| Job History: |
 | Product Manager. 27 years working in Financial Services industry.
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| Important Issues: |
| * Living wage for all Americans. Increase minimum wage to $10 in 2009 and $12 by July 2010.
* Pay for elections directly and stop paying for favors to big campaign donors. Put officials to work for us, the taxpayer, instead of corporations and the super wealthy.
* Provide universal, single payer health care. Health care is a basic human right - period.
* Consume tax dollars constructively. 25% reduction in military budget by 2012. Savings primarily spent on health care, rebuilding country’s infrastructure, educating young & unemployed and rebuilding the country impacted by Katrina and other natural disasters.
* Stop new Blackwater government contracts and take all possible steps to rescind existing contracts. All U.S. troops AND CONTRACTORS out of Iraq in 2009.
* Initiate New Deal program that invests billions to develop solar, wind, hydro, agricultural and other renewable energy.
* Become the leader to halt Global Warming instead of a leading contributor.
* Censure Bush/Cheney’s Iraq and torture policies within first 30 days of the new Congress. We must show the world that U.S. citizens are ethical and moral.
* Rescind the Patriot Act. A law that takes away our rights is not patriotic.
* Support initiatives restricting handguns while banning automatic weapons and instituting a cooling off period before guns can be purchased.
* Rescind the Bush Tax cuts which disproportionately favor the very wealthy. Impose tax on security portfolios in excess of $1,000,000.
* Implement life without parole instead of the death penalty.
* Enact a moratorium on home foreclosures. Congress should work with banks to renegotiate mortgages. Systemic fraud investigated and sensible rules imposed.
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| Why Vote For Me: |
| See important issues above.
Ask yourself if you agree with my policies.
If so, make the choice to support the candidate whose policies represent you, the people.
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| FACTS ON ISSUES:
* A 1998 economics study did not find systematic, significant job loss associated with the 1996-97 minimum wage increase. The low-wage labor market performed better than it had in decades (lower unemployment rates, increased hourly wages, increased family income, decreased poverty rates). Source: Economics Policy Institute
* The average winning House race cost $1.3 million in ‘06. Source: Common Cause. Big money and special interests decide who wins.
* A single payer health care system will save at least $150 billion annually in administrative costs. Source: Physicians for a National Health Program
* The U.S. spends more than twice as much on health care as industrialized nations ($7,129 per capita) but performs terribly on life expectancy and infant mortality. Other nations provide comprehensive coverage to their entire populations, while the U.S. leaves 47 million completely uninsured and millions more inadequately covered. Source: Physicians for a National Health Program
* U.S. military spending of $700 billion accounts for 48% of the world’s total. Source: GlobalIssues.org.
* Monetary cost of Iraq War to NJ's 5th Congressional District: $6.5 BILLION ($3,000,000,000,000 cost of war/300,000,000 (population. of U.S.) = $10,000 per citizen. 650,000 (population of N.J. 5th CD) x $10,000 = $6,500,000,000. Source for cost of war: Joseph Stiglitz: Nobel Prize Winner for Economics & Linda Bilmes of Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
* The U.S. accounts for 22% of Greenhouse gas emissions that trap sunlight and heat. U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC
* 68% of Americans oppose the Iraq war. Source: CNN. Large majorities (over 80%) in 19 large nations support a prohibition against torture. Source: U. of Maryland.
* In 2005 there were 30,694 gun deaths in the U.S (84 daily). 17,002 were suicides. Source: CDC National Center for Health Statistics. In 1998, handguns were used to murder 11,789 people in the United States, 19 in Japan, 54 in England and Wales, 57 in Australia, and 151 in Canada. Source: Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence.
* Most Bush tax giveaways are scheduled to expire December 31, 2010. The Congressional Budget Office estimated extending the giveaways would cost the U.S. Treasury nearly $1.8 trillion the following decade. Source: Wikipedia. Households in the top 1% of earnings, with an average income of $1.25 million, received an average tax giveaway of $58,000 – more than the average middle-income families earned.
* "The death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent." -Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. Eyewitness misidentification testimony was a factor in 77% of post-conviction 218 DNA exoneration cases in the U.S. Of that 77%, 48 % of cases where race is known involved cross-racial eyewitness identification. Studies have shown that people are less able to recognize faces of a different race than their own. Source: The Innocence Project.
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Welcome to my official web site. I am running as a Green for US House of Representatives.
