by John Rensenbrink 
[Note: At the end of this article I describe the criteria that were used  for choosing which policies to include.]
 
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.
 
 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. They will 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 750 Billion dollar “bailout from the top” scheme initiated in late 2008 called the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
 
Direct the national Treasury Department to shift the measurement of economic progress away from reliance on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 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 can no longer deceive 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 all the work connected with these deaths adds to the Gross Domestic Product. Or that building more prisons adds to GDP. Or piling up waste adds to GDP. Or buying more oil because our buildings leak 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 will 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 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. The initiation of these Summits will be conducted through genuine collaborative diplomacy.
 
Promote in these Summits a worldwide program for collective security, renewable energy, and science-based roll-back of carbon emissions. Of equal importance, the Summits will be dedicated to producing support for 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 and execute 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.
 

Six Criteria Used in Choosing the Policies for a Green Party President’s First 100 Days.
 
First and foremost, I choose those policies that most contribute to a profound shift in the power structure. The reader will readily see that the strong emphasis  in the above agenda on community preservation, community building, and community self reliance and self-governance, both in the United States and abroad, is a major feature of getting the nation and the world out from under the repressive and often lethal domination of the oligarchs.  Other policies also contribute to a shift, as for example the item on electoral reform in the U.S.; also, the item on a revolutionary change in the way “progress” is measured; and the item on ending the bizarre notion that corporations are persons in the eyes of the law. They all significantly contribute to a profound shift in the power structure.
 
A second criteria is timeliness — in two dimensions. Is the need for the policy imminent – is there little time to waste in getting at the issue? And, a second dimension, related but not the same, is it something heavy on the public’s mind? Health care is such an issue.
 
A third criteria is the need to foster diversity among the people so that differences of race, gender, sexual orientation, and class cease to be opportunities for bias and discrimination and cease to be stumbling blocks to the achievement of unity  in a diverse, mult-cultural society.
 
A fourth criteria is to choose policies that directly interconnect with one another; as for example, imposing a carbon tax and at the same time pushing strongly for renewable energy; also, pushing for collective security through collaborative diplomacy while at the same time withdrawing from U.S. military bases.
 
A fifth criteria for selection of the issues is to have directly in mind the Ten Key Values of the Green Party of the United States: Ecological Wisdom, Personal and Social Responsibility, Grass Roots Democracy, Non-Violence, Respect for Diversity, Gender Equity, Community Economics, Decentralization, Global Responsibility, and Sustainability (thinking to the seventh generation).  The domestic and foreign policy intentions and plans for the “First 100 Days” strongly reflect these values.
 
A sixth criteria is to have the issues chosen be consistent with, and be supported by, the United States Green Party Platform.

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