Liberty Maven

Yesterday, President Obama unveiled his latest boondoggle, a plan to bail out homeowners who got in over their heads and cannot pay their mortgages:

Obama Plans $75 Billion Outlay to Fight Foreclosures

Published: February 18, 2009

Seeking to stabilize the foundering housing market, President Obama is offering a plan to help as many as nine million families refinance their mortgages or avoid foreclosure, according to a summary released by the White House on Wednesday morning.

The plan, which is more ambitious than expected, would spend $75 billion to help keep as many as four million families in their homes, and would help as many as five million more refinance their mortgages to take advantage of lower interest rates.

Immediately, Chris Martenson (author of the incredible Economics Crash Course) fired back on his blog, saying:

If you did not buy more house than you could afford, or never issued a loan to a party that could (obviously and predictably) not repay that loan, then you just got punished.

He goes on to analyze the plan and the media’s mischaracterization of it, using New York Times‘s coverage as an example.

Then he takes a look at it from an economic standpoint…

This is throwing good money after bad, and, worse, by seeking to “shore up sinking house prices,” it betrays a complete ignorance of the actual root of the problem. Blaming sinking housing prices for the fix we are in is equivalent to blaming the car for the drunk driving wreck. If Obama were to craft a similar program for drunk drivers, it would include new cars for any that happened to wreck their own.

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D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

Quote of the Day: “Big brother is bad enough. Do you really want him working for the DMV?” – Knute Berger, Seattle Weekly, January 18, 2006

Politicians exploit crises not only to expand their own power, but also to make us forget previous transgressions. We doubt they do this intentionally, but we’re certain they do it continuously.

The government created financial crisis will continue to occupy our attention, but we must not be diverted from fighting old wrongs, like the REAL ID Act, especially since REAL ID now threatens your health care.

Remember, the REAL ID Act forces state governments to create a national identification card connected to a centralized federal database. You’ll need a REAL ID to board a plane, hold a job, or BE A PERSON! But it gets worse . . .

We’ve long maintained that REAL ID cards will eventually contain biometric identifiers. Now our prediction is coming closer to reality. The scam-stimulus bill contained two terrible provisions . . .

* You must have a single, searchable electronic medical record by 2014
* A new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will collect your electronic medical information and potentially monitor your health care choices

Whenever there’s the potential that the government will do something, you might as well say that it’s inevitable. All of this is part of a step-by-step plan to completely fund and control all health care from the top down.

We predict that the REAL ID card, perhaps by a different name, will be connected to your electronic medical records to control and ration your health care!

Eventually, you’ll need a REAL ID card to receive medical care, and the kind of care you receive will be determined by far-off bureaucrats. This will be done in the name of controlling health care costs, but it will actually make health care more expensive, cumbersome, and less effective.

We must stop this from happening!

DC Downsizers have so far bombarded Congress with 109,963 messages demanding the repeal of REAL ID. Twenty states have also refused to comply with the law. But we must keep pushing. The health care provisions in the scam-stimulus bill make it even more imperative that we kill REAL ID.

Please use our quick and easy Educate the Powerful System to once again instruct your elected representatives to repeal REAL ID.

Use your personal comments to object to the new electronic health care records, to the new National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, and to SCREAM POLITELY that you do not want your health care records connected to the REAL ID or monitored by federal bureaucrats.

In addition, consider sending a message to repeal the Transportation Worker Identification Card. Since the federal government couldn’t rope all of us into their Real ID scheme, they started with people in the marine, rail, and land transport industries. They’re “picking off the herd,” one industry at a time, hoping to eventually rope all of us into their scheme. Use our free Educate the Powerful System to tell Congress to ”reverse course.”

Please educate and recruit other people by sharing this Dispatch with them, and by Digging this message on our blog.

Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC army.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h
is the official email list of DownsizeDC.org, Inc. & Downsize DC Foundation

Glenn Beck has become a vocal opponent of socialism on both his radio and television shows these days. This morning he had a socialist leaning caller that he dismantled bit by bit and then went into a rant that demonstrates his deep beliefs in the Founders’ version of America.

Either that or he’s a pompous windbag Rush Limbaugh clone. I lean toward the former.

On his television show he had a true socialist and argued for having a real debate between capitalism and socialism. He was hilariously condescending to the man, and it made for entertaining television.

Below is the video from his tv show, then the audio of the socialist caller and followed by his rant.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Judge Napolitano’s great new show “Freedom Watch” aired its second show today. Lew Rockwell joined last week’s guests Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, Cody Willard, and others for an hour of free market discussion.

They discuss Obama’s stimulus bill in detail, lament its unconstitutionality and the tactics used in getting it passed. This show is a dream come true for all freedom lovers. Perhaps one day FOX will add it to their regular television lineup.

The weekly show airs online at http://foxnews.com/strategyroom at 2pm EST.

Watch the entire hour below in 6 parts.

Note: The videos were captured from the online web stream so there may be a few sections with video lag. Thanks to the show’s producer George Szucs for permitting the show to be captured and posted here and on YouTube, in fact he encouraged it.

Playlist Video:

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

Quote of the Day: “The idea that people lose their property but are never charged and never get it back, that’s theft as far as I’m concerned.” — Texas State Senator John Whitmire

Subject: Highway Robbery

If you happen to travel through east Texas, avoid Tenaha, especially if you’re African American. The Tenaha police may stop you and rob you, without even charging you with a crime. They even took $4,000 from a great-grandmother.

Tenaha, a town of 1,000, has used its robbery proceeds to build a new police station, and buy a second police car to extend its legal crime wave. But perhaps it’s unfair to single out Tenaha. Police departments all over America are doing the same thing, committing not only robbery, but also acts of terrorism.

Apparently, no one is safe. Just ask Cheye Calvo, the Mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland . . .

County police mistakenly targeted the Calvo home as a marijuana drop-off point. Police invaded the home, bound the mayor’s mother-in-law, and shot the family’s dogs. The Calvo’s were cleared of all wrongdoing, but the police won’t admit it made any mistakes.

Radley Balko reports that the use of SWAT teams and no-knock raids has soared, even when there’s no evidence that a targeted home poses any threat. These aggressive raids allow police to surprise the suspect and find as much valuable property to seize as quickly as possible.

Law enforcement agencies then auction off this property and spend the money on themselves, even when the victims they robbed are never convicted of any crime. Instead, the victims must prove that they are NOT guilty of a crime.

Proving a negative is almost impossible. That’s why innocence is presumed in free societies, and the state bears the burden of proving guilt. Civil asset forfeiture turn this principle on its head. It even forces victims to prove that their property was never used in a crime.

This means that most seized property is never returned, even to people who are completely innocent.

The asset forfeiture laws give police a huge incentive to steal as much as possible. They also create a conflict-of-interest. Police make more money seizing the proceeds of drug sales than by preventing drug sales. This contradicts the supposed purpose of drug prohibition.

But it gets worse . . .

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On Monday evening there was a truly wonderful episode of BookTV on CSPAN with Ron Paul, Richard Shenkman, and author of “Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty (Independent Studies in Political Economy)“, Ivan Eland.

The forum lasts an hour and 30 minutes and includes a speech by Ron Paul and a very interesting Q and A session following the speeches.

The book seems like a great companion to Gene Healy’s “The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power” which I urge everyone to read as well.

Watch the entire 90 minutes below (thanks to cspanjunkie for posting).

Last week was Judge Andrew Napolitano’s first online show for Fox News called Freedom Watch. Today will be the second installment and will again include Ron Paul and Peter Schiff among other free market champions. Last week’s show truly was a free market power hour.

We were able to capture the audio of last week’s show. This time, if things go according to plan, we will have video of the show available after it airs. If you are unable to watch it live check back with us for the video.

The show begins at 2pm and lasts an hour and is available here at the Fox News Strategy Room page. Don’t miss it!

StimulusWatch.org is a great resource to find out how money from the current “economic stimulus” package is proposed to be spent in your state.  In addition to listing all projects in your state, you can vote whether or not you believe the proposed project is critical.  Some highly questionable examples include:

• Laurel, MS – doorbells on housing for the elderly
• Austin, TX – disc golf course
• Las Vegas, NV – Performing Art Center
• Chula Vista, CA – dog park
• Lewiston, ME – a couple of dog parks
• Evansville, IN – Microsoft Office licenses
• Arlington, TX – golf course renovations
• Austin, TX – boardwalk along lake
• Cidra, PR – little league parking lot
• Hampstead, NY – indoor soccer field
• Salt Lake City, UT – baseball diamond viewing stands and concession booth upgrades

I suppose the idea is that all this spending will cure the nations ills caused by too much credit, too much spending, too much regulation and intervention into private businesses and markets, and fractional-reserve banking.  I’m not sure how it could possibly work.  Do you want to be paying for all these things (and much more)?  Perhaps it is time you pick up the phone and contact your representatives and make your voice heard: tell them that you object to this obscenity.  Or contact them using DownsizeDC.org’s easy-to-use system to “thank them or spank them” for their actions.

In an op-ed piece at the Washington Times, Jeffrey T. Kuhner compares the path the United States is taking to that of Argentina in the 1940s:

What is not commonly known about Argentina is that prior to World War II, it was an economic powerhouse. Beginning in the 1880s and continuing through the 1920s and 1930s, it was regarded as one of the most prosperous and advanced nations in the world.

Argentina had a strong industrial base, thriving agricultural exports and a broad and expanding middle class. Like America, it served as a magnet for immigrants from all over the world, especially Italians. Within 15 years, however, Argentina went from being one of the richest to one of the poorest countries.

This was due largely to Peronist policies. Upon coming to office, Peron, along with his popular wife, Eva, established a corporatist state characterized by lavish social spending, elaborate welfare programs, protectionism, confiscatory taxation and runaway deficits.

Lavish social spending?  Welfare programs?  Protectionism? Taxation?  Runaway deficits?  Sound familiar?

With the Federal Reserve embracing a policy of quantitative easing (printing money), inflation is bound to result just as it did in Argentina, Weimar, and so many other nations whose governments and central banks debased their fiat currencies until the currency was destroyed and middle class disappeared.

Referring to Juan Peron, Argentina’s leader, Kuhner writes:

The failure of Peronism should serve as a warning: Socialism and a sky-rocketing national debt can permanently impoverish even the wealthiest nations. America is not immune from the laws of economics. Prosperous republics – ancient Rome, the Italian city-states, Argentina – have seen their wealth squandered, never to recover.

Peron and his famous wife, Eva, is compared to our new President and his First Lady:

Mr. Obama is taking the first dangerous steps toward an American version of Peronism. His followers see him as a political messiah, a revolutionary change agent who will foster national cohesion and unity. He and the Democrats are plundering the state, using it as a vehicle to reward supporters (and punish foes). He is our Dear Leader, whose image is everywhere from magazine covers to T-shirts to baseball caps. His wife, Michelle, is the Eva Peron of our time – glamorous, chic, a fashion trend-setter who is beloved by the media.

Most ominously, Mr. Obama is repeating the statist populism that didn’t work in Argentina, and will not work in America. Professor Philip Jenkins wryly observes that the United States of America risks becoming “the United States of Argentina.” He is right. Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

The full editorial is here.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

Quote of the Day: “Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” — Otto von Bismarck, 1st Chancellor of the German Empire (1815-1898)

Why the rush? What was hidden in the Scam (Stimulus) Bill?

I made my regular appearance on Straight Talk with Jerry Hughes on Friday. He asked me about the scam (stimulus) bill,  saying, “What’s the point of fighting? It seems like there’s no way to stop them when they’re determined to ignore us.” Perhaps you’ve had similar doubts.

I pointed Jerry to our recently updated list of victories. Congress doesn’t always ignore us. They’ve voted our way 17 plus times since 2006.

But a more important clue to the fact that Congress cares what YOU think is the way they rushed to pass the scam (stimulus) bill.

THEY WERE AFRAID OF PUBLIC OPINION. They knew that the more the public read the bill the greater the opposition would be. Congress and the President were so scared of what YOU think that they violated numerous promises in their rush to make the scam (stimulus) bill a “done deal.”

* President Obama promised the most open, transparent administration in history. He pledged to not sign bills that hadn’t been posted online for the public to read for at least five days BEFORE the final vote was cast.

* Speaker Nancy Pelosi, just a week ago, promised that the final version of the scam (stimulus) bill would be posted online for at least 48 hours before the vote.

Here’s what they did instead . . .

* The 1,073 page scam bill, with an extra 421 page Explanatory Statement, was delivered, still unfinished, at midnight Thursday.
* The House passed the bill 14 hours and 24 minutes later.
* The Senate did likewise 3 hours and 5 minutes after the House.

We may laugh at Bismarck’s line about legislation and sausage, but Bismarck was a famed practitioner of realpolitick, where the practical concerns of power trump principle. Make no mistake about it . . .

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