Mike Binkley

Name: Mike Binkley

Age: 64

Birthplace: Ohio

How long have you lived in the 48th District? three years

Occupation: author, tutor, retired from a 40-year career in business and software project management in the aerospace industry (Logicon, Hughes Aircraft Co. and TRW Inc.) developing, implementing and deploying state-of-the-art systems

Education: bachelor’s degree in math at UCLA in 1964

Previously elected or appointed positions: chairman of the Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County, editor of the Los Angeles Libertarian, a 1,000-member newsletter

Community organizations: Libertarian Party of Orange County, Drug Policy Alliance, CATO Institute, Reason Foundation, Landmark Education, YogaWorks

Most critical issue: war -- at home and abroad. Reflecting the collective wisdom of America’s Founders, John Quincy Adams wrote: “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
Our Democratic and Republican political establishments have turned the Founders’ wisdom on its head. They are pursuing the Neocon agenda. Going abroad in search of monsters to destroy has become the organizing principle of their reckless foreign policy. Meanwhile, Presidents Bush and Obama, Democratic and Republican politicians are simultaneously waging a covert, incremental war on Americans’ constitutional rights at home.

1. Endless war abroad in service to empire

Our Neocon political establishment has deployed our military in 130 countries, where we are taking sides, making enemies and creating the need for a defense budget that almost equals the rest of the world’s combined.

Without public debate and without congressional hearings, our Democratic and Republican politicians have embraced a doctrine known as “the Long War.” It projects an “arc of instability” caused by insurgent groups from Europe to South Asia that will last between 50 and 80 years. They see Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as just “small wars in the midst of a big one.” (Source: the 2006 and the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Reviews, the nation’s long-term military blueprint)

Since his election, Obama, the self-styled “peace” candidate, has ordered a “surge” (read: escalation) of the wars in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

2. Laying the groundwork for a police state: the Neocons’ war on the Constitution

The Neocons’ war on our Constitution at home accompanies their open-ended war abroad. This war goes beyond the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA’s) creepy storage of digital images (read: nude pictures) made from full-body scans of airline passengers, including children. It is an agenda that includes vast spying on the American people and the employment of a growing army of secret police. In short, they are laying the groundwork for a police state. Some specifics:

• The Obama administration has seamlessly continued the Bush administration’s attack on our right of habeas corpus, the freedom from being secretly imprisoned, indefinitely.
• The Obama administration has also continued its policy of rendition, a practice of delivering (sometimes innocent) suspects to other countries, like Syria and Egypt, for torture.
• The Obama administration is insisting on the “right’ to assassinate any American after simply declaring him a “terrorist.”
• Earlier this year, the Democratic Congress quietly reauthorized the Patriot Act. This statute authorizes FBI agents to bypass a judge and write their own warrants to search any American’s home, business, etc. While serving the warrant, the agents can do a “black-bag job,” or secretly take “evidence” (read: your possessions) without informing you. Further, it makes it a crime for you, if served such a warrant, to tell anyone about it — including your spouse, your clergyman or even a judge under oath.

Again, both Democratic and Republican politicians endorse the Neocon agenda. The Obama administration and Democratic Congress have, in fact, only escalated the Neocon war on the Constitution –- albeit quietly.

How would you resolve that issue? Stop the Neocon’s endless war abroad and stop their war on the people and their Constitution at home. Restore to the American government the role of guaranteeing the rights of the American people.

Why should voters in Laguna Beach support you? The Neocons’ wars are, in my view, very serious. Their wars will not be stopped with the election of any new Republican or Democrat to Congress. I believe we need a political earthquake. The election of a Libertarian to Congress -- a very, very unlikely event –- would be very big news indeed. It would provide the winning candidate a platform for sane political reform, reform consistent with the Constitution -- a message, based on results, that is quite alien to our corrupt political establishment. Based on my own conversations with more than 200 people in the district, it is a message that all -- left, right and center -- find compelling.