All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.
Matthew 7:1

Why would that be such a bad idea?

I work with a lady that is, I guess the best way to say it is very involved with her church. Yet she endorses and advocates war after war in the middle east. How can being Christian and having such a pro-war attitude go hand-in-hand? Casualties cannot be discriminated during war. Countless innocent women and children are killed during war, and when a war is unjust, I just don’t see how someone can be such an advocate of the war and at the same time pretend to be such a Christian person.

We’ve become a nation that applauds and praises murder, execution, crippling sanctions, and war, all the while ignoring the costs both in dollars and human lives. That’s sad.

The Constitution, with its system of checks and balances, not only allows for gridlock, it practically guarantees some degree of it. The Founders knew that gridlock can be a very good thing. If nothing can be agreed upon in Washington, harm to the country is limited.
Ron Paul

The Constitution is designed near perfect. It fails only because the people fail to hold their elected officials’ feet to the fire on their votes. If we did that, we would see less compromise and harm done to our nation. Think about it, if our parents and grand parents, and so on and so forth, had done just that, we would have sound money, less taxes, and less war. We would have a much freer, much richer, and in a much better than current shape, nation.

Hope for gridlock in Washington.

For those of you who don’t believe that your calls and e-mails to Members of Congress work, let me assure you that they do. Members “freak out” when they receive more than half a dozen calls on any issue.
Rep Justin Amash

I don’t know anyone other than myself personally that take the time to call their representatives and urge them to vote one way or another on legislation that is coming up. And if you think about it, there’s 300 million Americans, and yet we’re all so “busy” that we can’t even make sure that we keep our elected officials in check. Not caring enough to make those calls or emails is going to bite us in the butt. It’s actually already in process with the most likely passage of the NDAA which includes provisions that allow for the indefinite detention of American citizens, yes that could be your or I, without charge or trial.

We all love to complain about Washington, the way they do things or in some cases don’t do things.  But if we’re not contacting our representatives, we have no right to complain at all.

It’s sad to hear from someone on the Hill, that half a dozen calls freak members of Congress out. No wonder they are able to pass bills that infringe upon our liberties that are guaranteed to us by our Bill of Rights, it’s because the people no longer care what goes on. I have a feeling that one day people will wake up and begin to care once again, but I fear then it will be far too late.

Start calling and let them know where you stand. The switchboard number is (202) 224-3121 and of course you can find the email addresses on the House or Senate websites. Let’s burn that switchboard up!

Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:

1. They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.
2. They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.
3. They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.
4. They accept the notion that the ends justify the means–that hardball politics is a moral necessity.
5. They express no opposition to the welfare state.
6. They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.
7. They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.
8. They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.
9. They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite and withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.
10. They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill advised.
11. They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.
12. They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.
13. Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force should not be limited to the defense of our country.
14. 9/11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.
15. They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists.)
16. They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.
17. They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.

Neoconservatism is not the philosophy of free markets and a wise foreign policy. Instead, it represents big-government welfare at home and a program of using our military might to spread their version of American values throughout the world.Ron Paul, A Foreign Policy of Freedom

I urge you to support the only man running for President that stands by his principles without wavering. A man that cannot be bought. A man that takes his oath to the Constitution seriously, unlike the vast majority of those on Capital Hill. I urge you to support Ron Paul now and in 2012.

Q: An Irishman, a Portuguese, and a Greek go into a bar and have a round of drinks. Who pays?

A: The German.

I’m against both of the taxes that are coming up for vote/renewal for different reasons.

I’m against the E-SPLOST because of the way our county operates it’s budget and has managed the previous E-SPLOST. I’m sure many will vote ‘yes’ on this for the sole reason that it has to do with funding going to education. But before one votes to give them another check to spend as they see fit, they need to look at the prior projects that E-SPLOST has provided. It’s almost a running joke around everyone in the entire county how they just can’t seem to ever have enough schools built. I don’t even know the number of schools we have now, because every time you turn around, another $20-30M school is being built. We’re to the point that we’re neglecting the older schools to give way for a future project-that project being to tear down and replace the neglected school rather than go the cheaper route and maintain the school. I went to the school that I’m talking about, and even though it’s been over 10 years ago, there is no way that it would be to the point that it is unsafe for the children if they had not ignored maintenance for so long. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that one of the contractors for all of these new schools has some ties to those that propose these sort of taxes on the voters.

I’m against the T-SPLOST because it’s a regional tax. My county, Whitfield County, would be a donor county, meaning that it’s citizens would be paying more in taxes than they would be receiving back through projects in their own county. This tax only makes sense if you are one of the poorer counties, and even then, it doesn’t make it right. These regional type proposals are nothing but disastrous. They are wealth distribution at it’s finest. If county A has transportation projects, let it introduce a tax for it’s voters only to cover the expense of the projects that they would be taking advantage of. If county B does, then same goes for it, and so on and so forth. We don’t need our officials taking money from one group and granting it to another.

And then in general, I’m against both of these taxes for the reason that it’s a bad time to be imposing taxes on anyone. Taxes inhibit economic growth. By letting the E-SPLOST tax expire, and not allowing the T-SPLOST tax to be imposed on us, there will be a slight bit of relief to the people.

Our county keeps talking about having to take money from reserves if the taxes don’t pass, but let me tell you this. Cut out your pet projects, those projects that are nothing more than favors to get you re-elected, and you won’t have to be raising taxes or taking from reserves. Look at how our population may be on the decline, due both to the immigration law and the pitiful economy, and you may also see that building new school after new school makes no sense, unless you want some vacant school buildings in the years to come.

Not everyone that is protesting is protesting for the wrong reasons. But seeing what some are there for, and their demands, alot of them are. If the movement was protesting the root of all of the problems in this country, our monetary policy, then it could potentially bring about the change that we need. The movement needs to focus on the end of the Federal Reserve, because the Fed is the facilitator of all things that are starving the middle class, and killing our country. It’s ability to print money out of thin air, allows our leaders to lead us into never-ending wars by pretending that deficits don’t matter. It allows the markets to make investments that it would not otherwise make by forcing artificially low interest rates which lead to bubbles that eventually burst, i.e. housing market. The Fed is the problem, plain and simple.

Instead, many of the protestors are protesting capitalism. Capitalism is the greatest thing in the markets, not regulations. Capitalism and true free markets allow companies that make products that are wanted by the populace make profits. And it also allows those that make products that no one wants lose and fail. Occupy Wall Street needs to be protesting crony capitalism (or corporatism), not capitalism. Crony capitalism is what we saw with the bank bailouts. It’s privatized profits and socialized losses. It’s allowing corporations to keep all of their profits, but force the tax payers to keep them from failing with bailouts of tax dollars.

Like bailing out the banks, they are also demanding student loan forgiveness. But, how fair can that be to forgive the loans of those that went to schools that they couldn’t afford, yet those that have worked their butts off, and have been able to pay their loans, not. And besides, student loan forgiveness, when the loans are backed by the government, means nothing more than transfering the debt to the middle class. Essentially another bank bailout type situation.

They are also calling for more taxes, but more taxes inhibits investments into the economy, and less investments mean less jobs. That’s a vicious cycle, especially for the middle class. More taxes are never the answer to fix a broken economy, only less taxes and fewer regulations.

I believe the movement needs to call for the end of the Federal Reserve, immediate withdrawal of all troops from foreign nations and wars, repeal the Patriot Act, and repeal of the 17th Amendment, to see changes that would begin to return our nation to that of one that is prosperous and free, as it was intended to be.

The Tea Party gets alot of attacks from people that don’t understand what the movement stands for, especially from the Left.  It’s pretty easy to understand though, those that were sent to Washington from the Tea Party, were sent with the message that the people are sick and tired of all the wasteful spending that is driving up our national debt with these unfathomable yearly deficits.  This book is definitely worth reading if you are unsure what the Tea Party is really about, or if you find yourself being one of those people that blindly attack the movement.