Issues
Healthcare
Healthcare decisions need to be made by patients and their doctors, not by clerical employees working for insurance companies. Up to 20% of the premiums we pay goes to support an unproductive insurance bureaucracy.
Healthcare professionals in growing numbers are supporting single payer health care where we use a system similar to Medicare to pay bills, and focus our efforts on improving the efficiency of care, especially treatment of chronic diseases. This isn’t socialized medicine or government-run medical care, but instead a much more efficient way of processing the payments. Instead of spending 20% of our health care dollars on armies of people in medical offices and insurance companies who shuffle paper and argue over bills, we need to spend 98% of our health care dollars on medical care. We also need to allow the government to negotiate prices for prescriptions so US consumers don’t pay the highest prices in the world for medicine.
Small business owners, self-employed individuals, and people between jobs all pay exorbitant rates for coverage, and medical bills are the biggest cause of personal bankruptcies. American businesses can’t be competitive in the world economy if we need to support these inefficient insurance companies and drug company ads on TV.
Safety & Security
Energy is the security issue. Our dependence on fossil fuels is moving us into evermore politically unstable arenas. The growing competition for fuel in developing nations is leading to conflict over dwindling fossil fuel resources. Russia and other oil rich regions are using oil and gas supplies to strong-arm neighboring countries into compliance. We haven’t got a moment to waste. We must work now to transition to a new energy economy.
War in Iraq
The invasion of Iraq was a tragic mistake, and has severely impacted our ability to pursue Islamic terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Any plan for the withdrawal of soldiers from Iraq must also include a plan to promote peace in the region, with broad international support and strong financial support from the Saudis and emirates who benefit from peace in the Middle East.
Policies of sanction, containment, and isolation in the region will continue to fail and must be replaced with dialogue between all nations.
Government will never resolve oil dependence by military means. To make our nation safer and more secure, there needs to be a national goal of reducing oil consumption by 30% by 2015.
Choice
There’s no place for government intrusion into the sometimes agonizing decisions that women and families make in consultation with their doctors. Young adults should have medically accurate and age-appropriate education to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STDs.
There’s no place for government intrusion into the sometimes agonizing decisions that women and families make in consultation with their doctors, whether it’s about pregnancy or allowing people to die with dignity.
Environment & Energy
It is imperative to address the energy constraints in our future. Our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels is reaching a critical point in human history.
Faced with price volatility, the likelihood of supply disruptions and the physical limits of the world’s oil extraction industry, our government needs to think creatively about how we will provide services in an energy-constrained world.
We cannot predict the changes in our economies and ecosystems or even the likely responses to the peaking of world oil production, but we can begin the dialogue, raising public awareness, tackling public and private consumption, and making decisions about transportation and land use within the context of their energy implications. Just as we plan for medical emergencies, civil unrest and natural disasters, we must also plan for energy uncertainties.
Our country has much at stake. Huntington Beach alone spends over $6 million for its energy needs each year. When the price of gasoline goes up $1 per gallon, the hit to the city’s budget is an additional half-million dollars. That is the equivalent of five new police officers patrolling neighborhoods. Our citizens are also vulnerable to high energy bills. Consider the impacts to Americans across this country. One-point-two million American households had their utilities shut off this past summer because they couldn’t pay their bills. The high costs of fuels impacts everyone in higher food costs, goods and services and transportation. For the first time in our nations history, the price of food is directly linked to the price of fuel.
Transportation is the biggest user of fossil fuels, so we need to invest in more economical and efficient transportation systems. This is another area where we need to invest in American innovation.
We need programs nationwide that will support sustainable building technologies because buildings are such a huge consumer of electricity and natural gas. There's a lot that can be done and we need representatives in Congress who understand the need to address energy issues quickly and creatively.
Creating Jobs
California is leading the nation in creating a new energy economy by setting targets that reduce energy consumption. We must continue directing resources toward efficiencies and conservation in construction, transportation, and consumption. Well paying, high skilled American jobs will retrofit homes, businesses, infrastructure, and sustainable transportation systems.
Investment in a clean energy economy will create new technologies and industries in America and give us the technological edge to compete globally.
Immigration
Every nation must have secure borders. The current situation is unsustainable.
We need to do something, we need to do something that works, and we need to do it now. As our economy goes into recession and as energy prices rise, there are going to be even more pressures on our borders.
We must also act humanely—separating families is morally wrong. Complex problems require creative solutions, not shouting about the problem on talk radio while doing nothing. We need to act, not talk.
Education
The federal government pays for very little of our children’s public school education. As a former PTA president and school volunteer, I know that the best solutions are created locally.
Mandates from the federal government, such as No Child Left Behind, which creates artificial standards of achievement, don’t work. Let teachers be teachers.
Debt Crisis
We’re now seeing the results of Republican economic policies, including the failure to regulate lenders, and a reckless borrow-and-spend fiscal policy.
We can’t bail out the speculators and hedge funds whose greed created the mess, but we do need to revisit all of Bush’s policies that have forced so many middle-class homeowners into financial distress.
In the short run, the most immediate step Congress could take would be to reform the bankruptcy laws to allow judges the ability to change the terms of mortgage loans so homeowners have a chance to work out plans to pay their debts without losing their homes.
Over a longer period, we need a serious fiscal policy and a government that relies on professionals and competitive bidding instead of partisan hacks and crony capitalism.