California Libertarian Alliance

“This headline is not from The Onion:

US appoints first cyber warfare general: Pentagon creates specialist online unit to counter cyber attack amid growing fears of militarisation of the internet.

“On Friday, newly-created U.S. Cyber Command—that’s USCYBERCOM to those in the know—got itself a general. One small problem: It’s not clear that anyone, even four-star general and National Security Agency head Keith Alexander, knows what U.S. Cyber Command is supposed to do now that it exists. The commerical Internet has been around since about 1995, but in recent years folks at the Pentagon and White House seem to have been struck with a similar thought: “Hey, we should do something about those Internets, huh?” ”

Full column by Katherine Mangu-Ward @ http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/26/meet-your-new-commander-in-gee

“A former White House speechwriter, Mark Thiessen, has jumped to the defense of his former boss, writing for the Washington Post that George W. Bush “established a conservative record without parallel.” Even by the loose standards of Washington, that is a jaw-dropping assertion. I’ve been explaining for years that Bush was a big-government advocate, even writing a column back in 2007 for the Washington Examiner pointing out that Clinton had a much better economic record from a free-market perspective.”

Daniel Mitchell debunks a defense of Bush’s big government conservatism @http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/04/12/bush-was-a-statist-not-a-conservative/

“The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net-neutrality ISPs, it’s Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence.”

“McConnell’s not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering. He’s the nice-seeming guy who’s willing and able to use fear-mongering to manipulate the federal bureaucracy for his own ends, while coming off like a straight shooter to those who are not in the know.”

“When he was head of the country’s national intelligence, he scared President Bush with visions of e-doom, prompting the president to sign a comprehensive secret order that unleashed tens of billions of dollars into the military’s black budget so they could start making firewalls and building malware into military equipment.”

“And now McConnell is back in civilian life as a vice president at the secretive defense contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton. He’s out in front of Congress and the media, peddling the same Cybaremaggedon! gloom.”

Ryan Singel exposes the real threat to internet freedom @ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/cyber-war-hype/

1. Additional federal spending transfers resources from the more productive private sector to the less productive public sector of the economy. The bulk of federal spending goes toward subsidies and benefit payments, which generally do not enhance economic productivity. With lower productivity, average American incomes will fall.

Chris Edwards has 5 more reasons to downsize the federal government @ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/03/03/six-reasons-to-downsize-the-federal-government/

The Cato Institute has dedicated a new  website to Downsizing the Federal Government:  http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/

“President Obama has introduced his budget for next year. He proposes that the government spend $3.83 trillion in fiscal 2011. To put that number into context, let’s take a trip down memory lane.”

Chris Edwards shows that President Bush busted the budget every year in office, and that President Obama is acting like big spender Bush on steroids @http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11182

“President Obama didn’t even get past the title of his budget before starting the lies. “A New Era of Responsibility,” President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget proposal, would increase the current year deficit to a new record $1.56 trillion. That’s an increase in the size of the deficit of $300 billion since his fiscal 2010 budget last spring. The new budget proposal would also increase the fiscal 2011 deficit to $1.267 trillion, an increase by the same $300 billion figure over his proposal last year, and more than double the national debt from its current $12 trillion to more than $25 trillion over 10 years.”

“Of course, it’s possible Obama and his budget officials weren’t lying in the title of their budget but were instead shooting for irony. If that was the case, they certainly succeeded. But it’s not funny.”

Thomas R. Eddlam looks at President Obama’s record spending proposal @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/2868-obamas-budget-building-record-deficits-higher