KIFI/KIDK Voter Guide: Natalie M Fleming

• Party:
  • Independent Party
• Personal Information:
  • Age: 49
• Website: natalieisawesome.com
• Facebook: Natalie M Fleming
• Background:
  • Fleming worked for a Software and Computer Networking company Novell Co. after graduation. As her children grew up she developed a yard sale website. "GarageSalenation.com" covered the entire country for three years. Her other career highlights include building an Insurance Exchange for a small insurance company and a non-profit servicing company managing applications for 36 states. Recently, she designed an app to help campaign volunteers build relationships within their own community.

Why are you running for U.S. Senate to represent Idaho?

Why in the world would I run?

And if you look at my position in my life right now, the whole world is in chaos. And of course, chaos is my life as a single mom, but I feel like 2020 everybody's catching up with me and, uh, my friends and all the challenges we've had. Um, but I look at Congress and DC and I just think they're doing it all wrong, but I think hashtag you're all wrong Isn't a very good campaign slogan. Obviously it's, I believe that I can help people to work together. And, um, I have a lot of great ideas. Many of them can only be implemented at the federal level. I know some people would think that I should run at the state level first, but we all know that if you run at the state level, you can get, you get conditioned to the parties. You get kind of conditioned to the rules and you learn to play by their rules.

We need someone to go to DC with culture shock and corruption shock. Who's not willing to who isn't trained to comply. And I am certifiably stubborn noncompliant. So I love our constitution. I love America. I love Idaho. Um, and I will protect Idaho and Idaho's rights.

Another thing while I think I see that there's so many things that can be best implemented at the federal level. We also need to get the federal government out of the way. The federal government is in a way of a lot of great programs. For example, in agriculture, there is something called a water retention landscape.

It's something that farmers and ranchers can use to hold the water on their ranch on their land. As the rain falls, it's very simple. It's what beavers do. Yet, It is illegal. So a lot of great practices are illegal. A lot of the Bureau of land management practices that a lot of practices that are good are illegal. So, um, we need to make some changes on that.

What issues would you focus on if you’re re-elected?

Some of the issues that I care about, what are, what are the, some of the key issues that I am running on? I'll keep it simple. Three issues, keep to three. Education. K-12 well, we're going to skip K-12 and go straight to college. I, as a single mom, I tried to go to school with four kids.

My oldest is asked me my emphasis autistic. And let me tell you that was, yeah, that was an experience. So let's just take all the college lectures. All of them, put them on YouTube and let people test out for a small fee. It costs next to nothing, and you don't have daycare issues. You can do it at your own leisure and then test out for a small fee.

A byproduct of that is worldwide education. I, um, we are already paying us taxpayers for a hundred thousand pre COVID. We were paying for a hundred thousand live lectures of just calculus 1 every year. Which is ridiculous. It's absurd. Um, put it all taxpayers through Pell grants, Perkins loans, put it all on YouTube.

Let people test out that knowledge, but then be accessible by to the third world or what, I don't know, the politically correct term anymore for that. And they that's another tool for them to improve their countries. And as long as things are terrible, they're in great here. They're going to want to come here and it's just a tool for them to help build their own country.
Um, I have another big issue of course, is data privacy, or you already met mentioned that, but data privacy, protection for mass surveillance, that is a big issue. I already mentioned that one. Of course, another big issue is fighting corruption in DC. There's of course, dialing for dollars, Google that where the senators and congressmen are expected to sit in a call center and call to raise money, to get the positions they want.

But another, but bigger than that is, they, they will present it omnibus bill the day before it's one to 2000 pages long. It has it's suppose 12 bills. Squeezed into one and they're holding the country hostage and they say, sign this. They say vote Yes on this by tomorrow morning or all the seniors are going to be kicked out of their facility.

All the veterans will start. They hold the country hostage. By presenting these bills at the last minute. And I am stubborn. I will vote. No. And I will tell them ahead of time. So they'll know that Natalie Fleming is going to vote No, you can count on that. If I don't have time to read it, I will vote. No.

So corruption, in DC, if you send somebody who's already conditioned, who's already been a Senator here or a representative here they're conditioned to comply with party. I will not comply. So that, those are my three big issues. Well, there's plenty more. I got issues.

You’ve mentioned community growth, do you have any specifics on how you would manage it in the long term?

So, the question you have asked me is how will I manage growth?

Now, personally, I perceived that as a local issue. Remember I mentioned that I do believe in getting the federal government out of the way, and that is a good way to manage growth. The federal government owns, I have this number in my head, I believe it is correct. Go ahead and fact, check me 63 or 61% of Idaho is owned by the federal government and they're doing a sucky job. They're terrible land managers. They're the ones who nuked Nevada. It kills the beavers, killed the Bison. Then the federal government we know in Idaho does a terrible job managing the land. Um, I would rather see poorly managed BLM land go for home development or. I hate to say this publicly. I do believe in homesteading, I'd like to insert five people in home and regenerative agriculture, holistic management, and after they qualify to either lottery or do small land grants so that they can rejuvenate the score, the soil, the federal government has been desert defying, the land.
That is a Sage brush areas of grassy grassy areas. And then of course they've been during the Bernie donor forest, so they don't know what they're doing. So, um, So as far as how to manage growth, um, that needs to be taken care of at the local level. And that needs to be done through giving the local governments power and control over their state. And I just see such an arrogance in DC on their attitude towards Idaho and federal lands. So.
Anyway, another big issue that is very important to me is a housing issue. Three years ago, I was telling people that Idaho was going to be in a massive housing crisis, uh, in 2008, 2007, when we had the last housing, but prior to the 2007, 2008 housing crisis, the federal government demanded that the mortgage companies go ahead and loan to the poor. The bank said, great. We're going to loan to the poor. We're just going to charge them three to 5% more. They can pay three to $500 more per month. Which of course set up the poor for failure. So when the poor fail, they said, see, it's irrational for us to loan to the poor. We shouldn't loan to them anymore. Then the federal guard that these homes that were foreclosed on prior to 2007, 2008, those homes would have gone to an online auction to a home auction. I bought my second home at a home auction with an owner occupied preference.

What that means is if you're going to move into the home, you get first been on these homes. Instead of continuing that program, all the foreclosed homes were put in package deals and sold to international equities firms in bulk, taken away out of the individual family market. And those homes are now being ready to us at inflated prices and massive international equity firms are going through different communities in buying the homes and math. They'll take a home that was previously rented for a thousand dollars, Polish it up a little bit and rent it out for $1,700. And because of their diversified market share across the country and across the world, they can drive up the prices in Caldwell and wait it out, um, I believe in individual homeownership. And if we, uh, when I, the more I read, the more I learned the angry or I get the more vicious I feel towards how I would handle these corporations in Congress. I believe that the best way to handle any crisis is if, if individuals own their homes, when you read the stories of the people who survived, the great depression, the people who own their home and had a garden, they did well.

And I do believe the 30 year mortgage has failed. And, um, I, I, all of my policies, these will be towards homeownership. The longer somebody rents, the sooner they become dependent upon the state for those rental payments, because people cannot rent forever. So we need to move all classes of people to personal homeownership, which is better than I don't believe in monopolies, whether it's a corporate monopoly or a government monopoly.

So I, I passionately need to fight for you so that you can own your homes.