The Progressive Platform

     I'm reading Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution , where he spends half the book detailing his presidential campaign and the other half writing about his platform. I picked up the book because I wanted to learn more about his values and goals, and the book does a pretty good job. He addresses a series of issues that, as demonstrated by a campaign that gained serious traction and realistically might have been the Democratic Party's best chance at putting a candidate in the Oval Office, concerns a great number of Americans.
     I think it's important to always remember, especially in the aftermath of the election and in light of the turbulence generated by the current administration, that every single politician represents a set of beliefs, mindsets, and ideas. To appreciate and follow through with the hype of the Sanders campaign requires an appreciation of the ideas that he never even got the chance to bring to the national forefront. I could rant about how the Democratic Party blew it and how anybody unhappy with Trump should lob a LOT of shade at the party leadership, but I digress. Instead, I wanted to publish the gist of some of his ideas. Each section is the title of a chapter in his book, but all the bullet points are my summary/understandings of what he writes.
1. Defeating Oligarchy

• End voter suppression laws
• Restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act in its entirety
• Restore the vote for convicted felons (of which there are 6mill+)
• Campaign finance reform
• Overturn Citizens United decision, 1976 Buckley v. Valeo, & 2014 McCutcheon v. FEC
• Pass legislation requiring wealthy individuals and corporations to disclose their donations/political spending

2. The Decline of the American Middle Class

• $15 minimum wage
• Mandate paid family, medical, & sick leave
• Mandate 10 paid vacation days

3. Ending a Rigged Economy

• More severely punishing companies that engage in breaking pay equity laws
• Make it easier for workers to join unions
• Transparency regarding wages (passing a/the Paycheck Fairness Act)
  
• Creating a full-employment economy
• Rebuilding infrastructure
• Combating climate change (making everything energy-efficient)
• Building & updating housing
• Create a universal pre-K & childcare system
• Make high-quality broadband access available to all (the idea that internet is a right vs. a privilege)
• Offer more support for small businesses
• More medical personnel so that no population goes underserved
• Reforming Wall Street
• Breaking up the biggest banks 
• Separating the functions of banks (personal banking vs. investment banking/insurance services) 
• Putting an end to excessive speculation (which is just higher-stakes gambling beyond most people's imagination, from what I understand)
• Credit-agency reform
• Capping interest rates so the consumer doesn't just get bent over and taken for a ride
• Allow post offices to offer banking services (so that everyone can have access to banks)
• Tax reform
• Closing loopholes that allow corporations to pay less in taxes than they're supposed to
• Raising taxes on the wealthiest 2.1% of the population
• Making a progressive estate tax to reduce enduring wealth inequity
• Limit tax deductions for the wealthiest to 24 cents on the dollar
• Tax capital gains & corporate stock dividends just like they are normal income

4. Health Care for All
5. Making Higher Education Affordable
6. Combating Climate Change
7. Real Criminal Justice Reform
8. Immigration Reform Now
9. Protecting Our Most Vulnerable

• Particularly: seniors, vets, the disabled, and Natives

10. Corporate Media and the Threat to Our Democracy

• What we think is really influenced by what's broadcasted to us, and currently just 6 corporations control the majority of the communications that reach us. So, while I definitely wouldn't go so far as to say we're getting brainwashed, there's definitely just a small number of people that can and do filter the things that we are exposed to. This is a threat to democracy because they can create any narrative they want to (or freeze out a guy that would've been the people's president)

     If you couldn't tell, I haven't read through the entire book, but the largest chapter (by far) is chapter 3. After that, every chapter just gets shorter and shorter. However, I covered a good deal of the things he writes on. Reason I wrote this post is so that more folks can get a good read on what drove his campaign. These are the issues he campaigned on, the same ones that drove what I think most of us would consider a "no-name" Senator almost all the way to the White House (except for fact that the Democratic establishment screwed him). So if you see these ideas and they resonate with you, remember that, as a result of his campaign, more and more folks are beginning to run with these issues in mind. & that you can start voting into office politicians who will give you their ear and address your concerns, as opposed to twiddling their thumbs and engaging in the fucking farce that currently dominates the landscape of American government.

Are Millenials THAT Bad?

     It's interesting that in the present day, we have so many digital platforms available to broadcast who we are - Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and all other social media. Thinking about the ways we put ourselves out there also got me thinking about what, exactly, we put out there. & although you'll find plenty of people who would tell you that millennials are selfish, entitled, and lazy, I don't think that's really the case.
     I'm not really sure how to measure these things, otherwise I would have just done a few quick searches, something like "selfish rate" for 1987, 1997, 2007, and 2017. In my mind, it's not that my generation is any more selfish than the last, it honestly might just be that it's much easier to flaunt it than it ever was before. Otherwise, all the issues that plague society that people like to pin on one age group? I'm pretty sure those are just natural tendencies that the majority of humanity has not outgrown quite yet (because it's clear, especially in America, that we haven't properly acclimated to an era of overabundance).
     That's my long way of saying - there is no generation gap in terms of attitudes and traits like being selfish, entitled, lazy, or whatever else you can think of. Instead, I'm pretty sure it's just shown more often than it used to be. Kinda like police brutality - there's one train of thought that it has only proliferated recently, and another train of thought that the prevalence of camera phones has just managed to capture these incidences more reliably.
     Regardless of whether there is a generation gap or not, though, I think it's fair to say that the majority of people are pretty selfish. So I put a list of things you could (should?) care about. Pick one, pick 3, heck take all of 'em and add your own - whatever you're into, there are SO MANY issues in OUR society that you can tackle! & this doesn't just go for the 20-somethings - these are issues that every citizen should be vested in, because whether or not you realize it, they DO have an impact on our (read: YOUR) quality of life.

Modern Slavery (international and domestic)
Wealth/income inequality
Education
Feminism/misogyny
Healthcare
Homelessness
National Fitness (or lack thereof)
The military-industrial complex
The prison-industrial complex
Government
Regulation of ANY industry you can think of (Energy, Banking, Fashion, Manufacturing, Technology, Media, the list goes on and on)
Climate change
Sustainable/responsible living

Bucket List

"A goal is just a dream with a deadline" - or something like that. So, I thought I would take some time and set some explicit goals and attach the age in or by which I hope to accomplish them. I'm currently 25.


Own a home - 31
Fully pay off the home - 56
Run a marathon - 27
Teach somebody and their child - 55 (I'm giving myself 30 years... if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen)
Make the world a better place - continuous
Finally do a single goddamn muscleup - 26
Learn to cook (have 10 go-to, very different recipes down pat) - 29
Travel to a different country every year - Ideally, every year up until I have kids
Master 5 different magic tricks (they'll probably all be card-related) - 28
Learn to play an instrument - ...32?
Ride in a hot air balloon - 30
Scale a mountain - 35
Become a casino dealer - 60
Go on a weeks-long hike through the mountains - 30
See the Northern Lights - 40
Stay a few nights at the Grand Canyon - 45
Visit a different national park every other year - continuous
Learn to knit/crochet well enough to make a pair of socks or a blanket - 37
Road trip through the US - 48