WAYNE ALLYN ROOT: Barack Obama: The great jobs killer

As former President Ronald Reagan might have said, "Obama, there you go again."


The current occupant of the White House claims to know how to create jobs. He claims jobs have been created. But so far the score is Great Obama Depression 2.2 million lost jobs, Obama 0 -- a blowout.


Obama is as hopeless, helpless, clueless and bankrupt of good ideas as the manager of the Chicago Cubs in late September. This "community organizer" knows as much about private-sector jobs as Pamela Anderson knows about nuclear physics.


It's time to call Obama what he is: The Great Jobs Killer. With his massive spending and tax hikes -- rewarding big government and big unions, while punishing taxpayers and business owners -- Obama has killed jobs, he has killed motivation to create new jobs, he has killed the motivation to invest in new businesses, or expand old ones. With all this killing, Obama should be given the top spot on the FBI's Most Wanted List.

Meanwhile, he has kept the union workers of GM and Chrysler employed (with taxpayer money). He has made sure that most government employee union members got their annual raises for sleeping on the job (with taxpayer money). He made sure that his voters got handouts mislabeled as "tax cuts" even though they never paid taxes (with taxpayer money). And he made sure that major campaign contributors collected billions off government stimulus (with taxpayer money). 
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Rule by Consensus

by Mike Calpino

What determines our morality? How do we determine the right course of action? How do we differentiate right from wrong? In the political sphere, how do we argue against our current rush into socialism? Too often, much too often, we quote polls or election results or statistics. If one major party or another wins an election, especially by a large majority, it becomes a license to act according to their platform or program, no matter how destructive, irrational or wrong.

The statists for years have been arguing from polls, getting the ‘feeling’ for what the people want, using the media to steer their desires, stating their case from the standpoint of emotional crisis. They have convinced the majority of the people that a government answer to a problem is the only answer that needs to be explored, the politicians simply need to argue details and emphasis.

Every year we slip further and further into the statist nightmare, we lose more and more liberty, the government gets bigger and bigger, exerts greater and greater control and takes more and more money. Few statists are honest about their goals because most people, due to the fact that they have been endowed by their Creator with a rudimentary understanding of the basic rights and liberties that make us human, would never choose slavery given an opportunity to hear a reasoned argument for and against its adoption. Nor do most want to be honest about the logical conclusions of statism, it has always led to the gulag and the death camps because it negates the value of the individual and the individual’s inherent rights. They simply want to be pragmatic, getting the benefits while trying to balance an inherently unbalanced system, hoping to get theirs before everything comes apart.

Now that there is a group in charge who are unbalancing the system in order to bring about the final resolution of the conflict between freedom and tyranny in favor of tyranny, people are getting nervous, at the least.


What do we hear from those who rail against the obviously socialist polices and actions of our government, the so-called conservatives? Two thirds of the people want health care repealed. This percentage think we shouldn’t bail out the banks. A certain percentage don’t think we should own General Motors. For those who make such argument, what happens if the majority do want health care, bank bailouts or direct government ownership of industries? Where are their arguments then? The same place as their arguments against Social Security and Medicare. They don’t make them because the majority of the people, while they may complain, don’t want them repealed or abolished. Because of that, arguments based on polls or public opinion or even elections cannot ever be winners for libertarians.

The statists have the time to make people comfortable in their slavery, accepting of their chains, and in so doing they move the argument; not over whether or not to have state control of this or that arena but only the degree of control. At best, policy based on public opinion is what we have now, with a hodgepodge of special interest groups vying for an ever larger piece of the pie. At worst, it becomes mob rule in which anything becomes possible and no right or property is respected.


The men who founded this nation did so according to principles, the key one of which was an understanding of the sacrosanct nature of individual rights. Men have a right to their lives as men. Their lives and the production of their lives does not belong to any other man and it certainly does not belong to the state. That is the fundamental argument that needs to be joined today. Not over how to reform a system that has become increasing statist. The reformers will always lose because it only requires another election to reverse any progress made in the defense of liberty. We should not be arguing about what degree of statism we should have but whether the state should be involved in any of the things we currently accept.

If we are going to argue against government run health care and be consistent, we cannot accept Medicare and Medicaid as legitimate forms of government intervention. If we try, the most consistent argument will win and the most consistent argument will either be all or nothing. The argument that allows exceptions will lose every time because once the exception is allowed, the premise of government control is accepted and the game is over. The same could be said for any government intervention in the market or our lives that is not directly related to the preservation of our fundamental rights.

It is time that those who stand for liberty stop trying to be "moderate", accepting a degree of slavery, a degree of respect for rights, a degree of redistribution, a degree of social justice, a degree of security or a degree of brute force. It is time to stand on absolute principles and learn to articulate those principles. After all, the fundamental nature of man yearns to be free, he must be fooled into becoming a slave. For too long so called "conservatives" have cooperated in the deception of the statists to reduce us all to servitude. They have failed to rise up to promote the "extreme" of "absolute" liberty. They have made arguments from fickle popular opinion, faith or even through appeals to history for history's sake and not according to the fundamental nature of man or the moral principles that make liberty and freedom so much better than tyranny. If we do not explain it and live it, freedom will continue to lose.

Mike Calpino
Candidate for Wicomico County Council

LP Monday Message: 10 reasons to end the wars now

Dear Friend of Liberty,

The long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been back in the news recently, and we just had the bizarre spectacle of the Republican National Committee Chairman saying he didn't like Obama's war in Afghanistan, while the DNC chastised him for failing to support the troops.

Here are ten reasons to end the wars now. I hope you'll take a look at some of the links.

1. American military and contractor casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2. Iraqi and Afghanistan civilian and military casualties.

3. These wars are a tremendous waste of taxpayer money in a time of extreme deficits, high unemployment and a falling stock market.

4. Invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq feeds terrorism.

5. Osama Bin Laden and his co-conspirators who attacked the World Trade Center were Saudi Arabian.

6. As Congressman Ron Paul recently said: "In Afghanistan, we are fighting the Taliban, those dangerous people with guns defending their homeland. Once they were called the Mujahideen, our old allies, along with bin Laden, in the fight to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan in the 1980s."

7. Most Republicans in Congress now admit Iraq was a mistake.

8. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele's comments show that even the hawkish Republican Party can't support this war with a straight face.

9. As James Madison said, "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." (Witness the PATRIOT Act.)

10. The U.S. military has been in Iraq over seven years, and in Afghanistan almost nine years. It's time to give peace a chance.

(Note, the LP doesn't necessarily endorse the organizations linked above. We encourage you to research these issues for yourself.)

Sincerely,

Wes Benedict
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee

Lorenzo on Immigration

Candidate for U.S. Congress, District 2:
Lorenzo Gaztañaga

PEACEFUL people should be able to cross borders PEACEFULLY for PEACEFUL purposes. What's going on along the southern border between the United States and Mexico is not an open border. I am tired of hearing that it's an open border. We don't have an open border any more than Sarajevo had open streets when people had to dodge bullets from snipers on rooftops. What we have on our southern border is chaos, mayhem and horrific crimes. People's property is being invaded, people are being kidnapped and murdered; women trying to cross the border (admittedly illegally) are being raped. The march across the border becomes a death march. Who does this benefit? I guess the people whose only goal is cheap labor. It has some benefit for those who make it in, IF they make it on the death march through the desert, since they can work, etc.

Before I get to my complete answer, let's knock down one myth-that these illegals don't pay taxes. They pay the same sales taxes that we all pay. The ones that are here using forged papers, including social security numbers from dead people, etc., are also paying income tax, which of course, the IRS in its infinite goodness doesn't mind or care about, as long as it gets its cut. What to do about the 12 to 14 million illegals here? Well, you find them. A government that knows everything about everybody living here should be able to find where they're working, go to these work places where illegals have been determined to be found, and fine the employers-but not to the extent of closing the business just to make the enforcers look good. There are many reasons for hiring illegal immigrants besides cheap labor. Some of them are very good workers.

Then, confront the illegal individuals and give them an ultimatum: a one year visa to stay in the country so long as you have work, which can be extended to two years as long as you're gainfully employed. If you do not accept or meet the criterion for that first year visa, you go back. A three year extension can be applied for after the two year extension, as long as you are gainfully employed. As long as you remain gainfully employed, after ten years you can apply for an indefinite period work visa. During this time, after five years of legal residence, you can begin the process of naturalization. There will also be a $50 fine for every year that you were here illegally before you were found out.

This is how to deal with the people who are here illegally now. Much like the Arizona law, for which I don't blame Arizona (my only concern is the possible violations of the fourth amendment), it would be a psychological deterrent to coming here illegally. Now, what do we do about changing the current immigration law? Well, you can come to the border peacefully and get a work visa at the border for $500 and proof that you have a job waiting for you. You can keep this visa until such time as you're no longer gainfully employed. A $500 processing fee is very reasonable, considering that poor people are paying thousands of dollars to criminals to get them across the border-coyotes who murder them in the desert or leave them to die in hot, unventilated trucks. In the United States, employers who are interested in hiring these folks could actually initiate contact with them in their home countries. This would be an easy matter in this age of the internet and cell phones and an entrepreneurial spirit that wants to rise above a calamitous economy. Job banks could easily be created in the countries of origin to match potential employers with potential employees. This should be managed as a private enterprise, not as a government service. The role of government is to ensure that people are not being abused or defrauded. Since they would be here legally, they would be able to report cases of abuse and fraud to the appropriate authorities. Any one of these immigrants will be treated as citizens or legal residents. If convicted of a crime, they will serve out their sentence here. If they have no job waiting for them after serving their time, they will be deported.

No fixed immigration policy can be complete without understanding the need for assimilation, and I know a thing or two about that personally. I am from Cuba. I'm very proud of my ancestry. I speak, read and write Spanish, my first tongue, fluently. My favorite dish is still Cuban black beans with white rice and pork chops. None of that has stopped me from loving my adoptive country, or from learning its language. Of course, I am fortunate, because when I came here, school systems were not trying to balkanize and separate Latin American immigrants and refugees by teaching them courses in Spanish that should have been taught in English, delaying their assimilation. The number of politicians back then who were trying to keep these immigrants as dependents of the government by keeping them apart and separate was not as large as it is today. This needs to change.

Lastly, concerning the virtual war that goes on along the southern border of the United States: we cannot separate the effects of the so-called War on Drugs from the mayhem along the border. To try to do so would be like separating the "H2" from the "O" and still thinking you have water. There's more, of course. I welcome questions and comments on this and all the other issues I've laid out here. Remember:

PEACEFUL PEOPLE SHOULD BE ABLE TO CROSS BORDERS PEACEFULLY FOR PEACEFUL PURPOSES.