In the beginning
I first became politically aware when I was 6 years old and heard Robert F. Kennedy’s famous quote, “Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.” Robert F. Kennedy’s vision connected with me and at that young age I identified as a Democrat. I went on to learn more about John F. Kennedy and his outside-the-box thinking connected with me when I was in middle school. In high school I wrote an in-depth paper on Thomas Jefferson as a renaissance man and was drawn to his political ideology as well as his architectural skill. I continued to identify as a Democrat right up to the Jimmy Carter administration. Then somehow through the Carter administration, without any changes in my political ideology, I was now a Republican. In 1980, with my first political vote, I voted for Ronald Reagan. I was drawn not only to his ideology, but to his pragmatic and direct style of governing. I read a Forbes article a while back that presented facts and arguments supporting the idea that John F. Kennedy would be considered a Reaganite extremist today. In addition to Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Thomas Jefferson, and Ronald Reagan, four other historical figures that had significant influence on me are Henry David Thoreau, Frank Lloyd Wright, Robert Frost, and Albert Einstein. I call them my historical gang-of-eight in shaping my thought processes and problem solving approaches of today.
Where I am today
I am Jeffersonian in my political ideology:
- I oppose excessive influence by elites and special interests over our government.
- I oppose corruption and exploitation and seek to eliminate it wherever I can, both in government and the free market.
- I promote virtue and strong moral foundations in our government.
- I prioritize our government to serve the people ahead of special interests, lobbyists, party, and self interests.
I am a fiscal conservative and a Constitutional Originalist. I am a budget hawk, a defense hawk, and being a systems engineer, I am also an efficiency hawk. The Constitution and Bill of Rights were created to protect the American people against the danger associated with the excessive accumulation of power in the hands of a few. The Constitution places the power in the hands of the free people of the independent and sovereign states. The only title in our country superior to ‘President’ is the title of ‘citizen’. The Constitution is not a living document and the only legal means to alter it is through Article V of the Constitution. I am running on a platform of liberty, limited government, individual responsibility, fiscal accountability, and equality of opportunity as detailed in my Campaign Platform discussion.
At age 15, my father lost his father. His mother was in poor health and unable to care for him and his four brothers. They didn’t have much and the five brothers stayed with an aunt and uncle until they graduated high school. After my father and his four brothers completed high school, they all enlisted in the military to further their personal growth and to serve our country. His life experiences at that early age instilled values in him that led him to ensure that my brother, sister, and I all had the tools to succeed if we chose to do so based on our vision, abilities, and personal ambitions. My father’s values became my values and as such, I support domestic programs to help all those in need by assisting them with the necessary tools to succeed, but not to the extent of making them permanently and inescapably dependent on government.
I am a responsible social progressive in being an innovator and reformer. But I stop short of being a liberal in that I advocate for traditional and cultural values. I believe in tolerance and that we should all be able to live our lives as we choose unless it causes harm to someone else. I hold government to that ideology as well. We all have the right to live by our values, but we don’t have the right to force our values on others. I know it sounds all kumbaya, but we need to respect our differences and live in harmony, much like the multi-cultural diversity that we enjoy here in Hawai’i. The only people we should judge are the people we see in the mirror. I am an innovator and reformer in my approach to problem solving and managing change. I try to work from all sides of an issue and tend to find the best solutions somewhere near the middle. I like to use this analogy, “One side says give a man fish. The other side says teach a man to fish. When the best solution is to give a man a fish while teaching him to fish and then send him out to teach others to fish.” I leveraged those innovation and change management methodologies to develop our proposed fact-based practical approaches and solutions to reduce the high cost of living in Hawai’i, establish an affordable and accessible national health care system for everyone, and steps to start reducing corruption in Congress with campaign spending reform, term limits, and a constitutional line-item-veto to eliminate future omnibus bills.
The plan forward
I am a devout capitalist and a firm believer that competition drives excellence. The only viable ideology for sustained and thriving economic growth is ethical capitalism that is devoid of exploitation. I have talked with many Millennials that while they support some of the Democratic Socialist Congress members and candidates, they have become increasingly frustrated with the false hopes and empty promises of the socialist policies. The socialist policies offer at best a short term fix that in the end do more harm than good. The Millennials have valid concerns and those concerns aren’t being adequately addressed. One of the issues I discussed with them was the high cost of college tuition. When looking at cost inflation from around 1990 to today, housing costs have gone up 50%, health care costs have gone up 100%, and college tuition+books have gone up 200%. There is something definitely wrong there. But subsidizing the college tuition doesn’t solve the problem, it merely subsidizes the underlying corruption and exploitation. It’s time to use tools in the congressional tool box other than the tax-and-spend tool. We need to do the research and analysis to develop the solutions to actually solve the underlying problems. The only functional long term solution is to seek out corruption and exploitation and eliminate it. Profit without ethics is plunder.
Of the people, by the people, for the people
We need to put policies in place to make it easier to identify and eliminate any exploitation of the American people. It is time for an evolution in the accountability and transparency practices of government, institutions that operate with public funding, and the free market where necessary to maintain a balanced and level playing field. The time for this is now.