Presidential Debate about Real Issues
Mike Ter Maat (candidate in the Libertarian Party) and Emanuel Pastreich (independent candidate)
Presidential Debate about Real Issues
Mike Ter Maat
candidate for president in the Libertarian Party
Emanuel Pastreich
independent candidate for president
Host
May 10, 2024
Ian Carpenter, host
Mellisa Stoker, discussant
Emanuel Pastreich
“This discussion, debate, between myself and the honorable Mr. Mike Ter Maat is the launch of the 2024 presidential campaign and the beginning of truth politics in the United States after a sixty-year period of hibernation.
When I say it is the beginning, I mean that Joe Biden and Donald Trump, regardless of what they may say, are so deeply involved in the promotion of, and the defense of, state crimes that they are unqualified for office—as are the vast majority of political figures. We must start with truth, not donations from billionaires.
We must first recognize that we are not in a country that is losing democracy, but rather that we already live in a country, and a world, controlled by private banks, IT corporations, military and intelligence units and the handful of extremely wealthy families behind the curtain of trusts and funds.
We must build a constitutional republic from the ground up, granted we will use the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as our foundation, and the best of ethical teachings to inspire our citizens to listen to their better angels.
But first we must cure the illness of decadence, narcissism, corruption and the outsourcing of the government to for-profit groups who have no loyalty to the government. That means drinking the bitter tonic known as truth—the only cure for the institutional and spiritual cancer that has metastasized throughout the body politic.
We must start with the three great state crimes. Facing them, putting forth a plan to resolve them, and moving forward will in itself transform our nation. They are the 9.11 incident and its aftermath, the quantitative easing, and COVID relief illegal counterfeiting regime for multinational banks and private equity, and the COVID-19 regime. These state crimes are linked to most all the other problems we face.
We here together today are numerous enough to start the process of ethical and spiritual transformation, and snap out of the Roman Imperial decay we see everywhere.
As the anthropologist Margaret Meade wrote,
‘Never estimate the ability of a small dedicated group to change the world. In fact, it is the only way it has ever been done.’”
Ian Carpenter
“Thank you very much, Emanuel Pastreich. Candidate Mike Ter Maat, please.”
Mike Ter Maat
“Thanks for having me on. And, Emanuel, thanks for joining us as well. And, Mellisa, thanks for handling all of our technology needs here. We're grateful to spend this time with you. I am seeking the Libertarian Party nomination. There are several candidates doing so, but I am currently recognized as the frontrunner. I want to emphasize, however, that I am not what one might characterize as the presumptive nominee. We have yet to hold our convention in Washington in just a couple of weeks where I believe that I will secure the nomination, so I don't want to accidentally mislead people.
The Libertarian Party is not just a third party in the United States. We are the third party. We are the party that has, in the past, had ballot access in all 50 states. We're working very hard at the moment to secure that access once again. And we expect that that we will be successful.
I am running on a platform of bold principles, libertarian principles. I am doing so because I believe that libertarian principles are American principles. Libertarianism is the philosophical descendant of the philosophy of the Founding Fathers. The idea that we should live in, and protect, a pluralistic democracy, that we should adhere to a constitution that limits the powers of government, practicing such principles as fiscal conservatism and defending the United States, rather than getting the United States involved in foreign wars. I believe that the United States government has gone off the rails in any number of ways, violating these very fundamental principles.
I agree with Emanuel. We live in a post-constitutional nation today. The way our government functions is weird; and not just weird, but a very bad thing. I think most economists would agree with me. I was a professional economist for more than two decades. I also think that most Americans would agree with me that the U.S. government is going to face a financial collapse before the middle of this century. This is a bad thing for all of us.
Don't get me wrong. The government itself not an organization that adds a lot of value to our lives. It's not like you are going to miss it. The problem is that a collapse of the federal government will lead to a collapse of financial markets all over the world, especially if the bond market dips and the US dollar collapses.
Such a scenario will plunge us into a deep global depression. The citizens of the world and the citizens of the United States deserve better. We need to right this ship. If you're waiting for a Republican politician to lead us back to fiscal conservatism or embrace an interpretation of the constitution that limits the powers of the government, I would argue you're waiting for something that's not going to happen.
I would say the same thing about the Democratic Party. That's a group of politicians that no longer adheres to the agenda that it once did. And in that sense, the 2024 election is a huge opportunity for the Libertarian Party. I think everyone agrees with that. Our new prominence is the talk of the town.
But more importantly, I think our political activism is an obligation. I think that the circumstances put forth a call of duty to the libertarian-minded, and to the Libertarian Party in specific. We need a libertarian-minded candidate who can lead the charge back toward the Constitution, who will cap federal spending, harden the US dollar by getting rid of the Federal Reserve System and replacing it with a system of rules that put an end to this silly system of utter discretion that permits a federal agency to issue as much money as it wants, thereby driving up inflation and undermining our way of living.
I think that it's high time that we answered the call of duty to change our foreign policy, to stop this idea that the United States is free to engage in proxy wars all over the world whether in Ukraine or in the Middle East. Currently, we are obliged to enter potential future wars with the Russian army in Europe through NATO agreements our citizens have never heard of.
Moreover, the Biden administration has already committed us to a war with China if China goes after Taiwan. I don't like the idea of China going after Taiwan, but am I willing to plunge the United States into World War III over microchips? No, I'm not. I believe that the current foreign policy of the United States does not align with American values. It does not align with the principles of American voters either. I believe that the Libertarian Party has an obligation, and has an opportunity, to turn our country around. This is our call of duty. I look forward to answering your questions.”
Ian Carpenter
“Let's follow up by talking about economics behind what we see. Emanuel, you suggest that your plan for increasing the wealth of the nation has a lot to do with stopping the crimes that are going on. Is that correct? How might correcting some of these state crimes actually help the economy?”
Emanuel Pastreich
“That is correct. And I would say that my position it's not a unique one, but it is different than that of the Libertarian Party. Some people would say I am more extreme. I think strong actions are required. We can get quite a lot of money to start off with simply by pursuing financial responsibility for state crimes. If we just take the issue of quantitative easing and COVID relief, we find essentially counterfeiting operations undertaken by major multinational banks and private equity in which they dictated to the Federal Reserve and the Department of Treasury to print up we don't even know how many tens of trillions of dollars. If we start by get that money back, perhaps 40 trillion dollars, that would be a massive help to the United States in and of itself. And the other two cases that I gave obviously would include massive financial accountability. All those criminal actions would bring us in a lot of money. But that would not be a permanent solution to the problem. I basically agree with Mike that we have to come back to a solid money.
The question would be how you do that. If you simply say that we go back to the gold standard, well, if all the gold is owned by billionaires, that policy in itself doesn't necessarily solve you all your problems. You have to create a currency with worth. I gave a series of five talks on this question entitled “Money is no mystery” that is based upon given speech by Charles Coughlin in 1934. I talk about what money is and how the Federal Reserve works. Obviously taking back the control of money, specifically how the value of money is assigned, taking that power away from private banks and unaccountable forces, is going to be key for our economy.”
Ian Carpenter
“Mike, what do you think about Emanuel's suggestion that there is money to be reclaimed by ending the criminal domination of a few state criminal actors? You have a background both in finance and law.”
Mike Ter Maat
“I have a deep background as a professional economist, as well as an academic economist, as well as an economist for the White House. I spent a decade battling the Federal Reserve System. I think a couple of things need to be said.
The lion's share of what's wrong with our economy is that our government spends too much money and the Federal Reserve prints too much money.
The government borrows too much money and it also taxes us for too much money. In sum, the government regulates our economy too much. These are the big issues. What we need to do in order to solve these economic problems is get the federal government out of our lives. Number one, that means capping federal spending. All the evil that we see comes from government spending, however it may be financed. Whether government spending is financed through taxation, or financed through inflation, or by raising debt, all those policies are problematic.
The fundamental problem is that the government spends too much money. That means you must first cap federal spending. When I worked for the White House in the 1990s, going way back, the budget was controlled by what we call budget control law. We don't have that today.
It didn't work perfectly then, but the idea was to make it difficult for Congress to spend more money. We want is an umbrella cap to relieve Congress of the political obligation to pick out specific programs that it will cut back because we know that when it comes to politics, practically speaking, Congress is never going to vote to cut back a particular program.
We want to create an umbrella cap on spending, and then bring that umbrella down, over time, thus giving all the programs a haircut across the board. It's the only politically feasible way to do it.
We do need to make profound changes in the way the Federal Reserve System works. I believe that fundamentally we need to get rid of the Fed. I think most Americans would be pissed off if they knew how the Fed makes monetary policy.
Every six weeks, twelve people gather together in a room and then basically we ask them what mood they're in. In this system there is no way to set a price for anything, much less to set the most important price in the world: short-term interest rates on the US dollar.
It's a horrible way to do business. Ethically, I've got a problem with the process, and, fundamentally, with the Federal Reserve's existence.
But beyond the values, the principles, and the ethics supporting this Federal Reserve system, as a practical matter, we know from watching the Federal Reserve System over the last 100 years that it is, objectively speaking, and empirically speaking, unable to live up to its mandate of mitigating the boom-bust cycle. It is simply a system that doesn't work, notwithstanding the best efforts of a lot of earnest people, a lot of smart people. I'm sure a lot of them are patriotic people too. But it is a system that just doesn't work.
We need to replace it with a system that says this government is not allowed to issue more money than required to target a 0% inflation rate. We need to replace the Fed with a rules-based system.”
Mellisa Stoker
“I agree wholeheartedly with everything both of you guys have said. It seems that you are in sync with each other. I also feel you are on the same page with our generation. We all see these same problems. I'm just curious about political backgrounds and what road led you into this, hopefully into this new career.”
Emanuel Pastreich
“I started as a professor of Asian studies. I worked on Japan, Korea and China at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, beginning teaching in 1998. In the course of my career, I discovered that Asian Studies was not funded appropriately to the importance of Asia for the United States. This anomaly led me to try and understand what was wrong with the United States and why we were underestimating the importance of Asia. Regarding the campaign for president, I started in February of 2020 as an independent candidate.
That run was inspired by revulsion at the COVID-19 regime and the zombie apocalypse led by Donald Trump and Joe Biden. I felt very strongly then that there could not possibly be a winner in that election who would have legitimacy as a president. And sadly, I was not disappointed.”
Mike Ter Maat
“I grew up in corporate finance and commercial finance. When I got out of engineering school and business school, I went to work for various financial institutions. Later on, I went back to graduate school to study economics. I attended the George Washington University, a very pro-free market environment. It was a great learning environment and put me in good stead for the rest of my career. I have taught economics at three different universities covering a wide range of topics, including international trade, international finance. I worked as a professional economist for the White House, and a couple years for other international agencies.
I spent about a decade in Washington as a professional advocate, mostly in the financial services space advocating for greater competition, for deregulation, and for free markets. I spent almost another decade at a firm I launched with a partner of mine engaged in strategic consulting for financial firms and nonprofits, and providing executive education for financial services professionals.
As a second career in public service and public policy, I worked as a police officer. I was on the road for eleven and a half years in South Florida, in Broward County, from the age of 49 to 60, that is to say until a couple of years ago. I was lucky to find a good police agency that had a separate unit for vice so that I didn't have to get involved personally with the stuff that I consider stupid like the “war on drugs” or prostitution stings. They had a separate traffic unit that meant I didn't have to get involved with the quotas that some towns demand that you hit to raise revenue. The result was that I had a good experience and I learned the hard way, and the easy way, the difference between good police work and bad police work. The issue is the fundamental respect for the Bill of Rights. And that became all the more clear as our nation went through the COVID mania, the COVID regime.
I have to give a shout out to my Republican friends at the police department. Most of the cops that I knew there were registered Republicans who, along with myself, joined me in giving a tremendous amount of pushback to the Biden administration regarding the COVID enforcement that our county and our town wanted us to perform: shutting down social affairs, businesses, and stuff like that. We weren't having it. I was very proud of the guys for the stand they took.”
Ian Carpenter
“I'd like to ask both candidates about the role of government with regards to how the government awarded Northrop Grumman a contract to build a lunar railroad. I believe the plan is to extract cesium from the lunar soil. And I did a little background check, and found that sure enough, there's the DARPA grant for Northrop Grumman to build this lunar railroad.
How important is space exploration? And do you think that the government is within its realm to budget for such projects, or should the commercial space agency take it on alone?”
Emanuel Pastreich
“There is fundamental difference in my position, or I should say our position. We think that we have government and then we have multinational corporations and private banks. Multinational corporations and private banks are not an alternative to government. They are, in fact, just another form of government, but they're a more opaque, more totalitarian than government, and their interest is short-term profit.
Saying that we're going to get rid of government and to replace it with multinational corporations like Lockheed Martin is not a step forward. Lockheed Martin is not really an American company; its stock is owned by investors from around the world who hide behind the curtain of funds and trusts. They include people who are quite hostile to us.
We need a smaller government, one which is actually accountable to the Constitution, a government in which you have public officials who are held to high ethical standards and work in a transparent manner. That means we must move away from the control of the economy and society by multinational corporations and banks.
Regarding space exploration, I must confess that I'm not sure anymore how much to believe of what I'm told about what's going on in space.
I think it's extremely dangerous in the case of Starlink, for example, that we have private companies controlled by multi-billionaires controlling space. In the case of Starlink, it is at the center of series of classified programs for armed military satellites. Those satellites can target any citizen in the United States or the entire world—and it is controlled by billionaires.
What we need is a small government but at the same time we must get rid of these private interests that have taken on dangerous roles in an unaccountable way.
The most dangerous change in the United States over the last 20 years is the rise of secret governance. Secret governance is what lies behind this privatization, the unaccountable cancerous merging of private corporations and government. Secret governance takes three forms.The main one is nondisclosure agreements in which people working for government, or for companies working with government, are not allowed to discuss the criminal actions that they're involved in. They can go to jail, or be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars, for calling out state crimes.
The second is secret law. The Congress passes laws, federal law, but also secret laws which have the same effect as federal law, but that cannot be disclosed to the public. But those secret laws can be quite effective. For example, you could have a secret law that says that Mike and I can never be on TV. That stupid secret law would have the effect of federal law.
The third is classified directives, which are used increasingly throughout the federal government. The pending Antisemitism Awareness Act, for example, includes an attempt to extend classified directives into the Department of Education by making “antisemitism” a “national security” issue. That will mean that the government officials can direct what your children learn and tell the teachers for K-12 not to teach these certain books. The schools will not be allowed to tell you what orders they have received.
One of the big issues in the expanded FISA extension bill is that includes new government powers for secret governance.
If an individual, say Mike or myself, are served with a national security letter that limits our activities, under this new law we will not be allowed to consult with a lawyer about it.”
Ian Carpenter
“Super! A gag order that includes the inability to contact an attorney. Did I hear that right?”
Emanuel Pastreich
“I can give you that material if you'd like. That's in the FISA extension that the new law, it has been expanded so that if you're served with national security letter or you get a classified directive that you are, you can be penalized for consulting with a lawyer about this classified information.”
Ian Carpenter
“That sounds very strict. Mike, do you have any comments on what your executive branch would be doing regarding industry space exploration and partnerships with big tech and government?”
Mike Ter Maat
“Space exploration will be very important to the future of our economy. All the more reason to keep government out of it, not into it. I want to stress, as someone with a degree in aeronautical engineering, that this debate is wholly premature. Technology has not caught up to our government's aspirations for how to control space.
The correct way to deploy and to allocate resources in space, is through the private sector. There's no question about that. You don't want government making these decisions or taking your resources and using them to either to contract Northrop to develop a rail on the moon, or to do anything else in outer space.
When the government does it, it deploys resources in the wrong sectors and it does so ineffectively. It does so inefficiently. And that is where this idea of crony capitalism comes from. The government has gotten too big. It controls too much of our resources.
And yes, American citizens, corporations frequently do compete and lobby and try to control the government for its own benefit. We understand that's the logical result of the government being an unethical political beast that controls too much resources. All of that is completely true.
Looking towards the future, we need to impose on the government a great deal more transparency. It is not the secrecy per se that is the problem with our government. The problem with our government is it does stupid shit that's not in your interest. It does so because that is what is in the interest of the politicians and the unelected bureaucrats that run it. These people collect resources so as to gain power for themselves so that they can stay in power.
Politicians nowadays adopt as their number one priority keeping the other party out of power. And we know that this is where authoritarianism comes from in a democracy. It used to be— Mellisa, you're a little young, you'll have to ask your parents—we always thought authoritarianism could not grow in the United States. We used to make fun of other democracies around the world where you could see a growing sense of authoritarianism. But we see it growing today in the United States, and it comes from the fact that politicians believe that they can gain power by abandoning what used to be their political agenda.
You see this in the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in spades. They leverage the fear of citizens by saying that what you really have to fear is not the loss of your civil liberties. ‘What you really have to fear,’ they say, is that ‘the other idiot will come to power. I am here to save you.’
So, we have these politicians who claim I will save you from COVID. I will save you from “fill in the blank,” right? Russia, China, whatever future catastrophe is around the corner.
We need to make sure that we hold these people accountable. Emanuel is absolutely right about that. We need greater transparency. We need to stop allowing our government to make everything classified so that we don't get to see what they're doing. We need to stop the government from prosecuting journalists for disclosing information about the bureaucracy. Wow! That's I would like to say that that's a 19th century concept, but it's not. We need to stop our government from working with social media companies to censor us. Wow! We're really in a bad spot here. And I would argue that we're accelerating in the wrong direction, rather than electing politicians that'll stand up for our rights.”
Mellisa Stoker
“I agree with that so much. I think transparency for my generation is going to be one of the most important issues because we can see through so much of the baloney and we're so tired of it. Take these huge bills with a thousand, or 10,000 pages. No one has time to read through that. In my opinion, those bills passed which weren't a one issue bill, plain and simple, one that could be read in a few hours, not a few months, those bills are all invalid. If you ask me, they're just the product of peer pressure—things that got pushed through when no one even knows what's in there... until they want to pull something out of their little hat and declare, “well now I can ruin you with this because we passed this bill.” It will be a bill that no one even knew that they passed.
Transparency is so important just as it is important to have one-issue bills. I think we need to be able to say that all of those past bills with all that hidden content in them should be rendered invalid. I know it's pretty hard, but we need to do that. What do you think is a goal that can be accomplished?”
Mike Ter Maat
“Certainly, going forward, we can pressure the Senate, which is where this would have a chance of succeeding, but we can pressure the House of Representatives as well. We can pressure these bodies to enact only legislation that is dedicated to a single issue, and have them impose rules on themselves. We can also elect a libertarian-minded, if not a Libertarian Party, candidate to the White House who would veto anything based on an advance pledge he has made to us. What we need is a president who will in advance pledge to veto anything that is a multi-topic bill.
The problem, of course, is that the counter argument so often carries the day. The counter argument is that we have all these complex issues and the only way to cut a political deal is to bring them all together in one bill. There is an enormous pushback to overcome.
We also need a libertarian-minded president to pledge in advance to veto anything that increases spending by the government. That alone would cut out a lot of the BS coming from Capitol Hill. Without those advanced pledges for policy, you're dead in the water. You have to have commitments from these people before they get to Washington.”
Ian Carpenter
“I'd like to know what each of you would do when Joint Chiefs of Staff come into the Oval Office to meet with you and at that meeting you encounter pressure to continue the warrantless spying.
Now most of the public, perhaps a large percentage of the public, is opposed to mass surveillance. And yet the politicians keep on reauthorizing and voting for it, even though the people who put them in office have asked them not to do.
Some people think there must be a moment when candidates who have conviction, are committed to transparency, are brought into a room, whether it's the Pentagon, the White House, or the Capitol building, and pressure is applied to get them to uphold the Constitution.
The Congress has made a conscious decision not to follow the Constitution in the example of the 702 reauthorization of FISA, for example. How are you going to stand up to these guys? People have told me that fairy gnomes have something to do with it, that there are these smells who don’t even notice in the room, but simply issue from the presence of certain people. Tell us, how are you going to stand up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and these tough people in Congress, who want to keep the mass surveillance going on?”
Mike Ter Maat
“You've got to be able to pledge in advance, and run on a platform in advance, so that by the time you get there, your hands are virtually tied, right? You are committed and you can say, ‘Ladies, gentlemen, I don't have a choice. I cannot go along with this BS any longer. The American public expects otherwise. And it's unrealistic for you to expect me to go along with this.’
There are a number of things that an administration can do to right the ship. It is true, as the pushback indicates, that a lot of the process is controlled by legislation and prior court cases. But an administration can shut down a lot unilaterally.
One of the best tools for doing so is by reducing the size of government. Of course, there's only a certain number of employees you can fire, but that is not an insignificant number. The rest of them can be redeployed to other agencies through a detailing process. What you want to do is fundamentally break up agencies like the CIA, FBI, and NSA. We cannot allow them to continue to control the level of resources that they do now. Fundamentally the problem is not limited to the surveillance program, as horrific as that is. More fundamental is the fact that these agencies exist to gain power for themselves. They are run by people who have a different set of values than you do, people who believe that all this expansion of government is a good idea. You can't let that continue. It's like whack-a-mole. Even if you were to suppress a surveillance program here or there, a spy program here or there, a foreign leader assassination program here or there, an assassination drone program here or there, it's still just whack-a-mole.
Your policy cannot be just cancelling individual programs once in a while. You have to fundamentally change these agencies. You cannot introduce legislation right away to sunset them completely lock, stock and barrel. That is impossible on day one. You have to reduce their political power first. Then, once that's completed, you can introduce legislation that cuts them down to size. The Federal Reserve System, or any other powerful organization in Washington, has its own powerful political base. You have to take away its resources, render it increasingly irrelevant, less capable of doing the stupid crap that it's been doing. And then, after a period of time, after its power is diminished, then you can move against them with legislation. The fundamental problem is these agencies themselves, not a specific program.”
Emanuel Pastreich
“I fundamentally disagree with this description of what's happening. More precisely, I disagree as to the cause of what we observe.
The mass surveillance program is not the result of the CIA, the NSA, or the rest of intelligence community. It is, rather, the result of the outsourcing of the surveillance functions of government to Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Google, and Amazon, and other firms like MITRE, Booz Allen Hamilton and CASI. The privatization of government functions is the problem here. These companies are interested in profit. They lobby. They play the government from both sides. They lobby to get the money from you and then they steal it from the taxpayers through these privatized programs.
The way to undo this mess is first to realize that these corporations, which are pretending to be the federal government using different ruses (and that includes Grumman or Lockheed Martin) are not the government. They function like the government, but they have to be rooted out of the whole system. That means ending lobbying. But it also means empowering government in a sense. What I mean by that is getting together a small group of committed people who follow the Constitution.
The United States was founded upon models offered by from Greece and Rome, ideals of a commitment by intellectuals to government service and to the community as a whole. That ethical tradition among the educated has to be the core of government. In a sense, what we really need is a more powerful government, powerful in a moral sense, and in a structural sense, but it does not need to be big. We must get rid of the parasites.
Beyond that we have to look at the Federal Reserve. We both agree on this. But let me go a little bit deeper it. We need to understand how a group of trusts offshore have extended their power in the government through a series of private banks in the United States, multinational private equity firms, and firms like BlackRock or Vanguard, which are a mixture of private intelligence, investment, analysis, and lobbying interests.
These parasitic creatures have latched onto the federal government and it is they who are behind what we see. I disagree with a simplistic call to cut back the government. We have to cut back this cancerous combination of government and corporate interests, but the most corrupt part of it, the most deadly part of it, is not the slow-moving, follow-the-rules bureaucrats, but rather the malicious small group of families, probably 100 families in the world, who control hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and who control trillions of dollars in funds through their trusts. We really have to take on these players before we can talk about anything else.”
Ian Carpenter
“Speaking of transparency, we have a Congressman in Arizona named Paul Gosser who introduced the resolution onto the floor for a program wherein members of Congress would participate in a voluntary pilot program of wearing a discreet body cam, similar to what police officers wear, and the live stream feed would go to a public website where the people could see their elected officials while they were at work.
This body cam could be removed in classified or strategy sessions, or in areas that might involve the privacy of a constituent, and it would be turned off when the elected official is not at work. What do you each think about body cams for Congress as a measure of assuring transparency?”
Emanuel Pastreich
“I have never heard this proposal before, so I hesitate to make any comment in a rash and unthinking manner. Obviously, body cams can be useful in many situations, but the surveillance state, whatever label you use for it, is a high risk. I would be very careful about implementing such a program.
I put forth a proposal in one of my speeches for a constitution of information. We live in an information society. We're driven increasingly by the control of information. We need to create a more balanced system, to establish a balance of powers to control how information is distributed, what its accuracy is, and who gets access to it. This question has to do with systems and it is something which is very critical for our future.
The whole classification system now, secret, top secret SCI works to deprive citizens of access to information about what's happening in the world. This is a very serious crisis especially with nanotechnology and development of nano weapons, a dangerous new security transformation especially when basically no one in the entire government knows what weapons are being developed or what they're going to be used for. That's extremely dangerous.
I agree with the need for transparency. I think that classified operations should be very limited in scope and they should have very limited time scales. The idea of surveilling everybody sets a precedent that I would be hesitant to endorse without knowing more.”
Mike Ter Maat
“Fundamentally, I don't really have a problem with the body cams for congressmen. They're public servants. If someone gets them to vote themselves to wear a body cam, I think that's fine.
I do think it's silly to think that this alone is going to fix anything, however, especially if you're going to allow them to turn it off during classified briefings. After all, it is precisely the classified activities that demand transparency. I would put more stock in the idea that I've been pushing, which is: when the administration changes, you need to set, for example, an 18-month clock that says everything is going to be declassified unless the agency in charge of the information can make a damn good case that it needs to remain classified. And that agency would have to make that case to me as president, to whomever the incumbent president is, and not to some panel, not to Congress, and not to the Defense Department.
Someone would have to make the case to general counsel's office of the White House that something needs to remain classified.
The problem is that the government does all kinds of stuff that is not in our interest and then covers it up through the classification process. This is a problem. You look at the most recent whistleblower, the Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira who was prosecuted for leaking information about Ukraine. He blew the whistle on the fact that there was so much information showing that the war in Ukraine was not going well. He posted this online and he's being prosecuted for it.
I understand the government's point of view. The problem is that they wouldn't let them release it because it was classified. The information was about how poorly the war in Ukraine is going. Now, think about that. Do the Russians know how the war in Ukraine is going? Of course they do. Do the Ukrainians know how well the war is going? Of course they do. So, from whom are we keeping this information? We are keeping this information from the American public. It's only the American public that doesn't know how this war is going. The Russian public and the Ukrainian public, and foreign governments already have the answers. So, we're prosecuting someone for releasing information to the American public that foreign governments already are damned well aware of. That's the fundamental problem.
None of this is a problem will be fixed by forcing Congressmen, or anybody else, to wear a camera in unclassified areas.”
Ian Carpenter
“Could we get your comments on Edward Snowden? It seems he is a pretty hot topic. Some think he committed crimes and others that he's a patriotic American. We've had more than 10 years to think about Ed Snowden. He still can't come home to see his mother and father.”
Mike Ter Maat
“Well, both are true. He committed a crime and he's a patriot. He committed a crime as crime is defined by the U.S. government. He had the stones to do it anyway. He knew damn well he was committing a crime. He knew damned well that he would probably be prosecuted for it, that it would change his life forever, and not a good way. I think that's the definition of courage.
Even if you disagreed with him, and I don't, you should be glad he did what he did. Even if you think he should have shut the hell up and you're mad that he disclosed all this information, you have to hand it to him. That took stones. I'm proud of him.
Having said that, the information that he disclosed absolutely needed to be disclosed. it revealed that the government of the United States of America was operating in an unconstitutional manner.
I don't know how it is that you could possibly try him in court. I am being rhetorical. I know damn well how the system works because I was a cop for a dozen years. But rhetorically speaking, I think that it's an open question for the ages: how it is that we have come to the point where the government of the United States prosecutes people for disclosing that the government was doing something unconstitutional and illegal.
We need to let that sink in. It is case 1A illustrating that the government is hiding things because it knows damned well that if citizens found out, they would be pissed. This is proof that the government is run by people who operate by a different set of principles than you do. This is not a metaphor. This is actually happening. And I think that it's high time that the American people stop wasting their votes on parties that bring politicians to power who want to use the government in ways that do not align with your values, and start voting for politicians who represent their values.
Yes, transparency. Yes, fiscal conservatism and a different style of foreign policy, a different style of monetary policy. We must reform criminal justice in a fundamental sense and avoid stupid things like leveraging fear so as to impose an oppressive regime as they did during the COVID mania. These are all fundamental changes that we must make.”
Emanuel Pastreich
“The Edward Snowden case is complicated, and it's difficult to explain it in a sound bite.
I think he personally was well-intentioned and brave in his efforts, and that his efforts served a positive role of raising awareness about criminality within the government and within corporations as well.
But let us remember that Edward Snowden became famous around the world; everybody knows who he is. I have some experience in this field and I can tell you what happens if you're an intelligence officer and you come out with classified materials and give them to the newspapers. They won't take them. If you did something like that, you would be unemployed for 30 years, maybe teaching part-time at a community college, or forced out of the country. It's not the normal situation that if you release classified information, you become world famous and show up on TV. This suggests that there were interested parties who were playing with the Snowden case. I do not have clear evidence, but some have suggested that behind the Snowden case was a great interest on the part of big tech to completely privatize the NSA, to break it up and sell it off to Amazon, Oracle and others as a way of destroying government supervision and accountability. That is what happened, by the way. That need to demonize the NSA might have been part of the reason Snowden became famous. As J. P. Morgan said, ‘There are two reasons for everything: a good reason and a real reason.’
That project was not his intention, but there was one aspect of the case that I think we need to consider.
The second issue is that what Snowden released was very selective.
Now, he claimed, as do his supporters, that he was selective because he didn't want to do anything that would endanger officers who were serving overseas.
I watched the criminal regime under George W. Bush, how they seized power in February of 2001, the various criminal actions they engaged in leading up to the 9-11 incident. Their actions were extremely criminal, turning most of the federal government into a criminal syndicate. Nothing that Snowden released indicated the true level of criminality in the United States. The facts released were scattershot, little incidents, that suggested a “few bad apples” causing trouble and not a systemic transformation of the government.
That part of Snowden’s work I found rather disappointing, and it made me wonder, whether we were really getting a real insight into how things work through Snowden. As far as I know, he has never revealed details of the 9.11 operation or the COVID-19 operation.
I agree that Snowden was well intentioned and brave, but he did not act alone and there are many people who did things like Snowden, or greater, that you have never heard of.
Mellisa Stoker
“What you were saying about the classified information is so true because we're not living in an isolated world anymore. We have the internet. We're all connected globally. So, they classify, or declassify, intelligence, or war strategy, or whatever. But you can be talking to someone on X or TikTok or some other platform anywhere in the world about what is going on. This global information sharing means that it is not that easy for the government to gaslight us. Basically classifying things and hiding things from us is just a way for the government to gaslight the public. But they can't do that anymore. These efforts are very futile.
And there's social media. There's so many, too many, ways for us to communicate that the governments of the world, the entire world, can't gaslight the people anymore. They try to censor us on social media, but it doesn't work. We find other ways to get the word out, and they're being exposed for what they are. They're just gaslighting the public for their own self-interest. Yes, government should be about public service, things like the roads. It shouldn't be regulating anything to do with space, or the other things that we are talking about. I think government should be completely about cut and dry, black and white, issues like the roads, maybe help with a hospital, and things like that. Instead, they've expanded so far with hands deep into the cookie jar of our taxes that the situation is just out of hand.”
Ian Carpenter
“Let's invite both candidates back again and talk for longer. Are you planning on exercising the write-in vote? Mike, you're with the Libertarian Party. Will you get your name on any ballots, or are you going to use the write-in?”
Mike Ter Maat
“We will have ballot access in all 50 states. So, my name, or, if I do not secure the nomination, the name of one of the other guys who are seeking the nomination, will be on the ballot. There will be a Libertarian line on everybody's ballot.
We're working very hard in New York and Illinois as we speak to make sure that those are the last two states in which we collect enough signatures to be on the ballot. We are not just a third party, as I mentioned, but the third party. We will be the third party with ballot access in all 50 states.
I'll just mention, real quick, in closing that I agree that the power of the state and the reach of the state needs to be cut back. But it is both. It's the power and the reach. Government is a parasite in our lives. We know this. We know empirically, objectively speaking. Our economy works better when government has as light a touch as absolutely possible. The only legitimate role for the federal government is to keep us safe from foreigners. And that does not happen by projecting military hegemony around the world.
I've got an ethical problem with the projection of military hegemony around the world. But even if you thought that that was ethically acceptable, the truth of the matter is that the government of the United States has pursued a foreign policy for generations around the world that makes us less safe, not safer, and that has brought us closer to World War III, not farther away from it. For this reason, I believe, Americans have an obligation to vote our values. Stop wasting your vote. I invite everyone to check out our website miketermaat.com.
full debate here