Legislative Profiles: Joseph Scafa (I- Rockaway)

Name: Joseph Scafa
Age: 43
Occupation: Self Employed (Homeland Security Design Deploy Company) (Medical Device Company)
Previous elected or appointed positions: None
Any other current elected or appointed positions: None
Other community associations: St. Simon Church, Private Baseball Coach, Tennis Coach   
Town (and length) of residence: Rockaway Twsp,  11 years
Length of residence in District 26: 11 years
Most pressing issues for this candidate in a coming term, and how they would be addressed: When I speak with the people, most of them tell me that "jobs" tends to rank up high on the most pressing issues that they would like to see addressed. Coming from private sector, I believe that, although government has come a long way for consumer protection rights, we should re-examine our position on how far regulations for businesses have gone and take a good, long look at what the effects were.  What we did learn from having too much regulation is that companies released employees to make up for the difference in loss of income, or for the cost of the regulation being put in place to begin with. The next step is to ask, 'What do we do now?' Do we still want to venture down that road, or simply ignore it and wait for more people to be out of work as well?

You can take most any industry, and I can give you a great example. Look at the most common industries, like cosmetology. People are not aware that the person washing your hair needs to have a license, or that the person who cuts your hair needs a separate license. If you should have your nails done, then that would require a totally separate license, and then another for facials. Are we a society of over-certifying? That only would cause more restrictions on what people can spend. The overhead has now become a base rate before the shop owner can factor in other true overhead costs, such as rent, utilities, insurance and maintenance, just to mention a few.

Over-regulation has crippled our business sector, and if anyone ever says it hasn't, simply look around. How is regulation working for you so far? Yeah. Just as I thought. 

Another market study I had done was on offshore drilling. I know it is not the most popular topic after the Gulf incident, but seriously, think about it for a second. Most people are not aware that out of all the oil floating on the oceans surface, the top 94 percent comes from open fissure from the ocean's floor. Yes, that is right. As the ocean floor is constantly moving, it is shaking loose 94 percent of the oil just under the surface. That being said, take the same industry and couple it with the fact that we are a nation in need of oil. Unfortunately, we are dependent on foreign oil. In fact, raising one oil rig for deep sea oil exploration would affect approximately 1.7 million jobs to create it. This includes workers who would be mining for the iron, making the steel, milling the iron and handling shipping and logistics on rail, truck, boat and barge. It also includes hiring engineering and design technicians, project managers, security and mechanics to keep it working, workers to run the facility and all the other personnel needed to construct the rig to begin with. This study didn't include piping, refining and logistics to final destinations here on the mainland, and all those jobs that would be affected. By announcing that we would allow offshore drilling to the world, we will have just announced that we are back in the the race as a world power. We then can control our destiny of energy costs, which affects our bottom line for everything we do here in the United States.

Fun Fact: Most voters probably don't know that I am probably the most tenacious person they will ever meet and know. I like learning from my own, or other people's, mistakes. Without mistakes, we will never know what failure feels like. Without failure, you will never know what success feels like, either. It is because of my mistakes that I have come out with unique technologies and devices for homeland security, medicine, construction and so on. Now, it is time for all of us to unite and bring this country to the greatness that it is entitled to.