Platform
Personal and Medical Freedom Over Mandates or Quarantines
Medical decisions should be between a patient and a doctor, and, in the case of a minor, their parents. Medical mandates, as a one-size-fits-all, I’m-worried-so-the-rest-of-the-world-must-stop solution, are not providing any appreciable benefit, but they are causing a great deal of harm in many ways, especially to our children, not to mention the real discrimination that is occurring in a number of other life situations. Big Pharma is also to blame, where it has been admitted that death and hospitalization numbers were overstated regularly, so that they and hospitals could receive more government funding, and were therefore incentivized to inflate them. I will put an end to Big Pharma’s death grip on our lives, make sure they face far more scrutiny, and force greater transparency in pricing and otherwise. Personal and medical freedom requires all available options, including masks and vaccines, as well as access to any available medication, even if not yet formally approved by the FDA, if patients or parents understand the risks and want to try them. Also, there is a reason we have never quarantined the healthy before, because it doesn’t work, since the solution is worse than the problem on so many levels. The government’s job is not to protect us from every illness and disease that might come along; it is to provide honest and complete research and then have the citizens take personal responsibility for their own lives. We need to return to normal living and follow tried-and-true precautionary measures that are showing far more success in other states than we are having in New Jersey, such as quarantining only those who become sick and following reasonable (not militant) social distancing during flu season, but, most importantly, the choices/options must belong to the patient and parents. Everything else is government overreach at its worst, where, for all of our mandates and quarantines, we have among the highest death rates per capita in the country right here in New Jersey. The debacle of the nursing homes and the veterans’ hospitals must also be prevented from ever happening again, along with a need to fully investigate what led to so many unnecessary deaths already. We need our State to be a model of treating veterans right, since they make sacrifices for our country like few others. I will seek the elimination of state income taxes on veteran pensions, acceptance of VA health benefits at all hospitals, and employment preferences for veterans. My personal pledge is to visit veterans’ hospitals on a regular basis during my term of office.
Helping Small Business, Lowering Taxes, Enabling Self-Sufficiency, and Reversing the Rate of Departures from the State
Small business is the backbone of the economy, but they are being crushed in New Jersey, where we have lost over 30% of businesses, either closing down or leaving the state, due to the undue burden on those businesses in just the last few years. In the most rapid expansion of the wealth gap in recent memory, estate taxes were replaced by the gas tax and toll increases in New Jersey, which far more disproportionately impact the poor, but the real problem has a simple solution, which I will fight for every day: CUT THE SPENDING! Everyone talks about trying to reduce the rate of increase in spending, but that does not go far enough. We need the free market to do what it does best by minimizing government intrusion into it, particularly with small business. I will fight to minimize regulation to quality control specific to each industry, and otherwise promote opportunities for businesses to thrive. Government needs to handle other people’s money as responsibly as if it were their own. If we can spend tax revenue on training and enablement programs, where people can soon come off the government benefit rolls that keep them impoverished and enable them to support themselves and their families, we would save a lot of costs, and more people would enjoy the benefits of the dignity of work. This would also stop the flood of people leaving the state due to exorbitantly high taxes, where we are not seeing the return on that investment in terms of improving people’s lives with the current spending. I want people to stop depending on the government for survival, and be able to survive on their own. It is essential to any free society.
School Choice, Home Schooling, and Free Market Competition
New Jersey is typically one of the better-performing states in the country when it comes to education, but, on an international level, the quality of education in the United States, including New Jersey, has fallen off a cliff, taking us from a #1 world ranking prior to the establishment of the Department of Education (federal and state) to a current ranking of #26. It is clear that students today are not nearly as prepared for adult life and work as in previous generations, and I intend to help put a stop to that. There is a very clear reason for this current problem: The lack of competition for the public school system when it comes to revenue dollars. The best cure is school choice, with as many options, including home schooling, available as possible, where, critically, the funding from tax revenue follows the student, whatever choice a family makes for their children’s education. If a public school cannot perform, it needs to lose funding, and potentially close down, if that will strengthen the options for our children. All facets of the economy should be consumer-driven, with as many options available as possible, and the school system is no different. I will fight to have our children better educated than they have been the last several years, so they are better prepared to be independent, self-sufficient adults, ready to take on their normal adult responsibilities. They cannot be perpetually taken care of, and in fact, at some point in the future, they need to be equipped to take care of others, whether elderly parents or young children, or both. We are doing them a disservice if we do not prepare them for that responsibility and help them realize that it is okay, and is in fact necessary, that the party doesn’t go on forever. Students have always performed better when curriculum control has been de-centralized to allow for a variety of innovative teaching methods by the ones trained for it, the teachers.
Adherence to the Second Amendment
Everyone has a right to protect themselves and their families, and all the studies show that safer neighborhoods are those where legal gun ownership is easier to achieve. It is a clear deterrent to most criminals even if there is just a fair chance that any home they break into could have a legal gun owner inside, whether a particular home has one or not. At most, a simple NICS check, without any process involving the local police, should be sufficient for a permit, rather than the overburdensome regulations, extended waiting times, and ever-increasing, unduly-prohibitive fees and costs of gun ownership we now have in New Jersey. There are many ways to infringe upon the rights of the People to be gunowners, and, particularly here in New Jersey, almost every method has been implemented, as can be seen by the plethora of gun control legislation currently in place. It is a state and national concern to ease these burdens, as responsible gunowners prove time and again that they are the solution, not the problem, with violent crime. At the federal level, I will work tirelessly, as I already have, to eliminate a large portion of the problems by instituting concealed carry and reciprocity, while simultaneously preventing state and local infringements of 2A rights. With a streamlined, minimal process, the resources, and the associated costs, for regulation can be reduced, and the right to bear arms under 2A can be preserved as intended by our Founding Fathers.
Border Crisis, Sanctuary Cities/States, and Voter ID
It has become clear that the border situation is a mess, to the extent that there are even admissions that we need to go back to securing it, rather than the current free-for-all and totally porous border we now have. We have people coming in who are infected with diseases, a wide-open opportunity for terrorists to smuggle themselves into the country among the groups of illegal immigrants, and a fentanyl and human trafficking problem that is out of control. The current administration is clearly inept at handling these types of problems. It was proven that the wall worked, and I will fight to finish it. While we need to improve current immigration law to allow more good people to come here and realize the American Dream, it is also clear that we need to control the border situation much better, for the benefit of everyone on either side of it. Public lands are owned by the taxpayers, so, just like an individual who owns property, the property rights in either case allow the owners to set the rules for being invited onto those lands. Allowing sanctuary cities and states, as well as driver licenses for illegal aliens, is also a clear violation of the oath of elected office to uphold the Constitution, and needs to result in immediate removal and a permanent bar from holding elected office again. I will stand on the side of the Constitution and liberty every time on this issue. Regarding Voter ID laws, of course there is no valid argument against having these laws. Everyone is able to obtain IDs for things of far less importance, and to suggest that, for example, the law should allow illegal immigrants, or even permanent residents, to vote is illegal, treasonous, and also a violation of an elected official’s oath of office. It is clear that we have to enable every legal vote to be counted, but we also have to make sure no illegal vote is counted, as, by definition, those not allowed to vote cannot have interests that align with the best interests of the country.
Transit/Roadway Infrastructure, Supply Chain, and Climate
Change/Renewable Energy
With the passage of the infrastructure law, I will fight for our State to receive their fair share of funding for critical/time-sensitive projects, while focusing on the inefficiencies and corruption in the process. It is no secret that taxes and tolls continue to skyrocket in New Jersey, yet our infrastructure, funded by those same taxes and tolls, continues to be ranked among the worst in the country. Due to prevailing wage laws, just like minimum wage laws or any other artificial imposition on the free market, our infrastructure costs the most by far per mile to maintain, so we once again need to go back to the free market, limiting these unsustainable impediments, and eliminating a limited bidding system that favors crony capitalism instead of true capitalism, the best system in world history. If the government would stop interfering in the free market, all these projects would dramatically improve, and resources would then be available to support fair wages and attract new members of the workforce to the variety of roles needed to help the supply chain recover and thrive. I will do everything I can to make sure government contracts have a fair and open bidding process, and also encourage businesses to allocate budgets appropriately to attract talented workers to help with the supply chain issue. As to sustainable energy, almost all alternatives have been shown, when pulling back the curtain to see what is involved in their production, to have a similar negative environmental impact as that of oil, with nuclear energy, under modern safety measures, delivering the best results for the environment. Exposing the problems associated with other forms of “clean” energy will be a priority for me, so people can know the truth about what works and what does not.