Where the ideal federal candidate stands
FROM THE LEFT
What I would like to hear from someone running for federal office: I am running because our government created for “We The People” has been taken over by the wealthiest among us. A flaw in our Constitution, the electoral college has played a major role in making this possible. Its sole purpose was to give the slave-holding states a stronger voice in the election of the president, by giving them more votes in the artificially created electoral college and to get them to approve the Constitution.
The clause of counting each slave as three-fifths of a person gave the slave-holding states about 60 more representatives in the House of Representatives, which determines the number of electoral votes a state has, plus two votes for every state’s U.S. senators. The three-fifths clause in the Constitution became null and void after the civil war, and the electoral college should also become null and void.
If elected, I will push for an amendment abolishing the electoral college and electing the president the same way as all elections worldwide are decided, by the popular vote. The electoral college does not reflect the will of the people. One electoral vote in Florida represents four times as many voters as an electoral vote in Alaska, or any of the small states.
I will be an advocate to pass legislation to limit the role money plays in our elections and overturn the Citizens United ruling, which gives money a stronger voice than votes in our elections.
I will push for legislation requiring nonpartisan commissions or computer-generated programs to draw district lines for all political districts nationwide. It is a worldwide problem that ruins democracy, when the party in power has the power to gerrymander lines in a partisan way. In the House of Representatives, the minority party has received more votes nationwide than the majority party in the last four elections. I want a system created in which the voters choose their representatives, not the politicians choosing their voters.
There is a simple solution to our Social Security and Medicare financial woes, but it has not been addressed because we have conceded control of our government to the rich. I will introduce legislation to lift the cap on FICA taxes, which now is about $128,000. If you earn $258.000, the percentage you pay is cut in half, and if you earn $10 million, you pay a fraction of 1 percent.
If a bill to lift the cap fails, I will introduce legislation requiring everyone to pay at least a certain percentage of their income for FICA taxes. If the percentage is 5 percent, for example, a person earning $1 million would pay $50,000.
If elected, I will push for universal health care for all, as a right, as every industrialized nation in the world does. It will give every person a sense of security, freeing them from the worry of providing health care to their family members. It would be a boost for small entrepreneurs starting a business, since all employees hired would have health care protection. It would relieve government at all levels of the burden of providing insurance for their employees. It would level the playing field for our companies doing business worldwide.
I will support the right of every person to keep their handguns and hunting rifles. But, I will work to pass legislation to ban the sale of military-grade weapons to civilians and limit the magazine capacity of non-military guns. I’ll also support stronger background checks to prevent the sale of guns to those deemed unfit to own a gun.
I believe giving tax cuts to the rich and corporations, when we have a $21 trillion national debt, record corporate profits and low unemployment, was insane.
Oh, What we could accomplish if we were able to have a democracy where the politicians represented “We the People,” instead of a plutocracy in which they represent the wealthiest among us.
Marvin Jacobson, Clermont