Only 2 days left to submit new planks to the Netroots platform!!!! Come on by and add your $.02 to the process:
www.NetrootsPlatform.org
You can find the current top planks below. These were developed by the Netroots community - democratically, collaboratively, transparently, and entirely online.
Most of the planks are really strong, but everything (even the good stuff) can still be improved. There's still time for YOU to add your voice before we submit this to the Obama Campaign and the DNC!
(For more info, see here, here, here, here and here.)
Click on to see the current platform:
The General Principles Plank
The American Dream: prosperity, liberty, security for all.
The American Dream begins with every American's right to be healthy, educated, and to live in a safe community and a clean environment. We believe vibrant economy is built with American jobs, well-paid productive workers, innovation, and the entrepreneurial spirit. We believe responsibility, honesty, and compassion are fundamental to a successful nation and that efficient government, effective public investments, and fiscal responsibility serve our citizens best.
We believe protecting personal liberty begins with the right of every citizen to enjoy their full civil liberties with equal access to opportunity and justice, We believe in the values of freedom, fairness, and respect. We believe the cornerstone of democracy is honest elections, transparent government and a deep commitment to our nations' Consititution and Bill of Rights.
We believe leadership with global cooperation is the best way to secure peace and acting on environmental challenges strengthens our nation and protects the Earth. We believe the power of the United States must be used honestly and wisely.
WE BELIEVE America's promise of prosperity, liberty and security belongs to all Americans and that our nation's strength lies in a shared commitment to these ideals.
The Economy Plank
It is our fundamental belief that the American economy should be an economy that is democratically managed for the benefit of all the American people, not merely for the benefit of large corporations or the wealthy elite. We have seen in recent years that when government abdicates its responsibility to regulate the economy, chaos ensues and the working class suffers as a result. We believe in free enterprise and we support the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people, but we believe that such enterprise flourishes only when the economy is responsibly managed by government on behalf of the people. In light of this fundamental belief, we propose the following steps to lift our economy out of its current recession:.
- Recognizing that our budget deficit contributes to the devaluation of the dollar and thus to inflation, we call for responsible budgeting by our government. Government can and should pay for programs as it goes; we cannot continue to fund programs with deficit spending.
- To work toward a balanced budget and ensure that needed programs do not suffer, we call for decreases in military spending wherever possible.
- Like our budget deficit, our trade deficit contributes to the devaluation of the dollar and inflation. We therefore call for a renegotiation of all free trade agreements, especially the North American and Central American Free Trade Agreements (NAFTA and CAFTA). All trade agreements should be sensitive to both domestic and foreign economic needs, to the rights of workers here and abroad.
- We believe that the organized labor movement is vital to ensuring a democratic economy. We therefore call for a restoration of labor rights and the repeal of Cold War-era laws that undermine the strength of labor unions, especially the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947..
- The current home mortgage and banking crises have occurred because government failed to adequately regulate the banking system. We call for a complete restoration of the banking regulations that existed prior to the Bush administration's deregulation efforts.
- To ensure a strong economy, government must work to curtail corporate crime and impropriety. Among the many steps that must be taken to curtail corporate crime, we call for an end to loopholes that allow corporations to move to offshore tax havens and avoid their taxes; for better regulation of the pension system to ensure retirement security; and for a ban on government contracting to corporate criminals.
- We believe in the fundamental principle that much should be expected from those to whom much has been given, and we have seen in recent years that the "trickle-down" theory of economics in which it is argued that tax cuts to the wealthy will trickle down for the benefit of all is a false theory. We therefore call for a truly progressive tax system in which the wealthy pay their share of taxes and wealth is taxed at a higher rate than work. We call for government to permit the Bush tax cuts to expire.
- We recognize that our energy and education policies are integral to a bright economic future for America. We call for an energy policy based on renewable resources to lower costs for Americans and create new jobs. We further call for an educational policy that deemphasizes standardized testing and that is sensitive to inequities experienced by underprivileged and minority students.
- We respect the role of working women in our economy, and we call for economic policy that recognizes the vital role these women play. We call for the ratification of a federal Equal Rights Amendment to ensure, among other things, that women are given equal pay for equal work.
- We recognize the contribution made to our economy by undocumented workers, and we reject policies that force them into hidden slave-labor. We call for humane immigration policies that make it easier for those of other lands to pursue the American dream, as many of our own ancestors did. We call for legal normalization of undocumented workers' status and a path to citizenship for those who have contributed to our prosperity.
These steps are vital to creating a people-powered economy, but they are the means to an end and not an end unto themselves. The ultimate goal of our economic policy must be to create an economy that works for all Americans, and government should pursue any policy that would work toward that end, no matter how bold or innovative. Boldness and innovation have helped to turn us into an economic superpower, and only that same boldness and innovation will preserve our economic standing for future generations.
The Civil Rights, Civil Liberties & Human Rights Plank
HUMAN RIGHTS AND JUSTICE.
We believe that every citizen regardless of their sex, race, national origin, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or economic status is entitled to equal protection under the law, to equal access to the benefits of our political and economic system, and to equal access to our courts. We support efforts to integrate individuals with handicaps into the community and workplace. We repudiate the racist and/or violent tendencies of extremist groups. We support a path to citizenship for all immigrants. We support the inherent right to privacy for law-abiding citizens, and the right of individuals to control their own bodies and medical decisions. Constant vigilance is necessary to protect our constitutional rights against efforts to undermine or ignore them.
RESTORE OUR AMERICAN CONSTITUTION AND BALANCES OF POWER IN GOVERNMENT.
Our Constitution is the fundamental framework if our democracy and freedoms. It must be upheld. We must actively secure government of the People, by the People, and for the People.
We resolve to restore the balance of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, in particular, all Congressional prerogatives such as declarations of war, the power of the purse, challenges to executive overreaching with signing statements and executive orders, enforcement of Congressional subpoenas, and impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors.
RESTORE OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS AND DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY.
We resolve to restore our constitutional rights including dissent, free speech, assembly, habeas corpus, privacy, due process of law, and equal protection. To this end, we resolve to put an end to government practices and to repeal or substantially amend laws (including the Patriot Act, the FISA Amendments law and the Military Commissions Act), executive orders and executive signing statements that attempt to legitimize warrantless surveillance on Americans, the use of secret evidence in military courts, torture, illegal rendition and imprisonment of U.S. citizens and others, and arbitrary racial and religious profiling. We resolve to replace these with laws that reaffirm our fundamental rights and hold accountable all parties who violate those rights.
GET FISA RIGHT.
We resolve to repeal or substantially amend the FISA Amendments Act, which threatens Fourth Amendment and other fundamental rights and to replace the FISA Amendments Act with a law that restores fundamental rights and holds all parties accountable who violate those rights.
We resolve to conduct a full investigation of illegal government surveillance programs, make public the legal opinions that justified them, and hold accountable those who ordered illegal warrantless surveillance.
We resolve to restore the rule of law and end unchecked unitary executive power by bringing to justice all corporate entities, government agencies, and persons who violated the Fourth Amendment and other fundamental rights.
LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDER/TRANSSEXUAL (LGBT) EQUALITY.
We support the hate crimes bill, known as the Matthew Shepard Act, as approved in the 110th Congress and will renew the effort to pass into legislation a hate crimes bill in order to protect more LGBT Americans from bias-motivated violence.
We support non-discrimination in employment, housing, credit, and public accommodation for LGTB people.
We support repealing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, as well as Article 125 of the Unified Military Justice Code, to allow all LGBT Americans to proudly defend our country.
We believe in the separation of Church and State. While different religions set different criteria about the gender of people that they marry, the government should not practice discrimination in the issuance of marriage licenses based upon the sex of the intended spouses.
We support the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and explicitly require the Federal Government to consider as married all couples legitimately married or joined in a civil union in a jurisdiction that recognizes these unions.
We believe that the government should recognize all civil unions and domestic partnerships equally.
We believe in a person's freedom to choose how to live his or her life, including the freedom of gender identity and expression and will pass legislation to protect that freedom.
We believe in a country in which all children can have a learning environment in schools safe of harassment and bullying and will pass legislation to that effect.
We support protecting all families and their children equally and explicitly acknowledge the adoption rights of same-sex couples. We will pass legislation to that effect.
The Healthcare Plank
While much attention has been focused on adminstrative details, there is more than one road to acheiving a fair healthcare system for America. No one structure can claim to be the only right way.
However, there are certain tests that must be met by any true reform.
They are:.
- Universality: A successful and fair reform must cover everyone, regardless of health status, age, economic status or place of residence.
- Equality: Everyone must be covered for the same standard of care. Any differentiation into one program for the poor and a different program for the rich leads inexorably to decay of programs perceived as serving the poor and disadvantaged.
- Comprehensiveness: All needed care covered, including inpatient and outpatient medical, dental, vision, mental health , physical and occupational therapies, rehabilitation services and compimentary therapies scientifically judged to be effective.
- Broad based financing mechanism: The financing mechanism must be broad based and appropriately progressive, or at a minimum, not regressive.
- Efficiency: the structure of the reformed system must be designed to minimize spending on administrative processes and maximize the portion of spending devoted to actual provision of care.
- Usability: The reformed system must provide ease of access and simplicity both for patient and provider.
- Emphasis on Prevention: To the extent that decisions must be made on the allocation of scarce resources, high priority should be given to prevention and early detection of disease and incentives designed to maximize patient use of preventive services, while minimizing preventable disease and disability.
National Security & Foreign Policy
The foreign policy of the United States should reflect our highest ideals of freedom, liberty, justice, and democracy. In the past, we have often relied too much on our military strength instead of our ethical principles. US military intervention in other countries is often seen by the people in those countries as insensitive and bullying, which has made it easier for extremists to rally support thus placing America in far greater danger.
Real security is best advanced by ameliorating global poverty and other problems that afflict people worldwide, upholding human rights, adhering to international law, cooperating with our allies who support these principles, and honestly negotiating mutually-satisfactory solutions with our adversaries.
We call for a new US foreign policy. Specifically we call for the United States to:
- Expeditiously end the war in Iraq and bring our troops safely home.
- Renounce pre-emptive or preventive wars and instead cooperate with our allies and honestly negotiate with our adversaries.
- Support pending international treaties (the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the International Criminal Court, the land mine treaty, cluster bomb treaty, and banning weapons in space), reaffirm our support of previously ratified international treaties (Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty), and seek to neogtiate other treaties that will eliminate weapons and build confidence in non-military solutions to conflicts.
- Support international capacities for prevention of armed conflict, for human rights monitoring, and for multilateral rapid responses to conflict and crisis via the United Nations.
- Renounce the first use of nuclear weapons and reaffirm that these weapons would only be used in retaliation after a nuclear attack initiated by another country. End efforts to develop new "useable" nuclear weapons.
- Work to end the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Specifically, expand funding for the Nunn-Lugar program to guard nuclear weapons and materials more securely and destroy existing nuclear stockpiles and production facilities, adhere to the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which calls for all countries with nuclear weapons to reduce and eliminate their nuclear weapons, adhere to chemical and biological weapons protocols to reduce and eliminate these weapons, and support verification measures and enhanced inspection of all weapons facilities.
- Ban the sale and transfer of arms to regions of conflict and to regimes involved in human rights abuses.
- Support programs that promote peaceful conflict resolution, democracy, human rights, equality, sustainable development, and civilian-led political transition and reconstruction programs.
- Increase foreign aid to democratic countries that work to end poverty and misery. End foreign aid to regimes that abuse human rights or block democratic reform and use this money to support nonprofit international aid organizations.
- Support nonpartisan, nonviolent intervention as practiced by groups like the Nonviolent Peaceforce and Peace Brigades International.
- End all financial contracts with private companies that provide soldiers (mercenaries). Ensure that all armed forces personnel adhere to the Uniform Military Code of Justice.
- Ban all lobbying by defense contractors. Bolster the resources of the Inspector General to reduce corruption in defense contracts.
- Reduce the number of US military bases around the world, reduce the number of people serving in the armed forces, slow the development of new weapons systems, and reduce the defense budget to reflect a truly defensive force. Use the savings to promote peaceful conflct resolution, democracy, and sustainable development.
- Increase health and eduation benefits for veterans to ensure they are taken care of and compensated for the toll taken by their service to our country.
- Support communication and commerce between Americans and people in other countries to increase empathy and understanding, reduce prejudice and fear, and build mutual interdependence.
The Energy & Environment Plank
The United States must commit to producing 100% of our electricity from cheap, clean renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, within 10 years. We must also embark on a major effort to develop mass transportation - reducing private vehicle use by 30% within 10 years.
The United States should commit to rebooting our economy using the needs of a sustainable green economy to create jobs and develop new industries. We should commit to a Green New Deal to build solar and wind capacity that will help to mitigate climate change and minimize poverty.
Our throwaway society is unsustainable. To send the right signals, producers of products and our built environment need to be designed with the whole life cycle in mind. We need to rethink our current cradle to grave disposable mindset with cradle to cradle design which will be healthy for all the children of all species for all time.
All subsidies for ethanol production and nuclear generation will be cut and applied to renewable energy and mass transportation. We will forego any further construction of nuclear power stations until the nuclear industry develops a way to safely store or dispose of its waste within the U.S.
Our National Park System should be protected and expanded. Funding will be increased to purchase open space adjacent to and within National Parks.
The Electoral Reform Plank
We believe that the basis for any democracy must be free and fair elections. We therefore endorse the following reform proposals to ensure the fairness of our elections and to make participation in our democratic system more accessible to Americans.
- We support a mandatory paper trail for all electronic voting systems to protect against error and fraud.
- We support the institution of a federal election holiday to ensure that every American has the opportunity to vote.
- We support the public financing of all political campaigns, with no loopholes - including donations through national party committees - to allow corporate and lobbyist money. We believe that our elections should be driven by the people of this country and not by the rich and powerful elite.
- We support a federal standard for ballot access in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and the American territories.
- We support a more inclusive public debate process, including the adoption of reasonable and clear standards by which candidates may participate in debates.
- We support instant run-off voting to ensure that our elected leaders are always chosen by a majority of the electorate and not by a mere plurality.
- We support proportional representation to ensure that all parties and candidates that enjoy the confidence of a significant percentage of the American people will have a seat at the table for the making of public policy.
- We support a binding national initiative to enable the people to have a direct role in the making of public policy, a proposal now made possible by new technologies.
- We support governmental affirmative action to ensure that minorities and women are well represented at every level of government.
- We support a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college, and in the meantime we support state-by-state efforts to award electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.
The Education Plank
The No Child Left Behind program has not had the desired affect of improving K-12 education in the United States. The drop out rates in high school are still unacceptably high, especially for minorities. Public education is not getting the support it needs at all levels of government from local to federal. Too much attention is spent on finding scapegoats rather than taking a bipartisan approach to improving our childrens education. School vouchers are not the answer as they just mask the problem, and add an element of bureaucracy that is not needed to improve our schools. Solutions to our education problems need to include teachers, parents, and school administrators who have first hand experience with the problems in our schools. Pay needs to be improved in order to attract more qualified teachers. Educators need to focus on student learning rather than training students on how to pass tests. At the college level, costs are getting out of control and many middle and working class families are being priced out of getting into college and/or incur massive debt in order to pay for their college education. We need to develop better funding mechanisms for college students and their parents so they can afford college. We also need to better understand why the cost of a college education is is escalating way beyond the Consumer Price Index.
The Science & Technology Plank
We support the expansion of the nation's broadband infrastructure through the establishment of a broadband superhighway system, along with guaranteed access to broadband internet connectivity.
Educational and enterprise innovation will thrive in an atmosphere of universal broadband access - laying the infrastructure for an explosive increase in American competitiveness in the information age.
The Media & Communications Plank
As the United States transitions to the next stage in this technologically advanced information age, openness and transparency of government must be a high priority. There must be a strong and vocal demand for government to use open source software rather than proprietary, closed software, and to willingly share data with citizens. Citizens have a right to their own data, data collected by the government as well as by corporations and other entities. Electronic voting machines must be based on open algorithms that can be checked and rechecked as a safeguard against tampering and election fraud.
Barack Obama has said that he wishes to appoint a CTO for the country, the same way that cities, states, and other municipalities have technical overseers, all of whom understand the importance of this point of view on government transparency. If this is not a vital part of the netroots platform, our privacy and security will suffer.
The Food & Agriculture Plank
We believe that the government should support a food supply that is sustainable both environmentally and economically. We believe that the level of control exerted by large multinational corporations over agriculture and our food supply is inconsistent with both the free market and social welfare. Strong enforcement of anti-trust laws is a critical step to decentralizing and strengthening our food supply.
We call for enforcement of existing regulations to protect the environment and address food safety. We also call for a recognition that many of the problems that the regulations seek to address are caused by large, industrial agriculture practices. Small, sustainable farms and food processors do not cause these problems and should not be burdened with unnecessary and expensive regulations. Small, local farmers are stewards of the land and water and provide safe and nutritious food, and the regulatory system should address them independently of the centralized, industrial agriculture system.
Economic Fairness:
- We oppose NAFTA, CAFTA and the other various free trade agreements (FTAs) as they undermine our nation's economy. They might benefit the multinational corporations but the rest of us aren't feeling too much trickling down as we watch our jobs go to Mexico.
- Our government must enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Packers & Stockyards Act. Monopolies are not good for capitalism. We resent the high amount of consolidation in so many industries and we look to an Obama administration to break them up.
- We want to see executives who hire undocumented workers to face severe penalties. They are not only taking away jobs from Americans, they are also often violating human rights by hiring the most helpless class of workers. Undocumented workers who are abused on the job cannot sue, often they cannot speak English, and they work under the threat of deportation. Those who abuse them and profit from their hard work deserve to be penalized for it.
- Enormous, industrial farms should be held accountable for the environmental damge they cause. It is not fair that we allow a huge farm to pollute drinking water with fertilizer and/or manure runoff and then taxpayers pay to clean the water to make it drinkable. That is, in essence, a tax subsidy freely given (but never recognized) to factory farms. The EPA must be funded appropriately so that the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts can be enforced (and both acts should be stiffened as appropriate to hold polluters accountable so that tax payers don't end up with the bill for their pollution. ).
- Congress should pass the "packer ban," a law prohibiting meat processors from owning livestock. The meatpacking industry is highly, highly consolidated and farmers already struggle to sell their animals for fair prices. When the enormous meatpackers also own livestock (and thus compete with the farmers), the system becomes even more monopolistic and unfair to the farmers.
Local Food:
The government must actively promote sustainable local food systems for a number of reasons: to combat global warming, to ensure better food safety, to provide access to healthy food for all Americans, and to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Some methods the government should use to do this include:.
- Significantly increase mandatory funding for the Community Food Projects competitive grant program (ideally from $5 million to $30 million). This program is an incredible bargain for taxpayers as it promotes local food without increasing the size of government bureaucracy, allows for local control over programs, and establishes local food programs that are financially independent after their initial period receiving federal grant money.
- Increase funding for the USDA's Risk Management Agency's Community Outreach Partnership Program far beyond its previous level of $8. 3 million before recent budget cuts. This program helps out the nation's most at-risk farmers and populations and produces tangible benefits in the form of increased community food security and healthier local food systems.
- Fund schools so they may build gardens, add kitchen facilities, hire kitchen staff, and purchase food from local farms. Make sure that schools do not have to teach to a test (as they do under No Child Left Behind) in such a way that they cannot offer any elective curricula, such as a gardening program.
Food Safety:
Part of national security is being able to trust that food from stores and restaurants are safe. Too often now, the burden of food safety is put on the consumer (i.e. it's OK if the store sells you beef with E. coli and it's your job to cook it thoroughly) and this is not OK. Food safety needs to begin on the farm..
- Studies show that we can drastically reduce E. coli in beef by changing the cows' diet from grain to alfalfa 3 days before slaughter. Americans die from E. coli 0157:H7 in ground beef; there is no reason we should not be taking this crucial step to save American lives.
- Another way to improve safety is to slow down the lines in meatpacking plants. Meatpackers increase line speed to increase profits, but they do so at the expense of worker safety and food safety. E. coli does not get into the meat without a mistake occurring during processing, either contaminating the meat from manure on the cow's hide or in the gut. Decreasing line speed will decrease mistakes.
- As Democrats, we should NOT support the ridiculous National Animal ID System as it does NOT improve food safety. By implementing an expensive, invasive tracking system without making the other needed changes in our food system, we will not do anything at all to improve our safety. All NAIS does do is invade privacy and push small farmers out of business.
- We should regulate what animals are allowed to eat. Currently, even though we know that feeding animal remains to animals causes mad cow, we still tolerate several loopholes in our system. For example, cows can eat pigs and pigs can eat cows. Calves often eat cow blood. We need to examine this and close the remaining loopholes.
Additionally, there are other things American agricultural animals eat that are banned in Europe with good reason (like chickens and arsenic). We must examine those and ban substances that should not be in the food chain.
- Individual farmers should be allowed to test their cows for mad cow if they so choose. Currently, farmers who wish to test every cow for mad cow in order to do business with Japan are not permitted to do so. This is insane. Why are we preventing our farmers from increasing the safety of our food supply?
- We need to adopt policies that actively promote small farms, farmers' markets, farm to school programs, and other local, decentralized food systems. We are sick of seeing outbreaks like this latest Salmonella outbreak, in which over 1000 people were affected across the country. When we promote local food systems, we also help citizens avoid the food safety issues that arise from our centralized, industrialized system.
Food Labeling:
Consumers should have the right to know what is in their food so they may make educated choices about what to eat. We propose the following:.
- Label foods that contain genetically-modified ingredients. Consumers are generally unaware that 70% of food in America contains GMOs and they have a right to know.
- Label added sugars in foods. Often a food (for example, blueberry yogurt) will contain both natural sugars (in the blueberries and milk) and added sugars (i.e. sugar or high fructose corn syrup). Currently the label shows only the total amount of sugar, which is not always helpful to a consumer trying to make healthy food choices. When eating blueberries or milk, one eats sugar but he or she also gets fiber, protein, and important vitamins at the same time. When one eats added sugar, he or she gets no nutritional benefit. Establishing a recommended amount of 10 teaspoons of added sugar per day for someone who eats a 2000 calorie diet and labeling added sugars would help consumers understand the impact of their food choices more effectively.
- Label all milk that comes from cows treated with rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone). Also, allow dairies to label products that are rBGH-free. Some consumers wish to avoid milk from treated cows because such milk contains significantly higher levels of a hormone known as IGF-1 (potentially linked to cancer) than milk from untreated cows. Others wish to avoid milk from treated cows because they feel the hormone is inhumane to the animals. Consumers have a right to know how their milk was produced.
- Regulate and limit call outs and health claims made on foods. The current trend of labeling cookies that are nutritionally worthless as "whole grain" or "trans fat free" aims to mislead consumers that such products are healthy. Other foods make even bolder claims that they can support or promote a particular body structure or function (i.e. supports respiratory function), leading consumers to purchase food for medicinal benefits when in fact the foods were never required to prove the claims on the labels are true.