Currently I read reading the book 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask by Thomas Woods (author of recent best-seller Meltdown). In it Woods brings up the Civil War and questions if it was really only or largely about slavery, as is commonly believed and taught in U.S. classrooms. He mentions a letter that Lord Acton, one of the leading figures in the libertarian school of thought, sent to Robert E. Lee in 1866.

I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo. — Lord Acton (Emphasis added.)

The more I research and think of the Civil War, the more I recognize that it was not a war about slavery, but a war of central, national authority and individual, sovereign states. If the South was seceding simply over the issue of slavery, they likely would have fervently supported the Corwin Amendment, which left the issue of slavery up to the states and out of the jurisdiction of Congress:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

The Corwin Amendment was passed by both the House and the Senate on March 2, 1861, two days prior to Lincoln taking office. Lincoln supported the Amendment (which would have been the 13th Amendment) in his First Inaugural Address and mentioned, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
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In light of the looming Senate vote and my recent announcement to only accept my district’s median household income for my congressional salary, and to make a charitable donation to local non-profit hospitals, I’d like to review this subject once more.  For more details, please read my health care plank, and to completely debunk the incumbent’s claim that health care legislation is constitutional, please read “To Nancy Pelosi on Health Care – Are YOU Serious?”

In the Bill of Rights of the Soviet Union, they were honest about health care – it states that “citizens of the USSR have the right to health protection.” This document also stipulated Soviet citizens have the “right to work” not longer than 41 hours in a workweek, the “right to rest and leisure,” the “right to education,” the “right to enjoy cultural benefits.” (Source) To find out how well this worked out for the Soviets, try reading Dr. Yuri Maltsev’s article “What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us.”  Even today, Russia’s life expectancy for males is just 59 years, while in the US it is 73 years.
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Great article that brings up the possibilities of more than just “Muslim extremism” in the case of Fort Hood. Like the article states, murder is murder, but the media and the government have skewed the causes and explanations of such a horrific incident.

On Thursday, November 5th, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan used handguns to fire upon fellow soldiers at Fort Hood Texas, killing 13 and wounding 30.

The base commander says soldiers who witnessed the shooting reported that Major Hasan shouted “Allah Akbar!” (God is great) before opening fire. Hasan, an American citizen and a practicing Muslim, himself was shot four times, and is presently hospitalized in stable condition. Originally it was thought that Hasan was killed, but later his survival was confirmed.

Hasan is a physician…a psychiatrist in fact. He recently worked at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Maryland, one of the primary places that wounded Gulf War soldiers are treated for horrific injuries. But those same wounded soldiers bring back deep mental wounds, and Hasan’s specialty was in counseling and helping soldiers suffering the mental anguish from war.

Major Hasan was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan, and reports say that he was angry about his deployment.

Over the coming weeks and months, military investigators will work to determine Major Hasan’s motivation for the murders. If found competent, he will likely stand trial for the murders and injuries. However, you should expect that the findings will be “spun” in a way that absolves Washington and the military from any responsibility for their part in the murders.

Nothing in this article should be misconstrued as a tacit approval of Hanan’s acts. Murder is always murder, and killing 13 and wounding 30 is an horrific slaughter. No justification exists for this act.

Take a look at the rest of the article: http://www.lewrockwell.com/ori…..e10.1.html

What is wealth?  With all of the ongoing talk about the financial crisis, 22% unemployment, unfunded pension plans, an upcoming and unmentioned commercial real estate crash due to the current silly state of “governomics” that we currently live in, and most especially the future popping of the dollar carry trade and US sovereign debt bubbles, I would like to share a philosophical point about wealth.

So what does the term “wealthy” actually mean? (more…)

Anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to the so called “Climate Change” legislation will realize this is nothing but a scam.

A friend of mine had a good analogy.  Let’s say I drive down the road and throw litter out the window.  I am polluting the environment.  If this legislation passes I have to pay someone else who is not littering, to balance things out.  The problem is that no one is cleaning up the mess I made.  I’m just paying someone who isn’t littering.  How does this impact the environment at all?  It doesn’t!

Climate change legislation is merely a front for GLOBAL REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH!  Not to mention the fact that many industries and individuals will become extremely wealthy if this legislation passes (G.E. and Al Gore to mention just a few).

Next we have the fact that carbon dioxide, the air we breath out, is now being called “poisonous”.  What could be more natural than carbon dioxide?  Trees and plants need carbon dioxide.  In fact they thrive with an abundance of it.

If the world were truly concerned about carbon dioxide they would plant thousands of acres of trees because trees remove carbon dioxide from the air.  The world is not doing this however because there is no money to be made, no wealth to redistribute.

Finally we have the fraudulent data and corrupt scientists trying to cover it up.  What does it mean when data is hidden and destroyed?  Perhaps it means that climate change (which used to be called “Global Warming”, but since the earth is becoming colder, it’s not called “Climate Change” any more), is nothing more than a farce.

No my friends, man made climate change is nothing but a scam and a hoax.

Is there anyone else but me that thinks our government is totally out of control?  How about totally corrupt?

I know this is old news, but I felt it worth bringing up.  At what point in time did the government start deciding they knew better than the people?  What is the government doing telling people what type of light bulb to buy and prohibiting sales of another type (e.g. CF bulbs instead of incandescent bulbs)?  I’m not disagreeing that CF bulbs produce more light with less energy (although they are potentially deadly if dropped).

Just think about it this way, imagine we’re at the dawn of the automobile age.  Many people still use horses and buggies.  Then one day the government says “Horses are old news.  They produce too much methane gas.  Automobiles are the way of the future!  From now on it will be illegal to buy and sell horses.  You must buy automobiles!”

One of the many questions I would ask is what happened to the free market?  Another question I would ask is who gave them the right to take away our rights to buy and sell horses?  Finally I would ask… WHO IS BENEFITING MOST FROM PROHIBITING THE SALES OF HORSES?  Why take something that is working perfectly fine, scrap it and prohibit people from buying it?

Who is benefiting the most by prohibiting one type of light bulb over the other?  Surely there is corruption here.  Can the American people not see it??

One questions the logic of “paying the bills” by raising the debt limit yet again. Expanding the national debt limit doesn’t do a thing to pay down bills, it expands the burden on the next generation and increases the size of government on nothing but credit and false promises.

The current debt limit by law stands at $12.1 trillion.

“We’ve incurred this debt. We have to pay our bills,” Hoyer, a Democrat from Maryland told political website Politico Wednesday.

That increase is nearly double what had been expected earlier this year.

“It is December, We don’t really have a choice,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin, told Politico.

“The bill’s already been run up; the credit card has already been used. When you get the bill in the mail you need to pay it,” he added.

http://www.ibtimes.com/article…..report.htm

The War on Poverty… the War on Drugs… the War on Terror… now we have the government’s “War” on Main Street. How to improve the economy and why the government is taking the exact opposite actions to destroy Main Street as a bad case of the “Seen and the Unseen” strikes the Lehigh Valley.

This talk was originally delivered to a Campaign of Liberty chapter on December 3, 2009.  Video will be available shortly.

Today President Obama will tour Allentown, Pennsylvania, in my home congressional district as part of a “Main Street Tour” to show his concern for economic plight of the masses. Many of the people I have spoken with while campaigning innately realize that government is at fault – or at least complain a lot about how the government should “fix” the economy. Unfortunately, many do not have enough of a grasp of economics to understand exactly how the government is ruining their lives and their childrens’ lives. Speaking for myself, about 2 years ago I would have been included in this category. This is no surprise as most of the press and educational system has been hijacked by the disciples of Lord Keynes (the Keynesians) and the socialist Karl Marx for the past century.

The late economist from the Austrian school and NY Times columnist Henry Hazlitt wrote a series of easy-to-understand economic lessons in the 1940s in what was later published as Economics in One Lesson. Hazlitt warned of the dangers of what he termed the “seen and the unseen.” Let me give a rather harsh but true example.

Last week one local paper published a story about a local hardware store on Main Street in Nazareth going out of business. I grew up in Nazareth, and this store was there my whole life. The owners were not able to afford the rent, tried moving down the street for cheaper rent, but were not able to save the company.

On the exact same day, another local paper published a story about the Obama stimulus plan. They explain how $7.8 million was awarded to the private Lehigh University for research on hot lava, smarter electric wheelchairs, and Ice Age climate shifts in Alaska. This amount was more than the amounts allotted to Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton, the three major cities in the Lehigh Valley. Before I continue – I am a proud alumni with an excellent education in chemical engineering provided by Lehigh.

So, what is going on here? It is nothing more than Hazlitt’s seen and the unseen at work. What is normally seen is the government spending on government pet projects, whether the Hoover Dam, hot lava research, banker bailouts of Goldman Sachs, or even new roads and bridges. Some government projects may even have some utility, like new roads or bridges. These are held up to the population as examples of how the government is doing its best to help you – with your taxes, that is.

However, what is typically NOT SEEN is local hardware stores failing, or other businesses who fail to get listed on the government’s gravy train list. What is NOT SEEN is those living on fixed incomes like social security whose standards of living are affected the harshest by inflation, the businesses that never started due to government interventions. What is NEVER SEEN is the employment these new businesses would be providing and, most especially, what is not seen is simply what would happen if the people were not plundered by government in the first place, either in the form of payroll taxes or the insidious hidden tax of inflation.

Of course, realistically speaking in today’s America, what is seen is the looting of the public treasury by the special interest lobbyists who, to a large extent, control Congress, the FED, and the rest of DC. We must instead focus on the general interest of society over the long run. We must remember that government exists to protect liberty, not to redistribute wealth, nor to grant special privileges, nor to interfere with the lives of individuals and their actions.  (more…)