<p>To the people of the 104th District</p>

<h1>Mitch's 5 Promises</h1>

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<p>A bipartisan, science-based plan to bring solutions back to local communities, put power back in people's hands, and rebuild the common good.</p><p><br><strong>Localism is our core belief: </strong>local control, self-reliant communities (growing our own food, powering our own homes, operating our own healthcare systems), and shared decentralized power.</p>

<h1>Common-Sense Politics for the 21st Century</h1>

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<p><strong>So much is happening right now.</strong> </p><p>Here's a bit about us in the news (or even our work in the news).</p>

<h2>Latest Campaign Developments</h2>

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<h4>Mitch's Five Promises</h4><p>I'm sick and tired of dishonest politicians and bad politics. So here are my FIVE promises to Michigan’s 104th:</p><ol type="1"><li><p>FULL TRANSPARENCY. My tax returns and campaign finances will be public. Always.</p></li><li><p>NO CORPORATE OR BILLIONAIRE PAC MONEY. Ever. I am running to represent you, not distant billionaires or corrupt corporations.</p></li><li><p>DIRECT ACCESS. You’ll have my personal phone number and email.</p></li><li><p>I’LL SHOW UP. Floods, emergencies, neighbors in need—I’ll be there.</p></li><li><p>PEOPLE OVER PARTY. Democrat, Republican, Independent—I don’t give a damn. I work for YOU.</p></li></ol>

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<p><strong>It's just common sense. </strong>True governance means <strong>Localism:</strong> empowering local communities by rebuilding local economies, restoring the self-sustainability of individuals and communities alike, and putting Michiganders before greedy corporate interests.</p><p></p><p>All of our policies will thus be viewed through a localist lens. </p>

<h2>Localism as our core philosophy</h2>

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<p><strong>All policy considerations should be viewed through a localist lens.</strong> Localism means power belongs closest to the people it affects—not distant regulators in Lansing or Washington. It means growing our own food, powering our own homes, banking and shopping locally, and running healthcare as community infrastructure; a system truly by the people, for the people. </p><p>It means residents—not distant bureaucrats or lobbyists—deciding on zoning, land use, and public dollars.</p><p>Localism isn't left or right. It's bipartisan, because self-reliance and community control are values we all share. A localist lens to policy is how we build a common good that actually feels like ours.</p>

<p>A recent op-ed in the Times Herald titled “We didn't stop the assembly line — why stop data centers?” deserves a response grounded in the science and evidence. I’ve been working on as a research scientist and director of a nonprofit that is leading statewide efforts against the construction of data centers in Michigan. Let's go claim by claim.</p>

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<h4>No, data centers are not assembly lines</h4>

<p><strong>Humans should be free to live how they want.</strong> Decades of American consumer culture have utterly dismantled the social pillar of the village that humans evolved within. Thriving individuals emerge from thriving communities, and thriving communities require intentional design on the legislator’s part. Ban the prioritization of car infrastructure over walkable, human-scaled community design. Fund community land trusts to keep neighborhoods in the hands of residents. Make it easier for communities to open their own community-run banks, utilities, and businesses. Establish cooperatively governed community centers, gardens, and green spaces in every district. Prioritize nature-based early childhood environments.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Tribe</em> by Sebastian Junger; <em>A Paradise Built</em> in Hell by Rebecca Solnit;<em> The World Until Yesterday</em> by Jared Diamond</p>

<h2>Restoring the Community</h2>

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<h4>Event title here</h4>

<p><strong>Social media algorithms specially target our youth.</strong> We have to end the predatory targeting of minors by technology platforms, which have reliably demonstrated that they cannot be trusted through their legal accountability history. Our Children's mental health and development must not be sacrificed for ad revenue.</p><p><strong>Documentary Recommendations:</strong> The Social Dilemma (2020)</p>

<h2>Protecting children from Big Tech</h2>

<p><strong>The greatest threat to personal liberty in the 21st century is the emerging technofascist state run by a few individuals.</strong> Across the world, the infrastructure of total control is being built in plain sight. Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) that can freeze your money or restrict what you buy. Digital IDs that make your ability to work, travel, and participate in society contingent on government approval. AI surveillance systems that track your everything. Social credit systems that reward compliance and punish dissent. Unfortunately, these are now real concerns. Michigan will not be a testing ground for these tools of control.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Technofeudalism </em>by Yanis Varoufakis</p>

<h2>Protecting citizens from technofascism and the emerging surveillance state</h2>

<p><strong>Big Banking doesn't work for the people. </strong>Big banks and national insurers answer to shareholders, not to us. Credit unions and local insurance co-ops answer to the people who use them. Keeping our money local means it stays here, funding local farms, local homes, and local businesses instead of flowing out to Wall Street.</p>

<h2>Community Banking/Insurance</h2>

<p><strong>Surveillance technology never works for the people.</strong> ALPRs like Flock are a direct affront to our 4th amendment. And the primary investors behind this tech have proven they cannot be trusted. All they care about is power. Thus, the only way to maintain a sustainable democracy that works for the people is to ban surveillance tech from coming into Michigan.</p>

<h2>Ban Surveillance Tech (Like Flock and other ALPRs)</h2>

<p><strong>A scientifically literate population is the requisite of an informed electorate.</strong> Yet the scientific community itself is under siege from Big Publishing, who have some of the largest profit margins of any industry because they collect intellectual property for free—work that was largely funded by taxpayers—and sell it back to the public at cost. They don't pay editors, reviewers, or authors for their work, then have the audacity to claim the knowledge as their own, lock it behind a paywall, and charge the public for it. The public is left paying twice—once for the tax dollars that go to publicly funded research, and again to access the knowledge. This double-dipping needs to be called out and stopped. I know this system firsthand. It is legalized extortion, and it benefits nobody except the publishers. Moreover, our 350-year-old journal system made sense when horses and buggies were the primary mode of transportation and communication. Today, however, we can make a significantly improved scientific system that is fully open to the public. We will push for mandatory open-access publishing for all federally funded research, public preprint infrastructure so scientists can share findings immediately, reformed peer review systems that are transparent, credited, and compensated, and antitrust scrutiny of the handful of publishing conglomerates that have cornered academic knowledge. We can have a faster, more honest, more accessible scientific ecosystem at a fraction of the current cost. The only people who lose are the ones who never deserved the profit in the first place.</p>

<h2>A New, Open Science</h2>

<p><strong>Humans are a communal species.</strong> We evolved to raise children together—a practice known as alloparenting, where the whole village shared responsibility for the young. For most of human history, no parent(s) raised a child alone. Today, we expect many people to. This shift has resulted in a profound crisis that often goes unacknowledged. Childhood anxiety, developmental delays, unnecessary trauma, and parental burnout are predictable outcomes of a society that has lost its "evolved nest". We must restore the village. That means universal, high-quality early childhood education &amp; childcare built around local communities. That means prioritizing nature-based early childhood environments. The science is clear that the earliest years are the most consequential. Investing in children is one of the smartest things a society can do.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>The Evolved Nest</em> by Darcia Narvaez and Gay Bradshaw</p>

<h2>Restoring our Evolved Nest: communal childhood development</h2>

<p><strong>There's only one policy that follows with the burgeoning scientific literature on data centers, and the public opposition to them: NO FRIGGEN' DATA CENTERS .</strong> The science is too new, but the bits and bobs we do have are massively concerning. And a recent poll found that 71% of Americans are against data centers going into their backyard. We live in a representative democracy, which means our policy decisions must align with scientific and public opinion. And that opinion says quite clearly that data centers are not necessary infrastructure. We don't need 'em, and we don't want 'em.  </p>

<h2>Ban Data Centers</h2>

<p><strong>If you want to link an external news source,</strong> open up the accordion for this item on the sidebar and switch the Post Publishing Setting to “Custom Link”.</p>

<h4>Tensions rise during Stronach Township data center discussion</h4>

<p><strong>Good social systems are the backbone of any good society. </strong>Even Adam Smith—the father of free-market economics—believed that education and public infrastructure should be public goods. But here's what both parties get wrong. These systems should be rooted in local communities, not managed from Lansing or Washington. Every family deserves universal paid family leave and affordable childcare. Medicare for All would end the cruelty of tying your health to your employer. Every child deserves a world-class public education. And our veterans, who gave everything, must never be left waiting for the care they earned, which means dramatically expanding and improving access to VA healthcare so that those who served are never left behind. These are universal human needs, and they are best met close to home, by the communities that know their people best.</p>

<h2>Universal social systems (at the communal level)</h2>

<h4>Antrim - Bee Well Mead &amp; Cider (Bellaire)</h4>

Antrim - Bee Well Mead & Cider

<p><strong>Modern medicine is extraordinary at keeping people alive. It is much less good at keeping people well.</strong> The Rockefeller model of medicine we inherited in the early 20th century shifted our focus toward treating symptoms through a pharmaceutical-centered approach (or "oil-based medicine"), rather than addressing the root causes of our diseases. We started treating the human body like a machine with broken parts. You have a symptom, you get a pill. You have a tumor, you cut it out. This approach has produced genuine miracles, but it has also produced a healthcare system that is among the most expensive in the world and leaves tens of millions of people chronically sick, chronically medicated, and no closer to understanding why they got sick in the first place. We are treating outputs. We need to be treating inputs. Consider cancer research: we pour billions of public dollars into targeting specific diseases one at a time, when the science is telling us that most non-infectious diseases—e.g., cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart disease—are ultimately diseases of aging, sharing the same upstream causes of cellular damage, chronic inflammation, and metabolic dysfunction. Redirecting even a fraction of that funding toward slowing the aging process itself could prevent all of them simultaneously. This is moving away from a mechanistic, Rockefeller-based model of medicine and towards a systems approach rooted in better philosophy. This new approach is called the biopsychosociospiritual model of medicine, and it recognizes what every good clinician already knows: that  physical health is inseparable from social, psychological, and even spiritual contexts. Chronic loneliness damages the body as profoundly as smoking. Trauma rewires the nervous system in ways that surface decades later as autoimmune disease. People without community, purpose, or spiritual grounding get sick more, recover more slowly, and die younger. This is the new model of medicine. It's not an alternative, "hippy" model built on shoddy evidence. It is built on the latest knowledge stemming from the frontiers of the sciences today. In short, we don't need more pills. We need a better philosophy, and the courage to build a new system based on what we currently know about humans.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Civilized to Death</em> by Christopher Paul Ryan</p>

<h2>A New Medicine (The Biopsychosociospiritual Model of Medicine)</h2>

<p><strong>We deserve free and fair elections.</strong> We deserve full transparency for all political donations. Ban dark money and require mandatory disclosure for all campaign donors. End gerrymandering. Prohibit the revolving door between Congress and lobbying. Limit total campaign spending. Ban lobbying altogether because it gives special interests an inherently unfair advantage over ordinary citizens.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Dark Money</em> by Jane Mayer</p>

<h2>Democracy reform & anti-corruption</h2>

<h4>Antrim - Providence Farms (Central Lake)</h4>

Antrim - Providence Farms (Central Lake)

<p><strong>Accomplishing energy and food independence is the first step to taking back power from the corrupt billionaire class.</strong> When we grow our own food and power our own homes, we're no longer participating in the world that doesn't work for us, but only works for billionaires. We're not stuck waiting on distant supply chains or price spikes we can't control. In practice, this means disbanding utility monopolies in favor of community solar programs, local utilities, local farms and co-ops—keeping both the power and the profits here, close to home.</p>

<h2>Energy/Food Independence of Communities</h2>

<p><strong>Any person or business that sits between a producer and a consumer without adding real value is a parasite.</strong> We have many parasites in our current society. Insurance companies that collect premiums and deny claims. Pharmaceutical middlemen who mark up drugs they didn't develop. Private equity firms that buy hospitals, gut staff, and bill patients more than necessary. Landlords who own dozens of properties they didn't build. Ticket scalpers. Predatory lenders. The list goes on and on. These aren't job creators. They are toll collectors. A community-first economy rewards the people who actually make things, grow things, teach things, build things, and heal things. Our goal is to systematically identify and eliminate middlemen wherever they sit between working people and the services they need.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendation:</strong> <em>Bullshit Jobs</em> by David Graeber</p>

<h2>Cut Out The Middleman</h2>

<h4>Antrim - Harbor Days (Elk Rapids)</h4>

Antrim - Harbor Days (Elk Rapids)

<p><strong>Michigan land, businesses, and homes belong to Michiganders</strong><span style="color: var(--color-text-accent-primary); text-decoration-color: var(--color-text-accent-primary);">—</span><strong>not greedy outside interests. </strong>Non-residents should not be permitted to own or purchase land, real estate, or businesses in Michigan. Today, over 6% of the Upper Peninsula is owned by foreign entities poised to extract our natural resources. Wall Street must be banned from buying single-family homes. Adversarial foreign nations must be barred from purchasing American farmland. Limit residential ownership to two homes per Michigan family.</p>

Write a short blurb about an issue your campaign is highlighting. Try to keep the text a similar size between the various issue blurbs.

<h2>Putting Michiganders First</h2>

<p>A <em>Washington Post</em> article, “How Data Centers Are Shifting the Political Landscape,” highlighted how the data center phenomenon is exposing that Americans share far more in common than they typically realize, the same pattern observed in Kalkaska. Maybe, just maybe, we’re not so different after all.</p>

<h4>Bridging the Political Divide: The science of working together, and how we’re doing it in northern Michigan</h4>

<p><strong>The Michigan Public Service Commission steals local control and is thus inherently anti-localist.</strong> As a governor-appointed board, this is why the MPSC likely votes in the interest of the Governor (and their corporate backers). Thus, we believe in abolishing the MPSC, because they have proven to be a fundamentally corrupt entity that does not function in Michiganders' best interests.</p>

<h2>Reform the MPSC</h2>

<h4>Mutual Aid Picnic</h4>

<p>Bring your family, friends, or co-workers and hang out with your neighbors practicing togetherness, collective action, and solidarity with millions of people across the United States participating in the May Day General Strike.</p><p>WHAT TO BRING</p><p>- Something to share (not required, no monetary exchange)</p><p>- Something to sit on (beach/camping chair, blanket)</p><p>- Handheld signs are permitted, but nothing IN the ground</p><p>DO NOT BRING</p><p>- amplified audio of any kind, no speakers, mics, megaphones etc...</p><p>- tables</p><p>- alcohol</p><p>- weapons of any kind</p>

Mutual Aid Picnic

<p><strong>Michigan's natural beauty is why we all live here.</strong> Our rivers, forests, wetlands, and Great Lakes are not merely resources for the rich to exploit to bolster their moneybags. They are living systems deserving legal protection in their own right. We will enshrine the Rights of Nature into Michigan law, giving ecosystems legal standing to exist and regenerate alongside humans. Hold corporate polluters criminally liable for environmental destruction. Establish a Great Lakes Protection Fund and honor tribal treaty rights as a cornerstone of environmental stewardship.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Finding the Mother Tree</em> by Suzanne Simard; <em>The Secret Wisdom of Nature</em> by Peter Wohlleben</p>

<h2>Enshrining Nature's Rights</h2>

<p><strong>Money in politics is the foremost issue underpinning our democratic system. </strong>The root cause of government acting against the public interest is that corporations and billionaires have more influence than citizens. Together, we must overturn Citizens United and ban corporate PACs.</p>

<h2>Money out of politics</h2>

<p><strong>"A well-informed electorate is a prerequisite to democracy," wrote Thomas Jefferson.</strong> Learning shouldn't stop at graduation—or ever, for that matter. Every person, at every age, deserves equal access to knowledge and education. That means fully funded public schools, free community college, universal public library access, and open educational resources that don't cost students hundreds of dollars per textbook. That means free courses on every topic known to humans, from trade skills such as woodworking to political theory. Knowledge hoarded behind paywalls and tuition bills is the basis of our unequal class system. In a healthy democracy, information flows freely and readily to all those who seek it. </p>

<h2>Knowledge Should Be Free</h2>

<p><strong>We live in a deeply unequal society</strong><span style="color: var(--color-text-accent-primary); text-decoration-color: var(--color-text-accent-primary);">, </span><strong>matching pre-Revolutionary France levels of social inequality.</strong> Billionaires and corporations must pay their fair share. Establish a minimum tax on billionaires and close the loopholes exposed in recent years (i.e., the Panama Papers, Epstein files). Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices directly. Extend Social Security taxes to incomes above $400,000 to fully fund the program. Enact strong data privacy laws that protect Americans from Big Tech, as most of Europe already has.</p>

<h2>Economic fairness & citizen protections</h2>

<p><strong>Every economist worth their salt knows that the neoclassical model is broken.</strong> It was built on the physics of Newton's era, yet humans don't fit into the neat categorical boxes of physical phenomena like the laws of physics (e.g., rational actor theory). We are complex beings. We need a new economic model that's actually grounded in human behavior and nature—what is called behavioral economics or "evonomics". This is, fundamentally, a new economics built on better science. The <a href="https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/econ-2022-0070/html?srsltid=AfmBOoqK_LiRe5JgAUtWFQNqzmlJksPnhQs_xyfYFncatzIlsrEDeisw">emerging multilevel paradigm</a> treats economies the way biology treats ecosystems—as adaptive, evolving systems shaped by culture, environment, cooperation, and competition all at once. Rather than assuming humans are isolated utility-maximizers, it starts from what we actually know about human nature, that we are deeply social beings who operate at multiple levels of organization within diverse groups and institutions. This is where the science of economics is heading. Thus, I will push to fund and elevate heterodox economic research, bring evolutionary and behavioral economics into how we design policy, and stop letting an outdated 19th-century model serve as the intellectual cover for decisions that hurt working people. Our economic assumptions shape everything—healthcare, housing, wages, climate. We cannot afford to keep getting the assumptions wrong. </p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Sacred Economics</em> by Charles Eisenstein; <em>Debunking Economics</em> by Steve Keen; <em>The Origin of Wealth</em> by Eric Beinhocker.</p>

<h2>A New Economics Rooted in Nature</h2>

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Dr. Mitchell Ryan Distin—biologist running for State Representative in Michigan's 104th District. A scientist fighting for clean water, affordable healthcare, and stronger communities across northern Michigan.

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Mitch's 5 Promises

A New kind of politician

Mitch's Five Promises