Candidate for
United States Representative; District 16; Libertarian Party

Your Rights

The purpose of our government is:

• To secure your rights.

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"

Now you know my top priority from which all others flow. And what are those others? Here they are.

I will work to reinvigorate your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness by pursuing these goals:

Freedom

Your property belongs to you. I'll reverse the Kelo decision with legislation to stop eminent domain from being used to steal homes and businesses. I'll eliminate asset forfeiture, which is outright theft by the government.

Your money belongs to you. The government tosses away your hard-earned money worse than a million drunken fools. It rings up on credit enough to bankrupt the ten richest Americans in an instant. So the little you get to keep is inflated away. I'll cut government spending and return us to the Gold Standard -- a monetary system of non-inflatable specie. I'll work for our country's fiscal responsibility, remembering the physics laws of conservation. Any physicist, or economist, can tell you that you can't consume more than you produce.

Your body belongs to you. You must be free to consume whatever substances you choose for any peaceable purpose, whether for nutrition, entertainment, or medical use. Specifically, I'll end the War on Drugs and let the sick use medical marijuana as they need. You must be free to engage in any desired physical activity between or among mutually consenting adults, whether for intellectual discourse, fun, money, or any other reason. This includes the choice to marry whomever you choose regardless of what others prefer as their own spouses. Your marriage choice is nobody else's business.

Your personal protection belongs to you. You have the right to bear arms. You must be free to purchase and use guns for any peaceable purpose and for self-defense.

Your words belong to you. I'll stop censorship and government control of media. I'll introduce legislation to restore the parts of the First Amendment that the Supreme Court has eroded. I'll work to gut the FCC. Individuals must be free to choose the media they want to read, hear, watch, and purchase. The freedom and the responsibility belong to you. You must control your own channel selectors, browser addresses, and off switches, not your neighbor and not your government. If you don't like the words and images others present, don't watch or listen.

Your beliefs belong to you. We must have freedom of and from religion. Your government should not force someone else's religion down your throat, or pay for someone else's religion. Or compel anyone to follow the tenets of yours either. Your beliefs are for your personal life, your family, your home, and your house of worship--not to compel others by law to follow or act according to your strange beliefs. And yes, your beliefs are goofy to everyone else who doesn't share your particular religion.

Your choices belong to you. What should you be "allowed" to do? Anything that doesn't initiate force or fraud. You should have the choices and the responsibilities. I'll work to free you from the nanny state.

You privacy belongs to you. I'll work to put teeth and technology against spammers and information thieves, and to let you enjoy your home in peace. I'll close the do-not-call list loopholes.

Your basic liberties belong to you. I'll eliminate the so-called Patriot Act. You must be free from the police-state excesses of warrantless searches, invasions of privacy, electronic surveillance, and phony safety procedures. I'll restore judicial oversight, the writ of habeas corpus, and due process.

A Domestic Agenda

Life and Productivity. I hate death and taxes, and so do you. Let's fight against them together. You want to live in good health, and you want to prosper economically. I'll work to remove the impediments to sound medical policy and business prosperity. I'll focus national priority on curing cancer and AIDS and Alzheimers and Parkinsons instead of killing our global neighbors.

Employment. Very few of us are at the pinnacle of success. The rest fear for our jobs and the cost of food, housing, fuel, and medical care. Are you unemployed? Or underemployed? Or terrified that your job will disappear? Why is it so hard to find a job in this country? Because we have not made it a national priority to keep our workforce employed or to keep jobs in this country. I'll work for both.

Innovation. We have so many brilliant people -- clever and hard-working. We have tough problems to solve, so we must make innovation a greater national priority. I'll remove the unnecessary impediments to starting businesses. I'll encourage the connections that place new solutions in the face of our greatest problems. Why are we buying fuel from countries that despise us instead of farming fuel from genetically modified bacteria? Why does a non-polluting engine that would revolutionize the automotive world languish without clamorous public support? Why aren't we extracting oil from our vast stores of oil-shale? Why aren't we solving a hundred more solvable problems?

Education. Our nation is dumbing down. We must change the focus of education away from learning to pass standardized tests toward showing students how to think clearly and critically. We are bombarded with idiocy from our media, and the daily news is drivel. How can our youth succeed if they don't know how to quickly integrate the valuable, while dismissing the irrelevant?

International Policy

Stop engaging in foreign wars. We must disentangle ourselves from the Iraq war. It's long past time to stop being the world's policeman, especially in the guise of the world's crooked, incompetent cop. A sound policy for both domestic and international relationships: Mind Your Own Business!

War is Hell. When fighting a war to defend our country, we must fight to win. That means to destroy the enemy. They end -- the end.

The United Nations Is a Joke. We should give it no more respect than it deserves. It's an organization in which savages and barbarians have a vote and say equal to our own.

Stand on the Moral High Ground. We shouldn't torture captives, spy on our own citizenry, or hide behind dark secrets. We must be the shining example of national integrity. That calls for leaders to be shining examples of personal integrity.