12 November 2008

Amnesty Blue

Concept

· Environment: Transfer all funds from public welfare system and extraneous government into environmental cleanup. Restrict the amount of land that can be used. Redevelop inner cities. Reward with tax breaks those with few electrical appliances. End frivolous and pointless industries, and force widespread recycling in detail.

· Culture: Localize, Give areas a chance to define their own values and policies and way of life. Localization requires that we reduce federal mandates that cause economic pressure, and disband useless government agencies. The advantage is that local communities handle their own upkeep for the most part.

· Ethnicity: End all discrimination laws in medicine, hiring, housing and government service.

· Crime: Concentrate city areas and make land use more efficient, and deploy more peace officers. Those who commit repeated crimes will be exiled.

· Economics: The economy will serve the State, which serves the Nation, composed of its people. Speculative economics replaced by investment in human capital, agriculture, manufacturing and learning.

Origins

Liberty originates in our belief in the autonomy of the individual. An individual without a world would have no way to even form the concept of caring about anything but itself. So avoiding that extreme we favor a world where the individual would have relatively few experiences of authority, unless it was doing something truly out of line. The nickel and dime stuff in government, chasing down kids with drugs and the like, crushes a system. A sparse and responsive government is better than a comprehensive but sluggish one.

The society is owned, collectively, by the people, and it acts in their interest. Unfortunately most of these are democratic, insuring that the lowest elements of reason prevail.

Green is a fraction of the Earth view on land. Our ground is sacred and it must have upkeep for following generations.

Platform for Jump-Starting democracy

1. Tax cuts for environmental objectives

Closing the chapter of environmental disaster in human history is our first objective. A simple mandate for change will not achieve its goal, as business is an ecosystem unto itself, and must be given a chance to transition gracefully to a new way of doing things, much as it absorbs any new cost or technology. Over time, we will increase taxes while offering large tax cuts for those businesses that achieve environmental objectives; only those businesses which do not produce tangible goods or services, such as pornography and media producers, will remain at the higher tax rate. These tax cuts will be sizable enough to allow businesses to invest most of their income into adapting to environmental requirements, and at the same time, building up infrastructure and becoming more competitive.

The same program will be applied to individuals. Those households which own fewer objects use less power and produce less waste will be given a larger break than those who do. Television use will be a means of measuring a family's excess time and wealth. This will not be used excessively into pressuring individuals into a violent existence, but to encourage limits on the excessive consumption of families as currently seen in the industrialized west.

2. Removal of biased objectives

In all states, we will remove moral regulation with the population. There will be no laws regulating speech, or that punish some for excelling in any field; furthermore, all affirmative action will be abolished. Governments will be prohibited for making suggestions for "progressive" social reform, and will be limited to functional duties and to funding cultural organizations for the upkeep of traditional culture. In public education, independent groups without profit motive will establish what is in textbooks, excluding all propaganda previously emitting from government sources.

Moreover, welfare systems will be replaced with workfare programs, and all shelters for the disadvantaged will be moved away from functional areas of the city and given an institutional nature. All laws which regulate scholarships and hiring outside of strict meritocracy will be banished, and will be replaced by a system of promoting the most able. All anti-discrimination legislation in housing, hiring and education will be stricken from the books to be replaced with meritocracy principles.

3. Autocracy

The authority of the federal government will prevail in matters of international politics and that which is related to it, including the trafficking of dangerous weapons, but otherwise each state must define its own laws and crimes. There will be no interstate police agency not created by the government; all issues of national security will be handled by the department of defense or regal equivalent.

4. Reduction of legal complexity

Law will be written in regards to the need for it to express logical construction, and lawmakers will be encouraged to reduce the amount of law on the books to a few simple principles per topic, or as close as is possible. Clearly corporate logic will never be as simple as legislation regarding homicide, but the proliferation of laws built upon previous laws with no thought of a system of law as whole will end.

5. Populations

In countries of civility, all folk and their offspring will be acknowledged , not discriminated, and no public scorn or retribution against these people will be permitted; they will be allowed to keep whatever wealth they have accrued, and will be treated honorably.

6. Autonomy

Academic and government leaders, elected to cultural centers and religious institutions, which receive funding from government, are administered by the people of their organization. Government cannot withhold funding because it disagrees with the choices of this organization, which will be responsible for creating public media, textbooks and other methods of passing on learning from the past and present. This organization is responsible only to law.

7. Responsible international politics

Respective of fair trade, all lobbyists will withdraw from international politics. Tariffs will be fixed, and no longer a bargaining chip with which one pacifies local industry; high tariffs will be considered correct for every nation. All foreign aid programs will be disbanded if not regulated.

8. All undeveloped land is purchased by government

Any land that is presently undeveloped, or in semi-natural state (open cleared fields), will be purchased by the government at market rates, and preserved as natural space. We have more than enough land for human use. Further, any land for which taxes have not been paid for three years, or which is derelict and empty, becomes property of the government and is preserved as natural space, or used in exchange for land which will become natural space. This will reintroduce money into the cities, and provide for the renovation of rotted inner city slums/ghettos.

9. Tax incentives for inner city development

To further help inner city residents, taxes will be raised in the inner city and large breaks provided for those who develop properties in those areas. This will encourage an end to the large numbers of unused and collapsing buildings, which result in no-mans-land neighborhoods which are too violent for any person to live in.

10. Limiting illicit behavior

Laws forbidding drug use, sodomy and rough personal may be replaced by laws directing people who wish to engage in such behaviors considered culturally acceptable toward specialized areas of each major city, chosen from derelict neighborhoods, where alone such things are permitted.

11. Return to strict meritocracy in hiring and education

All hiring and scholarships and educational admittance policies will return to a strict meritocracy: the most capable candidate is selected, regardless of his or her wealth or advantages.

12. Any area more than 50% concreted must begin planting

Localities will be charged to plant natural space in any area in which more than 50% of the available surface is covered with concrete or asphalt. Tax advantages will be offered to those who are renting or have bought in areas that are less than 50% concrete; higher taxes await those who wish to live on an unending slab of grey.

13. End tax-free status of religious organizations

Religion will be recognized as a business and subject to the same taxes as any other business, with the ability to deduct any public works or environmental actions.

14. bans, blacklists and exile

Banned, upon pain of death, will be: genetically modified foods; dumping of toxic waste; child molestation or possession of child pornography; possession of nerve toxins.