President Shrub
13-06-2005, 13:51
The Reform Party Manifesto
The Unpartisan Party
If you feel that your current party (or political parties in general) are far too partisan, too closed-minded, and simply aren't willing to address the political corruption that allows them to maintain their own control, then the Reform Party is for you. As the Artist Formally Known as Prince once said, "The opposite of Progress is Congress."
It would be unfair to say that we are either "Conservative" or "Liberal", as we advocate some Conservative policies and some Liberal policies. It's not about following whatever the left or the right says, like the average political sheep, but examing the evidence and making intelligent decisions on it. Most politics tend to become polarized in a way that both parties put forth ridiculous ideas, often supported by propaganda and poor reasoning, and the conflicting parties interact in a way that is completely detrimental society. Because you end up with two types of laws: laws put forth by extreme liberals that want big government to run every aspect of your life, and laws put forth by extreme conservatives that want big business to run every aspect of your life. The Reform Party does not fear just "big government" or "big business", but rather, both.
Integral Beliefs:
"Utilitarianism is our foundation." To determine laws, you must simply weigh the evidence. If the benefits of restricting a certain liberty outweigh the benefits outweigh the benefits of maintaining a certain liberty and the negative consequences for maintaining that liberty outweigh the negative consequences of restricting that certain liberty, then that liberty should be restricted. And, on the flip side, if the benefits of maintaining a certain liberty outweigh the benefits of restricting a certain liberty and the negative consequences for restricting that liberty outweigh the negative consequences of maintaining that certain liberty, then that liberty should NOT be restricted.
That might sound confusing, so, to simplify it: Basically, we look at the consequences. What does this law do good and what does it do bad? If it does more bad than good, then obviously we shouldn't enact it. This is the basic utilitarian scale by which all our decisions are measured. Not by our emotions, but by reason.
"Religion is important!" Many liberals have alienated themselves from a large majority by being too secular. It seems that they simply don't recognize the importance of religion or just don't express it. It is scientific fact that regardless of your religion, simply being religious:
-Decreases your chance of committing crime
-Decreases your chance of suicide
-Decreases your chance of drug-use
-Decreases your chance of emotional problems
-Increases your overall physical health
-Increases your amount of friends and the quality of your relationships
"Our government serves the people!" Not Bush's oil companies and not Gore's tobacco companies, but the people. We believe that the people are just as much of a part of the "checks and balances", as any branch of the government and it would destroy democracy to forget that. While we support some pro-business policies, we believe that unless campaign finances are carefully monitored, the government is a "tyrrany by majority", and that tyrrany is those with wealth, whether it's Green Peace hippies, lobbying for ridiculous global warming policies, or Oil barons, lobbying so they can drill through every Wildlife Preserve in America. We also believe that democracy is inherently somewhat "tyranny by majority" in that, although minorities can unite in ways that they might outnumber the apathetic majority, that isn't always the case. There are many minorities with valid concerns that can be and are ignored. So, it's important that, although we don't let this country be ruled by any of the minorities' foolish ideals, we must repeatedly ensure they are giving them the proper regard they deserve.
"We are truly uniters, not dividers!" This is probably the most important of all. As you'll see from our political policies, we do not swing to the left or right, but we are not centrists, either. We're open-minded and willing to accept the ideas of both the right and left as potentially valid, based upon the strength of their reasoning, not on whether they're "left" or "right." Such generalizations are stupid and only hinder progress. Democracy, itself, can only work if we truly try to come together. If either the Democrats or Republicans ran all of Congress or the Lib-Dems, Labour Party, or Conservative Party controlled all of Britain, our countries would be absolute nightmares. Every human being is flawed and so is every political party's ideals. It's why democracy works. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a fool or just trying to get your votes.
Political Policies
Eliminating Soft Money: The amount of campaign finances in recent years have been growing, exponentially. In the '97-'98 campaigns, the Democrats recieved $160 million dollars and the Republicans recieved $285 million dollars. In the '99-'00 campaigns, the Democrats recieved $275 million dollars and the Republicans recieved $466 million dollars. That's about a 60% increase, overall, between just ONE election. Compared to the '93-'94 elections, it about doubled in 7 years.
In case you aren't aware, soft money is unlimited campaign finances that a corporation, or any individual, may gave to a party for "campaign-building", but not for specific politicians. This has been used, in many cases, by both Democrats and Republicans, to illegally support specific candidates.
(According to statements made on the floor of the Senate (http://www.senate.gov/~feingold/speeches/senfloor/cfr.html))
Two out of three Americans think money has an "excessive influence" on elections and government policy, according to Committee for Economic Development’s March 1999 report on campaign finance reform.
Another CED poll question revealed that two-thirds of the public think "their own representative in Congress would listen to the views of outsiders who made large political contributions before a constituent’s views."
74.5 percent of respondents believe the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves, according to a poll from the Center for Policy Attitudes.
78 percent of respondents believe "the current set of laws that control congressional campaign funding needs reform," in a Hotline poll.
Now, if the majority of Americans believe that the government needs to stop taking so much money from corporations, then why hasn't Congress reacted? We are a government of the people, for the people, and by the people! Not of, for, and by the corporations that are friendly with the Democrats and Republicans!
Preventing Corporate Give-a-ways
With what we've seen of the Bush administration's clear favoritism, with Halliburton, it is absolutely essential that this issue be addressed. Vice President Cheney was CEO of Halliburton until 2000, and was still recieving pay from them through the year 2002. When America went to war with Iraq in 2003, they gave Halliburton $18 billion dollar contracts, including a $7 billion dollar "No Bid" contract, where there was not even any competition, for cheaper deals. This was done, supposedly, because they needed a contract rather quickly, but many find that extremely hard to believe.
The Reform Party proposes:
The laws regarding "No Bid" contracts be amended, to provide that none of the officials involved in deciding such contracts may have had substantial business relationships with them in the past (including owning them, or being employed in a high-ranking position by them)
That no politician (with the exception of current politicians), upon retiring, may be employed by a company which, through the politician's legislation or political actions, the company gained in excess of 2 billion dollars.
These are highly-unlikely occurrences, but it's a reasonable adjustment that needs to be made to the law, and it's not strictly directly towards Cheney. The Reform Party has no doubt that a Gore administration would have significantly increased tobacco subsidies as well.
Ending Federal Gun Control: The Reform Party almost completely opposes gun-control. Now, it's understandable why you wouldn't want civilians to own tanks or rocket-launchers, because though people using those would be rare, the results would be catastrophic. However, the two major studies on gun-control, by the U.N. (http://www.uncjin.org/Documents/6comm/4e.pdf) and U.S. Center for Disease Control (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm) concluded that there is no proven relationship between gun-control and crime. Democrats put forth statistics that gun-control decreases crime and Republicans put forth statistics that gun-control increases crime. Both statements, so far, have not been proven to be true. However, because of that, since gun-control's effectiveness is "undetermined", there is no reason why it should be enacted, without evidence.
Democrats put forth philosophical arguments that gun-control is effective, but even those are rather weak. The Reform Party believes that the Social Contract is only valid if both the people and the government have equal opportunity to opt out of it. If a corporation owned all the land you live on and said, "Follow these rules or we'll lock you up, and possibly even kill you", is that a CONTRACT? No. Without armed citizenry, the Social Contract is social extortion.
Stopping Illegal Immigration: Allowing illegal immigrants into our country hurts both our economy and foreign economies. Because it decreases the jobs where we live, putting our citizens out of work by people that don't pay taxes, and it takes citizens out of foreign countries, reducing the amount of taxes that foreign governments can use for social programs. So, it takes jobs away from our citizens, and makes the countries where they come from even worse. That creates an endless cycle, where even more people leave the foreign country, and continue putting unnecessary strains on our economy and theirs. The Reform Party believes that third-world economic healing can only be solved in their countries. While we support foreign aid to establish that, foreign aid will continue to be unsuccessful if illegal immigrants are allowed into our country and the foreign governments' spending of that money is not carefully monitored. For this reason, the Reform Party will take extremely strong steps to prevent illegal immigration, including allowing law-enforcement officials easier access to search warrants and also limiting the amount of immigration into the country, in general.
Fixing Social-Security: Social Security does need to be reformed, of course, in all countries, to some extent. We believe that privatization is not the answer. People who claim to be able to "fix" Social Security by privatizing it cannot explain how taking money out of Social Security will fix the program. Yes, some people could, theoretically, support themselves rather well by investing it in stocks. But that doesn't save the program. Putting Social Security into individual accounts would not save the program, but rather, it would destroy it, just as if you'd cut funding to it, period. And furthermore, even with limited private accounts, there's always going to be winners and losers. It's called Social Security and it isn't very 'secure', if there's the risk that the economy (or just your certain stock) could be in a slump, and you'd be living with a third less retirement money. But rather, we believe that the answer to solving the Social Security problem is as follows:
Stopping illegal immigrants from recieving welfare money out of Social Security funds. Many Democrats may not like this, but it is downright immoral for illegal immigrants to bring their elderly relatives here on temporary visas, claiming that they'll take care of them, and then having their relatives apply for welfare. Although this is a minor issue, it is still an important one that needs to be dealt with, in the long run.
Progressive taxation. The goal of Social Security is to provide a "living wage" for the elderly. Although progressive taxation places a greater burden on the wealthy, we feel that the negative consequence of the elderly living in poverty outweighs the economic inconveniences of the wealthy.
Raising or eliminating the cap on who pays Social Security tax.
Exploring the idea investing Social Security in the stockmarket as a whole. While it's true that individual retirement accounts would be a bad idea, it's also true that the stock market generates a better return than Social Security's current investment in U.S. government bonds. The only real problem with investing Social Security in the stockmarket as a whole is: Which companies? That decision could lead to corruption. However, the Reform Party believes the idea that a standard set of rules (such as distributing Social Security completely evenly throughout all "blue-chip" stocks) would be highly beneficial, both to the economy and also would create a stronger Social Security.
Stopping Global-Warming: Republicans are incorrect to claim global warming is not a problem. Democrats are incorrect to claim that regulation of emissions is the best way to approach it. During a debate over global warming, on C-Span, an atmospheric scientist called their show and explained that the majority of carbon dioxide is put out by natural causes, such as volcanoes, and that even if we revert back to a Stone-Age-type society, without machines at all, within 100 years, we'd only affect global warming by 0.04%. The person advocating de-regulation agreed, and said he'd even seen reports suggesting it was as low 0.02%. However, on the other hand, that is not to say we should necessarily de-regulate, either, because carbon dioxide put out by certain areas not nearby typical places of immense carbon dioxide could still create acid rain, which would be tremendously damaging to the local ecosystem. And regardless, global warming must still be addressed. The Reform Party feels that all laws on regulating emissions strictly for global warming reasons (and not to prevent acid rain or air pollution) should be repealed. However, to answer global warming, continued research must be done and we need to take strong steps to re-build our own nation's forests as well as the world's. These strong steps would include things such as government incentives for lumberers who re-plant a tree for every tree they chop down and regulations on a certain percentage of trees lumberers should be legally required to replace. Internationally, we would take diplomatic and economic steps towards encouraging foreign countries to do the same.
"A flat, but progressive tax-rate": The Reform Party supports the idea of a flat-tax. This would end the financial corruption that allows the rich to continuously dodge taxes, by hiring CPA's to find loopholes. It would also save citizens time and money. However, it would not be a completely flat tax, as, obviously, we want to encourage the growth of a strong middle class and decrease the burden on the middle class. This progressive rate is still open to debate, but it is without a doubt that this "flat, but progressive" tax would favor the poor and middle-class. But regardless, it would remain fair and balanced.
Policies On Education:
Privatization - It is a fact that students of private schools get better grades, have better chances of going to college, and also get higher scores on tests, regardless of the country. As a political columnist once remarked, "Public education thrives on its own failures." The public educational system does poorly and it gets more money. The public educational system continues doing poorly, and it gets even more money. The Reform Party believes that the fundamental reason why privatization of education would be a good idea is because of competition. With privatization of education, children would be faced with organizations competing to give them the best education, instead of a large, government agency, which is an embarassment to the world. Currently, even Cuba outranks the United States in literacy. Privatized education would still be subsidized for those who couldn't afford it, of course, and there would still be government oversight, ethical and curricular standards for education, and subsidies for companies developing education in poor areas. This is a perfect solution, as it reaps the benefits of economic competition, while maintaining the ideal that every child gets an education, in a way that our current public educational system does not provide.
"Children cannot succeed, if they are not given the opportunity to fail." - The Reform Party feels that children and teenagers today are coddled too much, in a way that isn't really beneficial. It's true that, scientifically, positive-reinforcement ("Good job!") usually works better than negative-reinforcement ("Go to the Principal's Office!"). However, the Reform Party sees students' negative behavior being positively enforced. A lot of teenagers, at times, aren't disciplined strongly enough, or they're put in situations where they're disciplined incorrectly, which reinforces the teenagers' perception that "the system" is keeping them down. In colleges, particularly community colleges, as well as the military, this attitude is practically non-existent. And we believe that it's because students at colleges and individuals in the military are challenged and given the opportunity to fail. Simply making students pay for their education and giving them this responsibility is key to students' education. Teachers should also be more involved with their students and school punishments should be raised.
"Students need someone to listen to them!" - High school guidance counseling is a joke. One of the many things that could've prevented many of the school shootings is if these students simply had someone they could talk to. In many cases, school staff make unfair decisions. School guidance counselors should act as a sort of advocate for the student, to make sure they're not being judged unfairly. Many young people have had experiences such as this, where they've been bullied, and even though they were the victim, they were also punished. This cannot be tolerated. There absolutely must be increased funding for and increased staff of school guidance counselors, both as therapists and student advocates.
"Learning how to think comes before learning what to think.": All of the things students learn in school are solely dependent upon two things: Logic and Ethics. And yet, these two basic subjects are not taught in most public school systems. It is no mistake that a large number of people use logical fallacies, continuously. Teaching students logical concepts at a very young age will increase their ability to think rationally, not just improving their education, but improving society as a whole. Philosophical ethics should also be taught, because anyone whose studied them knows that they don't inherently contradict religious ethics. In fact, one of the major founding fathers of philosophical ethics was a Christian: St. Thomas Aquinas. So, it is absolutely necessary that both logic and ethics be taught. Because of the immense, scientifically-proven benefits of religion, there should also be optional Ba'hai, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh Theology classes, to enrich students' minds with not only knowledge, but wisdom.
School Uniforms: According to the Zimbardo Prison Experiment, just simply wearing a uniform changes your perception of reality. In his experiment, college students were split into two groups: prison guards and prisoners. And they were both given uniforms. These were typical, average, American teenagers. When they first entered the mock-prison, they made jokes and thought it was funny. Within a couple weeks, the prison guards were brutally oppressive and the prisoners were psychotic. They ended the experiment early because they were worried someone might get hurt. Afterwards, they showed the teenagers who were prison guards pictures of their behavior and they said, "It's almost like it was a different person", and they weren't really sure why they acted that way. They also apologized, repeatedly, to the other guys for the cruel things they had said and done.
For this reason, it is quite possible that simply giving students uniforms would help to create a "professional" environment that would be conducive to learning. Yes, students should, of course, have the right to express themselves. But an individual does not require blue hair, nose rings, jeans hanging off their ass, or vulgar t-shirts to express themselves. Expressing yourself is done by what you do and say, not by going to Hot Topic or Abercrombie & Fitch, and complaining when someone else buys the same shirt.
Providing Appropriate Defense: Defense is essential to a country. The Reform Party strongly believes in increasing funding for the military's defense-capabilities, pay, benefits, and retirement, as well as substantial increases in expenditures for intelligence agencies. We are a "strong on defense" party. However, we don't support creating nuclear weapons, and we believe that in order for other countries to disarm, we must first show good faith and disarm ourselves. Yes, it would be foolish to say that we should eliminate all of our nuclear weapons, but when we've got more than enough to destroy the entire world, there's no reason for us to make more, and there's certainly no reason for us to make even stronger versions of them. On intelligence, we believe in increased funding, but not increased power without judicial oversight. As Benjamin Franklin said, "He who would sacrifice liberty for security deserves neither." And it is judicial oversight that balances and checks their power, to prevent intelligence agencies from becoming unchallengeable governments in and of themselves. We also feel that there is absolutely no reason why all members of the Legislative Branch (particularly the high-ranking members) should not have full-acess to all intelligence. A politician is not more likely to be a traitor than an intelligence official, and this would be yet another check on the intelligence agencies' power, while not hindering them, whatsoever.
The Economy:
"Economic Stability, Not Superiority" - One thing that both Republicans and Democrats fail to realize is that social welfare and economic growth have always been at odds with eachother. Democrats claim pro-business policies hurt the middle-class, but don't admit that welfare hurts the economy. And Republicans claim that welfare hurts the economy, but don't admit that pro-business policies hurt the middle-class. The Democrats are disproven by "the iron law of wages" and the Republicans are disproven by the fact that the middle-class has dwindled during the United States' 5 years under a Republican President and that there's been very little positive change in the conditions of poverty in foreign countries. The Reform Party recognizes the faults of both Democrats and Republicans. But we believe our goal should be economic stability, not economic superiority. In times when our economy is booming, we should increase social welfare. In times when our economy is in a slump, we should decrease it. This goes along with the sound principles of Keynesian economics that helped bring us out of the Great Depression.
Bring Our Economy To a New Technological Age - In a time of highly-advanced computers, there's no reason for our money to be printed on paper, contributing to both the common cold (which has an effect on the economy) and global warming. We believe that research should be put into developing a new, electronic currency to replace paper money. But it should should only be approved if it's proven, up until that point, to be totally secure. Now, it's completely true that no computer system is ever completely safe. For that reason, it should be required to keep a constant paper trail of transactions, and would extensive security measures to prevent any intrusion. A lot of people are paranoid that it would never be secure, but even paper currencies are never "perfectly" secure, as the con-man, Frank Abagnale Jr, proved. Even counterfeiters today can use older versions of programs like Paintshop Pro and scanners, to generate currency that is identical (or at least identical to the human eye) to the original. It wouldn't be perfect, but no system is. And furthermore, truly, electronic currency poses no more danger to us than credit cards do today. The potential for a thief to hack into a government agency's computer system is even less-likely than hacking into a credit card company's computers, as the government would obviously have even more superior funding and equipment.
In addition, research should also be put forth to see if the possibility of replacing Treasury departments (and the U.S.'s Federal Reserve) could be done through computer programs. Keynesian economics is based upon the principle of raising interest rates to lower spending when the economy is growing too fast, and lowering interest rates to increase spending when the economy is sluggish. Theoretically, a computer system could be designed by both Computer Science experts and Economics, that measures economic growth, in real-time, and makes decisions accordingly, instantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Not only would this significantly decrease government spending in the long-term, but it would eliminate any possible corruption (such as allegations made against the U.S. Federal Reserve).
Stopping Corrupt Charities - The corruption among charities is rarely mentioned, but rampant. (Link) (http://politics.fapfap.org/charities.html) Many individuals have formed corporations disguised as "churches" and "charities", to avoid paying tax, and to rob people who think they're giving to a good cause. Now, it is not the government's job to decide what is and is not a church. If a particular church's clergy decides that its leader should recieve all the funds, so that he can go to Hawaii and have a nice Cadillac, by all means, that's their right and they should not be taxed. However, by no means, should they be allowed to mislead to public. With the threat of global terrorism, terrorists can also use the guise of "churches" to fund terrorism abroad. Because churches aren't required to file with the government, or even keep financial records. For these reason, all churches and charities should be required to tell the public what percentage of their money is going to charity, and how. Charities who refuse to cooperate should lose their tax-exempt status and churches who refuse to cooperate should be heavily fined. And churches, while continuing to remain totally tax-free, should also be required to file with the government and keep accounting records. Many might consider this unreasonable, but we are simply trying to ensure that the people are not mislead. These are ethical practices which these organizations should follow anyway. Many, however, including "churches", are not.
Faith-Based Initiatives - On the other hand, religion is a very, very good thing, and should be encouraged. Churches which are actively involved with their local communities should, without any doubt, also be given financial support. Because, regardless of one's religious beliefs, scientifically-speaking, religion has an extremely positive effect on individuals. Many have said that lots of people have killed in the name of religion, yet they don't realize there economic factors that contributed to such wars. Fascists are known to manipulate religion, to make war. Hitler repeatedly made references to Christianity, and yet we don't say he did what he did for God, but rather, he was an evil man living in a poor society than envied the wealthy Jews. One could look back at World War II and claim that just because Hitler manipulated religion that religion was the cause. But that isn't true. It was the economic condition of the time. The same could be said of the Catholic Church, who wouldn't have attempted the Crusades, whatsoever, if the Muslims had nothing to be plundered. So, it's unfair to attribute so many wars to religion, as economics were the main cause.
Better Sex-Education: Abstinence-only is not the way to go.
According to the Alan Guttenmacher Institute's international studies on contraception, every peso Mexico spent on family-planning services from the Mexican Social Security System (IMSS), between 1972 and 1984, saved the government nine pesos. "Family planning services" were access to and information about contraception. And the money they spent on contraception, saved them 9 times the amount of money they would have spent on the significant number of families with unwanted births. Other countries faced similar benefits. Thailand's family-planning services yielded a ratio of amount saved versus amount spent, from 7 to 1 (16 to 1 over the long-term), Vietnam saved 7.6 dollars for every dollar spent on family-planning, India saved 2.39 rupees for every rupee spent on family-planning, and Egypt's family-planning services yielded a ratio of amount saved versus amount spent, of an incredible 31 to 1. So, not only are family-planning services which provide contraception effective, but they are very economically sound, although clearly moreso in developing countries.
But the issue is really whether or not people will use contraception. In America, they clearly do, regardless of whether the students are taught abstinence-only education or not.
Roughly one-third of all schools teach abstinence-only education, yet 98% of women in childbearing years, 15-44, have used contraception at least once. It's been clarified, that contraception can and does work (as it has worked significantly in other countries). And so, the argument must be that contraception works, but abstinence is "infallible", as contraception has been known, in some instances, to fail (condoms breaking, chemical contraception failing, etc). However, if a third of children are taught abstinence-only (and contraception was not taught until 1983), but 98% have tried contraception at least once, then clearly, abstinence-only is not infallible, either. Abstinence-only education is only "infallible", provided that people don't even attempt contraception or worse, unsafe sex. The claim is that, because birth-control has a 1% or less chance of failure, that abstinence is superior. But with nearly 100% of people taught abstinence-only, still trying contraception, abstinence-only education is, by no means, "infallible", either. Especially since, from 1999 to 2002, the amount of women using contraception during their first sexual experience was almost 80%.
Overall, roughly 66% of schools teach comprehensive sexual education, including both contraception and abstinence, with the other third teaching abstinence-only. Somewhat comparably, roughly 62% of women use contraception. There's no clear evidence that these two statistics are correlated, or whether they're related to their sex education, but it does make it quite poignant, that people do use contraception. And that is the most important factor: how willing people are. Because both abstinence and contraception are means to prevent teenage pregnancies and STDs. The question is not whether or not one is "infallible", but whether or not people will follow them. Two-thirds of people are taught to use contraception and 62% of women do. While one-third of students are taught abstinence only, but only roughly 47% of students have had sex.
According to the CDC's study, of the sexually-active students, roughly 63% had used a condom during their last intercourse, and 17% had tried to use birth-control pills to prevent pregnancy. So, of the students within America, two-thirds are not being taught abstinence-only, but once again, the statistics show that the majority use contraception, regardless of what they're taught. So, because of this clear scientific evidence, we should a comprehensive approach, which doesn't require that contraception be the main focus, but simply that:
#1. Contraception must be mentioned.
#2. The curriculum must not discriminate against anyone based on religion, such as teachers telling Christians that their religious beliefs are wrong, and there's nothing wrong with homosexuality.
#3. The curriculum must not discriminate againt homosexuals, such as outright ignoring homosexuality, except when mentioning AIDS.
#4. It must be based upon facts, such as certain abstinence-only schools which were teaching that condom-users have higher levels of cervical cancer.
Basically, whether or not abstinence should be the main focus or a side-focus should left up to smaller, local governments. But these four principles should be maintained.
Keeping the Drug Companies In-Check: Now, there is no doubt that is lack of regulation that allow many of the miracle drugs that we have today to come about, and we should be very thankful to the drug companies for that. However, there have been many instances where regulation is absolutely necessary. The drug companies have recently been devising a new scheme to sell drugs to people who, frankly, don't need them. This is immoral because doctors are the best ones to advise people on the proper drugs to take, not decieving and persuasive advertisements, marketing such drugs as, "Ambien", which are highly addictive. So, essentially, in some instances, the drug companies have become legal drug-dealers. And this needs to be stopped. People see these commercials, ask the doctors for the drugs or claim to have a certain disease when they don't, and if the doctors refuse, they find another doctor. Under a Reform Party administration, drug commercials would be outright banned.
Furthermore, in the U.S., under the FDA's quick-approval system for "miracle drugs", that save lives for diseases such as cancer and AIDS, the drug-companies have managed to slip in several drugs that were later proven to be ineffective, while people were paying, in some cases, thousands of dollars a month for drugs that had no effect. One U.S. Congressman is currently proposing legislation that doctors and patients both be notified with labels explaining that they're "conditionally-approved", and that the drug-companies have to do various preliminary tests to see if they even work. The Reform Party supports such legislation or any legislation of that nature.
Stop Imposing Tobacco On Foreign Countries: Currently, the U.S. forces many foreign countries to import foreign tobacco against their will. These countries did not wish to do buy American tobacco, because it's damaging to their citizens' health and nicotine is as addictive as heroin. Whenever they protest, we use our economic-muscle to make sure they comply. The Reform Party believes that forcing any country to import an addictive drug is immoral, whether it's tobacco and economic sanctions, or cocaine smuggled through the Mexican border.
"Fighting Prejudice By Talking": The Reform Party strongly believes that the absolute best way to eliminate prejudice is by bringing it out in the open. Many racists and sexists stay that way, because the only 'discussion' going on is in completely separate groups. This division in society is what maintains that prejudice. There was once a story of a black college student studying racism in Maryland. As part of his study, he decided to interview a local KKK leader. The KKK leader reluctantly agreed and they sat down together at a restaurant, talking on several occassions. Well, surprisingly, they became best friends. I call it 'Huck and Jim' syndrome, named after the book, "Huckleberry Finn", where a racist boy simply talked with a black man, and they became close friends. Since that KKK member met the black college student, he has quit the Klan, denounced his ways, and in a recent newspaper article I read, the black man even spent Christmas dinner with his family.
And so, as controversial as it may sound, I propose that there be a publicly-funded forum to talk about all of the issues that no one in the media or the government wants to talk about, because of the political pressure. This is not just to combat racism, but also to help give a new media to the people, where we can actually address the issues no one wants to address. No one would be barred from such a discussion forum for being "racist", but such individuals would be openly invited and treated with respect. The discussion would be completely uncensored, because to censor it would undermine the very basis for creating it. Many might find that troubling, but it is only through raw, pure honesty that we can conquer this problem. Indeed, racism today is swept under the carpet just as sex was swept under the carpet during the 1950's, or Britain's Victorian period.
Universal Healthcare:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
-The Declaration of Independence
The idea of every American being guaranteed life, simply life, is a concept which our society was founded upon. There is absolutely no reason why healthcare should not be provided to every single American. The Reform Party doesn't believe that Americans are inherently lazy, whether they're poor or rich. It's all about motivation. No one really wants to live off on sub-standard healthcare (or no healthcare at all), with the chance that they might get injured or sick, and not be able to help themselves. Two individuals, whom the leader of the Reform Party has known personally, were both injured, even though they had jobs, which both paid very little and offered no healthcare. One of them continued working with a broken arm, and the other had emergency coverage and had a cast, but his doctor told him to check back in a few weeks. He did as the doctor told him to, but as he should've expected, his insurance refused to cover it and stuck him, a man who had a job, but lived in a trailer supporting two children, with the several thousand dollar bill. No, the Reform Party does not believe any American is inherently lazy. They just need the right motivation. Poverty is a motivation, but so is competing with several major corporations.
So, while Universal Healthcare is the answer. We at least need to provide for the "needy." That's an important term that I believe America has forgotten. We don't call them needy anymore.
Limiting Medical Liability: On the other hand, the medical industry is struggling under the incredible weight of malpractice insurance. Many Republicans have made this point quite clear. Really, the major issue with this is that we assume doctors are God-like men that could never make any flaws. Yes, they should have to practice extreme caution. Should they be required to be perfect? No. No human being should have to pay insurance, requiring them to be "perfect." But rather, the law should be made more clear so that medical liability should only be warranted when there's reasonable that the doctor had "reasonable ignorance", which he could've prevented by following standard medical procedure. On the other hand, doctors should also be allowed to be honest with patients, when it comes to whether or not to end life-support. Currently, a doctor almost always states that "there's a chance", but the doctor should be allowed to more fully express his opinion in terms of explaining that the only 'chance' of recovery would contradict what we know of medicine (which has happened before, in extremely rare cases, hence the reason why they always need to say there's a chance of recovery).
Abortion: There is no universal answer to the question, "What is a human life?" People asked that question thousands of years ago and they continue to ask it today. And there's no 'science' that can tell you when something is a human life, either. Sure, appearing conscious. But do we ever know when something else is conscious? Even if you make dividing lines like, "it breathes, has the systems that will develop into a full human being, and has the capacity for pain", and set a specific date and time, that's still arbitrary. What about 5 minutes before that date? Or a day? Or a week? This discredits pro-choice advocates who set an "exact date" for being human. You can't really do that.
But then, with pro-life advocates... Even setting the arbitrary date that something is 'human' after an egg is fertilized, you could apply the philosophy of Xeno's paradox of motion.
Let's say I've got an ovum in a petri dish and I'm holding a syringe full of sperm above it. I squirt out a droplet of sperm and it falls towards the egg. But to reach the egg, it must travel halfway there, a fourth of the way there, an eighth of the way there, a sixteenth of the way there, and so on. Therefore, there are an infinite number of points between the sperm and the egg. So, when is the egg 'fertilized', therefore human?
There are no clear answers to the morality of abortion.
But when it comes to philosophical ethics, which are very appropriate to abide by in this instance, when faced with an ethical dilemma you must always choose the "morally safer course", not the easiest. Because of that, upon first examination, you could deduce that banning abortion is a moral decision. However, if you look at the consequences, banning abortion, while not necessarily ethical, might be ethical or it might not. It completely relies upon the idea that there is a set definition of when life begins which, as already explained, there is no conclusive definition of human life. But you have to look at the "possible" evil and the evil we know will happen from banning abortion.
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1.37 million abortions happen every year. Many of those would be twins, I'm sure. And adding almost 1 and a half million people to our population would absolutely destroy our social programs, including Social Security, unemployment would rise, and the resulting poverty would in turn increase crime, so that in saving "potential" human life, you've guaranteed people to live without jobs, homeless, and that people will steal and murder.
However, another interesting statistic from the Alan Guttmacher Institute is that 47% of abortions are performed on women who have already had one or more abortions. While the Reform Party maintains that women should be free to choose to have abortions and maintain control over their own bodies, it is not unreasonable to refuse abortions to women that repeatedly have unprotected sex, while knowing full well that they'll become pregnant. Such a number or guideline as to how many abortions a woman would have to have to be denied is undecided. It's very difficult to place a number like that, but because a minor regulation on abortion would have little negative effect on the vast majority of Americans, but would decrease a potentially huge amount of immoral acts, it's better that we "take the morally safer course", not the easiest. In the Reform Party, disagreement on this, however, is gladly welcomed.
Homosexual Marriage: The very idea of "separation between church and state" is violated by Judeo-Christian interpretations of the morality of homosexual marriage. Faith-based initiatives, if implemented properly, do not specifically benefit one religion, or any specific religious group. But our perceptions of homosexual marriage clearly blur the lines between fundamentalist Biblical interpretation and law. There little to no evidence supporting the idea that allowing homosexual marriages to occur would "destroy" society, or even the sanctity of marriage. However, it is not necessary to incorporate homosexuals into our current system, because the current system should be abolished as it is.
To our knowledge, it does not say, anywhere, in the Bible, that all marriages must be met with legally-binding financial unions. So far, the Reform Party has done extensive years of research and have been unfortunately unable to find the passage which says, "If ye become married, ye must sharest thou posessions, said the Lord, for yea, a tax-benefit shall be given unto thee." For this reason, there is neither a Christian or a Secular argument against separating marriage from legal unions. In Biblical times, there was no "legal union", other than that the man owned practically everything, including his wife (hence the various passages stating that a woman was "given" to a man in marriage). But that custom had no scriptural basis and living in a more a civilized age today, I'm sure we can all agree that shouldn't be upheld.
Legalizing Marijuana: Marijuana really is not illegal because of any sort of scientific basis anymore, but just politicians' ignorance of past and current scientific studies, and society's taboo on marijuana.
Legally, narcotics are banned. The definition of a narcotic is:
1. An addictive drug, such as opium, that reduces pain, alters mood and behavior, and usually induces sleep or stupor. Natural and synthetic narcotics are used in medicine to control pain.
2. A soothing, numbing agent or thing.
Why that applies to marijuana, but not alcohol or tobacco is absolutely beyond me, especially since tobacco's practically as addictive as heroin.
Wait, I know. Cotton producers buying our politicians. The main reason why marijuana continues to remain illegal is because hemp threatens the cotton producers.
Hemp is:
More durable than cotton.
Requires less land to grow than cotton.
Is cheaper to produce than cotton.
So, even though hemp IS NOT a narcotic and couldn't get a person high if they smoked ten pounds of it, many states continue to keep it illegal, all because they recieve funding from the Cotton producers.
For a look at the oldest scientific studies on marijuana all the way through 1996, take a look here:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/studies.htm
There's also various respectable international government agencies that, through recent scientific evidence, believe marijuana should be decriminalized:
http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3382
Remember, it costs the American taxpayers $23,000 a year (http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=4428) for every non-violent potsmoker in jail.
(...more to add later... go ahead and make any suggestions for additions, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions...)
The Unpartisan Party
If you feel that your current party (or political parties in general) are far too partisan, too closed-minded, and simply aren't willing to address the political corruption that allows them to maintain their own control, then the Reform Party is for you. As the Artist Formally Known as Prince once said, "The opposite of Progress is Congress."
It would be unfair to say that we are either "Conservative" or "Liberal", as we advocate some Conservative policies and some Liberal policies. It's not about following whatever the left or the right says, like the average political sheep, but examing the evidence and making intelligent decisions on it. Most politics tend to become polarized in a way that both parties put forth ridiculous ideas, often supported by propaganda and poor reasoning, and the conflicting parties interact in a way that is completely detrimental society. Because you end up with two types of laws: laws put forth by extreme liberals that want big government to run every aspect of your life, and laws put forth by extreme conservatives that want big business to run every aspect of your life. The Reform Party does not fear just "big government" or "big business", but rather, both.
Integral Beliefs:
"Utilitarianism is our foundation." To determine laws, you must simply weigh the evidence. If the benefits of restricting a certain liberty outweigh the benefits outweigh the benefits of maintaining a certain liberty and the negative consequences for maintaining that liberty outweigh the negative consequences of restricting that certain liberty, then that liberty should be restricted. And, on the flip side, if the benefits of maintaining a certain liberty outweigh the benefits of restricting a certain liberty and the negative consequences for restricting that liberty outweigh the negative consequences of maintaining that certain liberty, then that liberty should NOT be restricted.
That might sound confusing, so, to simplify it: Basically, we look at the consequences. What does this law do good and what does it do bad? If it does more bad than good, then obviously we shouldn't enact it. This is the basic utilitarian scale by which all our decisions are measured. Not by our emotions, but by reason.
"Religion is important!" Many liberals have alienated themselves from a large majority by being too secular. It seems that they simply don't recognize the importance of religion or just don't express it. It is scientific fact that regardless of your religion, simply being religious:
-Decreases your chance of committing crime
-Decreases your chance of suicide
-Decreases your chance of drug-use
-Decreases your chance of emotional problems
-Increases your overall physical health
-Increases your amount of friends and the quality of your relationships
"Our government serves the people!" Not Bush's oil companies and not Gore's tobacco companies, but the people. We believe that the people are just as much of a part of the "checks and balances", as any branch of the government and it would destroy democracy to forget that. While we support some pro-business policies, we believe that unless campaign finances are carefully monitored, the government is a "tyrrany by majority", and that tyrrany is those with wealth, whether it's Green Peace hippies, lobbying for ridiculous global warming policies, or Oil barons, lobbying so they can drill through every Wildlife Preserve in America. We also believe that democracy is inherently somewhat "tyranny by majority" in that, although minorities can unite in ways that they might outnumber the apathetic majority, that isn't always the case. There are many minorities with valid concerns that can be and are ignored. So, it's important that, although we don't let this country be ruled by any of the minorities' foolish ideals, we must repeatedly ensure they are giving them the proper regard they deserve.
"We are truly uniters, not dividers!" This is probably the most important of all. As you'll see from our political policies, we do not swing to the left or right, but we are not centrists, either. We're open-minded and willing to accept the ideas of both the right and left as potentially valid, based upon the strength of their reasoning, not on whether they're "left" or "right." Such generalizations are stupid and only hinder progress. Democracy, itself, can only work if we truly try to come together. If either the Democrats or Republicans ran all of Congress or the Lib-Dems, Labour Party, or Conservative Party controlled all of Britain, our countries would be absolute nightmares. Every human being is flawed and so is every political party's ideals. It's why democracy works. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a fool or just trying to get your votes.
Political Policies
Eliminating Soft Money: The amount of campaign finances in recent years have been growing, exponentially. In the '97-'98 campaigns, the Democrats recieved $160 million dollars and the Republicans recieved $285 million dollars. In the '99-'00 campaigns, the Democrats recieved $275 million dollars and the Republicans recieved $466 million dollars. That's about a 60% increase, overall, between just ONE election. Compared to the '93-'94 elections, it about doubled in 7 years.
In case you aren't aware, soft money is unlimited campaign finances that a corporation, or any individual, may gave to a party for "campaign-building", but not for specific politicians. This has been used, in many cases, by both Democrats and Republicans, to illegally support specific candidates.
(According to statements made on the floor of the Senate (http://www.senate.gov/~feingold/speeches/senfloor/cfr.html))
Two out of three Americans think money has an "excessive influence" on elections and government policy, according to Committee for Economic Development’s March 1999 report on campaign finance reform.
Another CED poll question revealed that two-thirds of the public think "their own representative in Congress would listen to the views of outsiders who made large political contributions before a constituent’s views."
74.5 percent of respondents believe the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves, according to a poll from the Center for Policy Attitudes.
78 percent of respondents believe "the current set of laws that control congressional campaign funding needs reform," in a Hotline poll.
Now, if the majority of Americans believe that the government needs to stop taking so much money from corporations, then why hasn't Congress reacted? We are a government of the people, for the people, and by the people! Not of, for, and by the corporations that are friendly with the Democrats and Republicans!
Preventing Corporate Give-a-ways
With what we've seen of the Bush administration's clear favoritism, with Halliburton, it is absolutely essential that this issue be addressed. Vice President Cheney was CEO of Halliburton until 2000, and was still recieving pay from them through the year 2002. When America went to war with Iraq in 2003, they gave Halliburton $18 billion dollar contracts, including a $7 billion dollar "No Bid" contract, where there was not even any competition, for cheaper deals. This was done, supposedly, because they needed a contract rather quickly, but many find that extremely hard to believe.
The Reform Party proposes:
The laws regarding "No Bid" contracts be amended, to provide that none of the officials involved in deciding such contracts may have had substantial business relationships with them in the past (including owning them, or being employed in a high-ranking position by them)
That no politician (with the exception of current politicians), upon retiring, may be employed by a company which, through the politician's legislation or political actions, the company gained in excess of 2 billion dollars.
These are highly-unlikely occurrences, but it's a reasonable adjustment that needs to be made to the law, and it's not strictly directly towards Cheney. The Reform Party has no doubt that a Gore administration would have significantly increased tobacco subsidies as well.
Ending Federal Gun Control: The Reform Party almost completely opposes gun-control. Now, it's understandable why you wouldn't want civilians to own tanks or rocket-launchers, because though people using those would be rare, the results would be catastrophic. However, the two major studies on gun-control, by the U.N. (http://www.uncjin.org/Documents/6comm/4e.pdf) and U.S. Center for Disease Control (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm) concluded that there is no proven relationship between gun-control and crime. Democrats put forth statistics that gun-control decreases crime and Republicans put forth statistics that gun-control increases crime. Both statements, so far, have not been proven to be true. However, because of that, since gun-control's effectiveness is "undetermined", there is no reason why it should be enacted, without evidence.
Democrats put forth philosophical arguments that gun-control is effective, but even those are rather weak. The Reform Party believes that the Social Contract is only valid if both the people and the government have equal opportunity to opt out of it. If a corporation owned all the land you live on and said, "Follow these rules or we'll lock you up, and possibly even kill you", is that a CONTRACT? No. Without armed citizenry, the Social Contract is social extortion.
Stopping Illegal Immigration: Allowing illegal immigrants into our country hurts both our economy and foreign economies. Because it decreases the jobs where we live, putting our citizens out of work by people that don't pay taxes, and it takes citizens out of foreign countries, reducing the amount of taxes that foreign governments can use for social programs. So, it takes jobs away from our citizens, and makes the countries where they come from even worse. That creates an endless cycle, where even more people leave the foreign country, and continue putting unnecessary strains on our economy and theirs. The Reform Party believes that third-world economic healing can only be solved in their countries. While we support foreign aid to establish that, foreign aid will continue to be unsuccessful if illegal immigrants are allowed into our country and the foreign governments' spending of that money is not carefully monitored. For this reason, the Reform Party will take extremely strong steps to prevent illegal immigration, including allowing law-enforcement officials easier access to search warrants and also limiting the amount of immigration into the country, in general.
Fixing Social-Security: Social Security does need to be reformed, of course, in all countries, to some extent. We believe that privatization is not the answer. People who claim to be able to "fix" Social Security by privatizing it cannot explain how taking money out of Social Security will fix the program. Yes, some people could, theoretically, support themselves rather well by investing it in stocks. But that doesn't save the program. Putting Social Security into individual accounts would not save the program, but rather, it would destroy it, just as if you'd cut funding to it, period. And furthermore, even with limited private accounts, there's always going to be winners and losers. It's called Social Security and it isn't very 'secure', if there's the risk that the economy (or just your certain stock) could be in a slump, and you'd be living with a third less retirement money. But rather, we believe that the answer to solving the Social Security problem is as follows:
Stopping illegal immigrants from recieving welfare money out of Social Security funds. Many Democrats may not like this, but it is downright immoral for illegal immigrants to bring their elderly relatives here on temporary visas, claiming that they'll take care of them, and then having their relatives apply for welfare. Although this is a minor issue, it is still an important one that needs to be dealt with, in the long run.
Progressive taxation. The goal of Social Security is to provide a "living wage" for the elderly. Although progressive taxation places a greater burden on the wealthy, we feel that the negative consequence of the elderly living in poverty outweighs the economic inconveniences of the wealthy.
Raising or eliminating the cap on who pays Social Security tax.
Exploring the idea investing Social Security in the stockmarket as a whole. While it's true that individual retirement accounts would be a bad idea, it's also true that the stock market generates a better return than Social Security's current investment in U.S. government bonds. The only real problem with investing Social Security in the stockmarket as a whole is: Which companies? That decision could lead to corruption. However, the Reform Party believes the idea that a standard set of rules (such as distributing Social Security completely evenly throughout all "blue-chip" stocks) would be highly beneficial, both to the economy and also would create a stronger Social Security.
Stopping Global-Warming: Republicans are incorrect to claim global warming is not a problem. Democrats are incorrect to claim that regulation of emissions is the best way to approach it. During a debate over global warming, on C-Span, an atmospheric scientist called their show and explained that the majority of carbon dioxide is put out by natural causes, such as volcanoes, and that even if we revert back to a Stone-Age-type society, without machines at all, within 100 years, we'd only affect global warming by 0.04%. The person advocating de-regulation agreed, and said he'd even seen reports suggesting it was as low 0.02%. However, on the other hand, that is not to say we should necessarily de-regulate, either, because carbon dioxide put out by certain areas not nearby typical places of immense carbon dioxide could still create acid rain, which would be tremendously damaging to the local ecosystem. And regardless, global warming must still be addressed. The Reform Party feels that all laws on regulating emissions strictly for global warming reasons (and not to prevent acid rain or air pollution) should be repealed. However, to answer global warming, continued research must be done and we need to take strong steps to re-build our own nation's forests as well as the world's. These strong steps would include things such as government incentives for lumberers who re-plant a tree for every tree they chop down and regulations on a certain percentage of trees lumberers should be legally required to replace. Internationally, we would take diplomatic and economic steps towards encouraging foreign countries to do the same.
"A flat, but progressive tax-rate": The Reform Party supports the idea of a flat-tax. This would end the financial corruption that allows the rich to continuously dodge taxes, by hiring CPA's to find loopholes. It would also save citizens time and money. However, it would not be a completely flat tax, as, obviously, we want to encourage the growth of a strong middle class and decrease the burden on the middle class. This progressive rate is still open to debate, but it is without a doubt that this "flat, but progressive" tax would favor the poor and middle-class. But regardless, it would remain fair and balanced.
Policies On Education:
Privatization - It is a fact that students of private schools get better grades, have better chances of going to college, and also get higher scores on tests, regardless of the country. As a political columnist once remarked, "Public education thrives on its own failures." The public educational system does poorly and it gets more money. The public educational system continues doing poorly, and it gets even more money. The Reform Party believes that the fundamental reason why privatization of education would be a good idea is because of competition. With privatization of education, children would be faced with organizations competing to give them the best education, instead of a large, government agency, which is an embarassment to the world. Currently, even Cuba outranks the United States in literacy. Privatized education would still be subsidized for those who couldn't afford it, of course, and there would still be government oversight, ethical and curricular standards for education, and subsidies for companies developing education in poor areas. This is a perfect solution, as it reaps the benefits of economic competition, while maintaining the ideal that every child gets an education, in a way that our current public educational system does not provide.
"Children cannot succeed, if they are not given the opportunity to fail." - The Reform Party feels that children and teenagers today are coddled too much, in a way that isn't really beneficial. It's true that, scientifically, positive-reinforcement ("Good job!") usually works better than negative-reinforcement ("Go to the Principal's Office!"). However, the Reform Party sees students' negative behavior being positively enforced. A lot of teenagers, at times, aren't disciplined strongly enough, or they're put in situations where they're disciplined incorrectly, which reinforces the teenagers' perception that "the system" is keeping them down. In colleges, particularly community colleges, as well as the military, this attitude is practically non-existent. And we believe that it's because students at colleges and individuals in the military are challenged and given the opportunity to fail. Simply making students pay for their education and giving them this responsibility is key to students' education. Teachers should also be more involved with their students and school punishments should be raised.
"Students need someone to listen to them!" - High school guidance counseling is a joke. One of the many things that could've prevented many of the school shootings is if these students simply had someone they could talk to. In many cases, school staff make unfair decisions. School guidance counselors should act as a sort of advocate for the student, to make sure they're not being judged unfairly. Many young people have had experiences such as this, where they've been bullied, and even though they were the victim, they were also punished. This cannot be tolerated. There absolutely must be increased funding for and increased staff of school guidance counselors, both as therapists and student advocates.
"Learning how to think comes before learning what to think.": All of the things students learn in school are solely dependent upon two things: Logic and Ethics. And yet, these two basic subjects are not taught in most public school systems. It is no mistake that a large number of people use logical fallacies, continuously. Teaching students logical concepts at a very young age will increase their ability to think rationally, not just improving their education, but improving society as a whole. Philosophical ethics should also be taught, because anyone whose studied them knows that they don't inherently contradict religious ethics. In fact, one of the major founding fathers of philosophical ethics was a Christian: St. Thomas Aquinas. So, it is absolutely necessary that both logic and ethics be taught. Because of the immense, scientifically-proven benefits of religion, there should also be optional Ba'hai, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh Theology classes, to enrich students' minds with not only knowledge, but wisdom.
School Uniforms: According to the Zimbardo Prison Experiment, just simply wearing a uniform changes your perception of reality. In his experiment, college students were split into two groups: prison guards and prisoners. And they were both given uniforms. These were typical, average, American teenagers. When they first entered the mock-prison, they made jokes and thought it was funny. Within a couple weeks, the prison guards were brutally oppressive and the prisoners were psychotic. They ended the experiment early because they were worried someone might get hurt. Afterwards, they showed the teenagers who were prison guards pictures of their behavior and they said, "It's almost like it was a different person", and they weren't really sure why they acted that way. They also apologized, repeatedly, to the other guys for the cruel things they had said and done.
For this reason, it is quite possible that simply giving students uniforms would help to create a "professional" environment that would be conducive to learning. Yes, students should, of course, have the right to express themselves. But an individual does not require blue hair, nose rings, jeans hanging off their ass, or vulgar t-shirts to express themselves. Expressing yourself is done by what you do and say, not by going to Hot Topic or Abercrombie & Fitch, and complaining when someone else buys the same shirt.
Providing Appropriate Defense: Defense is essential to a country. The Reform Party strongly believes in increasing funding for the military's defense-capabilities, pay, benefits, and retirement, as well as substantial increases in expenditures for intelligence agencies. We are a "strong on defense" party. However, we don't support creating nuclear weapons, and we believe that in order for other countries to disarm, we must first show good faith and disarm ourselves. Yes, it would be foolish to say that we should eliminate all of our nuclear weapons, but when we've got more than enough to destroy the entire world, there's no reason for us to make more, and there's certainly no reason for us to make even stronger versions of them. On intelligence, we believe in increased funding, but not increased power without judicial oversight. As Benjamin Franklin said, "He who would sacrifice liberty for security deserves neither." And it is judicial oversight that balances and checks their power, to prevent intelligence agencies from becoming unchallengeable governments in and of themselves. We also feel that there is absolutely no reason why all members of the Legislative Branch (particularly the high-ranking members) should not have full-acess to all intelligence. A politician is not more likely to be a traitor than an intelligence official, and this would be yet another check on the intelligence agencies' power, while not hindering them, whatsoever.
The Economy:
"Economic Stability, Not Superiority" - One thing that both Republicans and Democrats fail to realize is that social welfare and economic growth have always been at odds with eachother. Democrats claim pro-business policies hurt the middle-class, but don't admit that welfare hurts the economy. And Republicans claim that welfare hurts the economy, but don't admit that pro-business policies hurt the middle-class. The Democrats are disproven by "the iron law of wages" and the Republicans are disproven by the fact that the middle-class has dwindled during the United States' 5 years under a Republican President and that there's been very little positive change in the conditions of poverty in foreign countries. The Reform Party recognizes the faults of both Democrats and Republicans. But we believe our goal should be economic stability, not economic superiority. In times when our economy is booming, we should increase social welfare. In times when our economy is in a slump, we should decrease it. This goes along with the sound principles of Keynesian economics that helped bring us out of the Great Depression.
Bring Our Economy To a New Technological Age - In a time of highly-advanced computers, there's no reason for our money to be printed on paper, contributing to both the common cold (which has an effect on the economy) and global warming. We believe that research should be put into developing a new, electronic currency to replace paper money. But it should should only be approved if it's proven, up until that point, to be totally secure. Now, it's completely true that no computer system is ever completely safe. For that reason, it should be required to keep a constant paper trail of transactions, and would extensive security measures to prevent any intrusion. A lot of people are paranoid that it would never be secure, but even paper currencies are never "perfectly" secure, as the con-man, Frank Abagnale Jr, proved. Even counterfeiters today can use older versions of programs like Paintshop Pro and scanners, to generate currency that is identical (or at least identical to the human eye) to the original. It wouldn't be perfect, but no system is. And furthermore, truly, electronic currency poses no more danger to us than credit cards do today. The potential for a thief to hack into a government agency's computer system is even less-likely than hacking into a credit card company's computers, as the government would obviously have even more superior funding and equipment.
In addition, research should also be put forth to see if the possibility of replacing Treasury departments (and the U.S.'s Federal Reserve) could be done through computer programs. Keynesian economics is based upon the principle of raising interest rates to lower spending when the economy is growing too fast, and lowering interest rates to increase spending when the economy is sluggish. Theoretically, a computer system could be designed by both Computer Science experts and Economics, that measures economic growth, in real-time, and makes decisions accordingly, instantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Not only would this significantly decrease government spending in the long-term, but it would eliminate any possible corruption (such as allegations made against the U.S. Federal Reserve).
Stopping Corrupt Charities - The corruption among charities is rarely mentioned, but rampant. (Link) (http://politics.fapfap.org/charities.html) Many individuals have formed corporations disguised as "churches" and "charities", to avoid paying tax, and to rob people who think they're giving to a good cause. Now, it is not the government's job to decide what is and is not a church. If a particular church's clergy decides that its leader should recieve all the funds, so that he can go to Hawaii and have a nice Cadillac, by all means, that's their right and they should not be taxed. However, by no means, should they be allowed to mislead to public. With the threat of global terrorism, terrorists can also use the guise of "churches" to fund terrorism abroad. Because churches aren't required to file with the government, or even keep financial records. For these reason, all churches and charities should be required to tell the public what percentage of their money is going to charity, and how. Charities who refuse to cooperate should lose their tax-exempt status and churches who refuse to cooperate should be heavily fined. And churches, while continuing to remain totally tax-free, should also be required to file with the government and keep accounting records. Many might consider this unreasonable, but we are simply trying to ensure that the people are not mislead. These are ethical practices which these organizations should follow anyway. Many, however, including "churches", are not.
Faith-Based Initiatives - On the other hand, religion is a very, very good thing, and should be encouraged. Churches which are actively involved with their local communities should, without any doubt, also be given financial support. Because, regardless of one's religious beliefs, scientifically-speaking, religion has an extremely positive effect on individuals. Many have said that lots of people have killed in the name of religion, yet they don't realize there economic factors that contributed to such wars. Fascists are known to manipulate religion, to make war. Hitler repeatedly made references to Christianity, and yet we don't say he did what he did for God, but rather, he was an evil man living in a poor society than envied the wealthy Jews. One could look back at World War II and claim that just because Hitler manipulated religion that religion was the cause. But that isn't true. It was the economic condition of the time. The same could be said of the Catholic Church, who wouldn't have attempted the Crusades, whatsoever, if the Muslims had nothing to be plundered. So, it's unfair to attribute so many wars to religion, as economics were the main cause.
Better Sex-Education: Abstinence-only is not the way to go.
According to the Alan Guttenmacher Institute's international studies on contraception, every peso Mexico spent on family-planning services from the Mexican Social Security System (IMSS), between 1972 and 1984, saved the government nine pesos. "Family planning services" were access to and information about contraception. And the money they spent on contraception, saved them 9 times the amount of money they would have spent on the significant number of families with unwanted births. Other countries faced similar benefits. Thailand's family-planning services yielded a ratio of amount saved versus amount spent, from 7 to 1 (16 to 1 over the long-term), Vietnam saved 7.6 dollars for every dollar spent on family-planning, India saved 2.39 rupees for every rupee spent on family-planning, and Egypt's family-planning services yielded a ratio of amount saved versus amount spent, of an incredible 31 to 1. So, not only are family-planning services which provide contraception effective, but they are very economically sound, although clearly moreso in developing countries.
But the issue is really whether or not people will use contraception. In America, they clearly do, regardless of whether the students are taught abstinence-only education or not.
Roughly one-third of all schools teach abstinence-only education, yet 98% of women in childbearing years, 15-44, have used contraception at least once. It's been clarified, that contraception can and does work (as it has worked significantly in other countries). And so, the argument must be that contraception works, but abstinence is "infallible", as contraception has been known, in some instances, to fail (condoms breaking, chemical contraception failing, etc). However, if a third of children are taught abstinence-only (and contraception was not taught until 1983), but 98% have tried contraception at least once, then clearly, abstinence-only is not infallible, either. Abstinence-only education is only "infallible", provided that people don't even attempt contraception or worse, unsafe sex. The claim is that, because birth-control has a 1% or less chance of failure, that abstinence is superior. But with nearly 100% of people taught abstinence-only, still trying contraception, abstinence-only education is, by no means, "infallible", either. Especially since, from 1999 to 2002, the amount of women using contraception during their first sexual experience was almost 80%.
Overall, roughly 66% of schools teach comprehensive sexual education, including both contraception and abstinence, with the other third teaching abstinence-only. Somewhat comparably, roughly 62% of women use contraception. There's no clear evidence that these two statistics are correlated, or whether they're related to their sex education, but it does make it quite poignant, that people do use contraception. And that is the most important factor: how willing people are. Because both abstinence and contraception are means to prevent teenage pregnancies and STDs. The question is not whether or not one is "infallible", but whether or not people will follow them. Two-thirds of people are taught to use contraception and 62% of women do. While one-third of students are taught abstinence only, but only roughly 47% of students have had sex.
According to the CDC's study, of the sexually-active students, roughly 63% had used a condom during their last intercourse, and 17% had tried to use birth-control pills to prevent pregnancy. So, of the students within America, two-thirds are not being taught abstinence-only, but once again, the statistics show that the majority use contraception, regardless of what they're taught. So, because of this clear scientific evidence, we should a comprehensive approach, which doesn't require that contraception be the main focus, but simply that:
#1. Contraception must be mentioned.
#2. The curriculum must not discriminate against anyone based on religion, such as teachers telling Christians that their religious beliefs are wrong, and there's nothing wrong with homosexuality.
#3. The curriculum must not discriminate againt homosexuals, such as outright ignoring homosexuality, except when mentioning AIDS.
#4. It must be based upon facts, such as certain abstinence-only schools which were teaching that condom-users have higher levels of cervical cancer.
Basically, whether or not abstinence should be the main focus or a side-focus should left up to smaller, local governments. But these four principles should be maintained.
Keeping the Drug Companies In-Check: Now, there is no doubt that is lack of regulation that allow many of the miracle drugs that we have today to come about, and we should be very thankful to the drug companies for that. However, there have been many instances where regulation is absolutely necessary. The drug companies have recently been devising a new scheme to sell drugs to people who, frankly, don't need them. This is immoral because doctors are the best ones to advise people on the proper drugs to take, not decieving and persuasive advertisements, marketing such drugs as, "Ambien", which are highly addictive. So, essentially, in some instances, the drug companies have become legal drug-dealers. And this needs to be stopped. People see these commercials, ask the doctors for the drugs or claim to have a certain disease when they don't, and if the doctors refuse, they find another doctor. Under a Reform Party administration, drug commercials would be outright banned.
Furthermore, in the U.S., under the FDA's quick-approval system for "miracle drugs", that save lives for diseases such as cancer and AIDS, the drug-companies have managed to slip in several drugs that were later proven to be ineffective, while people were paying, in some cases, thousands of dollars a month for drugs that had no effect. One U.S. Congressman is currently proposing legislation that doctors and patients both be notified with labels explaining that they're "conditionally-approved", and that the drug-companies have to do various preliminary tests to see if they even work. The Reform Party supports such legislation or any legislation of that nature.
Stop Imposing Tobacco On Foreign Countries: Currently, the U.S. forces many foreign countries to import foreign tobacco against their will. These countries did not wish to do buy American tobacco, because it's damaging to their citizens' health and nicotine is as addictive as heroin. Whenever they protest, we use our economic-muscle to make sure they comply. The Reform Party believes that forcing any country to import an addictive drug is immoral, whether it's tobacco and economic sanctions, or cocaine smuggled through the Mexican border.
"Fighting Prejudice By Talking": The Reform Party strongly believes that the absolute best way to eliminate prejudice is by bringing it out in the open. Many racists and sexists stay that way, because the only 'discussion' going on is in completely separate groups. This division in society is what maintains that prejudice. There was once a story of a black college student studying racism in Maryland. As part of his study, he decided to interview a local KKK leader. The KKK leader reluctantly agreed and they sat down together at a restaurant, talking on several occassions. Well, surprisingly, they became best friends. I call it 'Huck and Jim' syndrome, named after the book, "Huckleberry Finn", where a racist boy simply talked with a black man, and they became close friends. Since that KKK member met the black college student, he has quit the Klan, denounced his ways, and in a recent newspaper article I read, the black man even spent Christmas dinner with his family.
And so, as controversial as it may sound, I propose that there be a publicly-funded forum to talk about all of the issues that no one in the media or the government wants to talk about, because of the political pressure. This is not just to combat racism, but also to help give a new media to the people, where we can actually address the issues no one wants to address. No one would be barred from such a discussion forum for being "racist", but such individuals would be openly invited and treated with respect. The discussion would be completely uncensored, because to censor it would undermine the very basis for creating it. Many might find that troubling, but it is only through raw, pure honesty that we can conquer this problem. Indeed, racism today is swept under the carpet just as sex was swept under the carpet during the 1950's, or Britain's Victorian period.
Universal Healthcare:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
-The Declaration of Independence
The idea of every American being guaranteed life, simply life, is a concept which our society was founded upon. There is absolutely no reason why healthcare should not be provided to every single American. The Reform Party doesn't believe that Americans are inherently lazy, whether they're poor or rich. It's all about motivation. No one really wants to live off on sub-standard healthcare (or no healthcare at all), with the chance that they might get injured or sick, and not be able to help themselves. Two individuals, whom the leader of the Reform Party has known personally, were both injured, even though they had jobs, which both paid very little and offered no healthcare. One of them continued working with a broken arm, and the other had emergency coverage and had a cast, but his doctor told him to check back in a few weeks. He did as the doctor told him to, but as he should've expected, his insurance refused to cover it and stuck him, a man who had a job, but lived in a trailer supporting two children, with the several thousand dollar bill. No, the Reform Party does not believe any American is inherently lazy. They just need the right motivation. Poverty is a motivation, but so is competing with several major corporations.
So, while Universal Healthcare is the answer. We at least need to provide for the "needy." That's an important term that I believe America has forgotten. We don't call them needy anymore.
Limiting Medical Liability: On the other hand, the medical industry is struggling under the incredible weight of malpractice insurance. Many Republicans have made this point quite clear. Really, the major issue with this is that we assume doctors are God-like men that could never make any flaws. Yes, they should have to practice extreme caution. Should they be required to be perfect? No. No human being should have to pay insurance, requiring them to be "perfect." But rather, the law should be made more clear so that medical liability should only be warranted when there's reasonable that the doctor had "reasonable ignorance", which he could've prevented by following standard medical procedure. On the other hand, doctors should also be allowed to be honest with patients, when it comes to whether or not to end life-support. Currently, a doctor almost always states that "there's a chance", but the doctor should be allowed to more fully express his opinion in terms of explaining that the only 'chance' of recovery would contradict what we know of medicine (which has happened before, in extremely rare cases, hence the reason why they always need to say there's a chance of recovery).
Abortion: There is no universal answer to the question, "What is a human life?" People asked that question thousands of years ago and they continue to ask it today. And there's no 'science' that can tell you when something is a human life, either. Sure, appearing conscious. But do we ever know when something else is conscious? Even if you make dividing lines like, "it breathes, has the systems that will develop into a full human being, and has the capacity for pain", and set a specific date and time, that's still arbitrary. What about 5 minutes before that date? Or a day? Or a week? This discredits pro-choice advocates who set an "exact date" for being human. You can't really do that.
But then, with pro-life advocates... Even setting the arbitrary date that something is 'human' after an egg is fertilized, you could apply the philosophy of Xeno's paradox of motion.
Let's say I've got an ovum in a petri dish and I'm holding a syringe full of sperm above it. I squirt out a droplet of sperm and it falls towards the egg. But to reach the egg, it must travel halfway there, a fourth of the way there, an eighth of the way there, a sixteenth of the way there, and so on. Therefore, there are an infinite number of points between the sperm and the egg. So, when is the egg 'fertilized', therefore human?
There are no clear answers to the morality of abortion.
But when it comes to philosophical ethics, which are very appropriate to abide by in this instance, when faced with an ethical dilemma you must always choose the "morally safer course", not the easiest. Because of that, upon first examination, you could deduce that banning abortion is a moral decision. However, if you look at the consequences, banning abortion, while not necessarily ethical, might be ethical or it might not. It completely relies upon the idea that there is a set definition of when life begins which, as already explained, there is no conclusive definition of human life. But you have to look at the "possible" evil and the evil we know will happen from banning abortion.
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1.37 million abortions happen every year. Many of those would be twins, I'm sure. And adding almost 1 and a half million people to our population would absolutely destroy our social programs, including Social Security, unemployment would rise, and the resulting poverty would in turn increase crime, so that in saving "potential" human life, you've guaranteed people to live without jobs, homeless, and that people will steal and murder.
However, another interesting statistic from the Alan Guttmacher Institute is that 47% of abortions are performed on women who have already had one or more abortions. While the Reform Party maintains that women should be free to choose to have abortions and maintain control over their own bodies, it is not unreasonable to refuse abortions to women that repeatedly have unprotected sex, while knowing full well that they'll become pregnant. Such a number or guideline as to how many abortions a woman would have to have to be denied is undecided. It's very difficult to place a number like that, but because a minor regulation on abortion would have little negative effect on the vast majority of Americans, but would decrease a potentially huge amount of immoral acts, it's better that we "take the morally safer course", not the easiest. In the Reform Party, disagreement on this, however, is gladly welcomed.
Homosexual Marriage: The very idea of "separation between church and state" is violated by Judeo-Christian interpretations of the morality of homosexual marriage. Faith-based initiatives, if implemented properly, do not specifically benefit one religion, or any specific religious group. But our perceptions of homosexual marriage clearly blur the lines between fundamentalist Biblical interpretation and law. There little to no evidence supporting the idea that allowing homosexual marriages to occur would "destroy" society, or even the sanctity of marriage. However, it is not necessary to incorporate homosexuals into our current system, because the current system should be abolished as it is.
To our knowledge, it does not say, anywhere, in the Bible, that all marriages must be met with legally-binding financial unions. So far, the Reform Party has done extensive years of research and have been unfortunately unable to find the passage which says, "If ye become married, ye must sharest thou posessions, said the Lord, for yea, a tax-benefit shall be given unto thee." For this reason, there is neither a Christian or a Secular argument against separating marriage from legal unions. In Biblical times, there was no "legal union", other than that the man owned practically everything, including his wife (hence the various passages stating that a woman was "given" to a man in marriage). But that custom had no scriptural basis and living in a more a civilized age today, I'm sure we can all agree that shouldn't be upheld.
Legalizing Marijuana: Marijuana really is not illegal because of any sort of scientific basis anymore, but just politicians' ignorance of past and current scientific studies, and society's taboo on marijuana.
Legally, narcotics are banned. The definition of a narcotic is:
1. An addictive drug, such as opium, that reduces pain, alters mood and behavior, and usually induces sleep or stupor. Natural and synthetic narcotics are used in medicine to control pain.
2. A soothing, numbing agent or thing.
Why that applies to marijuana, but not alcohol or tobacco is absolutely beyond me, especially since tobacco's practically as addictive as heroin.
Wait, I know. Cotton producers buying our politicians. The main reason why marijuana continues to remain illegal is because hemp threatens the cotton producers.
Hemp is:
More durable than cotton.
Requires less land to grow than cotton.
Is cheaper to produce than cotton.
So, even though hemp IS NOT a narcotic and couldn't get a person high if they smoked ten pounds of it, many states continue to keep it illegal, all because they recieve funding from the Cotton producers.
For a look at the oldest scientific studies on marijuana all the way through 1996, take a look here:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/studies.htm
There's also various respectable international government agencies that, through recent scientific evidence, believe marijuana should be decriminalized:
http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3382
Remember, it costs the American taxpayers $23,000 a year (http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=4428) for every non-violent potsmoker in jail.
(...more to add later... go ahead and make any suggestions for additions, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions...)