Rex Bell has made history in his previous runs for Indiana House. So why run for Congress? Rex explains to guest host Mike Kole.
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Rex Bell is one of the most successful campaigners in the entire Libertarian Party. Rex discusses his philosophy on campaigns, and shares tips on how to make your campaign successful. Recorded on April 21 in New Castle, Indiana.
Learn More at http://libertariantrainingcenter.com.
Over 50 Hoosiers gathered in Wayne County on St. Patrick’s Day to re-elect Rex Bell as Chairman, and to hear Libertarian candidates speak. Bell presided over the event, and introduced presumed LPIN candidates Jeremiah Morrell (HD-54) and Mark Brim (HD-56), and Rupert Boneham for Governor. Bell is also running for Congressional District 6. Mark Hoelscher was nominated for Wayne County Council at-large seat.
The event was covered by the area’s largest paper, the Pal-Item. Read that write-up here.
I heard Michael Cloud, one of my favorite libertarian speakers, say one time that if you can get people to ask the wrong question, it doesn’t matter what the answer is.
Yesterday, I read a story in a local paper in which Phil Pflum, one of our State Representatives, suggested a question concerning the “Right to work” legislation that will likely be discussed in the upcoming session of the Indiana General Assembly. Pflum’s suggestion: “Are we better off with or without unions? That’s what you have to ask yourself.”
I don’t have a problem with people asking themselves that question. I do wonder why the legislature should be asking itself that question.
Certainly everybody has the right to work. An employer and an employee, or an employer and a group of employees should be free to forge any type of agreement that they feel is beneficial to them. Whether or not that agreement requires, allows, or prohibits union membership should be entirely up to them. If they can’t reach an agreement, employees have the right to seek other employers, just as employers have the right to seek other employees.
As long as neither party is threatening or using force, the government shouldn’t be involved, or even asking a question.
Especially, considering if it does get involved, it will be the one threatening or using force.
Back when I was a student at Millville Grade School, there was a restaurant down the road in New Castle called Bud Alexander’s Cafeteria. Once in a while, after we got out of church, I was allowed to accompany my old buddy Stinky Wilmont and his family to Bud’s for Sunday dinner. We all lined up, walked down the serving aisle, loaded our plates with chicken and mashed potatoes, and when we reached Gladys, the cashier, we pointed back towards the end of the line where Stinky’s father was standing with Mrs. Wilmont, and explained that he would be paying for our meals.
And he always did. I understood that he was kind of obligated to feed his family, and I appreciated that he fed me whenever Stinky invited me to come along. I suppose he probably would have paid even if a stranger had managed to sneak into the line.
I recall the panic Stinky and I went through one time when we directed Gladys’s attention to end of the line, only to realize that Mr. Wilmont had wandered away from his post. It was our good fortune that Mrs. Wilmont located him before Gladys repossessed our chicken, but I did wonder at the time what might have happened if things hadn’t turned out like they did. I guess we could have simply told the cashier that the next person in line would pick up the bill, but I’m not sure he would have felt the same obligation to us that Stinky’s dad felt, and there’s a better than average chance that Gladys would have ended up with the chicken.
In the last several years, since I have had children and grandchildren of my own, I’ve spent a lot of time at the end of the line myself. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I figured that was part of the deal when I got married. And sometimes when we go out to eat with our children now, one of them ends up grabbing the bill. I’m not sure why, but I don’t want to offend them, so I don’t argue about it much. We never really signed a contract or anything. We’ve just kind of worked things out as we went along.
I have heard a lot of talk the last few years about something called a “social contract”. I guess it’s something that binds all people to a certain set of rules, even if you never signed it, and regardless of whether you agree with the rules or not. I’m a big fan of certain aspects of social contracts. To be sure, we are all bound, even without a contract, to abstain from initiating violence or force against another person or their property, just as we are bound to refrain from infringing on another person’s rights. But unfortunately, social contracts of today have morphed into something much more than that.
Several years ago, our government, and many voters at the time, decided that it would be a good idea to put a bunch of government managed retirement and health insurance programs into place. And, as is the case with most government programs, things didn’t work out quite as well as planned. Currently, the federal programs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and hundreds of state and local government pension programs across the country, are underfunded by about $61 trillion, give or take a trillion or two, which means the people collecting from these programs are relying on people a little farther down the line to kick in enough to pay their benefits. And a lot of those people down the line never signed up to do that.
Thomas Paine, the author of colonial America’s Common Sense, stated that: “Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it…Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow.”
If enough people at the end of the line decide old Thomas was correct about today’s social contracts, those of us getting ready to step up to the counter might want to start figuring on another way to take care of the bill.
It’s been a bad year for individual freedom and the 4th Amendment in Indiana this year. The Indiana supreme court ruled that individuals don’t have the right to resist an unlawful police entry into their home. Of course, the court was wrong. We always have had and always will have that right. What the court actually ruled is that the government will no longer protect that right. Since the one of the few legitimate functions of government is to protect our rights, it kind of makes me wonder why we keep it around at all if it can’t even do that.
As if the court’s decision alone wasn’t bad enough, it also has the side effect of contributing to another government injustice. As local governments and police departments everywhere face increasing budget shortages, many have been subsidizing those budgets through asset forfeiture, the practice of seizing a persons property before they have been convicted of committing a crime, and then keeping that property whether that person is convicted or not.
Indiana’s own Radley Balko recently relayed this story about the billions of dollars that are now taken through asset forfeiture programs, with some of the most infamous cases taking place in Indiana. Legally, the police can now enter your house without a warrant, grab the butter and egg money out of the cookie jar, and the burden of proof will be on you prove why they shouldn’t have entered your home in the first place, and why they shouldn’t be able to keep your money.
Luckily, (or unluckily), I don’t have enough butter and egg money to make an unlawful entry into my home very profitable for anyone. And I still hold out some hope that there are enough police officers out there who respect the Constitution and individual rights enough that the court’s decision won’t be as detrimental to freedom as it might be.
But however things turn out, I still maintain that no one is coming into my home without a warrant or an invitation.
At least not without some resistance.
Two local Libertarians have announced that they will seek their party’s nomination to run for office in 2012. Rex Bell, of Hagerstown, hopes to receive the nod for U.S. House of Representatives District 6 seat, currently held by Mike Pence. Jeremiah Morrell, of New Castle, will be going after the recently re-configured District 54 seat of the Indiana House, currently held by Thomas Saunders. Bell has previously been the Libertarian candidate for the District 54 seat. This is Morrell’s first run for office.
The Libertarian Party selects it’s state and federal candidates at it’s spring convention.
“Libertarians have made some significant gains in east central Indiana and across the state in the last few years”, said Bell. “In the District 54 race in 2010, the Libertarians managed to win a few precincts, and even finish ahead of the Democrat overall in Wayne County. The new District 54 still contains some of our strongest areas in Wayne County, and also encompasses the newly organized LP in Rush County, which made an excellent showing in the 2011 elections. Henry County also had a strong Libertarian presence in the 2010 election. I believe all of that, combined with the voters growing dissatisfaction with “politics as usual”, gives Jeremiah an excellent shot at being the first Libertarian in Indiana to be elected at the state level.”
Bell also emphasized the importance of having a Libertarian presence in Washington. “We are seeing more and more legislation from the states exercising their 10th Amendment protections from an over-reaching federal government. It’s necessary to have some allies in Congress who will respect and protect not only the 10th Amendment, but all of the Constitution, especially in the wake of the continued growth of both the federal debt and bureaucracy. I hope the people of the 6th District will trust me to be one of those allies.”
Jeremiah Morrell works as a project coordinator for Gerdau, in Muncie. Morrell is a graduate of Indiana Wesleyan University with a degree in business. He serves on the Henry County 4-H Association and as a 4-H project leader, and is active with the Libertarian Party.
Morrell on the run for office “I am excited to make the case for freedom. I have watched our government fail to protect our most basic freedoms, and in many cases overstep their authority. I am looking forward to making the case to the people of Henry, Rush, and Wayne counties, demonstrating why there is a true need for something different.”
Long time readers of LPIN.org are familiar with Rex Bell and his buddy Stinky Wilmont. Rex was a decent kid growing up, but his wayward pal Stinky always seemed to get the two of them in jams at Millville grade school. Along the way, Rex learned a lot about life and libertarianism. In this collection of short essays, Rex relays some of these stories. You can buy your own copy here. Rex posted his newest “Stinky Short” today at LPIN.org.
We’re now offering a free copy of this hilarious book to any Dillon Fellow of the 1994 Society.
Back when we were attending Millville Grade School, my old buddy Stinky Wilmont used to look forward to visiting his grandmother in Kentucky every summer. I don’t recall which part of the state she lived in, but I do recall that we didn’t have as many roads back then as we have nowadays, and I remember Stinky telling me that he would enjoy the drive to her house a lot more if the trip could have been started in Jeffersonville.
I never made very many trips to Kentucky, but I did make a trip every summer to Camp Mack up in northern Indiana, and I shared Stinky’s sentiments that the trip would have been a lot easier if we had started a little closer to our final destination to begin with.
Read the rest of this entry »
I attended a public hearing in Richmond tonight concerning the Wheel Tax the Wayne County Commissioners want to impose. It seems that since cars are getting better mileage and people are driving less, the county doesn’t have enough money to properly maintain the roads.
I can understand how that might be a problem.
Apparently the Wayne County Highway Department budget is $3.2 million for this year. The highway department and the commissioners say that isn’t enough. I don’t know if it is or not.
I do know that there are about 68,000 people in Wayne County. I’m guessing that about 41,300 of them drive. I’m also guessing that each driver probably averages using about 15 gallons of gasoline a week. Like I said, I’m just guessing.
If those guesses are anyways close to being right, that means Wayne County drivers buy about 32,214,000 gallons of gasoline each year. We pay 52 cents in road use taxes for every gallon we buy. That totals up to about $16,751,280.00 per year. That doesn’t include the 28 cents in sales tax we’re paying on every gallon also.
You would think they could find $3.2 million somewhere in that amount. I guess not.
The state and federal government gets the lions share of our road use taxes, and they spend them on a lot of projects that don’t involve roads.
Before the local government starts demanding more road use taxes from us, we need to demand that all levels of government spend the money they have already taken from us for its intended purpose.
It wouldn’t hurt if our local officials started demanding that too.
(Written May 4, 2011. Rex Bell is the Wayne County Chairman.)
I was born in Henry County, and raised on a small farm near Millville. I was the second of eight children. At an early age it was expected and accepted that the children would help with the farm chores. We drank milk from our own cows, ate eggs from our own chickens and bacon from our own pigs.
Outside of an occasional visit to Saffer’s General Store in Mooreland or Kelly’s Ranch Market in Millville, or sometimes when the Jewel Tea man stopped in, we were pretty much self-sufficient. I remember my Grandpa used to say that we were the type of people that liked to “pick up our own sticks and kill our own snakes.”
That self-sufficiency that my parents and grandparents taught me stayed with me into my young adult years, and in 1974, I started my own construction business, which I still operate today. I’ve spent 32 years driving nails. I said I was self-sufficient, I didn’t say I was smart.
This concept of looking out for yourself runs in the family. My wife Susan owns an upholstery shop and a furniture store. When she was elected Judge of the Hagerstown Court in 2003, she drew the first paycheck that either of us had seen in over 25 years. My two oldest children worked and saved and paid their own way through college, and my youngest son, who works with me now and has since he was eight years old, started a home remodeling business when he was junior in high school.
By now you are probably wondering “Where in the world is he going with this. To tell you the truth, I’ve been wondering that myself. I think the point I would try to make is how my upbringing eventually led me to the Libertarian Party. The libertarians are strong supporters of personal freedom and personal responsibility.
I was raised by Republicans, so I naturally thought that I was a Republican, and I had always believed they were the friends of small business and limited government. As long as I could run my business without much interference I was fairly happy, and besides, I could always blame any undue regulation or excessive tax on some Democrat somewhere.
That frame of mind started unraveling in the mid 1990’s. The building department in Wayne county, where I have resided since 1971, for years was operated by one little man. He would drive around the county visiting with contractors, and as long as nobody made any grievous errors in judgment, and as long the customer was happy with the builder’s work, he was not inclined to get involved in the private affairs of the public. I didn’t like the fact that our county commissioners were wasting our tax dollars paying this man a salary and buying his gas so he could drive around all day, but as long as he mostly left us alone, I had resigned myself to put up with him.
But, as I mentioned, sometime around 1996, my Republican county council and commissioners decided that they were going to “upgrade” the Wayne County Building Department. They increased the budget tenfold, hired a woman from Cincinnati with a codebook and a tape measure, but no knowledge of construction, to run the department, and generally made life a living hell for homeowners and builders in the county. I helped to lead a group of those homeowners and builders in a quest to return some sanity to the department. The new inspector was gone within a year, but not without a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth by a lot of citizens in the county. I’ve always felt that this was the series of events that started to cause me to question if the Republican Party as it existed now was going to be able to satisfy my needs.
It was quite by coincidence that during this time I happened across the coverage of a Libertarian Party convention on CNN. I had never heard of the LP before, but it only took a few minutes of listening to a speech by Presidential candidate Harry Browne for me to decide that “hey, these guys actually get it”. Mr. Browne’s views on a constitutionally limited government, and what that government’s role in our lives should be, mirrored what my thoughts had been for years. I had thought that I was crazy to have these thoughts. Now, maybe I was crazy. But at least I found out that there were other people out there that were just as crazy as I was.
That exposure to the Libertarian Party started me to studying the libertarian philosophy. It is a philosophy of freedom and the responsibility that must accompany that freedom. It is based on the principles of freedom and responsibility that this country was founded on 230 years ago. And it is based on the principles that I was raised on 50 years ago.
It’s about freedom. That’s why I’m proud to be an American, and that’s why I’m proud to be a Libertarian.
Greetings and Salutations!
Just a reminder. Please consider running for one of the local offices listed below, or if you know someone that would make a good limited government candidate, have them get in touch with me.
The Libertarian Party of Wayne County will hold its 2011 Convention on Saturday, April 16th, at 6:30 P.M., at Carver’s Restaurant, 2270 Chester Blvd., Richmond IN 47374.
The public is invited to attend, so make sure and forward this e-mail and spread the word to your friends and family.
The LPWC will be nominating candidates for the 2011 City and Town Elections at the convention, along with offering a short program called “Liberty 101, What Libertarians Believe”.
We will also be electing party officers for 2011, so make sure you are there if you want a position. It’s also a good idea to be there if you don’t wan’t a position!
If you are interested in limited government, lower taxes and personal freedom, or if you are interested in running for office or helping some one else run for office, or if you would like to find out more about the Libertarian Party, or even if you just like good food and stimulating conversation, please plan on attending.
For more information, contact LPWC chairman Rex Bell at (765) 969-0086, or lpwc@msn.com
Several local Libertarian candidates received national recognition for their vote totals and percentages from the 2010 election, and one candidate achieved a total that hadn’t been reached by a third party candidate for over 85 years:
There will be openings in cities and towns in Richmond, Wayne County, and the surrounding counties. We don’t want to let our momentum weaken. Please consider running for one of these offices this year, and/or recruiting limited government advocates to join us, by running for office, and/or supporting our candidates.
Thanks
Rex Bell
969-0086
I’ve done a fair share of whittling over the years, even though I was never very good at it. For those of you who weren’t raised in the country, whittling (I believe the correct spelling and pronunciation is whittlin’), involves taking out your pocket knife, picking up a stick or a piece of wood, and shaving away on that stick or piece of wood until it resembles something else. Often my work resembled a smaller stick or a smaller piece of wood, although occasionally I might end up with a lump that might pass for a deformed creature of some type.
My main problem was, whenever I set out to whittle something, it always took on a shape of its own, and even though I knew what I was trying to do, it just never ended up like I had envisioned it.
That seems to happen a lot whenever our legislators set us up with a new tax. Back in 1987, the Indiana General Assembly created the County Economic Development Income Tax (CEDIT), which county councils could adopt if they so desired. The rules for the use of the money collected by this tax were spelled out in the Indiana Code.
In simple terms, CEDIT funds could be used for “economic development projects” or for “capitol construction of most publicly owned facilities.” Whether or not tax money should be used on privately owned projects is still a point of contention even among many non-libertarians, but that’s the law for now, so that’s how its going to be until we get the law changed.
Of course, much like my whittlin’, things don’t always work out exactly like the lawmakers planned. In my county, Wayne, the funds were used to buy an $8000.00 desk for the president of the Economic Development Commission, that used $75,000.00 of the funds just to find him. A county to the south of us used $125,000.00 of CEDIT funds to pay for housing prisoners in other county jails.
A couple of years ago, my home town, Hagerstown, spent several thousand CEDIT dollars on the Legacy Project, which was purported to help the people of Hagerstown achieve their dreams. It was probably a nice project, but maybe a little lacking in economic development field.
This week, the Hagerstown Town Council spent $5000.00 of the CEDIT funds to pay the salary of Communities in Schools site coordinator for the Nettle Creek School Corporation, who’s job is “connecting adults with students through such programs as adult mentorships and tours of local businesses.”
I pretty much gave up whittlin’ because things seldom turned out like I had planned. I wish we could convince our legislators to stop passing most of these laws for the same reason.
A number of people, through choice or misunderstanding, fail to draw a distinction between what are called large “L” Libertarians, small “L” libertarians, and anarchists. While there are similarities, there are also some differences. Anarchists are probably best described as being in opposition of all government. Small “L” libertarians are a little more accepting of a little bit of government, as long as it doesn’t interfere with any individuals rights.
Large “L” Libertarians, which I consider myself, are pretty much in line with the small “L” libertarians, with a dash of pragmatism added. They generally support a constitutionally-limited government, while realizing that our original Constitution fell short of protecting everyones’ rights and might need an occasional amendment. I think they are more likely to belong to the Libertarian Party, although there are certainly a lot of small “L” members. I can personally testify that it makes for lively conventions.
One thing that Libertarians, libertarians and civilized anarchists generally agree on is the non-initiation of force. That doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to defend yourself or to help others defend themselves. It simply means you don’t have the right to initiate aggression against another person, or another person’s property. Furthermore, you don’t have the right to designate another person or group to initiate that aggression on your behalf.
Just as you don’t have the right to force others to support a cause you might find worthy, neither do you have the right to prevent others from supporting a cause they might find worthy. It is what sets the Libertarian Party apart from other parties, and it’s one thing that prevents Myanmar and other governments around the world from ever being considered libertarian.
Put as simply as possible, the Libertarian Party holds these principles:
Somebody once said that “There may be two Libertarians somewhere that agree on everything, but I’m not one of them.” I’m not either, but I think you will find that most agree that we need a smaller, less expensive and less intrusive government.
Of course, there are a lot of people that don’t consider themselves to be Libertarians that will agree with that.
As I said at the outset, this is just my version, and I’m pretty sure that even if we find that other Libertarian out there that agrees with me, I’m just as sure that with just a little effort we can find something here to disagree about. That’s another thing Libertarians do.
I ran into my old buddy Stinky Wilmont the other day, and in the course of our conversation, the subject of New Year’s resolutions came up. I asked Stinky if he was going to make any, and he replied that in 2011, he was going to resolve to gain 20 pounds and acquire a few more credit cards.
When I pointed out that those resolutions ran afoul of conventional resolutions, Stinky said that he realized they did, but that he had never had much luck with plans that involved losing weight or trimming his budget. He said he thought he would feel better about himself if he could keep whatever resolutions he made it, and since gaining weight and spending money kind of came naturally for him anyway, it just seemed like the logical way to go.
I started to explain to him that those resolutions probably weren’t in his best long term interest, but Stinky didn’t tend to think that far ahead. Besides, resolutions are kind of like promises to yourself by yourself, so Stinky’s resolutions probably weren’t any of my business, anyway.
But there is a difference between resolutions and promises. For years, politicians have been getting elected by making promises to the voters. A lot of those promises were about money. Sometimes they promised money they didn’t really have yet. Sometimes they had the money and spent it on something they had promised to somebody else. Sometimes they never had the money at all. Most of the time they were promising somebody else’s money anyway.
That’s what happened down in Prichard, Alabama. A while back, Prichard told about 150 city retirees that the city didn’t have enough money to pay them the pensions they were promised. They can still find the people that made the promises, but apparently they’re having trouble finding the people that will keep them.
Prichard, Alabama is just one of many entities across the country that has made promises it cannot keep. Public employee pensions have promised $3.2 trillion that they don’t have. Social Security and Medicare are in the same shape, but on a larger scale, and every day, another 10,000 citizens will turn 65, and get in line for their share of the promises the government made, and hope there are still enough people around willing to keep those promises somebody else made for them.
Over the next few years, we are going to hear a lot of stories about pension plans from all levels of government that have run out of money. Most of the problems will be the result of the government making promises to other people for other people.
We could solve a lot of those problems if we could just take on some personal responsibility, and start making and keeping our own promises.
Maybe that would be a good New Year’s resolution for all of us.
Right, Stinky?…..Stinky?……….Stinky?
