Blog

May 10, 2012: Candidate Ishmael, the lone Independent candidate for the 1st Congressional District, is an Associate Professor of Economics at Northwest University. That gives him a particular advantage over other candidates in how to best create jobs and stimulate the economy. The first piece of his economic stimulus package is the overhaul of the current broken tax system:

“I propose that we move to a flat tax proposal for all personal income taxes. Currently there are about 47% of Americans who pay no taxes, and the higher the income the more likely the possibility that higher income earners have hired tax attorneys and CPAs who find every conceivable tax deduction. By moving to a 17% flat tax for ALL AMERICANS we can guarantee that not only is the tax system more fair, but much simpler as well. This would greatly reduce the need for IRS auditors and tax attorneys while allowing only two deductions – charitable donations and primary residence mortgage interest.  All other personal income would carry a 17% taxable rate, including capital gains. In this manner, 100% of Americans will pay taxes on personal income instead of just 53%, and the rich (who often do not take a salary but rely on capital gains income) will pay an increased amount over the current rate. This will generate a significant increase in taxes to the Federal government without being an increase in taxes for all but the über rich.”

Our current tax system is broken and in need of a dramatic overhaul.  Candidate Ishmael’s proposal is the first in a series of his economic proposals to create more economic stimulation without returning us to the stagnant economic environment and poor job creation that the current economy is experiencing. You cannot overcome a stagnant or recessive economy merely by government spending or creating government jobs, nor can you create private sector jobs by harassing corporate CEOs into hiring more people. The only way to create more private sector jobs is to create a positive economic ecosystem that starts when consumers have confidence enough to start spending, and that will be all the stimulus we need to grow this economy and provide economic opportunity for all Americans.

Austerity programs scare the American people into a “bear” mentality, and government overspending creates the kind of worries that got us where we are today. All Americans have a responsibility to pay reasonable taxes, and Candidate Ishmael believes that the amount should be 17% borne by all Americans. He further believes that is the cost of our democracy. Economists know that the vast majority of Americans want more government than they are willing to pay for in taxes, so this proposal allows more revenue to the government while reducing taxes for the vast majority of tax paying Americans. And, this gives us more revenues to pay down our debt.

This is but one more way in which we can fix a broken Congress. By going to a flat tax of 17% we are suddenly eliminating a whole host of loopholes that special interest groups have lobbied on for years to reduce taxes to those who are most capable of paying them. This is not class warfare, but rather a tax revolution in which Americans are rebelling against the tyranny of special interest groups from both the right and left, and restoring power to the people!

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been proclaiming that they represent the 99%, but that is not an accurate depiction of the situation.  Crony capitalism is not the only threat to our democracy when it comes to the elite.  A new group of elite citizens have emerged in the past 10 years, the “Government Elite.”

Back when President Clinton won the presidency it was reported that he and Hillary never had lived in a private home of their own as adults.  They lived in the governor’s mansion of Arkansas before moving into the White House and were rumored to be nearly bankrupt after defending themselves in the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals.  However, at the end of his presidency he became a multi-millionaire of gigantic proportions. It has also recently been widely reported that many Congressmen of both parties have entered their government service as regular citizens and exited as multi-millionaires due to being allowed to use insider trading.  There have been a number of other Congressmen and Women who have used their fame in that role to have their books published such as our own Jay Inslee.

Another way the Government Elite has emerged as the new force to rival Wall Street fat cats is being a government employee.  In the past decade salaries of federal and state employees have surpassed those in the private sector with similar job descriptions.  Currently there are more than 4,700 Washington state employees earning more than $100,000 per year, and the City of Seattle alone has more than 2,300 employees in that category.  Scandals like the GSA spending millions of dollars to throw parties in Las Vegas and other exotic locales makes one think that these government elite types think this is their money to spend as they choose to augment their already inflated salaries.  When Suzan delBene lost her election bid to Dave Reichert in the 8^th Congressional District, Governor Gregoire offered a $140,000+ state government job to reward her for a race well run.  This keeps her on the dole until she can run again, and that, in effect, is subsidizing her run for office in the 1^st Congressional District (Gov. Gregoire appoints Suzan DelBene to be director of Department of Revenue)…. government cronyism at its worst.  Additional examples of this are the cases of John Edwards spending campaign cash on his pregnant campaign assistant and Aaron Reardon thinking he can use public money to fund his romantic getaways with his mistresses.

Finally, all candidates running for office are allowed to keep whatever funds they do not spend on their campaign.  That means that donors have contributed to candidates’ campaigns because they wanted them to win, but if the polls are fairly consistent in saying the candidate will lose, the candidate will start saving that money rather than spending it.  In some cases that amounts to millions of dollars that they are then able to use to entertain friends, buy new wardrobes or even pay themselves a salary.  How is that fair to their supporters?  Only Doug Roulstone is honorable enough to take a second mortgage on his house to be able to pay back people who had contributed to his campaign in 2008 when he decided to withdraw from the race and allow Sheriff Rick Bart to have the Republican field to himself in running for the 2nd Congressional District seat.

There is no difference between Wall Street and Government fat cats. They represent 1% of the population each, which leaves the rest of us as the 98% of normal people who earn normal paychecks.  If you really want to wage class warfare you need to include Government fat cats in the same elite group of Wall Street fat cats.  Both are destroying this country, and that is why we need a leader like Larry Ishmael for Congress in the 1st Congressional District!

Now is the time to make your commitment to the cause of cleaning up Congress. In looking at the top “Time” magazine covers for the 1970s I was shocked to see that they are the same problems we face today. The intransigence of Congress has not been limited to this latest session, the 113th Congress. No, it has been every one since the 70s! The only thing they can do is “kick the can down the road” so they can get re-elected, and so complex compromises are created that do not fix anything…. they just band-aid the problem until the next election. That is why it is so imperative that we commit now to electing an Independent who works for YOU and not the political parties or special interest groups.

I am asking you today to donate to my campaign. I have only started raising money this week, but must raise a lot of money if I am to win this election against a bevy of Democrats and a lone Republican. I am asking you to donate $25 or $50 to Friends of Larry Ishmael for Congress so that we can kick this campaign off the right way and create momentum going into the August primary election.

Donations can be made by either going to http://larryishmael.com/donate or by sending your check to:  Friends of Larry Ishmael for Congress, 16141 Cleveland Street, Redmond, WA  98052. This will be the best investment you have ever made in turning this “DO NOTHING CONGRESS” around and getting us on the right foot so I can use my economic, international, and environmental expertise to good use working for you. Let’s get America back on track!

How on earth can Governor Gregoire agree to a special election that parallels the Primary and General elections? With a cost estimated at almost $800,000 to run just the special election, this is an exercise in futility.  it is complicated as only the voters of the current boundaries of the 1st CD can vote versus the regular election where only the residents of the realigned 1st CD will vote, but the really insane part is that the interim candidate would only serve for 3 weeks. In case you didn’t know, the cost to the candidate to file for the election is 1% of the salary one would earn if they won the election (in this case it amounts to $1,740 for the special election and another $1,740 for the regular election).

At a time when our state spending far outstrips revenues, and we have a special session of the legislature to deal with that, it seems a really silly thing to do. The logic is that there are 6 candidates running on the Democrat ticket, one running on the Republican ticket, and I am running as an independent, so the vote would likely go to either me or the Republican candidate as the largest percentage of the vote a Democrat could probably get is a maximum of 20%. That means that it is not to the advantage of the Democrat governor to have a special election in 90 days like most other states do.

The way I see it, this is typical of the bitter partisan politics we see every day in our state and federal legislative bodies. Everyone is looking out for their own political party and no one is looking out for us, the voters. Only an independent can truly represent the will of “We the People” as is fully visible in this situation. We are not currently being represented in the US House of Representatives and it is all about bitter partisan politics!

DelBene purports to be a middle of the road Democrat that supports big business and liberal social issues. My longtime friend, Congressman Tom Cole of Oklahoma, once told me that you have to believe in what you are saying. If you are a Democrat but try to appeal to the middle, you will not be credible. The American people are smarter than that. If a Democrat tried to pretend to be pro business and act like a Republican, the voters will elect a real Republican. The same is true of Republicans trying to act like a Democrat. Only a true Independent will represent their constituency and not a political party.

DelBene worked for Microsoft and DrugStore.com where she made millions, but her ideology is strictly liberal Democrat. She wants big government and powerful labor unions (did you think she got several of their endorsements because she was pro business?). She is a wolf in sheep’s clothing who will say anything to get elected so she can join her liberal Dem colleagues on the Hill and act as another obstructionist.

Her Democrat counterpart, Darcy Burner, on the other hand, is proud to be a Democrat. She says what she believes and even if you don’t agree with her, you know she is genuine in her beliefs. If the Dems want a real Dem to represent them, Darcy should be their choice, not DelBene.

As for the rest of the crowd, the only other one that stands out is Darshan Rauniyar, a naturalized American citizen from Nepal. He is also a true believer. The rest are just in sheeps’ clothing with no bite.

I really am enjoying this year in South Africa. I feel very much at home and my circle of friends is expanding with the different activities I’ve been involved in here. My singular focus has been the dissertation, but I also have to remember that there is an election year coming up and I need to be positioned for that now. So, I spent Monday working on my “unofficial announcement” that I will be running for the 1st Congressional seat again in 2012. I ran in 2006 and 2008, but took 2010 0ff to concentrate on my Ph.D. work. Now, as my dissertation work is starting to shape up nicely, I hope to be Dr. Ishmael by the time the election rolls around next year.

The field for 2012 will be interesting. I hear that the incumbent, Jay Inslee, will be running against Rob McKenna for Governor of the state of Washington, which leaves the 1st CD seat open for the first time in recent memory. Now that is good timing for someone who has worked so hard for so long to win that seat, namely me! But, others are cropping up on the horizon like: Joe Marine (who ran in 2002), James Watkins (who ran in 2010), and possibly even John Koster (who ran for the 2nd CD seat in 2010 and 2004). But, I like my chances. My name recognition is second to John Koster, and I have no real negatives at this juncture. You really need to run at least twice to get name recognition high enough to win.

Now that I have informally announced, I can run my Congressional Exploratory Campaign until I have raised the limit for “testing the waters,” and then I will officially declare and register with the FEC. There is much work to assemble a team between now and then, and that means I need to start that process right now even though I’m still in South Africa.

I have a cadre of Stellenbosch students and professors in the Political Science department who are keenly interested in my campaign as South Africa is maturing as a democracy and they look to the way the US conducts theirs to learn who to do and what not to do going forward. It is, if you will, a case study in democracy for them which is why they are so interested.

The municipal elections here in South Africa took place this year (last week), with federal elections in two years. Although the major party in South Africa is the African National Congress (ANC), the party of Nelson Mandela, the second most powerful is the Democratic Alliance (DA). The DA runs the Western Cape province where I reside here, and is held in high esteem. They were recently re-elected to serve another 4 years with a 79.4% mandate. But, the interesting thing is that the main issue of this election cycle was “service delivery.”

What, you may ask, is service delivery? Well, it is the cumulative grouping of all government services to the public. They use it to measure how well your garbage service works, how good the roads are, how effective the schools are, and every other measure of customer service the local government provides to its residents. It is something that all levels of society (from the richest to the extremely poor) can measure as it effects their own lives, and the party that does the best job of it gets elected for another term. Pretty basic, right? Well, why don’t we do it in the USA?

Can you imagine how the US Congress would fare if the residents/constituents of each Congressional District (and all combined) measured service delivery? A more simplistic way of stating it is that the Congressional approval ratings are truly in the tank. A recent Rasmussen Poll pegs Congress’ approval rating at just 9% (http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/rasmussen-poll-congressionalapproval-all-time-low/2011/06/07/id/399124?s=al). Now, if you were to measure service delivery, it would be even lower still! You see, service delivery is about what they have actually accomplished to improve the lives of their residents, not just spouting dogma about what it would be like if they had their party’s way.

What do you think of your service delivery from Jay Inslee? What has he done to improve your life? Nada. Zip, Zilch. Has the nation’s fiscal situation been improved? Are you getting more out of those government services that affect your life for the taxes you pay? Heck, they can’t even balance the budget! They cannot so much as speak with civility towards each other, so how do you expect them to work together to provide any “service delivery?”

Of course, the key to service delivery is that it not be built on an ever increasing national debt. A balanced budget amendment would also be required so that the old adage, “a chicken in every pot” wasn’t used. How about the government sending out a “customer survey” on how happy the taxpayers are with each department of the government? Can you imagine one from the IRS? The House? The Senate? The Presidency? Imagine a government who took these customer service survey results and had to respond to them with actual programs to improve the service delivery they offered their clients! Now that is a world I would be proud to call my own!

Okay, enough about politics, so back to writing my dissertation….