I am Calen Fretts. People tell me I must be mad to run for Congress in the First District as a Libertarian. They say the Republican Party armor is far too thick to make a dent.

I don’t like attitudes like that. They make people who deserve better settle for less.

You see, I’m a blessed man. I have a home, a business, a wonderful fiancée, and I live in the greatest country in the world - a country that flourished by protecting individual rights, free markets, and limited government. I want my neighbors and future family to prosper. I can’t stay silent when I see the best parts of America withering away.

It is withering. A lot of that comes from Congress doing things it shouldn’t.

Take the debt ceiling, for example. Just this past August it was raised again by $2 trillion. Numbers have gotten so big, it’s tough to completely understand them, but $2 trillion means about $7000 in new debt, forced by the government, at interest, forever, on every man, woman and child in the country . Mind you, the federal government has spent $15 trillion already, and is set to spend a lot more.

Another example is Congresspersons giving up their powers to a “Supercommittee” so that they don’t have to make tough decisions. It is dead wrong for a member of Congress to give up his power to such a group. He may as well not be in Congress at all.

There is more. Most of my neighbors detest the thought that government is everyone’s nanny. The resistance to Obamacare, with its obvious costs and personal restrictions, instantly comes to mind. But the Republican Party doesn’t want to repeal Obamacare, they want to “repeal and replace” it with their own version that will also have costs and personal restrictions.

Add the Patriot Act to the list. Enacted without time to be read, it was sold to a frightened public as the way to keep us safe. It led to secret lists, government permission to travel, abusive searches on airlines, warrantless searches of Americans, zero financial privacy, and soon will lead to checkpoints in train stations, bus stations, and even open roads. This is America, the land of the free? What good is it for a country to gain the whole world, yet forfeit its own soul?

Even the rule of law is now in question. Congress has actually exempted itself from insider trading laws, meaning acts that we lowly citizens would go to jail for make them rich. The government uses fake accounting methods. Large financial companies, supposedly regulated by the government, repeatedly violate the law (some even get bailouts), and no one goes to jail.

Don’t take my word for it. Read the news yourself. These things are already happening, and happening by the hand of those in Congress.

In a land founded on individual rights, our government- at all levels- taxes us, limits us, regulates us, commands us, and threatens our way of life, more than ever. These assaults on liberty are branded as keeping us safe, or investing in the future, or the lesser of two evils, or being fair, or even compassion for our fellow citizens. No one can feel secure in their property, papers, or personal effects anymore. The abuses are everywhere, and are being enabled by Republicans and Democrats alike.

I may be young, but I know when I am being taken advantage of, and I don’t like it.

Congress is the key. I am about standing firm on no new debt. I am about political competition. I am about fighting the nanny state and all its ills. I am about maintaining our liberty instead of trading it for the illusion of security. I am for free, not managed, markets. Most of all, I am for the rule of law. We are not a country of truth and justice for some.

The proper role of government is to defend the country, impose justice on those who use force or fraud on others, and act within the limits of our Constitution. It is not to own businesses, or grant favors.
It won’t be fixed by hiring the same leaders again either.

This is what I am about.

Labels: Calen Fretts, Congress, nanny state

America's Founding Fathers envisioned a revolutionary ideology for the New World; one where the nation would refrain from offensive and interventionist wars, one where force would only be justified in defense against imminent attacks. Sadly, the U.S. today could not be further to the opposite side of the spectrum. Now fighting multiple wars in the Middle East with no real end in sight, the cost of incessant war is being unnecessarily paid every day with American lives and American dollars - blood and treasure.

Labels: Calen Fretts, defense, rule of law, war on terror

This matter goes to the heart of how Congress does business, and the only remedy is to vote out those who think they can live by a separate law than the rest of us.

Labels: Calen Fretts, Jeff Miller

Ten years ago 19 murderers using box cutters cold-bloodedly killed thousands of Americans.

Some events are scars on the memory. I can only imagine that 911 is for recent generations what Pearl Harbor and the JFK assassination were for previous ones. I can still remember the exact position I was standing in my living room when news of the event came over the television set.

To say this changed America is almost trite. If Americans were ever complacent about the dangers that lurk out in the world, it certainly stopped that day. It was one of those moments when as a people we looked into the abyss, and, true to form, the abyss looked back.

For many Americans, the Twin towers attacks filled them with a terrible resolve; a just desire to punish those responsible and to make sure it never happened again.

But this is where our leaders failed us.

America is more than a place, or a thing. It is an idea. It is the idea of individual liberty. It is the idea of equal justice for all, of innocent until proven guilty, of the rule of law, of a free market, of the supremacy of the Constitution. Kill the idea, and you kill the country.

The murderers on board those planes killed themselves to a purpose. In our reaction to their treachery they saw a path to America’s defeat. By banking on our leaders acting out of rage contrary to the ideas we hold so dear, they could see us eventually destroying ourselves.

How then have our leaders acted?

Instead of treating the hunt for Osama Bin laden as a criminal affair, it became a tool for replacing the Afghan leadership with ones of our own choosing. What could have been a short, punitive search for a fugitive became a long, meandering, painful, expensive and bloody exercise in nation building.

In the pursuit of preventing a recurrence of 911 all Americans have lost their protections to illegal search and seizure. Government permission is required to travel, and consent to search is assumed simply because you travel. American citizens are being searched without warrants on ships, trains, planes, and buses. Government agents perform physical acts that would be considered crimes in any other context, and should be.

Our government routinely performs searches of mail, electronic communications, and even the private homes of citizens without warrants. For many years, those who witnessed such searches and spoke of them could be put in jail simply for saying so. Government has given special immunity to companies for assisting the government violate wiretapping laws.

Those arrested for acts of terrorism have a completely separate legal system to determine their guilt or innocence. Even if found innocent, our Presidents, with the consent of the Congress and the courts, are holding some in prison indefinitely anyway.

Since George W. Bush’s day, the executive has maintained it has the prerogative to kill American citizens overseas if the government suspects they are engaged in terrorist activities, and it has actually done so. There is no judge, jury or public evidence involved.

Our government has openly admitted that it engaged in torture of apprehended criminals for information. Our former Vice President quite openly admits that he favors a form of torture for which we executed Japanese Officers.

Financial privacy does not exist anymore. Government has unlimited access to nearly anyone’s private finances. Many banks routinely report transactions of $2500 or more to the government as a suspicious activity.

We are currently fighting three undeclared hot wars, and at least two cold ones. Our President refuses to comply with the War Powers Act, and the Congress refuses to object. Every day the wars continue to consume more men, money and materiel slowly driving us into bankruptcy.

Herein lies the failure of our leaders. The Twin Towers were never really about 19 crazed murderers. They were always about us, and how we deal with what they did.

On this solemn day, ten years on, when we remember the dead, let’s think of the kind of legacy those who died would have wanted for America.

Would they have been happy that liberty became another casualty?

Pete Blome is a retired military officer and Chair of the Libertarian Party of Okaloosa County.

On Saturday, June 18th 2011, Ms. Jean Weber took her ailing mother to the airport so she could go see relations in Michigan.

Her mother was elderly, frail, and battling illness. She had to wear special undergarments because her age and infirmities made self control difficult. Travel is hard for her. She could not walk far enough to make it through an airport scanner. But she was determined to see her family in Michigan. With the help of her daughter, Jean, she would get through it somehow. For her part, Jean felt a daughter’s love and wanted her mom to get on her way in as little discomfort as possible.

Jean knew about airport security, but she didn’t worry. After all, this is Okaloosa; this is home.

Out of earshot, she watched as her mother was frisked by the TSA. She saw how rudely and hard the strangers placed their hands. It worried Jean because she knew how easily her mother bruised.

But something else was wrong. Her mother was shuffled out of view to a separate room. After some time a TSA agent came out and unceremoniously gave Jean an edict. In order to get on a plane her mother would have to remove her diaper for inspection.

Jean couldn’t believe it.

Jean’s Mom wasn’t offended. She was tired. She came from that generation that saw true hard times, and accepted official imposition in stride; maybe too much in stride. Seeing her family in Michigan is what mattered.

But to Jean, a heartfelt departure had turned kafkaesque. She had to physically assist her mom. Just getting to a restroom was a chore, and once there she had to help mom intimately disrobe for the TSA bureaucrats.

The inspectors told her she had a choice, but Jean knew she really didn’t. If you don’t comply, you don’t fly. There is no crime, judge or jury involved. There is no discussion of compensation for monetary loss or the fourth amendment. The TSA even claims, in court, the privilege to strip search anyone.

The emotion was too much. Jean came out of the bathroom crying. In the ridiculous shuffle of bags, tickets, wheelchair, jackets and removed undergarments, she misplaced the pass that allowed her to accompany her mom in the TSA “secure areas.” Ever helpful, a TSA agent told Jean she displayed “unusual behavior” by crying and not having a pass. Jean was subjected to an even more rigorous physical inspection as a result.

By now this process had taken a long time, and the aircraft departure was very near. Jean’s mom was still far from the gangway, and there was little time. Jean was still being questioned and frisked, so she asked that her mom be escorted to the plane.

As she watched her mom depart flanked by the TSA, she thought to herself that one of the last memories she would hold between them was this demeaning inspection.

Jean says her friends would laugh at the thought that she was complaining against the TSA. She is a private person, and minds her own business. She doesn’t get involved in “political” topics.

This event changed her. She has a new view of what it means to be an American.

Ms Jean said when she was a kid she used to watch the show “Davy Crockett.” She remembered a quote from that show, “Make sure you are right. Then go ahead.”

Ms Jean has filed a local complaint with the TSA over this incident, and she plans to file a national one as well.

Personally, I am not reassured by a complaint form.

Our government has forced us to argue for things that should be self evident, such as the fourth amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure, the concept of innocent until proven guilty, and the rule of law for everyone including government officials. To me, it is as if leaders in government have lost their senses.

The Sheriff of Okaloosa County should enforce the laws of Florida, especially those relating to battery and lewd and lascivious molestation, and arrest the TSA agents responsible for the acts perpetrated against Ms Jean’s mom.

Only then will this madness end.

Labels: arrest, Jean Weber, Okaloosa Sheriff, TSA

On June 20th I went to the Destin City Council Meeting to help my friend and colleague, Sky Monteith, to create a less expensive police contract than that offered by Sheriff Larry Ashley of Okaloosa County.

What I came away with was a picture, in miniature, of why our country is in as bad a situation as it is.

The matter had nothing to do with the police. The issue was trash. That evening there was to be a vote by the Destin City Council to give Waste Management (WM) Corporation an exclusive five year contract. The City of Destin would act as bill collector and put trash payments on the tax bill. It exchange for this “improvement,” the move was expected to save money for citizens.

But the room full of Destin residents realized that not only was the ability to choose trash services being lost, but a person could now lose their home in a tax certificate sale for trash payments in arrears.

Citizen after citizen stood up and objected to this collusion between government and a private corporation. One businessman pointed out how he must now pay advance trash fees for the whole year. Others talked about how there weren’t enough exemptions for undeveloped properties. Some thought that condo owners would not as liable for trash fees as home owners because their associations took care of the trash bill. One asked if the City would be the point of contact to solve trash problems now (it will be).

There were advocates. Councilmember Larry Hines said thousands are not paying their garbage bills now, or are freeloading off of others. It was the “efficient” thing to do. The audience asked, quite rightfully, why should the City Council collect fees for a private corporation?

“What is clear is we’ve done a bad job communicating about this issue,” Councilmember Jim Bagby said, but he threw his support for the contract anyway. It would save money, and besides, the matter had been under consideration for more than a year.

Council members Larry Williges and Dewey Destin objected. To their credit, both thought it wasn’t the role of government to determine peoples trash handlers for them. Councilmember Destin suggested that there would be no way to renegotiate service terms once the contract was signed. Councilman Williges showed that the proposed government intervention would only save about a dollar and change per household per month.

As the swapping of views and explanations between Council Members continued, it was far from clear that the Council itself agreed on what the details of the proposed ordinance were.

Just as in our USA at large, when the time came to vote, the voices for small government did not win.

Instead of free market competition, trash collection in Destin is now mandated and centrally controlled by the government.

If service is poor, you will have to call a government bureaucrat instead of the trash man.

Waste Management gained a virtual monopoly with the help of government.

Concerned citizens advocating the free market were voted down by government.

The government created a system of special privileges based on whether a person is a homeowner, a condo owner, a senior citizen, or an owner of undeveloped property.

The government became the bill collector for a private corporation.

At a stroke government made citizens liable for unpaid taxes instead of unpaid trash bills.

A year’s worth of bureaucratic inertia worked against reconsidering the measure.

And, in the end, the Council was not even in complete agreement among themselves as to the ordinances’ details.

It is for reasons like these that I think it is not the purpose of government to own businesses, or to grant favors, but to protect individual rights.

I am also sure in the next five years Waste Management will seek a rate increase and get it.

The savings will be ephemeral, the loss of choice and economic opportunity will be real, and this government intervention will only lead to more intervention. Just watch.

It is the dysfunctional America we live in today.

Labels: Bagby, Destin, Hines, Waste Management

by Karl Denninger    market-ticker.org

[Pjb - Mr. Denninger's passionate case for school reform highlights the arbitrary nature of the state monopoly known as our education system, and the apparent contradiction that free people are taught in the  autocratic state institutions known as public schools.   Removing the barriers to real competition among schools, both economic and legal, would go a long way to preventing the arbitrary use of power that state schools across the country have become accustomed to, as well as make them better teachers.]

I was called at approximately noon today to inform me that my daughter had sat at a table with other students, rather than at the table for her class. Her purpose in doing so, which she informed me she intended to do last evening, was to peaceably assemble with another student of her acquaintance during her lunch break. For this act of peaceable assembly she had been told to go to lunch detention at the front of the room, and she had politely refused. For this refusal she was sent to the office. These facts have all been admitted to and are without dispute.

A call was made to me in an apparent attempt to enlist me in applying some sort of sanction for her conduct. You may consider this letter my pointed and vociferous refusal, and a direct challenge to this School policy.

In reaching my conclusion I asked what purpose of the alleged rule had that she violated, that is, how her decision to peaceably assemble with another student of her acquaintance during non-instructional time while consuming her lunch in any way harmed the educational mission or execution within the school day. I was told that in the past some students had behaved in an unruly manner, including leaving trays and other debris after departing the lunch room at some point during previous school years.

However, it was explicitly admitted that she had not committed any such offense. Under questioning the administration admitted that she properly disposed of her tray and other debris, there was no student displaced from a seat at the table to which he would have otherwise been entitled and there was no misbehavior such as a raucous conversation. The alleged rule which she had intentionally broken, that of demanding that she refrain from said peaceable conversation with a person of her choosing, under obvious logical analysis, is nothing more than both prior restraint and collective punishment for an offense that has not in fact taken place. The sanction applied also implicates a fundamental human right of peaceable assembly.

Certainly any school has a right to sanction students who are unable to behave in a cordial and peaceable manner during lunch or any other time while on school grounds. It is unquestionable that the educational mission of a school requires that conversation between students be refrained from during instructional periods when attention should be paid to the material being presented. But no such argument can be made of disruption of the educational environment by a student simply choosing to have a quiet conversation with a friend while consuming lunch in the cafeteria.

Further, I was told that she had a right to attempt changing this policy through a representative process in the Student Council. Upon further questioning, however, this assertion proved to be false. Not only does the Student Council have no binding power of any sort this matter had been previously put to them in past years, they had passed open seating at lunch as a resolution, and the Administration then unilaterally revoked the decision of the Council instead of applying sanction to any wrong-doers. This was a mistake on the part of the administration as my willingness to cooperate always instantly evaporates if an attempt is made to deceive for the purpose of enlisting my agreement.

Collective punishment and deprivation of a student’s right to peaceable and quiet assembly with their classmates during non-instructional periods of the day is a poor and unwarranted excuse for the apparent rank arrogance and incompetence displayed by school staff who are unable or unwilling to do their job in policing the lunchroom and sanctioning those students who engage in inappropriate behavior on an individual basis.

Nobody who is aware of recent world events can miss the fact that we currently have an entire nation that is on its feet over exactly this right – that of peaceable assembly. The Egyptian body politic has risen and refused to cede the streets. I cannot help but draw the parallel between Ruckel Middle School’s refusal to recognize this fundamental human right and those protesting in Egypt, and find it particularly ironic that a civil rights complaint given to the governor was found discarded in the trash outside Port Said.

The right to peaceful assembly and conversation is a fundamental human right and the peaceful exercise thereof is being displayed right now, literally “in your face”, on television each and every night.

It is outrageous that our so-called “public schools”, which claim in their handbooks to be “a partnership between student, parent and school”, would fail to recognize, support and protect such fundamental human rights simply for the convenience of their incompetent staff. It is beyond ridiculous that Ruckel Middle School would choose, when challenged on these facts, to apply collective punishment rather than yield to the clear logic that is being demonstrated each and every day on international television.

Our schools should be teaching and respecting fundamental liberties, not wantonly abrogating them and threatening dissenters. Each student should be able to recite the three fundamental human rights: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of (but not entitlement to) Happiness. The right of free speech and peaceable assembly, contained in the First Amendment, is formal recognition of a portion of that right of Liberty. All rights may be infringed upon only where doing so reasonably prevents another’s rights from being harmed.

This is fundamental to our government and nation’s history and our schools, collectively and individually, have an affirmative obligation under both ethics and law to not only teach this but live it.

I have made clear to my daughter through her years at Ruckel and prior to that at Bluewater Elementary that all respect is earned. There is in fact nobody, not even myself as her father, who is owed respect. My first and foremost task in raising her from infancy to adulthood is for her to transition from someone dependent on another, in this case myself, to an independent adult who is able to think for herself, recognize what human rights are, and stand for them on her own two feet. Part of this educational process is informing her of the fundamental human rights declared but not granted in The Declaration of Independence, that rights are not bestowed by a nanny government or authority figure but rather are unalienable, and that with those rights come responsibilities.

In this case she is responsible for conducting herself in a cordial fashion while on school property and adhering to reasonably defensible rules that have a sensible and sound connection to the conduct of the school’s educational mission. The US Supreme Court supports this position. The Court has ruled that students do not cede their Constitutional Rights in the general sense at the door of a publicly-funded school. Only those constraints that can be linked to a colorable impairment of the educational mission and environment of the school, when they impugn fundamental liberties, are permissible. In Tinker .v. Des Moines (1969) the United States Supreme Court held that peaceable speech, in this case two students peaceably wearing armbands protesting the Vietnam War, could not be lawfully removed from school for their refusal to comply with a demand from administration officials to remove the armbands.

This is exactly the issue before Okaloosa County and Ruckel Middle School.

I am fully in support of a reasonable student dress code, restrictions on the use of electronic devices during instructional hours and any other conduct that could otherwise have a rationally-argued negative impact on the educational mission at Ruckel. She is fully-aware of my support of these objectives and constraints.

At the same time she is expected to both challenge authority when it is unjustly displayed in an abusive or repressive form and is, as I have explained to your administration in the past, within her rights to refuse to respect those who deliberately and intentionally engage in such conduct. She has never been and is not now or in the future under any obligation, either by the rules of my household or under well-settled law of The United States, required to cede to any authority that fails to comport with the above.

Civil disobedience has both a long and colorful history throughout the world and comes with the risk of sanction, which she was fully aware of at the time of the incident. Her conduct was not furtive in any way; there was no attempt to conceal the act and her intent was to lead to a reasonable discussion and resolution. The actions by your staff probably shouldn’t surprise me, given the nature of collective and prospective punishment that was first devised and implemented.

Ruckel and all other schools should be aware, however, that sanctions imposed by putative authority figures are subject to review through several paths. First, of course, is public exposure and protest. You might consider my publication of this letter as part of that. Perhaps this is a trivial matter in most students’ and their parents’ minds, or perhaps not. The decision as to whether other students and their parents wish to protest and what form that protest might take is, of course, up to them. Second, sanctions that appear to be improperly applied or impugn a fundamental liberty with justification can and may lead to legal review. I, as with all citizens, reserve the right to initiate that lawful and proper process should I deem it appropriate.

After careful consideration I cannot support the claimed need for a seat assignment in the Ruckel cafeteria as a means of prospective and collective punishment without any offense of the peace having first taken place. These students are not in primary school; all are of ages 12-14 and can certainly comport themselves with reasonable decorum and make it to their next class. Those who are unable to do so should be individually punished for their transgressions. In short, this restriction is unconscionable and must be dropped. If school staff is incompetent to supervise the students they must be publicly identified, fired and replaced.

Our school employees work for us as parents, not the other way around. They run a school, not a prison. Our children and school students have rights; they are not pawns on a chessboard or notches on a broomstick. We as the source of school funds have every right to demand accountability for every dollar of our tax money that is spent and the policies implemented. When apparent idiocy rears its head you can expect me to hold the schools to account, as I have in the past and both will in the present and future.

A version of this letter was sent directly to the administration. If you agree, the Principal is Ms. Goolsby and her fax number is (850) 833-3291. The Superintendent for Okaloosa County Schools, Alexis Tibbetts, has a fax at 850-833-3436.

Labels: Denninger, Okaloosa schools