The format is LOCATION:	TEXT [EXPLANATION]


Add this to II A 15:	The limitations of video and computers in teaching and providing information should be understood by all who use them. Commercial advertising and bias presented as fact have no place in the mandatory classroom. 

Replace II A 23:	We favor full support for public education at all levels. In advanced countries, students are not expected to pay to study. The additional tax revenue and the benefits to society are recognized as outweighing the cost.

Add this to the end of II A:	Those who intentionally create ignorance must take responsibility for the consequences. We favor placing an education tax on known contributors to functional illiteracy, such as most commercial television.To the extent that television programming creates an illiterate, naive public, it should be taxed to support educational programs that will reverse that trend.

Add this to the end of II A:	To paraphrase Mark Twain, schooling must never stand in the way of education.

Add this to the end of II A:	The benefit of the educational dollar should be measured community-wide, not merely among those who attend a specific school.

Add this to the end of II A:	We favor increasing intellectual diversity through incentives. Special credit should be given to students who develop skills to preserve the world's intellectual diversity (e.g. developing fluency in languages that face extinction).

Add this to the end of II A:	Schoolbooks should not outweigh the student. Carrying excessive weight, such as a stack of heavy books, can put pressure on growing spines and joints beyond those anticipated by nature.

Add this to the end of II A:	Instead of massive standardized tests, educational progress of young children should be evaluated frequently quantifying a wide combination of abilities that defy specific preparatory study.

Add this to the end of II A:	If the School of the Americas is to exist, we favor an open-admissions policy and changing the curriculum to emphasize the peaceful resolution of political problems. This knowledge should be available to everyone: US citizens, Palestinians, Latin American civilians, etc. Teaching the ways of war rather than peace insures that peace will never be successful.

Add this to the end of II A:	We favor outlawing public sponsorship of single-sex education, which violates the intention of the US Supreme Court, at institutions like the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership (VWIL).

Add this to the end of II A:	We favor freeing educational institutions from manipulation to distort research to provide private economic benefit. Academic freedom from corruption and outside manipulation must be protected. Academic freedom from ethics and candor is worthless to society. Academic fraud must be eliminated. [It is increasingly common for educators to distort their research, misleading the academic community and confusing the public, under pressure from administrators, politicians, donors, sponsors, or their own wallets.]

Add this to the end of II A:	We call for an end to the exploitation of students by large-scale non-professional sports leagues. College athletes should be compensated for the economic value of any labor they provide, rather than inadequate food and an empty diploma. As intercollegiate athletics can provide neither academic value nor career development for the vast majority, students should be able to opt out of exorbitant fees for carrying these enterprises (as much as $1,127 annually at Norfolk State University).

Add this to the end of II B:	We favor using organs donated for transplant for the intended purpose, rather than allowing them to be sold to tissue banks. While there is a waiting list, we favor a prohibition on any form of capital punishment that damages useful, needed, transplantable organs.

Add this to the end of II B:	We favor the establishment and promotion of standards of quality in merchandise by nonprofit organizations (such as labeling of non-irradiated and genetically unaltered food).

Add this to the end of II B:	Health is influenced by education, environment, air and water quality, diet, weather, and various types of stress. These costs and benefits must be recognized in the economy unless we wish to encourage a few to benefit by imposing costs on others.

Add this to the end of II B:	Society should encourage health insurers, including HMOs, to charge premiums only when a client is healthy. When a client is sick, the insurer is not providing a satisfactory level of service, so there should be no charge (a parallel to the warrant of habitability that suspends rent when the landlord does not provide a minimal level of service).

Add this to the end of II B:	We recognize the right to refuse to contract with a specific insurer or HMO on philosophical or religious grounds. [For example, the Roman Catholic church requires that people be involved in economic decisions that will affect them. Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses have limits to the variety of treatments they can receive. Patients who have a religious objection to people other than participants making a profit from thier health care are limited to a nonprofit, patient-controlled, or practitioner-controlled health insurance systems.]

Add this to the end of II B:	We urge investigation, prosecution, and charter revocation of any person or organization that pressures a physician to withhold information from a patient, to the detriment of that patient. [The vertical integration of health finance and management have led to cases where the patient is not only denied payment for treatment, but denied the information that the treatment is needed. With separate insurance, at least the patient had the option to pay for the treatment out-of-pocket. In serious cases, people are less likely to be told why they are sick than in the past.]

Add this to the end of II B:	With exception for high-risk jobs, society should not encourage health care to be dependent on employment. That practice leads to discrimination against applicants with disabilities. It unnecessarily increases the worry about losing a job. The people who have the most pressing need for assistance with paying medical bills are those who lack adequate and steady employment.

Add this to the end of II B:	Medicaid should adequately provide dentistry, mental health, and prevention in the patient's market. [I once spoke with a mother who travels 100 miles to the nearest physician who will treat her daughter under Medicaid. We were three blocks from a hospital at the time.]

Add this to the end of II B:	Medicaid should not encourage impoverishment or the rending of families for eligibility. It should serve to strenghthen society, not weaken it.

Add this to the end of II B:	We support the formation of co-operative health management organizations, run by clients.

Add this to the end of II B:	We favor requiring any private health insurer who has the choice of customers to participate in an assigned-risk pool to provide insurance at an appropriate cost to people who have been refused insurance. Health insurance provides dubious benefit to society if the people who need it most cannot get it. If the insurance industry makes a profit by picking and choosing customers based on their risk, it should spare Medicaid the responsibility for high-risk individuals.

Add this to the end of II B:	Before any child is subjected to a medical procedure for the benefit of someone else, a disinterested guardian shall insure that the child is not being exploited. [People seeking donors for organ or tissue transplants are being advised to produce a child. Once people agree to conceive a child for a specific purpose, that promise is difficult to abandon for any reason. Yet decisions regarding medical treatment require informed consent of either the patient or someone who will consider that patient in preference to all others.]

Add this to the end of II C:	We favor establishment of an administrative system of tort arbitration that would be more efficient, equitable, and adaptable to individual needs than the civil courts. [The legal system has become costly to our economy and too cumbersome for most people to use. A lot of people would like to avoid it. Many civil disputes involve simple questions of fact or of principle that can be answered without the formality of a trial. The clogged court system should be freed to deal with significant problems that require a full-scale formal adversarial proceeding.]

Add this to the end of II C:	We favor recognition in law of the right of people to participate in economic decisions that affect them (as preached though not practiced by the Roman Catholic Church).

Add this to the end of II C:	We favor limiting federal disaster relief to a bit less than 100%. In 1992, President Bush gave Florida residents who had suffered uninsured losses 100% of what they had lost. Thus, compared with those who had recovered their losses because they prudently paid paid insurance premiums, uninsured or underinsured homeowners wound up ahead by the amount of the premiums they never paid. Why should people buy insurance against disaster, if they can rely on Uncle Sam for a complete bailout, at taxpayer expense? What is to discourage building in unsafe places that are exposed to hazards, if the high cost of insurance is eliminated as a factor?

Add this to the end of II C:	We favor legislation to prohibit recovery of unsecured debts for gambling and bar tabs, so that businesses are encouraged to accept only cash that people can spare. [Casinos and saloons provide no material benefit for the money they take from the public. Casinos often provide free liquor and food to encourage people to gamble despite getting too tired and drunk to understand their actions. Businesses that take advantage of customers' addiction should not have the help of our court system in getting more money from susceptible people than they ever intended to spend.]

Add this to the end of II C:	We favor reducing Federal Deposit Insurance by a small percentage, to provide some incentive for depositors to scrutinize financial institutions. [Past generations of depositors were careful to give their money to institutions they believed prudent. Now, many choose unstable banks offering unrealistic returns, depending on the FDIC and FSLIC to protect them. Although most depositors are protected, the taxpayer is taking a bath because of the Savings & Loan crisis, a result of negligence caused by 100% deposit insurance.]

Add this to II D 8:	We favor availability of charity tax deduction at every level of donation and income. Current federal law provides charity tax deductions only for donations exceeding $10,000 in a year. This amounts to federal promotion of elitist charities that appeal to the wealthy, with little or no support for those that appeal to the poor. Skewing tax deductability toward the wealthy has the effect of transferring money from poor to rich communities.

Add this to the end of II D:	We favor ending government sponsorship or promotion of addictive behavior, such as gambling (especially the lottery). [Most states have become addicted to lotteries, which transfer money from the poor to the affluent. Some are turning to casino gambling.]

Add this to the end of II E:	We recognize the right of well-performing employees whose jobs are moved to another location to follow and retain those jobs. Americans have been losing jobs that are not eliminated, only moved to cheaper markets, where workers can be exploited, cheated, and endangered.  Experienced workers will have more knowledge and thus experience a lower rate of injury (which any responsible person or institution would wish to avoid) and be less likely to engage in unfair labor contracts.

Add this to the end of II E:	We favor treating postal employees as human beings, rather than turning them into mass murderers.

Add this to the end of II E:	We favor testing of reaction time for overtime workers whose mistakes can be deadly, including physicians, truck drivers, and pilots.

Add this to the end of II F 8:	To provide perspective on their role in society, we favor requiring new police officers to have five years of civilian experience outside law enforcement.

Add this to the end of II F:	We support the right of crime victims who have sufficient evidence to request an indictment from a grand jury.

Add this to the end of II F:	We favor stringent laws, enforcement, and prosecution of crimes committed in jails and prisons. Those who know crime as a way of life should learn how to live crime-free. Those convicted of crimes are entitled to as many rights of citizenship as may be permitted in order to affect the safe conduct of their debt to society. As wards of the state, they are entitled to special protection from the state, having had to forfeit the right of self-defense as a function of their incarceration. These rights include protection of life and all emolliments thereof for the balance of their sentencing. Crimes against them during incarceration and all attendent processes must be prosecuted with the full and deliberate weight of the judicial process and they are to be treated as full citizens for the purposes of such proceedings.

Add this to the end of II F:	We favor guaranteeing victims who gather evidence of crime the examination of that evidence by a grand jury. Crooked or incompetent prosecutors should not be able to prevent a grand juries from doing their work as they see fit.

Add this to the end of II F:	Where the law provides for administrative release of felons after a hearing, we favor adding a preliminary phase that would determine whether the felon should be considered for release before exposing victims to the trauma of a full hearing. [We might as well spare Charles Manson's victims appearance at a parole hearing if the board will routinely turn him down even without their statements. That's just one case out of thousands.]

Drop from II.G.17., III.A.4., III.D.1., III.D.5., III.F.1., and III.F.3.:	[Drop any advocacy of natural gas, a nonrenewable fossil fuel.]

Add this to the end of II G:	We favor allowing communities to designate park areas for clothing-optional recreation. [Green parties have taken the lead on this basic civil liberty, especially in Portugal.]

Add this to the end of II G:	We favor requiring legislative supermajorities for decisions that limit civil liberties.

Add this to the end of II G:	Unlike the ACLU, we support the legal recognition of basic human rights for children.

Add this to II H 3:	We favor tightening FCC requirements to require consideration of standards of accuracy and integrity in broadcast license renewal procedure. Being chosen to use the public airwaves is a privilege that carries an obligation not to mislead the public.

Add this to II H 6:	We favor reversing the current trend toward rating obscene or offensive media to instead promote widespread voluntary labeling of safe and inoffensive media. Requiring labeling of content would negate the right of artists to withhold information for dramatic effect. Consider the official investigation of the song "Louie, Louie", which found the lyrics unintelligible. Any label making claims about content of an ambiguous recording would invite complaint, either from those who found something unwanted, or from others who failed to find what they wanted.

Add this to II H 6:	We favor protecting the freedom of journalists from manipulation to distort the news to provide economic benefit to their employers. [Owners of broadcast stations, networks, newspapers, journals, and magazines are free to seek a profit by selling news to the public or to pay for undisguised advertising or lobbying. Those who sell advertising to the public engage in double-dipping. Subscription payment and/or time watching commercial ads amounts to consideration that compels the publishers and broadcasters to fulfill their contractual obligations to provide reliable information to the audience.]

Add this to I A 15 or II I 1:	We support legal recognition that indigenous peoples, wherever they are in the world have rights at least as much right to run their own lives and communities as anyone coming from outside. [This policy can provide exceptions for environmental damage that spreads beyond their land, environmental damage that would ruin the sustainability of their land and force them to leave, abuse of individual rights, etc. It is not intended to negate the rights of refugees and immigrants.]

Add this to the end of II J 3:	Chinese, Palestinians, Colombians, Timorese

Add this to the end of II K:	Because tax policy has the effect of subsidizing mortgages for homeowners, we favor granting equal favor to apartment dwellers who save money toward down payment on a home.