costco and starting a nonprofit, being the chairman of a board of a biomedical group. experience has taught me is there are people who are truly geniuses when it comes to businesses and running things. they are willing to help us. there are people in other areas, and we need to take advantage. that is what it is. that is why we are called the united states. because we have so much talent. and if we focus it in the right way and stop worrying about being right or my way or the highway, we will be a different nation. lastly, let me say we have to stop listening to these people that tell us we cannot talk about god, cannot talk about our faith. [applause] wonder -- do they realize our founding document,

the declaration of independence talks about certain inalienable rights given to us by our do they know the pledge of allegiance says we are one nation under god, and in one courtroom it says in god we trust. every bill in our wallets as in god we trust. it is in our founding documents, our courts, and our money. we are not supposed to talk about it? what is that? in medicine, we call it schizophrenia. it is time for us to realize there is nothing wrong with living by godly principles. caring about your neighbor, developing your god-given talent to become valuable to the people around you. if we do that, not only will we remain a pinnacle nation, but we will truly have one nation under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. thank you so much.

[applause] >> talk to us about term limits. someone asked about term limits. limits are not included in the constitution was because it was such an incredible sacrifice to serve. jobit has become a cushy with a lot of accoutrements. we are obviously going to have to adjust that. i believe strongly in term limits.

wouldnd i would suggest lengthen a term from two years to eight years. but they could be recalled every two years if they were doing a horrible job. senators could only have one term. for the president, a six-year term. but when people start running for office the next day, it does not make sense. it should extend to judges. lifetime limits for judges, the average length is 47. we need to have some judicial oversight so that we do not hamper their independence. but at the same time, we do not have an oligarchy where a few people are making decisions. >> what about the supreme court? the supreme court is one of the ones i am talking about. >> do you have a plan to fix

corruption? dr. carson: that is a big question. the criminal justice system is huge. the prison industry, which is what it is, is one of the fastest growing industries. we have 5% of the population of the world and 25% of the inmates. we are putting people in prison who have done things that are not violent. they do not require that they be sequestered. ,ut they go through prison which is like a university for criminality, and then they are out and out relationships that lead them to a life of crime and violence. we are obviously going to have to examine that carefully and find different ways to punish people who do not need to be in prison. >> what about the fiscal gap? how would you close it?

dr. carson: there are a number of things. recognize that we have the most powerful economic engine the world has ever known. now, a good example of somebody who closed the gas -- gap is italy. they were in the same boat as greece. but they have the courage to dramatically raise the retirement age. happy,ple were not very but they recognize where they were going without doing that. the only reason we can do it is because we can't print money. we will be in worse shape. there is nobody that can bail us out. norma's amounts of energy -- enormous amounts of energy but archaic rules that prevent us from doing it.

we have the ability to liquefy natural gas. it can be exported. we can make europe dependent on us for energy and drive down the debt. energy,oping petroleum fossil fuels, we can generate cleanfor re-search into energy. those things do not have to be a war with each other. the environmental protection agency should work with academia to find the cleanest ways to utilize energy, not suppress it. lookingart things like at the fact we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. that will drive business out of your. -- here.

but i would do a six-month hiatus tax-free so they could repatriate the $2 trillion over there. i would only stipulate that 10% of it had to be used for job creation and people who are unemployed. you want to talk about a stimulus that does tremendous and also get our businesses and corporations in the mindset of recognizing the people around them are resources. -- that resources is need to be developed. china has over one billion people. india has over one million. we cannot afford to waste people. we have to develop all our young people, change our mindset. everyone that we can keep from going down the path of

self-destruction is one less person we have to be afraid of, protect our family from. one more productive member of society who may discover that you are for cancer. wayeed to work in such a that the progressives cannot drive wedges between people. we are always working towards the same goal. those are a couple things. we obviously need to work with the tax system, the regulations. they are absolutely killing us. every new regulation drives up the cost. it hits were people disproportionately. more so than the well-to-do. as we draw the debt down, guess what begins to happen? the fence can loosen up the interest rate. we have to let the interest rate rise because the average man

does not have a place to grow his money. it is in a savings account or bond market. but nothing is coming from that. the only place it goes is the stock market. the only people that can play the high risk cards are well-to-do people. that is driving income disparity. we have to identify the things that are doing it. we have politicians talking about making college free for everybody. that is just driving the gap further and accelerating the clash of systems. do you have a timeline for that to be in effect? dr. carson: you would want to do it over a 10 year. aboutou are talking there are problems that extend out to 2022.

people have made plans based on those things. you cannot pull the rug out from those. the kinds of things i talk about, welfare reform. people think i to get rid of welfare. i do not want to get rid of welfare. i want to provide the kind of jobs that allow people to move up the ladder. as we give people viable options , we start withdrawing benefits or make them contingent on working, various things like that. we have to take into consideration all people. >> we will have more time later. we are upstairs. we are going to go in some fried food. [applause]

>> can i please take a picture? i represent modern woman. >> thank you. have a great night. from former new york governor and presidential candidate george pataki, who also spoke from the des moines soapbox. >> good afternoon. welcome to the political soapbox. i am carol hunter. our next speaker is governor george jackie of new york --

pataki of new york. he served in the assembly and senate and was elected three times to be governor. governor, welcome to the soapbox. [applause] >> thank you. mr. pataki: thank you all for being here and suffering in the sun. i will try to be brief. because this crowd, it looks like you have some questions. let me begin with a question of my own you are probably asking. there will be 18 people on this soap box during this state fair. the question is, why pataki? why another one? we have a parade of candidates. i understand that. but i honestly think my background is vastly different from anybody else in this race. my vision for what we can do as a country is different because of that background.

you know, i am from new york, but i don't have a plane. i have three tractors. in fact, i was out on a tractor last week moving hay. i'm the only candidate in this entire race in either party who was born and raised on a farm in my hometown of peekskill, new york, lived on a farm most of my life, and i'm still working with my wife, our family farm in upstate new york today. that sounds great, but what does it mean? any of you live on a farm or work on a farm or grow up on a farm? i see some out there. it teaches you values. one of the things you learn early on in the farm is words don't matter. if you say you are going to do something, it doesn't mean anything unless you do it very doesn't matter what you say you are going to do. it doesn't matter what you claim credit for having done. the only thing that matters is what you actually do. you learned that on the farm. if you cut corners, if you don't

do what you say you're going to do, it comes back to bite you and there is no getting around ultimately doing the job well. now, talk to the candidates who are running for president. you are going to hear a lot good words. i'm going to do this. i'm going to do that. how many of you feel like i do, that it seems regardless of who gets elected, the government gets bigger, the taxes get higher, the regulatory burden gets greater, and it seems that washington becomes more and more removed from people not just in iowa, but communities across america? that is their government, not our government. we have to take that government back. when i say i'm going to do something like reduce the size of the federal workforce by 15%, cut regulations, throw out a corrupt tax code that serves only the interest of the lobbyists and the powerful and the special interests and lower the rates for everyone, there are others who may say that too.

but let me tell you something -- i did it. i did it as a conservative republican in the state of new york, one of the deepest blue states in america. with 3 million more democrats than republicans. i say am going to reduce the workforce by 15% in washington. i did that in new york state. throw out a tax code that serves the powerful and lower the rates on working families and small businesses and americans across the board. i did that in new york. i lowered taxes by $143 billion, more than the other 49 states combined. get people off dependency on government. give them the opportunity to be independent and live the american dream and get on the employment rolls instead of the welfare rolls. you are going to hear that from a lot of people. i did that. and when i left as new york state governor, we had one million fewer people on welfare than when i took office because

we did transfer people from the welfare rolls to the employment rolls, and we had almost 700,000 more private sector jobs. and by the way, my state assembly -- i'm a conservative republican. there are 103 democrats and 47 republicans in that state assembly. i had to convince democratic legislators, many of them from new york city, many of them very liberal, to give our policies a chance. their policies were feeling. -- failing. we were last in jobs, last in taxes, and over one million people on welfare. i said, give my policies a chance. if they do not work, you can go back to your way. they gave me the chance and we changed new york state. two other ways we did that, when i took office we were the most dangerous state in america. when i left we were the fourth safest state in america, only a handful of states were safer than we were.

i was able to convince democratic legislators to support my tough on crime policies. so i will change washington, reduce its power, reduce the influence of the special interests, and those who can afford to have a lobbyist roaming the halls of washington, and give the power back to you, the people in iowa and across this country. i know i can do it because i did it in new york. the second thing, in my background that is unique, and it is something with me everyday, as i was governor of new york on september 11, i felt the horror. i knew victims. when i was leading new york through its recovery on that day with rudy giuliani and george bush, i felt the flames and could taste the air. i vowed then that this country so long as i have anything to say about it was never going to bow down to radical islam again. we were never going to forget

the lesson of september 11. that lesson to me is clearer today than it has ever been. we thought before september 11 because al qaeda was overseas it did not pose a threat to us in new york. we paid a horrible cost, a horrible penalty for not realizing the threat posed to us in america. today isis poses as large a threat if not greater to america, not just cities like new york but communities across america, and we have got to stand up and defeat radical islam over there before they can attack us here. let me give you two examples. think what happened in this country in the last few months. garland, texas. an american, radicalized by another american would have killed dozens of american citizens but for a texas cop. think of what happened in chattanooga, tennessee.

an american radicalized by jihadists killed marine recruiters before he was finally killed. we have got to shut down isis or any radical islamic group and their ability to recruit, to radicalize, or to proclaim an urge jihad anywhere in the united states regardless of where that message comes from. i'm a great believer in the first amendment. freedom of speech matters. but you can't yell fire in a crowded theater. you cannot tell a fellow american to kill your other americans in the name of jihad. that's not protected speech. that's a crime. they have to be shut down and arrested whether they are preaching it on the internet, in our prisons, or from the mosques. we have to protect america's freedom. by the way -- the response of this administration to our marine recruiters being shot was for them to take off their uniforms.

america is not going to bow down when i'm president to radical islam anywhere in the world, and certainly not in the united states. our marine recruiters should not be taking off their uniforms. they should be putting on their guns and we will be a lot safer across this country. it's not just enough to ignore the fact that isis has recruiting centers, training centers, planning huts, hundreds of millions of dollars, sophisticated weapons, social network capability and thousands of people with western passports. we have got to destroy their training and planning centers over there before they have a chance to attack us here again. let me tell you what i do first. directly aid the boots on the ground, which this administration is not doing. the kurdish army is fighting isis, but they are not getting the supplies, training, financing and help they deserve from us.

d directly toe ai the kurds. the sunni shikhs in anbar don't like isis. they would like to fight them, but they can't get any help from baghdad and this administration does not send any aid directly to them. i would do that as president of the united states. we would rent -- ramp up our bombing efforts. and if need be, i would send in american special ops to destroy those recruiting centers, those planning hubs, those places where they are organizing to attack us here, destroy them, kill them there, and get out before they have the chance to attack us here. i don't say this lightly. i don't want a 10 year war. i don't want $1 trillion spent trying to create a democracy in a part of the world are one has not existed. i have two sons. my older son when he graduated from college became a marine officer and served as a lieutenant for a year in anbar and iraq.