Summary of political beliefs

[Damocles]

Political Reforms:

Political Parties: Strong Political Parties. A party system with a few smaller, more ideologically disciplined parties is more able to hold their opposition to account and avoid walking back on their promises to their supporters.

Upper House: Mixed Method. Maintain the existing equality among states as political entities, but include some members elected through limited franchises based on their participation in trade unions, as well as some appointed members, and sorted members.

Conscription: Nominal Draft. Make women register alongside men at their 18th birthdays. If women are good enough to serve in combat roles, surely then they can get drafted, too.

Trade Unions: Strong Trade Unions. The Taft-Hartley Act, among other legislation limiting trade unions’ ability to organize and advocate for their membership, should be repealed.

Vote Franchise: Universal. Every state should use hand-counted paper ballots, and have a common standard for counting, tabulating, recording, and certifying tallies.

Voting System: Proportional Representation. Moving to a system under this umbrella would likely help break up the two-party system that has been a toxic plague on our politics.

Debt Law: Consolidate Debt. In particular, the issuance of sovereign debt to support overextended infrastructure projects designed for cars is atrocious. We need a more financially viable model to function that doesn’t depend on so much debt.

Slavery: Prohibited. Pass an amendment to the Constitution which prohibits any unpaid labor.

Public Meetings: All Allowed. Protests are supposed to make those in power feel uncomfortable. Placing arbitrary restrictions on their time, place, and manner is an unconstitutional restriction on their right to assemble.

Social Reforms:

Minimum Wage: Collective Bargaining. Trade unions should have the authority to negotiate these with the employer in the contract.

Work Hour Limit: Collective Bargaining. Trade unions should have the authority to negotiate these with the employer in the contract.

Safety Regulations: Strong Safety Regulations. Consumers should be confident that the products they are using are not going to poison or harm them.

Unemployment: Sliding Scale. Not everyone has the same need with unemployment. Let’s stop having welfare cliffs be a thing and have more tailored solutions.

Pensions: Good Pensions. Pensions might be financed through a public investment account which acts as a form of superannuation, as exists in Australia, as a base model.

Health Care: Public Health Care. A nationalized system of healthcare should be matched by dramatic and sweeping changes to Americans’ habits that enable all of these health problems in the first place.

School System: Good Public Schools. Private and charter schools should be nationalized and made part of the existing public school system, especially K-12 education. Adopt a common core set of subjects, for example.

Penal System: Rehabilitation. The existing punitive attitude towards corrections has been used to persecute millions of Black and Latino and Indigenous Americans. We need to break the prison pipeline and outlaw private prisons.

Matters of State:

Child Labor: Prohibited. The children should be in school.

Bureaucracy: Professional Civil Servants. Bureaucrats should be selected for their competency and excellence, rather than racial pedigree or connections to those already in the civil services.

Political Rights: Transcendental. If you’re an American, you should never have your right to cast a ballot abridged for any reason once you have achieved the age of majority.

Press Rights: Public Journalism. Local community journalism should be a powerful check on the business of local governments and cover community happenings in a way that national media is often impotent at, beholden as they are to property owners.