Some cool stuff…

Glenn Beck explaining Liberty and the “LAW” to CT AG Dick Blumenthal – absolutely priceless!

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A few quotes for you.  I thought these might put the current bailout, massive spending “stimulus”, AIG distraction etc. into proper context.

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole—with their common aim of legal plunder—constitute socialism.
-Frederic Bastiat, The Law

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
-Benjamin Franklin

In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other.
-Voltaire

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.
-Robert A. Heinlein

To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.
-Thomas Jefferson

When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.
-Frederic Bastiat, The Law

 The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
-William H. Borah

If you’re a Christian or simply a moral human being, you should be against these so-called rights. After all, when God gave Moses the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” I’m sure that he didn’t mean thou shalt not steal unless there is a majority vote in Congress.
-Walter E. Williams

The fraudulence of the left’s concern about poverty is exposed by their utter lack of interest in ways of increasing the nation’s wealth. Wealth is the only thing that can cure poverty. The reason there is less poverty today is not because the poor got a bigger slice of the pie but because the whole pie got a lot bigger—no thanks to the left.
-Thomas Sowell

Capitalism harnesses human self-interest; socialism exhausts itself trying to kill it.
-Linda Bowles

That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and, hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.
-Abraham Lincoln

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-H.L. Mencken

HECK! This is too easy!  I think I could do this all day!

It is seldom that any freedom is lost all at once.
-David Hume

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.
-Edmund Burke

The goal of the “liberals”—as it emerges from the record of the past decades—was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot—by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli. (The goal of the “conservative” was only to retard that process.)
-Ayn Rand

A society that puts equality…ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
-Milton Friedman

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
-Frederic Bastiat, The Law 

If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
-Samuel Adams

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.
-Thomas Sowell

The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
-Alexis de Tocqueville

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take
away everything you have”
-Thomas Jefferson

…those who are guilty of such sweeping criticisms [of the rich] do not know how many people would be made poor, and how much sufering would result, if wealthy people were to part all at once with any large proportion of their wealth in a way to disorganize and cripple great business enterprises.
-Booker T. Washington

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
-Milton Friedman

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
-Thomas Jefferson

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism, but under the name Liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program until America will one day be a Socialist nation without knowing how it happened.
-Norman Thomas

The “private sector” of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and…the “public sector” is, in fact, the coercive sector.
-Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson

It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights—the “right” to education, the “right” to health care, the “right” to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery—hay and a barn for human cattle.
-Alexis de Tocqueville

last but certainly not least,

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
-Mark Twain

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Finally, – A Black Woman’s View on the Election – An article by Anne Wortham

Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University ’s Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association.

She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.

In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer’s television series, “A World of Ideas.” The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas.

Dr. Wortham is author of “The Other Side of Racism: ? A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness” which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.

She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality.

Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.

This article by her is REALLY something.   I love this woman. 

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am Black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul’s name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America .

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival – all that I know about the history of the United States of America , all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the “change” that Obama asserts has come to America .

Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared “progressive” whites who voted for him because he doesn’t look like them.

I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration – political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University ’s Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that “fairness” is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to “go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice” is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the “bottom up,” and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting “Yes We Can!” Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead – and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States , the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over – and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.

So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America . Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton , Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to – Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine – what little there is left – for the chance to feel good.

There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

My latest email response to Sen. Lieberman 03/03/09

Dear Sen. Lieberman,

I respectfully have to disagree with you on your assessment that the ARRA and its brother and sister giant economic bailout bills are either necessary or timely.
Our country was founded on the premise that oppressive government is an impediment to liberty.   Our founders would have disagreed vehemently with your opinion that in times of crisis, the government is needed to take a more activist stance to cushion anything.

The current government is itself responsible for the creation of the current economic downfall and its continued interference is destined only to further aggravate and extend it.  I have taken the time to correspond with you as I find you to be an honorable and decent man.   I am often at odds with you politically but I recognize your love and respect for our country.  

I believe this and similar legislation is designed to further impoverish the citizenry and make them even more dependent on an already bloated government that never fails to stop its expansion.   In my mind, this is pure evil, and contrary to the dream of the architects of this great nation, not to mention, our Creator.

I implore you to reconsider the addition of your considerable weight to the support of this type of massive government expansion.   There is no proof whatsoever that it will do anything to avoid or even slow down the current economic decay.   There are many of us who believe, it will in fact achieve the complete opposite effect.  

Again, this may be the aim of some in government, to use this crisis as a means to nationalize and further diminish the liberty of individuals.   If it fails, our collective problems will become infinitely larger and you will have committed this and many future generations to an undeserved debt that may be far greater than anything merely financial.
 
Respectfully,

*********
Wolcott, CT

— On Mon, 3/2/09, correspondence-email@lieberman.senate.gov <correspondence-email@lieberman.senate.gov> wrote:
From: correspondence-email@lieberman.senate.gov <correspondence-email@lieberman.senate.gov>
Subject: Correspondence From Senator Lieberman
To: **********
Date: Monday, March 2, 2009, 5:45 PM
 
March 2, 2009
 
**********
Wolcott, CT
 
Dear ***********:
 
Thank you for contacting me with your concerns regarding the congressional response to the current economic downturn.  I am pleased to hear from you.
 
The economic downturn, which originated in the housing and financial sectors, has spread to the broader economy.  Unemployment in Connecticut is now over seven percent; prices of food, energy, child care, and other basic necessities are squeezing tight family budgets; and thousands have lost their homes to foreclosure.  On a national level, almost every aggregate economic indicator has turned negative over the last 12 months, including employment, capital investment, and trade.  Our economy lost 1.5 million jobs from November 2008 to January 2009, and consumer demand is expected to fall by $1 trillion this year and next.  In these times, the federal government can, and should, take a more activist stance to cushion the blow to families and communities.
 
After an intense debate, Congress, with my support, approved the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA; P.L. 111-5).  President Obama signed it into law on February 17, 2009.  The final version of this legislation will cost a total of about $787 billion over a number of years.  This package consists of $211 billion in tax relief for businesses and families and $575 billion worth of investments to assist communities and families.
 
This bill is targeted to help those who have been hit especially hard by the economic downturn.  It provides household tax relief in the form of a refundable tax credit for working individuals and families, an expansion of eligibility for the refundable portion of the child tax credit, an increase in the income thresholds subject to the alternative minimum tax (AMT) for one year, as well as a temporary suspension of the taxability of unemployment benefits.
 
For businesses, this legislation allows qualified small businesses to accelerate recognition of the research and development tax credit, extends the “net operating loss” carryback from two to five years, and extends the bonus depreciation schedule for capital expenditures incurred in 2008 to capital expenditures incurred in 2009.  These tax provisions are crucial to help businesses and families that have been negatively affected by the recession to weather the current storm.
 
Additionally, ARRA provides federal funding for assistance to municipalities and states that face serious budget shortfalls that prevent them from maintaining critical public services and making needed investments in infrastructure.  This problem is particularly acute in Connecticut.  Governor M. Jodi Rell’s office recently projected that our state faces a deficit of approximately $6 billion over the next few years.
 
This legislation will help states by supplementing state funding to maintain public housing, school systems, and medical care for the elderly and for low-income families.  Furthermore, under this legislation, cities and municipalities will be able to apply for funding to make important infrastructure investments in transportation, school construction, training for displaced workers, energy conservation, and water facility maintenance.  I have set up a page on my website detailing assistance to Connecticut under ARRA; you may view this page online at http://dpc.senate.gov/docs/fs-111-1-24-states/ct.pdf.
 
Furthermore, this package also makes significant long-term investments in the nation’s green economy, helping to reduce our dependence on foreign oil while creating new jobs in energy-related industries.  By investing in the development of clean, renewable energy sources, we can minimize our need for non-renewable fuels and curb our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.  This measure improves our energy security by making investments to redesign and retrofit our infrastructure so we consume less energy and to modernize our energy transmission systems to enhance reliability.
 
In total, the bill provides over $35 billion in funding specifically for programs to advance these goals, as well as an additional $20 billion in tax credits for energy efficiency and renewable energy.  ARRA will significantly improve the allocation of our clean energy resources while helping to achieve our common goal of promoting viable, innovative, and renewable domestic power sources.
 
Many rightly observe that this legislation has a very high price tag, given the uncertainty that it will ameliorate our economic ills.  I would counter, however, that the legislation is big because our problem is big.  In my view, incremental approaches will take us down the same path of Japan during the 1990s with stagnant growth and recurring federal intervention in the economy.
 
The passage of this package was necessary and timely, but funding from this legislation must not be spent in a wasteful manner.  I supported the inclusion of an additional $200 million for inspectors general to hire experienced auditors and investigators to oversee spending under ARRA.  In addition to that, as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which has oversight responsibility for government spending generally, I have already scheduled a hearing for March 5, 2009 to examine how the federal government will account for the billions of dollars expected to be spent over the next two years from ARRA.
 
With America in the midst of the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, I worked with several moderate Senate colleagues to forge the bipartisan compromise that eventually passed the Senate. The only alternative was to see the proposal fail altogether.  We are in an emergency, and this legislation must be judged in the context of the world we live in now.  Although imperfect, this legislation will begin the long process of restoring economic growth and transforming our economy.
 
Thank you again for sharing your views and concerns with me.  I hope you will continue to visit my website at http://lieberman.senate.gov for updated news about my work on behalf of Connecticut and the nation.  Please contact me if you have any additional questions or comments about our work in Congress.
 
Sincerely,
 
 
Joseph I. Lieberman
UNITED STATES SENATOR
 
JIL:kht