Melissa Brown Blaeuer
Melissa Brown Blaeuer, candidate for the New Jersey State Assembly in the 26th legislative district, submitted the following answers to SOMA Action’s questionnaire. She is running on the "Melissa and Pamela for the Assembly” slate with Pamela Fadden. SOMA Action endorses Blaeuer for the Assembly.
1. Fair Tax Policy
A. Do you support the so-called "millionaires' tax"?
Yes.
B. What role should the New Jersey Legislature take in reversing the limitation on the SALT deduction on Federal Income Tax?
The New Jersey Legislature can pass resolutions to take on the fight, assert its authority and affirm the right of a state to manage its own methods and formulas of state program funding that constitute stale and local taxes.
In New Jersey, stale income taxes fund essential state services, police, government and oversight. Local property taxes fund county and municipal essential services, police government and oversight, and the public school systems. Stale and local taxes are stale-specific and vary widely state-to-state according to local demographics, political theory and prosperity,
The federal government must respect the power of a state to administer its programs as primordial, It must not undermine these powers by treating a state, county or municipal tax as a common, nondeductible, arbitrary expense. The federal government likewise must not have the authority or power to apply arbitrary caps on these deductions.
Doing so bestows the federal government with the power to politically interfere in local rule where no federally protected rights are violated. This is a hammer that is being used to punish states that choose to invest more in public education and services. Such policy is alarming overreach, imposing power and influence that derives from out of state. It is propounded by special interests and legislators with orchestrated political agendas that continue to divide and fail our nation, deriving from stales whose representatives exhibit Draconian views of society, culture, public service and government. These special interests and representatives are abusing federal legislative weight to politically retaliate and defame other states and their sovereign authority
New Jersey has the best education in the nation, yet it is funded by local property taxes, with districts drawn primarily on the lines of municipalities. Other states center public education at the county level. This may minimize redundancies and leverage the power of shared services. To the extent possible, New Jersey owes it to the public to study such systems and consider these or other ways to further optimize costs of public services without compromising quality or the opportunity of students to realize their full potential with training and preparation for the 21st century careers, technology and entrepreneurship.
2. Economic Development Authority
A. The EDA has been beset by scandal, with companies allegedly receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks based on dubious claims of possible out-of-state relocation. As currently structured, the EDA's tax breaks do not require corporations to pay a fair wage to its employees, and or seek to maintain employees' current benefits or create new benefits. Do you support a thorough investigation by the Governor's Task Force of the EDA's past activities?
I support a thorough investigation by the Governor's Task Force into the EDA's past activities. Abusers of our public programs must be held accountable to send a message that public programs must not be tainted by disingenuous politics and duplicity, undervaluation of workers, and public grift. The demand for public safety net programs has escalated over the last several decades due to these kinds of gaming of our economic system and public-private partnerships.
New Jersey citizens need transparency, trust and authentic, compassionate leadership from their elected officials and public administration. Officials must not exploit their power and authority to benefit special business interests that back them. Businesses must not dupe our officials and agencies to funnel public resources into their private coffers.
Likewise, they must not betray our trust to privatize public resources and maximize profits by devaluing and under-serving their human talent, offshoring, and gaming the state by gaming and destabilizing our politics. These tactics offload the true costs of doing business health benefits, retirement savings, and a liveable wage onto the public largesse, the public safely net and affordable housing programs, while undercutting and alienating our workforce, civil society, justice, fairness, and opportunity.
We need to invest in the personal prosperity and fair valuation of our citizens and fairly compensate the talent and skills of our workforce. Likewise, we must ensure that healthcare, childcare, retirement savings and education are accessible, high quality and affordable so all stakeholders in our economy can realize their full creative, entrepreneurial and economic potential and contribution.
B. Do you support a policy that would require recipients of EDA subsidies to provide jobs with fair wages and maintain current benefits?
Yes.
C. Do you believe the EDA should be modified, and if so, in which ways? Do you support making receipt of benefits from EDA contingent on hiring or wage and benefit targets? If so, what should those targets look like?
EDA board members need to be vetted and approved by both legislative bodies, not just appointed by the Governor, Senate President and Assembly Speaker. The current EDA board appointment process is highly dependent on being connected and invested in the political process, and favors sponsorship by special interests.
More public-service minded, less partisan appointees with enduring vision, commitment and ability are needed. The process needs to be more open, rigorous, accountable and transparent, opened up to the public to identify potential appointees who will clearly state their ambitions for service and what programs of transformation, growth and prosperity they seek to implement.
The EDA operations and benefits process also needs more rigor, accountability and oversight with more mindful, careful administration, checks and balances.
Receipt of EDA benefits should be contingent on aligning with and forwarding an overarching economic master plan and vision of growth in New Jersey that is bottom-up economically empowering -- focused on hiring, wage and benefit targets to attain equity, and importantly, foster small business growth and training in entrepreneurship for the 21st century.
New Jersey must use its gravitas, power and prestige to partner with private business and foster real, enduring economic growth and stability through bottom-up empowerment of our citizens. We owe it to taxpayers to give them the best possible shot at a prosperous, fair and just life. To achieve this, they must be afforded the educational opportunity, workforce support including healthcare and childcare, transportation and quality of life, digital tools and know-how to realize their full potential, attain personal prosperity and build intergenerational wealth.
The pillars of my campaign with Pamela Fadden are the economy, education and infrastructure -- recognizing their interrelated and complementary levers of empowerment at the macro and micro levels. The EDA can be the logistical economic driver of small businesses and large, enabling personal and societal prosperity by focusing on accountability and empowerment, long-term planning, and bottom-up, proven strategies that build real value, quality, cultural enrichment and stability in society, politics, and our economy. This would serve our greatest good, benefit our local communities and economies, and build enduring state prestige and appeal.
3. Women's Reproductive Rights
A. Do you support a woman's right to choose in all circumstances?
Yes
B. Governor Murphy has restored funding to Planned Parenthood in New Jersey. What is your position on the restoration of these funds?
The state should administer social welfare programs fairly and impartially, using principles founded in equality and justice. New Jersey has equal rights embedded in its constitution.
The singling out of Planned Parenthood to deny them social services funding for the vital women's health and reproductive services they provide, that meet real world, on-the-ground needs that are often the direct result of women's exploitation and desperation, is pure political football that directly harms the most vulnerable members of our society. They do everything to sustain a culture of machismo, male privilege and aggression, and nothing to prevent the need for an abortion, such as preventing women's victimization and ensuring better treatment of women in our society and economy. That would be the true moral high ground.
No government has the authority to withhold such funding, because it imposes a separate set of rules that single out and deny women equal protection and empowerment under the law.
"Pro-life" today is a pure political football -- a political campaign identity intended to tear at religious and emotional heartstrings. Like "freedom' and "liberty," it is used to draw a false narrative of pious, rugged individualism that is only applicable to those it would empower. It also creates a deeply problematic, legally and politically empowered class of "unborn" persons' rights -- a personhood not recognized in the bible or the U.S. Constitution.
It is not possible to be genuinely "pro-life" while doing nothing to stop and everything to perpetuate the subordination, exploitation and objectification of half of humanity -- women.
It is not possible to be "pro-life" and not support the social safety net, fair and just liveable wages and benefits, affordable educational opportunity, and work force empowerment.
It is not possible to be "pro-life" and be pro-punishment, political and social aggression, soft and hard war, mass incarceration, racism, the death penalty, violence.
All these hypocrisies underlie the high-charge, high-emotion, irrational politics we currently suffer that is founded in divide-and-conquer tactics and disingenuous religious appropriation and dogma by cynical sponsors of state authoritarianism. It ultimately answers to no truly consistent, holistic spirituality.
C. Do you support state legislation that would create a legal right to abortion and contraception, even if Roe and Griswold are reversed by the Supreme Court?
Based on my response to part B of this question, Yes, I support state legislation to codify and embody equality and equal protection for women's reproductive autonomy including the legal right to an abortion and contraception.
Such legislation should likewise permanently prevent public health and social safety net funding from being withheld for these services.
D. What is your position on increasing access to quality contraceptive choices? Do you support economic support for contraception availability?
The full range of quality contraceptive choices should be available to women so they can make the most healthy and pragmatic choices according to their personal needs, and regardless of the health plan they subscribe to.
Where women are uninsured (a whole other issue that must be addressed to favor people before overly-empowered trickle-down entities), they must still have access to the full range of quality contraceptive choices — because optimal contraception is a fundamental tenet of personal and societal prosperity. It must be prioritized and administered according to the charitable framework in which they are accessing health care.
4. Protecting the Environment
A. What measures do you support to increase the use of renewable energy sources and reduce fossil fuel consumption in New Jersey?
Fossil fuel consumption is implicated in a broad range of environmental damage and open space loss, greenhouse gases, and widespread health toxicity in communities in proximity to its infrastructure. It negatively impacts quality of life and is entrenched politically in ways that compromise the idea of a truly free market economy where innovation is rewarded and adequately funded.
Where I live in West Milford, New Jersey, I opposed the expansion of the Tennessee Gas Pipeline project compressor station sited within a few hundred feel of the Monksville Reservoir that feeds the water supply of 3.5 million northern New Jersey residents. It also threatens the pristine quality of the area, protected since 2004 from development by the Highlands Act a community that desperately needs to develop its ecotourism infrastructure to stabilize growth and property values.
I support ongoing tax credits for homeowners, residential communities, and small and large business to optimize energy efficiency and public/private partnerships that invest for the long haul in green energy solutions — infrastructure including rooftop solar panels, community solar farms, cogeneration / electricity sharing and metering, electric cars and charging stations, wind power, removing lead from our plumbing infrastructure, and finding technologies that afford us stable sources of clean, potable water.
B. What measures do you support to move New Jersey towards the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030?
Please see my response above.
C. What measures would you support to reduce the amount of waste going into New Jersey landfills and incinerators?
Cutting waste involves examining the entire cradle-to-grave life cycle of most waste, especially waste streams that are chronic, toxic, becoming more expensive, wasteful, political, and societally intolerable.
Most of these chronic waste streams are directly attributable to an industrial process — the production of packaging, energy, transportation, plastics, manufacturing waste, and electronics.
The Natural Step for Business is a book authored in the early 2000s as part of a suite of forward-looking public-private measures that stem the production of waste by framing waste as a question of cradle-to-cradle re-use. It promotes reclamation of waste products in the environment by those manufacturers who produce and engineer them. The framework assigns accountability upon manufacturers to reclaim and reuse the materials they propagate into society and the environment. It compels them to rethink and re-engineer, to think in more holistic product life cycles, to design and produce products that are more biologically friendly, or do not require recycling because they do not linger
incompatibly in the environment.
Additionally, communities must continue to support robust recycling and community composting operations. Where these are not readily available, communities need to be incentivized to implement them and foster a statewide culture of re-use, reduction, and smaller, more local systems of production, consumption and organic disposal of less toxic food, packaging, toys, clothing and household goods.
The net result is lower waste and landfill tipping costs, more reclamation, and more disposable organic materials,
D. What measures would you support to protect and expand natural habitat in New Jersey?
Where possible, communities can add a small amount to their property taxes each year to invest in recreational and open space infrastructure. These pools of funds enable the municipality to leverage co-funding with grants from other sources to create more open space and reclaim brownfields from laying in waste and creating a blight on communities.
I am in my sixth year as a commissioner on the West Milford Economic Development Commission. The town is working to realize a master plan vision for our community that involves more downtown eco-trail and waterway enhancements to build a town center where local businesses can complement and benefit from the influx of foot traffic and outdoor, healthy enjoyment.
I do not see why any community cannot develop such a fund and create a long-term master plan to identify areas ripe for enhancement as community recreation resources to enhance the local economy, property values, and overall quality of life of the residents.
E. What measures do you support to promote environmental justice in New Jersey and protect overburdened communities?
Remediate polluted sites, eliminate lead pipes, invest in rehabilitation of brownfield sites to reclaim open space and restore the land for community recreation, invest in new and green technologies, retrofit idle factory spaces as indoor growing and whole foods manufacturing, and generally promote locally grown products and entrepreneurial knowledge.
5. Protecting Our Immigrant Communities
A. Do you support making drivers' licenses available to all New Jersey?
Yes
B. Do you support universal legal representation for immigrant detainees?
Yes
C. Do you support Assembly bill A5207, and its corresponding Senate bill S3361, which will keep ICE from: signing any new detention contracts in New Jersey; expanding any current detention contracts in New Jersey; or renewing any current detention contracts in New Jersey?
I support this bill because meaningful, constructive immigration policy is not the law of the land. Federal policy is highly politicized and intentionally polarized to embody irrational, cruel and inconsistent arguments, procedures and policies. Cruelty and indifference to suffering underlie the enforcement of our federal immigration laws, readily dispensing with our core principles of respect, equality, liberty and justice.
In a system of checks and balances, the state, county and local governments have an obligation to ensure that political extremism is not a lever of abuse or misuse of law enforcement and correctional facilities. The interests of the people of the states and their jurisdictions must be respected in a mutual balance of power from top to bottom and bottom to top.
Our policies regarding legal and illegal immigrants must be fair and respectful, but also respected. I support the impartial rule of reasonable law and just policy that weighs many factors in establishing rules of immigration. Our policies, like our nation, must be moderate, reasonable, unbiased, preventative and reformative. We must ever stand by our core principle that all people are created equal. We must use state power to administer fair and just governance and investment to support the true strength of our nation and the world people. We must work together to ensure everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential and be empowered in a stable society and make positive contributions to culture and society.
It is not normal for people to leave everything behind and start again with nothing — except 10 flee egregious and extenuating circumstances including gross political dysfunction, violence and poverty When they seek asylum in the US or any modem nation, there is an enlightened obligation to hear their case and give it careful consideration. There is an obligation to look hard at the crosscurrents and instability in the background and work diplomatically and multilaterally to apply cultural, political and economic pressures to address and curtail the direct causes of egregious circumstances, oppression and harm.
6. Public Education
A. The reopening of Public Schools closed as a result of the Covid crises has become quite controversial. What are your thoughts?
In-person instruction cannot be replaced as the most meaningful, immersive and effective form of education for academic, emotional, physical and social growth and expansion of prospects, aspirations and achievements.
I support all efforts to promote mask-wearing, vaccination, social distancing, and shielding, as well as a mix of in-person and remote learning. The latter, while not optimal, offers a new and future-leaning dimension of skill and experience to students that reflects the trends of the digital economy that are found to be workable and effective to afford employees greater quality of life and work-life balance.
B. As part of the CARES Act, school districts were provided Education Stabilization Funds to be used over the next three years to address the impact of COVID. How do you believe districts should allocate those funds?
There are a number of guidelines for spending embedded in the rules of implementation of the funding, including public communications, COVID remediation and policy development, safety and spread prevention, testing and vaccinations, accountability to the state education department, full stakeholder inclusion, and accommodation for the needs of underserved and handicapped students. It also discusses remediation of ventilation systems and expansion of facilities with temporary rental space to provide the needed social distancing that minimizes spread of the virus through the air. It does not support long-term capital investments or simple allocation of funds to rainy-day or educator bonuses.
I support these policies and feel that they should be implemented in such a way that immediate, near-term needs are addressed to maximize student learning as we continue to strategize our way through this widespread and enduring hardship. School systems have an obligation to serve the public in the most responsible, professional, and safe way, above political grandstanding and unfounded rhetoric. They must make personnel and student safety paramount in the near- and long-term.
Ultimately, all students impacted by covid-era learning deserve the best possible experiences, support and advisement 10 thrive, realize their full potential, and create a lifetime of personal stability. This will serve the highest societal goals to enable individuals to contribute to their own personal and family prosperity, as well as business and community prosperity throughout their lives.
C. What are your thoughts on bill A4454, which requires school districts to include instruction on diversity, equity, and inclusion in grades K-12 as of next school year?
Public schools must serve the inherently diverse and broad needs of the student population. Like public health and social services funding and administration, the gold standard for all public school policy, funding, instruction and course material must be impartial, equal and fair according to broadly agreed professional standards, societal and economic importance and temporal relevance, and intentionally seek to eliminate bias against the immutable personal, cultural and religious qualities of students or staff.
I am aware that some political arguments against this law claim that sexual instruction will begin in kindergarten and that this is inappropriate, degenerate, and unwholesome, and the responsibility of parents. Unfortunately, the schools must address these issues in order to fulfill their mission of serving the greater good and the public at large. These arguments are shortsighted and inconsistent with the spirit and word of the Constitution and founding principles of our nation of laws, order and personal boundaries, yet reappear time and again to oppose all forms of sex education, reproductive health access, and inclusive thinking in the name of "religious freedom" which is a poorly framed catch-all term to refer to the body of politically and economically oppressive historic precedent.
I do have some concerns that such inflammatory and unfounded claims may go unaddressed in the way this law is worded, yet I fully support the law's clear intention to make the public school curriculum and our society impartial and inclusive, and resilient to racist, sexist, and other political harm and divisive, polarizing social propaganda.
7. Access to Healthcare
A. What measures would you take in New Jersey to ensure that all residents have access to quality and affordable healthcare?
We need to raise the threshold for public access to Medicaid above the $1467 a month or about $9 per hour for an individual, and weigh in more factors of need and circumstance other than having dependents or disabilities. Consider that right now, to purchase adequate medical coverage on the open market without impossible deductibles easily runs upward of $1000 a month. On an income just north of $1467 a month, the math just doesn't add up when reasonable rent, food, job training, and other living expenses are added. A holistic picture should be taken and include a pathway to prosperity tailored to the individual including job and educational training, with quarterly or semi-annual review and certification.
Eliminating the gap between Medicaid eligibility and paying the cost of health insurance must be a priority. I support the current legislative initiatives to explore the creation of a public health insurance option in the New Jersey marketplace that would address this gap, and to introduce a powerful and stabilizing tool into the marketplace currently dominated by a profit-incentivized and service-minimized agenda. This would have the long-term effect of making private insurance policies more competitive, public-focused, high quality, reasonable, efficient and affordable, and to ensure all citizens at every income level have health insurance that does not bankrupt them and hinder them from realizing their full educational and career potential.
B. Do you support NJ's Marketplace through which people can buy insurance under the Affordable Care Act?
Yes, but we need to lead the country in establishing a public option and a full-coverage system that puts people before corporate profits and closes the gap between Medicaid and health insurance as discussed above.
C. What should New Jersey do to reduce the disparity in healthcare outcomes for people of color?
Implement a more fair and just playing field where all citizens have access to learning and experience that will make a profound difference in their overall health, well-being, quality of life, faith in the future and one another, personal prosperity and intergenerational wealth planning.
All aspects of life must be made livable, just, safe and equal, without special interest distortions of the market or public opinion. The economy, education and infrastructure are the pillars of my campaign with Pam Fadden, and these interleaving investment centers must serve from the bottom up to build strength, resilience and business know-how right out of high school for the 21st century's digital, ecological and political challenges. Trickle-down has always been a charade, a false picture of liberty, too reliant on the largesse and philanthropy of finance and business interests whose main objective is the fiduciary maximization of profit.
Life is holistic, and envisioning one's life is a big-picture skill that is influenced from the outside but comes from deep within. People can be encouraged to cultivate their unique talents, value their inherent worth, and embrace a healthy lifestyle. supported by personal and societal interconnections and networks,
A healthy person is created by healthy messages and the availability of healthy choices in society. Public administration of financial and institutional resources must serve one and all and not be corrupted into exploitation of one who is vulnerable for the benefit or another who is well-placed and powerful. The trickle-down never materializes and cannot be the foundation of our economics going forward as it exacerbates and perpetuates inequality, polarization, uncivility, cynicism... and the cold, cruel world.
8. Public Transportation
A. Do you support increased funding to ensure that NJ Transit operates more smoothly and without disruptions and that service is not cut off on a daily basis?
Yes, I support funding to ensure NJ Transit operates at optimal service levels and efficiency according to demand. Incompetence and negligence if and where they exist are not in service of the greater good or the public trust.
NJ Transit is the centerpiece of our public transportation infrastructure. It must be transitioned in a pragmatic manner to use clean, green sustainable energy and technology, under a master plan that maps the long-term goals for investment outcomes and operational targets based on solid research into economic, environmental and usage patterns.
9. Elections
A. New Jersey appears to be unique in having what is called "The Line" in Primaries. Do you agree with those who say that this advantages incumbents over challengers, "organization" backed candidates over independents that the resulting ballot design confuses voters? Would you favor doing away with "The Line"?
I agree that incumbents are clearly favored over challenges via The Line on primary ballots, and it is unlikely they will not receive the backing of the party whose main concern is that the candidate with the most name recognition and resources can win. Incumbents however mediocre have a tremendous advantage in this regard. This likewise gives outsized power and influence to the county parties and their leaders very early in a race.
The design of the ballot itself further influences who gets the votes since all primary ballots are partisan and where the party line is featured and challengers are visually sidelined or diminished in stature, voters will not recognize them, and may presume that the one on The Line has the most favor, support and financial resources to wage a campaign in the general election.
I further advocate that the back of the sample primary ballot that is mailed out to voters before the election carry on the back biographical, experience and platform information on the candidates, and include their web site, social media handles, publicly posted questionnaires such as Ballotopedia, and their voting record on important legislation if available, so voters know where to look to gain direct, unbiased input about the candidates and choose those who most closely match their views and concerns.
I also feel new candidates need better campaign how-to training and finance, and NJ ELEC guidance and system usability. The current system is better than before, but still flawed and hard to learn and use. Inexperience is a trial by fire that puts newcomers at a severe disadvantage. How to navigate the election system and run for office should be something taught in high school, based on a regular online learning curriculum open to all state residents that is run by the state board of elections.
Ballot redesign, equal presentation and weighting of all candidates in a partisan primary, and public campaign finance and training would all go far in stopping special weight, money, and influence in dominating the management, investment and politics of public power and resources.
B. Current law mandates the placement of ballot boxes at almost all Municipal Buildings and on College Campuses. A bill has been introduced in the legislature to amend this by giving wide discretion to County Elections Boards as to the placement of ballot boxes. Would you favor or oppose this Amendment?
The current placement framework is highly effective, fair and accessible, and does not need to be changed but this may be due to the oversight of a state-level administration that believes in full, fair, widespread and covid-safe participation in our elections. If a different spirit and strategy were behind such state-level control, the framework itself could be designed to do the very opposite, and curtail voting and enfranchisement.
Where control lies at the state level it can be benevolent or misanthropic, but consistent, predictable and streamlined. Where it is seated at the county level, more checks and balances could curtail abuse, but also spawn a confusing county-by-county patchwork of systems, strategies, and availability.
Since the current law was conceived to afford widespread consistency, convenience, flexibility, accountability and transparency, with the most security and trust, it should be left as-is to permanently ensure that voters have such access to such boxes, for the entire time duration that voting occurs.
C. Politics today are hyper-partisan. How can we reduce hyper-partisanship while pushing for a bold, progressive agenda?
We can shape the conversation by doing the opposite of what is being done today by the Republican Party dividing and conquering the electorate with messages stoking fear and insecurity of "us versus them," man against woman, race against race, citizen against foreigner, Christian against all others, and so on.
We do this by ensuring consistency and fidelity to our core values reminding one and all of the central tenets of all great faith and cultural traditions passed on through the ages — that life, liberty, equality, love, compassion, forgiveness and redemption are at the very heart of meaning, civilization, creativity, inspiration, purpose, philosophy, religion, culture and greatness.
Use of runaway propaganda, greed, corruption, defamation, domination, and brute force are what make the world cold, cruel, ironic and mad. At the heart of the progressive agenda is the inner imperative to speak truth to power, to overcome inequality, oppression, pollution, exploitation, indifference to suffering, corruption and grift by the unscrupulous, misanthropic, devious, cynical and indifferent.
We do this by training young people in school to understand our electoral process and the vital need for citizen participation and volunteerism in municipal and higher level government and the political process.
We do this by reforming democracy itself to disempower overweighted and undemocratic institutions, including measures such as ranked choice voting, abolishing the Electoral College, and re-weighting the U.S. Senate where states like California and Wyoming despite their dramatically disparate populations each have two extremely powerful representatives. Statehood itself thus becomes a lever of federal manipulation and corruption.
Money does not equal free speech. We must rein in political spend and help good candidates to develop name recognition and platform during the primaries through public campaign finance aligned with political party operations, campaign spending limits, rules of engagement that criminalize defamation and falsehoods, and ballot design where information about the candidates is available on the back as described above.