America can afford a living minimum wage. What’s been missing is a plan that raises pay without crushing small and mid-size businesses in the transition. Here’s a clear, workable path: tax extreme wealth and excess corporate profits to fund a short-term bridge for employers, and let the long-term payoff do the rest.

Short term: We raise the floor in steps and cover part of the gap for smaller employers with credits funded by taxes on extreme wealth and excess corporate profits.
Long term: Local businesses gain a larger, steadier customer base, lower churn, and fairer competition. Workers bring home enough to live—and to spend on Main Street.

America’s obsession with privatized healthcare has produced a system that is morally indefensible and economically unsustainable. No one should have to choose between treatment and bankruptcy, or watch loved ones suffer because a corporation denied coverage.

If health is wealth—and it is—then universal care is the foundation for a truly prosperous nation. We have the resources, the models, and the public support. What we lack is the political courage.

It’s time for the United States to join the civilized world and treat healthcare not as a profit engine, but as a sacred right.

The billionaire class has a choice: invest in the America that made their wealth possible or undermine democracy to preserve their power. So far, many have chosen the latter. But history shows that when ordinary people demand accountability and fairness, systemic change is possible.

If America is to honor its promise of government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” we must confront the corrosive influence of extreme wealth and build an economy — and a democracy — that works for everyone.

The stakes are nothing less than the survival of the American dream itself.

The Racket: Monopoly, Corruption, Collapse, Reform, Repeat

America keeps living through the same economic scam on loop. It goes like this:

1. Industries consolidate. A few giants choke out competition. Profits surge.

2. The giants rig the rules. Lobbyists flood Washington. Risk piles up in the dark.

3. The bubble pops. Workers lose jobs, savings, homes. The public pays the cleanup bill.

4. Congress steps in with reforms to “make sure this never happens again.”

5. Time passes. Wall Street, Big Tech, Big Banks, Big Oil, Big Whatever quietly pressure, sue, and lobby until those rules are weakened, gutted, or repealed.

6. Go back to step 1.

This isn’t an accident. It’s a cycle. And it’s older than any of us.

Let’s walk it.

A functional society does not allow the basic human need for shelter to be harvested like a commodity—especially when families are locked out of ownership and renters are squeezed by fees and concentrated market power. We can’t solve the entire housing crisis with one law, but we can stop making it worse by letting corporate owners crowd out first-time buyers and convert neighborhoods into profit machines. Homeownership should be for people. My commitment is simple: in Congress, I will fight to put families and the American Dream back in front of private equity’s balance sheet where it belongs.

Democracy isn’t just about counting votes; it’s about making votes count equally. The tools exist to end the era of politicians choosing their voters. All that’s missing is the will to use them.

The Founders warned about the danger of a standing army that becomes an engine of its own power. We built that engine anyway. We wrapped it in the flag. We called any oversight “unpatriotic.” And we now spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on a war machine that can’t pass an audit and routinely enriches a handful of corporations while young Americans come home in caskets.

“We the People” Is Not a Slogan—It’s a Standard

A Congress that can day-trade defense stocks, hide who bought their last fundraiser, carve their own voters, and float seamlessly into seven-figure lobbying gigs does not represent We the People. It represents the house account.

Shame has to come first. Then law. Then enforcement that actually hurts.

Ban the trades. Wear the donors. Shut the revolving door. Pay for performance. Lock in term limits. Outlaw partisan gerrymandering. And give the public an independent prosecutor who doesn’t ask permission to knock.

That’s how you end the racket—so the republic can finally get back to work.

Future generations will inherit the story we write right now. They will either celebrate this era as the moment humanity graduated, when we finally recognized that being “one species” mattered more than being “one faction” or they will study our failures as a warning about intelligence without maturity.

Cooper’s campaign presence has leaned hard into donation and signup funnels while offering no clearly labeled, detailed “Issues” platform page the public can review at a glance. When a politician has money on tap but policies on mute, it’s usually because the strategy is to coast on name recognition and vibes, not accountability.

America’s next great chapter can be written with hammers, seedlings, fiber-optic cable, and open hearts. Picture a national service program that puts hundreds of thousands of people to work strengthening our communities against climate shocks, rebuilding after disasters, expanding affordable housing, and reducing homelessness—while forging the kind of cross-country camaraderie veterans know well. Think of it as a way to serve your nation without joining the military—and to leave with GI Bill–style benefits for your next stage of life.

We have traveled from lords and masters to contracts and code. Feudalism denied mobility; slavery denied humanity; the platform age risks denying agency—the practical freedom to make plans and hold power to account. Automation and AI can either free us from drudgery or free capital from paying for labor. Subscriptions can either smooth access or sentence families to perpetual rent.

History’s lesson is not that progress is inevitable. It’s that progress is designed—through rules that balance innovation with equity, and through institutions that insist prosperity be shared. The future of work should not be a museum of old coercions dressed in new interfaces. It can be a commons of capability, where technology lifts human dignity rather than pricing it.

We still get to choose.

Humans often project moral judgments onto biology, confusing “unfamiliar” with “unnatural.” History is full of examples where what was once taboo—left-handedness, mental health conditions, neurological differences—was later understood as natural human variation once science caught up.

Sexual orientation and sexual diversity belong in that same category. Crucially, acknowledging this reality does not require abandoning culture, faith, or personal values. It requires something simpler and more demanding: intellectual humility.

How many times will we have to bail out Wall Street?

No two histories are identical—and the Holocaust remains a singular crime. But atrocity prevention is about recognizing patterns early enough to stop the worst from happening. Looking at how Nazi Germany marginalized and brutalized Jews before full-scale extermination, and comparing that to credible warnings being raised today about Palestinians—especially in Gaza—helps clarify urgent risks, responsibilities, and remedies.

This piece draws on widely accepted early-warning frameworks for mass atrocities, then maps key parallels in rhetoric, law, spatial control, collective punishment, and international response. It also names crucial differences—because precision matters when stakes are this high.

Vote stupid out!

A Compromise Plan on Reproductive Freedom and the Protection of Human Life

The debate over reproductive freedom and the protection of human life is one of the most polarizing issues in contemporary politics. On one side, advocates for reproductive freedom emphasize the importance of a woman's right to choose and have control over her body. On the other, those who wish to protect all human life, including the unborn, view abortion as a moral issue that involves the rights of the fetus. Finding common ground between these two perspectives is challenging, yet crucial for fostering a more united and understanding society. Here is a proposed plan that aims to respect both reproductive freedom and the protection of human life.

“Right to work” sounds like freedom. In practice, it’s a corporate playbook to defund unions, depress wages, and tilt power away from the people who make this country run. The slogan sells “choice”; the policy manufactures free riders—workers who benefit from union contracts while paying nothing for the representation that wins them. That is the point. It’s not about liberty; it’s about weakening the only large-scale counterweight ordinary workers have to corporate power.

Fixing the broken foundation.

Public programs like Social Security and Medicaid aren’t just policy successes—they’re moral victories. They represent what America looks like when it takes care of its own.

Privatization is not modernization. It's a cynical attempt to convert public solidarity into private profit, one budget line at a time. If we allow that to happen, we won’t just lose these programs—we’ll lose the social contract that binds us together.

In the richest country in the world, no elder should live in poverty, and no child should go without healthcare. It’s time we stop apologizing for our public programs—and start fighting like hell to protect and expand them.