An in-depth interview with Congressional District 5 candidate Mike Barkley | Calaveras County’s Most Trusted News Source

Ballotpedia as very well as Barkley’s formal web site states, “Barkley graduated from Del Valle Superior School in 1963. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1964 to 1967. Barkley gained a J.D. from Armstrong School Regulation School in 1980. Barkley’s career practical experience features doing work as an accounting manager at Sierra Pacific Insurance plan, a programmer-analyst at Insurnet and Pacific Bell, and an author.”

When requested what he would like to see adjusted in District 5, Barkley mentioned, “It would have helped if the ‘we draw the lines’ people today had completed their career previous summer season, rather of waiting till December 27. With Republicans, when they make up their intellect they just write a check out. With the Democrats, you need months and months of arranging just to have enough hard cash all over to file the candidate statements on the filing day.

“But due to the fact I have finished this prior to, I understood it was coming. So I was ready. Regrettably, my most loved way of campaigning is door to door. And in earlier campaigns, I have invested a calendar year up until eventually the primary knocking on doors, so I can get a considerable number of doorways, which tends to make a considerable change. But this year I shed that option since of the maps coming in so late. And then it took me 55 days to get some of those voter files, which are my supply for going for walks lists. So I missing a whole lot of time there,” ongoing Barkley.

Barkley mentioned that the challenge he is seeking to work on the most as well as the most challenging is drinking water. 

On the subject matter of drought, Barkley said, “I’m not specially aware of how the area districts are remaining influenced, but I am listening statewide. I have a strategy on my site, taken from federal and condition experiences, that adds 43 million acre-ft of further storage. And which is what we would have to have in order to counteract the consequences of the floods of 1862. The opposite side of not sufficient water saved up is the tendency that California has to have substantial floods. The flood of 1862 killed countless numbers of individuals, killed 800,000 head of livestock, it washed out virtually each and every bridge and ferry in the state. It was the least of seven such floods we have experienced in the last 1,800 several years.” 

He ongoing, “We need to have to save that water, and we have to have to help you save it someplace safe. We could do that, and we have a marketplace for some of it. The 6 southeastern states would buy a great deal of that, as very well as Mexico. But at the minute, California is having a larger sized share of the Colorado River than it ought to be. So with producing this sophisticated of supplemental reservoirs, we would need also three other conveyance systems which would hold the drinking water out of the Delta and not mess with that issue or add colder water for salmon.”

On the topic of housing, Barkley claimed, “The Tax Reform Act of 1986 got rid of the far more impressive depreciation, the increased percentage, and the for a longer period and the shorter allowance occasions. It increased the different least tax. So the business and household rental business enterprise fell off a cliff. And a few of decades later, the cost savings and financial loan disaster took place, and as a consequence, we dropped some of our lenders.” 

He continued, “In Texas, they had been bulldozing 200-moreover apartment complexes because you will find no additional sector for them with out the tax shelter rewards. So that took place with the Tax Reform Act of 1986. In 1998, they handed the Faircloth modification which put a ceiling on the quantity of sponsored units in the region, or in any location that could be produced. You can nevertheless produce individuals units, but you had to tear down others in purchase to compensate. But that wasn’t the major dilemma. For a though there they had been just flat-chopping the money for backed housing. In 2008 we experienced subprime financial loans and housing flippers.

“We experienced the housing disaster, which was principally primarily based on Wall Street’s interaction with the subprime financial loans and with housing flippers. All of a sudden, subprime loans were being forbidden by many regulatory or equivalent proceedings. So individuals lower-income financial loans just flat stopped. So we are lacking about 30 a long time of industrial rental house progress, lacking 20 many years of sponsored housing, and we’re missing about 10 yrs of subprime financial loans, despite the fact that they have not too long ago appear back a bit,” mentioned Barkley. 

“Congress did this to the nation, Congress requirements to correct it. You can handle the commercial rental home deficits by undertaking assessments of unique communities, figuring out the deficits, and the deficiencies in housing, and then assigning purchase lottery prospects to re-use the tax shelter provisions that disappeared in 1986.

“That will make a major distinction in getting housing restarted. You can get rid of the Faircloth modification and start subsidizing lower-cash flow housing. That would make a significant variance in the volume of housing available to low-revenue folks. You can incorporate a subprime financial loan division to HUD or FHA, which will subsidize riskier loans and enable all those people people who are otherwise not able to find the money for to obtain residences, at minimum make it make the energy. Now, we would get rid of some of all those due to the fact the issues don’t go away even if they get alongside. But the only factor that Congress didn’t contact was tents and sleeping bags,” spelled out Barkley. 

When questioned about infrastructure, Barkley explained, “I’m mindful of all the funding, I’m just not informed of what they’re actually carrying out, because I am not seeing it. I imagine they want to get off the stump and get out there and get that do the job completed.” 

He ongoing, “There is one infrastructure issue that definitely bothers me. When they designed New Melones, they constructed bypass potential that will be by way of the dam or spilling at 40% of what I feel the circulation was in January 1862 with the terrific California floods. It is a full dam, and I consider that if twice in January 1862 with the flows that we had, then It would have overtopped that dam twice, which would have created a catastrophe about 100 times worse than the Johnstown flood. And considering that I am downstream from it, I really don’t like that.”

On the subject of health care, Barkely was shorter and to the issue, “Any monthly bill that will come across my desk that improves wellness care for everybody, I would vote for. Of program, I would alternatively see Medicare for all with out deductibles. I like the provisions in Taiwan, where you get a card, go to any supplier you want, and you might be taken treatment of. We should really have that in this country.”

“First, you have to have to accumulate a record of things projects, or subsidies that you have to have and then go after them. I have a great deal of items on my website that I can horsetrade. And I believe I can get a ton of things for District 5 by horsetrading with that stuff,” explained Barkley when requested about his ideas for dealing with the federal authorities.

When it arrives to hearth period, Barkley reported, “I individual, with my brother, a ranch 40 miles from Chico out in the hills. We experienced to evacuate the ranch mainly because of the August Complicated Fire 18 months back. Thankfully for us, the wind turned and went the other path. I have appeared at the caucuses in Congress, and there is certainly 1 point that I believe is lacking that it requirements. We have to have a all-natural disaster caucus for wildfires, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes.” 

He continued, “It’s a natural catastrophe and casualty insurance plan caucus because the insurance plan is not enough. We have to have to add to that legal responsibility insurance so the community can get it. We require a reinsurance application comparable to an improved variation of FEMA’s flood insurance coverage only bigger, improved, and more rapidly. We need to be in a position to lay off industrial insurers. Federal firefighters require to get compensated a respectable wage, they require to get paid at the very least as a great deal as the California firefighters do. We need a method to enhance the upkeep of forestry streets and fireplace roadways. If there is a challenge with slash in the hearth-susceptible regions we have to have to clear that up.”

Pertaining to climate change, Barkley claimed, “That’s a difficult one since they have talked about minimizing carbon dioxide by 2050, they really want to do that by 2030. As I see it, the way the ice caps are melting, our foreseeable future is an inland lake that runs from Lemoore to Pink Bluff. And that affects areas of this district, Stanislaus largely. But it also affects everybody mainly because it truly is meals, you are unable to do a lot farming underwater.

“If we do not correct the international warming and the ice cap melting, we’re likely to will need a dike or more buildings at Golden Gate in purchase to keep the Central Valley successful. If not, Sacramento and Stockton will be absent- and where by I’m sitting will be below about 102-120 feet of water.”

On the subject of public transportation, Barkley mentioned, “Nationwide, we have subsidized Amtrak, but we missed the a single that was definitely beneficial to inadequate people, and that is Greyhound. We need to companion with Greyhound and reestablish their network which has stopped serving most of the modest cities simply because that’s in which the lousy men and women journey and they want that assistance.”

“Manteca is 85,000 people today, and we do not have Greyhound service, and which is silly. I can invest in a car or truck, but there are a large amount of individuals who cannot. We need to have to do with Greyhound what has been tried with the Amtrak, and we really should do that now.”

Smaller firms and businesses

When it came to small corporations competing with significant corporations, Barkley said, “We have the Small Business Administration, of class, we could insert to that program a financial loan forgiveness system if we wished to, in purchase to retain modest missus going, primarily below predicaments like the COVID epidemic.”

“They could look at those people loans and forgive the kinds that would retain the corporations likely. Exterior of Covid on a typical basis, they could once again, subsidize little corporations, based on some requirements that would will need to be formulated.”

“I would like to see community colleges be free. I would like to see the cuts that have been built 10 decades in the past in schooling funding restored. I would like to see far more cooperation with the lecturers on finding the funding required in their educational institutions somewhat than just blowing them off,” stated Barkley on instruction.

When it arrived to police reform Barkley explained, “That’s a tricky 1 since if there’s one thing out there as obvious, it would have previously been finished. In the scenario of police shootings of unarmed persons, I favor a provision that involves that any officer that shoots and kills an unarmed individual will be thereafter eternally barred from keeping any position that requires possession or use of a firearm.”

“As it is now, these shootings, it is really like on the spur of the minute, the assumed about it requires to go all the way back again to the law enforcement academy. ‘From this moment on, fully grasp that if you shoot somebody and they are not armed, that’s a vocation-ending act.’ I assume that would aid address a great deal of the anger and the mistaken shootings.”

“They’ve currently comfortable the imprisonment, but some of that has backfired. There’s been an enhance in theft and that sort of things, especially shoplifting. My personal experience is that if we clear up the housing dilemma, a great deal of that will go away,” stated Barkley on the topic of prescription drugs.

Concerning psychological wellness, Barkley stated, “The initially issue I require to do is to listen, which is the circumstance with each individual problem. And other than that, if the current experts are dealing with it accurately, they ought to know what they want to do. They most likely need to have funding.” 

“Mostly, I’m finding a smattering of smaller donations, but I have received dollars of my possess. Which I have been dumping into the marketing campaign. So most of what I have been paying has been my possess,” claimed Barkley when it arrived to his marketing campaign contributions.