POWER
TO THE
PEOPLE

Ohio boasts some of the best hospital systems in the world, yet we consistently rank in the bottom ten states for overall health value and infant mortality. Black infant mortality is a staggering three times higher than white infant mortality. The data proves that our system is fundamentally failing working families. We do not have a healthcare system. We have a wealth extraction system designed to squeeze patients when they are most vulnerable.

From a moral standpoint, we cannot allow healthcare executives to siphon billions in profits for their stockholders off the 15 to 20 percent margins permitted by the Affordable Care Act. Insurance companies game these margins by artificially inflating the overall cost of care. Their entire business model is predicated on denying claims, delaying necessary treatments, and forcing sick people into endless bureaucratic nightmares. GoFundMe has effectively become the leading healthcare provider for the working class, and that is an absolute disgrace.

Tying healthcare to employment is a chain around the neck of the American worker. It forces people to stay in exploitative jobs just to keep their families insured. It stifles innovation because working-class people cannot risk starting a small business if it means losing their medical safety net.

We need a single-payer system that works for patients, not corporate profits. Under our plan, nobody earning under 200,000 dollars a year will see a single cent in tax increases. We will pay for this by removing the parasitic middleman of private insurance. Healthcare is a human right, and it is time we enforce it.

In Ohio, there simply aren't enough slots for our babies. We are facing massive childcare dead zones across the state, especially throughout our rural and working-class urban communities. This leaves parents entirely stranded without safe options. We have built an economy that demands both parents work full-time, but refuses to provide the infrastructure required to actually raise a family.

Working families are also trapped by the "childcare cliff." If a parent earns a slight raise at work, they can immediately lose their state childcare subsidies. This forces families backward into poverty just for trying to get ahead. The math is impossible. Many mothers are forced to abandon their careers entirely because their paycheck barely covers the cost of daycare.

This system is broken on both ends. Families cannot afford the astronomical costs, while the very workers caring for our next generation face poverty wages and extreme turnover rates. Early childhood educators are not babysitters. They are professionals shaping the neural pathways of our children during their most critical developmental years. They deserve pensions, healthcare, and profound respect.

Universal, state-funded childcare will fix this broken market. It will guarantee fair pay for childcare workers to stabilize the industry and ensure no parent is forced to choose between a career and their child's safety.

House Bill 6 was not just a bribery scandal. It was a hostile corporate takeover of our state government. While the primary perpetrators got caught and went to prison, the underlying legislative loopholes that allowed the corruption to happen remain wide open. The political establishment thrives on this dark money system and actively refuses to fix it because it keeps them in power.

Ohio already has zero-dollar limits on direct corporate campaign contributions. Politicians love to point to this as proof of clean elections. However, untraceable 501(c)(4) groups and shadow LLCs operate like Russian nesting dolls. They remain highly prevalent and continue to legally launder unlimited amounts of money to buy our elections and dictate our utility rates.

We must completely banish these shadow entities. If a corporation or billionaire wants to influence our laws, they must do so in the blinding light of day. But transparency alone is not enough to break the oligarchy.

We must force politicians to fund their campaigns through working-class, grassroots support, not dark money PACs. By washing out corporate cash, we ensure our representatives are knocking on doors in our neighborhoods to listen to our needs, instead of kissing the rings of utility executives in country clubs.

The state of Ohio launched predatory 20-year contracts that force taxpayers to pay private prison corporations whether the prison beds are full or empty. These guaranteed occupancy rates create a perverse lockup quota. The only way the state avoids massive financial penalties on these terrible deals is by ensuring we criminalize and incarcerate as many of our own citizens as possible.

These private facilities claim to be cheaper for the state budget. In reality, they actively cherry-pick only the most profitable, low-risk, non-violent offenders to hold. They leave the public system burdened with providing for the most expensive and dangerous inmates.

The exploitation doesn't stop at the state level. These corporations extort the families of the incarcerated, charging exorbitant, monopolistic rates for simple phone calls and basic commissary goods. They are bleeding poor families dry just to keep them connected to their loved ones.

Private corporations profit massively off people who have no reason to be locked in a cage in the first place. This must end. True public safety is fully funded schools, mental health crisis response teams, and addiction treatment centers. It is not building corporate warehouses for human misery.

Our tax dollars must serve our local communities, not underwrite human rights violations or endless war. Right now, the retirement savings of our teachers and public workers are being leveraged without their consent. State pension funds are deeply invested in weapons manufacturers and entities complicit in the occupation and apartheid conditions faced by the Palestinian people.

We cannot be complicit in genocide or the destabilization of the globe through reckless military aggression. The struggles we face at home are deeply connected to the struggles abroad. The same militarized police tactics used against our communities are traded and trained with the forces enforcing occupation overseas.

Furthermore, the unconstitutional anti-BDS laws currently on the books in Ohio are a terrifying overreach of government power. The state using its contracting power to force a political loyalty oath to a foreign nation is a direct assault on our First Amendment rights. The state has absolutely no authority to dictate our political speech or ban peaceful boycotts.

We must protect our right to free speech. We demand immediate divestment from the military-industrial complex to ensure that the wealth generated by working people stays right here to build schools, fix infrastructure, and fund local economies.

When Ohio voters passed Issue 2, the tax revenue from legalized marijuana was specifically designed with justice in mind. The funds were meant to secure local jobs and repair the communities explicitly disenfranchised and targeted by the War on Drugs. Instead, the General Assembly immediately hijacked those funds, diverting the money to law enforcement and prison systems. It is an appalling betrayal of the voters.

The hypocrisy of the state is glaring. The very politicians who spent decades locking up Black and brown Ohioans for marijuana are now manipulating the legal market to ensure only their wealthy, corporate donors profit from it.

At the same time, the Attorney General is now suing nine massive Multi-State Operators for collusion and creating an illegal cartel. Through exorbitant licensing fees and backdoor deals, these corporate giants made it mathematically impossible for small, working-class business owners to enter the space.

With marijuana moving toward federal rescheduling, it is the perfect time to break up these corporate monopolies. We must guarantee that small, locally-owned dispensaries and craft growers can actually enter and thrive. We need a market where the wealth generated in a zip code actually stays in that zip code.

Corporations deliberately engineer their products to break down and actively prevent everyday people and independent shops from fixing them. This monopolistic behavior forces working-class people into predatory, endless upgrade cycles. It drives up consumer costs and creates massive amounts of unnecessary electronic waste that is currently poisoning our soil and water.

While past attempts at Right to Repair legislation were introduced in Ohio, the establishment politicians gutted the bills. They systematically excluded agricultural equipment after massive, dark-money lobbying campaigns by corporations like John Deere.

A farmer in rural Ohio should not have to wait three days and pay thousands of dollars for an authorized technician to reset a digital software lock on a tractor while their crops rot in the field. These corporations want total control over the equipment that feeds us, turning ownership into an endless corporate subscription.

This cannot be the case. A true Right to Repair law must be universal. It must cover everything from everyday smartphones and hospital ventilators to heavy agricultural equipment. We must break corporate control over the tools we rely on to survive.

Artificial Intelligence hyper-scale data centers are demanding unprecedented amounts of electricity and water. They are pushing our public utilities to the absolute breaking point and keeping dirty coal plants online, destroying our local green energy goals. Yet, working-class taxpayers are the ones being asked to foot the bill for their grid expansions.

These multi-trillion-dollar corporations must be forced to strictly adhere to environmental regulations. Their massive resource consumption directly threatens our local water tables and air quality, leaving our communities to deal with the fallout while tech executives cash out.

The threat extends directly to the working class. Unregulated AI is being deployed as a weapon to automate away jobs, suppress wages, and subject workers to invasive algorithmic surveillance. The immense wealth generated by this technological efficiency cannot be hoarded by a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires building doomsday bunkers.

If tech giants want to build and operate their massive data centers in our state, they must pull from local unions to do it. By mandating union labor, we guarantee the work and the wealth stay local. More importantly, it gives the working class actual recourse and undeniable bargaining power against these multi-trillion-dollar monopolies.