Why Tony Zirkle is the better choice for the Republican Party

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Voters need to know why I deserve their vote over the incumbent. Here are just a few of the reasons why I believe I would make a stronger candidate for the Republican Party in the 2004 fall general election against Donnelly.

1. Highway Bill **** See the Subsequent Press Release for Updates ***

“Transportation is the issue that will be central to Chocola’s general election campaign.” Post-Tribune, 4-25-2004. Should this issue be central for Chocola? Yes, he appears to be about to secure $45 million for this district for the next five years. However, the bill was for $275 billion. If one takes $275 billion and divides it by 435 congressional districts, then one finds that the average congressman should bring home $632,183,908. If we take the $45,000,000 that Chocola will likely bring home and divide it by the $632,183,908 that the average congressman will, we get 7.12%. Either I’m missing something, my math is wrong or Donnelly is fast asleep. If my math is correct and if this really is Chocola’s center piece for the general election, do we really want to run the risk that Donnelly revives before November 2? I’m getting my info here from newspaper reports, so if I’m wrong about him only bringing home 7.12% of the bacon that he should be on average, then perhaps he can clarify the issue for us.

2. No debate

I have tried to engage Congressman Chocola in a debate, but his office has not yet returned my phone call. On Dyngus day, I even personally asked Mr. Chocola to debate. He said he’d consider it, yet I’ve still had no response. The Republican party is supposed to be the party of free market capitalism which promotes a market place of ideas. If “it,” whatever that is, is really “all about you,” then Mr. Chocola would welcome a public debate in order to greater educate the voters on the issues. This issue will not likely harm Chocola in the fall because Donnelly is probably more guilty of anti-competitiveness because he went through a caucus where no other candidate even had a chance. If I’m elected, I’ll pledge to debate any primary challenger.

3. No party or district mandate

I do not believe that after having spent some 3 million dollars over the last two elections and barely garnering 50% of the vote against a left wing liberal who was endorsed by Emily’s list, that Mr. Chocola has either a party or a district mandate at this time.

4. Near monosyllabic, one-issue wonder obsession with “tax cuts.”

He supports further corporate tax breaks even though they are at their 2nd lowest rate for percentage of tax revenues in 69 years. I disagree. He supports making the tax cuts for the top 1-2% of incomes permanent. I would only agree if we can reintroduce the payroll tax for those high incomes in a manner that will lower the medical care costs for all. He votes for tax cuts for the wealthy and for ending the estate tax which already has a 1.5 million dollar exemption. I would vote to increase that exemption to 10 million to preserve family farms and businesses. I’m for the middle class, for limiting the size of mega, monopolistic/oligopolistic anti-competitive, anti-capitalistic corporations that earn more money per year than all but a few nations, and for limiting personal wealth to one billion dollars that will be checked at the inheritance transaction. When 33% of citizens pay zero federal income tax, further tax cuts do not seem to me to be the great issue of the day. We should also expand the definition of “tax” to include high health care costs, record gas prices, and the enormous taxes we pay to house 2.2 million inmates, a number which has tripled since 1975. Additionally, we are running $500 billion deficits. If we continue to cut taxes, then we may find that we are actually increasing taxes because the value of the dollar will likely fall which will make what people possess worth less on the international market. I can see democrats in the fall posed to assert their class warfare like never before because they now have the greatest ammo ever given them. For instance, according to a recent book entitled Perfectly Legal, citizens who make $10 million a year are now paying a lower percentage of their incomes in federal tax than those who make $70-80,000. This means that the tax code has become a regressive tax. The democrats will be saying that President Bush has orchestrated the greatest shift of the tax burden from wealth to work in history and Donnelly will likely paint Congressman Chocola as the poster boy for all that the democrat party economic platform stands against.

5. Campaign Fund Raising

For his March 31, 2004 report, Chocola reported $633,737 cash on hand. If he were to pay himself back his $600,000 personal loan, he would only have $33,737, which is far less than Donnelly. If he paid himself back the interest on that loan that former Congressman Roemer complained about, he might have nothing. Mr. Chocola will spend over a million dollars to get reelected in a congressional race. I won’t. A spend thrift campaign is poor training for someone who should be frugal with your tax dollars.

6. Public/Civil/Military Service

Mr. Chocola has never before been a public servant to my knowledge, though it appears he has engaged in honorable voluntary service. I have not only served in the military at the U.S. Naval Academy, but also I have served as a judicial law clerk and as a prosecutor in the three largest offices in North Central and West Indiana. Mr. Chocola has no announced plans for increasing civil service. I do with my plan to establish a U.S. Civil Service Academy.

7. Crime

Mr. Chocola has no announced plan to combat 100,000 child porn Web sites or to reduce mass prostitution. I do. Mr. Chocola has no announced plan to reduce crime or drug addiction. I do. He has sponsored a bill to give up to ten years for those who burn Hummers under the environmental terrorism lingo. According to our local U.S. Attorney, the federal arson statute already provides up to a 20 year sentence for burning even your own vehicle. Chocola’s bill just gave a sharp defense attorney an argument to cut the potential jail sentence in half under the “rule of lenity” legal decisions which state that criminal statutes are to be strictly construed against the government and that all vague issues and conflicts in the statute are to be resolved in favor of the defendant.

8. Tort Reform

He appeals to medical professionals to seek votes for himself with the sound bite of “tort reform.” I have worked for insurance companies and I understand the real issue is how they invest and what kind of policies they write. The insurance companies got themselves into trouble when they invested in the Michael Milken junk bonds of the 1980s. They have had a difficult time recovering since then. Additionally, CEOs now make, according to a Post-Tribune 4-25-04 article, about 301 times the salary of the average employee. We need to take a look at corporate greed/waste and perhaps single out the medical industry for a public debate on perhaps limiting the CEO pay to a certain number of times, perhaps 40 times, the salary of the lowest paid employee. Certainly, frivolous lawsuits are a concern; however, all states have provisions that allow judges to sanction attorneys for filing and pursuing lawsuits after they have become baseless or groundless.

9. Term Limits

He has promised to serve only 8 more years. I believe that a congressman is most effective when he has seniority. Look at his 7.12% return rate on the highway bill (assuming my math is correct). If the democrats take over the house, he’ll have almost no power and in 8 years, we’ll have to start over. If I’m elected, I’ll stay as long as I’m reelected, unless another position opens up where I can serve in a greater capacity of service.

10. Health Care

Mr. Chocola has no announced health care plan. I do. I will seek to cut premiums by taking the catastrophic claims out of the system and fund them with the payroll tax that will be reintroduced on incomes over $200,000. *** After teh Primary, he did announce a $3,000 tax credit proposal that was being debated in Congress ***

11. Sound Bites vs. Substantive Campaigns

Mr. Chocola speaks in warm and fuzzy sound bites and campaigns on little more than surface issues beyond more tax cuts. I’m campaigning on what is probably one of the most substantive platforms in the nation. If you find a better platform, let me know and I’ll improve mine.

12. Budget and Pork -Barrel Spending

Mr. Chocola has also sponsored a bill to reform the budget process to limit the growth of spending on just about everything except for military/security matters. It does not appear that Republican President Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex has been heeded. I say let us look at the excessive tax cuts for the top 1-2% of incomes at the same time that we seek to control spending and cut nonessential programs.

Let’s end all excess pork spending and limit the federal government to its constitutionally proscribed powers. One other idea is to prohibit any congressman from introducing any legislation or amendment for spending programs that exist in his/her district. We would also have to prohibit horse trading behind the scenes for this to work. This last proposal has its drawbacks, and I’m not sure I’d support it after having a full public debate. However, it is one idea that just might get spending under control. (For those who have been paying attention, you might have wondered if this position would conflict with my proposal to place the U.S. Civil Service Academy in or near LaPorte County. It does).

13. Residency/Contacts

Some have raised the issue of my living about 12 miles west of the district while Chocola only lives 1-2 miles east of it. If anyone votes for Chocola simply because he lives 10 or so miles closer to the district than I do, then I have failed to raise the quality of political debate for that voter. I had to move to Lake County for medical insurance reasons when my wife was pregnant in 2001. My voter’s registration has never been changed from St. Joseph County, so unlike Chocola, I can vote for myself in the primary. Also, I am closer to the Chicago Midway and Gary airports, so I can more rapidly get to and from D.C. Moreover, after going to school at Annapolis ( the U.S. Naval Academy) which is only 30 minutes east of D.C. and at Georgetown which is in D.C. itself, I have an already established extensive network of resources from which to draw from that will benefit the Hoosiers in this district. Finally, as the only native born Hoosier in this race who was raised in North-Central Indiana, I will represent this whole district, which I proved by keeping my pledge to visit all 12 counties in this district at least once a month from December to April in this primary. However, birth place and residency is not a solid issue in my opinion. I’m offering it only as a defense to those who may have doubts about my being able to represent the district.

Campaign Update.

The last press release, under 4. porn-prostitution, contained at least 5 typos. I have corrected the ones I have found so far and have updated the press release on my Web site, www.TonyZirkle.com.

I am in the process of getting out the last of 330,500 campaign fliers that have been or will be by May 3, 2004, distributed through the Elkhart Truth (2 runs), the South Bend Tribune, the Star Watch (?), the Michigan City News-Dispatch (2 runs), the Chesterton Tribune, the LaPorte Herald-Argus (2 runs), the Times, the Post-Tribune, the Plymouth Pilot News, the Knox Leader, the Bremen Enquirer, the Culver Citizen, the Bourbon News Mirror, the Advance News, the Rochester Sentinel, the Pulaski Co. Journal and the Independent, the Monticello Herald Journal, the Lafayette Journal and Courier, the Carroll County Comet, the Logansport Pharos-Tribune, the Kokomo Tribune, and the Kokomo Perspective. Additionally, I am planning currently for 2 thirty second phone calls to all 35,400 registered Republicans in the 2nd district to run on Friday, April 30th and Monday, May 3rd, 2004.

Your presence is welcome.

It’s the Kids, Smartie Campaign Committee

Anti-Gerrymandering and Zirkle’s View on President Bush’s Marriage Constitutional Amendment

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Zirkle States His Position on Gerrymandering and President Bush’s Proposed Constitutional Amendment on Marriage

March 5, 2004

1. Gerrymandering

A. Is gerrymandering present in Indiana?

Recently, Ralph Nader has campaigned against what he called “a two-party duopoly which tends towards single party districts.” Mr. Nader has a valid point. I am opposed to intentional gerrymandering by either party, and both parties are guilty of it. The 2nd Congressional District includes 8 counties and then 4 slivers of what appears to be intentional gerrymandering in order to secure the votes of city-dwelling democrats in Elkhart and Kokomo. Also, the chances that the district would exclude Congressman Chocola’s house by only a mile is next to nil. [I suppose that is the democrats' payback for Chocola having raised the next to frivolous issue of whether or not former Congressman Roemer owned property in the district, in what was reminiscent of our nation's early wealth property requirement restrictions for voting. It's domicile or permanent residency and where you maintain your voter's registration that counts, as was seen in my 2002 successful battle with the St. Joseph Co. Republican Party where I cited the Indiana Supreme Court decision regarding then Governor candidate Evan Bayh.] Representative Burton’s District 5 is even more bizarre in that it starts south of Kokomo and swings all the way around and to the south of Indianapolis. .

B. What problems arise with gerrymandering?

After having studied for two economics degrees, I’m a big fan of competition. I believe that non-natural monopolies should be avoided with all due diligence because they are inefficient and cause great harm in many areas. When intentional gerrymandering creates 60-70% party areas, like those in all four of South Bend’s Indiana State Representative districts, the risk of losing any real chance of removing mediocre politicians skyrockets.

The jockeying for position by both parties needs to stop. They both now have computer programs that detail where nearly every registered voter lives. They repeatedly run these programs until they can gerrymander their state to gain the greatest advantage. In the past, gerrymandering has been used to exclude minorities and other disfavored groups. It has also been used to maintain power for what may have been a minority party. In the end, the citizens are the ones who lose under such a perversion of fair representative democracy

The situation is exacerbated when one learns how party primary candidates are anointed, not by the voters, but by a very few number of party officials. For anyone who has attempted to run against a party anointed in the primary, they will quickly learn the lesson that a very small number of individuals decide who will in all likelihood secure the party nomination. Look at governor candidate Eric Miller, for example, who, according to a recent Indianapolis Star article, has to sit at the back of the Republican Lincoln Day dinners while Mitch Daniels gets to speak uninterrupted for a whole half hour.

When politicians know that no possibility exists for them being removed, they can abuse their power. For example, Indiana State Representative Ulmer has recently accused South Bend democrat Pat Bauer of doing just that when he locked out republicans and prevented any debate over the proposed marriage amendment which overwhelmingly passed in the senate.

When the minority party can not compete, then the power in a legislative house or senate can not be changed in any amount of reasonable time. When one understands how committees work, one realizes that democracy does not exist. For instance, a party committee chairman has an almost absolute discretion to hear or kill any bill he or she desires. For example, Michigan City State House Democrat Scott Pelath single-handedly killed the marriage bill amendment in his committee. He was not the first to engage in this tactic. St. Joseph Co. Prosecutor Mike Dvorak was also known to use this anti-democratic tactic. He killed two bills on abortion, one of which was to prohibit gender-selection abortion, and the anti-child pornography bill, which had passed in the senate 47-1. Both Pelath and Dvorak cited spins that the bills could not be passed because they were in a “short” legislative session which was reserved for “emergencies.” It takes a good degree of mental gymnastics to come to the conclusion that the 2004 daylight saving bill was an emergency for the democrats but that preserving marriage was not.

C. Zirkle’s plan to reduce intentional gerrymandering.

My plan will be to eliminate intentional gerrymandering in federal races. I will introduce a bill that will require that a state begin carving their districts in the northeastern most precinct of a county, which will start in the northeastern most county. I have randomly selected the northeast as the beginning corner because that is the region of our county where the first arose. The first county must be filled before a new one is chosen. This bill will include neutral measures of district dividing that will end many of the 60-70 noncompetitive races. By inserting competition into politics, voters will have a better opportunity to remove mediocre politicians and much of the gridlock in Washington will be removed. This bill will put power back into the hands of voters and will encourage more citizens to vote and become actively involved in their government. This country was meant to be a government by, for and of the people. Gerrymandering should not be allowed to squelch the voice of the citizens of this or any other state.

2. Zirkle states his position on the Bush constitutional amendment proposal.

If Bush’s amendment came across my desk, I would vote for it; however, it would not be my first choice for an amendment. I have a better one that I will propose. It will end the judocracy that we currently live in, return us to the representative democracy we were promised by our constitution, and will forever end the scourge of “black robe” disease.

A. After Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 in 1803, and its interpreted extensions, the judicial branch has no reasonable checks and balances.

After the constitution was adopted and the Bill of Rights was added, it only took a few years before the judicial branch began a power grab that has led to the near evaporation of representative democracy. That power grab is called the right of judicial review which grants unelected judges the power to strike down any statute that it decides is in conflict with the constitution. One can read the constitution from front to back and will find that nowhere does the text give that power to the judicial branch. Most constitutional scholars will agree that the Marbury decision represents “assumptions” and arguments of authority and not for authority. Many scholars will argue that Congress has at least an equal right to final interpretation of the constitution. The text is silent on the issue. In fact, I would argue that because the text states that Congress “shall make all laws” in Article I, that Congress has the edge on the claim. The Federalist Papers predicted that the judicial branch would be the least harmful. Chief Justice Rehnquist questioned whether that has turned out to be true in his book on the Supreme Court. If we consider that more U.S. American lives have been aborted since 1973 by one vote in a 5-4 decision in the Roe v. Wade case than have been killed in all of our nation’s wars combined, then I argue that taking the position that the judicial branch has turned out to be the least harmful is difficult to defend.

B. What are some examples of judicial review gone amuck?

It took less than 24 hours before the recent congressional vote and presidential signature to be overruled by injunction on the ban on partial birth abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court, besides going off the deep end and declaring that digitized child porn had constitutional protections, has also struck down state statutes on criminal behavior, has set up a near impossible standard when it comes to reducing porn-prostitution through its three-part vague obscenity test, and has contradicted itself time and time again. When I think of all of conflicts in the U.S. Supreme Courts’ rulings, I am reminded of what Martin Luther said about councils in that they had no authority for him, because they have contradicted one another.

Among constitutional scholars, a joke abounds that the U.S. Supreme Court is not final because it is infallible. They are infallible only because they have made themselves final.

C. How I plan to fix the system.

I do support judicial review because we do not want to have an emasculated judicial branch. However, amending the constitution every time a 25-year old law clerk persuades a distracted judge to write a bizarre opinion inconsistent with the people’s wishes is impractical. I know of no one who would say that judges have erred only 17 times since the Bill of Rights was adopted (There are 27 amendments).

While there is overwhelming support for the marriage preserving amendment that President Bush has proposed, this may be a once in lifetime opportunity to fix judicial review, place for the first time since 1803 a reasonable check and balance on the judicial branch, and put an end to what lawyers call “black robe disease,” which is an arrogance of power that enters, on rare occasions, the benches across our land.

My proposed amendment will declare for the first time that the judicial branch does have the power of judicial review; however, Congress also has the right to interpret the constitution. Deference will initially be given to the judicial branch; however, Congress may overrule any legal decision upon a super-majority vote (at least 2/3 in each house) with the executive signature. Some have proposed limiting the power of judicial review unless there is a unanimous verdict among the judges. My plan is better because a 3-judge panel on the Court of Appeals could make a decision. Representative democracy is too precious to leave in the hands of either 3 unelected judges on a circuit court of appeals or even among all 9 members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Your presence is welcome.

It’s the Kids, Smartie Campaign Committee