Issues

I support the Foundations for Success Act, which passed Feb. 2011. It calls for enhancing early childhood care and education. The purpose of this Act “is to provide grants, on a competitive basis, to States to enable such States to establish a State Early Care and Education System, which will provide all children in the State, ages 6 weeks to kindergarten, with access to a full-time, high quality, developmentally appropriate, early care and education program.” I will fight to guarantee that this act is implemented in our district.

I believe we need more teachers in our classrooms. We need to bring back money to reinstate fine arts and music classes in our schools as well as sufficient funding to provide adequate supplies and text books.

I also believe that we need to teach our students about healthy eating, provide healthy meals for them in our food programs and every school should have student gardens.

We need to have more education in technology such as hands on computer training, coding, website design, internet safety, how to use social media for networking and finding work and how to use and design software. Curriculum should include environmental issues and teach children a holistic approach for caring for the planet.

Middle and high school should include entrepreneurial and wealth creation curricula, including knowledge about credit, saving and investing. Knowing that they can start their own business and having knowledge of the principles of wealth creation will give students a sense of ownership of their future and confidence to take risks and start businesses.

I oppose No Child Left Behind and will fight to repeal that act or significantly change it.

I am not opposed to Common Core per se, however I do believe it needs to be more flexible as one size does not fit all.

I am opposed to school vouchers and favor bolstering our current schools with funding to provide much needed improvements in the physical buildings and the programs being offered.

Every student is entitled to an affordable college education. A good education is a fundamental key to a prosperous nation. I support free college tuition to state colleges for any student that wishes to attend and believe we need to lower student loan debt.

We need to maintain a strong focus on transforming the youth justice system by implementing more creative consequences than confinement. Young people should be assigned to meaningful community service designed to teach them about life rather than simply humiliate them.

If we help our young people find meaning in their lives, find their purpose and encourage their passions, I believe we will see a drop in the youth crime rate thereby creating a safer community.

I will fight for all of these things, building on what others have started before me and creating new task forces to create meaningful programs designed to bring lasting change.

My position on homeland security is strong as anyone’s however I believe that we need to take a holistic approach to keeping our country safe. We need to separate the myths from facts in order to do that.

For example, it is a myth that we have hordes of undocumented immigrants pouring across our borders. A 2014 study by the PEW Research Center found that unauthorized immigration has dropped of significantly. The myth continues to be perpetrated by the right-wing media and racists as a scare tactic.

With that said, I support giving the Department of Homeland Security the resources necessary to do the job of keeping us safe. I support modernizing the border patrol with drones and the most technically advanced equipment available so they can adequately monitor the entire border without having to add too many more agents.

I support reforming the way the TSA screens passengers as well. I believe that it is unnecessary to force people to remove their shoes in order to get on a plane. What may be more important is to improve screening and monitoring techniques of new hires of airport workers as smuggling prohibited items onto planes is often an inside job as is theft of travelers’ possessions.

Frankly from the get-go I must say that it is shameful that in this day of globalization and massive interchange socially, economically and every way possible that we could be talking about a WALL with our southern neighbor. I will NOT support a wall. What I do support is what nobody is talking about, to engage the Mexican government in being more responsible with their equal duty to safeguard the border from their side just as we do.

A wall would also not stop drugs from being brought into America. Drugs are entering the country from all the borders, by sea and by air as well as motor vehicles so a wall would be useless.

With regard to foreign policy, I stand with Bernie Sanders’ position and will support his policy which is,

“We live in a difficult and dangerous world, and there are no easy or magical solutions. As President and Commander-in-Chief, I will defend this nation, its people, and America’s vital strategic interests, but I will do it responsibly. America must defend freedom at home and abroad, but we must seek diplomatic solutions before resorting to military action. While force must always be an option, war must be a last resort, not the first option.”

While we must be relentless in combating terrorists who would do us harm, we cannot and should not be policeman of the world, nor bear the burden of fighting terrorism alone. The United States should be part of an international coalition, led and sustained by nations in the region that have the means to protect themselves. That is the only way to defeat ISIS and to begin the process of creating the conditions for a lasting peace in the region.”

I also strongly agree with and support the four pillars that Senator Sanders has laid out as the foundation of foreign policy for the United States:

1. Move away from a policy of unilateral military action, and toward a policy of emphasizing diplomacy, and ensuring the decision to go to war is a last resort.
2. Ensure that any military action we do engage in has clear goals, is limited in scope, and whenever possible provides support to our allies in the region.
3. Close Guantanamo Bay, reign in the National Security Agency, abolish the use of torture, and remember what truly makes America exceptional: our values.
4. Expand our global influence by promoting fair trade, addressing global climate change, providing humanitarian relief and economic assistance, defending the rule of law, and promoting human rights.

With regard to fair trade, I believe the trade agreements we have now need to be repealed and rewritten to actually be fair. As they stand now, they only benefit some countries and others are paying the price for those agreements. That is not fair and new agreements must be made.

My views on immigration are based around the core belief that our country was founded by immigrants who deserve respect for taking such a life changing course and risk with their lives.

As our country has evolved so have the waves of people that now come from all parts of the planet.

I support legal immigration. One of biggest problems in my view is visa violations where people fly here legally then not only overstay their legal welcome, but stay permanently and the government does little or nothing about this huge loophole. Any immigration policy must find ways to enforce the laws we already have on the books with appropriate consequences.

I also support increasing penalties against those that traffic in human lives, whether they smuggle people over the border or sell people into the human slave trade. This behavior cannot be tolerated and should be dealt with harshly.

What I do not support is the guest worker program. The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented that employers routinely cheat guest workers out of wages, hold employees captive by seizing documents, coerce workers to live in inhumane conditions, and deny medical treatment for on-the-job injuries. This also is inhumane behavior and cannot be tolerated. I will make it a priority to find a better way.

Other immigration policies I support are:

• The Dream Act
• Driver’s Licenses for the Undocumented
• Health Care for the Undocumented
• Support for people seeking asylum from oppressive governments

Please check back as I continue to add specifics to the things that I support.

I oppose what I believe to be the misguided drug war. Public opinion surveys show that people across the country, and particularly in Southern California, want to end the war on drugs. The main obstacles to legalizing marijuana are the powerful pharmaceutical, alcohol, and private prison companies. They make millions of dollars from the war on drugs. It is time to take corporate money out of politics, end the drug war, and provide legal and healthy alternatives for everyone.

In many of the states that have moved in the direction of legalization and regulation of marijuana for personal use, entire new industries have been created, all of which add jobs and increases tax revenues and crime rates are falling. While I do support the individual state’s rights to allow individuals to make their own decisions, I believe strongly that it is time for decriminalization and legalization.

It is important to understand that the drug war institutionalizes racial, generational, and economic injustice, by disproportionately punishing people of color, young people, and people with lower incomes at far greater rates than the population as a whole. The drug war results in mass incarceration which enriches the private prison companies. More than half a million people are behind bars on drug charges in the U.S., often destroying families.

There are other life altering consequences. People convicted of even misdemeanor drug offenses, including marijuana possession, are denied access to education, housing and federal financial aid under federal law, and often find that they are unable to find suitable employment. In some states, those convicted of non-violent drug felonies are barred for life from voting, even after they have served their sentences, regardless of whether they are employed, paying taxes, and raising families.

People should have the freedom to decide with their doctors whether to use medical marijuana, and to decide for themselves whether to use marijuana recreationally. We don’t need more prisons. We need more jobs, more educational opportunities and more treatment programs to provide a better means to help them recover.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.