Libertarian Bruce Majors opening statement at the Mayoral Debate at the Historic Sixth and I Synagogue

My opening statement at the Mayoral Debate at the Historic Sixth and I Synagogue on Sunday, September 28

Thank you all for coming today and to the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Sixth and I Synagogue for inviting us and hosting this event.

I am Bruce Majors and I am running for mayor so that you do not have to throw away your vote. I am running for Mayor as a Libertarian because I want to build a new political party in DC so we will no longer be plagued by the corruption and other problems that have resulted in part from our being a one party state.

I've lived in DC since 1980, where I've lived in 3 of the city's four quadrants (NW, SE and briefly NE), and in 4 of the city's Wards (Wards 2, 3, 4 and 6).

I've had a variety of jobs - technical editor, teaching English as a foreign language, event planning, renovating properties, and for about two decades, selling real estate.

I'd like your vote because voting for me is one of the few ways you can make your vote count, one of the few ways you can vote without throwing your vote away.

If you vote for frontrunner Muriel Bowser, according to the polls she is going to win anyway. Your vote really adds nothing to that and has no impact.

If you vote for David Catania, polls say he is down by almost 20% and cannot win.  He will retun to the private sector, at least for a couple of years, and your vote will have no impact.

If you vote for my friend Carol Schwartz, she will also, according to the polls, not win, and she will retire with her great legacy of public service, and your vote will have had no effect.

But if you vote for me, and any of the other 9 Libertarians running for office, you help a new party -- DC's fastest growing party -- stay on the ballot, and help make DC's political marketplace more competitive.

So I'm asking for your vote, even if you aren't particularly libertarian or libertarian-leaning. To learn more about our policy ideas, besides what Will Sommers mentioned in his introduction for me and what we will discuss here today, I invite you to check out our newly launched Majors for Mayor website, which we will be adding to daily. Or talk to me after the debate today.

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I was happy and surprised this provoked Schwartz to insist that she could win, as in past elections 200,000 DC voters have voted for her.  I was also happy this actually provoked Catania to attack me obliquely, for having elsewhere criticized his offering that DC taxpayers will pay for the healthcare of immigrants who come to DC, with no budgetary constraint or limit offered.

Q&A With Bruce Majors, DC’s Libertarian Candidate for Mayor | Politics | Washingtonian

Q&A With Bruce Majors, DC’s Libertarian Candidate for Mayor | Politics | Washingtonian

Questions for the three mayoral candidates invited by American University

American University sponsored a kind of Potemkin village debate among only three mayoral candidates.  The audience were only political hacks and campaign staff, mainly Bowser's, who were bused in before tickets were given out and got all the tickets for the main hall (the event was cosponsored by Palisades and Ward 3 groups, but neighborhood people who showed up were shunted across the building to an overflow room),  the three candidates squabbled among themselves in a slightly childish fashion, and their supporters shouted and were rude.  Both the candidates and their cheerleaders were admonished to behave a number of times by moderator Tom Sherwood.

We also learned that all three candidates favor disarming DC citizens and all three favor increased spending on a variety of programs.  We also learned that all of them think the other two were incompetent and unproductive in the past while on the city council, and that they are less than truthful about their records.  Perhaps we should trust their assessments of their opponents?

Needless to say none of the candidates identified ANY metrics showing that their past legislation has had any positive effects, in a city they all admit has double digit unemployment in Wards 7 and 8, and among the highest dropout and truancy rates in the country (calling Dr. Freud: Carol Schwartz said the book she would require DC students to read would be "A Tale of Two Cities"). And Catania did not tell us what his many many proposed programs would cost, nor where he would extract the loot for them from the taxpayer. 
 
I am a little surprised AU didn't invite David Pitts and Richard Berendzen to officiate.

1. For Catania, Schwartz and Bowser:  $29,000 is budgeted per pupil for students attending traditional public schools, but only $17,000 for charter students and even less ($12,000) for students using a DC Opportunity Voucher to attend an independent school.  Will you end this discriminatory and unequal funding, and allow all students the same resources, no matter where they choose to learn?

2.  For Catania: You propose to spend more on programs for failing schools, trees, immigrant healthcare, the homeless, college scholarships, daycare, paid family leave, affordable housing, and many other programs, and have suggested raising taxes to pay for this.  You also say you want to bring more and diverse businesses and jobs to DC.  How will you get business to move to DC when you raise their taxes for your new programs?  Follow up:  How much is the total budget for your new programs?

3. For Catania, Schwartz and Bowser:  In 1996 the DC voters voted for a term limit referendum by a 2/3rds majority; it passed by a majority in every Ward.  The City Council then overturned it.  How is the DC government legitimate if it nullified a basic constituitive principle passed by the voters?  How would you vote today?  For Schwartz:  How did you vote?

4. For Bowser, Catania and Schwartz:  It is widely discussed by the public that officials in the Metropolitan police department may have covered up domestic abuse in the past by DC politicians.  Would you investigate these stories?

5. For Schwartz:  You have said charter schools should be more closely regulated because some have misused funds.  But the traditional public schools spend $29,000 per pupil to produce at best equal results to those of charters, which receive only $17,000 per pupil.  How would you investigate the misuse of funds by the DC public schools?  Where is the money going?

6. For Catania:  You have called for subsidies for day care.  But independent providers of K-6 education and after school care in DC are regulated by different agencies from those that regulate public and charter schools, and are required to have more staff, more bathroom facilities, etc. per the same number of students, as well as other more costly amenities (e.g., cots off the floor instead of mats).  What have you done in the past to address this?

7. For Catania, Schwartz, and Bowser:  Mr. Catania’s 126 page booklet details how he has steered hundreds of millions of dollars to programs he favored, Ms. Schwartz’s 15 page paper details her history working on education issues, and Ms. Bowser has served on the city council for several years.  Yet as Mr. Catania’s booklet shows in various graphs, Wards 7 and 8 have double digit unemployment, and DC schools have higher truancy and drop out rates than anywhere in the United States, while spending more per pupil.  What metrics show that your past activities and expenditures have produced results?

8. For Catania:  You propose to expand facilities for the homeless in DC.  How will you ensure that DC does not end up absorbing the homeless from the entire region from Baltimore to Richmond, at taxpayer expense?

9. For Schwartz, Catania, and Bowser:  DC residents convicted of federal crimes are dispersed through prisons around the country, so that their relatives cannot easily visit them, which may frustrate their reintegration into society.  What plans do you have to address this and have them housed closer to DC?

10. For Catania, Schwartz, and Bowser:  DC has reduced its homicide rate, but has regular car and home theft and vandalism, as well as muggings, gay bashings etc.  Yet police resources are used on ticket traps and victimless crimes.  What have you done in the past to address the misallocation of police resources?

Bruce Majors, Libertarian for Mayor, 1200 23rd Street NW, Washington DC 20037

Bruce Majors speaks at DC State Fair

• Saturday, September 20, 2014

  2:00 PM to 2:15 PM
• Old City Farm and Guild

  925 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington, DC (edit map)
• A 5 minute speech and then we can pass out literature for 45 minutes.  Other candidates should come and meet voters.  I will introduce you from stage.

  

DC police arrest alleged prostitutes, wasting resources needed to fight violent crime

Mr Sinclair and Officer Boteler,

This was actually another big failure, which inflates our taxes unnecessarily for non violent crimes, as the Council and MPD seek to pretend to abolish street prostitution for the NIMBYs.

It might be more useful if MPD just arrested the johns and pimps to shame and scare away those who drive the market. Where ever there is a market of people — usually men with gross amounts of disposable income (like well to do PSA 307 residents) — to pay cash to exploit women (more than American society already does) for illicit sex, there will be suppliers.

DC's local judges don't take these irrational "solicitation" cases very seriously and often let non violent prostitutes go. I'm not sure whether or not the men involved get branded publicly as sex offenders — for the rest of their lives where ever they might live or work, to their wives and families — but it would make the system more effective and fair. Altogether, DC residents should fight to scrap current anti-prostitution policies and practices for a humane, logical, cost saving — if not revenue positive — alternative.

On Aug 27, during a trial for Monique L Moultrie (age 38) at the DC Superior Moultrie Courthouse, the Honorable Judge Truman Morrison stated that he's heard thousands of dubious "solicitation violations" in which — absent direct complaint of violence or an offense from one of the participants — MPD officers were actually guilty of committing the technically illegal solicitation to entrap poor people. The real victims in these situations are usually women (or LGBTs), notoriously abused by American society (more than whiny adult black males who get all the news media crying about racism) who have no better ways to survive in America and DC's local economy than to sell their bodies on the street to any disgusting creepy guy with $20 in their pants (who no normal economically stable and sensible human being would likely touch with a 10ft pole or want to see naked).

Judge Truman Morrison recalled an even more troubling case this year in which a poor woman — who was both deaf and mute — was arrested and tried for solicitation after an undercover MPD officer offered her $10 and begged her for some "head" and the male police officer claimed the poor woman solicited him when she "nodded" by looking down toward his crotch (more likely just intimidated, scared and dejected because she was about to be arrested w/o actually having committed a real crime). 

Judge Morrison decried current entrapment polices perpetuated by our DC Council and practiced by MPD as reprehensible and he suggested he usually throws out such cases, or gives meaningless light sentences, because the whole framework is inhumane and an obscene waste of tax payer dollars — from police resources to astronomical court costs — which no one dares itemize transparently for the public or at Council hearings because we would stop this nonsense completely and advocate to create a rational alternative.

So, the effect of the big Sept 13 prostitution bust will probably put the women back out the street with even fewer means to becoming employed and getting their lives back on track.

See: https://twitter.com/keridouglas/status/504695293854494720

Keri Douglas on Twitter: "Sex Drive-ins w/Prostitutes, Zurich http://t.co/pX44SN4oGi Need in #LoganCircle #DC @JackEvansWard2 @DCPoliceDept @marycheh

The nitwit way we use the brutal arm of the insanely costly criminal justice system to ruin the lives of non violent offenders is just one of the reasons Switzerland is ranked 7th as one of the world's leading democracies and the United States is lagging behind pathetically at 19th. The wealthy elite have ruined our democracy and are often eager to charge poor people with felonies that eliminate their right to vote and participate in society and advocate for more humane and rational cost saving policies.

Simple physiology dictates that men are hard wired to seek out sex regularly — with their wives, girlfriends and/or others. Puritanical fallacies about how people should live their lives are out of step with reality and even Christian values; even Jesus refused to condemn someone for a non violent sex offense in (The Gospel of John 8:3-11) when the elite wanted to have her stoned to death. It's hard to imagine He'd want anyone's life permanently ruined for such non violent offenses. 

Prostitution is unhealthy and self destructive, but so are BigGulps. A civilized humane society would not compound the damage — and increase their own taxes – by employing the criminal justice system instead of providing, at a lower cost, better education (than DC public schools — the worst in the Nation), preventive health care, substance abuse treatment, and legitimate/effective job training that would help empower these women (and their LGBT colleagues) and get them back on their feet to become productive neighbors and tax paying American citizens.

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Best regards,

Martin Moulton

2014 DC Libertarian candidate for United States Representative for the District of Columbia (Statehood/Shadow Representative)

(202) 422-1161, @ShawingtonTimes

Re: [MPD-3d] 3-D VICE Anti-Prostitution Operation a Success !

Great job! Thank you for the department's hard work on this!
Thom Sinclair

[MPD-3d] 3-D VICE Anti-Prostitution Operation a Success !
On Sat, Sep 13, 2014 at 7:15 AM, 'Boteler, James (MPD)' james.boteler@... [MPD-3d]<MPD-3d@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
On today's date, during the very early morning hours, members of your 3-D Vice Unit conducted an street-level undercover "Anti-Prostitution Operation" within PSA307.

The operation focused on street level prostitution and targeted both street-level prostitutes and the customers of said illicit activity.

A total of 15 adult men and women were arrested and charged with "Solicitation of Prostitution."