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| Interview with Troy Stanley 9-12 Candidate for Congress Florida District 4 |
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Welcome to The 9-12 Show...
| Show Host Danielle Hampson |
| Transcript Copying Rule |
| Support the 9-12 movement Join our email list |
| TRANSCRIPTS available by clicking on links below |
Candidate: Well, thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure to be invited and I look forward to your questions.
Host: Well, here are the questions that I would like to address with you. Taxes, term limits, national defense, and finally constitutional
rights. So let’s start right out of the gate, let’s start with taxes. You support the Fair Tax Act of 2009, a bill that was introduced by
Congressman John Linder, who is a Republican from Georgia, and it was co-sponsored by 55 other Republican and one Democrat, I sales
tax of, I believe, 23% in 2011. Would you please explain what the Fair Tax exactly is and why you see its implementation as a better solution
than our current tax system?
Candidate: The reason that I support the Fair Tax is that it’s simpler for one. We’re already paying that 23% as embedded taxes that are in
every product we buy in America. Right now I operate a small business and I collect sales tax for the state and every quarter I fill out a little
coupon with the money that I, you know, that totals up my sales and then I send in the percentage of the sales tax that I owe. And it’s, you
know, just a couple of pages of paperwork to do and I can do it myself. It’s not very complicated. Right now we have a 63,000 page Federal
tax code which is virtually impossible to decipher. Last year I did my taxes for my small business and my personal income myself and did
the best job I could at it. And it’s expensive just in the cost of compliance and making sure that you do it correctly. And that you pay what
you really owe and that you don’t pay what you don’t need to pay. I think it’s something that everybody can understand. It would bring more
revenue in I believe, because every dollar that’s spent in America would be taxed. I’m sure there’s money that gets through the black
market or whatever, that moves around the country that never sees a tax man.
Host: Well indeed, we know for a fact that over 50%, I believe I think that’s what the statistics say, 50% of the population do not even pay
Federal income tax to begin with.
Candidate: Right. The tax code as we have it now is used as a tool to make winners and losers so that, you know, when it’s time for election,
there are people that vote for their living, they vote for the person that’s going to give them redistributed wealth from someone else, you
know, that’s making more money. And they get either like an earned income credit back or some type of credit back, more money than
they paid in, they get back. I think there’s a problem with that. If everybody carried their fair share of the load, I think you know, they’d have
a greater interest in who actually gets elected too. And also, you know, the revenue would be better and it would be simpler. I mean the
main thing is that we’re already paying this tax and we’re already paying income tax. And we have a tax code that’s hard to understand.
Make something simple that people can understand and the government will get the money that they need. And also, you know, one of the
platform issues is a smaller government and that would put the power sent back to the people. You know, they could decide whether or not
to spend their money. Of course, you have to spend on your daily needs and stuff like that, but if a group of people wanted to get together
and say, “You know we don’t want the government to have a lot of money, we will just restrain from spending extra money this month and let
them see a little dip in the revenue, and hey, we do have power.”
Host: Now some in the past, they proposed the flat tax. What is the difference between the flat tax and the fair tax?
Candidate: Well, the flat tax, I have not really been a big supporter of that. The fair tax is, because it’s something that’s keyed to when you
spend money, not when you make money. I think people would enjoy a better prosperity if they received every dime they made, and if they
saved it, they saved it. And if they spent it, then they paid tax. So the flat tax, I’m against that because I don’t want a tax that’s tied to Federal
withholding and where politicians can have their fingers in there to make winners and losers. Because eventually you know, it may start out
good and before long it gets turned into something that’s ugly.
Host: Now let’s go to the term limits. Here you support a constitutional amendment that would prohibit a person from serving more than two
full consecutive terms as a Senator or six full consecutive terms as a Representative. This was actually introduced in January by
Congressman Todd Plaid from Pennsylvania, a Republican as well. Why do you support term limits?
Candidate: I support term limits because we end up with career politicians. I don’t even like to call myself a politician. My little slogan is
“Check out a new kind of statesman.” You know, a patriot, a statesman that goes to Washington, serves their country, does a limited
amount of terms. I’m limiting myself to two terms. I would support the bill for six years for the U. S. House if that was passed, but I myself am
limiting to two terms. You should go there, support your country, and come back home to whatever profession it was that you did before and
live under the law you just went up there and helped inact.
Host: I was going to say that certainly would help change some of those laws that we have that a lot of the, as you said the, I called them and
career politicians are not really obeying.
Candidate: Right, they get inside the beltway, and that’s kind of a little bubble of nirvana I guess, where they can get out of touch with what’s
going on back home. And, you know, right now when I work and I meet people on the street, I meet almost 100% people that agree with
term limits. You know, they’re tired of the same old, same old, the status quo. My wife even coined a phrase that, you know, if your happy
with your current representation and you say they’re a good politician, well that might be the very problem we have is they’re a good
politician. They’re not a statesman. They’re not looking out for their district, their state, or their country, in that order.
Host: You have spent 20 years in the military. You therefore enjoyed, should I say, a bird’s eye view of what our servicemen and women can
do. In sports, one often says the best defense is a strong offense. Where do you stand on national defense?
Candidate: Well, I believe we have to have a strong national defense. It’s the best way to…. I also believe that phrase too. A good offense
is better than a good defense. But we also, just knowing that we have a great capability is a great deterrent. And we have a great military. I
was in the Navy. We have a great Navy, these people, these men and women that are out there right now on the front lines. They will get the
job done. You know, they will do without. They will make do. They will get the job done if we give them clear missions. Missions that have
measureable goals where we can say, “Yeah we’re going to go in and kick out a rogue dictator, let’s say, and once he’s gone, we can come
out.” I’m not in the business of, and I don’t think America should be in the business of nation building. We should be in the business of
protecting other countries if they need it, if they can’t protect themselves. It’s just the Good Samaritan act, you know. If you see someone
hurting, I think we’re obligated morally and, as the great country that we are, to go help them out. So, measureable goals for the military put
them in, you know, if they’re going to go into battle, they’re going to go into battle and we’re going to go in to win. The whole Iraq issue and I
was part of that for a couple of years. I didn’t go on the land in Iraq, but I was part of Desert Storm on the seas. And I served in the Persian
Gulf different times and my opinion when we went into Iraq is we could be in and out of there in a few months if we had went in there with a
bigger force. Here we’re still there. It’s how many years later and one by one people are getting killed and I remember the milestones
when, okay we lost a thousand troops, two thousand, four thousand, and that’s crazy. Go in there to win. Set a measureable goal that we’re
going to defeat the insurgents and get out. And have some measureable goal that they can work to and come home. Come home with
dignity.
Host: I understand that you actually carry a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in your pocket.
Candidate: Yes, I have it right here, have it right here in front of me right now.
Host: You have it every single day. Why do you carry that with you?
Candidate: Well, as a symbol that, you know, that’s what founded our country and that we need to remember it. For twenty years I lived
under oath to support and defend it. And I didn’t always carry it with me and I was at a reenlistment ceremony for a young man and he had
just sworn the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the officer presiding over the ceremony said, “Here’s your
copy of the Constitution. You should know what it says because you just swore to die for it.” And I use that as an example to tell people that
you need to be reading this. It’s not very big. You know, I have a little small version. I think it came from the Cato Institute. I got it off of
eBay a while back. And it’s not a lot to read. You can read it in, you know, probably half an hour, an hour, and it is understandable. It’s not
some law speak that you might think you’d have a hard time to understand. I love to open it up and show people that “Hey this is actually
what it says.” And people, their eyes just get wide open and they say, “Oh, there it is, you know.” And it’s not some abstract idea that’s, you
know, an ancient document that’s preserved in the National Archives up there. You know, the ink’s faded on it up there. If you go view it, it’s
very hard to read the actual copy. But the truths that are there are still valid for today.
Host: You are running in the 4th Congressional District in the State of Florida. What do you think you will bring constituents in your district
should you be elected?
Candidate: My goal is to bring them a loud voice in Washington. Someone that will make sure that every bill that he signs is read.
Someone who looks at every bill and says where does this fit into the Constitution. If it doesn’t, we shouldn’t even be talking about it.
Someone who is approachable, that when I’m home from serving in Washington, they’re going to be able to talk to me. I vow that I would
have a town hall meeting before and after every single time I go to Washington, and I will stay there as long as it takes to answer everybody’
s question, good, bad or ugly. You know you’ve got to take the good and the bad and the ugly with these jobs and support what the people
want in Washington, D.C. with a loud voice that they know what their Congressman’s doing up there.
Host: Now you have on your website a citizen’s forum. How do you plan to utilize that tool?
Candidate: Well, that’s one of the tools that you can use. The town hall thing is big in the news right now and I think those forums are great
but we also need to use, you know, the electronic means, email. I’m on Twitter, Facebook, all of those things and the younger people, they
love to use those things. And I enjoy it too, I’m not that old, but they’re fun to do. And that’s a quick and easy way to get a hold of somebody
and I think when someone does that, they deserve a response. I’m sure it might get to someday where it’s thousands, I might have to have
some help, but they’re going to get a response from me, the electronic means. And I want to be a very approachable person that if you
called my phone number, you might just get me on the phone. Alice, my wife and children that help me answer the phone, but in the future,
if it’s one of my staff, I’m not going to be too far away and I should be able to talk to as many people as I can.
Host: You know, as a matter of fact, as I speak with a lot of people around me, one of the top gripes that they have against, primarily their
Congressman, but also their Senators, is that they send out letters, they send out emails, they make phone calls, and they never…. In fact, I
got just a few days ago, I got a very angry email from a woman who was complaining about trying to correspond with her Senator and to no
avail no matter what, and all they get are form letters. Typically politicians seem to be making themselves not very available to their
constituents that put them in the office in the first place. Realistically do you think that if you are elected and once you are in office, you really
think that you will be able to keep that connection with your constituents on a regular basis?
Candidate: Well that’s just, that’s part of the job to do the best that you can at it. This district is roughly around 500,000 people. They all
probably won’t want to talk to me because I’m sure there are some people that would be in opposition to me. They may want to talk to me
also, but I mean, I’ll listen to them too. But, yeah, it will get to be a hard job to do and I’ll have to get some help, but I would pledge that I
would do as much as I could to talk to everybody that I can, face to face, personally through email, phone calls or whatever. You know, the
nine principles in the 9-12 is the government works for me, I do not answer to them, they answer to me. So that needs to be upheld. I work
for them. Right now, they work for me. I’m their customer. They need to do the best they can to do that. And that will be hard to do and I’m
sure that I may let somebody down. I won’t make any promises that I couldn’t do that or won’t do that, but I’ll do my best to keep my face
visible and access to me as easy to get to as possible, if I’m elected.
Host: Obviously you want citizens and supporters to help and contact you and your campaign to help you achieve your goal. How may they
do that?
Candidate: Well, they can contact me through my website which is www.Stanley10.com, that’s Stanley one zero dot com. You can look up
Troy D. Stanley for Congress or Troy Stanley for Congress and you’ll be linked to my Facebook page. Troy Stanley is on Twitter. I’m
available on there. And my email is Troy dot Stanley at Mac dot com. (Troy.Stanley@mac.com). There’s many methods to get a hold of me.
Host: Okay and again, the main website is Stanley and the number ten dot com, Stanley10.com.
Candidate: Right.
Host: Okay, wonderful. Mr. Stanley, thank you very much for being on the 9-12 Project Show today.
Candidate: Well, thank you for inviting me.
Host: Well, here are the questions that I would like to address with you. Taxes, term limits, national defense, and finally constitutional
rights. So let’s start right out of the gate, let’s start with taxes. You support the Fair Tax Act of 2009, a bill that was introduced by
Congressman John Linder, who is a Republican from Georgia, and it was co-sponsored by 55 other Republican and one Democrat, I sales
tax of, I believe, 23% in 2011. Would you please explain what the Fair Tax exactly is and why you see its implementation as a better solution
than our current tax system?
Candidate: The reason that I support the Fair Tax is that it’s simpler for one. We’re already paying that 23% as embedded taxes that are in
every product we buy in America. Right now I operate a small business and I collect sales tax for the state and every quarter I fill out a little
coupon with the money that I, you know, that totals up my sales and then I send in the percentage of the sales tax that I owe. And it’s, you
know, just a couple of pages of paperwork to do and I can do it myself. It’s not very complicated. Right now we have a 63,000 page Federal
tax code which is virtually impossible to decipher. Last year I did my taxes for my small business and my personal income myself and did
the best job I could at it. And it’s expensive just in the cost of compliance and making sure that you do it correctly. And that you pay what
you really owe and that you don’t pay what you don’t need to pay. I think it’s something that everybody can understand. It would bring more
revenue in I believe, because every dollar that’s spent in America would be taxed. I’m sure there’s money that gets through the black
market or whatever, that moves around the country that never sees a tax man.
Host: Well indeed, we know for a fact that over 50%, I believe I think that’s what the statistics say, 50% of the population do not even pay
Federal income tax to begin with.
Candidate: Right. The tax code as we have it now is used as a tool to make winners and losers so that, you know, when it’s time for election,
there are people that vote for their living, they vote for the person that’s going to give them redistributed wealth from someone else, you
know, that’s making more money. And they get either like an earned income credit back or some type of credit back, more money than
they paid in, they get back. I think there’s a problem with that. If everybody carried their fair share of the load, I think you know, they’d have
a greater interest in who actually gets elected too. And also, you know, the revenue would be better and it would be simpler. I mean the
main thing is that we’re already paying this tax and we’re already paying income tax. And we have a tax code that’s hard to understand.
Make something simple that people can understand and the government will get the money that they need. And also, you know, one of the
platform issues is a smaller government and that would put the power sent back to the people. You know, they could decide whether or not
to spend their money. Of course, you have to spend on your daily needs and stuff like that, but if a group of people wanted to get together
and say, “You know we don’t want the government to have a lot of money, we will just restrain from spending extra money this month and let
them see a little dip in the revenue, and hey, we do have power.”
Host: Now some in the past, they proposed the flat tax. What is the difference between the flat tax and the fair tax?
Candidate: Well, the flat tax, I have not really been a big supporter of that. The fair tax is, because it’s something that’s keyed to when you
spend money, not when you make money. I think people would enjoy a better prosperity if they received every dime they made, and if they
saved it, they saved it. And if they spent it, then they paid tax. So the flat tax, I’m against that because I don’t want a tax that’s tied to Federal
withholding and where politicians can have their fingers in there to make winners and losers. Because eventually you know, it may start out
good and before long it gets turned into something that’s ugly.
Host: Now let’s go to the term limits. Here you support a constitutional amendment that would prohibit a person from serving more than two
full consecutive terms as a Senator or six full consecutive terms as a Representative. This was actually introduced in January by
Congressman Todd Plaid from Pennsylvania, a Republican as well. Why do you support term limits?
Candidate: I support term limits because we end up with career politicians. I don’t even like to call myself a politician. My little slogan is
“Check out a new kind of statesman.” You know, a patriot, a statesman that goes to Washington, serves their country, does a limited
amount of terms. I’m limiting myself to two terms. I would support the bill for six years for the U. S. House if that was passed, but I myself am
limiting to two terms. You should go there, support your country, and come back home to whatever profession it was that you did before and
live under the law you just went up there and helped inact.
Host: I was going to say that certainly would help change some of those laws that we have that a lot of the, as you said the, I called them and
career politicians are not really obeying.
Candidate: Right, they get inside the beltway, and that’s kind of a little bubble of nirvana I guess, where they can get out of touch with what’s
going on back home. And, you know, right now when I work and I meet people on the street, I meet almost 100% people that agree with
term limits. You know, they’re tired of the same old, same old, the status quo. My wife even coined a phrase that, you know, if your happy
with your current representation and you say they’re a good politician, well that might be the very problem we have is they’re a good
politician. They’re not a statesman. They’re not looking out for their district, their state, or their country, in that order.
Host: You have spent 20 years in the military. You therefore enjoyed, should I say, a bird’s eye view of what our servicemen and women can
do. In sports, one often says the best defense is a strong offense. Where do you stand on national defense?
Candidate: Well, I believe we have to have a strong national defense. It’s the best way to…. I also believe that phrase too. A good offense
is better than a good defense. But we also, just knowing that we have a great capability is a great deterrent. And we have a great military. I
was in the Navy. We have a great Navy, these people, these men and women that are out there right now on the front lines. They will get the
job done. You know, they will do without. They will make do. They will get the job done if we give them clear missions. Missions that have
measureable goals where we can say, “Yeah we’re going to go in and kick out a rogue dictator, let’s say, and once he’s gone, we can come
out.” I’m not in the business of, and I don’t think America should be in the business of nation building. We should be in the business of
protecting other countries if they need it, if they can’t protect themselves. It’s just the Good Samaritan act, you know. If you see someone
hurting, I think we’re obligated morally and, as the great country that we are, to go help them out. So, measureable goals for the military put
them in, you know, if they’re going to go into battle, they’re going to go into battle and we’re going to go in to win. The whole Iraq issue and I
was part of that for a couple of years. I didn’t go on the land in Iraq, but I was part of Desert Storm on the seas. And I served in the Persian
Gulf different times and my opinion when we went into Iraq is we could be in and out of there in a few months if we had went in there with a
bigger force. Here we’re still there. It’s how many years later and one by one people are getting killed and I remember the milestones
when, okay we lost a thousand troops, two thousand, four thousand, and that’s crazy. Go in there to win. Set a measureable goal that we’re
going to defeat the insurgents and get out. And have some measureable goal that they can work to and come home. Come home with
dignity.
Host: I understand that you actually carry a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in your pocket.
Candidate: Yes, I have it right here, have it right here in front of me right now.
Host: You have it every single day. Why do you carry that with you?
Candidate: Well, as a symbol that, you know, that’s what founded our country and that we need to remember it. For twenty years I lived
under oath to support and defend it. And I didn’t always carry it with me and I was at a reenlistment ceremony for a young man and he had
just sworn the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the officer presiding over the ceremony said, “Here’s your
copy of the Constitution. You should know what it says because you just swore to die for it.” And I use that as an example to tell people that
you need to be reading this. It’s not very big. You know, I have a little small version. I think it came from the Cato Institute. I got it off of
eBay a while back. And it’s not a lot to read. You can read it in, you know, probably half an hour, an hour, and it is understandable. It’s not
some law speak that you might think you’d have a hard time to understand. I love to open it up and show people that “Hey this is actually
what it says.” And people, their eyes just get wide open and they say, “Oh, there it is, you know.” And it’s not some abstract idea that’s, you
know, an ancient document that’s preserved in the National Archives up there. You know, the ink’s faded on it up there. If you go view it, it’s
very hard to read the actual copy. But the truths that are there are still valid for today.
Host: You are running in the 4th Congressional District in the State of Florida. What do you think you will bring constituents in your district
should you be elected?
Candidate: My goal is to bring them a loud voice in Washington. Someone that will make sure that every bill that he signs is read.
Someone who looks at every bill and says where does this fit into the Constitution. If it doesn’t, we shouldn’t even be talking about it.
Someone who is approachable, that when I’m home from serving in Washington, they’re going to be able to talk to me. I vow that I would
have a town hall meeting before and after every single time I go to Washington, and I will stay there as long as it takes to answer everybody’
s question, good, bad or ugly. You know you’ve got to take the good and the bad and the ugly with these jobs and support what the people
want in Washington, D.C. with a loud voice that they know what their Congressman’s doing up there.
Host: Now you have on your website a citizen’s forum. How do you plan to utilize that tool?
Candidate: Well, that’s one of the tools that you can use. The town hall thing is big in the news right now and I think those forums are great
but we also need to use, you know, the electronic means, email. I’m on Twitter, Facebook, all of those things and the younger people, they
love to use those things. And I enjoy it too, I’m not that old, but they’re fun to do. And that’s a quick and easy way to get a hold of somebody
and I think when someone does that, they deserve a response. I’m sure it might get to someday where it’s thousands, I might have to have
some help, but they’re going to get a response from me, the electronic means. And I want to be a very approachable person that if you
called my phone number, you might just get me on the phone. Alice, my wife and children that help me answer the phone, but in the future,
if it’s one of my staff, I’m not going to be too far away and I should be able to talk to as many people as I can.
Host: You know, as a matter of fact, as I speak with a lot of people around me, one of the top gripes that they have against, primarily their
Congressman, but also their Senators, is that they send out letters, they send out emails, they make phone calls, and they never…. In fact, I
got just a few days ago, I got a very angry email from a woman who was complaining about trying to correspond with her Senator and to no
avail no matter what, and all they get are form letters. Typically politicians seem to be making themselves not very available to their
constituents that put them in the office in the first place. Realistically do you think that if you are elected and once you are in office, you really
think that you will be able to keep that connection with your constituents on a regular basis?
Candidate: Well that’s just, that’s part of the job to do the best that you can at it. This district is roughly around 500,000 people. They all
probably won’t want to talk to me because I’m sure there are some people that would be in opposition to me. They may want to talk to me
also, but I mean, I’ll listen to them too. But, yeah, it will get to be a hard job to do and I’ll have to get some help, but I would pledge that I
would do as much as I could to talk to everybody that I can, face to face, personally through email, phone calls or whatever. You know, the
nine principles in the 9-12 is the government works for me, I do not answer to them, they answer to me. So that needs to be upheld. I work
for them. Right now, they work for me. I’m their customer. They need to do the best they can to do that. And that will be hard to do and I’m
sure that I may let somebody down. I won’t make any promises that I couldn’t do that or won’t do that, but I’ll do my best to keep my face
visible and access to me as easy to get to as possible, if I’m elected.
Host: Obviously you want citizens and supporters to help and contact you and your campaign to help you achieve your goal. How may they
do that?
Candidate: Well, they can contact me through my website which is www.Stanley10.com, that’s Stanley one zero dot com. You can look up
Troy D. Stanley for Congress or Troy Stanley for Congress and you’ll be linked to my Facebook page. Troy Stanley is on Twitter. I’m
available on there. And my email is Troy dot Stanley at Mac dot com. (Troy.Stanley@mac.com). There’s many methods to get a hold of me.
Host: Okay and again, the main website is Stanley and the number ten dot com, Stanley10.com.
Candidate: Right.
Host: Okay, wonderful. Mr. Stanley, thank you very much for being on the 9-12 Project Show today.
Candidate: Well, thank you for inviting me.
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transcript is to be used,
as well as its web
address;
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c- reporter/writer's full
name & contact
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