Karen lost her primary but achieved victory in many of her goals — a HUGE victory for liberty! We have not heard the last from Karen!!! Please read this letter from Karen this morning!
Visit Karen’s website here: KarenKForCongress.com.
Karen answers the Liberty Candidate questions below:
Re. the U.S. Financial System:
1. What is your view of the monetary system in the U.S. today?
I share Ron Paul’s fundamental criticism of the US monetary system, and the quasi private-public Federal Reserve is not just an enabler of the unsustainable debt by the federal government, but the primary cause. While a monetary policy does not need to be based on gold or other precious metals, it must depend on some tangible (non disposable and non-government controlled material.)
2. What corrective actions could we take right now to improve the economy?
Three major actions would have immediate results in capital growth and jobs.
Cutting government spending immediately and substantially (by half), including major cuts for the Pentagon, federal subsidies in all categories, repeal of Obamacare, elimination of a variety of agencies and programs based on their constitutional relevance, and housecleaning for fraud, waste and abuse in all remaining agencies. I would not increase the federal Debt Limit, but seek to reduce it. I would not support a continuing resolution until the cuts were agreed to and executed.
Suspending implementation of new regulations relating to environment, economy, or trade, pending a complete review of the body of regulatory law, within each agency, and production of an implementable reduction/simplification roadmap.
Immediate reduction in all tax rates by 35%, followed by a major simplification of the tax code. The revision of the tax code will be “Revenue Negative,” not “Revenue Neutral” and ultimately I would support a repeal of the 16th Amendment of the US Constitution.
3. Do you agree with the actions the Federal Reserve has taken to solve the financial crisis? If not, what could the Fed have done differently?
The Federal Reserve policies of sending false signals to the marketplace via artificially low interest rates, and the Fed’s enabling of both government spending and the financial situations of government favored financial and industrial giants, caused the crisis. Its subsequent actions, to effectively print money by making new and greater loans available to the Federal Government for politically motivated distribution into parts of the economy have been a predictable disaster and have extended the recession. It should have let the market set interest rates, and functioned in a restrained and conservative manner when pressed by Keynesian politicians and advisors to make fiat money available for state expenditure. In short, it should have done nothing, before or after.
4. Should the Federal Reserve be audited fully, no secrets, or does it need to keep some information under wraps?
It should be audited completely. This includes examination of its politically motivated decision-making process, accounting of its internal accounting of transactions, and verification of gold deposits of both the US and of foreign lenders held in US storage. This information should be publicized. This publicity would cause problems for those who depend upon the secrecy and poor bookkeeping of the Fed, and would hopefully eventually lead to elimination of the Fed as we know it.
II) Re. Foreign Policy:
1. What is your opinion on current US foreign policy?
US Foreign policy is currently conducted in a way unsupported by the constitution, and unimagined by the founders. It is not a republican foreign policy, but instead it is as if we have an Emperor, who is beholden to both political interests and wealthy institutions and people who have an interest in supporting this or that foreign policy. I believe that General Smedley Butler, in describing the Spanish-American War and the colonization of the Philippines in the early 1900s, and his observations on how Wilson engineered US participation at the end of the First World War have relevance today.
2. How should we fight a “war on terror”?
No. It’s not popular to say, but we should treat crimes, even major crimes committed against us, our land, and our people around the world, as crimes, not as acts of war. When an organization or even individuals strike out against US property and people, in most cases, our military is not organized and equipped to really effectively deal with those acts. Our military and its command structure has been designed to fight wars against organized states. Given the threats against American interests and property south of our borders, it seems a more proper use of our defense forces would be along some of those borders, rather than in foreign countries where we are now enmeshed, and not just fighting rather unproductively, but burning tax dollars by billions of dollars each week and creating anti-American hatred among a large segment of the locals.
3. Should the U.S. occupy other countries? If not, would you push to close all bases? Are there any you would keep open?
I don’t need to check my Constitution to see if we should occupy other countries. I know it isn’t there. Occupation is something the United States and our republican system of government is not organized to do, and we tend to do it ineffectively. I would push to close military bases and installations, but I believe that this would be something the military leadership itself would like to do, and therefore I would drastically cut the military operations budget, and have our generals and admirals figure out the smartest way to draw down overseas. There’s over 1000 of them. That’s 10% more than we had since 2000, and maybe some of them are commanding these bases we have to close down. But they are paid to make hard decisions. Incidentally, I don’t support the 1970’s era Carter Doctrine, which is the foundation for our extensive Middle East and Arabian Gulf regional military presence.
4. Should the U.S. maintain its standing army?
The founders warned against a standing army, and feared it as a tool of the state that would eventually be used against the citizens. The Second Amendment was insisted upon so citizens could protect their property, their persons, and their country from a central ruler (and his standing army). Constitutionally, a standing army is not called for. Having said that, it will be extremely difficult to dismantle over 70 years of American militaristic tradition, and a massive domestic industry has grown dependent upon the welfare state created in part by the demands of our standing army and global Navy and even our now globally operating Coast Guard. A first step would be re-empowering and returning military forces to our State Guards, such that those units are truly accountable to governors, and used for national purposes only when the Constitutional criteria are met.
5. Is the Patriot Act necessary to protect America? If not, would you vote to repeal it?
I would vote to repeal, not modify, the Patriot Act. This is based on both my concern about its overall constitutionality, as well as the fact that no Congressman read this act before it was made law originally in November 2001, and neither did the President when he signed it. It followed a path to law that Obama repeated in much the same way with Obamacare, and that path to law is inappropriate for a Constitutional Republic.
III) Re. Personal Liberty:
1. What information may the U.S. government legally gather about its citizens? When would it be necessary to overstep those boundaries?
I believe the Constitution calls for an accounting of the numbers of inhabitants in the geographical areas of the United States, basically the function of a census for allocation of representation. The 16th Amendment implies a federal interest in the most basic of human activities and economy, in terms of our individual production over the period of a tax year. In cases of the prosecution of crimes, the state needs to gather information, as constrained by the Constitution. I don’t see any reason for the government to have a compelling need to exceed the Constitutional limits.
2. What limits, if any, should be placed on the U.S. government’s ability to search its citizens without a warrant?
The government is already limited by the Constitution against warrantless searches, as modified by the FISA regulation, that allows for a secret warrant process, which is in effect a rubber stamp for a wide variety of national security concerns. This question may imply that what the government has been doing – conducting warrantless searches of it citizens – has become common law. I don’t believe it has.
3. Ought the U.S. government be allowed to protect its citizens’ health by outlawing foods it considers unsafe, or to force medicate (i.e., fluoridation) or force vaccinate citizens?
No. Absolutely not.
4. What controls, if any, should be placed on the right to own a gun? Is there an effective way to keep guns out of the hands of madmen and criminals without encroaching on the rights of free, law-abiding citizens?
My reading of the 2nd Amendment is that no controls should be placed on the ownership or usage of guns and other weapons. There is no logical or effective way to limit gun ownership through law and have that limitation apply only to criminals, who as a precursor to their job description, do not obey such laws. A gun can be used as a deadly weapon; so to can a car, a plane, a bottle of aspirin, allergens like shellfish or peanuts, a bottle of Scotch or a fountain pen. Keeping guns out of the hands of criminals doesn’t stop their criminal behavior or reduce their destructive tendencies. Punishing that crime does.
IV) Re. U.S. Sovereignty:
1. Is our involvement in and subjugation to global organizations, such as WHO, NATO, the UN, etc., a benefit to U.S. citizens?
No, except as a jobs program for a miniscule number of Americans who work at these agencies or work on contracts paid for by the UN and similar agencies.
2. Would you work to repeal international agreements that purport to hold U.S. citizens and/or property under its jurisdiction, or do you think there might be times when benefits outweigh concessions?
Yes, I would work to repeal those agreements. The Constitution is clear about the fundamental importance of individual freedom and property, even that property that might be taken or condemned by our own representative government, much less by a foreign country or global organization.
3. Are trade agreements with other nations, i.e., NAFTA, CAFTA, good for U.S. citizens?
If these agreements were really for free trade, they would not be thousands of pages of detailed legalese. They were sold as free trade agreements, but they always were envisioned as managed trade, designed to benefit some corporations and political interests over others, rather than to encourage real freedom of production, manufacture, entrepreneurialism, and trade. In the decades since these massive regulations were put in place, we have seen that they do not benefit us, and in many ways, they do not benefit our neighboring citizens either. Free trade would not, and should not require thousands of pages of item listings and rules put together by bureaucrats and lobbyists in Washington, D.C.
4. Should the U.S. give foreign aid to other countries? If yes, for what purposes would it be justified? If not all countries, which would you continue to support?
No. However, private citizens in this country should be free to give as much as they want to whatever countries, groups and causes that they wish to contribute to, without government oversight and government penalties. In this way, American influence can actually be promoted around the world in a cost effective and targeted way, and our values would be constructively shared. Over the decades, trillions of dollars in military and economic aid have in effect bankrupted our government, failed to further our interests, and in many cases, created dependent countries who despise us for our inability to give more.
V) Re. State Sovereignty:
1. When does state law take precedent over federal law?
When federal law is not constitutionally founded or described, the powers are reserved to the states and the people. States may legally challenge, suspend or not enforce or even nullify federal law, when that law is unconstitutional, unaffordable, or legally or ethically inconsistent with a state’s own constitution.
2. Would you stand up to the federal government and demand that it stay within the bounds of its enumerated powers and out of state business?
Yes.
3. Do federal officers have the right to arrest non-military citizens within the individual states for any crimes?
If they witness a crime in progress, they might be able to do a citizen’s arrest, much as you or I could do. Otherwise, they have the power to arrest only in defined federal jurisdictions.
VI) Illegal Immigration:
1. What do you see as the #1 problem with illegal immigration?
The U.S. welfare state, at both national and state levels. I would include federally funded public schools in that category, as they receive and increase their funding allocations based on the number of students enrolled, and therefore have no incentive to turn away children. The number two problem is a lack of honest free trade and the overregulation of business and industry in this country, which effectively drive the costs of doing business in the United States so high that shaving operating costs by hiring illegal aliens for slave wages is a survival mechanism for these businesses.
2. What actions could we take to stop illegal immigrants from taking advantage of social services?
Reduce the flow of funds to federal and state social service agencies. They’ll figure out the rest. The current emphasis on national IDs, national databases, enforcement and border fencing is like shutting the barn door after the horses have bolted, and it has already led to major expense, large growth in the federal bureaucracy aimed at enforcing immigration concerns, and almost unbelievable corruption.
VII) Misc. Questions:
1. If you could make one amendment to the U.S. Constitution, what would it be?
Repealing the 16th Amendment, hands down. This one change would begin a painful but necessary process of reducing the growth and overreach of the federal government. To ensure state’s rights are a foremost concern for the Congress, and to save many millions of dollars in public campaigns, I would also like to repeal the 17th Amendment as well, and return the power to appoint Senators to the US Senate to Governors and state legislators
2. Would you vote to end government subsidies to private industry?
In every way, and this includes agricultural subsidies.
3. What should our government’s action be against Julian Assange, if any?
None. He is not an American citizen, he operates his media outlet overseas, and he has not harmed the current U.S. government, along with many others around the world. Our government has not been harmed by Assange’s action, nor has it been blackmailed or threatened, but it has been embarrassed. There is no legal reason, nor a legal or constitutional method, to bring any charges against Assange. Likewise, much of what Assange initially published has been reprinted by most if not all of the major news media in this country, and they are all directly protected by the first Amendment. Law and constitution aside, it would be illogical to punish a foreigner for doing what many American editors subsequently also did within our borders, 100% legally, under the First Amendment.
Your Name: Karen Kwiatkowski
Office you seek: Congressional Representative
State: VA
District: 6th
PRIMARY DATE: Primary date is June 12, but could change to August if District lines have not been finalized by Mar. 1
Email Address
Website: KarenKforCongress.com
Not in your district. Donations needed?
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[...] Karen Kwiatkowski, VA, US House [...]