The Libertarian Party
of Alabama
The Libertarian Party
of Alabama
Huntsville, Alabama (205) 936-4010
The Libertarian Party, Washington, DC
1 800 682-1776
a message from Craig Goodrich, Candidate for US Congress, 5th District
The following is a questionnaire for Alabama congressional candidates, from the Associated Press, with the responses of Craig Goodrich, Libertarian candidate for the US House of Representatives for Alabama's Fifth District. Please feel free to contact Goodrich for Congress, box 432, Elkmont AL 35620 with questions or comments.
What do you think is the most important issue that the next Congress should tackle? Why?
Aside from the crippling level of taxation (see following), the most urgent issue to be addressed is governmental terrorism. In the last decades we have seen steadily increasing casual abuse of the citizenry by federal officials and bureaucrats, in utter disregard of the proscriptions of the Bill of Rights. These abuses range from absurd, Kafkaesque regulatory harassment by the EPA, through highhanded persecution by the IRS, to outright murders such as occurred at Ruby Ridge and Waco.
I shall propose in the next Congress the Community Policing Act, which will:
... Do you support cutting taxes when the annual federal budget deficit still exceeds $100 billion? If so, which [Dole or Clinton] plan do you prefer and why?
I support complete elimination of personal and corporate income taxes, combined with drastic reduction in the size and scope of the federal government. The 15% Dole plan is short by 85%, and the Clinton plan is just another transparent election-year gimmick. The average American pays nearly half his income in federal, state, and local taxes, which is impoverishing our families and crippling the economy.
Do you support [a Balanced Budget Amendment]? What programs, if any, would you exempt from spending cuts needed to balance the budget?
I support an absolute prohibition of borrowing by the federal government for any purpose whatever. No program, department, or agency should be exempt from spending cuts, and in fact at least three quarters of the Executive Branch agencies should be completely eliminated.
Do you favor changing the new welfare legislation ... to lessen the impact on poor children and to eliminate the ban on aid to illegal immigrants? Should Congress restore the federal guarantee of aid to all eligible poor people ...?
Government-run welfare programs have been a disaster for both the poor and the taxpayer, creating a culture of dependency in the recipients while wasting 70% of the taxpayers' money on bureaucratic empire-building. Government at all levels, but particularly the federal government, must get completely out of the "welfare" business, allowing churches and community organizations once again to provide the personalized, cost-effective assistance to the unfortunate that they did for the first 150 years of America's history.
Do you support [term limits]?
Yes. I support a limit of two terms (4 years) for the US House and one term (six years) for the US Senate, and if elected, I pledge to abide by these limits, regardless of legislation.
As an aside, the Supreme Court decision prohibiting the states from individually setting their own limits was absurd sophistry, as even the most cursory reading of the Constitution will reveal.
Personally, I am in general opposed to abortion in all but the most extreme circumstances. But prohibition of abortion has not been effective in the past --like all forms of prohibition, it has led only to disrespect for the law, increased suffering, and the vilest kind of profiteering--and it is in any case not a proper subject for government interference.
The federal government should neither regulate nor fund abortions, and all restrictions on adoption should be repealed, leaving adoption completely in the hands of private religious and social organizations and the abortion decision completely in the hands of the mother-to-be and her family and friends. The whole idea of such intimately personal decisions being made by a roomful of politicians, bureaucrats, and lawyers is utterly repulsive and contrary to every tradition of American freedom.
The real tragedy of the current situation is that all concept of a moral dimension to the abortion decision seems to have been lost--a problem about which government can do nothing constructive.
Do you support federal regulation of tobacco to combat teen smoking?
The idea that the federal government--founded solely to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens--should promulgate and attempt to enforce regulations to prevent adolescents from sneaking a cigarette behind the barn is utterly insane, and would be laughable if it were not typical of the regulatory power-grabbing that is suffocating American society. Bill Clinton isn't the first confidence man to try to use this issue: Professor Harold Hill, Meredith Wilson's Music Man, warned of "trouble right here in River City." But at least all Professor Hill wanted was the citizens' money; federal overreaching into every area of private life is robbing us of our fundamental rights. This idiotic proposal is only the most recent and obvious.
(I note, by the way, that the FDA is now also prohibiting the sale of nicotine patches and gum to teenagers. This is typical of the regulatory mindset: Kids shouldn't smoke, but if they do, we'll prevent them from buying something to help them quit. Hilarious.)
Would you support the use of US armed forces in drug interdiction efforts?
This is a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, and an invitation to abuse by federal officials, such as the wholly specious accusation of the Davidians of drug involvement -- Seventh-Day Adventists, for Heaven's sake! -- by the ATF in order to make use of tanks and National Guard helicopters in the Waco assault. In fact, the greatest contribution the federal government could make to reducing violent crime in this country is to repeal all drug laws. Quite aside from the basic moral question -- whose body is it, anyway? -- the War on Drugs, like alcohol prohibition in the '20s, has doubled our murder rate, enriched violent gangs, and provided a pretext for the destruction of our precious civil liberties, while at the same time being utterly ineffective in reducing drug abuse.
Do you support repealing the Brady law ...?
I support repeal of the Brady law, the wretched Clinton crime package, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the National Firearms Act of 1934. First, so-called "gun control" as a crime-fighting measure is complete nonsense, as even a moment's reflection will reveal: these laws are obeyed by people who obey laws, and people who obey laws are not the problem. Second, depriving citizens of their best tool of self-defense will increase violence, not decrease it; more than two million times a year, ordinary citizens use firearms to stop or prevent violent crime--nearly four times as often as guns are used in committing crime. Finally, even if there were some value to such legislation, the federal government has no legitimate authority to regulate firearms ownership, under the Second, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments (and neither do the states, under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866).
Do you support legislation to deny handgun purchases to persons convicted of domestic abuse?
No. The federal government has shown time and time again that any such grant of power will be abused, political enemies and minorities will be selectively prosecuted, and so on; moreover, it is extremely doubtful that domestic abuse is a proper subject for federal legislation in the first place. Those who are convicted of violence should be in prison, and I have no objection to denying handgun purchases to inmates of prisons.
Craig Goodrich for US Congress
Mark Thornton for US Senate
Harry Browne for President