Don Wagner versus “imported crime and violence” and "kangaroo rats"

Denizens of the 70th Assembly District (that includes me, almost) will be glad to hear that, on his campaign website, Republican candidate and SOCCCD trustee Don Wagner now offers his take on the issues. Here are some highlights:

Protect Families

The family is the bedrock of our civilization. It is critical to our state that we protect the family from threats to re-define it, make it obsolete, or undermine its importance to society. I will … defend the right to express our faith in the public square. I believe that life is precious and will fight to defend life from conception to natural death.

Illegal Immigration

I'll fight for our communities by working to put a stop to illegal immigration. I'll promote tightened eligibility requirements for government services and a tough stance against imported crime and violence….

Sensible Water Policies

…I'll stand up to extremist special interests that put delta smelt, sand flies, and kangaroo rats above men, women, and children….

Crime

…The sources of this scourge are both home grown and imported from across the border….

Promote Academic Success

…For more than ten years, I've been working to increase academic success as a Community College Trustee. I know what works and what doesn't in education; I have fought hard to craft sound and successful education programs, and to oppose the inefficient education bureaucracy that stifles real learning in California. I'll take that experience to Sacramento to reform our education laws and policies….

Reduce Taxes

…The liberal tax and spend crowd in Sacramento needs to understand that no society has ever taxed its way to prosperity. … Tax cuts revive failing economies, increase revenues, and reward savings and investment….

What's Don about, politically?

Don Wagner was (and likely still is) on the governing board of Tustin's religious right education reform organization known as “Education Alliance.” (The district’s Board Meeting Highlights for the September, 2007, board meeting describes Don as noting his attendance of an Education Alliance dinner “of which he is a board member.”)

Education Alliance (EA) supported Don [and Nancy Padberg] during his initial run for his trustee seat back in 1998.

EA got started, in the mid-90s, with money provided by Christian Reconstructionist Howard Ahmanson, Jr., who once told the OC Register that "My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives." (See.)

EA’s "platform” includes the following:

…Parents possess natural inherent inalienable rights to discipline, raise, control and participate in the education of their children. These rights should not be taken away by the government. ... Our education system as designed gives parents very limited control over their children's education. The system is designed and run by educational special interests who are determined to control how our children are raised. We therefore support reforms such as charter schools and school choice programs involving private schools.

…Federal control of education strikes at the very heart of the system of federalism established by the founding fathers of our country and must be resisted. Funding of education by the State and Federal governments is a primary means of exercising control. The failure of many existing school board members to resist both increased State and Federal control of our schools is error….

Students in the United States should be instructed in the English language….

…[J]ust as it is not possible to govern an entire nation or state that is in anarchy, it is not possible to govern a school system or a class that is in anarchy and where discipline is neither maintained nor enforced.

Don's Assembly run in 2004:

Wagner ran for Assembly (unsuccessfully) back in 2004. On his website for that campaign, Don offered a take on the issues not unlike the one on his new website:

"I would try to greatly expand the right of law abiding citizens to carry weapons.”

"Corporal punishment in the lower grades works.”

“…I am on the side of the culture war that believes Teddy Kennedy should do time for Chappaquidick and that Bill Clinton should do time for Juanita Broderick, perjury, illegal campaign fund raising from China...”

"There was nothing to like about [President Clinton’s] positions on gays in the military, nationalization of the health care industry, opposition to welfare reform that took a Republican Congress to finally achieve, …the incineration of children in Waco, …stonewalling on Vince Foster, missing Rose Law Firm billing records, … sale of the Lincoln Bedroom, ad nauseam.”

"…Those on my side of the culture war believe that with rights come responsibilities, and that you have a right to build on your own property even if a snail darter or some such endangered vermin happens to live on it, a right to pack a gun, and the right to live free of an oppressive nanny state. You also have a responsibility to care for yourself and your family, and to exhaust every effort to do so before asking the government for a handout. Personal responsibility and self reliance [sic] are more highly regarded on my side of the culture war than are feelings and groupthink.”

"My side of the culture war laughs at the hypocracy [sic!] of the left when it says we care about children only until they are born, when in fact it is our side that also opposes euthanasia, the left's creeping culture of death, the killing of Terry Schiavo….”