Fight for a Happier, Healthier Iowa

Our democracy is under attack by the current administration, and we need to elect officials who will protect it aggressively. If elected, I would help reclaim the powers granted to Congress in the U.S. Constitution including power over federal spending, protecting voter rights, and restoring checks and balances to the executive branch, rather than surrendering all power to it. We need to stop gerrymandering and protect voter rights for U.S. Citizens.

We need publicly funded universal healthcare like the happiest countries on earth benefit from. This is health care for all, paid for by taxes, mostly by the extremely wealthy. We've all heard the rhetoric that the “wait times are too long” and “the taxes are too high”, but eight of the ten happiest countries on earth have this health care model, so that tells us that those scare tactics are just false. If a candidate is using less committal language than “universal healthcare” they won't be fighting for healthcare for all. Publicly funded universal healthcare is one major way that would help pull us out of the status quo that made Americans willing to vote for someone who promised to tear everything down.

Too many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck or are unable to make ends meet. That has to change. But, there's also fear that if we raise the national minimum wage, retailers will just raise prices and the wage increase will be negated. That's why we need to index minimum wage to prices so that when prices go up, wages go up, and hardworking Americans are no longer left in the dust as prices continue to rise. Nine U.S. states have already implemented this, and it's working. 

Additionally, prices in Iowa are clearly very different from those in other states, such as California, so instead of having a flat minimum wage, it makes sense to have a formula states use to determine the minimum wage that satisfies the federal requirements.

When people say the economy is good or bad at any given time, I ask, “Good for who? Bad for who?” A lot of times when people talk about the economy looking good, they’re talking about the stock market. Stocks do affect the everyday American, especially since most of our retirement funds are tied up in them, but so many other factors go into whether the economy is working for most of us. We need to make sure people are earning enough pay for the work they’re doing. We need affordable groceries, housing, healthcare, and child care. These are the main things people are struggling with when they say the economy is their biggest concern. Getting rid of tariffs will help a lot, but we need to invest in housing, healthcare, and childcare. Most of our problems can be made better by appropriately taxing billionaires to fund the initiatives that would create a happier society.

How exactly do we tax billionaires when so many of them manipulate their financial situation to make it appear that they make no income, and are therefore untaxable? One idea is disallowing unrealized stocks as collateral for loans. This would force billionaires to have to sell off assets in order to make purchases, and then they would suddenly have taxable income, thus greatly disrupting the “buy, borrow, die” technique that many extremely wealthy individuals use to evade taxes.

Additionally, we need to stop companies from manipulating the cost of their stocks by prohibiting stock buybacks, which was illegal before Regan was president, crack down harder on insider trading, and stop all the other sneaky tricks companies use to manipulate stock prices.

We have a water quality problem here in Iowa. And the problem may be worse than we even previously thought, because taking only nitrate as an example, the EPA caps the acceptable level at 10 parts per million (ppm). This was established in 1962 to prevent babies from being born blue due to low blood oxygen levels, caused by nitrates. You may have read or heard about Des Moines Water Works' expensive, state of the art nitrate removal system being unable to get nitrates down to the 10 parts per million this year. Additionally, that limit has unfortunately not been re-evaluated since the 60s, even though science is showing that nitrates at much lower levels, possibly even .9 ppm could cause higher risk of developing certain cancers. 

           The Central Iowa Source Water Research Assessment found that about 80% of our nitrate pollution in the Raccoon and Des Moines riverways is due to agricultural runoff. 

So I think two main actions to improve water quality are in order:

1. We need extensive farming reform. We need federal law to require practices that will keep our waterways cleaner. But sustainable farming will require an investment. If we have federal law both funding sustainable farming, and requiring it, we won’t have to worry about one state falling behind economically in the agriculture sector because that state is doing the right thing but other states are not.

2. We need to re-evaluate all the acceptable levels of pollutants and nutrients in our water using current scientific methods.

Not just “family owned” farms, and not out-of-state landlords, but real, Iowan farmers, living on and farming the land. To do this we have to do several things:

• End the pointless tariffs that are destroying livelihoods

• Break up monopolies

• Disincentivize out-of-state landlords.

• Implement incentives for diversifying crops and livestock. One way of ensuring a market for this is creating or re-establishing relationships between farmers and schools, providing children with produce that will help them be healthier and learn better. But breaking up monopolies will also allow for new, smaller markets to pop up locally.

This comes mostly down to funding. 

• We need federal funding available for small towns to revive main streets, to complete other special projects, and get or expand broadband access so people can work remotely. 

• On the topic of remote workers, we could give tax breaks to companies that allow for fully remote work, which would make it feasible for people who want to live in a small town further away from their office to do so. 

• We need to stop cutting funding to Medicaid and keep hands off of Medicare, since these are significant sources of funding for rural hospitals.

• Additionally, there needs to be funding for traveling healthcare providers so that rural Iowans don’t have to drive so far just for basic care.

• Fully funding our public school system would help small towns keep their schools and not have to consolidate, which results in myriad benefits to children, families, school staff, and local economy. When there’s a school in town, that’s a whole bunch of jobs, and a whole bunch of people who may want to live in that town to be close to their job or children’s school. When that is taken away, well, we’ve seen the results, and they’re not pretty.

• I’d be doing this topic a disservice if I didn’t bang the Publicly Funded Universal Healthcare drum here as well, because with this healthcare model that the happiest countries on earth benefit from, every medical bill gets paid, so rural healthcare facilities stay open. Additionally, rural people, along with everyone else, would have guaranteed healthcare, and a healthier rural population is able to put more time and effort into their communities.

Veterans put everything on the line for us, and they absolutely deserve every benefit they earned. We need to expand the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and make it easier for vets to get their benefits, rather than cutting the budget to the VA.

There needs to be more training for vets as they return to civilian life - training for the job force, training for what benefits they’re entitled to, and how to access those, and better mental health assessments and treatment. There should never be homeless vets. If we implement all of the above, and we still have homeless veterans, we should create programs to help homeless vets get back on their feet.

Carbon capture is just a way for unsustainable industries to “greenwash”, which is when people are tricked into believing something is more environmentally friendly than it really is. Carbon capture is actually a tool for Enhanced Oil Recovery, so obviously, that is not environmentally friendly. But even if you don’t buy that as the real goal of carbon capture, on its surface level: it isn’t very effective, can be dangerous if a pipeline leaks or ruptures, and is financially unsustainable, relying on government subsidies.

On a federal level, we need to end the 45q tax credit that has been financially incentivizing carbon capture since 2008. And additionally, we need to introduce permanent legislation that reinstates the original purpose of the Fifth Amendment’s “public use” clause, which was to prevent private property seizure for private gain. Said clause was rendered virtually null in 2005 when the Supreme Court decided Kelo v. City of New London. In 2025, the Supreme Court declined to take up a new case that would challenge the Kelo decision. So we need new legislation to implement stricter definitions for “public use” to protect people from all forms of eminent domain abuse, not just as it relates to pipelines. While we can’t force the Supreme Court to rule in favor of such a law, it would at least have to be challenged in order to be struck down.

We’ve heard it a million times. “They just need to do it the right way!” And what does the “right way” of immigrating to the U.S. entail? For most people, it requires years of waiting and more money than most immigrants can afford. This is time and money people fleeing gang violence, starvation, etc. don’t have. The truth is immigrants would do it the right way if that way was feasible. 

Asylum is the right for refugees to seek protection from a country other than their own, but in the United States, asylum is only granted to people who can prove discrimination in their home country based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. But the vast majority of immigrants who come here aren’t fleeing persecution. They’re fleeing gang violence, starvation, and corrupt governments. So, that’s why so many people don’t do it “the right way” - it’s that there is no practical right way for most people who need asylum.

 We must reform our immigration law. We’ve been close to doing it several times, but the certain lawmakers always back out, because they want to use it as a voting issue. That needs to stop. We need to hold our legislators accountable for our broken immigration system (by voting them out), instead of blaming those who are trapped in it. We need to broaden the definition of asylum to do the humane thing and actually protect people in danger, and we need sensible immigration laws that will allow for feasible pathways to legal working status and/or citizenship.

I support legislation that’s been introduced that would stop congressmembers and their families from trading individual stocks and prohibit Supreme Court justices from accepting gifts over $50.

Additionally, we need to overturn the Citizens United and Buckley vs. Aleo Supreme Court decisions through constitutional amendment(s). Buckley v. Valeo established in 1976 that financial donations to political candidates are a type of speech, and therefore must be protected under the First Amendment. The 2010 Citizens United built on that, allowing unlimited money to be donated to Super PACs as long as they don’t coordinate directly with campaigns. These two decisions are eroding democracy in the following ways:

• Considering money to be speech gives corporations and billionaires an outsized voice in politics. A billionaire is now legally allowed to give the maximum allowed donation directly to a candidate, and then also help pay for unlimited 1 million dollar ads for said candidate, for example; whereas the everyday American may not even be able to afford the maximum legal contribution to a candidate, let alone contribute to ads for them. 

• The premise of Citizens United that donors and Super PACS must not coordinate with political campaigns is a fantastical notion that is not being followed. With all the untraceable ways for people to contact each other, it’s pretty unbelievable that the courts would just leave Super PACS up to good faith to not coordinate with political campaigns. It needs to be recognized that in politics, there cannot be “independent” groups, considering the whole point of said groups is to support a political goal.

DEI is not about giving handouts; it's about discouraging the exclusion of qualified people due to differences. DEI practices ensure that people with disabilities have the workplace accommodations they need, ensure that people aren't being denied interviews due to their last names, and generally foster a welcoming, positive workplace environment. At best, the attacks on DEI are motivated by an irrational fear that less qualified candidates of color are receiving jobs instead of more qualified white candidates, and at their worst they are motivated by outright racism. In reality most people of color and those with disabilities who have a position of power had to work much harder for their achievements than white people without disabilities.

Women are under attack by this administration. We need to maintain the right for women to vote. Initiatives like the SAVE Act would greatly and disproportionately depress women’s right to vote, and although it didn’t pass, we need to be hyper-vigilant, protecting women’s right to vote.

We need to codify abortion rights and get the government out of the choices between a woman and her doctor.

I used to be what I called a “Pro-life” Democrat, because I was uncomfortable with the concept of abortion, but several years ago I really started listening to stories of reasons women may need an abortion, and I’ve come to realize that being pro-choice is also the most pro-life option. To be anti-abortion is to be laser focused on the fetus and doesn’t consider the many ways a woman and other people in her life could be harmed by an unwanted pregnancy. We cannot legislate for the millions of different circumstances that could result in this choice, and that decision ultimately needs to be between a woman and her doctor. In the case of emergency abortions, it is ridiculous to think that any time would be wasted letting a panel decide if a doctor can save a woman’s life. Furthermore, it’s unacceptable that doctors have to navigate panels, complex laws, and the worries that decisions may get overturned and they’ll be held liable for an illegal abortion that was legal when they performed it. The vast majority of doctors live up to their Hippocratic Oath, and the government needs to stop interfering with their work.

LGBTQ+ people are people. When certain sectors of society are under attack for no legitimate reason, we must stand up for them. Gay marriage does not hurt straight marriage. Trans rights do not take away anyone else’s rights. Trans health care is another situation, along with insurance and abortion, where doctors are being interfered with and prevented from making the right choices with their patients for their medical care. Frankly, when I was growing up, and the LGBTQ+ community was starting to be able to come out more, I did not imagine this being an issue in 2025.

But, considering the decision that theoretically codified same sex marriage, Obergefell vs. Hodges, could potentially be revisited by the Supreme Court this fall, I think we need a constitutional amendment to protect gay marriage.

We need to fund the U.S. Department of Education. This should not be controversial. We need to keep public funds out of private schools and keep religion out of public schools. I say that as a person with deep faith, having attended my Presbyterian church in Storm Lake since childhood. If people want to learn more about their faith, they can go to their mosque, temple, church, synagogue, etc. Additionally, people can send their children to a private school, but public dollars should not pay for it, especially since private schools do not have the same accountability standards and are allowed to reject children with disabilities and/or Individual Education Plans.

We need a law that says if an appropriations bill is not passed before the deadline, the previous budget just carries over. There are myriad reasons this would be better than the current system, including that our servicemembers and other government employees wouldn’t have to go without pay during shutdowns, and just providing more stability for the American people on the whole.

We need to end the polarization in the U.S. Supreme court. Other countries have fixed this problem by implementing a system requiring bipartisan legislative appointment of Supreme court. This results in a Supreme Court that is more balanced, as each member’s appointment requires cooperation across the political spectrum. Let’s do that.

So called “Right to Work” is one of the many deceptive misnomers in politics. These laws would be better named “Right for the Powerful to Exploit Laborers”.

We must protect unions by stopping the corrupt practices that go against the NLRA (National Labor Relations Act), and protect workers from wage theft in all its forms, including misclassification as independent contractors.

Since 1929, when the number of US House Representatives was capped, the US population has nearly tripled, and yet, our number of US House Representatives has stayed at 435. We need to uncap the House to better represent the American people.

President George Washington opposed a two-party system, warning Americans that it could cause division, interference by foreign powers, distraction from public duties, and even violence and insurrection, all of which we have seen. Unfortunately, George Washington was unaware that our electoral system, where there’s one winner per race, inevitably results in a two-party system. There are some really good YouTube videos on this if you’d like to learn why this happens!

But, how do we solve this problem? Once again I defer to the happiest countries on earth to show that we don’t have to theorize whether another system might work; we know. The happiest countries, which are also very healthy democracies, have multiple political parties thanks to proportional representation, or PR, where 3-5 candidates get elected per political contest, rather than just one, so that more than just a slim majority, or sometimes only a plurality, get representation. This way, more people have a representative in office to advocate for them than in our current winner-takes-all system. As a positive side effect, PR greatly reduces or even eliminates gerrymandering because it creates a system that is harder to manipulate.

There are two different ways to increase the number of representatives per district: either keep the districts the same and increase the number of representatives, or increase the size of the districts. Especially as someone from Iowa’s 36 county district, I do not believe that we should make any districts larger, but also, this mathematically works out better, especially considering there are states with only one representative, so their district cannot be made any larger. Furthermore, since our census numbers have nearly tripled since 1929, when the number of House Reps was capped, it seems logical to triple the number of Reps per district to correct the underrepresentation.

While this is a substantial change that may take a long time to get enough support, I think it’s important to start talking about it now, so that hopefully some day we can have a fairer system. 

Fun fact: more democracies use PR than our system, which is called first-past-the-post (FPTP), and most countries that use FPTP are former British colonies. So, if we want to really exhibit our rugged American individualism, we should get out of what we’ve done forever, just because that’s what we inherited from Great Britain.