Paul Sand
Paul Sand (Libertarian Party) ran for election for Governor of Idaho. He lost in the general election on November 8, 2022.
Sand completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Paul Sand was born in Richfield, Minnesota. Sand's career experience includes working as a contractor with Monaco Enterprises, Inc., a computer software engineer, a carpenter and architect, a systems analyst, and an entrepreneur.[1][2]
Elections
2022
See also: Idaho gubernatorial election, 2022
General election
General election for Governor of Idaho
The following candidates ran in the general election for Governor of Idaho on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Brad Little (R) | 60.5 | 358,598 |
 | Stephen Heidt (D)  | 20.3 | 120,160 | |
 | Ammon Bundy (Independent) | 17.2 | 101,835 | |
 | Paul Sand (L) | 1.1 | 6,714 | |
 | Chantyrose Davison (Constitution Party) | 0.9 | 5,250 | |
 | Lisa Marie (Independent) (Write-in) | 0.0 | 46 | |
| Total votes: 592,603 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Robert Dempsey (Independent)
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Governor of Idaho
Stephen Heidt defeated Shelby Rognstad and David Reilly in the Democratic primary for Governor of Idaho on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Stephen Heidt | 78.8 | 25,088 |
 | Shelby Rognstad (Write-in) | 21.2 | 6,736 | |
 | David Reilly (Write-in) | 0.1 | 21 | |
| Total votes: 31,845 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Melissa Sue Robinson (D)
- Bob Dempsay (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for Governor of Idaho
The following candidates ran in the Republican primary for Governor of Idaho on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Brad Little | 52.8 | 148,843 |
 | Janice McGeachin | 32.2 | 90,857 | |
 | Ed Humphreys | 11.0 | 30,878 | |
 | Steven Bradshaw | 1.9 | 5,470 | |
 | Ashley Jackson | 1.1 | 3,172 | |
| Lisa Marie | 0.4 | 1,120 | |
| Ben Cannady | 0.3 | 804 | ||
| Cody Usabel | 0.2 | 680 | ||
| Total votes: 281,824 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Chris Hammond (R)
- Jeff Cotton (R)
Constitution primary election
Constitution primary for Governor of Idaho
Chantyrose Davison defeated Ryan Cole in the Constitution primary for Governor of Idaho on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Chantyrose Davison | 61.9 | 346 |
| Ryan Cole (Write-in) | 3.9 | 22 | ||
| Other/Write-in votes | 34.2 | 191 | ||
| Total votes: 559 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Libertarian primary election
Libertarian primary for Governor of Idaho
Paul Sand defeated John Dionne Jr. in the Libertarian primary for Governor of Idaho on May 17, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Paul Sand | 60.2 | 427 |
| John Dionne Jr. | 39.8 | 282 | ||
| Total votes: 709 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Campaign themes
2022
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Paul Sand completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Sand's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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I've started and ran a dozen businesses, including a 501(c)3 non-profit and several stock corporations involved in developing information technology used by local, state, and federal government agencies, and numerous large educational, industrial, and biotech entities. I also designed and built several energy efficient homes for my family, including our unique house in White Bird.
I have actual government experience working directly with top policy makers in nearly every agency of the Minnesota state government. I served on the White Bird City Council from 2007 to 2017 during a period of significant issues facing the city and surrounding community.- Stop the erosion of personal freedom and women's rights in Idaho
- Make the interests of workers and families higher than the interests of business anad government
- Protect gun rights by ending the causes of gun violence rather than by government regulation
And of course my mother who built the hardware and programmed the software for my mind, with a copy of her mind. I wish I could say anything good about my father.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Sand's campaign website stated the following:
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SOCIAL ISSUES Issue 1 - Stop Killing Each Other All human behaviors and emotions are also found in the animal kingdom. The only thing that differentiates humans from animals is that we can consciously choose to not behave like animals. Our tribes have been attacking and killing each other for a million years. Our willingness to kill each other is proof that we have not evolved beyond the animal level and have not yet achieved humanity. We need to stop all wars and hate now, and learn to coexist and to accept our differences.
Tribalism includes religion, racism, sexism, ageism, and all the other “ism”s. It is a natural biological feature of all social animal species. We have a biological need to belong to something. We cannot prevent people from being racist, but we can prevent people from acting racist. Everyone should think that their tribe is the best, but we are all part of multiple tribes and they all overlap to some degree, which puts us all in the same sinking boat. I am a member of the male tribe, senior citizen tribe, Viking tribe, Seahawk tribe, computer nerd tribe, etc. All tribes have a right to exist and a responsibility to give all other tribes the same rights that your tribe enjoys. Any tribe that interferes with another tribe’s rights will no longer be permitted to exist.
I am not sure we can consider America as free when we have the world's highest prison incarceration rate. We have six times the world's average rate and I am pretty sure we don't have six times the bad people rate. We would need to release 1.75 million prisoners to equal the rest of the world. This is not only blacks, but all people who are disadvantaged by discrimination or lack of opportunity. As soon as job training programs and mental health services are in place to provide a safe landing, we should release at least one million political prisoners from American prisons. These were otherwise good people who were victims of an unfair economic system that forced them into an unfair criminal justice system. They will all be given a one-time do-over and be provided with restitution in the form of free education, free job training, and a good paying guaranteed job that will allow them to raise a happy, healthy family and fully enjoy the American dream. Since organized crime was also caused by political malfeasance (prohibition), I would also give them a one-time, now or never, do-over, dismiss any past wrongdoings and let them “clean” their money for a 10% laundry tax and then go legal and stay legal. The laundry tax could also apply to any un-taxed offshore funds being brought home. By decriminalizing drugs, gambling and prostitution, we can eliminate drug pushers, street gangs, meth labs, drug cartels and their associated violence and can better manage gambling and prostitution operations. Then, law enforcement can focus on catching actual criminals and rapists and no longer need to risk getting shot while performing a routine traffic stop. The slightest hint of pot smell gives the police probable cause to detain, search and shoot you if you appear to resist or flee. Once decriminalized, the drug problem can come out into the daylight and social stigma can encourage young addicts to get treatment, get job training, and join the rest of society. We are a nation of stimulant addicts. Just drive by a coffee kiosk any time of the day or night. When I was growing up, my father who worked with numbers all day, had a legal prescription for dextroamphetamine, a.k.a. white crosses or dex and it is now being given to children to treat ADHD. Any politician that opposes legalizing drugs and yet supports legal and deadly alcohol and highly addictive nicotine is maintaining policies that fund organized crime and should be willing to take full personal responsibility for innocent people being killed by gang violence or by overzealous law enforcement.
With automation and A.I. the future will have fewer good paying jobs. Businesses should be encouraged to provide workers with family healthcare benefits and income that will fully support a family, with a stay-at-home parent. For most existing responsible businesses already providing fair wages, this will not add anything to their payroll expense. We also need a guest worker program to bring in workers that are desperately needed but not available with our workforce. Try to find a workforce to assemble cellphones or pick lettuce in this country. It can’t be done. When I was in college, I took a summer job at an electronics company drilling holes in printed circuit boards. After 4 hours, I left the facility to get lunch and never returned. Fortunately, this work is now done by robots.
Worker training is a responsibility of the business and the government. Anyone who wants to learn a new trade or skill should be given a free education as long as they are making progress. Businesses that need degreed workers should fund the college education for a basket of talented individuals who would be contractually obligated to the company for 5 years after graduation. If they are traded to another employer, the new employer would buy out the remaining contract. If they are released, they become unrestricted free agents and owe nothing for their education. We need at least one million more men and women construction workers now and in the near future as we build more new homes and fix old infrastructure. I recently tried to hire contractors for some concrete and masonry work and they were booked though next year. When asked why they don't expand, they said it is because they can't find skilled workers and those that are any good are hard to keep. I propose expanding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and re-open military bases across the country to train workers in all phases of light, medium or heavy construction. After two years of basic training, they will be fully ready and able to start construction work anywhere in the country. Those that want to stay in the Corps can re-enlist for 4 years and be deployed in this country and around the world wherever basic infrastructure needs to be built or repaired. This program would be best for trainees who need discipline and a structured environment to be successful.
Government handouts to people who don't want to work doesn't sit well with people who work hard for their living. This program is only for people who want work and can work. It is not a handout. It is also not a charity. We should create a safety-net that replaces welfare, disability and unemployment with paying work. If you lose your job on Friday, you can report to work on Monday, online or at your local PWP office, and your salary (with limits) and full benefits continue without interruption. There would be no restriction on how long you can remain in the PWP. You will get score points for volunteering for assignments and extra points for unpleasant assignments and leadership points for performing supervisory roles. PWP workers will need to be present, online or in person, to be paid for those hours. Online work being performed may be real or simulated and your speed and accuracy will be measured. Our public spaces need a lot of work and you may find yourself cleaning bird-poop off statues or picking up trash, with a good income and good benefits. Businesses will want to hire new workers from the PWP because workers with high scores are known to be reliable and hardworking. If you leave the PWP for a real job and then return to the PWP, you can resume with your prior score and status. Government agencies and businesses that need temporary workers will also use the PWP for those jobs. If a government department has work that is not getting done due to budget issues, the PWP will do that work at no cost to the department. The PWP also acts as job finding service and as the entry point for job training services for workers. PWP workers can continue to receive their salary and benefits as long as they are progressing in a job training program.
We can end gun violence simply by eliminating all of the uses for gun violence. Gun control has never worked. Buying a gun should be no more difficult than buying an electric toothbrush. Government policies that result in gun violence are being used by the establishment to generate political support from both parties for completely outlawing gun ownership. The obvious solutions are to provide mental health services to everyone regardless of age or insurance, end the failed war on drugs, and provide economic and social opportunity and an economic safety net so you don't lose everything when you lose your job..
We can end abortion by eliminating the need for abortion and we need to increase the birth rate if we want any kind of future. I am personally opposed to abortion because I have a God-given biological imperative to attempt to reproduce as often as possible. I also support a woman's God-given right and responsibility to be selective. The creation of a life and the gift of immortality is the greatest gift a woman can give any man. I can never adequately thank the mother of my three children. I believe that choice is an issue of personal freedom and women's rights. I was raised as a good protestant Christian, sang in the church choir, read the Bible from cover to cover and studied the teachings of Jesus, including those left out of the Bible, and I believe that Jesus never said that women were less than men. I also believe that any business or organization has the freedom to set any rules for members, employees, or customers, for any reason, as long as they don't try to impose those rules on the freedoms of other people or organizations. Abortion can be ended simply by eliminating the economic barriers and uncertainty that families face. Then we can end daycare, homelessness, hopelessness, domestic violence and teenage pregnancy.
HEALTHCARE REFORM Basic Medicare for Workers and Families Every year, businesses dread the negotiations with their employee benefit providers. To reduce those costs, we need to create a Basic Medicare for Workers and Families program. Businesses can buy this coverage for their “head-of-household” employees at a single fixed rate for all ages and all family sizes. The single fixed rate prevents employer discrimination based on age or family size. The premiums for B.M.W.F. are likely to be cheaper than the business is paying now for group insurance for just the worker. For actuarial soundness, there will need to be limits on the coverage. Workers and businesses can also optionally purchase commercial insurance supplements to expand the basic coverage or reduce deductibles. People with self-employment income or just “extra” income can also buy B.M.W.F. and supplements for themselves and their families.
We will greatly expand mental healthcare services and make them available to everyone. In addition to drug treatment and suicide prevention, new mental health services will include narcotic drug counseling and prescription service and life-termination counseling and service. Giving drugs to addicts is far cheaper than incarceration or having them rob convenience stores. You will be able to fill your meth prescription at Walgreens with pharmaceutical grade meth and if you can’t afford your medication, the federal government will pay for it. When young people only see hopelessness for themselves, they turn to the illegal drug culture for economic and social opportunity. The pyramid structure of the drug distribution system requires addicts to become pushers and recruit new addicts. Without the illegal economic aspect, the pyramid collapses. Old people or anyone else, who is ready to exit, can use the life-termination service and leave their assets and their world to their children or their favorite charity.
We will reduce the eligibility age for regular Medicare to age 62. This will allow millions of older workers to retire with healthcare coverage while still healthy and will free-up millions of jobs so that younger workers can move up and entry level workers can move in.
ENVIRONMENT Don't Recycle Plastic We’ve been told by paid “scientists” that landfills are bad when they are actually good for the climate. We’re told that recycling paper and plastic Is good when it is actually bad for the climate. And we’re told that cutting down forests is bad when it is actually good for the climate. The truth is, in the 1970s, the plastics industry paid for the ads that vilified landfills and promoted plastic recycling so they would not have to buy new expensive oil. We are fast approaching a cross-over point where the decreasing cost of clean energy will push down the demand and combustive value of fossilized petroleum, while increasing demand for non-combustive (carbon sequestering) uses such as lubricants, solvents and plastics will push up the value of fossilized petroleum. At this cross-over point, the oil will become too valuable to burn. This cross-over point is only a few years away and climate change will no longer be the disaster that the climate alarmists are expecting. We can speed up this cross-over point by consuming MORE plastic and NOT recycling any of it. This forces the plastic manufacturers to buy new oil, pushing the non-combustive value even higher thus ending fossilized petroleum combustion and its resulting carbon emissions forever. But, what about all the plastic floating in the ocean? This is not plastic’s fault; it is our habit of tossing our trash in the wrong places. For every ton of trash floating in the ocean, there is a million tons of trash that didn’t float. I am more concerned about poisoning our seas with heavy metals and “forever” chemicals than with floating plastic. Plastics should be buried in segregated landfills so we can dig it up again in about 1000 years. Putting plastic back in the ground where it came from is a carbon neutral transaction. Using plastic and plant fiber for permanent applications, such as building houses out of trees, effectively removes 200% of that carbon from the biosphere. The new plant matter that replaces the removed tree consumes carbon at a faster rate than the old growth. The carbon bonds in plastic are quite stable and should remain intact nearly forever if sequestered in a dark place. By the way, recycling aluminum and other metals is very important because mining and smelting ore is very bad for the environment. Also, the creation and extinction of species is a natural part of God’s design, and we shouldn’t be worried about every little frog, but we probably should worry about bees. We need them. In reality, the global benefits to humanity of climate change greatly outweigh the costs. Back when this carbon was in the biosphere, dense forests reached the shores of the Arctic Ocean and jungles covered eastern Montana and Wyoming, and food was so abundant that animals grew to be the size of houses. All the excess carbon emissions we generate now will be consumed by increased biomass production. If you simply look at the top of a globe, you will see that most of the planet’s land mass is north of 45 degrees latitude. Our real national security threat is that Russia and Canada will become the world’s major food suppliers and global economic powers and billions of refugees will be moving north.
Salmon are not native to the Columbia River system. Salmon evolved about 20 million years ago during a period of a few million years of a very warm, ice-cap free, climate that hadn’t been that warm for the previous 20 million years and hasn’t been that warm for the 20 million years since then. For the next 15 million years the salmon survived somewhere else just fine as the ice caps returned but the climate was still much warmer than anything we’ve seen in the last 5 million years. During that entire period the Columbia Basin would have been far too hot and dry for any salmon to survive. As the earth continued to cool, eventually the natural solar radiation input cycles resulting from planetary orbit cycles became the primary influence on our climate. For at least the last million years there has been at least ten 100,000-year climate cycles with a glaciation (ice age) period that lasts about 80,000 years and an inter-glacial period that lasts about 20,000 years. The salmon and early human beings have lived through all ten cycles with no apparent adverse effects. We will stay with the salmon story and get back to early humans in a little while. During each of those 10 warm periods the earth’s climate was much warmer than it is now. The Columbia Basin would have been far too hot and dry for any salmon to survive. During each of those 10 cold periods the earth’s climate was much colder than it is now. The Columbia Basin would have been far too frozen for any salmon to survive. The steeper downward climate slope pushed the salmon migration routes south too fast for them to visit the Columbia Basin. During the upward climate slope, they can spend about 10,000 years here before things get too toasty for them. Unfortunately, they have already been here for 9,900 years and have less than 100 years left before it is time to leave the Columbia Basin and continue their return to their native migration routes. The conclusion of this analysis is that the salmon have lived somewhere other than the Columbia Basin for 19.9 million years out of the last 20 million years (99.5%) and will continue to live somewhere else for the next 70,000 years and there has been no climate period in the last 40 million years that is too hot for salmon. Why we need more dams and not fewer dams will be explained in the last section.
Climate change deniers are ignorant and climate change alarmists are lying to you. If you only look at the negatives and ignore the much greater positives of climate change, then you are exactly as ignorant and close-minded as the climate change deniers. As a software engineer, I've developed environmental modeling tools that have actually been misused by government agencies and businesses to support their predetermined positions. Global warming has been happening since the "native" Americans discovered America. The alarmists are hiding the fact the climate cycles are a closed-loop self-limiting system and that a one-percent increase per year in carbon intake by existing plants would consume all the CO2 produced annually from fossil fuel combustion. Anyone who knows gardening knows that a greenhouse environment can grow much larger plants and a CO2 rich atmosphere would be even more productive. Also, every CO2 molecule from combustion comes with an H20 molecule. So, we will have significantly more fresh water than we have now, and the warmer air will hold more fresh water. Fossilized petroleum is just stored water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight that got trapped by geologic events millions of years ago and we are just releasing that water, carbon dioxide and sunlight. Stopping fossil fuel combustion will not stop the global climate cycle. Mother Nature's power should not be underestimated. We need to prepare for a future with some real engineering challenges. Cities will need to relocate to higher ground. Sea-ports should just offload containers onto self-driving rail-cars that deliver the goods to the appropriate Amazon distribution center.
This question is tricky to answer because of the signal to noise ratio problem. The signal we are trying to see is the very small long-term climate change through the noise of very large short-term climate changes. Climate “scientists” think we are at or near the warmest period of the cycle. They have absolutely no idea if they are looking at signal or noise. I can prove that the last ice age is not over yet, and we have much hotter temperatures ahead for a very long time and there is nothing we can do about it. The last ice age should be over in 100 years or less at which time the next warm period will begin and it will be hotter and last longer than any of the past 10 warm cycles. Fossilized plant material found at the bottom of an ice core, drilled through 5000 feet of ice in Greenland over 50 years ago and kept frozen, has been recently analyzed. The ice had been analyzed extensively but no one had previously looked at the dirt at the bottom and they found evidence of geologically recent plant life. About 400,000 years ago there was a warmer and much longer inter-glacial period that would have certainly thawed Greenland. The important fact is that the presence or lack of the Greenland ice sheet appears to fall within the dynamic range of the recent climate cycles. The last ice age may not end until Greenland is green again and the next ice age isn’t scheduled to start until 60,000 years from now, if ever. We are now at the steepest part of the upward temperature slope as the last of the continental ice melts. At this rate I would expect Greenland to be green in 100 years or less. Although it is impossible to see it through the noise, the climate is changing faster now than at any time in recent cycles. Here is the problem. This past ice age ended 20,000 years behind schedule and the next warm period will be at least 40,000 years longer and much hotter than usual. In fact, it is possible the next ice age will be cancelled altogether if the climate reaches the same level as 5 million years ago when it was too hot for any glaciation other than at the poles. If Greenland melts, Antarctic ice will also be substantially reduced and sea levels will be much higher than feared. Humans in our modern form evolved about 230,000 years ago as nomadic hunter/gatherers that followed the animals as the climate shifted north and south on each cycle and nomadic fisher/gatherers that followed the coasts as the climate shifted north and south on each cycle. During the warm period, human population probably expanded to about one billion people before collapsing, due to war, disease, and starvation, to less than 10 million by the dawn of civilization.
As the climate started to warm 12,000 years ago, numerous tribes of nomadic fisher/gatherers followed the coasts north, as the glaciers retreated inland, crossing from Russia to the Americas over the Bering Strait land bridge. The first tribes arriving in North America had to travel far south to find a habitable climate. There is evidence that the Nez Perce were originally a coastal fishing tribe who arrived here about the same time that the salmon migration route had moved north to the Columbia Basin. The salmon provided a reliable source of high quality protein which allowed coastal tribes to move inland and settle in the Columbia Basin. When the sea level started returning to normal as the glaciers melted and currents between the Pacific and Arctic Oceans resumed, the land bridge was washed away. When seas were lowest during the peak of the last ice age, there was only about 40 miles of water between Australia and Asia. There are also isolated tribes in the western Amazon of South America that have been found to have some Polynesian DNA and they could have arrived by boat at any time. Meanwhile, in the Fertile Crescent, the climate was ideal for nomadic tribes to put down roots, develop permanent settlements and invent agriculture. After 5000 years, the climate “sweet spot” had moved north and all that was left was sand blowing in the wind. At about the same time, permafrost in northern Russia was no longer permanent or frost. Its organic material was carbon dated as 6300 to 4000 years old. This is a good example of the signal to noise ratio problem. That short warm spike was greater than the entire temperature change in the last 10,000 years.
It is illogical and irrational that we think our current climate is the “best” climate ever. Those countries in the 20-50 degree-north-latitude club, like this climate. Those countries in the 50-80 degree-north-latitude club would like to see the “sweet spot” move north first and then lock it in. Look at a globe to see who belongs to each club. It is illogical, irrational, and more than a little arrogant that we think we can lock-in this climate forever against the power of God’s natural cycles. It is irrational to think that humans and salmon can’t survive this cycle after we have survived about ten ice age cycles during the last million years. It is insane to tear down our dams which provide increasingly important irrigation, clean energy and flood control as the climate gets warmer and wetter, just to protect the salmon who will continue migrating further north anyway. If we become sensible and change some priorities, we can use the reservoirs as giant batteries to store excess wind energy. It is hilarious that climate scientists think they can model our future climate when they can’t even model tomorrow’s weather without getting ten different results none of which are correct. Global warming, a.k.a. climate change, is real, unstoppable, a national security threat, and we had better get prepared for some serious economic and population disruptions.
California will need to choose between people or farms. They don’t have enough water for both. The dust bowl of the plains will become a permanent weather feature and tourist attraction. Texas and Oklahoma will be sand dunes and oil wells with an occasional “enclosed” city. Florida, which is just a big old sandbar, will just wash away one night while no one is looking. Wild weather patterns and agricultural zone shifts will make farming even riskier than it already is.
Develop new rechargeable battery technologies for electric vehicles. Keep reducing the cost of photovoltaic cells. Keep building wind farms. Build more dams for flood management, irrigation, recreation and power generation and storage. Build permanent infrastructure with wood, paper, and plastic to remove 200% of that carbon. Don’t recycle plastic, dispose it properly. Don’t try to regulate carbon emissions. It is not worth the trouble. Build my smart-rail robotic cross-country transportation system. Build homes smarter, not smarter homes.
There is a very popular trend in new residential home design that is very stupid from a energy efficiency and comfort point of view. Everyone wants a two-story open-concept living area with a two-story foyer or a two-story main living area, overlooked by open-concept living areas on the second level. If you live in a climate that needs heating or cooling, this does not work. The upstairs spaces are always too hot and the lower level is always too cold and the whole space is exposed to heat gain or loss through the roof. Grand foyers worked in the old days, because all the bedrooms upstairs were closed off from the hallway. Vertically stacking your living spaces with a separating door between vertical open spaces and horizontal open spaces is the most efficient space design. When the weather cooperates, you can leave the doors open. My house has a 35 foot tall entry atrium with stairs leading to 3 floors of open-concept living spaces. Each living space has a full-view french (double) door opening out to a landing overlooking the atrium. The three story atrium drives a convection envelope that makes my cooling cost nothing and my heating cost almost nothing.
Overview Regulatory Issues Natural Design Site Analysis Functional Design Structural Design Energy Design
EDUCATION REFORM The Past The public education system was created to provide trained workers for business. That is why we took typing, bookkeeping, drafting, welding, auto-mechanics and woodworking in high school. Our 1950s education system needs a complete overhaul that recognizes how early and how fast the human mind can learn and for fostering creativity and curiosity. Memorizing dates and facts is useless. It is better to understand the why and how than the what and when. I define knowledge as more than just knowing stuff and intelligence as knowing how to use knowledge. Young minds are like sponges that can quickly absorb knowledge and understand complex subjects. The mind’s capability for learning never goes up and is always decreasing with age. I define education as an ongoing process with no start or end. You never graduate, you just get too old. To attract more businesses like Schweitzer Engineering, we will need more creative workers in manufacturing and engineering, who can work with complex systems, perform logical analysis, solve challenging problems, and communicate clearly and accurately. Idaho is the ideal laboratory for testing a new approach to education because there is no deeply entrenched educational bureaucracy or teachers’ unions to resist changing a broken system. Other states can sit, watch, and see what happens when we zoom past them into the future. Just because Idaho doesn’t spend as much on education doesn’t mean we are stupid. My plan could cost even less with far greater returns and other states will be poaching our workers. My plan for education reform has been optimized for the endlessly continuing pandemic era. My plan is also designed to make school fun for the students by allowing them to choose and take responsibility for their own path. My plan also requires a stay-at-home parent. If you believe that children should be raised by an “institution”, with pre-school and daycare, all-day and all-year school, to be good compliant citizens for the establishment, then read no further. I am not saying that good pre-school and daycare programs don’t exist, but most are just sheep herders, and we shouldn’t have an economy that requires both parents to work full time to make ends meet. My children learned to read by watching Sesame Street on TV. Now there are numerous early education applications available. For the pandemic era, we will need virtual preschool playdate applications so that a child’s social behaviors can be developed and supervised. This can include interactive card games, board games, computer games and a variety of creative group activities. Children would even be able to play with those in other cities, states, or even other countries.
Any school board is free to choose the style of education they want to provide. They can stay with the old, try something new or mix the two together. Old school systems will be able to compete with new school systems in sports and all other team competitions. For each elementary, middle, and high school, the school board will choose which online lecture series they want to offer their students and assign a teacher as a virtual classroom discussion moderator for each course. All lectures will be college level and be presented by the best lecturers in each subject. Students will be able to watch the lectures at their own speed. Normal classroom lectures bore the fast students and leave the slow students in a cloud. The classroom social environment is too distracting for the students to actually learn anything anyway. Virtual classrooms will be divided into classes of no more than 30 students for each group discussion session and may include students from multiple schools with the same students in each class and the same teacher moderating each session. That teacher could even moderate elementary, middle, and high school class discussion sessions for the same course at different times. For example, one teacher could handle all the various history courses for all the virtual class sessions at all the school levels. The school board will also choose which group activity clubs they want to offer to students and assign a teacher as a mentor and coach for each club for each school. The clubs will compete with other schools in regional and state competitions and be awarded grade points for each club member if the club does well in the competitions. Clubs would include various sports teams, various entertainment groups, various technology clubs such as robotics, and hands-on educational facilities for science labs like physics, chemistry, and biology and skills like auto-mechanics, welding, and woodworking. A woodworking club could have individual projects and then select the best resulting project for regional and state competitions. In this case, only the winning individual gets the grade points. The student needs to understand that grade points do not represent anything other than the student's ability to earn grade points. It has no more value than the high score on a computer game. Students who want bragging rights can compete with each other for highest grade points. In this system, teachers will need to be good at drawing knowledge out of their students rather than pushing knowledge into their students. The requires a special kind of teacher that understands educational psychology, how to foster curiosity, and encourage communication. Multiple choice and true/false questions will not be permitted on any exam that issues official grade points. The students must prove they know the subject, not that they can guess the answer. Before each quarter, the students will sign up for the lecture classes and clubs that interest them. They also can choose independent study and sign up for no classes and/or no clubs. The basic daily schedule is virtual group discussion periods (30 minutes each), scheduled between 8 AM and 11 AM on specific days, covering the online lecture material that the student should have viewed prior to the group session. There are no grade points for issued viewing the lecture or attending the discussion sessions. Grade points are only issued during the discussion for good and very good questions, comments, or answers by a student. Mid-term and final exam results will determine most of their point score for the class. At any point during or even after a course is completed, the student can cancel a class or club if they loose interest, can't keep up or aren't doing well. "Any path is only a path and there is no affront to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do." From 11 AM to noon, students with any onsite activities, on that day, are transported to school in time for a lunch/social hour from noon to 1 PM. From 1 PM to 4PM, various club activities are scheduled on selected days of the week. Students can also spend any free time in the gym, computer lab or library when there is a gap in their schedule. Each student will have a “curriculum vitae” which will be their permanent record of their training and experience from birth to death. This file is created and started by the parent or guardian and can only be updated by the student and or an accredited educational entity which was authorized by the student to update the file with official course or training results. The student can make entries for their own educational or career achievements or just to log and timestamp creative ideas. Only the student can view the file without prior authorization from the student. For example, the student could make a synopsis or the entire file temporarily viewable by a business for an employment application. A student will be able to take an exam, for a fee, from an accredited educational entity to demonstrate proficiency in a self-taught subject and receive grade points on their permanent record for that subject. You get the same points for teaching yourself and passing the test as someone taking the course and passing the test with the same score as you. Your grade points are shown for each subject as a raw score and your rank as a percentage of those taking the same test along with a total raw score and an average rank for all your graded courses and graded self-taught subjects. There are no grade levels, just age levels. You start in first grade, and you graduate when you feel you’ve had enough and are ready to go to work, trade school, college, or just have fun. After zero to 3 years of preschool learning to read, write and count, students can take a test to enter first grade and learn navigating mobile and desktop operating systems, launching apps, and understanding file types. By the end of second grade they should be running apps for researching topics, writing reports, creating digital media and understand arithmetic in other than base 10, such as base 2 and base 16. In 1st thru 6th grades, the student can do self-directed research in various interests, such as art, music, sports, foreign languages, biology, chemistry, physics, robotics and computers. Young minds seem to be able to absorb this kind of knowledge effortlessly. They also can understand that computer programming does not actually require being a math genius and anyone can do it with simple knowledge of logic and arithmetic. Social sciences and history should wait until 7th thru 10th grades when the student has a deeper understanding of the world around them. In 11th and 12th grade, students should get marketable career training or preparation to go to college for a “real” professional degree. College course lectures should be presented by the best teachers in their field and be available free-of-charge online to anyone. Degreed professionals in physical and mental healthcare, science, engineering, business management and law will be in high demand.
Eliminate student loan debt so that young people can afford to raise a family. All existing student loans are, in fact, predatory and will be declared subject to bankruptcy. The lender never considered student’s ability to complete the degree and his likelihood of getting a good job using that degree. Future student loans will require due diligence on the part of the lender and will also be subject to bankruptcy. If a degree is required for your employment, its cost will be repaid by your employer in prepaid annual installments over the first 5 years of employment, in addition to your full salary.
BUSINESS ISSUES Issue 1 - Foreign Policy / Free Trade We are going to treat irresponsible countries the way we will treat irresponsible companies. Except for humanitarian aid, they will be entirely cut off from the free-world economy. The rest of the world will be a free trade zone. When the leaders of irresponsible countries are ready to join the free-world economy, we will send in the Corps of Engineers to rebuild their basic infrastructure and then provide low interest loans to refugees that want to return to their country and rebuild their businesses and homes. Trade wars hurt our own economy and no one else. Our foreign customers will just find new sources and we will lose those markets forever. Do we want to give up the opportunity for our agricultural industry to feed a billion people? Do we want to give up the opportunity for our lumber industry to build a billion new middle-class homes? This is a classic example of cutting off your nose to spite your face. Politicians on both sides vilify China for political purposes. Our business establishment has a de facto alliance with China. We each have enormous investments and dependency in the other. We both have a strategic need to keep Russia in check. The worst thing we could do is push China into Russia’s arms. China is not a strategic threat to us. Their economy is worse than ours and they need us. China is not taking our jobs. Try to hire a workforce to build cell phones in this country, and you won't find any Americans willing to do such mindless, tedious work. It makes more sense to leave them in their own country, where their government can take care of them, and just use their labor to make our products. I can assure you that there is plenty of work to be done here at home, so you shouldn't be concerned about enjoying the benefits of their work too. Also, free trade agreements give our businesses patent, copyright, and trademark protection. This is the only way we can protect our intellectual property. China isn't hampered by politicians getting in the way of doing what is best for their economy, such as building a new airport and a high-speed cross country rail system. They have an exploding middle class like our economic expansion of the 50’s that resulted from our interstate highway system. Their government has also recently started cracking down on exploitation of their workers by their businesses. This is good for us because as their labor costs are increasing, American labor becomes more competitive. On the human rights subject, we haven’t done a very good job ourselves, considering they have four times the population to manage. Try to imagine how little freedom we would have with that many people.
While there are still irresponsible countries, we will need to continue development of smart weapons and offensive and defensive cyber warfare capabilities. Other than bringing home our war-torn solders, I don’t see any reason to scale-back our global military presence or operations anytime soon. The need for large expensive offensive weapon delivery systems will be subject to review by the business community that will have to pay for them, and a large standing army is probably not needed. Since the U.S. military only exists to protect business assets, the business community will have to decide how much to tax themselves for that service.
This is the missing leg of the standard libertarian platform, which includes personal responsibility and personal freedom, but only includes corporate freedom without responsibility. Businesses are already realizing that responsibility is good for business. I have had personal experience with several companies that I believe are good examples of responsible corporate citizens. In no particular order: General Mills, Inc is based in Golden Valley Minnesota, a first ring suburb west of downtown Minneapolis, a couple miles from where I grew up in the 1950s eating General Mills cereal every day. In the 1970s, I did a contract project for them, using computer mapping software that I had developed, to geographically analyze marketing data by zip-code versus demographic data by census tract. G. H. Tennant Company is based in Golden Valley Minnesota. They manufacture floor and street maintenance equipment, also a couple miles from where I grew up. I did some lawn mowing for them when I was a teenager. My grandmother worked there and my older brother spent his entire career there. The Tennant family treated everyone in the company like family. Target is based in Minneapolis Minnesota. I was a customer of Dayton's department store long before they started Target. The Dayton family has always been considered as responsible citizens. The first Target store was located a few miles from my house in east Minneapolis and I shopped there the first week they were open. US Bank is based in Minneapolis Minnesota. I've been banking at US Bank or its predecessors for my entire adult life. Due to my business and real estate activities I needed a banker who could understand my sometimes unusual situation and look for solutions. I always felt they actually cared about my success and went out of their way to help. 3M Company is based in St. Paul Minnesota. My first full time job was as an entry level computer programmer for the electrical engineering department at 3M Company in 1967. The department designed the control systems for the machines that made Scotch Tape and everything else. Although the company had more than 100,000 employees at that time, they really made you feel like you were part of the 3M family. I had a serious crush on a girl in the keypunch pool who I had do my keypunching, but I went back to college before I had the guts to say anything to her. 3M invented some of the "forever" fluorinated chemicals (PFCs,PFOS,PFAS) that are now polluting the entire planet. 3M got where it is by inventing new materials. 3M memos clearly show that DuPont was instructed to use proper disposal methods for these chemicals. These instructions were completely ignored by DuPont, although 3M didn't do much better job of disposal themselves, but now I think they are trying to set things right. In the late 70s, I did a couple of contract computer projects for 3M including one involving developing these new materials. They showed me a sample of the material they were making which had the slipperyness of Teflon, the tensile strength of steel, and the compressive behavior of rubber. They had no idea what it could be used for, but it was extremely dangerous to make which is why they hired me to build a remote monitoring and control system that was flexible enough to be reconfigured for each experiment run. The apparatus was set up in the middle of an enormous room with 2 foot thick reinforced concrete walls except the 4th wall which was 2x4s and sheet metal designed to blow away if the experiment lost control. The door between the lab and the control room was 10 inches of solid steel. They put all of this money and effort into developing a material with no use. 3M has culture of invention and quest for knowledge that has resulted in many significant products throughout history. The last company that impresses me is Schweitzer Engineering Labs located in Pullman Washington. S.E.L. makes the equipment that monitors and controls our electrical distribution infrastructure which will be increasingly important in the future. This high-tech engineering and manufacturing company is employee owned and is rapidly expanding manufacturing operations in Lewiston and Moscow Idaho. I applied, and wasn't hired, for a software job at Schweitzer in 1998 and later I used some of their communication devices in a couple of projects. This is the kind of growth industry I want to bring to central Idaho and take advantage of our skilled workers, minimal regulations, clean water, clean electricity, low taxes, a sea port, and endless recreational opportunities. The southeastern Washington and central Idaho region is becoming a diversified industrial powerhouse. This would be a good place to manufacture the next generation of agricultural robots. Workers and consumers need to demand fair and honest treatment from businesses, or we will shut them down. Responsible businesses should also put pressure on irresponsible businesses who are unfairly competing with those that are trying to do the right thing. For example: Environment – Businesses that poison the air, water, and land compete unfairly with responsible businesses. Taxes – Businesses that try to avoid paying taxes compete unfairly with responsible businesses while shifting their tax share to the responsible businesses. Customers – Businesses that lie to customers compete unfairly with responsible businesses. Workers – Businesses that exploit their workers compete unfairly with responsible businesses. Shareholders – They deserve a fair return and steady growth from their investment. Management – If there is anything left after meeting ALL above responsibilities, give management a bonus, they did a good job!
TAX REFORM 2021 Tax Fight Cancelled Due to Lack of Balls Congress couldn't decide who should see their personal taxes hiked so they just raised the debt ceiling instead. The problem is that government taxes are based largely on economic production rather than wealth or profit. Most economic production today is done by machines and robots who don't pay income taxes. As the population of economic output consumers is increasing, the amount and relative value of human economic output produced is decreasing. You can't have an economy just selling stuff to each other. Someone needs to be producing something. Anyway, there is no one left now to pay for the government. In theory, a wheat farmer with 1000 acres of wheat should pay a tax based on the number of workers that would be required to plant and harvest the 1000 acres. An acre is defined as the amount of land a farmer with a yoke of (2) oxen can plow in a day. A thousand acres is a thousand man-days of work to plow. That and every other potential tax option is extremely inflationary. I have a very simple plan to make minor structural changes now which will facilitate flexibility for future tax policy decisions. This isn't tax reform but it paves the way for sensible tax reform that is desperately needed. There would be no immediate change to business payroll expense, government revenue or worker’s take home pay. Most workers would no longer file tax returns. People with investment income, capital gains and self-employment income would still file returns and pay taxes on that income. The underlying concept is to uncouple and break the link between taxes and earned income without changing either of them. By uncoupling these, we can remove politics from our tax policy decisions and just do what is best for the U.S. economy. The resulting paradigm eliminates any need for Congress to waste time debating over raising taxes on the rich or the middle class. It eliminates any need to debate over who should pay more taxes for our needed infrastructure investment. And, it permanently eliminates the burden of the government budget, budget deficit and government debt from the backs of current and future generations of workers.
My plan uses existing state and federal tax systems, forms and rates. It costs almost nothing to implement, nothing to operate and actually saves billions of dollars per year in unnecessary and redundant paperwork by business, the government and their workers. Legislation required at the state and federal level would simply allow responsible businesses to gather accurate dependent information for healthcare benefits and tax purposes, electronically file the tax returns and pay any taxes due, for the worker’s benefit, using the correct exemptions, dependents, and the standard deduction. Businesses would not be required to participate in this program. Responsible business can provide the same benefit to their workers by pledging to absorb any personal income tax increases and not reducing their take home pay. Once uncoupled, any future increases or decreases in tax rates on wages should no longer affect worker’s gross earned income and will affect business expenses and profits instead. Workers whose tax returns were filed by their employer would also be provided with a W-2 information statement for their personal records, showing earnings and taxes paid by the business for the worker, and they can use it to file an amended 1040 return to itemize deductions, and/or for reporting additional self-employment, investment income or capital gains that were reported on 1099s. Until union and other employment contracts and income tax tables are updated to the new gross wage paradigm, companies can add the worker's share of the prior employee deductions being paid by the employer, to compute a virtual gross wage for meeting those requirements and needs.
Once taxes have been uncoupled from worker’s paychecks, we can do some real tax reform, such as a flat tax on wages, a value added tax on all forms of production or increase taxes on business profits to encourage more long-term investment or more profit sharing. We need to have all the leaders and representatives of the largest U.S. corporations attend a “corporate responsibility” virtual conference to discuss and decide how they plan to tax themselves to fund the government while eliminating personal income tax on human earned income and permanently removing the cost of the government from the backs of current and future generations of workers.
INFRASTRUCTURE Rail Pods I strongly oppose allowing self-driving trucks on public highways. The last thing I want to see is a loaded semi barreling down the highway with no one on board. I have a design for a pandemic-era passenger and freight long-haul transportation system that uses electric self-driving, self-isolating rail cars on our existing rail infrastructure by simply adding a third rail for power, monitored and controlled by Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories equipment, on about 20,000 miles of track. The center rail would only be hot during the moment the "smart" vehicle is on that section. The tracks form a mesh network so there is more than one way to get between any two hubs. There would not be a central control system. The track controllers form a neural network that knows the condition and capacity of each section of track. The smart rail vehicles know where they are going and the track knows the best way to get there. Passenger pods could be coupled together for larger isolation groups and/or freight pods can be added for carrying your personal car or other supplies to your destination. This would not be nearly as costly to build as high-speed rail, and really, what is your hurry? In wide open areas, we could safely be going around 100 mph, while enjoying the scenery and the fresh clean air or sleeping, working, watching movies and playing games on the internet. Rail pods could also be privately owned and parked in smart-rail parking lots until needed. Initially, there would be about a dozen smart-rail hubs around the country near major cities where passenger pods and freight pods can be unloaded to conventional highway vehicles or self-coupled to conventional trains for transit to the destination terminal. Self-driving “engine” vehicles will also be able to haul conventional rail cars between smart-rail hubs across the country. At seaports, containers would be offloaded directly onto flat-bed freight-pods and sent on their way.
We need a 3-lane highway from Emmett to Council. It makes no sense to leave all of the northern Idaho economy disconnected from Boise. All transportation infrastructure exists primarily for commercial purposes and therefore are the responsibility of business. This includes public transportation systems that convey workers from their homes to their place of employment. Commuting to work will now be a business expense rather than a worker expense. It is not the responsibility of the worker to deliver himself to your place of business. Brick and mortar retailers will need to pay for customer commuting costs to compete with online retailers. For these reasons, it may make sense to make all public transportation free for workers, students and customers. New infrastructure projects would be funded through business taxes or business user fees.
Urban population densities are unnatural, unhealthy, obsolete and exist solely for commercial purposes and as such, all sanitary water and sewer system infrastructures, which are required to support healthy urban population densities, exist solely for commercial purposes and therefore are the responsibility of business for funding.[3] |
” |
| —Paul Sand's campaign website (2022)[4] | ||
See also
2022 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on April 22, 2022
- ↑ Paul Sand, "About Me," accessed May 3, 2022
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Paul Sand, “Home,” accessed April 28, 2022
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