I live in Pa. and it seems that Gov. Ed Rendell is getting a free ride. It does not become law unless he signs it.

This would be a great state to run some targeted candidates against the worst of these legislators, using this as a backbone issue.

Austin-
I think that's a great idea! We should run candidates against the incumbents that highly contrast the difference between tax-and-spenders, and we libertarians.

Oh evilness.

Platform for Pa. Legislator candidates:
1. Roll back salaries by 25%.
2. Annual session limited to 120 days.
3. Pledge to serve no more than four years;
no one should make this a career.
4. If annual budget exceeds increase in CPI,
salaries will be further reduced by the
excess percentage.
5. Free care in mental hospitals for any voter
who believes voting for Republicans or
Democrats will ever solve the problem.

You know what will really help LP candidates on this one? Promise to reduce salaries to next-to-nothing, or even to nothing. Instead of getting paid to serve, do it for free.

Every Pennsylvania LP should be discussing plans for candidates at their next meetings. Simple as that. When the door opens a crack, you need to kick it in.

Creech - I say the following should be done:

1) Roll back salaries by 33.33%
2) Reduce annual session to 91 days (13 weeks)
3) Recall any legislator who votes to raise taxes, increase economic regulations, increase government spending and run a budget deficit, increase the size of government, refuses to enforce property rights, favors government takeovers of more sectors in the economy, runs bigger public debts, violate other individual liberties and rights, etc.
4) Exactly as you wrote for #4
5) Charge a small fee in mental hospitals for any voters who believe that voting Democrat or Republican will ever solve the problem.

Well, calling people who vote Republican or Democrat insane is probably not a great way to get their vote.

Also, running a TON of candidates might be a bad idea. Rather, a candidate for governor plus 4-5 legislative candidates in very specially selected districts where there is a weakness and the LP candidate has a great resume. Raise each of them $25,000 or more from the national list... and you could actually see a win or two. That would be how I would play it.

1. Eliminate Salaries. Establish per diem, perhaps $100.00 per day.

2. No arbitrary limits on annual sessions. Living in Florida has given plenty of bad examples of what this leads to.

3. Sounds good.

4. Again, sounds good.

5. I wonder if the Florida Baker Act covers most voters. :)

I forget which year it was, I think 2002, there were actually more Libertarians running for Legislative seats then Democrats. But if you listened to the mainstream media, you would not have known any were running at all. I think it would be better to run a few high profile campaigns rather than hundreds of listless campaigns.

Oops.

To clarify last comment, that should be Libertarians running for Legislative seats in the State of Florida. It should be also noted that the Democratic Party is pretty much dead here in Florida.

Mark,

One down, one to go!

Mark, you're absolutely right. I remember that quite well as my Republican state legislator was opposed only by a Libertarian candidate.

I voted for the Republican.

The Libertarian didn't respond to any of the newspaper profile requests, didn't fill out any of the voter guide answers, and didn't spend a single dime campaigning. He didn't use the free tv spot at the local PBS station... I would almost be surprised if he bothered to vote for himself! Not a good way to introduce people to the Libertarian Party.

pennsylvania legislators giving themselves pay raises means deficit for the state of Pennsylvania. The PA taxpayers will have to pay increased taxes because of the legislators which will only encourage PA state legislators to give themselves more pay raises. The Democrats and Republicans at work. I knew something like this was going to happen.

I would like to say. That all LP Candidates need to use all advantages possible. If the LP is going to win elections LP Candidates need to use the things offered to them in local and state and National elections like the following:
1. Go on a local PBS affliate during your campaign. I know PBS is not candidate's dream choice of networks to be on , but take the oppurtunity to get on TV.
2. Fill out all profile requests to prove your legitimate candidate which in return voters will have more trust in you because your honest.
3. fill out all voter guide information to show what kind of competitior to the 2 party system will be.
4. Campaign spending will get you outreach in Newspaper TV and etc.
I was a disappointed by what I heard on a Candidate from Austin Cassidy. Know one is going to win a election by being lazzy. If the Candidate had a background that did not wan't to tell people about then that person should have never decided to run for public office. A candidate needs to honest and dedicated if he or she is going to run for office at any level.

Let's compromise and have the candidate say he/she will reduce salaries by the same % as the percentage of votes he gets!
Nothing is more discouraging than seeing "failed to respond" under the Libertarian candidate's name in the Voter Guide. What were you thinking?

Lol, Creech. Percentage of votes. Very nice.

There is nothing Rendell can do, he will not be re-elected after his fisaco as governor.

I have a list of all the yea votes on my frig, none of them will get my vote.

Maybe the IRS should investigate all these 'voucher' expenses. Don't forget if you include fully funded health care by us, travel expenses ($100 a day if you are 50 miles from HArrisburg) and almost 8k a year for a car, in addition to 5 years of retirement home insurance, they are well over 150k a year for the base reps.

And they get automatic raises now based on either the fed level increases or the cost of living index of metropolitan PA, DE and NJ, which ever is more every year. (So now they will never have to vote for a pay raise again)

Why do they get a salary at all? It's not like they work all year round. It's more like a civic duty, like jury duty. If we eliminate salaries for some public offices, we'll eliminate untrustworthy politicians who do it for the money. We'll just be left with the honest ones who want to make the world better and the untrustworthy ones who do it for the power. I can see, however, paying salaries to governors, mayors, and the president. They generally work all year round.

AAAAAHHHHHHH Like I said, we NEED TO GET A MOVE ON AND DO SOMETHING FAST!! Congress gave themselves a fat raise not to long ago as well. WE need to add this to our voting advertisment as well as EMINENT DOMAIN, CHANGE IN PROPERTY TAXES, CHIP TRACKING DEVICES, PRIVACY ISSUES.
and do it NOW. Another slogan could be
STOP SOCIALISM. VOTE LIBERTARIAN FOR FREEDOM

Howie,

I agree this is to the point of ridiculousness, but I do think that legislators deserve a salary. It is not a year round job, but it is a very time consuming one. And while it is a civic duty, if you have to take that much time out of your life to do your duty, you would have to be moderately wealthy to do it. Not paying any salary at all would prevent lower class citizens from running or performing in elected activities.

But as the poster above pointed out, thery're getting in excess of 150,000 a year approximately. That's ridiculous. I think $30,000 is the maximum, tops, I would be comftorable with, as well as a car rental budget, as these people do have to travel to their state capital for extended periods every year.

How about LP candidates promise not only to reduce the excessive pay they receive, but also to give back the excess part of their salary to their constituents until the ridiculous excessive pay is reduced to a suitable amount.

If you liken the legislator to jury duty, you do get a small allowance for jury duty. While it isn't much, and varies from place to place, it is something.

While living in Maryland, I think it was $20 a day plus mileage for fuel for state jury duty. In Oregon, state was $10 a day, and federal was $40 a day. All 3 added a few cents per mile for fuel costs as well.

I'm planning on moving to Pa in a few months time. I will definately vote against anyone who voted themselves a pay raise. I've always believed that the only way elected public officials should get a raise is by the voters.

We're the people that they work for, we should set their salaries. How many businesses allow their employees to set their salary? None I know of, because that would quickly put them out of business.

Seems to me people are still looking to big. Why run a candidate for governor anyway. Take the three highest spending legislators and put all funds into defeating those three. Not just a high enough % to get the other major party elected. Put all money into three campaigns and run them to win.

Ben

I know that people who serve jury duty get paid for their service, that's why I compared the two. It just seems more rational to give legislators money for their time and not a salary. The difference is that with a salary, they receive one large sum a year. With a pay for their service, they receive only a small stipend for every day they show up.

State legislatures should meet only on weekends, and perhaps for a two-week session in the summer. That way, it could be a volunteer position, and very little could get done.

The less done by state legislatures, the more freedom we have. In most liberty index rankings, a hypothetical politician who just voted no on everything would have the best rating, hands down.

For the upcoming elections we need to focus all of our energy and resources onto a small number of our most electable candidates. I'd rather see us run 15 people and have 10 get elected than run 100 and have 2 get elected. Of course this is easy for me to say, but hard to do. Here's what I mean by our most electable:

1) The person is honest and will be very open when it comes to discussing our positions on issues. No republicrat B.S. No exaggerations, no understatements, no skirting around difficult and controversial questions. The public is sick of that. They will cling to candidates who are genuine in what they say, even if they don't entirely agree with it. Just straightforward honesty will get our people elected.

2) The candidate cannot be a radical in the eyes of the voters. We need to take baby steps toward our goals. People will not elect anyone who says they want to legalize drugs the moment they get into office. Even though we know that we want to end the war on drugs, the candidate should focus on reducing or eliminating prison time for non-violent drug offenders so there can be more room and longer sentences for the real criminals. If a candidate goes into this saying they want to legalize drugs, end taxes, and privatize everything, THEY WILL NOT GET ELECTED.

3) Our focus candidates should be running in areas where the people are very dissatisfied with the current incumbents. From the article at the start of this thread, PA sounds like a great place to start. And as others have proposed, we should attack the things about the incumbents that the public hates most. No personal attacks, just attack their policies. Do not stoop to the level of our mud-slinging opponents.

Lets be realistic about our goals here guys. We are not going to create a libertarian society in the course of the next 4 years. We need to slowly and steadily increase the number of Libertarians in office. We need specific, difficult, but achievable goals. They should be set soon so we can begin work to achieve them in the next round of elections.

Wow. Adam gets it.

Credibility and Responsibility. If the LP gets those two things right in 2006 we will have a very good mid term.

Russ Diamond, a former Libertarian candidate for State house in Pa. has formed a group called Pa. Clean Sweep, which is addressing this issue. Russ has a flair for getting publicity....

Anti-legislative pay raise website (www.pacleansweep.com) founder, Russ Diamond, will address the Pennsylvania Press Club on Monday, August 22, 2005.

Russ Diamond was born in Hershey in 1963 and was raised along with four siblings in northern Lebanon County. After graduating from Northern Lebanon High School and Lebanon County Vo-Tech in 1981, Russ entered the work force.

In 1990, following a seven-year period of steady employment in a manufacturing facility, Russ followed his dreams of having a career as a musician.

The experiences and relationships Russ developed as a musician led him to open a recording studio in the Lebanon area in late 1992, and he subsequently gained regional notoriety as an accomplished audio engineer, music producer and live sound technician.

The studio's reputation attracted clients from many surrounding states, and the business has since been transformed into the nationally known CD and DVD manufacturing and duplication service known as Raintree.

Russ was a candidate for both Congress (17th district) and the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (101st district) in 2004, waging a unique and dual campaign that made both headlines and history for third party efforts in Pennsylvania.

Russ is a member of several community and civic organizations, and had been serving as an officer in two of them, but has backed away from those organizations in order to concentrate on founding, organizing and running Operation Clean Sweep.

The Pennsylvania Press Club launched monthly luncheons in 1996 to provide key lawmakers, newsmakers and other individuals an open forum to discuss current issues. The Press Club has featured a wide range of speakers, from Governors Tom Ridge, Mark Schweiker and Ed Rendell, to C-SPAN President and CEO Brian Lamb, to Philadelphia Phillies Chairman Bill Giles.

The public is invited to attend. The cost is $20 per person and must be paid in advance.

Reservations can be made by calling (717) 540-0296.

Statewide television coverage of the luncheons is provided by PCN.

I am a little bit surprised to see people advocating no pay for legislators. If you believe in the free market then you must understand that the only way to get qualified people (of any political persuasion) is to pay them. As it is, government salaries compared to private sector salaries are low enough to deter many highly qualified people from working in government -- this is, in my opinion, the second biggest cause of the incompetency we see in government.

And Howie, paying people by the day (or by the hour) only encourages working more. If you want your legislators to work less, you pay them a flat salary.

I love topics like this where we all agree, all have constructive suggestions and commentary, and well reasoned debate. This blog thread is the essence of the LP. I love the optimism expressed in here, too.

KB, if it is made that the legislation only meets x amount of days or weeks a year, then they will only get paid for x amount. How will they decide to work more? If they worked on their own time to create bills or research already proposed bills, they won't get paid for that, that's their duty to make an informed decision. The idea is that by paying them by the day or hour, you prevent them from being paid for time not spent in legislation, and you prevent them from writing unconstitutional bills that they'd otherwise pass. And don't counter with "if you don't pay them to write or research bills on their own time, they'll pass more bills they don't know anything about," because face it: they already do enough of that. How many whole bills do you think a legislator actually reads? Not many. If a legislator is true to the constitution and wants to make our lives better, he/she will do all the research he/she needs to make an informed decision. But, if you want to pay legislators to sit around on his/her ass, then so be it. I'd rather have my taxes go to something more useful, like my own bank account.

I think legislating is more of an occupation than a duty, so I believe in giving legislators fair, but not excessive, salaries.

The LP needs to a revisement on the platfrom, If we are going to have a long-term victory strategy. I would not dump the Libertarian Identity at all. I would make the LP look more centrist in the Libertarian fashion like Scoially Liberal, Fiscally Conservative. The platform we have now on the platform is mumble jumbo to the mainstream. The mainstream approach to socially liberal would be legalize marijuana, legalize gay marriage, support abortion rights, oppose the patriot act, election reform. The mainstream approach to fiscal conservative is Privitize social security, not abolish it, Welfare Refom, Fair Tax, healthcare reform. I would run as more towards a centrist than run as a candidate that want's no government at all.

I just saw this post. A few comments...

1) Pennsylvanians, please announce your candidacy on our website.

http://www.lppa.org/archive/2006/candidates/

2) We're trying to run as close to a full slate as possible. This has two benefits: running more candidates in general is good and it will make statewide petitioning easier. We need to collect 100,000 signatures in 2006 to be able to run a Libertarian against Rick Santorum and Ed Rendell. The easiest way to do this is to have 201 state rep candidates each collect 500 signatures.

3) It's a terrible idea to only run a few candidates. Sure, people can focus their resources on a few races, but realisticly winning will be very difficult and we need candidates everywhere so we can pounce on opportunities that present themselves between the petition deadline and the election. E.g., if a Republican candidate is accused of embezelment, we want a Libertarian running against him in that district. Pennsylvania has the lever, meaning people can go in and vote for all Republicans or all Democrats just by pressing one button. In my experience, over 50% of voters do this.

4) The sad thing is this pay raise issue isn't even the most ridiculous thing PA legislatures have done in the past year. A big newspaper article broke showing that many legislators don't show up. Others vote for them or they wedge a paper clip into the voting machine to automaticly vote "yes" while they vacation in their districts. The response from the ethics committee was to introduce a bill making this behavior legal, which passed overwhelmingly.

5) I think we should have a slate of candidates running coordinated campaigns... a Libertarian Contract with America.

6) Mike Slye, a Delaware County Libertarian member, suggested proposing a law requiring candidates to propose their salary when they file and have it listed next to them on the ballot. Then people could vote for $0 Libertarian or $130,000 Republican. Easy choice.

Chuck Moulton
Election Chair, Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania
Region 5E Alternate, Libertarian National Committee

LPPA pay raise press releases:

http://www.lppa.org/releases/20050630
http://www.lppa.org/releases/20050718
http://www.lppa.org/releases/20050815

I NOMINATE ADAM SILVERSTEIN, can we put him on the ballot somewhere.

Chuck,

If we had a lot more money than we do, I would agree with you that running a lot of candidates would be a good thing.

IMO there's only two things that really need to be done, 1. run your state so that you WILL have ballot access the next time around, making life easier for us next time, or 2. run the best candidates we can attract and put national LP money into the local races, running enough candidates to outspend their opposition at least 2 to 1. Either choose to go for ballot access reasons and run anyone who will sign on if thats what you need for ballot access *or* run to win.

I dont think the LP has the resources to do both. We wind up spending obscene amounts of money and effort in states that simply wont get us anywhere in the big scheme of things - and also drain the resources required to maybe make a big difference in a possible winning campaign elsewhere.

We just dont have the resource to have our cake and eat it too. Choices need to be made.

Many unwinnable races get us free media.

If we're realistic about what races are winnable, we won't run any candidates at all in 2006. Pennsylvania has state and federal elections in even years and local elections in odd years. State Rep is the lowest office up for election.

Can we win a state rep in Pennsylvania? Russ Diamond ran a dynamite campaign in 2004 and still got clobbered. We're up against THE LEVER. 50% of voters pull the Republican or Democrat lever without even looking at the candidates. The other 50% could conceivably be up for grabs. This means the Republicans and Democrats start with a 25 percentage point head start. Few (if any) Libertarians even poll above 25% in a three way race.

I think it's still worth trying our best to win. But if you want to follow your strategy you are left with two choices: 1) Lie about the probability of winning, get people's hopes up, and fail (see the San Diego mayor's race), 2) Run no candidates at all.

I'd rather run as many libertarians as want to run, let them compete for donor money and volunteer time in the free market, and see what we can achieve.

Telling people not to run is shooting ourselves in the foot. I learn something from every candidate I speak with. Everyone improves as a candidate with experience. And we're not just getting practice for the candidates, but also the campaign managers, treasurers, etc.

You really think a top notch candidate is going to want to run with us if we tell them we have no political experience whatsoever because we've been sitting out every race waiting for a top notch candidate?

This has been a very hot topic in PA since the raises went through. There is outrage on all sides. Perhaps the voters are ready to listen to us. Also note that many of those who voted against the salary increase were punished by party leaders with removal from committee positions, etc.

Chuck,

Why is it always one extreme to the other?

I think there ARE winnable local elections. I also think we could put these elections into play if we identified what the hell those races are, where they are, and planned for them a bit instead of going through the automatic "stuff everyone that wants to run" option so we can issue a press release about how many candidates we put up.

The best example I can use in here in WV. We ran more candidates than the Republicans did in 2000, yet we lost our ballot access by 85 votes. Looking back, I wish the party had dumped the majority of resources and energy into keeping our ballot access, becuase the state LP here just go decimated after we lost our access.

There's no reason for each state not to figure out which is most important to them for the future of their state LP's and run accordingly. I dont know the situation on the ground in PA, maybe running a lot of candidates there is a good idea. What I am saying, and what I continue to believe, is that it is NOT a good idea to simply do that becuase thats what we've done before.

There's no reason you couldnt pick out a weak incumbent and target that person with extra time and money. We suffer from a decided lack of such election pre planning, The R's and D's actually pay people at the state level JUST to do that. If they think it;s that important, we should too.

For Freedom:

Thanks for the support. However, I don't quite think I'm up for running for any office quite yet.

To Chuck Moulton:

I'm not saying to not let people run that want to. I think anyone who wants to run has a right to. And yes everyone does bring something different to the table. However, I still think that we still should focus the majority of our party resources on people who we think we have the best chance of winning.

I'll admit I'm armchair quarterbacking here. I've never been involved in a campaign before. But to me it seems like our party is throwing a bunch of candidates at a wall and just crossing our fingers in the hope that someone sticks. I'd go so far as to say that I'd like our entire party to pour our resources into just one candidate that has the best potential to win. I think that with one victory can come two, then four, then eight and so on. Once we crack the republicrat dichotomy, the floodgates will open.

ADAM I KNOW YOU'RE NOT quite ready, but we could really use good minds in the running. It is sometimes really hard to get people with the right minds to be in the running. Especially in times of need. But I am dreaming.

PEOPLE WE REALLY NEED TO GET ON a move for the 2006 and 2008 ELECTIONS, we have a situation that is very serious. PEOPLE NEED TO SEE LIBERTARIANS UP FOR THE RUNNING against democins or repulicrates and I am not seeing this in Yahoo. AGAIN I am just seeing demo replacing repulicrates and or such and such.

LET GET GOING PEOPLE. LETS ALL PUT OUR SELVES TO WORK HERE. EVERYONE OF US.

As I said, in Pennsylvania local elections are a whole different year from state and federal elections. So it makes no sense to say we should focus on winnable local elections in even years. That means running no candidates or supporting no candidates that are running.

The only way to keep minor party status in Pennsylvania is to run a statewide candidate. And to do that we need to collect 100,000 signatures. Either we can run close to 203 State Rep candidates and get all our signatures on a volunteer basis distributed around the state and get extra media for running candidates everywhere or we can dump $200,000 into paying petitioners to get us on the ballot statewide. Seems like a no brainer to me.

If we do not run candidates wherever we can get them, we will miss opportunities. Often the "weak incumbants" can't be identified until after the petitioning deadline or close to it because they do something boneheaded that alienates their constituents in that time frame. If we're not running a candidate, it's too late and that opportunity can't be exploited.

I agree that resources should be targeted where they have the most impact. But in my opinion it's a two stage process: 1) get people on the ballot, 2) campaign. I want to support a lot of people in stage 1, then step back and figure out who will go all out with good winning chances and who will be a "paper candidate". I'd support the former myself.

As for "party resources" in Pennsylvania our policy has been for the Party itself not to contribute money to campaigns. We connect campaigns with volunteers and let the campaigns themselves solicit volunteers and donors from individual LP members and others in their community.

It seems pretty clear to me that some of the posters have a fundamental misunderstanding of the election process in Pennsylvania. It reminds me of the time some out of state guy invaded our e-lists for 3 months sending 10 messages a day telling us to run local candidates and ignore everything else. Finally someone clued him in that there are no local races in even years and he went away as mysteriously as he came.

I was one of those "paper candidates" in 2000. In actual practice I was better than a paper guy, I walked the beat of the district and handed out 5000+ trifolds, and did a half page newspaper ad.

But if we had 10 less candidates in 2000 and spent our money running TV ads for our Candidate for Governor, Bob Myers, we would have retained our ballot access. The margin was only about 85 votes.

I think states without ballot access have to run a planned strategy to GET that ballot access, and states that have it can have the luxury of deciding which way they want to run their state.

My state's LP should have no other task but the recruitment of a governor candidate that will get us back on the WV ballot, and to hell with anything else. Nothing else we could do would have a greater impact than that. We need either 1 or 2 % (unsure, they changed it at some point) of the popular vote for Governor to do that.

For some states, running lots of people may be a better way - every state is different. Lets just not do something becuase we get to brag about a number to the press. We would get 10X the press if we elected someone than we would by running a "record number of candidates".

Seems like a lot of Pa. legislators already made a "boneheaded" mistake in voting for the pay increase. So pick out a few weak incumbents now -those who won narrow races in a district that registers a majority for the other party. Pennsy's big problem seems to be the huge and expensive number of petition signatures it continually needs. Sort of a Catch 22: knock off a weak incumbent or two and the legislator may look to increase the number of signatures!
Don't knock anyone off and continue to be ignored
(it doesn't matter how much publicity the party generates year after year if it isn't translated into growing votes and influence - unless of course the only goal is to see one's name in the paper and feel like a big shot.) Any suggestions on how to get the petition requirements lowered?

EVERYONE HERE COUNTS, we all can chip in and get more registered voters by having a paper and pencil ready no matter where we are. Take a few moments out of our time to talk to people about Libertarians and Freedom and the changes we need. Lets Start NOW> I AM IN> I WILL HELP.
But we NEED EVERYONE.
Bring this up at the meetings. And have everyone have the registration and petitions handed out or get one. Keep it with you at all times and talk to people no matter where you are.

PS WE CAN GO TO THE MEETINGS and tell how we did or have a posting on the board that such and such city got number of amount of registration or signed on petition.

These petitions you guys are talking about, do they have to be paper and pencil or can they be done over the internet?

You *do* know what's going to happen, right? No matter what we do, the other guy is going to win. If the culprit is a republican, and he's running again, then the people of his district is going to elect the democrat; and if he's not running again, there's probably a slightly less than fifty percent chance the new republican will get elected. Similarly, if the culprit is a democrat, and he's running again, then the people of his district is going to elect the republican; and if he's not running again, there's about a slightly less than fifty percent chance the new democrat will get elected. The general public is never going to learn that they're all pretty much the same. They don't even give a third party a second glance. Does that mean we shouldn't try? Of course not. We need to do all that we can.

Mark--
I'm in Florida as well, and I can tell you that I've never seen so many jaded Democrats (who would never consider voting Republican) ask me about the LP. It's an exciting time here to spread the word.

Maybe we should focus on young voters. I'm a senior in high school and I can't tell you how many times I've talked to my friends about the LP and they've never heard the word "libertarian" before. It's quite frustrating, but once I explain to them what we're all about, they agree that it's the most logical way to run things.

Perhaps if coaches weren't teaching all of the social studies classes, these kids would have heard about different ideas of government. It's a shame that some of the most important classes (political science, civics, economics, american history) are often taught by coaches who are required to teach some subject to be a school employee. I know that when I took these classes, I knew more than the teacher did, and it was downright depressing what they tried to pass off as an education.

Posted by: Katie at August 18, 2005 04:41 PM

Katie:

You might find it helpful to go to the LP home page and look up the smallest political quiz. Because we are a two party system most people think in terms of two parties and allow that to spill over in thier thinking about ideologies.

In our family one sister scores authoriterian, another conservitve, brother centerist, myself liberterian, father centerest, and mother decisively liberal. Inter-family discussions are rational but only mom looses control. God bless her! She is loyal to her party no matter what! Now we have names to put on our political differences. It does matter how you think about the questions. As it does when you vote in elections - principal or practical.

rense.com

Bring The National
Guard Home...NOW!
By Norman Solomon
9-1-5

The men and women of the National Guard shouldn't be killing in Iraq. They should be helping in New Orleans and Biloxi.

The catastrophic hurricane was an act of God. But the U.S. war effort in Iraq is a continuing act of the president. And now, that effort is hampering the capacity of the National Guard to save lives at home.

Before the flooding of New Orleans drastically escalated on Tuesday, the White House tried to disarm questions that could be politically explosive. "To those of you who are concerned about whether or not we're prepared to help, don't be, we are," President Bush said. "We're in place, we've got equipment in place, supplies in place, and once the -- once we're able to assess the damage, we'll be able to move in and help those good folks in the affected areas."

Echoing the official assurances, CBS News reported: "Even though more than a third of Mississippi's and Louisiana's National Guard troops are either in Iraq or supporting the war effort, the National Guard says there are more than enough at home to do the job.

But after New Orleans levees collapsed and the scope of the catastrophe became more clear, such reassuring claims lost credibility. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday: "With thousands of their citizen-soldiers away fighting in Iraq, states hit hard by Hurricane Katrina scrambled to muster forces for rescue and security missions yesterday -- calling up Army bands and water-purification teams, among other units, and requesting help from distant states and the active-duty military."

The back-page Post story added: "National Guard officials in the states acknowledged that the scale of the destruction is stretching the limits of available manpower while placing another extraordinary demand on their troops -- most of whom have already served tours in Iraq or Afghanistan or in homeland defense missions since 2001."

Speaking for the Mississippi National Guard, Lt. Andy Thaggard said: "Missing the personnel is the big thing in this particular event. We need our people." According to the Washington Post, the Mississippi National Guard "has a brigade of more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq" while "Louisiana also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad."

National Guard troops don't belong in Iraq. They should be rescuing and protecting in Louisiana and Mississippi, not patrolling and killing in a country that was invaded on the basis of presidential deception. They should be fighting the effects of flood waters at home -- helping people in the communities they know best -- not battling Iraqi people who want them to go away.

Let's use the Internet today to forward and post this demand so widely that the politicians in Washington can no longer ignore it:

Bring the National Guard home. Immediately.

Bring Them Home...NOW!

The National Guard Belongs in New Orleans and Biloxi

Not Baghdad

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