Earlier this week I posted on the outlines of a new political platform. I'll continue to update it. Some readers took exception to my assertion it is time to "dump the claims and signposts of American exceptionalism". I will continue to explain the point.
The U.S. has the highest incarceration rates in the industrial world. The "war on drugs" has been exceptional, to be sure. An exceptional failure. We spend nearly as much on incarceration as we do on education. This week Governor Rick Scott vetoed a bill approved by the rarest of bipartisan consensus in the legislature. The bill would have taken a small step in the direction of strengthening rehabilitation of drug offenders and focusing resources on violent criminals.
U.S. voters need to get their heads out of the sand. This week, too, leaders of the hemisphere blasted President Obama for failing to address the demand side of the drug market equation. It is time to process how deeply failed policies related to drugs mar our standing in the world. Come on, now: put the Secret Service and prostitutes in Colombia in the delete folder where they belong. Support Gimleteye's platform.
The economic crisis is deep, precisely because it is decades in the making. We elect one official after another based on a failed model of prosperity. Separately from this list, I plan to address taxation and the economy. Your comments and suggestions will be duly considered!
1) Protect personal liberty: de-criminalize marijuana and de-criminalize American society. From 13 Signs That America's Prison System Is Out Of Control, from Business Insider: "Since the war on drugs began in 1971, America's prison population has surged 700 percent to 2.4 million. Prisoners have become part of the economy, manufacturing and assembling products for major corporations, while private prisons have emerged as multi-billion dollar operations. There are more Americans under corrective supervision that were in Stalin's gulags."
The U.S. has the highest incarceration rates in the industrial world. The "war on drugs" has been exceptional, to be sure. An exceptional failure. We spend nearly as much on incarceration as we do on education. This week Governor Rick Scott vetoed a bill approved by the rarest of bipartisan consensus in the legislature. The bill would have taken a small step in the direction of strengthening rehabilitation of drug offenders and focusing resources on violent criminals.
U.S. voters need to get their heads out of the sand. This week, too, leaders of the hemisphere blasted President Obama for failing to address the demand side of the drug market equation. It is time to process how deeply failed policies related to drugs mar our standing in the world. Come on, now: put the Secret Service and prostitutes in Colombia in the delete folder where they belong. Support Gimleteye's platform.
The economic crisis is deep, precisely because it is decades in the making. We elect one official after another based on a failed model of prosperity. Separately from this list, I plan to address taxation and the economy. Your comments and suggestions will be duly considered!
1) Protect personal liberty: de-criminalize marijuana and de-criminalize American society. From 13 Signs That America's Prison System Is Out Of Control, from Business Insider: "Since the war on drugs began in 1971, America's prison population has surged 700 percent to 2.4 million. Prisoners have become part of the economy, manufacturing and assembling products for major corporations, while private prisons have emerged as multi-billion dollar operations. There are more Americans under corrective supervision that were in Stalin's gulags."
2) Reverse policies and programs favoring privatization of military functions.
3) Protect people from unwarranted surveillance by drones. The 2012 FAA reauthorization bill signed into law by President Obama authorizes the FAA to develop for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015 and could lead to tens of thousands of drones above U.S. skies by 2020. As a result, drones will be a billion dollar industry with tentacles around Congress, state and local legislatures. Before that happens, Congress must protect against unwarranted surveillance from drones to include strong criminal sentences for any who violate those prohibitions, absent search warrants. (NPR link on this subject.)
4) Create meaningful firewalls between regulators and the regulated.
5) Enact campaign finance reform to reverse the domination of the American political system by corporations and big campaign contributors.
6) Health care: single payer system. Period.
7) Create a national energy policy to prioritize conservation and existing technologies to rapidly reduce emission of pollution to the atmosphere.
8) Protect the food and water supply. No GMO. End corporate subsidies to Big Sugar.
9) Provide a national infrastructure and transportation plan with a fifty year planning horizon to include sea level rise and retreat from vulnerable coastlines.
10) Reinforce the separation of church and state.
3 comments:
You are so far to the left it's not funny anymore!
Check out this report, full of good charts, below. Number of incarcerated in 1980: less than 500,000.
Number of incarcerated in 2000: over 2,000,000.
http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/00-05_rep_punishingdecade_ac.pdf
I continue to marvel at the number of grown adults who still don't know their left from their right.
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