By Orion Karl Daley

Dear C-Span:
I watched your show this morning with Ron Paul. When he intimated that Amendment II of the Bill of Rights was intended to give the right of anarchy, I was dismayed that a Congressman would interpret its wording this way.

Consider - would Amendment II be intended to jettison the Constitution( Articles 1 -6 ) if the government was in question by the people ? In other words, does Amendment II say that we can trash the government which is based on the Constitution.

Consider George Washington's words: "Let us raise a standard that the wise can repair" . I believe that he was referring to the US Constitution.

Article 4, Section 4 speaks of a Republic, where in Amendment I, we are given the right to peaceably assemble, and also petition our government. It is my interpretation that Democracy ( to assemble and Petition ) drives our representation of the republic.

Consider - Why would Amendment I state our means to address government when at issue, if Amendment II was intended to give the right to anarchy ? Does this actually make sense ?

Lets also consider the words in Amendment II - The Right to Bear Arms –

"A Well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed"

Regarding the word Militia: In Article 1, Congress is solely responsible for forming Militias, and in Article II, it is the President who acts as the sole commander and chief of the Militia. Its only a matter of reading this document to see that the word Militia is only used 3 times !

Regarding the word 'Arms: I would imagine that this could mean anything, and if part of a Militia, as not having a national guard in 1790, means that you could have cannons, cannon balls and black powder as well. Today, if this is to be taken literally, and if given the right to Bear Arms, such as for one's personal protection - then does it include any form of modern weapon , or even an old spear ?

Consider what "to the security of a free state" might mean – when thinking back about the French Indian War, and the Revolution, and that the 9 colonies were the basis of a new founded nation without a national guard - what is required for the State to be free of oppression ? In other words to be overrun by the English, French or an Indian Tribe ?

Amendment 10 as affording States to make laws, provides plenty of latitude for Virginia and NY to differ in Gun Law. Simple question again - why would the Bill of Rights imply the Amendment II is for this when we are made up of states and given Amendment 10?

I am glad that we do have Amendment I when considering 450+ Senators and Representatives having various understandings of what the US Constitution means in terms of the management of our Government and our Bill of Rights –

Thank you in advance for thinking about this,

Orion Karl Daley
Presidential Candidate for 2008
for the Strategic Future of our nation
Author - The New Deal ISBN: 1419670948
Balanced Party http://unity2008.org
New York, NY, USA -

By Peter Bearse, Candidate NH CD-1

Bill Duncan’s NHInsider rebuttal to Paul Chevalier’s praise of Jeb Bradley’s service to veterans is fine and good as far as it goes. Rep. Shea-Porter did well to help the three disabled veterans whose cases Duncan cites. As a Member of Congress, who would not, with all the resources that a Congressional office can command?

Duncan then goes a step too far in lavishing praise. He quotes one of the veterans helped as saying: “When it comes to constituent services, she’s on a whole different level.” I do not doubt this statement was made by a veteran very grateful for the disability checks he began to receive. Yet, neither the veteran in question, nor Bill Duncan, nor even the Representative herself, is in a position to make such a sweeping claim. For every veteran helped, I can find one who was not. There are also many who have been helped but the service they have received has been untimely, incomplete or otherwise unsatisfactory.

As a study of Congress by the Heritage Foundation recognized, constituent service turns Congress into a giant reelection machine, more so than Congressional voting records or legislative achievements. Yet, it is also an area that lacks accountability. It is easy for Members of Congress, with their large staffs and expense budgets, to provide constituent services. It is easy to highlight some cases where the services have made significant differences in the lives of people helped. So, Bill Duncan, perhaps helped by Rep. Shea-Porter’s staff, found it easy to cherry-pick a few such cases. Yet, if the Representative of NH CD1, or any Representative, really wanted to provide accountability for the time and money devoted to constituent services, what would the accounts show? The fact is: We don’t know, because Congress hides its operations from accountability. They are opaque, far from transparent. Pulling a few favorable cases from office files is like the self-advertising provided by Members’ newsletters: It’s electioneering, not accountability.

Those who have analyzed organizational performance know what it takes to provide true accountability. Records need to be kept that enable one to measure performance – not only results but also time and money (taxpayers’) inputs employed to get results. In addition, polls need to be taken or surveys of customers or clients (here, constituents) administered to learn many things that Rep. Shea-Porter’s office is either unwilling or unable to report: How many veterans were served? What types of services were provided? Who provided them? – the Member or her staff? How did they feel about the quality and timeliness of services received? Voters should be challenging incumbents to provide such data and information. Citation of a few favorable cases does not make a case for overall favorable performance by a Representative, any more than a few big sales make a successful salesman. There are also questions of credits and trade-offs. Should Rep. Shea-Porter take credit for services rendered if they were provided by her staff? One of the vices of conventional politicians, after all, is taking credit for the work of others. What other requests for services had to be paid less attention in order to generate the good results generated for a few?

The latter reflects a tough trade-off. Besides ignoring or ill-serving some veterans needing service, what others were ignored or ill-served? In my travels throughout the district, I discovered two homeless people, another facing foreclosure and a fourth in danger of losing her son to the Division of Child and Family Services (DCYF). Given the demands of a campaign; thusfar, I have been able to help only one of these, the DCYF case. She had repeatedly appealed for help to Rep. Shea-Porter. She received nothing in response, not even an acknowledgement. Thus, no one can claim that our current Representative provides a “whole different level of service.” She doesn’t provide enough reporting back to voters to enable them to judge the truth of the claim.

By contrast, Independent Candidate Peter Bearse would provide a higher level of service and help to create a community of caring in the First District (NH CD 1). How? – By:

v Funding the establishment of two additional Congressional District offices out of his Congressional salary. These would provide active outreach to constituents, not just wait for people in need of help to walk in the door. Many would not, but many people need far more help than they are getting in these tough times in a big district (80 towns).

v Providing full accountability and reporting of time and money spent on constituent services, plus independent assessments of the results of services pro vided.

v Using both Congressional staff and a network of volunteers to leverage and supplement Congressional office resources.

Perhaps then, two years from now, we can both talk about and see a “higher level” of services and a “community of caring.”

Released by Supporters of PETER BEARSE for CONGRESS, September 3, 2008.

NOTE: Peter is an International Consulting Economist (Ph.D.), Expert on accountability co-author of Services: The New Economy, and Independent Candidate for Congress, NH CD 1.

by Dave Jarvis, NH CD-1 Republican Candidate

Today, Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is under fire from Democrats for the pregnancy of her seventeen year old daughter. Somehow it is considered a political scandal. Would it have been so if her daughter had had an abortion? No. If she had had an abortion she would not be incurring the wrath of the Democratic Party. It is only the choice for life that is so repulsive to liberals and counts for a scandal. The rest of America sees this pregnancy for what it is, possibly a mistake, but a new life nonetheless and a life to be celebrated. The fury of the Democrats is no surprise to me though, having run for congress as a Democrat and having spoken to the committed Democrats of the state of New Hampshire regarding life issues. At the time, I considered myself a “pro-life Democrat”, a term that today I simplify; I was naive.

After working to get Carol Shea-Porter elected to office, I watched dissilusioned as within the first moments after gaining power the Democrats repealed the parental consent laws so that any minor in the state could have an abortion without even discussing it with their parents. Soon after, the U.S. Supreme Court supported a ban on the barbaric practice of partial birth abortion where babies up to the ninth month of development could be aborted in a practice worthy of the Third Reich. Democrats everywhere howled in anger over the ruling that most Americans considered common decency. It was at that moment that I realized that my role in politics as a pro-life Democrat was merely a lie. The truth is, I should have known earlier.

When giving speeches to hardcore Democrats during the Congressional race I warned against a precipitous departure from Iraq and was the only Congressional candidate in 2006 to openly suggest troop increases. I was screamed at and insulted for it. When I warned these loyal Democrats about the toll in human life that would result from leaving Iraq in the midst of a civil war I was met with the cruelest of responses, “Let 'em die.” Throughout the campaign it seemed to me to be the real idea behind the rapid redeployment argument.

Thankfully, we have a Presidential candidate that fought long and hard defending the lives of our troops in harms way while making sure genocide didn't take over the entire Middle East. Thankfully, we have a John McCain. And thankfully we have a Vice Presidential candidate like Sarah Palin, a member of Feminists for Life (one of the most thoughtful pro-life organizations, and of which I am a member). And thank God they are both supportive of her daughter's decision to love and cherish the baby inside her womb.

But the voters of New Hampshire should not delude themselves like I did. There is no place for anyone even remotely pro-life in the Democratic Party. Evidence of this is everywhere. And assured of their own electoral victory in November the Democratic Party has even changed the wording of its official abortion policy from “Safe, Legal, and Rare” to “safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.” The hard truth is, and it took me a long time to accept it, is that they do not want less abortions. They want more.

It is through this mindset that Sarah Palin's daughter failed her family and her society. It's not that she got pregnant. It's that she decided for life. Those like me who support healthcare reform, and who support the rights of gays and lesbians to marry, and who are against the death penalty, but who commit the ultimate crime of believing life is sacred are absolutely unwelcome in the Democratic Party and should accept that fact immediately. We are all Sarah Palin's daughter to them. We are all a scandal.

By Dave Jarvis

Today, in the race for the Republican nomination for Congress in CD1, my competition argues that universal healthcare is essentially socialism. I would ask them to consider that with every American currently having access to either the emergency room, charitable care, or for Medicare, healthcare costs in American are already socialized and will be for the remainder of our history since we can't and shouldn't bear to see Americans dying in the street for lack of medical care. They also argue for the free market as the proper approach to skyrocketing healthcare costs. My question to them is...free market? What free market? Sure, there is a very obvious free market for health insurance but not for healthcare products themselves. And there is a free market for less expensive healthcare goods and services; that market is called the supermarket. And maybe for even more expensive products that can be purchased through medical wholesalers there may be something we could consider a free market. However the expensive goods that might actually have a price tag on them with available statistics regarding its value may be well outside the price range of the ordinary American except if they are using health insurance, and in that case the health insurance company would have their own price tag that is in no way negotiable with the consumer.

Free markets have transparent prices. Health products and services in the United States do not. Free markets have transparent means of qualifying the value of a product or service relational to price. Healthcare in this country does not. Free markets involve all the drama of a point to point purchase where the consumer evaluates value and price and stands to benefit financially from choosing the lesser price, and benefit personally from greater value. In our current healthcare system the only financial beneficiary is the health insurance company and the health professionals, and value is left to chance and the professional integrity of the medical community.

We are in the dark ages of healthcare funding. We have lords and vassals and the vassals have no choice but to pay the lords and take whatever comes. What we need in healthcare is the industry equivalent of the home mortgage where financial decisions can be made by the consumer while the bulk payment is carried by a much larger institution. Without the consumer controlling their own destiny, without them making free and unfettered decisions, our healthcare costs whether privatized or nationalized will bankrupt our nation.

Change will not happen on its own. The lords like the system this way. They enjoy great wealth because of it, and they hold an incredible amount of political power being in control of the lives and well being of three hundred million Americans. The only intelligent answer is to nationalize healthcare utilizing the huge amount of political will to do so from the left. And then we build it the way every conservative knows it should be, with a real market and transparent prices, with market statistics regarding value readily available, and with consumers holding the keys to their own kingdom. One sentence should make the whole argument...three hundred million Americans all striving to choose the best quality, best priced healthcare products.

The only plan we have that allows consumers full access to markets, encourages them to choose the best prices and economize, and yet is still a single payer system is our national food stamp program. And I think it should be the new model for healthcare funding. In such a system, necessary healthcare funds would go into an ebt card where once the product is consumed the consumer would have access to any remaining funds. It makes sense on a micro level where decisions are made free of any bureaucracy and has the immediate effect of making healthcare professionals compete for business with lower prices and more attention to value. And it makes sense on the macro level as an economic mechanism much in the same vein as social security, working like a shock absorber with consumers choosing value in good times thus pumping excess money through the system, and with consumers choosing lower prices in difficult times allowing the entire economy to save. With such a plan in place, Social Security's place as the only economic buffer in difficult times would be replaced by a much more efficient economic shock absorber.

Now, if the Right were to continue fighting against the concept of universal coverage they may lose their place in the essential debate as to how a national system might look. And the way a universal system will work is vastly more important than the idea of universal coverage itself and even than the idea of the plan being government funded. So, the Right doesn't have to provide the gas. The Right doesn't have to drive. But, the Right most certainly should be in the car, preferably in the passenger seat with with the road map in hand, gently guiding his strong willed friend on the left in the right direction.

By Peter Bearse

The title here does not label the Convention “Democratic” because it does not deserve the adjective, even with a small ‘d’. It was like one giant rally for Obama from beginning to end. The National Socialist (Nazi) Party could not have done a better job for their own leader [der Feuhrer].

The entire event was heavily scripted and highly controlled from start to finish. Nothing was left to chance. Media speculation wondered whether the Clintons’ might instigate an uprising, or do anything less than join the unending chorus of praise and support for Obama. All important decisions, including the wording of the party platform – an important subject for discussion and debate in democratic conventions past – were made before the Convention began. The nomination of Hillary was a charade, quickly put to rest with another unanimous acclamation for Obama. The assembled might as well have changed a few words in an old song to sing: ‘Back to Barack, belly to belly; I don’t give a damn and it doesn’t matter any…’

The fact that party conventions of both major parties have become a lot of media hype to make celebrities out of politicians should give voters pause. Let us ask, with Ben Franklin: Do we want a democratic Republic? Do we still have one? Can we “keep it”? Is texting via cell phones a substitute for face-to-face political discussion? Are the new technologies going to empower and liberate us or are they, as radio did in the ‘30’s and TV has been doing ever since, providing new tools for domination by political elites?

Lest we be misled by the misuse of the word “Democratic”, let us reflect on the controlled nature of the convention and ask: Does this represent the true nature of the Democratic Party and its ruling ideology? Do we want a command and control economy? Do we want mass politics that has people facing only towards a raised rostrum featuring a leader-as-American Idol? Are we observing the final degradation of American democracy? And if you share the concern for the renewal of our Republic implied by these questions: What are you going to do?

PETER BEARSE, Ph.D., Independent Candidate for Congress, NH CD 1