why DO we do this, anyway?

[ulysses]

What is your idea of good government? What do you want out of the next Democratic administration?

[Son of California]

1. ENGERGY INDEPENDENCE, LIBERAL SUPREME COURT NOMS

NO MORE BULLSHIT WARS!
GAY RIGHTS!

[ulysses]

2. fair enough.

:) Thanks.

[madeline_con]

3. New financial idea....

instead of spending BILLIONS trying to take over oil rich countries, we could BUY oil from them.

Less death, better world relations, less danger to U.S. in general.

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tridim]

4. Freedom

and not the BS kind displayed on SUV bumpers.. Real freedom.

[Jack Rabbit]

5. Fair trade policies

Abolition of artificial personhood for corporations
Strengthening of labor laws and workers' rights
Restoration of civil liberties (repealing the Patriot Act)
Meaningful election reform (only paper ballots will be counted)

[ulysses]

6. but are these

reasonable to expect?

[Jack Rabbit]

7. Expect them? We should demand them!!

If this is class warfare, let us make the most of it.

[ulysses]

8. I do love your spirit, my friend!

:toast:

[punpirate]

9. It's not good government...

... it's legal corruption.

1) A return to true progressive taxation and fair taxation of corporations (i.e., a repeal of the many tax breaks afforded only to corporations). It's not just fair, it's a necessity to keep the wealthy and corporations from seizing the government.

2) A Constitutional amendment defining corporations as artificial persons under law, without the rights of natural persons.

3) Reduce the size of the standing military, beef up the National Guard and concentrate on home defense, not offense. The more powerful the military, the more likely it is for a President to start a war for political purposes, and the more money wasted on weapons systems designed to create self-perpetuating arms races.

4) Start working on fixing the real problems--energy, global warming, infrastructure, and especially schools. Invest in the things which are long-term winners, not short-term losers.

5) Repeal the laws giving excessive power to corporate government--the Patriot Act, for one.

6) Get out of Iraq, gracefully, if possible, awkwardly, if not.

7) Reopen government--rescind the directives restricting access to information.

8) Rescind the executive orders opening government to religion.

9) Try the Bushites on every applicable charge--after Bush is out of office and no pardons are possible--convince the public of what we already know--that Republicans are fundamentally undemocratic in intent and method. If they can get away with what they've done, they'll keep on doing it.

10) A complete revamping of HAVA to accommodate the disabled and guarantee honest elections--with real ballots, not electronic ones.

11) Begin to actually use the Sherman Act again, instead of ignoring that it exists.

And, no, no Pollyanna here--I don't think that will happen....

[ulysses]

10. damned well said.

Thank you!

[welshTerrier2]

11. a few more planks ...

first, let's talk about good government within the Democratic Party itself ... all kinds of ideas are suggested on DU ... does anyone really believe the Democratic Party has a process by which good ideas, or for that matter even bad ideas, bubble up to the top for consideration ... what's wrong in our party is what's wrong in our country: most citizens have little or no chance to be heard. job one has to be restoring our democracy ...

job two: we must learn to be good global citizens ... our imperilistic foreign policy will weaken our alliances, allow us to carry much less influence in world affairs and put us at greater risk of attack ...

job three: we have to get big money out of our political processes and our electoral processes ... paid lobbying used to be called bribing public officials ... let's put an end to paid lobbyists ...

job four: reforming the tax code with a goal of achieving tax fairness ... many have called for simplifying the tax code ... here's a recap of a post i wrote a few days ago calling from a shift away from the income tax (or perhaps in addition to the income tax) towards a tax on wealth:

ultimately, shouldn't fairness be based on each person's ability to pay? shouldn't it be based on the idea that each citizen should contribute to the national priorities according to their ability to do so?

which brings us to a discussion of taxing income versus taxing wealth ... take an extreme case ... one guy is a multi-billionaire ... each of his three estates are worth billions of dollars ... the only income he has is unearned income from dividends and various tax-sheltered investments ... he has zero earned income ... the other guy earns $30K per year and pays taxes on his income ...

what's wrong with this picture? the billionaire could easily be paying tens of millions in taxes without any infringement on his lifestyle ... the working man, graduated rates notwithstanding, doles out some of his very limited savings to support the national agenda ...

why not consider taxing each citizen based on their wealth?? ... not only would we tax the billionaire's income in the first year, we would tax his "nest egg" every year thereafter ...

ability to pay should be the standard ... that often has very little to do with one's annual income ... and if encouraging more saving is the objective, a certain proportion of wealth based on annual income could be exempted from taxation ... that piece of the puzzle would be easily remedied ...

if you're arguing for tax fairness, taxing wealth or taxing a combination of wealth and income is a much fairer system than the current nonsense we have ...

[bvar22]

12. Universal HealthCare

*Re-regulation of Corporations providing essential services: Energy, Transportation, Communication (Fairness Doctrine), Banking, Investment, Insurance, Utilities. We gave them a chance at self-regulation. THEY blew it!

*Fair Trade

*Legislation that would enable Mom & Pop (independent) small business and farms to compete on a level field with the Wal-Marts and factory farms.

*De-Criminalization and Regulation of most drugs and prostitution. Well funded rehabilitation programs.

*Criminalization of offshore "secret" accounts (private and corporate).

*Transparency in ownership. Corporations cannot "OWN" other Corporations. Corporate Books opened to the public and published nightly on the Internet. 10% bounty paid to any citizen who discovers Corporate FRAUD.

*In depth reform of Corrections Industry. Forbid "private" prisons. It the American Public imprisons an individual, the American Public needs to be responsible for the Prison oversight, not some Corporate Board meeting behind closed doors.

*If people of the World are going to be killed IN OUR NAME, OUR military needs to be completely responsible and accountable to the public with a CONCRETE "Chain of Command". Never again should the American Public be forced to listen to the Sec. of Defense say,"The Chain of Command was murky." No mercenaries and No Private Contractors in active Military Zones!!!!!


*In depth reform of Judicial System. Universal access to defense Lawyers with a "Blind Draw". "Liberty and Justice for All" means the RICH can't Buy their way out while the poor go to Prison!

*10 Year Plan to develop and make available Alternative, Ecofriendly Energy.

*Criminalization of Special Interest Lobbying

*Verifiable elections

*Instant Runoff Voting

*Publicly Financed Elections


These are just a few, and I don't demand the immediate implementation of them. I do INSIST that the Party I support be headed in that direction. If my Political Party is headed AWAY from these reforms, I am in the wrong Party.

[FrenchieCat]

13. We need to

Cut the fucking pork out of the 400 billion per year pentagon budget to have money for social programs.

What we are currently spending over there is obscene, and does not serve America well.

What Democrats want and what our treasury is left with will not go together well.....if we have no source of funds.

[Nimble_Idea]

15. It's this attitude that kills us in every election.

Cut the Farm subsidies and stop the pork in other areas. The pentagon should get an increase in the budget that they have now, it is woefully underfunded even under this administration and that is saying a lot.

The pork is in the hands of coporate crooks. Those evil bastids need to get taxed double time to get back what they stole from America.

[bvar22]

16. The Defense Budget of the US

is larger than the combined Defense Budgets of the next 30 countries, and you want to INCREASE IT?!!!

Who are you planning on fighting?

[FrenchieCat]

18. I agree....

Not only that, it's the pentagon handing out the pork to the corps!

[welshTerrier2]

21. some have the naive belief that ...

more money equals better defense ...

the reality is that many of the bloated weapons-systems programs make us less safe ... more money should be spent on personnel instead ... look how badly trained our military is for the so-called "peace-keeping" mission ...

how will star wars help us out in Iraq ???

and now they're talking about building more nukes ... one of the main reasons we were unable to get anywhere at the recent nuke conference on getting countries like Iran to now develop nuclear technologies was that the US won't reduce its own stockpiles ... just how many of these evil things do we really need ???

[FrenchieCat]

22. Your point and mine......

The shit needs to be re-arranged...and the excess refunded to the treasury. That's why we have a deficit now.....all of the corps are in line, getting their hand out for doing almost nothing.

Remember the days of the $9,000 screw? Well those days are back! Just ask fucking Halliburton who pays them their cash!

The Republicans will never do it. They'll continue to increase it and still shortchange the troops.

[welshTerrier2]

23. the Democrats won't do it either ...

at least not the current power structure ...

they are poisoned with the notion, especially after 9/11, that we must never allow the republicans to paint us as WEAK ON DEFENSE ... this means that we need to continue supporting the occupation of Iraq because otherwise we'd be those yellow-bellied chicken-livered cowards who disgraced this country in the eyes of the world ... of course, the fact that the US occupation of Iraq has actually made us less safe is of no consequence ... the important thing for today's Democratic Party is to look tough ... macho makes the best politics, they believe ...

unfortunately, when it comes to good policy and providing the best defense, smart does better than macho every time ... but the "we're stuck there" Democrats don't want to hear about that ...

[sandnsea]

19. They just found a new planet

Who knows what they'll find next!!! Be afraid, be very afraid. :scared:

Increase the defense budget, good grief, :banghead:

[FrenchieCat]

20. Nimble......"this Attitude" ain't ever even addressed in elections....

Please know that the pentagon has the wrong priorities. Sure, the veterans care and active duty personnel get the short end of the stick....but please don't make the mistake of thinking that the pentagon in general is underfunded. That would be you being woefully uninformed.

Out of that 400 billion, there is money for our Veterans, our soldiers, and many, many other military spending....and still some left over that doesn't need to go there.

It's the pork given away every year that's killing us, not my attitude.

[FourStarDemocrat]

14. All that and...... ***transparency***

An absolute neccessity for good government.

[kentuck]

24. We'll probably do something really dramatic like raise minimum wage

Instead of repealing the taxcuts for the wealthy, creating a national healthcare system, saving Social Security, creating a national program for childcare for mothers that have to work, bringing our military home to protect our shores and to help rebuild our nation, and stop the corporate welfare. No, they will do something really dramatic - like raise the minimum wage to 6.50 per hour - and all we Democrats will be happy until the Repubs get back in power....

[wli]

25. this is going to be a long list

1. send war criminals to be tried in the international criminal court
2. impose an indefinite moratorium on influence in foreign governmental affairs
3. disband the military and all the intelligence agencies
4. carry out an intensive public audit of all covert operations and potential crimes against humanity and/or war crimes
5. use the results of (4) to uncover additional offenders to send to the international criminal court to be tried for crimes against humanity and war crimes
6. publicly disclose the results of (4)
7. seize the assets of and dissolve all corporations involved in (4)
8. revoke corporate personhood
9. Repeal all laws passed during the Bush administration
10. Repudiate all judicial decisions passed by members of the Federalist Society (disbanded and prosecuted by the 4th and 5th points)
11. Repudiate all judicial decisions passed during the Bush administration.
12. Rescind all executive orders given during the Bush administration.
13. Outlaw lobbyists.
14. Outlaw thinktanks.
15. Outlaw electronic voting
16. Outlaw private prisons
17. Legalize all drugs
18. Legalize all informed, consensual acts (in particular prostitution)
18. Free all imprisoned drug offenders and prostitutes
19. Eliminate the death penalty
20. Replace all current correctional staff, forbidding law enforcement or correctional roles to ever be assumed again by any such persons.
21. Establish strict control over prison conditions, with intensive surveillance and redundant watchdog monitoring of prison staff, prisoners, and the like for abuse.
22. Comprehensively survey current and former prison inmates for instances of rape and mutilation, and intensively prosecute such.
23. Abolish all powers of psychiatric confinement granted to physicians.
24. Abolish all powers of involuntary administration of medication and/or surgery granted to physicians.
25. Outlaw plea bargains.
26. Pay reparations to ethnic groups victimized by US imperialism, granting the most valuable 10% of the land in the country to Native Americans, all land formerly held by slaveowners to descendents of former slaves, ownership of and sovereignty over the historical Texas area (larger than the state of Texas) to the Mexican government, and monetary reparations to all Latin American states the US has subjected to military incursions, as well as Middle Eastern states likewise victimized.
27. Rewrite the tax code from scratch for a progressive and loophole-free income tax, re-establish the estate tax, and similar.
28. Reestablish social security.
29. Nationalize healthcare outright.
30. Nationalize all industries involving the development of "the commons."
31. Seize the assets of and dissolve all organizations and/or corporations or persons committing egregious environmental offenses.
32. Freeze all major banks' assets pending an intensive investigation of money laundering or other support for criminal activities.
33. Arrest all election officials involved in elections over the past 20 years pending investigations of their activities.
34. Arrest all elected officials of the Republican party who have held office ever in their lifetime pending investigations of corruption, criminal activities, or involvement in criminal conspiracies in their activities.
35. Halt all participation in the IMF and/or WTO.
36. Make unions mandatory for all workplaces.
37. Aggressively pursue energy independence, investing all public funds directed toward energy toward renewable energy resources and penalizing all organizations/corporations/etc. involved in non-renewal resource -related activities.
38. Reallocate the entire defense budget to education.
39. Pass a constitutional amendment giving equal rights to sexual orientation and gender identity, in particular marriage, self-determination of gender identity imposed at a federal level, and the like.
40. Comprehensively reform all sodomy, rape, and other laws to be stated in manners respecting all sexual orientations and gender identities.
41. Repeal the Taft-Hartley act.
42. I'm running out of steam, here. You get the idea. None of this is ever going to happen.