2008 Presidential Race archive at LibertyGuys

Archive for the '2008 Presidential Race' Category

Jul

If You Love Peace, Become a “Blue Republican” (Just for a Year)

By libertyvini 2 Comments

“…the one potential Presidential candidate (Ron Paul) who wishes to stop killing innocent people in foreign wars and stop transferring the wealth of poor and working Americans to the corporate elites happens to be — this time around — a Republican.”

via Robin Koerner: If You Love Peace, Become a “Blue Republican” (Just for a Year).

Jul

Britain’s Conservatives Worry About Ties to Murdoch

By libertyvini 0 Comments

Categories: 2008 Presidential Race, comedy, commentary, economics, fascism, mercantilism, politicians, politics, protectionism, reference, socialism and technology

GEE, do you think THIS has anything to do with why Citizen Rupert had “News of the World” euthanized? Sloppy, Rupert, sloppy;

LONDON — When David Cameron became prime minister in May 2010, one of his first visitors at 10 Downing Street — within 24 hours, and entering by a back door, according to accounts in British newspapers — was Rupert Murdoch.

Fourteen months later, with Mr. Murdoch’s media empire in Britain reeling, Mr. Cameron may feel that his close relationship with Mr. Murdoch, which included a range of social contacts with members of the Murdoch family and the tycoon’s senior executives, has been a costly overreach.

Those concerns will be intensified by the expected arrest on Friday of Andy Coulson, the former editor of The News of the World and, until he resigned in January this year, Mr. Cameron’s media chief at Downing Street.

Mr. Cameron hired Mr. Coulson in 2007 after scandals had rocked the newspaper. And he repeatedly defended him even as signs accumulated that Mr. Coulson had greater awareness of the newspaper’s phone-hacking practices than he had acknowledged.

Some of Mr. Cameron’s political opponents have cast the embrace of Mr. Murdoch as a mistake that could combine with other recent miscues by the Cameron government to seriously weaken the prime minister’s party, the Conservatives.

via Britain’s Conservatives Worry About Ties to Murdoch – NYTimes.com.

Jun

A Real Young Republican Revolt in Colorado

By libertyvini 0 Comments

Categories: 2008 Presidential Race, Austrian Economics, Constitution, Ron Paul, US Constitution, economics, fascism, monetary policy, politicians and politics

Whatever your stand on the health-care legislation at the center of this article, this open revolt by libertarian members against local and state Republican parties should be applauded and encouraged;

Not your average Republican power broker

Sarah Anderson is peculiar. For one thing, she’s a Republican. At 22, that makes her a statistical anomaly, even in El Paso County.

She spent her formative years reading a series of books that explain the free-market theory to teens. She will gleefully argue the superiority of the market-based Austrian School economic model of F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises over the Keynesian mixed-economy version. On her Facebook page, she describes her political views as “a beautiful blend of Anarcho-Capitalism and Minarchism.”

Another thing: Anderson is a born campaigner. Home-schooled, with college on hold, she says she’s worked on more than 60 campaigns over the past seven years. She started at age 9, after pleading with her mother, by volunteering at county headquarters while Bill Owens was running for governor. Six years later, she went door-to-door for Douglas Bruce, then a party hero who wanted a seat on the county commission. From 2004 to 2007, she worked at the state Capitol for legislators including Sen. Kent Lambert of Colorado Springs.

This past February, at the meeting of the county GOP’s central committee, she was elected party secretary in a decisive victory over party stalwart Holly Williams, wife of County Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams. Anderson says her speech — referencing work done for Lambert, former state Sen. Dave Schultheis, U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck and plenty more — clinched it.

“Let’s not just say we want youth in the party,” she told the crowd. “Let’s put experienced youth in leadership.”

Feisty, ambitious, intelligent and pretty, Anderson’s exactly the kind of person that the aging GOP is eager to draw into the fold. Except that, as she happily offers, “My beliefs aren’t popular with the majority of the powerholders of the Republican Party.”

May

Ron Paul versus Michael Gerson on Drugs

By libertyvini 0 Comments

Gerson, neocon that he is, uses Ron’s principled stand for liberty and against putting people in prison against him, as though rabid criminalization were somehow evidence of “compassion”. I politely argued otherwise;

“Congressman Paul was speaking of principles, not of policy. He has stated, clearly and repeatedly that the states can and should be the locus for any (slight) conditions under which adults can consume certain (or any) substances. And he makes the point within a framework where the choice to abuse drugs, being no longer supported within a welfare state, carries high personal and economic costs, high enough to be a deterrent to most people, even if his exposition was a tad too facile. The problem with Gerson’s allegedly more “complex” conservative response to drug use, prostitution, etc is it fails to consider any of these issues other than in a sterile vacuum. For most of our history drugs were legal, widely recognized for their dangers, and their use self-limiting. The medicalization of everything in our culture and the concurrent criminalization of certain substances has effectively subsidized irresponsible, widespread, and growing use of illicit drugs, while at the same time greatly increasing overall societal costs from their use. The current course is financially unsustainable, and deadly to personal and political freedom. Kudos to Dr. Paul for having the courage to finally declare it.”

May

YAY, Osama bin Laden’s Dead(?)

By libertyvini 0 Comments

Categories: 2008 Presidential Race, Austrian Economics, Constitution, Ron Paul, US Constitution, autarky, comedy, commentary, economics, police state, politicians, politics, terrorism and war

So, now, can we Just Come Home?

Feb

The Thing In Wisconsin

By libertyvini 0 Comments

Categories: 2008 Presidential Race, Austrian Economics, Constitution, Ron Paul, US Constitution, autarky, commentary, economics, education, energy independence, fascism, liberty, mercantilism, monetary policy, police state, politics, regulation, socialism and technology

Salaries and benefits in the public sector are unsustainable. This much is obvious. The states are broke, deep in debt, and standing on the edge of bonding oblivion.

The ruckus in Wisconsin is being spun by both sides – “Walker is saving the taxpayers from rapacious unions!” Walker is destroying working families!” The pundits on TV and radio are even worse.

Let’s be clear here. Scott Walker, Chris Christie, et al did not descend from heaven to defend the taxpayers against the evil unions. Their opponents (Tom Barrett and Jon Corzine) similarly did not descend from heaven to defend the rights of schoolchildren. All of these men ran on and in the event won on campaign contributions from substantial special interests.

To focus on two examples, Scott Walker received substantial backing by the Koch brothers, who run a gigantic, closely-held oil business, while his opponent, Tom Barrett also received large contributions from his own peculiar collection of special interests.

Last year, Christie and Corzine undoubtedly received cash from similar interests, Corzine being a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, and Christie being a state prosecutor. None of that money was contributed toward closing down New Jersey’s public schools. It would have been in no contributors interest to do so.

So let’s be clear here. What Scott Walker, Chris Christie and others are doing, however desirable from the standpoint of people who are forced to pay for it, is aimed primarily at the preservation of government for the purposes of government – the contracts and pelf that are stripped from the taxpayer. In other words, they are not doing it to benefit you, they are doing it primarily to keep the scheme alive.

I almost want to favor the unions sometimes, just so the implosion occurs quicker :o(

Feb

Our 30-Year Mistake by Ron Paul

By libertyvini 0 Comments

“We see now the folly of our interventionist foreign policy: not only has that stability fallen to pieces with the current unrest, but the years of propping up the corrupt regime in Egypt has led the people to increase their resentment of both America and Israel We are both worse off for decades of intervention into Egypt’s internal affairs. I wish I could say that we have learned our lesson and will no longer attempt to purchase – or rent – friends in the Middle East, but I am afraid that is being too optimistic. Already we see evidence that while the US historically propped up the Egyptian regime, we also provided assistance to groups opposed to the regime.

So we have lost the credibility to claim today that we support the self-determination of the Egyptian people. Our double-dealing has not endeared us to Egyptians who now seek to reclaim their independence and national dignity.

“Diplomacy” via foreign aid transfer payments only makes us less safe at home and less trusted overseas. But the overriding reality is that we simply cannot afford to continue a policy of buying friends. We face an ongoing and potentially deepening recession at home – so how can we justify to the unemployed and underemployed in the United States the incredible cost of maintaining a global empire? Moral arguments aside, we must stop sending hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign governments when our own economy is in shambles.”

via Our 30-Year Mistake by Ron Paul.

Oct

Volt Fraud At Government Motors

By libertyvini 2 Comments

HAHAHAHAHA, this is TOO funny;

“The Chevy Volt, hailed by the Obama administration as the electric savior of the auto industry and the planet, makes its debut in showrooms next month, but its already being rolled out for test drives by journalists. It appears were all being taken for a ride.”

via Volt Fraud At Government Motors – Investors.com.

Sep

About That “Minimum Wage”

By libertyvini 0 Comments

Categories: 2008 Presidential Race, Austrian Economics, Constitution, US Constitution, Uncategorized, autarky, commentary, economics, fascism, liberty, monetary policy, politicians, politics, recommendations, reference, regulation, socialism and war

@ Morning’s Minion;

“…one of my friends who is a social worker was part of a project to figure out what a real “living wage” in the DC Metro area would be.”

Probably an interesting experiment, but there is simply no way to know what decisions low-income people make to survive and succeed, what resources are available, where resources (housing, transportation) can be shared, or provided by employers, etc. All of these experiments have very poor correlation with reality, especially in light of the evidence that some people survive on less than that $14 estimate.

“Of course minimum wage is half that, which should tell us something about the conditions the working poor endure.”

That old canard. A tiny handful of people have to survive on the federal or state minimum wage. Minimum wage is always set lower than the median economic wage precisely for the reason that anyone who has or can develop a marketable skill will see their wage approach the marginal revenue product of their labor, meaning the last-hired worker is paid nearly all of the additional output he adds less employment expense.

The people who ARE negatively impacted by the minimum wage are people whose output is less than the mandated wage, new workers and others with, erm, uneven work histories. Before the minimum wage, people without skills were a handshake away from possibly learning a skill and rapidly increasing their output, their employability,m and their earning potential. By artificially raising the price to hire these unskilled workers above their marginal revenue product, the minimum wage prevents those people from being employed at all, probably forever.

”

Few things infuriate me as much as that phrase. The working poor. If you work, you should not be poor. What an abominable idea. ”

I agree. The government we labor under destroys wealth and steals income, not just direct income but investments that would increase worker output and enrich society at large. The poor are especially hard hit because they are regressively taxed – FICA is a 16% tax on every dollar they make, the inflation tax steals their income and makes saving futile, and the income tax is waiting to steal the funds necessary to climb out of poverty.

If we are going to reform Social Security (instead of end it, as I have already shown we should), then let’s recognize it for what it is, a tax-and-spend welfare / transfer scheme. Let’s drop the charade that it is some kind of annuity or insurance, since the supreme court has already disabused us of that notion, see Flemming v Nestor, conveniently available on the SSA website, or my site here;

…and let’s simply remove the tax cap, and make all income FICA-taxable, including any capital gains reported on individual returns. It will never happen, the owners of this country will make sure of that. But it will make the nature of the program clear.And maybe a few more people will wake up.

via Glenn Greenwald at Salon

Sep

Social Security Contributions Are A Theft. Period. That Doesn’t Mean The Feds Are Right To Steal Them Again.

By libertyvini 0 Comments

Categories: 2008 Presidential Race, Austrian Economics, Constitution, US Constitution, autarky, commentary, economics, fascism, liberty, mercantilism, monetary policy, police state, politicians, politics, socialism and war

Social Security Contributions Are A Theft. Period. That Doesn’t Mean The Feds Are Right To Steal Them Again.

@gc wall;

“I haven’t heard one democrat say that he wants to cut benefits and kick Granny off the dole. Links please. But then I am not telepathic like some people.”

Ummm, aren’t we discussing the secret work of the deficit-reduction commission? Exactly what do you think they are proposing to get out of the financial disaster they hath wrought?

“Social Security does not need an “orderly wind-down”"

I say it does. It is immoral to take property by force to give to others, no matter how needy.

“… a couple of easy tweaks and it will be solvent for seventy-five years.”

“Easy tweaks”, you say? Like raising the retirement age, cutting benefits, and raising (more) taxes on SS income? You a Reagan fan gc? Poor people and minorities already put more out in FICA taxes than they ever get out. Raising the retirement age makes that crime worse, and will force millions to literally work themselves to death. So if you assert that a few benign fixes will solve the problem, make the case. Let’s see the math. Demographics argue against it.

“It is amazing how many people advocate for saving employers’ all of six and one-half percent for insurance the keeps the less fortunate from eating cat food.”

1) It isn’t “the employer’s 6.5%”. The 6.5% (plus compliance fees and penalties) is money that would otherwise be paid to the employee. ALL SS “contributions” are stolen from employees at the point of a gun, and are immoral.

“When, exactly, did Americans agree that selfishness and indifference is wiser than responsibility and compassion?”

A smoke screen, and wrong to boot. SS contributions reduce the amount available for charity (and run it through the oh-so-efficient Federal government). Before the advent of the welfare state, Americans created thousands of charitable civic and fraternal organizations. Social Security is not insurance, is not an annuity, is not charity, and is not a retirement plan, it is a simple welfare / transfer program, a theft from producers that is transferred to consumers.

The bottom line is this – the labor I exchange with my employer is mine until we exchange. The money my employer exchanges with me is his, until we exchange. No one but two parties to the deal I mentioned has a legitimate moral claim to either one. To claim otherwise makes me a slave, and a victim of theft.

But back to my argument. Even if I agreed with your conception of Social Security as some kind of retarded, misguided, but well-intentioned charitable “responsibility”, the worst noises coming out of this evil “commission” hint not at reforming Social Security, or “easy tweaks”.

What we of a skeptical bent suspect is being mooted is a HUGE increase in FICA rates, along with removal of the cap, and for what? To skim enough money OFF OF A PROGRAM THAT IS ALREADY IN THE RED to avoid having to end America’s Global resource wars, the main reason we are in such deep financial trouble to start with.

This is what we suspect, because after the Bush Administration’s bailouts of 2008, it is increasingly obvious that theft is the only policy tool they have left.

via http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/09/04/simpson/index.html