20 Questions with Dr. Suchindran “Chat” Chatterjee, Democrat for AZ CD 2

Dr. Chat, as he likes to be called, is standing for the Democratic nomination against John
Thrasher, and ultimately for the right to take on incumbent Republican
Trent Franks. Dr. Chat dropped in on a meeting of Drinking Liberally in Tucson two weeks ago. It’s not unusual for a Congresssional candidate to stop by Drinking Liberally, but it is unusual for one to drive down from Phoenix just to do so.

Dr. Chat spent a very pleasant evening with us and asked if I would like to interview him. Unfortunately, not being from his district, I knew couldn’t address properly the many purely local issues that some voters would be interested in knowing about. But I did feel I could give prospective voters a good idea where Chat stands on major issues with just 20 questions. I’ll be sending the same questions (except maybe the first) to Chat’s rival for the nomination.

Yes, that’s Al Gore in the photo above. And no, Chat didn’t just slide up to him and get a snap; Chat went to school with Gore in Tennessee. Chat told me that a 20-something Gore once called him and a group of college friends together for their advice and support as he was contemplating his first run for Congress, and just recently, as Chat considered running for Congress, he reversed the roles and asked Gore for his advice on running. Not a bad coach to have in your corner when taking on an entrenched incumbent.

I haven’t done any follow-up questions based on Chat’s responses, but I’m hoping to rely on you readers to ask additional or clarifying questions. Chat reads this blog and I’m sure that he would be interested in addressing your comments and follow-up questions.

The first question may come as something of a surprise: Chat recently changed his party affiliation because, as he says, his party left him. Don’t be under any illusions: Chat is very much still a liberal Republican in his views, and he doesn’t pretend otherwise. But as there is no longer any room in the Republican tent for progressive independents like Chat, his campaign is testing the waters for a new alignment in American politics.

1) When did you change parties and why?

I have been an independent thinker all my life and I am cast in the
mold of Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, JFK, and Reagan. This means I
am a leader who transcends parties and thinks America first.

I have been a registered Democrat and Republican and Independent in
the states I have voted (Tennessee, Ohio, Nebraska, and AZ). Most
states allow one to be truly independent and not force one to choose
parties. AZ insists one declare a party or be shut out of most
primaries as a voter (that law changed slightly for the better
recently).

I was a liberal Republican in the mold of Goldwater, Pataki, and
Arnold of CA. I am a conservative democrat in the mold of Scoop Jackson
of WA, and JFK, and others.

The Republican Party has abandoned its true base completely; it
started around the time of Newt Gingrich and carries on with Bush,
Cheney, Karl Rove, Tom DeLay, Trent Franks and their ilk. I have always
been a social liberal and a fiscal conservative, the Republicans are
neither; so I changed parties in 2005 (a bit due to the 2004 election
sadness and Kerry’s loss and the gain of such radical right wingers
with whom I vehemently disagree). I have been a social liberal,
pro-choice, pro-women’s rights, pro-gay rights, pro public education,
pro freedom of religion (and from religion), pro national health care,
etc.

Conversely, while the Republicans claim to be small government,
notice that every new federal department recently created have all been
under republican administrations: Education, Health and Human Services,
Energy, Veteran’s Affairs, Homeland Security !!! They surely speak with
forked tongue when it comes to reducing government; they took a
Democratic balanced budget handed them in 2001 and have now driven us
to a trillion dollar deficit in SIX years.

2) Are there Democratic policies or values you want to see changed?

Yes, indeed. We Democrats are too soft on people who attack what we
believe in deeply. We also tend to give equal weight to the thinking
fringes of the party and that is detrimental to our well-being. As an
analogy, if the Republicans were in our vein, the Log Cabiners would
wield equal power to the right wing Christians in building their
tenets!!!

Democrats need to choose a few deep core values worth fighting for
and fight to the death for them. In my case, those values would be
Education, Health Care, Immigration and the Environment, in that order.
We cannot open many fronts and win on all fronts. We should have an
agenda that says we will fight and win the first few between now and
2010, then the next few between 2010 and 2015, and so on; choose and
win all battles, rather than skirmish hundreds of small ones and lose
them all to the big focused enemy.

3) What committees would you prefer to serve on if elected to Congress?

I would prefer to serve on the Armed Services, International
Relations, Energy and Commerce, Homeland Security, and Education
Committees (not in order or preference here, they are equally
critical). I would also like to serve on the Committee on Resources
with special attention to the office of Native American Affairs.

4) Are you in favor of immediate withdrawal from Iraq?

Yes, 100%. We have no business there, never did, and have created a
true quagmire and recruiting tool for all people who hate America as a
nation. We have also alienated all our friends.

The problem is that the US Government does not understand the
language or culture of the Middle East and thinks it does because it
has a few people who are not even native speakers of the languages
driving our policies.

We need to stop killing our young citizens there, and killing the
Iraqis to boot. Through this war, we get no positive deposits to the
emotional bank accounts of nations. This war has even made the citizens
of our closest friends – the UK – hate us. We need to gather the best
minds in America (both in and out of Congress) to address our true
national interests in the region, seeing it through 21st Century eyes
and ears.

5) Are you in favor of immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan?

No, I favor a planned withdrawal. This is a war we do need to fight.
Osama Bin Laden and his closest followers are in this region, boldly
traversing the Afghani-Pakistani border.

We have the highest technologies to track him, yet we do not use them. Why?

We claim that the Government of Pakistan is a friend and ally, yet Osama openly thumbs his nose at us from this very country.

We need to place our efforts in finding this true enemy #1 of the
USA, and stop talking about the other red herrings around the world. It
undermines the prestige of the only super power in the world to rattle
sabers with unworthy opponents.

6) Would you support the unilateral use of force against Iran to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons?

No, I would not. The days of imperial unilateral behavior in any
part of the world by anyone ended with the advent of live 24/7 TV, CNN,
etc. There are dozens of nuclear nations in the world, overt and
covert. We cannot single out Iran and say they cannot play in that
sandbox.

This is where the trillions we have spent at the UN since 1948 needs
to come into play. This is a true test for the UN Security Council, to
force them into living up to their ideals in making the world safe, and
work with Iran to make them see the light.

7) How do we deal with North Korea now that they have nuclear
weapons and are developing the means to strike United States’ territory?

This is a whole new world for the US and Asia. North Korea is a
renegade not by our choice but by their choice. All Asian economies
have passed North Korea by at light speeds and Kim Jong Il is paying
the price of being stagnant surrounded by Japan and South Korea (first
world economies) and China (rapidly leaving communism behind) and
India. He lost the ideological war and knows it and is behaving like
the spoilt child that Kim Il Sung (his father) made him.

The threat is more to Japan, South Korea, China and Russia, all
powerful nations bordering North Korea, with huge economic and
geo-strategic axes to grind (much more than us). He wants to hit
Seattle, but he can hit Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, all of Siberia, and
Seoul with almost no high technology better than an old truck. He is
saber rattling to get attention and we need to get his powerful
neighbors to bring him and his dirt poor nation into the 21st century.

Moreover, North Korea was the #1 surrogate to China and Russia for
decades, and some would argue, still is. So, let the people who created
this spoilt child handle it; we have our own creations gone awry such
as Osama Bin Laden, almost all Middle Eastern royalty, Iran,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, and some of Latin America keeping us quite busy
right now. This is analogous to East and West Germany in 1992, except
the geopolitics is much worse. South Korea will not step up to the
plate as West Germany did to fund reunification unless Kim Jong Il
really gives up all his power, a very feeble chance. The answer: the US
needs to broker a deal enabling the threatened powerhouse Asians to
work it out.

8) How can we help end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Israel is the closest friend and ally the US has in that region,
someone as close to us as the UK. We must stand by our friend, no
matter what.

We need to work towards another top-level peace talks such as that
brokered by President Carter between Sadat and Begin at Camp David. A
major ingredient is the existence of leaders such as Sadat and Begin in
that region to pull this off.

The US cannot end anything anywhere unless the people involved WANT
to end it, we are just a catalyst, not the prime mover in this 5000
year old conflict.

9) How can we afford to provide healthcare coverage to every American?

Every advanced nation in the world seems to have pulled this feat
off while we ask this very question over and over. We spend three times
on health care than any other G-8 nation, yet this care is not afforded
to 40 million of our citizens at all. We cover illegal aliens while
turning away our own citizens. We have insurance companies and
hospitals charging exorbitant amounts on line items on a patient bill
that would be hilarious if we did not have to pay it.

There is no free ride, period. We spend a lot of money and make only
insurance companies and hospitals richer, and burden doctors with
paperwork.

My answer: We study how the top ten rich nations fund their systems.
We study where our money really goes using GAAP tracking and project
flow analysis. We look at all our funding in toto, and reengineer the
whole system for cradle to grave care (don’t automate, obliterate and
start over). Then plan a transition from our current system to the new
one (as all successful complex transitions are planned and tracked to
the n-th degree).

Yes, I have the answer when I get to Congress, and the will to make
it happen, as I will not stand by and see the children of this greatest
nation on earth suffer because they were born without coverage.
Shameful.

10) How can we fix the coming deficits in the Medicare program?

Our problem is that when FDR created the social programs in answer
to the great depression in the 30s, he could not have foreseen the
social explosions and pressures caused by WW2, technology, immigration,
rapid world travel, TV, etc. Our current policies allow our country to
have badly administered private medical coverage untill age 65, and
then transitions to badly administered government medical coverage
after age 65. So we get shortchanged all around, from cradle to grave,
and many get rich on our dime.

Meanwhile, the new Medicare policies handed an open public checkbook
to drug companies through their lobbying of our incompetent and corrupt
legislative and executive branches. I say we reengineer the whole
system, private and public, and have the truly great end-to-end
coverage we already pay for and do not receive.

11) How do we fix the coming deficits in the Social Security program?

This crisis is a creation of our own stupidity in Washington. This
system was well running and self funded till the funds were combined
into the general fund pool so they could rob this bank to fund their
own deficit spending. Result, we get a bankrupt federal budget that
drags social security down with it.

I would fix this by first looking at windfall benefits never
foreseen by FDR (such as returns many fold what one has put in). Look
at the fact that this was never meant to be the sole income for
retirement. Look at why private pension plans are not only dying, but
companies have been allowed to rape and pillage what should have been
sacrosanct and escrowed funds. And finally, look at returning social
security to its rightful place of being outside general funds and being
self funded and viable.

This would result in two pension streams for people, private and
public, and a solvent social security system (not rocket science, this
is how it was before the funding debacle). The people deserve a pension
plan at least half as good that of their Congressmen!!!!

12) Would you support increasing any taxes to close the budget deficit?

No I will not. I truly believe that our government is over funded
and bloated. Government makes no money, it takes all from the citizens.
I am done with taking any more money from people to fund the
government’s profligate ways.

We MUST look into every nook and cranny and cut spending, live like
everyone else, within its means. I would start by resurrecting the
suggestions of the Grace Commission and forming another such commission
but to work much faster, as a corporate commission would, to come up
with answers.

When a company gets into trouble it does not have the luxury of
years to fix itself, the government needs to think in the same way, but
faster, as this affects the whole nation of millions, not just a few
thousand employees. We will not ask people for more money and will fix
our ways, period.

13) Can we cut military spending outside of war-related expenditures, and where?

We sure can. If you travel around the world, you will see that we
have an expensive military presence all over the EU countries, Japan,
South Korea, mainland Asia, etc. Huh? These are the richest countries
in the world and we are protecting them with our money so they can free
their budgets to compete with us and mess up our balance of payments in
two ways. Go figure!!

I would make these rich countries take care of their own defenses;
we are 60 years past the end of WW2, and 65 years away from Pearl
Harbor. Japan jokes that today, to cripple our economy, they would have
to bomb Tokyo. In today’s closely allied economies it does not make
sense to send money to defend rich nations whom we made rich. It is
time for them to pay us back and help us as we redo our health,
pension, and other systems that take care of the very people in our
greatest WW2 generation that freed them from the Axis powers of Hitler,
Mussolini, and Hirohito.

14) How can the federal government help to improve our education system?

The nations that have the best educational systems have very
high-standardized national systems. Moreover, the exams that matter,
all finals for every high school grade, are not graded in house but are
exchanged between cross state school systems so the grades are double
blind and REAL. We used to have a system that produced equal results,
and we did not have student rights that took precedence over teachers’
and parents’ rights.

We need to show leadership at the federal level by clamping down on
excessive administrative expenditures shown by school systems, take
that money and give it to the people who matter, the teachers, by way
of salaries, and stop the feel good “my child is an honor student in
first grade” system we have today. We need to praise real achievements
because that is how the rest of the world runs, the world in which
these students have to compete. Our educational system is badly broken,
and soon will go beyond repair. If we do not fix this NOW, this 2007
Congressional session, we shall become a third world nation within two
generations.

15) How can America redress our structural trade deficits with the rest of the world?

This is another topic in which our government has acted like an
ostrich. We not only have budget deficits, but we shovel our cash by
the billions per month to the rest of the world. We need to start
looking at making things in the US again, or we will have a great
nation with no jobs to pay anyone to buy anything. We are a service
economy with no service.

We need to look at countries that we buy so much from, yet they have
closed markets to our great farming, technology, auto, wireless, and
other products. It is not a true free trade economy when they can sell
anything to us but we are restricted in trade through their
nationalistic practices and laws.

We need to deal with each nation separately and say that it will be
tit for tat. If we cannot sell due to their unrealistic and
nationalistic laws, then they will be closed off to our markets too. It
so happens that most nations need our trade much more than we do
theirs, they need our dollars. Little known is that half of the dollars
in existence are OUTSIDE the US now, it is time to bring some of our
own money back home to feed our hungry, clothe our poor, better our
education, and provide them jobs and healthcare.

16) How do we keep jobs in the America with livable wages when we
are competing with developing nations with much cheaper labor and laxer
business regulations?

We should not play by their rules, but by our rules that made us
great. Of course their labor is cheaper; it is because they do not have
our standard of living. It cannot possibly be the aspiration of our
citizens to be like them, it is vice versa. Are we trying to make our
wages lower so we can live like the Chinese, the Indians, or anyone
else?

We have to pay a true living wage and stop acting like exporting our
jobs, or bringing in cheap labor could be good for us in the long run.
People want to be like us, want to immigrate to us, because of who and
what we are in our higher education and economy and freedom. What we
are doing is eroding all three by exporting our jobs and money.

We need to use our economic and military power and act like the true
super power we are rather that the apologetic shell of our former self
we have rapidly become. This slide will take us nowhere but into where
our enemies want us to be, a former power. As a Congressman, I will
personally see to it that does not happen. The time to change our
course is NOW. I will not allow a single job to be exported until every
American who wants to work is employed in a desirable job, and not
underemployed.

17) Do you support the Conyers Resolution to form a select committee to investigate impeachable offenses by the President?

Yes, indeed. I would like to see the current administration
impeached just for violating the laws of the Federal Acquisition
Regulations (FARs) wherein Halliburton and others have been awarded
sole source contracts far beyond the pale of anything the FARs allow
(for Iraq and Katrina).

This legislative branch has rolled over and is already declared dead
in following this issue up. Next comes the blatant lying and making up
the information to get us into Iraq. Third is the Abramoff corruption
scandal and the exposure of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. These few
items alone should suffice to see many of these people in some
long-term prison sentences, shades of Watergate.

18) How should we combat terrorism in an age of globalism?

We need to combat it with realistic planning and not feel good pie
in the sky rhetoric. Take the TSA, for example. They are a laughing
stock, as anyone who travels knows that it takes a fourth of the time
to go through airport security in any other advanced nation. Here we
clog up our systems, take out laptops and shoes, and kill our own
economy by making travel as unpleasant as possible.

We need real laws to catch those who mean us harm. Grandma Doe from
Great Falls, MT, is not a threat to us. We need a system where we catch
people who are REALLY suspicious, instead of being politically correct
and search everyone lest we hurt the feelings of someone.

I have no problem hurting the feelings of any group that means harm
to my beloved nation. I do not plan on winning the hearts and minds of
my enemies, I plan on annihilating them. So, we close our borders and
check everyone who comes over closely; we have a system where we can
have a tier where foreign citizens are not afforded the same rights as
an American; and we disallow certain technologies to be taught to
foreigners even in the US schools. This is a start. 9/11 taught us that
we taught the terrorists to fly and we saw nothing wrong with that. For
a start, I see a lot wrong with that. This is not a easy threat or an
easily answerable problem.

19) How can we get control of economic immigration from Mexico?

We do it by closing the borders, sending ALL their illegal citizens
here back, fining any American who hires an illegal, and meaning what
we say. If we say one thing and do another, we encourage scofflaws.

No other country affords the same rights to a visitor or an illegal
in their nation, yet we do. Merely showing up here is not a reason to
be afforded the same rights. It is time for Americans to stand up and
be counted on this issue or we shall be resigned to porous borders.

Mexico is about to have a new President and Vicente Fox’s term is
over. This is our chance to sit down with the new leader and lay out
the new rules of engagement between neighbors. NAFTA does not mean open
season on our borders. We are a strong sovereign nation and it is time
we acted like one.

20) Do you support clean, publicly financed campaigns for federal offices along the lines of Arizona’s Clean Elections?

Yes I do. I believe that it is unfair for an incumbent to be paid by
my tax dollars to campaign against me. If an incumbent want to rerun,
they should give back the proportionate amount of hourly dollars they
did not spend on public business. I would say that people would be
shocked that their Congressman works only half the time for them and
the other half for themselves. This would not be tolerated in any other
job.

So, clean elections is a start at leveling the playing field. I have
other strong ideas such as a shorter campaign cycle, such as the UK,
free and equal time from media for all registered candidates, etc. Our
election system is broken and the people have no leaders, just
self-serving politicians. We need leaders and I happen to be that rare
one. I say what I think and feel, and will lead my district, this great
state, and nation, to where it needs to go, and not necessarily always
where it wants to go.