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Abortion
==i am pro-choice.
Budget/Economy
===economic ideology: i oppose neoliberalism in all its forms.
budget: i assume that this refers to state busget practices? how they are understood is a function of the dominant economic ideology. if you oppose neoliberalism, it follows that neoliberal prescriptions about the budget for a state (balanced, etc.) are problematic to say the least.
Civil Rights
===um...they are good.
i oppose the bushwar-driven attempts to dismantle them. all of them.
i support expanding funding for public defenders across the board--most who are convicted of capital crimes are poor. the legal system is presently a complete joke in terms of equity if you factor in class. obviously, the seperation of civil rights from questions of the ability of someone charged with a crime to defend him or herself is a problem. so i do not understand why there are two different questions here.
Crime
===well i dont understand how people who endorse an economic ideology that rationalizes the largest transfers of wealth in history are in a position to complain about crime, which i see as directly tied to economics.
i oppose manditory sentencing laws.
i really oppose the demonization of the poor that was the precursor to these moronic mandatory sentencing laws.
i oppose capital punishment.
Defense
==a necessary evil. i dislike the role the military plays in contemporary discourse. i dislilke the fetishizing of people who are in the military.
i think bushpolicies---particularly nuclear first-strike--are insane.
i oppose nearly everything about the so-called war on terror. i think the category functions to obscure the link between the conditions created by american foreign and economic policies and the degrading of human beings around the world--when people organize and react as a way of trying to acquire some of the dignity these policies have stripped from them, they are terrorists. it is bullshit.
Drugs
--i like them. i dont do them any more to speak of, but still...
i would decriminalize mairjuana and maybe hallucinogens. i draw a line at cocaine, however--too many dead friends.
i find it amazing that the right is still caught in a "reefer madness" era understanding of drugs.
i think expanding addiction treatment programs is essential.
Education
--this requires serious consideration--i support flattening funding to public education across localities. as it stands, the education system is the strictest insitution in the reproduction of the american class system. until something like that funding shift happens, any talk of meritocracy in the states is a sad joke.
totally opposed to vouchers.
i think university tuitions are totally out of hand and should be brought in line.
i do not see why it should be necessary for most students who pass through university to come out with massive debt.
doing something about tuition and debts levels is fundamental to any project for creating an equitable health care system.
Environment
---another vague category. in general, trees are nice.
i think corporations should be held accountable for ecological damage they impose on the rest of us.
am once again in complete opposition to the policies of the bush administration in giving a long handjob to corporate interests on this matter.
Families & Gay Marriage
---i do not understand why anyone buys into the rights festishization of the bourgeois nuclear family and does not understand it as a rhetorical device aimed at evacuating the notion of public responsibility.
on gay marriage--why would the right care who other people choose to love? and why should everyone not be able to avail themselves of the legal protections written into the notion of marriage, if they want? since it is a secular, legal institution, after all...
Foreign Policy
--american foreign policy is and has been barbaric since world war 2. there are so many problems with it that i do not know where to start in a situation like this one.
Free Trade
-problematic notion. tends to increase the division between the wealthy and poorer nationa and to eliminate mechanism the latter might have for a more equitable trade situation--not to mention for economic autonomy. free trade is a new set of clothes for neocolonial business as usual.
this says nothing about the damage the free trade fetish does to domestic social stability in the states.
Govt. Reform
--i dont understand what this could mean outside the neoliberal frame of reference.
i oppose most forms of privatization because experience has shown the efficiency arguments to be totally false--in which case the motives for it have to be sought elsewhere--privatization is about depoliticization. it is a defensive move on the part of the state in the face of the uncertainties of globalizing capitalism---it is an abdication of responsibility sold as a matter of efficiency.
Gun Control
--agnostic
Health Care
--basic health care is a fundamental human right.
Immigration
-what about it?
School Choice
-see above on education. this "school choice" thing is a conservative category designed to reframe the question of vouchers by positioning them as a device to increase consumer choices. it is beside the point.
Social Security
--a good thing that should be protected.
Tax Reform
--this gets to the question of how you understand taxation. i have talked about my position too many times here to rehearse it again. opposed to the right's discourse about taxation--i think it is fundamentally dishonest.
Technology
--the state should follow the japanese model and fund emerging technologies as a matter of policy. the "market" is not rational, the "market" does not select emerging technologies on a rational basis....
the state should also fund the arts more. but that is a different matter, i suppose. i can get really cranked up about this one, however.
War & Peace
=peace is better than war.
i dont know what this category is about, actually, what it is asking me to articulate a position about. given the choice, i would choose peace. yes. well who wouldnt, really?
Welfare
==necessary as a mechanism for buying social stability. a way for the state to take some responsibility for the consequences of its lack of spine in the face of corporate actions. oppose all efforts to dismantle it.
i think that the welfare-to-work thing is delusional unless you are also willing to accept a partially planned economy---it might be a viable idea were the americans more social-democratic--but since most conservatives confuse social democracy and stalinism, i dont see it happening anytime soon. so welfare-tpo-work is a way of allowing the political class to erase the poor, to blow them off. it is crazy as practice and not justifiable as policy.
restatement: you want to reduce the purview of welfare? want it to be temporary? then you have no choice but to endorse some kind of economic planning. otherwise, you have nothing coherent to say on the matter.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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