Founded in 1991, the Republican Liberty Caucus works to advance the principles of limited government, free markets and individual liberty within the Republican Party.

The Republican Liberty Caucus of Minnesota believes every citizen has the freedom of association.  This includes the freedom to decide on their own whether to join or not join a union and whether to pay or not pay union dues.  Just like workers in 22 other states, Minnesotans should not be forced to join a union or pay dues to an organization if they do not wish to belong. House File 65 proposes that all citizens be granted the freedom to decide to join or leave a union as well as to pay or not pay dues without having it affect their employment status. The Republican Liberty Caucus of Minnesota encourages the Minnesota Legislature to pass a constitutional amendment, during the 2012 legislative session, giving individual voters the freedom to decide whether to become an employee freedom state.

Thank you Sen. Thompson and Rep. Drazkowski - both are RLCMN endorsed members of the Legislature.

SENATOR DAVE THOMPSON, REPRESENTATIVE STEVE DRAZKOWSKI ANNOUNCE EMPLOYEE FREEDOM CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

St. Paul- Senator Dave Thompson (R-Lakeville) and Representative Steve Drazkowski (R-Mazeppa) announced the introduction of a constitutional amendment that would give Minnesotans the opportunity to vote on whether or not Minnesota workers should have the freedom to join a union or not. Currently, if someone is hired by a company with a collective bargaining agreement in place, that person is required to join the union or pay fair share dues.

“In Minnesota law, if a worker refuses to pay union dues, they are fired. This isn't fair and it's definitely not free,” Representative Drazkowski said. “To me, this is the most important pro-jobs bill we can pass this session.It's estimated that had Minnesota passed this amendment 30 years ago, the average Minnesota working family would be earning an additional $7,000 or more every year.Nearly 70% of Minnesotans support employee freedom - let's allow the people to decide whether they want to guarantee this fundamental right in our constitution.”

If Minnesotans vote in favor of this amendment, every Minnesota worker would still have the right to join or support a labor union, only now it would be his or her own decision. Union employees would still be able to collectively bargain the same as under current law.

“Our bill is simple: let’s allow Minnesotans to vote on whether or not an individual should be forced to pay a third party in order to work.Jobs are our number one priority – this bill recognizes Minnesota workers’ ability, and right, to decide whether or not they’d like to be part of a union.States that have granted employees this freedom have experienced rapid growth in business, leading to greater job growth.From 1993 to 2009, private sector employment increased nearly 38% in those states versus only 19.6% in forced-unionism states,” said Senator Thompson.“We have an opportunity, as a state, to increase freedom and grow jobs – it’s an opportunity Minnesota cannot afford to turn down.”

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CONCORD, N.H.—The Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire rebukes the idea that Republicans should remove uncertainty by establishing a state health insurance exchange under the terms of Obamacare, as such a move would voluntarily bind the state under the control of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department while sending New Hampshire taxpayers the bill. Contrary to arguments from some insurance regulators, insurance companies and industry groups, creating a state exchange will remove New Hampshire’s local control and ensure Obamacare is fully enacted in New Hampshire, whether the federal law is repealed or not. In addition, establishing a state insurance exchange under Obamacare requires the state to pay for the full cost of implementation starting in 2015, which could cost New Hampshire taxpayers anywhere from $10 million to $47 million a year, according to HTMS, a North Dakota health care consulting company. “The bottom line is that the federal government has created uncertainty by passing an unworkable federal law that depends on states to put in the time and money to fix all of its faults,” said Carolyn McKinney, chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire. “The cloud of uncertainty created by President Obama and the Democratic Congress won’t go away just because we accept Obamacare by creating a state health insurance exchange. In fact, these exchanges will distort the market, which will make for even more uncertainty.” Those arguing for a state insurance exchange have clamored for predictability, but by establishing a state insurance exchange, the only predictable outcome will be that the state will be voluntarily implementing the terms of the Obamacare law that voters soundly rejected in 2010. The mammoth state bureaucracy created would only serve as a nominal state organization, but it would take all of its orders from Washington bureaucrats, who would set the rules for selling insurance plans within the state, thus reducing real competition and increasing the costs of providing health insurance. What makes matters worse, under SB 163, the N.H. Senate bill that establishes a state exchange, “poison pill” language would eliminate only those sections found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or repealed by the Congress, but it would leave everything else in place. If the bill passes, it would keep a state health insurance exchange in place even if the federal government fully rejects New Hampshire’s proposal, thus leaving us with a federal exchange plan funded by New Hampshire taxpayers. The better approach is HB 1297, which would prohibit the state from enacting an exchange and make it harder for the federal government to implement the law. In fact, the more states that opt not to create a health insurance exchange will then send the federal bureaucrats scrambling to come up with one, without the time or funding to create one that will work. If New Hampshire and other states around the country say no to a state health insurance exchange, it all but guarantees that Congress will have to repeal or replace Obamacare, which is what the people want. “Creating a state exchange voluntarily accepts Obamacare in New Hampshire,” McKinney said. “If we do that, this Republican Legislature will be directly opposing the voters who sent them to Concord to stand up against this federal overreach. These Republicans, and not the Obama Democrats, would be responsible for the consequences of Obamacare in New Hampshire. “If Republicans act now to definitively reject a state exchange, however; the Republican Legislature stands a better chance of fulfilling the mandate of New Hampshire voters and leading the way toward true health insurance reform,” McKinney said. For more information about the conclusions reached by RLCNH about state health insurance exchanges under Obamacare, please refer to these studies by the Cato Institute, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, and the Goldwater Institute.

With his surge in the polls I’ve been trying to get a handle on the philosophy of Newt Gingrich, and after finally seeing signs which should have been obvious all along and confirming them with a bit of research, I realized what I should have caught on to long ago, that Newt Gingrich is a Robert Heinlein Republican.

Like many in my generation I grew up reading Robert Heinlein’s Science Fiction novels almost religiously. Heinlein’s dystopian vision of the future and his romantic obsession with man as superman was enormously appealing to a teenager growing up in the space age. The Heinlein man could perfect himself and conquer the universe singlehanded by sheer determination and willpower. Heinlein’s theme was the triumph of the individual over time in Methuselah’s Children, over space in The Man Who Sold the Moon, over conventional morality in Stranger in a Strange Land and over the governments of lesser men in Farnham’s Freehold. Heinlein’s political philosophy of Rational Anarchism is summed up by the Professor Bernardo de la Paz in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress:

“In terms of morals there is no such thing as a ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free, because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything that I do.”

Heinlein’s muscular, militaristic individualism carried with it a deliberate intention from the very first to influence politics. After World War II Heinlein experimented with direct involvement in politics, served in elective party office in California and ultimately campaigned for Goldwater in 1964 and may have ghostwritten ads and speeches for his presidential campaign. In this period Heinlein had a friendship and rivalry with fellow writer L. Ron Hubbard. They supposedly had a long standing bet to see who could start a religion which would change society. Hubbard’s answer to this challenge was the creation of Scientology. Heinlein’s answer came through his writing and the ideas expressed in some of his bestselling novels of the late 1960s and its ultimate product seems to be Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich has admitted to being a Heinlein fan and his own fiction has a clear Heinlein influence. Gingrich is also friends with and has collaborated with Science Fiction author and former Reagan era technology adviser Jerry Pournelle, who sees himself as the heir to Heinlein’s ideas and literary tradition. Pournelle was a protege of influential neolibertarian thinker Russell Kirk, and has written extensively on politics from a neolibertarian perspective. Neolibertarianism is a branch of libertarianism which fits the Heinlein model quite closely. It at least partially deemphasizes the principle of non-coercion and places a strong emphasis on individual liberty, disdaining bureaucratic government and elevating the military to a near iconic status. The world envisioned in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers is very much the world of the neolibertarian movement.

Gingrich has clearly taken the Heinlein ideology to heart on many levels. His serial infidelity and request that his wife engage in an open relationship are pure Heinlein. Heinlein was an avowed libertine who practiced open marriage and advocated total sexual liberation and rejection of conventional morality as a recurrent theme in much of his writing. Gingrich’s obsession with colonizing the moon is also straight out of Heinlein’s work. Some of Heinlein’s most influential writing centers around the colonization and development of the moon in books like The Man Who Sold the Moon and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  Gingrich’s hostility towards bureaucracy, flaunting of the conventional political process and love of innovation for its own sake are pure Heinlein.  His egotism and obsessive character are also straight out of Heinlein.  Gingrich himself has much in common with megalomaniacal developer Delos D. Harriman in <i>The Man Who Sold the Moon</i>, though Gingrich seems not to understand that the self-destructive Harriman was intended more as an anti-hero than a role model.

Many observers of the libertarian end of the political spectrum see Heinlein’s vision and the ideas of the neolibertarians as the “ugly” side of libertarianism.  Disconnected from social morality and focused on the responsibility of the individual to himself and not to society, it can lead to views which verge on being an oxymoronic kind of libertarian fascism.  Ironically, this aggressive subset of the generally much more innocuous libertarian movement seems to have much greater political marketability.

To a generation of middle-aged voters who grew up on Heinlein and the writers he influenced, the Gingrich message and the Gingrich style have a real resonance.  You can see this in how Gingrich has successfully positioned himself as the defiant individualist in his challenging of the media establishment and how easily voters have been convinced to dismiss his unconventional personal life.  The fully realized individual is above conventional morality and is not accountable to anyone but himself.  The more Gingrich defies those who would judge him the more he proves that he is the kind of individualistic superman which Heinlein’s writing has convinced us that we all ought to be.  We identify with Gingrich and live vicariously through him, more like a literary character than a real human being.

In embracing the Heinleinian model of an anti-statesman Gingrich seems to have actually struck a thread with a public which is very unhappy with the conventional political establishment.  Even though he himself was part of that establishment for many years, he has thrown himself into the role of the outcast returning in triumph to exact vengeance on his detractors, a mythic archetype which is widespread in legend and literature and manifests in Heinlein’s work repeatedly.  Gingrich is the hero returned from exile.  He is Valentine Michael Smith and Thorby Baslim and Lazarus Long rolled into one unlikely package.  The unanswered question is whether Gingrich has the shortcomings of a mortal man or the inevitable victorious destiny of a literary character.

This article appeared in slightly different form on Blogcritics Magazine

Last night’s State of the Union address had a more positive tone than I had originally expected. But it still carried a hypocritical juxtaposition of calling on Americans to come together and adopt reforms that create jobs and lift the burden on businesses, improve our children’s educational opportunities, and achieve energy independence while also touting the divisive rhetoric that drives us against each other and drives us to blame the wrong causes for our current situation.

Much of what President Obama said tonight was true. It is true that mortgages were lent to those who could not afford them. It is true that companies are shipping jobs overseas and at the same time receiving tax breaks. It is true that with the death of Osama Bin Laden and numerous Al Qaeda leaders, America is much safer. And it is true that millions of new jobs have been created since he took office.

The positives may sound good when you phrase them as such. But the grim reality is that the problems America faces are so significant, that the good things that have happened under this administration are eclipsed. While these jobs were being created, millions of jobs were being eliminated. We still have fewer jobs than when the president took office. And whether he likes to admit it or not, his own policies have played a part in this anemic growth.

EPA regulations piled on by this administration have cost us over 5% of our GDP, and that’s just one federal department of many. The Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill will cost $30 billion that we don’t have. The Small Business Administration estimates that the compliance cost of our current regulatory environment is $1.75 trillion per year. President Obama alone cannot be blamed for this, as his predecessors and those in Congress passed many of these regulations prior to 2009.

The president failed to mention that government programs incentivized lending of mortgages to those who could not afford them. Federal laws demanded banks loosen their restrictions or face legal action. The Federal Reserve further incentivized banks to comply by offering them easy credit. They lowered interest rates causing investors to put their money into long term projects and many focused on residential construction.

With his re-appointment of Ben Bernanke to chair the Federal Reserve System, this inflationary policy of unnaturally and artificially low interest rates has continued. The Fed has injected trillions of dollars into our economy under this administration, money which is not backed by matching economic growth or a significant demand for US dollars. This has caused the value of our currency to drop, and commodities such as gasoline have jumped in price as a result of a speculative bubble.

President Obama could have partially alleviated this problem by promoting domestic drilling for oil and the construction of new refineries, while we wait for science to develop inexpensive renewable energy. Instead, he has chosen to stand in the way of domestic oil production, while we continue to send billions of dollars to the Saudi elite, and turn a blind eye as they send that money to violent, theocratic institutions all over the world. He turned down the Keystone oil pipeline which would run from our largest supplier of oil—Canada—to the world’s most high-tech refineries in Houston.

It would have created tens of thousands of new jobs, including many for union workers that support Obama enthusiastically. They have been denied this opportunity in favor of capitulating to a lobby of environmental zealots known for its dishonesty in promoting its agenda.

The president covered a topic that I have focused much of my attention on in recent years: education. While he briefly touted the importance of returning control to local communities and schools, the other solutions he proposed are not only wrong, but they would further damage a K-12 system that is already a miserable failure at meeting the needs of the 21st century economy.

The president proposed forcing students to stay in school until they are 18 and claimed this would improve overall education. With all due respect, this is dead wrong. We have to get out of this ‘everyone gets a trophy’ mentality and realize that some children just will not learn. By forcing them to stay in school they hold back those of our children who have the drive to succeed. It is sad and politically incorrect to mention this, but it is true.

It has been mentioned in the writings of Jim Blockey, a reform school teacher from Las Vegas, I’ve discussed it with Robert Mansfield of Pennsylvania; a man born to a drug-addicted mother who grew up on the streets of Philadelphia with nothing and who rose to success when he returned to school, got his GED and joined the Army where he rose to the rank of Sergeant.I have heard even more examples from my friends who attended failing government schools in the inner cities of Ohio.

Although early childhood education in this country is world class, by the time our children reach high school, students in European countries like Belgium beat us on a number of metrics. Students in Japan, South Korea and Singapore blow us out of the water. China isn’t messing around either. They are targeting their most skilled students and placing them into advanced programs. When those students come to our universities they trounce their American peers in mathematics and natural sciences, and then our broken immigration system forces them to return to China and use the skills that we taught them against us in the global economy. A better system would incentivize and enable them to become Americans, and grow our economy instead.

The Belgians and the Japanese emphasize on the importance of school choice and privatization of education. And the British and the Japanese both emphasize on the important of the individual. Their programs are customized to fit the abilities of each student. In Japan, education is mandatory till around 15 years of age, at which they get their equivalent of our GED. Their upper-tier secondary schools are optional, and yet over 95% of Japanese students continue their education beyond the mandatory requirements. These programs are customized as either vocational education or preparation for university.

And one third of these schools are private!

In Great Britain, when you are 16, you can stay in the system, go to a trade school, or if you are smart enough go straight to college. Some states have adopted similar programs right here in America, where gifted students can achieve associates degrees upon graduating. I propose that we don’t waste their time teaching things they don’t need in the career they want.

We need to take heed to what the Belgians, the British and especially our Japanese friends have done. We shouldn’t mandate education to 18; we should eliminate the high school diploma and require a GED at the end of what is currently 9th grade as they do in Japan. Then make tenth through twelfth grade a customizable and optional program. Let students have choices of vocational programs, college preparatory programs, and if they are skilled enough, let them go straight to college. Provide a system that can ensure our 18 year olds truly are adults by giving them the marketable skills they need to make a living wage instead of mooching off of mom and dad into their twenties.

The status quo is unacceptable! And it fosters this sort of environment. To those who are worried about the students who wouldn’t go to school beyond their GED, they can always take the unskilled labor jobs and then work their way up the ladder or choose to continue their education at a later time in life. What makes such a system work so well is that the market will determine what skills are needed and relevant programs will be supplied.

This one-size-fits-all everyone-needs-to-go-to-college mentality is causing us to fall behind the competition. It is creating an education bubble that will inevitably burst. Many of these college degrees are becoming useless, rendering starting salaries that are not significantly higher than a high school diploma. The focus must be on marketable skills. General education is never a bad thing and should be viewed as a virtue, but it can only go so far.

The best possible system we can provide for our children is a system of individual choice, with a supply of curriculum determined by the market economy’s demand. A system that empowers parents, rewards the best students, and the best teachers, and yes—a system that discourages and reprimands failure.

The president went on to claim that college tuition is too high, and if it continues to rise he will pull subsidies from those universities. He’s right to acknowledge the avarice of our university system: costing its students thousands in waste on unnecessary programs and fees that should either be privately funded or purchased a la carte at the individual level.

Yet, he fails to understand the prime reason why tuition has risen at twice the rate of inflation and four times the wage rate. The federal government’s guarantee of all student loans has given greedy academics and administrators an opportunity that they would not have in a free market. They have constantly jacked up their prices, knowing that the government would credit the money to them no matter what, and the students would get stuck with the bill.

In the state of today’s economy, no one between the ages of 18 and 22 with the exception of military, civil service and a few lucky kids who invested from their teen years would be able to apply for a loan at a bank to pay over $10,000 a year for full-time tuition and living expense financing unless they had either a parent or credit-worthy friend co-sign for them. I know because I borrow primarily from a credit union to finance my education. Without a co-signer I likely would not have been approved, and if I was approved, my interest rate would be over 10%.

But the government federally guarantees many financial options for students who have little to no credit history. This has allowed the universities to set their tuition and fees well above a true market rate. In a free market where the finance was out of pocket or credit-based, they could not do this. Their classrooms would sit empty at those prices, and they would go bankrupt. Ending the federal department of education would quickly slash tuition prices in half, and prices would finally begin to increase in conjunction with wages and inflation.

When my father went to college in the 1970s, you borrowed directly from the school. A full-time summer job was enough to cover a year’s tuition and much of your living expenses at a state university. My father came here a poor immigrant, went to a small private college, and worked part time as a manual laborer. He graduated on time and with two years of debt.

My generation has not been so lucky.

This achievement by my father is the American Dream that we should want for all of our children, and it is morally wrong to deny them the benefits of a free market where they have the power to control their own destinies.

The message of class envy is dividing us and acting against the interests of that dream. Claiming that a job creating class is not paying their fair share when the top 1% of earners pay nearly 40% of the income taxes and the top 10% pay 70% of income taxes is ludicrous. But loopholes favoring one business over another certainly must go.

Our country needs a fairer, flatter tax. We need low rates for all, but we need few to no deductions. Compliance with our current tax laws cost American businesses nearly half a trillion dollars every year. Corporate taxes only make up 9% of our federal revenue yet their punitive nature begs the question: are they really worth it? What if the economic growth that was unleashed as a result of their elimination put so many people back to work, that the income tax revenue increased not only to offset that 9%, but to surpass it?

President Obama mentioned that companies are receiving tax breaks while they offshore jobs, and he mentioned the importance of incentivizing them with tax breaks to bring those jobs back here. There are over one trillion American dollars sitting overseas because investors don’t want it to be taxed by both the foreign country and the United States upon its return. Presidential candidate Ron Paul, former candidate Herman Cain, and myself all support a common sense solution to this problem.

I call upon President Obama to eliminate taxes on all foreign money repatriated into the U.S. economy. Let these corporations and businesspeople know that if they use that money to create American jobs, they can bring it back tax free! This is something that everyone should get behind! One trillion dollars is a lot of money with the potential to create millions of new jobs. If the president and both parties in congress are serious about restoring this economy to greatness, then a bill will be brought up and soon eliminating the repatriation tax, and President Obama will not hesitate to sign it.

There is too much at stake here to play class warfare politics. If government stole the entire net worth of every billionaire on the planet, not just in the U.S., it would total up to $4.5 trillion. Under this administration, the national debt has increased by over $5 trillion . We have debt because we spend too much, not because we tax too little. Both parties are to blame. We cannot afford our so-called entitlement system as is and we cannot afford a foreign policy of being the world’s policeman.

Now that we are out of Iraq President Obama said he wants to take that money, spend half of it to pay down the debt and half to build our own infrastructure. What he failed to mention was that there are no actual savings from the end of the Iraq War. We borrowed and printed money to finance our operations there and continue to do so in Afghanistan. There is no sudden influx of revenue we can use to pay down the debt, there is only a smaller deficit.

The President must realize that this is a Now or Never moment to prevent our country from going the way of many great empires in history, destroying itself under massive debt from an affluent society at home and a thinly spread militarism.

Do not give up on bipartisanship, Mr. President. Despite the differences between you and the Republicans, you can still get started on these things. Take a look at the recommendations of the Erskine-Bowles commission. Find the things in there that you and the Republicans can agree on, and immediately pass them. It will not be the end-all-be-all solution, but it is far better than doing nothing.

We owe it to future generations to actually build them a future. I understand the pressures of an election cycle, Mr. President. But the best way to get reelected is to do right by the American people. Embracing the free-market, ending corporatism, foreign nation building, and unsustainable benefit programs is the only way to save the American Dream.

Thank you, and God Bless America!

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Aaron Alghawi is finishing his B.S. in Economics at Texas A&M University; he is a board member and Director of Student Outreach for the Republican Liberty Caucus.

RLCMN Secretary Rudy Takala wrote an article that was featured by American for Tax Reform.  Congratulations Rudy!

New Jersey billionaire Zygi Wilf, owner of the Minnesota Vikings, is seeking $700 million of taxpayers' money to build his team a new stadium in the state.

“State [of Minnesota] not rushing to act on Vikings stadium,” fretted the January 13 headline of a column in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. New Jersey billionaire Zygi Wilf, owner of the Minnesota Vikings, is seeking about $700 million in taxpayers’ money to build his team a new stadium in the state.

The $700 million would be roughly split between state and local taxpayers. Members of one proposed site for the stadium have been especially disgruntled by Wilf’s request to take their money for his business. A group in Ramsey County, which includes the state capital of St. Paul, has collected 2,000 signatures since January 6 in an effort to block any special taxes on their county to pay for the stadium.

The group, called The No Stadium Tax Coalition, needs to collect 15,000 signatures by July in order to amend the county’s charter. It would prevent, among other taxes, a 3 percent food and beverage tax on the county.

The prospect of $1.1 billion taxpayer dollars floating around has created a haze through which it is comedic to watch different parties blatantly promoting their own interests.

For example, Zygi Wilf would like his new stadium built in a northern suburb of Ramsey County. It would allow his team to continue playing in the Minneapolis Metrodome in the meantime, where it has been since 1979. If the Metrodome were to be replaced, the team would need to play in a less lucrative locale until construction was completed.

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis Star Tribune stands to make $45 million off the sale of its land if the Metrodome is replaced. It is hard to find news on the issue in the newspaper; most of the paper’s ink is devoted to questioning why lawmakers are not taking faster action to bring the stadium to their doorstep. Substantive news on The No Stadium Tax Coalition and other opposition comes from local publications, not from the state’s flagship newspaper.

Using budget shifts and accounting maneuvers, Minnesota lawmakers discovered they have a surplus of $876 million this year. No doubt that has some legislators reveling in the excitement of how many earmarks that will help them bring to their districts. The last time the state had a surplus was in 2007, when there was $1 billion on hand. That resulted in spending, deficit spending and more spending until the state peaked in 2011 with a deficit of $5 billion.

Due to measures taken to escape the deficit, the state needs to pay $1 billion in debt service over the course of 20 years to cover the interest on borrowed funds. It also delayed approximately $700 million in payments to schools that now need to be covered in 2012, which equates to 40 percent of the state’s aid.

Without the budgetary illusions, it is hardly the surplus that has state legislators rubbing their hands together.

However, Zygi Wilf apparently thought it would be more than enough for a generous helping of “w(i)lfare.” Wilf bought a $19 million apartment in New York last November as he was pleading with taxpayers to help him out.

There has been some encouraging news on the legislative front. Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Zellers (R-Maple Grove), a Taxpayer Protection Pledge signer, said it was “not my job” to line up votes for the stadium.

On the other hand, some legislators never like to let an opportunity to spend taxpayer dollars go to waste. Greg Davids (R-Preston), who is the chair of the House Tax Committee and who has not signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, had this assurance: “I think the only people who don’t realize the stadium is going to be in downtown Minneapolis are the Minnesota Vikings.”

Republican Sen. Julie Rosen and Republican Rep. Morrie Lanning, neither of whom are Pledge signers, round out the list of legislators who are especially supportive of wilfare.

Millionaire Governor Mark Dayton, a Democrat, is supportive of all proposals for the state government to spend more.

Read more: http://www.atr.org/wilfare-billionaires-a6687#ixzz1kUWtgnOS

As you all know, I’ve come out pretty strongly against these from the get go.  I have always been against “anti-file sharing” legislation. I blasted Kimba Wood for shutting down Limewire. And I’ve been warning about SOPA for months and PIPA for weeks. Now, the American people are finally waking up. And all it took was 24 hours without Wikipedia. First, let’s discuss exactly what this bill is. Corporatist [quasi-socialist] Hollywood executives, the California Teamsters Union, and greedy entertainers got together with their lobbyist friends and said “hey, get congress to write a bill that lets us make money every time someone so much as looks at us or listens to us, we deserve it!”. Intellectual property laws in this country predate the world wide web by decades, and the lobbyists knew it would be easy to manipulate them for maximum control.

Government also liked the idea. Those in congress that wrote and supported the bill up to this point saw it as an opportunity for unprecedented government power over an area–both an economy and a society in and of itself–that has remained extremely free: the internet. These statists had the ultimate opportunity now to monitor us, influence us, control us, and further consolidate their power as time goes on. That is what awaits us if these bills pass. Unprecedented power for the political class. All it takes is a few greedy people to abuse their power. Let’s go back to the entertainment industry and how they’ve abused IP laws over the years to make a dime every which way they can:

You can clearly tell the effect of Big Hollyweird lobbyists on the net worth of entertainers. Elvis was once at the top of the world. At his death, his net worth was $7 million (1977 dollars) which is anywhere from 18-25 million in 2010 dollars. (see inflation calculator: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/)

Now compare that to Katy Perry. She’s a top artist of today, but she’s not as popular today as Elvis was in his time. Her current net worth after about 5 years being mainstream (and the entire time during a recession) is $55 million.

Someone like Snoop Dogg with 20 years of fame may be a better comparison. His net worth is $150 million.

I’m not trying to single out Snoop as greedy or anything, he’s had a lot of time to invest. And of course there are exogenous factors like a more globalized economy. Powerful emerging economies of like Russia, Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan wouldn’t have been able to access American entertainment with such ease and in such high quotas prior to the fall of the Soviet empire and the advent of internet music. But that can’t possibly be the only cause of so much more wealth among musicians (not to mention actors, directors, crew, writers, etc) today. I’m trying to point out that Hollywood corporatism has amassed what is a disproportionate and most-likely unfair amount of money for entertainers. Why do you think they have lobbied so hard for SOPA and PIPA? They are trying to milk us for every dime they can.

In a true free market, they wouldn’t make half the money they do. File sharing like Limewire would still exist without limits on their content. Youtube would stream content. Nobody could do anything about it unless the person sharing or streaming was making money off of the “stolen” content (like those bootleg DVDs from China). You wouldn’t be put in prison for playing a pop music song in a home movie uploaded to Youtube…a song that pretty much everyone has heard because we live in the internet age. File sharing of songs obviously occurred because the market did not demand the music enough to pay large amounts of money for it. iTunes came along with a la carte music purchasing and over time, people would switch to one of the two as opposed to buying CDs. Did this really make entertainers poorer? NO! They got richer! And so did the film industry! In 2010, in a weak economy, Hollywood execs raked in more money than they did in 2007 when the economy was strong; right before the recession began its onslaught on our jobs and investments.

It’s also been very interesting to watch America’s unity against SOPA. This is going hard! Liberals, conservatives, moderates, libertarians; all coming out against Big Hollyweird. I love it! Al Gore and Ron Paul agreeing on something? I don’t think America has ever been more united on something in my lifetime other than killing Osama bin Laden. (Now, try to imagine the blowback of a hypothetical Santorum Administration shutting down the porn industry )

As for Nancy Pelosi and even some of my fellow Republicans that have come out against this in recent hours….I mean days….it’s clearly to save their own skin. Let’s take a good hard look at the people who wrote the bill and pushed it for so long. Make sure to be unforgiving at the polls (Lamar Smith, look out!)

I do want to say one more thing. It’s amazing what 24 hours without Wikipedia can do. They and the folks at Reddit shut down to get people’s attention. It WORKED! This is an example of what will happen if we continue this move toward socialism and continue to raise taxes and regulations on the entrepreneurial class. One day, they will say “enough!” and quit investing and creating jobs. When that happens, this recession we recently had will look like a boom by comparison. Wikipedia can just go back online tomorrow. Economies….not so much. I am confident that the House will strike down SOPA. Call your senators, and make sure that their equivalent–the Protect IP Act–is killed as well!

In Liberty,

Aaron Alghawi ’12

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Aaron Alghawi is a senior economics major at Texas A&M University, as well as an alternate board member and Director of Student Outreach for the Republican Liberty Caucus.

Five House Candidates Earn Recognition from Liberty Republicans in 2012 Primary

Despite claims that they have been “improved” and rumors that opposition from the Obama administration may make them harder to pass, we expect the Senate to move forward with a vote on the Protect IP Act (S.968), its version of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R.3261), on Tuesday and a vote on SOPA in the House may follow a few days later.

Despite prominent protests from major websites like Wikipedia and Google, which are staging “blackout” events, shutting their systems down to draw attention to the issue, influential media lobbyists have bought enough support in Congress that they may be able to ram these bills through  Congress with leverage from powerful Congressmen like SOPA author and Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX).

While some concern over online piracy is justified, SOPA and PIPA do not really target the major offshore data havens which are the real source of the problem and grant indiscriminate and unaccountable enforcement power to government agencies which will be used to intimidate content providers, shut down entire networks based on nothing more than an accusation, and even blacklist  businesses and remove them from the internet entirely. The existence of this sort of draconian enforcement system will have a chilling effect on this increasingly important sector of the economy and lead to wholesale violations of the privacy rights of individuals and businesses. It’s another bad idea from a government which has become too big and too eager to interfere in every aspect of our lives.

SOPA and PIPA would force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block public access to websites on their networks based on nothing but an unsubstantiated accusation of facilitating copyright infringement.  Nothing more than a complaint  could be used to preemptively shut down web-based businesses. They would be treated as guilty until they could prove their innocence, a complete contradiction of American legal tradition. The bills also open up the potential for prior censorship out of fear of accusations and bankrupting small businesses which cannot afford the legal costs of a fight to defend their rights. The potential for lawsuit abuse and intimidation from media giants with deep pockets and their own legal teams is enormous.

Opponents have compared this legislation to China’s online censorship. Corynne McSherry of the Electronic Frontier Foundation described SOPA as “the worst piece of intellectual property legislation we’ve seen in the last decade.” Protests from consumer groups, civil liberties advocates and online businesses are widespread, but despite opposition, Senator Harry Reid has scheduled a vote on PIPA for Monday in the Senate. He already has 40 sponsors from both parties, including big-government Republican traitors like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Orin Hatch and even Marco Rubio.

Our best hope right now is to win over as many Senators as we can and promote a Senate filibuster, but this is just the beginning of the fight. Please email your Senators now and be prepared for the next steps in the fight to keep the internet free and open for all Americans. We’ll keep you updated as the fight goes on to the House.

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When our founding fathers declared our independence from Great Britain in 1776 the colonists were already in the middle of a bloody and costly war to secure their freedom. Once the war was successfully concluded it was necessary to create a new nation with a form of government that would not allow a single individual or group to establish another totalitarian regime and steal the freedom of Americans.

It took years and one failed effort with the Articles of Confederation before the founders settled on the Constitution of the United States that established a unique type of government with three separate, but equal branches of branches. These are the executive branch that includes an elected President and his cabinet appointees, the legislative branch that consists of a Congress made up of two houses, the Senate and House of Representatives, and the judicial branch that consists of the Supreme Court and any lower federal courts that Congress might authorize.

A system of checks and balances was put into place to ensure that none of the three branches would be able to dominate the others and establish a dictatorship. In addition, the basic distrust of a powerful centralized government caused the framers of the Constitution to adopt the Bill of Rights that protected the rights of both individual Americans and the various states that formed the United States of America. The system has worked so well that our country became the most prosperous and powerful nation in the world.

Yet, now, almost 250 years later, elements in all three branches of government are conspiring to shred the Constitution and rob us of our God given rights. We have a rapidly emerging dictatorship and prime examples of it can be found in what is occurring in the first days of this New Year. As part of the balance of powers prescribed in the Constitution, the U.S. Senate must approve Presidential appointments to major positions in the Executive Branch of Government. The only exception is that during the times that the Senate is in recess the President can make appointments without the approval of the Senate, but they are temporary in nature.

However, on January 4, 2012, President Obama appointed three members to the National Labor Relations Board and a new “Czar” to head the Consumer Protection Agency without Senate approval despite the fact that the Senate was not in recess. This has created a Constitutional crisis of epic proportions.

I refer to this as a Constitutional crisis because this is not the first such action Obama has taken that has clearly violated not only the provisions of the Constitution, but also his oath of office, and he obviously plans to continue ignoring both the legislative and judicial branches of government. In fact, he actually brags about what he is doing while campaigning for reelection at the expense of American taxpayers. There is now no doubt that the current President of the United States considers himself a de facto dictator who is so much smarter than the rest of us that he can ignore the Constitution, the supreme law of our nation, and do whatever he wants. History has taught that in order to establish an effective dictatorship there must be three decisive actions taken. First, if the military in the country is patriotic and pro freedom, it must be marginalized to minimize its ability to resist the imposition of tyranny. Right after the New Year, Obama announced drastic cuts in the size and strength of our military forces across the board. He is claiming to have the authority to do this under the bill passed by Congress that created the so-called super committee that was to enact wide ranging spending cuts.

If it failed to do so there would be massive reductions of the defense budget. In previous articles I pointed out that the very creation of this super committee was unconstitutional and that its failure to act would cause the “doomsday scenario” to unfold for our military. Unfortunately, not only are my predictions coming true, but Obama is not even waiting for the automatic cuts to begin in 2013, he is unilaterally moving to destroy the military now. Secondly, the citizens of any country to be subjugated must be disarmed in order to diminish their ability to resist the imposition of a dictatorship. It is now clear, by virtue of the ongoing investigation in Congress of “Operation Fast and Furious” that over 2500 semi automatic weapons were sold to Mexican drug dealers on orders from the U.S. government not for the purpose of entrapping the drug dealers, but so Obama could impose gun control laws on U.S. citizens. He has now done so by Executive Order, bypassing Congress that had refused to take the same action.

In addition, Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton have pledged to sign the United Nations Small Arms Treaty that specifically targets private gun ownership in the United States. This treaty would essentially abolish the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution and make private ownership of firearms illegal despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has twice ruled that the right to keep and bear arms is a valid and individual right under the provisions of the Constitution.

Of course, the Constitution requires that any treaty that is signed by a President must be approved by two thirds of the Senate to be valid. The U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled that no treaty can supersede the provisions of the Constitution, particularly those that deal with individual rights. All of this would seem to render the treaty moot since two thirds of the current Senate will not ratify it, and it clearly violates the provisions of the second amendment. So why is Obama pushing for it? Simply put, he believes he can ignore the Senate and the court, sign the treaty, and then allow the United Nations to begin enforcing it. If you believe that he won’t try that, just look at what he has done in other areas.

The third goal of an effective dictatorship involves limiting the rights of the citizens to have free speech and a free press. People who can’t communicate and learn the truth are easier to control. Most of the main stream media in this country have already relinquished their freedom of the press and are doing whatever Obama tells them to do. Those that oppose him are under constant assault and Obama’s minions on the Federal Communications Commission are looking for ways to shut down conservative talk radio and control internet content. This is despite the fact that the Supreme Court has said that the FCC has no authority to regulate the Internet. Once again, Obama has issued orders that the Supreme Court and the Constitution be ignored.

Even more frightening is the fact that legislation pending in both houses of Congress will effectively give Obama an Internet kill switch. It is being pushed in the Senate by the usual leftists like Reid and Schumer, but in the House of Representatives it is some Republicans that are pushing it. My next blog article will contain more information about these and other bills pending in Congress.

The bottom line is, we are headed for a country that is no longer a Republic, but a nation controlled entirely by a small group of elitists, and unless the American people wake up soon it will be too late to stop it.

Michael Connelly mrobertc@hotmail.com www.michaelconnelly.jigsy.com www.constitution.jigsy.com

Come to our…

Liberty Candidate Roundtable

Tonight (1/22) at 9pm EST

A live online video event hosted on Yowie, featuring

Bill Yarbrough

Candidate for Ohio House District 12

Jessica Puente Bradshaw

Candidate for Texas House District 34