Policy

  The average Arkansan family will pay $440/YEAR which will insure EVERY member in their household under Medicare For All. The time has come for America to follow every other industrialized nation and give its citizens universal healthcare. Our current health system is putting profits above the health of Americans. Citizens are literally dying because they can’t afford their prescription drugs! The working class is spending 10-20% of their total income on health insurance which is completely unacceptable. There is not a single country on Earth that has reverted from a single payer health insurance to a private system. Dan's family spends around $8,300 a year on their insurance premiums, then must pay $3,500 in deductibles before his private insurance helps. Last year he lost part of the hearing in his left ear (and now has tinnitus, never ending ringing, for the rest of his life) because of the costs (nearly $1,200 to get a referral and see a specialist plus the tests involved) required to get medical help. Dan understands the struggles of private health insurance and wants to make sure no more Americans suffer because they can't afford medical care while paying huge sums of money for insurance. America is the only modernized nation in the world where citizens can go bankrupt just for getting sick. Last year the top 5 pharmaceutical companies profited $69,000,000,000, while Americans DIED because they could not afford their prescription drugs! As a cable guy I went into houses where senior citizens had to cut their prescription pills in half because they couldn't afford a refill! It’s time we tell these insurance companies that enough is enough and that we must start putting People > Profits. Human misery should never be monetized.  

  We live in a time where there are more than 29 lobbyists per U.S. Congressman that spend 24/7 trying to get your congressman to vote a certain way. Billionaires funnel unlimited amounts of money into our political system in exchange for political favors. The Koch brothers alone spent $400,000,000 in 2018 to help candidates get elected, when 86% of candidates with more campaign funds get "elected." Why would someone spend 400 million to help candidates get elected you ask? With the last tax bill that was passed by the congressmen they helped get elected, they were able to save over $50,000,000,000. We NEED elected officials to start representing their constituents and not the special interest donors that are making them rich. When a brave citizen enlists in the military, they give up certain rights, and I believe elected officials should do the same. If running for a public office a candidate should give up the right to financial privacy. Constituents should be able to go online and view their representatives' bank accounts. People should be able to see where money is coming from and where it goes. If someone doesn't like this because they are engaged in unethical or illegal activities, don't run for public office. I also believe elected officials should give up their right to plead the fifth amendment. If you want to represent people, don't be a criminal. Period.  

   Climate change is real. Period. 97% of the scientists on Earth have come to agreement this is no longer a political issue. You can say it is not and pretend all you want, but that does not change the facts. The impact mankind has had on our ecology is so unsustainable that we have already entered the sixth great extinction. We stand to lose 70% of ALL species on our planet within the next 50 years. We have already lost over 50% of the coral reefs around the world which contain 25% of ALL sea life. To make things worse this cascading effect will continue to hasten. As the ice melts around our planet the oceans are less white and bluer, which means the earth absorbs more light and reflects less heat. As the ice melts it is uncovering millions of acres of frozen tundra that is releasing carbon and methane that has been stored for millions of years. We have a mere 12 years to make drastic changes before we reach the point of no return. I am not saying the world is going to end, but the world as we know it is now changing. Our children will suffer dire droughts and great storms to the like’s mankind has never faced. A republican Mayor in Texas was able to get his constituents to agree on changing to a 100% renewable energy source and has since then created safer jobs with less hours and higher pay, lowered the electric bill of residents to less than $20/month, while lowering emissions. We can follow this brave republican’s model and make Arkansas the leader in clean energy. Let’s keep our Natural State the most beautiful in the nation.   

    I believe Marijuana should be federally decriminalized. It should be up to the voters in each state whether they want this drug to be illegal, whether medicinal or recreational. Let the people vote for the laws they adhere to. The war on drugs has done nothing for Americans but create a way to mass incarcerate individuals and ruin lives. If you look at the success of states that have legalized marijuana you would understand why this is such an important issue. Oregon has used the tax dollars gained from marijuana sales to fund their schools. Colorado made so much money they even refunded their taxpayers! If your child goes to school in Oregon their bus rides are free, their school lunches are free, their school materials are free, the instruments for band can be rented for free. No citizen, resident, guest, or undocumented immigrant should EVER go hungry. There is so much revenue gained from marijuana taxes that conservatives have come together with liberals to support legalization across more than half of the states.  Americans that have obtained a medicinal recommendation should not have their second amendment rights removed. We need to protect legal patients' ability to purchase a firearm.  Not only do we need to give states the option to vote on this legislation for themselves, but we need to pardon all marijuana related crimes across our great nation. That includes possession and paraphernalia. Together we will federally decriminalize cannabis and nationally expunge cannabis related charges for ALL Americans! Another thing that needs to happen is protecting law-abiding Americans' right to employment. An employer should NOT be allowed to fire an employee for testing positive for cannabis IF; They are a legal medicinal patient and test positive; They live in a recreational legal state; And have broken no laws.     

  Corporations like Amazon are getting away with paying little to no taxes. Amazon, FedEx, and Netflix paid $0 in taxes last year. While these corporations are skating by taxes, billionaires are also dodging them. An estimated $21,000,000,000,000 is floating around offshore bank accounts avoiding taxation. When we spend our money, we expect it to be taxed and come back into our communities, but it is instead going to offshore banks to build interest rather than building our economy. We need to close the loopholes that allow the rich to avoid paying their fair share. Why do we punish people for working? Why do we tax the working class so high while giant corporations and billionaires get away with paying little to nothing? The answer is simple: billionaires lobby money into legislators’ pockets in exchange for favorable legislation. What we need to do is enforce taxes on those avoiding them, then lower taxes for the working class. The new tax bill that our "representatives" voted to pass cost Americans $93,000,000,000 more in income taxes in 2018, while corporations paid $90,000,000,000 less. This is not what a representative should have done. This is what happens when legislators are on the payrolls of the corporations.  

  I support free college tuition for 2 year degrees, with the ability to continue at no cost to the student if they have a 3.0+ GPA. If we are to continue to be the greatest nation in the world, we must continue to educate without the threat of having a lifetime of debt. Students are graduating with tens of thousands of dollars of debt and get stuck paying the interest while barely touching the principal debt owned. I propose we cap the interest rate on Federal Student Loans at 1-2%, the current rate is 4.5%+. It’s time we stop punishing our youth with endless interest payments and start rewarding them for furthering their education in order to better our society. We also need to start promoting the continuing of education after high school. We need to promote vocational training and college degrees. I understand not everyone wants to get a degree, but the option should be there. Let's focus on supplying vocational training for those not wanting a degree and helping support our future working class by providing free college tuition to community colleges. The price of college textbooks has risen 1000% over the last 10 years. Colleges have become an industry of giant profits and huge debts, rather than a tool for education and the betterment of society.  We also need to look into a universal Pre-K program where working class parents can get educations for their young children at affordable, or no cost, rates.

 No one should ever be discriminated against for their sexual orientation or identity. All Americans are created equally and should have equal constitutional protections. This applies to same sex marriages. It is unconstitutional to prevent a same sex couple from receiving the same tax benefits as any other American couple. I also support same sex couples adopting children. As a cable guy I have been in thousands of peoples homes. I have met so many wonderful people including same sex couples. Being a good parent has nothing to do with sexual orientation or identity. 

The two party system has made it to where we are constantly faced with a lesser of two evils voting choice. A troubling poll asked two questions. First, are you enthusiastic to vote for Donald Trump? 68% said yes. Second, are you enthusiastic to vote for Biden? 31% said yes. The majority of people that will be voting for Biden are only doing so to vote against Trump, not because they support Biden. 

Ranked choice voting eliminates the need to vote for someone because you don't like their opponent. The way ranked choice voting works is you choose your favorite candidate as your rank 1 choice. Your second rank choice will be your second choice. Then third, and so on. After the election if no candidate has more than 50% of the vote, the candidate with the lowest amount of votes will be eliminated, and the people who voted for that candidate as their first choice will now add their vote to their second choice candidate. If no candidate has reached 50% of the vote yet, the next candidate with the lowest amount of votes will be eliminated, and their voters' next choice will be added to the remaining candidates. This continues until a candidate has over 50% of the vote.

  Domestic abusers have been getting off easy and then returning to their old ways. Women, children, and men, suffer from abuse daily. We need prosecutors to pursue domestic violence charges.  HB-4262 is a great start towards keeping families safe, other than putting the Attorney General in charge of the task force, because we are finding more and more corrupt Attorney Generals in our state administrations. One thing is clear, domestic violence is a huge issue here in Arkansas, and across the nation. Too many lives are being ruined due to a lack of acknowledgement, accountability, and a lack of leadership  

 Arkansas is the only state in which a tenant can go to prison for missing their rent. At the same time a landlord has no obligation to make a dwelling livable. 

  Gerrymandering has been used by political parties to create district lines, in which best benefit their parties ambitions, for too long. In order to fix gerrymandering for good I propose we use a computer algorithm to create district lines, rather than having interested parties do it.  

 The US Post has been serving Americans since 1775, when Benjamin Franklin was selected as the first Post Master. There are approximately 471 million pieces of mail delivered every single day through the USPS. We need to remove the legislation that was put into place to directly hurt the USPS in order to make it look inefficient to push for privatization.  The USPS should never have been put in the hands of an individual that has a huge financial incentive to see it fail.