BY FORMER U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE AND COMBAT VETERAN

I am dedicated to the ideal that each of us can impact the outcome of the 2012 elections. This Tuesday ironically Valentine’s Day 2012, at 08:15am in hearing room 5, in the basement of the Missouri state capitol building there will be a hearing on the second attempt to force the Missouri Secretary of State to properly have vetted and certify with best evidence available, the credentials of the President and the Vice President in accordance with the U.S. Constitution.

In 2010, during my campaign for the U.S. Senate; I was required to provide evidence of eligibility to run for office.  If I had failed to do so by such date, I was going to be removed from the primary ballot by the Secretary of State.   In my case she was doing her job and I proudly obliged.  Later, I found out that I was singled out or flagged according to the person at the elections office.

The president continues to profess that we are all to play by the same set of rules.  As such I have taken it my personal responsibility to ensure that all candidates running for federal office this year play by the same set of rules.  All candidates, including the President and Vice President need to provide irrefutable proof of eligibility.  Furthermore, in spite of the 2000 report from the inspectors general office published in Kansas City, all documents must be submitted and verified for authenticity.  No exceptions will be made if we are all to truly play by the same set of rules.

Within all of us, as true Americans, there lies a common thread.  A thread that has been pulled, twisted, and frayed for over 235 years and yet, it remains unbroken. Through the years, this common thread has given those who walked before us the strength to build a nation, and the courage to guard and defend it from all challenges, foreign as well as domestic. Generation after generation, despite all their faults and differences, their imperfections and prejudices, our ancestors always found a way to band together as one nation in a time of need or peril, until now.

Today we are more divided than we ever have been in American history.  We find elected state and federal officials take an oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution but then turn a check to suit political interest. As an officer in the United States Army, I have taken that same oath five times in my 15 years of service.  The first time I took the oath was on August 14, 1995 when I became an American citizen.  American Military men and women like me take that oath seriously and we are willing to give our lives to defend it.  It’s a personal insult to Veterans when politicians ignore their duty to support and defend the U.S. Constitution and they don’t.   There is a complete lack of true transparency and oversight in our political process.

Our founders believed in the need for transparency so much that they started Declaration of Independence with it. Engaging in true transparency, they made everyone aware of the problem, told everyone how they were going fix the problem and then as a kicker, they let everyone know why the problem had to be fixed.  Thanks to our fore-fathers, their victorious fight for independence gave them and all generations to follow the freedom and responsibility to form a more perfect union. Shortly after, in establishing that more perfect union, they wrote the U.S. Constitution which mandated, in part, that the Federal Government defend our borders from our enemies, foreign as well as domestic. Thanks to the Bill of Rights, we as Americans no longer have to take up arms to express and solve our differences. We are now able to do that through freedom of speech and with our vote.

This hearing to me is not about any single person.  Rather it’s about the integrity of our complete governing system.  As evident in the 2000 report, document fraud is prevalent in all aspects of our lives. Of which the most prevalent is birth certificate fraud and identity theft.   Document fraud cost Missouri Taxpayers millions of dollars every year, it cost the U.S. Government billions of dollars every year.  If we are to protect our political, economic, and national security interest whilst at the same time save tax-payer dollars by cracking down on welfare fraud, voter fraud, identity theft, healthcare fraud what better place to start than at the top if we are all to play by the same set of rules?  We have established long ago, during the Nixon Administration that no one, including the President is above the law.

It is my belief as it was our fore-fathers…A person whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be a ruler of a free people.

If you can make it to Jefferson City this Tuesday Feb 14, 2012 at 08:15am in Hearing room 5, Pease join me to show our Love for America on Valentine’s day.  I would greatly appreciate your support.  If you cannot make it, please pray that the Holy Spirit give those whom we elect the political courage to do what is right for the betterment of America and the American way of life.

Also, coming soon, www.americanrebel.org   Help us fight for true transparency, accountability and pure 100% Americanism.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. ~Abraham Lincoln

Respectfully,

“DEEDS NOT WORDS”
Hector Maldonado
Combat Veteran
True American Patriot
Proud American

Editor’s Note:  Mr. Maldonado had submitted the following for a public hearing on abill contemplated by the Missouri legislature last year:

Statement to Elections committee   March 2011. 

Thank you for including me as part of this discussion on Missouri HB 283.

Buenos Diaz.  My Name is Hector Manuel Maldonado and like many Americans life has left me far from my original roots. My journey started as a small boy, born in Mexico, brought to the United States by my father. As a migrant worker participating in the guest worker program from 1952 through the late 1960’s, my father was granted the opportunity to sponsor his wife and family. Like many immigrants of their time, my parents conveyed the importance of learning English as a stepping stone toward a better life.  To my parents’ credit, I can proudly come before you today and say, we are living our lives and the American Dream in the United States as proud, naturalized American citizens.

As a student at California State University San Bernardino I joined the ROTC program.  I soon found out that I had to be an American citizen to receive a commission through the ROTC program. Upon review, my ROTC director allowed me to stay in the program with the understanding that I would be able to be given a commission only if I graduated from the course as an American citizen.   On August 14, 1995, with the help of COL. James Holmes and a couple higher-ranking officers in my chain of command, I had the honor of becoming an American citizen.  The following year I graduated from Cal-State San Bernardino and from the Claremont Colleges’ ROTC Army Program.  And though I had done everything required of me to graduate from college and receive my commission at a state level, the 4^thRegional ROTC Command  required that I verify that I was indeed a U.S. Citizen.  Once again I proudly provided them with my Naturalization Certificate. Upon doing so, I was commissioned as an Officer in the United States Army. Fifteen years later, and after three decorated combat tours in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan and after commanding a unit of 9-11 First Responders at the World Trade Center in New York City, I found myself, as a 2010 candidate for U.S. Senate for the great state of Missouri, being asked once again to show proof of U.S. citizenship.

Out of a total of 18 candidates,  I was the only one on the Republican Ballot and asked by the Secretary of State to show proof of citizenship.  Later I found out that Constitution Party Candidate, Joe Montellaro was also asked to show Proof of Citizenship but not all candidates. Initially I felt that Joe and I had been singled out.  I asked the Secretary of State’s Office what caused my application to be red-flagged. I was told that it was because I had a two year voting history in the state of Missouri. That did not make sense to me, using criteria that only required a utility bill and no photo ID to raise suspicion of one’s citizenship. It made less sense when I found out that Joe Martellero had an eight year Missouri voting record. Since no other candidate’s application was red-flagged, could it stand to reason that the only way that a candidate’s citizenship could come under scrutiny in Missouri was by the length of their voting record?  After researching this matter, I have come to the following conclusions:

1)      Regardless of the person holding the office of Secretary of State, current Missouri statutes are too lenient and subject to broad interpretation for that person to verify any candidate’s validity to run for office. Such ambiguity can leave and has left the public wondering if a decision to question one candidate’s citizenship and not another’s was made with a personal, political, or racial bias. The biggest current example of public doubt caused by such ambiguity would be the computerized Certification of Live Birth of President Obama presented on the internet and accepted by the Secretary of State thru the Democratic National Committee as proof of his citizenship in 2008.  Citizens of Missouri would only have to go down to their local DMV office to see a sign posted that says a certification of live birth is not acceptable as a proof of identity.  Should not what applies to the citizens of Missouri be applicable to their President?

2)      Missouri’s failure to take heed on report studies of document fraud, such as the 2000 Office of the Inspector General Report on Document Fraud, has not only left us with an incomplete method of vetting our political candidates but left our state susceptible to entitlement and I.D. fraud. This is no longer our fathers’ America, where 99 % of the population looked upon citizenship as an honor to be earned, not as an entitlement to be stolen on the presentation of false documents by law breakers and their sympathizers. To the tune of millions of dollars, Missouri loses revenue due to document fraud every year.

In closing, as the 2000 Office of the Inspector General Report on Document Fraud has pointed out 10 years ago, misuse of vital and personal documents are rampant and each year with better technology the battle against document fraud grows. The report’s recommendation to use several documents as to oppose just one for verification would be one good way to combat document fraud or misuse.  Requiring the most information available from a document such as requiring a long form birth certificate over computer generated short form birth certificate is another way to combat misuse, insure proper identification and validate citizen status. Both recommendations are still valid today.

The time has come for Missouri and the nation as a whole to step up and improve its method of vetting its political candidates and entitlement recipients.  In a time where virtually every state and Federal legislature is anguishing over cuts that need to be made to balance their budgets, it would be negligent not to improve and standardize identification requirements. With all the reported fraud in the entitlement programs alone, it could be compared to money lying on the ground.  All we have to do is pick it up.

Thank you for your time

Hector M. Maldonado

The Post & Email had interviewed Mr. Maldonado in July 2010 when he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate from the state of Missouri.  In April of that year, he was asked to provide “proof of U.S. citizenship,” citing the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that a senatorial candidate have been a U.S. citizen for nine years.

In regard to challenges to the candidacy of Barack Hussein Obama, the New Hampshire Secretary of State said that it is not their job to vet presidential candidates, even though his office had done so in the past.  On January 26, 2012, the state of Georgia held an administrative hearingwhich was attended by neither Obama nor his attorney, after which Obama was declared eligible solely by an alleged birth in the U.S. without any documentary proof.  Georgia Secretary of StateBrian Kemp took Judge Michael Malihi’s recommendation and will place Obama’s name on the ballot for 2012.

Ballot challenge hearings to Obama’s eligibility in Illinois have not allowed the objectors to speak and have maintained that the “birth certificate” provided by Obama’s attorneys was sufficient proof of his meeting the “natural born Citizen” requirement of Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution.  At issue is whether or not a foreign-citizen father would preclude a person from presidential eligibility, a question which has also been raised about Sen. Marco Rubio, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney, as final determination regarding their respective fathers’ citizenship at the time of theirbirths might not have been made.

The Post & Email.