McBama

RELATED

McBama vs. America
by Craig Biddle | Objective Standard | Fall 2008
As the 2008 presidential election nears, and while John McCain and Barack Obama struggle to distinguish themselves from each other in terms of particular promises and goals, it is instructive to observe that these candidates are indistinguishable in terms of fundamentals.

When did the idea of freedom become a political orphan?
Steve Chapman | Chicago Tribune | September 7, 2008
Forty-four years after Goldwater's declaration, it's clear that collectivism, not individualism, is the reigning creed of Republicans as well as Democrats. Individuals are not valuable and precious in their own right but as a means for those in power to achieve their grand ambitions...[The idea of freedom] got lost somewhere between Thomas Jefferson and John McCain.

Abortion Politics

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Obama too pro-choice to receive vote for president
by Andrew Dunn | Asheville Citizen-Times | August 21, 2008

As a Roman Catholic, it is unfathomable to even think about voting for Barack Obama. Not only is Obama the most pro-abortion member of the Senate, earning an A-plus from the likes of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, his record has proven his support for the heinous act of partial-birth abortion — a gruesome, torturous procedure where a scissorslike contraption punctures and collapses a third-trimester child’s skull. Sounds like something Dr. Mengele would have performed at Auschwitz.

ONLINE COMMENT TO LTE:

1. The writer wants to use the coercive power of government to impose his own peculiar moral and religious views on all others. This is the movement toward theocracy and it is antithetical to America's purpose and significance in world history.

2. His lurid descriptions of surgery are an appeal to emotion. It is intended to gain sympathy for a wider religion-based abortion ban movement. This movement must be opposed vigorously; as all such religious-based political tendencies must.

3. The writer also says,

Obama promised that if elected president he would sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would cancel every federal, state and local regulation on abortion, as well as abolish all restrictions on taxpayer-funded abortions.

This is precisely what should happen. I oppose interference in these matters by the federal government. This is not a constitutionally mandated function. These, and many more issues besides, should be resolved by the individual states. This can be achieved by "canceling every federal, state and local regulation on abortion" and beginning again where the founders left off: with extra-constitutional legislation originating in the sovereign and independent states.

If the "Freedom of Choice Act" does anything to reverse the loathsome encroachments of religionists into the domain of secular politics and governance in a pluralistic society, then I heartily support the Act.

FURTHER READING

Purpose-Driven Politics
by Kathleen Parker | August 20, 2008. At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong.

More Americans Question Religion's Role in Politics
Pew Research Center | August 21, 2008. Some Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics. A new survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters.

Religion vs. America
by Leonard Peikoff. "A specter is haunting America--the specter of religion..."

Amendment 48 Is Anti-Life
by Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh | Coalition for Secular Government. Amendment 48, the ballot measure that would define a fertilized egg as a person with full legal rights in the Colorado constitution, is profoundly anti-life. It would obliterate basic reproductive rights in Colorado based solely on the faith-based fiction that a fertilized egg is the moral equal of a born infant. The biological facts show just the opposite: that only the pregnant woman, and then the born infant, are persons with rights.

The Tragedy of Theology: How Religion Caused and Extended the Dark Ages
Andrew Bernstein | The Objective Standard | Winter 2006–2007

Offshore Drilling

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:

Offshore drilling: short-term fix, not a solution
by Benjamin Ossoff | Asheville Citizen-Times | August 20, 2008

. . . drilling off our shores is not a solution but a futile short-term action to no benefit.

ONLINE COMMENT TO LTE:

Straw man argument.

Offshore drilling is not intended to be a "solution." It is one of many means of increasing domestic oil supply. This is a positive value and the marketplace should be unleashed to pursue it. Increases in supply help to satisfy demand and lower prices.

If offshore drilling was indeed a "short-term action" with no prospect of any benefit to any parties, then a free market would take pains to avoid that and any other similar action.

FURTHER READING

Investigate Big Congress, Not Big Oil
by Alex Epstein. "With gasoline prices exceeding $4 a gallon in some states, politicians are responding as usual: Blame Big Oil First..."

Open ANWR Already!
by Jon Basil Utley | Reason Magazine | August 14, 2008. The media constantly repeat the claim that it would take a decade to get the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) into oil production and about as long for offshore continental oil to start flowing. Most accounts promote the views of extreme environmentalists to make the issue appear so hopeless that we must instead "change our way of life" rather than tap into proven oil reserves. In July, CNN repeatedly reported that offshore drilling would take "seven to 10 years" to get into production. Yet Brazil's Petrobras expects its new finds in extraordinarily deep waters to already be producing 100,000 barrels per day in just two years. What is wrong with American oil companies that they would take so long?...

Time for Liberty

It's time.

Ron Paul Rally

Ron Paul Revolution Rally
Washington, DC
July 12, 2008

These are a few photographs that I took during the march and rally. (Click the center of the photograph to enlarge the slide show.)



FURTHER READING

The Ron Paul Revolution March Experience | by Marc Gallagher | July 13th, 2008

VIDEO

Ron Paul Rally | Ron Paul for President 2008

Naomi Wolf at the Revolution March (with blog post)

Introduction to Economics

Video: Introduction to Economics

by Jorge Besada

Introduction, in four short videos, that helps show how individual freedom and privatization are the keys to a prosperous social order regardless of what our intuition and fears might have us believe. Introduces viewers to "the market process" and how this economic process is what creates a prosperous social order and how government bureaucracies and regulations do great damage to society. The concepts mentioned here are discussed in more detail in my book "Economics, the Social Order, and the Ron Paul Revolution."

CONTENTS

1. Wealth, Production, Action, Value, Trade. This video begins the introduction to economics and explain basic building blocks like the nature of wealth, society's continuous cycle of production and consumption, human action, value and trade. The concepts mentioned here are discussed in more detail in my book "Economics, the Social Order, and the Ron Paul Revolution" which can be purchased from amazon.com here:

2. Economic Growth = Prosperity; Competition. This video provides an example that shows how the concepts of production, consumption, human action, value and trade all work together to shape the social order. Then it shows how we should be concerned about economic growth and realize that as the economic pie grows everyone will inevitably get a bigger slice of prosperity. Finally it introduces the concept of economic competition.

3. The Interest Rate and Savings. This video discusses the role that the interest rate and savings play in the economy.

4. Government Bureaucracies and Regulation. This video discusses the inherent inefficiencies in government as well as the disastrous effects of government regulation. Special attention is paid to the health care sector's Food and Drug Administration and American Medical Association.

Video Playlist

AUDIO

"What Has Government Done to Our Money" by Murray Rothbard, as read by Jeff Riggenbach.

Bob Barr

The chattering class is still in a dither over the Ron Paul Phenomenon. And still conducting meaningless, inane and biased surveys to get a sense of the mood of the common man so they can continue to propagate self-generated opinion.

So, where did the Paul phenomenon come from? How did a GOP back-bencher in Congress raise $35 million, including more than $4 million on a single day? How did he draw enough support to plan a counter-convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul while his party will be formally nominating John McCain as its standard-bearer?

The armchair analysts need to be inquiring more about the Revolution Phenomenon. Pegging "the Revolution" to Ron Paul (R) at this stage minimizes a national libertarian movement that is coalescing to a degree that is unprecedented.

Independents are in play this year. They complain about the two dominant parties being one and the same. Therefore, the only way to vote for "change" is to vote third party -- and in massive numbers.

Libertarian Party Presidential candidate Bob Barr (L) must earn the Revolution constituency. It will not be handed to him and even the fire-breathing, independent-minded "Revolutionaries" will stubbornly withhold support without strong signs of a conversion to the Revolution agenda. Not unlike Barr's recent conversion to a more libertarian political viewpoint from his erstwhile neo-con formulations.

Barr now needs to complete his conversion and develop the next phase by fully adopting the Paul platform; a platform grounded in consistent libertarian political philosophy. Barr must demonstrate that he apprehends an underlying and coherent intellectual basis for liberty-oriented public policy.

As a libertarian, the paramount issue for the proper role of government should be the protection of natural individual rights and that the entire range of governmental action should be circumscribed by that precept. A government is properly instituted in the capacity of a surrogate for an agent, where sovereign individuals loan their power to a government, by their consent, for the performance of certain constitutional functions; chief among them, the protection of individuals against predation.

Man is born free -- and free he should remain. Free to use his mind as he sees fit. The institution of government is subordinate to the sovereignty of the individual. Ron Paul understands this; as do his intellectual mentors, primarily Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Frederic Bastiat, and George Reisman.

We had the stirring Paul campaign. And now we have the manifesto. The groundswell of passion, thought and activism that have emerged will be harnessed or squandered.

Barr stands to upset the election in perhaps a great number of states. States where the two dominant, rules-making parties struggle for power unopposed. A voting bloc that can signal a retreat from statism is what is needed. I think this should be the near-term goal: Maximize Election Upset.

The odd politician will put their finger to the wind, as it were, and consult that wind to guides their views and actions. I propose that we change the wind.

###

Marc Gallagher sums up some positives about the Bob Barr record:

1. In the 107th Congress when Ron Paul stood up for our sovereignty against the United Nations (Roll Call votes 245 and 246), it was Bob Barr who supported him … just as Barr supported Paul in cutting corporate welfare by limiting funding for the Export-Import Bank.


2. Barr is a co-sponsor of H. Res. 197, ‘Stop U.N. Gun Ban.’


3. Barr supports H.R. 2615 ‘Stop National Medical ID and the Patient Privacy Protection Act.’


4. Barr is a leading defender of civil liberties. He introduced legislation that forces the National Security Agency’s Project ECHELON to provide a full accounting to the Congress of their covert monitoring of millions of phone calls, faxes, and emails.


5. He led the fight against National ID Card proposals and introduced legislation in 1998 to check the federal government’s abuse of wire-tapping laws — including the use of roving wiretaps — and also opposed governmental interception of cellular phone calls.


6. He introduced legislation to mandate that the federal government issue ‘Privacy Impact Statements’ every time it issues a new rule or regulation.


7. He was a chief sponsor of a law to limit abuses of the civil asset forfeiture statutes.


8. He fought against OSHA regulations and to limit small business vulnerability to frivolous labor litigation.


9. He is a board member of the National Rifle Association, and a staunch defender of the right of Americans to own and use firearms. He has introduced and sponsored legislation to block litigation against gun manufacturers for the acts of their customers and to limit any background checks and mandate they be conducted ‘instantly.’


10. Barr has succinctly advocated the principle that while criminals must be punished to the full extent of the law, their civil liberties must be protected with even more vigor.


11. He is a staunch defender of American sovereignty and opposes the executive branch’s overzealous use of our military abroad he even filed suit against President Clinton’s war in Kosovo without congressional approval.


12. He is a fierce critic of the United Nations — and to a lesser degree NATO — and has consistently supported efforts to withdraw U.S. membership from the United Nations.


13. He co-sponsored a committee amendment to withdraw the U.S. from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.


14. Since his first day in Congress back in 1995, Barr has tirelessly fought to eliminate the Internal Revenue Code, supported the “flat tax” proposal, and consistently supported passage of a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds supermajority of Congress to raise taxes.


15. He was an early supporter of lowering the capital gains tax and recently he introduced legislation to provide tax credits for educators: public, private, and home school.


16. More than any other member of the Georgia delegation, Congressman Barr has parted with the Republican majority to vote against bloated “pork barrel” spending.


17. He has continually fought the unconstitutional [McCain/Feingold] ‘campaign finance reforms.’ Defending our fundamental rights, he has filed a lawsuit to prevent implementation of the recently passed legislation.

FURTHER READING

The Barr Factor
by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar.com | April 7, 2008
Antiwar libertarian Republican continues the Ron Paul Revolution.

Some Ron Paul Supporters See No Liberty In Bob Barr. Why Are They Wrong?
by Marc Gallagher | Liberty Maven | June 23rd, 2008
Ever since Bob Barr became the Libertarian Presidential nominee he has been met with venomous criticism from those that can’t let bygones be bygones. There is no such thing as “forgiveness” apparently.

Libertarians: A (Not So) Lunatic Fringe
By NATHAN THORNBURGH | Time Magazine | Jul 10, 2008

VIDEO

Libertarian Candidate Barr Interview
By Eric Pianin | washingtonpost.com | June 18, 2008
Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential nominee, offered a scathing critique of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) today and predicted he would garner substantial conservative Republican support in a handful of battleground states critical to McCain in his campaign against Democratic Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.).

The Message of Freedom and Liberty
by Bob Barr
Liberty for America campaign feature video from Bob Barr & Wayne Allyn Root.

"A Real Choice" by Martin Avila, owner of Terra Eclipse, editor of the United Liberty blog and designer of the Ron Paul and Bob Barr official campaign web sites.

Bob Barr Interview | Fox News Sunday| 06/29/2008.

Musician's Bill of Rights

The Bluegrass Blog reports on A Bill of Rights for Songwriters and Composers by The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

This is good. I like the idea of explicitly defining how the concept of individual rights can be applied in a given field of enterprise; in this case, the property rights of musical artists.

However, this Bill states, “Without these rights, which directly emanate from the U.S. Constitution…”

This statement is untrue. The U.S. Constitution does not confer rights, it limits government.

Individual rights are natural and are inherited upon the condition of existence. They may or may not be recognized by a given society or government, but individual rights do not “emanate from the U.S. Constitution,” the Declaration of Independence, or any other document, decree, pact or utterance.

Better to say, “Without these rights, which directly emanate from the facts of existence and, consequently, a person’s natural right to properly and fully own the ‘fruits of their labor’…”

Otherwise, this is a fine effort to make clear how the core concept of property rights, and the attendant contractual agreements, should be exercised and recognized in the entertainment field.

The ten points are:

1. We have the right to be compensated for the use of our creative works, and share in the revenues that they generate.


2. We have the right to license our works and control the ways in which they are used.


3. We have the right to withhold permission for uses of our works on artistic, economic or philosophical grounds.


4. We have the right to protect our creative works to the fullest extent of the law from all forms of piracy, theft and unauthorized use, which deprive us of our right to earn a living based on our creativity.


5. We have the right to choose when and where our creative works may be used for free.


6. We have the right to develop, document and distribute our works through new media channels - while retaining the right to a share in all associated profits.


7. We have the right to choose the organizations we want to represent us and to join our voices together to protect our rights and negotiate for the value of our music.


8. We have the right to earn compensation from all types of "performances," including direct, live renditions as well as indirect recordings, broadcasts, digital streams and more.


9. We have the right to decline participation in business models that require us to relinquish all or part of our creative rights - or which do not respect our right to be compensated for our work.


10. We have the right to advocate for strong laws protecting our creative works, and demand that our government vigorously uphold and protect our rights.

Sign the petition if you agree that this is a proper statement of intellectual property rights in this case, and of the efficacy of voluntary contractual agreements, and would like to support the cause.

Rock on!

Oil!

Brazil Oil Finds May End Reliance on Middle East

"Brazil's discoveries of what may be two of the world's three biggest oil finds in the past 30 years could help end the Western Hemisphere's reliance on Middle East crude...The finds they've got so far are just the tip of the iceberg. Brazil is going to change the balance of the global oil markets..."



VIDEO

The Energy Non-Crisis - 75 min

Bakken Oil

FURTHER READING

The Energy Non-Crisis by Lindsey Williams

"A Free Market in Gasoline" by Ron Paul, October 31, 2005.

"Undoing America's Ethanol Mistake" by Kay Bailey Hutchison, 4/25/2008

"Environmentalists' Wild Predictions" By Walter E. Williams, May 7, 2008.

Investigate Big Congress, Not Big Oil
by Alex Epstein | ARI | May 29, 2008
With gasoline prices exceeding $4 a gallon in some states, politicians are responding as usual: Blame Big Oil First.

Dumb or Ill-Informed
Walter E. Williams | June 04, 2008
What assumptions do congressmen make about the American people? Do they assume that we're dumb or ill-informed about the energy problems we are experiencing?

Start Drilling
By Robert J. Samuelson | Washington Post | April 30, 2008
What to do about oil? First it went from $60 to $80 a barrel, then from $80 to $100 and now to $120. Perhaps we can persuade OPEC to raise production, as some senators suggest; but this seems unlikely.

Drill Now For Energy in America
Roy Innis | June 12, 2008
America’s energy situation is becoming more untenable and intolerable by the day...But this unacceptable situation has nothing to do with running out of vital energy resources. The shortages and soaring prices have been created and imposed on us by government policies and edicts. They are artificial.

Do the Right Thing: Start Drilling!
Victor Davis Hanson | June 12, 2008
The debate in Congress over more refineries and nuclear power plants; drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off our coasts; and developing oil shale, tar sands and liquid coal has been usually a predictable soap opera.

Drill! Drill! Drill!
By Daniel Henninger | WSJ | June 12, 2008
At this point in time, is there another country on the face of the earth that would possess the oil and gas reserves held by the United States and refuse to exploit them? Only technical incompetence, as in Mexico, would hold anyone back. But not us. We won't drill.

American Solutions
As gas prices continue to increase, Congress continues to blame others while ignoring practical steps to stop the pain Americans are feeling at the pump.

Greens thwart gasoline production
By Steven Milloy | June 12, 2008
Four-plus dollar gasoline is forcing Americans to realize that increased domestic oil production is needed to meet our ever-growing demand for affordable gasoline.

Bakken and Torquay Formations
A Saudi Arabia of oil under Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Manitoba.

Oil Is Making Millionaires in North Dakota
By JAMES MacPHERSON | The Associated Press | June 30, 2008
In less than a year, Stohler and his wife, Lorene, 82, have become millionaires from the production of one well on their land near Dunn Center, a mile or so from the sod home where Oscar grew up. A second well has begun producing on their property and another is being drilled — all aimed at the Bakken shale formation, a rich deposit that the U.S. Geological Survey calls the largest continuous oil accumulation it has ever assessed.

Bail Out

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, New York Fed President Tim Geithner, and Treasury Undersecretary Robert Steel testified today before the Senate Banking Committee.

They all stated that the bankruptcy of Bears Stearns took them by surprise even though Bears Stearns had already nearly collapsed one year ago when Bear had to bail out one of its own hedge funds, Long-Term Capital Management. This is the hedge fund that was bailed out by the Federal Reserve in 1998.

The witnesses also claimed that the Fed did not "bail out" Bear Stearns; not exactly. But rather they bailed out the broader financial industry that was somehow intricately connected to the success or failure of Bear.

Well, that is correct. Yes, Bear Stearns took it in the shorts and were made an example. But there was a bail-out.

So who specifically was bailed out? The liability that is the network of fraudulent financial connectivities. Banks and other financial institutions are hedging their bets by investing in each other in a Ponzi scheme that must collapse.

The only thing standing in the way of this collapse is the federal government. The government can postpone, seemingly indefinitely, the inevitable consequence of deception; as indeed they have done in other sectors. This is called "reassuring the markets" and it leads to restoring confidence and stability.

The government-sponsored "bail-out" by the Federal Reserve, a private bank, shields the network from disruption and mitigates the systemic liability that precipitated the original risk of industry-wide collapse, and which made the bail out necessary in the first place.

In this way, government intervention prevents the free market from operating as it should. In a free market, Bear Stearns would be in bankruptcy court, its executives and CEO would be out of a job (with a leaden parachute) and charged with fraud. Instead, Bear and all of its securities and assets are the newest acquisition issuing from J.P. Morgan's bargain-basement offer to salvage their evaporating value, whose risk-laden securities would now be backed up by guarantees from the Federal Reserve to absorb any and all losses.

In free markets, both success and failure are options. If government interventions prevent businesses, like Bear Stearns, from failing, then it is not truly a free market. As painful as it might be for Wall Street, banks, even big ones, must be allowed to fail. --Ron Paul, On Money, Inflation and Government

The other consequence of the bail-out is that there remains no incentive whatever to disconnect from the fraud. There is no move toward risk aversion. This is why these failures, and their subsequent "necessary" bail outs will continue.

Until the free market is allowed to operate, they must.

FURTHER READING

"Have You Met Fannie and Freddie?" by O. Max Gardner III, Shelby, NC, March 31, 2008.

"Paul Phenomenon" 19 Apr, 2008.

"The Fed Muddles Through a Bailout" By George Will, Sunday, April 20, 2008.

AUDIO

The Fed: Dealmaker, Interview with Gerald P. O'Driscoll.

VIDEO

Too Big To Bail: Alex Epstein, a business analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, explains how the government's "too big to bail" policy encouraged financial institutions to make billions of dollars in bad subprime investments.