Farm and Food Freedom

The freedom to grow your own food and share it with your neighbors must be restored. Individuals should be free to choose to drink raw milk, know if their food contains GMO's, eat farm slaughtered meat and other food choices. The federal government has monopolized the word“organic”. in order to become a certified organic farm the farmer must pay a fee to the government. This is a regressive tax on farmers and an impediment to the production of better food. Federal milk price controls, corn subsidies, and many other regulations, tax policies and financial assistance programs benefit large corporations, but make good food unavailable, unaffordable and inaccessible. Dexter will be a strong advocate for food and farm freedom.

Educational Freedom

Local control is practically lost in Vermont today. The current school funding mechanism has disconnected the taxpayer from their local budget. Local school revenues are now based on a per pupil reimbursement from the state. This is done through a complex formula that practically no one can explain. Dexter will strive to restore local control and a comprehensible school tax system.

Dexter is a proponent for school choice. Our educational system should provide for a greater amount of flexibility and mobility for students to obtain their education within our society. We should allow homeschooling, vouchers for private school, the ability to attend schools outside of the school district, and other educational choices.

Higher education costs are of a particular concern to Dexter. The federal subsidies to colleges and universities are unnaturally inflating the cost of education. Educators are selected based on their ability to win research and infrastructure grants rather than their ability as teachers. Government grants offset operating costs of the universities without a corresponding reduction in tuition fees. The result is the tuition fees increased to what the market would bear and the government's response is to provide financial assistance to students. Student loans are the vehicle that delivers a piece of the higher education market pie to the financial sector. The continuing ratcheting up of these subsidies and costs is a cause of these higher tuition fees. Vermont needs an innovative approach to higher education that will free higher educational students of the shackles of a corrupt financial system.

Economic Freedom

The United States is established on principles of individual liberty and limited government. These principles are intended to create an experimental free society. An element of this free society is its free markets. Market freedom has been eroded by a continuously expanding reach of governmental control. Dexter believes in a free market society, while recognizing that there is a role for government in certain segments of the market. The segments of the market that should be controlled by the government are forceful and fraudulent behavior, essential services and necessary monopolies. Dexter's goal is to repeal archaic or intrusive market regulations and to support new regulation of markets only in the appropriate segments of the market.