Geoff Young for Kentucky House of Representatives
Issue #1 — Eliminate the Sales Tax
Kentucky should eliminate the sales tax, cut income taxes for poor and working Kentuckians, and increase taxes on large corporations and very rich Kentuckians.
Kentucky first implemented a 6% state sales tax in 1960, following an earlier attempt in 1934 that was repealed in 1936. The original rate was 3%, which increased to 5% in 1968 and finally to the current 6% in 1990. The 1934 sales tax was repealed primarily due to overwhelming public opposition during the Great Depression.
Organized opposition vigorously demanded that the sales tax be eliminated because it hit poor Kentuckians hardest. Many were unemployed with little savings, and small businesspeople opposed it as a "sales killer."
The issue dominated the 1935 campaign for Governor of Kentucky. Voters elected Albert B. Chandler (who was then the Lieutenant Governor), a prominent anti-sales-tax leader, who ran against the tax that Governor Ruby Laffoon had pushed through.
The 1936 General Assembly repealed it almost unanimously: 99 to 1 in the House and 36 to zero in the Senate, making Kentucky the first state to repeal its sales tax.
The revenue was replaced with income taxes (both individual and corporate) and excise taxes on luxury items such as gasoline, alcohol, cigarettes, motor fuel, and amusements. Kentucky shifted from taxing consumption to taxing higher-income people who could afford to pay more.
For the last 25 years, the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce has lobbied hard to eliminate the state income tax and calls it its top priority. The Chamber has backed expanding the sales tax to cover more services as part of its strategy to replace the income tax cuts. The Republican Party now controls 80% of the Kentucky House and 80% of the Kentucky Senate, and they have already lowered the income tax from 5% in 2022 to 3.5% today.
In my opinion, the Republican Party of Kentucky (the RPK) has exactly the wrong idea. Instead of eliminating the state income tax, we should eliminate the sales tax and make up for the lost revenue by taxing rich and extremely rich Kentuckians more.
Issue #2 — Kentucky must prepare for another Great Depression.
All 50 states and the USA are heading for another Great Depression because the federal government's foreign policies have been horribly aggressive and violent from about 1947 to today. The world's population is 8.3 billion people, and 6 billion of them - approximately three-quarters - hate and fear the US government. Israel is the most hated country in the world, followed closely by the United States. The world is about to stop trading in US dollars, stop buying anything from the US, and stop exporting anything to the US because our currency will be worthless. MAJOR changes in all three branches of our state government are urgently needed. If we don't get major changes in Frankfort, Kentucky will descend into economic and societal collapse just like every other state that fails to prepare for hyperinflation and massive unemployment. Business-as-usual in Frankfort is exactly what no Kentuckian needs, but business as usual is all my two opponents have to offer you. The incumbent, Lindsey Burke (D), has accomplished nothing in Frankfort since she was first elected on November 8, 2022. The main reason is that Republicans hold 80 out of 100 seats in the Kentucky House of Representatives, and no Democrat can accomplish anything. All they can do is tell you what they would do if only the voters across Kentucky elect 35 more Democrats, re-elect all 20 sitting Democrats, and thereby give the Kentucky Democratic Party (the KDP) a majority in the House -- and also give the KDP a majority in the Kentucky Senate, where Republicans have a 32 to 6 (84%) supermajority. The KDP will never regain its former majority in Frankfort. My other opponent, Jeff Forsyth (R), has never run for office before and doesn't seem to realize that if he wins in November, he will be told exactly how to vote by the leadership of the Republican Party of Kentucky (the RPK). He will be nothing but a footsoldier for business-as-usual.
Issue #3 — I have been fighting corruption as an unelected citizen since 2015 — with some success.
I never ran for any elected office until 2012, when I ran for the Kentucky House of Representatives as a member of the Kentucky Green Party. In October 2013, I switched back to my lifelong party, the Democratic Party, and ran for the US House of Representatives in Kentucky's 6th Congressional District. My only opponent in the 2014 Democratic primary was Elisabeth Jensen. The Governor at that time was Steve Beshear (D), and he endorsed Ms. Jensen and helped her raise tens of thousands of dollars. I didn't realize it at the time, but Steve Beshear violated a Kentucky law, KRS 118.105 (Section 1), which makes it illegal for the leadership of the Democratic Party to support one Democrat over another in the primary. KRS 118.105(1) is a good law because the registered members of the D and R parties are supposed to choose who they want to represent them in the November general election, not a small group of powerful party insiders and big donors. Jensen won the primary but was defeated by Andy Barr (R) in the 2014 general election.