Advice to Libertarians who wish to run for City Council:

You may or may not follow my path.  It’s a change of life and a lot of work.

Find a leadership area in your community that’s of interest to you.  Seek a volunteer or appointed position in a community organization such as PTA, charity, local committee, city board or commission.  Attend City Council and commission meetings regularly.  Know the agenda topics. Write and speak to the City Council. Write letters to the editor.  Establish name recognition.

After you have a community resume and some name recognition, start a city council campaign 6-12 months before the election.  Know approximately how many votes it takes to be elected and focus on getting those votes.  Votes are all that matter.

Form an organizing committee.  Recruit campaign committee members to coordinate volunteers, manage a bank account, file state forms, and prepare your printed material (brochure/door hanger, signs, newspaper ads, campaign mailer).  You the candidate must do fund raising (about $15,000 for my successful re-election campaign for the Nov 2012 election).  You also must develop your campaign priorities and platform to reach voters, answer questionnaires, attend press interviews, attend candidate forums and walk precincts to meet voters.

Those are the essentials.  As an elected official you do not need to preach everything that is contained in the Libertarian Party Platform. There are enough bad policies and squandered taxpayer dollars to reasonably argue against.   You must have complete command of the facts involving a wide range of Council agenda topics and just use common sense in policy making.

74 percent of adults favor “requiring public employees to contribute more toward their own pensions and health care,” and 24 percent oppose, a new Reason-Rupe survey of Wisconsin finds.

“The Reason-Rupe poll asked Wisconsinites how the state should raise funds to pay government employee retirement benefits if the state did not have enough money to fund these benefits,” Reason reports.

72 percent oppose “increasing sales, income, or property taxes” to help fund government worker retirement benefits, 25 percent favor.

75 percent oppose “cutting spending on government programs, such as education and health care” to help fund public employee retirement benefits, 23 percent favor.

49 percent oppose and 46 percent favor “reducing public employee benefits.”

However, 74 percent favor “requiring public employees to contribute more toward their own pensions and health care,” and 24 percent oppose.

The poll followed by asking “if the state and local government had to reduce spending, which of the following areas would you reduce spending on first?” The plurality of Wisconsinites (38 percent) chose reducing spending on “pensions and benefits for public employees” followed by “prisons and courts” (29 percent).

Root writing for Fox News, states in part:

The truth is that government employees are the true 1%. We have far too many of them (21 million), many of them are paid too much, and their union demands are straining taxpayers to the breaking point…

…I recently talked with a retired New York City toll taker. His salary averaged about $70,000 per year over 20 years. But in his last few years he worked loads of overtime and added in accumulated sick days to get his salary in those final years up to $150,000.

His pension is based on his final years’ salary. This is a common pension-padding ploy.

He bragged that he will now get a taxpayer funded pension of $120,000 a year for the rest of his life. He’s only 50 years old…

…

But here’s a frightening question- what if he lives to 90? Or 100? His pension could rise to $8 million or higher.

Multiply this times 21 million government employees (on the federal, state and local level) and you now get a sense of what is bankrupting America.

Are these stories the exception, rather than the rule? Over 77,000 federal government employees earned more than the governor of their state.

On the federal level, it was just reported by USA Today that the average federal civil servant compensation is $123,049 per year.

The average 50-year old male has a life expectancy of almost 80. With automatic cost of living increases, that’s a bill to taxpayers of $5 million for the next 30 years –for not working. THREE TIMES WHAT HE EARNED WHILE WORKING.

And, of course, we’re also paying his medical bills.

Who did that to you?

Republicans and Democrats.

Want to do something about it?

Support Libertarians.

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While that’s actually an improvement, it is still unacceptable to most Americans and not good enough to turn around the declining economy.

According to Gallup Chief Economist Dennis Jacobe:

Given this difficult operating environment, it is not surprising that many small-business owners also worry about potential new healthcare costs and government regulations. While small businesses are always finding ways to deal with their changing operating environment, including government regulations and healthcare, these added challenges can be seen as exacerbating an already uncertain and difficult situation. In turn, they become additional reasons to hold back on hiring.

Jacobe later writes:

(L)awmakers could place a moratorium on new regulations for some period of time. In turn, this might provide the extra push needed to get small-business owners to decide to hire the employees they actually need and get the economy growing at a pace the average American can recognize as an economic recovery.

Republicans won’t do that.  Democrats won’t do that.  But Libertarians will.

Another 38 percent think the economy is becoming worse, while 22 percent say it’s staying the same.

Among independent voters the numbers are even grimmer. A whopping 48 percent say the economy is getting worse. Just 30 percent think it is getting better while 19 percent say it is staying the same.

You have the power to change that.

By supporting Libertarian candidates.

The “Libertarian Prosperity Plan” seeks to repeal the income tax and abolish the IRS, enact a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget without tax increases and repeal all corporate welfare programs and bailouts.

The Libertarian Prosperity Plan is rooted in the Libertarian Party platform and bedrock libertarian principles.

Unlike the other parties, we don’t promise tax cuts to just grab enough votes to win and then do nothing.  Elected Libertarians enact tax and spending cuts because it is what we believe in.

The Plan would:

1)    Repeal the income tax: Adopt legislation repealing the income tax and abolishing the Internal Revenue Service.  Until the income tax is repealed, adopt legislation preserving the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and enacting across-the-board income tax cuts.

2)    Adopt the Balanced Budget Amendment: Adopt a constitutional amendment requiring the federal budget be balanced, and balanced exclusively by cutting expenditures, not by raising taxes.

3)    Abolish corporate welfare and bailouts: Adopt federal legislation prohibiting any federal spending program that provides payments or unique benefits and advantages to specific companies or industries, terminating programs that provide direct grants to businesses, eliminating programs that provide research and other services for industries and ending programs that provide subsidized loans or insurance to businesses.

Only Libertarians have a plan, that they will follow up on, that frees job creators to begin investing and hiring again and curbs destructive federal spending.

Want to help put it into action?

Go here to learn more about running for office as a Libertarian.

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United Liberty

These facts should stop dead any further pushes to defend and keep public pensions sacrosanct. The left and public unions may get up and toot their own horn, but they can bleat about it until they’re blue in the face: the simple fact is we have no money. Eventually, people are going to get sick of the reductions in service and the hiking of taxes in order to pay for these pensions, and they’re going to come at them with hatchets.

Yet, for some inane reason, public unions cannot recognize this fact. They cannot see ahead even just ten years.

The good times are over. We all need to make cutbacks in order to get through this, and that includes our government. No matter what the left likes to think, reality does not have a liberal bias. It has a libertarian one.

Libertarian National Campaign Committee Chairman Wayne Root has long been speaking out about the need for public pension reform.  It’s an issue that threatens to lead our nation down the same road as Greece, toward riots and flames.

Republicans consistently fail to address the issue.  Democrats won’t touch it.  There’s only one way to save America from bankruptcy and economic collapse — support Libertarian candidates.

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“I’ve been a business consultant for most of my career, so I’ve worked in a wide variety of industries,” Beitler tells The Salisbury Post. “I really like working with business people. I think that’s what we need in the Secretary of State’s office — somebody who knows how to speak the language and understands what we need to do to promote job growth and creation in the state.”

Beitler also earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and economics from the University of Central Florida in 1976, a master’s degree in psychology from Norwich University in 1994 and a doctorate in leadership development from the The Union Institute in 1997.

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-77% oppose raising the federal gas tax

-Only 33% think transit should get more funding than its share in travel

-By a margin of 62% to 30% Americans favor more spending on roads because people and goods use them, as opposed to shifting funding to transit and other non-driving alternatives to try to get people out of cars.

-58% think new lanes or new highways should be funded with tolls rather than tax increases, and 59% say they would pay a toll if it would save them a significant amount of time

-57% support converting HOV lanes to HOT lanes, meaning letting single-occupant vehicles use carpool lanes if they pay a toll.

-55% support public private partnerships to build new roads and other infrastructure

-By 55% to 34% they support private companies funding and building high speed rails lines rather than the government.

“I am a 42 years old father of two. I have been employed in Topeka at AT&T for thirteen years as an Order Support Specialist.

“I am actively involved in the Libertarian Party and was elected to the position of Chairman of the state party in April 2009. The Libertarian Party is attractive to me due to their strong beliefs in fiscal conservatism and civil liberties.

“I was asked to run for the city council by countless people due to these beliefs. I am running for the 8th District City Council position because of the respect that I have for the generations that built this city and because of the deep sense of responsibility I feel to generations which raise their families in Topeka after me.”

…Among libertarians, even among those libertarians concerned with spreading a love and understanding of liberty, there are differences of opinion as to which methods work. Some are still convinced they can “vote themselves free”, while others see no evidence of this. Some prefer “preaching to the choir,” while others enjoy stepping into the lions’ den to try to show fans of coercion-based statutory “law” the superiority of voluntary action. Some think that it is a waste of time doing anything other than just living their life as they see fit to the best of their ability, and never try to help those who don’t want to be helped. “Just let the wagon go into the ravine if those on board insist on staying the course.”

Personally, I think there is a place for all those strategies, and it will take a little of all the above to once more make the world excited, and safe, for liberty. I’m not going to be too hard on anyone who is working toward the same goal.