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: Charlottesville-area Libertarians use 2011 Tax Day to argue against taxes

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on April 15, 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.

Charlottesville-area Libertarians use 2011 Tax Day to argue against taxes
April 15, 2011 12:14 AM MST

Each month members of the Jefferson Area Libertarians, a local division of the Libertarian Party of Virginia, meet for a social hour at West Main Restaurant in Charlottesville.

This month the meeting took place on the eve of the traditional date for Americans to complete their federal tax returns. (The Internal Revenue Service has extended this year's deadline from Friday, April 15, to Monday, April 18.)

James Curtis, treasurer of the Libertarian Party of Virginia (LPVA), and Jim Lark, secretary of the Jefferson Area Libertarians (JAL), will be guests on April 15 on The Schilling Show on WINA (1070 AM) to talk about tax policy. The two activists gave the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner an exclusive preview of the topics they will address on the radio Friday afternoon.

‘Grossly overtaxed’
Lark said he plans to talk about “the nature of what taxes are and the extent to which most libertarians feel that we are grossly overtaxed.”

The government, Lark explained, does many things it “should not be doing and we’re paying for those. There are many things that, even if government should be doing them – and that’s debatable – we’re still paying too much.”

Lark said he and Curtis will try to convey to Rob Schilling's listeners “the idea that perhaps we can cut the cost of government substantially. We can cut taxes; we can cut spending substantially.”

For his part, Curtis said that one point he wants to make is that there has been “a lot of discussion lately that the federal government’s not experiencing an income issue, it’s more of a spending matter. I politely disagree with that. I think it is a revenue issue also.”

Curtis explained that he thinks “the federal government actually takes in too much revenue” and it is “taxing us too aggressively, putting too much strain on the economy.”

How to transform the tax system
Offered a “magic wand” that could transform the country’s tax system, Lark and Curtis gave similar but not identical wish lists.

“If they give the magic wand to me,” Lark said he would get rid of the tax system “entirely” and instead would like to see “a society where taxes look more like user fees or something like that, where people actually pay for goods and services” that they use.

Given “a less powerful magic wand,” however, Lark said he would “probably go to some sort of flat-tax scheme at a very low rate.”

Curtis said that he would “repeal the individual and corporate income taxes and payroll taxes. Individual taxes are theft.”

Under those circumstances, he explained, “government would have to do without most of its unconstitutional programs,” while remaining programs “would have to be put into its reduced budget.”

He noted that much of the federal government’s revenue comes from “excise taxes, tariffs, and such” and that many people have a misconception that “if we got rid of the income tax, the federal government would go out of business.”

Curtis pointed out, however, that individual income taxes only constitute about 32 percent of federal revenues, “so we’re potentially talking about cutting the budget by a third if we repeal the income tax.”

What about the Fair Tax?
Both Curtis and Lark are reluctant to endorse the Fair Tax, a consumption tax popularized by nationally syndicated radio host Neal Boortz and former Georgia Congressman John Linder, designed to replace the income tax.

“I’ve always been a friendly skeptic about the Fair Tax,” said Lark. “I certainly understand what they’re trying to do and I’m very sympathetic to a lot of the ideas that motivate it, but I’m not sure that it would be a step in the right direction.”

Noting that he has “a lot of friends who are major Fair Tax enthusiasts,” Lark conceded that “if it were passed, it very well may be an improvement over what we now have,” but his own preference is to “move in a different direction.”

To Curtis, the Fair Tax is “better than what we have now but the polite way to put it is I’m not a fan.”

Tax Day Rallies
The Jefferson Area Libertarians will be participating in two events marking Tax Day 2011.

On Friday at 5:00 p.m., the group’s chairman, John Munchmeyer, will speak at a rally at the Free Speech Monument on Charlottesville’s downtown mall, sponsored by the Jefferson Area Tea Party.

On Monday, from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m., JAL will have its own educational demonstration outside the main Charlottesville Post Office on Route 29 North, hoping to reach local taxpayers as they drop their income tax returns into the mail box.

Leslie Carbone Talks About 'Slaying Leviathan'

Well-known Fairfax County-based blogger Leslie Carbone has a new book out, called Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform, published by Potomac Books.

Carbone is a former speechwriter for Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, and her articles have appeared in The Weekly Standard, American Enterprise, San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. Apropos of the topic of her book, she served as director of Family Tax Policy at the Family Research Council.

I have not yet had an opportunity to read the book, which has an official publication date of August 31, but fellow Virginia blogger Doug Mataconis has written a positive review of it at Below the Beltway:

There have been plenty of books and policy papers written, plenty of speeches and television and radio interviews, about the economic reasons that high progressive taxation is a bad idea. We’ve heard many times about how it restricts innovation by discouraging investments, or how higher tax rates actually have the seemingly perverse impact of decreasing government revenue, while lower tax rates lead to more money in the Treasury. Those arguments have been made and re-made, stated and re-stated, so many times that most fiscal conservatives can restate them on their own.

What we haven’t seen very often, though, is an argument about tax policy from a moral perspective, an examination of the impact that tax policy has on society in the manner that it punishes good behavior and rewards bad behavior. That is exactly the argument that Leslie Carbone takes up in Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform, and it’s a welcome addition to the debate.

Earlier today, Leslie spoke about her book and answered questions about taxation and morality at a monthly gathering of political activists in Richmond, known as the Tuesday Morning Group Coalition, which is sponsored by Tertium Quids.

Leslie gave me permission to videotape her presentation, which is in three parts. In the first part, she is introduced by John Taylor of the Virginia Institute for Public Policy. In parts two and three, she answers questions from the audience.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

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Slow Brew

It may be eleven days after the fact, but it is not too late to report on the Charlottesville Tea Party that took place on Independence Day in Jackson Park.

Organized by the Jefferson Area Tea Party group, under the leadership of Bill Hay and others, the Fourth of July gathering was a follow-up to the Tax Day Tea Parties that were held on April 15.

Protest on the Fourth of July has a long pedigree. University of Virginia historian Peter Onuf noted on a recent broadcast of BackStory - with the American History Guys, a radio program produced by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities:

The Fourth of July became a really big deal in the 1790s when, believe it or not, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other so-called Republicans were mobilizing against the Federalist administrations of George Washington.

Later in the show,, contrasting the "civic celebrations" of the 1870s with their counterparts in the early part of the 19th century, Onuf explained:

Earlier Fourth of July celebrations tended to be very contentious… The idea of the Declaration and of Jefferson as its author was a partisan thing in the 1790s and early 1800s. That is, it was Jefferson against the Federalists, that is, the administration.

And then later in the party system that emerged in the 1830s and ‘40s, there were a lot of counterdemonstrations of Democrats and Whigs having alternative celebrations trying to win over popular favor, and so forth.

The Tea Party Movement, such as it is, is diffuse. Lacking a central organizer, local Tea Parties have popped up here and there, sometimes in synchronicity with other groups around the country (as happened on April 15) and sometimes on odd days and hours.

Reporting on the Fourth of July Tea Parties, veteran political correspondent Donald Lambro explained in the Washington Times early the next morning:

Whether the turnout would match or exceed the hundreds of April 15 Tea Party protests remained to be seen, though a survey of dozens of publicized events from Maine to California suggested the grass-roots movement had not lost its energy and support.

The April 15 demonstrations drew an estimated 600,000 people to more than 600 events throughout the country, organizers said. Since then, the movement has remained localized, resisting efforts to turn itself into a national organization, and spawning hundreds of local, citizen-led groups that shun professional politicians at their meetings and public events.

While little media attention has been paid to the movement since then and some have suggested that its numbers were eroding, Tea Party leaders who have been monitoring the groups and this weekend's activities dispute that.

"I don't think this movement's eroding," said Adam Bitely, director of new media at Americans for Limited Government.

"When the president's cap-and-trade energy bill came up in the House, a lot of the Tea Party groups were doing local work, calling members of Congress to urge them to vote against the bill," said Mr. Bitely, whose NetRight Nation Web site tracks Tea Party activities.

"Most of these people don't want to be connected to any one group. They are trying to run their own local political organizations and don't need one national organization to do that," he said.

One example of this autonomy was the demonstration at the office of U.S. Representative Tom Perriello two days before the July 4th holiday, which was called to protest Perriello's vote on the "cap and trade" energy bill.

Another example was when the Taxpayer Alliances of Chesapeake, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach jointly participated in a "Defend and Declare Tea Party" event on June 26 in the Chesapeake City Park.

Over 1,000 people participated in the Charlottesville Tea Party on the Fourth of July. Some participants got their knickers in a bunch because the Daily Progress and other mainstream media outlets failed to cover the event.

I can understand their disappointment, but it was a holiday, after all, and the local news media was probably short-staffed. The Daily Progress didn't cover Congressman Perriello's remarks that day at Monticello, either. (He was the guest speaker at the annual naturalization ceremony for new citizens. Last year's featured speaker was President George W. Bush.)

One local TV station, WCAV-TV, did cover the event, saying:

Saturday over one thousand people from the Jefferson Area Tea Party rallied in Charlottesville. The holiday gathering in Jackson Park is the latest effort by the group to send a message to leaders in Washington that tax dollars need to be spent more wisely. While the rally had political overtones, it was also a celebration designed for families.

The participants shared a common distaste for what's happening in Washington.

"We have a bunch of usurpers in government," said Charlottesville resident, Michael Del Rosso. "People that don't care about their oath of office. We need to organize to defeat them in the next election and we need to make them accountable every turn they take that is unconstitutional."

I was able to capture video highlights of the Jefferson Area Tea Party on Independence Day. Here are a few of them.

James Curtis of the Jefferson Area Libertarians (a regional branch of the Libertarian Party of Virginia) addressed general issues of individual liberty, limited government, and personal responsibility:

(Other Libertarian Party members spoke at a Tea Party in Roanoke on Independence Day.)

Jim Morgan (who previously was unfamiliar to me) spoke about the Fair Tax, which would rid us of the meddlesome IRS and replace the income tax with a national retail sales tax.

(Those unfamiliar with the Fair Tax concept can learn a lot about it by reading The Fair Tax Book, by Congressman John Linder and radio talk-show host Neal Boortz. There is also a sequel, in which Linder and Boortz answer their critics.)

Delegate Rob Bell (R-58) was one of two elected officials who spoke at the Tea Party. (Elected officials, as a class, are highly disdained by Tea Partiers.) He introduced the other elected official on the program, state Senator Ken Cuccinelli (R-37).

Senator Cuccinelli, who is also running for Virginia Attorney General, barely mentioned his campaign in his remarks, which focused largely on property rights:

This final video clip is somewhat out of (chronological) order. It's a random collection of scenes from the Jefferson Area Tea Party on July 4th, featuring some of the interstitial comments by compere Joe Thomas, talk show host on WCHV-AM in Charlottesville, who dressed up as Samuel Adams for the occasion. There is also an excerpt from local Arby's restaurant owner Tom Slonaker's reading of the entire Declaration of Independence.

There will be little rest for the Jefferson Area Tea Partiers. Not even two weeks after the Independence Day Tea Party, they plan another peaceable assembly to petition their government for the redress of grievances -- in this case, to express their opinions on health care legislation pending before Congress -- on July 17 (the same day and time as similar protest demonstrations around the country. As announced on the Jefferson Area Tea Party blog,

On Friday July 17th we will once again be meeting at Congressman Tom Perriello’s Charlottesville office at 313 2nd Street SE. We will gather at 4 PM to express to the Congressman our desire for him to vote against the Democrat sponsored Health Care Bill that will soon be coming to the House Floor....

We had a great turn out for the 4th and this is a good opportunity to keep up the momentum. I am contacting Mr. Perriello’s office to let them know that we will be there that afternoon and are requesting the Congressman’s presence. At the very least maybe we can get Mr. Perriello to promise to read this bill before voting on it.

This event will be a great way to promote our July 20th Health Care Forum. The public needs to be aware of how Nationalized Health Care will affect their lives. It is only through education that we are able to make the correct decisions in regard to voting for our representatives and understanding their stances on issues.

The Tea Parties deserve a lot of credit for mobilizing citizens to become more engaged in politics and policymaking. Our system of representative government relies on persistent participation by the people, not only in public protests (which admittedly can be fun and entertaining as well as substantive) but also through phone calls, faxes, and emails to our Representatives and Senators in Washington, as well as legislators in Richmond and other state capitals, and elected officials at the local level, too.




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Community Organizer Takes on Perriello

A few weeks ago, I asked, with tongue only partially in cheek, "Is it 2010 already?"

The question was prompted by the appearance on local TV stations of commercials that were thinly-veiled endorsements of freshman Congressman Tom Perriello (D-VA5) by health- and pharmaceutical-industry lobbying groups.

Now, however, it seems the 2010 election campaign has begun in earnest, with the announcement that Republican candidate Bradley Rees is throwing his hat into the ring, with the slogan, "Today's troubles call for some heavy lifting.
It's time to bring in the forklift."

Media General reports:

Factory worker Bradley Rees, 31, formally announced his candidacy Thursday night to seek the Republican nomination to the U.S. House of Representatives for the 5th District. A small group gathered at Camilla Williams Park along the Dan River for the announcement.

With the former Dan River Inc. building as a backdrop, Rees, dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with the word “underdog” on it, spoke for about a half hour in support of the Fair Tax bill, which would eliminate income taxes and establish a national sales tax.

“I describe myself as a reluctant Republican,” Rees said before his speech. “The GOP has strayed from its conservative roots. (The current tax system) is basically unfair — direct, compulsory income taxation. The government gets the first chunk of your money, and to me, that’s theft.”

Rees is a self-declared grassroots candidate who flaunts his non-lawyer, common-man status. A forklift operator and assembly line technician with tattooed knuckles, Rees spent four years working as a Lynchburg community coordinator for Americans for Fair Taxation before founding his own organization, Operation: Bullhorn, last spring.

“I can’t stand politics,” Rees told the group, “or most politicians … Americans are tired of the same old choices. And you shouldn’t have to hold your nose when you pull that lever in the voting booth.”

A quick glance at the Rees for Congress web site suggests that the candidate is a man of libertarian instincts. Since the issues pages of the web site are incomplete, however, I will reserve judgment for the moment.

That said, in an earlier newspaper article, Rees described himself as a libertarian. According to Brian McNeill in the Charlottesville Daily Progress earlier this month:

Rees, who writes a blog called sonsofliberty2k10, is a vocal advocate of the so-called “FairTax” that would replace federal income taxes with a national retail sales tax. Rees said he has been “kind of forced into running” because of what he sees as the government infringing on his liberties.

“There’s so much encroachment,” he said. “The federal government confiscates my money before I can put food on the table for my family.”

Rees also said that government regulations and corporate taxes have led to declines in the manufacturing sector.

He considers himself a “reluctant Republican,” as he views himself as somewhat closer to a Libertarian. Nevertheless, he said, he plans to run to win the GOP nomination to challenge Perriello.

Rees is an unconventional candidate, to say the least: He's a forklift driver aiming to replace a lawyer who replaced a lawyer. (He has some spot-on comments on his web site about how the influence of lawyers in Congress has corrupted the institution. I wouldn't want to live in a world without lawyers, but a legislature without lawyers seems like a wonderful idea.)

If Brad Rees is willing to take a term-limits pledge as well as advocate for the Fair Tax, he may prove to be a formidable, Cincinnatus-like candidate. As his t-shirt indicates, he's an underdog facing an uphill battle, but having a working-class candidate is a welcome change-up in an increasingly predictable political game. He brings a "common man" element into what has become, regrettably, an elitist enterprise.

Virginia's Fifth Congressional District leans heavily Republican. Tom Perriello won by narrowest of margins after a recount against long-term incumbent Virgil Goode last year. With no Barack Obama at the top of the ticket in 2010, this will undoubtedly be a targeted race for the NRCC and the Republican primary (or nominating convention) will attract a lot of interest. Rees is just the first of several potential candidates to announce, but his will be a campaign worth watching.

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