RajForCongress

I support medical marijuana. As a biomedical researcher, I'm willing to look at any way to help ailing people, and the benefits of medical marijuana for certain treatments have been clear. I view the new state laws in Colorado and Washington regarding recreational marijuana as an experiment. I am curious to see how Colorado and Washington move forward with their new marijuana laws. Soon we'll have enough data for the nation to reexamine this issue. I believe recreational marijuana should be left for the states to decide.

We're not an oligarchy yet, but we should be vigilant. I think a lot of people feel their voices aren't being heard in Congressional districts all over the country, especially the Pennsylvania 16th District (after all, our Representative is Joe Pitts - he represents corporations far more than the people). We need strong corporations for a strong economy, but I'm very concerned with the amount of influence corporations have in Congress currently and think we need to make our Representatives more accessible and responsible to the people.

Great question! This has actually been a big part of why I'm running. As scientists, we are professional problem solvers. We like studying issues, finding good solutions regardless of where they might originate, and look to find clear, common sense solutions to problems. If you misinterpret or misrepresent the results of your experiment, your next experiments won't work, and a lot of your colleagues won't like that you wasted their time. In scientific reasearch, you can't get away with the rhetoric and noise that we see in Congress these days. To paraphrase Louis Pasteur, fortune favors the prepared mind. We need more "prepared minds" in Congress.

edit: still new to Reddit. Hope you guys will tolerate my growing pains on here.

Great question. The first difference? Joe Pitts voted to shut down our government, hurting local schools, businesses, hospitals, and people dependent on the government for things like Social Security. As a scientist, I don't buy into party rhetoric. I work to find solutions, and will vote in Congress for a good idea, regardless of which side of the aisle it comes from. In addition, I would have voted in favor of the Violence Against Women Act (Pitts voted against it), for Hurricane Sandy relief (Pitts, again, was against it), for immigration reform (which Pitts and the Tea Party are once again putting off until the next Congress), and to keep our government open.

Great question! This has actually been a big part of why I'm running. As scientists, we are professional problem solvers. We like studying issues, finding good solutions regardless of where they might originate, and look to find clear, common sense solutions to problems. If you misinterpret or misrepresent the results of your experiment, your next experiments won't work, and a lot of your colleagues won't like that you wasted their time. In scientific reasearch, you can't get away with the rhetoric and noise that we see in Congress these days. To paraphrase Louis Pasteur, fortune favors the prepared mind. We need more "prepared minds" in Congress.