I have nothing wrong with protesting against laws — it’s constitutional, sometimes effective, and a great way to voice dissent. However, I don’t think disagreeing with a law gives you carte blanche to violate that law, especially en masse. And that’s specifically what is going to happen in Raleigh on July 28.

On July 28, the Raleigh Amphitheatre and Festival Site will be hosting “Cauzin’ Vapors…Legalize It 2010 Summer Tour” — that is, a pro-Marijuana legalization music festival, like Woodstock with (maybe) more pot. While the booking was not explicitly done by the state (it was done by the company Live Nation), one can already see the issue with the tour: it pretty much encourages consumption of illegal drugs. Of course, the hilarity of this is that the aforementioned convention center is right across from a Raleigh Police Department. Still, it’s pretty clear the entire city of Raleigh can’t mobilize to babysit a bunch of concert goers — so what’s a city to do?

In my opinion, something needs to be done to plan for issues like this. I’ve honestly never understood how local governments could willingly stand aside and watch the law being flagrantly broken just because of the lack of police force. Be it by fining people or by increasing police force on days when such “tours” go on, the government needs to be willing to uphold the laws to everyone, even if a lot of people are violating the law at the same time. Put simply, there is no (and should be no) “group discount” for crime. I’d much rather see an entire concert shut down than to allow it to continue when illegal actions are being implicitly condoned.

But still, it may be that this “tour” manages to get by without a single joint — which would be the ideal situation, as unlikely as it would be. The best protesters are those who not only are able to articulate their dissent on a subject, but those who are also able to display that they do so not out of selfishness or greed, but rather simply by reason. There are a lot of remarkably interesting arguments out there that promote legalizing marijuana — “we do it anyway” isn’t one of them.

See Kirk Sigmon’s Commentary for more posts. So what do you think? It is appropriate that Raleigh is allowing such a tour?

While I never forward chain e-mails to my friends and family, I received one recently that reminded me of a fact most people in the United States are not aware of—our elected representatives in Congress are themselves exempt from most of the laws that they pass! A recent example of this: Obamacare.

If “Obamacare” and the vast number of other laws which curtail our freedoms and raid our pocketbooks were applied equally to our elected officials, would the bills ever pass? I doubt it. So how do you stop this new “Roman Senate” from unilaterally imposing their will upon us without personally suffering the consequences? Vote them out of office? Trust them to do the right thing? Of course not! What about a new amendment to the Constitution?

In that e-mail, the original author included language that he/she believes would do the trick:

“Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States “.

Without discussing the mechanics of amending the Constitution, this idea has serious merit. When most people are faced with decisions that have a major impact upon their lives or wallets, they (hopefully) evaluate the ramifications of that decision. Unfortunately, our elected representatives do not have to evaluate their decisions at a personal level because they are most likely not affected by the bill they are considering. Again using Obamacare as an example, the rules and regulations contained in the initial 2,700+ page bill apparently do not apply to members of Congress—they have their own “Cadillac” Health care coverage. Once again, it appears that the only thing most of our elected officials appear to be concerned with is raising money and getting reelected—not whether or not their decisions negatively effect the rest of us.

Why not ask your elected official what they think about this “new” amendment. Ask them if they would propose or support such a bill—remember, these people were elected to work for you, not to sit around in togas and sandals drinking wine.

Read more of Lance Sigmon’s commentary at his blog.

So what do you think? Is Congress too disconnected from the laws they pass? Should they be limited to passing laws that they have to follow as well?

The North Carolina Energy Office has decided to launch an Energy Star rebate program, which will, from April 22-25, provide 15% off the purchase of select Energy Star labeled appliances (specifically washers, dishwashers, refrigerators, and freezers) from any store participating in the program. The money for this program comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provided $8.8m for the campaign. The North Carolina Energy Office estimates that 49,960 “Energy Star” appliances will be purchased, “saving enough electricity to power 536 homes for a year”.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Except it’s a horrible, horrible idea.

First, allow me to make the obvious argument: $8.8 million could go to help a lot of families. Sure, there’s always the “trickle down effect”, and supporting local businesses is valuable to the community, but $8.8 million dollars could go to helping a lot of families stay afloat for a good amount of time. Certainly, it wouldn’t be many families, and it might not keep them afloat for very long — but it’s still significant. I don’t mean to be eco-unfriendly, but the ability to eat and sleep on an everyday basis in my mind takes priority over energy savings.

The second argument? Energy Star is a very questionable program, especially when funds could go elsewhere.

The Energy Star program was initiated in 1992 as a method to encourage appliance manufacturers (particularly appliances that suck down a lot of power, like dryers) to design appliances that used less energy, and thus taxed less on the grid and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Without going into too many details, the theory of encouraging people to switch to Energy Star appliances is pretty simple: it saves everyone (electricity-related) money and the environment in the long run, and in the short term it helps encourage appliance sales.

The problem is, it’s not quite as cut and dry is that. For a variety of reasons, the Energy Star program is questionable, at best. For one thing, very recently, government investigators revealed that the program would literally accept a space heater with a feather duster and fly strips attached and label it “Energy Star” without even seeing it in person or investigating it. Appliance makers could very well be lying about energy efficiency and no-one would be the wiser. Even on the most basic level, “Energy Star” rated appliances can cost double the price of non-rated appliances, as well as can be a heck of a lot more difficult to work with. Furthermore, on a technical level, lots of the “Energy Star” appliances out there are using cheaper materials, which obviously break easier and, in some cases, simply contribute to landfills and require the customer to purchase a replacement. And, of course, the statistics are usually inflated about the effectiveness of the “Energy Star” program — meaning those wonderful numbers mentioned in the beginning of this article are likely just drawn from thin air. Clearly, the program has its flaws.

This is not to imply that going non-energy efficient is better — rather, it’s simply an indicator that going “Energy Star” does not necessarily benefit the consumer, the environment, or the government. It may benefit the energy companies, but only in small doses. And, of course, this is presuming that consumers would be replacing non-”Energy Star” appliances with “Energy Star” appliances — there is very likely the case that someone could replace a rated appliance with another rated appliance, meaning absolutely nothing to the government!

Of course, we can’t blame the NC Government too much for this — it’s federally handed down money, tagged for a specific purpose. Still, I can’t help but to think it’s sad that we spend so much money on such an unproven project when people in the state desperately need the money to survive.

So what do you think? Is the Energy Star program worth the money? Or should the cash go to something different?

There are three lawsuits going through the North Carolina court system challenging specific areas of our state’s ballot access laws. The first case, filed in 2005, is that filed by the Libertarian Party of North Carolina and North Carolina Green Party (Libertarian Party of NC, et al and NC Green Party, et al. v. State of North Carolina, et al.). This suit challenges the constitutionality of all the state’s ballot access laws, but it focuses on a political party’s access to the election ballot.

The second case was initiated in 2008 by Bryan Greene, an unaffiliated candidate for the U.S. Congressional District 10 in 2008. (Bryan E. Greene, et al. v. Gary O. Bartlett, et al.). It focuses on unaffiliated candidates access to the election ballot in local and district elections.

The most recent case which was started in early 2010 by Mark Brody (Mark Brody, et al. v State Board of Elections, et al.), an unaffiliated candidate for the N.C. House of Representatives District 103, is set to challenge State election law to afford unaffiliated candidates the ability to retain access to the ballot once they successfully petition for access in the previous election.

After nearly two years in the courts, with delays including an attempted change of venue and a natural disaster hindering the advancement of the case, Bryan Greene’s case may soon be heard. He is challenging the restrictive ballot laws that kept him and all other unaffiliated candidates for the U.S. Congress since 1901 off of the ballot. The plaintiffs filed a Motion for Summary Judgment asking the Court to “[declare] North Carolina General Statute § 163.122(a)(2) unconstitutional…” as well as to prevent the “defendants from further enforcing…” the statute on Feb. 15.

The State responded to Greene’s Motion for Summary Judgment on March 18.

One of the first arguments the State made is that the plaintiff has the “initial burden of showing that the ballot access requirements seriously restricts political opportunity” and that the plaintiff “must demonstrate that a ‘reasonably diligent’ candidate could not gain a place on the ballot under the statutory framework.”

The State goes on to say that even though “no unaffiliated candidates have run for Congress from North Carolina” since 1901 (meaning successfully obtained access to the North Carolina election ballot to run for Congress) that “this one piece of evidence establishes nothing other than that no unaffiliated candidates have run for Congress from North Carolina” and incorrectly states that Greene has provided “no evidence why this is so.”

The State claims that not many have tried and that “no more effort” was put forth by those candidates “than did plaintiffs in this case” continuing on the State’s assumption that just because Greene only collected a total of 805 signatures that somehow his failure to get on the ballot was his own fault “from his own lack of effort to comply” with N.C.’s restrictive laws and are a “result of plaintiffs’ own decisions and inaction.”

The state also claims that Greene has no standing in the court to challenge the law because of the number of signatures he collected compared to the total 16,457 that were required in 2008. As Richard Winger of Ballot Access News stated in an article on the State’s response, “three times, the U.S. Supreme Court has accepted standing for plaintiffs in ballot access cases who had submitted no signatures whatsoever,” including the historic case of Williams v. Rhodes in 1968, so according to past Supreme Court cases, Bryan Greene has standing.

As Greene’s campaign manager, I know the campaign was not done half-heartedly or with “inaction” but that the opposite is so. Of the in excess of $1,200 that came into the campaign, the vast majority of those funds went in one way or another to obtaining signatures for the campaign to get on the ballot.

This is not much money to work with in the first place. Green was at a disadvantage already simply due to the fact that he was not a major party candidate, had no big party to back him and had to start everything from scratch. Greene was a full time employee at Frye Regional Medical Center during his campaign and still had family obligations. Running for Congress under these conditions is difficult enough, but made even more difficult when your primary focus for nearly half a year has to be nothing more than obtaining ballot access signatures while your opponents can focus on actually running a campaign.

The State also claims Greene lacks standing because he fails to demonstrate any ongoing or future harm and “the record is devoid of any but the most general suggestion that Bryan Green might again seek to run as an unaffiliated candidate for Congress or any other office.”

Greene brought this lawsuit against the State’s restrictive laws in order to have them declared unconstitutional. His purpose is to get a more understandable and attainable requirement similar to most other states put in place. He is trying to do this not just for his future attempts to get on the North Carolina ballot, but for the benefit of others who wish to run without any formal political party affiliation attached to their name on the ballot, no matter if they agree with his stances or not.

The is not just for Bryan Greene, not just so he can be on the ballot again, but to allow more candidates to participate in the North Carolina election process, to introduce some real competition into the debate and election, and to allow for a better flow of diverse ideas. The State seems to think this is all about Bryan Greene, but it is all about the people of North Carolina and their right to vote their conscience and not to be forced to choose from just two different parties that often times seem to look like one and the same.

The State attempts to make the point that the idea that there is a “fundamental right … to promote Bryan Greene’s candidacy” is “absurd.” It cites a 1971 U.S. Supreme Court Ruling (Jenness v. Fortson, 403 U.S. 431) upholding a Georgia standard for petition signatures in support of the State’s contention that North Carolina law does not violate First Amendment rights.

The State’s argument is that since North Carolina stipulates a lower percentage requirement, it is easier to get on the ballot here than in Georgia. This is a misleading statement. The number of signatures required is based on the number of registered voters as of January 1 of the election year. They must be turned in by the last Friday in June. That was June 27 in this case, a total of 178 days. Since the petitions must be certified by the county board of elections at least two weeks prior to that deadline, that reduces the period for signature collection to 164 days.

This is opposed to Georgia’s five percent signature requirement based on the number of registered voters eligible to vote in the last election for that office. Typically North Carolina’s highest signatures requirement for Congressional office is larger than Georgia’s highest requirement even though the percentage requirement in North Carolina is lower, as the vast majority of districts in North Carolina are larger than those of Georgia.

While it is true candidates can begin petitioning before January 1, they won’t know when they start how many signatures they need. And that number increases every election. For example, in this case the signature requirement in District 10 was 16,457 signatures in 2008 and now is 17,541.

Then as Richard Winger noted, the State fails to take into account that “a petitioning candidate had successfully qualified in each of the two previous elections before Jenness v Fortson was filed. Clearly, the Supreme Court never meant to endorse a ballot access law that is so difficult it is never used or virtually never used.” This is the case with North Carolina’s law where there has never been a single candidate successfully petition for access as an unaffiliated candidate for the Congress since 1901 when the state-regulated ballot kicked off.

It seems very convenient that the State left this important piece of information out of their response, as it is very significant when taken into context with the test established in Storer v Brown in 1974. The court’s test states “in the context of California politics, could a reasonably diligent independent candidate be expected to satisfy the signature requirements, or will it be only rarely that the unaffiliated candidate will succeed in getting on the ballot? Past experience will be a helpful, if not always an unerring, guide: it will be one thing if independent candidates have qualified with some regularity, and quite a different matter if they have not…” Substitute North Carolina for California and you will understand why an independent candidate has such difficulty qualifying for the ballot here.

So according to the Supreme Court’s own test, which was reaffirmed as recently as 2008 in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, if a law is seldom used it is likely unconstitutional. Hence the State has left out an important piece of information for their response, the fact that in the two preceding elections in Georgia a candidate had successfully met the signature requirement.

The State relies on the idea that somehow the State’s interest of preventing a crowded ballot outweighs the freedom of conscience and association, and the right to vote of thousands if not millions of North Carolina citizens. They go as far as to claim that the ballot would be too crowded because North Carolina elects the entire Council of State, and that taking into account this “complex whole” would show that what may work for others states with less restrictive ballot access laws will not work for North Carolina.

Washington state elects its Council of State every four years. Their requirement for ballot access is arguably one of the least restrictive in the nation, a 1,000 signature requirement for statewide and Congressional offices and they have no problem with a cluttered ballot. Most statewide and Congressional races have two to four candidates. There are few states that have seen more than eight candidates appear on their ballots for any statewide office during the past one hundred years, let alone enough to confuse the voter.

Breaking down this restrictive requirement in North Carolina will not open the flood gate of candidates. More choice equals a stronger voice for the people, a more effective and representative voice at the ballot box and more responsive elected officials. The Democrats and Republicans in power seem to be afraid of such a voice.

While waiting for the court to make its decision we can only hope for the best. In the meantime I encourage you to contact your state representatives and senators and let them know that the barriers to competition in the political arena through North Carolina’s ballot access laws must come down, but do not stop there. Write your local newspaper and let them know this issue is important to you and educate your fellow citizens about this important issue.

Copyright © 2010 Jordon M. Greene. Jordon M. Greene is the President and Founder of the North Carolinians for Free and Proper Elections PAC, a member of the Constitution Party of North Carolina State Executive and Ballot Access Committees, a political science student at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and served as campaign manager for the Bryan Greene 2008 Congressional Campaign Committee.

Read more of Jordon Greene’s perspective on his blog. So what do you think? Will breaking down restrictive requirements in NC flood the system and confuse voters, or will it give them more freedom and break the excessive control parties have on the political system?

There has been considerable talk lately about the size of the federal budget deficit and the national debt. Billions and trillions of dollars sound a bit confusing because those numbers are beyond the understanding of most Americans. Let me put these figures in perspective so that we can at least visualize just what the deficit and debt would look like in cold cash.

Let’s assume that one strap of $100 bills ($5,000) is ¼ inch thick.

A stack containing one million dollars ($1,000,000) in $100 bills is 50 inches tall. That is 4 feet, 2 inches tall.

A stack containing one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000) in $100 bills is 50,000 inches tall. That is 4,166.66 feet, or about 0.789 miles tall.

A stack containing one trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) in $100 bills is 50,000,000 inches tall. That is 4,166,666 feet, or about 789 miles tall.

Now let’s see how tall our estimated federal budget deficit for 2010 is, and then how tall our national debt is.

The federal budget deficit is the annual amount of money the U. S. Treasury has to BORROW to pay the nation’s bills each year. Tax revenues are simply not enough to satisfy our free spending leaders. The estimated deficit for the 2010 fiscal year ending September 30 is $1.4 TRILLION ($1,400,000,000,000). That amount—what we will borrow this year—is about 1,104.6 MILES tall.

Now for the really mind boggling national debt. That is the accumulated amount that we have borrowed and not yet paid back. As of this writing—March 18, 2010, the debt clock says the national debt is a bit over $12.651 TRILLION ($12,651,000,000,000), and that amount of $100 bills is a staggering 9,981.639 MILES TALL! Just to make the math easier, let’s round that off to 9,980 miles.

Now you may have trouble believing this, but, laid on its side and wrapped around the globe, that stack of $100 bills would reach roughly from Quito, Equator, straight through the North Pole and continuing south to the vicinity of Bangkok, Thailand! Driving 24 hours a day at 100 miles per hour, it would take you a shade longer than 4 days and 3 hours to drive that distance! Laid out flat, side by side, those bills would cover 2,241.776 square miles!

If our forefathers had a printing press that printed 10 $100 bills a second ($1,000 a second, $3,600,000 an hour), to accumulate the amount of money equal to our national debt they would have had to print continuously, 24/7, starting in the year 1611 AD!

Do I have your attention yet? Are you looking forward to the election in November?

Read more of samsanford’s commentary at http://ncvoice.com/samsanford/

In statements made to the USA Today, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said teachers “should be empowered and supported — not scapegoated.” Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, said the union was expecting a broader effort. Instead, the blueprint still relies on standardized tests and “too much top-down scapegoating of teachers and not enough collaboration.” http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-03-14-education_N.htm

While there are many to blame for the current state of our Nation’s failing schools, asking the federal government to dictate the direction and administration of our education system will never lead to a successful outcome. In his 2011 budget summary for the Department of Education, the President noted that “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) delivered nearly $100 billion to States and school districts to help address budget shortfalls… http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget11/summary/11summary.pdf Now the administration wants to throw even more money at the problem than last year ($77.8 billion up $3.5 billion from 2010) tied to its massive education bureaucracy ($1.8 billion budget and almost 4,000 full-time employees). Is this the future for our next generation—constant tinkering from the politically-driven politicians and bureaucrats in Washington. How can students ever be expected to know what is important in their education if the “adults” continually change the “rules?”

Maybe we should return the control of our schools back to the states and eliminate the Department of Education. This would push the responsibility for education closer to the end-users (parents, teachers and students) and eliminate a large federal expenditure for administrators in the process.

So do you agree? Should states take many of the roles the federal government currently plays? What do you think? Comment below!