Quote:
Originally Posted by kayanne
At this point just about any new party would be worth my looking into. If ever there were a time for a new party to rise up, I think it's now. I’ve said for the past few years that both D and R are becoming more extreme and unacceptable to the vast majority of the normal, sane, middle of the road people I know.
If a party were to focus on sound economic policy and securing our borders, I could tolerate just about anything else.
Bonuses for me would be:
Abortions legal in first trimester only (with only a few exceptions).
Return control over education to local or maybe state.
Cut wasteful spending (I know that's vague).
Welfare reform (do not incentivize laziness or having multiple babies when you can't afford them.)
Stop the transgender nonsense (no males being put in women's prisons, sports teams, locker rooms; no tax dollars for removal of genitals or gender-altering hormones.
Term limits and age limits for all elected officials.
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Here's my take on what an independent party would stand for as their platform.
A. End the culture war nonsense once and for all by:
- Allow and protect same-sex and inter-racial marriage.
- Abortions legal first 18 weeks (exceptions for rape, incest, safety of mother, non-viability of fetus, serious medical/mental issues).
- Cut abortion numbers with comprehensive sex ed to include birth control info and make BC products available and covered by insurances.
- Assure family creation and support by funding pre/post-natal care, child care, family leave.
- Allow end of life "death with dignity" for all citizens, covered by Medicare and/or insurances.
- Transgender athletes must compete within the gender they were born with.
- No Federal funded gender-reassignments, breast implants, etc, to include military personnel/spouses or prison inmates.
B. Education that supports the future in a global economy by:
- Local or state control over education, with some Federal guidelines for equal treatment of all students. Can't graduate dummies, can't low-fund minority districts.
- Fund college / trade school education to assure our people are prepared to succeed. Could require some form of national service in exchange. Need to stop importing nurses and construction workers.
C. Government operations better managed by:
- End waste by auditing Federal expenditures against mandated performance and outcome metrics.
- Welfare was reformed in the mid 1990s by Clinton and Gingrich to a lifetime max of 5 years.
- Term limits for elected officials AND Federal judges. Exceptions must be approved by 2/3 majority of the Senate.
- Hire thousands of auditors at IRS to go after cheaters who cost us $500B per year. Jail worst offenders.
- Corporations must pay a minimum tax of 15%, to include our international players who're protected by our massive DoD expenditures.
- End numerous tax loopholes and giveaways like the oil depletion allowance, farm subsidies, etc.
- Mortgage deduction only for one primary residence.
- End investors taking depreciation for single family homes and townhouses they own and rent out. Take the steam out of home buying so young people aren't priced out as they now are.
D. Climate issues addressed by:
- Focus on renewable energy, use tax incentives as needed.
- Possible mandatory rooftop solar funded by the utility firms instead of them spending for more plants powered by fossil-fuels.
- Keep researching nuclear power issues, i.e., fusion reactors.
- Build
Small Modular Reactors and deploy them where conditions fit.
E. Miscellaneous topics addressed by:
- Minimum wage = living wage, indexed for inflation, no exceptions for retail, restaurant or part-time work. Farm labor?
- Fix the immigration laws, manage the borders.
- Raise Federal gas tax to catch up for inflation since 1993, indexed for inflation. Spent on infrastructure.
- Reform Social Security and Medicare to insure long-term solvency.
- Expand Medicare to all, as an option to private insurance.
- Raise the mailing costs for all junk mail, bulk mail, to assure USPS solvency, employee benefits, etc.
- Outlaw all robo calls, even for politicians, prosecute the offenders.
- Federal funding of all Federal elections, get Citizens United dark money out of our elections. Every dollar received by candidates, PACs and Super PACs must be identified by source; every dollar spent must be for that campaign and documented. Unspent funds move to U.S.Treasury.
- Separation of church and state. Tax the church for gross receipts at 15%.
- No firearm buys until age 21, all buys/trades/gifts require background check to include mental health history.
I'll probably think up more later, but an independent party that focuses on these core issue should succeed.
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