What Issues are Most Important to You?
I need some help on a project I'm working on.
The goal is this: prepare one or two ranked-choice polls to rate how strongly progressives feel about a number of the Republican antics of the last five years. After the polls are up, we'll circulate the URLS to a few of the bigger lefty sites & mailing lists to see if we can get a couple of thousand responses.
The payoff would be twofold: we'd get information on what already sells (for election strategy, etc...), and what issues need to be pounded on to increase public awareness.
I'm having three problems:
1) Everybody has their blind spots. I'm sure I've missed huge issues,
2) The wording for the individual issues is going to be uneven, and
3) There's a technical limitation of at most 18 choices per poll.
I think the right approach to (3) is to break the issues down into two polls: foreign policy and domestic policy.
Any feedback on (1) and (2) would be much appreciated.
(A couple of good sources are http://www.thousandreasons.org/reasons.php , http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=64326 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W_Bush )
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Rough Draft of Issue List
In no particular order, here's my rough draft of the issue list:
1. Failure to Build Real Iraq Coalition
2. Misleading America about Iraq War Rationale
3. Financial Waste/No-bid Haliburton Contracts in Iraq
4. USA-PATRIOT Act
5. Bush Wiretapping U.S. Citizens
6. Election Fraud/Diebold Machines Stealing Votes
7. Appointing Sam Alito to Supreme Court
8. Prisoner Abuse/Secret Prisons/Rendering Prisoners
9. Cheney/Libby Leaking CIA Agent Valerie Plame's Name
10. Jack Abramoff/Tom DeLay Scandals
11. Opposing Creation of Independent 9/11 Commission
12. Hurricane Katrina Preparedness/Response
13. Bush Creates "Office of Global Communications"/Propaganda Mill
14. Medicare Act of 2003: Attack on Seniors
15. Administration Opposition to Stem Cell Research
16. Sustained Attack on Contraceptive Use/Family Planning/Abortion
17. Bush Stance Against Affirmative Action
18. Bush Stance Against Gay Marriage
19. UAE Running U.S. Ports
20. 3 Million U.S. Jobs Exported Overseas/CAFTA/WTO/NAFTA
21. Overtime Protection removed in 2004 Omnibus Spending Bill
22. Record Trade Defecits
23. Bush Favoring Intelligent Design over Evolution
24. Bush Creation of Office of Faith Based Initiatives
25. Terry Schiavo Affair
26. Underfunding "No Child Left Behind Act"
27. Support for School Vouchers is An Attack on The Poor
28. Tax Cuts for the Wealthy
29. Record Budget Defecits
30. Proposed Opening of ANWR to Oil Drilling/National Forest Sell-off
31. Global Warming/Refusing the Kyoto Protocol
32. Failure to Act on Peak Oil
33. $40B cuts on 89 Social Programs in 2006 Budget
34. Failure to Act on Bird Flu
35. Failure to Establish a Reasonable Minimum Wage (Living Wage)
36. Corporate Welfare/Multi-Billion Dollar Tax Loopholes for U.S. Companies
37. Obstructing National Single-Payer Health Care Proposals
Short of sitting down and saying: "Let me count the ways"...
I find that a return to our roots is helpful. KISS applies!
Choice
National Health Plan
Extensions of unemployment income for those who seek work and can't find it
Either bring American business back to America...or tax the hell out of those who have overseas operations dealing with American citizens or importing foreign-made goods into the country(high tariffs).
Living wages rather than minimum wages
Clean Air/Water/and improved sewage treatment/protection of our National and State parks and protection of wild areas
Better funded educational systems to a Federal Standard...no more teaching to the test. To improve school texts, establish a system of national standards and authorize each state to be the sole bargaining agent with the publishers...our low text standard now is due to Texas State doing all the text ordering for the entire state.
More...but this is enough to add to your ideas...good idea doing what you are doing.
ok... let's see
thanks for the input, grinch. i included some of your ideas: and now have choice, federal single-payer health care, corporations overseas, living wages, national parks, and clean air (kyoto).
i'm gonna punt on state parks unless someone can give me an example of this being an issue. i can't think of anything, even when i squint really hard.
i'm at a loss as to putting the education system into a 10-word synopsis. i touched on it earlier with "no child left behind." i see your points (Ted Rall makes very similar and very good arguments) but am having a really hard time framing them as something i can put on a ballot.
haus,
The state parks issue could raise the question of oil drilling in Alaska, isnt the wildlife refuge a state park? I think it is, but I'm not sure if it is labeled as such. that might be something to look into.
what your doing is a good idea. helps to organize the information. it could prove to be very valuable.
Yer on the right track...you might want to revisit...
FDR and the things he considered important...and Teddy Roosevelt for his stands on conservation and his acquisition of the National Parks...to be preserved for all.
Hard to frame? You bet it is.
Another might be:
Food stamp programs...these are absolutely essential for our poorest citizens. They not only help the poor, but they help the farmers and food producers, and the myriad of small markets that dot all our communities and do their share of keeping people alive.
Most important
I think defense and economy are the most important. Poor people need a living wage and we need security.
National Security
Bush failure to provide national security: ports, chemical and explosives plants (Bush stopped legislation that would have required this), defunding first responders, borders that are sieves.
Turning the country into a police state is not national security.
My top three changes
-universal health care
-living wage
-getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan now
Cuts to
VA and veterans benefits.
Saving the world from stupidity
One Republican at a time
Since November, 2004
one would think...
that being a vet, that would have occurred to me :)