Thank You Voters Of The 4th District!

Voters of the 4th District, I want to humbly and graciously thank you for the 4,487 votes that you cast for limited government, free markets, peace and individual liberty on Tuesday November 2nd. Add that to the 4,885 votes that were cast for Susan Ducey and together that is nearly 9,500 votes against the establishment/status quo and the tired, old two party system! Needless to say I will be watching Mr. Pompeo and calling him out when he votes against the Constitution and praising him when he does, if he actually does vote in favor of it! Mark my words, the new GOP controlled Congress WILL NOT end one Federal Goverment program, bureau or department in the next two years. The best thing about gridlock is that both wings of the Big Government Party will not be able to so easily raise our taxes and take away more of our freedoms! Onward to 2012 and check out my personal blog at http://www.shawnthelibertariandude.blogspot.com/
Thank you for your kind words and support during my campaign! Peace, Shawn

Welcome To My Campaign Blog

I am Shawn Smith, Libertarian candidate for 4th District U.S. House of Representatives. I have lived in Wichita all of my life. I make a living as an elementary school head custodian as well as being an aspiring entrepreneur. I have been marrried to my lovely wife Janet for 18 years. Our daughter Rachel is a bright and energetic 9 1/2 year old.
The foreign and domestic policies of both the Democrats and Republicans are responsible for the terrible mess our country finds itself in today. Libertarians are here to clean it up! I am dedicated to limited government, a pure free market economy, private property rights, civil liberties, personal freedoms WITH personal responsibilities and a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace and free trade.
Vote for me on Tuesday November 2nd and together we can begin to rebuild the crumbling foundation of our Constitutional Republic!

I fully support the Downsize DC Agenda!

DownsizeDC.org is a great website to visit and a great organization to support. Their ability to translate libertarian ideals into concrete pieces of legislation that would improve the way Congress operates is second to none. Here, for example, are the six items they have highlighted for their Downsize DC Agenda:

• The “Read the Bills Act”: The “Read the Bills Act,” or RTBA, would require all bills to be posted on the Internet for seven days prior to any vote so that citizens could weigh in on the proposed text. The bills would also have to be read orally in the presence of a quorum in the House and the Senate. Perhaps more importantly, however, the RTBA would require all members of Congress who intend to vote in favor of any bill to file affidavits certifying that they had actually read it themselves and knew its contents. This would promote public participation in the legislative process, prevent legislators from explaining away votes for unpopular measures with the claim that they didn’t know all the details in the bill, and—just maybe—discourage Congress from writing bills that run to hundreds and even thousands of pages in order to regulate so many unnecessary details of our lives.

• The “One Subject at a Time Act”: This bill takes aim at a major reason for the existence of so many deeply unpopular laws: the propensity of Congress to bury a few unrelated special favors in the middle of a bill that is supposed to deal with something else entirely. The OSTA would require all bills to address only one subject. Furthermore, all bills would be required to carry a title that describes what is actually in the bill, rather than a misleading, propagandistic title like “PATRIOT Act” or “DISCLOSE Act."

• The “Write the Laws Act”: The WTLA attempts to end Congress’s abdication of its constitutional power to decide what the laws are. In recent years, as evidenced by the recent financial “reform” bill, Congress has passed laws that are little more than general statements of policy accompanied by instructions to various regulatory agencies to write the substantive rules Congress couldn’t be bothered with. This results, necessarily, in government by unelected bureaucrats and unelected judges. It also, quite often, produces the disgraceful spectacle of a Congress that agrees to have a federal law about something without agreeing on what the federal law should say.

• The “Free Competition in Currency Act”:  This bill addresses one of the most fundamental economic problems we have: the corrosive influence of the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policies. Those policies facilitate excessive spending and unnecessary wars by Congress, and are the major cause of economic “bubbles” that wreak so much havoc on our prosperity. The FCCA would end government or quasi-government monopolies on the issuance of coins or currency, so that people would be free to deal in money that could not be arbitrarily drained of its value by government fiat. Although the concept of competing forms of money may be strange to most Americans today, it has been the norm for most of our history as a nation. Historically, and across many different civilizations, gold, silver, and other precious metals have been the commodities used most frequently and most successfully as money, and so the FCCA also prohibits capital gains taxation of transactions in these metals, in order to prevent the government from making them less competitive forms of money in the future. (Readers who want to learn more about these issues should read DownsizeDC.org’s FCCA background page, and may also wish to read Murray Rothbard’s excellent introduction to the problem, What Has Government Done to Our Money?)

• The “Enumerated Powers Act”: This requires Congress to specify in each bill precisely which enumerated Constitutional power it is exercising. The point, of course, is that there are really not very many enumerated powers that the Constitution gives to Congress. Bank bailouts, gun laws, drug laws, farm subsidies, automobile manufacturing, and free colonoscopies are just some of the many things our founders never intended Congress to have anything to do with. The Enumerated Powers Act would not prevent Congress from twisting and stretching the words of Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution in order to justify all manner of meddling, but it would make members of Congress go on the record with their tortured interpretations so that voters could hold them properly accountable.

• The “Fiscal Responsibility Act”: This cuts Congressional pay for every year the budget remains in deficit. A one-year deficit costs each member of Congress 5% of his pay. If deficits last for two or more years, the annual cut becomes 10%. Pay is restored to pre-deficit levels only after the budget is restored to balance.

          I pledge that if elected I will support the Downsize DC agenda!

Domestic Agenda

The American economy is on the brink of disaster. Social Security could be insolvent as early as 2018. Three million Americans have declared bankruptcy in the last two years. Home foreclosures for the month of September topped 100,000 for the first time! 40 million Americans are on foodstamps. Nearly 1 in 7 Americans depend on government anti-poverty programs such as Medicare and unemployment benefits. According to the Department of Labor the "official" unemployment rate is 9.6%, but in my opinion when you figure in the 16% of those underemployed (those who have had to accept part time work because full time employment cannot be found) the real figure is actually 25.6%! Cessna and Hawker Beechcraft have announced another round of lay-offs. Does that sound like an economy that is recovering?

If elected I pledge to:

*Downsize the Federal Government to only the functions allowed in the U.S. Constitution.
*Cut taxes AND spending. Sell off all U.S. Government assets that are not Constitutional to fully fund and privatize Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and then pay down the massive federal debt.
*Pass the "Free Competition in Currency Act" (H.R. 4248) which allows gold and silver to be used as legal tender as well as supporting legislation that removes capital gains and sales taxes on gold and silver coinage.
*Audit the Federal Reserve and then abolish it. (H.R. 1207) as well as auditing the gold stores at Fort Knox.
*Support a Constitutional amendment that repeals the 16th Amendment (progressive income tax), closes down the IRS and implements a flat tax of 23% to be collected by the Treasury Department. (H.R. 25).
*Do whatever is necessary to repeal the recently passed Obama/Pelosi health care law and restore a true free market in health care.
*End the institution of career politicians by supporting a Constitutional amendment to implement term limits, which would be 12 years/6 terms for Congressmen and 12 years/2 terms for Senators.
*Amend the Constitution to repeal the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators) giving back the State Legislatures some of their lost rights.
*Entirely eliminate the earmark process, oppose the ability of U.S. Congressmen and Senators to raise their own pay and repeal of the McCain-Feingold bi-partisan campaign reform act.
*Oppose any new legislation and move to repeal any existing laws that allow the federal government to prohibit the sale, transfer, use or carrying of firearms thereby further strengthening the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Foreign Agenda

The Federal Government is fundamentally bankrupt because of its debts and deficits. Our second largest expenditure is "defense" which is actually global offense. We can no longer afford to police the world. Israel, South Korea and Germany are fully capable of defending themselves. They do not need the U.S. We can no longer afford to police the world. It is too costly in both blood and treasure (money). We can no longer give away millions of dollars in foreign aid that usually ends up in the Swiss or Kamen Islands bank accounts of tin-pot dictators and not to the starving, suffering people who really need it. I am a firm believer in the Jeffersonian foreign policy of "peace and free trade with all nations, entangling alliances with none".

If elected, I will pledge to:

*Bring all U.S. troops home from overseas.
*Close down all foreign bases.
*Cut the "defense" budget by 50%.
*Adopt a true national defense policy.
*Opt out of all mutual defense agreements and alliances; NATO,SEATO etc.
*Stop all U.S. governmental foreign aid and encourage private charitable aid.
*Promote free trade by abolishing all tariffs, trade barriers and excise taxes.
*Opt out of all "managed trade" agreements such as NAFTA and GATT.
*Will support legislation that forbids U.S. troops from serving under United Nations command.
*Will support U.S. withdrawel from the United Nations which has strayed from its original purpose of peace among nations to a globalist/socialist/green agenda.