The 12 Word Platform:
- Medicare For All.
- End the Wars.
- Soak the Rich.
- Jobs for Everyone (slaps face)
It’s not quite JOBS for EVERYONE but, there are 536 job openings …. and there are openings in every state — in fact there is one opening in every single United States Congressional District ….. For candidates committed to The 12 Word Platform.
- 435 Congressional openings
- 100 open Senate Seats
- 1 Presidential opening
With so many Smart, Serious, Worried & Desperate Unemployed people in this country it seems like we should be able to find candidates to fill these positions.
And a plan to help them design their campaigns.
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
Sounds like a winner to me. I’d like to start with our scumbag repug represenative.
Do you know someone in your district who could run? Give them a call!!!
love the platform and the cure! Hooray!
Wow! I like it. Go, kbird, go! You seem inspired.
My bronchitis was cured!! It was apparently “invisible GERD” … acid in my stomach was triggering the whole thing. 8 weeks of misery!! And I guess all the other times I’ve had bronchitis the last couple of years. So now I’m taking one little pill and haven’t coughed or wheezed since.
I feel like my brain and body are working together for the first time in a year!
Please tell me more because I have been going through the same thing. What’s the name of the pill?
First he prescribed AcipHex but, the insurance company won’t cover it. So he switched the prescription to Omeprazole. I think they’re pretty common drugs for GERD. It’s just that I don’t have any obvious symptoms. I had no idea that persistent cough & sinus infections are symptoms.
Here’s the thing — These candidates have no money. They’re unemployed!!! But, they’ve got lots of time for thinking and going door to door talking to voters.
The platform is simple and easy to reproduce — it can be easily printed on 3×5 cards.
What we need are the Cream of the Crop …. The Brilliant Professionals who are quick thinkers.
These candidates will run lean campaigns that are built on the 12 world platform. And conversations with voters.
It can work!
I think I’s said this at corrente too a while back, I personally don’t like “soak the rich” – I think something like “pay your share” would be better at pointing out how the biggest freeloaders are the likes of GE etc.
I’m feeling crabby about the debt ceiling shit so I used the harsher language
🙂
Is there any way to say “Soak the rich” without actually saying “soak the rich”? I doubt that even that dreaded “socialist,” comrade George Soros, would go along with that formulation.
How about a “Back to Ike” tax structure? Hell, even “Back to Reagan” would work for me.
The point being, those were idolized Republican presidents and it would be very hard to argue that supporting the way things were in their day would translate into the triumph of Bolshevism.
So here’s my suggestion: Instead of “Soak the rich” how about “Tax like Ike”?
Also, “End the wars” — what if the wars DO end soon, for budgetary reasons? A platform should be workable beyond our present foolish military adventures.
Okay, a suggested rewrite. First, leave health care out of it for the nonce. Then:
1. Jobs for all
2. No needless wars
3. Tax like Reagan
That scenario would solve our problems, and yet each of those propositions would be difficult even for Republicans to argue with. (Of course, when I say “Tax like Reagan” I don’t mean what he proposed as he left office, but what he dealt with during most of his time in office.)
I left out Jobs for Everyone!! That’s crazy — I need a proof reader!!
I can’t give up on Health Care for Everyone but, I think the platform is simple enough that each candidate could make their own adjustments.
The point (for me) is a clean clear commitment without ambiguity or convenient word fogs.
… better yet: Tax like Eisenhower ….
Tax like Ike sounds good, but then you have to suck it up when someone tells you that JFK lowered the top tax rate and the country still prospered. Reagan had a top tax rate of 50% for everyone making more than $175,000 a year. That would solve our problems.
Here’s another problem solver: Although our official corporate tax rate is quite high compared to other nations, the loopholes mean that many corps pay no taxes at all. Close those loopholes — but allow one big one: A loophole for any company which increases hiring by X amount (we will let the wonks figure out X) in any given year when the unemployment rate is below 7 percent.
That should bring a lot of production back home.
The thing I like about the 12 word platform is that it is a clear outline but, doesn’t limit conversation.
The candidates have to figure out the details as they go door to door talking to voters.
One thing I’m sure of — with all the millions and millions of unemployed people out there — we’ve got 536 people out there to fill those jobs. With people who are on our side.
I don’t see a reason not to take a maximalist position. Let’s ask for more than we can get, eh, instead of pre-negotiating with ourselves for tactical purposes. We need as a baseline to change the discourse. The anodyne “needless war” won’t do that; no administration ever fights a “needless war”; that’s why they have propaganda campaigns and fake WMDs and so forth.
To me, “the wars” mean the wars we’ve got going now, and have had going for the entire teen and adult life-times of a lot of voters: Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya. These are all wars fought on false premises, nobody will explain why we are fighting them except with lies, they are all wars of choice, and the next one is no doubt already teed up. That cycle has to end, and “needless” is a loophole any Versailles weasel could drive a truck through. We can explain that if anybody manages to make it across the Atlantic and the Pacific with an Army, we’ll defend ourselves, and we’ll leave the Canadians to the local police forces along the border.
(See, also, the note below on militarization.)
you are getting into idealistic words that mean nothing.
What’s idealistic or meaningless about “Medicare for All”? Every single one of those points has a policy rationale and a clear program behind it.
I’m glad to see this platform propagating. I’m sure that to all of us it seems simple and reasonable — and every point relies on proven principles. The only one that’s at all iffy in people’s minds is “Jobs for Everyone.” That’s easily remedied by referring back to FDR’s WPA and CCC. The larger policy argument is how do you regulate the economy? For the last thirty years, the neo-liberals have done it by throwing people out of work. That’s barbaric.
* * *
The platform also provides a fine yardstick for how far away Versailles is from what people are thinking about. None of this is even remotely on the table.
I’m still trying to figure out how to convince potential candidates that they can run effective and winning campaigns.
They would be unconventional — based on door-to-door and visits to local meetings. But, at this point there is still time to get going.
It just takes finding the right kind of outgoing, articulate people. With lots and lots of time on their hands.
At some point 535 people have to sit up and say, “If not me? Who?”
And their families have to agree.
One more point: Although #2, “End the wars,” certainly applies to Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, it also (IMNSHO) applies to militarized policies where found, including the “war on terror” but especially the “war on drugs.” Both have been fabulously destructive of our rights as a free people and, not coincidentally, have enriched our enemies.
(nodding)
all good ideas.glad you are better K.B. 🙂
Here’s an incredibly destructive collage of Hillary images. Look at it.
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blpic-hillarycollage.htm
Then think She is experienced. She is hard working. She is committed. She has integrity. She wants universal health care. All the good things we know about her and then let the resonance of this collage come up in your imagination. Even when you are anissue voter, this image does something to you.
Now if you are NOT an issues voter, this image decides everything for you. The image always takes precedence in the mind over words. Unless they are slogans and repetitive.
Now what I want to do is the same thing to Obama. In 08 I saw a zine cover – Newsweek, Time ??? – of O and it was the most evil scary photo of him I ever saw. You just knew looking at it that he was cruel, ruthless,etc.
Now let’s find it and add to it all those chunky fat boy with cigarette images that were released after the election by another Community College student i Hawaii. And don’t forget Affirmative Action is the reason he went to New York and Harvard. And this is one of the reasons that hateful awful Clarence Thomas is against Affirmative Action. Every good program comes back to bite you, doesn’t it?
Now a collage of O to send out virally, globally. To swiftboat him.
http://www.bvblackspin.com/2008/07/03/barack-obama-magazine-covers/ number 29 is the one you want to see:
It is of the back if his head and it says, “Does experience matter?”
I still can’t find the one I want where he looks like an evil druglord, or a ruthless murderer. But I do still have that copy, somewhere i here? I can find it.