37th District Senate : What California Means to Me and What California Needs

California has been my home since 1964, when I moved here from Houston, Texas. In those days, California was filled with orange groves and there was Disneyland, of course. In the years since, the migration to California by people from other states and nations has stimulated business and property booms. There have been periodic short lived recessions, but for the most part the building and housing boom, the proliferation of Hummers and Ferraris has been non-stop. Now, however, the unemployment rate in California is one of the highest in the nation. Because the film industry has become so internationalized, we can no longer rely so much on that industry to be our unique salvation in dealing with a poor economy. Now we have an immense illegal immigration problem that has put added stresses upon our infrastructure. This is particularly troublesome in these hard times. Jobs must be generated for California, alliances must be made for our economic well being. Small towns in California need help to stay viable and to ensure that California will keep its special character as the land of everything's possible.
 I will work with national legislators to make sure that the needs of California are addressed as quickly as possible. We cannot afford to waste any time in the effort to restore a balanced life for Californians. I want California to be the land of hopes realized, goals acheived, and promises filled.

Running for Senate, 37th District

The 37th District covers quite a bit of territory, from Riverside to La Quinta and to Murrieta, Menifee, and the many communities in between. The desert communities of Palm Springs, Palm Desert, and La Quinta have different perspectives than the more eastward communities of Riverside and its perimeter communities. However there are some common threads that tie us all together: the need to jump start the economy and revive jobs is the primary issue we can all agree is of critical importance. I intend, if elected, to do my best for all the residents of the 37th District, aside from localized interests which may be promoted in every way possible.

My background is not that of a professional politician. In fact, I am a novice. I consider my newness to the public political arena to be more of an asset than a liability. After all, the many who have been in office with hefty political backgrounds have led us to the mess we are in now, haven't they? Maybe it is time for an honest novice to speak up. I have lived for more than five decades of political changes. I lived through about ten presidential changes, from Eisenhower to the present, and have lived through the many scandals of both the government and corporations. Always I wondered "what about the people?", Who ever thinks about them? Who is going to help them when they suffer the consequences of bad government and bad corporate acts? 

In my young adult days, I served for three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, during the Vietnam years. I ended my service with the rank of Sargeant, in the position of Computer Operations Supervisor. I returned to the private sector, taking jobs as a keytape operator when discrimination closed jobs to me that I was qualified for. I turned to education as a path to developing my life. I used the GI Bill to pay for my first degree in Fine Arts, and earned a B.A. from California State University in San Bernardino. I continued to earn my Masters and a Ph.D. in Educational Administration and a J.D. in Law, while teaching full time in public high schools for about twenty four years. I earned the tuition money through my work, and took no loans or handouts from anyone.

In 2005 the home I had built with myown money burned down in a brush fire. In 2006 I retired from teaching, sold my land, and put all the money into the stock market. As you might have guessed, it was all lost. So like many of you out there who have lost most or all of what you worked for over many years, so did I. I lost my last home to foreclosure and filed bankruptcy for the first time in my life. Now, at 63, I am overqualified and out of work. So, believe me when I say that I understand the serious situation the nation and California finds itself in now. Something must be done, and pretty quick. While our new President has the best intentions, it seems that the system, from Congress all the way down to local communities, is broken. What is needed is bold action, job creations, a renewal of American manufacturing, strengthening of resources for those who have little left with which to rebuild their lives, and a renewal of ethics, honesty and integrity. It is time to do what is right. These points are important to focus on:

Fixing the Economy
Creating Jobs Now
Grants for Small Business (not loans or tax credits)
Health Care for all, regardless of employment
A Flat Tax, ending the Income Tax
Term Limits at all levels
Nationalizing the fundamentals of life: (why should we pay until we die for the natural resources earth has given us for basic survival?):
           electricity, water, and gas for home use
           phone communications
           transportation systems
*** all of the above fundamentals are essential to life and should be available for all citizens without cost.. they belong to all of us, not to private corporations ***

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS ARE FUNDAMENTAL

I am in support of publicly funded reproductive rights, including family planning, contraception counseling, and right to decide on abortion. If men got pregnant, there would be such services provided by every HMO. This I believe to be the reality of the matter. Since men do not get pregnant, and men are the dominant gender in Congress by a huge percentage, women are less free to make their own decisions regarding this life changing issue. A woman's body belongs to her and only to her. She is the only person who should have any power to decide what is to be done with her body. If  woman cannot have exclusive control over her own body, then she is nothing more than a creature owned by the state.

GREATER ACCESS TO COURTS AND JUSTICE; AN END TO DEAD PEASANT INSURANCE; AN END TO INCOME TAX

As my life has progressed, and things have happened from time to time, I discovered that justice has too big a price. When a wrong has been done, especially a wrong by an employer, the path to justice has a toll that is too high for most working people. I would suggest that a subcategory of courts be created solely to hear employment cases, so that redress can be provided much more quickly than it has up to this point. In this capitalist system, survival depends upon working for an employer. When that employer unjustly terminates or unjustly abuses an employee, it devastates a person's ability to survive. Months and years can pass without the fair resolution to such a situation, and in the meantime, the person is less able to attain or keep employment, so that survival itself is seriously at risk.Furthermore, it is important that the justice system and courtrooms have the theatrical quality diminished and real justice restored. When justice becomes more a matter of how much money is spent, what deals are made,  and how much of a showman the attorney is, and less about truth and fairness there is in fact injustice being dished out. The citizenry becomes embittered with no faith nor respect for the justice system at all. Fact-finding and analysis , including modern forensics, should take the predominate role in our courtrooms, not the manipulations of attorneys, no matter how clever they may be.


It has been revealed that a number of large corporations take out what are called "dead peasant" life insurance policies on their employees. This is not something that the insured employees are even told of. When the employee dies the employing corporation reaps much more benefit than it would reap if the employee remained alive and remained in the employ of the corporation. The employee's family does not benefit at all from this insurance benefit.

Why should we in this age still impose a tax upon labor? Labor is the time and life energy of a citizen. Surely that is not something that should be taxed. Instead, there should be a national sales tax, and not one that has an unreasonably high rate such as has been heretofore suggested. The suggested rate of 20% plus is too high. More reasonable would be a 10% national sales tax, with the abolishment of separate state sales taxes. States can derive income from property taxes and corporate taxes.

JOBS JOBS JOBS

There can be no economic recovery without jobs. The Chinese have an ancient story about so called improvements in a community. The story goes thusly: A foreigner came to a small village which had no plumbed in water and each day two water carriers went to the community well to fill buckets of water to carry to each home in the village. The foreigner watched this and pondered it. He then asked for a meeting with the village elders, where he explained that he could guide them in the installing of pipes to each home so that water would no longer have to be delivered in this slow and cumbersome manner. The elders told him they would consider his thoughts and his plan and let him know of their decision the following day. That day they told him his plan had failed to consider one very important thing: what would happen to the two water carriers? They made their living by carrying water to each household, which paid them a small amount per household. If the pipe replaced them, then how could they survive?


Such is the case in our country as well. We have replaced grocery checkers with automatic scanners and bank tellers with automatic teller machines, and manufacturing workers with robots. Now, with all these workers now out of work, who will have the income to buy the groceries or the manufactured products or to have bank accounts? There is a short-sightedness in our country and other nations have seen that our system is a reactive not a proactive one, with only short range planning instead of long range planning. If we do not take account of the effects of the decisions that are made, then we will wind up paying in ways that could be seriously damaging.

HEALTHCARE FOR ALL REGARDLESS OF EMPLOYMENT OR MONEY

A national health care plan is essential and has been wanting for many years now. Unfortunately, the plan that is now being formulated is based on the payment of premiums. It is curious that in about three days time, billions were doled out to Wall Street and to corporations, yet Congress is telling us that there is no money for health care. I find this revealing of a lie. There is abundant money to provide health care for all. To require a premium payment particularly at a time when so many are unemployed and have lost their very homes seems outrageously stupid and oppressive. At any rate, for years I have wondered why health care provisions are linked to employment.  A person can get health care coverage if they are employed, but not when they are unemployed. If a person is employed, obviously they are healthy enough to work every day, so it would appear that health care needs would be less. If a person is unemployed, surely the money to buy enough healthy food and other things needed to maintain good health is not there. So, it makes sense that health care provisions are more critical when a person is unemployed. In this country we need to get past this linking of health care to employment status. It makes no sense at all. We are behind so many nations who have long ago created sound health care provisions and their citizens have been the beneficiaries of such plans.

SENIORS RELIEVED FROM UTILITY BILLS

A citizen who reaches the age of 60 and has worked for 25 years or more should have utility services on the house. Such a person has paid income tax for all those years and now is aged. It seems just that one would be set free from the struggle to provide for the basics of living utilities, such as water, an essential to life, electricity and gas to keep warm and to cook and eat. These are the fundamentals and we all ought to have them assured despite ability to pay. To provide these fundamentals to those who have contributed to the nation in taxes paid for years is just and will prevent such horrendous deaths such as the 90 year old man who froze to death because his electric bill had not been paid. He froze to death in his home without any heat because the electric utility company had cut it off in the midst of deep snow and freezing temperatures. That is about the most repulsive thing a nation would do to a citizen. Enough said.