Libertarian Party of Citrus County

Newsflash: SCOTUS upholds plan language of the Constitution.

2012-01-23T19:53:00.000-05:00

By Tom Rhodes, 1/23/2012

In a unanimous decision Monday the Supreme court ruled that the police must obtain a warrant before attaching a GPS tracker to person's vehicle. This is evidence that contrary to all available evidence there are limits to government power and authority. This case tested the boundaries of how far government can go in using new technologies to monitor the whereabouts of the people.

The plain language of the 4th Amendment is clear. It states "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The mere fact that the government would consider adding a device of any kind to a person's private property to monitor anything without probable cause is a clear indication that, on the whole, the government no-longer considers a person's private property to be of consequence. The government didn't argue that placing a GPS device on a person's car wasn't a violation of rights, but argued that attaching the tiny device to a car's undercarriage was too trivial a violation of property rights to matter, and that no one who drove in public streets could expect his movements to go unmonitored. Thus, the technique was "reasonable," meaning that police were free to employ it for any reason without first justifying it to a magistrate, the government said. To the government your rights are "trivial."

Justice Antonin Scalia writing for the majority concluded that the Fourth Amendment's protection of "persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" extends to private property such as an automobile.

Justice Samuel Alito split from fellow conservatives holding that the search violated not just property rights, but also individual's "reasonable expectation of privacy." The same justification the court has used since 1967, when it held that warrants were required before police could wiretap a call made from a public telephone booth because "the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places." He warned that a property-based approach was too narrow to guard against the proliferating threats to personal privacy modern technology posed.

It is nice to see that the SCOTUS in some cases still protects the rights of the people over the government. Too bad the SCOTUS isn't consistent in protecting our property rights from search and seizure, they still accept the idea that any cash you have is the government's unless you can prove that cash didn't commit a crime. Without probable cause nor evidence nor due process, if you carry cash it can be confiscated as drug money. Monday's decision should be celebrated as a good step in the right direction, but we still have too many laws that put the government's "interests" above the rights of the people.

Obama's Vision Doomed to Failure

2012-01-19T16:53:00.003-05:00

By Tom Rhodes, 12/18/2012

As usual President Obama was at a fundraising event last week. It is reported that he said, "We can't go back to this brand of you're-on-your-own economics." Interesting choice of words; I never heard of any economic system or theory called "you're-on-your-own economics." Other than recent punditry and news articles relating to Obama's reference, I cannot find any other educational or political reference. OK, so the POTUS coined a new phrase, that's cool, but let's think about it.

Obama in the same speech said, "we are not a country that was built on the idea of survival of the fittest" which implies a Darwinist theory of economics, not voluntary free markets, nor socialistic central control. The terminology implies that he means that "you're-on-your-own economic" system is one where people are allowed to suffer for the results of their life choices and if they make poor choices they are held responsible for those choices. A system where people take risks and are expected to live with the results of what risks they choose to take or don't take. As I've pointed out in other columns the vision Obama shared with potential contributors to his political campaign was a the same as the original vision for colonizing the new world by our Pilgrim Forefathers at the Plymouth Colony. They established a communist system, where all farmed together, and whatever they produced was put in a common storehouse. A certain amount of food was rationed to each person regardless of his contribution to the work. Many Pilgrims complained that they were too weak from hunger to do their share of the work. Even the deeply religious Pilgrims took to stealing from one another. In his history of the colony Gov. Bradford wrote "So as it well appeared that famine must still ensue, the next year also if not some way prevented."

So giving up on communism they set up a new system where every family was assigned a parcel of land, and kept what they produced. Gov. Bradford then observed, "The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression." Implementing "you're-on-your-own economics" lead to bountiful harvests which are still celebrated today on the fourth Thursday of every November.

So if we look at history we clearly see that when communism in any form is tried the results are less for everybody. All people who have utopian ideas of people being supplied their needs regardless of input into society forget and ignore human nature. When people don't own something, they don't take care of it. Look at government housing projects as a prime example. The undeniable fact is people tend to work harder and produce more when they own what they produce. Regardless of what any centrally controlled government wants or decides, people will barter for what they want, black market if suppressed by the government, and will protect what is theirs, and let waste and take what they can if allowed that isn't theirs. It is private ownership not public leads to more overall wealth for all.

President Obama's idea that free enterprise means the biggest and meanest and strongest force their will on others is pathologically invalid. Free enterprise and free voluntary trade results in business and people who have characteristics that make them better-equipped to survive and hence reproduce themselves succeed in a particular environment. This does not imply that they must eat, or destroy others.

Artificially protecting businesses, trades, and skills, that without being subsidized would fail, stops progress and hurts growth. Imagine if we had to subsidize all farriers, because economics, technology and business practices lead to a loss of these jobs. What a waste that obviously would be. Now what if somebody invented a faster cheaper way to send letters and other personal correspondence, like say a fax machine, or a computer program that could use phone lines or other connections to send a letter instantly, would it be smart to subsidize people delivering paper messages by hand all across the country? Or should competition result in the business of hand delivering small messages be allowed to go the way of farriers. There are still a small number of farriers earning a living and providing horse shoeing services and products, but it is not nearly the industry it was. Why should there remain subsidies for the Postal Service anymore than subsides for farriers?

Using Obama's economic vision, we would have the government subsidizing buggy whip production so that buggy whip manufacturer employees could keep their jobs. His idea is that we should take from those people whose life choices, luck, drive, and natural ability allowed them to succeed, and give it to those who made bad life choices, or had bad luck, or have no drive, or have little natural ability, sounds a lot like "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need." How many times must we historically witness this caring utopian vision fail when actually implemented before we instead work towards what has historically proven to work. Economic freedom leads to higher standard of living and better quality of life for everybody. So if you care about improving people's lives, then you really care about economic freedom. And having economic freedom doesn't mean having a right to vote, or a right to free health care, or a right to free education, a right to job, a right to food, what Economic freedom means...

Your property is protected, under an impartial rule of law.

You're free to trade with others for what you need and want.

Your money keeps its value because your national currency is stable.

And, government stays small relative to the size of the economy.

If you really cared about people, you'd give up utopian socialistic ideas, that sound compassionate but in reality only grant power to a few ruling elite and make everybody else poorer.

LPF Core Values

2012-01-12T17:38:00.002-05:00

by Tom Rhodes, 1/12/2012

Christ famously said “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” This is a truism and an undisputable part of human nature. As libertarians we can be proud of the fact research is clear that those who believe that people should be responsible for their own well being, are on average more generous and give more to charity to help those in need.
Nobody really argues that people don’t invest their time and money and effort into what they think is valuable. This is true not only individuals but also groups. Businesses invest in what they believe is valuable, I work for a large fortune 500 company, what it values has changed in its more than one century history. It now places a huge value on the safety of all its workers. Not just because of monetary considerations, but because there has been a real shift to a culture of safety. Safety is no longer just keeping people from losing life or limb. The company now worries about and actively works to protect against minor strains and sprains on a very serious note. The proof is in the substantial dollars, time, and resources invested in making safety a priority. Safety is now a core value even ahead of profits at this company.

Let’s consider our party, the Libertarian Party of Florida (LPF), where exactly does the LPF put its treasure (meager as it is). The short answer is the LPF puts in treasure in the bank, it sits on it. It values money in the bank over any other activity that money could be used for. We in our recent past, had a treasurer who was so un-willing to spend any LPF funds that he refused to spend money on what the Executive Council decided to spend it on. Where the LPF is willing to spend is a clear indicator of what it values. If it’s not willing to spend its treasure, then its heart must be in having a large bank account not actually doing the work of a political party.
Consider some more of Christ’s words. One of the more famous parables Jesus told was the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). The LPF as body appears to have acted like the man who was given one bag of gold.

It is very clear that the LPF (or at least its past leaders) does not value its constitutional officers, does not value its constitutionally mandated convention, and does not value its opportunity to have representation at the LP National convention, and does not value the volunteers it expects so much from.
Over the past year, the evidence that the new LPF leadership is trying to better promote and expand the LPF is evident. As a body however the LPF and its current traditions and actions doesn’t show that it actually values what its leaders do. I am not, nor do I want to be an elected officer in the LPF, but I am ashamed of how as a party we treat our leaders and volunteers. It is absurd to expect the hundreds and hundreds of hours that these good people put into the work of the LPF, then expect them to pay for the privilege of doing so. Getting anybody to volunteer to help any member of the EC makes pulling teeth seem like giving away money. We as members of the LPF cannot continue to expect great things of our leaders if we never support them. The membership of the LPF either doesn’t value its leaders, or doesn’t actually value the LPF. Look how few show up for regular meetings, fewer still for the state convention, and fewer still actually donate. If you value the LPF and what it stands for, agree in principle with its platform and clearly stated objectives, then prove it. As members your unwillingness to put either time or money into what you supposedly value speaks volumes.
We want the LPF to be a professional successful political party, that cannot happen if the actual values of its leaders and members, as expressed by how and where its leaders put their time and money, doesn’t reflect that both value the LPF as a party.

What this looks like, and in reality shows, is that the LPF is a debate club open to rich people who can afford it. A professional party would not have to be completely dependent upon unpaid volunteers for absolutely everything it does. LPF Volunteers aren’t even fed when working at LPF functions. The fact that the LPF does not see any fiduciary responsibility to sending representatives to the state convention much less national convention, shows that the LPF doesn’t even trust its own members to provide enough resources to put its constitutional officers in a hotel for the state convention, or that the LPF doesn’t actually value the convention.
How can we say we value our state convention, if we are not willing to invest in it? How can we as a party say the state convention is of any value if we aren’t even willing to foot the bill for hotel rooms for our constitutional officers? It is absurd of us to expect people to put in hundreds of hours of labor, then expect and require them to pay for the privilege of doing so. If we have the resources there is no moral, fiduciary, nor logical reason to require that constitutional officers attend the annual state convention, then require them to pay their own way. If we have the resources there is no moral, fiduciary, nor logical reason to require that representatives chosen by our constitutional officers to attend the National LP convention, then require them to pay their own way.

The traditions of the LPF like representatives paying all their own expenses must be addressed, a party that can’t afford to send its Chair to the national convention, can’t afford to run effective campaigns, and maybe can’t afford to exist. This does not show a professional image but indicates a desperate group trying to hang on, and that image will not garner investment of its own membership much less others. The LPF should minimally pay for the travel and lodging expenses of its officers or representatives at conventions (even if it gets donations from the very people it sends to cover those expenses), just so our books show that we are willing to invest in activities and demonstrate that the LPF holds those activities as valuable. If the party isn’t willing to invest in something, why should it expect its members to invest in it. The LPF should expect its members to invest in the party, and spend those resources on things the party values. Expecting people to become leaders, and as leader volunteer not only vast amounts of time, but financial resources indicates that the party does not value, or believe, that the work of its leadership is of any value. The traditions and actions of the LPF are a clear indication that the LPF as a body (or minimally its past leadership) does not value the efforts of its volunteers or leaders. If the funds exist to cover those expenses, I can see no valid rationale not to support the extraordinary efforts that or constitutional officers exert with more than a thank you.
There are a handful of people willing to do something and who work very hard but just that hand full cannot do everything, nor can they be expected to foot the bill for the privilege of working their asses off.
The traditions and actions of the LPF reflect its core values. So I ask, is it a core value of the LPF that only those rich enough can be national representatives? Is it a core value of the LPF that even our own state convention is so unimportant that LPF won’t even invest the minimal lodging costs of its constitutional officers? Does the LPF so undervalues state and national meetings that they are not willing to fund any of the officers the membership elects to attend these events? Obviously if the membership chooses a leader who is not financially well off then these traditions seem to be a way to keep any “lowlife poor” from actually being where decisions are made, and to discourage good working people who are not “well to do” from even running for LPF office? or if they do, keep them from remaining for long? The traditional method of leaders being expected to always foot their own way in the LPF, even the bragging from a former chair that they never have the party cover their expenses to national conventions, seem to indicate that the LPF is a rich-man’s debate club not a serious political party. Such bragging is more an indicator that that person is using the LPF for their own aggrandizement, not working to benefit the LPF. If those persons really believed in the LPF then they’d donate that money to the LPF and let the LPF leadership select and send a representative to the national convention. That representative may or may not be the donor, but the LPF would at least show it values the activity enough to materially support it. Let’s work at changing that image and those traditions. We’re the third largest state LP in the nation, if we aren’t willing to invest in sending our Chair to the national LP convention what does that say about the LPF?

Even if we can’t afford it, the funding for lodging etc, of our elected officials at official conventions should be through the party, not on their personal accounts. If the party can afford to fund such minimal expenses, but if the leader in question can and does choose to donate to the party to cover those expenses, that would be magnanimous and great, but the LPF should as a matter of policy, show that it values its conventions buy putting its treasure there. If it doesn’t then obviously it doesn’t actually value them. The LPF being unwilling to put its treasure at its constitutionally mandated meetings sends a clear message to the LPF membership, and public, that it doesn’t value those meetings. If we want to be a meaningful and serious party, then we need to start acting like one, and that includes footing the bill for our constitutional officers to attend the constitutionally mandated annual state convention. Unless of course the image of a rich-man’s debate club is not just an image but the reality of what the LPF is.

Too Much Government

2012-01-10T18:26:00.000-05:00

by Tom Rhodes, 1/10/2011

Common sense, reality, justice, are all concepts that the excess regulations that our government has instituted are chasing away from the American people form trust and belief in our government. We have so many laws and regulations that it is impossible for anybody to know them all, much less obey them all.

Consider a kid in school, a good kid, whom it is quite legal to own, use, and poses a tool when not in school. If this tool is a pocket knife, a tool people have traditionally carried from a young age for centuries, and he accidently forgets to leave it at home when he goes to school, notes that he forgot, and then self reports to the school (government) that he made a mistake, what should a reasonable response to that responsible action be.

The Gwinnett School System thinks that several days of in-school suspension is appropriate, they used to have a minimum 10-day out-of-school suspension for such atrocious crimes.

What our government is teaching it citizens, specifically our children, is that laws are not just, they are instituted to control you. That you are better off not trusting the government (schools) and hiding any problems or questionable possessions, as even if you did no wrong, you will be punished as an example to the rest of society.

Consider compliance with current traffic laws. We have so many traffic laws, most of which are used to generate fines, not provide more safety, that they are routinely ignored. Laws against and controlling mind altering substances like pot, beer, etc. are so routinely ignored that all of our past 3 presidents have openly admitted ignoring them.

Worse Yet, the government doesn't want to be accountable. Consider the EPA, they are arguing before the supreme court that the people have no right to legally challenge anything they dictate or any fine they levy, and must allow open access to private records without a court order to the EPA, and that there can be no judicial review. The government literally claims that the EPA as an agency is not and cannot be held to constitutional limits. In the case argued before the SCOTUS, a property owner had their property declared a wetland, it’s on the side of a hill in a subdivided community, and they had all the necessary building permits, and the property was not part any of the EPA declared wetlands. The EPA stopped construction and demanded they remove all foundations, plant non-native species, and let it be a virtual park for years before they could apply to the EPA for permission to build, and that there could be no review of the EPA finding of any kind.

SCOTUS Justice Elena Kagan said it was a “strange position” for the government to adopt in insisting that the property owner has no right to a hearing on such an order. Justice Stephen Breyer said it looked intimidating to him. “It said this is an order,” he said. Justice Alito summarized what had happened, saying, “You buy property to build a house. You think maybe there is a little drainage problem in part of your lot, so you start to build the house and then you get an order from the EPA which says you have filled in wetlands, so you can’t build your house. Remove the fill. Put in all kinds of plants. and now you have to let us on your premises whenever we want to … you have to turn over to us all sorts of documents, and for every day that you don’t do all this you are accumulating a potential fine of $75,000 and by the way, there is no way you can go to court to challenge our determination that this is a wetlands until such time as we choose to sue you…”

Justice Breyer said, “For 75 years the courts have interpreted statutes with an eye towards permitting judicial review, not the opposite.”

Justice Ruth Ginzburg recognized that the property owners had sought a hearing from the EPA over the controversy, “and the EPA said no.”

It is clear our government bureaucrats chafe at the idea that the people have rights and can challenge their orders. It has gotten so bad that even all of the liberal justices on the SCOTUS can be said to have misgivings based on the questions they asked EPA lawyers.

The EPA believes that the constitution no longer applies and does not restrict the power and authority of government. Regardless of the fact that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that “no person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” the EPA is arguing to the SCOTUS that through the Clean Water Act that they have the authority to issue orders as it wishes and collect fines for “violations” – without court review.

This is evidence that the government is trying to teach the people of this country that the rule of law, and equality under the law are passé. That the ruling elite have the power to issue orders as they wish and collect fines, confiscate property, and issue punishment for “violations” – without court review, without due process, and you mere citizens have no choice.

Clearly the left, and ruling elite in the government want to end property rights. Consider liberal columnist, Carl Gibson’s recent editorial titled, “ ‘Job Creators’ Aren't Doing Their Job.” where he says, "With $2 trillion at home and $1.4 trillion abroad, corporations are sitting on record-high piles of cash. For example, Apple holds $76 billion by itself, more than the U.S. Treasury. Yet these hoards of cash remain untaxed. A 35% tax on corporate America's cash reserves in the United States alone would generate $700 billion in revenue."

Start with the obvious lie, where he claims that “hoards of cash” are untaxed; taxes were paid on that cash when it was earned, cash on hand is savings not untaxed income. Just like individuals can save part of their income if they choose not to spend it after they pay taxes, groups of people (what corporations are) can do the same. Gibson is in essence saying that if you have cash remaining after you pay taxes and rather than spend those funds you choose to you save them, that then the government should take that savings from you. Get it!! you should only be allowed as much savings, property, etc, as the government gives you permission. Your savings is actually the governments and the government not you should decide if it should be spent. This sounds more like the old USSR than the USA. Liberals and the media wonder why corporations move their savings off shore, or why Americans are purchasing gold, jewellery, guns, and other tangible goods in record numbers, as investments to protect assets, it’s because the people no longer trust the government not to confiscate their accumulated wealth.

The ruling elite and liberal intelligentsia actually believe that all the wealth and property of the USA is the governments, not the individuals who earned it, and the government has the right to redistribute all property as it sees fit, including savings. It isn’t just big corporation savings (cash on hand) that leftists want, they also want the accumulated savings of those individuals who have taken personal responsibility and saved for their retirement. The government is actively seeking ways to control 401K accounts. The government is saying that you are too stupid and shouldn’t be burdened with being responsible for your own money, and that you are not a sovereign individual with individual rights, that your property is actually the governments, and it graciously allows you to keep some of it at the government discretion.

Our government is too big, protecting individual sovereignty and responsibility is no longer considered the job of government, and it now considers the people and their “rights” to be a burden. To get around constitutional restrictions on confiscating property without due process, then now charge the property not the person with a crime. Have more than a few dollars in your pocket, and the police will confiscate it saying it was drug money with no proof, no evidence, and no due process. Rather than innocent until proven guilty, you must prove that the money charged with a crime is yours. Note that to avoid the obvious lack of due process they have decided that it is ok to charge the money with a crime, not the owner of that money, and since money isn’t a person and has no rights, they can do what they want with it.

Too much government has now made it so that the average person no longer considers avoiding a tax wrong. Too much government has now made it so that the average person now considers what the government might do to them before reporting anything. Too much government has now made it so that the average person seriously searches for ways to avoid “permits.” In many of our big cities it is almost impossible to for the government to get a jury to convict individuals arrested for possession of small amounts of pot. The people realize that the law is stupid, the government will destroy individuals not for violating anybody else’s rights, but for doing something the government doesn’t like, so juries don’t convict.

Because of this the government is trying and has succeeded in limiting the people’s right to a jury trial. Schools no longer teach civics where the jury trial, and how being tried by your peers is a check against an abusive government. A jury can and does have the right to say not guilty when the government charges a person of a crime that although the defendant did commit, the law itself is wrong and the action should not be a crime. A fully informed jury is not something the government wants, and better yet, the government doesn’t want juries at all. Having to prove to 12 people, not a single government employee (the judge) severely restricts the power of government.

The solution to almost all the problems America now faces is not more government, it’s less government. But don’t expect the media who profits from more government or corporations who can buy off government to protect themselves from competition and being held accountable to their actions, to promote smaller government.

We need to return to limited government, but just as the Romans used bread and circuses to control the mobs, we too are seeing the same actions by our ruling elite, and is indicative of the beginning of the end of our republic. The only possible way to reverse course, and not end up a former shell of our past greatness like roam, losing our constitutionally protected rights, is to return to what made us great; being a limited small government republic. From the way anybody supporting smaller government who does manage to get the public’s attention (think Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson) is systematically destroyed, there is little hope that in 2012 we will even have the choice to elect a person who respects private property, individual liberty, freedom, self-rule, etc.

I have a better idea, more freedom, less government. Of course you have to be willing to accept that you not the government is responsible for your own well being. You not the government will be responsible to help the needy. You’ll have to be a part of your community and depend on your family, neighbours, church, etc. to help you when/if you’re in need not the government. That was the situation and worked for about the first 150 years of American history. That can, and will, work again, but not if society doesn’t believe in individual sovereignty and responsibility. If you wonder, I did steal that phrase “more freedom, less government” check it out at www.lpf.org.

Interesting Distraction

2012-01-05T18:46:00.000-05:00

By Tom Rhodes, 1/4/2012

In Georgia, a state law requires “every candidate for federal” office who is certified by the state executive committees of a political party or who files a notice of candidacy “shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

Obama’s attorney, Michael Jablonski, had argued that the requirements didn’t apply to candidates for a presidential primary, but Judge Michael W. Malihi of the Georgia state Office of State Administrative Hearings, ruled that “Statutory provisions must be read as they are written, and this court finds that the cases cited by [Obama] are not controlling. When the court construes a constitutional or statutory provision, the ‘first step … is to examine the plain statutory language,” the judge wrote. “Section 21-2-1(a) states that ‘every candidate for federal and state office’ must meet the qualifications for holding that particular office, and this court has seen no case law limiting this provision, nor found any language that contains an exception for the office of president or stating that the provision does not apply to the presidential preference primary.”

So let’s take Obama at his word, and we accept his birth certificate, and the fact he was born in Hawaii, his mom was a US Citizen, and his father wasn’t. Those facts are not in dispute. Now we must consider the fact that the constitution says that to be eligible to be president one must be a “natural born citizen.”

Again nobody is arguing that point, but exactly how is a “natural born citizen” defined?

The Constitution doesn’t define “natural born citizen” but lucky for us the US Supreme court did rule on that. In Minor v. Happersett, the U.S. Supreme Court opinion defines “natural-born citizen.” To be exact the SCOTUS Opinion states:

The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.

The SCOTUS is clear, where you’re born doesn’t make you a natural born citizen, but the citizenship of your parents does. An undisputeded fact is that both of Obama’s parents were not citizens at the time of his birth in Hawaii. That would mean that by definition Obama cannot be considered a “natural-born citizen.”

The State of Georgia, is allowing this to proceed, and has dismissed Obama’s attorney’s arguments that Georgia law doesn’t apply. Not all states have election law authorizing any state officials to screen candidate selections from political parties, but in some states it is the law, not the political parties that determine which candidates appear on ballots. Malihi’s ruling said: “The court finds that defendant is a candidate for federal office who has been certified by the state executive committee of a political party, and therefore must, under Code Section 21-2-5, meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

Looks like Obama may not be on the ballot in all 50 states. This is an interesting distraction. Taking Obama at his word, and accepting his birth certificate at face value, but using the clear language of Supreme Court precedent will result in the fact that by law Obama may not be a “natural-born citizen.”

The question is are we a country governed by law or by the dictates of some ruling elite?

Why Libertarians Don’t Win Elections

2011-12-29T11:52:00.002-05:00

by Tom Rhodes, 12/29/2011

The fundamental reason libertarians don’t win a lot of elections is not based on their ideology, but based on the fact that they live what the preach. Studies show that libertarians are as individuals more charitable than conservatives and liberals. Economically, philosophically, and morally, libertarian ideas have been proven to be what is best for the vast majority of people. The fundamental problem libertarians have is that they are good libertarians. They actually live by the standard of “live and let live.” The other basic principle is the one that says “effort should be rewarded as much as possible.”

The general desire to be left alone and to leave others alone, to oppose aggression against others, to allow others to succeed or not succeed based upon their own effort, and to voluntarily help your neighbor as you best see fit, are the fundamentals of libertarian ideology. Good Libertarians don’t seek power, nor to control others, as a result libertarians make bad politicians.

Libertarians are not demanding, which explains our political weakness. Self reliance, responsibility, the ability to not meddle in other’s affairs, and the live-and-let-live independence and the respect for the rights of others that permeate libertarian political positions are also considered to be the characteristics of emotionally mature adults. In general grownups content to live our own lives and willing to let others do the same? Meddling in the affairs of others, is synonymous with teen-age drama and angst, and is incompatible with grown-up (libertarian) behavior. Thus Libertarians by their very nature are not political animals.

Now liberals, statists, socialists, communists, etc, all have third grade mentality on fairness, thus love to meddle. Every desire becomes a right, every difference becomes a cause, and they cannot resist creating a new law, regulation, or dictate to “fix” things. Though outnumbered by a vast majority (liberals make up only 20% of the US population), they have learned to use the maturity of grown-ups who prefer not to meddle against liberty. They know that businesses and governments will make concessions to radical demands to avoid a scene and get back to business. They accumulate these capitulations over time to increase their power.

The TEA Party’s libertarian message, defensive in nature, basically a message of “Stop Spending” and “Leave Us Alone” has been morphed and distorted by Republicans, who are just statists with a dedication to big business not liberty. That defensive message won’t win elections. Just as in sports, it is offense, not defense that scores points. It’s hard to make a basket while defending your own hoop.

The liberal minority dominates American politics because liberals have a strategy for eroding liberty and promoting statism. Libertarians do not have an effective strategy of promoting liberty. Where is the libertarian strategy to ensure that every high-school student in America can give a spirited defense of liberty or free enterprise? Our defense has resulted in a win for leftists who have virtually removed the Declaration of Independence for our schools. Where is the libertarian strategy to ensure that immigrants assimilate and believe in liberty over socialism? There is no coherent strategy to return our culture to its libertarian roots.

We have failed to do as our founding fathers exhorted us to do. We have not been vigilant to protect liberty. Unless we actively work at and convert the main stream media to believing in liberty not statism, we are lost. The message of liberty cannot stand if we continue to “live and let live” and no longer hold the press and our politicians accountable for clearly anti-liberty, anti-freedom, anti-American ideas, actions, and direction.

The problem with libertarians, is we live by our creed, and by not meddling, leaving liberals and others to do as they please, and by compromising in order to get back to our businesses and lives. The result is that we have let a small minority of leftists control and set the direction of the country. We must to be effective start meddling, start telling people that the idea of equality of outcome will result in countries like Korea where everybody is equally poor, instead of our country where even the poor have color TV, cars, AC, indoor plumbing, and an obesity problem. Statism, as the left continuously promotes, has never worked, will never work, and we change our ways and meddle in the lives of our fellow Americans, if we want to succeed. Sorry America it’s time for Less not More Government.

The statists whether Demican or Republicrat will ignore all the caustic consequences of the policies of the liberal welfare state. Libertarians will be branded as selfish, racist, or worse. Statists will name their policies “compassionate conservatism”, or “social justice,” but the sad truth is welfare state policies lead to moral decay and narcissism. Compare the moral standards of those who love liberty and those who want a welfare stare. It is clear that those who want a welfare state, hate individual rights, hate property rights, hate any moral standards, hate individual responsibility, and all the traditional standards of western civilization, but it’s taboo to talk about that.

The good news is there is a paradigm shift, as John Stossel noted in his December 28, 2011 column, “This spring, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan presented a timid plan that would have slowed the growth of government slightly. Even Republicans went bonkers. Newt Gingrich called it "right-wing social engineering."

But now, just seven months later, the country's in a different place. Newt's apologized. Speaker John Boehner and other Republicans praise Ryan's plan. The Republican Study Committee wants to go further. Now Ryan agrees that his plan was "mild." Today he says he'd go farther.“

When you hear anybody tell you that the people must be regulated, they are not smart enough, or too foolish, to be left to their own decisions, and that the government must “protect” the people for their own good, be loud and proclaim that “We the People” not some ruling elite, have the power and authority. That we established a government, not to supply everybody’s needs but one limited to do only what we’ve authorized it to do. We must take back our government and restrict it to only those functions we originally granted it. Otherwise we will have an unlimited government that has the ability and authority to dictate every aspect of our lives, from what we eat, to where we live, to what we read, and what we can say. A government that has the power to supply every need, has the power to take every liberty.

We are clearly seeing a libertarian shift in American politics, maybe seeing the logical consequences of liberal policies, as clearly demonstrated in Greece’s riots, have helped America realize what happens when liberty is replaced with statism. Now is the time for Libertarians to be heard, to meddle, to get involved. The alternative is the destruction of our country and way of live in exchange for living at the hands of the ruling elite. Hopefully we as a party can take advantage of this shift, and elect libertarians.

It's For Your Own Good

2011-12-28T10:27:00.001-05:00

by Tom Rhodes, 12/28/2011

Big Brother now wants to control every aspect of everything you do, of course all for your own good. We have been warned by our founding fathers and many others over the decades, but C.S. Lewis summed it up best when he said;

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

The government never looks at the good people get from their activities, only what the government can get out of the peoples actions, or the political hay they can make. Consider the recent announcement by National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman, who called for states to mandate a total ban on cell phone usage while driving.

Hersman wants electronics manufacturers, – via The Wireless Association and the Consumer Electronics Association, to develop features that "disable the functions of portable electronic devices within reach of the driver when a vehicle is in motion." She wants the government to be able turn off your cell phone while you're driving. Of course if they can turn it off then, they can turn it off whenever they want.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration claims that there were some 3,092 roadway fatalities last year that involved distracted drivers. Not just people texting or using their cell phones but driving while distracted, according to the NTSB’s own web site, “distracted driving is any activity that could divert a person's attention away from the primary task of driving. All distractions endanger driver, passenger, and bystander safety”. These types of distractions include:

Texting

Using a cell phone or smartphone

Eating and drinking

Talking to passengers

Grooming

Reading, including maps Using a navigation system

Watching a video

Adjusting a radio, CD player, or MP3 player

The web page doesn't say what part of distracted driving came from cell phone use in vehicles, but considering all the other distractions while driving counted in the 3,092 roadway fatalities last year it is significantly less than the total, and probably less than 1000. The same web site shows a press release (LINK) that “2010 fatality and injury data showing that highway deaths fell to 32,885 for the year, the lowest level since 1949. The record-breaking decline in traffic fatalities occurred even as American drivers traveled nearly 46 billion more miles during the year, an increase of 1.6 percent over the 2009 level.” Think about that. 46 billion is 1.6 percent of what?

Answer: About 3 Trillion miles every year. So the number of highway deaths associated with distracted driving normalized per MILLION miles driven is 0.001. That means for every million miles Americans drive there is 0.001 deaths from distracted driving, and only a part of those are related to cell phones. That means for every BILLION miles we drive only 1 person dies as a resulted of distracted driving, and only a fraction of those are related to cell phones. Considering the BILLIONs of times people use cell phones driving, the benefit in saved time, effort, efficiency, etc. associated with enhanced communications will be lost. How many lives are saved by a doctor getting a call while driving and changing his course to get to the hospital instead of her original destination? All of those benefits will be lost if Big Brother Gets his way.

This is one of the proverbial camel getting its nose in the tent problems. Government ALWAYS does more and takes away more freedom when given a little. Soon drivers won’t be able to talk to passengers, or use a car radio, or sip a drink while driving. Imagine how much money trucking companies save, and hence consumers save because a truck driver can have a drink of water while driving instead of having to stop his big rig and get off the interstate every half hour or so. Imagine if a cop sees you putting on lipstick at a stop light and you get a ticket for “distracted driving.” Don’t say it won’t happen. The government has a history of going way farther than it promised.

Consider the government lie from 1966 which is now a major economic disaster that may cripple the country. In 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. President Johnson and Congress told us Medicare would cost an inflation-adjusted $12 billion by 1990. Reality Check, Medicare was over $107 billion, almost ten fold more than promised. We now spend over $523 billion on Medicare and it will continue to grow faster than we can pay. The 2009 Medicare trustees report shows that the unfunded Medicare liability is $89 trillion. That original Medicare cost estimates were the lie the Government used to buy into their agenda, Medicare was the camel’s nose that allowed the government into controlling healthcare.

From Income tax (originally promised to tax only the rich), to no child left behind, to EPA, the regulations all for our own good, do not take into consideration the costs those regulations will put on everybody. Distracted driving is not a good thing, but even with cell phones, navigation systems, and all the other distractions we have driving, we have far fewer deaths and injury than in our past. Cell phone use in cars is just another boogey man that the government is using to control us “for our own good.”

Consider the fact that around 24,000 people die every year from falls, and 82% of those are over the age of 65 (source ). Using the logic that the government is using to try and outlaw cell phone use in cars, they should be allowed to force old people to wear not slip footwear 24/7 and force changes in bathtub design, and force all those over 65 to constantly use a walker whether they need it or not. Life is not risk free. Six times more senior citizens die from a simple fall than from distracted driving, and only a small part of distracted driving is related to cell phones. At what point do we say enough is enough. Let us live our own lives the way we feel is in our own best interest.

The government’s job isn’t to protect us from ourselves, but to protect our rights. It can and should hold us accountable if our risks hurt another, but not unless there is some actual damage, the mere idea that an action might cause damage is not the legal or moral grounds to outlaw that action. Just as we cannot arrest a person who might steal something they must actually steal it before they have committed a crime, we cannot and should not restrict what people do prior to that person actually damaging another. A fatality rate of less than 0.001 per BILLION miles driven does not justify restricting the rights of millions of people who can and do use cell phones while driving millions of times per day safely. Imagine if vaccines had to be so safe that only 1 in a billion uses resulted in a death. No vaccine could be used and none of the benefits of a vaccines could be realized if they were forced to have the same safety record that cell phone use while driving has.

As Americans we should all oppose National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman’s proposal to outlaw cell phone use in cars. It is a risk, and taking risks or not taking risks should be the decision of the individual. The government shouldn’t determine what risks you are allowed to take. That is tyranny.

From a Libertarian perspective, the LPF Platform states, "Government should confine itself to protecting individuals from aggression, coercion and deceit. We oppose all laws and regulations that attempt to protect individuals from the consequences of their own behaviour." Basically the old adage of “no harm, no foul” so long as your actions don’t result in the harm to anybody else you should be free to do as you please. That however goes with the responsibility of being accountable for any actions you take that do harm another; hence because driving a car is not a right, and the potential to do harm in excess of an average person’s wealth to repay, the requirement to demonstrate both the ability to operate a motor vehicle, and the ability to pay for any damages (insurance) you may do to another as a result of operating that vehicle are reasonable restrictions. However, it is not reasonable to limit your radio, cup holder, navigation device, or cell phone while driving that vehicle. Although sipping a cup of coffee while driving is a slightly risky behavior, you should only be accountable for any damages you cause another, not limited in your behavior if it might cause damage to another.

Whether it be salt, trans-fats, drugs, prostitution, or booze, our country has and is experimenting with prohibition in order to mitigate risks. All have proven costly, resulting in huge government intrusion into our private lives, and are failing to mitigate the risky behavior the government has sought to control. What these laws and regulations that are sincerely enacted for the good of it’s the people do is oppress the people of this country. Prohibition of risks that people want to take, and will take, has never in the history of man, ever resulted in anything but more central control in the name of good, and less freedom and liberty. C.S. Lewis was right when he said, "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Respected Atheist

2011-12-19T20:14:00.000-05:00

By Tom Rhodes, 12/19/2012

Christopher Hitchens, an atheist worth respect. Unlike the current crop of panty-waste, wimpy, spineless, cowardly, pusillanimous, atheists whose feelings are so fragile the mere site plastic doll in a toy manger at the city park sends them into a funk so deep that they must petition the government to protect their fragile egos. The Wisconsin based Freedom From Religion Foundation, demanded that a nativity scene in Texas be taken down because Jesus was an "insult to human nature" because He taught that "men were sinners" and would one day be held accountable for their sins if they didn't repent and would be sent to forever simmer over the flames of Dante's House of Pain. This action is a far cry from the style and substance of the late Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens rather than cry, whine, complain, and sue when he heard about carolers sharing “Silent Night” in a far away public place, would instead argue his point, engaging his fellow man without the shrill baby like crying and crocodile tears of today’s atheist. He would then trust the audience to decide. Even when he had his butt handed to him ,as when he debated Dinesh D’Souza, he remained civil, and showed a robust character worthy of respect. (Watch the debate here and decide for yourself)

I would think that atheists being willing to stare death in the face, mock God, and be completely willing to live their lives with no thought of the hereafter would be a tougher lot. But when a plastic doll in a poorly decorated cardboard box set to look like a Bronze Age feeding trough is enough to cause such anguish that they must petition the government to have such odious imagery removed from their vision. What next, is the atheist going to petition the government to stop the playing the overt Christian works of Bach, Handel, and Mendelssohn on NPR or in any public owned place? Atheists are stupid to think that the Christian stamp on the arts in the public will ever be eliminated. Unless, like the Islamists, they are willing to destroy all the temples, statues, and great works of art throughout history, what do the atheists propose to do to keep themselves and the world from being exposed to the Sistine Chapel, the works of Di Vinci, Angelo, or any of the other artists whose works so clearly display a Christian Worldview? Atheists will fail in erasing Christian influence in the public sector.

Atheists who want to ban Christian symbolism because they can’t accept what it represents, deserve no respect. They should be grouped with Islamists, and any others who think censorship of ideas they don’t like or approve is a viable means of promoting their beliefs. The impudence of atheists’ ideas and methods to eliminate Christianity from the public space is harmful to any who value liberty, and freedom. This kind of thinking has lead to our government to try and hold Christians accountable for the evil acts that other commit don’t like what Christians say. Imagine that in protest to a speech by Dinesh D’Souza talking about “What’s So Great About Christianity” that atheists riot and vandalize the building, and then the police hold D’Souza, not the rioters or those who promoted the riot, accountable for the damages done by the atheists?

Sound farfetched? That is exactly the new standard that our government is trying to impose upon all Americans by UN treaty (because they could never get a law passed that allowed such an abridgement of the First Amendment). This December, is highlighted by Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, negotiating a UN treaty that will put a “test of consequences” on speech and expression exercised in the USA. To put it succinctly, if a non-Muslim says something about Islam that Muslims don’t like and then Muslims proceed to riot or bomb or assault or kill, the non-Muslim will be held responsible for the damage and the crimes. Just imagine a local college newspaper publishes a cartoon showing Mohamed with a bomb in his turban in Walla-Walla Washington, and some Islamists riot and cause damage in Afghanistan because they saw it on the web, and the college student in Walla-Walla is held responsible for the murders in Afghanistan. If the US signs and approves a UN treaty with a “test of consequences” on speech and expression then the reporter covering the murder and genocide of Coptic Christians in Egypt, will go to jail when the local Muslims in Egypt riot over the images and story that show them murdering women and children. Even if the accounts are true and factual, the reporter will be held accountable for the actions of the rioters.

Christians have a distinctly different worldview. It is this worldview that upsets atheists and non-Christians to such a state that they would deny basic rights to freedom of expression those who have such a worldview. Modern apologist Dinesh D’Souza sums it up succinctly, saying, “Christianity makes sense of who we are in the world. All of us need a framework in which to understand reality, and part of Christianity's appeal is that it is a worldview that makes things fit together. Science and reason are seamlessly integrated in a Christian framework, because modern science emerged from a Christian framework. Christianity has always embraced both reason and faith. While reason helps us to discover things about experience, faith helps us discover things that transcend experience. For limited, fallible humans like us, Christianity provides a comprehensive and believable account of who we are and why we are here.”

The Christian world view allows Christians tolerate and accept those who don’t believe, and accept and promote the idea that all speech should be protected equally, even the speech of atheists. They don’t buy into the notion that there is some sort of right not to be offended, or right not to be made feel uncomfortable, or right to not have your beliefs challenged. This tolerance does not mean that they won’t criticize those whom they disagree, nor attempt to expose the moral depravity of some atheistic beliefs. This tolerance is however, what atheist uses to attack and attempt to remove the influence of Christianity from public spaces. If atheists are so fragile that the mere presence of Christian symbols in public around Christian holidays is grounds to bring the full force of government to bear against any who would not accept a secular humanistic belief system, how can they, with any credibility, fight for freedom of speech, freedom of belief, freedom of assembly, or freedom of thought in general? I long for the day that atheists, like Christians, defend the rights of all beliefs to express their beliefs in public, and debate them openly as Hitchens did; allowing people individually to decide for themselves the value of such ideas.

Most of today’s atheists like the Islamists cannot stand to have their ideas challenged. Their actions clearly indicate that they have no faith in the validity of their ideas. It is obvious that they must believe that atheist ideas would be damaged if subject to debate, criticism, or ridicule. Like Islam, their ideas fall flat when compared to Christianity, so they seek to silence Christianity. What is so bad about the Christian Message that they cannot tolerate it, or let others be exposed to it? If there is no God, then why do the actions and symbols of Christians, who in no way force or insist that others believe as they do, matter or impact atheists to such a point that they seek to censor and silence Christians? Is it the idea that God not man dictates what is moral and just? Is it the idea that we as individuals, not as a society, will be held accountable to be charitable to our fellow man? Is it the idea that God not man will hold each individual accountable for sin? Is it the idea that we are all sinners, and that repentance and acceptance in Christ, not the actions of man, determines our place in the hereafter? How do any of the basic tenants of Christianity do any harm to atheists?

Obviously many if not most of today’s atheists have no character, no conviction, and fear being challenged. Many if not most of today’s atheists cannot tolerate others having a worldview different than their own. One can disagree with, but still respect an atheist like Christopher Hitchens, he never called to have any Christian symbol removed, and openly and publicly debated and promoted his beliefs, and more importantly never tried to silence those who disagreed with him. Although I repeat myself, regardless of what you believe, atheists who want to censor Christian symbolism, deserve no respect.

REEs make Green Tech a Fashion Statment

2011-12-18T10:32:00.003-05:00

By Tom Rhodes, 12/18/2011

“Investigating Rare Earth Element Mine Development in EPA Region 8 and Potential Environmental Impacts,” is the title of the study released in August 2011. In it’s study EPA reported on several sites located in the intermountain West, from Idaho to Colorado, which could become only the second REE mining operation in the entire country. (LINK) This study reported extensively on the possible sources of contaminants and waste byproducts associated with all mining, and especially those concentrated in REE-related extraction. This study clearly explains why Green technology is not actually “Green” and why US plants producing such products as photovoltaic cells have closed (even with federal funding) and moved to other countries.

The truth is so-called “green” tech, is more hazardous to the human health and the environment than burning coal to make electricity. The EPA reports:

“…every ton of rare earth elements produced generates approximately 8.5 kilograms of fluorine and 13 kilograms of flue dust. Additionally, sulfuric acid refining techniques used to produce one ton of rare earth elements generates 9,600 to 12,000 cubic meters of gas laden with flue dust concentrate, hydrofluoric acid, sulfur dioxide, and sulfuric acid. Not only are large quantities of harmful gas produced, alarming amounts of liquid and solid waste also resulted from Chinese refining processes. They estimate at the completion of refining one ton of rare earth elements, approximately 75 cubic meters of acidic waste water and about one ton of radioactive waste residue are produced. The IAGS reports China produced over 130,000 metric tons of rare earth elements in 2008 alone (IAGS, 2010). Extrapolation of the waste generation estimates over total production yields extreme amounts of waste. With little environmental regulation, stories of environmental pollution and human sickness remain frequent in areas near Chinese rare earth element production facilities.”

The volume of hazardous waste produced for each metric ton of REE is vast. To put it in terms understandable the average car weighs about one metric ton (2204 lbs), that is the amount of radioactive waste produced for each metric ton of REEs. In addition about 20,000 gallons of acidic waste water is created (the amount that fills a large swimming pool). The reason China produces 95% of the rare earth elements is not just because they can be found in China, but because it is one of the few places where they can be mined. In the US the EPA would not allow the vast amount of pollution associated with REE mining to even be considered. These REEs are are vital for green-energy products including giant wind turbines, hybrid gasoline-electric cars and compact fluorescent bulbs.

Consider “Green” Power like wind; there are two tons of REEs used in the permanent magnets of every 3 MW wind turbine. That means that 2 tons radioactive waste and the equivalent of 130,000 swimming pools of acid water waste are generated for each turbine. Nuclear power per KWH is far less damaging to the environment, including less radioactive waste per KW of generated electricity. Explain how “green” wind power is again?

Since China owns 95% of the REE’s they set the price. REE’s prices have skyrocketed because demand is artificially higher (we demand “green” tech) and there is a single government controlled source. “The high cost of rare earths is having a significant chilling effect on wind turbine and electric motor production in spite of offsetting government subsidies for green tech products,” said Michael N. Silver, chairman and chief executive of American Elements, a chemical company based in Los Angeles that supplies rare earths and other high-tech materials.

From the EPA report;

“Permanent magnets represent the staple clean energy technology of future green economies. They constitute main components of lightweight, high powered motors and generators due to their production of a stable magnetic field without the need for an external power source. Permanent magnet motors power contemporary electric, hybrid electric, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, while permanent magnet generators produce electricity from wind turbines (USDOE, 2010). The key element derived samarium-cobalt permanent magnets dominate rare earth technology because they produce a magnetic field in a much smaller size. The samarium-cobalt permanent magnet also retains its magnetic strength at high temperatures making it ideal for clean energy and even military applications, including precision guided munitions and aircrafts (IAGS, 2010).

Permanent magnets work in conjunction with high efficiency rare earth based batteries to store energy in electric, hybrid electric, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (USDOE, 2010). Current generation hybrid electric vehicles use a battery with a cathode containing a host of rare earths including lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, praseodymium, and cobalt (Kopera, 2004). Each hybrid electric battery may contain several kilograms of rare earth materials (USDOE, 2010). Plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles require even greater storage capacity and higher power ratings than typical hybrid vehicles. In light of this, automakers will likely use the lithium ion battery, increasing demand for yet another key element. Scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory estimated one lithium ion battery contains 3.4-12.7 kilograms of lithium depending on proprietary design (USDOE, 2010).”

Hybrid cars, like Toyota’s Prius, contain around 25 pounds of rare earth elements. “Green” technology uses twice the REEs of regular vehicles. So if you do the math on the amount of REEs used by hybrid and electic cars sold in the USA have used over 5 MILLION pounds of REEs. We won’t even go into the energy used and waste generated “re-cycling” used up cars laden with REEs.

Now take the lowly lightbulb; we are being forced to purchase CFL’s not traditional incandescent lightbulbs. CFL’s are getting more and more expensive, had if you breakone you need to have a hazmat suit, evacuate your home, and treat your floor like a hazardous waste site, but at least they are “Green.” The coust of CFL’s is going up and up; why? Because of the amount of REEs involved in their production. REE costs are climbing at unprecedented rates. Here’s what GE has to say about it; “Rare earths are undergoing extreme cost increases due to unprecedented market forces. In less than 12 months, costs of some rare earth oxide materials used in lighting products have experienced increases ranging from 500 percent to more than 2,000 percent, and they continue to climb. For perspective, if the rate of inflation on the rare earth element europium oxide were applied to a $2.00 cup of coffee, the new cost would be $24.55.”

And why are REEs so expensive, and why aren’t mines opening up in other countries? Again from GE’s Rare Earth FAQ; “In addition, increasing environmental standards and growing labor wages have resulted in the development of fewer mines.” In not so politically correct terms, the EPA and US federal regulations make mining REEs in the USA cost prohibitive.

It’s going to get worse. China, acting like a sensible owner of it’s own resources, will keep more and more of it’s REE for use within China. In its latest report, "Rare Earths & Yttrium: Market outlook to 2015, 14th edition 2011," international metals and minerals research firm Roskill said much of the total output would go to Chinese manufacturers to address the demands of domestic industry, leaving only a small amount for export.

This explains why even after receiving lots of US Federal Dollars (stimulus money) BP closed its US Photovoltaic manufacturing plant and moved it to China. Having to import REEs from China puts you into a business that will not be allowed to compete. The cost of REEs exported from China will become too expensive.

This is not China’s fault, other countries including the USA have REEs that could be mined. We choose not to do so for environmental and political reasons. No company in its right mind would take the risk and costs associated with mining REEs in the USA under current federal regulations. Knowing China has vast reserves and could flood the market making it impossible to sell your REEs, and the huge costs associated with mining in a manner which meets US federal environmental standards,

Green tech and materials will not be done in the USA. Green tech requires REEs, our Government has regulated green tech out of the country. It is also regulating traditional energy out of business like coal generation of electrical power. If you didn’t know better you’d think that liberal greenies want the US to exist at third world energy and technology use.

We may want green tech like more wind mills, but they are hugely expensive, going to get more expensive, and will not be able to be created in the USA because of the scarcity of REEs. BP recently ceased production of solar cells at its Frederick, Md., plant and laid off 320 of the 430 employees. Thus ending all of BP’s solar cell manufacturing in the U.S. Green jobs promised by Obama, are being killed by Federal Regulations.

Until we solve the resource problem associated with REE’s, “Green” technology will remain cost prohibitive to the average person. Just as “Green” tech CFL’s now cost as much as much as 10 times traditional tech incandescent lightbulbs. The Chevy Volt costs more than double the same vehicle powered with traditional tech (it would be 3 times the cost if not for government subsidies), only the very wealth making a fashion statement can afford “Green” tech.

Drive-By Results

2011-12-09T07:41:00.001-05:00

By Tom Rhodes, 12/9/2011

Anti-gun types are using the very tragic and horrible deaths of totally innocent children killed with stray bullets from drive-by shootings as a rationale to call for more restrictions on private gun ownership. Drive-by deaths are horrible tragic events, with totally innocent victims. The tragedy of such cannot be overstated. The cure proposed by progressives with good hearts is however baseless. It ignores basic cost benefit analysis, consideration of the causes, and consideration of what the unintended consequences may be. Deaths by drive-by shootings are rare, much rarer than the instance of citizens using firearms to protect themselves from crime. Around 2 million times a year people use firearms to protect themselves from criminals. The unintended cost of removing arms from citizens will not be a reduction in drive-by shootings but will be more crime.

What progressives fail to even try to address is the cause of drive-by shootings. Drive by shootings are not new, they are a staple of gangster movies depicting the events of prohibition from almost a century ago. Who hasn't seen a movie adaptation of a Tin-Lizzy rambling down a Chicago street with gangsters Tommy-Guns blazing out the window at their rivals? The question progressives should be asking is why these events occur. Most typically drive-by shootings are a drug gang seeking justice from another. Just as during prohibition, gangs resort to violence to settle their differences. The problem then as now is the same; Government interfering with the free and voluntary exchange of goods that forces those goods onto the black market. People selling and buying on the black market have no societal methodology to redress their grievances; hence it is Government, not guns, which caused the problem.

Consider beer; it is a mind altering product which is legal with reasonable restrictions (age to purchase, quality, etc). Beer is freely traded between producers and consumers. It is a product that can easily be made at home, and has been in use from before man recorded history. Man has always used and seeks mind altering substances, the use of which does not infringe upon the rights of any other person. When was the last time you saw a shootout over a beer deal gone bad? You don't, why? Because people purchasing and selling beer can and do have access to the legal system to redress their grievances. If you are sold bad batch of skunky beer that is undrinkable, and the seller fails to replace the product or refund your money, you can take that person to court. Our duly established government protects your right to receive the product promised for the price agreed upon; contract law to be exact. If however the government made beer illegal, people would be forced to purchase it on the black market. The problem is now that it's on the black market, if there is a disagreement between the seller and buyer, they no longer have access to courts to redress their problems; sellers and buyers are forced to redress their problems on their own. Sellers of products that are on the black market cannot use the police or courts to report stolen goods so must depend upon their own ability to provide security and enforce justice. The logical result is gangs, gang wars, graft, corruption, poor product quality, high prices, and violence in the streets. We saw this during prohibition, we see it now. Government banning people from purchasing products they want always results in black markets and the associated gang violence and problems. Even the old Soviet Union had these same problems with all kinds of goods that the government controlled rather than the free market. I like many others have stock piled 100watt light bulbs, hoping to benefit from the black market that will soon exist. I should see a 1000% profit, simply by having a product people want that the government has outlawed.

The solution to drive-by shootings is not disarming law abiding citizens, it is to eliminate the reason for gang warfare; eliminate the need to spend $15Billion per year in law enforcement; eliminate the root cause. Legalize drugs just as we legalized beer, and we will see huge benefits including reduction of our prison population by over 50%, and a sharp decrease in violent crime. This is not to say that hat legalization of drugs implies approval of drug use. Ending the war on drugs does not mean endorsing drug use, any more than ending prohibition meant endorsing alcohol consumption.

The Downside to legalization is that it may result in some increase in drug addiction. We did see an uptick in alcoholism after Prohibition was repealed. But the claim that drug legalization will lead to massive addiction has not been realized in those countries, like Portugal, who de-criminalized drugs. The child killed in a drive-by shoot-out between drug gangs is a total victim. The adult who decides to take drugs is not. We can agree that there will be some Americans, who will become addicts after legalization, who otherwise might not, however we must also consider if preventing those addictions is worth the terrible price we are now paying, in police costs, whole segments of our population incarcerated, international drug control efforts, border security, foregone tax revenue, overdose deaths, corruption and violence.

It is plainly obvious that drive-by shootings, and the violence we see across the country is not acceptable. People with good hearts want to do something, to take some action to stop such a senseless waste of human potential. The knee jerk reaction that if we just got rid of the guns the violence would not happen is misguided. Guns simply equalize the weak and the strong. Like a baseball bat, crow bar, hammer, machete', chain, or knife, a gun is just a tool which can be used for good or evil. Outlawing the ownership or possession of a tool, will not achieve the desired results, just as outlawing drugs is a failure outlawing guns will be a failure. People will purchase on the black market what they need and want if the government restricts those items from the free market. To end this kind of violence, as exemplified in drive-by shootings, we need to end the reason that it occurs. That reason is government interfering and making criminal the products that people wish to voluntarily purchase. It's not the tool used in the drive-by that is the problem, it's the inability of people to use legal means to redress their grievances (police and courts) because of government regulations, which forces them to seek justice at their own hands.

It is a shame that there are good hearted people who only see more government as a solution to problems caused by the government. Progressives never consider that eliminating the government from interfering with the free voluntary exchanges in goods and services that don't infringe upon the rights of others as an acceptable solution to problems that were cause by government interference in the first place. From the Drug War to the Mortgage Meltdown, government interference with free markets has had disastrous and expensive unintended results for everybody. Wishing that the tool (firearms) used in violence were removed would stop the violence is naive and misguided; the cause of the violence is not the tool but the government regulations. Nowhere in history has society ever been able to stop people from using mind altering substances. Some people want to impose their idea of how others should live on all of society and their belief that such laws will make things better has never worked and never will. The one thing that does work, is protecting the rights of all individual equally, and allowing individuals to make decisions on how best to live their lives so long as they don't infringe upon the rights of others while allowing them to benefit or suffer the consequences of those decisions, has proven to be best for everybody. Making arms illegal, does neither, and infringes upon individual's right to self defense. The idea that getting rid of guns is a solution to any problem we have is absurd, not well thought out, based on emotion not fact, and if implemented doomed to fail, as it has every where it's been tried. Drive-by shootings are just one unintended consequence of government interference in free markets.

The Moral Value of Effort

2011-12-06T14:52:00.001-05:00

By Tom Rhodes, 12/7/2011

Imagine you are a mildly disabled couple with no employment, if you apply you are currently eligible to receive more than $1,200 a month in public housing vouchers, plus state and government disability checks and food stamps. Not only is there is no requirement to show your net worth and assets, but they are not considered, the only thing considered to be eligible is your income. Wages not wealth are what we tax, and use measure a person's ability to pay.

Wages are not considered a person's own but your labor is considered the government's who determines what part of those wages you are allowed to keep. Our whole system is based on taxing the labor of those who work; it is assumed if you don't work you have no access to money. This is why the average person living on welfare has color TV, Cable, AC and Heat, Microwaves, a car, and lives in an apartment or house with more square feet per person than the average middle class European. Significant numbers of people on welfare are better off living on the dole than trying to live on the wages commensurate with their skills, and can and do live without working better than if they worked, the incentive to work and increase their skills is not there. We reward those with no skills or ambition. This is not to say that there are not people truly in need, but that number is far less than the numbers of people who actually live on the dole.

Actually being needy is not a requirement for government "charity." Consider this couple, they live in a million dollar mansion, etc, and have huge amounts of accumulated wealth, can afford to give to charity and travel the world, yet receive tens of thousands of dollars from the government a year because their income indicates that they live in poverty. No not everybody is abusing the system this much, but why are we giving money to anybody who can support themselves but won't. Our current welfare system is immoral.

The reason why the US and Germany are arguably the most successful in the world, is they share as societies a basic moral value. These values can be summed up as follows: Effort should lead to reward as often as possible. People who work hard and play by the rules should have a fair shot at prosperity but not a guarantee. People should be rewarded monetarily based on enterprise, merit, and effort. People should be rewarded for exercising self-control while sloth and envy should not be rewarded. Our government and other institutions should nurture responsibility and fairness and shame irresponsibility and favoritism.

However there are a large group of people who see things through poorly shaded lenses that cloud their vision with an image of a permanent class war. They do not think it matters how people conduct themselves, they only consider the final outcome of who has and does not have wealth. Rather than expect a person to be self-reliant they assume any person who does not have wealth is poor because a person of wealth purposefully withheld either opportunity or property. They do not consider the effort put into creating and accumulating wealth to have any more value than breathing. These people are generally liberals, progressives, leftists, socialists, etc, and all firmly believe that resistance to redistribution of wealth is greed and avarice and treated with outrage.

Our current financial crisis came from bankers buying off politicians and both getting rich off of securing mortgages to people who were not qualified to repay them. Even now the government is requiring banks to grant loans to people who cannot repay them, in order to be "fair." We still reward sloth and envy those who legally acquire wealth. We know this yet, the left, our press, the government, and the banks refuse to even talk about letting the people who caused the crisis to be held responsible. Our massive debt is the problem, not a lack of taxes, yet the left never even considers any strategy to unwind the gigantic debt buildup. Because the basic structural problems plaguing our economy are not attended to, nor does our current leadership, regardless of party, appear to be willing to address them, as we currently see, the result is that the United States suffering from a horrible crisis of trust. The result of this lack of trust is crippling slowdown in growth, a paralyzed government, and the strangest direction of politics in modern history.

Business is sitting on massive wealth, but will not invest it because the uncertainty of whether they will be allowed to grow those investments. If investment and labor cannot be reasonably assured to produce prosperity, while government cronyism and theft are visibly rewarded and while we routinely provide for those who can but don't provide for themselves, you cannot expect people to work and invest with such uncertainty and obvious moral corruption. The very moral fabric that created the most prosperous and generous country the world has ever seen is being torn apart by power hungry collectivists who seek to redistribute the wealth of this nation not based on the idea that effort should lead to reward as often as possible, but based on the idea that regardless of effort everybody should receive the same rewards, and the ruling elite should receive a lot more.

We cannot subsidize behaviors that make us poorer, and penalize behaviors that make us richer and expect people to choose to behave in a manner that enriches themselves and the country. If you want people who have legally acquired wealth, to invest that wealth (not hoard and protect it), you cannot penalize the profits from investing and take away the fruits of their labor to such an extent that they are better off doing nothing with their labor and wealth than they are to exploit both for their and their communities betterment. Why would a person or company make an investment whose efforts are taxed to such an extent that if they simply purchased gold or other commodity and did nothing, they would make more off the increase in value due to inflation, than the profits from investing?

Here is an example; we need massive expansion to our aging power grid. Power companies are regulated extensively but guaranteed a profit (about 10%). If you have money to invest and after you pay the taxes on your dividends the real profit from investing in a power company is a modest but because power companies are government protected monopolies such investments are fairly safe. This investment would allow the power company to expand and make improvements. Now if you invested that same money in gold, you have an even safer haven for your wealth and the return is greater than the investing in a power company. There is not growth, but the wealth is protected against inflation; the growth and payout from the power company doesn't even cover real inflation. Obviously the incentive is no longer to invest but to protect wealth and assets. It is the government regulation that severely restricts the profit that can be made by power companies, and takes the profit that can be made by investors, and inflates the value of dollars, which has made conditions such that those with wealth are better off sitting on it that putting it to work. Since we now punish people who invest and work hard, and reward hoarding wealth and doing nothing, people are no longer investing and working hard, but are doing everything they can to protect what assets (wealth) they have.

Eliminating those who would protect the very moral fabric of our society is essential for liberals and the Wall Street - Government Complex. The ruling elite do not garner wealth through effort but by graft. They make the less fortunate dependent upon the largess of the ruling elite to buy their votes so they may remain in power and suck the wealth and labor from those who labor. Explain why congress and its employees are exempt from insider trading laws. Explain why the ruling elite guaranteed known bad mortgages, and rewarded bankers and themselves with massive amounts of money at the expense of the taxpayer. Explain why it is acceptable to have generations of people living on the dole. Explain why with more and more spending and more and more government control that the actual output of government education continues to get worse not better, especially for those who live dependent upon the government for their every need. Explain why they have restructured and tried to change the purpose of government to supply the needs of everybody, rather than provide protection for the rights of all individuals equally. Explain why we reward sloth and envy and punish self-reliance and effort. Obviously those who would return the US to a system where effort, enterprise, productivity, and self-discipline were rewarded and bad governance, sloth, and envy were not rewarding, would result in the ruling elite losing both wealth and power. The protection of individual liberty, although historically prove to enhancing a societies overall wealth and well being, diminishes central control and power, the ruling elite would rather all lose liberty than they have less power.

It took a little while longer than I expected but the ruling elite in DC have succeeded in eliminating or silencing all the presidential candidates who are willing to address the true problems facing this country. Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Gary Johnson, and all the third party candidates have effectively been disqualified by the media and ruling elite in Washington. Even though Ron Paul, is still taking 2nd place in polls, and the people resonate with his message, the press and ruling elite will not address the issues he and others running who represent half of Americans who don't live off the government. All these candidates the collectivists don't want you exposed to share a common belief. They believe it is moral and just, and have a willingness, to hold the government accountable for its spending and seek to reestablish the basic moral formula that made this country great, based on moral values that has historically proven to provide the highest standard of living for the most people, a moral formula that so called progressives hate and refuse to acknowledge or address. That moral formula is simple, Effort should lead to reward as often as possible.

Frustration of Statists

2011-12-04T05:00:00.000-05:00

By Tom Rhodes, 12/4/2011

Big government statists regardless of party, especially Obama are frustrated. The people don’t want their repackaged tired old statist ideas, and the pressure the people are putting on elected officials is making it almost impossible for the ruling elite to impose bigger government on us. Obama has often lamented the restraints the constitution put on “getting things done” and openly commented he wished he could bypass congress. His actions of using bureaucratic actions to make end runs around congress show his contempt for having to get approval for his plans by representatives accountable to the people.

Just recents news we see liberals trying to eliminate accountability to the people in order to “get things done.” The people don’t want what liberals and big government types are promoting, to get around being accountable to the people, Governor Perdue argues that accountability through elections should be “suspended,” saying:

"You have to have more ability from Congress, I think, to work together and to get over the partisan bickering and focus on fixing things. I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that. The one good thing about Raleigh is that for so many years we worked across party lines. It's a little bit more contentious now but it's not impossible to try to do what's right in this state. You want people who don't worry about the next election."

Long time policy wonk and prominent member of both Clinton and Obama’s white house, Peter Orszag, wrote:

To solve the serious problems facing our country, we need to minimize the harm from legislative inertia by relying more on automatic policies and depoliticized commissions for certain policy decisions. In other words, radical as it sounds, we need to counter the gridlock of our political institutions by making them a bit less democratic.

In plain English, Orszag wants the government not to be accountable to the people. Accountability, as evidenced by the 2010 elections, makes instituting big government, big business, socialist central control very difficult. Because there is a huge part of this country that doesn’t want more government, more central control, and more bureaucracy, the statists and ruling class are having problems. They call it gridlock, when what they mean is they want to impose their wishes on the population without any accountability. What they call “getting things done” is in reality taking actions the majority of people don’t want. Accountability to the electorate galls the ruling class. They are openly saying so.

Compromise with ruling elite, like Obama, is a lot like compromising with a cannibal chief. The cannibal’s starting position is to roast you entirely and feed you to the tribe; your position is to have a salad for dinner. The cannibal then offers a compromise just roast your arms and legs; your position is to explore the alternative of dining on fruits and nuts. When you refuse to accept the cannibal’s final compromise of just roasting one of your haunches, you are chastised for being uncompromising and causing gridlock. The cannibal’s fundamental belief is that you belong to the tribe, and that your rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, are subservient to desire of the ruling elite who have the right to use you to pacify the tribe’s hunger.

The majority of people want to fix things, the government has failed, what we want is for the government to get out of the way and let us take care of ourselves. Self rule, a level playing field, equal opportunity, etc. What we get is bailout of banks and multi-national conglomerates, protection for privileged, increased pressure to restrict individual rights, inflation, ignoring the rule of law, wealth redistribution, and total contempt for the people. Obama has said he wants to “fundamentally” change America; the problem is that we people have and are rejecting the change he is trying to impose upon us.

Why is it when statists can’t get their way they way, they want to: limit accountability to the electorate; limit the speech of dissent; and demonize, mislabel and marginalize those who don’t support their policies? The liberal ruling class is totally disconnected from main stream America; their actions and words indicate that they believe that the people should be controlled and thankful for their rule;

It has taken a while, but we no longer have citizen legislators, we again again have a ruling class who are chaffing at the historic limits that the people placed on them. The ruling elite don’t believe in freedom, they don’t believe in being accountable to the people. They have been trying since 1787 to squash the idea that our government was established to protect the rights of the people not rule over them. The Preamble to our Constitution is a slap to the face of the ruling elite both here and around the world: “We the People . . . establish this constitution.” The idea that government is limited and the freedoms of the people are not is unacceptable to the ruling class. How dare we, mere commoners, pressure and remove from office those “rulers” who don’t do as the people think is best; don’t we understand that we are to be ruled, not served by the elite. The ruling elite are now openly saying that government of the people, by the people, and for the people must perish from this earth.

2011-12-03T05:00:00.000-05:00

Liberty vs the Left
Equality, Fairness, and Ethics

By Tom Rhodes, 12/2/2011

How do liberals (leftists) compare to those who believe in liberty and smaller government when it comes to Equality, Fairness, and Ethics.

Leftist yell that those who want smaller government are against equality, we are not. While generally recognising the benefits in Scandinavian-style homogeneity: crime tends to be lower, people are less stressed etc. The problem is a content size country like the USA, consisting of a vast and diverse population, is not and cannot be homogenous; nor will the policies and laws that work for a small homogenous society work for ours. The primay objection however is is not that egalitarianism is undesirable in itself, but that the policies required to enforce in involve a disproportionate loss of liberty and prosperity, Historically outside small nations with homogenous populations, egalitarian laws when implemented result in an overall lower standard of living and poorer quality of life for the society as a whole (look at USSR, Cuba, even the USA since implementing the War on Poverty).

The left accuses those who want smaller government as being against "fairness." The problem is that the left doesn't want fairness, they want socialism. If you promote more government, please explain how it's fair that public sector employees get paid more than private sector employees for the same jobs. Public school teachers get more than private school teachers is just one example. How is it fair to make our children and grand children pay for todays spending because we are unwilling to live within our means? How is it fair to the boy who leaves school at 16 and starts paying taxes to subsidise the one who goes to university? How about being fair to the unemployed, whom firms cannot afford to hire because of the social protection enjoyed by existing employees?

Of course the one subject the left avoids is ethics. Leftists rant and rave about how uncaring people on the right are, but when the truth is told it is they who lack ethics, and moral clarity. There is virtue in helping the poor, donating time, money to help others, but there is no virtue in being forced to do the same. Choosing to give your money to charity is meritorious; paying tax is morally neutral. Evidence is clear that, as taxes rise, and the state squeezes out civic society, people give less to good causes. It is also clear that those who believe in smaller government give more to private charity in both time and money than those who want and promote government solutions to our problems.

Equality, Fairness, and Ethics all subjects the left tries to claim superiority but when the truth is revealed the liberals support less equality, less fairness and lower moral action.

Obama Demands Higher Electricity Rates

2011-12-02T13:54:00.001-05:00

By Tom Rhodes, 11/28/2011

Obama and his policies are causing residential electricity rates to go up far faster than inflation. While real earnings are dropping or stagnant, and the consumer price index is up by 1.7% the average increase in electricity is as much as 5.1% annually. Electric rates depend on public policy and regulations not fuel costs, not regular operating costs, but the government’s interference.

The Oliver Wyman consulting firm recognizes this and predicts strategies for business because increased electric costs now are adding to “financial strain at the worst possible moment.” Their recent report designed to help utilities states, “There is a growing need to increase electricity prices. These rate increases are largely being driven by environmental, regulatory, and security requirements.” Even though pricing on some fuels, such as natural gas, has declined electricity rates are up an average of 2.7% per year.

The problem is that because of regulations and new Obama EPA rules, coal generated power is becoming cost prohibitive to produce. Required retrofits cannot economically meet existing environmental requirements; this means that good working but older coal-fueled plants must be pre-maturely retired. Existing and proposed EPA rules are having a significant impact on rates—with the vast majority of compliance costs falling on residents. The Wyman report states: “If these are enacted and enforced, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff has informally estimated that 8% of our electric generation capacity, representing 81 Giga Watts of the nation’s generating capacity, will need to be retired.” 81 GW is a huge amount of electricity,

EPA does not technically require shutting down any plant, the rules are such that plants cannot be operated economically. When asked about the about the mass retirements of coal-fueled power plants as a result of EPA regulations, Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator, said “I can’t say what a business will decide to do. Some businesses are investing in nuclear, some are looking at natural gas. There are states that are leading the way on solar or wind.” Obviously Obama and the leaders he have chosen, like Jackson, don’t see the resultant increases to the average consumer’s electricity rates as their problem.

Obama, the EPA, and Department of Energy’s actions make it clear. They only want new power from Wind and Solar, but they don’t even really want that, what they want is to put the USA at third world status for energy use. Solar and Wind power cost well over 5 times traditional electric generation costs. But the impact of solar and wind are even greater than traditional methods of generating electricity. On average industrial solar parks occupy 50 acres and have a capacity factor of one megawatt. Do some simple math and you will see that to replace the 81GW of coal generated electricity with solar would occupy 4 Million acres of land, and because of the intermittent nature, require 81GW of stand by natural gas turbines. That much infrastructure must be paid for by the people who use electricity, thus expect a 5 to 8 times increase in the cost of electricity.

Wind power is even worse; the industry average is about 17,000 acres to reliably generate 50 megawatts. That means to replace the 81GW of coal generated electricity, which Obama’s EPA’s new rules and regulations will require retiring, with wind power would occupy 27 Million Acres. There is no way environmentalists are going to allow millions and millions of acres of land to be occupied with solar and wind power. The damage to the environment would be devastating.

The cost of the infrastructure will have to be borne by the people who purchase electricity. Power companies only earn about 10% profit, not nearly enough to finance the expansion that the regulations will require; they must to meet Obama’s government regulations increase the cost of electricity. The disposable income for most Americans has shrunk; it is not the market nor Wall Street but rules and regulations that are driving the increase in electricity costs. Obama and the government are increasing energy’s share of people’s disposable income by 12%.

The facts are clear “While the future outlook for electricity rates is largely dependent upon public policy and regulatory decisions, one fact is clear: substantial capital investments are required by the nation’s utilities to modernize the electric grid and meet proposed environmental requirements,” this according to the Wyman report. Those capital improvements must be paid for, power companies do not make excessive profits, 10% cannot be called excessive, so obviously to make the government mandated and not wholly necessary improvements, the money must come from those who purchase electricity, there is no other means than raising electricity rates. Look at history, increased energy costs always lead to slower growth, and lower standard of living.

The environmentalists don’t talk about it but since 1990 the US population rose 22% but our electricity use dropped 2%, no other industrialized country can say that they use less electricity per person than they did 20 years ago. Although not the top per capita consumer of electricity we are among the largest energy users; we are also the leading manufacturer of goods, which takes energy, the leader in research and development in virtually every industry, which takes energy. While remaining the leader in hugely energy intensive activities which benefit the entire world we have managed to decrease our electricity usage. No other country can make such a claim. This is not good enough Obama and the bureaucrats he appoints, they want the US to stop being a leader in everything. They think we have and use too much, have too much prosperity, so want to take from those who work and earn and give to those who don’t.

When you look at your increasing power bill remember it was brought to you not by the power company, but buy the government. When you see the increase in the cost of manufactured goods from the USA, remember it was brought to you by increased energy costs, caused by the government, not the power company or the manufacturer. When you see even more manufacturing moving off shore where the regulatory burden is less, remember those jobs went overseas because of the government. Obama has said and wants the USA to consume less, do less, and have less. Attacking energy and raising its costs is his method.

If you keep putting the same people into office you have been, expect the same results. These results will be more government in every part of your life. From your energy bill going up, to being forced to purchase government approved everything. You have the choice, do not elect anyone who wants to expand government and aren’t calling on reducing the size and influence government has on all people. More and more government always leads to less liberty and freedom, which has historically proven to decrease not increase the overall standard of living for a society.

Is it Compromise or Capitulation?

2011-12-02T13:50:00.001-05:00

By Tom Rhodes, 11/29/2011

It’s not a Tomāto - Tomato thing. Capitulation in the name of compromise has destroyed the country. That’s right, it’s broke, the USA doesn’t work anymore, Why? Compromise! The press, Wall Street, Bankers, Government don’t want the people to elect people they don’t control. They shut down the most consistent candidate who had done outstanding in the polls, Ron Paul. Even Jon Stewart on comedy central has recognized that it is obvious that the establishment in Washington doesn’t want Ron Paul. Why? Because he won’t compromise on issues the Wall Street-Washington Cabal deem should not be chosen by the people. How dare the people elect Representatives who don’t compromise on what big-money big-government powerbrokers dictate?

Washington considers real raises in spending, but not as much as planned, to be actual cuts in spending. If you look the real spending of government after “cuts” is still spending more than before the “cuts.” Politicians who say they won’t vote for increased spending and keep their word are considering un-compromising. Let’s look today at where we would be if the right had chosen to “compromise” throughout our history: What would the world look like if our Founding Fathers had worked a compromise on taxes, minerals, and property rights with King George? Where would Obama be working today if Lincoln compromised and let the states below the Mason-Dixon Line have slaves? And how would Europe look if Churchill and FDR compromised with Hitler, letting him kill all the Jews he wanted if he didn't advance against England? Where would our civil rights be if Everett Dirksen had compromised on the Civil Rights Act of 1964? And where would Christianity and God's plan of salvation be if Jesus had decided to compromise on sin and the cross?

These at the time were all considered extreme right wing positions. Why is it extreme to expect our government to be limited, to not spend twice what it can collect in taxes (especially when it collects such vast sums of money), why is it extreme to want to monitor the Fed and see how our money is created and who gets it, and why is it extreme to want to protect individual liberty and rights?

The press says Ron Paul is unelectable, but they won’t include him in their polls to even offer him as a choice. Even when he wins they talk about other candidates but not him. The press is trying to push non-Democrats into choosing a liberal in GOP clothing, we did that with G.W. Bush, we got more government spending, more government interference. Just because a person is affiliated with the Republicans doesn’t mean they are not a liberal, Bush’s policies were consistently more liberal than Bill Clinton’s. From No-Child-Left-Behind to TARP, Bush was a liberal president.

The GOP congress, since taking over January, has not accomplished any of what they promised. It was fully within their power to stop the expansion of federal debt, all they had to do was vote not to increase spending, since ALL spending starts in the House of Representatives they had control. Instead we have debt as far as the eye can see, official corruption and the most aggressive social engineering agenda ever to come out of Washington? House Speaker John Boehner’s capitulation and appeasement on the debt limit, set up the farce of a Super-Committee. Fully within his power was the ability to freeze the debt, he never considered it but went straight to compromise. Now the GOP has lost political power and has nothing to show for it. Since the GOP didn’t get anything they wanted, they cannot be said to compromise, but must be said to have capitulated.

The GOP complained about how much Obama had spent and how he was wrecking the economy and saddling our progeny with debt, and then they went ahead and gave Obama another $1.5 trillion in borrowed (or printed from thin air) money to spend. Money which must be paid for by the 53% of the population that pays federal taxes. My question is; in that compromise exactly what did the GOP get? All I see is capitulation being called compromise.

Obama’s corruption, from Solyndra and the green energy scam that looted the Treasury and lined the pockets of his political cronies, to giving away military aircraft contracts to Brazil which American companies were excluded from the bidding with no explanation, is clearly evident but ignored. How much evidence do we need to see? Obama’s administration insisted that Solyndra hold off any layoff announcements until after Election Day last year. The GOP is enabling Obama to act like a dictator. It is time we recognized that the GOP compromise is not compromise but capitulation to big-money big-government Washington bureaucrats and power brokers. Otherwise you’d see special prosecutors instead of the side show we are now expected to take seriously.

Promising to reduce the size of government, then “compromising” to just grow it a little slower, is all the GOP provides. The Republicans offer talk of liberty, stopping spending, eliminating entire departments, ending corruption, and limited government. Their actions show that they don’t mean it, they will instead “compromise” and trade your freedom, property, wealth, and hard work, for bigger government. With very few exceptions, like Ron Paul, they will not and have not challenged Obama as promised. Obviously the solution is not to elect anybody who doesn’t pledge to protect individual liberty, nor any existing politician of any party who consistently compromises to grow government. At least the Democrats don’t lie about wanting to expand government; the GOP has lost all credibility. If you want less government in your life you cannot stay with the major parties. They are simply two sides of the same coin with Wall Street on one face, and DC on the other. It’s what VoxDay calls the Wall Street – Washington cabal. There is however a choice. Here are the Objectives of the Libertarian Party, if you agree, then Vote Libertarian.

Recognizing absolute freedom of speech, religion, and association

Demanding Constitutionally-limited government

Ensuring minimal taxation and balanced budgets

Defending property rights

Asserting sovereignty of the State from unconstitutional federal interference

Asserting sovereignty of the Republic from unconstitutional international interference

Upholding the Second Amendment and the absolute right to self defense

Promoting a true free market economy

Defending personal privacy and the Fourth Amendment

Promoting strong national defense through a Constitutional foreign policy

Ending government corruption

Ensuring no individual, corporation or government is above the rule of law

Ending prohibitions on all personal activities that do not infringe upon the rights of others.

No offence but if you can’t agree with these objectives, I urge you to voluntarily find another country that would be more suitable to your desires, because on these objectives Libertarians will not capitulate or “compromise,” and we will work tirelessly to reach these objectives.

Constitutional Questions

2011-11-24T08:08:00.001-05:00

In a recent Editorial Judge Andrew Nepalitano asks a series of questions, starting with "What if the Constitution no longer applied?"

All Americans should look at our government and look at the questions the good judge asks. Then also ask ourselves, after answering these questions, is this the kind of government we want?

Here are all the questions he asks:

What if the whole purpose of the Constitution was to limit the government? What if Congress' enumerated powers in the Constitution no longer limited Congress, but were actually used as justification to extend Congress' authority over every realm of human life? What if the president, meant to be an equal to Congress, has become a democratically elected, term-limited monarch? What if the president assumed everything he did was legal, just because he's the president? What if he could interrupt your regularly scheduled radio and TV programming for a special message from him? What if he could declare war on his own? What if he could read your emails and texts without a search warrant? What if he could kill you without warning?

What if the rights and principles guaranteed in the Constitution have been so distorted in the past 200 years as to be unrecognizable by the founders? What if the states were mere provinces of a totally nationalized and fully centralized government? What if the Constitution was amended stealthily, not by constitutional amendments duly passed by the states, but by the constant and persistent expansion of the federal government's role in our lives? What if the federal government decided whether its own powers were proper and constitutional?

Don't miss the judge's latest Constitution-defending book, "It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom"

What if you needed a license from the government to speak, to assemble or to protest the government? What if the right to keep and bear arms only applied to the government? What if posse comitatus – the law that prohibits our military from our streets – were no longer in effect? What if the government considered the military an adequate dispenser of domestic law enforcement? What if cops looked and acted like troops and you couldn't distinguish the military from the police? What if federal agents could write their own search warrants in defiance of the Constitution? What if the government could decide when you weren't entitled to a jury trial?

What if the government could take your property whenever it wanted it? What if the government could continue prosecuting you until it got the verdict it wanted? What if the government could force you to testify against yourself simply by labeling you a domestic terrorist? What if the government could torture you until you said what the government wanted to hear? What if people running for president actually supported torture? What if the government tortured your children to get to you? What if the government could send you to your death and your innocence meant nothing so long as the government's procedures were followed? What if America's prison population, the largest in the world, was the result of a cruel and unusual way for a country to be free? What if half the prison population never harmed anyone but themselves?

What if the people had no rights except those the government chose to let them have? What if the states had no rights except to do as the federal government commanded? What if our elected officials didn't really live among us, but all instead had their hearts and their homes in Washington, D.C.? What if the government could strip you of your rights because of where your mother was when you were born? What if the income tax was unconstitutional? What if the states were convinced to give up their representation in Congress? What if the government tried to ban you from using a substance older than the government itself? What if voting didn't mean anything anymore because both political parties stand for Big Government?

What if the government could write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event, the Constitution be damned? What if the government was the reason we don't have a Constitution anymore? What if you could love your country but hate what the government has done to it? What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if I'm right? What if the government is wrong? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?

Reality Check

2011-11-22T20:18:00.001-05:00

by Tom Rhodes, 11/21/2011

President Obama ran and campaigned for president on a “Hope and Change” platform. He said he wanted to fundamentally change America. More recently Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner said, "We're facing a very consequential debate about some fundamental choices as a country."

Exactly what kind of change are they talking about? Obama’s and Geithner’s actions and deeds seem to indicate that the fundamental change they are trying to make is to take away the right for individuals to remain free and make their own life choices and instead have those life choices made collectively “as a country.” This basically means that they believe that a few government bureaucrats should have the authority to make decisions and impose them on hundreds of millions of people for their own good.

Thomas Sowell put it this way; “the more fundamental question is whether individuals are to remain free to make their own choices, as distinguished from having collectivized choices, "as a country" – which is to say, having choices made by government officials and imposed on the rest of us. “

Obama lamented that he cannot just dictate what he thinks should be done as the totalitarian leaders do, ignoring the chilling history of totalitarianism in the last century. History is clear, economic central planning was such a widely recognized disaster that even China and other socialist governments were abandoning it as the last century ended. Compare the standard of living in countries with economic freedom to countries without economic freedom and it is clear that all people do better when living in free markets. The decline of the US as an economic super power is self evident, and it is directly related to increased government control of markets, and the economy. From dictating the kind of light bulb we use, to what kind of grease we can use to make pie crusts, to how much salt we can put in our food, to the thousands of unfunded mandates, to the absurdity of San Francisco trying to ban circumcision, to the ultimate nanny-state micro-control of our lives ObamaCare, we are witnessing a government which once limited now believes that it has the power to dictate every nuance of how we live our lives.

Obama and the liberal leaders now in Washington have forgotten the purpose of our government. It was established to protect the unalienable rights which all men are created, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The purpose is not to provide for all the needs of every individual or to see that those who through poor life choices or bad luck have are given the wealth of those who through good life choices and hard work attain.

Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner was right when he said, "We're facing a very consequential debate about some fundamental choices as a country." The choice is between liberty and totalitarianism. The TEA Party protests were to demand Liberty, the Occupy protests were for redistribution of wealth, and totalitarianism. Think about it what do you want, liberty and freedom knowing you may enjoy the fruits of your hard work but have the chance to fail, or the nanny-state where you will be equally poor as your neighbor?

Vive la Différence

2011-10-11T17:47:00.000-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, 10/11/2011

Usually I'm longwinded and have trouble getting a point across in less than 2000 words but this is really pretty simple. The difference between the TEA Party and Occupy Wall Street are huge and fundamental:

The Tea Party Movement is protest against abuse of political power and the increasing marginalization and disrespect for truths, such a protection of life, liberty, and property, that define American freedom.

Occupy Wall Street is about lust for political power, about defining what others should have, and redistributing and spending what belongs to some else.

Statist Rags

2011-10-11T17:44:00.000-04:00

By Tom Rhodes 10/11/2011

The St. Pete Times Tuesday October 11, 2011 editorial was based on a recent Philadelphia Inquirer editorial, even though the times treats it as a news article. The basis is: if the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania won't issue a person a carry concealed weapons (CCW) permit then Florida shouldn't be allowed to issue such a permit to the same person. Florida issues concealed weapons permits to all applicants who hold a valid driver’s license in their state of residency, are mentally sound, have never been convicted of a felony, and have had firearms training. Philly won’t issue CCW’s to anybody they don’t like.

Because the government in Philadelphia either cannot or will not convict a person of some crimes, but that person is “known” to be a criminal, they think that is justifiable reason to restrict a person’s rights. The Times laments that the State of Florida may grant a CCW permit to a person whom the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has denied. They seem to think the Florida standard of guilty until PROVEN innocent is extreme. They want to Florida to accept Pennsylvania’s standard of guilt by association. The Times tries to make this out to be a State’s Rights argument. They blame the agreement Florida has with Pennsylvania honoring the CCW permits issued from each other.

It is not a State’s Rights issue; Pennsylvania is free to change its laws, and/or modify its agreement to only honor Florida CCW permits from Florida residents or not honor Florida CCW permits at all. The Times fails to even recognize that people are Innocent until Proven Guilty, and accepts the standards of guilt by association, and guilty until proven innocent. Not one time to they think about the rights of individuals, nor consider that a person should be treated as innocent until proven guilty. Yes, by the standard of treating people innocent until PROVEN guilty, some guilty people will get through the cracks, but as a society we long ago determined that it is better for some guilty people to go free, than infringe upon the basic rights of all people.

So what is the point in noting that the Philadelphia Inquirer and St. Petersburg Times have a bias against citizens having guns? Both of these newspapers have proven and long standing “liberal” bias, and have consistently held anti-gun positions. The point is not to further expose known truths about them, but to note that they are in fact not liberal newspapers. A liberal, by definition, is someone who is favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties. The articles from both papers lament the fact that Florida honors and protects civil rights over the interest of the State. They conclude that the State should have the authority to restrict an individual’s civil liberties without due process or having to actually prove a person is guilty of something. They want to allow the State to instill a penalty for merely being suspect of committing a crime. They in fact are not “liberal” newspapers but “statist” rags. They actively promote principles and policies of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty. This is the very definition of Statism.

My open question to the Philadelphia Inquirer is why don’t you condemn the City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for restricting fundamental rights of its citizens without due process?

My open question to the St. Petersburg Times is why do you consider Florida’s belief and protection of the concept that all individuals are “Innocent Until Proven Guilty” and as such should be treated as innocent unless actually convicted of a crime do you find radical or extreme?

Obama Makes Orwell Look Like An Amateur

2011-09-27T19:45:00.001-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, 9/27/2011

As a word smith George Orwell was a piker compared to Obama. Consider these words from Obama: “… but [if] you are serious about the deficit overall—then part of what you have to look at is unjustifiable spending through the tax code …” The meaning is clear, taking less of the money people earn, is to be considered unjustifiable spending, as if the money was the governments to spend and allowing mere people to keep their earnings is the government graciously “spending” on that citizen. To accept Obama’s premise is to accept that the money American Taxpayers make is the government’s money and not the person who labored to earn it. Obama has clearly said that the government owns your labor, and that merely allowing you to keep the money which you traded your labor to acquire is him spending on you. What is the difference between that and serfdom?

Obama counts what are clearly tax increases, as spending cuts if they are not used for to increase the governments size and expenditures. He wants us to believe that by not borrowing money, and thus not paying more interest, “interest saved” as “spending cuts.” How do you explain a $1Trillion dollar increase in taxes as a $200Billion spending cut, because that is the amount of money saved in interest by not having to borrow that trillion dollars. Orwell would have been amazed at how the actual implementation of the ideas his famous and prophetic novel “1984” espoused.

The press and the government talk about the “rising cost of farm subsidies” real people and reality are that there is not a rising “cost” of farm subsidies, but a rise in spending on farm subsidies. Obama, his administration, and the left leaning press all have a clear objective in using obfuscating words and speech, to fundamentally change America from a land that protects and values individual rights to a land of bigger and bigger centralized government.

History has proven over and over again that centralized power leads inevitably to statism, despotism, and the loss of individual liberty. The Obama administration is installing more bureaucrats with more power and ushered in unprecedented public sector growth. His administration is continually granting more authority to unelected bureaucrats and removing from the congress and hence people, the power to effect and change laws and leadership. Obama has noted that congress, accountable to the people and special interest groups, cannot pass laws and regulations such as “cap and trade” because the people make themselves heard, and the legislature, liking their jobs, does as the people want, not as Obama and the corporate ruling elite would dictate. So rather than convince the people, and congress, he is usurping power bureaucratically doling out power and favors as he sees fit. Despotism through bureaucracy is no less despotic than through a dictator.

The US and its constitution is unlike any other governing body in the world, past or present. Unlike even the current E.U. Constitution the US Constitution is predicated on preserving the liberty of the individual. Our Declaration of Independence clearly states the purpose of our government; saying that it was established by men to protect the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Providing for the needs of the masses, means of monitoring and controlling people, etc. are not the purpose of the US Government, and to the chagrin of Obama, the US Government is severely limited by the US Constitution. The American system of government with its term limits, open primaries, direct elections of representatives, electoral college to force distributed power to all the states, and limits on government power, provide real and historic safeguards for preserving American Liberty. Liberty which many in the world hate, and which millions have chosen, even risking their lives, and the ruling elite find detrimental to increasing their power, is the hallmark of the American Ideal.

America does not always lived up to her ideals. The abomination of slavery and racial segregation were some of America’s historical failures. But even though we didn’t always live up to our ideals our history is clear that we valued and changed to meet and advance towards the founding principles written down by Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and others. The very ideals and principles that were used to establish our government have withstood the test of time. American citizens appreciate the innumerable benefits of our Constitution, and want to preserve the principles enshrined within it. The citizens of the US have begun to fight vigorously against the European socialization of the greatest country in the history of the world. Both parties hate and attack the TEA Party movement. They can’t control it, so demonize it. The growth of the Tea Party isn’t a reaction to the economic slump but to how the ruling elite of both parties have dealt with it. Spending more, expanding government power, helping big banks and business while letting the average Joe fall. The people wanted the and expected the rule of law to apply, even to failed banks, they wanted the Federal Reserve to just reorganize failing banks and stop there, just as they have with past bank failures. Allow those who have excess of the FDIC insured values, suffer, not to tax everybody to cover for the bad decisions of big banks, big government, and big business. If GM and Chrysler couldn’t make it, let them go the way of Ramble, Stutz, and dozens of other US car makers. We expected the government to treat GM like it did American Motors, not ignore the law, and grant favors to those it choose, and thwart those it didn’t.

The TEA Party, represents the average person, not special interests, or groups, its focus is economics but it has come to represent the wide variety of objections to the way things have been going in this country. It’s an amorphous socio-political phenomena like others that appear from time to time. Not a planned orchestrated movement. The ruling elite hate it, and more importantly hate the fact not even its own members are interested in becoming a political party, let alone be absorbed by one of the Big Two. This popular movement doesn't have to deal with problems of party organization, party platforms or party consensus. Its sole purpose is to reduce the power the ruling elite in Washington have over the people. Because Washington hands out favors etc, big business, liberals, corporate cronies, all have a vested interest in the TEA Party going away. It is more a random collection of dissatisfactions than any kind of conspiracy, it would not and could not have come into existence if either of the major parties inspired confidence. Like any vacuum, it will be filled, the TEA Party fills the vacuum created by both parties whose sole purposes are to gain power and protect their crony benefactors. The people are and have spoken, Enough already!!

Last year’s elections were not pro-GOP, they were anti-government. The Hubris of elected leaders earned the thrashing incumbents and the Democrats received at the hands of the people. Current polls indicate that November may see a lot of new faces in Washington, regardless of party, the people have had enough of government. The people are tired of hearing about “increased revenues” and “government investments” from an unquestioning media; these clever Orwellian euphemisms for “More Taxes” and More Spending” and less liberty don’t fool us anymore.

It means equal treatment under the law, a level playing field, etc. Allowing illegal labor to come in to this country and depress wages by expanding the labor market, or rewarding business to move jobs to overseas companies isn’t fair. Wealth redistribution isn’t fair. Contrary to what the ruling elite want to believe, and want the people to believe, the people are not stupid; as eloquently as Obama tries to create terms and words to distract and misinform, the people get it, and have rejected the socialistic Marxist ideology and ranting that he and the corporate cronies he protects are promoting. The People understand that protecting individual liberty will not result in equal outcomes. They want and believe in the founding principles of this country, and realize that the government has created a loaded deck, where big business, unions, big banks, and the big government are protected, and where competition and opportunity for the common man is suppressed; equality under the law is no longer even talked about; rule of law doesn’t apply to government or big business. The Orwellian form our government is headed has been recognized. The TEA Party is the people’s response. We do not accept the premises that the government is everything, owns everything and has rights to our labor and distribute it as they see fit. We will not be fooled by political double speak. We are a sovereign people not serfs. The ideas which Obama expresses, and believes, that the government rules the people and the people labor to serve the government, is completely opposite of why we established a limited republic to unite the states. Government of the people and by the people is not dead, and as such, Obama’s so-called progressive ideas must perish.

Statism vs. Freedom

2011-08-22T17:43:00.001-04:00

By Tom Rhodes 8/22/2011

Right now the US is polarized. The political and economic direction that the people in Washington and press are talking about they have not correctly identified. They people in DC, statists, have the press in their pocket and are not addressing the actual sentiment of the American people and the direction the people want to move. They are coaching their responses in degrees of government control while the actual mood of the country is towards freedom not statism. These are the main positions and points of contention in the USA:

More Spending (control of resources by the state) vs. Cutting Spending (control of resources by individual people)

Obamacare (state control) vs. Vouchers and Free Market Medicine (controlled by individual people)

Energy Planning (State Control, heavy regulation) vs Industry/consumer determined energy policy

Targeted tax cuts (State favors) vs broad tax cuts (treat each individual equally)

Dodd-Frank (State Control, more bureaucracy) vs Free markets (individual control)

Higher levels of Regulation (state control) vs Lower levels of regulation (individual responsibility)

More agencies and departments (more State control) vs elimination of agencies and departments (less state control)

The true divide we are seeing is those who want some ruling elite to make their choices for them and eliminate individual responsibility, over the freedom of individuals to make their own choices. Statists don’t want to allow individuals to have freedom, they want to concentrate more control into the hands of fewer people. They do so with the promise to individuals to be “free” from the responsibility and consequences of their choices, in exchange for obedience to the state.

The non-violent way to settle this is with elections. We had such an election in 2010, statists got their but kicked. Freedom loving people declared the want less central planning and less state control. The ruling elite are not happy (nor are the lame stream press). Thinking that this was an anomaly, in Wisconsin the statists tried to retake control through recall elections. The elections were clear and they statists failed. The people want less not more state control. Any pundit or politician telling you otherwise is deluded or a liar. Statists are running scared.

Our government is very scared that they cannot control elections as they have in the past. The explosion in communications makes it harder to control the news people see, and ideas they share. Because of this, and the heavy losses in the last election to people who are not loyal to the state, but are loyal to the people who elected them, Statists are demonizing not just the TEA Party, but any person who argues against more central planning and control. Proof of statist fear can be seen in the recent Homeland Security and FBI announcements to be on the lookout for Christian white males using cash to purchase hurricane and disaster preparedness supplies, self reliant people who do not trust the government as their protector, are potential terrorists. How exactly does the U.S. Department of Homeland Security view terrorists? You can see who the government fears in a new public service announcement that encourages Americans to report "suspicious" behavior to authorities. Watch Here.

The funny thing is that in reality what the government tells us to fear and look out for is not the profile of actual terrorists. Checking the Bombathon 2011 Scorecard , the first 20 days of Ramadan there has been over 100 terror attacks around the world in the name of Islam, with over 450 associated deaths. In the same time period there have been zero attacks and zero deaths in the name of all other religions. Comparing reality to government flyers and video’s it is obvious that the only reasonable explanation is that the government fears the vote self reliant citizens who love freedom more than it fears the bombs and murder by blood thirsty Islamic zealots who favor statism and despise western freedom.

This would explain why statists refer to the TEA Party as a terrorist organization, but won’t call Hamas or Hezbollah terrorist organizations. Statists accuse those congressmen who would vote as they promised their constituents terrorists, kidnappers, and worse for using their vote to enact change; change that they hope will move the country away from state control and towards liberty. Statists equate a legal vote to limit the government with real bombs killing innocent people.

None of the polls indicate that more state control is popular, congress is polling at an all time low and the chief statist, Pres. Obama, is bombing out. This is not party specific; the people are rightly blaming, centralized control, and not the Democrats or Republicans directly. Note the massive increase in independent and third party voter registration. We in the Libertarian Party are seeing massive growth, new leadership, and more interest in libertarian ideas they ever in our history. It doesn’t take a genius to see that things like the DoED, with more centralized planning, and statist control of education has failed; if you point this out the statists will attack you as wanting to end education, when the reality is the people want to end central planning of education.

The biggest boom to our economy, ever, was post WWII, when there was massive contraction of the government and centralized control and planning. Reducing central planning, eliminating state controls like rationing, and eliminating thousands of government employees and soldiers, resulted in the greatest economic expansion the world ever saw. If you compare real liberty, standards of living, and quality of life in countries with more vs. less state control, you will find that it is quite clear that the more economic freedom and protection of private property found in a country, the better off the people of that country are. We are seeing the US standard of living drop as we see more central planning; we see the standard of living increase where we see decrease in central planning and control in other countries. The problem is that with more central planning comes more power for statists, power they desire and won’t easily relinquish. Statists, regardless of party, firmly believe that it is better to have state control of the economy and politics at the expense of individual liberty. The simple fact is that less central planning results in more freedom.

What do you support freedom, or statism?

Uncivil Discourse? Bolderdash!

2011-08-19T10:33:00.000-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, 8/19/2011

I hear and read cries of people being “tired” of all this partisanship. The president, the press, and pundits claiming that “Never Before has the house/senate been so partisan, so uncivil, yada yada yada.” This is unmitigated Bolderdash. Today’s politicians are virtual bastions of etiquette, following in the footsteps of Emily Post compared to the speech and actions in the History of US Legislative and presidential discourse.

First consider the death of one of our most famous forefathers, Alexander Hamilton. Aaron Burr, the Al Gore of his day, lost the US presidential election in 1800 by a handful of votes. Thomas Jefferson was elected instead and made his defeated opponent Vice President. Burr blamed his defeat on Alexander Hamilton, one of the great figures of the American Revolution. Hamilton – a close friend of Washington, co-framer of the constitution and a former head of the army – had successfully persuaded a tied electoral college to swing behind Jefferson. so when Vice President Burr discovered a few years later that Hamilton had bad-mouthed him in a later, he issued an instant challenge. Hamilton – by then retired from politics – was opposed to dueling on moral and religious grounds, but the duty of honor was greater and so, on July 11, 1804, both men crossed the River Hudson with their seconds to what is now New Jersey. Burr was determined to shot his rival dead, which he did. Hamilton, as he was shot, discharged his own pistol into the ground. There was huge public revulsion at the death of such a popular figure and the Vice President found himself on the receiving end of some seriously bad headlines. He was deprived of his New York citizenship and forced in to hiding. In later years, he was shunned by society and died destitute n Staten Island in 1836.

Although he is ranting and raving a lot, I don’t see Al Gore challenging Dick Chaney or anybody else to a duel, much less killing those who words caused him political harm.

Now let’s consider the legislature, specifically that noble and dignified body the US Senate. On May 19, 1856, Republican Senator Charles Sumner gave his famous "Crime Against Kansas" speech in the well of the Senate. In his over three hour oration, Sumner attack Senators Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina, both pro-slavery. His attack on Butler was especially harsh and made fun of the Senator's speech defect.

Two days later, fellow senator, Democrat Preston Brooks, nephew of Congressman Butler, approached Sumner while the latter was writing at his desk in the Senate chamber. The room was nearly empty, but there were enough people present that an accurate account of what happened could later be assembled. Brooks approached the sitting Senator and said "Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine." With that, he began beating Sumner on the head with his heavy cane, which was topped with a gold head. Sumner could not rise up as his desk was bolted to the floor. Brooks continued to beat him until Sumner tore the desk from the floor and staggered up the aisle away from his attacker, blinded by his own blood. He collapsed in the middle of the aisle, at which time Brooks continued his attack until his cane broke in two. Several senators tried to intercede on Sumner's behalf, but Congressman Laurence Keitt of South Carolina, an ally of Brooks, stood by the men with a pistol drawn and shouted "Let them be!"

Senator Sumner took three years to recover from his wounds. The Massachusetts General Court reelected him in November 1856 anyway, believing that his vacant chair in the Senate chamber served as a powerful symbol of free speech and resistance to slavery. Congressman Brooks became sort of a hero in the South, a symbol of that area's resistance to perceived bullying from the North. Northerners were outraged. Senator Sumner, elected to his seat as a Republican, became a symbol for anti-slavery forces. Congressman Brooks was subject to an expulsion vote in the House of Representatives that did not pass, but nonetheless gave up his seat for the rest of his term. The people of South Caroline promptly re-elected him at the next election. In honor of Brooks, Pierceville, a small Florida town located near the site of Ft. Desoto, changed it's name to Brooksville. Both men remained in their offices for the rest of their lives.

Simply put, politician’s calls for more civility are just political drama, used to avoid having to answer tough questions. What today is called uncivil discourse is milquetoast compared to our history. What we need are not politicians who won't say what they think, and provide us safe middle of the road platitudes. We need bold politicians who are not affraid to say what they believe, stand up to those whom they don't agree, and let the votes fall where they will. We have a man who running for president right now who has remained stedfast in his beliefs, and not affraid to tell not only the other party but his own party what he believes. That's Ron Paul.

Reading between the party lines in the Iowa straw poll

2011-08-15T16:25:00.003-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, 8/15/2011

The Iowa GOP straw poll and the media response clearly demonstrate that the statist parties do not want nor respect the actual desires of the people.

Minnesota congresswoman and Iowa native, Michelle Bachmann, spent millions and won the Iowa straw poll. As a local and “favorite son” of Iowa, one would expect that the citizens of the great state of Iowa support one of their own. However, history has shown that nobody who has won the GOP Iowa straw poll (unless unopposed) has ultimately won, EVER! Although an entertaining candidate who sends liberals frothing at the mouth, which is always fun to watch, she will not win the GOP nomination much less the Presidency, and will be defeated fairly early in the primaries, the press and GOP leadership will see to that.

The results of the Iowa Republican straw poll of August 13, had Bachmann, edged out Ron Paul with a 4,823 to 4,671 victory. Ron Paul, despite what the main stream press says, won the debate last Thursday, and clearly has more popular support than the press or leadership in the GOP wants to recognize. Excluding Bachmann, Paul had more than double the votes of any other candidate, and the poll indicates that the rest of the GOP field does not have much popular support. The results of others were: (3) Tim Pawlenty 2,293; (4) Rick Santorum 1,657; (5) Herman Cain 1,456; (6) Rick Perry 718 (write-in); (7) Mitt Romney 567; (8) Newt Gingrich 385; (9) Jon Huntsman 69; (10) Thad McCotter 35.

It is clear that even with their national recognition Santorum, Cain, and Gingrich are in it so that they can hopefully set the direction the GOP want the nomination to go and have a voice in the primaries, not to actually win. The GOP and Press do not really want to recognize or accept the actual direction the people indicate they want the party to move. Romney finished 7^th, he is not conservative, does not believe small-government principles, and does not have popular support, and the albatross of Romneycare makes him unelectable; Yet according to the media, he is the front runner for the Republican nomination. Some in the press have declared that it is a race between Romney and Perry, the statists want the people to choose the candidate they prefer, not the candidate who voices the ideas the people actually want.

Romney is leading in corporate donations; Perry will be another large corporate beneficiary (big oil). The GOP elites in Washington do not want some outsider nominated. The current GOP nomination campaign will clearly demonstrate whether statist corporate cronyism or the people determine the course of the Republican Party. Last November the GOP elite and corporate cronies got caught with their pants down. The people through the TEA Party actually upset their apple cart, and the elected a good number of republicans who actually did as they promised, and voted to keep government spending down. They are being vilified by the press, the Democrats, and GOP leadership. Note the double standard in how the members of the TEA Party faction were treated for not voting to extend the debt ceiling, compared to the Democrats who also refused to vote for the plan.

I predict that the GOP elite and corporate cronies will do all they can to insure that they do not let the Republican nomination go to somebody who isn’t firmly in their pocket. I believe they would rather lose the presidency, then allow a person who they don’t firmly control, and who won’t continue to support the expansion of government, get nominated. The very idea of a GOP candidate who doesn’t support corporate supremacy, and the continued control of the economy and people through government largess frighten them. The Republicans and Democrats are both statists, their only difference is the means of state control they support. The Democrats want state control by controlling the people, the GOP wants state control through corporations, and neither promotes individual liberty and freedom.

The idea that somebody with true libertarian ideas who has popular support, like Ron Paul, wins the GOP nomination is not something the statists will tolerate. They do not want the people to have the chance to choose a candidate who supports small government. Expect the press to ignore or denigrate any success of candidates with libertarian ideas. Expect the leaders from both statist parties, the Republicans and Democrats, to work together to kill any libertarian candidate. Expect them to do all they can to down play the significance of the TEA Party changing the election in 2010, and the TEA Party faction actually voting in congress the way they promised. Expect the Democrats to attack and make the TEA party look smaller than it is, and the GOP to try and co-opt the TEA Party, and move it to corporate cronyism.

There is a faction of the GOP, the Republican Liberty Caucus, which espouses and supports libertarian ideas. They support Ron Paul and other libertarian minded candidates. The RLC claims to be the small government, liberty-defending wing of the Republican Party. The current GOP nomination campaign will clearly be a test of whether corporate or RLC determine the course of the Republican Party.

The RLC more closely rrepresents the actual values of the people, as indicated by the 4671 votes for Ron Paul over the media and GOP leadership preferred nominees. As a Libertarian, in many ways I hope the RLC is not successful in its goals of re-introducing the values that started the Republican Party back to the GOP. Today these values are called libertarian. The RLC Statement of Principles reads much like the LPF platform. For the sake of my party I would prefer the RLC to realize that the corporate powers that control the GOP will not allow their success, and the best chance for true success is to abandon the GOP and urge all liberty loving republicans to join the Libertarian Party. The good libertarian that I am, my true hope is more than the success of the LP but my hope is for actual smaller government and more liberty in my lifetime, so I will cheer the RLC if they are successful and Republican Ron Paul is nominated. If the RLC fails, it will be a clear indicator that the GOP is just a corporate shill promoting statism through corporate cronyism and that the two-party system has failed the people of the United States.

Damned if You Do, Damned . . .

2011-08-13T08:56:00.001-04:00

By Tom Rhodes

We as citizens are now in the position that if we do as the government has asked us to do then we are to be considered terrorists. If you follow the recommendations provided by our government through FEMA and prepare for an emergency the FBI says you’re a terrorist.

The government through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, specifically advises citizens to collect stockpile and keep a "Kit" ready in case of emergencies. The FEMA site recommends that we stock our disaster kits with such items as:

Food that does not require refrigeration and has a long shelf life (MRE’s)

Emergency preparedness manual

Portable, battery-operated radio or television and extra batteries

Flashlight and extra batteries

Knife

Compass

Matcheas in a waterproof container

Waterproof storage containers

Maps

Cash and Coins

Identity theft is a major problem, many government web pages urge people to guard their personal information. One of the best ways to protect your identity is not to give it out and to use cash whenever possible. When somebody shows an interest or requirement to have your identity and know your business, common sense dictates that you should not provide that information.

The FBI has distributed a flyer to retailers, some of the purchases/activities that the FBI has requested they be on the lookout in a recently purchased flyer:

Waterproof Match Containers

Meals Ready to Eat

Night Flashlights

Paying with cash

Wanting to protect personal identity

This FBI produced flyer titled, “Communities Against Terrorism” states:

Preventing terrorism is a community effort. By learning what to look for, you can make a positive contribution in the fight against terrorism. The partnership between the community and law enforcement is essential to the success of anti-terrorism efforts.

Some of the activities, taken individually, could be innocent and must be examined by law enforcement professionals in a larger context to determine whether there is a basis to investigate. The activities outlined on this handout are by no means all-inclusive but have been compiled from a review of terrorist events over several years.

Included in the flyers is a request by the FBI that among other actions retailers:

Require valid ID from all new customers.

Keep records or purchases.

Talk to customers, ask questions, and listen to and observe their responses.
br />So if we are good citizens and do as our government asks by protect our identities and take personal responsibility to take care of ourselves in the event of a disaster by storing reserve food supplies, water, self defense armaments, cash and tradable goods, etc. then we have become “persons of interest” and domestic terrorism suspects.

I often say we have “Too Much Government.” When the very act of doing what some parts of the government asks us to do is now considered an indicator of terrorist activity or intent, it is clear that saying we have “Too Much Government” may be the understatement of the century.

This blatant example of Too Much Government had me worried and mad, then I remembered a quote by Thomas Jefferson that gives me hope.

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." ~ Thomas Jefferson.

Obviously a significant portion of the justly people fear the government. Just as obviously the government fears the people, especially people who are willing to take responsibility for their own security and wellbeing. Maybe, just maybe, this irrational fear of the government has for the people is an indicator that liberty is not totally gone, but it is a warning to us all, that the government is not our friend or benefactor but a necessary evil which will take our liberty with the slimmest of excuses and we need to remain vigilant against the intrusion of government tyranny into our lives.

The next eco-panic: Galactic Warming!

2011-08-01T09:28:00.002-04:00

By VoxDay, 7/28/2011

I see no other way to view this terrifying news from NASA:

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA's Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

"The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. "There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."

The governments and people of the world must act at once to end the threat to the environment of space. It is not just our future, or our children's future, but the future of the furry six-eyed children living on Xaraxifap VI that depends on our species ending the threat posed by our industrial lifestyle. Clearly, the only solution is to provide completely unaccountable power to a centralized institution of global government and pay for it with new hot space taxes.

We cannot permit the Milky Way to become the Steamy, Frothy Way! End Galactic Warming now!

Editor's Note, I was about to post a virtually identical commentary using the same data, but VoxDay did it faster and better, so I stole it and put it here.

At Some Point You've Taken Enough

2011-07-28T13:53:00.000-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, 7/28/2011

President Obama famously said “At some point you’ve made enough money.” The American taxpayer clearly told the government in 2010 when it elected a whole new batch of people to the house and senate, “At some point you’ve taken enough money.”

The deficit argument and debt ceiling fight are just statist distractions to try and fool the people. The government has already approved huge increases in spending every year for ever by adopting so called “baseline budgeting” which automatically increase every federal department and programs budget every year. All the cuts they talk about are cuts to how much they plan on increasing their spending not actual cuts. Enough already, we should be talking about stopping the automatic growth of government. The people elected representatives who promised not to put us any further into debt. They know that compromising on raising the debt will cost them their jobs. The shell game of automatic increases has to stop. Nobody else outside of government can or does budget that way. This was put into place around 40 years ago around the time of Watergate and Jimmy Carter. The people are tired of it, we look at actual spending and try to figure out why they expect us to believe that they are going to cut a Trillion dollars of spending over 10 years when their own numbers show the national debt doubling under that same plan.

The budget the house passed, the Ryan Budget, was not passed by the Senate, and Obama said he would veto it. This so-called draconian budget still increased government spending every year, yet both major parties said it was a “cut.” In no way can a budget that increases actual spending every year be called a cut. The statists in Washington are lying to us. They continue to lie to us, and tell us we’re too stupid to understand when we actually expect them to cut some spending. Not one of the statists, Republican or Democrat, is willing to tell the truth. Constant automatic growth of government spending (hence growth of government) is not sustainable. The government should take its own advice and think about sustainability, uncontrolled unchecked growth is not sustainable even for government. Do like you want the people of this country and the world to do, learn to live with less, learn to live simply, learn to be satisfied with less, . . . .

Obama wants the people to accept that there is a limit to how much they should be allowed to earn, but no limit to what government should be allowed to spend. A great many people through their vote and polls have said to Obama and Washington, at some point you’ve taken enough money. But part of the American way is you can just keep on taking it if you’re providing a good product or you’re providing a good service. We the people don't want government to stop fulfilling the core responsibilities. But Washington you are not providing good service, a good product, and are overstepping the core responsibilities we’ve empowered you to fulfill.

Café Reality

2011-07-25T08:46:00.001-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, 7/25/2011

President Obama is calling for Café standards to be 56mpg by 2025. News articles and editorials lament that in Europe people can buy 60+mpg cars but the car companies “wont” sell them in the USA. The blame the car companies and ignores the reality of mobility in the USA.

The first thing is that people in the USA purchase a car for the weekends, and suffer with it for commuting. The choice of a vehicle to pull a boat, a camper, or take a long road trip has a lot of different criteria; fuel efficiency is important but not as important as a vehicle that will do the job. Although a tiny euro-econobox get’s great millage, squeezing 2 kids, spot the wonder dog, luggage, gifts, and all the necessary stuff to take the two day 1200 mile trip to visit grandma is not something many people wouldn’t do twice. Once it’s all loaded down, the euro-econobox won’t comfortably climb over the mountains. So although for everyday driving, to work, to the mall, to school, etc. the euro-econobox is a viable solution, the savings in fuel economy, are lost if you have to rent a big vehicle a couple times every year for family excursions, and it won’t tow the boat.

Then there are the details that most editorials don’t tell us when they talk about how wonderful the 60mpg euro-econobox car is, other than the evil car companies won’t sell them in the USA. They are light weight, and usually have a diesel engine. This is a big problem in the USA, the greater cost of diesel means that there is no savings in owning one, but you do have the smell, and smog…. those engines don’t meet us pollution control standards so can’t be sold in the US. Thus our government has declared that to decrease some exhaust gases, like particulate carbon and NOx, we are willing to create more of other gasses like CO2.

Now don’t forget the weight, our pollution and safety regulations have added significant mass to every vehicle on the road today. Compare the 1970 VW Beetle to the 2010 VW Beatle. In 1970 The VW Beatle had acceptable but not great performance, got a real 25MPG, with a very inefficient, air cooled, 57hp, 1600cc engine (using zero ethanol gas, with today’s fuel it only has around 45HP). It weighed less than 1600 pounds. Today’s Beetle gets the same 25MPG. Why after 40 years does the same model car get the same mileage it did in 1970?

Weight, today’s Beetle is about half a ton heavier, it weighs over 2600 pounds, has an engine that is 67% more mass, puts out about 3 times the horse power, carries 67% more fuel, has pounds and pounds of insulation and other materials to make the ride and noise levels acceptable, and significant increases in suspension to carry the extra weight. It has about the same MPG rating as the 1970 Beetle because the USA’s regulations have force it to carry massive amounts safety and pollution control equipment. Although in production until 2004, the old original Beetle design was eliminated from the US market 25 years before that because it could not meet the continuously more restrictive US regulations. In 1987 you had your choice of several 50+ MPG cars in the US. The Suzuki Swift, Geo Metro, Honda CRX, and similar models come to mind. Those cars continue to be sold in other parts of the world but not the US.

One of the big reasons we don’t have high MPG cars in the USA is that unlike other countries, the nanny state of the USA is not willing to let the people choose a car with the level of safety and pollution that accompany a tiny 1400 pound diesel car. The euro-econobox Fiat 500 being brought to the USA, is only going to get about 33MPG, and have less room and comfort than other cars with similar mileage ratings, etc. The Fiat 500 being sold in the US is not actually the same Fiat 500 sold in Europe. It is a different design that is built in Mexico. There are at least 45 major changes; The headlamps were raised 4 inches to meet US lighting laws; The wiper blades are longer to comply with the US law that stipulates how much of the windshield must be kept clear; The doors and lower pillars have steel reinforced braces to meet side impact regulations; The side airbag in the U.S. car extends to the back seat, it doesn’t in Europe (even if you never have a passenger in the micro back seat, you are having to pay for extended airbags); The spare tire was moved under the car to improve floor strength. The requirements to have the care sold in the US are so great, it virtually had to be redesigned.

All these changes to meet regulations cause increased weight, which means it needs more power, which means we cannot use the efficient little 57HP diesel the 60mpg euro version uses. This engine won’t meet the emission standards, and the added weight required for the US model means that the Fiat 500 won’t perform at acceptable levels with any of the smaller engine options available. Thus in the USA we only get the largest high performance 1.4L engine option. At around $16,000 other than for its retro-Italian styling it’s hard to fathom why people in the US would choose the Mexican built Fiat 500, over the roomier, equally fuel efficient, better guaranteed, choices available. (On another note, the tax dollars used to help out Chrysler, built a Fiat plant in Mexico not the USA.)

The government killed the big American Sedan, It used to be that the family bought a big sedan or station wagon that could pull a boat, was safe and was good for the great American road trip. The Ford LTD, Chrysler Newport, Chevy Impala, Buick Roadmaster and similar models were the family car. The government added café standards, and other regulations and those 12 mpg cars had to be eliminated, some of America bought the smaller cars the ruling elite in Washington wanted them to buy. Overall America’s needs and wants didn’t change, but the government rules did, so we continued to buy vehicles that did what we needed and wanted, trucks, 4 door pickups, SUV’s, conversion vans, etc.; a vehicle big enough to haul the camper, protect the family, with room enough to spread out on a long road trip. Truck and SUV sales didn’t sky rocket because America’s tastes changed, the government interfered with the free market and tried to force people into what the ruling elite in Washington wanted people to drive, not what met their needs and desires.

This is what it looked like at the end of the 70’s, a family sedan, today that picture would have a big SUV. I just can’t see a Fiat 500 towing an Airstream across America. Americans didn’t quit wanting to travel in comfort, on their own time schedule going where they wanted, but the government sure is trying to make it harder. The USA is not Europe, we drive thousands of miles more than they do on the other side of the pond. We are not all bunched up in old cities. This country grew up around the automobile, our suburbs, malls, drive-in’s, all were designed around cars and mobility. We have demanded safety standards the rest of the world doesn’t think are necessary. We won’t tolerate the same kind of pollution Europe does.

Only pinhead pseudo-intellectuals would think that American car companies don’t want to sell high MPG cars. American car companies sell what Americans want to buy. We do want fuel efficiency, just not at the expense of safety. We do want fuel efficiency, just not at the expense of ability to tow a trailer. We do want fuel efficiency, just not at the expense a comfortable ride on long trips. Like most Americans I don’t need my SUV for my everyday use, I purchased an SUV because a couple times a year, I need to pull a trailer with my motorcycles and camping gear for a week in the mountains. The alternative say pinhead pseudo-intellectuals, is to own and use a small car and rent a truck or SUV for the few times you actually need it. The problem is that the cost of driving a small car everyday and renting a bigger vehicle for the few times I actually need it, is greater than driving the SUV every day.

I live in a rural part of the country and drive 20000 miles per year, of that about 3600 miles is for vacations. My SUV gets an honest 20mpg. Do the math and for the 20000 miles per year I drive every year, I use about 1000 gallons of fuel. If I followed pinhead pseudo-intellectuals suggestion and I’d drive my 33mpg car 16400 miles I’d use about 500 gallons of fuel, and I’d rent an SUV as needed for my 36oo miles of vacation driving. If you do the math assuming $3.50 per gallon of gas, if I had a small car for everyday that got 33MPG and rented an SUV when I needed it, I’d save about $1120 in fuel costs, Add to that about $1200 in renting an SUV for my two week-long vacations to the mountains. It’s actually cheaper to drive my SUV everyday than it is to own a small car and rent an SUV for the few times I need it and I get the added benefit of a more versatile, more comfortable, and safer vehicle everyday not just on vacations.

The needs and desires of the American people drive the choices we make in vehicles. The government getting in the way doesn’t change the needs and desires of the people. CAFE standards killed the large American sedan. They did not change why the large American sedan was so popular. What the CAFE Standard did was move the people to mini-vans, pickups, and SUVs. This is typical of the unintended consequences that come with government regulations. I predict an unintended consequence of Obama’s increase in the CAFE standard will be a huge increase in the purchase of commercial vehicles by the people which in reality will be used for non-commercial purposes, like towing the boat, camper, and taking long trips. The market will provide the people with what they want in spite of how the government tries to control what people spend their money on.

Liberty vs. Security Just a Matter of Standards

2011-07-21T13:32:00.003-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, 7/20/2011The difference between statists (that’s both Democrats and Republicans) and libertarians is that libertarians respect liberty for themselves and others while statists have little or no respect for the liberty of others. Now if you believe that federal government’s primary roles is to take care of people, regulate their economic activities, and maintain an overseas military empire that intervenes in the affairs of other countries, then you are clearly a statist. This description clearly defines Obama as a well as Bush as statists.

Libertarians in the USA are different from statists, although they have been born and raised within the statist environment; they have broken free of it, in both an intellectual and moral sense. Unlike statists, we recognize that statism isn’t freedom at all. Libertarians want to be free, with all that freedom entails.

Of necessity people who want and accept freedom tend to be to be people of high standards. If a free person takes actions that are not in his best interest, he must be prepared to take the consequences for those actions. A free person doesn't have government agencies bailing him out of every difficulty or excusing his behavior because life isn’t “fair.”

The truth is that unfree people usually succumb to having or acquiring low standards. Under the ruse of being "fair," the government removes the consequences of behavior. This results in the removal of feedback for our actions. With no negative feedback to unproductive or immoral actions, standards sink like a rock. When our motivation to provide for ourselves, and treat others as we would be treated, is removed; when there are no negative consequences to our behavior; when we accept that others have the right to tell us what to do, and tell our neighbors what they must do; when we accept that we are entitled to the labor and property of others; we have lost our the ability to self-govern. Dependency becomes a way of life. Not only do unfree people not respect their own liberty, they demonize those who would claim freedom for themselves.

The lack of respect for liberty, leads directly to lack of respect for life and property. The natural course of events is for authoritarians to reward themselves with special dispensations, to participate in gross immorality and to use imprisonment, torture and murder as tools of control. Nobody could have thought that those terms could be used to describe the US government. Now it is plain that the statists whether Democrat or Republican, that are currently in Washington share significant qualities that were once only considered qualities of unaccountable dictators.

Because too many have become effeminate and will sacrifice their liberty, freedom, and self-respect to provide security for themselves and/or their children, individual freedom, liberty and rights are no longer respected. No matter how much effort is put forth in ensuring "security" no one is ever truly secure. In order to guarantee complete security, you would have to accept restraints on your liberty to the point that you are no longer free. Worse yet to secure this “security” you must restrain your fellow man and take his property as well.

One of the biggest projections that fearful statists have is that those who value freedom and liberty would be the first to call on the government for help, if they were in need. This is merely the projection of their fear onto others. They cannot fathom that a person would rather suffer the consequences of life and their own actions than give up their freedom. They have been so wussified by the belief that there should be no suffering for making bad decisions, nor suffering if nature doesn’t treat you fairly, that they cannot even comprehend the idea that there are those who have such high standards and belief in themselves that they prefer freedom to security.

The total lack of respect for liberty is evident, they create regulations as to what food you can buy, what chemicals you can put in your body, and new even want to regulate the level of success an individual is allowed to obtain. Statists demonize anybody who wants liberty. They demand that everybody accept their low standards and reject the high standards and accountability that free men expect of themselves and others. They are more worried about how students feel about themselves than how they perform. They fear risk, so attempt to regulate it out of existence. They hate the fact that it is free people willing to take risk, invest, work, who don’t accept that their success/failure is based on the actions of others, who created a government that had severely limited powers, whose sole purpose was to protect the natural rights of the people from all enemies foreign and domestic, and allow the people them self-rule, not rule by some elite. No place else in the world embraced the scary idea that to ensure freedom, the people should allowed to govern themselves, that the consequences of self-governing are preferable to the security of statism.

Obama has repeatedly said that he believes he is a ruling elite who should have the authority to do what he thinks is best for everybody, and that the labor, property, and capital of all individuals should be his and the other ruling elites to use and (re)distribute as they see fit. He’s called the constitution “inconvenient” and routinely ignored it. The rule of law is bothersome, and he changes it to reward those he favors and punish those he doesn’t, of course, all for the good and security of the nation. The has told us we are too stupid to understand the debt, promised us transparency while doing more in secret than even Bush. He is a statist of the worst kind and has no respect for the liberty of the citizens of the country he was elected to lead not rule.

Libertarians believe that people should be free to engage in any occupation or profession without any government-issued license, permit, or other form of official permission. Let consumers, not the government, decide who engages in different lines of work. I trust the ASE to certify my mechanic not the government, and would trust the American Board of Thoracic Surgeons to certify my doctor far more than the government. Let free men decide not the government. Libertarians believe that people should be free to enter into mutually beneficial transactions with anyone else without interference by the government.

Libertarians believe that people should be free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth and, equally important, to decide for themselves what to do with it — spend, save, invest, or donate it. Thus, we hold that people should be free to plan for their own retirement (or not), to donate to their church or other causes (or not), and to help out their elderly or ailing parents and grandparents (or not). Compare the human right standards of countries who are dependent upon foreign aid to those that are not.

Statists have low standards, don’t respect or trust the people to be free, they don’t respect the property of others, and don’t feel as though anybody should ever suffer as a result of bad decisions. So the Statists want to make all the decisions for everybody. This is hardly freedom, and the security they offer is just a lie to concentrate power among the ruling class. If you value security over freedom continue to vote for Democrats and Republicans, they will gladly promise you security in exchange for your freedom, property, and standard of living, you will get neither, nor if you would sacrifice you essential liberty for security do you deserve either. As Libertarians we want and will fight for, freedom.

Statists, mostly liberals, try to claim some sort of moral superiority to their policies. The problem is that the reality of implementing “progressive” policies is that they actually make things worse, usually through predictable but unintended consequences.

US Citizens are some of the most productive in the world, last year we increased our productivity, not with more jobs, but by working harder. Contrast that with the citizens of liberal welfare states, who are increasingly narcissistic. A huge part of the citizenry of England, France, Germany, and other Western Europeans focus on how much vacation time they will have and how early they can retire and be supported by the state. The fact is most Americans work Harder than Europeans. The acceptable standard, work ethic, for people who would be free is superior to those who would depend on others to provide for them.

All the history and evidence of welfare in our country points to the simple fact that nothing more guarantees the erosion of character than getting something for nothing. The welfare state leads to the entitlement mentality – another expression of narcissism. Liberals then take what people need, use twisted and tortured logic and label it a right; this just reinforces this sense of entitlement. Leading large numbers of people to the idea that they have a right to the property or labor of others without having to pay for it.

The great society program of LBJ, institutionalized the welfare state. This corrupts family life. Even significant numbers of Democrats recognize the destructive consequences of the welfare state on the underclass. This makes fathers (males in general) unnecessary to women, who now have the state to support them and their children instead of husbands. The welfare state has become the husband to large numbers of women. It even rewards them more children outside of the traditional family structure.

Children raised in the welfare state tend not to mature into responsible adults. This specifically is an attack against men, who no longer aspire to hard work, and creation of their own family, and the accusation of wealth to pass down to their progeny. I believe my generation was the last of American men raised to believe that they had a bigger purpose in life than just their own happiness. This is why so many women lament the plethora of boy-men who haven’t grown up, and complain that they can’t find a man worth marrying. The liberal state has told men that they don’t have to support anybody, and that they can remain boys as long as they want.

Progressives’ entire world view is twisted. They don’t see that there is a battle in the world between good and evil, what they see is a battle as between rich and poor. They actually believe that equality is more important than morality. This is how they can cheer Cuban tyranny and curse American liberty. They really believe that the egalitarian redistribution of Cuba is superior has lead to a better life for all Cubans than the freedom and liberty and inequality of outcome that exists in America has lead to the quality of life for all Americans.

The most telling fact is that the bigger the government, the less the citizens do for each other. If the state will provide for me, and provide for my neighbors, they why should I. This is best shown in the fact that people who live in the welfare states of Western Europeans give less to charity and volunteer less time to others than do Americans of the same socioeconomic status. Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville recognized this almost 200 years ago, noting one of the most distinguishing characteristics of Americans from Europeans was how much Americans, through myriad private associations, care of one another. Churches, Rotary Clubs, free-loan societies and other voluntary associations were ubiquitous, until our path to the welfare state was stared under FDR and expanded by other liberal presidents. As the state has grown, our charities have declined. In Western Europe, they are virtually non-existant.

With a bigger state comes a vastly greater amount of corruption. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," is an overused but none the less true statement. When a big business is caught in corruption, it goes out of business, people quit buying it’s products and services. Look at how fast News of the World disappeared. A government cannot be run out of business, but worse yet a corrupt business can’t just print money from thin air, nor can a business arrest you.

Of course statists will ignore all the caustic consequences of the policies of the liberal welfare state. They will call their policies “compassionate conservatism”, or “social justice” and label those who don’t believe in the welfare state as selfish or worse. The truth is the welfare state leads to moral decay and narcissism. The standards of those who love liberty and those who want a welfare stare are clearly defined, but taboo to talk about.

LPF Success Story.

2011-07-21T12:51:00.000-04:00

Although not mentioned in the main stream press, the hard fought campaign by the LPF, generally headed up by Radio Talk Show Host. Alex Snitker, has borne fruit. The City of Clearwater has decided NOT to install Red Light Cameras.

Clearwater is where the LPF had its first anti-red light camera demonstration. Yesterday’s news, and today’s St. Petersburg Times editorial document a small victory for the LPF. The city of Clearwater is not, and probably won't be installing RLC's.

Thanks to all the Libertarians who protested, and fought against RLC’s.

They Think You are Incompitient

2011-07-12T15:54:00.003-04:00

By Tom Rhodes

The ruling class, statists by nature, includes both Democrats and Republicans. The conventional thought is that back in 2010 the Democrats took a beating and the GOP made significant gains in both the House and Senate, in fact the Republicans took over the House. What the mainstream press tried to ignore the huge turnover in the GOP itself. There are about 100 so called “TEA Party Republicans” now in the House. The fact is the 2010 election scared the pants of both the Democrats and Republican’s. It was a loss not for one or the other political party, but a loss for statists, the ruling elite, and a win for small "L" libertarians.

Yesterday I told you about a Light Bulb Moment and described how the ruling elite in Washington treat the common man concerning something as simple as a light bulb clearly demonstrates the contempt the they have for you.

Let’s review; a statist is a person who believes in the principle or policy of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty. Obama said this very clearly at his last press conference where he told you that you, the American People, that you’re too stupid to understand the national debt and deficit. This was a call to try and pressure the newly elected so called “TEA Party” representatives, to get in line and do as the ruling elite want.

Try as they might, the reality is you don’t have to have a PhD. in economics to understand that you cannot continue to increase your spending when you are buried in debt. When you have a debt problem, the solution is not more debt. Look at how fast both GM and Chrysler are trying to get from under the mountain of debt from their respective bailouts. Although they have had some modest plant expansions (mostly outside the US), they cut back severely on many areas, just look at the number of dealerships Chrysler eliminated. Look at what the EU is forcing on Greece to get its debt problem in order; massive cuts to government spending. We cannot just tax the rich to increase our revenue and keep on increasing our spending. Some very simple math will show you that even if you tax the rich at 100% it would not produce enough revenue to offset the massive spending increases.

A vast supermajority of Americans recognizes that big-government elites are driving us straight over the fiscal cliff. The tea party and its representatives in Congress realize this, and are willing to take a stand on expanding the debt. It doesn't take an advanced degree in economics to realize that as more and more money is borrowed and printed by the government, inflation and interest rates will increase. For every extra point in interest, we pay an additional $145 billion annually on our $14.5 trillion debt. You don’t have to be economist to realize that it’s a lie that without an increase in the debt ceiling the US will default on it’s debt. The current revenue is greater than total expenditures in 2005. The only reason the US government would default on its loans if the debt ceiling is not raised, is if it refused to cut other spending.

Statists just don’t have the courage to act in the nation's best interest. Both parties are beholden to interests that benefit from an increasingly powerful central government and its accompanying largess. The Democrats are indebted to the unions and special interests who receive government charity, the Republicans are indebted to big business who receives massive tax breaks. Both are indebted to Wall Street. To put it bluntly parties are bought and paid for. They are desperate to preserve this power. There's no real leadership in the structure of either party.

Just look at Obama’s stance on taxes. In 2009 he said that raising taxes in the time of a recession would hurt the economy. Because of his economic policies in the two years since then the economy has stagnated. Now he is saying that we must raise taxes. If he believed in 2009 that raising taxes would hurt the economy, and obviously the economy is not significantly improved now, they why is raising taxes now a good idea? Obama will say and do anything to further concentrate power in Washington, and specifically in the presidency. The Statists are upset, that the people got rid of both old Republicans and Democrats and elected some people who are not part of the ruling elite. The people have been Taxed Enough Already, thus formed the TEA Party.

The Statists in the GOP, are trying to lay claim to what is essentially a leaderless grass roots movement. Creating self proclaimed leaders of the TEA Party, while not actually having the support of the many local grass roots TEA Parties throughout the nation. The Democrats are demonizing the TEA Party in any whey they can. Both parties need to have the TEA Party movement neutralized because it is a threat to their power. The main stream press which has a vested interest in maintaining statists, is also helping to demonize and minimize the TEA Party. Since the rise of the TEA party there we see significant increases to attacking the Libertarian Party and libertarians in general. The reason is that the vision of the TEA Party, is essentially the same vision that our founding fathers had, and is in essence libertarian.

The ruling elite, statists both Democrat and Republican, don’t believe in the basic tenants of the American idea; liberty. Their actions and deeds show that they don not believe in the Rule of Law. They do not believe in equal treatment under the law. They do not believe in private property rights. They believe that you are just part of the masses and are to be controlled, socially engineered, and milked of your assets.

Statists want to change the very nature of this country. This country unlike any other in history, put real power in the hands of the people. Today depending on the poll you look at between 60% and 70% of the people do not want the debt limit of the USA to be raised. We know that spending is out of control, that taxes are too high, and that the so called stimulus by the government has failed, that we are in wars that are not in our best interest, and that the government now treats the people as an enemy. 235 years ago, the people of this country slapped the face of statists the world over. We declared that the people, not some ruling elite, are in charge and created a government structure designed to treat everybody equally and severely restrict statism. That first shot of the Revolutionary wars was heard around the world, because it declared that no elite had the right to tell any others how to live.

It’s taken a couple centuries, but once again we are divided into the nobles and serfs. The nobles believe that you a mere serf cannot take care of yourself, and if you can then you’ve must have cheated the nobles from their just due. What you earn is theirs first, and they allow you to keep that portion they think you deserve. They grant favors and privileges to those whom they favor and take from those they don’t. They not you know how best to use the fruits of your labor. Since they know what’s best for everybody, and that you are too stupid, inept, or lazy to take care of yourself, they have for your own good taken control. They see themselves as separate and above the people and treat “we the people” as serfs or enemies. As proof of this, we see the militarization of our police and the blatant attacks by the government on the Bill of Rights and Constitution. Think about it, the ruling elite and their lackeys in the main stream press, try to make anybody who would try and hold the government to the limits of the constitution as radicals to be feared.

The very idea that the people would not choose representatives who the statists have decided should win but instead chose representatives who now elected refuse to allow the ruling class to spend all that they want, borrow as much as they want, representatives who pledged not to raise taxes but to curtail Washington’s spending and are keep those pledges. This galls statists. How dare these “freshman” who don’t know how things work, obstruct the ruling elite. The elected representatives who are actually doing what a supermajority of the people want are not the problem. It’s the ruling class who doesn’t want to be held accountable, and wants to dictate to the people instead of work for the people, and who will protect their power over the will and good of the people that are the problem.

The people have spoken and continue to speak. The majority clearly want smaller government, big cuts in government spending. Not to say that the people want no government, but we do want the government downsized. Statists know that decreasing government spending decreases their power. The Republicans have proven that they will expand government as fast as the Democrats, the difference only between the two is who they want to buy off with government largess not whether they seek expansion in government. Think about who you vote for, does that person trust you or is that person a statist who believes that the power of the state is more important than your liberty. If a politician or candidate thinks that your too stupid to know and act in your own best interests, they are a statist, and considers themselves to be a noble entitled to rule over you a mere serf. Statists do not care about your liberty or well being, they care about their power.

You can always think of it another way. In government there have always been two camps, not left-right nor Republican-Democrat, but one that thinks government power should be used to further the ideals of those in government, and the other that thinks government should have as little power as possible, allowing the people to further their own ideals. The fight is not between Democrats and Republicans, it’s between statists wanting more and more power for government and the people who want freedom and liberty. What camp are you in?

A Light Bulb Moment

2011-07-11T11:54:00.001-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, July 11, 2011

The difference between statists and libertarians, statists being the bulk of both Democrats and Republicans, is that the statists believe they know what’s best for you, and don’t think you should have the liberty to choose what you think is in your own best interest. This is called the Nanny State, or paternalism. The government wants to take away your choice. It doesn’t trust you to make your own choices. Do you get that? The government doesn’t trust you.

The best description between libertarians and statists can be represented by the lowly light bulb. Statists have decided that you are too stupid to pick the right light bulb; therefore they are taking away your freedom to choose how you want to light up your private living space. Libertarians on the other hand, don’t think that the choice of how to illuminate your private living space is any business of the government.

The reasoning for using one type of light bulb over another goes far beyond just energy usage, other factors include; quality of the light provided, the initial cost, the total cost of ownership, and even heat. Yes HEAT, the energy used by an incandescent light bulb that does not go to making light is heat, some say wasted heat. The fact is in a small well insulated house the heat produced from lighting is not wasted, and may provide enough warmth to negate the need for additional heating, and certainly supplements heating during the colder months. This heat when chilly, if it doesn’t come from a light bulb will have to come from some other source. Your thermostat doesn’t know where the heat it is measuring came from, furnace, space heater, or light bulb, it makes no difference.

Some of you don’t like the way the new bulbs come on slowly. Some of you don’t like the curlicue shape. Some of you don’t like not being able to attach your lamp shade to the bulb. Some of you just don’t like cold flickery fluorescent light. Some of you have noticed that CFL’s don’t in fact last longer than incandescent bulbs, and cost a lot more. Some of you are skeptical about promises of long-term savings. Some of you don’t want to spend more for a CFL now. Yet others of you hate having to shut down your furnace, air conditioner, and/or fans, evacuate all children and pets, and treat your home like a hazardous waste site if you happen to break a carcinogenic mercury filled CFL type light bulb.

It doesn’t matter what you need or what you prefer or what you think is in your own best interests. The government has decided that the only concern is watts per lumen, and you are too stupid to realize that. Your other wants and needs are not as relevant. Because the government thinks you’re too stupid to realize that your needs are subservient to the government desires, it doesn’t trust you to make the decision they want you to make, so has taken away your freedom to make that choice.

It doesn’t matter whether a statist calls themselves a Democrat or Republican, they believe in statism. Statism is the principle or policy of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty. When the government decries what light bulb you must use, or what food you can eat, or how much you should save, they are saying to you that you are too ignorant, too weak-willed, and computationally too incompetent to satisfy your real or underlying preferences. You save too little for your retirement because you are overly impatient and cannot postpone spending. You eat too many calories because you ignore the costs of future illness due to obesity.

This is the difference between statists and libertarians in a nutshell. Statists don’t trust you and believe that they are better able to decide what’s best for your life than you can; so they take away your freedom (choice) for your own good. Libertarians believe that the state can’t possibly know what’s best for every individual so you and every individual should have the freedom to choose what you feel is in your own best interest. Statists simply put hate freedom.

What do Libertarians Believe

2011-07-10T11:20:00.001-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, 7/10/2011

About a week ago on the Liberty Underground radio show, the Florida Chair of the Libertarian Party called out anarchists to defend their position. He wisely noted that the acceptance of anarchist positions was hurting the acceptance of libertarian ideas. The Libertarian Party must shed its acceptance of anarchy as a legitimate form of government and distance itself from anarchists if it is ever to gain acceptance in the eyes of the American People.

This is going to be very difficult. Prominent “libertarians” with no association with the Libertarian Party are consistently putting out libertine and anarchist positions as libertarian. Here it is important to note that libertarianism is not synonymous with libertinism. While some libertines (and some libertarians) find nothing at all morally wrong with prostitution, most libertarians believe that while it is morally wrong they understand that because it is a victimless crime the state has no legitimate role in enforcing it. Prostitution, like drug use and abuse, directly harms only the voluntary participant.

As Libertarians we often reference organizations such as The Ludwig von Mises Institute It is an online journal for libertarian scholarship. It has been and is a great source of scholarly work concerning libertarian philosophy. It is not associated with the Libertarian Party. The problem is that accepting and promoting articles from the Mises Institute we are left having to defend ideas that are clearly libertine not libertarian or acceptable to the general public. The vast majority of the work at the Mises Institute is great, but some articles, like Stateless in Somalia, and Loving It, hurt us.

The idea that the anarchy of Somalia is acceptable is absurd. With good reason Somalia is noted for its piracy, chaos, poverty and oppression not for its liberty. Clearly it is easy to see that in Somalia the reality is that the only rights individuals have are those that they can protect themselves. The kidnapping, murder, and lack of any protection for the rights of those not favored by the local war lord are clearly not the type of government the people of the USA want to even consider. The Utopian ideas of anarchists when actually implemented resulted in dystopic Somalia.Just as the utopian ideas of communism where implemented result in poverty and oppression and the murder of millions of citizens by their communist governments.
The idea that anarchy will ever function is a utopic ideology based on the same idea liberals use to promote socialism; the idea that people are basically good. It is contrary to the foundations of the USA, which was based on the idea that people are not basically good, and that even the people in government cannot be trusted, so power is limited, distributed, and dispersed. This country was founded on the idea that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The reality is that in an anarchy only those with the wealth, strength, or power to secure their own rights have any rights. In an anarchy the guy who is the strongest, or has the fastest gun, or most ruthless, has power over those who are not as strong, as fast, or ruthless. Freedom is not free, the cost is measured in many things not just money but also blood and acceptance of a certain amount of uncertainty. Our society which used to believe in liberty for all, was built with the understanding that the people instituted a government for the purpose of protecting the natural rights of everybody equally. As Libertarians we cannot accept or promote anarchist ideology. This ideology is contrary to the foundations of the USA, and contrary to the entire history of mankind. Like other utopian philosophies the reality of its implementation is not acceptable.

Libertarian Philosophy is being attacked right now from both the Left and the Right. We no longer have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The statists both left and right who want power and control are again in charge. It took time, a short time in the history of man, but once again the majority of people have property and wealth at the benevolence of the ruling elite. Self-rule and freedom is fleeting. Freedom is not the natural condition for man. History has shown that freedom has occasionally existed for short periods of time but has never lasted long. The natural condition is for a few powerful elite to live in relative ease with armies to back them up through force or threat of force to control the resources and people with the vast majority living in poverty. Today the government determines what portion of your labor (as measured by income) you are allowed to keep, they do allow the people to keep most of their wages, but there is nothing stopping them from taking it all. They carefully weight and measure what will maximize the peoples output, they know if they take too much the people will quit working, but the goal is never to see how little they can take but always how to maximize the power and wealth of government. This is a far cry from the form and type of government envisioned at our founding.

Our condition is rapidly deteriorating back to some form of feudalistic oligarchy. Libertarians recognize this but the Libertarian Party has historically presented not only the recognition that we no longer live in a free society, but we stupidly have allowed anarchist ideas into our midst. These ideas hurt not help the cause of liberty; they make libertarians look like either kooks, or cruel heartless robber barons. Check out this site Make Or Break Views Of Libertarianism. This site clearly states the image problem of the Libertarian Party. “Many libertarian statements take consistancy (sic)to such extreme positions, that it can make or break the acceptance of the ideas.” The site starts with an attack on the LP Platform, saying;

National Platform of the Libertarian Party
The 2004 platform is still as ridiculously extreme as its predecessors. It calls for legalization of baby selling, polygamy, secession, child prostitution, all drugs, insider trading, etc. It calls for abolition of public schools, medicaid, and Social Security, patents, and copyrights. And even privatization of air. All that and lots more, cloaked in vague statements of "liberty", and now carefully sanitized so that non-libertarians won't realize how truly extreme it is.

Now the critic does use huge laps in logic and equates wanting to end government welfare to baby selling, but the essence of what the critique says is that Libertarians are anarchist libertine kooks who want to allow big business to pollute your air, and take away your rights. Of course the 2010 party platform doesn’t advocate baby selling and is significantly different than the 2004 platform. Making this critique almost libelous.

The changes to our national platform over the years, removing the extremist anarchist positions are helping and a good thing. Compare the LP Florida platform to the national LP platform, and you will see differences which reflect libertarian vs libertine ideology. Libertarian philosophy, is understood and accepted by most Americans. The massive rise of the TEA Party is proof, the fact that the people are rising under the auspices of libertarian philosophy but not joining the Libertarian Party should cause the LP to reflect upon itself.

The LP needs to embrace completely the ideas which were the foundation of this country. Take to heart that we the people instituted a government to secure the natural rights of the people. We as a party need to denounce and distance ourselves from anarchist ideology. Adrian Wyllie, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Florida made a good start on Liberty Underground.

As Libertarians, we need to counter wherever we find it, and call out those who would lie about our objectives and ideas. Allowing anarchist ideology, or statist twisting of our objectives to put fear and doubt into the American people about what Libertarians are, is only hurting the LP. We in the LPF must work at getting the LP to recognize that it’s acceptance of anarchism as a legitimate libertarian viewpoint is hurting the party, and is not acceptable by the American people for good reason. Don’t let others tell you what Libertarians are, ask Libertarians. These are the Objectives of the Libertarian Party, You can see them for yourselves at www.lpf.org. The Objectives of the LPF are to:

Recognizing absolute freedom of speech, religion, and association

Demanding Constitutionally-limited government

Ensuring minimal taxation and balanced budgets

Defending property rights

Asserting sovereignty of the State from unconstitutional federal interference

Asserting sovereignty of the Republic from unconstitutional international interference

Upholding the Second Amendment and the absolute right to self defense

Promoting a true free market economy

Defending personal privacy and the Fourth Amendment

Promoting strong national defense through a Constitutional foreign policy

Ending government corruption

Ensuring no individual, corporation or government is above the rule of law

Ending prohibitions on all personal activities that do not infringe upon the rights of others

Are We Free Men or Serfs?

2011-07-07T17:30:00.001-04:00

by Tom Rhodes, 7/7/2011

Capitalism is nothing more than a subcategory of freedom – the freedom to trade one's goods and services with others without interference from government. When somebody talks about the "evils of capitalism" they are saying that freedom is evil. The idea that people should not be allowed to trade their property (goods) and labor (services) to others without the government interfering is not freedom.

The government’s sole responsibility concerning commerce in a free society should be to protect individual’s rights. This has traditionally been done by the government providing impartial judges and courts that allow individuals to sue other individuals when they believe that individual has not honored the contracted terms of their free exchange of property and/or labor.

Self-rule and freedom is fleeting. Freedom is not the natural condition for man. History has shown that freedom has occasionally existed for short periods of time but has never lasted long. The natural condition is for a few powerful elite to live in relative ease with armies to back them up through force or threat of force to control the resources and people with the vast majority living in poverty. The conditions today of the people living in Zimbabwe, Somalia or Afghanistan are more in line with historic norms for all of mankind than the conditions seen by the average man in the USA over the past two hundred years. The Idea of freedom and liberty for all is not easy to keep, or implement. Even the first 87 years of US history with legal slavery, is proof enough of that. As the saying goes “Freedom is not Free.” It has many costs.

One of the costs of freedom is uncertainty, as people are free to trade or not trade, hire or not hire, purchase or not purchase, work or not work. When people are free, they can compete, when there is competition then some people win and some lose. That means your business and hard work may or may not succeed, and if it fails you may lose your livelihood and cost those who work for you their livelihoods. This cost of freedom, uncertainty, is a high cost that some are not willing to pay. Many people will trade their freedom for certainty. They may not be as well off as they could be free, but the certainty of food, shelter, etc. is worth more to them than their freedom.

Some people with "vision" use this as a means to undermine freedom and make themselves the ruling elite. They promise that if you give me control, I will take away the uncertainty and you will be taken care of no matter what happens in life. These same people when in power, actively work to limit competition. Granting favors to companies and individual that help them keep their power, and making it harder for new people to enter into competing business.

Our country was made great by having a government that protected the natural rights, including property rights of all individuals equally. This did not result in equal outcomes as some through timing, hard work, competition, and natural ability do better than others. Overall by protecting freedom we did produce the most prosperous and generous society the world has ever seen. The very nature of our country was a slap in the face to the ruling elite across the world. Over the past century, those who would rule and control who is wealthy and who isn’t have slowly corrupted our country and the freedom we had is ebbing away. For our first 140 or so years, as a free country, although some people gained great wealth the difference between the top and bottom in the USA was not so great. As we gave away our freedom and embraced socialist ideas such as “from each according to his ability, to each according to their need” we have seen a greater disparity between rich and poor. By using the idea of certainty in our needs instead of freedom to pursue our needs and desires, we have allowed once again a few to concentrate power and wealth amongst themselves.

Once the idea that people have a right to the goods and services of another that they need, not just the right to trade for those goods and services freely, and that some ruling elite has the right to use force to make it so, we accepted the end of freedom and are once again on the path to subjugation. The idea that charity is not charity but a right is perverted. Nobody has the right to the labor or justly acquired property of another. Ideas such as the ruling elite have the authority to “spread the wealth” are anti-freedom. Once we accept the fact that a few elites have the right to the product of all risk and labor of the people (as measured by income) and use it as they see fit (providing for themselves and others in society) we are once again serfs, not free men. Although they allow people to keep a portion of their labor, the idea is that the government owns all your labor and determines what portion you may keep for yourself. This is no different than feudal serfdom or slavery.

This is not to say that free men don’t have a duty to pay taxes. For most if its life our Government survived on tariffs, user fees, postage, and other taxes. Direct taxation of labor was unconstitutional. There are problems collecting these kinds of taxes. One is the people see the tax directly so are conscious of what the government is taking. Another is that if the people feel a tax is unjust or usurious, not only do they change their vote, but find a means to avoid the tax, again adding a layer of uncertainty to government revenue. Another is that that if people choose to live frugally then the government revenue is decreased, and so revenue was uncertain. Demonstrating again a cost of freedom is uncertainty. By taxing labor (income), regardless of how a person chooses to live, or what government services he chooses to use, the government not the people is in charge and has control. The aristocracy finds this much easier to manage than being at the will and whim of the people.

Freedom in the USA is fleeting; the police no longer serve and protect the people, but are enforcers of arbitrary wishes of the ruling elite who pay them; no longer do judges serve as impartial arbiters of justice, both Actus Reus Versus Mens Rea are legal concepts our ruling elite no longer consider; Our government lays claim ownership of our real property and labor, you only rent your property and do not own it, and the government only allows you to keep that portion of your earnings they grant you. You are no longer free to trade your property and labor to others without government interference.

How are we now any different than feudal serfs, other than we vote for our aristocracy? A person no longer owns property, they rent it from the elected aristocracy, if the aristocracy thinks it can get more rent from somebody else, they will kick you out and give it to another. The aristocracy is your overseer and claims first right to your labor, they get your income first, and we serfs are allowed to keep that portion of our labor they allow. If they were truly taxing our income then you’d get a tax bill on a regular basis and pay your taxes. That doesn’t happen because the aristocracy doesn’t trust the people, as the people would revolt in mass if they had to actually pay taxes, so the aristocracy take our income before we ever see it and only allow us to keep a portion of it.

If the poor schlep making $24K working two jobs was forced to write a $1000 check every three months then file in April to get some of it back, we’d see a lot smaller government in a short time. If taxes weren’t reasonable the average citizen would non-violently revolt by simply not sending in his taxes. If a mere 5% of the people simply refused to pay taxes (that’s over 15 Million People) what could the government do? They couldn’t bring that many people up on charges, have a jury trial, and put them in jail. It would so overwhelm the government as to cripple it with both a loss of revenue and an overloaded court system. Knowing this the ruling elite slowly changed the system so that the average Joe only get’s what the government determines he should, and is none the wiser.

The aristocracy has declared that they have first right to all labor and by not taxing the least productive serfs they have purchased votes to maintain their aristocratic positions. They use the tried and true method of “Bread and Circuses” to keep a large part of the masses in compliance. Of course they keep rules in place that don’t allow for people without power to compete with those the aristocracy favors, and generously reward those whom support their power.

The normal condition for man is for a few ruling elite to wield power and force over the vast majority of people who live in poverty. The USA with its notions of freedom and self-rule will not last, freedom never has. The aristocracy will drive the country into financial ruin to gain power. Their goals are not prosperity, freedom, and independence for all, but the re-concentration of power into the hands of a few. We are seeing huge crushing attacks on freedom, like the patriot act and its renewal. I hope I’m wrong but if I’m right we will soon see more limits on free speech and assembly, watch for stricter controls of the internet, specifically YouTube, blogs, and who can report news. If I’m right we will see attacks on independent media, and attempts to control all news, and the exposure to the infringement of our freedoms. If I’m right we will see appeals to the UN or other International bodies to have greater authority than our Constitution. If I’m right we will see the aristocracy try to disarm the people as they have in Europe and other far less free societies. Project “Gunrunner” is just the tip if the iceberg for the aristocracy to try and find justification to disarm the serfs. Once disarmed the march back towards serfdom is inevitable. Already they have demonized weapons, and are trying to change the rationale behind the Second Amendment to exclude the idea that it was included not for hunting or self protection from criminals, but as a means for the people to be armed enough to stop a tyrannical government.

They have already convinced a significant portion of the population that they have a right to the goods and services of others without having to pay for them. In fact the aristocracy has convinced a significant portion of the population that their mere existence “entitles” them to the goods and services of others. Once the idea that individuals do not have rights to personal property and labor, and the idea that the aristocracy can take away the uncertainty that accompanies freedom and make everybody’s life secure by controlling the distributing all property and labor as they see fit, freedom is no longer valued. In fact freedom is considered selfish and evil, because if people are free and have individual rights, then the masses don’t have the right to property and services they haven’t earned.

Our founding fathers started with a Declaration of Independence, not the declaration to “spread the wealth.” They used words like Freedom, Independence and Liberty. Each of which refers to a dearth of undue restrictions and an opportunity to implement one's rights and powers. Freedom emphasizes the opportunity given for the implementation of one's rights, powers, desires, or the like: freedom of speech or conscience; freedom of movement. Independence implies not only lack of restrictions but also the ability to stand alone, unsustained by anything else: Independence of thought promotes invention and discovery. This of course carries the implication that others cannot be forced to sustain you should you fail. Capitalism is nothing more than a subcategory of freedom - the freedom to produce, trade, and consume any goods and services acquired without the use of force, fraud or theft. Freedom, Independence and Liberty are embodied in the rule of law, property rights and freedom of contract, and characterized by external and internal openness of the markets, the protection of property rights and freedom of economic initiative. The ruling elite in Washington are now compromising all that has embodied Freedom in the USA.

Time Magazine Promotes Tyranny

2011-06-28T12:50:00.001-04:00

by Tom Rhodes, 6/28/2011

This Year’s cover for Time Magazine has a picture of the constitution not a famous American as is traditional for the July 4th Issue. In its editorial, Time Magazine’s managing editor Richard Stengel, Asks a question about our Constitution: "Does it still matter?" He concludes that the constitution is irrelevant saying, "If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it certainly doesn't say so."

Either purposefully or of ignorance, Stengel completely misrepresents the plain language of the Constitution. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Those words make it quite clear that the federal government is limited to only the powers specifically granted to it by the people as clearly stated in the Constitution.

Stengel’s editorial makes the same tired claims that have been used to try and justify taking power from the people and giving it back to the elite for well over a century: “When the Constitution was framed there were no Railroads….” or “When the Constitution was framed there were no Telegraphs….” or “When the Constitution was framed there were no Radios….” “When the Constitution was framed there was no Internet….” The constitution was a framework designed to restrain government, and unlike any other government before it, and very few since, gave most of the power to the people not the ruling elite. No technological advances justify taking self-rule away from the people.

It doesn’t take very much reading on Facebook Groups, chat-rooms, or other internet forums, before you will hear some statist claiming the American people are idiots. When somebody loving freedom uses a poll or other data which clearly shows that a vast majority of Americans are in agreement on a topic but that agreement doesn’t meet with statists ideas or desires, then the people aren’t smart enough to know what’s good for them, or have been mis-lead.

Take Obamacare for instance, most Americans do want some kind of health care reform, but the reality of Obamacare and what it will do, is not what a super majority of Americans want. The statists in our country seem to believe that they know what’s best, and the people should accept what they have determined is best.

This Time Magizine editorial demonstrates clearly that we are not divided by left-right views but by the idea that there are elite who should rule and dole out the countries resources, and plebs who accept it. The statists appear to want to have enough people dependent upon the government that they can once again put the genie back into the bottle and determine who is a success and who isn’t. The constitution and insistence by the people that our government uphold the rule of law stands in the way of statists. Statists hate the idea, and that the people expect and consider it necessary that no person, company, and especially politician, is above the same laws the people must follow. Obama during his campaign lamented that constitution made it hard to “get things done.” Even the liberal St. Petersburg Times, notes that just like Bush, “Obama's refusal to follow the strictures of the War Powers Act says that he, too, is willing to manipulate language to ignore inconvenient limits on his power.”

The destruction of what was an experiment in the people taking for themselves the right to self-rule is over. One by one our natural rights are being stripped from us and we are again regressing to rule by the elite. The government now says no warrant is needed to search a person’s home, that you can be forced to purchase services whether you want them or not, that the government can determine what you are allowed to eat, that employment and work laws that apply to people and businesses don’t apply to the government, that accounting and bookkeeping laws that apply to the people and their businesses don’t apply to the government, the list continues to grow daily.

Setup by Bush and completed by Obama, was the destruction of the rule of law. The primary example being when the government was able to force without legislation, judiciary rulings contrary to existing bankruptcy law to reward political favors to unions over secured creditors and take over both GM and Chrysler as a result of their bankruptcies. The breakup of these companies like AMC, Hudson, Studebaker, Stutz, and others before, would not have seen the demise or end of the US auto industry. Consider Jeep, near bankruptcy it was taken over by AMC, it made and still does make a product people want. AMC made bad business decisions and it too folded, but the Jeep name and assets were purchased by Chrysler, and it remained. If Chrysler folded, another company or new investors would have purchased the Jeep brand physical assets and it would have continued. Jeeps are the best selling products Chrysler has.

Statists claim that you can’t run a post modern country the same way and with the same rules as we did when we were an agriculture based country of the early 1800’s. This is only true if you throw out the reasoning for the institution of the USA and accept the premise that the government has a duty and is responsible for the needs of all its citizens. Only if you throw away the idea of self-rule and limited government, can you justify granting the government the unlimited authority to do whatever the elite feel is necessary for the greater good. It is not based on liberal or conservative ideology but on the idea of statism.

Statism is the concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of a highly centralized government often but not necessarily extending to government ownership of industry. The concept of statism, which is seen as synonymous with the concept of nation, and corporatism repudiates individualism and exalts the nation as an organic body headed by the elites and nurtured by unity and force. The militarization of our police forces is prima facie evidence that statists are willing to and will use force to gain compliance by the people; even the Dept. of Education has its own SWAT team(s).

This is tyranny, the goals may be noble, but the implementation of the nanny state is tyrannical. Only with tortured logic can one justify the constitutionality of the federal government having the enumerated power to require people to purchase insurance. That and most other powers are restricted to the States or the People. Statists are doing everything they can to get rid of the pesky notion that the Constitution limits the federal government. Even the editor of Time Magazine, a statist, is willing to lie in order to try and convince the people that that the Constitution wasn’t intended to limit the federal government.

Contrary to what Mr. Stengel says, our founding fathers were quite clear, saying “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The notion that our forefathers didn’t believe in or want or attempt to limit the government is a lie. Our founding fathers created a framework that granted the government enough power to govern, but severely restricted it powers, knowing that men are not inherently good, that power corrupts, and that a limited government with enumerated powers, would protect future generations from the tyranny of an all powerful government.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” ~ C.S. Lewis

University of Indoctrination

2011-06-23T14:44:00.001-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, 6/23/2011

I spent a lovely Sunday riding my motorcycle, and ended up having a late lunch at a chain casual eatery noted for somewhat skimpy costumed waitresses, and good food. It was a slow summer afternoon, hot outside, cool inside, the beer, food and view were excellent. Chatting with the waitress I learned that she was a recent University of Florida graduate, with a degree in economics.

In her early 20’s, and having the attributes for this particular establishment, she chose to continue her college job after graduation because it paid significantly more than the jobs available with her degree. If the few other tables tipped the way my table did she was probably making $25 or more per hour during a slow day.

Finding out she was an economics major, and liking to stir the pot, I just had to ask her which major theories of economics were taught at UF and which one did she believe.

I was dumbfounded at her response, she said “What?” to which I replied, “You know, what was the predominant economic theory taught, Chicago School, Keynesian, Austrian, or what?

She didn’t have any idea what I was talking about, I asked if they discussed the various theories on economics, and how they differ in describing how the government actions influence the economy. She then said "Oh, We're not allowed to discuss any politics in class.”

“No debate on any difference economic theories at all?”

“No that would lead to politics which wasn’t allowed, we just learned what the book, and took the tests." They didn’t allow any theoretical discussion in the classes and they didn’t want the classes to have any conflict.

I was floored, not only did an economics major graduate from a major university with no political discussion of various economic theories, but she didn’t even have knowledge that there were multiple theories associated with economics. It sounded more like indoctrination than education.

Maybe I’ve just been out of college for too long, but I find it hard to believe that nowhere in the following required UF Economics Major Courses: ECO 2013 Principles of Macroeconomics; ECO 2023 Principles of Microeconomics; ECO 3101 Intermediate Microeconomics; ECO 3203 Intermediate Macroeconomics, that there are no competing ideas on economic theory addressed.

Sadly looking at the syllabi of those courses on-line, it is evident that an economic theory is taught, but not identified. From even a short chat with a graduate of the UF Economics program, it is evident that the economic theory taught is treated as if there were no other or competing economic theories. The young lady in question was definitely smart, but was totally ignorant not only of competing ideas but even that competing ideas existed.

It is no wonder a significant part of our population cannot logically debate ideas. While in college they aren’t allowed to debate ideas, and conflict is not allowed. Our young people are being taught that competitive ideas are not good, and that ideas other than those of their professors, are just political and not to be considered. I confirmed that within four years of courses at UF, the young lady in question never witnessed a debate on anything she was taught. This is a far cry from the way Dr. Michael Sandel teaches his course on Justice at Harvard. You can watch it at HERE, where debate and both sides of controversy are discussed, obviously without any fear that disagreeing with the professor will get you in trouble.

Any university program that discourages debate of competing ideas because of “politics” should be rethought. The idea that avoiding conflict in ideas at the college level is preferable to vibrant debate seems to me to be absurd. Yes students must be expected to provide the answers to exams that their professor want, whether they agree with those answers or not, but not even allowing the discussion of alternative ideas is not education but indoctrination.

The Trouble with Libertarians

2011-06-13T11:27:00.001-04:00

By Tom Rhodes
Vice-Chair Libertarian Party of Citrus County
Chairman LPF Platform Committee
6/13/2011

Today’s editorial by WND editor has the same title as my blog entry, The Trouble with Libertarians. Economically, philosophically, and morally, libertarian ideas have been proven to be what is best for the vast majority of people, but the implementation of libertarian ideas by Libertarians have made the Libertarian Party unpalatable for the majority of Americans.

There is a paradigm shift in this country happening, it’s not Republican/Democrat or Left/Right, or Conservative/Liberal. The people are realizing that there is now a war between those who love liberty and all it entails and statists who want to control everything. The Libertarian Party should take advantage of this paradigm shift, but as our 40 year history has shown, we once again we shoot ourselves in the foot. We have again furthered our image of Amoral Atheistic Anarchists. This unfortunately accurate combination of descriptors will insure that the American people will only rarely elect Libertarian candidates. Ron Paul, arguably the most successful candidate wearing the libertarian moniker, is not a member of the Libertarian Party. Because he has realized that to win elections and have a positive affect for liberty for all Americans, he had to abandon the LP. Americans will not elect Amoral Atheistic Anarchists.

Last week’s press release by LP Chairman, Mark Hinkle, unnecessarily alienated over half the US population and hypocritically compromised libertarian principles. By saying that, "Permitting couples to marry when they are of the same gender is a step in the direction of equality before the law” he said the LP is willing to compromise its principles, and willing to alienate the majority of the population which hold the more than 5000 year old belief that marriage is between a man and a woman; thus supporting the idea that a small minority can use the force of government to change the very definition accepted for thousands of years, and force not only tolerance but acceptance of their beliefs and silence the majority. This at its core is contrary the Principles of Liberty.

Hinkle was quite right when he said that "the idea that someone's legal rights should depend on whether they've entered a government-approved relationship ought to be repugnant to all of us." The Christian principle of Equality under the Law, properly adopted by both our founding fathers and the Libertarian Party, should make the idea of providing any special privileges or punishments to anybody repugnant. Saying that expanding the special privileges of some to include a few more only strengthens the idea that unequal treatment under the law is acceptable, and undermines Libertarians calling themselves “The Party of Principle.”

Most Americans firmly believe that all people should be free to do as they wish so long as they don’t infringe upon the rights of others. That means that most Americans tolerate but do not condone, approve, or even accept the amoral behavior of others, only that they accept that with liberty and freedom one must tolerate socially abhorrent behavior if it doesn’t infringe upon the rights of another. Thus to protect the free speech of everybody, we tolerate the racist bigoted hateful speech of both the KKK and Black Panthers. Toleration of such speech does not mean Americans condone it.

The LP could have taken a far more principled stand, and opened the LP up to both the LBGT community, and the majority of Americans who tolerate but don’t condone homosexuality. People are free to voluntarily enter into binding contracts, and the government’s duty is to justly honor and protect those contracts through the judicial system, but in no way should any person be given any special privileges or punishments based upon the voluntary private contracts that they enter. The LP’s sole position on marriage should be that it is not the job of the government to sanction marriage, the government’s purpose is to protect the rights of all people equally. To further that end our judicial system was created to justly administer criminal law and civil contracts.

From a moral or philosophical perspective how can justifying or supporting unequal treatment of singles or couples who choose not to enter legal contracts, over those who choose to be in contractual partnerships, be construed as a libertarian principle? The very idea, that expanding unequal treatment to include another sub-group is acceptable, is hypocritical pandering that makes the LP look no better or different than the Democrats or Republicans, and further hurts the reputation and image of the LP in the eyes of Americans. What Libertarian Principle justifies laws that treat some people different than others?

Today’s WND editorial, will reach more people than all the Libertarian press releases, blogs, and other stories combined. WND has more libertarian commentators than almost any other source, and regularly supports libertarian principles. At WND you can regularly find the writings of Wayne Allen Root, Walter E. Williams, John Stossel, Thomas Sowell, VoxDay, Lew Rockwell, and virtually every other credible libertarian of note. WND reflects the position of most Americans, who support libertarian ideology but reject the Libertarian Party.

Other libertarian organizations quite purposefully do not associate themselves with the LP. The reason they don’t is because they realize that their credibility with the American public is suspect if they do. The biggest ground swell in American politics in the last have century is the TEA Party movement. It’s a true grass roots movement made of many small organizations with no central control or authority. Any attempt by some to claim leadership is quite obviously a lie, as the many grass root TEA Parties throughout the country get very upset at some distant person they didn’t choose and not affiliated to their group claiming to be their leader. The TEA Party clearly embraces the Philosophy of Liberty and more than half the country associated itself with the TEA Party movement. The reason the American people have gravitated to it and not the LP, which should be their natural home, is because of the LP image.

Columnist Dick Morris, wrote in the National Review about libertarianism and the TEA party, "The libertarian strain in the American electorate has long been neglected by the mainstream media. But, through the tea party, it has gained ascendancy on the right. Those who want the government to stay out of both boardrooms and bedrooms have come to dominate the [Republican] party and its nominating process." He totally ignored the LP, because he believes it is irrelevant.

The Libertarian Party (LP) has remained virtually the same small portion of the electorate for decades. We can open ourselves up to a far larger segment of the population not only small special interest groups like the LBGT community, but also the far larger majority of the US population which still holds to Christian principles. Libertarian ideology is rooted in the same principles that were used to form our constitution. Whether we want to admit it or not those are Judeo-Christian principles. Christ’s example was to tolerate, help, and pray for sinners, he never condoned sinful behavior, but did recognize the free will God gave all men, and never advocated force to gain acceptance. If we continue to alienate over half the population by compromising our principles in order to trash Judeo-Christian beliefs, we will continue to have the same results, and remain a very small group, and virtually powerless except as a foil or joke for political pundits. Libertarian principles and values are main stream but Libertarians aren’t.

To be successful the LP must quit shooting ourselves in the foot. LP Chairman, Mark Hinkle’s last press release did nothing to help the LP, and only confirmed the image most Americans have of the LP, an image the people have consistently said with their vote is not compatible who they want to lead our country. Our party is insane to think that we can continue to embrace our Amoral Atheistic Anarchist image, and have any different acceptance by the American people. The LP is almost powerless because not only do we have to deal with all the inherent inequalities that being a third party entails, we have embraced an image the American people have rejected. The LP must stand by its principles; but to be effective in American politics we must also shed our Amoral Atheistic Anarchist image. I believe we can do both, but our leadership must recognize that we have an image problem and address it.

Economic History

2011-06-12T08:32:00.000-04:00

by Tom Rhodes, 6/12/11

Arguably the greatest government stimulus package we ever saw was World War II. What followed was the post WWII recovery, arguably the greatest economic boom we have ever seen. What did the government do to create such a boom?

Quite simply it rolled back to a small portion of what it was in WWII: Within one year government spending went from $84B to $30B; 10 million soldiers were released from service; economic controls and rationing were lifted; in short it was a shock-and-awe type of de-stimulus.

Keynesian economists of the day predicted that the abrupt withdrawal of government spending would plunge the economy into another depression. They predicted 14% unemployment.

The reality was that unemployment rates remained under 4.5%; employment grew, household consumption grew, business investment grew, and exports boomed, as government spending decreased.

Our postwar experience shows that growth is not generated by massive government action, but by the exact opposite. We do far better when the government will get out of our way and not to choke us with trillions of dollars in new debt.

A recent Harvard study showed that when a region has their congressman head a important committee, rather than do better they usually do worse economically.

Why are we unwilling to learn from our past. It is painfully obvious that massive government spending has not done as predicted; history has shown repeatedly that more government will not lead to more growth. Why don't we look at history, and repeat our post WWII success, with a massive de-stimulus and contraction of the government?

Government Red Tape Can and Does KILL.

2011-06-06T10:11:00.000-04:00

By Tom Rhodes 6/6/11

Here is the Fact - while trained personnel watched, a 53 year old man stood neck deep in the northern California surf until he got hypothermia and drowned. The government fire and police had training in the past, knew what to do, but because of their department policies, stood on shore and watched the man die rather than rescue him.

If you wondering what prevented the government fire and police personnel from rescuing Raymond Zack last week, the answer is easy. Since the government is worried about being open to liability if the attempt failed, the police is to do nothing. It turns out police and firefighters in Alameda, an island city, are no longer certified to government requirements in land-based water rescues. It seems budget constraints prevented recertification. Official policy is that without that paperwork government police and fire are not allowed to help.

The good people of Alameda, who assume that the tax dollars they spend on police, fire fighters and other emergency workers would mean that they are trained to handle this type of situation (they were but certification were allowed to expire) are now left knowing that the government is not there to serve and protect. This is a prime example of more government, more regulation, more bureaucracy, and less self-reliance spelling disaster for society. This is not what ruling elite promise us when they tell us that they must take away our liberties in exchange for being more secure.

Here is what Alameda fire chief Ricci Zombeck said about the situation, "Well, if I was off duty I would know what to do, but I think you're asking me my on-duty response, and I would have to stay within our policies and procedures because that's what's required by our department to do."

The policy is Alameda is to let people die. This is the caring we can expect from government bureaucracy. Police and firefighters risk their lives daily, but when they are told that if they help beyond their “certifications” they will be fired and are forced to allow people whom they may have been able to save die, we have a serious societal problem. There is some twisted notion that the government is there to solve and take care of every problem, and that only the government can be trusted to protect us and safeguard our welfare. Why didn’t any of the 75 civilian onlookers attempt to do something? Worse yet this is a case where individuals knew what to do to save a dying man, but official procedures prohibited them from acting.

Imagine your local firefighter, EMT, or sheriff deputy, who has the training and will, but must choose between keeping their job, or saving your loved one, because some bureaucrat has determined that heroic effort is against policy.

After Raymond Zack died, the government didn’t even retrieve the body, a 20 year old civilian girl did.

Explain to me again how much better off we are when the government takes care of us? This is a clear sign of a sick society.

A Failed Hypothesis

2011-06-01T09:02:00.001-04:00

by Tom Rhodes, 6/1/2011
The hypothesis in question is that of the Federal Department of Education (DoED). Based on its mission statement that hypothesis is that “Centralized federal education programs will promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”

Virtually every high school science book has a section, sometimes a whole chapter on problem solving and the scientific method. For a short time (3 years) I was a high school chemistry teacher. Having come from the industrial world, not the teaching world, and realizing that very little of the chemistry I thought would be remembered past graduation, I stressed one thing over and over, problem solving and critical thinking. I believe that these skills would be far more valuable and germane for my students than remembering the atomic number and mass of Germanium. If you google “4 steps to problem solving,” you will find a veritable tsunami of information. The basic 4 steps are Analyze, Plan, Execute, and Evaluate. These four steps may have different terms to describe them but in essence they are the basis of logical rational problem solving. Kids ask a lot of hard questions, often not about the subject you are teaching. As a teacher I often responded with “You are smart enough to figure that one out. Use your problem solving skills and think for yourself, what was tried before, what worked, what didn’t.”

The first step to solving any is always analyzing the problem. This involves correctly defining the problem. This should include what you know in as much detail as possible, historical information of similar or identical problems, previous solutions that worked and those that didn’t work, and what the expected or desired results to any actions you will plan for solving the problem. Most problems that keep getting worse not better are caused by three things; 1) incorrectly identifying the problem, and 2) failure to correctly evaluate the results of the plan executed to solve the problem, 3) failure to analyze the hypothesis and conclude that is is wrong because the results are not as desired.

Consider the Department of Education, it’s mission is to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.

The Department carries out its mission in two major ways. First, the Secretary and the Department play a leadership role in the ongoing national dialogue over how to improve the results of our education system for all students. This involves such activities as raising national and community awareness of the education challenges confronting the Nation, disseminating the latest discoveries on what works in teaching and learning, and helping communities work out solutions to difficult educational issues.

Second, the Department pursues its twin goals of access and excellence through the administration of programs that cover every area of education and range from preschool education through postdoctoral research.

The DoED has been in existence for over 30 years, any critical analysis of its mission and measureable results of implementing the plans created by the DoED conclusively indicate that both the DoED mission and execution of its plans have failed. Nobody can rationally argue that plans to improve US education by the US Government have, on the whole, been of much measurable success. Although a few of the DoED programs have had limited success, it can be reasonably concluded that as education as a whole, with an increase in centralized government influence, has cost more money and has produced no better, and usually worse outcomes.

We have a problem in our education system. Congress created a plan and the DoED to implement that plan to effect change. The DoED programs (plans) and have revised over and over again for the past 30 years, thus an attempt to follow basic scientific methods. The outcomes were not as desired, very expensive, and not successful. Rationally we should abandon the entire notion that with a country as large and varied as the USA founded on a system of strong States rights, that the federal government can centrally plan an education system that will meet the stated mission. Arguably the education of our students was as good or better before it was directed from Washington, and vast sums of wealth were not confiscated and redistributed in the name of education.

We have failed to correctly evaluate the results of the plans executed to solve the problem and failed to analyze the hypothesis created to fix the problem and consider that it may be in error. Rather than use emotion to attempt to keep promoting a failed hypothesis because we desperately want education to get better, we should use basic scientific thinking, and actually analyze the effects of centralized education programs.

The hypothesis, “Centralized federal education programs will promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access” through years of planning, execution and revision, has been completely disproven. Based on rational scientific evaluation of the results of 30 years of DoED programs, we should end the Department of Education. Diversity brings about innovation and change, not central control, we should let the 50 states all develop their own methods of education, the competition between different practices and ideas will provide a much better variety of education programs that will better serve our diverse nation.

The Obama/Progressive theory of exploitation.

2011-05-31T10:56:00.003-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, 5/31/2011

The Obama/ Progressive theory of exploitation can be summed up in this quote by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, "white folks' greed runs a world in need." No new thought here, according to Dr. Thomas Sowell this explanation of economic and other differences is among the oldest, and most factually discredited, explanations of such difference among all sorts of peoples in all sorts of places. Yet it is an explanation that has long been politically seductive, in countries around the world.

This idea has mass appeal, and satisfies an emotional need, to place the blame on others who have done better in the world for your not having done as well. It however runs contrary to history, and is an antithesis to the founding of the United States of America.

There is deep emotional appeal to this idea, and the plethora of evil deeds from every facet of society provides ample ammunition to support virtually any ideology which blames other people’s sins for their problems. This notion that the poor are poor because the rich have earned their riches on the backs of the poor is an ideological theme that plays well to the uneducated in Third World countries to explain why they lag so far behind the West.

Today and for the past couple of centuries, western culture dominates success compared to other cultures. This produces an image of rich European white people and poor non-white people. Many so called progressives try to blame this on race, and racial oppression. It completely ignores the fact that over human history this has not been the case. Northern white Europeans lagged far behind Eastern, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures for centuries. As Dr. Sowell notes, “In a wider view of history, however, it becomes clear that for centuries before the European ascendancy, Europe lagged far behind China in many achievements. Since neither of them changed much genetically between those times and the later rise of Europe, it is hard to reconcile this role reversal with racial theories.”

We would all laugh at the idea if Europe of a few centuries ago blamed its relative poorness on China’s relative wealth. Europeans changed their culture, from a doggedly feudal society, with virtually no rights of individuals, and regular abuse by a few ruling elite to a more liberal society, which acknowledged individual rights. Expanding on notions like Rule of Law, and Equality Under the Law, and Property Rights. This ideology eventually lead to the end of acceptance of slavery, civil rights. This expansion of rights, lead to huge increases in wealth for most of Western civilization. It cannot be reasonably argued that the standard of living for the vast majority of people in western civilization is not superior to that of what is now considered Third World civilization.

Obama and other elitists, rather than try to promote the ideology and actions that created such vast wealth for such a huge segment of the world, insist upon using the old, disproven, but emotionally appealing notion that those who are prosperous got their by suppressing others.

“Exploitation” theory cannot be reconciled with the facts. If this theory were true, the collapse of imperialism, which returned many countries to self rule from former colonial rule by English, French, or Spanish conquerors, should have resulted in increased overall wealth for those countries. Today many Third World countries are poorer and more oppressed now than when they were ruled by Western countries a few generations ago.

For some strange reason Obama and progressive elitists, want to return to rule by a few elite, eliminate both equal protection and rule of law, and institute historically failed socialist ideologies, fostered by the factually disproven but emotionally satisfying “Exploitation” ideology.

Liberalism, now termed libertarianism, was an evolved ideology which lead to more wealth for more people of all types than any ideology in the history of man. Proof of the failure of “Exploitation” theory, can be seen in Dr. Walter Williams old but still relevant video series unintended consequences.

World Borders 2010

2011-05-23T14:31:00.002-04:00

The borders of countries today are set for a variety of reasons; all the wars, politics, trading, and history have resulted in the borders we now see. Our President thinks that we should ignore the history of the past 45 years, and roll back borders to 1967. Not a well thought out idea; if we roll back the borders to 1967, does that mean the borders of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, East Germany, and Germany have to revert to the way they were in 1967? If not, then why not? Why should just one country have to ignore all the history of the past 45 years and reset its border?

Why 1967, why not 1959, I'm sure the native Hawaiians want their country back. Of course then Obama would be a Hawaiian not an US Citizen and have to give up his current job.

Why not go back further and give the Bohemians their old borders back. I'm sure the Saxons want their country returned as well. Is it fair that the Kingdoms of Naples don't have their old borders? I'm sure the Vikings miss not having the British Isles in their domain any longer.

Wasn't Israel and all of that area including Egypt once part of Rome? Wasn't Greece once part of the Persian Empire?

Many Japanese might think that early 1942 is where borders should be reset. Of course the people of Korea, Manchuria, Burma, Siam, Indo-China, the Philippines, and New Guinea might not like that, then again, considering today's economy they might. I'm sure Mongolia would like to set the boundaries at around 1264 or so.

History is not something we can ignore. It is also not justification for resetting today's borders to some past borders. Forcing Israel to revert to its 1967 borders is no different than saying the border between North and South Korea should be eliminated. Both ideas ignore the realities that war, politics, and history have done to change those borders. The 1967 Israeli border is no more valid today than are any of the historic former borders of Germany. Future wars, politics, trading, and changes in the people and fabric that creates history will mean that the borders we see today will not be the borders we see tomorrow.

End of the Experiment that was America.

2011-05-21T09:00:00.004-04:00

Article I, Section 8, of the US Constitution, clearly gives Congress the authority to declare war. In its wisdom, Congress allowed the president to initiate war action in certain circumstances, defined in the War Powers Act. Section 2(c) instructs the president in the use of War Powers:

"The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."

At the beginning of the U.S. military intervention in Libya, the Obama administration has cited the 1973 War Powers Act as the legal basis of its ability to conduct military activities for 60 days without first seeking a declaration of war from Congress. The military intervention started on March 19; Congress was notified on March 21. Those 60 days expire today.

Any further action by the US Military in Libya is in direct violation of the US Constitution and War Powers Act.

Have no fear, Obama's war will continue, the Rule of Law in the US is dead, Congress has no balls, and there will be no accountability to the Dictator and Chief Obama.

The Police State of Indiana

2011-05-16T11:33:00.001-04:00

On Thursday May 12, 2011 the Indiana Supreme court overturned 800 years of jurisprudence and common law. Dating back to the English Magna Carta, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the subjects of the State of Indiana have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes. The court stated that if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner has no right to do anything about it, and is guilty of a crime if he attempts or to stop the officer’s entry.

"We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."

It’s hard to believe that here in America, the former citizens of Indiana, now the subjects of Indiana, have less rights than did medieval Englishmen. In Indiana a man’s home is no longer his castle. This decision isn't just incorrect, it is a monstrous insult to the Bill of Rights as stated in the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, to the American Revolution, even to the very idea of America itself. The Indiana court had determined that Indiana is a police state. This ruling is a travesty; it is a mockery of the very inspiration which America was created, to claim that this nation, born in violence against the establishment, does not have a right to resist the illegal actions of the establishment in their own homes.

These are the very form and composition of tyranny that resulted in the American Revolution. It was against this very type of tyranny that resulted in the creation of our Declaration of Independence, and our refusal to accept a constitution without the Bill of Rights. I hope and pray that apparent desire of those in power for a police state and control of the masses doesn’t persist. Americans will not tolerate a police state. The increase in police shootings is proof enough. As the police in the US militarize, they are no longer fellow members of the community, working to protect and serve, but now represent Them, an arbitrary government who would arrest a child on weapons charges for binging a plastic knife in her lunch box, and are no longer to be trusted.

The core and fiber of America, from our formation, is summed in what may be our most retold story, the story of the outsider who defeats the elites. America is a unique nation of outsiders. Just look at the theme of most popular movies, from old classics like Mr. Smith goes to Washington (and the various remakes); most of the entire nior genre of films; or the many retellings of the Robin Hood tale; too many westerns to count; Easy Rider; Rocky; the 1983 Coppola hit “The Outsiders”, which launched the carriers of Howell, Macchio, Dillon, Swayze, Estevez, and Cruise, all of whom have made carriers of playing outsiders; to the latest Disney movie “Lemonade Mouth.” You can even include the themes of our most famous comic book superheroes, including; Spiderman, Wolverine, Batman, Blade, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and The X-Men just for starters. Liberals and Socialists want to minimize the “rugged individualist” attitude of Americans, discounting that it is a spirit that runs deep in our veins. From the moment the Pilgrims, who were religious outcasts from the English religious establishment , set foot on Plymouth Rock, soon to become the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the eventual starting point for the actions of the Boston Tea Party, Lexington, Concord and the "shot heard 'round the world" which started the revolution that became the Great American Experiment, America has been the home of Outsiders.

Most Americans consider themselves outsiders are not impressed, nor pay much deference to the establishment. Most of America see the Establishment as snobbish with nothing to be snobbish about, unimaginative and all too frequently incompetent. As Tony Blair said "there is a "quite elemental" force in America that is instinctively anti-Establishment."

The rebellion against insiders who mandate a health care system that reeks of a European welfare state should be of no surprise. The very model of Obamacare, an elite Insider group of alleged health care experts calling the shots on your health care, is not tenable in American culture, because in the American lexicon it translates into some are more equal than others. The rush to exemptions, and exclusion of the government from being forced to participate, and the rash of special privileges granted to the establishment have alone doomed Obamacare to failure. In essence America will not long tolerate anything but Equality Under the Law. Not that the reality our past didn’t suffer slavery, and other heinous discriminations, our history is a long march towards the goal equal treatment for everybody, regardless of any station or circumstance in life.

Paul Ryan accurately described the “The Progressivist vision is to create a new American person who no longer strives to better oneself but accepts one's station in life -- and looks to government to help cope not only with difficulties but with every important personal decision….The passivity this way of living encourages means that most people abandon the right to govern themselves, leaving bureaucratic experts and political leaders in control of every important aspect of individual and social life. “

This vision is not compatible with America. I pray our republic can be saved, but if rulings like that of The Indiana Supreme Court stand I fear it will not. The Indiana Supreme Court’s ruling, put all Hoosiers in a virtual police state, will must not stand, if it remains as such, we may once again hear the outsiders that embody the great majority of Americans utter these immortal words.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.

The Spirits of Our Forefathers

2011-05-15T10:27:00.002-04:00

Not my usual, but it's my blog and I think this is a good read.

The Spirits of Our Forefathers
By Tom Jewett

"Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants to see us happy." (Benjamin Franklin)

"Wine is necessary for life." (Thomas Jefferson)

"My manner of living is plain...a glass of wine and a bit of mutton." (George Washington)

The above statements by three of the Founding Fathers reflect the prevailing attitude toward alcohol in the 18th century and throughout much of our country's early existence. Alcohol has played a major role in our nation's history, and its use is a part of our heritage. In colonial times, Americans probably drank more alcohol that in any other era. Spirits were an integral part of daily life throughout the colonies no matter the geographic or economic differences. It was reported that the average American drank eight ounces of alcohol a day. And it didn't matter what. Americans drank beer, and cider with breakfast; rum and wine with dinner; claret, ratafias, creams, punches, and other concoctions in the evening. (Robinson, 2001)

"Revolutionary War era persons drank a phenomenal amount. We have here an account of a gentleman's average consumption: 'Given cider and punch for lunch; rum and brandy before dinner; punch, Madeira, port and sherry at dinner; punch and liqueurs with the ladies; and wine, spirit and punch till bedtime, all in punchbowls big enough for a goose to swim in.'" (As cited in Washington and Kitman, 1970)

There are a number of reasons for all of this tippling. Our English heritage declared that water was bad for a person's health. Given the sanitary standards of the day this was probably true. Beer consumption especially, was seen as a healthy substitute for water. Beer was considered a food, which showed social status (only the most destitute drank water) and allowed for persons to put in a full days work. Franklin while working in a printing house in London was known as the "water American", because of his affinity to water, by his fellow printers who were

"great guzzlers of beer...My companions at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six o'clock, and another when he had done his day's work." (As cited in Barr, 1999)

Americans of the period believed it was particularly healthier to drink lukewarm alcohol during hot weather rather than drink cold water. Signs were displayed at public wells warning individuals of the dangers of cold water during the summer. The rationale for this is that when a person sweated, heat was conducted from the inside of the body. Therefore, the stomach needed warmth, which could be provided by alcohol. (Barr, 1999)

The bias against water was so great that a recent immigrant from Italy, Phillip Massei, caused a stir at a large dinner party where he

"asked for a glass of water. I perceived some confusion among the servants, and the water did not arrive. The host, next to who I sat, whispered in my ear, asking with a smile if I could not drink something else, because the unexpected request for a glass upset the entire household and they did not know what they were about." (As cited in Barr, 1999)

Beer usually replaced water as the daily drink. An early morning tankard of beer was typical in colonial America, even for children. This tradition, as stated earlier, came from England. The Pilgrims loaded more beer than water on the Mayflower. And, there is some evidence that they were put off at Plymouth, rather than Virginia, because the ship's crew wished to make sure they had enough beer to consume on the return voyage. (Royce, 1981)

The ingredients for beer did not grow well in New England. As a substitute, the Puritans made do with hard cider. The many apple orchards of the area were planted for its production. Men usually began the day with a quart or more at breakfast.

Beer and cider were not readily available on the frontier. Settlers west of the Allegheny Mountains converted their corn into whiskey as a substitute and to make their crop transportable. Life was hard on the frontier. The pioneers called their whiskey the "Good Creature of God", giving them the strength needed to dull the pain of the brutal manual labor of making a home in the wilderness. (Powell, 1999)

"...there is unquestionably too much spirituous liquors drank in the newly settled parts of America, but a very good reason can be assigned for it. The labor of clearing the land is rugged and severe, and the summer sweats are sometimes so great that it would be dangerous to drink cold water..."(As cited in Barr, 1999)

The first businesses established on the frontier were often simple taverns located along trails and roads to take care of the needs of travelers. Tradition of the time dictated that a drink be had at every halt in a journey. One story tells of two travelers on a seventy-mile trek by coach who drank a quart of liquor at each of the eight stops that were made.

Tavern owners enjoyed higher social status than did the clergy during the colonial era. Taverns were the center of civic life. Because of this they were often required to be located near the church or meeting house. Religious services and court sessions were often held in taverns. Judges interrupted court to drink, and clergy were obligated to drink at every house call and were often seen reeling home. (Powell, 1999)

All of this drinking did not go on without some comment. John Adams stated: "If the ancients drank as our people drink rum and cider, it is no wonder we hear of so many possessed with devils." (As cited in History of Alcohol in America) But, among the founding fathers Adams stood pretty much alone. Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson all imbibed and enjoyed brewing or distilling their own alcoholic beverages.

Jefferson was one of the most knowledgeable wine connoisseurs ever to hold national office. And, he was the wine advisor for Washington, Madison and Monroe. He felt that wine was "...indispensable for my health." He further advocated the virtues of wine stating "no nation is drunken where wine is cheap; and none sober, where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage." (As cited in Insiders Guide to Virginia Wineries)

Jefferson believed that wine stimulated conversation. There must have been quite a bit of talking at Monticello because there are records that he and his guests consumed 1,203 bottles of wine in just over two year's time. (Garr, 1997) Jefferson, though, thought of himself as a man of moderation.

"...you are not to conclude I am a drinker. My measure is a perfectly sober one of 3 or 4 glasses at dinner, and not a drop at any other time. But as to those 3 or 4 glasses I am very fond." (As cited in Garr, 1997)

Jefferson's interests in wine went far beyond just drinking. He was also involved in viticulture. He planted vineyards at Monticello and encourage others to take up the practice. Jefferson's attempts were not successful since the phylloxera louse, which was not discovered until the 1860s, attacked his grapes.

The sober picture we have of Washington is not correct if we are to believe anecdotes of his day. It was said that he could dance the night away with four bottles of wine under his belt. And, that his Revolutionary War personal expense account for alcohol from September 1775 to March 1776 amount to over six thousand dollars. (Washington & Kitman, 1970) He was a devout lover of beer; in particular a dark porter was always in ample supply at Mount Vernon. A typical Washington hosted dinner "included several wines, beer, cider." (Mount Vernon An Illustrated Handbook, 1974)

With all the drinking that went on during this era, one tends to agree with Adams' statement and wonder how we fought a war, won our independence, and established a government. Perhaps the Spirit of '76, which inspired our forefathers, was indeed spirits.

References

Barr, Andrew. Drink: A Social History of America. 1999, Carroll & Graff Publishers, Inc.

Garr, Robin. "Jefferson and Wine". 1997, www.winelovers page.com/wines/tjeff.

"History of Alcohol in America" (Cider). www.2020 site.org/drinks/cider.

Mount Vernon An Illustrated Handbook. 1974, Mount Vernon Ladies Association.

Powell, Stephen. "The Devils Drink: 1999, www.bluemoon.net/~spowell/cart.

Robinson, Matthew. : How To Toast Like Our Founding Fathers", 2001, Claremont Institute Publications, www.claremont.org/publications/Robinson 010118.cfm.

Royce, James E. Alcohol Problems: A Comprehensive Survey. 1981, New York Free Press.

"Thomas Jefferson: Food and Wine Connoisseur", The Insiders Guide to Virginia Wineries. www.blueridge/sb-wineries.

Washington, George and Kitman, Marvin. 1970, George Washington's Expense Account. 1970, Simon and Schuster.

Libertarian Thoughts on Current Events

2011-05-10T11:03:00.002-04:00

By Tom Rhodes

Do you believe in Liberty?

Mike Adams, professor at UNC, proposed two very interesting questions: “Do you believe in the inherent ‘goodness’ or ‘perfectibility’ of mankind?” and “Does man get his rights from other men?”

If you or anybody you know answered yes to either question, it is clear they don’t believe in or understand the concept of liberty. Man is inherently evil, even the elite in power, hence we instituted a system of government that spreads out the power, and limits what government can do and charged the government with the specific and sole mandate of protecting individual rights.

The entire founding of our nation was based on the idea that man has rights that pre-exist the government, are natural, and not subject to the whims and wants of those in charge. They firmly believed that one person’s rights ended when they infringed upon the same rights of another; that all people should have the same rights, and all should be treated equally. They believed that no person’s right obligated another person to provide the means of exercising that right. Your right to keep and bear arms does not obligate others to provide you with arms to bear. The idea that mankind has rights not just privileges granted by those in control. Coupled with a healthy distrust for men in power, because history has always proven that “power corrupts,” our country was founded on the idea that the government has limits, not the people.

This idea was clearly stated in the purpose document for the founding of this country, The Declaration of Independence, which eloquently states that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights - that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness - To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Lies about racism.

After the first presidential debate In South Carolina – the home of secession, John C. Calhoun, Strom Thurmond, and the long-fluttering Stars and Bars over the state Capitol building – a black guy, Herman Cain, won in a landslide with a nearly all-white focus group of local Republicans. This provides compelling counter-evidence to the tired Democratic charge that conservatives and libertarians, especially from the south, detest Obama primarily because he’s black. The truth is that they despise him because he’s an old-fashioned, socialist, big government, anti-liberty, free-spending, elitist lefty.

Free Speech Dead in Denmark.

Tuesday May 3, 2011 marked the end of free speech in Denmark and the acceptance of Shariah law. Denmark convicted, Lars Hedegaard, president of the International Free Press Society, for offending Muslims. This will likely be used to set precedence in the EU.

Federal Government Hates South Carolina.

Because South Carolina doesn’t exercise the socialistic control of labor and business that northern states do, our federal government is denying them the opportunity to create high-skill, high-wage jobs, President Obama’s labor board, namely the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has undertaken a direct assault on South Carolina.

The NLRB has told both Boeing and South Carolina that because South Carolina is a right to work state, that Boeing cannot expand its production to South Carolina. Boeing is not reducing or closing a plant in Washington, but expanding, so it is not cutting union jobs in the North for non-union jobs in the South. It doesn’t matter, the government has determined that Boeing is not allowed to expand to right to work states.

Obama’s fidelity to Big Union Bosses extends to more than just South Carolina. The NLRB has begun to sue states whose citizens voted to protect themselves from coercion and intimidation by adding secret ballot guarantees to their state constitutions. There is proof that states with right-to-work laws are more financially and educationally accomplished than states where unionization is forced.

The Facts are clear, unemployment is lower in right-to-work states and home ownership is higher. There are more highly-educated workers than in forced unionization states. The overwhelming majority of young professionals – 94.3% to be exact, choose to live in right-to-work states. The best example is the giant sucking sound of the mass exodus of people, jobs, companies, and opportunity from Michigan to right-to-work states.

South Caroline Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina powerfully summed it up, “America will not win the future if Washington penalizes workers in states that have discovered winning economic strategies.”

It’s a Spending Problem

Our national debt is not a revenue problem it’s a spending problem; because regardless of the government’s income (tax revenue) it spends in excess. Hence we see still another call for expansion in the debt ceiling. Some may argue that it's necessary to keep the markets functioning, but they won't function for long if the government keeps spending trillions more than it takes in. Look at Greece and explain how well this strategy has worked for them. Even after they were bailed out by the EU, they have continued to spiral into more debt. We’re bigger than Greece but will end up in the same place if we continue to promise and spend more, than can be reasonably extracted from the public in taxes.

The tens of thousands of pages of tax law, the obvious inequality of taxes as currently collected, and the unwillingness of the Federal Government to live within its means, has lead to a situation where the majority of people no longer consider cheating on their taxes as immoral or unethical. This cannot be good for the country. To gain credibility and the support of the American people, the government must curb its spending.

National Curriculum

There is a movement to standardize K-12 curriculum. The very same educational professionals who have so miserably failed our students over the past 40 years are now advocating a "common curriculum" that would supposedly engage the minds of all American students, aligning their performance with the latest thinking as to what's needed. The Albert Shanker Institute, named for the late head of the American Federation of Teachers, wants a "coherent, sequential set of guidelines in the core academic disciplines, specifying the knowledge and skills" expected of all students.

To a conspiratorialist this sounds like a way for the government to control the ideas and knowledge that we expose all children. I doubt that, it’s probably just based on good intentions of people who refuse to look at reality, and think that what sounds good and feels good must somehow actually be good. It’s a bad idea just because it will completely stifle innovation in education, and make teachers worth even less. How much do you really know to herd children, and review the pre-planned power point, and give the pre-designed work sheet, and administer the pre-conceived test, which has been so dumbed down so that even the dumbest student can pass with little or no effort?

The Reality is that we have the exact educational systems that post-modern America wants. Not the best, nor the worst, the logical product of our feminized culture that demands equality not excellence. As long as we are more worried about how students feel about themselves than we are the quantity and quality of the knowledge they posses, our schools will continue to give us what we want -- Students, who think they are smart and successful, but who in reality cannot perform, especially when compared to other cultures. Because the results of academic competition in schools ends up with some kids not feeling as good about themselves as others, most schools no longer have valedictorians, class rankings, etc. Forcing schools to focus extraordinary effort on academically inferior and poorly motivated students, rather than use those resources to build up and advance our most gifted, has resulted in exactly what we want, equality of outcome not opportunity. Unless as a culture we are willing to separate the wheat from the chaff (academically speaking), and acknowledge that just like in sports not everyone has the same natural talents in intellect, we will continue to see poorer and poorer education. Post-modern America wants everybody to succeed, and if some can’t, we’ll just lower the standard so we can claim they did. We demand success whether it’s real or manufactured. In academics we will accept the lie and ignore reality so we can feel good about our children.

Us vs. Them

2011-05-07T12:37:00.002-04:00

by Tom Rhodes

It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican, you don’t trust the information you get from Washington. Like all Americans you are fed up with the fact that you can’t trust Washington. Regardless of what new laws they pass; they either pass the wrong ones or won’t enforce the ones they do pass. The difference between Libertarians and the Democrats and Republicans is that the Libertarians don’t even pay lip service to the lies of Washington leaders. We don’t get elected because we actually tell the truth.

All sides keep attacking both immigration and tax laws as an example of what is wrong in Washington. These two areas are a threat to our liberty and are an example of the rulers in Washington working at creating a dictatorship or small oligarchy to rule the USA.

History is clear, the easiest way to have dictatorial powers is to create laws that you don’t enforce. You can make everyone a criminal, and with selective enforcement, the government can decide who to jail and who to let free. Without having to abide by the rule of law the government can dictate rather than build a consensus. They can through power and threat ignore the limitations that the people put upon them.

Currently the government does not enforce immigration laws and has created a tax code so complex that it’s impossible to follow. The country has become so over criminalized that it is impossible for any individual or company to go a single day without breaking some kind of law. The government has also gone to absurd degrees in enforcing some laws for non criminal behavior. Explain how when an elementary school boy points a little green army man at a class mate can ever been reasonable construed as a criminal threat with a deadly weapon?

The absurdity of too much government has lead to a definite us vs. them mentality. The government has created a permanent under-class of criminals in this country, completely at the leave of the federal government. So the idiocy of the government is to create more complex laws- like Real ID- to combat problems related to them not enforcing laws in the first place.

The result is a constant assault and erosion of our liberties. Nobody trusts the government anymore, especially our leaders. As Americans we want to feel that when our President speaks we are hearing the truth. Nobody can objectively trust what comes out of our Presidents’ mouths. From Clinton’s famous “I did not have sex with that woman” while being impeached to Bush’s “I have been very candid about my past," during the 2000 campaign. Obama started early as president with lies, he promised not to raise taxes on those making less than $250K, and within a month of taking office raised taxes on tobacco, which disproportionately affects the poor. The point at which Obama totally lost credibility with the majority of Americans probably came last December when after ripped the Republicans as "hostage takers" on the "tax deal", then agreed to it. Rather than address this lie he left left it to Clinton to justify it, and people wonder why she is resigning.

One of the many planks that the Republicans ran in 2010, and promised was “tax reform.” One of the many planks that the Democrats ran in 2010, and promised was to “tax the rich.” The American people are fed up and know both parties are deceitful. We the people get screwed. Anybody who can do basic math, realizes that if we taxed the rich at 100% we wouldn’t even cover a year’s worth of government spending, so the Democrats mantra of trying to get more out of the rich won’t work. And anybody who can read, looks at the history of the Republicans, to see that they will continue to provide their rich patrons tax breaks, and do nothing of substance to reduce spending, they never have and never will.

Tax law is what the government uses to pay off the rich who directly fund the Washington elite. Lobbyists spend about $5Billion every year, and end up with about $200Billion in direct tax breaks for those whom they lobby. If your rich, or a rich company, that is a wise investment. The rulers in Washington, get a good deal, and are made wealthy looking out for their investors.

Why should any person who earns $X pay any different taxes than any other person who earns the exact same $X per year? If our countries leaders believed in the Rule of Law, and Equal Rights, then everybody who earned $X would pay the same taxes, Period. The tax code it used to reward those whom the government wants to reward, and to direct social engineering. A system that did not tax the poor, and then taxed everybody equally based on how much they consumed (the rich consume a lot more than the poor and this type of system would be very progressive). There is nothing fair about it and it will never be fair, as tax code exercised under the threat of force is the source of virtually all of our government’s power.

The Democrats and Republicans singular goal is to maintain power and take it from the other party. They do not have the interest of the people at heart. Even when they know a program has failed, to protect government workers and the illusion that their ideas and plans are effective, they will stop at nothing to protect such failed policies. Consider Head-Start, there is zero evidence that this program has any lasting benefits. Every study done, there are several, clearly demonstrate that this program provides zero long term benefits to children although it does have considerable costs. Even when confronted with verifiable factual objective data that clearly demonstrates that this is a government program that could be eliminated with no long term detriment the children it supposedly serves, those in government rationalize why we must continue this boondoggle. Generally this blame is on liberals (they exist in both major parties). Although a token Republican or two has talked about ending such programs, they know it is just a token gesture to try and appease a segment of the population calling for change. The fact is both parties use this kind of government boondoggle to buy supporters and maintain their power.

Our country, like many others, is at a critical juncture. The government has promised to take care of everybody knowing it doesn’t have the resources to do that. The Ponzi scheme it has used forcing payment for today’s promise on tomorrows people are not sustainable. The special patronage to those the government favors over the people has become blatant. The disregard for the rule of law and equal rights by the government is becoming more obvious. The historic norm for the world for almost all of history is power and wealth for a few who control the use of force, and poverty and servitude for everybody else. The Christian Reformation and the advancement of related ideas which accumulated in the US experiment, documented as documented Declaration of Independence, US Constitution, and the Amendments and laws which attempted to protect all individuals rights, are contrary to thousands of years of history. Like the other brief spots of liberty and freedom the world has seen, this one too will end, as those with power and the ability to force their will on others (even for their own good) will strip away liberty and force the masses into servitude again.

Think about it, we started with a government made up of the people and one that trusted the people more than it did the government. As such it recognized the right and need of the people to have the ability to throw off the government, by force if necessary. So we restricted the government. Until the failure of the government control program we call Prohibition, any weapon the military had was freely available to the people. Some of the people thinking of prohibition as tyranny, took up arms, including Tommy-guns, so that they could defend themselves from a tyrannical government enforcing unjust laws un-equally. The tyranny of prohibition made almost every American a criminal. Just at the prohibition against pot does today. After the government’s failed attempt to force the people to do what the government thought best (not drink), they set about putting up restrictions to how the people could arm themselves, because an armed populace made tyrannical laws much more difficult to enforce. Never mind that if the government hadn’t used force to keep the people from a voluntary exchange of goods they wanted the gangs and violence that came from Prohibition would never have happened, thus the justification for the restriction on arms would not have been valid.

At what point do we say we are no longer free citizens but serfs? When the government can declare what you can and can’t eat? If that is the case then we are already serfs. It is the difference in those who believe in unalienable rights, and rights granted by the state. It is us vs. them, people who don’t want to be taken care of, but want liberty, vs. ruling elite who offer a poor promise of security, in exchange for your property and liberty.

Rational or Rationizing

2011-05-06T13:37:00.000-04:00

by Tom Rhodes

Liberals are not rational animals, they are rationalizing animals.

Case in Point, Head-Start, there is zero evidence that this program has any lasting benefits. Every study done, there are several, clearly demonstrate that this program provides zero long term benifits to children although it does have considerable costs. Even when confronted with verifyable factual objective data that clearly demonstrates that this is a government program that could be eliminted with no long term detriment to those who currently take advantage of it, liberals still rationalize why we must continue this boondoggle.

There is emotional viseral hatred for anybody who would look at this program, or other government programs objectively. It goes agains what liberals "feel" should be the results. How they "feel" a program should work and what they want the results to be are far more important than the objective results.

The Chicago Way

2011-05-02T10:28:00.002-04:00

Nearly every pundit, including myself, has made a reference to Obama and the Chicago way, implying that his methodology is analogous to the Chicago thuggery of the prohibition era or the Daley machine. These articles have claimed that Obama works through extortion and force not the reasoned consensus building of a modern politician in polite society. The reason for the past several years that there exists such a cacophony of claims to Obama acting like a Chicago thug is not just that he hails from Chicago, but is based on real observation of his actions. In other words the reason so many pundits claim Obama is a political thug is because based on the objective evidence that it is true.

Last week we saw another prime example of the thug nature of the Obama administration. Exercising the old and proven method that thugs have used for eons to gather power and force the will upon others, Obama is using extortion. His Health and Human Services office is demanding the resignation of the CEO from Forest Laboratories. HHS wants to exclude Forest from selling its products to Medicaid, Medicare and VA hospitals unless their CEO, Howard Solomon, is let go. This is Chicago style extortion at its finest. This is meant to set an example for every medical company in America. To steal a line from the great gangster movie, The Godfather, Obama is making an offer that they can’t refuse. If you as a medical company dare not do as you are dictated by the Obama political machine, you too can and will be removed from position as CEO. Medical CEOs better "love" Obamacare or pay the price.

It is true that Forest Labs broke the law, marketing a drug, which was eventually approved by the FDA, prior to its approval. As a result they admitted their error, paid a $313 million fine, and complied with everything the Justice Department demanded. In truth, they paid for their crime, in full, as the law dictated that they should. For the Obama administration this wasn’t enough. They want the company’s CEO, Solomon tossed out, even though Forest Laboratories complied with every legal punishment, the FDA will prohibit them from any business involving the government unless they bow down to this extortion.

Never mind that Solomon took a small inconsequential vitamin company and built a major $4 billion company that employs thousands of people, generating millions in tax revenue and creates life-enhancing medicines to the benefit of millions of Americans. As an example to all Medical CEOs, and in absence of any law that grants the Obama administration the authority, Obama is going to exercise power in the tradition of Chicago organized crime, and demand the termination of Solomon, as a sacrifice. I can just imagine Obama in his best imitation Godfather accent saying, “We must make an example of this Solomon fellow.”

That is not to say that if you obey Obama your business will be a success. Last year when Obama, again with no legal authority, fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner and dictated the type of car GM will produce, specifically the Chevy Volt. GM like any other government owned and controlled company is losing money. Thanks to generous tax incentives, GM has managed to sell a whopping 271 Chevy Volts, all at a huge loss. Considering GM sold 592,545 vehicles in the first quarter of this year, the sales of the Volt are statistically ZERO(less than 0.05%). At least GM is temporarily safe by following the dictates of Chicago thugs who extorted them, the Obama Administration. Chicago style thuggery, which when exercised by government is called socialism or fascism, may dictate what a company produces, but because there is a modicum of freedom in the USA and we still have some choice, and there is still some free competition, so even with skyrocketing gas prices, the people prefer the just about any other vehicle over the Government Motors overpriced electric boondoggle.

Just like in Chicago, where the thug nature of how things were run during prohibition resulted in businesses that behaved out of fear not what was necessarily best for business. Buying from the thug approved seller, selling at the thug approved price, paying off the correct thugs for protection, or being eliminated and having your business sent to your thug controlled competitor. Businesses in this environment either become totally controlled by the thugs, move to a place with a better and safer business climate, or simply go out of business because it is no longer profitable. The result is that for people that live in places where business are controlled by thugs, they end up with fewer choices in businesses and products, paying more, and endanger themselves if they buck the system. Obama is trying to run the US the same way as the Chicago thugs historically run Chicago, with force, fear, and a disregard for the rule of law. Equality under the Law plays no part in the Obama administration’s methodology. They openly grant favors and exemptions from the law to those who support and/or obey, and punish beyond legal justification those of whom they want to make an example. You will read and hear more of Obama working in the “Chicago Way” not just as political hyperbole, but because it is objectively true. Obama is a Chicago thug, and his goal is the same as the historic goals of past Chicago thugs like Al Capone or the infamous Daley Machine, power.

Patent law and Constitutional Limits

2011-04-26T10:48:00.000-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, 4/26/2011

To bad none of the GOP or newly elected TEA Party legislators actually cares about the constitution. The Senate has passed a bill (S.23) to take away the property rights of American inventors. They held a quick poorly publicized hearing that did not include a single inventor, a small-business person, a venture capital person or a constitutional authority. It’s sister bill in the house is now being pushed without any publicity, H.R. 1249.

This bill is clearly unconstitutional, as rather than acknowledge one of the most valuable individual rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution is the right of "inventors" to own "the exclusive right" to their "discoveries" for "limited times” (see Article I, Section 8 of the US constitution), these bills give the right to an invention to the person who first files. Get that, if a company files the paperwork, they have the right to an invention, not the actual inventor.

The right to one’s own invention has been recognized and reinforced by our system of granting patents to inventors, U.S. patents are awarded to the "first-to-invent" a new and useful product. The U.S. patent system was unique when the Constitution was written and is still unique in the world today. It protects individual property rights, not government filing rights. This is one of, if not the primary, reason why the United States has produced most of the world's great inventions and dominates the world in innovation.

Every other country in the world award patents under a system called "first-to-file," i.e., the first person to file a paper with a government office. The rest of the world would prefer that we changed our system from first-to-invent to first-to-file. Harmonizing as it’s called, would take the system that has produced more innovation than any other and proven successful for centuries, and make it match the proven inferior system the rest of the world uses.

Even if harmonizing were a reasonable idea (it’s not) the bigger problem is that it is clearly unconstitutional. The Constitution, Federalist Papers, and centuries of court cases are very clear, and plainly state that the property right belongs to "inventors," not to someone handing a piece of paper to a government bureaucrat. Not a single scholarly law review article proves or claims otherwise, while many which have examined the issue have concluded that the “first-to-file” concept is unconstitutional.

Where are the TEA Party, and other so-called constitutional defenders on this issue? (I hear crickets chirping over the silence). An “inventor” through all of US history, and the writings of our forefathers has always meant the first-to-invent something, not the first to do paperwork. If you look at the “Patent Acts,” laws created in 1790, 1793, and 1836, you will see that historically we have always considered a patent to go to the first “original and true inventor.” First-to-invent, not first-to-file conforms with our tradition and history and over 200 years of court proceedings. First-to-invent is the standard we have used, and the standard that has proven to best protect innovation, and provide a foundation that has resulted in more innovation than the rest of the world combined. We have over 200 years of settled and successful law. Why are our leaders even considering the un-American notion that we should utilize treaties and foreign laws to reinterpret our Constitution and statutes concerning patent law?

Who benefits from first-to-file? This concept elevates paperwork over true inventions. First-to-file favors foreign inventors and big corporations that have the lawyers and resources to file quickly and redundantly, while taking rights away from independent inventors and small businesses.

First-to-file may make patents more efficient, and international agreements easier, but it destroys individual rights in favor of big business, and violates our Constitution. This is a truly perverse constitutional issue that YOU should be outraged over. Get out of your internet browser, fire up your word processing software (if you’re using word note that MS lost a patent case and is now at the US Supreme court trying to defend its theft of another’s invention) , and type out a letter, and sign it by hand and mail it to your US Representative, and urge him to vote against “harmonizing” US Patent Law.

Luddites

2011-04-20T17:29:00.002-04:00

Typical liberal Luddite – in the true historic meaning of the term - Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) declared that the Apple iPad was responsible for unemployment. In a impassioned declaration supporting bookmakers and publishers he said, "Now Borders is closing stores because why do you need to go to Borders anymore? Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble? Buy an iPad and download your newspaper, download your book, download your magazine. What becomes of publishing companies and publishing company jobs? What becomes of bookstores and libraries and all of the jobs associated with paper?"

Imagine if Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) was a political leader in the mid 15-th Century, he probably would have been working for the Church as it had all the power. His impassioned declaration would have read, "Now the monastery is closing because why do you need to have copyists? Why do you need to go to the Church or Town Square? Buy an Bible, or buy one of Luther’s books and read it yourself. What becomes of copyists, monks, Just think of all the quill maker jobs. What will the woodcarvers and their suppliers do?"

In the mid-15th century Johannes Gutenberg invented a mechanical way of making books. This was the first example of mass book production. Before the invention of printing, multiple copies of a manuscript had to be made by hand, a laborious task that could take many years. Later books were produced by and for the Church using the process of wood engraving. This required the craftsman to cut away the background, leaving the area to be printed raised. This process applied to both text and illustrations and was extremely time-consuming. When a page was complete, often comprising a number of blocks joined together, it would be inked and a sheet of paper was then pressed over it for an imprint. The susceptibility of wood to the elements gave such blocks a limited lifespan.

The result of Gutenberg’s invention was something called the Reformation. Without the printing press, the ideas of Luther, and later Calvin, would have been easily suppressed by Rome. The number of people who could read would have remained minimal, and the cost of creating a Library would have remained out of the reach of most small cities and villages. The printing press, and the generosity of industrialists like Carnegie, implementing new technology, has led to virtually every small town in the USA having a library, where the people could for free go and read books. Libraries cost the community, but the cost is minimal compared to the volume of information they provide. To use a library a person must take time, spend money on traveling, and provides limited access due to library hours, and is limited to the books on hand of a specific library. To create bound paper books uses large amounts of physical resources, paper, fuel, printing presses, etc. The printing press and resultant surge in libraries was a huge boon for all of society, but not so good for quill makers, wood carvers, and copyists, and hurt the control of the ruling elite.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) is typical of liberals and socialists. They support unions who uniformly resist technological advances. In the US we make more automobiles than ever before. Ford, GM, Chrysler, Mercedes, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Toyota, BMW, KIA, Nissan, Subaru, and Telsa, produce a larger number of cars of better quality in the USA than ever before and with just a fraction of the people it used to take. One of the prime reasons Detroit is just a shadow of itself is because the unions gained significant power and authority over law makers and were able to stop car companies from modernizing because it would eliminate union jobs. The unions became so strong that if technology resulted in the elimination of a position on the assembly line the car company in Detroit had to keep the person employed, and literally had to pay employees to sit in a room and do nothing. This was a huge contributor to why they moved and built their new facilities anywhere but Detroit and Michigan. The Luddite resistance to technological advances was a major contributor to the fall of Detroit.

EBook readers are not new, originally called Cyber-Readers or Cybooks, they have been available for over a decade. It’s just taken a few years for them to be accepted by the public. Personally I’ve been surfing the web, editing documents, watching movies, and reading eBooks on my Palm TX for over 5 years. Although the interface is not as glitzy as the Ipad or new Android tablets, Apple and Google are just now producing products with the functionally, including reading eBooks, that the Palm TX has had since 2005. From a single point of origin, Mainz, Germany, printing spread within several decades to over two hundred cities in a dozen European countries. By 1500, printing presses in operation throughout Western Europe had already produced more than twenty million volumes. In about 50 years more books were produced then in all of human history before. It created the Publishing industry.

Today, like the printing press, eBooks offer even greater access to information massively less cost. The Gutenberg Project now has over 40,000 eBooks available in virtually any electronic format at no cost. Anybody with a Nook, Kindle, Palm, Ipad, Iphone, or other similar device has a huge world of information sitting in their hands. The benefits in savings in material resources and availability of knowledge to everybody at such minimal costs can only benefit society. Visit The Gutenberg Project or new models of publishing like that offered by Baen to see what eBooks have to offer, even for free. With the volume of “free” books available you would think that book sales would drop. In reality antique bound paper type book sales are down, but the sale eBooks which now out sell traditional books have more than made up the difference. Now for the price of three new hardback books, you can have instant access to tens of thousands of books for free.

The explosion of relatively inexpensive information that Gutenberg ushered in changed the world. EBooks, and the explosion of inexpensive information that hand held tablets, smart phones and the internet have made possible, are again changing the world. Changes in the way and the ease in which people can get information severally hamper the control ruling that elite have over the masses. Hillary Clinton famously remarked that their needed to be some kind of “gatekeeper” on news. She like the ruling elite in the past, want the rulers to have control over what and how the masses receive information.

What I have experienced is that that in the month after finally convincing my 19yr old son to read an eBook on my Palm T|X, he read 6 novels. I wanted my Palm back, so I gave him a Nook for his birthday. Since then the sound of the TV and video games is no longer the dominant noise in the house. The purchase of a cover for the Nook that gives it the “feel” of a real book actually increased its use. Raised in a reading house my sons almost always are reading a book or two, but the ease of use and ability to read a chapter or two before purchasing a eBook has dramatically expanded both the volume and variety of reading. My son’s old eight to ten book a year habit, is now a 30 to 40 book a year habit. His disposable income for reading has not increased, but his access to reading has. He’s found authors like Cory Doctorow, and others who are generally not available in either the library, and seldom in the big book stores. Doctorow has shown a model for publishing where literally giving his books away has resulted in significant sales increases of his books. His libertarian methodology of voluntary exchange without government or big business control of the transactions is a thorn in government and big business attempts to control who and what get’s published.

In 1980, prior to the internet, there is a book written by Bruce Bethke, that literally coined a name for an entire genre of books, titled “Cyberpunk.” In that era, publishers controlled what people could read, and what could be printed. This novel was purchased by a publisher via an exclusive contract which forbid Bethke from selling the novel to any other publisher. The publisher decided to not release the novel, causing several years of legal battles over the rights to the book. Bethke has a downloadable version of the novel available on his website. This is an example of how technology has taken control away from the ruling elite, in this case Publishers.

I find it odd that Democrats and liberals in general often refer to conservatives as Luddites. The behavior of liberals is clearly more Luddite than any other group. The Luddite socialism that dominates the Democratic Party is inherently selfish. It requires the rest of us have less and pay more, so particular individuals may continue to make money from old technology. They want the power to determine what technology the people are allowed to adopt. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and his Washington brethren, think that artificially keeping the price of books and other information high to protect the jobs of publishers and printers is better for the people. If Washington Politicians truly cared about the people, they'd worry about the millions who like their eBook readers rather than the thousands who wield clubs, looking to smash the "infernal" machines. Never mind the new jobs of the people who make eBook readers, overpriced eBook covers, lights, and accessories.

Information technology is surpassing the ruling elite’s ability to control the people. Personally I believe that the Democrats are against modern eBooks and internet technologies because it severely limits how they can control the information the masses receive, and the Republicans won’t fight them on this because they are against eBooks and similar information technologies because these new technologies limit the profit they can make from selling information.

Watch the Watchmen

2011-04-20T08:16:00.000-04:00

Editor's Note: I hope Mr. Stossel doesn't get mad, I reprinting his article in total here. This particular subject is a huge problem in the USA, and one I think and am working on having the Libertarian Party attack. You will note that there is a specific plank about filming government officials, including law enforcement, in the Proposed Platform which should be adopted at the end of the month at the Libertarian Party of Florida State Convention. Thank you Mr. Stossel for bringing this problem into the spotlite.

Watch the watchmen
John Stossel © 2011
April 20, 2011

I believe in the right to privacy.

Yet I can think of someone who deserves very little privacy – a policeman making an arrest. Unfortunately, in some states it's a crime to make a video of a policeman doing just that. People recording police have been threatened, detained or arrested. Some were jailed overnight.

That's wrong. Police work for the public, they're paid with tax money, and most importantly, they have tremendous power. They've got the legal right to pull guns, detain us, lock us up and, in some cases, shoot us. The potential for abuse is great. So it's a good thing that modern video cameras are now so commonplace. Any abuse of police power in a public place is likely to be recorded. Why should that be a crime in some states?

I asked Radley Balko, an editor at Reason magazine who keeps an eye on issues like this: What's happened to the people who were arrested for videotaping cops at work? Balko will be a guest on my Fox Business show this week.

"In most of these cases, the people aren't actually prosecuted," Balko said. "The charges tend to get dropped before these cases get to trial – I think because the people prosecuting these cases and the people who make the laws don't want the laws to actually get challenged. But it's a night in jail."

On what charge?

"In states that have these two-party consent laws, they rely on the old wiretapping laws. The claim is that police officers have a right to privacy while they're on the job in public exercising some pretty powerful responsibilities that we give them. I think that claim is ridiculous."

He says some authorities now claim that people who record the police while being arrested are "interfering with arrest or ... refusing to obey a lawful order, if they tell you to turn the camera off and you don't."

How does it interfere with the arrest?

"It's a ridiculous argument. But here's the thing: You may not go to jail for these charges. But they're going to take your camera, going to arrest you, you're going to be handcuffed, put in the back of a squad car. And nothing is going to happen to the police officers who illegally arrest you – usually."

Occasionally a cop caught abusing his power is arrested or fired. But that's rare.

In Maryland, motorcyclist Tony Graber got in trouble for recording a cop who pulled him over for speeding. Graber didn't know it was a cop. He was just a guy in plainclothes with a gun. The cop eventually identified himself.

"Graber didn't get arrested until he posted that video on YouTube," Balko explained. "Once he posted it ... the state police raided his home – came into his home early in the morning, guns drawn – confiscated a bunch of computer equipment, held him and his parents at gunpoint, arrested him. He spent several nights in jail. He had felony charges hanging over his head until the case finally got to court."

Fortunately, a state judge threw out the charges and wrote a strong opinion:

"Those of us who are public officials and are entrusted with the power of the state should not expect our actions to be shielded from public observation."

He ended by asking, "Who watches the watchmen?" – a question Plato raised in "The Republic." Good for the judge. But Balko points out that no one punished the authorities who abused their power.

"The prosecutor who charged him, the cops who raided him and arrested him – they were all wrong about the law and did real harm to him, and none of them are going to suffer any consequences."

Most police officers told us that they're fine with cameras, and some were happy they were recorded when they were vindicated of misconduct charges thanks to a video made by a bystander. The cops who object tend to be problem cops.

That little phone with a camera is a good thing. Now it's even a weapon against tyranny.

But, Balko added, only if the laws "ensure that we can continue to use it that way."

Liberals Think Your Stupid Or.....

2011-04-14T09:36:00.005-04:00

Either liberals can’t do basic math or they are liars. There is no other answer. Their constant mantra of “Tax the Rich” is based on creating a false “class warfare” not on increasing government revenue.

Consider what would happen if we did as Michael Moore suggested and “Eat the Rich.” If we taxed those who make more than $250,000 a year at 100% and taxed 100% of all Fortune 500 companies’ profits, and confiscated all billionaire's total assets, we’d only cover a portion of the government’s annual expenses for one year. The rich don’t have enough total wealth to fix our problems. What’s worse, is next year those people would change their behavior and make dam sure that they reduced their income and hide their profits, or move to a place that allowed them to keep the money they earn. So the idea that we can solve our problems by taxing the rich just doesn’t add up.

Michael Moore is a prime example of people changing behavior based on what it will cost him. He was recently in Wisconsin ranting and raving and getting himself on the news in support of the public sector Unions, yet when it’s his money, he chooses to shoot his films where he doesn’t have to use union labor and shoots his films without union labor so that he can maximize his profits. He just doesn’t expect everybody else to change their behavior so they can keep more of what they earn.

As a percentage of GDP our taxes are the most progressive of all western industrialized nations. This explains why American businesses are moving overseas. Liberal high-tax ideologues don't see it. They would be horrified at the idea that we ought to lower our corporate tax rates, just so that more American businesses would do more of their business at home, providing more Americans with much-needed jobs.

You cannot cut taxes for the poor, they don’t pay any taxes, and therefore virtually any tax cut would result in being for the people who pay the most taxes, the rich. Because tax policy actually does affect behavior, when the rich are allowed to keep more profits, they do things to generate more profits, and hence although the rate of taxation may be lower, the results are the total dollars they pay in taxes is higher. History is clear, cutting very high tax rates has ended up bringing in more revenue to the government in the Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan and Bush 43 administrations. This included more – that’s MORE not less-- tax revenue from people in the highest income brackets than before. Some liberals doubt this and claim it is a lie using the fact that under Reagan with the tax cut was an accompanying increase in the national debt. The fact is total revenue did increase but was more than offset by even greater government spending; if spending increases faster than revenue increases it doesn’t do much good, you're still deeper in debt.

No matter what a liberal thinks, or a liberal wants to be true, or what a liberal tells us, changes in taxes policy result in changes the way taxpayers behave. Regardless of the tax policy, the revenue collected by our government since WWII remains relatively constant at just under 20% of GDP. Lower taxes and we generally see an increase GDP and thus greater revenue for the government. Raise taxes and people move their money to tax free bonds or offshore. Their money may not earn as much profit but amount of money they can keep is better and there is less risk. There is a balance between zero taxation and 100% taxation which maximizes revenue. History is clear that if you raise taxes too much you get less. Liberal high-tax ideologues don't see it that way. They would be horrified at the idea that we ought to lower our corporate tax rates, just so that more American businesses would do more of their business at home, providing more Americans with much-needed jobs.

Liberals do not want to increase taxes to increase government revenue, they know that this will not work; they are liars if they say or imply that we need tax increases to increase government revenue. Liberals are more concerned about wealth inequality than they are about jobs, the health of the country, liberty, freedom, human rights, quality of life. Rather than deal with what “is”, they deal in what they think “should” be. The act just like a mommy, and don’t think anybody should suffer as a result of the life choices they make, and want to make everything fair. Because they think it’s unfair that some people have more than others, rather than let some people succeed, they are willing to make everybody suffer. In a rare moment of honesty, while on the campaign trail Obama said that raising the taxes on the rich was about being fair, not about raising revenue for the government.

Liberals fundamentally don’t believe that society should reward people for what they contribute to society based on free and voluntary exchange with their fellow members of society. Because this will result in some people having more than others, becausenot everybody has equal talent, abilities, drive and luck. Liberals believe but that some ruling elite should distribute wealth based on their egalitarian principles, not based on the effort individuals contribute to society. The 20th century has many examples of this, all failed and ended up not only putting everyone in those societies (except for the ruling elite) into poverty, but resulted in those same ruling elite murdering tens of millions of people to maintain their power.

Don’t confuse our current system with Capitalism or Free Enterprise, because it isn’t. We now live in a semi-free corporate crony state, where the government picks and chooses who it wants to succeed based on how much they “donate” to the correct political coffer. It is not free enterprise, fair or voluntary trade between free people. Look at the tax code; nobody can say that it treats everybody equally under the law. GE is a prime example, they have legally found a way to protect their shareholders assets and virtually didn'tpay a dime in taxes last year. Again this is where liberals confuse what “is” with what they think “should” be, and blame capitalism for the unfair advantages some lawmakers in washington have granted to favored corporations.

Taxing income and profits and the ability to create special exceptions to those taxes (loopholes) is how the ruling elite in Washington hand out political favors for “donations” and attempt to control how and where people spend money. If they think you should buy an electric car, then they will allow you to deduct from your taxes part of the price of that car. This is of course of no benifit to the poor who cannot afford a new car. It gives the government an excuse to know how much everybody earns and how they spend that money, and uses that information to change and create tax law to manipulate the behavior of people to do what the ruling elite thinks is best, then redistribute these tax funds to purchase votes and maintain power. Because controlling tax laws have given the government so much power it is hard to imagine them truly “simplifying” or making the tax laws “fair.” If they did so it would greatly reduce their power. We will never again see fair taxation, the ruling elite have discovered they can control behavior and buy votes with tax dollars.

Listening to Obama, Pelosi, etc. it is clear that the liberals are upset . . again. They lost the power to totally control tax law, because the people of the USA got all uppity with what they were trying to do when they had the power. Even with democrat control of the House, a super majority in the Senate, and the Presidency their ineffectiveness was evident as they failed to pass a budget. Now, because all tax laws must start in the House of Representatives and even though liberals control the Presidency and the Senate, they only have moderate control of tax law. To get what they want, they once again have to deal with conservatives (Rep. Ryan) and libertarians (Rep Paul). They are doing so by calling Ryan’s proposed spending increases extreme cuts, and maintaining their call to tax the rich more.

So we are left with only two options when thinking about liberals. Either the liberals are so dumb that they can’t do basic math and look at history, or they are lying and think the American people are so dumb that they can’t do basic math and look at history. In either case their continued call to save the country and make things fair by increasing taxes on the rich, can obviously be discarded as a the wrong direction for this country. It will neither generate the increased revenue as promised nor will it make things fair. You decide either liberals can’t do basic math or they are liars.

Paper Money vs. Tangible Assets

2011-04-12T13:54:00.003-04:00

Now that it is clear that the people elected by the TEA Party to protect our liberty and institute financial responsibility by the government, are going to do what the Democrats and Republicans have for over 50 years, and spend spend spend regardless of the available revenue and wishes of the people (62% of us don’t want the government to extend the debt ceiling). It’s time to start changing our behavior and the way we think. The government will not live within its financial and constitutional restrictions anymore. Deficit spending at the current rate will bankrupt the USA and we will see another true depression. In less than 10 years there will not be money for Medicaid, social security, and welfare. That means in less than 10 years about half the population will have no means of support. What we will see will make the Great Depression look like a mild dip in the economy. For a thorough explanation read “The Return of Great Depression” by VoxDay. Here is an interview about the book.

Right now we are experiencing far more inflation that either the government or the news is telling us. Unless you live in a bubble you know this is true, just go to the grocery store or gas pump. At the grocery store you are seeing a steady significant increase in food prices. For example a 1 pound package of pasta less than 2 years ago cost 99 cents, now it costs $1.79, and a 16oz can of veggies now only contains 13oz. For many items the price appear to be stable the actual quantity of food sold per package has decreased. If the deficit spending doesn’t stop soon you’ll pay $10,000 or more for that pound of pasta.

Inflation is going to take away your savings and cripple the USA. To pay off the impossible debt of the government it will simply print money. This has been the way governments in debt trouble get out of debt. Unlike Greece, a relatively small country, there is nobody who can or will bail out the USA. If you think this can only happen to a third world countries like Zimbabwe and not to a modern western republic, you’re wrong, it has. Less than 100 years ago Germany (the Weimar Republic) went through hyperinflation.

Timeline of German (Weimar Republic) Hyper-Inflation

June 24, 1922: 272 Reichsmark (RM) = 1 US dollar

July 1922: 670 reichsmarks = 1 US dollar

August 1922: 2,000 reichsmarks = 1 US dollar

October 1922: 45,000 reichsmarks = 1 US dollar

November 1922: 10,000 reichsmarks = 1 US dollar

December 30, 1922: 500,000 reichsmarks = 1 US dollar

February 1923: Reichsbank buys back RM (or reichsmark); stabilizes RM at 20,000 to 1 US dollar

May 4, 1923: RM 40,000 = 1 US dollar

June 1, 1923: RM 70,000 = 1 US dollar

June 30, 1923: RM 150,000 = 1 US dollar

August 1-August 7, 1923: RM 3,500,000 = 1 US Dollar

August 15, 1923: RM 4,000,000 = 1 US Dollar

September 1, 1923: RM 10,000,000 = 1 US Dollar

Around September 10 to September 25, 1923: Prices reportedly rise hourly in several German cities.

September 30, 1923: RM 60,000,000 = 1 US Dollar

November 15, 1923: Rentenmark issued; pegged to the Gold Standard; Rentenmark 4.2 = 1 US dollar; at this time: Old Reichsmark 4,200,000,000 = 1 US dollar.

It could happen here, too, and all the money you've scrimped and saved could become worthless in a short order. Notice what they did to stabilize their currency, pegged it to Gold. Gold for thousands of years has been the standard to own to protect assets. Not to grow in value but to protect accumulated wealth. The rich own property, gold, jewelry, and other real assets as hedges against inflation.

What can you do? You can change your behavior. Traditional savings will not be adequate, forget growth, you need to put a significant amount of your assets into something tangible. Don’t go out and buy Gold, right now it is artificially high because significant people have realized the above truths and the law of supply and demand have increased its value above its traditional level. When (not if) hyper inflation hits we will be back to barter, until the government is forced to create a stable currency. Although valuable gold will be hard to trade and not as liquid as you may think. You need to think about what people will need and want that you can reasonably store and protect and will hold its value? The reality is a breeding pair of pet goats, or promoting your kid to raise a calf for 4H, are probably better investments than Wall Street. Unfortunately the people that will probably have the last laugh are survivalists. Yep those crackpots who are hording food, fuels, etc. will be better off when hyper inflation hits.

Personally, trying to figure out what assets will be tradable when hyper inflation hits but would still be either usable or maintain their value if the US does by some miracle avoids the next depression (it won’t) is difficult. I believe guns and ammo will be of high value and very trade-able, food stuffs will be valuable including basics like baking powder, yeast (for brewing and breads ), and spices. Owning some basic building supplies, nails, PVC pipe, tarps, and having tools, fasteners, etc may be valuable, but if the economy recovers what do you do with 100 lbs of nails and a half-dozen hammers that are no longer a viable trade good? I’m stocking up on sugar and grains, way more than I can reasonably use, except for the fact that my hobby, home brewing, has given me the skill to turn that sugar into alcohol. Now that is a trade worthy commodity of historical significance.

Regardless of how you do it, being prepared for a crash in the dollar makes prudent sense. If the powers that be vote to once again extend the debt limit, converting our assets from cash and other paper money to real trade worthy products is practical and shrewd.

How to Explain Our Budget Crisis so People Actually Understand.

2011-04-11T14:18:00.001-04:00

By Tom Rhodes, April 11, 2011

The Republicans and Democrats agreed to $38 Billion dollars in spending cuts. Sounds big, the news and our elected leaders are all saying how grand these spending cuts are, and how draconian any bigger cuts would be. The fact is the cuts are less than the interest on the national debt for just one year, and are barely symbolic, so they continue to choose to continuing borrowing money we don’t have.

Let’s put it this way, assume you are spending $1500 more than your income by using a home equity line of credit. Every additional dollar you spend over your income adds to your mortgage. Part of what you are using that $1500 in excess of income is to make part of your mortgage payment (like using one credit card to pay another). You finally realize that you (republicans) and your spouse (democrats) can’t keep spending they way you have, because you are digging a financial hole you may not be able to climb out of. You both argue over what to cut, and it seems everything is essential. So after lots of loud arguments you and your spouse agree to cut your excess monthly spending by $38. The results are that you and your spouse are mad at each other you’ve reduced your excess spending from $1500 more than what you earn to a mere $1462 more than your paychecks. STUPID! Does any rational person think that when you are spending $1500 more than your income, reducing your spending by $38, is going to help your debt problem? When this kind of spending has maxed out your line of credit, would any reasonable person think that because you will now only spend $1462 more than your income that it’s acceptable to get yet another line of credit and borrow more money?

In the real world the only acceptable solution would for you and your spouse to make some serious cuts in your spending, and stop spending more than you take in. Deficit spending over a short period of time for a real crisis is understandable, and most people have had to do that, but to do that every day, week, month, and year without any plan to reduce spending to below your income so that you can pay off the huge debt is a surefire road to bankruptcy. What do we call nations that do this? - Greece and Iceland. Permanent deficit spending is not sustainable.

We already have the most progressive taxes in the world. Our rich (the people who hire others), already pay a disproportionate share of taxes compared to the rest of the population. Our top 20% pay over 80%, while our bottom 50% pay less than 3%. Our history has shown that regardless how we structure our taxes, we cannot collect much more than 20% of GDP in taxes. If we raise taxes people find ways to get out of the taxes by either moving to where they can keep more of their money (off shore), or hording their assets (stop investing and sit on your cash), or some other way to get out of taxes (look at GE for an example). The amount of money the government can get out of the people is maxed out. Sustained spending at 24% of GDP as Obama proposed with revenue at 20% of GDP won’t work. You cannot continue to spend 5% more than your income and not go bankrupt. To become financially stable we must reduce spending to below revenues using the difference to pay down the debt. Nothing else will put us on solid financial ground.

If we don’t institute significant cuts to spending, we will become another Greece or Iceland. We can reduce the size of necessary and painful spending cuts if we increase our revenue. Because our history has clearly shown that in our society it is unreasonable to expect revenue greater than 20% of GDP. To increase revenue we must increase GDP. The problem is our current government laws, regulations, and taxes all go towards reducing GDP and making business harder to do in the USA. Unless your GE or one of the very few other “Fortune 100” companies who have the law makers in their pockets. What congress has done over the past few decades is kill incentives to increase the GDP. From Obamacare, Cap-n-Tax, and hundreds of thousands of pages of new regulations and tax code, the Federal government appears to be systematically trying to kill expansion of the US economy.

The best way to look at it to consider a small business with 40 employees. At the end of the year this business earns for its owner about $200,000. Considering the assets invested, risk taken, and long hour a small business owner works (typical is 60/week) the earnings are modest. Our example business would like to expand because there is a market for more of its product than they currently produces. Any serious or reasonable expansion would put it over the magical 50 employee mark. Because of the additional work expanding the business would cause for the owner, the additional government mandates, and the increase in taxes, if the owner doubled the size of the business the owner would realize an significant increase in liability, responsibility and costs. These increases are not proportional to the benefits of expanding. The additional government burdens because of exceeding 50 employees are huge. A doubling of the size of the business it would only earn its owner about total of $225,000. The meager additional earnings (12.5%) for the small business owner compared to the significant increase (100%) in workload and costs, coupled with a huge increase in regulatory liability, don’t justify expansion. So rather than expand and hire more people the business, holds steady. Imagine turning down work because it would require expansion, and that expansion would put you over 50 people, so the increase in work would become unprofitable? That is what our government has done to our small businesses. Contrary to what the press would have you believe, small businesses are what generate expansion in our economy, and fuel expansion in big business.

Now the problem, the old married couple we keep electing to run the country. The Democrats and Republicans, are not responsible, their entire goal is to maintain power for themselves. The are just like the example I started with explain our financial situation except, unlike couples living in the real world, they can tell the bank what to do. The Republicans newly elected based on promises to institute spending cuts, yada yada yada. They are no different than the Democrats, they promised fiscal responsibility, but when they had the power to force the government to become fiscally responsible they caved. The Republicans ignored their promises and look at the entire thing from how to maintain power not do what’s right, and admit it. In the national Review Online, on , April 9, 2011, Rich Lowry said, “I saw the whole confrontation through the prism of two major downside risks: 1) a shutdown that could go awry politically and badly hurt Republicans three months into their House majority; 2) a poisonous split in the caucus that would make it impossible for House Republicans to fight cohesively on the big items to come.”

Latest polls show that 62% of the people don’t want the government to raise the debt limit. That was and is a major point of what the TEA Party wants and demands. The taxpayers of the USA do not want the government to go further into debt, they understand we have a spending and debt problem. The Democrats hold the people of the US in total contempt. Over the weekend Sen. Charles Schumer may have come up with the most comically derogatory metaphor for the people of the US. He considers the people less than fleas. The people elected a new batch of Republicans to control the US finances, Schumer said they are a “flea, wagging a tail, wagging a dog.” He seems to think the government not the people is the dog, and that the government not the people is in charge.

The constitution makes the House in charge of taxing and revenue laws. The Senate cannot constitutionally initiate these laws; this is so that the law makers closest to the people, the House, are in charge. Constitutionally the government was instituted by the people for the purpose of protecting our rights. Chief Senate Democrat Schumer seems to think that Government, not the people is in charge. The wishes and desires of the people as expressed in our last election are just fleas( Majority of House), on the tail (Budget and Revenue Laws) wagging the Dog (Government).

Almost 80 percent of Americans feel today that the country is on the wrong track. Last November, voters fired one quarter of the sitting Democrats and a good number of the Republicans in Congress in the name of change. What is clear is that both Democrats and Republicans hold the financial health of this country and the wishes of a super majority of the people (62%) in total contempt. They want you to remain ignorant, and their desire is to maintain and keep power. There is a method to force the government to become financially solvent. Stop borrowing, the current GOP majority in congress has that power. Simply refuse to vote to expand the national debt limit. That would be the dog, as in We the US Taxpayer, being in control.

To quote Earl Pitts, “WAKE UP America!!”

Truth - Liberals Don't Tolerate It.

2011-04-07T14:05:00.000-04:00

The actions, thoughts and ideas that Democrats have about Obama are like parents at their kids' first piano recital, regardless of how their child actually plays the parents are convinced it's great and will lie to everybody including the child about how wonderful the child did. Every time Obama speaks, liberals think they're listening to a combination of the Gettysburg Address and the Dr. Kings “I have a Dream” speech. Just look at their name-calling and ad hominem attacks every time anybody criticizes Obama, while never addressing the reason, logic, and substance of the criticism. Objective truth about Obama is tolerated by liberals the same way helicopter parents tolerate bad grades; they attack the truth teller.

Obama called for an adult conversation about the budget and entitlements; Paul Ryan's release a budget for 2012 that addressed both in real substantive ways. Now that they have got their adult conversation, they can't handle it. Typically they are calling it and him, mean, radical, extreme, but have offered no alternative. Ryan's budget is well considered thought out carefully and restrained. It makes sure that no one who is vulnerable is hurt by the undeniably necessary changes proposed. This is a far more adult method of dealing with our problems than Obama's budget which is irresponsible and does not address any entitlement changes at all.

I’d like some liberal to explain to me how reducing the budget to below 2008 levels, restoring it to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout spending, is extreme. Ryan’s budget would decrease Federal spending to below 20% of GDP, similar to the long-run, postwar, historical level, by 2015. That is the same level of federal spending that prevailed on average for 60 years since World War II. What part of the government spending as a portion of GDP roughly the same as it did from Truman to Clinton, is radical, irresponsible, and extreme? Leaders and the press that are saying so are unprofessionally irresponsible and misleading.

If we adopt Ryan's budget we will see a reduction in the national debt by nearly $5 trillion relative to the President's budget in the first 10 years alone. This would result in the national debt being reduces as a percent of GDP every year, until the national debt is zero. In contrast O Obama's budget would double the national debt in his first term alone, and triple it by 2021. Which would you says is radical, irresponsible, and extreme?

Some economists say that Ryan's budget if implemented would result in about 1 million private sector jobs created next year, a drop in the unemployment rate to 4% by 2015, and by the end of the decade, the economy would be creating 2.5 million jobs a year. We have seen the real results when Obama’s ideas are implemented, instead of not letting unemployment reach 8%, the news seems joyous when it’s dropped to 9%.

The truth is that the liberals do not want an adult conversation about the budget, they are willing to turn the US into Greece, and destroy our way of life, and any objectivity about the money available to the budget from the taxpayer, and the spending by the government will not be tolerated. And they wonder why the Tea Party exists, why they have such low approval ratings. Governors, congressmen, and all sorts of politicians were elected based on promises to return this country to solvency, reduce the size of government, and gut government spending. The liberals are completely intolerant of these newly elected officials actually doing what they promised. The liberals are intolerant of these newcomers not “understanding” how government works. They really can’t tolerate liberty, and will use any means they can legal, illegal, immoral, and even unconstitutional, to keep power, and force their failed utopian socialist agenda on the people of this country.

The government might get shut down (temporarily) in a couple days, I can’t think of a single person who pays more in taxes than he receives in government handouts that will be more than mildly affected. Email will still be delivered, Stores will be open, electricity will flow, my local police will catch criminals, my local schools will teach children, churches will marry couples, and hospitals will help the injured. The people crying and gnashing their teeth will be those who live off the taxpayer, and have their needs and wants met by the government rather than in fair trade with their fellow citizen. This truth will greatly upset liberals.

“If the president does it it’s not illegal!”

2011-03-21T11:47:00.001-04:00

US Government 101 – The constitution is clear only Congress, not the president, may declare war. Due to the actions of past presidents concerning the use of the US Military after WWII,the Korean Police Action and the undeclared Vietnam war, with a two thirds majority of both the house and Senate they passed the War Powers Act.

The War Powers Act of 1973 (50 U.S.C. 1541–1548) was a United States Congress joint resolution providing that the President can send U.S. armed forces into action abroad only by authorization of Congress or if the United States is already under attack or serious threat.

Nobody can reasonablly claim that Libya has attacked or poses a serious threat to the United States directly or to it’s National Security. What is Obama’s legal or constitutional justification to go to war and bomb a sovereign nation that has not attacked the US nor poses a serious threat, without a congressional declaration of war?

Libya, a despicable but sovereign nation, is using the full force of its government against some of its own citizens who are violently rejecting the government itself. As much as I want the citizens of Libya to have freedom and liberty, how does this action within a sovereign nation warrant the US bombing Libya? Does an uprising of people anywhere in the world against their oppressive government justify other sovereign nations bombing that government? If that is so then there would be more justification to bomb a government that attacks and shoots its citizens who have not attacked the government. This would mean that Mexico, Iran, or even Libya would have been justified in bombing the United States over the federal slaughter of 76 Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.

Obama has unconstitutionally put the US Military at the control of the UN. On March 19, at meeting in Paris, attended by Hillary Clinton and representatives from other nations, as a group of "state actors” they issued guidance and control mechanisms that resulted in the bombing of a sovereign nation, using U.S. military assets without congressional approval. This action is global governance in action. Global governance must be rejected and national sovereignty reaffirmed as the only authority that governs the citizens of the United States. Obama's dictatorial like actions will lead us to tyranny.

During a Democratic Caucus conference call on Saturday, a group of House Democrats questioned the constitutionality of U.S. missile strikes against Libya, with one lawmaker raising the prospect of impeachment. It has been reported by two Democratic lawmakers who took part in that conference call that Reps. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Donna Edwards (Md.), Mike Capuano (Mass.), Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), Maxine Waters (Calif.), Rob Andrews (N.J.), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.) “all strongly raised objections to the constitutionality of the president’s actions.”

“Almost everybody who spoke was opposed to any unilateral actions or decisions being made by the president, and most of us expressed our constitutional concerns. There should be a resolution and there should be a debate so members of Congress can decide whether or not we enter in whatever this action is being called,” added another House Democrat opposed to the Libyan operation. One Democrat lawmaker said that the White House, “consulted the Arab League. They consulted the United Nations. They did not consult the United States Congress, They’re creating wreckage, and they can’t obviate that by saying there are no boots on the ground. … There aren’t boots on the ground; there are Tomahawks in the air.”

Democrat Rep. John Larson (Conn.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus and the fourth-highest ranking party leader called for Obama to seek congressional approval before committing the United States to any anti-Qadhafi military operation.

Unlike president Bush, who responding to a direct attack on US soil, not only consult ed Congress but won overwhelming congressional support for his actions in Iraq, Obama ignored both the law and the Constitution and dictated military action against Libya at the direction of the UN. Obama supports and wants global governance and dictatorial powers for the president. His actions clearly indicate that he does not believe in the concept that sovereign nations have the right to rule themselves, including the United States of America. His actions indicate that he believes that he and the UN not Congress have the power to determine if, when, and where the awesome violent power of the US Military is used.

Both Democrats and Republicans in congress know what Obama has done is not only unconstitutional but illegal. What Obama knows is that congress is made of wimps, whose only worry is how to keep themselves in power, and keep money flowing into their own coffers. As such Obama clearly has no fear of congress. He knows that even if congress did impeach him, which they won’t, the Democrat party controlled Senate, would not hold a trial and if it did would not convict him. The reason Obama didn’t consult congress is because he knows regardless of the constitution and the law he has the power to ignore congress. The reality is that the rule of law, equal protection under the law, and constitutionally limited government are dead.

Obama was a professor of Constitutional Law, so there is no doubt he knows about the constitution and the limits on the presidency, and knows about the further restrictions that Congress has put on the President. The laws and Constitution of the United States are very clear, concerning the use of the US Military. The President can send U.S. armed forces into action abroad ONLY by authorization of Congress or if the United States is already under attack or serious threat. What Obama has demonstrated is that although he knows the law and the limits on the presidency, he doesn’t care about them and that to advance his agenda he holds the same beliefs that former president Richard M. Nixon expressed in his famous David Frost interview, “If the president does it it’s not illegal!”

No bullying! Except ...

2011-03-16T07:17:00.005-04:00

The Government Owns You!

2011-03-14T12:12:00.002-04:00

Wow, that’s a sensational title for this article. How dare I make such an outlandish claim? Simple, it’s true. You no longer own yourself, but are the property of the government. True the government doesn’t choose to exercise total control over you, its property, but it does lay claim to you as property.

The government is slowly but surely doing away with private property rights, including the most precious property right, the right to yourself. The very idea that you can secure property and use it as you see fit, so long as you don’t use it to infringe upon the rights of another, is the heart of the beliefs that formed this nation. If you want to purchase a motorcycle, and ride it around your land, your free to do so, you can fuel it with alcohol or gasoline, you can take care of it or store it under a tree, you can even ride it up a ramp do a back flip and crash it into your own pond (thus destroying or damaging your motorcycle). That motorcycle is your property, you can crush it, throw it away, do whatever you want with it so long as you don’t infringe upon somebody else’s rights. Nobody would argue that, as you own it.

Now you don’t own your body, the government has laid claim to it, and for the protection of their property not only determines what you can and can’t do with it, what you can and can’t voluntarily feed it, but even what you can and can’t know about your own body. Because they have claimed ownership of you, they claim the right to protect their property (your body) from you.

In the words of Alabama Rep. Parker Griffiths, "It's very difficult to protect the public from itself and its desire to be healthy." It seems the position of the Federal Government through the Food and Drug Administration is that your own genetic code is a controlled substance. Because of that the FDA has the controlling authority and as such determined that you must be prevented from receiving any information without first going through an FDA-approved authority. At least that’s what Alabama Rep. Parker Griffiths said in the 2010 congressional hearing into the direct-to-consumer genetic testing industry. The government says it has authority over what information about yourself, you may be permitted to acquire.

Consider laws that infringe upon you right to yourself. The FDA now claims the authority to not just require that the information be available so that you know what is in what you are eating, but actually control the contents of what you choose to purchase just because you may not choose to eat what the FDA has determined is in your own best interest. The government now accepts the idea that the FDA’s job is to "protect the public from itself."

Does the idea that the of government as controller of what kind of light bulb you must purchase to illuminate your living space, what you are allowed to eat, right down to what you know about yourself, disturb you at all?

What moral or political basis is there to justify the government determining what information about your own body that you should be permitted to acquire? The only moral or political reasoning that could justify such a position is based on the assumption that the government has a greater right to you than you do yourself. In essence this assumes that the government owns you and can determine, what it thinks you should and shouldn’t know.

Assume you’ve amassed some wealth, paid every dime of taxes the government wants, and you decide that you want to leave the country with a million dollars in gold coins, can you? The answer is No you can’t. Since you can’t, is it truly your property? Do you own your house, or is it the government’s property, and they allow you a “title” in exchange for annual rent (property taxes)? If it’s truly your property, not the governments, then why do you have to pay for it every year?

Slave owners determine what their slaves are taught, what they can be exposed to, what they eat, what they can wear, etc. To keep a slave happy and productive, certain freedoms are allowed but controlled. According to the World Dictionary a slave is a person legally owned by another and having no freedom of action or right to property. According to the U.S. Government, you don’t even have the right to knowledge about your own body, or the right to choose what food you want to use to fuel your own body. If you don’t have the right to yourself, self-ownership, and although we are allowed some freedoms to keep us happy and productive, are we not actually slaves of the Federal Government, our masters.

Maybe it’s a bit extreme to say slaves; serfs may be a more apt description, but liberty, freedom, and self ownership are not words that can be used in a description of a people that must get their masters permission to learn what’s in their own DNA.

The Truth will Set You Free

2011-03-11T09:31:00.000-05:00

On August 21, 2010 Obama said the following, "The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are the people with something to hide."

The following is a list of some of the records that President Obama has refused to release to the public see:

educational records from kindergarten at Noelani Elementary through the swanky private Punahou School;

his SAT scores;

records from Occidental College that would reveal whether he attended as a foreign student;

the transcript of courses and grades he took at Occidental College, or Columbia University, or Harvard Law school.

his thesis written at Columbia on "Soviet Nuclear Disarmament," on which he reportedly spent a year of research;

his LSAT scores;

Harvard Law Review articles during the time he served as the first black president of the institution;

University of Chicago scholarly articles;

medical and health records;

files and schedules during his years as an Illinois state senator from 1997 through 2004;

If what Obama said is true, "The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are the people with something to hide," what is he trying to hide by not releasing those records?

Our inviolable right to self-defense

2011-03-10T08:25:00.000-05:00

by Phil Elmore
March 10, 2011 © 2011

The state in which I live, New York, is contemplating a law that would register and tax every firearm in the state. Already ruling the state most hostile to gun owners, New York's Democrats wish to enact a precursor to confiscation that is not just transparent in its intensions, but onerous in its financial burdens. What is often lost in debates over laws of this type is what they truly say to the citizens they affect. A law that restricts the technology of self-defense is a law that criminalizes self-defense itself. It is a law that violates your civil rights. It is a direct affront to you as a human being.

The Founding Fathers of the United States indicated their acceptance of, and based the United States Constitution on, the concept of natural rights. For the purposes of this discussion, it doesn't matter if you believe in God or not. Most deists and theists believe rights are God-granted, while others believe natural rights come from nature. Natural rights exist regardless.

Because you are a discrete biological entity, you are an individual. Every group of people can be broken into individuals. No group of people can exist as a single living organism because they simply aren't one, any more than a parking lot full of cars can be a single automobile.

Because no human can be another human, no one can live another's life. By virtue of your nature as an individual, you are born with the inalienable property right to yourself as a person. This means that no human being has a claim on your time or your effort without your consent. Think about it. If you do not own you, who does? If you are anything but your own property, you belong to someone else, which makes you that someone's slave. Are you a slave?

Your property right to your person extends to a general right to possess legally acquired property, for no human can exist without property of some kind. This is an axiom of existence. You cannot exist in space unconnected to all other existents, the sole resident of an empty bubble of space-time. This does not mean you have an automatic claim to someone else's property by virtue of your need for it, however. This means that you necessarily have the right to possess property if you can indeed acquire it. Claims to the contrary made by Marxists, collectivists and Michael Moore are empty. If you have no right to possess property once you have obtained it, those making this assertion must be making it naked while floating in empty rooms from which even air has been evacuated.

Your property right to yourself and your effort can be used to obtain rights to real property (land). He who first "mingles his labor with the land" earns a property right to it. What of land (or other property, for that matter) whose acquisition is disputed as being illegitimate? The longer an illegitimate claim goes uncontested, the more the passage of time legitimizes it – because the passage of time increases the possibility that an attempt to correct the illegitimate acquisition would harm parties who themselves have acted in good faith and who have committed no immoral actions. When redress of wrongs creates more wrong than it cures, it is not credible.

What is a property right, anyway? A right to property is the right to its use. If property belongs to no one, we have none, which contradicts the necessity of property. If we say all property belongs to everyone, we have a problem, because we would then only be able to use property with the mutual consent of every member of society. Because this is impossible, some delegation of humans within society would have to make this determination – and it would then be those people, not all the people, who hold the property right.

This points to a critical issue concerning rights. Either you recognize that you have sole dominion over your person, as does each human, or you do not. If you do not, you are saying either that all of society – the Collective, the State, whomever – has first right to you as property, or that some other person does.

A right is, by definition, unquestionable, and not dependent on some responsibility on your part. Many times, those who support some infringement on your natural rights will appeal to the idea that "With rights come responsibilities." This is not true. A right carries with it no concomitant responsibility, because it is, by definition, inviolable. Responsibilities, by contrast, are accepted, not imposed.

You are born into society accepting, by virtue of your existence, exactly one clause of the "social contract" – the agreement not to infringe on the natural rights of your fellow human beings. Humans who operate according to this guideline obtain what they require from other humans through exchange to mutual benefit. They are traders, giving value for value received. No human being has a claim to your life or your assets simply because you are born into his society. Your property rights to your person remain intact and inalienable regardless of the circumstances of your birth.

Given these facts of existence, the only legitimate role of government in a free society is the protection of individuals' natural rights. That is why governments are instituted among human beings – or at least, that is why they should be.

When a government denies its citizens' rights or actively seeks to infringe on these rights, it subordinates the individual to the state and injures that individual in the name of the community. By what right is this done? By what right is this force initiated and this theft made? How dare New York's commie libs steal the right of self–defense through their burdensome taxes and their obvious schemes for future confiscation? They have no right to do this; there is no justification for it.

Self-defense is an individual right and, as such, is inviolable ... no matter what lies Democrats tell.

Phil Elmore is a freelance author, technical writer and publisher of the self-defense e-zine The Martialist. This article originally appeard at WND.com

Politifact Loses All Credibility.

2011-03-09T08:57:00.001-05:00

Without using even a single outside source it is clear that Politifact has lot's it's credibility.

In claiming that the statement health care reform law a "government takeover" is a lie they clearly have to stretch the meaning of a lie and government takeover.

Here's what they said:

When government determines the limits of insurance coverage and medical fees and patient treatment through price controls, that's not a government takeover of health care. It may feel like one, it may have the same effect as one, but the federal government doesn't actually own the hospitals, clinics and medical practices. It just controls their prices and policies by controlling health insurance. Ergo, any talk of a government takeover of health care is not just wrong but a lie. Indeed, the biggest lie of the year.

To Politifact if the government doesn't own hospitals, clinics, and medical practices they haven't taken them over. They even admit that the Obamacare has the "same effect" as a government takeover, but because they don't actually "own" the physical property they haven't taken over health care.

Since when has taking over something equated to owning something. Lots of bullies have taken over a playground without owning the property. Nobody would argue that TSA hasn't taken over control of airport security without actually owning the airports.

Obviously the credibility of Politifact as a source to determine if a politician in telling the truth or not has been dramatically compromised. Politifact has lost its credibility, and cannot be trusted, especially if the subject in question concerns Obama and his policies.

The Left is Very Confused

2011-03-06T10:42:00.002-05:00

The left, mostly democrats and collectivists of all kinds, is presenting the country with a schism that is difficult to comprehend.

On one hand for decades the continually bombard us with the doctrine that the government is the solution to all our problems; that only the government can save us from ourselves.

On the other hand, they are supporting and promoting the unions and unionization of all government workers. This unionization implies that the workers need to be protected from the abuse of the government, who if not for the union’s power and collective bargaining would trample the rights and abuse government workers.

It appears as the very workers who deliver and are mechanism for the service the government provides is presenting themselves of victims of that same government.

Which is it, is the government the solution to our problems and protector of the people, or is it an evil monstrosity that the workers and people must be protected against?

It’s not all Bad News

2011-03-02T13:45:00.000-05:00

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday against government suppression of free speech. The Court ruled that Illinois students have the right to wear anti-gay shirt. The shirt in question said “Be Happy Not Gay.”

Justice took a long time. A teen sued in 2006 after school officials blacked out the words "Not Gay" on her T-shirt. The incident happened the day after a "Day of Silence," which was held to draw attention to the harassment of gay students.

The court rightly said a school that "permits advocacy of the rights of homosexual students cannot be allowed to stifle criticism of homosexuality."

This is clearly an action where the US courts correctly protected free speech. There is Hope for America as this is a clear indication that we live in a country of laws, where all laws apply equally to everybody. It’s easy to stand up for the rights of those we agree with but the true test of liberty is when we protect the rights of those whose opinions we don’t agree.

Equality under the Law is Dead in America

2011-02-25T13:08:00.000-05:00

Equality Under the Law was a foundational principle for our country and the basis of modern western civilization. This is the principle that ascribes that each individual is subject to the same laws, with no individual or group having special legal privileges. No one is exempt or included more than another. Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law." The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that all people will have "the equal protection of the laws." This basic principle, when applied, results in one of the other and interconnected foundational principles of western society; that a person is innocent until proven guilty. These two principles are what we call Justice.

This is not a new concept, the Bible is pretty clear saying “in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great.” The ancient Greek, Pericles, had this to say about the principle of Equality under the Law:

Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors', but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition.

This is not a principle that liberals believe, practice, or promote. They rarely even pay lip service to this principle anymore. The notion of "equality before the law" was long ago abandoned by the left.

Explain why congress and the government are exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act, why they are exempt from OSHA.

Consider the special privilege that is granted to the NEA. This union organization is a 501c3 corporation. It is the only 501c3 corporation in the USA that is permitted to serve as a lobbying organization. It is is illegal for any other tax-exempt group to do what the NEA does. That is not equality under the Law.

Consider the current debate/fight over Gay Marriage. It only exists because we have given up on the notion of Equality Under the Law. Why should anybody be treated any differently under the law because of personal relationships with another which they voluntarily choose to participate? Why should any law treat any individual differently because of contractual obligations they have with another individual? The problem isn’t that homosexual couples don’t get the same benefits as heterosexual couples; it’s that we give heterosexual couples special legal privileges and punishments.

Consider Taxes; our current tax system is not just or equal. The tens of thousands of pages with special exemptions for some and not others, and special punishments for some and not others is far from just. The tax system tries to instill “fairness” not justice. What is just or fair or equal about taxing somebody at a different rate because they are in a contractual relationship than somebody who is not? What’s just or fair or equal about allowing a person to deduct the cost of their health insurance if they buy it through their employer but not if they purchase it directly?

A journalist or pastor would be rightly outraged if they had to petition for permission from a government bureaucrat in order to exercise their First Amendment rights. The constitutional phrase “Shall Not Infringe,” implies that prior restraint on the exercise of basic rights is not permissible. In our Republic the idea of basic rights are unalienable and not granted by the government, and the idea of Equal Rights under the law, prohibits the government from enacting laws that restrict or unalienable rights prior to abuse of those rights. That principle is thrown out by modern liberals who only believe that people should be able to do what the ruling elite say they should.

So consider the right to defend oneself, arguably a far more basic right than those of free expression or religious practice, is routinely constrained, restricted, or rejected. The fact remains that gun owners are denied equality under the law. The Second Amendment clearly and unequivocally states that the right to firearms "shall not be abridged," such forthrightness escapes those who feel uninhibited in passing more and more anti-self-defense laws.

This abandonment of the principles of Justice are a path towards tyranny. Where those in power grant special favors to those they want to reward, and punish those that don’t obey the tyrant. Consider Obamacare, where around 900 businesses are exempt, mostly unions and corporations who have donated to Obama and the Democrat Party, and explain how Obama granting some favored people the right to limit health care payouts and not others is Equality Under the Law. This and similar despotic laws, has and will continue to undermine the confidence that we the people have in government.

Our government was instituted to protect individual rights, and all laws should do that, and punish those who violate another’s rights. No reasonable person would disagree with that. But rather than work under that assumption, and the idea that laws are for justice, and that all individuals should be treated Equally Under the Law, the socialists and leftists over the past 125 years have worked on a different premises. The idea that because something might be abused, the government has the right to deny/restrict/regulate that thing for all people. This principle allows the aggregation of power with a few ruling elite. Liberty, freedom, justice, and equality under the law are principles that have been abandoned for this principle.

A crowbar is an effective criminal tool and deadly weapon, it can and often is used to destroy or facilitate the theft of private property, and can just as easily be used to intimidate, injure, or kill someone; because it is so effective and readily available, does that justify the government forcing all people who want to own and use a crowbar to have to get a permit to own one, and to have to keep it in a locked unusable condition when not in use, and to restrict where a law abiding citizen may possess one? Some of you reading this are actually thinking that maybe we shouldn’t allow just anybody to go down to the local hardware store and buy such an efficiently destructive and deadly device; 50 years ago the absurdity of restricting every persons’ right to own a crowbar because it might be used criminally would have been obvious. We have laws making vandalism, theft, destruction of private property, assault, intimidation and murder crimes. We do not need, nor should we allow government to create special laws restricting the rights of everybody to certain things because they might used to break other laws.

Accepting the pernicious principle that “because something might be abused, the government has the right to deny/restrict/regulate that thing for all people,” has lead those in power to abandon the principles we call Justice , and create more and more laws discriminating against innocent people in how they conduct their lives.

You may ask, how is creating a law that equally restricts everybody a violation of the principle of Equality Under the Law? The answer should be obvious, no potential rights violation justify laws that discriminate against innocent people in how they conduct their lives. It treats the innocent like a criminal. Does the fact that a hammer can be used to crush your skull, or a pillow could be used to suffocate you, provide the impetus to allow the government to take away your liberty to own unlimited sizes, numbers, and varieties of pillows? Our government needs to abandon its attempts to forestall every undesirable behavior or to punish all of us for the transgressions of the few.

Take the time to re-read our Declaration of Independence, where the purpose of our government is plainly stated. Our laws should deal solely and exclusively with real or imminent threats to our rights and our freedoms, that is, with those people who initiate direct or indirect violence against us. Any other approach on the part of those who craft our laws can only destroy what each of us equally deserves: the full and unrestricted protection of our liberty.