Paula Bradshaw's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
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Paula Bradshaw has provided voters with clear stances on key issues by responding to the 2016 Political Courage Test.
Illinois Congressional Election 2016 Political Courage Test
| Pro-choice | Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation? | ||
| I support pro-choice, when it comes to keeping abortion legal, safe and affordable. Pro-life is not the opposite of pro-choice. Many people who call themselves "pro-life" only support fetuses until the day they are born. I oppose war (except in legitimate self-defense) and support paid maternity leave, a living wage, quality day care, a healthy environment and many more positions that support life. | |||
| Yes | In order to balance the budget, do you support reducing defense spending? | ||
| Yes | In order to balance the budget, do you support an income tax increase on any tax bracket? | ||
| I call for cutting the military budget in half, and withdrawing from the bases we inhabit in other people's countries around the world. We can support a strong defensive military without supporting war, just as we can support a well-equipped, well-trained fire department without supporting arson. I support a more progressive income tax, a corporate tax on all profits made in this country, whether from foreign or domestic firms, a speculation sales tax on derivatives and other speculative financial instruments, and a tax on primary resource extraction, but not on recycled resources. | |||
| Yes | Do you support the regulation of indirect campaign contributions from corporations and unions? | ||
| I support instant runoff voting, in order to stop the stranglehold the two corporate parties have upon the American voting public. I support free airtime for all qualified candidates, and an end to corporate personhood. Corporations are not people and money is not speech. | |||
| No | Do you support capital punishment for certain crimes? | ||
| Yes | Do you support alternatives to incarceration for certain non-violent offenders such as mandatory counseling or substance abuse treatment? | ||
| No | Do you support mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders? | ||
| Americans used to be taught that it is better for ten guilty men to go free, then have one innocent man punished. Now we have a Supreme Court ruling that innocence is irrelevant if you've had a trial. We have a President who claims that trials are unnecessary, and Tuesday morning meetings are enough to order people assassinated. We've had numerous people on death row proved to be innocent. We've gone from 500,000 people in prison in 1980 to over 2,000,000 today, and we have private prisons lobbying for more, while state legislatures guarantee them more. Enough! | |||
| Yes | Do you support federal spending as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| No | Do you support lowering taxes as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| No | Do you support providing tax incentives to businesses for the purpose of job creation? | ||
| 34 years of the Reagan and Bush/Obama tax cuts have proven that cutting taxes for the wealthy does not inspire them to create jobs for the rest of us. They have used their increased income to live in luxury, move factories overseas, speculate in financial markets, buy media outlets which propagate their views, and they buy legislators who give them even more American resources and wealth. Only the federal government can step in and spend for the good of the people and the environment. We need sustainable transportation, renewable energy, housing refurbishing, health care, education, social services and environmental restoration. | |||
| No | Do you generally support requiring states to adopt federal education standards? | ||
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| In principle, yes but the current ones, no. I think that having federal education standards are a good thing, but, as in so many other things that sound good, they are being misused to sell tests. There should be standards that local schools can voluntarily adapt. | |||
| No | Do you support building the Keystone XL pipeline? | ||
| Yes | Do you support government funding for the development of renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, thermal)? | ||
| Yes | Do you support increased regulations on the hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") industry? | ||
| I support a ban on fracking. As a Green, I am a supporter of renewable energy. This country has been talking about getting off fossil fuels for four decades, and, under Obama, instead has embarked on an unsustainable orgy of extreme extraction, leading to massive death and destruction, in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Appalachians, as well as other spills and pollution around the country. There are communities with no potable water wherever fracking is going on. This must stop. | |||
| Yes | Do you believe that human activity is contributing to climate change? | ||
| Yes | Do you support the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions? | ||
| We must immediately embark on a program of changing to clean, renewable energy, coupled with housing refurbishing and energy conservation. We need public, sustainable transportation, with an emphasis on rail. I support the fee and dividend proposal of James Hansen, in which fossil fuels are taxed, and the proceeds distributed to the public evenly. Those who use more will pay more, and those who use less will profit. Americans were put to work in the New Deal planting trees, and 4 billion were planted. A Green New Deal would plant trees, restore wetlands and use farming methods which sequester carbon. | |||
| No | Do you generally support gun-control legislation? | ||
| The so-called "gun control" bills are not about controlling guns, but about expanding databases and background checks on buyers. Meanwhile, the U.S. is the biggest gun and weapons dealer on the planet. This is hypocritical. This country glorifies violence, attacks other countries regularly, allows police to kill citizens with impunity, uses violence as entertainment on TV, movies and video games, and posits killing people in other countries to resolve disagreements. Why be surprised by gun violence at home? We can outlaw the manufacture of assault weapons, instead of using a data base to see who buys them. | |||
| Yes | Do you support repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare")? | ||
| The massive giveaway to health insurance companies that is the ACA is an affront to American citizens. Never before have we been forced, en masse, to buy a private, for profit product. Instead of the 700 page bill we could have simply removed the age 65 restriction on Medicare, and allowed every citizen to have Medicare. Expand the scope of community clinics and train more providers. We need health education for everyone, so that people don't go to their doctors for antibiotics when they have a virus. Changing our transportation and farming policies will also help the health of Americans. | |||
| No | Do you support requiring immigrants who are unlawfully present to return to their country of origin before they are eligible for citizenship? | ||
| Immigrants who are already part of our society should not have to go back to their country of origin, especially if they have US spouses or children. We have allowed corporations to break our immigration laws, and now we have to deal with it, since real people are involved. There should be one standard of citizenship, not two, and all of our labor laws should be enforced. We also need to repeal NAFTA and other "free trade" agreements that have damaged the economies of Mexico and Central America. | |||
| No | Do you support increased American intervention in Iraq and Syria beyond air support? | ||
| No | Should the U.S use military force in order to prevent governments hostile to the United States from possessing a nuclear weapon? | ||
| I do not support any American intervention in Iraq and Syria, including ''air support." The Syrians and Iraqis would do a better job of fighting the terrorists without the USAF bombing their troops and accidentally dropping supplies to the terrorists or allied groups that then supply the terrorists. | |||
| No | Do you support allowing individuals to divert a portion of their Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts? | ||
| Anyone who lived through the 2008 crash, in which 401K accounts were decimated, and Wall Street turned to the federal government for a bailout, should no longer believe the propaganda that their money is safer with Wall Street. Raise the cap on Social Security taxes, to include all income, not just the first $117,000. We should go back to the "pay as you go" system that we had for the first 50 years of Social Security, instead of paying into the "trust fund" which has been used as a slush fund for the last 30 years since Reagan instituted it. | |||
SpendingIndicate what federal spending levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one number per category; you can use a number more than once.TaxesIndicate what federal tax levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one number per category; you can use a number more than once.
| Slightly Increase | a) Agriculture | ||
| Greatly Increase | b) Arts | ||
| Greatly Decrease | c) Defense | ||
| Slightly Increase | d) Education | ||
| Greatly Increase | e) Environment | ||
| Eliminate | f) Homeland Security | ||
| Greatly Decrease | g) International aid | ||
| Maintain Status | h) Medical Research | ||
| Maintain Status | i) Scientific Research | ||
| Slightly Decrease | j) Space exploration | ||
| Maintain Status | k) United Nations | ||
| Greatly Increase | l) Welfare | ||
| Greatly Increase | a) Capital gains taxes | ||
| Greatly Increase | b) Corporate taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | c) Small business taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | d) Excise taxes (alcohol) | ||
| Maintain Status | e) Excise taxes (cigarettes) | ||
| Greatly Increase | f) Excise taxes (transportation fuel) | ||
| Greatly Decrease | g) Income taxes (low-income families) | ||
| Slightly Decrease | h) Income taxes (middle-income families) | ||
| Greatly Increase | i) Income taxes (high-income families) | ||
| Greatly Increase | j) Inheritance taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | k) Payroll taxes | ||
| I advocate rolling back the massive assault on our civil liberties that is "Homeland Security". Real security comes from protecting our environment, growing healthy food, keeping our water clean, providing health and education and making sure that every person has the basics of a comfortable life, including housing. I oppose the drone assassination program. So-called "international aid" is usually selling weapons, dumping food or selling unneeded infrastructure products to other countries. I support agricultural policies which encourage soil conservation, organic farming and helping young people enter the profession, in which the average farmer is 70. The TPP must be opposed. | |||
| As noted above, I would increase payroll taxes by lifting the income cap, so that all income is taxed and not just working people's income. I wouldn't raise the percentage, just the cap. I would add a financial speculation tax, which would bring in billions of dollars. If we have "sin taxes" on cigarettes and alcohol, we should have a sin tax on speculation. Cutting the military budget, the Homeland Security budget, raising taxes on the wealthy, and taxing financial speculation would raise enough money to pay for projects that would help Americans and restore our natural environment to health. | |||
| Immediate priority for the next Congress is to stop the TPP and TTIP. Roll back the assault on civil liberties by voting to repeal the Patriot Act, the NDAA and the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. I would push for a Green New Deal, in order to transform our dependence on oil, which would also decrease the need for the bloated military. Nationalize the Federal Reserve, to put our money supply into public control, instead of the current system, in which all money circulating is borrowed into existence. Spend money into the market by paying workers to do socially useful work. |
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