David A. Hansen
Campaign for
Utah State Senate Seat #22
Constitution Party Candidate
NEW! Click here for YouTube Videos by David A. Hansen on Restoring States Rights and Nullification
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Constitution Party of Utah Website
Why David A. Hansen is running for Utah Senate Seat #22
I'm running because leaders of the Constitution Party asked me to run. I accepted because this great nation has given me so much, and I feel it is my duty to ensure that those coming behind us have similar opportunities and the freedoms that I've enjoyed during my 50+ years as a citizen of these United States.
I'm a news junkie. I can't keep myself away from news. It permeates just about everything I do, and because of that I'm very attuned to the effects government is having on our individual lives and our collective life as a state and as a nation. As I have studied this nation's current state, I have come to believe that we are terribly off-track and headed for a horrible disaster. This state of affairs has not materialized overnight. It has been many decades in the making. I have fought these changes for decades as a citizen, as a former member of the Republican Party, and now as a member of the Constitution Party. As a small businessman, I'm well aware of the impacts these federal and local policies are having upon productive members of our community.
WHAT DOES A STATE SENATOR HAVE TO DO WITH A BURGEONING FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?
So if the Federal Government is the problem, then why am I running as a state senator? I am running because our problems cannot be changed from the top down. It must be changed from the bottom up--from our neighbors, to the lowliest caucus meeting to city governments to county and state government. Only by electing people to local positions who understand the big problem and who will follow the Constitution 100%, will we be able to restore our rapidly disintegrating nation to its previous stature.
One major change that must be made will be to repeal the 17th Amendment. This amendment, which allows for the popular election of senators, has done grave damage to our freedoms. Our U.S. senators, instead of being controlled by state legislators, are controlled by the special interests who fund their campaigns. States no longer have their proper rights because nobody is in Washington to protect those rights. Our Founding Fathers set up the U.S. Senate to be a protection to states' rights. It was part of our Republican form of government because our state leaders are far more aware of the states problems than the majority of individual citizens. The popular election of senators must be ended to restore states' rights. As your state senator I will work to overturn the 17th amendment so that our state legislators will choose our U.S. senators, and those senators will be motivated to protect rather than attack states' rights. Utah legislators must begin an effort to repeal the 17th Amendment.
As your state senator, I will also work to ensure that local elected sheriffs and courts have the final say on law enforcement in our state—Federal law enforcement will be required to obtain the local sheriff’s and local court approval before conducting any law enforcement operations. I will work to end the cozy relationships between Federal law enforcement and local law enforcement. We will stop the increasing militarization of the police forces that has been funded by the Federal government. I will also insist on tougher penalties for police abuses. Police should not be above the law and should be held to a higher standard.
As your state senator, I will challenge all Federal policies that intrude on state’s rights and individual rights.
As your state senator, I will protect your Second Amendment rights zealously. This is absolutely crucial to avoiding tyranny. A free citizen should not have to ask permission from a nanny government for the right to keep and bear--and carry--arms.
I will also work to protect our Fourth Amendment rights to privacy. Far too many usurpations of Fourth Amendment rights have occurred.
I will work to restore a competitive economy, one based on sound economic principles, low taxes, and good work ethics.
My voice will be loud and clear in the call to restore our rights that have been taken from us and to encourage citizens to exercise personal responsibility in the use of those rights.
I will continue the process of nullification and work to fast track it so that Utah does not have to kowtow to unconstitutional Federal mandates. See my blog entry here and here on nullification. See my YouTube videos on Nullification here. The basic idea is that states have both the right and duty to refuse to obey unconstitutional Federal mandates. Yes, I repeat, It is constitutional to REFUSE to obey unconstitutional Federal edicts!
NULLIFICATION OF UNCONSTITUTIONAL FEDERAL OWNERSHIP OF UTAH LANDS--TO FUND EDUCATION
The Constitution has never been amended to give authority to the Federal Government to own land outside of specific limited purposes (military and post office, for instance). These lands belong to Utah, and I intend to take them back for Utah and allows careful development to help fund education and legitimate government services. We will use the already existing model of the Utah Education Trust Lands to assist in funding education and legitimate government services.
THE FOLLY OF RE-ELECTING THOSE WHO GOT US INTO THIS MESS
We cannot fix these problems by re-electing those who have caused the problem. We cannot fix it by ignoring these problems. We cannot fix it by pretending the Republicans or the Democrats will fix it. They won't fix it. They're the ones who broke it and ran us off the track. What the Founders of our nation gave us has been literally trashed--and this by politicians who have pretended to be doing what is in our best interest but have only their own interests at heart. They speak soothing words of conservative, limited government, but the legislation they sponsor and pass is anything but.
As an example, in 1998, when Senator Robert Bennett was campaigning for his second term in office, I attended a town hall meeting he held. I asked him why he has continually voted to borrow from the Social Security Trust Fund to finance more government spending. His answer was, "We're not borrowing it, we're investing it." My jaw dropped, and I was given no opportunity for a follow-up question. So my follow-up question now is, "Senator Bennett, in light of the Bernie Madoff scandal in which he took from later investors to pay off early investors, why are you still a free man while Madoff is in jail? Shouldn't you get the same treatment for doing the same thing? Why aren't you in jail?"
In Madoff's case, investors lost millions; in the senator's case, taxpayers have lost trillions and are on the hook for even higher taxes to pay for a burgeoning baby boomer retirement expense out of the pockets of a diminishing number of taxpayers earning even lower wages.
This attitude of both Republicans and Democrats is, unfortunately, typical. Citizens typically have short memories and often are not aware of how their representatives voted to advance their own agenda instead of voting in the citizens' best interests.
Another example of Senator Bennett's (and Senator Orrin Hatch's) voting are their support of the World Trade Organization (WTO) treaty and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Even supposedly conservative Rob Bishop voted for CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement). Bishop's vote was, in fact, the tie-breaker that allowed this unconstitutional agreement to pass. The Constitution mandates that Congress is to manage trade, but Utah's politicians voted to turn that authority over to an unelected world government body. What has been the effect of this on the citizens?
These treaties have had the net effect of exporting millions of U.S. jobs overseas. Manufacturing jobs have been exported to India, Mexico, China, and many other "cheap labor" countries. My University of Utah economics class taught that manufacturing is the life-blood of a nation. Without manufacturing, a nation no longer enriches itself but becomes a service economy. Economies based strictly on services eventually collapse or remain poor. What do you suppose Lazy Boy Corporation employees did when their jobs were exported to Mexico? Well, many of them are now working at McDonalds or Burger King, or on unemployment, or on welfare. Their wages have dropped dramatically along with their spending, which further hurts the business community. And their payment of taxes has dropped too. When government revenues decline, politicians must raise taxes or cut spending or go into debt or create money out of thin air to pay for the spending. Senators Bennett and Hatch both voted for the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry. Rather than letting these companies fail as a normal free marketplace would demand, these companies were rewarded with huge amounts of cash, much of which went to bonuses for the incompetent executives. The result is that the collapse has been slightly delayed, but it's repercussions when it finally occurs will be much more dramatic.
If your family were to continually spend more than it takes in, it would go bankrupt. Governments, too, go bankrupt when they run up debt. America is for all intents and purposes bankrupt. 60 Minutes ran a segment on California. Click here to see it.
THE BIG GOVERNMENT PARTY
Politicians have sold you and your posterity downriver. You and your children will pay dearly. The longer it goes on, the higher the price. All of this was brought about because this nation has turned from the Constitution our Founders set up: the politicians we elected allowed greedy banksters to create a central private Federal Reserve Bank. Gold and silver are no longer legally usable as currency, and those paper dollars everyone chases are worth nothing more than the misplaced faith citizens put in them. Higher taxes and more "monetizing the debt" (that's codespeak for printing money out of thin air) will inevitably cause German-style hyper-inflation, which will assuredly wipe out the dollar's value and with it the remaining wealth of the the middle class.
Thus if we continue electing those who have caused and contributed to this problem, we do ourselves a greater disservice. Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for this mess. So we get mad at the Democrats and vote for Republicans, then we get mad at the Republicans and vote for the Democrats! Why can't we understand that both of them are responsible? Both parties should simply be renamed the Big Government Party.
The Big Government party has brought us substandard education, rising taxes, increased dependency upon government, rising crime rates, unemployment, unending wars, spreading of "democracy" by the sword (democracy is an incredibly dangerous form of government), loss of individual rights, enormously intrusive government, loss of privacy, destruction of moral values, and a polarization of our nation that may well lead to a loss of the liberties we have enjoyed for over two hundred years.
The only solution to Big Government is to, from the grass roots upward, elect good citizens who will reduce the size of government, restore our constitutional rights, and restore our constitutional republican form of government.
TEA PARTIES
The Tea Party movement has also come to recognize that something is terribly amiss in our government. Many popular celebrities are attempting to lead and mislead the Tea Party movement. And I do not use the word "mislead" lightly. Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Shaun Hannity, Sarah Palin, and others make many good points regarding what is wrong with our current government. However, each of these celebs/politicians are also seriously misleading their followers about the solutions to our problems.
Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Bob Bennett, et al.
Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, and Palin have all steadfastly supported the Republican party on many issues that have hurt our country. Each of them have aided and abetted the spreading of democracy by the sword. Yes, 9-11 happened. Yes, it deserved a response. But what did Iraq have to do with 9-11? Nothing! War has historically been promoted to help a few. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has made millions of dollars from Haliburton, a company that has no-bid contracts to the tune of billions of dollars to support the war. Former President George W. Bush admitted that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So this became a preemptive war against Iraq: the first time in the history of the United States that we have preemptively attacked another nation. And all of it based on lies! Limbaugh, Beck,Hannity, and Palin all supported this preemptive attack. We can further extrapolate others who cannot be trusted because of their support for preemptive war. John McCain has been a huge supporter of this preemptive war and has also attacked our rights to free speech and to keep and bear arms. Note that McCain has had huge support from both Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney. Thus Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and John McCain are all tied up in this together.
And not long ago Mitt Romney, who supported McCain, came out in support of reelecting Bob Bennett, as did Representative Rob Bishop. Clearly Utahans have had it with Bob Bennett. What I don't see happening is the requisite distrust that should be given to those who support Bob Bennett. I find it incredulous that Utahans could even consider any of these individuals to be worthy of public office or worthy of being listened to. The big question is whether we, as a Christian nation, have the right to enforce democracy by the sword. Not only that, but should we be spending literally a trillion-plus dollars war-faring in far off nations with the obvious result of further bankrupting our nation?
We are also spending billions of dollars and losing more American lives in Afghanistan. How much longer? And to what purpose? The real truth is that Afghanistan is in the middle of a civil war. Our being there any more is futile, costly, and unnecessarily fueling even more hatred of the U.S.
The U.S. needs to extricate itself from these foreign entanglements, to restore our own liberty and limited government, and to regain our position as a beacon of light and freedom in the world. We should spread freedom not by the sword, but by being a light to all for freedom and liberty.
Rush Limbaugh is especially guilty because of his promotion of the above-mentioned free-trade agreements. I used to listen to his show, but when he started supporting free trade I ended my listening right there. His claim was that those who lose their manufacturing jobs would find others. Well, it's not happening, folks. And many of the low paying jobs that are out there are being taken by illegal aliens.
Tea Party followers need to be very careful who they follow and not be mislead by the 20% lies mixed in with the truth.
THE IMPORTANCE OF MORALITY
Our Constitution has been the vehicle that has made our nation the greatest ever in the history of the world. Our freedoms we have enjoyed have come from it and the morality of the people. An immoral people that wants government to provide for its every need cannot be free; indeed, it is immoral to vote for politicians who do not honor and sustain the Constitution 100%, and it is immoral to vote for politicians who use government to forcibly take from one citizen the fruits of his labors and give them to another.
We live in perilous times. If we do not wish to be slaves to a massive federal bureaucracy assisted by local government bureaucracy, then we must stop bowing to and voting for the lesser of two evils. Vote only for those who support the Constitution as the law of the land in the home of the free. As Utah bravely leads out, other states will follow. One by one by one, we will restore this nation to once again be a beacon to the world.
CONSTITUTIONAL FIDELITY
The bottom line is this: most of us in a marriage expect complete fidelity from our spouses. How many of us would tolerate our spouses having extra-marital affairs half of the time, or 1/4 of the time, or twice, or even once? We might forgive once or twice, provided repentance was sincere. But two to three times or more, and most all of us would begin divorce proceedings, would we not? So why do we put up with constitutional infidelity? The Grassroots report card gave my opponent in this race a 75% rating based on its evaluation of how legislators rated with regard to constitutional principles and limited government (an improvement over his 59% lifetime score). So do we give him an A by grading him on the curve? Or do we give him a C based upon percentile? When we vote for the percentile-based C grade candidate, we're voting for constitutional infidelity. It's like saying, "sure, honey, go ahead and be unfaithful once in a while--I'm OK with that." But the resulting diseases and losses we suffer are cumulative. The 20% to 45% of the votes that go against the Constitution add up and chip away at our freedom: yes, just a little at a time, but all those "littles" add up over time, until pretty soon there is nothing left but a shell of a Constitution. That's where we stand today. If we keep voting for the lesser of two evils, then we still get evil rewarded to us.
The Constitution Party is the only party that stands for restoring the Constitution 100% per the original intent of the Founding Fathers. Voting for those who violate their oath of office 1% to 50% or more contributing to the problem.
THE REVOLUTION HAS ALREADY OCCURRED!
I ask each of you to stand with me in supporting the restoration of the Constitution. This is not a revolution. The revolution has already occurred, gradually, over the last 150 years. Your rights have been compromised and compromised and compromised, until almost nothing is left. If we do not lift up our heads and shout a resounding NO to continued encroachment and work to restore what has been lost, then we will assuredly have 0% of our rights left. Zero is bad. Zero is tyranny. Zero is what Germany was under Hitler. If you want that, then just keep voting for 75 percenters, or 60 percenters, and pretty soon we will indeed be at zero. All of everything our Founding Fathers fought for will be completely destroyed.
100% or 0%... Freedom or Tyranny... It's your choice...
That's why I'm running. I'm giving you a choice.
Pull the lever.
David A. Hansen
Constitution Party Candidate, Senate District #22.
801-643-5686