from Wish TV all Indiana politics is your Premier Source for Indiana politics focusing on issues that matter to you I still want us to be the best in the midwest we can't afford another lockdown give the citizens of this country the relief they need education in the state of Indiana remains priority number one in-depth nonpartisan coverage we don't know exactly where the economy will be in January people are worried with good reason exclusive interviews with Indiana's political leaders we have the resources here in the state of Indiana to care for those who are in need expert analysis on critical legislation we need to reform those laws this recovery is going to take some time you got to anticipate that there'll be a budget shortfall from Wish TV this is all Indiana politics podcast on the all Indiana podcast Network I'm Garrett berquist government reporter for Wish TV and the producer of all Indiana politics Donald Trump and cona Harris aren't the only names hoer voters will see on their presidential ballots this fall Chase all is carrying the libertarian party's Banner this year Oliver is from Atlanta Georgia he's 39 years old and got his start in politics protesting against the Iraq War he ran for Senate in Georgia two years ago and is widely credited with forcing a runoff between Raphael waro and hersel Walker there Oliver visited Indianapolis on September 10th and 11th he stopped by our Studios between campaign events joining us now as the libertarian candidate for president of the United States Chase Oliver Chase welcome to the program hey thank you for having me I look forward to speaking with you and uh speaking to your audience today why are you running for president well I honestly think that America deserves more than two choices uh from a failed two-party system I don't fit into the political binary and I know a lot of Voters don't as well we in the libertarian party are the third largest political party in the United States and we want to win we want to be able to grow ourselves to be a contender to the two-party system and inject at least a third voice uh into the system and Hope uh break it open so that we can have many more voices being represented across the Spectrum for our viewers who aren't familiar explain in a nutshell what the libertarian party stands for so we stand for U minimal government intrusion into your lives we believe that you know if you're not harming anyone you should be able to control your own life the way you handle your business the way you handle your personal life without the government intervening uh unless you're committing violence or fraud or Force against another person there really is no reason for the government to intervene in your day-to-day decisions and so uh in a nutshell I say if you're not harming anyone your life should be your life your body should be your body your business should be your business and your property should be your property not mine and not the federal government's one of the big issues that's come up in Indiana is the cost of housing and that's certainly not unique to our state there are of course some federal programs dealing with housing such as Section 8 at the federal level what would an Oliver Administration do to help people find affordable housing honestly I think what we need to do as much as possible is disengage the federal government from that uh from the housing market altogether and rely on free market practices but to do that we have to use the power of the bully pulpit to actually break down housing regulations uh and zoning regulations in cities and states uh all across this country um I want to see you know uh high density housing being built in cities where it's needed the biggest impediment to that is the nimi liberal the person who says not in my backyard hey we need the housing somewhere but just not close to me cuz will affect my property values or affect my day-to-day um I think we need to remove the barriers to creating new housing um and I don't think the federal government has a hand necessarily in building new homes uh you know just the same as with government doesn't create jobs you know politicians say I created X number of jobs they also don't build homes home builders build homes businesses build homes uh and we need to create the conditions that make it more affordable to actually build and a lot of that is getting the cost of goods down you know if plywood is costing four times more than it did a few years back it's going to cost more expensive uh for all the materials to build a house so we need to get uh costs under control first and foremost you've called for simplifying the immigration process what would that look like in practice what specifically would you like to do there well I call our platform a 21st century Ellis Island the reason being is that 40% of Americans can trace a relative that came to this country through Ellis Island in the 19th and 20th centuries during the last great migration wave and and during that time folks came to our Shores they declared who they were went through a health check and if everything was good to go they were allowed to come into this country uh and and so that is uh what we need to be doing at our Southern border is streamlining the process if you want to come here to this country to work come declare who you are to a background check to a health check and then if you're good to go be given a visa to get to work and let the market dictate where labor needs to go and where the jobs are uh the mess that we have at our Southern border is because of the red tape and bureaucracy and just complete failures of the government to address the needs of Labor uh in this country immigrants build jobs they create prosperity and they add to the economic pie and so I think it's a good thing if we can process people as quickly and uh streamline that as much as possible what about those Crossing illegally and for that matter what would you do about the flow of drugs especially fentel across the southern border so I think if you had a streamlined process uh where people could come here and declare who they are to be able to get a job or be able to get status to work uh you would see far less people actually trying to illegally come through the border and we can actually laser focus our law enforcement on those who would still be trying to do that because if they are there's a good chance they're doing it for the purposes of uh say uh you know human trafficking for the purposes of Labor or sexual exploitation or as you said bringing Fenton all across our border now I'm a Libertarian I want to see the end of the drug war overall I believe in decriminalizing all drugs but I think what we're seeing at our Southern border is a case of fraud where fentanyl is being made to look like Xanax or other drugs and people are taking these drugs thinking it's one thing and it's another and that's what's causing the overdose and so if we ended the War on Drugs you could actually see your drugs be tested to Pharmacy they do that in Portugal where they' decriminalized drugs and you would see far less overdoses because you would see more safe usage and that's one way to address the addiction crisis in this country from a harm reduction standpoint let's talk about that a little bit more and ending the War on Drugs has long been a Libertarian party goal what are some other things that you would do to address the fental crisis well you as I said you know what we are seeing here is a case of fraud most people who are overdosing on fentanyl don't know they're taking Fentanyl and so if you had a decriminalized world where you could properly test your product you would have higher uh you know you would have higher quality I I would hate to say higher quality drugs that are less likely to be cut with fentanyl uh you would have more awareness for a user to know what they're taking uh and you would create less stigma for those who are maybe wanting to sus out you know what it is uh that they might be ingesting to their body and so this is something that would save lives I've seen it actually happen harm reduction strategies where you pass out fitl testing strips Naran and other things at the community level to help prevent the worst cases of Overdose um but at the end of the day if ventom was legal I don't think you're going to use it I don't think I'm going to use it as long as we know what we're ingesting in our body I think that's what we really need when it comes to uh drug use and drug awareness especially when you're handling uh the crisis of addiction which should be a medical issue not a criminal justice one we're throwing people in jail You' said that we should end restrictions on abortions before viability and that's the exact wording on your website would you push for a federal law to that end yes I believe that body autonomy and medical privacy should allow an individual to make that choice for themselves and it should be determined by the most local government possible which is your own self-governance uh but we have to have the conditions to protect people's privacy rights and medical freedom to allow them to make that very difficult decision and I'm not going to want to make that decision for anyone I don't think any government bureaucrat should be making that decision up to the point of viability and post viability in those very rare instances it should be a doctor that determines whether the health or life of the mother is at risk not a government board who has to investigate these things I just think that that uh is the place for that kind of decision- making that there's no room for government uh in that very very private uh choice that you should be allowed to have and I just want to be clear here so you would push for a federal law legalized abortion and overriding state level bans such as the one we have here in Indiana yes if there was a uh if the standard of roie Wade and Casey were brought to a bill by Congress to my desk I would sign it because I do believe all people deserve uh that body autonomy I do want to say this though there are things that we can do with the pro-life Community to actually reduce the number of abortions in this country and partner with them in that things like legalize or not legalizing but uh making uh birth control over the counter so it's easier to access that contraception removing the red tapes and be barriers around adoption so more people choose to become adoptive parents so surr surrogacy becomes a more viable option instead of terminating a pregnancy so there are things we can certainly do in this uh country partnering pro-life and pro-choice Community together to prevent unwanted pregnancies to begin with we just had another school shooting last week in your home state of Georgia we talked about that a little bit as we were coming into the room here four people died two of them students how would you address the mass shooting problem in the United States how would you prevent future school shootings well I think the rush to gun control argument is one that I I don't really see um as viable because we've always had guns in this country but we haven't always had mass shootings and we need to examine what has changed in our society uh basically since Coline moving forward that has had the propensity for school shootings to to H you know to be growing in this country I think the first thing we need to look at is uh the dehumanization and the rise of social media where people can jump on social media platforms you can say all sorts of things to dehumanize it removes that human element uh from your interaction with folks and of course if you're a lonely person who's depressed or suffering from anxiety uh you it's very easy to find Wells of extremism in social media so parents need to be more responsible for understanding what their kids are consuming online I think that's the first barrier to preventing these tragedies from happening uh the second thing we need to look at is the rise of psychotropic drug use and these young men who are feeling extremely lonely and understand maybe there's a connection there uh but what we can do to protect our students is Harden the Target make it harder for someone to be able to get into a school with new schools being constructed we need to look at what logistically we can do uh to create barriers for someone who might want to be do harm and of course we need to remove the uh the attraction of gun free zones I think having uh if teachers want to be armed and want to go through some sort of certification you know or or you know a registration with the school to show that they can safely operate a firearm they should be allowed to do that and that can be a deterrent from anyone uh attacking a school knowing that there might be both teachers and resource officers who are ready and willing to defend their students you brought up the issue of social media but we have social media in other countries and other countries don't have the level of mass shootings we have here well you know I think uh part of that is uh culturally we have also looked at this entire generation of lonely young men and I think we are overmedicating the solution there I think a lot of that has to do with identifying the mental health issues that are going through these and I when I say young men that's because that's the highest propensity of these shooters uh we need to be examining what we can do to address the mental health crisises before it gets to the point of violence and I do also think in the case of appalache we need to look at the responsibility of parents who have had been warned that their child has violent ideations and yet still provide them Firearms uh that they're easily accessible to uh and we're seeing that play out uh in the appalache high school case I want to say this hits very close to home home to me I have a nephew who lives in Winder who goes to the school across town who knows people who have been victims in this shooting uh and so you know I care about the safety of our young people because it hits very close to home I do think the rush to gun control is a um it's kind of a knee-jerk reaction when I think there are other factors that contribute to to school violence let's turn to foreign policy would you end American military aid to Ukraine yes I would in United States military aid across the board as much as possible I think if there is a need for more military aid to Ukraine Western Europe can take the lead there as we examine what uh what we can do from a humanitarian point of view to alleviate the suffering in Ukraine um I would like to see more private organizations be able to sponsor refugees to come to the United States and settle until the war is over and ultimately I believe conscription uh being forced to fight in a military is uh wrong and that is a great reason to be able to claim Asylum and I would tell the Russian military many of whom are conscripts who don't want to fight and die in Ukraine that if they lay down their arms and declare themselves uh we will provide them amnesty to come to the United States because I don't believe you should have to fight in a war that Putin's forcing you to fight uh if you would rather live in peace what about Aid to Israel uh Aid to Israel I again I believe in removing all military aid I think we need to shift our pore policy to one that's more based and diplomacy free trade and voluntary exchange uh but you know Israel had a right to respond to October 7th I think if that had happened in Indianapolis we would be demanding a response from our own government here at home uh if such an attack were to happen to us I think the manner in which Israel has responded to that attack has been so heavy-handed in the terms of lives loss casualties tens of thousands of innocent people billions of dollars of infrastructure destroyed that's going to have to be rebuilt for the Palestinian people um I think that is what has turned much of the Goodwill of the world against Israel and that's not a result of the Israeli people many of whom want to see peace and a ceasefire as well it's a result of their government and I'd like to remind people that when I have criticism of Israel it is towards the Netanyahu government not the people of Israel just as my criticism of Hamas is not towards the Palestinian people if I criticize people for the actions of their government I would have to criticize Americans quite a bit and so I recognize that the peace process is not going to be coming from the Netanyahu government or Hamas it's going to be coming from Palestinians and Israelis changing their leadership and demanding a peaceful move forward um I would like to see that going but I don't think uh we're going to see those conditions until we see both a ceasefire plan and a release of the hostages which I call for regularly so what happens if Russia or Iran move into fill the power vacuum Left Behind Putin has already demonstrated that he will never be satisfied with just one more piece of territory well you know I I I don't see Putin moving uh Westward more into Europe honestly uh I do think that uh the best way for us to have spheres of influence around the world are not to do that with diplomacy that is done at the uh the barrel of a gun or with a drone or the bomb I think our diplomacy needs to be one that's trusted in mutual respect for our International Neighbors and I think we could actually Foster more Goodwill in many places around the world that have been actually hostile to us because of our militarization because we have bases all over the world uh because we kind of view ourselves as the world's policemen um I think we shifted our foreign policy to one that's more based in mutual respect uh for international neighbors we could still have you know great relations around the world and be able to still have you know great influence around the world United States culture is what tore down the Berlin Wall it's what tore down the Iron Curtain it wasn't just Reagan saying tear down the wall it was Wrangler jeans and rock and roll and Coca-Cola and McDonald's uh and I think our culture still is uh you know the most exported around the world and we still have the most influence around the world even if we don't do it uh with militarization our national debt is now at 35 trillion with a tea and still climbing what's your plan to bring it down well I think that's actually the most important thing that we need to be addressing uh as candidates for president is what are we going to do to address the debt and deficit I believe in balancing the Federal budget immediately uh I would challenge Congress to submit me a balanced budget if I were elected president if it's not balanced it will be vetoed and Congress would have to override because I don't want to add one more dollar of debt and deficit to our kids and grandkids uh and I believe in challenging Congress to meet that uh as those you know it is their job to hold the pur strings but that would involve lots of slashing redundancies a huge amount of Pentagon Cuts uh you'd have to address the entitlement spending there would really be nothing left off the table in terms of what we need to cut uh in term you know so that we can make ourselves a balanced budget because the highest driver of inflation is that debt and deficits the printing of trillions of dollars a year out of thin air and that's what is most affecting households each and every month when they look at the bills when they're trying to make ends meet and they see themselves stretching paycheck to paycheck the best thing we can do is get our fiscal house in order as a government so that way we can create more prosperity in the future uh for families across the country now here in Indiana we just had about 1,600 medically complex children who were removed from the Medicaid attendant care program that was part of an effort to close about a billion doll uh funding Gap in Medicaid here in the state of Indiana that's led to some very very significant hardship on the part of those families how would you head off those kinds of effects RIT large if you were to impose massive spending cuts Nationwide well there's two things I want to say uh first I think much of what the federal government does should be left to the states or local governments uh you know per the ninth and tth Amendment those are the you know um that's the Constitutional role of much of what we would cut out of the federal government that would be block granted back to the states to have to maintain and handle uh but there will be pain I don't want to be a liar uh there will be pain as we transition ourselves to a more balanced budget and remove ourselves from the entitlement trap that we've been in uh since before I was born there would have been less pain if we had done this 20 years ago and there will be more pain if we do it 20 years from now and as a millennial who sees the car going off the cliff I'm trying to steer ourselves away even if it causes some discomfort and I recognize that no plan is perfect but this is the best way to move ourselves away from being dependent on the government uh and continuing to see Rising costs because of that uh and and so you know I recognize that there will be uh pain in this process but that's also being honest in a way that Republicans and Democrats never have been when it comes to entitlement spending uh but the way we're going to add address that in our communities is through charity and through us taking care of our communities at the local level you know uh one of the biggest things I want to get across is Libertarians just because we don't think the government should do something doesn't mean it shouldn't be done it just means that we think that the government is one of the more inefficient and terrible ways of doing those things and it can be much better facilitated through local community action to care for our neighbors to care for our friends to care for our loved ones uh and that would be what would eventually fill in the Gap as we see some of these pain points created that's what would fill in the Gap and ultimately alleviate those pain points what's one issue we haven't talked about that you believe is not getting enough attention in this election well you know uh I I do think that both the Democrats and Republicans we were just talking about deficit spending and inflation I do think that both of them really do ignore this or at best pay lip service such as Donald Trump when he said he was going to cut the debt in half in eight years and he ran up more deficit spending in four than any other president had in a four-year term uh so I think that's one of the things that just isn't being talked about by the quote unquote Mainline candidates and because of that the media is kind of ignoring that as well um I think there's a lot of other issues when it comes to um you know things like Federal uh invasions of our privacy these post 911 uh legislation that is still existing on the books we're doing this interview on the 11th of September you know uh I know it's going to air later but it it's kind of in the front of my mind right now thinking about how the world has changed since 911 2001 and much of that has come from federal policy that has invaded our private invaded our Free Speech uh things like warrantless wiretapping the Patriot Act uh those are things that still don't get talked about that we still need to remove ourselves from but I think we've been through like three crisises since then so oftentimes it's just not in the Forefront of the American voter's mind and I hope uh Libertarians can maybe bring that back to the Forefront for a lot of Voters this fall the thing that is most Paramount to them is keeping either Donald Trump or kamla Harris out of the White House what do you say to people who might look at you and say well if I vote for this guy all I'm doing is ensuring that whichever of those two I dislike more goes into the Oval Office well you know there's a great solution to that if you convince enough of your friends and neighbors to vote for me you can actually keep both Donald Trump and K Harris out of the White House but absent that uh what I tell people is you know I am not here to spoil something because the two-party system is already spoiled rotten if you look at the Congressional approval ratings regularly under 20% yet the incumbent re-election rate regularly over 90% that tells you this system is broken that people are dissatisfied but they're not able to see the change they want to see and so the only way to make that change happen is to help a third party grow to help create more prominence for us to help us when ballot access or major party status across this country and to help create something that will challenge this two-party system and tear it down uh piece by piece the only way to do that is to vote differently uh and when you do that another thing happens Democrats and Republicans really start paying attention to you because if you get the 5 10 20% they're going to really say okay what can we do to earn those votes back and so even if we don't end up winning we win when they steal our best ideas and put them forward Chase Oliver thank you for joining us thank you that was Chase Oliver libertarian candidate for president of the United States remember you can catch all Indiana politics every Sunday morning at 9:30 only on Wish TV I'm Garrett berquist thanks for listening from Wish TV this is all India politics podcast on the all Indiana podcast Network watch all Indiana politics live Sunday mornings at 9:30 on Wish TV and atwi tv.com subscribe to this podcast and listen weekly here on the all Indiana podcast Network and be sure to discover even more great podcast at all Indian podcast network.com