Elissa Silverman’s opinion piece “King Ralph” (10/13) noted correctly that Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader has paid attention to the lack of congressional voting rights for D.C. residents. It also mentioned that he “addresses” the issues of the “increasing gap between rich and poor, the lack of universal access to health care, the substitution of corporations for government in civil life.”

However, the article fails to outline what Nader himself would do—give the greatest imperial power the world has ever seen even more power to control our lives! I’m sure the many non-leftist readers of the Washington City Paper would be glad to hear about another radical alternative, that presented by Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne.

Although Browne’s platform does not comment on District voting rights, libertarians naturally support self-determination for District residents—including the right to secede from the union if our equal rights are violated. Browne would abolish the two greatest sources of income inequality: the onerous income tax and the regressive Social Security tax, both of which provide welfare to well-off older individuals, big corporations, the military-industrial complex, and fat-cat bureaucrats at the expense of younger and lower-class working people. Browne would end the government’s interference in the health care market—interference that drives up prices (even as taxes lower wages), so that lower-income people cannot afford health benefits that they took for granted 40 years ago. Browne would abolish the tens of thousands of regulations and taxes that stifle small business while encouraging the corporate growth and consolidation that overwhelms small communities and even small nations. Most important, he takes on the biggest, nastiest corporate monopoly of all—Big Government!

For more information on Harry Browne and the Libertarian Party, go to www.lp-dc.org.

Chair

Libertarian Party of the District of Columbia