Libertarian ticket best bet for U.S.

I was interested in responding to Chad Tindell's claims in a letter Aug. 26 that Bush's policies have been good for Tennessee. He contends that there is a difference between how the Republicans and Democrats operate.

I agree. Take spending and taxes, for example. The welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. Democrats operate on the process of using a deliberately confusing tax code to pit big businesses against small businesses, employers against employees and merchants against customers.

Republicans, on the other hand, understand that, in order to maintain the welfare state, the amount of taxation had to be limited, and they have to resort to programs of massive deficit spending by issuing government bonds to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.

A recent example occurred in May 2003. The day before President Bush signed the tax cut of 2003 without much publicity, he signed another piece of legislation that raised the legal debt ceiling for the United States by $984 billion. He did this because his administration knew that the tax cuts were going to pass, and if they did, the country would need to borrow money. Tax cuts are generally a good thing for the economy, but unless spending is reduced along with them, they mean only more debt.

This is one reason I voted for Libertarian Party presidential candidate Harry Browne instead of Bush in 2000. It is also why I will be voting for Michael Badnarik this year.

CHRIS FORTNER
Knoxville