Dr. Seuss on the Obama Administration

I do not like this Uncle Sam,
I do not like his health care scam.

I do not like these dirty crooks,
or how they lie and cook the books.

I do not like when Congress steals,
I do not like their secret deals.

I do not like this speaker Nan,
I do not like this “YES WE CAN.”

I do not like this spending spree,
I’m smart, I know that nothing’s free,

I do not like your smug replies,
when I complain about your lies.

I do not like this kind of hope.

I do not like it you BIG Dope.
I do not like it NOPE NOPE NOPE!

– Author unknown

Light ‘em Up for Liberty

I’m told that the best thing about beating your head against the wall is how good it feels when you stop.  Our national bi-partisan War On Drugs is a lot like that.

The war on drugs has reduced respect for the rule of law.  As Montesquieu wrote two hundred years ago, Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. More than 100 million Americans have smoked marijuana. Each of those citizens is now a criminal.  Becoming a criminal changes the way that a citizen thinks about his country, about the legal system, and about himself.  It causes him to love his country less, to respect the legal system less, and to hold himself to a less strict standard of behavior.

Economically, the War on Drugs is a disaster.  Approximately 100,000 Americans are currently imprisoned for marijuana offenses.  Taking each of these citizens freedom costs the taxpayers approximately $40k/yr.  For $40k/yr, you could send your kid to a very good university.  Instead, the government is spending your kids tuition money to imprison people for smoking.

Our current president is an admitted marijuana and cocaine user, and yet he is afraid to publicly back marijuana legalization efforts.  Obama’s financial backer, George Soros, isn’t so timid.  He has funded legalization initiatives in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and the District of Columbia.

Notable conservative scholars such as William F. Buckley and George Schulz have written in favor of marijuana legalization, but such views remain in the minority of the Republican Party.  Marijuana legalization should be a Repubican issue.  If we are serious about small government, free markets, and liberty — we should not be giving government the power to tell people what they can and can’t smoke.

The Democratic Party  seems focused only on creating legislation, executive orders, and bureaucratic rules which expand government power and reduce American freedom.  Democratic voters should demand more of their officials.

The Republican Party is now in the process of soul-searching to determine who they are and what they stand for — and scheming how to get back in the good graces of the American public.  It seems to me that throwing party support behind marijuana legalization would endear the party to pro-liberty and small government activists, as well as the 100 million Americans who have smoked marijuana.  This would be an opportunity to make a good economic decision that would prove that the Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility.  It would also be a huge step towards the building the “big tent” that many Republicans believe is necessary to beat the Democrats in 2012.

But mostly, it’s the morally right thing to do.  As Thomas Jefferson wrote, Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’, because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. It’s time that both parties recognized how far we have strayed from the wisdom of our founding fathers.  The American government has no right to violate the rights of Americans — unless it is absolutely necessary to do so in order to protect the equal rights of others.  This is a fundamental part of what America stands for and we the people should refuse to vote for any candidate who denies this great American heritage.

Drive to Work with Cato

If you’re one of the minority of Americans who has a job and drives to work every day, I have a suggestion that could make better use of your drive time.

The folks from the Cato Institute are now putting together  daily podcasts to which you can download and listen.  They also share podcasts of presentations at Cato events.

These presentations are from some of the best minds in America and they discuss topics of interest to all concerned citizens.  The podcasts are in the industry standard MP3 format, so you can copy them to almost any audio device.

If downloading MP3 files manually isn’t your cup of tea, you can also subscribe to Cato Audio and have a CD mailed to you every month.

Expat Jobs

With the current U.S. recession turning into a full-scale depression, it’s time for many Americans to broaden their job searches past the horizon. We haven’t seen unemployment at levels like this since the recession caused by Carter’s inflationary spending of the late 1970′s.

Quite literally, there are no jobs for many of our sons and daughters who are returning home from defending freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan. While they were defending freedom, we were giving it up for the cheap words of a smooth huckster.

The U.S. economy is bad, but it’s going to get much worse before this is straightened out. In his first 100 days, Obama managed to grow the U.S. deficit by 50%. We now have a record breaking thirteen trillion dollar deficit. Our grandchildren are going to be born into indentured servitude.

But, it’s not time for a revolution. In the words of our great Declaration of Independence:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

We’re clearly headed that direction, but we’re not there yet.  So what is a rational individual to do?

One temporary solution is for a large number of Americans to take a break from America.  Let the Democrats stew in this depression of their own making.

Temporarily relocating overseas can earn you a deduction of the first $87,600 of your yearly income.  This means that if you earn $100k/yr working overseas, you pay taxes on only $12,400 in income.

This saves you money and it also allows you to legally stop supporting the national socialists who have taken power in Washington.

For more information on these jobs, check out Expat Jobs, Overseas Contract Jobs and Construction Jobs Overseas.

Never Get Busted Again

Imprisoning one person in a Bureau of Prisons facility costs $23,183.69 a year (2004 numbers). Those a taxpayer dollars. If we weren’t imprisoning drug users, those dollars could be used for other purposes. What could you do with an extra $23,183.69 a year? How does the War on Drugs affect one of your most precious freedoms — the freedom to spend your hard-earned money as you freely choose?

Barry Cooper is a hardened veteran of the War on Drugs. As a Texas law enforcement officer, Barry arrested hundreds of citizens for drug law violations. He worked with the ATF, DEA, and FBI to incarcerate people for exercising their rightful liberties with their own bodies.

Barry has since seen the error of his ways and to prove it he has produced a video called Never Get Busted Again which instructs citizens on how to avoid being profiled and arrested as a narcotics user. The video also teaches citizens a lot about how the police and the legal systems work — and don’t work.

750,000 American citizens are jailed each year for violating marijuana prohibition laws. Please, if you are going to take illegal drugs — buy this video and save the American taxpayers some money.

Tax Havens

A tax haven is any territory or country where there are low taxes or no taxes at all. For some people and many companies, they find that it is more economic and makes more sense to relocate to this area because they can save a considerable amount of money on their taxes. What this creates, in essence, is tax competition or governmental competition. Governments begin to have to compete for the tax revenue of different people and companies. When this happens, the average person typically makes out the best.

Competition is the lifeblood of business. When there are two companies that are creating the exact same product with a different name, suddenly it becomes important to see who can compete. Company A drops their price. Company B offers another incentive. Company A retaliates with an incentive. Company B drops their price. In the end, though, the consumer can walk up to the store and purchase whatever product they want. When there is competition, the consumer gets the best deal they can.

The problem, though, is the fact that governments don’t have very many competitors. If you’re a US citizen paying income tax, where’s the competition? You could leave the country. And that’s what more people are beginning to do. In a recent article published on Fort Liberty, I talked about how government greed was forcing American’s best and brightest to find new homes. They were so tired of all the high taxes that instead of paying it, they decided to instead find a new home. They would rather leave America than pay the high taxes.

When this happens, America loses out on tax revenue. While one hundred people leaving won’t appear at all on the bank roll of the treasury, if more people continue to leave or if a big business that pays millions a year in business were to leave the, that will hurt the bank roll. When that happens, the US government will have to reconsider their policies: do they raise taxes even more or do they lower taxes and hope that people will come back?

Tax competition would argue that the government should lower taxes. The first reason is to keep our citizens here. The second reason is because we want more people to come here. It used to be that people wanted to come to America, but now that our taxes are so much higher, fewer people want to immigrate to the United States.

A tax haven is a place where taxes are so low that people often relocate there to reap the benefits of the low tax. This results in government competition. Two different countries compete over the tax revenue. If the United States wants to increase the revenue that comes into the treasury, they need to be competitive. The government needs to make taxes more competitive. If they don’t, more people will continue to leave the country and fewer people will come in. That is disastrous to our country. A tax haven is competition to other countries; it’s a country’s choice how to respond to the competition.