THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610290499
SECTION: VOTER GUIDE PAGE: V4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Special Section
Voter Guide covering the candidates and campaign issues in the races for
President, U.S. Senator from Virginia, and area Representatives
SERIES: DECISION '96
LENGTH: 105 lines
HOWARD PHILLIPS
U.S. Taxpayers Party
Hometown: Vienna, Va.
Education: Harvard College, 1962
Family: Wife, Peggy; six children, six grandchildren
Current job: Chairman, The Conservative Caucus, 1974-present
Top policy priorities: The Taxpayers Party hopes to restore American jurisprudence to its ``heritage of biblical liberty,'' abolish the Internal Revenue Service and eliminate federal income taxes, capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes. Phillips' party also supports ending legalized abortion and reducing ``the reach, the grasp and take of the federal government.'' The party platform says that while the United States should be a friend to liberty everywhere, it should only invest and fight to guarantee it for the United States. Phillips, 55, a Republican-turned-independent, supports dismantling the Education and the Housing and Urban Development departments and ending government support of the arts. He is on the ballot in about 40 states.
Phillips and the U.S. Taxpayers Party propose to:
Balance the federal budget immediately.
Eliminate the national debt, strengthen the dollar, and fight inflation by abolishing the Federal Reserve System.
Appoint only judges who ``acknowledge the legal personhood of the unborn child.''
End federal interference with imposition of the death penalty for capital crimes.
Safeguard the Bill of Rights, including rights of property, speech, religion, and the right to keep and bear arms.
Terminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, AIDS education, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Legal Services Corporation.
JOHN HAGELIN
Natural Law Party
Born: June 9, 1954, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Hometown: Fairfield, Iowa
Education: Dartmouth, A.B.; Harvard University, M.S., Ph.D.
Family: Unmarried
Current job: Physicist; heads a doctoral program in physics at Maharishi International University (on leave)
Top policy priorities: On the ballot in 47 states, the Natural Law Party hopes to ``bring the light of science into politics.'' Its platform includes prevention-oriented health care, renewable energy and sustainable agriculture without pesticides. The party also wants a cost-effective government with a safety net that promotes well-being, including a 10 percent flat tax by 2002. Hagelin, 42, is one of the party's founders. In 1992 he garnered fewer than 40,000 votes. The Natural Law Party advocates transcendental meditation, contending it can lower the crime rate by setting up meditation groups in prisons, and can serve as a foreign policy tool by supporting groups who practice it in other countries.
Mike Tompkins, Hagelin's running mate, has worked with government for 17 years to introduce new prevention-oriented programs to solve America's critical problems. He currently serves as associate director of the Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa.
Hagelin and his party stand for:
Natural, prevention-oriented health care programs to prevent disease, promote health and significantly reduce costs.
Effective, field-tested community development and crime prevention programs to reduce crime.
Lowering taxes through cost-effective solutions to problems, rather than by cutting essential services.
HARRY BROWNE
Libertarian Party
Born: New York City, 1933.
Hometown: Franklin, Tenn.
Education: No college degree
Family: Married to Pamela Lanier Wolfe; one daughter
Current job: Investment adviser, author, public speaker
Top policy priorities: A best-selling investment writer, Browne is on the ballot in all 50 states. He says the Libertarians ``believe in individual liberty, personal responsibility and freedom from government.'' The party seeks to end the income tax and ``to reduce government to the absolute minimum possible.'' Browne, 63, opposes Internet censorship and supports a repeal of the assault weapons ban. The Libertarians have been around for about a quarter of a century. Their platform includes proposals to deregulate the health-care industry, privatize Medicare and Medicaid and legalize drugs.
Browne's running mate, Jo Jorgensen, is president and owner of Hypertech Inc., a software duplication company.
Browne and the Libertarian Party propose to:
Remove the federal government immediately and completely from every activity not specified in the Constitution - education, energy, regulation, crime control, welfare, housing, transportation, health care and agriculture.
End the income tax and abolish the IRS, and replace them with nothing.
Do away with all direct taxes - the income, estate, gift, capital gains and Social Security taxes - financing national defense and the federal judiciary with the level of tariffs and excise taxes being collected already.
Sell trillions of dollars worth of unneeded federal assets to finance the liquidation of Social Security through the purchase of private retirement annuities for the senior citizens who are dependent on Social Security. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
KEYWORDS: PRESIDENTIAL RACE 1996 CANDIDATES
THIRD PARTIES by CNB