Your Issue Description
Most issue descriptions (a statement of what you want to do about x) are kind of generic. Instead, borrow a personal story from organizations like Institute for Justice, Reason, or FEE. For example, IJ is fighting a car impounding racket in Chicago. Link to the story and tell the voters what you would do about this sort of abuse.
Prosecutorial Reform
See these articles for some background:
Our criminal justice system has become a crime
overzealous prosecutors hold them accountable by defunding state prisons
Prosecutors protect themselves first
are there viable solutions for prosecutorial misconduct
judge kozinski on reforms that can help prevent prosecutorial misconduct
ignore the prosecutor ignore the problem
a republican crime proposal that democrats should back
holding prosecutors responsible in an insider trading investigation
report says prosecutors rarely pay price for mistakes and misconduct
prosecutors have too much power juries should rein them in
prosecutorial abuse massachusetts
Mens Rea – prosecutors should have to prove criminal intent unless it is specifically excluded
Regulatory Bill of Rights
With these features:
1. You have the right to appeal with a person who at the very least is not a member of the specified agency. That means eliminating administrative law judges and referring the case to district court.
2. You have the right to hire an expert in that field for your defense.
3. You have the right to maintain your property until all hearings are completed, unless the rule you are accused of breaking will result in imminent injury/harm.
4. The presumption should always be that a person has no knowledge of the pertinent regulations, unless they can be shown to have training, skills, etc that indicate they should. ie mens rea should be a burden of the administrative agency.
5. Administrative entities have only limited prosecutorial immunity when it can be shown their activities were in good faith.
6. you have the right to see/have all evidence, statements, science, calculations, and any other information on which the entity relied to issue its injunction, cease and desist order, show cause, or [whatever form], including ALL exculpatory evidence and information the entity possesses.
See this article for background: rule of law in regulatory state
Minimum Wages
Minimum wage laws need to be eliminated because 1) they don’t work; 2) they interfere with the right of individuals to determine their own working conditions; and 3) wages are prices for labor so they obey the same laws of supply and demand that other prices do, and changes in them have similar consequences. You may experience the effects of higher wages by downloading this small business scenario and playing with the numbers.
Business Licenses and Permits
Business licenses and permits should be reduced or eliminated.
Businesses regulated by DORA in Colorado
Businesses regulated by some other agency in Colorado
Occupational license portability.
Corporate taxes
Corporations don’t pay taxes. They collect them from the customer and pass them along to the government. Reduce the corporate income tax rate to zero. This will encourage companies to bring jobs back to America which will mean higher wages and job growth.
Subsidies
Subsidies distort prices, reward uneconomic behavior, ruin lives, and enable fraud.
An economy that functions effectively depends on accurate prices. Prices have three functions: 1) transmit lots of information efficiently and effectively; 2) give people an incentive to act; 3) see that people get paid.
Prices transmit lots of information because they are composites of everything that goes into making the product. A hamburger for $10.00 is a composite of not just the meat, bun, lettuce, and tomato. It also includes the total cost of raising the cow, growing the wheat, planting and harvesting lettuce and tomatoes, shipping them to market, cooking the food, serving the meal, and washing the dishes.
Prices give us an incentive to act. Who ever turned down a 2 for 1 sale, or said No, that’s too much?
Prices make it possible for people to get paid for their labor. If we charged less than $10.00 for our hamburger, someone wouldn’t get paid – the farmer, baker, or rancher, and they would not sell us their product. Then our hamburger would be less desirable and we wouldn’t sell as many of them.
Relatively high prices are incentives for manufacturers to make more stuff and consumers to use less. Relatively low prices are incentives for manufacturers to make less stuff and consumers to use more. Prices need to be high enough to cover our costs and low enough to attract sales.
Subsidies reward uneconomic behavior by giving money to people or businesses for economic activity that wouldn’t exist without it.
Subsidies ruin lives. See student loans which are actually subsidies to colleges and universities who capture the subsidies by raising tuition and leave students in debt.
Subsidies enable fraud by creating opportunities for criminal activity in programs like Medicare and solar companies that went bankrupt.
See also this: Creeping Cronyism.
Drug Prescriptions
In Colorado, police can dig through your prescription records without a warrant. See: So you think prescriptions are private.
