14th Congressional District Democratic candidate: George Weber

SHARE 14th Congressional District Democratic candidate: George Weber
2018candidates_194_73574089.jpg

U.S. House 14th District Democratic primary candidate George Weber. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

Complete coverage of the local and national primary and general election, including results, analysis and voter resources to keep Chicago voters informed.

On Jan. 15, George Weber appeared before the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board. We asked him why he’s running for the Democratic seat in the 14th Congressional district of Illinois in the March 2018 primary:

Hi, I’m George Weber. I’m running for Congress in the 14th Congressional District. I’ve been married to my wife Beth, who is a middle school math teacher, for 33 years. We have three grown children and we live in Lakewood in the 14th Congressional District. I’m running for Congress because I don’t want our children to grow up in a world, or in a country, where there’s no middle class. Where the country’s broke. Where the healthcare system stinks and where the environment of the planet is being destroyed. My parents were immigrants from Europe and my father worked his entire career on an assembly line at a Chevy Engine plant. He was able to have most of his medical benefits paid for while he was working and he was able to retire at a reasonable age. I had many of the same opportunities when I was working. I had my medical benefits paid for and I was also able to retire with a pension. I asked my son once what he thought about retirement and he said, “Well, I’m going to have to work until I’m 80 years old.” To me that’s not acceptable. That’s one of the main reasons I’m running for Congress. We need to change what’s going on in the country and I decided that was my calling to do that.

America’s the greatest country in the world, but the middle class is struggling like it hasn’t struggled in decades. My goal is to change that and the way I want to do that is to allow the middle class to benefit from increasing productivity the way the shareholders and the way the top one percent have been benefitting. The main priority, my main priority, is prosperity for the middle class. The second priority that I have is to solve what I consider are easily solvable problems. The first of those is jobs. Right now there are 6 million jobs available out there that aren’t being filled because we don’t have a good vocational training system. The second one is solvin’ climate change. We need to do that and we know what the solutions are to that. The third part of that is solving our debt. Our debt is almost as big as it was after World War II, and we solved it then and we can solve it again. And the fourth is taking care of our elderly citizens. We need to do that more. We’re not doing that. And finally we need to take back our government in our political system. Right now our administration is implementing policies that don’t affect the will of the people and we need to change that.


The Chicago Sun-Times sent the candidates seeking nominations for Congress a list of questions to find out their views on a range of important issues facing the state of Illinois. George Weber submitted the following answers to our questionnaire:

QUESTION: As a member of the House from Illinois, please explain what your specific cause or causes will be. Please avoid a generic topic or issue in your answer.

ANSWER: I have a broad line of issues that I will attack when I go to represent the 14th District.  My primary platform item is bringing prosperity back to our struggling middle class.  I will accomplish this by allowing EVERYONE to benefit fairly from our economic system, not just the shareholders and the wealthiest 1%.

The basis for accomplishing this is what I call the employee/shareholder balance.  The CEO’s, who work for the shareholders and who have been highly compensated, have been pushing the benefits of our increasing productivity towards the shareholders and away from the employees as both benefits and pensions have been disappearing over the past two decades.  My parents were immigrants from Europe, and my father worked his entire career on an assembly line in an automobile engine plant.  He provided us with a middle-class lifestyle and was able to retire at a reasonable age with a pension.  I experienced the same opportunities and was also able to retire at a reasonable age with a pension.

My children and their generation will not have the same opportunities.  This is leading to a number of major problems:

Our middle class is struggling as it has not in decades.  A country without a middle class is a third world country.

We have a retirement crisis coming up where most people will have to work into old age.  This is not acceptable.

The shareholders who are benefiting from our increasing productivity represent the very few.  About 25% of U.S. stocks are owned by foreigners and a 2010 study indicated that the wealthiest 10% of Americans own about 82% of the rest.

Our GDP growth has been stuck at around 2.5% since 2010 because the majority of our wealth is concentrated with the very few richest Americans who do not spend a large portion of what they have.  Based on history, wealth does not and will not “trickle down” as claimed by the GOP.

To solve these problems, we need an active, open-minded government to develop policies that are based on facts, economics, and science.  We also need to develop a fair tax policy which is just the opposite of the GOP plan.  Finally, we need to strengthen our unions so that they can assist us in pushing the employee/shareholder balance back to where it was when most in our country was prospering in the mid to late twentieth century.

Regarding retirement, we need to assure the strength of our existing Social Security system into the future.  But Social Security is a safety net and not a retirement plan.  We need to replace, in some form, the pensions which have all but been eliminated, but which provided a secure retirement for previous generations.  We need to develop a new portable, mandatory retirement system which improves on the 401(K) and includes specified employer contributions to supplement Social Security.  Right now only about 45% of Americans even have a 401(K).  I will fight to solve our coming retirement crisis by providing us and coming generations with the same opportunity to retire at a reasonable age that many in our parents’ generation had.

In addition to this, we need to raise our minimum wage.  Between 1970 and 1980, it was equivalent to about $10 per hour, adjusted for inflation to present day dollars.  Today’s minimum wage provides a standard of living about $8,000 below the poverty line for a family of four.  It needs to be increased to $12 per hour.  This is not some “welfare” or “entitlement” proposal.  73% of people on government assistance are working at low paying jobs but cannot make ends meet.  Raising the minimum wage will improve the quality of their lives and also serve to reduce the number of those requiring government assistance.  However, raising the minimum wage will, no doubt, increase the rate at which automation is implemented.  This is another urgent problem that we need to address.

Our government needs to make sure that the benefits of automation, a huge issue on the short-term horizon, are realized throughout our society and not just by the shareholders.  Studies indicate that 38% of jobs will be replaced by automation in the next twenty years.  It is important to remember that automation is actually a good thing as long as the benefits are fairly distributed.  However, this is not now the case, as companies benefit from cheap AI or robot labor and employees get laid off.  The Europeans are already looking into how to fairly distribute the benefits of automation; we are not.  This needs to and will change.

I will also fight to provide access to good jobs through better education and vocational training.  We have about six million jobs out there waiting to be filled right now.  We need to better fund higher education, especially in fields where there is a shortage of workers.  For example, Germany spends about six times what we do as a function of GDP on job training, and about 53% of high schoolers there split their time between school and apprenticeship programs.  And we need to help those with debt due to education expenses pay them off with lower rate loans.

My second major platform item is to fight to resolve our easily solvable problems (easily solvable because we already know what the solutions are):

Providing the U.S. with the same great, inexpensive universal coverage health care system that Canada and the Europeans countries already have.  Based on studies such as that done by the Commonwealth Fund, these countries all have much better systems than we do and pay about half of what we do for healthcare.  Their average cost for healthcare per person is about $4,000 to $4,500 per year (2013 data) and ours is about $8,500 per year.  This is because their systems are so much more efficient than ours.  They are all also universal coverage systems; we are one of the only industrialized countries in the world that does not have universal coverage healthcare.  It should be noted that the health coverage systems in the countries studied are all run differently, with some being a combination of public-private systems and some being government run or single-payer systems, as is the case in Canada.  Overall, 60% of Americans now feel that the government has the responsibility to ensure health coverage for all.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of false information being spread around by people who don’t want the change the status quo when it comes to healthcare.  We need to do and will do a better job of marketing the real facts about health care systems to the American people, especially those who are still not on-board, to finally get our healthcare situation fixed and allow the U.S. join the rest of the developed world.

Paying off our national debt just like we did after World War II.  Over the years the Republicans have excessively cut the taxes on the wealthy to the point where we now have a huge debt to pay off.  It is interesting to follow the changes in the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans over the last 100 years.  The top tax bracket was 25% before the Great Depression.  Due to the depression and World War II the U.S. ran up a huge debt.  By comparison, our debt is now at about 105% of GDP, almost as large as it was after World War II when it was at 119% of GDP.  To pay off this debt, the highest marginal income tax rate was raised in stages up to 94% immediately after WW II and then varied around an average of about 90% between 1946 and about 1964.  At that point, it was reduced in stages to the point where President Reagan reduced it to a low point of about 28% in 1988.  This was when the debt, which had been reduced from 119% of GDP after WW II to 31% of GDP in 1981, started to increase.  President Clinton increased the tax rate back up to 40% in the 1990’s and we had a balanced budget for a short time during his presidency.  In 2002 the second President Bush reduced the tax rate to 35%.  It was increased back up to 40% in 2013.  The debt relative to GDP has been growing since 1981.  Our present debt level is almost as large as it was after WW II and we need to follow the example that our government set seventy years ago to start reducing it again.  Unlike trickle-down economics, which does not work as has been proven again recently in Kansas, raising the tax rate on the wealthiest has been shown to have no negative impact the economy.

Regaining our leadership position in driving for the quick resolution of climate change.  The average CO2 level in the atmosphere are now above 400 ppm, higher than it has been in the last 400,000 years and above normal climate cycles.  Indications are that climate change is occurring faster than models are predicting.  Luckily, solar power is 75% cheaper now than in 2009 and both solar and wind-produced power is cost competitive with fossil-fuel produced power, and the cost of clean energy is continuing to go down.  Because of the dire consequences of global warming, we need to expedite the transition to clean energy.  The best way to do this is to implement a carbon tax, which is a tax placed on fossil fuels based on their carbon content.  This accomplishes several objectives:  It puts a value on pollution which drives the highest polluters to go to cleaner sources of energy rather than imposing more regulations.  It also offers another revenue source for the government.  Canada, Australia, Chile, and many of the European countries are implementing such carbon taxes.  We are again falling behind the rest of the world because carbon taxes at the federal level are being blocked by Republicans.  However, some states are beginning to look into implementing their own programs including Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, and others.  California has had a program in place since 2006, and it works great with 69% of Californians approving of it.  Another issue is that rooftop solar power is taking off around the country, but some power companies are adding fees to home solar customers to limit the use their grid.  Here again, we cannot allow anything to stand in the way of a transition to clean power.  64% of Americans are now concerned about global warming and about the same number want to put priority on alternate energy development.

My third major platform item is allowing the American people to take back our government and our political system.  According to opinion polls, almost all of the policies being pursued by the Trump administration go against what the American people want.  My first action in Congress will be to legislate away the Citizens United decision, which polls indicate approximately 80% of Americans are against.  Yet, the bills that have been introduced to legislate this away were defeated in Congress.  I will propose new legislation and then lead the American people in a fight against Congress until they pass it, and then continue on from there, one issue at a time.  For example, polls indicate that 75% of Americans want term limits for people in Congress, 63% want to do away with the Electoral College, 70% want independent commissions to develop Congressional districts and end gerrymandering.  We can no longer allow gridlock to hold back our progress.  We need to change the direction that this country is heading in by doing things that make sense, and we need to do it NOW.

I want to make one final comment about what we should be focusing on as a country.  In the past, we have used GDP growth is a measure of how well our country is doing.  However, some economists indicate that this is not a good measurement of economic and social progress because GDP growth is not fairly distributed and is not a complete measure of well-being.  Two reports show that the U.S. is falling behind many other countries when it comes to a wider array of measures.  The Social Progress Index, published by a U.S.-based non-profit, ranks 128 countries based on 50 indicators such as personal rights, health and well-being, personal safety, and tolerance, in addition to GDP.  It is basically a measure of overall well-being.  Unfortunately, over the past years the U.S. has been losing ground, is now ranked number 18, and is regarded as a “second tier” country.  A similar World Happiness Report, published by a United Nations organization, ranks 34 OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries based on life satisfaction.  In this survey, the U.S. has dropped from third to nineteenth place in the past ten years.  This kind of information should be a wake-up call.  I will use metrics such as the ones in these reports in order to better educate and motivate the people, and to market the policies that we want to implement his country.

The United States is still the greatest country in the world but there is such potential to make this country a far better, fairer place for the sake of our generation and those to come.


George Weber

District running for: Illinois 14th Congressional District

Political/civic background: Just-retired Chemical Engineer, no politics

Occupation: Chemical Engineer

Education: B.S. Chemical Engineering, State University of New York at Buffalo

Campaign website: GeorgeWeberforCongress.com


QUESTION: Please list three district-specific needs that will be your priorities. This could be a project that is needed in your district, or a rule that needs to be changed, or some federal matter that has been ignored.

ANSWER:

I am a strong supporter of public transportation. Before I retired I took Metra to work round trip every day along with a Pace Vanpool group that took us from the train station to our work location. Chicago already has a great public transportation system compared to place such as Los Angeles. However, I also traveled extensively in my last job and so was exposed to other transit systems in Europe and Asia. Metra needs new equipment badly. So much of their equipment is old. Since they have not been able to get much from the state under the current administration, I will push for additional federal funding.

I would like to promote more vocational training in our schools. There are many people who are working at low paying jobs because they don’t have the right skills. In the meantime there are lots of unfilled jobs that require some specialized training. We need to bring the two together.

Finally, being a chemical engineer, I would like to work to get more young people in IL-14 involved in STEM careers. I feel that I can use my experiences as an engineer to tell young people what it is like and what I have done, the things I have seen in traveling overseas, my design and environmental work, etc. to get them interested.

QUESTION: If you are running as a Democrat, what is your best idea for getting any initiative you may propose advanced if the House continues to be controlled by the GOP after the 2018 elections?

ANSWER: As I mentioned in my third major platform item above, we have lost control of our government. The Trump administration, backed up by the Republicans and Randy Hultgren, the current 14th District representative, are making policy decisions which polls indicate nearly always go against the will of the majority of American people.  The elected officials in government work for the American people, not the other way around.  Politicians need to listen to the people that they work for.  As a result of the bad decisions being made, we are now beginning to fall behind much of the developed world in a number of key metrics.  This is just not acceptable!

I am running for Congress because I have no faith that any candidates or politicians will accomplish what I plan on accomplishing, based on what we see going on in Congress.  I feel my children and their generation are being threatened and I will not stand for it!  I am going to expect a lot out of myself once I get to Washington.  And most of all, I will get things done!  I will do this by being tough and independent-minded, using data to convince others, reaching across the aisle, and most importantly, by leveraging the power of the people to back me up.

I am not going there to be a career politician. I will be more vocal in getting things done because we are at a point where just going to Congress and voting is not accomplishing anything. If the gridlock continues, I will use public opinion polls and the power of the people to put an end to the gridlock, with the Citizens United decision being first on the list.

TOPIC: President Donald Trump

QUESTION: What do you make of President Trump?

ANSWER: Trump has lowered the bar on what it takes to be president to ground level. Organizations are tracking how many falsehoods he tells. Nineteen women have accused him of sexual harassment. The many aspects of his behavior. His constant attacks on the media. His support of Putin. His attacks on our intelligence agencies. Integrity is what made our country great. We cannot allow one person to destroy that.

QUESTION: Which three actions by the Trump administration do you support the most? Which three do you oppose the most?

ANSWER: I have trouble thinking of any that I support and there are just too many that I oppose. This is evident not just for me but for most in this country based on opinion polls. The list of those that I oppose include getting rid of environmental regulations which hurts our environment, eliminates jobs and helps company shareholders. I oppose backing out of the Paris Climate Agreement. I oppose reducing the size of national parks. I spent two weeks hiking the Appalachian Trail in May. We need to protect our parks and open spaces.

QUESTION: What is your view of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian tampering in the 2016 election, including possible collusion by the Trump campaign. Does Mueller have your support?

ANSWER: The Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia is very serious and needs to be investigated. Trump’s positive statements about Putin while he badmouths our intelligence agencies is truly alarming. Mueller has my full support. In my discussions with people in the 14th District, many, including myself, are extremely concerned about what is going on in Washington and we are looking to Robert Mueller’s investigation to finally bring out the truth. He is a ray of hope for many.

TOPIC: Terrorism

QUESTION: What should Congress do to reduce the threat of terrorism at home, either from ISIS or from others?

 ANSWER: We need to fight terrorism using all of our intelligence gathering capabilities, we need to fight ISIS in the Middle East, and we need to monitor those with potential mental illness or patterns on hate in this country. But we need to keep things in prospective. The chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are much less than being killed by being struck by lightning. Our present administration has taken extremist views and gone overboard with the things that they are doing, such as travel bans.

TOPIC: Guns and violence

QUESTION: What is the single most important action Congress can take to curb gun violence in the United States?

ANSWER: Gun violence actually consists of two separate problems: the high rates of killings in cities like Chicago, and the mass shootings that occur such as in Las Vegas. Both have different causes and both can only be handled by implementing a number of solutions, focusing on the root cause.

QUESTION: Do you favor a law banning the sale and use of “bump stocks” that increase the firing speed of semi-automatic weapons? Why? Do you favor any further legal limits on guns of any kind? Or, conversely, what gun restrictions should be done away with?

ANSWER: I favor banning “bump stocks”. We also need to do what is getting to be known as “common sense” gun reform based on what the majority of gun owners support. 85% of gun owners favor universal background checks. Gun owners also overwhelmingly support a federal database of gun sales, and barring people convicted of domestic violence or with mental illness from buying guns.

TOPIC: America’s growing wealth gap

QUESTION: As an editorial board, our core criticism of the tax overhaul legislation supported by the Republican majorities in the House and Senate is that it lowers taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans at a time of historic inequalities of wealth and income in the United States. We believe in free markets, but it does not look to us like the “silent hand” of the market is functioning properly, rewarding merit fairly. We are troubled that the top 1 percent of Americans own 38.6 percent of the nation’s wealth and the bottom 90 percent own just 22.8 percent of the wealth. Tell us how we are right or wrong about this. Does the growing income and wealth gap trouble you?

ANSWER: I totally agree that income inequality is a major problem in the country and it is getting worse. As I mentioned before, my major platform item is prosperity for the middle class. I discussed the reasons for it which all point back to income inequality. I also discussed some of the things we need to do about it.

The following are my comments on the recent passage of the horrible GOP tax plan.  Everyone loves a tax cut.  But the truth is that the GOP’s tax bill is bad for the people of Illinois and the U.S., both short term and long term.  Under the bill, tens of thousands of our neighbors will lose their health insurance, and homeowners will have less ability to deduct their property taxes.  As far as stimulating the economy, with the unemployment rate at an extremely low 4.1%, a tax cut will not reduce this rate much further.  And our economic growth has been stuck below about 2.5% GDP growth since the year 2000.  This is due to the fact that the average consumer in our consumer-driven economy has less and less money to spend.  Meanwhile, the wealthiest 1% are saving a majority of their money, earned mostly through stock market gains, rather than spending it on American goods and services that drive our economy.  Worst of all, the bulk of the tax cuts in the GOP plan will go toward large corporations and the wealthiest Americans who already have plenty of cash on hand.  Large corporations will not use this money to create jobs but will rather use most of the tax savings to benefit wealthy U.S. shareholders, and foreigners who own 25% of all U.S. stocks.  Small businesses that create most of the new jobs in this country every year, and the struggling middle class do deserve tax cuts, but the GOP’s tax bill puts its priorities elsewhere.  That is just the short-term impact.  Long term, the bill would add at least $1.5 trillion to our national debt, or more than $4,000 for every American.  As mentioned before, our debt is now almost as large as it was after World War II.  The problem now is that, based on past history, our economy is likely due to experience another recession in the near future.  When that happens, we will be hard pressed to stimulate the economy if we’re already deeply in debt.  As far as tax policy goes, I am a believer in Keynesian economics. This means that the government should raise taxes and decrease spending during times of a recovered economy (like now) to pay off our debt, and increase spending (and the debt) during recessions to stimulate the economy. This GOP tax plan makes almost no sense from any standpoint now and it will not be long before we end up paying the price for it.

TOPIC: International affairs

QUESTION: Do you support the Trump administration’s decision to move the United States embassy in Israel to Jerusalem? How will this help or hinder efforts to secure a lasting peace between Israel and its Middle East neighbors?

ANSWER: I am against this decision. Even the Pope has come out against doing this. This does nothing other than incite more hatred and reduce the chances of coming up with a peace plan for the area.

QUESTION: Is military action by the United States a plausible response to the nuclear weapons threat posed by North Korea? How might a U.S. military response play out for South Korea, Japan and China? What alternative do you support?

ANSWER: We must try to avoid a war on the Korean peninsula because of the deaths that it would cause and the potential for a further escalation with China and Russia. If the U.S. is attacked there is no question that we would respond. But we need to do something. Many people in North Korea are living terrible lives or in labor camps. Given the state of the people in there, I would propose expanding the effort to get the people in North Korea to overthrow their government. Some South Korean groups are already sending in balloons carrying flash drives and CD’s with information about the outside world. This should be expanded.

TOPIC: Immigration

QUESTION: The Supreme Court has ruled that the third version of the Trump administration’s travel ban on eight countries with predominantly Muslim populations can go into effect while legal challenges against the ban continue. What is your position on this travel ban?

ANSWER: I think that the travel ban serves no purpose. As I mentioned before, terrorism needs to be looked at in prospective, not from an extremist point of view.

QUESTION: Has the United States in the last decade been accepting too many immigrants, and does this pose a threat to the American way of life?

ANSWER: My parents were immigrants from Europe. We need immigrants to keep our economy growing. And immigrants are responsible for less crime than native-born Americans. We need to develop a structured, organized immigration policy that allows the right people to legally migrate to this country based on the availability of jobs. These immigrants then need to respect and abide by the principles that made this country great.

QUESTION: Should the “wall” between the United States and Mexico be built? What might it accomplish?

ANSWER: The wall is a waste of money and would not serve any purpose. Net immigration from Mexico is reportedly already near zero. Again, we need to develop a structured, organized immigration policy.

TOPIC: Affordable Care Act

QUESTION: The tax reform plan created by Republican majorities in the House and Senate would eliminate the Obamacare “individual mandate” that most Americans must have health insurance or pay a fine. Does this threaten the viability of the Affordable Care Act? What more on this, if anything, should be done?

ANSWER: Eliminating the individual mandate will threaten the ACA. Not having a mandate makes absolutely no sense. Everyone needs health insurance. No one knows when they are going to get sick. Even young, healthy people are risking their future when they decide to not get health insurance. That’s what insurance is for. The problem is that we all pay the price when people do not get health insurance. The biggest reason for personal bankruptcies in this country is people not be able to pay their medical bills. This is why we need a universal coverage system like every other developed country in the world has.

TOPIC: Your opponent(s)

QUESTION: What is your biggest difference with your opponent(s)?

ANSWER: My motivation to run for Congress is that I do not want our children and their generation to grow up in a world where there is no middle class, where the government is broke, and where the environment of the planet is being destroyed. And nothing is getting done! I feel I have been very fortunate in my life and career. My parents were immigrants from Europe. My father spent his career working on an assembly to provide us with what was a middle-class lifestyle. I had many of the same benefits and opportunities. I cannot say the same for my children and their generation. I plan on changing that.

I will go to Washington to be a citizen legislator which is what the Founding Fathers had envisioned, not to be a career politician.  I am not persuaded by ideology or rhetoric.  In Congress, I will pursue policies that reflect the will of the people, which also typically aligns with doing things that make sense.  And most of all, I will get things done!  I will do this by being tough and independent-minded, using data to convince others, reaching across the aisle, and most importantly, by leveraging the power of the people to back me up.

Being a just-retired chemical engineer, I will bring a unique prospective to policy-making.  Whenever engineers consider an issue, they examine it with an eye towards resolving it.  And there are a lot of issues that need to be resolved in government!  Unfortunately, there are only seven people in Congress right now who identify themselves as engineers.

As a Congressman for the 14th District, I will be a strong advocate for women.  I am a strong advocate of equal pay for equal work.  I am the proud husband of a teacher in our public school system and I have two successful daughters, so I have a personal stake in making sure that all women have a fair opportunity to achieve their dreams, both for the advancement of women and for the advancement of our country.

The decisions that I will make will always be based on facts, data, and science; not on ideology.  But most importantly, as a representative of the people I will not base decisions on my own will, but rather the will of the people in the 14th District.  We have now seen what it is like over the past year to have an administration in the White House that does not care about what the majority of Americans want, and a representative in our district who backs them up almost all of the time.

I am running for Congress because I have no faith that any candidates or politicians will accomplish what I plan on accomplishing, based on what we see going on in Congress.  I feel my children and their generation are being threatened and I will not stand for it!  I am going to expect a lot out of myself once I get to Washington and I would expect the same of whomever the representative is, if not me.  I don’t want to be represented by a do-nothing career politician.  I will be more vocal in getting things done because we are at a point where just going to Congress and voting is not accomplishing anything.

I have a lifetime of experience in solving life’s problems (three houses, three successful children, and thirty-three years of marriage) and a career’s worth of experience in solving problems in general, making things more efficient, and getting others to buy into my ideas.  There are numerous multi-million dollar projects operating that I designed, in addition to a U.S. Patent with my name on it (U.S. Patent 6,004,523).

Finally, in order to win the 14th Congressional District seat, the Democratic candidate will have to be electable. The 14th District is a Republican-heavy district that we have lost for too many years.  In 2016, we lost the District by nearly 20%.  We cannot allow this to happen again.  A recent poll indicated that Randy Hultgren still leads a “generic” Democratic candidate by 47% to 44% so even with all of the insanity going on in Washington, we still have an uphill fight.  We must nominate a candidate who can compete in this challenging environment.  In my last position before my retirement, my job for over seven years was to fly around the world convincing people throughout Asia and Europe to license American technology.  I did!  I will reach out to independents and moderate Republicans.  In order to win, the candidate will have to accomplish three things:

Gain the voter’s respect through knowledge.

Convince the voters that you have the right policies with facts and data.

Give the voters something to chew on, based on a strategy.

I can and will use my experience in convincing others, based on respect and knowledge, to win the 14th District.

We also need a tough candidate to go up against lawyer Randy Hultgren in debates. With my experience and facts, I will have no problem in doing this.

Finally, my wife and I have owned and lived in the same house in Lakewood in the 14th District for years and we will continue to do so for years to come.  This will be true whether I win or lose.  We saw how important an issue this is in the election in Georgia in mid-2017.


The Latest
Despite getting into foul trouble, which limited him to just six minutes in the second half, Shannon finished with 29 points, five rebounds and two assists.
Cowboy hats, bell-bottoms and boots were on full display Thursday night as fans lined up for the first of his three sold-out shows.
The incident occurred about 3:40 p.m. near Minooka. The horse was successfully placed back into the trailer, and the highway reopened about 40 minutes later. No injuries were reported.
The Hawks conceded the game’s only two goals within the first seven minutes and were shut out for the 12th time this season in a 2-0 defeat Thursday.