Manifesto: a written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer (Merriam Webster)

Taking Back Democracy is intended to be, by textbook definition, a Manifesto. It seems to be a word that is often stigmatized to have some sort of inherently negative connotation. This type of word association is the sort of thing that creates buzzwords with powerful reactions, when in reality there may not be anything intrinsically wrong with an idea. If you were initially turned off to the idea of a manifesto, purely as a result of its name, then I hope you read this now and reframe your idea of what it actually means. Just like the word itself, this manifesto is meant to take ideas that you currently hold, and challenge you to think about them differently.

Taking Back Democracy

Written by Anthony Bridges

In this document, I hope to establish a new baseline of what it means to be an American, and to support American Democracy. We are at a time right now where many citizens are understandably disillusioned with our government as it grows ever more dysfunctional. We have a polarized country, but that polarity isn’t echoed in our government. A majority of elected officials, regardless of political affiliation, are voting in favor of legislation that is damaging to our democracy. If you have lost faith in the elected officials you once believed in, then I urge you to consider this ideology.

Part I: The Problem

At the time of this initial draft it is January 28th, 2025. We are one week into the new Authoritarian Regime. I write this now because I’m observing a decisive shift in our democracy. The Trump Administration and the Oligarchs backing it are restructuring the government to operate exclusively with one agenda. Any opposition to this agenda is phased out and removed from their position. In our new government, you must be loyal to the Regime, or you will be replaced by someone who is.

Many among the American public are insistent that our freedoms will not be infringed upon severely enough to worry about our government’s dealings. Many believe the new Regime is something that we can ignore, and that in four years we’ll have a democratic election that will return us back to normalcy. Personally, I find this notion delusional. Regardless, whether our government is now authoritarian or still operating under the guise of a republic is irrelevant.

American Democracy has been dead for a long time. The labels of Democrat or Republican have been irrelevant. The government runs at the leisure of the Oligarchs. The most well funded campaign wins the seat in the House/Senate/Presidency. The media spits two different streams of propaganda, and then we regurgitate it back to each other on social media. They convince us of what we want, and follow through on the bare minimum of their promises, and change very little regardless of who ends up in charge. However, I will say that the Trump Regime has changed that. They are delivering on every promise and changing everything very quickly, because they are blowing by every regulation in place to slow them down. Unfortunately, these policies are based in socio-economic discrimination, and the unraveling of what few threads of Democracy we have left.

Policies have existed to extort the American public well before Trump ever came along, and the time to do something about it has been well past due. The income disparity becomes ever more profound, and there’s so many different ways the gap becomes deliberately expanded. Nothing in America is free. We are all enslaved by the monetization of our culture. USD is the life force that we are all bound by, and no one ever has enough. We exist in a society where a family making 100k a year (a top 30% income household) could have their whole way of life threatened by one emergency.

Let’s go down the rabbit hole with our hypothetical wealthy Americans, who are of course living the dream. They make 100k a year, with two kids and have a mortgage on a house just like they planned. Great! However, you of course need to pay for the house and the kids. The average mortgage is $2,200 a month(~26k/year). Presumably you would want at least two cars too, since this is America after all and the infrastructure is all specifically built for cars. Well the average car payment for a new car is $737 a month. Lucky for our family they already have a car that’s paid off so they only have to worry about one car payment, two insurance policies, gas, and preventative maintenance. Let’s round that to an optimistic $1,000 a month(12k/year). If you can’t afford that then good luck getting the kids to school, and getting to work and the grocery store and whatever other errands you need to run relying on public transportation or a bicycle. Next you have to burn the chunk of money dedicated to marginally reducing the rate at which the government goes into debt. If you make 100k, you can bank on 17k of that never hitting your pockets, so in practicum you actually make 83k. Or you would, except your employer is going to further reduce your take home pay so that they can provide you with benefits. Since healthcare isn’t a fundamental human right, your employer gets to hold your health insurance over your head. The average cost of a family health care plan is 24k for a year, fortunately your average employer will cover 29% of that for you, and conveniently pull the rest from your check for you. So there goes another chunk of 17k you can count on not seeing, down to a grand total of 66k for your actual take home. Let’s go ahead and reduce the housing and transportation costs of 38k from our incredible number and now we’re at 28k. Now we’re looking at $2,300 a month, however we still have one last true fundamental of survival to account for, which is food. Food expenses will cost the average household about $1,000 a month. So once you budget out all the fundamental needs based on average prices, that leaves $1,300 a month to contribute to clothing, life enriching activities, and savings.

This may seem comfortable at first glance, but the problem is that the cost of your necessities clocks in at 74k a year, and so you can’t afford to stop making money, or your entire way of life is immediately threatened. Also, Americans are subject to extensive ploys of consumerism which causes most of us to be pretty loose with spending the money that we do have. As a result, you’ll find a lot of people who don’t save money when they’re given the opportunity, and also a lot of people who will spend themselves into debt, which will cause an additional monthly charge that has to be paid in order to maintain good standing in society.

Most Americans can count on finding themselves 25k in debt at some point in their lives due to all the different opportunities that are provided to us with a significant price gouge. There’s a cost to education, some opportunities are reasonably affordable, but kids are naive and constantly see advertisements from big name schools that will happily loan them the tens of thousands of dollars they require. Before you know it, you’re 20/21 with a nice chunk of debt thanks to a seemingly good decision of going to a prestigious university. We have health insurance plans, but they come attached with deductibles and copays, and so you can be paying $200 a month for a health care plan, just to get slammed with a massive deductible and substantial copay if you ever end up actually needing to use it. It’s unlikely to be anything in the realm you can actually afford. Fortunately the United States runs on IOU’s so you can just pay it off indefinitely while you wait for your next costly emergency to come along. And make no mistake, a car is a fundamental necessity in this country. If you are reading this with no personal experience in the US, you have to understand how radically our infrastructure differs from countries that didn’t have millions of square miles to develop. Our country is very spread out, and it’s difficult for most people to get to everyday locations like the grocery store or the gym without a car. The problem with cars is that they’re an inherently bad investment, due to their sharp dive in value over time. Cars are a depreciating asset, a cardinal sin in investing, and should be viewed as a luxury. However, in the specific case of America, your first car is a necessity that will cost you dearly if you aren’t careful.

The beginning of this manifesto is highlighting the comfortable middle class of America who have debts, but also have the income and assets to maintain the American way of life. An unfortunate side effect of this lifestyle is a complete disconnect from the people who are very far removed from any sort of American dream. In order for there to be a top 30%, there must be a bottom 30%. 30% of American households make less than 50k a year. That may sound reasonable when you first hear it, but you’re likely single, or living in a society that isn’t price gouging you constantly. As we’ve already established, an American family can easily spend 74k a year on basic necessities if it’s within their means, but not all of that can be scaled back very easily. You can’t afford a new car, so you finance a used car instead around the meager average of $520 a month (~6k). You can’t afford a mortgage, so you pay the average rent of $1,500 a month (18k). Uncle Sam is gonna be sure to take his cut, so you can kiss about 8k goodbye. You still have to pay for health insurance, partially covered by your employer (Hopefully. You’ll notice a trend in America where the less money you make/have, the less money anyone will invest in you) so that’s a 17k deduction if it’s an average plan. And just like that, in order to budget for the cost of rent, a car payment, taxes, and health care you’re looking at 48k of your 50k gone. Obviously that’s not gonna work, as you still need car insurance, renter’s insurance, utility bills, food costs, etc. So we go back to the drawing board, and start finding things that are below average. We need a cheaper place to stay (you can find some really cheap housing in America, and believe me when I say you get what you pay for), we need a cheaper car, and we need cheaper health insurance. Hopefully that can all be found at a price within our means, and then we have to budget very frugally with other necessities, food being a major example. Spending $1,000 a month on food likely isn’t going to work, but making it cheaper is much easier said than done. There was a point in time where you could eat McDonald’s 2 or 3 times a day, and while that wouldn’t be healthy, it would’ve been affordable. However, the most disgusting garbage that our country tries to pass off as food will now cost you around $10 per meal. For the poorest Americans, fast food is becoming a luxury. Cooking at home is the only thing that’s sustainably affordable, and I don’t know if you heard, but the cost of eggs is just ridiculous right now. So legitimately it’s hard to find a way to eat for a household making 50k a year. It just isn’t the amount of money that it used to be. Another critical thing to consider is that at the lowest income bracket, you are essentially borrowing everything you have. A mortgage is an investment into the ownership of a valuable asset, whereas renting is just renting. That house/apartment isn’t yours, and it never will be. You are stuck only spending money, and never able to invest money and expand money because your cost of living is too high to spend money on anything other than survival. You can only spend the meager wages that you make. And this is not the lowest income bracket by any means. The bottom 20% of households make less than 35k a year, and if you ask anyone who isn’t the government, they’d tell you that’s only enough money for 1 person. A household any bigger than that would have a really hard time surviving on 35k.

If you ask the government though, these households are making plenty of money. A household of 4 isn’t considered impoverished until they’re making less than 32k, so if they’re making 35k they likely won’t qualify for a lot of federal assistance, which is of course what the government wants. The government wants to keep the poverty statistics as low as possible, and gate keep people from getting aid they likely need. If you were to check, you’d see 11.1% of Americans were in poverty in 2023, based on arbitrary thresholds the government makes deliberately lower than functional poverty. I reiterate the average cost of living for an American household is 77k, yet the poverty line is set at less than half that? So if your household makes 40k a year, you have to find a way to reduce your cost of living to half of the American average, and the government will give you absolutely no help. Inevitably, these people find themselves getting thrown further into debt as they struggle to afford a way of life that is priced higher than their means.

Now I ask a question to my fellow Americans, are you tired of it yet? Are you tired of always needing more money, no matter how much you make? Are you tired of being extorted for fundamental needs like education and health care? Are you tired of feeling like one bad accident, one unfortunate diagnosis, will derail your family’s financial security? Or have you been paying for your bad day for awhile now?

Part II: The Proposal

I want you to imagine a new America, reimagined from the ground up. A place where fundamental necessities are provided. A place where you exist, and so you have the right to higher education and effective health care with no strings attached. The government would tell you such things are unaffordable, but they only say that because they don’t want to tax the Oligarchs, and the insurance companies bleeding you dry are funding their campaigns. Realistically the government can’t afford anything, but it keeps spending money anyways so now we’re $36 Trillion in debt and it hasn’t mattered much so far. So what is the reasoning for trying to slow down the rate at which debt is accrued? What difference would it make if we were $50 or $60 Trillion in debt?

I do aspire to balance the budget, but when you talk about adopting $40 Trillion in debt, getting out of it seems pretty unimaginable, but I do believe it’s fundamentally possible to operate the government at a surplus. But if it isn’t then so be it. If that proves to be the case then I aspire to no longer make it the common man’s problem.

My economic restructure will be completely based around establishing way stricter guidelines for the wealthiest members of our society. Tax evasion would be truly illegal. Currently, it’s well known and well documented that a lot of America’s wealthiest do a lot of banking outside of the US in countries that leave that money untaxed, and they also avoid paying any US taxes on that money. This form of tax evasion should be illegal. American citizens should pay their full taxes to the government. The taxation of the wealthy will be the driving force of the government’s spending power. There will be a new bracket of income tax introduced at $1 Billion of 75%. The income tax rate for anyone making 75k or less will be 0%. Wealth distribution in the US is absurdly staggered. The bottom 50% of earners in the US only hold 2.5% of the total wealth in the country, so why bother to tax them? The taxes collected from the bottom 50% make up about 2.5% of the total money collected, a percentage that will become even less significant once the hyper wealthy are taxed more effectively. We can completely cut all income tax for our poorest citizens, and still substantially increase the amount of money being collected by our government.

Corporate tax rates will become variable, with 4 major brackets of income in mind:  

200k 10% I $1 Million 20% I $500 Million 38% I $1 Billion 60%. (Workshop number, subject to change. It’s important to be mindful of the corporate tax rate even at the most absurd echelon.) If a company is unable to record profit of at least 200k they will be tax exempt that year. Companies on the bubble will be allowed to submit claims for tax exemption. Claims will be reviewed based on how much a company spent on labor. Meaning, if a company was able to record profits exceeding 200k due to an unwillingness to pay laborers, they will not qualify for tax exemption. If laborer wages are deemed appropriate, and the company mildly exceeded the 200k threshold, they will qualify for tax exemption.

Property taxes will become variable. I don’t support the elimination of property taxes, because it disproportionately benefits the wealthy. You need to own property before you can benefit from the policy, which is a pipedream for the average American these days. Also, the more property you own, the more you stand to benefit. Instead, you should pay property taxes proportional to the amount of property that you own. If you own one property, then you won’t be taxed for that property. If you own two, then you’ll be taxed a little on those properties. If you own three, you will be taxed at a comparable rate to current taxes. With each additional property you own, your tax obligation will increase more and more. 

The key here is variable tax rates. Taxes should be low on people who have small amounts of wealth, and high on people with large amounts of wealth, and this concept needs to be implemented as much as possible. The new taxation system will be designed to prevent the hyper wealthy from sitting on their fortunes, and ease up on low income Americans and small businesses who are merely trying to survive. If anyone is still believing in trickle down economics at this point then I have some bad news for you; Santa isn’t real. The money won’t come back to the public if it isn’t taxed away, and redistributed by the government. The question is, what should the government do with it?

First, I want to talk about an issue that is near and dear to my heart, which is Education reform. I’ve been workshopping ideas to rebuild Education from the ground up for a long while now, and I have some ideas that can’t practically be implemented right now, but we can head in the right direction.

For now, private education will be left more or less untouched. If you’re wealthy, and you view the cost of private education as trivial, then by all means send your kid to private school. However, I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to send their kid to private school, or they won’t get an effective education. My biggest goal for the future of education is to remove all standards. This may seem counter-intuitive, but bear with me. With the removal of minimum standards, we can instead focus on specialization. Any educated person in the modern world can tell you that specialization is key, and we can begin specializing early. Common knowledge is a thing of the past. People’s knowledge bases are growing more and more unique with their particular skills, and from a societal standpoint that is a good thing. You need an expert in their field in order to push the field further. Education right now dictates that you need to be capable of determining that 6 x 8 = 48 even if your natural skill lies in the linguistic or literary. You could speak 3 languages with a reading level 4 grades higher than average in all of them, and fail in school because you aren’t good at math. I don’t believe in telling kids they have to be ok at everything, and telling them they’re stupid if they fail to meet that standard in a few subjects. All kids should still be taught every subject, but there shouldn’t be any institutional negativity if they fail to grasp a certain subject.

Subjects would be taught at levels, rather than by grade. You would take placement tests at the beginning of the year (maybe slightly before in the summer) to identify what level you’re currently at, and then you would take a class taught at that level. Instead of grouping classes based on age, classes would be grouped based on knowledge. That way, you can have kids learning things at the most ideal pace for them specifically. Your math whiz kid can go and take level 9 math while he takes level 5 history because it doesn’t come as naturally to him, and he tests out of each level at the speed at which he’s capable. Once he graduates, his high school transcript will show which levels he was able to accomplish, and colleges can accept him into various programs from there. If there’s things he still needs to learn, then he can be put in undergrad equivalent classes until his base knowledge is at an appropriate level for his major. If he did well enough in grade school to meet the level prerequisites for a major, then he can hop right into his Bachelor’s program and presumably knock it out in 2 years. We can have higher educated students hitting the workforce younger than ever. All public colleges will be expected to provide free tuition to all students, regardless of their home of record.

On the other hand, there will be children who struggle to achieve in any academic category. This may be disheartening, but there will be value in knowing that you have a firm understanding of every level you do manage to clear. If you graduate high school with knowledge levels too low to garner much university attention, there will still be community college equivalents (certain to be entirely free) that will be focused on raising your knowledge levels to a point where you will qualify for Bachelor’s programs. Even if you take a slower track to hit the minimum levels of your degree, once you get there you’ll be eligible to go down your degree path. Degree classes will likely grade very similarly to how traditional school is currently executed.

A potential roadblock that the program may face is true savants. There are certainly children out there who would fly through the basic academic levels if they were given the opportunity to show how fast they can learn, and so they may hit levels of education that are difficult to provide at their age. Anyone within a typical standard deviation of maybe +/- 4 would be able to be taught fairly easily at their school, but if it became apparent that your child was exceptionally talented across the board, or even in one specific subject, it could prove tricky to push their education further. My thoughts to remedy this is to potentially have some higher classes taught remotely. You could have an expert teach the class via webcam, and have the 20 children capable of absorbing the content across the region participating in the class with tablets.

As well, language barriers need to be addressed, but this is an issue that isn’t well managed in the current system. If a student doesn’t understand English, then all attempts to teach them anything else will be postponed until they can understand their teachers. There is no point in trying to teach a kid something in English if they don’t know the language. They will spend the whole school day learning English until they show enough proficiency to return to conventional education. Whatever disadvantage this may put them at pales in comparison to the disadvantage created by passing a kid through the system when they weren’t able to learn anything from the classes they took before, especially if they never pick up English well enough to be literate and well spoken.

Secondly, there will be a major deprivatization initiative starting with 3 major industries that can’t run for profit; healthcare, defense, and prisons. There should be no money in people’s sickness, the production of weapons of mass destruction, or the incarceration of our citizens. 

Our military spending is a fantastic example of how the capitalists steal our money in plain sight. Our military budget is nearing $1 Trillion, and this far outstrips any other country’s military spending. 2nd place is China hovering around $300 Billion. We could half our military spending, and still be the biggest military spenders in the world. All this money gets allotted to the military, and then they fail every audit.

Where is all this money going? Private companies. The biggest problem is that the DoD doesn’t have direct oversight over the manufacture of their weapons of war. The cost of military equipment should be the cost of production. Instead, there are these private middle men who are operating for profit, and in order to make that profit they charge more than the cost of production. 

The issue with a company like Lockheed Martin is that they are predominantly funded by the US Government, which means most of their profits are taxpayer money. When they gouge the price of an F-35, that is a robbery of the American public. F-35s don’t need to cost $100 Million+ per plane, but if Lockheed Martin wants to continue to record billions of dollars of profit, then the price has to go up.

It creates a moral dilemma as well when these companies are publicly traded. When people are invested in a company’s stock, they are expecting that company to exhibit exponential growth. It’s a cardinal sin in capitalism to allow money to stagnate, so Lockheed has to record more and more profit year over year to satisfy the expectations of their investors. However, the money Lockheed makes is taken directly from American taxpayers, and the weapons they produce should only be produced and used as needed. Capitalism can’t accept this, and demands that more and more be produced regardless of necessity, and relishes the cost of the goods increasing, even if at the expense of taxpayers. The GDP goes up, and investors grow their money, at our expense. Worse still is what is liable to happen when you need an excuse to produce more weapons of mass destruction.

Any production of equipment that can only be sold to the US government (or a close ally government) should be directly manufactured and distributed by the DoD. This equipment should be produced as needed, and we should be making up less reasons to “need” it.

Prisons are another entity that should be government owned and operated. The way the system currently exists, private companies are paid per inmate in their prison. This is completely unacceptable, because it incentivizes the company to keep people in their prison as long as possible. Jails and prisons should only be trying to incarcerate people as deemed necessary by the justice system. 

Finally, we will push ourselves out of the Medieval Era and treat health care like a basic human right. If you are an American citizen, then you have health care plain and simple. Our American labor force will pay into Medicare and Medicaid at the same rate as usual (which results in ~$2 Trillion annually), and that will cover the cost of healthcare for everyone in this country. There’s no good reason why the healthcare system should need more funding than that to effectively function. The current premiums and additional costs are nothing more than additional scams of the public by the private sector.

There will be a massive investigation launched into the explosion of health care costs, and I’m certain there will be various members of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries who will be found guilty of extorting the most vulnerable Americans in the most unethical method; forcing them to choose between manufactured lifelong medical debt, or a slow and painful death.

The current concept of “health insurance” will cease to exist. There will no longer be a middle man you’re forced to negotiate with, who’s creating a premium of the quality of health care you’re able to receive. One of the biggest problems with the system is the insurers’ capacity to deny claims, even for clients with proper health insurance. There will no longer be a need to take any course of action beyond expert medical advice. Claim denial rates for in-network care requests sit in a range from 10-20%. Insurers will deny care for insured Americans against medical advice. So not only is the system overwhelmingly expensive, but it also doesn’t guarantee effective care for the portion of the public that can afford it.

All medical practices will become publicly owned and funded. The largest expense is anticipated to be the labor of the medical professionals who work at the facilities. The “cost” of a procedure will be reevaluated with a new ideology. For example, say you need to get an MRI. The complexity of an MRI machine shouldn’t be understated, but the average cost to get an exam is $1,325. This price point is created due to the healthcare industry operating on a for profit basis. The hospital gets charged a fortune to acquire the machine and to conduct its maintenance, and so they in turn have to charge a lot of money to the patient’s insurance to cover the costs of the machine. Under the new system, the hospital will no longer run for profit. It will instead be government funded with the expectation that all the money will be spent and no revenue will be generated. The hospital will use government funds to buy the machine, maintain it, and run it, and that will be the cost. If it turns out that cost ends up legitimately being $1,325 per exam then so it shall be. Even still, the government will be the ones paying for it.

Pharmaceutical needs will also be completely covered for all American citizens who have a prescription. Pharmaceutical companies may also become government run and funded. Their contributions to the system are very minimal at first glance, as they aren’t actually responsible for developing new drugs. The most expensive element of drug production is the development of new drugs, and this practice is already predominantly funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). All the pharmaceutical companies do is mark up the commercial price for drugs that are already developed and ready for mass production. If they wish to remain private, they will be expected to distribute their drugs to the hospitals and pharmacies at a price not to exceed 20% of manufacturing cost. If they should determine a drug is now 500% more expensive than any other time in history, there will be a prompt investigation. If the investigation doesn’t find evidence of a 500% increase in manufacturing cost, there will be consequences.

All drug use will now be decriminalized to include marijuana. As well, there will be avenues for private vendors to obtain a license to sell most drugs to the public who don’t have a prescription. These vendors will be expected to have safely manufactured and tested products with clear labels detailing the contents. A major issue our healthcare system has is the swiftness with which strong medications get prescribed, and the patterns of addiction that can follow upon using a medication as prescribed. The stigma of addiction needs to be thought about in a new way. People who are battling powerful addictions are not likely to stop abusing their drug of choice any time soon. The solution is to provide them with a safer, regulated product. If a victim of traumatic injury is released from the hospital with a two week supply of Percocet, there is a high probability of developing opioid addiction. In the instance that this happens, a lack of availability or convenience will not prevent an opioid addict from getting a fix. They will just do something dangerous or illegal to find what they need. Instead, it’s better to provide them with a relatively safe product that they don’t have to commit any sort of fraud to attain. The vendors will be able to monitor the amount of drugs an addict is purchasing, and prevent them from exceeding a set limit for a period of time. Vendors will not be offering any substances in a form intended for intravenous use.

This policy will go hand-in-hand with a reimagining of mental health and rehabilitation. Rehab is currently too expensive for an active addict to attend, and to stay long enough to get over the hump of your addiction will take awhile. While drugs will be more readily available to the public, the primary goal of the new drug policy will be curing people’s addictions. Regular consumers of dangerous drugs will be encouraged to go to rehab by the clinics they’re buying from, so addicts will no longer be privately engaging in their addiction or buying from illicit vendors who don’t want their ailments to be cured. Vendors will be required to track a client’s descent into addiction and regularly remind them of rehab services and their increase of drug use and dependence. Some people may just need to hit rock bottom before they’re ready to accept help, but it’s possible we can save some people from reaching that point.

All mental health treatment will of course be free, so that you can get the help you need and there aren’t any negative repercussions. There was a story about a girl who was diagnosed with an adjustment disorder with depressed mood. The root of her adjustment disorder stemmed from stress related to medical debt. Well she powers through and time goes on, but one day she has a mental breakdown, and gets institutionalized for her recovery. While she’s there they work to get her back to baseline, and teach her some techniques to help her handle the stress better. Great! But then she has to leave, and the whole experience results in a fresh intake of additional medical debt. 47% of Americans say money has a negative effect on their mental health, so you can’t give a person mental health treatment and then charge them up the nose for it, or on the back end they will only end up feeling worse.

Transgender Americans will be entitled to gender affirming care. There is no reason why a trans person shouldn’t have access to a background info box asking them what gender they identify as. They also have the right to manipulate the hormones within their own bodies, as it has no impact on anyone else’s well being. The Transgender community is constantly struggling with the societal perception of their existence, and the bare minimum our society can do for them is recognize at a federal level that they are allowed to be themselves. 

Reproductive rights must be expanded. Abortion bans have already proven to be detrimental to maternal health. The rigidity of the ban makes it overwhelmingly difficult for women who are having an invalid pregnancy to get an abortion, even if the pregnancy is a threat to their life. The law states abortions should be acceptable for women in life threatening situations, but in practice it doesn’t work that way. There’s too many complications and hoops to jump through. At bare minimum, women should have the right to an abortion if a doctor deems it medically necessary. Once an obstetrics expert confirms an abortion is medically necessary, the operation should be performed with no additional delays.

There will be government subsidies put in place to assist prospective first time homeowners who have never purchased real estate before. Any household reporting less than 100k in taxable income will qualify for some form of loan assistance to buy their first house. Just to be clear, NO ONE will be given a free house even if they’re the most qualified applicant. Subsidies will likely range from 10-50% of home value depending on the flat value of the house, and the reported income of the applying household.

The poverty line will be raised, and will be directly based on average American household expenses. 50% of average household expenses will be the benchmark for a household of 4. The increments from there will move about the same as they currently do. This year it’s $5,500. So that would mean that poverty for a household of 4 would begin at $38,640, and households would move incrementally by $5,500 from there. Cost of living is expected to decrease once public services are implemented properly, but the formula can be reevaluated if the change proves ineffective.

Impoverished households are unlikely to be eligible for homeownership subsidies, but they will be eligible for rental assistance. There will also be an initiative to develop low income housing units that impoverished households will be eligible to live in. Qualifying factors for this housing include: a minimum household size of 3, living below the poverty line, no adult member of the household may have a criminal record. Utilities should be the only cost of living associated with this housing.

Credit card interest rates will now be capped at 10% for any card with a balance below 10k. Any single card exceeding the 10k balance threshold may be subject to an increased rate hard capped at 15%. Your interest rate can’t be pushed beyond 10% if you have debt exceeding 10k spread across multiple lines of credit. 

New pathways to expungement for convicted felons. Some felony charges will remain completely permanent (particularly in the vein of sexual abuse and violent crimes resulting in death) however, felons who are able to exhibit an extended period of civility should be able to qualify for expungement. Felons will be expected to serve their probationary period with good standing, and be eligible for expungement if they go an additional 5 years remaining in good standing with the law after their probation ends. Any expungement made will be case specific, and may take longer than the minimum 5 years before it gets approved.

Inmates serving time will be entitled to wages of $10 an hour should they be tasked with doing work to service the community neighboring their prison. Inmates should be given the opportunity to generate income and savings so they can be financially prepared for their assimilation into civilian life. If you don’t give criminals an avenue to become financially stable, then you can’t be surprised when they reoffend. If a citizen is released from prison with some financial savings and a realistic avenue for expungement, then that citizen is being put in a position where a life of crime isn’t their only choice.

Local police forces will be expected to have community town halls at least once a month. Police departments should be aspiring to serve and protect their communities, and they should respect the wishes of their community leaders and advocates. While certain activities may be illegal, if the local community doesn’t want some elements of the law to be heavily enforced, then the police should work with the community and be lenient in the areas that they’re requesting. It’s my hope that effective avenues of communication will be able to heal the covenant of trust between the police and the communities they protect.

Public transportation initiatives will be enhanced. Trains have proven to be an effective medium of transportation everywhere they’ve ever been implemented. Our infrastructure certainly uses a lot of trains, but more for the movement of cargo than for people. Interstate passenger trains, and localized train lines will be made with the intention of reducing the necessity of a privately owned vehicle.

Various common occurrences in politics will be deemed illegal. Lobbying will be illegal. If you accept money from someone and promise them special favors (which is widely known to happen and is completely legal for some reason), you will be removed from office. Gerrymandering will be illegal. District lines will be redrawn once to group similarly minded communities together, and they will not be able to be changed again without significant cause and effort. Elections will no longer be based on who raises more money, and the electoral college will be abolished. Election outcomes will be determined by the popular vote, so that each individual vote is just as significant as any other. If your ideology proves to be unpopular, then you will not win.

Ranked choice voting will be implemented, to empower voters to choose their favorite candidate first, without feeling like they may be “wasting” their vote. Ranked choice voting allows you to choose multiple candidates in a race, with your most preferred candidate being the 1st one you vote for. If that candidate is mathematically eliminated from that race, then you will vote for your 2nd pick from there. If your 2nd pick finds themselves eliminated as well, then you move onto your 3rd pick, and so on. This will allow voters to feel confident advocating for their favorite representatives, because they will still be able to vote for more popular candidates that they find preferable to their least favorite.

Voter suppression practices will now be illegal. Mail-in ballots will need to be reviewed by multiple agencies before being thrown out. If a ballot is found to possess adequate deficiencies to disqualify it, a message must be sent to the voter explaining the deficiency for why their ballot was invalid, and that they need to cast a new ballot before the mail-in deadline if they would like to participate in the democratic process. All in-person voters will vote in the same voting area, on the same voting machines. Any voter who registered properly beforehand, and possesses a valid ID will be allowed to vote. Any policy change that appears to be aimed at complicating the process of voter registration will be promptly investigated.

Minimum wage will be increased and now have different ratings and scales. Base minimum wage for a minor will be $10 per hour. Minimum wage for an adult at least 18 years of age will be $17 per hour. A 30 year old with at least 10 years of prior work experience will be entitled to $25 an hour. A 40 year old with 15 years of prior work experience will be paid at minimum $35 an hour. Any minimum wage employee who spends 10 years working for the same company will become tenured, and will not be permitted to be laid off due to an anticipated increase in wage requirements. Any company reporting less than 200k in income may negotiate privately with their employees and sign them on with any wages the employee will accept. Any company reporting over $1 Billion in income will be required to pay their employees at minimum $25 an hour, regardless of age or prior work experience. Low income businesses may also be eligible for a labor subsidy to assist with providing their employees with livable wages.

Environmental policies will be overhauled. We are suffering from too many ecological disasters to brazenly ignore it, and continue to prioritize revenue over everything else. Companies will still be able to make money even if they’re required to place some consideration on their environmental impact. 

We WILL enroll back into the Paris Agreement. We WILL respect environmental precautions such as the endangered species list. The environment is NOT the Oligarch’s toilet and treating it as such will not be tolerated. The environmental policies in place right now (or lack thereof) are quite simply unacceptable. Respecting the environment will no longer be treated like a debate, or that it’s optional.

There will be an initiative to reduce plastic production swiftly. Plastic is not recyclable, nor is it biodegradable. Any product designed to be “disposable” will not be made from plastic, or possess potentially dangerous waste such as lithium batteries. Glass, paper, aluminum and other metals will be prioritized manufacturing materials.

There will be a push for electric car infrastructure. Car charging stations will be developed with the intent to occur with a density comparable to gas stations. There’s no real rush to expedite a phase out of gas powered POVs, as individuals with POVs aren’t the driving cause behind climate change. However, large companies with massive logistic networks will be expected to phase out their fossil fuel trucks and planes, and begin development and implementation of environmentally friendly vehicles. Individuals who are eager to make the switch to electric (whether the motivations be environmental, economic, or simply aesthetic) should have access to effective infrastructure that’s easy for them to use.

Part III: The Proclamation

With this set of policies, I hereby declare the American Manifesto. I hope to establish a new baseline that all Americans can fundamentally support. If these ideas resonate with you, then please share them. The path to reclaim our Democracy must be walked by we the people. There are systemic issues in our society and government, that none of our representatives have made any attempt to remedy, and it’s time to hold them accountable. No one in our government wants to give us truly affordable health care, as they’re given too much money from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Any concern for the environment has been completely thrown out the window, even in the midst of unmanageable fires running rampant in LA county. Worse still, the Oligarchs predicted the fires would happen. 2.8 million homeowners’ insurance policies were canceled before these fires broke out. Why? Because they knew there was a heightened risk of something actually happening. Make no mistake, they know the environment is a problem, but even still they view environmental awareness as a waste of money. At what point do we declare that they’ve gone too far? Once you can’t grow oranges in Florida anymore?

How long will we allow the corporate oligarchs to dictate everything that happens in this country? If a disaster strikes, they withhold their insurance, and abandon the common man to stare at the rubble of a life he once knew. Time and again the rich prove that they’re happy to extort us, but we pay a premium on peace of mind. You pay for health insurance to feel like you’re covered in the instance of a medical emergency, only to find out your insurer denied your claim. If a prominent company declares bankruptcy, they turn to the government to bail them out with billions of dollars. Time and again we see that the government’s interests now only align with the oligarchs interest, and it’s become more apparent than ever.

What does it mean to be an American? America was built on revolution. It was founded with the implication that the future citizens of America would revolt if the government forgot their place. Our 2nd Amendment rights were given to us to fight government tyranny. Our ancestors incited the American Revolution on the basis of taxation without representation, and now we serve a Regime that is exclusively represented by loyalists. Meanwhile, the corporate tax rate is lower than it’s ever been in modern history, and the income tax rate is way too low for the hyper wealthy. The wealth of the Oligarchs grows exponentially while more and more Americans get left in the dust, struggling to pay off the debts that fuel their historic net worth.

Are we as a people really so content with the state of our country? In this manifesto, I have outlined a stance and a basis for real, systemic change. I’m advocating for policy changes that won’t be echoed anywhere in the corrupt halls of government. If we want to be treated like more than a walking ATM, then we have to advocate for ourselves. The time to be content with the system has passed, if it ever existed at all. It’s 2025, and we are citizens of the wealthiest nation in the world, but all that wealth is sitting in 20 billionaires’ bank accounts while we struggle for scraps. Meanwhile, the only thing those 20 people are thinking about is how they can make themselves even richer. We are the laborers of America. We are the driving force behind that wealth. We won’t let it be deprived from us any longer.

It’s our time to unite as Americans. This is our country, and it’s time we remembered our conservative values. We reserve the freedom of speech, and the right to bear arms against anyone who would try to take away our constitutional rights, and this is the reality that we live in right now. I know many of you don’t want to see it. A lot of you just want to ignore it, and some of you think we should embrace it. Once you’re ready to open your eyes, the oppression will be obvious. 14th Amendment rights are being taken away, and as an American I have a problem with that. If you would sit idly by and watch a fellow American be stripped of their rights and discriminated against, then I fear you may have forgotten why we celebrate this country. We celebrate freedom, and justice for all, and I urge all Americans to fight for justice, and recognize that the Regime in power is only looking to spit on everything we hold dear. This is the American Manifesto, an article meant to inspire any American who still hopes for a better future to unify and rally behind, as we bravely march forward through the darkness.