So watching The Humanist Report note that Mike Gravel's platform is near his ideal, I started to think about-- "What would my ideal be, and why?"
Obviously you could consider reform going on forever, but let's say 3 to push front and center, 10 that become major campaign pieces. What would they be?
I think mine would look like this:
1) Money out of politics -- move to public financing of elections and impose comprehensive anti-corruption laws
2) Single payer taking hints from the German and UK models of Healthcare
-Create a public option by opening Medicare to buy-in by anyone and empower Medicare to freely negotiate with health and pharma
-Dictate that a) All private healthcare companies must join with Medicare in negotiating universally accepted prices and plan prices, and collaboratively negotiate with pharma/health. b) No insurance provider can deny any patient from purchasing a plan, and the price/coverage of plans is universal. c) Everyone needs to have healthcare, either paying taxes into Medicare or enrolling in one of the private plans (if you aren't enrolled in private, you will automatically get Medicare).
-Create a network of federally owned public hospitals (similar to the post office model)
-Guarantee federal employee jobs at public hospitals to all licensed doctors and nurses
-Regulatory reform of Big Pharma (patents, advertising, opioids especially)
Explanation: This model allows us to keep the private companies (and their employees) while keeping market competition in both insurance and in health-- competition not based on profit margin since prices are universal, but on efficiency of service to attract enrollment and usage. Unlike the German model though, by guaranteeing Federal jobs, we will protect medical professionals from the wage squeeze these types of systems tend to create.
3) Worker's Democracy Reform
-All companies with 300 employees or more must register as either a capitalist company or a worker coop
-All capitalist companies must have a Board of Directors that democratically makes decisions, with 50% of Board of Directors seats given to workers to be democratically voted on.
-Foreign companies operating in the US must create a US subsidiary with its own Board of Directors (50% worker-elected), and there will be strict controls on foreign parent companies to influence management decisions being made by the local Board of Directors
-Right of First Refusal: All capitalist companies that wish to close an operation or sell an operation must first give workers the opportunity to purchase that operation and turn it into a worker coop. These decisions will be backed by cheap government loans.
-Any 10 individuals receiving federal unemployment benefits may jointly register to take out 1 year's worth of benefits in order to start a worker coop.
4) Green New Deal
-Create a German-style Internet of Energy
-Rebuild our Infrastructure
-Massively expand federal housing construction
-Jobs Guarantee
-Invest in green house gas reduction technology and advanced battery research
-Become carbon neutral in 10 years.
5) Finance, Tech, and Internet Reform
-21st Century strengthened Glass Steagall and regulation oversight
-Break up our largest banks
-Impose period-based restrictions on selling for influential shareholders
-bring back Net Neutrality
-create nation-wide free wifi and declare internet access as a human right
-nationalize the social media companies and run them as public utilities
-break up the other largest tech companies using antitrust laws
-create a national block chain system to give ownership of user data to users and impose data regulations
7) Education Reform
-Use quantitative easing to forgive all remaining student loans
-Free tuition at public universities
-Demand federal oversight of tuition reform at private universities, cutting off federal dollars to institutions that do not comply
-Universal preschool and robust public childcare services
-Invest in creating robust trade school tracks, starting earlier
-Modernize curriculum for the next century, focusing less on fact memorization and more on skills-- sex ed, relationship management, project management, statistics, code & development, financial planning, etc.
-Bring back socialist theory to our economics courses and departments
8) Comprehensive immigration reform
-Give citizenship to all DACA holders
-Create a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented now
-Extend voter rights, social insurance program access, and education opportunities to ALL registered tax payers (and we would register all the 11 million undocumented immigrants)
-Establish a rotating joint board of labor representatives, corporate executives, and economics academics to annually make a recommendation to congress on appropriate #'s migrant worker visas annually based on national demand for labor. Congress will hold votes to set those levels.
Explanation: This makes it so that not only are we protecting our workers from economic danger, but we are also making it so that there are NO vulnerable undocumented workers in the territory. The level we allow immigration will be based on demand by our economy, but by giving economic justice to all workers (citizen and immigrant) new workers are a cost to the bosses, not a stress to the workers.
9) Foreign Policy of Peace
-End all regime change wars and tactics that infringe on the sovereignty of foreign nations
-Document and Apologize for all previous regime-change and election interference incidents in America's last 150 years of history
-Enact sanctions against all countries with Apartheid policies
-End military and weapons support to Saudi Arabia and Israel
-Free all individuals from Guantanamo and pay them reparations
-Bring home all troops from the middle east
-Join the International Court of Justice
-Amnesty to all Whistle Blowers (yes, including Snowden and Assange)
-After rebuilding our own economy, launch a new Marshall plan to rebuild central and south America-- notably the countries the US has previously enacted regime change against.
10) Audit the Permanent State on Public Record
-Intelligence Community
-Federal Reserve
-Pentagon
-any others
I feel like I need an 11th and 12th for trade and criminal justice reform... but if I had to squeeze it to just 10...