With forty-nine new bills introduced in Congress yesterday, one must wonder how many are really necessary, and more importantly, how many are Constitutional. Answer: very few. In fact, the vast majority are unconstitutional intrusions into private industry, adding layer upon layer of regulation and bureaucracy. Here are a few of the more obvious examples:
HR1690 – To amend the Coastal Zone Management Act of 1972 to authorize the Secretary of Commerce to make grants to coastal states to support voluntary State efforts to initiate and complete surveys of coastal waters to identify potential areas suitable for the exploration, development, and production of renewable energy, and for other purposes.
HR1691 – To require that health plans provide coverage for a minimum hospital stay for mastectomies, lumpectomies, and lymph node dissection for the treatment of breast cancer and coverage for secondary consultations.
HR1684 – To preserve the rights granted under second amendment to the Constitution in national parks and national wildlife refuge areas. [Why do we need a bill to repeat what the second amendment already says? Simply hang (for treason) all those who violate their oaths to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution.]
HR1692 – To amend the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act to exempt ordinary books from the lead limit in such Act.
HR1693 – To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide for the coverage of marriage and family therapist services and mental health counselor services under part B of the Medicare Program, and for other purposes.
S-672 – A bill to amend the Natural Gas Act, the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978, and the Federal Power Act to modify provisions relating to enforcement and judicial review and to modify the procedures for proposing changes in natural gas rates.
S-674 - A bill to amend chapter 41 of title 5, United States Code, to provide for the establishment and authorization of funding for certain training programs for supervisors of Federal employees.
S-675 – A bill to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to prohibit the sale of dishwashing detergent in the United States if the detergent contains a high level of phosphorus, and for other purposes.
S-677 – A bill to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to require wealthy beneficiaries to pay a greater share of their premiums under the Medicare prescription drug program.
HR1677 – To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend and expand the benefits for businesses operating in empowerment zones, enterprise communities, or renewal communities, and for other purposes.
HR1678 – To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow a bad debt deduction to doctors to partially offset the cost of providing uncompensated care required to be provided under amendments made by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
HR1680 – To authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make grants to promote professional retrofit installation of fire alarm detection systems and other fire detection and prevention technologies in nursing homes, hospice facilities, and other appropriate facilities.
S-678 – A bill to reauthorize and improve the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, and for other purposes.
S-679 – A bill to establish a research, development, demonstration, and commercial application program to promote research of appropriate technologies for heavy duty plug-in hybrid vehicles, and for other purposes.
S-680 – A bill to limit Federal emergency economic assistance payments to certain recipients. [Such a Bill should not be necessary. No person or entity should receive emergency economic assistance. Read Davy Crockett vs. Welfare.]
S-681 – A bill to provide for special rules relating to assistance concerning the Greensburg, Kansas tornado.
“Debt is to blame,” Ron Paul reiterates on Fox Business News today in a very good 12 minute interview. He rails against the economic interventionism of Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner under Barack Obama’s watch.
“We don’t want them to be successful in socializing the nation.”
“Today we are determined to make our dollar weaker.”
“Bernanke is praying for inflation.”
“We don’t allow the correction to occur.”
“My biggest worry is loss of liberty.”
“Why don’t we just obey the Constitution?”
In a somewhat light moment the interviewer asks Paul if the reason he doesn’t fit in Washington is because he’s so logical. Ron uses his time to promote free market economics (Austrian by name) and the Mises Institute (mises.org).
He ends with something I’ve not heard from him. He calls the Federal Reserve the “fourth branch of government.” Watch the goodness below.
Last night Ron Paul was interviewed on the Jim Bohannon show (from a guest host) out of Pittsburgh, PA. Paul is introduced as a “major libertarian voice in Congress”.
Paul opens by admitting he didn’t watch Obama’s press conference last night and asks the host to let him know if he said something special. The host admits that Obama said nothing “terribly special”.
A large portion of the interview focuses on the financial system. Paul discusses his own beliefs for the future of the U.S. economy and the dollar.
“It’s as close to Socialism as you can get”, he says at one point.
Ron Paul was interviewed by Glenn Beck on his radio program this morning. They discussed (joked about really) the MIAC report which links Ron Paul supporters to dangerous anti-government domestic terrorist groups. They also discussed the recent efforts by Geithner and the Obama administration to spend our way out of the economic mess.
At one point Ron Paul reacted to a breaking news item from Glenn Beck with the following quote:
“They are lying through their teeth!”
One of the more interesting portions of the 17+ minute interview included a portion where Ron Paul preaches turning the political tide back toward freedom using education and political means rather than violence and chaos.
He believes (as we all should) that trying to “take back America” in a violent way is ultimately self defeating.
Listen to the interview here while I get it up on youtube for the masses:
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With the wave of sinister change befalling America I find myself caught between hope and a hard place. That hard place is a survivalist bunker with despair in the air. And that air is strangled with Barack Obama’s socio-fascist flatulence. If it weren’t for the wise old golden boy Ron Paul and my fellow free market odor-eaters I’d be the sound of one hand clapping.
Unfortunately during this, Obama’s honeymoon, we have to endure being accosted by his true believing underlings while we try not to make a mess in our under-things in disgust. The Democratic Party has “organized” to seek pledges in support of the almighty one’s liberty-intolerant agenda. I’m not sure why I endeavor to read the article and the comments. Perhaps I’m a glutton for eye rolls.
No country in the history of the world has ever spent their way out of a depression. To anyone supporting the spend and spend more policies of Barack Obama please answer one question. What makes America different from the other countries that have failed?
Could it be that the other countries didn’t spend enough? There is no better analogy for our situation than the average American family owning upside down homes and thousands in credit card debt. When the government wasn’t pushing subprime loans it was seeking subprime loans of its own. The pseudo-evil lenders were just following the government’s own “encouragement”. The average family followed the government into this predicament. As it unwinds the government will follow the average family on its own path to oblivion.
Family members are losing jobs and being forced out of homes. What happens when the U.S. government is forced out of its home? We already know from experience the laws are different for those that are fortunate enough to make them. Everyone blames Bernie Madoff for his pyramid scheme yet no one cries over the government sponsored pyramid scheme known as fractional reserve lending. Well, not many anyway. Those of us who claim Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, Tom Woods and a few others as our modern day economics professors recognize the hypocrisy immediately.
So what happens when our government’s “do as I say, not as I do” financial pyramid scheme falls apart? I sincerely hope we never have to find out.
Or do I have that backwards? No, I’m right. Doug Wead shares my own sentiment (and likely many others) that for America to elect Ron Paul or someone like Ron Paul things will have to get worse.
Well, things are certainly getting worse. Will it ever get to the point where people will start taking Ron Paul seriously as a Presidential candidate? I don’t know, but as we sit here today in the beginning stages of the second Great Depression, it is not out of the realm of belief.
Is there anyone who can save us from this insanity?
There is really only one option left. Ron Paul. It is a long shot, but if the madness goes far enough and the reaction sets in, the Paulistas just might stage a takeover of the Grand Old Party and Ron Paul would offer America a real choice. It’s a long shot. But four more years of this and America may actually be ready.
We are on this road. We can’t see beyond the horizon, but we certainly have an idea of what lies ahead. It’s not pretty.
It is rather unfortunate that we have to learn to accept the fact that the only path back to the principles which made America great is paved with economic calamity and social unrest, and constructed by a socialist steamroller.
Ron Paul was a guest on the Steve Gill show yesterday. He discussed his position on earmarks again, the financial crisis, the end of the currency, socialized medicine, and his belief that we are on the wrong path. There is not much new, but when Ron Paul speaks we liberty lovers listen.
I especially liked the portion where he discusses the ill advised efforts to pass bills quickly in the name of crisis prevention like we did after 9-11 and are doing now to “fix” the economy.
Well, Obama gave an answer anyway. His response was a bit long-winded and another attempt at political misdirection that he is becoming quite famous for these days. The Washington Times reports:
“It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question,” he told reporters, who had interviewed the president aboard Air Force One on Friday.
Opening the unusual presidential call to reporters by saying that there was “just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter,” he said it wasn’t he who started the federal government’s intervention into the nation’s financial system.
“I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement -– the prescription drug plan — without a source of funding. And so I think it’s important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word ’socialist’ around can’t say the same.”
Wow. He contradicts himself in a paragraph. Obama has learned “free market” principles from George W. Bush because he’s doing the same thing. Yet he blames Bush for not following “free market” principles. Here he comes off like a child arguing that two wrongs make a right, or should I say two Leftist policies make a right?
It continues:
The New York Times asked, “So whose watch are we talking about here?” but Obama wouldn’t name names.
“Well, I just think it’s clear by the time we got here, there already had been an enormous infusion of taxpayer money into the financial system. And the thing I constantly try to emphasize to people if that coming in, the market was doing fine, nobody would be happier than me to stay out of it. I have more than enough to do without having to worry the financial system. The fact that we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference, but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant risk taking has precipitated a crisis.”
He concluded the brief call by saying, “I think that covers it.”
In essence Obama has no free market principles if he believes “we’ve had to take these extraordinary measures and intervene.” The second you start throwing around the words “intervene” and “free market” on the same side of an argument you have already lost.
The real answer is that Obama may not be a Socialist in the purest sense, but he is certainly driving on the left side of the road. Truthfully his belief in wealth redistribution is Socialist in nature and his belief in regulatory control over the financial markets is Fascist in nature. In the end this name calling from the Right and blaming from the Left (Obama) do not matter.
What matters is getting out of this mess. Simultaneously blaming the Bush policies while expanding the reach and cost of those policies is not the way out. But apparently, Obama thinks it is. Aren’t we lucky he’s our President now? So much for change.
Enough bailouts? One bailout is one bailout too many. As many have pointed out it is a fallacy to blame capitalism or the free market for our economic woes because we haven’t had a free market system for about 100 years. Just because the modern day conventional wisdom (or lack thereof) is that deregulation caused our problems does not make it true.
Too many of us are Obama-blind. We smile and drool at our new king as he reaches his hand into our pockets and steals whatever he wants for whatever purpose he wants. Obama is using the economic crisis as an opportunity to mold America into a clone of Venezuela. I certainly hope in 20 years we aren’t going to be hailing Hugo Chavez as our new Founding Father.
If you’d like to do something to oppose the bailouts and path toward nationalization then Right.Org is a great place to start.
They have a great web site where you can sign a petition in opposition to the bailouts, participate in a video competition to win your own bailout, keep up on the latest bailout related news, and grab a bailout calculator flash widget to place on your own site like the one below.
Head on over there and make everyone else understand that capitalism is not dead yet, and the free market is not the cause of our economic troubles, but the solution. Go to Right.Org now.
Finishing up the first week of our new series, we find that a total of 218 new bills were introduced in Congress in only five days, the vast majority of which are quite clearly unconstitutional.
47 new bills we introduced on Friday. Below are some of the more asinine ones. (My commentary will appear in red).
HR221 – Recognizing and honoring Johnny Grant for his work as the Honorary Mayor of Hollywood, California for more than a quarter of a century. [Huh? It takes a vote of 535 elected officials to "honor" someone? How it this the business of government?]
HR220 – Urging Turkey to respect the rights and religious freedoms of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. [More unnecessary foreign meddling].
HR1381 – To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to permanently extend existing elective tax treatment for Alaska Native Settlement Trusts. [It's clearly unconstitutional for a law to benefit a group less than all Americans].
HR1380 – To establish a grant program for automated external defibrillators in elementary and secondary schools. [Don't get me started on government schooling].
HR1379 – To prohibit the commercial harvesting of Atlantic striped bass in the coastal waters and the exclusive economic zone.
HR1378 – To direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the Secretary of Education, to develop guidelines to be used on a voluntary basis to develop plans to manage the risk of food allergy and anaphylaxis in schools and early childhood education programs, to establish school-based food allergy management grants, and for other purposes.
HR1377 – To amend title 38, United States Code, to expand veteran eligibility for reimbursement by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs for emergency treatment furnished in a non-Department facility, and for other purposes. [Isee a lot of bills come through with regards veteran benefits. Somehow I have a hard time making sense of the idiocy of spending so much money to go out and blow stuff up, and then having to pay for the endless benefits of soldiers for the rest of their lives. CLARIFICATION: Since one reader took exception to my statement, let me clarify. For those who have served our country, I believe the U.S. has a responsibility to care for their physical and mental well-being. However, the umbrella of "veteran's benefits" has become another huge sinkhole of taxpayer money and resources due to the hugely overreaching U.S. military policy. If we dismantle the U.S. military-industrial complex, we'll be able to ramp down on all these benefits because we'll be deploying a lot fewer troops, and therefore much less in the way of benefits will be required in the long run].
S-543 – A bill to require a pilot program on training, certification, and support for family caregivers of seriously disabled veterans and members of the Armed Forces to provide caregiver services to such veterans and members, and for other purposes.
HR1376 – To authorize the Secretary of the Interior to establish the Waco Mammoth National Monument in the State of Texas. [Huh?]
HR1373 – To direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a resource study along the “Ox-Bow Route” of the Butterfield Overland Trail in the States of Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, and for other purposes. [So it's fair for people in Maine to share in paying for this?]
SR68 – A resolution recognizing the contributions of the Pennsylvania National Guard in service to the Nation.
Liberty Maven
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