Pat Ritchie, Democrat, Candidate for PA House, District 63
Inflation is less of an issue than most people are led to believe. The higher prices people are experiencing every day are almost entirely due to corporate greed. We must pass windfall profits tax policies to ease price pain for normal, everyday consumers.
Rent control works in 100% of the areas it has been implemented in, from NYC to Sacramento. I know Clarion and Kittanning aren't very big cities. Why should anyone here be allowed to charge $1,500 per month for a 1-bed, 1-bath apartment? Those are like, big city, easy-transit, metropolitan prices. We need to legislatively enforce both rent control (i.e. preventing the owning class from arbitrarily raising rents without any improvements whatsoever) and some kind of "maximum property ownership" act. I don't know what that number should be; we can debate that on the floor of the House; but what I do know is that no one should own multiple houses until there are no unwillfully homeless people in our districts.
32 of the world's 33 developed countries have been able to make national, single-payer (i.e. FREE to people having what is likely the worst day of their lives) healthcare work. I wonder why we haven't. Jokes aside, we need to abolish the very *concept* of private insurance companies, as they do not have a product; they simply siphon money away from people who need care. It is my goal that every PA citizen will have access to safe, free, and quality healthcare.
We're a nation of immigrants. We should be welcoming people who want a better life, not putting them in cages (like Republicans have been doing for decades now).
To quote the great Governor Tim Walz, "mind your own d*** business". The decision to abort a pregnancy is often one of, if not the single hardest decision for a person with a uterus to make in their life. It is not the job of a legislator to interfere with that extremely difficult and painful decision in ANY WAY.
No one needs to privately own an assault rifle. Period. (Note how my opponent proudly boasts about his NRA endorsement.) No one needs to be able to kill your children in a school without notice or consequence. We must fix this. Gun control legislation has worked in other countries, and it can work here too.
I firmly believe we need to take drastic measures to curb the effects of climate change that we are already seeing every day. It is NOT supposed to be 70 degrees in OCTOBER in a place like Clarion. "It's the coldest summer of the rest of our lives." - Ian Hunt
Live and let live. As an LGBT person myself (I am trans), I would not want a legislator telling me who I'm allowed to have in my bedroom or what healthcare I am allowed to receive. As a note, it's extremely weird that Republicans care what genitals someone has. Says a lot more about them than it does us, in my opinion.
Why lower what should be free? May I direct you to the UN Declaration on International Human RIghts, Article 26: "Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit." The government has the funding and resources necessary to make most education free for all students in our state, and is choosing not to do so.
Please feel free to contact me if you need more information. patforpa63@gmail.com. If you'd like to learn more about me, visit patforpa.com.