Tom’s Platform:
Medicare for All
We often hear about how costly a single payer health system will cost. It would cost billions less than we spend now. Now we have the most expensive and least responsive healthcare system in the developed world. Medicare improved and for all will provide quality health care to all citizens and cost less.
Student Debt Forgiveness
Those who have graduated in the last 10-15 years spend many years paying homage to private banks. Government can take over those payments and free up a tremendous amount of creativity from our recent grads. They do not have to be indentured servants.
Free Education
The developed world supports education from preschool to advanced graduate programs. The education provides a basis for a strong, innovative economy. Government can take over payments to schools for education. We will talk about how when we get to monetary reform.
Corporate Money Out of Politics
Presently there is work on a constitutional amendment to take away the person status of corporations and to limit the money for politics. I agree completely and commend those working to make this a reality. Get the corporate lobbyists out of our policy making.
Job Guarantee
One basis of the capitalist system to to have unemployment. The fear of being unemployed and the despair of being unemployed are tools the system uses to control economically. Anyone who wants to work should have a living wage job. We can look around and see plenty of work that needs to be done.
UBI for All
The first theorizing about a Universal Basic Income was explored over 140 years ago. $3000 a month for every citizen, $500 for children will lift many out of desperation and release an entrepreneurial creativity. This would also do away with the many means tested programs that leave people out. Worry about billionaires getting more money? Tax it back.
End the Wars
The US is presently in wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Uganda, Syria, and Yemen. Didn't know we were in all those places? It isn't covered in the news. Why are we in all those places? There is no good defensive reason to be in these places. Save our soldiers. Save the people in those countries. Save a lot of money. End those wars
Enhanced Social Security
Do you ever see elderly people in grocery stores handing out samples. Elderly all too often have to work to augment the small amount of Social Security they get. Social security should provide enough so elderly have a dignified living. Let’s make that happen.
Green New Deal
When did investing in a safe environment become a conservative or liberal issue. We need to invest in infrastructure and in the process create systems for renewable energy production, care for vital ecosystems, keeping our water pure, cleaning our air, limiting consumption. We need to take care of the planet before we run out of time for it.
De-militarizing the Police
Over the past 40 years the police forces have become transformed from a force of peace officers to soldiers fighting wars. There is the war on crime; war on drugs; war on terrorism; war on gangs; war of immigration etc. Police officers are not fighting wars. They are peace officers. Training and equipment over the past 40 years have created a mentality of siege. This must change. New training and less military equipment are needed to get back to police becoming community peace officers.
Just Foreign Policy
We are presently in 7 wars. We are boycotting countries, which is an illegal, immoral control strategy. We are working to undermine democratically elected governments. We are pushing toward a new nuclear arms race. We need to end intervention in all countries, overt and covert. We need to find ways to end the arms race.
Just Immigration Policy
Our covert intervention is some countries has created civil war which has created refugees. Some of those refugees wind up at our doorstep. Our policy is to declare them illegal and intern them or send them back to there countries and to the chaos which we have created. This must stop. Refugees must be treated with dignity and fairness, not interned.
Monetary Reform
When some look at my proposals they might ask, where will we get the money? We can have all the money we need because our constitution gives us the right to create that money. That privilege was given away to private banks with the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Now banks create the money out of nothing, but they charge us interest. That interest can never be paid. We can take back our right to create money and pay the banks back for the debt over a period of 100+ years. We will have all the money we need to take care of every citizen and protect our planet.