PDW members participated with other PDA members in the state to compose language for the new party platform. Unlike is previous years, the platform is being scraped and rewritten in its entirety. The March 7th statewide PDA meeting in Worcester initiated the process, where various issues were discussed as possiblities, a plank committee was formed and a decision made to focus on three primary planks. Here are those planks in final form:
Health Care, Not Warfare:
The Democratic Party of Massachusetts supports reduced U.S. military spending, an end to America's wars in the Mideast, and an end to the occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine. We advocate that America use an international multilateral approach to resolving conflict and attend to our own domestic agenda, especially on human health and welfare. Our foremost domestic priority is the creation of a comprehensive, single payer, guaranteed health care system, similar to Medicare.
The Democratic Party of Massachusetts calls upon all elected Federal and State officials to make single payer health care a legislative priority. Our goal is to create a health care agency with a single source of funding, administered by a non-profit government agency, and accountable to the public, which pays for all medical services and affirms the primacy of the doctor-patient relationship, the values of physician patient medical decision-making, and medical privacy. This single payer agency is designed to replace the 1500 private health insurance companies that currently do this work, each with its own profit stream, bureaucracy, complicated policies, and process for negotiating with medical providers.
To help fund a comprehensive single payer health care agency, U.S. military spending must be cut by a minimum of 25% by 2010 and funds redirected to the domestic agenda - health care, not warfare.
A Green New Deal:
Two of the urgent crises which confront the world are a grave threat to the environment from human-caused global warming, and a collapsing world financial and economic system. The Massachusetts Democratic Party calls upon our elected officials to affirm the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and to enact environmentally sound national legislation, in keeping with the exemplary Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act of 2008 and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
* Enact the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, increasing America's domestic energy capacity, including energy efficiency, conservation, progressively tougher CAFE standards, and large scale renewable energy development,
* Enter an international treaty on climate change prior to 2012, that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions a minimum of 80% by 2050, and reduce atmospheric carbon at a maximum of 350 ppm by the end of the century
* Enact a national Renewable portfolio standard) and a national cap & trade system for carbon emissions
* Build out a "smart", highly distributed, and reliable electricity grid
In this process we will create a clean and sustainable energy future, create millions of green collar jobs rebuilding and reinvesting in a new American and Massachusetts economy, and do so in a way that supports full social, environmental and economic justice here and abroad.
Restore the Rule of Law:
The Massachusetts Democratic Party calls for the passage of legislation to require complete transparency at all levels of government - local, state and national - regarding matters of justice, substantive policy, and political process.
We call for passage of legislation to guarantee all citizens the opportunity and power to affect the direction of all public enactments.
We call for legislation upholding and protecting the rights of individuals under the Constitution wherever they have been found to have been weakened, undermined or allowed to become moribund.
We revere the Constitution of the United States and find abhorrent acts contrary to its intent, such as excessive executive privilege leading to "preemptive" war.
We instruct our Congressional delegation to support and work for the appointment of a special prosecutor to hold any person at any level of government to account for:
* willfully violating the laws and the Constitution,
* willfully violating the rights of citizens and the rights guaranteed to foreigners under international treaties,employing or advocating torture,
* waging illegal wars with wanton disregard for the lives and safety of civilians, and
* ignoring, bypassing and/or sabotaging the laws, resolutions and subpoenas issued by the Congress of the United States.
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