Dan Pulju

Disagree

As the Supreme Court has now left it up to the states to determine their own abortion laws, noone is in any position to decide how other state or local governments spend their funds. The federal government is founded on natural rights, including the self-determination of bodily autonomy. Government has no right to interfere without a civil consensus arrived at by an honest public debate. This has yet to happen.

Agree

This is already legal in my state. It should be restricted to those terminally ill and in severe pain. This is an issue not only of personal liberty but of medical ethics. We have seen recently how easily the medical industry's ethics can lapse. If this begins to affect the practice of euthanasia, its legality may need to be revisited.

Abortion should be allowed under all circumstances until, and unless, the people of this country reach a reasonable consensus on what circumstances it should not be. This may never happen, and will almost certainly not happen soon, because reasoned debate is short supply in our poltiical conversations. For example, the position that late-term abortions should be banned has strong arguments behind it, but those lose traction when they are aligned politically with the position that life begins at conception, a weak argument that attempts to introduce religious values into government. Conversely the position that bodily autonomy is inviolable is strong and backed extensively by precedent, but is weakened when extended automatically to late terms when a fetus is viable outside the womb. Both these tendencies gloss over the complex question of when a fetus acquires equivalent natural rights to those already established for others. There is no precedent to inform this question, and our political process is too dysfunctional to resolve it rationally. The genuinely conservative position here must choose precedent, i.e. that these rights are not yet extended to the unborn in any form. The state bears a high burden of proof to interfere in the life choices of any citizen, and that burden is not met.

Neutral

Welfare state capitalism is a prison for the working class. It creates dependency on the state. This empowers the state and disempowers the people. Unfortunately, when wealthy people and large corporations control government, it's difficult to forge an alternative. Greens favor decentralized economics and local opportunity. Over the past few decades, and especially the past two years, our small businesses have been decimated while megacorps flourished and increased their monopolistic power.

Neutral

The government needs to dramatically cut spending on the military, particularly now that global hegemony and the petrodollar are no longer increasing our national net worth. Rather our overseas adventures have set in motion a decline that the Fed is powerless to stop.

Close the loopholes for billionaires and large corporations.

Agree

Noone should be forced to act against their religious beliefs, and likewise noone should be force to participate in the religious beliefs of another. Church and state are separate and should stay that way. History has repeatedly proven the alternative is bloody.

Neutral

This is not possible to answer without the contingency of the type of business. Is this the post office, a private contractor, a doctor? The ethics of refusing service depend on these circumstances.

Never the twain shall meet. As I mentioned before, history has shown us how bloody the alternative is.

In the current political climate, with authorities at all these levels having discredited themselves by mandating vaccines that were not adequately tested and proven safe, with data on risk and adverse effects suppressed, mandates should not be allowed. These authorities have a long road to regaining credibility on this matter. Censorship, extralegal orders and fear propaganda poisoned legitimate debate and the right of informed consent was regularly trampled. The left-right alignment on this issue is accidental - the Democrats nearly became the anti-lockdown side when Trump first imposed a travel ban, but later went whole hog in favor of mandates, believing the most pro-vax candidates would be seen as heroes. By doing this, they abandoned any pretense they'd ever shown of opposing the power of Big Pharma. As a Green, I'm "neither left nor right, but up front." I look at the specifics of issues and decide based on principles, not based on who's side I'm on. The party itself has no official position, there are a variety of opinions among our members.

B) I do support Medicare for All, but I am not for banning private options. I don't agree with including it in option A, when existing Medicare does allow private supplemental insurance. I'm not swayed by arguments to expense. Nations far less wealthy than ours achieve this easily. It's embarrassing to have about a quarter of the world's wealth but not set the standard. It makes us look bad.

E) The United States should stop provoking foreign conflicts completely. Our government is a dictatorship of corporate-captured bureaucracy centered around the military-industrial complex. This self-directed juggernaut has one purpose: to pursue and promote policies forged and entrenched by our decades of hegemonic expansion. First we sought to dominate our own hemisphere, and after world war 2, the entire world. This was never in the best interest of the American people, and now as our global empire starts to crumble, we find our corrupt leaders like Joe Biden all too willing to sacrifice us in a desperate bid to continue expanding. The Ukraine civil war was caused by the relentless eastward expansion of NATO culminating in the US-supported Euromaidan coup, and Russia's response was predictable. Now Biden relies on Russophobia, as Mueller did, to manipulate a deep relic hatred of a nation we have no reason to quarrel with. Are they even still Communist? Or maybe now it's the fact they have lots of oil and gas. Joe wants that stuff and he's willing to make us suffer as long as we have to for him to win his crazy trade war. It's going to take years to recover from the inflation and recession we're in.

Strongly Agree

The two-state solution was a failure. The refugees have the right of return. More importantly, as a grassroots, citizen led movement, the government doesn't have any right to interfere. This isn't a matter of unilateral state-level sanctions. My Democrat opponent, Ron Wyden, joined efforts to try to make BDS illegal.

Disagree

I have no use nor patience for fearmongering. The US still spends about as much on military and intel as every other nation on Earth combined. We have a huge nuclear arsenal, and only Russia has better aerospace forces. Neither Russia nor China is in a position to pick a fight with us; on the contrary we keep picking fights with them, near or even within their borders. Taiwan belongs to China, what was Pelosi doing if not provoking them? Strong people and strong nations are not so insecure.

The "war on terror" was a war on the rights and welfare of the American people, starting with the mass surveillance under the Patriot Act and continuing with the 2013 Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, which legalized the existing government practice of manipulating its own people with propaganda. Even at the height of this massive scam, Americans were many times more likely to be killed or injured in an ordinary car wreck than by an Islamic terrorist. Even worse, the "war on terror" morphed into a war OF terror, with rampant US involvement in efforts to topple the governments of Arab countries like Libya and Syria, resulting in the rise of ISIS and well-armed al-Qaeda militias. Of course, it's well established that Washington supported the original Mujahedin in Afghanistan too. At this point, most of the world's jihadists would lay down their arms as soon as we and our allies stop supporting and protecting them.

Agree

An uncontrolled border is a key feature of a failing state.

Disagree

Are all the funds in question relevant to immigration? Should an immigration law contain, perhaps, a clause providing that non-compliance means losing funds for water infrastructure? This is a bad-faith use of Federal power, and can be used to blackmail states on many other issues besides immigration. Be careful what you wish for!

Whoever can demonstrate that they can make it here. The idea that either Democrats or Republicans don't want undocumented immigrants here is a well-promoted fantasy. The economy depends on having an underprivileged caste to make sure lower-wage jobs get done. It's like outsourcing labor but in the reverse direction. The US has a growing fertility problem - the birth rate keeps declining. Hard for an economy to keep growing that way. Don't believe them when they say they don't want people coming in - it's all politics. I have no use for xenophobic rhetoric like "alien," or calls for language laws like making English official. We've always been a multiethnic, multilingual country. I also have no use for the fantasy that border control is a racist policy, or the absurd tolerance of the massive drug trafficking going on. Our representatives of both parties have completely lost touch with reality, or are merely just trying to enrich themselves.

Neutral

This really needs to be more specific in terms of what is considered discrimination. Consenting adults are free to do and think as they please. This shouldn't in most cases infringe on the free speech of others.

Neutral

The entire history of the western world (Europe and descendant states) for the past 500 years is imbued with racist excuses for colonization of the world. The historical roots of this in the United States are real and they still affect society. This doesn't mean it's your fault. It is silly how things shifted to individuals torturing their own guilty conscience, avoiding "microaggressions," tearing down statues and other questionable and often destructive heroics.

I am not religious, despite having had a number of near death experiences. On the contrary, I'm sure that all anyone really knows is you've got this one life. Don't waste it. Common decency is the ultimate moral, learned from life experience not a book.

Neutral

This depends on whether the ID requirement is a disadvantage to some, and on the strength of alternative methods of verifying the authenticity of ballots. Democrats often falsely claim that the poor have a hard time voting. The poor are the nation's foremost experts at dealing with bureaucracy, and voting is one of its simplest forms. The poor are simply not interested in voting, having noone on their side to vote for.

The US badly needs to adopt a proportional voting system. This is currently possible here in Oregon, but not constitutional for Congress. Single-winner plurality has created our phony "two party" system, where the two parties have more in common with each other than they have with the rest of us. According to Ballotpedia, 38% of our nation's voters aren't registered Republican or Democrat. Of those who are, I believe many, if not most, are choosing the so-called "lesser evil" or are sheepdogged into those parties to vote in primaries in the machine states, where the general election result is a foregone conclusion after the primaries are decided. So about half or more of our population isn't really represented by these "two" parties, but they get their way in everything because single-winner-plurality usually boils things down to a two-way contest between them. Here in Oregon, independents are called "non-affiliated," and are our largest voting Demographic. They'd be even larger if there weren't an "Independent Party" deceiving voters into thinking they're registering as independent. This "Independent Party" has nominated only one of its own members for any office this year, and dozens of major party members, the vast majority of them Democrats, including my opponent Ron Wyden. These non-affiliateds and hoodwinked independents need alternatives, and that's why I'm here. But for the alternative to win, we have to change how the votes are counted. We Greens played a key role in advancing Ranked Choice Voting here, but we really need to go farther than that and go proportional so people stop getting left out of the result.

Neutral

Racism is fundamental to our self-destructive foreign policy, and that is the greatest threat we currently face. Our economic collapse is triggered directly by the foolish trade war launched in hatred of Russia.

Disagree

Another question that is just too general. Some environmental laws are sensible, but others like electric vehicle mandates are pure lunacy. I'm not a "climate denier." I understand science and that we're probably in trouble - time will tell how much. But there are some exploiting the usual "emergency" dynamic to sell cars. If you believe there's an emergency, why are you even driving? Using air conditioning? No need to wait for alternatives, just use less energy. There's a lot of room for cuts.

Choose not to answer

I'm neither left nor right, but up front. Nothing on this scale describes me accurately. As a poll interviewer, I've asked this question to tens of thousands of voters myself. You might be surprised how many people don't actually think in these terms.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Yx0ZOvACNbVAVvZGuZwp1

No

I am determined to eradicate the corruption in our Federal government before it's too late. We are living in perilous times. I won't likely win this round, but I aim to do well enough to convince people that our two-party system can be beat.

Neutral

Neutral

I would have supported this in the past, but in the current climate of exaggerating the magnitude of police misconduct problems, we'd see a rise in crime. It's disingenuous to posit "mental health and community programs" as an alternative. These don't address the core economic issues behind petty crimes, drugs, homelessness.

Restrictions are acceptable for those convicted of misusing firearms. They may be acceptable for the mentally unstable or otherwise deemed dangerous, but this depends on who throws the "red flag" and why. What safeguards can prevent this from being abused by authorities?

Neutral