Why I Support Johnson and Weld

Let's see, me and my parent’s generation is leaving future generations with a 20 trillion dollar debt and enormously underfunded public and private pensions. So what do we have to show for it?

The slowest expansion on record since 1949.

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, 81 percent of the United States population is in an income bracket with flat or declining income over the last decade. 

Capital investment by businesses has actually become a drag on growth, falling 2.1% in the final quarter of 2015 and 4.5% in the first quarter of 2016. 

A nation of millennials who are so burdened by college debt that they can't afford to purchase homes and have put off off household formation.

INFRASTRUCTURE IS AMERICA’S BACKBONE

It’s your local water main and the Hoover Dam, the power lines connected to your house and the electrical grid spanning the U.S., and the street in front of your home and the national highway system. Yet, according to the American society of civil engineers, who do a report card on US infrastructure every 4 years in 2013 they gave America a grade of D+ plus and said that we have 3.6 trillion dollars worth of needed infrastructure improvements in America. 

From the crumbling bridges to the overflowing sewage drains and corroading water lines that are poisons us, to the rusting railroad tracks in the Northeast Corridor, decaying infrastructure is all around us, and the consequences are so familiar that we barely notice them—like urban traffic congestion, slow-moving trains, and flights that are often disrupted, thanks to an outdated air-traffic-control system. The costs are significant, once you reckon wasted time, lost productivity, poor public-health outcomes, and increased carbon emissions. 

TRUMP IS RIGHT ... HERE IS WHY WE NEED TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN:

National Center for Academic Statistics in the educational rankings of developed countries, the USA ranked 17th in reading, 19th in science, and 26th in math skills.

According to the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report for the United States ranked 13th.

The Fraser Institute—a free market think tank—released its annual Economic Freedom of the World report, which showed Hong Kong topping the list of the world's most free economies, with Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland and Canada rounding out the top five. However, America mired in the 16th spot for the second consecutive year, the institute noted.

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet we have almost 25 percent of the world’s total prison population. The numbers today are much higher than they were 30, 40 years ago despite the fact that crime is at historic lows. Our victimization rate is about the same as Europe but our incarceration rate is nearly 3 1/2×.

Taxes should be for running operations of the government. Not for realigning the economy or wealth. The government should strive to run as efficently as possible and to leave as much capital as it can in the free markets To create jobs and more wealth. Instead we have tax policy that pushes US multinational companies to do inversions in order to achieve more competitive tax rates and to keep 2 trillion of their cash overseas.  There is a growing attitude that we punish success and reward failure, which will drag down America. 

Why are we in the shape we're in?

Neither a marriage, an organization, or a team would survive if the individuals involved functioned the way our government and political system do today.  Party over people.  We are tearing ourselves down, rather than building America up.

Instead of looking for ideas to support from the other party, we look to either claim them for ourselves or to find only the faults.  We fail to give credit where credit is due, or hold ourselves accountable for our flaws and mistakes.  Trump is highly criticized, and yet, he started the discussion on how we need to do a better job of negotiating with NATO, and our trade deals. And now, with Gary Johnson, instead of focusing on his constructive ideas the media is exploiting is weakness on names.

We need Democratic ideas, we need Republican ideas, we need Green Party ideas, we need Libertarian ideas.  What we need most is an approach to government that:

1. fosters cooperation and accountability 
2. puts a higher emphasis on the vision of our Founding Fathers and the concepts in which our nation was founded.
3. Understand that government is failing by many measures and be willing to innovate and try new approaches.
4. we need to stop seeing leaving wealth in the hands of wealth creators as a bad thing, when that is better place for it to be.  
5. We need to elevate nonprofits and religious philanthropy. 
6. We have a mistaken forgone conclusion that regulation always makes things better. You couldn't build Beacon or Fishkill or Kingwood Park in Poughkeepsie today.
7. When America builds the world wins.  When we rebuild our infrastructure the world's less developed nations that rely on their mining and natural resources benefit.  The Internet may have started in the USA, but the world benefits.  Our leadership in drug research, space exploration, and nanotechnology, DNA, and other areas has benefited the world.  We have a great opportunity to lead in exploring and protecting the worlds oceans!  

One of the greatest strengths of America is the vision that our Founding Fathers had and left us with when America and its Constitution were created.  And, one of the greatest strengths of America is that our founding fathers knew the importance of States power.  The concept of innovation, competitiveness, that is derived from having 50 states who both compete for and share resources – is a brilliant facet in the formation of our nation.  The Federal Government undermines that system and the benefits of that dynamic when we take powers away and centralize decisions and control.  Educational processes, health care options, and more, can all develop better by giving greater control to the states.

----------------------------------

Our two party monopoly and partisan politics is damaging America precisely in the ways and for the reasons our Founding Father George Washington warned us. And I believe Johnson and Weld are the best present hope to correct this trend.  You in?

Excerpt from George Washington Farewell letter: (penned by Alexander Hamilton)

"Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume."