Still Not Sure How to Vote? Some Hints and Tips…

First of all what do you classify yourself as and what do the candidates classify themselves as?

Basic Definitions
Classical Liberal: Juris naturalist. One who believes that the country should have a small, weak government, and free markets, and that the individual is endowed by his Creator with inalienable rights to his life, liberty, and property. Also, one who believes in Natural Law and common law, or Higher Law.

Centrist: Moderate.

Conservative: A person on the right side of the left-right political spectrum. Conservatives believe in economic freedom and social control.

Democrat: A person on the left side of the political spectrum.

Juris Naturalist: syn. Classical liberal. Believes in Higher Law or Natural Law, that right and wrong are not matters of opinion. Believes political power corrupts both morals and judgment. Wants a government that is small and growing smaller.

Liberal: A person on the left side of the left-right political spectrum. Liberals believe in social freedom and economic control.

Moderate: One who is in the middle of the left-right political spectrum. Moderates advocate both economic encroachment and social encroachment, but perhaps not to the extremes that left and right do.

Progressive: One who is on the left side of the political spectrum.

Republican: Conservative.

See my Terms Defined page for more info.

According to the News Miner the candidates have classified themselves as:
Dukes: “I’m conservative. I believe we need a government, but I believe we need a government that is as small as can be but can deliver the needed services.”

Lawrence: “I think politically I’m a centrist who wants to make government work effectively and efficiently for the people.”

Aaron Bennett: A classical liberal, dedicated to upholding the Constitution and representing the people. “We’re supposed to be a constitutional republic. The Constitution is supposed to limit government, and obviously we’ve gotten away from that.”

King: “I would say that I’m very moderate and non-partisan. I don’t follow any political party lines.”

Kohler: “I’m a jumble. I would say I’m a fiscally conservative, pragmatic classic Republican type. Call me a moderate, I guess.”

McFarlane: “I’m a conservative, but on the assembly I will look at each proposal on its worth, not judge it politically.”

Palembas: A registered independent, he said he’s voted in both Democratic and Republican primaries in recent years. “I have no hidden agenda. I think there’s a lot of party agenda being played out in the Borough Assembly right now, and I don’t think it belongs there.”

Sattley: Describing himself as a fiscal conservative and social moderate, Sattley said he’s earned a reputation for being tight with funds. “I don’t waste money, whether it’s my own or public money.”

Joshua Bennett: “I’m limited government. I don’t want to get rid of the government, but I want it to be limited. The purpose of government is to protect private property.” *In an interview I had with Mr. Bennett he said he could also identify himself as a Juris Naturalist.

Blanchard: “I feel I’m a moderate conservative. I’m not anti-government, but it needs to be as small as possible to work best.”

Davies: “You could describe me as a progressive. I believe that we need to work together in a variety of ways, including through local government, to improve the quality of life.”

From my interviews/assessment the School Board candidates appear to be:

John Thies: Unknown

Sean Rice: Classical Democrat (based on interview from 2010)

Ryan Smith: Classical Liberal aka. Juris Naturalist (based on phone interview 9/11)

Sharon McConnell: Unknown

More hints and tips:

• If you’re really not sure on an issue, try applying the Golden Rule or ask yourself if you willing to accept the costs associated with passage of the issue. Ask yourself if you have a right to compel your neighbor to accept those costs.


• It’s okay to leave a blank circle if you feel neither answer/candidate fits your view. Just fill in the circle where you have conviction that your choice is a good one.


• Look at who is sponsoring the candidates. Generally they will be in the same political classification.


• Unions tend to support bigger government legislation. Also, Unions lean toward the social freedom and economic control ideals.


• Centrist/moderates appear to be trying to get as many votes as they can, thus identify themselves as centrist/moderate to hit what they feel the majority of the population leans to. This is not necessarily desirable if you have strong ideals where you feel your representative should be unwavering.
  

Ultimately, no matter what a candidate classifies themselves as, it could change in actual policies they end up supporting. This can be due to a desire to compromise with the perceived “other side” or it could have been the plan to begin with. We all know some candidates will do or say whatever they feel will get them the winning vote. This is why we need to look at records, keep up on issues, and call them out if they seem to change from their running platform once they are voted in.

Thanks for informing yourself to vote!

Assembly Seat E: Michael Palembas Summary

Mr. Palembas ran against Michael Dukes last year. He has degrees in social work and psychology and is unemployed right now.

Prop. 2 stance: Thinks there is still time for voluntary measures to take hold, will vote No.

Natural Gas: He supports free enterprise and thinks the borough should stay out of it.

Pay Freeze: Thought it was unfair.

Accepting Federal Money: “I’m all for it."

Goals for borough if elected: “He said he supports funding for the library and bookmobile but doesn’t enter the race with big borough goals. “I’m not running with an agenda.”

Political Views: “Has voted in both Democratic and Republican primaries in recent years. ‘I have no hidden agenda. I think there’s a lot of party agenda being played out in the Borough Assembly right now, and I don’t think it belongs there.’”

This summary extracted from this article.

Assembly Seat E: Guy Sattley

I interviewed Mr. Sattley via phone on 9/23/2011. Although I emailed questions he preferred the phone method of answering questions over writing.

Please explain your thoughts on Jury Nullification.

No to jury nullification.

What is your stance on the Propositions?

Prop. 1 - Yes
Prop. 2 - No
Prop. 3 - Yes

Many politicians (whether they run for Senate or School Board) always claim their best for the job due to “experience”, is experience all its cut out to be or are there other attributes we should be looking for?

Experience helps. It's especially important for assembly members to be property owners and have experience in paying property taxes. This provides a vested interest in the budgeting process as property taxes are a large portion of the borough budget funding. Mr. Sattley also feels it's goo for "young blood" to get involved with the political process (like Natalie Howard who is 35).

Mr. Sattley is the one who informed me that there will be no Voter Guide Supplements mailed out this year. He expressed disappointment in that.

Assembly Seat E: John Kohler, Jr. Round 2 Q & A

Please explain your thoughts on Jury Nullification.

Its a great way to end up in US supreme court. The mear mention of 800-tel-jury during jury questioning will free your calendar quickly from jury duty. They have not called me back for jury duty in YEARS.

Can a tax rate be so high that it’s not acceptable?
yes of course. We have a nice group of folks at the ITA that works hard to make sure our local mil rate remains stable and attractive. It would be nice to see a flat tax federally.

Please explain your thoughts on affirmative action.

I have been a victim of affirmative action. Reverse descrimination sucks just as bad as non-codified descrimination. I rose above, and made my own work happen. Most folks can, it's just fun to whine.

What is school for? What is education for? Are they the same?
Schools should teach you how to learn and give you a baseline level of knowledge. Education is lifelong, and is driven by the learning skills and love of learning you get in schools or at home. If you were to draw a venn diagram , the two terms would largely overlap, but not completely.

Thank you for running for a seat in this election. Also, thank you to those candidates who responded to my first round of questions. I look forward to reading everyone’s thoughts and posting the results on my blog.
You are welcome. October 4th can't come soon enough for me. I hope you do your best to get out the vote.

Regards,
John kohler jr

Follow Up Questions to Round 1 Q & A

I sent out follow up questions to 3 of the 4 respondants. So far there are only 2 return answers(I still plan to send more questions). I will include answers by both in this post. Please note that I am simply copy and pasting from my email messages. If there are any typo's or mis-spellings I left them as is so as not to misquote anyone.

Follow Up to Joshua Bennett
Based on your answer to the political career question, and knowing you ran for Borough Assembly last year I’m curious what your goal is in this bid, especially considering your statement, “If I did anything different, it would be to not run for a political office at all.”

"I do not believe the "political system" is a very valuable way to effect change. It usually comes down to the two "sides" dividing the people and getting the people to be against their neighbor, which is anti-Liberty at its core. The problem is because of the "other guy", and takes the focus off of the actual problem, the political system itself. All we do when we see one of the partys come to power, is they use political force to push their way on others.
Where does that system and freedom coexist? It can't. So when I said if I did anything different, I would not run, its because I am not seeking to force my ideals on anyone. I hope to use the forum that candidates get when they run for office to get the message of Liberty out (as I see it, based on history) to as many people as possible who might have otherwise never heard the concept.
If I won the seat, I would simply continue to use that "bully pulpit" to try and show the fallacy of the system that steals and forces submission ,and contrast it with Liberty, with the hope some people would get it. If we can change people way of thinking, then we have real change, and an honest change that isn't forced on anyone. Freedom.
But, there are other ways to spread the message, which is what I meant by "not running at all"."

Follow Up to Edward King

You said, “I believe in letting the free market work so long as it is working, but I also believe in correcting its failures.” Can you provide any examples where a free market failure would need correcting and how that would be done?

"On classic example in a market failure is pollution. When the costs (such as deteriorated air quality) are not being paid in monetary terms, there tends to be an excess produced than the community would prefer. In these cases, some sort of non-market inference is needed to correct the failure. Other cases include situations in which the society would benefit in a situation was in place, but there is not an individual incentive to provide the service and an opportunity to free ride if they try. Police, fire protection, road services, etc, are examples of this. Finally, the market fails when the citizenry does not have the dollars to drive the market toward the desired outcome. Think public education where the parents may not have the education to teach or the money to pay for an education for their children. In these cases, the general population is improved by providing a service that is needed where the direct beneficiaries cannot pay for it themselves."

Assembly Seat E: Leslie McFarlane Round 1 Q & A

It took 1 week for Mr. McFarlane to get answers back to me. Still he was 1 of the only 4 to respond to the original questionnaire sent out 8/20/11.

Thanks so much for sending me these questions. I deeply appreciate your interest in public affairs.

1. What would you say are the top 3 attributes in a candidate?

1. Honesty
This involves not only not lying, but by not saying things that are technically true but are misleading. I'll give an analogy: If I know that we spend $150 a week on groceries, but I want to increase our spending to $175 a week, I could say that our projected grocery budget is 200 dollars a week and that we are cutting our spending $25 a week when we are actually raising our spending from $150 to $175. In government we can be that misleading and tricky with voters. We can actually want to raise the Borough budget by $5 million, but so as to cover it up, we can state that we cut the spending by setting the projected spending up $10 million, cut that by $5 million, and then hope that the voters won't catch on that all the way along we wanted to raise the budget by $5 million. The principle I will live by is to never do or say anything that I have to hope nobody finds out about.

2. Vote for what is best.
An officeholder's only consideration is to vote for what's best. For instance, a Borough Assembly member's only concern on his voting should be what's best for the Borough. Voting for what he knows is wrong in order to advance his political career, to please high ranking people in his party, and to please those who helped him in his campaign has no place!

3. Having a thick skin
A person should have the quality of learning from criticism. Issues need to be discussed from all angles. It is a shame for a person to act like he is a mistreated victim because people disagree with him. A candidate should never feel that those who disagree with him are his enemies.

2. What top five principles do you try to live by ? Why?

1. Persistence
A person shouldn't give up when the going gets rough.

2. Courage
A person needs to stand for what is right regardless of what the latest poll says. His consideration should not be on what the majority of the voters want, but on what is right. An adviser to President Reagan spoke to him about what the polls said. President Reagan told the adviser to not tell him any more about what the polls said , but to tell him about what was best for the American people.

3. Kindness
A person needs to be kind to everyone. That kindness needs to be shown to everyone, including his toughest opponent. He needs to run a positive campaign.

4. Humility
When a person is criticized he should try to learn by the criticism. It is always wrong for a political candidate to take the attitude that he know it all. He should never have a defensive attitude. Wanting to prove you're right and the critic wrong is our of order. Any person should always be ready to apologize when that is needed. President Abraham Lincoln mailed a letter of apology to the Union General in the Civil War, U. S. Grant, for what he had instructed him to do as General.

5. Thankfulness
There is always things to complain about, but there is always a lot to be thankful for. Having a cheerful, upbeat attitude is a necessity.

I will try to live by these principles because to me these are essential. I want to be held accountable for what I say I believe.

3.What makes a community a great place to live?

What makes a community a great place to live is the quality of the people living in it. You can have the greatest employment opportunities, educational opportunities, booming businesses, wonderful tourist attractions, but what counts first and foremost is the quality of the people in the community.

4.Have you ever made missteps in your political career? Care to elaborate or say what you would do differently today?

I haven't had a political career. I applied to be State Representative from District 11 when there was a vacancy in 2009, and now I'm running for the Borough Assembly.

5.Many politicians (whether they run for Senate or School Board) always claim their best for the job due to experience, is experience all its cut out to be or are there more attributes we should be looking for?

Experience is good, but I believe that is is greatly overrated. There are more attributes that we should be looking for. One thing that I believe is important is that especially next year when candidates are running in a primary that they be asked a simple question. They need to be asked that in the event they lose the primary,that they will accept the primary result and not run a write in campaign. The majority vote of the people in primaries should be final.

When people stress only experience in a political candidate, I wish that they would think of the four great Presidents who are honored at Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. If at the time of them assuming the Presidency, how inspiring would their resumes have been if they had resumes back then?

George Washington was greatly embarrassed when as a British leader in the French and Indian War, it spread far and wide that he was forced to surrender to the French forces. In 1755 he ran for the Virginia House Of Burgesses in a three way race and came out a poor third, receiving less that 10% of the vote!

Thomas Jefferson in the Revolutionary war as Governor of Virginia fled from the State Capital because of British opposition. I don't say that with any hint of criticism about him, but I believe that his background coming to the Presidency was not altogether glamorous.

Abraham Lincoln lost seven political races before becoming President. His office holding experience consisted of 8 years(1834-1842) as a member of the Illinois State Legislature, and of 2 years(1847-1849) as a Congressman from Illinois.

Theodore Roosevelt became Vice President Of The United States after only 2 years as Governor of New York, and President after having been Vice President for 6 months and 10 days.

This hows me that there is more to be considered than experience.

I don't have a website yet, but I am working to get one. I'll let you know when it is up. I don't have a blog.

I thank you again for your questions, Ms. Robinson, and I will welcome your further input about government and politics. My home phone is 490-6966 and I reside at 1130 Glenn St. North Pole, Ak 99705.

Assembly Seat E: John Kohler Jr. Round 1 Q & A

Mr. Kohler responded in a respectable amount of time. Here are his answers.

I'll be rolling out my web site about September 1st, which should answer many of these questions @ www.kohler4assembly.com but until then, please let me try to answer your questions about my candidacy for seat E in order:


What would you say are the top 3 attributes in a candidate?
1. Heart for service
2. Ability to learn from others
3. Experience in working through problems with private sector (business) ,public , and non-profit enterprises. Some of the best solutions for problems come from Synergies between the different kinds of organizations. I hate those kinds of buzz words, but sometimes they are aptly used.


What top five principles do you try to live by? Why? 1. Love your neighbor (why else would a guy put himself through a campaign- YUK) . 2. Work Hard (nobody like a slacker). 3. Enjoy Helping( I do a lot of non-public helping with non-profits I care about) 4. Don't be afraid to try (and try hard) 5. KNow when to get help- (only about always- many hands make light work- and a person will rarely think of or be an expert on everything).


What makes a community a great place to live? Good people, and great opportunities to succeed. I am a fan of our borough in this regard.

Have you ever made missteps in your political career? My "political career" mostly consists of an appoint to the State Council on the Arts. My misstep was thinking that a statewide appoint/responsability would trump what I can accomplish working locally. I prefer local helping. it's easioer to wrap your mind and arms around problems that are within easy reach. When offered a shot at re-upping my State appointment I declined, and rejoined my local non-profit's board.


Many politicians (whether they run for Senate or School Board) always claim their best for the job due to “experience”, is experience all its cut out to be or are there more attributes we should be looking for? I think experience can count for alot. That being said, fresh energy and ideas and perspective is what refreshes the republic. I think everyone should have their turn in the barrel. I think experience is gained in local offices, and generally builds upon itself to the benefit of the folks represented. This is my first real stab at public office. I think my experience in business, Non-profits and light government service puts me in a good place to be a start up public servant.

Assembly Seat E: Ed King Round 1 Q & A

Mr. King was quick to respond to my email too. He did his answers essay style so first here are the initial questions I asked:

What would you say are the top 3 attributes in a candidate?
What top five principles do you try to live by? Why?
What makes a community a great place to live?
Have you ever made missteps in your political career? Care to elaborate or say what you would do differently today?
Many politicians (whether they run for Senate or School Board) always claim their best for the job due to “experience”, is experience all its cut out to be or are there more attributes we should be looking for?

Now for his answers:

I would like to start by thanking you for taking the time to be informed and asking important and intelligent questions. If you don't mind, I will answer your questions in a narrative rather than short answers to the independent questions.

I believe that elected officials are intended to provide 2 main functions. First, they should represent the interests of the people by examining issues and making decisions on their behalf. In this way, the individual citizens don't have to be bogged down by every issue and can instead focus on other aspects of their lives while knowing that someone else is representing them. Second, they should set the rules which balance protecting freedom with protecting health and well-being for the citizens they are serving. In order to achieve these aims, a political leader must be intelligent enough to deeply understand the issues at hand, honest about what they hope to achieve and have the integrity to be consistent in their decision making in the face of adversity. That is why I know I am a good leader and public servant. I live my life based on the those very principles: open-mindedness, humility, compassion, integrity, and honesty.

I believe that it is a society that understands and respects it's fellow members that makes a community great. This community is among the greatest in the world because of the mentality it maintains in respecting each other's freedom and individuality while being willing to provide a helping hand when it is needed. I want to ensure that this community remains a great place to raise a family. That includes maintaining an economy which provides income opportunity, affordable housing and energy, great educational opportunity and a healthy and safe environment. As an economist, I believe in letting the free market work so long as it is working, but I also believe in correcting its failures.

This is my first venture into politics directly, but I have been a public servant for my entire adult life. I spent 6 years in the Army, right out of high school, including a year in Iraq protecting our troops and Iraqi civilians from roadside bombs. I continue to serve and protect people in need through volunteer efforts and I continue to advance my understanding of the complex system in which we live through graduate level classes to add to my economics degree from the University of Washington. I do believe that experience is important if the person uses it as an intellectual foundation to examine what has worked as well as learning from mistakes. However, many times that experience can also lead to a reliance on tradition and an excuse not to examine a situation from the current context. Although I have not yet held a public office, I am very familiar with weighing costs and benefits as well as making tough decisions. Leading a group of soldiers in combat requires that they trust you are looking out for them, I carry that same mentality into office as I lead the good people of the North Star Borough.