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LWV League of Women Voters of California Education Fund

Smart Voter
San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz Counties, CA November 4, 2008 Election
Candidates Answer Questions on the Issues
United States Representative; District 14


The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of California and asked of all candidates for this office.     See below for questions on Climate Change, Health Coverage, Immigration

Click on a name for candidate information.   See also more information about this contest.

? 1. What, if anything, do you believe the federal government should do to control global climate change?

Answer from Carol L. (Shepard) Brouillet:

Stop subsidizing the oil industry, reduce its use of fossil fuels, raise standards on vehicles to improve their milage and reduce their emissions, stop blocking cleaner energy producing techhnologies. Shift research towards clean, renewable energy.

Answer from Ronny Santana:

We are to be responsible stewards of our earth, but not to the point of being militant because of a couple of unsubstantiated theories trying to turn ecology into a religion and a business for sheeple to follow.

Answer from Brian Holtz:

Damage to the environment only happens where there is no definition and enforcement of individual rights in resources like land, water, air, wildlife, carbon sinks, and electromagnetic spectrum. Markets are the best mechanism for protecting the environment, because they can factor the consequences of pollution into the cost calculations of each potential polluter, and encourage the owners of a resource to preserve it. Markets also allow consumers to reward and punish producers for their impact on the environment. Green pricing (i.e. pollution taxes) would stimulate the technological innovations and behavioral changes required to protect our environment and ecosystems.

The federal government should use its power over foreign trade and interstate commerce to enforce green pricing of the environmental externalities (e.g. anthropogenic global warming) imposed across those borders by the traded products.

? 2. What should the federal government do, if anything, to ensure that every American has health coverage?

Answer from Brian Holtz:

America has too much health insurance. Huge tax subsidies for corporate health insurance hide costs from the insured, discriminate against those not working for large employers, and make insurance portability a regulatory nightmare. Article I Section 8 gives Congress zero authority to tell Americans what healthcare or health insurance they are required or prohibited to buy for their families. Bloated defined-benefit insurance programs (Medicare and Medicaid) offer an antiquated mix of procedures and the wrong balance between routine care and catastrophic coverage. The government over-regulates private health insurance, stopping insurers and beneficiaries from agreeing on lower-cost (e.g. out-of-state) alternatives. The only role of government in healthcare should be to provide tax incentives for insurance consumers to join broad risk pools independent of their employment.

Answer from Ronny Santana:

I don't believe the government is supposed to "do" something to "ensure" anything. The government isn't a provider of goods & services for the general public. Where there is a successful model where a government has provided the best quality health care in the world, then we can take a look at it.

Answer from Carol L. (Shepard) Brouillet:

Institute a single payer health care program, such as the Canadian system.

? 3. What, if anything, should the federal government do about immigration?

Answer from Brian Holtz:

Migration across borders should be without constraints, provided that migrants do not trespass and are sponsored by someone (perhaps themselves) who can afford to assume the same responsibility for their resource impact and congestion impact and subsistence needs as parents do for native children. Libertarians support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a threat to security, health or property.

Answer from Carol L. (Shepard) Brouillet:

Stop subsidizing policies which drive people off their land in countries outside the US, such as Mexico, into poverty, and force them to leave their homes to seek work and money for their survival and their families survival. Do not criminalize workers, but be more rigorous in cracking down on businesses which take advantage of frightened labor which they are exploiting. The current policies encourage businesses to superexploit "undocumented immigrants" and businesses have become dependent on cheap labor.

Answer from Ronny Santana:

We need to:
1. build a wall on the Mexican border
2. enforce the LAWS for deportation - what is the purpose of a law if it is not enforced ?
3. enforce the laws of the people who hire illegals aliens.
4. immediately stop providing free health care to illegal aliens.
  • It sounds cold, but the cold reality is that America can not afford to pay for the services of people who choose to break our laws in order to work here and send that money out of the country to prop up another countries economy. Because of that the reverse effect is now already happening; some Americans are now forced to go to Mexico to get cheaper health care because our health care system has been overburdened and overextended because of people that have no legal right to be here, which has caused that increased cost to be put upon all of our health care premiums.


Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League. 

The order of the candidates is random and changes daily. Candidates who did not respond are not listed on this page.


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Created: January 24, 2009 10:43 PST
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