Goals for a restoration of the Republic



A) Telecommunications and the Media
1) Rescind the Telecommunications Act of 1996
2) Give the FCC back its teeth and appoint commissioners who will have the public interest in mind rather than media corporations' interests
3) Make all telecommunications, even satellite transmissions, for under the aegis of the Federal Communications Commission
4) Enforce educational and civic-minded programming requirements
5) Reinstate the Fairness Doctrine (removed in 1987 by the now idolized Reagan administration)
6) Insure the neutrality of the transmission of data over the Internet

B) The "War" on Terror
1) Rescind the recent legislation concerning detainees in Guantanamo
a) Specifically, reinstate habeas corpus
2) Recognize that if the War on Terror is about ideologies, then we already have the winning formula, a democratically elected Republic.
a) Treat the threat of terrorist attacks as Great Britain does: with law enforcement rather than the military
b) Get out of Iraq, as soon as humanly possible
c) Start supporting democratically elected governments even if they hold to policies disadvantageous to multinational corporations based in the United States, like Hamas in Palestine.
d) Start leaning heavily on non-democratic leaders in the world like Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Musharraf (Pakistan), and the Saudi Royal family
e) Maintain and protect the civil rights of Americans and people in America.
f) Make sure the President understands his oath; that preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution is actually more important the protecting the people of America. People live and die, but ideas do not. If we neglect (or reject) the power of our ideas in order to protect people we put the lie to our ideas and strength our enemies' arguments.

C) Voting and Redistricting
1) Make sure ALL electronic voting machines and ballot counters create a paper trail
2) Start promoting absentee ballots and generate the infrastructure required to handle large amounts of absentee ballots, from mail collection to ballot counting and reporting
3) Create new legislation that
a) Restricts redistricting to the 12 months following the release of census data
b) Creates non-partisan commissions to assign boundaries that ensure no party will have an advantage
c) Ensures that donations to political campaigns are not equated with free speech
d) Mandates public funding for all municipal, state, and federal campaigns, dispersions of funds to be handled by the Federal Elections Commission.
e) Prohibits private candidate funding of campaigns

D) Taxes
1) Restore the federal income tax for individuals and corporations making more than $200,000 a year to 1947 percentages
2) Fully reinstate the Estate Tax

E) Constitutional Amendments
1) Just give up on the "Flag Burning Amendment." It is a lousy idea.
2) Recognize that marriages performed in churches do not deserve the sanction of the Constitution (no marriage does)
3) Revive Equal Rights Amendment and get it passed



Posted: Wed - October 4, 2006 at 05:27 PM          

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