100 great political objectives

100 Great Political Objectives: - our goal is a society that prioritizes the needs of all before the profits of the few.

This brainstorm of 100 Great Ideas is offered to the Occupy Boston community to consider and discuss. The list has no formal bearing; it has not been consented to by GA.

The 100 Great Ideas began on the listserv of the Ideas Working Group and spread out from there. Responders were asked to add, not subtract, points. Some of the points come from the Occupy Boston wiki, OB working groups and other Occupations. And some comes from people who stumbled on the and decided to participate or were asked to by friends. It started on 12/3/2011 and hit 100 on x/xx/xxxx.

Nothing was excluded as too strange or improbable. What was not included were suggestions covered by others already on the list. The goal was to present a present a long list of possible objectives that are large in scope and able to be enacted legislatively (either by Congress, Constitutional Convention or the UN). It is presented alphabetically because nothing is more powerful than the alphabet. Thanks to all who participated.

A. Banking and Financial Reform-transparency, justice, accountability

1. Abolish corporate personhood.

2. Bring back Glass-Steagall.

3. Jubilee Year I. for all debt with an interest rate greater than 5%, every 49 years.

4. States may invest only in small local banks or state banks

5. Democratization of capital.

6. Break up the mega-banks and implement tax and regulatory policies that favor community financial institutions.

7. Establish state-owned partnership banks in each of the 50 states, patterned after the Bank of North Dakota.

8. Restructure the Federal Reserve to function under strict standards of transparency and public scrutiny, with General Accounting Office audits and Congressional oversight.

9. Break up the mega-banks and implement tax and regulatory policies that favor community financial institutions.

10. Establish state-owned partnership banks in each of the 50 states, patterned after the Bank of North Dakota.

11. Restructure the Federal Reserve to function under strict standards of transparency and public scrutiny, with General Accounting Office audits and Congressional oversight.

12. Direct all new money created by the Federal Reserve to a Federal Recovery and Reconstruction Bank rather than the current practice of directing it as a subsidy to Wall Street banks.

13. Rewrite international trade and investment rules to support national ownership, economic self-reliance, and economic self-determination.

14. Legislation to invalidate the Citizen’s United decision.

15. Codification of the idea that spending money is not a form of free speech

16. Audit FINRA. FINRA is a non-governmental entity tasked with minding the financial markets. FINRA needs to be audited for practices and, if necessary, folded into the SEC.

17. Program to employ out of work tax attorneys & accountants for the SEC.

18. Replace the prime interest rates system with a linked interest rate system. The interest rate for consumer credit shall not exceed 20% of the interest rate for consumer saving of the same institution.

19. Jubilee Year II; All loans for which the combined monthly payments exceed one fifth of the lender's income shall be forgiven sufficiently to reduce the monthly payments to one fifth of the lender's income. All loans owed by people with income at or below 300% of the poverty level shall be forgiven sufficiently to reduce the lender's combined monthly payments to one tenth of the lender's income. This shall apply to mortgages, credit card loans, bank loans, student loans, and all other personal loans without exception; it shall apply as well to small businesses with ten or fewer employees. Lending institutions shall be eligible for tax credit for up to 75% of their losses through this program.

20. Student loan debt relief.

22. An immediate one year freeze on all foreclosures

B. Electoral Reform-horizontal democracy

23. Proportional representation/ranked choice voting for all elections.

24. Abolish the Electoral College

25. Ban on all private contributions to all politicians.

26. Fair and equal public financing of all elections.

27. Prohibiting all federal public officials and their immediate family members, whether elected or appointed, from EVER being employed by any corporation they regulate while in office and/or holding any stock or shares in any corporation they regulate while in office until a full 7 years after their term is completed.

28. A complete lifetime ban on accepting all gifts, services, money, directly or indirectly, to any elected or appointed federal officials or their immediate family members, from any person, corporation,

29. Term limits for all elected officials.

30. Make election day a holiday, devoted to all things, electoral, political, and democratic.

32. Require the media to provide equal free air time to all candidates.

C. Tax Reform-justice

33.Zero Sum Budget the Federal Tax Code, ie burn it down and crowd source a new one from scratch.

34. Tax support for a sustainable peacetime economy, not the military industrial complex.

35. Make taxation democratic by giving people the opportunity to choose what their tax money supports, by choosing which fund their tax dollars go in. Separate the military fund from the social services fund.

36. Increase tax rates for and/or penalties for companies which are too big and/or too harmful to people and/or planet.

37. Tax breaks for companies abiding by a set of ethical principles stronger than the Sullivan Principles.

38. Government support that prioritizes domestic adoption over fertility treatments.

39. Tax hedge-fund gamblers.

40 Lift the cap on FICA

41. Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions and currency trades

42 Banning high frequency flash trading

43. Any company that ensures all its employees a living wage, based on the living expenses in the area where the employee lives, or where the company is located, whichever is higher, and taking into account the size of the employee's family, shall be eligible for a tax credit equal to two m

44. Any company that both guarantees a living wage to all employees and maintains a policy that the salary (including bonuses) of the highest-paid employee or CEO shall not exceed eight times that of the lowest-paid employee, shall be entitled to a tax credit equal to two weeks of the salary of the highest-paid employee.

45. The government shall subsidize 50% of mortgages for low-income buyers by matching all mortgage payments by low-income lenders. In addition, the government shall make direct grants available to provide down payments and also to install systems for renewable energy systems, such as wind mills or solar panels. Mortgage subsidies and down payment grants shall be available to home buyers buying a home for personal residential use if their income does not exceed 400% of the poverty level for their area; renewable energy grants shall likewise be available to homeowners and homebuyers with income up to 400% of the poverty level, and partial subsidies shall be available to people whose income does not exceed the median income for that state. All home owners and home buyers shall be eligible for tax credits for renewable energy installations.

D. Basic Human Needs-compassion

46. Nationalized Health Insurance and bundled fee structure for healthcare.

47. Direct government spending away from the military and towards social needs

48. Cradle to graves social safety net.

49. Take the profit out of healthcare.

50. Prohibition on empty buildings if anyone is involuntarily homeless.

51. National Socialized Medical Care program like Britain’s.

52. Stop paying healh care professionals when their patients get sick.

53. Repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

54. De-privatize the penal system.

E. Non-Violence

55. Bring all the troops, ships, etc. home now.

56. Hand to Hand Combat instead of current military model.

F. Sustainability

57. Tie the salaries of public employeess to the price of the production of sustainable food.

58. Greenhouse gases levels at no more than 350 ppm (in CO2 equivalents)

59. Low-carbon energy economy, leaving the remainder of earth's fossil fuel endowment in the ground

60. Legal restrictions insuring a modest ecological footprint, both personally and collectively.

62. Recycle rare metals

63. Tax credits for land use planning that encourages urban density to protect wildlands.

64. Base the value of an international currency on the health of the oceans.

65. Designate rooftops as commons needed for the public good; wind turbines, green protection.

66. Strategy to for “true cost” market value of products that includes ecological inputs

G. Federal Budget

67. Adoption of an immediate plan to reduce the national debt to a sustainable percentage of GDP.

H. Jobs, Economic Development

68.Extend public education from pre-school thru college

69. 21st Century Public Works Administration

7-. Employment program for hearing impaired to teach developmentally delayed infants sign language.

72. Thirty Hour Work Week for all government employees.

73. Large simple low interest loan program for micro-enterprises.

74. Prohibition on commerce Friday thru Sunday (economic calming.)

75. Program to employ out of work tax attorneys & accountants for the SEC.

76.End discrimination against the unemployed. Organizations hiring anyone who has been out of work for at least six months and shall be eligible for tax credits equal to the new employees first two months' paychecks plus any hiring bonus. Any company hiring individuals with income at or below 300% of the poverty level shall also be eligible for tax credits equal to any hiring bonus they pay to these new employees

77. Support workplace democracy initiatives

J. Racism

78. Immediate passage of the Dream Act and comprehensive immigration and border security reform.

79. Restitution for damages from slavery.

80. End racial profiling.

I. Other

81. Measuring the US’s Gross National Happiness instead of its Gross National Product.

82. Crowd source all public policy.

83.Access to the Internet as a First Amendment right.

84. Eliminate user fees for public defenders.

85. Network Neutrality

86. Repeal the 2nd Amendment