Bell Archive

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone that helped with my campaign, donated to my campaign, or voted for me in the recent election. I imagine most people are as happy as I am that the campaign is finally over. As least the ones I’ve talked to are. I’ve run for office a few times in the past, always on the Libertarian ticket, which requires that you really need to be both an optimist and a realist.

At the end of most of those elections, when people asked me how it went, I could honestly say the election went not as well as I had hoped, but better than I expected. This last election I was able to win 6 precincts. They tell me a Libertarian candidate for Congress has never done that before. I also finished second in 6 other precincts. Of course, I finished third in most of them.

Several other Libertarian candidates in Indiana saw significant growth in both numbers and percentages over past elections, but again, not as much as I had hoped, and this time not as much as I expected. I probably let my optimism influence my view of reality a little too much, but I honestly thought that with the government and the country being in the shape they’re in, a few more people might be ready for some limits on their government.

But, when I woke up Wednesday morning, I saw that about 100 million people chose to vote for war over peace, debt over prosperity, regulation over free will, government programs over personal responsibility, and dependency over freedom.

But then I thought, on the other hand, there were about 240 million people that didn’t. That gives me hope.

And while the optimist in me says we’ll get ‘em the next time, the realist in me says maybe it will be the time after that.

Rex Bell, U.S. House 6th District Candidate, speaks to the WRTV6 Democracy 2012 Project. Click here to view:  bit.ly/QXulKw

(Congressional Candidate Rex Bell (L-6) recently had a letter to the editor published in the New Castle Courier Times)

Many of the debates being planned in preparation for the upcoming election will not present voters with all of the options that will be on their ballot Nov. 6. Several will include the Republican and Democratic candidates, but not the Libertarians. The Libertarian candidates have not only achieved ballot access at both the state and national level, but also offer the only solutions that will actually limit the power of government. Organizers need to consider whether the purpose of the debates is to present the voters with all of their choices, or simply showcase the candidates who support the status quo.

We can choose to include all candidates in the debates, and have an open and honest discussion about the possibilities of creating a limited government, or we can choose to only include the candidates from the two old parties, and simply have a discussion about which of those parties gets to be in charge of our currently unlimited government.

The Ball State College Republicans and the Ball State University Democrats in conjunction with the Muncie-Delaware County Chamber of Commerce and the League of Women Voters of Muncie-Delaware County are scheduled to host the Sixth District Congressional Candidates in a debate. The event will be held on Oct. 2, 2012 at Pruis Hall on Ball State’s campus at 7:30 p.m.  It will be open and free-of-charge to the public.

The debate is scheduled to last 75 minutes. All sixth district congressional candidates on the November ballot will be featured: Republican Luke Messer of Shelbyville, Democrat Bradley Bookout of Muncie and Libertarian Rex Bell of Hagerstown.

The debate will be held with the goal of giving the voters within the sixth district the opportunity to hear each candidate’s message.  Between the recent redistricting and the currently open seat due to Congressman Mike Pence’s run for the Indiana governorship, it will be a consolidated forum that will give the voters the opportunity to hear candidates speak on a several issues.

Moderating the debate is Phil Bremen, assistant professor of telecommunications at Ball State. Bremen, a former NBC News correspondent, last spring moderated the only debate between Sen. Dick Lugar and his challenger in the Republican primary, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock. Bremen is faculty adviser to Ball State’s Emmy Award-winning student newscast, NewsLink Indiana.

A panel of Ball State political science professors, Dr. Ray Scheele and Dr. Charles Ta.

Rex Bell, Libertarian candidate for the 6th District seat in the United States House of Representatives has issued the following statement concerning the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act.

“It is disappointing, but not suprising, that the court would support this new law. I think the decision illustrates once again that there are no longer any restraints on the federal government at the federal level. We have reached the point where the government can do anything it wants. When we couple this with the provisions of the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, and the recent National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order, we realize that the federal government now believes there are no limits on the power it holds over the citizens of the United States. If we have any hope of turning that line of reasoning around, voters will have to start selecting candidates at both the state and federal level who pledge to uphold the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which gives the individual states the power to ignore and nullify unconstitutional mandates sent down from Washington. It’s also becoming increasingly clear that most politicians from the old parties are not willing to make that stand.”

Back when my old buddy Stinky Wilmont and I were attending Millville Grade School, “spare the rod and spoil the child” was still a popular and accepted philosophy of discipline. For the most part, I was a fairly well behaved student, but Stinky tended to be a little more unruly. I think that’s probably why he spent so much time in the principal’s office. It seemed like Stinky was always “getting what he had coming to him”, or “getting what he deserved”. At least he was getting what the principal thought he deserved. And I suppose he did get what he deserved when he threw a rock through Summit Taylor’s garage window, and he probably got what he had coming to him when he tied that dead opossum to the muffler on Miss Wangle’s Volkswagen. It always seemed kind of obvious to me that if you caused harm to someone or something, you most likely deserved something, whether you thought you deserved it or not.

Every once in a while Stinky would do something so grievous that the whole class would be punished. We missed a lot of recesses because of his transgressions. I never did understand why the teacher thought we all deserved to be punished on Stinky’s account, but when you’re in the third grade or somewhere there abouts, you don’t really get to decide those kinds of things. I remember hoping that when I grew up I would have a little more input on deciding what I deserved for not doing something.

My first regular job was working for Dawson Pope, a contractor up in Mooreland. I thought I deserved $5.00 an hour for my labors. Dawson thought I deserved $1.65. It turns out he was right, I guess, or at least that he was the one who got to make the decision. I liked Dawson a lot, but we never did agree on what I deserved.

When I started my own business 38 years ago, it didn’t take long to figure out that what I thought I deserved, and what I thought my customers deserved, needed to coincide pretty closely with what my potential customers thought I deserved and what they thought they deserved. Otherwise, they most likely wouldn’t become my customer. Seemed like the best way to decide who deserved what, or at least the best way I had found so far.

I read an article the other day from the Social Security Administration, encouraging injured people to sign-up early for disability benefits. According to the story, if you don’t sign up right away, you might miss out on some of the benefits you have coming to you. Now, I understand that there are a lot of people in this world who need some help, and probably some more than others. And I also understand that the people down at the Social Security office have the authority to decide who supposedly deserves benefits and who doesn’t. But I’m not sure how anybody thinks they have the right to decide that one person somehow automatically deserves another person’s property. I figure a person ought to decide that for themselves.

But every month the government makes that decision for about 15 million people. No doubt a lot of those people need it. I’m just not convinced the right people have determined they deserve it. Our government spends a lot of its time passing out a lot of our money to people who may or may not deserve it. Every month it sends out about a million checks, redistributing our tax money through a myriad of social and entitlement programs, all designed to keep recipients convinced that they deserve it, and keep them dependent on the government, and keep the people running the programs and the government in jobs.

The problem is the government is redistributing more money than it is collecting, by about $15 trillion, so far. And if we keep sending the same people back to Washington, by the next presidential election, that debt will have reached $20 trillion, with another $100 trillion in unfunded but promised liabilities.

That’s a lot of debt to hand to our children and grandchildren.

I’m just not sure they deserve it.

(Learn about Rex Bell for 6th District Representative at his website http://electrexbell.com/)