Bernie Sanders has an Agenda for America.
Bernie is not following in the wake of public opinion, which itself is following in the wake of social/human need. He is leading, because to people like Bernie, actions flow from character, from believing in the Party platform, from knowing that democracy DEPENDS upon widely distributed income, wealth and power. To people like Bernie the needs are obvious and solutions that scale to meet problems are necessary, not unicorns. Incremental change does not keep up, has not kept up, and therefore is absolutely NOT tied to reality, practicality or need. And that matters to a degree the establishment simply does not, will not recognize, because the establishment is chained to the status quo, not to social, human or environmental need. Period. For this reason, that the status quo is light-years from viable solutions, the establishment is consistently as WRONG as Dick Cheney. All you have to do is look at where we are in every sphere of human activity: the real economy, Wall St. management, the concentration of income and wealth, executive pay, business regulation, the environment, defense, national security, law enforcement, food safety, criminal justice, you fucking name it. These are not small gaps. It's no coincidence. It's the direct influence of the establishment and the status quo. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Consistently.
And it is not all on the Republicans. There are virtually always just enough Democrats to stymie progress and/or ensure regression into an ever weaker position, especially for the 90%. It's like they plan it.
Well, absolutely no surprise, Bernie has a different plan.
The Agenda:
1) Rebuilding Our Crumbling Infrastructure
2) Reversing Climate Change
3) Creating Worker Co-ops
4) Growing the Trade Union Movement
5) Raising the Minimum Wage
6) Pay Equity for Women Workers
7) Trade Policies that Benefit American Workers
8) Making College Affordable for All
9) Taking on Wall Street
10) Health Care as a Right for All
11) Protecting the Most Vulnerable Americans
12) Real Tax Reform
More below.
AGENDA FOR AMERICA
1) Rebuilding Our Crumbling Infrastructure
We need a major investment to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure: roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools. It has been estimated that the cost of the Bush-Cheney Iraq War, a war we should never have waged, will total $3 trillion by the time the last veteran receives needed care. A $1 trillion investment in infrastructure could create 13 million decent paying jobs and make this country more efficient and productive. We need to invest in infrastructure, not more war.
2) Reversing Climate Change
The United States must lead the world in reversing climate change and make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies. Millions of homes and buildings need to be weatherized, our transportation system needs to be energy efficient and we need to greatly accelerate the progress we are already seeing in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and other forms of sustainable energy. Transforming our energy system will not only protect the environment, it will create good paying jobs.
3) Creating Worker Co-ops
We need to develop new economic models to increase job creation and productivity. Instead of giving huge tax breaks to corporations which ship our jobs to China and other low-wage countries, we need to provide assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives. Study after study shows that when workers have an ownership stake in the businesses they work for, productivity goes up, absenteeism goes down and employees are much more satisfied with their jobs.
4) Growing the Trade Union Movement
Union workers who are able to collectively bargain for higher wages and benefits earn substantially more than non-union workers. Today, corporate opposition to union organizing makes it extremely difficult for workers to join a union. We need legislation which makes it clear that when a majority of workers sign cards in support of a union, they can form a union.
5) Raising the Minimum Wage
The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is a starvation wage. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. No one in this country who works 40 hours a week should live in poverty.
6) Pay Equity for Women Workers
Women workers today earn 78 percent of what their male counterparts make. We need pay equity in our country — equal pay for equal work.
7) Trade Policies that Benefit American Workers
Since 2001 we have lost more than 60,000 factories in this country, and more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs. We must end our disastrous trade policies (NAFTA, CAFTA, PNTR with China, etc.) which enable corporate America to shut down plants in this country and move to China and other low-wage countries. We need to end the race to the bottom and develop trade policies which demand that American corporations create jobs here, and not abroad.
8) Making College Affordable for All
In today's highly competitive global economy, millions of Americans are unable to afford the higher education they need in order to get good-paying jobs. Further, with both parents now often at work, most working-class families can't locate the high-quality and affordable child care they need for their kids. Quality education in America, from child care to higher education, must be affordable for all. Without a high-quality and affordable educational system, we will be unable to compete globally and our standard of living will continue to decline.
9) Taking on Wall Street
The function of banking is to facilitate the flow of capital into productive and job-creating activities. Financial institutions cannot be an island unto themselves, standing as huge profit centers outside of the real economy. Today, six huge Wall Street financial institutions have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product - over $9.8 trillion. These institutions underwrite more than half the mortgages in this country and more than two-thirds of the credit cards. The greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of major Wall Street firms plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. They are too powerful to be reformed. They must be broken up.
10) Health Care as a Right for All
The United States must join the rest of the industrialized world and recognize that health care is a right of all, and not a privilege. Despite the fact that more than 40 million Americans have no health insurance, we spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation. We need to establish a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system.
11) Protecting the Most Vulnerable Americans
Millions of seniors live in poverty and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country. We must strengthen the social safety net, not weaken it. Instead of cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs, we should be expanding these programs.
12) Real Tax Reform
At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we need a progressive tax system in this country which is based on ability to pay. It is not acceptable that major profitable corporations have paid nothing in federal income taxes, and that corporate CEOs in this country often enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than their secretaries. It is absurd that we lose over $100 billion a year in revenue because corporations and the wealthy stash their cash in offshore tax havens around the world. The time is long overdue for real tax reform.
Is Bernie perfect? No. Is he pure? No. He, like Elizabeth Warren and Alan Grayson, look that way in comparison to ALL their peers. They have little competition when it comes to
the integrity of saying and doing things consistent with the Democratic Party platform day in and day out, year after year. They don't need to edit the Democratic Party platform on economic and defense attitudes the way the establishment of did through the Obama administration. They aren't interested in adopting attitudes that take us AWAY from democracy-promoting beliefs and policy positions. They actually believe in democracy and the Party platform that promotes it. They don't simply mouth the words from time to time when it is politically expedient or safe.
Plenty of people, kossacks included, insisted that a black, affirmative action, Kenyan, socialist, pal of Saul Alinsky and Jeremiah--no small of smearing with which came from the HRC campaign--could not be elected. These same people held the position that HRC was inevitable, then turned nasty when things got real. These same people will claim that Bernie cannot be elected. They hold the position that HRC is inevitable. And they will get nasty when things get real.
The only thing standing in Bernie's way is the Democratic Party establishment, which claims it wants change but protects the status quo, wittingly or unwittingly, intentionally or unintentionally: it's just always the same result: much, much more of the same than progressive change, always more than offset by increasing economic vulnerability. Republicans can be beaten. Republicans working with the Democratic Party...that requires enormous Hope, enormous commitment to credible, effective change.
Can one person, even a President, change everything? NO. But at least we can have a damn President who stays on message, who fights back against the destructive neoliberal, neoconservative memes of the day. And he could do much more if all the establishment huggers and naysayers would get behind Bernie the way we got behind Obama. Truth is, with 8 more years of the concentration of wealth, Citizens United, and greater voter suppression, it will take even more. More is possible.
If we can drag the backward-leaning half of the party forward. If we did that, we could not only elect Bernie, but we could make solid gains on The Hill once again. Our losses there the past three elections tell the whole story. It is one thing to beat one bad candidate at the top. It is another to win up and down the ticket. THAT takes a winning agenda. THAT takes credibility.
By pushing and "coronating" HRC, the establishment has demonstrated once again that it is to status quo and strategies destined to winning the White House, at best, while winning little or no ground, possibly even losing ground, on The Hill, when what we need are strategies to for a landslide up and down the ticket. Only with Bernie, the ideas, messages and policies he promotes, and the CREDIBILITY he has for actually championing them after the election, can do that. Combine that with a unified message nationwide, and we have a shot.