This hasn’t been a very active blog up to now. Mostly it has carried information from my website, but there didn’t seem to be much else to blog about while I was doing as much face to face campaigning as I could get opportunity for. This week has brought something new. As you’re probably aware, I have accepted no campaign contributions and have done no yard signs, bumper stickers, mailers, or any other paid media advertising. This week mailers have appeared throughout the first district with my picture and a number of my positions-some apparently comparing and/or contrasting me with Dr. Harris, at least one just listing some of my positions and showing pictures of just me. This last and one other are apparently paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, at least two others have been reported to have no source attribution. (The one listing me alone asks if I am too conservative.) I have to assume all these mailers come from Democratic Party source. On one hand, I suppose I should thank them for putting so much money into my campaign. On the other hand, this kind of wasteful spending is one of the things I’ve been campaigning against, both in campaigns and in government, so my feelings are decidedly mixed. If I HAD been going to do a mailer, the one about me alone is very nearly what I might have done, though I might have tried to get in more of my positions, to get as much information as possible about where I stand on things. One thing I would have changed, though: as I have pointed out on a number of occasions, most notably the League of Women Voters forum in Centerville, I have not considered myself to be a conservative in years, other than in a fiscal sense, where I would approach service in Congress with the same frugality I have tried to exercise in my campaign. Politically and socially I came to the conclusion some time ago that the ideas of individual personal freedom, personal responsibility, and limited government controlled by the governed, have come full circle to where they are as radical as they were in the 1770’s and 1780’s. They were accepted wisdom for much of the following 120 years, but in the last 110 years or so, we have strayed from those ideals to where very few people can even imagine any more a world not permeated by the federal government in almost every area. Our ancestors lived in such a world and I believe we could do so again. It may be a scary thought to think of a life where the only safety net you have to protect you from your own mistakes is the net you weave yourself, maybe with some help from your family or even your local community. Nevertheless, it was such a world that our ancestors built here, and that has until recently been the real greatness of America-not how much of the world we can control by might, but the decent and productive individual lives we can live by ourselves and with our families and neighbors. Reducing government isn’t an end in itself, it’s just a way to let each of us be all we can. Government should be there only to limit those who seek to dominate their fellow citizens by means of force or fraud and trickery; those who interact peacefully and justly with others should have no need for government interference in their lives or their voluntary, peaceful interactions with others. THAT is the platform I am running on.

I had mixed feelings for many years on the idea of term limits, but over the years I have concluded that prolonged time in Washington, D.C. puts people more in touch with D.C. and more out of touch with anywhere else in the country, or, indeed, the world.  My proposal is for continuation of the limit of two terms of four years for the presidency, with the addition of a modified limit for both houses of Congress.  Senators would be limited to a single six-year term and Representatives to a maximum of three consecutive two-year terms.  Both would be allowed to run for further terms, but only after a return of at least four years to the private sector, which would NOT include any government employment or private employment requiring dealings with the government (most especially lobbying or dealing with industry regulatory compliance in a capacity that involves direct contact with regulatory agencies of any kind.)

The extreme libertarian position is that Social Security is a huge Ponzi scheme and should be abolished immediately and completely.  I differ in that I believe a true Ponzi scheme is at least voluntary for the investors.  For almost 75 years, millions of people have had money removed from their pay totaling billions of dollars, with the implied, if somewhat shaky; promise that it will be returned to them as retirement funding.  I believe the social and economic disruption from a sudden termination of the “plan” would be catastrophic.  I therefore propose the following steps:

1. Establish a credible Consumer Price Index based on the living needs of retirees:  food, shelter, utilities, medical care, and clothing.  Cost of living increases in benefits to be both determined and limited by this.  (I suspect this might actually add to the cost of the system.)
2. No other changes for EXISTING retirees.
3. For everyone aged 55 or younger at the effective date of the appropriate legislation end the option of eligibility for retirement earlier than the full effective retirement age except in cases of medical necessity.
4. With the effective date of the appropriate legislation, retirement effective date for anyone aged 40 or younger would be life expectancy minus 15 years.  For those born after the new system takes effect, retirement eligibility would be life expectancy at birth minus 15 years.  (When Social Security began, five years was a normal retirement life expectancy.)
5. Allow an individual to opt out of the system at age 35, 40, 45, 50, and 55.  To opt out, the individual would be paid the full amount of contributions to date in his or her choice of five or ten year government bonds at the prevailing rate of interest.  Eligibility for any other benefits would be waived at opt-out.  The individual could hold the bonds and roll them over as they matured or sell them at any time, but would be responsible for their own retirement in any case.  (For years the argument has been, as Congress borrows from the “trust fund” that “we owe the money to ourselves”.  Since much of what “we” owe is now to the Chinese, the Japanese, the Saudis, and anyone else who has bought large quantities of U.S. government bonds, this would return choice to the individual as to whether he or she wishes to entrust the government with retirement savings.  This should, at least in theory, require Congress to take more seriously the levels of debt it is willing to incur, though I remain a bit skeptical that anything can really accomplish that, short of more frequent changes in the membership of Congress.)
6. Ultimately, this should allow a gradual phasing out of the current system, with all its complexity and bureaucracy.  People who wish to do so could invest all or part of their retirement savings in government bonds, but would do so entirely by their own choice and would retain full control of those savings.  The only control they would cede to the government would be of the creditworthiness of the bonds, which could be influenced by the fiscal responsibility – or lack thereof – of their representatives in Congress

I believe this system would return to the individual citizens increased control over their own financial destinies while reducing the cost of government by eliminating (gradually) a huge bureaucracy and spurring people to take a much more active interest in both their own financial affairs and in the spending policies of their government, while potentially raising their incomes by the 15.3% currently withheld for retirement benefits by the Federal government.

The libertarian ideal is to do away with all taxes. However, recognizing that there will always be need for government (or at least for as long as people live in any proximity to each other) there must be a source of whatever funds are necessary. I propose the following measures as a means of initiating discussion on what should be taxed:

1. Short term capital gains (< 1 year) and ordinary dividends collected to be taxed as normal income
2. Long term capital gains and reinvested dividends and interest taxed at 10% below $75,000, as ordinary income for any in excess of 75,000 with these limits adjusted annually for inflation. For those disabled or retired, no tax up to $75,000, 5% above 75,000.
3. Individuals over age 80 exempt from tax on interest/dividends/capital gains.
4. A shift from tax on income to tax on consumption. Exemptions for necessities such as food and medical care, partial exemptions on shelter, clothing, energy/utilities to be determined by a determined level of what constitutes necessity versus luxury. Obviously this would be a complex process, but there are already examples in individual states that define, for example, foods that qualify as necessities versus luxuries such as snack foods.

Ultimately, reducing taxes is pointless without limiting government spending. Whether government takes resources as taxes or in the form of borrowing and inflation, the resources are taken. As the current economic crisis has spurred individuals to increased savings, we must encourage this trend, as money saved by an individual, whether invested in stocks and bonds or simply saved in a bank is ultimately reinvested in the economy, allowing growth at a pace determined by that saving. (There is, of course, one exception: money hoarded, whether buried or stuffed in a mattress, grows nothing.) Not all consumption is bad, but too much consumption in the present with too little saving to build for the future leads to disaster on both the individual and the national levels.

I have recently learned that there is no option to respond to my blogs here.  If you wish to respond, please do so by way of my e-mail, rjdavislp@gmail.com.

Let me begin by thanking the Baltimore Sun for providing this opportunity.  Please note their disclaimer, as it is likely that you will find that I disagree with almost everything the Sun advocates and/or endorses.  Ironically, I suspect that the bulk of what I call for would have found a sympathetic hearing from the greatest name associated with the Sun, the late H.L. Mencken.  (An additional irony, the Sun is now owned by the corporation based on the old Chicago Tribune, possibly the greatest media opponent of Franklin Roosevelt and the “New Deal.”)

As a Libertarian (with or without the capital “L”), I am opposed to the rationale of the Progressives who have held increasing sway over the workings of American governments for just over a century.  This rationale, as it appears to me, holds that the answers to most, if not all, human problems, lie in giving the “experts” in government ever greater control over how we all live our lives, since they supposedly have the knowledge and expertise to direct us.  I can find very little in the actual history of the last hundred years to support this.

It is my belief that the function of government should be to provide a framework to protect to the maximum possible extent the right of all citizens to live their lives as they see fit, without interference from others using either force or fraud.  I recognize that there is no unlimited freedom:  unlimited individual rights end as soon as you put a second person on the planet, because the rights of the one eventually come up against the boundary established by the rights of the second.  The more people, the more limits.  The less space, the more limits.  Nevertheless, I believe it is NOT the function of government to establish limits arbitrarily.  I believe people should be able to act and interact in any way they see fit as long as they are in mutual agreement.  I believe the proper function of government is to provide a mechanism for peaceful negotiation and/or arbitration in cases where the parties fail to reach peaceful agreement on their own.

Ideally, government would be set up to provide a neutral, unbiased mechanism for such mediation, the proverbial “level playing field.”  There is no question that we have always fallen short here.  There is, and effectively always has been, an advantage to the wealthy, the powerful, and the well-connected.  Some of this is likely built into human nature.  Our goal should be to limit these biases, and I believe the Constitution is in many ways an attempt to do this by placing checks and counterbalances in so many ways to slow down the abuse of power and influence.  It is by no means perfect, but it should prove far more useful in careful observance than it does in neglect or circumvention.

There are libertarians who will maintain that there is no need for government at all.  I do not believe this.  I believe that there will always be individuals with no conscience, no sense at all of right or wrong, to whom force and/or fraud are merely useful means to given ends.  I believe that they are in the minority and that government is our civilized way of collectively restraining them only to the extent that proves necessary to protect others.  This does not negate our individual right to self-protection, since government cannot be everywhere at all times, but it should serve to reduce the violence that would result in the absence of such organized societal restraints.

I believe that there MUST be corresponding restraints on government, as the collective use of force that defines government is much greater than an individual could amass alone and is correspondingly easier to abuse.  Hence the libertarian emphasis on limited government.

This should serve as a summary of my political philosophy.  For details on my views on such things as term limits and social security, there are position papers on my website, davis4congress.com.