1.  To support term limits,
a.  By serving no more than six terms as this District’s U.S. Representative, and
b.  With a Term-Limits Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

2.  To maintain at least 50 percent of my net worth in U.S. bonds for the remainder of my life.

3.  To provide my own annual, detailed, draft Federal budget that balances no more than five years into the future, and that remains in balance for most of the following twenty-five years.

4.  To support cutting agribusiness subsidies by two-thirds or more.

5.  To support free markets in health care, and to support universal access to health coverage.

6.  To oppose Social Security privatization, and to support tax-deferred private retirement funds.

7.  To support democratizing Congressional and Presidential elections with a Constitutional Amendment, including:
a.  Election by no less than a majority of votes;
b.  Ballot access for any eligible candidate presenting 1,000 signatures of registered voters in the state or District; and
c.  Prohibition of gerrymandering.

8.  To democratize my own campaigns, by agreeing to at least three debates per election, including every candidate on the ballot.

Signed,
Jeff Vanke

———-

1.  Term-Limits.

a. The Pledge. When Bob Goodlatte first ran in 1992, he promised to hold his Congressional seat for no more than six terms, and he chastised his opponent that year for not taking the same pledge.  Every two years since 2004, Bob Goodlatte has broken his promise again.  He is now running for his tenth term.  Six terms seems like a good limit to me, and I pledge, on my Eagle Scout’s honor, to serve no more than six terms as this District’s House Representative.

(Goodlatte made this pledge at the latest on May 27, 1992, per the May 28 Roanoke Times, and he perhaps reiterated it during one or more of ten+ joint appearances with Steven Musselwhite during that campaign.)

b.  Proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution:  No one shall be elected or appointed to either chamber of the United States Congress for more than twelve years of any sixteen consecutive years for a given chamber (House or Senate), or for more than eighteen years of any consecutive twenty-two years for both chambers combined.

2.  To maintain at least 50 percent of my net worth in U.S. bonds for the remainder of my life.

In June 2010, I challenged Bob Goodlatte to join me in this pledge (personally delivered letter to his Roanoke office).  Goodlatte’s U.S. House financial disclosure statement seems to indicate that he has recently held few if any U.S. bonds.  I think Congressmen and -women should lead Americans in investing in U.S. bonds.  After all, Congress created the debt, and Congress manages the debt.

3.  To provide my own annual, detailed, draft Federal budget that balances no more than five years into the future, and that remains in balance for most of the following twenty-five years.  This should be part of the job. My budget plan takes four years to balance.  No one in Congress, from either party, has a plan to balance the budget any sooner than the year 2063.

4.  To support cutting agribusiness subsidies by two-thirds or more. Bob Goodlatte has taken more than $1 million in agribusiness political donations.  During his twelve years in the majority, he spent more than $2,000 per taxpayer on agribusiness subsidies.  These facts are the main reason I recently push-polled 42 percent to Goodlatte’s 46 percent (details on my website, under “In the News”).

5.  To support free markets in health care, and to support universal access to health coverage, similar to the Dutch and Swiss models, with the addition of Health Savings Accounts.  No one should be mandated to enroll in a private insurance program unless that individual seeks and obtains medical coverage without the means to pay for it.  Insurers would be required to offer a “basic plan” to all applicants.  Partial risk-adjustment payments would occur annually between insurers, depending on per-patient loads of chronic and catastrophic illness.  Low-income patients would contribute to their own insurance and would receive subsidies from an annually adjusted percentage of unsubsidized private health care dollar expenditures, by limiting health insurance company revenues to around 10 percent of premiums.  No unfunded Federal mandates on state and local budgets through Medicaid or otherwise.  In short, everyone should have the “right to be seen when sick,” and the responsibility to pay for their own health care if able, in private health-care markets, without government-run health care.

6.  To oppose Social Security privatization, and to support tax-deferred private retirement funds. Congressional Republican Paul Ryan’s current plan to privatize up to 41 percent of Social Security offers a government guarantee for increased retirement benefits, which signs up future taxpayers for trillions and trillions in risk, while Wall Street sees only rewards.  Every generation experiences an entire decade or two of dramatically declining stock markets.  This Congressional Republican plan is an unacceptable government intervention in historically volatile markets.

7.  To support democratizing Congressional and Presidential elections with a Constitutional Amendment, including:

a.  Election by no less than a majority of votes. No candidate would win an office with anything less than 50% + 1 vote.  Presidential elections would move from the Electoral College to a system of “one voter, one vote.”  The current system of plurality victories, and winner-takes-all state Electoral votes, allows the two big parties to collude to divide up the political market, to the exclusion of not only external parties but also of policy alternatives, including centrist alternatives.

If no candidate receives a majority on the initial November ballot, a run-off would be held between the initial candidates minus one.  If still no candidate receives a majority, another candidate would be dropped for the next run-off, and so forth, until one candidate receives a majority.  (Instant run-off voting, or IRV, with candidates ranked on the initial ballots, yields the highest participation.  My preferred IRV variant is that which eliminates the most unwanted candidate of each round, known as Coombs’ method, as described with examples on Wikipedia.  A one-time “top-two” run-off, California’s new system, is almost as exclusionary as the current system of first-round plurality victories.)

b.  Ballot access for any eligible candidate presenting 1,000 signatures of registered voters. When the first Congress was elected in 1788, each House District represented about 30,000 inhabitants, and a fraction of that many voters.  Today, some states’ ballot-access rules are so restrictive as to require more than 20,000 voter signatures just to appear on the ballot for the House of Representatives – more than the total number of voters in our country’s first House Districts – with Democrats and Republicans exempt.  That is absurdly undemocratic.

Qualifying candidates should be given direct access to November ballots.  Parties may continue to hold their own primaries beforehand, but parties should not be permitted to muscle other candidates off the November ballot.

c.  Prohibition of gerrymandering. Non-partisan commissions (possibly drawn at the last minute from out-of-state) should meet, possibly sequestered, to redraw lines with no respect to incumbent addresses;  to respect local government boundaries  as much as possible, as well as metropolitan areas;  and to minimize the combined district circumference lengths within each state.

8.  To democratize my own campaigns, by agreeing to at least two debates per election, including every candidate on the ballot. In 1992, Goodlatte complained that his opponent wanted to stop debating after ten (10!) joint appearances.  In 2010, Goodlatte has declined repeated requests to debate his opponents even once.

poll phrasing:

[START]

Hello, we’re conducting a survey on the upcoming Congressional election, and your opinion is important to us. This survey has only 2 questions and will take less than a minute to complete.

If you’re concerned about Federal deficits, press 1. If you’re not sure, or if you’re not concerned, press 2.

There’s no Democrat in this race, but there is a choice. Independent Jeff Vanke has drafted a balanced Federal budget, and he’s running for Congress because no one there has done it. Eighteen-year incumbent Bob Goodlatte has taken more than $1 million in agribusiness political donations, and he has charged each of us over $2000 in extra taxes to pay for agribusiness subsidies. Independent Jeff Vanke thinks we can do better.

If the election were held today, who would you vote for? For Independent Jeff Vanke, press 1. For the incumbent, Republican Bob Goodlatte, press 2. For Libertarian Stuart Bain, press 3.

Thank you for participating in our poll. If you would like to learn more, please visit www.IndependentJeff.com.

Paid for by Jeff Vanke for Congress.

[END]

Some poll statistics:
- Poll conducted on September 21.
- The sampling included 14 of the 20 Cities and Counties in Virginia’s Sixth Congressional District.
- The sampling came from precincts whose weighted average results in the 2008 election were identical to the Sixth District’s total results — 62 percent for Goodlatte in 2008. That is, the sampling was chosen to represent the district as a whole, exactly.
- There were 1,040 respondents, including 65 non-responses by those who listened through to the poll’s conclusion.

Interviewed on Modern Whig Party Radio.

Television coverage included Staunton’s WHSV-ABC-3 (text and video), Roanoke’s WDBJ-CBS-7 (text and video), and Roanoke’s WSLS-NBC-10 (text and video).

Newspaper reports were in Lynchburg’s News & Advance, Harrisonburg’s Daily News-Record, and the Augusta Free Press.

Blog coverage by the Independent Political Report.