California Libertarian Alliance

“I hate to rain on the Republicans’ parade, but a brief look at Republican political history shows that we have no reason to be optimistic about a Republican majority in the House or anywhere else.”

“A Republican majority in the House will not mean any more than it did when the Republicans controlled both the Congress and the presidency under Dwight Eisenhower. With a Republican in the White House and a Republican majority in the Congress, one would think that the entire New Deal could have been repealed and the government restored to at least its pre-New Deal levels. Yet, we are still stuck with New Deal programs today, including the largest entitlement program in the federal budget — Social Security.”

“A Republican majority in the House will also not mean any more than it did when the Republicans controlled both the Congress and the presidency under George W. Bush. The damage done by Republicans when they were in total control of the government is incalculable: the arcane Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, federal bailouts, free-speech zones and other infringements on civil liberties, the draconian PATRIOT ACT, the repulsive TSA, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, skyrocketing congressional spending, doubling of the national debt, assassinations, torture, and illegal surveillance. And then there is the No Child Left Behind Act, which further federalized local public schools; and the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan, the largest expansion of the welfare state since Lyndon Johnson; and the Department of Homeland Security, precursor of the police state.”

Full commenty on the Republican victory by Laurence Vance @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/5086-what-a-republican-majority-will-not-mean-for-liberty-the-constitution-and-limited-government

“Democrat control of the White House, House of Representatives and the Senate has produced an unprecedented level of political brazenness and contempt for the limitations placed on the federal government by the U.S. Constitution. As such, it has raised a level of constitutional interest and anger against Washington’s interference in our lives that has been dormant for far too long.”

“Part of this heightened interest and anger is seen in the strength of the tea party movement around the nation. Another is the angry reception that many congressmen receive when they return to their districts and at town hall meetings. According to the most recent Gallup poll, only 20 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, but that’s up from a March 2010 low of 16 percent.”

“The smart money suggests that there will be a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate. The question is what can liberty-minded Americans expect from a Republican majority? Maybe a good starting point for an answer might be to examine how Republicans have handled their majority in the past.”

Read the awful truth about Republican statism by Walter Williams @
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/opinion/walter-williams/4341-will-republicans-save-us

“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