THE FOUR PILLARS OF THE GREEN NEW DEAL

I - THE ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS

Our country cannot truly move forward until the roots of inequality are pulled up, and the seeds of a new, healthier economy are planted. Thus, the Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill of Rights that ensures all citizens:

1. The right to employment through a Full Employment Program that will create 25 million jobs by implementing a nationally funded, but locally controlled direct employment initiative replacing unemployment offices with local employment offices offering public sector jobs which are "stored" in job banks in order to take up any slack in private sector employment.

• Local communities will use a process of broad stakeholder input and democratic decisionmaking to fairly implement these programs.
• Pay-to-play prohibitions will ensure that campaign contributions or lobbying favors do not impact decision-making.
• We will end unemployment in America once and for all by guaranteeing a job at a living wage for every American willing and able to work.

2. Worker's rights including the right to a living wage, to a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal.

3. The right to quality health care which will be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-for-All program.

4. The right to a tuition-free, quality, federally funded, local controlled public education system from pre-school through college. We will also forgive student loan debt from the current era of unaffordable college education.

5. The right to decent affordable housing, including an immediate halt to all foreclosures and evictions. We will:

• create a federal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages and either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants;
• expand rental and home ownership assistance;
• create ample public housing; and,
• offer capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.

6. The right to accessible and affordable utilities – heat, electricity, phone, internet, and public transportation – through democratically run, publicly owned utilities that operate at cost, not for profit.

7. The right to fair taxation that's distributed in proportion to ability to pay. In addition, corporate tax subsidies will be made transparent by detailing them in public budgets where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks.

II - A GREEN TRANSITION

The second priority of the Green New Deal is a Green Transition Program that will convert the old, gray economy into a new, sustainable economy that is environmentally sound, economically viable and socially responsible. We will:

1. Invest in green business by providing grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.

2. Prioritize green research by redirecting research funds from fossil fuels and other dead-end industries toward research in wind, solar and geothermal. We will invest in research in sustainable, nontoxic materials, closed-loop cycles that eliminate waste and pollution, as well as organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.

3. Provide green jobs by enacting the Full Employment Program which will directly provide 16 million jobs in sustainable energy and energy efficiency retrofitting, mass transit and "complete streets" that promote safe bike and pedestrian traffic, regional food systems based on sustainable organic agriculture, and clean manufacturing.

III - REAL FINANCIAL REFORM

The takeover of our economy by big banks and well-connected financiers has destabilized both our democracy and our economy. It's time to take Wall Street out of the driver's seat and to free the truly productive segments of working America to make this economy work for all of us. Real Financial Reform will:

1. Relieve the debt overhang holding back the economy by reducing homeowner and student debt burdens.

2. Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means we'll nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.

3. Break up the oversized banks that are "too big to fail."

4. End taxpayer-funded bailouts for banks, insurers, and other financial companies. We'll use the FDIC resolution process for failed banks to reopen them as public banks where possible after failed loans and underlying assets are auctioned off.

5. Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.

6. Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.

7. Establish a 90% tax on bonuses for bailed out bankers.

8. Support the formation of federal, state, and municipal public-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities.

Under the Green New Deal we will start building a financial system that is open, honest, stable, and serves the real economy rather than the phony economy of high finance.

IV - A FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY

We won't get these vital reforms without a fourth and final set of reforms to give us a real, functioning democracy. Just as we are replacing the old economy with a new one, we need a new politics to restore the promise of American democracy. The New Green Deal will:

1. Revoke corporate personhood by amending our Constitution to make clear that corporations are not persons and money is not speech. Those rights belong to living, breathing human beings - not to business entities controlled by the wealthy.

2. Protect our right to vote by supporting Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s proposed "Right to Vote Amendment," to clarify to the Supreme Court that yes, we do have a constitutional right to vote.

3. Enact the Voter Bill of Rights that will:

• guarantee us a voter-marked paper ballot for all voting;
• require that all votes are counted before election results are released;
• replace partisan oversight of elections with non-partisan election commissions;
• celebrate our democratic aspirations by making Election Day a national holiday;
• bring simplified, safe same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualified voter is barred from the polls;
• do away with so-called "winner take all" elections in which the "winner" does not have the support of most of the voters, and replace that system with instant runoff voting and proportional representation, systems most advanced countries now use to good effect;
• replace big money control of election campaigns with full public financing and free and equal access to the airwaves;
• guarantee equal access to the ballot and to the debates to all qualified candidates;
• abolish the Electoral College and implement direct election of the President;
• restore the vote to ex-offenders who've paid their debt to society; and,
• enact Statehood for the District of Columbia so that those Americans have representation in Congress and full rights to self rule like the rest of us.

4. Protect local democracy and democratic rights by commissioning a thorough review of federal preemption law and its impact on the practice of local democracy in the United States. This review will put at its center the "democracy question" – that is, what level of government is most open to democratic participation and most suited to protecting democratic rights.

5. Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.

6. Strengthen media democracy by expanding federal support for locally-owned broadcast media and local print media.

7. Protect our personal liberty and freedoms by:

• repealing the Patriot Act and those parts of the National Defense Authorization Act that violate our civil liberties;
• prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI from conspiring with local police forces to suppress our freedoms of assembly and of speech; and,
• ending the war on immigrants – including the cruel, so-called "secure communities" program.

8. Rein in the military-industrial complex by

• reducing military spending by 50% and closing U.S. military bases around the world;
• restoring the National Guard as the centerpiece of our system of national defense; and,
• creating a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives.

Let us not rest until we have pulled our nation back from the brink, and until we have secured the peaceful, just, green future we all deserve.

Kend wrote ~ "DAnneMarc that suspect shot at police. He is guilty of that. "

Very well, Kend. Assuming that there is evidence to support this claim. "Show me the evidence!" What you are saying at this point is merely speculation and allegation. Until the conclusion of the trial, this SUSPECT is INNOCENT! Please don't forget this basic tenant of American Law!!!

My applause for you caroline01! Well said!

The last suspect is captured! The threat is over? The last I heard everyone is innocent till proven guilty. We are not safe until the trial is over. Shame on Major Menimo for implying that the captured suspect is guilty. What has our Democracy become?

I don't agree with everything Thom or anyone else says. But I'm with you, U.S. Citizen on this:

U.S. Citizen wrote: However, we should all step back and think about the thousands of people in other lands who face this type of tragedy almost daily--at the hands of U.S. drones, bombs and military attacks.

The U.S. (or the fiction, NATO) recently killed 11 children in Afghanistan, one as young as 4 months. Where's the grieving, the sorrow for these and for the thousands that have been killed prior to this and will continue to be killed by the U.S.? Sure, we grieve for the Boston victims but does the compassion have to stop at the border?

My profund respect for those who have expressed compassion for those thousands of innocents that the U.S. has killed – and continues to kill - in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other places. My profound disgust for those who express hate for ALL muslims..

Chuckle8 - You totally missed the point. My point was that Obama will use a number like 90% to support his position on something like gun control while blowing off other strong public sentiment on issues where the public is obviously opposed to policy.

Personally, I think the 90% number is suspect anyway, if only because it seems impossible to get 90% of the people in this country to agree on anything. But if public opinion really was that unified I think it must have been in response to a really simplistic question like "do you support background checks for firearms purchases". Even the NRA supports that. It's when the questions get more nuanced that people become less single minded. But if you want to cling to that 90% number then you go right ahead.

60% does not equal 90%

DAnnemarc: Well, it was not exactly "stand around and do nothing" it was "sit around and type up silly do-nothing "make-work" reports that nobody read" and drive to various Gas/Oil Separation plants (GOSPs), mostly, around the Arabian Gulf side of the Arabian shield (aka: the eastern province) and watch Filipinos do all the work while pretending to keep an eye on them and, perhaps, make recommendation as to how things might be done better. However, those Filipinos were very well trained by the other contract companies who were paid scads of money to have the Filipinos do all the work.

Basically, I suppose, I did about as much work as the typical office supervisor and some of their office workers anywhere in the US.

Do you know that some office workers have so much time on their hands, in their offices, that they can actually make extra money, at their desks, by using their computers (especially their cameras) in creative ways. I won't go into details...you'll just have to use your imagination.

Some web sites can actually let you view the very "talented" things they can do..and, of course, they know they are being watched, and want to be watched, on-line. Of course, she may not have actually been in a real office, despite being able to hear other office workers talking on the phones...that could have been faked too. I'm sure a real business would have IT guys stop this kind of thing....yeah, right! Of course, I don't know any of this first hand...just what I hear from other people. ;-}

This is off the subject but just to make a point to all the gun restriction lefties, -- if you are living in Cambridge Mass. Today with a psycho on the loose do you want a gun with 10 round clip or a 30 round clip? And it is not a deer stalking the neighborhood.

Funny how some anti-gun nuts want to repeal the 2nd Amendment...sounds just like the Republicans (like Bush) in thinking of the Constitution as "just a quaint piece of paper" and wanting to repeal parts of it they didn't like either.

Maybe we should prevent the "mentally ill" from running for public office and from working in the Pentagon as high ranked military officials. And have them analyzed by a multi-partisan panel of psychiatrists. Before you are allowed to attain those positions you should need to be periodically certified to be sane. Maybe all those hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children that have been murdered by our military and political "crazies" would have been spared. And, one thing many gun control advocates completely overlook is that the US could very easily morph into a new totalitarian state just like in Nazi Germany, one that is controlled by pious, holier-than-thou, Torquemadas who , because of their "insanity", would have no problem setting up their own gas chambers to get rid of people that won't knuckle under to their narrowly defined belief systems. Or, maybe they conjure up in their syphalitic minds that we should worship space aliens and anyone who doesn't deserves to be imprisoned and sent to the gas-chambers. Or, maybe, some neo-Caligula gets into power and gets his jollies by watching selected Americans beheaded in the arena. Sounds pretty far-fetch, maybe, but these things creep up on otherwise orderly and sane societies. When the majority of people own guns, the really big crazies can be kept in check. The little crazies might do some little damage. But the really big crazies can do one hell of a lot of damage to millions of people. We need to hold on to our guns otherwise we will have no hand to play...we will be totally at the mercy of whatever deranged people that manipulate their way to the top. With lots of guns in the hands of the majority of the citizens, we have a chance...without them...we have no chance at all.

To the several posters who believe the 2nd Amendment should be repealed: Consider the dangers that faced the founders when they penned the 2nd. The country faced a very ruthless colonial power in Great Britain. We were a "rogue state" in the eyes of the Brits, and fair game for their fleet and their army (much as our own government views Pakistan today).

Today we live in a society of 300+ million, governed by a ruling elite that controls the courts, the politicians and therefore the machinery of state power (money, the police, the military, etc.) The will of the people is routinely ignored. What's more, we see that trend increasing. The 'government" of this country is quite at home with genocide. In my lifetime it started in Viet Nam and has extended to Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of the other protections afforded our own people by the Constitution have been severely weakened in recent times; few people will argue that fact. How long will it be until our own ruling class turns its focus inward, as all despots eventually do (China with Tiennamen Square, Hitler with the Third Reich, post revolution Soviet Russia)?

My question to you is this: Do you feel that you live in a LESS dangerous world today than existed at the time the founders added the Second Amendment? And what if you DO feel that your welfare will be protected and it turns out that you're wrong?

I have never advocated the violent overthrow of the United States government. Nonviolent means is far less risky and probably a superior method of changing the power structure as others here have observed. But I am completely in favor of the people of this country keeping a tight grip on the one thing at our disposal that will ultimately deter total subjugation of the people (flowing from policy decisions from the top down through brutal police enforcement) and that would be our right to bear arms. This one consideration vastly outweighs all the tragic school shootings, in my opinion. We need to seek other solutions to the very real problem of gun violence, but not by abolishing the Second Amendment.

You call it suppression, I call it protection. A few years ago, I attended a 912 meeting with some other Democrats - they were voicing their opinion of the 19th amendment. It was a real eye opener for me - they espoused the garbage on religion from Barton, the were all gun owners and one of the ladies dressed in Colonial dress talked about her "ankle bracelet" that allowed her to hide her gun under her long dress. The head of one of the prominant gun groups in Colorado gave a presentation in which he said his goal was to have NO Gun Rules. I asked him the question of while I respected HIS right to own a gun, where was MY protection to feel safe on the streets when there were now so many openly displaying their weaponry. How was one to determine who was a responsible gun owner and who wasn't. His reply . . . I am protected by the 2nd. amendment and you can't change that! We have to license cars, dogs, cats, and other things, we have to carry insurance for many things, why should we not protect ALL of the people and license guns that are not used for hunting and require insurance on those that possess them. WHY would our government have the RIGHT to address these issues to protect the masses?