Issues

This issues page is different from what you normally find.  First, I wrote it myself.  It doesn’t read “Stephen thinks…” or “Stephen believes…”.  It is a commited response.  It reads “I believe…”.  That’s what you deserve–not what a paid campaign staffer can write (a nice set of bullet points), but what the voters have expressed they need.  I offer analysis and proposals, because the things that policies affect– your family, your job, your home and your checkbook–aren’t affected by bullet points.  They’re affected by the ideas that become policy.  When you come across text that is a different color, click on it and it will link you to data and other articles that back up what I’ve written.

Each of you as voters give representatives a serious responsibility to pass laws which help protect your future and to fight the passage of laws which serve only special interests.  So you’ll find exactly what I believe, and the reasons for it.  That’s what servant leadership is about.  So here are some issues that have come up as I’ve been blockwalking in the district:

Limited Government

• I firmly believe in limited government.  James Madison expressed it best in Federalist 51 (1) why we need government to begin with, and (2) why government must be limited.  He wrote:

It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

• We can’t get rid of human nature any more than we can stop the sun from rising.  And elected officials don’t lose that human nature the day they are elected.  That means we need to focus on keeping government limited so that we all benefit by government not being more powerful and more into our lives than absolutely necessary to promote freedom.

• The first question I will ask before I vote for a piece of legislation is “should the government legitimately be doing this?”; in other words, “is this government’s job to do.”  If not, I will not vote for it.  And I expect voter involvement to hold me to this promise as I strive to keep it.

Oppressive Property Taxes

A large complaint voters across the district have asked me to fix is the school property tax rate.  A recent article in the Dallas news criticized the proposal of a consumption tax. The article is titled, “NO successful historical precedent for Medina’s sales tax proposal.”  The article describes the shift from property tax to consumption tax as an impossible idea, and vaguely suggests “reform” of the property tax system.  The author is wrong.  Completely wrong. And the research isn’t that hard to find.  Follow the links that I have in the next paragraphs.

There are historical precedents for its success.  First, here in the U.S., the Cato Institute demonstrated that cities with sales taxes versus income taxes–and I suggest the property tax is becoming worse than an income tax–are doing far better and have much more growth.   In fact, a property tax closely resembles an income tax in a high burden area because your income level is generally proportional to the size of your home and it comes around regardless of how many county services you use.  Second, abroad.  In New Zealand, a reform government found that revenue actually increased because less people attempted to find ways, through legislative exceptions, loopholes, etc., to avoid paying taxes.  This means that if we keep spending down, like we should, and replace the property tax with a sales tax our overall tax burden will go down.  That’s true tax relief!

We need true tax relief, not just a nice sounding word “reform.”  We can fund our schools 4 ways: a property tax (which needs reform or removal), an income tax (which is barred in this state constitutionally), a business tax (which will drive down the economy), or a consumption [sales] tax.  I suggest we relieve the property tax burden by eliminating it and funding our necessary community revenues (that fund police, education, etc.) through a consumption tax.

One suggestion is to cut the property taxes in half and use a transfer tax.  But unless we keep in line with the greater principle, limited government, property taxes will just increase, in my opinion, to where they were before.  Replacing the property tax with a sales tax is a consistent manner to provide true tax relief.

• People with low or fixed incomes won’t be taxed out of their homes, especially if they are right before retirement.
• It makes rental housing cheaper because the property tax is not passed along; therefore, more people will move to Texas both to buy and to rent.
• Less people will be able to skirt taxes by a lack of transparency in the appraisal process.
• We can get subsistence exemptions for low income people who qualify.
• It doesn’t make the tax burden of owning a home the main reason for not being able to afford a home.
• It doesn’t punish people who save, work hard, and then buy a lot of land or a large home.  This particularly protects agricultural areas with large amounts of farmland.
• Business will move here rather than leave here because they can operate with less overhead in the absence of a property tax.
• It also will allow businesses to create more jobs because with no property tax on the business building they can hire more employees, which produces more services and products. That, in turn, grows the economy.
• You will never see your sales tax increase the same amount you pay in property tax; the overall tax burden per person goes down.

It is a win-win situation, as this Texas Public Policy Foundation paper shows! Property tax goes away, we pay less overall taxes because of more transparency, and the economy prospers. And if revenue in a county drops because sales drop, then the response of the county should be like that of any responsible Texan who brings home less in a paycheck than the month before: spend less!  In a household the family goes out to eat less, saves a bit more.  Government trims back the budget and saves taxpayers’  money.  It is irresponsible in government to keep spending at the same rate when incoming tax revenues go down.  Replacing the property tax with a sales tax forces government to be more accountable.

There is support for this view from Rep. Phil King, the 2006 National Legislator of the Year (American Legislative Exchange Council), as blogged by another outstanding conservative, Michael Quinn Sullivan.  Just a brief look at the posting from Empower Texans and the comments showing the overwhelming support for doing this.

In the meantime, we can definitely reform the existing property tax rate and require property appraisal values (which affect the public revenue stream and therefore should be public knowledge) to be transparent.

We were made creative by God, the most creative being in the universe.  Surely we can be creative enough to get rid of the property tax and follow the same ‘limited government thinking’ that I promise to keep.  Let’s reform property tax in the meantime, but replacing the property tax with a smaller, fairer sales tax is the goal.

Education

The problems and solutions to education in Texas, from my view, have to deal with misplaced priorities.  Consider education from K-12.  There has been, according to Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, a 31% increase in non-teachers on the public payroll since 1988. That brings us to a 1:1 teacher to non-teacher ratio.  During that time, we went from $5,597 per student ($27.8 billion in 1988) to $9,998 per student (a whopping $46.5 billion in 2008).  You would think that with all the money spent on the new non-teacher salaries, the value added per student would have sharply increased.  No.  SAT scores are flat.  Why?  Because in 2008, educational costs—actual teaching time per student—was only $4,500 per student, about half of the money spent.

That is like dropping a double car payment every month for a decade to give you nice wipers, wiper blades, a new sound system, and a fresh paint job for your Ferrari but you still can’t win a race against the beat-up Yugo that challenged you at the stoplight.  We shouldn’t tolerate this.  We need to spend money in education on the actual engine of education—instructional time.  I do not doubt that the extra non-teaching staff in school districts (the bureaucracy) have great hearts, but we need more than just a great heart; we need great minds.  Obviously we need some amount of administration; however, for all the money spent and no added value, there is some change needed.

A caring, conservative, common sense solution?  Focus our education dollars on value received per dollar for each student.  Place more consumer choice in the hands of parents through making school funds per student portable, as this article from the Texas Public Policy Foundation suggests.  This is the fiscally responsible approach.  The teachers I meet as I walk this district already have a heart to teach.  What we need to do is empower them to do their job, which they already do tirelessly.  By placing a free market incentive back into the system we give teachers the chance to do the best job they can do.  And this will naturally result in higher pay.  How?  By eliminating unnecessary overhead costs, pay for teachers can increase.  And districts will have to respond by being more responsible in how they manage dollars in order to provide a product that is attractive to the true consumers in this area, the parents.

Health Insurance Reform

Here is again another area where government has grown too large, and I hear it from many people when walking throughout the district.  But government messing into health care, and the disasters it causes to freedom are not new.  Back in the 1880’s, Otto von Bismarck set up government health care in Germany that led to a rapid growth in his political base–giving the workers government paid health care.  Fast-forward to modern times, and the same is true.  If a leader can promise security instead of freedom, the temptation is strong to follow.  In The Social Transformation of American Medicine, Paul Starr argued that security in health care in the United States would turn benevolence–a nice good-hearted attitude–into political power, where politicians grow a base of voters by promising to take care of them.

There are several current problems we can fix with a caring, conservative, common sense approach instead of giving away our freedom to a politician or group in exchange for a promise to take care of us.  It will involve using proven solutions, recognizing some good opportunities, and setting some new goals:

• We have what is called a “health care wedge.”  This is the growing distance between the person paying a health cost–the insurance company or employer, and the actual service receiver–us.  The farther away the treatment decisions are from the person through layers of doctors, committees, insurance paperwork, HMOs, PPOs, etc., the less involved and attached a person is.  The solution?  Promote, encourage, and ‘beat the drum’ about Health Savings Accounts.  The American Academy of Actuaries (a group that uses math and statistics to measure costs) found that people saved between 12% and 20% in the first year alone from this idea. (Page 11 of the link)  Why?  Because when folks realized that they were spending the money, they made better decisions.  And many people predicted that this would cause the users of these accounts to ignore preventative care.  They were wrong.  The level of preventative care went up–in some cases over 23%! (Page 13 of the link)  Giving people their own money, tax free, to put into managing their own health, is freedom, nothing less.
  
• Another large problem is the inability for Texans to shop across state lines.  In the 1940’s, Congress passed the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which allowed each state to basically set up a regulation monopoly inside its own borders. (page 7 of the link)  That decision places the choice of where a Texans can get insurance not in the hands of Texans, where it belongs, but in the hands of a state agency.  Because of the inability to cross-state shop, a policy which costs a Texas man $248/month only costs $77/month in Alabama. Let’s roll back government here and allow Texans the freedom to shop for the best price.
• Part of the differences in price above also stem from another ‘big government problem’–mandated coverage.  That’s where the Texas Department of Insurance requires that your health insurance cover types of injuries, accidents, or procedures and services you don’t really want or need.  One writer suggests that “Mandating benefits is like saying to someone in the market for a new car, if you can’t afford a Lexus loaded with options, you have to walk.” This makes it so that if you don’t want coverage for a certain procedure, you have no other option but to be uninsured, priced out of the coverage you could have.  Why should a policy written for a male require coverage for invitro fertilization?  But that’s what we have. Instead, prices could be driven down if it were ‘choice’ based.  If we can get cable and telephone service like that, based on what we choose, how much more should we be able to choose a plan for health insurance that is right for us.
• Along with the opportunities that Health Savings Accounts offer, and the solutions of cross-state shopping and rolling back mandates, I suggest we set a goal that would change the health insurance landscape.  We must treat health coverage realistically.  For example, you would not expect your car insurance company to pay for wiper blades, oil changes, gas fill-ups, or window cleaner.  Why then do we expect every procedure, mainly routine ones, to have a copay?  When we do this, the personal responsibility that made our state strong is left behind, and the dependence on government that weakens us (look at the states now which are bankrupt or nearing it) begins to take effect.  By lessing the overall burden on the system, we free it up to deal with catastrophic care, and we take ownership of our decisions.  And doctors will be able to charge less without the added overhead of piles of insurance forms and other costs.

Putting decisions for health care back in the hands of Texans is the most caring, conservative, common sense approach we can have, and I promise to work hard based on these ideas.

Life

Our most precious right is the right to life.  The problem we face is that most people unfortunately define humanity based on externals rather than the actual “nature” of being human. This applies from the oldest person in Texas to the smallest embryo in Texas.  We need to foster a culture that values life.

Abortion: The clearest reasoning I’ve heard recently is found on this YouTube video.  Here’s a concise set of reasons why the pro-life position is true:

There are only 4 relevant differences between a baby just days old and a pre-born infant: Size, Level of Development, Environment, and Degree of Dependency.

“Size”: Whether you are talking about the moment sperm and egg just combined to make a unique 1 cell embryo, which has DNA completely different from mom or dad, of the baby who is a day away from birth, its smaller size does not change its humanity and isn’t justification to kill it through abortion. Bigger people aren’t more human than smaller people; adults aren’t more human than children; therefore, size is not a good enough reason to justify abortion.

“L” stands for “Level of Development”: Human life in the womb is a matter of development; nothing about development changes one’s humanity.  Simply because the pre-born infant isn’t as developed as a baby outside the womb, or an adult thirty years old, doesn’t justify abortion.  10 year-old children aren’t more human than 2 year-old children.  Humanity isn’t measured on a “bell-curve” where you become more human as you progress to your physical peak and then drop off as you grow past that.  Humanity is based on who you are rather than your level of development. Therefore, the level of development of a baby in the womb is not a good enough reason to justify abortion.

“E” stands for “Environment”: Everyone occupies different space. I type this article from an office. My children go to school at a desk or table. This difference in spatial position, or environment, does not change how human someone is.  My children aren’t less human because they sleep in their own bedroom; my movement from room to room in the house does not change the value of my life.  Surely then a journey down the birth canal doesn’t magically make a baby human. A baby already has its humanity because of who it is.  Therefore, the fact that a baby is inside the womb and we are outside the womb, a difference in environment, is not a good enough reason to justify abortion.

Finally, “D” stands for “Degree of Dependency”: All human beings are dependent in some manner, some more than others. When my children are ill, they need medicine. People suffering from diabetes often need insulin. Other people who are paralyzed need wheelchairs. All of us need food and shelter. The baby in the womb is no different, just at a different degree–it is in the womb for protection, attached to the mother for oxygen, food, and elimination of waste.   Someone’s humanity isn’t changed by the need for a cane to assist in walking; we don’t lose our humanity if for a period of time we can’t feed ourselves.  Therefore, the fact that a baby inside the womb is at a different degree of dependency is not a good enough reason to justify abortion.

Stem Cell Research: Here’s the bottom line:  there have been 73 cures from adult stem cells. There have been NO CURES AT ALL from embryonic stem cells. Think about it like this: You go to the hospital for surgery and get a choice of two possible surgeons.  The first surgeon has had 73 successful operations and the second surgeon has never had a successful operation.  Which would you choose?

And some folks would argue that you should get morality and politics “out of” science.  But our humanity is a moral question.  The scientific method is an analytical method, not a moral code.  Just learn from history: the Nazi doctors ignored morality when they performed awful experiments on scores of people, mainly Jews, during WWII.  We must rise above pure science, and be guided by our humanity, which is a political decision.

Euthanasia: Perhaps no other sign of our “me-first” fixation with our own generation is more clear than the neglect of the elder part of our society.  For whatever reason–time, money, patience–we have refused to let our comfort zone put up with and honor those who have taken care of us.  As the former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop once said:

We must be wary of those who are too willing to end the lives of the elderly and the ill. If we ever decide that a poor quality of life justifies ending that life, we have taken a step down a slippery slope that places all of us in danger. There is a difference between allowing nature to take its course and actively assisting death. The call for euthanasia surfaces in our society periodically, as it is doing now under the guise of “death with dignity” or assisted suicide. Euthanasia is a concept, it seems to me, that is in direct conflict with a religious and ethical tradition in which the human race is presented with ” a blessing and a curse, life and death,” and we are instructed ‘…therefore, to choose life.”

The danger comes from our defining “quality of life.”  What does that mean?  It changes from person to person, and is subjectively biased to the person doing the observing.

All human life is valuable.  From conception to natural death, our society must value life.  Abortion, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, and Euthanasia are fundamentally wrong.  Period.

Borders

Texas started as its own nation; now as part of the United States, we must be proactive in law-enforcement and interaction with the federal government to require that our nearest international neighbor respects our borders.  Just like you wouldn’t want your next-door neighbor coming over and destroying your yard, we should be able to expect our neighbor, Mexico, to control the violent drug-related crime which is spilling over into our border towns at an alarming rate.

And beyond reducing violence, border control affects honest-hardworking  Texans in several ways:

• Wages: When people cross into Texas illegally, any jobs they find take job opportunities from law-abiding Texans.  In American Thinker magazine, economists noted that illegal immigrant workers are ‘leveraging’ native workers out of jobs. With the economic downturn costing jobs already, we must protect the opportunities for legal workers.

• Drugs and Crime: While not every person crossing into Texas illegally is involved in the drug trade, many are.  Even the Department of Homeland Security has said this. With them comes crime from their violent turf wars, which makes our communities dangerous and unstable places to live and raise our families.  If we can’t provide a safe future for our children then we have already lost.  We must care about the safety of Texans, especially in HD 52 with the I-35 corridor providing a ready lane for drug traffic.

• Your vote:  Texas Democrats deny this possibility, but recent studies, found here, show that people do register to vote illegally.  The Democrats say that medical costs, college tuition, and insurance are more important.  What they miss by being short-sighted is that the burden put on these places by illegal immigration:

1. drives up medical costs because illegal immigrants use our emergency rooms for primary care;
2. drives up tuition costs when illegal immigrants are eligible for in-state tuition (more on that below);
3. require higher insurance levels to protect against “uninsured motorist” and other forms of non-payment insurance in order to spread the burden of their fiscal irresponsibility and non-payment across the system.  There is no ‘free lunch.’  The costs of illegal immigration are carried on the backs of hard-working Texas taxpayers.

By passing stronger voting measures, we will work together with increased border security to protect every honest Texans voice at the ballot box.

College tuition is affected for Texans also.  This last legislative cycle Texas Democrats prevented so many bills from getting a vote through intentionally using over nine minutes (but less than the limit of ten minutes) to ‘talk’ out the bill, a process called “chubbing,” to avoid voting on many immigration bills.  One included preventing illegal immigrations from getting an in-state tuition break, one that should rightfully benefit legal residents of Texas.  It took Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler) to get an Attorney General Opinion to protect Texans above the irresponsibility of Texans Democrats who forced us into a special session, wasted a lot of Texas taxpayer dollars, to avoid simply protecting Texas taxpayers.

It is time we require us all to live by the rule of law, expecting our southern neighbor, Mexico, and our national government to do their jobs in our borders and in the meantime protecting the Texas taxpayer from the fallout across the board (tuition, health care, insurance, illegal voting, crime and drugs) when they don’t.  By doing that, our overall costs tied to the burdens of illegal immigration will go down, and Texas will prosper.  This is the servant leadership approach.

Transportation

The massive growth in HD 52 and Texas in general (we have 5 of the largest 25 cities in the U.S.) makes preparing for the future a common sense idea.  As with any question of spending, you must answer at least two questions: (1) “How much should I spend?” and “What am I doing with what I already have?”

1. How much should Texans spend? An easy indicator on a ball-park figure is to find out what population has done.  From 2000 to 2008, Texas population rose from 20 million people to 25 million, an increase of 20%.  Yet spending in the budget went from 44.2 billion to 71.3 billion, an increase of 38%.  So we can already see that spending is rising faster than population growth, which is a possible, but not definite, indicator of excessive spending.  Let’s narrow the field to transportation.
2. What is Texas doing with the transportation money it already has? The “jury” is in on this question, and the verdict: Texas is squandering the transportation money it is supposed to be using on roads and sending it to non-transportation expenses of all kinds.  Yet we heard last session about the great call and need to have an increase in the gas tax.  Why?

• Think of it like this:  A guy makes a home budget that had $500 for new tires and maintenance for his car for the year.  Halfway through the year he sees a great painting at the local gallery or a cool big screen TV and buys it.  The next year his tires wear out and he now needs new ones.  Where does he go to get the money?  Well, if this imaginary person is “government,” there is only one place to go–you and me, the taxpayers, because government does not make any money. It only gets revenue from the taxpayer.  Yet this wasteful process, in a nutshell, is what has happened.  It’s called a “diversion,” and it has happened in the legislature for some time.
• In the 1998-99 budget, about $622 million was “diverted” from the Transportation Fund where it should rightfully go, and squandered, literally, on things non-transportation related.  That number last year was an alarming $1.6 billion! Among the list of things that this “transportation” money, to be used for roads, was spent on?  Here’s a short list:
  • Attorney General – Mineral Rights Litigation $ 1,700,000
  • Health and Human Services Commission $ 20,000,000
  • Texas Education Agency $ 100,000,000
  • Texas Workforce Commission – Client Transportation $ 13,658,704
  • Gross Weight Axle Fees $ 10,800,000
  • Commission on the Arts $ 1,340,000
  • Historical Commission $ 1,000,000
  • State Office of Administrative Hearings $ 6,736,396
  • Lufkin Tourist Information Center $ 150,000
  • Salary Increase for Schedule C $ 22,291,710
  • Regulation of Controlled Substances $ 804,972
  • Client Transportation Services $ 22,363,606
  • Medical Trans – Medicaid Match $ 85,381,725
  • Auto Theft Prevention $ 27,558,755

• This is unacceptable.  There is no excuse for spending money on the Commission on the Arts that is supposed to go to Transportation.  And the category “Auto Theft Prevention” certainly has the word “auto,” but it is not “roads.”  Were this not so serious for the Texas taxpayer, it would be like the story of Jack being sent to sell a cow at the market and him deciding to get some magic beans instead.  Only in the reality of state government, these beans don’t make a beanstalk, and there is no goose that lays a golden egg, only a greater burden laid at the feet of taxpayers due to the failure of legislators to have integrity and say, “No, no matter how popular your program is, I’m a public servant and this money is for roads.”

Toll Roads

• First and foremost, the foundation of our nation’s success has been free enterprise.  This approach has put the costs and burdens of decision-making on people actually doing the spending, resulting in thrift, savings, and efficiency.  The massive amount of spending for public roads has generally been done through a gas tax.  That must provide our starting point for how to use toll road options.
• As a limited government solution, toll roads offer an option, but not a failsafe.  Here are some of the problems that have crept in, and how to correct them:
  • Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs): in short, this is the government letting a private company make the road.  What the rarely-mentioned pitfall here to the consumer is that bonds for these are sometimes guaranteed and/or funded with taxpayer money and not strictly the money from tolls.  That violates a fundamental principle of the free market–allowing people to bear the costs of their decisions.  You get charged as a taxpayer for a service you aren’t even using.  The solution?  Allow toll roads to be solely funded by toll revenue bonds until the construction costs are paid–at a rate not based on private company management profit but public accountability–and then reduce or eliminate the toll once the bonds are paid.
  • Making existing roads a toll road: To my mind this type of change is a huge bait-and-switch on the taxpayer. A toll road should be new. Existing roads built with taxpayer money are an investment by the taxpayers and should not be given over to tolling.

• The money and management need to be kept local. In addition, voters should be able to vote on the toll roads, putting the decision into the hands of the people who would use it. It traffic conditions are not significant enough to warrant it, the voters will know and should be the ones who decide on whether to build the toll road.
• Toll roads should not be funded with gas tax dollars. That takes money from the non-toll users to benefit only the toll users.
• Toll roads can be done wisely, but because the government is making decisions that have a direct effect on the free market, it should be done with an eye toward ensuring that the non-toll taxpayer is not disadvantaged.

Building New Ideas into Our Infrastructure to Clear Congestion

• Have lived in many states across the U.S., I can say that Texas roads have some of the best design features that I don’t experience many other places: “Flyover” highway transitions when you simply want to go in the opposition direction and not go to a stoplight; a frontage road system that fosters a lot of store-front business opportunities; adequate turning lanes; lane structures that make common sense. There are more “best practices” we can use to clear up congestion:
  • ramp metering-where congestion around ramps is relieved by sequential entering of vehicles into the roadway
  • dynamic lanes-where congestion is relieved based on the direction of the flow of traffic based on the time of day by having a lane which can be used in dual directions
  • variable speed limits-by having adjustable speed limits based on traffic flow, cars are able to commute based on actual real-time conditions which improves the pace of traffic and reduces accidents and delay.

2nd Amendment Rights

In this race I’ve had the privilege to meet the son of Alan Crum, the man who stopped the UT shooter back in the 60’s.  Since then so many shootings have occurred in places where we’ve prohibited guns.  The reason why is simple: when guns are prohibited only the criminals will have them.  What’s the best policy then?  Allow law-abiding citizens to carry firearms.  If a criminal has to pause and consider that you might have a firearm, then that criminal may not attack you.  Consider this:

One of the most recent comprehensive looks at the self-defense use of guns in America was conducted in 1994 by two Florida State University criminologists, Garky Kleck and Marc Gertz. They called it the National Self-Defense Survey. The survey involved a random telephone sampling of 4,978 households in the lower 48 states and lengthy interviews both with respondents reporting self-defense use of guns and those not.

…

From the results of the telephone interviews, the study’s authors calculated that guns were used in self-defense between 800,000 and 2.5 million times a year. The range is rather large, but even the lower bound could mean that more crimes are thwarted with guns than are committed with them.

The National Self-Defense Survey also reported that 30% of would-be victims said that their gun “almost certainly” or “probably” saved their life. This becomes more believable when considering that more than half of the self-defense scenarios involved two or more assailants. The survey’s most daring statement is that its findings suggest that gun ownership protects 65 lives for every two lives lost.

I believe in the fullest exercise of our 2nd Amendment rights.  It was a great privilege for me to teach my oldest son to shoot this past year.  I unapologetically stand for those rights and will work against any law-local, state, or federal, that attempts to remove our right to self-defense.

-Water and Agriculture Policy

More issues will be coming soon as I post options based on the comments voters give to me.  Stay tuned as this page expands.