Politics Ahoy!
So as the few of you who are friends with me on Facebook are all-too-well aware, that's my venue for the vast majority of my politickin'. And if by some unlikely chance you read this post and want in on similar action over on FB, drop me a message here and I'll link/add you. But of course FB is better suited for sharing links and short blurbs, rather than meaty substance. And with the 2016 campaign season upon us, I've been meaning to write up a sort of issue-by-issue summary of where I stand, and who my druthers lead me to support in the 2016 contest. Really, it's something I think it behooves us all to undertake as informed citizens--articulate what you believe and why, and see who that leads you to support. You might be surprised, in some ways, or spot areas where you should do a little more homework. This survey is a pretty awesome way to see who you share beliefs with, great place to start (just make sure you expand all the 'Other stances' options to get a better view of the field).
Since this is bound to be superlong, I will cut for those who can't be bothered, of course. :)
So let me start, I guess, by saying in broad terms I consider myself strongly liberal, progressive and proud of it.
Rick Santorum was on Bill Maher's show last week, and I think Maher started out their interview perfectly (though it quickly went downhill from there, since it was Santorum): "If I had just two questions for any politician: What are you going to do about climate change? And: How are you going to get money out of politics?" To me those are indeed the largest issues facing us as a nation, and even as a species. The former because it is perhaps the greatest existential crisis--and of our own making!--humanity has ever faced, and is bound to get worse the longer we drag our feet on it. And the latter because I think it is the single biggest and over-arching problem in American politics, the one issue that MUST be addressed before we can hope to successfully address anything else (with climate change very high on that list). So let's start there, and then I'll kinda go wherever the wind takes me.
-Climate Change. Science has spoken. It is real, it is largely man-made, it is already causing major problems, and (not to be too doom-and-gloom, ha) it could very well portend the end of life as we know it as the next few decades roll along. And really, even if we give the deniers the benefit of what doubt remains, it STILL doesn't make any sense for us to ignore it, because fossil fuels are a dead-end no matter what. And so:
-Energy Policy. We need to make a strong and concerted effort to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, and in so doing lead the rest of the world to do the same. It's already happening in many ways, as wind and solar power become remarkably cheaper and more widespread. But gas-powered vehicles are a huge chunk of the issue, and government can do much to encourage the improvement and adoption of electric vehicles, just like it can do much to encourage individuals and businesses to install solar panels where it makes sense. And we need to clamp down on the power (no pun intended) of the coal, oil and natural gas industries. Fracking is Bad News and should be heavily regulated if not eliminated. Keystone XL is a non-starter and should be rejected.
-Economy and Taxes. When it comes to social science and politics, I am especially interested in economics, and here I think the greatest issue we have is the stagnation and decline of the Middle Class, which is closely related to the explosion of income/wealth inequality. The unprecedented boom years of the postwar 20th century were built on a sort of grand bargain between labor and capital. That bargain was that employees would offer up their work and loyalty, and in return employers would pay their workers well, provide solid benefits, retirement plans, pensions, and their own loyalty in return. That, combined with high taxes on the top income brackets supporting a sturdy social safety net, created the longest stretch of growth and prosperity of any nation in history. But around the late 1970s, the deal was broken. The assault on labor unions began in earnest, and trade deals (the TPP sucks, by the way) led to the shuttering of American manufacturing as cost-cutting became the order of the day and businesses shifted their labor to developing countries where they could pay pennies and offer no benefits. And here at home we've shifted to a largely service-oriented economy, where employees are treated as expendable and businesses find every way they can to cut pay and benefits, and then wonder why aggregate demand has fallen so sharply. Meanwhile, the neocons implemented the 30-year (and counting) experiment of trickle-down economics, which has only had the effect of siphoning money from the bottom upwards, as executive pay and capital-gains income skyrocketed while ordinary wage income has flatlined or declined. We now have just about the greatest level of income and wealth inequality in the developed world, and the result is stagnation, because the Middle Class is strapped and struggling--and they represent 70% of all consumer demand. We need to go back to a world where income is more evenly distributed and the wealthy pay their share, and I am not at all afraid of the phrase 'redistribution of wealth'--we've already had that over the past 3 decades, and it's way past time we flip the switch to redistribute wealth downwards instead. Raise the income tax, raise the capital-gains tax, implement nominal transaction fees on Wall Street, break up the big banks and reinstate Glass-Steagall to once again separate and protect consumer banking from risky speculation. Use the additional revenue to balance the budget while also expanding safety-net and beneficial programs to provide opportunity to those currently trapped in poverty. America has always promoted the idea of economic and social mobility--we currently fall very short of that promise.
-Health Care. The ACA (Obamacare) was a step in the right direction, and a success in that it has greatly lowered both the number of uninsured Americans and the growth of health-care costs. But it still relies on the for-profit insurance industry, and it does little to break the link between employment and insurance, which I think is a mistake. I know at some points in my life the main thing stopping me from stepping out on my own as an entrepreneur was the need to provide my own health insurance, and I can't be alone in that. So as the only first-world nation that doesn't offer some form of single-payer healthcare for all its citizens, we need to step up and do it. Healthcare is a right, not a privilege, and the quality of care shouldn't be based on how much you can pay for it.
-Drug Policy. The War On Drugs has been an abysmal failure. It has locked up and ruined the lives of millions of people who are guilty of trivial, non-violent offenses. Some drugs are obviously dangerous and should be illegal--but non-violent offenders should be regarded as sick and sent for treatment, not locked up where they'll just become hardened criminals. Marijuana is frankly less of a social problem than alcohol, and should be legalized--and taxed.
-Crime and Law Enforcement. The for-profit prison industry is a terrible mistake. It relies on a steady stream of convicts to incarcerate, and therefore has an incentive to lobby for locking up as many people as possible, which only makes the problem worse. As a nation we incarcerate more of our citizens than any other, and often for non-violent (usually drug-related) offenses. I think that's a mistake. It condemns millions of people to the underworld of criminals and ex-cons, limiting their future prospects and increasing their drag on society. We need to educate and reform criminals wherever possible, and only lock up the true dangers to society. Meanwhile, the militarization of law enforcement has turned many cities, especially urban centers, into war zones. Police increasingly seem to see themselves as an army rather than citizens sworn to protect and serve other citizens. We need to strictly limit the acquisition and use of military-style gear in law enforcement, and get back to true community policing. Body cameras should be a requirement, and police who abuse their power or misuse force (especially lethal force) should be harshly dealt with. As Jon Stewart wonderfully put it, "You can have great regard for law enforcement, and still want them to be held to high standards." I believe it is imperative that we do both.
-Gun Policy. I grew up in the woods surrounded by Florida rednecks. I've spent plenty of time around guns, and I appreciate legal gun ownership, and the fact that most gun owners abide by the law, handle their weapons responsibly, and will never present an issue. That said, the fact remains that as a nation we have--by FAR--the highest level of deaths by firearm of any developed nation, and unlike every other developed nation, it is the rare week that goes by here without some sort of horrific shooting incident, up to and including mass slaughter of innocents. It's a huge public health issue, yet we are paralyzed because the debate is too often framed (thanks to the tireless efforts and lobbying of the NRA) as scary Big Government coming to take away Joe America's guns because Nazis. What we need is sensible gun policy that eliminates the so-called Gun Show Loophole and requires background checks on every single gun purchase. We need to limit the sorts of weapons, ammunition, and magazines available, because no private citizen needs a weapon that can cut an entire classroom of children in half in a matter of seconds. Personally I'd like to see handguns heavily restricted as well, though I have no hope that will happen anytime soon. Bottom line, we need to do anything and everything we can to ensure that we keep guns out of the wrong hands, and remove them from individuals when the signs point to a need to do so (domestic abusers, for example). Pandora has left the box and we will not anytime soon remove the grim specter of widespread gun violence--but we can save SOME lives with a few simple changes, and it seems ridiculous not to do so with a quickness.
-Environmental Policy. This is closely related to climate change, of course, but pollution is still an issue and we need only look to the air over Shanghai to see how bad things can get in the absence of sensible regulation. I saw a politician (Republican, of course) suggest a while back that the EPA had done their job and could now be disbanded. Ha! We need to expand the EPA, and strictly enforce sensible regulations to preserve our air quality, and the quality (and quantity) of our water as well. Industry is important, yes, but we cannot eat, drink, or breathe money.
-Space Program. I admit bias here because I grew up next door to the Kennedy Space Center, where my Dad worked for most of my youth. But I strongly believe, dollar-for-dollar, no single program in the history of this nation has provided more bang for the buck than NASA. All the amazing space stuff aside, its contributions to air travel and technology in general have been massive. Its efforts towards viewing and measuring the planet and environment have been amazing. And of course mankind is at his best when reaching for the stars--NASA made that a literal notion. Consider that for the entire 50-year history of the manned spaceflight program, we've spent less money than we've spent since 2001 on the Department of Homeland Security and making people take their shoes off at airports. And gotten a hell of a lot more out of it, frankly.
-Military and Foreign Policy. Here I admit weakness. My eyes tend to glaze over when the subject turns to foreign policy. But what I will say is this: I think America does best when we stick to our ideals of justice and democracy, and we do ourselves and the world a disservice when we do things like torture and indefinitely detain people, kill innocent people with terror drones in the sky, kill the kids of people who hate us--or turn kids into people who hate us by killing their parents. ISIS and Muslim extremism is an issue, yes--but I don't believe it's an issue that greatly imperils us here at home apart from scattered incidents (right-wing anti-government terrorism is a much greater domestic threat at present), and I think we only make things worse when we intervene in the Middle East, especially militarily. That's why I support the Iran nuclear deal, because though its opponents don't come right out and say it, the alternative (which they seem to prefer) is war and boots-on-the-ground, and that has not historically gone well for us over there. Backing up a bit, our military spending has long been out of control--every year we literally spend almost as much as the rest of the world put together, and almost 5x as much as #2 (China). I believe it's important that we maintain a strong military, but we need to reassess exactly what that means, especially in the context of modern threats, which are vastly different than what they were even 30 years ago. If we redirected even a tenth of our military budget towards pure science and R&D, perhaps we could instead solve many of the problems that lead to military conflict and extremism in the first place--limited food, limited water, climate disasters, etc. That is the world we should be striving towards, not one of endless warfare.
-Social Issues. Abortion: Should absolutely be legal, and we should also work to make it rare by providing comprehensive sexual education and free contraception, especially among low-income communities.
Same-Sex Marriage: It's about damn time!
Religious Freedom: People should be free to believe whatever they want, but when it comes to forcing those beliefs on others, that is exactly what our Constitution was designed to prevent.
Poverty: We've done much to combat poverty via what amounts to handouts, and that's okay--I certainly don't think that any person, and especially no children, should go hungry in the richest nation on earth. But the real problem in our poverty-stricken areas is a lack of opportunity. It's easy to say those people should just get a job and work themselves out of poverty, but in reality that's often utterly impossible. Many can't even get a decent education, and/or there are no jobs they can reliably get to, or they do manage to get a job but it doesn't offer anywhere near the level of pay or benefits to sustain a decent existence. And we wonder why crime is so prevalent in places like that--what else is there?
Education. Along those lines, I believe education is a public good which should be freely available to all who desire it. Anyone, at any age, should have the opportunity to seek higher education if they wish, and it should be free at public institutions as long as they do the work and pull their weight. We've fallen behind much of the world in math and science among other things, and the result is a populace that often disregards or even defies science, probably because they simply fail to understand it.
Racial Issues. Racism is alive and well in the United States, as indeed everywhere. I don't think we can do much about that, aside from hoping that as the nation continues to integrate and diversify, race will become a non-issue for future generations. But while people may be racist, what we can and must do is ensure that our systems of government are not. We need to ensure that education, law enforcement, and other public services are fully available for minority communities, and of high standards. We need to do everything we can to extend opportunities for education, training, and employment to minority communities, so we can help make sure they don't sequester themselves in isolated conclaves, but fully integrate and become citizens and productive members of society. And obviously we need to clamp down hard on instances of racial inequality and discrimination, and label and prosecute hate crimes as such.
-Minimum Wage. Raise it, and the sooner the better. The federal minimum wage has lagged well behind inflation for some time, and the reality today is that not all (or even most) minimum-wage workers are kids just starting out and working for fun money. Plenty of people are out there trying to support themselves and even a family on minimum-wage jobs, and it's impossible. History has shown the impact of raising the minimum wage on prices is typically small, and the benefits to the economy are great, because we can always count on the lower (and even middle) classes to spend nearly every dollar they receive, which creates a multiplier effect. Whether $15 is the right number, I don't know--seems like it should be dependent on location, really, since $15 in LA is a lot different than $15 somewhere in Iowa. But the bottom line for me is that full-time work should support a reasonable standard of living anywhere in this country, minimum wage included. When a company like Wal-Mart gets away with paying sub-poverty wages (though they have made some welcome advances recently) such that each of their stores creates something like a $1M annual need for government benefits to close the gap--that's a problem.
-Money In Politics. This is the big one for me, because in my view every other issue we face is stymied because of the influence of money on our politics and politicians. Politicians spend waaaaay too much of their time fundraising for their next campaign (and the campaigns of party-mates), and waaaay too much of the money comes from wealthy individuals, companies and other special interests who view those donations as investments on which they damn well expect a return. The SCOTUS' Citizens United decision of 2010 (and a few others since) smashed what little was left of campaign finance regulation, so now the floodgates are open. In the 2012 elections, outside spending totaled just over a billion dollars--in 2008 that number was $338 million. 2016 will probably dwarf even 2012. It is ludicrous to suggest that all that money doesn't have a corrupting influence on our government, at every level. Meanwhile, at the state level we have organizations like ALEC, wherein corporations literally draft their own model legislation, which member legislators (nearly all Republican, of course) take back to their statehouses to get passed. I personally favor the notion of a Constitutional amendment to restrict campaign finance at the federal level, preferably provide a public-finance scheme, and to declare that corporations are not people when it comes to free speech and electioneering. Only if we remove the influence of big money are we likely to see a government more responsive to its constituents than its donors, and solving every other issue on this list depends on that very thing.
Gerrymandering. Okay, consider this one a bonus. The Republican Party, I believe, has backed themselves into quite a corner, at least at the national level. As the success of Donald Trump clearly shows, the GOP is reliant on a base of angry, reactionary, xenophobic, largely racist, almost entirely white voters--and that will no longer work to win the White House in America today. That's why they want to reform the Electoral College system, though thankfully they've had no luck with that so far. But even so, the GOP retains a grip on the legislatures of many states which lean Democratic by popular vote (like my own state of Florida). They do so by gerrymandering: they rope off as many minority voters as they can into a few insanely-shaped districts, so that as many districts as possible remain stacked with red voters. Of the country's 435 Congressional districts, for 2016 337 of them--that's 87%--are considered non-competitive, with another 41 considered pretty secure for one side or the other. That's the only way the GOP maintains their lock on the House, and on state legislatures. Many states (Florida included) are acting to drag their legislators kicking-and-screaming away from gerrymandering. But I'd love to see something at the Federal level to stomp it out, at least for House elections.
So all that said--and whew, if you managed to read all that you are awesome--who do I like for 2016? Should be pretty obvious, since pretty much everything I said is what he says, but my guy is Bernie Sanders. I've been a HUGE fan of his ever since I came to political awareness and heard the things he was saying, which are really the same things he's been saying for his entire 40 years of public service. The man is awesome, authentic, unpolished, truthful, and principled--everything most politicians these days are not. And he not only doesn't rely on huge donations from billionaires and special interests, he disdains them and wants nothing more than to kill that pay-to-play system. And frankly, even if the rest of his ideas end up being non-starters, if he can get into office and just push through a fair politics amendment, I will regard him as a success and a hero. So if you haven't checked him out, I encourage you to do so, and to spread the word. In my view, a vote for anyone else is a vote for the status quo, when big changes are what we sorely need. #FeelTheBern!
Any questions? :)
Since this is bound to be superlong, I will cut for those who can't be bothered, of course. :)
So let me start, I guess, by saying in broad terms I consider myself strongly liberal, progressive and proud of it.
Rick Santorum was on Bill Maher's show last week, and I think Maher started out their interview perfectly (though it quickly went downhill from there, since it was Santorum): "If I had just two questions for any politician: What are you going to do about climate change? And: How are you going to get money out of politics?" To me those are indeed the largest issues facing us as a nation, and even as a species. The former because it is perhaps the greatest existential crisis--and of our own making!--humanity has ever faced, and is bound to get worse the longer we drag our feet on it. And the latter because I think it is the single biggest and over-arching problem in American politics, the one issue that MUST be addressed before we can hope to successfully address anything else (with climate change very high on that list). So let's start there, and then I'll kinda go wherever the wind takes me.
-Climate Change. Science has spoken. It is real, it is largely man-made, it is already causing major problems, and (not to be too doom-and-gloom, ha) it could very well portend the end of life as we know it as the next few decades roll along. And really, even if we give the deniers the benefit of what doubt remains, it STILL doesn't make any sense for us to ignore it, because fossil fuels are a dead-end no matter what. And so:
-Energy Policy. We need to make a strong and concerted effort to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, and in so doing lead the rest of the world to do the same. It's already happening in many ways, as wind and solar power become remarkably cheaper and more widespread. But gas-powered vehicles are a huge chunk of the issue, and government can do much to encourage the improvement and adoption of electric vehicles, just like it can do much to encourage individuals and businesses to install solar panels where it makes sense. And we need to clamp down on the power (no pun intended) of the coal, oil and natural gas industries. Fracking is Bad News and should be heavily regulated if not eliminated. Keystone XL is a non-starter and should be rejected.
-Economy and Taxes. When it comes to social science and politics, I am especially interested in economics, and here I think the greatest issue we have is the stagnation and decline of the Middle Class, which is closely related to the explosion of income/wealth inequality. The unprecedented boom years of the postwar 20th century were built on a sort of grand bargain between labor and capital. That bargain was that employees would offer up their work and loyalty, and in return employers would pay their workers well, provide solid benefits, retirement plans, pensions, and their own loyalty in return. That, combined with high taxes on the top income brackets supporting a sturdy social safety net, created the longest stretch of growth and prosperity of any nation in history. But around the late 1970s, the deal was broken. The assault on labor unions began in earnest, and trade deals (the TPP sucks, by the way) led to the shuttering of American manufacturing as cost-cutting became the order of the day and businesses shifted their labor to developing countries where they could pay pennies and offer no benefits. And here at home we've shifted to a largely service-oriented economy, where employees are treated as expendable and businesses find every way they can to cut pay and benefits, and then wonder why aggregate demand has fallen so sharply. Meanwhile, the neocons implemented the 30-year (and counting) experiment of trickle-down economics, which has only had the effect of siphoning money from the bottom upwards, as executive pay and capital-gains income skyrocketed while ordinary wage income has flatlined or declined. We now have just about the greatest level of income and wealth inequality in the developed world, and the result is stagnation, because the Middle Class is strapped and struggling--and they represent 70% of all consumer demand. We need to go back to a world where income is more evenly distributed and the wealthy pay their share, and I am not at all afraid of the phrase 'redistribution of wealth'--we've already had that over the past 3 decades, and it's way past time we flip the switch to redistribute wealth downwards instead. Raise the income tax, raise the capital-gains tax, implement nominal transaction fees on Wall Street, break up the big banks and reinstate Glass-Steagall to once again separate and protect consumer banking from risky speculation. Use the additional revenue to balance the budget while also expanding safety-net and beneficial programs to provide opportunity to those currently trapped in poverty. America has always promoted the idea of economic and social mobility--we currently fall very short of that promise.
-Health Care. The ACA (Obamacare) was a step in the right direction, and a success in that it has greatly lowered both the number of uninsured Americans and the growth of health-care costs. But it still relies on the for-profit insurance industry, and it does little to break the link between employment and insurance, which I think is a mistake. I know at some points in my life the main thing stopping me from stepping out on my own as an entrepreneur was the need to provide my own health insurance, and I can't be alone in that. So as the only first-world nation that doesn't offer some form of single-payer healthcare for all its citizens, we need to step up and do it. Healthcare is a right, not a privilege, and the quality of care shouldn't be based on how much you can pay for it.
-Drug Policy. The War On Drugs has been an abysmal failure. It has locked up and ruined the lives of millions of people who are guilty of trivial, non-violent offenses. Some drugs are obviously dangerous and should be illegal--but non-violent offenders should be regarded as sick and sent for treatment, not locked up where they'll just become hardened criminals. Marijuana is frankly less of a social problem than alcohol, and should be legalized--and taxed.
-Crime and Law Enforcement. The for-profit prison industry is a terrible mistake. It relies on a steady stream of convicts to incarcerate, and therefore has an incentive to lobby for locking up as many people as possible, which only makes the problem worse. As a nation we incarcerate more of our citizens than any other, and often for non-violent (usually drug-related) offenses. I think that's a mistake. It condemns millions of people to the underworld of criminals and ex-cons, limiting their future prospects and increasing their drag on society. We need to educate and reform criminals wherever possible, and only lock up the true dangers to society. Meanwhile, the militarization of law enforcement has turned many cities, especially urban centers, into war zones. Police increasingly seem to see themselves as an army rather than citizens sworn to protect and serve other citizens. We need to strictly limit the acquisition and use of military-style gear in law enforcement, and get back to true community policing. Body cameras should be a requirement, and police who abuse their power or misuse force (especially lethal force) should be harshly dealt with. As Jon Stewart wonderfully put it, "You can have great regard for law enforcement, and still want them to be held to high standards." I believe it is imperative that we do both.
-Gun Policy. I grew up in the woods surrounded by Florida rednecks. I've spent plenty of time around guns, and I appreciate legal gun ownership, and the fact that most gun owners abide by the law, handle their weapons responsibly, and will never present an issue. That said, the fact remains that as a nation we have--by FAR--the highest level of deaths by firearm of any developed nation, and unlike every other developed nation, it is the rare week that goes by here without some sort of horrific shooting incident, up to and including mass slaughter of innocents. It's a huge public health issue, yet we are paralyzed because the debate is too often framed (thanks to the tireless efforts and lobbying of the NRA) as scary Big Government coming to take away Joe America's guns because Nazis. What we need is sensible gun policy that eliminates the so-called Gun Show Loophole and requires background checks on every single gun purchase. We need to limit the sorts of weapons, ammunition, and magazines available, because no private citizen needs a weapon that can cut an entire classroom of children in half in a matter of seconds. Personally I'd like to see handguns heavily restricted as well, though I have no hope that will happen anytime soon. Bottom line, we need to do anything and everything we can to ensure that we keep guns out of the wrong hands, and remove them from individuals when the signs point to a need to do so (domestic abusers, for example). Pandora has left the box and we will not anytime soon remove the grim specter of widespread gun violence--but we can save SOME lives with a few simple changes, and it seems ridiculous not to do so with a quickness.
-Environmental Policy. This is closely related to climate change, of course, but pollution is still an issue and we need only look to the air over Shanghai to see how bad things can get in the absence of sensible regulation. I saw a politician (Republican, of course) suggest a while back that the EPA had done their job and could now be disbanded. Ha! We need to expand the EPA, and strictly enforce sensible regulations to preserve our air quality, and the quality (and quantity) of our water as well. Industry is important, yes, but we cannot eat, drink, or breathe money.
-Space Program. I admit bias here because I grew up next door to the Kennedy Space Center, where my Dad worked for most of my youth. But I strongly believe, dollar-for-dollar, no single program in the history of this nation has provided more bang for the buck than NASA. All the amazing space stuff aside, its contributions to air travel and technology in general have been massive. Its efforts towards viewing and measuring the planet and environment have been amazing. And of course mankind is at his best when reaching for the stars--NASA made that a literal notion. Consider that for the entire 50-year history of the manned spaceflight program, we've spent less money than we've spent since 2001 on the Department of Homeland Security and making people take their shoes off at airports. And gotten a hell of a lot more out of it, frankly.
-Military and Foreign Policy. Here I admit weakness. My eyes tend to glaze over when the subject turns to foreign policy. But what I will say is this: I think America does best when we stick to our ideals of justice and democracy, and we do ourselves and the world a disservice when we do things like torture and indefinitely detain people, kill innocent people with terror drones in the sky, kill the kids of people who hate us--or turn kids into people who hate us by killing their parents. ISIS and Muslim extremism is an issue, yes--but I don't believe it's an issue that greatly imperils us here at home apart from scattered incidents (right-wing anti-government terrorism is a much greater domestic threat at present), and I think we only make things worse when we intervene in the Middle East, especially militarily. That's why I support the Iran nuclear deal, because though its opponents don't come right out and say it, the alternative (which they seem to prefer) is war and boots-on-the-ground, and that has not historically gone well for us over there. Backing up a bit, our military spending has long been out of control--every year we literally spend almost as much as the rest of the world put together, and almost 5x as much as #2 (China). I believe it's important that we maintain a strong military, but we need to reassess exactly what that means, especially in the context of modern threats, which are vastly different than what they were even 30 years ago. If we redirected even a tenth of our military budget towards pure science and R&D, perhaps we could instead solve many of the problems that lead to military conflict and extremism in the first place--limited food, limited water, climate disasters, etc. That is the world we should be striving towards, not one of endless warfare.
-Social Issues. Abortion: Should absolutely be legal, and we should also work to make it rare by providing comprehensive sexual education and free contraception, especially among low-income communities.
Same-Sex Marriage: It's about damn time!
Religious Freedom: People should be free to believe whatever they want, but when it comes to forcing those beliefs on others, that is exactly what our Constitution was designed to prevent.
Poverty: We've done much to combat poverty via what amounts to handouts, and that's okay--I certainly don't think that any person, and especially no children, should go hungry in the richest nation on earth. But the real problem in our poverty-stricken areas is a lack of opportunity. It's easy to say those people should just get a job and work themselves out of poverty, but in reality that's often utterly impossible. Many can't even get a decent education, and/or there are no jobs they can reliably get to, or they do manage to get a job but it doesn't offer anywhere near the level of pay or benefits to sustain a decent existence. And we wonder why crime is so prevalent in places like that--what else is there?
Education. Along those lines, I believe education is a public good which should be freely available to all who desire it. Anyone, at any age, should have the opportunity to seek higher education if they wish, and it should be free at public institutions as long as they do the work and pull their weight. We've fallen behind much of the world in math and science among other things, and the result is a populace that often disregards or even defies science, probably because they simply fail to understand it.
Racial Issues. Racism is alive and well in the United States, as indeed everywhere. I don't think we can do much about that, aside from hoping that as the nation continues to integrate and diversify, race will become a non-issue for future generations. But while people may be racist, what we can and must do is ensure that our systems of government are not. We need to ensure that education, law enforcement, and other public services are fully available for minority communities, and of high standards. We need to do everything we can to extend opportunities for education, training, and employment to minority communities, so we can help make sure they don't sequester themselves in isolated conclaves, but fully integrate and become citizens and productive members of society. And obviously we need to clamp down hard on instances of racial inequality and discrimination, and label and prosecute hate crimes as such.
-Minimum Wage. Raise it, and the sooner the better. The federal minimum wage has lagged well behind inflation for some time, and the reality today is that not all (or even most) minimum-wage workers are kids just starting out and working for fun money. Plenty of people are out there trying to support themselves and even a family on minimum-wage jobs, and it's impossible. History has shown the impact of raising the minimum wage on prices is typically small, and the benefits to the economy are great, because we can always count on the lower (and even middle) classes to spend nearly every dollar they receive, which creates a multiplier effect. Whether $15 is the right number, I don't know--seems like it should be dependent on location, really, since $15 in LA is a lot different than $15 somewhere in Iowa. But the bottom line for me is that full-time work should support a reasonable standard of living anywhere in this country, minimum wage included. When a company like Wal-Mart gets away with paying sub-poverty wages (though they have made some welcome advances recently) such that each of their stores creates something like a $1M annual need for government benefits to close the gap--that's a problem.
-Money In Politics. This is the big one for me, because in my view every other issue we face is stymied because of the influence of money on our politics and politicians. Politicians spend waaaaay too much of their time fundraising for their next campaign (and the campaigns of party-mates), and waaaay too much of the money comes from wealthy individuals, companies and other special interests who view those donations as investments on which they damn well expect a return. The SCOTUS' Citizens United decision of 2010 (and a few others since) smashed what little was left of campaign finance regulation, so now the floodgates are open. In the 2012 elections, outside spending totaled just over a billion dollars--in 2008 that number was $338 million. 2016 will probably dwarf even 2012. It is ludicrous to suggest that all that money doesn't have a corrupting influence on our government, at every level. Meanwhile, at the state level we have organizations like ALEC, wherein corporations literally draft their own model legislation, which member legislators (nearly all Republican, of course) take back to their statehouses to get passed. I personally favor the notion of a Constitutional amendment to restrict campaign finance at the federal level, preferably provide a public-finance scheme, and to declare that corporations are not people when it comes to free speech and electioneering. Only if we remove the influence of big money are we likely to see a government more responsive to its constituents than its donors, and solving every other issue on this list depends on that very thing.
Gerrymandering. Okay, consider this one a bonus. The Republican Party, I believe, has backed themselves into quite a corner, at least at the national level. As the success of Donald Trump clearly shows, the GOP is reliant on a base of angry, reactionary, xenophobic, largely racist, almost entirely white voters--and that will no longer work to win the White House in America today. That's why they want to reform the Electoral College system, though thankfully they've had no luck with that so far. But even so, the GOP retains a grip on the legislatures of many states which lean Democratic by popular vote (like my own state of Florida). They do so by gerrymandering: they rope off as many minority voters as they can into a few insanely-shaped districts, so that as many districts as possible remain stacked with red voters. Of the country's 435 Congressional districts, for 2016 337 of them--that's 87%--are considered non-competitive, with another 41 considered pretty secure for one side or the other. That's the only way the GOP maintains their lock on the House, and on state legislatures. Many states (Florida included) are acting to drag their legislators kicking-and-screaming away from gerrymandering. But I'd love to see something at the Federal level to stomp it out, at least for House elections.
So all that said--and whew, if you managed to read all that you are awesome--who do I like for 2016? Should be pretty obvious, since pretty much everything I said is what he says, but my guy is Bernie Sanders. I've been a HUGE fan of his ever since I came to political awareness and heard the things he was saying, which are really the same things he's been saying for his entire 40 years of public service. The man is awesome, authentic, unpolished, truthful, and principled--everything most politicians these days are not. And he not only doesn't rely on huge donations from billionaires and special interests, he disdains them and wants nothing more than to kill that pay-to-play system. And frankly, even if the rest of his ideas end up being non-starters, if he can get into office and just push through a fair politics amendment, I will regard him as a success and a hero. So if you haven't checked him out, I encourage you to do so, and to spread the word. In my view, a vote for anyone else is a vote for the status quo, when big changes are what we sorely need. #FeelTheBern!
Any questions? :)