Happy new year!  Some thoughts and hopes for the new year...

Buy local, buy American. These days it seems it isn't good enough to simply buy local. We love our Mom and Pop stores. We love the "main street" feeling we get when we walk down the avenue and stop to chat with our favorite merchants. We don't want to see our neighborhood commercial strips turn into strip malls. But it doesn't end there. The New York Times recently reported that the Federal government, one of the world's largest clothing purchasers, is spending $1.5 billion at overseas factories. Why isn't that money being spent here? We may end up paying more for our goods and services at first, but isn't reinvestment in our country's economy worth it? It doesn't end with clothing, or the Federal government alone. Government spending in general, Federal, State and City, should be strategically invested locally to concentrate wealth at home. There ought to be a law.

Use less packaging, conserve resources. We've been talking about it since the mass introduction of municipal recycling programs decades ago. And we've made a little headway - like shorter bottle caps, tagless clothing, and the current push to ban or restrict plastic shopping bags. We can do better. What about the really pernicious stuff like plastic utensils (2/3 of the world's population doesn't use forks), styrofoam containers (completely unnecessary), paper labels on canned goods (you can cheaply print directly onto the metal), plastic wrappers and address labels for periodicals, and those mountains and mountains of disposable baby diapers? Consumers pay a hefty tax on gasoline at the pumps, why not impose an equally hefty tax on manufactured petroleum-based products? That could be one way to encourage the use of alternate, sustainable materials and reduce the waste.

Invest in people, our most precious resource. We love our neighborhoods. They're how we identify where we live. What makes them special places are the people in them. Some who grew up here and helped build community. Some who ended up here and decided to plant roots. Even some who have to sacrifice to be able to stay. With homelessness, hunger, mental illness and other social challenges confronting us we need to take a serious look at how we're responding to these conditions and what we're doing about them. It isn't good enough for us to reactively house, feed and treat people. We need to focus more on preventing homelessness, providing education that prepares our children to succeed in the workplace and inculcating a culture of good mental hygiene. Feeding our neighbors today isn't good enough; we need to teach more people to fish.