Matthew Allen
Matthew Allen

The Issues

College Affordability

Matthew believes that college education should be attainable for all Americans, and that college debt isn't a barrier for anyone. Matthew believes that all public and community colleges should give a free four years of education.

Criminal Justice Reform

Although the United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, we have almost 25 percent of the total prison population. Matthew believes every police department in the nation should have body cameras to improve transparency and accountability on both sides of the lens. Matthew also believes in reforming mandatory minimum sentences for low-level nonviolent offenses, increase support for mental health and drug treatment, and pursue alternative punishments for low-level offenders, especially young people.

Foreign Policy

Matthew believes that the United States shouldn't be the World's police force. He believes that other countries should solve their own problems and fight their own wars, unless the problem could directly harm the United States or one of its allies. Matthew believes in attempting peaceful solutions and negotiations before violent and costly wars.

Immigration Reform

Matthew believes that we are a national of immigrants. Matthew's great-great-grandfather and mother traveled from Southern Italy to the United States in the early 1900's. Their story, my story, our story is a story of America: hard-working families coming to the United States to create a brighter future for their children. Matthew believes that we should not be talking about sweeping up millions of men, women, and children, many of whom have been here for years, and throwing them out of the country. He believes that we should close the borders now, and anyone who came here illegally should be fined, then given a path to citizenship.

Legalization of Marijuana

Matthew believes that marijuana is a dangerous drug, but he also believes that it becomes more dangerous in the "black market". If the government legalized marijuana usage, they could regulate sales, perhaps only allowing small dosages for sale at once and/or un-laced marijuana regulations. Also, the police spend a lot of their time finding marijuana users, but if it was legalized, the police could focus on arresting rapists, murderers, etc.

Public Transportation Reform

Matthew believes that public transportation creates jobs, reduces our carbon footprint, reduces gasoline consumption, saves money, and drives community revitalization. Matthew believes that too many Americans drive cars to go places, which is bad for the environment and forces them to spend hundreds of dollars on gasoline per year. If we improved our public transportation systems by making faster trains and more stations, the jobs market would improve, Americans would spend less on gasoline, and the United States government will spend less on oil.

Social Security and Medicare

Matthew believes that we should expand social security and medicare, not privitize or cut it. Right now, a billionare pays into social security, the same amount as someone who makes $118,500 per year. Social Security, also, has a $2.8 trillion surplus, and can pay every benefits owed to Americans for the next 19 years. Matthew believes that we should provide medicare to all citizens, expanding upon the great success of the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare). All citizens should have health care as a right, but some of the ACA's policies don't go far enough.

Uncorrupting Politics

Matthew believes that the system is rigged to favor the powerful and well-connected, and it ignores the voices of ordinary citizens. Our representative democracy has become so corrupted by this fundamental inequality, that only those who fund campaigns are represented. The result is the governmental dysfunction that we see today. Every issue — from climate change to gun safety, from Wall Street reform to defense spending — is tied to this core inequality. The solution is to fix our government so all citizens are represented equally. We must repeal Citizens United to be able to start cleansing our government of corruption.

Women's Rights

Matthew believes that we should never be denying women control over their own bodies, preventing access to vital medical and social services, and blocking equal pay for equal work. Abortion should be no one's business except for the women, her partner, and their doctor. The government (more specifically, Republicans in government) should never be able to block a women's ability to have control over her body. Also, no woman, should ever be offered a different salary than a man, just because she is a woman. No one can say that, in our country, women are treated equally with men, unless we do these vital things.

Creating Jobs

The real unemployment rate, workers who have given up looking for jobs, or those who are working part time when they want to work full time, is 10.3%, and over 50 percent of young African-Americans and more than one-third of white and Hispanic youth are looking for full-time work. Matthew believes this is a problem that must be solved immediately.

Environmental Protection and Alternative Energy

Matthew believes that the United States must lead the world in tackling climate change, if we are to make certain that this planet is habitable in the future. We must transform our energy system towards efficiency and sustainability. Millions of homes and buildings need to be weatherized, and we need to greatly accelerate technological progress in wind and solar power generation.

Gun Violence Prevention

In 2013, alone, nearly 34,000 Americans were killed by guns. Approximately 240 Americans are shot each day. Matthew understands that guns are important to many American communities, but he has seen too many Americans being slaughtered due to gun violence. Matthew supports a constitutional amendment to the 2nd Amendment. He believes that only current members or the military or other special task forces should have the right to bear arms, not just everyday citizens.

Income Inequality

Today, we live in the richest country in the history of the world, but that reality means little because much of that wealth is controlled by a tiny handful of individuals. Matthew believes that the rich are too rich, and the poor are too poor. The top one-tenth of one percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. 58 percent of all new income since the Wall Street crash has gone to the top one percent. This is bad, and must be fixed in order for our country's middle class to survive.

K-12 Education

Matthew believes that every American child deserves a high-class education. Matthew believes that teacher's have too high of job security, and tenure should be eliminated. Teachers should be paid based on improvements in students' standardized test scores. Teachers are a very important part of our country. They educate the future leaders of our country, and for that reason Matthew supports increasing teachers' salaries. The average teacher makes $44,550 per year. Matthew thinks that a teacher's salary should be at least $60,000 per year.

Minimum Wage Increase

Matthew believes that millions of Americans are working for totally inadequate wages. We must ensure that no full-time worker lives in poverty. The current federal minimum wage is starvation pay and must become a living wage. We must increase it to $15 an hour over the next several years. We aslo must increase the minimum wage each time inflation changes, to match it.

Racial Equality

Although the United States has made a lot of progress in expanding non-white rights, we still have a long way to go, until all Americans are equal. Minorities are being discriminated against by the police, the courts, and by the Republicans' discriminatory voting laws. We must make the police force more accountable, creating a more peaceful America. We should force every police officer to wear a camera on their helmet, which would make it easier to see if the officer was doing the right thing. Second, we must end the "war on drugs", which clearly discriminates against African-Americans. One out of every four black males, born today, can expect to spent time in prison. Finally, we must repeal Voter I.D. laws, which have been squashing the black vote for years.

Wall Street Reform

Matthew believes that Wall Street cannot gamble trillions of dollars in financial instruments, and expect American taxpayers to pay for their losses. He believes that we need to break up the financial institutions that are "too-big-to-fail". Finally, Matthew believes that Wall Street should pay back American taxpayers for the 2008 collapse.