The Freedom Factory

After extensive research we’ve concluded that these are the Top 10 Signs you just might be a Socialist:

1. You advocate for equality for all and yet you want to raise taxes on certain social classes.
2. You support the troops but do not support the war and you did not support the war in Iraq but now you support the war in Afghanistan. So… do you want war or not?
3. You believe in bigger Government and yet you advocate for the government not to run your life.
4. You think that we shouldn’t outsource labor and yet you complain about the rising cost of consumer goods.
5. You want the Government to take control and regulate all private businesses and yet you work for or own a privately owned business.
6. You want to get paid the same as everybody else, but the average income in the US is probably less than what you are making.
7. You think that the Government should spend more money to stimulate the economy when the Government has no money.
8. You think that the tax increase will not affect you.
9. You sit around and wait for the Government to “help” you.
10. You blame the economy for putting you in the situation that you are in even though you’ve been in the same situation for years.

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The Federal Reserve is creating tens of trillions of new dollars, debasing our currency, and silently taxing us all through inflation. With tens of trillions in federal budget deficits on the horizon there is nowhere for the US dollar to go, but down. Refuse to be a victim of this flawed financial system, buy gold and silver NOW!

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key speaks a strange language. It’s English, all right, even with an accent, but he is one of the only world leaders who is speaking of relaxing regulations, cutting taxes, spending within budget, and focusing on making his country more productive.

Rather than jumping on the tax, borrow, spend, print, populist bandwagon with nearly every other world leader, John Key’s solution to the tough times is to “use this time to transform the economy to make us stronger so that when the world starts growing again we can be running faster than other countries we compete with.”

Key’s idea is to grow the country out of recession by improving productivity, not simply catering to populist calls for wealth redistribution, stifling regulation, and growth-inhibiting class warfare taxes. He calls attempts to use debt and money printing to “prop up growth” risky, saying that saddling future generations with debt could be counterproductive. He is one of the only politicians who states “There is actually a limit to what governments can do.”

At a time when governments are growing by leaps and bounds, and everyone seems convinced that Big Brother holds the keys to economic prosperity, it is refreshing to see a world leader (actually an ex-currency trader) embrace sound economic principals.

Key admits that New Zealand will not pull the world out of recession; it’s too bad other leaders lack such humility!

Here’s a link to the Wall Street Journal interview with Key.

—–SPECIAL OFFER—–

The Federal Reserve is creating tens of trillions of new dollars, debasing our currency, and silently taxing us all through inflation. With tens of trillions in federal budget deficits on the horizon there is nowhere for the US dollar to go, but down.

Refuse to be a victim of this flawed financial system, buy gold and silver NOW!

In a speech to the European Parliament, British Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan confronts Prime Minister Gordon Brown:

In the last 12 months a 100,000 private sector jobs have been lost and yet you’ve created 30000 public sector jobs. pm, you cannot carry on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit. You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.

Hannan is furious with Britain’s response to the financial downturn, decrying the borrowing, spending, currency devaluation, and increased Socialization of the economy as destructive. It turns out that everything Britain is doing wrong is being done in the U.S.

Check out Daniel Hannan’s book, The Plan: Twelve Months To Renew Britain.

“ In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” Thomas Jefferson

For those of us who love individual liberty, free-markets and limited government, we face each day, burdened, with more news of the march toward socialism and the destruction of the principles of constitutionalism. The principles, upon which this nation were founded, are being discarded for the failed elitist theories of socialism.

I believe, however, that the move, by the current administration, toward a centralized, messianic government, does not reflect the will of the majority of the American people nor does it reflect the intent of the Framers of the Constitution.

We must be reminded, then, by what authority government operates and what limits the Framers of the Constitution intended to impose on government? Russell Kirk explains, in his excellent book, “The American Cause,” writing,

“The constitutions of the American commonwealth are intended – and have successfully operated – to restrain political power: to prevent any person or clique or party from dominating permanently the government of the country. Sir Henry Maine, the nineteenth-century historian of law, remarked that the American Constitution is the great political achievement of modern times. The American constitutional system reconciles popular government with private and local rights. It has been called “filtered democracy” – that is, the reign of public opinion chastened and limited by enduring laws, political checks and balances, and representative institutions. It combines stability with popular sovereignty.

It is one of the great premises of American political theory that all just authority comes form the people, under God: not from a monarch or a governing class, but from the innumerable individuals who make up the public. The people delegate to government only so much power as they think is prudent for government to exercise; they reserve to themselves all the powers and rights that are not expressly granted to the federal or state or local governments. Government is the creation of the people, not their master. Thus the American political system, first of all, is a system of limited, delegated powers, entrusted to political officers and representatives and leaders for certain well-defined public purposes. Only through the recognition of this theory of popular sovereignty, and only through this explicit delegation of powers, the founders of the American Republic believed, could be the American nation keep clear of tyranny or anarchy. The theory and the system have succeeded: America never has endured a dictator or tolerated violent social disorder.

I firmly believe that Americans are not ready to abandon the Constitutional principles of limited government, nor are they ready to allow the federal government to continue to overstep those principles. We have achieved the greatest freedom of any people on earth and history has not provided another prospect for bettering mankind. What it has shown us is that government must be bound “…from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

Adam Smith, who lived in the eighteenth century, provided the philosophical and most systematic arguments for the underpinnings of a laissez-faire economic system in his book “The Wealth of Nations.” Smith makes the argument that it was only the interference of government which disrupted the natural working of economic society and created poverty and decay rather than abundance and harmony. As Smith explained:

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.

The drive for greater government regulation is the drive toward increased poverty, unemployment and the loss of liberty. With the Obama administration pushing an ever expanding federal government plan to take control of our financial institutions, health care system, the auto industry, and its attack on free speech, the time is now to clearly articulate the differences between free markets and free people, and government administered markets and government control of our lives.

For Freedom’s Sake

CNN contributor, Paul Begala, attacks South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford in this commentary, claiming that if Sanford disagrees with federal spending plans he should not accept federal money. According to Begala, with all the money South Carolina receives in federal aid, the state is literally a “ward of the federal government.”

Note the two personal attacks on Sanford: this is routine operating procedure for leftists. If you cannot debunk the ideas of your competitor, attack the person and dance around the subject, trying to make the ideas sound ridiculous without actually addressing them: Continue Reading

In a newsletter earlier this month, Senator Boxer wrote to Californians that her chief priorities are to “stabilize the housing market, create new, good-paying jobs, and get our economy back on track.” You can read a letter I wrote to her in response.

She cites a dour real estate market and a state-wide unemployment rate in excess of 8.2%. California is, indeed, facing tough economic challenges. The real estate market crash has hit the state particularly hard, with prices down about 33% between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego.

Some “fixes” proposed by the Senator:

1. Extend the food stamp program
2. Revise the COPS program that helps local law enforcement with staffing needs
3. Congressional “economic recovery” package to create infrastructure programs (build bridges, highways, and other big ticket projects)
4. Subsidize alternative energy projects

These political “fixes” are all misdirected and will spend lots of your money to do little. Food stamps, more police officers, and temporary construction jobs will do nothing to make the state more competitive, which is the real problem. Government construction is notoriously corrupt and inefficient-think Boston’s Big Dig which ran 470% over budget and killed a motorist with shoddy construction.

Let’s get real and propose policies that will actually grow the economy. California has two big problems:  over-regulation and over-taxation. We were hard hit by the housing downturn largely due to politically distorted real estate markets. Heavy taxation and restrictive labor laws drive businesses out of the state.

If Senator Boxer seriously wishes to help the state economy she should do something entirely foreign to her: figure out how to reduce government involvement in business activity.

• Identify and eradicate laws and regulations that decrease business profitability
• Address California’s punitive tax system that drives jobs out of the state

More government is not the answer, but politicians rarely admit that the best way to help is to step aside. Everyone wants the glory that comes with power.

I’ll keep you updated on the Senator’s response to my letter. From experience, I anticipate receiving a canned, automated response. I have yet to receive a response that actually addresses my concerns directly. Rather, I suspect low level staffers simply match the topic of my message with pre-written responses.

The Wall Street Journal published an articletoday describing Senator John McCain’s energy platform. The underlying theme is that markets should be permitted to function naturally, while government involvement should be relegated to longer term alternative investment, primarily in nuclear and clean-coal. He is also for expanded access to domestic oil reserves through off-shore drilling, while keeping the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge off limits. To his credit, McCain takes a principled (and logical) stance against federal subsidization of corn ethanol, wind, and solar alternatives. Considering the power the ethanol lobby has maintained in Washington over the last thirty years, this open opposition is courageous.