Hi all - I barely met a 1 pm deadline today for submitting answers to local newspaper's online voters guide. Here's my answers, folowed by the script I then wrote for a 5 pm taping of 4-minute statement at local TV station. MARYLAND INDEPENDENT PARTY Steve Schulin,
Candidate for Congress - Maryland's 4th District
240-751-7286 Birthdate and place: June 20, 1954, Abingdon, Pennsylvania Residence: 15609 Gold Ring Way, Rockville, Maryland, since 1986 Family: Married, with two children Education: B.A. (1979) - The Catholic University of America Professional experience: Founding editor of nuclear.com, after many years as a nuclear energy consultant. I've been granted unescorted access at dozens of commercial nuclear power plants to assist in their radiation protection programs and have been Q-cleared for similar work involving federal nuclear weapons production. Current member of American Nuclear Society, Professional Reactor Operator Society, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. Community experience: I've worked with young and old in various church, school, and civic groups over the years, with an occasional political letter to the editor or to an elected official urging some action. Over the past year, it has been a real pleasure and an honor to work with God-fearing, liberty-loving, sovereignty-conserving folks across the nation -- supporters of Alan Keyes for President. In May, we decided to form America's Independent Party, and we are already the third largest national party in terms of number of registered voters. Our Maryland affiliate is the Maryland Independent Party. I've participated in a variety of state and local political causes this year. I stood with others in the group called Help Save Maryland in front of the day labor center in Derwood, urging government to stop aiding and abetting illegal immigration. I also answered the call for volunteers by Citizens for Responsible Government, gathering signatures to help unblock the referendum on the Montgomery County's ridiculously broad transgender rights law. Key issues: Every day, it seems like we wake up with a little less liberty than the day before, and with the prospect of big chunks of national sovereignty being given away. I want to stop these trends, and to regain much of what has already been lost. If We, the People, insist that America's principles -- as explicitly proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution -- be applied, we can have a bright future. Web site: http://www.MarylandIndependentParty.org E-mail address: if-you-dont-see-a-leader-be-a-leader@marylandindependentparty.org Telephone: 240-751-7286 Questions: How would you have voted on the $700 billion bailout/rescue package that Congress just approved? I would have voted no, and I would have offered alternative solution -- abolish the federal income tax system, including repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. One of the reasons I have long supported this change is that it would result in an ecomomic boom the likes of which we have never seen. Investors would rush to put their money at work in the USA, and the current "crisis" would soon be but a minor blip in our history. Is the bailout package a slippery slope? Can we expect other industries to need/request similar massive help and, if that’s the case, how should the government respond? The bailout is worse than slippery slope -- it is a headlong rush into unprecedented government ownership of industry. Everyone who cherishes our liberty ought to stand against the powerful combination of regulatory socialists personified by Obama and corporate socialists personified by McCain. This bailout is neither necessary nor desirable. The value of the dollar will fall as we print more. If you wanted to design a way to destroy the USA as a force for good in this world, you could not do better than giving more power to the same bunch of folks who got us into this mess. I suspect that, if you continue to vote for the Republicans and Democrats, yes, many more industries will fall into government control. The government should stop contributing to the problem. The best way to do that is to encourage community-based banks to flourish, and to stop allowing the destruction of healthy competition in every industry in the name of globalization and economies of scale. Some, like Sen. Cardin, have called for a Manhattan Project-type effort to address the nation’s energy needs and to get the U.S. off foreign oil? What do you believe should be done? I thoroughly agree with the goal of being as self-sufficient in vital needs as can be achieved. Energy supply is such a need. The federal government should not, however, be in the business of picking technological winners and losers. Some European nations have done this, and the results have been counterproductive in many ways. For example, every EU nation except UK adopted huge tax incentives for the purchase of diesel engine vehicles rather than than gasoline. This was done because mile-for-mile, diesel-powered vehicles emit less CO2, and CO2 was considered a climate change threat. Unfortunately, we have since discovered that the extra soot produced by these millions of extra diesels will actually cause more "radiative forcing" -- for more than a hundred years. If you want to go broke, be cold in the winter, and hot in the summer, getting the government involved in picking winners is a great choice. We have plenty of oil resources, plenty of coal, and and inventive people. The best course for government is to get out of the way. What are your top three priorities for the next two years, if elected? 1. I will work to ensure that America's principles are front and center in every debate. We have allowed our federal government to stray from these principles for much too long. I will start with the principle in the Declaration of Independence that all of us are Created equal, endowed by Creator with certain unalienable rights, including the right to life. I will challenge the secular humanists who want the government to define the right to life as some outmoded religious superstition. 2. I will oppose the global warming alarmists. We've seen electric bills rise by an average of 85% here in Maryland since 2006, and if Donna Edwards, Barack Obama ad John McCain have their way, there will be much bigger price hikes soon, due to their support for mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions. As part of my business, nuclear.com, I've spent literally thousands of hours reading the science journals and discussing the issues with scientists. I've concluded that the state-of-the-art climate models are of dubious predictive value, and that the UNIPCC claims about attributing 20th century warming to CO2 are based much too much on an "attribution-by-exclusion" approach which doesn't exclude nearly enough. I will use my office to save the typical family thousands of dollars a year in extra energy costs by using my understanding of the scientific issues to counter the alarmists in a very public and effective way. 3. I will work to unjam the political system nationally by sponsoring legislation to tear down the procedural fortresses that reward and protect incumbents; to ensure that every vote gets counted; and to ensure that every individual is free to voice his or her opinion. How would you rate the performance of the House of Representatives: excellent, good, fair or poor? Why? Of those three choices, "poor" is the closest to accurate. The Democrats and Republicans have failed miserably in leadership. I hope we fire a lot of them this year. The current financial system mess is a travesty and better leadership should have prevented it from ever occurring. Do you have a timeline on when the U.S. should pull out of Iraq? I don't favor a timeline, although I'd support one if the Iraqi government demands it. There's been tremendous progress in Iraq, and their tyrant neighbors are not at all pleased with this new tree of liberty blossoming in their region. How should the government pay for the War on Terror and is it working? "Peace through strength" is not a mere slogan, it is the means of survival for our country in a very dangerous and often hostile world. Our friendship should be a sought-after possession of all men and women of good will everywhere in the world. Our enmity should be something that all rightfully fear. We need economic strength at home. A good start to restoring that economic strength will be abolishing the income tax, substituting a a fair, simple, noninvasive, visible, efficient, consumption-based retail tax similar to the proposal popularly known as the FairTax. We have had some successes in the war, some publicized, some hinted at. We have also had some losses, including self-imposed losses to our liberties. The fact that we do not have control of who enters our country seems an obvious invitation to failure. I believe in secure national borders and bountiful freedom within. Would you make any changes to the way the Department of Homeland Security is run? I've not studied that huge Department. What should be done to reform Social Security, Medicare? The promises already made by these programs should be golden. The cost will be huge, and that makes unleashing our economy even more urgent than would have been the case if the Ponzi-scheme of social security had never been adopted. As to medical care, our government programs have been largely responsible for turning what should be a "health care" system into a "sick care" system. This has to change. Should SCHIP be expanded? If yes, how would you pay for an expansion? If no, how would you ensure that people who need health and dental care get it? No. States should be in the lead. This and the other redistributionist federal programs are an abrogation of the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution. What is your position on the death penalty? The government does have the right to impose the death penalty. The prosecutorial abuses uncovered in many death penalty cases are sickening and the People should hold malfeasant officials to account. What is your position on abortion? Here's the platform plank I've proposed for the new Maryland Independent Party: "Because the stated ultimate purpose of our Constitution is "to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity," we recognize the personhood of all unborn children and their protection by the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments. The right to life of all innocent persons, from conception to natural death, is God-given and unalienable. For the principled man or woman, no compromise is possible concerning such a critical matter of life and death. We believe that violators of this supreme right, in their words and actions, are unfit for any office of public trust, since this constitutes the breaking of the oath of office and the destruction of the very basis of our liberty." Do you support the federal No Child Left Behind law? No. This is another example of the federal government getting involved in areas denied to it by the Tenth Amendment. I will work to ensure that every parent has a choice in where to educate their children and I will fight the secular humanists every day. If foreign terrorists had caused the wreck of our education system, we'd declare war. What, if anything, should be done to assist homeowners at risk of losing their homes because of adjustable rate loans? The federal government was wrong to encourage uneconomic loans, but the main thing we should do now is stop the inflationary component of adjustable mortgages. Who should bear the costs of the changes wrought by BRAC? State and local. What state transportation projects are a priority and how should we pay for them? Mass transit is our biggest need. The federal government can best help by, that's right, abolishing the income tax and watching the economy boom. - - - END OF ANSWERS TO NEWSPAPER QUESTIONS - - - Here's the script I used this afternoon for a 4-minute video segment for the local public access TV station, AccessMontgomery. They will compile the segments from each candidate in my district and present the "Meet the candidates" show several times before the election. The show will also be made available online. STATEMENT OF STEVE SCHULIN, OCTOBER 8, 2008 The major parties have failed, miserably, in providing leadership. Every day, it seems we wake up with a bit less liberty and with the prospect of another big chunk of our sovereignty being given away. The recent hasty financial rescue is a tragic example of regulatory socialists like Barack Obama and our own Donna Edwards working in tandem with the corporate socialists like John McCain. I would have voted _no_ on that bill, and offered an alternative: abolish the federal income tax. The economic boom would be unlike anything seen before. Investors would rush to put their money to work. The current “crisis” would soon be but a minor blip in our history. Here’s another example of leadership failure: electricity bills in Maryland have risen an average of 85% since 2006. And if the republicans and democrats have their way, there's more price hikes soon to come, for no good reason. Can your family budget afford to pay an extra two thousand two hundred and fifty dollars a year for energy? Well, that's how much the last CO2 cap-and-trade bill debated in congress would cost a typical family of four, according to economic analysis team at Charles River Associates. That's an extra two-thousand-plus from household income of fifty-thousand dollars a year. Nobody can afford that, yet the democrat and republican candidates for President both support this type of bill. And our new representative, Donna Edwards, does too. On her web site, along with the endorsements of so-called environmental groups like Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, you can find Ms. Edwards claim, and I quote, "...We're in a crisis. It's time to set mandatory limits on [CO2] emissions with a goal of twenty percent reductions by 2020 and eighty percent reductions by the middle of the century.” _“This”_, she says, “is the call for this generation of leaders ..." Ladies and gentlemen, my business is nuclear power. I own nuclear-dot-com. Nuclear plants don't emit CO2. If CO2 controls are adopted, my personal financial outlook will be all the brighter. But after literally thousands of hours reading the science journals and discussing with scientists, i assure you that the alarmism embraced by Donna Edwards is based on shoddy analysis. Part of the problem is that the field of climate science is so broad that few scientists have much understanding of the many exaggerations that are bandied about every day on this subject. If you want someone in congress who can stand up to the CO2 alarmism with knowledge and skill, i'm you're guy. I'm Steve Schulin of Rockville. I'm here because I want my children _and yours_ to enjoy the many blessings of liberty. I’m a God-fearing, liberty-loving, sovereignty-conserving American. I support a new party, called Maryland Independent Party, and i’m asking for your vote. If you value American principles more than party labels, i hope you'll check out the platform I've proposed at www-dot-marylandindependentparty-dot-org. With like-minded folks across the country, a new national party has been formed too -- America’s Independent Party. Alan Keyes of Maryland is our nominee for President. Dr. Keyes is the candidate who has long best represented -- by far -- my views on a wide range of important issues. He’ll be a choice on the ballot for millions of voters. Here, you’ll have to write-in his name. I hope you’ll do so. Dr. Keyes can win this election. All he needs is about a third of the vote in about half of the states to win the electoral college. One of the things he's said that i've taken to heart is "if you don't see a leader, be a leader." Well, i look at the other candidates and see no one else who stands with me for the Declaration principle that we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights, including the right to life. I am 100% pro-life. Compare that with Donna Edwards who lists the nation’s largest abortion provider as one of her “champions of change”. None of the other candidates stand with me on the subject of secure borders, either. I believe in keeping the bad guys out and bountiful liberty inside. I’ll work to ensure that parents have a choice of schools, and I’ll fight the secular humanists every day. To vote for me on November 4, use the "write-in" feature. My name is Steve Schulin - s-c-h-u-l-i-n. Thank you, and may god richly bless you.
Edited by SteveSchulin 2008-10-08 6:46 PM
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