A Green Party Administration: Its First 100 Days 

Posted by John Rensenbrink on 02/12/09 The First 100 Days of a Green Party Administration

I wrote this piece the weekend before Obama’s inauguration. It is partly a fantasy but it is also meant as a practical vision of what a Green president-elect might/could proclaim to the county and the world at this moment.

I do not mean thereby to downplay Obama’s historic moment. I was full of joy on Obama’s inauguration day and very glad to hear his brave and inspiring words. He may be able to ameliorate some of the terrible problems vexing our people, so much of them caused and/or exacerbated by eight years of mendacious, unlawful, and incompetent leadership. At the very least, his administration may give us a reprieve in which to gather our wits and create momentum for meeting successfully the multiple crises that now loom over us.

With a view, then, towards staking out a practical vision that is adequate to the crises we face, I offer this sketch of what a Green administration should set about to do—to be updated as each January 20 comes round – trusting that our constitution will withstand any further shocks and thus continue to guarantee the orderly transfer of power from one party to another.

Here is what I have in mind. You will see that it takes a substantively different approach from the one being taken by Obama. Note also that it is based fundamentally on the principle of community self-reliance and community empowerment both here and abroad.

The Green Party’s President-Elect is about to take office in Washington, D.C. She will be joined by Green Party majorities in both Houses of Congress. Their program for their first 100 days in office includes the following highlights for both domestic and foreign policy.

Domestic Policy

==Initiate a one-trillion dollar community-based grant-in-aid program from the national government to local communities. These funds will be channeled though collaborative arrangements between state and local governments and require maximum feasible participation in governance by all parts of each local community receiving these grants. Also required is a 5% matching grant from each participating local community.

The purposes of the grants are for sustainable community development and community empowerment. The grants include funds for renewable energy, conservation, work-force housing, small business development coupled with apprenticeship programs to hire the unskilled, open space, extra support for teachers and for ecologically informed education, college scholarships, food and water security, public works, public transportation, regional cooperative projects, support for neighborhood policing programs, and support for the arts. This replaces the “bailout from the top” scheme initiated by Bush etc. in late 2008 called TARP --the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

==Direct the national Treasury Department to shift the measurement of economic progress away from reliance on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to full scale reliance on Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI). This will assist government officials, business executives, and university economists to provide, and be provided with, a critical tool to measure sustainable economic activity. We must no longer kid ourselves that 50,000 deaths a year on our highways contribute to our well-being—which by present measurements seems to be the case because doesn’t all the activity and work connected with these deaths add to the Gross Domestic Product?. Or that building more prisons adds to GDP. Or piling up waste. Or buying more oil because our buildings waste tons of energy. Or waging wars for oil (thus adding enormously to the GDP!) when you can shift to renewable energy. There are thousands of such examples. We need to measure well-being, not commodity transactions of goods and services.

==Substantially lower the income tax and combine this with a carbon tax of $250 per ton to be phased in at the rate of $25 per year from 2009 to 2020 –-the carbon tax to be offset at each step of the way with a matching reduction in income tax. This is advocated by Lester Brown of “State of the World” fame and is designed to discourage fossil fuel use and to stimulate investment of renewable sources of energy.

==Extend Medicare to the entire population; in other words, a single payer health care program for all.

==Establish a financial transactions fee. Economist Dean Baker (Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.) estimates that a very small fee – ranging up to, say, 0.25% will yield $100 billion or more annually. The fee would be placed on the sale or transfer of stocks, bonds, and other financial assets, including the great variety of exotic and speculator-driven financial instruments so much in the news lately.

==Initiate a Reparations Program for dispossessed African American and Native American peoples.

==Initiate a constitutional amendment for the election of President and Vice President by popular vote.

==Pressure state and local governments to institute Instant Run-off Voting in elections and to develop pilot programs for proportional representation.

==Push for laws and administrative rules in military and civilian life that provide support for gay marriage and gay families.

==End the Drug War, decriminalize cannabis, and support growing hemp for industrial use.

==Initiate a constitutional amendment affirming that the word “person” in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States applies to real persons and not to corporations.

Foreign Policy

==Initiate—through collaborative diplomacy—Peace, Justice, and Sustainability Summits, starting with Summits engaging respectively the governments in the Americas, in Europe, in Africa, in the Middle East, and in the Asia-Pacific region, leading to a World Summit on Peace, Justice, and Sustainability within two years.

==Promote in these Summits a worldwide program for collective security; renewable energy; and community-based sustainability programs in food, water, energy development, education, transportation, and local self-reliance, with guaranteed participation by all sections of the local community.

==Promote in these Summits plans and provisions to end the trade in arms, the trafficking of women, and the militarization of space.

==End the war and the military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

==Promote equally the security and rights of both Israel and Palestine.

==Develop a plan to close American military bases throughout the world, phasing out the bases in step with collaborative actions to provide the affected countries with alternative collective security arrangements.

==Take leadership in promoting a worldwide financial transactions fee, the funds raised to be directed primarily to solar power development in developing countries.

==Institute a world-wide carbon tax, proceeds to be used to lower taxes that burden small businesses.

==Create a World Environmental and Labor Protection Organization alongside the World Trade Organization (WTO)—OR expand the WTO to include protection of the environment and labor.

John Rensenbrink

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