21st Century Agenda for America

NDN needs your help to update our agenda. Last week we began the important process of updating the NDN Agenda for Hope and Progress, the document that defines our governing philosophy and is at the center of all our advocacy work. This week we are asking for your feedback on the first section of the NDN agenda "Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century Economy."  After you read the section below, sign-up for an NDN Blog account, if you haven't already, and share your ideas with us in the comments section. 

From NDN's Agenda for Hope and Progress...

Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century Global Economy: Enact a 21st century economic strategy that will help all Americans succeed in the global economy and create broad-based prosperity and opportunity; restore fiscal responsibility and genuine progressivity in the tax code; champion free and fair trade; ensure the integrity and vitality of America's capital markets and the U.S. dollar; promote entrepreneurship, innovation and broad access to capital; update national telecommunications policy to foster universal broadband; enact a new national energy strategy; raise the minimum wage; prepare for the retirement of the baby boom; and protect and promote the retirement security of all Americans.

To read and comment on the entire agenda click here.

NDN needs your help to update our agenda. We'll be working on each section in the weeks leading up to our Annual Meeting May 21-22 in Washington, DC. You can read the current version below or on our website. Share your ideas by commenting on the bottom of the post or by email. We'll incorporate your ideas in the updated agenda that we'll be rolling-out at this years annual meeting. Come back often to join in as we work on individual sections of the agenda in the weeks ahead.

Read and comment on "Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century Global Economy" here.

Read and comment on "Assert Responsible Global Leadership" and "Protect the Homeland " here.

Read and comment on "Strengthen Families and Communities"

Read and comment on "Modernize Our Health Care System"

For over two hundred years America has led the world on a steady march of progress. Across the globe we've helped bring peace, freedom and prosperity to more people than at any time in world history. At home, brick by brick, we've built a society that gives every new generation a greater chance at the American dream and has built the most remarkable middle class the world has ever seen. America has become more than a country, it has become an idea – of a self-governed democracy, committed to liberty, capitalism, free trade, peace and the "pursuit of happiness" – a powerful beacon of hope and light that has inspired many in what has too often been a dark and dangerous world.

Despite America's unparalleled success in recent decades in moving the world towards greater peace and prosperity, conservatives in Washington today seem intent on taking us down a different path. Their governing agenda has taken a sharp turn to the reckless right, offering an economic strategy ill-suited for the challenges we face, a foreign policy too belligerent and too ineffective, and a style of governing too arrogant and corrupt for our proud democracy. Their approach has not only failed to yield the results they've promised, but has endangered America's leadership in the world and broad-based prosperity at home in ways that will take many years to repair.

NDN believes we can, and must, restore the promise of America. We must work together to offer a new, optimistic, clear, achievable governing agenda that strongly affirms the common purpose of progressive politics, and brings along Democrats, Independents, and disaffected Republicans in a sustaining majority coalition committed to ensuring that the world we leave for our children is a better one than has been left for us.

It is in this spirit that in 2003, working with hundreds of allies from across the country, NDN proposed A Commitment to Hope and Progress: NDN's Agenda for the First Decade of the 21st Century. This annually updated Agenda serves as the basis for all of NDN's advocacy work.

If you share our concern that this bright light that has inspired the world is in danger of dimming, then join us. Join our network. Fight for these priorities – and against those reckless proposals that would undermine them. Use these Agenda items to spark a conversation and offer up suggestions of your own. But take action. For centuries the idea of America – the idea of hope and progress – has inspired millions to stand and be counted. Stand today, with us, and be part of this effort to restore the promise of America.

NDN's Agenda for Hope and Progress 

1. Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century Global Economy: Enact a 21st century economic strategy that will help all Americans succeed in the global economy and create broad-based prosperity and opportunity; restore fiscal responsibility and genuine progressivity in the tax code; champion free and fair trade; ensure the integrity and vitality of America’s capital markets and the U.S. dollar; promote entrepreneurship, innovation and broad access to capital; update national telecommunications policy to foster universal broadband; enact a new national energy strategy; raise the minimum wage; prepare for the retirement of the baby boom; and protect and promote the retirement security of all Americans.

2. Assert Responsible Global Leadership: Win the war on terrorism and end international conflicts that threaten our interests and values; foster security and democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan; ensure that America's military is the strongest, most agile, and best equipped in the world and our nation honors the service of our veterans; combat AIDS and other pandemics that threaten global stability; and work together with our allies and international organizations to advance democracy, human rights, liberty, free markets, opportunities for women, and rising standards of living across the world.

3. Protect the Homeland: Implement a comprehensive homeland security strategy; improve our nation's counter terrorism intelligence capabilities and performance; ensure that those on the frontlines have the very best tools, training and support to protect our communities; secure our nation's borders and ports without impeding the free flow of goods and people; and fight to protect the civil liberties for all Americans that have long been the envy of the world.

4. Strengthen Families and Communities: Put families, children and communities at the very center of our agenda by improving the nation's schools through higher standards, greater accountability, more choices for parents, quality teachers, and promised additional resources; fostering family friendly policies that help parents succeed at work and at home; expanding college opportunities; promoting safe neighborhoods, home ownership, and personal responsibility; keeping abortion safe, legal, and rare; embracing legal immigrants seeking a better life in America; developing an improved path to citizenship; and striving towards equal opportunity for all.

5. Modernize Our Health Care System: Increase access to quality and affordable healthcare; address the rapid rise of healthcare costs; ensure the solvency and effectiveness of Medicare and Medicaid; and invest in and encourage the extraordinary promise of the knowledge revolution in science and medical care.

6. Respect Our Natural Heritage and Move Towards Energy Independence: Fight for clean air, land, and water; combat global warming; strive for energy independence through improved efficiency, greater production here at home, and investment in renewable energy sources; and preserve our national resources so that they are available not only for the recreational uses so important to our quality of life, but also for those future generations of Americans to whom we owe our greatest responsibility.

7. Restoring our Democracy: Foster engagement in our democracy and civic life by making it easier to register and vote, ensuring all can have a voice in the national debate, and promoting civic education along with an ethic of political participation and national service.

The bar just keeps getting higher when it comes to all the innovative ways new tools are being used in politics, and now, government. I’m referring to two very recent developments where average people are given opportunities to contribute their own ideas on what to  do about issues for a candidate, and for a sitting governor.

The first is Obama’s new feature on his campaign website where he gives people the opportunity to submit their ideas about what to do about the national health care problem. The ideas, and the supportive contributions, can take many forms: a written idea blurb, a written personal story, a video that sheds light on the issue, or a recorded audio message that people can  make with any computer with a microphone, which is most decent ones. The audio contribution was something I had not seen done before. But taken all together, the package opportunity is different too.

This appears to be just the beginning of many other tool rollouts for Obama. Healthcare is just the first issues of many that will soon appear but also the website indicates that there will be opportunities to collaborate in other ways too. Collaboration, after all, is the essence of the new power of what is called Web 2.0.

Then there’s Deval Patrick’s morphed campaign site. The new governor of Massachusetts, who rode the new tools and much bottom-up energy to his election victory, is now trying to harness them in governing. His nascent attempt gives residents a chance to propose and support issues that the governor should take up and try to enact.

It’s very early days in both these efforts, but they are telegraphing a trend that is bound to pick up steam in the months ahead. If this country is truly going to take on the new challenges of the 21st century in effective ways, then people in politics will need to tap into the creativity and brainpower of millions of Americans who have been shut out of politics and governing – until now.

Peter Leyden  

29%.   That is the percentage of Americans who approve of the President’s performance today.   To me it is an accurate appraisal, as it has been a disappointing time for our nation.  Despite a sustained economic recovery wages haven’t risen and jobs haven’t been created at historic norms.   Iraq has gone terribly wrong, costing American lives, respect and so much money.   Katrina showed terrifying incompetence, reminding us with Bush we are not safer.  So little has worked as advertised in this age of Bush, and critical challenges like the funding of the retirement of baby boom, really improving our schools, fixing our broken immigration system, offering all Americans access to health insurance, lessening our dependence on foreign sources of energy and global climate change have gone unmet.

But there is another dimension to this disappointing age of Bush that needs a thorough discussion – its morality.  Has there ever been an American governing party which showed so little regard for the rule of law? Have there ever been so many criminal investigations into a governing party in American history?

Consider the record.   

• Duke Cunningham receives the longest jail sentence of any sitting Congressman in American history.
• House Majority Leader DeLay, one of the criminal masterminds of this era is indicted, for among other things, corrupting the redistricting process in his home state Texas. 
• #3 at the CIA, Dusty Foggo, indicted. 
• Former House Appropriations Chair Jerry Lewis, the architect of the corruption of the earmarking process, has racked up over $1 million in legal bills and seems to be the next to go.
• A business rival of Jack Abramoffi is denounced on on the floor of the House by now convicted Congressman Bob Ney and is then soon murdered by a known South Florida mafia hitman.
• Two senior White House staffers – Libby and Safavian – are indicted, brought to trial and convicted. 
• A senior official at Interior pleads guilty and is on his way to jail.
• The Republican leadership covered up, for years, the awful sexual recklessness of Mark Foley, and then put him in charge of the Committee for Missing and Exploited Children. 
• A male prostitute, with a public web site hawking his services, somehow gains a White House press pass, and regularly asks questions at the daily White House press briefing for what is in essence a fictitious conservative organization. 
• The Administration and Republican Party’s condoning of torture, establishment of secret prisons, regular practice of “rendition,” their repeal of habeas corpus for non-citizens and the overall undermining of the Geneva Conventions.
• The hanging out to dry of those kids in the Iraqi torture photos, calling them a few bad apples, when we now know that extreme torture policies had been signed off on by Rumsfeld himself.  The warentless spying on our citizens. 
• The extraordinary and perhaps illegal overstepping of even the generous provisions of the Patriot Act for National Security Letters. 
• Putting our kids into battle without proper equipment or training. 
• The incredible politicization of the US Attorney system, starting in 2002 with Rove’s removal of the US Attorney in Guam for pursuing a guy named Jack Abramoff.  Attorney General Gonzales' public, and now exposed, lie about his role in it all. 
• Jack Abramoff and his corrupt use of non-profits, his ripping off of Indian tribes, his serial bribing of public officials and his countless visits to the White House.
• The scandal of Walter Reed and other Veteran’s homes, and of the Administration’s repeated attempts to cut veteran’s benefits while sending our kids to fight in his ill-conceived war. 
• The savaging of two war heroes, John Kerry and Max Cleland, by a President who skipped his National Guard Service and a Vice President who deferred his way out of Vietnam. 
• The lying to the world about the cause of war. 
• The corruption and patronage of the Iraqi contracting process. 
• The buying off of journalists and commentators from Miami to Washington. 
• Their argument in the 2000 Florida recount that conducting a legally sanctioned recount of what was clearly a troubled election was illegal – an argument amazingly upheld by their allies on the Supreme Court.
• An FEC audit finds the 2004 Bush campaign overspent their Federal allotment by $40 million, a whole lot of money in a race decided by a single state.  
• Their systemic efforts to deny legitimate voters their right to vote. 
• Their ignoring of the cries from New Orleans. 
• Their cutting the taxes of the wealthiest among us while blocking an increase in the minimum wage, currently at its lowest level of buying power in 50 years.
• The demonization of Hispanic immigrants in the 2006 elections.
• The over the top partisanship on just about every issue. The list goes on and on….

I am no historian, but we have to start asking - has there been anything like this in American history? This kind of whatever it takes politics – the abuse of power, the systemic corruption, the sense that the rules don’t apply to them, the trampling of our liberties, the constant and never ending lying?  The conduct of our leaders in this period has extra-ordinary, corrupt and terrible.  It has been a profound betrayal of the public trust placed in them by the American people.

We will probably now see a protracted battle over whether it is proper for Rove and the White House team to offer proper Congressional testimony on the firings of the 8 US Attorneys. While this is an important battle, and of course they should all testify, the real battle ahead for the leaders of both parties is to re-establish the morality and virtue of the American government itself.  The modern conservatives running our nation these past few years have betrayed our noble heritage, betrayed their historic commitment to limited government, and certainly betrayed the “for the people” sentiment of their Party’s visionary first President.  We have lost, temporarily, something that has made America different, and better, than the rest of the world.  Together, we need to bring it back, and re-establish here at home what we have worked so hard to export to the rest of the world – liberty, open markets, the rule of law, and of course, democracy.

But bringing back the moral mission of America in the years ahead, doesn’t mean looking the other way and pretending these terrible years never happened.  Leaders of both parties need to hold Bush and his allies accountable for the way they’ve run our government. We have to take steps to understand what happened, undo things that can be undone, have a public discussion about our democratic heritage and the rule of law, and then, where appropriate, be forceful in holding those who broke American law accountable.  If Republicans are unwilling to do this, Democrats should do it themselves, all under the banner of “renewing our democracy,” and look to broaden the initiative to include things like the webcasting of all Congressional hearings, same day voter registration and other efforts to make it much easier for people to register and vote (like the funding of vote by mail experiments), much stiffer criminal penalties for those acting to deny any voter the legitimate right to vote and better disclosure for all 501 c (3)s, 501 c (4)s and 501 c (6)s organizations which collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars influencing the public debate but have very light reporting requirements.

Another important step in this effort to “renew our democracy” should be a bi-partisan effort to significantly increase the budget of Department of Justice’s Office of Public Integrity for the next ten years, and work to wall off those there from outside political interference.  Because of the deep and broad public corruption of this era, this office, which been the lead anti-corruption prosecutor in recent years, has more work and possible cases to try than it can handle.  It needs more resources to make sure than any significant corruption during this era is pursued, either through investigation or trial.  As it is non-partisan and staffed by career prosecutors, it will be seen as fair and just.   Failure to give this Office more money is a tacit acceptance that those who broke the law in this era will go unpunished, something that no leader of either party can accept.   

The behavior of these modern conservatives running our country these last few years has been disgraceful.  It is critical that our emerging leaders punish those who broke the law, stop other potential betrayals of the public trust, and start a process that will renew our democracy, giving the American people faith that their leaders once again have their best interests at heart.