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We Will Work to Stop the Bush-Cheney War Machine
The Democratic Party of Maui County recognizes that our country is in great danger. In just over six years, the Republican Administration of George Bush and Richard Cheney have wrecked devastation on innocents in Iraq and allowed devastation of innocents to take place in New Orleans and the other Katrina damaged areas of the South. Now the Bush-Cheney administration is threatening to attack Iran, and even to use nuclear weapons against them. This is insanity.
The Maui County Democratic Party opposes the use of nuclear weapons, including depleted uranium, we oppose preemptory offensive invasion of any other country, and we resolves to work to stop any such attack on Iran or other countries. We will work to support efforts to bring all our troops home from Iraq by the end of 2006.
We Will Work to Restore Our Constitutional Government
The Bush-Cheney administration has shown no respect for the fundamental defining document which created our country, the U.S. Constitution. They invaded Afghanistan and Iraq without first asking for a Declaration of War from our Congress, the only arm of government with the power to declare war under our Constitution. The Bush-Cheney administration has repeatedly declared that it has the right to ignore legislation passed by Congress, the only arm of government empowered to make the laws under our Constitution.
The Bush-Cheney administration have repeatedly ignored our Bill of Rights, conducting warrantless searches in violation of our Fourth Amendment and the criminal statute enacted by Congress to insure that our rights would be protected from over-reaching government secrecy. The Maui County Democratic Party opposes warrantless searches and seizures of any type and will work for repeal of the Patriot Act which allows massive governmental invasion of our right to privacy.
The First Amendment to our Constitution provides for the strict separation of church and state, yet the Bush administration has repeated directed the taxpayers money to support religious institutions. The First Amendment also protects our right to dissent and to assemble to protest governmental policies.
The Maui Democratic Party opposes the use of taxpayers’ money to support religious institutions and will work to protect our right to dissent, opposing laws which would prohibit government officials and private individuals from exposing illegal practices by our government. We must protect the whistle-blowers who give us the information we need to stop illegal and immoral government practices.
We Call For the Enforcement of Anti-Torture Laws
Our country was one of the primary drafters of the Geneva Conventions, designed to enforce the humane treatment of prisoners of war and civilians in war-afflicted countries. The U.S. helped to draft the United Nations’ Treaty against Torture and passed criminal laws in our federal system to outlaw torture and inhumane treatment, yet our current president and vice-president have made clear that they do not believe that they have a duty to respect the treaty and criminal law against torture. They have repeatedly condoned torture and gross humiliation of our detainees. This conduct must be stopped.
We Will Work to Enforce Our Bill of Rights
Our Bill of Rights provides that any person who is arrested by our government has a right to be told the charges against him, has the right to counsel, and the right to brought before a neutral magistrate and given bail. The Bush-Cheney administration has arrested persons in our country and in foreign countries, placed them in private jails, refused to allow the Red Cross to meet with them, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, tortured and humiliated detainees and refused to bring them before a neutral magistrate, refused them attorneys, refused them bail.
The “Patriot Act” is, in many provisions, subversive to our Bill of Rights, and we therefore call for its repeal.
We affirm the right of citizens to peacefully assemble without being segregated into “protest zones”. We support strong legal protection for “whistleblowers”, and condemn the Bush Administration’s attempt to suppress important information by threatening journalists with criminal charges.
The Maui County Democratic Party will work to stop the anti-constitutional practices of the Bush-Cheney administration and calls upon our State Democratic Party and our state and federal legislators to do likewise.
We Support Impeachment and Removal of Bush and Cheney
One means of stopping the Bush-Cheney administration from further violations of our Constitution and Bill of Rights is to impeach them and remove them from office.
The Maui Democratic Party hereby calls on our senators and representatives to do all they can to impeach President George Bush and Vice-President Richard Cheney and remove them from office as soon as possible.
We Call for Prosecution of Bush-Cheney War Crimes
The Maui Democratic Party further calls upon our federal representatives and senators to initiate war crimes prosecutions for all persons, including President Bush and his advisors, found to have violated the provisions of the Geneva Conventions or US criminal statutes against torture and inhumane treatment.
We Support the Humanization Of The Federal Budget
The Bush-Cheney administration represents only the super rich and the corporations. They have reduced taxes for the super rich while reducing services for the poor. They have squandered our tax money on no-bid contracts to corporate donors and defense contractors in a foreign war for control of oil fields, while eliminating school lunch eligibility for many of the poor. They have reduced needed housing subsidies for the poor, and withheld food stamps and needed medical care from many of our citizens.
Bush and Cheney have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars on their wars and the military budget. Gross war profiteering has taken place in connection with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. If the military budget were reduced by half, we would still spend more money on defense than all our potential adversaries put together.
Thus, we oppose the Star Wars program. It is an inordinately expensive, unworkable, and unnecessary. Many of the Pentagon’s other “war toys”are equally unjustified. We need to fund our soldiers’ safety and our veterans’ benefits and medical care as a first priority.
We support cutting the defense budget and passing and enforcing strong statutes against war profiteering, no-bid contracts, and price gauging such as is taking place right now in our oil industries. We must recoup unjustified payments to defense contractors and revoke contracts with contractors who fail to tender quality goods and work.
We support a progressive tax rate whereby the wealthy and corporations pay a higher proportion of taxes than those of modest means. The Estate Tax must be retained for estates in excess of two million dollars. We must eliminate excessive tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.
By reducing the defense budget by half and taxing corporations and the wealthy at a fair rate, we will have the money needed to fund education, nutrition, affordable housing, healthcare and other needed human services.
Food, Shelter, Housing, Medical Care are Basic Rights
The Maui Democratic Party believes that all human beings have a right to adequate nutrition, affordable housing, free public education to the university level and affordable medical and dental care.
To insure that the basic needs of all our citizens are fully met, the Maui Democratic Party calls for our defense budget to be reduced by fifty percent and the other fifty per cent be allocated to human services and environmental needs.
All Citizens Should Be Treated Equally
We believe all human beings should have the right to have their basic needs supplied, and have the right to be treated equally, with no discrimination on the basis of age, ethnicity, skin color, race, sexual orientation or gender identity. We oppose any laws that would deprive anyone of equal treatment under the laws and in the work place.
With regard to the separation of church and state, we believe that marriage as a religious institution should be a matter for the various religious groups who perform marriages, while civil partnerships should be controlled by the state governments and open to all who apply.
We Call for Honest Elections and Public Campaign Financing
A major danger to the continued existence of American democracy is the fact that we do not have honest and reliable voting systems in place. The introduction of electronic voting machines, owned by Republican companies have been shown to be readily manipulated. Other procedures for voting need to made reliable and uniform. The Maui County Democratic Party supports voting by paper ballot, with observable counting. No voting machines, counting equipment or software should be privately owned.
Another observable danger to our democracy is the fact that the donations of special interest group can determine the outcome of elections and the thereafter influence the way the elected official votes. Millions of dollars are not spent on congressional elections, so only those having millions or dollars or access to donors having millions of dollars, can run for elective office. We must prohibit all private donations to political campaigns and provide public funding for all electoral candidates.
To insure that all regions of our country are equally motivated to go out to vote, we support conducting all elections on Saturday and Sunday and having all polling booths, from New York to Hawaii, close at exactly the same time. We propose having exist polls conducted by non-partisan organizations, but the results of the exit polls would not be reported until after all polling booths have closed and reported. We also support instant run-off voting which may encourage a wider range of candidates in each election.
We support the re-establishment of the “Fairness Doctrine” for all broadcast media. TV and radio time should be made available to all candidates. The internet should remain free and unregulated.
We Support Aggressive Prevention of Global Warming
The Bush-Cheney administration has refused to take steps to address what is probably the greatest danger facing our world, global warming. They repeatedly refused to recognize that global warning is a danger, and thus refused to abide by the Kyoto Protocols to reduce the polluting emissions which are causing our whole planet to undergo disastrous changes, changes which will flood many great areas of the world and destroy the ecological balance of our marine world.
The Maui Democratic Party calls for the U.S. to sign the Kyoto Accords and participant in good faith in reducing US emissions by half by the year 2015. This can be accomplished by raising emission standards for all vehicles, private and commercial, and enforcing strict emissions standards on all commercial processes.
We support massive funding – a virtual “Manhattan Project” for the development of alternatives fuels. As we become independent of fossil fuels we will be able to greatly reduce our war budget.
We Will Work to Safeguard Our Food and Environment
The Maui Democratic Party recognizes that we all have a duty to protect our environment and the purity and diversity of our food chain from destructive forces. Unregulated genetically modified organisms have great destructive potential, therefore we call on our state and federal legislators to fund the research and regulation needed to protect our environment from the unforeseen consequences of unregulated genetically modified organisms.
We specifically oppose the use of GMO’s containing the “terminator gene”
which will work great economic hardship to our small farmers and those of other nations who traditionally rely on the use of naturally recurring seeds each season.
Seeds with the “terminator gene” would not generate new seeds, so seeds would have to be purchased anew each season. The use of “terminator gene” seeds must be heavily restricted to prevent cross-mutation to other plants. All products containing any GMO must be clearly labeled, with appropriate warnings.
Increase Minimum Wage and Free Access to Unionization
The Bush-Cheney administration has declared war not only on Afghanistan and Iraq but on our American workers. They have refused to raise the minimum wage, which has been static for over eight years while costs have living expenses have increased substantially. We favor increasing the minimum wage to a sufficient level so that everyone who works a forty hour week receives a respectable wage for their work, with automatic cost of living increases commensurate with cost of living increases.
Because economic justice for working families is essential for the realization of a democratic society, we will work to establish:
- A minimum wage well above the poverty level, with no tip credit toward minimum wage.
- Living wage and benefits for farm and rural workers
- Fair economic and trade policies which protect human rights,
workers rights, unionization and environmental protection
- Protection of small businesses and independent farmers
- Strict enforcement of union contracts and worker rights to unionize, to strike without job loss, to have a safe workplace, to mediate and arbitrate disputes, to have freedom of speech and association, and repeal of the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act.
- Fair representation and democracy within unions;
- Automatic recognition of unions based on card checks
- Automatic dues payment to unions
- Full funding for enforcement of labor standards, strict child labor and occupational health and safety laws.
- Strong protection for whistleblowers (including Federal employees)
- Responsible bidder language in all public financed works on fair wages, health, retirement and training, with 15% set asides for state certified apprentices.
- Repeal of all “right to work” laws.
- Strict laws against off shore tax and unionization avoidance.
- Strict laws against profiteering, predatory lending, and misuse of private data.
- Preservation of publicly funded social security and no privatization of essential government services
- Fair, progressive taxation at state and federal level
- Tax credits for business providing healthcare, pensions and childcare
- Protection of un-documented workers from prosecution, deportation or job loss for reporting an employer for violating labor laws.
- Workers reporting employer labor violations to receive a portion of any fine assessed on employer.
Healthcare
One of the major problems facing Americans and American employers is the enormous cost of health insurance. Much of the cost of health insurance goes to the administrative costs and profits of insurance companies. Our Medicare program is proof that government can provide health insurance at much reduced administrative costs. Ultimately, we support a government run health care system which will allow recipients to choose their own doctor and hospitals. Most of the other industrialized countries in the world have universal health insurance for their citizens. There are many different models to choose from, and we should do so.
Until such time as universal single-payer health care is available to all our citizens, the Maui County Democratic Party calls upon the Hawaii State Democratic Party to create a health care plan for its members, the cost of which will be based on the individual’s income.
We ask the Hawaii Democratic Party to form a committee of health care professionals and lay members to develop a plan for a Hawaii Democratic Party Health Care plan and to report back to the state central committee within six months. The plan may require members to attend a certain number of Democratic Party meetings per year in order to qualify for membership. Voting for Democratic candidates shall not be a requirement for health plan membership.
Insofar as healthcare is concerned, one of the critical areas of need is for alcohol and drug abuse treatment programs. Our prisons are full of persons who, but for their drug and alcohol problems, would never have been incarcerated at all. Our prisons, which spend more than $30,000 a year on each inmate, do not provide the drug and alcohol treatment the majority of inmates need. The Maui County Democrats supports the “Drug Court” model; but for those persons who must be incarcerated, we support the full funding of drug and alcohol treatment programs for all who need it.
The “War on Drugs” has been a disastrous failure and an enormous waste of money. The money that is being spent on interdiction should be spent on treatment. Fundamentally, drug and alcohol addiction is a medical problem, not a criminal one. Interdiction of drugs entering the U.S. benefits only the drug cartels as it raises the prices for drugs on the street. This, in turn, increases the amount of criminal offenses committed so users can purchase the more expensive drugs.
Mexico has just passed legislation to decriminalize possession of small quantities of many of the same drugs that are criminalized in this country. The Maui County Democrats supports decriminalization of possession of small quantities of what are presently listed as controlled substances, with the money formerly spent on drug interdiction and arrest and incarceration of users to go to funding drug and alcohol treatment programs.
Women to Control Their Healthcare Decisions
The Maui County Democratic Party supports the right of women to control their own bodies. Contraception, emergency contraception and abortion should be available to them as needed.
Education about pregnancy and sexual diseases and methods for their prevention shall be available to all persons, regardless of age. Good science, not religious views, shall dictate the nature of sex-related education. Religious views shall not control the availability of sex-related educational materials. Religious views shall not control the distribution of funding for women’s healthcare or contraception either nationally or internationally.
Protection of Physician’s Right to Treat Patients
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has attempted to defeat states’ efforts to make medical marijuana available to those who need it by arresting physicians for prescribing marijuana. They have also threatened physicans who have assisted dying patients to commit suicide pursuant to “Death with Dignity statutes”. Aside from violating the right of states to make laws in areas that are not given to federal jurisdiction, these attacks grossly interfere with the right of physicians to be able to make all medically necessary decisions regarding their patients treatment. The Maui County Democratic Party opposes federal interference in the medical decisions made by the treating physician and supports legal abortion and contraception, and legal access to marijuana for medical patients who need it and the availability of assistance from physicians in assisting those who chose to end their lives pursuant to Death with Dignity provisions.
Recognition of Native Hawaiian Rights and Culture
The Maui Democratic Party recognizes that the islands of Hawaii were illegally seized by the American government and the resources belonging to native Hawaiians were improperly confiscated from them. The effect of these injuries continues to the present day. We therefore support the right of native Hawaiians to self-determination and to reparations for the theft of their land and resources, including the protection of native Hawaiian educational programs.
Education
The Maui County Democratic Party supports the provision of free public education to the university level for all its citizens. We support the establishment of a four year college on Maui with graduate programs available as needed. This will allow Maui families to keep their children at home and will keep the educational funds, now spent elsewhere, in the Maui community.
We favor raising teachers salaries to attract well educated teachers. We favor the reduction in class size to 16 or less in all elementary and intermediate class rooms.
We favor the elimination of the unnecessarily lengthy and burdensome application process for substitute teachers, the reduction in training hours and expenses for their certification, and an increase in their daily pay.
Soldiers and Veterans
The Maui County Democratic Party calls on our federal congressional representatives and the U.S. military to honor its commitments and contracts with its soldiers and veterans. No soldier should be retained longer than his signed contract stipulates.
All recruitment promises should be legally enforceable. All recruiting promises must be performed. No soldier should be forced to bear arms if he determines that he is opposed to fighting and all such soldiers should be allowed to resign from the military service.
Promises of earning citizenship shall not be made by military recruiters, although all alien citizens who participate in the U.S. military services should be given expedited U.S. citizenship.
All U.S. military veterans who were at any time in the past promised U.S. citizenship shall be given citizenship immediately as promised.
Alternatives to Military Service
All students who are addressed by military recruiters shall likewise be informed of post-high school program alternatives to military service on an equal time basis.
The Maui County Democratic Party recommends to the Hawaii State Democratic Party that it consider the merits of working for the establishment of an alternative to military service. This program, which might be required of all students over the age of 16, would provide skills training to young people and the opportunity to perform volunteer projects of use to the community. Such programs might include performing maintenance in Haleakala National Park, building affordable housing, performing search and rescue in conjunction with the Coast Guard, monitoring coral reefs or fish and whale populations. Completing two years of this alternative service would make the young person eligible for free college tuition in addition to paying a stipend and exit bonus. The project might be run on the model of the Civilian Conservation Corps in existence during the Depression.
Sensible, Planned Development on Maui
The Maui County Democratic Party supports planned community development. As such we call on the Maui County Council to withhold building permits for agricultural land until such time as the General Development Plan is completed.
In connection with development on Maui, we call upon the Hawaii Department of Transportation to consult with our County officials and get their approval for all major changes involving transportation here on Maui, and to publish notice of all
planned changes well in advance of those changes in our local newspapers.
Preserving Maui’s Beauty and Environment
Recognizing that our County is heavily dependent upon the tourist business for its prosperity and that a clean and uncluttered environment will be attractive to tourists, and recognizing that keeping our environment clutter free is to be encouraged while the charging of fees causes some members of the Maui community to avoid using the regulated collection and dumping sites, the Maui Democratic Party recommends to the County Council that individual fees for all residential garbage collection and dumping be abolished and that all dumping for non-commercial purposes shall be freely available at convenient hours for all residents.
Recognizing that recycling of useable goods will cut down on the amount of trash which must be fitted into our small island’s dump sites and recognizing that recycling is sensible and in the interest of our community, the Maui County Democratic Party recommends to the County Council that the County institute a curb side recycling program as soon as possible and that it allow residents to remove useable materials from our dump sites.
2004 Maui County Platform
2004 Maui County Resolutions |
