Candidate for
State Senator; District 10

Government isn't the solution to our problems - it's most often the cause. Whether the problem is crime, unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, poor school performance, or high taxes, the blame can be laid squarely on poor choices by our legislators.

Our legislators suffer from an inability to address the hard problems. They pass laws outlawing plastic shopping bags instead of spending their effort finding ways of balancing the budget. The $20+ Billion deficit is destroying our credit rating, forcing the state to borrow at ever-higher interest rates. The most important role of the state is to protect and defend its citizens, but this is always the first budget item they threaten to cut, unless taxes are raised further. The reason they don't address the deficit is they are obligated by their constituencies to perpetuate the programs that should be cut. For example, there are 15,000 retired state employees with pensions greater than $100,000 per year. Do that math - that's a big chunk of our deficit being spent on current pensions. There are looming pension obligations of half a Trillion (with a T) dollars! These pensions are a payback to the unions that help elect our legislators with fat campaign contributions and feet on the street.

As citizens, we have an inalienable right to self-defense. Yet our legislators work to remove that right, by making it impossible to keep and bear arms, leaving us defenseless against dangerous predators. They undercut public safety by taking working cops off the street, in favor of unionized, fat-cat bureaucrats. They create housing projects that become gang and drug-dealer safe havens. Most of these entitlement programs are failures from the beginning, keeping people dependent on government, instead of helping them become self-sufficient, contributing members of society. This dependent class is another constituency our legislators like and want to keep.

Our legislators create regulatory and tax systems that are ranked as the most unfriendly in the nation - causing businesses to relocate to stay profitable, sending jobs out of state. For example, air quality regulations recently enacted for diesel engines (such as for generators and compressors) made it prohibitive to run construction and trucking companies in the state, because the ones companies owned could not be brought up to requirement, forcing the companies to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of new equipment, if they stayed in California. The solution? Move the company over the border, to Nevada. This didn't achieve the air quality improvement intended, did it?

Our legislators spend their time on LGBT issues, promoting tolerance and diversity, by creating programs like Harvey Milk Day. Harvey Milk was not a respectable role model - he is documented to have been a pedophile and criminal. However, he has become the martyr in the LGBT cause. This education agenda diverts from the important task of teaching science, mathematics, civics, history, English, and so on. Even science and history are subverted to present a distorted world view consistent with their far-left agenda. Instead of teaching the scientific method, where a hypothesis is tested by attempting to disprove it, instead, a theory is taught (e.g., global warming) and effort is made to find evidence to 'prove' it, and to use it to explain every phenomenon in the world. Students aren't taught critical thinking.

Equally important, the state legislature views it as their role to collect local districts' tax revenue and redistribute it back to the districts, minus their mordida. In the process, they affix mandates on the content of the education. Why not let local districts spend their revenue as their local citizens see fit? Why is it appropriate to mandate from above, what local citizens do with their own money?

The principles that guide me can be summarized:

Limited, Constitutionally-constrained government Authority delegation to more local government Individual responsibility Transparency and accountability Free-market solutions Private property Inalienable rights of life, liberty, property, self-defense, and the pursuit of happiness

I will cast votes for and against legislation based on these principles. I will not 'go along to get along.' I will document my votes and explain them in terms of these principles. If you agree with these principles, vote for me. If you disagree, don't vote for me. What you vote for is what you will get.