Libertarians for Ron Paul » 2008 » July
Jesse Ventura, former Independent Governor of Minnesota, will speak at Ron Paul’s Rally for the Republic on September 2 in Minneapolis. He joins former Governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico, former Congressman Barry Goldwater Jr and others in calling for limited government and restoration of our liberties.
In 2002, Norm Coleman was elected to the U.S. Senate as a supporter of President Bush and his pending war with Iraq. He has been a loyal supporter of Bush and Bush’s war. He even tried to provide an after the fact justification for the war with his investigation of the U.N. supervised “Oil for Food” program.
The war has proved to be a fiasco, and is now widely unpopular. But Minnesota Democrats have only been able to come up with a comedian to challenge Senator Coleman.
Minnesota voters have another choice. Dean Barkley is seeking to challenge Sen. Coleman as the candidate of the Independence Party. Dean Barkley helped elect Jesse Ventura as Governor of Minnesota in 1998, and has briefly served as appointed Senator.
Dean Barkley calls for fiscal responsibility, and points out the Federal Debt is killing our economy and our children’s future. Barkley calls for ending the Iraq War, and points out that Americans were misled into supporting the war.
Dean Barkley calls the War on Drugs a failure, and calls for an emphasis of rehabilitation rather than imprisonment as a way to deal with the drug problem.
Dean Barkley campaign site @ http://www.barkleyforsenate.org/
Tuesday, July 29, 2008: Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies:
“The new budget estimates show that federal spending will top $3.13 trillion in 2009, up 68 percent from $1.86 trillion when the current president came to office in 2001. That increase is enormous — indeed it is more than twice the 32 percent increase under eight years of President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The deficit is expected to rise to a record $482 billion next year and then decline and magically disappear by 2012, based on the usual phony accounting that we have become used to from this White House. However, the deficit can be, and should be, erased by major spending reforms and cuts, and that should be the top domestic priority of the next president.”
Source: http://www.cato.org/pressroom.php?display=ncomments&id=102
The Campaign for Liberty will hold a three day Rally for the Republic, as a counter convention to the Republican National Convention. The Rally for the Republic will take place from August 31 to September 2, 2008 at the Target Center, in Minneapolis.
Tucker Carlson will MC the events. Featured speakers will include:
**Barry Goldwater, Jr, former Congressman from California
**Gary Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico
**Bruce Fein, former Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan
**Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform
**Adam Curry from MTV
More information @ http://rally.campaignforliberty.com/
“What will it take to get our troops out of Iraq? The roughly 70 percent of Americans who are firmly against the war often ask this question. Those in power are reluctant to give conditions, but when they do and those conditions are met, the goal post is quietly moved.”
”Voters were promised, passionately and vehemently, that the new Congress would bring our troops home. Many were explicitly elected in 2006 under that banner. But our troops are still overseas, funding has been increased even beyond the administration’s wish list, and troop withdrawal has been negotiated away.”
”When things are going badly in Iraq, they say we must stay until the situation improves. When things improve, they tell us we must stay because our gains cannot be jeopardized.”
Rep. Ron Paul looks at the top issue of 2008 http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=13145
“Measuring the growth in the number of activities considered federal crimes is challenging. Ideally, one compares counts of federal crimes taken at different times and employing consistent criteria to determine what constitutes a federal crime. Obtaining comparable data, however, is almost impossible. Nonetheless, a careful survey of laws enacted by Congress does permit reasonable estimation of the number of federal criminal offenses.”
“This report follows from other attempts to count the number of federal criminal offenses or to measure their growth. The most complete count of federal crimes, done by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in the early 1980s, put the number at 3,000. A 1998 report by a task force of the American Bar Association relied on the DOJ figure and other data to measure the growth of federal criminal law but did not itself actually provide a count of federal crimes.[1] In a 2004 Federalist Society monograph building on the DOJ and ABA reports, I counted new federal crimes enacted following the point at which the ABA report finished its data collection at the close of 1996. That report estimates that there were 4,000 federal crimes at the start of 2000.[2] This report updates that total through 2007, finding 452 additional crimes created since 2007, for a total of at least 4,450 federal crimes.[3]”
John S. Baker, Jr has compiled a report for the Heritage Foundation http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/lm26.cfm
The Libertarian Party says that Republicans and Democrats have failed the American people by allowing telecommunication companies complicit in the Bush administration’s illegal wiretap program to go without punishment.
“Civil liberties were violated, and only 28 senators cared to see justice served,” says Libertarian Party spokesperson Andrew Davis, “and Barack Obama was not one of them.”
The Libertarian Party has repeatedly called for the rejection of any amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that empowered the government to spy on American citizens and granted immunity to companies complicit in illegal surveillance operations.
Full release from The Libertarian Party http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/telecom-immunity-fails-to-render-justice-to-the-american-people
“Online activists from the right and the left announced an unprecedented campaign Tuesday to hold Democratic lawmakers accountable for caving in to the Bush administration on domestic spying.”
Credit: Eggman
“A group of high-profile progressive bloggers and libertarian Republicans are rolling out a new political action committee called Accountability Now to channel widespread anger over pending legislation that would legalize much of the president’s warrantless electronic surveillance of Americans, and grant retroactive legal immunity to telephone companies that cooperated with the spying when it was still illegal.”
Wire Magazine reports on this new alliance:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/online-activist.html
“Early this year, the price of crude oil surpassed its previous inflation-adjusted peak of $103.76 a barrel (a record established in 1980). Since then, the price of crude has been making new record highs on a regular basis. And that’s not all. On June 6th, it surged by $10.58 a barrel – a record one-day move. This was enough to bring the chattering classes out in full force. They produced a great deal of commentary – much of it unfounded – about what was causing oil prices to go through the roof. They were also quick to condemn the traditional bogeyman – the speculators. Not surprisingly, the finance ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations focused on oil prices during their recent two-day meeting in Osaka, Japan.”
“Just what is pushing prices skyward? Surprisingly, the G-8 finance ministers failed to mention the US dollar’s role. Every commodity trader knows that all commodities trade off changes in the value of the greenback. When the value of the dollar falls, the nominal dollar prices of internationally traded commodities, like gold, rice, and oil, must increase because more dollars are required to purchase the same quantity of any commodity. Accordingly, a weak dollar should signal higher commodity prices. And it does.”
Steve Hanke of the Cato Institute looks at the oil market http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9490
Two hundred thirty two years ago, Thomas Jefferson authored the Declaration of Independence, and with representatives of the 13 colonies signed it, thereby laying the cornerstone for America to become a free nation. The Tree of Liberty had a blood-price, as 4,400 Americans died and 6,200 were wounded on Revolutionary War battlefields.
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
The 13 colonies abruptly severed the royal governorships of Great Britain, and Americans declared themselves independent of King George III’s rule. This dissolution was instigated by Britain’s internal taxes, trade tariffs, and military impositions, and the pitiless ignominy of no representation in Parliament.
Ron Getty writes about the heritage of The American Revolution that we celebrate today http://ca.lp.org/lp20080526.shtml