Darrell Castle discusses Trump vs Comey, the Trump – Russia investigation, and what it all means for America.
Au Revoir France – The Latest “Castle Report”
Au Revoir France
Darrell Castle talks about why the 2017 presidential election in France was so important to Americans.
Listen to the podcast at http://www.castlereport.us/
Restore Or Reform? – That Is The Question
This article by Constitution Party of Texas State Chairman, Daniel New, contrasts the GOP and the Constitution Party. Read more here
We Represent a Cause
Dear Patriot:
The Constitution Party represents more than electioneering. We are a cause. Who else champions the Constitution when it comes to the issues of the day?
Is there any party or candidate who makes the argument that the “gay marriage” fight is not over? We remind voters that the Founding Fathers gave Congress the right to restrain the Supreme Court’s power. Article III, Section 2, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution states:
“The Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to
Law and Fact, with such Exceptions and under Regulations as the Congress shall make.”
The Supreme Court has not “settled” the issue, and we are the only ones in the election arena who dare to prove it so. That’s why the Constitution Party aims to educate and motivate — we have developed tools that explain who we are and what we stand for.
I urge you to stock up on ammunition during this election year battle.
To revive hope for a logical, constitutional argument advocating traditional marriage, we have produced an issue card — outlining the problem and solution, attractively designed, and available at a very low price.
These pocket sized cards are shipped postage paid: 100 for just $15.
To tell the story of the Constitution Party — who we are and where we stand — we’ve produced a informative brochure in an easy-to-read format. It is a good introduction to our party and our cause.
This six panel brochure is shipped postage paid: 100 for $25 or 40 for $15.
Finally, when we discuss the issues, we must do so with a solid understanding of the Constitution itself. That’s why we have made special arrangement with the publishers to offer an autographed copy of the brand new book, How to Read the Constitution by Paul Skousen.
This is a essential handbook in the fight for freedom is shipped, postage paid, for a gift of $35.
How to Read the Constitution will help you to frame the argument of why we call ourselves Constitutionists and not just Conservatives.
Be sure you have this ammunition for the election.
Cordially,
Frank Fluckiger,
National Chairman,
Constitution Party
P.S. You may call-in your order for the above materials to expedite shipping: 1-800-VETO-IRS (1-800-283-8647).
Voters Need The Input And Impact Of A Third Party
by Peter Gemma
National Executive Committee Member
James Madison wisely observed, “When the variety and number of political parties increases, the chance for oppression, factionalism, and non-skeptical acceptance of ideas decreases.”
Marginalized policy initiatives can often bubble up into the mainstream because of independent candidates and third parties. In his book Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System, political strategist Douglas Schoen noted, “While third party movements and candidates have periodically emerged to challenge the status quo … none have ever come close to winning, though they did end up having a significant impact on policy formation as a result of their campaigns.”
Although the success of the Prohibition Party was fleeting, it is a good model of how an issue can come from a single constituency, evolve into a formidable political force, and flex muscle on Capitol Hill.
The Prohibition Party has run candidates for President in every election since 1872, but none received more than 300,000 votes or about two percent of the ballots cast. However, its candidates for state and federal office often siphoned off votes that cost the major party nominees their winning margins. That proved to be powerful political leverage. In the 1918 contest for US Senate in Colorado, incumbent Democrat John Shafroth polled 48 percent of the vote, but Prohibition Party candidate P. A. Richardson, who nabbed just 2.58 percent, gave the Republican nominee the edge – one of the two seats the GOP needed for majority status on Capitol Hill.
The Prohibition Party applied anti-establishment political pressure while bi-partisan grass roots organizations such as the Anti-Saloon League worked within the apparatus of the two major parties. The chemical reaction resulted in a Constitutional Amendment establishing prohibition as public policy.
The Libertarian Party has been a deciding factor in many elections in the past 45 years. In 1998, Majority Leader Harry Reid was re-elected by only 428 votes while the Libertarian candidate pulled in 8,000 supporters. In 2002, the country’s most hard-fought Senate race was in South Dakota. Republican John Thune lost to the Democrat incumbent, Senator Tim Johnson, by 524 votes, much less than the 3,000 votes for the Libertarian candidate.
The movement in favor of the legalization of marijuana consists of non-partisan operations including the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which has a network of 135 chapters. The marijuana issue is a well-known plank of the Libertarian Party’s platform since its formation in 1971.
Libertarian Party political operatives had an impact on the passage of the 2012 Colorado referendum to decriminalize the use of marijuana – it had already elected two city councilmen and a sheriff on their party line in the state. In addition, the Marijuana Policy Project spent one million dollars advocating the Colorado initiative. Just like the movement for prohibition, non-partisan grassroots operations combined with a political punch, yielded results.
The Reform Party nominated Texas billionaire Ross Perot as its presidential candidate in 1992. Perot hammered away on the issues of reducing the deficit and the importance of a balanced budget, issues previously ignored in elections. They now are a standard part of every national campaign. The winner of the election, Bill Clinton, coordinated a bi-partisan coalition that created several balanced-budget deals to put the government in the black.
History is on the side of third party movements because they are willing to touch third rail issues. The Prohibition and Socialist parties promoted women’s suffrage during the late 1800s, and by 1916 both Republicans and Democrats supported it. In the 1850’s, a new party, the Republicans, buried the traditional Whig Party as they rallied around a major social justice issue, the abolition of slavery.
Third parties can represent regional interests as well. In 1968, American Independent Party candidate George Wallace earned 45 electoral votes. The way he split the Democratic base led to the Republican Southern strategy that produced another sea change in American politics.
According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post survey, 48 percent of voters say they would prefer a third-party candidate to run. A recent Associated Press/University of Chicago poll revealed that 71 percent of millennials want an alternative to the Republican and Democrat nominees. Still, many voters view third parties as irrelevant, perhaps even worse than useless. The general assumption is if a third party candidate has no chance of winning, then it is foolish to lower the chances of the next-best, big-party candidate. Voting for a lesser-of-two-evils candidate who can win would be better than voting for an ideal candidate who will lose. However, “winnability” doesn’t matter as much as one might think. If a third party candidate can influence, even bully, the political power elites they score goals.
Permit me to channel Teddy Roosevelt: “The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.” He’s so right: America needs a third party – actually, a fourth, fifth and tenth party.
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The New Poll Tax: Ballot Access Laws Foil Independent Candidates
By Peter Gemma
National Executive Committee member
There is no free market of ideas, candidates, or political parties on Election Day.
It’s not for a lack of demand. According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post survey, 57 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton; 44 percent say they would prefer a third-party candidate to run. A recent Associated Press/University of Chicago poll revealed that 71 percent of millennials want an alternative to the Republican and Democrat nominees.
In another survey, Public Policy Polling matched “a giant meteor hitting the earth” against Clinton and Trump. The killer asteroid nabbed 13 percent of the vote, far more than any third party now ballot qualified.
The establishment parties benefit from strict ballot access laws that make it difficult for alternative candidates to participate in elections. In order to get on the ballot, independent and third party candidates must meet a variety of byzantine state-specific filing requirements. Complex stipulations and regulations determine whether voters will be able to choose from a larger pool of parties and candidates.
Unorthodox candidates must undergo bureaucratic and burdensome trials in all 50 states before they are permitted to run for office. And the laws have proven effective: no independent or third party presidential candidate has won an electoral vote in 48 years.
To get on the ballot nationwide this year, it is estimated that a maverick presidential candidate must have more than 880,000 signatures on petitions. The major parties regularly challenge the legitimacy of ballot access petitions (leaving out a middle initial is among many reasons that a name can be considered invalid), so securing a ratio of two-to-one of the required number of signatures is the pragmatic strategy for campaigns. That means an army of petitioners going door-to-door should collect about 1.76 million names in 2016. If that becomes difficult to manage, a candidate may hire professional solicitors who charge $2.50-$5.00 per signature. You do the math.
Consider how the ballot access system currently works: Texas requires independent candidates to collect 79,939 signatures (but double that number to be prudent); to become a recognized political party in North Carolina, signatures equal to two percent of the previous gubernatorial election are necessary — that adds up to 89,336 names (secure about 180,000 to be on the safe side); West Virginia demands 6,706 signatures on ballot access petitions if you want to run for the White House (please turn in twice that amount.) Candidates must also pay a hefty filing fee of $2,500.
Nine states don’t even allow voters to write-in names of their preferred candidates.
The Libertarian Party beat Oklahoma’s tightly controlled process by obtaining more than 42,000 signatures. The petition campaign cost the national party $104,000. For third parties, organizational infrastructure, as well as deep pockets, is vital — running for President means conducting 50 races simultaneously. Start-up campaigns simply do not have the money or the manpower to be competitive with Democrats and Republicans because of the barriers the ruling parties have put in place.
The nation’s leading expert on ballot access laws is Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News. He maintains that, “Ballot access restrictions vary from state to state, but they have one thing in common and that is to prevent people other than Democrats and Republicans from getting on the ballot.”
Disenfranchising candidates is part of the election game as well. Forty-five states have enacted “sore loser” laws denying defeated candidates the right to run a third party or independent campaign. If a candidate believes political power brokers have quashed any chance to win the Democrat or Republican nomination, there is no second chance.
Third party candidate Ralph Nader has observed, “If we all have an equal right to run for election. If they call third-party candidates spoilers but they don’t call their major opponent in the other party a spoiler, they are assigning a second-class citizenship to the third-party candidacy.”
The Gallup organization has found that, “A majority of Americans, 60 percent, say a third major political party is needed because the Republican and Democratic parties ‘do such a poor job’ of representing the American people.” Yet when voters get inside the polling booth, they often find only two candidates listed. Richard Winger asserts, “The extreme disparity of the burdens placed on old, established parties versus new parties has no parallel in any other democratic nation in the world.”
Reasonable ballot access requirements to set qualifying standards are necessary. However, just as poll taxes were set up to keep certain citizens from expressing their right to vote, today’s ballot access laws are deliberately designed to provide a similar obstacle for freethinkers who challenge the political power elites.
In 1775, John Adams warned future generations of American voters that, “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” He was so right.
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An Independence Day Message from President Garfield
4 July 2016 –
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Before being elected President, while serving in Congress, James Garfield stated at the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1876:
“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature … If the next centennial does not find us a great nation…it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.” |
I’m sure that quote will garner its fair share of “amens,” especially among the political right. However, I expect most of those “amens” will be predicated on the supposition that it’s “the other guy” who has tolerated ignorance, recklessness and corruption in Congress by his vote for, and support of, “the other party.” You might want to hold up on passing judgment just yet, and look at some numbers first.
Over the past 20 years, Republicans have held the majority in Congress 65% of the time, leaving the Democratic Party a relatively disenfranchised and powerless entity that only wielded control of Congress 35% of the time. If this were professional football, the Democrats would have a 6 and 10 record – pretty much time to fire the coach, sell the team and pack it in.
So if, in the words of President Garfield, Congress has been ignorant, reckless and corrupt over the past two decades, it is because the Christian-conservative-right has tolerated ignorance, recklessness and corruption by electing, and reelecting, a party of pachyderms that has perpetually increased the size of government, increased spending, increased the national debt, funded the welfare state, funded the warfare state, funded the police state, funded the healthcare state, never defunded a single unconstitutional or extra constitutional bureau, agency or program, and has generally disregarded the rule of law under the Constitution.
I believe if President Garfield were here today, he would admonish us to declare our independence from political parties, powers and leaders that obviously do not represent our values. When we continue to support, or affiliate with such entities, we become parties to, and responsible for, the ignorance, recklessness and corruption that we authorize by our vote.
It is time for “those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation” to withhold their time, their treasure, and their vote from any who are not clearly and consistently “intelligent, brave and pure,” as President Garfield put it. It is far past the time that we ought to have declared our independence from the established forms of political association that have become destructive of the ends for which they were established, and that we should begin to vote not for party, but for principle, and for men of character who Honor God, Uphold the Constitution and Contend for Liberty.
Robert W. Peck
Chairman
Constitution Party of Washington
© 2016 Robert W. Peck
Republish with attribution and link back to http://robertpeck.net
Click here to return to main Platform and Resolutions page.
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Special Independence Day Message from Western States Regional Co-chair Janine Hansen
June 30, 2016
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“Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.”
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Dorchester Heights could decide the outcome of the British occupation of Boston. All winter General Washington’s council of war had advised against a direct assault. Washington was anxious, as his proposals showed, to confront the British.
In the meantime, facing impossible odds, Colonel Henry Knox, just twenty five, arrived at Fort Ticonderoga on December 5, 1775. Knox retrieved 58 mortars and cannons, one cannon weighing 5,000 pounds alone. The whole lot was believed to weigh not less than 120,000 pounds. He floated the cannons down Lake George and then dragged the cannons on forty-two sleds with eighty yoke of oxen through blizzards, cruel thaws, deep snow, over iced rivers, and snow bound mountains. When they got to Springfield, Massachusetts, Knox switched to horses to quicken the pace. Not a gun had been lost. Hundreds of men had taken part. The cannons that Knox had rescued were about to change the stalemate at Boston.
On February 16, 1776, General Washington convened his council of war for the fourth time asking for a direct assault on Boston, but the answer again was no. However, there was agreement on another plan. They would draw the British out. They would occupy Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston in one night. The army went to work preparing a highly sophisticated scheme whereby fortifications would be fabricated elsewhere out of sight and brought to Dorchester Heights in one incredible night.
Miraculously, the British were entirely unaware of the plan, although hundreds even thousands understood what was unfolding. On March 2 a bombardment began to distract the British. On March 4 they moved all the fortifications to Dorchester Heights and were finished by first light the morning of March 5, the anniversary of the Boston Massacre.
All through the night on the Heights, men had toiled steadily with picks and shovels, breaking the frozen ground for earth and stone to fill the chandeliers (fortifications) and barrels. At three in the morning they were relieved by 3,000 men and an additional five regiments of riflemen took up positions near the shore. Twenty cannon were in place. Untouchable by the British, the cannons were high above Boston, threatening the whole occupied city and the British fleet.
It was an utterly phenomenal achievement. American General Heath was hardly exaggerating when he wrote, “Perhaps there never was so much work done in so short a space of time.” At daybreak, the British commanders looking up at the Heights could scarcely believe their eyes. The hoped-for, all-important surprise was total. British General Howe was said to have exclaimed, “My God, these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months.”
After a miraculous storm stopped the ill-fated British plan of counter-attacking the Americans, they sent word that they would not burn the city of Boston if they were allowed to evacuate which is what happened. Adapted from David McCullough’s wonderful book 1776.
Our nation was born of courage and perseverance of men like George Washington, because they willingly pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. God honored their sacrifices with miraculous victories, and after they had paid the price…liberty.
America has squandered that miraculous gift of God and our forefathers. Most of our leaders and elected officials are corrupt, but even worse they have embraced liberty destroying socialism. Unlike our founders who proclaimed “No King but King Jesus”…America’s God and King is now Government.
Our nation has lost the last vestiges of sovereignty as “conservatives” gave Fast Track authority for the Trans Pacific Partnership to a totally anti-American President. We now live under Fascism, collusion between Big Government and International Corporations, designed to supersede our Constitution and the rights of all Americans.
Our Supreme Court has abandoned God’s law, leading the way as Sodom and Gomorah engulfs our nation. The foundational right of Religious Liberty is now eclipsed by perversion and political correctness. Soon there will only be “marriages” in politically correct churches and persecution of believers will rage.
We live in the times Isaiah prophesied about, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” KJV Isaiah 5:20
Although our nation has rejected God, we can remain faithful and obtain God’ promises. “Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me…” KJV Psalms 101:13
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” KJV John 16:33
Good cheer should be the order of the day for the faithful.
First, we must reconcile ourselves with our God. “…be ye reconciled to God.” KJV 2 Corinthians 5:20
Second, we must do as he directs, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” KJV Matthew 22:37-39.
Third, we must continue to be faithful in the eternal cause of Liberty, “…Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof…” KJV Leviticus 25:10
Fourth, we must prepare ourselves and our families spiritually, financially and physically for the fulfillment of scripture, “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted…” KJV Matthew 24:7-9
Fifth, we must endure to the end. “But he that endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” KJV Matthew 24:13
Somehow, I feel a great sense of peace as I watch the incredible events unfolding around me. They are not a surprise for I have been watching for decades as these things unfold. Some are just awakening to a sense of their awful situation and that can be alarming. But we can do as the Lord directs and be of good cheer and trust in Him.
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” KJV Proverbs 3:5
Often things must get worse before they can get better. My brother Dan always said, “Americans are too comfortable. Nothing will change until that changes.” Change also equals opportunities. Be of Good Cheer!
Be of Good Cheer! Happy Fourth of July!
Janine Hansen Constitution Party Western States Co-Chairman director [at] iapn [dot] orgVisit our Presidential Candidates website: Castle 2016. Sign up to help and donate to help the campaign!
The Message of Liberty Is Our Priority: All Americans Committed to the Founding Principles Welcome Here
In response to questions raised regarding the search for a third party to field candidates from the Republican Party, Constitution Party National Chairman Frank Fluckiger issued the following statement:
“The Constitution Party national convention has been held, and our candidates have been selected. There is no provision in our bylaws of which I am aware that would permit us to do anything but move forward as we now are doing. To even consider another choice at this point would create nothing less than confusion and only hinder our progress. We would have to circulate petitions anew in some states. As important and as appealing a candidate might be, if we forget that it is our message of liberty first and foremost that resonates in the hearts of our supporters, we will in due time just become another political party.”
All Americans who hold to the idea of a constitutionally limited government, who believe in the sanctity of life and the traditional family, and who can agree with the principles found in our platform are welcome in the Constitution Party as it moves forward in this election year. Many such Americans have already joined our effort to elect a president who is committed to such ideals in the person of Darrell Castle, and our doors are open to all who will come.
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