Libertarian Party Nominates Gary Johnson for President

Governor Gary Johnson, 2012 Libertarian Candidate for President

LAS VEGAS – The Libertarian Party nominated former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson for President of the United States, expressing confidence he will be able to find effective small-government solutions to the country’s most pressing problems and mount a strong challenge to his major party rivals.

Mr. Johnson was declared the party’s Presidential nominee after he won 70% percent of the vote in the first round of balloting, receiving 419 of the 595 votes cast.

His closest challenger, R. Lee Wrights of Texas, finished second with 152 votes.

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Johnson promised to present a clear and viable alternative to major party candidates, saying his victory in November will offer Americans effective solutions to slow economic growth, high unemployment and endless foreign military commitments that sap the country’s financial strengths. America, for the first time in modern history, is poised to reject the tired two-party duopoly that has brought the nation to its knees economically.

“I am honored and I just want to pledge that no one will be disappointed. We’re going to grow the Libertarian Party.” said Mr. Johnson.

Libertarian Party Nominates Judge James P. Gray for Vice President

The Libertarian Party

LAS VEGAS – The Libertarian Party on Saturday nominated Judge James P. Gray of California for Vice President of the United States, giving him a chance to take his agenda of downsizing the federal government and marijuana decriminalization to Washington.

Jim Gray was declared the party’s Vice Presidential nominee after he won 59 percent of the vote in the first round of balloting. He received 357 votes from the 600 delegates of the National Libertarian Convention held at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, Nev.

His closest challenger, Lee Wrights of Texas, finished second with 229 votes.

“I am proud. I am invigorated. I am excited. With Gov. Gary Johnson. I am determined to bring back prosperity and liberty to the United States of America.” Judge Gray said.

A successful jurist who lives in Newport Beach, Calif. and presided over the Superior Court of Orange County, Judge Gray has been active in the Libertarian Party for several decades.

He was the 2004 Libertarian Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in California challenging incumbent U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. He is also the chief proponent of a California ballot initiative called “Regulate Marijuana Like Wine” that, if passed, would decriminalize cannabis consumption and production.

Judge Gray will form a Libertarian Party ticket with Gov. Gary Johnson, who won the party’s Presidential nomination earlier Saturday.

Decriminalize the Average Man

by Wendy McElroy

“Outright innocence is not sufficient to escape the brutality of detention.”

If you reside in America and it is dinnertime, you have almost certainly broken the law. In his book Three Felonies a Day, civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate estimates that the average person unknowingly breaks at least three federal criminal laws every day. This toll does not count an avalanche of other laws — for example misdemeanors or civil violations such as disobeying a civil contempt order — all of which confront average people at every turn.

An article in the Economist (July 22, 2010) entitled “Too many laws, too many prisoners” states,

Between 2.3m and 2.4m Americans are behind bars, roughly one in every 100 adults. If those on parole or probation are included, one adult in 31 is under “correctional” supervision. As a proportion of its total population, America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan.

By contrast, in 1970, less than one in 400 Americans was incarcerated. Why has the prison population more than quadrupled over a few decades? Why are you, as an average person and daily felon, more vulnerable to arrest than at any other time?

There is a simple answer but no single explanation as to how the situation arose or why it continues to accelerate out of control. The answer: a constant flood of new and broadly interpreted laws are criminalizing entire categories of daily life while, at the same time, the standards required for arrest and conviction have been severely diluted. The result is that far too many people are arrested and imprisoned for acts that should not be viewed as criminal at all or should receive minimal punishment.

In some cases, the violated laws are so obscure, vague, or complicated in language that even the police are ignorant of them. In other cases, outright innocence is not sufficient to escape the brutality of detention.

In Loco Insanity

by Becky Akers

“In loco parentis” is a slogan the State takes seriously. Very seriously. Throughout history and around the world, governments have savaged citizens as lethally as the most abusive father when they aren’t smothering us worse than any helicopter-mom.

Leviathan also interprets the phrase literally when preying on its youngest serfs. Indeed, the beast and its apologists assume that bureaucrats and politicians are far wiser, more loving, and more qualified to raise children than the poor slobs who birthed them.

That satanic fallacy drove the Orwellian “Department of Children and Family Services” in Cleveland, Ohio, to abduct a boy from his family last Thanksgiving. Its excuse? Timmy ate too well.

A Palestinian State?

by Ron Paul

Congressman Ron Paul

The Palestinian Authority’s recent announcement that it would seek UN recognition as an independent state dominated the news and the political debate in the United States last week, though in truth it should mean very little to us. Only a political class harboring the illusion it can run the world obsesses over the aspirations of a tiny population on a tiny piece of land thousands of miles away. Remember, the UN initiated this persistent conflict with its 1947 Partition Plan.

Unfortunately the debate is dominated by those who either support the Israeli side in the conflict, or those who support the Palestinian desire for statehood. We rarely seem to hear the view of those who support the US side and US interests. I am on that side. I believe that we can no longer police the world. We can no longer bribe the Israelis and Palestinians to continue an endless “peace process” that goes nowhere. It is not in our interest to hector the Palestinians or the Israelis, or to “export” democracy to the region but reject it when people vote the “wrong” way.

Legalize Currency Competition

by Ron Paul

Before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Financial Services, Hearing on HR 1098: the Free Competition in Currency Act

 

Congressman Ron Paul

I. The Problem

John Maynard Keynes once stated that “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” Such a situation is exactly what faces this country today, as the Federal Reserve seems hell-bent on destroying what little purchasing power remains of the U.S. Dollar.

Money is what allows civilization to flourish. Without money, consumers must barter their goods, hoping to exchange their products for those produced by others, and relying on a double coincidence of wants. Money enables man to rise above barter and makes exchange less burdensome. Once money comes into existence, businessmen can calculate profit and loss, homemakers can compare prices among different grocery stores, and individuals can begin to save and invest.

Money as a medium of exchange should always satisfy certain properties. It should be durable, not wearing out easily; it should be portable, easily carried; it should be divisible into units usable for everyday transactions; it should be recognizable and uniform, so that one unit of money has the same properties as every other unit; it should be scarce, in the economic sense, so that the extant supply does not satisfy the wants of everyone demanding it; it should be reproducible, so that enough units of money can be created to satisfy the needs of exchange; and most importantly, it should be stable, so that the value of its purchasing power does not fluctuate wildly.

America’s breathtaking ignorance on our decline

World According to America

By John Blythe

The photograph above is one that I found on the internet and it is meant to be funny, although it certainly illustrates how ignorant America has become on just about everything, while we continue to experience increased decline at an accelerated basis.

Newsflash: We’re not a superpower anymore and we’re not number 1 anymore!

For the third year in a row, we have had an annual budget deficit of over $1.3 trillion. Unfortunately, many Americans have no idea how staggering this is becoming. Since 1976, we have had negative trade deficits every single year because the United States does not produce enough of its own product. In other words, we spend more than what we take in. America has become the principal world consumer, if you will.

Currently, the U.S. federal tax revenue is roughly over $2.2 trillion, while our national debt is more than $14 trillion and the unfunded liabilities is now more than $116 trillion.

Does anyone have any idea how much $116 trillion is? It is unsustainable. This is the money that is supposed to be used for Medicare and Social Security programs. So for someone that is currently 25 years of age, by the time they turn 65, that is if the United States is even in existence at that point, they will most likely not receive any of those benefits.

According to the National Inflation Association, even if you taxed everyone in this country 100% of their personal income, it still would not be enough to fully fund the U.S. Federal Government. Even if the antisemitic sycophant himself, George Soros gave his entire multi-billion fortune to the government, it would only fund this nation’s budget deficit for about two weeks. But we have people out on Wall Street shouting tax the rich!

Wall Street protests spread worldwide

Rome protests (AP)

By John Blythe

The Occupy Wall Street movement spread worldwide this weekend. The protests, which started in New York City about a month ago with people on the left, on the right and down the middle, are calling for reforms to government, stopping corporate corruption, voicing social inequality and providing the redistribution of wealth.

On Saturday, protests in the United States continued in cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis and Oklahoma City; and spread rapidly across the globe to Vancouver, Toronto, Halifax, Tokyo, Seoul, Manila, London, Sydney, Paris, Munich, Madrid and Cape Town.

While a majority of these protests were peaceful, this was not the case in Rome. The protests turned into a mass riot, as participants set fire to vehicles and the Italian police had to use tear gas to maintain civility, while in London, there were reports that the British police use batons to beat some of the activists who were too out of control.

In Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, some protesters held up photos and signs of the “so-called” Cuban revolutionist Che Guevara. Do any of these protesters realize that Guevara, despite being a communist, was also a racist and a fascist? Besides, Bosnia seceded from Yugoslavia to escape the collapse of communism during the 1990’s and now here we have protesters calling for communism to return.

Or am I wrong?

Was Iranian assassination plot, an inside job?

Manssor Arbabsir, alleged Iranian mastermind

By John Blythe

There are some lingering questions that have come up ever since the alleged plot unfolded on Tuesday about an Iranian American citizen with ties to Iran’s government, planned to conspire with a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate a Saudi Ambassador and blow up an Israeli embassy in Washington.

The accused mastermind behind the plot, Manssor Arbabsir, was charged by the U.S. Justice Department for conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack on American soil. Manssor’s friends however, have a completely different viewpoint on this. Manssor was a used car salesman in Texas and his friends and associates say this was a man who could barely afford to pay his bills or keep his auto records straight, let along pull off a major terrorist attack.

In another interesting twist, the plot was released to the news media on the same day that Congressman Darrell Issa, the Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee stated that he would subpoena documents relating to Attorney General Eric Holder’s role in “Operation Fast and Furious”, which led to the ATF’s sale of more than 2,000 weapons to Mexican drug cartels.

Perhaps the same Mexican drug cartels that were planning on helping Manssor assassinate the Saudi Ambassador?

Is George Soros funding Wall Street protests?

George Soros

By John Blythe

As the Wall Street protests continue to gain momentum throughout America, several people are wondering who may be the real “perpetrator” behind this movement. One name that continues to come up and always seems to come up in just about every revolution known to man kind in recent years, is 80 year old George Soros.

The far left Hungarian-born stock investment billionaire, is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world, and while he may be unknown to some, Soros hass been a major influence to world finance and politics by fueling his agenda through his organizations including MoveOn.org, Media Matters for America and the Open Society Institute in the disguise of “global philanthropy”. Soros has also provided necessary funds to countries that have gone through revolutions and trained students to practice in Gene Sharp theory protests.

Among the laundry list of regime changes through divide and conquer that Mr. Soros has been involved in through recent years: the 2000 “Bulldozer Revolution” toppling Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia; the 2003 “Rose Revolution” forcing Eduard Sheverdenze in Georgia out of power after Soros provided funds to the U.S. State Department to prop up his puppet, Mihkeil Saakashvili; the 2004 “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine, the 2005 “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon and Soros recently helped remove Hosni Mubarak from power in Egypt and is further contributing to the destabilization of the Middle East as we speak by financing the “Arab Spring”. He has also been an outspoken critic of Israel citing that because of the country, there has never been true democracy in that region of the world. It also doesn’t hurt to mention that when Mr. Soros was a child growing up in Hungary, he watched Jews being sent to the Nazi death camps.