1972 Democratic Party Platform is so progressive as to be off the scale today [View all]

[andym]

Here is small selection of it:
note that it is very long-
George McGovern was to the left of nearly every Democrat today and it shows in the Democratic Party platform:
National health insurance, regulations on multi-national corporations to prevent job export, civil rights for everyone (sexual preference was not explicitly mentioned though), pro-environment, 2.50 minimum wage (14.38 today) etc

Be surprised!
I'm not sure this year's platform is really as progressive. Go to the link below and read the whole platform. It's amazing.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29605

Also, it doesn't include all of the ideas that McGovern ran on, including a minimum income for everyone, by issuing a check to every adult for $1000 (worth about $5800 today)

Jobs, Income and Dignity

Full employment—a guaranteed job for all—is the primary economic objective of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is committed to a job for every American who seeks work. Only through full employment can we reduce the burden on working people. We are determined to make economic security a matter of right. This means a job with decent pay and good working conditions for everyone willing and able to work and an adequate income for those unable to work. It means abolition of the present welfare system.

To assure jobs and economic security for all, the next Democratic Administration should support:

A full employment economy, making full use of fiscal and monetary policy to stimulate employment;

Tax reform directed toward equitable distribution of income and wealth and fair sharing of the cost of government;

Full enforcement of all equal employment opportunity laws, including federal contract compliance and federally-regulated industries and giving the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission adequate staff and resources and power to issue cease and desist orders promptly;

Vastly increased efforts to open education at all levels and in all fields to minorities, women and other under-represented groups;

An effective nation-wide job placement system to entrance worker mobility;

Opposition to arbitrarily high standards for entry to jobs;

Overhaul of current manpower programs to assure training-without sex, race or language discrimination for jobs that really exist with continuous skill improvement and the chance for advancement;

Economic development programs to ensure the growth of communities and industry in lagging parts of the nation and the economy;

Use of federal depository funds to reward banks and other financial institutions which invest in socially productive endeavors;

Improved adjustment assistance and job creation for workers and employers hurt by foreign competition, reconversion of defense-oriented companies, rapid technological change and environmental protection activities;

Closing tax loopholes that encourage the export of American jobs by American-controlled multi-national corporations;

Assurance that the needs of society are considered when a decision to close or move an industrial plant is to be made and that income loss to workers and revenue loss to communities does not occur when plants are closed;

Assurance that, whatever else is done in the income security area, the social security system provides a decent income for the elderly, the blind and the disabled and their dependents, with escalators so that benefits keep pace with rising prices and living standards;

Reform of social security and government employment security programs to remove all forms of discrimination by sex; and adequate federal income assistance for those who do not benefit sufficiently from the above measures.

The last is not least, but it is last for good reason. The present welfare system has failed because it has been required to make up for too many other failures. Millions of Americans are forced into public assistance because public policy too often creates no other choice.

The heart of a program of economic security based on earned income must be creating jobs and training people to fill them. Millions of jobs—real jobs, not make-work-need to be provided. Public service employment must be greatly expanded in order to make the government the employer of last resort and guarantee a job for all. Large sections of our cities resemble bombed-out Europe after World War II. Children in Appalachia cannot go to school when the dirt road is a sea of mud. Homes, schools and clinics, roads and mass transit systems need to be built.

Cleaning up our air and water will take skills and people in large numbers. In the school, the police department, the welfare agency or the recreation program, there are new careers to be developed to help ensure that social services reach the people for whom they are intended.

It may cost more, at least initially, to create decent jobs than to perpetuate the hand-out system of present welfare. But the return—in new public facilities and services, in the dignity of bringing a paycheck home and in the taxes that will come back in—far outweigh the cost of the investment.

The next Democratic Administration must end the present welfare system and replace it with an income security program which places cash assistance in an appropriate context with all of the measures outlined above, adding up to an earned income approach to ensure each family an income substantially more than the poverty level ensuring standards of decency and health, as officially defined in the area. Federal income assistance will supplement the income of working poor people and assure an adequate income for those unable to work. With full employment and simpler, fair administration, total costs will go down, and with federal financing the burden on local and state budgets will be eased. The program will protect current benefit goals during the transitional period.

The system of income protection which replaces welfare must he a part of the full employment policy which assures every American a job at a fair wage under conditions which make use of his ability and provide an opportunity for advancement. H.R. 1, and its various amendments, is not humane and does not meet the social and economic objectives that we believe in, and it should be defeated. It perpetuates the coercion of forced work requirements.

Skepticism and cynicism are widespread in America. The people are skeptical of platforms filled with political platitudes—of promises made by opportunistic politicians.

The people are cynical about the idea that a rosy future is just around the corner.

And is it any wonder that the people are skeptical and cynical of the whole political process?

Our traditions, our history, our Constitution, our lives, all say that America belongs to its people.

But the people no longer believe it.

They feel that the government is run for the privileged few rather than for the many-and they are right.

No political party, no President, no government can by itself restore a lost sense of faith. No Administration can provide solutions to all our problems. What we can do is to recognize the doubts of Americans, to speak to those doubts, and to act to begin turning those doubts into hopes.

As Democrats, we know that we share responsibility for that loss of confidence. But we also know, as Democrats that at decisive moments of choice in our past, our party has offered leadership that has tapped the best within our country.

Our party-standing by its ideals of domestic progress and enlightened internationalism--has served America well. We have nominated or elected men of the high calibre of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Adlai E. Stevenson, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson—and in the last election Hubert Humphrey and Edmund S. Muskie. In that proud tradition we are now prepared to move forward.

We know that our nation cannot tolerate any longer a government that shows no regard for the people's basic needs and no respect for our right to the truth from those who lead us. What do the people want? They want three things:

They want a personal life that makes us all feel that life is worth living;

They want a social environment whose institutions promote the good of all; and

They want a physical environment whose resources are used for the good of all.

They want an opportunity to achieve their aspirations and their dreams for themselves and their children.

We believe in the rights of citizens to achieve to the limit of their talents and energies. We are determined to remove barriers that limit citizens because they are black, brown, young or women; because they never had the chance to gain an education; because there was no possibility of being anything but what they were.

We believe in hard work as a fair measure of our own willingness to achieve. We are determined that millions should not stand idle while work demands to be done. We are determined that the dole should not become a permanent way of life for any. And we are determined that government no longer tax the product of hard work more rigorously than it taxes inherited wealth, or money that is gained simply by having money in the first place.

We believe that the law must apply equally to all, and that it must be an instrument of justice. We are determined that the citizen must be protected in his home and on his streets. We are determined also that the ordinary citizen should not be imprisoned for a crime before we know whether he is guilty or not while those with the right friends and the right connections can break the law without ever facing the consequences of their actions.

We believe that war is a waste of human life. We are determined to end forthwith a war which has cost 50,000 American lives, $150 billion of our resources, that has divided us from each other, drained our national will and inflicted incalculable damage to countless people. We will end that war by a simple plan that need not be kept secret: The immediate total withdrawal of all Americans from Southeast Asia.

We believe in the right of an individual to speak, think, read, write, worship, and live free of official intrusion. We are determined that our government must no longer tap the phones of law-abiding citizens nor spy on those who have broken no law. We are determined that never again shall government seek to censor the newspapers and television. We are determined that the government shall no longer mock the supreme law of the land, while it stands helpless in the face of crime which makes our neighborhoods and communities less and less safe.

Perhaps most fundamentally, we believe that government is the servant, not the master, of the people. We are determined that government should not mean a force so huge, so impersonal, that the complaint of an ordinary citizen goes unheard.

That is not the kind of government America was created to build. Our ancestors did not fight a revolution and sacrifice their lives against tyrants from abroad to leave us a government that does not know how to listen to its own people.

The Democratic Party is proud of its past; but we are honest enough to admit that we are part of the past and share in its mistakes. We want in 1972 to begin the long and difficult task of reviewing existing programs, revising them to make them work and finding new techniques to serve the public need. We want to speak for, and with, the citizens of our country. Our pledge is to be truthful to the people and to ourselves, to tell you when we succeed, but also when we fail or when we are not sure. In 1976, when this nation celebrates its 200th anniversary, we want to tell you simply that we have done our best to give the government to those who formed it—the people of America.

Every election is a choice: In 1972, Americans must decide whether they want their country back again.

Jobs, Income and Dignity

Full employment—a guaranteed job for all—is the primary economic objective of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party is committed to a job for every American who seeks work. Only through full employment can we reduce the burden on working people. We are determined to make economic security a matter of right. This means a job with decent pay and good working conditions for everyone willing and able to work and an adequate income for those unable to work. It means abolition of the present welfare system.

To assure jobs and economic security for all, the next Democratic Administration should support:

A full employment economy, making full use of fiscal and monetary policy to stimulate employment;

Tax reform directed toward equitable distribution of income and wealth and fair sharing of the cost of government;

Full enforcement of all equal employment opportunity laws, including federal contract compliance and federally-regulated industries and giving the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission adequate staff and resources and power to issue cease and desist orders promptly;

Vastly increased efforts to open education at all levels and in all fields to minorities, women and other under-represented groups;

An effective nation-wide job placement system to entrance worker mobility;

Opposition to arbitrarily high standards for entry to jobs;

Overhaul of current manpower programs to assure training-without sex, race or language discrimination for jobs that really exist with continuous skill improvement and the chance for advancement;

Economic development programs to ensure the growth of communities and industry in lagging parts of the nation and the economy;

Use of federal depository funds to reward banks and other financial institutions which invest in socially productive endeavors;

Improved adjustment assistance and job creation for workers and employers hurt by foreign competition, reconversion of defense-oriented companies, rapid technological change and environmental protection activities;

Closing tax loopholes that encourage the export of American jobs by American-controlled multi-national corporations;

Assurance that the needs of society are considered when a decision to close or move an industrial plant is to be made and that income loss to workers and revenue loss to communities does not occur when plants are closed;

Assurance that, whatever else is done in the income security area, the social security system provides a decent income for the elderly, the blind and the disabled and their dependents, with escalators so that benefits keep pace with rising prices and living standards;

Reform of social security and government employment security programs to remove all forms of discrimination by sex; and adequate federal income assistance for those who do not benefit sufficiently from the above measures.

The last is not least, but it is last for good reason. The present welfare system has failed because it has been required to make up for too many other failures. Millions of Americans are forced into public assistance because public policy too often creates no other choice.

The heart of a program of economic security based on earned income must be creating jobs and training people to fill them. Millions of jobs—real jobs, not make-work-need to be provided. Public service employment must be greatly expanded in order to make the government the employer of last resort and guarantee a job for all. Large sections of our cities resemble bombed-out Europe after World War II. Children in Appalachia cannot go to school when the dirt road is a sea of mud. Homes, schools and clinics, roads and mass transit systems need to be built.

Cleaning up our air and water will take skills and people in large numbers. In the school, the police department, the welfare agency or the recreation program, there are new careers to be developed to help ensure that social services reach the people for whom they are intended.

It may cost more, at least initially, to create decent jobs than to perpetuate the hand-out system of present welfare. But the return—in new public facilities and services, in the dignity of bringing a paycheck home and in the taxes that will come back in—far outweigh the cost of the investment.

The next Democratic Administration must end the present welfare system and replace it with an income security program which places cash assistance in an appropriate context with all of the measures outlined above, adding up to an earned income approach to ensure each family an income substantially more than the poverty level ensuring standards of decency and health, as officially defined in the area. Federal income assistance will supplement the income of working poor people and assure an adequate income for those unable to work. With full employment and simpler, fair administration, total costs will go down, and with federal financing the burden on local and state budgets will be eased. The program will protect current benefit goals during the transitional period.

The system of income protection which replaces welfare must he a part of the full employment policy which assures every American a job at a fair wage under conditions which make use of his ability and provide an opportunity for advancement. H.R. 1, and its various amendments, is not humane and does not meet the social and economic objectives that we believe in, and it should be defeated. It perpetuates the coercion of forced work requirements.

Economic Management
The first priority of a Democratic Administration must be eliminating the unfair, bureaucratic Nixon wage and price controls.

When price rises threaten to or do get out of control—as they are now—strong, fair action must be taken to protect family income and savings. The theme of that action should be swift, tough measures to break the wage-price spiral and restore the economy. In that kind of economic emergency, America's working people will support a truly fair stabilization program which affects profits, investment earnings, executive salaries and prices, as well as wages. The Nixon controls do not meet that standard. They have forced the American worker, who suffers most from inflation, to pay the price of trying to end it.

In addition to stabilizing the economy, we propose:

To develop automatic instruments protecting the livelihood of Americans who depend on fixed incomes, such as savings bonds with purchasing power guarantees and cost-of-living escalators in government social security and income support payments;

To create a system of "recession insurance" for states and localities to replace lost local revenues with federal funds in economic downturns, thereby avoiding reduction in public employment or public services;

To establish longer-term budget and fiscal planning; and

To create new mechanisms to stop unwarranted price increases in concentrated industries.

Toward Economic Justice

The Democratic Party deplores the increasing concentration of economic power in fewer and fewer hands. Five per cent of the American people control 90 per cent of our productive national wealth. Less than one per cent of all manufacturers have 88 per cent of the profits. Less than two per cent of the population now owns approximately 80 per cent of the nation's personally-held corporate stock, 90 per cent of the personally-held corporate bonds and nearly 100 per cent of the personally-held municipal bonds. The rest of the population—including all working men and women—pay too much for essential products and services because of national policy and market distortions.

The Democratic Administration should pledge itself to combat factors which tend to concentrate wealth and stimulate higher prices.

To this end, the federal government should:

Develop programs to spread economic growth among the workers, farmers and businessmen;

Help make parts of the economy more efficient such as medical care—where wasteful and inefficient practices now increase prices;

Step up anti-trust action to help competition, with particular regard to laws and enforcement curbing conglomerate mergers which swallow up efficient small business and feed the power of corporate giants;

Strengthen the anti-trust laws so that the divestiture remedy will be used vigorously to break up large conglomerates found to violate the antitrust laws;

Abolish the oil import quota that raises prices for consumers;

Deconcentrate shared monopolies such as auto, steel and tire industries which administer prices, create unemployment through restricted output and stifle technological innovation;

Assure the right of the citizen to recover costs and attorneys fees in all successful suits including class actions involving Constitutionally-guaranteed rights, or rights secured by federal statutes;

Adjust rate-making and regulatory activities, with particular attention to regulations which increase prices for food, transportation and other necessities;

Remove artificial constraints in the job market by better job manpower training and strictly enforcing equal employment opportunity;

Stiffen the civil and criminal statutes to make corporate officers responsible for their actions; and

Establish a temporary national economic commission to study federal chartering of large multi-national and international corporations, concentrated ownership and control in the nation's economy.


Health Care

Good health is the least this society should promise its citizens. The state of health services in this country indicates the failure of government to respond to this fundamental need. Costs skyrocket while the availability of services for all but the rich steadily declines.

We endorse the principle that good health is a right of all Americans.

America has a responsibility to offer to every American family the best in health care whenever they need it, regardless of income or where they live or any other factor.

To achieve this goal the next Democratic Administration should:

Establish a system of universal National Health Insurance which covers all Americans with a comprehensive set of benefits including preventive medicine, mental and emotional disorders, and complete protection against catastrophic costs, and in which the rule of free choice for both provider and consumer is protected. The program should be federally-financed and federally-administered. Every American must know he can afford the cost of health care whether given in a hospital or a doctor's office;

Incorporate in the National Health Insurance System incentives and controls to curb inflation in health care costs and to assure efficient delivery of all services;

Continue and evaluate Health Maintenance Organizations;

Set up incentives to bring health service personnel back to inner-cities and rural areas;

Continue to expand community health centers and availability of early screening diagnosis and treatment;

Provide federal funds to train added health manpower including doctors, nurses, technicians and para-medical workers;

Secure greater consumer participation and control over health care institutions;

Expand federal support for medical research including research in heart disease, hypertension, stroke, cancer, sickle cell anemia, occupational and childhood diseases which threaten millions and in preventive health care;

Eventual replacement of all federal programs of health care by a comprehensive National Health Insurance System;

Take legal and other action to curb soaring prices for vital drugs using anti trust laws as applicable and amending patent laws to end price-raising abuses, and require generic-name labeling of equal-effective drugs; and

Expand federal research and support for drug abuse treatment and education, especially development of non-addictive treatment methods.

and much more....