TAKE IT BACK IN 2010!

Are you interested in running for office yourself or helping a great candidate? Join us on February 6th, 2010 at the Quality Inn (2444 Maple Avenue) in Burlington, 9am to 6pm, for a training opportunity for those who wish to learn how to run as a successful candidate or become a more effective local organizer.

Our seminar will cover requirements for filing for office and steps to build the foundations of a solid campaign or local organization. These fundamentals will prepare you to be successful as the year builds to Election Day 2010, when we ask our fellow citizens to help us take our government back! Speakers will include Barbara Howe, chair of the LPNC, and Mike Munger, 2008 candidate for governor.

Pre-register online (http://www.lpnc.org/workshop.php) or by mail for $15.00. Registration at $40.00 includes a copy of Catherine Shaw’s highly recommended book, “The Campaign Manager”(4th edition). Pre-register by January 29 to receive book.

Same day registration will be available at the door for $20.

For more information contact Matt Reeps at lpncpd@gmail.com

10 Reasons Politics Should Be Held Accountable

I was sitting here the other day and the idea for an article just came to me…

What constitutes politics? Are these politicians snapshots of the American experience or are they the offerings of parties bent on further pushing the envelope?

Politics have penetrated all manner of news lately. It appears that those who would seek a short cut to fame and fortune need only find a way to crash through the constitutional barriers that are supposed to limit government; pretend a child’s life is in peril or have an inordinate amount of breast cancer screenings. I suggest that there are 10 reasons that politicians should be held accountable:

1.They reduce human emotions to ratings.
2.They appeal to our lowest instincts.
3.They set up a dangerous reward system.
4.They take advantage of people’s desperation.
5.They promote notoriety without responsibility.
6.They give place to those who seek unmerited honor.
7.They contribute to the delinquency of our national conscience.
9.They glamorize dysfunction.
10.They pad the pockets of those who place political gain over values.

What constitutes politics? Are these politicians snapshots of the American experience or are they the offerings of parties bent on further pushing the envelope? Whereas those who willingly participate in such politics are placing themselves in a position to be exploited, there is a larger responsibility that rests with those who provide an atmosphere for such exploitation and who politically profit from the suffering of others.

Although not all politicians are devoid of values, such politics often succumb to the need to shock and awe viewers for the sake of poll ratings. As long as there is an appetite for such politics on the part of the general public, there will be an ample supply. Politicians will seek the rewards that come with breaching constitutional protections and worse.

Unfortunately, as I did a little back checking, I realized that someone else had already had the same idea for an article. The weird thing is, it appeared that they took my same article and just replaced politics with reality TV. Very spooky! The other weird thing is, if you do that, the article still makes sense. Totally bizarre!

By Bill Shuler – FOXNews.com http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/12/06/shuler-reason-reality-tv-salahis/ (note: Of course the article was originally penned by Mr. Shuler, and is his property.)

Dr. Mike Beitler Speaking at the Charlotte End the Fed rally on 11-22-09 Part 1 of 2

Dr. Mike Beitler Speaking at the Charlotte End the Fed rally on 11-22-09 Part 2 of 2

URGENT NOTICE (or Get Crackin’ People)

Libertarians all over North Carolina should be taking notice. According to Congress and the Obama administration, great successes have been had with the stimulus bill. The reason this is important to the Libertarian Party is because studying the stimulus results allowed us to discover a number of congressional districts that the LP has not previously run a candidate in.

The LP should immediately begin canvassing for candidates for the following congressional districts:
37th
86th
24th
00th
91st

There is a possibility that candidates may end up running unopposed! We presume that is a possibility, since these districts did not previously exist and were created through the magic of the stimulus plan.

The party must act quickly though. In New Hampshire, Republicans have already begun to gobble up these new districts. Republican Grant Bosse formally declared his candidacy today in New Hampshire’s 00th Congressional District. Clearly, you snooze, you lose!

Now, you have to understand, they are trying to erase all evidence of these new districts before we can win those seats. They have changed the information since they realized we were paying attention.

Having said that, the information they made up to replace the previous information seems just as unlikely.

Here’s a fun comparison. As of today, they claim that North Carolina has created or saved 28,073.5 jobs at a cost of $4,302,734,742.00 which comes out to $153,266.77 per job. Make of that what you will. One single city seems to have done much better, given it’s size.

Washington D.C. is reported to have created or saved 2,274.2 jobs. Granted, that part does not sound nearly as impressive, but they received $2,792,048,590.00 to do so. That equates to $1,227,705.83 per job. I want one of THOSE jobs! Any coincidence that Congress has an office in that city? Nope, I don’t know either.

Meanwhile, please take a moment to examine the alleged top 20 recipients of stimulus money here in North Carolina to date.
Top Recipients Amount
TRANSPORTATION, NORTH CAROLINA DEPT $612,858,832
GOVERNOR’S OFFICE $552,674,104
CRIME CONTROL AND PUBLIC SAFETY $334,990,016
PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, NORTH CAROLINA DEPT $314,516,902
HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES, NC DEPT $254,412,525
UNIVERSITY OF NC AT CHAPEL HILL $114,001,348
ADMINISTRATION, NORTH CAROLINA DEPT OF $98,845,382
DUKE UNIVERSITY $92,618,770
ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES, NC DEPT$69,767,164
CMS SCHOOLS BOARD OF EDUCATION $62,274,557
WAKE COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM $58,743,910
NORTH CAROLINA HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY $52,152,687
CHARLOTTE, CITY OF $43,741,631
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY $36,342,048
GUILFORD COUNTY SCHOOL SYSTEM $34,651,327
VETERANS AFFAIRS, NORTH CAROLINA DIVISION $26,752,362
CUMBERLAND COUNTY SCHOOLS $26,552,992
WINSTON-SALEM/FORSYTH COUNTY SCHOOLS $26,050,167
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY $24,628,806

I will be happy to entertain your observations, but the thing that first occurs to me is that the money is largely funding budget items that our taxes have already been paying for. No wonder it is not creating jobs. This government spending is largely going to other government spending, none of which is supporting real business or job creation.

I wonder what the City of Charlotte has really done with that 43 million? I wonder if we can track that down. They presumably have not given it to CMS, which got 62 million of it’s own. How many jobs are the universities going to create? People pay to go there, not nearly so many get paid to. How many jobs were counted as created because NC State remodeled the library? Clearly that would not be a real job, just something for some existing company to do for a few weeks. Seriously?

Meanwhile, this is all deficit spending. None of this money exists. None of it comes from some fund. This means that your taxes have already gone to fund these things, then you will be paying more in taxes and inflation to pay for all this imaginary spending later. Sorry, the spending is not imaginary, just the money. Until economic reality catches up.

If you want to hand out imaginary money, at least give it to me. At about 2700 dollars per person, that would have created some serious consumer spending! I’m poor! Since I have a family of five, I could have done a lot with 13,500 dollars! We need a second car around here, darn it!

Yes, in case you missed that, the stimulus alone has cost every man, woman, and child 2700 dollars each. That works out to about 8000 dollars per actual taxpayer. Much worse if you understand that many poor taxpayers get back more than they actual pay. So figure if you make more than 25,000 dollars a year, you are probably more in the range of having 12 to 16,000 dollars added to your tax burden.

That’s one stimulus bill! Just one. That does not count TARP, Auto bailouts, the federal budget… You know, the little details. I will say it again, the calculator is your friend. Pick one up!

A Tale Of Two Cities (or Geopolitics in The Twilight Zone)

I often enjoy starting my day with a nutritional and stimulating bowl of irony. Needless to say, I am well fueled for the day ahead! Two items caught my attention that left me shaking my head just a bit.

Beijing and Washington, two cities combining for a geopolitical double take. Over the weekend, we heard word from the communist government of China that we are mismanaging our economy. Yes, you read that right. A communist country told us that we should be more responsible with our economy. Somehow the thought of communists giving us economic advice seems very much like Bob Ueker offering batting lessons. (sorry Bob)

The dreadful part of the situation is, the criticisms were not far off the mark. Liu Mingkang, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, said that a weak U.S. dollar and low U.S. interest rates had led to “massive speculation” that was inflating asset bubbles around the world. It has created “unavoidable risks for the recovery of the global economy, especially emerging economies,” Liu said.

The situation is “seriously impacting global asset prices and encouraging speculation in stock and property markets.” (credit to the WSJ for the quotations)

No doubt, a great deal of their concern stems from their reliance on our economy to prop up their own statist economy, occasional dabbling in attempted capitalism aside. Their investment in our debt and the massive trade imbalance, in their favor, is what allows the communists to appear to grow their economy.

Meanwhile, in Gotham… Or more properly Shanghai… president Obama addressed the Chinese. He used a few of those moments to advise the Chinese on free speech. He said tough criticisms of political leaders should be allowed and the free flow of information on the Internet “should be encouraged.” This while The Cybersecurity Act makes it’s way through Congress with his support.

“I’m a big supporter of non-censorship,” Obama said. “I recognize that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet—or unrestricted Internet access is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged.” This while the Internet Freedom Preservation Act and net neutrality also pass through Congress with similar enthusiasm. The names of these bills being somewhat ironic themselves.

He tells the Chinese that he believes in free discussion because it makes him, “a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.” This while being quite comfortable deciding what networks his administration will not appear on and who is a “real” news operation.

On one hand, he lobbies the Chinese to be open to 1st amendment rights, while actively lobbying to further limit them at home. Perhaps these two cities will meet somewhere in the middle. I have to hope not though.

All I know is, I have a my big heaping bowl of irony to help me start my day.

Video Available on demand, Senate candidate, Dr. Mike Beitler

“Senate Candidate Dr Mike Beitler Speaks On Liberty Principles At Campbell U. 11/3/2009″ is available at The Liberty Blog’s Livestream Channel. Select the “on demand” video button at the bottom of the video player. Go to:
http://www.livestream.com/libertycharlotte

What Could the Stimulus Have Actually Done? (or I’ve Got Your Bailout Right Here Buddy!)

A calculator. A simple calculator. Go ahead, pick one up. Bring up the one on your computer. That calculator is your friend. If you can stand to do it, it can reveal the lie in virtually every statement made by your politicians. They can promise this or that, but the numbers are what they are, no matter how you try to twist words. You can argue the definition of “is”, but “5” is still “5”.

Congress has recently grabbed a mind boggling amount of money from us. They confiscated about 1.5 trillion dollars between the bailout and the stimulus. They told us it would save the economy and save our jobs. It was a lie. The reality stares us down every day. Only those who in denial, like the parent who is positive the needle and spoon are for their child’s cooking class, won’t see.

It’s time for an intervention. Obama claims the stimulus saved or created 300,000 jobs? Others say it did nothing. Even the most optimistic claims pale in comparison to the number of jobs lost. It failed. It did not do what it was claimed to do. If you assume that those in the federal government are not simply misguided 13 year olds, then they deliberately lied. It made no sense then, it has produced no results now.

Now, pick up your calculator. It’s time to expose the power of that amount of money. It’s time to see what they could have done, if they had chosen to. Though it still would have been unconstitutional.

Type in 1.5 trillion. Divide that by 50,000 (the amount of a good paying job plus benefits). You got 30 million, didn’t you? In October of last year, 10 million people were out of work. This October the number was over 15 million. That is 5 million jobs lost! Take that combined 1.5 trillion and you could have given those 10 million people a great paying job for 3 years. You could still give all of our current unemployed folks a job for the next two years. Or you could just give everyone who is currently unemployed 100,000 dollars each. Now there’s some stimulus!

Hell, that could be a 5,000 dollar check for every man, woman, and child in the United States! (assuming a population of about 300 million) How is it that this stunning amount of money did not help?

You want to know how much money 1.5 trillion is, aside from over half of the federal annual budget? (Only half, if Obama has his way) Take the 50 largest cities in the United States, by population. ( http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763098.html ) Put that 1.5 trillion in an annuity account. If that amount could buy you about a 5% interest rate, the interest alone would pay the bloated city budgets of cities from #6 to #50 (Charlotte is 20th).

Yes, 45 of our country’s 50 largest cities could be “economic liberty zones”, where no taxes of any kind were collected. The full city budgets solely paid for by interest, in perpetuity! What business would not relocate to a city where there were no business taxes, no property taxes, no local sales tax, etc. Now that’s how you grow local business!

In case you are wondering, interest from 40 billion would pay for Charlotte’s budget completely. No more taxes or fees necessary. We could even have the trolley. That’s the power of the money stolen from us! That’s how much could be done with the money they took from us this past year for bailouts and stimuli! That’s what was not done. The situation continues to get worse. How quickly do you think things might have improved if they did any of these things?

Obama wants next year’s federal budget to be 3 trillion. Some Republicans might argue a bit, but they will probably help give it to him.

Get out your calculator, the 1.5 trillion that could have done all of these things is only HALF of what they will be confiscating from us next year.

You do the math…

Without Power There Can Be No Corruption

by Brian Irving
Press Secretary
North Carolinians for Free and Proper Elections

Just as predictable as the media’s “gotcha” coverage whenever a politician gets caught cheating or stealing is the inevitable call by political reform groups for more laws to prevent such abuse in the future and for “better” ways of financing campaigns. They ignore warning from our nations Founders’ who understood that the more corrupt a State the more it legislates.

More laws aren’t the answer to corruption because most of our current elected “leaders” bend, twist or simply ignore the law whenever it suits them. Witness all the “I don’t recall” and “I can’t remember” responses during the recent State Board of Elections hearing, or Governor Perdue’s response to the court-ordered release of convicts.

It’s pointless – and disingenuous – however to propose that forcing taxpayers to fund political campaigns they don’t agree with will promote honesty. Compelling anyone to pay for something they oppose is not just dishonest and corrupt, it is immoral.

“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical,” as Thomas Jefferson put it.

Corruption stems not from lobbyists money but from taxpayer money. As long as government isn’t limited in what it can spend your money on there will always be people who will find a way to get the politicians to spend it on them.

Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.” The corollary to this is that without power there can be no corruption for the politician has nothing to sell.

The absolute corruption of absolute power is evident in North Carolina government. Taxpayer-funded elections would only further strengthen the absolute power of the Democrat-Republican duopoly that wields on iron grip on state government by manipulating the law to favor supporters, reward cronies and thwart any third party or independent candidate who challenges that control.

Government is no longer about protecting individual liberty and promoting personal responsibility, it’s about “what’s in it for me” and “how much can I get.”

The framers of our nation’s Constitution understood that power corrupts, which is why they set up a government with specific and limited powers. As James Madison put it, “the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Modern political satirist P.J. O’Rouke put it another way: “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

If you reduce government power and restore the concept of limited government our nation was founded on, you eliminate the opportunity for corruption. Of course, the major party duopoly is not interested in reducing their power. That is why North Carolina has the most restrictive ballot access laws in the nation.

Any non-Demopublican or independent candidate must collect 80,000 or more signatures to qualify for the ballot. That takes time and money. Once they have climbed that mountain they can start running a campaign. That is, if they have not exhausted all their volunteers, resources and energy just getting to the starting line. It’s like asking an athlete to run a marathon before entering 100 meter race.

Real campaign finance reform will begin the ballot box when Libertarians, Greens, Constitution and independent candidates can challenge the two-party state in a race without first having to have run a marathon.

North Carolinians for Free and Proper Elections is a non-partisan state Political Action Committee dedicated to free, equal and proper elections in a state that has a history of restrictive ballot access laws.

Brian Irving is a board member and press secretary for North Carolinians for Free and Proper Elections. The retired U.S. Air Force captain lives in Cary.

-30-

NCFPE-PAC
2206 Planters Way Lenoir NC 28645
(828) 729-4509

Ghosts of Universities Past (or Wanna See the Future? Go Back to College)

You may have noticed that, among the RSS feeds on the sidepanel here, you will find a feed for F.I.R.E. or The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. They are an organization dedicated to being a watchdog and defender for people’s constitutional rights in educational settings, particularly in our nation’s government subsidized universities.

While the fight against the erosion of our civil rights may seem to be in Raleigh and Washington, the real front lines are in the schools. You can see our future on the campus right now.

You may vaguely recall the 60’s. The radicalization of the nation’s campuses. The free speech movement. The anti-war movement. The civil rights movement. These movements, regardless of the positives that may have resulted in some areas of civil liberties, were largely agitated by extreme socialists. Our youth and our campuses because their natural home and recruiting ground. This shift predicted the mainstreaming of the radical left within our political framework. Their cause was not civil rights, but socialist revolution disguised as “social justice.”

Once again, you can see our future by examining most any college campus. The very same people who participated in those movements, in their youth, now show us what the next evolution will be. Once again, our campuses are the test beds and front lines in mainstreaming our social and political future.

This is why I include FIRE among my feeds. FIRE is on those front lines right now, today. When one complains about “big government” and an erosion of our constitutional liberties, look at FIRE’s case files to see where things are going. The future is not nebulous and unknowable. You can watch it happening.

If you can’t imagine what a socialist/fascist revolution would do to our country and your life, pick up a book. It’s been done before. It’s still being done. There is no mystery, no need to guess at what would happen.

Trying to figure out what the socialized healthcare currently proposed by congress would result in? Forget the CBO, look around you. It’s been done before, it’s still being done. People from other countries who have experienced these things come here. They vote with their feet. China does not have an immigration problem, we do. Russia does not have an immigration problem, we do. There are no boat people trying to reach Iran . There are no people jumping fences to enter North Korea . People do not get a visa to visit Quebec for a life saving operation.

You need only look around. Fortunately, if you want to see the future of our civil rights, your field trip does not need to take you nearly as far. You only need to go as far as your nearest public university.

One of the most egregious examples is provided to us by the University of Delaware. Not content to wait for thought crimes to happen, they brought the political re-educations camps to the dorm rooms. U of D attempted to use the same types of groupthink psychology that cults and dictatorships have used for years beyond count. Read about this particular story here.

One of the most visible and common types of suppression comes in the form of “free speech zones”. This is where a select and out of the way area is set aside for “free speech”, and often you must apply for permission to use even that space for it’s stated purpose. Read about a recent case involving this issue here.

Even simple freedom of association is being broken down. Imagine the Libertarian party allowing anyone to join the party, but requiring that one must actually be a Libertarian to serve in a leadership role. Sounds fairly normal, doesn’t it? Imagine the government stepping in an requiring the LP to allow a communist party member to be in an LP leadership position. This is what universities try to do to unpopular groups on campus. You have an even shorter drive to find an excellent example of this issue. Try a trip to UNC. Here’s a shortcut.

You may already be able to think of some examples of how these tactics have been used, in the larger world, to chip away at our liberty. If you ever wondered what might be next, look to the campus. It is the incubator and laboratory for these tactics and trends. No crystal ball required.

If it ever occurs to you, please take a moment to send a letter to FIRE. I believe they deserve our support as they fight for our liberty on the front lines. Where creative ways to limit our liberties are being tested right now… Your local university.