Please send Congress a letter using an anti-bribery argument to oppose the cancerous healthcare bill.

You can copy or borrow from my letter to Congress to write your own . . .

Please oppose the so-called healthcare reform bill. I especially object to the fact that my tax dollars are being used to bribe members of Congress to secure their votes, or to reward powerful Senators. For instance . . .

The Baucus bill has the federal government paying the entire cost for the mandated Medicaid expansion in the following states: Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island and Michigan. This is an attempt to bribe or reward the Senators and Representatives from those states using my tax money.

Other states aren’t getting this sweet deal. Citizens in the other 46 states will have to pay higher taxes to fund this scheme.

I’m sure the so-called heathcare bill is stuffed with other sweetheart deals, designed to win key votes. You guys call this logrolling. I call it bribery. The only reason Congressional leaders get away with it is because they’re using my tax money to do the bribing, but that makes it worse, not better.

Frankly, I think any Congressional leader who offers a tax-funded benefit for a state or district in order to secure a vote, and any member of Congress who negotiates to gain such a benefit, should be brought up on charges and go to jail for violating the anti-bribery law.

The laws are supposed to treat all of us equally. Any law that treats citizens of some states differently is inherently unjust, and any law passed using tax-funded bribery is inherently unethical. I believe the so called healthcare bill is both things, unjust and unethical. VOTE AGAINST IT!

I’m paying close attention to what you do, and will take it into account as I discuss your re-election with other voters.

END OF SAMPLE LETTER

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Sources:

The Wall Street Journal writes about the sweetheart deal some Congresspersons have secured here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703746604574461434007876034.html

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h
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The bill is an unprecedented attack on personal liberty.

Please send a letter to Congress demanding they oppose Pelosi’s bill.

Here’s what I wrote:

HR 3962 will hamstring our finances. But it’s also full of blatant attacks on individual liberty.

For instance, chain restaurants and vending machine owners will be forced to publish calorie information on their menus. That’s not interstate commerce… unless the state line cuts through a McDonald’s counter. Congress can’t order private property owners around this way, and the Free Press clause of the First Amendment also clearly forbids this mandate. Calorie reports may be nice, but that’s outside of the government’s lawful scope.

HR 3962 also violates the broad 9th Amendment protection of individual liberty, and the 10th Amendment’s requirement that federal power be limited to only those functions listed in the Constitution.

Even though the Supreme Court has blown a gaping hole through many Constitutional protections of economic freedom — and blamed their lawlessness on the Commerce Clause power to regulate interstate commerce — it’s apparent that even this wide hole is too small for Congressional ambitions. Does anyone on Capitol Hill even know what interstate commerce is?

An example of this is the unprecedented, totalitarian attempt to force people to acquire government-approved insurance or face tax penalties. If Congress can force us to buy a particular grade of insurance, can it also force us to subscribe to “approved” newspapers?

The Supreme Court has ruled in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture (1922) that Congress can’t use the tax code to regulate behavior it doesn’t otherwise have power to regulate.

In United States v. Lopez (1995), United States v. Morrison (2000) and even Gonzales v. Raich (2005) the Court decreed that Congress cannot use the Commerce Clause to regulate activity that is NOT economic — such as NOT buying, NOT producing, or NOT making something. NOT buying insurance can’t be buying or making something.

That means, if you want to pay for this fancy plan, you’ll have to steal the money the old-fashioned way — a tax increase. You might want to review the matter in this Washington Post article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082103033.html

You swore an oath to obey and protect the Constitution. Please honor that oath. I insist that you stand up on behalf of liberty and oppose this bill.

END LETTER

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by John Browne – Senior Market Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital

Over the past two years, the federal government and the Federal Reserve have dispersed trillions of public dollars, run up enormous deficits, and kept interest rates at zero. In just about any economic textbook, this combination of policies would be described as the perfect recipe for inflation. Yet, with the exception of the usual increases in health care and education, prices by and large are not rising. Many have concluded that our economic leadership has simply outsmarted the textbooks.

The benign CPI figures are serving as a rallying point behind which the financial talking-heads are forming a parade of optimism. The low CPI is their ‘proof’ that inflation is not a pressing concern. This view is two dimensional.

Inflation is classically described simply as an increase in the money supply. Although these changes will impact price levels, it doesn’t necessarily follow that prices will rise when inflation is high. Instead, inflation may merely result in stable prices at a time when prices would otherwise be falling.

In the popular mentality, however, inflation is simply defined as prices rising. After decades of steadily rising prices, people seem to have forgotten that prices sometimes fall. In light of the bursting of a number of record-breaking, government-fueled asset bubbles, prices should be declining across the board (as they did in the Great Depression). The fact that prices are stable, or have even rallied in some sectors, indicates that inflation is already spreading across the economy.

After falling to just 6,547 in the months after the crash, the Dow has rallied past the 10,000 mark. This should strike even novice investors as unjustified. Jobs are still being lost, a massive healthcare entitlement and carbon tax are winding through Congress, and no one with at least one foot in the real world has a palpable sense of imminent recovery. Corporate earnings have fallen far behind the rally in shares prices, stretching valuation multiples to pre-crash levels.

While not quite as frothy, home prices are now moving up for all the wrong reasons. The seminal Case-Shiller Index of home prices is now up for the fourth month in a row. The index’s designer, Professor Robert Shiller, has stated recently that the current upward trajectory is unsustainable. In fact, the levels are still above the 50 and 100 year trend lines.

In the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, and after the largest housing bust on memory, single-family home prices should be falling well below the trend lines. But with a doubling of the monetary base and special interest programs like the homebuyers’ tax credit, home prices have stabilized and even increased in some markets. That’s the work of inflation.

With GDP growth now returning to positive territory, many inflation hawks ask why inflation has yet to truly manifest. The explanation can be found in the difference between monetary base and money supply.

The latest $1.9 trillion injection of government money was composed of some $900 billion of stimulus, of which only about 20 percent has been distributed. However, in its attempts to stabilize the financial system, the government has already spent some $1 trillion of TARP-type funds.

The TARP money, financed by an increase in the monetary base, has been provided to the banks at zero cost. And for the first time ever, the Fed is paying interest on bank reserves. Therefore, the banks can loan money to the Fed and to the government, via Treasury securities, at an interest rate spread of some 3 to 4 percent without risk. Given these incentives, it makes no sense to loan to anybody else. So, despite a massive increase in the monetary base, credit remains tight and price levels flat.

However, if the Fed stops paying interest on bank reserves or otherwise ‘persuades’ the banks to lend, the $1 trillion will be leveraged up by the banks and spewed out into the economy. Fractional reserve banking will transform a $1 trillion monetary base injection into a $9 trillion increase in money supply. When that happens, prices for everything will go through the roof.

So for now, inflation is like a ninja stalking our economy. It’s lurking in the shadows but can’t easily be seen. But once its strikes, it will be fast and deadly.

For a more in-depth analysis of our financial problems and the inherent dangers they pose for the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar, read Peter Schiff’s 2008 bestseller “The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets” and his newest release “Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit from the Economic Collapse.” Click here to learn more.

More importantly, don’t let the great deals pass you by. Get an inside view of Peter’s playbook with his new Special Report, “Peter Schiff’s Five Favorite Investment Choices for the Next Five Years.” Click here to dowload the report for free. You can find more free services for global investors, and learn about the Euro Pacific advantage, at www.europac.net.

by John Browne – Senior Market Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital

In a small bit of Washington irony, a government panel convened this week under the guise of ensuring ‘expressive freedom’ on the Internet, while at the same time the Obama Administration put Fox News on notice that ideological rectitude would be a prerequisite for White House engagement.

This heightened wrangling with the media comes at a time when ordinary Americans are rapidly becoming disillusioned with the major parties. Their disgust is evident in innumerable web discussion sites that, for many, have replaced the major media outlets as the primary source of information. In its focus to keep control of the conversation, the Administration is seeking to disguise the fact that the ‘change’ Mr. Obama promised in the election is unlikely to materialize.

Wishful thinking of the Nobel committee aside, what we have seen thus far from Obama is simply more of what had been delivered by the prior administration.

Obama renewed our military commitment to the quagmire that is Afghanistan. But he is hesitating now that the United Nations has uncovered fraud in the recent presidential elections there. Whether or not one believes the war is winnable, this type of hollow chest-pounding did not help anyone under G. W. Bush, and will not under Obama.

Domestically, Obama has re-enforced the doctrine of ‘too big to fail,’ which essentially involves ’socializing’ the costs of reckless Wall Street failures while ‘privatizing’ the gains made through their use of taxpayer funds. As a result of this policy, elite investment bankers are now seeing bonuses that rival those at the bubble’s peak. As an answer to Bush’s publicly funded rescue of GM and Chrysler, Obama gave some $10 billion to the very trade union that had brought Detroit to its knees. In the first nine months of his Administration, Obama has increased the Treasury debt by some 20 percent to almost 100 percent of GDP, or a staggering $12 trillion dollars.

Even facing the vast $104 trillion of additional, ‘off-balance sheet’ government obligations, Obama is pushing ahead with a new Health Bill. This is not even a populist measure, as most Americans are sensibly standing in opposition to this attempt to bankrupt their country. The legislative momentum is wholly provided by a small ideological core of Democrats at the expense of the greater good, a pattern set by Bush and his zealous Republican base.

It is becoming clear, even to Democrats, that Obama doesn’t aim to implement better policies, but to make the public feel better about the same old policies.

Unfortunately for the President, America is a free enterprise, capitalist and right-of-center country that does not take naturally to socialist policies. What is so concerning is that rather than learning this lesson, the White House is trying to silence the voices of opposition.

It is widely accepted that a free press will foster a healthy and vibrant cross section of views. While it is clearly susceptible to hyperbole, Fox News has nevertheless been instrumental in exposing the radical, socialist and even communist backgrounds of a surprising number of advisers and unelected officials close to the President. Their efforts in this regard have served the public.

These revelations about left-of-center tendencies would not have been damaging if the public were indeed in a mood to be led by leftists. If that were the case, the Administration would have dismissed Fox News as a network for conservatives to gripe to themselves. Perhaps the official uproar indicates Obama has noticed that some 50 percent of the Fox News audience is composed of Democrats and Independents.

Certainly, no credence can be given to the official position that the Administration is opposed to deliberate bias. On the other side of the aisle, MSNBC is just as partisan as Fox News, and in many ways functions as the media arm of the Democratic National Committee. Yet the President does not spar with that network. Perhaps he is attacking Fox News in response to MSNBC’s dismally low ratings, proof that the latter network really is just a forum for socialists to gripe to themselves.

At its core, this issue transcends left-right bickering. Politicians across the spectrum are feeling increasingly threatened by an unregulated media. The media is more accountable to the public than politicians, as ratings are measured in real-time, not election cycles. Fox News is benefiting from the reality that Americans believe in limited government, lower taxes, unhampered enterprise and personal responsibility. Although both parties pay lip service to these ideals, their actions reflect a clear belief in more control, less freedom and bigger government. This has led to a deep voter frustration and disenchantment with the two major parties.

It’s common sense that if the President wants to regain voters’ trust, the answer is to listen to their concerns. If investors are moving their wealth overseas, the answer is to become more competitive at home. This feud with Fox News shows that the President has not yet heeded this advice, and, really, would rather not hear it.

For a more in-depth analysis of our financial problems and the inherent dangers they pose for the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar, read Peter Schiff’s 2008 bestseller “The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets” and his newest release “Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit from the Economic Collapse.” Click here to learn more.

More importantly, don’t let the great deals pass you by. Get an inside view of Peter’s playbook with his new Special Report, “Peter Schiff’s Five Favorite Investment Choices for the Next Five Years.” Click here to dowload the report for free. You can find more free services for global investors, and learn about the Euro Pacific advantage, at www.europac.net.

Speaking of Robert Higgs, he will deliver a lecture on Monday evening at George Mason University. The event is free and is hosted by the Mason Economics Club and the Future of Freedom Foundation. For more details see the FFF web site and scroll down to the events section.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — President Obama has been steadfast in his pledge that he won’t raise taxes on those making less than $250,000. But that doesn’t mean only high-income households will be subject to higher taxes.

An increasing number of influential Democrats and fiscal-policy experts have signaled that lawmakers will have to get a handle on the deficit. And they recommend seriously considering the creation of a value-added tax (VAT) on top of the federal income tax.

That could mean more money out of everyone’s pockets when buying virtually anything — sweaters, school books, furniture, pottery classes, dinners out.

A VAT is tax on consumption similar to a national sales tax. But it’s not just paid at the cash register. It’s levied at every stage of production. So all businesses involved in making a product or performing a service would pay a VAT. And then the end-user — such as the retail customer — ponies up as well.

Continue reading the article at cnn.com.

The discussion lasts about 14 minutes. Following the interview Beck reiterates that he doesn’t agree with Ron Paul on some things, but when it comes to the Fed Glenn says he is “Dead Right.” Following that Beck goes into a discussion on foreign policy as it relates to Afghanistan.

Listen to the audio below.

Download audio file (rp-beck-endthefed-09302009.mp3)

…Hamilton looks pleasant enough in his portrait on our $10 bill, but he was an arrogant egomaniac.

Hamilton was a determined opponent of Jefferson’s laissez-faire philosophy at every turn. When it came to trade, he demanded high protective tariffs because he thought, in the mercantilistic tradition, that if a nation produced “its own” goods rather than purchasing them from “other countries” it would become stronger. Mercantilism was inseparable from economic nationalism — the foolish and destructive idea that political boundaries have great economic significance. (We still suffer grievously from this idiocy, of course.) Individual American consumers would be harmed by artificially high prices for items they might have bought less expensively from producers in other countries, but Hamilton was not concerned about the problems of individuals. His obsession was with “strengthening” the nation.

In the early years of the United States, Hamilton battled against Jefferson’s reading of the Constitution as placing severe limits on federal authority. To Hamilton and his Federalist allies, the wording of the Constitution, especially the enumerated powers of Congress, meant nothing more than an intellectual game of trying to invent interpretations that gave the government “inherent” powers that it was not specifically given. Contrary to the sensible, restrictive reading of the Constitution defended by Jefferson, Hamilton insisted that the General Welfare and Commerce Clauses were meant to give the federal government almost limitless powers.

Leef then goes on to discuss the traitorous presidencies of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and disasters in the form of the 17th Amendment, the income tax, and the Federal Reserve Act.  I highly recommend reading the entire article.

It turns out he was not much more than the architect of the housing bubble which contributed greatly to the economic mess we are suffering through right now. He was the maestro of moral hazard.

Greenspan’s successor, along with his partner in the Treasury are traipsing down the same path. Bernanke and Geithner are the Dukes of Moral Hazard. Bernanke is Luke and Geithner is Bo.

While they tinker with the economy (General Lee) they are making life hell for the rest of us. We are a bunch of Rosco P. Coltranes to them.

What is this moral hazard that I speak of?

Moral hazard is the prospect that a party insulated from risk may behave differently from the way it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk.

So the Dukes continue their bailouts, money printing, and money laundering just to keep the moral hazard government-sponsored Ponzi scheme afloat.

Meanwhile the dollars we are left with purchase less with every passing day. This is how our dearly beloved government can utilize the hidden tax of inflation to raise taxes. And they can do it without major public scorn since most do not understand that inflation is as evil a tax as the income tax.

There are a few things we can do to help people understand. First, make sure you contact your representative and request they cosponsor HR1207 or S604 to audit the Fed. Next, read Ron Paul’s newly released book, “End the Fed“. It will give you a deeper understanding of The Federal Reserve and arm you with persuasive arguments for abolishing it. Paul effectively ties the Fed to the general persistent growth of government and its intrusion in our lives.

With the Fed around there is no such thing as “limited” government. Government is a perpetual growth industry.

Aren’t we tired of this constant heavy hand regulating us into oblivion? It is high time for the people to stand up and regulate the government.

That would be change I could believe in.

With Ron Paul many of the attacks were leveled by the media itself. We even published a rather popular satire piece during the campaign called “The Official Media Guide To Attacking Ron Paul“.

Thus far with Rand Paul, most of the attacks are coming from the Left and the neo-conservative establishment friends of his Republican primary opponent Trey Grayson. The attacks themselves are quite typical.

The Left enjoys pointing out that white supremacist organizations have noticed Rand Paul’s campaign and support him. They like to point out that such extreme groups and individuals supporting Paul means that Paul himself somehow condones such beliefs. This is ludicrous. Guilt by association attacks are for the feeble-minded. No one, not even the Left’s Messiah Obama can control who chooses to support him.

Extremists like Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan both support Obama, but I don’t attack Obama because of it. Even though a much stronger case could be made for doing so due to the fact that Wright was Obama’s pastor and mentor for 20 years or so.

Believing in individual liberty and white supremacy are impossible bedfellows. Attacking Rand Paul this way tells us more about the attacker than the attacked.

The attacks from his own party are right out of the political attack playbook. What makes it humorous this time is that the charges against Rand Paul suggesting he isn’t a “real Republican” could be more easily made against his opponent. Trey Grayson used to be a Democrat and campaigned for Bill Clinton in the 90’s. At that time Rand Paul was busy founding an anti-tax group in Kentucky.

Grayson is to the left of George W. Bush and John McCain, two names that don’t exactly warm conservative Republicans hearts. Rand Paul is more like a Goldwater/Reagan Republican. He actually talks about term limits, cutting spending, and having a balanced budget. He doesn’t just deliver sound bites about lower taxes. Here is his excellent speech at a recent fund raiser in Nicholasville, Kentucky.

I’ll let you be the judge on which candidate is the “real” Republican.

As Rand Paul raises more and more money he will be attacked more and more. In today’s political climate being an establishment politician is more of a negative than in days past. To further illustrate the status quo vs. the anti-establishment fight another money bomb for Rand Paul has been scheduled. The money bomb will be held on the same day that Trey Grayson is having a $500 per plate fund raiser provided by his establishment GOP friends in DC.

On September 23rd, it is the KentuckyFight.com money bomb, also known as the “We The People” vs. the “DC Insiders” money bomb. The goal is to raise $500k for the day for Rand Paul’s campaign. The last money bomb yielded over $433k so the goal is achievable, but I would be surprised if the $500k is reached. I can’t blame anyone for aiming high though. Pledge today and help spread the word.

The more money the campaign raises the more vicious the attacks will become. Fighting the power makes the powerful uneasy and desperate. Rand Paul is fighting and has the best chance of any liberty candidate to actually win a U.S. Senate seat. In the name of freedom, let us help him be victorious.