January 4, 2022
Allow me to introduce myself...
My name is Paul Sand. and I am running for the Libertarian Party nomination for election to the Office of Governor of the State of Idaho in 2022 on a common-sense progressive Libertarian platform. I am a 73 year-old semi-retired computer software engineer with over 65 years of electronics and computer experience. I am also an avid outdoors adventurer. If I am not playing on liquid or frozen water, I am probably climbing something or building something. I live in White Bird Idaho, pictured above, and have served ten years on the White Bird City Council and I am a former member of the White Bird Volunteer Fire Department.
My campaign is based on three pillars: Freedom, Family and Future. I am running against our entirely dysfunctional, polarizing two-party political system. I want to be very clear. I am not anti-government, just anti-politics. I believe the government should become a benefit administrator for the business community by providing educated workers, family healthcare, retirement pensions, security, and the financial and physical infrastructure that our businesses need to be globally competitive, without putting any of it on the backs of current and future workers.
Workers just want to do their job and do it well, and earn enough to have fun, be happy, active, and healthy, enjoy their families, and have no worries. Workers should not have to worry about the economy, politics, taxes, social problems, healthcare, retirement, climate change, etc. We put all this stress on workers and then wonder why they are angry and not happy. It is time to move on to the future with a new paradigm for the human species based on peace, freedom, equality, transparency, and economic and social opportunity for everyone.
There is nothing in our political discourse these days that in anyway resembles common sense or personal freedom on either side of the political table. The two-party political system is not a true democracy because the ruling class picks the establishment or polarizing candidates that we get to choose between. The polarization they create keeps workers from working together for a better life for their families and keeps the rich just getting richer and richer.
Politics is not the democracy our founders envisioned. There is nothing about political parties in our Constitution. We now have a digital democracy that has rendered our old political system obsolete and irrelevant. Social media can accomplish more change overnight than politicians have accomplished in the last seventy years.
Our elected representatives should represent the economic interests and industries of their district. Voting should be a mere formality. If I am elected, any elected representative that pulls any politically polarizing stunts will be shunned and their constituents will lose their voice in the state government. I am happy to hear from anyone who has a logical solution to a real problem. I will have zero tolerance for divisiveness.
I see a clear future for our businesses, our workers, and their families but only if we take bold steps now to stop wasting our economic resources. I am not suggesting austerity. I am suggesting making smart investments of our economic output to grow our way out of a pending economic and social collapse. We are facing massive federal government debt every year, runaway hyper-inflation, or much worse. These are serious national security threats that we need to address now, rather than wasting time and money arguing about the small stuff that can be easily fixed.
I have done unbiased, multi-layer analysis of our complex economic, political, government, financial, business, transportation, climate, education, social, healthcare, and biological systems. These systems are all horribly broken but can be easily fixed. I am continually being astounded by how everything we are now doing is exactly the opposite of any logical rational behavior. Everyone is acting like a bunch of children or animals.
Idaho politics has become a national joke. My goal is to turn that around and in the memory of Frank Church and Cecil Andrus, make Idaho a model for the future of our entire country.
The three Pillars
Freedom
Over the past seventy years we have gone to war against everything from communism to drugs to terrorism supposedly to protect “our” freedoms. Our citizens sacrificed their lives to protect the freedom of the ruling class while our personal freedoms diminished with each war. Both parties are opposed to personal freedom and want to regulate away our problems. We don’t need to outlaw guns to end gun violence. We don’t need to outlaw drugs to end drug abuse. We don’t need to outlaw abortion to end abortion. These problems can all be solved by providing economic and social opportunity for everyone.
Guns do not cause gun violence. Gun control does not stop gun violence. We can guarantee our second amendment rights simply by eliminating the economic and social causes of all gun violence and thereby permanently remove gun-control from any political discussion.
Establishment Republicans are pro-abortion, anti-religion, anti-worker and would love to outlaw guns. Farmers and workers were all Democrats until Republican money-changers tricked us into voting against our own interest and against our Christian principles.
Democrats would solve our problems by giving everyone money. People who choose to work for a living don’t like that. The political establishment on both sides will need to create a police state to control people lives. I want to solve our problems with rational solutions and reward responsible behavior by corporations and by citizens. Corporations claim to be citizens so now they need to start acting like it.
Personal freedom comes with personal responsibility. You should be able to do anything you want if it doesn’t infringe on other people’s freedom to enjoy their life. Laws and regulations are needed only when freedom is abused. Corporate freedom also comes with responsibility. Social media can change corporate behavior and culture overnight so, as with personal freedom, laws and regulations are needed only when corporate freedom is abused.
Family
On the family front, we need to end the daycare era and return to a stay-at-home parent or co-parent to raise their children through the most formative years when strong family values are established. Also, it no longer makes sense in the pandemic era. An economic system that forces both parents to work and their children to be raised by an institution is more than a little scary. We will need a solution for single parents to work at home or provide on-site childcare for them at work.
Far too many young people today don’t see the possibility of a future that would make them want to have children and raise a family. The global birth rate is dangerously low, and we really need more families if we want any future at all. Unless we can achieve the hope of long-term stability, prosperity, and global peace, the downward birth rate spiral will continue everywhere.
Businesses are beginning to understand that they are solely responsible for the happiness and health of their workers and their workers families, and a happy worker with a happy family is far more productive and invested in the business’s success.
Responsible businesses will voluntarily provide family healthcare insurance, reimburse commuting and all other work-related expenses incurred by the worker, and pay the full social security or equivalent pension expense and the worker’s full income tax on earnings, as an employer wage tax rather than an employee earnings tax.
To hold down the cost of business healthcare premiums, I will be pushing for a federal “Basic Medicare for Workers and Families” program to provide responsible businesses with lower cost benefit coverage for protecting the worker’s entire family and to improve the actuarial quality of the Medicare risk pool. Self-employed and workers without healthcare benefits would also be allowed to purchase the same coverage for their families at the same price. Individuals or businesses will also be able to buy commercial supplements to expand coverage or decrease co-pays and deductibles.
Future
First, I would invite all the leaders and representatives of the largest U.S. corporations to a “corporate responsibility” virtual conference to discuss and decide how they plan to tax themselves to fund the government while eliminating personal income tax on earned income and permanently removing the cost of the government from the backs of current and future generations of workers.
For the future needs of business, we need to turn our public education system upside down and teach curiosity, creativity, intelligent analysis, and effective communication rather than memorizing knowledge that can easily be found online. My elementary school didn’t have an electronics class when I was in third grade, so I had to do my own research. Every student is or will be interested in something.
Designing, manufacturing, and maintaining the equipment that connects computers to the real world will be a very important part of the future economy. This includes working with robots, smart machines, remote sensing and control systems, and dedicated communication networks. Workers with the computer machine language and electronics knowledge needed to develop computer firmware will be more valuable than application software developers.
We also need to provide free education and job training, including living expenses, for anyone who is making continuous progress towards an actual career opportunity. This will give everyone equal access to economic and social opportunity.
We need 500,000 highly skilled construction professionals for very good paying jobs immediately and soon will need another 500,000 to rebuild America’s physical infrastructure. A trillion dollars for infrastructure can pay a million dollars each to a million construction workers or a billion dollars each to 1000 construction executives.
If you have a student loan for a worthless college degree, you should be allowed to file bankruptcy to get that anchor off your back so you can support a family. If your employment requires a professional degree, your employer should pay off any student loans over a maximum period of five years in addition to your full salary.
We should create a public work program to provide a safety net for anyone who loses or needs a job. This would allow unemployed workers to maintain their family health insurance and keep paying their car payments, rent and other normal living expenses for as long as needed. This is not a handout. They need to show up or log on, available for work, and not be running another gig on the side.
We need to make sure rural America is not left out of the digital economy. 99% of America does not even have cell phone service of any kind. Actually, 5G cell service is just 4G with more digits in the tower ID so that they can add thousands of low-power towers to provide the same bad service to thousands more people in heavily populated areas. The rest of us just get “extended range 5G” which is just ordinary 4G with more digits in the tower ID and which was “upgraded” with a simple remote firmware update and no actual investment in performance or hardware improvements.
The population/age inversion is a national economic security threat. We need to reconsider wasting our money trying to cure old age diseases and even more money keeping elderly vegetables locked in nursing home prisons. I will push strongly for right-to-die legislation so that God’s will is not thwarted by medical industry greed. There is no chance in hell that my mother would have permitted herself to become a burden on anyone. My memories of leaving her in the nursing home still haunt me.
The economic effects of climate change, including population disruptions caused by extreme weather, infrastructure failures and crop failures, leading to mass migrations, is both an economic threat and an opportunity. The threat and opportunity for Idaho is that we are too likely to be the destination for everyone trying to escape from the southwest, south, southeast, northeast and midwest.
The natural climate cycle will continue regardless of what we do with carbon. We are facing 60,000 years of much higher temperatures than now until the next ice age begins, so we better start preparing for a wild ride.