Op-Ed by Martha Boneta
Virginia is my home. It’s where I was raised, and where my family and friends live and work. 2017 will be a critical year for our Commonwealth.
Virginia needs a conservative who can lead and govern. I know in my heart that Ed Gillespie is that conservative leader.
It has been a joy getting to know Ed and Cathy Gillespie, and we’ve become friends. They are two of the most genuine and hardworking people I’ve ever met. They are always serving others. Ed’s career has been marked by serving other conservatives, helping elect principled leaders across the country and right here in Virginia.
Cathy has dedicated the past several years to promoting constitutional principles in public and private classrooms. Their tireless commitment to others, and especially to the beautiful Commonwealth I call home, is why I was honored to present Ed with the Liberty Farm Festival’s Sustained Service award earlier this year.
As everyone knows, I am passionate about liberty and the personal property rights of individuals. Ed and Cathy share that passion and as Governor, I know Ed will be an unwavering and ardent defender of liberty.
Ed Gillespie will protect the rights of private property owners from the overreaching hands of government. He will fight to repeal antiquated and burdensome regulations that harm our farmers. He will work with the new Trump Administration to end the EPA power grabs. He will lay out a substantive vision to grow our economy and create new opportunities for all of us.
Most importantly I know that as governor, Ed will be an honest, ethical and principled servant-leader who will fulfill his Constitutional duties in a manner worthy of Virginia.
I am so proud and honored to endorse Ed Gillespie to be our next Governor, and hope you will join me.
God bless you and our Commonwealth of Virginia!!
51 comments
Come on Dude. You are going to pick on Boneta? I’m not a big fan of Ed, but this isn’t some cut throat insider operator. She’s a good person but apparently you people are scared to death of a nice lady saying nice things about a candidate you don’t like. Like I said, he’s not my candidate but geez the way you are reacting you would think Boneta’s endorsement alone could turn an election.
Martha is an independent thinker who would never endorse anyone without serious consideration. Attacking Martha is just wrong
???
Who attacked her ?
Could it be possible that someone could be independently off the rails … and not even know it? Just a question!
Martha could well be a very nice lady. I think she probably is. But to fall all over the place on an endorsement which is little more than ‘Vote for me Class President’ on little more than ‘because’ I am a nice guy.’ Well, I just think we have to be a little more serious than this! And I really have trouble with mendacious begging without substantive reason.
Insulting a conservative Christian lady who has been fighting the good fight on property rights in Va. Shame. Tsk tsk tsk
Martha may be just as you say, but in addition you have to tell me if being ‘a conservative Christian lady’ has anything to do with knowing how the operations of the Law? Or if fighting the good fight is of any good avail if you are using the wrong guaranteed to lose tools?
I maintain that asking people to vote for Ed simply because he is a nice and by the way, his wife is nice too, this is a rather sorry, shallow appeal. I also maintain that arguing in civil rights law when one should be arguing unalienable rights is a fundamental error. The entire American system, vis-a-vie property rights, was undeniably based upon unalienable rights presupposition. And the Declaration of Independence makes this fact abundantly clear.
With such invincible ignorance at work, sorry … tsk tsk tsk does not cut mustard.
I agree, I don’t see what her gender has to do with anything, I don’t see why anybody even mentions that.
No … nothing to do with gender. And I too support farms with the exercise of Liberty. But I don’t agree in going begging to the state in code for a right we already possess, but fail to exercise. The right to which I refer is the right to farm, to sell the produce of a farm, and do so without the state infringing upon our business, our trade, our means of existence. But all of this is lost on most folks. And for this reason, under the guise of Liberty, the people remain enslaved. Thus, we have a Farm Freedom Movement and yet the ‘Freedom’ is a state grant to slaves to do a certain something. What is won is merely a kind of mock Liberty.
My other gripe here was the whole lack of rigor in Martha’s appeal. It just set me off because if people want to have Liberty, to have government beholding to them because they are the owners of government, then it is mandatory to use the faculty of thinking with a rigor free from lies, deception and non-substantive expression. What I saw in this article was the kind of mendacious thinking, a mendacious thinking that got us into duck soup in the first place.
Reading through your various comments….I’ve tried to follow your logic. But other than bullying and ad hominem attacks, I can’t find any logic. But you play the part of agitated jackass pretty well.
Thanks for the compliment though not deserved. Quite obviously you are bought into the idea that a strongly held opposite or different view is bullying. This is a common day perception much prevalent in the Land of the Snowflakes. As to your use of Latin, I just cannot see it unless you have gone a bridge too far — as also is the unfortunate custom of the day.
If you can’t follow what I am saying, you have company because 999 out of 1,000 people don’t have the faintest clue as to what I am saying thank you public schooling. And so, given the numbers, why do I bother? For one, reclaiming lost knowledge begins first with an intimation of what one might not know.
Thanks much for bothering to write. I do appreciate that.
I agree with Roger; I see nothing but personal attacks on anyone who supports Gillespie, but not one of you except Waverly Woods (who did not attack anyone) has offered an opinion on another candidate.
I’m thinking the reason is that all the negative comments and attacks are coming from the left, and since you don’t stand behind your comments by posting with an actual name that can be identified as a real person, I for one put no stock in what you have to say about anything.
If you don’t like Ed, and you have another candidate you favor, then why don’t YOU write an Op Ed for your person? Just a thought…
Right and Left, like blinders on a horse, are labels meant to keep the people from seeing WHAT IS BEYOND EITHER the Right or the Left. Furthermore, Right and Left have been defined for decades by political and media elites, who as we now know, have been making stuff up out of thin air. And if we pause to think about it more deeply, Left and Right is the Hegelian model of Thesis and Antithesis leading to the desired Synthesis. This model is the favored tool of Marxism for Mind Channeling. That we the people have fallen for this patently absurd modeling is beyond belief; and yet looking back, I too once fell victim.
With exception, I have discounted using Right or Left in any of my writing because it largely serves no greater use than perpetuating minds in bondage to self-styled Masters of the Universe, aka the parasitic elites. My discovery is that at the base, whether Right or Left, the people are equally deceived. That some of these have woken up a tad is to be seen in the crossover vote of Dems voting this cycle for Trump.
There have been no personal grind Martha into the dust attacks here that I can see. But there most assuredly is large scale disagreement as to the virtue of the endorsement and the vacuousness with which it was put forward. And my personal pet peeve is that Martha mistakenly argues for civil rights when the American Law is supposed to be built upon a pillar of Unalienable Rights God-given. There is, of course, a water and oil difference between the two. However this may be, I will grant you that Martha did the best she could, and that her efforts were not a complete waste. And I am glad that she and others nonetheless have with courage resisted tyranny. But I will also say that if we do not deal directly with differences in fundamental law, the elites will have our lunch every day of the week. And this is why I dared to bring up my objections on the score.
The dissenting view here is grounded in the fact that dissenters do not want more of either the program of Marxist Transformation or of State Fascism. And some folks have caught on to the larger fact that these two, also called Right and Left, are roads leading to one Tyrant Rome. As a footnote, please recall that the clarion call of the War for Independence was not Right or Left. It is was Liberty or Death. This is something which we have quite forgotten, and out of our forgetfulness, much mischief arises.
I was, for awhile well known on the western side of Virginia, and to a lesser extent, in the rest of Virginia. I say well known, by this I mean well know in a very, very small restricted circle of people, but one of some influence. I wrote a newsletter sent out under daverkb and daveragt. I was for a few years Vice Chair of the Constitution Party of Virginia. I continually vow to leave off politics for reason having to do with health, but I so very often just get sucked in.
My final statement is that I do not believe that the Gillespie dissenters are as bad as one, or even you, might imagine. They just want something better. And they might not have as yet found a way to get at it, nor the right means of expression.
I thank you for writing and for placing your thoughts in the open. I think that this is an excellent forum in which to carrying such in debate exchange. I don’t belittle your thoughts and doubts because in time past I have done much the same. Our lives our journeys and we change along the way.
I reckon we are both known in some small circles, but I put my name out there so people who do know me know where I am coming from, and those that don’t learn who I am and what I stand for.
As for Martha, she’s not fighting for civil rights; she’s fighting for property rights, and surely you know that property rights are as fundamental to our nation as the right to life.
Liberty is founded in the right to own property and do with it as you please. Do you not agree?
It seems obvious that you believe there is a better candidate out there, so please enlighten us.
This is where the Choo-Choo train goes off the tracks.
Martha and all the Farm Freedom people which I know (and this is not denigration them, believe me! They are good people.) are arguing property rights through law which is little more than Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) which is what the Code of Virginia (CoV) has perversely come to be. Begging for a state grant of ‘property right’ in statute code is not the same as affirming and upholding an unalienable right to property as understood through the Public Law which is the Constitution of Virginia (which in turn is presuppositionally superior and controlling of statute but is not in de facto practice).
I once asked the head of the VCDL, the gun lobby, whether his lobby was doing civil law or unalienable rights law. He rightly answered civil rights law, which I knew to be true. His answer told me that he at least knew the differences in the operation to two disparate, very different and irreconcilable bodies of law. This exchange occurred at a Tea Party meeting in Staunton, Virginia. I did not push the point because I already knew nobody in the audience understood the question. Nonetheless I was totally amazed at the candor of the response.
At this point, allow me to ask a trenchant question regarding property. If people have to beg the state for a grant of right in property, are we then dealing with property in the first place, or is it instead leasehold? There is a world of difference in the two.
This may come as a shock to you, but people do not own much property in any of the united States anymore. They have instead a ‘right’ to the beneficial use to property held in trust. There is a reason why the scrape of paper they issue you for ‘paid in full real estate’ is called a Deed of TRUST. Even the car dealership will not issue a sales invoice. No, you do not get a Title of Ownership. Instead, it is a Certificate of Title. And these are only two big examples of something amiss in the Happy Land of Property Ownership.
I would say that folks have a lot to learn, and if they knew the half of it, there would be a revolution over night, as Henry Ford put it.
I get your distinction. I’m not a lawyer and I don’t play one in comment sections, but I understand your point.
I don’t see what Martha has done as begging at all, just because her case is being argued in court as if she is defending herself from the local government. The way I see it, she has been asserting her right to farm and to sell the fruits of her labor on her own property without intervention from the local government.
I’m not sure how else one asserts their rights in a civil society that embraces unconstitutional laws and rules. Should she barricade herself inside of “Fortress Liberty Farm”, stand on a copy of the Constitution, and simply refuse to obey the laws on the books, even though those laws defy natural law? I’m thinking that wouldn’t work out so well for her.
Here is the take of constitutional lawyer Mark Fitzgibbons who was instrumental in getting the Boneta bill passed. He addresses the issue better than I can, and since we have gone off the rails as far as the subject of this article, I will leave you with this:
http://fauquierfreecitizen.com/boneta-bill-passed-now-virginians-need-teeth-zoning-abuses/
Okay! Here we are again! You say you see my point. And I say back to you, “Maybe the door is now opened a crack, but that is all.” But why do I say that?
I looked at the article. And just scanning through it, it looks all right at first glance (but it really has a lot of mischief in it which requires a lot of training to spot). And yes, we agree Martha went through hell. And there is mention of ‘property rights’ and of a citizen’s struggle for high ground is on display. And I can easily understand why the public is sucked into what Trump rightly calls The Rigged System, believing that we have no other options.
First point: when you go into court these days, the judge never tells you what kind of law court you are in. You think you know. You may think you are in Family Court, Traffic Court, Federal District Court, etc., and the judge is happy to let you think that you are in whatever court you think you are in so long as you consent to be under his authority. What the judge never wants you to understand is in what kind of court you are in BY OPERATION OF THE LAW. And he never wants you to question the court’s STANDING to hear your case. In short, you are never to question JURISDICTION; and if you do question jurisdiction, you better had be prepared for the next coming judicial onslaught. If have just read these few sentences and you find yourself left scratching your head, not understanding what I am saying, this is the way it is meant to be by systemic design. In The Rigged System to which president-elect Trump alludes, you are meant to be deceived, left in the dark about anything which may elevate your position in life. And by the way, anyone who lets a fly of truth out of the jar? Immediately a tin hat is placed upon his crown. The Rigged System, whether it’s the courts, legislative bodies, central banking and you name it, best to keep the people in the dark because if the people get to know something, things might get out of hand.
Lawyers? First off, Christ was right tell people have nothing to do with lawyers, serpents one and all. And regarding lawyers like the constitutional lawyer writing the article? You may have heard that constitutional lawyers have not studied constitutional law for over a hundred years now. They study precedent in The Rigged System, and believe me, this is nothing at all like the Law John Adams’ studied in America of the 18th century. And no lawyer is going to tell you anything at all about The Rigged System because that is where the money is. But interestingly, when I queried lawyers on the law, I was totally surprised at the number of them that would admit the law as now practiced is a crooked system. And the most interesting part of all is that if I got talking and the lawyer became wary of where the conversation was leading, none of them would deny what I was saying. Instead, they do what lawyers always do when confronted with inconvenient truths of the uncomfortable sort. They simply evaded my line of talk. Talking to lawyers and testing out reactions, responses, this was a big part of my validation that what I had come to know about legality, the Law and the political system was largely the Gospel Truth, so to speak.
From the beginnings of America in the 17th century onwards, through the period of the constitutions, and up until the time when Hillary’s beloved Progressive-ism began to get its hands around the throats of the American people, the American farmer took his produce to market free and clear of the state. The farmer did so in Liberty as one of the people, not as a citizen. And this is important, know that people and citizen are not identities. They are not the same thing. People have unalienable rights arising out of grant from God and the people operate in a jurisdiction separate from the state. I repeat … JURISDICTION SEPARATE FROM THE STATE. No lawyer will tell you this, but John Adams knew this was so because one of this railings before the Massachusetts High Court involved the complaint that the Crown was transferring Colonists outside of Liberty into Courts of Admiralty. Outside of Liberty means from a jurisdiction into which the state cannot infringe into a jurisdiction (Admiralty) in which state has absolute authority over a citizen, including grants so made by sovereign (crown) authority.
This is essentially what has happen to us in our present situation. We have been transferred out of Liberty and into a system that operates under a presumption which is a facsimile of Admiralty Court. We have been stripped of people-sovereigns-owners-of government status and been transferred over into citizen-subject status. Yes, we still play The Constitutional Rights Word Game, but we are doing it under a false pretense expressly fashioned and styled so as to perpetuate the crooked Rigged System. To reiterate, the Rigged System operates under Word deception as well as outright falsification of the Truth. And by the way, I would not have known anything of this excepting for the Internet, every bit as liberating as was the Gutenberg printing press.
I know that I have not answered you adequately. How could I? It is impossible to overcome one hundred years plus of disinformation in a few paragraphs. Only a fool would so attempt. But let me leave you with one thought, if you possess a Right such as the Declaration of Independence so makes known, and the law dictionary says that right is incapable of being bought or sold or transferred away from the possessor of said right, it is the logical that one would have to beg the state to restore the right? The state cannot restore what is pre-existing to the state and not granted by the state, not its creation. Also, can a people be regulated, dictated to in their business and still be sovereign, meaning sovereign and owners of government? This last seem lost on a populace which has lost its way. Owners instruct their government, are not instructed, regulated coerced or dictated to by government.
Again, this is more background. If you care to write to me directly, you may. You only need to ask.
You go right ahead honey and be w/Ed, I don’t think anyone will be swayed by you. Endorsements are such a racket.
My question is: if you were dumb enough to sign away your property rights, what makes you smart enough to evaluate candidates? I am sure that you are a very nice, personable young lady, but in politics, we do have to occasionally ask some very hard questions.
As to conservative: Bob Goodlatte says he is a conservative, but he was chairman of the Department of Agriculture House committee for many, may years. Go to the Department of Agriculture site and you will see ample proof the that Green is the New Red. And Bob never said a peep. So much for conservative, a really nice word unbacked by proof of the vine.
I’m sorry, Martha! But this rather blah touchy-feeling appeal is just not good enough.
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So now you are calling Martha dumb? You will never win any support that way.
I will say that there is an expression which has been bandied about for a long time. I refer to ‘The Dumbing Down of America,’ deliberate as public policy and as aided and abetted by the public education K-12, privates school, universities, the media and the politicians.
In the early 1990’s, my mother bought two large tracts of land in Rockbridge County. Not too long after purchase of the land, some Bright Boy from ‘the Government’ came around trying to get mom to ‘sign up’ for Wildlife Conservancy, and my, my … what wonderful benefits you’d get. My mother asked me what I thought she should do, and I said it would be a very DUMB thing to do to sign away your rights and thereby impair the value of the land. My mother did not sign up for Conservancy but the nice guy idiot Socialist that bought 30 acres above my mother’s land did. And so, at the very minimum, I would have to say that either placing land into conservancy or buying land already so impaired is not a smart thing to do.
In your remark, you are in a backhand way calling me dumb. And I may be, or not. As to Martha, certainly not dumb in all things and a nice enough women by all account, but not too bright in one of either of two things. Either consenting to impair land or buy land already impaired. I also think that not know the difference between civil rights and unalienable rights does not help anyone’s cause. But since most people don’t know the difference between the two anymore than they know the difference between the legal import of the terms ‘de jure’ and ‘de facto,’ people do the best they know to do. And that is what Martha did, and I cannot fault her for that.
And by the way, there is not one of us that is smart all the time, including all of us who scribble here.
You may not like Ed Gillespie. But go pick on someone your own size. Martha Boneta has been terrorized enough and has earned respect across the Commonwealth. I’m not a huge Gillespie fan, but I’m not going to beat up Boneta over her choice for governor. Not to mention she’s a class act and respectful of everyone. Never heard her say a cross word about any of the candidates even though she wasn’t supporting them.
Martha Boneta is about as grassroots as it gets in Virginia. The work she has done for the freedom movement is immeasurable. I trust her judgment on this choice. No doubt that Ed Gillespie is the best choice for the Commonwealth.
Martha is great, Ed is great, we’re all great, but anybody supporting a nominee on the say-so of someone else should be washing their own brain.
We should be picking the most qualified conservative Republican who can WIN — I want MORE than the platitudes offered by the endorsers du jour.
I agree – endorsements are only worth enough to draw interest in a candidate. Everyone should check out their candidates thoroughly.
I’ve checked out Ed Gillespie and agree 100% with those who endorse him. He’s by far the best candidate to challenge whatever candidate the Democrats offer and is best suited to be elected governor in 2017.
ok, what are his qualifications for governor, how do they stack up against the guy who got elected LG? And why go for Senate then and Governor now?
Other than the fact that he brings years of experience in both govt and the private sector, he has appeal in a very common-sense conservative way across the many different types of populations we have in Virginia. The country, as evidenced by our House, Senate, and now President, is eager for change to common sense core conservative Constitutional principles. Virginia is a lot like the country in that way. And Ed has the capacity and desire to do what’s best for the individual.
The current LG hasn’t done a thing in office. He’s a partisan in the mold of Hillary bundler Terry McAuliffe and on his watch, Virginia lost its star ranking as best state to do business. That hurts all Virginians.
Check out Ed’s website. I think you’ll understand his specific positions better and see how they’re best for all the Commonwealth.
Rick, I’m with you on the principles, heck, I posted the EG2 issue from the Senate.
Give me some specific experience, not platitudes, we need something other than an R next to your name.
I guess it depends on what you are looking for. I happen to think it’s a good thing that he’s never been elected to office. But he’s been appointed and trusted. He’s also been a very successful businessman. More than qualified in my book. Check votesmart.org for details.
Lots of people are appointed and trusted. Very successful at what? Your book seems kinda thin on Ed Governor experience.
Vote Smart no help.
It should not be so difficult to get specifics on a potential nominee.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/240ff9110c422acd327f71d818a6c53226643ac6046399efddbc697defe389d9.png
I don’t have a book, lol – I’ve just been in Virginia, involved in politics, and have made up my own mind. Do your research – it’s obvious that we measure things differently, which is fine. Not sure why you can’t find the votesmart.org info. It’s there: https://votesmart.org/candidate/147792/ed-gillespie#.WEw17ctOlnF
Yep, he would have made an awesome senator, his positions are grand, everyone thinks he’s swell. I know he could do the job, but can he get the job??
I checked out Ed and I agree that he’s a great guy.
I don’t want someone to ‘challenge’ the Dems, I don’t want ‘suited,’ I want to win.
Agreed. Trump is showing the benefits of winning. We need some of that in Virginia.
We have to make sure that we rally around whoever wins, and not trash any of the candidates on the way to the nomination.
The nominees and campaigns better know that when you run against our nominees, you run against our party.
Reagan’s 11th commandment matters and has a reason.
In a lot of ways, I agree. I see Corey Stewart already lying and going after Ed Gillespie. Gillespie is above those types of attacks.
Nope, I saw the Gillespie lapel hit-stickers at the advance. Gillespie and his proxies have started the witch hunt.
Please, lol – you know how supporters roll. I’m making fun of Stewart all the time, does that make me Ed’s proxy? Those weren’t created by Ed’s campaign.
Somebody bought and paid for hit stickers, Team Ed was flying them. A word that ‘Ed no likee’ was all that was needed.
Comments in a Blog forum is posturing and jiving for our respective candidates and hopefully we build ours up rather than tear the others down, but that’s what party contests are for.
I’m still waiting for satisfactory answers to questions I’ve posted about Ed.
In the meantime, not-Corey does not to equate to EG2
I hope you get your questions answered. All mine have been, and I was behind Ed for governor long before I even knew who else would be running.
I’ll proudly wear a locally-produced “Corey, you’re fired” sticker to poke fun at the competition and point out that the Trump campaign fired him. I’m confident that Ed’s campaign is way above the trash that Corey has tried to spew, and I’m looking forward to a healthy competition and a winner who can be our next governor.
I won’t badmouth a candidate that I could end up supporting — you don’t build up Ed by putting down Corey.
Your invective will make it difficult for you to rally around our nominee.
You ride a good horse here! All great! You great, me great, Martha great, I guess this means that we are all pal again? 🙂
Until I tick somebody off again, I’m the bringer of peace and love.
And worthy of The Grand Order of Equine Mirth! No Doubt!
In the old days, when we had an effective party, and leadership of principle and consistency, enough party luminaries could determine the nominee.
That dog don’t hunt in today’s Virginia.
Ed and John check all the boxes to get the nomination, except the most important one, can they beat the democrat in November!
Show me how Ed can win the state this time when he couldn’t last time. John “is not a politician” but can win where Mark Obenshain could not?
It is true that Martha is grassroots just as you say. But here is the thing. Martha, who people say is a lawyer, sold off property rights into conservancy for some pipe dream con man spiel. She compounds the error by begging from the state for remedy, for redress using the perverted law which the state gets by with these days. Instead, the whole wild life conservancy scam should be framed in Common Law as injury done by fraud. Furthermore, the whole conservancy assumption should be a glaring red flag that the state just might be operating outside its constitutional charter by a willful failure to uphold and affirm an unalienable right to property. But Martha the lawyer doesn’t seem to have a clue as to from where rights originate. Instead, she argues solely state granted civil right and code. So, why would we trust such a person who has shown bad judgment every step of the way? And should we not do our own homework?
If we keep on accepting people throwing impostors our way, we will surely keep on getting impostor government. As a footnote, I pause to say, my only consolation prize these days is that the Psychopath did not get elected president.
You’re entitled to your opinion. No one here is blindly following endorsements. Do your own research.
“Who people say is a lawyer”; “Sold off property rights into conservancy”; “begging the state for remedy”
daverkb – It is clear you do not know have a clue about who Martha Boneta is, how she became engaged in the property rights battle, what local governments can and do impose on local farmers to infringe on their property rights, and what Martha and her supporters have done to remedy that situation through legislation.
Click on this guy “daverkb”. He’s paid to write this BS. He has over 266 comments and you can tell whose payroll he is on.
Are a bunch of pro-Gillespie hacks going to materialize out of thin air to defend him in the comment section like the last endorsement article?
That was fun.
Sorry B, if Gillespie was involved in TARP that’s a non-starter, you know ? If its true that Radtke and the others are behind him then maybe MAYBE conservatives should at least listen to his explanation on TARP, but I don’t see how he pulls that out, it’d have to be some kind of amazing story. The TEA party was founded in the TARP tragedy, just as it flamed out, went into a tail spin, then crashed and burned in the court of public opinion. What kind of hypocrites are we if we support somebody that was involved in that.
If these TEA party people support Gillespie, let’s hear from them.