|
|
Ladies and gentlemen, it is today a year and a
month from the next gubernatorial election. Many things will
doubtless change between now and then. Therefore, to illustrate the
issues with which I will deal during the campaign and after elected,
I shall today pretend that I have just taken the oath of office. If I
decide, during the next year, that I'm wrong about something, or that
a different issue needs exposure, I am not above changing course or
admitting error.
Bill Janklow took the oath of office a few weeks ahead of the
official coronation ceremony. I shall take the oath of office as soon
as is legally possible after the election. We can't afford a second
longer than necessary to be governed by either the Democrat or
Republican wing of Big Government.
So pretend with me that I was elected governor a couple of weeks ago
and that the courts have said I can take the oath today. Pretend that
I have just done so twenty minutes ago. This then, is the inaugural
speech I would give today.
---------------------------------
The Preamble to the Constitution of South Dakota reads, "We the
people of South Dakota, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and
religious liberties, in order to form a more perfect and independent
government, establish justice, insure tranqullity, provide for the
common defense, promote the general welfare and preserve to ourselves
and to our posterity the blessings of liberty, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the State of South Dakota."
All of my actions as governor will fall within the duties and powers
granted the governor by the South Dakota Constitution, and I shall
perform them with the intent and spirit expressed in the foregoing
preamble.
In a more general sense, I perceive the duties of the chief executive
of the state to oversee both the executive agencies of SD Govt. and
the justice system. To insure to the best of my abilities that the
constitutional duties of government are fulfilled and that all
government employees act within their authority. To insure as well as
possible that the citizens of South Dakota have adequate access to
the state as an impartial arbiter in all disputes. Without a
meaningful court system-and I submit that ours needs some
improvement-the state becomes tyrannical and the people little more
than serfs.
Further, the executive office should be a buffer between the federal
government and the people of the state. I shall do all I can to slow
down, stop, and reverse the trend of the Government of the united
States to assume authority in areas properly in the domain of state
government.
With a mind toward fulfillment of all these duties and
responsibilities, I shall endeavor to secure the blessings of liberty
for all South Dakotans. On the other hand, you, my fellow South
Dakotans, have both the right and the responsibility to govern
yourselves in any peaceful and honest, fair and lawful ways you
choose, and to allow others to do the same, with liberty and justice
for all. Those who adhere to these guidelines should be able to live
their lives with contact with government being only at their
invitation. Without responsible self-government by a majority of
people, liberty is only a word.
I have just fulfilled the first promise of my campaign. I have signed
a pardon for everyone who has ever been convicted of a drug crime in
South Dakota. The pardon only extends to the convictions-whether
misdemeanor or felony-actually concerned with possession or
distribution of illegal drugs. It does not extend to any crime,
associated or not with the drug conviction, which created a victim.
In other words, I didn't turn any robbers or rapists loose. If their
punishment was partially or wholly a result of a true crime, they'll
have to serve their sentences.
That will release about 1200 of South Dakota's 2200 current
prisoners. That will free prison space for people who actually did
something to harm someone. That will obviate the necessity of
building new prisons, and will save South Dakota taxpayers about $200
Million over just the next two or three years.
It will expunge the drug convictions from the records of thousands
and thousands of South Dakotans who have been convicted under the
draconian and unconstitutional laws concerning possession and sale of
certain arbitrarily illicit substances. I hereby order the authorized
personnel to begin such expungement.
The Secretary of Corrections is advised to send to me for review the
cases in which an adult was charged with distributing psycho-active
substances to juveniles. It's always been a bad deal for people to
engage children in the sale and use of psycho-active substance.
I shall pardon in advance any new drug charges brought under South
Dakota law against anyone. Once again, I shall not pardon true
crimes-those which create victims. Being under the influence of any
intoxicant will not be a defense to having caused quantifiable
harm.
Ladies and gentlemen, this should provide the first domino falling in
what I believe will be a cascade of states-and finally the federal
government-capitulating to good sense and to the constitution itself.
We shall end the so-called--and phony--war on drugs, which has been
nothing less than a government price-support program for drug
dealers, and an invitation to the most vicious people on earth to
wage war on our streets.
This afternoon, I shall meet with state's attorneys and sheriffs from
every county in South Dakota. I shall suggest to them that they
require federal agencies to notify them prior to taking any official,
non-emergency, action in their respective counties not on federal
property. I shall particularly insist that they require the Internal
Revenue Service to do so.
I have known for some time, and the recent Senate Finance Committee
hearings have confirmed, that IRS agents often don't know the law
with respect to liens, levies, and seizures. There is ample
documentation, and the hearings confirmed, that IRS agents routinely
knowingly operate outside their own rules and United States and local
laws.
It will be incumbent on various state's attorneys and sheriffs to
become conversant in the law, and to communicate their knowledge to
the IRS and other federal agencies. I and the Attorney General will
coordinate with them in this educational effort. If, after having
received notice of the illegality of any particular action, an agency
or agent continues to break the law, we will arrest and prosecute
them.
I have prepared a position paper on the Federal Income Tax which
propounds upon the tax code and its applicability to the vast
majority of South Dakotans. There is no quicker way to make an
audience go glassy-eyed than to start pointing out the
inconsistencies in the law and the way it is applied by the IRS. I
will, however, state that, on its face, any code of laws applying to
a specific behavior which requires 9400 pages of very small print to
record the law and definitions of terms therein, is void for
vagueness.
Any set of laws which requires 17,000 pages of official explanation
in addition to the laws themselves cannot be moral. This fact is
further illustrated that the IRS's own experts disagree widely on the
meaning of many of these so-called laws and their explanations. It is
a common precept under common law that if one cannot understand the
law, one cannot be held responsible for violating it. I submit that,
therefore, almost no one can be held responsible for violating the
IRS code-with respect to filing or paying taxes--since no one knows
what it says.
With a mind toward the fact that many laws are either ambiguous,
stupid and useless, or completely indecipherable, I shall promote a
Fully Informed Jury Amendment to the Constitution.
A state's attorney replied to my question as to how many laws there
were in South Dakota, "Oh, thousands and thousands and thousands.
Maybe 300,000." "Is that too many?", I asked. "Oh yeah, way too
many."
Every attorney, legislator, judge, rancher, storeowner, barkeep, or
mechanic I've ever heard opine on the matter agrees there are too
many laws. Every one of these folks could name a bad law or two. The
legislators, of course, never named their own laws. And therein lies
the reason we need juries informed of their duties, powers, and
rights. The legislature's theory of its own infallibility leads to it
being all-but-impossible to get legislatures to repeal bad laws. It
also makes them unwilling to accede to the immutable fact that juries
have always had the power, the right, and the duty to say, "Not
guilty, because this law is a bad law!" or "Not Guilty, because law
enforcement acted so reprehensibly in this case as to blur the
distinction between the good guys and the bad guys!" If the lawyers
and the legislators won't get rid of bad laws, juries can and will,
if judges and lawyers stop lying to them.
The act shall provide one or both of two options.
First, that any party to a jury trial-to which the government is one
of the parties-shall have the option of informing the jury of its
historical right and duty to judge not only the facts of the case,
but to judge the law itself or its applicability to the case at
hand.
In the alternative, if the defendant wishes to plead "nolo
contendere"-no contest-pleas, the defendant may obtain a jury trial
at which the accused could explain to the jury why the law is a bad
law, or why the law does not or should not apply to his or her
action, in which case the jury would decide whether the alleged
offense deserves punishment by the court.
In the next legislative session, no bill will get past my veto pen
until the legislature repeals all laws concerning any peaceful honest
adult's possessing or selling hemp. The South Dakota Department of
Agriculture has been studying for some time the feasibility of hemp
as a farm product in the state. I submit that the studies have been
done for centuries, and the results are in. Hemp is an amazingly
hardy and versatile plant, with indications for use in or as therapy,
internal medicine, protein, essential fatty acids, oil, biomass,
methanol and ethanol, paper, rope, fabric, and thousands of related
uses.
South Dakota farmers can make up their own minds whether they can
raise and sell hemp. For any who choose to do so, I'll do my best to
defend them from the feds-who will likely take another three or four
years to get the picture.
Meanwhile, I'd encourage anyone who wants to start a facility to
process the hemp plant into any of its 60,000 or so industrial
products to do so.
I shall immediately begin lobbying the legislature to repeal certain
laws, to enact or modify others, and to review the entire criminal
justice system with the aim of encouraging responsibility and
accountability as the prime intent of a criminal code.
We shall, then, start by eliminating criminal laws and punishments
therefor which do not deal with redress of actual damage done to
identifiable victims. In cases where a person or group has done
quantifiable damage to another person or group, the laws will begin
to address the victims of irresponsibility or malice. The state
should be satisfied if the victim of a crime is satisfied. It's
obvious that some folks should be isolated from the rest of us. But
for the vast majority of people-particularly juveniles and other
first offenders--repayment of damage plus a punitive charge will
satisfy all parties.
I believe we'll have more tranquillity in a system where everyone can
read the laws, the laws respect peaceful honest behavior, and all of
us know what to expect if we act irresponsibly or with malice and
cause someone harm.
An example of a law I'd like to see repealed--other than all the drug
laws-is "possession of a firearm while intoxicated". This law is
whimsically applied and it serves no useful purpose. It is typically
used as a stack-on charge when some other law is alleged to have been
broken also-for instance, DUI or domestic abuse. Anything malicious
one does with a firearm is already against the law. Possession while
intoxicated cannot of itself be logically thought of as either
harmful or evidence of intent to be harmful.
The punishment for possession while intoxicated is a $175 fine plus
forfeiture of the weapon. This leads to unequal punishment for equal
crimes. If one is convicted in possession of a $70 Jennings pistol,
he or she loses it. If one is carrying a $1500 Colt Commemorative, he
or she loses it.
An example of a law I'd like to see changed is the one requiring
separate liability insurance policies for each vehicle one owns. The
premium for liability insurance is based on ones demographic profile
and one's actual driving record. That's fair enough, but one can only
drive one vehicle at a time. There is no conceivable reason that
driver's liability insurance should not be written on the driver
instead of the vehicle, with consideration for any particularly
notorious vehicles in that driver's car pool.
The current practice of requiring liability insurance on each vehicle
also leads to unequal punishments. If I am convicted of DUI, I will
pay a much higher insurance premium for some time-three years at
least. If a contractor with a fleet of a dozen vehicles is convicted,
he or she will pay a similarly higher rate as I would-times twelve.
It's inequitable and violates equal protection provisions of the
constitution.
I shall lobby the legislature to lower the legal drinking age to 18.
If we trust an 18-year-old with the most valuable franchise on
earth-the vote-we can hardly maintain he or she can't decide for
himself or herself on a simple matter of self-medication. If we beg
for 18-year-olds to join our National Guard, knowing we could ask
them to shoot someone they don't know, we can hardly say they're too
irresponsible by virtue of their youth to have a beer afterwards.
Simultaneously, I shall lobby the legislature to abolish the entire
system of taxes and fees charged in South Dakota, then to institute a
system of user fees for all possible government services. An example
would be a gas tax for road maintenance. Then the legislature-or the
people-should institute a single low tax on commercial transactions,
to cover the cost of government services not so conveniently covered
by user fees. The general outline of this proposal is available for
review now. I am not an economist, nor a mathematician. I simply
believe that the principle duty of government is to secure the
blessings of liberty for the governed. Among the most important
blessings of liberty is a free marketplace.
A simple tax of about 1.75% on all commercial
transactions will adequately fund essential government functions,
thus providing government the ability to protect the free market,
through a system of arbitration of disputes, and protection from and
punishment for force and fraud.
The cost of government will be plain to see on every receipt.
Everyone-no matter how they peacefully and honestly adapt the free
market to their own lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness-will pay
a proportionate share of the defense of these rights.
South Dakota will thus be a model for the entire nation. The
abominable, arrogant, cynical, and unlawful excesses of the
terror-engendering Internal Revenue Service can not long survive in
the face of a demonstrably more efficient and more fair taxing
system.
Section 24 of Article VI of the South Dakota Constitution states:
"The right of the people to bear arms in defense of themselves and
the state shall not be denied." Well, then, let's make it so. Let's
repeal the law which requires a person to have a permit to carry a
concealed weapon. There's no useful purpose. It's simply a device to
keep track of peaceful honest people who indicate by application that
they have a firearm. Even convicted criminals who have served their
sentences have the right to self-defense. There is no indication that
one who is inclined to commit a crime using a firearm is deterred by
the fact he doesn't have a permit to carry the weapon to the
mini-mart he's gonna rob.
I believe that the militia are the whole people, and that its combat
soldiers should be derived from those among the whole people both
capable and willing to bear arms in defense of the state. I believe
that since people are responsible to some extent for their own
defense, that the people are entitled to acquire, in any peaceful
honest manner they desire, the weapons of their choice for
self-defense. It's logical that people intent on self-defense would,
in some cases, like to have weapons of comparable utility with the
weapons of those likely to attempt to harm them.
A proper role of the executive department, then, is to provide or to
aid educational efforts in the proper care and use of firearms. Many
private organizations now provide such training. Without adding to
the tax burden now suffered by the citizens of this state, I shall
help coordinate the expansion of firearms education and training in
this state. If we are to adhere both to the letter and spirit of the
constitution, we must allow peaceful honest people to own firearms
without having so much as having to sign a single piece of paper.
That being the case, it would be irresponsible to not make provision
for training in proper use and care of firearms, since these firearms
and their owners might be asked to defend this state and the
principles upon which it stands.
In conclusion, then, my fellow South Dakotans, I'll quote Article VI,
Section 27 of the SD Constitution--one of the Bill of Rights--"The
blessings of a free government can only be maintained by a firm
adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue
and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."
I state again that my intent is nothing less than to secure the
blessings of liberty for us and for our posterity. Politics is the
continual argument over who gets to do what to whom, for how long,
and against what degree of dissent. That's all legislatures do-argue
over who gets to do what to whom. My goal will be to lessen the
incidence of anybody doing anything to anyone who doesn't want it
done.