Update on the Issues

 

This latest position statement was printed in the Addison Independent. In addition I would like to say that if you live and work in Vermont, you are a Vermonter regardless of federal citizenship. No discrimination. Freedom of movement must be guaranteed. Our freedom to organize in the workplace must be protected.

If you’d like me to address an additional issue, please click to contact me and I will put the response here.

Here’s the footage from yesterday’s Addison County Chamber of Commerce Candidate Forum:

Addison County House and Senate Candidates. 

Moderated by WVTK's Bruce Zeman. Ilsley Public library, 10/25/12

Jobs

Government cannot create jobs. What good government can do is get out of the way, respect the rule of law, refrain from acting in the interests of large corporations and special privilege. This restores our economic freedom, and with economic freedom comes jobs.

Job creation spending benefits land speculators & Wall Street, creates jobs in China, and pays Vermont farmers to grow GMO oilseed instead of food. No more pork!

A return to the principles of Liberty will create better-paying jobs and reduce greatly the need for social services.

Social services staff and day care workers are better paid in a vibrant economy.

Health Care

Montpelier must create a public option, and extend the corporate tax break for buying private health insurance, to private citizens. Watch the competition begin. Watch prices go down.

We must remove regulatory barriers to competition. Oppressive regulation, written by corporations such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, created a monopoly which severely limits the choices of Vermonters. Monopoly keeps smaller, competitive insurance providers out of Vermont. Access to health care Health care IS a human right, and that means taking care of our health care providers, so that they stay in Vermont.

To pay for the system, we must terminate corporate welfare in Vermont. Montpelier gives away our natural resources to corporations (tax-free), the only State to do so: $1.2 billion yearly, or $7,700 per Vermont family of four. Like Alaska, we must tax natural resources, set up a permanent fund to take care of our own.

Agriculture

Remove regulatory burdens and price controls. Vermont law trumps federal regulation, according to the Tenth Amendment. Vermont needs on-farm slaughter, industrial hemp and freedom to farm as we will.

To solve problems created by over-centralization, we must decentralize.

We need small farm starts by young people. Get the State out of the way: Deregulate farms, not Wall Street!

Adopt the Prosper Vermont proposals into law. Farmland should be cheap, not subject to land speculation and development pressure. When developers are encouraged to put already-developed land to its highest and best use, speculation no longer drives up the price of farmland.

Energy

I support energy independence, as did George Aiken: local solutions first. Every Vermonter or Vermont community an energy company, feeding energy into the local grid.

I oppose the use of eminent domain to convert private land to ‘wind farms’. Tax incentives only enrich private individuals & corporations.

VT Yankee is a clear and present danger: decrepit, unprofitable and would close on its own, as did Maine Yankee. But Montpelier’s special relationship with Entergy gives them the privilege of storing nuclear waste on-site. I would introduce a bill to terminate this relationship… put the health and safety of Vermonters before corporate profits.

Vermont must re-acquire our dams, now producing electricity for Massachusetts. We must eliminate corporate welfare to TransCanada: the exclusive, tax-free monopoly on Vermont’s surface water, part of the public trust.

The State may NOT tell us how and how not to heat and power our homes, businesses and farms.

Public Policy

The basic obligation of the State is to protect individual rights and property: our essential Liberty. What you’ve made, that’s yours and nobody has a right to it but you. This is clear in the Vermont Constitution.

Today Montpelier takes away private property, gives away billions in corporate welfare They tax us into the ground and invest in surveillance, tasers and riot police… Vermonters can no longer meet our own human needs. Social services become the norm, rather than a safety net.

The Welfare State is a failure throughout history. Shall we repeat a mistake, or do we want Liberty?