08/03/2024
"I believe, I believe" I believe I want to hear more about what a candidate will do than what they believe.
I believe: I want a candidate who knows how much a gallon of milk costs. I want a candidate with an income closer to the median than to the top .01%. I want a candidate who lives in the world I live in.
36% of eligible voters don't vote.
11% vote for Vermin Supreme, Mickey Mouse or another protest candidate.
This is the 47% of you I am talking to.
What good is a pony without a house and a barn and a regular supply of feed?
What good is representative government if the entire collection of those willing to be representatives have spent their entire life and career making themselves different than you and I? Are they representing us? or are they representing a sub group of business persons, court professionals and law enforcement officers?
What good is a vow to uphold the Constitution if every act you take goes against the preamble's clearly stated purposes of forming a greater union, establishing justice, providing for the common defense and welfare of the citizens? What good is an oath to "ensure domestic tranquility" if you are doing nothing but breathing air into the flames of conflict?
I know I cannot be elected and I know if a democrat voted for me: it would be like voting for Trump through the backdoor. That is why this page is for that other 47% who want something different? Maybe who understand what I mean in the rest of this post. If you are just going to not vote or vote for ponies or cartoon characters: consider just writing in my name, Gloria Kalteich. You aren't taking a vote from either of them: if you were not going to vote anyway.
I believe in things: I believe that all people have a right to food and water and having lived in poverty: I know how much is wasted: I know how much can be done with a 4x4 garden bed and a chicken coop. I believe in Victory Gardens and so I grow one and if I were elected: I would work to take money from the failed war on drugs and put that money into harm reduction efforts and efforts that eliminate the causes of addiction. That means; ending cannabis incarceration on a federal level and allotting that money to garden beds, chicken coops, rabbit hutches. I would bring military back to build strength at home on infrastructure projects, food distribution and creation of homes. I5 was built by the Army, for goodness sake, this isn't new concept.
I believe that my body is my body: if I want to dress it in a dinosaur costume I can If I want to to wear a mens' tuxedo, I can. if my son or husband wants to wear a skirt and heels: that is fine, too. "protecting" no one requires limiting these actions. What I wear or you wear is not what makes a harm to another. I believe that women have control over their bodies and their medical decisions. I believe each individual and their doctor not an insurance company should be responsible for medical decisions. Banks should be removed from ownership in medical insurance and not allowed to trade in terms of "human capital"
I would work on the causes of violence: not just limit its tools.
The thing is: some people will always do drugs. Some people will always do harm. Our laws do more to punish than prevent.
The Police kill three citizens a day by gunfire: there are a lot of steps to rectify this and other criminal justice issues in the United States, and I have written a potential Amendment to the 13th that would remove the convict exemption, eliminate contracts requiring minimum numbers of prisoners, remove corporations from ownership and management of prisons, stop the manufacture of law enforcement and military supplies in prisons, end mandatory purchasing from FPI, Unicor and FBOP, and explicitly states that prisons cannot be used to avoid minimum wages, unemployment insurance payments, providing of medical insurance for employees. the plan does not stop prisoners from having jobs: it eliminates many of the current means of exploiting this labor, and in my plan: wages would be handled much like Job Corps currently handles wages: the prisoners would receive enough for their commissary, etc as the wage is paid (said wage would be comparable to the same job outside of prisons). If the prisoner has family: the spouse or next of kin would pick up a large chunk of the earnings: as families suffer immensely with the loss of a parent, brother, sister, uncle, etc in order to cover expenses the inmate would be covering if they were outside. The remainder would go, like Job Corps, does into an account that saves money for when the prisoner is released. If our Justice system is to be more than a labor system for the prison-military industrial complex, if it is to become more Just, as we should strive towards: then this is the type of sweeping change we need. It doesn't cost the government to end this situation that impacts virtually all facets of life.
Doing this is also like to help slow down the rate of death by police gunfire. If "except as punishment for a crime for which one has been duly convicted," has impacted our system for nearly 160 years and this is where we are: trying something new is the only sane solution. So, I'd like to see where we get if that focus of law enforcement is eliminated.
A person does not ask to be born. A person born, can be punished for attempting to end their life. Criminalizing homelessness is literally the criminalization of being poor. Only 46% of earners make enough to pass the three times rent requirement most rentals require for a one bedroom unit. We cannot outlaw 56% of workers.
And unemployment: I would mandate that the bureau of labor statistics release not just data on unemployed in the workforce, but unemployment numbers that include the 35% or so of the working age population who are not in the "labor force" for whatever reason.
Anyway, I would like to think the 47% of us can come together behind someone a little more "electable". Someone who has more than two years of college, a background higher than middle management and activist leadership, someone who could also pull followers from those two bickering parties. I have way to dirty of a background: teen age run away, used drugs, still use cannabis, sometimes but not always smoke ci******es: That is me, I am not "electable" by any standard measure, but if you are among the 47% disillusioned with the system as it is...my name is a protest vote worth more than any damned pony.
