2020 Presidential Platform

Foundational principles

Justice and Equality are the basic principles that motivate all of our policy positions.

We place high value in upholding the constitution, governing in good faith, and incremental improvement to the quality of life for all citizens on average

Beyond that, we seek moderation in everything…. including moderation.

Election reform

Election day

Either move election day to the first Sunday in November, or keep the current day and make that date a national holiday.

The winner of the presidential election should be determined by ranked-choice voting. A voter can choose any number of candidates and rank them according to their preference. To win, a candidate must receive a majority of the votes. Tallying votes proceeds in rounds. If no candidate receives a majority of the votes in the first round, the candidate receiving the fewest votes is removed from the tally, and the vote of each voter who chose that candidate as their first preference is given to that voter’s second choice. In each round of tallying, the candidate in last place is removed until one candidate has a majority of votes.

Debates

Return the task of managing debates to the League of Women Voters. The Commission on Presidental Debates should no longer be responsible for the debates. It is “bi-partisan” in the sense that it is partisan, twice over. It is also sponsored by corporations. It is hurting democracy by allowing the parties to control debate topics.

Campaign finance

Super PACs have to go, and corporations are not people. Why would we give more power to people with more money?

If these corrections aren’t enough, we support the even stronger measure of an absolute cap on election spending. The cap would be sufficiently small to limit the length of the election season and allow 3rd parties a genuine chance to participate.

Ballot counting

There is no cost too high to guarantee fair elections, which are the most important part of functional democracy.

Voting should always be on paper, redundantly counted and video taped. In theory, all ballots should be counted by redundant human reading, but machine reading could prove to be more accurate due to inevitable human error. Nevertheless, machine reading is susceptible to programming errors and hacking. As a compromise, machine reading can be used, provided that all machines are not connected to the internet, the software on the machines is open source and its efficacy is independently verified and tested well before each election, and finally that during each election, a certain percentage of jurisdictions are chosen randomly to be hand-counted in order to confirm the results of machine counting. Elections are like performances without rehearsals. To succeed you need to simplify and streamline the process.

Voter suppression should not and cannot be tolerated under any circumstances. When a party participates in voter suppression, they reveal that they can only win elections by manipulating the voices of the people in their jurisdictions. Instead of ruining democracy, they should either change their platform in order to win elections, or accept defeat because their platform is not desirable to the people.

Tax the rich

This one is pretty simple, and it answers the question of how we plan to fund any of the programs mentioned below.

Everyone agrees that rich people should pay more taxes… except rich people. The problem is, they have more power in our system. This is simply unacceptable and our system should be reformed enough that it becomes possible to levy more taxes on the richest Americans. The above-mentioned election reform aims to do this.

As an example of how taxing the rich can benefit society, a small tax increase on the wealthiest Americans could fund universal health care, but rich people generally succeed in lobbying politicians to prevent this, so the burden of funding these social programs falls on many middle-class Americans, making the program undesirable to the general public. There is no excuse for this. Tax the rich.

Personal privacy

Data collection

We need legislation to curb the amount of data the government collects on citizens, and to delete data collected in the past. “Big data hubris” (the implicit assumption that big data are a substitute for, rather than a supplement to, traditional data collection and analysis), is not an acceptable justification for these actions, and we need to call upon our national security agencies to strive for better methods to achieve their goals.

Abortion

We are pro-choice. Abortion is a cultural issue that has been inappropriately branded as a political issue. Each woman should have the choice to decide their future, or to follow the guidelines of their community on this issue. On this issue we rely on the principles of personal freedom and specifically freedom of religion. Banning or limiting abortion for entire jurisdictions violates these principles.

Furthermore, pro-choice is not pro-abortion. It is a commitment to guarantee personal freedoms to all Americans. Finally, pro-choice includes rights for minors, because limiting access to abortion is not an effective strategy for limiting sexual intercourse among minors.

Supreme court

Supreme court justices should have term limits. They should be long and we should consult the judiciary on the appropriate number of years. Seats should become vacant at regular intervals so that each presidential term gets the same number of appointments.

Infrastructure

We need infrastructure bills that plan for major infrastructure projects as well as minor projects distributed among all jurisdictions in order to avoid the need for Senate pork. Such a bill would not need to fund all projects, but set out a road map for funding all the projects on the list. Funding infrastructure leads to job creation, economic stimulation, and economic stability. There’s no reason not to do this.

Energy

Improving our energy future is an economic and national security issue as well as an environmental issue. We need to take a multifaceted approach to improving our energy future, including using less energy, building a smart grid, moving to electric cars, and innovating renewable energy methods. There are various ways in which the government should participate.

Limit subsidies on oil, fund renewable energy initiatives instead

Special interests are the only thing stopping us from improving our energy future. Oil companies don’t want to become obsolete, and they control politicians who convince voters with propaganda. This is all a waste of everyone’s time - that limited resource we need to be using now to prevent environmental catastrophe. The absurd thing in all of this is that eventually renewable energy will out-compete fossil fuels, and the owners of fossil fuel companies will start switching their investments to renewable energy. Thus, this entire argument and all the risks we are taking in delaying significant change is based on the fact that a few rich people don’t want to lose some of their money making changes to their companies and portfolios. Is that worth risking a habitable world? No. So take away oil subsidies and we will see how well fossil fuels perform in a “free market.” Then spend that money on renewable energy development for the sake of our future.

Fund a smart-grid as an infrastructure project

Rebuilding our energy distribution system will cut back on demand significantly, and create jobs.

Support for rural and urban communities

Stereotypically speaking, the democratic party supports rights for minorities and finds more support in urban areas, while the republican party supports rights for certain workers and finds support in rural areas. We do not support urban communities at the expense of rural communities, and we do not support rural communities at the expense of urban communities. Rather, we support individual rights and freedoms, which members of minority groups are definitely entitled too, and we support small businesses and especially agricultural small businesses that promote and utilize non-industrial farming techniques. We support tax increases on the rich, with subsidies and deductions for small businesses and farmers.

Farming subsidies

Farming subsidies that incentivize the growth of more corn should be removed and replaced with subsidies that protect farmers in times of low demand.

Subsidies and tax breaks should be used to incentivize small scale, non-industrialized farming. The goals of this effort are to make our food supply more healthy and sustainable, and to reduce unemployment.

Health and the environment

Universal healthcare

We need a public option, which is a federally managed insurance plan, which is not subsidized by the government. This will create the competition needed to drive down the costs of health care. The only reason we don’t have this is the corruption of special interests like insurance companies.

If the creation of a public option is not enough to bring health insurance to everyone, medicaid should be expanded until we achieve 100% coverage.

Water

Universal access to potable water is a priority. The fact that certain communities are now losing this access is a true mark of declining quality of life in the US. If local jurisdictions cannot or will not put in the resources and effort to ensure continued access to potable water by their constituents, the federal government should step in to fix this problem and set them back on the right course.

Climate Change

We support drastic measures to mitigate the risks of climate change due to human activities. This includes full-fledged participation in the Paris Climate Accord and any similar future initiatives. We believe the costs of this effort will be insignificant compared to the benefits.

As an example, when Trump pulled out of the Paris agreement, he pointed to the fact that he was saving $2bil in taxpayer money to be spent over the next two years. To put this into perspective, federal revenue in 2019 was $3.5trillion, while the average income in the US in 2019 was $48,000. This means saving a billion dollars a year for the federal government is the equivalent of the average person saving $14.

Nevertheless, we recognize that in order to address climate change, the US will need to make a much larger commitment than what was planned for the Paris agreement. This need will be met by implementing our plans for energy.

Plastics

Our society needs to phase out the use of single-use plastics. The role of the federal government in this effort is two-fold. Most importantly, we need to remove subsidies for oil. This will increase the cost of producing plastics, which is tied to the cost of oil and natural gas. This is the most important step. As a secondary step, we should use some of that money to fund research in biodegradable alternatives, in order to bring down their cost to be economically competitive with plastics. This two-step process will make single-use plastics unfavorable to businesses and consumers, thus eliminating the problem of plastic waste pollution. The case of plastics is a great example of how attacking the source of the problem (plastic production) is far more effective than attacking the symptom (plastic patches in the oceans).

Universal income

This issue is actually about equality. Poverty is not a lack of character, it is a lack of cash. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is a myth, and the poorest members of society (as well as everyone else) should be given a lifeline of an unconditional monthly income in order to give them the chance to pull themselves up out of poverty. The cost of this program to the federal government will be offset by the reduced costs of emergency health care, the prison system, etc. We’ll say that again: this will save the government money in the long term. We can phase in this program by starting with a very small amount of money, and giving this money only to the poorest 10% of citizens. Then slowly ramp up the amount and the wealth brackets of people receiving money until it becomes universal.

This action will help to curb the unethical inequalities in our society, infuse the economic system with cash and thus help the economy, and reduce the extreme situation of wage slavery that has developed in modern times. This will also influence issues like the question of minimum wage increases in a positive way. Wages will go up for jobs that are essential in order to attract those who want to make more than their universal income.

Mandatory civil service

In order to qualify for universal income, all adults should complete one year of civil service. Each person would be able to choose from things like military service, AmeriCorps and other infrastructure projects, Peace Corps and other foreign aid projects, and social services. In addition to providing a work-force for needed civil projects, this will give citizens job skills and foster healthy patriotism through a sense of national community.

Justice for Native Americans

Build a program of Native American stewardship of National Parks and other lands, with special living rights and obligations of stewardship. As part of this program establish education programs to share knowledge about land stewardship with Native Americans that they lost due to cultural genocide.

Education

Decouple property taxes from public education funding. Each district should receive the same resources, proportional to their population. On top of that, special funding should be awarded to under-performing districts, along with personnel resources to utilize this funding.

Pay public school teachers more (not administrators).

Gun control

We need background checks for all gun sales - no exceptions. We need a ban on assault weapons for civilians, and a buy-back program.

In other words, we support individual gun rights and the 2nd amendment, as long as the individual is not a threat to society, and the gun is not designed specifically to murder humans.

The question can be asked: how can civilian gun ownership limit the threat of a military coup if only the military is allowed to posses military-grade weapons? Our answer comes in the form of a risk assessment of each alternative, with two parts. 1) What if the political situation in the US became so bad that civilian militias needed to defend the constitution against the US military? First of all, this seems extremely unlikely, but in the event this happens, we think the difference between civilian militias either having or not having assault rifles is extremely unlikely to affect the outcome. This is because either the military’s expertise and access to a slew of other weapons (tanks, bombs, fighter jets, etc) would far outweigh any power of civilian militias, or the size of the militia in a truly united defense would deter the military. Furthermore, the political context of 2020 shows us that we cannot assume militias will choose to defend the constitution, because armed civilians are forming militias to suppress the right to free speech and to oppress minorities. 2) The benefit of banning assault rifles would be to reduce the number of lives a mass shooter could take before being stopped. The amount of real suffering that is created from civilian access to assault rifles outweighs the hypothetical value described in #1, which has a very small chance of mattering.

Decreased funding of police

Fund other social services and do not send police to respond to a situation unless those social workers request it, or the situation is extreme. Dispatch these social workers through the existing system of 911.

Ban all use of military grade equipment by the police. Civilians are not their enemies.

Train all police in deescalation of force.

Fire police officers for sufficient misconduct and ban them from all departments nation-wide. The job is too important to be done by anyone that can’t do it properly.

Prison system

Ban privatized prisons. All prisons should be government-run. There is no ethical reason to make a business out of putting people in chains.

Increase the funding of social services within prisons. The goal of prisons should be to rehabilitate all prisoners, not to be an incubator for producing hardened criminals.

Former felons’ rights

Former felons, upon completing their sentence, should be allowed to vote. Additionally, asking if a person is a former felon on housing and employment applications should be illegal. Once a felon completes their sentence, they have endured the punishment that society has deemed fits their crime, so they should not live as a second class citizen for the rest of their life. If former felons are not capable of contributing to society and performing as normal citizens, then imprisonment as a form of punishment needs to be reformed.

Bail reform

Bail in the form of money should not be allowed to exceed what the defendant can afford to pay.

Foreign policy and the military

Sometimes nothing in the world seems to function so much like a zero-sum game as does international politics, where there is no overseer or global authority with true power, and each nation justifies its actions as self-interest. In order to effectively maintain relations with the world in this complex environment, we should always strive to maintain and build our status as a model nation, both during war and peace.

Foreign aid

We should not skimp on foreign aid, but we should also use this money more wisely, simply by asking local leaders what they actually want, instead of building American style infrastructure and allowing these project to line the pockets of American companies.

Aid and rebuilding in war zones

We should provide non-military aid to our allies in war-zones during and after wars we participate in. As a clear example, we should use the military to rebuild cities in Iraq as we capture them from ISIS so that those Iraqis see the benefit of being free from ISIS. This takes the political power away from an organization like ISIS.

Special aid to regions with shared history

The Americas and the Middle East are two regions that come to mind as places where we as the US should be putting special resources and political capital into building up rather than tearing down.

The US has a special historical bond with Latin American countries, in that many of the countries in this region were democratic experiments in the New World that brought together groups of mixed ethnicities and aimed to govern better than what was offered by European governance at that time. Instead of honoring that shared history, we have a tradition of distancing ourselves from Latin American countries, apparently based solely on racism. We should put this prejudice aside and instead build partnerships with these nations in order to help them achieve greater democracy and economic stability.

The US has had outsized influence on the Middle East in the last century, ostensibly to curb threats of authoritarianism, communism, and terrorism, while in reality the biggest motivation was to ensure our access to cheap oil. We are currently lowering our dependency on foreign oil, and should continue to do so as we move toward renewable energy. As we make this transition we need to move toward reconciliation and acceptance of the negative impacts of our actions on that part of the world. Practically speaking, we should offer significant aid (again targeted at programs that local and national leaders chose, rather than those that support our interests), offer educational opportunities to students through visas, offer safety to those that fought on our side in wars through visas and green cards, etc.

Once again, the overall theme is that we need to take the high road and prove to the world we are a country of moral authority, so that foreign political agendas that criticize the actions of the US fall on deaf ears and gain no traction.

Closing Guantanamo

As another example of taking the moral high ground, we should close Guantanomo Bay.