I read an article from Fox News earlier this evening regarding Mitt Romney’s energy independence plan. According to the article:

In a campaign speech in Hobbs, N.M., a few weeks ago, the GOP presidential nominee told the crowd, “I will set a national goal of North American independence by 2020. That means we produce all the energy we use in North America.

Seems like every presidential candidate since Carter has had one of those. None of them achieved it but they did bring us close. In spite of its many critics, NAFTA did do one good thing for the United States: made Canada and Mexico our two biggest oil providers, providing us with more than half of our oil. Saudi Arabian imports are now between 13-15%, which means less American money being redirected to terrorist groups and theocratic uprisings. Venezuelan imports are even less. OPEC’s stranglehold over us has been substantially reduced. And North American energy production is rising. All of this is good. But someone with no understanding of basic supply and demand or cost-benefit analysis decided to attack the GOP nominee.

Here’s what the beef was all about:

In addition to opening up new areas for offshore drilling, Romney says his energy independence goal can be accomplished by speeding up the time it takes to get permits to drill on federal lands. The way to do that, he says, is by putting state regulators in charge of the federal process just as they already are on state and private lands.

Said the article.

My immediate reaction: FINALLY! This is the Mitt Romney I’ve been wanting to see. After a mediocre campaign with mediocre positions, not much detail on how to get government out of our lives, and poor understanding of the duties of the federal government, Mitt Romney took a tenth amendment position that is much needed. A great deal of the mountain west is federally owned land. It should be given back to the states and the states should be in charge of any resources within their borders–with the federal government only involved in cross-border disputes.

But Pete Maysmith, executive director of Colorado Conservation Voters wasn’t exactly happy. He said:

“Governor Romney’s energy proposal … ignores the facts and is a giveaway to his big oil campaign supporters at the expense of our air, land and water. Energy production in the United States is at a 20-year high. So the problem is not regulations, the problem is not lack of access to federal lands.”

I don’t care what your political views are or who you are voting for. And there are many reasons not to like Mitt Romney. However, this is not one of them!

I don’t know if Mr. Maysmith is right or wrong about energy production being at a 20 year high. What I do know is this: IT DOES NOT MATTER!

That’s right. His conclusion might be partially factual in this and only this: most large energy companies are more than willing to comply with basic safety regulations. I’m a member of the Houston Economics Club, and such was the position that Andrew Slaughter, a former Chair of the National Petroleum Council, took at one of our meetings last January.

Most of the anti-fracking hype has been factually incorrect; I won’t get into detail on that but I’m just giving you an example: energy companies have engineered new methods of groundwater protection. So the private sector has addressed the problem, to the point where regulation should be toned down to a property-damage perspective. Not all regulation is bad. Property rights are paramount, and property damage must be prevented.

If you want more information on groundwater protection you can find it in this presentation by Slaughter found here

The point of my article is simply this: his premise is patently false, as is his conclusion that we should not increase access to federal lands.

It is not a matter of energy being at a 20 year high it is a matter of IT COULD BE HIGHER!.

Just because an industry is doing better than ever is no excuse for them not to try and do even better. America needs cheaper energy to prevent an economic collapse. I’m going to go through the dynamics here to justify my premises.

Our demand is probably higher than its even been, which means unless the supply goes up the price of your electric bill or filling up your gas tank will never be lower. It’s bad enough that Ben Bernanke’s quantitative easing policies devalue the dollar and enable speculators to drive up the price. It’s also bad enough that because of the globalized 21st century economy, prices rise even further due to the unrest in the Muslim world driving down production in the OPEC countries. Finally there is the rapid industrialization of several large emerging economies: China, India and Brazil. Brazil has a growing offshore oil supply and is ramping up its production, but China and India are not oil rich nations and cannot do the same.

So your energy prices are high, and they will only go higher if there isn’t more expansion of domestic energy production, not just in oil, but in natural gas, wind, nuclear, clean coal, and even–when cost effective–solar. Quite frankly, claiming our production being at a 20 year high (if that’s true) as a reason to stop expanding is pure economic dumbassery.

With our rising national debt, our lackluster job growth, our politicians’ inability to lessen the uncertainty on the private sector, and the Federal Reserve’s massive injections of new dollars into the market–that aren’t backed by economic growth–we face a much bigger problem than the problems conservationists tackle on a regular basis. We face the threat of an economic meltdown, the fall of the United States as a superpower and a much more difficult way of life than anyone in this country who is under the age of 70 or didn’t grow up in an undeveloped country could ever imagine. Its not a matter of Democrats vs. Republicans (and I know the irony of me saying that from a Republican website), its a matter of supply and demand.

Fiat money, when not backed by a hard asset such as silver or gold, is only good if there is demand for it. Demand for the US dollar is not rising as fast as the Federal Reserve is running its printing presses. This will lead to inflation, as long as the Fed continues to pursue this while keeping its interest rates low. Even Keynes, whose followers today laugh at the thought of a dollar collapse and who didn’t predict the housing bubble or 2008 economic crash (with the exception of Nouriel Roubini and few others), knew that increasing money supply should be done during a period of strong economic growth, not the anemic year-to-year growth we have seen over the past couple of years. If you increase the supply when the demand isn’t nearly as strong, you devalue the dollar.

Some Austrian school economic alarmists believe hyperinflation is inevitable. While they deserve credit for predicting the 2008 crash years before it happened, I can’t say I agree with its inevitability. However, I do see it as a possibility. Continuous increases in the money supply, with weak increases in demand for that dollar, and politicians’ inability to tackle our national debt could lead to a fall in confidence of our dollar. That’s the difference between hyperinflation and inflation. The latter is rising prices, the former is when other countries see a significant reduction in the value of your currency, and begin to dump it for other currencies or commodities. Demand for your currency plummets and as a result, the price of everyday living requirements skyrockets.

It’s not a risk worth taking, and neither is inflation. So while our politicians bicker like children and fail to address the debt, economic growth is the only thing that will stop the two.

Increasing our domestic energy production is perhaps the best shot we have at this for many reasons.

Ramping up energy production will create jobs in the industry. More unemployed people go back to work, start paying taxes again, and revenues to the federal government increase.

When people aren’t unnecessarily wasting as much of their money on gasoline and utilities they can be more productive with that spending by spending it on other industries or investing it into new capital. This creates even more jobs. And I do say we are wasting because if the price can be much lower, you’re being inefficient. Inefficiency is a waste.

Lower energy prices  cause the price of other goods to come down across the board, because transportation costs pretty much affect everything. So this offsets some of the inflation that will happen as a result of quantitative easing.

The growth in the economy will strengthen demand for the US dollar, further offsetting  Bernanke’s disastrous easing policies and preventing a dollar collapse prior to his replacement in 2014 (in the case of a Romney victory).

I imagine that Bernanke’s replacement in the event of a Romney victory will be Martin Feldstein. My familiarity with his work suggests to me he would finally allow interest rates to rise and roll back QE3. If this were to happen, we could prevent a debt crisis and a dollar collapse provided our politicians finally figure out how to balance the federal budget. With economic growth, balancing the budget comes much easier.

What I hope everyone takes away from this article is: WE SHOULD NEVER STOP! We should never stop trying to ramp up energy production so long as it cannot meet the demand at the cheapest possible price–and for you conservationists out there, I mean we will do it in a responsible manner. Pete Maysmith–who I hope reads this and learns a thing or two–made a huge error in his premise by ignoring the laws of supply and demand. This line of thought is poisonous, and I ask of my readers that you share this article with as many people as you can. The less people believe his ridiculous notion, that the goal for any or industry to stagnate or decrease production at any level, for any reason, other than falling demand or maxed out capacity, the better off we will be. And as the research shows, rising global energy demand is inevitable and we are far from incapable of increasing the supply in a responsible manner.

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Aaron Alghawi obtained a B.S. in Economics from Texas A&M University in 2012, and is a National At-Large Board Member of the Republican Liberty Caucus.

President Obama has stirred up a lot of controversy recently, after deciding to give “amnesty” to young illegal immigrants. So I’m going to give some food for thought. This issue has been one which pits the various factions within the Republican Party against each other. You have the liberty wing of the GOP–like myself–who want the market to be the primary force deciding immigration. You have the protectionist wing–old former Democrats who came to the party during the Reagan years but didn’t leave all of their big-government policies (and occasional bigotry) behind, and you have the establishment-types who are probably just trying to find the political winds and go with what’s popular. Also to consider, the large number of Hispanic Republicans at the convention, who are sick and tired of the games by those who seemingly want to choke Latin American immigration off completely.

At the Republican Party of Texas’ state convention in Ft. Worth a couple weeks ago, this ideological battle was clear and present. I was attending as an alternate for Brazos County and RLC Chair Dave Nalle was a delegate for Travis County. I won’t be going to Tampa but I’m proud to say that going to the convention allowed me to do two things I really wanted to do. Send some authentic small-government Republicans (including some Ron Paul supporters) to Tampa, and get some really dumb things removed from the state party platform during the drafting process. The end result was shocking to me at first but also gave me hope that the Republican Party is moving in the right direction. The liberty wing and the establishment united on one of the biggest hot-button issues: immigration.

During a minority report, delegates had the chance to voice opinions on the party platform before the final draft was taken to the floor–where delegates from all over the state would vote on it. Dave and I attended this session. It was small, as most of the people had left for dinner or their hotel rooms. It was around 8 PM. What I saw in the platform was an immigration plank that was very market friendly, attempting to make it easier for immigrants with the skills we need to get work visas. Work visas that may eventually lead to those immigrants becoming proud Americans. Well, the protectionists were having none of it, and they tried to get it struck down, using some of the most bogus arguments.

I testified in favor of it. Gave a brief bio of myself as the son of an immigrant and congratulated them on taking a market based approach. Immediately I was followed by some angry man who came off as a lunatic, claiming we’d become an overpopulated, poverty-stricken place like Mexico City. I wanted terribly to rebut him and put his “arguments” to shame, but we only got to speak once. Fortunately, a fellow Aggie was there to do a much better job than I did. His name was Jerry Patterson, and he will be running for Lt. Governor of Texas in 2014. Since I see no candidate emerging with better positions than him, he’s definitely getting my vote. The committee decided to keep the plank. Later, when the plank was being brought up before the at-large caucus, the protectionists lined up to testify against it, again calling the work visas “amnesty”. The establishment and the liberty wing loudly shouted “ay” as Chairman Munisteri issued a motion to move on to the next issue. The plank passed.

Now, had I been given the opportunity to speak again on the issue, and in more detail, I would have said something along the following lines. I would have made the case for a market-based immigration policy. I would have explained to the clearly uninformed voter that our current immigration system of quotas and a ridiculously unnecessary level of federal bureaucracy is a remnant of the so-called progressive era. Progressivism is the very thing we Constitutionalists are [supposedly] trying to combat within the Republican Party.

So here’s some food for thought on why the current system is unacceptable, and why the market can solve this issue better than a bunch of bureaucrats in Washington. I’ll follow it up with my plan for an immigration overhaul: a simple, fair, merit-based system that would save the taxpayer billions of dollars and grow this economy exponentially.

First, lets talk illegals. There’s this notion that all of the 12 million illegals in American were merely border-hopping people with no respect for our laws. This is far from the truth.

A lot of the “illegals” are only so because of useless bureaucracy that originated not with the founding fathers but with progressives like Woodrow Wilson–a notorious bigot. To understand how things were prior to the progressive era, think prior to the 20th century. And just before the turn of the century there was a Supreme Court ruling on birthright citizenship that gives you a general idea about immigration policy before the federal government became the center of our lives it is today.

If you revisit the rationale behind the 1898 Supreme Court case US v. Wong Kim Ark, you find a realistic solution to the “anchor baby” problem, and you also put a bunch of the ridiculous birther propaganda about Senator Marco Rubio in the trash heap of conspiracy nonsense where it belongs.

The case ruled that a child born on American soil to immigrant parents who were “engaged in the procurement of non-diplomatic business” (i.e. worked in the private sector) and had established a domicile (homestead law, which varies from state to state) was a natural born citizen. Back then it was pretty much “work hard and obey the laws and you can stay”.

This is the approach we need to take as Republicans. It destroys the liberal media’s ability to smear us as racists. It exposes the Democrats for the hypocrites they are on the issue. But most important of all, it would create something that President Obama hasn’t. Tens of millions of new jobs!

Due to the bureaucracy it takes too damn long to become a citizen. My father immigrated to this country from Lebanon in the mid 1970s. He did not become a citizen until 1999. Some of this delay was due to the fact he was always working but in today’s America 20 years is probably the average length it takes from immigration to citizenship. That, to me, is just plain stupid! The bureaucracy also makes it too hard to get a green card. Take the case of a German man named Gunter. He is a restaurant owner in New Braunfels, TX. I met him last year at a Students for Liberty regional conference. He still has to leave the restaurant and return to Germany every few years and reapply for a visa because they have made it too difficult for him to get a green card. This man is a small-business owner, who obviously wishes to do business in a freer country than his own, and is being given the runaround by a bunch of gubment employees who I’m willing to bet have never created a real job in their lifetimes.

Gunter is just one example of many. We have all these high skill international students in our colleges. They outperform their American peers in science and engineering programs subsidized with our tax dollars, and what do we do? We make naturalization so difficult that they go back to their home countries and use the skills we taught them against us in the global market? How is that intelligent? They should be playing for team America. We are a country where the best in the world left their homelands to escape poverty and tyranny, and to embrace the free-enterprise system that has created more wealth and human advancement in a couple centuries than any other in the entire history of the world before in.

So I propose a new immigration system for the United States. A capitalist system.

Step 1: We reopen Ellis Island and centers like it all across the country.

That way we can actually account for the people that come into the country for national security purposes. We must still be stringent on immigrants from countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or from Gaza/West Bank, to make sure they are legitimate people seeking freedom from theocrats and not theocrats themselves coming to this country to commit terrorism. And trust me, virtually everyone would choose going through one of those processing centers to using a coyote. At least every honest person would. So at the same time it makes it easier to figure out who the good guys are. These centers should be able to provide immigrants with some advice on where to live, work, and possibly offer English speaking courses for those who need it.

Step 2: Create a new system of regulating immigration status that is based in merit and behavior.

Everyone who comes into the United States gets a five-year trial period. They would get a work visa. At the end of this 5 years if they will be examined. If they work in the private sector, and do not commit any violent or financial crimes–and I emphasize this because nobody should be deported for something like a traffic violation–and demonstrate reasonable English speaking skills, they will be awarded permanent residency in the United States. If they are convicted of a serious violent or financial crime they should be immediately deported. If the English speaking does not meet the standard they will not receive a green card, but can reapply for a temporary work visa. No need to kick them out over that. This will probably not be an issue as most immigrants will be encouraged to learn the language because they want to stay in this great country.

As for welfare use. We need to crack down on sanctuary cities. Government welfare should be denied to anyone who is not a permanent US resident or US citizen. Personally I would like to see the federal welfare state abolished, but I’m a realist and understand that this is at least 20 years away from happening. Private charity, religious or secular, should not be a factor in whether or not one is granted permanent residency. If a church or private organization wants to help an individual, that is purely at their discretion. Its their money!

Step 3: Reform the naturalization process in a manner that expedites it.

After receiving their green card, they enter another five year trial period. If during this trial period they continue to meet the criteria set for them in the first, work hard and obey the law, then at the end of that 5 year period they will be moved to the front of the line and naturalized as citizens of the United States.

Step 4: What to do about the illegals already here? Well obviously it would be financially impossible to deport them all. So here’s where President Obama actually had a point for once. Focus on the criminals. As for the others, the proper solution is that they must take the new route established. They must go to the back of the line in the new processing centers, and begin the first five-year trial period. For those that were brought here as children by parents, they’re really victims of human trafficking if you think about it. Provided they have no criminal records and work hard I see no reason why they should be deported. But they should still go through the new system.

5 years to permanent residency and 10 years to citizenship, its not a bad deal. But nobody is just going to be handed it. That would be amnesty. And amnesty is not the solution.

Now, I’m gonna get some responses to this. So, I’m going to preempt some of the typical ones I get.

The left will call it ‘fascist’ for the English-language requirement. Anyone who is familiar with my views knows I’m as far from fascist as Kim Kardashian is from the Blessed Virgin Mary. English should have been made the official language a long time ago I don’t understand why it isn’t. Multikulti has failed miserably in Europe. I recommend reading Bruce Bawer’s books While Europe Slept and Surrender. I have no intention of chasing away foreign culture. I took two years of Spanish in high school and one year of Japanese in college and am currently teaching myself the latter and plan on doing the same with the former once I have the time. My father speaks Arabic and French. That’s what makes America great. Immigrants like my father bring the best of what the old country has to offer (usually in the form of cuisine or music), but unlike the lawless Islamic enclaves in European cities Bawer documents, they don’t bring the authoritarian ideologies with them, that’s why they left!

It makes it easier on immigrants when they are able to communicate with natural born citizens rather than having to search for people from their own country. The language barrier tends to break down over generations as their children learn English but it seems more efficient to me if it is expedited. There will always be Korea Towns and Little Italys. But segregation was repealed and tossed into the ash heap of history half a century ago, yet America today still has a defacto segregation. We don’t need to be living in white neighborhoods or black neighborhoods or Hispanic neighborhoods we need to be living in American neighborhoods.

Encouraging English speaking skills (notice I didn’t even say reading/writing, as most Americans struggle with grammar) as a manner to expedite the path to ones citizenship merely tests their mettle as to how badly they want to be a part of America as a whole and not just as a “minority”. It opens more doors to them in terms of career advancement, which of course leads to more money. And its not going to be an arduous task, as many of them will likely be learning it already as ESL students or employees working alongside Americans if they didn’t know some coming in.

Then of course the protectionists claim things like “overpopulation” and “they’re gonna take the jobs Americans need”. No, they won’t. In fact, we actually have people leaving the US because there aren’t jobs for them. There is NOT an overpopulation problem in the country. For those of you who think there is I have merely one thing to say to you: Have you ever been to Nebraska?

Okay, maybe I have more than one thing to say. There is no overpopulation problem, only a population density problem. In fact, if the entire population of the world, which is approaching 7 billion people was spread out into one area with the population density of New York City it would fill an area about the size of Texas. If it was as dense as Houston, it wouldn’t even fill the continental United States.

Overpopulation only becomes a problem with the presence of a welfare state. And it is the welfare state that needs to be reigned in. By requiring immigrants to work (or use private charity) and cutting them off from welfare programs, they are not a drag on the taxpayer; they become taxpayers. The welfare behemoth is going to take years to reign in and if we don’t start now we will suffer a Greece-like debt crisis before decade’s end. But as it relates to immigrants its not nearly as difficult an issue as it is relating to citizens.

Hard working people sustain themselves and should not be barred from becoming citizens provided they obey the laws. They should be welcomed with open arms. They will create jobs, create tax revenue, grow the economy and shrink the budget deficit. Its the criminals and the moochers that are the problem and they should be sent home. We have too many Americans that fall into those categories.

If these immigrants “take your job” its because you didn’t work hard enough to defeat them. Sorry bro, but that’s how capitalism works, the best win.

So lets recap.

5 years to a green card, 10 years to citizenship. And all I’m asking is that they work hard and stay out of trouble? This is the immigration policy that will allow the GOP to seize control of the issue from the Democrats permanently. It gives us two things: the reduction of federal bureaucracy conservatives want, and the opportunity to join the free-enterprise system that immigrants want.

Hey Mitt, think about it!

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Aaron Alghawi obtained a B.S. in Economics from Texas A&M University in 2012. He is a national board member and Director of Student Outreach for the Republican Liberty Caucus.

As you may have heard, last week actor Sean Penn visited his buddy Hugo Chavez in Venezuela once again. Associated Press reported his comments on the 2012 presidential election as

“It’s never predictable what can happen in an American election, but we certainly believe at this point that it’s becoming increasingly clear to the American people that the policies of the far right are the policies of the rich, and that they are to the exclusion of the middle class and the poor, and that no society has a future on that basis.”

This is far from the most outrageous comments attributed to Sean Penn during visits to the socialist police state that is Venezuela. Furthermore, these are exactly the kind of statements conservatives and libertarians should expect to hear from Hollywood liberals during President Obama’s reelection campaign. Being unable to run on a record of great success, the president will have no choice but to turn to this divisive rhetoric to get reelected. Unless his opponent is Rick Santorum, whose rigid social conservatism will hurt him greatly in swing states like Ohio and Florida, and whose record on big spending is most outstanding when compared to his three competitors–an ex-Governor who balanced budgets, a former house speaker who oversaw a government shutdown shortly followed by nearly-balanced budgets (national debt went up during the Clinton “surpluses”), and a Texas Congressman who has never voted for an unbalanced budget or a tax increase–the President will have to actually debate the merits of his economic policy. And it is a debate he will likely lose.

Organizing for America, the Democratic National Committee under the offensive demagogue of a new chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and various mainstream media personalities have been attempting to capitalize on the greed and anger of the Occutards and have been running on a “Republicans are the party of the rich!” message–in spite of President Obama’s backing of and expansion of the bailout and stimulus policies of his predecessor George W. Bush.

No doubt at the front of Mr. Obama’s campaign will be the entertainment industry that helped him get elected in the 2008 primary and general election against seemingly impossible odds. This will include Sean Penn.

It baffles me how Sean Penn and his ilk have any credibility with the American people. I’ll admit that I even find a personal degree of disappointment in myself when I share articles on Facebook about celebrities endorsing my choice for 2012–Ron Paul. I do it because sadly enough, Americans care more about what these people think than say, what the veterans and members of the military think, or what the people out of work think, or what the successful small-to-medium sized business owners think. I don’t like the idea about taking advice from celebrities on anything. Most of them have zero understanding of individual liberty, economics or how the business sector operates, a minimal understanding of international affairs, and a hypocritical view on the fair share the 1% which they are a part of is allegedly not paying. Sean Penn is one such actor.

What I am also baffled by is that those of us on the other side of the political spectrum rarely fight back against these celebutards. We often take a “who cares what Hollywood thinks mentality”, failing to understand the power they have over influencing everything the average American says and does. Middle America doesn’t understand the lack of credibility these people have and we fail miserably to expose them for their hypocrisy. Reason is on our side, and we need to prove it, and we can do show by exposing the words of these people for their inaccuracies and logical inconsistencies. Will everyone listen? Of course not. But we don’t need every American to listen to us, we just need to get a few people at a time to wake up. Eventually, enough will do so that Hollyweird loses is significance in election cycles.

In 2010 I was working on a satirical book, entitled Mass Media Mindnumb, on what I had perceived to be the denigration of American pop culture. I have since lost interest in the subject and focused on more important things in my professional and personal life, but I kept the unfinished manuscript and sometimes reference it if I need some ammunition to fight back against Hollywood hypocrisy. My generation has proven to be the strongest victim of the cult of celebrity. I fear greatly what subsequent generations will look like as they come of age. America today faces a dichotomy. We will go down one of two roads. A road of European style socialism all the way to bankruptcy, or a restoration of the long forgotten free-market principles that made America great in the first place. There will be a generational shift that will soon show up in the political spectrum. My generation will either choose this European socialism, or adopt a libertarian-leaning conservatism. The dominionist [religious] right stands in the way of them adopting the latter, while the entertainment industry beckons them to the former.

I’ve spent enough time recently demagoguing the dominionists, so I’m gonna go after Hollywood, and I’ll start with Sean Penn.

In Mass Media Mindnumb I had written a scathing rant about Sean Penn’s hypocrisy. I’m going to release the contents of that rant in this article, while making some minor editorial revisions to reflect current events. Here is what I had written:

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I Am Sean

Sean Penn is one of several celebrities who has made enough an ass of himself that he gets his own subsection in this chapter. You probably think he’s a good actor. Really I can’t remember him outside of any movies other than Fast Times at Ridgemont High—where he played a disruptive stoner and I Am Sam—where he played the mentally challenged title character. Both decent movies; the actor is a different story.

Deceitful, left-wing, but most importantly the ultimate hypocrite—Sean Penn routinely criticized George W. Bush for taking away civil liberties during the beginning of the war on terror, but recently came out suggesting that people lose their right to free speech!

Let me break it down for you.

In 2002, he placed a $56,000 ad in The Washington Post out of concern for the upcoming war in Iraq and the PATRIOT Act. This letter was surprisingly eloquent, making some interesting analogies. He particularly wanted Bush to reconsider invading Iraq and the expansion of his federal power, to not “[diminish U.S. citizens] through loss of civil liberties [or] dangerously heightened presidential autonomy through acts of Congress.” His criticism of Bush would soon turn into anger, going so far as to call for Bush’s impeachment.

The criticisms—well, the early ones at least–were not entirely unfair, but what completely destroys Penn’s credibility as a political voice (pay attention here) is his ultimate hypocrisy. Some time in spring 2010, Sean Penn appeared on Bill Maher’s show Real Time. On the show, Penn made comments that completely destroyed his credibility for all his criticisms of George W. Bush’s infringements on our civil liberties.

I mentioned briefly the socialist leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, a man who has partially usurped control of the media in his country, all but guaranteeing political insuperability. Well, Penn is chummy with this guy and doesn’t exactly like people who bash him. The mainstream media, according to Penn, constantly lies about Hugo Chavez.

In reality, the mainstream media tells a lot of lies and skews many of their stories. But portrayal of Hugo Chavez as a socialist dictator isn’t one of their misleading notions—its cold hard fact. Penn’s allegations of this as a lie aren’t what make him a hypocrite. What makes him a hypocrite is the fact that he suggested a law which would outright violate the First Amendment—both violating freedom of the press and of speech.

“Every day, this elected leader [Chavez] is called a dictator here, and we just accept it, and accept it. And this is mainstream media. There should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.” — Sean Penn in 2010 on Real Time with Bill Maher

Excuse me? You want a bar that would send people to prison for speaking their mind? Even if they were lying about Chavez’s oppression and socialist policies, and they certainly are not, the media has a constitutionally protected freedom to say whatever they want and it is the responsibility of ‘we the people’ to do our homework and find out the truth. As a matter of fact, two of the earliest media outlets in this country were created for campaigning purposes when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson battled each other for the presidency. They each had their own outlet to demagogue each other, and it was up to the citizens to separate fact from fallacy.

If anyone is going to be locked up for false allegations by this bar that Penn wants to create, consider this scenario where the law becomes international and then subsequently be used to lock up Chavez.

According to a Feb 2006 piece from Reuters, Chavez was quoted as saying the following of then-President Bush:

“The imperialist, genocidal, fascist attitude of the U.S. president has no limits. I think Hitler would be like a suckling baby next to George W. Bush.”

Hugo Chavez compared a man who removed an oppressive dictator and kept his country safe, despite wasting lots of money and using questionable policing tactics in the process, to a man who systematically murdered 6 million Jews and invaded multiple countries not with the goal of liberating them but with the goal of ethnically cleansing and then occupying them. Under Penn’s proposed law, Chavez would be behind bars.

See what I did there, Seanny? Apparently free speech is okay for Sean Penn only if you agree with him. When George W. Bush tapped phone and email communications in an attempt to secure our country—albeit with potential to violate our 4th amendment rights—it’s oppressive and fascist; but a man who controls his country’s media to consolidate his own power is a democratically elected and transparent leader, and anyone who disagrees with that should be locked up!?

Pot-calling-the-kettle-black much? You can’t yell about someone infringing on the First Amendment, then subsequently suggest people lose their First Amendment rights because they disagree with you, and expect to have any credibility left can you? I would hope not. And I would hope you the reader make note of this and don’t take political advice from this guy. Ironic enough that his own proposed law of course would probably ensure his buddies Chavez and Ahmedinejad be locked up for their lies—Ahmedinejad especially for calling the Holocaust a myth. But what’s even more ironic is that Sean Penn wants to make laws that oppress people who disagree with him politically, when his own father suffered the same oppression.

Sean must have forgotten that his father, the late actor Leo Penn, was an actor during the Red Scare. He was a communist sympathizer, a supporter of Hollywood trade unions and refused to accuse his communist friends to the House Un-American Activities Committee and as a result was blacklisted—i.e. nobody would hire him because of his political leanings! But in Sean Penn’s hypocrisy, he suggests people should be jailed for their opinions (or FACTS) that Hugo Chavez is a power hungry socialist tyrant.

Sean Penn is a true celebutard; a politically inept hypocrite who should just stick to acting and stay out of politics! But as much as I detest him, I would never suggest he be locked up for his lies. I would most likely never suggest he be blacklisted. But I will suggest a boycott of him. I don’t think I’ll be watching his upcoming films.

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My views on Sean Penn’s hypocrisy remain the same to this day. I hope the readers of this article take these facts to heart and share them with others, particularly the ones regarding Leo Penn. The Hollywood left is losing its credibility but I can only hope it will lose it in time stop my generation from accepting this entitlement mentality present among Occupy Wall Street. The last thing I want is to wake up in 10 years to a repeat of the recent London riots: a bunch of spoiled 14 year olds throwing rocks and molotov cocktails at shops because mommy and daddy didn’t buy them that iPad they are “entitled” to. And if you believe for one second this hypothetical will never happen, I’ll refer you to the even more recent riots in malls all across the country over the new Nike Air Jordans. I don’t think you get a more accurate example than that of combining the “entitlement” mentality with the peer-pressure driven cult of celebrity, not to mention the general wussification of the American male when a bunch of guys in their teens and early-to-mid twenties are fighting over shoes as if they were the Sex and the City girls.

Its not too late to stop this from happening. Just as we managed to do with the temporary stoppage of the so-called Stop Online Piracy Act, libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservatives will have to take up arms against Big Hollyweird once again; this time over their lies, distortions, and political influence. Don’t be afraid to spend a little extra time attacking their hypocrisy and their logical fallicies and eventually they’ll lose credibility with some of the electorate.

As for Sean Penn, the characters of Spicoli—the dumb stoner, and Sam—the mentally challenged man—may actually be smarter than their portrayer, Sean Penn. Sean PWNED!

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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.

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.

With GOP contenders battling it out for the chance to face President Barack Obama in 2012, the once “cult-following” of Texas Congressman Ron Paul has turned into a base large enough to consider him one of the frontrunners. Having a massive Facebook following, the second highest 2nd quarter funds raised after former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and recent poll victories such as the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll; Paul’s more than 30 year old message of individual liberty, sound money and free markets is resonating with an ever larger audience.

Of course with this popularity comes criticism. Too many Republican voters and self-described “Constitutional conservatives”—at least those I’ve come across—have been quick to describe the libertarian-minded congressman as “kooky” and a “crazy old man”. Their primary focus is on foreign policy but some on economics as well. Despite Paul’s fervent belief in Thomas Jefferson’s philosophy of avoiding “entangling alliances”, these conservatives often paint him as a “liberal”. Perhaps liberal in the classical sense like John Stuart Mill, but certainly not in the modern-day so-called liberalism of persons like President Obama, Ed Schultz, and Alan Colmes.

Many rumors are spread by the anti-Paul conservatives. Paul supporters are often referred to as “PaulBots”—ironically similar to author Jason Materra’s term “Obama Zombies” used in the book of the same name—although save for a few kooky and loud conspiracy theorists, Paul supporters tend to be better at justifying their support for the jolly old man than do the Obama Zombies. Paul is often mischaracterized as a bigot, even though there is no evidence to support this ad hominem attack.

But what the anti-Paul conservatives—usually of the interventionist line of foreign policy thinking that is commonly referred to as neoconservatism, though having its roots in Woodrow Wilson—fail to do is actually look at what Paul’s foreign policy positions are and have been and see if they have any connection to reality.  Paul’s years of studying the Austrian School of Economics have had a surprising effect on his analytical skills when it comes to foreign policy.

Recently, Ron Paul supporters posted a video to Youtube entitled “Ron Paul the Master”. It shows a collection of speeches and interviews in which Ron Paul makes some stunning predictions about our current economic woes and even international conflicts of the present. And he does this as far back as 2002. Of course no one gave him the time of day.

Let’s analyze one of these speeches, which begins at 3 minutes into the video and was presented before congress on April 24, 2002.

“Our government intervention in the economy and in the private affairs of citizens, and the internal affairs of foreign countries, leads to uncertainty and many unintended consequences. Here are some of the consequences about which we should be concerned.

The United States, with Tony Blair as head cheerleader, will attack Iraq without proper authority, and a major war, the largest since World War II, will result.

Major moves will be made by China, India, Russia, and Pakistan in Central Asia to take advantage of the chaos for the purpose of grabbing land, resources, and strategic advantages sought after for years.”

This is absolutely true. The chaos gave us many unexpected problems. Al Qaeda’s presence in Iraq grew after the invasion. And the country is now under Shiite control, moving it dangerously close to Iran. In 2002, Iran’s president was the more philosophically minded Mohammed Khatami…but now we have an anti-Semitic loudmoth, Ahmedinejad. Russia has moved into Iran to build an energy alliance. Vladimir Putin, and his cronies in Gazprom and Lukoil would love to gain control of the natural resources in Iran and Russia has been helping the Islamic Republic develop nuclear technology which US intelligence believes is being developed for destructive purposes. Let’s hope and pray they are wrong.

China and Pakistan have certainly taken advantage of the chaos. Not only is their alliance stronger, but the oil contracts in Iraq are going to—guess who—China! Kind of debunks the whole left-wing moonbattery that Iraq was “blood for oil”.

You can find more detail in these articles:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/04/05/news/international/iraq_oil/index.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/28/AR2008082802200.html

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2010/June/China-Benefits-from-Oil-Deals-with-Iraq/

“Current Israeli-United States policies will solidify Arab Muslim nations, this will include those Muslim nations that in the past have fought against each other.

Some of our moderate Arab allies will be overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists.”

What exactly do you think the “Arab Spring” is? Peaceful democratic people overthrowing dictators? Not quite. The Muslim Brotherhood, a precursor to Hamas, has founded its own political party in Egypt; it is possible these theocrats will gain significant power in the new government. Let’s not forget that Libyan and Yemeni rebels have been linked to Al Qaeda. Just the other day the new Al Qaeda cheif Ayman Al-Zawahiri was lauding the rioters in Syria.

And certainly the dictators—such as Gaddafi and Mubarak—aren’t moderate in the eyes of their own people, but often American politicians have viewed them as such. Useful when we need them, disposable when we don’t as Mobutu Sese Seko and Saddam Hussein once were.

“Many American military personnel and civilians will be killed in the coming conflict.

The leaders of whichever side loses the war will be hauled into and tried before the International Criminal Court for war crimes. The United States will not officially lose the war, but neither will we win. Our military and political leaders will not be tried by the International Criminal Court”

This wasn’t entirely true, Saddam was tried by his own people. But did we really “win” the war. We turned the country over to the Shiite theocrats instead of secularists and now those people are getting close to Iran.

“An international dollar crisis will dramatically boost interest rates in the United States.”

Price inflation, with a major economic downturn, will decimate U.S. Federal Government finances, and exploding deficits and uncontrolled spending.”

Ah yes, remember when that Burger King value meal was around $3.

“Federal Reserve policy will continue at an expanding rate, with massive credit expansion, which will make the dollar crisis worse. Gold will be seen as an alternative to paper money as it returns to its historic role as money.”

Though Bernanke has kept interest rates low, there is the prospect of T-Bill interest rates going up with the forthcoming debt crisis. There has been a dollar devaluation of 40% against the Euro since this 2002 speech, nearly 14% since June 2010 alone according to an article in The Washington Post.

Quantitative easing most definitely contributed to the high gas prices we see today. If you think it was all the fault of this “Arab Spring”, take a look at the Commodity Price Index some time. This freshly “recycled” dough being put in the hands of speculators causes them to artificially drive up the price of oil and other commodities, some of which are being bought as a hedge against the falling dollar; quite the vicious cycle.

As for gold, when Congressman Paul gave this speech gold was roughly $300 per ounce and today it stands at more than $1615 per ounce; you can check out the historical data on gold prices here.

That’s a whopping 438% increase.

“Erosion of civil liberties here at home will continue as our government responds to political fear in dealing with the terrorist threat by making generous use of the powers obtained with the Patriot Act.

The Congress and the President will shift radically toward expanding the size and scope of the Federal Government. This will satisfy both the liberals and the conservatives.

Military and police powers will grow, satisfying the conservatives. The welfare state, both domestic and international, will expand, satisfying the liberals. Both sides will endorse military adventurism overseas.”

The president today has the power to order the assassination American citizens, as in the case of Anwar Al-Awlaki—traitorous as he may be, this is wrong. The Constitution has rules for punishing those who commit treason. But President Obama has ignored this and has ordered him to be killed if possible with drone strikes in Yemen.

The welfare state has expanded significantly. A new, unaffordable addition to Medicare under Bush 43 was passed. We saw more than a trillion dollars of so called economic stimulus under Nancy Pelosi and the combined presidencies of Bush and Obama, and that’s not even including Obama’s wasteful and unpopular health care overhaul. Not to mention billions of foreign aid to countries, some of which—such as Pakistan—are less than trustworthy.

“This is the most important of my predictions: Policy changes could prevent all of the previous predictions from occurring. Unfortunately, that will not occur. In due course, the Constitution will continue to be steadily undermined and the American Republic further weakened

During the next decade, the American people will become poorer and less free, while they become more dependent on the government for economic security.

The war will prove to be divisive, with emotions and hatred growing between the various factions and special interests that drive our policies in the Middle East.”

The middle east is on fire right now. The Israelis are more concerned for their security than ever before. Meanwhile the Saudi lobby pushes us to deal with Iran, with the hopes that they can beat the Islamic Republic in terms of spheres of influence in this theocratic mess of a region.

“Agitation from more class warfare will succeed in dividing us domestically, and believe it or not, I expect lobbyists will thrive more than ever during the dangerous period of chaos.”

This one is self evident. Class warfare is a weapon of distraction used by those who wish to expand the size of government while fat cats at firms such as General Electric, Goldman Sachs, and BP fatten their wallets thanks to government’s policy of picking winners and losers via loopholes and subsidies. The administration may talk the talk, but just take a look at Obama’s campaign contributions and how cozy he is with Jeffrey Immelt; how GE almost got away with paying no taxes, and how a former Goldman Sachs legal adviser with no judicial experience now sits on the Supreme Court.

In addition, a piece was posted two days later, here, containing more words than in the video, which appears as if it may have been cropped to save time. Some of the predictions in that post, such as a reinstatement of the draft did not come true (thank God), but there is one of note that have somewhat come to fruition

“Some European countries will clandestinely support the Muslim countries and their anti-Israel pursuits.”

If you go on YouTube and read the comments sections on almost any video relating to middle eastern politics, you will find that it is a cesspool of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric, and many of the people making these comments are living in Europe. You can take my word for it as a person of Middle Eastern descent who keeps up with these things, or you can check it out yourself. The barbaric theocrats of Hamas are given the benefit of the doubt by many YouTube in the UK, France, Germany and Greece, while the Israelis are fallaciously smeared as “genocidal” and heartless.

Ron Paul’s predictions show a deep understanding of not just economics, but human emotions in the geopolitical world. Those who dismiss him as a “nut” and on the fringe would be wise to thoroughly read this article before making such a judgment. The facts are on his side, and he truly does seem to know what he is talking about.

Dr. Paul concludes with:

“I have no timetable for these predictions, but just in case, keep them around and look at them in 5 to 10 years. Let us hope and pray that I am wrong on all accounts. If so, I will be very pleased.”

Well, 2012 will be ten years in. You weren’t wrong on all accounts Ron, in fact, you were right on a great many of them. We should all be most displeased that these predictions came true.

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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.

Photo of Presidential Candidate Ron Paul (R, TX) by: Gage Skidmore (CC BY-SA 2.0)”]

Published 7/29/11 on Examiner

In conjunction with a recently released study confirming that U.S. involvement in the affairs of Israel actually hurts the country and the fact that the U.S. has blocked peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, it is time for Americans to demand a U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East — including an end to foreign aid and an expedient exit of U.S. troops from Libya, Iraq, and other sovereign nations in the region.

A report from earlier today (linked above) by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency states that the United States has blocked an initiative by the UN, the European Union, and Russia to outline an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement. The settlement related to border talks, solutions for Palestinian refugees, and the sharing of Jerusalem.

The U.S. nixed the ideas, saying it was “not the right time”.

Given that the United States is busy fighting three foreign wars and most recently bombed Libya, apparently peace is not on Nobel Peace Prize recipient Barack Obama’s agenda.

Which once again makes the case for the United States butting out of Israel’s affairs and exiting the Middle East altogether.

Here is a summary of what the bipartisan agreement in Congress on the 2011 budget compromise gained Republicans:

• The largest spending cut in U.S. history. The agreement will immediately cut $38.5 billion in federal spending – the largest spending cut in American history in terms of dollars – just months after President Obama asked Congress for a spending “freeze” that would result in no cuts.

• Hundreds of billions in spending cuts over the next decade. The agreement will cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the federal budget over the next decade – “real money,” as the Wall Street Journal editorial board recently noted.

• An end to the “Stimulus” Spending Binge. The agreement begins to reverse the “stimulus” spending binge that began in 2009 – signaling the official end of a period of unprecedented government intervention that former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and other economists say hurt job creation in America by crowding out private investment.

• Guarantees Senate Vote on Repeal of Obamacare. The agreement reached with Senate Democrats guarantees a Senate debate and vote on legislation that would repeal President Obama’s government takeover of health care in its entirety. The House passed such legislation in January as part of the Pledge to America.

• New Tools in the Fight to Repeal Obamacare. The agreement will generate new tools for the fight to repeal Obamacare by requiring numerous studies that will force the Obama Administration to reveal the true impact of the law’s mandates, including a study of how individuals and families will see increased premiums as a result of certain Obamacare mandates; a full audit of all the waivers that the Obama Administration has given to firms and organizations – including unions – who can’t meet the new annual coverage limits; a full audit of what’s happening with the comparative effectiveness research funding that was in Obamacare and the president’s failed “stimulus” spending bill; and a report on all of the contractors who have been hired to implement the law and the costs to taxpayers of such contracts.

• Denial of Additional Funding to the IRS. The Obama administration has sought increased federal funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – money that could be used to hire additional agents to enforce the administration’s agenda on a variety of issues. This increased funding is denied in the agreement.

• A Guarantee of Senate Vote and Debate On Defunding Planned Parenthood.  The agreement with Senate Democrats guarantees a Senate debate and vote on legislation that would end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

• Ban of Taxpayer-Funded Abortion in DC. The agreement includes a complete ban on federal funding of abortion in the District of Columbia, applying the pro-life principles of the Hyde Amendment (“D.C. Hyde”).

• Mandatory Audits of the New Job-Crushing Bureaucracy Set Up Under Dodd-Frank. The agreement subjects the so-called Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by the job-destroying Dodd-Frank law to yearly audits by both the private sector and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to monitor its impact on the economy, including its impact on jobs, by examining whether sound cost-benefit analyses are being used with rulemakings.

Will Reince Priebus exclude Ron Paul and Gary Johnson from the 2012 RNC debates?

Despite the fact that no candidates have formally announced for President, we know that campaign season is upon us because the usual suspects are working to find a way to exclude new ideas from the Presidential debates.

Presidential debates in our country have often been exclusionary, especially since the formation of the Commission on Presidential Debates after Ross Perot’s successful third party campaign in 1992. The Libertarian Party candidate has never been included in a nationally televised debate. Congressman Ron Paul was excluded from at least one debate in Iowa in 2007, but was ultimately included in the important debates. If he had not been included in the debates, both his ideas and his popularity would have suffered as a result. Perhaps the Tea Party never would have formed.

Last week, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus formed a committee comprised of RNC member Jim Bopp, former RNC Chair Mike Duncan, former Florida GOP Chair Al Cardenas, and former Congressman Dick Armey to decide whether the Republican National Committee should sponsor debates to raise money for themselves. According to James Bopp, “The RNC or its designee may at its discretion determine the time, place, co-sponsors, format , subject matter, moderators and participants” for the debates.

“Those candidates invited to participate in RNC-sanctioned debates will be allowed to participate in a list exchange with the RNC,” wrote Bopp.

And therein lies the problem. Certain candidates will be invited and other candidates will be excluded.

This is exactly what I warned of when I asked you to write your RNC member to oppose the nomination of RNC Chairman Reince Priebus just a few months ago.

The RNC is planning to pick favorites. If conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt — who thinks this is a grand plan for the Republican Party — has his way, Congressman Ron Paul and Governor Gary Johnson will be excluded from RNC-sanctioned debates. Writes Hewitt:

“Bar the stage to those candidates who simply cannot win the nomination, even under Iowa-upset circumstances. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania are long-shots, but they have a plausible path to the nomination. Former Rep. Buddy Roemer of Louisiana and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson do not. If Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, asks for another giant chunk of valuable time, the RNC should say no, and put up with the howls from the 1 percent who will scream.“

Fortunately, some debates are already scheduled, including a May 5 South Carolina debate, a June 7 New Hampshire debate, an August Iowa debate, two debates in Florida in September and October, and the Politico/NBC debate on September 14 in California. However, if the RNC continues with its plan, they could simply adopt some of these debates and begin excluding whomever they want — just as the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates excludes third party candidates each Presidential election cycle.

TAKE ACTION

Please contact RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, RNC Chief of Staff Jeff Larson, RNC Committeeman from Indiana Jim Bopp, RNC Committeeman from Kentucky Mike Duncan, FreedomWorks’ Dick Armey, and American Conservative Union’s Al Cardenas. Ask them for inclusive debates that include Congressman Ron Paul, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, former Louisiana Governor Buddy Roemer, and former Reagan official Fred Karger.

Here is a sample letter:

Dear Committeeman Bopp,

I recently learned that the Republican National Committee is sponsoring its own debates to raise money for the RNC.  I am a Republican party activist and am also involved with my local Tea Party.  I saw conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt comment that certain candidates should be excluded from the RNC-sanctioned debates.

Mr. Bopp, rest assured that I will not donate to the RNC if they exclude candidates like Congressman Ron Paul, Governor Buddy Roemer, or Governor Gary Johnson.  I want to hear as many voices as possible so that the Republican Party can have its best choice to defeat President Obama in 2012.

If your debates are going to be inclusive, then please forge ahead.  However, if you’re going to exclude candidates and ideas from the process, count me out.

Best Regards,

[Your Name]

You may also want to write to Hugh Hewitt to ask him why he believes American voters should be isolated from new ideas and different approaches to solving our problems.

GET INVOLVED

This leads us to the most important point about the discussion: We need more liberty-loving Republicans involved in the Republican Party so our voices can be heard.

Please join the Republican Liberty Caucus today and get involved in your state or local chapter.

If we’re not able to change the Republican Party from within, liberty will lose.

It’s really that simple. We choose to inject libertarian ideas into the party, or we give up. Those are our options.

Patriots, it’s time to go RINO hunting in beautiful North Dakota!

Yesterday twenty-nine RINOs in the North Dakota State House voted to block an amendment to the state Constitution to prohibit North Dakotans from having to purchase health care.

The bill, HCR 3014, received support from 39 House Republicans but was blocked when 29 RINOs joined with 25 Democrats to kill the modification language.

The amendment is necessary to both strengthen North Dakota’s legal challenge to Obamacare and to protect residents from whatever comes after the courts rule. So why did 29 Republicans, many of them claiming that they’re opposed to Obamacare, vote down this amendment?

Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem (pronounced Sten-jum), Republican.

Stenehjem, a likely candidate for higher office in 2012, did help North Dakota join the federal lawsuit challenging Obamacare. But he has also been working behind the scenes to convince state legislators that North Dakota is powerless in the face of federal law. In February, Stenehjem issued an opinion at the request of legislators in which he concluded that federal laws, once vetted by the states, are the supreme law of the land and that it is unconstitutional for the states to resist them.

Stenehjem has been working with State Rep. Bill Devlin to persuade Republican legislators that they are powerless until the court rules. Their campaign saw success in that it convinced Republican legislators to vote with the bloc of Democrats who supported Obamacare.

In response, please contact Wayne Stenehjem (Republican) at (701) 328-2210 today and express your disgust with his efforts to dissuade legislators from voting the will of their constituents. And please contact Bill Devlin (Republican) to express your feelings about his miseducation campaign in the North Dakota House.

Writes North Dakota blogger Rob Port, “This school of thought is based on a misunderstanding of the supremacy clause. Yes, the Constitution and such laws as the Congress may make are the supreme law of the land, but when the laws Congress makes violate the constitution then they cannot, by definition, be the supreme law of the land. That a federal court may endorse an unconstitutional law doesn’t make it any more constitutional.”

Concludes Port, “With Wayne Stenehjem clearly harboring aspirations for higher office, voters in North Dakota might want to remember just how hard he campaigned against the sovereignty of our state, and just how weakened his campaigning leaves our state in our battle to overturn Obamacare.”

The Republicans who voted against the measure include: Dick Anderson, Thomas Beadle, Dennis Johnson, Stacey Dahl, Duane DeKrey, Bill Devlin, Glen Froseth, Kathy Hawken, Joe Heilman, Curt Hofstad, Jon Nelson, George Keiser, Joyce Kingsbury, Matt Klein, Larry Klemin, Bill Kretschmar, Curt Kruen, Andy Maragos, Bob Martinson, Nancy Johnson, Gary Paur, Vonnie Pietsch, Todd Porter, Raeann Kelsch, Mark Sanford, Wayne Trottier, John Wall, Robin Weisz, David Drovdal

The form at this website will allow you to contact them in one fell swoop.

………………………………………

Two Republicans, Bill Devlin and Wayne Stenehjem, persuaded 29 Republican legislators to vote against asserting freedom from Obamacare in North Dakota. TAKE ACTION!

If the American intervention into Libya’s civil war was puzzling beforehand, the president’s inability to coherently explain it during his address to the nation only made things murkier.

But if there is one thing this entire situation has reinforced, it is that the foreign policy agenda erroneously passed off as conservatism during the Bush years was anything but. After all, the language used by Barack Obama to justify his attack on Libya was unmistakably similar to George Bush’s reasoning for going into Iraq.

Conservatives who dismissed criticism of Republican foreign policy during the mid-2000’s as dissent voiced only by disenchanted left-liberals might now be thinking there was more to these critiques than they were willing to admit. In fact, the foreign policy positions taken by many of the Bush Republicans resulted in the U.S. military’s role being viewed as one of “spreading democracy” around the globe, a notion not rooted in our history and an idea historically associated with the American Left. This idea had nothing to do with conservatism, but amazingly was passed off as such during the post 9/11 years. If more Republicans do not wake up from this mind set, the United States will ensure its bankruptcy and currency collapse sooner rather than later.

In years past, it became conventional wisdom that most liberals were rhetorically opposed to the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, while conservatives were expected to fully support them. This much was apparent.

Anyone questioning the cost or wisdom of two simultaneous Middle East occupations was written off as a “liberal” no matter how impressive their small government credentials. In hindsight, this simply made no sense; true, many on the Left did oppose Bush’s foreign policy, but that was based on the simple fact that it was Bush’s foreign policy. And the conservatives who unflinchingly supported the Iraq occupation and mission creep in Afghanistan largely did so out of a commitment to the administration, not because the installation of democracy in the Middle East was some longstanding goal of American conservatism or something they particularly were dogmatic about.

The degree to which so many otherwise intellectually curious conservatives were willing to dismiss facts and shut down critical thinking skills was truly disappointing. That they were so willing to do so was illustrative of a movement which had lost touch with its intellectual moorings, damaged largely by a blinding hatred of Bill Clinton in the 1990s which led to the embracing of a president ungrounded in his political philosophy in the 2000s.

Equating conservatism with ambitious nation building projects in Iraq and Afghanistan caused confusion over what the ideology even stood for. Attempting to install a democracy overseas and rebuild the fabric of a society from the top down are actions requiring an autocratic, centralized government to have any hope of success. Liberals would be the natural allies of such attempts due to their willingness to embrace Orwellian bureaucratic planning and the lack of aversion they show to using government for drastic societal change. Conservatives have generally understood that civil society must develop organically, naturally recoiling at ambitious projects with hefty price tags.

But the shoe was on the other foot during the Bush years, as both sides selected their positions based primarily on which party was in power. The relative silence of many anti-war groups after the election of Barack Obama showed their agenda had much more to do with electing a Democratic president than with ending any particular war; the only wars the Left seems to oppose are those started by a Republican or not given the U.N.’s stamp of approval.

And each side’s view of the particular war we happen to be involving ourselves in at the moment is a constantly evolving phenomenon. Evidence of this is ample: many of the same conservatives who denounced Bill Clinton’s humanitarian Kosovo operation were either silent on or vocally supportive of  intervention done largely on the same grounds in Iraq; before being opposed to such a policy once again when done in Libya.

These contradictions occur because the positions taken on so many foreign policy questions are not done out of any underlying principle, but simply result from partisan cheer-leading.

When Republicans passed the ruinous Medicare Part D expansion, the same ‘conservative’ commentators who would have been howling nonstop had it  been a Democratic initiative were comparatively silent. We heard warnings of “socialism” for a solid year during the debate over Obama’s health plan, but George Bush’s own foray into governmental health care involvement was treated with kid gloves.

Scenarios like this one paint a clear picture of how partisanship for sport creates an obvious and self-perpetuating double standard. After all, both sides can always finger point and decry the other side’s hypocrisy to justify their own hypocrisy; this vicious cycle, though financially lucrative for television and radio hosts, has been ruinous to conservatism and deleterious for the country at large.

Any impartial observer should have two eyebrows raised by Obama’s willingness to continue Bush’s foreign policy actions and rhetoric. This should make it clear there was never anything inherently conservative about it to begin with. In fact, liberal internationalism was what was on display during the foreign policy of the Bush years, not the non-interventionism fostered by true, prudent conservatism. Barack Obama genuinely believes the federal government can and should be used to help people in spite of how much debt it rings up or abysmal its track record. So of course he sees nothing odd about intervening in Libya; indeed, his entire philosophy is predicated on government action.

Frankly, Barack Obama’s public policies were more similar to that of his predecessor than those with partisan blinders on would care to admit, and, viewed through this lens, our failures in Iraq and Afghanistan actually repudiated the very centralization of government power conservatives are taught to abhor.

Those in the Tea Party confessing concern about our budget can no longer be intimidated into unquestioning acceptance of the foreign policy status quo. Americans have repeatedly rejected the ideology which demonized anyone who questioned our overseas policies, and the skittishness which greeted the Libyan intervention further underscored this. The same kind of thinking that gives birth to our costly welfare state at home only causes more difficulty for our country overseas when carried to fruition on an international scale.