Selected Blogs
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- Written by: Alex Pugliese
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During the 1950s, there were three broadcasting networks that provided for the public news and entertainment. In 1967, the U.S. government added another network that was to be publicly funded. The network was called Public Broadcasting Service and the organization responsible for daily operations was the Center for Public Broadcasting. A radio network was also added and National Public Radio was born. To this day, they still operate and get their funding from taxpayers and little from donations.
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- Written by: Alex Pugliese
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There is no question that the American people are the most generous people on the face of the earth. Every year, Americans give big to charities and to people who are struggling to make ends meet here and around the globe. As an American, I am proud of this fact. However, there is a great difference when individual Americans donate their time, money and effort to assist those in need and when the government does it. Individual Americans give from the goodness of their hearts whereas government gives monies (taxpayer monies) to create dependency and prop up bad policies. This is especially true when it come to the subject of foreign aid.
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- Written by: Alex Pugliese
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Many years ago, there was a gentleman that stated to me one time that members of the Libertarian Party should never dissent from the Libertarian Party platform. I have adhered to the platform as best as I can. However, when it comes to one issue, I followed my heart as well as my conscience. The issue is none other than abortion.
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- Written by: Guest Author
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Health insurance is cheap in some states. In others it costs as much as the lease on a Ferrari. This isn't because of any flaw in the free market. It's because we don't have a free market! What we have instead are laws that reward corporate welfare benefits to special interests and insurance companies.
Please send a letter asking Congress to restore free market health insurance.
Use the Ferrari example in my sample letter to make your case . . .
The average medical plan in New Jersey costs $37,164 per year. The monthly premiums exceed the lease for a Ferrari!
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- Written by: Alex Pugliese
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In my lifetime, in every presidential, senatorial and congressional contest that I have watched, there have been men and women that have promised that if elected, they would reduce or eliminate this nation’s debt. They would claim that they were deficit hawks. They would claim that they understood the threat the growing deficit represented to this nation. They claimed that this nation’s deficit was unsustainable. They claimed that they would “fix it” if they were put in office. When these men and women have been elected, however, they have done nothing. Nothing, but grow government and spend insanely like drug addicts and alcoholics.
With news yesterday that the national debt has grown to $12 Trillion, and
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- Written by: Alex Pugliese
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When it comes to same-sex marriage, there is no question that this is, like the abortion issue, very controversial. On the one side, you have supporters that believe that if two people care and love each other, then they should be allowed to "tie the knot," even if they are of the same sex. The supporters also believe that the state should recognize these unions and that these unions should be entitled to the same benefits that married heterosexual couples are entitled to also.
On the other side, the opponents claim that same-sex marriages violates centuries of traditions. That it violates Judeo-Christian philosophy and that it opens up a slippery slope in terms of what will be allowed as marriage in the future. That the original meaning of marriage should stand.
Both in my estimation have valid points. Both can be reconciled. The way that it can be done is in the following: Get the state out of the marriage business altogether.
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- Written by: Julian Heicklen
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Juries were instituted in England to act as protection from arbitrary decisions of the King. Originally, the judges in England instructed the juries that they must uphold the law. However the jury has the authority to vote anything between guilty and not guilty (i.e. guilty in part). The jurors cannot be questioned about their decision or how it was reached. Nor can they be overruled. In criminal cases, only the Defendant can appeal. The state cannot file an appeal.
A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum. Two men in England, William Penn and William Mead, openly practiced their Quaker religion. This was a violation of law in England, where the only allowed religion was the Church of England. (Remember why the Puritans came to America on the Mayflower) They were tried as criminals in an English Court. The judge INSTRUCTED the jurors to find Penn and Mead guilty. However the jury returned with a not guilty verdict. At this point the Judge locked the jurors up for three weeks with orders to change their verdict. The jury refused. Finally a higher court ordered the jurors released.
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- Written by: Alex Pugliese
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Over the years, I have heard all kinds of excuses on why government regulation is needed. These excuses are as follows:
Government regulation is needed to protect consumers and other individuals from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous companies and other entities.
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- Written by: Webmaster
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WASHINGTON - The Libertarian Party today suggested that, in the future, the announcement date every year for Nobel Prizes be moved to April 1.
"Unlike the gullible people who listened to The War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938 and thought Martians really were attacking the United States, when I heard this morning that Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, I changed the channel in disbelief. But, the same thing was being said in multiple places," Libertarian National Committee Chairman William Redpath said.
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- Written by: Wes Benedict
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I am disappointed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Barack Obama. That prize should go to individuals who end wars and make peace, not those who make war.
President Obama has utterly failed to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has increased American military involvement in Afghanistan, and appears ready to escalate that war even further.
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- Written by: Alex Pugliese
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When it comes to dependency, there are healthy and unhealthy forms. A healthy form is depending on food and water to sustain one’s life or a dependency on medication to help and cure illness and disease. There is the dependency on electricity to keep the lights on in one’s home. There is also the dependency on transportation to get us where we want to go and back. Unhealthy dependency encompasses an addiction to drugs and alcohol to cope with life and it includes an adult man or woman depending on parents to provide for them. Other forms include depending on shelter not for the purpose of keeping one safe from nature’s elements, but to isolate oneself from the world outside.
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- Written by: Guest Author
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President Obama is right when he says that the U.S. health care system needs reform. Although this country provides the finest care in the world, our health care system has serious problems. It costs too much. Too many people lack health insurance. And quality can be uneven.
But a government takeover of the health care system, as proposed by the president and some in Congress, would be a step in the wrong direction. Instead, we should pursue a uniquely American solution, one that builds on free markets, competition and choice.
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Let individuals control their health care dollars, and free them to choose from a wide variety of health plans and providers.
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- Written by: Guest Author
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Michael Moore utilizes a word in the title of his new movie to elicit praise and respect from his Left-leaning fans and derision from his Right-leaning critics. Unfortunately for all of us, he uses the wrong word to describe his movie’s subject matter. It’s not capitalism, silly man; it’s corporatism. Therefore, I refuse to call his movie anything but what its true title should be: “Corporatism, A Love Story“.
Let’s head to Merriam-Webster to clear this up. Which one of the following best describes America today?
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
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The Atlantic has posted an excellent analysis of the ills of our current health care system. David Goldhill presents the problems and shows that Obamacare will do nothing to solve the problems.
After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem.
How American Health Care Killed My Father
Illustration by Mark Hooper Almost two years ago, my father was killed by a hospital-borne infection in the intensive-care unit of a well-regarded nonprofit hospital in New York City. Dad had just turned 83, and he had a variety of the ailments common to men of his age. But he was still working on the day he walked into the hospital with pneumonia. Within 36 hours, he had developed sepsis. Over the next five weeks in the ICU, a wave of secondary infections, also acquired in the hospital, overwhelmed his defenses. My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy.
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
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The Unseen Cost of Minimum Wage Laws
The media are never better at displaying their economic illiteracy than when they report on the minimum wage.
"Workers got a raise on Friday when the federal minimum wage was hiked 70 cents to $7.25 an hour," the Christian Science Monitor reported last week. "They'll be shouting, "Olé!"
They assume that if politicians declare that workers should get a raise, they will actually get it. But the idea that government can increase wages by decree with only good consequences rests on a serious economic fallacy: that employers set wages arbitrarily. If wages are very low, it must be that employers are stingy.
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- Written by: Jay Edgar
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While truth can shine a light, it usually takes lies to generate heat.
Take the immigration debate, which is about to get underway again. President Obama has said that he intends to pursue comprehensive immigration reform. And recently, New York Senator Chuck Schumer said that he planned to have a bill written by Labor Day. We can expect six to eight months of spirited debate before Spring 2010, at which point Congress will either have passed the bill or defeated it.
Whenever we talk about immigration, much of the heat that is generated comes from myths and assumptions masquerading as facts. These are things that people know in their bones to be true, even though they aren’t really true at all. An example is when people say immigrant birthrates in the United States are going up, but all the available research points to the fact that newcomers are having smaller families — mostly for economic reasons.
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- Written by: Alex Pugliese
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Imagine, if you will, a single young lady with three children working a job making $12,000 to $18,000 annually. A woman that literally is struggling to make ends meet and provide food and shelter for her children. One day, she creates a product in her apartment and markets the product by creating a stand outside her home. People are in awe of it. Overnight, this product becomes a sensation and makes the young lady a millionaire. She enjoys the success she has achieved.
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- Written by: Glenn Jacobs
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H.R. 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 will result in a totalitarian centralization of the American economy in the administrative agencies of the federal government, especially the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This 1,300 page horror is a prime example of congressional modus operandi -- no one in Congress actually had the opportunity to read the bill which was, incidentally, being amended as it was debated on the floor. As H.R. 2454 shows, this axiom still holds true: the more benign the title of a congressional bill, the more draconian its contents. After all, who could be against clean energy or security? The real goal of H.R. 2454 has nothing to do with either of these; it is a power grab, pure and simple.
While we have all heard much about the tax implications of H.R. 2454 and that every American family could see a $3,000 a year increase in their energy costs, H.R. 2454 does much more than that. H.R. 2454 is a fascistic fait accompli, giving the government expansive powers to regulate, subsidize, and tax more sectors of the economy. The bill authorizes more federal government control over the electrical grid, state and local building codes, lighting and appliances, industry, the financial markets, and, perhaps most ominously of all, the health care system. In addition, it includes wealth redistribution measures and would allow increases in foreign aid.
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- Written by: Matt Welch
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Aside from perhaps the question answering itself, Fortune/CNN drills into the case of New Jersey, a state that makes California seem well-governed:
In June 2008 the state estimated that the plan - one of the nation's largest, covering teachers, state employees, firefighters, and police - had $34 billion less than it needed to meet its obligations. Since then the market value of the plan has dropped from $82 billion to $56 billion (a new estimate of underfunding is due in July).
Wha happen? [sic] The pension fund gambled on dot-com stocks, hedge funds, and other equity plays. The state cut contributions based on formulae that assumed such nonsense as an 8.75 percent annual return. Then, against that backdrop, this:
Meanwhile, the obligations keep mounting: Even while they were neglecting pension contributions, New Jersey politicians were sweetening the pot. In 2001 benefits for the state's two largest groups of workers, government employees and teachers, were increased by 9%, creating an additional $4.2 billion in liabilities. In 1999 the state approved a "20 and out" measure that allowed firefighters and local police to collect pensions equal to 50% of their pay after 20 years of service - a perk previously available only to the state police. Benefits added since 1999 have increased liabilities by more than $6.8 billion, according to official estimates.