Sunday, April 20, 2014

On the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Endorsement of Scott Walker in the Recall Election

Written on May 20th, 2012
Edited in April 2014



   The following is my response to a question from Ryan Haack: Are you going to say something about the Milwaukee Journal[-]Sentinel "endorsing" Walker.[?] ..."



   When Walker said he had no plans to make Wisconsin a Right-to-Work state, I wanted it to be an RTW state, but not just out of disagreement with Walker. That made me to the fiscal right of him.

   I changed my position to being against state RTW laws because I feel that they condition and inhibit contractual obligations for too large a geographical area and too many people. Walker came out in the last week or so saying he supported RTW laws, so now I disagree with him again, which makes my overall policy slightly more palatable to the left.

   Generally, I see the need for austerity and for cuts in government services, but I feel that it's more the federal government's fault than it is Walker's. I'm more likely to support austerity when the people decide it's the right time, not when governors have allowed the feds to bankrupt state and local governments.

   Arthur Kohl-Riggs said something to the effect of "any reasonable governor would have accepted that federal high-speed rail money". I disagree, and I commend Walker for rejecting it. High-speed rail that almost exclusively benefits Midwesterners does not promote the general welfare of all Americans, which I feel should be a necessary condition for federal spending.

   Besides, I think the private sector would do a more efficient and responsible job of constructing transportation infrastructure than the government, and there is less of a chance that that money would have been diverted to other spending projects and ending up in the pockets of politicians and lobbyists.

   Some might respond to the above by saying that the money would end up in the hands of CEOs and the like, and we all know how much Walker likes tax breaks for businesses and the wealthy. But Walker and I do not share the same economic or political philosophy.

   Walker is a corporatist technocrat who supports states' rights to some extent. I favor local communities' rights, and - under such conditions - taxation based on the creation of income disparity (but I also support introducing competition in governance, so that people can choose which fair and neutral party arbitrates disputes which they cannot resolve by themselves).

   In my opinion, Walker is not polarizing because he is farther to the right than people are used to. He is polarizing because – as with any politician, especially a governor or a president, under the current monopoly-government system – it’s Walker’s way or the highway. And that’s just the way it will be if Barrett wins.

   Nobody will be satisfied – and the “general (read: ‘universal’) welfare” clause will never be fulfilled – as long as people cannot vote “none of the above” in every election without having to vote again, and as long as people cannot choose to be governed by anyone other than the federal government along with its state and local subsidiary governments.

   The only politician who will not be polarizing is a candidate who lets people refrain from associating politically with people whose ideologies are nearly or completely irreconcilable with their own.

   Polarizing, extremist politicians are in-style in this political season. Scott Walker and Paul Ryan may be polarizing, but they are not extremist. But the most prominent extremists - people like Ron Paul and Gary Johnson – are somehow not polarizing; Paul has in fact been described as “transpartisan”.

   I feel that this shows that what we need is not “compromise, not capitulation” – as Democratic congressional candidate Mark Pocan put it – but “consensus, not compromise”, as independent congressional candidate myself puts it. This premise alone would satisfy the general welfare requirement.

   Fiscal sanity – not Scott-Walker-style soft money and tax breaks for businesses and the wealthy – helps the pocketbooks of all Americans. A humble foreign policy with a strong national defense – not George-W.-Bush-style interventionist military belligerence – makes all Americans safer.

   I am a Republican only in that republicanism is a means to an end. I respect extremists from both ends of the economic spectrum, because they have goals. All that polarizing, non-extremist, “pragmatic” Democrats and Republicans have to offer us is an all-or-nothing, “my-way-or-the-highway” mindset, and a political culture where an average of 49% of the people are dissatisfied and envious of those who are better represented.

   David Koch was the Libertarian Party Vice-Presidential candidate for president in 1980. Libertarians knew he wasn’t one of them then, and they know he isn’t one of them now. Libertarianism is not about corporate tyranny; it's about discovering to what extent any existing corporate tyranny is the fault of the State.The results of a (very in-depth, I must say) political quiz I recently took shows that libertarianism is nowhere near as all-or-nothing as the framed, false Republican-Democrat, "left-vs.-right" dichotomy. The quiz described me as a Libertarian Party sympathizer first, a Green Party sympathizer second, a Republican third, and a Democrat fourth.

   In conclusion, I am not voting in the recall election. I will vote in a Wisconsin gubernatorial election when and only when a candidate makes credible promises to start issuing passports; to advocate for the construction of consular offices with the purposes of establishing diplomacy with the foreign, alien federal government; and to re-assert the state's freedom, independence, and sovereignty, which is referenced in official federal government documents spanning from 1778 to just three years ago.

   Until that day happens, I urge my fellow (automatic, de-facto, default) Wisconsinites to vote "none of the above" if that is an option, and to remember to make as many qualifications as possible when making excuses for a representative of any agency at any level of one of the several governments to which we were presumed to have consented to delegate powers when we decided (without informed consent) to be born within the unnatural borders of a corporate State in proximity to the parent company which calls itself the United States Government.





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