John Stafford (U.S. politician)

John Stafford is an American politician and member of the Republican party from Maryland. He was the Chief Administrative Law Judge for the U.S. Department of the Interior in the first Reagan administration and was a candidate for Senate District 21 in the Maryland congressional elections, 2006.

John Stafford was born December 18,1940 Parris Island, SC, and died June 29,2011 at 8:30pm at the Orlando Regional Medical Center,Orlando, FL. of a Marine Corps family. His paternal ancestors were Irish Catholic migrants from County Wexford, and claim links to the Dukes of Buckingham. His maternal ancestors were from Sweden and Bohemia.

Stafford was educated at the University of Maryland, College Park where he was Treasurer of the SGA, serving with now-U.S. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer who was elected VP on that same ballot. He also wrote the column "Cloakroom Caucus" for the Diamondback daily newspaper, was Editor-in-Chief of the "M-Book", and was Associate Editor of the "Terrapin", and was a DJ for 4 years on WMUC with his 4-hour every Sunday evening show, playing pop and folk, and the early R&B songs on 45's and LP's of those earliest singers, most of whom are now in the R&B Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Stafford met and knew many of those early pioneer artists---Ruthie Brown, The Platters, The Drifters, etc.---personally, from the Casino Royale in downtown DC in the 1950s, and their other dates and concerts, as well as Joan Baez and Ian and Sylvia and Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba, et al., in his later years.

He served 4 years in the US Marine Corps as a lawyer during the Vietnam war. His cases as a prosecutor and defense counsel at Cherry Pt. MCAS and NAVARA and the Navy JAG Investigations Division included three of the most important cases arising during that war.

The case of US v. Denzil Allen was the first torture and mass murder and atrocity case of the Vietnam war, 9 months before My Lai. The case of US v. David Y. Przbycien led to setting the limit on how long a serviceman may be detained before trial at 90 days, or charges must be dismissed. That rule was later adopted by the Federal criminal courts, on a 60-day basis.

The case of US v. John Phillip Wass raised the issue of whether the United States was in "a time of war" in Vietnam, as Congress had not declared war (as required by the Constitution), but merely passed the infamous Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in a rush requested by President Lyndon Johnson, before any confirmation of the reality of the second alleged North Vietnamese attack on the destroyer USS Turner Joy could be confirmed.

Political career

He was elected a Democratic Precinct Committeeman in the 43rd Legislative District of Washington State in 1964 on the ballot with Lyndon Johnson and now-Congressman James McDermott, who was elected a State Representative. Stafford has worked for other candidates on about 50 political campaigns from county-level to Presidential over 54 years, beginning in 1952 with Presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the past 32 years for Republicans, beginning in 1979 as a National Vice-Chairman of Reagan Finance, at a time when Gov. Reagan was written-off, as was Stafford's boyhood friend since 1947 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, NH, Sen. John McCain, in 2007. Stafford has run for the US Senate in past elections in Maryland, in 1998, 2000, and 2004, as well as for the House of Delegates in 2002, and for the Senate of Maryland in 2006.

John Stafford was the Chief Administrative Law Judge for the U.S. Department of the Interior in the first Reagan administration. He was also National Vice-Chairman of Reagan Finance in 1979, and Special Counsel for the Chairman, Warren G. Magnuson, of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce. In this position he worked on the Rail Services Act of 1975, the 4R Act, where he proposed the re-privatization of Conrail, with the sale of stock to the public, which occurred in 1986, and is now owned by Norfolk Southern and CSX.

Stafford also served as Caucus Counsel for the majority leaderships of both the Washington State House and Senate, and as counsel to two committees thereof.

Finishing second in a field of nine in the Republican primary in 2004, he was outspent by the 2004 US Senate primary winner, State Senator E. J. Pipkin, by nearly $1 million. Stafford won the Republican nomination for the Maryland House of Delegates in 2002 in the 13th District of Howard County where he was then outspent by 100 to 1 by the 8-year Democrat incumbent, Shane Pendergrass.

Stafford was also the nominated Republican candidate for Senate District 21 in the 2006, then voluntarily stepping aside for Sen. John Giannetti, the Democrat incumbent, when John offered to switch to the Republican party, as reported by the "Laurel Leader" and by "The Washington Post" (for whom Stafford was a paper boy in 1953 in Chevy Chase DC) Maryland congressional elections.

Stafford opposes abortion, slot machine casino gambling, and gun control, and the many stresses and costs on families and family formations, inter alia, such as excessive income, sales, and real estate taxes. He supports his improved and fairer version of the Cong. Linder/Gov. Huckabee, et al.-supported, "Fair Tax". Stafford's proposal would abolish Federal personal income taxation and the 16th Amendment, which, under President Woodrow Wilson, and at the behest of the NYC bank owners and their "Federal" Reserve Bank, which they actually privately own all the preferred stock of, eliminated the Founders' specific Constitutional prohibition of such a direct "head" tax on personal [but not on business or corporate] income. Stafford would replace it completely with a Constitutional point-of-sales Federal sales tax. He has advocated this necessary change in the many Federal sources of revenue for 4 decades, and with the 3 Members of Congress and the US Senate for whom he has worked, first as a Congressional Staffer and later as Special Counsel to the Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Commerce. Stafford was the one who persuaded the former Chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Bill Archer, the Congressman of George H.W. Bush, from Houston, TX, and his Chief Counsel, to this position in 1995, which proposed legislation Stafford also prepared as a White Paper for U.S. Sen. Bob Dole during Dole's 1996 Presidential race, where Stafford was a close and voluntarily-unpaid advisor for 3½ years. And by alerting the Budget Director, Myrt Charney, of the State of Alaska, and its then-Gov. Egan, in 1973, of the impending bankruptcy of that State by 1979, Stafford played a key role in the repeal of the State income tax in that State, as that second-time Governor, Democrat Bill Egan, called a special hydrocarbon tax structure session of the Alaska Legislature and put that State on a sound financial footing ever since. Stafford's warning was connected to his job as a Consultant with Mathematical Sciences NW of Seattle, the firm which wrote the accurate socio-economic study for the Alyeska Pipeline Co. which then built the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline. A Libertarian Party-elected friend of Stafford's, a member of that legislature, then was able to secure all the support needed to repeal that state-level income tax. And Alaska's Permanent Fund, established because the State's finances were put on that sound basis after Stafford's study and research-based warning, has now paid to all its legal residents as much as $2000 in income per year, rather than taxing their annual income.