Perhaps it is unflattering, and potentially offensive, to suggest that Ron Paul’s effort to restore the Constitution as the rule of law in America is a jihad, but a jihad it is. He has devoted his life to this cause. While the majority focus on the violent definition of the word, there is also such a thing as a non-violent jihad.
Ron Paul often speaks with praise for those that practice peaceful civil disobedience. He lists Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi among his heroes. Both men were practitioners of non-violent jihad.
Ron Paul, thanks mostly to the media, has earned the “extreme” label. Indeed some even transformed the word “libertarian”, as applied to Ron Paul, into a snarling invective. American politics has devolved into something akin to professional wrestling: numb skulls blustering into microphones followed by false maneuvers that excite zealots, but leave thinking people incredulous at the lunacy of it all.
One of Liberty Maven’s (soon-to-be) Liberty Heroes, Thomas DiLorenzo, was interviewed by columnist Ilana Mercer. DiLorenzo, who recently wrote Hamilton’s Curse, discusses at length Hamilton’s strong desire for mercantilism in this country, and throws the stated desires of Obama and McCain into the mix for comparison purposes.
Obama is a slick politician, so I expect him to continue to administer the neo-mercantilist, Hamiltonian empire that has been built up by both parties over the decades, with all of its schemes for corporate welfare for defense contractors, investment bankers and myriad other politically active businesses which, in turn, provide financial support for the regime. But Obama is also a hardcore leftist who spent his earlier career working with some of the craziest socialists in America, groups like ACORN, who advocated such things as kicking doctors off the boards of hospitals and replacing them with “the poor,” and Soviet-style nationalization of the energy and health care industries.
Quote of the Day: “Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.” Source: “Minority Report” (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997 [1956]), p. 222
Subject: A state of permanent preparedness for impeachment
It’s Election Day. What should we say about it? We’re tempted to declare it a day of mourning, but instead, we’re going to argue that today is the day to adopt a state of permanent preparedness for impeachment.
As of yet, neither a Democrat nor a Republican has been elected President. That outcome will be revealed later today. But before that happens, we should commit ourselves to closely monitor the actions of the new President, and to be ready to call for his impeachment, should that become warranted.
We should be prepared to do this regardless of partisan loyalties.
What warrants impeachment? Different people will have different standards. We plan to maintain a running “bill of impeachment,” listing broken laws, Constitutional violations, and abuses of power. It will be up to you to agree or disagree with the items we choose to list, and to decide whether or not any one item or group of items justifies impeachment.
It’s possible, given your level of sensitivity, that the new President could do something on his first day that would immediately warrant impeachment in your eyes, or that he will never do enough bad things to justify such an action.
The call will be yours.
Some people reasonably object that impeachment is too vulnerable to partisan ax grinding. There are also many things for which a president could be impeached of which the impeachers themselves will be guilty. It is precisely these concerns that prevented us from advocating the impeachment of President Bush. But . . . Read More »
“If the court grants our request … then if any law enforcement officer sees a Mongol wearing his patch, he will be authorized to stop that gang member and literally take the jacket right off his back.” - U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien
“The government can’t ban confederate flags, swastikas, or klan robes, and it sure as hell can’t ban the display of the Mongols’ logo.” - Marc J. Randazza
“What if the government had decided that, because of the Watergate scandal, nobody could use the word Republican again? - Zeichner Ellman
One of Liberty Maven’s Heroes of Liberty, Judge Andrew Napolitano appeared on Fox News’ The Verdict to ask the question, “Is the government we have today what the founders had in mind?” He discusses the issues of the day: Obama, McCain, the $700B bailout, Congressmen and presidents overstepping their Constitutional bounds, etc. Great video. Watch it now.
Here at Liberty Maven we have endorsed Chris Martenson a number of times. His Crash Course on the economy is unparalleled in explaining otherwise inaccessible concepts to the layman. Today on his blog, Martenson puts to rest any notion that the United States practices free capitalism and again points out that those who created the current problems are being rewarded while those who acted prudently are being punished. Quoting a Washington Post article, he describes how this is angering some:
Community banking executives around the country responded with anger yesterday to the Bush administration’s strategy of investing $250 billion in financial firms, saying they don’t need the money, resent the intrusion and feel it’s unfair to rescue companies from their own mistakes.
And in offices around the country, bankers simmered.
Peter Fitzgerald, chairman of Chain Bridge Bank in McLean, said he was “much chagrined that we will be punished for behaving prudently by now having to face reckless competitors who all of a sudden are subsidized by the federal government.”
At Evergreen Federal Bank in Grants Pass, Ore., chief executive Brady Adams said he has more than 2,000 loans outstanding and only three borrowers behind on payments. “We don’t need a bailout, and if other banks had run their banks like we ran our bank, they wouldn’t have needed a bailout, either,” Adams said.
Quotes of the Day: “To better understand moral hazard, consider the case of a gambler going to a casino. If he bears the losses, his bets will be constrained by that risk. If someone were to guarantee him against loss, but allow him to keep the profits, the gambler would have an incentive to make the riskiest possible bets. He gains all the profits but bears none of the losses. One might designate such a system as “casino capitalism.” Current Fed policy has encouraged casino capitalism in the housing market.
– Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr.
“When . . . moral hazard is present, credit flows rapidly into inelastically supplied assets, such as real estate. Rapid appreciation is the result, until the inevitable albeit belated regulatory crackdown stops the flow of credit and leads to an asset-price crash.”
– Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman
Subject: The Fed is destroying your money, RIGHT NOW
In a continuing effort to rescue and reward those who made bad financial decisions, the Federal Reserve is making you pay yet again, in another way, on top of the Big Bailout.
Apparently, the $700 billion Big Bailout wasn’t a large enough payout to America’s poorly run companies. Still more of your hard earned money is needed. The federal government will take this new pound of flesh in the form of a massive inflation tax.
You pay an inflation tax whenever the Federal Reserve creates new dollars. This causes every dollar you hold to be worth less than it was before.
Those who get this new money first will become vastly richer, at your expense, because they’ll get to spend the money before it causes prices to rise.
Who gets the money first? The banking system — the very institutions that profited from the government policies that inflated the housing bubble. First they profited from the bubble, and now they’re going to profit from the bubble bursting too.
The Federal Reserve is taking this action because the Big Bailout was constructed on an inherent contradiction. How could the government solve the supposed problem of tight credit by borrowing $700 billion to bailout the credit system? Money borrowed by the government cannot be borrowed by others, which must inevitably tighten credit in the private economy. Of course . . .
Today’s article from the Ludwig von Mises Institute discusses the practice of “selling short”, which the SEC recently outlawed, and why it’s a critical component of how the market works:
The Securities and Exchange Commission took the very drastic step of outlawing the essential financial practice of short selling in an attempt to galvanize financial markets. (The SEC recently extended at least some portions of its initial ban through October 17.) But short selling provides essential information to market participants and helps us update our expectations accordingly. By outlawing short selling, the SEC has eliminated a crucial element of what makes markets work.
Basically, the federal government (in the form of the unconstitutional SEC) intervened in the market and ended up making it worse.
Quote of the Day: “It’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it”.
– George Carlin
Subject: Spying on Children
On Monday we made the case that had we passed the “Read the Bills Act” and the “One Subject at a Time Act” back in the 90s, the Big Bailout could not have passed last Friday.
If there had been a huge army of DC Downsizers back then, able to achieve universal visibility, and relentless, overwhelming pressure, the government laws, regulations, and programs that have led to the housing bubble and bust could also have been averted.
What was true then, remains true now. The seeds of future disasters are being sown even now, because this is what government does. It creates a crisis, and then exploits the resulting hysteria to gain new powers with which to create even larger disasters. But the cure for this disease also remains the same — the big army, Operation Everywhere, and passage of “Read the Bills” and “One Subject at a Time.”
Here’s the latest reason to pass “Read the Bills” . . .
According to AP, the Supreme Court refused to intervene in a lower court decision that disallowed Bob Barr to be on the Louisiana ballot.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court refused Tuesday to intervene in a dispute between Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr and Louisiana over Barr’s bid to get on the state’s ballot.
The justices denied Barr’s request for help in a one-sentence order.
The Libertarians blamed Hurricane Gustav for making them miss the deadline to be included on Louisiana ballot.
Barr is on the ballot in 43 states, though court challenges could change that.
According to Ballot Access News, Barr is on the ballot in 45 states. I’m not sure where the AP is obtaining their numbers. This is yet another time and money consuming distraction from the real issues that the well funded two party duopoly never has to worry about.
Will there be a third party uprising before 2012? I could certainly get behind that.
Liberty Maven
Today’s article from the 
