SAVE US NOW

Do not bail out on the following because of the seeming unlikelihood of the very first point below. The ‘HOW’ section details the means to actually accomplish that seemingly impossible task. Seriously, stay with this, because it can be done and the result will be positive both in immense savings of taxpayer money and a more highly functional and well-intentioned legislature. Besides that, even if the first point will be difficult to accomplish, the other points are more than feasible as a platform to proceed with fixing the problems of America and the world. Lastly, the list is a draft work in progress with additions and refinements to follow…

Legislation, an Informed Electorate, and Participatory Democracy

1. Change to a unicameral legislature, dismantling the now antiquated, outdated, and blatantly dysfunctional congressional house of representatives — which have come to only represent corporations and the wealthy, not “the people” — and just have one legislator/senator representing each state in the national legislature. See points 3 and 4 for clarification on how the will of the people and the electorate replaces the failed congress and the remaining legislators share the workload.
   

2. In this day and age of email, the internet, smart phones, interactive webcams, online audio/visual conferencing, etc., the one remaining unicameral legislator elected by their state will work from their state capital, back home, close to the people, close to the state legislature, only traveling to D.C. for pre-arranged necessary in person meetings and necessary legislative sessions.
   

3. Provide the entire populace — of all ages — with “participatory democracy” in order to determine the needs and preferences of the masses. This being government by the actual majority — as in “we the people” — not by corporations, not by lobbyists, not by special interest groups, not by “lobbied” politicians that say anything to get elected, but instead of serving the wishes of the entire electorate, they cater to the greed of their corporate and Wall Street money masters…
   

4. Provide the electorate with online e-voting, e-polling, and e-petitioning, not just during elections, but at any time for purposes such as determining majority support for proposed legislation, recalls of errant elected officials, and even what legislation the electorate prefers to be the priority. See note 2 following this list for more detailed clarification on this point.
   

5. Adequately fund public libraries to enable them to remain open on weekends, minor holidays, and during evening hours, providing computer labs with online access to the internet.
   

6. In the interest of an informed, activist populace, through either government funding or charitable foundations or a combination of both, fund online educational programs that educate the populace on topics which they have been under-informed or mis-informed about, such as the reality of global warming, toxic pollutants, health, etc… Upon completion of a program by demonstrating knowledge of each program, reward the student via a nominal monetary award. The intent is not only to present the truth to the electorate to enable them to make informed decisions, but also to stir activism in support of convincing legislators to do what is in the best interests of the populace rather than corporations.
   

7. Implement staffing of knowledgeable, expert, non-partisan, fair-minded panels to administer real time lie-o-meters (such as those by Politifact) in political debates, talk show discussions, and major news shows that feature comments from politicians, the financial sector, or those that exert significant influence on the audience on any important topic.
   

8. To address: solve the problem of corporate-owned and therefore heavily biased mainstream media underinforming, misinforming, distracting, engineering public opinion, and dumbing-down the populace. Increasingly federally de-funded and increasingly corporate and Wall Street sponsored National Public Media (or whatever they call themselves now) is no longer a viable source of unbiased news reporting. Credible alternative, independent media (http://www.openmediafoundation.org) must be brought to the forefront in the interim…

Politicians and the Electoral Process

1. Require psychiatric examinations, ethics evaluations, IQ tests, and lie-detector tests of politicians seeking “public service” in high office before they can officially become candidates. Make the summary results publicly available for the electorate in order to assess the mental health and degree of honesty of candidates..
   

2. No paid political campaign commercials will be allowed on any public or commercial airwaves. See next point…
   

3. Political campaigning will be restricted to dedicated CSPAN-like television channels, televised debates, as well as media talk shows, all of which must employ real-time or minimally summary lie-o-meters staffed by non-partisan people. If the NFL can have instant replay to insure accuracy, why not lie-o-meters to determine the degree of “truthiness” of a candidates statement, as in “the truth and nothing but the truth” (why wait til swearing-in ceremonies).
   

4. Reform the difficult process that has been jury-rigged by the “two-party system” bullies that makes it nearly impossible for independents and third party candidates to get on the ballot, to get elected, or to form a third party.
   

5. Eradicate “winner take all” elections, and instead provide “proportionate representation” reflecting how the electorate actually voted in an election (this could be done even in a unicameral legislature, see Note 1 at bottom for clarification).
   

6. Eliminate the costly, antiquated, and potentially faulty electoral college; simply elect officials by popular vote.
   

7. Stop federal funding of well-funded major political conventions with taxpayer dollars. Well-funded political parties must pay for their own conventions. Massive, elaborately expensive conventions are not necessary in this modern day and age of audio/visual communication, the internet, online e-voting, and on and on, to simply select a candidate via an antiquated proces that dates back over two centuries when there was no remote communication. If they must have a big party at a convention, let them pay for it themselves.
   

8. Eliminate the so-called “super delegate” process. The electorate voting in primaries are to select candidates, not to select delegates to an exhorbitantly elaborate, unnecessary, and outdated convention process. If “everyone must sacrifice” and “feel the pain”, then simply dissolve the partying of the parties at conventions. The voters have already selected the candidate they want in the primaries. Politcal conventions have become nothing more than unupposed campaigning, of which there is an excess already.
   

9. Eliminate gerrymandering; turn over the process of drawing voter districts to independent nonpartisan commissions, or even employ online e-voting by the electorate to determine their own voter districts. What would be wrong with a county or contiguous, solid segments of a county being a voting district, just like it was set up originally, rather than chopping up districts into erratic chunks of holy Swiss cheese that favor one party over the other…

Politicians, Goverment, and Money

1. Eliminate the K Street “lobbying” of politicians and government officials. “Lobbying” is simply bribery and that is unethical, illegal, hypocritical, and is not in the interest of the electorate or the populace.

2. Make all other forms of bribery of politicians illegal, such as the one that is ludicrously referred to as “campaign contributions”. Buying the favors of a politician is little different from the “oldest profession” and is a bad example for our youth…

3. Establish equal campaign funding for politicians from a central fund established by taxing corporations based on how much pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that the corporations are responsible for, along with a progressive surtax on the wealthiest Americans proportionate to their total wealth. Appoint a watchdog oversight panel to monitor how any campaign funding is allocated and spent.

4. Implement a nationwide recall process at the federal, state, and local level to allow removal from office any elected officials that deviate from their campaign platform or that simply do not conform to the majority will of the electorate. Any official removed from office could be replaced either by the candidate that received the next highest number of votes or by a new election if the electorate should so indicate via online real-time e-voting.

5. Revise legislator pay to only receive a salary while in office — except unemployment if necesary — when out of office. Let “fired” politicians go back to work like the rest of us; why set them up for life just because they managed to talk their way into winning an election but then were booted out or not re-elected. If American workers must give up their “unfunded” pensions, then golden parachute pensions for an ex-legislator that only served for four years — or less if recalled — should not be paid a platinum pension and health benefits for life. The exception would be ex-Presidents.

6. Elected officials must pay into their own retirement plan just like American workers do.

7. Revise funding health care for legislators to that of the private sector; let them provide or pay for part of their health insurance in the manner that legislation dictates that the populace must…

8. Cut back the platinum benefits and salaries of elected officials. If working Americans have to suffer “cut backs”, politicians on the taxpayer dole must also “share the pain” and “sacrifice” as politicians selfishly insist working Americans must do.

9. Elected officials must participate in Social Security in the manner to that of all Americans.

10. Annual raises in salaries for elected officials must not exceed that of the cost of living raises for social security recipients.

11. Eliminate political junkets and so-called fact-finding missions unless highly justified and approved by the electorate through e-voting.

12. Establish monitoring of all offshore bank accounts, particularly that of politicians, whether in office, campaigning, or out of office, retroactive to the establishment of records of banks. Shut down offshore income hideaways. Appoint a watchdog panel selected by public e-voting to oversee the process.

13. Establish independent watchdog panels to oversee the finances of politicians. And establish honest watchdog panels to oversee the finances of the independent watchdog panels?

14. Eradicate earmarks and pork barrel projects. Allow the electorate to indicate their preference for how money is spent by participatory democracy and real-time online e-voting.

15. Reduce and trim down “sacred cows” as feasible (e.g., the military industrial complex, not social security).

16. Remove the influence of “special interests” from government and politics.

17. It is well known and documented that various politicians and corporations and banks and hedge fund managers and Wall Streeters have become exorbitantly wealthy by cheating the American taxpayers. Appoint a committee to identify those that profited in excess and those that have stashed away their ill-gained bounty. Then select a panel of volunteer fair-minded Americans to determine how best to recover those excessive stolen monies and use it to pay off the national debt, where it should have been allocated to in the first place. Of particular note, first pay close attention to the years from 2001 to 2009… If nothing else, initiate public class-action lawsuits against the offenders.

Corporations, Banks, Wall Street, and the Plutocracy

1. Eliminate the cap on social security tax for high income Americans and stop paying social security benefits to the excessively wealthy.

2. Disallow the government funneling social security taxes into government bonds, which is then spent in any way politicians so desire.

3. Restore tax rates on the wealthy to that of 30 years ago before America started going bankrupt because the wealthy have not been paying their fair share of taxes for three decades.

4. Mandate the super-wealthy make their tax returns a matter of public record. It is the public’s right to know that the super rich pay from less than 20% to nothing in taxes while the rest of us, the 99ers pay up to 35% in taxes.

5. Reform the tax system to end loopholes and breaks for the wealthy and corporations. One example is to tax unearned income (hedge funds and private equity funds) at the same rate as earned income (actual work, labor). Or, conversely, lower the 35% tax on earned income down to the same rate of unearned income, 15%. Why should the wealthy get a 20% break on income that they do little or nothing to earn; hence “unearned”?

6. Put a cap on tax-free “deferred pay” for high paid corporate executives that allows them to shield unlimited amounts of compensation from being taxed. Why force the working class to cap their deferred income into 401k savings plans at 15% yet allow highly paid corporate executives to sock away unlimited — hundreds of millions of dollars each — into deferred pay accounts? Unfair practices that favor the wealthy and punish the working class are far too numerous to list here, but be aware that this is just one example of far too many unfair advantages of the already wealthy super rich…

7. Deny federal contracts or subsidies to corporations that pay executives a disproportionately higher income than the lowest paid workers, such as a set value from 25 to 50 times more.

8. Whatever happened to shareholders having a “say on pay”, voting to establish executive pay levels. If that is not the law, it should be. Shareholders — and even company workers — should have a say on who staffs corporate boards.

9. Eradicate government off-book accounting and corporate stock-option accounting.

10. Fix crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and address the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay of 475 to 1 in America, with the next highest country being something like 40 to 1… Limit the highest salary paid to any corporate officer to a ratio of the lowest salary paid to any employee.

11. Stop rewarding corporations for shipping American jobs overseas. Rather reward American companies that work to establish more jobs in America.

The Economy, et al

1. Implement a fair progressive estate tax except for family farms.

2. Eradicate taxpayer subsidies to big oil, big coal, big ag, big sugar, and any other highly profitable industry.

3. End Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Simple, it would cost far less money to staff a watchdog panel to fix the problems than the hundreds of millions of dollars it costs to allow the fraud to go unchecked.

4. End the lamely nonsensical Cuban trade embargo, buy sugar from Cuba, stop subsidizing American big sugar industry which pollutes the Everglades and all surrounding waters.

5. Rebuild America’s dilapidated collapsing infrastructure and put millions of people in the construction and housing industries back to work.

6. Stop policing the world. Close the majority of the hundreds of American military bases in over a hundred countries around the entire planet where they are not needed. Bring home the troops manning those bases and position them strategically to guard borders, airports, train stations, shipping terminals, as well as on public transportation mediums like the federal air marshals.

7. Educate and dedicate more computer experts to guarding the national computer networks. Prevent hackers from hostile countries camping out in the national defense computers for months without being detected, stealing military secrets. Prepare for winning a potential cyber war.

Health and the Environment

1. Tighten controls of pollution of the air, water, soils, and foods that sicken hundreds of thousands of Americans yearly with suffering, disease, disability, and death.

2. Enact more rigorous national laws that mirror laws such as California’s “Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act”, also know as the “Green Labeling Law”, that eliminates years of (chemical industry delays through) scientific debate (like the haggling and stalling of congressional stalemates) while establishing unambiguous limits on toxic chemicals by relying on reports from the National Toxicology Program on the Carcinogenic Potency Database. This is an essential step in countering the chemical industries polluting our bodies with hundreds of toxic, known carcinogenic chemicals. If blocked at the national level by Republicans, such laws must first be pursued at the state level in those states not handcuffed by Republicans, then replace any unconscionable Republicans with consciences politicians.

3. Chlorine and other newer chemicals used in water treatment are known to produce strong toxic, carcinogenic byproducts that are documented as detrimental to human health inducing cancer in an estimated 10,000 victims annually. There are other safer alternatives that work just as effectively to disinfect water-borne bacteria.

4. Fluoridation of drinking water is nothing more than the forced mass “medication” of the populace with an industrial chemical effluent waste byproduct, which has been proven to be ineffective and harmful to human health. Fluoride is an industrial effluent added to the water supply on the past lame contention that it lessens tooth decay, going back to the era of industries such as tobacco claiming cigarette smoking was healthful; if anyone needs protection from tooth decay, let them get fluoride treatments from their dentist. Enact laws to stop the fluoridation of water as have most other western countries.

5. Force pharmaceutical companies to immediately eliminate the use of known carcinogens and toxic chemicals in vaccines until they can at least justify any need or benefit for doing so. An ad campaign against smoking cigarettes recently featured a girl facetiously drinking the known carcinogen formaldehyde, yet that is only one of many toxic, poisonous, carcinogenic substances in vaccines for which there is no logical purpose and no explanation; which is injected with a needle directly into the bodies of our children over and over again during their formative years…

6. Consider class action lawsuits against big oil, big coal, big ag (factory farms), big sugar, big pharma, and big medicine. Millions of deaths are documented due to unethical practices of these excessively wealthy and nefarious factions, and damages are due the victims and the survivors of victims. This could keep the American glut of litigous attornies busy that are now filing questionable lawsuits in order to get by…

7. Force big coal to stop spending millions on bogus “clean coal” ad campaigns and instead divert that money — and more — into cutting the poisonous pollution generated by coal-fired power plants.

Last but not Least, Education…

1. Education, education, education. Fund it. Get American students and education — ranked down the list with third world countries at forty something from the top — out of the gutter that government “cut backs” and layoffs of teachers have plunged them into. Fix the educational system while at it… Encourage turning out more scientists and engineers and less lawyers, media bobbleheads, and political “science” grads.

2. If banks were “too big to fail” and were bailed out by American taxpayers, then students that have exorbitant student loans that are unable to obtain employment because of the financial mess brought on by the banks and politicians and the government should be classified as “too small to be punished” and should also be bailed out and pardoned their loans. Possible exception, children of the very wealthy?

Lastly for now, remember that the above list is a raw draft work in process. Refinements and additions will be ongoing. Check back, but feel free to contribute your ideas, advice and suggestions…

If anyone out there would like to get in on the “ground floor” participating in this sincere and monumentally nation-altering movement, send us an email at jeb@saveusnow.org.