Josh First speaks in Schuylkill County

Speaking to about 40 voters and outdoorsmen from around Schuylkill County, congressional candidate Josh First highlighted his conservation credentials, his experience in Washington, DC, and his commitment to Fair Trade as a way to bring back jobs to the Pennsylvania 17th district.

"My record of conserving farmland and working forests for hunting, outdoor recreation, and environmental quality is well known, and it is a commitment that I will never drop," said First. "It is in my blood. These landscapes define who we are as Americans."

"When it comes to bringing back jobs to America, and particularly to this congressional district, we need to have fair trade, not free trade," First said.

"Our trade deficit is based on the unfair conditions that we allow to continue through not enforcing the trade agreements that we have with other nations. China and other countries artificially prop up their manufacturing sectors, and our North American trade agreements place an artificial barrier to our marketing American-made products to those who want to buy American-made products. As your congressman, I will do my darnedest to fix these inequities," he said.

"Congressman Tim Holden is asleep at the wheel on these issues, and he needs to be retired."

First explained his past role in Washington, DC, where as a Federal environmental regulator he learned first-hand about the damage that "stupid regulations that are based on a zero-risk mentality" have cost American jobs and lowered our nation's quality of life at huge costs to taxpayers.

"This zero-risk mentality is the same thinking that brought us last week's vote on universal, socialist healthcare," First explained.

"A free society is based on risk taking and being rewarded or punished by the market for taking that risk. What Liberals want is zero risk, so that nothing bad can ever happen to anyone. Well guess what? If nothing bad can ever happen, nothing good can happen, either, and the result is that these unnecessary regulations lock us all into mediocrity and low expectations for ourselves and for our government, which is increasingly intruding into our private lives to force compliance with the regulations. We did not defeat the Soviet Union so that we could try to emulate them twenty years later."

"Tim Holden's Liberal voting record is what allows this quiet, un-American revolution to happen under our noses," First concluded.