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League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
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Political Philosophy for James P. "Jim" Gray
Candidate for |
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In essence, Judge Gray believes that the control of California must be returned to Californians. If the spending of the federal government is reduced, then taxes will necessarily become lower. This can be accomplished by the following four-point plan: 1) Establish "sunset" laws that will require an affirmative vote in Congress every five years before any federal agencies or programs can be refunded. That way the burden will appropriately be placed upon these entities to justify their continued funding and existence. If they are productive in their present form, they will be perpetuated and funded accordingly; if not, they will be changed, cut back or disbanded. 2) Repeal the failed and hopeless War on Drugs by restricting the role of the federal government to assisting each state to enforce its chosen laws. Crime was reduced by more than 20 percent within one year after we pursued this course with the repeal of Alcohol Prohibition, and the same results will be realized when we finally repeal Drug Prohibition. People must be held accountable for their actions, instead of attempting to control what they put into their bodies. The War on Drugs has directly created an enormously large and lucrative black market that has corrupted institutions, people in all walks of life, and, most especially, children, here and all around the world. In addition, it has enabled the sale of illicit drugs to provide huge amounts of funding for terrorists. Our policy should be changed for specified drugs like marijuana to be strictly regulated for distribution to adults, and taxed, and users of other drugs should be allowed legal access to them under the strict supervision of medical professionals. Medical programs of this kind are successfully reducing crime, drug usage and health problems today in countries like Switzerland and Germany, and we can emulate their success. 3) Return our educational and healthcare systems to the control of more local governments. These systems were working effectively until the middle 1960s. Then the federal government began to take control, with disastrous results. We must get the federal government out of our educational and healthcare systems, and must also allow prescription drugs to be available inside the United States at the lowest price that they are available anywhere in the world. Government over-regulation of these systems, as well as our businesses and our daily lives in general, directly reduces productivity and competition, which in turn puts an enormous and unnecessary strain upon our small businesses, inflates prices, and takes away jobs. 4) Establish a fair and effective national immigration program by requiring the federal government to pay for all of the costs of illegal immigration. Legal immigration has helped make our country strong, but many good people are being punished by the present system. Requiring the federal government to pay for the costs of failure would give it the proper incentives to implement a fair and workable policy, and would also allow our country to reclaim its borders. |
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