Candidate for
Council Member; City of Lodi

I base my philosophies on my experiences and my reading of other leaders. It would be fair to say that the following statements make up, in part, my philosophy.

"Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." (Luke 12:51)

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5: 20-21)

"If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams

"The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition." #John Adams

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." --Aesop

"To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?" --Wystan H. Auden, Epitaph for an unknown soldier

"Throughout most of American history, taxes were levied principally on consumption, rather than income. Except during the Civil War, the federal government was financed almost entirely by import duties and excise taxes until 1913, when our current income tax was imposed. The Founding Fathers favored consumption taxes in part because they are harder to raise to confiscatory levels than incomes taxes. ...Experience shows that general sales tax ratesmuch above 10 percent are very hard to collect. They encourage smuggling, black markets, evasion, production for personal use, substitution for untaxed commodities and other activities that erode the tax base. Thus, confining taxation to a form that is inherently hard to raise to excessive levels meant that the size of government would be severely limited." --Bruce Bartlett

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." --Sir Winston S. Churchill

"What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?"
--Grover Cleveland

"Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many -- not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some." --Charles Dickens

"Being a lover of freedom, when the [Nazi] revolution came, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no, the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks.... Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration for it because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly." --Albert Einstein

"Freedom from fear and injustice and oppression will be ours only in the measure that men who value such freedom are ready to sustain its possession -- to defend it against every thrust from within and without." --Dwight D. Eisenhower

"The two most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." #Harlan Ellison

"It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals." --Felix Frankfurter

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin

"We should restrain our inclination to believe that laws in and of themselves create a just society. It is a common morality, validated by law, that accomplishes that." --William Goldcamp

"Government implies the power of making laws. It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience." --Alexander Hamilton

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship." --Patrick Henry

"Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself." #Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Where there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned." --Herbert Hoover

"The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law." --Herbert Hoover, Inaugural Address, 1929

"But with the adoption of the income-tax amendment in 1913, the amount of money people retained as their own became totally subject to the will of the government. Congress might set the percentage high or low, but that wasn't really the point. The point was that by granting public officials the unfettered power to determine the percentage of income tax, government became the determiner of how much of their income people would be permitted to keep. The Sixteenth Amendment effectively nationalized people's income and placed them on a government allowance." --Jacob G. Hornberger

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ... Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." --Thomas Jefferson

"Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome." --Samuel Johnson

"The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God." --John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961

"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws, but conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." --Martin Luther King

"We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism." --Nikita S. Khrushchev

"Because just as good morals, if they are to be maintained, have need of the laws, so the laws, if they are to be observed, have need of good morals." #Niccolo Machiavelli

"He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself." --Philip Massinger

"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." --John Stuart Mill

"The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare." --Daniel P. Moynihan

"A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. all delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either." --Thomas Paine

"If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn't thinking." --George S. Patton

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived." --George S. Patton

"One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, 'Fixing the wire, Sir.' I asked, 'Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?' He answered, 'Yes, Sir, but the...wire has to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!' " --George S. Patton

"When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income." --Plato

"I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." --Ronald Reagan

"All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government." --Ronald Reagan

"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." --Ronald Reagan

"The First Continental Congress made its first act a prayer, the beginning of a great tradition. We have then a lesson from the founders of our land. That lesson is clear: That in the winning of freedom and in the living of life, the first step is prayer." #Ronald Reagan

"A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency, or simply swell its numbers.... And if there are those who cannot subscribe to these principles, then let them go their way." --Ronald Reagan

"It is necessary for us to learn from others' mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself." --Hyman Rickover

"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." --Will Rogers

"Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?" #Will Rogers

"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has." --Will Rogers

"The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office." --Will Rogers

"Pray not for lighter burdens but for stronger backs." --Theodore Roosevelt

"Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy." --Shakespeare

"In one century we went from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to offering remedial English in college." --Joseph Sobran

"Loyalty to your country should never require you to lie about it." --Joseph Sobran

"Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race." --William Howard Taft

"If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practicing leadership -- you are practicing followship." --Margaret Thatcher

"You'll never realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you've got." --Mother Theresa

"For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root." --H.D. Thoreau

"I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?" --Henry David Thoreau

"Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations." #Elton Trueblood

"The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination." #Voltaire

"It is sad that being a good patriot often means being the enemy of the rest of mankind." --Voltaire

"Law, natural or revealed, made for men or for nations, flows from the same Divine source: it is the law of God.... Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is Divine.... Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other." --James Wilson

"If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing." --Woodrow Wilson

"Discipline yourself and others won't have to." --John Wooden