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Long Term Constitutional Changes
Policies that go beyond the normal scope of the House of Representatives
- We need to replace the Electoral College, which enshrined rural privilege and counted land above People, and set up a national popular vote for President. The majority of the entire country should not be held hostage to the whims of a few depopulated states, with the campaign focusing on the few “swing states“ with the perfect balance to learn either way. The President should be campaigning in all 50 states, not the 5 that “really matter“ when it comes time to portion out electors.
- Ranked Choice Voting & Proportional Representation
- Moreover, we need to do away with the winner take all system, and establish Ranked Choice voting to allow the best candidates to rise in all Federal elections. Rather than telling everyone that they must settle for the “lesser of two evils”, the People will be free to vote for whom they believe is the best candidate, and select alternates down the line. We say we want to count every vote, so let’s make Every vote Count.
- And because there are only two Senators for every state, each Senator wields immense personal power, some even contradicting the wishes of their party to demand special concessions. We can counter this by adopting a system of mixed-member Proportional Representation in the Senate, where in addition to the state senators, we allocate a number (say 20) Senators at Large, allocated proportionally to the total national representation of first-choice votes. This elevates those first choice votes, and these Senators, chosen by the Parties themselves, would be able to cut through the current stalemates that characterize Senate proceedings, and push for change and consensus beyond the two-party status quo. This system more accurately represents the will of the voters, and allows more political parties to have a voice in the way our nation governs itself.
- In addition to abolishing the PATRIOT Act, we need to enshrine our right to privacy for all time in a new Amendment, expanding on the 4th, to include the right to privacy in e-mail and all digital communications, secure remote storage, the right to strong encryption, and total freedom from government and corporate back doors which make all of us less secure and in fact more open to foreign invasion. If anyone has a key, bad actors will find a way to pick the lock.
- This Amendment will ensure that sweeping surveillence of our communications and records, (with little to show for it at the expense of our privacy), will never again make it into law, no matter what momentary disaster pressures the weakest members in our legislature to trade freedom for security. In the Covid-19 pandemic we have now lost 200 times as many lives as were lost on 9/11/2001, and it is time to take a hard look at all our actions in the wake of both tragedies, and put our nation on a firmer path to liberty, health, and security once again.
- Each state, granted Two Senators, independent Governorship and Legislative body should encompass a minimum of 2 million citizens, the size of one medium-sized metropolitan area.
- And any territory which is not currently granted statehood should be so granted under this provision. Yes, that means you, Puerto Rico (population: 3.1 million!)
- Overcompetition between states
- The dynamic of states offering tax breaks and even direct payments to companies to relocate is a race to the bottom, leading those states to sell out their citizens’ futures and under-deliver essential services in hopes of enticing rapacious corporations to take advantage of their shortest term thinking. We need a mechanism to stop this competition on a national level.
- No person or company in the United States should have the ability to move significant amounts of wealth of other countries to avoid taxation, or to negate their taxation by paying a foreign subsidiary a token royalty to be claimed as a “business expense“. No island tax havens, no shell companies holding American IP away from American tax laws.
- This is also addressed in the Economic Policy section, but it will require a Consitutional amendment to institute a tax on wealth. See details in Economy for specific numbers on tax rates and implementation.
Human Rights
- It’s time to finally make good on the promise we’ve made to all the young Americans who are not currently citizens of our country. And we must move agressively to undo the roadblocks the Trump administration set up to impede the citizenship process.
- We must expand visa programs and accelerate the path to citizenship for all those who want to come to our country.
- I believe we must move to a place where there are NO illegal immigrants, because all those who want to come into this country can do so through legal channels in a timely manner. We have a tremendous amount of empty land, countless towns in the Midwest and the Rust Belt that are dwindling away because people are moving out. We should be encouraging immigration to those places and facilitating with Direct Subsidies to new citizens. A Homesteading Act for the 21st century.
- More Americans are renting now that ever before. Many Americans pay far more than the maximum recommended 30% of their income just to put a roof over their heads. We need grants for all cities to build more Below Market Rate housing, affordable, Rent Controlled dwellings, close to transit and based near enough to job opportunities that people can walk or bike to work. Our streets and freeways are clogged with commuters, and our transit infrastructure over-stressed because we have neglected residents for the benefit of property owners. We need a housing agenda that works for All People, not just those who are already well situated.
- This means providing housing vouchers for low income residents so they can secure housing first and rebuild their strength in a secure place. This means investing in public housing programs controlled and developed at the local level and integrated into communities as an afforable option that balances luxury development and large corporate landlord holdings.
- We have allowed virtual monopolies to exist in broadband internet, allowing a few large corporations to carve up this country into fiefdoms of marginal service and no service at all.
- To combat this, we need to allow municipal broadband competition everywhere, and allow local governments, not cable companies, to own the fiber lines that we will build to enable last mile infrastructure. These commonly owned lines should then be leased and serviced by many competing firms to offer access at the highest speeds and the lowest cost. This is the same kind of system that allows Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) like Mint and Google Fi to offer more affordable plans through existing networks set up by the big 3 wireless networks.
- This Pandemic has shown us just what a difference a stable broadband connection can make. Speed matters. Latency matters. The internet is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity.
- I believe in the decriminalization of people selling sex, without question, and accountability for abuse in the sex trade. Trafficking all people and involving minors must never be tolerated. And though it is controversial, it is my goal to phase out one-on-one prostitution, a form of sex work most open to abuse, and this must come in concert with new programs like non-police reporting agencies, crisis and trauma counseling, free college and job training, and expungement of prior felonies, to give those who feel they have no other option a "right to exit" without jeopardizing their lives or their livelihoods.
- It is no longer practical to trace records back 150 years to the Civil War. However, it is undeniable that systematic discrimination, intimidation, red-lining, and economic disparity was a fact of life for all African Americans well into the 20th century.
- Therefore, I would propose a concrete system of reparations based on the 1970 census data, which will disambiguate this difficult question as to who is eligible. $50,000, tax-free, should be paid in the each of the next 5 calendar years ($250,000 total) to each person who was recorded in the 1970 census as "Negro or Black" or "Indian (Amer.)" and living in America. Payments should be made directly to living persons, and claimable by descendants, apportioned to their estates and verified by will and testament or by birth certificate.
- This brings the question into the scope of living history, and targets the era in which reparations ought to have been made in line with the Civil Rights reforms. I will not be the sole author of the final bill, and terms may change, but this provides a concrete starting point from which to debate, rather than arguing over reparations without a firm idea of what that would mean, who might be included, and how it could be distributed.
- The total cost of this program, based on 1970 census data affecting 22.5M African Americans and 0.8M Indigenous people would be $1.16 Trillion annually, or roughly the cost of one year of Covid-19 stimulus, and its effects will be immediate and long-lasting to uplift the communities affected and drive the economy as a whole.
- At the bare minimum we must enact something like H.R. 40 to study a reparation plan which will no doubt be more comprehensive than this simple attempt. We must strive to put concrete numbers to these discussions though, that we may see these historic inequities resolved.
- Trans Rights are Human Rights
- I never understood why bathrooms were gendered in the first place, and that kind of separation has no place in the 21st century. It’s time to give bathroom stalls real doors that go all the way to the floor, and allow anyone and everyone to use whatever facilities they chose to. If it wasn’t already segregated this way, we would thing it was insane to only let half the people use half the bathrooms in any public building.
Universal Health Care
- Medicaid (not Medicare) For All
- Many people don’t realize that a lot of Seniors actually pay monthly premiums for Medicare, and pay again for doctor visits and prescriptions. This disjointed an unequal approach has roots in segregationism, and it should be abandoned for the much simpler system Medicaid works under: No premiums, No copays, No fees for service.
- And you might ask, why not make the wealthier pay? Because paying more creates an expectation that they are entitled to better care than those paying less or nothing at all. Health is the great equalizer; none of us chooses when we are striken by cancer or some other health emergency. None of us can choose where we might end up in a hospital. I want Warren Buffet and my grandfather to have exactly the same options in public health care, and if more Billionaires had to deal with the same system as the least fortunate of us, they would be a lot more invested in seeing it work well.
- Yes, we will tax progressively, but there will be no differential fees or upfront costs of any kind. Only this will completely disintermediate billing from care, and allow us to focus on health. This is the way.
- No health insurance companies
- There will be no health insurance companies. No private insurance. If you like your health plan now, chances are, you’ve never really needed it.
- This complete overhaul of our care delivery system will eliminate hospital chargemaster negotiations, and establish standardized rates for standard procedures across the entire country. No longer will a kidney transplant vary by hosptial within the same city, or vary by insurance plan within the same hospital.
- And there will be no private death panels like we have now; no claim adjusters to deny care or drop patients from insurance on technicalities in order to save the corporation a few dollars on the premiums they’ve already collected and don’t feel like paying out.
- This reduction in bureaucracy will cut the total burden of health care in half, based on data from every other civilized nation in the world.
- Elimination of medical student debt
- Many doctors now are worried about switching to a public system because far from the highly paid professionals they are purported to be, many young doctors carry debt burdens in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and their high salaries chiefly go towards paying interest to loan companies. By eliminating all public debt with the stroke of a pen, and negotiating collectively on a national level to eliminate private debt, we will free these doctors to care for their patients without worrying about a loan shark at their heals.
- And going forward, as part of a broader education plan, medical school and nursing school should be covered by the state, with doctors and nurses subject to eligibility based on their performance in those programs, not ever on their ability to pay to remain enrolled.
- Abortion should have no restrictions on federal funding and be treated as any other reproductive right. Completely covered and paid for. Trust me when I tell you that no one is running out to get unnecessary abortions. There are no unnecessary abortions. Every abortion is a private choice; every abortion is a necessary medical procedure.
- Freedom for all Americans!
- This elimination of employer-based insurance, and insurance burdens in general frees up all Americans to pursue their dreams. Unions can fight for higher wages instead of more complicated health coverage at the expense of other rights. All people can change jobs and take leave from work without worrying that doing so will endanger the health of their loved ones.
- For too long, health insurance has been a set of golden handcuffs, tying people to positions they no longer wish to fulfill, but fear to give up simply to have the health coverage they need to survive. We need to bring an end to that unseemly cycle of bondage, and allow all people in this great nation to thrive wherever they are in their lives. Healthcare is a Human Right.
Economy, Jobs, & Wealth
- Ongoing and Retroactive Pandemic Relief
- I speak on basic income below, but beyond that we have already established that each American is due a $2000 stimulus check in this new Congress. I believe the payments should be ongoing. I believe they should be retroactive. We cannot ignore the devastation that 2020 has wrought on common citizens, and we cannot let a lax and indolent Congress get away with their failure to enact those payments when they should have last March. I demand that All Americans should be paid the money they are owed for the government response to a completely preventable disaster which has now taken more lives than any war America has ever fought.
- Gig work, Part Time work = Real Work
- There is no reason to have an arbitrary cutoff at 30 hours/week separating full employment benefits from part time workers who get nothing. It only incentivizes corporations to under-schedule workers, to keep them just below them limit. Instead, all workers should get full benefits and companies pay full payroll taxes in proportion to the fraction of 30 hours they are active. Thus two 15-hour/week jobs make up one full-time 30-hour position for the worker, and for the employers' books.
- And gig work is not self-employment; it never was. Gig workers doing flexible time work for large corporations should be provided benefits and payroll-taxed just like any regular employee. Only when a worker has full control of their own conditions, the customers they can accept, and the rates they can charge, could we consider them self-employed, and expect those workers to take charge of their full payroll tax burden. This reclassification should also extend to freelance writers who do not control their terms of publication.
- Restoring SALT tax exemptions
- As part of Trump’s $Trillion dollar tax cut to the wealthy, he removed the State and Local Tax exemptions which allowed citizens in high tax, high service states like California to deduct property and income taxes at the state level from their Federal tax burden. This was a handout to no-tax states and caused a massive exodus from previously prosperous regions just as the Pandemic hit.
- Rather than rewarding states that do not provide enough for their citizens, we should be condemning them, and rewarding those states that do tax responsibly. No citizen should be double-taxed for living in a state that chooses to adopt fiscally sound tax policies and provide for its residents. Restoring these exemptions would ensure that we can continue growing our economies without distortion from punitive and disruptive tax policies meant to essentially punish those regions which rejected Trump in the first place.
- Reconfigure AMT to tax corporations
- Right now AMT tax burden falls heavily on startup employees with stock options vesting. These employees, often mid- and low-level, are getting their first big break, and suddenly faced with the choice of liquidating their share in growing startups simply to meet their tax bill. This is wrong, and it should end.
- That is not to say that a tax shouldn’t be paid. Rather, the tax burden should fall on the corporation issuing those options in lieu of real cash bonuses. We should be asking the startups themselves to pay, not the employees working for less and a chance to earn something more when the company finally goes public.
- This isn’t a big deal to most people, but it is a big deal to many startup employees in San Francisco, and it’s important to ask if we’re really targeting the billionaires here, or just people who are getting lucky for a brief and unique time in their long careers.
- Corporations are not and never were people. They are not subject to human laws and they have no human rights beyond those of the humans who run them. They cannot be jailed, and I’ve never seen one successfully executed for its crimes. The very idea is a farce propped up by the courts to justify the Billions of dollars in ad money that flow through every election cycle, and if the courts will not interpret the exiting laws for the benefit of Humanity, it is time for Congress to pass new ones declaring unequivocally that corporations are associations of people, not people themselves.
- Genius grants funded by IPO tax
- Every IPO or SPAC offering should be taxed and that money should go to funding a Genius Grant program to startup proposals of uncommon merit and worth to all Americans. For too long we’ve been allowing the last generation of “winners“ pick the next generation of “winners”, and lo and behold, that new crop of entrepreneurs looks exactly like the last in every demographic criterion.
- We need to search far and wide for the best ideas, the best scientists and entrepreneurs, rather than relying on New York and Silicon Valley to keep delivering more of the same with yet another copycat app set to exploit the next crop of desperate gig workers. We can do better, and we must, to build on transformative new ideas that aren’t just about what will generate the highest payback for VC funds of already-Billionaires to become even richer.
- Living Minimum Wage: a plan in perpetuity
- Often I hear the argument over whether minimum wage should be raised to $15 or $20, or $25. Setting a static number only forces us to revisit the issue every few years; great for career politicians to hold out to their voters, bad for all working Americans.
- We need to begin by raising the wage to $20/hour, and then put in place a System that automatically raises it every year in line with inflation and with the rising stock market, so that it increases annually. And for businesses to be able to plan for that increase, that wage schedule should be published by the Bureau of Labor & Statistics on a public schedule, just like the SF Rent Board publishes allowable rent increases a year or two in advance. That way workers will always know what they will be getting, and business owners will always know what to budget.
- And for those who say this is unaffordable for middle America, I would say that the fact that wages aren’t already higher is the exact reason why it’s unaffordable. More money taken home is more money to spend, everywhere. There is no good reason why the same job done in two different states shouldn’t pay exactly the same, and letting these states fight to the bottom is the very source of the inequality we’re trying to fix. It’s time to lift all boats and stop letting corporations game the system by hopping from tax shelter to tax shelter in search of a cheaper deal.
- Pay foreign workers American Wages
- Outsourcing is a form of mild slavery, paying workers pennies an hour to make all the products we rely on. This has to end, and the way to do it is to require all American companies and the companies they contract with for assembly (e.g. Foxconn) to pay American wages, no matter where in the world they are located.
- Then we will see how many of those jobs flow back into the United States. Or if there is really some genuine advantage to foreign factories, their workers will be the best compensated in their own countries, and American foreign-made goods will be all the better for it. We should be lifting the rest of the world up, not exploiting them for the lowest price we can get away with.
- This is also addressed in the Constitutional section, because it will require a Constitutional amendment to institute a tax on wealth. It should constitute a mandatory reporting of all accounts and items of property in excess of $50,000, and a 1-2% tax on that wealth to be paid annually. In such cases as property is not reported, the tax should be assessed in the year it comes to like, multiplied by the number of years it has remained tax free. So a $100,000 yacht, untaxed for 5 years, would be taxed at the greater of its prior full value or currently appreciated value at a rate of 5%. Exceptions should be made for 2 houses, 2 cars per filing household, or 1 in the case of married couples filing separately.
- Income tax should be drastically reduced and simplified for the average American. The idea that everyone needs “skin in the game“ is a farce, and leads to counterproductive policies that see us giving back money to the very people we just taxed. Let more average Americans keep their money on the lower end of the scale, and tax the wealthy more for the what they take in.
- Joe Biden should have reversed the capital gains tax cuts Trump put in place, but in the event he hasn’t, I’ll be fighting to put those back into place as well. The simple act of Holding Longer is not a social good in and of itself. And short term traders should be taxed at regular income levels, but we need to get rid of things like the Wash Sale Rule that bind retail investor’s from getting out of bad stocks and not being able to take advantage of dips in the market like we saw in 2020. Telling people to buy and hold may be good for the stock marketeers, but it’s bad for America.
- We should explore a program of basic income. I don’t believe it’s possible to guarantee every single America a job, because that would create jobs we don’t want or need. But we can guarantee every American a basic safety net to allow them to pursue their own happiness even in the even of turmoil in the labor market. The best and most efficient assistance is direct assistance without any bureaucratic tests or behavioral requirements. You made it to America. You get to eat today, and sleep somewhere warm tonight. That is the very least we can grant every citizen, for less than we spend on welfare programs today. We can start with a basic expansion of the SNAP program, and go from there until every citizen has that coverage, just like we will do with health care.
- Post office pension reform
- Years ago, Republicans passed a bill to force the USPS to fund its pensions in full, crippling their profitability to the point of near collapse. The Post Office, meanwhile, has shown itself to be essential in this Pandemic, and we now rely on it not only for mail, but for the very mechanisms of our democracy. We need to re-fund the Post Office, and reform its statutory requirements to fund its pensions like any ordinary department of the Federal government.
- No more no-grow farm subsidies
- Farmers should never be paid to avoid growing a crop. If there is a glut in the market, arrangements should be made to give them incentives to overproduce anyway, and send that overabundance as aid to our own people, or to people throughout the world.
- During the pandemic I saw farmers dumping milk down the drain because they couldn’t even get it processed, couldn’t sell it at all. I don’t want to ever see that again. We can re-employ thousands if not millions of Americans to act as response teams in these market mismatches, and get good, usable sustenance to where it can do the most good.
Green New Deal & Carbon Budget
- Yes, there should be a Green New Deal to empower the 10 million unemployed and millions more to find new work greening our economy through solar power, wind power, HVDC transmission infrastructure, smart meter installation and Smart Grids, electric car charging stations, and so much more.
- And we need to go further for our cities, incentivizing apartment managers to install solar and smart metering in their apartment complexes, allowing renters to draw power directly from the buildings they live in. Combined incentives should further encourage them to extend these installations to include curb-side charging. Such a plan would transform San Francisco and other dense cities from Battery Electric Vehicle exclusion zones to the best place to own and operate electric cars. And in a time where we are asking property managers to accept rent reductions and partial payments from tenants dealing with Covid, this will provide a lifeline, particularly to small single-property landlords, who are disproportionately comprised of Black and Indigenous People of Color. Rather than short-changing them, we should be offering then a path to do more for their tenants, and make the city a better place for all.
- Restoring natural waterways
- So much of our "green power" comes from hydroelectric dams which, although free from carbon emissions (apart from the carbon dioxide outgassing of their monumental concrete construction), has drastically altered our natural environment, robbing us of green space and habitats which so many plants and animals once knew as home.
- As we build out solar and wind infrastucture, we should take care to do so in a way that allows us to tear down these 20th century best-attempts, restoring the natural landscape and permitting a more natural water cycle. This will be a generational shift that must be done with utmost care, and it is the future that our grandchildren will thank us for. Before I die, I want to walk the Hetch Hetchy valley floor again, which John Muir once called a "grand landscape garden, one of nature's rarest and most precious mountain temples". So let it be again.
- You may have noticed that almost every bill and amendment proposed by the new 117th Congress are deficit neutral. This is a procedural nod to the Byrd rule which limits the process of budget reconciliation to matters with direct budget consequences which do not add to the deficit, tamper with Social Security, or are otherwise extraneous to the budget itself. It is one of the few ways the majority can get anything done with ongoing Republican minority obstructionism.
- We need a similar rule which demands that Congress give priority to legistation which decreases the total Carbon output of our nation as a whole. We should not be passing new fossil fuel subsidies or exploration projects, or expanding infrastructure unrelated to greening our planet, or at the very least offsetting those few with new measures which on balance offset and reverse any further carbon emissions.
- Having spent $6 Trillion in the last year alone under Donald Trump and the failing Republican majority, we are long past the point where the deficit should be a limiting factor. Our greatest concern must be the planet we leave to subsequent generations who come after us. It is on that measure that bills should be expedited to a vote, and on those criteria we should give pause to any proposal which does not align with those goals.
- In accordance with the National Carbon Budget, we will account for all emission sources, and institute a real carbon tax on all sources of carbon. This will replace our current cap-and-trade program, which has led to a carbon credit business that tries to equate some modicum of environmental busywork to balance tangible damage to the environment. That system only allows those with the most money to pay for more credits as they consume, indulge and destroy more. This system cuts out that pay-for-pollution scheme entirely. The more you pollute, the more you pay directly—simple as that.
- No more subsidies for fossil fuels
- I pledge to support no more drilling; no more fracking; no more mining for coal nor building “clean coal” plants that are more radioactive than any nuclear plant will ever be. It’s time to stop propping up the biggest industries in the 20th century, and start investing in tomorrow’s energy leaders.
- Tax container ships like we mean it
- It’s not about cheap goods from China; it’s about the dirty fuel oil container ships burn getting those goods here. The world’s largest container ships produce a prodigeous amount of sulfur and nitrogen oxides, as well as other pollutants. That is completely unacceptable, and the only reason they can get away with it is because those ships are not held to account for their pollution by anyone. But we control our own ports, and if those ships want to dock, they must pay for their profligacy, or switch to cleaner mechanisms of propulsion. We need a new generation of Green Container Ships that run on energy harvested during their voyage rather than fuel oil the consistency of hot tar.
Education for All
- Each state must have at least one College or University which has $0 tuition for every admitted student, financed by federal dollars and adhering to federal standards in depth and breadth of educational opportunities.
- In larger states, a whole system of free Universities should be encouraged, ensuring that education is accessible to all income levels. A student should never have to drop out of school because they can’t afford the bill, nor jeopardize their studies by working multiple jobs while managing a full course load. We owe it to future generations to give them better options than we had. They deserve access to the job training and cultural enrichment which has been denied to so many who simply could not afford to explore tertiary education.
- Cancel Student Loans, Cap Tuition
- We owe it to all Americans to make good on the 2020 campaign promises to end federal student loan debt, and to work collectively as a nation on behalf of all students to negotite the elimination private educational debt. Such an action will have positive effects all over the nation, and provide an immense stimulus to a generation which has been burdened by multiple recessions, an inflationary housing market, and now a global pandemic which has reset the entire economy. We cannot afford NOT to do this.
- And henceforth we must ensure that the deleterious cycle of rising tuition and increasing student debt is a relic of the past, by mandating a maximum allowable tuition rise which more directly conforms to actual inflation rates, rather than growing 3x as much as wages, as has been the case for the past several decades. And indeed these caps must start from a level which rolls back the last decade of increases. There has been no correlation with better outcomes for the students, and it’s time to admit that Universities simply took what they could, because no one was there to stop them, and delivered nothing in return to their students above what they already provided at much lower rates.
- Extend Basic Research Grant Terms
- Most scientific research grants under the purview of the National Science Foundation are awarded on a 3 year basis, with the final year contingent on progress in the first 2. This creates incentives to narrow the scope of research to produce early results and guarantee continued funding. We need to extend these research terms and broaden the scope of what can be researched without reapplying for grants, because this would allow the science to drive the discovery process, encourage researchers to aim higher, think deeper, and modify their methods to fit new information.
- This means better fundamental science, responsive to the latest data, and free from pressure to "publish or perish" before the clock runs out. As the most prosperous nation in the world, we can afford to give our best scientists the greatest leeway to do the work they do best, rather than asking them to be part-time scientists, part-time grant-writers and fund-raisers. Quality full-time basic research leads to massive improvements in applied technology, and those technologies are the bedrock of our economy—the very engine that drives our growth and ensures the prosperity of our nation.
- Fund Music, Visual & Performing Arts
- The winners in the new economy are not just engineers and technicians. They are creators who can combine technical skill with artistic design. And it’s time we start funding programs in Primary and especially Secondary schools to give today’s students the experience and opportunity to master tools they can use to create in tomorrow’s economy.
- It’s no longer enough to hand an art student a pad of paper, a music student a second-hand loaner instrument. Kids need hands on experience with the tools of the trade: computers that can mix sound, cut videos, and model 3D worlds. They need direct experience with these tools and creative space in the curriculum to explore their own potential in a number of mediums, and license to apply their skills back to the other subjects they are learning.
- And access to a computer lab isn’t enough: we need dedicated classes and funding for instructors to take them through the fundamentals of using these tools efficiently and professionally. We can’t expect teachers in other subjects to do double-duty running lab days in addition to their current responsibilities. To take our children to the next level, we need dedicated instructors who are themselves artists and can share the techniques they have learned. The arts are not secondary to the learning experience. They are the point of that experience. We are put here on this planet to create and transform our world.
- Get Police out of Schools
- Police Officers have done little to nothing to curb school shootings and random school violence. More often in recent years we have seen disproportionate force exercised by a select few officers against the very students they are meant to protect. It's time to accept that this program has not had the intended results, and remove Police Officers from Schools entirely.
- Retraining and Lifelong Learning
- We must provide funding to programs that can train retrain those already in the work force for new careers. As health insurance companies are dismantled, we have a unique opportunity to take highly skilled workers and provide them with options for growth and advancement, and we cannot let that opportunity go to waste.
- We must work to ensure that State run colleges and universities have a path that is tuition free and fully funded, not by loans that cause tuitions to balloon as administrations expand to match them, but my simple, direct payments based on nationally established curriculum guidelines, to ensure that money is not going to waste.
Law & Social Policy
- Running into a house, guns blazing, letting God sort the dead, is never a viable path to law enforcement. As we have seen so many times before, police make mistakes, and when those mistakes involve surprising people in their homes, they lead to murder, putting both regular citizens and police themselves at risk.
- There is no excuse, no crime so grave, that proper notice and due process should be extended to every citizen, beucase we all have a right to feel safe and secure in our homes. We need look no further than the grave injustice done to Breonna Taylor for an extreme example of the consequences, and subsequent miscarriage of justice when we even try to bring the people responsible to justice. I am in favor of a federal ban on the practice, to stop it once and for all, everywhere in the United States. No more excuses. No more lives lost.
- Public cameras, not more beat cops
- Cameras on every public street, on every block, would do wonders for crime reduction. Unlike body cameras, which only go where law enforcement is already present, street cameras are impartial, and always on the watch.
- Footage, accessible with proper warrants, would allow departments to track perpetrators from the crime scene block by block to apprehension, with minimal police interaction. No more running criminals down on foot; no more dangerous police chases through crowded city streets; no more harassing suspects who “fit the description”.
- Starting in San Francisco, and moving to other cities, we should implement federal funding for full city coverage of public spaces. Petty theft and previously intractable street crime will disappear once criminals know that someone is watching, and that they can no longer evade the law by dashing around a corner or a back alley, or fleeing the scene in a getaway car. A full camera network dramatically extends the window from minutes to potentially hours during which a perpetrator can be held to account. More than a dragnet, the 21st century demands a dragnetwork.
- While I believe public space should be public record, I am a firm believer in personal privacy in all private spaces, including phone conversation, text, messages, and email. We should never have given our security agencies free reign to surveil Americans, and the idea of secret FISA courts determining warrants is an affront to our Civil Liberties.
- While 9/11 was a tragedy, it was also an excuse Dick Cheney and the rest of the security state were waiting to jump on to give themselves unlimited access to communications. There’s no evidence that this access has prevented any terrorist attacks, and we have been made less safe as those with evil motives have transitioned to encrypted platforms, making valid warrants less effective when they are called for and properly approved.
- The recent trend to request tech companies to assist in this surveillance also makes us less safe. Installing back doors for the “good guys” leaves those doors open for bad guys too. Rather than relying on surveillance to do its job, the NSA should be working to strengthen encryption for everyone to make Americans more safe from foreign intrusion, not more vulnerable for the sake of our own.
- We need to redirect police spending to social services; new programs for crisis counselors and emergency responders to answer calls with compassion and aide, rather than relying on Law Enforcement officers to handle every 911 call. We have a policing problem because police are being asked to deal with situations that can’t be solved with guns, and escalation only makes things worse.
- This is not to say we do not need police; we absolutely do. But we need to stop blindly throwing money at police departments and demanding results that are beyond the scope of their mandate. We need police solving crimes and apprehending known criminals. For many other situations, even a “good guy with a gun” is the worst answer we could possibly provide. Emergencies come in all colors, and it’s time we re-design how we fund Social Services to respect that.
- The tangible result of this refocus will be that police budgets will go down for several years as other departments grow. And in addition to emergency services, we need to spend more on early prevention, education, and harm reduction to catch problems before they demand emergency responders at all. Safe shelters with private rooms, job programs, and retraining to get vulnerable citizens out of the cycle that leads to adverse police contact, incarceration and recidivism.
- We shouldn’t be overpaying officers of the law for overworking them. Tired people do not make good decisions. This isn’t just about exploiting the overtime system to ratchet up their pension benefits (though that has been a problem). There’s a real human cost to asking too much from the public servants we depend upon to make life-or-death decisions on little information in the heat of the moment.
- The best way to fix that is to require all law enforcement to adhere to 40-hour weeks, and hire more officers as needed. Overtime is overwork, plain and simple, and I don’t wish it on the police nor on any other sector of the economy. This goes for moonlighting security work as well. Businesses that need police presence should be served by police, not paying for off-duty officers to work double shifts under a 10b order.
- The Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency has become jailer to children, scourge of immigrants throughout our nation. This is wrong. The agency must be reorgnized together with Customs and Border Patrol, as a single Customs Enforcement Agency in line with more practical legal immigration policies, so they can focus on the important job of keeping contraband goods out of America rather than human beings.
- And further, they should be tasked with ensuring that money is not being exfiltrated from our nation to avoid income and wealth taxes, in coordination with the Secret Service and the Financial Action Task Force. This is where our borders must be strengthened, to prevent powerful, wealthy individuals and corporations from using their international connections to avoid national duties. We need secure borders, but they must be open to those who would make a life here and strengthen our country by living under our flag, in accordance with our laws, bolstering our communities and giving back to the land we all love.
- End Civil Asset Forfeiture
- Depriving citizens of property without due process should be made illegal again. This indsidious program, propagated by our Department of Justice, brought in $718 million dollars to California, $1.7 Billion across the nation. That is cash and assets seized without trial, without proof of crime, with no recourse, and that money is then directly used to fund the law enforcement that brings it in.
- This perverse incentive means there is little motivation to change the policies of their own course, and we must pass laws to abolish this practice once and for all. You can see full asset seizure statistics for 2020 here.
- Federal law banning bad cops from rehire
- All too often those few cops who are found guilty of misconduct can pick up and move to another city and be rehired by another police force. This must stop everywhere, across the nation. If we can hold criminals to three strikes, we must hold our law enforcement accountable to One Strike.
- And on the positive side, we need to rethink how police forces are administered, and start promoting based on behavior and success with the communities they serve, rather than by seniority. We need to empower the best to get rid of the worst, and bar police unions from interfering from internal affairs; they exist to negotiate better wages and working conditions, not to go to bat for the worst cops on the beat and keep those in their jobs at the cost of the rest of the department.
- Further, there must be specific consequences for misconduct. It shoudn’t be on the city to cover settlements at the expense of taxpayers. I am in favor of police carrying malpractice insurance, to let independent insurance companies determine through data which cops are no longer prudent to be covered. We can’t afford to take their own word for it after the last several decades of rampant abuse.
- Cannabis must be made Federally legal, including allowing banks to provide services and process transactions from cannabis-based businesses. It’s time to get cash out of the drug trade and put the money back into banks where it belongs. There is no excuse for continuing the charade when so many states have already made recreational cannabis legal. The moral argument no longer carries any wait. It’s just stubbornness.
- And other drugs should be reassessed and rescheduled according to science-based policy, with an eye towards harm reduction and addiction treatment. We cannot completely eliminate drugs, and the War on Drugs has failed, but we can push users to less harmful options and behaviors, and doing so on a national scale will rob cartels and criminal gangs of their single biggest source of funding.
- We have made our prisons the instruments of revenge and punishment since their inception. Year after year we turn sometime criminals into permanent problems for society by denying them right to work, right to vote, right to participate in the very society we claim to protect.
- We must reform our carceral system to focus on education and rehabilitation, and promise the 2.3 million Americans behind bars today that there will be a better life when they have served their time.
- This means making it illegal to ask about prior felonies as a condition of employment. Probation is probation, but after time served and probation is over, we must allow those who have served to move on with their lives. It also means restoring their right to vote in all 50 states, beginning with Federal elections by decree, and extending to State elections as a requirement for ongoing Federal funding. We cannot ask those anyone to take an interest in safeguarding society if they have been deprived a stake in that society. We cannot ask them to act with dignity, who have been denied that dignity themselves.[2]
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