Presidential candidate Kip Dean lays out his presidential platform:

I. I will work to get the everyday citizen involved in the political process. I think that voting turn-out is at a critical low and the public is not involved in our political process. This has led to a stagnate government and an ownership of our great nation by corporations and Wall Street. Getting folks involved with the process is the major tenant of my platform.

2. I will ensure that a retirement with dignity is the right and expectation of every single American, starting with pension reform, expanding saving incentives and preventing the privatization of social security. This is not a government handout. Employees place money into the trust, so does the employer and so does the government. The only problem that social security has is that the trust has been robbed to pay off other debts. Americans want social security to stay the same. I realize that Americans rely on more than just Social Security for a secure and dignified retirement. I will continue to fight for genuine pension reform that protects employees’ financial security from future Enron-style abuse.

3. I will continue to support Medicare. Medicare is one of the most successful government operated program. It provides a medical safety net for an aging American population. It provides a realistic hedge against greedy insurance companies dropping more expensive to insure seniors when their insurance risk outweighs their premiums. We must redouble efforts to bring the uninsured into coverage. We should guarantee access to affordable health care for every child. We should expand coverage to working families. We seek to ensure that dislocated workers are provided affordable care. We should make health care affordable for small businesses.

4. I will make efforts to move toward a single payer healthcare system. The United States is the only developed country that allows the health insurance companies to control the costs of health care. This leads to the most expensive health care provision in the world. In addition, by not having a single payer system, the U.S. is falling behind other developed countries in longevity, infant mortality, cancer and heart disease rates, etc.

5. I believe in the privacy and equality of women, I stand proudly for a woman’s right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay. At the same time, I strongly support family planning and adoption incentives. Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. I support contraceptive research, family planning, comprehensive family life education, and policies that support healthy childbearing.

6. I will work to eliminate corporate welfare. I am against the corporate welfare being given to companies like GE, Exxon, BP, etc.. These companies are making massive profits and do not need the additional handouts by the government.

7. I will work to increase the top marginal tax rate. I support raising tax rates to pre-Reagan era levels for everyone making 75k or more, an increase on the top rate on those couples making over 250K would go a long way toward denting the national debt. We do have a revenue problem. A good portion of that problem comes from a tax system that unfairly favored the rich during the past 10 years. I advocate making this a fairer system.

8. I support decreasing the defense and homeland sercurity budget by at least 25% This is the one area in which there is tremendous amount of potential savings. We are currently too involved in the middle east which is costing this country untold billions of dollars for yet undetermined outcomes. Our president has indicated that we should be looking at the "war on terror" as a police action and has proved that it works. We fund hardware that we do not need. We purchase equipment we overpay for. We spend more on our military / industrial complex than the next 5 largest countries combined. We must make the decrease in this area a priority.

9. I support public education and denounce vouchers. This country was built on the premise of equal education for all and the public education system was the mechanism by which we became great. The current assault on the American system of public education is an affront to all we stand for. My platform will call for the strengthening and improvement of the American public education system while denouncing vouchers as a scheme to weaken that system. I also am calling for the improvement of the sales tax systems across America as on-line retailers are not serving their communities by not charging sales tax and undercutting a local retailer.

10. I will extend the promise of citizenship to those still struggling for freedom. Today’s immigration laws do not reflect our values or serve our security, and we will work for real reform. The solution is not to establish a massive new status of second-class workers; that betrays our values and hurts all working people. Undocumented immigrants within our borders who clear a background check, work hard and pay taxes should have a path to earn full participation in America. I will work to hasten family reunification for parents and children, husbands and wives, and offer more English-language and civic education classes so immigrants can assume all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. I will work with our neighbors to strengthen our security so we are safer from those who would come here to harm us. We are a nation of immigrants, and from Arab-Americans in California to Latinos in Florida, we share the dream of a better life in the country we love.

11. I will work to make sure it is understood that we don’t have to choose between economy and environment. I believe that communities, environmental interests, and government should work together to protect resources while ensuring the vitality of local economies. Once Americans were led to believe they had to make a choice between the economy and the environment. They now know this is a false choice.

12. I will work to continue the great notion of the separation of church and state, a principle that are country was built on.

13. I support the full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and seek equal responsibilities, benefits, and protections for these families. In our country, marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there. My goal is to bring Americans together, not drive them apart.

14. I will work to enact a Constitutional version of the line-item veto to make it easier to root out pork-barrel spending. And we will make our government more efficient by cutting the waste of taxpayer dollars in the federal budget, from unneeded travel budgets to crony contracting.

15. I uphold the Second Amendment. I will work to vigorously enforce existing gun control laws, since I believe that the widespread availability of guns is, in itself, a significant contributing factor to the rise of violent crime. I also support a new automatic weapon ban, child safety locks, waiting periods, and background checks to help prevent guns from falling into the hands of children and convicted felons. I believe that this stance represents a suitable balance between public safety and the constitutional right to bear arms.

17. I will work towards a constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not persons is needed

18. I will to work to safeguard nuclear material and stop creating new material. Our approach should be simple: treat nuclear materials that make bombs like they are bombs. More than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia still has nearly 20,000 nuclear weapons and enough nuclear material to produce 50,000 more. For most of these weapons and materials, cooperative security upgrades have not been completed. I will work for and support sanctions targeted at countries working to create nuclear that are accompanied by a clear statement from the international community and/or led by the United States.

Dean shares his biographical information:

My name is Kip Dean and I am running for President of the United States of America. I was born the son of a career soldier in Fort Bragg, North Carolina and have spent the last thirty-three years living in Arizona. I have a 12 year old son, Jake, and a slew of pets. I have a MBA and a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from Arizona State University. I am a Certified Public Accountant and work for Banner Health, a large non-profit hospital system, where I manage the budget process.

My decision to run for President was inspired by several key factors. First, I found out how easy it was to get on the ballot in the state of Arizona. I did not need to provide any signatures, pay any fees, and most importantly, did not have to provide any form of identification proving my citizenship or location of birth. This is the same state that wasted huge amounts of legislation time and money attempting to force Federal measures with the Birther Bill controversy. My initial decision to run was a direct response to this seemingly contradictory situation.

Larger than that issue, though, was something that has been brewing for two years. When my state passed SB1070, a bill that was later found unconstitutional and I believe based (authored) in racial intolerance, I realized I needed to become more involved. My government no longer represented me or the most basic values I thought where inherent to this country. I looked around and saw that my state Senate was led by the author of this egregious bill, the Governor was an inexperienced and ill-equipped administrator who hides from her constituents because she can’t complete a sentence, and the county Sheriff has been found to be heading an office that engages in gross misconduct and racial profiling, using resources to ruin his opponents or discriminate, while grossly mismanaging tax dollars under his jurisdiction. Who was to blame? Me and every other citizen who have decided there was nothing we can do. We stopped caring, voting, and working for a better country, a better Earth to live on.

I now have a chance to act globally and think locally with my Presidential bid. I could have left this election alone, and then the next election, and the ones that follow—each time hoping someone will dig us out of this mess or do the work for me. While I have no shot at winning this election. The billions of dollars spent on your vote in 2012 by mainstream candidates means a small man like me with a platform that speaks out against lobbying and corporations has no chance. What I am hoping to do, though, is to inspire you to vote and get involved. Together let’s turn back the tide of the governmental corruption and the lack of accountability within the political leadership and give it back to the people of this country.
Go out and vote for the rest of your life and on February 28th, vote for me for President in the Republican Presidential Preference ballot.