Speech to the Douglas County Citizens for Liberty

Speech to the Douglas County Citizens for Liberty

I would like to thank the Douglas County Citizens for Liberty for their

invitation to come and speak before your assembly. I would like to

personally thank Susie Griswold and those people that have

supported the esteemed Representative Ron Paul in his

endeavour to run for the office of President of the United States.

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Richard Smith, I am a resident

of Wright County, the Eighth District, the State of Missouri and I have

lived in our beautiful State all my life, in Douglas and Wright County

for over 20 years.

I am running for the office of US Representative of this District as a

member of the Constitution Party.

As an Independent Conservative, a christian, husband, father, US

Navy Veteran and a truck driver I would like to humbly ask for

your support during this election cycle.

I would like to begin by saying that I agree whole-heartedly with the

ideas and goals which Representative Ron Paul espouses and

supports and if elected it would be an honour to work along side

him in the US House of Representatives to bring our nation back to

those paths laid down by our Founders.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe as Ronald Reagan said that

"Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the

problem." It is time that we work together to fix this problem.

I believe we need a change in Washington, a change from failed

domestic and foreign policies, a change from fiscal irresponsibility,

a change in the hearts of our political leaders. I believe that we need

to return to those " Old Paths " laid down by our founding fathers.

The paths defined within our Constitution, those paths that lead to

limited government, paths that lead to individual liberty, states

rights, respect for life, liberty, and our individual pursuit of

happiness. The paths of that lead to fiscal responsibility by our

elected officials.

Ladies and gentlemen, we need to change our current representation

in Washington, both in the Executive and Legislative branches of our

government, but not the kind of change spoken of by the Democrat

party or Senator Obama. Those changes will lead to nothing

but higher taxes, larger and more intrusive government and more

bureaucracies to harass the citizens of this nation.

The change we need in Washington is to return to those ideas that

made this nation great.

Ladies and gentlemen, this change must first start with you and I;

the citizens of this district, state, and nation. This change must

first start in the hearts of the people, because without a change of

heart no amount of superficial change will matter.

It has been said that our elected officials are a reflection of the

people that vote for them. My hope is that this is wrong.

If our elected officials are a reflection of the citizens of this

nation, then our nations' heart is in a very sad condition.

My hope, ladies and gentlemen, is that our current elected officials,

those that have given total disregard to the Constitution of our nation,

are not getting elected because of a corrupt populace; but that they

are getting elected through deceit and lies.

We need to work together to change this ladies and gentlemen. We

need to elect people to office which will stand in their integrity without

compromise. People that will not change their positions or beliefs

for political expediency. We need to elect people to office that stand

firm in their ideas just as Representative Ron Paul has has done by

being called " Doctor NO " by his colleagues, because he votes

against every bill that he feels violates the Constitution of the United

States.

Ladies and gentlemen, personally I marvel at the patience with which

the citizens of this nation submit to burdens laid upon them

unnecessarily by our government. The burden of heavy taxation,

fiscal irresponsiblity, violations of our civil rights, and violations by

our elected officials of the " Oath " to protect the Constitution of

the United States.

But I agree with Thomas Jefferson when he wrote in the Declaration

of Independence that ... " experience has shown that people are

more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than

to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are

accustomed..."

I would ask you ladies and gentlemen, are you personally suffering

from the action and/or inactions of our elected officials to solve the

problems which face our nation?

Do you feel the pain in your pocketbook everytime you have to fuel

your vehicles, purchase groceries, pay your taxes? Does your heart

ache listening to the stories of war, or have you experienced the pain

of loss that has occured to so many that are currently fighting?

I believe that we all have experienced some or all of these pains or

or losses in the past few years.

We see fuel prices rising, inflation rearing its ugly head, our dollar

faltering and becoming worthless on the international markets, we

see and hear of an endless "War on Terror" broadcast nightly

across the airwaves.

At the same time our government violates our civil rights,

debasing the Constitution of our nation which they took an oath

to protect.

Our Constitution ladies and gentlemen, is designed with checks and

balances to prevent abuses by our government, primarily by the

Bill of Rights.

Our founders used the federal structure of our government to protect

the people from abuse by dividing power between local, state, and

national governments, and also by delegating seperate powers

to each branch of the federal government.

I believe our founders intent was to divide the several offices of

our government so that each would be a check to the

other.

I believe in our government now ladies and gentlemen, that there

is a blantant disregard for these seperations of power, I believe that

the people of this nation can see that our elected officials are

and have succeeded in centralizing power to Washington.

One such example of the consolidation of power and the erosion

of our freedoms with the current administration is when it has

used the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to

violate the constitutional rights of the people.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Constitution does not give an

exception to the Bill of Rights or of the separation of

powers as defined by the Constitution because of national security,

and the Authorization for Use of Military Force did not

authorized the president to suspend constitutional rights at home.

Our current administration began the warrantless surveillance of

Americans without a court order. This program

began after the attacks of 9/11 and has targeted American citizens.

This directly violated surveillance requirements laid down in

the FISA laws.

Congress also submitted to Executive requests

and amended the current laws to give the government

unprecedented power to listen to phone calls and to read emails

of American citizens while granting immunity to telephone

companies which submitted to these government requests.

There is nothing in Article II of the Constitution that gives the

President the power to suspend any law or any Constitutional

protection at his discretion.

Also, our current administration is using the Patriot Act to designate

Americans citizens arrested in this nation as well as terrorist

captured overseas as enemy combatants, with this label alone

citizens of our nation are beyond the reach and protections of the

Constitution of the United States.

It is natural in war to capture prisoners and to hold them, but

not to name anyone as an enemy combatant and to hold them

indefinitely. There needs to be Constitutional and Congressional

oversight of these violations and they need to stop when

perpetrated against American citizens.

Holding enemy combatants is fine when at war, but to have the

power to name citizens as enemy combatants in this nation and

to hold them indefinitely with the suspension of the Writ of

Habeaus Corpus is to me a gross violation of the rights of the

people.

Ladies and gentlemen, Congress is the only department of our

government that has any authority to suspend the Writ of Habeas

Corpus, and then only to suspend and not to eliminate, and only

when our nation is invaded or faced with rebellion or insurrection.

(( Pause ))

Unfortunately, as I understand it the Supreme Court delivered a

verdict concerning this issue, in the case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld;

here it said that the U.S. government has the power to hold

American citizens and foreign nationals without charges or trial.

Because of these and other reasons we need to change our

representation in Washington, our Congress needs to begin to act

in the manner it was designed to by our Constitution and to limit

the other branches of government, both executive and judicual,

and to act responsibily.

The War on Terror does not give the President or Congress

unlimited authority to act as they please with regards to their

obligations to the constitution.

The government is constrained by the Constitution of our nation from

abusing the rights of the people. We need to make sure they once

again become respectful of our founding documents and the

limitations on their authority.

Concerning taxation and the burden that we all share in regards to

this divisive issue.

I believe that every person knows that the people of this nation are

over taxed, when we take our federal, state, and local taxes together

depending on where we live, between 45% to 60% of our hard

earned monies go to support government at some level.

Ladies and gentlemen, I personally would like to see as would

Representative Ron Paul, the elimination of the Internal Revenue

Service.

But until that could be achieved, I would like to, if elected, bring to

the table legislation which would create a two tiered tax bracket

instead of the current five or six.

These two tiers would be something such as 5 to 6% for anyone

under $120,000 and 8 to 10% or anyone over $120,000.

If elected ladies and gentlemen, I would also be willing to submit

legislation which would begin the procedures to craft a Constitutional

Amendment which would limit the Federal Government from Taxing

more than 10% of our income. Thereby allowing the people to keep

more of their money.

Although as I said, I would prefer to see the elimination of the Income

Tax altogether but until a consensus could be made and that

achieved, a two tiered tax system would benefit the people of this

nation by allowing them to keep their monies.

As during the Reagan administration when we reached a two tiered

tax system and the federal coffers swelled and business thrived,

I believe that we can do the same again but even to a greater

extent than occured during the Reagan administration.

We need to return fiscal responsibility to our government ladies

and gentlemen, we need to hold our elected officials responsible

for what they have done to our nation in bankrupting our posterity

by leaving a national debt in the trillions of dollars which no

future generation should have to bear.

We cannot spend our way out of debt, we need to reduce

government spending, we need to eliminate useless bueracracies

and consolidate those that have a track record of success.

By reducing spending and eliminating bueracracies and

consolidating we can save billions of dollars and reduce the

size of our behemoth of government.

We need elected officials in government ladies and gentlemen, that

will work to reduce the size of government, not to expand it.

((pause))

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no reason why we as a nation

cannot be energy independent.

We have to elect people to office that will work to allow drilling in

our nation.

There are several restrictions that have been placed on oil

companies that prevent drilling domestically, both environmental

laws and bueracratic laws.

These laws need to be removed so that we can become energy

independent.

If we do nothing our children will suffer a fate worse than our own.

Ladies and gentlemen, if elected, I would submit legislation to

Congress that would remove those restrictions and I would work

tirelessly until that is achieved.

Energy independence is one of the issues that I deal with on a

daily basis. As a truck driver, and an owner operator, I spend

$300 to $800 a day for fuel costs.

I know first hand what these costs are doing to this nation, I have

seen freight rates increase exponentially over the past few years

thereby causing a rise in what we pay at the stores for our goods.

This rise in inflation is being caused by several factors, among
which is the normal supply and demand. More demand and less
supply means higher costs.

With the emergence of China and India's growing economies
we are seeing a growing demand for oil, but ladies and gentlemen,
what we are not seeing is a rise in the production of oil by
oil producing nations, such as OPEC.

From 1973 OPEC was producing roughly 30 million barrels per day of
oil, in 2007 OPEC was producing only 26 to 27 million barrels of oil
per day.

There has been increases and decreases in production of oil through
out the history of the industry, the total global use of oil is roughly
82+ million barrels.

Also during this time the US oil production has remained stagnant at an
average between 9.5 to 11 million barrels a day.

Ladies and gentlemen, with the emerging economies of China and

India growing at 8 to 11% per year we are going to be seeing a
growing demand for oil globally, there has to be in increase
in the production of oil, both domestically and by OPEC.

We have Oil shale resources in the Colorado, Wyoming and the
Utah Green River formation estimated at 1.8 trillion barrels of oil
located beneath the surface.

The RAND Corporation has done a study which estimates that while
not all of this is recoverable, the upper limit is 1.1 trillion barrels
with a lower limit of 500 trillion.

Worldwide, the oil-shale resource base could easily be as large as
14 trillion barrels - more than 500 years of oil supply at year
2000 production rates.

There is more than four times as much oil under the Outer
Continental Shelf as all other current U.S. oil reserves -
more than 85 billion barrels, the Interior Department's Minerals
Management Service estimates.

Also the ANWR coast contains 6 billion to 16 billion barrels of
economically recoverable oil depending on the sources you wish
to reference.

Energy independence is possible ladies and gentlemen, if
our government would allow it.

(( pause ))

I would like you to know that I am prolife, pro-gun rights,
I believe that we have the right to own and use our properties
without government intrusions.

I believe that we need restructure our educational institutions,
that we need to change them from institutions which
indoctrinate our children with socialist ideas to institutions that
impart knowledge and wisdom, that teach morals,
values, and ethics which reflect the communities in which the
schools reside.

Much needs to be said, but more needs to be done. What needs
to be done first ladies and gentlemen is a change of heart, our hearts,
the American people.

Because without a change of heart and the fortitude to do what is right
nothing is going to happen in Washington or here at home.
With this being said ladies and gentlemen, I would like to humbly ask
for your vote and your support during this election and as would like to close
with again from former president Ronald Reagan, " "Government is
not a solution to our problem, government is the problem."

Thank you.

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