Kenneth DeGraaf's Issue Positions (Political Courage Test)
Office:
- State House (CO) - District 22, Republican
Key
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Kenneth DeGraaf did not provide voters with positions on key issues covered by the 2024 Political Courage Test, despite repeated requests from Vote Smart and voters like you.
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.
Colorado State Legislative Election 2022 Political Courage Test
| Pro-life | a) Do you generally support pro-choice or pro-life legislation? | ||
| No | b) Do you support legalizing abortion when the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support the prohibition of public funds for organizations that perform abortions? | ||
| "I deplore the horrible crime of child-murder" - SusanB Anthony Our DoI recognizes our Right to Life as predicated upon being Created in the image of God. If an unborn human does not have the RtL, no one does. The RtL can only be stripped by due process, but still precludes cruel & unusual means--chemical burning, severing, or being drawn & quartered. The perpetrators of the horrific crimes of rape & incest should be punished severely, not the pre-born human. There are significant responsibilities incurred by choosing to father a child and those cannot be imposed on the mother. | |||
| Yes | a) In order to balance the budget, do you support reducing state employee salaries AND/OR pensions? | ||
| No | b) DO you support raising taxes on any income or on any entity, to promote economic growth? | ||
| Reduce the scope of government to thereby reduce the number of employees & salaries. Budgets should be frozen with a downward annual trajectory of 3%, to reverse the exponential growth programmed through baseline budgeting. A tax is a drag on economic growth; a brake cannot make the wheel turn faster. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support capital punishment for certain crimes? | ||
| Yes | b) Should an individual under 18 accused of a violent crime be prosecuted as an adult? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support the enforcement of federal immigration laws by state and local police? | ||
| Yes | d) Do you support the use of private prisons? | ||
| Yes | e) Do you support mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders? | ||
| U18 violent criminals need to be appropriately removed from society, but they cannot be simply thrown into a general prison population to become prey for larger criminals if we hope to one day return them to society. There should be guideline minimums for which the judge must justify deviation in the written record, and thereby be held accountable. | |||
| No | a) Do you support state government spending as a means of promoting economic growth? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support reducing government regulations on the private sector? | ||
| No | c) Do you support an increase of the minimum wage of Colorado? | ||
| No | d) Do you support providing financial relief to businesses AND/OR corporations negatively impacted by the state of national emergency for COVID-19? | ||
| No | e) Do you support the creation of a task force to combat the housing shortage in Colorado? | ||
| Government confiscation precedes government spending, and government returns only a fraction of what was taken. Money left in the economy continues to circulate, amplifying its impact. Government spending causes the devaluation of the dollar & inflation which will eventually increase pay with no actual increase in purchasing power but will move the employee up into higher taxation levels. Minimum wage increases do the same. Counterproductive emergency intervention resulted in the destruction of lives and the economy but cannot be a justification to steal more from future generations. Housing can be made affordable by undoing the inflationary monetary and energy policy. | |||
| No | a) Do you support adopting federal education standards in Colorado? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support state funding for charter schools? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support increasing teacher salaries AND/OR benefits in Colorado? | ||
| No | d) Should immigrants unlawfully present in the United States who graduate from Colorado high schools be eligible for in-state tuition at public universities? | ||
| Schools should be locally controlled. Good ideas will spread naturally, while bad ideas tend to be imposed through centralization. Educational autonomy is essential but Article 34 of section 5 of the Colorado constitution demands "absolute control" by the state for anything it funds. Education should not be one of those things, as it is a conflict of interest. Tuition should be paid directly but counted as a tax credit. Admin fees are 30-40% of per-student spending. These should be reduced and realigned into additional teachers or aides to reduce teacher workload. | |||
| No | a) Do you support state funding for the development of renewable energy (e.g. solar, wind, geo-thermal)? | ||
| No | b) Do you support government regulations of greenhouse gas emissions? | ||
| No | c) Do you support increasing state funding for clean drinking water initiatives? | ||
| the sun & water drive the climate. CO2 is a trace gas (4 molecules in 10,000) essential to photosynthesis and plant growth, not a pollutant. Solar and wind are low-density energy sources requiring unreliable, failure-prone equipment, primarily made in China which burns normal coal with no environmental or humanitarian constraints. They are costly or impossible to recycle and it is unclear if they will ever yield more energy than was used in their manufacture and disposal. Clean drinking water is best funded and controlled at the local level instead of processing money through the state skimmers. | |||
| Yes | a) Do you support the regulation of campaign contributions from corporations, unions, and individuals? | ||
| Yes | b) Do you support the use of an independent AND/OR bipartisan commission for redistricting? | ||
| Yes | c) Do you support requiring a government-issued photo identification in order to vote at the polls? | ||
| No | d) Do you support automatic voter registration? | ||
| Limiting donations is an infringement on speech, but the investor influence could be reduced by disallowing the petition process to ensure political power remains with individuals via caucus & assembly and restricting the primary elections to party-affiliated voters. Redistricting should be made solely on the basis of population, not by affiliation or demographic. Require Photo ID for voting which should be done in-person to ensure anonymity, with votes hand-counted for accuracy. All computers can be hacked; electronic election is incredibly non-secure. Ballot boxes encourage illegal vote-harvesting and exploitation of marginalized communities. Voting on a work holiday to encourage participation. | |||
| No | a) Do you generally support gun-control legislation? | ||
| No | b) Should background checks be required on gun sales between private citizens at gun shows? | ||
| No | c) Should a license be required for gun ownership? | ||
| "Shall not be infringed" for each. A law is not valid if it contradicts the US Constitution. The primary purpose of the second amendment is to secure the rights of the governed from their government. Global history has proven the soundness of this wisdom as the methodologies mentioned have served as precursors to confiscation preceding tyranny and genocide. Tyrants prefer an unarmed populace. Police forces have been gutted, and criminals released making self-defense more essential. History shows any "reasonable measures" will be immediately expanded beyond any authority legislated. | |||
| No | a) Should the state government increase funding for treatment facilities to combat opioid abuse? | ||
| No | b) Do you support a government-run (single-payer) healthcare program such as Medicare-for All? | ||
| No | c) Should an individual have the right to choose to die through euthanasia? | ||
| No | d) Do you support eliminating religious exemptions for vaccinations? | ||
| No | e) Do you support expanding paid family AND/OR medical leave opportunities? | ||
| Yes | f) Do you support lowering the cost of prescription drugs? | ||
| Government should combat opioid use through law enforcement and not running a protection racket via "decriminalization." "Medicare for all" can be effectively implemented by allowing doctors to accept Medicare rates for all services. By paying ~1/5 of billed amounts, doctors must increase billed amounts by 5 times--essentially Medicare negotiates higher rates for everyone else. "Death with dignity" programs quickly become coercive violations of the Hippocratic oath. Full transparency in vaccination testing & efficacy should be provided. Government mandates violate "consent of the governed". | |||
| No | a) Do you support the inclusion of sexual orientation in Colorado's anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| No | b) Do you support the inclusion of gender identity in Colorado's anti-discrimination laws? | ||
| No | c) Do you support greater efforts by Colorado's state government in closing gender, racial and other wage gaps? | ||
| these are categories for which there is no limiting definition, making them infinitely malleable and expandable. | |||
| Remove & prevent unconstitutional legislation and spending, which increase government power and erode individual Liberty. Stop the Democrats from taking taxpayer money and giving it away to their radical environmental "green industry" investors. Open up our oil and gas resources to free-market businesses to expand energy to citizens at an affordable price. Fight for affordable healthcare. Big-government shouldn't have to force people to choose between paying the hospital bill or food, utilities and housing. Ensure better educational outcomes by removing big-government from the teaching decisions of parents and school boards; redirect money into the classroom to benefit students. | |||
| My top legislative priority is returning Liberty to the citizens of Colorado, and that is best done through rolling back government power and continually resisting legislation seeking to expand it. Legislation does not need to be ill-intended to have a negative impact on our Liberty--"the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Individual sovereignty as endowed by our Creator is the strength of our nation and the call to the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." The best stimulus program is to reduce government encroachment & limiting its power to that which secures our inalienable Rights. |
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