Tuesday, October 31, 2006

REMEMBER, REMEMBER


The 7th of November.

Give 'em L in the ballot box.

The NAFTA Superhighway

a.k.a. The trans-Texas corridor

The proposed highway is part of a broader plan advanced by a quasi-government organization called the “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,” or SPP.

The SPP was first launched in 2005 by the heads of state of Canada, Mexico, and the United States at a summit in Waco.

The SPP was not created by a treaty between the nations involved, nor was Congress involved in any way. Instead, the SPP is an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments. One principal player is a Spanish construction company, which plans to build the highway and operate it as a toll road. But don’t be fooled: the superhighway proposal is not the result of free market demand, but rather an extension of government-managed trade schemes like NAFTA that benefit politically-connected interests.

The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union – complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union. Like the European Union, a North American Union would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Give 'em L in Austin

Vote NO on all bond issues

The Travis County Libertarian Party (TCLP) has adopted a resolution opposing all seven City of Austin bond propositions to appear on the November 7 ballot.

"This authorization for wasteful spending would seriously increase the burden on local taxpayers," said Wes Benedict,
TCLP chair. "Most homeowners' tax bills already went up this year. We don't need a tax increase from the city on top of the fake tax cut the state just gave us."

Don't forget to "give 'em L" when you step into that voting booth -- haven't those nasty old "Ds" and "Rs" had enough of an opportunity to show how much better they are at spending your money than you are? Libertarians are the only ones who work to have government do less, be less dominant, and cause less strife and conflict among societal groups.
The following Libertarians will be on the ballot in Travis County. (Candidates in boldface live in Travis County.) You can just print this list out and take it with you to vote. If you live outside Travis County, please check http://www.lptexas. org/candidates. shtml for Libertarian candidates across the state.
Scott Lanier Jameson - U.S. Senator
James Werner - Governor
Judy Baker - Lieutenant Governor
Jon Roland - Attorney General
Mike Burris - Comptroller of Public Accounts
Michael A. French - Land Commissioner
Clay Woolam - Agriculture Commissioner
Tabitha Serrano - Railroad Commissioner
Tom Oxford - Chief Justice, Supreme Court
Wade Wilson - Justice, Supreme Court, Place 2
Jerry Adkins - Justice, Supreme Court, Place 4
Todd Phillippi - Justice, Supreme Court, Place 6
Jay H. Cookingham - Justice, Supreme Court, Place 8
Quanah Parker - Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 7
Dave Howard - Judge, Court of Criminal Appeals, Place 8
Michael Badnarik - U.S. Representative, District 10
James Arthur Strohm - U.S. Representative, District 21
Barbara Cunningham - U.S. Representative, District 25
Bill Oliver - State Board of Education, District 5
Martin Thomen - State Board of Education, District 10
Robert "Rock" Howard - State Senator, District 14
James R. (Bob) Thompson - State Senator, District 25
Richard Wedeikes - State Representative, District 46
Yvonne Schick - State Representative, District 47
Ben Easton - State Representative, District 48
Lisa McKay - State Representative, District 49
Jerry Chandler - State Representative, District 50
Arthur DiBianca - State Representative, District 51
Matt Turner - County Judge
Allan Juranek - County Clerk
Robert Brushaber - County Treasurer
Glen Bonnet, Jr. - County Commissioner, Precinct 2
Tim Davis - County Commissioner, Precinct 4
Matt Finkel - Justice of the Peace, Precinct 2
Robert B. McDonald - Justice of the Peace, Precinct 3
Chris Crenshaw - Justice of the Peace, Precinct 5


The Daily Texan of the University of Texas at Austin endorsed three Libertarian candidates: Michael Badnarik (Congress, District 10), Martin Thomen (State Board of Education, District 10) and Bill Oliver (State Board of Education, District 5).


VOTE LIBERTARIAN!

if you plan to vote at all.

These Libertarian candidates will appear on the ballot in November.

Be sure to vote for my boy Michael Badnarik if you're in District 10. We need stand-up guys like him in Congress. He intends to be the very first Libertarian in the U.S. Congress, please help be a part of history.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

You Don't Scare Me

The U.S. Mint is worried that people have finally wised up and no longer prefer using their paper money...."since the United States already has its own currency, the only thing Liberty Dollars buy in these parts is a jail term." - Washington Post

Please contact the U.S. Mint in your spare time to let them know that you like using silver and gold as money, just as humans have been doing for thousands of years.

(202) 354-7227
(202) 756-6200 fax

Here's the truth:

  1. Merchants CANNOT be prosecuted for accepting the Liberty Dollar KNOWING that it is private currency!

  1. Merchants CANNOT be prosecuted for giving out the Liberty Dollar in change if the customer KNOWS it is private currency!

  1. Users CANNOT be prosecuted for presenting the Liberty Dollar to a Merchant when the Merchant KNOWS it is private currency!

  1. Regional Currency Offices, or anyone else, CANNOT be prosecuted for exchanging Liberty Dollars for Federal Reserve Notes when the customer KNOWS it is private currency!

  1. NO ONE CAN BE PROSECUTED FOR HAVING POSSESSION OF THE LIBERTY DOLLAR!

Friday, October 13, 2006

Nothing to Worry About?

A California-born convert to Islam, accused of making a series of al Qaeda propaganda videos, became on Wednesday the first American charged with treason since the World War Two era, U.S. Justice Department officials said...

Friday, October 06, 2006

Descent into Tyranny

If you haven't been watching the political arena lately, you may not have noticed that the U.S. Congress last week handed President Bush a bill that, if signed, would spell the end of America as we know it.

Called the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the bill abandons the Geneva Convention (formed after Hitler's atrocities in WWII), legalizes the torture of U.S. citizens, suspends all civil rights for prisoners and allows the President to declare virtually anyone to be an "enemy combatant" -- artists, writers, scientists, protestors or anyone who does not agree with the pro-war stance of the current regime.

It would also retroactively grant blanket immunity to all U.S. military personnel who have committed war crimes under the Geneva Convention. Such immunity would extend to present and future war crimes as well. In other words, the United States will now officially harbor and support war criminals.

Criticize Cheney...

get arrested. That seems about par for the course with the Bush administration.

What Constitutes an Enemy Combatant?

Anyone who opposes Bush's policy. Who does this guy think he is, Abraham Lincoln?

CCR Legal Director Bill Goodman said: "This ominously broad definition of enemy combatants would mean that almost anyone who actively opposes the President or the government could be locked up indefinitely. This bill makes a mockery of the rule of law."

The current version of the Military Commissions redefines an "unlawful enemy combatant" (UEC) so broadly that it could include anyone who organizes a march against the war in Iraq.

The definition makes no reference to citizenship and therefore could be read to include any number of individuals, including:
  • CCR attorneys and other habeas counsel, Federal Public Defenders and military defense counsel for detainees at Guantánamo Bay
  • Any person who has given $5 to a charity working with orphans in Afghanistan that turns out to be associated in some fashion with someone who may be a member of the Taliban
Because there is no geographic limitation in the bill's language, it would allow the President to detain any non-citizen without their ever having the chance to challenge their detention in court

Examples of people who could be detained indefinitely with no access to a court include:
  • A foreign tourist wearing an anti-Bush t-shirt at the Statue of Liberty
  • A protester at an immigration rally who has lived in the U.S. since she was six months old and is a lawful, permanent resident

Thursday, October 05, 2006

The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

Government documents released by a Freedom of Information Act request reveal the Bush administration is running a "shadow government" with Mexico and Canada in which the U.S. is crafting a broad range of policy in conjunction with its neighbors to the north and south...

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Facist USA

  • Secret prisons – they’re back!
  • Torture – we’re doing it.
  • Spying on all citizens.
  • Arrests and indefinite imprisonment without trial.
  • Rampant militarism.
  • Secret detention.
  • Enforced disappearance.
  • Denial and restriction of habeas corpus.
  • Prolonged incommunicado detention.
  • Unfair trial procedures.
We’ve now gotten to the point where Nazi Germany was, say, in 1934. Remember, at that time, if you had told a typical German what his government would do over the next ten years, he would have looked at you as a madman. After all, his land had been civilized for over a thousand years. His was the nation of Albertus Magnus, Gutenberg, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Bach, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Heisenberg, Reimann, Mann, Lessing, Herder, Handel, Dürer, Leibniz, Gauss, Helmholtz – he could have gone on, but you get the point. His nation could not possibly descend into barbarism! If you tried to tell him he was living in a police state, he would have pointed out that his government had used its vast new powers very judiciously, and only against a few trouble-makers. So far.

America is full of decent people, who could never believe their own government could become fascist. So were Germany and Italy in the 1920s. But they became fascist anyway. They passed laws suspending civil liberties, but the government promised the frightened populace that those laws would only be used against targets like "Communist terrorists." And, a little bit at a time, the target kept getting bigger and bigger, slowly enough that the people who weren’t paying close attention never detected it.

And, next thing you know, there were millions of people dead! So, it turns out, it would have been worth paying attention after all.

Monday, October 02, 2006

DON'T DO IT BUSH!

Dear Mr. President,

You've already killed thousands of innocent people around the world, destroyed the reputation of these United States, and done your best to bankrupt our country, but please, please don't even think about signing into law a ban on Internet gambling. It's one of our last remaining freedoms, please don't take it away too, as you have so many others.

Thanks in advance,

Jason E. Colquitt

Civil War

I would say that when more than 6,000 people are killed in two months, it's about as close to a civil war as you can get. I cannot think of any logical reason why anyone in Washington thought that we could remove a dictatorship that had been in place in one form or another since the founding of the country and that a parliamentary democracy would bloom instantly like a lotus in a pond.

Our choice is to leave now, with 2,700 dead and 20,000 wounded, or linger on until there are 5,000 dead and 35,000 wounded and then leave.

In the meantime, use your common sense. Ask yourself just what it is that America's young men and women are dying for. To make Iraq a happy place? To make Israel feel safer? To help corporations with insider connections get richer? Not one of those reasons is worth the life of a camel, much less a human being.