*
He is a 1964 graduate of Yale University and a 45-year resident
of Minnesota.
* Married,
he has one daughter.
*
While not an attorney, he passed the commercial law section
of the CPA exam years ago. His sister, brother-in-law,
uncle, and grandfather
are or were attorneys and he understands legal processes.
*
He has been a candidate in two statewide campaigns -
in Minnesota in 2002 and in Louisiana in 2004 - with better-than-expected
results. In 2008, he was the Independence Party’s candidate
for Congress in Minnesota’s 5th District, receiving 22,300
votes or nearly 7% of the total.
*
He is a leading expert on the economics of work time, having
authored a book to support the last major drive for
federal shorter-hours
legislation (A Shorter Workweek in the 1980s) and coauthored
another with Eugene
McCarthy (Nonfinancial Economics: The Case for Shorter Hours
of Work).
He has also published on trade issues.
*
He has a strong sense of history and of historical trends.
He is author of “Five
Epochs of Civilization: World History as Emerging in Five
Civilizations” published in 2000. A Chinese-language
version of this book has also been published. Strong interest
has been shown in the book with respect to using world
history to predict the
future.
*
As a small landlord in a less affluent neighborhood of Minneapolis,
he is intimately acquainted with big-city
problems, including
racial and neighborhood politics, housing, and crime.
*
He is co-director of Metro Property Rights Action Committee,
a group of Minneapolis landlords who function as a public
watchdog with respect
to activities of Minneapolis and St. Paul city governments.
The group’s
expertise has been solicited by a well-known public-interest
law firm and a government investigative agency.
*
He is a five-year board member of Harrison Neighborhood Association
in Minneapolis.
*
A CPA, he is financially literate. His accounting career
included employment in state government,
manufacturing,
and public transportation.
*
He maintains an extensive set of web sites and has participated
actively in several
groups associated
with the e-democracy
forum.
* He
did not seek party endorsement at the Independence Party's convention
but will run in its primary. The Independence Party of
Minnesota has taken no position on the 9/11 controversy.