Green Party Candidates for President Jill Stein (MA) and Kent Mesplay (CA) will be appearing tonight in a Green Party Presidential Forum in Los Angeles, CA. The event will be Livestreamed by the Green Party, which you can watch there, or embedded here, “below the fold”.
The event begins at 7:30 PM PACIFIC, 9:30 PM [...]
Green Party Watch
Sioux Falls Conservative Examiner writer Lori Stacey reports that 2008 Constitution Party Presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin will run for Lieutenant Governor of Montana as a Republican:
The major announcement took place during the live broadcast of Pastor Chuck Baldwin’s sermon at Liberty Fellowship in Kalispell, Montana. He treated his congregation and many others watching online to a major political announcement this afternoon.
Dr. Chuck Baldwin, the 2008 Presidential Nominee of the Constitution Party has accepted an invitation by Republican Gubernatorial candidate Bob Fanning to be his running mate for Lt. Governor of Montana.
In looking up Bob Fanning’s campaign website, I noticed that this is definitely official as Bob already has Chuck Baldwin listed as his Lt. Governor running mate.
Bob Fanning, a retired manufacturing CEO, is one of ten candidates vying for the Republican nomination for Montana governor in 2012. In Montana, gubernatorial candidates pick their running mates before the primary.
In addition to running for the highest office in the land, the presidential candidates of the Libertarian and Green parties are keeping busy with party-building activities closer to home. Here are some things they’ve been in the news for recently:
- RJ Harris is moving ahead with plans to get the Libertarian Party on the Oklahoma ballot for the first time since 2000 through a massive petition drive. He told the Muskogee Phoenix that the Oklahoma LP is hoping to collect more than 51,000 signatures by March 1.
- Roger Gary is campaigning for a seat on the San Antonio River Authority. Gary, who previously served on the Authority, told the San Antonio Express-News that his goal is to repeal the tax currently levied for the San Antonio River Improvements Project. The election is Tuesday, November 8.
- Kent Mesplay has applied to fill a vacancy on the Encinitas City Council. The writer for The Coast News notes that Mesplay “wants to protect community character,” but seems to think the Green Party presidential candidate will not be tapped for the seat.
by R. Lee Wrights
BURNET, Texas (Nov. 5) – One of the first things you do when you’re applying for a job is to read the job description to find out the qualifications, duties and responsibilities of the office. After listening to years of presidential campaign speeches and debates, it seems to me that most candidates for the office simply haven’t read the job description for President of the United States. The Founding Fathers wrote it some 200 years ago, and despite some wear and tear, it is still perhaps one of the finest job descriptions ever written for the leader of a free republic.
The presidential job description was drafted, refined and honed during the months of the Constitutional Convention held in 1787. The duties of the President of the United States are outlined in Article II. The placement is deliberate. The first article of the Constitution establishes the Congress, the legislative branch, because the Founders believed the legislative was the most important function of government. As if to emphasize that point, the first mention of the President of the United States in the Constitution is in Article I, Section 7. This section says he must sign a bill passed by Congress before it becomes law. If he does not sign it, or he vetoes it, it can only become law if two-thirds of each House vote to approve it.
So what does the presidential job description say? First, there are three simple qualifications: you must be a natural-born citizen, 35 years old, and a United States resident for 14 years. I am all three. The “selection committee” for the job is technically the Electoral College, composed of people chosen by the states.” But in reality, it is the people of the United States who hire the president. The length of service is four years.
The first thing a new president does is to take an oath. It is a plain and simple oath, similar to the one I took many years ago when I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. The oath states: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” But in those few words lie some very powerful sentiments.
Article II, Sections 2 and 3 of the Constitution lists the specific duties of the president. One of the duties most discussed, and most abused, is his role as “commander-in-chief” of the Army and Navy, and of the state militia “when called into the service of the United States.” That last phrase is usually omitted when anyone speaks of the “commander-in-chief” but it is important. The president only commands the state militia, in modern terms that means the National Guard, under certain circumstances. Nor does this title make the president “commander-in-chief” of the United States, or any of the states, or the people. And it does not give him the authority to declare or wage war.
Alexander Hamilton, even though an advocate of a strong chief executive, made it clear in Federalist No. 69 that the title of commander-in-chief amounted to “nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces” and not to declaring war or raising and recruiting military forces. Such powers were specifically vested in Congress, because the Founders had direct experience of the tyranny that results when the executive, in their case the King of England, can raise and recruit armies and navies, and take the country to war without question.
If you will pardon a civics lesson, here’s a list of the other duties in the job description for President of the United States:
- Nominate and appoint ambassadors, again with the approval of the Senate;
- Appoint other public Ministers and consuls, subject to Senate approval;
- Appoint judges of the Supreme Court, and inferior federal courts, with Senate approval;
- Appoint all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not otherwise provided for in the Constitution or by law;
- Fill vacancies during Senate recesses, but only until the Senate reconvenes;
- Give to the Congress “information of the State of the Union,” and recommend legislation;
- Convene both House and Senate on “extraordinary Occasions,” or adjourn either or both of them if they can’t agree on adjournment;
- Receive Ambassadors and other public ministers;
- “Take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” and;
- Commission all the officers of the United States, that is, military officers.
That’s a very short list. Most of the duties simply have to do with appointing people to office. There is nothing in there about taxes, health care, jobs, education or the myriad of other things presidential candidates make promises about. The key point, however, is that all the power given to the president, all his duties, especially the duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” must be understood in the context of the oath of office. As president, I fully intend to take very, very good care that the laws are faithfully executed.
By that I mean that if a law is not faithful to the original intent of the Constitution — if it in fact does harm to the Constitution — I will not enforce it, nor let anyone in the executive department enforce it. If the Congress sends me a proposed law that does not have a direct basis in any of the specified and enumerated powers granted to the federal government under the Constitution, I will veto it. And even if they pass it over my veto, I will not enforce it.
Anyone I nominate to the Supreme Court or to any federal court will have a clear understanding of the concept of original intent. They will believe, as I do, that the Constitution established a government with specific, enumerated and limited power. Anyone I select for a federal office will be willing to conduct their duties with the understanding, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, that “The equal rights of man and the happiness of every individual are the only legitimate objects of government.” In short, I will conduct the office of President of the United States by heeding the advice of the Founding Fathers, who believed that when it came to power, you should not rely on “confidence in man,” but rather, bind him from mischief ” by the chains of the Constitution.”
R. Lee Wrights
R. Lee Wrights, 53, a libertarian writer and political activist, is seeking the presidential nomination because he believes the Libertarian message in 2012 must be a loud, clear and unequivocal call to stop all war. To that end he has pledged that 10 percent of all donations to his campaign will be spent for ballot access so that the stop all war message can be heard in all 50 states. Wrights is a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party and co-founder and editor of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All. Born in Winston-Salem, N.C., he now lives and works in Texas.
Lee Wrights for President
Contact: Brian Irving, press secretary
press@wrights2012.com
919.538.4548
By Jeremy Young
From comments on a prior IPR post. The debate can be viewed at http://rjharris2012.com/:
Instead of finishing what I was supposed to be doing tonight, I went ahead and watched this entire debate. Here are my thoughts on what I saw and heard. Interested readers should know that I’m a supporter of third parties but not a Libertarian, so my interest here is to have the strongest possible Libertarian win the Presidential nomination. I’m not an expert in Libertarian ideology, so I’ll leave issues of that sort up to real Libertarians and just tackle the presentation aspects of the candidates.
I was excited to see this debate because it’s the first time all five of the serious candidates have shared a stage. I think these will in fact be the only five serious candidates except for 1) last-minute entrants or 2) Wayne Root, who has sort of been running a shadow campaign all along. Which is to say, I think we’ll have these five and no others for at least the next few months.
First of all, I think Libertarians can feel confident in the fact that this is a field full of actual ideological Libertarians. Lee Wrights and Roger Gary are what you might call “pure” Libertarians; I doubt anyone in the party would find them deviating from the party line in any significant way. RJ Harris, Carl Person, and Bill Still are all Libertarian-oriented people. When they deviate from the party line on occasion, they are being heretical Libertarians, not impostors. I know there has been some concern about Harris because he ran in a Republican primary, but my sense is that he was and is by and large a Libertarian ideologically. (I wonder how the Republicans reacted when he told them he wanted an immediate withdrawal from all foreign wars?) This is a big difference from 2008, where some of the major candidates were only Libertarians if you could shoehorn their records into a Libertarian box (Gravel) or if you believed they were completely different people from what they’d been five years earlier (Barr, Root).
That said, I do think that Gary and Person are non-starters. Gary seems like a nice man and a fine Libertarian, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a worse debate performance in a third-party presidential campaign. Gary’s presentation was slow and halting, even in his opening and closing statements (which appeared unrehearsed). He seemed old, which is partly because he was the oldest candidate there, but he’s not significantly older than Still, who seemed much more chipper. Gary repeatedly stopped to haggle with the moderator about meaningless issues. His discussion of his Mexican friends was…dated, to say the least. (On the other hand, he declared his support for an almost completely open border, which I suspect will surprise a lot of Libertarians.) He showed absolutely no improvement from the MA debate last month. Overall, his presentation seemed lazy and sloppy. He even stated that he didn’t expect even to visit all 50 states, let alone campaign there. I don’t know why he’s such a poor candidate — his party pedigree certainly speaks highly for him — but if he can’t step it up, he’s going to be a non-factor in this race.
Person gave a somewhat better presentation, but yet again was done in by his crackpot ideas — and I mean crackpot from a Libertarian perspective, not from my perspective. His campaign strategy apparently consists of terraforming a town of 10,000 people — in what, the three months after the convention? — using some sort of crazy Libertarian media strategy that would produce universal employment there, then leveraging the media coverage of this miracle into a national campaign. Um, good luck with that, Carl. He repeatedly rambled and strayed off topic in the debate. Again, even if I didn’t have serious reservations about the company he keeps, I’d consider Person a non-factor in the race.
The remaining three candidates — Wrights, Harris, and Still — all presented themselves very well. I think any of them would be a credit to the LP as Presidential candidates. At the same time, they also present three clearly different approaches to the race. Wrights would focus on the war, Harris on freedom and liberty issues, Still on money and finance. Wrights would run an Internet-based strategy, Harris would focus on Oklahoma (where he has some name recognition, and expects to get ballot status for the first time in over a decade) and battleground states, Still would leverage his own following and connect with the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Of the three, Wrights definitely laid claim to the mantle of “pure” Libertarian standard-bearer in this debate. He’s clearly spent a lot of time with a debate coach, and the results were like night and day compared to his performance in the MA debate last month. It’s hard to believe that just last month he was as bad a public speaker as Roger Gary. (His opening statement still needs work, though.) Wrights displayed an engaging speaking style, well-rehearsed answers to many questions, and a supple ability to think on his feet and to come up with creative answers to difficult questions. He’s also beginning to draw contrasts between himself and other candidates — particularly Harris and Still, whom he clearly considers his main competition at this point. All in all, a very impressive performance by Wrights that left me thinking he could be an effective Chuck Baldwin-style candidate instead of the halting mutterer I was afraid he’d stay.
Harris presented himself with an air of confidence that suggests he’s the frontrunner, which, right now, I suppose he probably is. He’s clearly benefited from running a major-party campaign and participating in debates with seasoned politicians; his speaking style was measured, articulate, and polished. Some of his rhetoric was aimed at Tea Party types rather than Libertarians — I thought his comparison of himself with George Washington at the beginning wasn’t appropriate for this crowd — but overall, I was impressed with how well he fit in with the lifelong Libertarians. I also thought he handled the abortion issue effectively. He dodged about a bit, but essentially said that while he personally is really upset by abortions, he thinks the decision should be up to the states. That’s not exactly a mainstream Libertarian view, and Wrights called him on it, but it’s Ron Paul’s position, and as such I think a lot of Libertarians might find it acceptable. Meanwhile, those of you with bad memories of Barr and Root will be happy to hear that Harris came out unequivocally against foreign aid (including, specifically, for Israel — which Roger Gary strangely disagreed with him about), unequivocally against all foreign interventions, and unequivocally against the drug war. Given Harris’ definite right-Libertarian lean, I can see him becoming the candidate of the Starr/Root faction of the LP in the event that Root doesn’t run. This actually wouldn’t be a bad thing, as I think Harris would be more palatable to other Libertarians than just about any other candidate that faction could come up with.
Then there’s Bill Still. Frankly, I was kind of blown away by what I saw from him at this debate. Certainly there were moments where he looked like some guy who’d wandered into a Libertarian Presidential debate and didn’t know what the heck was going on, but I’m going to go ahead and forgive him for all of that given that he’s basically only been in the race for a week. There were other moments, though, where I saw flashes of a magnetic, charismatic speaker who knows Libertarian financial policy like the back of his hand and who might turn out to be the most compelling Libertarian presidential nominee in years. One minute he was reading his opening statement off his laptop like it was a teleprompter, the next he was ad-libbing with gracious humor, the next he was arguing loudly with Wrights about Libertarian priorities. He does have some real deviations from Libertarian orthodoxy — he opposes gutting Social Security because it wouldn’t be possible politically, he wants state banks to issue currency (and isn’t a goldbug), he said he “probably” supports the Fair Tax — but what’s interesting is that they’re eccentric deviations, not ones that suggest he would be a better fit for some other party. He seemed exceedingly raw as a candidate, as indeed he is, but if he’s willing to put in the hard work of running a campaign and developing strategies and issue policies (as Wrights and Harris are doing), he could end up being the best of the bunch. I tend to think he may have the Mike Gravel problem that he has no natural constituency in the party — too many deviations for the Radicals, too radical on fiscal policy for the Reformers — but if he can generate some support, he might find himself getting tapped as a compromise candidate if one of the sides finds itself without a standard-bearer.
Overall, I was quite heartened by what I saw in the debate. Before watching it, I thought the party had one serious and well-organized candidate (Harris) who wasn’t really a Libertarian. Now, I think there are three such candidates, and all of them are Libertarian to some degree. I think any of them would be a good choice for the party in 2012.
The Libertarian Party of Illinois will be streaming a presidential candidates forum live from their state convention Saturday, October 22 beginning at 2:30 p.m. (CDT).
Participating candidates include RJ Harris, Roger Gary, Lee Wrights, Carl Person, and Bill Still. The forum will be moderated by Lex Green, 2010 Illinois gubernatorial candidate and current state political director.
Illinois LP chair Lupe Diaz clarified that LP Illinois does not endorse any candidate for president. “The RJ Harris for President Campaign is lending us their UStream account,” he said. “LP Illinois is providing the equipment, manpower, and platform.”
Link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/us-libertarian-for-president-2012.
From Draft Jill Stein for President at jillstein.org:
Jill Stein will launch her Presidential Campaign Thursday Oct. 24 at 12:30pm at the State House in Boston, MA. She vows to end unemployment in America and to stop the Wall Street robbery of Main Street.
MEDIA ADVISORY
For Immediate Release: Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Contacts: Marnie Glickman, [...]
Green Party Watch
JClifford writes at Irregular Times:
A week ago, I noted that the Occupy Boston protest was not just demanding social justice. The protesters were making social justice happen, by feeding homeless people who have been occupying the streets of Bean Town for a long, long time. That’s the kind of direct action that America [...]
Green Party Watch
Wayne Allyn Root is a former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee. He now serves as Chairman of the Libertarian National Congressional Committee. He is the best-selling author of “The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gold & Tax Cuts.” His web site: www.ROOTforAmerica.com
I have heard countless questions about who the Green Party is going to run for President in 2012. As Obama continues to fail on environmental issues, continues overseas wars over oil, and cuts social programs that support the poor and the elderly, voters are clearly looking for an alternative.
At this point, Dr. Kent Mesplay [...]
Green Party Watch