Populist Reform of the Democratic Party

Haven't had a lot of time the last two weeks with a lot of other personal agenda items that I've had pushed on to me that have kept me busy.

I think we should take his issues and hopefully have a complete list of items that he would consider his platform now. Then we can have "edits" on some of those planks where we'd like to see them augmented, and additional items that we would make it clear that we think he should take on in areas perhaps where he doesn't have a publicly stated platform plank yet. I'm guessing if we go through Thom Hartmann's shows, we could probably find his stances on many of these issues, but perhaps not.

Some things (like the idea of a "war surtax" as a part of the higher income tax rates at the top of the scale that would provide incentives to get us out of wars) were my own ideas, that he might embrace, but perhaps hasn't expressed on his own.

I've already personally pushed here in Oregon the idea of providing amnesty for those convicted of or even having some history of charges, etc. of marijuana crimes that is starting to catch on in our legislature here now, now that marijuana has been legalized here. I think there a couple of bills now going through the legislature that might do this now. I have to believe that Bernie would love to have something that would stop this prohibition to it being handled as a medical issue that should be regulated like alcohol is, and at the same time start to disempower the prison industrial complex much like he would like to disempower the military industrial complex, both of which could help us reduce our deficit quite a bit and at the same time improve so many Americans' lives too.