Category: elections

Only Bob Barr Will CUT Federal Spending

As I write this, the U.S. Treasury lists the total public debt at $9.8 trillion. The amount held by the public (which means money the government owes to any entity outside the United States Government, such as individuals, corporations, state or local governments, or foreign governments) is $5.7 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office projects that number to increase to $7.9 trillion by the year 2018. These projections cannot predict every future war, natural disaster or economic “bailout” that could add further to the debt.

In short, the federal government is chin-deep in debt and sinking. What is needed now is bold action, forward-thinking leadership and tough decisions. Thankfully, both of the “big box” party candidates, Obama and McCain, are promising “change.”

How do these two crafty politicos plan on getting the government out of this quicksand bed of debt? By increasing spending of course! A recent analysis of the spending proposals of the presidential candidates by the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) showed that McCain’s proposals would boost federal spending by $92 billion per year. That IS a lot, but it’s a paltry sum compared to Obama’s planned $293 billion increase in annual spending.

Of the candidates researched by the NTU, only Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr would actually CUT federal spending. A Barr presidency would cut annual spending by about $201 billion. The biggest savings would come from restructuring the mission of the military from imperial maintenance duties to actual national defense, closing many foreign bases while maintaining a strong military. The next largest savings would be from eliminating the federal Dept. of Education, putting education back in the hands of the states, localities and the people (as the Constitution stipulates).

“Both the McCain and Obama campaigns have tried to keep pace with the political issues of the day — largely by responding with proposals for new programs and regulations that could reach deeper and deeper into taxpayers’ pockets,” NTU Foundation policy analyst Demian Brady said. “On the other side of the spectrum, Bob Barr’s Libertarian philosophy is strongly reflected in a platform that is built upon cutting programs and slashing spending.”

If you believe that during this fiscal crisis the federal government should be tightening its belt, rather than bellying up to the table for seconds, you need to vote for Bob Barr for president. When the spending increases of the two big box candidates necessitate tax increases down the road, hold on to your wallet! To avoid getting your pocket picked later, get your wallet out now and donate to Barr’s campaign to close the book on the era of big government.

Putting Lipstick on the Common Man

There are a lot of things I like about Sarah Palin. She’s pro-Second Amendment. Deservedly or not, she’s got a reputation for fighting wasteful government spending and corruption. Deservedly or not, she’s got a reputation as a tax-cutter. She’s pro-life. (By the way, I think the hypocrisy of the left is on full display on that issue. The liberals, who mindlessly “celebrate diversity” and pride themselves on being the defenders of the weak and downtrodden, stammer in stunned disbelief that Palin knowingly birthed a Down syndrome child who would be “different,” rather than killing him in the womb. O. compassionate liberals!) I like Palin‘s stance on many, but not all, issues.

Besides mere policy preferences, there seems to be other, elemental reasons why Palin is causing many disaffected voters, myself included, to take a second look at the GOP. Since she has a well-armed husband, I’ll stick with the political ones.

Steven F. Hayward hypothesizes in The Weekly Standard that the alternate elation and revulsion to Palin’s nomination is part of a larger civic debate going back to the very founding of the republic. “Lurking just below the surface of the second-guessing about Sarah Palin’s fitness to be president,” he writes, “is the serious question of whether we still believe in the American people’s capacity for self-government, what we mean when we affirm that all American citizens are equal, and whether we tacitly believe there are distinct classes of citizens and that American government at the highest levels is an elite occupation.” Essentially, the debate is: Should ours be a government “of the people, for the people, by the people,” or should it be an oligarchy ruled by an elite minority? Libertarians like myself obviously prefer the former.

This debate was on full display when the idea was floated to crown General Washington king after the revolution. The framers of the Constitution struck a balance between the two opposing viewpoints by giving us the “people‘s house” (the House of Representatives) and the Senate, supposedly populated by sage old gentlemen. The debate is still alive today. Sometimes it is ridiculously obvious, such as when the panting press refers to the Kennedys as “America’s Royal Family,” but usually it’s couched in rhetoric about “experience” or “qualification.” It is behind the visceral dislike of Sarah Palin, as well as the visceral fondness for her.

The three other principals in this race- Obama, Biden and McCain- have not experienced the same questioning of whether or not they’re “qualified” to be president as has Palin. (Although, with only two years in the Senate, Obama has had his “experience” questioned somewhat.) That’s probably because the three men rose through “proper” channels to attain their societal rank. Although our ideas about our ruling elite are somewhat more egalitarian than the royal houses of Europe, there are still rules and velvet ropes controlling entry into that class.

Barack Obama attained his stature in the ruling class through a common avenue: Ivy League education. Obama attended Harvard Law School and Columbia University. In Ivy League schools, students are not only instilled with a sense of elitism, they are given the social networking to back it up. A self-described underperforming student, Obama’s vice president nominee Joe Biden didn’t go to an Ivy League school but Syracuse University College of Law, still none too shabby.

Family tradition charted a much tougher route into elite circles for John McCain, via the U.S. military. Although the military is mostly comprised of working-class heroes, McCain served in the Navy not as a common sailor but as a third generation Naval officer with an admiral daddy and a legacy ticket into the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. (This is not to denigrate McCain’s military service. Even when you’re a legacy, wartime service is no walk in the park, as McCain’s four and a half years of torment at the hands of the enemy demonstrates.)

Despite their varied paths into the ruling class, all three men ended up in the ultimate repository of the cultural elite, the U.S. Senate. Only the Presidency itself is more coveted by the elitists, which explains why so many Senators chase that office like ravenous dogs every four years.

Sarah Palin’s resume stands in stark contrast with the princely pedigrees of the three “distinguished gentlemen” of the Senate. The daughter of a teacher and a secretary, Palin received her college education in small, financially manageable bites at places like North Idaho College and the University of Idaho, far from the ivory towers of the Ivy League. She has never been married to a U.S. President (unlike certain other lady members of the ruling elite) but is married to an oilfield roughneck and commercial fisherman. Being rolled-up sleeves jobs like small town mayor, Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commissioner, and Governor of Alaska, the political positions she’s held were important but are not highly regarded by the national elite.

Although I like Palin, there is no v.p. pick in the world who could make this libertarian vote for the authoritarian McCain. But I do find myself drawn to the idea of Sarah Palin, because the “common man” in this election is the woman.

Iowans Should Support Bob Barr For President

With their respective candidates for president the Democrats and Republicans have given the American electorate a clear and meaningful choice to make: Vanilla or French vanilla? But before you flip a coin and enter the voting booth, you should know that there IS a third choice. Former U.S. Representative Bob Barr is running for president for the Libertarian Party.

Bob Barr was born in Iowa City in 1948 and spent much of his youth in places like Malaysia, Panama, and pre-revolution Iran where his father took civil engineering jobs. He earned a degree in International Affairs from George Washington University in 1972 and a law degree from Georgetown University in 1977.

From 1970 to 1978 Barr worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. He was a U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1986 to 1990. He then served as president of the Southeastern Legal Foundation which supports “the principles of limited government and individual freedom.” Barr has worked with groups as seemingly divergent as the American Conservative Union and the ACLU.

In 1994 Barr was elected to the U.S. House of Representative for Georgia’s 7th District during the “Republican Revolution.” He served on the Judicial Committee, Committee on Financial Services, Committee on Veteran’s Affairs and as Vice-Chairman of the Government Reform Committee. He led the charge to impeach Bill Clinton for committing perjury and later became a vocal critic of President Bush’s erosion of due process protections, showing that Bob Barr doesn’t like Executive excesses regardless of party.

In 2006 Barr officially joined the Libertarian Party. In May of 2008 he became the Libertarian Presidential Nominee. This may be a banner year for Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party as there seems to be growing frustration with the present mess created by the two ruling parties.

The young people now arriving on the political scene (who grew up with their choice of hundreds of TV channels, soda pop, etc…) are particularly dismayed with the lack of choice that the two-party duopoly offers them. They are also disgusted that they are already being saddled with the yoke of a crushing public debt that they didn’t create. Bob Barr offers them at least one more choice and he wants to cut government spending before Congress can completely destroy their future.

Goldwater/Reagan/Ron Paul Republicans who believe in smaller, Constitutional government are also frustrated with their current choices. While in charge of the federal government’s purse strings the GOP increased non-defense and non-security spending by so much that they made the Democrats look like penny-pinchers (which is no small feat). The Republican presidential candidate John McCain voted against the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and supports a “cap-and-trade” (tax) on American industry. At a time when the overtaxed and overregulated U.S. economy is barely keeping its head above water, cap-and-trade would be like throwing it an anchor.

Bob Barr not only supports cutting taxes, he wants to completely overhaul the tax system and abolish the 16th Amendment (which authorizes the income tax). He would drastically cut federal spending and work for freer markets, not more regulations.

Many Democrats are disgusted with their party as well. Their candidates talk a good game about civil liberties and ending the war in Iraq while they’re at fundraisers and rallies, but don’t actually do anything about it when they get back to DC and even collaborate with the Bush administration on things like domestic spying.

Bob Barr would remove our troops from Iraq. While maintaining a strong military, he would reorient it toward its original mission: Defend America. And Barr’s fight against the increasingly Orwellian surveillance-state has earned him a reputation as one of the nation’s leading advocates of privacy rights.

Gun owners also face an odious choice with the two major parties. Despite his rhetoric, Barack Obama is clearly an anti-gun zealot. Unfortunately, John McCain isn’t much better.

The McCain-Feingold Act specifically sought to muzzle groups like the NRA from criticizing anti-gun candidates. NRA’s Wayne LaPierre called it “the most significant change in the First Amendment since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which tried to make it a crime to criticize a member of Congress.” The earlier McCain-Lieberman Gun Show bill supposedly sought to close the imaginary “gun show loophole,” but Second Amendment scholar Dave Kopel pointed out that the bill was “loaded with poison pills which would allow a single appointed official to prevent any gun show, anywhere in the United States from operating.”

McCain supported Bill Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees, who both recently voted AGAINST the Second Amendment in the case of DC v. Heller. McCain even did TV commercials for an anti-gun group. These and other actions earned McCain a grade of “F minus” from Gun Owners of America and the NRA’s official journal called him “one of the premier flag carriers for the enemies of the Second Amendment.”

Bob Barr is a committed supporter of the Second Amendment. The Libertarian Party was the only political party to file a legal brief in the Heller case, urging the Supreme Court to strike down the DC gun ban and uphold the Second Amendment. This brief was written by… Bob Barr. Rather than trying to torpedo the NRA, Bob Barr serves on its board of directors. Barr states his position succinctly, “I oppose any law requiring registration of, or restricting the ownership, manufacture, or transfer or sale of firearms or ammunition to law-abiding citizens.”

On these and other issues, you DO have a choice. When offered only vanilla or French vanilla, it’s time for a new ice cream shop. If you’re one of the many people disaffected by the “lesser of two evils” two-party system, please check out the Libertarian Party at http://www.lp.org/ and visit Bob Barr at http://www.bobbarr2008.com/.