Jon Greenspon's Campaign Issues

(Click here for Bill Ingram's Issues Section)

National Defense and Homeland Security

As a veteran of the US Marines, I am fully aware, night and day, as to the trials that our sons and daughters are making in the name of peace. I know that none of these young men and women joined our country's military in the hopes of going to far off lands on the chance of a war; they joined for the satisfaction of showing honor to the people that served before, for family traditions, and in most cases, the benefits associated with the status of veteran - in the forms of housing and education assistance. Nobody joins in the hopes of killing someone.

National Defense - This first decade of the 21^st century has placed unimaginable pressures on the United States, her friends, and our allies. Outside forces and radical forces have worked diligently to try our courage, test our resolution and erode our conviction in our country. During this era, where unconventional warfare plies through calculated acts of terrorism, nuclear arsenals growing in small countries, and the internet enables identity destruction without physical contact, we must never falter in our commitment to defend our citizens nor consider the option of negotiating from a position that lessens our national interests. We must pick our contests, rather then let them pick the contests for us. While we should always view military action as a last resort in the course of peace, we must remain resolved to resist any actions against our sovereignty. Negotiation with radical forces or foreign powers should never be conciliation.

Homeland Security – Safety and security begin right here, at home. America has the right to secure her borders, and in this day and age, the need. However, we must not compromise civil liberties or freedoms to do so. The presently constructed Department of Homeland Security, while a worthwhile concept is an overbearing conglomeration of entities, mismanaged from low levels on up. We need to pare down the agency to a functional organization, while not sacrificing our security, nor our misgivings for government intrusion into our daily lives. We need strong intelligence resources, competent and capable border and customs enforcement, and effective counterterrorism assets. We do not need to endlessly mire the court system with illegitimate legal cases against US Border Patrol agents, unnecessarily impede citizens with airport scrutiny, or prevent the availability of electronic intelligence of foreign operatives against Americans. This can be done with less manpower, and better direction of assets. America needs to be proactive in her own protection, not excessively reactive.

Economy, Immigration and Trade

The American economy is intricately tied to employment and trade. It also flexes with the cost of goods and commodities. In case anyone's missed it, oil is going over $100/barrel. This is translating into not only higher prices at your gas pump, but also higher grocery prices, utilities costs, and even your clothes and miscellaneous purchasing. These costs are being further impacted through job losses to illegal immigration, outsourcing and visa-based foreign worker programs. Lastly, it is being drowned by floods of cheap, low-quality imports through the myriad of free trade agreements the last few administrations have established.

Economy – There is no issue more critical to the American public the need to return the health of our economy and the strength of the US Dollar. Outsourced jobs, cheap imports, and illegal immigration employment has robbed the American family of its ability to plan or live beyond a very basic subsistence level. We are rapidly destroying our spending confidence and threatening our family structures as more and more families are having to two or more jobs to survive. At the same time, our economy is in a slow descent, causing a more than justifiable fear in American minds as people get more and more overextended in credit just to pay for necessities of life. Worse of all, as the costs to survive goes up, the standard of living is heading downward. 

We need to put our concerns in the place they are founded – squarely on the shoulders of the Federal government. We have over-extended ourselves, through overspending, earmarks, over-regulating and mismanagement of the public funds and trust. In the last half century, we have spent $1 trillion more than we’ve collected in taxes – more than $1 trillion in imaginary money, making your hard earned dollars worth less and less. At the same time, our “intelligent Congress” keeps telling us that imposing more taxes on business will correct this and allow the citizenry to pay less. I’m sorry to have to be honest here, but business isn’t a taxpayer, business is a tax collector. One of the primary roles of business is to collect taxes as a part of doing business. Every time you walk into a store, you pay taxes. The citizens of America pay the taxes, and only in the collective minds of Congress is anything else possible. 

Immigration – We’re a melting pot, we Americans. Regardless of where your ancestors started their journey, with little exception started on some foreign shore. It doesn’t mean anything to a German if you’re of African, Asian or Hispanic descent; to anyone in a different land you’re an American. Subdividing America into a racial/nationality based ethnicity is counterproductive to the melting pot philosophy this country was founded on. There are three basic problems with the immigration and integration of citizens in today’s United States. First, we need to bring a drastic close to the unchecked illegal immigration plaguing our country. I firmly applaud the efforts of Arizona, Oklahoma and Georgia in taking a forward step in dealing with the hiring and employment of undocumented workers in their states. We need to apply similar legislation in all states, as well as supportive assistance from the federal level. Second, I believe that it’s in our nation’s best interest to advance the entrance of those wishing to become citizens with a more affordable and more effective approach to citizenship. If someone wants to come to this great nation, let’s stop impeding their efforts by charging those fees, fines or other charges to become a citizen. Also, the process needs to take significantly less time to those that want to try hard. Lastly, we need to inform them that America has a working language of government, trade and national identity.

Trade – I believe in fair trade with other nations, trade serves a vital component of the American economy and daily life of our people. I do not, however, believe in “free trade” that hurts and often attacks our way of life. The North American Free Trade Agreement and the trade organizations that the US has signed into has been insidiously causing damage to our economy, powering the heightened rates of unemployment, and forcing us into a debtor status with countries around this globe. We need to reevaluate the concept of “Most Favored Trading Partners” into a semblance of a fair trade partner, not a country that’s going to undercut prices while refusing American entry into their markets at a similar value and pace. America also needs to review our participation in organizations and agreements that do not protect American sovereignty in trade and tariffs.

Social Concerns

As a nation, we are not a people without a social discourse. America has its core issues, beliefs and concerns. While issues such as socialized medicine are touted in the form of “universal healthcare”, we need to remember that fighting against socialized medicine is your fight. America can't socialize the medical establishment or insurers of service without socializing the American public, the patients of need. There are a great many problems that have the need of being addressed, such as the foundation of a viable alternative energy policy, real campaign finance reform, and many issues of morality already being dealt with at the state level. However, at the federal level, items that should always be kept as priorities are those that the Constitution would widely view as those that “promote the general welfare”.

Employment – Every person in this country, whether citizen or immigrant deserves the right to seek and find gainful employment, and to derive the pleasures and rewards that come from working. Unfortunately, we are taking for granted the concept of a good day’s work, in a time where the minimum wage doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. While our unemployment lines deepen, through the use of casually passed out visas, our citizens suffer on the food line. America needs to regain its independence from imported labor, willing to work for less money, put a stop to the imagined labor shortages in critical areas of American knowhow. Presently the H and L-series visa programs bring over 65,000 individuals to America yearly, while there is a functional need for less than 9,500 positions to be filled via this import process. These numbers are minimal when compared to the more than 400,000 jobs lost over the decade in outsourcing of American talent to foreign countries. We need to limit how long foreign workers can operate on American shores without working towards citizenship, reverse the outsourcing dilemma, and eliminate the interest in people coming here to live without documentation.

Social Security – As Americans, we understand the need to ensure a protection to our citizens, guaranteeing that envision that poverty need not the loss of employment by virtue age, and we understand our obligations to have a stable Social Security as a measure to confront this concern. We need however, to be fiscally concerned with the on-coming influx of the “baby boomer generation” when we listen to Congress reporting our budgetary ailments. This program, while an exceptional burden on a free society, is a responsibility toward the people who have invested into it. There are a great many concerns as to how we are to manage these entitlements for tomorrow’s recipients, and every concern is valid. The sons and daughters of yesterday, today and tomorrow will need coverage, and they will receive their due. It is up to us, as a nation, to work out a comprehensive, and viable, solution to ensure the viability needed to continue these programs to their necessary ends.

Income Tax – If we want to restore our economic health, we need to reduce the federal tax rates, structures and codes to a manageable level, getting rid of rates that hinder individual enterprise – in particular those of the personal tax codes, the very rates that effect individuals and small business. In short, we need to replace a system that favors government with one that favors citizens. At all times, we need to be mindful of the fact that small business, the mom and pop stores, not only provide more than 75% of all the jobs in this country and over one-half of the total American workforce, but are among the hardest impacted by the current tax laws. We need true changes, not temporary reforms, credits or incentives. We similarly need to move certain tax monies from the federal coffers and back to the states, where this money is needed for programs that benefit its citizens and the local infrastructure.

Simultaneously, we need to stop wasted government spending. I don’t mean for us to sacrifice essential government functions, getting rid of monies going to poor, elderly, sick or disabled. These are committed entitlements, for a people to help their fellow citizens. However, the federal government has demonstrated itself to be literally the most inefficient service supplier in the ballgame. We need to put a complete halt to an overconfident organization that refuses to accept blame upon itself, cannot be relied on to be truthful to its constituents and completely refuses to operate within a realistic means. I do not agree with the logic that the federal state is so omnipresent that it can’t be brought to task by a new executive administration. As President I would make it ever-present to the Congress that they respond to the needs and wishes of the people of the United States.