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Is winning a principle or the result of following your principles?

By on May 10, 2010 in Elections, Republocrats

The republican choir keeps getting louder on the subject of “winning” in November. The fear of third party candidates, independent candidates, and rival republican candidates are getting the inside pundits nervous. Well, they should be. But what they don’t understand is that people are looking for principled candidate’s period. They have seen what happens even when republicans win; many abandon their principles.

That is the reason we are in this mess. The people “in charge” of producing candidates, have become corrupted in the pursuit of winning. So what is winning? In the Republican Party’s eyes it is having one more republican than democrat in congress so they can control the committees, and therefore the agenda. Based on Obama’s lightning bolt efforts to ruin this country that is not all bad. But if the people in Arizona elect John McCain, the man currently pretending to share conservative and limited government values, will we get a candidate for limited government? No way, he is the typical republican candidate willing to “compromise” to get legislation passed and frustrating the rest of us who want principled constitutional government.

The two parties are spending lavishly on themselves while the expansion of government continues. Eighty percent of Americans don’t trust the federal government and I would suggest that number is not far from what people think about the two parties. So what do we do?

Do we continue to vote for the lesser of two evils or do we purge the evil? We need to change the foundation of the way we elect candidates and it starts with principles. We need to find principled candidates and help them win. The culture in political parties is corrupt and we know it. We watch people giving large sums of money for access, and we watch party insiders spending that money on getting more money from big donors that have one principle in mind; their own interest. The money is poisonous, the backroom deals are criminal, and we are focused on winning. We are helping to elect people that are willing to compromise our principles for the good of a party.

Again I ask; is winning a principle or is it the result of following our principles? We can follow our principles but as our founders stated in the Declaration of Independence “we must mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor”… Our founders knew what principle was worth but do we?

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Sunday in CA – The Tenthers

By on April 23, 2010 in Announcements, Elections, Tenthers

This Sunday, Bryce Shonka and myself will be speaking about the 10th Amendment and Nullification to a group in Woodland Hills, CA (just north of Malibu).  Also confirmed for the event are a number of 2010 candidates, along with Senate candidate, Chuck DeVore.

Personally, I can’t wait until December…not just for my birthday, but because I’ll be happy when all this election pandering is over.  The last 100 years or longer have proven to us that it doesn’t matter who gets elected to D.C., it doesn’t matter what political party is in power, and it doesn’t matter who the president it – the power of the government grows year in and year out.

Voting the bums out just gives us new bums.  Period.

But, it will be interesting to hear Chuck speak.  He flat-out refused to sign our 10-4 pledge, something that JD Hayworth (challenging John McCain), John Dennis (challenging Nancy Pelosi), Ron Ramsey (TN Lt. Governor) and many others have signed – on the grounds that “the oath of office is all he needs to sign”

The problem though is pretty clear – politicians take that “oath” all the time, and it means nothing.  And the proof is in the $3+ trillion budget in Washington D.C. right now.  That’s why we have the pledge – to find out who REALLY stands up for the Constitution as the Founders and Ratifiers gave it to us, and not as the politicians and courts have twisted it to mean.

Here’s a little more on the event, from RedCounty:

On Sunday, the Ventura County Tea Party will join Senate Candidate Chuck DeVore for a lecture on the amendment, which reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

The idea of federalism was a pretty good one. States would be sovereign, linked together by a federal government that had jurisdiction over federal courts, an army, interstate commerce, and anything else outside state jurisdiction. The states would be free to largely make their own policy, and thrive or decline on the merits of those policies. Should states enact popular laws, other states would be incentivized to do the same to keep their citizens. Should a state enact unpopular laws, citizens would be compelled to flee into a state that better served their interests. States would, in effect, compete with each other through their policies.

Good public policy would spread, and bad public policy would recede. Each state would be a laboratory.

Click here to read the rest

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Tennessee Lt. Governor’s Ad Affirms Tenth Amendment Stance

By on April 19, 2010 in Elections, State Sovereignty

In his first TV ad for the Tennessee gubernatorial race, Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey let’s the feds know he is not afraid to “give them the boot.”

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Independent Thinkers Needed

By on April 12, 2010 in Activism, Elections

Thomas Jefferson was the epitome of independent thinking and was a political genius. His genius was his true understanding of human nature. Jefferson knew how groups of people that fomented mob mentality were a danger to individual liberty. He was a man of faith but knew how allowing the men of cloth to dominate political affairs was dangerous for individual liberty. He could separate his religious beliefs from civic principle. He knew morality was the foundation of our republic and that by keeping faith separate from government it would allow faith to flourish which in his mind would preserve the foundation of our representative republic and principles.

Jefferson believed that party politics was a natural outcome of any political argument or election, but he believed the inherent problem with parties was the undermining principle of group over individual. He was a thinker on every subject and I often wonder what he would have said about today’s two party system. Probably the same things he said in his day;

“I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.” –Thomas Jefferson to Francis Hopkinson, 1789.

I value his words and I share with you my reason for actively running unaffiliated from any party. It is not because I disagree with every issue being represented by party politics, it is because I like to think about issues and make choices that are not influenced by how they impact a political party, but how an issue impacts individual citizens. I believe there are more people that think like me but are addicted to the “machine” that has fueled party politics. That machine is mostly a fundraising mechanism. There are so many good people in the party system but I believe we are better served when we serve individual liberty over party unity. I am not alone and the numbers support my argument.

There are 1,078,896 Colorado residents that have chosen to be unaffiliated voters. Compared to people that have chosen the Democratic Party, 1,058,785 and 1,048,669 in the Republican Party. The Unaffiliated voter group is bigger than either party. These statistics from the Secretary of State’s office tell a story that must be told. We need to ask ourselves as voters why we continue to invest our votes in a party when we have chosen not to associate with that same party organization. This year I am doing my part to represent the unaffiliated voter; the largest group of voters in Colorado.

This is NOT a third party movement; it is a movement to elect candidates that are not tied to the special interests of either party. In the traditions of one of the greatest political thinkers of all time, Thomas Jefferson, I am reaching out to individual voters of every party to stand as Coloradans against the tyranny of an out of control federal government. We must rally around our founding principles and stop the division fueled by our party system.

The federal government has recently shown what they think of our rights and the constitution by shoving through the Healthcare bill against the will of the people. The next Governor is the best line of defense to reaffirm our constitution and to stop the federal government’s trampling of our rights. They are governing as if they have dictatorial power, and have unrestrained rights to force you into any program they choose. They can do this because of the way the party system has created the rules in congress; parties matter more than individual representatives. The constitution gives the congress the authority to set the rules of how the congress operates. The rules favor party politics over individual district representation. We have given the parties too much power at the federal level. They have the power to change it but they will not. That would mean that we would actually have true debate about ideas and issues instead of party line votes. That would mean we would have to elect thinkers to congress instead of party loyalists.

At the state level we don’t need political parties to elect good candidates. We only need voters willing to do their homework about what their choices are for candidates. You do have more than two choices in the 2010 election. I hope you think for yourself and do your homework…

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Tennessee Boasts 13 Signers of the 10-4 Pledge

By on April 7, 2010 in Elections

The Great State of Tennessee now boasts 13 signers of the Tenth Amendment Center’s 10-4 Pledge. By signing the 10-4 Pledge each candidate commits to uphold the U.S. Constitution and specifically the Tenth Amendment every decision, every time, no excuses. To read the pledge, visit http://pledge.tenthamendmentcenter.com.

Not all signed pledges have been posted on the site yet, but check back in the future to see the signed pledges from these candidates and elected officials.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THIS POST

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An Important Warning to Those Who Want Change in 2010!

By on April 4, 2010 in Elections

In recent days, we’ve seen a great deal of media focus on episodes (real or imagined) of threats, verbal abuse, vandalism, and violence purportedly coming from opponents of “health care reform.” My guess is that much of this focus on how evil those opponents are marks the beginning of a deliberate political campaign looking toward the 2010 elections.

They did it before, remember – in the 1990s.

As you well know if you are familiar with the history of the Left – or have dared to oppose its agenda publicly – threats, verbal abuse, vandalism, and violence are part of its stock in trade. (Think of the anti-globalization riots, for example.) But similar episodes from the Right are, at least in contemporary America, comparatively rare: When was the last time you saw vandalized property with a conservative message scrawled on it?

So why all the attention to rare episodes? In the 1990s, after Bill and Hillary Clinton tried to take over health care, public opinion swung strongly to the right. The GOP won a majority in the House of the Representatives for the first time in decades. Ratings soared for conservative talk radio. It looked like Clinton might lose his1996 bid for re-election.

Part of the Democratic counterattack was to try to tie mainstream conservatives with extremists such the Oklahoma City bomber and the Montana Freemen. Bill Clinton and others gave speeches on “hate” that tarred innocent people with the guilt of a handful of nuts. As a conservative candidate running in a 1996 Republican primary, I personally had to deal with this tactic.

The tactic was dirty, but it worked. It helped switch public opinion away from conservatives and back to the Left. Otherwise, Bill Clinton may not have won reelection and a Republican President and a conservative Congress might have trimmed the size of the federal government.

So if you want change in the 2010 elections, be very careful. Be confrontational if necessary, but say or do nothing they can possibly construe as threats, abuse, vandalism, or violence. Keep focused on the important issues. And be particularly wary of agents provocateurs and of people eager to divert your energy into illegal, impractical, or time-wasting projects.

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Ron Paul 2012?

By on March 11, 2010 in Elections

Here I figured out a way to ask this question that he couldn’t answer with “it’s too early to say….”

cross-posted from the LewRockwell.com Blog

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The Alternative to Universal Voter Registration

By on February 22, 2010 in Elections

In his recent talk at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, The Wall Street Journal‘s John Fund performed a public service in warning America of Democrats’ plans for universal voter registration, or UVR. It may sound like a just and decent thing to advocate, but UVR is nothing less than a means for Democrats to pack the electorate and facilitate election shenanigans. I know this to be true because I’m a computer programmer, and it’s the job of guys like me to ensure the integrity of information, a.k.a. data. For the Information Technology professional, voter registries are nothing but data.

Voter registration is a problem with a purely technological solution. UVR is not a technological solution. UVR complicates what is a very simple problem. The problem with UVR is that it creates yet another mandate on the states, involving several state agencies; entails much work, much of which is duplicative; and uses multiple sources of data, which any I.T. pro will tell you is nutty.

But Mr. Fund’s jeremiad would never have been necessary had America decades ago adopted “automatic registration,” or AR. AR is the anti-UVR. Both AR and UVR seek to register everybody, but AR actually does it, and does it cleanly, without duplicate registrations, and with far, far less work. UVR is hit and miss, and cannot by its nature ensure that all citizens will be registered correctly, or even at all, whereas AR can.

For some time now, I’ve been writing about AR and other election reform ideas. Even though softened for non-technical types and sprinkled with liberal doses of what I call “humor,” my articles probably suffered from terminal tediousness and might have been a wee bit longish. So, here’s the gist of AR in one sentence:

Computer programs read through the Social Security Administration database, extract the data of age-eligible citizens, then send that data to the states.

Voila! Why make mandates on all those state agencies and dragoon all that manpower entailed by UVR when a computer program can register everyone? A competent programmer could write the extract program in his sleep.

But, there’s a little more to AR than just an extract program. For what the states would receive from the feds would be raw voter registries, and a state might need to update its raw voter registry for it to be consistent with state election laws. This would consist only of deleting registrations, not adding them. Under AR, the only responsibility left to the states in voter registration would be in maintaining ineligibility lists. If states kept such ineligibility lists as computer files, they could apply those files to their raw registries and be ready for an election in no time.

But the progressives pushing UVR want nothing to do with ineligibility lists; they wanteverybody to have the vote, including felons. Voter eligibility, however, is partly a matter of state election law. Currently, only two states allow incarcerated felons to vote, Vermont and Maine. So, UVR tramples all over states’ sovereignty.

With AR, voter registration is reduced to nothing more than keeping the feds updated about one’s address. We already do this when we file our income taxes and remit our quarterly payments. So we’re already automatically updating the feds’ databases in our other interactions with the feds. And there are means to update one’s address directly at any time, such as Form 8822. The Social Security Administration even allows folks to change their addresses using the Internet.

Conservatives may worry that with the entire citizenry registered to vote, AR might well spell the end for them. This fear is unwarranted: America remains a center-right country. Even Massachusetts, the bluest of states, will elect an advocate of limited government like a Scott Brown. The bigger threat to conservatism comes from election fraud and behind-the-scenes theft, which UVR (as well as the current system) makes possible. Correct voter registration is the single most important factor in eliminating fraud.

UVR stinks on ice. Even if one were to be charitable about the motives of those pushing it, UVR is still a prescription for election chaos. Its potential for error (not to mention the work involved) is actually worse than what we have. AR is the way to go.

(This 2-minute video is an excerpt of John Fund’s talk at the Horowitz center. For all four videos, click here. The fourth video is the source of the excerpt.)

Read more about AR here, and then click on the link at the end.

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Debra Medina on Texas Sovereignty and More

By on February 4, 2010 in Elections, State Sovereignty

Debra Medina interviewed by Alex Jones “I Will Be A Governor For The People”

Part 1:

Part 2:

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VA 5th District GOP Candidates Take the 10th

By on February 3, 2010 in Elections, Politicians, Sovereignty Movement

There’s a horse race afoot in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. No less than seven candidates are vying to run against vulnerable freshman Democrat Tom Perriello.

Six of them because they feel that the GOP’s anointed nominee, State Senator Robert Hurt, lacks the fortitude to champion small government in Washington. Considering that in 2004 Hurt supported then-Governor Mark Warner’s largest tax increase in VA history, it’s hard to argue with their logic.

But of course anybody can go to Washington promising tax cuts; it takes a true constitutionalist to point out that the federal government itself is the problem.

The real question is: Where do these candidates stand on the 10th Amendment?

Fortunately, the Schilling Show, a talk radio program in central Virginia has asked that question of each prospective candidate and posted their responses on its website.

Here’s a sample.

Laurence Verga:

If elected your Congressman I vow to do everything in my power to restore the proper Constitutional balance between the rights of the states and those of the federal government.

I am the only candidate who has signed a written pledge to uphold the 10th amendment. I challenge my opponents to do so as well if they want to take the amendment seriously.

Jim McKelvey:

The founders included the tenth amendment to help all of us understand where the power lies, powers that the Constitution did not impart on the government. It is clear and direct; it needs no interpretation, but it does need defending.

Robert Hurt:

[A]s a member of the Virginia General Assembly, I have cosponsored legislation that seeks to challenge the authority of the federal government to enact an unconstitutional federal takeover of our healthcare system. If elected to Congress, I pledge that I will continue to fight to reduce the size and influence of the federal government and to restore this country’s founding principles.

They all sound pretty good. But voters in the June 8th primary election will have to decide who is serious and who is just playing politics.

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