Marc G. - Middlebury, VT

A progressive is someone who supports transparent election procedures with paper ballot receipts; who is deeply committed to community values; who supports a sea-change in environmental policies in a 'green' direction; who supports universal health insurance; who opposes all racial and sexual discrimination--including discrimination against gays--in all circumstances; who supports expanding the rights of people with disabilities; who supports the use of military force only when the US is directly attacked; who opposes the use of nuclear weapons in all circumstances except a direct nuclear attack on the U.S. by an identifiable foreign state; who opposes all internal spying on US citizens unless they have been previously identified as active terrorists by law enforcement bodies (thus the current practices of the NSA must be condemned as illegal and un-American; who supports breaking up the degree of media oligopoly in the contemporary US and expanding the funding and independence of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; who believes in a woman's right to an abortion up until the 20th week of a pregnancy, and that such procedures should be covered by all health insurance; who believes that all scientific research and funding should be protected from political interference of any kind, regardless of whether this work is done in government sponsored bodies; who believes that the current rote test mania in k-12 education needs to be stepped back from and reconsidered from other perpectives on how to improve education; who beleives that college and university educations should be more fully funded by taxpayers; who believes that military spending should be reduced and corporate tax subsidies abolished; who beleives that progressivity must be strengthened in the tax code, including increasing income taxes on those who make more than $250,000 a year and that inheritance taxes above $1 milliond dollars restored and capital gains taxes increased for all U.S. investors and corporations; who beleives that any corporation that does at least 50 percent of its business in any one of its subsidiaries in the U.S. must pay taxes at the same rate of all other corporations in the U.S.; that much of so-called 'pork barrel' spending must be abolished by making passing a constitutional ammendment which states that all final spending decisions must be made by the full House and Senate and not in committees; and who believes that demagogic use of religion in politics is anti-American.