INDEPENDENT AND DAMN PROUD OF IT
If a revolution is what you want, gubernatorial candidate Chris Hansen will make sure you get it
BY DAVID HIMMEL

The system is broken. It doesn't work and it certainly can't keep going on like it is and has been for years. Our elected officials are being hauled off to prison for lap dances and a few measly dollars. Our school system is turning out lame teachers and bored kids. But hey, at least boredom is year-round. We don't even have a proper understanding of party lines. At least that's what Independent Americans like Christopher Hansen are saying.

From the law office where he works on 6th Street in downtown Las Vegas, Hansen is planning a revolution.

It's not the kind that results in war or marches, or even throwing tea into Lake Mead (although, Hansen and his Independent Party have a penchant for America's founding fathers). Hansen is ready to revolutionize government and the system it serves from within. 

You may not have heard much from him during the primary election, but Hansen is running to be governor of Nevada. It is hard to hear an independent above all the shouting from Republicans and Democrats. But just give him a chance - Hansen will do his share of shouting.

"We've got conservatives who are really corporatists," he says. "They believe in corporate power. Corporatism was defined by the author of fascism - Mussolini. Fascism is the combination of corporations and government. What do we have in America? We have fascism."

The words echo that of what the Bush administration is now calling our enemy - fascists. Who, then, is the pot and who the kettle? 

To Hansen, conservatives are often pinned for being Republican. However, he views Democrats as less evil. 

"Democrats, basically, are neo-fascists," Hansen says. "They have been their own worst enemies. Instead of building the labor unions and helping the little guy, they decided that government should step in and take care of the problems."

And once you have government taking over a business, there's no need for that business, Hansen continued. 

Many of the bills and subsequent fights that will face the governor and state legislature have to do with education. Everyone seems to agree that teachers are underpaid and that schools don't have enough money to update the textbooks and, subsequently, the kids aren't getting the education they need. 

Hansen champions the word "verbicide." Miriam-Webster defines verbicide as the deliberate distortion of a word. And he thinks the word "conservative" has become a victim of verbicide. 

"Conservative means to conserve. To keep things the same," he says. 

Instead of throwing more state money at teachers or into the schools hoping that pre-emptive incentive will fix the problem, Hansen supports a voucher system. 

"The best schools are the most inventive," he says.

Currently, students and parents do not get to choose their school - unless they have mountains of money and can live in the part of town they like. Or, they can afford to send their kid to private school. That leaves the less-fortunate a tad helpless and stuck. And even if the kid goes to a private school, he or she could get stuck with a lame-duck teacher. Not until junior high or high school can a student choose his or her teacher. Hansen wants to give people a choice in their education from the start.

People talk, and parents and kids know who the good teachers are. With Hansen, each kid gets a voucher worth the same amount of dollars. The kid chooses the teacher he or she wants and the parents walk into that teacher's classroom then hand the voucher (i.e., money) to the teacher and school. 

The voucher program would encourage free enterprise as each teacher would work harder to be the best in his profession. This leads to better pay because more students and schools would seek these teachers wanting to get a piece of the action. 

But what if every kid in the district wants the same teacher? Hansen's answer is that the teacher then becomes a manager, having other teachers who value his or her style studying below them. 

It may seem unconventional to some, but the current system doesn't work. When something is broke, fix it. And that's the point Hansen is trying to make with Nevada's masses.

IAP's website is riddled with quotes from Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and various other founding fathers. Hansen and his party, at the core, are purists. He sees no need for bureaucracy and all the red tape people have to go through just to drive a car, buy a home or even vote. Hansen doesn't have a driver's license. He doesn't even have a social security number.

"Why do we need them?" he asks. 

Is it a Big-Brother phobia?

"Our entire government is built around this structure of protecting itself." 

He sees no reason for the FBI to be the organization to bust open the doors of Cheetahs and interrupt a town meeting. He is sure the police and other elected government officials knew about the corruption. But they were protecting themselves.

"The government is supposed to be the servants," Hansen says. "But instead, they're treated like gods."

On Hansen's watch, with the IAP winding the gears, the time is nigh for change - a radical change, the kind of change the founding fathers needed to establish America. LW