2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY #259 "WE ARE ANNOUNCING!"

 Last Friday I filed my notice of running for the nomination by the Libertarian Party as it’s candidate for President of the United States.  Today’s atmosphere of polarization, name-calling and tribalism  is simply unacceptable to me, and I anticipate it is to you as well, so we simply must have another choice in addition to Donald Trump or Joe Biden.  What follows below is the announcement I am sending to the voting delegates of the Libertarian Party.  I would appreciate all of your comments, reactions and support during the coming months because, together, we can Unite America by representing all of the people!  So here it is:

Hello, my name is Judge Jim Gray, and I am seeking the nomination as the Libertarian candidate for President, along with our friend and Libertarian stalwart Larry Sharpe from New York as my running mate for Vice President.  I am proud of my background as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica, because I care about people; a Navy JAG officer, because I care about our military and our security; a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles , who knows that all prosecutors in the name of “We the People” should always do the right thing for the right reason; and a trial court judge for 25 years, where I put my professional future at risk by holding a press conference back in 1992 emphasizing the reality that our nation’s policy of Drug Prohibition simply was not working.

                I’m sure you agree with me that Big Government is really good at one thing, and that is increasing the size, cost and power of Big Government.  That must be reversed.  I also expect that you agree that our federal government recently simply failed us by not being prepared for emergencies.  Yes, they don’t know when or where disasters might strike, such as earthquakes, hurricanes or pandemics, but it is their obligation previously to have made plans and have them in place when those disasters strike.  If the government hasn’t planned, then it is too late when the disasters occur.  Instead the government’s response was to shut down the economy.  But they did this without considering the additional disasters that will be inflicted upon us all by often unnecessarily closing probably hundreds of thousands of businesses, many which will never open again, and putting tens of millions of people out of work!  And we all will feel those government-inflicted damages for many years to come!

                To “remedy” these problems the government did something that it does best, which was to throw a great amount of money -- $2.2 Trillion –  at some businesses and people, while often arbitrarily leaving others out in the cold.  (For example, the Kennedy Center received about $15 million.  Why?  “Because it was hurt by being shut down!”  But what about the other theaters all across the country that were hurt as well?  Nothing for them!  And, of course, these payments added greatly to our national deficit, which is the largest security threat to our country, as well as the economic future of our children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren who will have to pay it back!  Libertarians are the only political party that speaks out consistently and forcibly on this critical issue.

                Furthermore, we must follow our Constitution and our laws by requiring a Declaration of War from Congress before authorizing our troops to be in combat for more than 60 days.  (At this point, what really are the goals our troops are fighting for in Afghanistan?), and let’s also bring competition back to our healthcare system, which will reduce costs and increase services, as well as our educational system, which will bring back excellence to many schools that today are failing our children! 

                Long ago Thomas Jefferson said that “We should have a bloody revolution every generation to keep the vested interests at bay.”  Fortunately, our Constitution keeps the revolution from being bloody, but when was the last political revolution?  Probably in the early 1860s when the Republicans took over from the Whigs.  And look at how entrenched those vested interests have become since that time. 

                You can help!  Please visit www.GraySharpe2020. 

Join us!  Support us!  Together we will be that revolution!

We Pledge Allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America! 

And all along the way, we will do you proud!

Thought for the week:  My great wife, Dr. Grace Walker Gray, DPT, DOT, has just published a book in hard and soft cover as well as in audio entitled BYE-BYE BACK PAIN: 9 Holistic Solutions for Relief from Sciatica, Lumbago, Slipped Disc and Backache, which is available through Amazon and elsewhere.  Other than the back pain inflicted by too many government excesses, it covers virtually everything we need to know about controlling the back pain that we all get as we grow older.  Get a copy, and I feel confident that her advice will help you a great deal with this problem. Here is the link: https://www.amazon.com/Bye-Bye-Back-Pain-Holistic-Solutions/dp/1734288418/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=bye+bye+back+pain&qid=1587232003&sr=8-2 . Leave her a 4 or 5 star review. I did!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Please listen to our weekly radio show entitled “All Rise! The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray” as we discuss timely issues, and show how they will be addressed more beneficially by employing Libertarian values and approaches.  You can hear it every Friday morning at 7 Pacific/10 Eastern by going to www.VoiceAmerica.com, clicking on the Variety Channel and then upon the word “live.”  You can also hear past shows on demand as well.  And, by the way, these 2 Paragraph columns are now on my website at www.JudgeJImGray.com, Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray.wordpress.com  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.  In addition, my new book entitled “2 Paragraphs 4 Liberty: Solutions that are Practical, Effective, Responsible, Libertarian, is now available at Amazon.com.   Please read and discuss it with friends, and send in a review.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #201 "UNALTERABLE LAWS"

        Regardless of what legislatures, courts or juries say, there are some laws in life that always affect human conduct that are unalterable.  One of these laws is the Law of Supply and Demand.  This law certainly can be affected by other laws, regulations and mores, but it can never be repealed.  One explanation for this is that, to the degree that people have Liberty to make choices, they will always consider their own self-interest when it comes to spending their money, time or labor.  Of course, some of those self-interests can be altruistic, but at least to some degree, this law always affects human conduct.  And no educated person is unaware of this reality that Incentives Matter! 
  
            The second is the Law of Unintended Consequences.  This law demonstrates that, no matter what the good intentions are of the people making rules or passing laws, there are often to even a great extent other consequences that provide results that are unforeseen and frequently negative.  Dr. Milton Friedman proposed the best antidote to this law by suggesting that we should judge programs by their results, not their good intentions.  Some good examples of those results are minimum wage laws that purport to want to increase wages for low-paid workers.  But the blunt reality is that some people’s labors, most often those of young people and other unskilled laborers, simply are not worth the increased expense to their employers.  So, as a result, they lose their jobs or don’t get hired in the first place.  Is this a bad thing?  Actually, most sociologists would agree that it is far better for society, for example, to have 100 people at work earning $10 per hour than 65 people earning $15 per hour.  Other similar laws of purportedly good intentions are rent-control laws, which attempt to keep rents below market rates.  Those laws work fine, at least temporarily, for the fortunate few people who already have apartments at the lower rates.  But landlords mostly will do anything they reasonably can to maximize their profits.  (Remember, Incentives Matter!)  So they will attempt to evict lower-paying tenants, or convert their apartments into condominiums or even parking lots that will bring a market rate of return on their investments. And they most certainly will not invest in building new apartments.  So all of this results in a decrease in the supply of apartments, which further exacerbates the problem.  And this is normal human conduct.  So listen to Milton Friedman.  Regardless of good intentions, and even voters’ perceptions of those intentions, the only fair yardstick of good laws is their actual results.  If people were to understand this basic concept, this would be a positive revolution in our country.   
  
            Quote for the week:  “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”  Thomas Paine

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

By the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #193 "THE 'TRANSFER STATE' IN ACTION"

 Recently I read the book Your Money or your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax by Sheldon Richman (The Future of Freedom Foundation, 1999), which discusses how we have spawned such an expensive and intrusive federal government, and what it does to repress Liberty.  It truly is worth the read in itself. But he wrote the following three paragraphs, beginning at page 93, that I simply had to pass along to you.  Please think about this situation and share your thoughts with others.

“The irony is that even people who claim to support limits on government power play the transfer game.  The late libertarian teacher Robert LeFevre used to ask conservative businessmen to list the government activities they liked. These people, who claimed to favor limited government, would each write a short list of programs.  The lists would differ, though; so when they were consolidated, the result was a government that had its hands in many areas of the economy.  The point of LeFevre’s exercise was that the political process can produce big government even when self-styled limited-government advocates are calling the shots.

“Observe the transfer state in action.  Social Security imposes taxes on working people and hands the money to retired people.  Medicare does almost the same thing, except the money goes to doctors and hospitals.  Agricultural programs take money from taxpayers and consumers and give it to farmers for not growing or for growing particular crops.  Welfare programs give the taxpayers’ money to people who do not work. Subsidies reward well-connected business people with the hard-earned money of the middle class and working class. Foreign aid indirectly subsidizes particular American businesses by giving tax money to foreign governments that will buy American products and services.  Government cultural agencies transfer wealth to artists, musicians, broadcasters, and humanities scholars.  The education bureaucracy subsidizes trendy social experiments on children.  The defense bureaucracy floods contractors with cash for equipment that is not needed and for missions that are improper.  The list goes on and on.

“In each case, people seeking reelection and aspiring to prestigious ‘public’ careers extract wealth from the general population to finance their schemes and benefit those with the time and resources to gain influence.  The textbook model of democratic government responsive to the people is not found in the real world.  Rather, government is a vast auction hall (to use Mencken’s metaphor) in which people enter bids for access to politicians and the vast booty collected by the tax system.”

Thomas Jefferson famously said that we should have a bloody revolution every generation to keep the vested interests at bay.  Well, our Constitution can keep it from being bloody, but how long has it been since we had a revolution?  The 1860s when the Republicans took over from the Whigs?  So maybe it’s long since time! And the Libertarian Party is the only hope in sight!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Quote for the week by Author Unknown: “Dreams don’t work unless you do.”                                                                                

By the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty.

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: #182 “CUBA NOW DESERVES LIBERTY”

     Way back in 1959 there was a popular uprising in Cuba against a ruthless and corrupt dictator named Fulgencio Batista, who had maintained power with the backing of the U.S. Government.  During his time in power it was widely known that Batista had forged a business partnership with the renowned gangsters Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano who had, for their part, turned Cuba into a veritable international drug and prostitution haven.  Yes, the revolution was led by Fidel Castro and, yes, when in power, Castro quickly formed a communist government that wrongly appropriated the land and assets of many innocent people.  And yes, as a result, our government immediately punished Cuba with economic sanctions and soon, in April of 1961, endorsed a failed military raid on the island that became a fiasco at the Bay of Pigs.  But that was long ago.

     Of course, since that time we have continued to punish Cuba with economic sanctions, even though we are virtually the only country on earth that continues to do so.  (And, ironically, this policy strongly helped to keep Castro in power, because he was always successfully able to blame almost everything that went wrong in his country on our sanctions.)  But at least with the fall of the Soviet Union, and Cuba’s incumbent loss of the subsidies that it received from that failed country, Cuba has increasingly turned to the Free Enterprise System.  And now with the death of Fidel, and his brother Raul transferring power to a new government, it is well past time for the United States to choose to stop punishing the people of Cuba with these sanctions.  Realistically Cuba poses no threat to the United States, and the People of Cuba are at least now entitled to Liberty!  And we should all do our part to make it so.

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

Quote of the week: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that

matter.”                                       

-Dr. Martin Luther King 

By the way, these columns are now on Facebook and LinkedIn at judgejimgray, Twitter at judgejamesgray, and wordpress at judgejimgray@wordpress.com.  Please visit these sites for past editions, and do your part to spread the word about the importance of Liberty!