Forum Post: Lists are good. Demands that Congress needs to enact NOW.
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 7, 2011, 12:29 a.m. EST by BFranklin
(8)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
A plan that unites the left and right against the Politico-corporate puppet masters. Spread this list of demands. The American People are the real power. Direct democracy is the only form of democracy that is acceptable. The rest is just a facade of freedom.
End the Federal Reserve. It needs to go. This means Congress and the President order a resolution to dissolve the Federal Reserve. They're one of the prime instigators in this entire mess.
Congress passes a resolution to fix all real estate land values and write off all defaulted home loans and student loans. $20,000 an acre for residential, $80,000/acre for commercial. Home values will be based entirely off the condition of the house, and the materials used to build it (and the fixed cost of the land with 20% sales tax).
Single Payer Healthcare. Federal, of course.
End the IRS and institute 20% federal sales tax. No more payroll tax. Eliminate all other taxes. No one gets past with loopholes (eg corporate write-offs). Estates, investments, savings and capital gains are not touched. The public coffers will overflow.
Gut out the racist/classist DEA, ATF, and all other crony buraeucracies. Dissolve them. They waste money and resources, and accomplish nothing productive (they make the problems worse). Leave substance regulation to the states.
Immediately repeal the Patriot Act.
Regulate the Federal Government. Any money a public official receives that is not part of his salary will be met with Federal Prison sentence. No more special interest lobbying to politicians, period.
A new legislative system that requires politicians to obtain consent from their constituency (by vote) before petitioning bills to congress (both senate and house). Lobby organizations can only lobby the populace for votes. If a lobby organization presents a media campaign to the public, it must be counterbalanced with the opposite view from an opposing organization to ensure fair and free information is being propogated to the masses. No longer can politicians be bribed... they MUST obtain voter approval before submitting bills.
Publicly financed campaigns with equal airtime. Prospective office holders must pass vigorous background checks including all business associations and a deep probe into their personal lives (character and integrity). They must also have fully-formed bill proposals ready, a planned agenda, and full approval of a citizen's investigative commitee.
Require that corporations be 60% employee-owned with only a 40% margin for free trade on the market. Employee shares are equally distributed by each employee, and employees are actively involved in decision-making meetings.
Insititute equlization of trade through fair trade tarriffs. Price foreign-made goods at a comparable price to a domestically-made counterpart. Force corporations to bring manufacturing and jobs back to America, and to stop enslaving third-world countries.
End all foreign wars. Authorize domestic oil drilling again so we can become energy self-sufficient and end reliance on OPEC. Federal fianancing into alternative energy sources so that we can move forward from oil quickly.
Ban imminent domain.
Part-time legislature in congress. Congress convenes only twice a year (Spring, Fall) for two weeks at a time. Only the office of the President is year-round, with all other government agencies.
End all corporate subsidies. No more corporate welfare, ever.
All this is fine, however they do have to be fairly specific and attainable. For now focus only on Corporate Greed and limit Corp influence on politics, and the fading middle class. USA should start working for its citizens before corps, and the execs ruining the country. If successful with this, then the others can be tackled.
--No executive, CEO pay more than 50 times the average employee salary (this sounds like a lot but currently some are in the thousands). No board member, more than 5 times average employee salary. If corporation does not comply, have much more tax .
The arguement is that 'executive talent will leave'; this is crazy since no other country even comes close to paying execs like USA,.
Lobbyists can have no direct contact with elected officials; they can give invitations to presentations but thats it. Limit of 50K for contributions to any one candidate; make this an ammendment. Ignore the Supreme courts decision that there is no limit. Ideally candidates can only be publically financed.
Also best to start putting words in specific politicians mouths--then they must deny them. Obama, Boehner, etc support athe propositions.
This exactly what we need. A consensus forum to create a intellectual direction to move in. While everyone may not be completely pleased, a middle ground needs to be reached so an official petition of demands can be settled on and slapped in the government's face by the majority.
The one problem that is glaring above all - a government bought and sold by corporate interest. If there was one goal that could be accomplished - separate business and state, just like church and state.
"Home values will be based entirely off the condition of the house, and the materials used to build it"... so a house in the middle of a gang warzone surrounded by run-down buildings would cost the same amount as that same house in, say the Hamptons?
"A new legislative system that requires politicians to obtain consent from their constituency (by vote) before petitioning bills to congress (both senate and house)" Only 40.9% of eligible voters voted in the 2010 election. Only 61.6% in the last presidential election. How bad of a turnout would we would get for votes to allow a senator to submit a bill to congress?
"Leave substance regulation to the states"... DEA budget is $2 Billion in 2011. The majority of our drugs are snuck in over the border through Texas, so they would shoulder a large portion of that burden themselves. Sounds like Texas's taxes would increase quite a bit...
"Part-time legislature in congress. Congress convenes only twice a year (Spring, Fall) for two weeks at a time" wow. part of the problem in this country is that congress already moves at a snails pace... how would it get better if they met less often?
Good points.
Gun regulation can be handled on a more local level. I always believed in localized, rather than federalized control. The ATF is money drain. Plus, the fiasco with Mexico. That was definitely a classist move. Support oppression of poor people further through empowering drug lords with guns. Gotta go, IMHO.
7 and 8: Even though the corrupt politicians have theoretically been rooted out at 7, I still don't trust them to be immune to temptation from outside interest. If the financial payoff of corruption exceeds the risk of prison time, it might still be a risk they take. I'm for cutting off that channel entirely and reducing the absolute flood of random bills that pass through congress, bills that most people don't even know are happening.
Well, if your point was that Hitler-like figures arise in times like this, you have a point.
No, we're not asking for a totalitarian government. Please. No. Quite the opposite, actually.
I'll take either, as my attention span permits. :)
This is what I was looking for. Constructive feedback from consensus.
Cool! Here it comes:
Jesus christ, no. The Fed has a vital role in our system, and is a critical support in our recovery efforts. If you don't like something the Fed is doing, you can just get Congress to pass a law or something. I'm not saying they're perfect, but they're doing an okay job.
Nooooo! Why do you want the government setting land prices? What will that accomplish? And no, Congress doesn't have the power to "write-off" unpaid debts. You wouldn't want them to, either.
Cool.
I'm okay with a national VAT tax, but the way you've got it there is inherently regressive. We'll need to fine-tune that.
First, how is the ATF racist? Even if you just want some gun laws repealed, we still have to regulate things like RPGs. Secondly, I agree that the War on Drugs isn't working, but you can't leave substance control entirely to states - part of it would fall under the FDA. But some control to states would be good.
I support that.
That, too.
So, basically you want a referendum for everything and tax-funded commercials? That is both incredibly expensive and unimaginably time-consuming. The representative democracy we have usually works pretty well. Besides, you already got rid of lobbyists.
I like most of that. I don't really like the "character and integrity" checks, though. Not only is that an incredible invasion of privacy, but "character and integrity" are too difficult to define, and eventually, you won't be happy with the definition. Besides, they already go to jail for screwing up. If you're trying to cut down on Weiner-style twitter pictures, it's just the price we pay for democracy.
No, why? In theory, that's how publicly traded companies work anyway.
Free trade makes everyone richer. No.
Awesome.
No, we need that.
Why?
Possibly. I'll think about that one.
Long story short, it's a good start. :)
as far as "racist" ATF and DEA, there is statistical evidence to suggest that they arrest vastly more black and Hispanic people than white people. just saying
Shall I post a long winded-reply, or do you want the short answer?
Don't forget the Glass-Steagall Act!
The problem is we need more debates and acceptance of goals like this. We need to make sure the 99% want these. Which is impossible on this forum of disappearing threads. I'm working on a new one