| Political Opinion: I have opinion on the following topics. Respond if you wish. |
| Term Limits - Term limits should be imposed for all elected offices from city council to President of the United States. And I mean serious limits. A single term. One. Until politicians can have something on their minds beyond getting re-elected we will never have leaders who will make decisions based on logic and intelligence. Until lawmakers know that before very long they will have to return home and live with what they've done we'll continue to have lawmakers who are primarily politicians. |
| Gun Control - Only a fool believes that taking guns away from law-abiding citizens will do anything about crime. Only the law-abiding citizen will be effected by gun control and law-abiding citizens aren't the problem. |
| Death Penalty - I don't believe that the threat of a death penalty is any real deterrent. But I believe that a person who denies another of the right to live is no longer entitled to his own life. I've heard all the arguments that an executed person learns nothing, is not rehabilitated and that execution is nothing more than retribution. I personally am a fan of retribution. I think there should always be a consequence to one's actions and that those consequences should be commensurate with the crime. |
| Repairations - Let's see if I understand this one. People who never owned slaves should give money to people who never were slaves. Does that just about sum it up? |
| National Endowment for the Arts - I don't believe that the government should be in any way involved in what is or isn't art. I don't believe that taxpayers should be required to subsidize art that they find offensive. To suggest that to not give these artists their stipend will stifle their creativity is non-sense. If they are truly passionate about their art they'll do it when they get home from work. And if their art is truly worthy some one will buy it. I would never suggest for a moment that somebody not be allowed to create anything he chooses. I just don't think taxpayers should be paying for it. |
| Personal Responsibility - Have you ever been blamed for something somebody else did? Do you think that anything I do justifies anything you do? People need to return to taking responsibility for their own actions. A gun can't make you do anything. That movie didn't make you do anything. There are only two things you have to do: Die and live until you die. Everything else is up to you. |
| Income Tax - The purpose of an income tax is to fund the operation of government, not to modify the behavior of citizens. The current income tax should be scraped in favor of a national sales tax. Such a tax, that is not applied to food, housing or medical coverage, would true be a voluntary tax. A dissenting person could reduse the amount of taxes paid by limiting his expendatures. Poor people who are truely poor would be taxed very little. And rich people, who by larger, more expensive things than we do, will pay the most taxes. Such a tax would reduce the federal government's interaction with individual citizens and would reduce the ridiculously complex tax code we have now. The mechinism for collection of such a tax is already in place for virtually every state in the union as they already collect local and state sales taxes. |
| Campaign Finance Reform - We need Campaign Finance Reform. But unlike most proposals from legislators, which will really only give greater advantage to incumbents, what I propose is a simple uncompromising law. You cannot contribute to a candidate or legislation unless you can vote for that candidate or issue. Period! No exceptions! If you can't vote for it, you can't contribute to it. |
| Letter to the Editor Spokesman-Review 22 February, 1998 "The Monica Lewinsky issue should just go away." "Whatever he does in his private life is his own business." "The economy is good and as long as it doesn't affect me, I don't care." I believe that statements like these are the hiding places for people who don't want to admit, even to themselves, that they voted for a man of low moral character. Were the president of my company to have a relationship like this with a subordinate, people would be screaming for his head. Shall we hold The President of the United States to lower standards? Normally I don't have much use for anybody's private lives being scrutinized, but I heard somebody say something the other day that really made me think. "You can't be one kind of man and another kind of President." How many of us conduct our personal lives with less honesty than our professional lives? Few, I think. No one is 100% honest all the time. But I'm pretty sure that whatever level of integrity I hold myself to "at home" is the same for "at work." |
| Letter to the Editor Spokesman-Review 23 March, 2000 We've heard a lot lately about comments made by Wayne LaPierre about President Clinton's tolerance for violence. While nobody suggests that when President Clinton blames the NRA for Columbine he was speaking out of turn, everybody who can get in front of a microphone says that Mr. LaPierre should have softened his words. President Clinton can say any inflammatory thing he wants, but we don't want to offend his tender ears. Mr. LaPierre might have chosen better words, but what he said was the truth. President Clinton needs a certain amount of hysteria to forward his desired policy direction. Since the facts don't support his position he has nothing else to draw upon. He has to hold up the body of a little girl to stir up emotion. He then proposes new laws that, were they in place then, would have done nothing to save the little girl's life. Why doesn't President Clinton come out with his new laws when a convenience store clerk saves his customer's lives? Or when a woman fends off a would-be rapist? This administration's prosecutions of gun related crimes is down some 47% from previous administrations. Why do you think that is? |
| Letter to the Editor Spokesman-Review 12 May, 2000 So John McCain endorses George W. Bush. It's about time! They're not fools, you know. They know that while they may have their differences, they are still closer to each other ideologically than either is to Al Gore. Neither, for example, is looking to take away our means of transportation, our rights or our jobs. Neither is trying to make us believe that trigger locks and photo IDs will stop gang violence. And neither is telling us that our pot smoking, lying, cowardly, contempt cited, hopefully disbarred chief executive is the best president in the history of the United States. Three things right there that they have in common. There are other things too. Neither one claims to have invented the Internet ... or the paper clip ... or water. Neither one was so monumentally stupid as to think that laundering money through Buddhist nuns was enough to conceal its origin. The truth of the matter is that John McCain and George W. Bush have some differences but are both, as far as we know, honorable men. And we know Vice President Al Gore is not. Honor is a quality we've not seen in the Whitehouse in a long time. |
| Letter to the Editor Spokesman-Review 20 September, 2000 We didn't get what we wanted this time. We wanted to make a statement about honor and keeping one's word. And I suppose that to a degree we did make it. We were unable to make it loud enough and it seems that there aren't enough people who care about that sort of thing anymore … but we made our point anyway. And that's about all we can do in life. What we think is right. Well, now we've got a choice to make. We can vote for someone who has disappointed us some, we can abstain and stay home, or we can vote for his opponent. Voting for his opponent is voting for the left. Abstaining, while not exactly supporting the leftist, will lessen his opposition. Either one brings us just a little closer to putting a liberal where we now have a conservative. For myself, while I'd have preferred another, I'm going to hold my nose and vote for a man who has at least had a pretty decent voting record. I'm certainly not going to vote for higher taxes, fewer rights and less freedom. We need to keep our eye on the ball here. Numbers equals power in the House and Senate. And power in the hands of the left is not in our best interest. |
| Letter to the Editor Spokesman-Review 26 October, 2000 As you may have heard, it's the position of the Clinton/Gore administration that there is no constitutionally protected right to own firearms. Not handguns, not rifles, not shotguns. This administration has made it clear that they do not like the idea of power in the hands of the people. This apparently extends to the power to defend ourselves. During the debates Vice President Al Gore has said that he's not going to try to take our firearms away. But we've heard him say a lot of things. He's also said to some group that he intends to do whatever it takes to keep guns out of the hands of children and criminals. Nobel aspiration, but unachievable in a free society. Do you suppose he was lying to them? Perhaps … Anything to get elected, you know. The only way you can make absolutely sure that parents do not leave unsecured weapons about is to make sure they have no weapons. The only way you can make absolutely sure that criminals can't steal firearms is to make sure there are none to steal. Vice President Gore has also said he wants to register all firearms and make us all get photo-IDs. Gee, I wonder why he wants this? Do you suppose he's stupid enough to think that criminals will register their arms and pay for photo-IDs? I don't think he's that stupid. He's a liar and a cheat … but he's not stupid. There's only one reason to register guns and gun owners. Just one. |
| Letter to the Editor Spokesman-Review 27 September, 2001 In the aftermath of 11 September, we have to be careful not to do stupid things. Sometimes when people are anxious to "do something" they will allow themselves to be lulled into the belief that "anything" will help. That is simply not true. One of the things being proposed (again) is a national id card. What possible help could this be? What will it be used for? In the first place it won't be good for anything unless somebody is looking at it. Since airlines are not the only targets of terrorists, we're talking about checkpoints, right? "Your papers, please." How far would that be from ID checks for state-to-state travel? And questions about where we're going and why. Another thing is that driver's licenses are faked all the time. How would we make our "papers" forgery resistant? There are complicated ways of doing that, but they're expensive. And we're talking about 270 million of them … that will have to be renewed periodically … at some cost to the holder we must presume. And what would it accomplish? … Except make us just a little less free. |
| I invite anyone who would like to have a politically oriented conversation about liberal vs. conservative ideals. No personal insults and no poor language. If you think you've got something to say, lets dance. Send me mail at randallj@sisna.com. |
| Last Updated: 14 February, 2002 |