The Ultimate Tax Cut

The Ultimate Tax Cut
by Jacob G. Hornberger
jhornberger@fff.org

Since it is presidential campaign season, we will inevitably be
treated to the usual discourse about tax cuts. Some candidates will call for
tax cuts, undoubtedly as a way to bribe voters into voting for them. Others
will resist the call, undoubtedly in fear that their favorite government
program might not receive desired funding. In actuality, all the tax-cut
talk will be rather meaningless, especially for advocates of liberty.

From the founding of the United States through the early part of
the 20th century, with a few exceptions (e.g., the Civil War), Americans
lived without income taxation, the federal government being funded primarily
by tariffs and excise taxes. Americans were free to keep everything they
earned and decide what to do with their money. There was no IRS and no one
had to file income-tax returns.

When the idea of an income-tax-free society is posed to a
modern-day American, oftentimes the reaction to such a radical idea is
shock. "Why, that would be anarchy!" the American sometimes responds. But
that notion would have come as a surprise to our American ancestors, who
lived in a society with a fully functioning federal government and no income
taxation for more than 100 years.

Why did our American ancestors oppose income taxation? Because
they had discovered an important point: People cannot be free in a society
in which the government has the power to levy taxes on income. To put it
another way, people are free only when they have the ability to keep
everything they earn and decide for themselves what to do with their own
money.

With the advent of income taxation in America, the relationship
between citizen and government was inverted. Prior to the income tax, the
citizen was sovereign by virtue of the fact that he was free to earn
unlimited amounts of money and there was nothing the government could do
about it. Like it or not, it was his money, to do with as he pleased.

With the adoption of income taxation, all that changed. In
effect, the income tax nationalized income. While many people would
undoubtedly prefer not to think about it in this way, under the federal
income tax everyone's income belongs to the government or, if you prefer, to
"society." The power to set the tax rate is essentially the power to decide
how much of their income people are going to be permitted to keep.

Thus, the income tax has converted the relationship between
government and citizen into one akin to parent and child. The portion of
their income that the citizenry are permitted to retain has effectively
become an allowance. Sometimes the government is good to the citizenry and
lets them keep more of their income. Sometimes the government is not so nice
and lets the citizenry keep less of their income. But what's important here,
in terms of freedom, is not the percentage that is being levied but rather
the fact that it is the government making the determination. That's
obviously a far cry from a society in which there is no income taxation at
all.

Taxes and spending

There is another factor to consider here, a practical one. Those
candidates who call for tax cuts are doing more than throwing a bone to
beleaguered taxpayers. They are also perpetrating a fraud, because they know
that since government expenditures today far exceed government revenues,
people are going to have to pay for the deficit somehow.

Permit me to digress a bit here. One of my biggest personal
revelations when I discovered libertarianism many years ago was that the
federal government acquired its resources differently than people in the
private sector. I had envisioned the government as just being part of a huge
collection of enterprises, producing its own wealth and deciding what to do
with it. That was one reason I could not understand why anyone would object
to the government's helping the poor with welfare. I thought, Why shouldn't
the government be as "free" as everyone else to decide how to spend its
money, and why shouldn't it spend its money on helping the poor?

And then I discovered that the federal government acquired its
money differently than everyone else. Its money comes from taxes, which are
forcible exactions imposed on people. That is obviously very different from
how people in the private sector get their money. Microsoft, for example,
depends on offering products that induce people to voluntarily trade their
money for a particular piece of software. If people decide to hold on to
their money instead of buying the software, there is nothing that Microsoft
can do about it. That is, Microsoft cannot force anyone to hand over his
money.

It's different with the government. Its revenues do depend on
force. If someone doesn't like a particular service that the government is
providing (e.g., waging the drug war, providing people with welfare,
torturing detainees, or killing people in Iraq), he can't do what he does
with Microsoft. He must pay his income taxes anyway, on pain of fine and
imprisonment or even death upon steadfast refusal to do so.

Now, back to the tax-cut bone that presidential candidates love
to offer voters during campaign season. As Milton Friedman pointed out, the
true level of taxation is not what is being collected in taxes but rather
the level of government expenses. Why is this so? Because if the government
is spending more than it is receiving in tax revenues, it is doing it in one
of two ways - borrowing or printing the money.

If it's borrowing the money to finance its expenditures, those
debts must ultimately be paid back. That's why a tax-cut bone that
presidential candidates offer voters is a fraud. They know that one way or
another, ultimately the government is going to have to repay those debts.
And the only way it can get the money to repay those debts is to tax the
citizenry.

Inflation plunder

Another way - historically a popular one - that the government
finances its excess expenditures is by simply printing the money to pay for
expenditures, a practice known as inflation. When the government inflates
the currency to pay its excess bills, the result is a lower-valued currency.
As with any other product, increasing the supply of money lowers its value.
And the lower value of a currency is reflected in a rise in the prices of
the things that money buys - such as groceries, automobiles, gasoline,
clothing, and school supplies.

The advantage of paying for government expenses through
inflation, as compared to income taxation, should be obvious: Most people
don't have any idea that this is the way that government is paying its
bills. They think that inflation is some sort of mysterious monetary
infection that just seems to strike nations randomly and unexpectedly. In
fact, even mainstream "educated" journalists often use the term "inflation"
to describe rising prices in society rather than using it in its true
sense - an artificial increase in the supply of money that is reflected in
the rising prices in society.

The point of all this is to show another reason that the tax-cut
bone that presidential candidates offer the electorate is a fraud. Since
people are going to have to pay for the excess government expenditures
through the reduced purchasing power of their income, what practical
difference does a tax cut make to them? Moreover, even if a tax cut
increases government revenues, as some people claim, government expenditures
inevitably rise proportionately.

Suppose that government spends $100 million a year and collects
income taxes of $100 million. The following year, the government decides to
engage in an overseas military adventure that doubles government
expenditures to $200 million. The president, however, vows not to raise
taxes. To pay the extra $100 million in new expenses, the government simply
prints the money, which because of rising prices reduces the purchasing
power of everyone's income, a reduction, say, equal to a doubling of the
income tax.

Are people any better off because the government has financed
its expenditures through inflation? Of course not. While it's true that some
taxpayers might benefit more and others lose more, the fact is that either
way, the government has sucked $200 million out of the pockets of the
citizenry.

Let's assume that during this process, a power-lusting
presidential candidate comes along and calls for a tax cut. "I'll lower your
taxes if you elect me!" exclaims the politician. Would people be better off
with such a tax cut? Of course not, because what is gained with the tax cut
will be lost in the reduced purchasing power of their income, given that the
excess expenditures are being financed with inflation.

Ultimately, the issue of income taxation cannot be divorced from
the things on which the federal government is spending its money. As we have
seen, the money that government is spending must be collected, either
directly through taxes, through borrowing (which must be repaid through
taxes or inflation), or inflation. The burden of government expenditures
must ultimately be borne by the citizenry.

Alternative taxes

Thus, while the abolition of the income tax and the IRS are
necessary prerequisites to a free society, if the financial burden of other
taxes is equal to the same amount that the income taxes were collecting, how
much better off are people financially if they're having to pay the same
amount of money through an alternative tax that they were previously paying
though the income tax? Let's assume, for example, that a family is earning
$60,000 a year and paying $20,000 in income taxes. Suppose the income tax is
abolished and replaced with a national sales tax, which ultimately collects
$20,000 from our hypothetical family. While it's true that the individual
will be freer in the sense that he no longer has to file income tax returns
and deal with the abusiveness and intrusiveness of the IRS, the federal
government is still determining the family's "allowance," albeit indirectly.

That's why, ultimately, the only protection that people have is
a constitutional prohibition on all taxation (the ideal) or, alternatively,
a constitutional limitation on the overall level of indirect taxation.

The former would mean that government would have to depend on
voluntary support from the citizenry, just as churches, museums, and other
charitable organizations operate. Of course, the standard response to such a
suggestion is, "Well, that's ridiculous. The American people don't believe
in government and, therefore, have to be forced to support it."

Yet, if most Americans didn't believe government is important,
why wouldn't they have abolished it a long time ago? The fact is that most
Americans do believe that government is important and essential and would be
as willing to support it as they do other organizations.

In an imperfect world of indirect taxation to fund the federal
government, people would still be better off with a constitutional ceiling
on the rate of tax collected; for example: "The federal government shall
collect its revenues only through tariffs, which shall never exceed 2
percent."

Obviously, there would have to be a simultaneous moral and
intellectual revolution with respect to government programs because
government revenues will most likely be quite small, especially in
comparison to what they are today. That means that in order to restore a
free society, Americans must ask themselves a fundamentally important
question: What should be the role of government in a free society? Should
its role include taking money from one group of people by force (i.e.,
taxation) in order to give it to another group of people (i.e., provide
welfare)? Should its role include the maintenance of an enormous
military-industrial empire that serves as an international policeman and
welfare-provider for the world?

The reason that such questions are so important is that if
people maintain their allegiance to either a welfare state or a warfare
state, they need to recognize that the restoration of a free society becomes
impossible because of the massive amount of tax revenues needed to fund such
states. In fact, as one hopes that modern-day Americans have learned, once
they delegate to the government the role of providing socialist or
imperialist programs, its expenditures inevitably soar exponentially.

Finally, there is a critically important economic angle to all
this. The key to higher standards of living lies in the accumulation of
private savings, which tends toward investment in tools and equipment, which
makes workers more productive, and that tends toward higher incomes. Thus,
the more income and savings that government is confiscating, the lower the
standard of living of the citizenry.

Thus, a moral and intellectual revolution against income
taxation must be accompanied by a moral and intellectual revolution against
socialism and empire. By limiting the role of government to its
traditionally legitimate functions of police, defense, and courts, the
amount of voluntary money needed to fund such operations becomes relatively
minuscule. The citizenry would have the freedom to keep everything they earn
in the marketplace, accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth, and decide for
themselves how to dispose of it. Herein lies the key to a free, prosperous,
and harmonious society.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of
Freedom Foundation.

© 2001-2007 The Future of Freedom Foundation.


Viva Liberty!

Spying on Users

The Already Big Thing on the Internet: Spying on Users
By ADAM COHEN

In 1993, the dawn of the Internet age, the liberating anonymity of the
online world was captured in a well-known New Yorker cartoon. One dog,
sitting at a computer, tells another: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're
a dog." Fifteen years later, that anonymity is gone.

It's not paranoia: they really are spying on you.

Technology companies have long used "cookies," little bits of tracking
software slipped onto your computer, and other means, to record the Web
sites you visit, the ads you click on, even the words you enter in search
engines - information that some hold onto forever. They're not telling you
they're doing it, and they're not asking permission. Internet service
providers are now getting into the act. Because they control your
connection, they can keep track of everything you do online, and there have
been reports that I.S.P.'s may have started to sell the information they
collect.

The driving force behind this prying is commerce. The big growth area in
online advertising right now is "behavioral targeting." Web sites can charge
a premium if they are able to tell the maker of an expensive sports car that
its ads will appear on Web pages clicked on by upper-income, middle-aged
men.

The information, however, gets a lot more specific than age and gender - and
more sensitive. Tech companies can keep track of when a particular Internet
user looks up Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, visits adult Web sites, buys
cancer drugs online or participates in anti-government discussion groups.

Serving up ads based on behavioral targeting can itself be an invasion of
privacy, especially when the information used is personal. ("Hmm ... I
wonder why I always get those drug-rehab ads when I surf the Internet on
Jane's laptop?")

The bigger issue is the digital dossiers that tech companies can compile.
Some companies have promised to keep data confidential, or to obscure it so
it cannot be traced back to individuals. But it's hard to know what a
particular company's policy is, and there are too many to keep track of. And
privacy policies can be changed at any time.

There is also no guarantee that the information will stay with the company
that collected it. It can be sold to employers or insurance companies, which
have financial motives for wanting to know if their workers and
policyholders are alcoholics or have AIDS.

It could also end up with the government, which needs only to serve a
subpoena to get it (and these days that formality might be ignored).

If George Orwell had lived in the Internet age, he could have painted a grim
picture of how Web monitoring could be used to promote authoritarianism.
There is no need for neighborhood informants and paper dossiers if the
government can see citizens' every Web site visit, e-mail and text message.

The public has been slow to express outrage - not, as tech companies like to
claim, because they don't care about privacy, but simply because few people
know all that is going on. That is changing. "A lot of people are
creeped-out by this," says Ari Schwartz, a vice president of the Center for
Democracy and Technology. He says the government is under increasing
pressure to act.

The Federal Trade Commission has proposed self-regulatory guidelines for
companies that do behavioral targeting. Anything that highlights the problem
is good, but self-regulation is not enough. One idea starting to gain
traction in Congress is a do-not-track list, similar to the federal
do-not-call list, which would allow Internet users to opt out of being spied
on. That would be a clear improvement over the status quo, but the operating
principle should be "opt in" - companies should not be allowed to track
Internet activities unless they get the user's expressed consent.

The founders wrote the Fourth Amendment - guaranteeing protection against
illegal search and seizure - at a time when people were most concerned about
protecting the privacy of their homes and bodies. The amendment, and more
recent federal laws, have been extended to cover telephone communications.
Now work has to be done to give Internet activities the same level of
privacy protection.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company


Viva Liberty!

WANT A DUMB, NON-READING CHILD? KEEP THEM IN PUBLIC SCHOOL

WANT A DUMB, NON-READING CHILD? KEEP THEM IN PUBLIC SCHOOL

By Joel Turtel

To teach children how to play the piano, you have to teach them the basics of music - keys, notes, chords, melody, and harmony. With these tools learned, your kids can experience the joy and sense of accomplishment from playing their favorite songs on the piano.

To most of us, driving a car seems effortlessness. Our eyes, hands, and feet work together seamlessly, automatically, without conscious thought.

But we first had to learn the basics of driving when we were young. Remember back to your father's driving lessons? He taught you how to turn the steering wheel, where the gas and brake pedal was, how to stay in your lane, turn signals and stop signs, use of mirrors, keeping to speed limits, looking ahead. All these basics took time and practice to learn. Now, those of us who have been driving for many years, take these basics for granted.

We drive "automatically" and with skill.

The same process applies to another skill-reading. Read a book or a newspaper and it seems effortless. Yet such skill comes from constant use, from constant practice of basic skills learned at an early age.

What are these skills? To read, you have to recognize words on a printed page, yet there are millions of them. Enter the wonder of the alphabet and phonics. It is by recognizing letters and their sounds that a child puts letter-sounds together to form words. Since all words are built from only twenty-six letters, the huge task becomes greatly simplified. The child need not memorize the word, only sound it out, read it, and find its meaning in a dictionary.

As in driving a car, reading is difficult at first. But, once learned, the skill becomes automatic, unconscious, effortless, and we read quickly without sounding-out every letter of every word. In the end, with practice, we read effortlessly, and all the knowledge of the world is open to us.

Without learning the basic skills, however, reading is not possible.

Enter educrat "experts" who think otherwise. "Don't adults read without sounding out every letter of every word," they ask? "So why teach children phonics? Why put children through the boredom, drudgery, and hard work of phonics and spelling drills? How can reading be "joyful" if literature becomes drills?," they say. "Why wound children's self-esteem and self-expression with tests and standards and high expectations?"

"If we have children memorize whole words instead of drilling on the alphabet and letter sounds, all this pain is gone," they chime. "Do not teach them to sound out M-O-T-H-E-R. Have them memorize what the whole word looks like-teach them word-pictures, teach them hieroglyphics, so they "recognize" the word in a book. Have the child read "Dick and Jane" learning books that repeat each word a hundred times, so the child comes to "recognize" it. Do this for each word."

"If the child can't grasp a new word because he cannot sound it out, teach him "pre-reading" strategies," they expound. "These "strategies" will help him "guess" what the word is. Have him look at the title of the story.

Have the child look at pictures, look for "clues," look for "patterns" in the story that make sense. Or skip the word and come back to it. Or ask a friend who also cannot read it. Or finally, when all else fails, ask the teacher. Anything," say the learned educrats, "except actually sounding out and reading the word."

This, the educrats say, is the "centered," "self-esteem-enhancing" way to teach reading. Meaning and context-not basics. Group discussions-not letters, sounds, drills, and independence.

This is your whole-language method (now called "balanced literacy" or some other deceptive name). This is the hieroglyphics of Egypt transported to your children's classroom.

This is our educrats' pet "reading" theory, foisted on 45 million public-school children-victims across the country.

The results were inevitable-half the nation's high-school grads cannot read a bus schedule. Businesses lose $40 billion a year for remedial reading classes for new employees fresh from high school. Thirty percent of Americans functionally illiterate. The child who is taught phonics is able to read thousands of words in a few semesters. The "whole-word" child-victim is able to "recognize" only a few hundred words. Thus we have the crash in reading skills, the dumbing-down of our kids, the millions of frustrated teens who drop out of school, turn to crime, and end up in prison because they can't get a decent job.

Yet, in the face of such failure, such disaster for our children, the educrats turn a blind eye and a deaf ear. In the face of reality - massive denial and rationalization.

Buy why? What do they gain? There is always a reason for irrational behavior, and the educrats have many.

Educrats think phonics believers are extremist Christian Rightists or educational simpletons unable to understand the "complexity" of the educrats' so-called learning theories. Yet, let reality be the judge. The children who learn phonics read far quicker and better than the "whole-word" readers. And the "complexity" educrats proclaim is a self-serving fantasy of their making, designed to ward off competition. Educrats think they are gurus with special skills no parent can possess. Rather, they are education buffoons who don't know how to teach phonics to your kids any longer, or don't want to bother.

Educrats claim that phonics and rules will turn kids off to the joy of reading. Just the opposite is true - when a "whole-language" victim-child tries to read the many words he was not taught to "recognize," he will give up in frustration. His frustration will end his reading and his 'joy" in reading. The phonics-trained child can read any word and any book, and the joy of reading follows from his skills

This learning of basic skills need not be a struggle. What turns kids off? The insufferable boredom, the mediocrity of the educrats' teaching methods, unchanged for 50 years.

Children learn the alphabet and letter sounds with delight at home.

Sesame Street, "Hooked on Phonics," the Internet, learning channels on cable TV, creative reading books especially made for kids by learning entrepreneurs can make learning letters and sounds a delight.

Phonics and drills are a drudge in government schools because educrats don't have the time, skill, desire, or imagination to make them otherwise.

Rather than blame themselves or their government-run system for failure, they blame everyone else. They now claim it is the child's fault (he has attention-deficit disorder!), the parents' fault (they don't get "involved!"), or "society's" fault (racism or "not enough money for the schools!").

Educrats also say that drills and basics, tests and standards, are "unfair" to kids, cause them stress, and threaten their self-esteem. Just the opposite is true-real self-esteem comes from achievement, not from a teacher's hot-air, feel-good compliments. Achievement needs tasks, content, ever-increasing complex skills children learn with guided effort. Joy, not stress, is the result of achievement. And what is more important than for children to learn that rewards come from effort and perseverence? Educrats hate phonics and true reading skills because their teacher colleges don't train them in the phonics method. Teachers who are not taught the phonics method will naturally feel inadequate to teach phonics to children. It is not the teachers' fault. Rather, the fault lies with educrats, teacher colleges, and educational theorists who have contempt for phonics.

Phonics and drills requires a "teacher-centered" approach in the classroom. This approach requires greater effort and responsibility on teachers and schools to create lesson plans that show real progress in reading skills. The teacher-centered approach requires teachers and educrats to constantly test and evaluate both students and themselves.

The "whole-language" reading method, in contrast, is allegedly "student-centered," meaning that kids get to sit around in circles and talk about their feelings rather than learn to actually read. With "whole-language" reading, educrats can claim there are no standards, no way to test reading skills and achievement. There are few rigorous tests, low standards, and no failing grades.

"Whole-language" reading therefore achieves the educrats' ultimate goal - if there are no standards or objectivity, no one can blame them, no one can question them, no one can hold them accountable for their failure to teach our children to read. The educrats don't want to grade their students' performance because it allegedly hurts the kids "self-esteem." I believe this attitude is merely a projection of the educrat's primal fears-they do not want parents judging their performance and holding them accountable for teaching their kids to read. The educrats don't want their fragile self-esteem threatened by angry parents who expect public schools to do one simple thing-teach their kids to read.

Government schools are designed to assuage the educrats' terror at being judged by parents, and being forced to compete in a free-market education system. Government (public) schools' ultimate purpose is to be a full-employment program for educrats-to give them guaranteed jobs without accountability to parents. It is to placate these fearful educrats that our government schools dumb-down our children and turn them into illiterates with bleak futures.

So what can you, as a concerned parent, do to protect your child? As long as public schools are run by government and their educrats, they will never change. In my book, "Public Schools, Public Menace," I tell parents about wonderful new education alternatives to public schools, such as accredited, low-cost internet private schools. Parents, I urge you to look into these alternatives, before your children are irreparably harmed by public-school whole-language, anti-phonics, "reading" instruction.

© 2008 Joel Turtel

Viva Liberty!

Ron Paul at DUI School

Ron Paul at DUI School

by John Armstrong

strongarmedjohn@yahoo.com <mailto:strongarmedjohn%40yahoo.com>

a.. So what is your government really attempting to accomplish by creating and enforcing the laws that brought you here today?

To reduce the highway mortality rate from alcohol and drug impairment requires altering culturally rooted behaviors. Behavior-al change may best be accomplished through ongoing programs of vigorous enforcement, coupled with ambitious education and information activities. Thus, there is a broad range of issues involved with alcohol and drug enforcement on the highway. Effective DWI Statutes.

Let me break this down for you:

Altering culturally rooted behaviors = Changing the way people act by changing the way they think.

Ambitious education and information activities = propaganda (like the stuff we've been watching in this class the government made you attend because you broke a law they created even though you didn't harm anyone).

Just in case I wasn't clear enough, altering culturally rooted behaviors with ambitious education and enforcement activities has a simpler name: Brainwashing. And unfortunately, they are very good at it.

Want a couple of examples? Fill in the blanks. The number one leading cause of death in America is _________. A drunk behind the wheel of a car is as dangerous as a ___________ _____. If you said, "smoking" or "obesity" for the first one and "loaded gun" the second one, give yourself a gold star.

What do both of these things have in common? Both play on fears, and people who are afraid are easier to control.

A decade ago it was smokers who were the threat. In order to address this "issue" our government used our money to fund a ton of questionable "scientific" studies (about things like the DANGER of second hand smoke for instance). This caused people who weren't personally affected by the freedom limiting laws these studies ushered in to clamor for them because of the "safety" they provided. The propaganda was so good that the people who chose to smoke went from being someone who smoked to a being a "smoker" which carried a massively negative connotation. When people think that your choice to smoke is going to kill them, it's hard to find anyone to stand up for your right to do with your body what you please. And because of the dehumanizing collectivist "smoker" description, nobody cares if your rights are violated. Overweight (by FDA description) people are next as we gear up for the War on Obesity.

The loaded gun thing is no different. When a person who drives after having a few drinks turns into a "drunk driver", it's hard to find someone who doesn't believe that you got what was coming to you. Think of how an overwhelming majority of people thing of "drunk drivers". As I'll demonstrate later, this "loaded gun" statement is absolutely ridiculous, but so is the statement "with liberty and justice for all" yet millions of school kids recite and believe it daily.

Ask yourself this question: What is really scarier, a drunk driver mowing you down in cold blood or a government who decides what's best for the collective whole regardless of its impact on the individual and then uses its basically unlimited financial and media power to convince the masses that it's not only okay to create laws that interfere with individual rights but outright necessary before these "evil-doers" kill every innocent child in America?

a.. Were you really drunk when you were arrested?

Does it even matter? What is an "Effective DWI Statute"?

As we consider these questions, it is important to keep in mind that the real purpose of these laws is to alter culturally rooted behaviors, not to determine whether or not you actually deserve to have your freedom (financial, employment, time, unalienable rights) taken from you because of your actions. This is obvious from the following statement found in the same document cited above:

While substances affect different individuals in differing degrees, laws should emphasize the impairment of the driver-not the type, legal or illegal, or even the amount of the substance ingested. The effects of alcohol consumption are well known. Although they vary with the individuals consuming it, all persons are thought to be impaired by alcohol when its concentration in the blood (BAC) reaches 0.08 percent. Statutes should provide that presumptive evidence, per se, exists to suggest that a driver's ability to operate a motor vehicle is impaired when his BAC exceeds

0.08 percent.

Think about this for a second. This is a publication from our federal government telling the states how they should construct their laws to alter behavior. It openly states that you as an individual may not have actually been impaired when you were arrested, but that matters none.

This .08 number is where all persons are thought to be impaired.

Below is a section from the Constitution's 5th Amendment.

It reads:

No person...shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

What does that mean and how does it relate to the .08 thing? Before I get into that, let's look at something else from that little "Highway Safety Desk Book."

The law should require all drivers to submit to a chemical test, or tests, at the option of the arresting officer, to determine the level of alcohol and/or drugs in their blood, as a condition of holding a driver's license. Consent to a chemical test should also be implied when a driver is incapacitated or killed while driving a motor vehicle.

In order to deter impaired driving, the penalty must be sufficient to outweigh the relatively low risk of apprehension.

"No Person" = an individual = you. As an individual you have individual rights, not collective guilt because of an arbitrary government selected number representing the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream of a "drunk driver."

Due process = innocent until proven guilty. In this particular case, that means proven to be impaired--not THOUGHT TO BE IMPAIRED because of an arbitrary number.

Another tenet of due process is that the "punishment should fit the crime." The "crime" most people commit when charged with a DUI is making wide turns, swerving, or failure to maintain control of a vehicle. The punishment recommended here obviously violates this Constitutional right. You are being punished not only for you, but also for everyone else who doesn't get caught since there is a "relatively low risk of apprehension." Why is there a "relatively low risk of apprehension"?

Because the overwhelming majority of drunk drivers make it home safely, eat something fattening, and pass out (or do other things if they happen to come home with someone else they met at a bar, but that's a whole different story).

And I may be crazy but "requiring drivers to submit to a chemical test" or else lose the liberty that comes from driving seems an awful lot like testifying against yourself since whatever you blow is certainly going to be used against you in court.

Were you deprived of life? How have you been affected because of this "crime" you committed although you hurt nobody?

Were you deprived of liberty? Were you put in jail? Are you able to drive freely?

Were you deprived of property? Your money is your property. How much of that have you sacrificed individually in order to help your government alter culturally rooted behaviors? Was your car towed without your consent? Did you have to pay to retrieve it? If you have multiple offenses, was your vehicle seized and sold at auction? If so, were you compensated for it?

a.. Well if those things are true, how has this happened?

I know history and government classes were boring and the Constitution may not mean much to you, but it is an incredible document. In actuality it is a Contract between "We the People" and our government. As with any contract, when one party benefits from violating the contract, the other party suffers. Think of it like this: if you had a contract with someone to build a house for you and they knew you'd never read the Contract or they could convince you that it was "too complicated" to try and understand, the person building your house could build it with substandard materials and charge even more than what was in the contract and you would may be upset but you'd have no recourse since you hadn't read the contract.

Who would benefit? The contractor. Who would suffer? You. Our federal government is the contractor in this example, and you are still you.

On the other hand, if you wanted to allow the contractor to build you a brick house instead of the vinyl one in the original contract, you could-by changing the contract. We can change ours-it's called an "Amendment" (amend means change).

a.. So what's the purpose of this Contract?

To establish a government that protects the freedom of the people. That's it.

And how does the Contract do this? By severely limiting the role of the federal government. The people who wrote it knew things would change, that's why they put a way in there to change it, complete with easy to read instructions. And only the people can change it, not the government. They knew how tyrannical a government could become if it were allowed to change the Contract without the direct consent of the people. As Thomas Jefferson wrote:

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."

Every President and Congressman takes an Oath of Office to "Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution of the United States of America" (aka your rights). They don't swear in to "Protect Americans from drunk drivers" or to "Defend people against poor personal choices which may kill them."

a.. But it's the state that charged me with this crime, not the federal government.

Yes, that may be true. And the states may have a right to make a law restricting drunk driving (as long as your rights aren't violated in the process) according to the 10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

But consider two things: The reason these laws exist in their current form is due to Federal Government suggestions. If States don't comply with these "suggestions", they don't receive funding for highway projects. Secondly, enforcing these tyrannical laws wouldn't be possible without federal government funding. And if the states don't do what the federal government tells them to do, they not only lose highway funds, they lose out on enforcement funds as well. This is how they mandate a "national" drinking age which ironically enough was raised due to MADD lobbying as a way to reduce underage impaired driving fatalities (which it didn't). But it did expand the role of the federal government.

I won't bore you with many more history details, but trust me when I tell you that nobody who truly understands the purpose of the Constitution (ensure freedom, limit the federal government) would ever read this line:

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

Which is found in Article 1, Section 8 and think that the government has a right to create programs to fund aggressive DWI enforcement. But this is exactly the clause cited as the reason they have power to do so. It's called the "Commerce Clause" and was meant to, for example, keep someone in Virginia who sent money to a horse farmer in Kentucky from being screwed over and never receiving a horse due to the horse farmer's claiming "you're in Virginia; I'm in Kentucky; screw you."

But now it somehow means that they can take money from you and give it to a state law enforcement office in order to deprive you of your God-given rights in an attempt to alter your behavior through vigorous enforcement of effective DWI statutes.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but your government is not supposed to protect you from your own stupid decisions.

But it isn't supposed to punish you for them either unless you hurt someone else. If you'd killed or hurt yourself when you were driving drunk, too bad.

If you had hurt or killed someone else, you should be in prison or worse.

If you'd broken something, you should have been made to pay for it. But you shouldn't be a "criminal" for making a poor personal decision that harmed nobody. Even the government produced "Handbook" I've cited doesn't say that the purpose is to "prevent people from killing or hurting other people" it is to "reduce highway mortality rate" (by violating your Constitutional rights in order to brainwash the public).

The government is supposed to protect your liberty not find any way possible to take it. Here's another Thomas Jefferson (he was a smart dude) quote about that:

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law', because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

a.. So who really gets harmed by your "criminal" activity?

Organizations like M.A.D.D. would have you believe that the people who are harmed are the "innocent victims" slaughtered by maniacal sociopathic drunks. These victims are always sweet little prom queens who made straight A's and had promising futures until people like you ripped it all away. They started this propaganda campaign full swing back in the 1980's (which is why many of the videos you've seen in this class are from that era). Drinking related accidents increased last year, so the propaganda machine is gearing back up for another run in an attempt to get rid of drunk driving permanently by getting the government to force auto manufacturers to install the locking devices on all cars and developing technology to tell if you've been drinking (along with more aggressive DUI enforcement of course).

There was a time when an officer who pulled you over when you were drunk would ask you to pour out your beer, follow you home to make sure you made it safely, or if you were really messed up even take you home and leave your car sitting until you could return the next day to get it.

So I ask you again, who is really being harmed by your "criminal activity"?

1. The American Taxpayer. In 2008 alone, over $135,000,000 in taxpayer money was spent by the NHTSA (the people who wrote the report I cited earlier) solely on DWI issues. Of course this agency is just one division of the Department of Transportation that just requested $68,199,000,000 (That's $68 Billion) to do all kinds of fun stuff with in

2009 to keep us all "safe." You could buy a lot of cab rides with that.

2. Individuals. Like you.

As the old maxim states: there are three types of lies:

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. And it is the third type that help feed the first and second types in order to turn people who drive after drinking into "drunk drivers." Let's take a different look at the numbers:

In 2006: 38,588 people died in car crashes. 15,945 were alcohol related of those 11,180 were single vehicle crashes.

In 1994: 36,254 people died in car crashes. 14,814 were alcohol related of those 10,017 were single car crashes.

First of all let's take out those single car crashes. Why should the single car crashes be excluded? It's not the government's job to enact laws to protect you from yourself. If it were, they could make you go on a diet or force you to sleep 8 hours a night. The notion of protecting you from you is preposterous (in the words of Ron Paul) and in absolutely no way represents what America is supposed to be about. Other people who shouldn't be included are the people who voluntarily choose to get in the car with a drunk driver and the kids who don't have a choice and are the responsibility of the irresponsible person driving.

Once we take those people out of the statistics, you find that there were 4765 innocent people killed by drunk drivers in 2006 and

4797 killed in 1994.

So after spending literally Billions of Dollars chasing the myth of "Safety" 32 more people were killed by drunk drivers in 2006 than in 1994.

While I am sure the purveyors of "ambitious education" and "information activities" would take these same statistics and cite a 10+% decrease in alcohol related fatalities, the point is missed. The only people who didn't "deserve" to die were the ones who were driving sober when an individual who was driving after drinking hit them (and is there any way to definitively know that this wouldn't have happened if the drunk guy had been sober? Perhaps that's why it's alcohol "related" instead of alcohol "caused" fatalities)

Let's do a little comparison:

4797 people were killed in a collision involving an individual who had been drinking.
22,242 died of poisoning (many by side effects of "safe"
government approved prescription drugs)
15,764 died from a fall.
12,574 died of suffocation.
1,200,000 adults were arrested for DUI.

Now get this-that Million Plus was only 2.9% of people who said that they had driven after drinking. That means that if everyone who actually admitted driving after drinking did it only once there were over 41,000,000 chances for a "drunk driver" to kill someone else. 4797 isn't that many. In fact, only .01% of drunk drivers kill someone (and that's assuming that every time they kill someone it's only one). That's one person killed for every 10,000 times someone drives drunk. What happens the other 9,999 times? The individual driving after drinking at worst either kills or hurts himself and possibly passengers who chose to get in the car, hurt someone in another car without killing them, or in most cases makes it home safely.

So the next time you hear some ridiculous propaganda about how a drunk driver is as dangerous as a loaded gun, you can ask the speaker of such propaganda which one they'd rather take their chances with. Someone would have to be as poorly skilled in shooting a gun as the government is good at creating emotional, fear based, freedom destroying, unconstitutional decisions in order to actually shoot you with those kind of odds.

There is absolutely nothing that justifies these tyrannical, life- destroying laws. It is sad that a few thousand people a year die because people drive after drinking. But by creating an "issue"
called "drunk driving" and creating criminals called "drunk drivers" and selling it through emotional propaganda, the general population goes mindlessly along with the song and dance. Less than 5,000 lives lost despite the laws vs. 1+ million lives ruined annually as a direct result of these laws. Think about that.

The only way this type of legislation could possibly be justified is through flawed logic and the assumption that even 5000 lives are too many to lose if something can be done about it. The flaw is the assumption that what they are doing about it actually works. If it did, there would be zero fatalities. The tragedy is that individuals' lives are destroyed because of the way the issue is addressed.

Keep in mind that our government doesn't solve problems; it addresses issues. Actually solving problems would reduce the size and power of the government, so it makes much more sense to create issues and then make laws to address them. Laws can't make you a better person. They can only make you a criminal. But these laws are for the "common good", I suppose. I mean, what parent deserves to see their kid die because of a "drunk driver"? We could prevent every crime in America. All we'd have to do is put everyone in prison. This idea of a "Common Good" isn't a new idea.

The following line is the first tenet of the platform of another historical figure you've heard of:

COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD

You know whose platform that was a part of? A little guy with a funny moustache from Germany named Adolf.

The laws as they are currently enforced haven't been around that long, but we're reaching the point that people don't really question them anymore. As Thomas Paine wrote in the introduction to Common

Sense:

A long habit of not thinking a thing Wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.

Don't most people at least believe that it's "not wrong" to have DUI laws? By merely mentioning that these laws may be wrong there is certainly an "outcry in defense of custom", i.e. keeping the laws the way they are or even toughening them. Yet I am here to say that these laws are not right despite their superficial appearance of being so.

And as Dresden James said:

When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.

I'm sorry if I seem like a lunatic to you, but I'm not one complain about something and then sit idly by. When I wake up to something, I share it with as many people as possible because I also believe Jefferson when he wrote, "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."

This DUI thing is just the beginning. When you understand the insanity of everything our federal government does that starts with the "War on" or in the name of "safety" you will be up in arms, figuratively if not literally.

Unfortunately, you are a criminal now. Very few people will stand up for you because they haven't suffered and have been convinced that you deserve to suffer because of your heinous act of having a few beers after work and subsequently turning too widely into your driveway. Had you actually hurt someone, you'd be in jail-not in this class. Few will stand up for you now because you are a criminal.

As is written in a famous poem about Nazi Germany:

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

If you can see what's really going on here, will you use your 1st Amendment right to stand up for others while you still can or will you just be glad to get your certificate and go home? Either way it's your choice. Just like driving home after drinking should be.

Viva Liberty!

What If Public Schools Were Abolished?

What If Public Schools Were Abolished?
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
lewrockwell@mac.com

In American culture, public schools are praised in public and
criticized in private, which is roughly the opposite of how we tend to treat
large-scale enterprises like Wal-Mart. In public, everyone says that
Wal-Mart is awful, filled with shoddy foreign products and exploiting
workers. But in private, we buy the well-priced, quality goods, and long
lines of people hope to be hired.

Why is this? It has something to do with the fact that public
schools are part of our civic religion, the primary evidence that people
cite to show that local government serves us. And there is a psychological
element. Most of us turn our kids over to them, so surely they must have our
best interest at heart!

But do they? Murray N. Rothbard's Education: Free and Compulsory
explains that the true origin and purpose of public education is not so much
education as we think of it, but indoctrination in the civic religion. This
explains why the civic elite is so suspicious of homeschooling and private
schooling: it's not fear of low test scores that is driving this, but the
worry that these kids aren't learning the values that the state considers
important.

But to blast public schools is not the purpose of this article.
There are decent public schools and terrible ones, so there is no use
generalizing. Nor is there a need to trot out data on test scores. Let me
just deal with economics. All studies have shown that average cost per pupil
for public schools is twice that of private schools (here is a sample
study).

This runs contrary to intuition, since people think of public
schools as free and private schools as expensive. But once you consider the
source of funding (tax dollars vs. market tuition or donation), the private
alternative is much cheaper. In fact, the public schools cost as much as the
most expensive and elite private schools in the country. The difference is
that the cost of public schooling is spread out over the entire population,
whereas the private school cost is borne only by the families with students
who attend them.

In short, if we could abolish public schools and compulsory
schooling laws, and replace it all with market-provided education, we would
have better schools at half the price, and be freer too. We would also be a
more just society, with only the customers of education bearing the costs.

What's not to like? Well, there is the problem of the
transition. There are obvious and grave political difficulties. We might say
that public education enjoys a political advantage here due to network
effects. A significant number of "subscriptions, " etc. have been piled up in
the status quo, and it is very difficult to change those.

But let's pretend. Let's say that a single town decided that the
costs of public schooling are too vast relative to private schooling, and
the city council decided to abolish public schools outright. The first thing
to notice is that this would be illegal, since every state requires
localities to provide education on a public basis. I don't know what would
happen to the city council. Would they be jailed? Who knows? Certainly they
would be sued.

But let's say we somehow get past that problem, thanks to, say,
a special amendment in the state constitution, that exempts certain
localities if the city council approves. Then there is the problem of
federal legislation and regulation. I am purely speculating since I don't
know the relevant laws, but we can guess that the Department of Education
would take notice, and a national hysteria of some sort would follow. But
let's say we miraculously get past that problem too, and the federal
government lets this locality go its own way.

There will be two stages to the transition. In the first stage,
many seemingly bad things will happen. How are the physical buildings
handled in our example? They are sold to the highest bidder, whether that be
to new school owners, businesses, or housing developers. And the teachers
and administrators? All let go. You can imagine the outcry.

With property taxes abolished, people with kids in public
schools might move away. There will be no premium for houses in school
districts that are considered good. There will be anger about this. For the
parents that remain, there is a major problem of what to do with the kids
during the day.

With property taxes gone, there is extra money to pay for
schools, but their assets have just fallen in market value (even without the
Fed), which is a serious problem when it comes to shelling out for school
tuition. There will, of course, be widespread hysteria about the poor too,
who will find themselves without any schooling choices other than
homeschool.

Now, all that sounds pretty catastrophic, doesn't it? Indeed.
But it is only phase one. If we can somehow make it to phase two, something
completely different will emerge. The existing private schools will be
filled to capacity and there will be a crying need for new ones.
Entrepreneurs will quickly flood into the area to provide schools on a
competitive basis. Churches and other civic institutions will gather the
money to provide education.

At first, the new schools will be modeled on the public school
idea. Kids will be there from 8 to 4 or 5, and all classes will be covered.
But in short order, new alternatives will appear. There will be schools for
half-day classes. There will be large, medium, and small schools. Some will
have 40 kids per class, and others 4 or 1. Private tutoring will boom.
Sectarian schools of all kinds will appear. Micro-schools will open to serve
niche interests: science, classics, music, theater, computers, agriculture,
etc. There will be single sex schools. Whether sports would be part of
school or something completely independent is for the market to decide.

And no longer will the "elementary, middle school, high school"
model be the only one. Classes will not necessarily be grouped by age alone.
Some will be based on ability and level of advancement too. Tuition would
range from free to super expensive. The key thing is that the customer would
be in charge.

Transportation services would spring up to replace the old
school-bus system. People would be able to make money by buying vans and
providing transportation. In all areas related to education, profit
opportunities would abound.

In short, the market for education would operate the same as any
other market. Groceries, for example. Where there is a demand, and obviously
people demand education for their kids, there is supply. There are large
grocery stores, small ones, discount ones, premium ones, and stores for
groceries on the run. It is the same for other goods, and it would be the
same for education. Again, the customer would rule. In the end, what would
emerge is not entirely predictable - the market never is - but whatever
happened would be in accord with the wishes of the public.

After this phase two, this town would emerge as one of the most
desirable in the country. Educational alternatives would be unlimited. It
would be the source of enormous progress, and a model for the nation. It
could cause the entire country to rethink education. And then those who
moved away would move back to enjoy the best schools in the country at half
the price of the public schools, and those without children in the house
wouldn't have to pay a dime for education. Talk about attractive!

So which town will be the first to try it and show us all the
way?

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is founder and president
of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of
LewRockwell. com, and author of Speaking of Liberty.

© 2008 LewRockwell. com



Viva Liberty!

It takes a......

Its been said..
It takes a Village to raise a Child.

However...
It only takes a Government to Raise an Idiot.







Viva Liberty!

The Last Americans

The Last Americans

Charles J. Hunsinger

charles@hunsingerswords.net <mailto:charles%40hunsingerswords.net>

As the message of Dr. Ron Paul rose onto the national stage there were brief moments of hope, clarity and splinters of sunshine, as his words echoed with the strength, integrity and character, so needed in a country smothered in the transparent fog of socialism and fascist propaganda. The message that was brought by Dr. Paul may be the last words, so uttered, that spoke to the principles of American freedom. It may be possible that Dr.

Paul will be the Last American to run for political office; so it is with great gratitude that I salute his effort and his courage.

It is difficult to grasp the idea that this valiant man will be the last American voice heard, even though his words were muffled, distorted and muted by a free press dedicated to the suppression of free speech.

Are there no Americans left? Are we so intimidated by the strength of the stench of our socialist politicians that we are left impotent and voiceless? Freedom is not talking about freedom. It is not lamenting the loss of freedom. It is not waving a sign, a flag and then cowering in the face of opposition. Freedom is action, not resignation. It is principle, not consensus: it is strength, conviction and determination.

Freedom is not a handout. It does notcome through a welfare or entitlement state. It is the individual mindset and not a collective hive of mindless drones whose value is determined, not by the individual, but rather by their mindless addiction to sacrifice for the hive. Freedom is first the individual, the man, the woman who stand as individuals. It is for him, who says that he is free, and stands alone within himself and possessed of his own strength. There and then does freedom exist; not to be given, granted or bestowed; it is his to claim, to own, it is who he is. That is American freedom. Freedom is The Bill of Rights. That is the only freedom. Democracy is not freedom, "it is the only road to socialism." Joseph Stalin

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote." Benjamin Franklin,
1759

Times Change

We do not face the British, musket to musket, bayonet to bayonet, as we did when we threw off the tyranny of the British throne: we face ourselves, our own greed, our stupidity and ignorance, our laziness and our gullibility. How do we fight that; the piglets we have come to be.

Perhaps, the words of Thomas Pain, who played no small part in The American Revolution, can remind us of what is at stake should we not choose to fight the treason of government; the socialism that convolutes America and freedom.

"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." Thomas Paine, "The American Crisis"

Times change and we are now 232 years after Pain wrote those words.

Our enemy has changed; he wore a red coat then and called himself British, our new enemy wears yellow and calls himself American and a patriot. Pain called for service to country: it is not country that one should now serve, freedom is the master and service is not required; if it were, we could not call it freedom and it would not be worthy of service. The idea, the concept of freedom is embodied within the original Bill of Rights, the freedom of individual achievement. To sustain such an ideal one must first be in service to him self without want from others. When we fight for our own freedom; it is then that we are unbeatable and it is only then that we stand together.

Terminally ill

There is a name for this illness however, that infects us; that weakens our resolve, which distorts our memory and fogs our vision with the clarity and transparency of lead. It is called Socialism or Fascism or even Communism or Marxist. It is viral infection deep within the vital organs. It is insidious, in that it divides and isolates. It destroys our immune system by creating new viruses under the guise of tolerance, multiculturism, diversity and American guilt. It destroys our independence and our intellect, especially in our youth. The bonds, the loyalties, the traditions of the family decay under the strain of government intervention. Our schools, under government direction, herd our children like sheep toward a global socialism, a global citizenry; rewarding their lock step with permissible deviant behavior and fencing out parental guidance and control in the name of 'Rights of the Child'. It intertwines and seduces the unholy

(Fascistic) alliance between government and business and subordinates the Constitution to Laws forged behind locked doors under the guise of Treaties.

It is far easier to fight the cunning and the savagery of a given enemy than to combat the digressive weaknesses that are deep within us. As a combat veteran I know what it is to face the insanity and the unbridled violence of war, and I know that it takes greater courage and strength to face an enemy that resides within your own house. That is why, I fear, that Dr. Paul was our last hope.

We have been compromised; our government has been compromised, local police agencies, education, courts, business, our economy, the dollar and every facet of our society, even the weather.

We must come to grips, those of us who consider ourselves citizens of The Constitution, with the idea that American Independence; American Freedom has been treasonously betrayed by those who live in Her house, those who have been entrusted to protect it.

The Lamb must speak

We have, but one vote remaining; one action left and that is to stop the desecration of the American Flag. It must not be flown over a Socialistic State, whether it is called The New World Order, The North American Union, or America. We must not allow Her to be lowered in disgrace and replaced with the flag of hypocrisy, deceit and treason.

Sadly there are no more American heroes; they have all died. Our military; that too, has been compromised, and we are alone, except for the Department of Homeland Security.

We cannot stop, nor can we change the globalization that sweeps across our nation and the world like the Black Plague that swept across Europe: the death of America is imminent. Our language has been decimated; our culture and social structure is being destroyed, our values have been replaced by the writing and values of Karl Marx.

We cannot do a lot of things, but what we can do is to begin burning The American Flag. We must, in a most dramatic and non-violent and peaceful manner announce the death of an ideal, an experiment in freedom that was overcome by greed and power centered Globalists. We must announce our dissent if we are still free enough to do so.

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." Thomas Jefferson

Frankly, I fear the government, as it no longer functions under the Constitution. I am ready however, to burn The Flag, as my vote and in defense of my freedom and in defense of my values and out of love and respect for what was a glorious dream-America. Our Flag, the greatest symbol of individual freedom, the world has ever known, is being prostituted and soiled by those who would exploit Her, use Her to promote and advance a collectivistic mentality necessary for the foundation of Marxist Socialism.

It is my intention to burn the first American Flag on July 4th 2008 in Sacramento CA. I will call the media and inform them of the Burning. I will do this alone if necessary.

I have fought in combat under that Flag. I wish there was recourse. To set fire to Her will be the most difficult thing I have ever done. It will be akin to the burning of dreams, of hope, of tomorrows, of the memory of Her history, the greatness and courage of her fallen children. She must not be abused, be prostituted or exploited. I, we have no choice. Dignity and honor, courage, integrity and strength: Her gifts to us: can we give Her less?

I, We the People, cannot allow our Flag, the Dream of America, to be further humiliated, disgraced, and exploited by American Socialists. We must begin to form, organize in every city and in every state until the burning of Flags light up the night skies across America. Let the burning embers of the fabric of freedom spark into the night sky igniting the passions, energies and courage of freedom loving people every where.

I ask you to join with me, unite our strength, in a final tribute to America. Contact me for more information. Help me to organize a national movement of dissent. The Burning begins July 4th, 2008.

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Barry Goldwater

© 2007 AOL, LLC.

Viva Liberty!

Another One For Ron Paul

Thank God for Ron Paul.

Before the Financial Services Committee Subcommittee on
Domestic & International Monetary Policy of the US House of
Representatives, April 2, 2008: Hearing on Proposed UIGEA
Regulations

Hands Off Internet Gambling
by Ron Paul

Mr. Chairman, I stand opposed to the regulations being discussed
today because I opposed the underlying bill upon which these regulations are
based. The ban on Internet gambling infringes upon two freedoms that are
important to many Americans: the ability to do with their money as they see
fit, and the freedom from government interference with the Internet.

The proper role of the federal government is not that of a
nanny, protecting citizens from any and every potential negative consequence
of their actions. Although I personally believe gambling to be a dumb waste
of money, American citizens should be just as free to spend their money
playing online poker as they should be able to buy a used car, enter into a
mortgage, or invest in a hedge fund. Risk is inherent in any economic
activity, and it is not for the government to determine which risky
behaviors Americans may or may not engage in.

The Internet is a powerful tool, and any censorship of Internet
activity sets a dangerous precedent. Many Americans rely on the Internet for
activities as varied as watching basketball games, keeping up on
international news broadcasts, or buying food and clothing. In the last few
years we have seen ominous signs of the federal government's desire to
control the Internet. The ostensible reasons are to protect Americans from
sex offenders, terrorists, and the evils of gambling, but once the door is
open to government intrusion, there is no telling what legitimate activity,
especially political activity, might fall afoul of government authorities.

The regulations and underlying bill also force financial
institutions to act as law enforcement officers. This is another pernicious
trend that has accelerated in the aftermath of the Patriot Act, the
deputization of private businesses to perform intrusive enforcement and
surveillance functions that the federal government is unwilling to perform
on its own.

In conclusion, I urge my colleagues to oppose these new
regulations and support Chairman Frank's HR 2046, of which I am a cosponsor.
Although this bill has been criticized by some for its regulatory aspects,
this act does not create any new federal laws and merely ensures that
Internet gambling firms comply with existing federal law. The passage of HR
2046 would restore the right of Americans to decide for themselves whether
or not to gamble online.

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

© 2008 LewRockwell. com


Viva Liberty!

More Politicians Over exerting their power

School Bill Would Force Parents To Volunteer
Parents Who Don't Volunteer Would Face $100 Fine

CLEVELAND -- It's no secret that schools need volunteers in
order to do more for students, but one proposed law in Indiana would make it
a requirement for parents to volunteer at their children's school.

Parent Darlene Boyd has been volunteering at her grandchildren' s
school for six years. If the state legislature passes House Bill 519, she'll
have a lot of company, Cleveland station WEWS reports.

The bill would require all parents to volunteer 13 hours each
school year, either in the lunchroom, chaperoning field trips, or wherever
the district needs help.

Research shows parents' involvement leads to student success,
but Cleveland schools CEO Eugene Sanders said volunteerism is almost
impossible to legislate.

"If there's a way to encourage it, create incentives -- that's
the better way. The difficulty is what are your options to address it if it
doesn't occur? Your legal options are limited in that kind of setting,"
Sanders said.

The bill's incentive is a $100 fine for parents who don't
fulfill the requirement.

Franklin D. Roosevelt Academy Principal Sam Vawters said he can
always use more parent volunteers, but he doesn't think that's the way to do
it.

And Boyd agrees: "I wouldn't want anyone to be forced to come
here. Either you want to be here or you don't."

According to the bill, if a parent doesn't fulfill the
requirement and refuses to pay the fine, the money would be taken out of the
parent's state tax refund.

House Bill 519 is sponsored by Sandra Williams (D-Cleveland)
from District 11. You can e-mail her at district11@ohr.state.oh.us.

© 2008, Internet Broadcasting Systems, Inc.


Utterly ridiculous

Viva Liberty!

The Ron Paul Moment Has Only Begun

The Ron Paul Moment Has Only Begun
by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
woods@mises.org

Whatever your expectations for Ron Paul's book The Revolution:
A Manifesto, I can say with confidence that they have been exceeded. By a
mile.

Ron Paul has produced the kind of book that changes the person
who reads it. It is one of the most persuasively argued and beautifully
written defenses of the free society I have ever encountered. No president,
no presidential candidate, indeed no American politician has ever written
anything like this. But that is such faint praise, and such an unjust
understatement, that I almost regret uttering it.

From the first page of this book to the last, Ron Paul tells his
fellow Americans things that - if the usual political and media fare we are
offered is any indication - they are not supposed to hear. As I've said in
another context, Ron Paul's The Revolution: A Manifesto is, to the
establishment, rather like the man who shouts out in the middle of the show
how the magician is really sawing the woman in half.

What does it cover? Oh, just the Constitution, war, terrorism,
the economy, trade, civil liberties, the war on drugs, the dollar, gold,
abortion, executive orders, taxation, the housing bubble, the Federal
Reserve, education, health care, the environment, conservatism,
entitlements, foreign aid, regulation, and presidential war powers.

In order to make progress toward liberty, economist and
libertarian Murray Rothbard used to say, the benign façade of the state has
to be dramatically torn down. The people must be made to understand that
this institution, which they've been taught to venerate since elementary
school as the expression of the popular will, is ripping them off.

Well, this is the book Murray was waiting for.

After describing the income tax as merely a species of forced
labor, for example, Dr. Paul concludes: "Strip away the civics-class
platitudes about 'contributions' to 'society,' which are mere obfuscations
designed to engineer the people's consent to the system, and that is what
the income tax amounts to." The word "exploited" appears several times in
the book - to refer to government's treatment of its subject population. He
likewise writes, after having shown how the so-called distribution effects
of inflation hurt the middle class and the working poor, that "the average
person is silently robbed through this invisible means, and usually doesn't
understand what exactly is happening to him. And almost no one in the
political establishment has an incentive to tell him."

One of the things that frustrated me most during 2007 was the
way Ron Paul's enemies employed predictable "anti-American" and
"appeasement" rhetoric against his foreign policy views. Dr. Paul gets the
last laugh here: his chapter on foreign policy is the most persuasive short
statement of the non-interventionist position I have ever read. It turns the
tables completely: suddenly it is the neoconservatives who are on the
defensive, and Ron Paul the knowledgeable and wise statesman steering his
country to safety. As a former neocon myself - who knew my enthusiasm for
this book would elicit that awful confession? - I can confidently say that I
would have changed my mind a lot sooner if I had been exposed to arguments
like these.

It's also a little unusual for an American presidential
candidate to refer to and quote from Alexis de Tocqueville, Frédéric
Bastiat, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Nozick, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
George Washington, John Adams, Daniel Webster, John Quincy Adams, Henry
Clay, Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, William Graham Sumner, Ludwig von Mises,
and other figures of comparable renown.

Now trust me that I am not doing this book justice, but here's a
sample of its style and content.

On the conservative movement:

A substantial portion of the conservative movement has become
a parody of its former self. Once home to distinguished intellectuals and
men of letters, it now tolerates and even encourages anti-intellectualis m
and jingoism that would have embarrassed earlier generations of conservative
thinkers.

On blowback:

The question [CIA bin Laden expert Michael] Scheuer and I are
asking is not who is morally responsible for terrorism - only a fool would
place the moral responsibility for terrorism on anyone other than the
terrorists themselves. The question we are asking is less doltish and more
serious: given that a hyper-interventioni st foreign policy is very likely to
lead to this kind of blowback, are we still sure we want such a foreign
policy?. I have [n]ever said or believed that Americans had it coming on
9/11, or that the attacks were justified, or any of this other nonsense. The
point is a simple one: when our government meddles around the world, it can
stir up hornets' nests and thereby jeopardize the safety of the American
people. That's just common sense. But hardly anyone in our government dares
to level with the American people about our fiasco of a foreign policy.

On the idea of a "living" Constitution:

A "living" Constitution is just the thing any government would
be delighted to have, for whenever the people complain that their
Constitution has been violated, the government can trot out its judges to
inform the people that they've simply misunderstood: the Constitution, you
see, has merely evolved with the times. Thus, as in Orwell's Animal Farm,
"no animal shall sleep in a bed" becomes "no animal shall sleep in a bed
with sheets," "no animal shall drink alcohol" becomes "no animal shall drink
alcohol to excess," and "no animal shall kill any other animal" becomes "no
animal shall kill any other animal without cause."

On civil liberties:

We have allowed the president to abduct an American citizen on
American soil, declare him an "enemy combatant" (a charge the accused has no
power to contest, which is rendered by the president in secret and is
unreviewable) , detain him indefinitely, deny him legal counsel, and subject
him to inhumane treatment.. Have we been so blinded by propaganda that we
have forgotten basic American principles, and legal guarantees that extend
back to our British forbears eight centuries ago?. Claims that these powers
will be exercised only against the bad guys are not worth listening to.

On propaganda:

Toward the end of 2007, Senator Jeff Sessions declared, "Some
people in this chamber love the Constitution more than they love the safety
of this nation. We should all send President Bush a letter thanking him for
protecting us." What kind of sheep must politicians take Americans for if
they expect them to fall for creepy propaganda like this?

On neoconservatives:

Every last prediction they made about the Iraq debacle - e.g.,
it would be a cakewalk, the cost would be paid by oil revenues, the prospect
of sectarian fighting was slim - has been resolutely falsified by events,
and yet they continue to grace the pages of major American newspapers and
appear regularly on cable television talk shows. Instead of being disgraced,
as common sense might lead us to expect, they continue to be exalted for a
wisdom they obviously do not possess. I am reminded of George Orwell's
reference to "the streamlined men who think in slogans and talk in bullets."

On our foreign-policy debate:

The possibility that we should avoid bleeding ourselves dry in
endless foreign meddling is not raised. For heaven's sake, what kind of
debate is it in which all sides agree that America needs troops in 130
countries?

On Iraq:

The leadership of al Qaeda hoped to lure us into a "desert
Vietnam," an enormously expensive war that would deplete our resources and
help their own recruitment by stirring up the locals against us. And that is
just what happened. The war's ultimate cost is being estimated in the
trillions. The dollar is collapsing. And more terrorists are being created.
According to a study by the Global Research in International Affairs Center
in Herzliya, Israel, the vast bulk of the foreign fighters in Iraq are
people who had never been involved in terrorist activity before but have
been radicalized by the U.S. presence in Iraq - the second-holiest place in
Islam.

The terrorists, in short, have played us like a fiddle.

On the Federal Reserve:

Even if the Fed chairman really possessed the singular genius
our media and politicians regularly ascribe to him, what if things have
reached a point at which the Fed simply cannot stop the collapse? What if
economic law, which the Fed can no more defy than it can repeal the law of
gravity, is about to hit the Fed and the American people like a tidal wave,
before which little rate cuts here and there are like the tiny umbrella Wile
E. Coyote puts over his head to protect himself from falling boulders?

This book will change minds. Of that I am absolutely certain.
That's why our chief task right now is getting it into people's hands.

This is the next major grassroots mission: thinking up creative
ways to distribute this book, in the process making it an unavoidable part
of current-day political discourse. Nothing would be more satisfying than to
disrupt the lead-up to the establishment' s November bore-a-thon with -
gasp - a discussion of things that actually matter, aimed at the
non-catatonic segment of the population.

In the short run, buy copies for yourself and your friends. Of
course, lending the book also works, but actually buying them copies serves
two useful purposes: 1) boosting Ron Paul's bestseller status (dare we hope
for a debut at #1?) and 2) guilting your friends into actually reading it,
since they know you put down your own money on it.

The prospect that by means of this book hundreds of thousands,
perhaps even millions, of Americans may be exposed to these ideas - which
this book explains and defends more compellingly than any other book of its
length I have ever read - is among the happiest and most exciting
developments I can recall in years. I'd say more about the book's potential,
but everything I write comes out like a cliché. This time, though, believe
the clichés. Ron Paul has taken the gloves off, and the result is a thing of
beauty.

Toward the very end, Dr. Paul writes:

Ours is not a fated existence, for nowhere is our destiny
etched in stone. In the final analysis, the last line of defense of freedom
and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want
to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state
apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on
needless wars, destroys the value of their dollar, and spews forth endless
propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be
without it, there is no force that can stop them.

The book's dedication page is striking, and fitting:

To my supporters:

I have never been more humbled and honored than by your
selfless devotion to freedom and the Constitution.

The American Revolutionaries did the impossible.

So can we.

The Revolution: A Manifesto makes one thing abundantly clear:
anybody who thought Ron Paul's moment was over is sorely mistaken.

He's just getting started.

Note: The book's official release date is April 30, when its
publicity campaign will get under way, but it will be in stores and shipping
from Amazon by next week.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. is senior fellow in American history
at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and the author, most recently,
of Sacred Then and Sacred Now: The Return of the Old Latin Mass
and 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask.

© 2008 LewRockwell. com


Viva Liberty!