The purpose of government is to protect and promote the rights of people, especially the rights of peaceful honest people to conduct business. It has no other legitimate function. The institutions of armies, police forces, courts, and the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges, are created to protect and promote the free market, and for no other reason. When tyrants -- domestic or foreign -- initiate force or commit fraud they offend these rights, and governments are commissioned to prosecute these criminals.
When governments attempt to do other than protect people from tyranny, they nearly always fail, and they always create more problems than they solve. Today, all too often, even state and local governments try so hard to provide everything people want that they are unable to provide the important services government is intended to provide.
As Governor of South Dakota, Bob Newland will (not necessarily in order of importance):
A. Improve the lives, income and business of South Dakotans by replacing the current unfair, insane, and impossible tax system through lobbying the legislature to enact the Just One Tax constitutional amendment (see Just One Tax analysis);
B. Provide for better education and opportunities for families and children by removing the impediments to providing quality education. Mr. Newland will lobby the legislature to enact laws consistent with the US and SD constitutions which enable parents, students, and teachers to decide what is best for the education of individual students. This effort will be aimed at providing as much school choice as possible, thus providing a free-market, competitive solution to the challenges of education;
C. Protect South Dakotans from the abuses of the federal tax system and bureaucracy, first by educating South Dakotans about their rights concerning the Federal Income Tax, and second, by forcing the IRS and other federal agencies to explain under what statutes they act against citizens of South Dakota;
D. Reduce and quickly end the horrible negative impacts on South Dakotans of the "war on drugs", which has accomplished nothing of value, but has created untold and unimaginable damage to individuals and to the rights of all of us; first by pardoning all convictions ever obtained under South Dakota law for possession or sale of drugs (in adult-to-adult transactions); second, by directing efforts of state law enforcement to concentrate on preventing and protecting victims of crime (especially violent crime); and third, by reestablishing trust between South Dakota citizens and peace officers;
E. Improve the ability of the state government to provide essential services to South Dakotans by, first, reducing all state government activities to those specifically enumerated in the constitution, and, second, examining all state agencies and bureaucracies to transfer all possible activities from tax-supported agencies and programs to the free market; thereby letting government agencies concentrate on their most important missions rather than trying to do everything, and at the same time reducing the burden of state and local government on the people;
F. Improve relations between Indians and non-Indians in South Dakota by implementing a comprehensive policy to reverse the trend of alienating Indians from the non-Indian society (see American Indian Policy Statement); and
G. Improve the justice and legal system in South Dakota by, first, lobbying the legislature for a Fully-Informed Jury Act, i.e., a statute or amendment which would state, in effect: "Any party to a trial by jury, to which government is one of the parties, shall be allowed to inform the jury that it is judge not only of the evidence in the case, but of the law itself, or of the application of the law in case at hand."; and, second, by working with the legislature to simplify, clarify, and reduce the laws and regulations of the State and local governments to provide for better protection of the people from violence and fraud while reducing the burdens and costs of the system.