Zack Macomber - US House Representative from MI

I was asked by a follower, "Why do you think Tom Barrett is doing a bad job, and what would you do differently?"

I'll pick out one thing that's been bugging me over the past couple months. The Federal government shut down. Now whether you're a proponent of less government, more government, or just the amount of government there is, this poses a problem.

The government does a lot of things that we rely on: Enforces a series of laws that create incentives for people to do what society as a whole would like. Employs workers to uphold safety regulations, such as air traffic controllers to keep planes from smashing into one another in the air or on the ground. Collect data that individuals and firms use to plan properly for the near future. And so much more. These are regular people with families, responsibilities, and bills to pay.

Tom's response to the government shutdown was to play the blame game. To call large swaths of the population names. To call into question their sanity. Post after post, Tom showed that he didn't want to listen to the concerns of his constituents. (Heck, he rarely shows up in an official capacity anywhere that people actually are!) He wanted to pass blame and lie to the people who would listen to him.

Many times, Tom parroted the idea of passing a clean Continuing Resolution (CR) for the budget. And what he led voters to believe is that this CR wouldn't be full of extra spending that we, as a nation, can't afford. He certainly didn't show that he cared about the affordability crisis that the average citizen faces. As we know, the government reopened and immediately, Tom trumpeted all the pork present in that "clean" bill.

To me, this is ludicrous. I understand that as a politician, you have an incentive to bring money to your district. You need to help your constituents. I have no problem with this. What I have a problem with is lying to your constituents. Many people agreed that there should be a clean CR. One that didn't have an affect on spending levels. Let Congress figure out the big budget when everyone's back together in session.

If a politician needs to lie in order to get popular support, they really have no business being elected. The cynics among us will say, "They all lie!" That is not a reason for us to continue putting people in office that behave that way. As Americans, we need to realize that being divided is not what's best for us. We need to come together in order to tackle the issues big and small in front of us.

Please, let me represent you. Let me bring some honesty back into our lives. I'm sure not everything that I think would be good is totally feasible, but I promise not to mislead or outright lie to you about my intentions.

Some people may want to ask me, "Why are you running as a Republican?"

There are currently 7 people looking to be the Democratic candidate for the 7th District. There is only one Republican candidate, and that is Tom Barrett.

Tom is not a leader of the people. He is in a position of power because he will do what he is told. Not by his constituents, but by the powers that be. Sure, you might get a trinket here or there that he will hold high as doing something great. But that's not going to make our lives better.

We need someone who stops the divisive Republicans vs. Democrats game. Actually, we need this everywhere throughout the country. I believe that there are very few differences among the average citizens in this country. We all want our next generations to do better than we are. I don't think we are currently creating an economy that will do that.

I want to help put in place the right incentives to get people, firms, and government to act right. To put the wellbeing of society over record breaking profit that gets Scrooge McDuck'd away. We can do better. I would like to help us get that way.

I'm running as a Republican because I think most people in the 7th District don't want to reelect Tom Barrett and I want to give them the choice to throw him out before the general election.