In my town, growing up on the far North side said all that needed to be said. When I told someone where I lived, the snickers and sneers were all that were necessary to understand that I grew up on the wrong side of town. No matter how much pride we took in our neighborhood and no matter how nice our neighborhood looked, we were the very poor. Yes, we were poor, but growing up that way I never knew I was poor because everyone I knew was poor too. I know we were at and below the poverty line many years because we received reduced or free lunches at school. The crazy thing is that both of my parents worked in professional jobs.
Why the big intro, because it is what formed me into me? I was bored in school and just enjoyed being the goofy, skinny, shy kid hiding from the world. I hated to read and seldom did because I did not find it as satisfying as being in the great outdoors enjoying God’s creation. I played every sport I could because I was relatively athletic. I was better in baseball than the other sports and put my mind in to becoming the best player I could be. Knowing me know you would never think I was athletic at all.
Until 1980 I never really cared about politics, and never read the newspaper. I grew up in Arkansas and the politics in Arkansas was Democrat first and foremost. I was raised with the principles from the 1930’s and 1940’s that taught self-reliance and self-determination. Almost all of my friends were raised by parents following Dr. Spock and his elitist views of child rearing. I grew up with strict rules and strict limits. This is what made the Democrat Party incapable of keeping me in the family fold. I was not them and never would be.
I grew up in Arkansas in the glorious times of Bill and Hillary Clinton. I was very unimpressed with him as a human and even less impressed with her. From the earliest years I knew what Bill was and it was relatively self evident if you cared to look. Bill and Hillary overstepped their welcome and that is what drove me into the love of politics. I had been in a class in 7th or 8th grade where we read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States and I was hooked. The ideas and principles laid out in those two documents caught me and grasped me and made me a lover of their philosophy.
Then it happened. The second and third terms of Jimmy Carter are what permanently convinced me that the socialistic policies of the Democrat Party were not consistent with the principles of the Founding Fathers or the documents, which set forth this nation. Double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, and 21% interest rates proved that liberal economics were not compatible with a capitalist society.
It was this background that laid the groundwork for my baptism into electoral politics. God sent a great man into the life of these United States and he sat tall in the saddle. He was a great philosopher and statesman, a true conservative for all times, my hero, Ronald Reagan. Never have I been so enthralled or enraptured with a single human being. He was everything I was raised to be, he was everything the Declaration and Constitution taught me about this country, he was a conservative.
I loved his political philosophy of privatizing the public sector and still think it is the most conservative philosophy I hold dear. It is true private business can and does a better job than lazy government employees who are paid even if their work is horrible. I have never found one single government entity that can function better than private business.
Now for the hard work at hand, what I would change as a politician. First and foremost, I would hold weekly news conferences and drive home the point that there are only 17 – 18 items in the Constitution of the United States that are granted to the congress of the United States to legislate. If an item in not listed in these 18 items, then according to the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution, those rights are reserved for the people and the states. After 10 days in office, I would file suit against the Congress of the United States and charge them with violations of the Constitution based on the 9th and 10th Amendments.
I would charge the Congress before the Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional and therefore dismantle all social programs undertaken by the federal government as violations of States Rights. Further, I would demand from congress a constitutional to repeal of the 16th Amendment and replace it with the Fair Tax with a taxable rate of 23% or less and demand a ¾ supermajority to raise the rate and a simple majority to lower the rate. I would also demand that the Congress strip away the authority of the Supreme Court and all lower courts to enact legislation or demand legislation from the bench because it is a violation of the Constitution for the courts to provide legislation.
By returning the Federal Government to performing its limited role in the 18 enumerated rights, the states and the people retain their exclusive rights granted them in the 9th and 10th Amendments. The Federal government will return to the states their rights and privileges guaranteed to the states and the people. The Federal Government will be almost out of business and limited to its transient role of providing for national defense and the postal service.
The people should therefore privatize as many functions as possible and do away with federal regulations placed on it in an unconstitutional manner. The states would therefore be able to appropriately limit the social programs that they will have placed in their jurisdiction and eliminate as many programs that they deem unnecessary. It is the prerogative of the states to have and implement programs not enumerated to the Federal Government and it is their choice to eliminate or continue services and programs and whether to privatize those services and programs.