Voter Guide: David Vogel Profile (1st District)

Monday, November 05, 2012

Dan McGowan, GoLocalProv News Editor

Voter Guide: David Vogel Profile (1st District)

Birth Date: December 1, 1966

Education:

Moses Brown School, High School, 1985

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Cornell University, B.A., 1990

University of Rhode Island, M.B.A., 1994

Roger Williams University School of Law, J.D., 1998

Villanova University School of Law, LL.M. Federal Taxation, 1999

Bio: Born in Brooklyn, New York. My parents moved to Rhode Island when I was four years old. I was raised in a New-York-style household, which means my upbringing was modern liberalism with a healthy dose of old-world sensibilities.

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I have been an attorney for nearly fourteen years and, during that time, have practiced in a few different areas of law -- including two different types of federal law (taxation and immigration). The background and the experience have given me an understanding of why federal policy is formulated, and of how it is supposed to work.

I have lived in many different places over the years, but always seem to make my way back to Rhode Island.

On The Issues:

How can you create jobs in Rhode Island?

As a practical matter, there is not much a federal legislator is able to do directly that will create jobs in Rhode Island. The best one can do is to try to steer money here; it really is the responsibility of the state legislature to ensure that the environment in Rhode Island is conducive to attracting business AND their employees.

Social Security/Medicare:

One of the things I have repeated consistently is that the federal government must learn to allocate properly the resources this country already has. To a large extent, the money needed to address shortfalls with Social Security and Medicare could be taken painlessly from the defense budget.

Affordable Care Act :

The Affordable Care Act is a good start. The law places upwards of thirty million more people on the rolls for insurance, and makes positive inroads towards reducing the outlays that must be made by the federal government for medical care in this country. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act will serve to reduce drastically the expenditures of taxpayer money that currently is being spent unnecessarily. Additionally, the development of a more competitive environment through the health care exchanges should serve to further reduce the costs of health insurance in the future.

Abortion:

Those who would legislate against a woman's right to choose clearly have zero understanding of The Golden Rule; one wonders how bitterly such people would be complaining if federal law required that, just to be fair and balanced, EVERY religion were allowed to codify something from its own set of beliefs.

In any event, there is a solid constitutional reason for why a woman's right to choose must remain the law of the land:

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects more than simply speech -- it also is meant to ensure that with respect to issues that are purely religiously-based and/or social in nature, the government must not legislate at all; it is the First Amendment from which we derive the concept of separation of church and state.

As a nation, we should be very wary of any legislature that is willing to use our basic rights as bargaining chips. First Amendment rights are fundamental in nature, and the very idea that elected officials so readily hold them (and, by extension, the public) hostage is, in my view, unacceptably abhorrent.

Education:

While there is no disputing that technology is widely used in today's classroom, it also is the case that our educational methodologies have not kept pace with an information-based economic environment. We already know that babies are capable of learning within the first twenty-four hours of life. This begs the question of why we waste the first three or four years of their lives by not beginning to develop the capabilities of their brains at a very young age. One way in which I believe we could innovate in the area of education would be to utilize our technological capabilities in order to design a system wherein children, from the very earliest of ages, could be taught the basics of problem-solving skills. With such a program, they would have significantly more developed skills by the time they hit kindergarten. As with everything else, the key is a good foundation.

Same Sex Marriage:

This requires the same answer I gave under abortion -- this is a First Amendment matter, and thus should not be legislated at all.

Afghanistan:

Our involvement there was unjustified at the start, and still is not justifiable. Moreover, our experience has resulted in thousands of lives lost and shattered, massive wastes of natural resources, and massive harm to our country in terms of money spent.

Energy and the Environment:

When I was six years old, OPEC instituted an embargo of the sale of oil to this country. At that time, I asked my father what we would do for energy; it had occurred to me that as a country, it was foolish for us to be dependent upon a finite resource that came from somewhere else.

If a six-year-old could understand such a concept, it boggles the mind as to why Congress was unable to connect the same dots.

Since that time, the world has changed.... but conceptually, nothing has. We do need to develop our own independence with respect to energy, but simply drilling for more fossil fuels is not the answer.

We have been giving unnecessary subsidies to the fossil fuel industry for decades. It's time we developed a comprehensive policy for energy-independence through renewable energy, and it's time we shifted the resources (and the money) away from the old types of fuels, and into the sector that, whether we like it or not, will be necessary if we are to survive as an energy-dependent species indefinitely.

Illegal Immigration:

I don't know anyone who supports illegal immigration -- we need LEGAL immigration to be made fairer and more accessible.

A system wherein the rules were consistent across agencies, that mandated clear standards by which decisions could be made, that made the achievement of immigration and family unity an actual possibility, and that imposed accountability upon government personnel, would be a good start.

There are far too many problems with the current system -- it is impossible here to even scratch the surface.

DREAM Act:

Excellent idea. I find it ironic that while it consistently passes the house, it has been stymied by republican senators whose home states (Texas and Arizona) have passed laws that are favorable to educating undocumented students.

Do you support right-to-work?

I do not support such laws. Contrary to what the name would seem to imply, right-to-work laws have nothing to do with guaranteeing employment, or even with one's rights in the workplace. These laws go a long way towards weakening the position of unions in trying to bargain with management for a better workplace environment.

Quick Hitters:

What is the single most important issue you want to tackle in 2013?

How we allocate the national budget, and how we address the backwards priorities and the upside-down policies that have taken Congress from being a semblance of a legislative body to being an entirely out-of-touch bastion of bickering and petulance.

Who is your favorite member of the opposite party?

Because I am running as an Independent, this question gets an answer of "N/A."

In one paragraph, why should voters support you?

Electing committed partisans ensures that in Washington, there will continue to be greater allegiance owed to party bosses and to corporate backers than there will be to the public. Our nation likes to remind itself that innovation, along with a never-say-die attitude, is an enormous source of our collective pride; that same principle should apply to how we choose our public servants. If you are of the opinion that money has poisoned our central government, then I ask you to veer away from the major parties, and to vote for a candidate whose only obligation would be to the voters.

Dan McGowan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @danmcgowan.

Voter Guide: David Vogel Profile (1st District)