Brookville Meet the Candidates night

Playing ball is more fun than watching it. Thus, I was pleased to spend Thursday evening at a candidate forum here close at the local county seat in Brookville rather than watching the little faux "debate" with Kerry and Bush. Ours was scheduled first, and I certainly rate it more important.

Meet the Candidates was sponsored by the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, in conjunction with the Democrat and Republican women's groups. We probably had 100 people in attendance, by my guessing, largely candidates' families. It was held at the Schilling Center, right next to the remains of our old grandstand that was recently placed in the historic registry, and burned down just the day before. That's a danged shame.

Old home politics in Brookville always feels just a little bit warm and cozy. I'm not sure quite what all the neighbors think of that third party guy up on the hill, but some of them have known me and/or the family for all my life.

Indeed, the event was being run by Lois Clark. I hadn't seen her in many years, but she remembers feeding me lollipops as a wee lad.

Others naturally asked about my father, Howard Barger. After 40 years in business, the old man's a pretty popular fellow about town. That's a pretty good association for my benefit.

On the other hand, I might also inherit the karma of my delightfully cranky late uncle Helmuth Fields. Let's just say that Slick Fields was the bane of local Democrat politicians- and not necessarily that popular with some of the Republicans. Uncle Bud was something of a role model for me. Now he's gone to that great county commissioner's meeting in the sky.

Anyway, this event was open for every candidate who is on a Franklin County ballot. Turns out that I was the only federal candidate who showed up, so that definitely put me first at the podium.

This was interesting, because there were no guidelines given. I had no clue how long I was supposed to speak. They just pretty much called me up, and handed me the mic. I was aiming for not over five minutes, as there's a room full of candidates. I'm guessing at that though, and they starting to wave at me from the back after what I'm guessing was three minutes or so. I ranted for a minute about Congress ripping off Social Security money. I sat down.

What's nice is that Franklin County politics are friendly and civil enough that we can work in a loose manner like this in a co-operative way. I hear about these schmucks running for president that need a 30+ page debate agreement just to get together and talk in front of cameras for a minute. I know it's bigger stakes, but still.

Family friend and former electoral opponent State Senator Bob Jackman was in attendance, seeking election (42nd district) to his third term. Turns out that the Democrat opponent Barry Welsh is the preacher at the Presbyterian church not 5 miles away in Laurel.

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention county commissioner Tom Wilson, who is popular with the Barger family and seeking re-election.

I was personally particularly pleased to see Rebecca Oglesby. I had needled her a bit publicly a couple of years ago when she was the outgoing clerk. She's running now for county treasurer. She may be a danged ol' Republican, but she's very charming. Plus, she's running against a retired IRS agent. In theory, I know that this would probably be a good technical qualification for the job, but you can't ask me to vote for a revenuer. You just can't.

As part of our civic instruction, the current clerk was showing off our fancy new optical scan ballots and machines. This fall will be our first crack with these new machines. They seemed okay, and they do certainly have a paper trail, as we're physically marking ballots.

Having had formal issues earlier in the year about my attempted presidential primary write-in vote, our long suffering clerk was not surprised that I had a write-in vote on my sample ballot. I wrote in Ayn Rand for "Best Writer." This was actually useful, in demonstrating how the scanner detects and separates ballots with write-in votes.

The Republican women brought in bunches of Laura Bush's Oatmeal-chocolate Chunk cookies. They were of course a homebaked delight.

The Democrat women brought in Teresa Heinz Kerry's Pumpkin Spice cookies. In theory, I'm all about chocolate, but I have to say these were pretty good. Also, Franklin County Democrat women get extra points with me for their restraint in not rising to my bait as I teased them about 'Teresa Heinz' butler's cookie recipe.'

There's no place like home.

Connersville News-Examiner profile

Darrell Smith wrote a fine profile of me for the front page of the Connersville News-Examiner. CLICK HERE

In general, I am quite pleased, but I will take one little quibble. He says at one point that I "somewhat" supported the Iraq war. Now this is probably what Cool Hand Luke's warden would call a "failure to communicate." My bad, no doubt.

I don't recall our interview exactly, but I typically say that I "somewhat reluctantly" supported the war. I did not support the original 1991 war, and it took a good bit of convincing to get my support.

However, I did support going in to Iraq, and still think we're doing basically the right thing - though I might argue with some of the tactics. I fully support doing whatever is necessary to finish the job. We might have to be somewhat harsher than we mostly have been. Also, I won't balk at us being there for several years or spending some money. That's what it might realistically take to get at least a half decent government going and able to control the country, though I predict it settles down a lot within the next six months.

I'm just not wanting to be mistaken for John Kerry. Thanks.

Anyway, here's the story:

Laurel's Barger runs for Senate
BY DARRELL SMITH/Staff Writer

A Whitewater Valley man is stumping the state to get his Libertarian message out to voters in the race for U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Evan Bayh and Republican Marvin Scott.

Al Barger, 41, of Laurel has been on the campaign trail since being nominated by the Indiana Libertarian Party Central Committee in early June.

He concedes he is a long shot but maintains there is a reason for his candidacy.

"I will say, it's unlikely that I can unseat Evan Bayh, but every single vote that shows up in my column is one clear message being sent that you think there is too much government and it needs to be pared back to its constitutionally-authorized functions," he said.

Barger graduated from Laurel High School and earned a bachelor's degree from Ball State University with a major in journalism and minors in political science and psychology.

"I turned 18 just in time to vote in 1980," he said. "Before I had met another Libertarian, I was getting Ed Clark (Libertarian candidate for president) literature in the mail and taking it door-to-door in Laurel. It just immediately made sense."

He said his judgment at that early age - that Republicans do not really believe in limited government and second amendment rights - has been confirmed.

Gun control is just one of the issues in which the federal government has overstepped its bounds, he said. He calls himself a Barry Goldwater conservative and said there is no place for him in today's Republican Party.

"What the Congress is suppose to do is outlined in the U.S. Constitution," he explained. "They are specific and limited duties. The one thing the federal government is suppose to do is national defense - stop people from coming in and killing us - and then a small handful of lesser responsibilities outlined specifically for them such as making copyright laws and printing money."

He said his father, Howard, and grandfather, Brown, started a combination convenience store and sporting goods store, including the sale of handguns, in the mid-1960s. At that time, former Democratic Indiana Sen. Birch Bayh, Evan Bayh's father, and his friend, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., led the passage of the gun control act which resulted in additional paperwork and federal inspections on gun shops, Barger said.

"They (father and grandfather) just gave up and got out of business," he said. "I tend to take a dim view when I see the son supporting yet more gun control."

Barger said the federal government has no responsibility in the war on drugs, that the task is an obligation of the states.

"And likewise, where in the constitution does it say the federal government has any authority to be involved in education?" he asked. "In my mind, the federal Department of Education is unconstitutional, it has no authority for that."

An issue he said is high on his priority list is Social Security.

"In the first place, it's unconstitutional," he said. "There's nothing in the constitution authorizing the federal government to take charge of our retirement money, and look what happens."

He said 15 percent of a worker's paycheck is taken off the top for Social Security and squandered. He said U.S. presidents and congressmen should go to jail for financial mismanagement.

"What the Congress, including Evan Bayh, has done is a thousand times worse than anything Ken Lay (former Enron CEO) or WorldCom or Tyco ever dreamed of doing," he said.

Barger said the government has no business being involved in marriage, except for the oversight of contracts between people over issues such as money.

"The government should restrict its role to contract law. If you want to sign a contract recognized by the government that you've got inheritance rights, that's great," he explained. "As far as being a marriage, you can take that to church and it's between you, the church and God."

He said he believes personally that - as the bumper stickers read - "abortion stops a beating heart." But he is not comfortable giving the federal government authority over what is inside a woman, he said, and he could consider some state-level regulations, including parental notification.

Barger calls himself hawkish on issues such as terrorism, and he said he "somewhat" supported the Iraq war.

He said he did not support President Bush signing the McCain-Feingold campaign reform act into law because it was unconstitutional.

He said Bayh has $7.4 million in his campaign spending chest, and that he does not have a problem with that as long as he was included in any debates between Bayh and Scott.

Indiana gubernatorial mission statements

This week, the Sunday Indianapolis Star featured column length mission statements from the three candidates for Indiana governor from Democrat Joe Kernan, Libertarian Kenn Gividen, and Republican Mitch Daniels. You can read their statements HERE.

Obviously, I'm going to favor Kenn Gividen's response. I think he's got the best ideas. However, he's my brother Libertarian and buddy, so maybe I'm not entirely objective.

However, I suggest that you READ THE THREE STATEMENTS and judge them for yourself. Now for starters, regardless of how much you agree or disagree with his policy ideas, tell me if you don't think that Kenn gave by far the most direct answer with the most specific plans.

I'd say that alone is more good reason to vote for Mr. Gividen than anything I've seen from either of the other two.

By the way, all three candidates will be debating Tuesday night (9-28-2004). The 90-minute event will be broadcast live by WFYI (Channel 20) and 90.1 FM. It is also expected to show nationally on C-Span. I predict that Brother Kenn keeps it real.

What is a "libertarian?"

Libertarianism for me began at age 17 in 1980 with the presidential campaign of Ed Clark. The basic appeal to strictly restrict government in the name of individual freedom instantly made sense. That's for me!

Yet not everyone knows or understands what libertarianism or the Libertarian Party stand for. You're with the 'libertine party?' I got a lot of that 20 years ago, far less of it now. Still, I suspect most people have only have a vague idea of libertarian beliefs. So, let's take a quick pass at nailing it down a bit.

Centrally, libertarianism is a political belief system based on property rights and individualism. Stated simply, libertarians believe that individuals have the right to do whatever they will with their own lives and property, so long as they respect the equal rights of others.

One basic core principle of libertarian thought is that groups don't have rights. Any group -the Catholic church, the Boy Scouts or the US government- is no more nor less than the individuals who comprise the group. Groups get whatever legitimacy they have from the individual members, and thus have no rights to do anything any individual wouldn't be allowed to do.

Thus, libertarians will tend to see minimal differences between IRS agents vs the guy robbing the 7-11 vs a mafia family collecting protection money. If you don't have a right to come take my money at gunpoint because you decide you "need" it, it doesn't become any more right because you got some buddies together and voted to rob me.

This all leads naturally toward believing in strictly limiting the powers of government. You might have to have a little bit of it for basic police purposes and national defense, but not much else. The less government we can get by with, the better.

The closest that we have come to this ideal in actual practice in human history was the US Constitution. In the practical application, there were serious shortcomings there, but these ideas of individual sovereignty were the basic ideals of the brain trust of our revolution, notably Thomas Jefferson. Thus, the modern Libertarian Party tends to strongly emphasize the US Constitution, not out of some superstitious devotion to our ancestors, but because they got it right the first time.

In those times, these beliefs in an open society with minimal government power were called "liberal" ideas. That would be nice, except that the first thing FDR stole as he inflicted socialism on the country in the 1930s was the word "liberal." Jefferson or Washington would not recognize such an authoritarian as one of theirs. College professors sometimes now refer to these Jeffersonian belief systems as "classical liberalism."

FDR stole the good name of liberalism, and those classical liberal ideas were on the wane in public debate for some years. My hero Barry Goldwater tried to inject some of those principles back into the mix, but was of course beaten by LBJ - and far worse, subverted from within by fellow Republicans.

One of the worst culprit Republican schmucks was Richard Nixon. It was specifically Nixon's imposition of wage and price controls that set off three or four now ex-Republicans to get together and start a new political party. They managed to get a first presidential candidate on a few state ballots in 1972.

They named it the "Libertarian Party." The word "libertarian" had existed for probably at least a century, but had only limited usage. Thus, the word mostly is an association of the American political party that uses it. They picked it to represent the central goal of the movement: liberty. Not the divine right of kings, nor the will of the majority, nor any kind of group rights, but individual liberties.

A good way to get a handle on what libertarians are about would be to read some of the authors that influence the movement. In my experience, probably a majority of Libertarian Party activists have been particularly heavily influenced by one or both of two major authors: Ayn Rand and Robert Heinlein.

We're very pluralistic and all, so you could find a good many libertarians who have never read either of these authors. Still, probably the best way to start to understand libertarian thinking would be to read Ayn Rand's classic novel Atlas Shrugged (the most important book of the 20th century), or Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress .

Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce HobNob, September 23

The Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce HobNob is THE meet and greet event of the Indiana electoral season. I don't entirely understand the food chain, but it is officially co-sponsored by the Indiana Democrat, Libertarian, and Republican parties. Local tv and radio stations have their fingers in it as well.

It was a fine mix of prominent business people, members of boards and such, and many of the higher level candidates for public office in the state this year. I'm guessing there were a thousand people or more attending.

We all got together for a lovely affair at the Indiana Historical Society on Ohio Street. One particularly nice feature of the event was the bunch of wandering historical re-enactors hired from Conner Prarie among other places. They wandered the grounds in historical garb, schmoozing and telling their stories. They had a particularly cool looking ringer for Teddy Roosevelt. Most of them were more types of people, though, rather than specific historical figures. I was bonding with a fur trapper from the Oklahoma territories, circa 1860.

Probably my bestest new buddy for the night turned out to be Katherine Fox Carr, a very personable Democrat running for the 5th district house seat long occupied by Dan Burton. She expressed some frustration that a whack job like Burton cannot be effectively challenged in this heavily Republican district. She considers him rather an embarassment to the state.

For my part, I kind of enjoy such eccentricities as Burton's talk on the house floor about how he had shot a watermelon in his back yard to test a theory about Vince Foster's death. I find such things endearingly eccentric, but I can see how exasperating this might be to others. Miss Katherine thinks we need a more serious and perhaps more mentally balanced congressional representative.

For all the politicians around, the only speechifying was about five minutes apiece from the two attending gubernatorial candidates. My man Kenn Gividen emphasized the issue of property taxes, specifically his intention to eliminate them. This is what you call an "issue." Mitch Daniels' issue, on the other hand, was that he knew the names of several obscure small towns near Terre Haute. On the other hand, unlike Governor Kernan, Mitch Daniels did actually show up.

Naturally, my esteemed opponent Senator Bayh was absent. Now, obviously I'm critical of him for refusing to come out and play. He needs to come out and debate his opponents and answer questions from the citizens. In this particular case, however, he does have a good excuse. Congress is in session right now, and he does need to be there doing the job. He gets a pass for this one.

Also, I got to see old pal Andy Horning for the first time this campaign season. He's now a Libertarian Party ex-patriot making his debut run as a Republican for US House against Julia Carson, and our own Barry Campbell. I'm all for the Libertarian candidate, but Andy would also be an outstanding member of Congress. You really can't go wrong either way there. The people of Indianapolis are fortunate to have two good choices for Congress.

Plus of course the fellowship of my Libertarian Party brethren was rewarding, as always. Particularly, the ladies' auxillary was in full force, led by the evil twin doppleganger of a Stepford Wife known as Rebecca Sink Burris.

Also, I got to talk to a re-enacting turn of the century tax collector about my coon dog Rebel Rouser that likes to tree revenuers. He acted appropriately alarmed.

Did I mention free booze?

Rescue American Jobs survey: Revise and extend

I got a candidate survey with some interesting questions from an outfit called Rescue American Jobs. WEBSITE

As you might guess from the very name of the group - much less the questions, they're basically promoting protectionist closed market economic strategies.

As a staunch free market libertarian, I obviously wasn't going to get far with this crowd. They're pretty much coming in with the opposite agenda from me in this stuff. Nonetheless, they were decent questions, they wanted my opinions as a candidate, and so I answered. MY RESULTS

I knew it wouldn't likely win me any points with this group when I answered, for example, "I'm 100% in favor of outsourcing." That up-in-your-grill response felt good, though. Indeed, I was bragging to the crew about my perfect "0" scores. They graded me, not suprisingly, an F.

Now, I'm right about these issues, and they're wrong - of course. So what, though? Several of my Libertarian Party colleagues have criticized me over this survey for not really trying to reach out and show that I understand and share their concerns. I need to present myself as more of a compassionate libertarian, as W might say it, promoting (as his father would say) a kinder and gentler America.

My critics are at least halfway right, though, I must conclude. My job is to show these people that I have a better answer. What someone might mistakenly but perfectly understandably take from my original responses would be that I simply don't care about their concerns.

At that point, they may likely not be open to hearing my different outlook on how to go about addressing their issues. It's not going to change minds, and it's certainly not going to get me votes.

Therefore, let me take this opportunity to, as we say in Congress, revise and extend my remarks.

Jobs and wages are pretty important things. You have to feed the family. Baby needs a new pair of shoes. It's absolutely appropriate that this would be one of the top couple of concerns on voter's minds.

However, I disagree with liberals and socialists on what we need to do to get and keep those jobs. They generally wish to use the force of law to make Americans buy American made products through tariffs and bans on imports. They will tend to want to manipulate tax codes to stop companies from re-locating operations to poorer countries with cheaper labor.

Historically, those types of approaches have not worked well. They hurt consumers, for starters, who are made to pay more for what they buy, which makes everybody in the country poorer.

Protectionist trade policies naturally beget retaliatory policies from other countries. We end up losing valuable foreign markets, and hurt lots of industries, and costs ourselves jobs. A world filled with lots of restrictive trade barriers will not prosper like it should.

Also, the protectionist mentality tends to play to our lowest emotional centers, the xenophobic and racist impulses from the lower part of our animal natures. It is neither accurate nor spiritually uplifting to blame poor Mexicans or Malaysians for our economic problems. Hey they're just trying to feed the kids like anybody else.

You can't just demand by law that companies hire people, or keep people on payrolls when they're not making money on them. Well, you CAN, but it's just not going to work. They'll just end up going broke. The command economy of the Soviet Union and every place that tries similar has been utterly dismal.

As Ayn Rand noted in a critical insight, you can't force someone to THINK. You can force them to stand up, or sit down. You simply cannot force or demand that people create wealth, though. This involves huge complexes thinking and acting that can only be done voluntarily.

The more you restrict people's freedom of action, the more you restrict their ability to create wealth. Forcing people by law to act against the best judgment of their own thinking actively works against their success. You simply can't just pass a law to make bad economic policies work.

Now, what has been shown to really promote more and better jobs in practice is a free market, with stable rule of law, a minimum of regulations, and a minimum of taxes. As would seem absolutely intuitive to me, this approach maximizes wealth creation, business profits and growth in demand for labor, generating more and better jobs.

Generally, the best thing to create jobs and prosperity in the country is to do things to improve the business climate. It might satisfy some resentment to see a rich guy knocked down, but the guy who is making the most money is generally going to be the one creating the most jobs.

There's no such thing as a level playing field. Life isn't fair. Third World countries will generally have certain economic vantages such as lower environmental standards. We might be a little more mindful of the economic costs of EPA rules and high OSHA workplace standards, but we're not going to abandon our high standards - nor should we.

On the other hand, Americans have lots of advantages working for us. We have a much better, more consistent and stable rule of law. We have vast natural resources. We have about the best university system in the world.

The best thing we can do is to make it more attractive to do business here. We're going to lose out on some lower end jobs because dirt poor South Americans will do them cheaper. That can't be helped. However, we can do tort reform, lower taxes, and improve education. We can try to streamline and simplify some of the thousands of pages of tax code, and business regulations.

Democrats like to brag on how Bill Clinton created 20 million jobs in the 90s. To the extent that it was anything done by government, what was it that Bill Clinton actually did? In a word: NAFTA.

NAFTA was his main big legislative accomplishment, moving it through a still Democratic Congress where Reagan and Bush Sr had been unable. Despite his liberal Democratic facade, Clinton did not rework the tax code to stop outsourcing, or much of any of the typical liberal socialist stuff. He opened markets coming in and out with NAFTA and other trade agreements. The "giant sucking sound" that Ross Perot imagined turned out to be a huge INCREASE in American jobs and wages.

Now, I don't want to 100% endorse NAFTA or other trade agreements. There are lots of issues about national sovereignty, and lots of things to nitpick over.

However, Bill Clinton was quite good at getting trade agreements, which resulted in lots more business going in and out of the country, both directions. This generated great opportunities for American businesses around the world, and for businessmen around the world to do business here.

We got much cheaper consumer goods in many cases, improving the standard of living even for people whose income remained static. We lost some jobs where we weren't competitive, but we created a great many more jobs by selling things all over the world. It was a win-win.

That's how you do it.


Here are the original responses I made to the Rescue American Jobs questionnare:

MOST CRITICAL ISSUE:
National defense. The main job of the federal government is to stop people from coming in and killing us. In line with that, I tend to be fairly hawkish. I supported the Iraq war, and (depending on circumstances) would be likely to favor military action against Iran and/or North Korea.

It's not pretty or nice, we're definitely better off taking the fight to our enemies in their homelands rather than waiting for them to hit us again.

POSITION ON TRADE:
I favor free, open trade. I am highly disinclined to engage in any kind of protectionism. It hurts consumers, generates ill will in the world, and ultimately just doesn't help.

I understand that there are some legitimate issues about inequality in US vs third world labor and environmental laws, and so forth. There are hundreds of countries with their own laws.

Therefore, there is not and will never be any totally "fair" trade or "level playing field." Life isn't fair. However, a lot of that un-levelness is American advantage in thousands of ways.

I'm guessing that this is not what this organization wants to hear, but if you can't compete in the world market in your current job or industry, then find something else to do for a living.

POSITION ON OUTSOURCING:
I'm 100% in favor of outsourcing. This "American jobs" talk is a lot of nonsense. "Job" is a noun as a figure of language and sentence structure, but is not in fact a tangible possession that someone owns. It's not a table or chair, but a relationship between and employer and employee. People sometimes talk about foreigners "stealing American jobs." That's such a lot of nonsense.

If the employer no longer needs or cannot afford the employee, or can get the job done far cheaper somewhere else, then that's not just their right, but their absolute proper RESPONSIBILITY to their own stockholders.

To my ears, people talking about "shipping out American jobs" sounds like racism. Indians and Mexicans have to eat, too, and they have as much right to work as an American.

Look, Americans have SO many advantages in the world. If some of our businesses can't keep up, then they should do something else.

POSITION ON GUEST WORKERS:
I'm all for them. As a good Libertarian, I tend to want to favor open borders in general - though post 9/11 security concerns give me some doubts. Plus, I recognize the strain on social services of huge influxes of illegal Mexicans.

However, visas for professionals should be a no-brainer. Unless someone has some obvious security flags, we want all the educated professionals we can get.

Most obviously, if it wasn't for immigrants, big parts of rural America (including my own) would not have anything like sufficient doctors.

POSITION ON CORRUPTION:
Government will inevitably be corrupted in thousands of creative ways all around as long as it has the power to hand out trillions of dollars a year in tax money, and as long as it has vast powers to hand out legilative favors. This corruption comes from corporations, from foreign interests, from labor unions (especially government unions such as AFSCME and the NEA), and from every other person or group with a hand out for money or favors. As long as the government has big favors and piles of money to hand out, rich dirtbags are going to be at the front of the line.

Reducing the size of the federal government and restriciting it to the few functions actually authorized by the US Constitution is the only thing that will really substantially reduce corruption. Eliminate income taxes, cut the spending and power of the government by at least two thirds, and the influence peddling and corruption will be largely eliminated. There simply won't be near so much influence to peddle.

End of the assault weapons ban

Today freedom loving Americans can celebrate the end of at least one unconstitutional law, Clinton's 1994 ban on so-called "assault weapons" which expired yesterday. Note that these formerly prohibited guns are not functionally different than a lot of other guns. It was largely a cosmetic issue. By rights, it should have been called the ban on guns that look scary to ignorant people who know nothing about guns.

However, the expiration of this ban comes with no thanks to my opponent, Senator Evan Bayh. Evan Bayh proudly voted earlier this year to extend the ban, supported by exceedingly lame claims that this would constitute a prudent move in the war on terror. Right. Oh well, the Bayh family has a long history of pushing for gun control.

But let's not leave the senator alone in the hall of shame for supporting this bad law. You expect this from a liberal Democrat, but President Bush also supports an extension or re-authorization of this ban. Senator Bayh probably really thinks in his heart that this ban was a good thing, but Bush absolutely knows better. He's simply whoring for "moderate" votes. I guess those come from nice, moderate people who favor only moderate violations of the constitution and modest abrogations of the Bill of Rights.

I predict that we find absolutely NO statistical increase in crime caused by the expiration of this ban.

Libertarian Party cookout, Bloomington, September 12

The general public of Bloomington, Indiana was invited to the home of our beloved Maragaret Fette and her loving husband Paul, though we mostly ended up with LP members. It's about worth the trip to Bloomington though just for a pat on the back and a few words of encouragement from Miss Margaret, Jamie Goldstein, and of course our irreplacable right wing hippie earth mother Cindy Kirkpatrick.

Most of our state bigwigs were there, including gubernatorial candidate Kenn Gividen, who must be the hardest working man in the state party. I know I can't go anywhere without running into him. Our deceptively mild mannered state chair Mark Rutherford was there. Note also our privilege in having the attendance of the globe trotting sophisticate Mike Kole on his way to Denmark, and already an announced candidate for the critical 2006 Secretary of State nomination.

A few words must be said also for our last candidate for the position, also in attendance Sunday. Rebecca Sink-Burris is a dangerous gal because she looks so harmless. At a glance, you might think that she was merely a pretty little Stepford wife. You might even think that after doing a couple of minutes of business with her at the grocery store or the bank.

However, if you talk to her for awhile, you'll see how tough minded she is, and just why she belongs in the Libertarian Party. She's friendly and loving and kind - but she's a little more radical than she may appear. Let's just say she's nobody's robot.

We also had a visiting Libertarian alumni. Paul Hager perhaps unnecessarily ceremoniously left the party two years ago, and hadn't been seen in our circles since. One or two of our people still have a bit of a grudge against the ex-member, understandably.

For my part though, I was glad to hear that Paul Hager is now the Republican Party candidate for state house district 60. Perhaps his people skills occasionally fail him, but Hager is definitely a friend of liberty. He's committed to principles of small, constitutionally limited government. He's smart, and he knows his stuff. Indiana would be fortunate to have such as him in the legislature, whatever party label he's carrying.

All in all, we had lots of good food, met a few new voters and got to compare notes midway through the campaigns. Also, I got some attention from some of my favorite womenfolk.

New Palestine Lions Club Fair, September 11

I spent the afternoon of September 11 campaigning amongst the Palestinians. New Palestinians specifically. For not that big a town, they had a pretty impressive turnout. I probably got to talk to at least a couple of hundred people.

Also, Chris Ward (a local county council candidate) conjured up a television on which to watch the football game. That definitely lured a few unsuspecting constituents into our lair. Ha! Plus, he brought candy!

Our everloving gubernatorial candidate Kenn Gividen was there as well, along with several other dedicated libertarians.

It pleased me to note that there was no 9/11 stuff at this fair at all, though there could have been something in the parade before I got there. Not that we should forget or dismiss or forgive the events of 9/11, but it's not our best move to unnecessarily dwell on those tragic events.

More importantly, we had a fair to attend. We had balloons and hot dogs and rides and a parade and a fine day with the neighbors.