HEALTH CARE: The role of government in healthcare should be to reconnect the patient with the caregiver. When a patient can choose which doctor to go to, the quality of health care is maintained, and if the patient is encouraged to shop around by being directly involved with the payment of healthcare then the cost of healthcare is contained.
SCHOOL FUNDING: Control should be returned to the local level. If parents were allowed to choose where to send their children then the quality of education would be taken care of and if the money follows the child then the cost of education would be taken care of. The ever encroachment of state government upon the local municipalities to control and manipulate them is resulting in abject failure of the school systems to provide our children with quality education.
TRANSPARENCY: Deliberation is the process by which all sides have a chance to be heard and ideas vetted. When only one idea is allowed to be put forth and no dissent on it is permitted, transparency is curtailed, and we lose the benefit that comes from multiple points of view. To have a free society we must have a free exchange of ideas where all sides can state their opinions and debate them.
OPIATE ADDICTION: In spite of claims to address the opiate addiction problem there has only been a halfhearted response in actually doing anything as well as too much foot dragging and time wasted on studying the issue. Instead the campaign against tobacco could be used as a template and a serious program could be implemented to make strides to deal with the addiction problems.
HIGHER EDUCATION: Higher education cost is taking second place to the problem of low employment opportunity as more and more jobs leave the state that require higher education and are replaced by minimum wage and low skilled jobs that do not require a higher education nor provide enough income to pay for said higher educations. A robust economy will need to be maintained so that jobs of higher education are necessary. The state will have to reform its tax codes and regulation codes.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: Government plays an important role in economic development, in that free markets are only free if they are free from force and fraud. Governments in a free market are thereby charged to prevent force and fraud from entering the marketplace. A government that instead seeks to control the marketplace, brings with it immediately force and opens the doorway to fraud. Vermont has strayed a long way from protecting markets to controlling them. A thorough audit of the books and revisions and repeal of various laws and regulations that control marketplace should be done in order to re-create a business environment in which businesses can start, move to, thrive, and grow.