Building a better world- starting January 20, 2021...

I was challenged by a right wing "conservative" to elucidate (not his word, of course) my proposals for a Democratic platform, to tell him what our platform is, actually. Here was my response:

I'll just give you mine, since we don't have a nominee yet or a platform. Perhaps you've read or heard some of these in news reports or during Democratic debates:

(1) Protect elections and The People's right to vote. Require every State to provide the opportunity to every voter to vote by absentee ballot (referred to as "vote by mail") with no excuse required-- the way five Sates currently do and the way every State has allowed- including Georgia- for decades, but the voter has to have a valid excuse, like disability, age, or being away on business or being in the military. Require every State to provide a paper ballot backup of every vote cast (Georgia finally switched to this system this year). Prevent voter purges without strict safeguards to protect against striking legitimate voters. Require every State to provide enough precincts and enough voting machines so that when in-person voting does occur, no one will have to wait in a long line. Bring back Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and require every State in the country to have to abide by it. And my simple, yet elegant solution to the voter photo id requirement is to allow everyone to vote- with or without a photo, and those without a photo will be photographed with a digital camera on site by the poll worker, so that if anyone ever challenges that vote, the registrar can simply pull up the record of that voter and that photograph and verify that he/she is who he/she says he/she is. Which will never happen of course, because this was an imaginary and completely fabricated problem foisted on us by Karl Rove and designed solely to depress votes cast by poor voters, most of whom were minorities, the majority of whom typically voted Democratic.

(2) Bring back the rule of law. Establish by legislation that no person, including the President, is above the law. Remove Presidential judicially created immunity from civil suit, including the emoluments clause. Put a federal equivalent of 42 U.S.C. §1983 on the books, which allows any person whose civil rights have been violated by a governmental action to sue for redress, and eliminate all of the bullshit judicially related immunity roadblocks. Allow every person kidnapped, tortured, or family members of those killed to bring a civil lawsuit against the federal government, no immunity allowed, the statute of limitations extended to 50 years to cover all of the misdeeds done under Reagan and Bush II.

(3) Expand the Medicare system and allow any person under 65 to sign up for Medicare and pay a monthly premium equal to the incremental cost to the system. In other words, a revenue neutral system. But for this occasion, give a 12 month premium waiver to all persons put out of work during the Trump Coronavirus Pandemic to allow them to get back on their feet.

(4) Free tuition for all persons unable to afford public college, universities, or technical schools. That means it will be means tested. And allow any person with crushing student debt to eliminate it by dedicating a certain number of years to public service.

(5) Raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour (which is only $1,256.67 per month, gross). We can gradually increase it to $15.00 an hour.

(6) Rejoin the Paris Climate Accords. Take every action possible for enacting a "Green New Deal" that will provide millions of jobs while saving the planet. Fire every person in every regulatory agency who came from the companies being regulated- i.e., the foxes were guarding the henhouses. Bring back all of the environmental regulations designed to safeguard our water, our air, our soil, our food, our health.

(7) Public financing of all federal elections. Prohibit all private contributions and solicitations for federal elections, as they are nothing more than bribes. To solve the Super PAC dark money problem, require that every political advertisement that targets a candidate or promotes another candidate be first previewed by the candidate targeted or opposed, and allow him or her to run a free ad, same length as the first, immediately following the attack ad, every time the attack ad runs.

(8) The Senate should end the filibuster and all Senatorial "courtesy" rules that allow a single member to block or delay a nomination or legislation. The House and Senate should each change their rules to allow every member, at least once every four years, to propose a bill that will be reviewed by a committee and evaluated, but will still be sent to the floor of that house for an up or down, yea or nay, vote, no amendments allowed. Also, allow minority members of every committee to have subpoena power. These rule changes will protect the rights of the minority party in Congress without allowing a minority to block necessary legislation.

(9) Require all judiical nominations to receive at least 60 votes in the Senate. No more Clarence Thomas's or Justice Kavenaugh's passing by the skin of their teeth.

(10) Require every authoritztion for the use of military force to be re-enacted every two years to remain in effect.

(11) Repeal the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and the USA Patriot Act. Bring a little Sunshine into our judicial system. No more secret hearings. No more secret warrants. No more secret prisons.

(12) Gun safety- instant background checks on every sale. Red flag laws everywhere to protect us from the violent and the insane. And enact a ban on any magazines holding more than six shots for civilians, and any muzzle velocities in excess of 100 feet per second for civilians. Also, require every firearm to have the same safeguards as cell phones- code or fingerprint locks keyed to the owner and GPS in all of them. Require every firearm manufacturer to replace every gun sold by that company free of charge with a firearm that comports with the new regulations. Any manufacturer which fails to do so loses all immunity from lawsuits and faces strict liability for any harm which was caused by any firearm manufactured by it which does not have those safeguards.

If anyone has any suggestions to add to the Democratic platform and actual legislation starting next January 21st, when, hopefully, we will have restored legitimacy and sanity to the presidency and the Senate, I'd like to see them.