Speaking of malign influences: since when does an American military officer make foreign policy pronouncements, as if he were the president? It’s an indication of the advances militarism has made in what used to be a republic that no one has so much as blinked at the brazenness of such blatant Caesarism.

     - Is War With Iran Imminent?- by Justin Raimondo

This is what prompted Justin’s quote:

“The nation’s top military officer said yesterday that the Pentagon is planning for ‘potential military courses of action’ as one of several options against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government’s ‘increasingly lethal and malign influence’ in Iraq. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be ‘extremely stressing’ but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force.”

Now Bush is using the military brass as cheerleaders for a public relations campaign to further destructive foreign aggression.

Government, National, Quote of the Day, World | No Comments »

McCain’s health-care plan is a step in the right direction.  The skyrocketing costs we have now are directly related to the cost disconnect between consumers, providers and insurance companies.  Allowing consumers to chose insurance companies, in an affordable manner, will increase competition and drive down costs.

McCain’s prescription would seek to lure workers away from their company health plans with a $5,000 family tax credit and a promise that, left to their own devices, they would be able to find cheaper insurance that is more tailored to their health-care needs and not tied to a particular job.

Under McCain’s plan, $3.6 trillion worth of tax breaks over a decade that would have gone to businesses for coverage of their employees would be redirected to individuals, regardless of whether they are covered by a company plan.

“Insurance companies could no longer take your business for granted, offering narrow plans with escalating costs,” McCain said. “It would help change the whole dynamic of the current system, putting individuals and families back in charge, and forcing companies to respond with better service at lower cost.”

Read it all:  McCain Offers Market-Based Health Plan - washingtonpost.com

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A genuinely free market favors no one except those who best can produce the goods desired by consumers, and no participant in the market process can gain an elevated status in society that is exempt from the necessity to continue to serve the interests of consumers in the future.

— Gene Callahan, “Is Fair Trade a Fair Deal?” [March 2008]

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This is just a bit hard to swallow after Patterson signed the new budget with a billion dollars in new taxes and fees coupled with a 4.5% spending increase.

Gov. David Paterson has delivered an edict to commissioners of New York state agencies, directing them to submit a detailed plan to reduce spending.

Paterson is either disingenuous or a schizophrenic.

Gov: NY must change way it does business - Business First of Buffalo:

Government Waste, New York State | No Comments »

This is commonsense. 

Sign the Petition to Congress

WHEREAS: Most Americans rent or own their home outright, and the vast majority of homes (98%) are not in foreclosure.

WHEREAS: Both banks and borrowers should be reponsible for their actions, and the government should not reward reckless behavior.

WHEREAS: It is wrong to force all taxpayers– including renters who are already subsidizing home owners through the tax code– to pay for additional bailouts for big banks and home flippers.

BE IT RESOVED: That Congress should not pass any bailout programs that reward risky borrowing and lending. Let the free market sort it out!

Sign here:  Angry Renter: Oppose the Mortgage Lender Housing Bailout

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I’ve oftentimes criticized that phrase for being meaningless in a political campaign.  Especially when the person using it lacks substantive, meaningful positions.

Jon Powers, the former Army captain and Iraq War veteran running for Congress, will reimburse the $4,000 he charged his campaign for renting his home as his campaign office, his campaign manager says.

“The campaign may not pay for mortgage, rent or utilities for the personal residence of the candidate or the candidate’s family even if part of the residence is being used by the campaign,” according to the Federal Election Commission’s campaign guide for congressional candidates.

It looks like Jon Powers’ chickens have come home to roost.  Here’s his campaign in a nutshell:

Powers’ campaign of “leadership by example” is about listening to everyday Western New Yorkers, meeting our challenges, and providing reasonable, cost-effective solutions to the problems that impact real people in their daily lives.

Politicians violating the law is not the type of example we need our elected officials to follow.

The Buffalo News: City & Region: Powers to pay back money received from campaign to rent his house

National, New York State, Ridiculous | 2 Comments »

And why aren’t parents allowed school choice for their children?   Oh, wait, there are no good answers to that question.

A school bus fight, mostly among girls from a city elementary school, spilled onto an East Side street Thursday afternoon, and when adults arrived, at least four shots rang out and two were injured, Buffalo police said Friday.

Here’s the good part.

“Once the bus stopped and the students were off, some way, somehow, the altercation continued with family members and other people in and around the bus stop,” said Mychajliw, a spokesman for School Superintendent James A. Williams.

The adults apparently were notified of the disturbance by cell phone calls from the pupils on the bus.

One unidentified man fired four rounds in the direction of the bus, although no one was hit, police reported.

“According to the students on the bus, the gunshots were fired from like a football field away, about 100 yards,” Mychajliw said.

During the fight, at least two people were injured; a 26-year-old man was slashed in the back with a knife or box cutter, and a 33-year-old woman was punched in the face three times, police reports indicated.

No arrests have been made, according to police, and there were no reports of anyone being hospitalized from the fight.

Wake up people, public schools are dysfunctional and parents need the freedom to determine where to educate their children.

The Buffalo News: Home: Shots fired, adults injured as elementary school fight spills from bus into street

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 Ron Paul’s Texas Straight Talk.

Bailing Out Banks

There has been a lot of talk in the news recently about the Federal Reserve and the actions it has taken over the past few months. Many media pundits have been bending over backwards to praise the Fed for supposedly restoring stability to the market. This interpretation of the Fed’s actions couldn’t be further from the truth.

The current market crisis began because of Federal Reserve monetary policy during the early 2000s in which the Fed lowered the interest rate to a below-market rate. The artificially low rates led to overinvestment in housing and other malinvestments. When the first indications of market trouble began back in August of 2007, instead of holding back and allowing bad decision-makers to suffer the consequences of their actions, the Federal Reserve took aggressive, inflationary action to ensure that large Wall Street firms would not lose money. It began by lowering the discount rates, the rates of interest charged to banks who borrow directly from the Fed, and lengthening the terms of such loans. This eliminated much of the stigma from discount window borrowing and enabled troubled banks to come to the Fed directly for funding, pay only a slightly higher interest rate but also secure these loans for a period longer than just overnight.

After the massive increase in discount window lending proved to be ineffective, the Fed became more and more creative with its funding arrangements. It has since created the Term Auction Facility (TAF), the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF), and the Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF). The upshot of all of these new programs is that through auctions of securities or through deposits of collateral, the Fed is pushing hundreds of billions of dollars of funding into the financial system in a misguided attempt to shore up the stability of the system.

The PDCF in particular is a departure from the established pattern of Fed intervention because it targets the primary dealers, the largest investment banks who purchase government securities directly from the New York Fed. These banks have never before been allowed to borrow from the Fed, but thanks to the Fed Board of Governors, these investment banks can now receive loans from the Fed in exchange for securities which will in all likelihood soon lose much of their value.

The net effect of all this new funding has been to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system and bail out banks whose poor decision making should have caused them to go out of business. Instead of being forced to learn their lesson, these poor-performing banks are being rewarded for their financial mismanagement, and the ultimate cost of this bailout will fall on the American taxpayers. Already this new money flowing into the system is spurring talk of the next speculative bubble, possibly this time in commodities.

Worst of all, the Treasury Department has recently proposed that the Federal Reserve, which was responsible for the housing bubble and subprime crisis in the first place, be rewarded for all its intervention by being turned into a super-regulator. The Treasury foresees the Fed as the guarantor of market stability, with oversight over any financial institution that could pose a threat to the financial system. Rewarding poor performing financial institutions is bad enough, but rewarding the institution that enabled the current economic crisis is unconscionable.

Bailing Out Banks

Government Waste, National, Ron Paul for President | No Comments »

One person needed to fill a vacancy representing the NY 26th Congressional seat being vacated by Tom Reynolds.  The qualifications are as follows:

• Supports personal responsibility over government intervention.
• Advocates free-market solutions over cost-inefficient government solutions rife with unintended consequences.
• Works to abolish all laws that do not specifically protect the lives and property of individuals from others.
• Advocates a foreign policy based on free-trade and the protection of our natural borders.
• Places the control over education back in the hands of parents, where it belongs.  Public schools receive no preference in funding over private schools.
• Returns the accountability for health care costs to doctors and patients.
• Supports the Constitution.

If interested, please contact your local party.  To date, none of the interested candidates possess the ideas necessary to restore our country to a state of freedom.

Erie County, Government, Musings, New York State | No Comments »

Jefferson should be considered one of the greatest and most accurate prophets throughout history.

I sincerely wish… we could see our government so secured as to depend less on the character of the person in whose hands it is trusted. Bad men will sometimes get in and with such an immense patronage may make great progress in corrupting the public mind and principles. This is a subject with which wisdom and patriotism should be occupied.

— Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Moses Robinson [1801]

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81% in Poll Say Nation Is Headed on the Wrong Track, yet the voters keep electing politicians with the same old failing policies and ideas.  Obama, Hillary or McCain, it makes no difference.  Not one of them is even close to what our country needs in a President.

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Thousands of people have access to your personal data, often with little or no oversight.  Government intrusions into our personal life and information is becoming more widespread by the day.

Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver’s license photographs and credit reports, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post.

One center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the document shows, though it’s not clear what information those systems contain.

The list of information resources was part of a survey conducted last year, officials familiar with the effort said. It shows that, like most police agencies, the fusion centers have subscriptions to private information-broker services that keep records about Americans’ locations, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and the like.

This is what one fascist had to say about intelligence gathering.

“There is never ever enough information when it comes to terrorism” said Maj. Steven G. O’Donnell, deputy superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police. “That’s what post-9/11 is about.”

We should just change the name of our country to the U.S.G. - The United States of the Government - somewhere along the way the people have been forgotten.

Centers Tap Into Personal Databases - washingtonpost.com

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It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.

— Robert Houghwout Jackson, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and Chief Judge at the War-Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg

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Ron Paul didn’t just jump on the bandwagon criticizing the declining dollar.  He’s been leading the parade against our doomed federal monetary policies for years.

Time to listen to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the lone voice of reason in Congress today who’s got to feel like he’s shouting into a field of cotton with his repeated warnings about the dangers of a collapsing dollar, while the administration goes AWOL on the problem.

The dollar just hit a record intraday low against the euro on reports that consumer confidence levels have dropped to levels not seen since the post-Watergate era. It is down 7% year to date against the Chinese renminbi, it’s weaker than the Japanese yen and the Canadian loonie.

The joke is the greenback is now only stronger than the Mexican pesos and the Zimbabwe dollar, an overstatement for dramatic effect, to be sure.But since hitting a peak in 2002, the dollar has lost about a quarter of its value against a trade weighted basket of currencies.

. . . Congressman Paul rightfully warns us when he says the US government has “systematically undermined” the US dollar by expanding “the money supply at will for financing war or manipulating the economy with little resistance from Congress–while benefiting the special interests that influence government.”

. . . “Empires fail because they run out of money, or more accurately, run out of the ability to spend or inflate,” Congressman Paul warns. “We need to control spending, immediately, before it is too late.”

Emac’s Stock Watch | Fox Business

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Ron Paul may not have won the Republican nomination, but he surely is a winner.  And, when Ron Paul wins, the country wins!

But even if Paul’s ideological purity is never going to get him to the White House, it does help illuminate the impurities — and sometimes the hypocrisies — of today’s Republicans, just as Ralph Nader can do for the Democrats. The G.O.P. candidates all claimed to defend taxpayers, but Paul was the only one who refused to accept a taxpayer-funded pension or taxpayer-funded junkets. The candidates all talked about shrinking big government, but Paul was the only one who included the Pentagon and NSA wiretaps and petroleum subsidies in his definition. Bush’s approval ratings have been abysmal for years, but Paul was the only Republican who really campaigned for change.

And in doing so Paul illustrated what was so striking about the Republican race. The leading candidates had all strayed from Bush and current orthodoxy in the past — Rudy Giuliani on abortion and gay rights, John McCain on tax cuts, torture, health care and campaign finance, Mitt Romney on just about everything. But while Paul was getting attacked every time he called for a new direction, the rest spent the primaries minimizing and renouncing their previous departures, implicitly promising four more years of Bushism. McCain is lucky he has some time to craft a new message, because that’s not where America stands today, either.

Read it all:  Why Ron Paul Scares the GOP - TIME

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