My name is Lauren Hillmer and I'm running for the Michigan House of Representatives as a Libertarian to bring real positive changes to Michiganians - especially children.

The Issues

I intend to focus my campaign on three issues this election:

• Health Care: We need to focus on healthy lifestyles through our schools and employers.

Specifically, I would work to eliminate wasteful subsidies for profitable businesses that drain resources from the State General Fund.   This would allow us to shift some funding to important preventative public health initiatives that will result in lower incidence of diabetes, heart disease, and other life-shortening illnesses.

The State of Michigan must not fail to properly invest in these preventative health measures – many of which will result in reduced future expenses providing treatments to sick people.

It is my view that public health is a jobs issue.  Reducing overall illness makes for a healthy workforce – more productive – and lower cost to employers.

Additionally, we must not impede scientific work necessary to cure diseases like diabetes. We should allow stem cell research which will not only add high tech jobs to the state but also afford us the opportunity to ease human suffering.

• Education: We need to work towards greater choice in educating our children.

 I believe that choice in how we have our children educated is critical to improving education to all students. Just as each child is unique and special it is unreasonable to think that one way and environment for teaching them (like a traditional public school) will work. It is through experimentation and competition that we will improve education not only for those students in charter schools, private schools, and homeschoolers but also those who choose to stay in the traditional schools.

Competition between the schools leads to improved innovation and learning conditions with all those involved. Ultimately, if a school is unable to attract children due to poor outcomes, safety, etc. it will be forced to close which is desirable. This will encourage schools to remain on the cutting edge and focus on what parents and students want - not just what school administrators and teachers want.

• Equality for all Michiganians.

Unlike my opponents, I fully support proposal 2 (Michigan Civil Rights Initiative) which will amend the state constitution to eliminate preferential treatment for or against citizens based on their gender, race, or national origin. I believe that equal means equal and that we should not use superficial qualities to accept or reject individuals.

Hopefully, together we can work towards this color blind ideal and begin treating people for who they are not what they are.

For more information:

• On Proposal 2
• School Choice