Tag: WV Governor Election Contest

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Learn about the platform and views of Danny Lutz Jr, the Mountain Party Candidate for Governor of West Virginia.
Danny Lutz Jr’s website
Other candidates for Governor are:
Marshall Wilson-Independent
Erika Kolenich-Libertarian
Ben Salango-Democrat
Jim Justice-Republican

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Danny Lutz Article-Selected Excerpts from the Interview

Well, good morning, all. I’m Danny Lutz running for the governorship of West Virginia on the mountain party ticket. We’re an affiliate of the Green Party of the United States, and the question probably in most people’s minds, why run? Well, I’m going to steal a phrase from one of my dear friends who has since departed, his name is Carl Hess; he wrote this line for Barry Goldwater in 1964; “I want to offer a choice, not an echo.” I want to offer the people of West Virginia a plan that will enable them to enter the 21st century on a competitive basis. I’m not hearing that from any of the other candidates.

Richard: So what would you say are three of your main platform points that you would like to share?

Danny Lutz: My number one point is broadband. Until we have broadband accessible to everyone in West Virginia who wants it, we will not progress. I have been in touch with Intelsat and Space X, and they have assured me that six months from the date of an agreement, a contract, as they said, they could have a turnkey operation available to every West Virginian, every business, every church, every school, every organization that wants the broadband service, and I emphasize that adjective turnkey, they said it would be ready to operate within six months……

A second point, and it can be summed up in one word, water. Most people don’t think about it, but West Virginia is the birthplace of most of the rivers in the East, that is east of the Western Continental Divide.

We supply some of the water for ourselves, the District of Columbia and parts of 12 other states. That is a mandate to stewardship.

We have got to assure that the water that leaves West Virginia is as clean as when it came out of the earth, because water is life, and with that, I’ve also got a program that I would like to implement. It would be a pollution control credit system. Before anyone can discharge any contaminant into the air, the water or the soil, they have to get a credit for a certain amount of that. Now the state of West Virginia will create these credits under my program, and then they will be distributed to each household in West Virginia where there is a registered voter, and then it will be up to the entity desiring to discharge the pollution or contaminant to purchase these credits for the best deal they can make. The households could hold the credit, they could sell the credit. They could swap the credit for something that want. They could trade it. Whatever the best deal is they could make. My opinion is that each of these credits should be worth between $2500 and $4500 apiece. So if a household had only 10 credits. That could be as much as a $25,000 income boost. And seeing how 45% of the people of West Virginia, for whatever the reason, do not work, this would be an annual income supplement, not a guaranteed annual income, not a welfare program. This is pure capitalism. That is, the household have a good that the industrial users need and they make the best deal they can for it. You can’t get purer capitalism than that. And it will be something I think that the other states would implement. California is doing a modified version of this and Virginia is looking at a modified version, especially with regard to carbon dioxide.

In addition to firms like Rockwool, fracking companies would be required to purchase these credits before they could discharge or inject their waste water, sewage waste and other sources and contaminants……

Another point that I have that I want to develop involves the coal industry. West Virginia has coal, and we have it, not in the abundance that we used to have it, but we have, in addition to the coal, we have some of the largest recoverable deposits of rare earth elements in North America, and that’s the elements between Element number 57 and 71. And they are used in all kinds of high technological applications for, you name it. We can recover these, and some of them are worth as much as $70,000 a kilogram. They’re in the shales that are on top of the coal that’s being stripped off. They’re in the coal itself, and they’re in the shale deposits that are beneath the coal. And those tailings have been pushed into ravines, smoothed over and patched up. And called reclamation. The coal ash and the GOB piles, just are in waste piles. We have a fortune that we can recover……

Something else along this line, mechanization is coming in leaps and bounds, I was reading an article in yesterday’s, Washington Post, about, with the COVID 19 problem that a lot of firms are looking at robots to do the cleaning instead of people. They are saying some of the robot cleaners can do it a third as fast as a human person doing the cleaning. Well, if a company employs a machine to replace one or more people, why shouldn’t they contribute a portion of the savings that they’re going to realize to, A) Help to re-train these people to do something else, to assure that they can have medical and healthcare, B) To assure that they do not have to choose between whether to put food on the table for their families or to buy prescriptions to cure their ills. This is something that we’ve got to consider, because once again, going back to that figure… The last one I had, 45% of West Virginians do not work, whether it’s because they’re disabled, whether because they’re unemployed or because they’re on social security or retired, whatever…….

I would like to re-create an equivalent of what used to be the civil defense program, for West Virginia. Now, I don’t wanna go back to duck and cover drills and stuff like that, and having signs up on the highway is saying in the event of an enemy attack, this highway may be closed to all but military traffic, etcetera. I don’t wanna go back to that, but what I want to go to is to a civilian, a civil defense program that will inventory our resources so that we have stockpiles of food, stockpiles of potable water, and medical supplies for basic medical needs, and have them within 30 minutes of any West Virginian and have a program developed to deal as these pandemics arise, and I think there’s going to be more of them, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of COVID because it appears to have a fantastic replicating ability, and it could even mutate into something we haven’t anticipated yet, so I’d like to see that kind of a program developed whereby it wouldn’t be just say, stay your house and wear a mask. It would involve a health care program, that is a health services program that would enable people, to get the health service they need and to get the instructions for coping with such organisms as they need them and in a timely fashion. And a usable way…..

Richard: So on the point you mentioned about forcing people to do things… One issue I’m been working on is our forced vaccination system. As you know, West Virginia was one of only two states where they have the policy, no full vaccination, no school, no exceptions, except for extremely hard to get medical exemptions, which are only about 100 granted per year, if that. Point being, a few other states have now adopted that, as you know, like New York state and California, unfortunately, but is that a good policy? Shouldn’t people have freedom to choose before they’re forced to inject dangerous substances? What’s your take on that?

Danny Lutz: Well, I’m torn, I’d like to share with you an anecdote, if you will, from my own experience. In 1955, the Salk vaccine for polio came out. And two years later, in the Jefferson County school system, they had a program where they brought all the students into what was then the county building on the corner of Congress and George streets, and they got a polio vaccination, I think it was a three shot type. My mother had heard about what turned out to be a bad batch of the Salk vaccine, which had caused polio, so she wouldn’t let my sister and I take the Salk vaccine. I don’t know whether that saved me from getting polio or not. It probably wasn’t an issue because none of the students with whom I was in school, came down with polio. And then, seven years later, when the Sabin live vaccine came, they called it the serum on sugar, we did take that because that had been tested and was proven. Where, for instance, it’s a disease like small pox, has pretty well been eradicated from the Earth, because of vaccination.

Richard: Well, there’s some debate about that, meaning not that it doesn’t have any effect, but that most diseases, even small pox, some places use quarantine, like Leicester, if I pronounce it correctly, England, and they were successful using other methods, and that many diseases like diphtheria, the instance, and even measles the instances of disease had gone down more than 90% before the vaccine was introduced. So it’s not an A then B thing, it’s like because of improvements of sanitation, like no more horse manure in the streets and things like that, even before vaccines were introduced a lot of diseases had decreased.  So, to just say, oh, it’s because of the vaccine is overly simple…..

Richard: Well, would you, in a nutshell, allow people to have exemptions for religious or conscientious reasons.  That would be a simple thing.

Danny Lutz: I would allow the consideration of contentious religious objection to vaccines.  But once again, I would also like to keep track of the people who, and of course, the health department would have these records, keep track of the people who have made such and received such an exemption, so that if a disease should break out among these people or a community where these people reside, that we could get the handle on it……

Richard: As governor, would you promote having time limits on these kind of mandates, or you think that the way it is now is fine?

Danny Lutz: As governor, because as governor, I realize I know enough about this to get into trouble, I would be surrounding myself with the best expertise I could, and if they said it’s time to cut… To cut it out, then we would cut it out, if they say, Hey, you’re gonna have to continue this in another six months, then that’s what I would do, and it’s the same way with education, I know enough about education and education theory to get into trouble.  So I would be relying upon the people who have made a lifetime study of education, tell me what the best thing to do is.  There are certain things that I can do fairly well, but a lot of things I’ve got to rely upon good information and heaven help the person who gives me bad information…..

Richard: I noticed that the Mountain party, when you’re talking about the family, but like I noticed they’re saying they are for the LGBTQ equality and these kind of things. So are you okay with that?

Danny Lutz: You probably won’t be able to put this on the air this way, but the way most of us in a Mountain party feel what two consenting adults do inside their own four walls, between their eyebrows and their knee caps is strictly between them. Don’t take it outside and ram it down somebody else’s throat. And don’t inculcate it in the children unless it’s their lifestyle, they’re eligible, they’re old enough to understand and eligible and able to choose. It’s an individual liberty thing there, as far as we are concerned, between the eyebrows and the knee caps and inside four walls… We’re not going to dictate that.

Richard: In some sense I agree with that. Those kind of thing. But those things also affect society profoundly in the sense that as we know, there are states where the examples where people are fined because they have a problem with baking a cake or doing photography for a same sex wedding. So there are those areas where it gets out into society and then where the state can, and in some states does force people and say, “Oh no, no, you don’t like to serve that clientele. Sorry, you must” So you get into that area, you know what I mean?

Danny Lutz: I see where you’re coming from. And if I could play dictator, we might have fewer lawyers litigating such cases, because if I walk into, and I am heterosexual, I might add. But if I was homosexual and I walk in to a bakery and order a wedding cake and tell them that I want two male figures on top of it; let’s say I can’t do that. I’d just walk out the door. It’s not worth the fight. It’s not worth taking up public resources to litigate something like that. It is not worth the aggravation and the heartache that it’s going to cause a number of people in a particular incident. What’s wrong with simply walking away from what you don’t like unless it’s going to physically harm you? And I’m taking that position with a lot of things. That’s why I’m hard on pollution, but soft on individual liberties. Let people live their lives as they want to, but don’t put smoke down their throat.

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Richard:  Good morning, and welcome to this edition of the Richard Urban Show, where we present news and views from God’s point of view. Today we are happy to have Mike Folk on. He’s a Republican candidate for governor of West Virginia. So please introduce yourself.

 “Hello, I’m Mike Folk. I grew up in Berkeley, County on a farm in Swan Pond. I went to local schools, local college actually too Shepherd University. Studied education and economics; ended up finishing my degree in economics. Worked for a year in the financial industry. Had all my series 763, all your different financial licenses. And then I went to graduate school at WVU. Went into teaching, a little bit, both at the high school and college level, while also flying and working for my dad’s, aviation business. My dad had a heart attack between my junior and senior year, so I was the guy involved in hiring a pilot to take his place for the seasonal business. But then I Left shepherd University, Shepherd College at the time, and went to work in Mac trucks in Hagerstown for a year, their engine plant. I really just didn’t really like being inside all day and had fell in love with flying. So I went in the pursuit of an airline career, became an airline pilot. And I got married just a little bit before my 30th birthday to my wife, Stella and we now have five children. My wife was a school teacher for about 12 to 14 years. And, so you haven’t heard any politics in there yet.”

“I finally, in the 08-012 time frame, I started getting a little frustrated with some things, that were going on at the national level. We know who was the head of it all at that time. Some guy named Obama and so in 2012 I ran for office for the House of Delegates, and served six years in the House of Delegates. Two years in the minority, four years in the majority.”

“We got some good things done but I think there’s a lot left to be done, particularly when we have a governor who… It doesn’t matter what you do, you run against the incumbent, you gotta tell the differences. And so, he was elected as a Democrat, switched to Republican. But really, in my opinion hasn’t really changed his principles much. So that’s why I decided to run, to try to give West Virginians what I believe is; Phyllis Schlafly, if you ever heard of her, wrote a book, she was a Goldwater girl she wrote a book, to give the people a choice, not an echo which I believe that the other major opponents are really just an echo of the past, and even though they’ve changed their stripes for the lack of a better way of putting it, there’s still the same failed policies that have led West Virginia to some pretty bad places.”

Richard:  Okay, thank you. So what would you say the three main things you would emphasize in helping West Virginia as you’re running for Governor?

“Well, obviously, the paradigm has shifted a little bit, even in the last three months with budget issues. In 2017 when we had the last major budget problem when Justice first took office, under his budget proposal we were looking at a $450 million deficit. In reality that was only about a $100 million deficit. The reason it was $450 million in his budget is because he raised government spending by $350 million and a lot of chroniistic type plans that were gonna benefit him and his cronies. And so in that case, I’m well suited to balance the budget without raising taxes. Because I at the time when the government was claiming that West Virginia, he was using the analogy that West Virginia was kind of like a patient on life support, and the only way to save the patient was to raise taxes. And he kept saying, that over and over. So a group of us got together and I was the lead sponsor. My wife actually made up a nice spreadsheet for the budget, to prove that we could balance the budget without raising taxes. And at that time still give the teachers a 2% pay raise.”

“So one thing is, that’s going to be critical is the budget, the next thing is going to be education. There’s a lot of serious issues in education, a lot of them have resulted from Common Core and getting away from, and some people say this is cliché, but getting away from the basics. We’ve done too much social engineering, let’s put it that way, in education and gotten away from learning the basics and leaving the social stuff to the home, the family and the church.”

“Education I think is an important part. In West Virginia the biggest part about education is it’s very top-heavy, very Charleston-centric. We call it building six down there. And then, the third thing is, and this really has come to the forefront during this whole pandemic, is constitution. We shouldn’t be suspending the Constitution, and this is important in West Virginia, or anywhere in the country, but we’ve basically thrown the constitution [under the bus], and particularly the state constitution under Article 3 Section 10, which the title of is safeguards for life, liberty and property. And then, the exact wording in that article says, “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, in the judgment of their peers.””

“We’ve had thousands of small businesses that have been shut down around the state in a very illogical and unconstitutional way. The person that has the small shop, it sells clothing, clothing store and shoe store, for instance, was shut down. But the huge Walmarts where you can still buy clothing and shoes, was allowed to stay open. And so, you had these mass amount of people going to the Walmarts to the Lowes to the other stores.”

“So if the intent was to prevent people from congregating, shutting down small businesses was the exact opposite of what should have been done and in reality, it was literally a power grab by the Governor and this whole thing, especially after the first couple of weeks of realizing that this wasn’t as bad as they thought it was gonna be.”

Richard: something that’s dear to my heart is the issue of our policy on forced vaccination, or you might say, if you don’t get every vaccine that’s mandated in West Virginia, you can’t send your child to public school. How do you feel about that? Is that a good policy, is that a bad policy?

“Well, I think you know my history on that. I was a lead sponsor, to get rid of mandatory vaccinations. Look, if vaccinations are done properly, and when I say done properly, I’m talking about developed, brought to market, but we know since the 1986 federal law that exempted all vaccine manufacturers from any liability there have been a multitude. I mean, I could tell you and I are a little older. So when we were growing up? There might have been a handful of vaccinations that you would get maybe three or four. Small pox, polio. I think that’s probably all I ever got that I can recall right off top of my head, I might have missed one, but we didn’t get a chicken pox vaccination and if we got a measles vaccination, it wasn’t a combination of three vaccines. It wasn’t the MMR. I believe in an informed consent and let people make their decisions. The reality is that, especially it’s an interesting conversation right now, because they’re talking about having the governors mandate this potential vaccine that’s coming out for this COVID-19, which is actually SARS COV-2. It’s the second SARS virus. The first one was the 2003 SARS virus…But yeah, I don’t wear a mask in public. It’s crazy. The craziest thing I’ve seen is when people are driving down the road and they have a mask on or they’re out in the sun, sun shine, out by themselves, and they have a mask on. That makes no sense.”

Richard:  Okay, thanks for sharing. so one thing I’ve been also interviewed some of the candidates for the Commission of Agriculture. And they’re telling me about some of the very cumbersome regulations. I know you’re a farmer. Do you have any comment about that, or maybe what could be done to improve the situation for smaller farmers?

“Well, when I was growing up in Berkeley County, Jefferson County as an example, literally had six or seven butcher shops. Were you could market your cattle, your hogs. And now we’ve consolidated industry so much and it’s usually because of the burdensome regulation because a small Mom-and-Pop that might employ two or three people can’t keep up with those regulations, that these massive processing facilities can. And I think having a diverse food supply, at the local level, and less nationally, would benefit all of society greatly.”

Richard: when we’re looking at the long term of idea of helping society, helping with the whole family breakdown or opioid situation, and this is not maybe so much a political but more a philosophical question. Our organization deals with emphasizing that youth should stay absent before marriage. That that’s the best standard for school-age children. Would you agree with that kind of approach? And that will help stabilize families and make them more successful.

“Anything we can do to help the nuclear family stay together will take care of a lot of these ancillary issues. The black community, as an example, Candace Owens, in front of the Congress testified. That’s the number one issue in that community that destroys families, is the number of single parent households. So I think all of those things together will produce the outcomes that we had a generation ago, or two generations ago.”

Richard: comparing yourself to your opponents, why should the voters choose you? What’s most outstanding in comparison?

“I’m definitely more like the average voter than these two guys are. Both these guys are pretty wealthy guys compared to me. Justice inherited hundreds of millions of dollars and in fact, even Woody, 20 years ago or so inherited about a million dollars. So I’m more like the average everyday citizen with a family trying to raise a family, trying to make ends meet. But at the same time I have experience in the legislature, particularly from the budget perspective and the constitutional perspective. Whether it’s defending your second amendment, your First Amendment, the pro-life issues. I’ve got 100% pro-life, 100% pro-second amendment voting record. I’ve actually developed my own state budget. I don’t think either one of those guys has.”

“Justice has signed a few. Of course the first one that I proposed, which became a blueprint for what ultimately became law, that was, if you recall, that’s when Justice vetoed the budget on the silver platter with the cow pie. That year Justice, never signed a budget. It became law without his signature. A lot of you probably weren’t even aware of that yourself. He vetoed the one on the silver platter with the cow pie, then we went back in special session. In June of 2017, we gave him a budget but he wouldn’t sign it. He let it become law. Because after a certain period of time, it becomes law, automatically. That’s how that budget became law. So I think I have a better ear to the ground of the everyday citizen in West Virginia. And I’ll take that to the office if elected.”

Richard: Okay, well thank you very much. Any other closing thoughts?

“Just get on my Facebook. If you’re on social media. ‘Michael folk for West Virginia governor’ and my website is fokk4wv.com, and check me out if you haven’t.”