What is common sense conservatism? Common sense conservatism is a direct approach to transform depressed, economically urban areas into thriving, competitive communities. Focused primarily on education and economic empowerment, the Common Sense Conservative platform works to reduce as well as reroute government spending from wasteful entitlement expenditures to building city infrastructure that will increase human capital and sustain global competitiveness now and in the future. Brandon proposes a plan for urban renewal that eradicates for families by increasing educational opportunity and developing an environment that facilitates economic empowerment and urban entrepreneurial success.

The essence of Common Sense Conservatism is in its practicality; moderates, independents and conservative Democrats endorse the platform despite their differing views on conservative ideology. It is the pragmatic, solutions-oriented premise that offers a realistic approach to development and growth, particularly in urban areas that are structurally underdeveloped and deteriorating under liberal agendas.

Here are a few policy points of what a Common Sense Conservative platform should be:

Education

Common Sense Conservatism strongly believes in education it is a core foundation for how we build urban communities. It’s important that we support all schools by establishing high academic standards of achievement for students, standards of subjective competency, and performance for teachers. Furthermore, there must be standards of performance for administrators and enhanced accountability by incorporating incentives such as merit pay for meeting competency benchmarks.

Charter schools are a huge component of positive change in our communities and often require less tax dollars to achieve desired results. However, they have been watered down in terms of vision and accountability. The development of educational empowerment zones in urban communities will serve to expand educational voucher options to the middle class, enticing middle-income families with children back into the inner city and thus strengthening and stabilizing the tax base.

Furthermore, within these educational empowerment zones we are developing new workforce development programs that will help train students and adults for 21st century job market opportunities that are constantly changing and developing. Common Sense Conservatism believes that in the ability to promote a global level of educational competitiveness. This includes curtailing electives, increasing core subjects, and placing an emphasis on examinations such as ACT, SAT and all forms of application testing.

Common Sense Conservatism support educational reform measures such as alternative teacher certification, eliminating the basic skills test and allowing aspiring teachers to take the subject area test upon graduation; merit pay eliminating duplication of services to curtail costs by consolidating educational services into a more country-run school district; and expanding the school year to 240 days instead of the traditional 180 days.

Common Sense Conservatism support educational reform measures such as alternative teacher certification, eliminating the basic skills test and allowing aspiring teachers to take the subject area test upon graduation; merit pay eliminating duplication of services to curtail costs by consolidating educational services into a more country-run school district; and expanding the school year to 240 days instead of the traditional 180 days.

Common Sense Conservatism understands that schools cannot fix societal problems without the support and participation of parents, families, and communities in the learning process. Studies show ever widening achievement gaps between urban and suburban students as well as between minority and white students. This academic achievement gap is the precursor to quality-of-life gaps in employment, income, health, housing, marriage and wealth. Before schools can address this educational gap it must be addressed in the homes, communities, and value systems of all urban Americans. Parents must become an active part of the educational process to produce more human capital and less tax payer waste.

Common Sense Conservatism advocates that the community, not the government, must be responsible for teaching our children to read. No other strategy or approach has worked. Encouraging the urban community to take responsibility for ensuring our children learn to read does not mean that integration was a failure or that many white teachers are not doing a good job. It also does not mean that our people should only allow their children to attend majority black or black-operated schools. It does mean, however, that no matter who teaches our children, the urban community must develop and enforce its own educational standards.

Affordable Housing

Common Sense Conservatism supports the need to provide tax credits and other tax incentives to responsible home buyers so they can keep their homes. Also, we can increase home ownership by converting existing rent or tenant payments into long-term purchasing payments. This is not only good in existing neighbourhoods where there are more renters than homeowners but also in public housing complexes.

Small Business & Economic Development

Common Sense Conservatism is interested in moving our urban cores into globally competitive cities: New small businesses should participate in creating a tax base and sustainability by utilizing the funding and resources from the Small Business Administration, private funding, as well as the support from the Minority Business Development Association.

Transforming urban communities into financial and technology hubs will take time. We begin to do this by developing public-private partnerships, eliminating a city’s income tax, eliminating income taxes that cause burdens on local development, and attracting high technology companies to plant roots in urban areas through the provision of workforce development programs. Common Sense Conservatives do not view urban agriculture as merely planting seeds in the ground and growing crops. Even though we are not opposed to such we would rather seek to purchase foreclosed homes and turn those into urban greenhouses to develop agricultural technology.

Prison Re-entry

The lack of post-incarceration support has created a cycle of failure that severely handicaps ex-offenders and often leads to a re-entry into the penal system. Federal funding and philanthropic donations to non-profits and state agencies to help defray re-entry costs have not done enough. Two out of every three inmates return to prison within two years of release. Low education, lack of skills, low-wage jobs, and lack of community and family support bind many ex-convicts to their former lifestyles and works to create repeat offenders.

Where public-private dollars are usually spent on employment training and placement, Common Sense Conservatism believes entrepreneurship training and assistance is in many cases a more practical, effective avenue to success. Many offenders who enter the penal system possess many transferable job skills. Illegal and black market industries employ the principles of monopoly, market competition, oligopoly, market re-investment, and dividend payments which have many relevant parallels in the legal and mainstream economy. Common Sense Conservatism believes that emphasis should be placed on ex-offenders channelling their skills towards legal activities that will positively affect both the individuals and the communities and economies of the areas in which they live.

State-sponsored re-entry programs typically don't provide information on investment skills, emerging markets, and venture capitalist firms for small business development. Urban conservatives believe that if more ex-offenders became legitimate business owners an additional tax base is created as well as generating potential mentorship opportunities. Through practical, effective policy and economic transformation in conjunction with urban counterculture and educational focuses, Common Sense Conservatism can act as a change agent in Urban America when implemented by local government.