The Problem: The American people and the federal government are not having the kinds of conversations that matter. I don’t mean screaming at each other or watching people on television or mobile devices screaming at each other. I mean real dialog, listening to each other and agreeing on actions to solve shared problems.
The Bigger Mess: The American people barely understand what agencies actually do, how they make decisions and how they spend taxpayer monies. The chasm between government and the governed is dangerously wide.
The Big Idea: Track 5 calls for Citizen Summits with small-group discussions and new technologies that roll up small-group decisions so we have a clearer sense of shared solutions offered by the American public. Communication is how we rebuild trust.
The Solution: Launch Conversations with America so we can have national discussions about the big issues – how we spend taxpayer money, how we move people out of poverty, how we rebuild the relationship between law enforcement and local communities, how we can rethink education, how we shape an energy policy that truly supports all alternatives, and how we define America’s role around the world. And let’s demand that all government policies, guidelines, regulations and legislation be written in plain language so we can all understand what our government does and why.
Charles Fernandez says
The Problem is not only the lack of productive conversation it is political.
Senate Republican block a needed program for veterans healthcare because it is not paid for, but at the same time advance many more billions in corporate tax cuts that are not paid for. That is political hypocrisy at its worst, but it is political. Regressives will not compromise on their allegiance to the oligarchy. Independent Bernie Sanders is doing much better than expected because he is addressing the political roots of problems. While I support your goals and methods, It will be a grave problem garnering a larger following unless you also begin to address these root causes of so much of what you are correctly railing against.
Bonne Chance.
charles
I’m attaching my treatise on Conservative v. Liberal:
Stop calling them Conservatives: What do they want to conserve?
We need to change the nomenclature and rhetoric of political identity. Our language has been usurped and demeaned by Radical Right Wing Reactionary Regressives. The real dichotomy is between Progressives and Regressives; NOT Liberal and Conservative. We must make a winning effort to take control of the language of debate.
What are so called conservatives trying to conserve? Certainly not the 224-year-old separation of church and state, nor the 48 year old voting rights act, nor the 100-year-old progressive income tax, or the 80-year-old social security safety net, nor the 40-year-old right to privacy. These are all things under attack by ironically named “conservatives.”
Republicans are not conservative but Regressives; radical reactionaries seeking to return to the days of untrammelled white male heterosexual privilege, Jim Crow, non unionized substandard living wages, gilded age extravagance, bloated military industrial cold war excesses, and a Norman Rockwell vision of America and the world rooted in fantasy.
They claim to be Economic Conservatives. But what Conservative in their right mind would budget money for buying private airplanes and yachts, hundred million dollar mansions, and 181 million dollar paintings when the roof was leaking, the car needs tires, the electricity is intermittent, and the kids can’t read. Our infrastructure, roads, bridges, rail, power production and transmission, and our schools are in dire need of repair. Interest rates are at an all time low. Is it not the essence of conservatism and good business to conserve and protect what you have and not go on a profligate spending spree with money you don’t have. And every good business knows that when interest rates are at an all time low it is time to invest and grow.
Progressive are true Conservatives seeking to preserve the core American values: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Life:
To be alive is to be in good health. Health care is no longer a doctor with a little black bag making house calls for $5 or a chicken. In order to provide the miracles that modern medical science has conceived we need a health care system that makes it possible to provide those services to all. Not having insurance or the means to cover bills and relying on government to pay the emergency room bills is the opposite of conservative. It is a total lack of personal responsibility.
It is the Regressives who are cutting the social security net especially the reactionary push to drastically cut food stamps that overwhelmingly feed hungry children, the sick and the old, with very little fraud. In an attempt to undo Medicaid they cut the funding for fraud enforcement that led to a drastic increase in fraud, thereby fueling the anger at Medicaid thieves and the program as a whole. Progressives, where elected, have increased funding and drastically cut the fraud.
Since when is it NOT Conservative to CONSERVE the Environment by opposing fracking, dirty tar sands, soft terrorist targets like pipelines and unsustainable nuclear energy, resisting renewable energy etc. Of course it is the fossil fuel fueled Regressives. Clean air and water are essential to LIFE!
For the past 400,000 years, human have evolved within a bubble of relatively acceptable climate. Previously there were times when human life could not have existed on earth. For the past 12000 years we have been blessed with a temperate epoch that has allowed humans to flourish. The overwhelming consensus of scientists is that human activity is threatening our benign climate. Is it not the FIRST law of Conservatism to protect the existence human race and flourish (Genesis 1: 28 & 9:1)? I say blessed be the aptly named Conservationists AKA environmentalists whom the Regressives routinely insult and dismiss as tree huggers.
It is the Regressive Neo-Cons who campaigned for foreign wars costing thousands of American lives and in the process exploding the deficit by not putting the cost into the budget and providing for it with progressive taxation. Since when is not living within you means conservative? It is the very definition of a profligate regressive.
Liberty:
Taxation without representation caused by Regressive gerrymandering congressional districts that enabled them in 2012 to win 33 more House of Representative races while losing the popular vote by 1.2 million votes. Regressives are trying their best to suppress the vote with multiple obstructionist measure’s that make it difficult or impossible to vote, in in effect denying voting rights to many poor people, minorities, women, old and young people? Denying voting rights to millions who have paid their debt to society is to exclude them from civil society. Their rational of voter fraud to deny voting rights is THE fraud, as it does not exist in any meaningful way.
Is it not a basic right, a fundamental liberty to have dominion over ones own body?
Has it not been long established that we have the right to congregate include forming unions. Regressives are attacking Unions. Regressives are suppressing free enterprise by establishing rules that empower and enable monopoly crony capitalism at the cost of millions of small family and individual entrepreneurs who both hire and buy locally, while oligarchs off-shore of jobs to low wage countries and stash the profits in tax havens to avoid taxes.
Working full time and just covering the minimum costs of sustenance; a roof over your head, food on the table, and a shirt on your back, is that not the definition of slave? What kind of Liberty can one have with Regressive backed Slave wages?
The Pursuit of Happiness:
Regressives are cutting funding for education and the long establish right to a free public first class education that is the key to success in the modern world?
Is it not a conservative right to believe in GOD in your own way, or not? Is this belief Not fundamental to personal happiness? Regressives are trying to establish a Christian America in an a-historical, anti-American “crusade.” Freedom to believe and practice a religion of your choice or no religion, unencumbered by the dictates of Government was a major reason the new world was populated by Europeans fleeing from religious oppression. It is enshrined in our Constitution. Jefferson, Adams, Madison, all wrote and supported a strict separation of Church and State. Washington religiously practiced that separation by never joining a specific church while attending many. This is a conservative tradition 400 years old and fundamental to happiness. It is Progressive’s who support this right and traditions, and religious fundamentalists supported by Regressives who are threatening it.
Regressives oppose the right to marry whom you choose? What pray tell is more important to happiness than the right to love whom you choose.
This list could go on for pages but one thing is certain, it is emphatically not Progressives standing in the way of the Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
I suggest that we start using this terminology, Stop calling them Conservatives, call them Regressives.
Lynn S Kahn says
Thanks for your comments. While Republican versus Democrat is the current paradigm, I predict the rise of the independent movement and the frustration of We the People will catapult the 2016 election results beyond partisan politics. The sum of my 7-track platform is the only way to fund and realize the social justice and green energy goals shared by many candidates.