The GREEN NEW DEAL, how can everyone not support it.

DCal430

Diamond Member
Feb 12, 2011
6,020
9
81
Here is the GREEN NEW DEAL:


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.



FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE GREEN NEW DEAL:

Jill Stein's Green New Deal was released on the night of January 25, 2012, with a video address entitled "A People's State of the Union: A Green New Deal for America." The Green New Deal is the central platform of the Stein/Honkala ticket. You can learn more about it by reading or viewing the various documents and videos below.

I don't see how you can be against these things. No more unemployment, the people actually in control of the government, good wages for all. Proper access to education for all, healthcare for all. Give the people back control of the banking system, and back control of the utilities. This is the platform everyone should support. :thumbsup:
 

theevilsharpie

Platinum Member
Nov 2, 2009
2,322
14
81
I don't see how you can be against these things.

LOL socialism.

Not that I think this plan is socialist, but that like socialism, economic reality tends to win out over feel-good promises. There's a few good ideas in this platform (e.g., unemployment reform, investment in alternative energy research, etc.), but things like broad debt forgiveness, a universal living wage, rights to everything etc. would leave us looking more like Greece rather than the utopia the author envisions.

Sorry.
 

DCal430

Diamond Member
Feb 12, 2011
6,020
9
81
LOL socialism.

Not that I think this plan is socialist, but that like socialism, economic reality tends to win out over feel-good promises. There's a few good ideas in this platform (e.g., unemployment reform, investment in alternative energy research, etc.), but things like broad debt forgiveness, a universal living wage, rights to everything etc. would leave us looking more like Greece rather than the utopia the author envisions.

Sorry.

Progressivism is a better term for this plan.
 

EagleKeeper

Discussion Club Moderator<br>Elite Member
Staff member
Oct 30, 2000
42,591
5
0
Great dream for the most part.

To implement it; people have no clue

Also, it again is a Robin Hood scheme.

Take from those because you do not have the same amount.
 

ichy

Diamond Member
Oct 5, 2006
6,940
8
81
You don't understand how people can be against an end to all foreclosures and evictions? Yay, no consequences for deadbeats!
 

boomerang

Lifer
Jun 19, 2000
18,890
642
126
It's not naive it's childish.

I stopped reading with any interest right here. "The right to employment through a Full Employment Program"

At that point I knew it was based in unicorns and rainbows. Wanting something and saying something does not make it feasible. How can we have such a large faction of people that, with no concern for the consequences or the viability, are so deeply behind ideals that are not attainable? In part it's due to their proclivity to measure success based on intentions. Saying it is all that matters. Actually accomplishing it is a secondary goal. If it doesn't transpire, they're still winners because they tried. The cost of it? Immaterial. More debt? So what?
 

nehalem256

Lifer
Apr 13, 2012
15,669
8
0
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.

So do I get a rebate of the tuition I paid straight cash so I would not have to take out loans?

Or are you only rewarded for acting irresponsibly?
 

ichy

Diamond Member
Oct 5, 2006
6,940
8
81
The Green Party ought to call themselves the Socialist party because their platform is more about wealth redistribution than environmental protection.
 

nehalem256

Lifer
Apr 13, 2012
15,669
8
0
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.

Didn't Obama already try this?

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.

Did Mitt Romney write this.... while drunk. Because I think it is less grounded in reality then his normal "plans".

It also contains the typical left-wing hardon for bikes. Have fun biking through the 10in snow drifts lefties.
 

PokerGuy

Lifer
Jul 2, 2005
13,650
201
101
Excellent, I see we've set the bar for most stupid idea of the day pretty high right off the bat. Good going! :D
 

Exterous

Super Moderator
Jun 20, 2006
20,348
3,426
126
• 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.

Riiiiight - because its just that easy and every country up to now just didn't feel like doing that
 

Matt1970

Lifer
Mar 19, 2007
12,320
3
0
Sweet, we will all work for the Government.

This is the Occupy Manifesto incase you were wondering.
 
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spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
5
76
Reads like the damn communist manifesto. This is what the left truly believes, marxist to their core. It seems like the liberal isn't even hiding their communism anymore, they've gone full libtard.
 

Anarchist420

Diamond Member
Feb 13, 2010
8,645
0
76
www.facebook.com
Well, at least Jill Stein is principiled unlike Obama. I don't think obama's a Marxist any more than most politicians are, for the reasons Gary North pointed out.

I think the green party is naive and childish, but so are many of the neocons since empires must eventually collapse under their own weight.
 

waggy

No Lifer
Dec 14, 2000
68,145
10
81
bwhahah I hope you save post like these dcal. because when you get older and the real world hits you in the head. it will be funny to read.

When younger i thought the same. why can't everyone just have a house. we have the space! and everyone should have a job that pays the bills! and free college! etc etc.

then reality set in. to do all of that I would be working my ass off (because i would have a job) to pay FOR YOUR house, bills etc.

FUCK THAT. i work hard enough to buy shit for MY family.
 

spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
5
76
bwhahah I hope you save post like these dcal. because when you get older and the real world hits you in the head. it will be funny to read.

When younger i thought the same. why can't everyone just have a house. we have the space! and everyone should have a job that pays the bills! and free college! etc etc.

then reality set in. to do all of that I would be working my ass off (because i would have a job) to pay FOR YOUR house, bills etc.

FUCK THAT. i work hard enough to buy shit for MY family.

Oh, you're selfish and greedy! BAD!
 

QuantumPion

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2005
6,010
1
76
for those who may be interested in where DCal got this from:

http://www.jillstein.org/green_new_deal

I did vote for Nader when he was the greens candidate.

Actually I assumed he got it from this, lol:

In the name of the general welfare, to protect the people's security, to achieve full equality and total stability, it is decreed for the duration of the national emergency that:

Point One. All workers, wage earners and employees of any kind whatsoever shall henceforth be attached to their jobs and shall not leave nor be dismissed nor change employment, under penalty of a term in jail. The penalty shall be determined by the Unification Board, such Board to be appointed by the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. All persons reaching the age of twenty-one shall report to the Unification Board, which shall assign them to where, in its opinion, their services will best serve the interests of the nation.

Point Two. All industrial, commercial, manufacturing and business establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth remain in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not quit nor leave nor retire, nor close, sell or transfer their business, under penalty of the nationalization of their establishment and of any and all of their property.

Point Three. All patents and copyrights, pertaining to any devices, inventions, formulas, processes and works of any nature whatsoever, shall be turned over to the nation as a patriotic emergency gift by means of Gift Certificates to be signed voluntarily by the owners of all such patents and copyrights. The Unification Board shall then license the use of such patents and copyrights to all applicants, equally and without discrimination, for the purpose of eliminating monopolistic practices, discarding obsolete products and making the best available to the whole nation. No trademarks, brand names or copyrighted titles shall be used. Every formerly patented product shall be known by a new name and sold by all manufacturers under the same name, such name to be selected by the Unification Board. All private trademarks and brand names are hereby abolished.

Point Four. No new devices, inventions, products, or goods of any nature whatsoever, not now on the market, shall be produced, invented, manufactured or sold after the date of this directive. The Office of Patents and Copyrights is hereby suspended.

Point Five. Every establishment, concern, corporation or person engaged in production of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth produce the same amount of goods per year as it, they or he produced during the Basic Year, no more and no less. The year to be known as the Basic or Yardstick Year is to be the year ending on the date of this directive. Over or under production shall be fined, such fines to be determined by the Unification Board.

Point Six. Every person of any age, sex, class or income, shall henceforth spend the same amount of money on the purchase of goods per year as he or she spent during the Basic Year, no more and no less. Over or under purchasing shall be fined, such fines to be determined by the Unification Board.

Point Seven. All wages, prices, salaries, dividends, profits, interest rates and forms of income of any nature whatsoever, shall be frozen at their present figures, as of the date of this directive.

Point Eight. All cases arising from and rules not specifically provided for in this directive, shall be settled and determined by the Unification Board, whose decisions will be final.
 

CPA

Elite Member
Nov 19, 2001
30,322
4
0
It's not naive it's childish.

I stopped reading with any interest right here. "The right to employment through a Full Employment Program"

At that point I knew it was based in unicorns and rainbows. Wanting something and saying something does not make it feasible. How can we have such a large faction of people that, with no concern for the consequences or the viability, are so deeply behind ideals that are not attainable? In part it's due to their proclivity to measure success based on intentions. Saying it is all that matters. Actually accomplishing it is a secondary goal. If it doesn't transpire, they're still winners because they tried. The cost of it? Immaterial. More debt? So what?

I got a little further, but stopped at "living wage".
 

diesbudt

Diamond Member
Jun 1, 2012
3,393
0
0
I got a little further, but stopped at "living wage".

I only got as far as:

"The right to employment through a Full Employment Program that will create 25 million jobs by implementing a nationally funded"

then I laughed.