We have a great Libertarian candidate for Governor of Ohio in 2006 -- William S. Peirce. I look forward to his campaign.

There should not be such thing as campaign finance laws. People should be free to put their money wherever they feel like.
In any case, no campaign finance law will ever work because federal and local governments manage too much money and have too much regulatory power. Cut government and corruption will eventually go down.
I have however no sympathy for Tom Noe because he was funding pro-government politicians.

Wonderful, another Libertarian running. Keep those Libertarians comming.

I hope Mr. Dailey and other staffers who post original material to this blog will remember that we're also a political party, and as such, whenever opposition politicians are mentioned, an effort should be made in the same article to also show the better - Libertarian Party - alternative to the Demopublican.

Why was it up to Mr. Whitfield to reveal the fact that there was an LP candidate running to replace the scandal-plagued top dog?

To any blog readers who are Ohioans interested in reducing the size and scope of state government - so there is less of a market for corruption in the first place - please check out Pierce for Governor:

http://peirceforohio.com

That guy looks like he has a pretty solid campaign going.

Yes, he's a great candidate.

D, I'm curious about something. I want a honest answer. This is from Peirce's website:

"Education is important and most people want education to be publicly funded. That does not mean that every child is best served by the nearest public school. Children differ and parents have their own preferences about teaching styles and methods of maintaining discipline. More important, the public schools are caught in the middle of intense disputes about values, religion, and even what subjects should be taught. Moreover, court decisions and bureaucratic controls at all levels—Washington, Columbus, and the local school district—interfere with the freedom of teachers to teach and to maintain order. Especially in the largest and most diverse districts, it is impossible for public schools to satisfy the needs of all families.

Currently, our educational system is controlled by high-priced lawyers and lobbyists in Columbus who actually spend our own schools’ money to influence legislators in the State House. Money is spent as political favors for powerful friends, not for our children.

Bill Peirce has an answer to this problem: he wants you to decide how to spend your money on your children’s education. He wants you to choose where to send your children for their best interests.

And to help you do what’s best for your child, the school of your choice will receive a $3,000 grant from the state of Ohio. This is similar to the Pell grants the federal government provides at the university level. You decide on a school, and the school earns the grant."

Now, I dont have any problem with the above. I view it as a politically possible interim position that acknowledges reality on the ground in Ohio. But wouldnt you be against such a plan? If I came up with such a thing you would bitterly attack it as a sell out on principle, would you not?

Seriously, why the double standard?

OK CAN someone tell the Webmaster to add on the left or right side a link for Libertarian Candidate, so all the candidate can be listed and user friendly without having to go all over the blog to find it. Wouldn't this be a productive way to bettter let people know of all the candidate's running in one shot. I cannot believe with how important this is, they haven't done this. People should also foward this information to all people, new and old to let the Libertarians are going to make a stance. Please G-d.

For Freedom, you have a very short memory. I already found out (at your request) from Shane Cory that the LP can't post such links on the national website because of legal reason due to Federal Election Commission rules. See http://www.lp.org/yourturn/archives/000119.shtml for details.

No I didn't forget, but if you look at the Ca.lp.org you will see Mr. cohen has been posted there, so why would that be any different? Also, is the advertisment Libertarian running for congress, kinda doing the same thing as you see there on the left. So all your doing is just making a list that doesn't dissapear as new blogs appear.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/schoolgirls-beheaded-in-grisly-indonesian-attack/2005/10/29/1130400398091.html

Again why we should not have open border. These people will kill at anything.

http://www.wivb.com/Global/story.asp?S=4045531
Again why we should not have teenage girls. These teenagers will kill at anything.

Come on! Seriously, the problem behind crime is not immigration. And closing borders will not help you much. What would help you is more effective police. People must abide by the law, which assumes that the law is simple enough and that the police does not have to waste resources on fake crimes like immigration, drug, doing business and can focus on violent crimes (by the way, some people will always do crazy things...).

Really, like the police are really helping us, they have taken guns away in New Orleans, in case you forgotten, abused their authority, and our privacy rights are continuing to be taken as well as the fact you turn around and with all these new laws popping up, you can be arrested for anything.
And police are also arresting 5 year old in schools instead of working on crimes that are important.

I 100% agree with you. Today, the police serves the policies and interests of big government people. That's why a libertarian agenda is so relevant today. Liberals and conservatives each grow government in their own ways and the bottom line is that government, police and Justice, do not or cannot focus anymore on their core responsibilites. Vote libertarian.

"http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/schoolgirls-beheaded-in-grisly-indonesian-attack/2005/10/29/1130400398091.html

Again why we should not have open border. These people will kill at anything. "

Actually those were Australians getting killed in Indonesia, not in Australia by Indonesians. That is actually a great example of why we shouldn't mess with other countries - they'll kill our citizens.

Nigel, whether we mess or not mess with other countries, depending on the situation, they will kill us anyways. Like the Nazi. Only we are more advance in making bombs. Do not think if we just stick our head in the sand it will all go away.

What do the last six posts have to do with Ohio?

On the local news today. It was mentioned that the dogs are being auctioned that was left behind in New Orleans, I wonder how well they were working to find the original owners. Maybe or maybe not. They confiscate the people's guns, the told them they can't take their dogs. Now these people dogs are being auctioned off for money.
Also what happened to giving away the dogs for free to new homes? Oh that right it's all about money.

Your government at work.

"Nigel, whether we mess or not mess with other countries, depending on the situation, they will kill us anyways. Like the Nazi. Only we are more advance in making bombs. Do not think if we just stick our head in the sand it will all go away."

They'll still dislike us for a while, but back when Yankee traders were our main contact with other countries, nobody hated us. Now that an overbearing government is, everybody does. Few hate the American people. Most just hate our government.

"What do the last six posts have to do with Ohio?"
Posted by jnice

Meh, not a lot, but discussion is good.

In the United States or overseas, Yankee traders are respected only if they don't use violence. Violence made legal through government or violance said to serve noble public purposes is still violence. What's the point of freeing Irak, Vietnam, France, Germany if taxes and regulations expand in the US? At one point, some country will have to declare war on the US to bring freedom to the US. I guess there is a link with Ohio here.

You folks are ignoring the fact that people in iceland and belize are not being killed by anyone. The reason being that those people have not caused the iraqis, the irainians, the indonesians or anyone else to hate their guts as the united states and our allies have done. The point being that if you don't give people a reason to want to kill you, they probably won't. The fact that we are better at making bombs in itself is not a problem, but, the fact that we use them on innocent people tends to cause a great deal of hate for our country.

John christopher wrote: At one point, some country will have to declare war on the US to bring freedom to the US. I guess there is a link with Ohio here.

Well john, we have certainly brought freedom to a number of occupied countries when germany and japan invaded and maybe those countries will return the favor by removing our dictators from office and restoring our constitution and freedoms that we cherish. Never thought the day would come when our government would turn against freedom, but they surely have.

This is one issue I fall in the middle. I believe that we have a interventionist foreign poilcy that has led to much animosity towards us. But let us not use this as an excuse to become childishly naive. There are evil people out there that want to do us harm, even if we adopt Switzerland like naturality. The fact is because of our size and wealth we will remain a nice target for socialist and terrorist leaders who need a scapgoat for all the harm and suffering that they bring their own people. So I say lets keep working to end our interventionist foreign poilcy but don't think this alone will make us safe.We also need good intelligence and a strong military(in this department I think we're 50% there,if only they were home instead of nation building). Let's not point to weak anecdotal evidence like,"If we just stay nautral like Switzerland", because we are not Switzerland. We represent 30% of the world's wealth and only 3% of the world's population, that alone will always make us a target.

For Freedom wrote, regarding linking to canddiate websites: "No I didn't forget, but if you look at the Ca.lp.org you will see Mr. cohen has been posted there, so why would that be any different? Also, is the advertisment Libertarian running for congress, kinda doing the same thing as you see there on the left. So all your doing is just making a list that doesn't dissapear as new blogs appear."

The rules Mr. Cory referred to related to the national website pointing to local and state campaigns. He wrote, "A simple link to a candidate's site who solicits contributions over the web could be seen as solicitation by the national LP. This cannot be done for local and state candidates per the FEC."

His comment suggests this rule does not prevent the California party from similarly linking, since it is a prohibition against national parties. Legally speaking, the state parties are separate from the national party.

Regarding your second comment, that: "...is the advertisment Libertarian running for congress, kinda doing the same thing as you see there on the left."

No, it's not an advertisement. It's a reporting of party news. While the distinction may be slight, my guess is that it's sufficient to make the legal difference. Also, the link does not point to Cohen's website. It points to an article written about the campaign. In the FEC's fuzzy legal world, this probably makes the difference between a "solicitation" and a "report."

Campaign finance laws are unconstitutional, whatever our Supreme Court has said. The cliche, "the freedom of the press belongs to the person who owns one," illustrates the reason why. The press isn't going to build and maintain itself. The blank paper and ink aren't free. To exercise freedom of the press, you need resources, especially money, and to exercise a LOT of freedom of the press, you need a LOT of those resources. Similarly with speech: if you need a venue, that's a resource, which probably costs money, at least to maintain. When everyone is trying to exercise their freedom of speech, there is competition for venues, requiring the expenditure of more resources, again, especially money. Another cliche explains this situation: "free speech isn't free."

If someone comes along and says that you can only raise or spend so much money to exercise your freedom of press or speech, then your ability to exercise your freedom is curtailed, abridged. What reasonable person would deny this? Our Congress made a law to do just that. Yet the First Amendment to the US Constitution says, quite clearly, "Congress shall make no law ... abdridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

This doesn't mean "make some law," or "make only nice law." It means "make NO law"! Just because the law targets the means to exercise freedom of speech and press, and doesn't blatantly restrict speech itself (though, reading through the bill, it does that, too), this doesn't mean that the effect of the bill is NOT to constrain speech. The Amendment doesn't say, "congress shall make no law, the INTENT of which is to abridge..." It says, "make no law abridging...," which covers laws INTENDED to abridge as well as laws that have the EFFECT of abridging, as the campaign finance laws clearly do in the case of political speech & the expression of political ideas.

That the Supreme Court has not already seen fit to strike down such laws, as being offensive to the Constitution, is shameful, in my opinion.

I guess I don't see the point of this article, UNLESS it is to turn the reader's attention to the LP and its candidates in the next election cycle, or to highlight the LP's own opposition to the laws, under which the GOP supporter is being prosecuted. If the point was simply to illustrate how Demopublicans are "hoist by their own petards," or seem to have no problem breaking the unjust laws they expect others to follow, then there are better, more explicit ways to make such things clear.

Ok, bottom line is, our freedom on this is limited as well. To me it's all how you word things, loopholes and whatever the government puts out. A game that is played and we are the guinea pigs of course. The government puts up rules and we jump through hoops.

Time to change that.

I agree with James Anderson Merritt and For Freedom on this. It's long past time to change the campaign finance laws. They didn't make any sense when they were passed, and they make even less sense now.

James anderson merritt wrote: Yet the First Amendment to the US Constitution says, quite clearly, "Congress shall make no law ... abdridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

This is exactly one of the reason (as well as many others) that these corrupt politicians who have taken over our government need to be removed from office thru the election process. The constitution is the law of this land and it (should and will) remain the law of this land long after our present government politicians have long since died in an american prison cell for failing to uphold the constitution and bill of rights that are granted to each and every american citizen.
If every politician in government today were held to the same standards that tom noe is being held too, almost every politician in office today would be indicted on several felonies that have to do with much more than violating federal campaign finance laws.

Additionally, Mr. Noe is under investigation for investing $50 million of the state workers' compensation fund in rare coins, with $13 million gone missing. The Ohio attorney general has accused Mr. Noe of stealing at least $6 million. State officials are planning to sue Mr. Noe and file criminal charges for alleged theft and fraud, according to the Editor and Publisher.

THIS IS VERY INTERESTING.
I believe every member of congress and senate would be guilty of the same charges when they took money out of our paychecks to be used for social security and then put it into the general fund, spent the money on all sorts of wasteful, foolish programs and then left us something called an (I OWE YOU). Well guess what? They sure as hell do owe us.

I might be wrong but from what I remember, the campain finance reform was the brain child of Ross Perot. If I recall right it was supposed to help third party candidates. The laws we have now came from a bill, introduced by Sen Mc Cain, and the reform he created was to keep third party candidates from competing. Then again, I should probably keep my mouth shut because it's been a while since I read up on it, and Either way this Mr.Noe is a lying scum bag like the rest of them. He's lying, cheating and stealing to get himself, or one of his politcal ally some more power. If he wasn't caught I guess we could expect him to be the next supreme court Judge with the Bush administration. What can you realy expect from a government, whose elected officials are decietful powermongers. You'll get a country that deals in decietful powermongering, and isn't that what we've been seeing in the past couple administrations?

You are mistaken, Mat. The Federal Election Campaign Act dates back to 1971 and had predecessors even before that. Wikipedia gives a good history of it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform as follows:

-------------------

...Congress passed a comprehensive overhaul of campaign finance regulations in 1971 with the Federal Election Campaign Act (amended 1974) and Revenue Act. The legislation was wide-ranging, attempting to consolidate previous reforms and also enacting a variety of new measures, including the first steps towards public financing of presidential campaigns. Enforcement remained a challenge, though, thanks in part to the lack of a central agency for monitoring compliance.

Public outrage at the Watergate scandal resulted in amendments to FECA which finally resulted in real changes in campaign finance. New provisions included stricter and more comprehensive contribution and expenditure limits for campaigns and other committees, full public financing for presidential general election campaigns, and, for the first time, an independent agency -- the Federal Election Commission -- to inform campaign finance rules.

The new law was challenged, resulting in a landmark Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo. The decision upheld contribution limits, disclosure requirements, and voluntary public financing, while striking down most limits on expenditures....

Another feature of the 1971 law was the $1 presidential checkoff on ones tax return. In those distant days, you could indicate to which party the $1 went! Needless to say, the IRS never paid dime one to the LP even though numerous LP members checked it off and wrote in
Libertarian party. Rather than file suit, the LP
looked reality in the face and realized it would cost more to litigate than they would probably gain. Maybe it would have been money well spent to uncover the theft and deception. Congress was chagrined enough to stop allowing taxpayers to designate their check off in future years.

Question: If you repeal campaign reform, all you do is allow certain sectors of our society to buy influence into a 'corrupt' political system. The logic of campaign reform holds up if you are still under a big government. If you get rid of campaign reform I guarantee that what you will get is Prayer in Schools, corporate welfarism and probably a constiutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

What do you all think.

Van what I think, I cannot say on here. believe me it is not very good. I HATE BIG GOVERNMENT.

I joined this blogversation late. Dr Bill Peirce has not formally been nominated, so he is not officially our candidate yet (as of now, nobody is running against him). But if you all seem to like the fact that libertarians are running professional campaigns for office, how about helping out monetarily. Visit https://donate.peirceforohio.com/

For anybody who lives in Ohio, we need people to help collect signatures. Send an e-mail to vicechair at lpo dot org.

As an Ex-Ohioan, I would like to point out that most of the problems [in Ohio] are based in the monopoly of power by the Republicans and Democrats. In addition to investigations for ALL WRONGDOINGS, Ohio should ask itself the question: WHY DID THE REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS NULLIFY 57,000 SIGNATURES IN A PETITION FOR BADNARIK FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004? Another question that should be asked is why the State House Store sell Republican and Democrat items. The State should not only separate itself from religion, it should separate from corporations and political parties, and behave as a private company competing for services [and customers].

Van Martin: The problem with your argument is that it assumes that big money interests that want to give large amounts of money to support their political agendas cannot currently do so. In truth they can. What they can't do is give whatever amounts of money they want to the candidate of their choice. Instead, they can spread their money around to candidates of a particular party or a particular issue pressure group.

The campaign finance laws work in favor of big government, not against it, because they work to support those who are already in power and influence, which is where the big money interests are interested in placing their support in the first place.

Big donors aren't trying to change the system. They're simply trying to buy control of those who already run it.

I know this is off topic but its a must read. Check it out.

COPS CALL FOR END OF DRUG WAR

Friday, October 28, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.com

One of the most influential groups calling for the government to end the war on drugs is an organization of law officers that have first hand experience of its failures, according to The Albuquerque Tribune. The Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a lobby group against the war on drugs, is gaining attention because it has over 2,000 members that range from former police officers, and prosecutors to judges. The group includes many high-ranking officials such as a previous New York City police chief and Gary Johnson, a former Governor of New Mexico.

It is estimated that the government has spent over $500 billion on the war against drugs, but members of LEAP all have first-hand experience and maintain that current policies are having no effect. They argue that instead of sending drug users or sellers to jail, the government should focus its resources on treatment. Supply cannot be stopped in a free market, but demand can be reduced through appropriate intervention.

Despite massive budgets and resources thrown at the problem LEAP members point out that usage of methamphetamines is exploding throughout the country. Jack Cole, the executive director of LEAP says, “This is not a war on drugs. It's a war on people.” White House officials have accused LEAP of being misguided and irresponsible.

staff reports - Free-Market News Network

Selected commentary is posted daily with FMNN responses to the FEEDBACK section of www.FreeMarketNews.com.