The Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

We need to explicitly, in law, make it clear that ANY organization -- commercial, nonprofit, government -- has its FIRST responsibility to the people and region in which it exists. Its SECOND responsibility is to its CUSTOMERS -- the specific people or organizations that its products or services will be used by. Its THIRD responsibility is to its WORKERS -- the employees who do all the work. (I'm not sure if that shouldn't be the second, but I think this is the best setup). The FOURTH responsibility, then, is when we reach the investors, the stockholders. 

There are currently data centers being planned which will take up a vast amount of the water and energy resources of the area they'll be built in -- enough to seriously impact the hundreds of thousands of people living in the area, making such resources more scarce, and more expensive, perhaps even seriously restricted in availability. THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN. This should be ILLEGAL. A company that wants to build something with so great an impact should FIRST have to demonstrate how they will INCREASE the carrying capacity of the region -- how they will generate more power, how they can bring in more water, etc. -- without damaging the environment OR putting the burden of their operations on the general populace. Expenses of a company should be ON the company.

There are many companies whose employees often require public assistance just to survive. This, ALSO, should NEVER happen. A company whose employees take X billion dollars in public assistance should have to pay that X billion dollars straight back to the government. Plus a penalty for making people jump through hoops just to live (see "Basic Human Value" below). 

*Universal healthcare. Every other civilized country on Earth has this. Yes, you can find horror stories of waits or mistreatment or whatever for all of those countries, but -- no surprise here -- you can find worse ones in job lots HERE. I can tell you some of ours, and ours haven't been nearly as bad as many other people have experienced. In actuality, people in comparable countries with universal healthcare are paying less for better care and are healthier. The USA's life expectancy is LOWER than that of most of the first world, because most of us are afraid to go to the doctor unless we're deathly ill or in some kind of major accident. This will NOT result in "unpaid doctors" -- the bloated healthcare costs in the USA are almost entirely due to the parasitic insurance industry. The taxes I'd have to pay for additional universal healthcare would be TRIVIAL compared to what I currently have to pay just to insure me and my wife (fortunately, NYS has programs that have generally covered my kids). You could (and probably should) double nurses' and doctors' salaries and STILL drastically reduce the costs of healthcare here. While NOT reducing the quality -- likely improving it. 

*Universal bodily autonomy. The sad thing is that this is an assumed fact in a LOT of law. It's just that there are specific areas that a relatively small, but very vocal, group of people keep insisting that bodily autonomy shouldn't apply to, and of course most of this gets put on women and other minority groups. The right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy is one of the most obvious, but this issue also applies to trans people, and also to the general ... well, shocking APATHY that seems to apply to the abuse of women and girls in general. The basic principle needs to be explicitly and universally written into law so that there's literally no BASIS for people to deny others control over their own body. 

*Universal Human Value. We have this stated in various documents, in different ways, most obviously in the Declaration of Independence ("...that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."), but the LAW has been rather patchwork about this, and because of that an awful lot of people suffer who shouldn't. 

Specifically, we need to directly,  and forcibly in law, recognize that EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING has these rights that we declare above, and that these are not PASSIVE rights, but ACTIVE ones. Every human being has the right to live. Every human being as the right to liberty. Every human being has the right to be able to pursue their own happiness. AND THIS MEANS EVERY HUMAN BEING MUST HAVE THE RESOURCES TO MEET THESE RIGHTS.

There is no "right to life" if your ability to LIVE is at the mercy of someone else. If you have the right to life, you have the RIGHT to eat. You have the RIGHT to be sheltered from bad weather. You have the  RIGHT to healthcare to keep you from dying or suffering. 

There is no "right to liberty" if your existence is so constrained that you literally have no choice but to spend all of your time surviving. There is no liberty in a grinding bare existence. You have the RIGHT to a life that gives you choices beyond "suffer and live" and "suffer and die". 

There is no "right to the pursuit of happiness" if you have neither time nor resources to apply to the pursuit. You have the right to a life that allows you leisure, that allows you pleasure, that allows you, in short, to LIVE FULLY as a human being. Happiness ITSELF cannot be guaranteed -- that's partly due to our own natures and choices -- but there's a big difference between existing hand-to-mouth and actually LIVING in a way that might give you a chance to be happy.

*Explicit separation of religions and government.  We've had too much trouble from having to argue whether that provision is actually in the Constitution; it needs to be put in specifically. This includes not merely eliminating the use of religion as a justification or framework for how government should act, but also explicitly eliminating any assumptions that any one religion is superior inherently to any other and therefore able to be used as a tool to oppress others. The Heritage Foundation and their apocalyptic Evangelical associates have made it clear that this is a necessary change.