TALLAHASSEE – Standing on the steps of the historic State Capitol building, Alexander Snitker made some history of his own by becoming the first Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate to ever appear on the Florida ballot. Snitker announced that he had met all the requirements to qualify for the ballot, which included paying the $10,440 filing fee.

“This race just became at least a three-way dogfight,” Snitker told the assembled media at a press conference in Tallahassee on Wednesday.

Prior to the announcement, the race for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat was considered a two-way contest between the Democrat and Republican nominees, with Kendrick Meek and Marco Rubio being the front runners from each respective party.

Rumors continue to grow that Gov. Charlie Crist will drop out of the GOP primary to run as an independent, which would result in a four-way contest between the two major parties, a Libertarian, and an independent.

Snitker is running on a platform centered on a Constitutionally-limited federal government. While Snitker and Rubio agree that the government is too large and spends too much money, they differ on how to solve the problem. Snitker proposes a balanced budget Amendment, abolishing the IRS in favor of the Fair Tax, an audit of the Federal Reserve, and a non-interventionist foreign policy.

However, on moral issues, Snitker sometimes sounds more like a Democrat. When asked his position on gay marriage, he queried, “Why should the federal government be involved in marriage at all? Isn’t marriage between two individuals? I haven’t found anything in the Constitution that governs individual relationships, so it is a power reserved to the states or to the people.”

The 34-year-old former Marine and office equipment salesman for AXSA Document Solutions considers himself to be a “citizen statesman” in the tradition of the Founding Fathers. “The framers of the Constitution never envisioned that someone would want to make a 40-year career out of serving in Congress,” he said. “They looked at it as a civic duty — you made the laws and then you went home to live by the laws that you made.”

To achieve that goal, Snitker proposes a two-term limit in the Senate, and a six-term limit in the House, both equaling 12 years maximum. He also supports ending Congressional pensions and perks.

After the announcement, opinion in the blogosphere seemed to be split right down the middle. Many tea partiers and conservative bloggers viewed him as a better alternative to Rubio; a regular guy as opposed to a career politician and lawyer. Most said they liked his strict Constitutional interpretation of the issues. However, others angrily warned that he would split the conservative vote, with a few even speculating that he was part of a progressive conspiracy.

Snitker addressed the split-the-vote issue by saying, “The two-party political class has gotten us to where we are today. If my opponents are concerned about splitting the vote, I suggest they do what is best for the country and drop out of the race.”

While most pundits give him only the slimmest chance of victory in November, Snitker says don’t count him out just yet. “I’m in this to win.”

Libertarianism is both a philosophy and a political view. The key concepts defining Libertarianism are:
Individual Rights as inherent to human beings, not granted by government
A Spontaneous Order through which people conduct their daily interactions and through which society is organized independent of central (government) direction
The Rule of Law which dictates that everyone is free to do as they please so long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others
A divided and Limited Government, checked by written constitution
Free Markets in which price and exchange is agreed upon mutually by individuals
Virtue of Production whereby the productive labor of the individual and any translation of that labor into earnings belongs, by right, to the individual who should not have to sacrifice those earnings to taxes
Peace which has, throughout history, most commonly been disrupted by the interests of the ruling class or centralized government.

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“Tonight’s speech was a reminder that, for decades, the policies of Republicans and Democrats alike have failed. Libertarians are asking people to take matters into their own hands. Instead of just complaining, we’re encouraging ordinary Americans to step up and run for Congress on the Libertarian Party ballot line.

I can say exactly the same thing about President Obama’s speech tonight that I said about George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech in January 2008: ‘Tonight’s State of the Union address went much as expected. Instead of calling for a more limited role of the federal government in American society, the President laid out plans that would only increase the government’s intervention into the realm of economics, health care, education and foreign policy.

I am weary of the President’s unspoken premise that only government–indeed, only the federal government–can accomplish good in our society.

President Obama seems to be totally blind to the concept that government can cause problems rather than solve them. His speech was filled with ‘More’: more handouts, more spending, more programs, more bailouts, more regulations. We Libertarians want less government, not more.

Not to be outmatched by the Democrats, the Republican Party conveyed its lack of seriousness in addressing this nation’s government spending problems by having Bob McDonnell, Virginia Governor for eleven (11) days, deliver its rebuttal to the President. If they were really serious about addressing the dire fiscal circumstances of this nation, they would have had Paul Ryan, a six-term congressman from Wisconsin, who has proposed the most serious plan of anyone in the two older parties to keep us from going off a fiscal cliff.

Last week, Alan Auerbach, Professor of Economics and Law at UC Berkeley and US government fiscal policy expert, said that the Democratic and Republican parties are in a ‘death embrace’ with their government spending. The only political party that is rationally and forthrightly addressing the need to cut government spending and end our culture of ever expanding entitlements is the Libertarian Party.

As Americans lose hope in Obama, we Libertarians are warning voters against running back to the Republicans who got us into such big messes in the first place. Republicans started the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republicans made the false intellectual case for bailing out banks and car companies. Republicans argued that deficits don’t matter. Republicans gave us the giant Medicare expansion bill.

The President’s suggestion of a ’spending freeze’ was especially ludicrous and insulting to the intelligence of Americans. The amounts involved are minuscule, and Congress won’t accept them anyway. Will Obama sign the spending bills that ignore his ‘freeze’? You bet he will. Instead, the President should demand across-the-board cuts in all areas, including entitlements.

The President talked a lot about jobs. Unfortunately, the policies he supports are responsible for most of the unemployment we see today. High taxes, minimum wage laws, hiring regulations, firing regulations, mandatory unemployment benefits, and other government interference make it much more difficult for businesses to hire and keep employees. As expected, the President’s prescription is to increase the dosage of this government poison.

While our nation is declining dangerously right now, a turnaround could be straightforward and simple with steps like these: 1. Bring our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan; 2. Stop rewarding failed companies with bailouts; 3. Cut taxes and spending and let the free market work.

Finally, on the matter of political rhetoric, I call upon the two older parties to stop spoon feeding politics to the American people as if we are a bunch of overgrown children. These are difficult times that call for more than rhetorical flourish or positioning a group of diverse people around a politician. Older party politicians need to be specific about their proposed policies, as Libertarians are.

And, I know I’m probably just wasting electrons, but can’t we go back to the days in which the President sent a copy of his speech to Congress and left it at that. The speech last night took 1/7000th of an entire year. I think the vast majority of the American people would agree that we have better ways to spend our time.”

William Redpath has served as the Chairman of the Libertarian Party since 2006. For more information, or to arrange an interview, call LP Executive Director Wes Benedict at 202-333-0008 ext. 222.

The LP is America’s third-largest political party, founded in 1971. The Libertarian Party stands for free markets and civil liberties.

The Libertarian Party is America’s third largest and fastest growing political party. Libertarians engage in a variety of projects, working for everyone’s liberty on every issue.

The Libertarian Party was created in December of 1971 by people who realized that the politicians had strayed from America’s original libertarian foundation, with disastrous results. Their vision was the same as that of America’s founders — a world where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, a world of peace, harmony, opportunity, and abundance.

Libertarians are practical; we know we can’t make the world perfect. But, it can be better. Libertarians will keep working to create a better, freer society for everyone. As William Allen White said: “Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.”

“Libertarians believe the answer to America’s political problems is the same commitment to freedom that earned America its greatness: a free-market economy and the abundance and prosperity it brings; a dedication to civil liberties and personal freedom that marks this country above all others; and a foreign policy of non-intervention, peace, and free trade as prescribed by America’s founders.”

Libertarians believe in the American heritage of liberty, enterprise, and personal responsibility. Libertarians recognize the responsibility we all share to preserve this precious heritage for our children and grandchildren.

Libertarians believe that being free and independent is a great way to live. We want a system which encourages all people to choose what they want from life; that lets them live, love, work, play, and dream their own way.

The Libertarian way is a caring, people-centered approach to politics. We believe each individual is unique. We want a system which respects the individual and encourages us to discover the best within ourselves and develop our full potential.

The Libertarian way is a logically consistent approach to politics based on the moral principle of self-ownership. Each individual has the right to control his or her own body, action, speech, and property. Government’s only role is to help individuals defend themselves from force and fraud.

The Libertarian Party is for all who don’t want to push other people around and don’t want to be pushed around themselves. Live and let live is the Libertarian way.

Let’s take a look at the state of Maine. A state that had 128,000 citizens that were uninsured in 2003. At the time, Governor John Baldacci (D) signed into law a state-wide health care plan to combat the situation. By the time 2009 arrived, it would cover all of Maine’s citizens. The system would help keep control of hospitals and physicians to hold down insurance premiums. It was sold as a way to provide everyone insurance as well as save business and patients money. To top it off, it was stated that there would be no increase in taxes.

Well after five years of the program, not only has the program not save any money, but it has also cost the taxpayers of Maine $155 million and is still rising. Here’s how the program was supposed to work. There were to be two government programs that would cover the uninsured. The legislature greatly expanded MaineCare, the state’s Medicaid program. Today Maine families with incomes of up to $44,000 a year are eligible; 22% of the population is now in Medicaid, roughly twice the national average.

Then the state created a “public option” (where have you heard that lately?) known as DirigoChoice. The plan would compete with private plans such as Blue Cross. To get lower income Mainers to enroll, it offered taxpayer-subsidized premiums. (again, this sounds familiar) The plan’s original funding source was $50 million of federal stimulus money the state got in 2003. Over the years, the plan was to be “funded by the savings in the health-care system.”

During the peak of the program in 2006, only about 15,000 people had enrolled in the DirigoChoice program. That number has now dropped to below 10,000, according to Maine’s own reporting. About two-thirds of those who enrolled already had insurance, which they dropped in favor of the subsidized public option. So instead of the 128,000 that were uninsured, the actual number is only 3,400.

Most of what is in Maine’s health care program is actually in the Obama-care bill. So why bother with trying to have a national health care program when they can’t even get it to work on a small scale? If Obama and his friends are so into this bill, then may I suggest that we do a test on the actual program on the state level. Sort of like a “try it before you buy it” program. Try it in California for five years and let’s see how successful it is at that point. If it can survive without a constant need of federal stimulus money, then I say we go ahead with it on a national level.

I know it will never work. One because that it has already been tried in Maine as well as Massachusetts and Tennessee and each time it failed. Currently in Maine, a healthy single male at the age of thirty, pays a monthly premium of $762 while a citizen in the same condition in New Hampshire only pays $222.

This bill (HR3200) needs to be stopped and the discussion of health care reform needs to be re-focused to look at tort reform. A major part of health care costs come from malpractice insurance that the doctors need to have to protect themselves from from major law-suits. The lawyers have pushed the price of health care up from the class-action suits to individual cases. As for class-action suits, no one benefits from this type of practice other than the lawyers. Lawyers will pocket millions of dollars while the people who are affected by the situation only get a few dollars each as compensation.

Will Universal Health Care really work here in America? The answer is no. If you don’t believe it, then you need to go look for the information like I did.

It’s a shame that many (if not all) of these politicians are just going through the motions of actually listening to their voters. Quite a few of them have canceled their meeting and the ones that are having one are just trying to pacify the crowd.

Arlen Specter (Republican turned Democrat) had a meeting this morning and from the way his posture and his actions gave me the impression of not really listening to the people. When one woman asked a question about health care. She read from the Bill that at a certain age, the persons coverage would be limited. If a seventy-four year old with cancer, that patient would not be given the treatment to fight the disease. The Senator gave a snappy answer as to the statement is just a lie and 1that that is not the case for the elderly. He immediately asked for the next question and did not go into detail of the bill.

These politicians no longer care about the American people and in my opinion should be voted out of office at the first chance that they come up for re-election. Not just the Democrats, but the Republicans as well. The position of a Senator or a Representative was never meant to be a career. It seems that all politicians have forgotten the fact that they work for us, the American people. We are their base and they need to be reminded of the fact. No matter who is up for re-election, they should be removed from the position. The political ties that they have made have gotten too big.