"Convention Card"

When I stumbled into a duplicate bridge tournament at the very fashionable Regency Club in New York nearly fifty years ago a learned a valuable lesson the hard way. I was to play in a duplicate bridge tournament. At our first table, we were embarrassed when asked for our convention card, which would show our opponents explicitly what each of our bids meant. We didn't have one, nor did we even know what it was supposed to be. The tournament director was called, and we were asked to leave at once.

My "convention card" as a liberal Democrat would contain all of the following:

I believe that every man and woman should have a job if they wish to work, and the compensation for that job should allow them to live decently.

I support the notion that rich people should be able to have much more money then poor people, but not as much more then they have today.

I support the notion that we must protect our environment as much as is possible and reasonable.

I believe that every person should have the right to a proper education. No child left behind, and no young adult left behind either. But we must mean it, not just say it.

I believe that as one of the richest countries of the world, every person should have health care.

I believe that we should not go to war as casually as we have in the past, and we must protect ourselves from atrocities like The Gulf Of Tonkin resolution and the WMD misleads that took our country to war.

I believe that men should be able to marry other men, and women should be able to marry other women.

I believe that we must ban the possession of assault weapons. If this offends some voters, that is just too bad.

I believe that we must keep the government out of as many things as possible, but when the Congress passes a Medicare drug bill, it MUST allow the government to negotiate the lowest possible price for these drugs with the companies that manufacture them.

I believe that the government should stop encouraging the process of industry consolidation. Anti trust laws need to be expanded, and they need to be enforced. Put a few violators in jail and see what effect that has on violations.

I believe that gigantic self-serving companies should not control the media. Just like "break up the Yankees," we must break up the media holdings of General Electric, Viacom/CBS, News Corp, The Walt Disney Company, and Time/Warner. Cross ownership rules should remain in place for a long, long time.

I believe that we must find a way to reduce the influence of lobbyists.

I believe that we must accept that there will be terrorist attacks. We must not allow our constitution to be shredded in the pursuit of preventing this.

I believe that it would be an interesting political debate if the Democrats and the Republicans were required to present in advance their "convention cards" concerning what they believe in for our country before every appearance on television.

Norman Horowitz
Former "Communist"

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