GO WITH STO

Howard Stopeck for Congress

United States House of Representatives

Fifth District of Georgia

gowithsto.com

1.     FULFILL GOD’S COMMANDMENT TO PROVIDE FOR THE POOR, THE WIDOW, THE ORPHAN AND THE STRANGER BY REVIVING FDR’S CIVILIAN  CONSERVATION CORPS, REDUCE UNEMPLOYMENT AND REDUCE SPENDING. 

2.     LOBBIES BRIBE LEGISLATORS FOR PAYBACK 

3.     FREEDOM OF CHOICE SHOULD BE EQUALLY APPLIED 

4.     GET THE EVIL RICH TO FINANCE OUR DEBT INSTEAD OF CHINA

5.     SHOULD GOVERNMENT DECIDE WHAT IS FAIR 

6.     DON’T BRING HOME THE BACON AND REDUCE SPENDING 

7.     THE EQUAL TAX CODE IS EQUALITY 

8.     BLIND PEOPLE IGNORE BOWLES-SIMPSON DEBT COMMISSION

9.     CONDUCT GOVERNMENT LIKE A BUSINESS IN CHAPTER-11

10.    WHY REPUBLICANS WILL DEFUND NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO  

11.    FREE MARKET CAPITALISM VERSUS SPREAD WEALTH AROUND 

God commanded us to provide for the poor.  The poor do not have the right to be cared for. That’s our obligation.  Maimonides, a twelfth century rabbi and the greatest scholar of the five books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, known as the Pentateuch or the Torah, instructed us to care for the poor, by giving him an interest free loan, a grant or a job so he don’t have to rely on others, and to strengthen the stranger who lives amongst us, so he won’t fall and need our help.  Where did that come from?  What are our values?   

·        Leviticus 19:9-10, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest; nor shall you glean your vineyard; nor shall you gather every grape of your vineyard.  You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.   

·        Deuteronomy 4:19-22, “When you cut down your harvest in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go again to fetch it.  It shall be for the stranger, for the orphan, and for the widow; and remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt .  Therefore I command that you do this.

·        Proverbs 29:7: "The righteous know the cause of the poor.  The wicked have no understanding."  

·        Combine that with our history and our values: 

·        Benjamin Franklin: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

·        Frederick Douglas: “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”

·        Louis Brandeis: “It is the duty of every man to help the poor so they’ll feel there’s some hope for them in life. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” 

·        FDR “In the truest sense freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved”.

·        The Chinese proverb: “If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime."  

·        JFK: "Ask not what your country could do for you. Ask what you could do for your country”.  

·        We brought low the poor and endangered their liberty. We gave a man a fish instead of teaching him how to fish.  We enabled and encouraged them to expect entitlements to exist. We addicted and enslaved them. We didn’t lift them up.  We caused them to fall by our naïve incompetence at best or demonic bewitchment at worst.  We robbed them their liberty, dignity and kept them in the dust without hope. We wasted trillions to administer that folly, enriched the plunderers and bankrupt the rest of us. We violated our obligation to God, wasted their productivity and committed a sin that must be undone.   But how?

·        Restore FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers in the Defense budget, working on roads, bridges, rivers, streams and infrastructure in 6-month enlistments governed by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They’ll have training, uniforms, on-base medical care, gangs outlawed, eat in the Mess Hall, perform the work they were trained for and receive a diploma as credentials of their competence. We’ll reduce unemployment. They’ll be encouraged to leave the nest; but could re-enlist for another 6-months, get more training without paying a tuition that would otherwise cost a bundle. With our help, the poor will lift themselves up and serve our country.  Only then will JFK's philosophy apply, "Ask not what your country could do for you. Ask what you could do for your country”.  Obama got it backwards, "It's not what you could do for your country; it’s what your country could do for you, if you remember who your friends are”.  

·        AFDC, public housing, food stamps, ER medical care and funding most of what we inefficiently outlay for the poor, will be reduced. We have an obligation to teach a man to fish, protect him from plunderers while he’s fishing and find a way to make everyone of us productive.  

·        Republican Abraham Lincoln advocated Civil Rights; and if you’re interested in facts and not spin, 85% of the Republican Senators and only 65% of Democrat Senators voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

·         The greatest danger to liberty lurks in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding. 

·         Mother eagle brings rats to the nest to feed her eaglets. When they're capable of flight, she’ll push her babies out of the nest, watch them fly and live like eagles. Democrats want momma eagle to bring rats to her babies forever, to stay in the nest forever and never fly. Those who accept the Democrats dogma that they have a right and entitlement to stuff just by being alive, are self-inflicted slaves who vote but never fly.

·        Nobody likes the idea of lobbies, except their Special Interest employers and the legislators who take their money. Special Interests make campaign contributions and give things of value to legislators as payback for their vote.  From unions, anti-oil, anti-defense; or from oil, Wall Street, defense contractors or any Special Interest who pay legislators obscene sums of money in trade for payback.

·        In fact, during political campaigns each party publishes the great sums of money they raked in and, they do it with pride, as if that’s evidence of the candidate’s competence. To me, that’s legal bribery and a Faustian compact with the devil.

·        McCain/Feingold tried but it didn’t end that legal bribery, as it was emasculated by US Supreme Court, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 130 S.Ct.876 (2010), which held that unions and corporations could use their treasury money to support or oppose candidates in elections as a constitutional engagement of freedom of speech.

·        I know a way to end that legal bribery without violating the union’s or corporation’s constitutional freedom of speech held in Citizens United.

·        I propose enacting legislation that prohibits legislators who receive anything of value from any Special Interest, however made, from sponsoring, introducing, supporting or voting for legislation that benefits that Special Interest. The violation shall be an impeachable offense and a crime. The receiving legislator shall have an ethical duty to report and announce what they raked-in from any Special Interest and recuse themselves when the legislation is introduced or comes for a vote.

·        Anything of value shall include but not limited to any direct or indirect campaign contributions, TV commercials, golf outings, transportation, hotel rooms, meals, drinks, vacations or anything of value. 

·        The enactment of this legislation will withstand a constitutional freedom of speech challenge because the Citizens United decision does not prohibit unions and corporations from contributing tons of money; nor does it prohibit their compact with the devil to stick their beaks into the common trough, suck our treasury dry and then ask us to pay even more taxes so they could keep on doing it to us. 

·        Our greatest obstacles to rid ourselves of this enterprise are legislators who will enforce their compact with the devil and live in the Special Interests pocket. They are Special Interest tools, payback addicts who need that money to maintain their habit. Then they’ll get on TV programs trying to justify their compact with the devil, with intellectual spin and gamesmanship.  

·        I will propose legislation making it a crime to coerce a worker to join a union or coerce a union worker to vote contrary to their Freedom of Choice. 

·        I will propose legislation allowing parents the Freedom of Choice to send their children to either a public or private school with an apportionment of federal monies paid to government for education, to be redistributed to the parents in the form of vouchers to give to public or private schools pursuant to their Freedom of Choice.  Alternately, abolish the Department of Education, where the costs to educate will be paid directly to the States who will administer education and the parents’ Freedom of Choice to educate their children.

·        Since Democrats deny Conservative’s Freedom of Choice regarding school vouchers and Right to Work States, while claiming a woman’s Freedom of Choice right to an abortion, they are inconsistent hypocrites, no mater how get on TV programs trying to intellectualize or spin their hypocrisy. 

·        We owe China 9% of our debt at a 2.5% to 4% fluctuating interest rate based on 20 year notes; and China is going to 3 or 6 month notes at higher interest rates. Great Brittan owns 3%, the European Union owns 4% and Japan owns 1.5% of our debt.  We could raise the debt ceiling to borrow more money at unknown interest or beg other countries to loan us more money, just to pay the interest.  How will we get the money without begging; and if we do beg and get it, will we drown in debt to become another Greece or Portugal ? 

·        Obama wants to confiscate the money of the evil rich by taxing them even more. Obama told us he’s only going to the tax top 1% because it’s unfair for the evil rich to ride on the backs of the poor.  He thinks that since the rich are boogiemen hording their money, he’s going to confiscate their money as an act of Marxist class warfare.

·        Visualize the evil rich moving their facilities out of America to tax friendly countries to avoid those confiscatory practices, or just shut it down, leaving no evil rich left in America .

·        The money is here and we could get it, if Obama abandons his spread the wealth philosophy. We could issue ten-year Treasury Bonds at 4% interest; being less than the interest we’d pay China , with full disclosure of the risk.  We could get the evil rich to invest in America to keep it in the family. Then we’ll see if the rich are evil as Democrats proclaim, or if they’re patriots who will finance our debt rather than having us looking like beggars to the rest of the world. 

·        George Soros, Bill Gates, Donald Trump and other rich guys will buy those Treasury Bonds rather than having us crawl on our knees and beg China .  

·        Obama’s criterion for a Supreme Court nominee is fairness.  There are opposing concepts of fairness and each considers their concept fair. That’s why we abide by the laws passed by Congress, the Constitution and its interpretation by the Supreme Court.  Any Supreme Court nominee, who tells Congress they will decide an issue based on fairness and not the Constitution, should not be confirmed. 

·        Democrats want to destroy talk radio by enacting the Fairness Doctrine which they claim is fair; but they’ll limit it to Conservative media and not Liberal leaning media.  That will be litigated as a freedom of speech issue before the Supreme Court. Then, if the American Civil Liberties Union is true to its principles and ideals, it will represent the free speech of talk-radio just as they did when they represented the Nazi’s right to a permit to march in Skokie , Illinois . 

·        Obama advocates for Fairness but not Equality. For instance, Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO President told Obama to appoint Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, because he was their general counsel who advocated for unions and against management. Since those facts would have been brought out in confirmation hearings, Obama appointed him by a recess appointment as a union payback debt and he admitted it in a speech to the AFL-CIO. The NLRB is controlled by union leaning Obama appointees, so when Boeing elected to move some 787 Dreamliner construction from its Washington plant to its plant in South Carolina, a Right To Work State, the NLRB prohibited the move claiming it would reduce labor costs; and unions got their big payback for their enormous campaign contributions and door-to-door work on election day. 

·        When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Republican majority proposed legislation to reduce costs that would affect teachers, Wisconsin Democrat State Senators hid out in Illinois to avoid voting.  You saw how the liberal media broadcast the turmoil created by union members, how they came to the aid of their friends, how they demonized Republicans and tried to justify cramming unions down our throats, under the force of law.

·        Democrats don’t want equality.  They don’t respect State Right-To-Work law or school vouchers. They wear blinders to prevent seeing beyond their own concept of fairness. 

·        When legislators campaign for reelection they brag about the money they took from the federal coffers and brought back to their district, at town hall meetings and television campaigns, as something to be proud of.

·        First of all, how did the federal government get that money in the first place, only to dispense it back to the people who funded it and then distribute it to still others?

·        If legislators want to take money from our treasury to bring to their district, they should propose legislation for that purpose; let it be considered on the merits, voted on and passed, but never as an earmark payback for supporting their party.

·        We need legislators who’ll tell their constituents, I won’t bring back ten cents to our district.  I’ll oppose any other representative from bringing home the bacon to his district. If its bacon you want, vote for my opponent.  If fact, I’ll reduce what you’re now getting.  With my opponent, you’ll keep getting the bacon, and every electorate in our country will keep getting the bacon until we figure out we’re paying for it. 

·        Our treasury is not a bottomless pot; and there’s no such thing as a money tree.

·        Whereas government is incompetent to stimulate economic growth, it never let its lack of competence stand in its way.  We dispense oil depreciations allowances, defense contract over-runs, tax refunds to people who don’t pay taxes, cash for clunkers and we encourage the poor to be dependent on us.

·        Our current tax code is madness created by a devil that bewitched and addicted us with the dope of dueling favoritism that we cling to like a life preserver on the ocean. The madness of our tax code is the parasites and the plunderers locked in a demonic enterprise spinning their competing concepts of fairness, while the rest of us go bankrupt.

·        On one side we have an underground economy, about 43% who games the system by working in cash, who file no tax return, pay no taxes; and then have the audacity to demand a tax refund. They’ll demand more entitlements as a matter of right, and in the same breathe, they’ll say the evil rich should pay their fair share.

·        On the other side, General Electric games the system by paying no tax.  The oil industry games the system by getting oil depreciation allowances and tax incentives, make great profit and claim that’s fair. If oil likes capitalism they shouldn’t take hand outs. 

·        After first providing for ourselves, a new tax code must increase revenue, reduce spending, embrace equality, eliminate dueling concepts of fairness, class warfare and tax avoidance.  We need a flat tax, consumption tax or a corporate tax on gross final sales, to create the transparency required to compare spending with revenue side by side. It must have economists clearly lay out how it’s to be done, who don’t say we’ll find out what’s in it, after it’s enacted. 

·        Any tax code must use a fixed percentage, be equal and eliminate every hand-out, tax incentive or deduction. That could only be done with a fixed percentage, so it will feel like it came from our pocket and not a money tree. A fixed percentage is ours and it’s personal. When we see revenue and spending side by side and want to reduce the percentage, we’ll have to reduce what we want from government.  It’s OK to order from an ala carte menu if you know the money is coming out of your own pocket.  If the restaurant says grits or hash-browns are included in the price of breakfast, don’t believe it.  Someone has to plant, harvest, process, package, distribute, deliver, cook and serve it and everyone must be paid. 

·        Plunderers and parasites like our tax code because it espouses advantage over equality, has altruistic sounding platitudes and uses a magician’s smoke and mirrors, to justify the indefensible with incomprehensible spin.  To the plunderers and parasites, an equal tax code is an abomination.  

The ostrich that sticks his head in the sand, thinking if he doesn't see the lion, the lion won't see him, will be eaten by the lion. 

·        If your water is limited to one bucket, that's all there is, regardless of how thirsty you are. Legislating more water and Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold are both fairytales. Bowles-Simpson told us to quench our thirst with one bucket of water. When we have lots of rain, we'll have more water.

·        When Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson came up with a plan to save us, everyone jumped down their throats, wanting only the other side to give up stuff. 

·        We need fiscally conservative leaders with solutions, who are not worried about getting elected.  We need to eliminate revenue manipulations, tax incentives, farm or milk supports, oil depreciation allowances, mortgage deductions or defense contract overruns.  By burying our heads in the sand, we are slaves addicted to a Ponzi Pyramid with no money left in the pot.

·        We need to wake up, smell the coffee (or tea) and exorcise the demon that squeezed into America resulting in a country of plunderers and parasites. 

·        A business is about to go in the toilet because of their poor financial choices and frivolous expenditures.  But they want to stay in business and so they file a Chapter-11 petition for protection under our Bankruptcy Law.

·        Here’s the process: A Trustee is appointed. There's a meeting of the creditors.  There’s an agreed-upon plan where the business agrees to pay its creditors on an ongoing basis. The business pays the Trustee, who pays the creditors and it conducts its business in a fiscally conservative manner under the watchful eye of the Bankruptcy Court. The business survives.  Its creditors are paid.  The shareholder’s investment did not go down the toilet and the business does not repeat its frivolous ways.

·        I want Congress to employ those same principles to resolve our financial crisis.  In theory, give the case of our bankrupt economy to a bankruptcy judge, who will hear all arguments and issue rulings to be followed to resolve our financial crisis.  

·        Aside from finding ways to reduce government spending, Republicans want to defund NPR because its journalism is limited to supporting Democrats. NPR only employs liberal leaning reporters, such as Nina Totenberg, who said that she hopes Jesse Helms, Dick Chaney and other Republicans will get Aids and die and other venomous hate speech.

·        The programming of “You Don’t Say” and “Prairie Home Companion” go out of its way to say hateful things about Republicans, playing to a Democrat audience who responds with laughter.

·        Republicans don’t want to have to pay to support an enterprise that hates and demeans them with obvious, insulting slaps in the face.  Republicans think that the rest of NPR’s valuable work does not balance the insult, it’s not worth the trade-off and they don’t have a sense of humor. 

·        Whereas NPR’s programming, journalism and hatred for Republicans, should not change, its naïve for them to expect Republican support, just as Israel will not supply Hamas or Hezbollah with the missiles to launch into Israel .

·         Opposing political pundits sell their books on TV every hour, teaching us that our fellow man is the enemy.  Evil crept into America by hypocrisy of opposing concepts of special privilege, inequality and favoritism that pitted us against each other with venom that diminishes everyone.

·        Who are we?

·         “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.  Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties” Abraham Lincoln

·        “The United States Constitution is not a mere lawyers' document, it is a vehicle of life whose spirit is always the spirit of the age” Woodrow Wilson.

·        “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?  Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”  Martin Luther King, Jr.

·         “Some Americans prefer to liberate humanity from the oppression the Capitalist market visits upon us, who want a government to ensure that all people are equal, with the same material possessions, political, social and civil rights, and if denied; the people have the right to take it by Revolution, by force of arms or by political election.” - Karl Marx.

·        Are Republicans the evil rich who want to suppress the poor? 

·        Democrats don’t like Capitalism and they made movies about it.  Democrats advocate confiscating the wealth of producers to evenly spread it out, nationalize finance, automobile oil, health, industries and appoint Supreme Court Judges to pull it off.  Is that what Democrats claim is fair?

·        Are Democrats the altruistic, selfless good-guys who effectively cared for the poor? Has their philosophy to spread the wealth around uplifted the poor so they’ll feel like there’s some hope in life, or has it left them in the dust? 

·        If like an ostrich, you stick your head in the sand, thinking if you don’t see the lion, the lion won’t see you; you’re going to get eaten by the lion.