I’m always criticizing other people’s ideas. I think it is important, if you are going to criticize others, to put yourself out there with your policy. So this is my manifesto, of a kind. Not so dangerous, I think you will find. LOL. I’d appreciate any comments aimed at ferreting out detail. This is a work in progress. Disagree, but I would appreciate any commentary intended to debate and discuss the issues intelligently and reasonably. I am NOT here as a tribal warrior of any kind and don’t respond well to tribalist groupist ideology if you do comment.
I have started out with broad generalized statements on policy, but I intend to flesh it out over time with detail in bullet points beneath the general points.
General Principles
Ethical Leadership: At the core of any good government is ethics, responsibility and decency. Transparency and the acceptance of responsibility for mistakes is critical.
Limited Government: Governments today are HUGE. And they have an immense tax base that can be expanded quickly in times of need. While some major expansions of government are necessary, say in healthcare or elder care, many many other substantive areas can be far more limited than they are. Governments should expand NOT by spending, but by regulation and enforcement, with clear rules and consistent enforcement.
Globalism and Humanism: Recognize that borders of all kinds are historical artifices that are only meaningful because of economic differences between nations. Be rational about these differences and seek to enrich the global south by discouraging corruption, enhancing systems, and encouraging markets and good government. Recognize that all parts of the world are equally worthy of respect and treat them the same and with common universal principles.
Orders of Magnitude Spending Attention: Many many many smaller programs can be funded by small adjustments to larger wasteful programs. For example, if you limit the major government programs for people above a certain asset size, you can fund tons of other things.
Elimination of Party and Dictator Control: Recognize that governments want to stay in power. Encourage term limits or systemic limits on power possible. Independent oversight that is itself subject to limits. Recognize that the peaceful turnover of power to democratic winners is necessary and create systems that allow dictators and controlling governments to be removed from power if the people desire. Fight all efforts to install dictators at any level of the US government. Recognize the massive threat to all that Trump poses.
Systems are GOOD. Recognize that systems and laws, broadly, protect the people from abuse. When a system begins to be used to abuse the people, look for changes first. Only scrap existing systems when they become totally unworkable or an obviously better system exists and is do-able. Systems, over time, provide a base level of stability and order, the value of which cannot be overestimated. BUT…to be truly good, systems have to be fair to everyone and should be scrutinized for bias and unfairness, routinely and the bias and unfairness should be eliminated. Recognize that some systems are maintained to help the wealthy and powerful (US tax policy, anyone?), and we should reform them to help all people equitably.
National Defense
National Defense: Provide for a strong, effective and efficient national defense. Continue to evolve the armed forces to current technology levels. Abandon ineffective prior technologies as soon as they go obsolete. Recognize that the best way to a good national defense is through the encouragement of globalism and humanism. Recognize that today’s modern weaponry is exceptionally dangerous for humans and population levels, and seek systemic and global controls on the use of such weapons, and the moral and ethical use of such weapons.
Military in Space: Recognize that space is another military frontier and will need military involvement as we get off the planet.
Economy
Taxes: Recognize that low taxes and business friendly policies enable change and job creation. Avoid taxing the current growth industries and job creators. Use tax policy on the margins to implement change.
Economic Equity: Recognize that people in the bottom two quartiles of personal income should be the center of government spending, and that spending on the very bottom quintile (and lower) is necessary to make society better for all. Economic spending by government should be centered on programs that help the very bottom raise their quality of life.
Scrutinize Corporate, Upper and Middle Class Government Benefits: Existing programs that help the middle class or the upper class, and corporations, should be regularly scrutinized for ways to limit them on income or asset restrictions to shrink the size of government spending. New programs should be looking at the same issue, regularly.
Corporate Controls: Reform anti-trust law to allow a lot more insight into markets that are not functioning well. Look for corporate abuse of markets and aggressively point it out and limit it. Do NOT be shy about corporate laws that restrain their behavior through law. Unrestrained corporations have proven themselves to be incapable of non-financial judgment and so they must be limited.
Immigration
Legal Immigration: Massively increase legal immigration, to a scale at least 4-5x its current levels, so 3-5 Million legal immigrants a year.
Refugees: Increase refugee intake as the urgency dictates, but direct most immigrants to the legal immigration channels.
Illegal Immigration: Be extremely firm on illegal immigration on the front end. Send people back over the border to Mexico. Push Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean hard to firm up their immigration policies. But, once an illegal immigrant has been in the US for say 3-5 years, start to track their contributions and then offer an incentivized path to citizenship.
Abortion
Federal Abortion Law: Re-do the Roe compromise at the federal level legislatively, with an earlier end date for abortion. Ban most 2nd trimester abortions. Move the outside date for most abortions to, say 16 weeks after conception (not 16 weeks of pregnancy!). Totally allow the morning after and contraception and other forms of birth control. Allow exceptions for rape, incest and severe danger to the mother, and young women under 18. Do NOT allow state variances once the legislation has passed.
Gun Control
Gun Control: Gun ownership is a right that should be limited to the experienced, responsible and capable. Aggressively limit, either permanently or temporarily, the gun rights of possible dangerous users of guns – young people, drug users, the mentally ill, people in divorce and custody proceedings, people in gangs that kill people, people with restraining orders and criminal convictions. And multiple other categories of dangerous gun users. Track all guns and gun owners. Make gun owners responsible for all current and future crimes committed with a gun they own or have owned in some way.
Healthcare
Healthcare: Embrace healthcare for all that is based on the idea of money well spent and basic healthcare. Recognize that early treatment and identification of diseases reduces cost. Recognize that the American insurance and private healthcare system has failed and that people’s financial lives should not be ruined by health conditions if we can afford to provide government healthcare (which we can).
Housing
Housing: Land use and local policy should be centered on making high quality, great fully serviced neighborhoods available to all with a full range of market options. Low-income, but high quality, housing should be encouraged everywhere centered on the above neighborhoods. NIMBYism should be recognized for the disaster that it is – no one wants anything new built anywhere near THEIR house. But super good high quality long term planning is essential, including growth where population is still growing rapidly, but also retirement of systems, shrinking of neighborhoods, and obsolescence and non-growth should be planned for intelligently in most communities given population trends.
Homelessness
Homelessness Spending: Spend money in large amounts on EFFECTIVE programs to reduce homelessness. Recognize that they are the ones who need the most help in society and do not abandon them.
Make Homelessness Hard in Desirable Central Areas. Do not allow the permanently homeless (the ones who resist housing and services over and over again) to occupy desirable areas. Force them to the least desirable areas.
Services. Offer major services to the homeless. Recognize and address the poverty, drug, and mental health entry points to homelessness.
Eliminate Privacy Rights for Permanently Homeless. Track the homeless and reduce their “privacy” rights if they refuse services. Utilize the poverty crime as an opportunity to force acceptance of services.
Education
Education: The primary education spending should be focused on standards, curriculum, requirements, and quality, NOT teacher pay, unions, and student loans.
Universal Pre-K. Pre-K universal public education should start at age 3.
University Policy: Private universities should be required to VASTLY broaden their enrollment through technology enhancement. Universities should be funded only if they offer a set of social norms that are at least moderately reflective of society as a whole.
Community Colleges: Community colleges and technical schools should be funded to the maximum with the goal of making opportunities available for all americans.
School Choice: Charter schools, funded by the government, should be permitted, but discouraged. The value of schools to a community and common shared values has to be paramount. But if a school district is really not performing, allow competitive mechanisms in to bring up the standards.
Election Laws
Voting: Universal Voting ID should be the norm. Ballot access should be as available as possible. Mail-In. Technology. Mandatory voting should be considered.
Gerrymandering: Gerrymandering should be absolutely banned and shunned. Neutral, population based districts should be created, using communities and cities that people consider their own communities as the base. NO strangely shaped districts that split communities, or other similar non community based political control gerrymandering.
Ethics
Financial Influence on Congress: All lobbying should be transparent. Every congressperson should be obligated to disclose EVERY meeting and the specific legislation that was discussed, and the financial benefits in all forms given to that congressperson by the meeting participants.
Family Members of Political Leaders: Family members should never be given jobs or opportunities that are greater than those they can earn on their own. This should be scrutinized for privilege and corruption.
Labor
Unions: Unions should be encouraged for professions where people truly are taken advantage of: lawn care, agricultural, janitors, retail front line, housekeepers, maintenance, low end jobs. Unions should be highly discouraged for elitist professions like pilots, teachers, actors, professional sports players, government workers in non “low end” roles. Powerful unions should be reviewed under antitrust law and limited. The NEA in particular.
International Labor Controls: Encourage the free movement of labor globally. Allow for vast increases in the number of temporary labor visas available in the market, with a path to citizenship after a long period of work (5-10 years).
Elder Care
Elder Care: Vastly increase spending and regulation on care for the elderly, particularly the physically and mentally compromised. Eliminate the nursing home profit motive. Regulate HIGH standards of care. Both social security and medicare should be continued, funded and expanded. Social security is THE best social spending government program in the US because it just puts money in the hands of people that need it without a lot of fuss and should be looked at as a model for other social spending programs.
Corruption: Continue to seek rules and laws that make government more transparent and accountable.
Social Media
Limit Social Medial Platform Regulation: Do not require platforms to limit speech in any way other than what is required by law. But permit platforms to limit speech however they so desire and allow the market to sort out which platforms are popular. Laws on social media should be focused on traditional areas of crime and abuse, with enforcement.
Harassment and Dangerous Acts: Harassment, trolling, anonymous accounts should all be prohibited under LAW with specific regulations, not social media corporate policy.
Environmental
Fossil Fuels and Earth Resources: Recognize that fuels, minerals and water are limited resources and that we only have one planet.
Clean Energy: Encourage to the maximum renewable energy and reuse of materials wherever possible.
Planned Obsolescence: Plan for obsolescence and re-use on all projects, to allow for the effective destruction and removal of aged projects. Encourage renewal.
Death Penalty
Death Penalty: Totally permit it for the worst cases. You know it when you see it. Otherwise, tightly control its use.
Incarceration
Incarceration. Continue to seek ways to improve incarceration and refine penalties. Recognize that our current prison system is deeply flawed. Seek to adopt as many of the rehabilitation policies that restore a criminal’s positive attitude toward society and reduce recidivism.
Crime: Recognize that society is a LOT safer with the most dangerous criminals behind bars.
Poverty Crime: Also recognize that poverty crimes require solutions other than incarceration. Provide resources and financial assistance to proven committers of poverty crime initially, but see repeat offenders section below.
Repeat Offenders. Punish the repeat offender, even for poverty crimes if assistance is refused.
First Nations
First Nations. Broaden governmental support but move away from the “sin model” of first nations policy where the reservations are the home of alcohol, tobacco, and casinos. Require the tribes to provide a base level of services to citizens that upgrades over time, and provide those services to all tribal members even if the tribe does not permit it. Allow for US oversight on crimes, environmental, education, and other matters that are not up to US standards.
Foreign Policy
Elimination of Borders and Nationalism. Over time, seek globalist, internationalist solutions to world problems that are not manageable locally – the environment, public health and viruses, and global crime and global fraud – things like international tax evasion. Acknowledge the nationalist reality and vast economic disparities while seeking these things.
Massively Reform the UN. Increase the power of the UN General Secretary over international issues. Adjust the composition of the Security Council to increase it’s membership to include the largest countries by population, India, Nigeria, Brazil, and Indonesia. Change the veto power to a vote where at least 15% of the security council must object for a vote to not be approved. Consider dropping one of the European powers, preferably Russia. Reform the UN to focus on true global problems like the environment, public health, and international crime and fraud. Limit the power of the UN in most other areas.
Increase the Power and Legitimacy of a World Court. Create a HIGHLY functioning global court system for international disputes, non-national actors, and international crime & fraud. Concede sovereignty on such issues to the court, properly constituted.
Advancement of Democracy and Balance of Power. Advance democracy and shared power systems. Promote governments with functioning executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
Discourage Autocracy. Recognize that once a dictator is in power, they do not cede control and do whatever they want. Therefore, discourage dictatorship and party control, wherever possible. Oppose leaders who are not democratic, and encourage countries to have free and fair elections. Oppose the current dictators: Putin, Xi, Erdogan, Maduro, Kim, Lukashenko, Diaz-Canel, Khamenei. Throw Russia out of the G8 and the G20, until their war comes to an end.
Advancement of Capitalism and Labor Freedom. Encourage the reduction of border controls on both labor and capital, whereever possible.
Systems and Government Enhancement. Encourage the development and facilitation of transparent, ethical, and progressive systems and governments that seek to stabilize and enable human development.
Anti-Corruption. Seek to destroy corruption and cheating whereever it exists.
Fundamentalism and Terrorism. Eliminate global intolerance. Recognize that tribalism is NOT terrorism, when considered from the perspective of the tribe. Seek to reduce violence against humans, but recognize that ethical use of modern weaponry is appropriate against aggressors and violent regimes.
Human Rights. Attempt to create a universal, enforceable standard of human rights.
