End the War in Afghanistan

Texas Congressman Ron Paul calls for an end to the war in Afghanistan.

Part I:



Part II:

Police Have No Duty to Protect Individuals

Katey Montague discusses the fact that courts in US have found that police have no duty to protect individuals.

Russia Today News Network

Tarrin Lupo comments on the unique coverage provided by Russia Today.

Zygi Has a Fit

Free rent and a $675,000 payment from the taxpayers is not good enough for poor little rich man Zygi Wilf. From the St.Paul Pioneer Press:

The Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission unanimously passed a proposal today to offer the Minnesota Vikings cost reductions if the team agrees to a two-year lease extension through the 2013 season.

The commission would not collect rent from the Vikings and would give back $675,000 if the team agrees not to sell the team without the commission's consent or move the team outside of Minnesota.

Vikings owners Zygi Wilf and Mark Wilf had sent a scathing letter Wednesday to Paul Thatcher, chairman of the finance committee of the Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission, a day after Thatcher's committee approved a resolution threatening to penalize the team if it doesn't agree to extend its lease at the Metrodome. If the Vikings decline the new lease, they would pay $4 million annually in rent under the proposal.

The letter delivered to Thatcher says the Vikings are "shocked, exasperated and extremely disappointed" by the proposal. The Vikings said they were unaware of the proposal before it was advanced by Thatcher.

"Your actions yesterday leave us confused and questioning the future of this franchise," the Wilfs wrote. "As a result, we have instructed our management team to suspend any further engagement with the MSFC unless and until the Commission gets serious about resolving the near-term revenue issues and acting like a partner with us to retain this valued franchise in Minnesota for the next generation of fans. The time for more political games on this issue has expired."

Publicly financing stadiums is corporate welfare of the worst kind. To use the logic of the defenders of stadium proposals, the taxpayers should ante up and construct the facilities for every single factory and commercial property in the state. That argument is simply ludicrous.

Sports stadiums used to be built, owned and operated by the sports teams. There is absolutely NO reason they still can’t be.

Public financing of sports stadiums is an example of “if everyone is doing it, I have to also”.

All public financing of stadiums does is to subsidize the wealthy owners and their not quite as wealthy players at the expense of the common taxpayer.

It allows Zygi Wilf to have his personal jet fly down to Mississippi to pick up Brett Favre to sign his multimillion dollar contract to throw a ball around.

Meanwhile the common taxpayer is trying to figure out how to afford to gas and maintain their 8 year old car to get to work.

If you want to encourage business and jobs, the fairest and most effective way is to reduce taxes across the board.

Subsidies, TIF districts and the like allow the government and politicians to decide the winners and losers.

Of course that is exactly why politicians and wealthy business love subsides, they grease each others palm using the taxpayers money.

Rest assured, our great leaders in both parties will find a way to transfer money from you and me to Zygi and Brett.

High School Confidential

More nonsense in the never ending saga of government schools imposing censorship and zero tolerance. From WRBC TV:

Some Chattooga (GA) High School students paid $50 in advance for their 2009 yearbook, but when they picked it up last week, four pages were cut out, literally.


The 2009 yearbook was delivered to students, two months late with pages 11-14 clipped out. The books arrived at Chattooga High in early September, but are just now going out to those students who had purchased them last year. On page 10, you see part of a girl's head, next to an unrelated page 15. What happened to the pages in between?

The yearbook was dedicated to former Chattooga teacher Dr. Alan Perry, who supervised the yearbook for the past 27 years. After he retired in May, a new principal and yearbook advisor didn't like what they saw: photos of shirtless boys playing basketball. So before distributing to students, they began the two-month process of cutting pages 11-14 out of every yearbook.

Dr. Perry, who was able to obtain an original, uncut version of the yearbook, posted the pages on his Facebook site. He said, "I'm very disappointed with the decision to mutilate a wonderful yearbook--a decision that was completely unnecessary. There was absolutely nothing inappropriate about the pages that were cut from the book; I am offended by the lack of regard shown for the students pictured on those pages, the students who worked on the yearbook staff last year, and most of all, the students who purchased the yearbook."

Arrested for Pamphleteering / Filming on Federal Property

Federal security officials arrest two men for the crime of passing out literature and filming on federal (public) property. Once again proving that the Constitution no longer matters in this country.

From Garry Reed of the Libertarian News Examiner:

Police arrested a freelance videographer and confiscated the memory card from his camera while he was recording FIJA activist Julian Heicklen Monday.

The videographer, who goes by the name of "bile," was standing on public property at the time.

Heicklen, for the fourth Monday (jury selection day) in a row, was passing out the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) pamphlets, “A Primer for Prospective Jurors” at the federal courthouse in New York City.

After police briefly spoke to Heicklen and left, bile approached him and conducted a short interview.

As he explained on the Free Talk Live radio call-in show that evening, bile had heard about Julian's previous activism and arrests and decided to support him by acting as a witness.

The police, with additional officers, returned and asked Heicklen to leave. He declined, so they announced he was under arrest. As Heicklen always does, he dropped to the ground and went limp and silent.

It was then that Police confronted bile with his digital camcorder. When bile informed them that, "I was working for Free Talk Live," they said he was under arrest for breaking a federal statute that regulates what people on federal property may photograph.

Bile was told he was guilty of photographing "without permission."

Rest of Story here.

Climate McCarthyism: Global Warming Church

John Stossel discusses the McCarthyite tactics used in the Global Warming.. oops sorry, now called Climate Change, debate.

Sneaky Taxes - Pay the State Morning and Night

John Stossel discusses all the sneaky taxes imposed by governments, taxes that are hidden from the average person's view.

You're Watching How He Votes

Here is an ad Campaign for Liberty is running in Nebraska urging Senator Ben Nelson's constituents to tell him to oppose the bill to completely take over our health care.

Obama Promises to Bring Troops Home Immediately!

Here is Barack Obama telling the crowd of his plans for our troops and the war. This is from October 27, 2007. Since our troops are still there, the war is still going on and Obama is planning to escalate the war in Afghanistan, apparently Obama has "changed" his mind. Or maybe he lied back in 2007.




Here is the quote from the video:

"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war...."

Talking About the Fed on Squawk Box

Texas Congressman Ron Paul on CNBC's Squawk Box discusses the status of his Audit the Fed Bill and how at this point it has been gutted by the powers in Congress to protect the banking interests and their all the Federal Reserve.

Freedom of Choice Over Your Life Will Be Lost

Judge Andrew Napolitano talks with Kevin Gutzman and Tom Woods about how our Constitution has been violated and ignored. The topic of nullification is also discussed.

Nullification is the right of an individual state to declare null and void any law passed by the United States Congress which the state deems unacceptable and unconstitutional. Nullification was used in the years preceding the Civil War.

The Cold War Never Ended

I missed posting on the fall of the Berlin Wall, something I though I'd never see in my lifetime. Here is a discussion of the what led up to the event. From Reason TV:

On November 9, 2009, the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Reason senior editor Michael C. Moynihan discussed his article "The Cold War Never Ended" on the Kremlin-backed television station Russia Today and who deserves the credit for killing off the evil empire.

Healthcare Malpractice

From Texas Congressman Ron Paul:

Healthcare Reform is Economic Malpractice

As Washington continues debating healthcare reform the rest of the country is primarily concerned about jobs and the economy. It is still uncertain what policies will be implemented, but I am certain about one thing: It will only further devastate our economy and our dollar.

The leadership has come up with a proposal they are confident will be what they consider fiscally responsible, only to have it scored as nearly twice as expensive by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Estimates of past healthcare spending programs have been off by as much as 100 percent so there is no telling what the actual cost will be.

The past century should have taught us one thing: that government intervention is expensive. Government programs lend themselves so easily to waste, fraud and abuse. Combine that with overall inefficiency and it all adds up to a hefty price tag for the taxpayer, with not much leftover for actual services. An outright takeover of an entire sector of the economy, especially one as important as healthcare, is something that we just cannot afford for the government to do right now. Not to mention the fact that it is completely unconstitutional. But Washington insists on torturing the numbers and tinkering around the edges rather than facing this truth.

If healthcare reform does indeed pass, we should not be under the illusion that it will be free. The money to pay for it will have to come from somewhere. They say they will get the money from cutting waste, fraud and abuse, but all of that is seemingly intrinsic to government programs. Since they want to expand the government’s reach we have to assume we will be trading waste, fraud and abuse for waste, fraud and abuse with a bigger budget. The powers that be have insisted the money won’t come from higher taxes, it won’t come from rationing of care, and it won’t come from higher premiums. This can only then put more pressure on the Fed to print the money out of thin air. We already have a weakening dollar. They are accelerating everything that weakened it in the past. Adding this new, monumental pressure could very well be the straw that will break the dollar’s back.

Foreign creditors are already nervous about continuing to invest in the US because of our skyrocketing debt. The explosion of debt that is certain to accompany the enactment of this national health care bill can only add to that nervousness.

Ironically, enactment of the health care bill could help the cause of liberty by hastening the day when Congress is forced by economic circumstances to stop increasing the welfare-warfare state and return to the Constitution.

There are many problems with our current healthcare system, to be sure. There are many tragic stories to be told. However, we need to look at the root of our problems in order to address them properly. More government intervention and bureaucracy injected into healthcare will take a flawed system and make immeasurably worse.

The Growing Rift Between Libertarians and Republicans

Judge Andrew Napolitano discusses the growing rift between libertarians/constitutionalists and the Republican leadership.

CIA Kidnapping in Italy

Judge Andrew Napolitano talks with Michael German of the ACLU on the CIA's 2003 illegal kidnapping of a cleric, who was then flown to Egypt and tortured.

George W. Obama: Little Has Changed

Jack Hunter comments on how little foreign policy has changed since Barack Obama succeeded George W. Bush.

Too Much Government or Too Little

Dr. Rand Paul discusses the lack of competition in health care.

The Employer-based Health Care System

Peter Schiff talks about the problems with the employer-based health care system and government involvement in health care.

Lying About Inflation

Texas Congressman Ron Paul on how the government "adjusts" the measure of inflation to its advantage and the negative effects on the average person.

Government Statistics and Lies

There has been a lot of talk in Washington recently about senior citizens, mostly about how various healthcare reform models would help or hurt them. But there is another critical issue that has quietly devastated seniors financially over the last few decades. It concerns how the cost of living is calculated. How does the administration justify not giving a cost of living increase to Social Security recipients this year?

According to the official Consumer Price Index calculation, life has gotten cheaper for the first time in decades. If the government can show statistically that the cost of living has gone down, not up, then they can make the case for not giving a cost of living increase to social security recipients. But does this match reality? Using older calculations of CPI, the cost of living has actually increased – by roughly 5 percent!

The CPI (Consumer Price Index) is a calculation based on the average price of a fixed basket of goods that was initially designed to help businesses adjust for inflation. The government eventually started using it to determine cost of living adjustments for entitlement programs. Couple that with politicians’ discovery that they could raid the social security trust fund to pay for new spending programs, and you have a perfect storm to deny seniors what they were promised, while hiding the true size of the deficit. For politicians, it is a win-win.

For seniors, it is a different story. Economist John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics has estimated that if the original methodology of CPI had not changed, Social Security checks would be nearly double what they are today. This represents a lot of money that politicians have been able to literally steal from seniors, to spend on their own wasteful programs. One example of how they do this is to substitute hamburger for steak, which lowers the average price of that basket of goods. But living on hamburger, or maybe dog food, instead of steak does not represent a constant standard of living. This renders the measurement virtually meaningless, even though politically it comes in very handy.

I have introduced legislation to keep politicians in Washington from ever raiding the Social Security trust fund again. HR 219 The Social Security Preservation Act would assure that all monies collected by the Social Security Trust Fund would only be used in payments to beneficiaries, or be placed in interest bearing certificates of deposit. This would at least stop the bleeding of the fund, and take away some incentive to tease and torture the numbers in order to give seniors the minimal amount. This would also cut off a source of funding for government growth, so it is not likely to get easy support from many politicians.

It is bad enough that Washington imposes high payroll taxes on American workers. The least Congress could do is use the tax dollars for their stated purpose. Instead, seniors will have a harder and harder time trying to survive on a fixed income in an economy based on variables and deception. For them, it is too late to start over. Today’s young people will be forced to pay into the system for years to come. The first step towards solving the impending crisis facing Social Security is to stop politicians from raiding the trust fund and to significantly cut federal government spending.

Audit The Fed Update

From the Campaign for Liberty:

In this Audit the Fed update, Dr. Paul explains what is happening with HR 1207 in the Monetary Policy Subcommittee, describes his plan to protect 1207 in the full Financial Services Committee, and provides ideas on actions we can take to keep Audit the Fed from being watered down.