There was an Op-Ed in today's Watertown Daily Times entitled On the fringes.
It stated that the party's endorsed candidates are "squirming" to explain what they are about.
I'm not squirming. I know what I stand for.
Freedom.
Liberty.
Limited government bound by the limits as set forth in the Constitution.
The Rule of Law where the government doesn't choose which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. I first took my oath to support and defend the Constitution when I was 18 years old and it did not come with an expiration date.
The Bill of Rights is not open to negotiation. The people are guaranteed the right to keep and bear arms. A true representative republic has nothing to fear from an armed populace.
A balanced federal budget pegged to a percentage of GDP and backed up with a flat or fair tax where everyone has "skin in the game."
Secure borders and enforcing our current immigration laws.
The sanctity of human life.
Strong national defense.
Lifting the burden of the world's highest corporate tax rate and regulations that will lead to investment, business creation, jobs, economic growth and prosperity.

The writer stated that "extremism does not play well with the voters in the North Country." When did our Founding principles, fiscal responsibility and the Constitution become extreme?

The paper said it was important to know the abilities and background of the candidates. I didn't have to move or get a Post Office box in order to run. I was born and raised in the North Country. I was an altar boy, boy scout, played high school football and joined the Army right out of high school. 24 years 2 tours in Germany, Korea and three tours in Iraq later I came back home and now live on a farm in St. Lawrence County.

I am the only veteran in this race. I served with the 10th Mountain Division three times. I was the intelligence officer (S2) for 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade. I served in Iraq with the 10th Mountain Division twice when elements of the Climb to Glory division was attached to my 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad.

I was also a military contractor on Fort Drum. There is no one in this race who can possibly understand the needs of the veterans, families, Soldiers and civilian employees on Fort Drum more. I have been all of the above.

My father had two factories close underneath him and was left unemployed. The first was the Diamond International plant in Ogdensburg. The second was the General Motors plant in Massena. My grandparents, uncles and many other family members owned and operated dairy farms, and I currently live on a farm myself. I understand the needs of the area's farmers because I am one.

I have a record of leadership, actually cutting government spending, drafting and passing legislation that the other candidates can't touch. I will stand by my record of being a responsible steward of the tax payers money, managing budgets, passing legislation and leadership.

There is another choice for Congress in the 21st District. Don't allow the parties or the media tell you who to vote for. Don't allow the media to label you as an extremist if you believe in the founding principles of the Constitution, believe that America is exceptional, and that this district is exceptional.

Government has gone off the rails. I will set it right.

My name is Joe Gilbert. I am a candidate for Congress in NY's 21st Congressional District.

I am a retired US Army officer with 3 combat tours in Iraq and 2 Bronze Star medals. I have served 11 years total overseas throughout my 24yr military career. I have commanded a platoon, 2 companies and a battalion. I commanded the reconnaissance company for the Iraq Survey Group in 2003 and over 1700 Soldiers in Al Anbar Province for 15 months and brought all my Soldiers home from all three tours with no casualties.

After my retirement from the Army, I was a civilian intelligence contractor with the 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, NY and then the Director of Emergency Services for St. Lawrence County, NY.

I have been a Tea Party supporter since there was a Tea Party. I was the Boston Tea Party Examiner in 2009 and then the Watertown Tea Party Examiner. I even founded my own Tea Party group, the Northern NY Tea Party (nnyteaparty.org).

I am also a gun owner (my favorite is my Springfield M1A rifle), pro-life, a member of the National Rifle Association, a Son of the American Revolution a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and AMVETS. I live on and operate a farm in Dekalb Junction in St. Lawrence County in our heavily agricultural district. I believe a true representative republic has nothing to fear from an armed populace.

The number one agenda item on my platform is the restoration of the rule of law and the Constitution being once again the supreme law of the land. This administration and the vast majority of our "representatives" in Washington no longer represent the will, traditions, history or values of We the People at all. They pick and choose which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore. They choose winners and losers in our economy and use our tax code and the IRS to punish their enemies. We are spied on, lied to, misled, divided into groups and pitted against each other, abandoned on the battlefield and then vilified if we dare to speak out. The IRS, NSA, EPA and other government agencies have been turned into weapons and turned on the American people. And the Constitution and our Founding principles are shredded in the process. I took the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic when I was 18 years old. It never came with an expiration date. The one campaign promise I will make is that I will fight to my last breath to defend our God given rights. Chief among those is our right to be simply left alone. I will fight to restore this great republic for our future generations.

I believe in smaller, fiscally responsible government bound by the limits set forth in our Constitution. Smaller governments are cheaper. I also believe in a balanced budget amendment. The government can't continue to spend, spend, spend and then print $85 billion a month out of thin air and expect our country to remain solvent. This needs to stop.

Our economy is burdened with crushing laws and regulations that kill jobs, slow the economy, discourage hiring, and make it harder and harder for small businesses to get started, grow and survive. I will fight against this! The first thing that needs to happen is the full repeal of Obamacare.

Recent events have demonstrated that we still live in a very dangerous world. Russia is invading of the Ukraine and testing ballistic missiles. North Korea continues to threaten its neighbors with nuclear weapons. China is conducting gun boat diplomacy across the Pacific rim. Iran is still pursuing nuclear weapons and is supporting the civil war in Syria. On top of everything, after so much precious American blood and treasure, Al Qaida and the Muslim extremists and terrorists control more territory than ever before.

I am the only veteran in this race. I am the only candidate who has stood on the wall facing the Soviet Union in the Cold War and served on the DMZ in Korea. And I am the only combat veteran who has actually led Soldiers in the fight against the jihadists in this world who are plotting to kill us every day. I still hold a current and active security clearance. With recent events when you think of your representative on the armed services, intelligence or foreign affairs committees, I will bring over 25 years of experience and training to bear.

I am a conservative in my beliefs, my convictions and my actions. While the Director of Emergency Services, I cut my government budget by over 20% in the first 18 months while improving emergency operations and public safety that will actually save lives. I have written, reviewed and pushed resolutions through a legislature dominated by the opposition party. I did this by leading. I reached across the aisle and argued my position without sacrificing my convictions and got my bills passed. I will do all of this again for you in Washington.

I am running as a purely grassroots candidate. I know I can win. I am one of the Americans who is fed up with those in Washington thinking and behaving as though they are a permanent ruling class. We the People are not serfs to be ruled, but a free and sovereign people. That is my vision for New York, this district, and America. Future generations will remember what we do right now with this moment in history we have been given.

Thank you,

Joe Gilbert

https://www.facebook.com/JoeGilbertForCongress?ref=hl

http://joegilbertforcongress.org/

There is a move afoot for a Convention of States for proposing amendments to the Constitution. The ruling class doesn't uphold the Constitution now. Will they uphold it if we propose more amendments? I doubt it.
I would only support 4 amendments.
1. Repeal the 16th Amendment and abolish the IRS. Go to a flat or fair tax system.
2. Repeal the 17th Amendment and put that key check on federal power back in the hands of the states. If a senator appointed by their respective state legislature doesn't represent the interest of the state and not the federal government, he or she can be recalled immediately.
3. Balanced budget amendment where the federal government cannot spend more than it takes in. But, that must include a limit, as a percentage of GDP, how much the government can spend.
4. Term limits on Supreme Court justices. Presidents like Obama can't pack the court with Liberal judges that erode the core of this country for generations.u do for America today?

I can't sit idle and silent on the great "budget deal" reached in Congress.
So, they've agreed to cut $23 billion from the proposed growth in government spending over the next 10 years.
The federal budget is $3.8 Trillion, with a deficit of $642 Billion. Total debt is #17.3 Trillion, 2013 annual revenues were $2.8 Trillion.

Put into terms of a household, minus a bunch of zeros:
If your family was $170,000 in debt, with an annual income of $28,000 and going further into debt by about $650 - $1000 a year. Then, your spouse comes to you and says, "Hey, honey, good news,, I was planning on borrowing another $700 next year without paying off any of our debt, but instead, we're only going to go into debt by $697.70!!" Just how excited would you be?

This is crazy. When are we really going to take a stand against Big Government? Its so frustrating watching this train wreck. The problem is, we're all passengers on this AMTRAK to disaster, and we're taking our kids down with us.

https://www.facebook.com/JoeGilbertForCongress

I was asked of my faith and its origins. I am a Christian but don't normally discuss my faith here. But, because I was asked, I'll address it briefly.
I believe that if one believes in God, they MUST believe in Freedom and Liberty. If you believe in God, then you believe that God made you. If you believe that God made you, then He made you and put you on this earth to accomplish something. He put you here with a purpose.
If God put you here with a purpose, then you MUST be free do pursue God's purpose for your life. How can you pursue God's purpose in your life if you are bound in slavery? This is precisely why our Rights do not come from government, but come from God. That's why We the People made government not the other way around.
We the People are the sovereign masters of government and government exists solely to protect our Rights.

If you haven't seen this, Harvard conducted a survey of "Millennials" to determine their impressions on Washington, especially Obamacare.

In order to best interpret my impressions of the survey, please note the following statement taken from the article: “Overcoming today's bitter partisanship and governmental gridlock is essential to showing Millennials and all our citizens that Washington, D.C. – and our democratic process – can still work and make a difference."

http://www.joegilbertforcongress.com/

Therein lies the base of the problem. The federal government has become so bloated and powerful, that citizens just assume that Washington is supposed to solve all our problems. They can't. That is why in the Constitution, the federal government is trusted with only 18 enumerated powers. 536 people (435 in the House, 100 in the Senate and 1 president) cannot run every aspects of the country and the lives of 330 million people. They were never supposed to. But, over the last 100 years, since Woodrow Wilson, there has been a steady concentration of power in Washington. So, today, everything from trade, employment, the minimum wage, roads and bridges, the education of our children and now our healthcare has by practice fallen under the purview of the federal government.

There is nothing they run, except the military, that is cost efficient and effective. The Postal Service, AMTRAK, Department of Veterans Affairs or healthcare.gov are all failures. Two other aspects of the survey are worth noting as well. First, at long last, a major part of the base that supported the president in his election and reelection are waking up to the truth of what centralized power really means. They are directly feeling the effects of how the government lied to them to get their support, then are now using them in their redistribution plan that is Obamacare. The Millennials are the ones that are being counted on to pay the much higher premiums to fund all the subsidies, pre-existing conditions and elderly that will be actually using their health insurance. Now they know. It may be too late, but they know.

Secondly, and more troubling, is that more of them are becoming discouraged and not taking part in politics at all. Instead of being angered to the point of action, they are being angered to the point of inaction. It should be the other way around. But, as stated above, when power is unconstitutionally concentrated at the federal level, a feeling of helplessness can take hold where people feel like they really can't make a difference and their one vote doesn't count. This is a major theme of my campaign. People need to feel empowered again. The United States is no longer a true representative republic run in accordance with the Constitution. We have a political ruling class of elitists that exempt themselves from the very laws that they themselves pass. This is wrong and it needs to be turned around. Every member of Congress and the president take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States then violate that oath on a regular basis.

http://www.joegilbertforcongress.com/

A majority of those surveyed said they would recall every member of Congress and the president. Good. This really comes back to my last point. We were never intended to have a ruling class. Instead, we have representatives making 35 year careers out of 2 year terms. And, they'll spend $$$ Millions in a single campaign to get a job that pays $174,000. For the majority of politicians, public service no longer matters. It is all about gaining and maintaining power. Elections strongly favor the incumbents and it is virtually impossible for grassroots campaigns to take hold, because in the end, it is all about how much money a candidate can raise and significantly less about the issues. There is a political machine at work in Washington that only wants to hold on to power, not solve problems. In every case, their answer is more government, another program, another agency or bureaucracy and more spending. It can be easily mathematically demonstrated that is a flawed formula. Our national debt is $17,208,550,000,000. There are more than 91 million Americans no longer participating in the workforce and not even counted towards our unemployment number. There are 49 million Americans on food stamps and the poverty rate is 16% (the same exact rate as it was in 1964 when LBJ launched his famous "War on Poverty" on which we've spent more than $16 Trillion).

Obama's numbers are down on international affairs as well. The latest "deal" with Iran does nothing to stop their nuclear weapons program and he pressed for military intervention in Syria's civil war. As of Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2013, at least 2,153 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan.

Since the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, 19,496 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department. We're still in Afghanistan and when we do leave, what kind of Afghanistan will we leave behind? We left Iraq with our tails between our legs too - where I served 3 tours. There is nothing in this administration to feel good about. Nothing.

I know the survey really focused on Obamacare as it should. Obamacare is, in my opinion, the single worst piece of legislation passed in Washington. It will destroy our private health insurance industry. It will drive doctors out of practice and by extension wreck medical schools (who is going to spend $300,000 to become a doctor through 10 years of school, residency, etc only to be forced to accept Medicaid and Medicare patients for whom you'll only be reimbursed 40 cents on the dollar forcing you to operate at a loss?), drive full time workers into part time jobs, force up to 100 million Americans to lose their health insurance, and those that will have insurance will pay way more than they are paying now for better care, and in the end, by the government's own estimates cost the economy $2.7 Trillion and still leave 30 million with no insurance at all. Oh, and by the way, the website is a disaster and people who do log on are explicitly told they can have no expectation of privacy of the plethora of personal information they are forced to provide.

Given all of this, the results of the survey are really no big surprise. The only surprise here is that it took so long for the Millennials to wake up to what's going on. But, instead of withdrawing from the political process, we need these Americans involved and engaged to change the system that they are so fed up with.

I can be reached either on my campaign website: http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/ or on my facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/JoeGilbertForCongress.

Rumors of the Tea Party’s demise are greatly exaggerated. 

Before, during and after the government shutdown, the Tea Party was dragged through the mud, chastised, called names and even told that our movement should die.

This all came about because the representatives we elected on the promise to fight Obamacare dared to do so. The irony is now that the Affordable Care Act is beginning to be implemented, the whole country is beginning to see that the Tea Party was right all along.

During the government shutdown last month, the president, democrats and the main stream media all blamed a small group of hard-liner Tea Party republicans for all of the country’s woes. The Boston Globe, for example, stated it was the “Tea Party movement’s strategy of shutting down the government and bringing the nation to the brink of debt default.”

http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/

Former George H.W. Bush administration official Bruce Bartlett expressed hope that the Tea Party would soon "die a well-deserved death" on MSNBC.  In an Op-Ed published in USA Today on 18 October, Hank Plante after calling the Tea Party “extortionists” stated “members of the tea party will continue to be political extortionists as long as the news media and the rest of the public give them equal weight on the sanity scale.”

The Republicans in general and the Tea Party specifically were called extremists, obstructionists, jihadists and terrorists.  We were told that the Tea Party was holding the country hostage and were willing to let the country default on its debt.

The real facts of the “shutdown” paint an entirely different picture. First, the government never shutdown.  Eighty-five percent of the government was funded, up and running.  The president through the Office of Management and Budget had the discretion to pick and choose which agencies and functions of the federal government would close and which would stay open. President Obama specifically chose to close what he believed would be the most visible and objectionable to the American people.

Second, the House bill fully funded the entire government, except Obamacare.  Nothing else had to close. Additionally, the House then passed a long series of bills that funded each aspect of the government including the national parks, the National Institute of Health and all of the military.

http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/

The images of World War II veterans being denied entry into their memorial and senior citizens being rounded up at Yellowstone were absolutely unnecessary.  The worst came when the commander in chief chose to deny death benefits to three families whose sons were killed in Afghanistan. Obama could have instead not funded Planned Parenthood, or Public Broadcasting or cut foreign aid. He made the conscious decision to hurt the American people as much as possible.

Meanwhile, all of the House bills to fund the government sat on Harry Reid’s desk at the Senate. He dug in his heels and absolutely refused to even debate or compromise on not fully funding and implementing the Affordable Care Act. The biggest lie of all was that the government was on the verge of default.  The federal government takes in about $300 billion a month in revenue. That is more than enough to fully fund entitlement programs and service the debt. The government was never at risk of a debt default. The national narrative as espoused by the White House, his party and the complicit media was it all was the Tea Party’s fault. 

Since then, the Republicans caved to the pressure and kicked the can down the road. The government is fully funded and the debt ceiling raised until February 7^th 2014. So, nothing has changed. We are just going further into debt and federal spending, at least for now, can continue unabated down the road to fiscal ruin.

Obamacare became active on 1 October.  Just one month into the implementation of the ACA, the news is grim, just as the Tea Party predicted. Under the new law, the government will fine you if you don’t go onto the healthcare.gov site, which doesn’t work, and sign up for a plan you don’t want and that will increase your rates so much you can’t afford insurance at all. A study conducted by the the American Action Forum, calculated that the Obamacare increases for individual health insurance policies to be 193 percent for women on average, and 260 percent for men.  With such rate increases, millions of Americans will be forced to drop their coverage. 

http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/

And, millions of Americans will lose their employer provided health insurance. Even the Congressional Budget Office predicts that because of Obamacare, up to 20 million Americans will lose their employer based coverage. But, the president said “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period”

He lied. And he knew he was lying each and every time he said that. Forbes reported today that in a 2010 Federal Register document, the Obama Administration predicted that up to 93 million Americans would lose their healthcare coverage.

As reported by News Busters on 31 October, Section 1251 of the Affordable Care Act contains a “grandfather” provision that, in theory, allows people to keep their existing plans if they like them. But subsequent regulations from the Obama administration interpreted that provision so narrowly as to prevent most plans from gaining this protection.

Page 34552 of the 2010 Federal Register reads “The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013.”

Forbes did the math: 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans.

These numbers as grim as they are, vindicate the Tea Party.  We knew all along that not only was the ACA unconstitutional on many levels but that it would destroy the best healthcare system in the world.  We held true to our convictions when we were bashed every day in the media.  We knew the president, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were all lying.

We held strong to our beliefs of smaller, fiscally responsible government. We knew that only a return to America’s founding principles would restore this great representative republic with a federal government bound to the limits set forth in the Constitution. 

We held strong then. We must hold even stronger now.  The Tea Party is not dead.  It will be the Tea Party and those that follow us that will save this country from itself.  This is our challenge. This is our time.  If not us, who? If not now, when?

As Ronald Reagan said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.  It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.  Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”

We will not be the generation that loses freedom in America. We must now redouble our efforts to bring sanity and responsibility back to government.  We must seek out and support true constitutional conservative candidates wherever we may find them whether they are in our home district or across the country and fully support them to propel them into office. 

We can do this. We owe it to our children and our children’s children. The Tea Party will be ones who lead the restoration of our country.  To paraphrase Shakespeare: We few, we happy few, we band of Patriots; For he today who stands with me shall be my brother.

I can be reached either on my campaign website: http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/  or on my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JoeGilbertForCongress.  

I love this country. I want my children and yours to grow up proud to be Americans where they can achieve their highest aspirations and become their highest, best selves. I want a country that is not buried in debt that stifles economic growth and devalues our currency. I believe in a country where everyone has the same opportunities, but not limited by government to the same outcome.

I believe that in world affairs, we should be respected by our friends and rightfully feared by our enemies, and where we would never ever even think about leaving Americans behind on a foreign field of battle. We should commit our sons and daughters to combat sparingly and when we do it is only because our citizens or vital national interest are at stake.  Our commanders on the ground control the fight and know before the first bullet flies what victory looks like. Then, when the battle is over, I want a country that holds its history and its veterans in a sacred place of honor as those among us who have fought and volunteered their blood for our Liberty. It was an outrage when this Administration denied the death benefits to the families of our fallen heroes in Afghanistan and closed the memorials to our combat veterans.

http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/

I want an America that citizens of other countries long to come to because we are a beacon of Liberty across the globe, but they do so legally. Those who do cross our borders illegally are not rewarded with federal entitlements that our hard working citizens pay for.  There is so much more to being an American than just being in America.

I want an America where our kids receive a quality education that prepares them not for a standardized federal exam, but to succeed in life. In our schools, parents and teachers together determine the course of their teaching not unelected bureaucrats in Washington. There is no provision in the Constitution for the federal government to be in charge of anyone’s education in the first place.

I will fight for an America that pays its bills, is fiscally responsible and adheres to the same economic principles as every American family has to. That is, that it can't spend more than it takes in and the American taxpayer isn't seen as the "piggybank" that can be tapped again and again to fund their liberal, progressive agenda.

My United States came with an owner's manual and it is called the Constitution. It is a document not to limit We the People, but to constrict the government's intrusion into our lives and to maximize our Liberty. We need to fight every day to ensure the government respects its sovereign masters, We the People, and adheres to its limits as set forth in the Constitution. Every bill proposed in Congress should have attached to it the provision in the Constitution that allows the federal government the power to act on that proposed legislation in the first place.

http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/

I believe we can have again a federal government that respects our individual rights and private property as set forth in the Bill of Rights.  These include our right to peaceably assemble, petition the government. The people should be respected as the sovereign masters of government when we do assemble, and not be confronted by mounted riot police complete with gas masks, batons and shields to intimidate 80 and 90 year old combat veterans in wheelchairs.

Americans have the right to possess firearms.  I am a gun owner and have no propensity to commit any violent crime. My firearms are to hunt, for sport and to protect my home, my life and my family.  The 2nd Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights, however, so Americans would always possess the capability to defend themselves against an oppressive government, or, if need be, overthrow it. A truly representative republic has nothing to fear from an armed populace.  Laws exist now to punish those who possess guns illegally and those who commit crimes with firearms. Those need to be enforced.  We do not need further laws to restrict the lawful ownership of firearms by law-abiding citizens.

We in the Tea Party have been demonized as “extremists,” and even “terrorists”.  Today we are being told by the main stream media that our movement is dead.  As you know, the Tea Party is not a political party. I am a lifelong registered Republican. I am also a Tea Party member. The Tea Party is not an organized force or political party.  It is an informal group of patriotic Americans connected by the idea that the government needs to control its spending, be fiscally responsible and accountable to We the People. I believe the government needs to control its spending and stop going into debt that we and our children will eventually have to repay.  America goes into debt at the rate of $50,000 a second, every second of every day. That is unsustainable and is not only a severe threat to our economy and our future but also to our national security.

http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/

Another threat to our economy and our national security is our failure to fully develop our domestic energy sources.  We have more natural sources of energy than the Middle East.  There is no reason for the United States to purchase oil from countries that not only do not like America, but actively support and fund our enemies. Developing domestic energy will bring energy independence, which brings independence from any influence from Middle Eastern countries while serving as the engine for economic recovery here at home.  This administration consistently shuts down or inhibits American energy development while supporting foreign sources. That has to be reversed.

I'm not an idealist. All of these proposals can be achieved. It just takes the right leadership in Washington. We have to find and support true Constitutional conservative candidates and fight to get them elected.  We have to do this for every level of government from your town hall to the capitol. The stakes have never been higher.  Our career politicians in Washington have become completely out of touch with the people they were hired to represent.  They argue and bicker with each other over the color of the drapes as the house burns down around them.

This is our challenge. This is our time.  If we don’t do this, who will? If not now, when?

I've been a leader throughout my entire career.  I've commanded two companies and a battalion in combat in Iraq. I'm very proud to say that I never lost of Soldier. Every one of the great Americans I had the honor to lead came home to their families with all their fingers and toes intact.  This is after hundreds of missions "outside the wire" doing reconnaissance, intelligence raids and patrols all over the country.  At one point I was in charge of over 1700 civilian and military subordinates. These included Americans, Iraqis, Turkish personnel and even a security company from Uganda.

I'm running for Congress in NY's 21st Congressional District.  Northern NY has suffered under liberal policies and agendas for years.  In my hometown of Ogdensburg, my father had two factories close underneath him, as did his brother in the Shade Roller factory next door.  We're still experiencing high unemployment, high taxes and essentially no economic growth.  When I left the military, I came home. I worked for St. Lawrence County as the Director of Emergency Services after my retirement from the Army.

While in service to the county as the Director of Emergency Services, I cut my budget by almost $200,000 in 18 months.  While at the same time I launched new initiatives to improve public safety and emergency communications for our over 2100 volunteer firefighters and EMTs.  I don't just talk about fiscal responsibility and cutting government spending, I've done it. I'll do it again as your Congressman in Washington.

My legislative experience will be put to work in Washington as well.  I've drafted resolutions and pushed them through legislatures. I've sat on and appeared before legislative committees and have had to reach across the aisle to come to bipartisan consensus to get things done. This isn't political theory to me. I've done this.  I will do it again, this time for America as your representative in Congress.

I can be reached either on my campaign website: http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/ or on my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JoeGilbertForCongress.

America was never intended to have a professional political ruling class. But, that is exactly what we have now. Guys like Harry Reid, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and our other elected representatives have become so disconnected from We the People they feel exempt from the effects of the laws they pass. They believe they are above the law itself. You'll hear them speak of "the American people" as if we are a separate entity, distant and distinct from themselves. Just as they have exempted themselves with subsidies from Obamacare that you pay for.

As they are sworn into office, over and over, they do take an oath to support and uphold the Constitution. But, that means nothing to them. If it did, the Constitutional merits of every piece of legislation would be debated even before they'd discuss the details of the bill itself. We all know that doesn't happen.

It time we have new leadership in Washington. We simply cannot afford to continue down this road to ruin as a nation.

I can be reached either on my campaign website: http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/  or on my facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JoeGilbertForCongress.

I've been watching Obamacare's roll-out turn into Obama's unraveling. Or at least it should be. But the Left will survive whatever we say about Obamacare. Like it did with Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS and NSA scandals too.

Obama's approval rating is tanking. His lies about his lies about Obamacare even have the democrats worried. Millions have lost their health insurance, lost their jobs, trading full time jobs for part time jobs and are really worried about the future. They're slow to the party, but America is finally getting it and waking up.

I am not a moderate. This country doesn't have time for moderates anymore. This isn't politics as usual. We are really on the edge of losing this great representative republic forever. We have a cancer in Washington. It will take painful medicine to cure it. I'm not going up there to "go along to get along". I don't care who the speaker is. I don't care what party controls what. We just don't have time to play the usual political games. I'm not going to be the one referring to the other guy as "the honorable gentleman" when he is trying to destroy my country.

This isn't a game. This isn’t tiddly-winks. This is a serious, purposeful attempt to highjack America and destroy capitalism. This isn’t a trainwreck. It’s purposeful suicide. It’s not failing, it’s working exactly according to plan. Obama knows what he’s doing. I will stop apologizing and start fighting to my last dying breath to protect your rights and defend my children's future, and the future of my constituents' children.

We play nice. We are polite. When we speak up they call us "extremists, obstructionists, jihadists, terrorists" and our side gets scared and then we compromise or give in and the march to socialism continues. The White House, the Left, controls the media and therefore the message. We get wrapped up in providing free contraceptives while they destroy the domestic energy industry and take away jobs from millions of average Americans. If we keep playing this game according to their rules, we're doomed. Not on my watch.

This is crazy. My primary opponent keeps saying we need "new leadership" in Washington. She's right. We certainly do. But to get that, you first have to elect an experienced leader.

You are not the folks you're going to see having tea and cookies in the garden under a parasol. You are like me: God fearing Patriots all. There are those who will sat in their dining rooms on 18 April 1775, and then there were those who standing on Lexington Green. I invite you now to stand by my side with your muskets on your shoulders.

This fight is about freedom. This fight is about the future of America. This is a fight we simply cannot afford to lose. You can help. Act now. Make a donation to my campaign. $5, $10, $25, $50, or whatever you can afford. Don't let this country slip away. Volunteer. Now is our time. This is serious business and nothing short of the future of our country hangs in the balance.

http://www.joegilbertforcongress.org/ 

No other economic system has brought more people out of poverty, provided for the health and well-being of millions and raised the standard of living more societies than capitalism. When people cooperate to fulfill their own self interest, they all benefit.

Capitalism and freedom are inextricably linked. When the Declaration of Independence was first drafted it read "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and Property."

This was changed later to read "pursuit of happiness" because the Founders did not want the document to be perceived to support slavery. But the first draft read 'property'. Why?

The concept of property, and private property rights are indispensable to freedom and liberty. They are also indispensable to capitalism. Realize first that the term property includes much more than the material items we buy, store or make. Property also includes our thoughts, actions, education and experience and labor. Our voices, spirituality and even our lives are also our property. What we do with our property, how we employ it to better our lives and take care of our families ought to be completely up to us. Government was created, and its only function should be to protect our property and our right to employ, or not to employ them as we see fit.

The Declaration of Independence listed those three specific rights, and then the very next line explained the function of government: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men”. Then, in the US Constitution, the government created specifically to secure our rights is strictly limited in its power, lest the government created by the governed become too powerful. Also, to further restrict the power of government and to secure our rights and property, the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution before the states would ratify it.

So, our God-given rights are also our property and government exists to secure these rights and the Constitution exists to protect us from government. The freedom assured to the people in such an arrangement naturally leads to capitalism. It is this system, a Federal government with strictly limited powers and a populace with the freedom to employ their property as they wish, allowed the United States to rise from a small, backward agrarian society to become a world power in less than a century.

It is this legal respect for personal property that allowed great innovation, invention and industry to flourish. It is the mobility that was granted to our people by our freedoms that allowed the country to grow and our people to prosper. The extension of the concept of property to include our ideas that allowed the Wright Brothers to invent the first powered aircraft. It allowed the Thomas Edisons, Henry Fords and the Steve Jobs of our country to patent and protect their ideas, grow companies and provide incomes and livelihoods to an untold millions of people. I’ve seen the other side. In my time in the Army, I’ve served both in Germany and in South Korea. I’ve seen what communism looks like staring back from across Europe's Iron Curtain and the DMZ. I’ve seen the misery and poverty that comes from a centrally planned economy where personal property rights don’t exist and liberty is unknown. The walls that I guarded wearing the uniform of freedom were not constructed by us to keep the forces of communism out. Those walls were built by the forces of communism to hold their own people in.

For once you strip the people of their liberty, their freedom and their property, in all its forms, you’ve stripped them of their individuality. They no longer exist for themselves, they no longer have any worth except to fill some role that betters the State. They are more like workers in an ant hill with no individual rights, no personal property, no way to improve their lives for all property and all means of production belong to the queen.

But, now, our Constitution and the concept of property are under attack. We have a president that is alienating those that create. He, and his allies on the Left, are making enemies of those that innovate, build and dream. He is espousing a philosophy that states that in order for anyone to get ahead, we have to pull the successful among us down. Somehow he is trying to convince us that by taking money from some of our citizens and giving that money to the government, that the poor among us will be better off. The truth is that all that will happen is that all of us become poorer.

This rhetoric is designed to simultaneously group us into the “masses” and divide us into groups. It has been called “class warfare” but it goes much deeper. The term “fairness” is used over and over to espouse a false argument that there should be an equality in outcome, that we should all be the same, that some having more is somehow unfair to those that have less. In capitalism, wealth can be created exponentially through innovation, invention and starting a small business, hiring people and becoming a large business. Having wealth and creating wealth is not dependent upon seizing the wealth from others. Now we are being told that we can achieve equality, and “fairness” only by seizing the wealth of others and to give it to those that do not contribute.

We must recognize that if we stand idly by and by our inaction, allow the government to seize the property of some of our citizens under the false premise that it benefits us all, we all lose. For once a freedom is lost, once we surrender a liberty, it will not come back. We must recognize that the government is not only trying to convince us they are only seeking to achieve "fairness" and only they can best determine what that means and they will take, by force, the property from some of our citizens for those ends. How is it, in the words of Mark Levine, that we are wise enough to choose our leaders, but not our lightbulbs? This entire concept turns our founding on its head and the government has become supreme. The people have surrendered their Liberty.

Capitalism, and the concept of private property, has proven that one can employ their property: their ideas, labor, capital, experience, education, hard work, spirituality, time and dreams and put them to work to advance their well-being, raise a family, and leave this a better country, a better world for your children than how you inherited it. We are close to losing this America. We are close to losing our freedoms. We have a government now that does not respect personal property and believes it can choose better how you should employ your property. For every new power the government gains, it must necessarily take a like amount of freedom from us.

There is no wonder why the vast majority of Americans are opposed to military action in Syria when the possible outcomes are so damaging:
 
1. The US military attacks with cruise missiles which does some damage, Assad stays in power, their civil war continues as it has. Why attack, no change? Except with no international support, the credibility of the US is severely damaged. Bad outcome. US forces are put in harm's way and we kill people with no strategic change in the situation in Syria. 
2. The US attacks, Assad stays in power, Syria and/or Iran attacks Israel in retaliation to US attack, much larger regional conflict is ignited. Bad. We could be dragged into defending Israel from an attack which we instigated with no long-range plan of success. Or we could abandon Israel. Also very bad outcomes. 
3. The US military attacks, destroys Syria's air force and air defenses, Assad falls. Rebels, including Al Qaida seize control including Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles. Bad. This scenario doesn't even guarantee the end of the conflict as Hezbollah, Al Quds, Iran, Alwites still support Al Assad and could easily continue fighting even after Assad is gone - Think Egypt, only worse. Very bad outcome. We give chemical weapons to Al Qaida. 

To make matters worse, our allies have decided NOT to assist us in military intervention. The UN will not support military intervention. 81% of Americans are against intervention. Russia and China have warned us against intervention (which would make no difference to me if our national security was threatened, which it is not), Syria and Iran have promised to attack Israel if we attack Syria. Again, we have a totalitarian regime fighting against Islamic extremists groups, including Al Qaida. What's our role here? 

We can, however, provide humanitarian aid to the victims and Syrian refugee civilians, support our true ally in the region, Israel and interdict Iran's supply routes into Syria in Iraq. All good outcomes.

Chemical weapons cannot be destroyed by an air attack. Delivery systems can be damaged and the chemicals themselves can be spread by the use of explosives, but not destroyed. Either Assad will retain the chemical weapons or the opposition will seize them. 

How can this Administration convince us that they know everything that happened in Damascus with this chemical attack- what weapons were used, how they were delivered, who conducted the attack, and just as importantly, who did not conduct the attack, how many casualties there were, which chemical agents were used, etc with a "high confidence" ? But they still can't tell us anything about Benghazi where we apparently had dozens of CIA agents on the ground? So, we're supposed to trust their word now? How many times has this administration lied to us?

Never mind that they are killing us. Never mnd that they preach Sharia law that is diametrically opposed to Western principles. Never mind they vandalized Britain's war memorials. 

We have no right to criticize?

http://unitedpatriotsworldwide.com/vinienco/2013/04/23/25000-muslims-march-england-calling-laws-silence-critics-islam/ 

Following the Islamic terror attack where a British Soldier was killed in the streets, Muslims are now defacing British war memorials in a park in London.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/05/islam-spray-painted-on-war-memorials-in-london-parks.html 

This post needs to be read after reading the last one, "Obama's Saudi Connection."

I didn't write either article.  They weren't written by the same author or for the same audience, but when taken together, it makes better sense.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/54665#at_pco=cfd-1.0

By Doug Hagmann: 

What do the murders of four Americans in Benghazi have to do with the murders of three in a terrorist attack in Boston? Plenty, if you understand what you are seeing in the abstract expressionism of the Jackson Pollock painting is actually a blood trail, and the Pollock painting you are closely studying is an exact reproduction of one of his earlier works. It is a reproduction of a reproduction. We’ve seen this picture before, a bloodstained tangle of lies being sold to us as an artistic masterpiece. But you have to step farther back, not closer to the painting, to actually see the blood trail.

This and the next post make more sense in context when the information is considered together. Then it makes perfect, scary sense.

From Obama's Marxist indoctrination from Frank Marshall Davis to the help from Valerie Jarett's father-in-law and help from the Muslim world that propelled Obama to the presidency.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2990890/posts

Watch for the next post as well.

According to research at the British National Archives, Barack Sr. had a son on Aug 4, 1961.

In May 2012, someone conducted a search of the Archives using the search term “Obama” and found that an unnamed son of Obama Sr. was born in Kenya in 1961. Since the guy in the White House is the only known son of Obama Sr. born after 1960 and before 1963 when Kenya became officially independent from the UK, it is reasonable for us to conclude that Barack Jr. is that unnamed son of Obama Sr. born in Kenya in 1961. And in fact, the claimed birth date of the president is August 4, 1961.

http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2013/05/son-was-born-to-obama-sr-in-1961-in-kenya-2644016.html