New Ideas for Democrats
by Jason Sanford

There's been a lot of debate since the midterm elections about why the Democratic Party lost, well, almost everything. Democrats are split on the issue. Half the party suspects they forgot their progressive roots and were too Republican (which isn't as strange as it seems, since the Jewish vote for Buchanan gave Bush the election); the other half believes Democratic candidates should do something akin to wearing the hollowed-out skins of Republicans until after each election, then tearing off their disguises and saying "Surprise, I'm really a Democrat!" (Doing this would finally give a reason for having elections just after Halloween.)

Of course, the real reason that the Democrats lost is that the party hasn't produced a new idea in decades. The party that practically invented civil rights, the Great Society and Social Security between the 1930s and 1960s has been intellectually dead since the 1970s. And so in the interest of fomenting some new thoughts for desperate Democrats, here are a few ideas they might consider grabbing:

1) Health-care bills are taxes!

Republicans continually trumpet the statistic about people working through May each year to pay off all of their taxes. (Some people have taken to calling this break-even point Tax Freedom Day.) Well, in the same vein, unless their employer is generous enough to provide health insurance (which fewer are willing to do each day), the typical American family pays anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a month just for health insurance. That dwarfs all governmental taxes.

According to Webster's Dictionary, the noun version of tax means "A charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes." You can't have more of a public purpose than health care, especially since sick people can't work, buy stuff or take care of their family values (all activities rated rather highly by Dubya and the Republicans). Of course, using this health-care-bills-are-taxes logic means that most of our monthly bills have a public purpose — but isn't that what Dubya is saying when he asks Americans to keep our economy going by charging those Christmas presents at 18 percent interest?

2) Equal rights for corporations — let them go to jail!

The idea that corporations are legally equal to people came about through constitutional rulings and laws enacted over the last century or so. The flaw with this equality is that while corporations have all the constitutional benefits of American citizens — including the right to lobby our government with billions of dollars of money-is-free-speech payoffs — they don't face the same prison risk citizens do when they break the law. So why not a law or constitutional amendment that requires any corporation wanting the benefits of citizenship to offer up its board of directors as jail bait if the corporation ever does wrong?

3) Cut bureaucratic waste — nationalize WorldCom!

Anyone who has ever worked in the free market knows that the government isn't the last refuge of entrenched bureaucracies. For every $2,000 toilet seat the Pentagon buys, there are a dozen private companies doing the same. The myth of corporate America being a place where hard work is rewarded is contradicted by how often not-so-hard work actually gets rewarded, especially if it is done by someone with connections, the ability to suck up or simply with the skill to to keep certain accounting issues quiet.

So here's the idea: Whenever a Fortune 500 company goes bankrupt, make public management of the company for 10 years a condition of bankruptcy. After all, when a person declares bankruptcy, it stays on their credit report for 10 years. Why shouldn't a similar penalty be handed down to large companies?

4) Apply the Golden Rule to international policy

Okay, this idea isn't exactly new, but instead of doing unto others before they do unto us, the United States would do much better to actually practice and support the ideals of our country. (You know, democracy, equality, free speech — things Americans say they believe in but tend to forget about until they are gone.)

Sound naive? Then reach back to high school, where humans fine tune their diplomatic skills. Remember that bully who beat you up every day? Turns out he's gained a hundred pounds, got divorced and is stuck in a dead-end job. The reason? He couldn't fit in with all of those geeks he used to beat up — and those geeks are now running the world.

Times are changing fast. With the information revolution, countries the world over are equalizing. While the United States can still get its way like the biggest bully in high school, someday soon the European Union nations, China and a hundred other countries aren't going to go for that. Better to lay the groundwork for good relations now than have the alternative forced on us in the future.

There you go. Four new ideas. Democrats are free to pick and use as they please. And if the party doesn't go for these ideas, I'd be more than pleased to hunt them down some Republican pelts to wear until the next election.

E-mail Jason Sanford at lapthai at yahoo dot com.