- Take Climate Change Seriously.
- Student Loans Interest Free.
- Create Jobs with Pay and Purpose.
- Affordable Health Care for All.
- Justice Reconstruction.
- Gun laws that make sense.
- Mental health a Priority.
There is no issue more important today than Global Warming/ Climate change.
As President of the United States, we will use any means necessary to stop and reverse Global warming as fast as possible. We will recommit to the Paris Agreement but work to exceed the goals set forth by the Global community. We will stop the proliferation of fossil fuels extraction immediately on public lands. We will seek justice against any persons or corporations that knowingly and willingly destroy the integrity of our air, soil, and water sources, as these are crimes against humanity. Most importantly, we will aggressively seek and support the development of clean recycling methods, affordable and renewable energy sources and transportation that is not reliant on fossil fuels. This is the path to Creating Jobs with Dignity, Pay, and Purpose that will provide financial stability to families and restore vibrancy to our towns across the nation,
Make Student Loans Interest Free
My plan is to take away any interest on student loans for a reasonable loan payment period. Under my plan, there will be incentives such as discounts for borrowers that repay early, and disincentives, such as gradually increasing interest rates, for borrowers that are past the interest-free grace period. We will also move to slow down the cost of education which has increased 8 times the rate of wage increases. Interest-Free Student Loans is something America can agree on.
The Affordable Care Act, Public Option, Medicare for all? Yes to all three!
The Affordable Care Act, along with a Public Option that provides superior and more affordable healthcare than what is available through insurance carriers, will allow us to fearlessly transition to a single-payer (Medicare for All) option in the future. There are already models of better health care (Value-Based Managed Care Organizations or Accountable Care Organizations) in communities around the country serving our medicare customers. These health centers are providing excellent whole-person care that is actually bringing down the cost of medical care, with reported successes such as a 40% decrease in hospitalizations.
Justice Reconstruction
We will work to achieve a color-blind and wealth blind justice system, that is free from profitability. When Justice is truly equal it will quickly move to become more humane, free of exploitation, and oriented towards rehabilitation, reconciliation, and restoration. To this end, we must move away from the privatization of our penal system and remove the loophole in our Constitution that allows for profitability and exploitation through the continuation of slave labor. We must amend the 13th amendment “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” to remove (except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,) which has allowed slavery to be continued through our justice system. Convict leasing, free or near-free penal labor, are the primary methods used today of exploiting the proverbial 13th Amendment loophole. When our penal system is free of profitability, we will greatly reduce our reliance on our justice system, reduce incarceration, and move toward more preventive measures to address behaviors in our society.
Gun Laws through the lens of a psychologist
What we know about the human brain is that it is not fully developed until the mid-twenties, especially for males. We know from experience that teenagers are more prone to hot-headedness, risky behaviors, and they more easily pulled into bad ideas. There is a reason why car insurance is astronomically high for young people under 25 years old. Moreover, severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, tends to surface between the ages of 17 and 25 years old. Without getting into any constitutional rights arguments, battles about NRA and the availability of military-style weapons and magazine capacities, I would seek legislation that considered the age of the buyer based on these facts and not the typical 18 or 21 year old criteria for making gun purchasing decisions, especially those weapons with the capacity to kill masses of people.
Mental Health as a Priority
As a psychologist, Mental Health is so interwoven with who I am and how I view the world, that is not separate from my existence and I sometimes forget to list Mental Health as part of my platform. Just as a mother would not think to add ‘mothering’ to her daily to-do list, seeking out the very best mental health outcomes for our people with neurological abnormalities, learning disabilities, addictions, and mental illnesses are integral to who I am. But this focus on mental health extends to the day to day stresses of Americans in general. I believe that every policy and bill considered for signing into law must have as its foundation the mental well-being of the people of the United States.
