“President Obama needs to stop lying,” said Mark Hinkle. “He repeated the ridiculous and false claim that the U.S. combat mission is over in Iraq. He seems to think that if he keeps talking about the war in a nice way, then the war isn’t really happening.”

Even though he is the one person with the authority to withdraw U.S. military forces from Iraq, Hinkle said the president has chosen to keep risking the lives of 50,000 Americans and bleeding taxpayers.

“Contrary to his rhetoric before being elected, the president has proven himself to be shockingly pro-war,” Hinkle said. “In addition to sustaining the American war presence in Iraq, he has greatly escalated the war in Afghanistan.”

All the Libertarian candidates for Congress in North Carolina agree that ending the war means bringing all the troops home. “It does not end until all troops are back on American soil,” said Tom Rose, Libertarian candidate for U.S. House District 12.

On his website, Libertarian U.S. Senate Mike Beitler writes, “The best thing we can do for our troops is to bring them home. “America cannot afford to serve as the policeman of the world, nor does it have the authority to do so.”

The Republicans are equally to blame because they have consistently failed to oppose the terrible financial impact of these wars, while claiming to champions of small government, Hinkle said.

“They want to nit-pick Obama’s past statements about the war, but in fact they should be showering him with praise for doing exactly what they want,” he said.

Hinkle called the conflict the “Bush-Obama war” and said it has been “shameful from the beginning.” Even if the U.S. military success in imposing democracy, he said that the effort is not worth the thousands of American lives and billions of dollars lost in the process.

“The Bush-Obama War in Iraq has done nothing to safeguard the rights of Americans — on the contrary, it has probably made Americans less safe, and certainly poorer,” he said. “The purpose of the U.S. armed forces is to defend the territory of the United States, not to re-engineer foreign societies.”

“Just like his predecessor, Obama believes that government force is the answer to everything.”

The Libertarian Party believes U.S. foreign policy should emphasize defense against attack from abroad and enhance the likelihood of peace by avoiding foreign entanglements, including intervention and military and economic aid.

“President Obama said he was announcing that ‘the American combat mission in Iraq’ has ended and that it was time to ‘turn the page’ on a ‘remarkable chapter in American history,” Wrights said. “It is time to do more than just turn the page. It is time to close the book of war, put it back on the shelf, and never refer to it again.”

“There is nothing remarkable about this chapter in American history,” Wrights said. “If the president really wanted to end the war he would simply tell the joint chiefs to draw up a plan to remove every last American solider, sailor, airman and marine from the region as quickly and safely as possible.”

“If the president really wanted to honor the sacrifices made by America’s men and women in uniform, he would not continue to put them in harm’s way unnecessarily,” Wrights said.

Wrights said that President Obama was elected on the expectation that he would end America’s interventionist foreign policy, but from the words he used in this address it appears he is going to continue this policy and use different language to hide his intentions.

For example, Wrights noted that while the president said the combat mission is ending, he said our commitment to Iraq is not. The president also said a transitional force will remain to advise and assist Iraqi security forces, support Iraqi troops in targeted counter-terrorism missions and protect civilians. In fact, as the last “combat” troops leave Iraq, fifty thousand troops will remain behind.

“In other words, our soldiers and marines will still be going on patrol, getting shot at, and possibly getting killed, but the president won’t call it combat operations,” Wrights said. He noted that the infantry brigades still in Iraq have been renamed “advise and assist” brigades.

“It is shameful the way politicians will parse words in order to justify and obscure their actions; and, it is disgraceful that any president who refers to himself as the commander-in-chief would use such a tactic to disguise the service of the men and women he is supposed to command.”

“It is disturbing the way the president casually dismissed the fact that this war was fought for a lie,” Wrights said. The president said that what began as “a war to disarm a state became a fight against insurgency.”

“It is distressing that President Obama admitted that the war has cost us one trillion dollars, most of it borrowed for other nations, and contributed to our debt, yet he doesn’t miss a beat in calling for even more government spending,” Wrights said. “He shows absolutely no signs that he is going to change anything in American foreign policy when he said America ‘must use all elements of our power to secure our interests and stand by our allies.’”

Wrights is considering seeking the presidential nomination because he believes the Libertarian message in 2012 should be a loud and unequivocal call to stop all war. He has pledged that 10 percent of all donations to his campaign will be spent for ballot access so that the stop all war message can be heard in all 50 states.

The 52-year old Wrights, a Winston-Salem native, is writer and political activist living in Texas. He is the co-founder and editor of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All.

From Wrights for President Exploratory Committee press release

“One trillion dollars is an almost incomprehensible number, but what is even more incomprehensible is the fact that most of that cost is borrowed money,” said R. Lee Wrights, former Libertarian Party national vice chair and the editor and co-founder of Liberty for All, an online free speech magazine.

“The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“The federal government borrows about 43 cents of every dollar it spends, and then uses it to build schools, roads and hospitals in countries where we’re partly responsible for destroying that infrastructure,” he said. “That’s not only insane, it’s immoral.”

Wrights said that he is considering seeking the presidential nomination because he believes the Libertarian message in 2012 should be a loud and unequivocal call to stop all war. Wrights, 52, was born in Winston-Salem and lived in North Carolina most of his life. He now lives and works in Texas.

“The Libertarian Party faces a critical test in 2012 and I want to make sure that we’re up to the challenge,” Wrights said. “The Libertarian message in 2012 must be loud and clear – stop all wars! Stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, stop the war on drugs and alternative lifestyles, stop the war on civil liberties.”

“When we first invaded Iraq we were told that the ‘war would pay for itself’ because Iraq had the oil resources,” Wrights said. He noted that Paul Wolfowitz, then assistant secretary of defense, told Congress in March 2003, “There’s a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”

“That hasn’t happened. Instead, the federal government has simply printed or borrowed the money to rebuild what’s been destroyed,” Wrights said. “Politicians are treating war spending like an open checkbook. As long as they have checks, they keep writing them without bothering to balance the account.”

The 2010 military budget is $700 billion. In real terms, defense spending is more today than at any time during the Cold War, the Korean War, or the Vietnam War, according to Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute.

“To justify its budget, the Defense Department said it was not enough to have a military capable of deterring or responding to aggression,” Wrights said. “Incredibly, defense officials actually claimed it was ‘vital’ the United States be ‘a force for good by engaging with and helping positively to shape the world.’”

“Our founder’s would be appalled,” Wrights said. “They predicted that war would be the most dreaded threat to our liberties. They told us that from war would proceed mean debt, taxes, fraud and degeneracy of morals. They warned us that no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

Wrights has pledged that 10 percent of all donations to his campaign will be spent for ballot access so that the stop all war message can be heard in all 50 states.

Greene argued that requiring an independent candidate to collect signatures from four percent of the registered voters in the district is unduly restrictive and discriminates against independent candidates because the number of signatures need varies from district to district.

While Mullen observed that North Carolina’s election laws place severe restrictions upon unaffiliated candidates and that they do not regularly qualify for the ballot, he said, “It is well settled law that the State has a legitimate interest in limiting access to the ballot in order to prevent ballot clutter and voter confusion, as well as discourage frivolous candidates.”

Mullen ruled that the statue does not violate the right to equal protection of the law, as Green argued, nor did he agree with the plaintiff’s argument that there is no rational basis for the rule.

>While on the high-end of the petitioning spectrum, North Carolina’s four percent requirement passes strict scrutiny because it is the only aspect of North Carolina’s election requirements that present a barrier of any significance to an unaffiliated candidate,” Mullen said.

Greene said that the judge did not address the central issue behind the lawsuit, which was filed to protect rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

The real purpose of this lawsuit was the right of each individual to be represented and to be able vote according to his conscience,” he said. He said that people should able to vote for people they choose, and not be limited to a group that North Carolina says meets the state’s qualifications. Greene said that it seemed like the judge forgot about the Constitution in making his decision.
The contention that a less restrictive ballot access laws would result in the ballot being flooded with candidates has no merit, Greene said.

We don’t want to flood the ballot box, and it’s never happened, so why are they (the state) worried about it,” he said. “There’s no weight to that argument, there’s no evidence of that anywhere, in any state.”

The judge said that the General Assembly has “deemed it prudent that North Carolina require a greater showing of support for unaffiliated candidates than its sisters states.” He said he was not convinced that the four percent requirement is not “narrowly defined.”

Jordon Greene, Bryan Greene’s son and campaign manager, called this a ludicrous statement. “There are 318 U.S. House districts where the signature requirement is below 5,000 and 62 districts where it ranges between 5,000 and 9,999,” he said. “There are only 55 districts– including all those in North Carolina – where an independent candidate needs more than 10,00 signatures to get on the ballot.”

In his ruling, Mullen dismissed the plaintiff’s assertion that no independent candidate has every qualified for a U.S. House race since 1901. He cited the case of Wendell Fant, who the judge said has submitted sufficient signatures to run as an independent in the 8th Congressional District.

The judge ignored the rest of the story,” the younger Greene said. “First of all, Mr. Fant did not submit the signatures himself. They were submitted by the state employees union. Second, Mr. Fant is not running.”

Nor does Judge Mullen take note that the signatures were collected by paid petitioners, and that the petition drive was funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from outside the state, from outside of the typical man’s reach,” Jordon Greene said. The drive was funded by the Service Employees International Union, parent organization of the State Employees Association of North Carolina.

The judge’s comments had nothing to do with the real issues in the case because the Fant petition drive was actually part of an internal Democratic Party struggle, Jordon Greene said.

It’s clear that the entire effort was undertaken to punish the incumbent Democrat for failing to support President Obama’s political agenda, not as a serious effort to run an independent candidacy,” Jordon Greene said. “The organizers admitted this.” The unions first attempted to form a new political party to challenge the errant Democrats, he said, and when that effort failed they tried to qualify an independent candidate.

>The court seems to be saying that just because a well-funded union can get the signatures it means the law is alright,” he said, “totally dismissing the burden it places on the average Joe who wants to run for office but doesn’t have deep pockets and isn’t bought and paid for by the ruling class, lobbyists or corporate interests.”

Bryan Greene said he has not yet decided whether or not to appeal the decision.

Earlier story: Hearing set for independent candidate ballot access case

Republican Sen. Richard Burr, Democratic N.C. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and Libertarian Dr. Mike Beitler separately answered five questions posed by council representatives. Topics included immigration reform, federal restrictions on tobacco exports, alternative fuel and energy sources, government regulation of farming, and animal rights and welfare.

“We need common sense immigration reform that begins with border security,” said Burr. Marshall also called for securing the border “first and foremost.” “We need to have a safe, stable and legal supply of workers,” Marshall said.

“Immigration is an issue the major parties have been dodging,” said Beitler. “I believe in amnesty and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers.” He said that the state needs a policy that would allow a quick and efficient method for people to come here to work.

In several responses to questions about federal regulation of farming, Burr and Marshall said that they believed farmers are the “best stewards” of the land. Beitler also agreed, but added that he not only opposed government regulation, but also corporate welfare for farmers.

Tobacco, one of the state’s major crops, is heavily regulated by the federal government. Burr said that the crop may be the key to the nation’s economic recovery. “I believe if you want to put Americans back to work the place we ought to start is to open up as many markets as we can to agricultural products and tobacco would be one.”

Marshall said tobacco farming was being unfairly singled out. “Politicians cannot continue to look at tobacco as a cash cow,” Marshall said.

Beitler also noted that tobacco was the target of unfair regulation. “I’m concerned that it is being singled out for regulation which is unfair to the tobacco industry.” That is why he said he opposes the ban on smoking in restaurants and bars.

“Tobacco is a very important crop in North Carolina and will be for years to come,” Beitler said. “But we do need to recognize that it’s a declining industry, and we need to think long-term on how to replace that crop.”

He said that farmers should consider alternatives. One such crop, suggested by Thomas Jefferson, is hemp. While the plant is related to marijuana, it is not a hallucinogen and could be used to make other products, including rope and paper.

B.J. Lawson, Republican candidate for U.S. Congress District 4 provided and operated the wood chipper. Libertarians Dr. Mike Beitler, candidate for U.S. Senate, Tom Rose, candidate for U.S. House 2 and Lon Cecil, candidate for U.S. House 12, and Republican Bill Randall, candidate U.S. House 13, feed in the faux tax code pages.

“We the people have to run over the tax lobby in Washington,” said Laura McCue, a volunteer director of the N.C. FairTax group, organizers of the Shred the IRS Tax Code Rally. She said that the political commentators who tell fair tax supporters that the reform “is never going to help” is an example of the “distance and disconnect” between the “political class and the average American.”

Libertarian candidates Lon Cecil, Mike Beitler and Tom Rose help feed the tax-code mock-up into a wood chipper.

The fair tax plan is a comprehensive proposal that would begin by abolishing all federal income and payroll-based taxes. This would include personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes. They would all be replaced with a single federal retail sales tax, administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities.

The fair tax plan also includes what proponents call a “prebate” to insure that “all Americans consume what they see as their necessities of life free of tax.” This monthly check would be sent to every registered household in an amount calculated by multiplying the annual poverty level spending by the fair tax rate.

The fair tax plan is designed to be revenue-neutral, meaning it would neither increase nor decrease the amount of money already collect in taxes by the federal government.

A spokesman for Sen. Richard Burr, who was not present, said the senator is a fiscal conservative and had recently agreed to co-sponsor the fair tax bill (SB 1025).

“If Senator Burr is a fiscal conservative, then I must be an extreme fiscal conservative, because I would not have voted for TARP,” responded Beitler in his remarks. “I’m proud to be an extremist on this issue.”

One of the reasons he said he supports the fair tax plan is that it would eliminate “checkbook audits,” an experience he suffered many times while working as a CPA. “I sat across from my client as an IRS agent went line-by-line through their checkbook,” Beitler said. “If that is not a gross invasion of privacy, I don’t know what is.”

He said he also supports the plan because it would encourage savings and increase jobs, as companies moved operations back to the United States from overseas to take advantage of the abolition of the corporate income tax.

Cecil, Rose, Randall and Lawson pledged to co-sponsor the fair tax bill currently in the U.S. House (HR 25). “The IRS is becoming more of an Infinite Revenue Seizure agency for any revenue enhancement that Congress and our president can muscle through Congress,” said Ceci

As a libertarian, Cecil said that although he believes in eliminating most taxes, as long as there are taxes the fair tax is more direct and equitable. “It is based on sales, what you buy, not what you make in wages and income,” he said. “Your wages are yours to keep.”

Rose agreed that the fair tax is not ideal, but it’s a step in the right direction. “It will get the conversation started,” he said. “I support the fair tax plan because it will eliminate the need for the IRS and is so much better than our present federal tax system.”

Both libertarians agree that conversation should be about the real issue, which is cutting spending.

“If we don’t quit spending we’ll never catch up,” Cecil said. “But if Congress finally has the will to pass the fair tax, we’ll finally have people in place to cut spending. They won’t have the unlimited spending ideas in the current Congress.”

Terrorism is a tactic that uses fear to make people act in ways against their belief, he said. “To defeat terrorism, we must embrace the ideas of freedom and liberty and protect the rights of all individuals and not just of a select few.”

Beitler said that some politicians have decided to take a different path, which he describe as “the religious crusade for some, this hatred of the other.” “These are not American ideals,” Beitler said, “they are fascist ones.”

One of the most shameful things he said he’s learned about the political manipulation of September 11 is the refusal to mention the Muslims murdered that day.

One of the 63 Muslim victims was Mohammad Salman Hamdami, a part-time ambulance driver, medical student, and an NYPD cadet.

When he saw smoke coming from the twin towers, he drove right to the scene and tried to help,” Beitler said. “Since he wasn’t working and no one knew his whereabouts, the media were happy to brandish him as a terrorist and say that he was involved in the plot due to his ethnicity and religion.”

Rahma Salie was passenger on the American Airlines flight that crashed into the North Tower. She was seven-months pregnant and traveling to California with her husband to attend a wedding. Beitler said that Rahma was put on the FBI watch list because of her “Muslim-sounding” name and her travel patterns were similar to those of the hijackers. She was a computer consultant living in Boston.

Although her name was eventually removed from the list, several of her family members were barred from taking flights to her memorial service,” Beitler said.

Mohammad Chowdhury was a waiter in the Windows of the World restaurant on the top floors of Tower One. His wife Baraheen Ashrafi gave birth to a son two days after the attack.

“I wonder what the eight-year-old Farqad is thinking today when he hears that a mosque his father might have worshiped in should not be built because it’s an affront to his father’s memory,” Beitler said.

Beitler said he’s been silent on the issue in the hope that common sense would prevail. To a libertarian, this is not really an issue, since the Constitution protects religious freedom and property rights. “Everything else is irrelevant,” he said.

“I have paid for everything I have owned since I was 17,” Johnson said. He grew a handy-man business he started into the largest construction company in New Mexico based on a simple philosophy: show up on time, do what you say you are going to do, and even do a little more.

Johnson took that work ethic into the governor’s mansion and applied the principle of cost benefit analysis to every bill that came across his desk. “Everything for me was a cost benefit analysis: what are we spending and what are we getting,” he said. “It was always about getting the best product and the best service for the best price.”

“I said no to billions of dollars of new spending. I said no to growing government. I said no to all sorts of things,” he said. “I would like to think I brought about a principled discussion on a whole range of issues.”

Johnson, who’s considered a potential candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, began his political career as a novice. First he won the Republican nomination in a primary against candidates backed by the party’s establishment. Then he unseated the incumbent Democratic governor in a state with a two-to-one Democratic advantage in voter registration.

He attributes his success and re-election to his adherence to this principle. “What Democrats saw was good stewardship of taxpayers dollars,” he said. “What everybody saw was this notion of government for everybody, not government for a selected few individuals and corporations who were connected politically.”

Johnson said he gained national notoriety for his views on school choice. “I believe that the only way to improve public education is to bring competition to public education,” he said. He proposed that every student in the state get a school voucher.

For six years, Johnson said he took the debate everywhere he went. The proposal never was enacted But he said that when he started 65 percent of New Mexicans opposed the idea and when he left office 54 percent supported it.

Johnson also gained a national reputation as a Republican who advocates the legalization of marijuana and opposes the war on drugs, a position he arrived at after approaching the issue using the cost benefit analysis philosophy.

“We’re spending $75 billions a year on law enforcement, the courts and prisons, and what are we getting for it,” he said. “We are arresting 1.8 million people a year.” He believes legalized marijuana should be regulated just like alcohol and that drug use and abuse should be treated as a health problem, not a criminal issue.

When he left office because of term-limits, which he supports, Johnson said he was perfectly happy to return to private life. He returned to public life last year because he said he’s outraged about what’s happening in the county.

“That outrage stems from the fact the we are bankrupt, that 43 cents out of every dollar we’re spending is borrowing, that spending is out of control,” he said. “I want to put a voice to that outrage.”

Johnson created the Our America Initiative to give shape and form to his ideas. “There is no ‘they’ out there who are going to come to our rescue,” he said. “There is you and there is me.”

He said that he was encouraged by growing awareness that America is not about entitlements and security but about liberty and freedom and the personal responsibility that goes along with that.

“We need to cut spending 43 percent just to get our revenues in line with expenditures,” he said.

To address the insolvency of entitlement programs, Johnson suggested consideration of some unpopular and controversial ideas, including means testing, raising the retirement age and privatizing social security. He also proposes moving from a defined benefits system to a defined contributions system.

“A big shoe to drop is the fact that 50 states are underwater when it comes to entitlements.” He called Federal and state entitlement programs Ponzi schemes, promises made that should have never been made which are unsustainable.

Johnson on …

Iraq and Afghanistan

“We are building roads, schools, bridges, highways and hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan and we’re borrowing 43 cents out of every dollar to do this. This is insane.”

The Department of Education

“The Federal Department of Education gives each state about 11 cents of the dollars they spend for education, but it comes with about 16 cents worth of strings attached, so it’s really a negative to take federal money. Just give education back to the states and see 50 states engage in an innovation race; you would see some truly ‘best practices’ emerge.”

National health care

“I don’t think there is any industry that could be further removed from the free market than health care. It is as controlled and regulated an industry as there is in this country. The government can do a lot to improve health care simply by removing impediments to health care entrepreneurs.”

Immigration

“You can address 75 percent of the border issue by simply making it easy for immigrants to get a work visa.”

“Immigration is about work not about welfare.”

“Amnesty has never been about citizenship, never, and shouldn’t be. But amnesty, or what I call a grace period, needs to be set up whereby illegal immigrants go get a work visa.”

Fair Tax

“Any tax reform is really about raising taxes. The focus should be on slashing spending.”

Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Mike Beitler told the North Carolina Latino Coalition Assembly yesterday that he supports amnesty for illegal immigrants and a pathway to citizenship. “I challenge my opponents to take the same stand,” he said.

“The role of government is to protect us from criminals, not immigrants,” Beitler said. “Immigrants, whether classified as legal or undocumented, are a benefit to North Carolina. They provide a much- needed work force, they are consumers who are spending their income in North Carolina and they are a great example to the rest of us of hard workers.”

The coalition is a nonpartisan, multi-issue network of organizations dedicated to building relational power among grassroots Latino leaders. About 1,500 delegates representing 40 organizations and churches sent delegates to the assembly held in the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Durham.

Beitler was accompanied by three Libertarian candidates for Congress, Thomas Hill, District 6, Tom Rose, District 2, and Lon Cecil, District 12. In addition, Republican B.J. Lawson and the Democrat incumbent he is challenging, David Price, also addressed the assembly.

“Honest and peaceful people who are working for a living are not criminals,” Hill told the delegates that Latinos and libertarians share a belief in the value of “neighbors taking care of neighbors.”

Beitler said that no one should be considered illegal simply because of where they come from. “You have the right to go where the jobs are, without being penalized by the government, persecuted by racists, or imprisoned for simply trying to make an honest living for yourself and your family,” he said.

The candidates were asked to hold up a “yes” or “no” sign indicating their support of the assembly’s five point of immigration plan:

• Family reunification. Reduce the backlog of visa petitions that often take several years and implementing a more efficient process.

• Workers protection. Set up rules to protect wages and working conditions of those admitted legally to fill available jobs.

• Restore the rule of law and enhance security. Employ realistic law enforcement that targets terrorists, smugglers and lawbreaking employers.

• Allocate sufficient visas to close unlawful migration channels. Set the level of legal immigration by labor market needs.

• A rational and humane approach to the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrant population. Create a registration process that includes background checks, a fine, taxes and studying English and leads to permanent residency and citizenship.

Only Lawson held up a “no” sign. He told the delegates that he could not in good conscience support amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Judge Graham Mullen heard oral arguments in Greene v. Bartlett yesterday. The case challenges the number of signatures needed for an independent candidate to qualify to run for U.S. House. Since North Carolina began issuing government-printed ballots in 1901, no independent has ever qualified for a U.S. House race. The law requires verified signatures from four percent of the number of registered voters in the district.

Jordon Greene, president of North Carolinians for Free and Proper Elections, attended the hearing with his father, the plaintiff Bryan Greene. The younger Greene said that the state attorneys defended a statement in their brief that “people do not have the right to vote for the candidate of their choice.”

“They claim that what they meant by that statement is that if people had a right to vote for the candidate of their choosing, the state would have to put everyone on the ballot, whether or not they were running, which is an absurd statement,” Greene said.

The plantiff’s argument that people have the right to vote for the candidate of their choice takes into account the fact that people themselves have made the decision to run for office. “That’s a much different claim,” Jordon Greene said.

The state also presented the “cluttered ballot” argument which claims that since North Carolina may elect ten council of state positions at one time the ballot would be too long and cluttered.

“This fails to take into consideration states like Washington, which also elects ten council of state positions, but whose burden on unaffiliated candidates is much easier,” Greene said. Washington only requires 1,000 signatures for independent Congressional candidates as opposed to North Carolina’s 16,000 to 23,000.

“Washington seems to have no problem with a cluttered ballot,” he said. “No race for Congress had more than four or five candidate in the past several elections and most had only two or three,” he said.

See earlier story here.