Timothy Shepard Policy Platform

We need to end mass incarceration, promote equity, and increase participation in our representative democracy. The laws that regularly feed teenagers into the prison system need to go. In order to restore democracy, we need to fix our most un-democratic systems and laws.

We need to make it easier for all citizens to vote. Many people aren’t represented because of laws and systems to suppress their vote. In order to restore democracy, we all must be represented.

Representative democracy starts locally and builds up to the state and national level. Ordinary Americans deserve to have their voice matter. Instead, corporations, the super-rich, PACs, and dark money are flooding into our political system in record amounts. The average American has almost no say. To restore democracy we need to fix our broken campaign finance system.

The Declaration of Independence boldly states “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We have to restore democracy and get back to this foundational truth.

BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, People of Color.

Government has no role in dictating anyone’s anatomical or biological decisions. We restore democracy by allowing citizens to make choices only they should make. 

Democracy and free-trade provide global security and prosperity for all people. Who doesn’t want that?

Criminalizing marijuana is a major contributing factor to mass incarceration and disproportionately affects the poor and communities of color. It’s funded the rise of the dangerous drug cartels as they battled for market share. Legalizing marijuana will allow us to combat more serious issues like dangerous drugs and sex trafficking while raising billions of dollars in new tax revenue. This ensures that we aren’t imprisoning peaceful and law-abiding citizens so we can restore democracy.

Every day, more than 100 people in the United States are killed with guns. Our society lives under the constant threat of gun violence tearing apart our lives at our schools, churches, concerts, and more. I strongly support gun sense legislation to help make our country a safer place. This means I support common sense reform to help keep us safe.

We need to break the stranglehold grip that big monopolist agriculture has on our farmers. Too many CAFO’s and multi-national farms pose a threat to our local mom and pop farmers. I stand for our farmers and will support legislation that fosters innovative new ways to help young people enter agriculture. We need to ensure that our food supply stays under the sovereign control of Missouri and American families. Big Ag poses a threat to the livelihood of American farmers and agri-tourism. We need to break the stranglehold of the agricultural monopolies. We must ensure our rural areas have the federal government’s investment and the policy in place to ensure Mainstreet Missouri soars again.

We need to ensure small and medium-sized businesses have the tools and backing to compete. We must reform capitalism to focus on growth and fostering entrepreneurship. The government SHOULD NOT continue to pick winners and losers among corporate titans at the expense of the little guys.

Protectionism limits economic opportunities at home and makes us less secure. We need to reform capitalism and embrace fair and free trade to ensure American farmers and producers are able to participate and gain market share in the global economy. It’s also an important tool in our arsenal against global bad players, bringing democracy-loving countries into our economic orbit and building on the integration model that has ensured global peace for the latter half of the 20th century.

Break Up Monopolies/Too Big to Fail. Some of our most successful companies have become too big to fail and over the past two decades brought our economy to its knees multiple times. Consolidation in the name of competitiveness concentrates market power in too few people’s hands. We need to reform capitalism to ensure small and medium-sized businesses are able to gain a foothold in our economy and hold our largest companies accountable to ensure they are not incentivized to rig the system against all of us.

Make minimum wage, a living wage. The bottom quartile of income earners in our country has not shared in the upside of wealth creation for decades. We need to revisit policies that have caused this inequality and ensure that the upside is distributed across all income levels.

Those at the top need to pay their fair share. Warren Buffett is famously on record saying it’s morally incomprehensible that he pays a lower percentage of his income than his secretary.

Our enlisted troops and officer corps devote their lives to us, we need to invest in our future by taking better care of our military families, enhanced return to civilian life services, better wages for active-duty military, and more robust pension plans for those returning, especially for our troop’s dependants.

The information economy has left behind rural America. We must invest in our future by expanding access to high-speed internet nationwide and investing in the roads and innovative financing to help our next generation of farmers compete against agricultural giants.

We need robust early childhood education, after-school care, workforce readiness training, and vocational training. So many Americans with liabilities also need special resources in their education, we need to ensure we equip American families with what they need to help navigate every challenge. We also must evaluate a plan to guarantee American competitiveness. We need to invest in our future and ensure Americans pursuing higher education at our public universities graduate without crippling debt.

We have a poverty problem in America, one key driver of this is driven by a lack of understanding and acceptance of mental health. We must invest in proper guidance for employers to provide reasonable workplace accommodations, civilian social workers to complement policing and properly handle mental health emergencies, and anti-poverty programs for those who can’t just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

For Americans who live on social security, we know that while it’s better than nothing, we need to do more to ensure those who depend on it don’t have to live in poverty. Social security remittances should be evaluated to the same standard as a living wage.

We need to ensure that America leads the world in sustainable sciences so that we don’t fall behind, doing so will create tens of millions of high-paying union jobs and ensure we lead the world for the next century.

Nobody should go without healthcare in the wealthiest country in the world. Investing now so that every American is covered will help us reduce the cost of our healthcare system overall by getting people access to primary and preventative care. While also preventing families from sliding into poverty for health-related reasons.

In the 20th century, America built an infrastructure that was the envy of the world, this foundation enabled us to become the wealthiest nation on earth. We must invest in maintaining and expanding this system to maintain our competitiveness for centuries to come.