Steven Vasquez is one of two Republicans running for congress in New York State’s 21st Congressional District. The following is part one of a three part interview that Upstream conducted with Mr. Vasquez. In the portion of the interview we are publishing today, candidate Vasquez gives his views on the energy crisis, the current economic situation, the War in Iraq and what should be done about Iran and North Korea. Mr. Vasquez will participate in a forum with other candidates tomorrow night, August 12, at the Unitarian-Universalist Society of Albany from 7-9p.m. The forum will focus on health care.
Click here to read part two of this interview.
Upstream: There are two Republicans and five Democrats left in the race for New York State’s 21st Congressional District. What distinguishes you and your candidacy from the other candidates?
Mr. Vasquez: The message of our campaign is to bring accountability and responsibility back to our government. What drives our campaigns and all of its supporters is restoring the founding principles that made America great under the Constitution, including limited government, protecting individual freedoms, free trade (not corporate welfare), balanced budgets, and a humble foreign policy with no nation building. The people want the government out of their pocket books, out of their family life, and out of their email and phone conversations. 4 out of 5 Americans are upset with the government, upset that it spends far beyond its means, causing massive devaluation of the dollar which causes prices of food, fuel, and healthcare to rise at dramatic rates. They are upset with a government that misled them with false information that led to undeclared wars of aggression. They are upset with no accountability from Congress and the loss of freedoms through the FISA bill, Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act, and REAL-ID. Americans know the economy is on a major decline in the next few years, and they want to know there is someone in Congress that can understand and fix the economy.
I am not a lawyer or a career politician, I am a local successful business person with an MBA and Masters of Engineering from RPI, who is not running for self gain, but to represent the people who wants to make America great and economically strong. As an entrepreneur I know how to get a great deal done with few resources, unlike our government which gets little good done with a great deal of resources. I am going to change that.
Upstream: Let’s jump right to the issues. Energy is one of the top issues in this campaign. What should the government be doing about the energy crisis?
Mr. Vasquez: There is an energy crisis on hand, but the cause is entirely placed on our government’s intervention and interference in the energy sector and the devaluation of the dollar. The situation today is similar to the energy crisis in the 70’s, when Nixon removed the dollar from the gold standard, causing massive inflation and devaluation of the dollar that brought prices sky high. Since then the dollar dropped 90% of it value, 25% in the last 3 years alone, to pay for the wars, the housing crisis caused by the Federal Reserve, and the looming entitlement crisis. While the devaluation of the dollar is a major portion of the prices, the current state of the nation’s energy problems relate directly to government interference. When Japanese manufacturers were creating gas efficient cars because of competitive market situations, the US government was subsidizing automobile manufacturers to build gas guzzling SUVs and Hummers.
The government provides billions of dollars in corporate welfare to oil companies and energy utility companies to finance their capital infrastructures, when they can easily afford to capitalize it themselves through their massive profits. For instance, coal power plants are still at 27% efficiency today as they were in the 1950s, despite advanced technologies that significantly increase efficiencies and drastically reduces the carbon footprint. Today, even if a utility wanted to improve its existing plants, the Clean Air Act actually prevents these companies from upgrading by imposing draconian new regulations. New York state power line infrastructure today is in disarray and in much need of upgrading, but the current regulations and government interference prevents true free market forces to come in and compete. In addition federal regulations have made it financially impossible to create new refineries in the US since 1976 and placed bans on oil drilling that, under the 10th Amendment, they do not have the authority to do and should be reserved as state’s rights. Unlike other countries, this is not free market and removes any competitive incentive to buy more cost effective and energy efficient systems. Instead we pay more with our taxes to get an expensive, lower quality energy from government sponsored monopolies. If subsidies were removed from the utility companies, the current price of solar energy and other alternative energy sources would be directly competitive with coal and other fossil fuel power plants.
Recently, the government subsidized corn to be used for ethanol in what can be conceived as a perfect example of government energy intervention leading to disaster. Because of the money and influence of the corn lobbies, corn was subsidized at the cost of billions of taxpayers money, which is very inefficient to make ethanol compared to many other crops such as wild prairie grass or sugar. The result ended up with a shortage of other stable crops leading to increases in prices of food across the globe.
The advancement of alternative energies in recent years have been driven by the free market forces of the high cost of fossil fuels, but even here the government is interfering by removing the tax credits for alternative energy while still increasing the corporate welfare of big oil. As long as crooked politicians get funded by special interests and lobbyists, their energy (and education, healthcare, pharmaceutical, banking, telecom, and military) policies will not be for the benefit of the American taxpayer, but for those with the biggest bank accounts. Ideally, the best energy policy for the government is to not interfere and subsidize any energy policy; in the long run it would be cheaper and more efficient for the American people. If the federal government is to provide assistance, at most it should only provide tax credits for alternative energy and research without having a bureaucrat from Washington DC determining which method is best.
Upstream: What other issues do you see as high priority right now?
Mr. Vasquez: The biggest issue is the dollar bubble, and the economic collapse due to the “perfect storm” of the housing crisis, the entitlement crisis, and the never ending wars. According to the Government Accounting Office, the US Treasury now releases an audited version of he Federal budget which follows proper accounting principles required by corporations. Annual deficits are more than double what is reported by the government, reaching close to $800 billion a year. Even during Clinton’s surplus years, the deficit was over $489 billion. Much of the difference comes from the government not including the rising costs of civil servants and military personnel. It does not include the entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicare, and veteran funds in the budget, which would bring the annual deficit to over $3.5 trillion a year.
Every year, Congress loots up to $150 billion from Social Security and Medicare Trust funds for its out of control deficit spending, leaving an IOU for future taxpayers. This is the equivalent of stealing from every American’s pension fund. If Congress was a corporation, it would be arrested for stealing and fraud. Within the next 20 years, 78 million baby boomers will be entering retirement age, and Medicare will be bankrupt in 2018. In ten years, when Medicare is insolvent, so is the Federal Government, and it would not longer be able to pay for other programs including national defense and keep its obligations to senior citizens and veterans. The true deficit including the entitlement programs is $53 trillion, or over $400,000 per household that our children and grandchildren will pay all their lives and not see a penny of it.
To pay for this, Americans are already working until July 16th of every year to pay for all government taxes and fees before they start making any income. Even if taxes increase to an impossible 100% for every American and corporation, it will still not pay for this. We already borrow from Communist China and Saudi Arabia where most of the 9/11 terrorists originated from, and foreign corporations now own 10% of American interest. The only mechanism left for the Federal Government other than cutting waste is to print money out of thin air through the Treasury and the private and secret cartel of banks known as the Federal Reserve. In the last 3 years, over $4 trillion was created to fund the wars, bail out the housing crisis, and subsidize the oil companies. That increased the money supply by 25%, decreasing the value of the dollar so its now worth less than a Canadian dollar, and has sent prices skyrocketing. The scenario is similar to 1920’s Germany, post-WWI Hungary, Soviet Union, and today Zimbabwe, where hyperinflation occurred due to the central bank continuously printing and inflating money without the backing of a stable commodity, dropping the value of the currency in a downward spiral.
Click here to read article associated with graph.
To stop this we need a responsible economic and foreign policy, with a sound monetary policy. We need to stop Congress stealing from Social Security and Medicare by passing HR129, the Social Security Preservation Act to protect our seniors. We have to cut major expenses, including bringing our troops home from over 700 bases in over 130 countries. We are paying close to a trillion dollars a year for our empire, which is no longer relevant in a post-Cold War society. We are defending rich countries such as Germany and Japan, while our troops spend their incomes in these economies. By bringing our troops home, we will have a stronger national defense where our troops are not thinly spread out throughout the world. We need to make the hard choices and cut spending to live within our means, so we do not pass this massive deficit to our children and grandchildren.
Upstream: Do you support an immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq?
Mr. Vasquez: Yes, bring our troops home now. Besides the breaking economic burden on the American taxpayer, the loss of American troops is over 4,000, with tens of thousands of American casualties with permanent disabilities. The administration stated that we will leave when the Iraqi people no longer wants us there. A few weeks ago Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki testified to Congress that over 70% of the Iraqi people want the US to withdraw. The administration has set no goals for success, leading to a never ending occupation of a sovereign nation. Opponents to withdrawal state that leaving would create a civil war killing thousands. Since the beginning of the war, estimates of 100,000 to 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been killed, or nearly the equivalent of every man, woman, and child in the Albany. Another 2 million Iraqis have fled the country and another million are now homeless and refugees. In Baghdad, the city is walled and separated into secular ghettos, the people imprisoned in their own cities. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/21/iraq.iraqtimeline and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTMp-YNaDdg) The “success” of the surge resides mainly from bribing the Sunni insurgents with hundreds of millions of American taxpayer money not to fight, essentially funding them for weapons when we stop bribing them.
Other critics of withdrawal say that Al-Qaeda will take over Iraq if we were to leave. Before the war, there were no real presence of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the blowback of the war and occupation of an Islamic nation is the continuing recruitment of resentment against the United States. The United States was not attacked by Iraq or even threatened through military action (in fact Rumsfeld and Cheney funded Saddam Hussein and provided most of their arms including WMDs throughout the 1980’s). Yet, the administration invaded and conquered Iraq based on false information that countered legitimate intelligence found by the CIA. Senator McCain on David Letterman in October 2001 linked the Anthrax attacks after 9/11 to Iraq, even though the Anthrax originated from US Army labs. (Why would Iraq target Senators who were against the Patriot Act?) The Iraq War will fall as one of the darkest times in US history, and there needs to be accountability to restore the checks and balance as exists in the Constitution.
Upstream: What position should the United States be taking in relation to countries like Iran and North Korea?
Mr. Vasquez: The U.S.. needs to follow the Constitution, which does not give it the mandate to be the military police force of the world, nor can the American taxpayer afford it. George Washington urged the US to trade with all and ally with no one. George W. Bush ran on a platform of a humble foreign policy with no nation building in 2000. U.S. interference and intervention has caused resentment towards the US around the world as blowback. In the 1950’s, when the democratic government of Iran tried to expand its economy by reclaiming its oil fields, the US overthrew the democracy and installed a dictator. This led the to Iranian revolution in the 1970s. In the course of the last century, the US has toppled democracies and funded military dictators. The administration claims to go after countries with WMDs, but ignored North Korea and Pakistan, both dictatorships that actually do have nuclear weapons. The administration claims to be combating terrorists, but ignores the countries where terrorists exist such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The administration claims to be spreading democracies, but democracies form from and by the people, not behind the barrel of the guns of a foreign nation. The administration claims to go after dictators such as Saddam Hussein, who killed their own people (with WMDs provided by the US), yet ignore Darfur and Rwanda. Iran is now considered a threat even though National Intelligence Reports showed they have not worked on a nuclear weapon since 2003 and are not even close to producing a weapon. On the other hand, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan have some of the world’s largest energy reserves. To improve their economies against inflation from the devaluation of the US dollar, Iran in February 17, 2008 has opened a new Petroleum Exchange not pegged to the dollar. Iraq also removed the peg on the dollar for oil trades in 2000. Financially this is a threat to the dollar and the bankers. What are the real reasons for these wars and who benefits financially?
The policy of the United States should follow the advice from the founding fathers. Trade with everyone and spread democracy by setting an example.
Part two of this interview will be published tomorrow. Meanwhile, you can learn more about Steven Vasquez at his website.
2 Comments
August 11, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Thanks for doing this interview.
August 12, 2008 at 10:30 am
Thank you for doing this interview, and giving Steven a chance to get his message out there to the people!