Chris Wright (Minnesota)

Chris Wright's Top Issues

Legal Marijuana Now-Restore Our Constitutional Farm & Garden Rights

f you’re a farmer, raise your hand if you want to give up your Constitutional gun rights? Now, raise your hand if you want to lose your Constitutional farm and garden rights? Many farmers will fight for their gun rights, but, won’t fight for their farm and garden rights. Why? They do NOT KNOW they have these rights.

The Minnesota Constitution, Article 13, Section 7, says No license necessary to peddle “Any person may sell or peddle the products of the farm or garden occupied and cultivated by him without obtaining a license therefor.”

In 1906, when this was adopted, cannabis was already a product of Minnesota’s farms and gardens. The Attorney General noted that this would allow farmers the right to sell their products “house to house.” Minnesota is the ONLY state that has this right. This was the genesis of Minnesota’s Farmers Market.

A corporation cannot be considered “Any person” if the Constitution also says “cultivated by him,” because a corporation cannot be a “him [or her],” corporations don’t possess gender. Therefore, a corporation can be licensed, but not living human being.

To jail farmers, Farmer-Labor Governor Floyd Olson, and the legislature of 1935, defrauded Minnesotans of this right by requiring an illegal pharmacy license for cannabis hemp, meaning “marijuana.” This historic injustice usurped and defrauded us of our freedom to cultivate without a license. They broke the law, perjured their oath of office, destroyed public safety; solicited & monetized crime; caused murder; false imprisonment; racial unfairness; trigger-happy police; and then they had the nerve to call us ‘criminals?’

Today, the Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFL) wants us to reward their criminality by giving them police power to defraud us again? The DFL wants to legalize cannabis by fraud, but the GOP demands criminalization by fraud. It’s hard to imagine farmers voting overwhelmingly for Republicans who want to jail them for cultivation. Neither of the ruling parties want to obey the law?

Of the 15 town hall meetings held across Minnesota called “Be Heard on Cannabis” sponsored by House majority leader, Rep. Ryan Winkler, I spoke at 14. I addressed the locals, “All in favor of growing as much cannabis as you want in your backyard garden, as guaranteed in Article 13, Section 7, of the Minnesota Constitution, raise your hands?” Almost every hand in every location across the state raised their hand in favor, while the “All opposed” were virtually non-existent. Rep. Winkler never allowed us to “Be Heard on Cannabis” in HF600, Adult Use of Cannabis, that passed the House in 2021. I have re-written the “Adult Use of Cannabis” bill (AUC) to restore our Constitutional rights. See 2021_03_14 HF 600 amendments offered Chris Wright -Adult Use Cannabis 3

Governor Tim Walz supports legalization by fraud. The AUC is a greedy, opportunistic, illegal money grab. The ultimate goal of Governor Walz and the DFL is to exclude Minnesotans from the market by denying your right to Constitutional cannabis and economic justice. If they can require a person to have a license, then they can:

1. Eliminate the competition;
2. Drive up prices to black market levels;
3. Keep criminals in business who can always undercut the legal market;
4. Choose which wealthy investors to enrich;
5. Swindle revenue that belongs to the people;
6. Prevent the poor from selling homegrown to help pay their bills; and
7. Raises the economic burden on the sick and their families for cannabis medicine they could produce themselves for the cost of seeds. The Governor and Legislature forces them to buy overpriced and overtaxed cannabis from licensed dealers who profit from their misery.

The Adult-Use Cannabis Bill (AUC) is unconstitutional, economically unfair and cruel to the sick.

Here’s just a short list of its flaws:

1. It wastes taxpayer dollars to create patronage jobs. Instead of combining the same duties that are currently being performed by the Dept. of Public Safety’s “Alcohol & Gambling Enforcement Division” this bill creates an entirely new bureaucratic agency called the Cannabis Management Board.
2. It creates a Substance Use Disorder Advisory Council that will advise the Dept. of Human Services (DHS) forever, without the automatic expiration of 2-years required by Statute 15.059. In Statute 254A.04, the Legislature created an Alcohol & Other Drug Abuse Advisory Council to advise DHS, which expired in 2018. By now, boring the DHS with advice on cannabis dependence that barely exists, in perpetuity, is stupid.
3. The AUC imposes a 10-percent gross receipts tax on cannabis, while the gross receipt tax on alcohol is 2.5-percent. In other words, cannabis is taxed 4-times more than alcohol, the most destructive drug known to mankind and way more addictive. It’s a prime example of “regressive taxation,” where the poor pay a disproportionate share of the tax burden. How do you justify that?
4. The AUC requires two employees to transport or deliver cannabis. One employee is enough to transport or deliver alcohol and prescription drugs. Is pot more dangerous than alcohol and amphetamines? Why do you need a guard employee? Just lock the vehicle. This is nonsense!
5. The AUC prohibits outdoor advertising on a building or a vehicle. However, the alcohol commissioner can approve the grape logo for Edina Liquor and the name “Budweiser” on the side of a delivery vehicle. More nonsense!
6. The AUC has equity grants because it inequitably defrauds the poor and rich alike of their Constitutional right to grow, sell and peddle without a license. The rich won’t bother growing cannabis when they can easily buy it from a personal grower through an app that connects buyers and home growers or a corporate grower. Outrageous regulations requiring high-cost surveillance and security systems along with high license fees, drives up the cost of small business startups in poor and wealthier neighborhoods.

This is another example of the stupid DFL & GOP bills that are passed every year. How can you NOT KNOW that voting for the ruling parties is wrong? Give them a reason to change, never, ever, vote for them.

Local Economy Solution

For five years I was the owner of Genesis Computers in Bloomington. I wasn’t a good businessman, but I understand some of the difficulties and challenges in running a small business.

Americans agree, Wall Street can’t be trusted, but people trust in local Main Street businesses to keep their money close to home.

The best kind of business for economic development, the best kind of business for resilience, with businesses that are competitive, the evidence is absolutely clear that locally owned businesses and local self-reliance is the ticket to prosperity in this country.

Half of the US economy is local small business along with half the jobs; yet, virtually all of the economic development investment subsidies have been for non-local businesses. It’s remarkable how well small business has done despite the best efforts of public policy to kill them. I’d like to see that change.

Most of the focus on community development has centered on “ATTRACT AND RETAIN” policies. Yet, you cannot attract a local business and if you have to pay a corporate welfare bribe to attract or keep them, then how local are they anyway. We need a different approach that develops our local businesses.

When it comes to economic development, we don’t have an unlimited budget and unlimited time. Every dollar we spend on a pointless attraction or retention is a dollar that is not spent nurturing our local self-reliance. Every hour spent attracting business outside our communities is an hour not spent working shoulder to shoulder with our local businesses. My responsibility as a civil servant is to get the most impact for the least cost. It is clear to me that supporting local business is going to be the most effective way of promoting local prosperity.

Locally owned businesses spend more of their money locally and thereby pump up the local economic multiplier effect. An analysis in 2002 demonstrated that locally owned merchants generate more than three times the local economic activity of their competitor chain stores on equal revenue. Buying the same book at the same price at the local bookseller the community got three times the jobs, three times the income and wealth effects, three times the tax collections, and three times the charitable contributions. In study after study, when you spend at a locally owned enterprise you get two to four times the jobs and other economic development impacts as you would get at non-locally owned businesses. Significantly, there has not been a study to show otherwise.

The strongest and most prosperous communities first, maximize the local ownership of business and second, maximize local self-reliance.

The mistake of economic development is the assertion that if you could just focus on the global side of the picture the local side takes care of itself. In fact, it works in exactly the opposite direction. When you focus on local businesses and nurture them and grow them many of them will naturally start looking to global markets and they won’t need subsidies to get there.

Let’s Get Growing – Support your local Minnesota businesses.

How to Nurture Local Business?

Economic Leakage Analysis—let’s plug up our economic leakage through import substitution. I propose that Minnesota do a community by community leakage analysis, starting with the poorest communities, identifying all those things in the local economy where people are unnecessarily buying outside goods and services. Those unnecessary imports represent money leaking out of your economy. If we can plug those leaks with new import substituting business we can grow the economy and pump up the local multiplier. (For example: Instead of exporting our dollars to oil, gas, and coal producers outside Minnesota, we could substitute renewable energy and keep that money in Minnesota.)

Support Entrepreneurs: How can we support a new generation of local entrepreneurs?

What about helping new entrepreneurs by supporting Single-Payer Health Care to reduce one of the biggest burdens on new businesses. How about setting up a self-directed IRA’s or Solo 401(k) to direct some of your retirement investments to Main Street instead of Wall Street. Investing is risky, so buyer beware, but a diversified portfolio spreads out the risk.

Harness Local Investment: How can we bring capital into local business?

1. Establish a Bank of Minnesota – Like the Bank of North Dakota, profits from the bank are either depositoted in North Dakota’s general fund, or are used to support economic development in the state promoting community lending, local business, and grassroots investment. See Take Back the Money Power.
2. Minnesota Transportation Act – An act introduced in 2011 that would regulate state chartered banks to create needed infrastructure. Since you can’t have local commerce without transportation, the whole system works exactly the same as it does now, except with one small accounting change in the genesis of money creation. In other words, we will be monetizing production of infrastructure for the benefit of the people without taxation and without borrowing. See Take Back the Money Power.
3. Move Public Money – Deposit Public Funds in Local Main Street Banks not Wall Street Banks. In 2010, HF3205 would have given small banks and credit unions throughout Minnesota preferential treatment over large financial institutions in bidding for deposits of state funds. Small banks touted it as a way to spur economic development in outlying parts of the state, even if the deposits were minimal. They argued that smaller banks and credit unions have nurtured closer and more enduring relationships with their customers and are more likely to lend to local small business owners. The bill never made it out of committee partly due to the fact that it was opposed by the Minnesota Bankers Association.
4. State Stock Exchange – MNVest is a local stock exchange that provides crowdfunding for any resident of the state to invest up to $10,000 per person per offering in local businesses. Of course, investing in securities can be risky, so buyer beware, but many Minnesotans invest in non-local securities on Wall Street, but invest nothing in the other half of the economy located in Minnesota and the returns are higher. I’d like to see that change.
5. Keep your money in a local bank or credit union – which on average gives 56 percent of their loans to local businesses, while big banks only give 18 percent.
6. Issue Bonds to Support Local Businesses – Your local government issues bonds all the time, often to support economic-development projects. How about creating bonds to finance local businesses? Perhaps create “food bonds,” the proceeds of which might go into a local fund that collateralized loans from local banks and credit unions to high-priority local food businesses. Properly structured, the interest from these bonds could be tax exempt, and these bonds could be purchased by residents of your community.

Creating Networks – How do we create networks of local business that are more competitive together than they would be just competing against one another? Collectively buying products and equipment they use regularly to reduce their costs through collaboration.

Buy Local – We need to spearhead “local first” campaigns. Economic developers need to ask, “How do you get more consumers to purchase more items locally more of the time?”

Public Policy – What is needed most by public policy is coordination. From the perspective of entrepreneurs, they see an alphabet soup of organizations out there and they don’t know how to navigate them. So we need to create a coordinated infrastructure for them so people know where to go to meet their needs.

Now get out there, support and enjoy some lively, local businesses!

Campaign Finance Reform-End Money Control of Government

When it comes to defending our fragile democracy, restoring citizen control of government and reigning in corporate power, we are in the fight of our lives.

Without campaign finance reform no other meaningful reform is possible.

Asking money-controlled ruling party candidates to favor real campaign finance reform is like asking a turkey to be in favor of Thanksgiving. It’s impossible.

Democratic citizen control of government is ONLY possible by voting third-party or independent; they’re not controlled by money. Which shall rule, wealth or man? How many times do you have to be kicked in the rear end before you find out who’s kicking you? STOP WASTING YOUR VOTE!

You cannot change the status quo by voting for the status quo, it gives them no reason to change. Their ONLY reason to change is when you don’t waste your vote on them.

Our corporate ruling adversaries who own our lawmaking judges and politicians also own the third wing of government, the media. By controlling the media narrative they control public thinking. When former Tonight Show host Jay Leno asked people on the street to identify two photographs, they identified Joe Camel but couldn’t identify Joe Stalin. If historical amnesia isn’t a national goal, then the subject of history is tragically neglected in our schools.

Without knowledge of the past, we cannot make sense of the present.

What makes totalitarian rule possible, whether it is an autocracy, dictatorship, or, in our case, an oligarchy, is that people are not informed and cannot form opinions based on the facts. If all you hear is lies, then you cannot believe anything. A people that cannot believe anything can’t make up its mind, can’t act and can’t think, giving the ruling class unlimited authority and a blank check.

Without access to the truth, the public has nowhere to turn, especially our courtiers to corporate capital in the legislature or the governor. We can’t turn to the courts because they are generally appointed as unelected feudal stewards of capital who jealously guard their police power to control you.

Information doesn’t get to us from the outside because media journalists are merely stenographers of the state narrative.

Without the means to make informed decisions you discover you’re trapped in a cage, cut off from normal democratic processes and nowhere left to turn.

The suicidal effect of voter disengagement leaves the foxes guarding the henhouse and enables the seizure of political power by economic power. Of course, voting for the ruling parties is just as futile.

The only way to free ourselves from these shackles of confinement is a political revolution that must include those on the right and the left.

What difference does it make if your candidates are ‘already-chosen’ as in Communist China or ‘money-chosen’ as in an oligarchy like Minnesota or Russia? Both systems deny democratic citizen control of government.

Under a money-rigged system, it takes huge advertising budgets to catch the attention of the average voter. That means the wealthy influence peddlers win the election and the voters get to choose the least-worst candidate.

We must realize that contributions and other gifts from lobbyists and special interests to public servants are bribes.

Lobbyists today write ninety percent of the bills at the Minnesota Legislature. Ninety percent! Lobbyists buy, sell and rent politicians, including staffers and offer them revolving door lobbying jobs when they leave their public jobs. In fact, once a politician or staffer accepts an offer to work for the lobbyists, and before they’re officially hired, the lobbyist knows they’re already on the job working for free.

Until the US Supreme Court case, Citizens United v FEC, is overturned or an amendment to the Constitution is adopted that says, “Corporations are not people and money is not speech,” unlimited amounts of money can be spent to influence and undermine elections.

So how can we bring about citizen-owned elections, end conflicts of interest and political bribery?

I propose the following:

1. A simple law that says, “No candidate or party shall buy time or space in the media. All time and space in the media shall be free of charge and elections shall only be eight weeks.” The money interests will call this welfare for politicians, but unless we own our politicians the alternative is that money will control our politicians and you.
2. Prohibit lobbyists from bundling campaign contributions.
3. Close the revolving door—elected officials and their staff must be barred for life from working for any company, organization, or association which lobbies the government. In addition, it should be illegal to get around lobbying by saying you’re a consultant who introduces an official to an individual at their law firm who tries to lobby them.
4. Lobbyists should be banned from gift-giving as well—Instead of limiting the amount that lobbyists may spend on wining and dining elected officials and their staff; eliminate it entirely. No finger food, no snacks, no hot dogs. Nothing!
5. Eliminate any contribution by those lobbying government participating as contractors, or otherwise financially benefiting from public funds, be it a company, a union, an association, a law firm, or an individual, if you get money or perks from the government or public officials, you should not be able to give a single red cent.
6. Prohibit fundraising during legislative hours.
7. End Gerrymandering—Transfer authority over redistricting to an independent, fully transparent, commission. Give commission members strict guidelines to follow that eliminate human bias. For instance, there is an open-source computer program called, “Auto-Redistrict” that could assist commissioners to create district boundaries fairly. Simply open a “shapefile” load in census and election data and hit “GO.”
8. Minnesota’s Political Contribution Refund (PCR) program – established in 1990, allows donors to give to the candidate or party of their choice up to $50 per year. I propose giving every eligible resident a $75 credit, tied to inflation, the ability to contribute to candidates or parties that agree to fundraise only from small donors. The Campaign Finance Board could create an phone app to allow voters to set up a username, password, or PIN, with two-part authentication, to allow them to immediately donate their State credit online to the candidate or party of their choice without waiting for their contribution refund to come in the mail. If the PCR had been tied to inflation in 1990, your $50 donation would be worth $110 today.
9. Automatically register eligible citizens to vote. Citizens can always decline to be registered.
10. Eliminate Dark Money—Disclose the Donors—meaning stop donors from hiding behind non-profit secret-money groups like 501(C)(4) (social welfare), 501(C)(5) (unions) and 501(C)(6) (trade association) groups. These groups flood elections with money funneled through secret donors that spend money directly to influence elections and make unlimited contributions to super PAC’s which run ads to elect and defeat candidates or measures.
11. Since we own the airwaves and the internet provide free or reduced cost advertising on Google, Facebook, and other platforms, as well as public and private television and radio for all candidates and take away their business charters to operate if they refuse.
12. Free space in public buildings or subsidized space for political party headquarters or local branches.
13. Free access to public stadiums and arenas for rallies.
14. Free or subsidized campaign mailings.
15. Provide access to political debates by ballot qualified candidates so pressing issues don’t go undebated, like campaign finance reform.

Combat Climate Change for Local Self-Reliance

Aldous Huxley wrote, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

When it comes to mitigating the global warming ecocide emergency, the facts are undeniable. The Democrats accept the facts; the Republicans deny the facts; and both ignore the facts.

On December 10, 1985 Minnesota Senator Dave Durenberger, chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, acknowledged being aware of the greenhouse effect in 1979, his first year in the Senate.

Minnesota’s leaders understood this issue before President Ronald Reagan removed President Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the roof of the Whitehouse and criminally neglected this issue for forty-three years. FORTY-THREE YEARS!

This is a damning indictment of criminal malfeasance and an abdication of leadership by ruling parties. How can you NOT KNOW that voting for the do-nothing ruling parties is WASTING YOUR VOTE? They need to be overthrown and immediately replaced by people who will address this emergency boldly.

Instead of behaving like self-reliant independent adults, Republicans and Democrats are children who prefer weakness and dependence on the oil baby bottle. All I have to say to them is “Grow up!”

If the ruling class cared, then we’d already be reducing emissions at a World War II mobilization level. In my view, condemning our children, grandchildren, and future generations to suffer in climate hell, for the profits of the few, is not an option. I will not walk silently into the night.

This alarming crisis can only be averted by bold and prompt government action. We cannot wait for carbon-tax incentives or the marketplace to lower the cost of renewables and storage. This can only be achieved by a series of mandates.

Constructing a renewable infrastructure is not a sacrifice; it is an investment that will pay for itself in local self-reliance; keep our energy dollars in Minnesota; create thousands of good paying jobs; energy savings; lower energy prices; and better health.

It may seem like achieving a political miracle, but we have no other choice. In fact, it doesn’t take a miracle if we all come together to address our common interests. When we do, there is nothing we cannot achieve.

Draft Mandates to End the Ecocide

1. All new electrical power generation shall be renewable and storable.
2. The State shall give priority and funding to the construction of publicly owned municipal electric generation to reduce electric bills.
3. Within 10-years all electrical power generation and distribution shall be emissions free. Providers of private electrical generation and distribution shall submit plans for zero emissions within 2-years. The State shall provide government loan guarantees as necessary to meet these goals.
4. The State shall submit plans for licensing and construction of local area pyrolytic synthetic gasification (SynGas) plants where farm produced carbon feedstocks can be delivered, purchased and stored to produce a suitable substitute for natural gas and piped to former oil refineries for the production of gasoline, diesel, kerosene, ammonia and other chemical needs. The State shall give priority to the construction of publicly owned local area gasification plants and provide loan guarantees. The State shall license private gasification plants and provide loan guarantees as necessary to meet the State’s needs. The State shall also license PUROX Solid Refuse Gasification Plants based on Patent US3729298 by John E. Anderson.
5. Within 10 years only carbon neutral fuels shall be licensed to be sold within the state. Private and Public Natural Gas Suppliers, Pipeline owners and Oil Refineries shall develop coordinated plans within 2-years for carbon neutral products.
6. The State shall set insulation efficiency standards for new architecture and existing dwellings and retrofitted with either cold-climate ground-source heat pumps or cold climate air source heat pumps and provide loan guarantees and grants to meet that goal. No dwelling may be sold until it meets the new efficiency standards.
7. Within 10 years only Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV’s) shall be licensed to operate within the state. Manufacturers of transportation vehicles and producers of internal combustion engines shall submit plans for zero emissions within 2-years.The State shall provide waivers for certain new internal combustion vehicles, like motorcycles, and all legacy internal combustion vehicles, farm machinery, generators and small-engine machinery.
8. Within 10 years only new zero emission trains and waterway shipping shall be licensed to operate within the state. Rail and waterway shipping companies shall submit plans to the State within 2-years. The State shall provide loan guarantees to meet these goals. All legacy trains and freight shipping shall purchase only licensed fuels within the state.
9. Within 10 years only new zero emission aircraft shall be licensed to operate within the state. Airlines and aircraft manufacturers shall submit plans to the State within 2-years. The State shall provide loan guarantees to meet these goals. All legacy aircraft shall purchase only licensed fuels within the state.
10. Within 10 years only zero emissions mining and metal manufacturing shall be licensed to operate within the state. Mining and metal manufacturers shall submit plans to the State within 2-years. The State shall provide loan guarantees to meet these goals. Appropriate taxes shall be applied to protect state producers from importation outside the state from manufacturers who do not provide emissions-free products.
11. Within 10 years only zero emissions cement manufacturers shall be licensed to operate with the state. Manufacturers of cementitious materials shall submit plans to the State within 2-years. The State shall provide loan guarantees to meet these goals.
12. The State shall provide farmers with information on the best practices for agricultural & livestock carbon sequestration and assist them with meeting these goals. The State shall provide government loan guarantees and/or grants as necessary to meet these goals.
13. The State shall monetize renewable energy infrastructure through the regulation of State Chartered Banks in lieu of bonding or taxation. Each project shall be reviewed and paid for in a similar manner to current transportation infrastructure projects. (See Take Back the Money Power)

The State shall impose fines and penalties for violations, fraud, and failure to meet timely goals, use of unlicensed fossil fuels and other standards. A strict appeals process shall be set forth for failures to meet target deadlines and other unforeseeable obstacles.

First-Class Education

Minnesota must treat education as a human right essential to the exercise of an effective democracy. At all levels of education, the teaching of critical thinking is paramount. Without the moral values of truth, fairness and objectivity, in a question driven society trained in critical thinking, a democratic government cannot endure nor be reformed.

Public knowledge of world and national history, including civics, has been neglected. Let’s start from the beginning of history and work our way to the present so citizens understand how we got to this point. Without knowledge of the past, you cannot make sense of the present.

In my view, Minnesota should adopt the world’s best developed educational system. Finland has consistently ranked as the number one education system in the world according to rankings from different organizations and institutions.

In 1979, The Finns passed a new law requiring all new elementary and secondary school teachers must possess a master’s degree. Kindergarten teachers are required to have a bachelor’s degree. The master’s program emphasizing professional development and focusing on research-based teacher education has transformed Finland. The decentralization of education put teachers in the driver seat of decision-making and they are trusted with a high degree of professional autonomy to design the curricula, choice of teaching methods and learning materials.

In 2020, the average teacher salary in Finland was $44,180 vs. $62,102 for U.S. teachers. In 2018, the U.S. spent an average of $16,268 a year to educate a pupil compared to $10,661 in Finland.

A total rethinking of education was adopted rejecting the market-oriented education trends of competition, standardization, school choice, charter schools and privatization. Finland had the courage to choose completely different policies and ways of implementing those policies than other countries. Of the students who take the master’s teaching exams after high school, only 10 percent are accepted to teaching universities. For those who are accepted their tuition and living expenses are free. Because it takes 10,000 hours to become a pro, the Finns seek to retain their teachers for over 10 years, whereas in America, many leave the profession after five years.

Equity and equality of educational opportunity has been a primary driver of their reform success. Equity to the Finns means that they do not allow the family’s social, economic and cultural background to determine their educational performance. Initially, there was harsh criticism of putting equity first. Those false charges were shattered when the first Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) studies provided overwhelming evidence in 2001 that Finland was outperforming most countries in literacy, mathematics and science, but that Finland had the most equitable system in the world.

Education equity is achieved mostly through inclusive special education. About one-third of students attending basic school receive special education. Half of those who leave basic school have been in some type of special education. Therefore, there is no stigma attached to having been in special education and they don’t have to repeat a grade like students in America. A comprehensive approach for identifying students with special needs and learning disabilities begins in early childhood education. First, if learning difficulties are not serious, the student is included in regular class and provided with a part-time special education teacher in small groups with an adjusted curriculum. The second pathway is to provide permanent special education that determines the special needs sometimes within a child’s own school or in a separate institution.

They believe that it is important to have a smart funding system that provides funding where it’s needed most, especially poor areas with high immigration and single-parent families.

Children are being taken care of beginning with early childhood education, intervention and support which begins prior to childbirth through age seven. This includes municipal daycare, private daycare and before and after school care until age 10 with qualified personnel with training in early childhood education. Accessible to all are comprehensive health services and preventative measures to identify possible learning and developmental difficulties before children start schooling at age seven.

A child’s well-being comes first in Finland. Only when children are happy and feel good are they able to learn. Providing health care, dental care, healthy school lunch and other services for free for everybody is essential.

The Finns exercise smart resource management. They have less teaching time and more time for professional collaboration with fellow teachers, building curriculums and assessing their students. They have less classroom hours. Students spend 2.5 hours less in the classroom than in the United States. It is hard to create a teaching profession that is truly professional if they are teaching non-stop. Doctors aren’t in surgery 8-hour a day and lawyers aren’t in the courtroom continuously. Classroom hours do not correlate to better performing students. Finland often outperforms the Netherlands and Australia even though their children have two or more years of classroom time. Homework is minimal, a half-hour a day. This means their kids have more time to play which is viewed as important.

Finland applied the knowledge, research and innovation of American educators to its system and succeeded. Yet, the United States hasn’t practiced what it has preached to education systems in the world. Instead of excelling in education the US has burdened itself with bureaucracies, test-based accountability, and competition, stunting its education system with forced regulation. The solutions of tougher competition between schools, stronger accountability for student achievement, performance-based pay for teachers and closing down troubled schools are all part of a recipe to fix a failing education system. However, tougher competition, more data, abolishing teacher unions, opening more charter schools, or employing corporate management models into education systems will not bring about a resolution to our education crises.

Finland has proven that collaboration, networking, cooperation and sharing beats competition in education. Finns want more personalized and individualized learning based on creativity, innovation and the ability to produce diversity, not standardization where everyone thinks the same. Equity and school choice are opposites because evidence shows that school choice enhances segregation.

Privatization of a public function puts profits over people and cannot serve the core public mission of education. Let’s follow the Finnish trailblazers who adopted American educational research and applied it for the common good.

Single-Payer Health Care for Small Business & Public Health

Politicians who don’t support Single-Payer Health Care also don’t support taking the massive burden of health care off of the shrinking bottom line of small business. It’s time we stopped pushing the costs of health care on patients and small businesses to line the pockets of giant insurance companies who provide no health care at all.

For many small businesses operating on small margins, today’s health insurance forces a choice between going under and denying hard-working employees the coverage they deserve. In addition, rising healthcare premiums limit the ability of local businesses to boost wages and salaries.

Starting your own small business, being self-employed, doing gig work, temp work and multiple part-time jobs would not jeopardize your coverage and eliminates health care from business startup costs. Decoupling health care coverage from the workplace will benefit entrepreneurship.

Single-payer creates a better functioning labor market. It increases the availability of good jobs, better matches between workers and employers and reduces stress during times of job loss. It eliminates ‘job lock’ that forces employees to remain with a large employer for fear of the loss of employer-sponsored insurance. Job seekers reject recruitment from small businesses that are at a disadvantage to large employers because insurance coverage is significantly higher with fewer benefits. Single-Payer eliminates the choice between bargaining for higher wages or better health insurance.

I propose Single-payer be paid for by an employer payroll tax that would replace the premiums that businesses currently pay. The employee may pay a small tax that would replace their co-pays and deductibles. The additional taxes that a person would pay annually would be far less than the average person is now paying in premiums to insurance companies.

Opponents of single-payer health care tell us that enormous taxes will have to be raised and we cannot afford this expansion of government. But as a percentage of GDP, America spends almost twice as much as other advanced nations.

Costs will decrease. For example, the overhead costs for Medicare are 2 or 3 percent; while private insurance is around 20 percent. The costs of workman’s compensation and retirees’ health benefits would disappear. Malpractice premiums would go down since settlements would no longer include payments for future medical care.

Minnesota should opt-out of MNSure by requesting a 1332 waiver through Health and Human Services (HHS) to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (Obamacare) in order to implement single-payer health care in our state.

We need to support legislation like the, Minnesota Health Plan. (1)

Our parasitic corporatized medical insurance produces no healthcare whatsoever, yet, it feeds on us. What it does produce is healthcare rationing, higher prices, diminished choices, and bureaucracy. This insurance system has close to a third of all health care spending having nothing to do with health care—overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments, huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. In a single payer system you don’t have multiple bills, inscrutable bills, fooling around with codes, and you don’t have the incentive to exploit patients that can lead to their harm.

A Single-Payer system makes it is easier to detect the billions wasted and spent on computerized billing fraud which has become a bureaucratic nightmare. By learning the art of a model fraud-control strategy, government and the healthcare industry could substantially cut costs. Yet, over ten percent of all health expenditures are defrauded. (Note: See my plan to control Medical Waste, Fraud and Abuse)

Once you have a single payer healthcare system you can push for reducing the skyrocketing prescription drug prices. Drugs created with taxpayer money are cheaper in Canada & Europe, yet we are the first to be gouged by these ungrateful drug companies who profit from American research and development.

Expect a bewildering attack by the powerful pay-or-die healthcare lobby for any attempt to pass healthcare that is more humane, economically efficient, saves thousands of lives a year and does it with free choice of doctor or hospital. Extreme public pressure will be necessary.

The marketplace should not be allowed to legislate life and death. It’s time to stand up to the mercenary medical insurance lobby that places profits above the health and safety of the people.

• SF 2060 – Minnesota Health Plan – as introduced – 89th Legislature (2015 – 2016) Authors — Marty; Bach; Lourey; Eken; Torres Ray

Take Back the Money Power

Most people have no clue how money comes into existence. When private individuals create money out of nothing, it’s called counterfeiting. When un-elected private bankers commit this so-called fraud on the sovereign people, they dignify it as Fractional Reserve Banking.

Fractional Reserve Lending is a system in which bankers only need a fraction of reserves in order to issue many times the reserve amount in loans.

Bankers create our money supply by using $1 of reserves to create $9 of new money/loans. An individual by contrast, must first save $1 to lend $1. If a person could create nine dollars out of thin air with just a dollar and charge interest for it, then anybody could rule the world. Wealthy individuals receive the lowest interest rates while the rest of us borrow at high interest rates. In other words, money is created at the top of the wealth pyramid to benefit the top of the pyramid. This is avalanche-up economics.

No one should be able to create money for their own personal profit. But that’s exactly how Fractional Reserve Banking works. It starts at the Federal Reserve, which is not federal and has no reserves. It is a quasi-public institution owned by a private banking monopoly. Under Fractional Reserve Banking all money comes into existence as loans created out of nothing, just bookkeeping entries.

Thomas Edison said, “”If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill.” See p. 6, column 3, New York Times, (6 December 1921)

Why pay interest on money the government can create without interest?

Debt isn’t real money because if all debts were paid back, then there wouldn’t be any money. In other words, beware of paying off the federal debt too quickly, you’ll tank the economy.

Private bankers create the principle, but not the interest to pay back the loan. The money to pay back the interest has to come from someone else’s loan and eventually someone defaults. It‘s a 300-year-old Ponzi scheme where eventually all the compound interest goes to the oligarchs.

The Bible says, “[T]he borrower is servant to the lender.” When our government borrows from bankers, we lose democratic sovereignty to the lending plutocrats. The Federal Reserve Act, gave banks the money-power to create our money supply as debt, it sanctioned bankers as the ruling class, and able to direct our governing policies. To call this a rigged economy is a colossal understatement.

By controlling the money-power, banks can expand and contract the money supply, causing booms and busts at will. The tremendous power of the ruling elite to tank the economy in order to hold on to the money power means it will take TREMENDOUS national courage to change this fraudulent system.

Fractional reserve lending demands perpetual and unsustainable growth in order to pay the interest on the principal. Economist Kenneth Boulding said, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

Monetary expansion is inherently inflationary. The act of expanding the money supply without their being a proportional expansion of goods and services in the economy will always debase the currency. Parity can only be achieved by strict control of the quantity of money. Issuing too much money will cause inflation. Issuing too little money will cause deflation. If we want to retain the value of our money we’ll need a monetary authority that keeps our money at a nominal value.

Fractional Reserve Banking is bad public policy because it legalized what was originally a criminal fraud, legitimized structural wealth inequality and created an un-elected ruling class. In a democracy, bankers should be our servants, not our masters.

Stephen Zarlenga, author of “The Lost Science of Money” said, “Over time, whoever controls the money system controls the nation.” In a democracy the “We the People” are the sovereign rulers with the power to issue money interest-free at the bottom of the wealth pyramid for the benefit of all. In a democracy, bankers should be our servants, not our masters.

How Can We Take Back the Money Power?

Since Minnesota cannot affect national monetary reform or end fractional reserve lending alone, we can harness the local power we do have. I’ll address national reform last.

State Monetary Reform

Bank of Minnesota

Let’s take back the money power with a Bank of Minnesota based on the publicly-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND) founded in 1919 which acts as a ‘Mini-Fed’ to the State.

The bank is the only legal depository for all state funds. Their mission is “to deliver quality, sound financial services that promote agriculture, commerce, and industry.” The founding legislative principle for the BND said, “BND is to be helpful to and assist in the development of…financial institutions and public corporations within the state and not, in any manner, to destroy or to be harmful to existing financial institutions.”

The bank has turned a profit every year since 1919. Profits from the bank are either deposited in North Dakota’s general fund, or are used to support economic development in the state promoting community lending, local business, and grassroots investment. The BND boosts locally owned private banks and credit unions.

Money any state collects from taxpayers and from the federal government, before being spent, has to be parked somewhere. North Dakota deposits it at local banks and credit unions, expanding lending opportunities for local businesses.

Chris Hedges said, “You can tell what the oligarchs fear by what they seek to destroy.” It shouldn’t surprise you that it was fiercely opposed by grain, railroad, and banking trusts who sought measures to prevent its creation in 1919. Today the BND is wildly popular in a state where 65% of voters are Republicans who voted for Trump, which suggests the bipartisan appeal of community capital that keeps money circulating within the state. Ignore the lobbyists from big banks, who detest the idea, and let’s set up a public Bank of Minnesota immediately.

Minnesota Transportation Act

We need to reintroduce and support a banking regulation called the Minnesota Transportation Act SF65 and HF 610 as introduced – 87th Legislature (2011-2012). (5)

The Minnesota Transportation Act, formally called, “USE OF NEW WEALTH-BASED BOOKKEEPING ENTRY MONEY FOR TRANSPORTATION FUNDING,” can be enacted more simply than requiring an act of Congress and can be implemented as soon as the legislature passes the bill. In less than four months we could create jobs, putting people to work and paying them wages to rebuild the state’s crumbling infrastructure at no cost to the taxpayer.

The concept of the bill is to have state chartered banks issue bookkeeping entries as a way to put money into circulation that will be a direct payment for infrastructure without interest; in lieu of borrowing, bonding or taxation.

Under fractional reserve lending, banks normally create a liability on their books, meaning, debt-money created out of nothing, and then credit the liability as an asset in the borrowers account. If you can create money as a loan, then you can create money as an asset. In this case, state chartered banks create an asset spent into circulation as a payment for production done

Instead of creating and loaning debt into circulation as a mortgage on the production that was just done for the benefit of the banks, the state, counties and municipalities get the benefit. Since you can’t have local commerce without transportation, the whole system works exactly the same as it does now, except with one small accounting change in the genesis of money creation. In other words, we will be monetizing production of infrastructure for the benefit of the people without taxation and without borrowing.

Public infrastructure funding this way can be used to Combat Climate Change by creating municipal electric systems for wind, solar and storage infrastructure or statewide high-speed broadband infrastructure to serve local residents and increase the competitiveness of rural local businesses.

See Minnesota Transportation Act.

Minnesota Transportation Act – Excerpt from “Web of Debt” by Ellen Brown

One proposed solution is for states to create their own credit. Article I, Section 10, of the US Constitution says that states shall not “emit bills of credit,” meaning they cannot issue their own paper currency; but there’s no rule against a state owning a bank that creates money with accounting entries, on accepted fractional reserve banking principles.

That option was the basis of an innovative bill called “the Minnesota Transportation Act” (MTA), which was heard in the Minnesota Legislature in March 2008. Drafted by Minnesota resident Byron Dale, the bill mandates state-chartered banks to advance funds for approved transportation projects in the same way that they make commercial loans—by simply “monetizing” the collateral, or turning it into money. Banks routinely monetize the promissory notes of borrowers just by making book entries to a checking account and saying “you have a new deposit with us.” Under the MTA, state chartered banks would create an Asset Monetization Account that would monetize the bid value of projects, turning them into money. This money would not have to be repaid but would be considered one of those “investments” that banks are allowed to make with their “excess reserves.” (See Chapter 18)

It was a clever plan, but Minnesota legislators rejected it. They said, “Our banks don’t create money.” A website devoted to the MTA countered with these authoritative quotes: “[T]he actual creation of money always involves the extension of credit by private commercial banks.” Russel L. Munk, Assistant General Counsel, Department of the Treasury.

“Money is created when loans are issued and debts incurred; money is extinguished when loans are repaid.” John B. Henderson, Senior Specialist in Price Economics, Congressional Research Service, Report No. 83-125 E.

“[T]he money that one borrower uses to pay interest on a loan has been created somewhere else in the economy by another loan.” John M. Yetter, Attorney-Advisor, Department of the Treasury.

National Monetary Reform

In 2011, Dennis Kucinich introduced H.R. 2990, which would have ended fractional reserve lending, monetize the national debt, and instead of Americans going into debt to the banks, the banks would be in debt to Americans. No wonder it never made it out of committee.

Likewise, in 2018, the Swiss referendum known as the Volgeld Initiative attempted to end fractional reserve lending too. Despite a campaign of confusion, misunderstanding, and fear from the Federal Council and the Swiss National Bank, an estimated 26% voted for the Sovereign Money Initiative. Had it won, it would have sent shockwaves throughout the world, because bankers would have been servants to the lender, meaning, the sovereign people.

In both cases, Kucinich’s bill never made it out of committee and the Volgeld was bitterly opposed by big money. You can tell what the oligarchs fear by what they seek to destroy.

Data Collection and Protection Act

Why isn’t the ruling parties protecting us from being the most spied upon, watched, photographed, monitored, tracked and surveilled people in human history?

Where is Minnesota’s equivalent of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) or, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?

In all fairness, Minnesota was on the leading edge of this problem in 1974 when we passed the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act (MGDPA).

In 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the stunning extent of surveillance tech companies in collusion with government intelligence agencies in warrantless spying on Americans. The transfer of every single piece of phone, internet, and the internet of things (IoT) metadata is now being stored in Bluffton, Utah. This outrage came as a result of the USA Patriot Act. Before that time the data was being collected at the behest of the War on Drugs by President George H.W. Bush.

Who owns our data? Apparently Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon, phone companies, and others own us? They turn our behavioral data into commodities to sell to advertisers.

The Third Party Doctrine, Smith v Maryland 1979, said that data records collected by a third party do not belong to a person, they belong to a company. The government does not need a warrant because mass surveillance is legal. This is an outrage!

Edward Snowden identified the problem with the EU’s GDPR. He said, “The problem isn’t data protection, the problem is data collection…Regulating the protection of data presumes that the collection of data in the first place was proper, was appropriate, that it doesn’t represent a threat or a danger, that it’s OK to spy on everyone all the time whether they are your customers or your citizens—so long as it never leaks, so long as only you are in control of what it is that you’ve stolen from everybody…We have legalized the abuse of the person, through the personal. We have entrenched a system that makes the population vulnerable for the benefit of the privileged…Data isn’t harmless. Data isn’t abstract when it’s about people. It’s not data that is being exploited, it’s people that are being exploited. It is not data and networks that are being influenced and manipulated, it is you.”

Author Shoshana Zuboff noted that—We thought we were users, but realized we were being used. We used to think Google & Facebook were free, but they were thinking we were free. We thought we were using social media, but social media was using us. We thought we were searching Google, but Google was searching us.

Glenn Greenwald said, “If you are always being watched and judged, then you are not really free.”

They own our pirated data, not us. It’s well past time that WE own our data and not the pirates.

Government needs to constrain the business model of surveillance capitalism. The best way to do this is to declare that personal data is a human right, not an asset. This would limit business models to first party intended uses of data. There would be no third party commerce or use of private data, no predictive models based on personal data, no web tracking and no corporate surveillance.

The British newspaper, The Guardian, reported “Edward Snowden calls for a spyware trade ban amid Pegasus revelations.” The cyber surveillance weapon “Pegasus” sold by the Israeli company NGO Group, can gain access to all your phone’s capabilities including the ability to turn on your camera and microphone without your knowledge.

Permitting warrantless surveillance to impede protected political activity by unpopular political organizations, free speech or tracing journalistic confidential sources undermines the principles of a free society.

We should take the best parts of the CCPA; the GDPR; constrain the business model of surveillance capitalism, reign in corporate and government overreach of our rights; and create a Minnesota Data Collection and Protection Act that restores our rights in a digital world.

Other Important Issues

Legalize Drugs-Peaceful Distribution like Liquor & Re-Fund Police

End the Gunfight

I see little reason to change Minnesota’s gun laws. The gun grabbers support so-called assault weapons bans, the gun nuts support so-called Stand Your Ground laws. In my view both are wrong. I’m happy to stand on the territory between the gun grabbers and the gun nuts.

From our nation’s inception, we have had a mix of gun rights and gun control.

British royalists were banned from owning guns after the Revolutionary War. Blacks and Indians were banned from owning guns. The legendary gun fight at the OK Corral happened because the Clanton’s wouldn’t turn over their guns to Wyatt Earp in violation of Tombstone’s gun ordinance. Even Governor Ronald Reagan and the NRA supported the 1967 Mulford Act repealing a law allowing the public carrying of loaded firearms because the Black Panther Party (BPP) was conducting armed cop-watching patrols of Oakland neighborhoods. Reagan supported the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, named for his press secretary shot during the 1981 attempt on Reagan’s life. That bill passed in 1993, mandating federal background checks and a five-day waiting period.

In 2008, the landmark case, District of Columbia vs. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm for self-defense unrelated to service in a militia. Justice Antonin Scalia handed down the majority decision deeming many forms of gun control to be constitutional. “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” Scalia wrote, Nothing in the opinion should “be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” Scalia also suggested that bans on “dangerous and unusual weapons,” such as machine guns, where constitutionally permissible. While there was a right to bear arms for individual self-defense, the right was not “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any way whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Scalia implied that the right recognized by the Court might be restricted to the home. Individuals did not necessarily have the right to possess a weapon in public. (1)

Assault Weapons Ban: When it comes to a ban on semi-automatic assault rifles, I disagree. In fact, there are higher caliber semi-automatic weapons that are far more destructive than so-called military style assault rifles. They’re only machine gun replicas and not fully automatic. Banning both types of weapons would only serve to punish recreational gun owners and serve no public safety interest.

Background Checks: I think Antonin Scalia was right and that “longstanding prohibitions on possession by felons and the mentally ill…were constitutionally permissible.” So I don’t see a problem with reasonable gun control bills containing a background check. Because most firearms deaths are suicides, not to mention the suicide-murderers, to put murder-suicide in the proper mental sequencing, I would support an immediate temporary restraining order on anyone who has been admitted for medical treatment for suspected self-inflicted suicidal wounds and included on a background check. That restraining order should become permanent if the court confirms that it was a genuine suicide attempt.

Bans on Dangerous and Unusual Weapons: I agree with Scalia that license bans on “dangerous and unusual weapons,” such as machine guns, are constitutionally permissible. So, I would support a ban on slide-fire stocks, or so-called “bump stocks,” as trigger activators for semi-automatic firearms depending on the bill.

Magazine Size Limits: It seems pointless to me to limit magazine sizes since it is so easy to construct a plastic box with springs, modify an existing clip to hold more ammunition, not to mention 3D printers. Also there are a lot of large magazine size clips in circulation. Mass shooters also carry multiple guns too. While there seems to be good reason to believe that lower clip sizes might reduce the numbers killed in mass shootings, what limits are reasonable and where does it end? In general, I wouldn’t support a ban on the possession or use of standard and high capacity magazines, although some high capacity magazines are useless and absurd.

Age Limits: There doesn’t seem to be much reason in our state to change our law from 18 to 21 years of age to purchase a firearm. Are we going to tell a voting age adult, “No, you can’t bear arms in the military?” That’s nonsense.

Approximately 33,000 people die per year from gun violence. Of that number, a largely preventable, 66-percent are suicides and accidents. What are we doing to identify the causes, nature and control of suicide and depression? A credible “Interpersonal Theory of Suicide” has been put forth by Thomas Joiner, Jr. in his groundbreaking book “Why People Die of Suicide.” When three components exist simultaneously—thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness and acquired capability (fearlessness), suicide becomes strongly predictable. There is a difference in suicide risk between those who don’t know anything about guns and don’t own them and someone who has practical access to and familiarity with a potential means of suicide. As governor, I would address this issue. This is a good reason to support Single-Payer Healthcare in order to address the mental health issues of all Minnesotans.

Among homicides nationally, 1,100 are prohibition related, meaning, caused by the War on Drugs. In 1934, the National Firearms Act was passed banning machine guns because of gangster preference for the Tommie gun during alcohol prohibition. Even then, most of the prohibitionist-caused gun deaths weren’t from machine guns. Yet, even before the passage of the National Firearms Act, murder and assault by firearms was plummeting because of the repeal of alcohol prohibition, and did so for ten years in a row. Despite the fact that 1,100 deaths per year are 2-to-5 times as many deaths as the highly publicized mass-shootings we witness yearly, there seems to be no outrage over the prohibition-related gun deaths. Where’s the outcry for the repeal of narcotics prohibition? Apparently, gun control advocates are just as hypocritical as the National Rifle Association (NRA).

We have to get realistic. Often people in the gun control community believe that you can get rid of all the firearms. Believe me, with 320 million guns in America, it’s not happening. Likewise, opposition to reasonable gun control by the gun lobby is equally unrealistic.

We seem to be mired in the debate between the two extremes of the gun nuts and the gun grabbers. Too many Americans believe we have a right to bear arms or a right to gun control, but not both. The Second Amendment’s history and text tells us otherwise. I’m here to tell you, “We can have both.” We can have the right to bear arms and reasonable and effective gun control at the same time.

The gunfight has been used as a ruse by politicians and their wealthy campaign contributors to divide us against our common interests in order to win elections. And while we’re fighting it out they’re laughing all the way to the bank. And we’re such suckers, we fall for it.

My views on addressing gun violence are still evolving, but I believe we can begin with preventable gun violence.

(1) Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America, by Adam Winkler pg. 279.

Broadband Infrastructure Project

Minnesota should provide broadband to every household and business in the state.

A Broadband Infrastructure Project will provide Minnesota with the infrastructure to become the internet capitol of the world.

Minnesota should provide a 200Mbps (megabit per second) connection to nearly every location in the state. We must regard the internet as a basic economic infrastructure – just like roads and bridges. Everyone must have access to the internet in a knowledge society.

I’d like to see this broadband project paid for like that proposed in the Minnesota Transportation Act.

See Take Back the Money Power https://votewright.org/take-back-the-money-power/

Old Growth Restoration Project

From the prairie grasslands, deciduous woodlands to the coniferous forests, Minnesota once had a grand mix of all three that no other state possessed. The prairie lands are practically gone due to the farm plow. The dense canopy of arboreal splendor was largely lost due to the logging of the past.

Most of the guidelines established by the Minnesota DNR have been to protect the remaining old growth forest lands.

A 1994 study estimated that old-growth forest grew on just 3.9% of Minnesota’s timberland, whereas it made up 51% of Minnesota’s forests in 1850.

The remnants of the plant life that once covered 51% of the state’s forested regions, and their harvest delivered immense wealth to individuals, speculators, corporations and the government, speeding the development of the state’s early economy.

While living and working in Bemidji, I would venture to the “Lost 40,” preserved due to a surveying error. It is one of the last big stands of white and red pine left. I also visited Little Falls to see a 50-acre patch of land within the city limits known as the Primeval Forest, donated by Weyerhaeuser Company in 1913, because they feared that someday old growth of this type would no longer exist. They were right, and they had the logging company to prove it. To think that all the lands surrounding Little Falls once appeared like what is seen in this small plot demands that our state owned lands be returned to their original state of being.

We need legislation mandating all state lands be restored to 51% old growth and to encourage old growth preservation on private lands. As state lands are logged they should be replanted with old growth species. I’d like to see the state purchase farmland to create a continuous area of old growth prairie stretching the state as well.

After 200 years we should arrive at 51% old growth. It’s not too much to ask that we restore a fraction of the natural heritage our state once enjoyed. Let’s restore our natural heritage.

Motorcycle Helmet Safety Optional

Many of my friends are bikers and I intend on representing their interests.

I’m against high registration fees and the purchase of state-mandated personal injury protection (PIP) insurance. That being said, I encourage people to have adequate insurance coverage.

When it comes to mandated helmet laws the people have spoken. A majority of motorcycle riders oppose mandatory helmet laws.

There’s a sense of freedom to feel the wind in your face and the air in your hair on a hot summer day, instead of sweating in a stuffy helmet. Folks want to hear their engines and their surroundings, even if they can’t hear much.

The safe operation of motorcycles should be encouraged. There’s plenty of evidence that helmets protect the driver from serious head injury and death.

In my view, the personal decision to wear a motorcycle helmet should be left to the discretion of the driver, but it’s a risk a person needs to weigh carefully.

Abortion Laws-Let the Women Decide

The decision to have an abortion should be strictly between a woman and her doctor. No politician should deny women control over their own bodies and access medical care.

There is no mention whatsoever in the U.S. Constitution of “Judicial Review.” This power was seized by Chief Justice John Marshall in the case Marbury v. Madison. The Supreme Court should not have the power to overrule the legislation of Congress. The people through their elected representatives should decide what the law is not appointed, unelected dictators on the Supreme Court. Judges can never be the impartial defenders of the Rule of Law as long as judicial review gives them the power to legislate from the bench. The partisan lawmakers on the Supreme Court have made disastrous legislative decisions like Dred Scott, Plessy v Ferguson, Roe v Wade, Citizen’s United v FEC, and the list goes on.

As Americans, not only do we have privacy rights, we have an un-enumerated 9th Amendment right to procreate. Despite the failure of the U.S. Supreme Court to enumerate fundamental rights under the 9th Amendment, that doesn’t mean we don’t have a fundamental right to have children. If we have a right to procreate then we also have a right not to procreate.

Prohibition of abortion won’t end abortion it simply takes regulatory power from the public and puts it into the hands of the black market. RU486, the abortion pill, will be distributed. The War on Drugs has witnessed increased distribution for over one hundred years. Obviously, distribution is inevitable. The only question left to ask is “How will drugs be distributed? Will they be distributed legally safely and peacefully like alcohol and prescription drugs or illegally, unsafely and violently like narcotics? Abortion prohibition, like drug prohibition, is an exercise in futility. An invitation to the black market destroys public safety.

In my view, the abortion question is best left to the judgment of women.^[3]