Populist Manifesto

A Populist Manifesto for a New America

Gary Null PhD and Richard Gale, December 8, 2023

1. Create legislation to curtail the vulnerability of people’s savings accounts due to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.
2. Create a Marshall Plan to rebuild our forests to reduce the acceleration of climate change
3. Reverse Trump’s and Biden’s opening of public lands to private interests and implement a moratorium on private exploitation of national parks (e.g., fossil fuels, mining, lumber)
4. Create a national food program to ensure that the 16 million hungry children in the US are fed.
5. Increase regulations on trading in those commodities that are essential to life such as food, crops, water privatization. 
6. Moratorium on the Federal Reserve from giving no-interest loans to banks and corporations.
7. Declare a national moratorium on home foreclosures now that the US and Europe are on the verge of a new recession
8. Forgive student loan late fees and cap all interest on student loans at 1-2%.
9. Eliminate pay day loans and credit card interest rates, late or not, at 18% or more. Set maximum interest at approximately 10%
10. Support senior citizens with free community hospital service and food coops.
11. Eliminate all federal subsidies to fossil fuel industries of any kind. 
12. Remove the influence of money from elections:
13. Halt all corporate funding of candidates, PACs and political parties
14. .   Forbid corporations to publicly or privately endorse candidates or solicit endorsements or funding for candidates through the use of corporate resources; however, individual officers and employees of a corporation are free to endorse any candidate publicly or privately. 
15. Forbid all sources of funding for a candidate except for government funding.
16. Launch a federal review and audit of partisan astroturf groups (e.g., ALEC, Americans for Prosperity, Center for American Progress, American Council on Science and Health, Moveon.org) and support stronger laws to limit their influence on federal and state legislators
17. A congressional investigation into USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy to clean them of intelligence agency influence and/or interference so that they may serve their stated mission and cease serving as a vehicle of interference in or replacement of foreign governments.
18. Pardon all whistleblowers. Strengthen whistleblower protection laws and criminalize efforts to silence and threaten whistleblowers. 
19. Campaign finance reform and return to manual balloting; cessation of gerrymandering — voting districts to be determined by independent, non partisan review based upon the specific needs of populations in the regions.
20. Normalize foreign relations with China and Russia and pivot from the unipolar agenda of the World Economic Forum and move closer towards a national recognition of the rapidly multipolar world that is dethroning the dollar’s hegemony. 
21. Reduce military budget to a size no greater than needed to defend the nation from attack, while simultaneously converting our factories, manufacturing facilities, environmental resources, technology and labor from war making production to the production of consumer goods, infrastructure renewal, cultural enrichment and other socially beneficial ends – in effect, a reversal of WWII policies when peacetime factories, manufacturing facilities, environmental resources, technology and labor were converting from producing automobiles and other consumer goods to the production of military hardware and weapons. The government would use the no-longer exaggerated budget to smooth the conversion and retain the labor pool.
22. Begin closing the 800-plus foreign military bases that serve no defensive purpose while retraining and redeploying to civilian jobs the million-plus US service personnel currently deployed on military bases. 
23. Cease conducting provocative and confrontational military exercises and war games near borders and territorial waters of Russia, China, Iran or any other nation that has not posed a direct threat to the US.
24. Ban interference or participation, overt or covert, in foreign domestic affairs or foreign military conflicts by US military or government personnel unless specifically authorized and funded by Congress for that specific circumstance.
25. Immediately cease any current operations other than intelligence gathering by the 17 or more US intelligence agencies, and begin the process of defunding, destaffing and dismantling their capability to conduct such non-intelligence gathering operations.
26. Restore healthy relations with international institutions, especially the United Nations. As even the Democratic Party propaganda mouthpiece, the Council on Foreign Relations, puts it: “Continuing to refuse to ratify the above treaties and countless others erodes US global leadership and sends a message to the rest of the world that the United States remains unwilling to commit to action on issues like human right and arms control. A stalwart commitment to narrow conception of national sovereignty and to the ideal of American exceptionalism undermine the United States’ ability to participate as a leader and partner on the international stage.”
27. Review and where advisable, reactivate, restore, ratify or sign international treaties and/or agreements  that address word peace, defense, human rights and the environment, which virtually all nations have signed but which the US has either refused to sign, withdrawn from, terminated, or simply refused to honor. For example:
28. Additional protocols to the Geneva Convention
29. The Arms Trade Treaty
30. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
31. Convention on Biological Diversity
32. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
33. The Landmine Ban Treaty
34. Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
35. The Minsk Agreement between Ukraine and Russia
36. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
37. Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants
38. .International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
39. UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
40. UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
41. International Labor Convention
42. Geneva Agreement of 1954
43. Paris Climate Accord
44. Convention on Torture
45. Iran Nuclear Agreement.
46. US has unilaterally arrogated to itself the right to set those rules, as well as break or ignore them whenever it pleases or so desires. 
47. Overhaul of the USDA and its ties to the agro-chemical and big food industries to strengthen scientific oversight on dangerous agricultural toxins damaging the environment and unhealthy food additives that Abandon the US-defined “rules based international order” in which the impair health. 
48. Federally mandate the labeling of foods containing GMO ingredients
49. Audit the Federal Reserve, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and the CIA, reducing their budgets to what is actually necessary for the nation’s security and defense, and make the budget public
50. Allow corporations that cannot be maintained to go through structured bankruptcy instead of a bailout.
51. Reject the ratification of the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Treaty
52. Universal healthcare under Medicare that includes some alternative medical therapies as in some other European nations
53. Create a national preventative health program.
54. Undertake an independent scientific review of the causes for our autism epidemic and support a concerted review of the role of the CDC’s vaccine schedule in the rise in childhood physical and mental illnesses.
55. Make efforts to revoke or substantially amend corporate privileges in Citizens United
56. Accelerate efforts to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and expand the legal oversight to include large nonprofit internet organizations such as Wikipedia.
57. Regulation of the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence in areas where it may infringe on fundamental human rights
58. Initiate a proper, independent review and analysis of the short and long term implications of central bank digital currency replacing a cash society, social credit scores attached to block chain technologies, and vaccine passports.
59. Eliminate and/or set more strict rules on privatized prison systems; stop the growing practices of debtor’s prisons and bail for non-violent crimes.  
60. Promote stronger prosecution of corporate and banking executives convicted of serious financial fraud and crimes

National program to have potential law enforcement officers undergo a psychological screening — many are former vets who have serious PTSD and other mental health issues