Austin Martin's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
On The Ballot: Running, Libertarian for State House (HI) - District 3
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Hawaii State Legislative Election 2024 Political Courage Test
| Pro-life | a) Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation? | ||
| No | b) Do you support legalizing abortion when the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support the prohibition of public funds (e.g. Medicaid) for organizations that perform abortions? | ||
| "Do no harm"; I believe the procedure should be available whenever a legitimate medical need or complication arises which threatens the health of the mother. The right to life is more important than the right to comfort & convenience. | |||
| No | a) In order to balance the budget, do you support limiting state government spending on social programs (e.g. SNAP, TANF)? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support a decrease in income taxes in order to promote economic growth? | ||
| No | c) Do you support a wealth tax in order to pay for public programs in your state? | ||
| I support free-market economics - and in a local, rule-of-law, free market system, these kinds of public benefits would not exist, and would rarely, if ever, be needed. Today, we do not have a free market - we have a corrupt gaggle of unelected special-interest cronies who have captured their regulators, and now seem to be calling the shots for everyone. No one approves, yet no one seems to be able to do anything about the entrenched problems. Without the free, local market being restored, cutting benefits like food stamps would be a disaster for ordinary families. Those programs should eventually be cut or dramatically reduced, but only after we fix the astonishing damage bad policy has done to our economy; until then, these payments can be thought of as a kind of charitable recompense for un-American policy decisions as we transition back to economic freedom and prosperity. It is not like the people depending on those programs simply have better options (*yet) - the weight of inflation, government regulation, and other bad economic policies have gutted local economies, outsourcing our industries and leaving Hawaiians with no other way to afford necessities like food. If we fix the root causes, these symptoms will eventually clear up on their own. I am absolutely in favor of reducing reliance on these programs, but I would also have to oppose any ?rug-pulls? for those who are currently relying on them. If a government is doing good business, it should be profitable - not broke. Our government is carrying on very unprofitable business, and we are all paying the cost of it. For instance, to address the housing crisis, rather than throwing good money after bad, why not try relaxing the extreme regulations against private landowners; let them be free to build their homes on their own land without needing a thousand permission slips from the government? There would be no housing crisis in the first place, (nor cost of living crisis) without well-intended government intervention, and as always, it comes unintended consequences, leading to the inevitable cascade of interventions; each with their own set of consequences. Blowback is real - and if we don't change course, it's coming sooner than any of us want to admit. This is why we have a constitution which limits the powers of government, and why it should be well enforced on our government. We have to address these issues responsibly, and not with knee jerk reactions. There are much better departments that could take meaningful cuts, long before we consider cutting benefits to poor families. There is zero need to increase taxes nor the size of government to bring reasonableness back to Hawaii. Our government needs to work for us, and it needs to have respect for you, the boss. That doesn't seem to be how things are actually working - and I think that many of our current issues are symptoms of this much bigger problem. Together, we can address it responsibly, and do better. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support capital punishment for violent crimes? | ||
| Yes | b) Should an individual under 18 accused of a violent crime be prosecuted as an adult? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support the enforcement of federal immigration laws by state and local police? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support the use of private prisons? | ||
| No | e) Do you support mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support legalization of marijuana for recreational use? | ||
| The constitution doesn't permit the kind of police-state tyranny which is now a distinctive feature of local American governments - any more than it permits the official corruption which is fuel on the fires of disorder. Lawlessness in our government is a root cause. The legal system is profoundly broken; increasing law enforcement, without addressing the root causes of the problems, is not helpful - it's reactionary. It's throwing good money after bad. We need more Mayberry and less 1984. We need local rule of law and accountability restored - because the powers which we propose to use to accomplish social and political goals, can and will be turned against us. This is the lesson of the embarrassing failures of the war on drugs and the war on terror; both unconstitutional domestic policy wars have been waged, not on drugs nor terrorism, but instead on the American people. We need to restore the constitutional rule of law, and bring our government to heel. Why support private prisons? Mainly because the government is really bad at policing itself, and a private entity would be easier to sue in court without illegal immunity doctrines protecting wrongdoers from accountability. All immunity doctrines are lawlessness. If private prisons have immunity, I would oppose them. To fix the crime problem, we need to make our courts accountable again, and make sure that lawyers & judges stop putting themselves above the law. Those who betray the public trust should be held to a stricter standard - and not given a pass from accountability. If the law is applied equally on the government, and the courts are functioning with reasonableness, then most of our local problems would greatly improve. | |||
| No | a) Do you support state government spending as a means of promoting economic growth (e.g. grants, tax incentives)? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support reducing state government regulations on the private sector (e.g. for business or the environment)? | ||
| No | c) Do you support an increase of the minimum wage of Hawai'i? | ||
| No | d) Do you support government spending on affordable housing projects in Hawai'i? | ||
| All of these questions *sound* like good ideas - to the unwary & unwise; but each one has the devil in the details, evil in disguise. Hell itself is paved with good intentions. 1. State spending always hurts long term economic growth, and encourages misplaced investments to persist. This corrupts the market, and always comes with massive hidden costs. 2. We live in a regulatory wasteland. Anyone supporting more regulation in Hawaii probably needs their brain examined. It would be difficult to find a more hostile environment for business in the developed world. 3. Increasing minimum wage only increases inflation, and makes everyone poorer. It kills businesses - and makes it even harder for startups to form. This is a toxic and misleading policy - it promises to help workers, but in reality, it has a 100% failure rate. Freedom is the solution - not more government attacks on small businesses. This only sounds good to people who have not been taught much about the laws of economic consequences, and who have not studied enough history to know just how badly this backfires on ordinary working folks, every single time. If you want higher wages, get the government out of the wage regulation game, and instead make it focus on protecting rights, punishing abuses, and keeping the door of opportunity wide open. Wages tend to naturally rise toward a living-wage when the free economy is allowed to function organically over time. 4. The housing crisis is caused by the current government policy. For instance, they refuse to approve permits, except for their friends, and then have their friends in the press tell you it's all the fault of short-term vacation rentals (which, over time, persuades the masses to ban private property rights, and give more power to the government, and help the big tourism industry remove its #1 threat to their hotel industry). They then tell us the rising costs of living is all because we haven't given the government enough power to regulate and tax enough families. After all, its private property owners are to blame for the housing crisis; the government says they just aren't building the right kind of houses. In reality, the blame is entirely with the county and state; I could fix this problem in no time at all, because it's a manufactured problem, designed to force the poor to move away to the mainland. The free market would have never allowed such a thing to occur. More freedom + less government = a richer Hawaii | |||
| No | a) Do you support adopting federal education standards (e.g. Common Core) in Hawai'i? | ||
| No | b) Do you support state funding for charter schools? | ||
| No | c) Do you support increasing teacher salaries AND/OR benefits in Hawai'i? | ||
| No | d) Should immigrants in the United States who graduate from Hawai'i high schools be eligible for in-state tuition at public universities, regardless of immigration status? | ||
| We had the best education system in the world, born of the free market - until they fixed all that when they created the DOE. Our schools are the biggest jokes in the long sad history of educational jokes. We should not be funding a dumpster fire. State education is what denationalized Hawaii, destroyed our culture, our language, and our way of life. Private education teaches our kids & prepares them for life. Public education indoctrinates kids and prepares them for slavery or prison. The government also hates competition, and so as long as it is in the school market, it will interfere with the other participants. We need to get the government out of the classroom. It is not a hard choice, except that such great funding makes for great sound-bites about helping our children - though in reality, many of our social, economic, and government problems can be traced directly to the failures of state education. What has been done to our schools is nothing short of a national catastrophe. We need community based solutions where local parents are in the drivers seat, rather than unelected grifters appointed by the governor. | |||
| No | a) Do you support state funding for the development of renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, geo-thermal)? | ||
| No | b) Do you support state governments allowing permits for drilling on public lands? | ||
| No | c) Do you support increasing state funding for clean drinking water initiatives? | ||
| We need to respect our local culture, local communities, and let them be free to find better solutions without the government putting their fingers on the scales, shoving their agenda down our throats. They don't care how many times we tell them to let our community decide for itself - but they keep pushing. We need the state to return the lands it has seized, and stop meddling. Give the power back to the local communities. Keep the state out of it. We need real energy solutions- and we would have them already if the state simply got out of our way. Instead they want central control of all the power & resources. They want to sell mineral rights on the land they stole from the Kanakas to their corrupt corporate friends, so they can sell the energy back to the same people they stole the resources from, taxing it both ways - it is a racket. The State of Hawaii, as currently run, is a parasite. It cannot help much right now except by getting out of the way. As a legislator, I would aim to protect your rights, while still working with the other sides to get needed business done in a way that doesn't cause more harm than good. I think most leaders seem to lack the perspective that no matter how good our intentions are, we can cause great harm even with the smallest careless act. It's an awful burden, and another important reason why localism is better than big-government. | |||
| No | a)Do you support limiting campaign contributions from corporations, unions, and individuals? | ||
| No | b) Do you support the use of an independent or bipartisan commission for redistricting? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support requiring a government-issued photo identification in order to vote at the polls? | ||
| No | d) Do you support automatic voter registration? | ||
| No | e) Do you support the implementation of ranked choice voting in Hawai'i? | ||
| Money in politics? Trying to get money out of politics has only gotten grassroots money out of politics. Corporations, unions, etc., can all afford the fines and red tape to rock the election; your neighborhood community group has no chance. Even if a generous donor wanted to help your community group, they would be limited; it takes even bigger money to do what the big-politics industry does. Nobody wants money to be the sole determining factor in an election - yet today, is it not more so than ever, despite thousands of laws supposedly intended to prevent it? This is a complex problem; my mind is open to new ideas about this - however in my consideration of the problem, I have found that campaign contributions, at their core, are a 1st amendment right of expression. Therefore I lean against limiting them, though I recognize the great problem of financial influence on elections, especially in the absence of a functioning free market. However, the current regulatory framework for election spending is mostly irrelevant to the big parties. The existing regulations really only hurts small parties, independent candidates, and authentic community voices. Voter engagement and volunteering is at all times lows. These laws do nothing whatsoever to stop the corrupt 2-party system from dominating elections with brute force and obscene amounts of cash. Any attempt by 3rd parties to be competitive in such a hostile regulatory environment results in them being labeled like criminals and slapped with penalties that hurt cash-starved local activist groups, yet the big two parties can laugh it off as a small cost of doing business. This is objectively a failure of law. The principle guiding my thoughts on election regulation is this: I am against government involvement in elections, which should belong to the People and the local communities. Despite this, I am open to better solutions than what we have now, which is an unfortunately low bar to clear. | |||
| No | a) Do you generally support gun-control legislation (e.g. red flag laws, closing the boyfriend loophole)? | ||
| No | b) Should background checks be required on gun sales between private citizens at gun shows? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support the right to concealed carry in Hawai'i? | ||
| Every single gun law is unconstitutional. The only reason they want to disarm you is if they?re doing things that would make you want to shoot them. I especially love the idea of arming women and vulnerable minorities. After all, what kind of person would want to disarm women? I want to see the right of self defense respected - too often it seems like the cops (along with their cohorts, the prosecutors & judges) protect the criminals and charge the innocent - acting as if self defense were illegal and equally as wrong as the one attacking. This kind of lawless thuggery from the government is so sick - and it is a big part of why our social fabric is unraveling. | |||
| No | a) Should the state government increase funding for treatment facilities to combat opioid abuse? | ||
| No | b) Do you support a government-run (e.g. single-payer) healthcare program such as Medicare-for-All? | ||
| No | c) Should an individual have the right to choose to die (e.g. those with a terminal illness) through euthanasia? | ||
| No | d) Do you support mandating vaccinations (e.g. for school or employment)? | ||
| No | e) Do you support expanding paid family AND/OR medical leave benefits (e.g. maternity leave)? | ||
| No | f) Should the government be able to regulate the cost of prescription drugs? | ||
| No | g) Do you support banning the sale of flavored tobacco products? | ||
| All of these things are attempts to control private interactions, and I generally oppose attempts to use the government improperly to solve every social problem. The free market and individual freedoms cannot continue while the government is playing God. The reason costs are so high right now has little to do with corporate greed, and everything to do with authoritarian policy. Also, mandatory vaccines, especially experimental vaccines, are no different than other illegal mass mandatory medical experiments & non-consenting violations of human rights. The damage done in the name of public health is catastrophic. This is a line in the sand. I will not allow Hawaii to be locked down ever again. I will also fight to stop the abuse of the Emergency Powers Act. | |||
| No | a) Do you support inclusion of sexual orientation in Hawai'i anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| No | b) Do you support the inclusion of gender identity in Hawai'i anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| No | c) Do you support greater efforts by Hawai'i state government in closing gender, racial, and other wage gaps? | ||
| These are Trojan horses. The anti-discrimination laws are utterly ineffective. Just look at what they are doing to the Hawaiian Families. I would politely tell someone to ask the native Hawaiians if anti-discrimination laws did their people any good at stopping a foreign agenda from being rammed down their collective throats. This divisive way of looking at civil rights is wrong; there is only one kind of rights: human rights. Sexual orientation & gender are already protected, anyway. These groups are not under attack - but giving them a more preferred status will cause resentment and injustice in our society. This mentality of false equality is being used to destroy equal individual rights, by elevating some above others, and that is not equality. All individuals should have the same rights, and preferred status should not be granted to any class of individuals. Equal rights means equal rights. Anti-racism is still just racism, and we can not fight fire with fire. The modern establishment civil rights narrative, in my opinion, is social-engineering - not substantive progress for individual freedom. Today, the pendulum has already swung, and now straight, traditional families are in as much danger of discrimination as any LGBT, depending on where they live; bad policy has resulted in neither group having truly equal rights. I believe in equal rights, not favoritism. | |||
| Aloha! I am Austin Martin, and I am running to represent you as your House Rep for District 3. You may have seen me playing Ukulele around town - it's my way of adding some sunshine to our world. I want to bring positive changes & transparency to our community. I am not afraid to confront challenges head-on and deliver on my promises to help homesteaders, legalize freedom, and clean up Hawaii's corruption problem. A Free Port for Hawaii - Nullify the Jones Act I have an idea to radically reduce the cost of living & make our local economy competitive, while also taking positive, responsible steps to reconcile past wrongs with the Hawaiian Nation. How? A Free Hawaiian Port - if we can designate a single port as exempt from the Jones Act, either by invoking states rights, or by granting it a status as a Hawaiian National Port, we could bring prices down across the board. The Jones Act is a very old federal law from before Hawaii became a state, and put simply, it is a major reason why Hawaii is so much more expensive than most other places, even other islands. It is why our local Hawaiian economy suffers crippling disadvantages. I will fight hard to bring down the cost of living with enlightened economic policy. We could be the jewel of the pacific: rich, free, and independent. We only need the courage to do the right thing. Hawaii can do better. Judicial, Prosecutorial, & Police Misconduct: I will fight against government overreach and work towards judicial transparency and oversight. No one should be denied due process, and I will fight to make sure that everyone is treated fairly in court. I will fight to end the abuse of judicial and qualified immunity. If we want to reduce crime, we need to ensure our courts are operating lawfully, and that abuses are not covered up. Legislative Watch: I have the knowledge and skills to understand and address a wide range of issues affecting our community. I will use this expertise to propose & vote for legislation that protects your rights and interests. Hands off our homesteads! Election Integrity: I am committed to ensuring fair and transparent elections. I will work tirelessly to protect the integrity of our electoral process and to ensure any misconduct is properly & responsibly investigated, rather than ignored. If we want everyone to accept and feel confident in the results, we must make sure the rules are followed and that irregularities are responsibly investigated. I believe in standing up for equal individual rights & fighting against corruption in our beautiful Hawaii. As a man of faith and action, I am dedicated to serving our community and making it a better place for all of us. Your support means everything to me; I promise to work hard to earn and keep your trust. Thank you for choosing me as your candidate. Let's work together to make Hawaii a better place for everyone. |
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