League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
	San Francisco County, CA November 2, 2010 Election
	Candidates Answer Questions on the Issues United States Representative; District 8

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of California and asked of all candidates for this office.     See below for questions on Economy, Federal Budget, Energy, Health Care, Campaign Financing Click on a name for candidate information.   See also more information about this contest. 1. In this time of high unemployment, what are the most important steps that should be taken to improve our nation’s economy? Answer from Gloria E. La Riva: Full employment - decent jobs for all! Instead of using our tax dollars to fuel the destructive Pentagon budget of more than a three quarters of a trillion dollars per year, the Gloria La Riva for Congress campaign calls for redirecting that money to create millions of union jobs for unemployed and underemployed working-class people. We also demand that the minimum wage be raised to $15 dollars an hour now. The highway, bridge, water, and other infrastructure in the United States are in serious need of repair; more than 155,000 U.S. bridges need to be restored or reconstructed. The creation of hundreds of thousands of permanent, full-time union jobs could restore the infrastructure. Mass transit and high-speed national train systems also are needed to greatly reduce dependence on cars and to reduce global warming. Jobs must be created to give millions of seniors in the United States the special, individual care they deserve. They could live healthier, more independent lives with the help of home care workers. Day care programs to fulfill the social and personal needs of seniors can help enrich their lives and the lives of their families. We call for the hiring of hundreds of thousands more teachers and tutors for students who need a boost in learning. Classroom sizes should be reduced and public education should be improved at all grade levels. National and community arts and cultural programs should be expanded. Providing health care for all people in the country also would provide many more jobs. We call for the creation of quality substance abuse programs with guaranteed disability or other income for people receiving treatment. Social service aftercare will contribute enormously to affected communities and society as a whole, reducing crime as well. The Gloria La Riva for Congress campaign believes that everyone is entitled to a job. A job should be a constitutional right. Youth training and hiring programs, along with apprenticeship programs and job placement for adults of all ages can fill the employment for the projects above and more. 2. How should federal budget priorities be changed, now and into the future? How will you balance the costs of military action overseas and national security with the costs of domestic needs? Answer from Gloria E. La Riva: We should fund the needs of people including housing, education, healthcare, social security, and jobs, instead of colonial wars and interventions abroad in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Pakistan, Yemen, and Palestine. We stand for the immediate removal of all U.S. and foreign forces from Iraq. All 750 U.S. bases around the world should be shut down immediately. Reparations should be paid to the Iraqi people for the vast destruction inflicted on their land by the launching of an unprovoked war of aggression. The human cost of the war has been horrific. More than a million Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion on March 19, 2003. Over a million more died due to U.S.-led sanctions from 1990-2003. Since 2003, more than 4.5 million Iraqis have become refugees and hundreds of thousands more have been wounded. Nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed in the war. More than 60,000 have been wounded, injured or suffered serious illness. The war has officially cost over a trillion dollars--a figure that is rising at a rate of $450 million per day, $5,000 per second. 3. What, if anything, should be done by the federal government to address our dependence on fossil fuels or spur the use of clean energy? Answer from Gloria E. La Riva: Today, so much carbon dioxide has already built up in the environment that it endangers islands, coastlines and one-fifth to two-thirds of the world's species due to rising global temperatures. Yet, no real solution is offered to the crisis our planet is facing. Market-based "cap and trade" programs, which involve selling emissions credits, are not the answer to holding the big polluters accountable for their destruction of the environments. Emissions credits systems allow polluters to buy the "right" to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gas. If the corporation does not use up the credit, it can sell the credit to someone else, allowing that company to emit more gases. Of course, nowhere in this system are the workers and oppressed of the world given a voice in determining how much pollution is acceptable, even though climate change will disproportionately affect working-class people and poor countries. There is support for the expansion of bio-fuels. These are fuels made out of biological sources such as corn, soy or palm oil. While these sources are all renewable, they are also food sources. Diverting food to fuel has resulted in rising food prices in many countries. In addition, the production and use of bio-fuels does not result in lower carbon emissions than the equivalent amount of fossil fuels. All these factors point to the fact that capitalism is the greatest threat to our environment. As long as we live in a society where profits are prioritized over people's needs, our planet will continue to be destroyed as corporations are allowed to continue polluting to cut costs and make more profit. The Gloria La Riva for Congress campaign believes that the only true and lasting solution for our environment is the socialist reorganization of the economy. Socialism is a system based on centralized, ecologically sustainable planning where the profit motive has been taken out of the picture. Eliminating the tyranny of private corporate profit as the dominant feature controlling economic development opens the door to true working-class democracy. That is what we mean by "people over profits." Rational social and economic planning, rather than production for the "market," is the only method for the implementation of scientifically supported solutions to global warming. 4. What, if any, changes should be made to current federal policies or programs that promote or provide health coverage for Americans? Answer from Gloria E. La Riva: Create a real national healthcare system! Shut down the insurance industry ! Don't let banks and insurance companies profit from our illnesses! Double the number of city hospitals! Health care is a fundamental human right. Yet 47 million people in the United States have no health care coverage whatsoever. Millions more have limited access to health care services. Health care is treated not as a right but as a commodity that exists for the profit of pharmaceutical and insurance company owners. Even though most Americans believe that health care is a human right, it remains a privilege of the wealthy and not the right of all. While giant pharmaceutical companies have agreed to pledge $80 billion in cost savings over the next 10 years to help pay for the Healthy Americans Act of 2009, it is with the understanding government will protect the drug makers' profits. The top five health insurance companies alone made $7.8 billion in profits in 2008--that number has been going up every year. That amount alone could pay for the health care needs of 1 million of poor and working people around the country. Shut down the insurance companies! Coverage is not the same as care. Basic, affordable coverage--as defined by the current system dominated by insurance and pharmaceutical companies--cannot fulfill the right to health care if a person lives in a medically underserved urban or rural area; has no money for premiums, co-pays, deductibles or transportation; or cannot afford to take time off work. A worker may also have coverage that only provides basic health services and does nothing for that person during a medical crisis or when additional care is needed. The current debate treats health care as a commodity whose sale must be reformed to protect U.S. business and financial interests while addressing to some extent the crisis of the uninsured. This strips health care of its place among human rights. 5. What, if any, changes should be made to federal rules on campaign financing or disclosure of political expenditures? Answer from Gloria E. La Riva: All Corporate financing should be eliminated from political campaigns. The government should not be influenced by private business, nor should its policies allow for the plundering of the working class in order to sustain corporate welfare. Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' responses are not edited or corrected by the League. No candidate may refer to another candidate in the response. The order of the candidates is random and changes daily. Candidates who did not respond are not listed on this page.