We live in a country where billionaire tech CEOs are celebrated as “visionaries,” while teachers ~ one of the vertebrae in the backbone of our society ~ can’t afford rent.
Where lifesaving EpiPens and basic inhalers can cost hundreds of dollars, while corporate tax loopholes drain trillions from public coffers.
Where the “American Dream” has been purchased by Private Equity, gutted, shrink-wrapped, and sold back to us at prices tens of millions of people cannot afford to pay.
The truth? Most of America’s biggest problems are not complex. They’re the predictable outcome of a system engineered to maximize profit for the uber wealthy at the direct expense of ordinary people. We live in an EXTRACTION economy.
And despite what Silicon Valley moguls and Wall Street titans pretend, wealth does not equal wisdom ~ it simply means they’ve mastered a game rigged entirely in their favor.
It’s like watching adults cheat at poker while they are playing against children who don’t know the rules ~ and then congratulating themselves for being “geniuses.”
Below are fifteen unapologetically straightforward reforms that would materially improve life for hundreds of millions of Americans.
1. BREAK UP THE MONOPOLIES
When just a handful of corporations control entire sectors, competition dies and prices skyrocket.
One of the most obvious and important places this can be seen is in our grocery stores. It seems almost weekly, prices go up on most things we purchase. And often not by just a little. Many times by as much as 10%-20% or more.
The second is housing. Corporate ownership of housing has more than doubled rents and home prices over the past five to eight years in most major cities. By focusing on almost complete control of these two sectors as the uber-wealthy have done, they are attacking the very essence of what it means to be a human being living in a free and democratic society.
Controlling food and housing in America has not happened by accident. It is part of a well-thought out plan to control the masses of humanity by the uber-wealthy. If you can control a human’s basic needs, you in essence control the person.
The FTC under Lina Khan understood this. She was doing her job better than anyone else in Washington. One of the first things Trump did was remove her. Lina Khan needs to be reinstated to run the FTC, and real antitrust enforcement needs to be carried out immediately.
Additionally, reinvigorating competition through wise and prudent regulation would create lower prices, more innovation, and a freer economy — not one chained to cartel-like corporate giants.
2. BAN CORPORATE OWNERSHIP OF HOUSING
Congress needs to enact H.R. 1745 and S. 788 immediately with amended versions to require the divestiture to occur within five years, not ten as they are written now.
Wall Street firms are buying entire neighborhoods and converting homes into permanently monetized assets for rent.
This should also include Student Housing. Blackstone is now the largest owner of Student Housing in the country. The purpose of such housing is to give students an affordable place to live while they are going to school, not to provide Blackstone an opportunity to make the lives of our children more costly so Steven Schwarzman can purchase another mansion in the Hamptons.
Housing should exist for human beings as places they can call home. It should not be for hedge funds to pad their quarterly reports and profits.
3. IMPLEMENT A WELL-RUN, SINGLE-PAYER NATIONAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
Every major developed nation has figured this out but us.
Healthcare is not a luxury item, yet our system treats it like one — enriching middle-man insurers, while patients in American have to make choices between buying their overpriced medicines, paying their rent, or declaring bankruptcy.
A single-payer model wipes out waste, slashes administrative bloat, and centers care around people instead of profit-hungry parasites.
The status quo is a moral failure. It is setup to enrich the C-Suites and Boards of a few greedy, uncaring corporations, which are monopolies, extracting all they can from sick, vulnerable human beings who need our collective assistance, not corporate abuse.
How do we create the best healthcare system in the world? It’s easy. Ask other countries like Norway, Sweden, France, Canada, Mexico, etc. what they love about their systems and copy the good stuff. Ask them what they wish they had done differently and fix the weaknesses in their systems so we have the BEST HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD. This is not rocket science. It is simply caring more for people than profits.
4. REFORM THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Cap administrative salaries at $200,000 permanently with no future raises for anyone making $200,000 or more, (with rare exceptions TBD ~ such as the Superintendent or the CFO of school districts, but not more than $300,000) unless an individual were to do something absolutely extraordinary that benefits the entire system, then bonuses could be paid. No more 3% a year raises just because.
Direct all savings toward teacher pay and other physical, tangible needs, i.e. school supplies, building maintenance, etc.
We have built a bureaucratic skyscraper (an inverted pyramid) administered by an overpaid elite group, while the people actually teaching America’s children need to work two jobs to survive.
This is backward, corrupt, and completely fixable. The same type of thinking needs to be incorporated into our city, county, state, and national governments. Pay them good salaries for good work, but do not allow them to abuse and misuse taxpayers (their neighbors) dollars.
5. TAX BILLIONAIRES AND LARGE CORPORATIONS APPROPRIATELY
A wise and prudent progressive tax system that might go as high as a 50% on billionaires and large multi-national corporations (and wise, prudent spending by the governement) and 30% on capital gains UNTIL OUR DEFICITS ARE REDUCED AND STABILIZED, is not radical — it’s rational. And we need to remove ALL of the loop holes that allow the uberwealthy to pay next to nothing.
Extreme wealth is not built in a vacuum. It is built on the backs of millions of other people working everyday to build the businesses for the owners, as well as the infrastructure of the entire country – the roads, power lines, water systems, etc. Extreme wealth concentration produces extreme political distortion, giving the ultra-rich the ability to bend government to their will and that never ends up well.
6. CREATE A TRUE FEDERAL RESERVE TO SERVE AMERICAN CITIZENS, NOT WALL STREET
Today’s Federal Reserve overwhelmingly prioritizes the interests of large banks and financial institutions — because it’s owned and operated by large private banks, not by the U.S. Government, and operated for the benefit of its citizens as it should be.
America should create a Central Bank that serves the public, not the system we currently have that is disguised as one serving the public, but which is actually designed to enrich Wall Street. The Federal Reserve as it is set up now makes money in one way or another off every bit of debt that exists for the benefit of the large private banks that own it. It uses leverage to extract profits from the working class for large Wall Street financial institutions and is filled with unhealthy conflicts of interest.
7. AUDIT THE PENTAGON ANNUALLY
We spend nearly $900 billion a year on defense, and the Pentagon has never passed a full audit.
Accountability is not anti-military — it’s the baseline expectation for any institution funded by taxpayers.
8. ESTABLISH NATIONAL USURY LAWS
Cap interest rates at 10% nationwide.
Predatory lenders exploiting desperate people with 30%–400% interest rates should not exist in a civilized society.
Ending legal loansharking would stabilize millions of families.
9. IMPLEMENT TERM LIMITS & EXPAND HOUSE TERMS
No more than two consecutive terms for any and all national Senators and House Representatives.
Extend House terms from 2 years to 4, ending the nonstop fundraising treadmill that makes politicians dependent on donors instead of voters.
10. CREATE A SYSTEM OF AFFORDABLE PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION
A national community college system funded publicly and costing no more than $500 per term for participating attendees. The program should also include education in trades that are badly needed, such as plumbing, electrical, construction, etc.
Cap current student loans at 2%, and give tax write offs to employers that pay off their employees’ loans. Ban corporate ownership of student housing.
Education should be a public good — not a multibillion-dollar extraction industry for private equity funds and predatory lenders.
11. ABOLISH PRIVATE PRISONS
The profit motive has no rightful place in deciding human freedom.
When companies make money by keeping cells filled, justice is warped beyond recognition.
Abolish the model entirely.
12. OVERTURN CITIZENS UNITED
Corporations are not people.
Money is not speech.
This disastrous Supreme Court ruling unleashed a tidal wave of dark money that drowned the political voice of ordinary Americans.
And there is a way to stop it on a state level. Simply pass a statute saying that corporations formed in or doing business in the state CANNOT contribute to political candidates.
13. PROTECT WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
Abortion is healthcare.
Decisions about a woman’s body belong to her and her doctor — not to lawmakers, committees, governments, leaders of churches, or anyone else but the woman.
14. LAUNCH A NATIONAL HEALTH INITIATIVE
Fund a massive, sustained public campaign championing daily exercise, eating whole foods, and clean living over chemically loaded processed foods. Teaching the same in our schools. Tai Chi in the park. Pickleball. Group hikes. Etc. Encouraging people to get out of the house and move.
Prevention is cheaper, healthier, and far more humane than treating preventable chronic illness.
15. REGULATE SOCIAL MEDIA, AI & TECH GIANTS
A few unelected tech billionaires currently control the flow of information, public discourse, and personal data for billions of people. This same group is also doing everything they can to advance AI as fast as possible with NO regulation, so they can make trillions of dollars and control the rest of humanity. Much of their efforts are centered on creating AI to replace human workers to reduce costs, rather than making AI systems that would enhance life for all of us, not just the already uber-wealthy. They should NOT be allowed to do this.
Guess who the largest owner of data centers world wide is? BLACKSTONE.
They are building DATA CENTERS that consume massive amounts of fresh water and electricity and they are bribing local, state, and national politicians to allow them to do this in secret then pushing the costs off to everyday working people, when they should be paying for it. And they are doing it at a time when Climate Change is already destroying the environment on a massive scale. In Memphis, TN, as an example, Elon Musk is using UNLICENESED NATURAL GAS TURBINES to power his COLLOSUS AI for GROK.
That level of power demands meaningful oversight, aggressive antitrust enforcement — breaking up the monopolies outright.
THE BOTTOM LINE
These reforms are not extreme — they’re common sense.
Most Americans, across party lines, would support them if the facts weren’t buried under billions in corporate lobbying and PR.
The only reason these ideas feel “impossible” is because powerful interests have convinced us that their exploitation is inevitable.
Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Peter Theil, and others are not superhuman geniuses.
They’re simply richer than everyone else, but their wealth has been built on the backs of workers, taxpayers, small businesses, stock manipulation and a political system they manipulate with their wealth because they are allowed to operate freely as monopolies and take advantage of others.
It’s time to stop treating billionaires as untouchable deities and start demanding a country that serves all of us — not just those at the very top.
The question isn’t whether these reforms would make America better.
The real question is whether we will finally summon the courage and the common sense to demand them and make an America that Works for Everyone!
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After watching all of the people jockeying to run for President, acting as if they are not, I have come to a simple conclusion. I am confident I could do a better job than anyone else currently jockeying for position to run or running. I also understand the financial world well enough that Wall Street will not be able to confuse me. And I am the only one thinking about running for office whose morality I trust, with the exception of James Talarico, Zohran Mandami, and Bernie Sanders. But Talarico is running for Senate and I am not sure he understands the financial world enough to understand how Wall Streets manipulates everything and they could fool him in ways he doesn’t understand. I certainly do not doubt his morality though. Zohran can’t run for the Presidency because he wasn’t born here, and Bernie has said he is too old.
I have watched Gavin Newsom, and arrived at the conclusion that he is either as corrupt as anyone in the country because of the $24 billion missing in CA designated for the homeless that can’t be accounted for; or he is incompetent and incapable of doing what is necessary to make something happen, due to the complete fiasco their highspeed rail project has become.
With $24 billion I could build a new apartment in Bakersfield for every homeless person in California and he can’t find it.
I once had to upgrade 18 miles of rail running from Red Oak, Iowa to Shenandoah, Iowa for an ethanol plant I built. I used union labor and only paid $195,000 per mile. It wasn’t that hard of a thing to do, because they have huge machines that lay the track. California has spend $14 billion and still hasn’t laid a single mile of track. He is either corrupt or incompetent. Either way, I certainly don’t want him as President.
Over the years, I have watched the current members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, destroying our educational system in the country by enslaving our children with student debt. In the last election, the Democrats refused to hold a primary so someone like Bernie couldn’t run again. This proves to me they are as corrupt as the Republicans in many ways.
Additionally, when Zohran Mamdani (who I would vote for in a heart beat for anything he wanted to run for) ran for the Mayor of NYC, no one from the Democratic Party would endorse him, even after he won the primary and was the Democratic candidate, except for AOC and Bernie Sanders, who is actually an Independent. I believe that should show anyone how corrupt the elected members of the Democratic Party are who are in Congress now. The current members are owned by Wall Street and Israel and work for the same people backing Trump. For these reasons, and because I understand how to create things from nothing and how business operates and just care about people more than money, I have been thinking about running myself if enough people wanted to do the things I have outlined in this paper. I would do them.
I am currently the President of First Home Inc, an affordable housing company. I am also the founder and former CEO/Chairman of GPRE on NASDAQ. GPRE was the second largest ethanol producer in the world for a while and is still now one of the largest. It makes the ethanol in gasoline to meet the clean air standards. If you drive a gas burning car, chances are you have Green Plains ethanol in your tank right now. I mention that because it is a public company and people can read about it and see that I was the founder and former CEO by reading their filings on Edgar, the SEC’s reporting platform. I raised $200 million and built the first two plants for the company when I started it. I built them in the middle of the least expensive corn in the country which is what allowed us to acquire so many bankrupt plants to grow as fast as the company did. I became the low cost producer in the United States as soon as the plants became operational. And I found the perfect guy to run it who knew more about ethanol than just about anyone else in the country other than Jeff Broin. The company wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for me, and the ethanol it produces is in 10 to 20 million cars in both the United States and Canada on any given day. I DO have the skill set to be President, the intelligence, and most importantly I cannot be bought.
This paper outlines the type of things I would do if elected and demonstrates what I see as moral. If you want the type of country I have described in this piece, and you would support and work with such a person and my campaign, share this with your friends and family because the billionaires who own these sites certainly don’t want others seeing this and they will block it from being seen by others unless you share it. Then let me know in an email or the comments that you would support me and I will run if enough people want me to.