Author: Campaign For Liberty Blog

By carolyn moffa

If you haven’t heard from us already, Campaign for Liberty is working on getting as many people as possible to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference!

This year it will be hosted in New Orleans, Louisiana from April 8-11. SRLC 2010 will be taking place at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel, and Ron Paul will be speaking at the event on the afternoon of Saturday, April 10^th. Campaign for Liberty will also be having a special reception that evening, where Dr. Paul will be in attendance.

Not only will you be able to see Ron Paul, but it is also the same weekend as the French Quarter Festival! If great music, food and quality time with other Liberty loving individuals sounds like something you would be interested in, click here. Adult tickets are only $30 for the whole event, and Students can go for FREE but they are going fast, so make sure you register today!

See you in New Orleans!

By Adam de Angeli

Dear Friend of Liberty,

By Matt Hawes

More hope and change on its way.  Read the AP article here.

By Matt Holdridge

From Time Magazine:

Could a national identity card help resolve the heated immigration-reform divide?

Two Senators, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer and South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, certainly seem to think so. They recently presented an immigration-bill blueprint to President Barack Obama that includes a proposal to issue a biometric ID card — one that would contain physical data such as fingerprints or retinal scans — to all working Americans.

We’ve seen this attempt before. Again, the argument by Graham and Schumer is full of holes and danger as Time points out. 

The sheer scale of the project is a potential problem, in terms of time, money and technology. The premise of using a biometric employment card (which would most likely contain fingerprint data) to stop illegal immigrants from working requires that all 150 million–plus American workers, not just immigrants, have one. Michael Cherry, president of identification-technology company Cherry Biometrics, says the accuracy of such large-scale biometric measuring hasn’t been proved. “What study have we done?” he says. “We just have a few assumptions.”

Furthermore, a biometric card possesses too many opportunities for abuse by clever criminals and most of all, the government itself. 

Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, believes that keeping biometric information out of a centralized database is “the biggest challenge.” Otherwise, she says, the prospect of having millions of fingerprints on hand would be too tempting for the government not to abuse. In their op-ed, the Senators said the information would be stored only on the card.

Although the card is being presented as existing solely for determining employment eligibility, “it will be almost impossible to say that this wealth of information is there, but you can only use it for this purpose,” Coney says. “Privacy is pretty much hinged on the notion that if you collect data for one purpose, you can’t use it for another.” Calabrese expresses worries that this ID will become a “central identity document” that one will need in order to travel, vote or perhaps own a gun, which Melmed calls “mission creep.”

As C4L President, John Tate said “This is exactly the type of battle that often decides whether a country remains free, or continues down a slide toward tyranny.” 

That’s why it’s vital you sign the petitions to your Congressman and Senators IMMEDIATELY.

By Matt Hawes

C4L’s Kevin Brett recently interviewed columnist and author Tim Carney on how the recent health care bill empowers the drug and insurance industries, why Barack Obama is not the foe of the special interests he’s believed to be, and what effect the legislation will have on our health care.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxlHOJJ1GJg

Pick up a copy of Tim’s book, Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses, at Amazon.com and share it with family and friends who may still think President Obama is the anti-corporate crusader the White House would have you believe.

By Matt Holdridge

From James Antle in the Daily Caller: 

The drive to “repeal and replace” the newly enacted health care-reform law has already bumped into a bit of Beltway conventional wisdom: Entitlements are never repealed. Even if Republicans somehow summoned the political will to try, they would first need to win the presidency and a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate.

That would be a tall order, to be sure. And no one should underestimate the difficulty of reversing what Washington has wrought—in a welfare state, the ratchet effect usually works only one way. But those who say it has never been done before are forgetting about the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988.

Unlike President Obama’s recent health care handiwork, the 1988 law was a genuinely bipartisan achievement passed by lopsided margins. It was signed into law by a Republican president, Ronald Reagan. It offered all kinds of new benefits, including expanded coverage of hospital stays, at-home care, and prescription drugs (the act was in some respects of a forerunner of Medicare Part D).

The Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act was nevertheless repealed a year later. No change in partisan control of Washington was necessary—the repeal was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by another Republican president, George H.W. Bush. The repeal turned out to be most popular with the elderly voters who had demanded the new benefits in the first place.

He goes on,

Not everyone who opposed Medicare expansion was particularly principled or even well informed. Health care scholar David Hyman quoted a reporter as saying at the time, “the elderly are not against the new benefits—unlimited hospital care, new at-home benefits, prescription drug coverage; they just don’t want to pay for them.”

The conclusion,

…if the new health care reform law results in higher taxes, higher premiums, and busted state budgets, more people will be angry than the occasional old woman who says she doesn’t want the federal government messing with her Medicare. This could prove especially true of legislation with front-loaded costs that was narrowly supported by members of just one political party.

In 1988, members of Congress thought they were passing catastrophic care. They ended up with a catastrophe. Repeal is always a possibility when their political health is at stake.

The political class is hoping that we forget about the health care fight. It’s our job to keep it on the front burner. 

By Gary Howard

Another post about Romneycare?  (Tim Shoemaker makes some similar points so check his out too)? Why not?

From today’s WSJ:

President Barack Obama found himself, once again, defending the health care overhaul this morning.

But this time he brought up former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Rommey, who has been positioning himself as a leader of the effort to repeal the health bill.

In an interview on NBC’s Today Show, the president told host Matt Lauer that the new law “is a critical first step in making a health care system that works for all Americans.” And in blunt terms, he blamed the GOP for the public uproar surrounding its passage. “I think the Republican Party made a calculated decision, a political decision, that they would not support whatever we did.” Read more…

Well, that is interesting. Let’s read on.

Obama went on to say that “I think that’s unfortunate because when you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean, a lot of commentators have said, you know, this is this is similar to the bill that Mitt Rommey, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts.”

So Obama admits that he agrees with Republican ideas on healthcare. As a matter of fact, he based his whole bill on a really bad one. But Mitt keeps saying that the bills are not alike.

From the Boston Globe:

Mitt Romney offered an enthusiastic defense last night of the comprehensive health care law he helped create four years ago in Massachusetts, even as he pointed to crucial distinctions between it and a similar national program enacted last week by Democrats.
…
“Overall, ours is a model that works,” Romney said in response to a question after a speech at Iowa State University. “We solved our problem at the state level. Like it or not, it was a state solution. Why is it that President Obama is stepping in and saying ‘one size fits all’ ”? Read more…

He says it again in the same interview, just in case you didn’t hear him:

“People often compare his plan to the Massachusetts plan,” Romney said in an interview last month. “They’re as different as night and day. There are some words that sound the same, but our plan is based on states solving our issues; his is based on a one-size-fits-all plan.”

But (in the same article) there are always people willing to point out those pesky facts:

“Basically, it’s the same thing,” said Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney and Obama administrations on their health insurance programs. A national health overhaul would not have happened if Mitt Romney had not made “the decision in 2005 to go for it. He is in many ways the intellectual father of national health reform.”

Why does Mitt Romney want to distance himself from such an historic acheivement? I wonder.

By Tim Shoemaker

According to the Wall Street Journal, President Obama defended his health care boondoggle again this morning, only this time he justified it as incorporating “Republican ideals”…

In an interview on NBC’s Today Show, the president told host Matt Lauer that the new law “is a critical first step in making a health care system that works for all Americans.” And in blunt terms, he blamed the GOP for the public uproar surrounding its passage. “I think the Republican Party made a calculated decision, a political decision, that they would not support whatever we did.”

Obama went on to say that “I think that’s unfortunate because when you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean, a lot of commentators have said, you know, this is this is similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts.” (Yes, he called Romney a presidential candidate.)

Mitt Romney’s self-proclaimed “crowning achievement” of his short tenure as Governor was Romneycare.  It included an individual mandate to purchase health care just like Obamacare.  Now Romney wants to set himself up as the primary opposition to the new health care law without even slightly noting the glaring hypocrisy.

The Huffington Post has made a compilation video looking back at Romney’s “double-talk express.”  It’s titled “Ob’omneycare!“…enjoy!

By Matt Holdridge

From The Huffington Post: 

What secrets are hidden in the Federal Reserve’s trillion-dollar shadow? Economic recovery depends on confidence, and confidence requires knowledge. But Senators like Chris Dodd and Judd Gregg don’t want us to have that knowledge. They don’t even want it themselves.

In Sen. Dodd’s case, he’s trying to give the Fed more authority (over consumer protection) even as he fights to keep its activities hidden. Fortunately, the final decision may not be up to him.

A judge’s recent ruling in favor of two news organizations (Bloomberg and Fox) promised to shed light on $2 trillion in concealed Fed emergency loans to major financial firms. That’s a start. But Sen. Dodd is still fighting efforts to have a full-scale audit of the Fed’s other major bailout activities, including the $1.25 trillion program to buy mortgage-backed securities. That’s been going at the rate of $10 billion per week – a massive program which ends this Wednesday.

You could argue that giving $10 billion every week to the people that wrecked our economy is like giving Viagra to sex offenders. (Remember last week’s “controversy” about that?) And that $10 billion per week goes to buy the worthless assets of bankers who enriched themselves on loans that ranged from predatory to merely incompetent.

Who’s been able to avoid the consequences of their own bad business practices, thanks to the Fed? We don’t know yet, because Sen. Dodd promised GOP Senator Gregg there would be no audit of the bailout. Which just goes to show: Scratch a bad policy idea these days and you’re likely to find it was promoted under the guise of a false “bipartisanship.” Outside the Senate bubble, however, many progressives are aligned with conservatives like Ron Paul on the need for an audit. That makes it one of the few truly bipartisan movements out there.

Read the rest here. 

By Matt Hawes

Joining with states all across the country, the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is the first doctor’s group to sue to overturn Obama’s health care legislation.

From their press release:

“If the PPACA goes unchallenged, then it spells the end of freedom in medicine as we know it,” observed Jane Orient, M.D., the Executive Director of AAPS. “Courts should not allow this massive intrusion into the practice of medicine and the rights of patients.”…

The PPACA requires most Americans to buy government-approved insurance starting in 2014, or face stiff penalties. Insurance company executives will be enriched by this requirement, but it violates the Fifth Amendment protection against the government forcing one person to pay cash to another. AAPS is the first to assert this important constitutional claim….

Read the rest of the press release here and click here for even more information.  (Thanks to N.S.)

By Matt Holdridge

There was a story today in The Daily Caller titled, “Hedging my bets by dating a Libertarian hedge-fund manager.”

Last summer I dated a Libertarian, and I credit Serena Williams and Obama’s health-care plan with our break-up.

I’d met “Jim” on an online dating site. He was a 40-year-old hedge-fund manager, never married, and not bad looking. I brought my “A” game to our first date…What I discovered was more alarming than if he’d had a secret family…It turns out Jim had made a sizable contribution to Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign. Hmmm.

…My political views have always been liberal, but as a single New Yorker in her mid-30s, I wasn’t about to let a little thing like the rejection of government or any other authoritarian power keep me from meeting the potential father of my children.

The entertaining column, at first, leads you to believe that the author’s relationship became a disaster because her liberal beliefs didn’t square with her Ron Paul supporting boyfriend. Many of us can certainly relate to that. However, as the article goes on, you find that the problem wasn’t really about political differences at all. 

Intended or not, she makes an interesting philosophical point concerning human relations at the end of the piece. 

She says,

I did learn something from dating Lobster Salad [her former boyfriend], though, and it’s not that people with sharply contradictory political views can’t live happily ever after. (If both partners are respectful of each other’s beliefs, why shouldn’t we all have a shot at what Mary Matalin and James Carville have?) Instead, I learned that it’s better to be alone than to force oneself to “make it work,” Tim Gunn-style, after you’ve realized you find someone’s company stultifying.

Her statement perhaps unwittingly makes an argument for the thrust of freedom and liberty. That isn’t it best to leave people with different value systems or customs alone then to force them into “make it work” scenarios? 

This is true whether we are talking about one group forcing another through law to buy health insurance or marching an army into foreign lands to make the world “safe for democracy.” 

Respectfully allowing people to live in their own voluntary communities in the way they choose, provided they’re not harming others, is the most humane way to coexist with our fellow man.

We are not fighting political battles to impose our beliefs on our neighbors. We are fighting for everyone’s right to be left alone and to live as they see fit.

By Matt Hawes

Despite all the rhetoric from the administration, the AP reports on not only how the drug industry is set to benefit from the Obama-backed health care bill, but how Big Pharma came out miles ahead of anyone else.

By Tim Shoemaker

Over the weekend, Dr. Paul addressed an enthusiastic audience at Boise State campus.  From the Idaho Statesman:

Crowds cheered former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul’s claim that “the revolution is alive and well in Idaho,” in a speech Saturday at the Morrison Center that at times took on the feel of a revival meeting.

Americans, he said, have misunderstood the definition of “rights,” which are God-given and include “life, liberty and the right to keep the fruits of our labor.” Those rights include neither education nor health care.

“Amen!” came a voice from the crowd.

Amen indeed!  The freedom message truly is popular, as exemplified by the large crowds that continue to turn out to hear Congressman Paul speak on college campuses and conferences nationwide.

Don’t forget, you can see Ron Paul in New Orleans at the SRLC on Saturday, April 10!  Click here to purchase tickets.

By Thomas Woods

Then you might be interested in these items.  First, Laurence Vance, author of Christianity and War, will be speaking on the subject of that book in Montgomery at Faulkner University’s Lester Chapel at 7:00pm tonight.  Second, I myself will be speaking at Campbell University tomorrow night, also at 7pm.  It costs ten bucks, but that includes dinner.  RSVP info at the link.  Come on out and meet some like-minded folks at these events.

By minnesotachris

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2MHw3BfELU

By Matt Hawes

At a House Financial Services hearing on Thursday, Congressman Ron Paul spoke on the recent court ruling requiring Fed transparency and questioned Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke concerning the Fed’s balance sheet and price fixing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jUEDsPCoYA

Update: In addition to his exchange with Ben Bernanke at Thursday’s House Financial Services hearing, Congressman Ron Paul also questioned Laurence Ball, Larry Meyer, Marvin Goodspeed and John Taylor about inflation, monetizing the debt, and government’s role in the value of money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mffe99d0Wcs

By Gary Howard

As WSJ reports:

Personal income in 42 states fell in 2009, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

Nevada’s 4.8% plunge was the steepest, as construction and tourism industries took a beating. Also hit hard: Wyoming, where incomes fell 3.9%.

Incomes stayed flat in two states and rose in six and the District of Columbia. West Virginia had the best showing with a 2.1% increase. In Maine, Kentucky and Hawaii, increased government benefits, such as unemployment insurance and Social Security, offset drops in earnings and property values.

Read more…

With the healthcare reform bill now law, it brings with it a load of new taxes, fees, and higher insurance premiums–and don’t forget the individual federal mandate to purchase that insurance. Add all of that to this news of falling personal income, a weak economy, a central bank on steroids, and folks in power who see no reason to even think about cutting back on spending, this is still just the beginning and will surely lead nowhere good.

By Tim Shoemaker

Tim Carney writes in the Washington Examiner about how lobbyists benefit from the health care “reform.”

When President Obama signed the Senate health care bill Tuesday, the mood among beat reporters resembled the last day of finals in college: pride in the long, hard hours they had put in; wonder about what they would do next; and relief that finally it was over.

But on K Street and in the business world, folks knew better. It’s not over.

Far from it. Health care reform means it’s always Christmas on K Street.

If you think Pfizer, General Electric and the American Medical Association do a lot of lobbying now (and they do), wait until this bill’s health insurance “exchanges” are established and Uncle Sam starts laying the ground rules for what is and isn’t covered and subsidized.

Under Obamacare, the Office of Management and Budget, which will govern the exchanges regulating and subsidizing health insurance, will hold the purse strings of companies that make drugs, mammogram machines and MRIs.

As Carney explains lobbyists will be empowered by the new bills:

The regulations implementing the law will not be crafted in a hermetically sealed chamber. The bureaucrats, by necessity, will take comments and suggestions from those who best understand the markets to be regulated — and that will include lobbyists from health care companies.

The drawn-out implementation period — some provisions don’t go into effect until 2018 — gives plenty of time for stakeholders to make their case to HHS, OMB, Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.

Stay tuned for Kevin Brett’s exclusive interview with Tim Carney about Obama’s health care “reform” and what it means for you.

By Matt Holdridge

From the Washington Times:

President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation’s economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.

In its 2011 budget, which the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released Feb. 1, the administration projected a 10-year deficit total of $8.53 trillion. After looking it over, CBO said in its final analysis, released Thursday, that the president’s budget would generate a combined $9.75 trillion in deficits over the next decade.

The report goes on…

The federal public debt, which was $6.3 trillion ($56,000 per household) when Mr. Obama entered office amid an economic crisis, totals $8.2 trillion ($72,000 per household) today, and it’s headed toward $20.3 trillion (more than $170,000 per household) in 2020, according to CBO’s deficit estimates.

As F.A. Hayek stated in the Road to Serfdom, 

Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And whoever has sole control of the means must also determine which ends are to be served, which values are to be rated higher and which lower — in short, what men should believe and strive for.

There’s something to chew on. 

By Tim Shoemaker

Feeling overwhelmed by the tax code?  Don’t feel bad, most lawmakers and IRS officials don’t understand it well enough to do their own taxes either.

From the Daily Caller:

IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman practically ran away when The Daily Caller asked him whether he prepares his own taxes. Millions of Americans struggling through complicated IRS forms in the weeks leading up to tax day – April 15 – might like to know.

“I don’t have time for this … If you want an interview, you can call my office,” he said, speed-walking down an ornate hallway in the Longworth House Office Building.  Shulman’s spokesman later said he employs an accountant to prepare his tax filings, as does about 60 percent of the country who shell out hundreds or even thousands of dollars each for such services.

What about Rep. Xavier Becerra, a top Democrat on the House Ways & Means Committee?

“No. I have a tax preparer back home who’s been doing it for me for many years,” he told The Daily Caller. Becerra explains that his finances are more complex – and his tax filings fall under far greater scrutiny – than ordinary Americans who could figure out the forms if they tried.

Perhaps the chairman of that committee, Rep. John Lewis, surely he does his own taxes right?

“Oh no, no, no, no, no. I have an accountant that I’ve been using for years,” Rep. John Lewis said. He said he needs to head home this weekend to fill out paperwork for his accountant.

So did the Daily Caller find anyone on the Hill who prepares their own taxes?

We asked people whether they knew of any lawmakers who do prepare their own taxes. One suggestion was Wyoming Sen. Mike Ezni, a certified accountant. Enzi’s spokeswoman confirmed that yes, Enzi is one of the (very) few. [emphasis added]

“Senator Enzi does prepare his own taxes. He believes the federal tax code, which is more than 17,000 pages long and counting, is too complex. He has sponsored several bills to simplify the tax code so taxpayers aren’t forced to spend additional money on taxpayer professionals to prepare their taxes,” she said.

Read the rest.

One solution to simplify the tax code would be to eliminate federal withholding and allow individuals to keep the fruits of their own labor instead of loaning it to the government interest free.