A calling ...

"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims."

"Make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone."

- Buckminster Fuller

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Draft 22 of UAP Party Platform (Guest Blog: Norman Kurland)

PLATFORM OF THE UNITED AMERICA PARTY
DRAFT #22, APRIL 25, 2014

I. THE PARTY’S PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS AND FUTURE VISION
We are reaching out to all who are searching for and willing to lead a positive and peaceful Second American Revolution to unite all Americans and, by example, unite humanity.

Our agenda is fully consistent with the spirit of the original American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The United America Party derives its vision from the history behind the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence, which reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The Preamble of the Constitution, expressing the role and mission of the state, reads: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
           
The Bill of Rights expressed in the first ten amendments to the Constitution (without which the Constitution would not have been approved by founders such as George Mason) set limits on the power of the Federal Government vis-à-vis the people.

The Party bases its agenda and fundamental principles on the largely ignored Ninth Amendment of the Constitution, which reads: 'The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." This Amendment subordinates the coercive powers of government to the God-given sovereignty, freedom, dignity and “inalienable rights” of each human person. America’s founders devoted their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” to defend this principle. By reviving popular understanding and support for America’s founding principles our Party will bring about a new unity among now divided Americans on the politically suppressed issue of who should own and control the future wealth of our nation.
The commitment of Americans to “property” was best expressed in the Virginia Declaration of Rights authored by George Mason and approved on May 15, 1776 by the Virginia Convention “as the basis and foundation of government.” Section 1 of the Virginia Declaration’s Preamble reads: “That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property [bold added], and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
The question is, why did Thomas Jefferson leave out “property” when revolutionary thinkers like John Locke, Tom Paine, John Adams and many others considered the preservation of private property rights as the highest purpose of government?  Many believe that Jefferson, a slave owner, left out  “property” as an essential founding principle in authoring the Declaration of Independence because he was not prepared politically to address America’s “original sin” — the institution of slavery.  Slavery violated the “unalienable” right of humans to own themselves and other things that can help them become more productive to meet their consumption needs.  Slavery dehumanized humans by treating them as “things” whose bodies and economic productiveness would belong to and be totally controlled by the slave owners, not the victims of slavery.
America’s  Civil War followed by Abraham Lincoln’s promotion of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution ended the legality of the institution of slavery.  Yet the current economic system of America and the world continue to perpetuate a more subtle form of “slavery” (wage slaves, welfare slaves, charity, and consumer debt slaves) that the United America Party seeks to liberate and empower as owners.
The fundamental right of every person to become an owner is reflected in Article 17 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1947 by United Nations, which reads:
·         (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
·         (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
It should be noted sadly that no nation in the world systematically promotes and protects this fundamental human right.
The central feature in the platform of the United America Party is its proposed Capital Homestead Act.  This legislation calls for a comprehensive restructuring of America’s economic policies to grow the economy in ways that create a nation of capital owners, citizens who are independent of big government, big business, and big labor for their economic well-being. This Act is based on the Party’s Just Third Way philosophy. This philosophy embodies a morality, respect for life and human dignity, and sense of the common good that is more just than socialism (which institutionalizes envy) and capitalism (which institutionalizes greed). Because it is based on changing the system for financing future growth to equalize ownership opportunity, Capital Homesteading will lift poor and middle-income Americans, without redistributing existing wealth from today’s tiny ownership elite.

Through the systemic transfer of economic and money power from government to the citizens under a Capital Homestead Act, the Party will attract authentic and responsible leaders to run for offices at all levels. From political independents and frustrated activists of other parties, the United America Party will seek out leaders who are willing to dedicate their lives to serving, teaching, and empowering others.

The United America Party will recreate from the ground-up the political order envisioned by America’s revolutionary founders of "one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all" or, in Abraham Lincoln's terms, "the last best hope of earth.”

We recognize and acknowledge that the principles written in the Constitution require an economic base. The economic system determines the social order, and society cannot attain social justice without a just and democratic economic system. A government of the people must be supported and sustained by a stable and just money system controlled by the people.
As part of a movement respectful of civilization's most humanizing traditions, the Party can help overcome the so-called “clash of civilizations” by bringing out the best of all civilizations in their common understanding of justice as a necessary moral framework for peace, freedom, and democracy. America, by launching for itself the Second American Revolution based on these values, will serve as a model and beacon of hope for every democratic nation seeking a free, just, and life-enhancing future for its citizens.

II. ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
We, in the spirit of America's revolutionary founders, all of whom recognized that concentrated power is inherently corrupting, will promote economic democracy as a key to effective political democracy and freedom through the following:
q  Promote Economic and Social Justice through the Just Third Way
Consistent with traditional principles of social and economic justice, the agenda of the United America Party will build a just market-based model of economic democracy, resting on four policy pillars of the Just Third Way:
1.      Democratize Capital Credit and Ownership of Wealth-Creating, Income-Generating Productive Assets, in order to promote full and sustainable production, a life-enhancing environment, affordable shelter, democratic and transparent corporate governance, and rising property incomes for all. The moral omission of every economy on the globe is the indifference of political leaders to exclusionary barriers faced by ordinary citizens and the poor in gaining effective access to capital ownership and capital credit.
2.      Limit the Economic Power of the State, in order to end special privileges and monopolies, especially discriminatory access by already wealthy people to the money-creation and credit powers of the Federal Reserve System.
3.      Restore Private Property Rights, especially in corporate equity shares, by reversing laws and court decisions that deny capital owners: (a) full voting powers in corporate governance; (b) full transparency over management decisions; and (c) access to full profit distributions. Discriminatory double- and triple-taxation of corporate profits should be ended by full dividend payouts, so that capital incomes will be taxed at the same rates as labor incomes and new capital will be financed by the issuance of new shares to workers and other new owners.
4.      Restore Free Markets and Just Trade as the most democratic means to determine just prices, just wages, and just profits. This would eliminate monopolistic, bureaucratic, or other coercive or unjust attempts to substitute centralized control over economic choices for the more democratic, more objective and more efficient laws of supply and demand.
q  End Wage and Welfare Slavery through Justice-Based Incomes for All
We will reform American income distribution policy to shift from its present reliance on inflationary wages, job-destroying employer benefits, and incomes dependent on redistributing incomes earned by taxpayers. Instead, we will promote income independence for every citizen by accelerating investment in new wealth-creating, income-generating productive assets in ways that widely broaden individual capital accumulations and property incomes while improving ecological conditions for healthier lives and a healthier planet earth.
q  Expand Capital Ownership through Capital Homesteading
We will enable every child, woman and man from birth to set up a personal Capital Homestead Account at a local bank and receive at least $7,000 of Federal Reserve-created, interest-free, and insured capital credit every year throughout their lives to invest their Capital Homestead credit in newly issued corporate growth stock of an expanding private sector, with such credit repayable entirely with future profits derived from the added productiveness of capital assets.
We will reduce Social Security, Medicare and welfare benefits to the extent property incomes from accumulated assets in a citizen’s Capital Homestead Account replace that citizen’s dependency on incomes redistributed from other taxpaying workers and capital owners. This would radically reduce the present value of estimated future deficits for Medicare and Social Security, a mounting burden on future generations now projected at $129 trillion, or a hidden debt of over $400,000 on every child, woman and man in today’s America. (http://www.usdebtclock.org/)
q  Lift Barriers to Universal Access to Money Power and Broad-Based Ownership of Newly-Created Capital Assets
We will reactivate Section 13(2) of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to supply asset-backed currency through the discount windows of each of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks in order to: (a) promote sustainable, non-inflationary regional growth of industry, commerce, and agriculture through Capital Homestead Accounts, (b) de-monopolize the power of money, productive credit and ownership and decentralize that power to every citizen through a local bank as a new right of citizenship, and (c) restore an elastic, asset-backed reserve currency to replace the present currency backed by government debt.  We will amend the Federal Reserve Act to democratize share ownership in each of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks so that ownership rights and governing powers in each region central bank is exclusively shared by each one of its regional citizens.
q  Create a Radically More Simple and Just Tax System
We will control government spending through a national tax system designed to: (a) encourage accelerated rates of investment, sustainable green growth in urban and rural communities, productive jobs, and widespread ownership opportunities; (b) eliminate the double and triple tax on corporate profits and job-destroying Social Security, Medicare, and other payroll taxes; (c) continue to fund all personal entitlements out of general revenues until reduced and eventually exceeded by capital incomes earned through Capital Homestead Account assets; (d) eliminate all individual income taxes below a “living income” exemption of $30,000 per adult and $20,000 per dependent, [or $100,000 for a family of four]; and (e) balance the Federal budget and gradually repay old debt through a single rate personal tax on all personal incomes above the taxpayer’s “living income” exemptions.
We will enable all citizens to report their incomes from all sources on a postal card, while allowing corporations, as with subchapter S corporations, partnerships, and cooperatives, to avoid business income taxes by treating full dividend payouts and other profit-based distributions as business deductions taxable when received at the personal level.
We will provide citizens whose incomes, whether from private charity or other sources, are below the poverty line, with a monthly voucher check to meet their basic subsistence needs until earned income from their Capital Homesteading dividends and labor incomes rise above the poverty level.
q  Avoid Concentrations in Wealth Transfers from One Generation to the Next
We will change inheritance and gift taxes to encourage the top 5 percent of wealth-holders to distribute broadly their capital accumulations from one generation to the next directly or through tax-sheltered Capital Homestead Accounts of individual members of their families, workers, teachers, the poor and disabled, and other citizens with little or no income-producing assets.  Recipients would be subject to a one-time individual income tax on the gift or bequest, applied to the portion of the gift or bequest that brings their personally-held capital accumulations (excluding their primary residence) above $1 million.

III. DOMESTIC AND HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES
We, American Revolutionaries of the 21st Century, stand for the preservation of the following social guidelines:
q  Promote Harmony in the Relationships Between the Moral, Religious and Political Institutions
We will recognize and preserve the historic role of religion in teaching universal moral virtues, deeply rooted in the founding of America as a revolutionary nation. America’s unity, we also reaffirm, was based on the freedom of every person to pursue his own religious and spiritual life within a religiously pluralistic society, with no religious authority put in a position where it could use the coercive powers of the state to infringe on the freedom or spiritual lives of individuals, whether or not they belong to any organized religion.
q  Strengthen the Family as the Basic Social Institution of Society

We will elevate the needs and concerns of the family (the basic social unit of any moral society) and the protection of children to the highest national priorities in order to secure the advance of civilization. In the spirit of family unity, we will seek to eliminate the separation of family members through deportation of those who are not citizens, leaving other family members behind.  Instead, we favor maximizing the opportunities of non-citizens to become citizens.

q  Favor a Culture and Economic System that Promotes Life, Dignity, Security, Property, and Freedom through Justice and Equality of Opportunity for Every Human Being

Our Just Third Way Economic Agenda would eliminate financial reasons for terminating a pregnancy; ending anyone's life due to costly health care for their illness; for depriving people of a quality education; and for limiting and impairing the life of any person. With economic security, society can offer greater care, dignity and security for mothers and their unborn, continuing throughout the lives of all Americans.  By working together to heal the wounds of the past, to provide full equality of social and economic opportunity, citizens will have fulfilled the ultimate promise of America's founders. By uniting, guided by fundamental principles of social and economic justice, Americans can end poverty and social and economic inequalities, and give birth to civilization's first model of a socially and economically free and classless society. Divisive issues of the past can then be settled in the marketplace of moral ideas, based on genuine equality, through the powers of reason and persuasion rather than through the coercive and occasionally oppressive powers of government.
q  Fund and Encourage Educational Choice and Responsibility of Parents
We will offer educational vouchers to all families based on the (measured) educational needs of each child, so that the primary responsibility and adequate resources for exercising choice of schooling resides with parents, not with any monopoly of educational services. Teachers, school administrators and teachers’ unions would thus play a supportive and more empowering role in closing the educational opportunity gap in the American educational system.
q  Enhance Lifetime Learning Opportunities for all Citizens
Since political democracy assumes and requires educated, informed, and independent thinking citizens, we will create a cultural environment that enhances quality learning opportunities for all citizens at all stages of their lives.
q  Support Private Universal Health Insurance and Reduce Costs of Funding New Medical Advances
Re-establish privacy through your own personal health plan rather than through an employer. We will encourage the private sector to offer universal catastrophic health care insurance, reinforced with health care vouchers for health care insurance for those who cannot afford it, and provide Capital Homesteading capital credit to health plan subscribers and health plan providers – the only two groups with a direct stake in quality health care. With access to low-cost capital credit and direct ownership opportunities, these stakeholders would acquire control and would become co-owners of comprehensive and competitive health care delivery systems. A restoration of power to stakeholders would help restore the sacred relationship between patients and their health providers that has been lost in many of today’s Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs). We will condition all taxpayer-supported medical research financing support on royalty-free licensing of all patentable inventions in order to stimulate competition among suppliers and reduce the costs of producing pharmaceuticals and other life-enhancing health technologies.
q  Discourage Judicial Activism that Threatens a Just Constitutional Order
We will encourage the judiciary to return to the original intent of the founders in interpreting and ruling on the U.S. Constitution and discourage judges from making laws that should be left to elected legislators or to the people by referenda.
We will seek rulings from the Supreme Court that restore the original meaning to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments and reinstate the rights and powers of the people under natural law principles that govern right and wrong, which the founders understood and drew upon, as well as under pre-existing English common law. Among the fundamental rights of the people that were supposed to be respected and preserved under the Constitution was universal access to “the means of acquiring and possessing property,” a right which was expressly acknowledged under the Virginia and Massachusetts Declarations of Rights.

IV. GLOBAL AFFAIRS, NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
q  Offer More Creative and Just Approaches to Global Conflict Resolution
We will promote a new global model of a democratic state that promotes and protects freedom of religion and belief for all individuals but which would ban control over the coercive power of the state by any organized religious body.  These rights are guaranteed under the First Amendment of the Constitution which opposes laws “respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” as well as the first two articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) adopted by the United Nations in 1948.  In addition, Article 17 of the UDHR, states that “Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others” and “No one should be arbitrarily deprived of his property.”
Based on Article 17 of the UDHR, the new global model state should not own land and other natural resources.  Instead, every child, woman and man should share an equal, lifetime, non-transferable ownership right and share equally in the profits and governing powers for preserving, extracting and renting economic uses of all of Nature’s resources.
With respect to human-created economic technologies, rentable space, wealth-producing systems and ideas, and infrastructure, each citizen should be guaranteed equality of future ownership opportunities and the monetary and legal means to acquire and earn personal property rights over new and transferred income-producing assets. Economic democracy would thus become the ultimate check on potential abuses of concentrated economic power by any state as well as by those controlling private monopolies of wealth and economic power.
Economic democracy through equally shared ownership opportunities would also neutralize the influence of preachers of hate and violence who recruit economically frustrated persons to enlist as suicide terrorists to use whatever weapons they can acquire to kill millions of innocent citizens. The new model state would thus build unifying cultures and a more just economic foundation for peace, prosperity and freedom in the West Bank/Gaza/Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, poverty-stricken countries in Africa and other unstable countries that breed global terrorists.
q  Lead the World in Restoring A Fixed and More Just Global Standard for Foreign Currency Exchange Rates to Avoid Wage Arbitrage
We will convene a Second Bretton Woods Conference to promote global monetary policies consistent with principles of the Just Third Way, including adoption of a fixed global standard for measuring the value of an elastic and asset-backed global reserve currency (beyond the gold standard, based on the average global cost of producing a kilowatt-hour), while adjusting  currency exchange rates for trade among countries so that they reflect the lowest market labor rates in each country. This will create a more level playing field in tradable goods and services and stem the exploitative outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries and remove pressures for protectionist trade policies that hurt all consumers.
q  Expand Global Markets for Commercial Uses of Advanced U.S. Technologies
We will promote open global markets to enable America to sell to developing countries advanced technologies and high-tech services that enhance civilized life for all, particularly for sustainable food production; environmentally friendly, clean fuel and solar technologies developed by NASA and other government agencies; advanced information, health and agricultural systems; and consulting on Capital Homesteading financing strategies and participatory Justice-Based Management and Governance systems.
q  Help Accelerate Third World Development and Debt Relief
We will export the social technologies of the Second American Revolution and Capital Homesteading to all nations to democratize and accelerate economic growth in developing economies, neutralize and marginalize the preachers and teachers of global terrorism, systematize greater transparency to reduce public corruption, and build sustainable Just Third Way economies from the bottom-up.
We will cancel old debt to developing countries that resulted from non-productive projects or that enriched corrupt political leaders and their cronies at the expense of the people.
q  Address Global Warming and Stewardship of the Global Environment
We will create a ten-year equivalent of the Marshall Plan or the "Race to the Moon" to conduct research, development, and financing of advanced sustainable energy technologies (many of which have already been developed by NASA and other Federal agencies but have not yet been commercialized) that reduce the levels of carbon dioxide and other pollutants from continued use of finite fossil fuels.
We will rapidly reduce America’s dependency on oil and fossil fuels by shifting to renewable sources of energy, so that existing reserves will not be depleted before a “safety cushion” is preserved in the ground to handle future emergencies within an increasingly more fragile and technologically dependent world.

We will seek to design and build technologically and environmentally sound public transportation systems in cities and metropolitan areas currently without them that are convenient and safe for those seeking alternatives to the use of motor vehicles and traditional urban transit systems. This will reduce pollution and motor vehicle accidents, decrease the use of fossil fuels, allow non-drivers access to the advantages of city life, and reduce traffic gridlock.
q  Transform the United Nations and Global Politics to Promote Economic Democracy as a Pre-Condition for Spreading Political Democracy Globally
We will use America's superpower status to bring together a coalition of free and democratic countries unified to support the Just Third Way to transform or replace the United Nations as a global institution for advancing global peace, prosperity and freedom through global economic, social and political justice.
q  Improve National Security by Winning the War on Global Terrorism
We will strengthen and transform the national security policy of America and its coalition partners by launching, unilaterally or preemptively if necessary, a Just Third Way offensive as the leading edge in the war of ideas. To eliminate the breeding grounds for recruiting extremists, religious and other terrorists, this new national security policy would be immediately followed by more effective bottom-up assistance from U.S. and international development agencies for delivering ideas and strategies that encourage higher levels of economic and social justice for toall citizens within poor and underdeveloped countries.
We will limit American military intervention as a last resort in winning the War on Global Terrorism. Instead America should use its superpower military and economic status to lead other nations in advancing global governance bodies and Just Third Way initiatives that promote the dignity and quality of life for all global citizens. We should also supply, unilaterally and preemptively if necessary, all forms of assistance to revolutionary Just Third Way groups struggling to overcome genocidal dictatorships in all countries that harbor terrorists and other threats to global peace.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Norm Kurland, President, Center for Economic and Social Justice
Email: thirdway@cesj.org
Mail: P.O. Box 40711, Washington, D.C. 20016

Phone: (703) 243-5155 | Fax: (703) 243-5935|

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