Meet Gino DiSimone, Independent Candidate for Nevada Governor

SAYS IF OBAMA NOT NATURAL BORN, HE SHOULD BE TRIED FOR TREASON ALONG WITH ALL CO-CONSPIRATORS

Interview by Sharon Rondeau

(Feb. 27, 2010) — Gino DiSimone has served in the Navy, known extreme economic hardship while working his way through college to a BSEE in Electrical Engineering, and been a corporate executive at some of America’s best-known companies. A parent, grandparent, published author and entrepreneur, Mr. DiSimone recently left the Republican Party and is running as an Independent, non-partisan candidate for governor of Nevada.

Following is Part I of an interview which covers his motivation for entering the race, his ideas for boosting the economy, reforming Nevada’s educational system and bringing jobs back to the state as well as the Obama eligibility question. Mr. DiSimone was very generous with his time and promised a follow-up interview when some of his plans are rolled out in greater detail.

SHARON: I noticed on your website you said you were brought up in Colorado. When did you move to Nevada, and when did you set your sights on the governorship?

GINO: About eight years ago; I moved back to Nevada about eight years ago from California and set my sights on running for governor about a year ago.

SHARON: What was the one thing that really made you decide to do it? What was in your mind at that point?

GINO: That’s a great question, and the answer is that I could not find a suitable candidate who would stand up to the federal invasion of our constitution. There just isn’t one out there. I tried to get involved – I was a very staunch Republican at the time – I pushed my thesis through the Republican ranks. It was kicked back, and I got very upset. The answer is that I couldn’t sit in the grandstands any longer; I just can”t take it any more with these weak, very weak politicians. So I said fine, I’ll run myself. I think there are a lot more people out there like me; they’re just fed up with it.

SHARON: Why do you think politicians are typically weak-kneed? It seems as if it’s getting worse all the time.

GINO: I agree with you. It is worse than before and I wish I could answer that in great detail. I personally do not know the facts of their lives and the deals that they make behind closed doors to be able to answer that definitively. I can only answer it with guesswork.

SHARON: When did you officially become an Independent?

GINO: At the 2008 presidential election. I was absolutely frustrated with the way the whole Republican camp exercised that process.

SHARON: When did you officially announce your candidacy?

GINO: It was October 2009 when I put a website together and told everyone I knew that I was going to run for governor.

SHARON: What was the reaction of any Republican-type operatives with whom you had been in contact?

GINO: “Would you please come back to the Republican party?” That was verbatim. And I’ve been asked that – I’m keeping track now – I’ve been asked that 14 times since then. The most recent time was Sunday, yesterday (laughs).

SHARON: They’re still trying, then.

GINO: Yeah, they’re still trying. It’s too late for them, but there are probably some reasons why. They recognize the momentum we’ve picked up; they recognize that I will not back down on principles and values, and they’re losing voters in their voter registration database.

SHARON: What was your response, particularly to the person on Sunday?

GINO: Laughter – you have to kind-of chuckle at it, as in “Haven’t you received the message by now?” I was at a gun show, actually, I set up a table…a colleague of mine said, “You know, you’re very staunch on gun rights; why don’t you put a table up at a gun show here in Reno and just do that?” So I did. I put a table up next to his, put a big banner up there, and that drew a lot of attention. And then a Republican person came in late in the day, announced herself and said, “I’ll be around to talk to everybody,” and she and her entourage came by my table and we said “hello” and then her entourage stuck around and said, “Look, you’ve got to get back into the Republican Party.” So I had to laugh! (laughs)  I said, “You’re kidding, right?” (laughs)

SHARON: I can just imagine the response.

GINO: And she was not kidding. She was absolutely serious.

SHARON: I’d like to ask you about state sovereignty. I read quite a bit on your website about it, and as you know, there’s been a big push in many states for Tenth Amendment resolutions in 2009. Has Nevada passed one?

GINO: Nothing of substance.

SHARON: Has there been any discussion that you know of in the legislature?

GINO: Our legislature has not characteristically followed that thinking process.

SHARON: What are your feelings about the Tenth Amendment?

GINO:  I took a stand against Obama’s birth certificate and made a claim stating that it infringes on the legalities of the constitution, and because of that infringement it is potentially reasonable to take up a court case to say that this direct violation of the agreement between the states and the federal entity breaches that agreement, and by virtue of such a breach, all of the land and arrangements that the state of Nevada has had with the federal government defaults back to the states. After I said that, I then further stated that I will drive the birth certificate issue all the way through conclusion with the executive powers of a governor from a sovereign state. That key to a sovereign state – you read that piece, right?

SHARON: Yes, I did.

GINO: That Sovereign State [website statement] created a huge uproar within predominantly the Republican ranks, because they said, “There are no sovereign states,” which is absolutely absurd. Every state is sovereign and is guaranteed sovereignty via the Tenth Amendment, which comes back to your question.

SHARON: And the Republicans didn’t realize that?

GINO: Nearly all the Republicans that are in the party position or active in the party – this is not Republican voters, and it’s very important to separate those two, by the way – the party players of the Republican arena consistently try to push through media and through their websites that the states are not sovereign entities in and of themselves. Completely wrong.

SHARON: Is it that they really don’t know, or they don’t want people to know?

GINO: I think they’re willingly ignorant. I believe they are willingly ignorant, and the reason why I say that is because Democrat voters have come to me – and in fact, a third of my followers are probably Democrat, as far as we can tell – they’re just Libertarian, Democrat people and they’re hung up on these labels of liberal vs. conservative. Once you get past those labels, they’re everyday people like you and me, with very few exceptions, which we can talk about later. Those people have taken the responsibility to go and read the First Continental Congress information, way back – they just pull it up off the Internet, the same as anybody else can do – they read how Madison architected the bicameral Congress; they go through, they start reading the Federalist Papers, they start doing all this research, and it’s amazing the lights that go on in their head, and they come and they say, “Wow, have we gone astray!” And there’s a reason why; there’s a motivating factor that’s driving them.

SHARON: I was just going to ask you that.

GINO: The economy is angering them. The value of their dollar is infuriating them. That’s the root of their frustration to say, “What is going on?” That’s what started it all. And that’s very consistent with almost everyone, because I asked them the same question. I said, “Well, what got you started? How come you decided to go do some research? and they said, “Because I’m getting poorer and poorer. My dollar buys me less and less in my lifetime. I’m seeing it happen year after year and before my very eyes and I don’t understand it. Why?”

SHARON: So would you say that the citizenry, at least in your state of Nevada, are becoming more motivated? Are they more educated? Do you think people are waking up?

GINO: Let’s put a little more granularity to that question. The answer is there is an absolute awakening – no question about it – there is an awakening. In fact, I spoke at a tea party and I had this thing going, and I said, “OK, listen to the sound:  boom-boom, boom-boom. I said, ‘Now say it with me: boom-boom, boom-boom.’ And we did that and the guys said, “Louder!” – boom-boom. And it got really loud – I mean, the roof of the gazebo was vibrating because everybody was shouting “Boom-boom, boom-boom!” and as they were shouting, I said, “That’s the heartbeat!” Listen to the heartbeat! That’s the sleeping giant waking up, boom-boom! That’s you, boom-boom! That’s your heartbeat, boom-boom! The sleeping giant is awake! And then roar, right? So I picked up a nick-name: “Gino ‘Boom-boom’ DiSimone!”

So the reality is the awakening…there is an awakening like you and I have never seen in our lifetime. Thank God!

SHARON: That’s exciting.

GINO: It’s very exciting. Now, the second part of that question is: are Nevadans as a whole waking up? The answer is no; it’s a slow awakening. And again, I would say my understanding as to the slowness of it all is they’re stuck in an economic crunch and they’re grasping for their parties to fix it. And they are, they literally are; they’re grasping for their party to fix the problem, and that is just not going to happen. So as they start becoming a little bit more aware of the fact that that’s not the solution, you and me and them, every one of us: we are the solution. And then I start reminding them, “Hey, did you know that our government was established by the consent of those who are governed? Did you know that?” and they scratch their heads and say, “What does that mean?” and guess what I take out? The Declaration of Independence, and I read it to them, that paragraph right there.

SHARON: Do you carry a Declaration of Independence with you all the time?

GINO: Everywhere I go (laughs)…and the U.S. Constitution!

SHARON: This leads me to another question I wanted to ask about education. Is this connected to the public school system and what they are learning or not learning there?

GINO: Absolutely, 100%, unequivocally, yes. It is completely the educational demise of our country.

SHARON: When do you think it started?

GINO: I think it started happening around the early 1900s. I believe in 1919, the educational system was originally handed over to the federal government, but I’d have to double-check to verify. But certainly, it was the early 1900s.

SHARON: And since then, what do you think has happened?

GINO: Oh, my goodness, we’ve been…here’s the simple answer:  The federal government took over the textbooks and had them written according to a certain group of people within the federal government, the Department of Education, according to their standards and what their belief systems were. As the years went by, those standards and belief systems started to degrade because the people who were appointed to those positions didn’t have the same morals and standards of their predecessors and through time, you have what we have today.

SHARON: What’s the state of public education in Nevada now?

GINO: I would like to send you a letter that I received from a concerned parent. I’ll summarize it for you and I’d like to send it to you if you would like to reprint it.

SHARON: Yes, I would.

GINO: A sixth-grader brought home a homework assignment and showed it to his mother, and she read the homework assignment, which was for the sixth-grader to draw a picture of what the Hindu god might look like and write an essay or a paragraph on how he might worship that Hindu god.

SHARON: Really?

GINO: This occurred in the public schools of Nevada out of the Fernley School system. I will email that to you and you can put it out anywhere you like. That is how far our public education has degraded. Now of course the parents went and had words with the public school officials and removed their child from school and now they’re homeschooling as of a week ago. That’s the demise of our system. How far did we get away from reading, writing, arithmetic, math, science, history? What happened to our history lessons? These kids don’t even know what a Constitution is other than, “Yeah, that’s part of America.”  That’s how far we’ve gone astray.

SHARON: Is this pretty much throughout your state?

GINO: Yes, it is throughout the state, although that particular exercise is certainly not throughout the state. And I would like to say this, too – I would like to put a qualifier in there. Generally speaking, and this is a very large generality, but generally speaking, it is not the teacher; it is the curriculum that the teacher is expected to push.

SHARON: And that comes from…?

GINO: It comes from the Board of Regents which gets it from the Department of Education from the federal government. Everything is mandated through the federal government, passed down through the Board of Regents into our academic society. Now there’s a lot of latitude that the teachers have, but the general guidelines are of that nature.

SHARON: What can you do about changing that?

GINO: The first thing I’m going to do is completely revamp the Board of Regents and the educational administration within the state of Nevada. That’s the very first thing I’m going to do. We’re going to cut the purse strings from the federal government; we’re going to “lean out” the administrative network of the state education system. They do not spend their money wisely, and the teachers are the ones who are suffering because of it, by the way – and we are going to change the curriculum back to reading, writing, math, science, history, geography, and music for grades 1-9 and music or a vocational for grades 10, 11 and 12. That’s step 1.

Step 2 is we completely eliminate the age requirement or age barriers for grade levels – no more going into a grade because of your age. That’s gone. Every grade will have an academic process to advance to the next grade. If a student fails that process, they do not advance. If it takes them more than a couple of years to get past it, then they’re probably not suited for school. Parents will have a compulsory requirement to attend class one day per month per child, so there will be parents in the classroom at all times.

SHARON: Is the purpose of that to get the parents more involved or so that the parents can actually look at what the teachers are doing?

GINO: Both. Exactly both. Incidentally, the teachers have applauded me – I’ve received standing applause whenever I state that. I had one person object to that, and I’ll tell you about that objection in a moment. The purpose of it all – the education of a child – the responsibility of that education lies with the parent. It doesn’t lie with the state. But here’s what’s happened: the parents and the people of the state, the citizenry, have overwhelmingly decided, “We would like to hand that responsibility over to the state, and we don’t mind if you take a portion of the tax money to pay for it.” That’s a general agreement between the citizens and the state. I think pretty much every state is very much in that camp.

However, the state has done a very poor job of administrating education because the state doesn’t want to figure out how to build their schools and give all the kids their instruments and their sports facilities, etc. They would rather take federal money to do that, and when you take federal money, you always have to follow federal rules. Now there’s a mistake. So the more a state can separate itself from the federal government through these funding opportunities that the federal government gives, the more autonomy the state has, the more control the state has, and the more influence the citizens have. And that’s the key, really; that’s where you want it to go back to. It’s the parents’ responsibility to educate the children, not the state’s. The parents have asked the state to take care of it and are willing to pay the taxes, etc. to do it. OK; but that does not eliminate the requirement for the parents to stay involved in a child’s education. So that’s why the parents need to be in the classroom.

SHARON: How do you feel about the Race to the Top funding?

GINO: It’s a disaster, it’s a horrible process. It’s a waste of money, to be honest with you. The very simple solution is to cut out all that waste – I’m sure there are some benefits to it, and I shouldn’t be so broad-based – but generally speaking, cut all that waste process out completely, get back to basics, and follow an academic process by grade level, not by age level, not by anything else. If a student happens to be exceptionally skilled and talented and is able to assimilate, comprehend the information and retain it, that student by nature will advance through the grades faster anyway because we’ve removed all the age barriers. It’s a natural process, a natural product of the plan anyway. We don’t need to go through this Race to the Top whole new program, whole new infrastructure, whole new administration, whole new expense. It’s not necessary.

SHARON: So as governor, would you opt out of Race to the Top?

GINO: Yes.

SHARON: Who are the other people running against you for governor?

GINO: All of the candidates have not yet been confirmed by the Secretary of State. I recently received my confirmation. As a non-partisan, I had to go collect signatures and everything was successful. The Democrat Party is producing Rory Reid, who is the son of Harry Reid, and there currently are no other Democrat contenders. He appears to be the only one at this time.

On the Republican side, there’s the incumbent, Jim Gibbons. There is a man by the name of Brian Sandoval, who was a federal judge in the state of Nevada, and there is Mike Montandin, who is an ex-mayor for the city of North Las Vegas. That’s a different city than Las Vegas.

Those who have not been announced at this point in time are the minority parties. There’s a Libertarian Party, there is an Independent American Party that’s different from me, by the way – I’m non-partisan. There’s the Green Party, and I haven’t heard one way or the other if they have a candidate to produce.

SHARON: You mentioned a lot in your interview with the Liberty Pen about bringing jobs back to Nevada. I know it was your job at one time to outsource jobs. What would be the first step in bringing back jobs to our state?

GINO: The first step is to identify local developers who will develop and bring manufacturing and grow manufacturing. That’s the first step: are there local players who want to grow their manufacturing base, what are their barriers to success, how do we remove them, that sort of thing. And there actually is one who has come forth now; he has all of the funding and research necessary to put an Olympic training center in northern Nevada, a very large 160-acre training center, a several-hundred-million-dollar project. So the very first step is to get those people moving, launch them, get them started. He has road barriers with the educational system because the University of Nevada at Reno owns the land and there’s a political problem with releasing that land which we have to remove.

SHARON: Is that possible?

GINO: Yes, absolutely. In fact, the thing that the university needs is what I’ll bring to the table and that’s other funding, so there are some trade-offs that we can satisfy with them. So yes, we’ll get that started. Now, the second piece is that I’m going to bring gun and munition-manufacturing into the state of Nevada.  I’m going to do it by offering  it first to an American corporation which is very unlikely to come forward because of its ties to the federal government.  If that doesn’t produce a manufacturer, then I already have a commitment from a German corporation to come and open up shop in the state of Nevada. So it’s Americans first, America first, all the way; if that doesn’t produce, then I’m going to employ our citizens and bring an outsider in. And munitions, as well.

The other item is technology. If you’ve read the piece by the Liberty Pen, I have the capability to bring a number of high-tech manufacturing corporations in to the state of Nevada. I do have some legislature hurdles to climb, but here again, the legislature needs money, and I have a revenue plan that we haven’t talked about yet to produce that money. So I’m certain that there won’t be any problems crossing the legislature. Moreover, when those plans go public, none of this is going to be done in the back-door community.  As soon as I’m able to get the verbal commitment and the written memorandum of understanding from the corporation, all of that information goes out in the public domain and the citizens of the state will drive the legislature to do the right thing. I probably won’t have a lot of work to do; they’ll be overwhelmed by the citizens.

SHARON: And the citizens will want it, because it means employment and money.

GINO: That’s right.

SHARON: Could you tell me about your plan to raise revenue: what you’ll do first, and how you’ll do it?

GINO: I have to reserve answering that question to a future date, and I’ll tell you why. I am within weeks of releasing the plan. However, there is an ongoing activity which I’m a part of to bring together a coalition of sorts of constitutionally-conservative gubernatorial candidates across America, and we’ve got over a dozen states right now. It’s growing very quickly. The vast majority of these governors’ revenue problems will be satisfied by the revenue plan that I am producing. It may not overcome them all, but what it does is set a foundation that will take them going forward. Now Nevada is a very small state by population, and the revenue plan in Nevada is extremely conservatively targeted at $1B. The reality is that it’s probably about $2B, but I don’t want to set incorrect expectations.

The revenue plan can be adopted for almost every state in the union, and some states will benefit substantially more than others. So I have to reserve those details to a future interview with you.

SHARON: You began to answer my next question, which was what is the connection between being an engineer and running for office, or is there one?

GINO: Problem-solving is really the biggest one. Engineers are generally very, very careful thinkers.  They don’t like to take action until all the data is on the table, and then they’ll architect a product or a service or something like that. Engineers rarely will do something because Marketing says, “This is the greatest thing on Planet Earth; I can sell 100,000 of these things.” An engineer will scratch his head and say, “Well, let’s look a little deeper. What does it take to make these things? And then, what does it take to manufacture these things, and then, is all of the tooling available? Do we have the infrastructure locally; do we have to go offshore? What’s it going to cost, who’s going to invest in it? This is an engineer thinking through all the questions; that’s how engineers work.

SHARON: Do you see that as an advantage?

GINO: It’s an asset I have because I was raised as an engineer through my collegiate life and on into management.

SHARON: Regarding Obama and the birth certificate, if there’s something else that were to come to light, that either he hasn’t been truthful about his past or he doesn’t meet the constitution’s definition of “natural born Citizen,” what do you think should happen?

GINO: Do you want the politically-correct answer or my real answer?

SHARON: I want what you really think.

GINO: He should be tried for treason as well as all of the accomplices that helped hide the truth from the public.

SHARON: That could be a lot of people.

GINO: You know, if they’re guilty, they’re guilty. It’s pretty simple. There’s no sense in covering anybody’s neck. They willfully chose to hide the truth from the public for a person who was going to hold a public office and which the lives of the very citizens depend upon. You know, in the old days, they’d hang ‘im. I don’t know what they’ll do these days, but he ought to be tried for treason as well as all the cohorts who worked with him to accomplish this.

SHARON: At this point we know that a lot of things have been hidden. Why do you think they’ve done that, particularly the Democrat and Republican Parties?

GINO: Because I don’t believe they really thought he was a great leader; I honestly don’t. I believe most people recognize that. Every decision he’s made has made America worse. I can’t think of one thing he has done that has helped America; I honestly can’t think of one. This whole jobs package: what you hear in the media is untrue; it’s a spinoff of reality. So why did they do that? They knew he was not economically sound; they knew he had a strange background, a bit of a blur. They knew all these things. John McCain knew he didn’t have a real birth certificate but dismissed it and still dismisses it. So why did they follow him? There’s only one conclusion that I can come up with which is complete conjecture; I don’t know. But evidently, those people have some baggage that they did not want exposed, and the only way they could keep that in was to help process this man through.

SHARON: It is astounding how no one looked into this or felt compelled to ask Obama to open his records. You’ve answered me regarding the political parties. With more than 40 lawsuits filed by citizens across the country, why do you think the courts keep dismissing these cases?

GINO: That one I don’t know, but I do know the courts have been corrupt for some time. They approve legislation that’s absolutely not constitutionally correct; they’ve been doing it for a while. Why did they have a back-door meeting with Obama before a court case was to be addressed? That’s a complete violation of any rule of law anywhere; I don’t care how far back in history you go. Why did they do that? I don’t know. What did they talk about? I don’t know. But part of invoking Article V is terminating the justices on the Supreme Court. If enough states came together and satisfied the conditions in Article V, then the states can terminate all justices on the Supreme Court.

SHARON: I didn’t know that.

GINO: That’s the whole idea behind Article V. Article V says that anything we say as a state, three-fourths’ majority, we can change the entire Constitution; we can do whatever the states agree upon. The states have that much authority.

SHARON: Politically, how would you describe yourself?

GINO: I am a constitutional conservative. I’m non-partisan. I don’t believe the parties are a valid entity these days; they have failed America over and over again. You’ve cited several things; the most recent one is the birth certificate. The Republicans had a chance to take a stand, and they didn’t.

Please watch The Post & Email for a follow-up interview with Gino, which will be coming soon.

UPDATE:  See the link to our article and recent statement by Mr. DiSimone regarding the Obama eligibility crisis and the actions he would take as governor on his campaign website.