House · OH-14 · Challenger

Carl Setzer

DOH

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General: Nov 3, 2026 · 99d

Candidate Biography

About Carl Setzer

Carl Setzer (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Ohio's 14th Congressional District. He lost in the Democratic primary on May 5, 2026.

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[{"question": "Ballotpedia survey responses", "answer_html": "See also: <a href=\"/Ballotpedia%27s_Candidate_Connection\">Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection</a>\n<div class=\"row\"><div class=\"col-xs-10 col-md-6 col-xs-offset-1 col-md-offset-3\"><a href=\"https://ballotpedia.org/Ballotpedia%27s_Candidate_Connection\"><img align=\"middle\" alt=\"Candidate Connection\" src=\"https://cdn.ballotpedia.org/images/8/88/Candidate_Connection_Logo.png\" width=\"90%\"/></a></div></div>\nCarl Setzer completed <a href=\"/Ballotpedia%27s_Candidate_Connection\">Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection</a> survey in 2026. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Setzer's responses.\nExpand all | Collapse all\n<div aria-multiselectable=\"true\" class=\"panel-group\" id=\"accordion\" role=\"tablist\"><div class=\"panel panel-default\"><div class=\"panel-heading\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" href=\"#collapse-bio-403704-2026-02-05\" id=\"heading-bio-403704-2026-02-05\" role=\"tab\"><a aria-controls=\"collapse-bio-403704-2026-02-05\" aria-expanded=\"false\" class=\"collapsed\" data-parent=\"#accordion\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" href=\"#collapse-bio-403704-2026-02-05\" role=\"button\">\t\t\t\tWho are you? Tell us about yourself.\t\t\t</a></div><div aria-labelledby=\"heading-bio-403704-2026-02-05\" class=\"panel-collapse collapse\" id=\"collapse-bio-403704-2026-02-05\" role=\"tabpanel\"><div class=\"panel-body\" style=\"max-height: 500px; overflow-y: scroll;\"><div class=\"answers-container\">\t\t\t\tMy name is Carl Setzer, and I was born and raised in Northeast Ohio. My father was a tool and die maker, and my mother was a social worker. I attended university in Alabama and left the United States in 2004 to teach in China, where I witnessed economic growth I had previously only read about in accounts of America’s Gilded Age.\r\nI earned a master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007. From 2007 to 2010, I worked in information security, observing the early growth of security consulting along with the emergence of fintech and artificial intelligence. In 2010, I left that industry to found what became one of China’s leading craft beer brands prior to COVID-19, gaining experience in entrepreneurship, workforce management, and international business.\r\nThe COVID-19 pandemic changed my family’s life and business. My wife and I lost control of our brewery due to private equity pressures. In 2020, I was detained after returning to China with COVID-19 and spent nearly two months in government quarantine facilities, strengthening my appreciation for civil liberties and individual rights.\r\n\nMy wife became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2024. Living abroad gave me insight into immigration, opportunity, and the importance of preserving the institutions that allow people to build better futures.\t\t\t</div></div></div></div><div class=\"panel panel-default\"><div class=\"panel-heading\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" href=\"#collapse-key-message-403704-2026-02-05\" id=\"heading-key-message-403704-2026-02-05\" role=\"tab\"><a aria-controls=\"collapse-key-message-403704-2026-02-05\" aria-expanded=\"false\" class=\"collapsed\" data-parent=\"#accordion\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" href=\"#collapse-key-message-403704-2026-02-05\" role=\"button\">\t\t\t\tPlease list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?\t\t\t</a></div><div aria-labelledby=\"heading-key-message-403704-2026-02-05\" class=\"panel-collapse collapse\" id=\"collapse-key-message-403704-2026-02-05\" role=\"tabpanel\"><div class=\"panel-body\" style=\"max-height: 500px; overflow-y: scroll;\"><div class=\"answers-container\"><ul><li>My main healthcare policy is expanding Medicare for All W-2 employees. \r\nThe working class deserves to have the stability and security that we already provide to Americans over the age of 65 and to our veterans. Expanding Medicare to include all W-2’d employees will cut the employer contributions and create growth capital and reinvestment dollars for small, midsized and large companies across America, while cutting the costs of employee contributions and saving American working families up to $10,000 dollars a year. \r\n\nIt will also expand the Medicare user base by over 100,000,000 Americans driving down costs for retired Americans and increasing affordability for everyone.</li><li>Americans are overdue for a Consumer Bill of Rights that protects ownership of personal data, gives families greater control over what children are exposed to, and strengthens individuals’ ability to maintain personal privacy. The right to privacy has been weakened, and I believe it is important to restore meaningful protections. I support federal action to combat scam and spam phone calls that are frequently used by predatory actors, including stronger enforcement requirements and improved consumer blocking protections. I believe personal data has real economic value. Individuals should have the right to opt out of companies selling their information or, if they choose to allow it, receive compensation when their data is sold.</li><li>America is due for major reform in workforce development. High school students should have alternatives to traditional college pathways that help them quickly identify careers that fit their skills and interests. Too many Americans fall into jobs they never planned to pursue simply to earn a living. \r\n\r\nI support programs allowing students to explore multiple trades during their final two years of high school, followed by a structured post-graduation program where they gain hands-on experience across several fields. This approach would help employers recruit workers who already understand and enjoy the work while helping young adults efficiently discover stable, in-demand career paths.</li></ul></div></div></div></div><div class=\"panel panel-default\"><div class=\"panel-heading\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" href=\"#collapse1-403704-2026-02-05\" id=\"heading1-403704-2026-02-05\" role=\"tab\"><a aria-controls=\"collapse1-403704-2026-02-05\" aria-expanded=\"false\" class=\"collapsed\" data-parent=\"#accordion\" data-toggle=\"collapse\" href=\"#collapse1-403704-2026-02-05\" role=\"button\">\t\t\t\tWhat areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?\t\t\t</a></div><div aria-labelledby=\"heading1-403704-2026-02-05\" class=\"panel-collapse collapse\" id=\"collapse1-403704-2026-02-05\" role=\"tabpanel\"><div class=\"panel-body\" style=\"max-height: 500px; overflow-y: scroll;\"><div class=\"answers-container\">\t\t\t\tWorkforce development, healthcare, personal rights, corporate regulations, education, business development and tax reform.\t\t\t</div></div></div></div></div>\n<div class=\"small\" data-nosnippet=\"\">Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.</div>\n<div><div style=\"margin-bottom:1.5rem\"><h4>Campaign websites</h4>Setzer's campaign website stated the following:<div style=\"max-height:400px;overflow-y:auto;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px;margin:20px\"><blockquote style=\"margin:0px\">Key Takeaways from I Pay Taxes, You Pay Taxes, We All Pay Taxes American resistance to taxation is cultural, not historical. The founders opposed unaccountable power and inherited wealth, not the concept of taxes themselves.The most equitable and prosperous period in U.S. history followed high top-tier tax rates. Post–World War II taxation funded broad public goods and real economic mobility.Wealth concentration since the 1970s was engineered, not inevitable. Policy choices shifted the tax burden downward and hollowed out public services.Private equity and tax havens have extracted value from communities without accountability. Profits are privatized while costs are socialized and local economies are left behind.Taxing extreme wealth is patriotic, not punitive. Vast fortunes are only possible because of public infrastructure, labor, and state investment — and should be paid back accordingly. Taxation can be a dangerous topic in politics because the American curmudgeon position has always been that all taxes are theft, and you can’t be free if you pay taxes. I was taught from a young age that a tax shouldn’t be paid on wages, or property or inheritance. There is traditionally a very patriotic resonance to those ideologies when viewed from a purely American perspective. America is a place where we seem destined to be fine. Our history, from a mass-produced consumer perspective, sanitized and just the high points, points to an inevitability of perfection. But what does that mean when looked at through the chaos of our historical reality? We begin our story with a group of men that HATED estates, kings, lords and inheritance. There isn’t a lot of wiggle room here. No matter how many times any right-wing revisionists tries to paint the past as anything but a foreign country, meaning, whatever parallels we would hope to draw between the intent of historical figures are wildly irrelevant due to their incomprehension of how our lives even work. An example of this always comes to mind when I see a “Don’t Tread on Me” sticker on a Ford F150 Raptor. The humans that commissioned that flag as a battle cry would most likely just slap the driver of that truck in the face until he was on his knees. A man driving a mechanical horse, fueled by dead dinosaur blood, across roads made of either that very same dinosaur fossil or crushed mountains reformed with water and chemicals, to and from your home where lightning stolen from Apollo powers magical engines that either heat your house or freeze ground chicken parts in the shape of those very same dinosaurs in giant cubed and hinged boxes that you keep in the extra house you have to just store said truck, would likely be the last man that the founders would tolerate complaining about oppression. The founders merely wanted taxation that came via representation and logical, Socratic debate and compromise. To see that the fruit of their rebellion against Britain resulted in a brand new nation that could establish law and policy drawn directly from enlightenment thinkers and philosophers was indeed a huge bonus. We have, as a society, decided that the most egalitarian application of taxes is that they are derived directly from the citizenry, real estate, and commercial transactions. The greatest and most equitable application of the tax rate happened in the decades following World War II when the top ten percent paid upwards of 60% of their income towards taxes. This funded a basket of universally available social services and public goods and represents the one true period where Adam Smith’s version of capitalism was in full effect. The funds distributed from the top tax brackets to society build schools, libraries, state universities, hospitals, infrastructure and a myriad of other hard assets while also provided soft social services like health care, subsidized college education, mortgages underwriting, small business support and the expansion of American power abroad. Throughout the 80s and 90s we experienced a realignment of America’s relationship with wealth and instead of it being an abundant source for the tax base, the wealth class worked behind the scenes with several economic libertarians to pull back on the percentage of profits and income that needed to be paid in taxes from the top tiers of earners. Gone were the days of well-funded, well negotiated and robust services, instead we arrived at an engineered friction between the working class and those in need, property owners and school children and small business owners and their employees. We were caught sleeping I suppose. This transfer of wealth to create a new class of ultra-high net worth individuals has also seen services that never turned a profit before, be defunded and privatized and turned into wholly for-profit industries; university tuition, healthcare/health insurance, public parking, snow removal, ambulance services etc. I have personal experience with the bloodthirsty need for private equity to create shareholder value through generation of profit. It is a meat grinder. When a local company was saddled with providing employer funded health insurance to its workers, the assumption was that health care costs would never need to be for profit, and that that local company would, worst case scenario, be publicly traded and best-case scenario would remain privately held and rooted in the community. What is the worse that could happen? Well, private equity could raid the publicly traded and privately held corporate class to pillage value locked in equity and assets leaving a bleeding shell of a company left behind, holding all debts and liabilities, only to declare bankruptcy while the private equity company absconds with the static value of not just the corporation but the soul of Main Street and the workforce that put faith in the competent governance of the company for which they worked. To top it all off, private equity and the ultra-high net worth individuals that profit from Private Equity's ruthlessness all operate under shell corporations in the foreign countries where they park all of their profits and pay nothing in taxes. The revelations included in the Panama Papers should’ve lit Washington on fire with the need for reform and accountability. Instead, the Citizens United ruling gave these very corporations who flaunt their raiding of our communities and their lack of willingness to pay their fair share of taxes, with the designation as individuals capable of donating unlimited numbers of political donations to PACs and Super PACs. The logic here is mind bending. It seems to be an intentional middle finger to the working class, the elderly, and future generations. There seems to be a fairly interesting and gaping loophole in the logic of Citizens United, that being that if corporations are people, if they are indeed individual people, than they should be held to the same nominal tax rate as the father of three who torches metal at Cap Steel in Ashtabula. We should of course make it fair, for the first ten years of this definition of how Citizens United effects the interpretation of how we should tax the profits of corporations, it should really just be applied to those corporations that essentially declared their personhood through making donations of more than $3500 to any PAC or super PAC since Citizens United. Congratulations on your political donation, Pinocchio! Now you are now a real boy.The aggressive nature of taxation on high net worth individuals is not punitive, its patriotic. That money was made because of the infrastructure of what America provides its people. The goods, the services, the international logistic and trade routes and protections, the workforce, the technical developments and research and development capabilities of not just DARPA, but also the CIA and NSA. America invests an intense amount of human capital, tacit knowledge and support to anyone that choses to build their business here. The Small Business Administration alone is a resource that is not replicated in many other places. To pay back into that system on a fair share basis is to admit that you didn’t make your money in a vacuum and you understand the responsibility of those that benefit from the system to increase the likelihood that everyone else won’t be left behind. It doesn’t help that most people don’t know what wealth actually is, like having 5,000,000 dollars is comfortable, having 50,000,000 dollars is generational wealth, having $500,000,000 is unfathomable wealth, and having $5,000,000,000 means you likely stole it from someone by leveraging parts of the system only those with that much money can afford to navigate. For those friends that don’t understand how much money $500,000,000 is, think about your best night out in the last ten years. Think about you and 20 of your friends renting a limo bus with wet bar service for 8 hours from Mr. Limo, traveling from Mentor to Cleveland to watch Shane Gillis from a private box at Rocket Mortgage Field House, then treating your friends to a dinner at Cordelia or Morton’s with wine, cocktails and dessert, and then handing all of them five hundred dollars and heading to the Jack Casino. Now do that every night, 365 nights a year, for 75 years. You might eat through $400,000,000 if you didn’t give up by year 45, or day 16,426. Just dropping $15,000 dollars every day of your life, it’s a lot of Shane Gillis. Now, if you are Peter Thiel and you’ve cheated the Roth IRA system through some cute accounting, you’ve got $5,000,000,000 in one retirement account. To spend that you would have to take 200 people out on that same itinerary every night for 75 years. If you are Elon Musk and you have $715,000,000,000 of value to your name, that means you would have to take 2,860 people out on that same itinerary, every night, for 75 years. Maybe these guys can just pay the same nominal tax rate as the rest of us? America’s workforce isn’t failing — it’s underinvested and overlooked.Industrial communities still hold enormous potential, and revitalizing them requires strategy, confidence, and long-term investment rather than writing them off.Modern manufacturing depends on skilled workers and smart technology working together.Advanced tools like collaborative robotics can boost productivity and competitiveness while strengthening, not replacing, human labor.Education and training must directly connect to real jobs.Expanding apprenticeships, career and technical education, and partnerships between schools and local employers can better prepare workers for current and future industry needs.Rebuilding domestic production requires intentional economic policy.Investments in manufacturing facilities, regional industry strategies, and partnerships with labor and local business groups can create stable, well-paying career paths.Workforce growth must be inclusive and community-centered.Supporting displaced workers, removing employment barriers, and creating lifelong learning opportunities helps ensure economic opportunity reaches every community. Carl Setzer believes America’s workforce is not broken, it’s forgotten. For decades, communities like ours watched production jobs vanish, watched industries shrink or flee overseas, and listened as political elites declared our industrial heartland “done.” But the potential never left. It’s time to unlock it. A Vision Rooted in RealityCarl doesn’t just talk about workforce development, he’s lived it. Returning to Northeast Ohio after years abroad, he saw firsthand that manufacturing isn’t dead, it’s misunderstood. Factories, fabrication shops, and skilled trades are still vital but only if we approach them with strategy, confidence, and belief. He saw companies like Last Arrow Manufacturing outcompete low-cost foreign rivals not by cutting wages, but by doing production smarter — embracing collaborative robotics (“co-robotics”), leaning into technology that amplifies human ability, and pairing that with skilled workers trained to use it. That’s the kind of future Carl fights for: one where technology lifts workers up rather than replaces them. 1. Expand Skills and Training That Match Real JobsToo many education systems prepare young people for “some job”… not the job that’s hiring right now. Carl will: Elevate career and technical education as a pathway equal to college.Expand apprenticeships and on-the-job training programs where workers earn while they learn.Partner schools with local manufacturers so training connects directly to hiring needs. Modern manufacturing isn’t muscle work — it’s thinking with your hands and tech in your mind. Collaborative robots and digital tools need skilled operators, not just warm bodies. Carl will push workforce systems to match those skills to opportunity, not the other way around. 2. Empower Workers in a Tech-Driven EconomyAutomation and advanced technologies get mislabeled as job killers — but the truth is different: when responsibly integrated, they multiply human output and efficiency. Carl saw this firsthand with welding co-robotics that made one worker 350 % more productive, reduced turnover, and created a competitive edge. Carl’s plan will: Support technology adoption programs that uplift workers instead of displacing them.Incentivize training in digital skills and robotics operation for existing and new workers.Help small and mid-sized manufacturers afford tech upgrades without sacrificing American jobs. 3. Re-shore and Grow Production Jobs That PayCarl believes America should produce again — and profit here too. But supporting production isn’t just about tax breaks or slogans — it’s about building capability: Providing low-interest public financing for new manufacturing equipment and facilities, with repayment tied to real job creation and regional economic impact.Supporting regional industrial strategies that let communities build on their strengths instead of chasing footloose corporate investment.Partnering with local business chambers, unions, and workforce boards to ensure jobs created offer career paths and livable wages. 4. Include Every Community in the Growth StoryWorkforce development must uplift every American. That means: Targeted support for workers displaced by globalization or automation.Programs that address barriers to employment — like childcare, transportation, and credentialing support. Collaborations with community organizations to recruit and train historically underserved workers. 5. A Workforce Strategy That Honors the Midwest’s IdentityThe Midwest wasn’t built on abstract theory — it was built by skilled hands, generations of craftsmanship, and communities tied to what they made. Carl’s workforce strategy honors that history while preparing for tomorrow: Emphasizing lifelong learning and career mobility across industries.Building education-to-employment pathways that reflect the real economy — both blue collar and tech-enabled.Supporting workforce initiatives that keep talent in our communities, not shipped off to coasts or overseas. A Future Where Work Works for YouWorkforce development isn’t a policy niche — it’s the foundation of economic dignity. Carl Setzer’s plan doesn’t just fill jobs; it builds careers, strengthens families, and restores the promise that if you’re willing to work hard here in America, you can build a life worth living. That’s how we revive production and reclaim opportunity in the 21st century — not by returning to the past, but by making the future with American hands and American hearts. Workforce Development: Rebuilding America’s Industrial HeartAmerica’s industrial workforce is dormant, not gone. Revitalizing manufacturing is about unlocking existing potential and restoring pride, purpose, and opportunity in communities that built the country.Career pathways must extend beyond four-year degrees. Expanding technical education, apprenticeships, and employer-linked training creates real jobs without forcing workers into unnecessary debt.A modern talent pipeline requires lifelong learning. Addressing workforce shortages means investing in upskilling, mentorship, and career ladders that help workers grow from entry-level roles to leadership.Good jobs require good wages, benefits, and respect. Workforce development succeeds only when employers are incentivized to retain workers through strong compensation, inclusive hiring, and supportive workplace cultures.Regional strengths should drive national growth. Targeted investment in America’s industrial regions can modernize infrastructure, strengthen local manufacturers, and create family-supporting jobs tied to community needs. America’s industrial capacity isn’t dead—it’s dormant. When Carl returned home after years abroad, he saw a nation with enormous potential and a workforce waiting to be unleashed. He believes that revitalizing our manufacturing base isn’t just about bringing jobs back—it’s about restoring pride, purpose, and opportunity across communities that built this country. Expand and Strengthen Career Pathways Carl will champion policies that connect education directly to careers. Too many young people are told they need a four-year degree to succeed, leaving high-growth industries like advanced manufacturing starving for talent. He supports expanding career and technical education, pre-apprenticeships, and registered apprenticeship programs that give students hands-on skills and credentials employers demand—without burdensome debt. Partnerships between community colleges, high schools, and employers will be central to his strategy, ensuring that training leads to real jobs. Build a 21st-Century Talent Pipeline Workforce shortages in metal fabrication and production are real: millions of manufacturing jobs risk going unfilled due to demographic shifts, skills gaps, and an aging workforce. Carl will work with industry and educators to create talent pipelines that start early, retain workers, and promote lifelong learning. That means investing in upskilling programs, mentorship networks, and career ladders so workers can grow from entry-level roles to leadership and advanced technical positions. Attract and Retain Workers in Every Community Carl knows that good jobs must come with good wages, benefits, and workplace cultures that value people. Workforce development isn’t just about training—it’s about keeping talent here. He will push for incentives that help employers raise compensation, offer robust benefits, and build environments where workers feel respected and supported. This also includes reducing barriers to employment for historically underrepresented communities so that opportunity is truly inclusive and broad-based. Leverage Local Strengths for Regional Growth America’s industrial core—from Ohio to the Great Lakes and beyond—has a legacy of productivity and innovation. Carl will support targeted federal and state investments that help regions leverage their manufacturing strengths, modernize infrastructure, and attract companies offering family-supporting jobs. This includes expanding access to workforce development funds, incentivizing employers to train locally, and helping small and medium manufacturers compete in global markets. Connect Policy to People’s Lives For Carl, workforce development isn’t a buzzword—it’s the foundation of economic dignity. Growing production capacity isn’t just about outputs on a spreadsheet; it’s about ensuring every American can find meaningful work that supports their family and community. Carl will use his experience in industry, manufacturing leadership, and global economic systems to push real solutions—because when we rebuild the workforce, we rebuild our future. Five Key Takeaways1. Carl's Personal Experience Shows the Full Spectrum of Education ModelsThe author’s journey through public school, private religious school, homeschooling, and international education provides a rare, firsthand comparison of multiple educational systems. 2. Public Education Often Provides Critical Support Beyond AcademicsServices like speech therapy, community stability, and emotional development demonstrate how public schools frequently serve as support systems for children and families. 3. Ideological Fear Can Sometimes Drive Educational Decisions More Than Student NeedsThe narrative illustrates how religious and political beliefs can shape educational choices in ways that may unintentionally isolate or disadvantage children. 4. Homeschooling and Private Education Are Not Automatically Superior AlternativesWhile they can work for some families, these systems can also create isolation, uneven academic outcomes, and reduced social development when implemented for ideological or separatist reasons. 5. American Public Education Remains Exceptionally Accessible Compared to Many Global SystemsThe author’s experience abroad highlights how uniquely open and available U.S. public education is, particularly when compared to costly private international schooling and bureaucratic or corrupt enrollment systems in other countries. My education was a priority for my parents, but not in the way most of you are thinking. As a kid, I attended Lathrop Elementary until the third grade, except for a three-month stint at Cedarbrook Elementary as part of an above-and-beyond gifted kids’ program. I remember walking into the playground on the first day of school at Lathrop, where each class lined up waiting for the doors to open. I had my backpack, lunch, and my crayons. Waiting to be let into what seemed like the largest building I had ever seen was scary, but everyone was excited, and the teachers’ kindness was infectious. My parents taught me something very different about public education. It was a tool that the state used to brainwash kids. I was never fully trusting of it. The proudest I ever remember my mother being of me as a child was when I refused to dress up for Halloween. When my teacher asked me why, I said, “Because if I’m dressed up and Jesus comes back, he won’t recognize me.” My mother would tell that story to girlfriends I brought home from college fifteen years later. I don’t think it ever dawned on her that if Jesus loved me, he would probably recognize me if I was dressed up like ThunderCat… At Lathrop, I remember the school recommending that I see a speech therapist because I had a slight lisp and couldn’t pronounce my R’s, but in the most adorable way. My mother said that we wouldn’t be able to afford that kind of therapy, and the principal responded that it was provided to all students and wouldn’t cost us anything. I would sit with that speech therapist twice a week, and she would help me not only correct my speech, but also make me feel like there was no reason to be ashamed of being different and to find my own voice. My sister finished the fifth grade at Lathrop and then transferred to Our Shepherd School at Zion Lutheran. My parents’ faith in public services continued to deteriorate as the years went by until they made the decision to take me out of the public system and transfer me to the same private Christian school as my sister. After my sister finished the 7th grade at Our Shepherd, she was transferred to Willo-Hill Christian School in Kirtland. I followed the next year. We were three years apart, and the focus was usually to use my sister as the guinea pig and then drag me along. Not a super awesome plan, but it also meant that I wouldn’t get the experience of graduating from anything with my peers until I was in college. My time at Willo-Hill was sixth grade through the first month of my tenth-grade year. It coincided with my parents’ radicalization and our membership at Shiloh Christian Church. Our church leadership challenged all of us to be combative, argumentative, and overly boisterous about “true Christianity” and “biblical standards.” I would become more and more of a problem for school administrators and would eventually be asked to leave after a series of embarrassing expressions of “fundamentalism.” The only option left in the minds of my parents was to homeschool me. Not the “cool” homeschooling of Instagram or liberal circles where homeschooling is becoming a trend. I was homeschooled for good old separatist reasons. I was never lonelier in my life. I worked at an industrial warehouse three days a week and filled out workbooks and took tests by myself on the other two days of the week. I would eventually be mentored by another “Friend of Shiloh” who was a lawyer and had a practice in Geneva. Truth be told, I don’t remember learning anything for those three years. I just remember being sad and alone while my parents proclaimed they homeschooled their gifted son as a badge of honor. As a child, I experienced every aspect of education. I was just a kid looking for a safe place to be a child. I wasn’t abused. Some people hear that I was homeschooled, and they don’t understand what that means because they weren’t homeschooled. They just heard it must be better because no one tells them that, in most cases, it isn’t. It doesn’t develop worse kids or better kids, but it does produce a lot of kids who would never homeschool their kids. All the kids that I was homeschooled in parallel with are now professional childcare providers, public school teachers, or education theorists who spent their lives being what they didn’t have when they were homeschooled; someone who could laugh, from experience, at how hilarious it is to be homeschooled out of fear. Parochial or Christian education was not robust enough in the first quarter of the twentieth century to provide enough access to education to America’s youth, and as a result, churches and private religious groups lobbied for the government to provide robust public education for the growing and far-flung American population. The result was, and is, a modern marvel: access to standardized education in facilities maintained and managed by professionals that provide care, education, safety, food, health care, and a place to be a kid for anyone who needs it. Sometimes, when you have a world-class institution that is the envy of every developing nation, the population that directly benefits from the services provided by that institution takes it for granted and decides that it’s better to slowly break it while claiming it’s inherently flawed and that’s why it’s not working, and then replace it with an alternative that is either private for profit or religious non-profit. My son attended international schools in both Taipei, Taiwan, and Beijing, China. I was not going to put any ideologies between my son and a proper education. He attended the Taipei American School in Taipei for kindergarten and first grade. TAS is an American public school in its bones, funded by the State Department and tuition. It’s so American to the point where, when it was constructed, American-standard cinder blocks were imported and used. Anyone who has spent time abroad knows that painted cinder blocks are a very American thing. It was the first time my wife had even seen a building made with the heart and soul of American brutalist material. He transferred to the Western Academy of Beijing his second-grade year. WAB is 100% a private, for-profit business. It cost us $47,000 United States dollars a year, paid up front, to send our son there. TAS was about $19,000, paid every semester. That’s the difference between what education costs the top 10% and what education costs when there are some government subsidies. We left China halfway through my son’s third-grade year due to COVID; no refund was issued for the money we paid up front. We walked into the administrator’s office at Wickliffe Public Schools, and all we had to do was sign up. Even public education in China is not free. There are fees for everything and gifts to schools and bribes to principals, and even then your child isn’t guaranteed a place. In America, you just walk in, show proof of residency, and fill out some forms. Our system isn’t broken. Key Takeaways:1. American Public Education Is Imperfect but Fundamentally StrongPublic schools reflect the complexity of American democracy. It's messy, diverse, and constantly evolving, but they remain one of the most successful and accessible public institutions in the world and serve as essential community infrastructure. 2. Public Schools Are Often the Primary Safety Net for Children and CommunitiesBeyond academics, public education provides stability, nutrition, health support, social development, and safe environments. In many communities, especially highlighted during COVID, schools function as the central pillar holding families and neighborhoods together. 3. The Real Crisis in Public Education Is How It Is Funded, Not Its ExistenceReliance on property taxes creates instability, inequality, and political conflict by tying educational opportunity to real estate wealth rather than shared societal investment in children. 4. Education Should Be Treated as a Shared Public Good That Benefits EveryoneAn educated America strengthens the economy, democracy, public health, and social mobility. Because everyone benefits, funding schools should be broadly shared across society rather than disproportionately placed on homeowners or local tax bases. 5. Children Should Not Bear the Consequences of Adult Ideology, Wealth Gaps, or Political BattlesDebates over education policy, privatization, and funding often prioritize adult beliefs and economic interests over student well-being. Investing heavily and consistently in public education is ultimately an investment in the nation’s long-term prosperity and stability. American public education isn’t perfect. Much like America itself, it’s the result of thousands of different ideologies and worldviews all trying to exist with one another simultaneously, while the vast majority resist domination by any single ideology or worldview. American public education is not, however, broken. It is far from broken. It could improve. It could be more cherished, and it could be a stronger pillar for communities, but as we learned during COVID, in some communities, it is the ONLY pillar that exists. Public education should be overfunded.We shouldn’t politicize our kids.The alternative isn’t better.Few places around the world have a better system.The best of what we have should be the lowest common denominator of our goals for public education. Our children deserve for us to realize they are our largest natural resource, and they deserve more, not less, than that with which we were raised. We punish them for our beliefs. For our party affiliations. For not being rich. Or having any aspect of their growth, body, or mind that aren’t “normal” enough. One of the original sins of public education is how it is funded. The property tax as a tax basket for public education has never made any sense to me. The property tax, as I have written here, is the reason why we have a middle class that can own their own homes. It is one of the most American things we’ve ever done as a nation. But property shouldn’t be the source of funds for education. It’s polarizing and punitive. The benefits of an educated population benefit all aspects of our society, but pegging it to the property of retirees, working families, or those that don’t have children at all seems to create an intentional tension so public education will never truly be stable. Instead of 60% of public school funding coming from property tax and the remainder coming from a combination of revenue generated by the lottery and a small percentage that comes from the sales tax, we could realign the tax allocated from sales tax to be the basket for public schools and the taxes generated by property tax to pay for anything that protects those properties and the residents in that area, and the development of property for the use of residents for infrastructure, parks, and real estate development projects that will increase the tax base of an area. Maybe schools should be funded passively by funds collected through the commercial activity of ALL people in the area, and property developers should have to go door to door and ask retirees to increase their property tax so we can build a new football stadium we don’t need and no one asked for? Maybe our kids deserve to have access to fully funded schools paid for by sales tax, and Jimmy Haslam can ask your neighbor to pay more so he can build his cathedral in Brook Park? Environmental progress should be driven by innovation, efficiency, and modern infrastructure.Environmental policy must connect to real-world concerns to win public support. Industry and agriculture can be part of the solution with the right incentives and modernization. America needs realistic energy solutions to meet future demand. Economic growth and environmental stewardship are not opposites. I have an irrational love for the geographic area that encompasses the Ohio 14th Congressional District. When I was a kid, I loved this area in the way that a child does. It was familiar, it was all I knew, and it was a place where the people who loved me lived. My connection to the region changed when my parents put me in a religious community that taught me to fear and hate everything that wasn’t a part of its own ideology. Things like “man’s dominion over the earth” were used from the pulpit to justify treating the region with an almost irresponsible contempt. The recently implemented “E-Check” regulations infuriated my father, as he viewed the EPA as a subsidiary of Satan himself. It wasn’t until I left the region, traveling first to the American South, then Europe, and ultimately Asia, that my personal views and connection to the environment started to become clear. While brewing in China, I learned the importance of next-generation technology that implemented efficiencies in terms of energy use and carbon emissions. For every one part of beer, you use four to five parts water if you are using efficient means of production, but if you are using outdated equipment and methods, those ratios could go as high as one to eight. I studied with some of the best thinkers in the space during my time at the Technical and Scientific Congress at the Technical University of Berlin. I saw how Europe answered the question of environmental protection while also fostering and sustaining business and commercial growth. I took those lessons back to China after every congress and tried to implement what would make my little part of my community that much greener and that much more efficient. I also, in a stubborn way, designed our production facility to shatter international standards of water usage, carbon emissions, and wastewater treatment. I did these things because they were the right thing to do, but also because I had the privilege of building exactly what I wanted to build, not just a copy of some older methodology. Fixed assets and equipment degradation are a huge issue in industrial production and commercial manufacturing. Having equipment replacement grants and efficiency standards that incentivize the largest users of energy to upgrade their means of production and leapfrog the last generation of process engineering, allowing industry to live in the future without over-leveraging their capital position, is one small way to reduce the production of greenhouse gases, efficiently consume energy, and consume, treat, and return water to the water table. We can do that through targeted tax incentives, equipment replacement grants, and efficiency standards that reward better outcomes. The issue the Democratic Party struggles with when it comes to the environment is that we tend to pillarize it as a stand-alone issue that needs to be protected and preserved without acknowledging our own complex existence within it. I call this the Greta Thunberg effect. The feeling of a young lady who comes from easily one of the most privileged places on the planet, whose education and existence were bolstered by robust buffer funds that traditionally have been vested by the automotive industry and the massive oil refining concerns that make Sweden one of the largest net exporters of petroleum to Northern Europe and Scandinavia, yelling at the rest of the world to use less energy was a clear example of how environmental messaging can become disconnected from the realities people are living in for much of the world. It was also catnip for the calcified right to point at how liberals want America to have less, not more. The Thunberg effect has rippled through the efficacy of environmental policies for the last ten years. It’s why most liberal candidates don’t even bother having an environmental policy anymore. Consultants and advisors tell you to answer environmental questions and then pivot to something else as quickly as possible. We suffer from optics and messaging, not a lack of education or facts. Talking to American conservatives about the environment isn’t easy, but it is doable. We only need to talk about the fishery community’s warnings over the last ten years, that it is harder and harder to harvest fish in waters traditionally cold enough to facilitate the repopulation and density needed to satisfy markets with supply that meets demand. Yes, warming seas will eventually raise sea levels, but your Republican neighbors take cruises that they pay for with their Costco points to warmer waters, and it doesn’t seem that islands are losing beaches or that coastlines in Puerto Vallarta are dealing with encroachment. As a metric, rising sea levels are for the hardest of hard-line environmental watchers and give liberals the position of righteousness, but they aren’t quantifiable enough to reach your more moderate friends. Fishermen ringing the warning bell, however, is the perfect conversation topic with your MAGA relatives because it reaches deep into that well of “common sense” that appeals to your family members who love rewatching Yellowstone. Watching any Taylor Sheridan serialized dramas will give you a good idea of what matters most to your conservative friends. Brazil and Argentina annihilating rainforest to create pastureland to raise beef for American and Asian consumers has been a fear from the American beef and cattle industry for years. A robust farm bill, with incentives to improve livestock and land on generational ranch lands, creates competitiveness with international markets while also slowing the clearing of rainforest lands, because market demands don’t support the destruction of rainforest canopy for cattle production. Sometimes improving the industry that already supports American communities with robust, agriculturally minded policies gives the American farmer the ability to see the benefits of improving land management, trapping phosphorus, reducing algae blooms in our watersheds, and diversifying micro and macro biological systems, which helps our ecosystems regenerate themselves. This is what that looks like in practice: a modernized farm bill that rewards soil health, supports land improvements, and keeps American farmers competitive without sacrificing the land they depend on. In any environmentally minded approach to our future, we should look at the full context of what is causing the bad results, who the bad actors are, and who is responsible for preventing regulations that can solve the problem and create a clearer future, one that balances environmental policy, the rights of the environment to be clean and healthy, and the needs of a growing economy and population. Some approaches focus on immediate, sweeping change without fully accounting for the infrastructure and economic realities we face today. They don’t want to hear about moderation or conservancy, or letting nature heal itself. They want the end of the thing that thumbs its nose at their data, and they want to burn the petroleum industry and its downstream ecosystem to the ground without acknowledging America’s inability to produce power for an all-electric consumer base due to infrastructure and power generation limitations. Yes, solar is a wonderful idea, but the production of solar panels is problematic, the state of solid-state batteries is problematic, and the ability to do a hard reset to an all-EV future isn’t possible under our current infrastructural limitations. Chinese EVs are not the answer. BYD dumps entire shiploads of EVs into markets like Thailand and Mexico on what is called “consignment,” a system in which China doesn’t get any payment for those cars until each one is sold individually at a dealership. That is not the sign of a roadmap to a solution; that is the sign that the Chinese economy is in such a weak position that party secretaries would prefer keeping the factory operating in a debt position and dumping finished products into developing markets, hoping for pull-through sales, rather than admitting there is no demand for the EVs in China or the greater non-U.S. market and shuttering the plant and firing the workers. We’re playing an economic cup game with the future of consumer transportation. The solution to almost all of the above issues would be a prolific construction of new nuclear power plants across America, with robust regulations for what to do with nuclear waste once it is removed from the power plant. Nuclear power is a scientific miracle that, with next-generation technological improvements and more aesthetically pleasing architectural approaches, can meet the needs of America’s future power consumption requirements without making every American landscape look like the title credits of The Simpsons. If we are serious about meeting future energy demand, this is the direction we have to go. That means investing in next-generation nuclear, setting clear standards for waste management, and building the workforce to support it. As opposed to echoing the Thunberg effect, we can take real, pragmatic steps toward a better future. Small changes in consumer behavior, when scaled across millions of households, can produce measurable reductions in energy use, but they only work when paired with structural improvements in how we produce and deliver energy. We could demand a revolution in consumer packaged goods (CPG) packaging requirements. There are layers and layers of useless packaging materials per unit of any given item when bought at a grocery store, pharmacy, or wholesale club, and even more packaging when items are shipped via online delivery services and door-to-door delivery apps. If the U.S. government provided a tax credit for non-plug-in hybrids and next-generation battery-driven, petroleum engine-supported hybrid technologies, we would be able to transition to more nuclear power at a rate that allows us to phase out excess petroleum infrastructure without over-stressing the ramp-up of full EV adoption or the wind-down of gasoline-powered vehicles. There are ways to be stewards of our environment without being the reason the world ends even sooner because we’re incapable of selling our society on the need for a slightly different approach to our consumer behaviors. We can’t find the fish, and our hamburgers are killing the rainforest canopy. We can actually have our hamburger and eat it too, we just need to start thinking about how we improve in a way that makes everyone’s lives better and doesn’t create a reality where well-fed, overeducated humans are telling the rest of the world that the party is over and they need to starve and live with less. This isn’t about choosing between the environment and the economy. It’s about finally building a system where they work together. Key Takeaways:Employer-tied health care is a structural failure.Tying access to care to your job leaves workers vulnerable, limits mobility, and creates unnecessary financial and emotional risk.Medicare already works—and can be expanded without reinventing the system.The proposal builds on an existing, familiar program funded through payroll taxes, rather than replacing the entire health care system.Expanding Medicare to W-2 workers increases freedom and economic mobility.Workers could change jobs, go part-time, or start businesses without fear of losing health coverage.A larger, younger risk pool would strengthen Medicare and lower costs.Including working-age, healthier Americans would improve system stability and reduce overall health care spending.This is a practical reform, not a radical overhaul.The approach frames universal access as a common-sense correction—preserving quality and choice while removing job-based gatekeeping. Carl Setzer believes America’s health care system should serve people — not profits, paperwork, or job status. Today, access to quality health care for most Americans is tied to employment. If you work for a company, your coverage usually comes through a private plan your employer provides or helps pay for. But that system leaves too many people vulnerable — stuck in jobs they don’t want, without real choice, and facing financial risk if anything goes wrong. Why Medicare for all W-2 Employees?Carl’s time abroad and his personal experiences with health care systems — both where care was commodified and where care was denied — made one thing clear: the system we have is broken by design. Rather than forcing people to earn health care through an employer, he argues that health care should be universally accessible on the same foundation that already helps millions of Americans in retirement. Medicare today is funded by a payroll tax system in which workers and employers each contribute a portion of wages — 1.45 % each on W-2 earnings — into the federal program that supports hospital and inpatient care for older Americans. Carl’s vision is not to rip up what works, but to expand it: extend the dignity and predictability of Medicare coverage to every working person on a W-2, not just those over 65. What It Would Mean for WorkersHealth care no longer tied to a job: You wouldn’t lose care just because you change employers, go part-time, or start a small business.More security for families: Without premiums, deductibles, and unpredictable private insurance costs, workers could plan their lives with certainty — from raising kids to saving for retirement.Younger, healthier risk pool: Bringing healthier, working-age Americans into Medicare would lower overall costs and strengthen the system. Freedom and mobility: Workers could change jobs or start businesses without healthcare fear holding them back — a real boost for a dynamic economy. A Common-Sense Step, Not a Radical BreakCarl doesn’t see universal health access as theft of private choice or a wholesale desertion of what works in American health care. He views it as correcting a structural flaw: health care should not be a privilege you earn by having the right employer. In Carl’s own words: “Expanding Medicare to all W-2 employees would see the overall cost of healthcare in America plummet. The anxiety of the American worker would dissipate just that much more.” By elevating a proven public program and removing incentives that lock health care to job status, this approach preserves quality care while expanding access and fairness across the workforce. The topic of immigration has become a touchpoint for violence, oppression, and a loss of faith in the American experiment. As with other inflammatory issues, we tend to either patronize the focus of the tension, or we infantilize it. Instead of making grandiose, yet somewhat empty proclamations about our horror at the current situation with ICE due to our own ancestry descending from immigrants (with the exception of our Iroquoian and Shawnee brothers and sisters, in Northeast Ohio, we all do, you aren’t special) or abolishing entire government agencies that, up until they were weaponized, served a benign and needed duty of making sure people who had overstayed their visas were processed and deported (some people do have to go eventually, no country ignores this problem), I would rather err on the side of understanding the humanity behind these tensions. We need to try and understand what it feels like to be other-ized, under-documented, and targeted for political ends. Through this series of essays, I’d like to highlight three aspects of immigration and posit a pragmatic and American solution to our very unnecessary problem of making humans “illegal.” Firstly, I’m going to tell a story that represents the pathway that a Northeast Ohioan has followed in her attempts to find legal status in a system that is designed to keep you in a form of purgatory. As you read about this, think about those in your own life, community, workplace, church, or ecosystem who have faced similar challenges. Realize this is a human problem that deserves a human response. It is intensely un-American to pretend a human being doesn’t exist or to set a bar so high that no American would be able to pass it themselves. When a person starts on the long path of having the right to work, the right to pay payroll taxes, and the very American right to make mistakes without the risk of deportation, they take on a challenge that is measured in decades, not months. While you read this series of posts, ask yourself, “would I be able to endure such a gauntlet if our positions were reversed tomorrow?” When you tell yourself the answer in your heart, remember the basic principle of all religions and philosophies, “don’t be a problem when you can be the answer instead.” Or more simply... Treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated.When Elena, Leni to her friends, arrived in the Cleveland area, her father was an employee of a company that offered a three-year visa program for sponsored foreign employees. Her dad transferred to America a year ahead of time and prepared the way for bringing his daughter and sister to Cleveland. She arrived when she was twelve years old and was enrolled in a local public high school with a strong tax base and solid services. Her mother had passed away when she was young, and her aunt came with her as a quasi-caregiver and bridge to her culture and identity. Her aunt had her own student visa for a graduate program in international relations that gave her the time to spend mornings and evenings with her niece in their new American home. The number of migrant parents who will complain about how quickly their children become “Americanized” is a testament to the strength of our collective culture and society. It’s also a direct contradiction to the xenophobia-driven fear of “cultural dilution” or when too many people from a specific culture will eventually change the culture of America. Fortunately, or unfortunately, American culture tends to be the dominant gene in the DNA of the world tapestry. A couple years into her residency in Northeast Ohio, Leni’s father uncovered some irregularities in his employer’s bookkeeping and brought it to the attention of his direct management. This resulted in his final contract not being renewed, and ultimately the loss of his job and legal status in America. Her dad, being a passionate student of their own heritage, applied for a master’s degree in international political science at the same school his sister was attending. This gave Leni the ability to stay in the area and continue her education. He was given the chance to study at a partner school in the region for a semester as part of an exchange program and Leni’s aunt, who had begun her PhD so she could stay in the area as well, became her sole caregiver. Her aunt was living with a new boyfriend at the time and Leni would stay at that apartment and then commute to her high school even though it was out of the district by a couple miles. During that time the boyfriend became aggressive with Leni which resulted in the ending of that relationship for her aunt, but also the first feeling of complete vulnerability as an under-documented resident of Ohio. The boyfriend knew that Leni’s father’s situation was precarious as student visas don’t necessarily give you and your family the same security as employer-backed work visas, being easier to revoke or be canceled. The boyfriend was also a county government employee and knew that Leni was attending school out of the district of her place of residence, and he used both vulnerabilities as cover for his predation. There are of course non-profit organizations and government channels that under-documented residents can use, but none of them are watertight and any link in that chain can report a case to ICE through anonymous platforms. This all occurred during Trump’s first time in office and the immigrant community was very sensitive to using any reporting mechanisms as any of them, in their pursuit of justice, could lead to arrest and deportation. In our current climate, some remember Trump’s first administration as the good old days because it was a bureaucratic anxiety or a back-channel anxiety, but in our current situation Trump is saying the quiet part out loud and their intentions are quite clearly to bend and break laws and social norms in the pursuit of the unachievable goal of a “migrant-less US economy.” This was the first time that Leni really considered just moving home. To be left with no recourse other than to expose yourself to deportation after you’ve been the victim of rape didn’t feel like much of a choice at all. She decided, however, to do what was right not only for her but for the potential future victims of her rapist and she filed charges that resulted in an arrest. During that time her father’s student visa expired after he graduated from his program. She was also about to graduate from high school, but with no legal status, and after just filing assault charges, she assumed that his arrest meant she had done her civic duty to herself and her community and it was safe for her to consider moving back to her home country. A place she hadn’t seen in over seven years, a place where she might not fit in anymore, and a place that might reject her for the sin of becoming too foreign. She wrestled with this issue and decided to inform the arresting detectives that she intended to leave the country and return to her home country. Their response would determine the next four years of Leni’s life. “If you leave, we can’t guarantee that he will face a conviction, and he might be released with time served due to not having an accuser to face.” Her heart sank and she realized that she would need to find a pathway to stay in America legally while the case was adjudicated, and she saw justice finally prevail. The United States has a visa designation, specifically for people who have been the victim of a felony and are facing participation in a court proceeding. There are also funds available from many countries that have citizens residing in America in these gray-area-type statuses to finance legal help in the case that they are taken advantage of while being under-documented in America. The fact that there is a specific U.S. visa designation and legal aid provided by the embassies and consulates for foreign nationals residing in America says enough about the calcification of the problem of under-documented residents and the vulnerability they face when left exposed to predators and usurious conditions. Leni applied for her visa and received a notice saying that her application was received and that it will be processed in the order that it was received. No estimated time of processing was given because the resources provided for processing these visas change with every presidential administration. We have politicized being an immigrant in this country to the point where a simple review of paperwork and processing of next-stage authorizations, mind you, not the visa itself, just the step where they tell you to continue to wait or give a “temporary right to work and tax identification number,” would take almost four years. FOUR YEARS to wait for the documentation that would allow you to support yourself financially while you wait to hear about your visa issuance’s final ruling. Four years of vulnerability.Four years of anxiety.Four years of working at the whim of the morality of small business owners.Four years of not having the ability to drive yourself anywhere.Four years of looking over your shoulder for the friends or family of your rapist to give you more trouble for sticking up for yourself.Four years of walking a perfect line to stay out of the crosshairs of suspicion.Four years of being a partial human.Four years of being Un-American… My wife and I were one of Leni’s first calls when she got her Temporary Work Authorization, but the joy was muted by the reality of a second Trump administration that was planning to take the guardrails off of the intersection between enforcement and fascistic thuggery. Her hope was palpable, but the concern in her voice was unmistakable. I’ve never understood how we can view ourselves as a nation of immigrants but so few of us understand the requirements to become American in 2026. This isn’t “my grandpa married my grandma and they came to America and signed a book” style immigration. We’ve lost ourselves in the mindless need to enforce rules to which so very few of us were ever subjected. We want this to be the rule of law, but no one is responsible to explain the point, the timeline, the process, or the need for a system that exposes our neighbors and guests to crime, anxiety, and a general loss of themselves. We can do better. As Americans, we must do better. People notice that I’m running for office for personal reasons, just as much as I am to advocate for others, build stronger communities, and remind America that we can and are fundamentally better than our current political climate. This essay will be more on the personal side, and I hope it is not misconstrued as misunderstood privilege or virtue signaling. For 16 years I was an immigrant in Asia. The word “expat” is antiquated and does not describe my life in Asia at all. I was never given a large corporate compensation package. I never lived in a Stepford Wives-esque community of foreignness protected by security guards and gates and fencing. I moved to China in 2004 and worked in an isolated industrial town in the mountains of Central China. To aid in their economic development, China needed English teachers and “foreign area experts” to work for universities and large state-owned companies. My life for that first year was teaching English poorly, basketball, and eating. I learned very quickly that China’s growth was on par with the industrial expansion that built places like Pittsburgh and Cleveland. I knew I would need to create more value in myself to fully utilize the opportunity of being in a place like that, at a time like that. I worked on my education and learned Mandarin to a level of competency that I was able to land a job in information security, as an analyst at first, but within three years I was the general manager for my employer’s China office and director of their East Asia operation. To truly live in a place, you need to figure out how to turn on your utilities, open bank accounts, figure out transportation, learn the language, contribute to the tax base, etc. A lot of people misunderstand “staying” in a country for a while as being the same as “living” in a country. I’d say that’s the easiest differentiation between an expatriate-style lifestyle and that of an immigrant. Expats get taken care of by a larger organization, so they don’t feel inconvenienced. Immigrants must take care of themselves and strive for some sort of convenience. You can’t hide as a 6’3”, blonde haired, blued eyed foreigner in China.It becomes clear, very quickly, that you will forever be a guest in a place that cannot comprehend allowing the ‘Other’ to become a part of the culture. My journey in China would only expose how American I really was, and how proud I was of that, as I also tried to understand the parts of China that allowed themselves to be understood. I studied the language academically via scholarships to the best language schools in Taiwan. I traveled to as many places as I could, from the badlands of Karamay, to the archipelagoes of Fujian, the mountains of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Hunan, and the deserts of Inner Mongolia and Gansu province. I ate everything, drank everything, traveled on every speed of train, bus, horse-cart, and vehicles that would find a welcome place in a Mad Max chase scene. I was welcomed, loved, hated, spat upon, and rejected, sometimes all in the same day. The one thing that stayed true is I would never have the luxury of being ignored. Your presence in mainland China, especially in the mid-00s but still true to this day, was never unnoticed. Someone once described being Other in China as being either a god or a dog, something to be worshipped or something to be fed scraps and kept outside. It opened my eyes to what it feels like to be truly foreign in a new place. To allow others to become a part of your society is a truly enlightened thing. A confident society does not fear extending opportunity, it is strengthened by it. Necessity was what allowed me to live in a place like China. It wasn’t a societal principle to welcome others; it was an economic need that started with needing English speakers and ended with needing foreign direct investment and tax revenue generation. After my wife and I got married we decided to really throw ourselves into being the change we wanted to see in our environment. We opened our first nano-brewery in 2010, meeting with overwhelming support. We opened our second location in 2013, our third in 2015, and closed our Series A investment in 2017. It was a wild ride; we weren’t ever accepted by the organism that is a single-party governance system, but the Chinese consumer loved what we did, and being able to express a uniquely American consumer trend to an economy that was poised to become the largest in the world, if not for the pandemic, was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Through all that stimulation and accomplishment, I was never, not for one day, accepted or assumed a natural part of the environment by everyone I met. Some people assumed I must’ve just arrived and welcomed me to China (after 16 years you could imagine this goes from annoying, to infuriating, and then to just being amusing), some thought I was lost, or must only be there as a tourist. Almost everyone had some sort of assumption, and it was never “you should be here,” it was always needing their approval or permission. Everyone had to have some sort of agency over my existence in “their” country. Other than my wife, the only other human being that never questioned my presence in China was her grandfather. Liu Shao Zeng and I met in 2008 when I stayed with him while visiting his granddaughter. This was before we fell in love and before I was anything other than some guy, a friend from college. As I was falling head over heels for his oldest son’s only child, Grandpa never second-guessed me or treated me like I had to earn his approval. When we got our marriage licenses, he held his wife’s hand as the two acted as our required witnesses. At our wedding he wore the Cleveland Indians hat I bought him for Chinese New Year the year before. He laughed when I pointed it out and said, “it’s a pretty nice hat.” When our son was born, he was there to name his great-grandson after the light rain that fell that morning. When I installed any of our breweries he was there, with his little stool and radio, to “make sure” everything went according to plan. When there was trouble, he was there. When there were celebrations, he would sit quietly in the corner and be satisfied that his great-granddaughter would never know the starvation and suffering that his generation did. When he was diagnosed with leukemia, I would sit by his bedside and listen to him tell stories about driving industrial trucks in the 70s and selling dried fish in the 80s. Whenever I would enter a new hospital room for the first time, his roommates would always tense up and wonder what would bring me to their room. I would bring Grandpa his lunch or some snacks or medication and we would talk for a couple minutes, and I would leave as quickly as I appeared, knowing the next time I saw Grandpa he would tell me about what was said the minute I left the room.“Who was that?”“Where is he from?”“How did he learn our language?” The second time I came they would know my entire life story and welcome me to sit at their table and play cards. Without Grandpa, I would’ve just been a threat. When we lost him to his second bout of cancer, I knew my time in China was over. There would never be another old man to tell people to accept me for who I was. Once he was gone, the moments where I felt comfortable with him by my side became just memories. Coming back to an America divided, after being a guest, immigrant, and outsider in China, wasn’t the easiest transition. I hadn’t enjoyed the privilege of being “from” the place that I was living in for a very long time. When we left China, we didn’t flee, but we did run. My wife was pregnant with our second child and the Beijing city government determined that prenatal services were not essential. That was the last in a long line of “we should probably leave for a while” thoughts. The reality of China is kind of lost on most people who visit, because it’s not necessary to understand it as a tourist or short-term observer. Few policies gave me more anxiety during my time in China as a husband than the law that said that if you had a physical altercation with a Chinese citizen, as a foreigner, you would be arrested and deported immediately. We watched this happen to several acquaintances who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.It didn’t matter how long they had lived there, or how much they had contributed, their status was still conditional. As a husband of a strikingly beautiful woman in a country that has 30,000,000 more men than women, I often found myself in spaces where men, unhappy with my everything, would lob threats at us, and I understood how quickly the system could turn against someone who didn’t belong. Living under laws that treat you differently because you are foreign creates a constant, quiet awareness. You calculate risk differently. You move differently. And when your place in a society depends on fragile permissions rather than shared standing, you feel it every day. That instability is something many families navigating our immigration system understand intimately. When legal status is complicated, inconsistent, or politicized, everyday life carries an added weight that most citizens never have to consider. Before we discuss what it was like going from being an immigrant to watching my wife live the American immigrant experience, it’s first necessary to dispel some false assumptions that most Americans have when it comes to the steps needed to legally be a foreign spouse of a U.S. citizen in America: - The Department of State is not required to grant visas to the foreign spouses of U.S. citizens. - Being the spouse of an American citizen does not automatically make the spouse a U.S. citizen. - Being married to an American citizen does not fast-track, guarantee, or alleviate most of the ambiguity in the immigration process. My wife, then fiancée, was denied a tourist visa to the United States in 2008. The only question the interviewer asked her during her face-to-face visit to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing resulting in that denial was, “what is your husband’s favorite movie?” (It’s Tombstone.) My wife was denied a spousal visa while she was 9 months pregnant with our son in 2011, based on her failure to have collected documentation that was marked “optional” on the instructions. When we applied for her next visa in the fall of 2011, for a Thanksgiving holiday visit, I couldn’t sleep for a week. She had already been denied on two separate occasions, which then must be listed on every subsequent application. When the reviewer saw that her email address was “fliu@greatleapbrewing.com,” they simply smiled and whispered, “we love your brewery, enjoy your trip to America!” The U.S. tends to fall into the trap of thinking that everyone’s goal is to come to America and take advantage of all the things our society has to offer. There are few pathways to America that aren’t completely entrenched in the end goal being naturalization. No one in the application system understood why my wife and I would want to get married and not immediately leave China and get her citizenship on U.S. terra firma. It is nearly impossible to get married, get a spousal visa, and apply for a green card without being en route to, or already in, America. We didn’t successfully apply for her green card until COVID when we were in America, fourteen years after we got our marriage licenses. Even with all the things that are in favor of couples seeking a green card for the foreign spouse, the process is somewhere just south of humiliating. It is essentially a process that demands that you prove that you are married out of love. I mean, take a Gallup poll tomorrow and ask how many married Americans are currently in love, and then let’s talk about that being the benchmark for a direct relative green card. I was already accustomed to this process from when we first received our marriage licenses in 2008. The Chinese government requires something more pragmatic in the form of an “Affidavit of Marriageability,” meaning proof you aren’t married somewhere else. This affidavit had to be issued by the U.S. consular services and the process was one where I had to vow an oath that I wasn’t married anywhere else to a consular officer behind a pane of bulletproof glass. Before executing the oath, the official looked at my paperwork and broke bureaucratic rancor to tell me how rare it is to administer an oath like this to someone who is young, roughly the same age as his fiancée, and had never previously been married. The need for checks and scrutiny is obviously because someone, at some point, did something so ridiculous that now there is a policy to prevent it from ever happening again. To still have that same feeling of “prove it” after 14 years of marriage and two kids, it made me feel like maybe we were taking the need for oversight a bit too far. My wife’s first green card interview had to be canceled because I was being held in a COVID detention facility in China on the day that I was meant to accompany her for the appointment. The rescheduled interview took place in March 2021. We were required to bring a binder of pictures and memorabilia to prove our marriage was real, a stack of paperwork, health physicals, letters of support, birth certificates for our kids, and anything else that we felt might be helpful. We were armed and ready. I was ready to fight to prove our love was real. The official took our binder of things-that-proved-we-liked-each-other, and the first page was a scanned copy of a Beijing language magazine with us on the cover, the second page was a front-page USA Today article, then it progressed into pages of screenshots from us on Rock Center with Brian Williams and the Marriott Bonvoy welcome video that played at every Marriott hotel in China of my wife greeting travelers and guests and welcoming them to our breweries. He didn’t get past the second page. He immediately closed the binder and said, “your green card will be in the mail in 5–7 days.” Where society in China struggles with the idea of permanently acclimating foreign guests into China and letting them affect China’s relationship with itself, American society doesn’t reject visitors or immigrants, but we do leave the process to the custody of a politicized system. Unless it affects us directly, we never actually have to check up on the process and see what it takes to currently become American. Few of us would, but all of us should, attend a random naturalization ceremony. We hear stories of “illegal” immigrants and immediately draw the comparison to “my grandparents came here LEGALLY and so should everyone else!” without truly realizing the difference between what used to count as “legal” and what the legal pathway currently requires. It is hard to believe that my grandparents would’ve tolerated the level of scrutiny that is currently used to process immigration and naturalizations when they left post–World War II Berlin to return to the Ohio region as a son of the Lake Erie watershed and his new German wife. My gut says that my grandfather would’ve gone back to Berlin, continued to run his photography studio, and my family tree would’ve simply continued in Europe. I believe in secure borders and a functioning legal immigration system. Those goals support each other. When legal pathways are confusing, inconsistent, or politicized, it creates chaos for families, employers, and communities alike. A serious country can enforce its laws while modernizing outdated processes that no longer reflect economic reality. But we are cutting off our nose to spite our face and most Americans don’t even know what is being stolen from them: New neighbors.New cultures.New contributors to the tax base.New innovations.New businesses.New capital.NEW FOOD.New. Furthermore, we don’t want to admit that some people just want to come and work seasonally, or for a couple of years, and that their goal in life isn’t to be “American.” Their goal in life is to provide for their family and take part in a foreign country as a participant, but not necessarily as a convert. Some people don’t want to be here at all. They are grateful for the sanctuary, but their world is somewhere they left behind. Some place that was stolen from them by war, famine, natural disaster, or a combination of all three. They want to work hard here, be good guests, pay their taxes, add to their communities, but eventually they want to go home. Our system should provide opportunities for all that want to experience America, as much or as little as they are able to. We need a generational reconstruction of our relationship to immigration. In 2024, I attended my wife’s naturalization ceremony. The minute my feet touched American soil in 2021 until the minute she took her oath, my fear was that she would be sent back to China and punished for thinking she could ever really get away. My last experience there wasn’t torture, but it was cruel and unusual treatment. I wanted nothing more than to have the certainty that my wife and kids would never know what that feels like. Once they called her name and she walked to the front of the federal courthouse in downtown Cleveland, I choked back the tears. To be welcoming is a beautiful thing. To be strong enough in your own society to provide a pathway for others to come and make it their own? That is truly American. Money should have no real place in politics, but unfortunately it does, and it does in a way that is disgusting. It shouldn’t make anyone feel good that corporations can donate unlimited funds to PACs and Super PACs and the average human being can’t possibly make an equitable impact without organizing a large group or network of like-minded individuals. It is, by definition, the tipping of the scales for corporations over human beings. We’ve been here before in the history of this great experiment. When party bosses ran districts and whipped support for special interests, our country experienced graft and corruption the was endemic and corrosive. Tammany Hall is the best example, but this type of whipping of votes was a part of American democracy until we, as a citizenry, decided we didn’t want it anymore. Special interests have an ability to find cracks in any system. When one side fights the battle in front of them and puts out the first demanding the most attention it is a tactical approach to confrontation. When the other side implements capital and pressure over a long period of time to find a way to give corporate interests, private equity, large ideologically driven groups and high net worth individuals an uneven playing field, that is called strategy. Money should have no real place in politics, but unfortunately it does, and when you are fighting a battle against an enemy that is playing chess while you are playing checkers, you don’t switch to tiddlywinks and call it strategy. If a political candidate in 2026 has the chance to end a 32-year streak of Republican control over a congressional seat, and they choose to raise no money on principle, that candidate will go down in the record as a paperweight. There is no place in any race in 2026 for anything other than the desire to win through the mechanisms that give you the best likelihood of success. My kids deserve more than a righteous loser who dies on the wrong hill, fighting the wrong war at the worst possible time. There are ways to reform money’s place in politics, but you can’t reform anything if you hold no power, control no majority, and just complain from the sidelines. I will, unfortunately, go to every room, dial every phone number, and ask through all new media, for donors to donate money to my campaign. I have no other choice. Dave Joyce has no desire to help the working class, he has no understanding of running a business on razor thin margins, he doesn’t understand what it’s like to no make ends meet pay check to pay check, and he certainly doesn’t know how it feels sit in a CSL Plasma chair and donate plasma to cover the cost of Christmas presents. I will have to deploy every possible effort to raise enough money to make this a national spotlight race that gives not just democrats but also independents and moderate republicans hope that we aren’t sliding into a combination of kleptocracy, oligarchy and theocracy. I will use every penny at my disposal to flip this district and give the quietly concerned and activist alike a reason to believe that are heard and represented by someone who knows what it feels like to worry more often than they dream of a better life for themselves, their kids and their loved ones. Once I’m elected, the current system must be destroyed, and campaign financing needs to be a footnote in our history. Overturning Citizen’s United is a generational task, but boxing it in and cutting its legs off can be, and will be done via the legislative branch. Passing legislation that fully recognizes the personhood of corporations and declaring that as individuals they are responsible to pay income and capital gains taxes on their profits the same way an individual would. Defining the tax rate they would owe and including an caveat that allows for a tax holiday if the corporation can show that it has not exercised its right to donate political contributions as a person can, would generate much needed tax revenue while also providing a way to prevent dark monies participation in politics. I would also mandate that if social media, new media and traditional media will pay 75% taxes on all political advertisement sales or they can donate free time equally to all candidates in exchange for a tax credit. If there was no need to spend money on advertising, political campaigns wouldn’t need to raise the money to pay for it. I would also push for legislation that requires debate in any race that has two or more political candidates. These debates would be aired as part of the tax credit rebate system across all streaming platforms, traditional media and new media platforms. Candidates should be held to their word and their word alone. Candidates should never be able to duck a debate or hide behind paid advertisements and campaign war chests. Lastly, Citizens United should be debated on the national stage and a constitutional congress must be called to allow the citizens of America to decide whether corporations should be involved in our political discourse. I do not believe that money has a place in politics. I also don’t believe that a heavy weight champion boxer should be allowed to fight a 13 year old first year boxing student. If a fight is unfair, it doesn’t matter how righteous the side is who is outmatched, they are going to lose. As a party, we need to find a way to win, and then reform and be ready to step out of the way when a better class of politician who is not mired by the stench of money comes to take our place. I would rather be known as the politicians who’s reforms made himself obsolete than the politician that refuses to raise any money and loses by 25 points in his righteousness. Key TakeawaysTechnology should serve people, not harass them. Americans did not consent to a digital environment built around manipulation, addiction, and nonstop intrusion. “Self-regulation” by tech companies is a myth. Systems designed to extract attention, data, and money cannot be trusted to police themselves. Consumers deserve real control, not the illusion of control. Turning off a microphone or enabling airplane mode should mean exactly that — no exceptions, no workarounds. Time, attention, and peace are finite resources. Endless subscriptions, robocalls, scams, and deceptive interfaces steal from Americans every single day. Being left alone is a right. A modern Consumer Bill of Rights must protect families, children, and ordinary people from predatory technology. One of the only profitable applications for technology born from large language models (LLMs) is in the gray market of annoying everyone to death. When we map our relationship with technology, very few of us feel like it has made our lives better. Instead, we see increases in nearly everything that makes us worry about the future of our society: anxiety, autism, social disorders, fraud, scams, theft, corruption, the degradation of social and civic institutions, and a level of polarization so severe that average people are expected to have opinions about when a social media troll gets murdered — or even to know the name Nick Fuentes at all. Why do any of us know his name? Nobody asked for any of this. Technologists often hold an irrational belief that their inventions are society-advancing strokes of godlike genius. Whenever I think about things no one asked for, I think of Sea-Monkeys. Sometimes things are just scams because there is money to be made. When I turn my phone to grayscale and put it in airplane mode while I sleep, it feels like I’m in control. But without a government regulator guaranteeing that airplane mode actually means airplane mode — or that switching off a microphone in an app truly disables it — that sense of control may exist only in my own mind. If there is no one standing between a man with a gun and a child with twenty dollars, can we really trust the man with the gun to take another victim instead? I do not believe that anyone actively working to extract as much value as possible from society would ever meaningfully self-regulate. There is a clear and present need for a Consumer Bill of Rights in the face of the next generation of billionaire “innovators” who are running out of oil to drill. What American Consumers DeserveAs American consumers, we should have the right to a master control that instantly disables microphone and camera access across all apps and all layers of a device’s operating system. As American consumers, we should have the right to unsubscribe from all subscriptions universally, at any time, from a centralized control point. As American consumers, we should be required to give explicit consent to any payment that is automatically set to auto-renew at checkout. As American consumers, we should have the right to claw back funds drawn by any company or subscription with which we have not interacted for more than 30 days. As American consumers, we should have the right to opt out of all unknown phone calls, except those originating from a national registry of verified government agencies, banks, and hospitals. As American consumers, we should have the right to know who is behind any phone number that calls us, whether inside or outside the jurisdiction of the United States. As American consumers, all customer service providers should be required to offer an automatic callback option, paired with a reminder text message five minutes before the call. As American consumers, we should be able to sue any social media platform that distributes deceptive content to anyone in our lives over the age of 65 under a nuisance-to-society standard. As American consumers, we should have the right to set any device our child uses to an “everything but” 56k dial-up speed, preventing modern apps, games, videos, or content from loading while allowing access to a single approved app — so a child can watch Zootopia on a snow day while parents try to work from home. As American consumers, we should have the right to demand that no child under the age of 16 can sign up for any social media, socially interactive, or LLM-related service, application, or subscription. The Right to Be Left AloneThe average American knows what it feels like to be left on hold while precious time disappears. To answer a call and realize it’s an AI bot trying to scam you. To worry about your children’s safety in a world that seems to believe you no longer have the right to shield them from it. We are told this is progress. It isn’t. We have the right to be left alone. Nobody asked for this. Key TakeawaysYour data is not a byproduct — it is a resource. Like oil, its value comes from extraction, refinement, and scale, and right now it is being taken without compensation.Big Tech profits from your inner life. Your thoughts, emotions, relationships, and behaviors are continuously studied, modeled, and sold — often without your informed consent.“Free” platforms are not free. The services you rely on are paid for with access to your identity, your attention, and your future choices.Ownership means control, transparency, and choice. You should know what data is collected, how it’s used, who profits from it, and have the right to delete or monetize it.Americans deserve to benefit from what belongs to them. A fair data economy would return value to individuals and the public, not concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few companies. Who owns your thoughts? Your culture? Your art? Your fears? Your dreams? Is it you? In 2019, Andrew Yang began having conversations with the American public about what was in store for our collective future. One of his frequent topics was why big data companies were able to abscond with our data without paying us anything for it. These ideas had already been championed by Jaron Lanier for nearly a decade, but Yang’s comparison of data to a natural resource—specifically oil—hit a nerve and deserved a deeper examination. Especially in the context of OH - 14 and our history. America’s Long History of Leaving Money on the TableFor the last 150 years, America has had a complicated relationship with resources that, once refined, generate enormous value and landslides of profit. Often, we romanticize the creation of that wealth while ignoring how it was captured. John D. Rockefeller once walked into a field of sludge in Ashtabula County after a train and carriage ride from his office in Cleveland, Ohio. He walked out of that field with the rights to remove that sludge by the wheelbarrow full—and was likely paid by the landowner to do it. Rockefeller knew the sludge was crude oil and that its value lied in how efficiently you could process it into kerosene, oils for his friends at Sherwin Williams to create paint and a byproduct called “gasoline” that he would dump into the Cuyahoga River or burn off for heat in the winter at his plants. As surface oil became less accessible, America drilled deeper—pumping millions of barrels from places as extreme as the Gulf of Mexico and shale deposits unlocked through fracking. Since 1859, the United States has extracted approximately 250 billion barrels of oil from its territory. Had America instituted a $1 per barrel excise tax (in 2026 dollars) on every barrel extracted since 1859, we would today possess a massive Sovereign Wealth Fund dedicated to the care, education, health, and long-term prosperity of the American public. In 1859, a 2026 dollar would have been worth about 2.5 cents. If those 2.5 cents collected on the roughly 2,000 barrels extracted that year were invested at a modest 7% annual return, they would be worth approximately $120 million today. In 1860, when 500,000 barrels were produced, that same model would yield $30 billion today. That is the money we left on the table. No one would have objected. Even at oil’s lowest price—49 cents per barrel during the Civil War—2.5 cents represented a 5% tax. We impose excise taxes on beer, cigarettes, whiskey, and wine, but not on remains of dinosaurs and rotten Paleolithic leaves. The American public has paid the price ever since. This robbery is often treated as a historical footnote or something that needed to occur for American progress, but it represents something deeper: a pattern of allowing private actors to pillage public wealth without accountability. Data Is the New Oil — and the Theft Is Happening AgainToday, data is the new oil, and we are living through the same extraction—only this time, the resource is us. Instead of oil being pumped from federal land, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk are extracting our history, our art, our literature, our music, and our culture—without paying for any of it. At breakneck speed, companies running Large Language Models (LLMs) are using our data to make our labor obsolete. Data used to be boring. Social media profiles and search histories were harvested to optimize advertising and return on ad spend. That era was the kerosene phase—important, but limited. Now we have reached the gasoline moment. Your data trains the models and targets you as a consumer of LLM-generated content, advertisements, and social manipulation. The system is predatory by design. Look at the terms of service you click through when downloading products from Meta, ByteDance, or Alphabet. These companies access nearly every function of your device and every aspect of your behavior. We no longer know when we are being watched, listened to, mimetically studied, or manipulated. If your child plays soccer, there’s an app. If your newborn is in daycare, there’s an app. If you track your child’s health and growth, there’s an app for that. If you talk to coworkers, family, or religious groups, there’s an app. All of that data is being gathered and sold. Each app has permission to study your anxiety triggers, emotional responses, facial expressions, tone of voice, and desire patterns. These are not passive collectors of likes and dislikes. These are active students of the human soul. Your life is profiled, rarely anonymized, and sold to anyone who wishes to manipulate it. Ownership, Autonomy, and AccountabilityOwning our data is analogous to how First Nations people viewed photography—as something that could steal the soul. We mocked that belief, until we built systems that do exactly that, minute by minute. Big data companies justify this theft with a manufactured valuation: We give you free email and social media, so we get to own your heart, soul, and spirit. That is an inequitable valuation. We should decide what our hopes and fears are worth. Companies should be required to define what a “barrel” of data is, how it is metered, and what it is worth. They should pay for it through a system negotiated in good faith, with clear purpose and accountability. When we exist online, we should retain total autonomy. Our data should be compartmentalized, tagged, traceable, and deletable. Transparency must exist around what is collected, how it is sold, and how it is monetized—because only then can data be treated as a true commodity. Carl Setzer supports tiering data into clear categories: Basic public informationInformation inferred from public recordsInformation shared through deliberate participationInformation extracted in real time through behavioral analysis The first two tiers should generate a national excise tax paid into a Sovereign Wealth Fund for the American people. All other tiers must remain under the direct control of individuals—either generating income based on consent and value or being fully expunged at the user’s discretion. The Principle Is SimpleYour data is you. And if someone is going to profit from it, the American people deserve ownership, compensation, and control. That is what it means to own your data.</blockquote><div style=\"text-align: right; font-size: 0.9em; color: #555; margin-top: 0.5em;\">— Carl Setzer's <a href=\"https://setzerforcongress.com/issues\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">campaign website</a> (May 1, 2026)</div></div>Setzer's campaign website stated the following:<div style=\"max-height:400px;overflow-y:auto;border:1px solid #ccc;padding:10px;margin:20px\"><blockquote style=\"margin:0px\"><h3>A Core Philosophy: Systems Should Work for Participants</h3>At the heart of the platform is a consistent argument: American systems—economic, political, and corporate—have drifted away from serving the people who participate in them.The campaign’s “radically moderate” framing isn’t about splitting ideological differences. It’s about identifying where systems break down in real life and fixing them in practical ways. Across every issue, the same question applies: does this system actually work for the people inside it?<h3>Healthcare: Stability First, Universal Coverage as the Goal</h3>Healthcare remains one of the most developed and clearly defined issues.The campaign’s proposal, “Medicare for the Working Class,” is framed as both a solution and a transition:<ul><li>Anyone paying into Medicare (W-2 or W-9 workers) would gain access for themselves and their families</li><li>Coverage would no longer be tied to a particular job</li><li>The system would reduce administrative overhead for hospitals driven by private insurance</li></ul>Importantly, this is positioned as a step toward universal coverage, not the final endpoint.The campaign also highlights systemic problems often overlooked:<ul><li>Private equity ownership of hospitals driving profit-first decision-making</li><li>Administrative complexity increasing costs for both providers and patients</li><li>Instability for families who lose coverage when jobs change</li></ul>The broader goal is to create a stable baseline where healthcare is reliable, affordable, and focused on patients—not shareholders. This stability is also framed as economically beneficial, freeing workers to change jobs or pursue better opportunities without risking coverage.<h3>The Economy: Fair Contribution and Lower Cost of Living</h3>Economic policy expands beyond wages alone. The campaign connects income, taxation, and cost of living into a single system.Key positions include:<ul><li>Support for higher contributions from the wealthiest Americans (“the billionaire class should pay their fair share”)</li><li>Recognition that wages alone don’t define economic well-being—costs matter just as much</li><li>A focus on reducing major household expenses like healthcare and housing</li></ul>The platform challenges a common policy blind spot: even rising wages don’t improve quality of life if essential costs are simultaneously increasing due to systemic pressures like private equity investment.Rather than setting a single national wage figure, the campaign ties the idea of a livable wage to broader economic conditions.The argument is straightforward:<ul><li>A “livable wage” depends on whether essential costs are under control</li><li>Housing inflation and healthcare costs distort what wages can actually provide</li><li>Fixing those systems allows wages to go further without constant escalation</li></ul>This connects wage policy directly to housing, healthcare, and corporate practices—making it part of a larger structural reform rather than a standalone issue.<h3>Workforce Development: The Centerpiece of the Platform</h3>Workforce development is not treated as a side issue—it is one of the campaign’s three core pillars.The campaign calls for a complete overhaul of how Americans build careers:<ul><li>A shift from one-time education to lifelong career development systems</li><li>Better alignment between training programs and real labor market needs</li><li>Support for career transitions, not just first-time job placement</li></ul>A major cultural component is also emphasized:<ul><li>Expanding respect and opportunity for skilled trades</li><li>Moving away from the “college-only” success narrative</li><li>Giving young people earlier exposure to different career paths</li></ul>The goal is a system that helps people build stable, meaningful careers, not just find jobs.<h3>Consumer Bill of Rights: Data, Privacy, and Power</h3>The campaign frames data ownership as one of the defining issues of the modern economy.The proposed Consumer Bill of Rights would:<ul><li>Give individuals control over their personal data</li><li>Simplify opt-out processes for data collection</li><li>Increase transparency in how corporations use personal information</li></ul>This is positioned as a necessary update to consumer protections in a digital world, where personal data has become a core economic asset.<h3>Government Accountability: Local Focus Over Political Theater</h3>A recurring theme—reinforced in campaign communications—is a deliberate focus on local impact over national political drama.Key commitments include:<ul><li>Regular, accessible office hours for constituents</li><li>Clear communication and transparency in decision-making</li><li>Prioritizing district outcomes over partisan positioning</li></ul>The campaign explicitly rejects “political theater,” arguing that symbolic actions without consequences rarely produce meaningful change. Instead, the focus is on measurable improvements in people’s daily lives.<h3>Campaign Integrity and Independence</h3>The campaign also directly addresses concerns about outside influence.It states clearly:<ul><li>No funding from foreign governments.</li><li>No affiliation with organizations like AIPAC among donors.</li><li>Full transparency through publicly available campaign finance reports.</li></ul>This reinforces a broader message seen across the platform: independence from concentrated power, whether political, corporate, or international.<h3>Let's Say It Again</h3>We are not taking AIPAC money, nor will we.<h3>Immigration: Practical and Workforce-Oriented</h3>Immigration policy is framed through economic and human realities rather than ideology.The approach emphasizes:<ul><li>Legal pathways aligned with labor market needs</li><li>Recognition of immigrants as contributors to the economy</li><li>A structured, humane system that avoids political extremes</li></ul>This aligns closely with the campaign’s broader workforce focus—treating immigration as part of a functioning labor system.<h3>Agriculture, Local Economies, and Supply Chains</h3>The platform highlights the importance of strengthening local and regional systems:<ul><li>Supporting small, mid-sized, locally owned farms</li><li>Building resilient local supply chains</li><li>Reducing over-reliance on fragile global networks</li></ul>These ideas connect directly to concerns about economic resilience and national stability.More detailed policies in agriculture, environmental issues, and supply chain reform are coming.<h3>Private Equity and Market Distortion</h3>A recurring underlying concern—now made explicit—is the role of private equity in distorting essential systems.The campaign points to its impact on:<ul><li>Healthcare (hospital acquisitions)</li><li>Housing costs</li><li>Broader cost-of-living increases</li></ul>Future policy expansions are expected to include limits on private equity’s role in critical sectors, reinforcing the broader theme of keeping essential systems aligned with public needs.<h3>Education: Realigning with Careers and Opportunity</h3>Education policy is closely tied to workforce reform:<ul><li>Better alignment between education and real-world job opportunities</li><li>Expanded pathways beyond traditional four-year degrees</li><li>Early exposure to career options</li><li>Establish fair funding (Current Ohio Public School Funding is a state matter)</li></ul>The emphasis is on outcomes—ensuring education leads to stable, meaningful work.<h3>Law, Accountability, and Practical Governance</h3>On legal and justice-related issues, the campaign takes a balanced stance when asked: Would you make it a main and primary goal to impeach, prosecute, and hold accountable any criminal currently holding office?<ul><li>Carl supports holding criminal activity accountable, however</li><li>There is skepticism toward purely symbolic enforcement actions</li></ul>The focus remains consistent: policies should produce real outcomes, not just headlines.<h2>The Big Picture: One System, Many Failures—One Approach to Fixing Them</h2>When viewed together, every issue connects back to a single diagnosis:systems fail when they prioritize scale, profit, or power over the people inside them.And every proposed solution follows the same logic:<ul><li>Build stability (healthcare, wages, careers)</li><li>Reduce unnecessary complexity (insurance, workforce systems)</li><li>Increase accountability (government, corporations)</li><li>Rebalance power toward individuals and workers</li></ul><h2>Final Takeaway</h2>This platform isn’t a collection of disconnected policies—it’s a systems-level critique paired with practical reforms.The campaign’s priorities—healthcare reform, workforce development, and consumer protections—act as anchors, while other issues (immigration, agriculture, economic policy, and governance) reinforce the same core idea:If people are participating in a system—working, paying in, contributing—then that system should work for them.Everything else in the platform builds from that premise.</blockquote><div style=\"text-align: right; font-size: 0.9em; color: #555; margin-top: 0.5em;\">— Carl Setzer's <a href=\"https://setzerforcongress.com/issues/f/catching-up-on-every-issue-a-complete-guide-to-the-setzer-for-co\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">campaign website</a> (April 24, 2026)</div></div></div><div style=\"text-align: center; font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0.5em;\">Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.</div></div>", "answer_text": "See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection\n\nCarl Setzer completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2026. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Setzer's responses.\nExpand all | Collapse all\nWho are you? Tell us about yourself. My name is Carl Setzer, and I was born and raised in Northeast Ohio. My father was a tool and die maker, and my mother was a social worker. I attended university in Alabama and left the United States in 2004 to teach in China, where I witnessed economic growth I had previously only read about in accounts of America’s Gilded Age. I earned a master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007. From 2007 to 2010, I worked in information security, observing the early growth of security consulting along with the emergence of fintech and artificial intelligence. In 2010, I left that industry to found what became one of China’s leading craft beer brands prior to COVID-19, gaining experience in entrepreneurship, workforce management, and international business. The COVID-19 pandemic changed my family’s life and business. My wife and I lost control of our brewery due to private equity pressures. In 2020, I was detained after returning to China with COVID-19 and spent nearly two months in government quarantine facilities, strengthening my appreciation for civil liberties and individual rights. My wife became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2024. Living abroad gave me insight into immigration, opportunity, and the importance of preserving the institutions that allow people to build better futures. Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office? My main healthcare policy is expanding Medicare for All W-2 employees. The working class deserves to have the stability and security that we already provide to Americans over the age of 65 and to our veterans. Expanding Medicare to include all W-2’d employees will cut the employer contributions and create growth capital and reinvestment dollars for small, midsized and large companies across America, while cutting the costs of employee contributions and saving American working families up to $10,000 dollars a year. It will also expand the Medicare user base by over 100,000,000 Americans driving down costs for retired Americans and increasing affordability for everyone. Americans are overdue for a Consumer Bill of Rights that protects ownership of personal data, gives families greater control over what children are exposed to, and strengthens individuals’ ability to maintain personal privacy. The right to privacy has been weakened, and I believe it is important to restore meaningful protections. I support federal action to combat scam and spam phone calls that are frequently used by predatory actors, including stronger enforcement requirements and improved consumer blocking protections. I believe personal data has real economic value. Individuals should have the right to opt out of companies selling their information or, if they choose to allow it, receive compensation when their data is sold. America is due for major reform in workforce development. High school students should have alternatives to traditional college pathways that help them quickly identify careers that fit their skills and interests. Too many Americans fall into jobs they never planned to pursue simply to earn a living. \r\n\r\nI support programs allowing students to explore multiple trades during their final two years of high school, followed by a structured post-graduation program where they gain hands-on experience across several fields. This approach would help employers recruit workers who already understand and enjoy the work while helping young adults efficiently discover stable, in-demand career paths. What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about? Workforce development, healthcare, personal rights, corporate regulations, education, business development and tax reform.\nNote: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.\nCampaign websites Setzer's campaign website stated the following: Key Takeaways from I Pay Taxes, You Pay Taxes, We All Pay Taxes American resistance to taxation is cultural, not historical. The founders opposed unaccountable power and inherited wealth, not the concept of taxes themselves. The most equitable and prosperous period in U.S. history followed high top-tier tax rates. Post–World War II taxation funded broad public goods and real economic mobility. Wealth concentration since the 1970s was engineered, not inevitable. Policy choices shifted the tax burden downward and hollowed out public services. Private equity and tax havens have extracted value from communities without accountability. Profits are privatized while costs are socialized and local economies are left behind. Taxing extreme wealth is patriotic, not punitive. Vast fortunes are only possible because of public infrastructure, labor, and state investment — and should be paid back accordingly. Taxation can be a dangerous topic in politics because the American curmudgeon position has always been that all taxes are theft, and you can’t be free if you pay taxes. I was taught from a young age that a tax shouldn’t be paid on wages, or property or inheritance. There is traditionally a very patriotic resonance to those ideologies when viewed from a purely American perspective. America is a place where we seem destined to be fine. Our history, from a mass-produced consumer perspective, sanitized and just the high points, points to an inevitability of perfection. But what does that mean when looked at through the chaos of our historical reality? We begin our story with a group of men that HATED estates, kings, lords and inheritance. There isn’t a lot of wiggle room here. No matter how many times any right-wing revisionists tries to paint the past as anything but a foreign country, meaning, whatever parallels we would hope to draw between the intent of historical figures are wildly irrelevant due to their incomprehension of how our lives even work. An example of this always comes to mind when I see a “Don’t Tread on Me” sticker on a Ford F150 Raptor. The humans that commissioned that flag as a battle cry would most likely just slap the driver of that truck in the face until he was on his knees. A man driving a mechanical horse, fueled by dead dinosaur blood, across roads made of either that very same dinosaur fossil or crushed mountains reformed with water and chemicals, to and from your home where lightning stolen from Apollo powers magical engines that either heat your house or freeze ground chicken parts in the shape of those very same dinosaurs in giant cubed and hinged boxes that you keep in the extra house you have to just store said truck, would likely be the last man that the founders would tolerate complaining about oppression. The founders merely wanted taxation that came via representation and logical, Socratic debate and compromise. To see that the fruit of their rebellion against Britain resulted in a brand new nation that could establish law and policy drawn directly from enlightenment thinkers and philosophers was indeed a huge bonus. We have, as a society, decided that the most egalitarian application of taxes is that they are derived directly from the citizenry, real estate, and commercial transactions. The greatest and most equitable application of the tax rate happened in the decades following World War II when the top ten percent paid upwards of 60% of their income towards taxes. This funded a basket of universally available social services and public goods and represents the one true period where Adam Smith’s version of capitalism was in full effect. The funds distributed from the top tax brackets to society build schools, libraries, state universities, hospitals, infrastructure and a myriad of other hard assets while also provided soft social services like health care, subsidized college education, mortgages underwriting, small business support and the expansion of American power abroad. Throughout the 80s and 90s we experienced a realignment of America’s relationship with wealth and instead of it being an abundant source for the tax base, the wealth class worked behind the scenes with several economic libertarians to pull back on the percentage of profits and income that needed to be paid in taxes from the top tiers of earners. Gone were the days of well-funded, well negotiated and robust services, instead we arrived at an engineered friction between the working class and those in need, property owners and school children and small business owners and their employees. We were caught sleeping I suppose. This transfer of wealth to create a new class of ultra-high net worth individuals has also seen services that never turned a profit before, be defunded and privatized and turned into wholly for-profit industries; university tuition, healthcare/health insurance, public parking, snow removal, ambulance services etc. I have personal experience with the bloodthirsty need for private equity to create shareholder value through generation of profit. It is a meat grinder. When a local company was saddled with providing employer funded health insurance to its workers, the assumption was that health care costs would never need to be for profit, and that that local company would, worst case scenario, be publicly traded and best-case scenario would remain privately held and rooted in the community. What is the worse that could happen? Well, private equity could raid the publicly traded and privately held corporate class to pillage value locked in equity and assets leaving a bleeding shell of a company left behind, holding all debts and liabilities, only to declare bankruptcy while the private equity company absconds with the static value of not just the corporation but the soul of Main Street and the workforce that put faith in the competent governance of the company for which they worked. To top it all off, private equity and the ultra-high net worth individuals that profit from Private Equity's ruthlessness all operate under shell corporations in the foreign countries where they park all of their profits and pay nothing in taxes. The revelations included in the Panama Papers should’ve lit Washington on fire with the need for reform and accountability. Instead, the Citizens United ruling gave these very corporations who flaunt their raiding of our communities and their lack of willingness to pay their fair share of taxes, with the designation as individuals capable of donating unlimited numbers of political donations to PACs and Super PACs. The logic here is mind bending. It seems to be an intentional middle finger to the working class, the elderly, and future generations. There seems to be a fairly interesting and gaping loophole in the logic of Citizens United, that being that if corporations are people, if they are indeed individual people, than they should be held to the same nominal tax rate as the father of three who torches metal at Cap Steel in Ashtabula. We should of course make it fair, for the first ten years of this definition of how Citizens United effects the interpretation of how we should tax the profits of corporations, it should really just be applied to those corporations that essentially declared their personhood through making donations of more than $3500 to any PAC or super PAC since Citizens United. Congratulations on your political donation, Pinocchio! Now you are now a real boy. The aggressive nature of taxation on high net worth individuals is not punitive, its patriotic. That money was made because of the infrastructure of what America provides its people. The goods, the services, the international logistic and trade routes and protections, the workforce, the technical developments and research and development capabilities of not just DARPA, but also the CIA and NSA. America invests an intense amount of human capital, tacit knowledge and support to anyone that choses to build their business here. The Small Business Administration alone is a resource that is not replicated in many other places. To pay back into that system on a fair share basis is to admit that you didn’t make your money in a vacuum and you understand the responsibility of those that benefit from the system to increase the likelihood that everyone else won’t be left behind. It doesn’t help that most people don’t know what wealth actually is, like having 5,000,000 dollars is comfortable, having 50,000,000 dollars is generational wealth, having $500,000,000 is unfathomable wealth, and having $5,000,000,000 means you likely stole it from someone by leveraging parts of the system only those with that much money can afford to navigate. For those friends that don’t understand how much money $500,000,000 is, think about your best night out in the last ten years. Think about you and 20 of your friends renting a limo bus with wet bar service for 8 hours from Mr. Limo, traveling from Mentor to Cleveland to watch Shane Gillis from a private box at Rocket Mortgage Field House, then treating your friends to a dinner at Cordelia or Morton’s with wine, cocktails and dessert, and then handing all of them five hundred dollars and heading to the Jack Casino. Now do that every night, 365 nights a year, for 75 years. You might eat through $400,000,000 if you didn’t give up by year 45, or day 16,426. Just dropping $15,000 dollars every day of your life, it’s a lot of Shane Gillis. Now, if you are Peter Thiel and you’ve cheated the Roth IRA system through some cute accounting, you’ve got $5,000,000,000 in one retirement account. To spend that you would have to take 200 people out on that same itinerary every night for 75 years. If you are Elon Musk and you have $715,000,000,000 of value to your name, that means you would have to take 2,860 people out on that same itinerary, every night, for 75 years. Maybe these guys can just pay the same nominal tax rate as the rest of us? America’s workforce isn’t failing — it’s underinvested and overlooked. Industrial communities still hold enormous potential, and revitalizing them requires strategy, confidence, and long-term investment rather than writing them off. Modern manufacturing depends on skilled workers and smart technology working together. Advanced tools like collaborative robotics can boost productivity and competitiveness while strengthening, not replacing, human labor. Education and training must directly connect to real jobs. Expanding apprenticeships, career and technical education, and partnerships between schools and local employers can better prepare workers for current and future industry needs. Rebuilding domestic production requires intentional economic policy. Investments in manufacturing facilities, regional industry strategies, and partnerships with labor and local business groups can create stable, well-paying career paths. Workforce growth must be inclusive and community-centered. Supporting displaced workers, removing employment barriers, and creating lifelong learning opportunities helps ensure economic opportunity reaches every community. Carl Setzer believes America’s workforce is not broken, it’s forgotten. For decades, communities like ours watched production jobs vanish, watched industries shrink or flee overseas, and listened as political elites declared our industrial heartland “done.” But the potential never left. It’s time to unlock it. A Vision Rooted in Reality Carl doesn’t just talk about workforce development, he’s lived it. Returning to Northeast Ohio after years abroad, he saw firsthand that manufacturing isn’t dead, it’s misunderstood. Factories, fabrication shops, and skilled trades are still vital but only if we approach them with strategy, confidence, and belief. He saw companies like Last Arrow Manufacturing outcompete low-cost foreign rivals not by cutting wages, but by doing production smarter — embracing collaborative robotics (“co-robotics”), leaning into technology that amplifies human ability, and pairing that with skilled workers trained to use it. That’s the kind of future Carl fights for: one where technology lifts workers up rather than replaces them. 1. Expand Skills and Training That Match Real Jobs Too many education systems prepare young people for “some job”… not the job that’s hiring right now. Carl will: Elevate career and technical education as a pathway equal to college. Expand apprenticeships and on-the-job training programs where workers earn while they learn. Partner schools with local manufacturers so training connects directly to hiring needs. Modern manufacturing isn’t muscle work — it’s thinking with your hands and tech in your mind. Collaborative robots and digital tools need skilled operators, not just warm bodies. Carl will push workforce systems to match those skills to opportunity, not the other way around. 2. Empower Workers in a Tech-Driven Economy Automation and advanced technologies get mislabeled as job killers — but the truth is different: when responsibly integrated, they multiply human output and efficiency. Carl saw this firsthand with welding co-robotics that made one worker 350 % more productive, reduced turnover, and created a competitive edge. Carl’s plan will: Support technology adoption programs that uplift workers instead of displacing them. Incentivize training in digital skills and robotics operation for existing and new workers. Help small and mid-sized manufacturers afford tech upgrades without sacrificing American jobs. 3. Re-shore and Grow Production Jobs That Pay Carl believes America should produce again — and profit here too. But supporting production isn’t just about tax breaks or slogans — it’s about building capability: Providing low-interest public financing for new manufacturing equipment and facilities, with repayment tied to real job creation and regional economic impact. Supporting regional industrial strategies that let communities build on their strengths instead of chasing footloose corporate investment. Partnering with local business chambers, unions, and workforce boards to ensure jobs created offer career paths and livable wages. 4. Include Every Community in the Growth Story Workforce development must uplift every American. That means: Targeted support for workers displaced by globalization or automation. Programs that address barriers to employment — like childcare, transportation, and credentialing support. Collaborations with community organizations to recruit and train historically underserved workers. 5. A Workforce Strategy That Honors the Midwest’s Identity The Midwest wasn’t built on abstract theory — it was built by skilled hands, generations of craftsmanship, and communities tied to what they made. Carl’s workforce strategy honors that history while preparing for tomorrow: Emphasizing lifelong learning and career mobility across industries. Building education-to-employment pathways that reflect the real economy — both blue collar and tech-enabled. Supporting workforce initiatives that keep talent in our communities, not shipped off to coasts or overseas. A Future Where Work Works for You Workforce development isn’t a policy niche — it’s the foundation of economic dignity. Carl Setzer’s plan doesn’t just fill jobs; it builds careers, strengthens families, and restores the promise that if you’re willing to work hard here in America, you can build a life worth living. That’s how we revive production and reclaim opportunity in the 21st century — not by returning to the past, but by making the future with American hands and American hearts. Workforce Development: Rebuilding America’s Industrial Heart America’s industrial workforce is dormant, not gone. Revitalizing manufacturing is about unlocking existing potential and restoring pride, purpose, and opportunity in communities that built the country. Career pathways must extend beyond four-year degrees. Expanding technical education, apprenticeships, and employer-linked training creates real jobs without forcing workers into unnecessary debt. A modern talent pipeline requires lifelong learning. Addressing workforce shortages means investing in upskilling, mentorship, and career ladders that help workers grow from entry-level roles to leadership. Good jobs require good wages, benefits, and respect. Workforce development succeeds only when employers are incentivized to retain workers through strong compensation, inclusive hiring, and supportive workplace cultures. Regional strengths should drive national growth. Targeted investment in America’s industrial regions can modernize infrastructure, strengthen local manufacturers, and create family-supporting jobs tied to community needs. America’s industrial capacity isn’t dead—it’s dormant. When Carl returned home after years abroad, he saw a nation with enormous potential and a workforce waiting to be unleashed. He believes that revitalizing our manufacturing base isn’t just about bringing jobs back—it’s about restoring pride, purpose, and opportunity across communities that built this country. Expand and Strengthen Career Pathways Carl will champion policies that connect education directly to careers. Too many young people are told they need a four-year degree to succeed, leaving high-growth industries like advanced manufacturing starving for talent. He supports expanding career and technical education, pre-apprenticeships, and registered apprenticeship programs that give students hands-on skills and credentials employers demand—without burdensome debt. Partnerships between community colleges, high schools, and employers will be central to his strategy, ensuring that training leads to real jobs. Build a 21st-Century Talent Pipeline Workforce shortages in metal fabrication and production are real: millions of manufacturing jobs risk going unfilled due to demographic shifts, skills gaps, and an aging workforce. Carl will work with industry and educators to create talent pipelines that start early, retain workers, and promote lifelong learning. That means investing in upskilling programs, mentorship networks, and career ladders so workers can grow from entry-level roles to leadership and advanced technical positions. Attract and Retain Workers in Every Community Carl knows that good jobs must come with good wages, benefits, and workplace cultures that value people. Workforce development isn’t just about training—it’s about keeping talent here. He will push for incentives that help employers raise compensation, offer robust benefits, and build environments where workers feel respected and supported. This also includes reducing barriers to employment for historically underrepresented communities so that opportunity is truly inclusive and broad-based. Leverage Local Strengths for Regional Growth America’s industrial core—from Ohio to the Great Lakes and beyond—has a legacy of productivity and innovation. Carl will support targeted federal and state investments that help regions leverage their manufacturing strengths, modernize infrastructure, and attract companies offering family-supporting jobs. This includes expanding access to workforce development funds, incentivizing employers to train locally, and helping small and medium manufacturers compete in global markets. Connect Policy to People’s Lives For Carl, workforce development isn’t a buzzword—it’s the foundation of economic dignity. Growing production capacity isn’t just about outputs on a spreadsheet; it’s about ensuring every American can find meaningful work that supports their family and community. Carl will use his experience in industry, manufacturing leadership, and global economic systems to push real solutions—because when we rebuild the workforce, we rebuild our future. Five Key Takeaways 1. Carl's Personal Experience Shows the Full Spectrum of Education Models The author’s journey through public school, private religious school, homeschooling, and international education provides a rare, firsthand comparison of multiple educational systems. 2. Public Education Often Provides Critical Support Beyond Academics Services like speech therapy, community stability, and emotional development demonstrate how public schools frequently serve as support systems for children and families. 3. Ideological Fear Can Sometimes Drive Educational Decisions More Than Student Needs The narrative illustrates how religious and political beliefs can shape educational choices in ways that may unintentionally isolate or disadvantage children. 4. Homeschooling and Private Education Are Not Automatically Superior Alternatives While they can work for some families, these systems can also create isolation, uneven academic outcomes, and reduced social development when implemented for ideological or separatist reasons. 5. American Public Education Remains Exceptionally Accessible Compared to Many Global Systems The author’s experience abroad highlights how uniquely open and available U.S. public education is, particularly when compared to costly private international schooling and bureaucratic or corrupt enrollment systems in other countries. My education was a priority for my parents, but not in the way most of you are thinking. As a kid, I attended Lathrop Elementary until the third grade, except for a three-month stint at Cedarbrook Elementary as part of an above-and-beyond gifted kids’ program. I remember walking into the playground on the first day of school at Lathrop, where each class lined up waiting for the doors to open. I had my backpack, lunch, and my crayons. Waiting to be let into what seemed like the largest building I had ever seen was scary, but everyone was excited, and the teachers’ kindness was infectious. My parents taught me something very different about public education. It was a tool that the state used to brainwash kids. I was never fully trusting of it. The proudest I ever remember my mother being of me as a child was when I refused to dress up for Halloween. When my teacher asked me why, I said, “Because if I’m dressed up and Jesus comes back, he won’t recognize me.” My mother would tell that story to girlfriends I brought home from college fifteen years later. I don’t think it ever dawned on her that if Jesus loved me, he would probably recognize me if I was dressed up like ThunderCat… At Lathrop, I remember the school recommending that I see a speech therapist because I had a slight lisp and couldn’t pronounce my R’s, but in the most adorable way. My mother said that we wouldn’t be able to afford that kind of therapy, and the principal responded that it was provided to all students and wouldn’t cost us anything. I would sit with that speech therapist twice a week, and she would help me not only correct my speech, but also make me feel like there was no reason to be ashamed of being different and to find my own voice. My sister finished the fifth grade at Lathrop and then transferred to Our Shepherd School at Zion Lutheran. My parents’ faith in public services continued to deteriorate as the years went by until they made the decision to take me out of the public system and transfer me to the same private Christian school as my sister. After my sister finished the 7th grade at Our Shepherd, she was transferred to Willo-Hill Christian School in Kirtland. I followed the next year. We were three years apart, and the focus was usually to use my sister as the guinea pig and then drag me along. Not a super awesome plan, but it also meant that I wouldn’t get the experience of graduating from anything with my peers until I was in college. My time at Willo-Hill was sixth grade through the first month of my tenth-grade year. It coincided with my parents’ radicalization and our membership at Shiloh Christian Church. Our church leadership challenged all of us to be combative, argumentative, and overly boisterous about “true Christianity” and “biblical standards.” I would become more and more of a problem for school administrators and would eventually be asked to leave after a series of embarrassing expressions of “fundamentalism.” The only option left in the minds of my parents was to homeschool me. Not the “cool” homeschooling of Instagram or liberal circles where homeschooling is becoming a trend. I was homeschooled for good old separatist reasons. I was never lonelier in my life. I worked at an industrial warehouse three days a week and filled out workbooks and took tests by myself on the other two days of the week. I would eventually be mentored by another “Friend of Shiloh” who was a lawyer and had a practice in Geneva. Truth be told, I don’t remember learning anything for those three years. I just remember being sad and alone while my parents proclaimed they homeschooled their gifted son as a badge of honor. As a child, I experienced every aspect of education. I was just a kid looking for a safe place to be a child. I wasn’t abused. Some people hear that I was homeschooled, and they don’t understand what that means because they weren’t homeschooled. They just heard it must be better because no one tells them that, in most cases, it isn’t. It doesn’t develop worse kids or better kids, but it does produce a lot of kids who would never homeschool their kids. All the kids that I was homeschooled in parallel with are now professional childcare providers, public school teachers, or education theorists who spent their lives being what they didn’t have when they were homeschooled; someone who could laugh, from experience, at how hilarious it is to be homeschooled out of fear. Parochial or Christian education was not robust enough in the first quarter of the twentieth century to provide enough access to education to America’s youth, and as a result, churches and private religious groups lobbied for the government to provide robust public education for the growing and far-flung American population. The result was, and is, a modern marvel: access to standardized education in facilities maintained and managed by professionals that provide care, education, safety, food, health care, and a place to be a kid for anyone who needs it. Sometimes, when you have a world-class institution that is the envy of every developing nation, the population that directly benefits from the services provided by that institution takes it for granted and decides that it’s better to slowly break it while claiming it’s inherently flawed and that’s why it’s not working, and then replace it with an alternative that is either private for profit or religious non-profit. My son attended international schools in both Taipei, Taiwan, and Beijing, China. I was not going to put any ideologies between my son and a proper education. He attended the Taipei American School in Taipei for kindergarten and first grade. TAS is an American public school in its bones, funded by the State Department and tuition. It’s so American to the point where, when it was constructed, American-standard cinder blocks were imported and used. Anyone who has spent time abroad knows that painted cinder blocks are a very American thing. It was the first time my wife had even seen a building made with the heart and soul of American brutalist material. He transferred to the Western Academy of Beijing his second-grade year. WAB is 100% a private, for-profit business. It cost us $47,000 United States dollars a year, paid up front, to send our son there. TAS was about $19,000, paid every semester. That’s the difference between what education costs the top 10% and what education costs when there are some government subsidies. We left China halfway through my son’s third-grade year due to COVID; no refund was issued for the money we paid up front. We walked into the administrator’s office at Wickliffe Public Schools, and all we had to do was sign up. Even public education in China is not free. There are fees for everything and gifts to schools and bribes to principals, and even then your child isn’t guaranteed a place. In America, you just walk in, show proof of residency, and fill out some forms. Our system isn’t broken. Key Takeaways: 1. American Public Education Is Imperfect but Fundamentally Strong Public schools reflect the complexity of American democracy. It's messy, diverse, and constantly evolving, but they remain one of the most successful and accessible public institutions in the world and serve as essential community infrastructure. 2. Public Schools Are Often the Primary Safety Net for Children and Communities Beyond academics, public education provides stability, nutrition, health support, social development, and safe environments. In many communities, especially highlighted during COVID, schools function as the central pillar holding families and neighborhoods together. 3. The Real Crisis in Public Education Is How It Is Funded, Not Its Existence Reliance on property taxes creates instability, inequality, and political conflict by tying educational opportunity to real estate wealth rather than shared societal investment in children. 4. Education Should Be Treated as a Shared Public Good That Benefits Everyone An educated America strengthens the economy, democracy, public health, and social mobility. Because everyone benefits, funding schools should be broadly shared across society rather than disproportionately placed on homeowners or local tax bases. 5. Children Should Not Bear the Consequences of Adult Ideology, Wealth Gaps, or Political Battles Debates over education policy, privatization, and funding often prioritize adult beliefs and economic interests over student well-being. Investing heavily and consistently in public education is ultimately an investment in the nation’s long-term prosperity and stability. American public education isn’t perfect. Much like America itself, it’s the result of thousands of different ideologies and worldviews all trying to exist with one another simultaneously, while the vast majority resist domination by any single ideology or worldview. American public education is not, however, broken. It is far from broken. It could improve. It could be more cherished, and it could be a stronger pillar for communities, but as we learned during COVID, in some communities, it is the ONLY pillar that exists. Public education should be overfunded. We shouldn’t politicize our kids. The alternative isn’t better. Few places around the world have a better system. The best of what we have should be the lowest common denominator of our goals for public education. Our children deserve for us to realize they are our largest natural resource, and they deserve more, not less, than that with which we were raised. We punish them for our beliefs. For our party affiliations. For not being rich. Or having any aspect of their growth, body, or mind that aren’t “normal” enough. One of the original sins of public education is how it is funded. The property tax as a tax basket for public education has never made any sense to me. The property tax, as I have written here, is the reason why we have a middle class that can own their own homes. It is one of the most American things we’ve ever done as a nation. But property shouldn’t be the source of funds for education. It’s polarizing and punitive. The benefits of an educated population benefit all aspects of our society, but pegging it to the property of retirees, working families, or those that don’t have children at all seems to create an intentional tension so public education will never truly be stable. Instead of 60% of public school funding coming from property tax and the remainder coming from a combination of revenue generated by the lottery and a small percentage that comes from the sales tax, we could realign the tax allocated from sales tax to be the basket for public schools and the taxes generated by property tax to pay for anything that protects those properties and the residents in that area, and the development of property for the use of residents for infrastructure, parks, and real estate development projects that will increase the tax base of an area. Maybe schools should be funded passively by funds collected through the commercial activity of ALL people in the area, and property developers should have to go door to door and ask retirees to increase their property tax so we can build a new football stadium we don’t need and no one asked for? Maybe our kids deserve to have access to fully funded schools paid for by sales tax, and Jimmy Haslam can ask your neighbor to pay more so he can build his cathedral in Brook Park? Environmental progress should be driven by innovation, efficiency, and modern infrastructure. Environmental policy must connect to real-world concerns to win public support. Industry and agriculture can be part of the solution with the right incentives and modernization. America needs realistic energy solutions to meet future demand. Economic growth and environmental stewardship are not opposites. I have an irrational love for the geographic area that encompasses the Ohio 14th Congressional District. When I was a kid, I loved this area in the way that a child does. It was familiar, it was all I knew, and it was a place where the people who loved me lived. My connection to the region changed when my parents put me in a religious community that taught me to fear and hate everything that wasn’t a part of its own ideology. Things like “man’s dominion over the earth” were used from the pulpit to justify treating the region with an almost irresponsible contempt. The recently implemented “E-Check” regulations infuriated my father, as he viewed the EPA as a subsidiary of Satan himself. It wasn’t until I left the region, traveling first to the American South, then Europe, and ultimately Asia, that my personal views and connection to the environment started to become clear. While brewing in China, I learned the importance of next-generation technology that implemented efficiencies in terms of energy use and carbon emissions. For every one part of beer, you use four to five parts water if you are using efficient means of production, but if you are using outdated equipment and methods, those ratios could go as high as one to eight. I studied with some of the best thinkers in the space during my time at the Technical and Scientific Congress at the Technical University of Berlin. I saw how Europe answered the question of environmental protection while also fostering and sustaining business and commercial growth. I took those lessons back to China after every congress and tried to implement what would make my little part of my community that much greener and that much more efficient. I also, in a stubborn way, designed our production facility to shatter international standards of water usage, carbon emissions, and wastewater treatment. I did these things because they were the right thing to do, but also because I had the privilege of building exactly what I wanted to build, not just a copy of some older methodology. Fixed assets and equipment degradation are a huge issue in industrial production and commercial manufacturing. Having equipment replacement grants and efficiency standards that incentivize the largest users of energy to upgrade their means of production and leapfrog the last generation of process engineering, allowing industry to live in the future without over-leveraging their capital position, is one small way to reduce the production of greenhouse gases, efficiently consume energy, and consume, treat, and return water to the water table. We can do that through targeted tax incentives, equipment replacement grants, and efficiency standards that reward better outcomes. The issue the Democratic Party struggles with when it comes to the environment is that we tend to pillarize it as a stand-alone issue that needs to be protected and preserved without acknowledging our own complex existence within it. I call this the Greta Thunberg effect. The feeling of a young lady who comes from easily one of the most privileged places on the planet, whose education and existence were bolstered by robust buffer funds that traditionally have been vested by the automotive industry and the massive oil refining concerns that make Sweden one of the largest net exporters of petroleum to Northern Europe and Scandinavia, yelling at the rest of the world to use less energy was a clear example of how environmental messaging can become disconnected from the realities people are living in for much of the world. It was also catnip for the calcified right to point at how liberals want America to have less, not more. The Thunberg effect has rippled through the efficacy of environmental policies for the last ten years. It’s why most liberal candidates don’t even bother having an environmental policy anymore. Consultants and advisors tell you to answer environmental questions and then pivot to something else as quickly as possible. We suffer from optics and messaging, not a lack of education or facts. Talking to American conservatives about the environment isn’t easy, but it is doable. We only need to talk about the fishery community’s warnings over the last ten years, that it is harder and harder to harvest fish in waters traditionally cold enough to facilitate the repopulation and density needed to satisfy markets with supply that meets demand. Yes, warming seas will eventually raise sea levels, but your Republican neighbors take cruises that they pay for with their Costco points to warmer waters, and it doesn’t seem that islands are losing beaches or that coastlines in Puerto Vallarta are dealing with encroachment. As a metric, rising sea levels are for the hardest of hard-line environmental watchers and give liberals the position of righteousness, but they aren’t quantifiable enough to reach your more moderate friends. Fishermen ringing the warning bell, however, is the perfect conversation topic with your MAGA relatives because it reaches deep into that well of “common sense” that appeals to your family members who love rewatching Yellowstone. Watching any Taylor Sheridan serialized dramas will give you a good idea of what matters most to your conservative friends. Brazil and Argentina annihilating rainforest to create pastureland to raise beef for American and Asian consumers has been a fear from the American beef and cattle industry for years. A robust farm bill, with incentives to improve livestock and land on generational ranch lands, creates competitiveness with international markets while also slowing the clearing of rainforest lands, because market demands don’t support the destruction of rainforest canopy for cattle production. Sometimes improving the industry that already supports American communities with robust, agriculturally minded policies gives the American farmer the ability to see the benefits of improving land management, trapping phosphorus, reducing algae blooms in our watersheds, and diversifying micro and macro biological systems, which helps our ecosystems regenerate themselves. This is what that looks like in practice: a modernized farm bill that rewards soil health, supports land improvements, and keeps American farmers competitive without sacrificing the land they depend on. In any environmentally minded approach to our future, we should look at the full context of what is causing the bad results, who the bad actors are, and who is responsible for preventing regulations that can solve the problem and create a clearer future, one that balances environmental policy, the rights of the environment to be clean and healthy, and the needs of a growing economy and population. Some approaches focus on immediate, sweeping change without fully accounting for the infrastructure and economic realities we face today. They don’t want to hear about moderation or conservancy, or letting nature heal itself. They want the end of the thing that thumbs its nose at their data, and they want to burn the petroleum industry and its downstream ecosystem to the ground without acknowledging America’s inability to produce power for an all-electric consumer base due to infrastructure and power generation limitations. Yes, solar is a wonderful idea, but the production of solar panels is problematic, the state of solid-state batteries is problematic, and the ability to do a hard reset to an all-EV future isn’t possible under our current infrastructural limitations. Chinese EVs are not the answer. BYD dumps entire shiploads of EVs into markets like Thailand and Mexico on what is called “consignment,” a system in which China doesn’t get any payment for those cars until each one is sold individually at a dealership. That is not the sign of a roadmap to a solution; that is the sign that the Chinese economy is in such a weak position that party secretaries would prefer keeping the factory operating in a debt position and dumping finished products into developing markets, hoping for pull-through sales, rather than admitting there is no demand for the EVs in China or the greater non-U.S. market and shuttering the plant and firing the workers. We’re playing an economic cup game with the future of consumer transportation. The solution to almost all of the above issues would be a prolific construction of new nuclear power plants across America, with robust regulations for what to do with nuclear waste once it is removed from the power plant. Nuclear power is a scientific miracle that, with next-generation technological improvements and more aesthetically pleasing architectural approaches, can meet the needs of America’s future power consumption requirements without making every American landscape look like the title credits of The Simpsons. If we are serious about meeting future energy demand, this is the direction we have to go. That means investing in next-generation nuclear, setting clear standards for waste management, and building the workforce to support it. As opposed to echoing the Thunberg effect, we can take real, pragmatic steps toward a better future. Small changes in consumer behavior, when scaled across millions of households, can produce measurable reductions in energy use, but they only work when paired with structural improvements in how we produce and deliver energy. We could demand a revolution in consumer packaged goods (CPG) packaging requirements. There are layers and layers of useless packaging materials per unit of any given item when bought at a grocery store, pharmacy, or wholesale club, and even more packaging when items are shipped via online delivery services and door-to-door delivery apps. If the U.S. government provided a tax credit for non-plug-in hybrids and next-generation battery-driven, petroleum engine-supported hybrid technologies, we would be able to transition to more nuclear power at a rate that allows us to phase out excess petroleum infrastructure without over-stressing the ramp-up of full EV adoption or the wind-down of gasoline-powered vehicles. There are ways to be stewards of our environment without being the reason the world ends even sooner because we’re incapable of selling our society on the need for a slightly different approach to our consumer behaviors. We can’t find the fish, and our hamburgers are killing the rainforest canopy. We can actually have our hamburger and eat it too, we just need to start thinking about how we improve in a way that makes everyone’s lives better and doesn’t create a reality where well-fed, overeducated humans are telling the rest of the world that the party is over and they need to starve and live with less. This isn’t about choosing between the environment and the economy. It’s about finally building a system where they work together. Key Takeaways: Employer-tied health care is a structural failure. Tying access to care to your job leaves workers vulnerable, limits mobility, and creates unnecessary financial and emotional risk. Medicare already works—and can be expanded without reinventing the system. The proposal builds on an existing, familiar program funded through payroll taxes, rather than replacing the entire health care system. Expanding Medicare to W-2 workers increases freedom and economic mobility. Workers could change jobs, go part-time, or start businesses without fear of losing health coverage. A larger, younger risk pool would strengthen Medicare and lower costs. Including working-age, healthier Americans would improve system stability and reduce overall health care spending. This is a practical reform, not a radical overhaul. The approach frames universal access as a common-sense correction—preserving quality and choice while removing job-based gatekeeping. Carl Setzer believes America’s health care system should serve people — not profits, paperwork, or job status. Today, access to quality health care for most Americans is tied to employment. If you work for a company, your coverage usually comes through a private plan your employer provides or helps pay for. But that system leaves too many people vulnerable — stuck in jobs they don’t want, without real choice, and facing financial risk if anything goes wrong. Why Medicare for all W-2 Employees? Carl’s time abroad and his personal experiences with health care systems — both where care was commodified and where care was denied — made one thing clear: the system we have is broken by design. Rather than forcing people to earn health care through an employer, he argues that health care should be universally accessible on the same foundation that already helps millions of Americans in retirement. Medicare today is funded by a payroll tax system in which workers and employers each contribute a portion of wages — 1.45 % each on W-2 earnings — into the federal program that supports hospital and inpatient care for older Americans. Carl’s vision is not to rip up what works, but to expand it: extend the dignity and predictability of Medicare coverage to every working person on a W-2, not just those over 65. What It Would Mean for Workers Health care no longer tied to a job: You wouldn’t lose care just because you change employers, go part-time, or start a small business. More security for families: Without premiums, deductibles, and unpredictable private insurance costs, workers could plan their lives with certainty — from raising kids to saving for retirement. Younger, healthier risk pool: Bringing healthier, working-age Americans into Medicare would lower overall costs and strengthen the system. Freedom and mobility: Workers could change jobs or start businesses without healthcare fear holding them back — a real boost for a dynamic economy. A Common-Sense Step, Not a Radical Break Carl doesn’t see universal health access as theft of private choice or a wholesale desertion of what works in American health care. He views it as correcting a structural flaw: health care should not be a privilege you earn by having the right employer. In Carl’s own words: “Expanding Medicare to all W-2 employees would see the overall cost of healthcare in America plummet. The anxiety of the American worker would dissipate just that much more.” By elevating a proven public program and removing incentives that lock health care to job status, this approach preserves quality care while expanding access and fairness across the workforce. The topic of immigration has become a touchpoint for violence, oppression, and a loss of faith in the American experiment. As with other inflammatory issues, we tend to either patronize the focus of the tension, or we infantilize it. Instead of making grandiose, yet somewhat empty proclamations about our horror at the current situation with ICE due to our own ancestry descending from immigrants (with the exception of our Iroquoian and Shawnee brothers and sisters, in Northeast Ohio, we all do, you aren’t special) or abolishing entire government agencies that, up until they were weaponized, served a benign and needed duty of making sure people who had overstayed their visas were processed and deported (some people do have to go eventually, no country ignores this problem), I would rather err on the side of understanding the humanity behind these tensions. We need to try and understand what it feels like to be other-ized, under-documented, and targeted for political ends. Through this series of essays, I’d like to highlight three aspects of immigration and posit a pragmatic and American solution to our very unnecessary problem of making humans “illegal.” Firstly, I’m going to tell a story that represents the pathway that a Northeast Ohioan has followed in her attempts to find legal status in a system that is designed to keep you in a form of purgatory. As you read about this, think about those in your own life, community, workplace, church, or ecosystem who have faced similar challenges. Realize this is a human problem that deserves a human response. It is intensely un-American to pretend a human being doesn’t exist or to set a bar so high that no American would be able to pass it themselves. When a person starts on the long path of having the right to work, the right to pay payroll taxes, and the very American right to make mistakes without the risk of deportation, they take on a challenge that is measured in decades, not months. While you read this series of posts, ask yourself, “would I be able to endure such a gauntlet if our positions were reversed tomorrow?” When you tell yourself the answer in your heart, remember the basic principle of all religions and philosophies, “don’t be a problem when you can be the answer instead.” Or more simply... Treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated. When Elena, Leni to her friends, arrived in the Cleveland area, her father was an employee of a company that offered a three-year visa program for sponsored foreign employees. Her dad transferred to America a year ahead of time and prepared the way for bringing his daughter and sister to Cleveland. She arrived when she was twelve years old and was enrolled in a local public high school with a strong tax base and solid services. Her mother had passed away when she was young, and her aunt came with her as a quasi-caregiver and bridge to her culture and identity. Her aunt had her own student visa for a graduate program in international relations that gave her the time to spend mornings and evenings with her niece in their new American home. The number of migrant parents who will complain about how quickly their children become “Americanized” is a testament to the strength of our collective culture and society. It’s also a direct contradiction to the xenophobia-driven fear of “cultural dilution” or when too many people from a specific culture will eventually change the culture of America. Fortunately, or unfortunately, American culture tends to be the dominant gene in the DNA of the world tapestry. A couple years into her residency in Northeast Ohio, Leni’s father uncovered some irregularities in his employer’s bookkeeping and brought it to the attention of his direct management. This resulted in his final contract not being renewed, and ultimately the loss of his job and legal status in America. Her dad, being a passionate student of their own heritage, applied for a master’s degree in international political science at the same school his sister was attending. This gave Leni the ability to stay in the area and continue her education. He was given the chance to study at a partner school in the region for a semester as part of an exchange program and Leni’s aunt, who had begun her PhD so she could stay in the area as well, became her sole caregiver. Her aunt was living with a new boyfriend at the time and Leni would stay at that apartment and then commute to her high school even though it was out of the district by a couple miles. During that time the boyfriend became aggressive with Leni which resulted in the ending of that relationship for her aunt, but also the first feeling of complete vulnerability as an under-documented resident of Ohio. The boyfriend knew that Leni’s father’s situation was precarious as student visas don’t necessarily give you and your family the same security as employer-backed work visas, being easier to revoke or be canceled. The boyfriend was also a county government employee and knew that Leni was attending school out of the district of her place of residence, and he used both vulnerabilities as cover for his predation. There are of course non-profit organizations and government channels that under-documented residents can use, but none of them are watertight and any link in that chain can report a case to ICE through anonymous platforms. This all occurred during Trump’s first time in office and the immigrant community was very sensitive to using any reporting mechanisms as any of them, in their pursuit of justice, could lead to arrest and deportation. In our current climate, some remember Trump’s first administration as the good old days because it was a bureaucratic anxiety or a back-channel anxiety, but in our current situation Trump is saying the quiet part out loud and their intentions are quite clearly to bend and break laws and social norms in the pursuit of the unachievable goal of a “migrant-less US economy.” This was the first time that Leni really considered just moving home. To be left with no recourse other than to expose yourself to deportation after you’ve been the victim of rape didn’t feel like much of a choice at all. She decided, however, to do what was right not only for her but for the potential future victims of her rapist and she filed charges that resulted in an arrest. During that time her father’s student visa expired after he graduated from his program. She was also about to graduate from high school, but with no legal status, and after just filing assault charges, she assumed that his arrest meant she had done her civic duty to herself and her community and it was safe for her to consider moving back to her home country. A place she hadn’t seen in over seven years, a place where she might not fit in anymore, and a place that might reject her for the sin of becoming too foreign. She wrestled with this issue and decided to inform the arresting detectives that she intended to leave the country and return to her home country. Their response would determine the next four years of Leni’s life. “If you leave, we can’t guarantee that he will face a conviction, and he might be released with time served due to not having an accuser to face.” Her heart sank and she realized that she would need to find a pathway to stay in America legally while the case was adjudicated, and she saw justice finally prevail. The United States has a visa designation, specifically for people who have been the victim of a felony and are facing participation in a court proceeding. There are also funds available from many countries that have citizens residing in America in these gray-area-type statuses to finance legal help in the case that they are taken advantage of while being under-documented in America. The fact that there is a specific U.S. visa designation and legal aid provided by the embassies and consulates for foreign nationals residing in America says enough about the calcification of the problem of under-documented residents and the vulnerability they face when left exposed to predators and usurious conditions. Leni applied for her visa and received a notice saying that her application was received and that it will be processed in the order that it was received. No estimated time of processing was given because the resources provided for processing these visas change with every presidential administration. We have politicized being an immigrant in this country to the point where a simple review of paperwork and processing of next-stage authorizations, mind you, not the visa itself, just the step where they tell you to continue to wait or give a “temporary right to work and tax identification number,” would take almost four years. FOUR YEARS to wait for the documentation that would allow you to support yourself financially while you wait to hear about your visa issuance’s final ruling. Four years of vulnerability. Four years of anxiety. Four years of working at the whim of the morality of small business owners. Four years of not having the ability to drive yourself anywhere. Four years of looking over your shoulder for the friends or family of your rapist to give you more trouble for sticking up for yourself. Four years of walking a perfect line to stay out of the crosshairs of suspicion. Four years of being a partial human. Four years of being Un-American… My wife and I were one of Leni’s first calls when she got her Temporary Work Authorization, but the joy was muted by the reality of a second Trump administration that was planning to take the guardrails off of the intersection between enforcement and fascistic thuggery. Her hope was palpable, but the concern in her voice was unmistakable. I’ve never understood how we can view ourselves as a nation of immigrants but so few of us understand the requirements to become American in 2026. This isn’t “my grandpa married my grandma and they came to America and signed a book” style immigration. We’ve lost ourselves in the mindless need to enforce rules to which so very few of us were ever subjected. We want this to be the rule of law, but no one is responsible to explain the point, the timeline, the process, or the need for a system that exposes our neighbors and guests to crime, anxiety, and a general loss of themselves. We can do better. As Americans, we must do better. People notice that I’m running for office for personal reasons, just as much as I am to advocate for others, build stronger communities, and remind America that we can and are fundamentally better than our current political climate. This essay will be more on the personal side, and I hope it is not misconstrued as misunderstood privilege or virtue signaling. For 16 years I was an immigrant in Asia. The word “expat” is antiquated and does not describe my life in Asia at all. I was never given a large corporate compensation package. I never lived in a Stepford Wives-esque community of foreignness protected by security guards and gates and fencing. I moved to China in 2004 and worked in an isolated industrial town in the mountains of Central China. To aid in their economic development, China needed English teachers and “foreign area experts” to work for universities and large state-owned companies. My life for that first year was teaching English poorly, basketball, and eating. I learned very quickly that China’s growth was on par with the industrial expansion that built places like Pittsburgh and Cleveland. I knew I would need to create more value in myself to fully utilize the opportunity of being in a place like that, at a time like that. I worked on my education and learned Mandarin to a level of competency that I was able to land a job in information security, as an analyst at first, but within three years I was the general manager for my employer’s China office and director of their East Asia operation. To truly live in a place, you need to figure out how to turn on your utilities, open bank accounts, figure out transportation, learn the language, contribute to the tax base, etc. A lot of people misunderstand “staying” in a country for a while as being the same as “living” in a country. I’d say that’s the easiest differentiation between an expatriate-style lifestyle and that of an immigrant. Expats get taken care of by a larger organization, so they don’t feel inconvenienced. Immigrants must take care of themselves and strive for some sort of convenience. You can’t hide as a 6’3”, blonde haired, blued eyed foreigner in China. It becomes clear, very quickly, that you will forever be a guest in a place that cannot comprehend allowing the ‘Other’ to become a part of the culture. My journey in China would only expose how American I really was, and how proud I was of that, as I also tried to understand the parts of China that allowed themselves to be understood. I studied the language academically via scholarships to the best language schools in Taiwan. I traveled to as many places as I could, from the badlands of Karamay, to the archipelagoes of Fujian, the mountains of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Hunan, and the deserts of Inner Mongolia and Gansu province. I ate everything, drank everything, traveled on every speed of train, bus, horse-cart, and vehicles that would find a welcome place in a Mad Max chase scene. I was welcomed, loved, hated, spat upon, and rejected, sometimes all in the same day. The one thing that stayed true is I would never have the luxury of being ignored. Your presence in mainland China, especially in the mid-00s but still true to this day, was never unnoticed. Someone once described being Other in China as being either a god or a dog, something to be worshipped or something to be fed scraps and kept outside. It opened my eyes to what it feels like to be truly foreign in a new place. To allow others to become a part of your society is a truly enlightened thing. A confident society does not fear extending opportunity, it is strengthened by it. Necessity was what allowed me to live in a place like China. It wasn’t a societal principle to welcome others; it was an economic need that started with needing English speakers and ended with needing foreign direct investment and tax revenue generation. After my wife and I got married we decided to really throw ourselves into being the change we wanted to see in our environment. We opened our first nano-brewery in 2010, meeting with overwhelming support. We opened our second location in 2013, our third in 2015, and closed our Series A investment in 2017. It was a wild ride; we weren’t ever accepted by the organism that is a single-party governance system, but the Chinese consumer loved what we did, and being able to express a uniquely American consumer trend to an economy that was poised to become the largest in the world, if not for the pandemic, was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Through all that stimulation and accomplishment, I was never, not for one day, accepted or assumed a natural part of the environment by everyone I met. Some people assumed I must’ve just arrived and welcomed me to China (after 16 years you could imagine this goes from annoying, to infuriating, and then to just being amusing), some thought I was lost, or must only be there as a tourist. Almost everyone had some sort of assumption, and it was never “you should be here,” it was always needing their approval or permission. Everyone had to have some sort of agency over my existence in “their” country. Other than my wife, the only other human being that never questioned my presence in China was her grandfather. Liu Shao Zeng and I met in 2008 when I stayed with him while visiting his granddaughter. This was before we fell in love and before I was anything other than some guy, a friend from college. As I was falling head over heels for his oldest son’s only child, Grandpa never second-guessed me or treated me like I had to earn his approval. When we got our marriage licenses, he held his wife’s hand as the two acted as our required witnesses. At our wedding he wore the Cleveland Indians hat I bought him for Chinese New Year the year before. He laughed when I pointed it out and said, “it’s a pretty nice hat.” When our son was born, he was there to name his great-grandson after the light rain that fell that morning. When I installed any of our breweries he was there, with his little stool and radio, to “make sure” everything went according to plan. When there was trouble, he was there. When there were celebrations, he would sit quietly in the corner and be satisfied that his great-granddaughter would never know the starvation and suffering that his generation did. When he was diagnosed with leukemia, I would sit by his bedside and listen to him tell stories about driving industrial trucks in the 70s and selling dried fish in the 80s. Whenever I would enter a new hospital room for the first time, his roommates would always tense up and wonder what would bring me to their room. I would bring Grandpa his lunch or some snacks or medication and we would talk for a couple minutes, and I would leave as quickly as I appeared, knowing the next time I saw Grandpa he would tell me about what was said the minute I left the room. “Who was that?” “Where is he from?” “How did he learn our language?” The second time I came they would know my entire life story and welcome me to sit at their table and play cards. Without Grandpa, I would’ve just been a threat. When we lost him to his second bout of cancer, I knew my time in China was over. There would never be another old man to tell people to accept me for who I was. Once he was gone, the moments where I felt comfortable with him by my side became just memories. Coming back to an America divided, after being a guest, immigrant, and outsider in China, wasn’t the easiest transition. I hadn’t enjoyed the privilege of being “from” the place that I was living in for a very long time. When we left China, we didn’t flee, but we did run. My wife was pregnant with our second child and the Beijing city government determined that prenatal services were not essential. That was the last in a long line of “we should probably leave for a while” thoughts. The reality of China is kind of lost on most people who visit, because it’s not necessary to understand it as a tourist or short-term observer. Few policies gave me more anxiety during my time in China as a husband than the law that said that if you had a physical altercation with a Chinese citizen, as a foreigner, you would be arrested and deported immediately. We watched this happen to several acquaintances who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.It didn’t matter how long they had lived there, or how much they had contributed, their status was still conditional. As a husband of a strikingly beautiful woman in a country that has 30,000,000 more men than women, I often found myself in spaces where men, unhappy with my everything, would lob threats at us, and I understood how quickly the system could turn against someone who didn’t belong. Living under laws that treat you differently because you are foreign creates a constant, quiet awareness. You calculate risk differently. You move differently. And when your place in a society depends on fragile permissions rather than shared standing, you feel it every day. That instability is something many families navigating our immigration system understand intimately. When legal status is complicated, inconsistent, or politicized, everyday life carries an added weight that most citizens never have to consider. Before we discuss what it was like going from being an immigrant to watching my wife live the American immigrant experience, it’s first necessary to dispel some false assumptions that most Americans have when it comes to the steps needed to legally be a foreign spouse of a U.S. citizen in America: - The Department of State is not required to grant visas to the foreign spouses of U.S. citizens. - Being the spouse of an American citizen does not automatically make the spouse a U.S. citizen. - Being married to an American citizen does not fast-track, guarantee, or alleviate most of the ambiguity in the immigration process. My wife, then fiancée, was denied a tourist visa to the United States in 2008. The only question the interviewer asked her during her face-to-face visit to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing resulting in that denial was, “what is your husband’s favorite movie?” (It’s Tombstone.) My wife was denied a spousal visa while she was 9 months pregnant with our son in 2011, based on her failure to have collected documentation that was marked “optional” on the instructions. When we applied for her next visa in the fall of 2011, for a Thanksgiving holiday visit, I couldn’t sleep for a week. She had already been denied on two separate occasions, which then must be listed on every subsequent application. When the reviewer saw that her email address was “fliu@greatleapbrewing.com,” they simply smiled and whispered, “we love your brewery, enjoy your trip to America!” The U.S. tends to fall into the trap of thinking that everyone’s goal is to come to America and take advantage of all the things our society has to offer. There are few pathways to America that aren’t completely entrenched in the end goal being naturalization. No one in the application system understood why my wife and I would want to get married and not immediately leave China and get her citizenship on U.S. terra firma. It is nearly impossible to get married, get a spousal visa, and apply for a green card without being en route to, or already in, America. We didn’t successfully apply for her green card until COVID when we were in America, fourteen years after we got our marriage licenses. Even with all the things that are in favor of couples seeking a green card for the foreign spouse, the process is somewhere just south of humiliating. It is essentially a process that demands that you prove that you are married out of love. I mean, take a Gallup poll tomorrow and ask how many married Americans are currently in love, and then let’s talk about that being the benchmark for a direct relative green card. I was already accustomed to this process from when we first received our marriage licenses in 2008. The Chinese government requires something more pragmatic in the form of an “Affidavit of Marriageability,” meaning proof you aren’t married somewhere else. This affidavit had to be issued by the U.S. consular services and the process was one where I had to vow an oath that I wasn’t married anywhere else to a consular officer behind a pane of bulletproof glass. Before executing the oath, the official looked at my paperwork and broke bureaucratic rancor to tell me how rare it is to administer an oath like this to someone who is young, roughly the same age as his fiancée, and had never previously been married. The need for checks and scrutiny is obviously because someone, at some point, did something so ridiculous that now there is a policy to prevent it from ever happening again. To still have that same feeling of “prove it” after 14 years of marriage and two kids, it made me feel like maybe we were taking the need for oversight a bit too far. My wife’s first green card interview had to be canceled because I was being held in a COVID detention facility in China on the day that I was meant to accompany her for the appointment. The rescheduled interview took place in March 2021. We were required to bring a binder of pictures and memorabilia to prove our marriage was real, a stack of paperwork, health physicals, letters of support, birth certificates for our kids, and anything else that we felt might be helpful. We were armed and ready. I was ready to fight to prove our love was real. The official took our binder of things-that-proved-we-liked-each-other, and the first page was a scanned copy of a Beijing language magazine with us on the cover, the second page was a front-page USA Today article, then it progressed into pages of screenshots from us on Rock Center with Brian Williams and the Marriott Bonvoy welcome video that played at every Marriott hotel in China of my wife greeting travelers and guests and welcoming them to our breweries. He didn’t get past the second page. He immediately closed the binder and said, “your green card will be in the mail in 5–7 days.” Where society in China struggles with the idea of permanently acclimating foreign guests into China and letting them affect China’s relationship with itself, American society doesn’t reject visitors or immigrants, but we do leave the process to the custody of a politicized system. Unless it affects us directly, we never actually have to check up on the process and see what it takes to currently become American. Few of us would, but all of us should, attend a random naturalization ceremony. We hear stories of “illegal” immigrants and immediately draw the comparison to “my grandparents came here LEGALLY and so should everyone else!” without truly realizing the difference between what used to count as “legal” and what the legal pathway currently requires. It is hard to believe that my grandparents would’ve tolerated the level of scrutiny that is currently used to process immigration and naturalizations when they left post–World War II Berlin to return to the Ohio region as a son of the Lake Erie watershed and his new German wife. My gut says that my grandfather would’ve gone back to Berlin, continued to run his photography studio, and my family tree would’ve simply continued in Europe. I believe in secure borders and a functioning legal immigration system. Those goals support each other. When legal pathways are confusing, inconsistent, or politicized, it creates chaos for families, employers, and communities alike. A serious country can enforce its laws while modernizing outdated processes that no longer reflect economic reality. But we are cutting off our nose to spite our face and most Americans don’t even know what is being stolen from them: New neighbors. New cultures. New contributors to the tax base. New innovations. New businesses. New capital. NEW FOOD. New. Furthermore, we don’t want to admit that some people just want to come and work seasonally, or for a couple of years, and that their goal in life isn’t to be “American.” Their goal in life is to provide for their family and take part in a foreign country as a participant, but not necessarily as a convert. Some people don’t want to be here at all. They are grateful for the sanctuary, but their world is somewhere they left behind. Some place that was stolen from them by war, famine, natural disaster, or a combination of all three. They want to work hard here, be good guests, pay their taxes, add to their communities, but eventually they want to go home. Our system should provide opportunities for all that want to experience America, as much or as little as they are able to. We need a generational reconstruction of our relationship to immigration. In 2024, I attended my wife’s naturalization ceremony. The minute my feet touched American soil in 2021 until the minute she took her oath, my fear was that she would be sent back to China and punished for thinking she could ever really get away. My last experience there wasn’t torture, but it was cruel and unusual treatment. I wanted nothing more than to have the certainty that my wife and kids would never know what that feels like. Once they called her name and she walked to the front of the federal courthouse in downtown Cleveland, I choked back the tears. To be welcoming is a beautiful thing. To be strong enough in your own society to provide a pathway for others to come and make it their own? That is truly American. Money should have no real place in politics, but unfortunately it does, and it does in a way that is disgusting. It shouldn’t make anyone feel good that corporations can donate unlimited funds to PACs and Super PACs and the average human being can’t possibly make an equitable impact without organizing a large group or network of like-minded individuals. It is, by definition, the tipping of the scales for corporations over human beings. We’ve been here before in the history of this great experiment. When party bosses ran districts and whipped support for special interests, our country experienced graft and corruption the was endemic and corrosive. Tammany Hall is the best example, but this type of whipping of votes was a part of American democracy until we, as a citizenry, decided we didn’t want it anymore. Special interests have an ability to find cracks in any system. When one side fights the battle in front of them and puts out the first demanding the most attention it is a tactical approach to confrontation. When the other side implements capital and pressure over a long period of time to find a way to give corporate interests, private equity, large ideologically driven groups and high net worth individuals an uneven playing field, that is called strategy. Money should have no real place in politics, but unfortunately it does, and when you are fighting a battle against an enemy that is playing chess while you are playing checkers, you don’t switch to tiddlywinks and call it strategy. If a political candidate in 2026 has the chance to end a 32-year streak of Republican control over a congressional seat, and they choose to raise no money on principle, that candidate will go down in the record as a paperweight. There is no place in any race in 2026 for anything other than the desire to win through the mechanisms that give you the best likelihood of success. My kids deserve more than a righteous loser who dies on the wrong hill, fighting the wrong war at the worst possible time. There are ways to reform money’s place in politics, but you can’t reform anything if you hold no power, control no majority, and just complain from the sidelines. I will, unfortunately, go to every room, dial every phone number, and ask through all new media, for donors to donate money to my campaign. I have no other choice. Dave Joyce has no desire to help the working class, he has no understanding of running a business on razor thin margins, he doesn’t understand what it’s like to no make ends meet pay check to pay check, and he certainly doesn’t know how it feels sit in a CSL Plasma chair and donate plasma to cover the cost of Christmas presents. I will have to deploy every possible effort to raise enough money to make this a national spotlight race that gives not just democrats but also independents and moderate republicans hope that we aren’t sliding into a combination of kleptocracy, oligarchy and theocracy. I will use every penny at my disposal to flip this district and give the quietly concerned and activist alike a reason to believe that are heard and represented by someone who knows what it feels like to worry more often than they dream of a better life for themselves, their kids and their loved ones. Once I’m elected, the current system must be destroyed, and campaign financing needs to be a footnote in our history. Overturning Citizen’s United is a generational task, but boxing it in and cutting its legs off can be, and will be done via the legislative branch. Passing legislation that fully recognizes the personhood of corporations and declaring that as individuals they are responsible to pay income and capital gains taxes on their profits the same way an individual would. Defining the tax rate they would owe and including an caveat that allows for a tax holiday if the corporation can show that it has not exercised its right to donate political contributions as a person can, would generate much needed tax revenue while also providing a way to prevent dark monies participation in politics. I would also mandate that if social media, new media and traditional media will pay 75% taxes on all political advertisement sales or they can donate free time equally to all candidates in exchange for a tax credit. If there was no need to spend money on advertising, political campaigns wouldn’t need to raise the money to pay for it. I would also push for legislation that requires debate in any race that has two or more political candidates. These debates would be aired as part of the tax credit rebate system across all streaming platforms, traditional media and new media platforms. Candidates should be held to their word and their word alone. Candidates should never be able to duck a debate or hide behind paid advertisements and campaign war chests. Lastly, Citizens United should be debated on the national stage and a constitutional congress must be called to allow the citizens of America to decide whether corporations should be involved in our political discourse. I do not believe that money has a place in politics. I also don’t believe that a heavy weight champion boxer should be allowed to fight a 13 year old first year boxing student. If a fight is unfair, it doesn’t matter how righteous the side is who is outmatched, they are going to lose. As a party, we need to find a way to win, and then reform and be ready to step out of the way when a better class of politician who is not mired by the stench of money comes to take our place. I would rather be known as the politicians who’s reforms made himself obsolete than the politician that refuses to raise any money and loses by 25 points in his righteousness. Key Takeaways Technology should serve people, not harass them. Americans did not consent to a digital environment built around manipulation, addiction, and nonstop intrusion. “Self-regulation” by tech companies is a myth. Systems designed to extract attention, data, and money cannot be trusted to police themselves. Consumers deserve real control, not the illusion of control. Turning off a microphone or enabling airplane mode should mean exactly that — no exceptions, no workarounds. Time, attention, and peace are finite resources. Endless subscriptions, robocalls, scams, and deceptive interfaces steal from Americans every single day. Being left alone is a right. A modern Consumer Bill of Rights must protect families, children, and ordinary people from predatory technology. One of the only profitable applications for technology born from large language models (LLMs) is in the gray market of annoying everyone to death. When we map our relationship with technology, very few of us feel like it has made our lives better. Instead, we see increases in nearly everything that makes us worry about the future of our society: anxiety, autism, social disorders, fraud, scams, theft, corruption, the degradation of social and civic institutions, and a level of polarization so severe that average people are expected to have opinions about when a social media troll gets murdered — or even to know the name Nick Fuentes at all. Why do any of us know his name? Nobody asked for any of this. Technologists often hold an irrational belief that their inventions are society-advancing strokes of godlike genius. Whenever I think about things no one asked for, I think of Sea-Monkeys. Sometimes things are just scams because there is money to be made. When I turn my phone to grayscale and put it in airplane mode while I sleep, it feels like I’m in control. But without a government regulator guaranteeing that airplane mode actually means airplane mode — or that switching off a microphone in an app truly disables it — that sense of control may exist only in my own mind. If there is no one standing between a man with a gun and a child with twenty dollars, can we really trust the man with the gun to take another victim instead? I do not believe that anyone actively working to extract as much value as possible from society would ever meaningfully self-regulate. There is a clear and present need for a Consumer Bill of Rights in the face of the next generation of billionaire “innovators” who are running out of oil to drill. What American Consumers Deserve As American consumers, we should have the right to a master control that instantly disables microphone and camera access across all apps and all layers of a device’s operating system. As American consumers, we should have the right to unsubscribe from all subscriptions universally, at any time, from a centralized control point. As American consumers, we should be required to give explicit consent to any payment that is automatically set to auto-renew at checkout. As American consumers, we should have the right to claw back funds drawn by any company or subscription with which we have not interacted for more than 30 days. As American consumers, we should have the right to opt out of all unknown phone calls, except those originating from a national registry of verified government agencies, banks, and hospitals. As American consumers, we should have the right to know who is behind any phone number that calls us, whether inside or outside the jurisdiction of the United States. As American consumers, all customer service providers should be required to offer an automatic callback option, paired with a reminder text message five minutes before the call. As American consumers, we should be able to sue any social media platform that distributes deceptive content to anyone in our lives over the age of 65 under a nuisance-to-society standard. As American consumers, we should have the right to set any device our child uses to an “everything but” 56k dial-up speed, preventing modern apps, games, videos, or content from loading while allowing access to a single approved app — so a child can watch Zootopia on a snow day while parents try to work from home. As American consumers, we should have the right to demand that no child under the age of 16 can sign up for any social media, socially interactive, or LLM-related service, application, or subscription. The Right to Be Left Alone The average American knows what it feels like to be left on hold while precious time disappears. To answer a call and realize it’s an AI bot trying to scam you. To worry about your children’s safety in a world that seems to believe you no longer have the right to shield them from it. We are told this is progress. It isn’t. We have the right to be left alone. Nobody asked for this. Key Takeaways Your data is not a byproduct — it is a resource. Like oil, its value comes from extraction, refinement, and scale, and right now it is being taken without compensation. Big Tech profits from your inner life. Your thoughts, emotions, relationships, and behaviors are continuously studied, modeled, and sold — often without your informed consent. “Free” platforms are not free. The services you rely on are paid for with access to your identity, your attention, and your future choices. Ownership means control, transparency, and choice. You should know what data is collected, how it’s used, who profits from it, and have the right to delete or monetize it. Americans deserve to benefit from what belongs to them. A fair data economy would return value to individuals and the public, not concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few companies. Who owns your thoughts? Your culture? Your art? Your fears? Your dreams? Is it you? In 2019, Andrew Yang began having conversations with the American public about what was in store for our collective future. One of his frequent topics was why big data companies were able to abscond with our data without paying us anything for it. These ideas had already been championed by Jaron Lanier for nearly a decade, but Yang’s comparison of data to a natural resource—specifically oil—hit a nerve and deserved a deeper examination. Especially in the context of OH - 14 and our history. America’s Long History of Leaving Money on the Table For the last 150 years, America has had a complicated relationship with resources that, once refined, generate enormous value and landslides of profit. Often, we romanticize the creation of that wealth while ignoring how it was captured. John D. Rockefeller once walked into a field of sludge in Ashtabula County after a train and carriage ride from his office in Cleveland, Ohio. He walked out of that field with the rights to remove that sludge by the wheelbarrow full—and was likely paid by the landowner to do it. Rockefeller knew the sludge was crude oil and that its value lied in how efficiently you could process it into kerosene, oils for his friends at Sherwin Williams to create paint and a byproduct called “gasoline” that he would dump into the Cuyahoga River or burn off for heat in the winter at his plants. As surface oil became less accessible, America drilled deeper—pumping millions of barrels from places as extreme as the Gulf of Mexico and shale deposits unlocked through fracking. Since 1859, the United States has extracted approximately 250 billion barrels of oil from its territory. Had America instituted a $1 per barrel excise tax (in 2026 dollars) on every barrel extracted since 1859, we would today possess a massive Sovereign Wealth Fund dedicated to the care, education, health, and long-term prosperity of the American public. In 1859, a 2026 dollar would have been worth about 2.5 cents. If those 2.5 cents collected on the roughly 2,000 barrels extracted that year were invested at a modest 7% annual return, they would be worth approximately $120 million today. In 1860, when 500,000 barrels were produced, that same model would yield $30 billion today. That is the money we left on the table. No one would have objected. Even at oil’s lowest price—49 cents per barrel during the Civil War—2.5 cents represented a 5% tax. We impose excise taxes on beer, cigarettes, whiskey, and wine, but not on remains of dinosaurs and rotten Paleolithic leaves. The American public has paid the price ever since. This robbery is often treated as a historical footnote or something that needed to occur for American progress, but it represents something deeper: a pattern of allowing private actors to pillage public wealth without accountability. Data Is the New Oil — and the Theft Is Happening Again Today, data is the new oil, and we are living through the same extraction—only this time, the resource is us. Instead of oil being pumped from federal land, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk are extracting our history, our art, our literature, our music, and our culture—without paying for any of it. At breakneck speed, companies running Large Language Models (LLMs) are using our data to make our labor obsolete. Data used to be boring. Social media profiles and search histories were harvested to optimize advertising and return on ad spend. That era was the kerosene phase—important, but limited. Now we have reached the gasoline moment. Your data trains the models and targets you as a consumer of LLM-generated content, advertisements, and social manipulation. The system is predatory by design. Look at the terms of service you click through when downloading products from Meta, ByteDance, or Alphabet. These companies access nearly every function of your device and every aspect of your behavior. We no longer know when we are being watched, listened to, mimetically studied, or manipulated. If your child plays soccer, there’s an app. If your newborn is in daycare, there’s an app. If you track your child’s health and growth, there’s an app for that. If you talk to coworkers, family, or religious groups, there’s an app. All of that data is being gathered and sold. Each app has permission to study your anxiety triggers, emotional responses, facial expressions, tone of voice, and desire patterns. These are not passive collectors of likes and dislikes. These are active students of the human soul. Your life is profiled, rarely anonymized, and sold to anyone who wishes to manipulate it. Ownership, Autonomy, and Accountability Owning our data is analogous to how First Nations people viewed photography—as something that could steal the soul. We mocked that belief, until we built systems that do exactly that, minute by minute. Big data companies justify this theft with a manufactured valuation: We give you free email and social media, so we get to own your heart, soul, and spirit. That is an inequitable valuation. We should decide what our hopes and fears are worth. Companies should be required to define what a “barrel” of data is, how it is metered, and what it is worth. They should pay for it through a system negotiated in good faith, with clear purpose and accountability. When we exist online, we should retain total autonomy. Our data should be compartmentalized, tagged, traceable, and deletable. Transparency must exist around what is collected, how it is sold, and how it is monetized—because only then can data be treated as a true commodity. Carl Setzer supports tiering data into clear categories: Basic public information Information inferred from public records Information shared through deliberate participation Information extracted in real time through behavioral analysis The first two tiers should generate a national excise tax paid into a Sovereign Wealth Fund for the American people. All other tiers must remain under the direct control of individuals—either generating income based on consent and value or being fully expunged at the user’s discretion. The Principle Is Simple Your data is you. And if someone is going to profit from it, the American people deserve ownership, compensation, and control. That is what it means to own your data. — Carl Setzer's campaign website (May 1, 2026) Setzer's campaign website stated the following: A Core Philosophy: Systems Should Work for Participants At the heart of the platform is a consistent argument: American systems—economic, political, and corporate—have drifted away from serving the people who participate in them. The campaign’s “radically moderate” framing isn’t about splitting ideological differences. It’s about identifying where systems break down in real life and fixing them in practical ways. Across every issue, the same question applies: does this system actually work for the people inside it? Healthcare: Stability First, Universal Coverage as the Goal Healthcare remains one of the most developed and clearly defined issues. The campaign’s proposal, “Medicare for the Working Class,” is framed as both a solution and a transition: Anyone paying into Medicare (W-2 or W-9 workers) would gain access for themselves and their families Coverage would no longer be tied to a particular job The system would reduce administrative overhead for hospitals driven by private insurance Importantly, this is positioned as a step toward universal coverage , not the final endpoint. The campaign also highlights systemic problems often overlooked: Private equity ownership of hospitals driving profit-first decision-making Administrative complexity increasing costs for both providers and patients Instability for families who lose coverage when jobs change The broader goal is to create a stable baseline where healthcare is reliable, affordable, and focused on patients—not shareholders. This stability is also framed as economically beneficial, freeing workers to change jobs or pursue better opportunities without risking coverage. The Economy: Fair Contribution and Lower Cost of Living Economic policy expands beyond wages alone. The campaign connects income, taxation, and cost of living into a single system. Key positions include: Support for higher contributions from the wealthiest Americans (“the billionaire class should pay their fair share”) Recognition that wages alone don’t define economic well-being— costs matter just as much A focus on reducing major household expenses like healthcare and housing The platform challenges a common policy blind spot: even rising wages don’t improve quality of life if essential costs are simultaneously increasing due to systemic pressures like private equity investment. Rather than setting a single national wage figure, the campaign ties the idea of a livable wage to broader economic conditions. The argument is straightforward: A “livable wage” depends on whether essential costs are under control Housing inflation and healthcare costs distort what wages can actually provide Fixing those systems allows wages to go further without constant escalation This connects wage policy directly to housing, healthcare, and corporate practices—making it part of a larger structural reform rather than a standalone issue. Workforce Development: The Centerpiece of the Platform Workforce development is not treated as a side issue—it is one of the campaign’s three core pillars. The campaign calls for a complete overhaul of how Americans build careers: A shift from one-time education to lifelong career development systems Better alignment between training programs and real labor market needs Support for career transitions, not just first-time job placement A major cultural component is also emphasized: Expanding respect and opportunity for skilled trades Moving away from the “college-only” success narrative Giving young people earlier exposure to different career paths The goal is a system that helps people build stable, meaningful careers , not just find jobs. Consumer Bill of Rights: Data, Privacy, and Power The campaign frames data ownership as one of the defining issues of the modern economy. The proposed Consumer Bill of Rights would: Give individuals control over their personal data Simplify opt-out processes for data collection Increase transparency in how corporations use personal information This is positioned as a necessary update to consumer protections in a digital world, where personal data has become a core economic asset. Government Accountability: Local Focus Over Political Theater A recurring theme—reinforced in campaign communications—is a deliberate focus on local impact over national political drama . Key commitments include: Regular, accessible office hours for constituents Clear communication and transparency in decision-making Prioritizing district outcomes over partisan positioning The campaign explicitly rejects “political theater,” arguing that symbolic actions without consequences rarely produce meaningful change. Instead, the focus is on measurable improvements in people’s daily lives. Campaign Integrity and Independence The campaign also directly addresses concerns about outside influence. It states clearly: No funding from foreign governments. No affiliation with organizations like AIPAC among donors. Full transparency through publicly available campaign finance reports. This reinforces a broader message seen across the platform: independence from concentrated power , whether political, corporate, or international. Let's Say It Again We are not taking AIPAC money, nor will we. Immigration: Practical and Workforce-Oriented Immigration policy is framed through economic and human realities rather than ideology. The approach emphasizes: Legal pathways aligned with labor market needs Recognition of immigrants as contributors to the economy A structured, humane system that avoids political extremes This aligns closely with the campaign’s broader workforce focus—treating immigration as part of a functioning labor system. Agriculture, Local Economies, and Supply Chains The platform highlights the importance of strengthening local and regional systems: Supporting small, mid-sized, locally owned farms Building resilient local supply chains Reducing over-reliance on fragile global networks These ideas connect directly to concerns about economic resilience and national stability. More detailed policies in agriculture, environmental issues, and supply chain reform are coming. Private Equity and Market Distortion A recurring underlying concern—now made explicit—is the role of private equity in distorting essential systems. The campaign points to its impact on: Healthcare (hospital acquisitions) Housing costs Broader cost-of-living increases Future policy expansions are expected to include limits on private equity’s role in critical sectors , reinforcing the broader theme of keeping essential systems aligned with public needs. Education: Realigning with Careers and Opportunity Education policy is closely tied to workforce reform: Better alignment between education and real-world job opportunities Expanded pathways beyond traditional four-year degrees Early exposure to career options Establish fair funding (Current Ohio Public School Funding is a state matter) The emphasis is on outcomes—ensuring education leads to stable, meaningful work. Law, Accountability, and Practical Governance On legal and justice-related issues, the campaign takes a balanced stance when asked: Would you make it a main and primary goal to impeach, prosecute, and hold accountable any criminal currently holding office? Carl supports holding criminal activity accountable, however There is skepticism toward purely symbolic enforcement actions The focus remains consistent: policies should produce real outcomes, not just headlines. The Big Picture: One System, Many Failures—One Approach to Fixing Them When viewed together, every issue connects back to a single diagnosis: systems fail when they prioritize scale, profit, or power over the people inside them. And every proposed solution follows the same logic: Build stability (healthcare, wages, careers) Reduce unnecessary complexity (insurance, workforce systems) Increase accountability (government, corporations) Rebalance power toward individuals and workers Final Takeaway This platform isn’t a collection of disconnected policies—it’s a systems-level critique paired with practical reforms. The campaign’s priorities—healthcare reform, workforce development, and consumer protections—act as anchors, while other issues (immigration, agriculture, economic policy, and governance) reinforce the same core idea: If people are participating in a system—working, paying in, contributing—then that system should work for them. Everything else in the platform builds from that premise. — Carl Setzer's campaign website (April 24, 2026) Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source."}]

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