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Marijuana
It is time to legalize Marijuana in Texas. If elected I will do everything possible to bring this about. Non Aggression The Core Belief of the Libertarian Party is the Non Aggression Principle. It is also the core belief of a huge majority of Texans, where live and let live and minding your own business has long been part of our culture. Simply stated it says that to have the best possible human society, no one should initiate force against another, or deceive them so that they do something they would not otherwise do. The proper role of government is preventing force and fraud. Beyond this government itself becomes the problem. I will promote the Non-Aggression Principle as the guide for all public policy. I will ask these questions of every policy proposal: Does it promote fewer government jobs or more? Does it move in the direction of more individual choice? Does it create fewer or more opportunities for some to rule over others? Does it have a planned termination? Does it create an opportunity for favoritism and corruption? Public Employee Pensions The problem of unfunded pension obligations has overwhelmed our large cities and is spreading like metastasizing cancer to smaller and smaller Texas communities. Except for police and firemen, I propose totally ending public employee pensions. Under my plan governmental bodies would pay the rates needed to fill the jobs, pay into Social Security, and let employees themselves handle future retirement needs. For jobs which have traditionally provided early retirement such as police and firemen, they would pay into these pension funds with each pay check. Funds unpaid at the end of each year are lost. A procedure would be developed to calculate the amount due to other employees who were due pensions, and the governmental bodies would still be liable for paying them, but no new obligations would be incurred. It is humanly impossible for governments to avoid promising future payments as compensation, and equally impossible for them to actually use limited resources to fund them. Anyone who has ever served on a committee knows how hard it is to restrain spending. Spending other people’s money, with the pressure of pressing needs pushed by familiar faces, creates a situation where it is impossible to not pay government employees with promises of future benefits, and where there is never money left over to pay into those funds. The huge unmentionable secret among the Democrats who run our large cities is that the fund contributions will never be paid. Instead, they expect bankruptcy. They plan to let the bankruptcy courts force the ruinous property tax increases needed. A Constitutional Amendment is needed to stop this. No human can stand against paying with future promises if that avenue is available. It must be totally forbidden. K-12 Education Funding State level education funding should pay only for accomplishment. I propose creating an educational endowment for each student, with the money paid out only when that student achieves a specified annual level. Education funds are currently paid in at the top and are expected to be used properly to educate the students, but often are not. Big inner city public school systems have become a funding source for Democrats, while turning out poorly educated graduates, and leaving dropouts to fend for themselves. We should change all state level funding to an endowment at the individual student level. The money stays in the student account until each level is met, making poor students much more valuable to educators who can catch them up. For example, bringing a fifteen year old at the sixth grade level up to sophomore level would pay four years of compensation to the successful educator. Unpaid funds should stay in each student account indefinitely, allowing people who finally get their act together as adults to obtain an education. Opening educational services to the free market will see most students moving through material much faster than at present. This will allow for practical job related instruction, and college level courses, to be included. Competition among educational providers will make full use of technology, will provide useful training for actual jobs, will deliver far more education for the same money, and will free the taxpayers from the grip of an incredibly corrupt and self-serving educational establishment. The school funding mess cannot be ended simply, but if state level funds were used to set up student endowments, paid out only after educational accomplishment, if would start dramatic change. In a world of free market provision of educational services, quality and variety will increase and costs will fall. Tax funding might eventually end, with charities providing for poor students, and the cost of education dramatically lower than it has become. The largest source of endless property tax increases could be removed. |
None Of The Above
Texans must be able to say NO. I will introduce legislation to place the choice of None Of The Above on all Texas Ballots. If NOTA wins the election must be held again with different candidates. Texas has untold numbers of locked in local party establishments that prevent anyone but cronies from running. Being able to vote for None Of The Above will truly make Texas Greater Higher Education The system is an absolute disgrace. Academia is a corrupt monopoly with academics and administrators making incredible salaries while adjuncts working as near slave laborers provide much of the actual instruction. It has promoted student loans to remove itself from market forces. It has created a situation where young adults can’t afford to start families or buy their first house due to student debt. It is an out of control monopoly that must be opened to competition. I propose to require all State Universities to provide equivalent credits via examinations. The instruction needed to pass these examinations would be provided by the free market. Students receiving these credits would receive the same degree as those who sat through the courses, and could mix actual classes with credits via exams to attain their degrees. The MOOC expansion is a partial move in the right direction, but students should be able to acquire education from any source and earn the same academic credits via testing as by sitting through the classes. This would create an explosion of free market providers of educational services and end the current abused monopoly status of academia. The credentialing exams should also allow retaking, with higher grade points reflecting life experience and added study. The tests should not be pass/fail, but actually indicate the test score. To stop indoctrination, an appeals procedure staffed by volunteer alumni should allow review of grades where other than multiple choice questions are part of the grade. Total transparency at the student’s option should be required. In the fast approaching world of the future, continual education will become the norm. It is time to open the provision of educational services to the free market in a truly meaningful way. Government Oppression If elected I will press the legislature to revisit the laws against oppression under color of law. Politicians in today’s world are claiming hero status for using government to stick it to their ideological opponents. A public debate is needed to strengthen laws against local tyrants who abuse government power. Texans should feel free to criticize local officials and run for office without having their businesses destroyed. Abortion I will do everything I can to keep government out of the abortion issue. Only bad things can arise out of giving government the power to be involved in this issue. Do we actually want to create a situation where women who miscarry are subjected to prosecution? Do we actually believe that outlawing this will not create a huge new criminal industry providing abortion services? Although I am personally pro-life, I believe that involving government in this issue will be a disaster. I provide my reasons in the write-up When The Dog Catches The Car. Law Enforcement Those in charge of law and order should be answerable to the voters in a much more direct way than our large cities now provide. I propose we dramatically expand the elected Constable system to handle all law enforcement except traffic and major cases. Greatly reduced areas for elected Constables would put locally elected officials known to almost everyone in the community in charge of law and order. Traffic enforcement should be separated from other duties. The Constable and his officers should focus on property and domestic disturbance and broken window policing. The elected Constable’s officers could still make traffic stops but there should be no connection between that revenue and their funding. Traffic offense income has become too large a part of the funding used by some cities and has led to widespread abuses and hatred of the police. Texans in rural counties elect sheriffs who provide a high quality of law and order and who answer to the voters. Texans in large cities should be able to do the same. Building Inspections Inspectors should work for insurance companies, not local governments. If local governments believe they have a need to protect the public they should require liability insurance, with inspections conducted by the insurance companies who have actual skin in the game. Our cities should be prevented from employing this widely abused system. |