Forum Post: Our Platform---some ideas
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 12, 2011, 10:57 p.m. EST by TruePatriots
(274)
from San Diego, CA
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
We need a platform that is attractive to both independents and liberals and yet still deals with curving the power of financial institutions.
So, first thing first taking pot shots at congress which has the lowest approval rating in its history. I say we should demand term limits such as 3 terms for the House and 1 term for the Senate which would equal 6 years each. That was for liberals and independents :)
I was then thinking how do we curtail financial institution's influence and to do that one must think how they go about their way of gaining influence. The answer: they meet privately (their lobbyists) behind closed doors or through communications. So, we can demand open communications (we would have to do that through amendments to the constitution because a court would rule that congressmen have the right to privacy) but not like the freedom of information act which you have to request the communications which they may or may not approve. The law should require a monthly publication of all communications of politicians and their employees (you see how they would circumvent the law by using their employees to communicate). All private meetings will be illegal with ALL citizens to be fair though public meetings will be legal (define public?).
I think when it comes to the financial institutions themselves we should make a law for any future bailout to require the receiving institution to downsize their company by 25% (or insert your own number).
Just some thoughts.
Getting all $ out of elections is the one unifying movement both sides can agree on. Once we actually gain our voice back we can then move towards making real change. We can debate the fine points later. We need to focus so as not to be divided until then.
I can see that. It would require an amendment though because the Supreme Court already ruled corporations people. We need a limit that affects everyone and everything (that's you corporations) equally.
Agreed...all big $ via PAC's or otherwise is the problem. Our politicans are bought and paid for. My main drive is that at this point we keep it simple and focused as a means of rallying all of us together. Get ALL $ out of elections.
Get money out of politics!!!
We belong to different parties, different unions, different clubs with different interests. Nevertheless, we all share the same common goal: a Better Life. And though each person has a unique vision of Better Life, we don’t dream of starvation and misery, or meaningless jobs that eat up our lives. Our visions include peace, meaningful life, excitement, happiness, and freedom. This is where we all want to get, one general direction.
Peace is when no people are under threat of being killed or mutilated for any reason.
Meaningful life, excitement, and happiness are private challenges that every person must be free to explore in a personal way.
Freedom is vital for all that. Freedom to organize and unite for common goals, freedom to stay independent of organisations and set personal goals. Freedom to shape one’s life any way one wants, freedom no to do that. This large all-inclusive freedom for all is possible.
I see nine features of a free society, as free country or free world. These features are goals that we can reach very soon, if we unite for them. They are in the same general direction of meaningful life, peace, happiness, and freedom. They are basically paperwork changes, upgrade to the existing system.
Business is an organisation where people play different roles and work together towards common goals. We need to recognize that owners and employees of all levels, managers and workers, are free individuals that partner together in the free enterprise, and are entitled to shares of the enterprise profits. Wages are merely allowances for a general level of life to make it possible for the workers to carry out their duties. The actual work should be compensated with a fair share of collective achievement — a share of profit.
Uneven distribution of power is what impedes individual freedom and corrupts the very notion of freedom. It is incompatible with democracy. Strong progressive income tax must protect us from uneven distribution of power.
We must ensure that every person gets a fair share of the results of that person’s work. For that, we have to recognize that any work takes time and physical effort. If one person honestly works hard for a day, hardly anyone can do ten times more work, but it is physically impossible to do a hundred or a thousand times more work in a day. Progressive income tax must narrow down the gap of money and privilege between jobs. It must establish a high top margin of individual earnings. Maximum earnings limit should depend on minimum wage, and be substantially, but not unreasonably higher. If minimum wage is $30,000 a year, it may be prudent to agree on the maximum income of $300,000 — ten times the minimum.
Taxes other than the income tax, such as sales tax or payroll tax, should be reduced or cancelled.
We must ensure every person’s right not to be forced into any organisation, including not economically forcing free individuals to join business organisations to attain the basic necessities of modern life. Every person is entitled to a free and inalienable lifelong allowance that should cover average rent, food, transportation and communication (such as Internet connection), and should be equal to minimum wage.
No person shall be denied the right to healthcare and no person shall be denied the right to improve oneself through education. Healthcare and education must be free.
Essential social service workers — policemen, firefighters, medics, and teachers — should get the high-end salaries that reflect their vital importance to the society. Throughout their careers their salaries should approach the maximum income.
Government must be fully transparent. A taxpayer must be able to track where every tax dollar is at any time, down to departments, individual people responsible for that dollar, and particular contracts.
Free people can not submit other free people to any form of physical punishment. No person can be subjected to physical punishment, including termination of life.
Reaching these goals will mean Better Life based on freedom and equal opportunity to every individual. It is possible in the modern world, with our knowledge and technology, to switch to this freedom-for-all within our existing infrastructure. A few administrative changes is all that’s needed, but we don’t have much time. If you don’t agree with all of these goals, let’s unite to bring about those we agree on first. Pick a goal and let’s reach it together.
Distribute this text any way you like: re-post, publish, print, translate, quote, make a video or a song. Our task is to make these features of the free society common knowledge, in order to unite in one great general direction, and so that if you don’t see any of these features around, you know you are not free.
Daniel Malikov
text from superunion.org
well said :)
Thanks.
I am admin at superunion.org. Just starting. We charge $1/year. If you think our platform can somehow help, make the accounts and send me the list of your accounts, I'll waive the fees.
Abolish the Senate, it is outdated and gives too much power to underpopulated states. All elections are to be publicly financed. End all political advertisements and signage. Instead give free time for debates, interviews, and opportunities to print platform. Shorten election process to three months. Have a national primary for both parties with preferential voting (choose 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices). Voting to begin on Sunday at 6 am and end on Monday at 6 am. All voting must have paper trail. Balloting would be universally the same across all states, same method. There must be enough voting stations to prevent long waits. Abolish filibuster and other parliamentary abuses and problems. End electoral college.
I'm all for an up or down vote. I am tired of the filibuster. It was only because of the GOP filibustering from 2008-2010 that the Democrats were only able to get a handful of major laws passed. It gave life to the Tea Party in fact....imagine how better the nation would have been without those fools...
Exactly, but we most immediately need is a comprehensive strategy, and related candidate, that implements all our demands at the same time, and although I'm all in favor of taking down today's ineffective and inefficient Top 10% Management System of Business & Government, there's only one way to do it – by fighting bankers as bankers ourselves. Consequently, I have posted a 1-page Summary of the Strategic Legal Policies, Organizational Operating Structures, and Tactical Investment Procedures necessary to do this at:
http://getsatisfaction.com/americanselect/topics/on_strategic_legal_policy_organizational_operational_structures_tactical_investment_procedures
Join
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/StrategicInternationalSystems/
if you want to be 1 of 100,000 people needed to support a Presidential Candidate – such as myself – at AmericansElect.org in support of the above bank-focused platform.
My idea is to make music, like this (enjoy):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVOLTrhXhac
What will you do with the outcry of hundreds and maybe thousands of people put out on the street with no job? They might, uh, rally against you.
So, we should reward them for making mistakes? If the company is too big to fail and is failing then we need them to be smaller.
Huh? I didn't say that. You read too far into it. I just wanted to know what you would do about that - I mean, isn't that a major concern with the OWS right now? Hell, I just read a thread from someone saying jobs should be a human right. A HUMAN RIGHT to have a concept, a man-made construct, as if taking away employment papers is like taking away air. You can still work, create goods and enjoy a good living from the fruits of that work, without someone telling you you're hired. That's just an idea of bartering abstracted so we can specialize - you give access to the means to labor, I give my actual labor on your equipment, you give money (though not all, since I already was on borrowed time with the equipment), and finally, last but not even close to least, the baker gives bread.
I agree that if a system is not working, you don't feed it more human fodder, time, or resources. You break it down, and remake it better using the lessons you learned the first time. That's just efficient and logical. Systems are not people - we don't need to treat them humanely. However, systems people rely on, well, in those cases we need to consider the impact on the humans involved. Kind of like not demolishing a house while the human owner, perhaps a man in his bathrobe, is trying to sleep off his hangover. (grin second reference)
That said, bailouts for large banks definitely sound like bullshit to my ears. I don't know the inner workings of the transactions, though, so I'm not someone of any authority on that subject. It may or may not have been the best, albeit crappy, option at the time to keep the economy on life support. It may or may not have been a truly scummy, corrupt thing to do. I definitely think it should have been more transparent, whatever the truth behind it. Tax payers should get reports just like stock holders. We invest in you, you tell us everything and we get to decide. The people at large have been tricked into thinking they are too stupid and incapable of being prudent stewards of this country and its resources. They have been coddled into 8 hours a day of mind-numbing entertainment and inconsequential, petty relationships with their fellow man, followed by long periods of self loathing and desire for material goods they don't actually need to feel fulfilled and happy by. They have been told they should be given everything, and that this - not genuine work and the resulting fruits (and wonderful sense of ability that comes with that, the rush of doing something real), not true growth - is the only way they will be happy. This was a lie, but we were the ones who bought it. I guess there will be the piper's hand on both sides of the fence.
The unfortunate part was that we did need the bailouts. I know we are all frustrated and we all sorts of issues that was semi-covered up or unclear to the public that are all of a sudden pushed onto us. That said, we do need make it clear to the financial institutions that bailouts are not a fail safe option. There needs to be serious handicaps laced on them to make them aware it's not just the last option but rather the last last option.
Yeah, I don't want our society in a lariat like that again, personally, no matter who is holding the ends.
Make it a "pass the mic" platform. Allow each one to voice their reasoning for being there one after another. Make it loud and clear.
This should be done at all capitals, in DC, wall street, banks, etc
The system won't allow real changes to itself. Politicians will never limit their own jobs, or take away their sources of riches. We need to take control in a simple way. If 'Wall Street' wants to look at us as consumers and cheap labor, we can cure that without any elections or political backing. I am sure there must be a few good people who are already working in OWS. I offer this simple suggestion. Make a list of the biggest problems to the smallest in a few simple categories, like outsourcing, corporate political donations and lobbying, overpaid executives, polluters.. Then list in order from the biggest offender to the least, and organize a boycott for the leader in each category. For example- if Dell computers is the biggest outsourcer of jobs, they would be at the top of that list. Exxon might top the list of polluters.
if we as consumers just boycotted Dell or Exxon for a week, or two, Dell would start to immediately bring back call center jobs, just as a start. We can start with demands to bring back the fastest jobs to set up, and then move to demand more and more made in USA content.
If we boycott companies products who contribute(bribe) to politicians, they will stop contributing. This organization has the influence now to do this. I believe that we don't need any political action at all, after all we are the 99%!!!!!!!!
The system won't allow real changes to itself. Politicians will never limit their own jobs, or take away their sources of riches. We need to take control in a simple way. If 'Wall Street' wants to look at us as consumers and cheap labor, we can cure that without any elections or political backing. I am sure there must be a few good people who are already working in OWS. I offer this simple suggestion. Make a list of the biggest problems to the smallest in a few simple categories, like outsourcing, corporate political donations and lobbying, overpaid executives, polluters.. Then list in order from the biggest offender to the least, and organize a boycott for the leader in each category. For example- if Dell computers is the biggest outsourcer of jobs, they would be at the top of that list. Exxon might top the list of polluters.
if we as consumers just boycotted Dell or Exxon for a week, or two, Dell would start to immediately bring back call center jobs, just as a start. We can start with demands to bring back the fastest jobs to set up, and then move to demand more and more made in USA content.
If we boycott companies products who contribute(bribe) to politicians, they will stop contributing. This organization has the influence now to do this. I believe that we don't need any political action at all, after all we are the 99%!!!!!!!! We CAN make politicicians almost irrelevant by voting with our money, if done in an organized way. This will scare the corporate thieves more than ony other single threat they perceive.
Excellent ideas but boycotts seldom work. It requires almost all of us to work together and that's a feat in itself. But, we can dream :)
A platform is as easy as what everyone can agree on. Get a consensus (democracy) on that. Look into how to change what's generally accepted to be wrong. Just like that - platform established. Don't discourage advisement from anyone - even the establishment - just don't accept it blindly. Myself, I like Maximum Wage and standard of living based limited socialism (socializing ONLY utilities such as power, water and natural gas). But that isn't for everybody.
And if someone does take maximum wage and run with it, don't propose a ridiculously low ceiling. Heart and neuro surgeons average close to $1 mil a year and I can't see how they don't deserve that with the level of skill, education and risk that involves. My top is $2 mil.
Another easy add-on: bring home the troops!