Category Archives: Politics

Obama outmaneuvers Republicans again on gun control

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TAMPA, January 20, 2013 — One day before his second inauguration ceremony, President Obama has plenty of reasons to smile. Despite a persistently weak economy, he was reelected by a comfortable margin in November and then completely outmaneuvered his Republican opponents in the tax hike standoff. That ended with Republicans breaking a decades-old pledge never to raise taxes.

Following the usual calls for more gun control following a widely publicized shooting, it looks as if Obama has outmaneuvered the GOP again. After appointing Vice President Joe Biden to head a gun violence task force, Obama made an ominous-sounding statement.

“Well, my understanding is the Vice President is going to provide a range of steps that we can take to reduce gun violence. Some of them will require legislation. Some of them I can accomplish through executive action. And so I’ll be reviewing those today. And as I said, I’ll speak in more detail to what we’re going to go ahead and propose later in the week.”

The Republican response was predictable. Cries of constitutional crisis and calls for impeachment exploded from Republican politicians and conservative-leaning media.

Whether because of the Republican reaction or by design, Obama’s executive orders were remarkably uncontroversial. Despite rumors that the president had written 23 new executive orders restricting gun ownership, Obama actually didn’t write any. Instead, he wrote 3 “presidential memoranda” directing existing federal agencies to do a better job at what they are already doing.

This leaves Republicans who yelled “impeachment” before even hearing what the president proposed looking like “extremists” again, not to mention somewhat silly. It sets up the Democrats perfectly for the upcoming congressional fight over new gun legislation. Republicans will be under pressure to compromise to undo the political damage done by this latest gaffe.

There are certainly constitutional arguments against Obama’s actions, but Republicans are in no position to make them. Strict constitutionalists have long argued that the mere existence of agencies like the ATF and the CDC is unconstitutional, but the Republican Party, which created one and greatly expanded the other, has no grounds upon which to make this argument.

Those few GOP legislators who can do so with any credibility, like Senator Rand Paul or Rep. Justin Amash, are considered outsiders by the party elite.

There is a fundamental problem here that the GOP has to resolve if it does not wish to fade into irrelevance. It has to define some fundamental philosophical differences between it and the Democratic Party. Despite rhetoric about small government and free markets, there just isn’t any meat on the GOP bones for opponents of the Democratic Party to sink their teeth into.

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Feinstein’s assault weapons ban would abolish the 2nd Amendment

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TAMPA, December 18, 2012 –U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein has vowed to introduce a bill to ban assault weapons nationwide, similar to existing legislation in California. In doing so, she will effectively abolish yet another of the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

To many, Feinstein’s argument might sound very reasonable. She isn’t looking to ban all guns. “The purpose of this bill is to get just what Mayor Bloomberg said, weapons of war off the streets of our cities,” the senator told Meet the Press.

Having weapons of war on the streets is the whole point of the 2nd Amendment. The amendment wasn’t drafted to ensure that Americans could hunt. It wasn’t drafted so that Americans could protect themselves, although the natural right to defend one’s life was never as compromised as it is in the modern gun control era.

Like most of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, the 2nd Amendment was drafted to prevent an abuse of power that American colonists had suffered under the British. The 4th Amendment was passed with Writs of Assistance in mind. Lexington and Concord inspired the 2nd.

The left loves to reduce the American Revolution to one issue: taxation without representation. That works for well for their agenda, because they can then say, “Well, you’re represented, so now we can tax the living daylights out of you.”

It wasn’t that simple, of course. There were many long term and short term causes for the American secession from Great Britain. But the straw that broke the camel’s back, the most immediate cause for armed resistance, was the British attempt to disarm the colonists.

That’s why the British marched to Concord. That’s the only reason the colonists cared where they were marching.

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Mitt Romney did not pay less in taxes than his secretary (and raising capital gains tax will destroy the economy)

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TAMPA, December 1, 2012 ― President Obama and the Democrats were successful in 2012 largely on the strength of some rather outlandish demagoguery. “Billionaires pay fewer taxes than their secretaries” was one slogan that was particularly successful.

The Obama campaign successfully made an issue out of Mitt Romney’s taxes, finally getting Romney to admit that he paid around 13% of his earnings in taxes over the past several years. The “fair share” crowd contrasted this with the higher percentage that would have been paid by a secretary in the 28% bracket, for example, who would still pay more than 13% even after deductions.

That Americans bought this specious argument is more worrisome than that the Democrats made it.

Romney’s tax percentage was low because most of earnings came from capital gains, not income. Capital gains are just what they sound like. They are the appreciation in the value of one’s capital. If you buy a stock at $5 per share and its price goes up to $7 dollars per share, you have realized $2 in capital gains. If you sell that stock at a $2 dollar profit, the government wants a percentage.

Right now, Mitt Romney would pay 35% income tax and 15% on capital gains. The average secretary would pay 15% income tax and 15% on capital gains. So, Romney’s tax liability as a percentage of income is more than double the average secretary’s. His tax liability on capital gains is the same. Obviously, Romney’s nominal tax payments in both categories would exceed the secretary’s by orders of magnitude.

That’s how things actually are out here in the real world.

So why is the tax rate on capital gains lower than on income? Because “capital,” by definition, comes from previously taxed income.

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The fiscal cliff: Another phony emergency to give the government more power

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TAMPA, November 27, 2012 – The 24-hour news cycle is dominated with frantic warnings about the “fiscal cliff.” If you merely listen to the sound bites, there is another “emergency” facing the United States of America and only some drastic action by Congress can avert it.

What nonsense. Don’t Americans ever learn anything from even the recent past?

Just four years ago, we were told that if we didn’t allow Congress to give Wall Street almost a trillion dollars of our money, the end of the world would occur. The “bold” legislation was necessary to “save the financial system.” Other than preventing a lot of billionaires who made bad investments from losing their money, I’m not sure what that was supposed to mean.

It didn’t prevent millions of borrowers from losing their homes. That happened anyway.

We were told after 911 that “the world changed” and the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments to the Constitution would have to be trashed. Americans now subject themselves to unreasonable searches without warrant merely for the “privilege” of getting on a plane. They allow presidents to arrest American citizens without a warrant or charges and hold them indefinitely without recourse to a writ of habeas corpus.

The president can even kill American citizens without due process.

It was all supposedly necessary to protect us from…the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber. Both defeated the new government security apparatus and were subdued by private citizens.

Both initiatives were accompanied by a non-stop barrage of media propaganda trumpeting impending doom if the government wasn’t given more power.

The fiscal cliff scam is playing out exactly the same way. Day and night, Americans are bombarded with the same message. If Congress doesn’t do something, the world will end.

There are two components to this supposed disaster. The first is the “draconian cuts” to government spending built into the Budget Control Act of 2011. Supposedly, they will “gut the military,” while plunging the economy back into recession.

There is only one problem. Even if Congress fails to make a deal, nothing is being cut from the federal budget.

Let me repeat that. Nothing is being cut.

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The real question about Benghazi: Was Chris Stevens a CIA agent?

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TAMPA, November 25, 2012 ― The media can’t get enough of the “investigation” into what the Obama administration knew about what was happening in Benghazi and when they knew it. Obama survived the initial furor and got reelected, but the controversy rages on.

What is the real question here? Judging from media coverage and the Congressional investigation, we might assume that the only matter to be resolved is whether the Obama administration knew that a coordinated terrorist attack was underway, rather than a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Muslim film. According to this narrative, Obama could have been more proactive in responding to the attack and sent in military assistance to try to save Stevens and his associates.

None of this would seem to be the stuff of a major scandal. The Obama administration may or may not have handled the situation properly. If they didn’t and tried to cover up their incompetence, it would hardly be a new Watergate. The intensity of the controversy doesn’t jibe with its supposed cause.

Or is there another reason for a cover-up by the White House? Was Chris Stevens a CIA agent?

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As far back as October 25, Fox News’ Andrew Napolitano asked this question and he was not alone. He cited his colleague Justin Fishel’s report on the same subject. According to Fishel:

“In reality, CIA agents and other intelligence officials were operating out of Benghazi conducting delicate missions, including the search for over 20,000 deadly shoulder-fired missiles previously owned by Muammar Qaddafi’s Libyan forces … Both the CIA outpost and the consulate were attacked on Sept. 11. Two of the men killed, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, were hit by indirect fire while defending the intelligence post, not the consulate.”

If the September 11 attack targeted a CIA base actively conducting covert operations within Libya, it renders the whole question of whether the attack was a reaction to the infamous video or a coordinated terrorist attack moot. Under those circumstances, it would be neither. It might more accurately be described as a “counterinsurgency operation” carried out by forces opposed to the new U.S.-installed Libyan government. Perhaps they were aligned with the ousted Qaddafi government. Perhaps they were al Qaeda who were happy to accept U.S. assistance in getting rid of Qaddafi and are now happy to turn on the U.S. That would be a familiar story.

Regardless, Stevens’ death might have been collateral damage in an attack against a known (in Libya) CIA covert operation. Or Stevens might have been a CIA operative himself who was not only participating in the post-revolution operations in 2012 but had actively participated in the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime. According to Napolitano, this theory might fit the facts better than any offered so far.

“Now we can connect some dots. If Stevens was a CIA agent, he was in violation of international law by acting as the U.S. ambassador. And if he and his colleagues were intelligence officials, they are not typically protected by Marines, because they ought to have been able to take care of themselves.”

If Stevens was a CIA agent actively involved in covert operations, it would be a major international scandal. It would call into question not only the Obama administration, but all of the U.S. government’s activities during its decade-long “war on terror.”

So why have neither the media nor the Congressional committee even asked the question?

Fishel confirms that the House oversight committee investigating the incident has been instructed not to investigate certain aspects of the Benghazi operation.

That means that no one is even trying to get at the truth. The Congressional investigation and the media frenzy amount to little more than a distraction for the American public, which seems to have taken the bait hook, line and sinker. They join the two major parties in fiercely debating a non-issue while ignoring the crucial questions asked by a few actual journalists.

Was Chris Stevens a CIA agent? Was the attack on Benghazi a terrorist attack or a counterattack against a covert military operation? Are there other U.S. diplomats actively participating in covert operations while posing as ambassadors of peace to foreign governments? Has the U.S. government become as immoral as the terrorists it purports to be fighting? What else do we not know about its international activities?

The silence is deafening.

President Obama: Staying out of Gaza conflict your biggest test

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TAMPA, November 16, 2012 – Dear President Obama,

Push may be coming to shove in Israel. There is only so long that one side can tolerate rockets being fired into its territory and the other can tolerate living under martial law imposed by a foreign power. The whole world hopes for a diplomatic solution, but one side or both may insist upon war.

If it comes to that, then you will face the biggest test of your presidency. Under enormous pressure to do otherwise, the right decision will be to do nothing.

The government you run is bankrupt and the nation is weary of war, especially the pointless kind we’ve waged in the Middle East over the past decade. History will eventually judge both of those wars U.S. defeats. A mighty empire invaded a third world backwater and was eventually expelled by guerilla “freedom fighters” defending their homeland. It’s an old story, but apparently neither voters nor world leaders learn much from history.

For now, the U.S. can declare victory in Afghanistan and withdraw and only good can come of that. What we cannot afford, economically or from a national security standpoint is to go right back into the Middle East, this time with world war a very real possibility.

There is already some speculation that a major offensive by Israel into Gaza may merely be a warm-up for a war with Iran. That may or may not be the Israeli government’s intention, but no rational person can deny that the situation has enormous potential to go there. At that point, it will be more important than ever to adopt the foreign policy that 24 consecutive U.S. presidents said was what made our nation wealthy and powerful: nonintervention.

U.S. citizens have been badgered for a decade with the tired argument that history has taught us not to “appease” a dictator. First Saddam Hussein and now Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been the latest Hitler. Appease them, we are told, and they will not stop until they take over the world. Of course, no one stops to ask the obvious question: With what?

Let’s talk about Hitler and what we learned from history. Chamberlain’s infamous agreement is rather late in the game to pick up the story. Let’s rewind back to Hitler’s rise to power. It could never have happened without the economic hardship Germans suffered as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. That one-sided treaty would never have been signed had the U.S. not entered WWI and turned a stalemate that all countries wanted a way out of into a decisive Allied victory.

Sound familiar? It should, although there is a major difference here. Any war between Israel and either the Palestinians or Iranians – or even both of them together – would not be a stalemate. It would be a decisive Israeli victory that might lead to a lasting peace, if all of the players understand that they are on their own.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

Election 2012: Was Obama the lesser of two evils?

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TAMPA, November 8, 2012 – “We’re all socialists now.”

If all of the pre-election hype about the presidential election being a choice between socialism and capitalism was true, then that statement must be true.

I doubt most Americans believe it.

In fact, Obama is no more a socialist than Romney is a capitalist. Obama has not called for state ownership of the means of production. Romney has not called for a laissez faire economy. Absent the rhetoric, they would both be most accurately described as European social democrats.

For libertarians, the choice between them was “heads the government wins, tails libertarians lose.” It is generally assumed that libertarians would consider Romney the “lesser of two evils.” I don’t think that’s true.

Romney’s rhetoric employed buzz words that both libertarians and conservatives respond to, like “free markets,” “small government” and “less taxes.” Obama’s rhetoric employed universally recognized code words for wealth redistribution like “fairness,” “fair share” and “investment.”

However, when you strip all of that away, the policy platforms of the two men were virtually identical.

Obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthy to help balance the federal budget. Romney does not disagree. Romney stated – over and over again in the first debate – that his plan to lower the income tax rates while simultaneously “closing loopholes” (translation: eliminate deductions) was aimed at getting the wealthy to pay more while giving small business and the middle class a tax break.

When Obama says it, he’s a socialist. When Romney says it, crickets.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

Interview (Video): Christina Tobin of Free and Equal Elections Foundation

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TAMPA, November 4, 2012 – “Remember, remember the 5th of November.”

So says Christina Tobin, found and chair of the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, a 501 (c)3 non-profit formed to ensure a fair an open electoral process for all. The organization is sponsoring its second presidential debate this election season on November 5th at 9 PM EST. Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson will square off against Green Party nominee Jill Stein.

Johnson and Stein won the right to participate by finishing first and second, respectively, in an online vote conducted after the first Free and Equal debate on October 23rd. In addition to Johnson and Stein, Constitution Party nominee Virgil Goode and Justice Party nominee Rocky Anderson also participated in the first debate.

While united in their opposition to the two-party system, Johnson and Stein have very different ideas about the role of government and the solutions to America’s problems.

“They do have a different take on things such as healthcare and so on, but my feeling is that the two-party system has been playing us for over a century now and they’ve made us quite divisive. I do foresee, after this election, a huge movement of independents running for office and finding, well, we do have a lot in common across the spectrum,” said Tobin.

Watch the video interview at Communities@ Washington Times…

Read Free Chapters of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America here!

 

Support for Kill List and NDAA make Obama and Romney unfit for office

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TAMPA, November 2, 2012 – It wasn’t so long ago that the following statement could only appear in a dystopian novel or movie script:

The U.S. President has killed an American citizen without due process, without even charging him with a crime. His decision to do this has been challenged by members of neither party.

While the media-fueled frenzy goes on about how supposedly different Romney and the conservatives are from Obama and the liberals, no one even raises an eyebrow about this terrifying political development.

Not even the left, which quite correctly howled at passage of the Patriot Act and the Bush administrations’ other assaults on freedom.

Bush and the Republicans committed egregious crimes against liberty, but did not go near this far in violating the even more important right to life.

The president makes a mockery of the term “due process” by claiming the requirement is fulfilled by a panel of his own self-appointed czars and cronies reviewing the case. This doesn’t even pass the constitutional test. The panel is exclusively comprised of members of the executive branch of government. Judicial power is explicitly denied to the executive by the plain words of the constitution.

At any previous time in American history, a summary execution by the executive without due process would have been considered cold blooded murder and an act of tyranny. Yet, it has happened in the light of day and neither the political class nor the citizenry has batted an eye.

If even this does not rouse American citizens to stand up to their government, to what would they conceivably say “no?”

Given Romney’s endorsement of the president’s action, there is a well-worn term that applies to both candidates for president. “Unfit for office” has been wasted in the past on extramarital affairs or scandals involving some misappropriation of funds in private business. Like the cry of “wolf!” its impact has been eroded by overuse.

However, it is a gravely serious charge. It denotes a fundamental moral failing that puts a candidate completely beyond consideration.

Both President Obama and Mitt Romney are unfit for office due to their support for the presidential kill list. Regardless of where they stand on economic policy, foreign policy or social issues, this position alone should disqualify them in any civilized society.

So why hasn’t it?

The only possible answer is the American public has become so numb to the exercise of arbitrary power that they are unable to even raise a bleat while being led to the slaughter.

It is almost anti-climactic to point out that if you are not summarily executed by either a Romney or Obama administration, you may be arrested by the military without a warrant and held indefinitely without charges, recourse to a writ of habeas corpus or any appeal to an impartial judge. This provision is part of the last NDAA bill which the president signed and which Romney stated he would have signed as well. It is the law of the land.

So was the Reichstag Fire Act in 1930’s Germany. That did not make it right. Without exaggerating, that is where we are right now.

Anyone who watched the first Third Party Debate could not have helped but notice that the various candidates were as different from each other individually as they were collectively from Romney or Obama. Green Party candidate Jill Stein is so far left on economic policy that she makes Obama look like Warren G. Harding. Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson is so laissez faire that he makes Romney look like Woodrow Wilson.

However, all of them agreed on one thing. The basic protections of personal freedom and security guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are not open to negotiation. That is the “red line” over which the government may not tread. That line is the one tangible thing that has made America different from the worst tyrannies of history.

A vote for Obama or Romney on November 6th is worse than wasting your vote. It is surrendering not only your liberty but your very life to the discretion of the all-powerful state. It is accepting a station even lower than a slave’s.

Fortunately, you do have other choices. Gary Johnson will be on the ballot in at least 47 states. Many of the other candidates may be on your ballot as well. Florida’s ballot will provide twelve choices for president. Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein will debate again on November 5th, one day before the election.

Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, you will find among these choices a candidate you agree with at least as much as you agree with Romney or Obama. What you will not find is a candidate who claims arbitrary power over your life.

Do not give your consent to a candidate who does.

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

2nd Third Party Debate: Will Americans Remember the 5th of November?

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TAMPA, October 31, 2012 – “We’ll have to agree to disagree.” When uttered in a political context, there is no passive-aggressive cliché that I detest more than this one,

Invariably, this is the rejoinder offered by the statist who has painted himself into a corner while trying to justify his invasion of the life and property of others. Unable to honestly answer the question, “Aren’t you advocating the initiation of force against your fellow man?” the statist will end the conversation with this insipid bit of anti-reason, usually with condescending sanctimoniousness.

The problem is that one side of the argument is agreeing to refrain from invading the property of anyone else, while the other side claims doing so is his right. There is nothing either fair or civilized by “agreeing to disagree” under these circumstances.

Of course, the problem isn’t that the statist holds this opinion.

It is his right to hold any opinion he wishes and to express that opinion freely. The problem is what happens next. Informed by his opinion, the statist then goes into the voting booth and votes himself the life and property of other people.

Worse yet, according to the bizarre principles presently governing American society, he is then provided with the ill-gotten gains by the politician.

Continue at Communities@ Washington Times…

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