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Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
NEO COMMS « Conservative Libertarian Outpost
June 9, 2007NEO COMMS
June 9, 2007“It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people…” —Adam Smith
Hilrya Rodhamovich Clintonov’s economic plan
Demo-gogue presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave a little-noticed stump speech this week that should’ve sent up countless red flags.
By now, all of us know about Clinton’s re-warmed plans for socializing medicine, regulating healthcare services and providers and centralizing government control of about ten percent of the U.S. economy.
This week, however, Clinton went national with her classist “it takes a village” model, claiming that free-enterprise Capitalism is the root of all evil.
In a speech on “shared prosperity,” she proclaimed that it’s time to replace the conservative notion of an “ownership society” and economy with one based on communal responsibility and prosperity, alleging that the current system is really an “on your own” society that increases the income gap between “poor” and “rich” Americans.
Now, if Clinton is implying that individual initiative, self-reliance, responsibility and ingenuity—the very foundation of free enterprise—are the keys to creating wealth, then she is right. If she is implying that dependence upon the state and redistribution of income creates poverty, then she is right here, too—but that was not her message.
“I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society,” she went on. “I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”
In a quintessential example of Clintonista doublespeak, Hillary outlined her economic fairness doctrine: “There is no greater force for economic growth than free markets, but markets work best with rules that promote our values, protect our workers and give all people a chance to succeed. Fairness doesn’t just happen. It requires the right government policies.”
So, according to Ms. Clinton, free markets work best when they’re constrained by the right government policies. In other words, free markets work best when they’re not free.
Apparently Hillary has also been smoking Fidel’s hand-rolled cigars. How else are we to account for her failure to recall that centralized economies, like that of the former Soviet Union, are doomed to fail and have cost millions of lives along the way?
Of course, Clinton’s allusion to “rules” is Demo-code for taxation, which, as we know, is often the forcible transfer of wealth from one group to another. This taxation, in turn, creates reliable political constituencies for Democrats. As George Bernard Shaw once noted, “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.”
Clinton’s economic plan is nothing more than a contemporary remake of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s class-warfare proclamation: “Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.”
In fact, Roosevelt’s “principle” was no more American than Clinton’s. It was a paraphrase of Karl Marx’s Communist maxim, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev said of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” paradigm shift, “We can’t expect the American people to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.”
Echoing that sentiment was perennial Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas (the grandfather, incidentally, of Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas): “The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
No irony was spared in another interview this week, when Hillary Clinton was asked about the enormous wealth that she and Bill have amassed since their co-presidency. Clinton replied, “My husband and I never had any money. Now suddenly we’re rich. I have nothing against rich people.”
“Never had any money”? Spare me. She and Bill were long ago cashing in on commodity futures and real-estate deals. Still, the wealth they have accumulated in recent years must make those good ol’ days seem Spartan by comparison.
Hillary claims that if elected, she will “hit the restart button on the 21st century and redo it the right way.” I checked, and the Clintons were in the White House the first year of the 21st Century. Did they push the wrong button then?
Only when the Clintons voluntarily surrender for redistribution all their assets to the U.S. Treasury will I then consider her economic views with at least the sincerity afforded one who is not a complete hypocrite. In the eternal interim, her Socialist “we’re all in it together” claptrap should be considered a perilous hazard to prosperity for all.
source: Patriot Post
Record Lake Trout « Conservative Libertarian Outpost
June 9, 2007Bill O’Reilly « Conservative Libertarian Outpost
June 9, 2007Bill O’Reilly
June 9, 2007‘With great power there must also come – great responsibility!” So said the first Spider-Man comic book, in 1962. In the last few weeks, talk radio’s The Caplis & Silverman Show has abused its great power.Since May 16, almost every C&S Show has incited a campaign against Boulder High School. I wish that hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman would focus their considerable talents elsewhere, rather than harassing the Boulder High community, and attempting to impose the censorious morality of outsiders on Boulder.
Last April, several panels of the CU Conference on World Affairs were held, as is the custom, at next-door Boulder High. For the panel “STDs: Sex, Teens and Drugs,” some students attended on their own, with parental permission; several classes were brought to the panel by teachers. Not every teacher specifically restated the universal policy at Boulder High – applicable to all films, books and speakers – that anyone who was uncomfortable could opt out.
In the ensuing fallout, the Boulder Valley School District immediately stated that the failure to re- announce the opt-out rule was an error. Moreover, the panel violated BVSD policy that a broad range of views be presented on controversial subjects. The responsible employees were reprimanded.
End of story? Not for C&S. Day after day it has been playing selected quotes from the panel. Caplis has demanded that “each school authority” be “severely disciplined.” C&S has orchestrated an e-mail and telephone deluge against Boulder High.
Conspicuously missing from the C&S daily expression of “outrage” is support from Boulder High parents of students who actually listened to the panel. One parent of a student who was brought in to hear the panel complained at a school board meeting. Neither C&S nor other media have found even a second upset family of a student who actually attended the panel.
Given the school board’s appropriate response to the single aggrieved parent – ensuring that in the future every parent have the opportunity to opt out of any CWA panel beforehand – C&S should have moved on long ago from a story that merited, at most, a couple days’ attention. The silent majority of Boulder families apparently are not as repressive as C&S about how free the speech in public high schools should be.
Many parents who tell their teenagers to “say no” know that students must learn to think for themselves. A comment on the Boulder Daily Camera Web site aptly quoted John Milton: “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary . . . ”
Harping on the need to protect “the children,” C&S arrogates to itself a decision that properly belongs to BHS parents.
Statements of panelists have been shorn of context. C&S tells its audience that panelist Antonio Sacre said that he had stopped using condoms because it “doesn’t feel as good.”
Literally true, but nearly libelous. What C&S did not tell the audience was that Sacre explained his regret for his foolish choices about condoms as a teenager. Sacre warned his audience that they should always use condoms – even if the female is taking birth-control pills – because of the danger of sexually transmitted diseases, and because there is always a risk of pregnancy. (The full transcript and audio are available at www.bvsdwatch.org, which C&S, to their credit, have linked to on their KHOW Web page.)
Caplis insists that teachers should have driven the students out of the auditorium because “within five minutes” the panel was promoting drug use and sex. In fact, the opening 10 minutes consisted of introductions and a presentation by Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies, who simply critiqued counterproductive programs, such as DARE, which loses credibility because of its reckless exaggerations.
C&S claimed that the panel was in accord with panelist Joel Becker, who encouraged students to have sex and use drugs “appropriately” because they would be having sex and using drugs anyway. Actually, Sanho Tree, the panel’s drug policy expert, said not a single word encouraging the students to use drugs. Instead, he criticized the harmful effects of current drug policies.
Appearing on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox TV show, The O’Reilly Factor, Caplis did not even know the name of the school’s good-hearted and excellent principal Bud Jenkins, but was sure that Jenkins and every administrator should be fired. Heedless of First Amendment case law, O’Reilly proclaimed that the panel’s speech constituted a crime. The only crime was perpetrated by the O’Reilly producer who, attempting to ambush interview school board President Helayne Jones, criminally trespassed into her garage.
As a Boulder High parent, I have discovered that the school is a much more tolerant place than the average large high school. Respect for freedom of speech is part of what makes Boulder High special.
O’Reilly tells the world that Bud Jenkins is “the villain.” As Boulder High students are learning, media scandal- makers sometimes tell you much less than the full story.
Dave Kopel is research director at the Independence Institute, an attorney and author of 10 books. He can be reached at kopeld@RockyMountainNews.com.
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BE MINDFUL OF MOUNTAIN LIONS
June 9, 2007From our friends at the Colorado Division of Wildlife some words of wisdom, so that you don’t end up with a story about you in “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Immigration Bill « Conservative Libertarian Outpost
May 27, 2007Immigration Bill
May 27, 2007More of the same old politics. Write a Bill about one thing, then cram in unrelated things.
Immigration Bill Could Outlaw Gun Shops
Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://www.gunowners.org/ordergoamem.htm
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
First, there was the McCarthy-Dingell bill. The folks on Capitol
Hill have been telling you we need HR 297, a bill to greatly expand
the Brady Law. They say it will stop future Virginia Tech shootings.
And, oh yes, there’s one more thing: they want you to believe the
McCarthy-Dingell gun control bill isn’t really gun control.
Now, they want to bring you an anti-gun immigration amnesty bill.
Already you’re hearing it’s not really an amnesty bill. (Yeah,
right.) So don’t be surprised if they tell you it’s not an anti-gun
bill either.
Forget, for a moment, the fact that the immigration package
negotiated in the Senate could grant amnesty to up to a hundred
million illegal aliens who have flaunted our laws.
Forget, for a moment, that it would pull the rug out from under the
growing number of states that have vetoed the anti-gun National ID
bill passed by Congress in 2005.
Forget, for a moment, that the bill will strengthen existing laws by
requiring all legal Americans (like you) to own a National ID card
before you can get a job.
In addition to all these things, the bill could, in the hands of an
anti-gun administration, result in the closing of every major gun
store in America.
GUN CONTROL IN THE IMMIGRATION BILL
Senator Ted Kennedy and the anti-gun zealots who wrote the bill just
couldn’t resist the temptation to get their hands on our guns. They
have included language that GOA has been able to defeat in the past.
When Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) introduced these anti-gun provisions
in 1998, the GOA grassroots were able to convince seven senator
cosponsors to pull their names from Hatch’s bill.
At the time, The Hill newspaper credited GOA with having “generated a
significant number of postcards” into Senate offices. “The
defecting
[seven] senators, echoing the concerns of the GOA, are apprehensive
about the violation of Second Amendment rights,” reported The Hill.
The current language in the amnesty bill is only slightly different
from Hatch’s original language almost 10 years ago, but it would
essentially do the same thing — threaten every gun store in America.
In Section 205, for example, all it takes for the employees of a gun
shop (of five or more persons) to become a “criminal gang” is:
* For them to commit two or more violations of ANY federal felony gun
offense — which includes virtually all gun offenses, including
paperwork violations; and
* For the anti-gunners to find that violating gun laws was a “primary
purpose” of the group.
So let’s say your local gun store sells two or three firearms to
Mayor Bloomberg’s thuggish agents under New York City’s
extraterritorial “sting” operations. Your gun shop is now a
“criminal gang.”
This provision could even be used against a family of five who drives
by two schools on the way to a movie with a gun in the glove
compartment. Certainly under a Hillary administration, it would not
be surprising to see them treat this infraction as a “felony” under
the weird language of Gun Free School Zones Act. Thus, you and your
family would become a “criminal gang.”
OTHER PROBLEMS IN THE IMMIGRATION BILL
There is still no official immigration bill — that is, the working
draft does not have an official senate number. The draft was
concocted by senators who put it together behind closed doors, all
the while bypassing the normal committee process.
While this unofficial draft has been “the buzz” around the country
this past week, several things have been overlooked. One thing, to
be sure, is the threat to gun owners’ rights mentioned above. But
also ignored is the fact that the negotiating draft imposes draconian
penalties for those who live in states that have the audacity to veto
the National ID card (which passed as part of the REAL ID Act of
2005).
If you live in a state such as Montana, Maine, Idaho, etc. which has
passed legislation opposing the government’s efforts to turn your
driver’s license into a National ID card, YOU COULD BE DENIED
EMPLOYMENT OF ANY SORT.
Gun Owners was already concerned about this law — which has yet to
be implemented — because of the threat it poses to gun owners’
privacy. But now the immigration bill will go even further by
requiring all present and future private sector employees to be
screened by the Electronic Employee Verification System (EEVS).
And in Section 1(a)(4)(i) of the draft legislation, the bill allows
for EEVS approval of your continued employment only if your private
employer meets “strict standards for identification documents that
must be presented in the hiring process, including the use of secure
documentation that contains a photograph, biometrics and/or complies
with the requirements [of the] REAL ID Act….”
Hence, no National ID card… no job.
ACTION: Please use the letter below to contact your Senator. You can
use the pre-written message below and send it as an e-mail by
visiting the GOA Legislative Action Center at
http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm (where phone and fax numbers
are also available).
—–Pre-written letter—–
Dear Senator:
Why does the Congress seem bent on pushing gun control every chance
it gets? First, there was the McCarthy-Dingell bill in the House (HR
297) that would greatly expand the Brady Law. We don’t need more gun
control as a response to Virginia Tech shootings. We need to repeal
the gun free zones that turn people into mandatory victims!
Now, the Senate wants to sneak gun control past us in the form of an
immigration bill. The Senate immigration package is a horrid piece
of legislation in such a wide variety of respects.
But, in addition to everything else, section 205 could, in the hands
of an anti-gun administration, PUT EVERY MAJOR GUN SHOP OUT OF
BUSINESS.
All it would take is for the shop to commit two felony paperwork
violations — and an anti-gun administration willing to find that
this was a “primary purpose.”
Similarly, a family driving to church or to the movies — with a gun
in the glove compartment — could be a “criminal gang” if it passed
two schools, and an anti-gun administration determined that
protecting his family was one of the father’s “primary purposes.”
Again, I urge you to OPPOSE the immigration package as long as this
anti-gun language remains in the bill.
Sincerely,
****************************
TVC Motor Clubs Are A Pro-gun Alternative To AAA
GOA endorses this motor club as an alternative to AAA — which
supports the equivalent of no-knock entry for motorists. That is,
AAA supports what are called primary seat belt laws which enable
motorists to be pulled over for that alone. This only increases the
risk of an officer asking about guns and doing an illegal search.
TVC does not support such legislation.
Executive Director Larry Pratt has been pleased with their service.
See http://www.tvcmatrix.com for details.
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