End Corporate Influence In Our Politics
With a political campaign finance system that is corrupt and increasingly controlled by billionaires and special interests, we fear that government for the people is beginning to perish in the US and our Constitution is seriously disrespected! During the 2016 campaign cycle, billions of dollars from the wealthiest people in this country flooded the political process. The passing of Citizens United in 2010 is pretty much an offer by the US Supreme Court to corporations directly stating that they can essentially buy out the US Government, the White House, the US Senate, the US House, Governors’ seats, legislatures, and State judicial branches as well. Super PACs are enabling the wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country to contribute unlimited amounts of money to campaigns because of Citizens United. This is one of the biggest corruptions facing our country today and we believe that all people regardless of income can participate in the political process and run for an office without begging for contributions from the wealthy elite. A democracy should be one where candidates can speak to the vast majority of our people.
End The Federal Reserve
Since 1913, the Federal Reserve has taken over our country by being granted full authority to print out our money! The Federal Reserve continues to print our trillions of dollars out of thin air and enslave our people through the devaluing of our currency that makes it harder for us to make a living. Federal Reserve notes paper promises backed by no intrinsic value and the people of this country are forced to use it! The Federal Reserve’s counterfeiting finances the government’s militarization of our police, surveillance over us, and perpetual war for profits! The Environmental Party aims to end this corruption, prosecute all the bankers that have contributed to this corruption, and restore economic prosperity to this country! If Iceland can do it, we can do it too!
We propose the following:
- Break up our nation’s largest banks and financial institutions so that none is “too big to fail.”
- Regulate all financial derivatives, ban any predatory or gambling use of derivatives, and require full transparency for all derivative trades, to control risk of systemic financial collapse.
- Re-enact the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited bank holding companies from owning other financial companies and engaging in risky economic transactions.
- Oppose the federal government being the final guarantor of speculative investments.
- Ensure that low- and middle-income people have access to banking services, affordable loans, and small-business supporting capital, especially through credit unions.
- Oppose disinvestment practices, in which lending and financial institutions move money deposited in local communities out of those same communities, damaging the best interests of their customers and community.
- Support the extension of the Community Reinvestment Act to provide public and timely information on the extent of housing loans, small business loans to minority-owned enterprises, investments in community development projects, and affordable housing.
- Strengthen disclosure laws, anti-redlining laws, and openness on the part of lenders regarding what criteria they use in making lending decisions.
- Oppose arbitrary or discriminatory practices that deny individuals or small business access to credit.
- Support development of charter community development banks, which would be capitalized with public funds and work to meet the credit needs of local communities.
- Support the expansion of co-operative credit unions.
- Prosecute criminal banking speculation.
- Impose a moratorium on foreclosures.
- Make it illegal to charge students tuition in our universities like in Finland. Finland enjoys high quality education without being shackled to student debt.
- Promote competition in currencies and decentralization. Recently, Bitcoin, a crytocurrency, has displayed the huge potential of decentralization by offering a currency alternative that is actually backed up by a community of people who vested interest in its success and is currently the most valuable currency in the world teetering at around $4,296.27 for one Bitcoin as of August 2017. Though we still need to continue to monitor the innovation of cryptocurrencies and their stability in the market, introducing competition to currencies like we do with technology can lead to offering a better alternative for people that has true value and improves their quality of life. Such a technology can be applied to environmental incentives as well.
Reduce Corporate Power
Currently, corporations are designed solely to generate profit and is damaging our country and our planet in countless ways. We must reform the legal design of corporations so that they generate profits, but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, public health, the communities in which the corporation operates. We must influence corporations to serve human and environmental needs through sustainable practices so that our people and the environment can live peacefully.
We need to:
- End corporate influence in the lobbying process.
- Federally charter corporations including strict and enforceable social responsibility requirements.
- Strengthen the civil justice system to ensure that it holds corporations strictly liable for corporate the crimes they commit.
- Empower shareholders to stop abuses by the managers they hire.
- Enforce existing antitrust laws and support even tougher new ones.
- Strengthen oversight of federal antitrust enforcement.
- End the rule allowing American corporations to defer paying federal income taxes on profits of offshore subsidiaries.
- Prevent corporations from avoiding US taxes by claiming to be a foreign company in a tax haven country.
- Eliminate tax breaks for big oil, gas, and coal companies.
- Prevent American companies from avoiding US taxes by corporate inversions.
- Close loopholes that allow US corporations to artificially inflate or accelerate foreign tax credits.
Audit The Government
Many secret government actions violate the separation and limitation of powers as defined in the Constitution. In the name of national security, our government frequently conceals its actions claiming to operate on the people’s behalf. But by acting against our people’s will, the government is in effect denying the people representation. Worse, it carries out these activities with public funds and violates the principle that there should be no taxation without representation.
We can solve this problem by implementing the following:
- Increase the public’s access to information by implementing and expanding the Freedom of Information Act.
- Establish a citizen review board to oversee the process by which the government classifies information, including the Pentagon’s “black budget.”
- Ensure compliance of all open-meeting laws at every level of government for holding public hearings, procedures for informing the people about upcoming government actions, citizens’ rights to discuss these actions, and opportunities to do so.
- Pass legislation banning secret government actions unless the public has explicitly sanctioned the goals in question and include legislation punishes those responsible for unethical covert action in addition to protections for whistleblowers.
- Provide criminal consequences for any government official who conceals or misrepresents information under their jurisdiction from the public.
- Keep all governmental records, including all presidential papers and recordings, in the public domain after an official leaves office.
- Pass legislation removing all secrecy classifications from any governmental document that is ten years old or older.