I was a Libertarian before it was cool

Posted by Steve Adcock

This is the Libertarian Party’s moment to shine. Corruption has reached an all-time high in Washington D.C. and the American people are rightly becoming more and more suspect of their elected government officials. From the Benghazi cover-up to the IRS scandal, from gun running (Fast and Furious) to the Associated Press privacy fiasco, the government is clearly out of control and the evidence is in plain sight.

This is nothing new. This is what governments do when the people grant them virtually unchecked power. Why does it take public scandal before Americans finally wake up to what’s been going on under their noses for decades?

And the people of our nation, once again, are left footing the bill. The American people have a reason to start looking elsewhere for their political leadership – as they always have. Will this mean the majority of Republicans and Democrats will jump ship to the Libertarians? Of course not. And honestly, they don’t need to. The Libertarian movement has always been around and always will be. We are willing to accept anyone to the side of freedom and liberty.

But if Americans truly want change in their country, it is imperative that they finally stop believing that it is their job to vote for the lesser of two evils because, as all Americans plainly see, evil is still evil however you slice it. Your party affiliation does not matter as much as your votes do. Vote for freedom and start experiencing everything that this great nation has to offer. Or, continuing vote for evil, and our government will forever remain…evil.

I am a damn proud Libertarian. I am a Libertarian because I have two eyes, both in working order. I cringe when I look at my paycheck every two weeks and see the money being confiscated from me. I see our government’s never-ending drive to disarm the American people and throw away parts of the Constitution. I see the federal government running up deficits and asking Americans to cut back and spend responsibly even when our own politicians would never dream of using the same philosophy with our money at the national level.

Benghazi made it cool again to be a Libertarian, but it should not take major public scandals to wake the population up to the systematic failures of their own government. It should not take the loss of freedom before Americans begin to love freedom. But it does.

Ron Paul: The IRS itself is the problem

Posted by Ron Paul

“What do you expect when you target the President?” This is what an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent allegedly said to the head of a conservative organization that was being audited after calling for the impeachment of then-President Clinton. Recent revelations that IRS agents gave “special scrutiny” to organizations opposed to the current administration’s policies suggest that many in the IRS still believe harassing the President’s opponents is part of their job.

As troubling as these recent reports are, it would be a grave mistake to think that IRS harassment of opponents of the incumbent President is a modern, or a partisan, phenomenon. As scholar Burton Folsom pointed out in his book New Deal or Raw Deal, IRS agents in the 1930s were essentially “hit squads” against opponents of the New Deal. It is well-known that the administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson used the IRS to silence their critics. One of the articles of impeachment drawn up against Richard Nixon dealt with his use of the IRS to harass his political enemies. Allegations of IRS abuses were common during the Clinton administration, and just this week some of the current administration’s defenders recalled that antiwar and progressive groups alleged harassment by the IRS during the Bush presidency.

The bipartisan tradition of using the IRS as a tool to harass political opponents suggests that the problem is deeper than just a few “rogue” IRS agents – or even corruption within one, two, three or many administrations. Instead, the problem lays in the extraordinary power the tax system grants the IRS.

The IRS routinely obtains information about how we earn a living, what investments we make, what we spend on ourselves and our families, and even what charitable and religious organizations we support. Starting next year, the IRS will be collecting personally identifiable health insurance information in order to ensure we are complying with Obamacare’s mandates.

The current tax laws even give the IRS power to marginalize any educational, political, or even religious organizations whose goals, beliefs, and values are not favored by the current regime by denying those organizations “tax-free” status. This is the root of the latest scandal involving the IRS.

Considering the type of power the IRS excises over the American people, and the propensity of those who hold power to violate liberty, it is surprising we do not hear about more cases of politically-motivated IRS harassment. As the first U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall said, “The power to tax is the power to destroy” – and who better to destroy than one’s political enemies?

The United States flourished for over 120 years without an income tax, and our liberty and prosperity will only benefit from getting rid of the current tax system. The federal government will get along just fine without its immoral claim on the fruits of our labor, particularly if the elimination of federal income taxes are accompanied by serious reduction in all areas of spending, starting with the military spending beloved by so many who claim to be opponents of high taxes and big government.

While it is important for Congress to investigate the most recent scandal and ensure all involved are held accountable, we cannot pretend that the problem is a few bad actors. The very purpose of the IRS is to transfer wealth from one group to another while violating our liberties in the process. Thus the only way Congress can protect our freedoms is to repeal the income tax and shutter the doors of the IRS once and for all.

On gun control, “common sense” is anything but common

Posted by Steve Adcock

Common sense is a wonderful thing. The implication of “common” sense reforms implies that we’re discussing regulations so proper and so basic that people as a whole – the population – can easily see its virtues and support it. In theory, these “common sense gun reforms” represent the most fundamental level of protection against another attack, and what American would oppose laws that are designed to prevent another attack?

The problem starts from ground zero – common sense is not pulled out of a hat. Common sense is never the result of emotions. Common sense results from experience and research, but unfortunately, neither of these two traits are present in these so-called common sense gun control laws floating around Congress. How much confidence in these laws can the American people have when our elected leaders admit that their most recent failure – a bill requiring universal background checks - will not stop the next massacre, nor would it have prevented Sandy Hook, Columbine, or Virginia Tech?

To rely on background checks, one needs to assume two different things: First, we need to assume that criminals in our society would voluntarily submit to background checks. Second, we need to necessarily assume that if a person were to fail a background check, they immediately stop trying to obtain a firearm. Once they fail, that is it. They go on about their lives as productive members of our society and simply forget about the cause of their aggression. They instantly reform themselves, as if touched by an angel, and become law-abiding citizens of our great nation.

I do not know in what world that would be considered “common sense”, but it is not in this one. Even our political class knows that universal background checks, while fed to the American people in an easily digestible “common sense” package, would do nothing to prevent the next attack.

It does not stop there. Nobody wants to take away your guns, they say. The problem? They do. Diane Feinstein, mother of the so-called assault weapons ban – a ban on the very type of weapons that are used in an extremely tiny fraction of crime in America – admitted in 1995 that if the votes were there, she would support a full and outright ban on weapons in this country, disarming the American people and keeping guns only in the hands of our trustworthy and sensible government. What could go wrong?

So, let’s take a look at what one of the more prominent gun control activists in Congress supports. At the very least, Feinstein wants a ban on weapons that are not used in the large majority of crime in America. But truthfully, the goal is an outright ban on all weapons, essentially destroying the second amendment and leaving Americans, quite literally, as sitting ducks to those who would do us harm – including (and especially?) the government.

To believe in a gun ban, you must willingly forget the Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 that kicked off the Revolutionary War, when British “Red Coat” soldiers attempted to seize a large collection of arms from the colonists. The alarm was sounded and the colonial militiamen quickly formed their armed resistance and pushed the British army back into retreat. The moral of this story? Disarmament was tried before, and the second amendment does not only exist to protect skeet shooting and hunting, as many would have you believe. This is about freedom from tyranny.

Even more nonsensical are limits to magazines – and New York (7-round max) currently leads the way in this truly reckless control mechanism. 10-rounds seem to be the most popular number to limit magazine capacities at, but only the most uninformed gun control proponent could possibly support such a limit given that the gunmen in one of the worst school tragedies in recent history, Columbine, used 10-round magazines. Thirteen different 10-round magazines, in fact. The Virginia Tech shooter used several 10-round magazines, along with some 15-round mags. The point? Magazine limits cannot prevent a crazy gunman from opening up a torrent of gun fire, and even the most rudimentary research effort would uncover this fact.

Tell me, ladies and gentlemen – what is common sense about any of this? Is the destruction of the second amendment somehow “common”? If so, we have a much larger problem on our hands. Is passing a universal background check system, a proposition that our own government admits will not stop the next attack, common? How can limiting magazine capacities to the precise number that gunmen in many of our school tragedies use be at all connected to “common” … or “sense”, for that matter?

The truth of the matter is violent crime in the United States of America is at an all time low according to recent statistics. Why, then, do the majority of Americans believe that crime is on the rise? The answer lies in our media’s attempt at creating a life-and-death situation out of thin air, exploiting tragedies like Sandy Hook and virtually every accidental shooting as grounds to prop up the fraud. Sadly, our government could not be happier about it because it gives them an opportunity to further their own political agendas and strengthen our society of dependence on the federal government. Worse, it reinforces in a largely uninformed population the notion that America has a “gun problem”, and that the government needs to fix it.

It is well known that in the immediate aftermath of well-publicized national tragedies, the American people tear down their defenses and let the government encroach into their lives in ways they probably never dreamed of (think TSA). This time, our government narrowly missed the window of opportunity to cash in on the heightened emotional level of Americans and push through a piece of meaningless legislation that would treat every American as a potential criminal.

This media-concocted fraud plays an integral part in creating the illusion that gun control laws in Congress are “common sense”. If Americans are scared for their lives, they are more likely to give up their freedom in order to obtain perceived safety. Of course, it is only those who do not own guns, nor have much knowledge about them, that are most willing to give up their right to them. You want an example of being selfish? This is it.

There is nothing “common sense” about that.

Minimum wage kills jobs, reduces economic freedom

Posted by Steve Adcock

President Obama’s plan that would increase the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour would not only reduce the availability of jobs (especially in the minority population, Obama’s biggest support group), but it would prevent the freedom of workers to work jobs for less than the minimum wage even if both parties agree to the lower wage, wrote the Cato Institute’s James Dorn in an article published in U.S. News and World Report.

“If the prevailing market wage for low-skilled workers is $7.25 per hour and Congress mandates a minimum of $9 per hour, then workers who produce less than that will not be retained or hired,” he wrote. In other words, basic economics. As the government increases the minimum wage, businesses are necessarily forced to make a decision: reduce their workforce or increase prices. Which would you prefer?

Both, of course, have negative consequences for our nation. If businesses reduce their workforce, workers who previously had jobs will probably seek unemployment benefits, costing the American taxpayer money. If companies increase prices, consumers will naturally spend less which, in turn, effects the cash flow of American businesses and may necessitate further layoffs and curtail innovation. The minimum wage death spiral gets strengthened.

“The best way to stimulate the economy and create jobs is to increase economic growth by expanding free markets, not by increasing government power through a higher minimum wage.”

What makes Sandy Hook victims credible on gun control?

Posted by Steve Adcock

Risking the chance of being insensitive to the victims of Sandy Hook’s tragedy last year, their involvement in gun control legislation around the country has me wondering why these parents are considered credible participants in the gun control debate.

The involvement of these parents bring nothing but emotion into the issue of gun control and personal protection – and emotion never makes for good politics. This week, Four parents from Sandy Hook had a meeting with Delaware Governor Jack Markell to “discuss” gun violence.

“We are trying to encourage lawmakers in other states and in Washington to embrace the concept of expanding background checks,” said one of the parents who lost a 6-year old child in the massacre. Even the sponsors of the failed Senate background check bill admitted that background checks would not have prevented Sandy Hook and, likewise, will not prevent the next attack.

“We would also like to see a limit to large capacity magazines, in many of these mass shootings that would have made a difference in the lethality of the firearm,” he continued, apparently unaware that the Columbine shooters obtained their firearms and equipment from the state of California where magazine limits were already in place. Again, another failed gun control “reform” that only takes freedoms and liberties away from the American people.

But this is not about true gun reform in any way. These meetings are not about ensuring the constitutional rights of the American people are protected and nurtured.

These meetings are about making it harder for law-abiding citizens to own firearms due to emotional politics, and Governors and other politicians around the nation are shamelessly using the victims of Sandy Hook to make it happen. Emotionally-driven politics with very little resemblance to anything even remotely close to true reform, these parents add nothing to the debate over gun control.

They lost their loved ones last year and are understandably devastated. Everybody wants to find ways to prevent the next attack, but removing guns from law-abiding citizens won’t do it. Running background checks ahead of gun purchases and assuming that will prevent a criminal from obtaining a firearm won’t do it. Limiting magazine capacities won’t do it. Demonstrably, these laws do not work. Criminals don’t follow the law.

That’s why they are criminals.