The End of the Road

As everything has a beginning, everything has an end. We are approaching the end of the 2010 election cycle and I wish to thank those who assisted me in my efforts. The Libertarian Party of Southeast Wisconsin members were great. I really have to thank my wife and kids, George Meyers, Daane Hoffman, Anthony DeCubellis, Keith Deschler, Jim Sewell and many others in getting my campaign on the map. I would like to thank both Paul Ryan and John Heckenlively for participating in the process. It was a polite, gentlemanly campaign as the citizens of the First District deserve.

This year we got some good press and some less than good press. I even got an actual sound bite to a few media outlets regarding "tripartisanship". I was actually recognized publicly, so the Libertarians are making a difference. I think our widespread effort that had multiple visible candidates across the first district made things better. I have a feeling that our effort made Chris Wright show up to a forum that he would have otherwise skipped. I feel Daane's campaign made Barca toss up signs "just in case". It is great that every party sees us in their rear view mirrors now!!!

The recent endorsement of Paul Ryan by the Kenosha News is easy to brush aside, but they implied that my campaign was not good enough to be taken seriously. I am insulted by that.

I was invited to 2 forums. I attended both.

Paul Ryan only attended one of those.

I was asked by WPR to do an interview. I obliged.

I was asked by WPT to do a candidate address.

I drove to Madison to do it.

I was asked by WisconsinEye to do an interview.

I drove to Milwaukee to do it.

I was asked by WRJN to do an interview

and take callers questions. I did it.

I spoke with the Kenosha News.

I spoke with the Journal Sentinal

I was asked to respond to many surveys

and I did most of them. Paul Ryan

apparently refuses to answer them.

I was at the Racine County Fair on 3 days

to work the booth, presenting myself

as a candidate.

Using the signs I recycled from the 2008 campaign,

I got some signs out around the 1st District.

Private citizens requested information using the

email address from my website. I replied.

I personally distributed over 2000 pieces literature,

going door to door.

I spoke to all those who wished to discuss

the issues with me.

As I did not seek donations for my campaign, I ended up far below any level which would need to be reported. My campaign was funded by myself, with the exception of a very small unsolicited contribution from a good libertarian friend. It was much less than the amount that I would have had to record any information on it. After the expeditions to Madison and Milwaukee, I spent under $100 for fuel and some simple flyers. I have to say I feel good about my effort. I did everything a candidate should do with the exception of taking millions of dollars of donations and pimping myself like a box of laundry detergent. Of course, area newspapers would have enjoyed the ad money.

My only regret is far too many surveys are Y/N type which do not allow me to put the reasoning behind my responses. If your favorite survey was not completed, it may be that is was the Y/N type. I avoid those unless I know I am in full agreement of that group where little explanation would be needed. It is the NO replies that usually need some room to put my views.

Another situation is where I may not get a survey until it is too late to reply or I just cannot get to it. As the only person in this race with a private sector job, I think I did pretty good.

As a libertarian, I feel that the voters need to do their own research. I must be available to inquiry and I was. I am not required to make apathetic voters excited. I am certain that I am not on the take and I didn't throw mud.

For those who may not have had the time to look up my campaign efforts, I will offer some below.

AAUW Forum

Stephanie Jones article.

WGTD Forum Podcast

Racine Post Coverage

WPR Interview with Ben Merens (Real Player required)

WPT Candidate Comments

WisconsinEye Interview (Real Player required)

JSOnline Interview

Vote Smart Courage Test

Wisconsin Coalition to Normalize Relations to Cuba Survey

Organic Consumers Fund Question

Campaign for Liberty Questions

If that is not enough, let Google help you.

Thank you everybody.

Liberty, Peace and Prosperity!

Joseph Kexel

Libertarian Candidate for Wisconsin's First Congressional District

I hope everyone had a great Constitution Day!

That should be a bigger celebration than it is. The Declaration of Independence is great document that we should celebrate dearly, but the acceptance of the Constitution created a government that would support liberty into to the future. We should have fireworks and parties for Constitution Day as well.

I participated in such a celebration yesterday. I joined a group of people, from children to those in their 70s celebrate the founding documents of our nation. It was a great event and I hope it is the beginning of a long line of celebrations of our Constitution.

The event was well planned. We began with a reading of the Declaration of Independence, which must be considered an important introduction of our nation's Constitution. It clearly stated why we started the journey to become a sovereign nation.

Next, we marched to a park where we read the Bill of Rights, which we know does not create such rights, but simply states that they exist and the federal government must keep their hands off them.

At the next stop in the march, we had a speaker explain separation of powers and shared the importance of the Federalist Papers in understanding the meaning of the Constitution.

We ended up at Milwaukee's War Memorial. We had a great introduction to the Oath Keepers and a great closing speech by Ken Van Doren. Both made it clear it was up to us to see that the Constitution is the law of the land. The Constitution is merely ink on paper. It is "We The People" that make it real. "We the People" must enforce it, even while our government denies its existence.

For those who missed Constitution Day, make it a point to celebrate it next year.

Special thanks to Stacy Kaat for organizing this event. To all who supported her to make it possible, THANK YOU!!!

The Wars

A recent news article stated that Wisconsin Congressional candidates websites do not address the wars. It is pretty clear from my site that I oppose the wars and feel we must bring the troops home. The single-most reason is that the wars are not declared.

To be honest, my site only mentioned Iraq by name, but I did say wars in the text portion. That was from 2008 when Iraq was in the limelight more that Afghanistan.

To make my position more clear, I will not vote for any bill or budget that funds an undeclared war. If we have not used our Constitution to declare the conflict, then the Congress is not authorized to fund it.

Wars are not productive. They do not add to our economy. If you imagine all the money spent on the wars spent on domestic industrial production, though we would still be in debt, every family would have a new car, their house payment halved and at least one critical surgery available for them when they needed it. I am not promoting socialism, but the fact that instead of anything tangible we have broken nations in need of expensive repair.

I have little faith that Iraq will not collapse in the future under the pressure of religious and cultural differences. Does anybody truly feel that thousands of years of conflict is now erased due to American influence? The Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds remained in a single nation solely due to the iron fist of Saddam Hussein. The withdrawal from Iraq which is now beginning will not remove all troops. We will be stationed there forever as we have been in Germany, Japan, Korea and countless other nations.

Afghanistan has even more severe obstacles to stability, they are truly a third world nation without any real exports other than opium. Without firing a single shot, we could have disabled them forever by giving our citizens more freedom. With the legalization of drugs, aside from saving hundreds of billions domestically on enforcement and incarceration, the price of opium would drop to the point Afghanistan would lucky to feed themselves and could no longer fund terrorism around the world.

Now, be clear that legalization does not mean endorsement of drug use. I only support that the free American people be allowed to make their own personal value judgments. I, also, think a drastic decline of the effects of the black market drug trade would be a beneficial to our domestic situations of gang violence and gun crime. There would even be a benefit to the international issues of Mexican drug gang violence and the funding of terrorism.

I will reiterate that I will not support funding the current wars. I will support bringing all our troops home from around the world. Our troops should only be stationed or actively in combat when in immediate defense of our nation and when we have a Constitutionally declared war.

Wars should be rare and be backed by the people. It is their liberty and property on the line, we must never keep the people out of the loop.

Ballot Access and Questionnaires

Now that we have completed the push to get signatures, I may enter campaign mode. Aside from myself, we got 3 Libertarians on the ballot for state assembly in the Kenosha/Racine area, George Meyers, Anthony Decubellis and Daane Hoffman.

I am both willing and eager to push for access to newspapers, TV and such. However, I believe I will need to make a stand this year. Some of these questionnaires are sickening. I will not name names, but I find that most special interest groups seem to despise the states. They want this national law or that national law.

The worst seems to be pro-life groups that I would love to support, but their views are tough for a libertarian to manage. For example, early on they ask in a questionnaire if I feel that abortion is wrong except in the case of saving the mother's life, rape or incest. I can agree with those positions.

Then they will ask if I support overruling Roe v. Wade. I agree with that, but at that point I am done as a federal candidate. Once abortion is in the hands of the states, the feds need to back the heck off!

However, they want all sorts of federal intervention into the states' business even if Roe v Wade is made void. Their position is completely inconsistent with the Constitution. If you accept states have the power, I agree. However, you cannot pick and choose when to follow the Constitution in order to get your agenda completed.

I will offer that I will resist any effort for federal funding of abortion. I find that is abhorrent in the most basic sense. You cannot tax people to pay for the activities of others, let alone taxing people to fund activities they find morally offensive. The government does not have any power that individual citizens do not have. A woman does not have the right to barge into a church and rob a person at gunpoint to pay for her abortion. Similarly, the government cannot use it's force to make that same church going citizen pay for another person's abortion.

The pro-gun lobby is a little better, but they have to throw in the idea that a federal law must be passed in order to force other states to allow concealed carry for residents of other states with possibly very different criteria for concealed carry. I would never expect a foreign nation to accept Wisconsin's open carry rules, why should I expect other states to? Concealed carry is the same thing. I would love to see states have reciprocal laws, but that is something for the state legislatures to hammer out. That decision must not come from DC.

As for guns, the 2nd Amendment is pretty damn clear.

“

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

”

The key thing to remember is that the Constitution limits the federal government, not the states. The only real issue is how far does the 14th Amendment go in making states buckle under the authority of the federal government?

Is a permit infringing? I may feel so, but different states may have different rules. Obviously infringing in my view would be banning, limiting the types of firearms, impossible paper work ( too difficult for most to comply ) or any fees that make it prohibitive to own firearms.

I feel that the 14th Amendment is there to keep the states from becoming tyrannical towards their entire population or specific groups. The clear reason for the 14th Amendment was the fear that blacks would be second class citizens and I agree with that point of view. I do not, however, want the states to be mere puppets of the federal government. As long as a state makes their rules uniform and do not pass laws that make a owning guns impossible due to regulation or expense, I feel the federal government should stay out of it. I do agree with the recent Supreme Court rulings that a city cannot simply ban a class of weapons completely, leaving their citizens ripe for abuse from the criminal element.

Liberty, Peace and Prosperity
Liberty + Peace = Prosperity

Repeal 1913!

Today, I will discuss my platform for my run for Congress. Aside from obeying the Constitution, I believe that 1913 was a disastrous year for our Constitution and I wish to see that year repealed. That one year saw both the 16th and 17th Amendments passed. Those amendments bypassed the state governments in taxation (16th Amendment) and in representation in Congress (17th Amendment).

The states were, in effect, neutered. Without the 16th Amendment, the federal government would only be able to receive income from tariffs and excise taxes. When additional money was required the federal government would have to bill the states apportionately. The states would then need to implement taxation upon their citizens to get their share of federal tax bill. The key part is without the 17th Amendment, the states would be able to nip most spending programs in the bud with their Senators. I believe the states would resist having to be the bad guy taxing people while Uncle Sam wins brownie points with the people by providing handouts.

The states were actually a check on the people. I think the founders understood that the states as sovereign governments would have goals that may not necessarily correlate with federal power grabs or citizens trying to raid the treasury that ultimately the states would be obligated to pay for.

As we look at the system today, we see the population robbed before they even get their paychecks. Uncle Sam gets his before you get yours! Your state then needs to beg the federal government to get the money back that you provided the federal government due to the 16th Amendment. Often the feds use the money like doggie treats to get the states to perform the tricks (actions) they desire from them.

If the 16th and 17th Amendments were not bad enough, we added the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. That act pretty much was Congress giving away their power to manage the money supply to a private group of bankers. That system allows the bankers to invent money out of thin air to lend to the government (National Debt) and private concerns (Housing Bubble). The federal government uses that as a credit card. That line of credit has allowed our government to grow far beyond its means and has indebted every person in the United States to at least $350,000.

My opponents will offer their prescriptions to manage the symptoms of an over-reaching federal government. I offer you the cure to an over-reaching federal government, sovereign states with their Senators back, sovereign individuals not taxed by the IRS and cutting up the federal government's credit card (Terminate the Federal Reserve).

Join me and let's REPEAL 1913!

The Magic of Socialism

First I will need to clarify the only difference between fascism and socialism is that a fascist state will let you own capital (on paper) and allow you to keep a larger piece of the economic action. The problem with fascism is the extreme regulatory system prevents a high level of prosperity.

Pure economic liberty has not been tried for any significant length of time. At some point members of the society will notice that some unfairness occurs, even if slight and demand tweaking from a free system to one a little less free. Then it is only a matter of time before fascism occurs. It is inevitable for the purely free economic system is labeled unworkable and the only direction allowed is towards more and more regulatory control. This regulatory control leads to poor decision making and large amounts of inefficiency which creates poor economic performance. Today, the United States is fascist state.

Since a system of pure economic liberty is not acceptable due to dogma and the fascist system is unable to provide enough prosperity to be labeled successful, even more control is demanded from the public leading to the government taking ownership. Please, keep this clear the government owns it, not you. If you owned it you could quickly decide GM is a poor investment and divest yourself of stock on the open market. Do not think Government Motors is going public anytime soon with the government's shares of the company. The government gets power over the entire industry for they will ultimately demand Ford and others follow their rules or else GM will get special favors from the government.

I hope this explains how socialism is inevitable once you eliminate economic liberty from society. Now I will explain to you the magical power that socialism has. It is a very amazing power.

We can look to the USSR to help reveal to us this power socialism has. A nation which spanned 7 time zones could not make enough toilet paper for its people. In the USSR, the grandparents' job was to stand in line in hope of finding food and other products to survive. They were not even shopping, but grabbing anything that by some stroke of luck made it before them. In fact, defectors from the USSR to the United States were so impacted by this behavior that they had a difficult time shopping in an American store. We had so many choices they couldn't handle it.

When buying milk was as simple as buying anything resembling it, whether or not it was rancid or curdled, a modern supermarket could be intimidating. Just look at milk aisle in your local store and you see whole milk, 2%, 1%, skim, chocolate flavored, strawberry flavored, banana flavored, egg nog, cream, half and half, buttermilk and more. That is pretty impressive, yet you still need to determine what size you want like half-pint, pint, half-gallon, gallon or 2 gallon multi-packs. When you add into the mix the 3 or more different brands each selling that massive array of milk products you have a mind boggling amount of choices. Prosperity does that. (Note: We are living off the prosperity of the past. Consolidation of most industries is occurring at a rapid pace. At some point we will have only a few companies doing dairy for the entire nation. That is much easier for the government to control. Maybe a monopoly will be allowed to occur before the nationalization of the industry, but that is inevitable in this system. Like I said socialism and to a lesser extent fascism is destructive to the economy, but as momentum in a physical system takes time to overcome, wealth takes time to disappear. Do not be mistaken the economic engine in the US is dying.)

Before the US was the bread basket of the world, the Ukraine was. When the Soviet government grabbed the farms, grain production dropped so severely that the ultimate economic result of the USSR was sealed. They went from having a surplus to sell the world, to needing to borrow money to buy grain from the world. The downward spiral was begun and collapse was impossible to avoid. Socialism killed the economic engine of the USSR immediately. It just took over 60 years for the USSR to die from that mortal wound.

Seeing what was going on in the USSR, China chose to turn away from socialism in order to save its people, but they merely moved back to a position of fascism. At some point, the people may demand socialism again unless they see a completely free economy as the good it truly is.

Europe is going broke. The United States is going broke. Central America and South America are going broke. All are debt ridden from socialist and fascist policies which destroy their economies.

What is the magic power of socialism and to a lesser extent fascism? Socialism has the power to impoverish an entire planet! It has failed the world over, again and again.

If socialism is inevitable in the absence of pure economic liberty and socialism creates poverty, then the only rational choice is pure economic liberty.

I will end this with a quote I find so revealing of the ultimate nature of socialism.

"We are not without accomplishment. We have managed to distribute poverty equally." -Nguyen Co Thatch, Vietnamese foreign minister

The End of Virtue

The number one failure of our society is the reduction of virtue. At the core, I see our socialist and fascist government programs as the cause of this trend. How can a government program destroy virtue?

Let me show you.

When people behave charitably, there is one inherent element that is so basic to that social transaction that to ignore it is obscene. That element is choice. Without voluntary action charity cannot exist. Giving to a charitable organization or directly providing charity is a sign of personal virtue.

To a socialist, charity is the transfer of wealth from a rich person to a poor person, regardless of how or why that transaction occurs. To a socialist, robbing the wealthier person with threat of financial penalties or jail time and offering that money to the disadvantaged is still charity. The perversity of that position continues when the receiver thanks the socialist for the gift by re-electing them into office.

There is absolutely no virtue in that transaction. One man is robbed, another takes the money while ignoring the crime and the remaining participant gains power over both.

As if the forced donations were not bad enough, the real damage occurs later. When citizens are forced to provide to others through taxation the virtue of charity is discarded. People do not feel any satisfaction at tax time. The satisfaction is not really the reward as much as a natural response to aiding another human being. We are social creatures and the vast majority of us respond favorably to the needs of our brothers and sisters.

Gratitude disappears, too. Another virtuous behavior is thanking somebody when they help you. The person getting the check from the government doesn't thank those who are productive enough to pay a tax, but instead are grateful to the government.

At this point, it should become clear that the social interactions of helping others and showing gratitude are completely destroyed. This is the toxic result of a 3rd party, aka government, butting into an area where it doesn't belong. True charity is not a social evil resulting from income disparity, but a social good which brings the community together.

The most severe repercussions of this social decay develop over time. When such a system of taxation and handouts lasts several generations, you get the entitlement syndrome. It is when those who receive the gifts from government no longer see it as a gift nor a privilege, but a right. They no longer recognize the theft from their neighbors.

Even the productive members of society get warped. Soon, they see problems in need of a response and they wonder why their tax money hasn't been used to fix it. From potholes to broken people, it becomes harder to respond. When they see government, with all that money at its disposal unable to solve these problems, it is little wonder they feel powerless.

The downward spiral is complete.

We must reject this ideology. We must trust ourselves to help others without force. Benjamin Franklin suggested that only a virtuous people could be free. I offer that the corollary is equally true, only a free people can be virtuous.