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-Ã -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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