Candidate for
United States Representative; District 18; Libertarian Party

Linda Marie (Alves) DeGroat - Bio

Linda's maternal and paternal grandparents emigrated to the US from Madera, Portugal. Her mother and father were born in New Bedford, Mass and moved to California in 1945 following WWII and his separation from the Marine Corps. Linda was born (September 9, 1948) and raised in Oakland but spent most summers in Modesto with her aunt, uncle and their five children. She has an older brother and younger sister who still reside in the Bay Area.

Linda attended public schools in Oakland graduating from Castlemont High School in 1966 and attended Holy Names College on an academic scholarship 1966-67. She left college following her marriage to then Navy Petty Officer Don DeGroat on October 21, 1967 and undertook full time employment with Pacific Telephone. Linda was able to bridge her years of working into a career through working for other AT&T companies as she followed her husband through transfers to San Diego, Albuquerque, New Mexico and back to Oakland. In addition to residing in several different cities Linda has traveled extensively across the U.S. and made excursions to the Philippines and Hong Kong. Rising to District Management she retired from Pacific Telephone with 33 years service in November 2000. Linda earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Franciso in 1997.

Linda and Don have three children: Deanne 16, is a junior at a Modesto high school; Eric 22, is a senior at the University of California; Denise 30, is married to a career navy man, resides in Washington State and is the mother of the only grandchild, Rebecca 5.

Moving to Modesto in 1991, the couple purchased a home off West Hatch Blvd. utilizing the GI bill. Linda joined the Libertarian Party that same year and became politically active running for Modesto City Council in 1992 and State Senate district 12 in 1994. This bid for United States Representative district 18 will be her third. The 1998 election found Linda as the only other candidate on the ballot to oppose Condit's re-election bid.

Linda has to balance full time employment for North American Title Company with active campaigning and the costs of that campaigning are paid for by using her own savings. She maintains that it's worth it as it wakes a few more voters up each time she speaks. More and more the public is realizing that returning bought and paid for politicians back to office to give great lunch while special interest groups vie to fill their "campaign chest" doesn't make sense. Incumbents, by and large, are the very reason this country is where it is now and have reversed the freedoms and prosperity of the American people. What will these multi-term legislators do differently if returned for another term? Doing nothing would be an improvement in comparison to what they are really accomplishing.

Linda's major goals will be to:

Move the Federal government back to the restraints embodied in the US
Constitution.
End the fraudulent income tax (not one penny goes to our US Treasury).
Get rid of the Federal Reserve's stooge, the Internal Revenue Service
(utilized to terrorize and control selective portions of society).
Throw out the Federal Reserve (a private corporation whose stockholders are the super-rich of this world. This corporation is no more federal than Federal Express is and effectively controls our nation and its leadership.)

These changes can't and won't happen over night. For stability and a variety of other reasons, programs and bureaus will have to be closed gradually in an orderly return to what made America great for the first 150 years - our Constitution. It has taken the foes of this republic, working through the federal government, many years to usurp the sovereignty of states and make serfs out of the citizens. The assumption that this huge, centralized government is acting in the citizen's best interest is a myth. They are not. Their interest has one purpose in reality, to get larger at our expense. The federal government can't know what is best for the fifty states, each of whom have their own legislatures. The federal bureaucracy has to pretend that they can effectively micromanage everything down to the citizen level. Those exercising control, especially by appointment and not through election or because of their wealth, are not on the side of the citizen majority. This control would be severely weakened if it could not be exercised through centralized government acting outside the US Constitution. The Constitution empowers the Federal government to do a mere fraction of the things they blatantly do each day. Ignorance and apathy is allowing it.

This republic is a nightmare because voters have let the federal government become the very beast our founding fathers tried to prevent any central government from becoming when they wrote the Constitution. One way to end any nightmare is simply to WAKE UP. Linda can help this process. Not like a blaring, rude alarm clock but with gentle shaking while asking "Haven't we made some commitments? You're late already. It's time to get moving."