Document:National Platform 1994: Difference between revisions

Until government involvement in education is ended, we support elimination, within the governmental school system, of forced busing and corporal punishment. We further support immediate reduction of tax support for schools, and removal of the burden of school taxes from those not responsible for the education of children.

Recognizing that the American people are not a collective national resource, we oppose all coercive measures for population control.

We support an end to all subsidies for childbearing built into our present laws, including welfare plans and the provision of tax-supported services for children. We urge the elimination of special tax burdens on single people and couples with few or no children.

Government interference in transportation is characterized by monopolistic restriction, corruption and gross inefficiency. We therefore call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation, including the Department of Transportation, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Coast Guard, and the Federal Maritime Commission, and the transfer of their legitimate functions to competitive private firms. We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of airports, air traffic control systems, public roads, and the national highway system. We condemn the re-cartelization of commercial aviation by the Federal Aviation Administration via rationing of take-off and landing rights and controlling scheduling in the name of "safety."

As interim measures, we advocate an immediate end to government regulation of private transit organizations and to governmental favors to the transportation industry. In particular, we support the immediate repeal of all laws restricting transit competition such as the granting of taxicab and bus monopolies and the prohibition of private jitney services. We urge immediate deregulation of the trucking industry. Likewise, we advocate the immediate repeal of federally imposed speed limits.

Government fiscal and monetary measures that artificially foster business expansion guarantee an eventual increase in unemployment rather than curtailing it. We call for the immediate cessation of such policies as well as any governmental attempts to affect employment levels.

To speed the time when governmental programs are replaced by effective private institutions we advocate dollar-for-dollar tax credits for all charitable contributions.

We favor restoring and reviving a free market health care system. We oppose the efforts of Washington politicians to place all the spending on health in American society within a federally-planned overall health budget. A new national health budget will necessitate not only federal price controls on health care services -- with all the waiting lines and distortions that accompany price controls -- but also rationing of health care. The bureaucratic, top-down system called "managed competition" that is to determine what-gets-spent-on-what cannot escape being a political scramble by special interests seeking health dollars and could never be an adequate substitute for completely free competition in the medical marketplace.

Because existing tax policy has dampened price competition and consumer cost-consciousness in the medical industry, we would provide not only tax breaks for employer-provided health plans (whose value is not currently taxed as income), but also individual tax credits so that families can choose their own health plans.

Resource management is properly the responsibility and right of the legitimate owners of land, water, and other natural resources. We oppose government control of resource use through eminent domain, zoning laws, building codes, rent control, regional planning, urban renewal, or purchase of development rights with tax money. Such regulations and programs violate property rights, discriminate against minorities, create housing shortages, and tend to cause higher rents.

We call for the homesteading or other just transfer to private ownership of federally held lands. We oppose any use of executive orders invoking the Antiquities Act to set aside public lands. We call for the abolition of the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. Forced surface-mining of privately homesteaded lands in which the government has reserved surface mining rights to itself is a violation of the rights of the present landholders. We recognize the legitimacy of resource planning by means of private, voluntary covenants. We oppose creation of new government parks or wilderness and recreation areas. Such parks and areas that already exist should be transferred to non-government ownership. Pending such just transfer, their operating costs should be borne by their users rather than by taxpayers.

America's free market in agriculture, the system that feeds much of the world, has been plowed under by government intervention. Government subsidies, regulation, and taxes have encouraged the centralization of agricultural business. Government export policies hold American farmers hostage to the political whims of both Republican and Democratic administrations. Government embargoes on grain sales and other obstacles to free trade have frustrated the development of free and stable trade relationships between peoples of the world.

d. repeal of federal inheritance taxes; and

e. ending government involvement in agricultural pest control. A policy of pest control whereby private individuals or corporations bear full responsibility for damages they inflict on their neighbors should be implemented.

We call for the repeal of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. This law denies the right to liberty and property to both employer and employee, and it interferes in their private contractual relations. OSHA's arbitrary and high-handed actions invade property rights, raise costs, and are an injustice imposed on business.

We favor replacing the current fraudulent, virtually bankrupt, government sponsored Social Security system with a private voluntary system. Pending that replacement, participation in Social Security should be made voluntary. Victims of the Social Security tax should have a claim against government property.

We propose the abolition of the government Postal Service. The present system, in addition to being inefficient, encourages government surveillance of private correspondence. Pending abolition, we call for an end to the monopoly system and for allowing free competition in all aspects of postal service.

We propose the abolition of the Civil Service system, which entrenches a permanent and growing bureaucracy upon the land. We recognize that the Civil Service is inherently a system of concealed patronage. We therefore recommend return to the Jeffersonian principle of rotation in office.

We call for an end to government control of political parties, consistent with First Amendment rights to freedom of association and freedom of expression. As private voluntary groups, political parties should be allowed to establish their own rules for nomination procedures, primaries, and conventions.

In order to grant voters a full range of choice in federal, state, and local elections, we propose the addition of the alternative "None of the above is acceptable" to all ballots. We further propose that in the event that "none of the above is acceptable" receives a plurality of votes in any election, the elective office for that term should remain unfilled and unfunded.

American foreign policy should seek an America at peace with the world and the defense -- against attack from abroad -- of the lives, liberty, and property of the American people on American soil. Provision of such defense must respect the individual rights of people everywhere.