Ray Harvey

Among so-called libertarians, Congressman Ron Paul has taken on brobdingnagian proportions of late, despite the fact that he doesn’t actually believe in liberty.

The confusion comes, I think, from his nominal advocacy of free markets, the Austrian School of Economics in particular, of which I myself am a proponent. But as we’ve seen, economics is not the proper foundation of any government, because private property – which is the crux of the free market – is not primarily rooted in economics but ethics:

Property (including money) is only an extension of person; thus, the right to property rests upon the more fundamental right to life.

Do you think that Paul supports individual freedom, unrestricted by law? He does not. Quoting his own words:

I also support overriding the Supreme Court case that overturned state laws prohibiting flag burning. Under the Constitutional principle of federalism, questions such as whether or not Texas should prohibit flag burning are strictly up to the people of Texas, not the United States Supreme Court. Thus, if this amendment simply restored the state’s authority to ban flag burning, I would enthusiastically support it.

Goodbye, free speech — if, that is, your state votes it down.

You see, on Planet Paul, big government is fine, provided that government operates at the state or local level, not federal.

In fact, Ron Paul only believes in freedom unrestricted by federal law. When it comes to state and local governments, he fully endorses those governments’ “right” to restrict any number of your freedoms.

It comes as no surprise to learn, therefore, that on a host of other issues, such as the banning of raw milk, marijuana, abortion, same-sex relations, and so on, Paul explicitly advocates majority rule at the state level.

Properly classified, Ron Paul is what’s called an anti-federalist.

He is more specifically an anti-federalist neo-confederate masquerading as a defender of a Constitution he doesn’t fully understand. To wit:

“The notion of a rigid separation between church and state,” says Paul, “has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writing of our Founding Fathers.”

From this provably false assertion, he arrives at a remarkable conclusion:

“Far from mandating strict secularism in schools, [the First Amendment] instead bars the federal government from prohibiting the Pledge of Allegiance, school prayer, or any other religious expression. The politicians and judges pushing the removal of religion from public life are violating the First Amendment, not upholding it.”

What this translates to where Ron Paul comes from is that the First Amendment was intended to sanction (rather than prohibit) state governments who wish to impose religion upon the people.

Accordingly, Paul rejects the Jeffersonian wall of separation between church and state, and you can read it in his own words on this website.

It’s important to note here a far-too-often forgotten fact: namely, the principle behind individual rights – and, indeed, the whole reason that the United States is not a democracy but a Constitutional Republic – is that the rights of every individual, including the rights of gay people, are inalienable and never subject to vote, not at the federal level, not at the state level, and not at the local level, much as Congressman Paul wishes they were.

A religious man, Ron Paul naturally rejects evolution in favor of creationism.

He believes also that the Ten Commandments should be posted in public institutions and that the word “God” should be included in the Pledge of Allegiance.

On the issue of abortion, he’s to the right of such notable figures as Pat Robertson. He thus seeks to repeal Roe v. Wade, and he supports legislation to eliminate any legal distinction between a zygote and a fully-formed human being.

On Planet Paul, abortion is tantamount to murder; yet despite this, neither “murder” (of this sort) nor “fetal rights” (so-called) fall within the jurisdiction of the federal government. “Murder” and “the rights of the unborn” devolve to the states, so that the state can then exercise its own brand of tyranny, via public vote. This is known as majority rule, which is also known as democracy, which is also known as tyranny of the masses, which is why our Constitutional framers distrusted democracy, as well they should have. And Ron Paul knows this.

Congressman Paul correctly votes against all spending bills – that is, until it comes to his own district, for which he’s won earmarks in the federal budget, to the tune of hundreds of millions. The above process, incidentally, is nowhere to be found in the Constitution, and yet Congressman Paul says he’s “never voted for anything not specifically authorized by the Constitution.” How, then, does he justify this?

“By getting the money into the budget but then voting against the budget on the floor of the House,” says Paul critic, libertarian Stephen Greene.

And who can forget the notorious Paul newsletter, which shocked so many, myself included, and which, it turns out, he didn’t write but did endorse for thirty years. (A more thorough explication of that bigoted bile can be viewed here.)

If you’re unfamiliar with this newsletter, please don’t despair: you’ve read it many times before from neo-Marxists like Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Howard Zinn, Norman Mailer, and an army of others: the standard anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, blame-America-first rhetoric.

The New Republic said this about it:

What [the newsletters] reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing – but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.

True.

In the arena of foreign policy, one of Paul’s main gurus is a fellow named Robert Pape, who wrote a book called Dying to Win, which, in the last few years, has become Paul’s foreign policy Bible.

The premise of the book is that American occupation is what compels these otherwise gentle Islamofascists into their suicide missions. Marc Sageman, however, author of the more authoritative Understanding Terror Networks, says this about it:

“In terms of al Qaeda, [Robert Pape] is dead wrong.”

Osama bin Laden, incidentally, says the same thing as Marc Sageman. Still, Paul would have us believe Ron Paul and Robert Pape instead.

It’s this and a number of other hot topics (such as the peculiar about-face on immigration) that has made many erstwhile supporters distance themselves from Paul. To many, he’s become just another garden-variety, religious, conspiratorial “survivalist.”

Quoting libertarian lawyer Kip Esquire:

If you want to declare openly and loudly that you are a radical majoritarian anti-federalist, and that you support Ron Paul because he shares your worldview, then good for you. If you want to shrug and conclude that a radical majoritarian anti-federalist is better than the other candidates, that could be rational as well. But don’t dare proclaim that Paul is a libertarian or that his views reflect a commitment to individual liberty, regarding the war on drugs or anything else.

It’s crucial to remember here that the founders of this country didn’t create federalism so that the states could thus be empowered. On the contrary, along with the system of checks-and-balances, federalism was created to further protect individuals from government, at any and every level, including state.

Freedom is fundamentally the absence of coercion. It matters not at which level the coercion originates. Your right to life, liberty, and property are inalienable – which means: your rights literally cannot be transferred or made alien. Paul, however, doesn’t recognize the inalienability of rights but endorses overriding a great many of them, via majority rule, provided it occurs at the state or local levels.

Finally, if you’re still in doubt about Ron Paul, just look at whom he endorsed for the 2008 presidency.
That’s right: candidate Chuck Baldwin, of the Constitution Party, whose party Preamble reads, in part:

The Constitution Party gratefully acknowledges the blessing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as Creator, Preserver and Ruler of the Universe and of these United States. We hereby appeal to Him for mercy, aid, comfort, guidance and the protection of His Providence as we work to restore and preserve these United States.

This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been and are afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.

The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations …

(Source)

Just recently, at a so-called CNBC Town Hall, a quondam Obot told Barack Obama to his face:

I’m one of your middle class Americans. And quite frankly, I’m exhausted. Exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for.

My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot dogs and beans era of our lives, but, quite frankly, it’s starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we’re headed again, and, quite frankly, Mr. President, I need you to answer this honestly. Is this my new reality?

Real Clear Politics hasn’t yet made the priceless video embeddable, but you can — and should — watch it here. It will make you laugh, or it will make you cry.

Just incidentally, if you want to get drunk while watching it, try this drinking game: take a guzzle of beer (or Evan Williams) every time she says “quite frankly,” and I virtually guarantee you that by the end of it, you’ll be shit-faced.

Bernie Marcus is the CEO and cofounder of Home Depot — or, as it’s known to the anti-business, buy-local-only groupies, Home Despot. In the following video, Bernie Marcus correctly demolishes their (non)argument:

(Video via joegerarden)

Hat tip Doug Powers.

The church of recycling and the cult of organic composting was dealt another hard blow recently, when the Toronto Star conducted the following in-depth investigation, which was sent to me by my indefatigable friend Redmond. (Vote Redmond on October 25th, 2010!)

Green bins: A wasted effort?
Deep flaws mar recycling program as tons of organics end up in landfills or are turned into compost so toxic it kills plants

The City of Toronto boasts that its green bin program diverts a third of our garbage and turns it into “black gold” compost. But a Star investigation shows that the program – although nobly conceived – is a sham.

There are two problems. First, the city’s claim of how much waste the program diverts from landfill is inflated. Second, some of the compost that is being produced will kill your plants because of its high salt content, according to laboratory tests.

The Star found that, over the past two years, thousands of tons of organics in various stages of the composting process have been dumped into a gravel pit, tossed into landfills or stockpiled on city property. What’s more, some of the material residents are told to place in green bins – plastic bags and diapers – has wound up in the belly of a Michigan incinerator, despite Mayor David Miller’s vow Toronto will never burn garbage.

City residents deserve better, say compost experts. At least $15 million of taxpayers’ money goes to truck and treat the organic waste.

“Toronto homeowners put a lot of time and energy into separating their kitchen organics,” says Jim Graham, chair of the Ontario Waste Management Association.

“Residents have the right to expect the processors to do their job – and to create high-quality compost of consumer grade that they can use on their gardens.”

Toronto Mayor David Miller was too busy with the strike to comment, a spokesman told the Star on Thursday.

Geoff Rathbone, the city official in charge of the organic program, told the Star what happens to the organic matter “is not of concern to us” because it’s the provincial Ministry of the Environment’s job to enforce standards on processors.

The green bin program began in 2002, and today 510,000 Toronto homeowners dutifully separate garbage and put the organic waste into green bins for curbside pickup.

Compared to the pure organic programs in Durham and Peel regions, Toronto’s was flawed from the start. After public consultations, the city chose the simplest system for homeowners, encouraging plastic bag liners and the inclusion of diapers, neither of which can be composted.

The city proudly states that the compost it produces is “safe to use in gardens and lawns.”

Tests conducted for the Star by A&L Canada, a leading agricultural laboratory, found serious problems with compost produced by two separate companies contracted by the city to process the organic waste.

In one case, the lab found the compost was unfinished, meaning it was rushed through the process, in which micro-organisms break the waste down into a high-nutrient soil conditioner.

In the second case, the sodium content of compost given out at Toronto’s Environment Days was so high that it would kill plants. (More curing time would have removed naturally occurring sodium in vegetables and the salt we add to food.)

The Star also looked at the city’s so-called “diversion rate,” the markers by which recycling programs are judged. Critics say Toronto’s one-third rate is inflated.

Miller’s re-election promise in 2006 vowed to ramp up diversion rates to 70 per cent by 2010, so there’s pressure on the city to claim the highest possible rate.

Toronto’s annual output of 120,000 tons of organics has created a mad scramble for processors. In each of 2007 and 2008, the city shipped 1,000 truckloads to Quebec. By the time the green bin waste arrived, locked inside plastic bags the city wants residents to use, it was sometimes so rotten it went straight to landfill, says Quebec’s environment ministry. Some processors can’t handle liquefied rotten material.

That burns Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong, who has spent years trying to track the organic waste. “We have an unwritten rule with the public that the green bin system will have integrity, and the materials they put in the bins will be reused in a meaningful way,” Minnan-Wong says.

“When the food ends up landfilled, or when the compost is toxic, then you are betraying the principles and the reasons why we have this program to begin with.”

Two major compost processors hired by the city to handle the waste – such as leftover steak, banana peels and all those diapers – have been hit with provincial restrictions due to neighbourhood odour complaints.

Within the past two months, before the municipal garbage strike began, Orgaworld Canada in London was severely limited in the amount of organics it could process while Universal Resource Recovery in Welland was shut down entirely. Follow the trail of Toronto’s organics, and the flaws in the system emerge.

The Star found that Orgaworld, which processes about 40 per cent of Toronto’s organic waste, has been sending thousands of tons of “residual” plastics to be burned in Detroit. It turns out about one-fifth of Toronto’s organic output is being burned or buried in landfills.

The city tells residents to put diapers into their green bins.

Graham of the Ontario Waste Management Association also owns Try-Recycling in London. He said the diapers are considered diverted when placed in the compost stream, but are immediately screened out. “Makes for good diversion numbers, but they end up in the landfill anyway,” he said.

Add to that the plastic Toronto wants homeowners to line their bins with. In Durham and Peel, residents are told to buy compostable bags.

Toronto has built a multi-million-dollar system that is sup posed to separate organic waste from non-compostable plastic bags. (It is also planning two new local processing facilities, at a cost of roughly $65 million, using the same technology.) But plastics make the food rot quickly, causing odour problems for processors, and large shreds of plastic end up in the compost.

Nobody wants to see the green bin program scrapped, just made better. Susan Antler, executive director of the Composting Council of Canada, says some municipalities, such as Durham, are “shining stars.” They impose strict limits – no plastic bags, no diapers, and no dog feces and kitty litter. (The latter two are both allowed in Toronto, with feces contributing to odour issues and kitty litter putting clay into the compost.)

“Garbage in means garbage out,” Antler says.

Orgaworld founder Henk Kaskens, who is based in the Netherlands, came to London, Ont., last month to deal with “the fuss” created when the environment ministry ordered Orgaworld to limit its daily intake of green bin material to five trucks, or about 150 tons. Before that it was taking about 1,000 tons a day. (The order was lifted recently, but a new investigation is underway.)

The environment ministry says it has logged 170 odour complaints against Orgaworld since January.

At the same time the ministry hit Orgaworld with the limits, it closed down the second largest processor of Toronto’s organic waste, Welland’s Universal. The ministry told Universal it had logged 120 complaints of odours such as smells akin to “vomit” or “dead animals” since the facility opened last fall.

Toronto was caught in a vice, with nowhere to turn, because all but one of its other processors were facing ministry limitations or Environment Act charges.

Universal general manager Gerald Pratt said his company is taking the odour issues very seriously and is working very hard to fix the problems at the plant.

The problem caused Toronto to stockpile 3,000 tons of organics in city transfer stations – long before the strike began.

Orgaworld’s Kaskens, who said he makes “the best compost in Ontario,” invited the Star for a tour of his plant. He said the odour problems resulted from ducts that crashed from the walls to the floor because a subcontractor had not properly fastened them. He complained the environment ministry is too enforcement-focused and scares away future investments.

Inside the cavernous plant are huge piles of food waste, plastic bags ripped open. Kaskens said his technology turns organics into compost in just 12 to 14 days. The ministry requires it be held another 21 days, but “it is not necessary.”

The Composting Council’s Antler and numerous other industry leaders said they have never heard of compost that can be finished in 12 days. It takes up to six months to cure compost, Antler said. Kaskens pointed out the piles of residual waste, the plastics, in his plant. He said they are trucked to Detroit for incineration.

Neither the city nor compost companies could put a firm figure on the amount of non-organic residuals that are burned or landfilled, giving figures that vary from 15 to 22 per cent and higher.

Welland’s Universal general manager Gerald Pratt put it at 26 per cent, primarily plastic shopping bags. Toronto’s organic waste has a “great deal of contaminants in it,” Pratt wrote in a June letter to a Michigan landfill he hoped would help him after his plant closed.

The Michigan landfill’s manager, Dan Gudgel, said in an interview he could not compost Universal’s organics because the contamination meant it would take too long to get Michigan government approvals.

“I hear you have a state of emergency up there,” he said.

Article by Moira Welsh

Just recently, Barack Obama said, for the five or sixth hundredth time in the last year and a half: “The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place.”

He was referring of course to the profligate policies instituted under George W. Bush — about whom I’ve written here — and yet the question remains: why then has Barack Obama, from the beginning of his term, “gone back to the very same policies” instituted by his favorite scapegoat, without whom he’d be lost?

Unfortunately, I have no good answer for that question, but here’s something everyone, including Barack Obama, should know:

The President of the United States can’t create budget deficits or budget surpluses.

All spending bills, without exception, are born in the House of Representatives, and all taxes are voted into law by Congress.

Quoting Thomas Sowell:

Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president. The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.

The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, Bill Clinton was president, so it was called “the Clinton surplus.” But Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, for the first time in 40 years. It was also the first budget surplus in more than a quarter of a century.

The only direct power that any president has that can affect deficits and surpluses is the power to veto spending bills. President Bush did not veto enough spending bills but Senator Obama and his fellow Democrats in control of Congress were the ones who passed the spending bills.

Today, with Barack Obama in the White House, allied with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in charge in Congress, the national debt is a bigger share of the national output than it has been in more than half a century. And its share is projected to continue going up for years to come, becoming larger than national output in 2012.

Having created this scary situation, President Obama now says, “Don’t give in to fear. Let’s reach for hope.” The voters reached for hope when they elected Obama. The fear comes from what he has done since taking office.

“The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place,” he said recently. “In November, you’re going to have that choice.”

Another political fable is that the current economic downturn is due to not enough government regulation of the housing and financial markets. But it was precisely the government regulators, under pressure from politicians, who forced banks and other lending institutions to lower their standards for making mortgage loans.

These risky loans, and the defaults that followed, were what set off a chain reaction of massive financial losses that brought down the whole economy.

Was this due to George W. Bush and the Republicans? Only partly. Most of those who pushed the lowering of mortgage lending standards were Democrats– notably Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd, though too many Republicans went along.

At the heart of these policies were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who bought huge amounts of risky mortgages, passing the risk on from the banks that lent the money (and made the profits) to the taxpayers who were not even aware that they would end up paying in the end.

When President Bush said in 2004 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be reined in, 76 members of the House of Representatives issued a statement to the contrary. These included Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters and Charles Rangel.

If we are going to talk about “the policies that created this mess in the first place,” let’s at least get the facts straight and the names right.

The current policies of the Obama administration are a continuation of the same reckless policies that brought on the current economic problems– all in the name of “change.” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still sacred cows in Washington, even though they have already required the biggest bailouts of all.

Why? Because they allow politicians to direct vast sums of money where it will do politicians the most good, either personally or in terms of buying votes in the next election.

(Link)

“I don’t,” said Barack Obama, when asked this morning if he regrets labeling the past three months of economic catastrophe a Recovery Summer.

Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary Robert Reich does not, however, agree:

Doug Powers speculates that the following photos help explain Barack Obama’s inexplicable label:

(Hat tip HotAirPundit)

Pretty hard to equivocate this one, no matter how liberal your viewpoint.

Here’s the Governor’s exact words:

“It’s a free country. I wish it weren’t, but . . . it’s a free country. You know, you got to, you got to respect that freedom.”

Deval Patrick said this on the “Jim & Margery Show” (WTKK-FM, Boston) September 1st, 2010.

Here, on video, is the audio:

As Doug Powers drolly notes:

Every now and then, a politician goofs and reveals more than he or she intended, providing a window into the true motives or beliefs. Michigan’s John Dingell claiming that Obamacare is a peachy way to “control the people,” and President Obama saying that America is a world super power “whether we like it or not” are recent examples.

Reader, do the world a favor and send this son-of-a-bitch Deval Patrick a message. Here is his contact form.

Doctor Hal Scherz is a pediatric urological surgeon at Georgia Urology and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. He also serves on the faculty of Emory University Medical School and is president of Docs4PatientCare. Just recently, he wrote that “because the issue this upcoming election is so stark — literally life and death for millions of Americans in the years ahead — we are this week posting a ‘Dear Patient’ letter in our waiting rooms.” This is, in part, what that letter says:

“Dear Patient: Section 1311 of the new health care legislation gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and her appointees the power to establish care guidelines that your doctor must abide by or face penalties and fines. In making doctors answerable in the federal bureaucracy this bill effectively makes them government employees and means that you and your doctor are no longer in charge of your health care decisions. This new law politicizes medicine and in my opinion destroys the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship that makes the American health care system the best in the world.”

In this same letter, Doctor Scherz writes:

“Badly exacerbating the current doctor shortage [ObamaCare will bring] major cost increases, rising insurance premiums, higher taxes, a decline in new medical techniques, a fall-off in the development of miracle drugs as well as rationing by government panels and by bureaucrats like passionate rationing advocate Donald Berwick that will force delays of months or sometimes years for hospitalization or surgery.”

He also cites the brutal, unignorable, irrefutable facts of ObamaCare’s passage:

“Despite countless protests by doctors and overwhelming public opposition — up to 60% of Americans opposed this bill — the current party in control of Congress pushed this bill through with legal bribes and Chicago style threats and is determined now to resist any ‘repeal and replace’ efforts. This doctor’s office is non-partisan — always has been, always will be. But the fact is that every Republican voted against this bad bill while the Democratic Party leadership and the White House completely dismissed the will of the people in ruthlessly pushing through this legislation….

“In the face of voter anger some Democratic candidates are now trying to make a cosmetic retreat, calling for minor modifications or pretending they are opposed to government-run medicine. Once the election is over, however, they will vote with their party bosses against repealing this bill.”

The letter’s final lines are perhaps the most important:

“Please remember when you vote this November that unless the Democratic Party receives a strong negative message about this power grab our healthcare system will never be fixed and the doctor patient relationship will be ruined forever.”

In the Wall Street Journal, the following from Doctor Scherz is appended:

This message is going out to an electorate that is already frustrated over what they see happening to health care. Missouri voters rejected ObamaCare overwhelmingly in August, voting by a margin of 71%-29% to reject the federal requirement that all individuals purchase health insurance. Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen has assessed that ObamaCare is “a disaster” for Democrats. And around the country many little-noticed primaries have reflected voter rage—including the Republican primary victory of surgeon, political newcomer, and advocate of repeal Daniel Benishek in Michigan’s first district.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s damage-control efforts have fallen flat. The latest round of pro-ObamaCare television spots targeting the elderly and starring veteran actor Andy Griffith have not only failed to move the polling numbers. They have caused five U.S. Senators to ask for an investigation of the ads as a violation of federal laws barring the use of tax dollars ($750,000) for campaign purposes.

(Link)