More evidence that we are living through Bush's third term

Remember this?



So that sixteen-month time frame has come and gone and now the AP reports today that the US is open to keeping troops in Iraq past the end of 2011 withdrawal deadline.

In other news, the Hill is reporting that a watchdog group is asking for a probe of Google's "unusually close" ties to Obama:

The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a group that advocates for a smaller and more ethical government, wrote to leaders of the House Oversight Committee this month urging them to investigate a major privacy breach by Google. It wants to know if the company's ties to the administration helped it dodge penalties after the incident.

The article continues:

"Like Halliburton in the previous administration, Google has an exceptionally close relationship with the current administration," the letter says.

Is it 2012 yet?

President George W. Bush Admits to Authorizing Waterboarding

President George W. Bush, in his memoirs "Decision Points," reveals that he was asked for and granted permission to the CIA to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. As you may or may not recall, KSM was reportedly waterboarded 183 times in March 2003.

President Obama announced in 2008 that he would not pursue charges against former President Bush or other government officials for war crimes related to waterboarding, even though waterboarding is generally accepted to be a form of torture. The Geneva Convention of 1949, ratified by the US, expressly prohibits torture. At the Tokyo Trials following WW II, Japanese soldiers were tried, convicted, and hanged for crimes committed against American POWs which included waterboarding.

President Bush gets blamed for a lot of things; some rightfully so, some not. With his stunning admission of authorizing waterboarding, this is one particular case where it is painfully obvious that Bush is deserving of whatever criticism he has coming. While I don't think that the former President should be hanged for his crimes and would likely be pardoned if convicted, the Justice Department would be remiss to fail to prosecute him.

Judgment Day is coming

Many heralded the elections of November 2008 as historic. Obama's messianic campaign fancied him the anti-war candidate, champion of LGBT rights, the transformative leader who would usher in a new era of post-racial harmony, an era of the highest level of ethics and government transparency, etc., and the Democrats rode this wave of "hope" and "change" to overwhelming majorities in both houses of congress.

Sadly, both the President and his Democratic colleagues haven't made good on their promises. They bailed out the bankers and Wall Street but neglected Main Street; unemployment remains stuck at 9.6%. The President ramped up the war in Afghanistan and now his Justice Department is appealing the ruling backing gay marriage and is expected to appeal the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters are mired in ethics scandals, and news broke today of Barney Frank's trip via private jet to the US Virgin Islands courtesy of a hedge fund manager who just so happened to have received $200 million in 2009 as part of the $180 billion federal bailout of troubled insurance giant AIG.

In November 2010 we the people face another choice; that is what elections are after all, a choice. Instead of running on their record, Democrats, with the help of President Obama, are creating a new bogeyman: the US Chamber of Commerce. The President and his surrogates are alleging that powerful foreign interests, in an attempt to influence US elections, are funding attack ads against Democrats via donations to the Chamber of Commerce. Never mind that there is no actual proof that any of this is even happening.

The premise is that since the US Chamber of Commerce receives donations from foreign interests it must necessarily be using this money to fund attack ads. As the New York Times reported, "Organizations from both ends of the political spectrum, from liberal ones like the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the Sierra Club to conservative groups like the National Rifle Association, have international affiliations and get money from foreign entities while at the same time pushing political causes in the United States." If this is such a big deal, then why is the President singling out the US Chamber of Commerce? SEIU and AFSCME are expected to spend $100 Million on the 2010 election, with the AFL-CIO slated to spend an additional $40 Million. Needless to say this is clearly a political stunt intended to rally the Democratic base and little else.

By any reasonable metric it's hard to deny that the stimulus was a failure. People like Paul Krugman now argue that the problem is that we didn't spend enough, and President Obama, in spite of all of his talk about "shovel-ready jobs" has now back-peddled in saying that there probably is no such thing. As if pushing a $50 Billion "jobs bill" for infrastructure projects after passing the $787 Billion Recovery Act directed at that same goal didn't tip off the American public.

So what will happen in November 2010? Expect voter outrage at the current state of the economy to translate into anti-incumbent sentiment resulting in a lot of turnover in both houses of congress. Given the Democrats' overwhelming majorities, expect them to bear the brunt of this anger. Republicans are by no means safe, though. People haven't forgotten what happened the last time that they were in charge.

Communism vs. Freedom

Fidel Castro recently opined to a visiting American journalist that Cuba's communist economic model doesn't work. I know what you're thinking: What a shock! Even a casual observer of the 20th century and the fall of the Soviet Union should be able to surmise that given enough time communism and all of its variants will inevitably always and everywhere fail.

The main problem with wealth redistribution, other than it being a fancy term for government-sanctioned theft and thus morally reprehensible, is that it encourages mediocrity. The US, with its progressive tax rates and myriad welfare programs, is a good case study. In America you are punished for excellence; the more you earn, the more the government takes from you. What's the incentive for you to work hard and to take risks if the government is just going to take away the fruits of your labor?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, most of the country's welfare programs are means tested, meaning that if you make above a certain threshold you are ineligible to receive a government subsidy. On one hand there is some logic in means testing as you need some way to quantify who is most deserving of a subsidy. On the other hand, it incentivizes underachieving as people are careful not to earn too much money for fear of losing their government handout. This keeps people just comfortable enough to get by but too poor to ever really advance their station in life.

President Obama and many on the left would like to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire. The wealthy aren't "paying their fair share," whatever that means. The harsh reality is that the wealthy create jobs. There's an old saying that "no poor person ever gave me a job," and this certainly rings true in my own personal experiences. However, let's examine for a second what happens when we allow people, regardless of income level, to keep more of their own money.

Nobody socks away money under a mattress anymore, so really there are only a few plausible scenarios these days as to what a person will do with their money. 1) The person spends their money on goods and services that they want, thus providing clear signs to the market regarding which goods and services should be produced. 2) The person invests their money in some interest-bearing venture that suits their affinity for risk. This similarly sends clear signals to the market as to which ventures should be pursued. 3) The person saves their money. All three of these scenarios cause the economy to grow. Even simply "doing nothing" with money and placing it in a bank account spurs economic growth as it allows banks to loan out the money to market participants.

We will never eliminate inequality in the world; the best that we can is to try to mitigate injustice. Many are in favor of progressive tax rates because they feel that flat tax rates disproportionately affect the poor. My response to that is that if you don't like where you are financially then go out, work hard, and make more money. There are very few things that government is actually good at doing, and charity isn't one of them; there is every incentive for the government to be wasteful as they are spending "someone else's money."

When it comes to money and how people spend it, there's a fourth option that I didn't include above and that is that people have the option to donate to charity. Americans collectively are by far the most charitable people in the world. It's time for government to simply get out of the way. After all, rewarding mediocrity is not what made the US the greatest country in the history of the world.

When is your private property not really your private property?

When the government says so, of course!



Montgomery, AL residents are being told to demolish their homes per a local blight ordinance. If they refuse to do so the local government is coming in with bulldozers and then sending the homeowners the bill. If the homeowners are unable to pay the bill, the government is seizing their land and selling it at auction.

abcnews did an article on this phenomenon:

Many of the homes and apartment buildings already torn down are located just blocks away from the sites of some of Montgomery's proudest moments in the civil rights movement, including the bus stop where Rosa Parks was arrested and the final stop in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery.

"This is what freed all of us, so it should take care of the people who stayed here in Montgomery," Jones said of the city. "This district should be a historic district, actually. It should be trying to be preserved and revitalized."

Goodbye, 4th Amendment. It was nice knowing you.

Backscatter x-ray scanners, like the the controversial full-body scanners that are being rolled out by the TSA in airports around the U.S., now come in a new and exciting flavor...street-roving van! You read that right, American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, is producing these monstrosities. According to AS&E's head of marketing, these vans have been deployed by law enforcement agencies here in the U.S. So much for the 4th Amendment. Watch this video...truly frightening stuff:



I've heard people argue that the TSA scanners are OK because if you don't like it then you don't have to fly. So what's the rationale for these being acceptable? If you don't like it, you don't have to leave your lead-lined bomb shelter?

Classic bump and lift?

Do a quick scan of the news and take a guess at what today's top headline is. Is it "Weekly Jobless Claims Post Surprise Jump, Hit 500,000?" Nope. Is it "More tough economic times forecast by CBO?" Nope, that's not it either. In my own personal experience, the two most talked about stories today are "TIME Poll: Majority Oppose Mosque, Many Distrust Muslims" and "White House says Obama is Christian, prays daily."

What?!

Don't be a mark. Unemployment is officially at 9.5% (although the real number is probably floating around 20%). The economy is still in tatters. There has been no "summer of recovery." With millions of Americans wondering how they're going to feed their families and pay their mortgages, we cannot afford to be distracted.

This is one of the oldest tricks in the book; let's show Washington that we're not going to fall for it anymore.

The Fed makes it rain!

Pretend for a moment that you're the Federal Reserve; since December 2008 you've maintained your key interest rate at right around zero percent and you've committed at least $6.4 Trillion in bailouts, but the economy is still stalled out. To boot, you've already doubled the money supply. So what do you do? Inflate some more, of course!

According to the AP, the Federal Reserve will begin purchasing $10 Billion of government debt monthly. The article describes this as "a small amount;" however, as Murray Rothbard showed rather elegantly $10 Billion can quickly turn into $100 Billion due to our fractional reserve banking system.

So every month the Federal Reserve is going to pump $100 Billion created out of thin air directly into the banking system. Sooner or later all of this money is going to make its way out into the general economy, and when it does, God help us all. Weimar Republic, anyone?

End the Fed already!

Another bailout on the horizon?

Reuters is reporting on a rumored August mortgage bailout in which GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would engage in mortgage debt forgiveness for homeowners that presently have mortgages that exceed the actual value of their homes (aka "underwater"). This could all take place without any Congressional input or oversight.

This will be framed to the American public as a bailout of Main Street, but make no mistake this is just another Wall Street bailout. Banks around the globe are heavily invested in securities that are based on these toxic assets. When the federally-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rewrite the terms of mortgages for homeowners that are underwater, the debt owed doesn't just vanish; it is paid for by US taxpayers. This will make the banks happy because they will now have investments based on assets that are appropriately priced (aka no longer worthless). To add insult to injury, it will only further encourage bad behavior as those who made poor decisions will be rewarded at the expense of those that made good choices and lived within their means. This is known as moral hazard.

More "change" we can believe in!

Is this your idea of transparency?

If you thought that the financial reform legislation that passed last week was bad, it turns out that it's probably even worse than you had imagined. A freedom of information act inquiry that was recently submitted by FOX Business to the SEC was summarily rejected. Why? Apparently under the new financial reform legislation the SEC is no longer required to comply with such requests.

The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.

Not only does this legislation ignore many of the root causes that lead to the financial meltdown of 2008, it prohibits the public and the media from obtaining information from the regulatory body that oversees financial markets in the US. So much for that pledge of increased transparency and accountability under the Obama administration.

Return of the draft to the USA?

Remember this video from the campaign trail?



Unless America speaks up, it looks like President Obama may be getting his wish. Two weeks ago H.R.5741, the "Universal National Service Act," was introduced in the House by embattled Congressman Charlie Rangel. The act aims "[t]o require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, and for other purposes."

This is not hyperbole: You will essentially be enslaved for a two-year period. If we do not even have the right to our own person then what rights do we have? I strongly urge you to write your Congressman in opposition to this bill.

Financial Reform: More of the same?

Indeed, the current outstanding balance of overall Federal support for the nation's financial system...has actually increased more than 23% over the past year, from approximately $3.0 trillion to $3.7 trillion -- the equivalent of a fully deployed TARP program -- largely without congressional action, even as the banking crisis has, by most measures, abated from its most acute phases.

These are the words of Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He asserts that this was due largely to the government's pledges to supply capital to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to guarantee more mortgages to the support the housing market. He went on to say that the TARP program has not "put an appreciable dent in foreclosure filings," i.e. the bailouts are not working.

So you'd expect that Fannie and Freddie, two government sponsored enterprises that were at the heart of the financial collapse, would be a main focus of the "monumental" financial reform legislation that was signed into law Wednesday by President Obama, right? Wrong. According to a report by the AP "[t]he bill doesn't include a fix for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."

So basically we have a 2,000-page law that is supposed to prevent another collapse like the one we experienced in 2008 and it doesn't even address two of the biggest players that helped to cause the collapse? Brilliant!

North America - The New Battleground for Terror?

According to the AP, drug cartel battles have resulted in the deaths of about 25,000 people since late 2006 in Mexico. Friday night came the news that the Mexican drug traffickers have now added Hezbollah-style car bombings to their repertoire. This on the heels of a NY Daily News editorial reporting that the Mexican government has recently uncovered a Hezbollah network being built in Tijuana.

All of this is a direct consequence of the war on drugs and our adventurous foreign policy. Americans have some very important decisions to make this November regarding the proper role of government, both home and abroad.

What are we doing in Afghanistan?

Much ado has been made of Michael Steele's recent comment that Afghanistan is "a war of Obama's choosing." Given Obama's 2008 campaign rhetoric, it's hard to argue against this point. However, a larger point needs to be made: What exactly are we doing in Afghanistan?

According to CIA director Leon Panetta, there are maybe 100 al-Qaida militants currently operating in Afghanistan. Do we really need 100,000 US troops to hunt down 100 al-Qaida militants? Seems a bit like overkill, no?

In his 1961 farewell address President Eisenhower warned us to beware the military industrial complex. As we approach the tenth anniversary of our involvement in Afghanistan and the 50th anniversary of this speech, perhaps we would be wise to heed Eisenhower's warning.

Obama Internet kill switch plan approved by US Senate

Techworld reports:

A US Senate committee has approved a wide-ranging cybersecurity bill that some critics have suggested would give the US president the authority to shut down parts of the Internet during a cyberattack.

Senator Joe Lieberman and other bill sponsors have refuted the charges that the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act gives the president an Internet "kill switch." Instead, the bill puts limits on the powers the president already has to cause "the closing of any facility or stations for wire communication" in a time of war, as described in the Communications Act of 1934, they said in a breakdown of the bill published on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee website.

There are quite a few problems with Senator Lieberman's rationalization. "War" has become a pretty nebulous term these days. Prior to the Korean War, Congress took it's constitutionally enumerated power as the body of government authorized to declare war quite seriously. Since that time the mere notion of a formal declaration of war has become passé. We've essentially been in a perpetual state of war since 9/14/2001 when Congress gave President Bush carte blanche to go into Afghanistan to pursue the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

What happens if someday the US finds itself in the same situation that Iran found itself in the summer of 2009? Twitter was integral in allowing the people of Iran to organize and mobilize during the chaos subsequent to their highly contested presidential election. The Iranian government had essentially shut down the media and the Internet; were it not for Twitter the world would have had nary a detail about the brutality of the state in the uprising that followed the election.

We cannot afford to give our government such power. Have we learned nothing from our post-9/11 experience including the passage of the Patriot Act? Many of the provisions of the Patriot Act were supposed to sunset 12/31/2005. Over five years later President Obama reauthorized key portions of the act including roving wiretaps, records access and tracking terror suspects not affiliated with any group.

The Internet is the last bastion of freedom in America; we cannot simply allow it to go quietly into the night.

How would the free market have handled the BP oil spill?

The latest headline from the AP reads "Oil pours from cap over Gulf gusher, some captured" as BP's latest attempt to abate this Gulf disaster appears only marginally successful at best. The article notes "[s]ix weeks after the April 20 oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers, the well has leaked somewhere between 22 million and 47 million gallons of oil, according to government estimates."

On June 2 Louisiana finally got the OK from the White House to build sand bars to cut off the spread of the oil spill throughout the Gulf, this after languishing in limbo for weeks while the Army Corps of Engineers conducted a study to assess the environmental impact of building sand bars. They initially made the request on May 11; by June 2 the oil slick was within seven miles of the Florida Panhandle.

As I've written previously, the government is considering quadupling the oil tax to help to pay for the cleanup effort. That's because BP's liability for damages is capped at $75 million. This cap was a gift to the oil companies in exchange for an 8 cents per barrel tax on oil after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

We have a regulatory body, the federal Minerals Management Service, that inspects rigs like the Deepwater Horizon for safety. According to an AP report, the MMS issued an award to the Deepwater Horizon for its safety history just last year. This should be of comfort to those in the Gulf given that according to CNN "[o]il company BP had three indications of trouble aboard the doomed drill rig Deepwater Horizon in the hour before the April 20 explosion that sank the offshore platform" which were ignored.

President Obama has responded by issuing a moratorium on deepwater drilling. According to the NY Times, "[t]he Obama administration plans to halt new deepwater drilling for six months, suspend exploratory drilling that had been scheduled off Alaska this summer and cancel a lease sale off Virginia." Aside from the disastrous effect that this could have on Louisiana's economy, this knee-jerk reaction is eerily reminiscent of the almost 30-year moratorium on new nuclear plants in the US following the near-meltdown at TMI in the 70's. In the meantime, nuclear power in countries like France has grown to generate almost 80% of their power needs while our dependence on oil has only increased.

So how would the free market respond?

BP should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for the damage that they have caused to the environment and Gulf businesses that have been injured due to BP's actions should be free to seek full restitution in civil court. BP should be liable for 100% of the damages resultant to this disaster. If they go out of business in the process, so be it. Louisiana should be free to take whatever measures it deems necessary to protect its land and its citizens without interference from the federal government. Furthermore, the cleanup efforts should not be subsidized by the taxpayers. If additional money is needed, then charity should be the answer. Americans are and have always been extremely generous in times of need:

There was a time in this country when it was recognized to be improper for the federal government to provide humanitarian relief even within the United States. President Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill in 1887 that would have provided seed for farmers in drought-stricken Texas. In his veto message, he wrote that aid from Washington only "encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." The Texas farmers ended up getting ten times as much in private assistance as they would have received from Uncle Sam.

Regulation hampers entrepreneurship and results in both the destruction of wealth and a poorer standard of living for everyone. Regulation did not stop this disaster from happening and further regulation will not prevent future accidents from occurring. Regulation merely results in granting virtual monopoly rights to a select few that are politically favored. Additionally, regulation creates a moral hazard as companies like BP have no incentive to take the proper safety precautions. Why would they when they fully expect the government to step in and pay for their mess should anything happen?

A sea of government did not stop this; no amount of regulation can stop accidents from happening. So what's the answer? The answer is freedom.

Capitalism is a system based on risk and reward. A perversion of this system where the government subsidizes risk but allows market participants to keep the rewards can only result in catastrophe. We don't need more regulation; what we need is accountability.

Who should pay for the BP oil spill?

Sounds like a simple question, right? Not so fast. According to the AP:

Responding to the massive BP oil spill, Congress is getting ready to quadruple—to 32 cents a barrel—a tax on oil used to help finance cleanups. The increase would raise nearly $11 billion over the next decade.

Let's take a quick trip down memory lane and revisit a moment in Pennsylvania history as reported in 2007 by the Tribune-Democrat:

On March 17, 1936, floodwaters fueled by heavy rains and melting snow surged through Johnstown.

The deluge took two dozen lives, destroyed 77 buildings and caused more than $40 million in damages.

And, in a sense, every modern-day consumer who buys liquor or wine in Pennsylvania still is footing the bill for that St. Patrick’s Day disaster 71 years ago.

The so-called “Johnstown Flood Tax,” an 18-percent surcharge on every bottle bought at a state liquor store, first was introduced a “temporary” tax to help Johnstown’s cleanup efforts in 1936.

And the levy, which is separate from the state’s 6-percent sales tax, lives on despite multiple attempts to kill it – and in spite of the fact that the tax’s proceeds have not flowed into Johnstown anytime in recent memory.

The article continues:

The tax originally was set at 10 percent. But instead of repealing the levy when Johnstown’s cleanup was complete, state lawmakers actually raised it twice in the 1960s to the current level of 18 percent.

As Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board’s retail sales have reached record-high levels, so have flood-tax revenues. Proceeds from the levy topped $200 million in fiscal year 2004-05 and rose to $239.4 million in fiscal 2006-07.

And it is not clear where that cash eventually ends up, since it simply is sent directly to the state treasury.

As of the date of the Tribune-Democrat article, 12/15/2007, $5.4 Billion had been collected via a tax that was instituted to pay for $40 Million in flood damage.

This oil spill is BP's fault; American taxpayers should not have to pay a single dime to fix BP's mistake. If anything, the Johnstown Flood Tax should remind us of an old Milton Friedman adage: "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."

Where have the Democrat champions of civil liberties gone?

cnet reports:

Millions of Americans arrested for but not convicted of crimes will likely have their DNA forcibly extracted and added to a national database, according to a bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday.

By a 357 to 32 vote, the House approved legislation that will pay state governments to require DNA samples, which could mean drawing blood with a needle, from adults "arrested for" certain serious crimes. Not one Democrat voted against the database measure, which would hand out about $75 million to states that agree to make such testing mandatory.

The fourth amendment is pretty clear:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It shouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that wanting to take someone's blood qualifies as an unreasonable search and seizure. So what does the constitution require law enforcement to do? Go to a judge, show probable cause, and get them to sign a warrant. Apparently making law enforcement's job a little easier trumps our fourth amendment rights.

The article continues:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership scheduled Tuesday's debate on the bill--called the Katie Sepich Enhanced DNA Collection Act of 2010--using a procedure known as the "suspension calendar" intended to be reserved for non-controversial legislation.

"Suspension of the rules is supposed to be for praising the winner of the NCAA championship or renaming Post Offices," Harper says. "Things like collecting Americans' DNA are supposed to be fully debated in Congress."

It's sad to see a Democratic party that has historically been a defender of civil liberties completely sell out the people of the United States of America.

What's the real story on the price of gold?

The headline on CBSNEWS reads "Rep. Anthony Weiner Hits Glenn Beck, Goldline for "Unholy Alliance" to Sell Gold."

Weiner accused Beck and other conservative spokespeople (among them Mark Levin and Fred Thompson) of using "their shows to prey on the public's fears of inflation and socialist takeovers while actively promoting the purchase of gold coins as insurance against this purported government overreach."

So what's the real story here? Let's look at the numbers.

Here's a chart of the US Money Supply (to remind you, the Federal Reserve is charged with managing monetary policy):



Here's a chart of the price of gold in US$ per ounce from 2000 - 2010:



Notice that the two upward trends from 2006 on are eerily similar? Should we really be surprised that a doubling of the money supply would result in the doubling of the price of gold?

The Federal Reserve is literally stealing our money via inflation. An amendment to the Dodd financial reform bill that would have allowed for a full audit of the Federal Reserve failed 37-62. Maybe we should be less concerned with Goldline and more concerned with why our elected officials are allowing an unelected quasi-private entity with zero congressional oversight of their daily operations to continue to victimize the American people.

The War on Drugs

According to the AP:

After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

The statistics are staggering: 22,700 dead at our southern border in the last three years, all due to the drug war.

So here's your "war on drugs" in action. In raiding the home of a suspected marijuana drug dealer, Missouri SWAT shot two family dogs (killing one) and likely traumatized a seven year-old boy. What did they find? A little marijuana residue inside a pipe.



Clearly the war on drugs is a colossal failure. We could have gotten much better results by simply decriminalized drug possession for personal use and focusing instead on education and prevention. We learned a tough lesson in the 1920's: Prohibition does not work. How did we end Al Capone et al.'s reign of terror? The US repealed the 18th amendment. Maybe we should take a cue from our prior successes. Seems unlikely though:

"President Obama's newly released drug war budget is essentially the same as Bush's, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal justice system as to treatment and prevention," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. "This despite Obama's statements on the campaign trail that drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue."

Obama is requesting a record $15.5 billion for the drug war for 2011, about two thirds of it for law enforcement at the front lines of the battle: police, military and border patrol agents struggling to seize drugs and arrest traffickers and users.

About $5.6 billion would be spent on prevention and treatment.

When will we learn our lesson?

Didn't we learn our lesson from the PATRIOT Act?

Joe Lieberman is drafting legislation to strip the citizenship of American terror suspects in order to circumvent the constitution:

“I’m now putting together legislation to amend that to [specify that] any individual American citizen who is found to be involved in a foreign terrorist organization, as defined by the Department of State, would be deprived of their citizenship rights,” Lieberman said Tuesday.

So essentially an unelected body of bureaucrats decides that you are an enemy of the state and presto, you have no civil rights and you are shipped off to Gitmo. The problem with this is that the "enemy" is largely determined by who is in power. In light of last year's Department of Homeland Security report warning against the rise of right-wing extremism, advocates of limited government and fidelity to the constitution should be on guard.

The real face of US domestic terror?

A family in the woods of Michigan conspiring to kill law enforcement officials is newsworthy, but apparently two of America's oldest and most notorious street gangs conspiring together to do the same in America's most populous city is not.

According to an article that ran in the New York Post about a week and a half ago "Bloods and Crips in a rough corner of Queens put their beef on ice to form a murderous, drug-pushing union that was caught on wiretaps plotting to use a sniper rifle to pick off beat cops from rooftops."

I suppose this isn't newsworthy because it doesn't fit neatly into the narrative that has been constructed by the media in lockstep with the current administration. Eugene Robinson stated in a Washington Post op-ed that "[f]or decades now, the most serious threat of domestic terrorism has come from the growing ranks of paranoid, anti-government hate groups that draw their inspiration, vocabulary and anger from the far right," in spite of the fact that street gangs, like the Bloods and the Crips, have been terrorizing American neighborhoods for over four decades.

An Internet search for major news outlets covering this story resulted in zero hits.

Indeed, a revolution is brewing in America. Contrary to what the left will have you believe, it is a peaceful revolution. It would appear that the current administration has taken regulatory czar Cass Sunstein's advice to "cognitively infiltrate" the opposition. In the words of Gandhi, "[f]irst they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win."

Not one single dime, Mr. President?

Today the AP ran an article on a CBO report showing that millions of Americans, the vast majority of them middle class, will be paying fines in excess of $1,000 for not getting health insurance once the health care overhaul kicks in. This is in sharp contrast to President Obama's statement that "if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."

Under the new law, the penalties will be phased in starting in 2014. By 2016, those who must get insurance but don't will be fined $695 or 2.5 percent of their household income, whichever is greater.

The article continues:

About 3 million of those required to pay fines in 2016 will have incomes below $59,000 for individuals and $120,000 for families of four, according to the CBO projections.

H.R. 4995, sponsored by Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, would repeal the individual mandate and get rid of these onerous fines. Contact your congressman today and urge them to become a cosponsor.

US Department of Justice wants warrantless email searches

What happens when the law hasn't quite caught up to technology? Chicanery ensues. According to a report by cnet, the US DOJ is attempting to gain access to email messages of Yahoo! Mail users without first obtaining a search warrant.

According Kevin Bankston, attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

"The government is trying to evade federal privacy law and the Constitution." Yahoo's brief is also worth noting. Like the coalition's filing, it argues that "users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their e-mails" and says the Fourth Amendment requires police to obtain a warrant to peruse stored messages. And it confirms that prosecutors want "all e-mail" in the targeted Yahoo Mail accounts, even if it's not relevant to the investigation or could include documents protected by the attorney-client privilege.

Looks like Big Brother is at it again!

END THE MANDATE - Support H.R. 4995

On April 13, 2010, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas introduced legislation to repeal the individual mandate component of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

H.R. 4995 aims "[t]o restore the American people's freedom to choose the health insurance that best meets their individual needs by repealing the mandate that all Americans obtain government-approved health insurance."

As it stands, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has a clause that stipulates that every man, woman, and child must either purchase a government approved health insurance plan or pay a fine. For the first time in our nation's history the purchase of a good is required by virtue of citizenship.

Contact your congressman today and urge them to become a cosponsor of this critical piece of legislation.

Government should take its cues from Main Street

It's looking increasingly more and more like now was probably not the best time to introduce a new trillion dollar entitlement program. In speaking about the current economic state of affairs in the US, Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke was quoted in an article by the AP as saying:

"To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above."

The Article continues:

"Unless we as a nation demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility, in the longer run we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth," he said.

It doesn't appear that we, as a nation, are serious about making a commitment to fiscal responsibility:

The US government registered a record budget deficit in February of 220.909 billion dollars despite rising revenues, setting a record 17th consecutive month in the red.

The White House has warned the deficit for the 2010 fiscal year that ends on September 30 could swell to 1.555 trillion dollars, eclipsing the prior year's record of 1.415 trillion dollars, because of government spending to stimulate recovery from the worst recession in decades.

The US debt stood at 7.5 trillion dollars or 53 percent of gross domestic product at the end of 2009, according to the CBO, which expects that figure to balloon to 20.3 trillion dollars, or 90 percent of GDP by 2020.

In a time when belt-tightening has become commonplace among Americans, government continues to spend our money like there's no tomorrow.

Soak the Rich!

Joe Biden complained about the top 1% of earners taking home 22% of the income in the US. What he didn't tell you is that the top 10% of earners also pay 73% of income taxes. Is this what he means by "tax equity?"

The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education. It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners -- households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 -- paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

The bottom 40 percent, on average, make a profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes. For those people, the government sends them a payment.

Is it no wonder that the demand for government services continues to rise when many of the recipients bear increasingly less and less of the burden required to provide them?

Health Care Reform: Young Adults Get Left Holding the Bag

The AP ran an article yesterday discussing something that many have been warning about for the past year: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act forces healthy 20- and 30-somethings to purchase approved health insurance policies to subsidize care for older generations.

Under the health care overhaul, young adults who buy their own insurance will carry a heavier burden of the medical costs of older Americans—a shift expected to raise insurance premiums for young people when the plan takes full effect.

Beginning in 2014, most Americans will be required to buy insurance or pay a tax penalty. That's when premiums for young adults seeking coverage on the individual market would likely climb by 17 percent on average, or roughly $42 a month, according to an analysis of the plan conducted for The Associated Press. The analysis did not factor in tax credits to help offset the increase.

The higher costs will pinch many people in their 20s and early 30s who are struggling to start or advance their careers with the highest unemployment rate in 26 years.

...and the hits just keep on coming.

Pennsylvania: Looking for a better solution than Obamacare?

Look no further than Altoona, PA. As reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dr. Zane Gates runs a clinic there for Altoona's working poor that "serves more than 3,500 people who earn too much to qualify for medical assistance but cannot scrape together enough money for health insurance."

How can he do this?

The clinic, Partnering for Health Services, subsists through an association with Altoona Regional Health System, which absorbs and writes off approximately $2.3 million more in costs per year for laboratory tests, X-rays and medication.

Additionally,

He is also developing a hospital-only insurance plan that would give his free clinic patients access to a preventive wellness program and three emergency room visits each year, for which they would pay less than $100 a month.

"If you have a heart attack, or you break a leg, you get your gall bladder out -- all that stuff, it's all covered," said Dr. Gates. "No co-pays, no pre-existing conditions, anything."

The plan would save money for both the clinic's patients and Altoona Regional Health System, said Cloyd Beers, executive director of the Altoona Regional Partnership for a Healthy Community.

Compare that to the Obama plan that was recently signed into law which at best is just another unfunded mandate for the already distressed states. According to the chief deputy director for California's health programs, Obamacare's expansion of medicaid will cost his state at least an additional $2 - 3 Billion annually.

Perhaps a new massive social program isn't the answer after all.

Social Security: The elephant in the room

$2.5 Trillion of the US government's $12.5 Trillion debt is owed...to the US Government? Due to the economic downturn it looks like the bill has finally come due. According to an article run by the AP today:

For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

The article continues:

For more than two decades, regardless of which political party was in power, Congress has been accused of raiding the Social Security trust funds to pay for other programs, masking the size of the budget deficit.

These accounting tricks are finally catching up to us. Unfortunately, the outlook is not so good:

In the short term, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security will continue to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes for the next three years. It is projected to post small surpluses of $6 billion each in 2014 and 2015, before returning to indefinite deficits in 2016.

Additionally,

Social Security is projected to drain its trust funds by 2037 unless Congress acts, and there's concern that the looming crisis will lead to reduced benefits.

Social Security is essentially a giant Ponzi scheme; Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in a federal prison for doing the same thing that the United States government has been doing since 1935. Clearly this is a problem that the people of America can no longer ignore.

Big Brother to take a peak at your emails?

WSJ Blogs is reporting that the Obama administration lifted the veil Tuesday on a highly-secretive set of policies to defend the U.S. from cyber attacks. This Homeland Security program is nicknamed "Einstein":

The current version of the program is widely seen as providing meager protection against attack, but a new version being built will be more robust–largely because it’s rooted in NSA technology. The program is designed to look for indicators of cyber attacks by digging into all Internet communications, including the contents of emails (emphasis added), according to the declassified summary.

Although Einstein was designed to operate on federal networks, cnet reports that the Department of Homeland Security is looking to extend this technology to private sector networks.

And you thought that the Patriot Act was bad! The government will literally be snooping in on every domestic transmission via the internet.

Email? Check. Internet phone? Check. Video chat? Check. Blogs? (gulp) Check.

You can view the summary on the White House web site here.

Canadian dignitary travels to US for cardiac surgery

It's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the Canadian health care system when one of the country's ruling class chooses to come to the US for surgery in lieu of waiting in line with the common folk. It's nothing new for the elite to play by a different set of rules, especially when they have means and resources to which the masses do not have access. In Premier Williams' own words:

"This was my heart, my choice and my health."

"I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics."

Perhaps we should think twice about which health care systems we wish to emulate when those with access to "free" health care would rather pay to come to the US for it.

Bailout Bonanza!

Apparently the executive pay limits set by President Obama only apply to Wall Street bankers. The AP is reporting that Ed Whitacre, the new CEO of General Motors, is poised to receive a $9 Million pay package this year. This is almost twice the amount of money that former CEO Fritz Henderson, the man that was essentially fired by President Obama, was paid. Speaking of Fritz, he's recently been hired back on as a consultant to the tune of $59,090/month to come back in and work 20 hours per month. All of this from the company that lost almost $31 billion in 2008 and received a $49.9 Billion bailout in 2009.

Looks like that $49.9 Billion is turning out to be money well spent!

Do we really need universal health care?

According to a recently conducted survey reported by PennLive.com, 2 out of 3 in Pennsylvania want universal health care. Many of the reader comments that favor universal health care describe skyrocketing health care costs and a lack of affordable insurance options as their motivation.

Let's look at the facts. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that government programs will soon account for over 50 percent of health care spending in the US. This would imply that we already have "some form of universal health care." Some other interesting statistics about health care:

Many claim that there are 46 million uninsured Americans when 9.7 million are not Americans, 16 million make more than $50,000, and 14 million are eligible for government programs leaving 8 million as chronically uninsured. The rate of uninsured in the U.S. is steady at about 15-16% since the early 90’s. In Pennsylvania, about 92% are insured!

Medical bankruptcy is another hot button issue, even though an American Journal of Medicine study showed that 77.9 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy due to medical issues actually had insurance at the onset of their illness.

So where is all of this coming from? It would appear that the Obama Administration has taken a page out of the Alinksy playbook in manufacturing a health care crisis. According to the most recent US Census Bureau statistics, about 88 percent of those those with private insurance have employer-provided insurance. ABC reported that among insured Americans, 82 percent rate their health coverage positively.

Is our system perfect? Far from it. But when a 55 y/o male can get health insurance in Pennsylvania through Geisinger Choice for as low as $202/month, and a 25 y/o male can get insurance for as low as $53/month, it would seem that the situation is not as dire as we're being lead to believe. There is certainly room for reform but a complete government hijacking of the health care system is probably unnecessary.

Harrisburg City to Possibly Raise Water Rates for Residents of Neighboring Municipalities

There is currently an article on PennLive.com indicating that Harrisburg City is contemplating raising water rates for residents of Susquehanna Township and Penbrook Borough in order to service the city's debt. Regardless of whether this may or may not be legal, it is completely immoral. It is one thing to raise water rates due to increased costs in processing or delivering water; it is another thing entirely to raise water rates for something completely unrelated to the service being provided i.e. inability to pay off incinerator debt. The residents of neighboring municipalities, who do not even reside within city limits, should not be punished for the ineptitude of city leadership.

I advise all residents of Susquehanna Township and Penbrook Borough to contact their local officials and state senator/representative and demand their attention in this matter.

Obama Administration Wants to Track Cell Phones Without a Warrant

According to a report by cnet, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia will hear oral arguments Friday in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

The fourth amendment is pretty clear:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

There is at a minimum an implied right to privacy embedded in the Constitution. Should the court find in the White House's favor, it would certainly be a profound loss for liberty everywhere.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

According to a Foxnews.com report, the Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a prominent Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids. This is a bit peculiar given the loftiness of then candidate Obama's campaign rhetoric:

As a candidate for president in 2008, then-Sen. Obama frequently derided the Bush administration for the awarding of federal contracts without competitive bidding.

"I will finally end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all," the senator told a Grand Rapids audience on Oct. 2. "The days of sweetheart deals for Halliburton will be over when I'm in the White House."

Those remarks echoed an earlier occasion, during a candidates' debate in Austin, Texas on Feb. 21, when Mr. Obama vowed to upgrade the government's online databases listing federal contracts.

"If (the American people) see a bridge to nowhere being built, they know where it's going and who sponsored it," he said to audience laughter, "and if they see a no-bid contract going to Halliburton, they can check that out too."

The article continues:

Less than two months after he was sworn into office, President Obama signed a memorandum that he claimed would "dramatically reform the way we do business on contracts across the entire government."

Flanked by aides and lawmakers at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building on March 4, Obama vowed to "end unnecessary no-bid and cost-plus contracts," adding: "In some cases, contracts are awarded without competition…And that's completely unacceptable."

The March 4 memorandum directed the Office of Management and Budget to "maximize the use of full and open competition" in the awarding of federal contracts.

Sounds like it's business as usual in Washington, D.C.

How much have the bailouts really cost YOU?

With the money spent on bailouts the past two years, you and every other working American could have paid zero dollars in federal taxes this year. You read that right. Zero. Dollars. In. Federal. Taxes.

You could have kept your entire paycheck, free to spend it as you see fit. That is, of course, if you're among those lucky enough to still be collecting a paycheck. What did you get instead? 10% unemployment (which is probably closer to 20% unemployment if you use the government's old method for making the calculation) and an economic system built on sand.

What can you do? Support HR 1207 and S 604 and audit the Fed!

A tax on banks is a tax on you!

According to Bloomberg:

As many as 50 financial firms with assets greater than $50 billion each would be hit by a levy President Barack Obama will propose today to help recoup taxpayer bailout money and trim the federal budget deficit, an administration official said.

The article continues:

The fee targets the country’s biggest financial institutions and aims to recoup losses from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which the Treasury Department now estimates to cost $117 billion, the administration official said.

Banking, like any other enterprise, is a profit-seeking venture. Simply put, banks are in the business of making money. If government chooses to increase the cost of doing business for these banks, this in turn will result in higher costs for consumers. To quote:

“Using tax policy to punish people is a bad idea,” JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, 53, said after testifying yesterday at a hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in Washington. “All businesses tend to pass their costs on to customers.”

To be frank, this approach does not truly address any of the problems that lead to the bank bailouts. Regardless, if we truly want to fix the problem we must end the Federal Reserve, return to a gold standard, and do away with fractional reserve banking and the FDIC.

Banks are required by law to keep only 10% of their reserves on hand at any given time. This is called fractional reserve banking. What this means in practice is that if you deposit $1,000 into a bank account, the bank can turn around and make a loan to someone else for $10,000 at an interest rate higher than what they agree to pay you to hold your money. This is how banks make money (as an aside, the inflation caused from the increased money supply makes each dollar that you own worth less). Eliminating fractional reserve banking would force banks to keep customers' money on hand in cash reserves, much like a warehouse, effectively giving them less money to play around with. In turn, this would force banks to be more selective about the types of loans they issue, thus resulting in a sounder financial system.

We need to be honest with ourselves; we are never going to see that TARP money back. If government does by chance recover some of that money they will simply spend it on something else. The most practical course of action is to properly identify and eliminate the root causes of our current financial crisis and to take effective steps to mitigate moral hazard.

Surprised? Public works spending provides no "stimulus"

According to a study completed by the AP, "a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry." This should come as no surprise to those that have studied history. No matter how much Paul Krugman and others insist that these types of measures bear fruit, in practice this has simply not been the case.

Spend a lot or spend nothing at all, it didn't matter, the AP analysis showed: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation, raising questions about Obama's argument that more road money would address an "urgent need to accelerate job growth."

Obama wants a second stimulus bill from Congress that relies in part on more road and bridge spending, projects the president said are "at the heart of our effort to accelerate job growth."

The article continues:

Even within the construction industry, which stood to benefit most from transportation money, the AP's analysis found there was nearly no connection between stimulus money and the number of construction workers hired or fired since Congress passed the recovery program. The effect was so small, one economist compared it to trying to move the Empire State Building by pushing against it.

"As a policy tool for creating jobs, this doesn't seem to have much bite," said Emory University economist Thomas Smith, who supported the stimulus and reviewed AP's analysis. "In terms of creating jobs, it doesn't seem like it's created very many. It may well be employing lots of people but those two things are very different."

There was no difference in unemployment trends between the group of counties that received the most stimulus money and the group that received none, the analysis found.

In spite of this, it seems that the President and Congress are determined to pass another "stimulus:"

Despite the disconnect, Congress is moving quickly to give Obama the road money he requested. The Senate will soon consider a proposal that would direct nearly $28 billion more on roads and bridges, programs that are popular with politicians, lobbyists and voters. The overall price tag on the bill, which also would pay for water projects, school repairs and jobs for teachers, firefighters and police officers, would be $75 billion.

It's time for Americans to insist that our government forgo what is popular in favor of what actually works. The only way to improve our economic outlook is to opt for true stimulus, which involves shrinking the size of government by reducing government spending and cutting taxes for everyone.

Health Care "Reform?" America...you're getting hosed!

C‑SPAN has sent a letter to House and Senate leaders asking that negotiations on the health care bill be open to their cameras. Given that President Obama pledged to do as much during the Presidential Campaign, you'd think that this one would be a no-brainer; guess again.

As the Washington Times points out, this is just the latest in a long line of measures that Congress has taken to make this process as convoluted as possible. The House passed their version of the bill on a Saturday night. The Senate held its key procedural vote at 1 AM and passed their version of the bill Christmas Eve. House and Senate leadership is now taking things one step further by bypassing the traditional conference committee in favor of simply passing the Senate version with an amendment added and shipping it back over to the Senate for a final vote. This vote would need a simple majority and not the typical sixty votes that would be needed otherwise. In doing so, House and Senate leadership can simultaneously castrate any Republican opposition as well as snuff out any opposition from moderate Democrats.

What's with all of the secrecy? This is a dangerous game that Reid, Pelosi, et al. are playing. If you happen to still be of the mind that this legislation is a good thing for Americans, you may want to re-evaluate your position.