Ken Arnold for Assembly

Background:

I am a native southern Californian and have lived in Orange County most of my life and raised my two sons here. I spent about a dozen years helping to grow an information systems business from near startup. We provided IS support to very small to medium sized businesses. I then moved on to a Fortune 100 firm for over ten years, where I was also successful, before becoming a self-employed consultant. In 2001, I married the very talented Thanh-Thanh Ho.

I have always defined myself as predominately liberal, but with a large dose of realistic pragmatism, some fiscal conservatism and a bit of social libertarianism. I have always been politically aware and sometimes helped in campaigns (particularly 1980, 1988), but was never as involved and active as I have been these past eight years. I helped in our (46th CD) last 2 (2004, 2006) Congressional elections and really look forward to helping retire Rep. Dana Rohrabacher this time. I have been environmentally concerned since youth and fear the 8 years of callous neglect of the environment by the present administration may be too difficult to recover from. I am in the second year of my first term as a delegate to the California State Democratic party Central Committee. I am a member of the Progressive and other caucuses of the state party. I am active supporter of some and a passive or financial supporter of many other organizations locally and nationally, too many to list here. Refer to campaign website (under construction) or better visit and join at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dfaoc/ for more info.

Goals:

We need a progressive super majority in the state legislature in order to get sane and responsible budgets passed.
The incumbent is a right wing rubber stamp that is trying to build a very dangerous political machine here and should be stopped.
The primary themes for the campaign are reason, service and good government. Education and the environment are my top priorities but I have many areas of issues and concern for this state including: various aspects of public safety including adequate funding for fire protection and prisons, political and electoral reform including rational non-partisan redistricting, health care for all and the state of our emergency services, public and private aspects of the state infrastructure including water, transportation and sustainable energy, our beaches, parks and other public educational and recreational resources, our justice systems, and responsibly growing our economy to provide economic opportunity for all residents of the state.

Issues:

Saving the environment and starting to build a 21st century energy, water and transportation infrastructure for the state.
Health care (and food, shelter and good water) for all Californians.
Restoring our education systems to their rightful place of national and world prominence.
Improving government through many initiatives such as publicly financed campaigns, rational redistricting, open government initiatives, electoral reform, and more.

Grassroots Support:

My campaign is all grassroots and internet based. My core support is the local DFA, PDA, peace groups and various democratic clubs. I will be working with them on all the campaigns this year. I hope to build a strong internet presence and team. I hope to recruit many young dems to the party and get them active helping in campaigns, party building and GOTV efforts this year.

DFA Values:

For human rights, civil rights and liberties for all, strongly environmental, pro-choice, pro-marriage equality, pro-labor, actively for bringing proper science and true reason into our political discourse and life.
I will work within practical realities and within the appropriate roles of government toward a better world and society for all.
Fiscally responsible. Yes, definitely. The state cannot print money the way the Fed does and we already have too much in outstanding bonds and future indebtedness for the health of future generations. I am fundamentally opposed to creating more debt and passing it onto future generations for other than highly necessary and very long-lived infrastructure assets. We can no longer expect continuing population and/or economic growth to ease the burden of any presently incurred debt upon future generations. Restraint is necessary. Nevertheless, too much of our resources have been squandered, too much of our infrastructure neglected and the challenges before us are too great and important, that I will not pre-pledge any absolutes in my fiscal policy. It, in large part, has been the fanatic adherence to the anti-tax policies by the extreme right, which has gotten the nation and state into much of its present mess.