JOIN THE PARTY

 A Template for a Party Platform of The Twenty-eighth Peoples Assembly

The "Twenty-eighth People’s Assembly" is a political party to be qualified and registered in each of fifty States of the United States of America.

History

In 2023 the Democrat, Independent and Republican parties became deadlocked in the United States Congress. "The House has voted 749 times this year but passed just 27 bills that have become law. That makes this Congress the least productive in decades."

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/21/1221040449/118th-congress-to-be-the-most-unproductive-in-decades

Through social media we the people ask for a new assembly (caucuses and conventions) to seek a twenty-eighth amendment to the U S Constitution that would add provisions about parties to make parties responsible for electing the President and US Congress.

We the peoples' assemblies in each State seek to register enough electors and to obtain a certification that they are an official party in each State.

The primary platform policy object of the 28th Assembly is to amend the US Constitution (mend the electoral college) by establishing State Nominating Primaries and Nationwide Popular Direct Election of the President (SNaP N PEP).

To gain additional support for SNaP N PEP the "Twenty-eighth Peoples Assembly" seeks consensus on other platforms and policies objectives regarding each Department of the U S Government. They are not in order of importance. They are ordered by date of Establishment of the Executive Departments.  https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h723.html

1 Twenty-eighth Amendment  

2 Department of State

When a career Foreign Service Officer (career diplomat – CD) completes a Presidential appointment (PA), that career diplomat can be reappointed to the previously held status of a career Foreign Service Officer. That candidate should be rewarded for accepting and performing in the political service. Such a candidate should have some preferential choice for reassignment rather than directed first assignment in positions designated as hard to fill or otherwise meeting an immediate service need. They should be allowed reappointment whether they have been tenured before leaving the (CD) Service. Further when their request for reappointment follows immediately their (PA) Service, then the duration of service should not be a determinant in their reappointment request.

3 Department of the Treasury

Today, the Multilateral Development Banks provide support to the world's poorest in every corner of the globe, strengthening institutions, rebuilding states, and fostering economic growth and entrepreneurship. Many of the banks turn the loans into grants. The US should vote to provide more loan and grants to poverty stricken Central American Countries. U.S. foreign aid spending recently surpassed $70 billion in appropriated funds for the first time in 70 years, new data shows, fueled by continued support of Israel and a spike in funding for Ukraine amid the country’s war with Russia. Israel and Ukraine topped the list of nearly 180 countries receiving funds globally.

The United States of America should increase humanitarian foreign aid from one percent to one- and one-half percent of the US Budget or from about 67 billion to 100 billion. The humanitarian aids should be distributed to the South American countries according to those countries' multidimensional poverty measure, its global multidimensional poverty index and relative Gross Domestic Product. The aid should foster economic growth and entrepreneurship, especially in Central America.

4 Department of War

Department of Defense (merger of War and Navy departments)

 US defense spending accounted for 3.6% of the United States’ gross domestic product in 2023. The United States spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined, China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan, and Ukraine. There are over 1.4 million active military. Of course, Add to that the National Guard and Reserves. Within the other 15 Departments of the Federal Government there are 139,641 people providing protection services. Homeland Security alone has over 80,000 protective service officers.  In FY 2024, the Department of Defense (DOD) proposed budgets over $1.55 Trillion.

The Federal Government ought to provide less money to foreign aid and provide more money to State Domestic Security Aid especially for equipping State Defense Forces, for their training and some monetary incentives to increase the number participating the SDFs. The State Defense Forces number about 8000. In fact, the overall numbers of state guardsmen have swollen by upwards of 25% after the terrorist attacks of 2001 to 12000 members in State Defense Forces (militias).

5 Attorney General
Department of Justice

What is a reasonable time. Generally, the reasonableness or unreasonableness of time used or taken by a party are made subject of judicial review. Reasonable time is interpreted by the court considering the nature, purpose, and circumstances of each case. The reasonable time requirement concerns the guarantee of anybody going to court that a final decision in a case will be given within a reasonable time. The idea is that citizens are entitled to legal certainty.

Why are the proceedings of our court systems taking longer and longer? The time the court takes to get the job done should be less and less given the fact that there are so many more technological aids. Given so many technological aids most of our society has shown giant leaps in progress, efficiency, and effectiveness. But the Courts just seem to get slower and slower. "In the determination of a person’s civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against them, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial court established by law.” But who is policing the Justices, judges, and decision makers?  Who evaluates? It is true that no human management system is perfect. Our Justice system needs to admit their imperfections, measure the rates of errors, manage the rate of errors, give the Justices time limits that result in socially acceptable error rates.  A gordian knot, no, but mirror, mirror on the wall, can the Justices correct their ways.

To achieve more socially acceptable "reasonable time" for court proceedings the United States ought to establish a Commission composed of Federal and States Justices who would be given the task to evaluate the reasonable response times, to determine how to be make progress, to become more efficient, to become more effective, and indeed to be more just. Like a Hallmark Card there may have to be reasonable times for many occasions: felonies, misdemeanors, and infractions; personal injuries, contracts; punishments, executions, and forgiveness.

Postmaster General
(Post Office privatized in 1970)

The Post Office Department was one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. The Constitution granted Congress the power to establish post offices. When Pres. George Washington appointed Samuel Osgood of Massachusetts postmaster general of the United States, the Post Office was a bureau of the Treasury Department. At the outset there were only 76 post offices and less than 2,400 miles (3,900 km) of post roads.

"We the People" were happy our government helped us to communicate. Today we communicate on digital roads. The United States ought to consider establishing with the United States Postal Service special digital postal services and roads. This would be a trusted and transparent public service that would compete with a plethora of private digital services that have extremely variable quality and volumes of services.  I know many would agree that they would trust and feel more comfortable having the USPS Commission overseeing the transmission of the digital currency, cryptocurrency, electronic payments and receipts or bitcoin transactions.

6 Department of the Interior

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has developed prototype statistics to measure the ocean’s contribution to U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). These prototype statistics show that the ocean economy accounted for 1.8 percent ($372.8 billion) of national GDP in 2018.

The U S needs to evaluate the resources beneath the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans within its 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone. Then it needs to reserve more than ten percent for long term future oceanic park use; it should reserve 10 percent of the underwater economic resource to be held until catastrophic events cause a need for its release: and in the remainder it should control the rates extraction of the economic resources to protect the environment and our future. The fees collected for extraction are used to control the rates of use of known resources; the fees are used to pay for expenses of the Department.   

7 Department of Agricultural Commerce

According to UN estimates, over 780 million people experience hunger, almost one-third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted and nearly three billion people cannot afford healthy diets. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in rural areas of developing countries. It has mobilized some $39 billion for rural development. to build the resilience of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable rural people to current global challenges, including the Ukraine crisis and other food system shocks over the next three years.             

In the US the emphasis seems to be conservation (take out of production) to reduce CO2 emissions, so people can breathe fresh air while they die of starvation. Such immoral policies need to be changed.  The Department of Agriculture should be providing incentives to get more land into food production.

USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) is expanding double crop insurance opportunities in over 1,500 counties where double cropping is viable to reduce the risk of raising two crops on the same land in one year – a practice known as double cropping. That is a start. How about encouraging arid land to be used to grow trees. How about encouraging tree forest land to be converted to food production.

8 Department of Commerce

 Its main purpose is to create jobs, promote economic growth, encourage sustainable development and block harmful trade practices of other nations.[3] It helps to set industrial standards. The agency is charged with forecasting weather, monitoring oceanic and atmospheric conditions, charting the seas, conducting deep sea exploration, and managing fishing and protection of marine mammals and endangered species in the U.S. oceanic exclusive economic zone.

 The U S needs to evaluate the resources beneath the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans within its 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone. Then it needs to reserve more than ten percent for long term future oceanic park use; it should reserve 10 percent of the underwater economic resource to be held until catastrophic events cause a need for its release: and in the remainder it should control the rates extraction of the economic resources to protect the environment and our future. It should be given the authority to sell or lease ten percent of the of the area below the surface of the oceans, to sell right to resource extraction, the rights to use to farm or to build a home.                   

9 Department of Labor

The purpose of the Department of Labor is to foster, promote, and develop the well-being of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights. Employment and Training Administration, the National Apprenticeship Act budgets $4,410,999,000 that ought to be reallocated and supplemented to provide more for apprenticeship training especially where the U S government requires and makes it mandatory for all citizens to perform for one-year national citizen service to help the poor of our country. Also, the US should require all illegal undocumented aliens to perform public service for three years in order to qualify for US Citizenship.

10 Department of Health, Education and Welfare

Department of Health and Human Services
Universal health coverage does not exist in the United States.

A desirable Lone Term goal is to achieve Universal Health Coverage by 2044.  Whole solution attempts have been unsuccessful.

Proposed is an incremental approach to increase Universal Health Coverage from 85 percent to 100 percent.

Incrementally, the goal is to increase the people’s access to health care by 2 million more people per year.  It could be achieved through a social insurance program like Medicare, Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program and by laws requiring private employers to extend coverage to uncovered people. Costs would be shared among Federal, State, employers, insurers and insured. In the US non system 40 million people do not have insured or tax assisted access to health care, and an additional sizable number have inadequate coverage and wide disparities in access and quality.

The US Health non systems at both the Federal and State levels are in a constant state of change, push and pull, negotiations, adjustments to market mechanisms, erratic responses to fluctuating patient visits, and unclear chaotic (sometimes even counterproductive) responses to communicable disease outbreaks.

There should be established Federal/State Boards for Equitable Health Distribution.   A Federal Health Board in US health services would be established. It would have neutral expertise, would collect objective evidence, and would review incentives for efficiency and effectiveness and disincentives for waste by providing 50% federal 50% States government tax subsidies. This way another piece of the pie, a thin slice of the 40 million uninsured and millions of inadequately insured can be provided access to health care.  Then State Boards would make reviews about incentives for efficiency and effectiveness and disincentives for waste and then distribute tax subsidies. Providers (hospitals & their tools, supplies, labor), Professional Staff (Doctors technicians, nurses, & care givers), Pharmaceutical Suppliers, Medical material suppliers, Insurers, and Patients would be given incentives or disincentives to increase efficiency and effectiveness and decrease waste.

The 7,000 volunteer AmeriCorps members in the VISTA program serve annually to alleviate poverty by helping local organizations expand their capacity to make change. You can serve in any U.S. state or territory.  AmeriCorps members in the VISTA program work and support an organization to make sustainable change in areas that affect poverty, including education, public health, climate, access to benefits, and more. The members in the AmeriCorps VISTA program help to lift people and communities out of poverty.  https://americorps.gov/serve/americorps/americorps-vista

 The U S government ought to consider making it mandatory for all citizens to perform for one-year national citizen service to help the poor of our country. Further the US should require all illegal undocumented aliens to perform public service for three years to qualify for US Citizenship. Further providing that illegal undocumented aliens could become a citizen after serving two years in the US Armed Service or other US Protective Services.

           

11 Department of Housing and Urban Development

By 2030, UN-Habitat estimates that 3 billion people, about 40 percent of the world’s population, will need access to adequate housing. This translates into a demand for 96,000 new affordable living units every day. Additionally, an estimated 100 million people worldwide are homeless and one in four people live in harmful conditions that affect their health, safety and prosperity. Access to housing is a precondition for access to employment, education, health, and social services. To address the current housing challenges, all levels of government should put housing at the center of urban policies by placing people and human rights at the forefront of urban sustainable development. Adequate housing is a human right enshrined in international human rights law. Failing to recognize, protect, and fulfil the Right to Adequate Housing results in the violation of a plethora of fundamental rights including the Right to Work, Education, Health, and Security. https://unhabitat.org/topic/housing

 

In The U S the 7.77 million households with worst case housing needs in 2019 included 2.27 million households with children, 2.24 million households headed by an older adult (62 years or older), and 2.54 million single adults.  Households with worst case housing needs are very low-income renters—households with incomes at or below 50 percent of area median income—who do not receive government housing assistance and who pay more than one-half of their income toward rent, live in severely inadequate conditions, or both. 1 The physically adequate (voucher-eligible) units with rents within program limits must be made available in the market, {Competitive Capitalism Commerce business}. 2 The charitable vouchers should reduce worst case needs to the extent that landlords are willing to participate in HUD’s voucher program. HUD continues to reach out to landlords and conduct program demonstrations to test incentives {Competitive Capitalism Commerce business} for greater landlord participation in HUD’s primary rent subsidy program with the aim of making voucher-eligible units more accessible, especially in higher-opportunity neighborhoods. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Worst-Case-Housing-Needs-2021.pdf

 HUD needs to supplement the capitalistic landlord strategy with modern employer-assisted housing incentives or groups of small business employer-assisted incentives.

The idea of employer-assisted housing may conjure up memories of the 19th-century “company town,” where all housing and businesses were owned by the employer. In extreme cases, employees were paid wages usable only in company stores (also known as “scrip”). The driving forces behind the housing aspect of these “company towns” were simple, it was good for business and most of the time good for employees.    Renters in the United States face a crisis in the growing lack of housing availability and affordability. 70% of the lowest-income renters spent more than half their income on rent in fiscal year 2021. The problem of workers not being able to live where they work is also becoming increasingly acute. In only 7% of U.S. counties could a worker earning minimum wage afford a one-bedroom home at fair market rent in 2021. Is it possible that employers could play a role in ensuring that workers who are renters are able to live in affordable housing near their place of work? If designed with workers’ interests in mind, employer-assisted housing programs have the potential to substantially benefit both employers and employees.  https://onlabor.org/employer-assisted-housing-for-renters-company-towns-2-0-or-increasing-access-to-housing/

 The National Association of Home Builders recommends an employer assisted housing strategy. https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/advocacy/docs/top-priorities/housing-affordability/overview-explore-employer-assisted-housing-opportunities.pdf        

12 Department of Transportation

The United States has the greatest transportation system in the world. The objective of the platform is to make it greater in the air, across the oceans and waterways, over the land by rail and interstate highway and at intermodal exchange facilities. Bulk containerization is here to stay. Ideally, containers should always be full when they are moved. This is the most efficient way to transport goods and results in the lowest costs. Internal container loading, storage, and multipurpose flexibility need to be improved.

This is an issue for several reasons: It costs money to transport a container, whether it is full, partially full, or empty. The Department of Transportation through a public and private partnership should evaluate ways to reduce the cost, effort and other resources involved in transporting containers.  The US Department of Transportation should lead and partner with the bulk transport industry to plan, locate, and participate in the improvement of existing and the construction of new nationwide intermodal exchange and storage facilities.   They should develop and begin new supply chain technologies using artificial intelligence to optimize supply chain methodologies. Thievery has become a problem in North America. Sophisticated thieves learn how to interpret the codes on the outside of containers to ascertain which ones have easily disposable cargo. They break into isolated containers on long trains, or even board slowly moving trains to toss the items to accomplices on the ground.[15] For national security the DHS CISA – Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and The Department of Transportation need to plan, implement, and manage a bulk container encrypted Radio-frequency identification (RFID)  that would provide greater security and a more rapid coordinated response to mitigate the loss due to emergency events.     

13 Department of Energy

The Department of Energy with the Department of Education should establish a program to promote the use of safer energy sources.

Solar, wind, tidal, hydropower without dams (like Niagara Power) and nuclear energy are safest and best for the environment.  Nuclear energy, for example, results in 99.9% fewer deaths than brown coal; 99.8% fewer than coal; 99.7% fewer than oil; and 97.6% fewer than gas. Wind and solar are just as safe.

Tidal energy is a renewable energy powered by the natural rise and fall of ocean tides and currents. Some of these technologies include turbines and paddles. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/tidal-energy/ Worldwide there are ten operating tidal power plants (765 MW), eight (25640 MW) more are proposed, and Russia is planning two projects totaling 113,100 MW. For most tidal energy generators, turbines are placed in tidal streams. Because water is much denser than air, tidal energy is more powerful than wind energy. Unlike wind, tides are predictable and stable. Where tidal generators are used, they produce a steady, reliable stream of electricity.   Turbines are most effective in shallow water. This produces more energy and allows ships to navigate around the turbines. turn slowly, which helps marine life avoid getting caught in the system.

The gravity and the forces caused by the movements of the earth, moon, sun and other bodies of the universe are a source of energy that needs to be evaluated and machines need to be invented to utilize that energy. Many have heard about machines that are being invented to get energy from the tidal movement in the oceans.

14 Department of Education

Education in its broadest sense includes the communities' discoveries and their transmission of knowledge, libraries, abilities, and the skills both mental and moral qualities needed by an individual, family, community, and humanity to be a satisfactory citizen. Communities may be exclusive, Amish, Monastic but most are mainstream towns and cities.

 In the narrower sense, education refers to the discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching (transmitting knowledge) and learning in schools or other social settings (family & group), as opposed to various non formal and informal means of self-learning socialization. Teaching, the profession of those who give instruction, especially in an elementary school or a secondary school or in a university. Knowledge is facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education, the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject:

Science, any system of knowledge that is concerned with the physical world and its phenomena and that entails unbiased observations and systematic experimentation. In general, science involves a pursuit of knowledge covering general truths or the operations of fundamental laws. Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences.[1]

The U S educational systems are both public and private decentralized and divided among fifty States. Consequently, the U S Department of Education concerns should relate to education in its broadest sense. It should seek to emphasize discoveries, to expand repositories of knowledge like the Library of Congress, to improve the communications technologies for teacher, parents, groups and communities, and to provide experiences to foster satisfactory citizenship. With regard to the latter, it should consider increasing subsidies for apprenticeships and national public service. The 7,000 volunteer AmeriCorps members in the VISTA program serve annually to alleviate poverty by helping local organizations expand their capacity to make change. You can serve in any U.S. state or territory.  AmeriCorps members in the VISTA program work and support an organization to make sustainable change in areas that affect poverty, including education, public health, climate, access to benefits, and more. The members in the AmeriCorps VISTA program help to lift people and communities out of poverty.  https://americorps.gov/serve/americorps/americorps-vista

  The U S government ought to consider making it mandatory for all citizens to perform for one-year national citizen service to help the poor of our country. Also, the US should require all illegal undocumented aliens to perform public service for three years to qualify for US Citizenship. Further providing that illegal undocumented aliens could become a citizen after serving two years in the US Armed Service or other US Protective Services.  

15 Department of Veterans’ Affairs

State Veterans Homes are facilities that provide nursing homes, domiciliary or adult day care. They are owned, operated, and managed by state governments. They date back to the post-Civil War era when many states created them to provide shelter to disabled and homeless Veterans. There are 161 State Veterans Homes (SVH) across all 50 states and in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico offering three levels of care*: nursing home care, domiciliary care, and/or adult day health care to about 20,000 Veterans.  The total number of Veterans who experienced homelessness was 35,574 – an increase of 7.4% over January 2022. The estimated number of Veterans experiencing homelessness in America has declined by 52.0% since 2010. Since 2010, the number of Veterans experiencing homelessness in the U.S. has been cut almost in half, from 74,087 in 2010 to 37,252 in 2020.

The U S Veterans Administration should begin establishing and managing Federal veteran group homes for physically and mentally disabled veterans; and directly give assistance for home living to low-income veterans and their families. Today too many programs for veterans are decentralized and funneled by too many Federal Offices through the States, to municipalities, and to non-profit charitable organizations. The homeless veterans may not be anywhere near them. A performance audit of the efficiency and effectiveness of those programs will disclose the weakness of the programs and illuminate ways to improve them. It is often said that having many hands can make a job easier. In the Army a dozen people in the kitchen can feed a company of soldiers, but not if all the people are chief cooks. Today’s decentralized veteran programs are like an army of chefs and no soldiers.                   

16 Department of Homeland Security

The Department of Homeland Security works to improve the security of the United States. The Department's work includes customs, border, and immigration enforcement, emergency response to natural and manmade disasters, antiterrorism work, and cybersecurity. With more than 240,000 employees, [1] DHS is the third-largest Cabinet department, after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. CBP – U.S. Customs and Border Protection has 60,000 employees. ICE – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has 20,000 employees. CISA – Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has 2,800 employees.

The platform and policies objectives of the "Twenty-eighth People’s Assembly" includes that the DHS should reevaluate it missions to determine which natural and manmade disasters, antiterrorism events, or cybersecurity attacks might have the greatest impact upon life and economic well-being of the citizens of the US.  Cybersecurity attacks might have the greatest and consequently DHS should double the number of employees engaged in Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. This should be achieved by transferring DHS employees working on other missions (except CBP and ICE).

DHS should be made responsible for providing incentives especially for equipping State Defense Forces, for their training and some monetary incentives to increase the number participating in the SDFs. The State Defense Forces number about 8000. In fact, the overall numbers of state guardsmen have swollen by upwards of 25% after the terrorist attacks of 2001 to 12000 members in State Defense Forces (militias).

 "A strong argument has been made for a national-level Homeland Defense Force to be created under the Department of Homeland Security. Such a “Home Guard” already exists in the state defense forces already is in place. Individual members of these guards can be trained to provide physical security, crowd control, and medical and logistical support to reserve and regular forces as well as to local and state authorities. The state guards would not interfere with federal or National Guard missions but would instead complement them. “The State Guard/Home Guard company costs virtually nothing in new budget appropriation,” former longtime State Guard Association of the United States (SGAUS) President Paul McHenry noted back in 1998. “It supports but does not lead the civil government. It fills in behind police, the emergency management, and any other agency within the purview of its function. The home guard company has support as its function – support of those with expertise. Home guard has nothing to do with warrior classes of the Armed Forces.” https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA497658.pdf