Fri 17 Jul 2009
The first 100 days under a Green Party administration
Posted by admin under 2009 Summer, 2009 Summer Features
[6] Comments
by John Rensenbrink, Maine Green Independent Party
The Green Party agenda for the first 100 days would:
1: Initiate a one trillion dollar community-based grant-in-aid program from the national government to local communities. These funds will be channeled though collaborative arrangements between state and local governments. They will require maximum feasible participation in governance by all parts of each local community receiving these grants. A five percent matching grant from each participating local community is also required. The purposes of the grants are for sustainable community development and community empowerment. The grants include funds for renewable energy, conservation, workforce housing, small business development coupled with apprenticeship programs to hire the unskilled, open space, extra support for teachers and for ecologically informed education, college scholarships, food and water security, public works, public transportation, regional cooperative projects, support for neighborhood policing programs, and support for the arts. This replaces the 750 billion dollar “bailout from the top” scheme initiated in late 2008 called the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
2: Direct the national Treasury Department to shift the measurement of economic progress away from reliance on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to reliance on Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI). This will assist government officials, business executives, and university economists to provide, and be provided with, a critical tool to measure sustainable economic activity. We can no longer deceive ourselves that 50,000 deaths a year on our highways contributes to our well being—which by present measurements seems to be the case because all the work connected with these deaths adds to the GDP. Other sources included in the GDP include: building more prisons, piling up waste, buying more oil because our buildings leak tons of energy, waging wars for oil (adding enormously to the GDP!) instead of shifting to renewable energy. We need to measure well being, not commodity transactions of goods and services.
3: Substantially lower the income tax and combine this with a carbon tax of $250 per ton to be phased in at the rate of $25 per year from 2009 to 2020. The carbon tax would be offset with a matching reduction in income tax. This is advocated by Lester Brown of “State of the World” fame and is designed to discourage fossil fuel use and to stimulate investment of renewable sources of energy.
4: Extend Medicare to the entire population; in other words, a single-payer health care program for all.
5: Establish a financial transactions fee. Economist Dean Baker (Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.) estimates that a very small fee—ranging up to, say, 0.25 percent —will yield $100 billion or more annually. The fee will be placed on the sale or transfer of stocks, bonds, and other financial assets, including the great variety of exotic and speculator-driven financial instruments so much in the news lately.
6: Initiate a Reparations Program for dispossessed African American and Native American peoples.
7: Initiate a constitutional amendment for the election of president and vice president by popular vote.
8: Pressure state and local governments to institute instant run-off voting in elections and develop pilot programs for proportional representation.
9: Push for laws and administrative rules in military and civilian life that provide support for gay marriage and gay families.
10: End the Drug War, decriminalize cannabis, and support growing hemp for industrial use.
11: Initiate a constitutional amendment affirming that the word “person” in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States applies to real persons and not to corporations.
“I chose policies that most contribute to a profound shift in the power structure, with a strong emphasis on community”
I chose policies that most contribute to a profound shift in the power structure, with a strong emphasis on community: building, preservation, self-reliance and self-governance. This is a major feature of getting the nation and the world out from under the repressive and often lethal domination of the oligarchs.
These policies also address timeliness. It is important to ask in formulating policy—is there little time to waste in getting at the issue and is this issue something heavy on the public’s mind? Health care is such an issue. Also I considered policies which foster diversity, so differences of race, gender, sexual orientation, and class cease to be opportunities for bias and discrimination and cease to be stumbling blocks to the achievement of unity in a diverse, multi-cultural society.
Many of these policies directly interconnect with one another, for example, imposing a carbon tax and at the same time pushing strongly for renewable energy. All policies address the Ten Key Values of the Green Party of the United States: Ecological Wisdom, Personal and Social Responsibility, Grass Roots Democracy, Non-Violence, Respect for Diversity, Gender Equity, Community Economics, Decentralization, Global Responsibility, and Sustainability.
For more essays on the first 100 days go to: http://www.gp.org/first100/
6 Responses to “ The first 100 days under a Green Party administration ”
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[...] fashion, there are nearly a dozen essays on the subject from Greens all over the country, advancing proposals like these: 1: Initiate a one trillion dollar community-based grant-in-aid program from the [...]
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This all sounds good on paper, but how about trying strict adherence to the Constitution? The problem is government from local cities all the up to the fed have decided that they know better about how to spend our money than we do. It’s time to dump the nanny state, reduce taxes, and stimulate revenue by letting people spend their money how they see fit. This country was founded on rugged individualism and people learned how to make their own way. Up to the point that government decided to stick its nose in peoples personal business, and duplicate offices that are best left to the states, the only direction we went was up. True there were some bumps in the road, but we got beyond those.
Now, about reparations for blacks and Indians, why? My relatives were either poor, or immigrants to this country well after slavery and after the atrocities the American Indians suffered. Not one of the people alive today suffered the atrocities that slaves and Indians endured, so why pay them? How do you separate the relatives of free blacks from those of slaves? And why must we pay for the sins of our ancestors?
I hope we will see more Green Party candidates in more races. There needs to be more organization. I wish I could attend the conference at NCCU (I taught there one year), because I would like to see if people think the Obama admin is doing enough. Personally I am aghast at appts to the BLM, Fish and Wildlife, etc.
Single payer health care, which is something most Americans want, is getting punted by the Democratic Party. It isn’t even discussed. Yet many people believe Obama wants this.
What has been done with the Hate Crimes bill is also a travesty, making it an amendment to a defense bill, then amending it to include the death penalty. The undercurrent of gay hate in this admin is also disgusting.
I think a great way to get the Green Party proposals on the board is to get rid of the Republican and Democratic Parties, and that the money that these two have should go to reducing the national debt, help to get renewable energy projects off the ground and other projects that would help the people, the enviorment and other ways to reduce the national debt and decrease the unemployent rate. Thanks, Doug Lass
One crucial omission is a Constitutional Amendment that guarantees full employment at a living wage and mandates the reduction of the length of the work week annually to meet this goal. In short, reduce the work week to the point where the competition for hiring falls on employers rather than having workers compete for jobs. I would go so far as to say that this should be the FIRST order of business in the first 100 days. I say this because it is precisely the competition for jobs that is at the root of the reactionary politics that consumes our country and planet. It is the reason why workers, all too often, support the same polluting industries that are slowly poisoning them to death. It is the glue that holds the Military-Industrial Complex together and it is the root cause of racism and anti-foriegn attitudes. It is also one of the strongest motivators for military recruitment that sustains U.S. foreign military adventures abroad. America is the most overworked country in the world. We are locked into a downward spiral where we overwork so that we could overconsume! We cannot move to a sustainable economy unless we move in the opposite direction by replacing a consumer culture with an economic model that increases and promotes more leisure time and thus emphasizes true freedom and the valuing of people over things.
Commentator appears to present comprehensive policies which reflect many Greens views. They include single-payer healthcare, the use of gender-neutral languag etc. However, one of the ten key values of the Green Party is Feminism. While gender equity promises to recognize all gender orientations, Feminism gives us an overall circular web of oversight, in which we utilize to vet, modify, consent, and follow-through, to these commentators’ prescribed policies. Feminism is relevant.