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: #251 "TREATMENT COURTS WORK!"

       As I often say on my radio podcast All Rise! The Libertarian Way with Judge Jim Gray, we all know that many things are going wrong today all around the world, but we do not particularly focus upon the fact that lots of things are actually going right as well.  And one of them is Treatment Courts, otherwise known as Collaborative Courts.  So what are those courts and what do they do?  Here in Orange County and, increasingly, all around our country we have Homeless Courts, Veterans Courts, Drug Courts, Mental Disability Courts and others.  And these courts do gratifyingly good jobs in treating the underlying problems that give rise to crimes in the first place.  They are called collaborative because the teams are composed of judges, social workers, counselors, medical doctors, prosecutors, defense attorneys and probation officers.  Yes, there is coercion that “encourages” the subjects/defendants to be involved, but those people quickly see that, if they take the programs seriously, not only will the criminal charges be dismissed but their lives will be much better.  So the programs are successful.

      When I was first appointed to the Bench at the end of 1983, it quickly became apparent to me that alcohol-related offenses were the largest unmet problems facing our courts.   So, I am proud to say, within six months of my appointment we had up and running what was probably the first Drug Court in the country.  Knowing full well that if the offenders were alcoholics they would continue to drink, and then almost certainly drive and pose unacceptably large risks to hurt themselves or others, we put them on a special program that demanded total abstinence.  In fact, I would tell them if they even ate rum cake and I found out about it, I would put them in jail.  But we did give them support with the Probation Department to oversee the program and the Orange County Health Care Agency to provide treatment.  And we were successful in keeping alcoholics, or what we called “high-risk problem drinkers,” off alcohol for six months, which was as long as I was able to keep statistics.  Happily now there are similar programs for the mentally ill, homeless and veterans.  For example, many people who are mentally ill self-medicate with mostly illicit substances in order to “keep their demons away.”  Thus it does no good whatsoever to put them in jail.  And, since jail is both the most expensive option as well as the purveyor of additional harm to these mentally fragile people, today’s approaches serve everyone’s interests.  So I just thought that you would like to know about these developments, because the best way to “get tough on crime” is to reduce it.

      Quote of the Week: “I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered.  But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: ‘No good in a bed, but fine against a wall.’”  Eleanor Roosevelt

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: #231 "HARM REDUCTION"

       According to President Nixon’s Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, back during the Nixon Administration the choice was made to pursue an incarceration approach to drug problems instead of one involving treatment, even though they knew that treatment worked and incarceration did not.  Why was this done?  Because Nixon anticipated that the political benefits he would reap in being perceived as being “tough,” and fighting against something that could not fight back, would be significant.  And, again according to Keindienst, the actual political benefits were far greater than anyone anticipated.  But we all have been saddled with many tragic results from that choice ever since that time.

         Of course, the presence of mind-altering and sometimes addicting drugs in our society brings harms.  But reasonable estimates are that the drug usage itself brings only about 10 percent of those harms.  The other 90 percent comes from the drug money.  In addition, since no society has ever been without some of these substances, except maybe the Eskimos because they couldn’t grow anything, we should recognize as adults that harms will result from the presence of those drugs – and invoke a policy to reduce those harms.   Think of it this way: we can’t even keep these drugs out of our prisons, so how can we expect to keep them out of our communities?  (Charles Manson was transferred from one California state prison to another because he was found to be selling drugs from his prison cell – and he was in solitary confinement!)  And since, as stated above, one of the approaches that works is drug treatment, which also includes overdose prevention and care and needle exchange programs, those approaches should be emphasized.  (The old saying is that dead addicts can’t recover.)  Of course, this approach includes enforcement through some incarceration for those whose addictions push them into criminal conduct, such as driving under the influence, burglaries to get money to purchase drugs, etc.  So please use your Liberty and actions to help us steer away from the mindless incarceration of drug users we have followed since the Nixon Administration.

Quote for the week:  “And remember the truth that once was spoken: to love another person is to see the face of God.”  (From the musical Les Miserables)

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 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: #191 "DRUG PROHIBITION KILLS AGAIN!"

      Many prior 2 Paragraphs editions have outlined how our government’s policy of Drug Prohibition is killing people, both through the absence of quality control as well as the rampant violence of Mexican drug cartels and juvenile street gangs which emanates from the sales of illicit drugs.  But now we can update those unnecessary deaths with the current so-called opioid crisis.  Yes, drug “overdose” deaths have increased recently, many coming in combination with alcohol and other substances.  But a closer look at the news reports shows that many of these deaths are caused by the synthetic form of heroin called fentanyl.  This is manufactured in Mainland China that is as much as 50 times more potent than heroin, such that a sugar-packet-sized bag of it is strong enough to kill 500 people!  But, since it is so potent, only small amounts are needed, and they can be shipped into our country without detection fairly easily.  So it is the absence of quality control and accurate labeling caused by the illicit market spawned by Drug Prohibition that is killing so many people.            

     As reported on October 21, 2018 in the Orange County Register, the Zheng drug trafficking organization in Shanghai advertises and sells fentanyl and its synthetic cousins quite cheaply and openly in 35 languages on the internet.  And since the DEA is now monitoring our country’s medical doctors so strongly when they prescribe narcotics as pain medication, many doctors are hesitant to provide them to their patients.  So this either leaves the patients in needless pain, or forces them to seek relief from street drugs, like heroin.  And the result?  Last year there were 28,826 recorded deaths in our country from overdoses linked to synthetic opioids, mostly fentanyl, which is up from “only” 3,100 such deaths in 2013.  But in countries that do not prosecute the possession and use of heroin, such as Portugal and the Netherlands, fentanyl is virtually unknown.  So, for all of the potential harm that can be caused by heroin, don’t you agree that the quality control and death prevention efforts would be better left in the hands of a legal market overseen by medical professionals, than an illegal one overseen by mobsters?  In other words, the term “Controlled Substances” is the biggest oxymoron in the English language.  Why?  Because as soon as we prohibit a substance, we leave all of the control regarding quantity, quality and age restrictions in the hands of the bad guys!  There must be, and is, a better way!

Judge Jim Gray (Ret.)

2012 Libertarian candidate for Vice President, along with

Governor Gary Johnson as the candidate for President

The quote for the week comes in the form of a poem written at the Terezin Nazi Concentration Camp in what is now the Czech Republic by a 12 year-old boy, who soon was killed. It brought tears to my eyes.  

                                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.