The Promise in Policy
The Promise can help us critically and constructively choose what policies to support, can re-energize our leading progressive policy directions, and can guide us toward new policies.
Choosing Policy
Choosing what policies to support may seem complicated. But it starts making sense when we look for a concrete connection between a policy and the values it upholds. Make a habit of browsing the Promise every time you read a news story about a new policy that has been proposed in federal, state, or local government. Beyond the source where you first read about the policy, search the internet or browse newspapers and magazines for more articles. Also search progressive websites like those listed on the Issues & Inspiration page.
Think about whether the proposed policy helps us move along the path of leading progressive policy directions. Think who really benefits if the policy were to go into effect. Does it really promote the common good? Does it promote shared authority, mutual accountability, and respect for individual initiative among all involved? Does it promote a balance of economic and political power among all citizens?
Leading Progressive Policy Directions
The progressive movement has awakened from its forty-year slumber and is brimming with bold, achievable policies to revive the economy and restore democracy. This run-down of leading policy directions is intended as a resource to quickly familiarize yourself with progressive efforts which have reached the national stage and need our advocacy. Write your representatives, speak up when talking with friends and associates, and vote for candidates who pledge to make these efforts part of their plan.
Universal Healthcare Insurance
Americans generally agree that everyone deserves access to good healthcare. Universal access to healthcare helps us all to fulfill our potential, improves productivity, and promotes the common good. And according to economists who actually have the numbers to back up their words, universal healthcare insurance that delivers better care, reduces administrative costs, and is affordable for citizens, the government, and the economy is doable. Economist Paul Krugman notes that a single-payer system expanding on the efficiencies of Medicare is both the most effective and affordable solution and the one most likely to be shot down by political lobbyists of the insurance industry. Fortunately, there are hybrid solutions which are economically sound and politically winnable. These solutions include community rating, subsidies for low-income families, mandated coverage, and public-private competition.
Sustainable Energy, Prosperous Economy
Our nation, in fact our world, faces two serious challenges: a declining economy that is literally running out of gas and a polluted world of catastrophic climate change. Because energy powers everything, oil scarcity is driving all costs up and dragging the whole economy down. But this mutually reinforcing problem also reveals a mutually reinforcing solution. Public investment in energy innovation to reclaim the environment can lift up the whole economy. Progressive candidates and elected officials are supporting the Apollo Alliance's call for "investment in clean energy technology and sustainable infrastructure that would reduce our nation's dependence on fossil fuels and create millions of good jobs in America's clean energy economy".
Fair Pay and Balanced Taxes
New jobs don't help if they don't pay. The question to ask when our federal or local government gives tax breaks to a company that will "create jobs" is: What kind of job, with what kind of pay? Fair pay can be ensured through a federal minimum wage that is a true living wage, through civil service pay that exemplifies the compensation all working people deserve, and through protections for unions to bargain effectively. Tax cuts don't help either if they go to the wealthiest citizens and are paid for by spending cuts eliminating the basic government services that benefit all Americans. The tax rate for corporations and for the wealthy has been on a rollercoaster decline since 1963, and middle class economic security has been declining right along with it. Balanced tax rates must be restored so that all individuals and corporations do their part to invest in America's future.
Sustainable Farming, Healthy Food
Sustainable agriculture encourages production that is environmentally sound, socially equitable, and economically viable, thus providing stewardship of our natural world, promoting a balance of power among citizens, and promoting the common good. Healthy food is grown through sustainable agriculture and receives minimal processing before being sold to the consumer, thus retaining its natural nutritional value and avoiding the harmful health effects of artificial additives. We can promote a shift from corporate farming and processed food to sustainable farming and healthy food through policies that fund the US Food and Drug Administration, support family farms, promote local distribution networks including grocery coops and farmers markets, demand sustainable practice in proportion to each farm's ability to afford it, and protect consumers against unhealthful artificial processing of foods.
Free Press
Freedom of the press helps fulfill our potential through the exchange of information and ideas, and helps maintain transparency and accountability in public and corporate affairs. We need progressive policies in place to promote, in the words of the media reform organization Free Press, "diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications".
Fair Elections
Fair elections fulfill the Constitution's pledge that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged". The goal is for all eligible citizens to vote and all votes to count equally. New state voter ID requirements are not the solution and have been shown to reduce the registration and turnout of legitimate voters, thereby abridging citizens' rights. We can increase voter access through universal registration and voter protections, and we can enhance voter equality through publicly funded elections, a national popular vote, instant runoff voting, proportional voting, and transparent election administration.
Further Policy Directions
The work of democracy is never done. Here are some directions for the future, ideas we can start talking and writing about.
Corporate Governance Reform
Corporations could be a benefit to society and the nation, if they were organized democratically. They could allow citizens to consolidate their labor and capital to accomplish projects together they cannot accomplish individually, just as government and cooperative institutions do. But corporations are not organized democratically. They are organized as oligarchies, and as a result they amass great amounts of labor and capital for the benefit of a few, violating the principle of the common good and upsetting the balance of power among citizens.
Thomas Jefferson, who understood that corporations threaten our democracy, wrote to George Logan in November of 1816, "I hope we shall crush in it's birth the aristicracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
We must defend America against the aristocratic power of corporations. We need a formal democracy of markets just as plainly as we need the formal democracy of governance our founders created through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We need new rules for corporate charters, requiring shared authority and balanced compensation among all emloyees, so that corporations, too, are democracies.
Expanding the Commons and Public Resources
Essential public needs such as basic water, energy, communications, transportation, health and retirement insurance, and education call for public investment and public governance. The corporate market is prone to excess, crisis, and failure. It can offer specialized or value-added services but cannot be relied on as the sole provider of essential services. To promote the common good and the balance of power, these essentials must be ensured by government through direct service (as in the construction of the Interstate Highway System or the operation of Medicare and Social Security) or through policies which empower community cooperatives to provide these services affordably and democratically to all citizens.
Middle East
We need a seachange in Middle East policy. Efforts to eliminate particular organizations like Hamas or Al Qaida have been futile and fail to address the root problem of Middle East violence and conflict. You cannot eliminate a problem by eliminating people. Particular persons or groups are simply representatives of a problem. Eliminate them and the problem remains, and new representatives step forward. Balanced policies which address the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and hold all parties accountable to international law are the long-term answer.
Read essays in Commentary.