Western Washtenaw County Democrats Candicates' Night Presentation, February 8th, 2006
1) What issues do you want to define you as a candidate for office?
I am running for the Congress of the United States in order build a decent future in a free country, in a clean world for our children and all children. Dangerous, incompetent fools are running our country now – so dangerous that I had to quit the kindergarten teaching job I loved to fight them as hard as I can.
I run for the US House of Representatives in order to end the war in Iraq quickly and with honor, and I have a clear plan. We must build real security for America, both overseas and at home. We must create economic strength, largely based on educational excellence. We need to move quickly toward energy independence in our country, based largely on the rapid development of renewable sources of energy. We must have universal health care that is affordable for all Americans. We must build retirement security both in terms of pensions and health care. We must protect our sacred earth – our web of life that we are now ripping to shreds …and do all this as we restore liberty and justice for all.
2) Do you have a strategy for making health care affordable and accessible to all?
Health care costs are skyrocketing in the USA, more than doubling its share of our Gross Domestic Product in less than 50 years. Our employer-based system for providing health care coverage is disintegrating under these huge costs. Forty six million Americans have no health care coverage – they can’t get health care until they end up in the emergency room. This is the only rich nation where people have to choose between medical care for their loved ones or bankruptcy.
Quality health care is a basic human right and every other advanced nation in the world has a system that guarantees health care coverage for all of its citizens. Americans realize that it is now time for our national government to set up a system that can control costs and provide universal coverage. We could choose the best features from the programs of other nations, or simply expand Medicare to cover all Americans. The profit motive alone will not produce the best health outcomes. We need a system that emphasizes public health and preventative medicine.
3) How should Michigan respond to the demise of manufacturing?
I am a Ford Motor Company boy myself, but now I see that foreign competition is threatening all our major manufacturing industries in Michigan.
Part of problem stems from having terrible corporate and political leadership. Much of our problem stems from the lack of a level playing field. We let our currency find its true market value, and leave our nation open to foreign marketing and investment. The nations that are taking away our jobs are not open. China and Japan manipulate the value of their currency, so that we start out with one hand tied behind our back. Most Asian nations perpetuate unfair trade practices. We can’t avoid world competition, but we must refuse to play the game until our competitors open up their economies as much as we do.
The USA must continue to have a strong manufacturing base. With a level playing field, health care, and renewable energy sources, our manufacturers will always be able to compete in the world market - on the basis of productivity, quality, and capacity for innovation.
4) What policy initiatives would you propose and support to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, particularly petroleum.
It is a sin and a scandal to keep using fossil fuels, when we know what global warming and pollution are doing to our world. It may not be too late for us to change course, if we do it immediately and radically – and changing our fuels can fuel an economic boom.
We must prioritize research into renewable sources of energy as if our lives dependent on it, since they do. George Bush might have saved our civilization if the trillion or two that will be wasted in Iraq had been spent on alternative energy research. We must move to renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric – and eventually to hydrogen and possibly nuclear fission.
Only major changes in fiscal policy can move energy transformation fast enough to preserve our environment. Tax on income must come down as we vastly increase taxation on fossil fuels and unsustainable economic practices. Renewable fuels must be strongly encouraged with large financial subsidies.
5) What educational issue do you feel is most important, and why?
My career was in teaching, but I know that our educational outcomes are falling behind. Even within the USA our graduate level engineering and mathematics departments are dominated by foreigners. The world’s best education must become standard in Michigan, if we are to remain competitive.
High quality preschool education is critical, since I know that many children enter kindergarten with no chance of ever catching up with their peers.
A more demanding high school curriculum must be instituted along with higher standards for graduation. Young people who take difficult coursework should be rewarded. We need students and parents to get serious about education.
Our most important educational issue however is equal access to higher education for all qualified students. This is not altruism, it is critical for our future that we develop our best brainpower, rather than educating only those young people who don’t need to get a job and can afford the huge cost of college.
6) What is your position on prisons,?Would your emphasis be on building more prisons or the development of alternatives to incarceration.
I helped defeat a huge prison project in Washtenaw County last year. When I was young people talked about the Russian prisons, the gulags. Now it is the “land of the free” that has developed the largest prison system on earth. Why do we keep 6 or 7 times as many people in prison as they do in Canada or Europe? The answer is racism, cultural war, and a lack of social services and mental health care. Our prisons have expanded 500% since the “drug war” was declared in 1971.
“Secure” jail beds are both the most expensive and least effective way to house prisoners. Only people who are violent or won’t follow the rules need to be locked down. Other prisoners should be housed in community-based alternatives where costs are lower and they might learn something worthwhile. Guidelines must be clear; decisions must be documented. There are at least 30 currently used alternatives to incarceration, including house arrest, electronic monitoring, release to a third party, day reporting, community service, restitution, work or school release, and minimum security programs.
7) What are your plans to make government more open and transparent and communicate with your constituents?
Few things are more dangerous to democracy than government secrecy. Our current administration in Washington hides behind the skirts of national security and is the most secretive government within memory. Transparency helps keep government honest. Secrecy lets them get away with the abuse of power.
Our Administration in Washington thinks that it can ignore the Freedom of Information Act. The FOIA provisions are critical to open government and must be enforced.
Government agencies are now preventing scientists from speaking to the press if their findings diverge from prevailing governmental fantasies. The media must have access to the findings of federal scientists, not only to the public relations spin-masters.
My office will be open and transparent, and I will use all legal means to communicate with my constituents.
8) What reforms would you propose or support in the area of campaign finance.
There is no mystery why most people don’t vote. They know we don’t have democracy, we have moneyocracy. Money has replaced ideas as political currency. If money didn’t buy influence why would it be given?
The moment that you let any person or company give money to an elected official democracy is over. Money is not speech; it’s bribery in trade for access or favors.
We must remove money from politics, totally and completely.
My plan is borrowed from James Carville; it is completely constitutional. Here’s the rule. NOBODY is legally allowed to give money to an elected public official. A challenger is allowed to raise all the money he can, and then the officeholder is provided with that same amount out of the public treasury.
This one reform would restore confidence in government more than anything else.
E-mail me at chuckreamforcongress@yahoo.com
