I promise to fight for every Kentuckian’s right to affordable health care. As past Chairman of the Park DuValle Community Health Center, I understand the need for indigent healthcare. Promoting the development of healthy Kentuckians is important for the development of productive Kentuckians. I will fight to strengthen Medicare and Veterans care to ensure our seniors and veterans enjoy the quality of care they deserve. Doing nothing, as the Republicans have done during the past eight years, is not an option. Fixing health care means eliminating our fears and providing peace of mind for hard-working Americans and their families and providing much needed public oversight of an industry that makes all the rules and all the money. There must be accountability that allows for any government program to be tweaked within ninety days of discovery of errors or loopholes.

Creating Jobs and Strengthening the Economy

We must invest in our Colleges and Universities and allow them to become an oasis for regional research and development to help develop new revenue streams for our small businesses and those businesses, which are “Uniquely Kentucky”. Job creation means identifying those assets, which cannot be outsourced. Examples of jobs which are “Uniquely Kentucky” are our Colleges and Universities, coal, tobacco, our parks and agriculture, the 62 businesses and thousands of jobs depending on or associated with the Ohio River, and GE’s Green Initiatives for manufacturing water heaters, washer and driers in Kentucky. Its time we take these assets to the next level going from good to great.

As the only candidate who has actually created jobs, my main priority is to get the economy back on track. It doesn’t matter to me if the economists tell us the recession is “technically over” when unemployment in Kentucky is 10.9%. Kentucky’s working families and small businesses have been hurt the most during this difficult economic period. The first step is to stop the bleeding. One way to do this is to adopt the AFL-CIO’s five steps to care for the jobless and putting America back to work. Those steps are:

1. Extend the lifeline for jobless workers.
2. Rebuild America’s schools, roads and energy systems.
3. Increase aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services.
4. Fund jobs in our communities.
5. Put TARP funds to work for Main Street.

The second step to strengthen Kentucky’s economy is to give Kentucky’s small businesses the necessary tools to compete and succeed. As a small business owner, I have first-hand experience dealing with the issues small businesses face, such as obtaining credit and providing health care for employees. My past experience working as the community outreach officer for National City Bank to ensure credit availability for small businesses along with my experience serving on the board of the Louisville Chamber of Commerce, has helped me recognize the obstacles small businesses face and what it takes to overcome those obstacles.

The third step is making the types of long-term investments that will ensure that Kentucky is an innovative jobs leader long into the future. I support investments in hi-tech and clean energy manufacturing, which will create thousands of good-paying jobs and complement our strengths in traditional energies, agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing.

Finally, as one of the founders of the Metropolitan Housing Coalition, an advocacy group working to ensure that affordable housing is available to Kentuckian, I believe we need to make sure the economy works for working families for a change. For too long, politicians in Frankfort and Washington, D.C. have catered to special interests at the expense of working Kentuckians and their families. There is something very wrong when the big banks on Wall Street get billions in taxpayer bailouts, and workers in Kentucky get pink slips. As your senator, I will support tough oversight of those Wall Street businesses that utilize taxpayer’s dollars to provide services, which the general public depends on.

21st Century Education

You will be hard pressed to find a family among these candidates who has done any more for the Education of Kentucky students than mine. My family has been involved in the education of Kentuckians since my great grandfather, Tandy Cunningham, born in 1828 were upon gaining his freedom from slavery, built the Negro school on his farm in Trigg County. Since then, I come from five generations of Educators, my great grandmother, grandmother, mother, sister and two nephews. My father Dr. P. O. Sweeney born in Casey County was a teacher and principal in 1920s Clinton, Kentucky. As a dentist, he later led and won the struggle in 1938 for the equalization of salaries between black and white teachers. My mother, Susa Sweeney was born in Trigg County and taught home economics in Christian and Madison County and my sister taught 33 years in Anchorage, KY. One nephew teaches English at Male Traditional School and the other teaches at the University of San Francisco.

A product of our public school system, at Eastern High School I was a founder of the SPBR Club, Students to Promote Better Relations in 1972. In 1973 I became the school’s first Black Student Council President. Eleven years later, in 1984, I lead the negotiations for the school desegregation plan for 92,000 Jefferson County students. According to Dr. Gary Orfield, Jefferson County became the most desegregated School system in the nation and the only place where new schools were being built in old neighborhoods. As Chairman of the Jefferson County Public Schools’ Adult Education Advisory Committee we initiated a program to give reading glasses to adults seeking their GED. In 1986 JCPS Superintendent Don Ingramson, asked me to be the community representative for the Panasonic Foundation which choose 12 school districts across the nation to study student assessment. In 1986, I help start Project BUILD, Businesses United in Leadership Development, a mini MBA program for Juniors and Seniors, while an employee of National City Bank. In 2005 I was part of a team that developed the Kentucky Engineering Scholars Program. This plan was designed to encourage women and minority students to make Civil engineering a career choice. I was the program administrator for three years. There have been few decision made regarding the education of children in Jefferson County for which I have not participated in as a volunteer. This includes getting involved in 2008 with WIRE 65; a program to keep Kentucky’s best and brightest in the Region. Lexington has a similar initiative I believe called Wire 75, what we need is a Wire Kentucky.

So I understand the obstacles children and adults seeking additional education face. As your next Senator, I will make the return of your tax dollars for education my number one priority.

Expanding and investing in educational opportunities are at the forefront of my plan to get Kentuckians back to work. Kentucky’s workforce must have the necessary skills and education to compete in the 21st century global economy. Our future is our children and that future is rooted in our educational system. Our teachers need incentives packages that will allow their salaries to reflect our nations national average. We must provide dollars to our Colleges and Universities and incentives to those graduating students willing to work in Kentucky.

My priorities for Public Education includes:

1. Support federal funding that will bring Kentucky’s teacher salaries/compensation equal to that of the national average. Better teacher salaries will attract better teacher looking for a career in the education of our children. Better teacher should correlate with better student performance.
2. Revisit “No Child Left Behind”(NCLB) to determine what works and what does not work. As well intended as the program might have been, too many teachers and administrators have expressed concerns of the outcomes to be ignored. Like many federally funded programs that seem like good idea at the time, NCLB must be made current and have the input of such organizations as the NEA.
3. Improve funding for K-12. Programs singled out to improve the education of children should be consistent nation wide to ensure all children are getting the education needed to have the opportunity to be productive and successful. This would allow for a better chance for continuity of education across county or state lines.
4. Support of research dollars for our Colleges and Universities, Pell Grants and forgivable loans for college students. Support for our colleges and students will help provide our high school students with direction and incentives to study well to be enabled for continuing education.
5. Will support the federal legislation to eliminate the Government Pension Offset and Windfall Elimination provision. It’s your money and you earned it.
6. Funding for the additional education of classified school employees and vocational education. Classified school employees add much needed support for our teachers and skilled vocational training for our students. We must ensure that working class Kentuckians get as good of training as skilled workers as those seeking college degrees.

Energy Policy

Kentucky cannot allow the Nation or the World to turn its back on coal or coal research. Controlling carbon emissions is a necessary inevitability. Sticking our head in sand is not the answer. Taking the lead in coal technology with our Colleges and Universities is. There is no reason to believe that our Universities and Colleges cannot provide us with the research needed to allow Kentucky Coal to lead the world in safer cleaner fuels. Let Kentucky schools lead in R&D coal to gas and coal to liquid research along with developing methods of mining that will lessen environmental dangers from mountain top mining. The by-products from the burning of coal include drywall, potash, and dense grade for highway construction to name a few. I am committed to Kentucky coal use development and to the thousands of people who work or benefit from Kentucky’s greatest energy source.

Our energy policy must embrace the idea that the United States must find independence from depending on other countries for its energy source. This mean fully funding R/D from any taxes incurred from the taxing of energy due to their C02 emissions. As we try to curb our appetite from CO2 emission and those from fossil fuels, “Going Green” must not be just a slogan but a way of the future that we must embrace. However, it is important that we simultaneously recognize that existing energy resources must be sustained with an end in mind that serves our citizens and industry in an expanding world market. I embrace both research into renewable energy and a more efficient use of the sources we have. It starts with what we can all participate in together, energy conservation and recycling.

Unlike many, I do believe there is merit to the notion that man is causing the earth’s climate to change for the worst. Even if this notion is incorrect, I believe we still have an obligation to care for the only earth we have. That means that if we error, we error on the side that says we can limit green house gases, improve on recycling and better care for our drinking water. As a farmer at heart, I will not sacrifice the goodness of our soil and water for any immediate unsustainable contamination period.

Cap and Trade is an extension of our care for the planet. We cannot afford to limit our obligations to the environment to what other countries do or don’t do. That would be like saying two wrongs make a right. Trading tax credits for creative caps on gas emissions is a creative way to the future. The key is for us to recognize that any tax dollars produced from revenue productions from CO2 emissions must be reinvested in the study and research development of improving our environment and green house gases. An example would be using these tax dollars to develop new or better mining methods, which can assist in the production of safer and climate friendly coal. These research dollars can also help our Colleges and Universities in seeking additional revenue streams that aid the schools, its students and the citizens of Kentucky.

Term Limits

Leaders lead its just that simple. Some of our career politicians couldn’t lead you out of a paper sack. If there is an issue out there they wait to see which way the wind blows to see how many votes they might lose rather than what will be gained for the people of the Commonwealth. That’s why I was the first candidate to favor term limits so that our elected officials will work for us rather than trying to get re-elected. Term limits will ensure fresh ideas, create debate for current generations and provide the next generation with the thought that they can some day serve without concern for the millions of dollars an incumbent has raised to stay in an office we asked them to hold, not have. With the Supreme Court allowing special interest groups to provide unlimited amount of money to candidates, the likely hood of serious finance reform is over. Term limits presents a logical way to rid our selves of career politician on the bankrolls of special interest.

Afghanistan

This is not the time to second-guess our Commander-in-Chief. I fully support President Obama’s decision and trust that his decisions are made with superior intelligence based on information from our solders in the field that has not been made available to the general public. For some time, I have advocated for discussions as it relates to our troops extraction out of Afghanistan. It is irresponsible to discuss these matters without the adequate intelligence made available to the President.

President Obama has substantiated my assertion that the billions of dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan can be best spent on our national debt, affordable education, and healthcare and job creation. By adding a specific time line which is a withdraw start and not a completion time for securing Afghanistan and more importantly Pakistani borders from the influences of Al-Qaida; provides the United States time to shift its security policies, operations and better control domestic spending for debt reduction.

Pakistan is already engaged as a partner with the US in protecting interest in the region. Those opposed to the Presidents objectives miss the fact that the United States can not cut and run without finishing our objective of making sure Al-Qaida is unable to utilize these countries as a training ground and a point of origin for terrorism against America.