http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCRw3O0x-Ys&feature=email

or you can just put “Sam Edwards – Candidate for NC House District #118” in the YouTube search bar.  Look for the other candidates’ talks as well.

The two forums (one sponsored by the Haywood Chamber of Commerce and the other by Senior Advocacy Network and the Junaluskans) were interesting, especially in that they put on exhibit the common tack being taken by the local Democrat legislative delegation (Haire, Queen, Rapp, and Snow). Basically, the Fantastic Four’s message boils down to these points:

(1) You can’t really want to vote us out just as we’re getting into senior leadership positions in Raleigh. (This means, “We can get more pork for you”). The problem is, this will mean nothing if their party is not in the majority, which recent evidence (such as the recent scientific poll from the Civitas Foundation [http://www.nccivitas.org/media/poll-results/september-2010-poll-results]) suggests is not going to happen – maybe is not going to happen big-time.

Another problem is that, with a newly awakening and increasingly savvy electorate, there are more and more people like the business owner I talked with in Waynesville yesterday who said, “I don’t want the government to give me anything.” You can’t sell pork if nobody’s buying. To more and more of us ordinary folks, switching to a kosher diet in the political sphere is looking like an essential measure for economic health.

(2) We don’t know what all this negativity about the economy is about. Why, Site Selection magazine rates our state as having the best business climate of any of the fifty states in the nation! YOU’VE GOTTA BELIEEEVE US!!! The problem here is that most of their soon to be former constituents don’t have time to read – let alone care about – what Site Selection says about the NC (especially the Western NC) business climate – they’re too busy scrambling to stay afloat in what any of them can tell the Fabulous Four is the worst economy anyone under sixty has ever seen. And note, Site Selection is the only source ever cited to support this claim, which isn’t very surprising, since the magazine seems to cater to the kind of corporations – big ones – that typically benefit from the kind of corporate welfare to which the Fantastic Four and their party are partial.

It is a stitch, though, to hear a bunch of Democrats using a tactic that worked so well for Herbert Hoover (NOT!) when he told the folks that “Prosperity is Just Around the Corner!”

(3) We’ve already made the hard choices and made the largest budget cuts in state history – 3 billion (or 3.5, or 5, or something that’s a lot) dollars! If you were an executive with a corporation (like, say, Enron) and did this kind of financial reporting to your stockholders, they’d fire you, and you’d be lucky not to end up with a taxpayer funded vacation at Concertina Wire Mountain Preserve. They say they cut the budget, but somehow state spending still went up more than a hundred million dollars.

I still don’t get it. Seems like they thought about buying the Escalade (you know, like the one Heath Shuler drives) and settled for the Geo (which they still can’t pay for) and are counting the difference in price between what they wanted and what they got as a budget cut. I’m not saying they’re lying (which would require them actually to know what the truth about this really is – an arguable point) but I do think it’s safe to say they’re not telling us the truth.

“Just listen to a push poll that said you would raise the sales tax in the state to 23% if elected.”

Here’s my response:

Thank you for contacting me about the push-poll alleging that I would raise the state sales tax to 23% if elected.  I wish I could say I was surprised, but the only thing that is really surprising about it is that it took the opposition until now to use it.  My opponent’s Party must be getting worried that his re-election is now in peril.

This assertion (or, more likely, this suggestion) is, of course, a lie (that being defined here as the intentional telling of an untruth by someone who knows, or who is the agent of someone who knows, the truth).  It is so on several counts:

First, and most simply, it is beyond the capability of a single member of the General Assembly to raise any tax:  He has to get the agreement of at least sixty-one Representatives and twenty-six Senators to pass such a bill, which still requires the Governor’s consent.

Second, the allegation is a common one levelled against supporters of the concept of the Fair Tax, of whom I am one, which proposes, not the augmentation, but the total replacement of the current Internal Revenue Code (which taxes incomes, excises, inheritance, and just about anything that moves) with a single tax levied on the consumption of new goods and services. The cost of the items we buy is increased by the necessity of complying with the current tax code already, but that is hidden from us.  This change (which is designed to be revenue-neutral) would make the already embedded tax rate plain and also deliver us from the current system in which politicians game the tax code to reward the people who invested in their careers.  The concept is detailed at FairTax.org and in two best-selling books by Congressman John Linder (R-Ga.) and talk-show host Neal Boortz, which are readily available in bookstores and on the internet.

(The “this candidate would raise your taxes 23%” ploy has been used before in this District when Heath Shuler was running against Charles Taylor, who was a FairTax supporter.  It was a distortion, which the Shuler campaign knew to be a distortion, and therefore it was a lie.  It still is.)

Third, the 23% figure is for a Federal tax and designed to be revenue-neutral for a multi-trillion dollar budget.  Any state levy on a similar basis would be far less, since the state budget is far less (though it’s still too big).

Fourth, the lie is aided by its failure to mention that the proposal includes, as an integral and non-negotiable element, a monthly anticipatory rebate (called a “prebate” for short) of the amount of taxes that would be payed on essential goods and services by your household.  This would be calculated  by using the official poverty line for the household type (single, married, married with children, etc.), applying the tax, and dividing the result by 12.  This prevents the tax being regressive – negatively impacting the poor – which is a major defect of any conventional sales tax.

To be clear, here is a summary of my position on taxation for North Carolina:

1.  I will support my Party’s plan to reduce corporate and individual tax rates within the first 100 days of our taking control of the General Assembly in January.

2.  I consider this a urgently necessary first step toward a complete overhaul of the state’s current system of taxation, which stifles economic development, discourages investment, and makes saving difficult.

3.  I believe that overhaul should result in the abolition of the current complicated and unfair income-based system with one based on consumption.  If you save, you shouldn’t be taxed.  If you spend, you should (unless you thriftily buy used goods, which already have been taxed).  Accomplishing this will not be easy, for in Raleigh as in Washington there are entrenched lobbying interests (partisan, bi-partisan, and non-partisan) which make their living jockeying for special favors through tax legislation.

4.  I believe that tax reform should include property-tax reform and am developing a concept for that which would enable people who have completely paid for their real, personal, and personal property not to be treated – as is currently the case – as tenants of the government even after they have a clear title to the property.

5.  I believe taxation must be equally and fairly applied.

6.  I believe that tax reform is part of the solution to our state’s economic problems.  We must have spending discipline and limit our spending to those things that are necessary functions of state government.

I hope this helps, and invite you to contact me again if I can be of assistance concerning this or any other matter of concern.

I would be honored to have your support at the ballot-box this year.

Sincerely yours,

Sam Edwards

1.  You can see my cable access TV interview with Dr Dan Eichenbaum at

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/9574810

(The distinguished gentleman with me is RL Clark, who is contesting uberliberal Martin Nesbitt in NC Senate District 49.)

2.  I sat down with the Asheville Citizen-Times’ political staff for an interview, and they allowed me to do a 90-second video presentation as part of it, which you can view at

http://www.citizen-time.com/article/20100924/POLITICS01/309240028/1223/POLITICS

3.  As part of their election coverage, I interviewed with Vicki Hyatt and Jonathan Key of The Mountaineer.  The 10-minute video portion of the interview can be seen at

http://www.votehaywood.com

You can click on the NC House tab on the left side of the page, or go direct to the video interview by clicking on the candidate picture on the menu tape on the homepage.  (Apologies in advance for my scrunched-up blazer:  I didn’t know it happened until I saw the tape!)

The proposed revision of the Solid Waste Rule before the Board of Health continues to concern many good and law-abiding members of the Haywood County community. Even though the matter is before a different body, the forum of the County Commission is an appropriate place to address it for two reasons: First, because, at last report, the Board of Health plans to permit no further public comment on the proposal at its own meetings. Second, because you as Commissioners are responsible for appointing the members of that Board – a fact that the public is no more likely to forget than they are to forget your assurances last year that the proposed Nuisance Ordinance was a dead issue.

That there has been confusion about this Rule is true. However, it needs to be said that most of this confusion seems to originate not from the concerned citizens, but from some of the agents of county government. Denny and Debbie King have done amazing, impressive, and thorough research on this matter. On the basis of this research, they have raised informed questions and sound objections, not only to the Rule itself, but to the lack of an ultimately believable rationale for adopting the excessive sanctions which it imposes.

I would suggest to you – and through you to the Board of Health – that the proposed application of Class 1 Misdemeanor penalties to violators of this Rule makes about as much sense as attempting to swat a mosquito with a baseball bat: The mosquito will almost certainly escape, but in the process the bat is very likely do considerable collateral damage – not least to the confidence of the people in the competence of whoever is wielding the bat and the judgment of whoever sent him in to do the job.

If there has been any benefit to this year-and-a-half long debacle, it is this: It has made it very clear that the objective of giving local government more direct control over local affairs, to which an increasing number of citizens are dedicated, will not be adequately accomplished unless we also enact strict and effective limitations on the powers of boards that are neither elected by the people nor under the effective control of the people’s elected local representatives. The administrative state – which operates under the assumption that, in the end everything is owned by the government – needs to be dismantled. Government by the elected representatives of the people needs to be restored and renewed. Let this begin here, and may it flow down like a mighty river from the Great Smokies to the Outer Banks.

 This is the article that Rush Limbaugh brought to national attention last week.  To Codevilla’s insights, he added the helpful distinction — borrowed from Soviet-speak – between the apparatchiks (the foot soldiers of the Party) and the nomenklatura (those who set the policy and reap the big rewards of power).   The apparatchik always wants to become one of the nomenklatura, but almost certainly he never will – though, to keep him compliant and themselves safe from revolution, the members of the nomenklatura will always give him reason to hope.  Ultimately, though, the apparatchik is just a tool for the people who really matter, who really set the policy, who really believe that they have a natural right to rule (not just to govern, but to RULE), the people who are legends in their own minds – who know they are smarter, better, wiser than us ignorant rubes who are neither nomenklatura nor even the lowest of apparatchik.  And the apparatchik runs a risk rarely experienced by any member of the nomenklatura, at least in its American iteration:  He is always subject to being thrown to the wolves so that the people that really matter in the Ruling Class can save their own skins.

 Instead of apparatchiks and nomenklatura, Americans might call the personnel of the Ruling Class bagmen and capos, or ward heelers and party bosses, or bureaucrats and elitists, or pushers and suppliers.  From Pontius Pilate to Adolf Eichmann, history is replete with examples of apparatchiks – enough examples to make it clear that the apparatchik is capable of doing great damage and effecting considerable evil.   though the greater guilt and the ultimate responsibility rests with the nomenklatura.

 It is these who must be resoundingly defeated and utterly overthrown come November.  In Lincoln’s words, “We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country” – and our state, and our county.

During a private conversation yesterday following 11th District Congressional candidate Jeff Miller’s Q&A with the Haywood TEA Party, a future constituent of ours made what I thought was a very profound observation. “The choice we have to make,” he told me, “is whether we’re going to be an entitlement society or an entrepreneurial society.”

We’ve already gone a long way toward the former during the last hundred years of the Progressive (NOT) ascendancy, and we’ve now reached the point where we cannot refuse to choose.

If we become finally an entitlement society, I’d respectfully suggest that we change our national emblem from the eagle to the turkey vulture (a.k.a., the buzzard).

Or maybe the vampire bat.

Or the mosquito.

Whatcha think?

Showing the game bag (Vicki Hyatt photo)

This week, Waynesville’s local paper, The Mountaineer, published a photograph of Representative Ray Rapp (my opponent) and Senator Joe Sam Queen flanking local law enforcement chiefs and some of the video gaming machines that were outlawed by the General Assembly just before its recent adjournment — legislation which both legislators supported. It looks for all the world like a photo of Teddy Roosevelt and his staff exhibiting the animals they had bagged on safari.

Presumably, this was intended as a visual representation of how our hardworking men in Raleigh have co-operated to protect the citizenry from the depredations of greedy gambling interests. For all I know, this was the intention of both Mr Rapp and Mr Queen in supporting the measure, and if so it is to their credit. But it does seem that the act may have behind it other, less noble motivations which are real even if they may not be shared by our current legislators.

It’s worth considering that the elimination of video gaming actually serves a dual purpose:

1) It protects the state monopoly on gambling called the “Education Lottery” from competition (and it seems that video poker generally was more popular than the Lottery), and

2) it gives cover for incumbents with those citizens (and there are many in this District and region) who oppose the expansion of gambling on religious, moral and/ or social grounds. (For example, it can be argued that state-sponsored gambling is another way in which the state – intentionally or not – encourages people to take chances rather than responsibility, and that because lower-income people tend to be disproportionately represented among those who play such games, it amounts to an unfair and exploitative tax on the poor.)

While I am not convinced that so-called games of chance are inherently vicious, neither do I think that the state has a role in choosing winners and losers in this or any other sort of business that it grants the stamp of legality. Still less does the state have the right to set itself up as what is, in effect, the only entity allowed to exercise authority over an area which, when all is said and done, is outside its constitutionally-limited scope.

What this means practically is that the permission of gambling enterprises in a state is a question more of prudence than of principle. I do not think that North Carolina should permit for-profit gambling, and would gladly vote to repeal the lottery, but if the state continues to permit it, then for-profit gambling should not be restricted to the state monopoly. Instead, such enterprises should be subject to appropriate licensing, regulation, policing and taxation.

One more thing on this general issue: Recent reports suggest that, if the Lottery were in Nevada, the state gaming commission would shut it down because the house (that is, the state) is paying out far too little in prizes in comparison to what it takes in. So far, it would appear that the NC Education Lottery provides yet another instance of the principle that I modestly call Edwards’ First Law of Political Economy: “When government steps outside its limited area of responsibility, there is no problem, however bad, that its involvement cannot make worse.”

In addition to yours truly, Mayor Ralph Hise (running for Senate District 47), Steve Pressley (candidate for Haywood County Register of Deeds) and Donna Forga (running in the non-partisan election for one of the District Court seats in the 30th Judicial District) were there. County Commission candidates David Bradley and Denny King, who had been with us at the first such event on July 9th, were otherwise engaged.

Both my opponent (Ray Rapp) and Ralph Hise’s (Joe Sam Queen) were present on the stage at the front. This time (unlike at the July 2 dance), JSQ refrained from open electioneering on his and RR’s behalf. (I imagine that questions had been raised as to whether this actually had been in conformity with NC election laws.)

Some folks did ask us what the Democrats were giving away, but all we could do was to say, “Well, you’ll have to ask them.” I guess it was probably just as well that it didn’t occur to me to respond, “Free promises!”