The polls are in

I hate political polls.  If they have no effect on the way people vote, why do them?  If they do have an effect on the way people vote, however, it’s immoral and in every other way wrong to do them.

We should vote on right and wrong, truth versus lies…not on odds and poll numbers.

But given the Hatfield v McCoy/ robbing Peter to pay Paul mentality that fuels our politics today, let me just offer a simple message by the prevailing paradigm:

Don’t waste your vote on Jill Long Thompson.  She can’t win.  No way.

Don’t waste your vote on Mitch, either.  He’s already got you for another four years.

If you want your vote to say something at all, vote for me.  That vote will tell Mitch that you want him to obey the oath of office.  It will tell Governor Daniels that you’re not giving him a free pass to do whatever he wants to do with your life, liberty and property.  It will tell all politicians that voters want the constitutions that protect citizens from ungoverned government.  A vote for me says, “I’m onto y’all…we want our rights and property and lives back.”

So if you’re on the fence about who’ll get your vote for Governor of Indiana, vote for law and order, peace and principle…vote for Andy Horning for Governor and Lisa Kelly for Lt. Governor.

 

John Stossel is an American Hero.

I wish I could be a tenth as effective as a Free Market missionary as is John Stossel.  Here is a video that you should watch with your kids, neighbors and coworkers.  It’s excellent.  You can also watch this 20/20 piece, “the Politically Incorrect Guide to Politics” as a six-part YouTube video.

Just do it.

 

Obama or no; there’ll be no change for the better this year

This is pretty disappointing to me; but probably not for the reasons you think.  Yes, the Howey poll puts me at 3% on Election Day.  But that’s about what I’d come to expect.  In traveling the state and talking to people I became convinced that we’ll once again tell the entrenched powers, “atta boy, keep doing what you’ve been doing to us!”  Our collective votes will be wasted again.

Sigh.

But that’s not what’s so disappointing.

Here’s what I think is disappointing:

On a scale of 1-10, voters say that their level of interest in this campaign season is 9.42.  And, sure enough, 99% of voters know who Mitch Daniels is.  (one must wonder about the one percent who have no idea who’s governing Indiana’s government, but that’s another matter)

Only 84% of voters, however, are aware of Jill Long Thompson, who’s the Democrat running against Mitch.  And worse (for me, of course), only 29% of voters have heard of me.

So at least 71% of those polled don’t know their choices in the voting booth!

On one hand, it will assuage my delicate sensibilities on Election Day knowing that most voters didn’t even know that I was on the ballot.  That “wasted vote syndrome” deceit will never enter their mind because they’ve got no idea to whom it could apply.  They’re not voting against the constitution, since they don’t know it’s on the ballot.   They’re not consciously choosing the anticonstitutionalists because they have no idea that there is an alternative.  That does make me, personally, feel a little better, in a way.

But on the other hand, ladies and gentlemen, this is no way to run a government.

Of course God is in control of all things and I shouldn’t fret it.  No human government can last. 

All government is, in one way or another, by consent of the governed.  Our governments always reflect who we are as social creatures.  And we are fallen creatures indeed.  We choose all the problems we suffer.  And the level of ignorance displayed by citizens and reflected in politicians today simply cannot continue. 

It will end.  Probably quite badly.

That is pretty disappointing to me.

 

Horning Economic Plan

While they’ve not granted me nearly as much coverage as they’ve bequeathed to entrenched-party candidates, my hat is nonetheless off to WTHR-13 in Indianapolis who, at least this once, covered one of my press conferences.  Here’s a story the other media missed (Thank you, Kevin Rader), and here’s a copy of the press conference handout that WTHR actually linked to their website:

Politicians have been protecting themselves, their cronies and their money for so long that their whole robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul scheme is on the verge of collapse – and they’re taking us all with them.  This is not good.  But we still have time to prevent the worst.

In the 2000 gubernatorial race I said we should cut government spending by 7% per year, push back against Washington, DC’s profligacy, and restore the legitimacy and practicality of constitutional governance in order to prepare for the financial crisis now upon us.

Now we must act more quickly and aggressively.  It is perhaps too late to avoid pain, but we still have great opportunities.

Indeed, we can become the Switzerland of the USA if we only insist upon the constitutions to which every politician has already sworn an oath of obedience:

 

1. Cut property tax by at least 50%.  This would be done mostly by removing public school costs from personal property tax, as Article 8, Section 2 already requires. 
2. Forbid the foreclosures and usurious tax lien sales on residences driven by property tax (see Article I, Section 22 of the Indiana Constitution).   
3. Unconstitutional spending must stop immediately!  There will be no more corporate subsidies, as such are forbidden by Article 11, Section 12.  Article 10, Section 5 forbids most bond issues.  And Article 13, Section 1 forbids much of the state’s debts.  And instead of embracing the costly mandates and taxes from the thieves in DC, we must insist upon the federalism mandated by both state and federal constitutions.
4. Invoke the Sound Money policy described in Article 11, Section 3 of the Indiana Constitution.  We now have the technology to quickly acquire gold and silver as backing for this marketable trade currency (see http://www.goldmoneybill.org/), and to verify a sound yet profitable fractional reserve for safe lending practices.
5. We must reactivate the voluntary service organizations that were once the heart, soul and helping hands of this nation.  I would do my level best to encourage voluntary organizations (churches, Lion’s Clubs, women’s service groups) to roll up their sleeves, put out a call for new members and get busy.  Government will no longer compete with these groups, and will instead get out of the way.
6. Rule of Law.  It should now be evident that politicians must be kept to their oaths and kept on a leash.  We need politicians to concentrate on their real, valid, necessary jobs to keep peace and security.  I would focus government on the protection of our property, rights and lives as though government has no other job.

 

Our current crop of politicians has chosen to inflate the “bubble” even more, rather than to fix the problems now.  They’ve chosen to more deeply mortgage our future when we can no longer afford that.  At best, their promises have failed.  More likely, they’ve lied to us.  It’s up to voters to fix this by firing the liars, cheats and thieves, and by choosing a better, legal, proven course for this nation.

 

Andy Horning

Freedom, Indiana

We must now act quickly…

“To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection–a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end.”  – Friedrich August von Hayek, Introduction to “Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle,” 1932

 

Hayek won a Nobel Prize for his work explaining what caused, worsened and prolonged the Great Depression.  “Austrian School” economists have ever since warned us about what’s now unfolding before us as an even greater socioeconomic catastrophe. 

 

Putting this into a political perspective, Libertarians have been right and the other parties have been wrong.  Americans have believed the proven nonsense of the entrenched powers to our undoing.

 

Putting this into still another perspective; you are the victim of highly organized crime.  You’ve been robbed, and the theft will continue until you stop it.

 

OK, so now what?

 

First, as Hayek pleaded, we must stop misdirecting the markets; and by extension, we must stop voting for/empowering those who’ve misdirected the markets.  Fire the thieves/cheats/liars.  You must.

 

Next, we must prepare for some tough times.  As I’d warned in the 2000 gubernatorial bid, “We’ve had our years of plenty, and now we must prepare for the years of hard times.”  And we have far less time now than we had in 2000!

 

As an immediate measure, I propose massive budget cuts, refusal of unfunded/underfunded “federal” mandates, and reactivation of voluntary social services (churches, fraternal organizations).

 

I also propose we immediately invoke the Indiana Constitution’s Article 11 with a currency backed by gold or silver, to immunize Hoosiers against the deflation/collapse of the dollar.

 

Here’s Section 7: “All bills or notes issued as money shall be, at all times, redeemable in gold or silver; and no law shall be passed, sanctioning, directly or indirectly, the suspension, by any bank or banking company of specie payments.”

 

This Sound Money Proposal can be implemented by electronic/virtual acquisition of assets such as described at http://www.goldmoneybill.org/.

 

We’d better do this fast…