Candidate for
United States Representative; District 3; Libertarian Party

Age: 57

Birth date: April 11, 1944

Community of residence: Antelope, Sacramento County

Years lived in the community: eleven

Affiliations:

• Libertarian Party, Sacramento County Central Committee Member
• Cato Institute, Sponsor

• Cato University, home study course completed in 1999
• Lousiana Tech University, Civil Engineering, B.S. in 1971

2000: Candidate, U.S. Representative, CA Congressional District 3.

1998: Candidate, U.S. Representative, CA Congressional District 5.

1997, July 12:

• Submitted letter to California Regional Water Quality Control Board regarding its Control Program to Reduce Selenium Discharges from the Grassland Watershed to the San Joaquin River, Agenda Item No. 4, Meeting of 19 June 1997. Reprinted November 12, 1998 with the following introduction.

• Too Much Leviathan Caused Kesterson Tragedy - Not Selenium
• Federal government deception regarding the authorized purpose of a federal water project facility named Kesterson Reservoir remains the basis for continuing political tragedy - communist reallocation of property. State government reliance on this federal hoax extends the scope of this political tragedy by enforcement of bogus water quality regulations.

• First day of federal civil service retirement. Total federal service included 21 years as a civil engineer in the Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Department of the Interior, and 2 years active duty in the U.S. Navy.

1972: Graduate Assistant, Louisiana Tech University

1971:

• Engineer-In-Training, Louisiana
• B.S., Civil Engineering, Louisiana Tech University

• Total corporate employment included 2 years as a gas plant technician and 3 years as an engineering assistant for Chevron Oil Company, The California Company Division in Louisiana and Mississippi.

• Total military service included 4 years as an Electronics Technician-Radar on the Naval Reserves, 1 year as a seaman assigned to the USS Saratoga, and 1 year as a cadet in Aviation Training.

Libertarian Congressional candidate runs in District 3 again

Come November, many voters will see new names on their ballots for the candidates running for U.S. Representative. But the name for the Libertarian candidate in District 3 will be the same as it was in 2000: Douglas Arthur Tuma. Friends call him "Art."

California Congressional district boundaries were redrawn last year, and in the process the Sacramento Valley was removed from District 3, except for a rural gerrymander through northern Solano County. Southern Sacramento, Amador, Alpine and Calaveras counties were added. The community of Elk Grove in southern Sacramento County joined District 3 from District 5, where Tuma ran in 1998.

Tuma polled about 2.5 percent in both Districts 3 and 5, which is par for Libertarian candidates. Even though hundreds of Libertarians have run for Congress, they are still trying for their first Congressional win. Arguably, Ron Paul, R-TX, has been a libertarian Congressman for many years, but has always won elections as a Republican.

Tuma refers to David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, for the meaning of the name "libertarian." According to Boaz, it's a policy that recognizes individual dignity and rights, the spontaneous order of language, law, money, and markets, the rule of law instead of arbitrary commands, limited government, free markets, the virtue of productive people keeping what they earn, the natural harmony of interests not engaged in political conflict, and the popular sentiment for peace instead of war.

By studying libertarian literature, including publications by the Cato Institute, Tuma learned that nineteenth century philosophers called this policy "liberal." Many of America's founding fathers and framers of the Constitution considered themselves defenders of liberty and as such, liberals. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and America's third President, blessed America with a treasure trove of ideas for defending liberty. Libertarians refer to these historical defenders of liberty as "classical liberals," to avoid confusion with twentieth century progressives, big-government socialists, also called "liberals."

While Tuma studied journalism in high school, the most influential defender of liberty he read was Barry Goldwater, a promising candidate for the upcoming Republican Presidential nomination in 1960. Goldwater always asked, "Where do you stand?" at the end of his commentaries, prompting readers to think about taking an individual position.

After reading a Goldwater opinion, Tuma did think about where he would stand. Most of the time, he thought he would stand with Goldwater. He watched for news from the Republican Party Convention, hoping that delegates would nominate Goldwater. But Vice President Richard Nixon won the nomination and then went on to lose to John Kennedy.

President Eisenhower finished his eight years in office with a warning against a military-industrial complex growing out of control. But military spending in Kennedy's administration increased to close an alleged missile gap. Tuma, as well as most other Americans couldn't know for sure. How such a missile gap was determined was, no doubt, information critical to national security, never to be divulged by the military.

By studying defense policy reports, Tuma eventually learned that America had adopted a mutually assured destruction (MAD) defense policy that relied on enough offensive weapons to survive an enemy's first strike. Apparently, MAD assumed all enemies would always withhold attack out of fear of retaliation, not withstanding evidence that people often overcome their fears, like WWII kamikaze suicide pilots. For lack of ballistic missile defense, the only apparent way to survive a first attack was to have many more missiles and warheads than the enemy's arsenal. So America raced the Soviet Union to build tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.

Targets for Soviet ballistic missiles bearing nuclear warheads presumably included the U.S. Air Force Headquarters of Strategic Air Command near Omaha NE. But in the event of nuclear attack, even places escaping direct hits, perhaps Tuma's home town of Omaha, were sure to become true environmental disasters as clouds of radioactive debris drifted in the winds and rained down to sterilize the land. The whole world had become a battlefield.

Young men were expected to serve their country. In Tuma's freshman year of high school, Army ROTC taught him to handle M-1 rifles. In his freshman year of college, Air Force ROTC took him on tours of nearby bases, including Titan II missile silos. His education from rifles to silos took just three years.

Armageddon seemed imminent to Tuma. At any time, Omaha's population might be vaporized in a nuclear flash. Given the travel time for missiles launched from the other side of the world, he calculated that people in targeted cities would have no more than fifteen minutes warning to get their affairs in order, if they got any warning at all.

The world was headed towards sudden global sterilization, allegedly to resolve who will decide how to use what, where and when. People might say the choice was between politicians and property owners, between communism and capitalism. But private property rights of capitalists become worthless when rained upon by radioactive fallout. And preparing for nuclear exchange by building only more offensive weapons is a sure way to enable it.

The Soviet Union fell apart after thirty years of nuclear exchange terror. Now instead of fearing the push of a nuclear button by a single Soviet command, America faces many potential instigators of nuclear attack. What's more, many scientists now recognize that natural events, asteroid impacts, also threaten global ruin.

But many environmentalists, politically represented by the Green Party, are only worried about (1) human development encroaching on wildlife habitat and (2) human consumption of natural resources. They vote for any Green socialist politician, regardless of party affiliation, who promises government "protection" of natural resources to thwart private development.

The final irony will happen when followers of government established environmentalism perish in the next global cataclysm, either by asteroid impact or nuclear exchange, because they intentionally thwarted technological progress and capital growth required for development of adequate defense or escape.

In the summer of 1961, Tuma transferred to Hinds Junior College in Raymond MS, a rural community far away from anything valuable enough to be a missile target. But many people there had something that was very precious to them, their certainty of white supremacy. Fearing loss of privileges and immunities enjoyed by white society, many whites condoned or tolerated violence of a different kind: government enforced racial segregation and exclusion of blacks from political participation.

Many people only see government violence when they are on the receiving end. And many southern whites only saw the abuse they received from a government that was not of their consent, the national government that ruled the South by virtue of military conquest in
1865.

Advocates of states rights to powers not delegated to national government found receptive audiences in southern states. Tuma heard Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, warn against growing communism in America as well as abroad.

When President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, decided to enforce a federal court opinion on a state's school admission policy, Tuma took a look at martial law in Oxford MS. As a captive, he got an inside view of both the federal marshal roundup of pedestrian passersby and the National Guard roundup of motorists who fit a profile of young white male in civilian clothes. Mostly, he saw the suffering of fellow captives and the confusion of the captors while they waited for orders from Washington, D.C.

Apparently, the nation's leaders turned their attention to some Soviet missiles being shipped to launch sites in Cuba. Tuma's attention to his engineering studies waned and turned to flight school in the Navy. He was eighteen when he enlisted, beginning his federal career at the end of 1962.

Tuma's flight training lasted a year. He failed formation-flying lessons and served out the rest of his active duty time aboard an aircraft carrier, cleaning sleeping quarters. He said years later that he never could put his finger on the problem he had with formation flying until the Thunderbirds, an Air Force aerobatics team, followed their leader into the ground. Those pilots had the right stuff, and they were all dead.

In hindsight, Tuma's flight instructors probably saved his life by ending his training. Although it wasn't a concern for him at the time, his fellow students, including some from Vietnam, would no doubt go on to serve in the following years of escalating conflict in Southeast Asia.

Much of the escalation occurred during the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson, who defeated Goldwater in a landslide victory in 1964. Incumbents almost always win elections. And so do candidates promising peace. Johnson's campaign aired a message that showed a preschooler plucking petals from a daisy while a mushroom cloud rose in the distance. Given Goldwater's refusal to say he wouldn't use nuclear weapons, the image sent a clear message: a Democratic administration was a better prospect for peace.

But the better prospect continued killing people in Vietnam year after year. By the time America withdrew in 1973, the undeclared, and thereby unconstitutional, "war" killed a million southeast Asians and 46 thousand Americans. Johnson also escalated federal power with new "Great Society" welfare programs, more ways to force redistribution of wealth according to "need," as determined by federal bureaucrats. In 1969 Nixon followed Johnson with even grander delusions of federal solutions, promising protection of the environment and wage and price stability.

In the wake of Nixon's decree on wage and price controls and removal of U.S. currency from the gold standard, a few defenders of liberty in Colorado decided a new party was needed that stood for real limited government and individual freedom. They voted to form the Libertarian Party on December 11, 1971. Meanwhile Tuma taught and took civil engineering classes as a graduate assistant at Louisiana Tech University. He studied news reports on the "Pentagon Papers," a purloined classified report that apparently revealed government lies about America's involvement in Vietnam.

In 1988 Tuma happened on a listing of candidates and their positions in a Phoenix newspaper and saw that Libertarians were the only candidates promising to end the drug war. He immediately registered Libertarian and voted for all the Libertarians on his ballot, including Ron Paul for President. Soon after he moved to Sacramento in 1989, he joined the Libertarian Party and began reading libertarian literature.

Tuma retired from federal civil service in 1994, finishing 21 years as a civil engineer for the U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation. He authorized payment for research, monitoring and management of selenium deposits in the former Kesterson Reservoir site, a drainage sump for ground water collected below farm fields in the west side of the upper San Joaquin Valley.

Tuma helped develop plans for more wetlands near Kesterson as partial mitigation for a ballyhooed "environmental disaster" that prompted regulatory agencies to force closure of the reservoir in 1986. He studied government records of correspondence, technical reports, environmental impact assessments, legislation, hearings, news media commentary and Green group publications related to the closure of Kesterson and agricultural drainage for the San Joaquin Valley.

Tuma concluded that the alleged "environmental disaster" at Kesterson was a hoax, fabricated by zealous Green socialist agents employed as government biologists, geologists, economists, lawyers and refuge managers. By claiming a disaster, they all facilitated the Green group objective to break renewable federal water supply contracts to farms, thereby stopping river diversions and keeping more water in rivers and wetlands.

Rather than being honest about the complete loss of habitat value expected in a drainage sump, government agents acted horrified as if the low biological productivity of the sump represented a violation of refuge sanctity. Opportunistically, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service named the sump "Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge," and by acting outraged, misrepresented the revocable contract terms for its conditional wildlife management use of the sump.

The Kesterson hoax fallout leaves San Joaquin Valley farms dry for lack of irrigation water. And it leaves them to perish in accumulated salt for lack of an out-of-valley drain, other than the California Aqueduct, which supplies drinking water to Southern California.

The perpetrators of the Kesterson hoax caused drought by regulation, loss of farm production, loss of business, loss of capital, loss of quality in Southern California's drinking water, and loss of more valuable wildlife habitat in other locations where more land is cleared to grow crops that could have been grown in the desert climate of the San Joaquin Valley.

Rather than improving net habitat conditions, the Kesterson hoax gave Green groups and tour guides at refuges, including Stone Lakes Refuge near Elk Grove, a scary story to fool people into voting for politicians promising to block further development of water supply and drainage facilities. This fraud is the basis for a moratorium on water resource development and for "reallocation" of prior water rights and contracts to meet fish and wildlife "needs."

Reallocation according to need is the criteria for communist redistribution of wealth. Tuma remembered Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's words to Western ambassadors in 1956, "History is our side. We will bury you!" He decided the best way he could help stop those words from coming true was to enter politics as a Libertarian candidate.

Tuma uses the Kesterson hoax as an example of federal power abuse by Green socialists. He advocates release of federal property to private ownership as the most certain way to end conflicts among special interests over the purpose and use of federal property.

Tuma also advocates return of capital investment choice to property owners, letting people be free from federal payroll, income and death taxes to build their personal estate faster and retire sooner.

And Tuma advocates return of environmental protection management to property owners, letting land and water owners be free from the whims of government employed eco-priests.

Tuma hopes to raise America's spirit of freedom to defend against aggression, both foreign and domestic. He joins his fellow Libertarian Congressional candidates in urging voters to defend against federal government aggression by voting Libertarian.