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Gary Johnson, the ex-governor of New Mexico, might be preparing for a 2012 presidential bid, due to the speculation surrounding his recent appearances across the country. However we can't be sure until he makes an official announcement. The reason for all these rumors is primarily due to Johnson's recent political campaigning through his non-profit website called Our America Initiative. As of late Mr. Johnson has been extremely outspoken about the state of affairs within America.

Johnson has spending the better half of 2010 averting questions about his intentions for a presidential bid in 2012 and doing quite a bit of traveling around the country. He has visited colleges and universities in 30 different states handshaking with over 450 different political groups. Most importantly he has been to some key primary states. So far within the last year Johnson has visited Iowa and South Carolina a total of four times and New Hampshire a total of six times.

Johnson appeared on Stephen Colbert's show on May 10th 2010 which gave him a bit of bump, to paraphrase Stephen's words. And since groups have been springing up over the country to urge a presidential run.

Johnson has been addressing many issues through his travels across the country. For example, he has publicly said that the national debt is America's number one threat to keeping a strong dollar. Some of his suggestions to reduce the deficit are cuts primarily in defense spending where we have spent trillions of tax payers dollars thus far. In a recent statement Johnson compared our operations in Afghanistan to the Russian-Afghan war. He points out that the occupation had bankrupted the Russians in the 1980's and issues a word of warning to America.

He given a three pronged approach to getting our economy back on track. The first is to cut our spending. To do this he suggests that America make some cuts to programs such as medicare, medicaid, and social security. The second prong is to cut taxes and stop taxing investment and savings and to simplify the tax code. The last prong for is to limit government involvement in the economy itself. He wants to put an end to corporate bailouts, funding of special interests with tax payers dollars, place restrictions on the federal reserve, and broaden free trade.

Johnson's most controversial topic is his stance on the legalization of marijuana claiming that it should be regulated and taxed by the American government in the same manner as tobacco. He is advocating for more drug reform of more serious drugs such as heroin and claims by criminalizing heroin we don't address the problem of addiction. Instead of locking people up for more serious drug additions, we should look for treatment rather than wasting tax payers dollars on prison expense.