The Issues

• The Economy
• Healthcare
• Freedom
• Immigration
• Social Issues
• Social Security
• Energy
• Transportation
• Federal Reserve
• Education
• NASA
• Taxes
• War and Peace

The Economy

Our economy is in the worst recession since 1932 and the start of the Great Depression. Our leaders have chosen to spend money on government programs and raise taxes. This is exactly the wrong thing to do and will only lead to more government controls, regulations and taxes. We did not recover from the 1930's depression until 1950, when a wave of freedom spilled over from the war years. Japan has tried unsuccessfully to spend its way out of recession now for 20 years. Every business person knows that in a time of recession, it needs to cut spending, save money and prepare for the next economic boom. Only governments do not get the message. In spite of numerous failures and a flawed theory (Keynesian economics has never worked), governments continue to pursue this path. It leads to more government and a socialist takeover of our Republic which is the real objective.

When I become your Congressman, I will work to repeal the economic recovery program and its ruinous spending. Our bonds may lose their AAA credit rating which will lead to higher interest rates and a bigger deficit. I will also work to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Stop giving the money to big corporations and return it to the people in the form of tax cuts.

This is the only way to bring back lost jobs and to restore a healthy economy. If we continue to go down the path of more government, we will wind up in a permanent recession like the 1930's, or worse a socialist takeover of our Republic.

Next, I support the bill to audit the Federal Reserve. My Constitution says that Congress has the power to control our money. It cannot give it away to a private bank with anonymous owners. The powers of the Fed should be curtailed, not increased as proposed.

Health Care

I find nothing good in the new medical care law. It will raise the price of medical care just like all prior government programs. It will affect the quality, cost and quantity of health care for everyone. This is the "Universal Health Care" we are getting. Here are some examples. Medicare reimbursement to doctors was reduced by 21% on April 1, 2010. More doctors will refuse Medicare patients. Of course, Congress will fix that in a future bill by requiring all doctors to take Medicare patients. Forty-nine per cent of doctors polled say they will retire early causing a shortage of doctors. Forcing the insurance companies to take patients with "preexisting conditions" will force the insurance companies to RAISE the rates by as much as 30% for everyone else to cover this expense. If the objective had been to insure the claimed 32 million people without coverage, this could have been done with 50 pages of law. The new law is 2,700 pages of over-regulation and new taxation. The worst law may be the one requiring everyone to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. In order to enforce this law, 16,000 new IRS agents will be hired. Penalties go as high as $300 per day for not buying your health insurance. Why will 32 million people get a free ride and others get to "experience" a visit from the IRS? The first version or this law was 1,000 pages. It was rejected by voters. The next one was 2,000 pages. Again, it was rejected. The final bill which is now law is 2,700 pages. What kind of Congress persons do we have? Why do they not listen to the public? Congressman Adam Smith voted for this bill Elect Jim Postma and retire Adam Smith.

As a boy, when we went to the doctor, we paid for medical care just like any other service we used. We wrote the doctor a check. Yes, he made more money than we did; but we managed. After forty years of government subsidies, regulations, and taxes, the price of health care has soared to almost $8,000 per person per year, which is draining our bank accounts. The doctors, insurance companies, lawyers, courts, medical companies, HMO's, and drug companies get it. In their bill, Democrats do not even address legal reform, which is a very big cost item. Why? Because many are lawyers and are benefiting from the high legal costs. In our free enterprise system, the risk-takers are rewarded with a compensating profit. Why is it so expensive? We have a medical, pharmaceutical, legal, insurance, and government complex that drives up the prices.

When individuals took the medical risk, they paid for it as they needed it. Now a huge demand for very expensive medical services, created by a "free" system, is overwhelming the supply and creating a financial bubble in medical services that will burst just like the stock market bubble and the real estate bubble. That is, if we let it. Putting another 32 million people into this medical services bubble will blow it up even bigger. The result will be rationing of services just as in Canada and the UK. If you are not a good investment, because you are too old or too sick, you will be denied the service. Even if you are approved, you will have to wait a long time. The government hopes that you will die before they have to pay for it. There is a big medical practice in Bellingham, Washington, which provides medical services for Canadian citizens who cannot get their free medical service in Canada.

So what is the answer?

First, help me repeal the new medical care law by electing me, Jim Postma, to Congress in the Washington 9th Congressional district. You do not have to be a registered voter in the 9th to help. Please ask me how.

Next, take control of your health. It is your body, not the doctors’ to "practice" on. You have only one life. Make it a good one with long life. Drugs are great but look at other options first. Do you know that taking drugs increases your life insurance rates? Look at alternative medical practices. There are many good doctors in this field. Simple basics like exercise and nutrition are required for a high quality of life.

Freedom

For forty years, I have been fighting socialism and communism, a mostly external threat ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Books were written in the 1960's and 1970's about the dangers of socialism. Now we have real data on the results of socialism within the USSR, Cuba, China, and North Korea. Actually, China saw the end coming so they hired the prominent economist, Milton Freedman, to explain how free market capitalism works. Now they are a world-class economic powerhouse. Now the big question is whether economic freedom will lead to political and religious freedom in China.

Recent political events in Europe show that even a democratic welfare state can suffer the same results. Greece and possibly Portugal and other Euro Zone nations are having hard times because of excessive social programs.

We are moving rapidly towards socialism. When the Socialist party disbanded, the leader stated that the American people will never accept socialism; therefore, it must be sold to the people one liberal program at a time. We, too, will fail if this trend is not stopped. I was a Paul Revere in 2008 warning that the socialists are coming. Now they are here. They are running the country. They will not stop until they achieve total government. This is war! A war they have declared. Do not ignore it.

Our government entitlement programs including Social Security and Medicare are giant Ponzi schemes which will bankrupt the nation. They depend on taxes from workers to pay the retired. No one under the age of 40 expects to get any money out of it. These programs must be made fiscally sound and the money invested to provide for the workers’ retirement.

Another threat to the Republic is Muslim Jihad. We need to stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are using the money to teach Jihad and are attacking us in Iraq and infiltrating our domestic institutions.

Some environmentalists want us to stop using oil and want us to have no more cars or airplanes for the public. Only Al Gore and his friends will have access to airplanes and cars. Their theories have been shown to be false and their data and tactics rigged. These are the same people who stopped the Supersonic Transport. I will work for enhanced onshore domestic oil production and advanced transportation systems.

Another threat is from ordinary criminals. These criminals have been emboldened by lax penal laws passed by your state legislators. We need to feel safe in our environment.

All of these threats are working together to undermine our Republic.

Immigration

Our Immigration laws appear adequate and work well for legal immigration. My biggest concern is that the laws deter immigration from the nations from which the majority of this country was populated. I favor immigration laws that encourage all people to come to America much as they did one hundred years ago.

We have enough laws regarding illegal immigration, but we need to enforce them. Some states give benefits to illegal immigrants which complicates the issue.

Illegal immigration, mostly from and through Mexico, is a serous problem and has become more so since 9/11. This movement has raised security risks. We clearly need to strengthen our borders, intercept illegals and return them home. Border States could help by denying health care, education and other services to illegals. We are very lax in dealing with this problem. Mexican laws are stricter and are enforced.

What should we do with the millions of illegals now in this country? Can we return these people, with American-born children, back to their homeland? We cannot repatriate these parents and leave the children here, nor can we send these children somewhere other than home with their parents. Should we send the children back with their parents? The Supreme Court needs to decide if the American-born children of illegal immigrants are citizens.

In 1996, President Clinton signed an Executive Order which required that states and businesses provide up to thirty-two national languages to correspond with the illegal immigrants in their native language. He did this without the permission of Congress. This is a bad idea. President Theodore Roosevelt and other presidents have warned of the problems associated with not integrating minorities into the population. This situation creates friction and strife between the Americans and the immigrant class and creates a class struggle which can be exploited. This was a classical communist technique when overtaking a nation. My parents and grandparents came to this country wanting to become American and learned to speak English. Norwegian, Dutch, German, Chinese and many other nationalities integrated in this country. There was no need to make English our official language (there is no such requirement presently) because everyone wanted to speak English. The Federal government spends between three and five billion dollars yearly translating documents. We should pass the bill to make English our official language and require everyone to speak English. Eighty-two per cent of the Americans, when polled, believe English should be the Official Language of the United States. Intense lobbying pressure keeps politicians from passing the English Language Unity Act.

Social Security

Social Security runs a surplus at this time. Collections in taxes exceed distributions. This will reverse at some time in the future when taxes will be insufficient to cover distributions. Unfortunately, the entire surplus is routinely spent on other government programs by borrowing from the surplus. There is no way to pay for the expected shortfall with the present system.

One candidate proposes to raise social security taxes at this time to cover the future deficit. This would only make the situation worse because the surplus would still be spent; and, when the shortfall occurs, it will be more difficult to raise taxes on taxes already raised. Public dissatisfaction will be huge if we raise taxes now and then ask for more taxes later for the same purpose. What did we do with the money? Congress spent it on other programs. You see why raising taxes won’t work.

The Social Security system is not an insurance program; it has been ruled by the US Supreme Court to be only a taxation system. The surplus is NOT invested.

If an insurance company issued annuities or life insurance policies like this, they would be hauled into court. There is only one way to solve this looming problem. The surplus in the Social Security trust fund should be invested in legitimate investments which give conservative returns much like all insurance companies are now required to do. Congress should immediately return the money to the trust fund from which they borrowed and authorize it to be invested in our American Capitalist system.

Medicare and health care may be included in this program.

Energy

Electricity is produced in this country by a variety of energy sources including coal, nuclear, oil, natural gas, and hydroelectric.

Oil

Thirty years ago we decided not to drill for oil in our ecologically sensitive areas, as defined by environmentalists, forcing the oil companies to buy the oil we needed from other countries. We have more petroleum in these reserves than in all of the middle-eastern states. At the time, gas was $1.50 per gallon. Now, India and China are developing their economies and want their share of the world oil supply, which greatly increases the world oil demand. With a fixed supply of oil and increasing demand, it is clear that the price will go higher and higher until some users are squeezed out of the market. Some of us will have to park our cars and seek other transportation. Will it be you who will give up your car? Will it be me? What will we do with all the surplus cars? What will happen to our auto industry? What will this do to our economy? The airlines are parking airplanes and laying off flight crews now. This appears to be a no-brainier decision. We simply must drill. But we can drill responsibly and pay attention to ecological concerns. We have the technical skills to extract the oil without harming the environment. We cannot hesitate, litigate, and procrastinate on this issue any longer. Canada is developing its tar sands fields similar to our oil shale fields and is using its offshore fields. So is Venezuela. When I was a rocket engineer, we had a technical decision to make which was holding up the development of the moon rockets. Wehrer Von Braun, who was in charge of the project, listened to the engineers and then declared, "We had better make up our mind tomorrow because the rocket was going to launch in one year." We gave him a “yes” and did it. Let us give the oil companies a “go” to get this oil. We should also be investing the surplus social security trust funds in the oil companies so that they will have the capital to get the oil. For more on this, please see the section on Social Security.

What about alternative energy? Can we develop it instead of drilling for more oil? We are making some progress on alternative energy.

We are using windmills and making alcohol from corn and diesel fuel from soybeans. The windmill effort is good and growing slowly but requires subsidies. Making food into fuel is economically unsound. We could make all of our corn into fuel and not solve the energy shortage. This program should be downgraded. Its main effect has been to contribute to food poverty in poorer nations and to create a worldwide food shortage.

We need to start making nuclear power plants again. Thirty years ago, we had a type of nuclear power that reduced the waste disposal problem. Incredibly, for political reasons, we did not develop this but gave it to the French who are doing great things with it. Their high-speed trains use it, and they have electric cars that use it. France is 80% energy independent because of it. We need to send a Congressional delegation to France to see how they do it. Now that we need this power, we are going to have to hire French and Japanese engineers to develop it here. We are becoming a second-rate nation in energy technology.

Electric cars have been competing with gasoline and diesel for one hundred years and have always lost because of energy storage, recharging and range considerations. You refill your gas tank in just a few minutes and can drive for hundreds of miles The electric car needs an overnight charge and has limited range. The gas car stores about sixty pounds of fuel to do this. The electric cars’ batteries weigh hundreds of pounds, take up too much space, are expensive, and need to be replaced frequently. Newer-type batteries will help these problems but will not solve them. We have spent a lot of money improving pollution of gasoline-powered cars, and they may have less pollution than electric cars powered by polluting power plants in the desert. Electric cars powered by electricity from nuclear power plants create little pollution. Any reliance on electric power will require huge improvements in electric power transmission. I do not see the electric car becoming a substitute for gasoline or diesel powered vehicles anytime soon.

Natural gas-powered buses in cities have low pollution. They have a large fuel tank on the roof to hold the fuel, which is not practical for cars and trucks and would impact their cargo/ passenger capacity.

Conclusions

There is no substitute for oil in our economy. It will continue to be used for cars, trucks, railroads and airplanes as fuel. There are many other uses for oil including plastics, drugs, roofing, etc. For national security reasons, we need to reduce our reliance on imported oil so we need to increase our domestic production. Nuclear is the best choice in alternative energy. There have been many advances in nuclear in safety, size, and economy. Some work is going on in fusion energy in which we are partnering with other nations and which will be a great leap forward in technology.

Transportation

Our automobiles have improved greatly over the last fifty years. They are now capable of sustained safe speeds much greater than allowed by speed laws. These laws mainly reflect drivers abilities and our driver-training programs. In Europe, driver education is much more extensive; and they allow higher maximum speeds on their high-speed roads. I propose that we implement a similar program to make better use of our interstate highway system and to reduce long-distance travel time.

Aviation Initiative

All segments of the United States Aviation Community are suffering economic stress, which is primarily caused by unfavorable government and political actions. High fuel costs, other operating costs, prices of replacement parts, and restrictive government regulations are causing hard times in aviation which also affect the greater economy.

History

The first fifty years of aviation saw great progress from the Wright Brothers to the Jet Age. We went from crude gliders to Jet Travel making affordable world travel possible. Specialized aircraft began appearing in the 1930's for commercial and military uses. Most other aircraft were classified as general aviation. These General Aviation Aircraft are the seeds for training aviators for commercial and military aviation.

Commercial

Commercial aircraft progressed rapidly to the Jet Age. In the 1970's, supersonic transports were being designed. In the USA, environmentalists claimed that the airplane would damage the atmosphere, endangering the earth and causing noise pollution with sonic booms. These claims were later proved to be false; but the political damage was done, and the Boeing Company had to stop the production design. A combined French/ British company finished its design and produced a number of aircraft operated by Air France and British Airlines. Air France quit service, but British Air continued service of the Concorde until 2005. The airplane always lost money. The US SST was larger and may have been profitable. Could a modern composite SST be successful? Commercial sub-orbital flight could go anywhere in the world in less than one hour. A small company may offer sub-orbital flight for recreational use.

In conclusion, very little progress has been made in speed in the last fifty years. Range and economy have improved because of engine refinements . Flight deck design and control has also improved because of modern electronics. This lack of progress is almost entirely attributed to government actions caused by environmental concerns. Environmental concerns are also prohibiting oil production in the USA on government lands greatly increasing the cost of aviation fuel which causes the cost of air travel to go up. If this trend continues, the public may lose the ability to travel the world. I will introduce bills in Congress for advanced forms of transportation.

Military and NASA

Military aircraft have been subjected to fewer environmental and political pressures and have progressed greatly. Supersonic high altitude flight has been achieved. Satellites protect us and provide navigation.

NASA has reached the moon with manned missions and the planets with unmanned missions. Some of these programs are truly exciting and have achieved great benefits. We are continuing space exploration, but it is always subject to political review. The current administration is unfavorable to space exploration. They are wasting tons of money on stimulus programs but are cutting the NASA budget.

General Aviation

All aviation except commercial, military and NASA, is considered General Aviation and consists mostly of small aircraft which have many uses in personal, commercial, and government programs. Personal aircraft flourished until the fuel crisis began in the 1980's. High aviation fuel prices have priced many pleasure fliers out of aviation. Manufacturer liability has been passed from the aircraft manufacturer to the parts’ suppliers, making parts and maintenance very expensive. High fuel costs are the biggest problem. These problems are so severe that very few piston engine aircraft have been made since 1980. These aircraft and their use are facing extinction. An important use is as training aircraft. Military pilots are staying in service until retirement so we need small aircraft to train future airline pilots. Even the military pilots get their first flight experience in small aircraft.

An exception to this has been the corporate jet market. Business has found it to be an essential executive tool. The current unfavorable image is hurting this market with political pressure on executive use. Personal use is also being hurt by the recession.

Program

First and foremost, we must have lower fuel prices. Without a reliable, inexpensive supply, there will be more trouble in all of aviation. General Aviation will become extinct. Airline use will be restricted to VIP's and politicians. The oil companies know where the oil is. Environmentalists pressure the government to prevent use of our oil on federal lands and refinery development. The environmental issue is mainly political. The science behind it is very weak. These environmentalists are the same neo-luddites that stopped the Super Sonic Transport. Al Gore is a politician and is not an environmental scientist. A petition saying that the global warming theory is invalid has been signed by 17,000 scientists. Note that the proponents of global warming have changed the name to climate change because the earth is actually cooling. We are the only nation on earth that does not use its oil. The government could be making money by collecting royalties on oil production instead of subsidizing alternative energy. The electric car has been non competitive with the gasoline car for over 100 years and has always lost.

General Aviation needs lower-cost parts. This is partly regulatory since laws have passed liability from the airframe manufacturers to the manufacturers and suppliers of the parts. We need tort reform. The legal/judicial system is killing small aviation with outlandish and frivolous lawsuits.

General Aviation is in better shape in the United States than in other parts of the world where it is almost nonexistent due to high taxes, regulations, and an unfavorable political environment. Please do not let this happen here. We need to protect our existing aviation resources and infrastructure. Organizations such as Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association do a good job on this issue, but General Aviation is under constant attack sometimes by Commercial Aviation. Commercial Aviation bites the hand that feeds them as they will become increasingly dependent on General Aviation for pilots.

I propose that a regional program and later a national program be started to ensure the viability of General Aviation based on the issues as above. I am working hard for this issue using my Congressional candidacy. I have been an exhibitor at the Northwest Aviation Trade Show and Fair and will be an exhibitor at the upcoming Northwest Experimental Aviation Fly In at Arlington, Washington, July 7-11 . There are organizations working to advance General Aviation but none combining all of the necessary elements as outlined above. I encourage organizations and individuals to support my political efforts.