Ohio Freedom Alliance

WHO WE ARE:

The Ohio Freedom Alliance is a diverse group of Ohio residents who have come together to preserve and protect liberty in America as it was originally intended by our founding fathers. Members of the OFA are from all different demographics and political affiliations.

The Ohio Freedom Alliance was founded in order to facilitate greater communication and cooperation between various freedom-minded individuals and organizations. Our intention is not to replace or dilute the efforts of existing organizations, but rather unite all freedom-minded individuals and groups. Through this network of OFA affiliated individuals and groups, we can all be more effective together than we can be alone.

OUR MISSION is to:

EDUCATE ourselves on the Constitutional principles which promote peace, prosperity and freedom.

ACTIVATE at the precinct level to disseminate this information to our friends and neighbors, thereby educating the general electorate.

DELEGATE like-minded citizens to run for open political positions at a state and federal level.

WHAT WE BELIEVE:

The Ohio Freedom Alliance is made of of many different individuals with different beliefs on any number of issues. However, we all agree on the underlying philosophy of a constitutional, limited, federal government where the majority of the power rests in the hands of the people.

Quite simply, we believe in a philosophy of PEACE, PROSPERITY, and FREEDOM. This philosophy leads us to agree upon the following positions on several important issues:

1) Debt and Taxes

Working Americans like lower taxes. Lower taxes benefit all of us, creating jobs and allowing us to make more decisions for ourselves about our lives. Today, too many politicians and lobbyists are spending America into ruin. We are nine trillion dollars in debt as a nation. Our mounting government debt endangers the financial future of our children and grandchildren. If we don’t cut spending now, higher taxes and economic disaster will be in their future — and yours.

In addition, the Federal Reserve, our central bank, fosters runaway debt by increasing the money supply — making each dollar in your pocket worth less. The Fed is a private bank run by unelected officials who are not required to be open or accountable to “we the people.” Worse, our economy and our very independence as a nation is increasingly in the hands of foreign governments such as China and Saudi Arabia, because their central banks also finance our runaway spending.

We cannot continue to allow private banks, wasteful agencies, lobbyists, corporations on welfare, and governments collecting foreign aid to dictate the size of our ballooning budget. We need a new method to prioritize our spending. It’s called the Constitution of the United States.

2) The Inflation Tax

Today, the federal government burdens us with one of the most dangerous taxes it can impose — the inflation tax. When the federal government finds that it cannot afford its out-of-control spending, and is unwilling to directly tax the public, it resorts simply to creating the money out of thin air.

Inflating the money supply is the easiest form of financing the government. The Federal Reserve, an unelected and unaccountable private organization, pumps more dollars into the economy whenever it chooses. Because the public is forced to accept these bills, the Fed essentially gets away with legally counterfeiting. We cannot possibly expect the government to control spending when it has a blank checkbook.

This greatly benefits the politicians and special interests — they are able to finance the massive welfare-warfare state. But how does this inflation affect us?

Basic economics tells us that the more there is of a good, the less valuable it becomes. This is also true of money. The dollar is worth four cents of what it was when the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

Day by day, every dollar you have is being devalued. You pay an inflation tax without even realizing it because you are forced by a falling dollar to pay more for goods and services.

The disastrous fiscal policies of our own government, marked by shameless deficit spending and Federal Reserve currency devaluation, are some of the greatest threats facing our nation today. It is this one-two punch — Congress spending more than it can tax or borrow, and the Treasury printing money to make up the difference — that threatens to impoverish us by further destroying the value of our dollars.

By legalizing competing currencies, we can end the Federal Reserve’s stranglehold on our money supply and begin to restore value to the dollar. But Congress will continue to spend extravagantly until we the people make our views known at the ballot box.

3) American Independence and Foreign Policy

So called free trade deals and world governmental organizations like the International Criminal Court (ICC), NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA are a threat to our independence as a nation. They transfer power from our government to unelected foreign elites.

NAFTA’s superhighway is just one part of a plan to erase the borders between the U.S. and Mexico, called the North American Union. This spawn of powerful special interests, would create a single nation out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new unelected bureaucracy and money system. Forget about controlling immigration under this scheme. And a free America, with limited, constitutional government, would be gone forever.

We support the withdrawal from any organizations and trade deals that infringe upon the freedom and independence of the United States of America.

4) Privacy and Personal Liberty

The biggest threat to our privacy is the government. We must drastically limit the ability of government to collect and store data regarding citizens’ personal matters. We must stop the move toward a national ID card system. All states are preparing to issue new driver’s licenses embedded with “standard identifier” data — a national ID. A national ID with new tracking technologies means we’re heading into an Orwellian world of no privacy.

To date, the privacy focus has been on identity theft. It was Congress that created this danger by mandating use of the standard identifier (currently your SSN) in the private sector. For example, banks use SSNs as customer account identifiers because the government requires it. We must also protect medical privacy. Right now, we're vulnerable. Under so-called “medical privacy protection” rules, insurance companies and other entities have access to our personal medical information.

Financial privacy? Right now depositing $10,000 or more in cash in your local bank account will generate a federally-mandated report to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network at the United States Department of the Treasury.

And then there’s the so-called Patriot Act. As originally proposed, it:

• Expanded the federal government’s ability to use wiretaps without judicial oversight;
• Allowed nationwide search warrants non-specific to any given location, nor subject to any local judicial oversight;
• Made it far easier for the government to monitor private internet usage;
• Authorized “sneak and peek” warrants enabling federal authorities to search a person’s home, office, or personal property without that person’s knowledge; and
• Required libraries and bookstores to turn over records of books read by their patrons.

We reject the idea that our personal liberties must be infringed upon to ensure the overall freedom of this country. Thomas Jefferson warned “A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither."

5) National Defense

A defense policy designed to keep Americans safe should start with the idea that we must secure our borders from those who would cross them to do us harm. Currently, the United States maintains hundreds of thousands of troops in more than 100 foreign countries. In many cases, they are there to defend foreign borders. Maintaining such a global empire drains nearly one trillion dollars from the U.S. economy each year, while offering very little real security for the American people. What’s worse, our U.S. Border Guards are sent overseas to places like Iraq while our own borders remain porous and vulnerable.

Keeping America safe and secure is about more than the size of the defense budget or the number of U.S. military personnel. An America-first defense policy understands the need to rationally assess the threats that do exist to the United States and then figure out what we can do to minimize those threats. We must be willing to ask and answer the hard questions. Has our foreign policy of interventionism overseas increased or decreased the threats to our security? When we interfere in a foreign election or foment unrest abroad, are the people more or less likely to harbor ill-feelings toward the United States and the American people?

A defense policy for the United States should first seek to make Americans safer. A foreign policy of non-interventionism overseas will be the first step in reducing threats to the U.S. My policy will enable us to focus our resources where they belong: in defense of the United States and the American people. An America-first defense policy will not go abroad seeking monsters to slay, but will deter through strength and lead by example.

6) War and Foreign Policy

The war in Iraq was sold to us with false information. The area is more dangerous now than when we entered it. We destroyed a regime hated by our direct enemies, the jihadists, and created thousands of new recruits for them. This war has cost more than 3,000 American lives, thousands of seriously wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Both Jefferson and Washington warned us about entangling ourselves in the affairs of other nations. Today, we have troops in 130 countries. We are spread so thin that we have too few troops defending America. And now, there are new calls for a draft of our young men and women.

We can continue to fund and fight no-win police actions around the globe, or we can refocus on securing America and bring the troops home. No war should ever be fought without a declaration of war voted upon by the Congress, as required by the Constitution. Under no circumstances should the U.S. again go to war as the result of a resolution that comes from an unelected, foreign body, such as the United Nations.

Too often we give foreign aid and intervene on behalf of governments that are despised. Then, we become despised. Too often we have supported those who turn on us, like the Kosovars who aid Islamic terrorists, or the Afghan jihadists themselves, and their friend Osama bin Laden. We armed and trained them, and now we’re paying the price.

At the same time, we must not isolate ourselves. The generosity of the American people has been felt around the globe. Many have thanked God for it, in many languages. Let us have a strong America, conducting open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations.

7) Property Rights and Eminent Domain

We must stop special interests from violating property rights and literally driving families from their homes, farms and ranches.

Today, we face a new threat of widespread eminent domain actions as a result of powerful interests who want to build a NAFTA superhighway through the United States from Mexico to Canada.

We also face another danger in regulatory takings: Through excess regulation, governments deprive property owners of significant value and use of their properties — all without paying “just compensation.”

Property rights are the foundation of all rights in a free society. Without the right to own a printing press, for example, freedom of the press becomes meaningless. The next president must get federal agencies out of these schemes to deny property owners their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.

8) The Environment

The federal government has proven itself untrustworthy with environmental policy by facilitating polluters, subsidizing logging in the National Forests, and instituting one-size-fits-all approaches that too often discriminate against those they are intended to help.

The key to sound environmental policy is respect for private property rights. The strict enforcement of property rights corrects environmental wrongs while increasing the cost of polluting. In a free market, no one is allowed to pollute his neighbor's land, air, or water. If your property is being damaged, you have every right to sue the polluter, and government should protect that right. After paying damages, the polluter's production and sale costs rise, making it unprofitable to continue doing business the same way. Currently, preemptive regulations and pay-to-pollute schemes favor those wealthy enough to perform the regulatory tap dance, while those who own the polluted land rarely receive a quick or just resolution to their problems.

Individuals, businesses, localities, and states must be free to negotiate environmental standards. Those who depend on the land for their health and livelihood have the greatest incentive to be responsible stewards.

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

The OFA is always working on numerous projects to both educate people and create political change on the state level. Our projects seek to preserve both our civil liberties and our economic liberties.

First, we recommend that you REGISTER on the OFA Forum. This is the main hub of activity in the OFA community, and a place where you can start to communicate with other members of our group.

Second, we recommend that you sign up to participate in one of our current projects.

Finally, be sure to come to one of our monthly meetings.

Welcome and we hope you will get involved!