George Phillies
Libertarian
For President In 2008

Creating Peace, Liberty, and Prosperity

      George Phillies on Issues that Concern Americans

• Immigration Someday, the Libertarian message of peace, liberty, and prosperity reach the entire world, so all people will enjoy the high standard of living we take for granted.  In that day, immigration and open borders will be non-issues.  We may differ as to what our laws should be.  However, Americans are entitled to the certainty that their country's just laws will be enforced until those laws are changed.   Furthermore, America is a welfare state with generous safety net.  The low-cost workers we import into America pay less in taxes than the social services they receive, so a vote for open borders is also a vote for a tax increase on the rest of us.  Needless to say, I am not in the habit of supporting tax increases.  Americans who quote the Statue of Liberty's message 'Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free' should remember that it was written when France, Germany and Russia were autocratic monarchies.  The huddled masses of Europe now breathe free.

• Civil Liberties The Oath of Office of the President is to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States.  When a President takes office, he should place his hand on one place: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights he is swearing to protect.  When as Advisor tells the President 'The Constitution is not a suicide pact' as a justification for his illegal deeds, he is urging that our government be overthrown.  The President should appoint officials and advisors who support the Constitution.

• Education There is no more important investment in the future than the education of our children and grandchildren.  When you invest wisely by paying to educate a child, whether your own child or the child of impoverished parents, you should receive a dollar for dollar Federal tax credit for your investment. 

• No Child Left Behind George Bush wants to rescue the education of our children, using all the wisdom and compassion he used to rescue New Orleans.  The No Child Left Behind Act should be repealed. The Federal government should leave education to states and communities.

• The Kelo Decision  Should your house belong to you, or to the lounge lizard who bribed and seduced your city council?    Takings should be limited to traditional public purposes.   Your house should belong to you.  Governments should be forbidden to use eminent domain to seize your house and give it to a developer or sports team.  If your home is taken for a legitimate public purpose, the fair value of the property should include your emotional loss and the cost of your time and effort to relocate.  As a rule of thumb, tripling the market value of the property might give a fair payment.

• The Budget Deficit George Bush and his Democratic and Republican allies just gave America the biggest tax increase in history.  It's called the budget deficit and it has a unique twist:  You spend the money. Your grandkids get the bill, labeled 'interest on the national debt'.  The grandchild tax is a terrible gift for our grandchildren.  We should end the grandchild tax and pay our own bills.  Federal debt should only be created in the direst of national emergencies and should be promptly discharged when the emergency is over.

• Taxes The first tax we need to end is the grandchild tax, the tax that goes on forever and buys you the taxpayer absolutely nothing. Our skyrocketing national debt eats up every penny saved by all Americans.  The only way we can borrow the national debt is by borrowing from foreigners.  We end the grandchild tax by cutting spending.  Will we cut...? No matter the choice, the answer has to be 'Yes.  We have to cut that too.'   The national debt chews up capital, so that savings that are no longer available to pay for new factories, better roads, or energy-saving home improvements.

• The Environment We the American people own vast amounts of land in the form of National Forests, National Wildernesses, and other Federal lands.  We should be its stewards, leaving our descendants a patrimony that is more valuable than the one we inherited from our forefathers.  In some states, the amount of Federal Land exceeds all reason or need, has no unique beauty or value, and should very gradually be auctioned off.  We the American people own the air we breathe and the navigable waterways.  There is no more a right to vent poisons into our air and water than there is to dump toxic waste on your front lawn.  When someone poisons your lawn, they are obliged to clean up the mess, and the same goes for our air and water.  It's a property rights issue. 

• Medical Care Expenses Why is health insurance so expensive? One large reason is cost transfers.  Hospitals are required to give free medical care to large numbers of people who have no insurance.  They pay for that care by charging it to the people who have insurance.  Cost transfers should be made illegal: Your insurance should only pay for your care.  If a hospital is required by law to provide free care, the legal requirement should come with the money to pay for that care.  Also, all medical care costs should have the same tax basis: No matter whether your employer pays for your insurance, you pay for insurance, or you pay for medical costs, those payments should be excluded from your taxable income.

• Corporate Welfare Your neighbors should make money by selling desired goods and services, not by bribing Congressmen to give them subsidies out of your tax payments. Corporate welfare should be brought to an end.

• Free Trade When a country is a dictatorship that suppresses labor unions and shoots labor organizers, the goods it exports are stolen property, stolen from the workers coerced to make them.  Stolen goods cannot be traded freely.  We should not engage in 'free trade' in stolen property. Furthermore, it is only fair that all manufacturers pay the same taxes.  We may differ as to what those taxes should be. However, there should not be one tax rate for Ford Motors, and another much higher tax rate for General Motors.  When we place a financial burden however labeled on American manufacturers, fairness dictates that foreign imports be subject to the same burden, a tax equivalent to whatever minimum wage and environmental restrictions foreign manufacturers are avoiding.

• NAFTA, CAFTA A 'free trade' agreement that takes hundreds or thousands of pages to spell out has nothing to do with free trade, and everything to do with state socialist managed trade.  All those thousands of pages are written with someone's interest in mind: For almost all readers, that someone is not you.  It's whoever made the right campaign donations.  Phony 'free trade' agreements should be ended.

• Abortion Government should take no role in this matter.  It should not encourage or discourage abortion.  It should not force women to bear children they do not want.  It should not force opponents of abortion to pay for abortions.  People who bomb abortion clinics and churches are criminals who should be brought to justice.

• Prohibition When I was a little boy, television was filled with gangster prohibition movies.  My parents, who were very wise people, told me that there were two certainties about prohibition: It was a total failure.  No one would ever be dumb enough to try it again. Now we have drug prohibition, a total failure that wastes tens of billions of dollars, gives criminal records to millions of Americans, and can't even keep drugs out of our prisons.  It's time to treat marijuana the way we treat alcohol. Yes, we do have people with alcohol problems.  We live in an imperfect world.  Sometimes the best we can do is contained in the Hippocratic oath of ancient physicians: At least, do not make matters worse than when you started.

• National Defense When the Cold War ended, America should have contracted its military to match its defense needs.  We maintain a huge fleet in the Atlantic, an ocean that borders only on friendly countries.  That fleet makes no sense.  Our military spending is half the world's total, and most of the rest is spent by our allies; that spending makes no sense.  There should be massive cuts in defense spending.  We should take seriously FDR's laws on military reserves: As an organizational issue, States should put their main emphasis on their State Defense Force, not on their National Guard, putting the same fine people where they can best protect America.  The search for Mr. Bin Laden needs groups of specialists, not shoals of tanks and clouds of aircraft that muddy the waters.

• Torture. Rendition. Secret Prisons. These are all UnAmerican activities.  Real Americans do not torture.  Real Americans do not kidnap so others can torture for us.  Real Americans support timely public trials with juries, not military kangaroo tribunals. We real Americans should ensure that torture, renditions, and secret prisons are ended, and the people who committed crimes to torture, rend, and secretly imprison are brought to justice.

• Immigration All too often, we hear claims that we must import foreign workers because Americans won't do those jobs. 'Those jobs' are hard, physically demanding, outdoor work that require constant, careful attention to detail. Those jobs should be receiving a wage premium, not be barely-minimum-wage sources of employment.  If those jobs paid that premium, there would be Americans available to do them.  Mr. Bush's foreign guest worker scheme is a corporate welfare deal at the expense of the American worker.

• Family Values There is no part of family life more fundamental than guiding medical care for family members unable to act for themselves.  In the Terry Schiavo case Congress tried to steal control of medical care from a young woman's loving husband.  Congress voted against real family values.  The Terry Schiavo case shows that Congress is happy to trade real family values for a few votes in the next election.  Americans who support real family values should elect people who share their views, libertarians who believe Uncle Sam has no business making life and death decisions for you and your loved ones.

• Presidential Royalism  We have a President, not an Emperor.  Americans who dissent from elected Federal officers are true patriots who understand where America was born.  Advocates of Free Speech zones, into which protesters are herded and hidden from the press, are dangerous subversives who are attacking our Constitution.  Patriotic Americans do not grovel.  They should not mindlessly stand and applaud because a President walks into the room. [Mind you, if you want to stand, applaud, or throw yourself on your kneepads, that's your privilege.]  We should reject royalism.

• Soaring TV Cable Rates Rates soar because there is no competition.  Cities and towns already have the option of allowing multiple providers.  (You should make this point to your town council.)  Competition should be made the standard, not the rare exception, and we can change Federal law to do this.

• High Fuel Bills The cost of oil is high because world oil demand is climbing, and world oil production is not.  Oil production in the United States peaked 30 years ago.  Oil production of the whole world is now peaking  Americans are about to experience an educational experience, teaching them that government cannot solve your problems.  We are bound for $4 a gallon gasoline, and the government cannot make it go away.  By investing wisely in replaceable (notably wind and solar) power supplies for Federal installations, the Federal government can reduce its own demand for fossil fuels, thus reducing your prices, and at the same time supporting market development of better solutions.

• Osama Bin Laden Most Americans believe that Osama Bin Laden was the real ringleader of the 9/11 air pirates, even though the Germans convicted someone else of masterminding the plot.  We should capture Mr. Bin Laden and bring him to justice, giving him a fair trial in front of an impartial jury.