League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
San Diego County, CA November 4, 2008 Election
	Joe Michael Ryan Answers Questions Candidate for United States Representative; District 52

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of California and asked of all candidates for this office.
Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

Questions & Answers

1. What, if anything, do you believe the federal government should do to control global climate change?

I think that we should empower common people and build stronger communities by instituting a gas rationing plan, and by giving people of low and modest incomes the ability and tools to participate in building a new economy based on green, renewable energy sources; instead of beating lower income people down financially to the point where they cannot be effective participants in a community's green-progress. If you look at any community where the people are doing poor financially, you'll see people who will survive by take shortcuts - in their personal and business practices - that harm the environment. So, when we consider the environment, we must consider the bigger picture which involves financial matters, and giving people some other path to prosperity and/or happiness, than having lots of children. Give people hope, and they will concentrate less on creating big families, and more on creating clean communities. We can't successfully regulate every poor person on the planet with a system like cap n trade. We need to empower people, and make them want to be part of the solution. We can give out energy credits to the citizens and let them have fun changing the world, or we can give energy credits to the hedge funds - created by Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan, that are scooping up logging-rights to forests in anticipation of the passage of cap n trade. Cap N Trade is being pushed by billionaires, because it delivers huge amounts of profits to the wealthiest people on the planet. Gas Rationing delivers money the other way; from billionaires to us! Either system can allow for a research fund. Nobody talks about alternatives to Cap N Trade. We need to open up the discussion fast before we get stuck with a bad system. Of course we want a green environment, but Cap N Trade is being shoved down our throat

2. What should the federal government do, if anything, to ensure that every American has health coverage?

The caseloads of doctors are full, so passing universal health-care delivers more money to insurance companies, without any possibility that the pool of available care will increase. People want fast solutions to our health-care systems woes, so they fall for re-organizing 'plans' and other trickery; when the only solution is to build more medical facilities, and increase the pool of nurses and doctors. That can't be done overnight without robbing the rest of the world of health-care providers and allowing them to immigrate to the US. Ultimately, we have the strength and resources to create a large new generation of doctors and nurses, but that will require new standards, and lots of money for medical facilities and education facilities. Where could a pile of money that size come from? How about if we concentrate on eliminating insurance companies, HMO's and all other party's that are effectively leaching the healthcare system dry. Let's face it, we can't fix this problem fast. We must think longterm, and we must be logical about what we can afford, and we must realize there's only one place to get what we need. We can't build a perfect system. That's an unreachable utopia. But we can do better by getting back to the basics. Let doctors be doctors instead of bean counters. We have to get back to people being motivated to take care of themselves better, and being motivated to save money for doctors visits, and think about whether they can afford healthcare before they engage in wildly dangerous sports or have way too many children. I do not advocate letting indigent patients go without care. We are better than that, but we can't keep letting a larger and larger percentage of health-care dollars get drained away, just so we can feel safe with our illusory 'universal plans'. Also, since 62 billion dollars was stolen from Medicare through fraud last year, maybe we need to set up some special federal, and state prosecution teams, and break-up the medicare scam rings once and for all. I generally believe we need to jail less citizens, but I also believe a lot more white collar criminals are going to have to be pursued with vigor and actually put in jail (as a deterrent to others), or our healthcare reform efforts will go for naught.

3. What, if anything, should the federal government do about immigration?

We must effect change in Mexico without being heavy-handed and without disrespecting Mexico's sovereignty or it's people. The standard of living in Mexico must be raised up to a level that allows for job creation at the bottom of the Mexican economy. We must not allow any further concentration of power in the hands of ruthless drug-gangs, and the only way to stop the process, is to decriminalize drug possession in the United States. We must not cooperate with Mexico's efforts to suppress it's citizens when they strive for greater freedom and autonomy. We must not allow Mexico's drug-gangs to gain effective control over the entire populace. We must get Mexico's farmers back in their fields and with their families, instead of allowing the Globalist Crime Syndicate to run them under and effectively steal their land from under them.

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Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League. 

Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: October 1, 2008 12:58
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