Hugo Schulz's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
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Oregon State Legislative Election 2010 Political Courage Test
| Pro-choice | a) Do you consider yourself pro-choice or pro-life? | ||
| No | b) Should abortion be legal only within the first trimester of pregnancy? | ||
| Yes | c) Should abortion be legal when the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape? | ||
| Yes | d) Should abortion be legal when the life of the woman is endangered? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support requiring parental notification before an abortion is performed on a minor? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support requiring parental consent before an abortion is performed on a minor? | ||
| Yes | g) Do you support sexual education programs that include information on abstinence, contraceptives, and HIV/STD prevention methods? | ||
| No | h) Do you support abstinence-only sexual education programs? | ||
| I oppose all government funded abortions becasue it violates the religious beliefs of some people by forcing them to pay for them through their taxes. I believe that abortion is wrong, but the decision should be between a woman and her conscience. Those who are strongly against abortion should contribute to organizations that minimize the need for them (pregnancy prevention) or in post-pregnancy situations fund adoption organizations. | |||
1) State SpendingIndicate what state funding levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one level per category- you can use a number more than once.2) State TaxesIndicate what state tax levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one level per category- you can use a number more than once.3) Budget StabilizationIndicate which proposals you support (if any) for balancing Oregon's budget.
| Maintain Status | a) Education (higher) | ||
| Maintain Status | b) Education (K-12) | ||
| Slightly Decrease | c) Environment | ||
| Maintain Status | d) Health care | ||
| Greatly Decrease | e) Law enforcement | ||
| Slightly Decrease | f) Transportation and highway infrastructure | ||
| Maintain Status | g) Welfare | ||
| Maintain Status | a) Alcohol taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | b) Cigarette taxes | ||
| Slightly Decrease | c) Corporate taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | d) Gasoline taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | e) Property taxes | ||
| Slightly Decrease | f) Income taxes (low-income families) | ||
| Slightly Decrease | g) Income taxes (middle-income families) | ||
| Slightly Decrease | h) Income taxes (high-income families) | ||
| Yes | a) Tapping into Oregon's "rainy day" fund | ||
| Yes | b) Redirecting excess income tax collections to a permanent "rainy day" fund | ||
| Yes | c) Issuing the early release of certain non-violent offenders | ||
| No | d) Increasing tuition rates at public universities | ||
| Yes | e) Instituting mandatory furloughs and layoffs for state employees | ||
| No | f) Reducing benefits for Medicaid recipients | ||
| Yes | g) Privatizing certain government services | ||
| We need to stop holding teachers hostage to extort more taxes out of Oregonians by funding education first. At the same time we must respect diversity by giving parents choice of educational options, which in many cases are lower cost, whether charter, online, private or home-based. We can't pull the safety out from under people, but we must strive towards voluntary giving which is the true basis of community. Why has crime decreased yet prison costs have gone up? Re-legalize marijuana and reduce law enforcement costs. Oregon can once again flourish, but only if State spending growth rates are reduced. | |||
| I trust Oregonians. If allowed to keep more of their hard-earned income, they'll create jobs and help their neighbors. We have a spending problem in Oregon, not a taxing problem. Oregonians' income has been stagnant or decreased over the last 4 years while state government spending has increased on average nearly 10% in each of the last 4 years. Higher or middle-income earners pay proportionally higher taxes. If they've made money illegally then arrest and convict them, don't punish successful small business entrepreneurs who create jobs. Businesses don't pay taxes; you do when you pay more for goods and services. | |||
| Governor Kulongoski's Reset Committee projects an increasing disparity between Oregonians' ability to pay and projected State spending due significantly to increased State employee compensation. 3 out of 4 General Fund dollars goes to payroll. The Committee's recommendations amount to a savings of $1.5 billion over the next 4 years and includes requiring State employees to contribute more toward their benefits more comparable to private sector employees. All government funding methods have downsides. That's why a sufficiently large "rainy day' fund that grows in "fat" years to be available during "lean" years is needed as a cushion. | |||
d) Do you support limits on the following types of contributions to candidates for state government?
| Yes | a) Do you support limits on the number of terms for Oregon governors? | ||
| No | b) Do you support limits on the number of terms for Oregon state legislators? | ||
| No | c) Should the Oregon state legislature be required to convene in annual sessions? | ||
| No | 1) Individual | ||
| No | 2) Political Action Committee | ||
| No | 3) Corporate | ||
| No | 4) Political Party | ||
| Yes | e) Should candidates for state office be encouraged to meet voluntary spending limits? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support requiring full and timely disclosure of campaign finance information? | ||
| To take the money out of political campaigns reduce the power of the State to redistribute money. The purpose of government is to protect individual rights. Government ignores that purpose when it violates the rights of some individuals for the privileges of other individuals whether those privileged people are part of a corporation, a lawyer who gets a $20 taxpayer-subsidized light-rail ride downtown or musicians playing a concert in the park. PACs, corporations and political parties are each made up of individuals. If an individual action is legal, shouldn't the action be legal when done by a group of individuals? | |||
| No | a) Do you support capital punishment for certain crimes? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support alternatives to incarceration for certain non-violent offenders, such as mandatory counseling or substance abuse treatment? | ||
| Yes | c) Should the possession of small amounts of marijuana be decriminalized? | ||
| No | d) Should minors accused of a violent crime be prosecuted as adults? | ||
| No | e) Should minors who send sexually-explicit or nude photos by cell phone face criminal charges? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support the enforcement of federal immigration laws by state and local police? | ||
| With respect to capital punishment, I am pro-life. I believe in the possibility of redemption which can't happen if you're dead. However, the convicted should serve their time even if it's life. Drug and drug-related crimes make up a large portion of our prisons and incarceration doesn't seem to work to prevent repeat offenses. Let's try a different approach by at least re-legalizing marijuana. The drug war has created more crime and destroyed many lives unnecessarily. If someone cut in line at Starbucks, would you be upset? How do legal immigrants feel about the "uninvited" cutting in line? | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support reducing government regulations on the private sector? | ||
| No | b) Do you support increased state funding for job-training programs that re-train displaced workers? | ||
| No | c) Do you support expanding access to unemployment benefits? | ||
| No | d) Do you support providing financial incentives to the private sector for the purpose of job creation? | ||
| No | e) Do you support increased spending on infrastructure projects for the purpose of job creation? | ||
| No | f) Do you support providing direct financial assistance to homeowners facing foreclosure? | ||
| To get Oregon's economy going we need to reduce spending so we can decrease money extraction from Oregonians, reduce unneeded regulations, licenses and fees, reduce changes affecting commerce to create an atmosphere of certainty, and facilitate export markets whether overseas or in other States - find out what they want and grow it, make it or invent it. Government intervention has not worked out very well. We've spent billions on the war on drugs, the war on poverty, and just plain war. While we can't end intervention over night, let's move towards a voluntary society. | |||
| No | a) Do you support national education standards? | ||
| No | b) Do you support requiring public schools to administer high school exit exams? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support using a merit pay system for teachers? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support state funding for charter schools? | ||
| No | e) Do you support the state government providing college students with financial aid? | ||
| No | f) Should illegal immigrants who graduate from Oregon high schools be eligible for in-state tuition at public universities? | ||
| The US in general spends more per student than any developed country and yet our students fall in the bottom half of other developed countries in math and science. Let parents choose the school that best meets their child's learning style whether it be traditional public, charter, online, private or home-based. Many of these other educational options are lower cost. For example, there's a waiting list to get into online charter schools and yet the legislature has capped this lower cost solution. There should be some independent testing of basics, but teaching to the test is not education. | |||
| No | a) Do you support state funding for the development of alternative energy? | ||
| No | b) Do you support state funding for the development of traditional domestic energy sources (e.g. coal, natural gas, oil)? | ||
| No | c) Do you support providing financial incentives to farms that produce biofuel crops? | ||
| No | d) Do you support state funding for improvements to Oregon's energy infrastructure? | ||
| No | e) Do you support state funding for open space preservation? | ||
| No | f) Do you support enacting environmental regulations aimed at reducing the effects of climate change? | ||
| Oregon should reclaim the millions of acres of federal lands (53.1% of the state - a lot of open space) so Oregon can control its environmental and resource destiny. Increased solar and wind is great, but until the storage problem is solved, back-up gas or nuclear plants have to be built to meet power requirements when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. Until peak oil makes alternatives economically viable, taxpayer subsidies of alternative energy will reduce our prosperity and particularly hurt the poorest of our neighbors. Subsidizing one thing deprives another; the pie is only so big. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns? | ||
| No | b) Do you support requiring background checks on gun sales between private citizens at gun shows? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support allowing individuals to carry concealed guns? | ||
| No | d) Do you support requiring a license for gun possession? | ||
| All people should have the right to defend themselves, so there should be minimal restrictions on gun purchase and posession. A parent or guardian should sign-off on a minor's purchase. A person currently undergoing psychiatric treatment might be restricted depending on the problem; however, assigning mental illness to get rid of political dissenters was a tool of the Soviets. If a convicted felon has paid his/her dues shouldn't they have a right to defend themselves? History is rife with the birth of dictatorships beginning with first licensing, then confiscating and finally banning firearms, e.g. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. | |||
| No | a) Do you support a universally-accessible, publicly-administered health insurance option? | ||
| No | b) Do you support expanding access to health care through commercial health insurance reform? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support interstate health insurance compacts? | ||
| No | d) Should individuals be required to purchase health care insurance? | ||
| No | e) Do you support monetary limits on damages that can be collected in malpractice lawsuits? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support continuing to allow physician-assisted suicide in Oregon? | ||
| Yes | g) Do you support allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana to their patients for medicinal purposes? | ||
| Although I have read that malpractice lawsuits aren't as significant of contributors to health care costs as is commonly thought, they appear to be factors in certain types of physicians leaving the profession. While tempted to cap damages, I don't want to restrict justifiable compensation. Educating the public so that future jurors will make better decisions regarding compensation might be one approach. Having the loser pay the defendant's legal fees such as they have in other countries would also help. Physician-assisted suicide contradicts the Hippocratic Oath that physicians used to take and I find it disturbing, but won't oppose it. | |||
| No | a) Should marriage only be between one man and one woman? | ||
| Yes | b) Should Oregon allow same-sex couples to form domestic partnerships? | ||
| No | c) Do you support state funding for stem cell research? | ||
| No | d) Do you support state funding for embryonic stem cell research? | ||
| No | e) Do you support the state's use of affirmative action? | ||
| No | f) Do you support the inclusion of sexual orientation in Oregon's anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| No | g) Do you support the inclusion of gender identity in Oregon's anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| State-sanctioned marriage licenses are a legacy of racial bigotry used to prevent or minimize inter-racial marriages. Ideally, I would abolish all state-sanctioned marriage licenses. There should be a simple contractual legal form that would provide terms of commitment; something that would become recognized by governments and employers. The marriage can be sanctified in whatever way the couple wishes. There are only individual rights not group rights. "Grouping" is the seed of bigotry. The greatest respect for diversity is to value the individual. Individuals should have the right of association. Gays shouldn't be forced to admit a straight to their club. | |||
| 1. Get spending under control by requiring a prioritized budget for the General Fund and each department. 2. Pass a measure to implement a tuition tax credit for parental educational options. Since Oregon spends over $10,000 per student, a credit of $5,000 would allow the State to have $5000 extra to spend, perhaps on the more challenged children that some say will be left. Also, remove the cap on online charter schools - get into the 21st century. 3. Re-legalize Oregon-grown hemp. Exported hemp-derived food, fuel and fiber would bring income to the State. Tax medicinal hemp used in-state only. |
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