President Obama Re-Elected - Page 519

JOBS

Enact the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 25 million green jobs in sustainable energy, mass transit, sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing, as well as social work, teaching, and and other service jobs.
Provide grants and low-interest loans to green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community, rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.
Renegotiate NAFTA and other "free trade'' agreements that export American jobs, depress wages, and undermine the sovereign right of Americans and citizens of other countries to control their own economy.

WORKER RIGHTS

Provide full protection for workplace rights, including the right to a safe workplace and the right to organize a union without fear of firing or reprisal by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.
Support the formation of worker-owned cooperatives to provide alternatives to exploitative business models.
Make the minimum wage a living wage.
Oppose two-tier wage systems.
Ensure equal pay for equal work, ending discrimination based on race, gender, or generation.

BUDGET AND TAXES

Reduce the budget deficit by restoring full employment, cutting the bloated military budget, and cutting private health insurance waste.
Eliminate needless tax giveaways that increase the deficit.
Require full disclosure of corporate subsidies in the budget and stop hiding subsidies in complicated tax code.
Rewrite the entire tax code to be truly progressive with tax cuts for working families, the poor and middle class, and higher taxes for the richest Americans.
Reject cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
Stop draining the non-profit sectors of our economy in order to give tax cuts to the for-profit sectors.
Relieve the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens.Ensure the right to accessible and affordable utilities – heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation – through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for profit.
Maintain and upgrade our nation's essential public infrastructure, including highways, railways, electrical grids, water systems, schools, libraries, and the Internet, resisting privatization or policy manipulation by for-profit interests.
Establish a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.

FINANCIAL REFORM

Break up the oversized banks that are “too big to fail,” starting with Bank of America.
Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.
End bailouts for the financial elite and use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.
Bring monetary policy under democratic control by prohibiting private banks from creating money, thus restoring government's Constitutional authority.
Let pension funds be managed by boards controlled by workers, not corporate managers.
Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.
Require banks to use honest bookkeeping so that toxic assets cannot be hidden or sold to unsuspecting persons.
Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.
Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means nationalizing the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and placing them under a Federal Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.
Establish federal, state, and municipal publicly-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities and focus on helping people, not enriching themselves.

EDUCATION

Provide tuition-free education from kindergarten through college, thus eliminating the student debt crisis.
Forgive existing student debt.
Protect our public school systems from privatization
End high-stakes testing and stop punishing students and teachers for failures of the system in which they work.
Stop denying students diplomas based on tests.
Stop using merit pay to punish teachers.

HEALTH CARE

Provide complete, affordable, quality health care for every American through an improved Medicare-for-all insurance program.
Allow full access to all medically justified contraceptive and reproductive care.
Expand women's access to the "morning after" contraception by lifting the Obama Administration's ban.
Roll back the community drivers of chronic disease, including poor nutrition, health-damaging pollution, and passive dirty transportation.
Avoid chronic diseases by investing in essential community health infrastructure such as local, fresh, organic food systems, pollution-free renewable energy, phasing out toxic chemicals, and active transportation such as bike paths and safe sidewalks that dovetail with public transit.
End overcharging for prescription drugs by using bulk purchasing negotiations.
Ensure that consumers have essential information for making informed food choices by expanding product labeling requirements for country of origin, GMO content, toxic chemical ingredients, fair trade practices, etc.

HOUSING

Impose an immediate moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.
Offer capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.
Create a federal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages, and either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants.
Expand rental and home ownership assistance and create ample public housing.

CLEAN ENERGY

Create a binding international treaty to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to levels deemed safe by scientific analysis to reduce global warming.
Phase out coal power plants to end their unacceptable harm to the climate, health and the economy.
End mountaintop removal in Appalachia.
Redirect research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward research in renewable energy and conservation.
Build a nationwide smart electricity grid that can pool and store power from a diversity of renewable sources, giving the nation clean, democratically-controlled, terrorist-proof energy.
Phase out nuclear power and end nuclear subsidies.
Stop hydrofracking to prevent devastating pollution of groundwater, destruction of roads from the transport of millions of tons of toxic water, and the threats of earthquakes recently determined to be caused by drilling and disposal of fracking water in seismically unstable regions.
End Federal subsidies for "clean coal" -- an expensive, carbon intensive, unproven technology promoted by the coal industry public relations campaign.
Halt all drilling that poses a threat to public lands or water resources.
Halt the Keystone XL pipeline and bring the tar sand oils under a comprehensive climate protection treaty.

CIVIL LIBERTIES

Issue an Executive Order prohibiting Federal agencies from conspiring with local police to infringe upon right of assembly and peaceful protest.
Repeal the Patriot Act that violates our constitutional right to privacy and protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
Repeal the unconstitutional provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act that gives the president the power to indefinitely imprison and even assassinate American citizens without due process.
Oppose the Online Piracy Act and all other legislation that would undermine freedom and equality on the Internet.
Pass the Equal Rights Amendment to forever end discrimination based on gender.
Eliminate the doctrine of corporate personhood with a constitutional amendment to clarify that only human beings have constitutional rights.
Implement marriage equality nationwide to end discrimination against same-sex couples.
Expand federal support for locally-owned broadcast media and local print media.

VOTING RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY

Enact the full Voter's Bill of Rights guaranteeing each person's right to vote, the right to have our votes counted on hand-marked paper ballots, and the right to vote within systems that give each vote meaning.
Abolish the electoral college and directly elect the President.
Get the big money payoffs out of politics by implementing public funding of election campaigns.
Reverse the Citizens United ruling to revoke corporate personhood, and amend our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech.
Restore the right to run for office and eliminate unopposed races by removing ballot access barriers.
Require the use of auditable, hand-counted paper ballots in all local, state, and federal elections.
Guarantee equal access to the ballot and to the debates to all qualified candidates
Eliminate “winner take all” elections in which the “winner” does not have the support of most of the voters, and replace that system with instant runoff voting and proportional representation.
Provide equal and free access to the airways for all candidates, not just those with big campaign warchests.
Enact statehood for the District of Columbia to ensure the region has full representation in Congress, and full powers of self-rule.
Restore voting rights to ex-offenders who’ve paid their debt to society.
Require that all votes are counted before election results are released.
Replace partisan oversight of elections with non-partisan election commissions.
Celebrate our democratic aspirations by making Election Day a national holiday.
Bring simplified, safe same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualified voter is barred from the polls.
Protect our right to vote by supporting Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s proposed “Right to Vote Amendment,” to clarify to the Supreme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.
Protect the legitimate exercise of local democracy by making clear that acts of Congress establish a floor, and not a ceiling, on laws relating to economic regulation, workers rights, human rights, and the environment.

PEACE AND FOREIGN POLICY

Cut the bloated Pentagon budget by 50%.
End use of assassination as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, including collaborative assassination through intermediaries.
Increase our energy security by reducing our nation's dependence on oil.
Demilitarize U.S. foreign policy to emphasize human rights, international law, multinational diplomatic initiatives and support for democratic movements across the world.
Restore the National Guard as the centerpiece of our defense.
Create a nuclear free zone in the Middle East region and require all nations in area to join.
Oppose attacks on nuclear facilities.
Ban use of drone aircraft for assassination, bombing, and other offensive purposes.
End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, withdrawing both troops and military contractors.
Make human rights and international law the basis of our policy in the Middle East.
Join 159 other nations in signing the Ottawa treaty banning the use of anti-personnel land mines.
Close some 140 U.S. military bases abroad.
Initiate a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives.

ENVIRONMENT

Create millions of green jobs in areas such as weatherization, recycling, public transportation, worker and community owned cooperatives, and energy-efficient infrastructure.
Adopt the EPA's new tougher standards on ozone pollution.
Promote conversion to sustainable, nontoxic materials.
Promote use of closed-loop, zero waste processes.
Promote organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.

IMMIGRATION

Grant undocumented immigrants who are already residing and working in the United States a legal status which includes the chance to become U.S. citizens.
Halt deportations of law-abiding undocumented immigrants.
Repeal the deceptively named Secure Communities Act.
Improve economic conditions abroad to reduce flow of immigrants, in part by repealing NAFTA.
Demilitarize border crossings throughout North America.
End the war on immigrants, including the cruel, so-called “secure communities” program.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Repair our communities rather than dump resources into the prison-industrial complex.
Work to eliminate laws tying judge’s hands with mandatory sentencing requirements.
Immediately legalize medical use of marijuana and move to permit general legal sales under suitable regulatory framework.
End the ineffective and costly War on Drugs and begin to treat drug use as a public health problem, not a criminal problem.