Category Archives: taxes

My 2016 Florida Primary Endorsements

 

 

 

For those of you who live in Santa Rosa County, Florida, here are my endorsements in order of appearance on the ballot:

US Senator

Marco Rubio

Representative in Congress, District 1

Brian Frazier

State Senator, District 1

Mike Hill

State Representative, District 3

Jayer Williamson

Sheriff

Chris Roper

Tax Collector

Dustin James Matthews

Board of County Commissioners, District 1

Sam Parker

Board of County Commissioners, District 3

Marvin Fowler

School Board, District 2

Joseph M. Pool

Proposed Constitutional Amendment #4

No

Sales Tax for Courthouse

Against the one-half cent sales tax

Sales Tax for Infrastructure

Against the one-half cent sales tax

Please post any questions or comments below.

Northwest Florida Candidates

Last Saturday I sent a survey to 51 candidates running for the various offices representing Northwest Florida. I got 12 survey responses and two emails in reply. The two email replies did not complete the survey. Below are the candidate responses to the survey and some survey statistics (which are interesting). I do apologize because I realized too late that questions 6 & 7 were duplicates (the dangers of copy and paste), however it is interesting that some candidates answered the same question differently.

Candidate Responses

Candidate Survey Data

(These are pdf files and are safe for downloading. You will need Adobe Acrobat reader, which you can download here for free)

Based on these responses and other research, here are my endorsements. I did not endorse all candidates simply because there was not enough information available to me. Some of my endorsements are not without reservations. Governor Scott and Congressman Miller have been disappointing on some issues. Nevertheless, the alternative candidates did not gain my confidence and trust. Feel free to leave your endorsements below; just do not attack an opposing candidate or your response will be rejected. Notwithstanding, stating an incumbent's voting record is not an attack.

I've listed all the candidates I contacted and the candidate's name I've endorsed is in bold. I've also parenthetically put their response status. If they responded, I put the number so you can easily find their response in the Candidate Responses document above.

These endorsements are solely my own and in no way reflect the endorsements of the Northwest Florida Republican Assembly, the Florida Republican Assembly (FRA), or the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA).

Governor

Rick Scott (Incumbent) (email response sent me to another website)
Yinka Abosede Adeshina (did not respond)
Elizabeth Cuevas-Neunder (email said she didn’t want me endorsement, but would complete the survey, which she did not

US Representative, FL District 1

John Krause (did not respond)
Jeff Miller [(Incumbent) did not respond]

Florida State Representative, District 2

Doug Broxson [(Incumbent) did not respond]
Jamie Smith (response #8)

Escambia County Commissioner – District 2

Doug Underhill (did not respond)
Gene Valentino [(Incumbent) did not respond]

Mayor Of Pensacola (Nonpartisan Office)

Donna Clark (response #3)
Ashton Hayward [(Incumbent) did not respond]

Pensacola City Council, District 2 (Nonpartisan Office)

Sherri Myers [(Incumbent) did not respond]
Dennis Tacket (did not respond)

Pensacola City Council, District 6 (Nonpartisan Office)

Brian Spencer [(Incumbent) did not respond]
Mark Taylor (did not respond)

Santa Rosa County Commissioner – District 2

Robert (Bob) Cole (response #6)
Jim Melvin (response #1)

Santa Rosa County Commissioner – District 4

Ruth Dupont Esser (response #11)
Yvonne Harper (response #5)
Andrea McDermott (response #4)
Rob Williamson (did not respond)

Santa Rosa County School Board – District 1

Sandra Nicely (response #3)
Diane Scott [(Incumbent) did not respond]

Santa Rosa County School Board – District 3

Carol Boston (did not respond)
Debbie Gunnoe (response #9)
Fuchsia Ann Spann (did not respond)
Jim R. Taylor (did not respond)

Circuit Judge, Group 22 (Non-Partisan Office)

Michelle Inere (did not respond)
Jennie Kinsey (did not respond)

Okaloosa County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller

J.D. Peacock (did not respond)
Charles Baugh Jr. (did not respond)
Dan Spence (response #12)

Okaloosa County Commissioner – District 4

Don Amunds [(Incumbent) did not respond]
Henry Kelley (did not respond)
Trey Goodwin (did not respond)

Okaloosa County School Board – District 1

Cindy Frakes [(Incumbent) response #7]
Lamar White (did not respond)

Okaloosa County School Board – District 3

C.W. Soldier Hyden (response #10)
Joseph Slusser (did not respond)Rodney Walker [(Incumbent) did not respond]

Okaloosa County School Board – District 5

David Scholl (did not respond)
Melissa Thrush [(Incumbent) did not respond]

 No Walton County candidates responded to the survey

Ryan’s Hope

For those of you who wholeheartedly supported the Romney/Ryan ticket, particularly when the future conservative superstar Paul Ryan was added, you may be feeling disappointed in Ryan’s latest fiscal compromising on the budget. Then there’s the immigration compromise, but that’s for another day.

We are the Truth Watch so let me help understand Ryan’s seemingly inexplicable slide to the middle; it was totally expected. I can tell you the exact day I knew this about Ryan and thusly he lost my support. It was during the election when Ryan said he was comfortable with Romney’s stance on abortion, which differed from Ryan. In other words, he was willing to compromise his position on abortion because Romney’s was “a vast improvement to the status quo.”

Here’s where the lack of my surprise of Ryan’s shifting his conservative positions on fiscal and national security did not surprise me.

Any person, who can compromise on the issue of life, and more specifically baby murder, will have no problem compromising on the budget or illegal aliens. The Bible clearly explains this sequence of selling-out: “he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8)

My buddy Steve Deace clearly explains the problem. Elected officials such as Paul Ryan are people of positions and not convictions. The former will compromise even on core values whereas the latter will stand rock-solid against such compromise.

I pray one day Americans will finally come to understand this phenomenon.

Obamanomics

Hello Mastercard?

Yes, this is Mr. Jeffers. I'd like to raise my debt limit to $10,000.

What's that?

Oh no ma'am, I am in no way increasing my debt or my liability and I'm surely not going to be a spendthrift.

No ma'am, this will allow me to pay the bills that I've racked up. I'm just preserving the full faith and credit of David Jeffers.

Excuse me?! I beg to differ ma'am, I'm not crazy. I just following the Obamanomics model.

Hello? Hello? She hung up on me.

I guess she needs to watch the video at the link below:

Obamanomics

Conservatives Don’t Have a Messaging Problem; They Have a Governing Problem

Rubio addresses the American Conservative Union's annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in WashingtonOne day the Republican Party may actually get it. With great frustration, I read a Christian Post article reporting on National Review’s Summit, “The Future of Conservatism,” where the meme about messaging is resonating.

There is no doubt that the Republican Party is anemic in the ability to get their message out. That is true on all fronts. But that is not why the GOP loses elections.

The GOP loses elections because they govern like liberals.

The first TARP bill was passed in the Democratic-controlled Congress with 34 of 48 Senate Republicans and 108 of 199 House Republicans voting yes. That is 71% of Senate Republicans and 54% of House Republicans. When more than half of the so-called conservative party votes like liberals, then you can't really make the case that conservatives have a messaging problem.

Conservatives rightly complain about the nation’s debt, and Republicans in Congress decry the President’s out of control spending, but they don’t add in this inconvenient truth. They‘ve raised the debt ceiling every time they’ve reached the “fiscal cliff.” And spare me the idiotic statement that the debt limit wasn’t raised when you suspend it. It still allows for the actual debt to increase.

My buddy Steve Deace, nationally-syndicated radio host, puts it best. He has stated, "If Republicans actually lived up to their platform the American people might trust us more, and if we offered people solutions rather than philosophical mission statements the American people would almost always choose us over them."

Barack Obama was reelected because he turned out his base. Mitt Romney was defeated because he at best took his base for granted or worse, ignored it.

When you ignore an already disgruntled base by nominating a Governor who governed as a liberal, the mantra of “Stop the Obama Express” does not equate to large voter turnout.

Republicans do not govern like conservatives because they are afraid of being blamed for government shut downs, starving little children, and turning off old people’s heat. And when Republicans do give into the Democrats and govern like liberals, they get…wait for it…blamed anyway.

As I write this Barack Obama is delivering his partisan speech in what is traditionally known as the State of the Union Address.

Republicans have a key opportunity to go after Obama and the Democrats' destructive policies with relentless aggression. I am talking no-holds barred, winner-take-all battle royale of comparing solid conservative solutions to disastrous Democrat-liberal socialism. The contrast could not be more clear or stark.

If Republicans will simply govern like conservatives, then they will not only win back the White House and control of both houses, but they might actually rescue our nation.

Now that's a message that attracts voters.

Founder’s View of Government Revenue Collection

“The ability of a country to pay taxes must always be proportioned, in a great degree, to the quantity of money in circulation, and to the celerity with which it circulates.” Federalist Paper #12

Our national debt has caused economic chaos beyond what most Americans can fathom.
Most of us realize this debt is unsustainable, but we do not realize the reason our economy is suffering. It is because money is scarce, it is moving too slowly, and the government’s source of revenue is itself, so it must print more dollars when the current source dries up.

In a letter to Samuel Kercheval, the author of our Declaration of Independence and 3rd President Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”

The government has loaded the people “with perpetual debt.” Jefferson is right; it is the people who fear the government today, when it should be the government who fear the  people. That will only happen when WE the People elect only those who will actually defend the US Constitution and the inalienable rights given to us by God, as identified by Jefferson. We cannot allow our government to continue to load our posterity down with perpetual debt. Our continued freedom is depending upon our holding back this economic tyranny.