There is this popular idea, that earmark spending results in increased Federal Government spending; so it is thought that the government should be given the money to spend on whatever they please. As with most popular ideas, this one is wrong; it is likely propaganda from those who would be receiving the pork without accountability.

As Congressman Ron Paul describes, the amount of a particular budget is decided before any earmarks are put into place; so a particular earmark does not alter the amount of the overall budget. To remove earmarks would remove accountability and give them even more money in their slush funds; to do with as they please.

Earmarks Don’t Add Up

by Ron Paul | RonPaul.com

Earmarks seem to be the hot topic this week, and as a fiscal conservative I am dismayed so many people deliberately distort the earmarking process and grandstand to make political points. It is an easy thing to do with earmarks. It takes a little more time and patience to grasp the reality of what earmarks really are.

To be sure, if earmarks were the driving force behind explosive government spending as some have been led to believe, that would be a good reason for all the fuss. The misconception seems to be that members of Congress put together a bunch of requests for project funding, add them all together and come up with a budget. The truth is, it is not done that way. The total level of spending is determined by the Congressional leadership and the appropriators before any Member has a chance to offer any amendments. Members’ requests are simply recommendations to allocate parts of that spending for certain items in that members’ district or state. If funds are not designated, they revert to non-designated spending controlled by bureaucrats in the executive branch. In other words, when a designation request makes it into the budget, it subtracts funds out of what is available to the executive branch and bureaucrats in various departments, and targets it for projects that the people and their representatives request in their districts. If a congressman does not submit funding requests for his district the money is simply spent elsewhere. To eliminate all earmarks would be to further consolidate power in the already dominant executive branch and not save a penny.

Furthermore, designating how money is spent provides a level of transparency and accountability over taxpayer dollars that we don’t have with general funds. I argue that all spending should be decided by Congress so that we at least know where the money goes. This has been a major problem with TARP funding. The public and Congress are now trying to find out where all that money went.

The real issue is that the overall budget is too big, by far, which is why I always vote against it. But attacking the 1% that was earmarked solves nothing. The whole issue is a distraction from the real problems we face, which are that the Federal Government will absorb over 1/3 of our country’s GDP this year and taxpayers are forced to fork over more than half their income to fund government at all levels. On top of that, the national debt is $11 trillion, which is $36,000 per citizen. The recent increases in bailouts, government spending and money creation is going to hobble our economy for decades. We must curb the government’s appetite severely if this country is ever to thrive again. The noise over “earmarks” is a red herring and a distraction from the real issue of uncommitted spending.

It is time to attack the entirety of government spending. We especially need a full account of the activities of the Federal Reserve that spends and creates trillions of dollars with no meaningful oversight. This is a huge problem that needs immediate attention.

By Noam Chomsky

Barack Obama is recognized to be a person of acute intelligence, a legal scholar, careful with his choice of words. He deserves to be taken seriously – both what he says, and what he omits. Particularly significant is his first substantive statement on foreign affairs, on January 22, at the State Department, when introducing George Mitchell to serve as his special envoy for Middle East peace.

Mitchell is to focus his attention on the Israel-Palestine problem, in the wake of the recent US-Israeli invasion of Gaza. During the murderous assault, Obama remained silent apart from a few platitudes, because, he said, there is only one president – a fact that did not silence him on many other issues. His campaign did, however, repeat his statement that “if missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that.” He was referring to Israeli children, not the hundreds of Palestinian children being butchered by US arms, about whom he could not speak, because there was only one president.
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The spell-bound American citizenry must realize what is really going on with their new president.  They need to sit down and do their research; to realize what is truly happening here.  The so-called populist president, Barrack H. Obama, has appointed to his administration the very architects of the financial disaster we are now engaged in.

Most of these supporters are well meaning; they just want something to believe in.  They want to feel like we’re turning a new leaf as a country and as a civilization; but we will not be able to achieve any measure of “change” until the a critical mass of people realize how things really work in this paradigm and begin to think for themselves, instead of this cattle-like group-think that got us into this mess in the first-place.

First you had Bush, who used the 9/11 inside job to buffalo the population into a perpetual war, after which, Bush ran roughshod over the people of this nation, with policies that trashed every tradition that our fore-bearers worked so hard for.

Now we have Obama, who takes advantage of the people’s desire to have a feel-good sort of attitude; because they want you to allow what is now taking place to happen, without objection.  You might ask what is happening?

The bankers are taking trillions out of the economy every week.  And while Gitmo may now be closing, what you failed to realize is that they are moving these types of operations on shore, where you are likely to one day be threatened with incarceration without the due process of law.

I’ve got news for many of you out there.  Nothing changes overnight, although the media will use every tool in their arsenal to convince you that it has.  The corruption that plagues this planet is deep-seated, and it has been around for several thousand years.

If we really want to do something about this corruption, we have to rely on our own selves and our independant thoughts.  We have to return to our constitutional roots and become sovereign individuals, instead of idolizing one individual or institution.

The United States, Presidency, Federal Reserve, AMA and many other institutions that pervade your lives are not here to help you.  They are specifically designed to control your thoughts and actions, with the eventual goal of extracting your sweat equity and preventing your ability to self-actualize.

by Anthony Gregory | Campaign for Liberty

Questions as to whether Timothy Geithner, Obama’s pick for Treasury Secretary, has paid all his taxes or followed immigration law concerning his housekeeper raise an interesting point. The scrutiny surrounding confirmation hearings presents one of the only opportunities politicians get to see what it is like to be harassed like a normal American citizen. Only during scandals like these are government officials given a taste of their own medicine, and it is such a bitter taste that the more humane among us might sympathize even with our would-be rulers as their lives and finances become open to inspection and public criticism.

Consider the rich irony in Geithner’s case. He seeks to be the head of the Treasury, and thus the head of the IRS, which commands an apparatus of staggering intrusiveness nearly unparalleled in all of human history. The IRS notoriously enjoys a certain exemption from the standards of Anglo-Saxon law; the presumption with tax cases is that you are guilty until proven innocent. Every year, millions of good Americans are terrorized by the organization. Many have their homes, their savings, their businesses confiscated, all supposedly in the name of creating a great society for all. IRS agents give the wrong advice to Americans filling out their taxes about a third of the time, but getting it wrong under their instruction is no excuse when error is found.

In addition to the nightmare of mid-April, the Treasury and other departments have burdened Americans with thousands of regulations that invade every facet of financial life. Democrats are even worse rhetorically than Republicans in this regard. In response to cries for immigration reform, the most common proposal from Democrats is to crack down on employers, to spy on them and threaten them with fines and imprisonment if they do not pry into all their employees’ lives to ensure none are illegal aliens. Aside from being a threat to the freedom of contract, this guarantees increasing government involvement into business and erosion of privacy and civil liberties. Much of the rationale behind the horrific Real ID Act can be attributed to this particular desire to ferret out illegal immigrants.

And so what a scene we have: A national Democratic leader in potential trouble for violating employment regulations; the chosen chief of the Treasury, which brings in trillions of dollars annually by taking it by force from those who earned it, himself accused of not putting in his fair share.

From the standpoint of freedom, however, Geithner’s true rip-off of the American people is not in his alleged tax evasion. All by itself, not paying taxes is not a scandalous crime. An everyday taxpayer would not deserve media attention for this. And as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner did far more to compromise economic fairness than he could have possibly done with his tax forms; as Treasury Secretary, he would undoubtedly do much more. Furthermore, from the perspective of liberty, Geithner’s villainy is not in the fact that he might have hired an illegal alien so much as it is in the hypocrisy by which he and so many other government officials hold themselves to a standard of law radically different from that to which they hold the rest of us.

A little hypocrisy is ubiquitous in nearly any society, but the issue of government always raises the stakes and makes it all the more egregious. It may be an insult for someone to verbally criticize you for a vice, such as smoking, only to light up himself minutes later. But for the government to impose the will, the ethics, the standards of some politicians on you by force even as they do what they claim should not be done—that is a different, much worse form of hypocrisy altogether.

Which brings us to William Corr, Obama’s choice for the second slot at the Department of Health and Human Services. Corr is an anti-smoking advocate and both he and Obama seem to support an agenda, to be carried out by the Democratic Congress, of “increasing federal regulation of cigarettes, raising taxes on tobacco products and approving an international tobacco control treaty,” as the New York Times puts it.

Obama has gotten attention as the first open cigarette smoker to be elected president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and yet he seems to have no problem pushing around smokers, making their habit more expensive (tobacco taxes always hurt the poor the most), and even internationalizing an issue that should not even be dealt with at the national level under our Constitution. In a free society, tobacco, along with other drugs, would be handled locally, and ideally by the family and community, and not at all through the criminal justice and regulatory systems. Yet politicians who drink alcohol or smoke tobacco or even have tried illegal drugs think very little of taxing, regulating, harassing and even jailing their fellow citizens for doing the same.

It has long been frustrating to watch a politician who smokes tobacco or drinks alcohol champion the war on drugs, all to stem the tide of chemicals that don’t kill nearly as many people as tobacco and alcohol do. Perhaps it is even more frustrating to see a president who smokes cigarettes wave the anti-smoking banner. Government crusades against drugs, cigarettes or other vices always fail to uplift the moral character of the people, but they are great ways to destroy liberty and personal responsibility and are reliable sources of high hypocrisy.

Just this week we have seen two exemplary cases of political hypocrisy pop up in the area of Obama’s political appointments. Again, such appointments are one of the few occasions when the media really explore the hypocrisy saturating the personal lives of politicians. If they were watched this closely year round, we would find ever more examples all the time. But in all such cases, whether it is Al Gore consuming enough electricity for 20 people as he flies around condemning carbon emissions, or a Republican leader caught straying from the very family values he has claimed should be imposed on us all by national planning, the real problem in the hypocrisy is not usually the politicians’ personal indiscretions, which usually fall short of any offense against the public safety or liberty. No, the real problem with such hypocrisy is that it is borne by politicians who implement their plans for a Brave New World on their compatriots without considering the human costs, the destroyed wealth, the uprooted lives, the lost liberties, the jailed innocents. If Geithner agreed to butt out of our finances, and Obama agreed to let people smoke as they will, it is doubtful we would not happily reciprocate and leave them alone as well.

“I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.”
— Adolf Hitler

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”
— Adolf Hitler

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
— Adolf Hitler

Obama has better rhetoric, he’s a slicker speaker and is more deceptive than his predecessors. He knows how to say exactly what you want to hear, and he will tell you that he is here to solve all of your problems; even if he changes his rhetoric, or does the exact opposite later-on.  Whatever he says or does, or has said or done in the past; nobody seems to care.

Yes, Barrack H. Obama has yet to demonstrate genuine integrity, during his political career; nor does he have a willingness to change the status quo.  He and his friends in the congressional black caucus were integral in causing the debacle which lead to the epic failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Just have a look at this man’s history.  Has he ever demonstrated genuine integrity? What has he ever accomplished? If you think the man is for “change” then find me examples of what he has accomplished.

The people love him and he will be given a few months, during which he will be able to ram through, whatever legislation he wants; but after this so-called “honeymoon” period, there may be violence and insurrection as the blacks, especially, realize that we’ve all been fucked, right up the ass, just like it has always been done since the assassination of JFK.

Obama is in the oval office, as we speak, lubing up his big black anal probe. You had better bend right over and spread out those cheeks, young ones; because you’ve been had.  And I might add, it was like shooting fish in a barrel this time.

Barrack Heussein Obama, there is ample evidence to illustrate your contempt for the American people. You have refused to produce a certified birth certificate. You have deceived the American public into thinking that you will stop the warfare and fix what is wrong with this nation.

In point of fact, you truly plan on exacerbating what is wrong with this nation; and you plan on bringing socialist ideals and bigger government into an already bankrupt nation.

The politician you most closely resemble bears the name Adolf Hitler. One day, they may very-well call you the “Black Hitler” of our time.  May the youth who’s minds you have in the palm of your hands realize what you are before it is too late.

I urge those of you who understand what you are in for if a bailout is done to write your congressmen and tell them that you will not stand for this kind of financial absurdity.  We need to stop the bailout, allow the insolvent institutions to fail and return to sound money.

Here’s what I recently wrote to my congressmen via votenobailout.org.

It really infuriates me to see the Congress giving the White House and its Secretary of the Treasury the power to transfer the people’s money to wealthy bankers on Wall Street.

These are the same people who got us into this mess and bailing them out most certainly isn’t going to get us out.

As a citizen of the united States of America I demand that you vote No to the Bailout legislation. Read the rest of this entry »

Wolf Blitzer said that the CNN-controlled debate was going to give all candidates equal time to respond to each question. In-fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Obvious media bias was geared towards the “top tier” demagogues like “Ghouliani”, “double the size of Guantanamo Romney” and “torture is bad unless if I vote for it McCain.”

Despite all of this, and in contravention to the “wisdom” of CNN’s and other MSM “analysts,” Ron Paul won almost every online poll, indicating that the public believes that he won the debate.
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In the classic neo-con style of uneducated, special-ed rants, the head of the Arkansas GOP stated that he believes we need more “attacks on American soil” so that him and the other neo-con blow-hards will have the appearance of being right about terrorism.

Its bizarre how the neo-cons think that getting attacked will mean that they were some-how right. This is similar to the reasoning that Rudy Giuliani, the mayor who failed, on two occasions, to prevent the attacks on the world trade centers, is the best man to protect America.

Gop Head: We Need More ‘attacks On American Soil’, so people appreciate Bush

Josh Catone Raw Story
Monday June 4, 2007

In his first interview as the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, Dennis Milligan told a reporter that America needs to be attacked by terrorists so that people will appreciate the work that President Bush has done to protect the country. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is an audio recording of Ron Paul on the Dennis Miller Show on May 30, 2007. During the interview, they discuss abortion, eminent domain, and the Iraq war.

Dennis says that he agrees with Dr. Paul on most of the issues except for the war. On that subject Dennis holds the arcane and debunked neo-con view that “we have to kill them or they will kill us.” Which is similar to the line of blarney used by war-mongers during the Vietnam war.

Video: Audio of the Ron Paul interview on Dennis Miller

Although 1 in 3 Americans believe in a 9/11 cover-up, they continue to refer to concerned citizens as “radicals” while war mongering demagogues like Giuliani are alright.

Video: Giuliani Confronted by Citizens who are concerned with his lies about the eleventh of September.

Giuliani Confronted By 9/11 Truthers, Lies About WTC Collapse

Though Giuliani is attempting to make a distinction of the fact that he expected the towers to fall after a period of time, this still doesn’t explain who gave him the warning and why he seems to flip-flop on this issue every time he is asked about it, while wearing a strange broad grin across his face.it also underscores the notion that the sudden implosion of the twin towers was an unnatural event and even Giuliani acknowledges this fact.The 9/11 truth activists led by Rudowski also confronted David Rockefeller at his home as well as the CFR at their main headquarters. Reports and video footage on those events will be forthcoming.

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