the fuss and furor in TX over our future governor
forwarded from Richard Forsythe:
How low? BELO
Unless you think a big corporation should be allowed to tell you who you're not supposed to vote for, this'll interest you. Media giant BELO has decided that none of you might like a Libertarian Governor and you don't need to hear what one would do to fix all of Texas' problems. Whether you're a Libertarian or not you should be offended that a Big media company should be allowed to exclude a viable gubernatorial candidate because they don't like him! In truth they're afraid of Libertarians and exclude us from all media because they suspect everyone would vote that way if they knew the truth about all issues.
Here's one example from a Libertarian candidate's website, Massive Fraud Perpetrated on People of Texas!
Stand up for your right to make your own decisions about who is a viable candidate for Governor!! If a novelty candidate like Kinky 'Salsa' Freidman and another independent can get into the public debates then surely a candidate associated with the 3rd largest party in America should be in it!! Libertarian candidate James Werner was made to fill out forms neither of those two had to, and was still excluded. Third party candidates (unlike Dems and Reps) must pay signature volunteers to gather thousands of signatures even just to get on the ballot. That's akin to running a marathon just to get to the footrace! Every year the Big 2 parties make it harder and harder for alternative parties even to get on the ballot!
That's un-American!
With only 2 basically identical parties on the ballot your true choices have been eliminated and we're then living in a dictatorship! The Libertarian Party is the only non-collectivist (truly financially conservative, socially tolerant) party on the ballot! You deserve that choice if you want it! America is now a ONE party system with 2 factions!
Their bi-partisan debates are nothing more than taxpayer financed advertisements for each of the 2 identical candidates!!!
e.g. If both candidates are for the war (Bush/Kerry) where's your other choice?!?!? He (Badnarik) was standing outside trying to get into the building!
PLEASE email/call/fax BELO, Fox and every other newspaper, daily free paper and media corporation about this travesty. Here's a big list of Fox and other, news email contacts you can easily paste into the Bcc: field of your email (so they don't know who else it's going to) and only write one email. A "form email" is written below by James Werner you can use for expediency.
Beltway@foxnews.com; Myword@foxnews.com; Bigstory-weekend@foxnews.com; Bullsandbears@foxnews.com; Cash@foxnews.com; Cavuto@foxnews.com; Dayside@foxnews.com; Forbes@foxnews.com; Friends@foxnews.com; Viewerservices@foxnews.com; Jamie@foxnews.com; Feedback@foxnews.com; FNS@foxnews.com; Newswatch@foxnews.com; Foxreport@foxnews.com; Hannity@foxnews.com; Colmes@foxnews.com; Heartland@foxnews.com; JER@foxnews.com; Lineup@foxnews.com; Ontherecord@foxnews.com; Oreilly@foxnews.com; Special@foxnews.com; Studiob@foxnews.com; Warstories@foxnews.com; Cavuto@foxnews.com; http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form1.html?39; http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form1.html?29; nightly@nbc.com; evening@cbsnews.com
Just paste it into the Bcc: field of your email so they won't see who else it went to and address it generically such as "Dear concerned media representative,"
If you don't do this now you may not have the choice later as the election laws are getting tougher every year only for 3rd party candidates.
Thank you!
Richard
Dear News anchor,
I am writing to express my deep concern over the exclusion of Libertarian James Werner from the gubernatorial debates in October.
Mr. Werner is a qualified candidate and duly appears on the ballot for governor. In fact, Mr. Werner had ballot access long before the independent candidates had even begun to seek signatures for their own campaigns. And unlike the independents, the Libertarian Party earned its ballot access through the actual votes of hundreds of thousands of Texans in the previous election cycle.
With respect to polling numbers, you may not be aware that the Belo Corporation has largely been using polls in which Mr. Werner's name does not appear to allege a lack of support for his candidacy. Obviously this is an absurd "Catch 22" which does not hold up under the most basic scrutiny.
Texans believe that the public square must not be restricted to the wealthy, the famous, and the politically connected. I am certain that you agree with this sentiment, and that you will strenuously call for Mr. Werner's inclusion in the gubernatorial debate in October.
Sincerely,
Your Name
How Low? Belo
Belo Corp. Headquarters
Street Address:
400 South Record Street
Dallas, Texas 75202-4841
214-977-6606
214-977-6603 (fax)
Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 655237
Dallas, Texas 75265-5237
PROOF LIBERTARIANS ARE EXCLUDED FROM ALL MEDIA.
The media totally excludes all mention to Libertarians 99.5% of the time. Why? Because Libertarians would end government corruption greed and theft of your rights and taxes and the other party with 2-faces (the Demopublicans) know it! Presidential candidate Michael Badnarik got arrested trying to get into the presidential debates right before the 04' elections along with another 3rd party candidate yet did ANY news media mention it? NO! Cats caught in trees got more mention that week in the news! You should be outraged!!!! If ANY other Presidential candidate got arrested a month before the elections it would have been on the front page in every paper!!!
http://www.e-thepeople.org/article/35752/ The media is controlled. Badnarik arrest.
http://www.orwellrollsinhisgrave.com/ The media is totally controlled. What you always suspected.
I just wanted to chime in to try to synthesize the many threads that have evolved concerning my participation (or lack thereof) in the October debate sponsored by the Belo Corp. This is a bit long, but please try to read through it.
First a bit of history:
Several weeks ago, government television station KERA in Dallas indicated that it was going to be sponsoring a gubernatorial debate in conjunction with the Dallas Morning News.
They initially invited my four opponents sight unseen, yet demanded that I fill out a lengthy questionnaire to justify my newsworthiness. I told them that I would respond to the questionnaire as soon as the other candidates were provided with a similar document, and that in the meantime I would await my invitation.
In addition to all of the obvious reasons to include me, we did a bit of research on the non-profit status of KERA and found out a very interesting fact. As a 501c3 (IRS speak for "not-for-profit" organization), KERA was legally obliged to include all qualified candidates in the debate--and numerous IRS rulings to that effect made this point clear.
When we informed KERA of this fact, they went to ground and were silent for several weeks. The next thing we heard, KERA had disappeared from the scene, and the sponsorship of the debate had been transferred to the Belo Corporation--the corporate parent of the Dallas Morning News.
Shocking, simply shocking
As a for-profit corporation, Belo has far more latitude with respect to which candidates they may include or exclude. So now KERA gets to pick up the feed and broadcast the debate as they had always intended, but they can sidestep IRS regs because they are not the actual sponsor of the event. A clever shell game indeed.
So who is Belo Corporation anyway, and what recourse do we have against them?
Well, Belo is a $1.5 billion fortune 1000 company with many newspaper, radio, and TV holdings in Texas and around the nation. Their affiliates in Texas include the Dallas Morning News, KHOU in Houston, KVUE in Austin and WFAA in Dallas.
As for recourse, without getting into too much detail, the courts have repeatedly held that candidates do not have a 1st amendment right to be included in these "news events" and that there is an extremely wide degree of journalistic latitude allowed news outlets. We can decry the unfairness of this fact all day long, but it will not change the outcome-a 1st amendment legal challenge will fail.
The next possible avenue of attack might be to suggest that Belo is offering my competitors an illegal campaign contribution. After all, they are providing my opponents with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free TV exposure which both helps them and dramatically prejudices my campaign. While this is obviously the case, media outlets have been exempted from campaign reporting requirements at the federal level. This is not necessarily true at the state level. So while such a challenge would be a legal long shot for us, it remains a slim possibility.
So now you're asking the question, "Why are these people so incredibly desperate to exclude James Werner from the debate?" Without making this situation out to be more than it is, I'd suggest a couple of likely reasons-most of them pretty obvious.
1. They want to maintain tight control over their journalistic environment, and they are concerned that if they allow me into the debate, they will be less able to manage who participates in future such events. They just see it as a bad precedent, and they don't want to upset the apple cart.
2. Journalists like to hang out with rich and famous people, and they like to consider themselves as part of the elite glitterati. If they start allowing riff-raff "regular guys" into their debates, this cheapens their experience and makes them feel less important.
3. Some or all of the other candidates have made it clear that they do not want me in the debate (in spite of their public pronouncements to the contrary.) It is entirely possible that my NOT being invited was a pre-condition for Perry to even show up.
This is not a conspiracy-it's just good common sense on the part of the other candidates. The word is out that I am the most coherent, lucid, and serious of the five candidates (and this speaks more to the nature of the other candidates than it does to my own skills.) Why would a sitting governor want to publicly expose himself to a guy who can run verbal rings around him? Why would our eccentric comptroller want to be made to look silly? You get the picture.
4. The journalistic elite is profoundly anti-libertarian (both little "l" and big "L"). The notion that someone might get on state-wide TV and coherently explain how we can eliminate all property taxes, dramatically shrink the size of the government, and introduce school choice makes them turn blue in the face. And for those who think the aforementioned items might actually be good ideas, the thought of equating drug prohibition with alcohol prohibition, getting the state out of people's bedrooms and living rooms, and leaving gay people the hell alone makes them pop an aneurism.
OK, so now the question is, what do we do?
Well, thus far, I have taken my case to everyone from CNN to the New York Times. I've been interviewed and expressed my outrage to the San Antonio Express, the Houston Chronicle, WBAP in Dallas, and KTSA in San Antonio.
My on-air targets for the coming week include KVET and KLBJ in Austin, KTSA in San Antonio (again), KLLI, KRLD and KLIF in Dallas, WBAP in Ft. Worth (again), KTRH in Houston, KTEP, KROD and KTSM in El Paso, KEDT, KKTX, KEYS in Corpus Christi, and KJDL in Lubbock.
In addition to all the usual reasons to include me in the debate, I will be making a public call for the other candidates to boycott the debate unless I am included. All the other candidates (with the exception of minor candidate Chris Bell) have come out in favor of my inclusion-if they are sincere, let them put their money where their mouths are and refuse to participate without me.
Additionally, we will be looking carefully at legal options-particularly the angle of the potentially illegal campaign contribution that this debate may represent.
I am also interested in pursuing the possibility of lawful, peaceful protests outside the offices of the Belo affiliates and other stations carrying the debate.
And what can you all do?
Well, for starters, I'd ask you to flood the offices of Belo affiliates with letters and emails RESPECTFULLY requesting my inclusion in the debate. The text should read something like this:
Dear:
I am writing to express my deep concern over the exclusion of Libertarian James Werner from the gubernatorial debates in October.
Mr. Werner is a qualified candidate and duly appears on the ballot for governor. In fact, Mr. Werner had ballot access long before the independent candidates had even begun to seek signatures for their own campaigns. And unlike the independents, the Libertarian Party earned its ballot access through the actual votes of hundreds of thousands of Texans in the previous election cycle.
With respect to polling numbers, you may not be aware that the Belo Corporation has largely been using polls in which Mr. Werner's name does not appear to allege a lack of support for his candidacy. Obviously this is an absurd "Catch 22" which does not hold up under the most basic scrutiny.
Texans believe that the public square must not be restricted to the wealthy, the famous, and the politically connected. I am certain that you agree with this sentiment, and that you will strenuously call for Mr. Werner's inclusion in the gubernatorial debate in October.
Sincerely,
Your Name
OK, so thanks for bearing with me (if you've read this far!) I appreciate your support, and look forward to the publicity that we will continue to garner with this issue. I should also stress that everyone temper his enthusiasm with a degree of prudence. I fully expect that any activities undertaken in my name will be respectful, peaceful and lawful, and I know I can count on your cooperation!
Best,
James Werner
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein
How low? BELO
Unless you think a big corporation should be allowed to tell you who you're not supposed to vote for, this'll interest you. Media giant BELO has decided that none of you might like a Libertarian Governor and you don't need to hear what one would do to fix all of Texas' problems. Whether you're a Libertarian or not you should be offended that a Big media company should be allowed to exclude a viable gubernatorial candidate because they don't like him! In truth they're afraid of Libertarians and exclude us from all media because they suspect everyone would vote that way if they knew the truth about all issues.
Here's one example from a Libertarian candidate's website, Massive Fraud Perpetrated on People of Texas!
Stand up for your right to make your own decisions about who is a viable candidate for Governor!! If a novelty candidate like Kinky 'Salsa' Freidman and another independent can get into the public debates then surely a candidate associated with the 3rd largest party in America should be in it!! Libertarian candidate James Werner was made to fill out forms neither of those two had to, and was still excluded. Third party candidates (unlike Dems and Reps) must pay signature volunteers to gather thousands of signatures even just to get on the ballot. That's akin to running a marathon just to get to the footrace! Every year the Big 2 parties make it harder and harder for alternative parties even to get on the ballot!
That's un-American!
With only 2 basically identical parties on the ballot your true choices have been eliminated and we're then living in a dictatorship! The Libertarian Party is the only non-collectivist (truly financially conservative, socially tolerant) party on the ballot! You deserve that choice if you want it! America is now a ONE party system with 2 factions!
Their bi-partisan debates are nothing more than taxpayer financed advertisements for each of the 2 identical candidates!!!
e.g. If both candidates are for the war (Bush/Kerry) where's your other choice?!?!? He (Badnarik) was standing outside trying to get into the building!
PLEASE email/call/fax BELO, Fox and every other newspaper, daily free paper and media corporation about this travesty. Here's a big list of Fox and other, news email contacts you can easily paste into the Bcc: field of your email (so they don't know who else it's going to) and only write one email. A "form email" is written below by James Werner you can use for expediency.
Beltway@foxnews.com; Myword@foxnews.com; Bigstory-weekend@foxnews.com; Bullsandbears@foxnews.com; Cash@foxnews.com; Cavuto@foxnews.com; Dayside@foxnews.com; Forbes@foxnews.com; Friends@foxnews.com; Viewerservices@foxnews.com; Jamie@foxnews.com; Feedback@foxnews.com; FNS@foxnews.com; Newswatch@foxnews.com; Foxreport@foxnews.com; Hannity@foxnews.com; Colmes@foxnews.com; Heartland@foxnews.com; JER@foxnews.com; Lineup@foxnews.com; Ontherecord@foxnews.com; Oreilly@foxnews.com; Special@foxnews.com; Studiob@foxnews.com; Warstories@foxnews.com; Cavuto@foxnews.com; http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form1.html?39; http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form1.html?29; nightly@nbc.com; evening@cbsnews.com
Just paste it into the Bcc: field of your email so they won't see who else it went to and address it generically such as "Dear concerned media representative,"
If you don't do this now you may not have the choice later as the election laws are getting tougher every year only for 3rd party candidates.
Thank you!
Richard
Dear News anchor,
I am writing to express my deep concern over the exclusion of Libertarian James Werner from the gubernatorial debates in October.
Mr. Werner is a qualified candidate and duly appears on the ballot for governor. In fact, Mr. Werner had ballot access long before the independent candidates had even begun to seek signatures for their own campaigns. And unlike the independents, the Libertarian Party earned its ballot access through the actual votes of hundreds of thousands of Texans in the previous election cycle.
With respect to polling numbers, you may not be aware that the Belo Corporation has largely been using polls in which Mr. Werner's name does not appear to allege a lack of support for his candidacy. Obviously this is an absurd "Catch 22" which does not hold up under the most basic scrutiny.
Texans believe that the public square must not be restricted to the wealthy, the famous, and the politically connected. I am certain that you agree with this sentiment, and that you will strenuously call for Mr. Werner's inclusion in the gubernatorial debate in October.
Sincerely,
Your Name
How Low? Belo
Belo Corp. Headquarters
Street Address:
400 South Record Street
Dallas, Texas 75202-4841
214-977-6606
214-977-6603 (fax)
Mailing Address:
P.O. Box 655237
Dallas, Texas 75265-5237
PROOF LIBERTARIANS ARE EXCLUDED FROM ALL MEDIA.
The media totally excludes all mention to Libertarians 99.5% of the time. Why? Because Libertarians would end government corruption greed and theft of your rights and taxes and the other party with 2-faces (the Demopublicans) know it! Presidential candidate Michael Badnarik got arrested trying to get into the presidential debates right before the 04' elections along with another 3rd party candidate yet did ANY news media mention it? NO! Cats caught in trees got more mention that week in the news! You should be outraged!!!! If ANY other Presidential candidate got arrested a month before the elections it would have been on the front page in every paper!!!
http://www.e-thepeople.org/article/35752/ The media is controlled. Badnarik arrest.
http://www.orwellrollsinhisgrave.com/ The media is totally controlled. What you always suspected.
I just wanted to chime in to try to synthesize the many threads that have evolved concerning my participation (or lack thereof) in the October debate sponsored by the Belo Corp. This is a bit long, but please try to read through it.
First a bit of history:
Several weeks ago, government television station KERA in Dallas indicated that it was going to be sponsoring a gubernatorial debate in conjunction with the Dallas Morning News.
They initially invited my four opponents sight unseen, yet demanded that I fill out a lengthy questionnaire to justify my newsworthiness. I told them that I would respond to the questionnaire as soon as the other candidates were provided with a similar document, and that in the meantime I would await my invitation.
In addition to all of the obvious reasons to include me, we did a bit of research on the non-profit status of KERA and found out a very interesting fact. As a 501c3 (IRS speak for "not-for-profit" organization), KERA was legally obliged to include all qualified candidates in the debate--and numerous IRS rulings to that effect made this point clear.
When we informed KERA of this fact, they went to ground and were silent for several weeks. The next thing we heard, KERA had disappeared from the scene, and the sponsorship of the debate had been transferred to the Belo Corporation--the corporate parent of the Dallas Morning News.
Shocking, simply shocking
As a for-profit corporation, Belo has far more latitude with respect to which candidates they may include or exclude. So now KERA gets to pick up the feed and broadcast the debate as they had always intended, but they can sidestep IRS regs because they are not the actual sponsor of the event. A clever shell game indeed.
So who is Belo Corporation anyway, and what recourse do we have against them?
Well, Belo is a $1.5 billion fortune 1000 company with many newspaper, radio, and TV holdings in Texas and around the nation. Their affiliates in Texas include the Dallas Morning News, KHOU in Houston, KVUE in Austin and WFAA in Dallas.
As for recourse, without getting into too much detail, the courts have repeatedly held that candidates do not have a 1st amendment right to be included in these "news events" and that there is an extremely wide degree of journalistic latitude allowed news outlets. We can decry the unfairness of this fact all day long, but it will not change the outcome-a 1st amendment legal challenge will fail.
The next possible avenue of attack might be to suggest that Belo is offering my competitors an illegal campaign contribution. After all, they are providing my opponents with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free TV exposure which both helps them and dramatically prejudices my campaign. While this is obviously the case, media outlets have been exempted from campaign reporting requirements at the federal level. This is not necessarily true at the state level. So while such a challenge would be a legal long shot for us, it remains a slim possibility.
So now you're asking the question, "Why are these people so incredibly desperate to exclude James Werner from the debate?" Without making this situation out to be more than it is, I'd suggest a couple of likely reasons-most of them pretty obvious.
1. They want to maintain tight control over their journalistic environment, and they are concerned that if they allow me into the debate, they will be less able to manage who participates in future such events. They just see it as a bad precedent, and they don't want to upset the apple cart.
2. Journalists like to hang out with rich and famous people, and they like to consider themselves as part of the elite glitterati. If they start allowing riff-raff "regular guys" into their debates, this cheapens their experience and makes them feel less important.
3. Some or all of the other candidates have made it clear that they do not want me in the debate (in spite of their public pronouncements to the contrary.) It is entirely possible that my NOT being invited was a pre-condition for Perry to even show up.
This is not a conspiracy-it's just good common sense on the part of the other candidates. The word is out that I am the most coherent, lucid, and serious of the five candidates (and this speaks more to the nature of the other candidates than it does to my own skills.) Why would a sitting governor want to publicly expose himself to a guy who can run verbal rings around him? Why would our eccentric comptroller want to be made to look silly? You get the picture.
4. The journalistic elite is profoundly anti-libertarian (both little "l" and big "L"). The notion that someone might get on state-wide TV and coherently explain how we can eliminate all property taxes, dramatically shrink the size of the government, and introduce school choice makes them turn blue in the face. And for those who think the aforementioned items might actually be good ideas, the thought of equating drug prohibition with alcohol prohibition, getting the state out of people's bedrooms and living rooms, and leaving gay people the hell alone makes them pop an aneurism.
OK, so now the question is, what do we do?
Well, thus far, I have taken my case to everyone from CNN to the New York Times. I've been interviewed and expressed my outrage to the San Antonio Express, the Houston Chronicle, WBAP in Dallas, and KTSA in San Antonio.
My on-air targets for the coming week include KVET and KLBJ in Austin, KTSA in San Antonio (again), KLLI, KRLD and KLIF in Dallas, WBAP in Ft. Worth (again), KTRH in Houston, KTEP, KROD and KTSM in El Paso, KEDT, KKTX, KEYS in Corpus Christi, and KJDL in Lubbock.
In addition to all the usual reasons to include me in the debate, I will be making a public call for the other candidates to boycott the debate unless I am included. All the other candidates (with the exception of minor candidate Chris Bell) have come out in favor of my inclusion-if they are sincere, let them put their money where their mouths are and refuse to participate without me.
Additionally, we will be looking carefully at legal options-particularly the angle of the potentially illegal campaign contribution that this debate may represent.
I am also interested in pursuing the possibility of lawful, peaceful protests outside the offices of the Belo affiliates and other stations carrying the debate.
And what can you all do?
Well, for starters, I'd ask you to flood the offices of Belo affiliates with letters and emails RESPECTFULLY requesting my inclusion in the debate. The text should read something like this:
Dear:
I am writing to express my deep concern over the exclusion of Libertarian James Werner from the gubernatorial debates in October.
Mr. Werner is a qualified candidate and duly appears on the ballot for governor. In fact, Mr. Werner had ballot access long before the independent candidates had even begun to seek signatures for their own campaigns. And unlike the independents, the Libertarian Party earned its ballot access through the actual votes of hundreds of thousands of Texans in the previous election cycle.
With respect to polling numbers, you may not be aware that the Belo Corporation has largely been using polls in which Mr. Werner's name does not appear to allege a lack of support for his candidacy. Obviously this is an absurd "Catch 22" which does not hold up under the most basic scrutiny.
Texans believe that the public square must not be restricted to the wealthy, the famous, and the politically connected. I am certain that you agree with this sentiment, and that you will strenuously call for Mr. Werner's inclusion in the gubernatorial debate in October.
Sincerely,
Your Name
OK, so thanks for bearing with me (if you've read this far!) I appreciate your support, and look forward to the publicity that we will continue to garner with this issue. I should also stress that everyone temper his enthusiasm with a degree of prudence. I fully expect that any activities undertaken in my name will be respectful, peaceful and lawful, and I know I can count on your cooperation!
Best,
James Werner
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein