www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcU57FWRFr4

Don’t forget to pledge and donate on March 23rd for Rand Paul’s next money bomb. He went over $2 million dollars last night and needs a lot more to continue to compete and hold his lead in the primary and general election.

The interview is in two parts.

The talk is in seven parts in the playlist below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=26B927B136BECA17

www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2PwDvkG4ew

In other words, if every lawmaker who votes for health reform agrees to personally pay for everyone else’s health care for any amount health care costs rise above the CBO estimates in the future I could support it.

This would include their “estate” continuing to pay after they die, perhaps from sub-standard government-run health care. If Obama and company really honestly believe that their plan would reduce costs why would they not stand behind that belief?

Oh, that’s right, they aren’t very big supporters of personal responsibility are they?

Blame-shifting is an art in DC, and our representatives are master artists.

Nevermind. Once health costs sky rocket under this plan, they would likely just raise their own salaries enough to cover the costs, thereby sticking it to the taxpayers anyway.

* pass the Senate 2,700 page healthcare reform bill, clearing it for President Obama’s signature
* but pretend that they didn’t

It’s a mind-boggling process suggested by Rule Committee Chair Rep. Louise Slaughter. To summarize . . .

* before Congress can pass a reconciliation bill “fixing” the Senate’s bill, the House must first pass the Senate bill and the President must sign it into law
* but the House doesn’t want an up-or-down vote on the unpopular Senate bill
* so instead the House will tie the Senate bill and the reconciliation bill together in a Rules Committee resolution
* which says that if the reconciliation bill passes, then the original Senate bill will be “DEEMED” to have been passed
* the Senate bill can then be signed into law, after which the Senate will (supposedly) proceed to consider the reconciliation bill

How can they do this? Because the House Rules Committee can propose anything that it pleases.

Fortunately, this procedure will require majority approval in the House. Which means . . .  

The vote on the Rules Committee resolution will be a vote on the Senate healthcare bill.

We must tell the House we’re on to their scheme, and they won’t get away with it.

You may borrow from or copy this letter . . .

My Senators are also seeing this letter to let them know of my disgust with the “Slaughter Strategy.”

Last week, President Obama called for an “up-or-down” vote on the healthcare bill. http://tinyurl.com/y8l38uc

Instead, the House Slaughter Strategy “would allow House members to say they never voted for the Senate bill, just the amendments to fix it.” http://tinyurl.com/yetgz5x

I demand that you do everything in your power to prevent House Democrats from foolishly attempting this maneuver. But if they follow through, please realize that the American people will know that a vote for the Rule Committee resolution will be a vote for the corrupt Senate healthcare bill.

It will be a vote for . . .

* the Cornhusker Kickback for Sen. Ben Nelson
* the Louisiana Purchase of Sen. Mary Landrieu’s vote
* and other bribes to several Senators

As a member of the House, you are already aware that if the you pass the Senate bill into law, then the Senate will have no vested interest in “fixing” their own bill with the reconciliation process. Have you ever trusted the Senate before? http://tinyurl.com/yfp2yqn

Does it make sense to support a bill that . . .

* the American people don’t like
* that the majority of the House doesn’t really like
* which will probably NOT be changed by reconciliation?

That would be political suicide!

Do yourself and the American people a favor. Oppose the Senate’s healthcare bill.

END LETTER

You can send you letter through DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

Official email newsletter of DownsizeDC.org, Inc. & Downsize DC Foundation.

Rand Paul is everything the Tea Partiers wanted in Scott Brown and more. He is their Reagan fantasy becoming reality. Only they don’t appear to completely realize it yet. Sarah Palin’s endorsement was huge, but the jury is still out on whether Palin is more than just a conservative “Barbie” to Scott Brown’s “Ken”.

Dropping the campaign sweat from Rand Paul’s brow on truly limited government litmus paper reveals two names that would make almost every conservative smile: Goldwater and Reagan. These two icons are at the very root of Rand Paul’s philosophy of governance.

Philosophy is nice for those of us that immerse ourselves in the issues on a daily basis, but it’s not very appealing to the large majority that catch a whiff of it on the news while stepping through the routine of their lives. To be successful politically, as much as I hate to admit it, requires more than just being right on the issues. So much more.

In today’s media-centric world it requires an attractive appearance, charm, charisma, no skeletons, and a beautiful family and articulate wife doesn’t hurt either. Rand Paul has all of these things plus he’s right on the philosophy.

Proof came recently when Rand’s wife Kelley delivered a speech on behalf of her husband to a county GOP woman’s group in Owensboro, Kentucky. She details some of her husband’s history including a story about Rand Paul attending the 1976 Republican convention with his father, Ron Paul. The younger Paul witnessed his father be one of only 4 Republicans to stand up and support Reagan against the incumbent Ford at the time.

I highly recommend you take some time and watch Kelley Paul speak in the video below (2 parts). When you are finished head over to WinRandWin.com and pledge to participate in the March 23rd money bomb. He needs help to fend off the barrage of attacks that have already started from his GOP primary opponent Trey Grayson.

I get concerned when I hear that Rand is dedicated to being a citizen legislator and that he’s not embarking on this political journey as a stepping stone to higher office. I suppose that can change like it does for many of our elected officials (including his father). I worry about this because I see potential in Rand Paul that goes beyond the title of Senator right on to the title of President.

The final quote from Rand’s brother Robert, in a recent Houston Chronicle article does provide some hope.

Rand, he said, is a good messenger for the second generation of the Paul revolution: “I think my dad has always wanted someone to take the message forward.”

And how sweet that Tea Party-Goldwater-Reagan-Paul message is. Watch Kelley Paul below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F4929D571632797

This bill will . . .

* control your ability to use vitamins,
* for the benefit of the major sports leagues

The following welfare queens endorsed McCain’s bill within hours of its introduction . . .

* The National Football League
* The National Basketball Association
* Major League Baseball
* National Hockey League
* The NCAA
* The Professional Golf Association
* The U.S. Olympic Committee

Nearly all of these entities receive tax funding to build the stadiums they play in. Now they want to make your supplements more expensive so that none of their rich athletes will accidentally ingest anything banned by league rules. But you can take action to kill this bill.

It’s crucial to understand that most vitamins and supplements aren’t drugs. Your food that grows in the ground, or on the hoof, is full of these substances. That’s one reason why previous government attempts to label these nutritional supplements as drugs, and regulate them, have met with fierce public opposition. Indeed . . .

Prior to the Internet, one such government power grab generated what may have been the biggest barrage of letters to Congress in American history. That power grab failed, because public pressure works!

Instead of regulating supplements Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 DSHEA).

That law states that most nutritional substances do not require FDA pre-approval before going to market, and cannot be re-classified as drugs.

Now, John McCain seeks to repeal key provisions of the DSHEA. Yet in his remarks introducing S.3002  . . .

* he provides no evidence that the relatively free-market approach of the DHSEA has failed
* he cites no evidence that dietary supplements, consumed by 150 million Americans, are unsafe or a threat to public health

And the DSSA is completely unnecessary to address the (minor) steroid problem. In fact, the problems McCain does cite were already addressed by current law, which has not been competently enforced by the FDA!

* the FDA already has authority to ban any substance containing anabolic steroids
* and products are already required to list all their ingredients

To make matters worse, “. . . the bill reverses “common law, which assumes all is legal unless restricted. DSSA would allow only what is permitted to be legal.”

The DSSA is nothing but regulatory “corporate welfare” for major sports leagues (and multi-national drug companies). It will put the FDA in the business of helping the NFL, Major League Baseball, etc. enforce their substance policies — at your expense.

This bill will deny you freedom of choice, place expensive burdens on small enterprises, and do nothing to protect your health. It will actually make you less healthy, by causing nutritional substances to be less available and more expensive.

Please use these talking points to tell your Representative and your two Senators to oppose S. 3002, John McCain’s Dietary Supplement Safety Act.

And if you’re excited about DownsizeDC.org’s work, please do one or both of the following:

1) Start a monthly pledge or make a one-time donation.
2) Commit to sharing this campaign with ten other people who would be interested in this issue.

Both methods will help grow the Downsize DC Army,

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

Official email newsletter of DownsizeDC.org, Inc. & Downsize DC Foundation.

by Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and author of Crash Proof 2.0: How to Profit from the Economic Collapse

By late 2009, as the U.S. dollar flirted with multi-year lows against most foreign currencies, big investment players crowded into trades that shorted the greenback. Commentators noted that the anti-dollar momentum had taken on a life of its own and that the trade had become too crowded.  It is true that markets have a nasty tendency to move against the crowd.  When a lot of traders agree on a particular trade, it’s more likely that in the short-run the opposite trade will be a winner.

The 2008 “flight to safety” rally of the U.S. dollar was a once in a lifetime event that presented huge opportunities for aggressive currency traders. By December 2008, after rallying 25% over the previous five months, the dollar topped out. However, there were many speculators who had come somewhat late to the party, as well as many others who had ridden the dollar up and were thus sitting on huge unrealized gains.

Those technical reasons, combined with the re-emergence of strong growth in emerging markets and solid earnings from overseas companies, redirected investment flows away from the dollar. 2009 became a year of dollar weakness, with the buck giving back nearly all of its gains. At that point, most people made the reasonable conclusion that the decline would continue.

As is often the case, an unforeseen event came along that made mincemeat out of the consensus’ well-conceived strategy. Once some fiscal squabbling grabbed headlines in the eurozone, the negative sentiment that had built up on the dollar was suddenly diverted to the euro. Catalyzed by the Greek debt crisis, the greenback surged by about 8% in six weeks.

From a technical standpoint, the short dollar trade of late 2009 was too crowded; but from a fundamental standpoint, I don’t think it was crowded enough. As with stocks, there can be no long-term substitute to examining a government’s fundamentals to determine its currency’s worth. Based on the fundamentals, far too many investors remain far too confident about the greenback’s underlying viability.

In fact, I do not think I have ever seen so rapid a change in sentiment in my career. The crowd had completely switched sides, with most now betting on the demise of the euro rather than the dollar.  This is looking like July 2008 all over again, with the dollar poised to put in over-sized gains. It also presents a good opportunity for those who keep their heads.

In my opinion, the market is now perfectly positioned for a massive dollar sell-off. The fundamentals for the dollar in 2010 are so much worse than they were in 2008 that it is hard to imagine a reason for people to keep buying once a modicum of political and monetary stability can be restored in Europe. In fact, the euro has recently stabilized.

My gut is that the dollar sell-off will be sharp and swift. Once the dollar decisively breaks below last year’s lows, many of the traders who jumped ship in the recent rally will look to re-establish their positions. This will accelerate the dollar’s descent and refocus everyone’s attention back on the financial train-wreck unfolding in the United States.

Any doubts about the future of the U.S. dollar should be laid to rest by today’s announcement that San Francisco Federal Reserve President Janet Yellen has been nominated to be Vice Chair of the Fed’s Board of Governors, and thereby a voter on the interest rate-setting, seven-member Open Markets Committee. Ms. Yellen has earned a reputation for being one of the biggest inflation doves among the Fed’s top players.

Looking for an ally to paper over the administration’s gaping fiscal holes, it is not surprising that president Obama made this selection. Yellen has consistently downplayed the dangers of inflation and has made statements that indicate she views the Fed as an extension of the Labor Department, rather than a guardian of our currency. Last month, in discussing what she saw as the Fed’s obligation to promote employment, she said, “If it were possible to take interest rates into negative territory, I would be voting for that.” She may very well make Chairman Bernanke look like a tightwad by comparison.

It is anyone’s guess which sparks will be responsible for igniting the falling dollar powder keg. From a trader’s perspective, a sharp reversal in the dollar will catch many investors completely off guard. Those who stepped off the short-dollar train will be stuck on the platform as it speeds away. Those who refused to give up their seats are in for a hell of a ride.

Let’s stop them! Please tell Congress to repeal REAL ID and oppose any further attempts at creating a national ID card.

You may borrow from or copy this letter . . .

What is the purpose of REAL ID?

* to prevent terrorists from boarding planes, even though there are an infinite number of other ways to engage in terrorism
* to prevent illegal immigrants from getting driver’s licenses – which only increases the likelihood they will drive without ever being tested, creating more dangerous roads http://tinyurl.com/yf5r595

Why should either (misguided) goal interfere with an American citizen’s attempt to renew a driver’s license?

REAL ID is working exactly as I thought it would. It punishes innocent Americans like me with red tape and higher fees by forcing us to “prove” we’re not terrorists or illegal immigrants.

In Florida . . .

* the driver’s license fee jumped from $25 to $48
* a woman was denied a license for failing to produce certified documentation of her first marriage, held in 1958 in Minnesota  http://tinyurl.com/ykb4kud
* and a 68 year-old man’s Rhode Island birth certificate that had been used to get into the Air Force, and to get a Florida license 20 years earlier, was rejected  http://tinyurl.com/ylzyhct

Nevada has also been plagued by long lines with applicants turned away. http://tinyurl.com/yzgfex3

Meanwhile, two New York DMV workers were recently arrested for selling “authentic” ID’s to criminals. http://tinyurl.com/yh7r7zm

This hardly inspires confidence that a nationalized ID system will stop terrorists and criminals from getting driver’s licenses!

And yet the Administration and Congress are considering a replacement to REAL ID, the PASS ID Act, which will make it even easier for corrupt state employees to get access to my identity documents! http://www.realnightmare.org/about/114/

In addition, Sens. Lindsay Graham and Chuck Schumer want to force all American workers to carry a biometric ID card. http://tinyurl.com/yd83dwt

In other words, to hold down a job, I would have to be fingerprinted, enrolled in a national database, and possibly tracked.

I have had it! This is America! Americans shouldn’t have to prove we’re not terrorists, or that we’re not illegal immigrants. I have the right to travel. I have the right to earn a living. I resent and reject any government program that presumes I must ask for permission.

I demand that you repeal the REAL ID Act and do everything in your power to oppose the PASS Act, the Graham-Schumer card, and all forms of national ID.

END LETTER

You may send your letter using DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System.

And please consider making a donation to further our work.

We appreciate your support!

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

Official email newsletter of DownsizeDC.org, Inc. & Downsize DC Foundation.

This series addresses the War on Terror. While my stances on both the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars are very clear, in this piece I will propose what to do with Guantanamo Bay and its prisoners.  In Part 1, I explained the history of Guantanamo for knowing its history is key to understanding what should be done with this military base.  In this piece,  I will dissect a recent editorial published in the local newspaper by the incumbent Congressman and then propose my solutions on how to handle Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Following this, no current discussion on terror would be complete without discussing the controversial body scanning and I will add my comments and solutions on airline safety. The last part will summarize border security and just how dangerous the war on terror is – not only to our soldiers who risk their lives everyday and avoiding financial ruin as a country, but also to our liberties as a free society.

Readers should be aware that the incumbent, Congressman Dent, in my congressional race sits on Homeland Security and is a rabid supporter of the Bush and Obama administrations’ War on Terror. While I do not question his motives to protect the American people, I do very much oppose his actions and ineffective solutions. Our country’s leaders have not only plunged our nation into expensive, preemptive, and unjust wars for the past decade, but have embarked on a vast extension of a modern-day police state. It is the duty of every citizen to question whether these new restraints over our lives are, in fact, beneficial. I view the infringement of civil liberties that are protected by our Constitution as not only illegal but unnecessary and immoral.

The original source has been moved to the Morning Call archives here, but a modified version is available on Politico. In quotation marks are quotes from the Congressman, followed by my comments explaining my logic.

Dent:  “I can assure you firsthand that closing the facility is impractical at this time, and, if accomplished, would further weaken the security of our homeland.”

Dent is referring to only closing the prison, and while it is obvious that closing overnight is not practical, he fails to outline specifically WHY it is impractical, and WHY it would weaken security. During World War II, we kept German prisoners of war on our soil, and the ability of our military police to keep all prisoners secured in secluded location should be unquestioned.  He does refer to the $200 million price tag from the Obama administration for a new prison, but placing this into perspective, this is about the same cost as the oil burned in a single day by the Pentagon (395,000 in 2008) multiplied by the “fully-burdened” price of delivering it to Afghanistan ($400 a gallon).

Dent then wrote, “The government has already spent millions of dollars in state-of-the-art infrastructure and the guards are exceptionally professional. This is no Abu Ghraib and any attempt to characterize it as such is a blatant lie. The facility provides more freedom of movement than US-based maximum-security prisons and while Pennsylvanians struggle to feed their families, detainees get a daily 6,500-calorie diet and most have access to classes, sports, TV, and even video games.”

Many of the prisoners are charged with assisting the Al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked our country on 9/11. While I can understand providing the Koran for their religion and some freedom of movement, why are we providing them with video games and TV? While I find it hard to believe that Guantanamo is a vacation spot compared to Pennsylvania, does Dent not get the supreme irony of freely spending millions upon billions of dollars while some residents in our district struggling to feed their families?  Most of the prisoners left have been detained for over 6 years with no trial whatsoever. If they are guilty of crimes connected with 9/11, they should be tried on the evidence, not left indefinitely to rot in prison.

Dent also neatly tries to avoid mentioning that Guantanamo prisoners have been tortured in the past, and the reasons for holding “enemy combatants” off-shore in Guantanamo and the extraordinary rendition to other CIA bases was mainly so that torture could be used, such as the well-known waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the British national Binyam Mohamed who was released and determined to be innocent of any crime after being extradited to a secret CIA prison in Morocco where his jailers mutilated his genitalia among many other forms of torture.

Dent: “We still find our military men and women capturing terrorists on the fields of battle. However, these fields are no longer limited to Iraq and Afghanistan. They include the coastlines of Yemen and Somalia, neighborhoods in Texas and Colorado, and the skies above Michigan. The administration may not want to call it a war on terror, but that’s what it is. Where, then, shall we hold these prisoners of war – these enemy combatants?”

Dent’s blurring of the terms “terrorists” and “prisoners of war” is highly misleading. The truth is that the current wars are being fought against mostly insurgent tribal Muslim rebels, and the United States is allied with their opposing Muslim tribe.  Terrorism is simply a tactic of war.  The United States – or any other nation – cannot ever win a war against a tactic, we can only win wars against defined enemies. For instance, civilians in Pakistan where homes and innocent lives have been mistakenly destroyed by Predator drones could also argue that this is also a form of terrorism instead of America’s unique, inhuman term “collateral damage.”

If the Canadians or Russians ever invaded our country and we fought back, would any resistance on our part still be construed as “terrorism”? Were the French actions of sabotage during WWII against the Nazis or the original Boston Tea Party with its tar-and-feathering also “acts of terrorism”? In many ways, the actions of the minutemen at Lexington and Concord when the American Revolution first started against the British could be seen as cowardly acts as we shot at them from the forest rather than formally lining up on a field of battle.

Americans must place ourselves in the shoes of those we are attacking. Many that have joined the Taliban or Al-Qaeda have done so not because of a call to jihad by Bin Laden, but because their family members and friends have been killed.  Many are at war against the United States solely because we are over there, occupying their lands. It is highly unlikely that Osama Bin Laden would have been able to convince the 19 hijackers who killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11 to commit suicide if American troops had not been stationed in the Holy Land of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and many more countries – and presently the US military has over 761 bases in 150 of the world’s 194 countries if you want to be exact.

As Congress has never declared war against any nation, including Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan, as required by the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8), this does place our country into an awkward position.  My personal beliefs are:

• All Al-Qaeda charged with acts related to the 9/11 attacks or acts against American civilians not located in the war zones of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan, should be given a trial by jury.
• All tribal insurgents, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, etc. who attack American troops on foreign soil in whatever manner should be treated as prisoners of war and humanely detained by the military until the end of the wars’ hostilities. They should never be subjected to torture.
• The Bushian term Dent uses – “enemy combatants” – is childish conniving to thwart the rule of law by inventing new terms in order to torture and unlawfully detain individuals. The creation of kangaroo military courts as evidenced by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is to be condemned.

____________________________________________________________

WHAT TO DO WITH GUANTANAMO’S PRISONERS???

1. I believe that the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, if charged with an act of aggression, including terrorism, against American civilians in connection with 9/11 or otherwise, should be given a trial by jury, though depending on the exact circumstances may be under maritime law. These are criminal acts and should be treated as such. If there is no evidence to place them on trial, they should be released in accordance with our law – we will already have detained most of them for the better part of a decade. There is nothing to fear by giving these individuals constitutional protections since if abiding by the Constitution is good enough for me, it will have to be good enough for an alleged criminal and terrorist, no matter how much I myself hold terrorist acts in utter disdain.
2. I believe all prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, if charged with an act of aggression, including terrorism, against the American military or military contractors following 9/11 on foreign soil should be held as prisoners of war until the end of hostilities. If there is a case where an act of aggression may NOT have been committed against the military, a hearing can be held by the military to determine if there is enough evidence to continue holding the prisoner of war, but sentencing, capital punishment, or additional punishment should NOT be the subject of any such hearings. They should be treated humanely and not subjected to torture under ANY circumstances.
3. As outlined in Part 1, for historical reasons Guantanamo Bay clearly belongs to Cuba so once again, my stance is to support the closure of the entire military base, including the prison.
4. Those detained under #1 can be moved to a secluded location in the United States where they can be imprisoned and given their trial by jury. (Obviously, I do recognize that finding an impartial jury may be difficult, so details surrounding jury selection are a valid point for debate.)
5. Those detained under #2 above can be either be imprisoned by the military police in the United States or moved back into prisons in the occupied countries. Again, the United States is responsible to never torture and safely detain these prisoners of war.
6. To further elucidate the position of the United States’s “war on terror,” Congress should hold an up or down vote on the wars and also clearly specify the enemy and how victory is to be achieved. This is owed to the American people.  While I would vote against either war, I would support issuing letters of marque and reprisal, as outlined in my Afghanistan War plank, to address Al-Qaeda specifically.

America used to believe that individuals were innocent until proven guilty by jury in a court of law, no matter how heinous the crime.

America used to believe that torture is to be condemned as the actions of uncivilized brutes, and is unbecoming the most highly advanced society on earth.

America used to believe that without a warrant and probable cause, the government has no right or ability to search you as stated in the Fourth Amendment. As seen by the recent backdoor re-authorization of the PATRIOT Act, Congress and the President are out of touch with protecting individual rights.

If America does not return to our roots in the rule of law, history teaches dark days are ahead. We must reject the actions of so-called representatives in Congress and replace them with those who believe in the rule of law and will abide by their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

For reference, here are links to my Iraq War and Afghanistan War planks.

For the Republic and the Constitution,

Jake Towne

March 10, 2010