Rock River, WY car barrel

Issues

Taxes

Taxes are extortion. Governments collect taxes by threatening to send you to prison if you don't pay. Taxes also distort the market by discouraging productive activity. Taxes are an irresistible target for lobbyists: they want to impose them on their competitors and exempt themselves from paying.

As we eliminate State programs, the money saved should be returned to the people by reducing taxes. Programs should be funded through user fees instead of taxes. If taxes must exist, they should be applied equally to all industries and all people. Tax loopholes distort the market and corrupt the political process.

Federalism

Government policies, if they must exist at all, should be as local as possible. Local governments are more responsive to their constituents and allow many different entities to experiment to find the best policy. A town council is better than county commissioners who are better than the State legislature which is better than the Federal government.

As much as possible, the State Legislature should push back against Federal mandates and regulations. It should also repeal state-wide regulations allowing counties and cities to regulate, if they deem it necessary.

Guns

Gun ownership is a fundamental right by which we protect all our other rights. Law enforcement does its best to keep us safe, but they can't be everywhere. An armed population is a civil and safe population. The government should not restrict guns or gun owners. When it tries, criminals disregard the law and they get a pool of unprotected victims.

DKRW Coal Gasification Plant

If DKRW builds their project with private funding and takes full responsibility for any damages to surrounding land and water resources, they have my support. However, if DKRW seeks public financing or taxpayer backed loans, I'll oppose them wholeheartedly. It's wrong to foist business risk onto the backs of tax payers, no matter how polished the business proposal.

As an engineer, I find coal gasification technology fascinating. It might prove to be a valuable market for Wyoming's coal resources someday. I'd love to see the project succeed on its own merits rather than through skillful lobbying.

Education

Education is a responsibility of individuals, parents and teachers; in that order. State and Federal regulators only harm the education process. Less than 5% of our education funding comes from the Federal government, yet they provide far more than 5% of the headaches. Wyoming should refuse all Federal education funding and free ourselves from its onerous mandates.

Homeschooling is a vital competitive pressure which keeps government schools honest and provides individualized instruction that works well for many students. The Legislature should remove all regulatory hurdles to homeschooling.

Healthcare

America's healthcare system is broken because third parties pay for most healthcare decisions. Those third parties include employers, insurance companies and governments. None of us make good decisions when others pay the price. Tax loopholes, insurance regulations and government health programs gave us the broken incentives we have today. They should be repealed. Wyoming should push back against the Federal individual mandate.

Consider America's food system. Food is necessary for sustaining life, just like healthcare. It's done almost entirely in the private sphere. Nobody receives tax exemptions for employer-provided grocery benefits. We don't give away groceries to all Americans 65 and older. People don't carry grocery insurance. The end result is that we have so much food, so cheaply, that Americans are getting fatter by the year. Imagine if healthcare were that cheap.

The food analogy isn't perfect, but the parallels are instructive. Once individual consumers make their own healthcare decisions and pay the resulting costs, healthcare will become affordable again. As with food, private charities will step up to fill any gaps and care for the poor.

Transportation

Wyoming should eliminate the property tax on vehicles. The price of your car has no bearing on how much you use the highways. This tax penalizes people who buy newer, safer vehicles. We should reduce pensions and housing benefits for WyDOT employees to bring them in line with private sector employees.

Increasing fuel taxes should require voter approval. Fuel should be taxed as a percentage rather than a fixed "pennies per gallon" tax. Our current system charges about 4.8% tax in the winter (when it's paid mostly by local residents). It charges 3.8% tax in the summer (when it's paid mostly by out-of-state travelers). It's the only tax I know of that charges residents more than non-residents. Using a percentage also keeps the transportation budget safe from inflation. Under such a system, I'd like to see a tax rate of 3.5% or less; lower than our current tax rates.

Land Policy

Nearly half of Wyoming's land is owned by the U.S. Government. That land is administered poorly. It also places our economic, recreational and environmental future in the hands of lobbyists and politicians. They don't have to live with the consequences of their policies like we do.

In the short term, Wyoming should push for federal lands to be permanently transferred to the States. We can then discuss transferring those lands to our counties and residents. The end result will be a diversified land ownership allowing thousands of parties to implement management policies that work for them and their communities.

Drug Policy

The War on Drugs has failed even more spectacularly than Prohibition did. It's become the War on Privacy and Private Property. It's single-handedly created powerful, foreign drug cartels. It's flooded our courts and prisons costing us hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Thousands of law enforcement officers agree that drug prohibition must end.

Unwinding decades of failed drug policy will take time. We can start by decriminalizing recreational amounts of marijuana at the State level. Counties can re-criminalize it, if they want. This environment will start an experiment in which counties can learn from each other.

We should also decriminalize marijuana transport through the State. If a trunk load of marijuana happens to travel across Wyoming on its way from California to Colorado, that's not our concern. We certainly shouldn't spend our tax money, occupy our courts and fill our prisons to prevent it.

Other Issues?

Did I not discuss your favorite issue? Please contact me. I'd be glad to personally answer your questions about any other issues.