Austin May 2005 Election Endorsements

If the socialistic Austin Chronicle is going to weigh in its endorsements with a states' rights slant, we figured we should do so as well from an individual rights perspective.

As a side note, we feel that blindly accepting someone else's candidate summaries and endorsements creates a "less than informed voter."  Candidate summaries are always biased to the writer's beliefs (even if only unconsciously) and accepting endorsements without doing your own research is, by definition, being uninformed.  To that end, every candidate we found with a website we linked to, so that you can do your own fact digging.  If one of the unlinked candidates has a website, please drop us a line.

Here's the short list of just the recommendations, with reasons for choices further down.

Place 1
Steve Adams (write in)

Place 3
None (see reasons below)

Place 4
Wes Benedict

Proposed Smoking Ordinance
Yes

ACC Annexation Proposition
No

Additional Info:
Early Voting Locations
Election Day Polls
League of Women Voters Austin Area (Very useful, but sure wish they'd move into the current century and lose the .pdf format for their guides.)

Best regards,

M.J. Taylor
Publisher
ReasonToFreedom.com

PS: Interested in lowering the cost of elections?  Visit Instant Runoff Austin

The candidates we select are for ethics, individual rights (as opposed to having a socialistic states' rights viewpoint), and against pork and special interests.  For some background regarding candidate choices, you may visit our "What You Can Do" page and for some background regarding individualism and socialism, you may visit our "Father Daughter Talk" page.

Place 1
Steve Adams (write in)
"No Tax Handouts and No Tolls."
From a rational ethical standpoint that says it all.

Lee Leffingwell, has received maximum Contributions from:

- Brian Cassidy, CTRMA lawyer with Locke Liddell.
- Toller Gerald "I don't want an independent study" Daugherty
- convicted criminal Pete Peters' wife Karen Peters.

— Found in reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission by the Police & EMS pacs (Courtesy Sal Costello, Austin Toll Party)

Others in the race:
Andrew Bucknall, Lee Leffingwell, James Paine, Casey Walker, Scott Williams

Place 3
Place 3 falls into a least evil choice, so you are probably better off doing you own research.

We did have Jennifer Kim, but recent information indicates she has taken campaign contributions from the Toll Road Special Interest crowd.  We are told the only one in this race to not have accepted Toll contributions is Margot Clarke, but her other planks lean her into the states' rights camp.  Personally, I'm going to vote for Clarke, as you have to vote for someone :), and not voting allows an even lesser desired candidate to be elected.

Greg Knaupe, has received maximum Contributions from:

- Brian Cassidy, CTRMA lawyer with Locke Liddell.
- Henry Gilmore, CTRMA board member.
- Various other RECA & Toller circle people.

— Found in reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission by the Police & EMS pacs (Courtesy Sal Costello, Austin Toll Party)

In the race:
Margot Clarke, Mandy Dealey, Jennifer Kim, Gregg Knaupe

Place 4
Wes Benedict
Desires to "lower your taxes, cut bureaucratic red tape, and protect your property rights."

Betty Dunkerley, has received maximum Contributions from:

- convicted criminal Pete Peters from comptroller report, Williamson county toller "circle".
also, Lowel Leibberman, Vice chair of CTRMA solicited money for her.

— Found in reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission by the Police & EMS pacs (Courtesy Sal Costello, Austin Toll Party)

Others in the race:
Betty Dunkerley (incumbent), Phillip Byron Miller, Jennifer Gale, John Wickham

Proposed Smoking Ordinance
Yes

From a rational ethical standpoint, your vote should be "No."  In this case, vote "Yes," as the current smoking ban, which was not voted on by the public, puts a minority group into a monopoly situation.  Voting yes will bring disequity to all, reduce some of the special interest crap going on, and hopefully wake up the general population.

All of which begs the question, how exactly a government gets off on telling an individual what to do on their own property is unfathomable (as long as the individual's actions do not extend beyond their property line).  If you want to vote to ban smoking in public places, fine, and you would even get the support of individual rights groups.  But the current ordinance reeks.

ACC Annexation Proposition
No

Yeah, it's ethical to have people who aren't being annexed to get to vote on this.  Sure.  All of Texas' annexation rules are pretty screwed up this way.  Stop for 10 seconds, think about what kind of socialism/fascism this is, and "Just Vote No."

It's the proposed annexed area's decision to either be a part of the ACC district or not.  They currently have made the decision to pay out of district rates, which is their choice.  Having this choice taken away from them and imposing some external groups' choice is just short of communism.  We still live in America don't we?