By Linnea Brown
Staff writer
JUPITER - The nation's next commander-in-chief could be a local.
Jupiter resident Frank Lynch, 65, filed papers with the Federal Election Commission in August and announced he's running for president.
Mr. Lynch, who dubs himself "the most important emerging national leader since Abraham Lincoln," said he intends to transform and uplift Americans with the same tools that Mr. Lincoln did: preserving the United States' existence in a time of great danger, bringing true equality to every person, re-inventing education to teach useful things and creating the greatest scientific, economic and job booms in history.
A lifelong Republican who converted to the Democratic Party in July, Mr. Lynch credited filmmaker Michael Moore's movie "Sicko" and Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" with inspiring him to run for president.
"I saw 'Sicko' Fourth of July weekend, and (paired with) the war in Iraq and global warming, I mailed in my paperwork changing my party affiliation almost immediately," he said. "Then I began looking at all the Web sites of presidential candidates in both parties, and found no (original) ideas on any of them."
Mr. Lynch said he believes in providing free healthcare, daycare and college for everyone and abolishing the income tax.
Instead, Mr. Lynch said he would employ an across-the-board 5 percent payroll deduction to pay for these things, with the rest of the money coming from the Abraham Lincoln tax, or a 47 percent tax on all imported goods and services.
This would go toward helping pay for the first and foremost issue of his campaign: free universal healthcare, with a complete choice of doctors.
"I propose enrolling everyone, regardless of age, in Medicare and eliminating all co-pays and deductibles to make it free," he said. "By doing this, we'll immediately save 25 percent, which was previously going to insurance companies. This will cover the 16 percent of people who aren't covered, and leave us with 9 percent to improve the quality of medical care."
Mr. Lynch said he retired about 10 years ago after a career in management consulting and corporate finance.
While he has never held elected office, Mr. Lynch said his perspective as "a fresh new outsider" will allow him to run an honest campaign, be on the ballot as a Democrat in all 50 states and be a significant fundraiser.
"This really is a crusade. This is not just another guy running for president," he said. "In fact, I made the decision reluctantly because I don't want to be president. I think it's a horrible burden, but I think I'll do the (best job)."
Instead of running an expensive campaign, he said he intends to tour the nation promoting his book, due out later this year. He said he is confident his Web site and the Internet will win the support of college students and working mothers.
He believes in providing year-round neighborhood schools, with hours to fit the needs of working mothers and free daycare. School would be held every day, with free breakfast, snacks and lunch for all, free uniforms, and free medical, dental and vision care provided inside schools.
Because school with longer hours will double the number of class hours each year, children will finish high school by age 12 or 13.
Then, he would use existing high school buildings as colleges emphasizing medicine, math, science, engineering and other useful subjects, so every child in America completes a free college degree by age 17.
"I would take all the monstrous high schools, like Jupiter High, and turn them into free colleges," he said. "Instead of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, every child would have Internet-based testing once a week. By the time each child is 17, they'll have a useful skill and be able to go to work or graduate school with no college loans."
This would also be paid for with the rest of the 47 percent import tax, he said.
An avid environmentalist, Mr. Lynch said he would aim to create 20 new green, or environmentally conscious, cities with 20 million new high-paying jobs.
He would build these cities along the 2,000-mile, eight-lane superhighway that stretches from Canada to the Mexican border, 150 miles east of the Rocky Mountains, with giant windmills producing electricity with no pollution at all.
"This country needs someone who is looking toward the future," he said.
As far as foreign affairs, Mr. Lynch believes in ending the war in Iraq intelligently, he said.
"We're still doing the fighting for everyone else, and that's wrong," he said. "My first week in office, I will have a meeting with the head of every country in the Middle East and say we're going to (stop), and that they have to start (stepping in). This will get our troops out of Iraq in 12 months and keep Iran and al-Qaida out of Iraq."
Mr. Lynch also expressed adamant views about anti-globalization.
"Right now all of our jobs are being sucked out of the country to India and China. We're losing money to foreign trade, and it's getting worse and worse," he said. "So with the new 47 percent tax on imports, we can keep our jobs and let our college graduates have those jobs. If it takes a higher tax, I'll raise it as high as it needs to go."
He said the U.S. should be concerned about four enemies: communist China and Russia, Iran and al-Qaida.
"These are dictatorships with long-range strategies. Everything they do is guided, and they all want to dominate the world," he said. "We have no national strategy, and we need it. Otherwise they are going to conquer us."
As a management consultant for the international consulting firm Booz Allen, he consulted on national security issues. In 1968, he co-authored a study for the Department of Defense that forecasted Middle Eastern conflicts 20 years into the future. He said that study correctly foresaw today's problems.
"Forty years ago, I predicted to the Pentagon the mess we would be in with Iraq and Iran today, but the Pentagon scrapped the whole thing," he said. "Too bad they didn't read that study before either of the invasions of Iraq."
He later worked on Wall Street as an investment banker.
An avid reader, Mr. Lynch said he has read more than 1,000 books since retiring 10 years ago, soaking in information and drafting a plan for change.
While he prefers to remain mysterious about the title, details of this plan can be found in his book, which he intends to release later this year.
Originally from Chicago, Mr. Lynch attended Purdue University, Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business and the University of California at Berkeley.
He lives in Jupiter with his elderly mother. He has never been married and has no children.
For more information, go to www.franklynch.org.
Brown@hometownnewsol.com