OK, I got this in the mail a couple of days ago...
THE DCCC 2010 PRIORITY ISSUES SURVEY. Wherein they ask me to rank my top three priorities from the following list:
Economy/Recession
Foreclosures
Health Care Reform
Terrorism
Ending the War in Iraq
Stabilizing Afghanistan
Protecting Social Security
Middle Class Tax Breaks
Education
Equal Rights
Wages and Jobs
Global Warming
Fiscal Responsibility
After looking at the list and reading the rest of the survey I got a little pissed off. Why did my highest priorities not even make it on to the list? Is my own party trying to push a narrative on me? Do they really think I’m this stupid and/or gullible? Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr...
It made me sort of sick to my stomach that my Democratic Party had sunk to this point. It’s not quite a push poll, but it's close. Who came up with these choices? Is my party really this out of touch? I’m a pretty realistic, pragmatic progressive. I understand the influence of corporate money on politics and the dynamic of right/left/center opinion management on re-election campaigns, and didn’t really have too many illusions about what Obama or the Democrats in Congress would get done in the next 4 or 8 years. In short, I deliberately lowered my expectations quite a bit and was prepared to be satisfied with having them not making things any worse, while appointing some liberal/progressive judges, and alowing time and common sense to slowly heal the worst aspects of the Bush Disaster.
But this poll sort of got my goat. I know it's a party composed in large part of corrupt sellouts. I’ve been inside Democratic party politics since 1978. There is no need to print that fact up on a glossy flyer and send it to my house.
So I stewed on it for a couple of days and decided that the single line to add my own priority did not seem sufficient, so I’m going to rewrite the whole flyer with some of my own priorities added and a heck of a lot of clarifications provided on theirs, and return it.
So here’s my First Draft. Please offer me some suggestions for other "priorities" that the DCCC may have overlooked if you want to.
My letter back to the DCCC:
Thank you for including me in Priority Issues Ranking Poll. I’m pleased that you care enough about my opinion to ask me to share which priorities I think most important. However, you missed a few issues that I find fairly important, and I did not feel that your original survey was as accurate and useful as it might have been without including a few more options and clarifications. I’ve taken the liberty of modifying your survey to better facilitate informing you of my own priorities. Thank you,
My Prioritized List of Issues:
- DADT repeal
- DOMA repeal
- Protect and strengthen women’s Universal Right of Choice.
- Remove all public and private financial restrictions on abortion services.
- Repeal all aspects of the so called "Patriot Act".
- Vocally and publicly support Universal Marriage Equality.
- Publicly denounce LGBT hate speech.
- Strengthen the Separation of Church and State.
- End Warrant-less Domestic Spying in all of its forms.
- End Torture and adhere to the Geneva Conventions in all ways.
- Publicly recognize the unassailable nature of the human right of Habeas Corpus.
- Make all American elections free, fair and transparent.
- Pass a very strong, pro-worker, Employee Free Choice Act.
- Hire one to two million more full time federal government and military employees.
- Sensibly re-regulate corporations, banks, insurers, financial institutions, lobbyists, etc.
- Add a Medicare buy-in or other strong public option to insurance reform.
- Pull troops out of Iraq ASAP.
- Raise corporate taxes, taxes on the wealthy, the estate tax, etc. ASAP.
- Realistically address Global warming/sustainable energy development.
- Finish the job in Afghanistan correctly.
- Terrorism... Please do not waste any more time, energy or money "protecting me".
- Education is not a priority right now.
- Protecting Social Security is not a priority right now.
- Fiscal Responsibility is important, but simply not feasible right now.
Here is the list of priorities my new ones at the top and the originals from your list below them with some brief clarification:
1. LGBT Rights: Including but not limited to DOMA repeal, DADT repeal, Federal and Party Support for universal Marriage Equality, end all public and private pandering to ultra right wing religious freaks, like Rick Warren, that use hate speech against LGBT people. Appoint and approve more LGBT judges. Prep several for the high court in the future.
2. Women’s Rights: Specifically women’s Universal Right of Choice. This means appoint and approve sensible, progressive federal and Supreme Court judges, and ending all aspects of the Hyde and Stupak amendments. I don’t get to tell my government to not to piss my money away in Iraq, so conservative religious freaks should not get to tell the government not to spend their money on abortion coverage. End DCCC and all other Democratic Party financial support for Bart Stupak immediately and permanently.
3. Strengthen the Separation of Church and State: Fight against the frightening efforts of shadowy and secretive extremist, right wing religious organizations (The Family, etc.) to gain control over elements of the U.S. government and military. Remove the tax exempt status of any church or religious organization that tries to extend its fingers into the machinery of politics, government, public education or the military. End support for faith based government programs and end abstinence only programs. Stop appointing Catholics to the Supreme Court.
4. Dismantle the Powers of the Unitary Executive: Please address these issues more-or-less in the order of importance listed here...
• Repeal all aspects of the so called "Patriot Act".
• We are not at perpetual war with "terror", and no President gets to claim extraordinary powers as if we were, unless Congress specifically and explicitly gives him/her those powers.
• No President is above the law.
• Spying, wiretaps, and other searches without warrants and without just cause are illegal and unconstitutional and Democratic leaders should do everything in their power to ensure that they never happen again in this country.
• The U.S. respects and adheres to the Geneva Convention, basic human rights and the international laws of warfare. We do not torture, ever, not even "mild" torture, and not even if there is a ticking bomb. We just don’t condone it, don’t do it and never will.
• We all have an inherent, human, and constitutional right of habeas corpus.
• Data mining, secret searches, secret prisons, overseas renditions, indefinite detentions, and withholding legal counsel from prisoners are all illegal and unconstitutional and Democratic leaders should stop them and do everything in their power to ensure that they never happen again in this country.
• War profiteering, price fixing and gouging by pharmaceuticals, gasoline, insurance, electricity, etc., manipulation of energy markets and prices, no bid contracts to corporations that pay bribes through political contributions are all wrong and Democratic leaders should do everything in their power to stop these things, make them illegal, and prevent them from ever happening again.
• All Democratic leaders will work to ensure that all elections held in the U.S. are free and fair and that every vote is counted and verified is the most transparent way possible and that all Americans that have the right to vote have the opportunity to exercise that right free from an atmosphere of intimidation and harassment. We will not allow the power of any part of the Federal government to be used to attempt to influence the outcome of any election.
• Signing statements are unconstitutional, and Democratic leaders should never issue one, and do everything in their power to ensure that they are never used again.
• Stop all presidents from abusing the Presidential powers to make recess appointments and grant pardons.
• Democratic leaders will respect the powers of the legislative and the judiciary branches of government. We will never attempt or allow others to co-opt or subvert the legitimate roles of those co-equal branches of government.
• All policy decisions made in the Federal Government will be as open and transparent as possible to the press and the American people. We will not develop policy in secret cooperation with the special interest groups that have vested interests in that policy.
• We will respect the legitimate role of the press in this country to fairly report those doings of the government that are and should be known to the public. We acknowledge that reporting illegal activities, corruption, nepotism, waste, fraud, and conflicts of interest within all branches of the government and of all government servants (including the President) is not disloyal, treasonous, or inappropriate. We will respect the long standing right of journalists to protect their sources and will not attempt to break that power in order to intimidate the press. Nor will I use the FCC or other government agencies to attempt to exert control or influence over the media to influence the nature of their reporting.
Now here is your original list with my comments and clarifications added:
Jobs, Wages, etc.: Let’s face it. Reagan’s privatization efforts have been a dismal failure. Privatizing functions that should be handled by government is a terrible idea and always has been. The best jobs program would be to end unrealistic and excessive privatization efforts and hire government workers to do government jobs (including in the military). Also, it would help if Democrats supported policies that strengthen organized labor. You should pass a strong version of the Employee Free Choice Act.
Economy: We both know there is little you can do to repair the current economic state. That will take a long time and a sound federal budget and tax policy. However, you should reinstate most of the common sense corporate and financial regulations that the Republicans have stripped away over the last 30 years to prevent another such disaster from happening in the future.
Foreclosures: Again, there is not much you can do to stop foreclosures. Too many people were given loans that they never had much hope that they would be able to re-pay. And people without jobs can’t pay a mortgage. The best thing you can do is create one or two million desperately needed, good, unionized, Federal government jobs to help some of these people keep there homes, and re-regulate the mortgage and banking sectors to keep this from happening again.
Health Care Reform: Single Payer, Medicare for all, or even a robust public option of some sort would help. But please don’t hand several trillion of our dollars to a few multinational drug, insurance and lobbying corporations, while excluding funding for abortions, and try to convince me it’s something that should be called health care reform. That’s too much like pissing on my head while telling me it’s raining.
Terrorism: We both know there’s not a lot you can do about this either. You can’t hire a full time body guard for each and every American. Terrorists can and will strike us. We can take some steps to lessen the impacts, retaliate against the right enemies, and make them less likely to want to strike us. We seem to be doing most of those right now. But a full court press to force a settlement of some sort on the Occupied Territories/Israel issues would probably be single best thing that could be done. But don’t take away any more of my freedoms to give me more "protection". Currently, I’m more afraid of my government than I am of being hurt or killed by a terrorist.
Ending the War in Iraq: Yes please. I’m not really hard in the anti-war camp, but it’s clear that the money we are pouring out of our economy into Iraq has done, and continues to do, more damage to American security than all terrorist acts in the history of the world combined have ever done. End it as fast as possible.
Continuing the War in Afghanistan: Weirdly, I agree that we have to continue with a military operation in Afghanistan. The Taliban were a horror and a blight on the civilized world. They came to power because of the proxy war the USA and USSR fought there for much of the last 40 years. We have a moral obligation to try to fix the problems we helped create. I wish we had spent all the time, money, and military power we pissed away in Iraq in Afghanistan, but we can’t go back in time and undo that. But we should not abandon Afghanistan again just because Bush was the dumbest human leader since Zog over in cave three declared war on trees, rocks and rain.
Protecting Social Security: Yeah, this one you can win, just by not being Republicans.
Middle Class Tax Breaks: Fuck no. Not with things they are now. For the love of God, raise taxes on the wealthy, corporations that are raking it in, raise the estate tax, cigarette taxes, gas taxes and just about everything else you can think of, to try to get us closer to a balanced budget. Raise my taxes.
Education: It needs work, but leave it alone for now.
Equal Rights: See LGBT, Women’s and Human rights above at priority numbers one, two and four.
Global Warming: High priority but cap and trade is not a solution. We need an Apollo mission project type of commitment to develop solar and wind power, hybrid cars, efficient homes and businesses, etc. to reduce our use of fossil fuels by 50% in the next 20 years.
Fiscal Responsibility: We can’t balance the budget while we have troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, unemployment over 6%, or more than 75% of our power coming from fossil fuels, so this one is a non starter for now. Just face the fact that we are going to have to mortgage our future for at least a generation to climb out of the hole that the Republicans have dug us in to.