Hello! I am Supreme Leader, and I am running for Governor through the National Identity Front. Who am I? Allow me to introduce myself in a bit more detail. My name is Supreme Leader, and I'm a Korean American male from Seattle, Washington. I have the innate ability to organize, and lead a group of people, as well as the ability to take criticism well. I am very open-minded, and I enjoy debating with others in order to sharpen my argumentative skills, and to ultimately be a well-rounded and rational person. My idea of the ideal government is one that for the most part, keeps out of the lives of it's people. The role of the government is not to be an invisible gun against the head to the civilians, but rather to help the collective population express their needs through their elected officials. This means that generally for social issues, I find that it's best for the people to decide their own fate, rather than some highly ranked official who has somehow convinced himself of his moral superiority to have the ability to make decisions for the collective majority. Here, I will state my general beliefs for a variety of different heated topics of political discussion. Feel free to question, and challenge me to debate on whatever topic of your choice. As does my party, the NIF, I promote intellectual conversation, and I find that it is one of the most healthy things that you can do for your brain. I'm completely against the idea of exclusion of thought and the idea of thought-policing, as I feel that if you truly are correct in your thinking, then you should have absolutely no problem in making the other person look like a complete idiot in an intellectual discussion. If not, you probably should sit down and consider thinking deeper into your political views. And even in the event that you cannot get to a common ground, being able to disagree while remaining united is the foundation of any great civilization built on intellectual expansion and development. Anyways, let's begin. Topics: Freedom of Speech - This is a topic not being discussed by the other candidates, but I feel that is necessary to address. The right to freedom of speech, historically, has always been created to help support unpopular speech. Popular speech has no need for such laws of protection, because popular speech protects itself. It is important that we hear out every possible political ideology out there, and then weed out those that are weak through proper, intellectual discussion. The concept goes something like this: If you truly believe that you are correct in comparison to another person, then what is the worry in taking to them in a debate? Challenging your views and beliefs with others does nothing more than help sharpen your ability to logical reason, but on top of that it helps weed out inferior or outdated beliefs within our society. Marijuana - I find it to be absolutely useless to waste our time and money on trying to fight against the use of recreational marijuana. However, I still strongly believe that there should be strict regulations on ALL different kinds of drugs. For example, I find that there should be a vote among the people in which we decide the legal age to purchase, and posses certain amounts of marijuana. I believe that in social topics such as these, that it should be in the hands of the people to decide their fate. Gun Control - I am a strong believer in the right to bear arms, for multiple different reasons. Firstly, I find that there is a always a threat of potential government tyranny. The people should be able to fight back against an authoritarian government, if it gets to that extreme. Secondly, the threat of being a victim of crime is always a constant threat as well. The people should be able to defend themselves against those wicked-minded, and also when criminals begin to acknowledge that more and more people are deciding to carry weapons, the crime rate will naturally decrease. However, with more loose policy on gun control, there must be more strict punishments if someone were to be caught misusing their firearms. Longer jail time, and other penalties need to be enforced to discourage this behavior. Minimum Wage - As a person who advocates for free-market, I do not feel there needs to be a need for government regulation on minimum wage. It's more than a myth that government or businesses controls prices, or wages. The market does. The government should not be saturating the market with enforcing fictitious prices and wages out of nowhere, because the market will naturally balance these wages and prices out through supply, demand, and the economic prosperity of the consumer base. The Law - With giving more freedoms to the people, there needs to be harsh punishments to deter these people from turning to a life of crime. This means longer prison sentences, and harsher penalties for committing crimes. Obviously, the punishments will vary dependent on the type of crime. However, with giving the people the privilege of certain liberties, we must give incentive them to maintain a positive lifestyle through having them acknowledge the dire consequences for going against the law of the land. The Government - I find that the role of the government is to accurately represent the people, and to give the people a voice in which they can express their views. Through this, I will help support intellectual discussion within our population, and enforce the law of freedom of speech. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Taxes - This one will be an odd-ball because we don't necessarily know how the economy will function as of now, and we can only make speculate at this point. However, these are my proposed tax plans (due to change, but the general principles will still be the same). Income Tax: Up to $9,000 ------- 3% tax $9000-$30,000 ------- 5% tax $30,000-$80,000 ------- 15% tax $80,000-$100,000 ------- 20% tax $100,000-$200,000 ------- 25% tax $200,000+ ------- 28% tax This proposed tax plan is to ensure power in the middle class, and to support consumerism in the market for not only people of business interests to thrive, but also our consumer population. I will also allow people to write-off donations and charity in their taxes, however to stop tax avoidance, only 70% of the total donations and charity will be able to be written off. This way a person of $200,000 income can't just "donate" $200,000 to a friend's organization, just for his friend to give it back to him, with the initial guy having zero tax liability. However, having the ability to write off donations and charity will still help give incentive people to give back to their communities, while still not taking a huge hit in their net incomes. Business Tax: I propose a low 2% corporate income tax, for a few reasons. 1) Increase in the job market With more businesses having to worry less about how much the government is going to take out of their profits, we should be helping them, as businesses will be an integral part of our economy. With the decrease in focus of taxes, businesses will be able to hire more, pay more, offer better benefits, etc. Now, you may ask: "What if the businesses just pocket the extra cash?" Something to understand is that with everything having to do with a business and a customer, there is always competition. With businesses looking for the best, most motivated, and most efficient workers, they have to offer something with employment that other businesses cannot. This is why we see such an increase of the better workers in the lower class moving to businesses like Amazon IRL, because they offer something to their employees that other businesses just can't compete with. To summarize a bit more, businesses will HAVE to employ more with BETTER benefits in order to even compete in the job market. This is why I don't propose a base minimum wage, because the market will determine this on its own accord, and pushing government regulation on this will do nothing more than harm to our free and open markets. 2) Better benefits for employees Same reasons as above ^^ Competition, competition, and more competition in the job market among employers to attract the best workers they possibly can. 3) If we drastically lower the corporate income tax, we could eliminate the special treatment for dividends and capital gains. The reason we currently have the special rates is to offset the "double taxation" of corporate profits. You can quibble with the term, but the fact remains that a 35% corporate income tax combined with, say, a 43% marginal income tax rate (once we add in the special Medicare surcharges), would be a hell of a disincentive for the very wealthy to invest; you're talking about lowering the projected return on an investment by almost 3/4. There's little question that this would be bad--there's a reason that not even Sweden attempts to levy those sorts of taxes on capital. ---------------------------------------------------------------- I am aware that there are a multitude of topics that I may have missed, but feel free to ask me through a reply! I'd be more than happy to answer or challenge any of you to a debate. Supreme Leader for Governor! President of the National Identity Front (NIF)