Tuesday, October 24, 2006

I Hereby Announce My Candicacy for Governor of Maryland

Friends and fellow citizens,

I hereby announce my willingness to accept your write-in votes for Governor of Maryland. If elected, I will accept the position. So that you might understand my motivation in this, I will explain.

As you all know (citizens of Maryland), we have two candidates for Governor in Maryland. Bob Ehrlich (R) the incumbent, and Martin O'Malley (D) the mayor of Baltimore. You may also know that both candidates are essentially the same when it comes to important issues. Their campaign has basically sunk to a point where all one hears is that O'Malley failed to bring the murder rate in Baltimore down to the level he promised, and that Ehrlich, who is as leftist a Republican as I have seen, is somehow tied to George Bush, and because of that should be voted out, due to the Iraq war.

If you actually care about serious issues, affecting Maryland, as I do, neither candidate can be taken seriously or as someone worthy of a vote. I have looked and have been unable to find either a Constitution Party candidate or a Libertarian candidate for this office, in this election. Yesterday, I received a campaign brochure in the mail from Governor Ehrlich's campaign, touting his devotion to state funded stem cell research here in Maryland. This is the Republican campaign mind you. And he is clearly pandering both to the so-called "moderates" at the same time he is pandering to Maryland's huge bio-tech-genetic-research industry. It became painfully clear in that instant that we have no pro-life or liberty loving candidates running for this office.

While I do not expect to win, especially with this extremely limited campaign, which will consist of me emailing this blog post to a bunch of people in hopes that they will forward it on, I do think if I can get a couple thousand write in votes, with this extremely limited campaign, maybe we can convince a pro-life, libertarian, conservative type candidate to run in the next election, so that we at least have someone to vote for.

For the sake of being honest in my campaign, I will run down my brief series of issues and my positions:

-I am in favor of school vouchers for all Kindergarten through twelfth grade students in Maryland
-I support tax credits for home-schooling families
-I would veto and fight any attempt to fund stem-cell research with taxpayer money
-I would veto and fight any attempt to provide taxpayer money for abortions
-I would support and sign a ban on abortions similar to South Dakota's recent ban
-I would support a law that made it illegal for a state auto inspector to fix the vehicle he is inspecting
-I am completely opposed to any attempt to take someone's property and give it to another private entity (as in the recent eminent domain cases)
-I support and would push for a flat income tax for the state
-I support building lots more roads to ease traffic congestion
-I am of course opposed to violent and property related crimes and would do all I could to protect people and their property

I can best be described as a pro-life Libertarian. That is how you would be able to expect me to behave as governor. While I am pretty universally consistent in my support of Libertarian positions, the positions listed above are those that I would most focus on. Should other issues come up, you could expect me to continue to be Libertarian.

Now, for practical purposes, if you are indeed interested in sending a message to those in government here in the "blue state" of Maryland, my name is Paul Buede. To help you remember how to spell my last name, think of suede but with a B instead of S. Thats not how we pronounce it, but pronunciation doesn't matter for this exercise.

If you, like me, believe that both Republocrat candidates are essentially equally bad, and that we have no decent choice for governor, I hope you will consider sending a message on election day. Write me in!

PAUL BUEDE for Governor of Maryland