Why is Joe Biden silent on massive voting fraud? Does he not want people to believe that he was elected fair and square? State legislatures in contested states should send electors that support the will of the voters in their states to Washington to vote for Donald J. Trump.
by Richard Urban
In Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Detroit Michigan and other locations, poll watchers were prevented from observing the counting of ballots, allegedly due to COVID restrictions. Even after court orders, they could still not observe ballot counting in Philadelphia.
Why hasn’t Joe Biden made a statement to the American people that he fully supports investigation of any and all allegations of voter fraud? Does he not want people to be confident that his ‘stealth’ supposed ‘win’ is legitimate? All honest officials of any party or none, should want only legitimate ballots counted.
As these allegations, which are very substantial, wind through the courts, state legislatures in contested states, or which all have Republican majorities except Nevada, should send their own slate of electors that support President Donald J Trump, to Washington.
Article 2, Section 1 of the United States Constitution says
2. Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in The Congress…”
There is no requirement in the Constitution to use the popular vote in a state as the basis for assigning electors.
There is a precedent for legislatures in contested states to appoint electors, too. In the contested Presidential Election of 1876, three states sent their own slate of electors to Washington. Eventually, the race was decided in favor of the seeming loser, President Rutherford B. Hayes. The reason for the contested states to send their own electors was voting fraud.
In fact, if the contested states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and possibly North Carolina and Arizona, don’t send their own slate of electors loyal to President Donald J. Trump, they are disenfranchising all of the legitimate votes cast by their state’s residents.
Again, everyone should want only legitimate votes counted. If ballot observers were not allowed to observe, which a fact is, then those ballots must not be counted. Why would any honest person want those ballots to be counted? What were election officials trying to hide? And this happened in not just one location, but multiple locations.
It is each state’s legislature’s responsibility to ensure the integrity of their state’s ballots. The Democratic Party Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar, made unilateral changes to election procedures days before election, allowing late ballots to be counted. Only the legislature can make such changes. Since this has already occurred, the State Legislature of Pennsylvania must take corrective action for this, plus the denial of access to poll watchers.
Just as Bill Gates’ foundation donated $50 million to the World Health Organization before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife donated $50 million to the Center for Election Innovation & Research. $10 million went to the city of Philadelphia to quadruple the number of voting locations. According to Just the News
“also In justifying one item for which funds were sought, the grant application stated that “a full, 5-member Election Board (Judge of Elections, two Inspectors of Election, one Clerk, and one Machine Inspector) will require recruiting, training, and assigning up to 8,515 poll workers (1,703 divisions x 5 Election Board members).”
So Mark Zuckerberg is literally funding election judges and workers. The very same Mark Zuckerberg who censors right-leaning discussion on Facebook. This is a complete outrage.
Another concerning issue is why there were delays in vote counting in many locations, such as Fulton County, Georgia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In conclusion, the legislatures of the states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and possibly North Carolina and Arizona, must call emergency sessions to select a slate of electors loyal to the person that the voters chose before fraudulent ballots were counted, President Donald J. Trump.
Are you growing a healthy fruit or a wormy, rotten fruit through the actions that you are taking, especially centered on absolute sexual ethics? When you are not committed to the betterment of your children, or the children that may be created, you are doing a disservice to yourself and to society.
What is the link between absolute sexual ethics and the current ballot fraud scandal?
With the 2020 Presidential Election still Undecided, should we trust the system and trust Joe Biden?
Learn about a life of true love and about the relationship between your physical self and the eternal spiritual self. Read the Principle, the teaching of Rev. Sun Myung Moon: https://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Books/DP06/0-Toc.htm
The choice could not be more clear. One candidate supports fulfilling God’s purpose of creation, and one does not. One is on the side of good, the other is on the side of evil.
Learn more about the “laptop from Hell” that show that Joe Biden know about Hunter Biden getting millions. Also the laptop allegedly has sexual images of underaged girls.
Learn about the importance of lineage and about the phoenix-like life of Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
Learn more about Mike Chapman, his previous management and law enforcement experience and his views on issues facing law enforcement in Jefferson County WV.
Mike Chapman Interview Excerpts
Mike Chapman: Hi. Good morning Mr. Urban and all your viewers. Thanks for having me on the show today. I really appreciate it. I am Mike Chapman. I’m the Democratic candidate for Sheriff. I’m probably a little different than the other candidates in the field. I was a reserve deputy for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office for 10 years. I logged a lot of volunteer time in a police cruiser, doing by my best to make the citizens of Jefferson County safe. I served under three different Sheriffs. I’ve seen three different management styles of the organization. But my primary bread and butter, so to speak; throughout my life, I’ve been involved in information technology, business and finance. I’m an entrepreneur. I have owned a few small businesses over the years. Still do actually. I also own a farm out on the South end of Jefferson County. I think that basically, I’ll bring a unique perspective to the office. One, I do have the law enforcement experience. I do know what goes on inside the sheriff’s office. I do have some experience with all that. But the fact that I spent my entire career in the private sector, where in order to survive, you have to make things more efficient, more cost-effective and more customer service friendly.
Those are traits that you do not see in government, generally speaking. Not always. I don’t want to be too over dramatic with it, but a lot of times in law enforcement, we’re missing some of those things. So I think that once I get in office and I take a good hard look at everything and do a complete process analysis, complete needs assessment. We’ll find some opportunities to save the tax payers’ money, to be more responsible to the voters, to provide a higher level of customer service to people that have to react with the Sheriff’s office. And hopefully, just provide a total better service to the community while providing a better experience to the employees that work under me.
Richard: Can you clarify for myself and the viewers, what do the reserve officers do? Have you ever made an arrest, for instance? Or is it more like direct traffic or is it much more involved than that?
Mike Chapman: It sort of depends on the Sheriff, as to how much leeway he gives them. It also depends on the deputy that you might be working with at the time.
The reserves have an academy with about 200 hours of training. They are trained in Tasers, pepper spray, take down tactics, hand cuffing. They assist deputies with arrests. At least in my day they did. I assume they still do. I’ve rolled around on the floor with the subject trying to apprehend him along with the deputies. You’re very much involved. We transport prisoners. We take them to arraignment, take them to prison. We help process the paperwork on DUIs. We do direct traffic when there’s a catastrophic event, something that might down the highways. We’re extra manpower, extra eyes and ears in the community. A lot of the things we do, for example, I think a DUI arrest might take several hours to process. And that will also include a trip to the Regional Jail. So we’ll take some of those responsibilities off the deputy to get them back out on the street faster. So we’re sort of a force multiplier for the sheriff’s department.
Richard: And that’s a volunteer position, so you’re giving your time.
Mike Chapman: Yes. And I was involved in that early on. I was one of the people that helped form the organization and make it what it is today.
Richard: I notice about the training academy, they said it’s one of the, maybe the only one in the state or something.
Mike Chapman: A lot of the counties, local counties will send their officers here for training, because we do have such a great program. Ours is the model program for the state of West Virginia.
Richard: What do you think right now is the greatest issue for law enforcement in Jefferson County?
Mike Chapman: That’s a two-part question for me.
The biggest issue as we see it immediately is the opioid crisis. The opioid crisis drives so many other things. To an extent, human trafficking. To an extent, healthcare, because we’re seeing upticks in hepatitis, HIV, because of things that are going on in and around the opioid crisis. It’s destroying families, it’s creating despair. It’s definitely a problem. But what I see as an even potentially bigger problem looming on the horizon, if you’re following the news, the national rhetoric against police officers, de-funding the police. It’s driving down morale. We’re seeing in New York that there is a mass exodus of police officers from New York City. They’re retiring, they’re quitting.
Has it happened here yet? No. Are the guys and girls in law enforcement feeling it? Yes. A lot of them want out. And even before this, recruitment nationally for law enforcement officers is down by 60%. Used to advertise, you’d get 100 applications. Now you’re getting locally, you can get 10. It’s a problem, it’s a real problem. And so what scares me is, at some point, you’re going to lose your talented police officers because they’re educated, they’re smart, they can get another job. You’re going to lose them, and there’s nobody to back fill them because nobody wants to go in law enforcement. The younger generation didn’t like it, that idea, anyway, they’re not jumping in to fill the seats, and everybody else is, why would they subject themselves to what they’re hearing?
Richard: If I might ask the question. Okay, so I saw your post about the New York City Police Department and the patrol officer just quit. And I know hundreds of other officers have quit. The patrol officer, chief or director or whatever the title is. But the conundrum I see is, the Democratic Party and the Democratic Mayor De Blasio, he’s causing a lot of these issues and the whole kind of nexus between the Democratic Party and the defund the police movement. I know yourself you clearly indicate you’re not for that, but your party seems to be leaning that way. Can you address that?
Mike Chapman: I can’t speak for the Democratic Party. Listen, there’s a lot of labels that I used to define myself. I’m an American, I have to leave in the constitution 100%. I understand on the West Virginian. I’m a husband, I’m a brother, I’m a son, I’m an entrepreneur. Somewhere down on that list, way down is the label Democrat. I am a part of the party, but I don’t understand the national objective. I really don’t know what they’re trying to achieve by forcing his rhetoric on us. Because, I don’t know that many people that really want to de-fund the police. I have met a few locally, I have. But it seems to be very much a minority. Because what’s going to happen when you call 911 if there are no police officers to take the call? I don’t want to live in that world.
Richard: On the question of the big issue of the opioids, and you were mentioning on your website or Facebook about also a multi-pronged approach or reducing demand. I know specific you mentioned that. What could be done to reduce demand? How do you see that?
Mike Chapman: Sure, sure. First thing about opioids is that it knows no socio-economic boundaries. It can happen in any family. It just can. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or what race you are. What I see is part of the problem is the supply-demand equation. As long as there is a demand for the product, there’s going to be a supplier. We catch the supplier, we take down, we disrupt the network for a little while. Somebody else comes back in to fill it because there’s demand for it. So, we have to find a way, and I know that once you’re on opioids, it’s almost impossible to get off. It’s a life-long addiction. I know all that. But, the point is, if we do nothing, we’re not going to make any progress at all. So we have to do something. If we can only save 10% than that’s still worth it. But what we do now, we catch people with drugs or we catch people who have committed a small property crime to get drugs, and we put them in jail for a while. And we don’t really cure then, we don’t fix them, we don’t make anything better. We pay $50 a day for them to sit in jail, and then we release them back into the world, still addicted. Still, whatever the underlying problem that may have led to their addiction is still there, if it’s mental health, whatever it may be.
So what I would propose is that we try to fix them, as best we can. We try to help them, and we have a day report Center in town. It obviously has limited capacity. The treatment is funded largely through insurance companies. So it alleviates the jail bill. The insurance picks up the tab for the treatment. It’s expensive to send them through that, but the idea is first we treat the chemical addiction, then we try to treat the underlying condition that may have caused the chemical addiction, then we try to re-integrate them back into society. Give them some job training. There’s some employers locally that are hiring people out of that program. And try to make them productive citizens, again, give them a reason to be proud. The current system of just putting addicts in prison because they were holding drugs and they got caught and they go to jail, now they have a drug addiction and a criminal record, that’s not really helping them, so we have to do something different…
Richard: On another topic. We’ve had the governor’s mandates for COVID-19. Then we know that some businesses locally in Jefferson County, at least a couple, and others, and I know in Martinsburg, there’s a barber shop where the gentleman said he wasn’t shutting down. Presumably these could or have escalated where the Sheriff’s Office might be sent over or maybe Martinsburg actually it’s the police, but in any case as an example, so to say, ‘Hey look, you have to shut down’. Would you enforce those kind of COVID 19 regulations? Or even they could involve wearing a face mask. I was at the Moulton Park on a Memorial Day. It was closed. I was going to have a picnic with a friend. It was closed. The signs said it is not open. In fact, they removed the picnic tables. So presumably, someone could have said ‘Hey, don’t congregate here’, or even arrest you. How would you handle those kind of mandates? Are those constitutional? What would you do?
Mike Chapman: Well, let’s take the face mask. I don’t see the Sheriff’s office being able to enforce masks. We have a 32-33 deputies and they are all not on duty at one time. At any given time, there’s four or five out on the road. We have 56-ish thousand citizens. We are a tourist economy that has three million visitors per year. We don’t have enough deputies to do the law enforcement jobs that we have now, let alone try to tackle 3 million plus 56,000 people who may or may not be in compliance with mask law. I think this is, at best, it’s the responsibility of the Health Department to enforce. It’s also the responsibility of private businesses to handle on their own. I’m a little, in some ways, shocked at people that fight the mass thing so much. My entire life, I’ve been involved in things. Like, I’m an IT guy that worked in a factory. When I went out on a factory floor I had to have steel toed boots, hearing protection, eye protection. In certain areas a hard hat. Safety equipment is part of many, many, many jobs. If you play sports you are required to wear safety equipment. The mask thing to me is, I just wear one if they want me to, and that’s it. But I understand people who don’t want to do that. I understand some people can’t do that. But, it’s up to the businesses to enforce that, and if someone demands to come in without a mask and their policy is that you must have a mask, it’s within their right to deny service to the customer that doesn’t want to comply.
And if that situation that comes escalated, then we’ll step in and remove them because they at that point will be trespassing. But just to walk around and tell people or site people for not wearing a mask, we’re not going to do that. As for the gathering, if the park was officially closed and the owners of the park, is that publicly owned?
Richard: No, that’s County. That’s Moulton Park.
Mike Chapman: They may have closed the park. But no one was really interested in enforcing that. The Governor himself said people should be outside and doing things. And so if you were outside using public grounds for family activity, I have no problem with that whatsoever…
Richard: As we come toward a conclusion, why would the voters especially choose you versus your three or supposedly four opponents? What will be your distinguishing points?
Mike Chapman: Well, I’m the best candidate for the job. That’s a good reason to pick me. I bring a different perspective. The guys with law enforcement experience, to be a law enforcement officer minimum requirements are, high school diploma and 14 weeks at the academy and some on the job training. And I’m not speaking about specifically the other candidates, but just generally speaking. So, you can come up through the ranks and run a police department based on that without a broad scope of other world experience. And your knowledge is sort of pigeon-holed into that area. I think what I bring to the table above and beyond the other guys is that broader range of experience. Other ideas, ways to do things faster and more efficient. I’ve got some ideas and I don’t really want to go into the detail of them yet because they’re so, I’ll call them state-of-the-art, that the state code doesn’t even address whether it’s legal to do it or not. So I’m going to have to get a legal opinion on how to do some of these things to help improve the processes in the Sheriff’s office. I think that also having been in private sector, managing people, Sheriff’s office is king of definitely a chain of command king of organization, and it needs to remain so.
But what happens is, police officers who have done this forever, they become a little jaded. They definitely, they see the worst in society, and they see the best people quite often when they’re having the worst day of their lives. So, they’re a little jaded. They don’t always think in terms of more modern management and leadership styles. And I think this Sheriff’s Office needs an injection of that. We need to empower the deputies and the supervisors of the deputies. We need to provide them more competitive things to help make their jobs better, like training, for example. We have one guy that’s trained in action reconstruction. We’ve got two detectives. Why not train more people? If I find out that Officer X wants to be trained in accident reconstruction, because that’s something they’re really passionate, really want to do, I should be able to provide that training to them to further their career for their knowledge. And also just give them a better experience while they work there. Plus, when you only have one guy that involved in a discipline, if he moves on, then we have no one. So we need some bench strength. I think that also some of the things I bring to the table with that broader experience is like recruiting. We recruit deputies now by put an ad in the paper and an ad on Facebook. And we’re not drawing a broad base. We have no minority representation whatsoever.
So when I recruit deputies, I’m going to use, borrow from my business experience. What do we do? We partnership with educational institutions. We’re going to partnership with Shepherd College and catch their criminal justice majors. Blue Ridge technical Community College. Even Jefferson High School. There are students there taking forensics classes right now and Washington High School as well. So if we actually partnership with these organizations and try to recruit these kids that have a propensity for law enforcement type backgrounds, and then plan our testing around graduation time so we catch them first when they’re right out of school. And reach out to them to invite them to the testing, personally, maybe even have job fairs, if necessarily. Do something more than just an ad in the paper. And I think we can get a better pool we are picking from. We can also diversify our workforce a little bit.
Richard: You mentioned you’re in IT, do you work for a larger company, have your own business? Just tell us a little more about that.
Mike Chapman: Both, actually. My primary job in IT, I worked for a local company, there’s no longer here, Royal Vendors. The largest budget I ever managed just for IT was $3 million. Now, Royal Vendors, the world headquarters was here in Kearneysville. But we had plants in Mississippi once upon a time. Tennessee, Arizona. And of course, there we a plant in Missouri. It was an incredible place to work. I rode the upswing from $70 million to a $300 million company, and then I wrote it back down again as they started divesting of other locations. To add to that, we also had sales offices in Canada, Mexico, Australia and Europe. So it was a global IT network that I managed. And then on the side, I had a contracting in business. I did IT work for daycare, for healthcare. I did work for other manufacturing companies. I did work for construction companies, I did work for property management companies. I always just had kind of a sideline there. I’ve owned a few other businesses along the way, including a commercial property maintenance company, and property management company, which I still own.
Richard: Any concluding thoughts you’d like to share?
Mike Chapman: Basically, I am definitely the right candidate for the job. I’ve got the experience in finance to manage the budget. I think this year we’re fine with the CARES Act propped up the County budget, but at some point, we’re going to be in trouble. Because video lottery revenues are down, hotel and motel taxes are down, and table games revenues down, property taxes seemed to be on the increase or they soon will be because houses are selling like crazy. And I’m hearing from my realtor friends that they’re getting 25% over asking price. It’s going to drive up our property tax revenue. So where we’re going to land, I don’t know. But if we do find a budget shortfall, we’ll figure it out. I’ve got the experience to do budget modeling to come up with ways that very quickly tell what we can do to make the Sheriff’s Department work. If we have to lean it up, we can still provide the same local service to Jefferson County on a smaller budget for a short period of time. I’ve got some ideas for retention. I know, I’ve talked to some deputies. There are various morale problems. I think I can improve it. I’ve already got those plans in place. Basically, we can just provide the citizens of Jefferson County with a higher level of service than they currently have, regardless of the budget condition.
Learn more about John Doyle and his stand on Rockwool, Red Flag Laws, COVID-19 restrictions and much more.
John Doyle Interview Excerpts
John Doyle: To me, the most pressing issue is the need for clean government. And I define clean government as government that is accessible and accountable to the people, that is responsible and responsive to the people, that he is open and transparent. And I’ve been working on that for a long time. I became particularly attuned to that with the fight over Rockwool. Because a whole lot of that was done in secret. Whether you want Rockwell or not, I would argue that we should not have these decisions made in secret. And I also will confess, when I served for 20 years or 22 years actually; I’m in my 24th year in the House of Delegates, but in three separate stints. I was elected in ’82, got defeated in ’84, got back in in ’92, stayed for 20 years. Retired voluntarily in 2012 and became Deputy Secretary of Revenue in Governor Tomlin’s second term. And he was term limited. So when his term ended, my job ended. And I got back elected, that was in 2016, and I was elected again to the legislature in 2018. When I was in before, I thought we weren’t transparent enough, and I argued for greater transparency.
But Richard, I will tell you, we were a whole lot more transparent than has been the case in the last half dozen years with the current leadership of the legislature. And particularly the last four years, with Jim Justice as governor.
Richard: Is it a legislative thing you think where there needs to be changes or, because of what you’re saying now is a little subjective in the fact that you’re saying it’s less transparent, but presumably the laws are basically the same, and also what needs to be done, in your opinion, to make it more transparent?
John Doyle: It is both. It is a problem with both the legislature and the executive branch. Yes, the laws, in many cases are the same. But how they are applied, it is different. Legislatively, let me give you an example. I served for 12 years on the House finance committee, actually 14 years. And for 12 years, I was on the budget conference committee. Every year I would be appointed to the budget conference committee to negotiate the final version of the budget with the Senate. There would be a half a dozen delegates and a half a dozen senators. These meetings would be open to the public to anyone who wanted to come. We would argue back and forth on different points of difference in the budget and come to compromise. This last year, the final version of the budget was a private negotiation between the chair of the Senate Finance Committee and the chair of the House Finance committee. That’s not right. And in terms of the Executive Branch, since Governor Justice has taken over, there has been much less ability for the public to find out exactly what is going on in the various agencies of state government.
Now, what needs to be done, now there are some changes in law that I think need to be made. One is if a project is going to be announced, like Rockwool, for example. Presently, the rules are, you have to advertise it in a newspaper of local circulation. You have to advertise it twice. I think you also ought to have to advertise it electronically, in addition to that print advertising. A couple of years ago, the coal industry came up with a bill that would have done a complete switcharoo. Yes, let’s advertise it electronically, but in return for that, eliminate the requirement for advertising in print. Well, this wouldn’t work in coal country, because people in the southern coal fields, we think we’ve got bad internet here and bad cell phone service, it’s much, much worse down there. And for many people, the only way they get information is the local weekly newspaper in the county. I think the requirement needs to be for both, that’s an example of a change in statute I have to make the executive branch more transparent….
Richard: Where do you see it going? And what’s your current interpretation? What could or should be done regarding the Rockwool plant. I saw some of your comments, but just go ahead and explain for the viewers.
John Doyle: The fight against Rockwool is not necessarily against Rockwool per se. It’s a fight against air pollution and water pollution. In terms of water pollution, the EPA, the Federal EPA, strongly recommends to states, now West Virginia is one of the states that has what’s called primacy, where our Environmental Agency, the DEP, the Department of Environmental Protection, has the ability to regulate. But the regulations are not supposed to be any weaker than the federal floor. Now, the EPA says to the DEP, you should not allow settling ponds for storm water management in karst topography. Karst being the kind of porous limestone we have around here. Not up on the Blue Ridge, but the rest of the county, the part of the county that’s in the Shenandoah Valley. The DEP let them do it anyway.
Now, for heaven’s sake, sink holes can open up any time and they can get wider and wider and wider. You just don’t know. And it’s possible for a sinkhole to open up underneath one of these ponds that has a pretty thick liner. I’ll give him that. That the liners thick enough. But if the sink hole gets so wide that it’s wider than the liner, all that dirty water gets dumped into our groundwater. And well over half the people of Jefferson County get their drinking water from ground water. This is the kind of thing that we have to fight. And I’m hoping that this investigation of Rockwool will show that our DEP should have required them to use whatever type of storm water management EPA requires in karst. That’s just an example…
Richard: Another topic, with the current COVID 19 mandates of the governor, do you think he’s overstepped his bounds and would you support changing the West Virginia code, to require the legislature to automatically review those kind of mandates which now don’t have any expiration? Maybe they would have a 30-day limit. The legislature must reconvene. What do you think about that?
John Doyle: My biggest problem with the governor is, he has overstepped his bounds in terms of giving out money. The state constitution does not permit the governor to appropriate money. Yet he is taking it upon himself to do that. The Governor does have broad emergency powers, but he cannot appropriate money. I think most of the things that he’s done, I probably would have voted for, but he needed to call the legislature into session and say, Here’s my plan, present the plan; let members offer Amendments if they want it. We vote on the amendments and then we vote on the final plan. That’s the proper way to have done this…
Richard: He didn’t get the legislature’s input on the financing.
John Doyle: It’s not just input. The Constitution requires legislative approval for appropriating money.
Richard: On the constitutional side, what about the issue of saying which businesses could be open, they’re “essential”, others were not “essential”. As you know, many businesses struggled. More than a few have shut down permanently. Do you feel this is an infringement of, constitutional rights? Then on the individual side, saying to say people have to wear masks in certain conditions, based on spacing or square footage of the business. Is this appropriate? Or is this not appropriate?
John Doyle: I believe in the mask requirement, I think we all should have been required to wear masks from the beginning. If we had done that, if the President of the United States and all 50 governors had said that, I think we would have fewer than half of the people who have died from COVID would have died from COVID. Now, in terms of businesses, if we require people to wear masks, we could have let the businesses be open much more than they were. I think we went about it the wrong way.
Richard: Is it okay to shut a business down? Does the governor have authority to say that these small businesses are “non-essential” or does he not have authority?
John Doyle: I think the governor does have the authority to do it. I’m arguing that if he had required masks instead, we would not have had to shut them down.
Richard: One issue I’ve worked on in the legislature, talking to legislators such as yourself, is the issue of vaccine choice or health freedom. And specifically, in order to attend school in West Virginia, all vaccinations are required, no exceptions, except extremely hard to get medical exceptions, which are very few, like 100 statewide. So short question, do you support providing religious or conscientious exemptions for a parent or even can be an adult in some cases, like employers sometimes required vaccines, who has a conscientious or religious objection?
John Doyle: Richard, you know my answer to that question. So for the benefit of your listeners, I will say no, I do not. What might be the reasoning for that, why do you think it’s not appropriate? Public health. I mean, the first requirement of government is protection of the public health and safety, and that’s why we have stop signs and rules that you have got to drive on a certain side of the road. Yeah.
Richard: To me, that’s not a good enough answer, but we could probably have a long discussion on that. We’ll leave it at that for now. That’s clear enough for our viewers.
You had introduced legislation to have a type of red flag law where in certain circumstances that would mean firearms could be confiscated, I guess, in certain circumstances. And honestly, I haven’t read your proposal. Is that correct? You introduce that, and also, if so, why do you feel it’s necessary?
John Doyle: Because some people, a very few, very small number of people, a tiny minority, are in fact very, very dangerous to themselves and to people around them, particularly their loved ones. And, you’re right, I did sponsored that bill, it went nowhere. I did not expect it to go anywhere. I was very careful. I researched, I think about at least a dozen states had these laws. I researched them all. I regarded the one in Arizona as the one that was friendliest to civil liberties. I took the Arizona law and made it even more friendly to civil liberties. For example, under the bill I introduced, you cannot seize the firearm right away. Or at least you can, but only for a very short period of time, and the government is required, within 10 days to give the person a hearing so the person can come up and say, Here’s why I am not a danger, and the burden of proof is on the state to prove the person a danger in that situation. Not the reverse. So at any rate, I will say this, Richard, even the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia opposed my bill. But in private conversation, they told me, John, you’re right, you got the most civil liberties friendly version of this bill that there is anywhere in the country…
Related to this, my opponent likes to, at least leaves open the inference of the inference, that I’m in favor of de-funding the police. I am not. I want to give the police more money. Specifically, I want to raise their salaries. And I’ve always been an advocate for raising the salaries in the state police when I’ve been in the legislature, so there…..
Richard: Children themselves have very little risk. Of course, they’re teachers there. But generally the COVID itself has proven to be much less deadly than we thought, with something like 0.25% infection fatality rate. All that being said, it somewhat seems a lot of these things are political in the sense that there’s a lot of unnecessary restrictions, in my view. Do you have any comment on that?
John Doyle: I think you and I would disagree on some of those restrictions. I think some of them are necessary. But the bottom line is this. I trust the science. And the reason it’s gotten political, is that we have too many elected political leaders and appointed political leaders that have attempted to ignore the science for their own political benefit.
Richard: On the issue of taxation or increasing taxes, that’s a local issue, personally I know that was something we’re deciding here, I’m not for the excess levy. I think people are more capable of deciding how to spend their own money, so especially with things like the excess levy, and you could apply this out to the state level, the schools get funding mostly from the state level, or the state decides the funding. Would you say that we should, in some cases, increase taxes on gasoline or other things, or various kinds of taxes, personal property tax or different things, because there’s a need for various programs, or more to the side that, if people have more of their own money to spend, like the local school taxes, 40% for that excess levy increase in the property tax. I know it’s been in effect for decades, but it costs tax payers 40% more than if it wasn’t in effect. Should we reduce taxes? That’s the easy way to put it. Or do we need to increase them sometimes?
John Doyle: Some taxes should be reduced and some should not be. I have argued for doing away with the car tax. I think that is a real pain in the butt when it comes to the functioning of the economy. Now, if you do away with the tax, you either have to reduce the budget or you have to find another tax or fee or something, to replace the money. I advocate doubling the severance tax on energy-producing natural resources. That would give us an additional $250 million to $300 million a year in the state budget to do things with, and that would enable us to do away with the car tax. Now, it gets complicated because the car tax is part of the property tax. Property taxes go to local governments. So in order to do this, I think you have to mandate that the legislature come up with a replacement for local governments to get rid of that money. All of the property taxes go locally, and so I would insist that even though I’m for getting rid of the car tax, you’ve got to have an absolute, it would have to be done by a constitutional amendment, and there would have to be an absolute hard and fast mandate in that constitutional amendment forcing the legislature to replace the money for counties and cities and school districts dollar for dollar…
Richard: It’s kind of really weird that the Rockwool are is part of Ranson when it’s not. So I think that has been corrected, right? It’s not adjacent to Ransom. Am I not correct, that’s not adjacent?
John Doyle: No, they used a highway, that’s why it’s called pipe stem; sometimes called shoe string. You take two or three miles of a highway; it connects you to a farm. You annex the highway and the farm. And the irony is, it happened when Dave Hamill was mayor of Ranson, God rest his soul. Dave Hamill wanted to shed Ransom of its reputation as being a factory town. And he envisioned moving the train station, the commuter train station, from Duffields to that location, to Kearneysville. And turning that into a multi-use complex; offices, retail, apartments, single-family homes. And that was Dave Hamill’s vision, and that’s why he persuaded Ranson to do that, pipe stem annexation; to shed their manufacturing image. And look what we have now.
Richard: I’ll agree with you on the lack of transparency in that. That’s certainly a problem. I’m not enough up to answer properly about all the different legislation of 2001, and you said previous, but I do believe that has been corrected now, right, that is correct. The problem of the pipe stem and the minor boundary adjustment.
John Doyle: That is exactly right. When the second one happened, Herb Snyder and I went to work again, and we passed a bill, I think it was in 08, and that’s what created what’s called the urban growth boundary.
Richard: But Mr. Simon was saying there was a more recent bill in the last session or so about the so-called minor boundary adjustment.
John Doyle: There was… There was… And again, and he is right about this. The Municipal League and the County Commissioners Association are constantly fighting each other over stuff like this, and the legislature has to come in and referee, and what we usually say is, if you two come together on something, we’ll pass it. We’ll presume its okay with both of you and pass it. And that sort of approach usually works, but every now and then it doesn’t.
Richard: In conclusion, I guess you indirectly or directly talked about a lot, but did you want to say anything else about how you will differentiate yourself and why voters should choose you versus Mr. Simon?
John Doyle: I think I have, and I hope I’ve answered all your questions. I would just say this. He calls himself a common sense candidate, and I personally don’t think he’s making sense.