>Happy 4th of July weekend from Ian Linker
I grew up in middle class Nassau county on Long Island. I was 5 when we celebrated America’s bicentennial. I remember how exciting the stories were about the Revolutionary War and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. America’s bicentennial is the first time I remember feeling love for my country.
We moved to western Suffolk county when I was 7. My family struggled to make ends meet. My… parents’ marriage buckled under the pressure of financial strain and they were divorced when I was 13. I played the trumpet and piano and was the drum major in my high school marching band. I was a good athlete.
Growing up, I was a self-taught student of history. I loved watching and reading about Ronald Reagan leading us in our global fight against communism and reading about other American struggles for freedom – from the War for Independence, to the American Civil War, to our victory in WWII.
After my parents split up they both worked hard to establish themselves and they succeeded. My mother and step father started a staffing agency out on LI that grew with hard work, dedication, and perseverance into a successful business. More than once Mom was named one of LI’s most successful female business owners.
My father also struggled. He struggled to find his niche. But hard work also paid off for him. He is now a well known and firmly established forensic accountant. The life lessons I took away from their example have served me well.
After high school, I went to a community college on LI and held a series of odd jobs. I then made a big decision. I would leave the northeast and attend college in Tucson at the University of Arizona. I graduated with a BS in Finance placing a heavy emphasis on economics.
It was in Arizona in the early 1990s where I became a conservative. Reading Ayn Rand, Barry Goldwater, Milton Friedman, and F.A. Hayek, I began to realize that government did not always have the answers, that intervention in free markets hindered growth and did not facilitate it, that individuals needed to be accountable for their actions, and that preserving our Constitutional republic was no easy task.
After graduating college, I toyed with becoming a stock broker and getting into politics. To help me with the latter I decided to go to law school. In law school I fell in love, this time with the law. I jumped in with both feet and excelled. I decided that politics would just be a hobby and I would become an attorney.
13 years later I am still practicing law – specializing in employee benefits litigation – and have argued cases in federal courts of appeals around the country.
My wife and I live with our two children in Ridgewood, NJ.
As an avid student of history and economics, amateur political theorist, and believer in limited government, I have watched as government has become more and more entrenched and intrusive and has squandered more and more of our nation’s wealth.
Our Government’s response to the financial crisis got my juices flowing. I watched
Congress bail out private industry, run up massive deficits, take over vast new swaths of the private sector, and incur a mountain of debt that my children and their children will spend their lifetimes paying off. I could no longer sit idly by and allow government to destroy this country that I feel so strongly about.
I am running for the US Senate to:
-Restore the federal government to its Constitutional limits.
-Rein in out of control spending to pay down our debt.
-Support entitlement reform that will give control over Medicaid to the states, eliminate bureaucratic inefficiencies in Medicare, and give people more control over their Social Security to bring down the costs of these programs and preserve them for the future.
-Support a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
-Support progrowth tax reform which will bring down corporate, individual, and capital gains rates which will create jobs and grow the economy.
-Advocate for an American energy policy that will end our dependence on foreign oil and tap our domestic resources to bring down the cost of oil and create American jobs.
-Repeal and replace Obamacare with a law that actually addresses the out of control cost of healthcare.
-Be an outspoken advocate for Israel.
-Support school choice in DC and return control of our schools to the states.
