I am a Libertarian. I have been voting over 50 years. I am also a recovering Republican, but in my 12 Step Program, I have been unable to proceed beyond Step 8: Making a list of all persons I have harmed by my votes for Republicans (and several Democrats). We have been ruled, not governed, for too long by only two parties, and today even our grandchildrens financial futures are now in doubt. We all get what we deserve when voting or not voting in national elections. The same is true for the Republicans in the 4th District House race on Tuesday.
It would be great if we could vote for candidates A or B or C for their positions on limited state government and personal liberty. We could focus on the long term effects to our state of issues they support. But we don’t, so we vote for sound bites that pass for policy positions, personalities and political connections, all because we want our party to win, not our citizens.
We are in this situation, because we rewarded a man whom we believed had done well in local politics. We promoted him to Tallahassee where he worked hard to bring our share of budget dollars back to us. He was rewarded by his fellow career politicians with the Speakers position, the fatal, last brush with the flame of absolute power. We ask ourselves, How the h__l could this happen!? Well, a majority of those voting each election day rewarded his efforts . . . several times. So, did we get what we deserved?
Fast forward and Republicans can reward the prior electoral successes and political experiences of Craig Barker, Bill Garvie, or Jerry Melvin with promotion to Tallahassee.
Or they can promote a new face, Matt Gaetz, a lawyer-activist who is well-connected. He also is being credited with saving half of the F-35 mission at Eglin, without being critiqued as too late to save the entire mission. Whether his thinking is independent of his dads as he claims, well, that is part of the Republican crapshoot, isnt it?
Finally, they can reward a businessman and budget-activist, Kabe Woods, who founded the Okaloosa Citizens Alliance to bring greater accountability for our tax dollars to our County and local governments. Only outsiders, not experienced elected representatives within the system, seem to be able to do that.
Will it be possible for Republican voters to stop rewarding career politicians and look seriously at new faces on Tuesday? An elected representative brings a tool kit of skills from their education and experiences to their position. Political careerists bring connections. Lawyers bring legal tactics. Business people bring analysis and concern for effective results.
Will Republicans go to the polls, to continue political careers, start a new political career, or bring sense to how our taxes are spent by the state? It is a big responsibility, and only Republicans can do it Tuesday.
Lee Jackson

The Federal Reserve is criminal brilliance...
It looks like a government agency, but is actually a private corporation that has a monopoly on the creation of money...
Its edicts must be followed by the entire banking industry, or be punishable by law...Federal reserve Notes must be used as a payment of debt, or the refusal can lead to prison.
It looks like it is a free market proponent, but it artificially controls the price for money (interest)
It has cultured an image of a wise sage of American business, but has sucessfully resisted any open audit of its operations for 100 years. It assumed control of the US gold supply as one of its first actions.
To the average person, it looks relatively unimportant compared with working hard and putting food on the table, but in actuality it takes a cut of every loaf of bread put on that table. It determines whether you will stay in your house, send your kids to college, or even retire in your old age. It robs the value of your savings through purposefully induced inflation.
It looks like a regulator, but it is in fact regulating the for profit private banks that compose itself, which combined with natural human greed, is a recipe for corruption. It enables and encourages the practice known as fractional reserve lending, something which if you or I did would land us in jail.
It can, and has, used its power to move an economy for its own advantage (and don't forget Chairman Biddles threat to President Jackson to bring down the economy if he didn't continue the charter of the National Bank way back when)
Few people understand it, and of those who do, most are coopted by it because of their own self interest (if you can't beat em, join em). Our government loves it because it allows deficit spending that simply could not happen otherwise.
It regularly convenes with other central banks, from foreign nations, swapping our currency for various favors from these banks, so as to manipulate world trade and the value of the dollar, sometimes swapping up to $500 billion dollars at a time. Moreover, these meetings are largely unreported and completely unaccountable to any branch of government.
The Congress bickers over $700 Billion in misguided bailout funding, and the Fed creates $12.8 trillion in loans and gurantees for government business (GM, AIG, Chrysler, Fannie, Freddie, etc) without so much as a vote in Congress.
And then, after screwing up the economy so badly the system may collapse, they request more power to regulate the what, where, when and how you use your earnings for your own benefit...slowly, you become a debt slave...
Mind bogglingly brilliant...
End the Fed.

On Feb. 9, members of the Fort Walton Beach Tea Party had an opportunity to listen firsthand to the plight of charter fisherman Capt. George Eller and how federal and state regulation threatens to ruin a large segment of what remains of Destin’s charter fishing fleet.

We responded as typical good citizens. Various proposals to fix the problem ranged from calling our federal and state representatives and urging them to support corrective legislation, to writing letters, to having face-to-face meetings with the chief Washington bureaucrat who caused this mess by issuing edicts with the power of law, a Dr. Roy Crabtree.

As useful as these steps may appear to be, they miss the point.

Limited government has become a thing of the past in our land of the free and home of the brave. Fishermen who supposedly have the right to own property, contract freely and enjoy the protection of the 10th Amendment, in fact, do not.

By bureaucratic decree supported by federal legislation and a Supreme Court ruling (Wickard v. Felburn, 1942, where the Supreme Court decided the federal government has a constitutional right to regulate how much wheat a Kansas farmer grows even on his own property for his own use), the federal government overrules the state of Florida in fishing matters. In turn, Florida overrules its own fishermen in the pursuit of their livelihood, forcing them to get permits and thereby placing limits on the wealth they can accumulate.

Neither the feds nor the state go out and sweat for fish; neither do they take on the financial risk of running a fishing company. But they are in a position to dictate how a fishing company must operate and share the catch.

Worse still, the feds and the state of Florida are controlled by legislators who have no direct stake in the success or failure of the fishing industry. To them, a fishing fleet is just one more source of tax revenue to be exchanged for any other.

It should not be this way. Limited government does not mean a government that decides not to interfere. It means a government that cannot interfere.

Individuals must succeed or fail on their own circumstances. The purpose of government is not to own businesses or grant favors but to protect individual rights.

There is a false enlightenment in America that thinks government control is necessary to prevent depletion of the environment or to ensure a steady market when individuals would ruin what they have.

As Capt. Eller made abundantly clear, fishermen have a vested interest in what they do, and they did selfregulate — either through moral persuasion, or by association contracts, or even by the power of the marketplace.

If depletion takes place, fewer fish means higher prices. Higher prices mean fewer fish are bought and sold, restricting the size of the fleet.

How is this different from what the government is doing now? The government is artificially restricting the amount of buying and selling of fish, resulting in higher prices and a reduction of the fleet.

Government regulation doesn’t ensure anything except a bigger government, and all it does is transfer the ability of Destin’s fishermen to run their own lives over to a government bureaucracy that must be bowed and scraped to.

The Tea Party must get more to the root of what ails us.

Peter J. Blome is a retired military officer and chairman of the Libertarian Party of Okaloosa County. He is also a member of the nonpartisan Fort Walton Beach Tea Party.

First published 7 August 2008

America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, is also the land of government intervention.

This is especially true regarding the economy.

Many of us are actually in favor of it. The popular thinking is that working within the constraints of the Constitution would be too great a price for the USA to pay. If we followed established law and enforced contracts the pain would simply be too great. It is easier to just sacrifice a few nameless, faceless people, and our principles, in the name of stability, smoothly functioning markets, and control.

I mean, what is not to like about Politicians creating a solution that business could not? If you do not like what the free markets brings, change it to suit your immediate needs. Government programs will make sure you and everybody else gets a piece of the action. Intervention is good because it keeps people in their jobs and keeps the money flowing.

No one notices the price you have to pay.

Living with injustice is one.

The trillion dollar bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is injustice of the most immediate and palpable type. When times were good, non-investors did not get a check, but now that times are bad everyone gets to pay. Worse still, the costs are so big, the value of the dollar may collapse. That will increase the cost of everything based in dollars forever. You think milk is expensive now, just wait.

Another example is the recently passed housing rescue bill which rewards those who bought more house than they could pay for. It actually reduces the mortgage for some people. What you do not hear is what happens to those people who live by their mortgage contracts, are responsible, and live within their means. They foot the bill for everybody else.

When the Federal Reserve arranged the JP Morgan buyout of Bear Stearns bank last March, they did it using funds the Fed created at the cost of greater inflation for the whole country. Since those who run large banks are a relatively small fraternity (our current Treasury Secretary came from Goldman Sachs), it also stands to reason that JP Morgan personnel are a big part of the rank and file of those who run the Federal Reserve.

Lets see, JP Morgan people deciding if the Fed should create money out of thin air to help out JP Morgan. Suspicious?

The Security and Exchange Commission recently excluded 19 commercial banks from trading rules that every other business still had to endure, such as short stock sales. It does not hurt you unless you were bank number 20 on the list and the stock owned by your poor old grandma drops 50%.

Examples of intervention like this are happening everyday. Several government bureaucracies such as the Exchange Stabilization Bank, the President’s Financial Working Group (executive order 12631) and the Federal Reserve itself are allowed by law to secretly intervene in the market. These secret interventions affect companies, and people like you, in real dollars, everyday. What you think will go up, might go down. What you think might have value, might instead prove to be worthless.

Even though they are part of your government and directly affect your pocketbook, you cannot know what they do. Your role is to just pay taxes and support them.

Living with injustice like this takes away opportunity, and opportunity is the heart of freedom. Because the government has decided to favor some businesses over others, the unfavored businesses waiting in the wings with good balance sheets will never get a chance to grow and make money for their investors. The old business will still be there. The old business will be protected with the weight of law.

In other words, your dreams will take a back seat to someone else not because you work less, but because they were bigger and will stay that way no matter what you do. They have government on their side.

In our land of rugged individualism, government influence has become the most important , and counterproductive, commodity there is.

American business is now not so much about building a better mousetrap than being the king rat who has access to government. This will lead to more graft as more government bureaucrats realize the control they have. Government protected businesses will use their advantage to hurt their unprotected competition every way they can.

Oh, by the way, you and I pay more forever.

What is not to like?

Peter J. Blome

Labels: Federal Reserve, government intervention

An address by John Quincy Adams 4 July 1821

Presumably responding to a comment from Britain as to "What has America done for Mankind?"

"And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world [Britain], the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this:

America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government.

America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.

She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.

She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.

She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.

She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....

[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace...
This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

John Quincy Adams served as U. S. Secretary of State, he delivered this speech to the U.S. House of Representatives on July 4, 1821, in celebration of American Independence Day.

Labels: 4 July, America, libertarians

Real Political Competition

Americans like to compete. It validates what works, and gradually eliminates that which doesn’t.

Libertarians believe in competition. The greatest amount of happiness and prosperity come from people being able to compete in a free market where their individual rights are preserved by a government that is limited in its power. This leads to lasting benefits for both individuals and society.

Most people would agree. But for the last 150 years, from Okaloosa County all the way to the Congress, our leaders can come from only the Republican or Democrat Parties. In a group of four Americans you will find five different opinions, but somehow come election time we all just fall in line behind two major parties. As ridiculous as it seems, every solution, every possibility, every good, comes from either column R or column D, and no where else.

That, of course, is not by accident. Supposed competitors, the major parties are more like an old married couple that through hard experience know what to argue about, and what not to. Over time, by the skillful use of laws they created and the timely bribing of voters with their own money, these parties have suppressed political competition to their mutual advantage. They made people more dependent on government than ever before, increased the power of government over them and reduced individual opportunities in life. When election time comes people become afraid to vote for something different because it would remove the benefits the government gives them.

You pay a huge cost for this cozy political arrangement. Whether it is under the Republican President Reagan, or the Democrat President Clinton, or even in our own county, government has grown like a weed. Your taxes are higher, there are more bureaucrats who can tell you what to do with your property under penalty of law, the wars on poverty, drugs and terror regularly consume trillions of American’s wealth, and each of us ends up carrying a share of Federal government debt to the tune of $600,000. Government promises of Social security and Medicare will be worth nothing, either because the government will not pay or the money will be made worthless by inflation. Today your financial activities are monitored, your travel restricted, and even putting up a sign on your own property saying you like candidate such-and-such without telling the government could land you in jail for a year (FS 106.071). The FBI has conducted more than 200,000 warrantless searches on Americans citizens and the Inspector General of the Justice Department says 724,000 Americans are on the government’s terrorism watch list which is growing by 20,000 a month. There is no area of life where the government cannot monitor, regulate, or intervene. As said in the movie “The Patriot” we have replaced one tyrant 3000 miles away with 3000 tyrants one mile away. And all the while the Republicans and Democrats talk about change while supporting greater government power as they always have.

Libertarians know America can do better. In our hearts, Americans cherish Libertarian values. No one thinks about their future and says “Oh, I look forward to the day for the day the government confiscates my land, gives me what they see fit for it, tells me how to use it, gives me financial support, gives me permission to travel, searches where they like, tells me how I can speak on political matters, monitors my finances, taxes my income, and tells me what I can do with my body” but that is where we are. Every solution, every good, every possibility does not come from government, but from individuals who put the time, sweat, caring and personal risk into a project to make it better. Libertarians are about making it possible to do for yourself, and allow others to do for themselves as much as possible.

Instead of debating how big a tax increase should be, the debate should be about eliminating government spending. Instead of creating bureaucracies that seem to think of themselves first, there should be serious thought about eliminating them. Instead of meekly accepting that government can do anything, lawmakers must be limited in what they can do. Let people decide matters for themselves as long as they do not use force or fraud on each other. The end result is less costs and more options; in a word, freedom.

Only a Libertarian can say that, and that is real political competition.


Peter J. Blome - Summer 2008

Labels: competition, freedom, libertarians, politics

Our political system for electing those who govern us is based on a belief that strong political parties, our freedom of political speech, and an inquiring press will provide us with enough information to cast an intelligent vote. The conflict and friction of the system makes campaigns unattractive to many and often bring out our baser natures. Money has become the dominant factor.

In theory, this process places the best candidates in positions of leadership. But the alleged two-party system with the press as referee is a fraud!

Nationally, we know nothing about our chief executive. We vote for or against candidates based on a single issue, based on their seniority, because they are members of our party, or to be on the "winning side" Locally, we have a sheriff who has pleaded guilty in connection with a kickback scheme a state legislator who's been indicted on a felony charge of official misconduct. There is a call for returning ethics to local politics, an allegation that perhaps unethical individuals were elected many years ago and we have re-elected them several times since.

This situation is an indictment of our newspapers and at least half of those who voted each cycle. I find such a call for more ethics to be politics as usual and unproductive for Okaloosa County.

It is time for those who vote only for the two major party candidates to stop holding their noses while voting against personal principles. A politician's promise of benefits at the cost of other taxpayers is too great a price for our votes.

No more politics as usual! It’s time for us to follow our values and principles. Our voting habits have produced professional politicians who go straight into government from school, are elected, and never hold a real job nor run a business.

The results are life time political careers without fear of losing re-election; one-party counties like Okaloosa and cities like Chicago; a sense of political entitlement; billions of dollars for pork-barrel projects directed to supporters; millions in bonuses with inadequate review; and corruption. Indictments for the misuse of tax dollars are a natural outcome.

What is the central issue in these indictments? These are not unethical people who have been elected to office as suggested by a recent writer ("Bring back ethics," April 22). These are examples of elected officials being in office too long! These are examples of too many voters expecting their elected officials to "do things" for them in exchange for their vote and support.

We are not upset by the bonuses and the money for the hangar in Destin, but that these favors were given to those with more pull than we. The insult is we pay for these special favors with our tax dollars.

As long as we accept as normal that our government is the source of all benefits, our taxes will continue to increase, the money available for elected officials to buy our votes will be enormous, and its misuse will continue.

Voters must eliminate the notion that their elected official "doing something" for them is a positive when voting for a candidate. The voting decision must be framed this way: Will this candidate do what is constitutionally correct and which does not take rights or freedoms from other citizens to give me a benefit I do not earn?

The tough work of citizenship demands we replace politics as usual, not call for ethics reform one more time. We must evaluate our real political values, e.g. by taking the "World’s Smallest Political Quiz" at The Advocates for Small Government. Do we truly believe in personal and economic freedom or do we want more restrictions on our lives?

Then we must evaluate where candidates stand on personal freedoms. Look more closely at those who are truly closest to us and evaluate their positions in greater detail. Our vote will determine whether our personal freedoms are protected.

Finally don't just "Spout Off" now and then. Stay engaged after each election cycle! Attend city and county business and budget meetings. Have a detailed knowledge of the parts of government that interest you most.

Our form of government may not be the best in this world, but it is far better than any other. It is worthy of more than just our vote. It deserves our continuous attention.

Lee Jackson, Chairman
Libertarian Party of Okaloosa County

Labels: ethics, okaloosa county