On The Issues

About our issues

This issues section of our website will feature information about my policy agenda issues as well as a moderate community discussion forum focusing on these issues and related community challenges and opportunities as they relate to state level public policy.  Constructive community feedback is welcome, especially from Northsiders and other caring people who can identify solutions that work!

In the springtime, I will be publishing policy position papers to elaborate on the broad issues areas outlined in the People over Profits campaign platform.  In the meantime, please read the following statements explaining my position on the platform issues:

People over Profits Platform:

Fair economy

A fair economy would feature governments that consistently serve the public interests of people over large corporate profiteering, with an emphasis on making public policies and public investments which create viable opportunities for low and moderate income individuals, families and communities to access and create livable wage jobs.  Entrepreneurship is the only viable option for many Minnesotans; therefore we must focus on supporting start-ups and helping promising businesses expand.

The banking and financial services industries are generally not well-serving Minnesotans who are not well off.  We need to break-up the multi-national mega banks and create tax and regulatory policies which favor community-based financial institutions that are either cooperatives or non-profit lenders.  All banks are not bad banks, but we must not support those organizations that ruthlessly extract resources without giving back generously, for example, adhering to the Community Reinvestment Act requirements.

The state of Minnesota should establish a state owned partnership bank, modeled after the Bank of North Dakota.  Our state’s financial assets would be deposited there and accrued interest could be used to support community financial institutions that fund small businesses, farms and job training programs.

A fair economy would feature equitable taxation with the wealthy paying their fair share, proportionally.  It is insane and unreasonable for elected officials to always serve the richest people at the expense of everyone else.  I am strongly in favor of organizing a state convention to endorse a federal constitutional amendment to counter the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United catastrophe, to get corporate money out of our politics.

During the last state legislative session in 2011 the Republicans stubbornly refused to raise income taxes on the wealthiest Minnesotans, 7,700 people who are paying much lower effective tax rates than the poorest Minnesotans.  That is unfair and an imbalanced approach to resolving the state budget deficit.  Obsessive Republican budget “cuts only” solutions are ridiculous.  Borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars from our already underfunded schools to supposedly fix the budget is absolutely irresponsible.  Instead of raising taxes on millionaires the Republicans indirectly raised property taxes on homeowners and businesses.  As Minority leader Paul Thissen says, “When you have some money in your savings account but you’ve maxed out your credit card, your savings account balance isn’t real.”  I want to get inside of the Capitol to take these plutocratic, anti-poor puppets for the 1% to the mat!

Corporations are good for creating jobs, but the state of Minnesota should not subsidize any major corporation that isn’t providing living wage jobs for all of its’ workers.  I love the Vikings, too, but find it unacceptable for the state to subsidize a new stadium for a billionaire team owner.  What is our taxpayer return on investment?  Yes, professional sports teams add entertainment value to the state, but are we making a profit?

A fair economy would feature governments that accurately report real unemployment numbers because we cannot address the crises of rampant unemployment and under-employment if we’re significantly undercounting the number of people who cannot afford the cost of living.  We need all of our elected officials to be fully honest about the huge shortage of living wage opportunities and the cruel consequences of poverty.  The reality is that half of our country is low-income and that is detrimental for the overall economy when 70 percent of it is based on consumer spending.

We definitely need a robust middle class, but we need politicians who will champion the needs of the poor and working classes.  We always hear about the middle class, but rarely about the masses of Americans and Minnesotans who want to, and are striving to join the so-called middle class.  The Missing Class unofficially represents everyone who isn’t really middle class but doesn’t meet the federal poverty criteria.

A Works Progress Administration-like program is necessary now to reintegrate the unemployable and disenfranchised into the workforce by creating public jobs when the private sector can’t meet the needs for a good job.  A fair economy would require legislators who find income inequality disturbing enough to champion living wage jobs, not just poverty wage jobs for the sake of claiming job growth statistics, and advance innovative strategies to reduce poverty and expand the middle class.  While the private sector obviously has far more capacity to create jobs, the government can create jobs through investments in bonding bills, transportation appropriations, and Legacy amendment projects.  Public investments in infrastructure make Minnesota even more competitive in attracting businesses.

Housing justice

North Minneapolis was hit harder by the foreclosure crisis than any other area in the state, and the crisis continues!  Since 2007, when the housing bubble burst, there have been more than 10,000 foreclosures in the city of Minneapolis, with more than 50 percent of them over North!  Many of these foreclosures were caused by predatory mortgages, deceptive adjustable rate mortgages to be specific.  Most of the rest have been caused by rampant unemployment, health care related personal debt crises or bankruptcies, and cruel tax liens.  Approximately half of home-owners are underwater, meaning they owe more on the principle balance of their mortgage than the depressed market value of their home.

Most banks are doing a terrible job of working with people to save their homes from foreclosures, not allowing partial payments, rarely being open to negotiating loan modifications, losing paperwork in the process, and taking years to modify when they do.  When people are finally kicked out of their homes onto the curb too many of these vacant homes are neglected for a long time, creating neighborhood safety hazards with further destabilizing effects on neighboring home values.  Everyone is adversely impacted by foreclosures!  A moratorium on foreclosures should be enacted now until a fair and effective system of loan modifications is established.  Let’s help as many people as possible stay in their homes, especially the long-term residents and families.  Big banks got bailed out, but what about the people?

There is currently a shortage of affordable rental housing in Minnesota.  The supply must be developed to meet the growing demand.  Some homeowners who are fanatically anti-renter may not like to hear it, but we need a significant increase in housing subsidies for working individuals and families who are responsible citizens who simply don’t earn enough income to be able to afford safe, clean housing, food and health care security, and transportation expenses.  Mixed-income communities are much more stable and beneficial for all than mass concentrations of poverty in housing developments; therefore nearly every community should have affordable rental housing.  Yes, I said it!  I’m not saying it’s always a bad thing, but too often highly concentrated poverty concentrates desperate people in neighborhoods who are willing or nearly forced to do desperate, criminal things to survive.  Concentrated poverty concentrates hopelessness and poor people need hope more than the privileged community members.  Good jobs, good housing, and good schools are good for all families.

We must continue investing in direct service homelessness prevention and outreach efforts to help chronically homeless people receive proper treatment and recover from drug addictions, alcoholism and/or mental illness, to help people escaping domestic abuse, to help the thousands of teenage foster kids who become homeless when they age out of the system, etc.  Without housing people are unprotected from the natural elements, i.e. life health and life threatening weather conditions, and highly vulnerable to mental health crises.  It is nearly impossible to secure a good job when you’re homeless, and the thousands of Minnesotan kids who suffer homelessness cannot receive a quality education without a stable home.

I believe housing should be a human right in the United States of America.  How united are we?

Education equity

North Minneapolis is home to some of the lowest-performing schools and the worst education attainment disparities for low-income students of color.  While high concentrations of poverty and transient families, and intergenerational illiteracy are significant contributing factors, the so-called “achievement gap” is essentially an opportunity gap.  Our schools need more equitable school funding because local property tax funding structures are inadequate.  The underprivileged students with the greatest academic needs require the greatest public investments in education.  We need more resources for the most vulnerable children to gain access to high quality early childhood education and K-12 environments; smaller classrooms with highly effective teachers, more education assistants in high need classrooms, flexible curriculums with cultural competence, and an army of tutors to work 1:1 with the students most in need of academic support.

It is imperative that we ensure access to equitable opportunities for all of our children, in poor inner cities and poor rural areas, to achieve life and college readiness by the time they graduate from high school.  There should be universal access to pre-K for Northside toddlers, and we should not allow our youth to drop out of high school.  The school to prison pipeline must be stopped as both crime prevention and economic development measures.  With 7 out of 10 jobs today requiring higher education we must effectively support all students with the potential to graduate from college in doing so, and preparing all other youth for trade schools that lead to available, living wage jobs.  The best way to strengthen our economy into the future is by developing a highly educated workforce, and racial disparities cannot be tolerated, especially as our states increasingly diversifies.

All of our youth should be encouraged from an early age to prepare for the jobs of the future, particularly well-paying science, technology, engineering, math and health care jobs.  Minnesota must integrate entrepreneurial education throughout our E-12 systems to promote self-employment and encourage the proliferation of “job creators.”

Affordable health care

I support the Minnesota Health Plan, a proposed single payer system that would cover all the health care costs of Minnesotans for all of their medical needs.  All Minnesotans would contribute to paying for this system, according to ability to pay, and it would replace all premiums, co-payments and other costs currently paid by employers and employees.

All Minnesotans need have fair access to affordable health care regardless of income level or employment status.  I am currently uninsured, so I know what it’s like to avoid seeking medical care for fear of the costs that I cannot afford!  Many businesses and nonprofit organizations cannot afford to provide health care coverage for their employees.  Too many people lose coverage when they lose their jobs.  The government should play a major role in creating access for everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, and regulating the industry because this is one which should not be driven by profits!  The Affordable Healthcare Act, aka “Obama-care” in Republican circles, has some great provisions, but it does not go far enough.  The Minnesota Health Plan would!

You can call me a (democratic) socialist if you want; I won’t disagree.  We already have a hybrid capitalist/socialist society, but we need to do better in light of huge disparities, or inequality in income/wealth, and growing health care costs under the current profiteering system which has denied people coverage based on ability to pay, and pre-conditions.  I believe government should primarily focus on assisting people who can’t afford the cost of living for basic needs, including health care.  (On the other hand, I also believe in entrepreneurship and individual / family wealth building, so don’t incorrectly label me.)

As the apt cliché says, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  Preventative healthcare is far more cost-effective and less painful.  Ensuring that everyone has coverage will produce tremendous cost savings because most people would receive care before they develop preventable injuries, illnesses and diseases.  It would be beneficial for our state to aggressively target the people who account for the greatest share of health care costs to be treated proactively.  When people are un and underinsured they neglect medical health care until they experience health crises which end up costing the system far more than preventative care would.  Reducing costs of the highest risk patients with preventative care is the ideal approach to reducing overall system costs, because nearly all of them end up in the emergency room when their continued heart beat and breathing become dependent on it.

Criminal justice reform

The United States (U.S.) has a prison industrial complex.  Incarceration is big business for private for-profit correctional corporations, and it provides economic development in terms of jobs and tax revenues for counties and municipalities, particularly in rural areas with little other industry.  The U.S. is home to 5 percent of the world’s human beings, and 25 percent of the world’ prison population.  The War on Drugs has been the largest driver of the dramatic increase since President Reagan declared it during the 1980’s.  Tough on crime politics and the prison industrial complex have had the most devastating impact on low-income communities of color.  It isn’t the case that these communities addictively consume or sell illegal drugs more than others.  Rather, law enforcement, state sentencing guidelines and zealous prosecutorial practices in American court systems have perpetuated racially inequitable outcomes with disparate targeting and access to justice, or lack thereof.  People from low-income communities of color are punished much harsher and disproportionately.

We need criminal justice reform with radical changes in law enforcement practices such as an aggressive prohibition of racial profiling, establishment of external forces of accountability for police corruption, halting blindly zealous prosecution, including corruptly extortionist-like plea bargaining cases of people who cannot afford competent legal representation, reformation of sentencing guidelines to allow judges more flexibility in judging crime and punishment on a case by case basis.  Our criminal justice system needs a revolutionary paradigm shift to begin prioritizing community corrections over incarceration – in appropriate criminal cases – to stop locking up people who are chemically dependent or mentally ill.  We need effective juvenile justice diversionary policies and practices to avoid conditioning troubled youth for criminal careers which occur in prison.  We must reduce the collateral consequences of not only convictions, but also arrest records without convictions, that haunt ex-offenders and others for life, creating barriers to opportunities which inspire crimes of hopeless desperation and rage.

Candidates with issues

While many electoral candidates run for office with ambitions of becoming something – a public figure – the best candidates campaign to do something – to represent and serve community interests and win legislative victories that will benefit constituents.  I am running for State Representative because I want to gain a position of legislative power in order to advance progressive public policies and secure public investments that will contribute to effectively addressing the most critical issues challenging the people of North Minneapolis.  We need more equitable, engaging and effective legislators; we deserve better political representation than we’ve had in recent years.

Too many candidates and voters have unreasonable expectations about how politicians can comprehensively improve community conditions by getting elected, but gaining legislative voting power in government gives elected officials a decision making voice in lawmaking, not magical, God-like superhuman powers.  We need political leaders who are as equally honest and realistic as they are bold and ambitious.  We need to support candidates with strong policy agendas, not just desires to become career politicians.