Politics

… by who’s standards???

I signed up to be a precinct leader for the Campaign for Liberty a month ago or so. Funny thing, Vermont doesn’t even HAVE precincts so I have yet to figure out my “area”. The job isn’t too demanding. In fact, I hadn’t done anything at all until yesterday. Except read and learn a lot!

Yesterday I completed my first task. I sent out this press release to 4 local newspapers, 1 local television station and a handful of radio stations. Then I thought I could post it on my blog since there may be a handful of Vermont readers! Really, only a handful. And if that handful actually reads this post, only one will be somewhat conservative. Have you been here before?

Hopefully posting an email address won’t create massive spam. We’ll see.

www.campaignforliberty.com/usa/VT

January 13, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE AND PUBLICATION:

The Vermont Campaign for Liberty is proud to announce that a state-wide convention is scheduled for January 24, 2009 from 10 am to 4 pm in the House Chambers of the Vermont State House. The Convention is open to members of the Campaign for Liberty and persons interested in learning more about the Campaign and its mission to restore the Republic. Admission is free, please bring a lunch.

There will be several speakers including Tom Licata, founder of Vermonters for Economic Health, and Geoffrey Norman, Editor of vermonttiger.com who will be speaking on the coming budget fight and economic crisis here in Vermont. Members of the Vermont chapter of the Campaign for Liberty will also be speaking about community organizing, achieving ballot access and the vision for this organization in Vermont. We will also discuss grassroots activity on the precinct level and how this can be used to rally communities around the issues that are most important to them. This Convention will provide an opportunity to meet members of the Campaign and learn how you can help return our country to its roots of personal liberty, economic freedom, limited constitutional government and common sense foreign policy.

The Campaign for Liberty is a movement which has sprung from Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign. Please visit www.campaignforliberty.com/about.php for more information about our mission and principles. Each state chapter will define itself and its goals according to the needs and desires of its members and the states in which they live. The Vermont Campaign for Liberty is a non-partisan group of citizens whose mission is to inform the electorate on issues of local, state and national importance and to create a political atmosphere supportive of liberty-minded candidates and issues regardless of party affiliation.

RSVP’s are appreciated but not required. Please contact Steven Howard at (802)779-4447 or Heather Burditt at heatherbean@gmail.com if you need further information.

I’ve been consumed by politics lately… it wouldn’t be fair if i didn’t share some of it.

A MINORITY VIEW

BY WALTER E. WILLIAMS

RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2008, AND THEREAFTER

Evil Concealed by Money

Evil acts can be given an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding socialistic expressions such as spreading the wealth, income redistribution or caring for the less fortunate. Let’s think about socialism.

Imagine there’s an elderly widow down the street from you. She has neither the strength to mow her lawn nor enough money to hire someone to do it. Here’s my question to you that I’m almost afraid for the answer: Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the lady’s lawn each week? If he failed to follow the government orders, would you approve of some kind of punishment ranging from house arrest and fines to imprisonment? I’m hoping that the average American would condemn such a government mandate because it would be a form of slavery, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Would there be the same condemnation if instead of the government forcing your neighbor to physically mow the widow’s lawn, the government forced him to give the lady $40 of his weekly earnings? That way the widow could hire someone to mow her lawn. I’d say that there is little difference between the mandates. While the mandate’s mechanism differs, it is nonetheless the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.

Probably most Americans would have a clearer conscience if all the neighbors were forced to put money in a government pot and a government agency would send the widow a weekly sum of $40 to hire someone to mow her lawn. This mechanism makes the particular victim invisible but it still boils down to one person being forcibly used to serve the purposes of another. Putting the money into a government pot makes palatable acts that would otherwise be deemed morally offensive.

This is why socialism is evil. It employs evil means, coercion or taking the property of one person, to accomplish good ends, helping one’s fellow man. Helping one’s fellow man in need, by reaching into one’s own pockets, is a laudable and praiseworthy goal. Doing the same through coercion and reaching into another’s pockets has no redeeming features and is worthy of condemnation.

Some people might contend that we are a democracy where the majority agrees to the forcible use of one person for the good of another. But does a majority consensus confer morality to an act that would otherwise be deemed as immoral? In other words, if a majority of the widow’s neighbors voted to force one neighbor to mow her law, would that make it moral?

I don’t believe any moral case can be made for the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another. But that conclusion is not nearly as important as the fact that so many of my fellow Americans give wide support to using people. I would like to think it is because they haven’t considered that more than $2 trillion of the over $3 trillion federal budget represents Americans using one another. Of course, they might consider it compensatory justice. For example, one American might think, “Farmers get Congress to use me to serve the needs of some farmers. I’m going to get Congress to use someone else to serve my needs by subsidizing my child’s college education.”

The bottom line is that we’ve become a nation of thieves, a value rejected by our founders. James Madison, the father of our Constitution, was horrified when Congress appropriated $15,000 to help French refugees. He said, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” Tragically, today’s Americans would run Madison out of town on a rail.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” John Galt

It’s been a little crazy around here. Hence the total lack of blog posts. Adjusting to three is much different than adjusting to two! The older two have been squabbling… a lot! I’ve been slowly losing my patience. Until I went to a baby shower the other day. Some nice ladies were cooing over Phoenix and calling him an “old soul” and saying that he could be the next Barack Obama or maybe the next Ghandi.

It really got me thinking about how children should be treated. Yes! They were right, I should treat them like they are the next Ghandi! And I should be so careful in my respect for them, that they do not become like Obama.

I’m sure that this is not at all what those women meant. This is how I see it.

Ever since the baby shower, I have remembered how special they were to me and to the world each time my patience has stretched thin. It’s really helped me. It’s helped me to stay calm, listen to their feelings, and help them through their struggles.

“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too. My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Someone, please explain to me why this is ok. Why was the country so blind with hero worship that everyone thinks this is ok. Obama is not a hero. He is nothing more than a poor imitation of Robinhood.

All the humble people who profess that money doesn’t matter; Obama just convinced them that it does. He convinced them that their social class and their money are of the utmost importance.

Obama is a socialist. I was going to say closet socialist… but he is so out of the closet he’s more like a flaming socialist. Please tell me why socialism is ok.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=917_1224167987

Socialism is the transitional period between Capitalism and Communism

I’m angry and I’m truly scared what the next 4 years holds for us. People are worshipping Obama like a god. I know how religious worship turns out.

… for some politics.

I’ve written my reps. Have you? (Scroll to bottom for links to your state representatives)

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Dear Friends,

Whenever a Great Bipartisan Consensus is announced, and a compliant media assures everyone that the wondrous actions of our wise leaders are being taken for our own good, you can know with absolute certainty that disaster is about to strike.

The events of the past week are no exception.

The bailout package that is about to be rammed down Congress’ throat is not just economically foolish. It is downright sinister. It makes a mockery of our Constitution, which our leaders should never again bother pretending is still in effect. It promises the American people a never-ending nightmare of ever-greater debt liabilities they will have to shoulder. Two weeks ago, financial analyst Jim Rogers said the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made America more communist than China ! “This is welfare for the rich,” he said. “This is socialism for the rich. It’s bailing out the financiers, the banks, the Wall Streeters.”

That describes the current bailout package to a T. And we’re being told it’s unavoidable.

The claim that the market caused all this is so staggeringly foolish that only politicians and the media could pretend to believe it. But that has become the conventional wisdom, with the desired result that those responsible for the credit bubble and its predictable consequences – predictable, that is, to those who understand sound, Austrian economics – are being let off the hook. The Federal Reserve System is actually positioning itself as the savior, rather than the culprit, in this mess!

• The Treasury Secretary is authorized to purchase up to $700 billion in mortgage-related assets at any one time. That means $700 billion is only the very beginning of what will hit us.

• Financial institutions are “designated as financial agents of the Government.” This is the New Deal to end all New Deals.

• Then there’s this: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.” Translation: the Secretary can buy up whatever junk debt he wants to, burden the American people with it, and be subject to no one in the process.

There goes your country.

Even some so-called free-market economists are calling all this “sadly necessary.” Sad, yes. Necessary? Don’t make me laugh.

Our one-party system is complicit in yet another crime against the American people. The two major party candidates for president themselves initially indicated their strong support for bailouts of this kind – another example of the big choice we’re supposedly presented with this November: yes or yes. Now, with a backlash brewing, they’re not quite sure what their views are. A sad display, really.

Although the present bailout package is almost certainly not the end of the political atrocities we’ll witness in connection with the crisis, time is short. Congress may vote as soon as tomorrow. With a Rasmussen poll finding support for the bailout at an anemic seven percent, some members of Congress are afraid to vote for it. Call them! Let them hear from you! Tell them you will never vote for anyone who supports this atrocity.

The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are about to be looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care?

When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media?

Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

Links below will get you to the information you need to contact your senators and representatives from all states. It will only take a minute to leave a message. I did. They do listen if you call. Voice mail is 24 hours. Just leave your – name, city or town your from and state and tell them – “No Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bail outs and no more government regulations.” If you never forward e-mails, this may be the one that’s worth the trouble!

U.S. SENATORS http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

U.S. REPRESENTATIVES http://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml