What
follows are excerpts from posts which I made to the Facebook Groups
“Lake County IL Environmentalists”, “Clean Air Lake County
Community Support”, “Northern Illinois Progressive Candidates,
Electeds, and Activists”, and “Illinois Against the TPP” on August 29th, 2020.
Hi
everyone. I'm running as a write-in candidate for U.S. Representative
from Illinois's 10th district (the northeast corner of the state).
I
support peace, a fair and free economy, taxing destruction and waste
instead of harmless productive activity, and balancing budgets
through reducing unnecessary military expenditures not necessary to
our defense.
I
also support promoting local solutions to environmental problems, to
guard against the risk that the E.P.A. could continue to be put up
for sale to corporate and pro-pollution interests.
Furthermore,
fixing our economy will make it easier to decrease our national debt.
I also support amending the 13th Amendment to get rid of as many
forms of involuntary servitude (i.e.,
slavery) as possible, both within the criminal justice system and
outside of it.
I
want to reform taxes so that they focus on environmental issues. I
will promote Land Value Taxation, one of the two revenue sourcing
systems which Howie Hawkins has proposed for funding the Green New
Deal. The other revenue sourcing system, the Negative Income Tax, is
also a step in the right direction as far as improving income taxes
goes, but I'd eventually like to eliminate all taxes on earned income
(unearned income is a different issue though).
With
Land Value Taxation, local governments would be urged to increase
natural resource extraction fees, and increase taxes on land
degradation and blight (as well as vacant land, abandoned properties,
land hoarding), while reducing taxes on income, sales, consumption,
and building value).
Additionally,
I support Community Land Trusts (C.L.T.s) as well as community air
trusts and community water trusts. C.L.T.s should be created, in each
county in America, as voluntary associations which are non-profit and
untaxed. They would be untaxed because they would be the entities
doing the taxing of land; charging land occupancy fees and land
degradation fees. C.L.T.s would help align each community's economic
future with its future need for ecological sustainability.
I believe
in dual federalism, triple federalism, and subsidiarism: the most
local authority possible, should handle environmental issues, as long
as that authority is competent enough to handle the issue. Not all
environmental problems are nationwide issues; some of them are local.
Furthermore, no county would willingly allow itself to be polluted.
That is why we must ensure that the federal government never has the
right to determine which areas may be polluted, or have nuclear
materials stored, without that community's consent, and without
proper compensation for the adverse health effects. Federal
environmental standards can help, but having environmental standards
is not SO important, that such standards should OVERRIDE local and
state environmental regulations, if those regulations can be better
than the nationwide standard. That is why localities must be free to
set higher environmental standards than the national standard.
For
each community to have a C.L.T. (a non-profit, untaxed voluntary
association which help guard against the risk of the E.P.A.
continuing to be bought and sold by pro-pollution interests. I would
align myself with environmental conservationists, and also the
decentralists within the Green Party, but I would also promote
C.L.T.s as a quasi-"private", somewhat
property-rights-oriented solution to environmental problems (because
they would be non-profit and untaxed, and therefore unaffiliated with
the state and federal governments).
I
also support bioregionalism, the idea behind the Cascadia
independence project. I believe that bioregionalism will help prevent
unnecessary federal intrusion into local environmental problems, and
restore local rights without allowing states to use states' rights as
a justification to dismantle environmental protections.
If
I am elected to Congress, I will spread awareness of Land Value
Taxation, Community Land Trusts, and bioregionalism on a national
level. This will help the current generation of environmental law
students, and other voters, get a free education about these
little-known ideas, and start a conversation about what needs to
become an important topic in American political discourse:
ENVIRONMENTAL TAXATION.
These ideas are important because they could
reduce unemployment, reduce waste of land, decrease economic
inequality, and reduce environmental degradation, all at the same
time.
I
want to help create a free and fair economy by building a Mutualist
Party, while offering new and unique alternatives to traditional
neo-liberal policies like those of my opponent Brad Schneider, like
re-orienting taxation to focus on environmental issues (such as the
need to tax blight and land degradation).
On
trade issues, I support "alter-globalization", in which we
would have 1) localized social safety nets, alongside 2) open and
fair trade, not unregulated free trade, and 3) free movement of
people. We would also have 4) cultural and economic globalization,
but not global government; and 5 & 6) the consumer would have the
right to fully boycott (and unionize) and refuse to purchase all
products (repeal Taft-Hartley).
Please
consider writing-me in against Democrat Brad Schneider and Republican
Valerie Ramirez-Mukherjee. Read sections 13 and 14 of my platform to
learn more about my views on the environment and Land Value Taxation
(which is also part of my plan to balance budgets, lower prices on
goods, and increase the purchasing power of the dollar).
Written as separate posts on August 29th, 2020
Edited together and published on August 31st, 2020
