POLICY

Energy:

Nuclear

  • Retain existing nuclear power plants
  • Expand nuclear engineering programs at public universities
  • Provide funding for advanced nuclear reactor research that use different fuels like thorium and different coolants like molten salt
  • Deploy small modular nuclear reactors

Natural Gas

  • Require safer, more efficient methods of fracking that results in less wastewater. 
  • Require natural gas companies prevent methane gas leaks
  • Invest in developing cheaper methods of natural gas extraction, refining, and shipping. 
  • Begin exploring future uses for natural gas and other fossil fuels within a carbon neutral, sustainable framework

Wind and Solar

  • Expand solar cell production even further
  • Build rooftop solar arrays, no solar farms
  • Expand wind farming in western Ohio
  • Mitigate damage of wind farms
  • Invest in wind turbine improvements to reduce footprint, increase efficiency

Electric Grid

  • Smart grid
  • Incorporate smart grid into broadband expansion

Battery Storage

  • Ohio invest in variety of storage devices
  • Invest in lithium battery production to help dominate electric vehicle industry

Agriculture

Crop Diversity

  • Popularize more foods
  • Education of preferred farming techniques, different system of crop rotation
  • Develop techniques for farming greater variety of crops
  • Seek out and develop new crops
  • Restore eastern agricultural complex
  • Prepare for a post-corn world

Precision Farming

  • Develop precision farming tools/sensors/software
  • Create program to incorporate precision farming techniques into Ohio farming

Genetic Modification

  • GMOs good
  • Reduce red tape wherever possible
  • Open source GMOs

Industrial Farming and Automation

  • Explore paths for more efficient, more sustainable industrial scale farming
  • Invest in technologies to increase automation of harvesting

Forestry

  • Cross laminated timber products
  • Forestry as carbon sinks
  • Government managed reforesting of disused farmland if the collapse of ethanol proves so damaging to land prices. 

Unconventional Farming Techniques

  • Aquaponics
  • Algae Farming
  • Hydroponics
  • Vertical Farming

Housing and Construction

Public Works/Infrastructure 

  • Modular
  • Better examination of cost/benefit estimations
  • Don’t always settle for lowest bid, examine bids carefully
  • Penalties for contracts that exceed a certain percentage of estimated costs
  • More flood prevention
  • Integration of Ohio’s state infrastructure bank into new Ohio government banking system

Housing

  • Cross laminated timber products for taller wooden structures
  • Modular 
  • Preservation and restoration of existing housing
  • Transition from property tax to land value tax
  • Rezoning to allow denser housing and mixture of residential and commercial 

Healthcare

  • Decouple healthcare from health insurance.
  • Decouple health insurance from employment.
  • Create an interstate healthcare standards compact to simplify operation of healthcare providers across state lines.
  • Explore how Ohio can pursue a Direct Care model while working within the stringent requirements of federal law and the ACA.
  • Transparent pricing
  • Invest in new hospitals, targeting rural Ohio first, through a broad infrastructure program.
  • Reduce exhaustive paperwork, tort reform
  • Expand medical school openings and reduce costs. 
  • Repeal Ohio’s Certificate of Need laws. 
  • Raise awareness of the value and importance of timely vaccination 
  • Greater access to medicine through telemedicine
  • Greater development of remote health monitoring technologies
  • Greater emphasis on both preventative care and general quality of life/health improvement

Education

Post-Secondary

  • Open source textbooks and course materials
  • Open source online education programs created and provided jointly by Ohio’s public universities, community colleges, and high schools
  • More directly linking community colleges and technical schools with local high schools for more seamless transition 
  • Make public universities partially liable for unpaid student loans
  • Eliminate obstacles for students seeking transcripts
  • Expand and modify programs of vital economic importance (nuclear engineering, medical, teaching, aerospace engineering, programming)
  • Consider alternative approaches for assessing student performance beyond basic GPA (weighting courses, for instance)

Primary and Secondary Education

  • Eliminate 12th grade
  • Universal pre-k
  • Support internal diversity and innovation in education by providing multiple styles and paths within schools (this is my compromise with pro and anti-charter school folks)
  • Universal vouchers
  • Centralize funding a little more (maybe with universal vouchers in a horrifying market experiment) 
  • More integration of web enabled and self-paced education
  • Really need to eliminate lead and asbestos in school
  • Good lord, we desperately need to upgrade ventilation and airflow in schools
  • We’re going to teach my version of economics from now on, so Tim decrees! 

Aerospace

  • Space mining
  • Satellites 
  • New propulsion and rocketry

Transportation

  • Never give up on autonomous vehicles
  • Ohio centric high speed rail (acceleration is much more important than max velocity here)
  • Electric vehicle production
  • Build out train connections from Ohio’s small cities to the tri-C route 
  • Why are highways so expensive to build? I blame people
  • Make subways cheap by doing the opposite of whatever NYC does

Communication

  • Rural broadband
  • 5G
  • Domestic competition in internet provision
  • Link with rollout of smartgrid 
  • Enshrine the right of individuals to the data they produce 

Resource Management

  • Space mining
  • Developing techniques for the harvesting of rare earth elements from disused coal mines
  • Natural gas and oil sustainability
  • See if we can making mining in Ohio a thing again but cheap and clean
  • Cleaning up after ourselves
  • Figure out something to do with carbon: nanotubes, graphene, carbon fiber

Innovation and Industrial Policy

  • The importance of standard setting to market dominance
  • The American system forever! Interoperability, modularity.
  • Clusters
  • Establish Bank of Ohio for Ohio government funds, roll in Ohio infrastructure bank 
  • Foster a culture of innovation and self-improvement

Ohio Investment Bank (an idea I just won’t let die)

  • Large state controlled venture capital fund
  • Tied into university technology transfer offices 
  • Small business services (paperwork, accounting)
  • Export, import, and supply chain management assistance
  • The means by which most technological growth and industry investment will be achieved

Government

  • Experimental policy 
  • State government as standard setter and centralizer of information
  • Local governments for implementation, tailor local policy to meet state targets
  • Democracy dollars
  • Eliminate state senate (maybe)
    • If not, 6 at large senators
  • 225 person general assembly 
    • salaries cut to $20,000/yr
    • 3 year terms, 75 up for election per year
    • Alternatively 6 year terms, 75 up every two years
  • Eliminate self funding (you can contribute as much to your own campaign as anyone else can) 
  • Automatic voter registration
  • Same day voter registration
  • Lower voting age to 17
  • Independent Redistricting
  • Ranked Choice or Approval Voting
  • Bank of Ohio to hold state’s funds
  • More transparency from 501c4 or a ban on political spending
  • Digital government, every interaction with the government should reasonably be done online and in a simplified format. Never stand in line! 

Taxation

  • Eliminate the Ohio Commercial Activity Tax
  • Return of the Inheritance tax
  • Sales tax to value added tax
  • Property tax to land value tax
  • Increase taxes on incomes above $150,000 individual a year
  • The Independent Commission on Taxation

Criminal Justice

  • Judicial discretion, eliminate mandatory minimums on a lot of things
  • Decriminalize drugs (and start trying to release drug offenders from prisons)
  • Legalize marijuana and really liberalize that market, none of these state sponsored monopolies
  • No private prisons
  • Increases educational resources and skills training within prisons