Biggest WNY Tea Party Yet
Join your fellow Patriots in over 1300 cities!
July 4th—Noon to 1pm
Niagara Square Downtown Buffalo

Speakers:
Len Roberto
Rus Thompson
Jim Ostrowski

You will hear specific ideas on how to turn America and New York State around.

Groups involved incude:
Buffalonyteaparty.wordpress.com
PrimaryChallenge.org
TeaNewYork.com
PoliticalClassDismissed.com

For more information, write to ilkitty@roadrunner.com or go to http://buffalonyteaparty.wordpress.com/

Print 100 fliers to pass out.
http://politicalclassdismissed.com/teaparty/teapartyflyer.pdf

Speakers:
Len Roberto
Rus Thompson
Jim Ostrowski

You will hear specific ideas on how to turn America and New York State around.

Sponsored by:
Buffalonyteaparty.wordpress.com
PrimaryChallenge.org
TeaNewYork.com
PoliticalClassDismissed.com

For more information, write to ilkitty@roadrunner.com or go to http://buffalonyteaparty.wordpress.com/

There are many proposals for faux reform. These are actually harmful to reform since they crowd out proposals that could actually get NY out of its downward spiral to oblivion.

New York’s problem is that it is the least free state both on economic and personal issues. See the magnificent study by WNY resident and UB professor Jason Sorens and his co-author William P. Rugar, Freedom in the Fifty States (PDF).

In plain terms, NY consumes too much of the capital of the citizenry to allow NY to be competitive in the Northeast, let alone the country as a whole or the world. Ironically, NY’s taxes are much higher than Vietnam’s, the country we allegedly had to liberate from state socialism.

Any reform that fails to reduce the government’s consumption of our capital or that fails to increase our personal freedom, is a faux reform that that citizens should assume is designed to con them into thinking something real is being done.

Freedom, by the way, is seamless. You can’t favor the citizens’ freedom to spend their own money while holding that they are too dimwitted and irresponsible to exercise freedom in personal matters. NY is proof positive of this as we have the least freedom across the board. In sharp contrast, the freest state, New Hampshire, ranks high in both personal and economic freedom.

New York’s motto should be: “Live free or die a slow, painful death.”

For years, Free New York advocated a drastic reduction in the size of state and local government in New York. Now that the political leadership has caught up with us, we are releasing a list of ten needed reforms most of which have been the subject of our policy studies published in recent years.

Free New York’s Agenda for Real Change in NY:

1. Make gerrymandering illegal. There is no need for a bipartisan committee to do so. Just mandate that the districts be geometrically compact and allow any citizen to sue to keep you honest.

2. Abolish all forms of corporate welfare, subsidies grants, loans, enterprise zones. These are just excuses to give politicians power to extract donations from business people. Roll all of the savings into an across the board tax cut.

3. Merge all school districts into the local towns; the town council becomes the board; no more special elections where few vote.

4. Abolish all authorities and special districts. Merge into local governments, privatize them, or, as with IDAs, abolish them.

5. Equalize private and public sector salaries and benefits.

6. Convert state pensions to defined contribution plans and eliminate pensions for all elected officials and all benefits of any kind for part-time elected officials.

7. Eliminate all the well-known pension scams such as the using overtime to inflate the “high-three.”

8. Abolish all Medicaid extras not required by federal law and cap spending until we spend the average of other states.

9. Hire the Ohio and PA budget directors for a million dollars each so they can tell us why they spend 68 cents to the NY dollar on state and local government.

10. Finally, legalize medical marijuana. Marijuana helps cancer patients better tolerate chemotherapy treatment. It helps them fight the severe nausea that destroys their appetites and threatens malnutrition. It is time that NY stop its barbaric practice of arresting sick people for taking medicine!

For the various policy studies that underlie these proposals, go to FreeNewYork.org.

Channel 7 went live at noon with Julie Fine while Rich Newberg followed us into Antoine Thompson’s office only to be told his cameras are barred from the building. Nice.

The lady from WBFO was on her first day and a wild day it was.

Anyway, here’s the ten point plan:

1. Make gerrymandering illegal. There is no need for a bipartisan committee to do so. Just mandate that the districts be geometrically compact and allow any citizen to sue to keep you honest.

2. Abolish all forms of corporate welfare, subsidies grants, loans, enterprise zones. These are just excuses to give politicians power to extract donations from business people. Roll all of the savings into an across the board tax cut.

3. Merge all school districts into the local towns; the town council becomes the board; no more special elections where few vote.

4. Abolish all authorities and special districts. Merge into local governments, privatize them, or, as with IDAs, abolish them.

5. Equalize private and public sector salaries and benefits.

6. Convert state pensions to defined contribution plans and eliminate pensions for all elected officials and all benefits of any kind for part-time elected officials.

7. Eliminate all the well-known pension scams such as the using overtime to inflate the “high-three.”

8. Abolish all Medicaid extras not required by federal law and cap spending until we spend the average of other states.

9. Hire the Ohio and PA budget directors for a million dollars each so they can tell us why they spend 68 cents to the NY dollar on state and local government.

10. Finally, legalize medical marijuana. Marijuana helps cancer patients better tolerate chemotherapy treatment. It helps them fight the severe nausea that destroys their appetites and threatens malnutrition. It is time that NY stop its barbaric practice of arresting sick people for taking medicine!

For the various policy studies that underlie these proposals, go to FreeNewYork.org.

Free New York will hold a press conference on Thursday, June 18th, at noon in Niagara Square in downtown Buffalo, to release a ten point plan for real reform in NY. The people are demanding change but all they get is empty promises, vague cliches and meaningless procedural reforms that have failed in the past.

Free New York’s plan will actually address what is wrong with NY government: too many government agencies employing too many people making too much money.

For years, Free New York advocated a drastic reduction in the size of state and local government in New York. Now that some of the political leadership claims to have caught up with us, we are releasing a list of ten needed reforms most of which have been the subject of our policy studies published in recent years. They include abolishing gerrymandering, corporate welfare, and public authorities.

The public is encouraged to attend and take the reform proposals to the local offices of their state legislators.

Everyone is promising reform of New York State government but few are doing anything real about it.

There are many proposals for faux reform. These are actually harmful to reform since they crowd out proposals that could actually get NY out of its downward spiral to oblivion.

New York’s problem is that it is the least free state both on economic and personal issues. See the magnificent study by WNY resident and UB professor Jason Sorens and his co-author William P. Rugar, Freedom in the Fifty States (PDF).

In plain terms, NY consumes too much of the capital of the citizenry to allow NY to be competitive in the Northeast, let alone the country as a whole or the world. Ironically, NY’s taxes are much higher than Vietnam’s, the country we allegedly had to liberate from state socialism.

Any reform that fails to reduce the government’s consumption of our capital or that fails to increase our personal freedom, is a faux reform that that citizens should assume is designed to con them into thinking something real is being done.

Freedom, by the way, is seamless. You can’t favor the citizens’ freedom to spend their own money while holding that they are too dimwitted and irresponsible to exercise freedom in personal matters. NY is proof positive of this as we have the least freedom across the board. In sharp contrast, the freest state, New Hampshire, ranks high in both personal and economic freedom.

New York’s motto should be: “Live free or die a slow, painful death.”

For years, Free New York advocated a drastic reduction in the size of state and local government in New York. Now that the political leadership has caught up with us, we are releasing a list of ten needed reforms most of which have been the subject of our policy studies published in recent years.

Free New York’s Agenda for Real Change in NY:

1. Make gerrymandering illegal. There is no need for a bipartisan committee to do so. Just mandate that the districts be geometrically compact and allow any citizen to sue to keep you honest.

2. Abolish all forms of corporate welfare, subsidies grants, loans, enterprise zones. These are just excuses to give politicians power to extract donations from business people. Roll all of the savings into an across the board tax cut.

3. Merge all school districts into the local towns; the town council becomes the board; no more special elections where few vote.

4. Abolish all authorities and special districts. Merge into local governments, privatize them, as with IDAs, abolish them.

5. Equalize private and public sector salaries and benefits.

6. Convert state pensions to defined contribution plans and eliminate pensions for all elected officials and all benefits of any kind for part-time elected officials.

7. Eliminate all the well-known pension scams such as the using overtime to inflate the “high-three.”

8. Abolish all Medicaid extras not required by federal law and cap spending until we spend the average of other states.

9. Hire the Ohio and PA budget directors for a million dollars each so they can tell us why they spend 68 cents to the NY dollar on state and local government.

10. Finally, legalize medical marijuana. Marijuana helps cancer patients better tolerate chemotherapy treatment. It helps them fight the severe nausea that destroys their appetites and threatens malnutrition. It is time that NY stop its barbaric practice of arresting sick people for taking medicine!

For the various policy studies that underlie these proposals, go to FreeNewYork.org.

Rus Thompson
Carl Paladino

I still think this is a viable strategy and as far as I know the name Citizens Against Prohibition is still available. If someone wants to come forward and lead this effort, PCD will help you as much as we can.

So, pretend it’s 1990 and enjoy:

How to End the War on Drug Users and Sellers

by James Ostrowski

Overview

CAP’s strategy will be to first change public opinion, then to change public policy. Changes in public policy will not occur until public support for legalization begins to approach 50 percent. It is important to avoid the tilting at windmills perception. A good rule of thumb is that serious political and legislation action should not be attempted until close to forty percent of the population appears to be supportive. At that point, the increased attention that political action brings will assist us in getting that extra ten percent support.

Thus, the goal of education will be to achieve a level of public support which makes political and legislative action credible. Initiating legislative action will then attract additional media and public attention which will increase support and lead to repeal.

So, at least on the national level, education will be the prime focus. We are about 15 percentage points short of the level of support we need to launch a serious legislative campaign and support for legalization is scarce among national political leaders. At the national level, we must then go directly to the public with our message. (This is not the case at the local level, about which more later.)

National Strategies

William Bennett is correct when he says that the American people are on his side in the “war on drugs.” Though the margins are decreasing, polls show that legalization is still opposed by most people. Since we can assume that the people are wrong here, we might ask why. The reasons include pervasive and systematic deception by prohibitionists over many decades, the resulting misapprehension of the nature of the drug problem by the public, and the intense quasi—religious emotional reaction that most people have to conscious—altering drugs. A successful strategy for repealing prohibition must deal with these realities. Strategies must be developed which are commensurate with the problems to be solved.

More

At the last event on April 18th, we rolled out a 12-point plan for victory. However, the plan sort of got lost in the shuffle of a complex, four hour event. Many people left without taking a flier. Also, the website that goes along with the plan was not ready for prime time but will be shortly.

I do not believe in having a rally for the sake of blowing off steam. Also, if you don’t give people a plan, they won’t come back nor should they.

I see this next rally as focusing on the goal of restoring the Republic through direct citizen action.

Please save the date and time.

If you wish to be on the committee, send me an email at jameso@apollo3.com.