The midterm elections have me imagining what my platform would be if I were running for national political office. I think the exercise is forcing me question some pretty foundational aspects of the current system. Here are 36 of those hypothetical planks:
--
Addenda:
(2:54 PM):
- Make voting compulsory.
- Create a multi-day voting holiday.
- Ease the absentee voting process.
- Abolish voter ID requirements.
- Replace First Past the Post voting with Single Transferable Voting.
- Limit politicians solely to public campaign funds.
- Establish that personhood does not extend to fetuses or corporations.
- Expand the Veterans Health Administration/Medicare/Medicaid into a universal single-payer health care system for all citizens.
- Tie the minimum wage to reliable measures of the living wage and inflation.
- Expand the Social Security Retirement Benefits program to replace pensions and 401k's.
- Establish federal funding for primary and secondary education.
- Establish compulsory public education (i.e. eliminate charter and private schools).
- Re-fund state colleges and universities.
- Make birth control freely available to all people of reproductive age.
- Make abortion both legal and available.
- Establish compulsory, fully-paid, universal parental leave of equal time for both men and women for birth and adoption.
- Require a compulsory minimum of 30 paid vacation days per year.
- Consider reducing the workweek and workday.
- Establish a carbon tax market.
- Subsidize renewable power sources.
- Build, operate, and subsidize public transportation (e.g. buses, light rail, and trains).
- Make same-sex marriage legal.
- Consider a policy of open borders.
- Reduce military spending to about one-seventh of current levels.
- Outlaw assault weapons, and restrict handgun ownership.
- End the War on Drugs.
- Reduce the current incarceration rate to less than a tenth of current levels.
- Increase restrictions on traditional corporations.
- Encourage benefit corps and employee-owned business models.
- Encourage labor union participation.
- Replaced the tax code with a simple, progressive system.
- Abolish gambling.
- Protect religious freedom by enforcing a strict separation between church and state.
- Increase spending on scientific research.
- Increase spending on art and the humanities.
- Decriminalize euthanasia.
--
Addenda:
(2:54 PM):
- Make higher education free.
- Abolish gambling, including state-backed lotteries.
- Establish free, universal childcare.
(6/6/2016):
- Make paid eldercare leave universal.
No comments:
Post a Comment