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07 November 2014

The Imaginary Political Platform Exercise

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:
  • 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.
As you can clearly see, I am utterly unelectable.

--
Addenda:
(2:54 PM):
  • Make higher education free.
  • Abolish gambling, including state-backed lotteries.
(11/10/2014 1:03 PM):
  • Establish free, universal childcare.
(6/6/2016):
  • Make paid eldercare leave universal.

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