I should volunteer for this guy’s campaign or something.<\/p>\n
from http:\/\/www.deanforamerica.com\/index.cfm<\/p>\n
Howard Dean, (Democrat) Former Governor of Vermont Dean is a physician who previously shared a medical practice with his wife, Dr. Judith Steinberg. He’s the father of two nearly grown children. Dean was born into a wealthy New York family in 1948. The oldest of four brothers and the son of a wealthy, conservative stockbroker, he grew up in the Hamptons and the Upper-East side where he attended elite private schools. (His grandmother was a bridesmaid to President Bush’s grandmother). In 1967, he entered Yale University. While at Yale, Dean discovered that he had an innate sympathy for the civil rights movement and the plight of the poor. He steered clear of radical protests and student demonstrations, later saying that he instinctively distrusted ideologues, but he also came to oppose the escalating Vietnam War.<\/p>\n
Taxes & Spending: “I am a true fiscal conservative though,” said Dean. “I cut taxes in Vermont, taking the highest municipal income tax (in New England), and making it the lowest.” “The biggest problem with our economy right now is that Republicans don\u2019t know how to manage money,” started Dean, later saying the opposing party has the habit of borrowing, spending, borrowing, spending. “Social justice can only be achieved through a balanced budget”, Dean said. He thinks he will appeal to fiscal conservatives, because he is the only Democrat in the field who has balanced a budget: From his campaign site: “To help finance this effort (Universal Health Care) , we must repeal the President’s tax cuts — which have thrown America back into the huge deficits of the 1980s — and balance the federal budget. We cannot build crucial social programs without a solid financial foundation.”<\/p>\n
Social Services Funding: Dean “Supports some faith-based initiatives because he believes that charities do very good work. However, he does not support giving tax money to organizations that do not abide by federal anti-discrimination laws. He stated that if elected, he would try and ensure that organizations that discriminate would not receive federal funding.”<\/p>\n
Welfare: Promotes “welfare reform” “…we resist attempts by President Bush to dictate to the states how we run our … welfare programs…” He condemned the Bush administration’s welfare reform proposal, or more formally the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) reauthorization bill, as “a step backwards for everyone who believes in welfare reform.” “We are particularly concerned about the extraordinary rigidity of the 40-hour work week [requirement],” Vermont was the first state in the nation to reform welfare on a statewide basis. Then-Governor Dean’s initiative requires work and limits the amount of time a welfare recipient can receive assistance, but supports children and their working parents with health care, child care, and job training.<\/p>\n
Security & Terrorism: “I would repeal that part and any other part of the PATRIOT Act that violates our Constitution.”<\/p>\n
Foreign Affairs: Dean said that he’s the only candidate with previous experience in government who has opposed the war with Iraq from the start. “I have serious concerns about the increasingly unilateralist approach to foreign policy we have seen from the current Administration, particularly in the President’s posture toward Iraq.” The Washington Post reported: Former Vermont governor Howard Dean has taken a consistently hard line against Bush’s policy, telling Democratic audiences around the country that, unlike his rivals for the nomination, he would have opposed the congressional resolution authorizing Bush to go to war. But his vociferous opposition comes with a caveat. “If the evidence is there [that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction],” Dean said yesterday, “we would go to the Security Council, and if they refused to act, we would have to do so in 60 days.” Dean opined that by enunciating pre-emption as a doctrine, Bush had inadvertently encouraged the Chinese to claim a “clear and present danger” in Taiwan.<\/p>\n
Education: Warned against “harebrained” ideas like school vouchers. Dean criticized the president’s education plan, called the “no child left behind” act, by calling it the “no school board left standing” act. “Everybody running for president except for me and the Republicans got together on this wonderful bipartisan bill that is the second largest unfunded mandate in the history of education,” he said.<\/p>\n
Healthcare: From his campaing site: “As a doctor, I understand the fear facing families without health insurance. As a Governor, I am proud that virtually every child under 18 and more than 90 percent of adults in Vermont are eligible for health coverage. But as a country, the United States can do better on this front.” Said his plan of providing universal health insurance through expanding Medicaid and added it could be paid for with half of the president’s tax cut. The country needs health insurance, says the doctor, yet Congress is arguing about the wrong thing, the patients’ bill of rights, which would not make the slightest difference because “it would not bring health insurance to a single American.”<\/p>\n
Social Security: Dean criticized the idea of allowing private individuals to invest their Social Security savings in the stock market. “Allowing individuals to invest money in the stock market is foolish,” he said. “Social Security is not a retirement program; it is a safety net for people so they don’t starve.”<\/p>\n
Illicit Drugs: We need to treat drugs as a public health problem.. That’s difficult to do. We actually don’t have a lot of drug users in our jails; the ones we have in there are drug users who are also dealers. Jails not a particularly effective way to get people to stop using drugs; treatment is.<\/p>\n
Ex-felons’ Voting Rights: Information regarding his position on this issue has not been found at this time.<\/p>\n
Gun Policy: Dean received a “A” grade from the NRA<\/p>\n
Abortion Policy: Dean explained that in his opinion, the government should have no say in what a woman should choose. “It\u2019s none of the government\u2019s business.”<\/p>\n
Environmental Policy: Dean received was not rated by the League of Conservation Voters. He is courting the environmental vote. He was the keynote speaker at the California League of Conservation Voters lunch. “As President, I would bring my commitment to our environment to the White House.”<\/p>\n
Minority Issues: In her Profile in Courage Essay Contest Prize Winning Essay, Stephanie Dziczek of Holmes High School, Covington, Kentucky, wrote “Minority champions like Dean, with the courage to hold principle and respect for all people above common opinion, are the reasons that today women can vote, African Americans are legally protected from discrimination, and homosexuals can engage in civil unions.” Increased the number minorities in judgeships and other prominent positions.<\/p>\n
Civil Liberties: Dean has not been scored by The American Civil Liberties Union. Dean, who is running on his civil rights record as governor, is well-known for signing Vermont’s law legalizing gay civil unions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I should volunteer for this guy’s campaign or something.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cheerfulchaotic.crazycrew.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}