Vote No on Josephine County, Oregon Measure 17-112: Smash the Sales Tax!

I urge Josephine County voters to vote NO on Measure 17-112, which tries to impose a 3% sales tax on retail sales in Josephine County, including online purchases.

This heinous attempt to loot the poor, the working classes, and the small business owner or artisan, in order to subsidize the wealthy PERS recipients of Oregon, whose top pension is now at $980k per year, and whose list of recipients include pages and pages of people now receiving over $325k per year, is deeply immoral and must be smashed at the polls. These PERS pensions increase at an annual rate of about 8%, and did so all through the years that the Peasants of Oregon were receiving 0.01% on their savings during the Obama years. When I ran for Governor in 2014, the top pension was in the $400k range, and there were a total of twelve people receiving over $200k per year. So you can see how quickly these pensions have grown in magnitude in the eight years since I ran for Governor. These pensions, by the way, are paid to any politician who has worked for two years for the State, so a County Commissioner who serves two terms, and then moves to another State, as one of our liberal former commissioners recently did immediately after serving his two terms, will be receiving a pension for the rest of his life from the taxpayers of Oregon.

But, you protest, this tax is all for Law Enforcement, in order to fund the Sherriff’s Department. And in the arguments against this measure, coming from small business owners and the hotel and restaurant businesses, no mention was made of PERS, the only arguments being how this tax would affect those businesses in a time of hyperinflation and receding spending on anything but the necessities.

The tax looters counter that this tax will not apply to “necessities” like food, gas, medicine, utilities, etc. but it will apply to online purchases. Does this mean that walmart will have to hire someone to determine what part of your online order is “necessities” and what is not. Is chewing gum a food? Is dental floss a discretionary or medical item? Is a plumbing wrench a necessity or a luxury? Maybe the looters who proposed this tax will make up a comprehensive list of every single item at the major online retailers, so we can know what is taxed and what is not.

No. The real reason this tax bill is immoral is that, on average, between 17-21% of an Oregon State worker’s paycheck is placed into the PERS system, which means that every time a county employee gets a raise, or every time a new tax like this one is imposed on the public, 17-21% of that raise or tax increase is going directly into the PERS system to pay annual pensions of $980k, and $325k. And the list of PERS recipients goes on page after page into the thousands. You should take the time to look at it, and The Oregonian newspaper, which also runs the oregonlive.com website, publishes an annual list, with the new updated annual amounts.

So I am not wrong when I say this is a bill designed to rob the poor and working classes to subsidize the wealthy, although you may not feel that an annual pension of $980k or $325k or 100k is being wealthy. On that we have a difference of opinion.

In the voter’s pamphlet, the objectors to this tax measure did make the argument that this tax would force small business owners to do a lot of extra work in collecting and paying the tax. This was countered by the argument that anyone with point of sales payment equipment would automatically have the tax computed and paid. I guess it’s too bad for those very small business owners or sellers who cannot afford to have POS equipment, or who do not want to pay the exorbitant fees that automatic payments require. Moreover, the tax must be paid monthly, and anyone not paying on time is punished with another 10% fine, followed by another 30% fine if still not paid.

However, one argument the objectors did not make, which they should have, is that this tax filing requirement is a violation of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits involuntary servitude unless convicted of a crime. I wonder what crime these business owners, who must spend all this time collecting and filing this tax, which is involuntary servitude, have committed? Is it the Crime of engaging in Capitalistic activity? It would seem so, despite all the hot air from politicians about this being a Capitalist, Free-Market, society.

And it is ironic that this measure appears on a ballot that also includes a State Measure which would prohibit slavery or involuntary servitude even if convicted of a crime. The taxing Liberal Democrats don’t much mind imposing involuntary servitude on the small business owner who has been convicted of no crime, but they are sure going to make sure that anyone convicted of a very serious crime will not have to do any “involuntary servitude” while in prison.

— Paul Grad, Libertarian Party of Oregon Gubernatorial Nominee 2014

The Racist U.S. Census: Brainwashing America into the Hitlerian Mentality

One of the most egregious and disgusting insults to the Human Being has recently been sent out by the US Government, forcing residents in America, under penalty of the law, to comply with the immoral order to classify themselves according to race. This very obvious brainwashing into the Hitlerian Racist Mythology has been greeted with absolute silence by all the major political parties. I, at least, have seen nothing from the Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, and Green Parties condemning this vile outrage designed to indoctrinate all Americans in the Race mythology that has divided Mankind into so many groups, and killed so many people. Nor have I heard any major spokesmen or political figures condemn this heinous attempt to subtly instill in US Citizens and immigrants the false sectarian “reality” that people belong to races, and not just the Human Race.

The original census was merely designed to count how many people there were in the United Colonies, now labeled States after the glorious Revolution. Due to the nature of racism back then, and the “Peculiar Institution” — the euphemism for Slavery, people were asked to classify themselves as to Black or White, and if Black, Free or Slave, and also as to their sex and age, but there was none of that Hitlerian classification down to this that or the other race that we find on today’s “modern” census form, and sub-classifications even within those races (Whites being forced to list which European countries their ancestors came from). So the census, under modern social Democrats, has become more racist, not less, since the founding of the Republic.

But even more ironic is the fact that it is modern Liberal Democrats who are so in favor of this racist classification that all Americans are forced to make on themselves and their children, because that is how certain groups within the Democrat Party’s voting blocks can get free money and benefits from the Government, based on that racial classification. The fact that minorities have suffered most from racial classifications throughout history seems to be completely forgotten by these evidently history-ignorant modern Liberals, as is the fact that racist classification in and of itself psychologically brainwashes people into the myth of Racism. If the US Government says there are races, so this brainwashing goes, then races must surely exist, because the Government knows best, will never lie to us (intentionally), and is the friend of minorities.

And then those same supporters of the Census will bray about “institutionalized racism”. Yes, they have provided racism’s bedrock themselves.

A further outrage of the US Census, one that is clearly Unconstitutional but has not even been mentioned to my knowledge in recent libertarian debates, is how being forced to fill out the Census form is a clear violation of The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states that no person shall be forced into involuntary servitude except on conviction of a crime. What Crime has a law abiding US Citizen committed that he should be forced to fill out more information on the Census than his own existence, age, and sex? Being forced to classify oneself according to race, and then fill out that part of the form, is clearly a coerced “involuntary servitude” under legal threat, and therefore Unconstitutional, but I have heard no Libertarian, Democrat, Green, or Republican politician or elected member of Congress condemn it.

The only possible exception I can see to a very narrow requirement of listing existence, sex, and age on the Census Form, is that for American Indians who have certain Treaty Rights with the US Government. But in that case it is a matter of classifying oneself according to “Tribal Affiliation”, not race. Tribal Affiliation is completely different from race, since I believe every tribe has its own definition of Tribal membership, and if a Tribe has a system that allows non-Indians to become members of a tribe, then its Tribal membership is obviously not based on so-called “race”. This difference between race and tribal affiliation is another implicit contradiction in the Census Form that is consistently overlooked and ignored.

So it looks like the nationalist socialists of the Democrat Party, and the non-thinkers of the Republican Party, have pulled it off again with no resistance, defining, institutionalizing, and reinforcing the Hitlerian Myth that the Human Race is divided into races, and that race, not mere existence, is what is important, thus psychologically negating the Jeffersonian Revolution which says that all Men have Equal Inalienable Rights that no man, or group of men, can assault.

The U.S. Census — working hard to brainwash Americans into the Hitlerian racialist mentality.

Paul Grad for Oregon Governor: Abolishing Jury Duty Slavery

As the Libertarian Nominee for Governor of Oregon, I will, if elected, seek to abolish the heinous Crime of Jury Duty Slavery.

If there is one evil that Libertarians stand squarely against, it is involuntary servitude, or slavery. Slavery might be defined as forcing a person to work for no wages, or forcing a person to work for a wage which they would not accept under the Free Market.

Compulsory Jury Service differs very little from Conscription. Liberals have long been vocal against the draft or slavery, but they seem to be completely silent when it comes to the Crime of Jury Slavery. They’re quite vocal when it concerns the minimum wage, but are silent as the grave when it comes to the injustice of dragooning Free Citizens into working an entire day for $10 (the Oregon State compensation rate for the first two days of jury duty, which increases to $25/day after that. Mileage compensation is an inadequate 20 cents/mile.)

It should be clear that there is little difference between compulsory Jury Duty and Slavery. The Individual is forced to perform tasks on the State’s behalf and at the State’s bidding, at slave wages. If he refuses to comply with his enslavement, he can be fined $750. In some trials, he can be locked away for weeks and forbidden to read newspapers. This is obviously prison and slavery for non-criminals, something forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment. Yet this vile Crime has continued unabated in Oregon for decades, with Republican and Democrat Governors completely ignoring it. It shall be ignored no longer under my Administration.

But some might object that Jury Duty is a very important civic function, and insures that defendants will receive a fair trial before a jury of their peers, instead of trials and verdicts being conducted and declared by judges, especially since the judge is part of the State, and could be used by the State to silence its critics.

Very true, but this objection only highlights the pressing need for jurors who will gladly serve voluntarily. Obviously, the same claims for the virtue of serving on a jury at slave wages could also be made for the judge and the district attorney, but you will note that they are not paid $10 for a day of their life. No judge or D.A. would serve for less than minimum wage, unless they were gladly volunteering their services, nor would the public expect the quality of people in those positions to be of the highest if they were dragooned and coerced into serving at slave wages.

If we wouldn’t expect judges and D.A.s to serve at slave wages, why do we expect jurors to serve at those wages? And obviously, the quality of those juries suffers greatly when we have disgruntled jurors chaffing at the way they are being exploited as slaves. How many innocents have been sent to Oregon State Prisons because the jurors were in a hurry to bring in a verdict and get home to their televisions? We’ll never know.

Obviously, if we want jurors to serve gladly and voluntarily, we should pay decent compensation.

If elected Governor of Oregon, I will mandate that jurors must be paid at least minimum wage for all hours they are forced to be confined in court or the deliberation room, except for the lunch hour when they are free to leave the court building, thus making the State of Oregon compliant with the Thirteen Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

If we paid our Oregon jurors somewhere between minimum wage and $20/hr. we would have far better juries making far better decisions.

Let’s abolish the heinous Crime of Jury Slavery in Oregon.

Paul Grad, Libertarian, for Oregon Governor. paulgrad4governor.wordpress.com

Paul Grad for Oregon Governor: Repealing Oregon’s SB 132 The Vaccination Bill

As Governor of Oregon, I will introduce legislation repealing SB 132, the so-called Vaccination Bill.

Without going into the vaccine-antivaccine controversy, I would oppose this bill because it forces involuntary servitude on American individuals, which is prohibited by the Federal Bill of Rights.

What SB 132 does is require parents, who don’t want their children vaccinated for some moral, non-medical reason, to either get a certificate from an M.D., or certify that they have watched an online “educational” video. In requiring a person to go through these actions, even though they have already stated their opposition to having their children vaccinated, the State is compelling involuntary servitude, and thus SB 132 is unConstitutional in my opinion.

It is interesting to note that Oregon, usually referred to as a Liberal, Democratic State, with a Democratic Party Governor who is also an M.D., should also have the highest non-compliance in the U.S. for mandatory vaccination programs for school and daycare children. This Libertarian scepticism in what the government says is safe may result from a more Libertarian attitude in general in Oregon. While the national average for non-compliance with vaccination mandates is 1.2%, the Oregon average is 6.4%, the highest in America. Funny that these Liberals who vote Democrat should run a State that rejects the mainstream Liberal-Democrat medical line. In the State legislature, the bill passed 16-13, with 16 Democrats voting for it and 13 Republicans voting against it.

Even more astonishing is the fact that Ashland, Oregon, a Liberal-Democratic area with Southern Oregon State University situated there, which presumably indicates many highly educated people, should have a reported non-compliance rate with vaccinations of 25%. Why does a Liberal Democratic city have a rate over 20 times higher than the national average? Sounds like these Liberal Democrats may have read about the dangers of vaccination, or studied the issue so that they have legitimate doubts about the safety of these drugs pumped into their non-voting children. Perhaps they remember thalidimide? Perhaps they believe in the “precautionary principle”, which should be the standard for all substances mandated for use on the public.? Unless it has been proven 100% safe, no chemical or drug should be permitted to be administered to people without their consent. This violates the Libertarian prohibition against “invasion”, which is obviously a violation of Individual Property Rights.

As Governor, I will attempt to repeal this heinous form of involuntary servitude, which mocks the ability of people to choose for themselves what they feel is best for themselves and their children.

Libertarians can vote for me on the Libertarian Primary Ballot. Democrats, Republicans, and Communists can write me in.

Paul Grad, paulgrad4governor.wordpress.com