Former Fighter Pilot Opposes Rep. Nangle Lowell Republican Opposes 'High-Handedness' on Beacon Hill   By Curt Lovelace October 2002 Print Edition
	A former fighter pilot, Chris Kreiger believes that any democracy needs an opposition party and our state is suffering because we don't have one.

MassNews: You've said that you "believe in the 1st through the 10th Amendments." Would you elaborate on how you view the Second Amendment?

Krieger: Well, I think an example of the fact that I do believe in the 1st through the 10th Amendments is the fact that I belong to both the ACLU and the NRA. The right to own arms is presented to us in the Constitution and I think that while I don't think the government has no right to some regulation in the matter of gun ownership, we also cannot have a regime that's slowly squeezing the people out from their right to have guns. I certainly don't like to see the situation a friend told me about down in Maryland where the right to issue licenses to carry has been authorized, but not a license has been issued in the last year. I think that kind of bureaucratic activity is wrong. The question really isn't where are we now? It's where are we going? Continuing restrictions on gun ownership arguing that the Second Amendment doesn't mean what it says, I think is just the wrong direction.

Massnews: Taxation is always a big issue in the Commonwealth. What are your thoughts on that topic?

Krieger: The government needs taxes. It needs taxes to do what it needs to do. You need to pay your bills. I don't think that you need to tax and tax and tax, then spend and spend. The question really is, what is the government spending the money on? Are we doing things in intelligent ways? I think the billion dollar tax raise in the recent legislative session just flew in the face of recent ballot questions. Mr. Finneran might make the argument that he ordinarily respects the will of the voters, but this was ill-timed because of the recession. He is flagrant in disregarding the voters. He ups the income tax back up three decimal points and adds on a billion dollars worth of additional taxes. And we're in the middle of a recession.

Massnews: How, then, does government deal with a recession?

Krieger: In the middle of a recession, if you raise the taxes, you run the risk of making the recession worse. Massachusetts is the 21st largest economy in the world. We don't have our own state bank to regulate our currency, but I think the actions of the commonwealth government need to be done in concert with the realities.

MassNews: What are those realities?

Krieger: To raise taxes a billion dollars, according to the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University, cost us over 30,000 jobs this year because of the fact that we're taking that money out of the economy. There's been no debate on that issue, no open clash of ideas in the General Court. It's just that Mr. Finneran has said that this is the way it's going to be, and we bump those taxes up. So we have to pay our bills. We need to find out what the real bills need to be. And I'm not convinced we're doing a real good job of that. And we need to not be jacking up taxes by a billion dollars in a time of recession at a cost of 30,000 jobs.

MassNews: Are lotteries a good alternative to raising taxes?

Krieger: I think that using gambling as a way of paying our bills needs to be carefully considered. I don't think I'd be in favor of doing away with the lottery, but the question has come up as to whether we should use casinos to pay our bills. I'm not so sure about that. With a good argument I might be convinced. There are always the questions about what kind of elements come with a casino. Not necessarily all bad elements come with casinos. Now there is no doubt that the ready availability of gambling can encourage those that have a problem with gambling, and I think we need to be concerned with that. On the other hand, if people want to go to Foxwoods or Mohican Sun I think they should have the right to go there. We can't be the nanny state, but we also shouldn't create the near occasion of sin.

MassNews: How do you feel about the proposal to abolish the income tax?

Krieger: I'm against that for a couple of reasons. One of which is that is seems to propose that we cut the money and then see what programs fall out at the other end. I'm not sure that's a good approach. Another thing with an income tax is that it's a little more visible than a lot of the hidden bills and fees that people have to pay, where the government gets you with a nickel here and a dime there - or maybe these days, a quarter here and a dollar there. The income tax is fairer than a lot of these fees for people in lower income brackets. This way we do a better job of protecting the people than having a lot of fees that may impact people in the lower income areas.

MassNews: What do you think of the initiative process?

Krieger: There seems to be an attitude that initiatives are bad. I voted in Orange County, California for almost 30 years. California has a lot of initiatives. When there's a big bond proposal, it goes on an initiative and the people vote on it. I think that's a good thing, a way to reach out with some direct democracy. I think those legislators who are afraid of the people and afraid of the people having access to the ballot initiative process, need to be more trusting of the people.

MassNews: Does the legislature really distrust the voters?

Krieger: I voted against the Clean Elections initiative. But it passed overwhelmingly and the General Court should have dealt with it in a straightforward manner, by either voting it down or funding it. The fact they just waffled around for so long is an indication that the Speaker respects neither the voters nor the Constitution. That's another reason I think it's important for Republicans to mount challenges in each of the districts. Without the ability for the opposition party to sustain a veto, I think it weakens a governor quite a bit.

MassNews: That brings us to another ballot question, the Protection of Marriage Amendment. What do you think about the proposal itself and what about the lack of action by the Constitutional Convention?

Krieger: Let me take the second part of the question first. It was terrible that Mr. Birmingham dealt with the situation that way. It just strikes me as another example of high-handed activities on Beacon Hill. It's that kind of thing that really makes it necessary to have more [Republican] legislators so that we can stand up against that. Mr. Birmingham was the one with the gavel. He's directly responsible for the actions that took place. He's the one to be held responsible.

The Protection of Marriage Act, I think, is asking the right questions. Sociological studies indicate that children that are in two-parent families do better. They do better in school. They do better in terms of the income they earn. The facts are, two-parent families are there for a reason. It works. I just read a startling fact in James Q. Wilson's book that just came out called The Marriage Problem. A child who is not raised with his or her natural parents in the first two years of life is 70 times more likely to be murdered than if the child is with the two natural parents. That's an astonishing fact. I was so struck by it that I wrote the author a letter, then went to the library and got the original study on inter-library loan to verify it for myself. This is the kind of thing that indicates that marriage is a very important institution.

The real answer is to strengthen families and provide incentives for people to stay together and to raise children in those families.

MassNews: All legislatures say that education is an important item on their agendas. What do you think about educational issues in the Commonwealth?

Krieger: We need to have education. We need to have incentives to make education work. I know that when you have a broad spectrum of people, education is really contentious because of the issue of choice. Now vouchers aren't authorized in Massachusetts because of the state Constitution. But we do have school choice. We have METCO. This is an opportunity, particularly for inner city kids whose parents think the schools aren't doing a good job, to go somewhere else. People do like choice. My neighbors are sending their kids off to boarding school for thousands of dollars a year. What we need to do is make that choice available to everybody. And I think that's what President Bush is trying to do with his incentives.

MassNews: What do you think about MCAS?

Krieger: I think MCAS is important. Is MCAS the best test in the world? No. But, is it a bad test? I don't think so. Should MCAS be a requirement for graduation? I'm not real sure. Maybe we just give people a diploma that says you graduated from high school and you passed the MCAS. Graduating from high school itself is real important. The Air Force, for instance, only recruits high school graduates because their experience teaches them that high school graduates tend to complete basic training and stay in the service for the full term at a much higher rate than those who did not complete high school. It's an indication of a certain amount of self-discipline, enough self-discipline to make it through that process. MCAS is an indication of a certain amount of academic proficiency, and I think that's important, too.

MassNews: What do you think about the bilingual education issue?

Krieger: English immersion is what we should be doing. However, I suspect that English immersion is not the right answer for 100 percent of the students. There are probably some students out there who are going to need some help. Local schools should be allowed to do that so long as they don't use that permission to just totally overthrow the idea of English immersion.

MassNews: The last issue I want to ask you about is often seen as a federal issue. But there is much about the abortion issue which can be dealt with at the state level. What are your views on this matter?

Krieger: Well, it is a federal issue. The Supreme Court has said that women have the right to have an abortion. So, until we get a constitutional amendment that changes that, that's the law of the land. Having said that, however, over 80 of people believe that the states should have a right to regulate this issue and I think that's where the Commonwealth comes into play. I think that regulation of partial birth abortions and late term abortions is within the rights of the state. I don't think the country is ready to deal with the issue of a constitutional amendment on abortion. That's an educational issue. I hope that we have an opportunity to have a full and open debate on the matter and those of us who oppose abortion have a chance to educate those who don't.

Krieger's website can be found at http://www.krieger2002.org. His phone number is (978) 459-0708.