Lawrence Dale's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
Key
Official Position: Candidate addressed this issue directly by taking the Political Courage Test.
Inferred Position: Candidate refused to address this issue, but Vote Smart inferred this issue based on the candidate's public record, including statements, voting record, and special interest group endorsements.
Unknown Position: Candidate refused to address this issue, or we could not infer an answer for this candidate despite exhaustive research of their public record.
Additional Information: Click on this icon to reveal more information about this candidate's position, from their answers or Vote Smart's research.
Other or Expanded Principles & Legislative Priorities are entered exactly as candidates submit them. Vote Smart does not edit for misspelled words, punctuation or grammar.
Candidates who qualify will be invited to take the 2020 Political Courage Test.
This candidate has responded to a Political Courage Test in a previous election. As a continued effort to provide the American public with factual information on candidates running for public office, these archived responses are made available here.
Wisconsin Congressional Election 2014 Political Courage Test
| Pro-choice | Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation? | ||
| Pro life positions are too circumspect by not seeking to build alliances with efforts to stop wealthy agribusiness corporations from despoiling our air, water, and food with massive applications of toxins doing more harm to fetal and infant development than abortions do. For example, one of every 119 live births are autistic today reflecting a 600 percent increase in autistic births since 1980. Atrazine, an agricultural herbicide banned in Europe , is permitted in the U.S. This, along with scores of other massively applied herbicides, pesticides contaminate our aquifers ,rivers , and other fresh water sources poisoning humans and wildlife. | |||
| Yes | In order to balance the budget, do you support reducing defense spending? | ||
| No | In order to balance the budget, do you support an income tax increase on any tax bracket? | ||
| We must defund all private military contractors and place all military operations/functions under the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Keeping operations in-house allows for more accountability and will save money. Keeping private contractors out assures there will be a lot less conflict of interest and more oversight. We cannot continue shifting the tax burden onto the working poor and middle class. Wiping out certain tax incentives that promote U.S. corporate capital flight to third world quasi narco states or out right police states like China will keep more jobs in the U.S. preserving what's left of our diminished manufacturing base. | |||
| Yes | Do you support the regulation of indirect campaign contributions from corporations and unions? | ||
| However to compare union ability to fund elections with corporations is misguided. Giving corporations use of unlimited funding from their massive corporate treasuries to interfere in political elections has effectively legalizing political bribery. The infamous 2010 U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United case is destructive to our democracy and those justices need to be removed for violating their oath of office and lying in their confirmation hearings about looking to precedent in making their rulings. | |||
| No | Do you support capital punishment for certain crimes? | ||
| The fact is too many people have been executed and later found to be innocent. We must never execute another- furthermore it's a violation of Judeo-Christian ethics/morality. | |||
| Yes | Do you support federal spending as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| Yes | Do you support lowering taxes as a way of promoting growth in the economy? | ||
| Yes | Do you support providing tax incentives to businesses for the purpose of job creation? | ||
| Republicans and Dems have supported corporate out-sourcing American manufacturing jobs by the millions since 2001. During economic down turns it's common practice to incentivize companies to expand but this assumes their is a demand for their products or services. Increased demand promotes growth but offshoring jobs reduces demand because the workers/communities that lost jobs can't spend. Therefore, taking steps to dis-incentivize corporate off-shoring /out-sourcing must be the focus. The tax incentives I would suggest would be to take away existing corporate tax write-offs were the business/corporation exposed using its profits primarily to off-shore more jobs than it created domestically | |||
| No | Do you support requiring states to implement education reforms in order to be eligible for competitive federal grants? | ||
| The pressure to blame someone or some group during national economic malaise brought on by the massive corporate outsourcing of U.S. manufacturing to a wage-slave police state, China has so seriously damaged our domestic economy that corporate demagogues using their massive corporate funding to create smoke and mirrors campaign to blame the still heavily unionized teaching sector as the culprit in our nations failing public schools. The fact is, during times of economic down-turn and especially since the financial crisis of 2008, the corporate sector points to the union sector again to misrepresent it as K-12 education's fiscal problems originator. | |||
| No | Do you support building the Keystone XL pipeline? | ||
| No | Do you support reducing restrictions on offshore energy production? | ||
| The focus of our country's energy future needs to be in sustainable arenas , not unsustainable energy solutions. To promote the production and distribution of the most environmentally damaging as the pipeline project does is at odds with our national commitment to arresting climate change through renewable energy resource development which means we should not be building fossil fuel infrastructure but instead our objective must be focused on solar and wind. Otherwise we must begin now making preparations to evacuate our nations coastal areas. | |||
| Yes | Do you believe that human activity is contributing to climate change? | ||
| Yes | Do you support the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions? | ||
| If you want to call corporations human which they're not, they're more like the Borg in Ray Bradbury's science fiction, Star Trek but they do commandeer human activity to carry out their centralized and narrowly focused commercial operations, like fracking. As an example of corporations via their elected proxies putting their narrow commercial interests ahead of the public well being, we must restore our nation's Clean Air and Water Act against exempted oil and gas drilling (fracking) corporations . They massively contaminate fresh water reserves at will. but what about our future generations ability to access fresh water resources? | |||
| Yes | Do you support restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns? | ||
| Gun show operations should not continue to be a legal unaccountable conduit for criminals and the mentally deranged to access dangerous instruments like guns. | |||
| No | Do you support repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act? | ||
| Although I have little faith that this band aid will do any good for long, it has proven itself to able to help millions of lower income individuals be protected from life destructive billings from healthcare providers. The fact is, the cause of the high demand for health care is causing much of the problem | |||
SpendingIndicate what federal spending levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one number per category; you can use a number more than once.TaxesIndicate what federal tax levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one number per category; you can use a number more than once.
| a) Agriculture | |||
| b) Arts | |||
| c) Defense | |||
| d) Education | |||
| e) Environment | |||
| f) Homeland Security | |||
| g) International aid | |||
| h) Medical Research | |||
| i) Scientific Research | |||
| j) Space exploration | |||
| k) United Nations | |||
| l) Welfare | |||
| m) Other or expanded categories | |||
| a) Capital gains taxes | |||
| b) Corporate taxes | |||
| c) Excise taxes (alcohol) | |||
| d) Excise taxes (cigarettes) | |||
| e) Excise taxes (transportation fuel) | |||
| f) Income taxes (low-income families) | |||
| g) Income taxes (middle-income families) | |||
| h) Income taxes (high-income families) | |||
| i) Inheritance taxes | |||
| j) Payroll taxes | |||
| k) Other or expanded categories | |||
Vote Smart does not permit the use of its name or programs in any campaign activity, including advertising, debates, and speeches.