Liberty Maven

Well, he’s actually right about that, but it’s not something you want to hear from the president. And to be fair it’s only by implication:

From The Daily Caller:

Obama, one year to the day after his historic inauguration, argued that when Americans are educated about the details of his plan “those specific provisions are actually very popular.”

“One of the things that I have learned in Washington is you have to repeat yourself a lot because because unfortunately it doesn’t penetrate,” he said.

Yeah, that’s it Barack. It’s because we didn’t hear your side of the health care debate enough. I was sick of hearing about it back in August and here it is January and we still are hearing about it. The truth of the matter is we don’t want your brand of government medicine. We don’t appreciate being placed in a strait-jacket, forcing us to have some form of health care. The government is already way too intrusive.

The more Barack Obama repeats himself the less patience people will have for his agenda. So keep on repeating yourself Obama. You may not get the change you want, but you just might get the change you deserve in 2012.

Bear with me. This is going to be a long and random deluge of my thoughts on the state of politics in the USA as we begin the year 2010.

In 1773 it was Britain’s tea tax on the colonies that moved the American revolutionaries to protest by dumping tea into the Boston harbor. In late 2007 a tribute to that protest occurred on it’s 234th anniversary when $6.04 million was raised in a single day for Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign. In 2009 the Tea Party tribute reached some kind of critical mass with various protests all over America.

Did this happen because the U.S. citizens suddenly realized that their government no longer represented them? Or did this happen because they were just pissed that Barack Obama was elected President instead of Johnny “Maverick” McCain?

It’s important to look at the origins of this “movement”. It all goes back to Ron Paul, or rather, Ron Paul’s grassroots supporters. They were the nuts that commissioned a freakin’ blimp to fly up and down the east coast “advertising” their candidate. They were the nuts that littered America with signs (homemade and otherwise) in every city, town, and suburb. They were the nuts that organized following each debate to vote for their candidate in the post-debate text polls.

They were in your face and you either hated it, tolerated it, or loved it. No matter what your reaction, you can’t deny their dedication. I’m not sure I see that kind of dedication from the Tea Party movement yet. Even though they try to portray that they are angered at the growth of government, many seem to be dedicated to their dislike of Barack Obama and not much else. Bad-mouthing Bush now, comes off as merely lip-service or useless 20/20 hindsight.

Ron Paulers have been doing it since 2007 and are still doing it. The evidence is all around us. Ron Paul’s books are consistent best sellers. His Federal Reserve audit bill has 317 sponsors, including every House Republican and over 100 Democrats. That bill, in the form of an amendment, is contained within Barney Frank’s financial regulatory bill that passed the House and is now waiting for Senate action. Paul is omnipresent on main stream media outlets like CNN, FOX, and MSNBC. He’s a political celebrity that draws huge crowds for conferences and speaking engagements. Politicians seek endorsements from him. In a word, he is “hot” right now, politically speaking.

The best thing to conservatives was for Barack Obama to be elected President. It has galvanized and united many Republicans, libertarians, free market economists, and many independents disillusioned with America’s power elite. However, below the surface runs a very deep divide when it comes to foreign policy. This divide is between those like Ron Paul who support non-intervention and those that support our current policy, the Bush doctrine of preventive war.

Interestingly, this divide cannot be found between Democrats and Republicans. Fundamentally, both parties support the Bush doctrine of preventive war. They may disagree on the specifics of tertiary issues like which country to invade, but there is no difference on policy. This “invade or die” policy is the poison pill that will ultimately bring about our demise because we simply cannot afford it any longer.  Perhaps it should be rephrased, “Invade and die… eventually.”

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D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

With these regulations, the Obama Administration will bypass Congress entirely and implement their climate change agenda. The administration knows what is good for us. Why mess with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution? Why worry about giving the people represenation?

DownsizeDC.org’s Write the Laws Act (WTLA) would prevent this bureaucratic “legislation without representation” and we encourage you to send a letter to Congress demanding that they pass the WTLA.

These regulations will be very harmful, as I explained in my letter to Congress . . .

The EPA’s proposal to regulate greenhouse gases is a prime example of the need for WTLA. The EPA’s “authority” comes from the Clean Air Act, though that bill was never intended to be used this way. As Steven E. Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute writes . . .
http://www.aei.org/article/101456

* Reducing conventional sources of air pollution in the Clean Air Act was mostly a technological problem–such as removing lead from gasoline.
* The intent and effect of the Clean Air Act was cleaner air, not reduced energy consumption (which has actually doubled)
* But the only way to reduce CO2 emissions is to burn a lot less fossil fuel because there are no add-on technologies to remove carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion
* Which means the EPA will turn into an energy regulatory agency

It gets worse . . .    Read More »

by Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit from the Economic Collapse

As business owners undergo the yearly ritual of passing through eye-popping health insurance premium increases to their employees, it’s easy to understand why any attempt at health insurance reform would be met with some degree of hope. Unfortunately, President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are about to take a very bad system and make it unimaginably worse.

While ramming their new legislation through Congress, the Democrats have taken great pains to point out that they do not intend to “socialize medicine.”  But make no mistake, that’s where we’re headed. Even if some naïve centrists believe that their efforts have denied the Left a total victory, the practical implications of the current legislation sow the seeds for complete capitulation.

This first round of reform could be labeled as the ‘neutron bomb’ of the insurance industry: it leaves some of the private apparatus standing, but it irradiates whatever remains of the industry’s market viability.

The bill’s centerpiece is a clause prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on a pre-existing medical condition. However noble and marketable an idea, this proscription removes the very basis upon which any insurance model operates profitably.

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D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

by Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit from the Economic Collapse

Although Barack Obama has refrained, at least for now, from delivering triumphant speeches in a naval flight suit, there is nevertheless a strong tone of accomplishment emanating from the President and his deputies. Over the weekend, top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers even pronounced that the recession is now over. Without hedging his bets, Summers declared that thanks to the Obama Administration’s wise stewardship, economic stimuli, and emergency bailouts, another Great Depression, set up by the prior Administration, had been narrowly averted. Summers saw no impediments to the return of sustainable growth. He may as well have delivered these remarks from the deck of an aircraft carrier.

I hate to shoot down these high-flying expectations, but the economy is not improving. All that has changed is that we are now more indebted to foreign creditors, with even less to show for it. Washington’s current policies have once again deferred the fundamental, market-driven reforms needed to redirect us onto a sustainable path. Instead, through aggressive monetary and fiscal stimuli, we are trying to re-inflate a balloon that is full of holes. This was the Bush Administration’s exact response to the 2002 recession. It’s shocking how few observers note the repeating pattern, especially the fact that each crash is worse than the last.

Obama’s claim of success largely derives from the slowing tally of job losses, the seemingly renewed strength in the financial system, the pickup in home sales and home prices, and the positive GDP figures. But these ‘achievements’ fall apart under close examination.   Read More »

Is it really possible to read a president’s mind from afar? Without sophisticated CIA equipment? Robert Silverberg wrote a story about a telepath who stands along a parade route so he can be close enough to read Richard Nixon’s mind. As the president rides by, the man is struck with highly disturbing visions (left unspecified by Silverberg) and rushes away, deeply upset. Does that story make a sort of sense to you, in that, if telepathy were possible, something like that might have gone down?

Then you’ll perhaps give credence to my proposition that I have successfully read President Obama’s mind, albeit from considerably farther away than Silverberg’s character read Nixon’s. Want to hear what I’ve gathered? Ok, here it is, starting with the more obvious, exterior stuff:

Obama has been engaged in a fantastic juggling act with pro and anti-war forces from the beginning. He needed the anti-war folk, MoveOn.org et al, to help him get elected, but he also needed the quiet support and sustenance of the military-industrial complex (you didn’t have to read Eisenhower’s mind) which any president who wants to last two seconds in office must obey. The m/i complex agreed to stand down and let Obama be elected in return for an understanding with him that he would give them what they want once he was safely in office.

Fast forward to Obama’s recent speech revealing his “decision,” after “months of deliberation,” to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Here’s where the mind reading comes in.

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The War on Poverty… the War on Drugs… the War on Terror… now we have the government’s “War” on Main Street. How to improve the economy and why the government is taking the exact opposite actions to destroy Main Street as a bad case of the “Seen and the Unseen” strikes the Lehigh Valley

Originally published December 4, 2009 at http://towneforcongress.com/economy/the-governments-war-on-main-street-1

This talk was originally delivered to Campaign of Liberty chapter on December 3, 2009.  Video will be available shortly.

Today President Obama will tour Allentown, Pennsylvania, in my home congressional district as part of a “Main Street Tour” to show his concern for economic plight of the masses. Many of the people I have spoken with while campaigning innately realize that government is at fault – or at least complain a lot about how the government should “fix” the economy. Unfortunately, many do not have enough of a grasp of economics to understand exactly how the government is ruining their lives and their childrens’ lives. Speaking for myself, about 2 years ago I would have been included in this category. This is no surprise as most of the press and educational system has been hijacked by the disciples of Lord Keynes (the Keynesians) and the socialist Karl Marx for the past century.

The late economist from the Austrian school and NY Times columnist Henry Hazlitt wrote a series of easy-to-understand economic lessons in the 1940s in what was later published as Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt warned of the dangers of what he termed the “seen and the unseen.” Let me give a rather harsh but true example.

Last week one local paper published a story about a local hardware store on Main Street in Nazareth going out of business. I grew up in Nazareth, and this store was there my whole life. The owners were not able to afford the rent, tried moving down the street for cheaper rent, but were not able to save the company.

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“All Warfare is Deception… There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.” – Sun Tzu, circa 250 BC

Originally published on November 14, 2009, at http://towneforcongress.com/platform-issues/afghanistan-war

While Republican Bush II once famously claimed he was “the decider,” the ‘Change We Can Believe In’ promised by his replacement, the Democrat Obama, is hardly any different in regards to the Afghanistan and Pakistan wars.  The media and American people breathlessly await the President’s decision on how many troops to send into the war zone.  With spines made of jelly, Congress is as toothless as a bunch of newborns as they delegate their responsibilities to represent the American people to a single man.  What could they ‘Change’ instead?

Congress could refuse to approve spending to extend this unconstitutional war of aggression against Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Congress should instead pass a resolution for a rapid, immediate, and orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan and redeployment to protect America’s sieve-like borders.  Congress could increase the reward for the capture of Osama Bin Laden forty times from $27 million to over $1 billion.  Congress should also issue constitutional letters of marque to bring indicted terrorists to justice in a court of law.

To support this stance, I offer the following four key points: First, elected officials must begin behaving like the United States is a nation of laws, not a collection of rogues who delegate their gravest responsibility and immaturely fail to follow the supreme law of the land and declare war. Second, America’s historical foreign policy actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan must be understood, which contain the true reasons why terrorists attacked the United States in 2001. Third, a sober look at the eco-politics of the area, such as opiates and oil pipelines, must be taken. Lastly, we should contain the problem by securing our borders, and with all of the economic unrest, now is no time to be nation-building and quartering troops in foreign lands.    Read More »

by John Browne – Senior Market Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital

The U.S. economy is in uncertain times. Analysts are split between those seeing recovery and those fearing a second downturn. This confusion is being echoed in the highest levels of government as President Obama simultaneously speaks about the need for more federal spending and warns of the dangers of increased debt. As the volatile markets indicate, investors are not only confused – they are seriously concerned.

The country appears to be going through a period of buyer’s remorse over the election of Barack Obama. The majority cobbled together by the President one year ago included the Democratic base, independents hoping for “change,” and many disaffected Republicans betrayed by the Bush Administration’s big-government neoconservatism. It is unlikely that most of these voters favored an overt push toward socialism; however, this is what they have received. As the ‘tea parties’ illustrate, voters are not only confused – they are seriously concerned.

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