RESPONSE - Shetterly

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>QUESTION #3 - October 28, 1994:
>
>Today, Minnesotans feel government is less relevant to their lives and are
>having a hard time seeing how the benefits associated with government are
>worth the costs.  As the chief executive of Minnesota's state government,
>how will you demonstrate the importance of state government to the citizens
>of Minnesota.  In other words, where are the costs resulting in clear
>societal gains?  Suggested issues you might address include information
>infrastructure, public education, health care, etc.

Our government is still designed to function as though we were entering the
last century instead of the next. Ninety years ago, when communication
throughout the land took days instead of instants, centralization was the
most efficient form of government, and prohibition of selected books,
drugs, and sexual activities seemed to be the simplest way to deal with
social problems.

Our society changes more quickly than our government. People have realized
that in today's world, education is cheaper than legislation, and small
local governments can deal with our needs faster and better than large
distant ones. It's time for Minnesota to help instead of hinder this
process. Our representatives should take more pride in eliminating
out-dated regulations than in creating new ones, in offering new solutions
instead of more of the same failed ones.

America has over a million prisoners who are serving more than a year, and
several hundred thousand more who are serving less than a year. Our prison
population has doubled in the last ten years. The reason for the increase
is the war on drugs. Though our crime rate has been decreasing for several
years, our representatives fling tax dollars at prisons and police instead
of schools and teachers. They continue to cling to the idea that we can fix
society by forbidding things instead of regulating them, even though
alcohol prohibition taught us otherwise, even though use of currently
illegal drugs has grown enormously since those drugs were made illegal. We
cannot keep illegal drugs out of our federal prisons. How can we ever hope
to keep them out of our society? Our current prohibitions only guarantee
enormous profits for violent gangs who engage in illegal businesses. One
writer (Peter McWilliams, AIN'T NOBODY'S BUSINESS IF YOU DO) has estimated
that if we legalized, regulated, and taxed all consensual crime in America,
we could pay off our national debt in twenty years. Whether his
calculations are correct, a simple truth remains: we cannot afford to
continue our government's expensive and ineffective policies of
prohibition.

Americans spend as much money on illegal drugs as they do on alcohol or
tobacco. The state would save millions by no longer spending money to
enforce that prohibition, and the state would make millions by taxing that
business. We have the institutions in place to regulate all drug trade.
Drugs with no significant known medical dangers, such as hemp, could be
handled exactly like alcohol. More dangerous drugs could be available by
prescription; you and the person who provides your health care are the only
people who should decide what goes into your body.

Some of the savings from legalizing consensual activities should go into
universal health care. America currently has the finest health care in the
world for the rich, but the average citizens of most major industrialized
nations get better and cheaper care than the average Minnesotan. Canada,
Japan, and Germany do this through single-payer plans. We should follow
their example.

Some of the savings should go into public transportation. Instead of
widening our city highways, we should be adding light rail. Two tracks of
rail can carry as many people in an hour as 16 lanes of highway.

Some of the savings should go into public education. The school day and the
school year should be longer. We should offer universal day care.
Ultimately, we should offer free university education, just as we offer
free high school education. Advanced education is as important to today's
worker as a high school education was to the worker of the 1950s.

We need a small, creative government that pays more attention to the
long-term consequences of its policies than to the short-term cost. The
Grassroots Party believes we can have that government by electing people
who believe in increasing personal liberty and social responsibility, who
believe that political office is a service rather than a career, who
believe the nation advances by offering opportunity instead of restraint to
the people.


>Will you join us again for an electronic
>discussion if you are elected and will your office be "on-line"?

Yes to both. The duties of office might keep me from being on-line as much,
but as the ways we do business continue to evolve, elected officials or
their assistants might be on-line for much of the day.

Will Shetterly
Grassroots Party candidate for Governor
POBox 7253, Minneapolis, MN 55407

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