Libertarian Candidates Square Off
Three contenders for the Libertarian nomination made their respective cases as to why they should be the nominee for president:
The candidates, though, were hardly of the Kerry or Bush ilk. In fact, their relative facelessness is the crux of the party’s trouble.
Former Hollywood producer Aaron Russo, computer consultant Michael Badnarik and radio talk-show host Gary Nolan touted their platforms to about 70 people at their party’s annual convention in hopes of securing a ballot spot. The final candidate will be chosen in May at the party’s national convention in Atlanta.
The trio espoused a monolithic sentiment of limited government — the party’s mantra since it was founded in Colorado in 1971.
“Most of what our government is doing is unconstitutional,” Mr. Badnarik said in opening his presentation. “And most people understand that but don’t know what to do about it.”
Mr. Nolan promised to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and bring U.S. troops home from all stations abroad, adding that “if you want a smaller government, you really can’t vote for George Bush, can you?”
“We need a candidate who is going to get out and spread the word” of the Libertarian Party, he said. The party claims to have around 123,000 registered voters nationwide.
While I admire their sentiment, they keep affirming to the nation that they are crazy. As much as I’d like to see the IRS abolished, you can’t run on a platform like that and expect to be taken seriously. Also, I don’t understand why the Libertarians focus so much energy on the Presidency. They’d be better served using their resources to get lower level political offices. This way, they have a chance to win. And, if their record is good, they can run on those records. Until then, they’ll continue to be viewed as a fringe party. Of course, I’ll probably vote for their candidate.
March 29th, 2004 at 11:51 am
Yup, my sentiments exactly.
March 29th, 2004 at 12:20 pm
As much as I’d like to see the IRS abolished …
I assume you mean the IRS in its current form. After all, even a limited government is going to need revenue to operate, and there has to be some organization responsible for gathering that revenue. Maybe it comes in the form of use taxes instead of income taxes, but it still comes, and there still needs to be some central body to collect it.
They’d be better served using their resources to get lower level political offices.
I’ve been saying this for a long time, about virtually every “third-party.” An alternative might be to run libertarian candidates for lower office as Republicans, and thereby gain a voice within the party by building a substantial base. This is how the Religious Right came to prominence in the GOP, starting small (local offices, school boards, etc.).
March 29th, 2004 at 12:26 pm
No, I mean abolished. The Constitution provided for tariffs and use taxes, not income taxes. There is some question as to whether the 16th amendment actually had the merit to pass or not (i.e., there were several procedural rules broken that should have not let it pass).
March 29th, 2004 at 2:40 pm
Uncle:
So who would collect the tarrifs?
March 29th, 2004 at 3:01 pm
Who cares?
March 29th, 2004 at 3:12 pm
Who collected the tariffs before the IRS was established?
March 29th, 2004 at 4:53 pm
There’s a proposal languishing in Congress called Fairtax. It even has a website promoting it ( http://www.fairtax.org ). It would replace the income tax with a constitutionally justifiable national sales tax. I’m not crazy about the rate but it’s no worse than what’s being extorted from me now & it eliminates all of the privacy issues.
Anyway, replacing the income tax with a sales tax would eliminate the need for a big agency to collect the tax. we could get rid of the IRSS w/o it effecting revenue collection.
But ideally a sales tax with a much lower rate than they’re propoising would work best. I happen to agree in principle with something Bush said: if ya cut off terrorists money they won’t be as effective at causing damage. Which to me is further justification for reducing the cash flow to congress. 😀
& yes, the Libertarians would be better off if they concentrated on smaller, perhaps winnable elections. But w/o someone running for pres I think they fear their small amount of publicity would diminish even further thus hurting even the smaller elections. I think they’re using a very long term strategy. Very long term.
March 29th, 2004 at 5:20 pm
Always love these discussions about “fair tax”. How about taking tyranny out of the tax code? Isn’t that a good idea? Which makes me wonder why none of the anti-tax brigade ever seem to lobby for getting rid of taxes on non-citizens.
publicola: I think tgirsch’s point is that some agency would still have to collect the tax. Granted, it would be smaller because it would only have to collect from businesses rather than individuals. In terms of cutting off funding to Congress, the current Congress has had its funding cut and is still spending like a drunken sailor. As I see it, only a balanced budget amendment can reduce spending. I’d go further and make every bill include a funding component or cost estimate in language that people can understand (i.e. this bill will cost your family, $x). If the medicare bill also had a oh by the way, your medicare tax rate will go up by x, there is no way that it would have passed.
Tariffs are collected by Customs IIRC, not the IRS.
March 29th, 2004 at 9:12 pm
Manish,
the main beef with the IRSS is that they are destructively intrusion in the lives of individuals. Yes we’d still have an agency for collecting sales taxes under a FAirtax like system, but it would be different enough in perception & function that you couldn’t really call it IRSS Lite.
& yeah, we did reduce funds to congress but not nearly enough. & You’re right – we need something to keep them from spending what they don’t have. But we’d also need (under either taxation system) language that prevents them from raising the rates from what they are. Otherwise they’d balance the budget by retroactively raising taxes.
Personally I’m thinking giving them a fixed 5% sales tax on all items & making them produce a budget 10% under that would do wonders for the government & the economy.
& if you ever want to see your rep. make an unusual facial contortion, tell him you have a petition of X thousand constituents who want to eliminate weekly with holding & make all income taxes due on October 20th. After all taking it piece by piece & having the balance due 6 months from the election aren’t lucky (for them) coincidences.
BTW, the Sec of Treasury was responsible for collecting taxes, duties, tarrifs, etc… before the IRSS came about. The IRSS is an agency under Treasury, just like the ATF ‘fore they got those delusions of granduere. So the Sec of Treasury would set up some agency to handle a Fairtax system, unless he just used an existing agency to handle it.
March 31st, 2004 at 5:46 pm
Manish:
Which makes me wonder why none of the anti-tax brigade ever seem to lobby for getting rid of taxes on non-citizens.
Like the Canadians do? 🙂 Truth to tell, I almost always forget to file my GST refund stuff in time.
Publicola:
A few main beefs with the fair tax plan.
Beef #1: It discourages spending. The more you spend, the more you’re taxed, so if you don’t want to be taxed so much, spend less money! Of course “spend less money” is a recipe for economic disaster.
Beef #2: It ties the nation’s revenue even more tightly to the economy than it already is. It is precisely when the economy is weak that government needs to be spending money to keep it in flow. (This is also my primary beef with a balanced budget amendment, an otherwise good idea — sometimes deficit spending, within reason, is necessary and prudent.)
Beef #3: It’s regressive. Since poorer people necessarily spend a higher percentage of their income than more well-off people, poorer people would bear a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. A fair tax rebate doesn’t account for this sufficiently, because poor people can’t afford to wait until the end of the year to be reimbursed for taxes they’ve paid.
Still, I suppose an idea like this could work. Exempt food, clothing, and primary residence from taxation, for example, instead taxing only luxury items. You still have the “discourages spending” problem, but at least then it’s not so disproportionately weighted onto poorer people.
March 31st, 2004 at 8:38 pm
Uncle: do you have any sources for the theory that the 16th Amendment was not ratified? Of all the people who’ve been sent to prison for tax evasion, you’d think someone would have raised that issue by now.
As to a national sales tax, I understand the argument for a less intrusive IRS, but I’m not sure I understand the fairness argument. Wouldn’t the fairest tax of all be one that taxes all income equally, regardless of how the money is ultimately spent? Taxing consumption only strikes me as a prescription for recession, as it would give everyone an artificial incentive to save rather than spend.
March 31st, 2004 at 9:02 pm
I’ve been trying to find it (i read it a while back). Basically, it was some procedural things and people were looking into it but were not real successful.
IIRC, one of the procedural things was that a certain number of the states had to send the amendment back unaltered but several states actually altered.
It’s been a while, but i’ll continue to search for it.
March 31st, 2004 at 9:05 pm
That was quick, here it is:
http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/