KENNETH STEPP ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS!

1. Do you support or oppose ending some tax breaks and loopholes for the wealthiest Americans in
order to reinvest in public services and infrastructure? Please explain.
I support ending some tax breaks and loopholes for the wealthiest Americans in order to reinvest in public services and infrastructure. We should end corporation-welfare and have a more equitable tax burden.

2. What are your ideas for building a healthier and more diverse economy in eastern Kentucky and
across our Commonwealth?
The three answers to building a healthier and more diverse economy in Eastern Kentucky are education, education, and education! I support better federal support of higher education, and better Pell Grants. Federal revenue sharing for Kindergarten, elementary education, and high school education has my support. I even will enthusiastically support the military service schools such as the Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy and West Point as education is good for the economy, and is basically helpful to the economy in all areas. Agriculture and biotechs are good sections of education to encourage. My father was a professor teaching in a College Department of Agriculture for over thirty years, Agricultural education is deserving of our help.

3. Do you support or oppose restoring voting rights for former felons who have served their full
sentence? Also, what are your views of proposals in Congress to update the Voting Rights Act?
Most former felons who have served their full sentence should have their voting rights restored. The worst sort of felons should continue to be barred from voting after their release from prison. I consider murderers to be persons who should not have their voting rights restored.
Considering the Voting Rights Act, it was designed to help end the scourge of racism that was especially strong in the Deep South, although the Upper South, such as Kentucky, was not entirely free of racism when the Voting Rights Act was first enacted. Barak Obama was able to become President because most Americans have rejected racism. He secured his party nomination by winning Democratic Primaries in South Carolina and other Southern former-slaveholding states, and then won big in the Northern and Western Cities in his first nationwide general election. A racist nation would certainly never have elected Barak Obama as President, much less re-elected him two years ago. Racism should continue to be guarded against, but openly racist candidates rarely get so far as winning the primaries.

4. Do you support or oppose proposals to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour over the next
three years? Please explain. When they wanted to raise the minimum wage to its present level, I supported that change. Now, we are coming out of a major recession, and Democrats support extending the Federal Unemployment Benefits because unemployment is so rampant. Also, the costs of Obamacare upon the employers is slowing the recovery from massive unemployment that we suffered in the last portion of the George W. Bush Administration. When the Democrats agree with the Republicans that it is time to end the Federal Unemployment Benefits extensions, then I will support an increase in the Federal Minimum Wage; until then I will support keeping the Federal Minimum Wage at its present level.

5. Do you support or oppose a national policy to ask all utilities to meet specific standards for
renewable energy and energy efficiency? Please explain. The free enterprise system is the best method of allocating scarce resources to be used for energy. Government tampering with the economy, in the form of having electric utilities have a quota of windmills or solar panels to put online would result in waste and inefficiency. The poor people that are the main backers of the Democratic Party can ill afford to have their food stamp money taken away and wasted on windmills and fancy solar panels.

6. Do you support or oppose policies aimed at protecting our air, land, water and health, from pollution caused by mining and burning fossil fuels, including coal? Please explain. We have to explain what we mean by pollution. Some people teaching junk science insist that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. Carbon Dioxide is the life breath of all plants from algae in scum ponds, to the mighty oaks, firs, pines, redwoods, and sequoias that tower above the forests of America. To say that the Carbon Dioxide that a two-thousand-year-old-redwood tree absorbs to stay alive is pollution is just not good science. I agree that Black Lung Benefit insurance companies should be subjected to the same rules as the other health insurance companies regulated by Federal rules, that they pay at least half of their premiums received in the form of treatment and benefits for people with the Black Lung disease that they purport to insure against. I agree that fly ash should not end up in our streams and rivers, and the government should continue to police against fly ash pollution. I'm green, but I also support the free enterprise system.

7. Do you support or oppose actions to curb emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce the harmful
affects of global climate change? Please explain. Of course with Daniel Boone National Forest and our high per-centage of Eastern Kentucky land that is forests, we lead the way in producing Oxygen which replaces Carbon Dioxide. Clay County, Kentucky probably has more trees than people; it probably has a hundred trees per person. When I take a deep breath of the oxygen-ehanced air from those giant trees, and exhale Carbon Dioxide I praise the Lord that I live In such an oxygen-enhanced place such as Clay County. My week takes me into Jackson County, and Leslie County, both of which have many more trees per person that Clay County has. One third of the oxygen that we breathe comes from the oceans. Kentucky is a long way from an ocean, but we have a plentiful supply of oxygen from our forests. The winters have been getting colder lately. I drove to Booneville, Kentucky for a court hearing in seven degree weather earlier this year, and found that court was cancelled because of the cold weather. When they quit cancelling school and court because of cold weather in Kentucky, I'll be more concerned about global warning.

8. What ideas or policies do you support to address the growing problem of income inequality in
Kentucky and across the nation? I support the Lilly Ledbetter Act, and laws against sex, race, age, and religious discrimination in the workplace. I favor an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. The food stamp program helps make incomes more equal; I support the food stamp program and would restore it to the October 2013 levels. I support Medicare and Medicaid—that makes incomes more equal for poorer people. I support free education through college—that makes incomes more equal for poorer people. I support better highways and parks—that makes quality of life more equal for poor people. Today, the average black American has a better chance to attend college that the average white American had in the 1960's—equalizing opportunity to produce goods and services helps pull poor people up to higher income. To the wealthy, I say “Be all you can be!” I am more concerned with improving the living standards of all Americans rather than promoting one class over the other. Right now America is the lighthouse on the hill, showing other nations how well life could be lived; let's keep it that way and remain an example to other peoples of how a people can pull ahead by working together.