A Fair Deal for America

A person asked me what are my democratic values?

There are two answers to that question. The short answer is my values reflect what I knew as I grew up in East Texas. Honest work deserves living wages, and everybody deserves the right to be able to work. Everybody deserves the right to live according to their own beliefs and to be able to hope for a better future for all. Everyone deserves the right to be able to have dreams and to be able to pursue those dreams.

That’s the short answer. The longer answer takes a bit longer to say, but, as the old saying goes, “the proof is in the details.”

I believe in Responsible Capitalism, not Predatory Capitalism.


We know what happens when there is not sufficient oversight over certain forms of business. Our current Sub-Prime Loans catastrophe, like the manufactured energy crisis in California only a few years ago, will cost not only every tax payer but also any future user of the services of those banks involved.

Responsible oversight might have halted the pathway of both of these.

When we offer a corporation tax incentives, those incentives should help pave a pathway to a future, not a bridge to no where. They should encourage recruitment and training of local employees and the development of technologies that anticipate needs, rather than encourage relocation of jobs to other countries or simple ways to slice personnel numbers.

Responsible Capitalism made this country of our’s great. It provided the means for funds to be pumped back into the economy for more expansion and development, and everyone benefited.

I believe in a Responsible Health Care System.

One out of every three workers is either underinsured or uninsured. Millions of women and children have no access to proper health care in this country. We have a growing shortage of trained medical personnel coast to coast, and most hospitals operate at nurse to patient ratio that is unsafe.

We need to develop a comprehensive system of health care that begins with enabling those people who wish to pursue a career in the medical fields the ability to get the necessary educational training they need.

Then we need to assure the patients that their medical needs will be met. Those needs will not be determined by some insurance provider, but by the joint decision of the Doctor and the Patient. No insurance statistician should dictate that a woman should be pushed out of a hospital almost immediately after she has given birth or had a mastectomy.

Medicare must be able to negotiate with pharmaceuticals over fair prices, and when Federal tax dollars are used to develop new drug therapies, US tax payers should never be asked to pay once more for those costs of development in artificially high prescription prices.

Our goal must be high quality universal health care. Nothing less is acceptable.

I believe in Responsible Labor Policy.

Tax incentives to keep jobs in America is responsible. Incentives to ship those jobs overseas is not.

Yet we must also make every effort to assure that the laborer will be worthy of his hire. Tax incentives that encourage training of personnel will always be better for the individuals and society than longer unemployment lines.

Our Government Contracts should always go to American Companies, if at all possible. We don’t need military caps made in China or military transports manufactured in Europe.


I believe in Responsible Education for our children.

Once upon a time, a simple High School Diploma was enough to earn a living wage. Now, that is no longer true.

Higher Education must be made affordable and available to every High School Graduate who wishes to go farther. Public universities must remain open and affordable to the public.

Public Schools should be encouraged to improve, not punished if they do not improve. Our current system of testing assures that more children will be left behind than ever before.

Our teachers, like our children, should be seen as our greatest assets for the future. Our teachers deserve respect and encouragement, not tokenism.

I believe in Responsible Government.

Any Democracy is a series of compromises, and one of those compromises is that a government is necessary. It should help to protect all of the people all of the time, but it does not have the right to impose its will into the personal lives of the people.

One lesson I learned growing up was to respect other people. Our Government must do the same. We live in a country with a Constitution that begins with the words, “WE THE PEOPLE.”

We are the People. We are endowed with unalienable rights, and our rights must be respected by our Government. Respect is a part of protecting, when it is done responsibly.

I believe in the United States of America, and I believe in the People.

Together, we can work for those changes we need now and will need in the future.

That’s the Responsible way to live and to govern.

I Thank You for listening.
<>