Robby Starbuck, TN, US House, District 5 Representative

Policy Issues

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I believe that freedom is our most essential value and that it’s value most under threat in the United States. I will always fight to give you more freedom, not less. That means being an advocate for your:

  • Freedom of expression
  • Freedom to own a gun
  • Freedom of movement
  • Freedom of speech
  • Freedom to do business
  • Religious freedom
  • And so many others

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Have you ever watched a Congressional Big Tech hearing only to be frustrated beyond belief when you realize that a LARGE number of our representatives don’t understand the technology they’re supposed to be holding accountable? I have. It was just another motivator to run for office. We need people who understand the algorithms and who understand how Big Tech is abusing our citizens by intruding on their privacy.

Trust Busting: I believe that Big Tech companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter are monopolies who have grossly abused their power. Countless small businesses all over our country have been destroyed by Amazon’s monopolistic behavior, all the while Amazon paid no where near what they should have in tax. I will hold them accountable and work to break up these monopolies. I fight for small business.

Censorship: Social Media Companies have an outsized role in our politics. Their ability to be judge and jury with no explanation is not in alignment with the spirit of free speech and expression in America. I always tell people to imagine they were on the phone with their friend venting about something in politics and then imagine that a representative from the phone company came on the line all of a sudden to tell you that you can’t say those words on the phone… Then they ban you. We’d all recognize what a horrible overreach this is. We’d all recognize how this violates our rights. There’s a reason phone companies are banned from doing this. We must ban social media giants from being able to behave this way. A wise person once said that the answer to speech you disagree with is better speech. Beat bad speech with better speech in the arena of debate and the best ideas will prevail. I’ll always believe in that. For those who agree with the social media bans we’ve seen in recent years, I ask you how you’d feel if you were next because the new management at a social media company decided they don’t like your opinions? More speech is the answer.

Privacy: Big Tech Companies abuse your data on an hourly basis. They extract as much data as they can about you without your knowledge and sell it to the highest bidder. You deserve to have informed consent. Every Big Tech company should have a simple explainer that people have to agree to in order to have their data mined and sold. Not agreeing to having your data sold should NOT be a reason to withhold the ability to use services that should be defined as a public utility.

You may be interested in reading my opinion piece breaking down how the modern left has turned into a pseudo religion. It touches on the need they have to censor opposition. https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/13/6-ways-leftism-acts-like-a-religion/

School Choice: School Choice is the civil rights issue of this generation. I trust PARENTS to decide what school is best for their child. The one size fits all model of public school is not always the best school for a child’s needs. I believe PARENTS know their child’s needs more than the government does. I support full school choice with no strings attached meaning that whatever dollar amount is earmarked for your child to attend public school would be given to you so that you can choose which school is best for your child whether that be a public school, private school, a religious school, a micro school, a school specialized for learning differences or homeschooling. “No Strings Attached” is the important part of that statement. I believe government must simply give back the tax dollars that are earmarked for your child’s education and allow you to decide the best school for them whether it’s at home, a private school, a public school or some other option. Government needs to get out of the way and let parents do their job! 

Critical Race Theory: CRT is a poison infecting our schools. It’s teaching kids that the skin they were born with means they’re either privileged or oppressed without any regard for other circumstances in their life. We’ve seen kids go through CRT and come out hating the skin they were born with. That’s not okay and it’s NOT the role our government should be playing. I would support a full ban on this harmful marxist ideology along with a way for parents to report the use of CRT by rogue teachers. Being the son of a Cuban refugee, I like to remind people that this racially divisive policy in schools is not new. Every Marxist “revolution” had elements of this push to divide people by race through education. We can’t allow this to infect our children’s minds any further. I believe we must make the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. a reality so that our children will be judged NOT by their skin but by the content of their character. 

Protecting Girls Sports: I will always stand to protect girls sports. Biological males have inherent physical differences that create an unfair playing field. This is not a hateful statement. This is not bigoted. It’s common sense. I’ve seen it, you’ve seen it, there’s no denying it and I won’t be gaslit into denying reality.

Politicization: When I was a kid I didn’t know how my teachers voted. That’s how it should be. It means you’re getting an unbiased education. Every child is entitled to a politically neutral education. It’s not the job of our schools to politically indoctrinate a child to hold any political view. I’ve seen this with my own children where they come home knowing exactly what view their teacher holds because they put a political candidates sticker in the classroom or trashed a candidate during class. This isn’t okay. We need to end the politicizing of our classrooms and our children. The same reporting option I mentioned above for CRT should be available to report a teacher or school who are injecting their political views into the learning environment. No matter what view the teacher holds, by stating it they cause unnecessary stress in the classroom and they make half of their class uncomfortable. This isn’t the purpose of school, nor is it a healthy learning environment.

Radical Gender Theory: I will not support any education program that pushes radical gender theory into the classroom. In places like California they’ve mandated children as young as first grade be taught that gender is a spectrum with unlimited possibilities. This is unscientific and we should not be teaching extremist theories to children as fact. I believe in biology. I believe the science of biology. Biology says and has said very clearly since it’s ability to examine chromosomes that any human born with XX chromosomes is a female and any human born with XY chromosomes is a male. That is the science. Any theory being pushed beyond that is denying the very clear biological science. I oppose it!

 

The first thing I have to say about law enforcement is that it’s hard work and I’m so thankful for the sacrifices our police make for us. The modern left rarely recognizes this. Their side is intent on demonizing the police and defunding them. The march on the modern left to defund and abolish the police is similar to what has happened during every marxist “revolution” in history. They pit people against one another, dividing us by race or creed because that’s what gives them power. The question is, will we continue to let them divide us like this? I won’t. The simple truth is that there are a few bad apples in policing just like there are in every job. No one disputes that they should be held accountable but to get the very best policing we need MORE funding and MORE training. Not less. I like to ask people who criticize all police a very simple question: If a few members of any group, race or religion do something bad, is it okay to blame the entire group, race or religion for it? The hypocrisy of their ideology becomes clear very quickly after that. We can’t punish all police for the actions of a few bad apples. We must treat officers as the individuals they are. The vast majority are heroic. In terms of policy, I ask myself “What will make policing safer for both the officer and the people interacting with an officer?” and “What will make our streets safer?”

The answer to both questions is the same:

  • More funding
  • More training
  • More community engagement
  • More outside the box thinking
  • More body cameras
  • More specialized training and officers for sex crimes and human trafficking

 Here’s an example of my outside the box thinking: I believe we should have training in high schools where police explain their job to students, explain how a stop works, what an officer is thinking during a stop and then do an exercise where the student plays the officer role and has to decide when someone is a threat. This exercise alone will result in better outcomes.

You may be interested in reading my recent piece in the NYPost where I explain part of the problem with crime in America right now (Hint, Left wing donors like George Soros are funding extremist prosecutors): https://nypost.com/2021/12/01/george-soros-has-blood-on-his-hands-for-the-rise-in-killings-nationwide/

You may also want to read my previous deep dive on races Soros is spending money in. I’ve warned people for years now! https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/19/why-arent-we-allowed-to-talk-about-george-soross-plan-to-remake-america/

Human Trafficking is an epidemic.

My wife Landon and I have personally invested our time and energy in fighting the epidemic of human trafficking. Due to our interstate access District 5 sees a disproportionate number of trafficking victims trafficked through the district. It’s our job to do everything we can to end Human Trafficking, Sex Trafficking and Child Trafficking. The Marxist elements in our politics like Odessa Kelly and “The Squad” in Congress believe that so called “Sex Work” should be legalized. I oppose this. Legal “Sex Work” does not fit Tennessee values and it hurts victims of sex trafficking more than anyone because law enforcment no longer would search out for potential vicitims forced into prostitution. Here’s how I commit to fighting the trafficking epidemic:

  • More funding for safe homes
  • More training for police in how to spot and offer resources to trafficking victims 
  • More education for high schoolers on how to spot potential threats
  • Force Porn websites to verify the age and consent of people in the videos they host
  • Shut down Porn websites who host videos of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), charge the operators of these websites with federal crimes against children they’ve committed and use the data seized to go after consumers of this illegal, horrific content

 Together we can work to end modern day slavery!

The border crisis is a preventable tragedy. Strong borders make strong countries. Caring about borders is not racist. As a Latino man and the son of a Cuban LEGAL refugee, I feel a duty to say that. Strong countries have to plan for increases in migration. You have to plan economically, for public health, for safety and for culture. With our unemployment issue, we can’t afford to wait any longer to stop this surge. I believe in LEGAL immigration but in order for us to have a smooth legal immigration system, we must get control of our illegal immigration crisis. The tragedy of this crisis is that innocent kids end up sexually assaulted and sold by cartels as a result of open borders policies. We have the ability to end this and we MUST end this. So here’s what I support:

  • Designate Cartels as terrorist organizations and impose the consequences that come along with that, I’ve already discussed this with Texas Congressman Chip Roy and plan to support his proposal
  • Put forward my Citizenship Protection Act which will clearly state that: Any economic migrant who enters the US illegally in order to seek a job will NEVER be able to become a US citizen and will NEVER be entitled to receive benefits from the United States government — We must incentivize LEGAL immigration and this bill does that
  • Pass a bill imposing harsher penalties on anyone caught trafficking a child across the border
  • Increase funding for our Border Patrol & ICE teams
  • Finish building the wall with smart technology like drone deployment that can spot cartels before they ever get near the wall, tunnel detection systems to detect when cartels are digging holes under the wall and more

 You may be interested in watching my appearance on Tucker Carlson about the March To The Border event my wife organized that I helped lead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c5AcxyM8XQ

You may be interested in reading my piece on Democrats enabling illegal immigration: https://www.ocregister.com/2019/09/03/when-will-big-city-democrats-stop-enabling-illegal-immigration/

We MUST take a leadership position on this issue to prevent socialized healthcare from becoming a reality in America. Why? Let me tell you a story…

I have a family member who died a few years ago in Cuba after years of extremely painful illness that went untreated despite her best attempts to get help from the government. For years she couldn’t even get a scan to diagnose the cancer. Finally she did but it was years too late. She was terminal. Cuba decided not to treat her at all, not even with pain medicine because at that point, she was an item line, not a human being. She died on a cold metal bed in a hospital room that had no medical equipment in it and a view of dirty walls serving as a reminder of how Cuba had decayed since Marxists stole control of the country.

I like to remind people that there’s a reason Canadian citizens come to the US to get surgeries and it’s not because their socialized system is better.

We can’t just complain about how dangerous socialized healthcare is though, we have to offer a solution that fixes our broken system. Here’s my solution:

  • Open up state lines so that you can buy insurance from any state – This will drive competition and bring us lower prices
  • Offer more Catastrophic plans and more direct pay options
  • Ban insurance companies from denying coverage when your medical provider says that you need a procedure or a medicine
  • Pass a bill that bans pharmacuetical companies from charging Americans more for a drug than they charge people in Canada or Europe – Most of these drugs were developed in the US with grants from YOUR TAX DOLLARS – We should not be gouged to pay more than similarly developed nations
  • Pass a bill saying that medical debt cannot be used against people when they’re trying to get a mortgage, a car loan or a small business loan – Many end up with this medical debt through no fault of their own or worse yet, through shady billing practices –  It must not be allowed to destroy families
  • Reinstate Trump policy that lowered the price of insulin
  • Force price transparency at every medical provider – You should know in advance what you’re going to be charged for a service
  • Enshrine in law that Americans must NEVER be forced or coerced by government or their job to undergo a medical procedure
  • No more senseless war: I know this sounds like common sense to you and me but apparently it isn’t common sense in Washington D.C. yet. I’ll stand with Senator Rand Paul in opposing senseless wars.
  • Defund the UN: This might surprise you but let me explain. The US pays close to 30% of the UN budget. The next closest is China at 15%. In exchange we get trampled on at every turn by the UN as they disrespect our country by naming countries like Iran to the Women’s Rights Counsel or Venezuela and Cuba to the Human Rights Counsel. If the UN won’t get their act together then it has outlived its purpose and we must leave to form a new organization that doesn’t take advantage of us and will give the proper respect to contributions of the United States.
  • Support Israel: Israel faces certain extinction without the support of the United States. Israel has been attacked by Marxists like “The Squad” who would like to empower terrorist groups like HAMAS instead. I oppose this. We must stand strong with Israel to maintain the security of the entire world. If things were to go wrong there it could set off a series of events that threaten our own country. We must not forget that. 
  • Strengthen our relationship with India: If we don’t make India our close ally then someone else will. We have shared cultural bonds like the importance of family, faith and hard work. A close bond with India will keep the world safer and keep us out of senseless wars.
  • Stop giving money to corrupt governments: Joe Biden recently gave over $4 BILLION to governments in Central America with provable ties to cartels and provable economic abuses. This waste of our tax payer dollars is inexcusable and it must end. We should be investing in our communities and our infrastructure. 
  • Oppose China’s plan to dominate the world: At every step we must oppose China’s plan to dominate the world. We must recognize the threat they pose to our country and act to prevent them from hurting our citizens and the country we love.
    • Over 70% of our pharmaceuticals have some part of them produced in China. This is a national security threat and it must end. We can use existing processes like the DPA to force manufacturers back to the United States
    • China is buying more farmland in America than anyone not named Bill Gates. Meanwhile Americans cannot buy farmland in China. You know why? Strong countries don’t let other countries take control of their food supply. We must ban foreign ownership of our farmland and create a time period that they must sell this land by. This is a national security threat. 
    • Demand accountability from international bodies for China’s human rights abuse of the Uighur people. They have over a million Uighurs in concentration camps for no reason other than their religious beliefs. This is not okay. Seeing them loaded into cattle cars you have to wonder what China plans to do next. We must oppose this.
    • If China retaliates in any way, force tariffs onto their most prized exports
    • Vocally support Taiwan who faces the threat of China attempting to take it over like they’ve done in Hong Kong, by force.
    • Demand accountability at every level for how China lied to the world throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. 
  • Support a Cuban freedom referendum to end the communist rule of Cuba: Cuba Libre!
  • We need to restore trust in our elections. With the accelerated growth of technology and the security holes that are constantly arising in all facets of technology, we need to go back to basics. Every election should move to paper ballots that are counted in a timely manner. No more waiting for days to find out who won a race, with questions arising the entire time. Until we have a system that we feel can be entirely protected (likely via blockchain) it’s essential to have a process we all know and trust that can provide built in safeguards via a non-partisan auditing process that everyone has access to. 

    • Go back to basics by using paper ballots.
    • Restore trust through transparency.
    • Live, uninterrupted camera feeds of the counting process.
    • Ability for voters to check who they voted for after the fact.
    • Never hide the counting process from the public.
    • Ban corporations and orgs formed by Billionaires from injecting millions into voter initiatives that are targeted toward areas that vote disproportionately for one party or another like Mark Zuckerberg did in 2020 when those initiatives by law are supposed to be non-partisan.
    • Ban ballot harvesting.
    • Audit voter rolls to ensure voters who have moved aren’t voting in two states.
    • Recognize that transparency solves problems while a lack of transparency always causes problems
  • We all know how hard COVID has been on families. The hardest part for many has been the loss of friends or family, the shutdown of our businesses, our schools and our way of life. Lockdowns have not proven any efficacy in bringing down the transmission of COVID yet we destroyed parts of our country by locking them down. This can never happen again. While small businesses were shut down by force, big corporations and chain stores were packed with shoppers. Every new rule was more non-sensical than the last but the most long lasting damage has been to the growing entitlement among the elite to tell everyday people how to live their lives. I want to live in a country where you’re free to make your own decisions, not where the government and a few billionaires decide how you MUST live.

    • I will do everything I can to ensure that the government never shuts down small businesses and schools ever again.
    • Get to the bottom of COVID-19’s origin and why the US Govt, through the National Institute of Health, was funding gain of function research at the Wuhan Virology Lab before COVID-19 began to infect the public in Wuhan.
    • Hold the Chinese Communist Party and the World Health Organization Accountable for lying about human to human transmission in January 2020 when they knew the virus was transmitting human to human over a month before that.
    • I will OPPOSE ALL vaccine passports, requirements and mandates. 
    • I will OPPOSE mandated seasonal mask wearing that is now being suggested by the Biden Administration. Wearing a mask must be YOUR CHOICE and never be forced. 
    • I will OPPOSE forced masking in schools.
     

    Even if you disagree with the choice someone makes, our country is not an authoritarian one. We must let people choose what’s right for their life, their health situation and their religious beliefs. Taking part in society has risks and we all agree to those risks by participating in society. Adding medical requirements to that social contract is a slippery authoritarian slope that could violate your firmly held beliefs tomorrow. So agree or disagree with the decision someone makes now — we should all agree that protecting Freedom is essential to our core values as Americans.

I’m proudly pro-life. I stand up for the rights of the unborn and will continue to be pro-life for kids after they’re born. We have a duty as a strong country to give every child a great education. No child in America should ever be without food and no child should ever be without medical care. If you haven’t voted Republican before you might be confused reading that but looking after these kids after they’re born is part of our conservative values despite what the left wing media may have told you. You may have also heard the modern left attack us as anti-science. It’s actually their pro-abortion point of view that’s divorced from science. The science of fetal pain has advanced tremendously since Roe V. Wade. We now understand that unborn human beings who are aborted today due to the Roe decision can feel pain during the abortion. We now have the benefit of 4D ultrasounds that show us the traumatizing reality of abortion for the baby. We also have advanced neurological science that shows us brain wave activity earlier than they thought possible when Roe essentially legalized abortion nationwide. It’s time to protect life. Think of the doctors, president’s, #1 Moms and Dad’s of the Year we’ve missed out on because of abortion. It doesn’t have to be this way. We have among the most permissive abortion laws in the world. Many developed countries have much stricter laws dictating when you can abort an unborn child. America can do better and must do better. We also need to offer support to struggling mom’s who need the support of their community and we need to rebuild a culture where Dad’s are present in their kid’s lives and duty bound to their responsibilities as a father.

My whole platform is about freedom and unleashing our potential as a nation. Seeing people within our government pushing for policies that limit our potential by over regulating or by forcing business owners to do things that don’t work for their businesses is a big reason why i’m running. Bitcoin falls right into that. I believe the government needs to stop trying to control Bitcoin. I think what’s so beautiful about Bitcoin is it’s ability to ultimately be controlled by the people. By over regulating Bitcoin we’re going to end up with all of the innovation surrounding Bitcoin happening in other nations while the top 0.1% are still able to profit but everyone else will end up severely limited in their ability to grow with Bitcoin as it grows. The more control we allow the 0.1% to have over Bitcoin, the less everyday people will be able to feel the positive effects of Bitcoin’s growth. My goal on the Bitcoin/Crypto front is to put every Bitcoin holder in a position where the government is going to stay out of their life so that they can sink or swim by virtue of the investment decisions they make. Government has no place banning or controlling our investments because they say they want to protect us. There’s few things scarier to me than the government telling us that they want to protect us. The unilateral freedom that usually ends up stripped as a result never leads to good things. Bitcoin if you contrast it against that, It has done so much good for ALL. Suffice to say I’ll be a voice that fights to unleash the potential of Crypto. 

Endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Green, Rand Paul, Thomas Massie

He was removed by TN GOP--There is fear in the RINO Establishment

Tennessee Republican Primary for US House District 5 - August 4, 2022
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