Arizona Congressional Election 2018 Political Courage Test

Abortion

1. Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation?
- Pro-choice

2. Other or expanded principles
- As Ruth Bader Ginsberg explained during her confirmation hearing, a woman's right to abortion is clearly an equal rights issue. The 14th amendment: "No State shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." (Except for the exceptions: seems that the original-intent argument doesn't include women.) We do in fact need to ratify the ERA. This abortion question is fundamental to bodily autonomy. Of course, sex education should be included in schools.

Budget

1. In order to balance the budget, do you support an income tax increase on any tax bracket?
- Yes

2. In order to balance the budget, do you support reducing defense spending?
- Yes

3. Other or expanded principles
- In the U.S. there's been a radical transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, and the worker is accused of "class warfare" for demanding job safety and health protections and a decent wage. Let's get back to progressive taxation, meaning an increase at the high brackets. Tax the churches. Revisit all non-profits. We must drastically reduce "defense" spending, then reduce it some more. U.S. out of Africa! U.S. out of NATO! Shut down bases, including pork barrel domestic bases. (As for a Space Force, instead of further militarizing space, we must work on cooperating with Russia and China.)

Campaign Finance

1. Do you support the regulation of indirect campaign contributions from corporations and unions?
- Yes

2. Other or expanded principles
- Election campaigns must be publicly financed. The broadcast media, licensed to use public airwaves, must provide a set block of time to qualifying candidates at all levels. It's not just indirect Super-PAC contributions that must be curtailed. All campaign contributions are anathema: "What's in it for me?" Contributors expect a return on their investments. Quid-pro-quo links shouldn't have to be proven in court. It's obvious to any observer that a contribution of any amount will make a candidate look favorably upon a donor's agenda.

Economy

1. Do you support federal spending as a means of promoting economic growth?
- No

2. Do you support lowering corporate taxes as a means of promoting economic growth?
- No

3. Other or expanded principles
- "Special economic privileges" raise suspicion. Crony capitalism and tax incentives, allowances, deductions, all need review. The very word "growth" needs intense debate. With the impending global climate catastrophe, we'll have to jettison the received notion that we're entitled to any economic growth. It's not a good idea to default on federal debt obligations, so let's not do that. Federal spending will be necessary for the massive transition to public transportation and renewable energy generation. Corporate taxes will have to raised, plain and simple.

Education

1. Do you support requiring states to adopt federal education standards?
- Yes

2. Other or expanded principles
- States are demonstrating that their governments can be hijacked by special interests who like to rewrite history. Slavery, and the treatment of Native Americans, and military adventures like Viet Nam and Iraq and Afghanistan: these are getting excised from the curriculum when states can get away with it. Texas and Florida textbooks, and now Arizona's too vis-a-vis evolution, conform to bizarre local standards.

Energy & Environment

1. Do you support government funding for the development of renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, thermal)?
- Yes

2. Do you support the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions?
- Yes

3. Other or expanded principles
- The U.S. must correct course, and get back into the Paris Agreement. The rest of the world is still in CoP21. Of course we must get off fossil fuels, sooner than the soonest. Even with subsidies, renewables and energy storage facilities for intermittents cannot catch up with the need. We will have to adjust down our expectations for plentiful energy. Voluntary reduction of ghg emissions is not happening. Now is a critical moment for the feds to step in. Those extractive corporations will just have to perish if they cannot adapt to stranded assets.

Guns

1. Do you generally support gun-control legislation?
- Yes

2. Other or expanded principles
- "No gun safety training, no gun." In Arizona we had a state senator famously pointing her pink concealed-carry pistol at a newspaper reporter's chest, showing off the laser, and claiming that her daddy taught her gun safety. On a hike, I had to ask a young man, slovenly dangling his air rifle at his hip, to direct it away from me. "Universal Background Check" is common sense legislation. School shootings and other manifestations of mass violence reveal a poverty of spirit in our society. What leads to such despair? Education (not indoctrination) and meditation are the antidote.

Health Care

1. Do you support repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare")?
- No

2. Other or expanded principles
- That familiar chant, "Repeal and replace," never quite included a suggestion of what would replace Obamacare. Pre-existing conditions are legion. Capping the dollar amount, allowing insurance companies to drop coverage, where's the decency in that? When we finally do get "Universal Health Care," I suppose we will have to help workers from the gargantuan medical insurance industry to get honest jobs. An expanded Medicare system should be allowed to negotiate prescription drug prices, as in other countries.

Immigration

1. Do you support the construction of a wall along the Mexican border?
- No

2. Do you support requiring immigrants who are unlawfully present to return to their country of origin before they are eligible for citizenship?
- No

3. Other or expanded principles
- The other day I saw a photo of the ridiculous border fence extending from the beach a few meters into the ocean, near San Diego. Maginot Line? The last time I returned to the U.S. from Mexico, the agent on the U.S. side was extremely rude and threatening toward me, a U.S. citizen. Evidently, ICE is dysfunctional. The "Soft Brexit" resembles NAFTA, in which capital and goods flow, but not people. There is no "going to the back of the line." We must acknowledge, accept and appreciate our immigrants, and offer citizenship to those who want it.

Marijuana

1. Do you support the legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes?
- Yes

2. Other or expanded principles
- Recently AMLO, newly elected president of Mexico, proposed legalizing all drugs. That's what I propose here in the U.S. too, including expungement of felony records. For pot: state testing labs, to assure that THC levels are as advertised, and that contaminants like pesticides and nutrients are absent. Accuracy in labeling: a purchaser might want assurance that the strains don't get mixed up. Extortionate prices will go down. Violence will no longer be a given. Prison-for-profit corporations will shrivel up and go away. Currently we have prosecutors who revel in ruining people's lives over possession, and denying voting rights.

National Security

1. Should the United States use military force in order to prevent governments hostile to the U.S. from possessing a nuclear weapon?
- No

2. Do you support increased American intervention in Middle Eastern conflicts beyond air support?
- No

3. Other or expanded principles
- We will end the imperious pushing around of other countries using U.S. military force: we will be shrinking the military to prevent ruinous economic collapse of the U.S. economy, and by the way, to prevent the U.S. military from wreaking havoc and pestilence in every corner of the globe. The U.S. should unilaterally eliminate its nuclear arsenal. Remember when the U.S. channeled weapons through Pakistan to the Taliban in Afghanistan? The U.S. Congress ignored injunctions against arms dealing with countries, including Pakistan, engaged in developing nuclear weapons. The U.S. must stop invading the Middle East and everywhere.

Administrative Priorities

Please explain in a total of 100 words or less, your top two or three priorities if elected. If they require additional funding for implementation, please explain how you would obtain this funding.
- Peace is still the overarching imperative: we will reduce Pentagon spending. Renounce nukes. No Space Force. No bases in Africa, or Europe or Asia. As a rebuke of Israel's oppression of its Palestinian (and now Druze and other Arab) population, we will honor BDS. End the culture of aggression and death and foreign entanglements. Our fragile planetary environment needs tender loving care: immediately stop all fossil fuel extraction; go with renewables. Conserve water. No more Interstate highway construction, nor airports nor seaports. As the little man in Congress, I will represent the worker, the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed.