Article Contributed on: 10/13/2008 10:18:38 AM
Thomas C. Miller is running for State House District 2 and answered a questionnaire for YourHub.com. To read all of the candidate questionnaires,
click here.
Name: Thomas C. "Doc" Miller
Seat you are seeking: State House Representative District 2
Age: 57
My family: Wife,
Judith Phillips; Sons by first marriage,
Justin, 20.
Trey 19; Step-children,
Matthew, 24, and
Lindsey 21
Occupation: Criminal Defense lawyer
Hometown: Denver
Favorite Web site: www.electdocmiller.com
Favorite local place to hang out: Michelangelo's Coffee Shop, the Hornet
What do you like most about living here: Everything. Denver is a fast-growing city with parks, bike paths, access to the Rockies, museums, art galleries, growing mass transit, colleges and universities. It offers an urban environment with western values and friendliness.
Interests & hobbies: Reading, foreign languages, skiing, hunting, hiking, target shooting, writing poetry and fiction, firearms, history, jazz and classical music, photography, fine art, movies, news and newspapers, and on and on.
Favorite TV show: Anything my lovely wife cares to watch.
People who inspired me (and how): My father for his humility, character, intelligence, strength and courage. He is a doctor who is 88 years of age and continues to practice medicine and work in an emergency room. His work ethic and energy is an inspiration to anyone who meets him, and his gentleness and kindness to others is something to aspire to.
How you have contributed to the community: I taught creative writing in community college for years and have taught English courses at business colleges and community college. these were second jobs because I saw the need for teaching others English skills that our public schools were failing to provide. I also provide an enormous amount of pro bono legal services to clients who would not otherwise have legal representation.
What are the biggest issues facing your constituency now: Ending the drug war. Our prisons are filled with citizens whose crime is to be addicted to drugs. Two-thirds of inmates are incarcerated for victimless crimes. Colorado's population growth between 1980 and 2006 was 59%. By contrast prison population grew by 608%. It took only 13 years from 1919 to 1932 to realize that all Prohibition brought was
Al Capone. In 40 some years of the drug war we have destroyed countless lives by attempting to enforce a moral policy position in an immoral drug war. Our spending on endless prison expansion should stop and the money must be invested in health care for the poor, highways, mass transit, investment in charter schools and other areas of infrastructure. Drug addiction should be a medical, not a criminal issue.
We also have a failed public education system that does not provide for choice in education by parents. Schools and colleges have become bastions of dogmatic political agendas as teachers' unions teach a single ideology. Teachers, in general, are caring and giving individuals, but teachers unions will not put students first until students are paying union dues Citizens wishing to provide their children with an ideology different from those of public schools should have the option of vouchers, tax credits and charter schools. Education reform requires greater competition and less union organized intrusion.
We also are failing to meet the global challenge of increased oil exploration and production as we ignore the value of that exploration as a means of economic growth while throwing all of our resources into alternative and renewable energy resources. Those new clean technologies that we are developing cannot replace oil in the time it would take to develop oil independence. In the interim, the economy we have is based upon oil, and much of the struggles we are enduring economically come from the huge transfer of wealth in our purchases of oil from governments who don't like us. We must free ourselves and our country from the grip of foreign oil supplies by developing American oil reserves. This applies especially to the development of oil shale in northwestern Colorado.