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John K. Wilson Clarifies His Position

Oct. 26, 2010 Staff Report

John K. Wilson (R), who is running for NY State District 37 Assembly seat, wrote the following comment to readers, clarifying his position/beliefs. His response followed an earlier article that covered the United 40s political debate.

When I use words like “self-reliance, personal-responsibility, entrepreneurship,” and “liberty,” I don’t intend for them to be code-words to indicate that I would like to destroy necessary social services; they simply mean what they mean. I believe these are virtues to admire and aspire to.

I don’t advocate cruelty, and, in fact, because I believe in spending public funds wisely, I am very much in favor of investing public funds on children early–through Head Start-type programs–because it is so much less expensive than to build prisons, fund welfare, and over-burden the legal system later. Besides, it is just the right thing to do. We need to decide, as a society, just what it is that we value–and fund those things–because our government dollars are limited now, and will be dwindling soon. Personally, I value children, our elderly, and the truly needy more than the convenience of public sector unions.

Incidentally, sometimes “work-safety laws” are an impediment to liberty and entrepreneurship, as well as safety itself: at a very important downtown construction site, workers are required to wear safety googles at all times. Sounds prudent, doesn’t it? But, one of my future constituents, a worker there, told me that, when wearing those thing at ALL times, vision is impaired. He says the practice has caused several serious injuries; and, he believes it is a matter of time before someone loses their life. He says that no worker would ever not wear the googles when working in a situation that called for it; but, he wished common sense would prevail. He further explained that the insurance company has determined that eye injuries are the greatest single threat to their financial health; the other injuries caused by wearing the goggles at all times–and presumably any fatalities–are cheaper for them to pay-out on.

Sometimes, things that sound like a good idea are made to sound good in order to convince the public that an action that is good for a particular group’s bottom line is also in the public interest; in reality, it may not be.

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Regulations like anything else can be good or bad. Unfortunately, we’ve become such a bureaucratic, nanny-state and litigious society a lot of regulations are just plain ridiculous, a drag on business and are just an excuse to make more work for lawyers and government employees.

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