SEE ALDEN LINK FOR PRESIDENT
Alden Link Stands For:
• Achieving Energy Independence
• Respecting Personal Choice
• Shrinking The Size Of Government
• Defending America
• Ending Illegal Immigration
• Exploring The Universe
• Fighting For Gay Rights
REPEALING THE PATRIOT ACT
The patriot Act is a major infringement on our constitutional rights. The Bill of Rights is being trampled on and there are no discernable security results. As President I would see that this travesty is repealed and individual liberties restored.
THE UNITED NATIONS
The UN is an anti US and anti Israel body. They vote against us and condemn Israel at every opportunity. The UN delegates enjoy their New York City assignments. They go out for $200.00 lunches and party at night spots. If I am elected I would get the UN out of New York and move it to Somalia. The delegates would soon learn the realities of Third World life and might respond appropriately. New York City could convert the current UN building to a hotel and gambling casino and would not have to deal with the delegates, their illegal parking, their security protection and their tax exemptions and would enjoy revenue from the casino.
ACHIEVING ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
The United States needs to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by developing alternative energy resources and by encouraging greater energy conservation efforts. The government needs to get out of the business of subsidizing, taxing and regulating some energy sources at the expense of others. Nuclear power plants can now be built in 3-6 years with passive safety features and more efficient solar energy cells offer great promise for the future. Ending our reliance on gasoline fueled automobiles is the single greatest step we can take to reduce pollution and greenhouse emissions, especially in the major metropolitan areas of the world. Hydrogen cell and electric cars are only two of the many alternative technologies that entrepreneurs should be encouraged to investigate.
RESPECTING PERSONAL CHOICE
People are sovereign over their own bodies and they should have the right to do with them as they please so long as they do not directly interfere with the right of others to do the same. The government should not be involved in trying to legislate morality and should not act paternalistically to protect people from making the decisions they believe are in their own best interests. People with drug addictions are not criminals. The war on drugs must be ended and all prisoners doing time for the use or possession of drugs should be released from prison and should have their criminal records expunged. Prostitution and pornography fall in the category of "victimless crimes" that do no direct harm to others. Private adult consensual behavior should not be criminalized. The words contained in the United States Constitution should be interpreted to recognize that every citizen has a constitutionally protected "zone of privacy" that must not be intruded upon by the government.
SHRINKING THE SIZE OF GOVERNMENT
We must shrink the size of government by cutting back on the amount of taxes it collects and the amount of money it can borrow. All property taxes need to be eliminated so the government no longer has a permanent claim against the land and home you own. As a first step toward eliminating the income tax, a simple 10% flat tax should be instituted. The death tax and capital gains tax represent double taxation and should be repealed. The government is growing larger and more intrusive with every law it passes, and with every dollar it spends. We need to have a government of limited powers, such as the one provided for in the United States Constitution.
DEFENDING AMERICA
Western Civilization and its traditions are under attack by radical Islamic fundamentalists who seek to spread their message through violence. The United States needs to aggressively defend its institutions and way of life against this threat. We need to develop a common front and strategic plan with moderate Islamic states that share our interest in addressing this problem. We need to increase our support for the government of Afghanistan and must seek out innovative solutions, such as dividing Iraq into three autonomous regions, in order to enable the United States to withdraw its troops from Iraq at the earliest possible date. We must take our campaign against foreign terrorists and domestic "sleeper cells" directly to their doorsteps. We must infiltrate their operations and strike at them before they have the opportunity to carry out their plans. We must defend ourselves against direct threats to our liberty whether those threats come from aboard or from our own government. Our constitutional rights are continually being eroded by our government and through rulings of the Supreme Court. What happened to the "probable cause" required for a police officer to stop your car on a public highway? What happened to your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms? The excess infringements upon your civil liberties present in the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act must be immediately repealed and the civil liberties of all Americans must be restored.
ENDING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
Just as private property owners have the right to decide whom they wish to invite onto their property, the government of each nation state, as a representative of the citizens living therein, has the absolute right to decide who shall be permitted to enter their country. The United States has the right to make decisions with respect to whom it wishes to admit and under what conditions. All illegal immigration into the United States must end. Enforcement efforts against all non-working undocumented aliens must be increased. Worker Visas should be offered to all undocumented aliens who are currently employed, which would entitle those workers and their families to continue to reside in the United States as long as they are never unemployed for a period of longer than one year. Immigrants with Worker Visas would need to apply for citizenship on an equal basis with individuals applying for citizenship from outside the United States. Automatic citizenship should be granted to all illegal aliens age 70 or above who have resided in this country for more than five years. The policy of granting automatic citizenship to children born to parents who are both illegal aliens should end.
EXPLORING THE UNIVERSE
Space Exploration Day, celebrated on July 20th of every year, commemorates Neil Armstrong's setting foot on the moon in 1969. Very little progress has been made since then because of N.A.S.A.'s virtual monopoly of the space industry and the government's regulation of independent entrepreneurial efforts that would have flourished in a freer market atmosphere. Exploring the universe not only gives us a better understanding of who we are, but it also unites the people of the Earth by helping them to understand we are part of a human race living in a fragile biosphere, with no other habitable planets within reach. New technologies have come to light as a result of space exploration and science fiction has provided ideas for what later became science fact. The old "Star Trek" communicators have become our modern day cell phones. Who could have guessed this would one day become possible? We must encourage entrepreneurs to develop space tourism as an industry and we must come to a better understanding of how best to protect the environment and the diversity of life on our planet.
FIGHTING FOR GAY RIGHTS
Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals are entitled to full equality under the law regardless of their sexual orientations or perceived gender identity or presentation. All federal and state Defense of Marriage Acts must be repealed. The military's"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy must be ended so our gay and lesbian service men and women can serve their country openly and proudly. All Federal Marriage Amendments and all state constitutional amendments seeking to define marriage as a union of one man and one woman should be opposed and/or repealed. All special benefits and privileges granted to individuals on the basis of their marital status should be ended. All state governments and localities should get out of the business of granting marriage licenses in order to allow people to enter into contractual relationships to order their lives as they see fit, but so long as the government continues to grant marriage licenses to heterosexual couples, gay couples are entitled to the "equal protection" of the laws and should be allowed to obtain government issued marriage licenses as well. All religious institutions should retain the right to perform marriage ceremonies in accordance with their church doctrine without governmental interference.
ABOUT THE CANDIDATE
Born in Brooklyn, New York, 1930. Went to 4 room schoolhouse for first 5 grades. Abraham Lincoln H.S., graduated 1948. State University at Farmingdale, graduated 1953. Majored in technical subjects.
US Army 1954-55.
Brooklyn College BA,1960. Major physics.
NYU Graduate School. Business Administration.
Married to Carol Helfman Link. Children: Jeffrey, Amy, Lilli. Seven grandchildren.
Work history: engineering, building residential housing.
Presently owner manufacturing business.
Active in local politics in White Plains.
Moved to Milton, NY in 1994.
Distressed by direction the country is headed with regard to the war in Iraq and reliance on fossil fuels for energy.
Felt compelled to do something for the future generations.
Times Herald-Record
July 23, 2006
Local Man's Big Dream Of The White House
by Tim Logan
To understand why Alden Link is doing what he's doing, it helps to climb into his little Cardinal II prop plane and go for a flight on a clear day.
At 76, Link has been flying for two decades. And in that time, he's noticed something change in the sky. The haze.
It used to be hazy to 4,000 feet around here, Link says. Now the haze is higher. And as his old plane climbs slowly a mile over New Paltz, you can barely see the hills east of the Hudson through the blackish-gray film in the air. Same thing at 6,000 feet, and 7,000 and 8,000.
Finally, at 9,000 feet, the plane pokes through. The sky is clear. And Link can see for miles.
"Do you see it?" he says. "I've got another believer!"
But Link can't take everybody flying in his Cardinal II prop plane. He can't show them what he sees up there and tell them that he has an answer to it. So he's taking his message to the masses. He's running for president of the United States.
Link is a longtime Newburgh businessman and developer. He's got thick machinist's hands, a nasal Brooklyn accent and the kind of twinkle in his eye that makes you wonder, just for a second, whether this is all a joke. He has no party, no campaign staff, no name recognition and, despite being one of the very first declared candidates for the 2008 presidential election, no real chance of actually being elected.
But he does have an idea, and the faith that, in this country, a man with an idea can still make a difference.
Alden's idea is fairly simple: nuclear power for all.
If the U.S. built 1,000 new nuclear plants - about 10 times what it has now - it could quit using fossil fuels and run every car, truck and factory on cheap electric power, he says.
The air would be clean. The trade deficit would shrink. We'd have fewer entanglements in the messy Middle East. Nuclear, Alden says, is the answer to most of our problems. He has other ideas, like legalizing drugs and...a foreign policy that political pundits might call "out of the mainstream"...
But the key to America's future, in a Link presidency, is nuclear power.
"Somebody has to do something about this energy problem," he says. "And no one is talking about it."
Since he started his quixotic campaign this spring, Alden's hit the streets in Newburgh and Goshen. He's been to Albany and to Burlington, Vt., and to an air show in Florida. Right now he's hopscotching the Midwest on the way to a big air show in Wisconsin.
He's raised $20, $10 each from a couple of friends. He's printed out several thousand brochures. He's thinking about hiring someone to help with his campaign.
"This politics thing takes a lot of time," he says.
And Alden's new at it. He ran once for City Council in White Plains, decades ago. He lost. Now he's getting on in years, and he doesn't have time to climb the ladder the old-fashioned way. But he's got a little experience influencing public policy. Alden, you see, takes a bit of credit for the invention of 401(k)s.
It was the mid-'70s, he'd just switched jobs and was unimpressed with his new company's pension plan. So he wrote a letter to then-Sen. Jacob Javits, suggesting the government create some sort of portable pension plan.
A few weeks later, "60 Minutes" called, he says, and interviewed him about the idea. The interview never aired, but a few months later, the idea was introduced in the Senate.
"I don't know if I made a difference," he says with a chuckle. "But now we have 401(k)s."
He also has a way of making things work.
In his long working life, Alden's been an engineer for big companies like AT&T. He's rehabbed old buildings in Newburgh and built new homes in Ulster County. And for the last 40 years, he's been the nation's leading manufacturer of wheat grass juicers.
Link owns Sundance Industries, where he and four employees build the juicers - blenders for wheat grass - essentially by hand in an ancient factory on lower Broadway in downtown Newburgh. It sells them nationwide and has an exclusive contract with the country's biggest juice bar chain. Business is good.
It's something Link stumbled into when his mother-in-law showed him her broken juicer. He took it home and fixed it. She told a friend, and word spread in the small community of those who used wheat grass juicers in the mid-'60s. Pretty soon, Link was working every night in his basement, fixing and making juicers.
"One day, 5,000 engines arrived on a truck," he said. "I was trying to get them off by hand and it took all night. That ticked off the neighbors."
When he and his wife moved to Newburgh 20 years ago, seduced by the view of Mount Beacon, he bought two buildings on lower Broadway and put a factory in one of them. He's still there.
Alden's not sure how much longer he'll be in the juicer business, though. He's getting older, and what he'd really like to do is fly his plane.
"But then this idea came along," he said. "It's like a calling."
So he's running for president.
It's not all that unusual. Thirty-seven people, most of them unknowns, filed for the New Hampshire primaries in 2004. And the idea that anyone can rise to the White House is as old as our democracy.
Billionaire Ross Perot almost pulled it off in 1992, and John Anderson won 6 million votes as an independent in 1980. But the chances of a regular guy like Alden Link getting much traction, are, well, none, said Lee Miringoff, director of Poughkeepsie's Marist Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie.
"The odds are very long, without money or party standing," he said. "He can't do it by just going door to door. It's too big a country."
Alden realizes this, so he's been trying to extend his reach, trying to find some people to carry the seeds of his idea. He's trying to find a party.
He called the Republicans a few times. The man he spoke with was polite, Alden said, "but by the third time I called him, he wouldn't return my calls."
So he tried the United Auto Workers. Who's going to buy cars if we can't fix the oil problem? But when he reached an official at UAW's political office, it didn't go well. President is not an entry-level job, he was told.
"He was curt, you know?" Alden said. "I'm trying to be helpful."
So in April, he went to Albany, for the annual convention of the Libertarian Party of New York. He's been a registered Libertarian in recent years, so he hoped to win their nomination for Senate and launch a statewide campaign as a steppingstone to the White House. And, yes, Alden knows that would mean taking on Hillary Clinton this fall.
"I want to beat her," he said. "I think I can."
He had a good idea, after all, and that ought to be enough. For two days, Alden worked the Libertarians. He cornered them over meals and pitched his idea. He sat in on a two-hour party brainstorming session. He met a sharp-dressed Southerner from the New York Tax Reform Organization, who called Alden "one of the most important candidates we've got."
Some of the Libertarians dismissed him. Some debated him. Some even agreed with him. But mostly, this group of fringe party die-hards was immersed in their own big ideas, about freedom and the role of the state. They weren't too interested in Alden's.
"That's the problem with these guys," he said. "They get all hung up on these dissertations. They've got nothing to say."
Still, he persuaded one longtime Libertarian to nominate him for Senate. So he got to make a three-minute speech on the convention floor. He got polite applause when it was done and he was hopeful as he stood, hands folded, against the wall watching the delegates cast their vote.
Then someone stepped to the microphone.
"Jeff Russell, 22."
"Steve Greenfield, 15."
"Alden Link, 4."
"Nobody's interested," he said later. "What I really want to do is get the word out about nuclear power. It seems to have had no effect. Four people. That's all that understand."
"But four is maybe more than there were."
Make a Contribution To Alden Link
See Sundance Industries, Inc.
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