My name is Jacob VandenPlas, Libertarian candidate
for Wisconsin's 8th Congressional District.
Little bit about myself,
I was born and raised in Abrams, Wisconsin,
just north of Green Bay.
Graduated from Oconto Falls High School
in the great year of 2002.
And shortly after that,
I shipped off to Fort Benning, Georgia,
the infantry school for the United States Army.
I spent 13 years in the Wisconsin Army National Guard
as an infantryman, did two tours in Iraq,
one of which was served with Bravo Company 2-127
right here out of Green Bay.
I also served a second tour
with Charlie Company 121st Field Artillery
out of Sussex, Wisconsin.
I did those tours back to back.
And currently, my wife and I and our beautiful family
reside in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.
And we have a nonprofit organization,
DC Farm for Vets,
short for Door County Farm for Vets,
where we actually train veterans on how to grow produce
and live sustainably,
how to butcher animals, how to package food,
and kind of live off the land.
Gives them a sense of purpose and being back in their lives.
I decided to run as a Libertarian
for lots of reasons, a multitude of reasons.
I feel that both the major parties
have left the American people behind
and they no longer represent us.
We're supposed to have a constitutional republic,
but because of these two parties,
we have actually formed a democracy.
And democracies by nature are very, very polarizing.
And that's what we see right now,
is an extraordinary polarization of our country,
where we're fighting our neighbors
and fighting our families.
We have to stop.
We have to come together
and we have to start decentralizing our government
and put the wealth and prosperity of this country
back in the hands of the American people.
And we do this by focusing on local legislation.
Our federal government's only supposed to be
handling a couple of things,
and right now, they're handling a lot.
We need to fix that.
And we have to stop the fighting.
When we focus on local legislation
and self-governance, everybody wins.
They were not supposed to have Republican governance
or Democrat governance
functioning at the federal level.
We're supposed to be protecting self-governance
and individual liberties.
We no longer have that.
I intend to fully bring that back.
My highest priorities that I'm gonna be tackling
during my time in Washington
is the fiscal responsibility of our government.
Right now, we're spending money like never before.
We're almost $31 trillion in debt, exorbitant inflation,
40-year high record inflation,
and it's not coming down any time soon.
There's times I look at my son, who's 14 years old,
he's gonna be looking at buying his first car here shortly.
Average car payments are over $700 a month.
Or those families right now
that are trying to buy their first home.
Average mortgage rates have more than, not just doubled,
but have risen almost 100% just in the last two years.
This is starting to cripple our country.
And this is all the result
of Republicans and Democrats fighting back and forth.
It's time that we come together, focus on self-governance,
individual liberties,
and tackling these problems that this great nation faces
within our local communities.
We can solve all these problems,
and we can have a government accountable to the people
if we focus on local legislation.
I definitely appreciate this time,
and if you're interested more in my campaign,
you can check out my website at www.jakeliberty2022.com.
I appreciate your support,
and I definitely would enjoy your vote
come this November.
Thank you for your time.