Howard Switzer's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
Key
Official Position: Candidate addressed this issue directly by taking the Political Courage Test.
Inferred Position: Candidate refused to address this issue, but Vote Smart inferred this issue based on the candidate's public record, including statements, voting record, and special interest group endorsements.
Unknown Position: Candidate refused to address this issue, or we could not infer an answer for this candidate despite exhaustive research of their public record.
Additional Information: Click on this icon to reveal more information about this candidate's position, from their answers or Vote Smart's research.
Other or Expanded Principles & Legislative Priorities are entered exactly as candidates submit them. Vote Smart does not edit for misspelled words, punctuation or grammar.
Due to a later filing deadline or other circumstances delaying entry into our database, Howard Switzer did not receive the 2012 Political Courage Test.
Issue Positions
For Presidential and Congressional candidates who refuse to provide voters with their positions, Vote Smart has researched their public records to determine their likely responses. These issue positions are from 2012.
- Howard Switzer. Issue Position: Reproductive Rights. Access 11 October 2012. "Humans and other species have been doing this for eons. There could be many reasons but I respect a woman's choice to not carry a baby to term if she feels that it is absolutely necessary. I think we must keep women's right to abortion legal, safe, affordable, and accessible, we need to keep birth control legal and available and make sure women never again have to turn to deadly, back alley abortions." (votesmart.org)
- Howard Switzer. Project Vote Smart: 2006 Tennessee Gubernatorial Political Courage Test. Did Not Check SUPPORT for: "f) Prohibit public funding of abortions and to organizations that advocate or perform abortions."
- Howard Switzer. Project Vote Smart: 2006 Tennessee Gubernatorial Political Courage Test. Checked SUPPORT for: "b) Abortions should always be legal."
- Howard Switzer. Project Vote Smart: 2006 Tennessee Gubernatorial Political Courage Test. Did Not Check SUPPORT for: "a) Abortions should always be illegal."
- Howard Switzer. Project Vote Smart: 2010 Tennessee Gubernatorial Political Courage Test. Selected "Pro-choice" for: "a) Do you consider yourself pro-choice or pro-life?" Abortion and Reproductive Issues Other or expanded principles: "I consider myself pro-choice AND pro-life, in fact LIFE is what matters most, not political ideologies or media driven societal divisions. Since the inability to adequately provide for a child is what drives most decisions to abort, rather than making laws against it we should make it illegal for a pregnant woman to not be provided with all the love and care from society that she and her baby deserves, being born equal with rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Let's jail all those who vote against or actively oppose helping poor pregnant women."
- Howard Switzer. Facebook:Timeline. 19 June 2012. "She [OB/GYN Dr. Jen Gunter] supports women's rights, so do I." (www.facebook.com)
- Howard Switzer. Issues. 9 October 2012. "Stop the Wars Bankrupting the World" (howardswitzer.com)
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Howard Switzer. Had Enough of Politics? Me too, So I'm Running for Congress. 5 September 2012. "Here is our plan, the Green New Deal: An Economic Bill of Rights; A right to work, locally controlled, direct employment initiative picking up any slack in private employment, 25 million jobs with a living wage." (votesmart.org)
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Howard Switzer. Project Vote Smart: 2010 Tennessee Gubernatorial Political Courage Test. Selected "Yes" for: "a) Do you support restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns?" Gun Issues Other or expanded principles: "Guns make it way too easy to kill things when we should be worried about the amount of things being killed instead. We are in the 6th extinction loosing species at an unprecedented rate mostly due to habitat loss. With a system of community scale carbo-hydrate economies we could learn to restore habitats as we begin to understand how natural systems can work with us. If we don't start creating sane communities no amount of guns will bring anyone real security."
- Howard Switzer. Project Vote Smart: 2010 Tennessee Gubernatorial Political Courage Test. Selected "No" for: "c) Do you support allowing individuals to carry concealed guns?" Gun Issues Other or expanded principles: "Guns make it way too easy to kill things when we should be worried about the amount of things being killed instead. We are in the 6th extinction loosing species at an unprecedented rate mostly due to habitat loss. With a system of community scale carbo-hydrate economies we could learn to restore habitats as we begin to understand how natural systems can work with us. If we don't start creating sane communities no amount of guns will bring anyone real security."
- Howard Switzer. Project Vote Smart: 2010 Tennessee Gubernatorial Political Courage Test. Selected "No" for: "b) Do you support expanding access to health care through commercial health insurance reform?" Health Issues Other or expanded principles: "Only in America, land of the so-ripped-off-they-can't-see-straight, do these questions make any sense. All this talk of insurance means there are powerful people making a lot of money off of sick people. Chemical/food corps get rich making them sick while their corporate cousins get rich off of maintaining their illnesses, they don't cure them, no money in that. If we don't start learning how to take care of one another WE will go extinct because that is how nature works. This current system is creating more famine, more disease, more suffering, more habitat loss, more disasters than ever."
- Howard Switzer. Green the Governorship: Blogspot. "Pirates of the Care" 26 May 2010. "Well as usual we didn't get much chance to read the health care bill. No wonder, its a mile thick and as illegible as a dour corporate lawyer can make it. As usual there are a few spoons of sugar to help the medicine go down but this medicine isn't going to make anyone well, no sir, this is all about ...you guessed it, money, in the form of corporate profits that is." (switzer4governor.blogspot.com)
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
- Howard Switzer. Project Vote Smart: 2010 Tennessee Gubernatorial Political Courage Test. Selected "No" for: "a) Should marriage only be between one man and one woman?" Social Issues Other or expanded principles: "What part of 'love one another' do we not understand? Considering then, the driving abilities of the immoral corporate profit-before-people bozos driving this bus, our world, how can we trust them with the keys to our bodies, our planets genetics? We need to have a sane society before we start messing with things we don't understand. We have plenty of work to do to rebuild our own habitat, in the mean time if rich people get sick well they will have to die like the rest of us I guess. That is what stem cell research is about, right?"
- Howard Switzer. Issue Position Marriage. Access 11 October 2012. "Love is sacred. The sanctity in marriage is the sanctity of love. I don't think the state should be in the business of telling people who they can or can't marry. Marriage is about love and commitment, not gender, and denying lovers the right to marry is a violation of human dignity. I believe in equal rights for all." (votesmart.org)
- Despite exhaustive research, Vote Smart was unable to find information about this candidate's position.
This candidate has responded to a Political Courage Test in a previous election. As a continued effort to provide the American public with factual information on candidates running for public office, these archived responses are made available here.
| Pro-choice | a) Do you consider yourself pro-choice or pro-life? | ||
| No | b) Should abortion be legal only within the first trimester of pregnancy? | ||
| Yes | c) Should abortion be legal when the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape? | ||
| Yes | d) Should abortion be legal when the life of the woman is endangered? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support requiring parental notification before an abortion is performed on a minor? | ||
| No | f) Do you support requiring parental consent before an abortion is performed on a minor? | ||
| Yes | g) Do you support sexual education programs that include information on abstinence, contraceptives, and HIV/STD prevention methods? | ||
| No | h) Do you support abstinence-only sexual education programs? | ||
| I consider myself pro-choice AND pro-life, in fact LIFE is what matters most, not political ideologies or media driven societal divisions. Since the inability to adequately provide for a child is what drives most decisions to abort, rather than making laws against it we should make it illegal for a pregnant woman to not be provided with all the love and care from society that she and her baby deserves, being born equal with rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Let's jail all those who vote against or actively oppose helping poor pregnant women. | |||
1) State SpendingIndicate what state funding levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one level per category; you may use a number more than once.2) State TaxesIndicate what state tax levels (#1-6) you support for the following general categories. Select one level per category; you may use a number more than once.3) Budget StabilizationIndicate which proposals you support (if any) for balancing Tennessee's budget.
| Greatly Increase | a) Education (higher) | ||
| Greatly Increase | b) Education (K-12) | ||
| Greatly Increase | c) Environment | ||
| Greatly Increase | d) Health care | ||
| Slightly Decrease | e) Law enforcement | ||
| Greatly Increase | f) Transportation and highway infrastructure | ||
| Greatly Increase | g) Welfare | ||
| Greatly Increase | h) Other or expanded categories | ||
| Maintain Status | a) Alcohol taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | b) Cigarette taxes | ||
| Greatly Increase | c) Corporate taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | d) Gasoline taxes | ||
| Maintain Status | e) Property taxes | ||
| Eliminate | f) Sales taxes | ||
| Eliminate | g) Income taxes (low-income families) | ||
| Eliminate | h) Income taxes (middle-income families) | ||
| Greatly Increase | i) Income taxes (high-income families) | ||
| Yes | a) Tapping into Tennessee's "rainy day" fund | ||
| Yes | b) Issuing the early release of certain non-violent offenders | ||
| No | c) Increasing tuition rates at public universities | ||
| No | d) Instituting mandatory furloughs and layoffs for state employees | ||
| No | e) Reducing benefits for Medicaid recipients | ||
| No | f) Privatizing certain government services | ||
| Education, environment and health care are my budget priorities. We have issues coming at us that our leaders haven't even noticed yet and we should be getting prepared for major changes in the climate and the economy instead of going down the same road. Law enforcement would not be critical if we were taking care of these priorities but security does not come from laws, it comes from smart planning and implementation of systems critical to community support for life's essentials. Infrastructure $ should not be for highways as much as for community scale food,fiber, medicine and fuel systems. | |||
| We need to re-think the tax structure all together. We don't need major corporations, we don't need the FED and without them our taxes would go down and priorities for spending tax money could then be reordered to make sense to people. We have record profits going to outfits that have cheated the American people for a century while most Americans are struggling to pay their bills. I want to turn that on its head. No corporation should be allowed any profits, they belong to the workers and communities that created them. | |||
| Four of these come right out of a right-wing think tank, the Heartlland Institute's '10 Principles of Fiscal Policy.' They propose a bunch of the same "free market solutions" that got us into our current mess. Their policy proposals are designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer and they don't give a damn about the poor. In fact they want to make many many more of them because it drives labor costs down. They are amoral and undermine every principle this nation was founded upon. There is no free market, it belongs to the rich. | |||
c) Do you support limits on the following types of contributions to candidates for state government?
| Yes | a) Do you support limits on the number of terms for Tennessee governors? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support limits on the number of terms for Tennessee state legislators? | ||
| Yes | 1) Individual | ||
| Yes | 2) Political Action Committee | ||
| Yes | 3) Corporate | ||
| Yes | 4) Political Party | ||
| Yes | d) Should candidates for state office be encouraged to meet voluntary spending limits? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support requiring full and timely disclosure of campaign finance information? | ||
| One has to wonder why there isn't any mention here of the most devastating threat to American freedom and democracy in the history of our nation, the corporate manipulation of our political process not only through direct finance but through the corporate media's ability to make or break any candidate they choose. Clearly we have a partnership between the major corporations and government leaders and agencies. This is called fascism. Campaign finance reform is basic to our ability to reform this nation and return it to its founding principles. | |||
| No | a) Do you support capital punishment for certain crimes? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support alternatives to incarceration for certain non-violent offenders, such as mandatory counseling or substance abuse treatment? | ||
| Yes | c) Should the possession of small amounts of marijuana be decriminalized? | ||
| No | d) Should a minor accused of a violent crime be prosecuted as an adult? | ||
| No | e) Should a minor who sends sexually-explicit or nude photos by cell phone face criminal charges? | ||
| No | f) Do you support the enforcement of federal immigration laws by state and local police? | ||
| If we had a society designed for, freedom, mutual aid, and the pursuit of happiness we would not be having much crime. Fewer laws would be better than the constant creep of laws and regulation pushing everyone into a corner. And there is not as much crime as the media corps. and the security corps. want us to believe, they want more criminals, more laws, because it means more cash for their corporate cousins, the private prison industry. We've got to change this "make a law, make a business" street gang doctrine currently running everything into the ground. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support reducing government regulations on the private sector? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support a state constitutional amendment to ban taxes on personal wages? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support increased state funding for job-training programs that re-train displaced workers? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support expanding access to unemployment benefits? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support providing financial incentives to the private sector for the purpose of job creation? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support increased spending on infrastructure projects for the purpose of job creation? | ||
| Yes | g) Do you support providing direct financial assistance to homeowners facing foreclosure? | ||
| I don't consider publicly traded corporations "private" and thus their profits do not belong only to individuals invested in them but to the people who did the work, those who provided the materials plus the restoration of any environmental damage caused by its operation. We have to get back to "corporation" being defined as "being in the public interest for specific projects only with a mechanism to pull their charter if they fail to serve the public interest." Environmental destruction is running to the tune of 2.5 trillion dollars per year, a mere 1/3 of corporate profits. | |||
| No | a) Do you support national education standards? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support requiring public schools to administer high school exit exams? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support using a merit pay system for teachers? | ||
| No | d) Do you support state funding for charter schools? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support the state government providing college students with financial aid? | ||
| Yes | f) Should illegal immigrants who graduate from Tennessee high schools be eligible for in-state tuition at public universities? | ||
| A major problem I have with this whole form is that the questions assume an understanding of all the key code terms being used to form a certain interpretation of what is being said, thus if one's answer does not fit within the accepted boundaries of your discussion it requires much more than 100 words to explain. So-called Education in this country is all about social management and has little if anything to do with education. It is a system based on the Prussian school of social management used to extend people's childhoods for management purposes. It sucks. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support state funding for the development of alternative energy? | ||
| No | b) Do you support state funding for the development of traditional domestic energy sources (e.g. coal, natural gas, oil)? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support providing financial incentives to farms that produce biofuel crops? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support state funding for improvements to Tennessee's energy infrastructure? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support state funding for open space preservation? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support enacting environmental regulations aimed at reducing the effects of climate change? | ||
| Fossil fuels are going away fast, we better get decentralized and back into a community scale carbo-hydrate economies to replace this crazy hydro-carbon one. We have to go decentralized and community scale because we aren't going to have so much energy to burn. Communities need to be empowered and trained to create their own economies. Resource use decisions only make sense at a local community scale to assure a balance. Such a decentralized system of self-reliant communities and regions would greatly increase our national security just considering the redundancy alone. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support restrictions on the purchase and possession of guns? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support requiring background checks on gun sales between private citizens at gun shows? | ||
| No | c) Do you support allowing individuals to carry concealed guns? | ||
| No | d) Do you support allowing guns in public establishments that serve alcohol? | ||
| No | e) Do you support requiring a license for gun possession? | ||
| Guns make it way too easy to kill things when we should be worried about the amount of things being killed instead. We are in the 6th extinction loosing species at an unprecedented rate mostly due to habitat loss. With a system of community scale carbo-hydrate economies we could learn to restore habitats as we begin to understand how natural systems can work with us. If we don't start creating sane communities no amount of guns will bring anyone real security. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support a universally-accessible, publicly-administered health insurance option? | ||
| No | b) Do you support expanding access to health care through commercial health insurance reform? | ||
| No | c) Do you support interstate health insurance compacts? | ||
| No | d) Should individuals be required to purchase health care insurance? | ||
| No | e) Do you support monetary limits on damages that can be collected in malpractice lawsuits? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support legalizing physician-assisted suicide in Tennessee? | ||
| Yes | g) Do you support allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana to their patients for medicinal purposes? | ||
| Only in America, land of the so-ripped-off-they-can't-see-straight, do these questions make any sense. All this talk of insurance means there are powerful people making a lot of money off of sick people. Chemical/food corps get rich making them sick while their corporate cousins get rich off of maintaining their illnesses, they don't cure them, no money in that. If we don't start learning how to take care of one another WE will go extinct because that is how nature works. This current system is creating more famine, more disease, more suffering, more habitat loss, more disasters than ever. | |||
| No | a) Should marriage only be between one man and one woman? | ||
| Yes | b) Should Tennessee allow same-sex couples to form civil unions? | ||
| No | c) Do you support state funding for stem cell research? | ||
| No | d) Do you support state funding for embryonic stem cell research? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support the state's use of affirmative action? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support the inclusion of sexual orientation in Tennessee's anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| Yes | g) Do you support the inclusion of gender identity in Tennessee's anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| What part of 'love one another' do we not understand? Considering then, the driving abilities of the immoral corporate profit-before-people bozos driving this bus, our world, how can we trust them with the keys to our bodies, our planets genetics? We need to have a sane society before we start messing with things we don't understand. We have plenty of work to do to rebuild our own habitat, in the mean time if rich people get sick well they will have to die like the rest of us I guess. That is what stem cell research is about, right? | |||
| Move state priorities away from service to extractive corporate clients, create a network of viable, resilient and self reliant communities with Community Dialogue Projects so people could get to know one another, let them research and discuss what was best for their communities. Equip communities with community scale technologies for food, fiber, fuel and energy and close all nutrient and material loops, wasting nothing. Utilized solar resources to the max, directly or indirectly, encourage innovation and invention, establish community banks and a state bank. Integrate education into fabric of community teaching real skills, critical thinking and problem solving. |
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