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Human life is sacred. Our Republic was primarily founded on the principle of protecting and preserving human life. In fact, our Declaration of Independence firmly states:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
The right to life is the FIRST RIGHT claimed by our Founding Fathers in our founding document. Abortion steals that right from the most vulnerable in our society—unborn, innocent babies.
However, I firmly believe that we must also do what we can in society and in our government to protect our women from needless emotional and physical harm. The abortion industry preys on women who find themselves with an unexpected pregnancy and who are often confused, misinformed, and fearful. In some cases, they are even coerced into their abortions.
Our society and culture should reflect an attitude of grace towards women and recognize that both the baby and the mother are both victims when an abortion takes place.
As Governor of Idaho, I will sign an executive order on DAY ONE of my administration banning abortion in the state of Idaho.
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Civil Asset Forfeiture is the legal means that gives police officers the license to steal your property during any routine interaction, and gives the police department the ability to keep your property (including cash) for itself.
Sure, this is supposed to only be done when the assets or property in question are directly related to drug trafficking, but do you believe that is how it's being used? Of course not. The list of abuses and outright theft using the claim of "civil asset forfeiture" is longer and more egregious than you could possibly imagine. Just search for it on the internet yourself.
Anything you own can be taken by a police officer in the name of civil asset forfeiture and you will most likely never get it back.
It is so absurd, that once a police officer steals your property, the court case that follows literally names the stolen property as the defendant in the case. I'm serious. For example, if a cop steals your new C8 Corvette, then the case that follows will be "City of Boise vs Corvette." I'm not kidding. The cases would be humorous if they weren't so serious.
Believe it or not, but law enforcement agents steal more money from the American people than all burglaries in the country combined!1
This is an abomination and it has to be stopped. As Governor I will simply put an end to Civil Asset Forfeiture in the State of Idaho. We cannot and will not allow legal plunder in our state.
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After researching the issue and consulting with stakeholders in regards to public education, I learned that the biggest problem for school administrators is the ridiculous amount of burdens put on teachers and schools by the state and federal government regulations and “standards”. It's time to eliminate those regulations and empower our schools and teachers to make their own decisions about how they run their schools.
Think about it—if you trust your schools enough to send your own children to them to instruct them, supervise them, and essentially raise them without your oversight, then why wouldn't you trust them concerning how to get their jobs done. It makes no sense for legislators and bureaucrats, most of whom aren’t even educators themselves, to put unnecessary burdens and regulations on our teachers.
How would you like to be treated that way? What if in your job, which you are trained to do as a professional, you had other people who had never done your job, and never been trained to do to your job, telling you how to do your job? Would you like that? Would you or could you be effective if people who didn’t even know how to do what you do put standards and regulations on you and your work? Of course not. It's senseless.
It's time to empower our educators. Let our local school districts and schools determine their own course of action without needless intrusion by state and federal bureaucracies. In short, here’s my plan—let's allow teachers and educators to tell us what they need to successfully educate our children and then let's let them do it. They are the professionals, so let them work.
Teachers, I support you. I want to empower you to teach in the way that you know will work best without intrusion from senseless bureaucratic meddling into the classroom.
My explanation above describes my position regarding education. As such, I strongly oppose forced curriculums or education “standards” such as “Common Core.” As governor, I will ensure we prevent and eliminate (where necessary) all "standards" which are detrimental to schools, families, educators, and most importantly—to Idaho's children. And I will also advocate any legislation that offers parent’s a choice for where to send their children to school.
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Its unbelievable, but the federal government currently has control of over 63% of Idaho’s land. And you know what that land represents? It represents wealth. It represents jobs and financial peace and security here in Idaho. Its is untapped wealth, however. Its wealth that we can’t take advantage of because the federal government controls it.
Imagine for a minute that you had a million dollars in the bank, but you were never allowed to have access to 63% of it. Think about how much real money you would lose every year in missed opportunities because of your inability to access your own wealth. The same thing goes for Idaho.
Look, if it's our land, then it's our land. That land represents cities, businesses, mines, gold, silver, restaurants, resorts, telecom, roads, infrastructure, schools, churches, non-profits, and all the jobs that go along with that. But right now, it sits empty and useless. Every state in the country that has access to the largest portion of its own land is economically prosperous. Those that don’t are economically stagnated. Idaho is included in that stagnant number.
As Governor, I will see to it that the state of Idaho reclaims our own land that is rightfully ours. Idaho can manage its own land. We don’t need the federal government bullying us around and telling us what we can and can’t do with our own land. So, let's use our land properly and efficiently and watch our economy explode here in Idaho.
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I don't even know why we have to talk about this one. Guns are more American than apple pie. And Here's the bottom line with guns—every other freedom in the Constitution rests upon our citizens right to bear arms.
If the 2nd amendment fails, so does our Republic. I will defend the 2nd amendment with every fiber of my being for I firmly believe it is the most important of all of our freedoms—even more then the 1st amendment. Think about it, if our citizens can't defend themselves against our government, then none of us can be assured of our right to worship, to free speech, or any other right.
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The historical American Dream was rooted in property ownership and in order for people to feel prosperous, secure, and happy, they have to have their own home. Idaho is a growing state, and as we grow, we want people in Idaho to participate in this dream.
So, Idaho must make a cultural decision—we can either build up or build out. That is to say, we can grow by spreading out or by creating densely populated areas. However, history and human nature demonstrate that if we go down the path we are on now and build up and create dense and congested cities with large populations, traffic, and pollution, we will lose our conservative, traditional values. It's just what happens.
If we are going to maintain our historic and traditional values, and ultimately Keep Idaho IDAHO, we must spread out and make Idaho's land available to the people while simultaneously ensuring that necessary land remains public land for multiple use purposes (under local jurisdiction). Then we can enjoy the fruits of prosperity and land ownership while maintaining our culturally conservative identity.
The current affordable housing crisis is caused by a number of complicated factors, many of which have been caused by the Federal Government. Nevertheless, at its core, this crisis is simply a supply-and-demand issue. To lower prices, we simply need more supply. And to have more supply, we need to take our land back.
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The Idaho State Healthcare Exchange is a disaster beyond measure. Idaho legislators teamed up with then Governor Otter and rammed Obamacare down our throats. They claim it was done for "states rights" and because it was "better for the state of Idaho to handle the exchange instead of the federal government," but that is pure sophistry and they all know it!
Obamacare is not only illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral—but its downright evil. It gives the government control of your life and your body in ways that only dictator's fantasize about.
I support the full repeal of our State Healthcare exchange and I will also support Idaho standing on its 10th amendment rights and rejecting the mandates of Obamacare in our state.
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Parents have been given both the authority and responsibility to raise their own children by God Almighty. The state has no right to intervene in the upbringing of children.
I will ensure that Parental Rights are preserved and protected so that the government cannot meddle with families, particularly in the areas of homeschooling and decisions regarding education, morality, medical decisions including vaccination and "life-saving" medical treatments, etc.
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Property tax is the most immoral of all taxes because it is the state's way of deifying itself by claiming that it owns everything, while forcing you to pay an annual tax on property that is supposed to be yours. But if you have to pay a tax on it forever, or it is taken away from you, then how is it actually yours?
People everyday in Idaho are losing their homes to the state because they can't pay the property tax. Sadly, it is the elderly that lose their homes the most, but people that find themselves without a job for a period of time or who are disabled are losing their homes to the state, as well.
The right to own and control your own property without paying someone to keep it, is the American dream. Taxes based on ownership of property were used in ancient times by British and European kings or landlords who claimed that all the land belonged to them and the peasants had to pay them to use it. Property tax in Idaho is no different. We have to pay state officials until the day we die, or they will take our property.
The father of communism Karl Marx says in his Manifesto of the Communist Party "Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property." Marx also said, "Private property has already been abolished for nine-tenths of the population. In other words, as long as the economy is run by a few wealthy people in their own interest, the working class won't be able to achieve prosperity." In effect, the State of Idaho is forcing a part of Communism upon Idahoans—and they do it in the name of property tax.
What if there was a way to rid ourselves of this Communistic-type control on private property and still have a way to fund the legitimate purposes of government? I believe there is! Rather than abolishing private property, let's abolish property tax and replace it with a moral consumption tax.
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For decades we have been led to believe that quality service comes because of a government license.
This is simply not true, and to prove it let's use a couple of examples.
First, let's say you have the profession of a health care worker.
You went to school to receive training and then you where issued a certificate of completion, proving you have been trained
in your field of work. You were then hired and now provide great health care and service. You don’t provide great care and
service because your licensed with the state - not at all. That’s a misnomer. Your quality of service has nothing to do with
licensure. However, licensing is a way for the state to control an industry's ability to freely trade services and for the
state to justify collecting fees from that industry. When it comes to health care, I want the best care I can get, of course.
But good care has nothing at all to do with a state agency controlling the people that provide it. In fact, the service in our
health care facilities has drastically diminished directly because of government regulation in health care and other industries
and services.
Second, let's say you want to build a home, and you decide to hire licensed contractors to do the work. You tend to believe
that because they hold a license granted by the state government that they are good workers, that they must know what they are
doing, and that they will be honest and upright in their dealings with you. After all, why else would a business advertise
its state contractor's license number unless it was supposed to instill confidence in potential customers. However, after the
work is done, and they have been paid, does this mean your home will never have problems, and is built exactly as you would prefer?
Absolutely not. You were likely not present during the entire building process, and ultimately have no idea
what the contractor(s) did (and neither does the state). Yet, we still hear of homes all the time, built by state licensed
contractors, supposedly built 'to code', but still have issues, or that even burn down! In fact, we even hear stories of contractors
getting paid, and then disappearing before finishing the job they were hired to do! But, what about those licenses? Wasn't it
supposed to protect you from poor craftsmanship and/or fraud? What about all those permits and inspections? Shouldn't they have
protected your major investment? While the latter at least has potential to help... the former does absolutely nothing in
determining the quality of the service or goods you receive.
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The 10th amendment contains one of the most important statements in the entire U.S. Constitution. It reads as follows:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
This means that individual States are sovereign and are only subject to Federal authority that is specially granted in the Constitution. If its not in the Constitution, then the Federal Government has no jurisdiction or authority. It's that simple.
I believe the Federal Governments overreach into areas of our lives not expressly authorized in the Constitution represents lawlessness at the highest level and it is not only our right, but it is our duty at the State level to resist this unlawful intrusion. It is time for Idaho to simply say NO to the Federal Government when it reaches beyond its Constitutional boundaries and to stand firmly on the 10th amendment which grants us this right.
In short, I will always FIGHT any unlawful federal overreach into Idaho and my history demonstrates that I'm willing to stand on these principles and fight until the very end.
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Welfare is a destructive element in a free society. Truly, welfare is nothing more than legal plunder in the name of "helping the poor." To make welfare payments, governments must forcefully steal from productive members of society to give to those who they claim to be more needy.
Of course, government itself gets its hand in and takes a cut for itself. This is simply wrong—and when put into perspective, the average citizen knows it's wrong. I'll explain with 3 simple questions:
Is it wrong for me to steal money out of your wallet? Yes it is.
Is it wrong for me to steal money out of your wallet if I give a portion of the money I stole to the poor? Yes, it still is. Stealing is stealing.
Then is it wrong for the government to steal money out of your wallet if they give a portion of the stolen money to the poor? Obviously, it still is. Theft doesn't become moral when the government does it.
As Governor of Idaho, I will work to minimize and ultimately eliminate welfare in the state of Idaho. The poor are better and more efficiently cared for by churches, charities, and private institutions—it is not the role of the government to redistribute wealth or to steal from one to give to another.
