It would be vain for me or anyone else to make promises that cannot be kept singlehandedly or express opinions as if they had the weight of law. I will address issues here as they have been raised by my opponent as I seek election to represent District 79 in the Wisconsin Assembly.
I
Health Care and Reproductive Rights
Health Care is a widely available essential service. However, our access to Health Care is currently based on the individual’s ability to pay or afford the insurance which does pay. Critically, that cost can make Health Care unavailable even if the clinic or hospital is near at hand. Government can facilitate Health Care in a clumsy manner by subsidizing costs; that is, pay outright with public funds into a private system for diagnosis and treatment.
A more effective Health Care attitude by State Government is authoritative interaction and if necessary intervention with medical providers including pharmaceutical and insurance companies.
Government has the power of the people to act on behalf of the people in order to obtain the best possible terms in the competitive marketplace of medical practice. Government may use tax money to subsidize health costs, but that amounts to a form of individual patient bailout which exerts no influence on the system, but merely enables current practice to continue with the inevitable negative impact upon the taxpayer.
Government has the power of legislation, licensure and inspection, plus appropriate influence to encourage training at every level of the Health Care professions.
I support the substantive role of the Wisconsin Assembly to provide Health Care for all the people of Wisconsin and simultaneously support recruitment and training throughout the medical community in order to help not only those who need help, but those with the dedication to help others.
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Sex and gender related issues have dominated a great deal of politics in recent years, including reproductive rights which translates into abortion rights. These have created drama and estrangement at all levels, as government attempts to exert authority or people argue government must exert authority in the most personal, private and intimate of human relationships.
As our Nation rightfully asserts the separation of Church and State, I assert the separation of Sex and State.
Government does not belong where it is not needed and passionately not wanted. Other institutions or individuals may offer their particular comfort, assistance, advice or even prohibitions in matters of sex, gender, conception or reproduction. There are many guides for adults who seek guidance. These are all voluntary and include the medical arts and sciences, religious denominations and social organizations. Government does not belong among them, certainly not as government takes away voluntary participation and imposes law on what is essentially a private and intensely personal choice and freedom.
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II
Safe Communities
At no time in the history of the world has any nation ever enjoyed the prosperity, material success or advancement known in the United States of America. Freedom has done this. We have done this. Those who came before us did this for every one of us even as they did it for themselves.
Now we are tragically threatened by our own success whenever we use freedom to gain nothing but excess for its own sake and substitute virtual reality for the true reality of knowing one another as family, neighbors and fellow citizens. We become anonymous. We become strangers who imitate friendship on line with technology and social media. We mistake convenience for freedom.
Gun violence, poverty, mental illness and addiction all flourish where the virtues which created the society we rely upon are replaced by mere impatient greed for what we want. Citizens become poor in this environment. Not poor in a materialistic sense, but poor in public spirit. They are poor because they don’t know one another. Respect for law becomes a game of hide and seek. Communities in turn become poor and unsafe.
Conditions such as these where they exist will not be miraculously legislated out of existence. Legislation will, however, affect availability of services which answer the need of every community as citizens determine for themselves whether they will build up or tear down the communities they have inherited in this Great State of Wisconsin.
Public safety to include adequately funded law enforcement, emergency services, well constructed and maintained highways and infrastructure are the least the Wisconsin Assembly can do to give its citizens the platform upon which to build the best and safest communities for themselves, communities which are they were given and which they must preserve as a firm foundation for the future.
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III
Get to Work
“A strong economy that works for all of us,” is cited by my opponent in Assembly District 79 as a high priority. After ten years in office she refers to ‘worker shortage’ without specifying what kind of workers. She credits herself with introducing legislation “to raise the minimum wage and increase access to childcare and paid family leave,” which amounts to one half of the economic equation, but leaves profitability for employers unanswered.
As an Assembly member who has “fought for bargaining rights” she presumes a belligerent attitude that raises a fist in the face of employers and tempts labor to believe they must automatically fight for what they might otherwise reasonably gain.
Jobs are at the heart of any economy and the workers who hold them. Wages, salaries and benefits accrue after an employer finds advantage to do business in a place like Wisconsin. If that advantage does not exist or vanishes, then jobs vanish with it and in such a negative financial environment all the rewards to owners, management and labor disappear.
Pie charts are popular in economics. If the economy is a pie and everyone takes a bigger and bigger slice without making the pie any bigger or making more pies to consume, it doesn’t take an economist to know what will happen.
I support both sides of the economic equation without hypocrisy or contradiction. Wisconsin must have a positive attitude toward entrepreneurial investment and owners willing to take financial risks as well as workers employed to benefit from the investment of others and earn their living in reliable jobs.
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IV
Public Education
Schools are sacred.
They must not become sacred cows.
All the children who attend our schools are collectively and individually our very future.
Teachers who dedicate their lives to children and the future should be honored and revered in terms of both respect and financial security.
Assembly District 79 is a metropolitan district. It can boast distinct cultural and educational advantages. It is also an Assembly District which contains a high school with a ten percent drop out rate; a school superintendent with an annual salary in excess of one-third of a million dollars; an Assembly District in which it is reported civic organizations rescue brand new unused textbooks from dumpsters, sometimes in unopened shipping cases, for distribution in underprivileged schools elsewhere.
Schools must teach not merely by wrote, but by example.
Money can be wasted, but the consequences of wasting our children in the process is the worst form of academic or legislative illiteracy.
As a result of my father’s profession, my family moved many times. I never attended the same school two years in a row, until I became a junior in high school. Through the years I saw a lot of educational practice, until I graduated with a Masters Degree as an adult. I have the advantage of being among the most fortunate children in history as I attended public schools as they existed in America.
Times have changed.
Now I am old enough to learn with regret and indignation when people say they are glad they don’t have children in public school.
The people of Wisconsin and Assembly District 79 have a lot of homework to do.
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V
Democracy
“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
So asked Elizabeth Willing Powell of Benjamin Franklin as he left the Constitutional Convention outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia in 1787.
“A republic, if you can keep it,” replied Franklin.
And so we have kept it for better or for worth these 250 years.
Can we keep it by allowing our eyes to remain fixed on little screens as we walk down the street or sit beside strangers staring into their own little screens and speak what we think without speaking at all by playing with our thumbs on a little keyboard?
Can we keep it by not voting or not running for public office because we shrug and don’t believe it will make any difference?
Can we keep it by replacing common good with private ambition?
Can we keep it by deleting our National Motto – Out of Many, One – and entering – I’m Just Not Comfortable With That?
NO.
We cannot.
We must not.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “As a nation of free individuals we will either live through all time or die by suicide.”
As the Republican candidate for Wisconsin Assembly District 79 in the November 3 General Election, I intend to keep our Republican Democracy alive.
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VI
Environment
We the People constitute an ever greater portion of the environment.
As our numbers increase, so do our demands upon the environment and our reliance upon one another to preserve and protect one another, the earth, the water and the air we breathe.
The People and the Environment are One and Indivisible.
It is well to remember the Navajo wisdom, “The earth is a mother that never dies.”
No one in their right mind seeks to harm to destroy themselves or the one who gave them birth.
Love and respect are required before politics if we intend to live upon this earth, upon whatever piece of ground we have been given, with whatever resources we have in hand, remembering none of it is ours to keep, but all of it must be given in turn to future generations.
Philosophy and sentiment must come face to face with human need and economic development. What we require is an Environmental Golden Rule : Do unto the environment as you would have it do unto you.
Clean water and clear air, fertile soil without contamination and natural resources are what our ancestors found here. We have a responsibility to preserve or restore those immeasurable gifts and bequeath them to We the People yet to come.
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As a member of Wisconsin Assembly District 79 I will work to protect, defend and promote the many reasons why FORWARD is the one word best used to describe what it means to live in Wisconsin.
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