Green Party candidate for Pennsylvania, Paul Glover, provides details on his plans for school funding, green jobs and more.

Top priority is creation of green jobs, to fully employ the next 10 generations of Pennsylvanians while repairing the environment. Such jobs will reduce dependence on dysfunctional jobs like fracking and incarceration. I offer detailed plans for 500,000 new jobs without raising taxes.

Bucks County Courier Times
By Paul Glover
October 14, 2018

Preventing addiction requires creation and expansion of jobs within neighborhoods through which people are reliably respected, housed, fed. Without these, crises make people likelier to lean on drugs. Asset-based community development is my specialty. Immediately restrict prescriptions, closely regulate detox centers, regulate and decriminalize use of heroin, raise cigarette taxes, decriminalize marijuana, promote medical marijuana as an alternate painkiller.

Pennsylvania should purchase defaulted student loans at pennies per dollar, then extinguish them. State universities and colleges should become tuition-free. Smaller administration, fewer stadiums, more curricula for solving social problems rather than exploiting them. Students have little moral obligation to repay student loans when the game is rigged against them. It's the greater moral obligation of elders to transfer knowledge so that society can progress.

Pennsylvania monies need to move into a Pennsylvania State Bank, to invest in programs directly benefiting our state. Commercial banks spread our money worldwide, often doing damage to communities and nature.

I'll shift budget from highways to rail and transit. Meeting more needs within regions and neighborhoods. I'm a member of Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission's Transportation Task Force.

No homeowner should lose their home because of school taxes, so I support tripwires. We are a state full of creative people. We do not need to offer tax abatements. Import replacement expands in-state job creation, reduces dependence on imports. Also prefer luxury taxes to sales taxes. Smart funding of our schools, without resorting to fracking, will include:

• Cut expense for HVAC in half by retrofitting for maximum efficiency: super-insulation, super-windows, solar electric. This releases more money for teachers, students, pleasant classrooms.
  
  
• Enact progressive taxation and close the "Delaware Loophole." We need corporate partners, not corporate siphons.
  
  
• Reinvest part of pensions in Pennsylvania enterprise, to expand the tax base. I've created plans for regional stock exchanges.
  
  
• Cap school district bureaucrat top salaries. It is outrageous when desk jockeys become more dedicated to big paychecks than to little children.
  
  
• Tax profits of major non-profit institutions. A shopping mall owned by a university should contribute to public education.
  
  
• Establish employee co-op health insurance system to dramatically reduce costs of insurance for teachers and taxpayers. I am founder of the Ithaca Health Alliance, a local co-op.
  
  
• Accept regional bonds and currencies to repay sweat equity and in-kind donations. This expands the money supply and reduces dependence on dollars. I am founder of one such plan, which has transacted millions of dollars in equivalent value and made interest-free loans for community benefit.
  
  
• Issue bonds through a Pennsylvania state bank, starting with 10 percent of unrestricted state funds. State incentives should be available to universities and school districts that 1) restrain administrative salaries; 2) restrain new construction; 3) super-insulate and cogenerate; 4) invest endowments and pensions in a new Pennsylvania state bank.
  
  
• Shift budget from prisons to schools. Tracking children into prison is itself the greatest crime. My budget will reverse this. At the same time, I will establish the Green Labor Administration (GLAD) to create 500,000 green collar jobs statewide and encourage curricula which prepare the young to take these responsibilities. I'm author of the book "Green Jobs Philly" of Green Jobs Philly News and taught Green Jobs at Temple University.
  
  
• All schools should have modern libraries with computers. Head Start should expand to reach all children.
  
  
• Raise state proportion of funding toward 50 percent. This will be especially practicable as the reforms above proceed.