TONY ZIRKLE FOR CONGRESS
PRESS RELEASE: TONY ZIRKLE FOR CONGRESS
DATE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2006
PLACE: LAW OFFICES OF TONY ZIRKLE 110 N. MAIN ST. SOUTH BEND, IN 46601
TIME: 11:00 A.M. with follow-up interviews at 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m.
On Tuesday, February 21, 2006 at 11:00 a.m., I will be formally announcing my primary campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives, District 2 at my Law Office in South Bend.
The purpose of this press conference is to provide an outline of the issues I will seek to inject into the public debate from now until the May 2, 2006 primary. I will make myself available at 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. for any member of the press or public who wishes to ask me questions should they not be available for the 11:00 a.m. press conference.
I. A recap of some 2004 issues.
I will continue to endorse many of the issues I raised in the 2004 campaign which included:
1. A “Manhattan Project” for new energy sources. Energy, including but not limited to oil, is rapidly becoming an issue of increasing national security importance. At my ten-year reunion at Georgetown this past summer, former CIA Director George Tenet mentioned that the issue of energy is likely to become of such great importance that it will shift political alliances. I agree. We can see this fact already in world events. For instance, President Chavez in Venezuela and the Iranians are better able to thumb their noses at the U.S. and even lash out with threats because the Chinese need their oil.
The participants in this project would be given a key to the patent office and the government would exercise eminent domain over key patents, with just compensation of course, so that not only the U.S., but also the entire world, could benefit from the advancements in research that is not obstructed by the profit motive. We could house this project at the USCSA that is discussed in point 2 below.
2. I will continue to call for a public debate to establish a United States Civil Service Academy that I would like to place in LaPorte County. The Academy could be modeled after the military service academies and would provide the training ground for the next generation of elite civil servants in a wide variety of fields such as in the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security and administrative agencies. I would also suggest that we train a host of “medical ambassadors” where hundreds of young students could receive a free medical education and who would then pay back their education with service in foreign nations where they will provide medical treatment to impoverished nations. There is no doubt that the U.S. is facing an image problem. This program is just one of my suggestions that could help to turn the world opinion somewhat more in our favor.
3. Gerrymandering. I still support the idea having neutral rules for drawing congressional districts. I suggest that we start in the north-east corner of each state and complete one county before going to the next. Right now, parties use computer programs to enhance their party power. Campaigning is overly expensive and inefficient because of districts that look like a Rorsach’s ink blot test. Ralph Nader did have a point when he said that politics was becoming a “two-party duopoly with single party districts.”
4. Drug-Crime. I have prosecuted felony drug-dealers in the three largest counties (Elkhart, Lake & St. Joseph) in the Chicago-Detroit drug corridor, so I feel competent to speak with some authority on this issue. A large percentage of crime is in one way or another connected to drug use. People do not bust out a car window to steal a quarter in their view to buy a cup of coffee. They do it to buy drugs. Robberies, burglaries, and thefts are often committed to fund, and rapes, domestic violence and child abuse/molest are often committed while on drugs. Unfortunately, prosecutors often neglect drug crime and consider it of lower priority. The five months I spent in the Lake County, Indiana Felony Drug Unit was worth years of experience elsewhere. When I arrived, my assignment was to catch up on a four-year backlog of boxes of Gary drug dealers. 2002 was an election year and the incumbent was rumored to have a challenger. The uncharged Gary drug dealers was perceived as a weakness to the re-election. In five months, I charged about 230 felony cases. I did receive a complaint from a judge about the “new tough approach” on drug crime. The mayor of Gary announced about six months after I left that the murder rate in Gary had dropped by 25% that year. Gary was no longer the murder capital of the U.S. I understand that Gary is now once again at the top of the list. In sum, I believed that evidence exists that aggressive prosecution of drug dealers is and should be recognized as a key component in reducing crime.
5. Gambling. I will continue to object to the continued rise and expansion of gambling in all its forms. Studies show that big lottery winners often have their lives ruined by divorce, bankruptcy, kidnapings and threats, for example. Gamblers also prey on senior citizens. I personally am familiar with a case where the boats took about $300,000 in about a year from a lonely senior citizen whose husband had just passed. They sent her free coupons and gave her all the attention she needed in order to fork over nearly all of her children’s inheritance. A congressional investigation may be warranted where issues such as whether or not the bells and lights have a psychological “drug-like” effect on seniors that lifts their moods. Additionally, mass, public gambling is likely to fuel the fire for the terrorists who had previously had at least one plan to bomb Las Vegas, according to one news station that I recall.
6. Immigration. I still believe that concurrent jurisdiction for local enforcement is the best solution when coupled with a one-time, final amnesty with increased penalties for future enforcement. Noone has the will to deport the millions here, so we may as well just fix the system and bring those who are here out of the shadows. I also still support the idea of placing some of our prisons on the border and assigning some of the non-violent ones to the border patrol. Another idea would be to recruit dead-beat child support debtors to police the Canadian border.
7. Health care. After I lost the primary, I noticed that Senator Kerry’s health care plan was similar to mine. We can make health care insurance affordable by taking the catastrophic claims, i.e. over $50,000 a year, out of the system through a universal single-payor system that could be funded by re-introducing the payroll tax on incomes over $200,000 a year while leaving a donut between $90,000 and $200,000 so that the middle class gets to keep a tax break. Student insurance can provide family coverage for about $2,000 per year for a family only because they limit their liability to $50,000 a year.
8. Activist judges. I still support the idea that some reasonable check and balance outside amending the Constitution needs to be in place for the judicial branch. My idea is to legitimize judicial review, which is of questionable authority in the Constitution, by formalizing it in an amendment. The amendment would state that the legislature, in both houses in a 3/4 super-majority vote, when coupled with the executive, may act to override individual judicial legal interpretations.
9. Social Security. I will continue to support the idea that social security may be delayed until age 70 for those who do not need it. I will support the institution of a means test for wealthy individuals to delay their receipt. Columnist Robert Novak gave me this idea when he stated that it is “absurd” that he gets a social security check. Social security should be for security and not for extra pocket change to blow on gambling boats.
10. Abortion. Here is my current position. The constitution does not protect abortion. Simply put. The federal government is a government of limited powers and issues of the police powers of “health, welfare, safety and morality” are left to the states unless interstate commerce is substantially affected, and after the 1995 U.S. Supreme Court Lopez decision, it’s likely that birth is enough to trigger the commerce clause. Perhaps the clearest way that the Constitution could protect the “right” of abortion is under the 14th Amendment if Congress had acted to remedy due process violations by the states. Congress, to date, has not acted. I am an original intent, strict constructionist, and everyone would probably agree that in 1787 the writers did not intend for abortion to be covered in the Bill of Rights. The Constitution outlines the process for amendment and considering it a living document makes the amendment process somewhat irrelevant and risks turning all of our rights into a lottery of judicial opinion that is causing war between the parties over nominees’ personal beliefs and views.
II. Expanded 2006 Issues.
If I could be allowed one sound bite, it would likely be this:
“Historically and presently, the most effective implemented weapon of mass destruction has almost always been and still remains, porn-prostitution in its manifold manifestations, and the Achilles heel of militant Islam is Western social reform. A mountain of evidence exists in original source, pre-politically correct, watered-down and revisionist history to support both premises.”
1. Porn-prostitution. I will during this campaign seek to draw more public attention to this current scourge that is plaguing my generation with an STD rate of 50% by the age of 25. The rate is estimated to be 33% by the time children are a high school senior. Billboards in Berrien County, Michigan speak of a silent stalker–the Human Papilloma Virus which has almost certainly affected nearly every male porn “star” who, with no readily ascertainable symptoms, then transmits it to what is often thousands of young, manic-depressive, drug-addicted cervical cancer acquiring females, who, in prior ages, would have devoted their “increased activity toward goal-related endeavors” in the rearing of our societies’ great presidents, generals and statesmen. If ever there was an untapped tax cut, it is right now the Great Porn-Prostitution Tax. Far more details of this point will follow.
2. War on Terror. Bin Laden has stated that Western porn is one reason to justify attacking the West. Middle Age scholars like John Wesley would interpret the Rev. 9 army of locusts and scorpions as the Saracens and Turks who attacked those who refused to give up “murders, thefts, PORNei and drugs.” However, scholars differ on the accuracy of this view, so I will not focus on that point in the Congressional campaign to any great degree.
In my view, we should call them “murders like their father who was one from the beginning” instead of terrorists. My philosophy of life dictates that we should not fear those who can only harm the body but that we should fear those who can enslave the mind. In that view, Howard “porn-stooge” Stern is more terrifying than Bin Laden.
While at the Naval Academy, a Muslim saved me from an Egyptian prison after my flash went off in the Cairo Museum, and my first day underway on an aircraft carrier gave me first-hand experience with “terrorism” when some Lebanese militants killed a Marine and we responded by bombing several sites in Lebanon. One of my Lebanese classmates at Georgetown later stated, “So, that was you who bombed us.” She later indicated that Christians used to be the majority in Lebanon, but “we breed faster.” It may be that militant Islam has the opportunity to accomplish in short order by high Eastern birth rates and mass Western STDs what they could not militarily in 1400 years. When I pressed this question to former CIA Director Tenet, he stated, “Could be.”
I have also roomed with a Pakistani Muslim, wrestled with an Iranian down the hall at Georgetown and sat in class with a North Korean in the seminary at Andrews. My experience also includes a near assassination knifing in Istanbul, Turkey and getting pelted with rocks in the West bank by Palestinians. Because of this experience, I tried to pay special attention to the prophetic role of Islam in historical interpretations while I was a seminary student.
3. Porn & Terror
I will, however, seek to point out to the public the numerous examples of what happened to societies that embraced the ancient porn-prostitution cults and will seek to draw connections with modern day political events. For instance, Ezekiel criticized the sex cults of his day when he stated that the women had turned to the ancient equivalent of Chinese “male images” and that the beauty of Israel was being “laid waste” in the prostitution high places just before they were enslaved for 70 years.
On the other hand, Emperor Augustus outlawed adultery and gave tax credits to “married” people who had children, and the Pax Romana ensued. After Tertullian, around 220 A.D., prayed that the barbarians not conquer Rome because the little horn was next, Augustine of Hippo, less than two centuries later, declared that prostitution was a “necessary evil.”
The barbarians conquered Rome and some 1,260 years of dark ages ensured which was cut short by the Reformation or Revolt, depending on your perspective. Note that the Ottoman Empire was not called the “sick man of the east” until after the Reformation/Revolt because they were at the gates of Vienna in Luther’s day in the 16th Century. The French Revolution led to “no fault divorce” and their society experienced constant wars for years. The “Great War on White Slavery” was lost at the turn of the 20th Century and WWI, WWII, and the Korean and Vietnam Conflicts ensued. During the sex revolution of the 60s, we couldn’t even beat ½ of Vietnam while President Johnson’s porn commission was deciding that porn was no big deal.
President Reagan established the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Unit, which was operated at a net plus to tax payers with every major porn distributor being placed under investigation or indictment by 1993 when President Clinton took office. Communism fell without a bullet being fired. President Clinton then fired every federal obscenity prosecutor in the country except for one, and he joked to me in 2001 that I was about to accomplish in five months more than he could in five years in that administration when I was just days from indicting the world’s largest porn-pimp right before former St. Joseph Co. Prosecutor Toth and I parted ways. Now, after Clinton, we have this 63-plus country “War on Terror” that is likely to not end any time in the near future.
Some will not appreciate the lessons from history or religion, so I will also attempt logic via secular economics. Porn is illogical and is a drain on the economy. It wastes time and reduces workers’ productivity. It does contribute to violence in certain individuals as recorded by Ted Bundy. By glorifying the freak and manufactured extremes of human anatomy, it has destroyed the self-esteem of many of our youth and is a major factor that has lead to mass drug addiction that is destabilizing South and Central America. Porn creates a vacuum that our youth seek to fill with drugs, and drugs have become a root cause of our national debt through the “crime tax.”
This questions deserves a response from our political leaders. How can the U.S. justify wars to spread “democracy” when we ignore a now 70 billion dollar industry that far too often preys on mentally-ill and drug-addicted teenage girls and that has developed an Internet that maintained about 100,000 Web sites linked to child pornography, according to a 2001 U.S. Customs Department press release after Operation Blue Orchid?
More details and issues will follow.
IV. Prosecutor’s Race Update.
My formal announcement for St. Joseph Co. Prosecutor will be at 1:00 p.m. at my law office in South Bend on Wednesday, March 1, 2006.
Additionally, if Scott Duerring wishes to become the St. Joseph Co. Prosecutor, I will give him his chance. Assuming that I remain on the ballot and make it through the primary, I will give him until July 1, 2006 to move to St. Joseph Co. and establish his voter’s residency. I will then consent to a one-debate “caucus” for registered St. Joseph Co. Republicans at the Century Center or the party headquarters, for example. If Scott will agree to a one-hour debate with me, I will let the voters decide who is the best candidate to oust St. Joseph Co. Prosecutor Mike Dvorak in the fall. If they choose Scott, I’ll withdraw and enjoy my summer with my family.
I have no illusions about that job. I personally saw what the local democrats did to Chris Toth. The democrats are organized and vicious (i.e. Barnes’ anti-Toth campaign about Toth never even having prosecuted a single felony crime), and Dvorak is not a political naivete, although he never has had any real competition in his gerrymandered House District 8 seat and in the 2002 race after Toth made unnecessary enemies faster than one can cook instant grits. I’m running because I’m confident I am the best person to tackle the job and that the democrat tactics are far less likely to affect my performance not only because I understand them, but also because of my background education, training and experience which can be viewed on my Web site at www.TonyZirkle.com under “About Tony.”
Your presence is welcome at the above press conference.
Very truly yours,
Tony Zirkle
Law Offices of Tony Zirkle
110 N. Main St.
South Bend, IN 46601
(574) 386-7960
www.TonyZirkle.com
Post Script
Here is a brief recap of my prior campaigns:
1. 2000. I closed the gap by 4.4 % on former State Rep. Mike Dvorak with ½ the prior challenger’s money and no active campaign manager. During this campaign, Toth had personally hand-picked me to run against Dvorak, and the St. Joseph Co. Chairmen once called me “the best kept secret in St. Joseph County.”
2. 2002. I received 1 vote (mine) and 34% of the anti-Toth vote in the Republican primary against former St. Joseph Co. Prosecutor Chris Toth with about $3,000 in self-funded campaigning and almost no help. The (then) new St. Joseph Co. Chairman unsuccessfully tried to kick me off the ballot and called for a felony perjury investigation against me because he didn’t understand the difference between domicile and residency.
3. 2004. I garnered 16% of the Republican primary vote against incumbent Congressman Chris Chocola. I thought I got creamed until I found out that this was the second highest percentage of any primary challenger in the entire state and that the one challenger who received 4.9 % more than me ran against the most poorly funded incumbent; whereas, Chocola was the most heavily funded, party-supported incumbent. I ran this 12 county campaign entirely by myself with $290 in contributions and a single credit card.
Of the 3 M’s of campaigning, money, mobility and message, I have negative money and no mobility; however, the first two are irrelevant to actual governing, so I have put all my effort into the third. My message is stronger than any politician I hear and see on TV, and if I can ever find a way to get people’s attention before they write me off as a side-show joke, then there is a small chance that I can use what I have worked so hard to learn to improve society. I am willing to face the likely scorn that I will receive because the stakes are so high and because millions are about to repeat the same mistakes of those who have gone before us.