We found the above interview to be telling. The constitution was initially designed to protect individual freedoms — your innate (God Given, many argue) right to your body, the fruits your labor (e.g., you’re not a slave in any portion to man or state), and the rights to the fruits of past labor (in essence, you’re protected against after-the-fact slavery, protected from those who make noble arguments that stealing your property after you’ve earned it is nobler than simply stealing at the time you’re earning it as in true slavery, when functionally these acts are not different).

When it comes to regulating your life and all the goings on in this once great nation, the meddlers in support of big government have created a gigantic hole in the Constitution, carved carefully through an initially tiny hole in the commerce clause; one that has since been pushed so far open that violations to personal liberty are disregarded as if the constitution never existed, so long as the political enablers of such violations can somehow define said violation as covered by the commerce clause.

That said, in this video above the recent supreme court nominee, Kagan, seems to find no fault in driving the Titanic through this liberty stealing hole in the constitution: the government has the authority to tell you what you must eat.

Funny how neither major party will object to her nomination when push comes to shove. That’s because both generally love all the power that the commerce clause allows them to consolidate in Washington D.C. for their own purposes, largely to ply one voting base against another. It is a politician’s lifeblood, and both D’s and R’s would rather trade away your freedoms than stem the bleeding and shrink the power grab.

As for blame, you need only look in the mirror: They know that you — as a D or R voter — you can’t bear to give up the goodies you get at the expense of your fellow country man, funded by those other citizens’ wealth, production, liberty — funded at the expense of their basic, innate rights. Politicians know your lust to have the reigns of power in the hands of your team –for at least a little while, where government pushes your agenda when your candidate wins, is a reasonable trade-off you’ll gladly accept while watching your own liberties and rights erode when the other party is in power — or when they both collude together and screw the little guy, as the dirty truth tends to be when you really see what’s beneath well-sounding legislation that is purported to benefit you.

If you’re tired of this arrangement, it’s time to start voting like you mean business in protecting not just yourself from the giant, increasingly dangerous Big Government. It’s time to vote for liberty for one and all, and it all starts locally.

Vote libertarian!

WASHINGTON (AP) – Stung by a series of inquiries, nearly half the members of the Congressional Black Caucus want to rein in an independent ethics office that Democrats trumpeted after gaining control of Congress.

Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, and 19 fellow black lawmakers in the all-Democratic caucus quietly introduced a resolution last week that would restrict the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics to open new investigations and make its findings public. The office, formed by Congress in 2008, is run by a panel of private citizens….

…Since its inception, the ethics office has investigated at least eight black caucus members, including veteran Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., and five others in that group over privately funded trips to the Caribbean. Many of them are among the co-sponsors of Fudge’s resolution, although Rangel is not….

…The ethics office essentially serves as an advisory board to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, a congressional committee run by lawmakers who are charged with policing their colleagues.

The citizen-run ethics panel is far more open than the notoriously secretive standards committee, publicizing its findings after referring them to the ethics committee.

The resolution would make it harder for the ethics office to initiate investigations, requiring a sworn complaint from a citizen claiming personal knowledge of an alleged violation. That could prevent complaints from watchdog groups, for example.

It would also prevent the standards committee from taking a referral from the ethics office within 60 days before an election in which the subject of the case is a candidate.

Corruption runs deep in Congress, and is certainly not limited to these members of the “Black Caucus”. Laws that shine the light on corruption are hated by those with power since it exposes the true nature of Big Government. The more the truth is seen by average Americans, the less they like Big Government and the associated power.

It’s time to unseat that corruption. Vote the only true party of small government. Vote Libertarian!

The libertarians (philosophical) and the Libertarian Party (the political extension of the philosophy) and its economic sub-philosophy (also called Austrian Economics) have all warned about the recklessness of mainstream economics and mainstream politics.   Voters have been hoodwinked into believing  that there is a serious difference between republicans and democrats.

On some issues related to government growth, each party has pressed for absurd amounts of growth.  When it comes to neoconservative foreign policy, for example, where the United States intervenes globally (and directly) into other nations’ politics, influencing elections, overthrowing their governments, and supporting outright wars that kill thousands of their citizens for a myriad of supposedly noble purposes, the republicans are quick to ignore the problems of Big Government and liberty killing policies at home. and especially abroad.   Democrats talk a good game, but if (on a scale of 1-10) the republicans want to grow this part of Big Government at a 10, Democrats will settle for a pace of 5-8 pretty regularly, telling their constituency they’re fighting hard against such initiatives.  Nobody is fighting for zero, or for what’s really needed (as clearly indicated in the video above) a  negative (-) 7 to (-)10!  The same might be pointed out about the bailout of the banking industry.

Meanwhile, when democrats have some harebrained spending idea, boondoggle or otherwise, the self -proclaimed party of small government (hard to believe the republicans get away with this name), the republicans gladly settle for growing government at a page of +7, calling that a victory vs. the democrats intent to grow it for those programs at +10.  Welfare, health-care (yes, it was the republicans who pushed for the bankrupting prescription drugs program) , bailouts, Freddie and Fannie, etc. etc. etc., were all rubber stamped by republicans who compromised to avoid making their next elections more difficult, or so they could tag onto some lousy bill a myriad of unrelated spending programs that they want to have passed.  Both parties chronically trade their votes on bills they’re constituencies don’t want in exchange for getting other politicians votes for spending bills their constituencies do want.

And around and around it goes, with only the Libertarian Party and a small handful of politicians who are really philosophically libertarian (such as Ron Paul) pointing out the real consequences.  The rest of the politicians — your democrats and republicans — take the attitude that if they can push the problem off to the future — even if they know it will blow up or saddle your children and grandchildren with slave levels of debt, — those politicians will choose  winning an election today and gathering more power today vs. doing what is right.

The consequences of 75++ years of politics as usual is what this grim video is about.  Watch it and learn.  And BE SCARED.  Your Government and its trusty elected officials have thoroughly sent this once great nation into a tailspin.  Local politicians are equally guilty, choosing easy election wins by appeasing government unions (and their wayyyy overpriced benefits) instead of dealing taxpayers a fair deal.

Again, please watch this video and Learn what the mainstream media ignores, and learn about the legacy both Republicans and Democrats want to sweep under the rug — how they have both ruined this nation by selling it off to highest bidders, enshrining corporatism and banker-ism (to coin a word) at the expense of the common man, while at the same time hooking to poor and less educated on a stream of welfare that is the modern plantation:  You give them your vote, they give you a pittance of an income, while they hack away to fund it all at the expense of small businesses and an ever-shrinking middle class that increasingly finds itself dependent on more govt. handouts.

The only solution?  Vote Libertarian!  It all starts locally, so please start now!

In October 2008, Libertarian presidential candidate, Bob Barr, came to Pittsburgh to speak. Here’s a video that takes us back to that election of 2008. Are you still content with your vote for change?

Yes. That ever critical area where the government needs to protect us all — from the poorly arranged flower arrangement.

Many Tea Party folks are actually libertarians. They either just don’t know it, or they continue to delude themselves into believing that “this time it’ll be different” by voting republican or democrat.

Folks, they take you for granted, and always will. Both are for big government. Both are quasi authoritarian, believing that so long as the majority votes a certain way, that gives them the authority to revoke your rights and confiscate the fruits of your labor, a form of delayed slavery. (So you’re in the 35% or higher tax bracket when you add up all your taxes — federal, state, local, social security, medicare, sales taxes, real estate taxes, the loss of purchasing power in the $$ when they print $$ trillions to bailout politically connected banks…. Why tolerate being a 35% slave?? Do you really need them to tell you how to contribute to charity? Or to pick the best way to pay for this or that? And should you not have the right to avoid contributing to wasteful pork or special interest projects? And why should you be forced to use this school or that, or pay well above market price to hire this employee or that, just because they work for a govt. connected union? And on and on…)

Only Libertarians believe in smaller, less intrusive government in every situation. The only exception is when someone is taking away your right to consent — things like theft, robbery, murder, rape, slavery, extortion, or fraud. These are crimes that violate your right to consent — your right to life, liberty, and the fruits of your own labor.

Unfortunately, we launder many of these same criminal actions through the voting booth via democracy — as if that somehow cleanses the immorality of what’s really going on!

Enough is enough! Vote Libertarian!

Care to know how Big Government is about to make your costs go up in order to win a few votes from the Teamsters? Democrats and Republicans are both responsible for allowing government to get this big. Neither want to disarm Big Government since each party wants the power to abscond with your freedoms and wealth for their own purposes.

For the AP Article on this give-away of your hard earned money, read this:

• Rule change favors unions at airlines, railroads

Vote Libertarian! Vote freedom! Vote Consent. It all starts locally.

Take jobless benefits, for example. Both parties are quick to approve endless jobless benefits extensions during this crisis always suggesting that if it was not for the benefits, the consequences would be awful.

Now, we’re not going to quickly dismiss the difficulty individuals and their families experience when a job is lost. Nobody wants to go through that, especially if there are few savings to fall back on. And that’s why Democrats and Republicans are quick to take other citizens money and give it to those who lost their jobs.

But what they never consider are the unseen costs. These costs, libertarians point out, end up being worse than the problem the two big parties claim to be solving.

How so?

When money is taken from business and individuals and redirected to those who just lost their jobs, a few things happen.

First, business have less money to grow. Money they might have spent expanding the business is instead redirected. Instead of hiring someone new with their savings in an industry that actually is generating jobs and wealth, these businesses savings are redirected to pay people to not to work. Now, that’s not the objective of most on jobless benefits. Many simply can’t find work — because the money redirected to them can’t be used to hire them!

Money taken from individuals and redirected to jobless benefits works the same way. That money would have been spent in functioning business, used to buy things that people actually want and need. Instead, it’s redirected to hold people on jobless benefits.

Of course, with the Federal Reserve printing money that’s being used to help finance the Federal Deficit (too complicated to dig into in depth via this simple post), well — those dollars printed out of thin air get their purchasing power at the expense of existing dollar holders, spending power redirected from the functioning economy to the jobless benefits.

So, while republicans and democrats point out all the people they are helping, while earning votes from those receiving benefits (as well as those kind-hearted folks who have been mislead into believing that voting for this junk-economics is actually doing good), in reality these major parties are doing nothing more than turning real jobs into government welfare. Instead, we should look at such programs as job killers!

Now, there’s an additional problem. Not everyone on jobless benefits actually feels like working. Take this article from the Detroit News:

“In a state with the nation’s highest jobless rate, landscaping companies are finding some job applicants are rejecting work offers so they can continue collecting unemployment benefits.

It is unclear whether this trend is affecting other seasonal industries. But the fact that some seasonal landscaping workers choose to stay home and collect a check from the state, rather than work outside for a full week and spend money for gas, taxes and other expenses, raises questions about whether extended unemployment benefits give the jobless an incentive to avoid work.

Members of the Michigan Nursery and Landscape Association “have told me that they have a lot of people applying but that when they actually talk to them, it turns out that they’re on unemployment and not looking for work,” said Amy Frankmann, the group’s executive director. “It is starting to make things difficult.”

Chris Pompeo, vice president of operations for Landscape America in Warren, said he has had about a dozen offers declined. One applicant, who had eight weeks to go until his state unemployment benefits ran out, asked for a deferred start date.”

Libertarians realize that people are people. We all agree that given an opportunity to get something for nothing, most folks will have a hard time turning it down, especially if the system says it’s legal and ethically o.k. Take a look at the whole financial meltdown and the ethics problems on Wall Street and in D.C. regarding that. Why should individuals on jobless benefits be any different?

The article continues:

“The average landscape worker earns about $12 per hour, according to the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth. A full-time landscaping employee would make $225 more a week working than from an unemployment check of $255.

But after federal and state taxes are deducted, a full-time landscaper would earn $350 a week, or $95 more than a jobless check. The gap could narrow further for those who worked at other higher-paying seasonal jobs, such as construction or roofing, which would result in a larger benefits check.

The maximum weekly benefit an unemployed Michigan worker can receive is $387.

The jobless in Michigan are collecting for a longer time — an average of 19.4 weeks last year, up from 15 weeks in 2008. State benefits last for up to 26 weeks.

The unemployed can then apply for extended federal benefits that increase the total time on the public dole up to a maximum of 99 weeks.

The federal jobless benefits extension “is the most generous safety net we’ve ever offered nationally,” said David Littmann, senior economist of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market-oriented research group in Midland. The extra protection reduces the incentive to find work, he said.

It’s impossible to know exactly how many workers are illegally declining employment, but 15 percent of Michigan’s economy is underground, where people trade services, barter or exchange cash without reporting it to the government, Littmann said.”

So, while Democrats and Republicans are quick to get votes by handing your money away while destroying the economy and enabling some people to game the system, libertarians are against it! We believe that charity is important, that helping neighbors through tough times is helpful. But we don’t believe anyone is entitled to anything, or that you solve the problem of unemployment by hamstringing the economy from recovering on its own — without making republican and democrats all important by handing out goodies for votes.

Moreover, we point out that jobless benefits have created a moral dilemma, where people know there’s no risk to losing their job with the jobless benefit programs, so they spend every dime they have living paycheck to paycheck vs. keeping emergency savings.

Instead of helping out and causing good, the republicans and democrats are more interested in promising free lunches for votes. Jobless benefits do more harm than good, and are actually one among many forms of democrat and republican endorsed intervention that not only drove the economy to its current horrible state, they are being expanded and therefore preventing the economy from recovering in any meaningful way. An economic recovery dependent upon redistributing other people’s wealth is a recovery destined to crash and burn, thus requiring more democrats and republicans to ride to the rescue.

Break this cycle of dependency and vote Libertarian!

Libertarians have a different view of economics than those who benefit from the mainstream view of economics — a view promoted and embraced those who are beneficiaries of big banks (and the Federal Reserve) and big government, which is the same view taught in our government schools to our children. That philosophy is rooted in the theories of John Maynard Keynes, a Fabian Socialist who believed that a nation could spend its way to riches, and indebt itself to wealth. If the the economy slows too much? Turn to counterfeiting — print money out of thin air via the Fed, with the big banks getting to play with it first before it devalues as it circulates through the economy. People in the economy want to slow down and start saving to be extra safe? Have the politicians pay off their special interest constituencies with even more deficit spending, sticking our kids and grandkids even further into debt slavery.

Here’s another interview with libertarian economics buff Peter Schiff discussing the problem.

The Libertarian Party is not a fan of many of the drug war laws in the United States, believing that they create too many criminals out of otherwise consenting adults.  Not that we condone the use of drugs (or the abuse for that matter — any more than we’d condone the misuse or abuse of alcohol).  It’s the fact that prohibitions create black markets for otherwise worthless substances.  Rather than taking  away the incentive to push all sorts of things on your friends, family (children at school), the profits created by the War on Drugs give every person willing to take a shortcut to wealth the perfect incentive to get people hooked on the junk.

And then there is the ugliest side of the War on Drugs: further erosion of basic liberties, and the mainstreaming of authoritarian behavior in the culture to the points where many citizens watching the video above will think the actions of the police above are perfectly justified, or at worst, are a tolerable casualty  — tolerable collateral damage for a good cause.

Above is video from a February raid in Missouri.  The Balko site captions:

SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family’s pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on. They found a “small amount” of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment.

And advocates:

I’d urge you to watch it, and to send it to the drug warriors in your life. This is the blunt-end result of all the war imagery and militaristic rhetoric politicians have been spewing for the last 30 years—cops dressed like soldiers, barreling through the front door middle of the night, slaughtering the family pets, filling the house with bullets in the presence of children, then having the audacity to charge the parents with endangering their own kid. There are 100-150 of these raids every day in America, the vast, vast majority like this one, to serve a warrant for a consensual crime. But they did prevent Jonathan Whitworth from smoking the pot they found in his possession. So I guess this mission was a success.