Twenty-One Questions for Bob Dold and Brad Schneider

Written Between October 1^st and 16^th, 2016
Published on October 10^th, 2016
Edited and Expanded on October 20th, 2016

 

            One of some eight or nine debates between Illinois's 10^th District U.S. congressional candidates Bob Dold and Brad Schneider took place at Lake Forest High School in Lake Forest, Illinois, at 1:30 on the afternoon of Sunday, October 16^th, 2016. The debate, hosted by the Lake County League of Women Voters, was free and open to the public.

Audience members were invited to submit questions at the debate by writing them on notecards. Since, as a write-in candidate, my name is not technically on the ballot, I was not invited to the debate; however, I was there to submit questions. Since audience members were only permitted to ask several questions each, below I have listed twenty-one questions that I would like to hear the candidates answer.

 

Ninth Amendment

     I believe that the freedoms to marry, travel, work, go on strike, buy and sell, drink, smoke, vote, and defend oneself, are natural, fundamental, and inalienable rights; that they cannot be voted away by legislatures. Do you agree, or do you believe that our rights are mere privileges, which are sold or revoked at government's whim, and that we need to pay taxes on - and pay for applications, permits, and licenses for - everything we do?

Ninth Amendment
     Is there a single, unifying reason why self-defense, marriage, voting, working in an occupation, buying and selling, and traveling, should not be considered natural rights or freedoms, but rather as privileges which can be sold or denied by government, which has the exclusive authority to profit from the sale of license and permit fees?

Government's Role in Society

     What is your preferred vision of the kind of society that government has a responsibility to help create; a compulsory society, or a voluntary society? Would you prefer a compulsory society in which there is a military draft, and nearly everything we do is taxed, and may not be done without applying for a permit or license, and paying fees therefor? Or do you prefer an all-volunteer military; low barriers of entry into the professions; and a tax base relying only on voluntary contributions, user fees, and fees punishing waste?

Private Property
     What are you doing to make it easier to own a car with full exclusionary rights and access to the vehicle's Statement of Origin? What have you done to make it easier to fully own a home without being subject to neighborhood association guidelines and property taxes that disincentivize construction, growth, and useful production thereupon? What would you do to make it easier to owning landed property in full allodial title?


Separation of Powers
     How can you defend the constitutionality of federal involvement in health and education, without resorting to making excuses for the same kind of inappropriate delegation of congressional powers to the president; the kind that brought us the expansion of domestic surveillance and the size of the executive branch, in addition to the expansion of presidential war powers which led to the second invasion of Iraq?

Elections

     Which of the following is the biggest problem pertaining to campaign finance?: 1) lack of transparency in donation disclosures; 2) unlimited donations; or 3) the influence of lobbyists on expanding government, with its favors and privileges for donors and favored industries, in a way that makes such large donations typical? Also, would you support limiting your own office to four consecutive terms at a time?

Amending the Constitution

     Is there any amendment that you would like to see repealed or heavily amended; such as the 14^th, 16^th, or 17^th Amendments? Would you support a new amendment to the Constitution? Would you support voting reform, term limits, an Equal Rights Amendment, or a Balanced Budget Amendment?

Taxes and Productivity

     Do you suspect that taxing any behaviors at lower rates might yield greater revenues? Do you think that keeping tax rates too high might risk inadvertently disincentivizing the behaviors being taxed (namely earning money, buying and selling goods and services, making investments, importing goods, giving gifts, and bequeathing inheritances)? Would it be less harmful to base all government revenue on voluntary contributions; user fees; fees for mineral resource extraction; and fees penalizing waste, blight, and pollution?

Taxes and Poverty

     How is poverty best addressed? Would you support: 1) extending the Earned Income Tax Credit; 2) applying homesteading tax credits to low-cost housing; 3) establishing a citizens' dividend or sovereign wealth fund; or 4) the Negative Income Tax, giving tax payments to those below the poverty level?

Unions
     First, were things better for workers when unions engaged in strikes without the permission of a government labor relations board? Second, would it benefit workers to amend the law so that wildcat strikes, sympathy strikes, and wide-scale boycotts are legal, effective, and possible? Third and last, would you amend the Wagner Act so that unions are no longer required to represent all workers in a workplace, including those who do not consent to paying dues and do not want the benefits of representation?

Wages, Treasury, and the Budget
     Would it still be necessary to raise the minimum wage for private-sector jobs, if we had a balanced budget, a more sound currency, a greater purchasing power, and consumers' costs could be relieved directly by eliminating duties, imposts, tariffs, and sales taxes?

Taxation of Business
     When it comes to enterprise, which types of behaviors by companies should be taxed; 1) malinvestments; 2) personal income, executive bonuses, sales and profits, imports, capital gains, investments, and retirement and health accounts; or 3) pollution, waste, abuse and disuse of land, and extraction of natural resources?

Corporate Privilege
     Would you agree that it is not possible to effectively boycott companies, unless and until several types of government-granted, taxpayer-funded corporate and small business privileges and supports are either revoked or more strictly limited? Also, should multinational businesses be free to sue governments for loss of potential future profits, if those governments don't agree to do business with those companies?

Banking and Bailouts

     How is the public best insulated from the risks of Wall Street speculation, the excesses of commercial banking, and the risk of bailouts? Should Glass-Steagall be restored, should the amount of money that the F.D.I.C. can insure be lowered, is it the credit and bond rating systems that need reform, or should something else be done?

Abortion

     Should partial-birth abortion be legal, should it be publicly funded, and is it abortion or infanticide? Also, what in the Constitution gives any agent or agency of the federal government authority on matters of abortion, except when it comes to whether health insurance should cover the reproductive health needs of federal workers? Lastly, does anything about either the 9^th or the 14^th Amendment agree or conflict with your position on abortion?

Guns and the Draft
     Should the Second Amendment be modified as to recognize the natural right to refuse service in the militia; and the right to claim a moral philosophical, or religious conscientious objection to being required to render military service in person, whether as part of a draft or mandatory civil emergency preparedness service? Should women be required to register for the draft; or should mandatory draft registration end altogether, and the draft be repealed via a constitutional amendment?

Foreign Aid to Israel

The federal government sends $3.8 billion to the State of Israel each year. Considering that an IRmep/Google poll revealed last month that more than 80% of American adult internet users surveyed, thought that aid to Israel would better be spent on something else, would you consider reducing or revoking aid until the Israelis agree to end their draft, withdraw from illegally occupied territories, admit their possession of nuclear weapons, and sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

Israel and Iran

   What would you say to a voter who opposes foreign aid to both the State of Israel and its majority-Muslim neighbor states, for the same reasons; women's rights violations, denial of religious freedoms, disregard of civil liberties in policing and military recruitment, and non-transparent nuclear military ambitions? Could Israel take a more merciful role in the peace process? Lastly, do you support the Iran deal, and why or why not?

Schneider's Foreign Policy

Mr. Schneider, what should be done about U.S. presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan? Should we stay in Iraq to fight I.S.I.S., or work with the Russians to achieve peace in Syria? Would you support the Iraq partition plan, or time-tables for withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan? Finally, should the U.S. Army be guarding Pakistan's border with India instead of its border with Afghanistan?

Dold's Inconsistencies

Congressman Dold, what would you tell a conservative or Republican voter who feels that you have flip-flopped on repealing Obamacare, and sees your commercials where you promote gun control and continuing funding for Planned Parenthood, and wonder whether there are any key issues on which you are in total agreement with conservative voters?

Rahm Emanuel

Have you met Rahm Emanuel, do you think he is a good leader, and do you think he has done anything unethical in any of his roles in government or business - such as his time as a Clinton fundraiser and adviser, on the board of Freddie Mac, in his role in the 2008 restructuring, as President Obama's Chief of Staff, or as the Mayor of Chicago - that should disqualify him from seeking higher offices?

Speech to the Illinois State Line Rifle Association on April 27th, 2016

            The following piece was written as an introduction to my 2014 piece “Altering the Second Amendment to Protect Conscientious Objection”.
     At the Illinois State Line Rifle Association (S.L.R.A.)’s April 27^th meeting in Round Lake Park, Illinois, I read the following piece to an audience of about fifteen people, followed by that article on the relationship between gun control and draft registration.

            Thank you very much for having me. My name is Joseph W. Kopsick, and I’m a candidate in the race for the U.S. House of Representatives, representing my home town of Lake Bluff, as well as Round Lake Park, and much of the North Shore, including most of Lake County, and parts of northern Cook County.

            Illinois state “sore loser laws” prevent me from running as an independent, so I’m running as a New Party candidate, and seeking the nomination of the Libertarian Party. I am the only candidate in the race besides incumbent Republican Bob Dold; and challenger and former congressman, Democrat Brad Schneider.

            A little bit of background on me: I was born in Lake Forest, grew up in Wildwood, went to preschool right around the corner in Grayslake, and when I was five, my family moved to Lake Bluff. I attended Lake Bluff public schools, and graduated from Lake Forest High School in 2005. In 2009, I graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, having majored in political science.

            Growing up in an upper-middle-class suburban household, I was never around guns; I never went hunting. In fact, before the age of eighteen, the closest thing I ever saw to a hunting rifle was a potato gun. For part of my idealistic, naïve liberal youth, I even thought that it was immoral to defend yourself… and then I turned fourteen. Since then, I’ve handled a few guns, but I’ve still never fired one.

            I started showing some conservative inclinations during high school, and throughout the Bush era, I grew to value the Bill of Rights and civil liberties. I was especially concerned that I’d be drafted, since I was upset about being required to register for the draft at the age of seventeen, with a $125,000 fine threatened against myself and my parents for failing to ensure that I registered. It was only recently that I noticed the connection between the Second Amendment and draft registration.

            In 2007, I discovered Ron Paul and libertarianism; my interest in civil liberties; individual rights; and personal, social, and economic freedom only grew from there. I went on to run for Congress from Wisconsin’s 2^nd District in 2012, and Oregon’s 3^rd in 2014.

            In early 2011, after the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, I saw the demand for increased gun control grow exponentially. Since that, the massacres in Aurora, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, and other places, have only added fuel to that fire.

            Calls for quote-unquote “common-sense” gun legislation abound; especially at the federal level, despite the contents of the Second Amendment. Bans on so-called “military-purpose assault rifles”, high-capacity magazines, stronger background checks, elimination of gun-sale background check loopholes that arguably don’t exist, safety precautions – like safety locks, requirements that guns be stored in locked places, and even requirements that guns only be able to be fired by their owners, perhaps through the use of a fingerprint scanner – these regulations are based on purely cosmetic differences, they are unenforceable, they are written and defended by gun-illiterate people, and they have disastrous unintended consequences.

            Some say “guns don’t kill people; people kill people”; others say guns do kill. But accidentally shooting yourself or someone else does not mean guns kill by themselves. Many defenders of gun control are peaceful, well-meaning people, but their rhetoric is flawed, and they fail to see the connection between guns and our freedom.

            I’ll get to that in a minute, but first I want to say that if I am elected, I will not support any gun control legislation at the federal level. Since I believe in the Tenth Amendment as much as the Second, I would not cast a vote that interferes with the states’ rights to legislate on matters of guns.

            However, any such laws can only, rightfully, be applied to the intrastate manufacture of guns; not interstate manufacture, and certainly not to commerce and trade of guns across state borders, due to the Commerce Clause. Furthermore, while I would not vote to interfere with the states’ rights to craft constitutional gun control legislation, I would also support the resistance to overbearing state gun laws, by supporting communities’ rights, counties’ rights, jury nullification, and civil disobedience of such unjust laws.

            The only (arguably) “pro-gun-control” position I would take, is that I would oppose protections for gun sellers and manufacturers, from being sued by victims of gun violence and their families. But I take this position because, as it says in 42 U.S. Code Section 1981, “All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States, shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue”, among other things.

            Don’t get me wrong, I believe that after a gun is manufactured and sold to you, it becomes your property, and what you do with it is your responsibility. And the seller – and especially not the manufacturer – ought have any positive obligation (outside of direct contract with you) to do background checks on you, nor take any other measures to ensure that you will be responsible with it.

            I believe such lawsuits are frivolous, and I believe that they should be settled out of court, and laughed out of court. If Ben Carson hits his mother in the head with a hammer, it wouldn’t make sense for her to sue Ace Hardware, but I’d welcome her to try. I oppose these protections, also, to take a stand against corporate privilege.

            To those who would argue that this position puts me to the left of Bernie Sanders on the issue of lawsuits against gun sellers and manufacturers, I’d respond that while Sanders voted for such protections, he was glad that Sandy Hook victims’ families won in a preliminary judgment concerning their right to sue, so Sanders has not been consistent on this issue.

            But on to my main point: I’d like to read a piece that I wrote several years ago, which is entitled “Altering the Second Amendment to Protect Conscientious Objection”. I think this information is crucial, especially now, a time when seasoned liberals – from Carl Bernstein, to Robert Reich, to Charlie Rangel, to Rahm Emanuel – are openly calling for some form or another of mandatory national civil service; even calls to require women to register for the draft.







Please click on the following link to read the remainder of this speech:

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/05/altering-2nd-amendment-to-protect.html

"Speech to the Illinois State Line Rifle Association":
Written on April 27^th, 2016Edited on May 28^th, 2016

"Altering the 2nd Amendment to Protect the Right of Conscientious Objection":

Originally Written in May 2014

Edited on January 9^th, February 18^th, and May 28^th, 2016

Independent Candidate Enters Race for U.S. House

Originally Written on March 27^th, 2016

Edited on March 29^th and 30^th, and April 22nd, 2016


Thanks to Annie Dean for her helpful input

            Joseph Kopsick, a 29-year-old resident of Lake Bluff, is running as a New Party candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. He will be fighting to represent Illinois’s 10^th District, along with some other recognizable names. An Illinois native, Kopsick was born at Lake Forest Hospital in 1987, attended area public schools in Lake Bluff throughout his childhood, and graduated from Lake Forest High School in 2005. He majored in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating with a bachelor’s in 2009. While living in Madison, Kopsick ran for the U.S. House from Wisconsin’s 2^nd District in 2012, and also ran for Oregon’s 3^rd in 2014.

Kopsick decided to move back home to Illinois after traveling around the country getting to know different kinds of people, and understanding their struggles and what they need most from their government. In a country so divided, Kopsick now feels that the battle for the House is just as important in Illinois’s 10^th as anywhere else. Kopsick declared his candidacy in November, citing a lack of diversity of opinion among the other candidates on numerous key issues. He believes that his opponents’ records do not sufficiently reflect an interest in reducing federal power, practicing a non-interventionist foreign policy, and supporting personal freedom.

            Kopsick desires to reduce the size of the federal workforce, cap spending at lower levels, and help pass a Balanced Budget Amendment. He opposes income taxes, but would accept a Negative Income Tax. He considers taxes on sales, gifts, estates, and investments as discouraging productive behavior. Kopsick favors an integrated approach to taxes and the environment, desiring to reform property taxes so as to fund government solely through fees on natural resource extraction, and fines on pollution and blight and disuse of land. He opposes privatizing Lake Michigan’s water rights, favoring the establishment of community land and water trusts.

            Kopsick opposes federal gun control legislation, and supports strengthening the Second Amendment by restoring it to its original intent of protecting the right of conscientious objection to military conscription. Concerning immigration, Kopsick opposes building a border wall, and would support legislative deferred action for childhood arrivals and their parents, rather than executive orders or memoranda effecting the same. On health, Kopsick will work to expand insurance coverage by legalizing interstate insurance purchase and eliminating the tax credit for employer provided insurance. He opposes federal restrictions on abortion, and considers mandated ultrasounds intrusive, costly, and medically unnecessary.

            On labor issues, Kopsick has criticized both Right to Work laws and compulsory union voting, and prefers allowing workers to personalize their retirements and opt-out of Social Security rather than privatizing the program. As alternatives to increasing the federal minimum wage, Kopsick hopes to increase the dollar’s purchasing power by reining-in the Federal Reserve, eliminating tariffs and sales taxes, and improving the balance of trade. Kopsick’s political writing is available on his blog www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com, and you can join the conversation about his campaign on Facebook at “Joe Kopsick for Congress 2016 (IL-10)”, and on Twitter @JoeK4Congress.

2016 Congressional Campaign Policies

Originally Written on March 27^th, 2016

Edited and Expanded on March 30^th, 2016

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. My Opponents

3. Size of Government, Taxes, and Spending

4. Economic Issues: Trade, Wages, Labor, and Campaign Finance

5. Military, Defense, and Foreign Policy; Gun Control; and Immigration

6. Domestic Issues: Housing, Social Security, Environment and Energy, Health, and Abortion

7. Conclusion

Content

1. Introduction

            I am running for the U.S. House of Representatives, from Illinois’s 10^th Congressional District, which includes my home town of Lake Bluff, Illinois. I submitted my Statement of Candidacy in November 2015. I am currently running under the banner of the Absurdist Party, which consists of myself. My party affiliation may change, as I plan to seek the endorsements of the state Libertarian Party and the state Constitution Party. Due to the State of Illinois’s “sore loser law”, I will not be running as an independent candidate.

            To get on the ballot will require obtaining between 9,573 and 15,316 petition signatures. If I get on the ballot, then I will most likely be included in the debates. If I fail to obtain the signatures necessary, then I will file to run as a write-in candidate. Signature collection begins on Tuesday, March 29^th, 2016. The general election will be held on Tuesday, November 8^th, 2016.

2. My Opponents

            My opponents in the race are Robert Dold and Brad Schneider. Bob Dold is the incumbent Republican who currently represents Illinois’s 10^th District, and also represented the district from 2011 to 2013. Brad Schneider is a Democrat; he represented the district from 2013 to 2015. I would describe both candidates as moderates within their parties, especially Dold. Both candidates support a strong federal government.

Both Dold and Schneider have voting records which strongly support the State of Israel, and both candidates have supported sanctions against Iran. Both have supported domestic surveillance. Both have supported gun control, although Dold’s position is more pro-gun than Schneider’s. Both have supported keeping Obamacare in place; Dold has voted to repeal it, but now favors improving it. Both have opposed defunding Planned Parenthood, while Dold’s position on abortion is difficult to discern from his voting record. Both have been neutral on legalizing marijuana.

Due to the plenitude of these candidates’ similarities, I see it appropriate to enter this race, and oppose them on these issues. If elected, I would vote to oppose sanctions against Iran, resist the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, oppose domestic surveillance, strongly support the Second Amendment, repeal Obamacare, defund Planned Parenthood, and oppose the continued criminalization of marijuana.

If elected, the following are the policies which I would support.

3. Size of Government, Taxes, and Spending

SIZE OF GOVERNMENT: Abolish unconstitutional federal departments and reduce the size of the federal workforce. Abolish the Department of Commerce; the Department of Energy; the Department of Education; the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of the Interior.

TAXES: Eliminate tax loopholes, tax credits, and differential taxation, while also opposing the expiration of tax cuts. Reform the tax code in a way that ceases to punish productive behavior, instead imposing fines on destructive behavior. Reduce, eliminate, and abolish the individual / personal income tax, but support the implementation of a Negative Income Tax if it cannot be abolished. Reduce, eliminate, and abolish taxes on consumption (i.e., sales and luxury taxes), taxes on corporate income and investment, the gift tax, the death tax / estate tax, and the “inflation tax on money” that discourages savings. Reform property taxes by ceasing to tax property values, instead imposing financial penalties upon disuse and blight.

SPENDING: Support a Cut, Cap, and Balance plan. In anticipation of the failure of such an effort, support passing a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, requiring at least a 7-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases. If the other reforms I support can be made, and the budget and deficit reduced sufficiently, only then consider refraining from cutting agricultural subsidies, the Smithsonian Institute, the National Park Service, and the size of the federal workforce operating within constitutional strictures.

4. Economic Issues: Trade, Wages, Labor, and Campaign Finance

TRADE: Support real free trade, rather than managed trade, “smart trade”, or fair but unfree trade. Eliminate tariffs altogether; foreign nations do not always respond to tariffs the way we wish them to. Tariffs can only cause foreign nations to manipulate their currencies, cut wages at the lowest levels of production, and make trade wars and military wars more likely.

WAGES: Oppose increasing the federal minimum wage. Instead, focus on increasing the purchasing power of the U.S. Dollar, by eliminating taxes on sales of consumer goods, abolishing the Department of Commerce, and annually auditing the Federal Reserve.

LABOR: Oppose Right to Work legislation on the grounds that it impairs the obligation of contracts, and on the grounds that it would not be necessary if not for labor contracts gradually coming to resemble permanent laws as decades pass, which causes wages to stagnate. Oppose Compulsory Unionism and compulsory voting. Oppose requiring supposedly “free-riding”, but actually non-consenting, workers, to become members of, and pay dues to, labor and trade unions, partially in order to help reduce the influence of soft money from labor interests on elections. Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act, in order to legalize wildcat strikes and secondary boycotts. Protect workers’ rights of concerted activity in the workplace, including the right to form new unions and file complaints against management. If the Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act of 1935) and the Taft-Hartley Act cannot be repealed, then amend it to require management to negotiate with unions even if they lack the support of a majority of voting employees.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE: Oppose attempts to overturn the Citizens United decision, by pointing out that unlimited campaign donations are only symptoms of the problem. The problem, instead, is a high-stakes legislative environment in which unconstitutional legislation can be passed, funding corporate welfare as well as social welfare, pitting the left and right against one another. To remedy this problem, candidates should set a good example, by following the Constitution, and by rejecting donations of more than $2,500 per person, per campaign, per election cycle.

5. Military, Defense, and Foreign Policy; Gun Control; and Immigration

MILITARY, DEFENSE, AND FOREIGN POLICY: Bring troops and private contractors home from Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible, as well as from Germany, Japan, South Korea, and other countries. Deconstruct our hundreds of overseas military bases, stop spying on our allies, and cut all aid to foreign countries for their military as well as domestic purposes. Reduce the size of the Army to the size it was before the Iraq War, but do not reduce the size of the Navy or Air Force fleets. Do not cut the pay, nor the benefits, of non-combat military personnel. Oppose efforts to reinstate the draft, and efforts to require women, as well as men, to register for the draft. Cancel or delay some weapons programs, and reduce the nuclear arsenal and spending on space exploration.

GUN CONTROL: Oppose all proposed federal gun control legislation, and protect the right of conscientious objection to military conscription as the original intent of the Second Amendment.

IMMIGRATION: Defend a reasonable, minimally invasive immigration and naturalization process, by citing the need for the free movement of labor (as well as capital) across international borders. Oppose all efforts to build walls and fences along the U.S.-Mexico border. Support a path to citizenship, in addition to Green Cards and temporary work visas. Do not allow the deportation of undocumented immigrants unless and until they have been convicted of violent crimes. Support birthright citizenship, and the right of undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. prior to the age of 16 to apply for U.S. citizenship when they turn 18. Support efforts to pass legislative versions of D.A.C.A. (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and D.A.P.A. (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans), rather than unconstitutional executive orders that mandate the same policies. Oppose federal D.R.E.A.M. Act -type legislation, as well as executive orders supporting similar ends; instead abolish all federal social welfare. However, refrain from interfering with states’ rights to provide education, housing, and other aid to undocumented immigrants as they see fit. Render moot the issue of driver’s licensing for undocumented immigrants, by opposing driver licensing as an unconstitutional interference with the freedom of travel.

6. Domestic Issues: Housing, Social Security, Environment and Energy, Health, and Abortion

HOUSING: Abolish the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Recognize that H.U.D., Freddie Mac, and the Federal Reserve were significantly more responsible for creating the economic and legislative environments that led to the mortgage meltdown, than Wall Street was.

SOCIAL SECURITY: Eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. Do not impose privatization of retirement accounts, but rather allow the personalization of retirement accounts, encouraging citizens to obtain cooperative and mutual accounts. Do not means-test Social Security; pay workers back what they earned and what they expected to get back. Allow young workers to opt-out of Social Security. Cap the growth of Social Security spending to the rate of growth of either the Consumer Price Index or the Gross Domestic Product. Only consider gradually raising the retirement age if Social Security cannot be phased out, block-granted, or otherwise devolved to the states and / or the marketplace.

ENVIRONMENT AND ENERGY: Oppose fracking and the expansion of offshore oil drilling. Achieve zero non-offset carbon emissions by the year 2030. End subsidies and tax credits for all energy companies. Oppose the privatization of water rights, instead allowing and encouraging the establishment of community land trusts and community water trusts. Fund government entirely through fines imposed on pollution, blight, abuse and disuse, neglect, and hoarding of land; and through fees on the extraction of natural resources. Allow states and other local jurisdictions to establish citizens’ dividends and residents’ dividends funded through fees on natural resource extraction.

HEALTH: Repeal Obamacare, especially the individual insurance purchase mandate, which is a penalty, not a tax. Instead, legalize the purchase of health insurance policies across state lines, and repeal the tax credit for employer provided health insurance; these policies will, together, make it easier for people to keep their health insurance policies, or afford similarly priced policies, regardless of whether they lose their job or move to other states. Don’t tax medical device sales, or hospitals, allowing all hospitals to potentially managed on reduced-cost and charity bases. Oppose tort reform in order to avoid disempowering juries. Cap the growth of Medicare spending to the rate of growth of either the Consumer Price Index or the Gross Domestic Product, unless and until Medicare and Medicaid can be phased out, block-granted, or otherwise devolved to the states.

ABORTION: Oppose continued federal involvement in the abortion issue, opposing the federal funding of Planned Parenthood, in order to avoid public funds going to abortion. Support the rights of the states to pass legislation limiting first- and second- trimester abortion, nullifying the Roe v. Wade decision; but also support citizens’ rights to civil disobedience of state abortion laws on Ninth Amendment grounds. Do not interfere with contraceptive medicines and devices being sold over the counter or on the shelves. Do not require employers’ health insurance policies to cover contraception or abortion, nor prohibit them from doing so. Oppose efforts to require ultrasounds as a condition of getting an abortion, partially to help address the problem of unnecessary medical procedures contributing to the high costs of medical care. Prohibit partial-birth abortion as infanticide, but do not punish women for getting abortions at any stage of pregnancy, nor treat abortion as murder; instead revoke medical licenses from doctors committing infanticide.

7. Conclusion

            My campaign committee is called the Committee to Elect Joe Kopsick. Anyone interested in supporting my campaign can send a check to Committee to Elect Joe Kopsick, 132 Welwyn St., Lake Bluff, IL 60044.

In order to set a good example for other candidates, I will not accept, and return, donations in excess of $2,500 – which was the limit per person per campaign per election cycle in 2011 and 2012 – so I ask that no one send donations in excess of that amount.

Thank you for your support!