Dick Eiden for Congress

Our democracy has been hijacked by multinational corporations and their armies of lobbyists.If we don’t get money out of politics, nothing will change on any important issue. Too many politicians from both parties are beholden to big donors. The high cost of campaigns means that only the rich or well-connected have a chance to win, and only Republicans and Democrats. About half the people in Congress are millionaires. Even so, they are constantly raising money for their next election.Last summer’s debt ceiling crisis showed that ugly partisanship has turned to gridlock. Congress’ approval rating plunged to 9%, the lowest it’s ever been. We have many big problems and Congress isn’t serious about dealing them or even being honest and above board.I support MoveToAmend.org and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who are trying to amend the constitution to make clear that corporations are not people and money is not speech. After that we should adopt a public financing policy, limits on corporate contributions, and consider limiting the time for campaigning. In England it’s only six weeks. Let’s top spending so much of society’s resources on seemingly endless campaigns. Elections are not sport and shouldn’t be treated as such.It wouldn’t be so bad if election money was spent to educate people about the many complex issues our country faces. Good information is certainly needed, but the money is mostly spent on repetitive name recognition, negative character assassination, misleading and even lying statements which are poisoning our body politic, tearing it apart.

I oppose every aspect of the Republican war on women. It’s almost unbelievable that hard-won and well-established rights are now threatened by Congress and state legislatures. As you Congressman I will stand for full equality for women in education, workplace, sports, health care, including full, unhindered health and reproductive rights for women. Women should have full control over when and whether to have children. Our government has no right to make women go out of state or jump through extra hoops for full health care.
Regarding abortion, unwanted pregnancies are the problem, and Planned Parenthood helps reduce unwanted pregnancies. I am proud to be rated “100% Pro Choice” by Planned Parenthood of San Diego & Imperial Counties. Making abortion illegal simply does not work. Belgium has free abortions and only 9 per 100 live births compared to 28 abortions to every 100 live births in the U.S. When to have children is one among many things that should not be the subject of government regulation.
The Planned Parenthood Action Fund of the Pacific Northwest has rated Dick Eiden as a 100% Pro Choice candidate, based upon a shared commitment to women’s reproductive health.

There is no compromise between life and death. All Americans should have access to affordable health care and thus be free of the fear of financial ruin due to soaring medical costs. I support a single payer system (Medicare for all) as the ideal solution to the inefficiency of our current health care structure. In a single payer model, individuals make decisions about their care in consultation with their doctors and families, free of the intrusion of insurance company middlemen.
Among the facts that highlight the need for health care reform now are these: 1) 122 Americans die every day because they lack health insurance; 2) health insurance companies exist to produce profits for their shareholders; their primary concern is the bottom line, not your health; 3) the U.S. spends nearly twice as much per capita on health care services as the next most costly nation, but ranks 32nd in life expectancy, and 41st in infant mortality; 4) skyrocketing medical costs have left family after family bankrupt while 1 in 6 Americans still lack access to adequate health care.
A single payer system means universal access to health care for everyone, uniform coverage (no Cadillac plans for the wealthy and Pinto plans for everyone else), and never a lapse in coverage if you are unemployed or change jobs. Just as importantly, this system would encourage all to see doctors for preventive care which would reduce the expense involved in providing care for preventable illnesses.

This should be a top national priority because global climate change is real, and poses a serious risk to our health, economy, security and environment. Our reliance on fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change and a major contributor toward perpetual war. Fossil fuels are running out anyway, so we must mobilize and move toward renewable energy sources like we mobilized to put a man on the moon in the Sixties. This is more important.
Green, renewable energy technologies can and should be the engine of our economy in the coming decades. We should accelerate development if solar, wind, and wave technologies, while continuing the search for new and better technologies.
In the meantime, we should move immediately toward transitional clean generating technologies. When called upon to shift quickly in the case of World War II, Americans met the challenge and rose together. We now need to shift our military-industrial complex into building energy solutions for the future for solar, wind, wave and next generation technologies. Drilling more oil wells, opening up offshore drilling and building a pipeline are only preventing us from evolving into a low-carbon emission nation, while foreign energy sources keep us enslaved to unstable countries, and tax incentives/subsidies to oil, gas and coal producers are clearly draining our economy and need to be revoked. The only responsible solution is to recognize that our addiction to fossil fuels is a dead end.
The oil and gas industry, coupled with the financial sector – with “undue influence”, to use Eisenhower’s phrase – made a casino out of the market, helping drive gas prices up and using our lives and families as chips. The Energy Bill of 2005 was the crowning glory of the cowboy oilman’s White House, allowing them to drill almost anywhere and everywhere. They are now fracking throughout the Rocky Mountain states and in the Ohio-Pennsylvania region, and it’s expanding exponentially. Fracking causes earthquakes, and releases gas and unknown chemicals into the water. Like the Keystone Pipeline, these projects were planned years ago, mostly out of sight of the public, which didn’t understand the consequences. The gas and oil industry pays huge amounts of money for influence with legislators and for “good will” commercials on TV, to soften, mislead and distract the public. That’s the way things are done.

An educated electorate is the lifeblood of a democracy. To participate intelligently, voters must understand the principles of democracy and their own role in the political process, analyze claims made by candidates and elected officials, and ascertain the impact of governmental policies on themselves and their families. In other words, they must be able to think critically—and to think for themselves.
With the current heavy emphasis on standardized testing, our educational system has too often given critical thinking skills short shrift. This must change. Student achievement must be measured not only in language arts, math and subject matter content, but also in the development of age-appropriate analytical thinking skills.
In order to once again create a world class educational system, we must invest in quality teacher preparation, ensure that all public schools receive funding that allows for manageable class sizes, provide educational options that meet the needs of all young people, and demand that students meet rigorous standards. We must also ensure that public colleges and universities remain affordable for all qualified students.
We owe it to our children, facing an uncertain future both at home and abroad, to give them the tools that will allow them to become part of the solution, not part of the problem as they become voting adults. They need to be in classrooms with highly trained teachers whose input into educational decisions is respected and whose creativity in meeting their needs is valued. Education must be a priority as this nation allocates its resources.

I’ve been an anti-war and civil rights activist since college in 1965. I’ve been a leader of the anti-war movement in North San Diego County since 2002. I held a sign on the west lawn of Congress on Opening Day this year saying “No War On Iran”. I believe the so-called “need to attack Iran is as phony as the reasons used to attach Iraq in 2003.
Unfortunately, war is good for business, and the military-industrial complex has taken firm control of our economy and our government since Eisenhower issued his warning. Instead of a peace dividend after the collapse of our sole superpower rival in 1991, we got greater and greater military spending, and more and more U.S. military involvement around the globe, not less. This helps prove that military spending is driven more by geopolitics, the scramble for declining resources like oil and food, and the economic needs of giant contractors, than by a genuine need for defense.
While contractors and foreign “allies” are paid huge sums of money, our soldiers and their families make incredible sacrifices, but get short-changed in the support they deserve.
I will fight for our service members and their families, including keeping them at home. There’s plenty for them to do right here. Let’s start rebuilding America!
I’ll fight for transforming our economy from a war economy to a peace economy, from domination to cooperation, from empire to world community.
We need to end perpetual war without destroying the economy, but this will take some planning. I want to be an agent of change and transformation. We need to start planning for peace and a green, peacetime economy in which everyone has an opportunity to participate on a level playing field. Neither of the two major parties are talking about a peaceful, sustainable world and how to get there. I will raise this issue and join with others to create a Department of Peace.

This is one area in which I am and will continue to be critical of the democrats as well as Republicans. Democratic leadership has been complicit in most of the tragic wrongdoing that took place in the past 20 years and the vast transfer of wealth from the middle and working classes to the richest of the rich – the multi-million dollar bonus guys, the golden parachute guys, the ones who gambled with our money and lost, gambled against our economy and won. Primarily pushed by Republicans, the democrats enabled the decimation of the middle class and the impoverishment of the working class.
Bill Clinton pushed for and passed NAFTA in 1994, and the “giant sucking sound” predicted by Ross Perot began taking U.S. jobs to other countries. And after the banking industry spent $300 million and lobbied for 20 years, Clinton giddily signed the bill repealing the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. This paved the way for the sub-prime and mortgage bundling practices which led to the Bush recession.
For his part, Obama continued with the Bush-era officials and policies that brought us this disastrous recession, and he refused to prosecute those whose reckless gambling with our national wealth led to the disaster. Even Lehman Brothers haven’t been prosecuted for hiding $50 billion dollars and other blatantly illegal conduct. And in the House of Representatives, our former hero Barney Frank pulled the teeth from the Dodd-Frank bill, leaving big banks free to continue some of the worst practices of the disastrous Bush years. When push comes to shove, the Democratic leadership won’t push for real change because they are part of and beholden to the status quo and all it represents.