Virginia Libertarian

Why I Resigned | Blanton for Congress - Virginia 7th District

Why I Resigned
Without full public financing of campaigns we will never have fair elections. Cantor has bribed everyone who has local community influence very well. Most, if not all, of the sheriffs of the 12 counties in District 7 are bought and many local small time politicos have been paid off as well.

Without ten times the amount of money I was able to raise I didn’t have a chance in hell of winning, because the system is set up to guarantee that the amount of money it takes to win a campaign preserves the tradition of moneyed interests controlling government. The amount needed to win is great enough that any candidate who could win is already so much a part of the system in order to run. They are not likely to significantly change the system.

People with great ideas that solve problems and help millions of people cannot get their ideas across without money. People with money with dumb ideas can. Take a look at the imbeciles we have. Without full public financing we will never have fair elections and never elect anyone who hasn’t already bought into the system, except for occasional accidents.

Jim Nachman has hardly any chance of winning, even adding together my Independent supporters and the support of the Democratic Party, because he doesn’t have enough money either. Clearly, he is not corrupt enough. Cantor is as corrupt as they come-Abramoff, Delay, Foley corrupt-and he will probably win because he is corrupt. He has a million dollars cash on hand for spreading his prpopaganda and lies. Don’t vote for Eric Cantor.

Don’t vote for Brad Blanton. Vote for Jim Nachman. I support Jim Nachman for Congress. I am giving him some money and telling all my friends. Give him some money, and tell all your friends. Maybe an accident will happen. Thanks.

Most unfortunate that Mr. Blanton has quit the race.  While I don’t support his postion on a lot of the issues, the fact that he was not a Dem or a Rep was a big plus for me over someone with the same views running as one of the Duopoly.  We need more people running for office, we need more choices.  The people currently running just don’t cut it.

The News Leader - www.newsleader.com - Staunton, Va.

Kyoto Protocol Candidates in the U.S. House race answer the question: Do you think the U.S. needs to comply with the Kyoto protocol? (150 words)Bob Goodlatte

America has made great strides towards preserving our environment and has arguably the most comprehensive and protective environmental standards in the world, but more must be done. While, I agree we need to curtail global warming, I don’t think the Kyoto Protocol is the best way to reduce greenhouse gas.

The treaty is flawed in many ways. India and China, two of the world’s leading contributors of greenhouse gases, are exempt from the treaty, as are most countries. Additionally, the restraints aren’t realistic for many countries, and the goals are arbitrary.

While climate change is a complex issue, our economy is intrinsically linked to the availability and affordability of energy. Had America agreed to the treaty, the mandates would’ve caused a negative economic impact, causing loss of jobs and higher prices for consumers. I believe we need to encourage investment in environmentally sound, cost-effective practices without setting back our economy.

Andre Peery

Yes, we should at least try.

Barbara Pryor

YES

While I am angry at him for voting for the abominable Unlawfull Internet Gambling Act of 2006, he gets this mostly right.  I am not a believer in so-called “global warming”.  I don’t see how we can even make a guess at what the climate is doing when we barely have 100 years worth of climate data on record.  Nobody knows what the earth’s cycles are in that much detail.  The Kyoto protocol was an abomination and mostly an anti-America push by the EU.

cbs4boston.com - Attleboro School Bans Tag, Other Recess Games

Attleboro School Bans Tag, Other Recess Games(CBS4) ATTLEBORO Children at the Willett Elementary School in Attleboro are not allowed to play tag, touch football or any games involving contact during recess.

You knew this was coming, with all the “save the children” tactics involved in locking down the public prisons schools.

Prinicpal Gaylene Heppe cited the safety risks and the school’s liability in case of injury as reasons for the recess ban. Heppe, who is in her second year as principal, told CBS4 the ban is not new and has been in effect for years.

I see this as a result of our “sue to hit the jackpot” mentality these days.  Any time someone stubs their big toe, they sue.  Hey, you know what, life is messy, deal with it.  Take responsibilty for your own actions.  You may even have to take responsibility for your childrens.  If your child is playing and manages to get injured, that’s not the teacher, school, or counties fault.  Guess what, it’s your child’s fault, and your fault.  Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t let them do it, children need to make mistakes, it’s a great way to learn.

“I was surprised….I think they should be allowed to. I used to run and chase, play kickball, dodgeball, all that,” said parent Colleen Bischoff.

Critics of the policy said it’s just another way to micromanage kids.

“Kids will be kids, no matter what. Kids are going to trip on rocks, it happens,” said one unidentified parent.

The Attleboro Sun Chronicle reports elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyo. and Spokane, Wash. banned tag at recess this year. A suburban Charleston, S.C. school also outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.

Principal Heppe said she isn’t interested in any trends around the country, her concern lies with keeping the children as safe as possible.

That’s the answer, lets just keep everyone “safe”.  Why don’t they just stick them in a strait-jacket and put them in a rubber room for 8 hours a day?  That way they’d be guaranteed to be “safe”.  Living life is not about being safe all the time.  Life is dangerous, we all die at the end of it.

Here’s a question for you.  The door to the middle school roof is left unlocked.  Your child goes up the door, onto the roof, and falls (or jumps, either way) off.  Whose fault is it?  My guess would be that more than 50% of you out there would answer that it’s the schools fault, or the janitor, or whoever had the key to the door.  Gues what, it’s not.  It was either your childs choice to go up there on the roof, knowing the consequences, or it was your fault for not telling your child what will happen if they fall/jump off a roof.  It is not the job of the school to be your childs parent or nanny.  It is their job to educate them.  Some of you will whine and moan about “negligance”.  There was no negligance involved here.  There was nothing done that caused any danger to anyone.  A door left open has to be walked through.  This is a big part of what is currently wrong with our society today, our need to pass our responsibilities on to someone else, so we can also pass on the blame.

Nevada to vote on legalizing marijuana - Yahoo! News

If it passes Nov. 7, Nevada will be the first state to allow adults to possess up to an ounce of pot that they could buy at government-regulated marijuana shops.

Baby steps are better than no steps.  The ultimate goal would be complete legalization of the drug, and get rid of government control altogether.  I think this will end up the way prohibition did though, with government regulated shops like the ABC.

Proponents of the measure also argue that the legal system wastes time and money on low-level marijuana offenses, and that taxing and regulating pot would put drug dealers out of business while freeing law enforcement to focus on violent crime and more dangerous drugs such as methamphetamine.

Well, how about we free them to do what they really should be doing, and that would be enforcing the laws against violent crime.  Why we should move them from enforcing stupid drug laws against one drug to enforcing stupid drug laws against another is beyond my understanding, but I will take steps where I can get them.  I don’t think that meth users are necessarily any more violent or prone to hurting other people than pot users, so why the push against that drug now.  Hmm, could be the same reasons they went for pot?

“Make no mistake, I don’t think using marijuana is a wise choice for anyone,” said the Rev. William C. Webb, a Baptist minister who joined dozens of other religious leaders in announcing their backing. But “if there has to be a market in marijuana, I’d rather it be regulated with sensible safeguards than run by violent gangs and dangerous drug dealers.”

There we go, another good reason to get government out of it.  If there were really no market for it, there would be no gangs currently controlling distribution.  But there is a market, and since government has make it illegal, you get violence, high prices, and low quality product.

Cato Unbound -» Blog Archive -» A New Breed of Democrats

So all those libertarians seeking some pandering, too bad. This isn’t about you. It’s about us. Now libertarians have a choice - continue to be taken for granted and pandered to inside a Republican Party hostile to just about everything important to libertarians, or help fuel the libertarian left. Of course, they can vote big “L” Libertarian or sit elections out. But if they want to have a real effect on the political process, the two major parties are pretty much it. And, fact is, one party is moving closer to traditional libertarian principles while the other is moving away from them.In the short term, libertarians should vote Democratic simply because divided government is in everyone’s interests. A good dose of gridlock will slow Bush’s insatiable appetite for ever-growing, deficit-devouring big government. Mid-term, a Democratic trifecta (White House and Congress) would help reverse many of Bush’s worst excesses. But 10 to 15 years down the road, libertarians will hopefully have better reasons to move into the “D” column.

Kos starts of by saying “My piece wasn’t a play for the libertarian vote”, but the proceeds to dedicate the article to play for libertarian votes. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that the Dems practices of regulating everything to death in the economic world is as repugnant to us as the Reps regulating everything to death in the social world. Why can’t any of them just leave us alone?

We don’t advocate the elimination of safety-net programs or the abolition of publicly funded education or any of the more extreme manifestations of libertarianism.

We don’t think that “corporations derive their power from government,”

And here is the problem, Dems differ from us on the economic issue as much as Reps do on the social ones. Sure, with Dems you’d be free to marry whoever you choose, or be free not to hold down a job and still get a check from Big Brother, or get all your meds paid for by Medicare, but you’d also have to pay half of what you earn in taxes for the government to run its inefficent programs to do so. And I really don’t see them changing their spots 10 to 15 years down the road, and neither will we.