Call for No CARA

September 12, 2000

My name is Douglas Arthur Tuma. Got too much government? Vote Tuma for Congress, Gail Lightfoot for U.S. Senate, Art Olivier for Vice President and Harry Browne for President. We're Libertarians..

On November 7 we vote for candidates to represent what we want government to do. We vote Democrat or Republican if we want government to take more of our earnings to give to whatever charitable cause politicians think will win
them more votesÑlike new entitlements for land conservation, wildlife
protection, and parks programs proposed by the Conservation and Reinvestment
Act (CARA). CARA is the Senate version of the House bill sponsored by Rep.
Don Young of Alaska that would spend $45 billion in the next fifteen years,
including half a billion a year for new federal land acquisitions.

Putting more private property into the hands of our federal government will
guarantee it won't get used by people. It may as well go up in smoke, like
the 6 million acres of forest we lost to fire so far this year. I'm pretty
sure those charred federal forests would have suffered a lot less damage if
they had been  released years ago to private ownership.

Of course, forests are not the only federal smoke we've been denied the
opportunity to control by private ownership. Since the end of alcohol
prohibition our federal government has been trying to control the burning of
all cannabis, "the dried flowering spikes of the female hemp plant." It
still funds agents to search and seize the property of medical marijuana
patients, like Michele and Steve Kubby, despite the will of Californian
voters to pass Proposition 215 to allow such medicinal use. Government
prosecution of the Kubbys is pure punitive domination, destruction, and
denial of liberty.

The fatal peril of cannabis, even for non-users like Donald Scott of Malibu,
comes with the rush of law enforcement agents storming homes with battering
rams and guns. Or, as in the case of the Kubbys and recently departed Peter
McWilliams, court enforced abstinence. Our government not only fails to
protect our property, it is killing us.

We vote Libertarian if we think we all will be better off if we let each
person decide how they want to spend their own money, whether cultivating
cannabis or wildlife habitat. We call both our Senators to oppose CARA at
the temporary free number (800) 241-7109 or the permanent number (202)
224-3121. We call everyone we know to encourage them to vote Libertarian to
oppose the federal drug war.

Harry Browne promises to pardon all federal non-violent drug convictions on
his first day as President. That simple act of compassion will end the drug
war.

Beginning on her first day in the U.S. Senate, Gail Lightfoot promises to
restore the U.S. Constitution as the limit of our consent to federal
government power. Her vote, along with the votes of twenty other Libertarian
  candidates running for U.S. Senate, will also end the drug war.

Lightfoot predicts, "It will end when we, the people, say enough is enough.
When I get to the Senate I will work to stop this madness. Let recovery
groups and nonprofit organizations get on with the real job of ending the
high demand for drugs in the U.S. Then we will see no more need to trample
over the Constitution and Bill of Rights to fight a war on our own people."

If the U.S. Senate doesn't stop the drug war and more involuntary charity
like CARA, the U.S. House of Representatives can. At least 245 Libertarian
candidates in 44 states have already qualified to be on the ballot for the
U.S. House and 10 more may yet qualify. This is the first time in 80 years
for a third party to have candidates in more than half of all House races.

Are there enough Americans to stop government growth by voting Libertarian?
According to a recent survey by Rasmussen Research, 16% of Americans
strongly support libertarian positions on issues, 13% are staunchly liberal
and 7% are consistently conservative. Another 32% are centrists, 14% are
authoritarians, and 17% fall on "the borders" of the different categories.

Steve Dasbach, national director of the Libertarian Party observed, "The
survey suggests there is a vast, untapped pool of Americans who hold very
strong libertarian positions -- but do not yet realize they are libertarian.
This voting block could become the most potent force in American politics in
the 21st century, and that's good news for the Libertarian Party."

Indeed, good news for all of us longing for freedom and voting Libertarian.

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We Can Stop the Drug War

July 11, 2000

My name is Douglas Arthur Tuma. Got too much government? Vote Tuma for Congress, Gail Lightfoot for U.S. Senate, Art Olivier for Vice President and Harry Browne for President. We're Libertarians.

We're sad to see the passing of Peter McWilliams. We're sad to see so many of our friends and relations censored, harassed, persecuted and even murdered by our government. We ask "America is this the government we want?"

Our drug war is insane. Our drug war is killing us. Our drug war has got to stop. We didn't start our drug war, but we can stop it. We can vote Libertarian.

A few days ago, Libertarians from across the nation met in Anaheim to pick our candidates for President and Vice President.

Art Olivier is a former mayor of Bellflower CA, a clean shaven young man who looks like the character Opie in a television show long ago and now considered quaint for the innocence of its model society. I actually heard him say he has never used illegal drugs.

But more importantly, I heard him say many things that rang as clear as a liberty bell, including his determination to end the war on drugs. He is a fine Libertarian to stand up and run for Vice President.

For the second time in a row, Harry Browne is our Libertarian Presidential candidate. Who is Harry Browne? Here are his own words.

"I was in the investment world for 30 years -- writing books, consulting, and producing a newsletter. Like so many people, I also didn't vote for 30 years, because I knew that whether the Democrats or Republicans won, government would just get bigger, more expensive, and more intrusive. It was only in the early 1990s that I saw that public opinion had shifted to the point that perhaps we could restore an America in which you would be free to live your life as you want to live it -- not as Bill Clinton, or George W. Bush, or Al Gore thinks you should live it."

David Asman, a former Wall Street Journal editorial writer and now a news reporter at Fox asked Browne whether he believed there are very many Americans "who hate the federal government as much as" he does. Browne pointed out to him, "I don't hate anyone, but I do feel sorry for people who expect the government to [keep its] promises."

Browne keeps asking, "Who will control your life, you or the politicians? I keep pointing out that we need to take power out of the hands of the politicians and put it not in the hands of 'the people' -- but in the hands of each individual citizen, to live his life as he thinks best."

As for the drug war, Browne has said "The real issue is George Bush signing laws that impose draconian sentences on drug-users for doing what he apparently did when he was younger. Would George Bush be a better person today if he had served ten years in prison for cocaine use? Should Al Gore have spent five years in prison for smoking marijuana in the 1960s? If not, why are these men so determined to impose such sentences on others?"

Harry Browne is a breath of fresh air amid the stench of our drug war. He is a good reason for us to vote Libertarian.

Who Decides the "Needs"?

May 9, 2000

My name is Douglas Arthur Tuma. Got too much government? Vote Tuma for Congress and Gail Lightfoot for U.S. Senate. We're Libertarians. We look at the news photo of Elián González, face to face with the business end of a government assault weapon, and ask "America, is this the government you want?"

We ask "How does our government differ from Fidel Castro's?" Any differences in the authorization for the use of government guns is meaningless to targeted victims. Elián had the good fortune to be rescued at sea, but his rescuer couldn't save him from communist sharks on land. Our  government and
Castro's government are the same leviathan. America is no longer a safe haven for refugees. We are no longer safe in our own homes from government assault, whether we live in Miami FL, Waco TX, Ruby Ridge ID, or Malibu CA.

Government is gunfire. George Washington warned us "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearsome master."

Whoever's got the guns makes the decisions in a communist society. When we ask "Who decides?" whenever our government redistributes propertyaccording
to who "needs" what - whether reallocation of child guardianship by the INS; income, capital gains, and inheritance by the IRS; critical habitat by EPA; or water supply and drainage rights by CALFED - we should remember who held the gun pointed at Elián..

We see cities suing gun manufacturers for the cost of assorted public services, including the cleanup of blood in the streets, as if our government's war on drugs is irrelevant. We see moms marching on Washington for more gun control. We see states banning guns by distorting the intent of consumer protection law against defective products. But do any of these actions promise to control government guns? No! The only guns in dispute belong to us citizens!

Communists only negotiate the ownership of other people's property. Likewise, government only disarms civilians, not police, federal marshals, storm troopers, or whatever jack-booted gestapo it uses to terrorize us. We should ask ourselves again and again, "What can we do to save ourselves from government guns?"

The Second Amendment of the Constitution is just meaningless words on paper to anyone who thinks the education they got in a public school is enough. Unfortunately, that's a lot of us voters. A lot of us have been taught that the Constitution is a "living" document, always subject to new interpretation, regardless of what the founding fathers intended. As Professor Walter Williams of George Mason University said, "...that's like saying the rules of poker can be changed. Maybe my two pair can beat your flush."

Some progressive socialists claim "...the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" is an ancient artifact, like slavery and the disenfranchisement of women, that can no longer be defended in modern urban settings.

In the modern urban setting of Miami, our federal government's chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Janet Reno, claimed she felt threatened by Elián's neighbors because they had permits to carry concealed guns. Think what that means. She thinks she can walk into anybody's home unchallenged as if it were her own. She thinks our government owns everybody's home.

We find ourselves living in a land where the government no longer recognizes our private property rights. A nation without private property rights is a communist nation.

As communists, we can't defend our homes because we don't own them. Our government does. And Reno's been asserting our government's ownership of our homes from Miami to Malibu. Our government has been waging war against our liberty to own private property, including our homes, our personal choice of mind management, and our last line of defense against aggression - our guns.

Our federal government lost an office building full of its agents in Oklahoma City, and it still arrogantly denies that its own assault against armed home owners was the instigation of this tragic reprisal. Instead, it acts as innocent as the unsuspecting preschoolers it had set up as a front for its regional headquarters of domestic terror. And it parades the pictures of maimed infants just like all the foreign states that suffered collateral damage from American bombs aimed at the headquarters of foreign terrorists.

Whenever our government-media complex parades pictures of maimed babies or deformed bird embryos, it's only trying to fool us by blinding our capacity to see its fraud through our own tears.

Now we know all of us citizens with guns, law abiding or not, are perceived by our government as a threat. We should replace it before it replaces our last vestiges of liberty with total communist tyranny.

The simplest, quickest, and easiest way to replace our communist government is to vote Libertarian.

April 11, 2000

My name is Douglas Arthur Tuma. Got too much government? Vote Tuma for Congress and Gail Lightfoot for U.S. Senate. We're Libertarians. We want to be free from overweening government.

We fear we may be the last who see overweening government as a problem. If it were a snake, we'd be bit.

E.J. Dionne Jr., columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group, looked at last week's House vote to give $100 million to local fire departments and asked, "Wasn't this Republican Congress elected to scale back the federal government? Haven't we been told over and over that Washington has no business getting involved with what were traditionally 'state and local' responsibilities? Isn't firefighting a quintessentially 'local' responsibility?" "Why a new federal program in this area?"

Sponsor for the bill, Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., explained, ".while law enforcement receives billions of dollars in federal aid each year, our volunteer fire departments receive virtually no assistance." On the House floor, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said, "I congratulate the Republican Party on sloughing off that old notion that the federal government was something whose influence should be resisted and restricted."

Dionne cites "Weldon's new deal for firefighters" as ".a small but telling symbol of the sweeping change that has overtaken the Republican Party. Gone is the bold rhetoric about rolling back an overweening federal apparatus."

"Instead, Republicans talk about meeting 'the needs out there,' as Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., puts it," writes Dionne.

As Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up. It was printed on page 6 in the Forum section of the Sacramento Bee last Sunday, April 9th. "To each according to his needs" is how Karl Marx would have a communist government redistribute wealth. Being the overweening genius he was, he didn't bother to worry about who would decide the needs. After all, with nothing but the best interest of the working man in mind, couldn't any communist see what is needed?

Now we hear a Republican Congressmen from Michigan talk as if he can see what we need. And Dionne says this is how Republicans now talk. They talk and walk bills through Congress like communists.

Who better to recognize a communist than a Democrat? Dionne reports, "Robert Shrum, a Democrat consultant assisting Vice President Gore's campaign, sees the changes in Congress and George W. Bush's forays into Democratic territory on education and the environment as marking the rebirth of 'me, too, Republicanism.' That term grew popular in the 1960's among Goldwater conservatives. They used it to bash their moderate brethren for proposing programs.that tried to do what the Democrats wanted to do, but for less money."

The only way for Democrats see communist Republicans as copy-cats is, of course, for Democrats to be communists.

According to Dionne, "Frank says the Republican shift is a response to new public demands for government action on education, health care, the minimum wage and other problems." Camp, a moderate conservative according to Dionne, said, "The political environment and the concerns people have change, and a lot has changed since 1994. If we were to just stand in one place, that's not governing responsibly."

So, in the pursuit of responsible government, Camp would move our government closer to totalitarian authority. Camp is blind to our loss of control of our own lives to overweening government. And so is his fellow Republican delegate from Michigan, Fred Upton. They are too focused on the Republican-Democrat struggle for control of government.

Upton sees the prescription drug issue as the top concern of his constituents. Dionne quoted him, "If we don't do something on prescription drugs, there's a decent chance we'd lose the House."

Behind the power of government drug control lurks a chilling specter of government communists keeping us and our children stupefied and enslaved all our lives in a "worker's paradise".

For government to do something on drugs is for government to do something on our minds. We now know that television networks and magazines have run antidrug propaganda without disclosing such as paid government announcements. But where's the outcry?

According to Gwynne Dyer, a London-based independent journalist, "So deeply inured have Americans become to the fanatical war on drugs mindset that neither the magazines nor the White House seemed embarrassed by this abuse of public trust."

When government tells us what drugs we can or can not have, it censors our speech by stupefying our minds. It violates its First Amendment Constitutional prohibition of law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. We've caught our government being so overweening it tried to fool us into thinking our press was free from government control.

We lost the Cold War against communism if we're now so blind we can't see we've got overweening government.

Any hope that Republicans will fight for freedom from overweening government is now gone. Democrats, of course, deny that overweening government abuses civil liberties. Obviously, our last chance for liberty is to vote Libertarian.

February 29, 2000

My name is Douglas Arthur Tuma. Got too much government? Vote Tuma for Congress and Gail Lightfoot for U.S. Senate. We're Libertarians. We want to be free from overweening government.

Why? Because we are people. We dream of a better life. We reason.

Our gift of reason is a gift of rights that can not be taken from a person. They are inalienable. The gift of reason is an endowment that conveys no authority to rule others. We the people are created as political equals, authorized to manage our own private lives. We have private property rights in our own mind and body.

We have private property rights in what we produce with our own mind and body. In the absence of claims by others, we are free to claim ownership of natural resources we use in our production. And we are free to give to others our ownership rights to property that can be separated from a person. These are alienable private property rights.

In civil society our private property rights are given or exchanged voluntarily. In political society, they are usurped by government taxation, expropriation, confiscation, and prohibition. In communist society, private property rights are devoutly denied.

By trading our private property rights, we benefit each other by exchanging what we are willing to give up for what we want in return. Willing buyers and sellers trading similar goods spontaneously form a competitive market that rewards efficient and reliable producers with the patronage of wise shoppers. In a market, we discover what people want and how much they are willing to offer in return. Accordingly, producers plan their production to satisfy customer demand. The labor in the production is rewarded by sales to satisfied customers.

We customers reward superior performance when we pay more than the cost of production. The reward is profit. Profits can be accumulated as capital, a credit account for good performance. Capital may be used to secure loans, perhaps for the start-up expenses of new business, including job training. Or capital may be used to fund charity, recreation, and retirement. Capital is also security. The more capital we accumulate, the better prepared we are to survive unforeseen adversity.

The total capital wealth in our society grows as we develop more ways to make acquisition of essentials, like food and shelter, easier. When essentials are easier to obtain, we have more individual capacity to perform new services and accumulate more wealth. Our individual and collective wealth grows as long as we rely on reason, not laws based on earth-deifying dogma, and honor each person's private property rights.

Our country's founding fathers declared government derives power from the consent of the governed for the purpose of securing our inalienable rights - our private property rights. King George lost the consent of the governed in America. His presumption of authority to rule America was unjustified arrogance. His tyranny was overweening government.

On Constitutional paper we are free from rule by a king. Yet the government of our consent is full of elected and appointed men who behave as kings. They presume they know better how we should live. They take our private property and claim pride in spending it for our alleged benefit. Their self-esteem is unjustified. They burden us with overweening government.

When we hear our representative tell us what a good job he has done with our taxes and our consent to be governed, we hear overweening pride.

We can't forget lies like "drug war" protection from self-abuse, based on prohibition of intoxicants other than those produced by alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical corporations.

Lies, like "lockbox" protection from government raids on Social Security funds, based on payroll taxes withheld from workers and their own choice of investment opportunities. In effect, Social Security payroll taxes force workers to labor more years before reaching the financial independence of retirement.

Lies, like "environmental disaster" protection from agricultural drainage, based on reallocation of water unlocked from renewable contracts for delivery of federal Central Valley Project water authorized and dedicated for farms. In effect, grocery shoppers pay for the grand plans of government biologists playing god with fish and wildlife habitat.

When we hear our representative tell us he will hold government accountable, we should hold him accountable for stupidity or deception. Only people with capital are accountable. Government is our agent to protect our capital. We can't blame government for past abuse. That's like blaming guns and drugs for crime. Government authority begins and ends with our consent. We vote for our government. We are accountable for our own choice for representative.

The Republican incumbent and the Democrat challenger for the office of U.S. Representative for our congressional district are not clear on the concept that we consent to government for protection of our private property rights. We can hold both accountable for their own confusion and vote Libertarian.

February 22, 2000

My name is Douglas Arthur Tuma. Got too much government? Vote Tuma for Congress and Gail Lightfoot for U.S. Senate. We're Libertarians. We hold the same truths held by Thomas Jefferson and the signers of his Declaration of Independence.

"WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness - That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

For our safety and happiness our founding fathers abolished rule by British monarchy and instituted a new government, laying its foundation on the principle that divided and separate enumerated government powers would save us from tyranny. The organizational form of these separate and limited powers is our federal government's Constitution.

And for our safety and happiness in later years, subsequent forefathers altered the Constitution with amendments, such as the 19th Amendment in 1920.

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

Sixty years later another amendment was almost ratified.

"Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

It was called the equal rights amendment (ERA). Democrats liked it. Republicans did not. Jimmy Carter was up for reelection to four more years of Democratic control of the executive branch of the federal government.

Then I saw an amazing thing happen. Months before Ronald Reagan won the election, the executive management of the federal agency that employed me rescinded its prior policy of being in compliance with the proposed ERA.

It was as if the election was a forgone conclusion. The fix was in. Reagan had won, and the ERA was dead. Its time limit for ratification would expire while conservative moral socialists dominated national and state politics. There was nothing left to do but go through the formality of national and state elections.

I found myself working for a federal government that denied women equal rights. How long could that last? And when this last gasp of legal discrimination against women expired, how would I explain my silent complicity?

I had come to this federal employment eight years before from a conquered Confederacy where generations of racial discrimination and federal usurpation of States rights kept growth of peaceful prosperity shackled by hatred.

Discrimination by race is immoral. Discrimination by sex is immoral. Neither race nor sex has anything to do with the creation of Men, with a capital M, and endowment of inalienable rights. Yet when I submitted my memorandum to disassociate myself from the federal government's anti-ERA policy, I was told ERA was just a political issue.

Now, according to syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman, a new interpretation of the capacity of Congress to repeal or revise the deadline on the ERA has inspired a new effort to get it ratified.

We shouldn't be surprised by new interpretations of what Congress can do. In 1956 Congress promised California water districts they could renew Central Valley Project (CVP) water supply contracts. In 1992 Congress changed its mind.

And I saw another amazing thing happen. Months before President Bush signed the infamous CVP Improvement Act (CVPIA), that took ten to twenty percent of federal water dedicated for California farms and reallocated it to fish and wildlife, a new federal office opened up. On its door were painted the words "Water Reallocation Office". Communism may have died in Russia, but it's still alive in America.

It was as if passage of CVPIA was a foregone conclusion. The fix was in. CVPIA had become law, and property rights in renewable contracts were dead. Judicial review would languish while environmental socialists dominated national and state politics. There was nothing left to do but go through the formality of Congressional passage and Presidential signing of a bill into law.

Who runs this country? When government changes policy before elections and passage of statutory law, it's not we the people.

If equal rights under the law is to have any meaning, we the people have to save the law from government corruption. We can do that by voting Libertarian.

February 15, 2000

My name is Douglas Arthur Tuma. Got too much government? Vote Tuma for Congress and Gail Lightfoot for U.S. Senate. We're Libertarians. We want everyone to be wealthier. We want everyone to have more freedom.

We want to be free from government protection rackets based on emergent-earth alarmist hearsay. We are not fooled. We are not sheep. We will not be fleeced. We use our own minds. We are human, free to reason.

We look at the reasons for government programs that take from some to give to others and find the arrogance of politicians with the hubris to believe they know better who should reap the fruits of labor. Their pride in public service is vain, for their reasons are not reasons at all. They are just a collection of sleazy sound bites.

Some of the sleaziest sound bites are found in the political discourse about who should get how much of California's water and for what purpose. This past Thursday, the tenth of February, the Sacramento Bee printed an opinion that also appeared in the Fresno Bee: "Candidates need to offer more than sound bites about water." It was authored by Lloyd G. Carter, described as a journalist who has covered California water issues for more than 20 years and is president of the "California Save Our Streams Council."

Carter finished his speculation about what presidential candidates might say about the San Luis Drain for farms in the San Joaquin River drainage basin with a dismissive sound bite of his own. "Let's hope for more than sound bites about how we all need to eat." That's the kind of sound bite that can only come from someone so rich he can't remember hunger or have respect for those who do.

Instead, Carter wanted to hear what government could do about "survival of the family farmer, pesticides, the valley's horrific air quality, and the fate of our water supplies and dead or polluted rivers."

Carter wanted Al Gore to explain "why the Department of Reclamation can trample public trust rights in the river, harming downstream farmers and river lovers, in order to aid corporate agribusinesses in Tulare and Kern counties."

Carter's premise for this trampling is his version of San Luis Drain history. "The drain, built halfway to the Delta, was closed in 1986 following the bird deformities at the Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in Merced County. Kesterson was a holding pond for the toxic selenium-laced drainage originating in the Westlands Water District of Fresno County."

We've heard this emergent-earth alarmist hearsay version of San Luis Drain history repeated by so many for so long, we accept it as common knowledge. But we've been fooled.

We've been fooled by eco-fascist government biologists acting alarmed about the loss of thousands of bird embryos to selenium toxicosis, as if that one cause of mortality among a multitude of others has some impact on the rate of eventual survival of nestlings to fledglings, let alone total survival of adults in any species. As if wintering waterfowl feeding in selenium-rich San Joaquin Valley wetlands don't pass selenium from their bodies as they migrate to northern breeding grounds to have healthy chicks. As if waterfowl migration accommodates change in seasonal climate but not the associated change in the mineral content of food supplies growing in different lands.

We've been fooled by emergent-earth prophets raising alarms about short-term hydro-geologic changes from human defense against floods, droughts and hunger, out of context of long-term natural trends and geologic evidence of really violent cataclysms and associated mass extinctions.

We've been fooled by the name "National Wildlife Refuge" for Kesterson. It implied unlimited authorization to use that government property for wildlife protection. In fact, the management authority for Kesterson was the Central Valley Project (CVP) authorization by Congress. Wildlife management was by contract limited to not interfere with the primary purpose of the San Luis Drain. By ignoring the contract limits, media indignation over a falsely implied violation of refuge sanctity was bogus. The "Kesterson environmental disaster" was a mass media hoax.

We've been fooled by eco-Marxist priests, reallocating water to fish and wildlife according to "needs". Only priests can divine Mother Nature's intent for wildlife needs. Marxists justify taking water from farms by claiming farms waste our common water supply. But instead of showing us how much water is actually diverted to farms, they give us only sound bites like "dead rivers." They expand a public trust empire of natural resources withheld from market demand, but used market jargon to break the Congressional promise to renew CVP contracts for farm water.

The best way to let government know we are not fooled is to take control of Congress away from the political parties that let the federal government grow out of control. We take back control when we reduce government to the limits of its Constitutional authority. Government will serve us, the people, when we vote Libertarian.

February 8, 2000

My name is Douglas Arthur Tuma. Do you have too much government? Vote Tuma for Congress and Gail Lightfoot for U.S. Senate. We're Libertarians. We aim to liberate ourselves from government oppression. We want everyone to join our party. We want everyone to be rich.

Lots of people are still trying to figure out how to get rich, because their government school teachers never taught them. Their teachers couldn't teach what they never learned themselves when they attended government schools. So government schools perpetuate a cycle of ignorance, poverty, and government oppression.

We can break that cycle. Getting rich means more freedom, more choices, and more liberty. We can get more liberty if we can get control of our individual lives. That means less control by government. And we can do that by electing Libertarians.

But unfortunately, despite the past century of failed socialist empires, a lot of people are still tempted by government central planning, regulation, enforcement, and redistribution of wealth. A lot of people are tempted to regulate campaign spending by special-interest lobbies trying to get a bigger share of government power. But if we didn't have so much government power up for grabs, the lobbies wouldn't be so tempted to fight for government rule.

Let us remember regulation enforcement threatens brutal force. Central planners can't possibly know as much as consumers what consumers want. So government planners guess what is good for us and steer government policy and programs like truck drivers in a fog. Government planners might have the best training possible, but their vision can't compare to the sum total of what each of us sees. Even if what each of us sees is distorted by the spin put on news manufactured by special-interest lobbies seeking voter support for more government control.

To win voter support for environmental restoration, emergent-earth lobbies use alarmist hearsay and apocalypse prophesy. Hearsay is a poor substitute for reality. We should suspect alarmist hearsay as a front for fraud. We should recognize accusations of "anti-government" against those of us trying to expose eco-fascist fraud as evidence that emergent-earth religion now rules our government.

Why does government let eco-Marxist priests decide how to manage water supply and drainage for farms and cities? Why do we let government save bird embryos? Because we have been programmed in government schools to presume government knows what is best. The emergent-earth doctrine that we must use government to save the earth uses government programming of our children to ensure earth worship will rule for eternity.

Let me say again, I can't get alarmed over bird embryos perished in agribusiness drain water ponds built to keep other water fresh and farmland productive.

I'm alarmed about the federal government reneging on its promise to Central Valley Project (CVP) water users to renew contracts to save wildlife. I am alarmed about federal decision-makers shutting down Kesterson Reservoir and stalling the San Luis Drain to hurt California agribusiness without regard to growing global consumer demand for crops.

And consumer demand for crops continues to grow as long as socialist governments subsidize child care and schooling, removing parents from the direct cost and responsibility of raising their own children.

San Joaquin Valley crop production lost for lack of good drainage will be replaced by less productive farms elsewhere that encroach on more valuable wildlife habitat. The global, long-term impact of federal government cannibalization of CVP for the benefit of local wildlife habitat is a net sacrifice of global wildlife habitat while forests still fall to make more farms to feed more socialists.

A lot of people have been living under the impression that if we want to see something done, we just raise taxes and tell government to do it. We tend to forget that taxes are collected by force. When we force people to give, nobody is charitable. People who are forced to give are being robbed of their own investment opportunities. We should stop robbing people by taxation. We should stop taking environmental protection choices from private property owners.

Let me state again my position. Let's return environmental protection choice to property owners, return investment opportunity choice to wage earners, and release federal property to private ownership.

This not just my position. It is a mainstream Libertarian position. CVP would be released from federal control and granted or sold to a private entity. Management that answered to shareholders, rather than the emergent-earth lobbies that now run the federal government, would then consider CVP development as best meets customer demand.

We've lost opportunities to be wealthier, to have more freedom, because we've been fooled by emergent-earth prophets to depend on government to save the earth. We will continue to be fooled until we see we are being fleeced. When we decide to use our own minds, when we decide to be human and free to reason and choose our own destiny, we will free ourselves from overweening government by voting Libertarian.

February 2, 2000

My name is Douglas Arthur Tuma. I'm your Libertarian candidate for Congress. I appreciate your consideration and ask that you also vote for Gail Lightfoot, our Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate.

Managing the outcomes of our respective lives is a personal responsibility for each of us. We can't expect a government guarantee for protection of our individual life just because we exist. We always have and always will live at the mercy of those who support us. We can't force others to support us. That would be slavery. If those who support us decide to end their support, we have to honor that decision and look for support elsewhere. That is a task beyond the capacity of a human embryo. It is also beyond the capacity of a bird embryo.

We can make our life better if we didn't see so much deliberate death by government: war, capital punishment, famine, and prohibition of life saving drugs. For some people life would be better if they didn't see so much suicide and abortion. Since these are private affairs, how they become visible to critics is not clear to me. I suspect an ulterior motive for those who pry into other people's private lives. Like I suspect an ulterior motive for the federal environmental assessment specialist who pried into bird reproduction in agribusiness drain water ponds.

Our federal government has been subsidizing the North American population of migratory waterfowl to support a hundred million in fall flights to winter wetlands in places like our Central Valley. Typically a third of the wintering population dies each year. If the bird population remains stable, the next breeding season will recruit just enough fledglings to replace the past winter's mortality.

For every breeding pair, on average only one chick will survive to fledge and fly in the next fall flight. Assuming an average clutch size of eight, the average number of embryos and chicks per nest that perish would be seven. Assuming equal numbers of male and female breeding adults, we could expect 30 million nests. At seven lost per nest, North American migratory waterfowl lose 200 million embryos and chicks every year.

It's okay for wildlife to have such high infant mortality. It's natural and necessary for a stable wildlife population.

I can't get alarmed over bird embryos perished in agribusiness drain water ponds built to keep other water fresh and farmland productive. Even if the embryos perished from selenium toxicosis. Even if their deformities were horribly ugly. Even if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service labelled the drain water ponds a "National Wildlife Refuge". Even if the perished embryos and chicks included an estimated 82,150 tricolored blackbirds. Even if the tricolored blackbird population is so small it has a higher risk than other species of becoming extinct.

We risk becoming extinct when we break promises, contracts, and our trust in each other. Our federal government broke our promise to renew Central Valley Project water supply contracts and complete the San Luis Drain to save bird embryos. In 1992 would-be president Bill Bradley and perennial Congressman George Miller from neighboring District 7 sponsored the passage of the infamous Central Valley Project Improvement Act, reallocating according to the hubris of environmental socialists the federal water dedicated for California farms. This is the epitome of American communism.

On June 19, 1997, I stood before the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board and commented on its program to reduce selenium discharges from the Grasslands watershed to the San Joaquin River.

I said, "Our problem is not an ecological problem. It's a people problem. I think we just don't have our priorities in order. If you can't tell the difference in priority between saving bird embryos and contracts between people, you're lost!"

Now I'm putting this question up to the voters. Are we still lost?

We are lost until Libertarians - Gail Lightfoot for U.S. Senate and Tuma for Congress - get voted into office.

Let's get our priorities in order. Breach of contract is uglier than deformed bird embryos. To be otherwise would be a scam. Let's not reward environmental deception to save bird embryos. Let's stop government from taking whatever environmental socialists say the environment "needs".

Let's return environmental protection choice to property owners, return investment opportunity choice to wage earners, and release federal property to private ownership.

Until we see we are being fleeced like sheep by environmental socialists, we are fools. When we see ourselves as sheep, we can see ourselves in a cartoon by Gary Larson. One of us stands up in the middle of our flock and says, "Wait! Wait! Listen to me! We don't have to be just sheep!"

When we decide we don't want to be sheep, we vote Libertarian.

February 1, 2000

My name is Douglas Arthur Tuma. I'm your Libertarian candidate for Congress. I appreciate your consideration and ask that you also vote for Gail Lightfoot, our Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate.

We can thank David Letterman for helping us think about things ranked in priority from ten to one. He saves the funniest for last. And isn't that how we'd like to live our lives? Saving the best for last so it will last, and last a long time?

That way we always have something good to anticipate. That's why we conserve natural resources. We conserve energy to have more for other uses. We conserve water to get us through droughts. We conserve wages to get us through unemployment. We conserve time so we can do more of what we choose. We accumulate what we conserve as wealth. It helps prepare us for the next cataclysm.

Earth's geologic record is full of cataclysms. We should not be so arrogant to think we are adequately prepared for the next big one. We should not be so complacent to let government make all decisions on what to conserve and how we should prepare for our own safety. We should not be surprised to find government priorities different from our own.

As we learn more about life, we should be getting wealthier. As we pass on our knowledge, each succeeding generation should be able to reach financial independence with less effort. Each generation should be logging more quality time in their retirement years. We do that by teaching our children how to become rich. They become rich by learning what we have learned to value.

We value beauty. We quickly learn what is beautiful and what is not. But I find our government priorities for what is ugly are much different than mine. So I'm running for Congress so we can give it new instructions on what we want to save and what we want to avoid. We should tell the government how we rank our disgust for what is ugly.

So, following Letterman's top ten format, I offer my top twenty-one candidates for what is ugly.

Starting with number twenty-one: begging, racial discrimination, slander, disenfranchisement, bad faith, breach of contract, fraud, theft, vandalism, assault, robbery, kidnapping, rape, murder, socialism, environmental socialism, usurpation, tyranny, slavery, perjury, and the worst sin of all according to the ancient Greeks, hubris. That's unjustified arrogance. Failure to recognize our knowledge is limited.

Remember the sneer on Benito Mussolini's face? The master race in Adolph Hitler's Third Reich? The dissident purges in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Empire? The Great Leap in Mao Zedong's culture? That was all hubris.

Now we face the balance in Al Gore's earth. Al Gore's rescue of the global environment, his "central organizing principle" for civilization, is the hubris of environmental socialists. On page 274 in his book Earth in the Balance, Gore claimed his "all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action" would be "agreed to voluntarily."

Government is force. Only an idiot would think it's programs would be agreed to voluntarily. Only a hubris filled mind presumes such elite insight to all things environmental that he must command and control the lives of everyone in the world by a global government to save the earth.

Al Gore may be America's most dangerous politician. But neither Republican nor Democrat can pass an opportunity for more government control. So environmental protection by government control continues to grow. The Green Party proposes even more government control to save the earth, making the Democrat and Republican Parties look comparatively sane.

I propose that a government run by religious fanatics is ugly, no matter what spirit they serve - Christ, working comrades, or Mother Earth. Religious morality is a blessing for those willing to embrace it. But when forced on people, it is tyranny. The worship of earth in canyon cathedrals is a personal choice, no more suited for government school indoctrination than the sanctity of a drug free mind.

Some people say no to drugs. Some say no to sex. And some say no to agribusiness drainage to save the environment. As if the food they eat from agribusiness farms could be grown without drainage. As if anything alive, including themselves, could possibly be drain free.

By limiting government enforcement to the protection of our property from trespass we can say no to government harm, saving it for those who harm other people. And those who break promises, who break contracts, harm those who trusted them.

Our federal government broke our promise to renew Central Valley Project water supply contracts and complete the San Luis Drain to save bird embryos. When we break contracts to save birds, we break what makes us human. We break trust in each other. Let us stand and defend our liberty to trust each other. Let us be human. Let us vote Libertarian.

Jan 11, 2000

My name is Douglas Arthur Tuma. I'm your Libertarian candidate for Congress. When you vote for a representative, think about how you can get the best return on your voluntary contribution to our national government. Please remember that taxes are not voluntary contributions. People who try to evade taxes face incarceration.

When you vote, you tell government what to do. You pick your representative based on the political agenda you want to prevail in Congress. Each candidate represents a different agenda.

If you want more government management of what people buy, vote Democrat.

If you want more government management of how people play, vote Republican.

If you want more government management of environmental quality, vote Green.

If you want more government management of anything by those claiming superior knowledge of science, vote Natural Law.

But if you want less government management of anything, vote Libertarian.

The Libertarian agenda is less collective government, more individual liberty. It is the eternal struggle against tyranny. It defends each person's right to choose how to live without harm to the equal rights of others. It is what we do to answer Patrick Henry's cry "Give me liberty, or give me death!"

What past representatives have done in Congress has been compared to starving slaves fighting over a barrel of pork scraps. They fought to bring scraps back home to their constituents.

But Congressmen are not slaves. They get to decide what goes in the barrel. They get to make up laws that enlarge the government's share of our wealth, our liberty. Then they aggrandize themselves as benefactors when they bring back some of what they took from us. They are our ruling class.

But we don't have to let Congressmen rule so much. We can tell them to honor their oath to defend the Constitution by repealing every law that has anything to do with anything not specified in the powers of government enumerated in the Constitution. We can tell them to save our Constitution as our authorization limit on federal power: national defense, foreign policy, and ready access to justice. We can tell them that by voting for Libertarian candidates.

When you look at your ballot and see Libertarian candidates - Gail Lightfoot for U.S. Senate and Tuma for Congress - think liberty. Think how happy we all will be when we each choose what we want out of life instead of waiting for government permission. Think: first we shrink the government, then we party.

This is the time of year when we remember Martin Luther King and his dream for freedom from racial discrimination. But we dream of freedom from much more.

We dream of freedom from school and media indoctrination of the false expectation that we will be happy with the unforeseen consequences of government final solutions.

We dream of freedom from protection rackets to save whatever we are told we can't save without government enforcement.

We dream of freedom from political fights against eco-fascist fraud over the use of government managed public trust resources, a national commons withheld from private property ownership.

We dream of freedom from government reallocation of natural resources based on wildlife needs decided by eco-Marxist priests.

We dream of freedom from fear of government agents kicking in our door, forcing our face to the floor, jamming a gun in our back, confiscating our property, hauling us off to jail, and letting us rot in prison. Not to protect potential innocent victims from any suspected criminal action. But because of possession of prohibited property.

We dream of freedom to associate with people of our own choice.

We dream of freedom to honor each other's management authority over mind, body, labor, and property.

We dream of freedom to trust laws that protect our rights to manage and trade property, tested and tempered by judicial review.

We dream of freedom to live without fear of mutually assured destruction foreign policy, to live in peace with friends, strategic disengagement with others.

We dream of a day when we can say "Liberty at last, oh Lord, liberty at last!"

We share our dream of liberty.

As Bob Dylan once said "You can be in my dream if I can be in yours."

Let's tell government what to do. Tell it to protect our liberty.

Vote Libertarian.