Stephen Imholt's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
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Stephen Imholt has provided voters with clear stances on key issues by responding to the 2015 Political Courage Test.
Virginia State Legislative Election 2015 Political Courage Test
| a) Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation? | |||
| No | b) Should abortions be illegal after the first trimester of pregnancy? | ||
| Yes | c) Should abortion be legal when the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape? | ||
| No | 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? | ||
| No | f) Do you support requiring parental consent before an abortion is performed on a minor? | ||
| Yes | g) Do you support the prohibition of public funds for abortion procedures? | ||
| Yes | h) Do you support the prohibition of public funds for organizations that perform abortions? | ||
| Having actually read Roe vs Wade, I find my personal beliefs at odds with what I also belief my responsibilities as a legislator would be. Succinctly put, RoeVWade placed the legal intervention in support of the life of the child at the point where there was a 51% chance of survival. Prior to that 51% mark, RoeVWade limited the law as an invasion of privacy. In 1972, that point was at the 26th week of pregnancy, today that point is at 22 weeks. I would support legislation reducing to 22 weeks the period where privacy outweighed the child's rights. | |||
1) Budget Stabilization:Indicate which proposals you support (if any) for balancing Virginia's budget.2) State Spending:Using the key, indicate what state funding levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one level per category; you may use a number more than once.3) State Taxes:Using the key, indicate what state tax levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one level per category; you may use a number more than once.
| No | a) Tapping into Virginia's "rainy day" fund | ||
| Yes | b) Decreasing funding for public universities | ||
| Yes | c) Reducing state employee salaries AND/OR pensions | ||
| Yes | d) Instituting mandatory furloughs AND/OR layoffs for state employees | ||
| No | e) Reducing benefits for Medicaid recipients | ||
| Maintain Status | a) Education (higher) | ||
| Maintain Status | b) Education (K-12) | ||
| Maintain Status | c) Environment | ||
| Maintain Status | d) Health care | ||
| Maintain Status | e) Law enforcement/corrections | ||
| Maintain Status | f) Transportation/infrastructure | ||
| Maintain Status | g) Welfare | ||
| Maintain Status | a) Alcohol taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | b) Cigarette taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | c) Corporate taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | d) Small business taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | e) Gas/Oil taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | f) Property taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | g) Sales taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | h) Income taxes (low-income families) | ||
| Maintain Status | i) Income taxes (mid-income families) | ||
| Maintain Status | j) Income taxes (high-income families) | ||
| Reduce and eliminate the redundancy in many state commissions, departments, through a single personal data store, owned and secured by every state resident, accessed by any state agency which requires access, but where each access is documented for the owner to see. This would require that many agencies re-engineer their outmoded automated systems. Transition as much of the ongoing operations that are outward directing, that is, those which face the public to be delivered on a local level, not the state level, and to pay the state's fair share of property taxes for every locality where state offices exist. | |||
| I set each of the priorities to maintain status because it is impossible to prioritize ANY portion of the state government in it's current form. We have lost traceability of revenues to expenditures, we have lost the relative separation between local, state, and federal government, and worst we have lost any form or real representative government. Until we can get the state and local government levels operating in a true transparent manner, that is until the original budget, amended budget, and year to date actual costs are publicly available online, we cannot hope to set valid priorities | |||
| See my response to state spending for the reasons I set each status to maintain. In the highly unlikely event that we actually undertook the effort to provide transparency and traceability from our revenues to our expenditures within state government, then it would be appropriate to decide which sources of revenue should be changed. However, since it has become such common practice to move funds from one state operation to another, traceability is impractical without a complete re-engineering of the state government. I do support that re-engineering which itself will allow most of these taxes to be reduced. | |||
a) Do you support limits on the following types of contributions for state candidates?
| No | 1) Individual | ||
| No | 2) Political Action Committee | ||
| No | 3) Corporate | ||
| No | 4) Political Party | ||
| Yes | b) Should candidates for state office be encouraged to meet voluntary spending limits? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support requiring full and timely disclosure of campaign finance information? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support the use of an independent AND/OR bipartisan commission for redistricting? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support requiring a government-issued photo identification in order to vote at the polls? | ||
| For items 1-4, limits are simply a way of forcing candidates to be at best disingenuous, and more likely less honest. Please recognize that I make this statement when I have less than $500 in total campaign contributions at this time. For item d, I support using a method by which the total perimeter of all districts within the state are within 5% of the mathematical minimum. This would allow for some geographical limitations such as the James River to effectively serve as a boundary. Lastly, I support requiring photo ID for all residents of Virginia to use government services. | |||
| Yes | 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) Do you support legalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana? | ||
| d) Should a minor accused of a violent crime be prosecuted as an adult? | |||
| Yes | e) Do you support the enforcement of federal immigration laws by state and local police? | ||
| I did not respond to item d because there are multiple levels of violent crime, and there are multiple stages in a child's life. I do not support a 7 year old being prosecuted as an adult in any circumstance. I can see where a 16 year old could be guilty of a crime in such a way as requiring their prosecution as an adult, say a hypothetical murder for hire. Regarding item e, I would also like to see federal immigration laws enforced by federal officers. | |||
| No | a) Do you support government spending as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support lowering taxes as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support reducing government regulations on the private sector? | ||
| d) Do you support increased state funding for job-training programs that re-train displaced workers? | |||
| e) Do you support expanding access to unemployment benefits? | |||
| f) Do you support providing financial incentives to the private sector for the purpose of job creation? | |||
| No | g) Do you support providing direct financial assistance to homeowners facing foreclosure? | ||
| No | h) Do you support an increase of the minimum wage? | ||
| I believe our state and federal welfare systems are broken. That is why I left items d,e, and f blank. I believe state funds for all of these items should be provided to local neighborhood level government, to both insure the funds are spent appropriately, and to reduce the level of dependency. Please note, that when I say local neighborhood government, I mean government units with elected councils containing 4-10 thousand people. That is, a neighborhood | |||
| No | a) Do you support the national Common Core State Standards initiative? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support a merit pay system for teachers? | ||
| No | c) Is the tenure process for public school teachers producing effective teachers? | ||
| Yes | d) Should parents be allowed to use vouchers to send their children to any school? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support state funding for charter schools? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support the state government providing college students with financial aid? | ||
| No | g) Should illegal immigrants who graduate from Virginia high schools be eligible for in-state tuition at public universities? | ||
| Regarding item e, I believe in a full voucher system for all students. In effect that would provide local funding for charter schools. | |||
| No | a) Do you support state funding for the development of renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, thermal)? | ||
| 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 state funding for improvements to Virginia's energy infrastructure? | ||
| No | d) Do you support state funding for open space preservation? | ||
| No | e) Do you support government regulations of greenhouse gas emissions? | ||
| No | f) Do you support increased regulations of the hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") industry? | ||
| Until we clean up our government we cannot hope to clean up our environment. | |||
| a) Do you generally support gun-control legislation? | |||
| b) Should background checks be required on gun sales between private citizens at gun shows? | |||
| Yes | c) Should citizens be allowed to carry concealed guns? | ||
| d) Should a license be required for gun possession? | |||
| I support requiring every individual who possesses a gun to have passed a certified gun safety class. I do not support complete government managed gun registration. I do support requiring individuals to register their weapons with a non-governmental entity such as the National Rifle Association, or the National Gun Rights association. Government agencies should be required to have a search permit to request information from these non-governmental sources if an individual possesses a weapon. That way, for mental health purposes, they can APPROPRIATELY identify when law enforcement must intervene to prevent an Aurora, or Virginia Tech type of tragedy. | |||
| No | a) Do you support a universally-accessible, publicly-administered health insurance option? | ||
| Yes | 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) Do you support Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare")? | ||
| No | e) Do you support requiring individuals to purchase health care insurance? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support monetary limits on damages that can be collected in malpractice lawsuits? | ||
| Yes | g) Do you support allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana to their patients for medicinal purposes? | ||
| Let me be blunt. There is not a single portion of the Affordable Care Act that functions to reduce the cost of health care. It was designed and implemented to transfer the costs of insurance around. HEALTH INSURANCE DOESN'T EQUAL HEALTH CARE. It does zero good to talk about reducing emergency room care when it is the only care that people can get to because there is no physician within walking distance. But a single payer system is worse than what we had before Obamacare. And a single payer system is what will be offered to be the next fix. | |||
| a) Do you support same-sex marriage? | |||
| Yes | b) Do you support the inclusion of sexual orientation in Virginia's anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support the inclusion of gender identity in Virginia's anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| I believe marriage is a religious event. I believe government has no role within religious observances. I believe all contracts currently called marriages in the context of the law should be changed to be interpersonal civil contracts freely entered into by two people regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. Problem solved. | |||
| My top 3 legislative priorities are the transition of equal rights to a criminal support structure instead of a civil litigation structure. I support making government effective, by being both transparent in the operations at each level of the government, but also by changing the delivery systems to be locally managed by Neighborhood Government councils. In that same context, making the state be responsible for a fair percentage of city and county operations much higher than currently through proper use of the PILOT amounts. Lastly, I support individual privacy by using Personal Data Stores where government access can be controlled. |
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