On Monday, March 12, The Xavierite had the opportunity to interview gubernatorial candidate, Robert Marshall.
Marshall is a Vietnam veteran and licensed physician who continues to work as a radiologist in various places throughout the state. He wants to become the governor of Illinois to make some changes.
If elected, one of the problems he would like to solve is keeping people in the state of Illinois.
“The one main big problem is the number of people leaving the state is thirty to forty thousand people left last year and these people are better earning people better you know better higher income people so if they leave they take the money to take the jobs with them. And that continues,†Marshall said.
“That’s very bad because it’s those people who stay here will have to pay higher taxes or decrease services or whatever†said Marshall.
Marshall goes on to say that the two reasons why people are leaving Illinois is gun violence and the various types of high taxes.
“There’s two reasons why they’re leaving and I think they are the enormous amount of violence in Chicago. All the shootings, the murders there, and so I think one thing we could do to solve that is to take the money out of the drug trade killing each other for the money for drugs. So, we need to legalize marijuana and throughout the whole state, or at least Chicago, and legalize marijuana and take the money out of that,†Marshall stated.
“The other reason the problem of people leaving is because of very high taxes and property taxes, the income taxes, all the different kind of taxes that people go to Indiana to set up a business. You know all the surrounding states because of the taxes, so I would rebate the marijuana money the increased revenue from the marijuana directly to property owners to help with the property taxesâ€.
Marshall goes on to say that the best way to get our national economy back on its feet is to stimulate middle class spending.
“By opposing tax increases is one way to do that the middle-class taxes are pretty high the way they are now. I think the tax hike that will target the middle class, and the middle class to me is people who make like fifty-thousand to three or four hundred thousand a year, I would consider that middle class. So, a graduated income tax will target these people and decrease the amount of money they have and decrease the spending you know the spending that they do.â€
When asked how he would make a college education affordable for students, he believes that legalizing casino gambling would generate a lot of money towards that.
“I think we ought to have legalize casino gambling for Chicago this be geared to the tourists. There’s fifty-five million tourists that come to the city every year, and they’re pretty well to do people you know. So, I think we have that geared toward tourists and that will generate enormous amount of money. So, I think we have that geared toward Tourists that will generate enormous amount of money. Plus the marijuana money. And that’s how you pay for education student loans as well,†said Marshall.
“What I would use the casino money for is to pay back to help students pay for these loans because they’re pretty big loans and they postpone a lot of things like marriage and children and buying a home and you know they postpone everything because these big loans you know so if you have a casino gambling money help helping them with some of those loans that would help them alot.â€
Lastly, when asked about how he will work to improve or defend the MAP grant for students, he reiterated that we need more money for that and that would come from legalizing marijuana and casino gambling and fighting against increasing income taxes.
“We want to and you need more money for that. I would be for continuing that and need to get more money to do that. And the way to do that is if these two sources that I already mentioned casino gambling for Chicago and legalizing marijuana. I would be against increasing income taxes. With a graduated tax or a flat tax because that penalizes people who work, who work hard to make more money. We finally have to find other sources of income.â€
You can listen to the complete interview with Robert Marshall on soundcloud.
Elizabeth Granato
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