Friday, July 27, 2007

Policies I would implement

  • Ban non-human powered transportation (bikes okay; no cars, planes or trains). Tear up the freeways and highways and replace with trails.
  • Open the borders.
  • Establish and enforce the right of all workers, citizens and non-citizens, to fair union representation.
  • Slash the military budget, end all occupations. Abolish all first-strike policies. Wait? Won't people invade us then? Well, quit doing all you can to piss people off!
  • Functional universal health care. Focus on preventative care, not drugs. End corporate drug advertising and cap drug prices.
  • Make the FDA actually work. Mandate full ingredient lists on food (no "natural and artificial ingredients"), including alcoholic beverages (pop has to have a nutritional label but alcopop doesn't :-/). Severely limit allowed ingredients.
  • Ban GMO crops, we don't have enough information and they can take over native crops creating a monoculture of plants engineered solely to make greater profits.
  • Ban artificial hormones in cattle and other animals. We know they have serious side effects in humans but money, not health, talks.
  • Ban petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Dumping chemicals on our food is starting to have serious health effects. The massive doses of pesticides used in cotton production trashes the soil and they often are rotated with food (esp. peanuts), which brings deadly chemicals otherwise banned for food use into our food.
  • Ban animal testing. Broaden existing laws to include rats, mice and birds as animals (!). Extend animal abuse crimes to include corporations (e.g. what Michael Vick did could have been done legally if done by a corporation or university claiming it was for "scientific advancement" or "testing of consumer products").
  • Severely restrict the cruelest forms of animal torture and exploitation, including the fur trade. Ban zoos and circuses which use animals.
  • Restrict animal breeding to discourage domestication as harmful to animals and the environment.
  • Reinstitute high tariffs to protect our national economy.
  • Drastically shrink the federal government. Move closer towards confederacy, government should function bottom-up, not top-down. Localism should be encouraged, centralism discouraged. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people." (10th Amendment to the Constitution)
  • Abolish corporate welfare and personhood.
  • Abolish the practice of dumping goods in the form of "aid", which destroys local economies.
  • End the "War on (Certain) Drugs". It only exacerbates the problem. What is of prime importance is to raise the living conditions in the inner city through economic restructuring and social programs that actually work.

The general idea is agrarian localist socialist, partly inspired by Wendell Berry and mostly inspired by my disdain for the current state of affairs.

What else can you think of?

No comments: