Now What Should the Democrats Do? (Survey)

The Progressive Democrats (as opposed to the corporate Democrats, such as the Clintons) has a two question survey that they sent out in a newsletter:

1) What do you think progressives should focus on? (Text box)

2) What is your top priority right now? (Choose One)

• Pressuring Democrats who would cut Social Security in a budget deal.
• Organizing in Republican districts to influence budget negotiations.
• Recruiting and supporting progressives who can beat Tea Party Republicans in 2014.
• Resting -- I'm worn out from the shutdown and need a week off from activism.
• I have another priority in mind.

I chose saving Social Security as my answer for question #2 and for question #1 I left this:

In no particular order:

1) Taxing capital gains as regular income and taxing that income for Social Security while eliminating the "cap".

2) Medicare for All -- taxing the former capital gains for Medicare at the current payroll rate.

3) Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and indexing it to inflation while invoking a 50:1 cap on CEO pay.

4) Hiring more IRS auditors to pursue tax evasion and investigating offshore banking.

5) Campaign finance reform; repealing Citizens United; publicly financed elections; stronger voting rights; outlaw superPACs; end gerrymandering.

6) Reforming "limited liability" clauses in corporate charters, holding execs criminally liable for wrong-doing.

7) Impose a life-time ban on all politicians and military personal from becoming corporate lobbyists after leaving public service (outlawing the "revolving door")

8) Eliminate all loopholes in the tax code for corporate taxes. The GOP likes "flat taxes" so tax all corporations a flat tax of 35% on all gross profits.

9) Impose a 1% transaction tax on all stock trades and a 1% infrastructure tax on all income over $1 million a year.

10) Hire more government workers to inspect our food supply, production, and imports

11) Big Pharma (nuff said)

12) Reforming the Fed (those who sit on their boards) and then nationalizing the big banks as branches of the Fed (no more "too big to fail") and allowing consumers to borrow at the same rate as the big banks were allowed to borrow.

13) Put the energy companies on notice that they could be nationalized; stop exporting our natural resources from federal lands only to profit a few (oil and gas should be used domestically to lower energy costs.) Note: If the energy industry were nationalized, the profits could also be used to research and finance clean energy.

Yes, I'm sure I missed a few things...