Skip to main content

An Announcement of Sorts: Or, I take a new position coordinating the Gary Johnson campaign in Delaware

Governor Gary Johnson, the
best-qualified candidate for
President this year in any party.
I don't believe the Libertarian Party has ever had a presidential candidate as qualified as former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson.

Frankly, I don't think that--assuming he makes it onto the Presidential Debate stage in the Fall (and that is certainly not a done deal)--either President Obama or Governor Romney will appear any more qualified for the office.

Johnson was a two-term Governor, who inherited a $300 million deficit and left the state with a $1 billion surplus.  He never raised taxes.  He vetoed 750 spending bills.  He increased teacher pay.  He cleaned up bad environmental spills.  His state had the best job creation record in the country.

He's qualified.

He's also different.  Johnson tried for the GOP nomination, but couldn't get any traction.

Small wonder.

He opposes US military adventures abroad, and would slash the defense budget by 43% in order to help balance the Federal budget.

He would order the troops out of Afghanistan on day one of his administraition.

He would audit the Fed and return it to exercising only the powers under its original charter.

He would create a path to citizenship for undocumented workers.

He supports marijuana legalization and marriage equality.

He would eliminate the US Department of Education, block grant the money to the States, and get the Feds the hell out of our public schoosls.

He would replace the income tax and most other taxes with a consumption tax (the Flat Tax) that include "pre-bates" for those at or below the poverty line.

He has a rational plan for reforming Social Security.

Find out more at Gary Johnson 2012.

Right now he's pollng at 6-9% in various places around the country, and at about 6-7% nationally.

Of course, most polling organizations are not using his name at all.

There are those who would tell me I should only support a candidate with a chance of winning.

If Gary gets into the debates, I think he has a chance--a very long chance, but a real one as the only other candidate besides Obama and Romney who will appear on ballots nationwide.

Why?

Because he's the only one saying anything different on the issues.

We have no money, and an unlikely coalition of people who really believe Gary has a shot at being President, people who believe he'll be able to change the debate, and others who simply think that in 2012 a protest vote might finally be in order.

So we will have to see what we can do with imagination.

Undoubtedly a Quixotic quest in a life spent tilting at windmills, but I do feel better about having a candidate in whom I believe and trust.

Comments

Dana Garrett said…
Congradts, Steve.

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?