From the Archives: Virginia Senator Mark Warner discusses budget issues, independent voters

Virginia Senator Mark Warner discusses budget issues, independent voters
September 6, 2012
3:06 PM MST

As he has done almost every year since he first ran for elective office in 1996, Virginia Senator Mark Warner (D-Alexandria) marched in the annual Buena Vista Labor Day parade and spoke to a gathering of local citizens and political activists from around the state.

In an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, Warner looked forward to what Congress is likely to do between its return from its summer recess next week and Election Day in November.

The top agenda item, he said, will be to “continue the funding of the federal government,” adding that “the Republican-Democratic leadership have agreed on a plan on that.”

‘Comprehensive debt-reduction’

His own priority is to “go ahead and give the confidence that the economy’s looking for” by taking on sequestration and “the comprehensive debt-reduction plan.”

That would require two stages, Warner said, but “chances are we won’t [do it] because both national campaigns in the last sixty days before the election probably can’t show any level of compromise that’s going to be needed.”

Warner said he hopes that Congress “will have a bipartisan plan to put on the desk either of Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney after the election,” noting that he personally favors the re-election of President Obama.

“Whoever is elected,” he said, “we’re going to have to work with that individual to get this problem fixed.”

Asked whether the failure of Congress to pass a budget over the past three years has had an effect on business confidence and the economic recovery, Warner replied that “we’ve had this debate before.”

‘Political document’

There is “a budget in place,” he said emphatically. “It was part of the Budget Control Act that passed last year and this year. This will also set the appropriations level for the coming year.”

What Congress has not provided, he said, “is a long-term plan but frankly,” he pointed out, “the federal budget document is a political document. It doesn’t have the force of law.”

This contrasts, Warner explained, with his experience as a business executive and as a governor, when “we had budgets we had to meet” or face adverse consequences.

“What we need is a real plan with consequences,” he continued, “so that Congress doesn’t try to put a plan in place and then, when they care to, continue to spend or create new initiatives without any responsibility.”

The bipartisan coalition of six senators known as the Gang of Six, which included Warner, had proposed “budget control restrictions that would make sure that budgets that were adopted couldn’t be breached in the dark of night.”

‘Folks were mad’

Warner also commented on what former Governor Tim Kaine, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Virginia this year, could do to attract the votes of those who cast ballots for neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney in the presidential race.

“My sense is that 2010 was a year where folks were mad and a lot of folks got to Congress and expressed that anger by just saying no to everything,” he said.

“That didn’t move the country forward,” he explained, adding: “As a matter of fact, we’re in a deeper hole.”

The 2012 election will be different from the 2010 election, Warner predicted.

“My sense is that what people are looking for now, more than party labels, or even ideological labels, are [candidates] who can actually get stuff fixed and,” he concluded, “I think at the end of the day that’s been part of Tim Kaine’s record.”

From the Archives: Virginia GOP Senate candidates share thoughts on 17th Amendment repeal

Virginia GOP Senate candidates share thoughts on 17th Amendment repeal
May 1, 2012 7:41 PM MST

Three of the four candidates seeking the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Virginia agree that efforts to repeal the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – which authorizes the direct election of senators – are impractical at best.

In post-debate interviews in Roanoke on Saturday, where all four candidates participated in a forum sponsored by the Republican Party of Virginia, the candidates expressed their views on the 17th Amendment in response to questions posed by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner.

‘Repeal Amendment’ alternative

Jamie Radtke said that she does not think the repeal efforts are viable, “so I’ve been very supportive, as you know, of the Repeal Amendment,” proposed by William Howell, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, and Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett.

The Repeal Amendment, Radtke explained, “says that if two-thirds of the state legislatures agree,” Americans can use that method to “repeal any act of Congress, any rule, any regulation, or any tax.”

That, she said, “gets to the heart of the 17th Amendment without taking any people’s right to vote away.”

Exponential corruption

E.W. Jackson said that he has “been asked that question on numerous occasions and my response is always the same: I’m not convinced it’s a good thing to do.”

Jackson explained that, “while people may feel” indirect elections “may make a senator more responsive to the needs of the state and the state legislature,” he thinks “the potential for corruption is exponential” because of “the deals that need to be cut to select who that person is going to be.”

As a result, Jackson said, “I’m in favor of leaving it as it is but I’ve made a commitment to those who have that concern that I will regularly go and visit the General Assembly and regularly meet with our delegates and our senators [to] talk to them about what their needs are and what I can do to either help them with federal policy or get federal policy off the backs of our state.”

‘Cheaper to campaign’

From the Archives: Virginia Senate candidates remember Ronald Reagan on his 100th birthday

Virginia Senate candidates remember Ronald Reagan on his 100th birthday
February 6, 2011 9:45 AM MST

The 2012 campaign for the U.S. Senate in Virginia is still a year away, but potential nominees from both the Democratic and Republican parties are taking advantage of the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Ronald Reagan to associate themselves with the conservative icon.

Jim Webb

Incumbent Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat who has not yet announced whether he will seek re-election, served as Secretary of the Navy under Reagan. According to the Washington Post, he sent a letter to Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, encouraging the state’s chief executive to honor the Reagan centennial.

"More than twenty years ago, President Reagan inspired this nation after a period of extraordinary turmoil and self-doubt," Rosalind Helderman quotes Webb as saying. "I believe it is entirely fitting that we reexamine his legacy today as our nation faces serious challenges at home and abroad."

On Friday, McDonnell issued a proclamation designating February 6 as “Ronald Reagan Day” in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

George Allen
Webb’s 2006 opponent, former Governor and Senator George Allen, who recently announced his intention to take back his old seat, sent an email to supporters with his own reminiscences of Reagan.

Allen notes that he first met Reagan when the latter was governor of California and that he had served as chairman of Young Virginians for Reagan during the nomination campaign of 1976.

Allen goes on to say that Reagan “knew that to unleash America's potential, people must be unburdened by government interference, unrestricted by onerous taxes and obstacles to innovation and creativity, and unobstructed by incentive-sapping laws and regulation. By using Ronald Reagan's faith in foundational principles we can confront the challenges we face in our nation, state and local communities and again unleash the unique potential of the American Dream.”

Jamie Radtke
Allen’s only announced rival for the 2012 GOP Senate nomination, former Tea Party leader Jamie Radtke, also released a statement on the occasion of Reagan’s 100th birthday.

“Just as President Reagan kept alive the ideals of the Founders,” Radtke says, “the modern-day Tea Party movement has revived the ideals of Ronald Wilson Reagan, even as the political party he led wandered from those principles, with disastrous results.”

Taking credit for a return to Reagan’s values, Radtke goes on to say that “the Tea Party movement, of which I have been a proud member, has driven a resurgence of the Republican Party in Washington centered around Ronald Reagan's principles of smaller, Constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, free markets and virtue and accountability.”

There have been reports that other candidates who may enter the 2012 Senate race in Virginia include Delegate Bob Marshall (R-Manassas) and Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors.


Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on February 6, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: CPAC bars GOProud; presidential candidate Gary Johnson presciently weighs in

CPAC bars GOProud; presidential candidate Gary Johnson presciently weighs in
August 3, 2011 11:54 PM MST

In the lead-up to the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a minor controversy developed with regard to the presence of GOProud, an organization of gay conservatives and their allies. Several long-time CPAC participants announced that they would not take part in the 2011 conference because of GOProud’s presence.

The controversy came to a head, if not a conclusion, on July 29, when Gregg Keller, executive director of the American Conservative Union (ACU), which runs CPAC each year, sent a letter to GOProud’s Jimmy LaSalvia with what GOProud characterized as “disappointing news.”

‘Not invited’

Keller told LaSalvia: “As a courtesy to your organization, a previous co-sponsor of CPAC, this letter serves to inform you that GOProud will not be invited to participate in a formal role for CPAC events scheduled during the 2012 election cycle.”

According to the Daily Caller, a similar letter was sent to the John Birch Society, which had a formal presence at CPAC for the first time in 2011.

Keller went on in the letter to say that GOProud members were welcome to attend CPAC and its programs as “individual registrants.”

‘Divisive agenda’

GOProud’s board of directors issued a response to the letter that said, in part, ““For the last two years, GOProud has sought to support CPAC and keep the conservative movement united. Unfortunately, elements inside and outside of ACU have pushed their own narrow, divisive and sometimes personal agenda. They have done so at the expense of the conservative movement.”

The GOProud board added that the focus of the conservative movement should be on defeating Barack Obama next year, not on internal bickering.

During CPAC, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner had an opportunity to interview Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson and asked him specifically about the GOProud controversy. His words presaged GOProud's reaction to its banishment from CPAC.


‘Gay rights are included’

Johnson, who has distinguished himself within the Republican presidential field with his libertarian positions on social issues, said the situation was “unfortunate.”

Governor Gary Johnson at CPAC 2011

Republicans, he said, quoting the Declaration of Independence, espouse as central values “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Johnson said that “liberty and freedom” are basic “tenets of what this country" stands for and that “gay rights are included in that" vision.

The former two-term New Mexico governor went on to say that “what I’m really trying to do is grow the Republican Party” because he thinks the GOP “is the only party capable of fixing where we’re at right now.”

Looking toward 2012, Johnson stated his hope “that Americans would give Republicans another shot at doing that -- but to do that, the Republican Party’s got to grow, got to be bigger than a narrow focus.”

In July, Johnson followed up on his comments at CPAC by becoming the first presidential candidate to refuse to sign the so-called “Family Leader” pledge in Iowa, calling it “offensive and unRepublican” because of its animus toward members of minority groups. At the same time, he released a campaign video titled “Tolerance Is American.”

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on August 3, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: GOProud’s Jimmy LaSalvia talks about CPAC and gay conservatives

GOProud’s Jimmy LaSalvia talks about CPAC and gay conservatives
February 17, 2011 2:03 PM MST

A minor controversy erupted in the weeks leading up to the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in regard to the participation of GOProud, an organization of gay conservatives. A handful of groups decided to sit out this year’s CPAC rather than be seen in the same room with gay men and lesbians.

Jimmy LaSalvia, executive director of GOProud, spoke to the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner at CPAC about the controversy and about his organization’s mission and plans for 2011 and 2012.

GOProud, LaSalvia explained, is a national, 527 political organization representing gay conservatives and their allies.

“We started in 2009,” he said, “so we’re about a year and a half old. We’re growing, with about 10,000 members. We bring the perspective of gay conservatives to every issue that affects Americans.”

Federal issues
GOProud is based in Washington works only on federal issues, he said, “like a lot of organizations that you see here at CPAC.” He gave as examples Americans for Tax Reform and the Club for Growth as national organizations “that have a Washington presence.”

The issues that most concern GOProud, LaSalvia said, are “whatever comes up in Washington. The priorities of our membership are the same as the priorities of most conservatives and, in fact, of most Americans.”

GOProud, he said, wants to help the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives “to rein in the size of government, control spending, protect our borders, and protect us from the terrorists.” In that, he noted, “we’re just the same as everybody else in America.”

‘Biggest, best CPAC’
Despite the controversy and the absence of a few groups from the CPAC exhibit hall, La Salvia said, this year’s conference was “the biggest, best CPAC ever.”

The message of CPAC, he pointed out, “is that the conservative movement is united. We’re united around those priorities that I just talked about, the priorities of the American people. It’s been a great CPAC so far.”

LaSalvia said the reception of GOProud by CPAC attendees has been positive.

“We’ve had a lot of people come up to our booth and tell us that they’re glad that we’re here, that they’re glad that we’re part of the discussion that’s happening here at CPAC to offer solutions to our country, to help get our country back on track. It’s great,” he added.

When reminded that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had also spoken out in favor of including GOProud in CPAC, LaSalvia noted that she “went out of her way to say” that her own absence from the conference was due to scheduling conflicts and not because she wanted to endorse those who were shunning GOProud.

LaSalvia also pointed out the millionaire businessman Donald Trump spoke to CPAC because he was invited by GOProud and that he also favored an inclusive conference and conservative movement.

Support like that expressed by conservatives at CPAC, LaSalvia added, “has really been heartening.”

Differences in approach

Asked if there’s a difference between the way conservatives and other people approach gay issues, LaSalvia said there was not.

“There may be policy differences here and there among conservatives with issues relating to gay people, but conservatives aren’t any different than any other Americans,” he said.

“As you know,” he continued, “in the past couple of decades, more and more gay people are coming out and living their lives openly and honestly. The vast majority of Americans and the vast majority of conservatives have gay people in their lives, so as folks around the country think about issues that affect gay people, they think about people who are in their lives. They think about Joe and Bill and Sue and Lynn and their lives when they think about these issues.

The consequence of knowing gay people personally, LaSalvia explained, is that “conservatives are no different than anyone else [who] thinks about these issues.”

'Fun' plans for 2011 and 2012

GOProud’s plans for 2011 and the presidential election year of 2012, he said, are “to engage in the debate as it occurs on Capitol Hill and across the country.”

Noting that CPAC marks the kickoff of the presidential campaign season, LaSalvia said that “we’ll be very engaged in that.”

He hesitated to give more details and cautioned that “I can’t really tell you the specific things that we’ve got planned this year but a lot of them will relate to the presidential election.”

What he would say for certain is that, whatever GOProud has planned, “it’s going to be fun for everybody. It’s going to be fun for our country and the Republican party and we’re looking forward to engaging in it.”

Publisher's note: This article is part of a series marking June as gay pride month. It was originally published on Examiner.com on February 17, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Obama’s announcement prompts question, Is gay marriage a ‘new right’?

Obama’s announcement prompts question, Is gay marriage a ‘new right’?
May 9, 2012 4:02 PM MST

With President Barack Obama’s surprise announcement today that he supports the rights of gay and lesbian couples to legally wed, political pundits are debating whether this was a calculated move designed to help the president’s re-election bid, or whether it will help presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, instead.

Obama’s statement came on the heels of North Carolina voters decisively adding a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage and civil unions in that state. The president said, perhaps with that news in mind, that he thinks legalizing gay marriage should be decided on a state-by-state basis, without intervention from the federal government – or, presumably, through judicial decisions by the courts.

Some opponents of same-sex marriage assert that the Founders, in drawing up the Constitution, did not intend its protections to include gay individuals who wish to marry each other.

‘Life, liberty, or property’

Since the Fourteenth Amendment is usually cited by those who believe the Constitution does, in fact, protect a right to same-sex marriage (“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”), opponents of gay marriage argue that the post-Civil War amendments were intended only to extend constitutional protections on the basis of race and that their authors would not have also extended those protections on the basis of sexual orientation.

To be fair, there are also people who favor extending equal marriage rights to all citizens but who argue that this should be done legislatively, because, they say, courts should not be creating new rights not present in the language of the Constitution or the minds of its authors.

Since the “new rights” meme is so common, it may be useful to consult a different analogy (unrelated to race) to reveal why this objection is logically flawed.

The argument of the opponents of same-sex marriage is that it is an entirely new concept and therefore courts should not extend the right of marriage to gay people.

‘Not a new concept’
Yet “marriage” is not a new concept, and it may be engaged in legally by most, but not all, people who desire opposite-sex marriages.

In every state except Mississippi and Nebraska, any adult from the age of 18 may wed another person without parental permission. (In Mississippi, the legal age to freely marry is 21; in Nebraska, it is 19.) In many of the states, the marriageable age was once 21 but has been changed to 18.

In all these states, the legal age of majority is 18 – people who have reached that age can enter into contracts, buy and sell goods and services, own a home, join the military, pay taxes, vote in elections and – in some cases – serve in elective public office, including the state legislature.

If someone in Mississippi sued for the right to marry at the age of 18 or 19, it would not be unreasonable for a court to rule that the current prohibition on marriage there before the age of 21 is unconstitutional, because it deprives that person of a liberty (to marry) guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Nobody would argue that that court was creating a “new,” previously non-existent right. It would simply be expanding the pool of otherwise eligible adult citizens who can enjoy that right.

That is because, for virtually every other person in the country older than 18 years of age, marriage is legal and available to them.

‘Extending a right’
The point is that judges who recognize the right of gay couples to marry are not creating a “new right.” Rather, they are extending a right that is already recognized for all other adults.

“Marriage” is legal for all adults, except those who are gay or lesbian. To recognize that being gay or lesbian is no impediment to marriage is no more creating a “new right” than to say that 18-year-old adult citizens of Mississippi should be able to marry today rather than wait three years.

There may be compelling arguments, on policy grounds, to continue to prohibit gay marriage. Seven states, the District of Columbia, Canada, several European countries, and South Africa (among other governments) have rejected those arguments, if they exist.

But one argument that does not stand up to scrutiny is that same-sex marriage is a “judge-created right.” With President Obama’s return to a position he first held in 1996, the political debate over the rights of gay citizens to marry takes a new direction.


Publisher's note: This article is part of a series to mark June as Gay Pride Month. It was originally published on Examiner.com on May 9, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Senate candidate E.W. Jackson defends anti-gay stance as ‘fundamental’

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 29, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Senate candidate E.W. Jackson defends anti-gay stance as ‘fundamental’
April 29, 2012 7:26 PM MST

In a previous interview on Examiner.com, which he featured on his campaign Twitter feed, Virginia Senate candidate E.W. Jackson said that he thinks “we maximize individual freedom [and] we let people make their own choices, where those choices don’t impinge on the life, the liberty, or the property of others,” adding that under those conditions, “we’re going to always be a better country for it. We persuade people of what is right and decent and good and moral; we don’t try to force it on them.”

Jackson was one of the participants in a debate on April 28 in Roanoke sponsored by the Republican Party of Virginia. He and other GOP primary candidates George Allen, Bob Marshall, and Jamie Radtke answered questions about policy topics from a panel of political activists.

‘Fundamental rights’
After the debate, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner asked Jackson to restate his position on government non-interference in the moral lives of citizens.

“Where life is concerned, where property rights are concerned, in other words, when the fundamental rights of other citizens are concerned,” Jackson said, “I think government certainly has a role and our constitution indicates it’s supposed to secure those rights for other citizens.”

He added, however, that “if that’s not what’s at stake, then yes, I tend to believe that we are better off when we are freer to make our own decisions and to chart the course of our own lives without the government telling us what we should and should not do and, frankly, I think most Americans feel that way, given the overreach of this government.”

Not a libertarian

To follow up, Jackson was asked how that position is consistent with his stated policy stance on prohibiting same-sex marriage and supporting the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

“For me,” he replied, “the issue of marriage is a fundamental issue. It’s a fundamental moral and spiritual issue and I don’t think that the state should be sanctioning marriage between other than a man and a woman.”

Jackson conceded that he would not call himself a libertarian and added that “I don’t know that libertarians would call me a libertarian,” but that what he had said previously is that “libertarians like me because they know I lean very strongly into keeping government out of the lives of people.”

With regard to gay marriage, he added, “you’ve got to remember, what is really happening there is that people who want homosexual marriage are inviting the government to put its imprimatur on what they want to do and to change 6,000 years of human history and 200 years of American policy. So in my view, they’re the ones who are trying to use the government to intrude upon those of us who believe that marriage as it is is just fine.”

‘Affecting our culture’
The next question was how Jackson would be affected if the gay couple next door were to get married.

“I’m talking about it affecting society, affecting our culture in the long term,” he answered.

“I would turn the question around and say, if you’re going to upend 6,000 years of human history, it is incumbent upon you to prove to me that somehow we’re going to be better off with that.”

Asked whether “gay people and abortion” are the only exceptions to his general view that the government should not interfere in citizens’ private lives, Jackson replied:

“Well, I don’t know that I would limit it, as you put it, ‘gay people and abortion.’ I think it would have to be something you’d have to look at on a case by case basis. Look, you have to remember something. We’re called to represent the constitution, to represent the people of the United States. We’re also called to represent our own consciences.”

Podcast available
A complete audio recording of this interview with E.W. Jackson is available as a Bearing Drift podcast.

From the Archives: Va. Senate candidate Jamie Radtke hopes her message resonates with libertarians

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 21, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Va. Senate candidate Jamie Radtke hopes her message resonates with libertarians
April 21, 2011 2:17 PM MST

U.S. Senate candidate Jamie Radtke is carrying her message that “something has to be done” about spending and the debt to Republican unit committees, Kiwanis clubs, Tea Parties, and Rotaries around Virginia where, she says, “people get it. I don’t know if politicians get it, but people get it.”

Radtke was campaigning April 20 at the 63rd Annual Shad Planking in Wakefield, along with two of her opponents for the 2012 GOP Senate nomination, George Allen and David McCormick. Standing at her campaign’s booth in unusually warm spring weather, she answered questions from the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner about the issues she is emphasizing and what she would do to attract the votes of Virginia libertarians.

In her campaign, she explained, “we’re talking about a constitutionally limited government [and] what is the role of the federal government.”


'Right in line' with libertarians

“Our message is right in line with the libertarian vote,” Radtke said, especially “as far as the spending and the debt and getting the fiscal house in order. The PATRIOT Act is another one that really irritates the libertarian people. Infringing on civil rights is an issue with me, as well. All those things are important.”

She said that when talking about the budget, “you’ve got to look at entitlements” and, from a libertarian point of view, entitlements “should be consumer-driven. People should have skin in the game.”

Things like that, Radtke explained, “resonate with people in the Libertarian Party.”

Even defense spending should be on the table, she said.

“The priority, the absolute priority, 100 percent should be our military and our veterans,” she said, “but the size of the Defense budget is so astronomical that even the Department of Defense is talking about places where there can be savings” without adversely impacting current troops or veterans.

“All of those things,” she concluded, “are things that we have in common” with libertarian voters.

Budget deal 'horrible,' 'sham'
The budget deal worked out in Congress earlier this month is “horrible,” Radtke said.

“I think that promising $100 billion in cuts and then ending up at $68 billion and then saying it’s $38 billion and then it really being $353 million is a complete sham,” she complained.

“I don’t think that that’s what people are looking for” in terms of congressional action on the budget, she added.

“When you look at Standard & Poors coming out and downgrading our outlook to negative, saying you have two years to do something, [but] our big idea is to cut $353 million and start talking about raising the debt ceiling, that is the absolutely wrong message to be sending.”

Radtke also believes there needs to be fundamental tax reform.

“We have a tax system that’s all about special interest loopholes,” she explaind. “We need to get to a place where everyone has skin in the game, not only half of America.”

Prefers Fair Tax
The options she sees are a flat tax or the Fair Tax. “One or the other. Not this optional flat tax thing where [you] try to make everyone happy and straddle the fence. You’re going to have to have a flat tax, or have a Fair Tax.”

Radtke’s preference is for the Fair Tax. “I think it’s good to tax consumption and not tax income,” she said, but added that she has talked to economists “who say that you can structure a flat tax that sort of acts as a consumption tax. My preference is taxing consumption.”

She worries, however, that politicians cannot be trusted to do the job right.

“My fear with the Fair Tax is politicians,” she explained. “That’s my fear with the Fair Tax, because you know you have to repeal the Sixteenth Amendment in order for the Fair Tax to work. I don’t trust politicians that they’ll pass the Fair Tax” without first repealing the Sixteenth Amendment and the result that “all of a sudden we’ve got a consumption tax and an income tax, combined.”

Radtke acknowledged that the original Fair Tax bill, which was introduced by former Congressman John Linder of Georgia, has sequential requirements of first repealing the income tax amendment in the Constitution and then instituting a consumption tax, but that does not allay her fears.

“Knowing how deals get made and things get added to the bill at the last minute,” she is concerned that Congress “would pass the Fair Tax [while] the income tax was still in existence.”

Radtke reiterated that, as she talks to voters around the state, “the key issues are spending and the debt, talking about entitlement reform and what has to be done.”

Her warning to Congress is this: “You can talk about spending and debt all you want but if you’re not going to talk about entitlements, then you’re really not serious about spending and the debt.”

From the Archives: Bob Marshall cites ‘rainbow spectrum’ of support for his legislation

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 10, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Bob Marshall cites ‘rainbow spectrum’ of support for his legislation
April 10, 2012 11:27 PM MST

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Marshall cites three specific pieces of legislation when asked how he will earn the votes of libertarians.

Marshall is one of four candidates in a June 12 GOP primary that will select a nominee to face former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine in the fall. The winner in the November election will succeed Senator Jim Webb, who is retiring from Congress after one term.

In an interview on April 10 with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, Marshall explained how he plans to attract the votes of libertarians in the primary (or, should he get that far, in the general election), he named “three things.”

Getting the libertarian vote

He noted that “Robert Dean, who heads the Libertarian Party of Tidewater, is 110 percent behind my preventive detention bill,” which was the General Assembly’s response to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and will likely be signed, with amendments, by Governor Bob McDonnell later this month.

He mentioned HB 10, a 2010 law he called “the anti-Obamacare bill” but which is also know by its formal title, the Virginia Health Care Freedom Act. That law was used by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in suing the federal government to overturn the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, one of the cases heard last month by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Marshall also cited “the anti-Real ID bill” he introduced in 2009, which responds to federal regulations about driver’s licenses and other identification cards.

“What I said in my bill is, If we cannot be certain that the encrypted data on those licenses is not secure, we’re telling the federal government, you’re on your own, we’re not participating.”

Summarizing, Marshall reiterated that he has “done three things that should appeal to people for whom liberty is a paramount concern and again, two of those passed into law, the third one is going to pass into law in a few days because the governor agreed to an amendment last night and I believe the House and Senate will accept that.”

Libertarians, he said, “are right to be concerned about liberty” and in these bills he “had support from John Birch and the ACLU,” two organizations that are “as far apart as you can get.”

He described that coalition as “really the rainbow spectrum” supporting legislation he introduced as a “conservative Republican.” To pass those measures, he said, “we dropped all our other differences – and they are considerable – to focus on this and we’ve succeeded.”

Oddfellows

Marshall also talked about political figures he admires.

Without hesitation, he listed “Jefferson, Madison, and Ronald Reagan” and then, in response to a question about politicians with whom he disagrees but nonetheless admires, he paused to think before naming Joe Morrissey, a Democratic member of the House of Delegates from Richmond.

“Joe Morrissey,” Marshall said, is his “exact, 180-degree opposite” but “he gets in as many fights as I do, I think for his own right reasons. We differ but we respect each other. In other words, I respect persons, not views. I think Joe’s crazy on some of his views. He thinks I’m crazy but amazingly we get along.”

Later. Marshall added that he also gets along with state Senator Adam Ebbin, the only openly gay member of the General Assembly. The two of them served together for several years in the House of Delegates before Ebbin, an Alexandria Democrat, was elected to the Senate.

In part one of this interview, Marshall discussed HB 1160, his state legislative response to the National Defense Authorization Act’s preventive detention provisions, and why he decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 2012.

Suggested Links

Bob Marshall on Virginia’s response to NDAA, why he aims for the Senate
Presidential hopeful Gary Johnson on health care, marriage, and Colbert
Congressman Scott Rigell on the challenge of reaching independent voters
Virginia Congressman Rob Wittman mulls GOP outreach to libertarians
Libertarian Party praises Virginia legislators for anti-NDAA bill

From the Archives: Bob Marshall on Virginia’s response to NDAA, why he aims for the Senate

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 10, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Bob Marshall on Virginia’s response to NDAA, why he aims for the Senate
April 10, 2012 7:16 PM MST

Delegate Bob Marshall is one of four candidates seeking the Republican nomination to succeed Senator Jim Webb in a primary election on June 12. In the 2008 U.S. Senate race, Marshall came within a few votes of defeating former Governor Jim Gilmore at a state GOP nominating convention.

Marshall is the author of HB 1160, a bill written in response to the passage last year of provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that permit the president to detain indefinitely, without trial, American citizens suspected of ties to terrorism. HB 1160 passed both chambers of the General Assembly with large majorities.

After the legislator spoke to a group of conservative political activists in Richmond on April 10, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner asked Marshall about the significance of that bill, which is likely to get the General Assembly’s final approval later this month after it considers a few minor amendments from Governor Bob McDonnell.

Freedom or serfdom

“It’s the significance of being a free citizen and being a serf,” Marshall said.

“I introduced House Bill 1160, which was a response to a statute that Congress passed [NDAA] that basically said the President (or any president) can take American citizens off the streets, not charge them with anything, not give them opportunity for counsel, not go to trial, not face their accuser – this is unprecedented in American history and the ostensible reason was, ‘Well, there are people committing treason out here for al-Qaeda.’”

Rick Sincere and Bob Marshall

That reasoning, to Marshall, was insufficient justification for giving the President this new authority.

“The Constitution has a specific provision for how Congress is supposed to treat Americans charged with treason,” he explained, noting that James Madison in the Federalist Papers had “said Congress was limited in how it prosecuted treason because treason in England was a recipe for going after your political enemies.”

The Framers, he continued, wanted to restrict the authority of Congress with regard to treason.

“There is a constitutional remedy for treason,” Marshall said.

The NDAA provisions were passed by Congress despite reported objections by the Obama administration although, Marshall said, President Obama is “on both sides of this issue,” because while “he wanted any provision in there that prevented him from detaining people taken out,” when he signed the bill he said, “‘Well, I won’t use this power you’ve just given me.’ That’s hard to fathom.”

Why run for Senate?

With regard to his decision to run for the U.S. Senate this year, Marshall said that “the fact that I ran in 2008 and came so close was an incentive for me to consider it but I really couldn’t do it until after I ran the House of Delegates race” in 2011, where he was running in a district that was at half new to him.

In that campaign, he said, “I had to introduce myself to voters. I do this at the ground level, knocking on doors, and I didn’t want them to think that I’m just doing this as a stepping stone” to higher office.

Although Marshall had been in elected office for 20 years, many of his new constituents “didn’t know that,” so he postponed a decision about the Senate race until after he had secured his re-election to the House of Delegates.

After last year’s election, he added, “I called around the state to see” whether there would “be support for a candidate like myself. When I found out there was, I decided to enter it.”

In part two of this interview, Bob Marshall explains how he intends to earn the votes of libertarians and talks about political figures he admires.

Suggested Links

Libertarian Party praises Virginia legislators for anti-NDAA bill
Environmental activist David Rothbard says 'lift up people and nature together'
Virginia 5th District candidate John Douglass calls for ‘new policies’
Senate hopeful E.W. Jackson claims libertarian backing, unique qualities
Presidential hopeful Gary Johnson on health care, marriage, and Colbert

From the Archives: LP ballot-access expert Bill Redpath talks about petition gathering

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 6, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

LP ballot-access expert Bill Redpath talks about petition gathering
April 6, 2012 1:06 PM MST

Bill Redpath has been a candidate for Virginia Governor (2001), the U.S. Senate (2008), and the U.S. House of Representatives (10th District, 2010). He is also national treasurer of the Libertarian Party and a veteran of more than two decades as a ballot-access coordinator and collector of petition signatures.

At a Northern Virginia fundraising event this week for Gary Johnson, a candidate for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner caught up with Redpath to ask him questions about ballot-access laws, the challenge faced by third-party and independent candidates to put their names on the ballot, and his own experience as a petitioner.

To put the LP’s presidential ticket on the ballot in 2012, Redpath said, will take “a lot of petitioning,” ranging from about 1,500 signatures in Iowa that can be collected by volunteers to as many as “51,739 valid signatures on a new party petition” in Oklahoma, where the Libertarian effort fell short and the party has turned to litigation to challenge the state’s ballot-access requirements.

’50 states and D.C.’
Despite these challenges and setbacks, Redpath explained, “we’re still hopeful that we’ll have our presidential ticket on the ballot in all 50 states and D.C.,” although the “Libertarian National Committee is probably going to spend about a quarter of a million dollars on ballot access,” in addition to expenditures for that purpose by individual state parties and the presidential campaign.

Ballot access, said Redpath, “is a major undertaking.”

Virginia’s ballot-access laws came to national attention recently when only two candidates, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, were able to qualify for the Republican presidential primary ballot. Redpath has some suggestions for fixing Virginia’s requirements.

Until about 1968, he explained, Virginia required only 1,000 valid signatures to get on the ballot for president and other statewide offices.

Virginia reforms
Redpath suggests that “it would be good to reduce the number of signatures to get on the ballot for a given office to one-tenth of one percent of the number of registered voters for that office.”

For statewide office in Virginia, in that case, he calculated, “we’re probably talking about 3,000 signatures to get on the ballot.”

Redpath considers one-tenth of one percent to be “a sufficiently high hurdle that people have to go out and work” to get their candidates on the ballot. It is, he added, “a hurdle that is fair” because it is “not overly taxing but at the same time it will be enough of a deterrent to keep completely frivolous candidates off the ballot.”

Worst and best
Asked to name the best and the worst states for ballot-access requirement, Redpath immediately responded that Colorado is among the easiest because “there is just paperwork that needs to be filed.”

Florida, he noted, “used to be one of the hardest, now it’s one of the easiest.”

Ballot access requirements, he continued, have “improved over the last 20 to 25 years.”

There are still “bad states,” however, and one of them is Wyoming.

While the Libertarian Party currently has ballot status in Wyoming “because we get, time and again, over two percent for U.S. House so we can remain on the ballot,” other third-party and independent candidates need to get 8,000 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot in Wyoming and, as Redpath pointed out, “that’s a lot of sigs in Wyoming!”

Another difficult state is Oklahoma, which Redpath identified as “about the worst. To get on the ballot as an independent presidential candidate takes about 45,000 signatures in Oklahoma.”

North Carolina is also difficult for presidential ballot access, but Redpath also pointed to states where “it’s tougher to get on the ballot for U.S. House or for non-statewide offices.”

He noted that in general elections in Georgia, that state has only “had one non-R, non-D candidate for U.S. House in several decades.”

That has also been the case in North Carolina, where it is “extremely difficult to get on the ballot for U.S. House as a third-party candidate or independent.”

Petitioning experience
Ironically, North Carolina proved to be the place where Redpath has had some of his most successful efforts at collecting signatures.

He estimates that, over the years, he has collected more than 10,000 signatures, but his personal best one-day effort was at the North Carolina State University precinct in Raleigh on election day in 1996.

“I hold the record for the most number of signatures gathered in a single day,” he explained.

“It was an extremely fortunate situation where they had a polling place that was too small for the horde of college students that descended on it,” he said, “and a theater line formed outside that didn’t go away for hours. The acceptance rate was 80 or 90 percent. I got 1,179 [signatures] in one day.”

Redpath said that the reactions he gets from members of the public when he is out petitioning are generally good.

“Overall,” he said, “people are pretty nice when it comes to petitioning. Some people actually thank me for being out there. I think people know how few people will actually go out and solicit signatures from strangers and [that not] very many people want to do that [so] they appreciate it when somebody is out there. Even some people who refuse to sign actually thank me for being there.”

He singled out Giant Foods for its civic-mindedness in allowing petitioners to stand in front of their stores to collect signatures (with advance permission). Giant customers, he said, “appreciate it.”