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Jesse is an outside-the-box thinker dedicated to enacting ideas that will make Minnesota a state that will be a well-ordered and thriving place tomorrow and a hundred years from now. A single state representative will not be able to change everything on his own, but I can speak what I believe on these matters and work with other lawmakers to see what improvements we can pass. 

Here is what I think on core issues of my platform. More will be added!

ISSUES

HOUSING
Our leaders of both parties have gradually created a situation in which our young people are having to choose between unaffordable houses and becoming permanent renters. We must give our citizens the tools to determine the destiny of housing by letting localities vote on zoning reforms. We must also make houses a staple of life again rather than an investment commodity for megacorporations to flip by the hundreds.
  • ​Allow the people rather than bureaucracy to determine the zoning of their localities. Have incorporated cities of 15,000 or more conduct referenda on different policies related to incremental housing such as building rowhomes, cottage courts, brownstones, duplexes, accessory dwelling units/casitas.
  • Bring back the cottage industry. Make corner cafés and neighborhood barbers and tailors possible again through zoning reforms. Allow main street buildings to have the family business on the first floor and the house on the second floor. Defer to cities for such reforms, but begin the conversation by making them vote on these.
  • Change the 2-staircase requirement of any 3-or-more-storey apartment building to apply to apartments of 6 or more stories, provided they use more fire-resistant materials such as stone and brick in their construction. This would make them take up less space.
  • Prohibit the purchase of more than 2 single-family homes by any corporation of 100 or more employees.
  • Consider antitrust action on any real estate conglomerates with significant sway on housing costs.
EDUCATION
Minnesota's destiny lies in her children, and we have a duty to determine the nature of their education. Our public schools are falling behind and need thorough reform in order for our grandchildren to have any hope of being intelligent and well-formed men and women. 
  • Require a course on Minnesota history in all public school students’ education.​
  • Since  second-language courses tend to produce dismal long-term results, restructure them to be tailored to a locality. If a school only offers one default second-language course, let it be one rooted in the history or customs of the area. For example, New Ulm’s default would be German, Grand Marais’ and Two Harbors’ would be Ojibwe, Forest Lake’s would be Swedish, and Shakopee’s would be Dakota. Tie these to an annual field trip to a local area of cultural significance for the speakers of that language.
  • Instill a knowledge of Minnesotan culture by having every student read all or part of The Song of Hiawatha, a work of Laura Ingalls Wilder, or a work of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
  • Ensure competition exists between public schools and districts so all parties are incentivized to maintain good quality of education.
  • Double teacher salaries for public schools. Pay for this by redirecting funds from administrative areas.
  • Make it easier to fire bad teachers and hire new ones. Do not let it be impossible to fire a teacher just because he or she has been there for 20 years.
  • Reduce bureaucratic bloat in the school system and return agency to the teachers, parents, and principals.
  • Reduce the power of the MN Department of Education relative to the legislature and school districts – let our voters have agency.
  • Empower school districts to conduct recall votes on superintendents.
  • Empower principals more in the firing of non-teaching staff, while allowing recall votes for principals.
  • Consider a rethinking of the Prussian model that has dominated American education for the last century. Discuss with other lawmakers how we can do this.
  • Require a basic civics test to graduate high school (something like the US Citizenship test).
  • Encourage juniors and seniors to explore all options, including community college, university, apprenticeships and the trades, or immediate entry into the workforce, military, or marriage. Inform them of the economic and social benefits and negatives of each option. Bring parents into this discussion process with school counselors.
  • Bring back wood shop and auto shop in high school.
  • Ensure all public middle and high schools have at least one support staff at school or on call for mental health aid at all school hours.
  • Allow school districts to vote on disbanding education union activities within their district.
  • Prevent the diminishing attention spans of our students by tying increases in district funding to a phasing out of the disastrous screen-heavy status quo. No more giving students iPads to distract them.
  • Return sexual education classes to a lesson in the biology class, describing the anatomical processes and hormonal dynamics in play, including probabilities of pregnancy at different times of the menstrual cycle. Inform parents of the lesson plans for these ahead of time and let them know that any further teaching of their children about sexuality and reproduction must be parents’ responsibility and is not the school’s burden.
  • Reduce the burden on school districts by undoing some of the unfunded mandates from the 2023-2024 legislative session.
CRIME, PUBLIC SAFETY, and LAW ENFORCEMENT
More and more Minnesotans are being victimized by violent criminals, and our system is letting the situation deteriorate. We must ensure mandatory minimum sentencing for violent crime is truly mandatory and hold judges accountable for neglect of duty when they let dangerous men run free. 
  • Make all 5 levels of CSC (criminal sexual conduct) have mandatory minimum sentences
  • Refer any non-citizen convicted of a violent crime to the federal government for deportation. This would include visitors, those with guest worker or student visas, resident aliens with green cards, and illegal aliens.
  • Apply a "broken windows policing” philosophy to public safety in our more crime-ridden areas. Few criminals commit murder before some lesser crime, so correcting bad behavior early on is critical for the well-being of both criminals and would-be victims.
  • Hold law enforcement accountable for negligence and failures to police its own members. Any state troopers caught speeding by more than 20 mph over the limit while not in an active chase with lights and siren on must receive a week’s suspension without pay, and any subsequent accident caused by his malfeasance shall result in an immediate firing.
  • Allow one-year suspensions of local police unions by acts of the city council (which a mayor may veto or the public may undo by referendum) following acts of fatal malfeasance.
THE FAMILY
The family is the building block of society and the rudder that steers the ship of state. Preserving the family is one of the most important things Minnesota can do.
  • ​Make it possible again for most families to live on one single income.
  • Make it possible for mothers not to have to work while pregnant and nursing. Find ways to make it easier for their families to support them.
  • Maintain a sufficient birth rate for our population to sustain itself. Do this by incentivizing large families through steep tax benefits to families of 4 or more natural or adopted children. Make this conditional on the parents remaining married, and tie increases in the tax benefits to the consumer price index.
  • Provide tax benefits for embryo adoption of embryos that have been frozen since before 2005, or any embryo whose parents are deceased and next-of-kin cannot be found.
  • Find ways to make adoption easier, especially within the US.
  • Make childbirth free. Pay for this by setting aside in times of budget surplus a “childbirth fund” assigned to every female citizen between puberty and average menopausal age, invest the funds in a mutual fund or something like an IRA tied to gold, and have it transferable at her wishes to any other resident (citizen or alien). Allow such transfer to be considered a tax-deductible donation.
  • Stop incentivizing fatherless homes. Counteract the effects of Great-Society incentives by making welfare benefits increase if you get married to the father of your children and not increase if you become divorced, unless you can prove abuse.
  • Divorce shatters families and permanently affects children and grandchildren. The divorce court system is biased against fathers and incentivizes men not to marry their girlfriends at all. Let marriage actually mean something again before the law by making no-fault divorce more difficult.
SOCIAL COHESION and MENTAL HEALTH
Strong communities and mental health are inextricably linked, and psychology is much more collective than we think. Helping the mental health of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and thus holding our society together, requires that we form our communities in a way that is conducive to social and emotional well-being.
  • ​Implement zoning reforms to make neighborhoods places to live rather than just an artery from work to one’s house.
  • Build more courtyards, public spaces and “third places”. Build art studios, recreation facilities, and boardwalks.
  • Use grants, incentives, or regulation changes to encourage cities to adopt architecture that reflects the heritage particular to that city or county, Minnesota broadly, or the larger Midwestern part of the American tradition. This will increase citizens’ sense of place and subconscious knowledge that they are part of and welcome in a community with a special culture. Disincentivize ugly and bland architecture that prioritizes pragmatism or strangeness, such as brutalist concrete boxes.
  • Highlight in public discourse and social studies courses the role of religious communities in providing a sense of purpose and belonging to humans throughout history while being nonsectarian, so that young people (whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or of any or no affiliation) can feel an open invitation to partake in whatever their area has to offer.
  • Similar to the above, encourage cities to provide websites or offices (perhaps staffed by a social worker) to help guide lonely young people who are in search of community to a place where they may find it, whether a religious community, volunteering or nonprofit group, local civic association or club.
  • Embrace the transition to the gig economy becoming popular among Gen Z, and adjust our regulations to induce a renaissance of the American small business.
  • Protect our children from the serious harms of internet pornography by preventing underage users from accessing these websites.
  • Make cities more accessible to pedestrians, and link major commercial and work areas through trains (in Rochester, this might look like a train along highway 63/Broadway from the airport to 37th Street). This would also allow non-driving seniors to partake in our city’s community activities and solve part of Rochester’s downtown parking problem by allowing citizens to park their cars a couple miles from downtown and arrive there by train within a few minutes. Similar actions in Duluth would greatly increase the prosperity of downtown businesses and be well suited to university students, seniors and visitors from around northeastern Minnesota (and bring in tax revenue from visitors from Superior, Wisconsin).
MORE TO COME...
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