Excerpt from Ralph Nader, Sept 2018
A Democratic Party “Contract with America” should include a $15 per hour federal minimum wage—up from the present frozen $7.25 an hour. It should endorse a Medicare–for-all system that emphasizes preventive care, cost controls on drug companies, and prevention of criminal or immoral overcharging. Serious attention should be paid to saving lives and preventing injuries and diseases. Preventable problems in hospitals are taking at least 5,000 lives per week (see Johns Hopkins May 2016 report).
A Democratic “Contract with America” should commit to what over 85 percent of the American people want—tough law enforcement on corporate crime, fraud, and abuse. Consumers, workers, and small taxpayers would understand such a pledge. Many anxieties, dread, and fear in peoples’ hassled daily lives come from lawless or abusive companies. Taxpayers would relish cracking down on businesses that defraud Medicare, Medicaid, military contracts, and almost always get away with it.
The Contract should include an empowering agenda and also a commitment to democracy — shifting power from the few to the many workers, consumers, and voters.
The Democrats know how to overcome Republican voter suppression and how to make it easier for Americans to band together to defend themselves, through open access to the courts, forming labor unions, consumer cooperatives, and taxpayer watchdog associations.
It is also time to launch a long overdue dedication to major public works and infrastructure projects that will produce millions of good-paying jobs—paid for by restoring corporate and super-rich taxes, along with decreasing the bloated, wasteful military budget that exceeds half of the entire federal government’s operating expenditures.
The Democratic Party should reverse course and tell taxpayers they will oppose all those massive corporate welfare (crony capitalism) subsidies, hand-outs, and bailouts that embody the hypocrisy of so-called corporate capitalists right down to those stadiums and ballparks taxpayers pay for without even getting naming rights!
Democrats, frantically dialing for corporate campaign dollars, have become anemic, fuzzing their campaigns with weak rhetoric and losing so much of the peoples’ trust. They have joined with the Republicans on waging boomeranging wars instead of waging peace and engaging in treaties protecting workers, consumers, and the environment.
The Party requires crisp clarity, repeated again and again in believable ways and means in the coming weeks. So when the words “Democratic Party” are spoken, millions of voters would know what it stands for so they can hold candidates specifically accountable should there be any post-election betrayals.
So, Democratic National Chairman, Tom Perez, where is the Party’s Contract with America? Send him a message at https://www.tomperez.org/contact-1/.
