LPM OnlineMarch 28, 2000 |
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Candidates for state and local office in Michigan are now required to get the name and address of all contributors, even if it is only $1 for a bumper sticker. Candidates can still accept cash contributions up to $20, but they must get the name and address. This change became effective on March 10. Thanks to Leonard Schwartz for keeping us up to date on the State's hoops. We want to make sure we jump! Anyway, it is worth noting: Only candidates receiving and/or spending over $1,000 need to actually file the name and address of each contributor. Candidates not planning to cross that $1,000 filing threshold do not need to file any reports with the State, and therefore it is not necessary for them to know the source of every dollar. However, Liz Newberry of the Michigan Department of Elections, Campaign Finance Office, recommends that "all candidates keep a record of everything, so that they'll know when and if they cross that $1,000 filing threshold," and of course, so that then they'll have the record should they spend/raise over $1,000, at which time it is necessary to file reports with the State. Thank you, Libertarian Candidates! Do not be discouraged or intimidated! In fact, let this serve as a source of inspiration to you! Get out there and make a difference--eliminate these hoops we all must jump through! Please don't hesitate to contact me at stacyvo@eesc.com or contact the State Campaign Finance Office at (517)373-8558 if you have any questions.
Officers for the year 2000 were elected at the March 7th meeting of the Wayne County Libertarian Party. The entire executive board was re-elected to another one-year term. The officers are as follows: Chair- Joann Karpinski Vice Chair- Bill Shotey Secretary-Greg Stempfle Treasurer- Ben Bachrach At-Large Board -Loel Gnadt, Karin Corliss, and Kerry Smith This will be one of the most active election years for the Wayne County affiliate. We are contesting every US Congressional District in the county, a majority of the State House Seats, as well as many of the County Commissioner Districts. Michael Corliss, of Westland will be seeking the LPM nomination for US Senate.
The following article is the latest in a series of Op-ed articles written by LPM Executive Director Tim O'Brien and submitted to news outlets across the state for publication. This current article was published on January 19, 2000 in the Detroit News and can be viewed on their web site at: http://www.detnews.com/EDITPAGE/0003/22/yes/yes.htm Towards the end of the eighteenth century our forefathers, who had successfully ended rule by an hereditary monarchy and replaced it with a republican form of government, came up against what seemed to them to be an all but insurmountable disagreement. The thirteen colonies that had called their alliance "the united States of America" were extremely jealous of their individual sovereignty. In fact the previous sentence provides good evidence of this anxiety in that it contains no misprint. Look at a copy of the Declaration of Independence and you will discover that the proclamation is made on behalf of the States of America. The word "united" in the title is a mere, lower case modifier -- given no more prominence than the number "thirteen" which precedes it. At the time Mr. Madison, et al., were debating the formation of our second (and current) government under what would become the Constitution of the United States, our country was much more analogous to the contemporary combination NATO and European Economic Union than the omnipotent central leviathan we have now. Indeed, up until Reconstruction, the name of our country was a plural noun (i.e., one would say "The United States are..." not "The United States is..."). Even after the "u" graduated to upper case. The impasse for those who wished to replace our first central government with a new and stronger one was over how to apportion representation in the legislative branch. The more populous states argued that relative power should reflect the relative distribution of the people to be represented. The smaller states would not permit their individual sovereignty to be trumped by the sheer weight of numbers represented by their larger sisters. Finally, "the Great Compromise" was struck whereby the legislature would consist of two, separate bodies with all legislation having to pass through both. One, called the Senate, would give all states equal representation. The other, called the House of Representatives, would be apportioned according to population. It was in order to make certain that this second body would continue to fairly reflect the distribution of population in the young and growing land that there would be a census at the beginning of every decade. It is the 21st such census that is now underway. Many people, having endured incessant blathering over the last few months by census officials, mostly about getting our "fair share" of federal loot, may be surprised to learn that apportioning representation in Congress is the only constitutional purpose of the census. Thus, the only relevant census question is: How many people are living at this address? The necessity of redetermining appropriate representation in congress among the states is not advanced by telling the government whether you are a homeowner or renter, your gender, age, or race. Indeed, this last question is downright offensive. There is nothing but mischief to be made of classifying people by race. And there is very grave danger in it. Our federal government finally managed to recognize the ugliness of counting each African-American as three fifths of person (another deal struck by Madison & Co. at the constitutional convention) and eliminated that particular travesty. But they apparently missed the history of racial classifications in this century by such governments as Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa. And if you think this is an exaggeration or only happened in other countries, ask census officials what their guarantees of confidentiality meant to the Japanese-Americans who were rounded up and put into American concentration camps based on data their agency supplied to the army. Of course, the overwhelming majority of bureaucrats do not have sinister intent. However, they are by their very nature obsessively nosy. They just couldn't pass up the decennial opportunity to pry into our personal lives. One in six households will get the even more obnoxious "long form" that includes more than 50 questions, ranging from the merely intrusive, such as what you do for a living and how much you make doing it, to the ludicrous, such as how many toilets you have and whether you take a ferry to work. Since there is no constitutional authority for any of this, the snoops in Washington DC have passed statutory requirements that you answer all of their questions. 13 USC 221 provides for fines up to $100 for anyone who "refuses or willfully neglects...to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him." Anyone "who willfully gives any answer that is false" can be fined up to $500. So, my wife and I will answer the first question on our census form: "Two." And since we don't wish to break the law, we'll answer all the rest of the questions: "None of your business." That way we won't be willfully neglecting to answer. Nor will our answers be false. |
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