Clark County fair, July 30

Singing in the rain, what a glorious feeling! The Clark county fair in Charlestown, Indiana (just a couple of miles north of Louisville, KY) was the place to be for a good time Friday evening, even if it was a bit soggy.

Kenn Gividen and I arrived a few minutes before the local party members to find a sloppy mess. We had our own little outside tent, rather than a booth in a building. We ended up having to trash some LP literature, notably a big stack of thoroughly soaked "million dollar bills." That's all right, they'll print more - much like the federal treasury.

The cavalry came riding in right behind us. The lovely and charming Floyd County chair Grace Martin came out, as well as Greg Hertzch. John Harbeson is our Clark County chair, and the missus thoughtfully brought a most useful bag full of towels. Besides being the bringer of towels, Debbie Harbeson also writes a mean column. Check out her group. Check out the local party website.

All the political and most of the commercial stuff was stuck way in the back corner of the fairgrounds. Considering that, and the rainy, overcast and highly humid conditions, I frankly wasn't expecting much traffic.

We probably didn't see quite as many people as we did last week in Hamilton county particularly, but I still went through probably 200 cards. I was pretty satisfied with that.

The locals also had nice blue "Vote Libertarian" balloons for the kiddies. This gave a chance to at least figuratively kiss some babies like a good politician. Plus I got to teach some kids how to bop brothers and parents and politicians with balloons. "Take that, you Republican, you!" Now, now, don't be calling your little brother names like that.

This slightly lighter traffic also gave me more time for singing. I do enjoy this campaigning stuff, and the the fellowship of my Libertarian brethren (along with the smell of elephant ears and the bleating of 4H goats) just seems to fill my heart with song.

"Mountain Dew" was my primary song choice of the night, and soon everybody around knew all about short Uncle Nort who thinks he's a giant when he gets him a pint. Local Clark County party members (specifically Miss Debbie), however, were notably somewhat more open than previous party locals in telling me when it was time to pick a new song.

I had several good conversations with Clark County voters about Social Security. Here's one issue in particular where both the Democrats and Republicans have absolutely, undeniably both colluded together and dug US a big, very deep hole. They've taken and blown your retirement money - all of it.

As I explained it to one young working woman, that money she paid out in FICA taxes even just now in June is all gone. What did they do with it? It doesn't matter. They may as well have spent it on crack, and smoked it up, cause the money's just as gone as if they had.

She kind of blinked to hear a candidate saying something that blunt, but she laughed and agreed. Yeah, the money's just that gone. Why would anyone trust a bunch of Yankee revenuers with their retirement money?

We had a visit from the lovely young daughter of a local city councilman. I might not have guessed from her appearance that she was in fact old enough to vote. A few minutes chatting with her, however, showed her to be more knowledgeable and thoughtful about political issues than most voters twice her age. She's quite an impressive young lass.

I don't really know the relative strength of the Republicans and Democrats locally, but there sure didn't seem to be much going with these Democrats. They only finally had two people show up somewhere around 8PM, not much more than in time to go home.

They apparently didn't have a table or literature of any kind. Best I could tell, they just stood under their tent among the various yard signs watching as people walked past. Or maybe they were just a couple of random fair patrons getting out of the rain. Keep that up, and us Libertarians will eat your lunch for you. Ha!

I hate to talk nice about danged old Republicans, but they were good enough to give us some voter registration forms when we ran out. Thanks, ladies.

It sprinkled a little off and on through the evening - just enough to make it fun by my figuring, but it was definitely moving in as it got toward 9 o'clock. Kenn and I skinned on out, making it back to his van just as the sky opened up.

Campaigning sure is fun.

Campaigning begins at home

I really enjoy campaigning, engaging with individual voters at county fairs and such. For one thing, that's when I most feel like a part of the community, filling my humble role in the democratic circus.

However, that does tend to take away from other things, such as the fam. So, the main "campaign stop" for Sunday was my brother's house in Connersville for a little spot of time with the nephew and nieces that I hadn't talked to for awhile.

Turns out they were all intrigued with this campaigning and politics. They wanted to hear all about this election stuff. Indeed, my beloved 10 year old Ashtyn, who proudly proclaims me to be her "meanest favorite" drew me a special campaign picture:



Getting back to basics is generally a good idea, and explaining the federal government to ten year olds makes a good opportunity to do just that. So I tried to give them a basic five minute version of what the US government is supposed to be.

We have a basic document that explains what the parts of the US government are, and what they are supposed to do. It's called the US Constitution.

According to the US Constitution, there are three separate branches that divide up the power and get things done. On is the executive branch, which is headed by the president, who is elected by the whole country. Another branch is the judiciary branch, headed by the Supreme Court. They are the top judges in the in the land. There are nine of them, and they are picked by the president.

Finally, there is the legislative branch, which is generally the most powerful and important part. They mostly make the laws, set the taxes, and spend the money. Congress is the legislative branch, and has two parts, a House of Representatives and a Senate. The house has several hundred members elected by the people in separate small districts across the country. The senate (for which I am running) has 100 total members, two from each state. For most things, both the house and senate have to agree on something for it to become law.

Now, for all this setup, the whole US federal government has one main job under the constitution: stop people from coming in and killing us. According to the US Constitution, national defense is the main thing the federal government is supposed to do. There are also some smaller jobs specified as well, such as printing money and setting copyright laws.

Other than that, most everything else is supposed to be left for the state or local governments, or -mostly- left for people to deal with themselves.

This explanation seemed to go over pretty well. It might would be a bit much for a Democrat or Republican to digest. They often seem to think that having so much as pricked their finger means a call to Uncle Sam. Schoolchildren, however, seem perfectly capable of understanding the basic gist of the deal.

Why do they hate us?

Our most critical national concern today is terrorism. There are people trying to kill us, and working towards leveraging their killing power with WMDs.

An obvious key question in this is why do they hate us? The answers to this question are important in formulating our responses. Can we soothe their anger? Is there some way to make nice? Do we just have to lay waste to some people and blast them into submission?

Those are the most practical issues, but there are also moral issues. To what extent if any have we brought this on ourselves?

I've got an ongoing discussion on some of this on Todd Yarling's blog. As one of my bestest college buddies and a staunch libertarian, it's not surprising that he's supporting my candidacy. However, he takes a signficantly different view of just some of these foreign policy issues - and he's not afraid to take me to task. Short version, I (reluctantly) supported the Iraq war and a fairly hawkish response to Muslim/Arab extremists, and he opposed the war.

Anyway, we've got a discussion on these matter ongoing. CLICK HERE to join in.

Hamilton County Fair, July 24

We were blessed with a beautiful night again on Saturday, probably below 70 degrees by the time I got to Noblesville for the Hamilton County fair. This seems like the coolest summer in my memory. Besides being exceptionally pleasant, this cool weather seems to belie dystopian liberal predictions of global warming.

In any case, I'd never been to the Hamilton County fair. They certainly take their fair pretty serious. Maybe it had to do with the placement of the commercial tent where all us politician types were set up, but it sure seemed like a lot of animals. The 4-H part of the fair was definitely prominent. I stopped on the way in to make friends with a couple of sheep. But enough about the Democrats. [(Adopting Foghorn Leghorn voice) That's a joke, son. I said, joke.]

For starters, we had a fine turnout from the Hamilton County Libertarian Party. Other than absolutely Marion County next door (Indianapolis), Hamilton County probably has the biggest county party in the state, and the most candidates.

Heck, they've embarassed the local Democrats bad enough to get them to actually run candidates for office. This is something that the badly outnumbered Democrats hadn't even been bothering to do in this Republican county - until the Libertarians began actually running more candidates than the Democrats in the last couple of election cycles.

Anyway, there were too many danged Libertarians running around for me to keep track of. Among the most merciless tormenters of the local Republicrats in attendance were big, bad Mark Schreiber, and the infamous author of the Kole Hard Facts of Life blog and secretary of the state party, Mike Kole. [Mike's account of the fair]

Kenn Gividen, our hardworking gubernatorial candidate, was again in attendance. He had been out on the grounds when first I arrived. Coming across the tent to our booth in the far back corner, he claimed to hear me from the other end of the tent, which must have been at least 100 yards. Apologies if I was sucking all the air out of the room, but I was talking over the tractors in the ring just back of the tent. Then again, out in Franklin County, we're used to hollering over farm equipment.

Indeed, I was, as Chuck Berry would say, "campaign shoutin' like a Southern diplomat" all night. With the beautiful weather, we had strong steady traffic the whole evening. I kept even busier than in Lafayette the night before. This saved the Hamilton County party people from hearing me sing, cause I was about too busy to breath. Best guess is that I talked at least briefly to 500 people.

By the time I was leaving at 10pm, about all the more "talking" I could do was bleating. This turned out to be just enough to have a brief conversation with a half dozen vocal young goats on leashes that I crossed paths with in the parking lot.

Black goat: "Baaaaaah!"
White goat: "Baaaaah!"
Al: "Baaaaaaah!"

Tippecanoe County fair, July 23

Friday was a great night to be campaigning in Lafayette, Indiana. It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood, indeed pitch perfect in the low 70s and nicely breezy. I am reminded of Grandpa Jones classic admonition that "the least that you can do is thank the Lord for the air, the sunshine and the rain."

More specifically, it was a great night to be having a Libertarian party with Randy Young and the party animals of the Tippecanoe County Libertarian Party. Among the animals participating was Purdue economics student and District 2 County Commission candidate Mark Davis. Rick Irvine was there with his baby face that belies his thirtysomething years. He's running for an at-large County Council seat. Name checks should also go out to attendees Ken Bireta and Fred Navarra.

Kenn Gividen, our candidate for governor, was there as well, passing out fliers and books about education reform. One woman absolutely didn't recognize him from the photo on his flier that he was holding up, even with him wearing a name tag. She had a good save, though, explaining to me that Kenn just looks so much better in person that she didn't even recognize him. Flattery will get you everywhere.

At a fair, I usually figure that people are more interested in elephant ears and ferris wheels than they are in discussing tax policy and such, so I try to keep the conversations quick and light. It's more a chance just to personally meet people. If they want to hear policy proposals, they can get this website from my card.

The main actual policy type issue discussed was the unconscionable level of federal spending, which the Republican president and Republican congress have taken way past even what the Democrats had done when they were last in control. As I've said repeatedly, the only thing worse than a bleeding heart liberal Democrat is a compassionate conservative Republican.

Of course, you can't have a party without a couple of party poopers. There was the guy across the aisle from some mortuary who was up in my grill for supposedly blocking traffic within five minutes of my arrival. He apparently just wasn't digging our people all week. Oh well, you can't please everybody. There was also the woman who was still mad about the Florida recount - as if I had anything to do with that.

On the other hand, one particularly personable woman out with her husband had a bit of disagreement from the other side. Turns out that she is ex-military, and she was ready to scrap with me if I wanted to do any Bush bashing. Not wanting to get beat up by a woman in public, I held my tongue about the president.

Actually, she was smiling and cordial. I liked her particularly. But I still wouldn't have wanted to get her mad.

It was a good rockin' time, but by the end even the stalwart party animals were probably about done with listening to me sing Sam Cooke and Grandpa Jones songs. By way of consolation, I shared a few CDs of my custom homemade Liberty Mix that I put together to listen to while I'm out campaigning. I'm sure the Grandpa Jones sounds better when HE sings it.

Judging by the number of cards gone, I'd say I personally talked to at least 300 voters. A good time was had by one and almost all.

Disenfranchised: Please count my vote

I filed the following letter with the Franklin County, Indiana clerk for delivery to the county Board of Elections.

**************
July 22, 2004

My name is Albert Barger. I am a resident and voter in Posey Township in Franklin County Indiana.

On the day of the May 2004 primary elections, I went to the polling place in Andersonville and took a Democrat primary ballot. I carefully marked the envelope in the prescribed manner to cast a write-in ballot for Rev. Al Sharpton as the Democrat nominee for president of the United States.

My vote was not counted. I am told by people at both the county and state level of government that in the state of Indiana, we simply do not accept ANY write-in votes during primaries.

This is unacceptable. If we are to say that we have a democracy and elections, then I have a right to vote for whomever I want - not just whatever two or three choices the state picks out for me.

Note that I didn't write in "Mickey Mouse" or "Cartman" or some other fictional character. Rev Sharpton was in fact a well-known national figure pursuing the office.

I voted for him. My vote didn't count. I was disenfranchised.

I am requesting that whatever entity has the authority to do so [circuit court, county election board, state election board] please in fact order that my vote for Rev Sharpton be duly counted and that the primary election results be changed to reflect that vote.

I will be more than willing to fill out any kind of affidavit or paperwork required to officially ascertain that I cast this vote.

In addition, there is another voter from Posey Township in exactly the same position, having cast a write-in vote for Rev Sharpton that was not counted. If necessary, he also would be willing to sign an affidavit regarding his vote.

Again, I am requesting that the county election returns be changed to accurately reflect my vote in the May 2004 Democrat presidential primary.

I look forward to a prompt and just resolution to this matter.

Al Barger
14205 Barger Rd
Laurel, IN 47024
***************

A couple of extra notes that were not deemed relevant to include in the official letter to the election board:

A lot of people complained about being "disenfranchised" in Florida during the 2000 election. Most of that appears to have been simply fictitious - people were not being turned away from the polls.

Mostly, the problems that did arise were from people not smart enough to use a simple ballot. If you punch out the wrong hole on the ballot, as perhaps one fourth or half of one percent did, that's nobody's fault but yours. There were also some small number of mechanical or technical problems - all of which were amplified in importance because of the freakishly close vote totals.

By contrast, in my case documented above, I carefully and correctly marked the box for a write-in vote, and carefully spelled out the name. Not counting this vote was not from voter error. Nor was it from an accidental technical glitch.

They simply did not INTEND to count my vote - unless I voted for one of those few and highly unappealing names they already had picked out for me.

Vote for whoever you want to - as long as it's one of these two. This would be somewhat like the poor child asked to choose his dinner from amongst nasty jars of strained green beans or strained spinach. Your choice. This may be appropriate for a toddler, but is not right for adults in a democracy.

By the way, some may wonder why a libertarian would wish to vote for a socialist, racialist demagogue such as the Rev Sharpton. My reasoning would not be any of the election board's business, but my basic idea there was to embarrass the Democrat Party for fostering such a character. With all the wicked race baiting fomented by the Democrats and their operatives, they richly deserve to have a guy like Sharpton prominent in their field, and making them all look foolish.

I note also that the staff at the Franklin County clerk's office were all particularly patient and courteous with me through the phone calls and office visits involved in checking the records and figuring out how best to make this appeal. I acknowledge that I'm coloring somewhat outside the lines here, as it were, and I appreciate their efforts to work with me. Thank you.

My hawkish libertarian apostasy

Even though I am the Libertarian Party candidate for US Senate, I don't believe that the answer to every question is to go to the Libertarian Party Playbook and plug in the relevant quote. My general assumptions might go that way, but the particulars of a situation might not.

Much of my thought this way comes from reading Robert Anton Wilson, who emphasizes again and again that "The map is not the territory" or alternately that "The menu is not the meal."

This comes from a guy named Alford Korzybski, who stated, "A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness."

Often, roadmaps tell me just where I am with my car, and how I can get to where I need to go. Sometimes they just aren't accurate representations of what I actually get on the ground and at the wheel. Sometimes, that picture on the restaurant menu doesn't look like the stuff that shows up on my plate.

It is more important to me to make the best interpretation based on observed facts on the ground in a particular situation rather than having the Correct Libertarian Response. I used to be really bugged by the famous Emerson quote that "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." In this type of context, though, I have come to see the wisdom of Emerson.

This goes to my apostasy from some people's idea of the libertarian playbook in foreign policy. A lot of times, normal libertarian individualist assumptions about human behavior don't fit the particular facts on the ground in some parts of the world.

By the way, my relatively hawkish views may be in disagreement with some of the current Libertarian Party, but how far off I am from the libertarian playbook depends very much on exactly who's playbook we're reading from. Probably the top two modern intellectuals inspiring the creation of the contemporary libertarian movement are Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein. Not that it is a relevant argument in favor of my outlook, but I'd bet both of them would be pretty much in my camp on most of these issues.

Classical liberal or libertarian thought tends to work on the premise that humans will naturally tend to seek their own self-interest. What's in it for me? We design our political thoughts to harness that natural healthy selfishness to the greater good. Thus, Adam Smith's famous observation that the baker doesn't give us a tasty loaf of cheap bread out of the goodness of his heart, but out of his own self interest in wanting to make a buck by SELLING us the tasty loaf cheaper than his competitors.

That kind of thinking seems to describe most human behavior most of the time, but seems less than useful in dealing with suicide bombers and jihadists. In practice, a good many people in the Muslim/Arab world seem to be more motivated by a desire to see US suffer rather than any idea of getting anything positive for themselves. Parents who willingly send their children out to blow up Jews and infidels are simply not motivated by any desire to better themselves.

That tells me that you cannot appeal to some of these people on the basis of self interest. You can't buy them off, or try to offer them a better future. At some point, they're just mentally diseased, and the only thing you can do is put them down like rabid dogs. Hopefully they won't make US take too many other people down with them.

Thus, I supported the Iraq war - though I have some issues with the conduct and the aftermath. Those issues, however, are more often to the side that I don't think we've been harsh enough in some cases, notably Fallujah - which would pretty much be reduced to a parking lot now if I were in charge.

Likewise, I would be willing to strongly consider military actions in other near places to cut down Muslim terrorists and the rat's nest of infrastructure that supports them, most obviously in Iran and Syria. Besides those Muslim jihadists, North Korea may require some unpleasant and destructive action.

I'd prefer that these other regimes see what has happened to Hussein, and take a clue. I'd like to appeal to them in some way so as to avoid the necessity of killing them. War is indeed bad for children and other living things. Maybe North Korea could be appealed to with carrots, like Libya - though it doesn't seem to have done any good so far.

Further, I don't have any desire for revenge over 9/11, nor particularly even for "justice." If it were just those things, I'd say we should let it go. It's not worth us killing people (especially the inevitable innocent casualties), and it's especially not worth getting our own people killed.

That's not the situation, though. People are still coming here to kill us. Besides any deaths overseas, we're still looking at serious terrorist threats here. There are apparently big warning signs of impending attacks intended to screw up our elections. Also, it was just a month ago, in June '04, that Attorney General Ashcroft announced the arrest of an Al Qaeda operative from Somalia busted while plotting to blow up a mall in Columbus, Ohio.

I've got people in Columbus. I've got a three year old niece there. I want to be a nice guy, but I'd turn the entire Middle East into one big paved over parking lot before I'll accept that we're just going to get blown up and anthraxed and such what here and there. I'm far less patient than the Israelis.

Whether we like it or not, we're at war with people intent on leveraging their way up to WMDs to destroy our society. This is not paranoia, nor overstating the point. Under such circumstances, I will favor crushing them - as Brother Malcolm would say - by any means necessary. Or as my other hero Barry Goldwater said, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

I survived Bloomington

Lovely and industrious Monroe County LP chair Margaret Fette organized a county party outreach meeting for Tuesday evening, July 13 in Bloomington at the Village Deli in the IU village to draw local businessmen in to discuss insurance stuff, and invited me as a guest speaker.

Coming in from the south, though, the weather got all funky. Driving rains coupled with 50 and 60 mile per hour winds just about had me ready to stop on the road. Huge lightning bolts were striking, knocking out at least several traffic lights.

I eventually figured out that there was a tornado sighting on the south side of Bloomington during this time, and one poor soul got killed in it somewhere around Columbus. Further, when I got there, I was driving around the block looking for parking - only to encounter a big ol' tree uprooted and laying across the street.

By this point, I obviously wasn't expecting much. However, when I walked in, there were as many as a dozen people, mostly party stalwarts. Obviously, these are the real hardcore, coming out in the tornado and all.

After all that, and some insurance talk, I was pleased to discuss Social Security and entitlement reform with the faithful. Granted, I was largely preaching to the choir, but it was some triumph to by gummy get there and speak and not get killed.

Of course, the libertarian choir tends to talk back to you. They're not a go-along-to-get-along bunch. That's part of why we love 'em. These folks don't come out in a tornado just to nod their heads in blind agreement. They ask questions and challenge assumptions and such.

Specifically to that end, I want to give a special name check to Monroe county party member Bill Milroy. He's one of those smart old dudes what goes in for this old school thing called "reading." He'd been boning up on a critical biography of JP Morgan, among other things, and was politely calling me out on issues of business regulation.

Mr. Milroy argued in favor of business regulation, and was generally more wary of corporate abuses than are most libertarians. As a libertarian from a family of Republicans, I suspect that I have sometimes been a bit lax in dismissing the abuses that big corporations often commit. It was good to get reminded of some of this, and to be prodded a bit.

In any case, we had a good discussion, and he sharpened my understanding on a few issues. I was glad to meet him, and look forward to having more time to discuss some of these things with him in the future.

Most impressive of all, I survived Bloomington.

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