Some basic inaugural discussion about goals?

[Chathamization]

10. A few ideas:

Single-payer: States will be able to do this starting in 2017. Vermont has already started with this. I know California and Massachusetts have considered it from time to time.

Free higher education: Like City University some decades ago. There’s recently been movement in some places to make community colleges free, which would be a good starting point.

Climate Change: Needs to be addressed immediately. I think Joe Romm’s suggestions are a good jumping off point.

Infrastructure repair: Roads, bridges, pipes, sewers, and other essential infrastructure that is falling apart all need to be repaired as soon as possible.

Strengthening Social Security: Any shortfall in Social Security could be eliminated by raising the cap. When people talk about cutting Social Security, they’re making the choice to cut the program because they don’t want millionaires to have to have a Social Security tax on all of their incomes like most Americans do.

End poverty in America: Begin by ending child hunger. State that poverty in America exists because we choose to let it exist

End the War on Drugs: legalize safer substances, and treat the addiction to harder substances as a disease, not a crime.

Public public utilities: We can’t allow another Enron to try to manipulate the power supply for profit, or the cable providers to destroy the free internet.

Investment in innovation: acknowledging that the government has been responsible for scientific and economic booms, such as DARPA’s creation of the internet that lead to the tech boom. Acknowledging that these are investments where the payoff may be years off, but is often quite huge.

Then there are some important platforms where there’s an important idea to stand by, but the implementation and details are numerous and more complex:

End Prejudice, discrimination , and segregation: fighting against things like pay inequality, school segregation, suppression of minority votes, supporting things like gay rights and immigrant rights.

Smart and just foreign policy: So we’re not bombing the same people we were arming five minutes ago, or sending attack helicopters for dictators to use on their citizens while chastising other countries for their lack of freedom.

A “smart” government: streamline and modernize the government, give people easy access to things. The IRS should pre-populate tax information and send you information online, people should be able to complete most of the forms they need to online, less duplicate forms needed, information should be easily accessible online, etc.