Bernie Sanders
Related: About this forumAn amplification of Bernie's 12 Steps from his website
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.
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)being able to support a candidate for POTUS who is promoting worker-owned businesses.
I studied worker-ownership in grad school in the 80s, and have always been mystified
as to why there aren't more worker-owned businesses in the USA. Worker ownership
effectively anchors both jobs and capital into the local economy, and plows most profits
back into the local economy as well. It's a win/win/win for local communities.
Autumn
(44,762 posts)Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)Coops are best
marym625
(17,997 posts)Great post. Thanks so much, radical you!
daleanime
(17,796 posts)Half-Century Man
(5,279 posts)I will copy to my notes in phone, so I have a quick reference guide when "Speaking Sanders" to the masses.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)Half-Century Man
(5,279 posts)Manually spread message.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)We build our own grassroots organizations, train everyone we can on Bernie's positions, maybe develop a standard response book for common objections or questions concerning each of the points as necessary (e.g. "If we increase min. wage, won't people lose jobs?), & get that stuff around among the untold thousands who are pouring in to volunteer. We can build a solid and informed base very quickly & get this thing snowballing through social media, etc.
For those who Facebook, why not start posting Bernie's steps, etc?
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)yurbud
(39,405 posts)Populist_Prole
(5,364 posts)To republicans/conservatives/neocons/teabaggers: A manifesto that would make them vacillate between shitting a brick or having a heart attack
To team player DLC types/Third-Wayers/Centrists: A list too far reaching and unsettling to the PTB, which would make the list's author "unelectable"
To us hoi-polloi: The first time we can get fired up and get behind a something other than a "not quite as bad as the republicans" candidate to run this country.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)glinda
(14,807 posts)SoapBox
(18,791 posts)At least for the 99%.
How can the masses argue with any of it.
merrily
(45,251 posts)and call it a campaign pamphlet that I would be proud to pass out in Boston, even to Boston's Republicans.
http://mic.com/articles/117510/11-powerful-quotes-from-bernie-sanders-show-why-he-s-a-progressive-icon
Bonobo
(29,257 posts)Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)No point in endlessly recirculating the playlist among the choir.
See my thread on receptive priming for further amplification. Each point ought to be the subject of its own little e-poster with attention-getting graphics.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/128011228
Bonobo
(29,257 posts)Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)to do that once we have the graphics, but I don't think it will accomplish much toward getting Bernie elected.
I spend a lot of time--too much--in GD myelf, doing things like this.
But wouldn't we be better off if we could just put more effort into sensitizing the social networks to Bernie's issues?
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)title to a significant part of the ground we walk on.
Are we going to take it? Pull a Venezuela?
I want to know how...
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)to a pinned thread in a protected forum.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)thought had been put to it.
Don't waste your time with me any longer. Got it?
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)Here's the fucking link to Bernie's bill:
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/download/tbtfleg?inline=file
Next time try Google instead of intruding in inappropriate places.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)Response to Jackpine Radical (Reply #26)
Post removed
Admiral Loinpresser
(3,859 posts)breaking up big banks by straight-forward antitrust litigation filed by the Department of Justice. The same way AT & T was broken up in the 1980s. The precedents for it are there and it seems quite doable.
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)If you sent this list to the people in the Republican neighborhood near here most of them would agree with every one of these points.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Wilms
(26,795 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Autumn
(44,762 posts)In fact, I would argue that they have done their best to disengage us from activism.
Absent citizen involvement and action, a candidacy like Bernie's will go nowhere, and if that citizen participation wavers after the election, everything reverts to "normal." Unfortunately, "normal" is an ecological, cultural and physical death trip.
Can we make things go differently this time? I don't know. But I know I have to do my little part to help, and the people I know who are into Bernie are into him in a big way, seeming ready to put some major effort into it.
There's too much riding on the outcome this time to do less.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/128012413