Policy Doug Stands For
It doesn’t matter who votes, how many vote, or who they vote for if there is no election integrity, It only matters who counts the votes. Integrity in the voting process is critical to the survival of the Republic.
We should demand auditable and verifiable election results. The best way to do that is with single day voting on paper ballots by people who show identification.
Election Integrity
The Seventeenth Amendment interrupted a delicate balance of power between the Federal Government, the State governments and the people. The States their representation at the Federal level, and the People got two houses when the amendment allowed election of senators by popular vote. As a result, The States, whose responsibility it is to hold the Federal government to its enumerated powers, was handicapped in filling that role.
In the Affordable Care Act decision, Chief Justice John Roberts said, “The states are separate and independent sovereigns; sometimes they have to act like it.” Notwithstanding the disadvantage of the seventeenth amendment, states must create the healthy tension needed to keep the Federal Government in its constitutional box.
Federalism and Federal Over-reach
The Federal Government owns more the two thirds of the State of Utah. The only power granted to Congress regarding ownership of the Public Lands, was the power to dispose (Article IV, Section III Clause 2, US Constitution). Additionally each new state’s enabling legislation guaranteed that land within the states would be disposed of by the Federal government. Those promises are yet to be honored. I have worked for the past 11 years to bring this promise to reality, and we are making progress.
In 2012 I co-founded the American Lands Council to advocate for Federal Public Lands to become State Public Lands with all valid existing rights intact and land management decision to be made at the County level. I want to bring title and management decisions home where they belong.
Federal Public Lands
Environmental groups have conceived of several novel ways to wrest property from Private interests and put it into permanent protection. One of those schemes is Conservation Easement in which Non-profits (usually funded by tax dollars) purchase perpetual easements on private lands which prohibit ever utilizing those lands for certain specified uses. So in effect private land owners are taxed and then their tax dollars are used to purchase your birthright. Utah needs to take steps to control this scheme.
Conservation Easements and National Asset Companies
The family is the basic unit of society. Healthy families make healthy communities.
I believe governments should take steps to encourage and preserve families in their traditional roles. Family disintegration brings social and emotional challenges to individuals and to society in general. Law enforcement challenges always increase as the family disintegrates.
I believe in the sanctity of life and the protection of the unborn. We must educate that Rights and responsibilities are "paired principles". The rights we enjoy of are, of necessity, always accompanied by responsibility for our actions and decisions. Its not helpful to shield people from responsibility for their actions by allowing them to kill their "mistake". That policy simply encourages more irresponsible behavior.
Family and the Sanctity of life
Homelessness in America is largely created by government. It is a direct result of bureaucratic overreach. The international building code with its ever increasing requirements has driven the cost of housing far beyond the reach of many citizens.
While it would be wonderful if everyone could afford a perfect house, many cannot. It's as though some genius in a bureaucracy decided that, “We’d rather you be homeless than allow you to live in something that doesn’t meet my standards”.
Surely it is the right of a man to provide shelter for his family on his own property and with his own resources without being required to meet ultimate standards which frequently are enacted, not to protect people, but to protect the environment.
If I had all power I would make some codes for private homes advisory only. As a contractor, I believe it could cut costs for private dwellings by as much as 40%.
Overregulation
Legitimate protection comes from laws that punish dishonesty and fraud, not from restricting those who want to try. We need protection from dishonesty not from peoples strengths.
Business licensing is equivalent to punishing people for things they haven’t done yet. Punishing them by not letting them try. Licensing keeps many who are extremely talented from participating in the game by favoring those who test well.
As a licensed contractor I have known many conscientious skilled craftsmen who were intimidated by the licensing obstacles. I have also seen licensed contractors who were crooks.
No one should be disqualified from participating in the market. Remove licensing and watch the price of goods and services shrink.
Business Licensing
In 2020 when the Covid Pandemic began, a special legislative session was called to grant expanded emergency powers. There are no legitimate expanded emergency powers.
Everything that was done under the pretense of emergency powers was a violation of the sovereign rights of the people. Businesses were forced to close, never to reopen by government decree and even worse, the action served to condition the minds of our people to believe that government can legitimately overstep theri bounds.
I oppose expanded powers of any kind. “Never let a good crisis go to waste” should be eliminated.
Emergency Powers
While guns are fun for competition shooting and for hunting, that has nothing to do with the second amendment. The second amendment is to defend against predators and criminals, from tyrants abroad, and occasionally would-be tyrants in our own country. Nothing has impeded the power seekers in America as much as the knowledge that the largest and best equipped army in the world is the gun owners of America. It is not coincidental that worldwide, more than 100 million people have been murdered by their own governments in the last century…. after their weapons were taken away. Politicians who want weapon confiscation have an agenda. Personal weapons are standing in the way of something they want to achieve.
Second Amendment
Not all good ideas should become law. Laws are not suggestions, they are absolute mandates. We should never legislate wisdom. One of my favorite sayings is that “stupid is an unalienable right”. If we try to eliminate all bad choices, imagine the library big enough to hold all the laws, and by doing so we would eliminate personal choice.
Laws should not protect people from themselves nor should laws protect things other than people at the people's expense. The government’s role is to protect people from other people.
Legislating Wisdom
“That all men are equal” is about equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. “There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people”. (Thomas Jefferson) There is nothing more crushing to human initiative than guaranteed outcomes regardless of effort or qualification. Nothing is more destructive to Liberty than guaranteeing prosperity to those who do not obey the laws upon which prosperity must rest.
Redistribution of wealth is a very old idea, but it has crushed every nation that has adopted it. Governments must resist the temptation to guarantee economic outcomes regardless of individual effort. Failure to do so guarantees the eventual collapse of the entire system.
Equality of opportunity -vs- equality of outcome
National Capital Companies and Capital Accounts are being created to quantify and monetize natural processes for the purpose of increasing the federal collateral and listing these on the federal balance sheet. They are a Federal attempt to do what the private sector failed to do through "Natural Asset Companies."
It is important that Utah take steps to prohibit those kind of activities in the Great State of Utah.