Beyond The Broken Spectrum

Does the city you live in have smoking ordinances? Mine does, and while I am not a smoker, I am against smoking bans. I look at it this way, the government shouldn’t have the power to enforce such a law, whether it be local, state, or federal. Whether or not to allow smoking should be the decision of whoever owns a particular building or business, no one else.

Concerned that sitting in the same room as someone that is smoking a cigarette is a health hazard? If whoever owns the building or business where you are has decided to allow smoking in their establishment, you have the power to walk out and not come back. You even have the power to make a complaint to the management, but ultimately, it is their decision, no one elses.

I’ve even heard reports of smoking being banned in bars, which really shows how some people in this society are so selfish, that they feel the need to impose their will on everyone else by passing these useless laws. This is destroying businesses and hurting many others.

Smoking bans infringe on people’s right to make their own decisions, taking power from the people and giving it to government. That is not a good path to follow, because in the end, it only leads to absolute power for government, and severely limits the right of the individual, which is one of this country’s basic principles.

Sen. Obama’s rhetoric is uplifting and positive, but the Senator who showed genuine foresight and courage in opposing the Iraq war spent most of the primary season edging away from his initial tough stand. Will he order the troops to exit Iraq? Will he bring them all home, or simply shift them from Iraq to another foreign country?

Similarly, it would be hard for Sen. Obama not to be an improvement over the Bush administration on civil liberties. However, here, too, Sen. Obama has demonstrated his willingness to trim under pressure.

President George W. Bush violated the law when he ignored both the Constitution and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Congress should have held him and his appointees accountable for their law-breaking. Moreover, telephone companies that aided and abetted executive branch law-breaking should have been left liable in the courts.

Yet, Sen. Obama folded, backing a “compromise” that gave the administration most everything that it wanted. No individualized warrants or evidence of law-breaking is required to authorize government spying on U.S. citizens’ phone calls and emails. No administration officials paid the slightest cost for engaging in illegal conduct. No private firm suffered the slightest inconvenience for helping the government violate their customers’ constitutional rights. This was the moment for Sen. Obama to prove that he possessed a true dedication to civil liberties, and he failed.

Of course, we all hope that, as president, he will feel freer to stand up for American liberties. But there also will be voices advising him to use the executive powers so freely expanded by his predecessor. Will he be strong enough to resist this Siren’s Song? No one knows, but one thing is known: If freed from the limiting forces of public awareness and involvement, President Obama would follow a long line of presidents who talk of enhanced individual liberty, but practice a policy of increased government power.

In other words, the best way to encourage Sen. Obama, if he is elected president, to follow the straight and narrow is to actively and clearly demonstrate that we, the American people, are concerned both about our civil liberties and his commitment to protect them. The way to do that is to vote for Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party.

-Bob Barr

The City Club of Cleveland is hosting a debate between Libertarian Party Presidential Nominee Bob Barr, consumer activist Ralph Nader and Pastor Chuck Baldwin on Thursday, October 30 at 4:30 p.m. EDT.

• When: Thursday, October 30, at 4:30 p.m. EDT.
• Where: The City Club of Cleveland; 50 Euclid Ave, 2nd Floor, Cleveland, OH
• Topic: The Economy: “Where do we go from here?”

This will be the first professionally organized debate to include both Bob Barr and Ralph Nader. The Thursday visit to Cleveland is former congressman Barr’s fourth visit to Ohio — a state that will play a crucial role in the presidential election.

Being as seating is limited and there will be questions from the audience, please BE SURE TO ARRIVE AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE.

Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. Barr’s name will appear before 95 percent of Americans when they vote on Election Day – more than any other third-party or independent candidate.

As some may have heard, there have been reports of people making dummies of both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama and then hanging them by the neck from ropes. These were all done separately, there isn’t a case of having both in the same place, just to clarify.

Cases of the Palin dummies are being dismissed as Halloween decoration, however cases of Obama dummies are being treated as possibly race related crimes. What the hell is our country coming to? Our country is so politically correct with every person standing ready to make race an issue, whether it is or not. These are double standards when people can hang a Sarah Palin dummy up by the neck and people say it is ok, and then make the Obama dummy into a hate crime.

When you get down to it all, its a matter of free speech anyways, not even considering any other factors. I support the right for anyone to hang any dummy in their yard that they want. I’m a great believer in the fact that society will police itself. I don’t mean vigilanty justice either, I’m talking about society as a whole accepting that people have the right to do what they want so long as it doesn’t harm another person and taking it upon themselves to act against such things, should they feel the need, in a peaceful manner that depicts the subject at hand, as being wrong.

Wake up America!

October 27, 2008 12:12 pm EST

Sen. John McCain accuses Sen. Barack Obama of being a “socialist,” but it is President George W. Bush, supported by Sen. McCain, who has done the most to socialize the U.S. economy. Courtesy of the Republican Party, the federal government is set to own a sizeable chunk of the housing, auto, banking and insurance industries, as well as pieces of individual companies lining up to sell securities to Washington. Even individual homes, with Uncle Sam preparing to become the mortgage guarantor of last resort, are the targets of nationalization.

What will be left for the next president to socialize?

The Republican Party once campaigned against irresponsible federal spending and government red ink. Then George W. Bush became president. With a Republican Congress, he turned a budget surplus into a half trillion dollar deficit, added trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities with creation of the Medicare drug benefit, and expanded virtually every federal program, domestic as well as foreign.

How is this different from what the Democratic Party has been promising to do for years?

Only after the Democrats retook control of Congress did President Bush suddenly become concerned about fiscal responsibility. But that lasted only until the subprime mortgage crisis enveloped Washington. Taking its cue from Democratic tax and spend policies of the past, the administration then opened the Treasury doors to all comers.

So far, the Bush administration, Congress, and Federal Reserve have provided more than $2 trillion in bailouts. Congress got the ball rolling, with an assist from the administration, with a $300 billion bailout of the housing industry. The president even agreed to a multi-million dollar taxpayer pay-off to the left-wing activist group ACORN to grease the legislative wheels.

Then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson abandoned his contrary assurances and nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at a cost of $200 billion, though the price could go higher. Bailouts began sprouting like mushrooms after a heavy rain—$29 billion to cover Bear Stearns, hundreds of billions of dollars from the Federal Reserve to banks and investment banks, as well as to buy mortgage-backed securities, $85 billion to nationalize the big insurer AIG, followed by another $38 billion for AIG and $25 billion more in loans to the auto industry.

Then there was the grand pay-off to Wall Street. Secretary Paulson came up with the wholly arbitrary $700 billion bailout—his aides admitted that he just wanted a really big number. And the administration accepted an extra $150 billion in pork and special tax breaks to win over reluctant congressmen. The purpose, we were told, was to clear “toxic” paper off of corporate balance sheets.

It turns out this was nothing more than another Bush Administration bait-and-switch.

Now the $700 billion is being used to buy up the U.S. economy. First, the administration decided to “invest” in big banks, whether they wanted it or not. The Bush administration put pressure on even sound institutions and argued that bankers must accept Republican socialism as a matter of patriotism. Who knows when, if ever, the government will sell off its stake in America’s financial system.

Then the administration suggested a new $40 billion homeowners program. The federal government is going to start guaranteeing individual mortgages. A lender who makes a bad loan will be assured of repayment so long as he cuts the interest rate or principal. A homeowner who should never have bought the house will get bailed-out by responsible homeowners and renters.

But the administration isn’t finished. On Friday, October 24, the Treasury Department announced that it was going to buy ownership stakes in major insurance companies. After all, the insurers are in trouble too. So The Hartford, MetLife, and Prudential already are in line for a government hand-out.

Now the Financial Services Roundtable has asked the Treasury Department to buy into securities dealers, auto manufacturers, and even U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies. After all, they “play a vital role in the U.S. economy,” explained the Roundtable. By that criterion, what industry or company doesn’t qualify for a bail-out?

Is Sen. Obama “socialist?” Yes, he wants to “spread the wealth,” as he puts it. But that’s what the Republicans have been doing for the last eight years. We already have “big government,” “socialism,” or whatever else you want to call it—and it was Republicans who gave it to us.

Even if he was elected, Sen. McCain would continue to this drive to bigger and bigger government: He has proposed that the federal government spend $300 billion to buy every bad mortgage in America. But, he isn’t going to win.

The real alternative this election is Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party. Only a vote for Bob Barr will tell Washington that there are Americans who don’t want socialism, whether from the Democrats or the Republicans. Only Bob Barr represents real change in Washington.

- Bob Barr

Bob’s interview with Dave Weigel of Reason is now available online. The interview was part of the magazine’s election issue released in stores earlier this month.

On deciding to run for the Libertarian Party’s nomination:

reason: In 2006, when you joined the Libertarian Party, you told reason that you were not interested in running for anything else. What changed?

Bob Barr: A couple of things. First of all, since 2006 civil liberties have continued to be under assault by this administration and by Washington generally. At the national level—in both the Congress, with very few exceptions, and in the administration, with no exception—the assault on the right to privacy and other civil liberties, the assault on the notion that we are a nation that lives by the rule of law, not by the rule of men, continues to move forward at an accelerating pace.

There’s a very interesting quote by Dante Alighieri: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis remain neutral.” So even though continuing to work as a member of the Libertarian National Committee certainly provided an appropriate forum and an opportunity to work to restore liberty and freedom in America, the process has accelerated so greatly that it was absolutely essential to enter the fray.

On his philosophy:

reason: How would you characterize your philosophy? You’ve described yourself as a Randian. Unpack that.

Bob Barr: I don’t know that anybody is a perfect Randian. I have a very high regard for Ayn Rand, her philosophy, her writings, and the ideas that continue to resonate surprisingly well in our society more than 50 years after Atlas Shrugged and 65 years after The Fountainhead was published. To me the philosophy that is at the core of Ayn Rand, that is at the core of the Libertarian Party, and that is at the core of my philosophy of what government should be doing, is that the government should exercise those powers that are clearly delineated to it and, in addition to that, are essential to allow the citizens to operate with the maximum amount of freedom in our society. In other words, scaling back tremendously, for example, that scope of federal criminal laws.

Even if Bob Barr were president or another Libertarian were president, none of these changes would be accomplished dramatically and instantaneously. But if we don’t commit ourselves very consciously to the process, to start unraveling the power of the federal government in particular, I fear the notion that the federal government is able to and should be the supreme authority in a whole range of domestic behavior will be so entrenched, so established, so systematized, that it will from a practical standpoint be impossible to unravel. In that sense, I think this current cycle and the next few years are the sort of the last best hope, as Reagan said, to unravel the oppressive statism that has grown up in our society.

And it’s the result not just of these social issues. It’s the result, I think, also very much of the power of the government to regulate in the economic sphere. Government regulates so much of what goes on in business and in our economy at all levels, from the personal through the state to the federal level, that it has acclimated people to think of the federal government as not just the last but the first resort to solve problems that people perceive in this society. That is not the job of the federal government.

That’s all I’m going to give. Head over and check the rest of the interview out.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that many of  these national poll surveys are highly inaccurate? No matter how sophisticated our mathematical system becomes or the techniques that these companies use, they will never get the true opinion of the American people, especially by only surveying 1000 or so people, and in many cases, sampling more Democrats than Republicans while neglecting all other groups. Not to mention that every survey has its own way of determining and weighting their results, which is evident as currently just about every poll has a widely different result no matter what the subject may be.

Looking further, any survey can be manipulated, whether it be on the interviewer’s end, or the group of people being interviewed. Numbers can be skewed to fit a desired result, questions can be asked in a certain way to achieve certain results, these surveyors also neglect to mention every possible option. All of these can factor into how accurate or inaccurate a survey can be. If you really want to get into this deep, I could even venture to say, with good reason, that most surveys are probably fixed in one way or another, because they are sponsored by interest groups of all kinds. While I’m not one to point fingers without proof, I have to remain suspicious of any official survey that has the backing of a special interest group.

How do you justify surveying a small group of people in a single state and then pushing results that are supposed to represent an entire nation’s views? It is impossible, no matter how you look at it, that’s why I don’t often put much stock in what national surveys say.

All I can say is that you should keep an eye on the polls, but never put too much stock in them, and never let the outcome of a survey change your opinion of something.