Category Archives: Gaylon On The Issues

Some Thoughts on the State of Our Union
By Gaylon Kent
Libertarian For Congress

President Donald Trump – President Donald Trump! – will deliver the State of the Union address in the House of Representatives chamber at the United States Capitol tonight. Though you no doubt know this, some are always surprised to find out this is mandated by the Constitution with Article II, Section 3 stating, in part, that the president:

…shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.

Trump being Trump, he could sound downright presidential, which he’s capable of, or he could come off as a complete freakazoid. He will probably be a bit of both and his State of the Union address will no doubt end up sounding like a campaign speech, something his inaugural ended up being even though he won the election.

Let’s take a look at the state of our American Union right now. There’s both good and bad.

The economic numbers aren’t too shabby, frankly. Wall Street is flourishing and the unemployment rate is a bit less than five percent but boy, anybody who has had to pound the street looking for work the past few years knows it’s tough to make a go of it. Employers figured out how to make a profit in tough times during the Great Recession and HR departments are still acting like it’s 2009.

This really isn’t an indictment. One of the functions of businesses in a free market is adapting. It’s what American business has been doing since the Pilgrims first traded with the Indians. American workers, spurred on by the disappearance of the once-proud private-sector American union, are currently content to take what employers choose to offer. You can’t blame employers for that. 

But there are aspects of our American Union that are troubling, elements that if not checked will destroy our country, probably before this half-century is out.

One, we are coming up on three decades of non-stop warfare and President Trump is not stopping this. The American military presence in both Afghanistan and Syria has increased and President Trump – correctly, really, – doesn’t fret too much over the details but he has given area commanders greater authority to take offensive action.

A truly flourishing economy anchored in low taxes is not forthcoming, either. The GOP tax plan does nothing to either simplify our tax code or stop the government from taking too much of our money.

There are other things, too. American society, like it’s government, is a partisan, fractured and bickering mess. Gunfire is now our primary form of social interaction. Americans are so thrilled with their lives we are drugging ourselves to death in record numbers. In the 12-month period beginning in July, 2016 and ending in June 2017 nearly 67,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, a 16-percent increase.

Friends, we have a partisan, fractured and bickering government because you and me – we the people – continue to tolerate it every Election Day. The time has come for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District to show our state and our nation that we are demanding better this Election Day. The time has come to toss aside the status quo. 

I ‘m Gaylon Kent, and I ‘ll lead the charge.

Cordially,
Gaylon

Click here to read a preview of my book We The People: Making America America Again. Click here to read the entire book.  

Friends, my campaign can be boiled down to four things I want for our country:

1. An Empowered American Electorate
Every good thing in our country starts with participating and demanding citizens demanding good  government. We will always get the government we elect and this Election Day those of us in the 3rd District can continue to rubber stamp the status quo or we can dismiss the status quo and tell our state and nation that we demand better.

2. An America at Peace
America has been at war every day since 1989. This means we have an entire generation of Americans who have never known their country at peace. We are feeling the effects of that now. We have a violent world and violent American citizens in large measure because we have a violent American government.

The only dividend war provides is more war. We will not have a peaceful world until we have a peaceful America.

3. An American Economy Anchored In Low Taxes And Free Markets
I continue to favor a flat tax of no more than 10 percent on American incomes. And ten percent is only because America is a fiscal cesspool right now. Ideally it’s no more than 5 percent and perhaps one day we can eliminate it entirely. We work hard for our money and the government is not entitled to more than a small amount of it and there are those that say they are entitled to none of it. They have a point.

A flat tax would simplify our tax code, too. Our return could be filed on a single sheet of paper and the IRS would stop issuing incorrect information one-quarter of the time.

I  also favor eliminating the tax on corporate profits, because it is merely another cost they pass on to you and me, the consumer and we deserve better than that.

These changes would give consumers more money to spend and businesses more money for innovation and expansion, including hiring more employees at better salaries and wages. It would also return $200 billion to the American economy as the cost of complying with our tax responsibilities is virtually eliminated.

4. An America That Does Not Convict The Innocent
I’ll be honest, on the campaign trail in 2016 and 2014 I did not run into a lot of my fellow Americans getting too worked up over this issue.

We should, though, every one of us. America has released over 800 people from prison for murders they did not convict and over 150 of these have been from death row and it is not reasonable to believe America has not executed innocent people over the years. For a nation conceived in liberty, these numbers are shameful. No one in our country should be imprisoned for something we didn’t do.

Friends, I  look forward to discussing these issue with you. Please, leave your comments below.

Cordially,
Gaylon

Click here to read a preview of my book We The People: Making America America Again. Click here to read the entire book. 

America’s drug war is an interesting exercise in human nature. It is as if this country learned nothing from Prohibition, the period from 1920-33 when booze was illegal in America. All this did was make criminals rich and cause violence that does not exist before or after Prohibition.

This is exactly what is happening with our current fixation with ridding our country of drugs. Our country expends an awful lot of resources trying to prevent their importation, sale and use. Does it do any good? Honestly, no. These efforts do nothing from stopping anyone who wants to use drugs from doing so. Humans being human, it never will. There will always be demand and to try and stop it is folly. It’s the way the world is built.

Now, I  do not use drugs nor, frankly, do I enjoy being around those who do. Nor do I favor government regulation. We are regulated and taxed enough. Besides, potheads, stoners and their vendors already have distribution, quality control and payment systems in place. Let them be. All the government needs to do is decriminalize their manufacture, sale and use.

I  look forward to your comments. Please, leave them in the space below.

Thank you for reading,
Gaylon

There are a lot of issues associated with capital punishment. Personally, however, only one matters:

Our country has executed innocent people. The death penalty must be eliminated.

Solve that problem, and I ‘ll find some other reason to oppose it, but for now this will do.

Too many convicted murderers are being released from prison, including death row, because they didn’t commit the murders they were convicted of and personally I do not think it is reasonable to believe innocent people have not been sent to their deaths.

If you still are not convinced, please go and read the cases of Cameron Todd Willingham and James Beathard, both executed by Texas. If you do read enough on these cases to come to an informed conclusion, one, I  will hug you for being a concerned citizen, regardless of the conclusion you drew. But I  think you’ll conclude, like I did, that they were innocent of the crimes they were condemned for.

We deserve better than executing innocent people. We are not going to have better until we demand it at the ballot box, however. So let’s go demand better this Election Day. I ‘m Gaylon Kent and I ‘ll lead the charge.

Many thanks for reading and, please, leave your thoughts in the section below.

Gaylon

Our nation has always benefited from the immigrant’s work ethic. From the time the white man was the immigrant to now, when people still come to America to make a go of it, the immigrant’s mark on this country is as profound as it is long-lasting. Those who deny or dismiss the immigrant’s impact have either forgotten history’s lessons or never learned them in the first place.

Practically speaking, laws must reflect the way people live. If they don’t, they’re going to be ignored. This is what is happening with our immigration laws. If we change the laws to reflect the way people are actually living, the number of criminals goes down and the number of legal workers in this country goes up.

We favor letting those here illegally stay. Give them a national identity card and let them do the work they came here to do. When the work dries up, they will stop coming. They can pay taxes and buy homes and cars and generally make themselves useful here. Those worried about them taking jobs from Americans should bear in mind a couple of things. One, immigrants tend to take jobs held by high school dropouts, a segment of the population that is declining. Even it wasn’t, those who didn’t have the gumption to graduate high school deserve what they get. And two, they often take jobs our skilled and educated workforce no longer needs to take.

Those with national ID cards who entered America illegally will be entitled to everything except citizenship. That must be reserved for those who play by the rules. Practically speaking, this will deprive of them of a US passport, the right to vote and the right to have relatives join them in America. OK, that’s still not too bad a deal. Perhaps provisions can be made for applying for citizenship after certain number of years in this country or after reaching a certain age.

As a sovereign nation America has a right, indeed an obligation, to provide secure borders. But there is no reason to chase away those who merely want to build a life for themselves. It’s why the Pilgrims came here in the first place and was the foundation on which America was built.

Gaylon

I  currently do not exercise them, but I support our Second Amendment rights without qualification or restriction. The Founding Fathers wanted armed citizens, not only for service in the militia but to fight off the Indians whose lands we were stealing and to provide for food and personal defense. Perhaps most importantly, they didn’t want unarmed citizens going up against an armed government, something we feel remains a consideration today.

Let’s take a look at the Second Amendment. It’s only 27 words long and like a lot of our Constitution it is brilliantly ambiguous in its brevity:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Does the Second Amendment refer only to bearing arms in the context of militia service, or does it allow citizens to own whatever weapon they want? Taken in the context of the times that inspired the Bill of Rights and the English laws and customs that influenced them, I think the answer is both.

Now, eventually, a weary nation will want to discuss modifying or even eliminating the Second Amendment. It’s inevitable. We have suffered too much carnage from too many mass shootings for too long. Those of us who support the Second Amendment must be active participants in this discussion and not merely by blindly trotting out a copy of the Second Amendment.

Please, feel free to leave your comments below.

Gaylon

Friends, America deserves better than it is getting from our current tax system. The goal of my tax plan is two-fold: to simplify our tax code and to stop the government from taking too much of our money.

Our current tax code is currently over nine million words long and is so confusing the IRS gives out wrong information 25 percent of the time. This is insane. We are entitled to an income tax return we can fill out on a single sheet of paper.

I have long favored a flat tax of no more than ten percent, and ideally five percent, on individual incomes. I also favor eliminating the tax on corporate profits. I didn’t always. I once thought it appropriate for companies to pay something for the opportunity to make a fortune in this country but then a business owner said all taxes were were an expense he passed on to his customers. That made sense. There is no reason to saddle us consumers with what is essentially another tax on us.

A low-tax environment for citizens and businesses would produce a flourishing economy. Us citizens would have more money to spend and businesses would have more money to meet our needs. They would have more money for innovation and expansion and for hiring more workers and paying them better salaries and wages. And everyone would be freed from the cost of complying with our current tax code, meaning over $200 billion would be pumped back into the economy every year.

We deserve better than what we have now. So let’s demand better this November. We can send a message to the rest of our state, and to the nation, that we are demanding better than what the status quo is spoon feeding us.

As always, I look forward to discussing this with you. Please, leave your comments below.

Gaylon

My view is that the government must butt out of the abortion debate. It must not allow it and it must not prohibit it. It must stay out of it.

It’s important to note that us humans have been terminating pregnancies for thousands of years. This does not make it right and it does not make it wrong, it merely illustrates that criminalizing it will not eliminate it. It’s the way the world is built.

Now, I had 13 years of Lutheran schooling and I am familiar with and have the highest amount of respect for the views that prohibit abortion. Not only that, I was born six months after my parents got married, so I  was hardly planned. I ‘m glad my parents had me.

But this is a debate the government must stay out of. You may not personally favor abortion yourself, or you might, I don’t really care because that is your lookout and not mine. But it is not the government’s job to make the choice for us. It is the government’s job to leave its citizens alone.

This is as contentious an issue as I’ve come across on the campaign trail, so please keep your comments civil. I look forward to hearing them.

Gaylon

While running for the United States Senate in 2014, a group whose name I ‘ve forgotten sent out some robocalls that mentioned my name. Since these robocalls went out in the middle of the night, it caused a modest scandal. The voice on the call said Gaylon Kent was the only peace candidate on the United States Senate ballot that year.

True enough. I was and still am the peace candidate.

Friends, we have been at war every day since we invaded Panama in 1989. That is almost thirty years of non-stop warfare. It hasn’t worked. Three decades of warfare has not produced peace and it’s not going to, either. During past campaigns I said this every hour on the hour:

We are not going to have a peaceful world without a peaceful America.

A lot of the violence in this world is because of America butting in everywhere. We have been at it for decades and the only result is a world more violent than ever, except for our two world wars.

War does not produce peace. The only dividend war provides is more war. It will always be that way, too. Since no nation has ever been able to sustain perpetual war, eventually perpetual war will mean the end of our country. America will collapse, tossed aside the scrap heap of history along with the Roman Empire and the Soviet Union, probably before this half-century is out.

We deserve better. We deserve an America and a world at peace, but we will only get it if we demand it at the ballot box this November.

I say let’s go get it. The time has come for us to tell our state and our nation that we are demanding better this Election Day.

I‘m Gaylon Kent, and I ‘ll lead the charge. Let’s go!

Gaylon