Office of Chairman TNF: Red Army takes NM, UT, ID, AZ

[TNF]

GREATER THAN THEIR HOARDED GOLD
A Labor Day message from the President Pro Tempore

The great city of Minneapolis in the state of Joy has been the site of many a labor struggle, most notably the 1934 Minneapolis Teamster Strike, which transformed the city from a bastion of the 'open shop' into a union town.

Comrades!

Today we come together to celebrate the Atlasian worker. It is with great pride that I can register my name among those friends of labor in the Labor Party and in all parties that have helped us construct a modern and humane labor code for our nation. My crowning achievement, and I will go to my grave defending said achievement, is of course, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 2013. It was a bipartisan effort, with the drafting process ultimately working out in favor of compromise, although it was (and still is) a contentious piece of legislation to this day. I will, as your Senator, continue to stand on the side of the working class in all my days in the Senate. You can count on that.

Of course, with all that Labor has achieved, it's easy to say that we have done enough, or in the words of some of our fair-weather friends in the People's Party, we have done "too much," or that we have created an environment "hostile to business growth," or any of the canards the likes of a certain Governor likes to throw around when addressing the Labor program. But to say that we have done enough, or to assert that we have gone too far, is to ignore the reality of labor relations on the ground. Workers are still denied the right to organize unions in a very prominent sector of the economy (the military, that is) for example. Workers are still denied input in decisions that greatly affect them, be it the decision to close a plant or the decision to dump toxic waste in a fresh water source. New forms of organizing are being brought into being and need to be addressed and brought into the overall framework of collective bargaining, be they consumers' unions or students' unions.

Currently, there are some pieces of legislation in the queue to address these issues, but more work will be needed in the future to address the future of the ongoing class struggle between those who add value and those who do not. The Codetermination Act of 2014 is a resurrected version of the Codetermination and Cooperative Development Act of 2013, which unfortunately failed to pass the Senate in a close vote. The Codetermination Act of 2014 will give workers a say on corporate boards and will ultimately give workers more control over the workplace. The Collective Bargaining Modernization Act of 2014 is another attempt at a bill of the previous name, which, again, failed in a close vote the last time it was considered by the Senate. This act would allow for sectional unions to bargain directly with entire sectors of the economy, thus standardizing working conditions, wages, and benefits across industry and adding some degree of rationalization to the economy as a whole.

These two pieces of legislation are, I think, essential to the further development of our economy in a way that gives workers a voice at the table, rather than allows Capital to continue its domination of our economy, our lives, our nation, and our world. But these alone are not sufficient. In the next legislative session, I will introduce legislation allowing for consumers to form unions and bargain directly with distributors over prices and other concerns, students to form unions and bargain directly with universities and school districts over conditions in the classroom, funding, and tuition fees; public transit users to form unions and directly bargain with local governments over transit rider fees, etc. The development of a new and bold form of social unionism is happening all around us, and we on the side of labor would be foolhardy not to embrace these movements and make their causes our own. As I said to the good people of Missoula yesterday, I will also introduce legislation allowing soldiers to form unions and bargain collectively with the federal government concerning wages and working conditions.

We must reinvigorate our labor movement as well by putting up a strong defense of internal union democracy, as well. I am a friend of all democratic or reform movements within the labor movement and will sponsor legislation in the next legislative session that will improve the rights of rank and file union members' control over their union organizations and expand the power of the rank and file as opposed to the entrenched bureaucracies that are unfortunately the result of fighting for social justice in the capitalist jungle. I believe that union members should have control over their own pension funds and that unions should be given the same tax advantages we give corporations -- if we are going to subsidize Capital accumulation, there's no reason for us not to subsidize the development of a free working class.

The final conflict between Labor and Capital may yet be upon us, and in that case, we must be prepared to engage in that conflict by any means necessary. I shall continue to reiterate my call for a universal arming of the working class and the universal military training of the working class, as well as the development of independent workers' militia groups for the purpose of defending and policing their communities, and kicking the bourgeoisie and its scabs-in-blue out of our neighborhoods.

So long as there is a class struggle, I shall be a partisan in it. I am for the class struggle. I am for the defeat of Capital by Labor and the erection of a workers', farmers', and soldiers' government in Nyman. But I understand that we cannot live upon revolution alone, and as a Senator, I will continue to seek the reform of Atlasian capitalism so as to make the transition to socialism that much simpler, that much easier, that much quicker. I shall always and forever believe those words from the old labor hymn, Solidarity Forever:

In OUR hands is placed a power, greater than their hoarded gold, greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand fold
WE can bring to birth a new world, from the ashes of the old

We are the ones that we have been waiting for, workingmen and workingwomen of Atlasia. We are marching forward, toward the realization of our world historical mission: the defeat of capital and the ushering in of the cooperative commonwealth of humankind. We can do this. We must do this.

[TNF]

Endorsed!

Thank you for your endorsement, comrade.

[TNF]

What has TNF ever done for me?
A comprehensive catalog of legislation introduced by the Senator from Wonderment and passed by the Senate

1. Amendment to the Labor Rights Act of 2012
2. Responsible Federal Contracting Act of 2013
3. Death With Dignity Act
4. Amendment to the Student Loan Interest Rate Fairness Act
5. Black Friday Means Black Friday Act
6. Recognition of Labor Act of 2013
7. Paid Leave Act of 2013
8. Sex Work Act of 2013
9. Fair Labor Standards Act of 2013
10. An Actual End to Imperialism Act
11. Comprehensive Drug Reform Act of 2013
12. The "You can't fire me, I quit!" Act of 2013
13. Transgender Rights Act of 2013
14. Amendment to The Productivity Equalization and Worker Employment Act of 2011
15. Freedom of Thought and Association Act of 2013
16. State Name Recognition Act of 2013
17. Employer Non-Interference Act of 2013
18. Homeschooling Act of 2014
19. Circumsicion Act of 2014
20. Freedom From Religion Act
21. Anti-Plutocracy Act of 2014
22. End Affirmative Action for the Rich Act
23. Fair Taxation Act
24. The DemPGH Fortune Fairness Act
25. Party Like It's Your Birthday Act
26. Contract Modernization and Continuity Act of 2014
27. Public Intoxication Act
28. Cheech and Chong Act
29. Cooperative Development Act of 2014
30. Rapists Shouldn't Have Custody Act of 2014
31. The Public Means Public Act
32. Demilitarization Act of 2014
33. End Sports Profiteering Act of 2014
34. Sweet Sixteen Act of 2014
35. Fair Hiring Act of 2014
36. Railway Labor Act of 2014
37. End McCarthyism Once and For All Act of 2014
38. Oil Pipeline Funding Expungement Act

[TNF]

Oh lordy, look at all those things you've been able to pass.

Now now, I seem to remember having quite a bit of help from a certain someone on a few of those bills.

[TNF]

VOTE YOURSELF A FACTORY
Building Atlasian Socialism

The Midwest is Red! Senator TNF joins us for an early morning talk on building socialism in Atlasia from the industrial hub of Omaha in the great state of Grit

Comrades!

It's good to see everyone out this early. I know, I know, it has to be terrible going back to work after having a nice, long, four-day weekend, but unfortunately, so long as the capitalists run the show, we don't have much of a say in the matter. But changing that is what I'm actually here to talk about today. How do we build socialism in Atlasia? Will socialism come from the ballot box alone?

Before I try to address those questions, I would like to first comment upon the moves we have made in the direction of socialism since the Labor Party came into being as an explicitly socialist party committed to the fundamental reorganization of society upon a socialist basis. We have done a lot in the way of expanding the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively, and I hit upon a few of those themes yesterday in my Labor Day address, but expanded collective bargaining and higher union density alone are not socialism. We have expanded the welfare state, but again, an expansion of the welfare state alone is not socialism. We have even enacted a strong bill providing developmental aid to cooperative enterprises, but again, this is not, in and of itself, socialism. Perhaps the closest we came to establishing a socialist island in the capitalist sea was during the debate over the Public Fuel and Power Act of 2014, which would have established a democratically-governed and publicly-administered public energy monopoly, one that could have pushed us fully in the direction of renewable energy, were it not for the sniping of the so-called 'serious people' (i.e. the apologists for capitalist ownership of our energy supply) with no plan of their own other than to allow the capitalists to continue to gouge us at the pump and in our monthly electricity bills.

But alas, for the time being, public ownership of energy has been shelved, in part because of a furious media campaign waged by the capitalist press and their allies and in part because of an unwillingness to take up the issue until a concrete plan with broad support in the Labor Party itself can be drawn up and once again carried forward. I have many regrets over the conclusion of the previous debate, and most of those center on the fact that, until the very last hour, almost no one bothered to offer concrete proposals of their own, waiting to snipe the proposal that I had worked out at the very end. This is unfortunate because some of the kinks in my own plan (and I'm fully aware that there were some) could have been worked out early on and the lot of us could be driving home today after filling up at an Atlasian Energy Authority-owned gas station at no charge. Public ownership of energy is not dead, it is only, at this point in time, in hibernation. You can mark my words that I will not rest until not only energy is publicly owned in the Republic of Atlasia, but until all industry in Atlasia is publicly owned and managed by the workers themselves.

Socialism is not public ownership alone, a point that Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky (to say nothing of the whole great pantheon of socialist thinkers) made clear time and time again in their own writings. Socialism is the ownership of the means of production by the working class and the democratic control and management of those means of production by the working class. It is true economic democracy. This is why I was not satisfied with simply creating another bureaucracy in the case of the public power debate and it is why I created mechanisms within the bill that provided for workers to elect representatives and the public at-large to be represented. If we are to have public ownership in the 21st century, it must not be the same kind of squalid, undemocratic, bureaucracy that characterized the public ownership of the 20th century. It must be democratic. It must be alive with activity. It must be directly controlled by the public, not by bureaucrats from this or that department.

The creation of such democratic public enterprises will provide schooling for the working class itself in how the whole of society shall be structured under socialism. It will provide a 'boot camp' for the radical democratic socialist society of the future, but even so, it will, still not be socialism by itself. For socialism to be attained, the whole of the economy must be subordinated to workers' control and workers' management. In seizing utilities and other essential sectors, we are still leaving many sectors of the economy in the hands of the capitalists, and, I am convinced, that although we may attempt to wrest these enterprises from the capitalists democratically (and I will make every attempt to do so while in the Senate), we won't be able to fully establish socialism through the ballot box. We may yet need a revolution to accomplish such a feat, as no ruling class in the history of class society has ever peacefully yielded its control of society.

I would like to outline, however, what I think should be our goals so far as building socialism in the here and now, that is, preparing for the revolution to come, should be. First and foremost, expanding the right of the working class to organize into all sectors of the economy and in new contexts, is essential to building socialism. Yesterday I noted that we need to embrace new kinds of unions, ones that bring together students, consumers, or service users to bargain collectively with school districts, distributors, or service providers. These provide a new avenue for the construction of socialism and a new means of waging the class struggle, and further, they help foster class consciousness among the workers themselves. We must also continue to expand the control of workers over their own unions and their workplaces.

[TNF]

Secondly, we must commit ourselves to increasing the control of workers over the key sectors of the economy, with the eventual goal of a fully publicly owned and managed economy. We must re-visit the debate on public power, but we must also begin a debate on public ownership of and democratic management of transportation in Atlasia. From automobile companies to airliners to cruise lines, these must be taken in to full public ownership so that we can begin a process of fully revitalizing our transportation sector, making the decisions that have to be made in lieu of climate change, and making transportation safe and affordable for all. We have to not only bring energy under public control and democratic management, but we must also bring heating, water, telecommunications, and other essential services under public ownership and democratic management. The world's foremost economic and social power should not be one in which any person freezes to death in the winter, goes without reliable water or has to boil water to use it on a regular basis, or doesn't have access to the Internet.

Production itself must be brought under public ownership and democratic management, for use rather than for private profit. There are many factories that lay idle and there are even more workers without jobs - let us bring them together in publicly-owned, democratically-managed industries where they can produce to the limit those things that we all need, be they smart meters for our homes to help check energy usage or electric cars. And of course, we cannot even begin to discuss these without bringing that sector which has the ability to crash our entire economy under heel - the financial sector. At present, democratic management of the economy is ultimately undermined from within by the unaccountable, undemocratic Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve, and, for that matter, the entire banking sector, must be brought under public ownership and democratic management. Private banking and private control of our money supply have proven themselves untenable even under the present capitalist epoch, and must be abolished with all due haste.

In addition to expanding the publicly-owned, democratically-managed sectors of the economy, we must also continue to expand our welfare state. Lifelong education and retraining for the unemployed or underemployed must be heavily subsidized by the federal government. We must move in the direction of offering more public services to communities without regard to cost, as well. At present, we have a national system of public libraries that serve our communities and provide them with free access to knowledge. I would propose that we enact legislation creating public gymnasiums along the same line, providing equal access to fitness for all who seek to use them. We must provide free eye tests in every school, not unlike the free meals currently provided as of the latest piece of federal legislation concerning education, to help identify problems with eyesight early on and get children the help they need.

Universal access to education must also be enacted on a broad scale, with full federal financing of education from pre-school to graduate school. Students should be provided with state of the art technology, classroom sizes should be strictly limited, and students above a certain age should be provided with a weekly stipend, so as to discourage them from holding a job and instead encourage them to focus on their studies. We must subsidize the arts and bring art from the masses to the masses. The great programs of the New Deal period for artists must be revived and put under control of the artists themselves; we must fund a lot of experimentation and new ways of thinking, so far as the arts are concerned. We must provide grants for young people to organize themselves, to form clubs and debating societies and so on; such grants would allow the young to develop the skills that under a socialist society, they would need in order to participate in a radically democratic, egalitarian society.

We must also, of course, finish Fritzcare. And by that, I mean, we must build a democratic National Health Service covering all aspects of medical care at no charge to those who utilize those services. The democratic National Health Service should be managed by doctors, nurses, and patients, and should provide dental and mental health services in addition to standard coverage. For prospective parents, we should provide free parenting classes.

At present, I have introduced a bill providing for work for all who are unemployed and seek to work. The Job Guarantee Act would be a cornerstone of our welfare state if passed, for it would ensure that no person is unemployed unless they consciously choose unemployment, a choice that, in light of the oppressive, authoritarian conditions of modern capitalism, I greatly sympathize with, at this juncture. In that vein, I of course support the expansion of Nixcome and redesigning it into a truly universal basic income program for all who create value.

We must have universal child care programs to help liberate women from the drudgery of housework. We must have rent controls to prevent gouging of the tenant by the landlord. We must ensure that every person that is now homeless has a place to stay, and we must do so by prying open vacant hotel rooms, seizing the unused mansions of the bourgeoisie, and constructing new, communal public housing.

[TNF]

Above all, and, fundamentally, it does not matter which way our welfare state grows so long as it provides us with a means to de-commodify that which is essential to our wellbeing. We must embrace the logic of de-commification and take it yet a step further by taking the fight itself to the capitalists, that is, by making the first steps toward expropriating the expropriators.

Controls on the export of capital must be enacted swiftly to prevent capital flight in light of the enactment of any or all of the above policies. If the capitalists will not hire the unemployed, if they will not produce, they forfeit their right to own the means of production to the working class. We should thus seize those industries where the capitalists have proposed relocating capital overseas and transform them into democratic enterprises. We must also be aware of, and must clamp down upon, bourgeois attempts to undermine the democratic process. Racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, and other bigoted ideas and the groups that organize around them are the battering ram of the bourgeoisie against working class unity. So long as these ideas may be freely proclaimed in public, on television or on the radio, working class unity is in danger. We must not shirk away from use of coercive force to bar these poisonous ideas from being injected into our national debate, and we must not shirk away from prosecuting those individuals who deliberately use them as a means of dividing and conquering the working class.

The bourgeoisie should be explicitly denied the right to purchase for their children a better education or better medical care. Private medical care and private education should be totally banned upon the creation of a fully fledged, democratic and public alternative. Homeschooling, already restricted under our laws, must be completely and totally banned.

The tax structure should be altered so as to make war against the bourgeoisie, rather than to divide up the working class and tax it to pay for the bourgeois state. We should reject any and all taxation that is regressive in nature or that levies a tax upon income, rather than one which levies a tax upon how income is derived. The income tax has long been hailed as a progressive advance, but it is undeniably bourgeois in character in that it assumes all income should equally be subject to taxation; it ignores the crucial question of how an income is made. Capital gains taxation or inheritance taxation, on the other hand, do not. Nor does a Land Value Tax, another option that we must strongly consider enacting as a replacement for the kind of individualized, bourgeois taxation that now exists.

However, some individual taxation, at least so far as individual spending on the part of the bourgeoisie is concerned, is worth maintaining and expanding. Thus I recently introduced the Tax the Bastards Act of 2014, which would enact a mansion tax and a tax upon luxury goods, two key components in our war against the bourgeoisie. I continue to support the capping of incomes of the bourgeoisie. No person should earn more annually than five (5) times the annual yearly income of a minimum wage worker. But none of this can even begin to be enforceable unless we fundamentally strengthen our tax code. We need to start sending tax cheats to prison and we need to start throwing up sanctions and restrictions upon travel and trade with known tax havens. We must make the tax returns of the bourgeoisie publicly accessible, so that everyone may view how these parasites get their money and what they do with it. Home ownership should be strictly regulated. No person should be allowed to own a second home, and all excess homes should be seized and converted into communal living spaces for the working class.

We must also not forget, in our war against the bourgeoisie, that the working class must likewise be built up to combat this class of parasites. A public educational campaign on the real division of society, between producers and parasites, must be the official policy of the Labor Party and the state itself. Education must be reorganized and actually taught from a material, i.e. from a scientific, basis, rather than being used as a means of bourgeois propaganda. Public service broadcasting should be democratized and expanded; the state should fund the growth of publicly-owned, democratic newspapers and deliver those newspapers for free, as well as promote more community television timeslots and the like.

As I noted yesterday, the working class must fundamentally begin to learn how to push the struggle forward in its own terms, on a military basis. The events in Ferguson, Missouri show us that the police cannot be trusted to police our communities. The police are the scabs-in-blue of the bourgeoisie, not friends of the workers or of their communities. We must disarm the police, regulate the hiring and firing of police officers, and ideally substitute for the police a system whereby concerned citizens can apply for licenses to patrol their own communities as special public safety patrols. We must familiarize the working class with the workings of the gun and we must arm every proletarian household.

Fundamentally, we shall not build socialism through the ballot box. I wish it were not so, but it is undeniable that the bourgeoisie will defend its privileges and its power at all costs, and so it is prudent and makes sense for us to organize and to defend ourselves, and, eventually, to make the revolution that will free us from toil. In the interim, I will continue to seek reform within the capitalist system, but never lose sight of the ultimate goal, of worldwide socialist revolution. I am first and foremost a revolutionist, a dialectical materialist, a proletarian internationalist, and a Marxist. You may not agree with where I stand, but you will never have any doubts as to it, and that I can guarantee you.

Onward to socialism, comrades! Onward to the cooperative commonwealth of all humankind!

[TNF]

SOLIDARITY FOREVER
Completing the Civil Rights Revolution

The city of Osawatomie in the state of Harmony was the site of a major battle for civil rights led by abolitionist militant John Brown in the 1850s. Senator TNF, an admirer of John Brown, joins us today from this small Midwestern town.

Comrades!

It is great to be in small town Atlasia today, and even greater that that small town is one with such a rich and important history. One of my personal heroes is and will always be John Brown, that fiery abolitionist who Frederick Douglass said, and I'm paraphrasing here, was the only man he knew that could "die for the slave," that would of course sacrifice his life for the greater good of bringing an end to the horror of slavery. John Brown may have been hanged for the crime of doing the right thing by opposing slavery in 1859, but his spirit lives on. It lives on within the Labor Party, it lives on within the labor movement, among those that seek to smash the chains of our modern equivalent of slavery, that is, wage slavery, and free all workers from their daily toil. It lives on in social movements that seek the equality of men and women and those of us who do not identify with a gender or those of us that have a different term for our specific gender expression. It lives on in the anti-racist movement. It lives on in the movement for LGBTQ liberation. It lives on in each and everyone one of us that embrace that dictum that freedom must be grasped "by any means necessary," in the words of the great revolutionary Malcolm X.

In the spirit of John Brown, my address today is concerned primarily with the liberation of oppressed peoples. From Belfast to Edinburgh, from Barcelona to the Gaza Strip, from Kurdistan to Montreal, we must stand with those who seek to bee free from the shackles of oppression. And, likewise, in our own country, we must recognize the right of all oppressed people to govern themselves. The native people of Hawaii, of Puerto Rico, and of all colonized areas, must be allowed the option to chart a course all their own, or be allowed to request autonomy from the federal and regional governments. So should it be in the deep South, where black Atlasians compose the numerical majority and yet lack control over the major institutions that dominate their lives. The Civil Rights Act of 2014, which I have proposed and which is currently in the queue, outlines a process by which autonomy or independence is a possibility for oppressed people in the Republic of Atlasia.

The Civil Rights Act of 2014 also outlines a process by which the rights of the oppressed in society at large can be better protected than at present. We must not only act to protect the rights of the oppressed, but to extend those rights and guard them -- by any means necessary. We must first seek to root out racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all other bigoted belief systems which seek to divide the working class. The public prohibition of advocating for these bigoted worldviews is a necessity if we are to actually do much of anything about them. We cannot allow open racists, misogynists, or homophobes to march down our streets and attack large segments of our population.

We should make it so that those who seek to spew this vile hatred in public spend time behind bars, pay fines, and have to pay back their debt to society by taking classes that educate these persons on the wrongness behind the bigoted things that they advocate. If these forces organize and attempt to block the implementation of such a law, these elements should have their heads acquainted with the pavement. We should provide no quarter for bigotry in this country.

Much of what I advocate here has been detailed in long form in the Civil Rights Act of 2014, and as such, I will not repeat it here. Interested parties may look in the queue thread and read the bill for themselves. What I want to make an overall note of today is that racism and other forms of oppression cannot simply be eliminated by promoting certain numbers of an oppressed group or changing the way oppressed persons are represented in the media. Make no mistake -- I believe that both of the above are goals worth fighting for. But I want to underline the fact that bigotry under capitalism is systemic and serves a certain purpose, that is, to block the unity of and the organization of the working masses to demand their own liberation as a class and smash the bourgeois oppressors.

We must tackle systemic bigotry and everyday bigotry at the same time. These are not either or goals, they are the pre-eminent mission of the modern progressive movement. We cannot even begin to talk about working class unity and working class unity until we start breaking down the bigoted attitudes that prevail in society at-large. We must thus build a rainbow coalition to tear down bigotry and liberate the working class. We must smash not only capitalism, not only the state, but also the concept of 'race', the concept of 'gender', the concept of 'sexual orientation', etc. We must smash all hierarchies that we have not ourselves chosen democratically. Then, and only then, will we be able to say that John Brown can rest in peace, that liberation of the oppressed is a full and complete project.

[TNF]

I shouldn't have to say this, but ENDORSED for reelection, comrade!

Thank you for your support, Mr. Vice President.

[TNF]

Obviously endorsed!

Thank you for your support, comrade! I'll never forget your stint as my running mate on the greatest Atlasian presidential ticket of all time (TM)

I'm sure at least one of them I tried to table right away

That I don't doubt, but nonetheless, I couldn't have gotten a few of those things passed without you.

[TNF]

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances (i.e. the good Senator from the Midwest finally getting his hands on a copy of Capital by Karl Marx), the speech concerning civil liberties is going to have to be moved to tomorrow. I apologize for the inconvenience and will update my calendar to reflect the changes made tomorrow.

[TNF]

I apologize for the lull in speechifying this weekend. I've been working 10 1/2 hour days! And you wonder why I'm a communist. Don't worry though, regular campaigning should resume on Monday. Until then, stay safe comrades and enjoy your three day weekend, courtesy of the Amendment to the Worker Productivity and Equalization Act of 2011, passed by yours truly of course.

[TNF]

The campaign shall resume tonight, but in the meantime, I'd like to just officially announce that I am seeking a second term as the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. In my tenure as President Pro Tempore, I have been nothing less than partial and have been active and response on requests for final votes and for voting on amendments. I understand that some of my actions have been controversial (especially concerning the certification of Tyrion as Vice President) but I shall continue to maintain that my actions are fully within the scope of my power as President Pro Tempore and I shall not relent in exercising that power to keep the Senate moving and active. We cannot slip into inactivity and let debate lull when there are so many issues facing Atlasia today that require us to engage in thoughtful and meaningful debate.

[TNF]

Updated Schedule of Events for the Week of September 7, 2014

Sunday, September 7
No events scheduled

Monday, September 8
Domestic policy speech on civil liberties "The Free Development of All" in Denver, Mirth

Tuesday, September 9
Domestic policy speech on farm policy "Land to the Landless" in Cedar Rapids, Moxie

Wednesday, September 10
Domestic policy speech on energy policy "Sustainable Socialism" in Fargo, Serenity

Thursday, September 11
Foreign policy speech on post-September 11th developments in Atlasian foreign policy "Imperialism in the 21st Century" in Tulsa, Bluster

Friday, September 12
Foreign policy speech on military structure and spending "Toward a democratic armed forces" in Sioux City, Vitality

Saturday, September 13
Domestic policy speech on policing "The People's Militia: An Alternative to the Police" in Cheyenne, Amity

[TNF]

Isn't Puerto Rico an Atlasian state?

Yes, it is, but it being part of the Republic is still the result of imperialism, and thus, should the indigenous people of that state wish to pursue a separate destiny, they should be allowed to do so. The same right should be allowed for of any oppressed group in this country, as I have repeatedly advocated.

[TNF]

THE FREE DEVELOPMENT OF ALL
Defending the Atlasian social revolution

Comrades!

I join you today from the great metropolis of Denver in the great state of Mirth. Mirth has a storied history, from the great labor wars of the last century and the century prior, to its role in helping spearhead what I like to describe as the 'Atlasian social revolution' in our present day. Mirth was, of course, one of the first states in real life to legalize Cannabis. Cannabis has of course been legal in Atlasia far longer, but the tolerance of its free use and open use has not been widely accepted until late, and there are yet attempts by many on the Atlasian right to undo the progress that we have made toward a more humane and progressive society.

I will fight the attempt of reactionaries of all stripes to undo the great strides we on the left and on the right (especially my libertarian comrades) have made toward dismantling the coercive, judgmental aspects of state power on our personal lives. I am proud to say that I helped bring down the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have undone the progressive work toward Regional recognition of marriages, which has of course allowed for a lot of experimentation in this regard, especially in the Northeast. The fact that polyamory has been recognized as a legitimate mode of social organization in the Northeast is a step in the right direction. The state should butt out of our bedrooms and let us sleep with whom we want, when we want, and under the conditions that we mutually consent to. And yes, for those of you who think that such decision-making power should be limited or are uncomfortable with the idea, this means that we must allow consenting persons to engage in incestuous relations if they see fit to do so. It is none of your business, and it is certainly none of mine, to condemn these people for doing so. The state has much more important issues to worry about than policing the bedrooms of a nation of 300 million people.

But how do we square that belief with practical reality? It must be said that, in one form or another, the present state of affairs is an affinity toward and support for heterosexual, two parent households. Centuries of propaganda by the bourgeoisie, that is family unit was the be-all, end-all form of social organization, have certainly had the desired effect of not only producing homophobia, but also a sharp backlash against anyone who thinks or acts differently, be they independent women being slut-shamed or threatened with physical or sexual assault or persons who do not squarely fit into the repressive and regressive gender binary birthed by capitalist ideology. We have to end the preferences in our tax code and combat in our society all sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and heteronormative ideas.

We have made quite a few strides in the right direction, but there is yet more work to be done. Sexuality must be brought into the open and debated. The culture of prudery must be obliterated and Atlasians encouraged not to view sex as something to be ashamed of, but something to embrace and enjoy to the utmost. Sex positivity should replace the sex negativity exhibited by the kinds of sexual education most young people receive in schools. We must, in that vein, remove existing penalties for underage persons engaging in sexual activity with their peers; the 'age of consent' as it presently exists should be redefined so that all persons who are sexually mature (by biological standards) and who consent to sexual activity can do so without fear of reprisal from the authorities.

In liberalizing these laws, we must also bring to bear the question of sexual violence, which unfortunately is given far too much of a pass in society at large. I stand for equating sexual assault with first degree murder in our criminal code, sexual harassment with second degree murder, and no quarter for rapists in the court of public opinion. Rape should be treated as what it is: not a crime of passion, not a sexual crime, but an attack upon all women and furthermore, all free people, for the heinous act of sexual assault robs from the victim the right to bodily autonomy, dignity, and peace of mind. We must conduct a thorough propaganda campaign to combat rape culture and stamp out misogyny in every aspect of public life.

The right to do as one pleases obviously comes into conflict with the desire of all of us for a peaceful and harmonious order of things. We are told that in order to have order, we must restrict our desires and downplay our differences. I do not abide in this idea. Rather, I believe that a well ordered society is one in which everyone may express themselves in whichever manner they see fit, provided that they are doing so in a way that does not degrade or injure others. This is why I see no contradiction in an unwavering commitment to freedom of speech and banning hate speech and prosecuting it's purveyors, and I am not about to back down from that stance. Bigotry should not be considered protected speech, and I will continue to fight to make sure that in the future, it is not considered as such by the Republic of Atlasia.

Wherever assumptions exist about the nature of things, or about the best way to order our society, these should be re-examined and debated, not taken as mere fact. We do ourselves a disservice when we do not critically examine the structures behind existing law or existing custom. We feign for tradition instead of thought and instead of critical debate, when instead we should question all things and make changes where necessary to advance the cause of human freedom. My opponents may disagree, but I think that unless we throw off the muck of the past, we won't be able to build a future in which we may all live as equals. You might not agree with my conception of that future, but you will always know that I stand for that future, and will fight to the death to make it a reality.

[TNF]

I will be making my rounds in the Canadian provinces next week, Gass3268.

[TNF]

LAND TO THE LANDLESS
Agricultural policy in the 21st Century


An aerial view of Cedar Rapids, Moxie, the city in which the President Pro Tempore will be presenting an outline of his policy on agriculture.

Comrades!

Today I join you from Cedar Rapids in the great farming state of Moxie. Farm policy may seen quaint to some of our comrades in other regions, but we of the Midwest know that without farmers, modern industry would effectively grind to a halt. The earth, after all, is one of the primary sources of all wealth, the second of which being labor, which of course would largely be impossible without the raw materials and other things provided to us by the earth itself. We must thus speak with an awe and a reverence not just for farmers and agricultural communities, but we must do so for every aspect of our natural world and tread lightly, so as not to disturb the delicate balance between human life and the natural environment. I will speak at-length on environmental issues tomorrow, but for now I would like to highlight a few issues specific to agriculture policy in the Republic.

One of my more far-ranging achievements while a member of the Senate has been the collaboration between myself and former Governor (and At-Large Senator) Maxwell on the phase-out of farm subsidies. Although we arrived at our position from different assumptions and different ideological convictions, the both of us came together and made the end of the senseless subsidization of agribusiness conglomerates a thing of the past. I would hope that, in the future, I can find the same kind of bipartisan support for the policies I am about to outline today.

The farmer and the worker are natural allies. Both are producers, both have an interest in allying with one another to help build a new and better society. The farmer, although they may not have a boss in the same way that the worker does, is exploited by the market forces which dominate and destroy their livelihood, which drive production to the lowest common denominator, and which ruin the soil below their feet. Agribusiness conglomerates may not be receiving federal subsidies, but they continue to dominate the agricultural economy by way of controlling the distribution of food, and all too often this becomes a means by which to starve out the working class in order to feed their insatiable drive for profit.

Atlasian farmers produce enough food to feed everyone in this fair Republic. It is time that we recognized that and made the eradication of hunger within a generation not just a dream for which to aspire, but a reality. It is time to take on the agribusiness conglomerates, to organize the unorganized, and to take back control of our food supply and our nutritional needs from the profiteers.

First and foremost, we must guarantee a living income for all working farmers. This does not mean that we should return to the failed subsidy policy of the past, rather, it means that every farmer gets a return from the sale of their produce that is enough for them to make ends meet. If a farmer cannot find a distributor whereby to sell their goods, those goods should be purchased at a fair rate by the federal government and distributed to those who lack access to food. We must demand nothing short of a social wage for farmers, denied to those agribusiness conglomerates which poison the earth and deny us control over our own food supply.

Secondly, we must enact legislation allowing for farmers to collectively bargain with food distributors and processors, along with new legislation that would allow for the greater utilization of (and democratization of) farmer cooperative organizations. If there's anywhere that the cooperative model has been proven to work, it is in agricultural operations. We must encourage the formation of agricultural cooperatives insofar as possible. The federal government should provide incentives for farmers to come together and build cooperative farming units that can and will outproduce the individualized farming units of the past, and that can provide a safe alternative to the sprawling, unhealthy corporate agribusiness alternative.

Third, we must improve the status of the farmer by establishing farmer training programs and improving general agricultural knowledge among the population. Every high school student should receive at least basic training in growing and maintaining a garden, and should be able to receive at least some higher level training if they seek to enter the agricultural field. Higher education programs should be set up by the federal government to encourage interest in and provide training for prospective farmers, and these should be taught by experienced, small-farmers or cooperative farmers themselves and hosted in farming communities.

Fourth, we must end restrictions currently placed upon urban farming operations. Not only will this provide city-dwellers with an opportunity to engage in their own farming operations, but it will also reduce strain on our transportation system and allow for a reduction in CO2 emissions. Every city rooftop should have a garden on it, and the tax code should encourage, not restrict, the growth and development of vertical farming operations.

Fifth, conditions for farmworkers must be improved in accordance with conditions for workers across the whole of the economy. We have enacted a lot of progressive labor law thus far, but more is still needed in order to ensure that workers are able to have a voice on the job, and this includes farmworkers. Especially in this field (no pun intended), where a lot of migrant labor is employed, we must make changes to our immigration system that include an end to ICE raids and recognize the right of all people to free movement across borders.

Sixth, we must recognize that the Earth is the property of no man or woman, but the property of all of humankind and the species which inhabit it. As such, we must reject the claim of any to the ownership of land in favor of titles of stewardship which will allow individuals to maintain a specific plot of land for a specific period of time so long as they meet the conditions outlined in said title. Those who use public land for private profit should be taxed and the resulting dividend for such use distributed to the whole of society. A tax on land value must be levied in order to help build a better society, free from the exploitation of the landlords and the capitalists.

Seventh, we should encourage local farm product procurement by requiring that a percentage of all agricultural products purchased by government agencies are from local farms. Again, this will reduce strain on our transportation system, reduce CO2 emissions, and keep funds in the locality in which they originate, as well as build a network of solidarity between the farmer and their community.

Eighth, we should seize all warehouses and distribution centers housing food and place them under democratic control. The control of food distribution will allow the working public to feed those without food and to prioritize the kinds of foods being produced in the first place. It will help put us on a path toward the development of healthier forms of agriculture, and will help stamp out the poisonous 'food product' peddled to us by the agribusiness conglomerates.

Ninth, we must take a hardline in favor of public health and against private profit in food production. Those products which pose a definite danger to human health should be restricted in the regular food supply insofar as possible. The federal government should invest in and take seriously the testing of food products and issue recalls with teeth and fines for violators, if not a retraction in business licenses for frequent or repeat offenders.

Finally, we must re-evaluate our relationship with GM food production and act accordingly. I understand the basic framework by which genetically modified food production has been engaged in in the past few decades and I understand that in most instances, such modification is harmless or poses no real threat to human beings. However, I do not think that food processors have the best interest of the public in mind when it comes to food policy, and as such, I support enacting legislation requiring the labeling of all genetically modified foodstuffs. Consumers have a right to know what it is they are putting into their bodies, whether or not GM food production is harmful. If it is not, what do the GM food producers have to worry about? The consumer can make an informed decision and choose whichever foodstuff they wish, but I firmly believe that, in order to do so, we need to label those food products and at some level begin a re-evaluation of the science behind the genetic modification of food, even if only to confirm the science that is already out there.

[TNF]

SUSTAINABLE SOCIALISM
We must go 'Green' by going 'Red'


The President Pro Tempore joins us today from the city of Fargo in the state of Serenity.

Comrades!

Today I would like to make a few remarks concerning my policy proposals concerning the environment. Before I begin, I would like to hail the passage of the Oil Pipeline Funding Expungement Act, which passed fairly easily in the Senate with the aid of both members of the Labor Party and other statesmen who stepped across the aisle to do the right thing and end federal subsidization of fossil fuel production and distribution, at least as far as petroleum is concerned. I would just like to thank all of those who helped get this bill re-written in a way that it could pass with such overwhelming support, as well as the support the bill was given by the President and the feedback from noted authorities on environmental policy like our brilliant Secretary of International Affairs, Averroes Nix.

I would like to see the Oil Pipeline Funding Expungement Act as a stepping stone toward a series of legislative acts concerning ecology, and I think that's something that, regardless of what party label we choose, we should all be able to come together and agree on. Of course, I am under no allusions that all of us collaborating on such legislation have the same end point in mind: unlike most of my colleagues, I am a proud socialist and, to add to that, an ecosocialist, and I am intimately concerned about the future of our planet, which I understand as in grave danger so long as the capitalist epoch continues.

Although my colleagues might disagree, I believe that it is clearer than ever that we cannot allow capitalism to continue dictating our interaction with the natural world, with energy policy, and with the use of resources. This is why I favor the nationalization of the energy sector and the transportation sector, as well as all sectors tied intimately to the ravaging of nature for private profit. We must have democratic control and management of the industries most responsible for the present crisis, or else we risk allowing the 1 percent to wipe the lot of mankind out in the pursuit of profit.

We have begun to make baby steps in this direction. The Fracking Limitation and Safer Energy Act (F.L. 60-3) slapped regulations on the fracking industry that, I think, are a bold step in the right direction. We have seen the effects of fracking on the water supply and on regional and local ecology, and we have acted. The logical next step in the fight against fracking is its further restriction, and, of course, the enactment of a bill prohibiting other forms of dangerous resource extraction which endanger the health of our communities and the natural world.

Another bold piece of legislation from the past we can and should build upon is the Omnibus Green Energy Policy Act, which has of course set Atlasia on a path toward energy independence and increased reliance upon renewable power. We must expand the scope of this Act and put a death grip on dirty fuel production by removing private energy companies from the market and distributing energy on the basis of need, not on the basis of greed. But we must do so in a way that is fair an efficient; we must eliminate unemployment and we must eliminate privation via what I would like to call the Second Reconstruction program, and I would like to outline that below.

The Second Reconstruction plan would pick up where the first left off, but it would of course be precipitated upon a successful defeat of the Atlasian right at the polls. With a left-wing majority restored in Nyman and left-wing control of the Presidency, a true rebuilding of Atlasian society, from the bottom up, could be at hand. Hence the term 'Second Reconstruction' and hence the following policy proposals:

1. End unemployment completely by hiring the unemployed and the underemployed at union wages to completely retrofit and rebuild Atlasian energy infrastructure. We cannot wait for the capitalists to figure out that not investing in solar or wind power will mean the extinction of human beings; we must act, and we must act quickly. A large number of Atlasians are out of work or are underemployed: these underemployed or unemployed persons should be directly hired by the federal government to do the work necessary to convert Atlasia to a wholly renewables-based society by 2030.

2. Public ownership and worker control of major industry, especially the energy and transportation sectors. With the control of industry under workers themselves, decisionmaking will circumvent the normal channels of capitalist rule and allow for the quick building up of an alternative transportation and energy infrastructure that can deliver affordable energy to all Atlasians using sources that do not destroy our planet or our civilization. Transport shall be reorganized under public ownership so as to promote the proliferation of trams, buses, and subways for cities, light rail lines connecting suburbia to the cities and to the surrounding towns, and massive new high speed rail infrastructure across the country.

3. Seize all abandoned factories and place them under the control of communities so as to jumpstart 'green' production. Capital controls must be enacted that allow for the seizure of factories should capitalists decide to relocate production elsewhere; in the meantime, all abandoned worksites should be seized without compensation and should be converted into centers for green production and for the hiring of the unemployed. These must be managed and run collectively by the workers of these plants themselves.

This may not be the end for the Second Reconstruction program, or even just a part of it, but it is, at present, the best formulation that I can work out for the wholescale restructuring of society along an ecological basis.

[TNF]

You are too kind.

Please keep up your valient fight against rules illiteracy in the Senate.

Thank you for your kind words, Comrade Secretary.

Today's speech might be delayed until tomorrow on account of me having to close at work tonight, or it might not, just depends on how long it takes us to clean up and get out of there. I apologize for any inconvenience, but I would like to take a moment to express my condolences for the lives lost on both of the tragic September 11th anniversaries we commemorate today, namely the attack upon the World Trade Center in 2001 and the overthrow of the socialist government of Chile in 1973. So long as I am in the Senate, I will fight against the ideologues that make these kinds of tragedy inevitable in the pursuit of an imperial foreign policy. I will have more commentary on this issue in my forthcoming address.

I would also like to officially unveil the theme song for the TNF for Senate campaign: Working Man by Rush. I decided to go with Working Man because that's what I am, that's who I care about (and that goes without saying that I'm not limiting that to men, either. I am a friend of workers of all gender expressions, be they male, female, genderqueer, or any other gender) and that is who I will continue to advocate on behalf of while in the Senate of the Republic of Atlasia.

[TNF]

Thank you both for your support, comrades!

[TNF]

I will have a few statements out tonight after I get off of work. I apologize for the lull in campaigning this weekend. Those ten-hour days are a killer.

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to sit back on the union-made leather couches in my office and enjoy themselves with a cold union-made beer. Hey, it's the least I can do, since I'm about to have to go back down to the regular Senate offices!

[TNF]

Well this work week has been fairly brutal and so I'm going to postpone the three speeches that I have slated until tomorrow, in which case I will probably knit them into one big speech and try to connect the dots between Atlasian imperialism and police brutality. Believe me, they're more related than you might think initially. On that front, I would like to say that I completely and totally support the bill just introduced by Senator North Carolina Yankee to re-evaluate how surplus military equipment is finding it's way into police departments here at home.

I hope that he won't mind, but I want to go ahead and publicly announce that I and Senator Deus are currently collaborating on a bill to reform the criminal justice and law enforcement system from top to bottom. More details on that tomorrow in my speech on the police and on law enforcement.

Until then, I hope that everyone has a safe weekend and a good night. I know I'm going to try and catch up on some sleep, since tomorrow is one of those rare days where I'm off both days at my two jobs at the same time!

[TNF]

The People's Militia
An Alternative to the Police



Senator TNF addresses the crowd in Cheyenne, Amity

I apologize for my absence from the campaign trail over the past few days, comrades, I have been caught between the demands of two part time jobs and the demands of setting up and maintaining a new life in a new state. I thank you for your patience and I thank you all for your support, especially those of you who have endorsed me the past few days. I will spend my time today addressing something that is of vital importance in the wake of the ongoing uprising in Ferguson, Missouri.

Believe it or not, the police have not always been with us. The development of a separate body of armed men (and of late, women and persons of other gender expressions) with the sole mission of maintaining 'order' in society at large is the direct result of the emergence of class society. The police as an institution exist to maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie, or capitalist, class. They are not there to protect you. They exist to protect the rule of the bourgeoisie and to protect private property, and nothing more.

And as such, these bourgeois police officers should not be regarded as impartial moderators of class conflict in society, nor should they be respected or held up as models for which we should all aspire. The police in a bourgeois society are the first and often most visible signifier of the rule of the bourgeoisie. In Ferguson, these pigs have taken the life of an unarmed black teenager. So long as capitalism is the social system in which we live, racially motivated policing will be with us, because racism is one of the primary methods of controlling and dividing the working class.

So how should we respond? Should we call for a more 'professional' police force? Should we mandate more training for police officers, or ban police officers from being armed? There are a lot of options to consider. I believe that the most expedient and the option which provides for the best possible outcome is the idea of 'opting out' of a local police force in favor of a people's militia.

How would we do that, and just what is a 'people's militia'? A people's militia is exactly as it sounds. It is the replacement of the separate, special body of armed persons with the arming of the people and their own organizations replacing the official 'police' organization of the bourgeoisie. A law should be enacted that allows citizens to collect signatures and hold a referendum on opting out of a specific local police force in favor of self-patrol of their own communities. Drafting such a law will require technical, precise levels of detail, and as such, I am glad to say that such a work is in the works between myself and my esteemed colleague, Senator Deus.

Because at the end of the day, police reform is not a partisan issue. I view the police as the natural outgrowth of capitalism. Others may not, but they may yet be concerned with the increased power of and willingness of the police to use force. I think that I can find common ground with those voices, and I will find common ground with those voices, to make meaningful reform a priority. At times I have been a strong partisan voice, and I do not deny or wish to shirk away from my role as such. But on issues like this one, I know that we are all better off when like-minded civil libertarians of all parties help craft a solution to such a pressing issue, and that is what I will do if the good voters of the Midwest decide to return me to office in October.

[TNF]

Ask Me Anything!
Senator TNF kicks off tour of the Canadian Midwest


Senator TNF joins Canadian Midwesterners from the city of Saskatoon in the province of Magnanimity

Comrades!

I join you today from the Canadian Midwest to kick off my tour of the provinces under the jurisdiction of the Midwest regional government. I don't have a speech today so much as I plan on opening up a question and answer session with my constituents and with other concerned parties. So, there you have it -- ask me anything!