From an email sent by DFA: http://democracyforamerica.com/
When 87.9% of DFA members endorsed Bernie Sanders, Democracy for America committed to waging a 100% positive campaign focused on the issues in support of Bernie. This commitment to campaigning on the issues includes defending Sen. Sanders against unfair and inaccurate attacks by his opponents.
Unfortunately, over the past few days, the Clinton campaign has launched extremely dishonest attacks against Bernie Sanders on an issue that defines what it means to be a Democrat — universal health care.
In those spurious attacks, the Clinton campaign has completely distorted and misled voters about Bernie’s universal health care plan.
They said Bernie is in favor of “ripping up Obamacare” and that he would “dismantle Medicare” and “send health insurance to the states, turning over your and my health insurance to governors.” The implication is that his plan would somehow mean seniors would lose access to the benefits they get from Medicare, or that right-wing governors would be able to block it from coming into their states.
That’s ridiculous. It’s time to correct the record:
Bernie’s universal health care plan would make access to health care a right for every single American — and no state government would ever be allowed to stop it.
Why are these attacks on Bernie happening now? Because several new polls in the last few days have proven that the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is up for grabs in Iowa and New Hampshire.
If the Clinton campaign manages to win by scaring voters into believing that Bernie’s plan would hurt them, not only would it be bad for Bernie, it would be a crushing blow to the movement for universal health care and the ability of Democrats to advocate for it in the future.
Here’s why the attacks by the Clinton campaign are so dangerous:
Regardless of who wins the presidential primary, Democrats need to hold on to the White House in 2016. This is something that all Democrats agree on because we all know just how much is at stake in this election.
In a contested primary, it makes sense for the candidates to draw contrasts with their opponents on the issues. But there is simply no excuse for the Clinton campaign’s dishonesty about Bernie Sanders’s policies — the same kinds of lies we would expect to hear from Republicans in a general election.
Every single second the Clinton campaign continues engaging in false attacks, they make it more and more difficult to bring the party together and achieve victory for our nominee — whomever that might be — in November.
We need to put an end to this kind of dishonesty in the Democratic presidential primary — and the best way to do it is to prove that campaigns that engage in it don’t win.
Earlier today, Hillary Clinton’s campaign unleashed a series of vicious and coordinated attacks against Bernie’s universal health care plan. They falsely claimed Bernie’s plan would end the Children’s Health Insurance Program, dismantle Medicare and strip millions of people of their coverage.
Here is the truth: Bernie’s plan would guarantee health care as a right for every man, woman, and child, and it would be implemented in every state in the country regardless of who is governor.
We have made tremendous gains in Iowa, but if we lost because Hillary Clinton’s campaign scared voters into thinking Bernie’s plan would cost them their coverage, it could set our vision for universal health care back at least a generation.
I want to close with something important. This campaign isn’t about Bernie Sanders and it isn’t about Hillary Clinton. It’s about the very real issues facing working families across this country. It is a national disgrace that the United States is the only major country in the world that does not offer health care as a right.
We need a president who will fight for the 29 million Americans without health care. That’s what this campaign, and your contribution, is about.
In solidarity,
Jeff Weaver
Campaign Manager
Bernie 2016
Paid for by Bernie 2016
PO Box 905 – Burlington VT 05402 United States – (855) 4-BERNIE
For several reasons is has become relevant for me to elaborate on what my version of global dominion would look like. I do this in an attempt to give the clearest and most concise overview of my political identity without either me or my reader having to know all the relevant academic jargon.
See also: underlore.com/wp-admin/about.php
***I am not asking to be emperor.***
This essay is intended to be a fairly complete if somewhat general overview of my platform so to speak. Sort of a continuation of my Apex post, a kind of “Ok, so what do you suggest?”
I should start by saying that while I do believe a world with me as emperor would be an improvement over the current state, (assuming a peaceful ascension of course,) I don’t for one minute believe I’m the best person Earth has to offer for the job. (Though my girlfriend may very well be, literally.)
In order to determine whether or not a potential emperor is better than another we need to at least partly define the role of emperor in this context.
Obviously it would not be possible for a single human to micromanage every aspect of a functional ethical government. So it becomes rather important to specify what the supplementary government would be like.
To make things relatively simple for myself and my English speaking western readers let’s just say the post of Emperor is a hypothetical fourth branch of the United States government with the power to supersede the other three.
Anything that isn’t an imperial decree is handled as it is being handled now or otherwise according to the usual process in the United States. This would serve two large purposes. Feedback and auto pilot.
For purposes of this hypothetical, what we’re talking about is imperial decree being automatic ratified law. The resulting law (up to an including constitutional amendments) would be processed normally. So in theory if the emperor simply stopped making decrees, he’d stop existing as a legal entity.
Onward!
The goal of my rule would be to encourage a transition to a post-singularity society that may well not need anything like this, or may require a radical rethinking of things. So mine would be an interim government by design and express intent. I’m not building pyramids here.
Imperial merit can be defined based on the principles of the Apex, which are more or less Rule Utilitarian in nature, based on the twin axioms of life and pleasure’s general desirability. Does a given Emperor/platform have a greater net increase in life and pleasure than another? That I leave up to you.
In the longer term I should admit that I saw the ending to The Forbin Project (where an AI takes over earth) as a relatively happy one. We live by laws which we also often call code. What if that code was machine readable? (Much of it already is as machines ability to read existing material expands.) What if we could program a leader AI? Congress and the rest would do their job relevant to its code instead of a body of law. All judges and lawyers would confer with the AI instead of having law books thus making the fields more accessible. Think more jury duty, less law school. More democracy, less republic. Imagine not needing all the lawyers because you could literally ask the law its opinion and then we could choose to change the law or agree to it.
The AI could also point out contradictions and give us extremely useful metadata about law that we just don’t have now, like how many laws there are for example.
Anyway.
Policy Overview and Intent
Firstly let me say that as of now this was written by one man with virtually no help. Where here my wording fails, it would be improved if given any power because I’d enlist aid.
My plans for world improvement can be understood as a fairly interdependent set of policy positions designed to empower and diversify, with the end goal of increasing our odds of survival and our enjoyment of the time granted by that survival.
The zero compromise broad strokes would be as follows:
Immediate mass deployment of nuclear power
Via LFTR reactors and a ban on burning fossil fuels for purposes of grid-level electricity generation. Personal and business use is still permitted. Industrial use must be approved and will be heavily regulated with strong encouragement and aid provided for transitioning to use of the non-fossil power sources. The base load is to be provided entirely by nuclear within 10 years or sooner. (Support Link)
The immediate and permanent open sourcing of all technology and software.
Patents modified to serve mainly as a technical archive and social pride record. Patent protections will extend only to securing your legacy as the inventor. It’s a score board now and a reference manual, little else. It will not be permitted to hide data for reasons of profit. No paywalls. Only privacy protection.
My changes, like any large charges, are going to obviate whole swathes of industry and employment. This must not translate into mass starvation or anything even close. It follows that in order for social organization to have meaning it must supersede everything, and it must benefit all people. What’s the point of a given government if something human sourced is more powerful, and what’s the point of government if it doesn’t do everyone good? The wealth cap prevents the former and a UBI assures the latter.
Immediately extend animal cruelty law.
Fish, reptiles, and simulated brains at or above that complexity count legally as mammals. Preemptively protect artificial life to prevent the torment and murder of artificial minds. (Support Link) Establish that citizenship is contingent on either manifest consciousness, or the genetic predisposition to consciousness. The intent being to protect humans with brain damage as well as software and synthetic life. Consciousness here defined primarily as the ability to experience suffering or pleasure.
Abolish for profit law practice.
I will be extending the full legal system’s protection to everyone regardless of wealth. Really excellent lawyers will just have their pick of clients and everyone can choose to either wait or find another. This should also refocus social attention into areas of reform instead of areas of finance if and when bottlenecks and recurring problems are discovered.
Defense budget immediately splits with NASA.
With a caveat that half NASA’s activity be directed to the establishment of off-world colonies, a space elevator, celestial defense, and generational seed ships. The intent being to prepare for long term one way travel, or local just-in-case backups, should Earth experience an unavoidable extinction level event. Humanity needs a backup and a fire escape.
Pain and death by aging reclassified as illnesses.
The CDC and NIH and all other relevant institutions are directed to respond to them as such. They are to be parsed legally and administratively as curable pandemics and researched and responded to accordingly.
Children right now are legally somewhere between livestock and citizens. This is to end. Children are full citizens. Social adjustments required must apply to all citizens. Think more like “you must be this tall to ride this ride” instead of an arbitrary chronological limit. This would also ensure that adults with the minds of children are treated with all due respect, dignity, and consideration.
Prison is to be replaced with sequestration centers.
These centers will also house other people that need to be kept from humanity for whatever reason. All are to be given full citizen rights except where those rights are likely to harm others, including the right to leave. Self harm is perfectly permissible so long as it or its risk is informed and willful. They are to be livable and humane, possibly by requiring that legislators spend a week there with no special treatment as a condition of reelection. Link 1. Link 2. Link 3. The purpose of these centers is not vengeance but protective isolation either for the occupant, society, or both. This will among other things take care of the logical contradiction of innocent until proven guilty, and incarceration pending trial.
The concept of a felon and probation is to be stricken from legal standing.
Felons are the new slaves quite literally. This ends now. Legally speaking you are either in need of being sequestered or you aren’t. If you aren’t, then you are a full citizen free to live without prejudice. Recidivism is grounds for reevaluation of the criteria for sequestration generally, not an excuse to reduce the rights of a given individual.
All public service is to be recorded and archived for at least five years.
The people will watch the watchmen. Recordings deemed secret for reasons of national security or privacy protection are to be available to all members of congress, SCOTUS justices, the president. These recordings can be made public by executive order, majority ruling, or legislative decree. Privacy protections do not apply to public officials during the course of their duties. Every officer is to wear a body cam while on duty, every proceeding is to be filmed.
End the drug war by legalizing every chemical for informed willful consumption.
Keeping in mind that behaviors are still illegal. One set of law is to be worked out for all drugs, both medical and recreational.
Establish a nationalized food supply.
Baseline food security is to be considered a subset of national security. The government is to stand ready to feed the entire population over which is has authority. And any citizen had the right to demand to be fed sufficient to be healthy. This is to also include a permanent seed and gene bank to avoid the extinction of any existing or potential sources of food.
Legalize medical treatment outside the medical system so long as full disclosure of that outside status is given
We let people climb mountains, so we can let them experiment with treatment. Certified doctors are not permitted to offer certified services outside the system. I will not permit an extortion funded gold rush brain drain.
Restructure the Internet for security and privacy.
It is to be converted into a hard encrypted, anonymous by default, peer to peer model, with a shortwave radio and fiber backbone, nationalized and maintained by the Library of Congress and the NSF.
True and full separation of church and state.
No state recognized religious rituals ever, including marriage. Marriage is to have the same official status as baptism or exorcism. No tax exemptions for churches, and no special dispensations for observance of religious rituals. Yes, I am officially canceling Christmas and all other religious holidays. They can still be celebrated of course but you’re going to have to use up a vacation day for it. If you can’t do a job and maintain your religion at the same time, then you must choose. With a living wage UBI in play there’s no grounds for compromise. You are perfectly able to live as a monk should you so choose.
Race and gender is to be stricken from government policy outside medical contexts.
It is to be given no more official policy status than height or ice cream preference. Human rights mean all humans. Racism or sexism cannot be responses to racism or sexism. Anti-discrimination laws are sufficient. And again, the UBI allows for safe exit of harmful situations. Go be an activist and change what you don’t like.
A public air travel system.
Essentially if you can mail something somewhere you can travel there provided you can pay the fair price for it. Save up if needed. The UBI makes this possible for anyone.
Private companies will no longer be allowed to demand waiver of rights as conditions for services.
No more EULA/TOS evasions of civic liability. If a company doesn’t want to accept the responsibilities, then they can reject the power. Business is a risk. And again, with a living wage UBI in play, there’s no argument for compromise. Business failure here is never going to be personally catastrophic to anyone because the farthest you can ever fall is sequestration and a living wage.
Dual (or more) citizenship is to be honored and encouraged.
It’s petty to force members of other nations to give up their status in those nations simply to be a member of ours as well. We’re a country, not a jealous lover. All the same laws and requirements will still apply. No such thing as diplomatic immunity. That’s why we have telephones and webcams.
The role of the military is to be expanded to include the protection and rescue of citizens during travel.
The nonconsensual intentional infliction of pain, injury, or death shall be prohibited universally outside self defense actions or congressionally authorized acts of war. Tolerance of human rights violations is a human rights violation. My United States would not permit torture or genocide, anywhere. This may mean wars. So be it. Some things are worth fighting for. The military will rescue anyone held for such purposes by foreign governments. Those governments knowing this have full authority to prohibit entry of American citizens, and the right to demand that we facilitate deportation of any of our citizens found to be in local criminal violation.
Citizenship of the United States can be acquired simply by asking, and can never be revoked once granted.
The price of our protection is being subject to our laws forever. Any United States citizen can demand extraction and return to the nearest United States military base or embassy if they fear for their safety.
Establishment of a National Cryonics Archive.
Think Arlington, only for everyone that wants it with cryonic tubes instead of graves.
Immediately ban the replenishment aspects of the meat industry.
They can sell off what they have left, but the refilling of the torture factories ends today. Those industries will receive big oil’s subsidies with a mandate and a 5 year time limit. Scale up and deploy in-vitro meat or change industries. Again, UBI allows no room for excuses.
Firstly, let’s be honest… They could poop in a cup, film said cup for 2 hours in 3d, call it a Star Wars sequel, and it would make every bit as much money.
The movie is completely bland and a blatant ripoff of the previous films. Seriously. The main plot threat is once against a giant ball that destroys planets with a super laser beam.
It’s both sexist and racist imo. The poor black guy is comic relief, and of course wounded into a coma by the end of the movie, and essentially the main character’s emotional and physical punching bag. Seemingly happy to do her bidding at the risk of his own life for no apparent reason.
Of course he’s required to fall in “love” (in true Disney style) with her, and dutifully does.
Her character on the other hand is a blatant and way over the top effort to pander to feminists in a misguided attempt to apologize for slave Leia, despite the fact of course that “slave” Leia literally strangled her oppressor to death with her own chains in what might well be the most powerful and well known feminist uprising scene in all of the fantasy film genre.
Why do I say pandering? Because the main character is like that kid in make believe sessions that cries if you don’t let them be everything and win everything.
She’s the secret important relative, she’s the prettiest one, she’s the center of all attention, she’s the ninja, she’s the brilliant tech, she’s the savvy smuggler scavenger, she’s the super pilot, she’s the most self reliant, she’s the most competent at whatever she’s doing at the time, she’s the purest heart, she’s got the thicket plot armor, she’s the budding force messiah, she’s the most loved, and on and on and on.
Watching her is like watching someone play a lara croft with all the cheat codes turned on. There is zero tension. I’m reminded of a line from lawn mower man… “I am GOD here.”
And then there’s the cameos, which as far as I can tell are Chewy, Han, Leia, and Luke. Chewy is of course interchangeable. He’s completely unchanged. Han is older, and has been turned into a total incompetent and apparently tragic father figure. Leia’s role is wildly boring and can apparently barely move her own mouth muscles anymore presumably due to surgery. And Luke literally says not one word, takes not one step, and doesn’t even change his facial expression.
The entire plot is obvious from the beginning. Plot armor for everyone!
We even have a wise old tiny alien because we all miss Yoda. (Of course female now because boys are awful, am I right?) And a cute little robot that speaks in bleeps and whistles that of course the main character understands. (Making the token black guy comment on this fact like it’s a joke doesn’t make it any better.)
But I did enjoy watching the movie because I saw it in the theater and it was completely beautiful in 3d. If you just tune out the cloned carcass of a plot and think of it like a 2 hour moving painting it’s way way better.
It’s a Starwars toy infomercial funded by Disney, of course the production values are going to be staggering. And they are.
Reposted here because I completely agree and I wish I had written it. Also #FeelTheBern because we need single payer as badly now as we needed it then, and Bernie has ALWAYS been saying so.
Posted on Aug 24, 2009
AP / Bob Child
Protesters, in front of health insurer Aetna’s headquarters, hold signs with the company’s profit for 2007’s first quarter, $434 million. The company would report $27.6 billion in revenue for the year and $31 billion for the following year.
Percentage change since 2002 in average premiums paid to large US health-insurance companies: +87%
Percentage change in the profits of the top ten insurance companies: +428%
Chances that an American bankrupted by medical bills has health insurance: 7 in 10
—Harper’s Index, September 2009
Capitalists, as my friend Father Michael Doyle says, should never be allowed near a health care system. They hold sick children hostage as they force parents to bankrupt themselves in the desperate scramble to pay for medical care. The sick do not have a choice. Medical care is not a consumable good. We can choose to buy a used car or a new car, shop at a boutique or a thrift store, but there is no choice between illness and health. And any debate about health care must acknowledge that the for-profit health care industry is the problem and must be destroyed. This is an industry that hires doctors and analysts to deny care to patients in order to increase profits. It is an industry that causes half of all bankruptcies. And the 20,000 Americans who died last year because they did not receive adequate care condemn these corporations as complicit in murder.
The current health care debate in Congress has nothing to do with death panels or public options or socialized medicine. The real debate, the only one that counts, is how much money our blood-sucking insurance, pharmaceutical and for-profit health services are going to be able to siphon off from new health care legislation. The proposed plans rattling around Congress all ensure that the profits for these corporations will increase and the misery for ordinary Americans will be compounded. The corporate state, enabled by both Democrats and Republicans, is yet again cannibalizing the Treasury. It is yet again pushing Americans, especially the poor and the working class, into levels of despair and rage that will continue to fuel the violent, proto-fascist movements leaping up around the edges of American society. And the traditional watchdogs—those in public office, the press and citizens groups—are as useless as the perfumed fops of another era who busied their days with court intrigue at Versailles. Canada never looked so good.
The Democrats are collaborating with lobbyists for the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry and for-profit health care providers to craft the current health care reform legislation. “Corporate and industry players are inside the tent this time,” says David Merritt, project director at Newt Gingrich’s Center for Health Transformation, “so there is a vacuum on the outside.” And these lobbyists have already killed a viable public option and made sure nothing in the bills will impede their growing profits and capacity for abuse.
“It will basically be a government law that says you have to buy their defective product,” says Dr. David Himmelstein, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a founder of Physicians for a National Health Plan. “Next the government will tell us a Pinto in every garage, a lead-coated toy to every child and melamine-laced puppy chow for every dog.”
“Health insurance is not a race to the top; it is a race to the bottom,” he told me from Cambridge, Mass. “The way you make money is by abusing people. And if a public-option plan is not ready and willing to abuse patients it is stuck with the expensive patients. The premiums will go up until it is noncompetitive. The conditions that have now been set for the plans include a hobbled public option. Under the best-case scenario there will be tens of millions [who] will remain uninsured at the outset, and the number will climb as more and more people are priced out of the insurance market.”
The inclusion of these corporations in the crafting of health care legislation has not stopped figures like Rick Scott, the former head of the Columbia/HCA health care company, from attempting to sabotage any plan. Scott’s company was forced to pay a $1.7 billion fraud settlement—the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history—for stealing hundreds of millions from taxpayers by overbilling for medical care. Scott, who made his money primarily from Medicare, is now saturating the airwaves in a reputed $20 million ad campaign that is stoking the anger and fear of many Americans. His ads are coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the group that masterminded the “Swift boat” attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.
“They are using our money to campaign against us,” Dr. Himmelstein told me. “The money for these commercials came from health care interests that collect fees from American patients. We experienced this before in Massachusetts. We ran a ballot initiative for universal health care in 2000 and the insurance industry spent $5 million on it, including the insurance company I am insured by. They used my premiums to smear an idea that 70 percent in Massachusetts, according to polls, favored before this smear campaign. Universal health care was narrowly defeated.”
The bills now in Congress will, at best, impose on the country the failed model in Massachusetts. That model will demand that Americans buy health insurance from private insurers. There will be some subsidies for the very poor but not for anyone above a modest income. Insurers will be allowed to continue to jack up premiums, including for the elderly. The bankruptcies due to medical bills and swelling premiums will mount along with rising deductibles and co-payments. Health care will be beyond the reach of many families. In Massachusetts one in six people who have mandated insurance still say they cannot afford care, and 30,000 people were evicted from the state program this month because of budget cuts. Expect the same debacle nationwide.
“For someone my age who is making $40,000 a year you are required to lay out $5,000 for an insurance premium for coverage that covers nothing until you have spent $2,000 out of pocket,” Himmelstein said. “You are $7,000 out of pocket before you have any coverage at all. For most people that means you are already bankrupt before you have insurance. If anything, that has made them worse off. Instead of having that $5,000 to cover some of their medical expenses they have laid it out in premiums.”
The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care—$7,129 per capita—although 45.7 million Americans remain without health coverage and millions more are inadequately covered. There are 14,000 Americans a day now losing their health coverage. A report in the journal Health Affairs estimates that, if the system is left unchanged, one of every five dollars spent by Americans in 2017 will go to health coverage. Private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume one-third, 31 percent, of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough, Physicians for a National Health Plan points out, to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans. But the proposed America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3200 in the House) will, rather than cut costs, add an estimated $239 billion over 10 years to the federal deficit. This is very good for the corporations. It is very bad for us.
The lobbyists have, as they did with the obscene bailouts for banks and investment firms, hijacked legislation in order to fleece the citizen. The five largest private health insurers and their trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, spent more than $6 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug maker, spent more than $9 million during the last quarter of 2008 and the first three months of this year. The Washington Post reported that up to 30 members of Congress from both parties who hold key committee memberships have major investments in health care companies totaling between $11 million and $27 million. President Barack Obama’s director of health care policy, who will not discuss single-payer as an option, has served on the boards of several health care corporations.
Obama and the congressional leadership have shut out advocates of single-payer. The press, including papers such as The New York Times, treats single-payer as a fringe movement. The television networks rarely mention it. And yet between 45 and 60 percent of doctors favor single-payer. Between 40 and 62 percent of the American people, including 80 percent of registered Democrats, want universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans. The ability of the corporations to discredit and silence voices that represent at least half of the population is another sad testament to the power of our corporate state.
“We are considering a variety of striking efforts for early in the fall,” Dr. Himmelstein said, “including protests outside state capitals by doctors around the country, video links of conferences in 70 or 80 cities around the country, with protests and potential doctors chaining themselves to the fence of the White House.”
Greed, fraud, dishonesty, and arrogance: these are the words that best describe the reality of Wall Street today.
We can no longer tolerate an economy and a political system that have been rigged by Wall Street to benefit the wealthiest Americans in this country at the expense of everyone else. While President Obama deserves credit for getting this economy back on track after the Wall Street crash, the reality is there is a lot of unfinished business.
That’s why today in New York City I announced my plan for taking on Wall Street. We must break up the banks, end their casino-style gambling, and fundamentally change the approach of the financial industry to focus on helping the American people.
To those on Wall Street, let me be very clear. Greed is not good. In fact, the greed of Wall Street and corporate America is destroying the fabric of our nation. And here is a promise I will make as president: If Wall Street does not end its greed, we will end it for them.
As most people know, in the 1990s and later, financial interests spent billions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions to force through Congress the deregulation of Wall Street, the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, and the weakening of consumer protection laws.
They paid this money to show the American people all that they could do with that freedom. Well, they sure showed the American people. In 2008, the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street nearly destroyed the U.S. and global economy. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes, and their life savings.
Meanwhile, the American middle class continues to disappear, poverty is increasing, and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider by the day. But the American people are catching on. They also know that a handful of people on Wall Street have extraordinary power over the economic and political life of our country.
We must act now to change that. Our goal must be to create a financial system and an economy that works for all Americans, not just a handful of billionaires.
There are eight points to my plan, and I want to go through each of them here because I think it’s important for our campaign to discuss specific policies with our supporters. Some of this may seem a little in the weeds, but I trust our supporters to be able to handle this kind of policy discussion.
Here’s my plan for what I will do with Wall Street when I am president:
Break up huge financial institutions in the first year of my administration. Within the first 100 days of my administration, I will require the Secretary of the Treasury to establish a “Too Big to Fail” list of commercial banks, shadow banks, and insurance companies whose failure would pose a catastrophic risk to the U.S. economy without a taxpayer bailout. Within one year, my administration will break these institutions up so that they no longer pose a grave threat to the economy.
Reinstate a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act to clearly separate traditional banking from risky investment banking and insurance services. It is not enough to tell Wall Street to “cut it out,” propose a few new rules and slap on some fines. Under my administration, financial institutions will no longer be too big to fail or too big to manage. Wall Street cannot continue to be an island unto itself, gambling trillions in risky financial instruments. If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.
End too-big-to-jail. We live in a country today that has an economy that is rigged, a campaign finance system which is corrupt, and a criminal justice system which often does not dispense justice. The average American sees kids being arrested and sometimes even jailed for possessing marijuana. But when it comes to Wall Street executives — some of the most wealthy and powerful people in this country whose illegal behavior hurt millions of Americans — somehow nothing happens to them. No jail time. No police record. No justice.
Not one major Wall Street executive has been prosecuted for causing the near collapse of our entire economy. That will change under my administration. “Equal Justice Under Law” will not just be words engraved on the entrance of the Supreme Court. It will be the standard that applies to Wall Street and all Americans.
Establish a tax on Wall Street to discourage reckless gambling and encourage productive investments in the job-creating economy. We will use the revenue from this tax to make public colleges and universities tuition free. During the financial crisis, the middle class of this country bailed out Wall Street. Now, it’s Wall Street’s turn to help the middle class.
Cap Credit Card Interest Rates and ATM Fees. We have got to stop financial institutions from ripping off the American people by charging sky-high interest rates and outrageous fees. In my view, it is unacceptable that Americans are paying a $4 or $5 fee each time they go to the ATM. And it is unacceptable that millions of Americans are paying credit card interest rates of 20 or 30 percent.
The Bible has a term for this practice. It’s called usury. And in The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for sinners who charged people usurious interest rates. Today, we don’t need the hellfire and the pitchforks, we don’t need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law.
We need to cap interest rates on credit cards and consumer loans at 15 percent. I would also cap ATM fees at $2.
Allow Post Offices to Offer Banking Services. We also need to give Americans affordable banking options. The reality is that, unbelievably, millions of low-income Americans live in communities where there are no normal banking services. Today, if you live in a low-income community and you need to cash a check or get a loan to pay for a car repair or a medical emergency, where do you go? You go to a payday lender who could charge an interest rate of over 300 percent and trap you into a vicious cycle of debt. That is unacceptable.
We need to stop payday lenders from ripping off millions of Americans. Post offices exist in almost every community in our country. One important way to provide decent banking opportunities for low-income communities is to allow the U.S. Postal Service to engage in basic banking services, and that’s what I will fight for.
Reform Credit Rating Agencies. We cannot have a safe and sound financial system if we cannot trust the credit agencies to accurately rate financial products. The only way we can restore that trust is to make sure credit rating agencies cannot make a profit from Wall Street. Under my administration, we will turn for-profit credit rating agencies into non-profit institutions, independent from Wall Street. No longer will Wall Street be able to pick and choose which credit agency will rate their products.
Reform the Federal Reserve. We need to structurally reform the Federal Reserve to make it a more democratic institution responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans, not just the billionaires on Wall Street. It is unacceptable that the Federal Reserve has been hijacked by the very bankers it is in charge of regulating. When Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, the Federal Reserve acted with a fierce sense of urgency to save the financial system. We need the Fed to act with the same boldness to combat the unemployment crisis and fulfill its full employment mandate.
So my message to you is straightforward: I’ll rein in Wall Street’s reckless behavior so they can’t crash our economy again.
Will Wall Street like me? No. Will they begin to play by the rules if I’m president? You better believe it.
No president alone, not Bernie Sanders or anyone else, can effectively address the crises facing the working families of this country without a powerful grassroots movement. When we stand together, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.
