California Libertarian Alliance

“Following in the distinguished footsteps of Microsoft and Google, Apple is the latest innovative company to be targeted by politicians and regulators for being too successful. Will it be sucked into Washington’s “parasite economy”?”

“For more than a decade, Microsoft went about its business, developing software, selling it to customers, and — happily, legally — making money. Then in 1995, after repeated assaults by the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Microsoft broke down and started playing the Beltway game — defensively at first.”

“Washington politicians and journalists sneered at Microsoft’s initial political innocence. A congressional aide said, “They don’t want to play the D.C. game, that’s clear, and they’ve gotten away with it so far. The problem is, in the long run they won’t be able to.” ”

Full commentary on how government preys on businss by David Boaz @ http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11972

“America’s financial situation is unsustainable. In 2009 the federal government spent $3.5 trillion but collected only $2.1 trillion in revenue. The result was a $1.4 trillion deficit, up from $458 billion in 2008. That’s 10 percent of gross domestic product, a level unseen since World War II. Worse, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that we’ll be drowning in red ink for the foreseeable future, with annual deficits averaging $1 trillion during the next decade.”

“While these figures are dramatic, they pale in comparison to what the federal government owes foreign and domestic investors….”

Full column on our pending doom by Veronique de Rugy @ http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/11/our-unsustainable-debt

“The idea that President Barack Obama is a socialist is popular among many conservatives; all of us have seen automobiles sporting the bumper sticker reading, Don’t Blame Me; I Didn’t Vote For the Socialist — obviously referring to Obama. Not so fast, says, of all people, Ron Paul (R-Texas). ”

“Addressing the Southern Republican Leadership Conference during its third day, Dr. Paul told the audience, “The question has been raised about whether or not our president is a socialist….  I am sure there are some people here who believe it. But in the technical sense, in the economic definition of a what a socialist is, no, he’s not a socialist.”

Dr. Paul continued, “He’s a corporatist. And unfortunately we have corporatists inside the Republican party and that means you take care of corporations and corporations take over and run the country.”

Steven Yates takes an in-depth look at Corporatism and who loves it @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/economy/commentary-mainmenu-43/3303-ron-paul-obama-is-another-corporatist-not-a-socialist

“For decades, the “Tobin Tax” — a proposed global tax on currency transactions — has remained far from economic mainstream thought, being primarily the hobby horse of left-wing academics and advocates of world government, such as the World Federalists, or communist dictators, such as Fidel Castro. The past few years, however, have seen a host of Tobin-type proposals coming from more establishment sources. ”

“In the past few months, it has been boosted by liberal-left economists Paul Krugman and Robert Kuttner, as well as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Council, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou  (who is also president of the Socialist International) and the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority chairman Lord Adair Turner.”

“Advocates of the Tobin tax, named for the late Yale economics professor and Nobel laureate James Tobin, suggest a tax on foreign currency transactions would engender international currency stability by discouraging speculation. Some politicians, like Gordon Brown and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, have pushed for Tobin taxes at the national level. However, as the British journal The Economist noted,  “Unless a Tobin tax were implemented worldwide, trading would move out of any country that enforced it.” ”

William F. Jasper exposes the push for a new  tax on financial transactions @ http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/2901-qtobin-taxq-and-un-global-taxman-making-a-comeback

“If President Obama is serious about controlling spending, he can’t exempt the Pentagon. In announcing a three-year spending freeze, he exempted all security-related funding. This exemption applies to the budgets of the Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, foreign aid and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Because the budgets of these agencies, particularly that of the Pentagon, are responsible for a large and increasing share of the discretionary portion of the federal budget, the president’s spending freeze will have a marginal effect. ”

“Rather than exclude these accounts from the freeze for fear of appearing weak on defense, the president should mandate that the baseline defense budget also be frozen.”

Lawrence Korb makes the case for a military spending freeze @ http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/27/spending-defense-freeze/

“Last year I tried to compile a list of all the taxes President Obama and his allies were maneuvering to impose. But each week brings new ideas. Just recently we’ve heard about a bank tax, applying the Medicare tax to capital gains and other “passive” or “unearned” income, raising the Medicare tax rate, raising or broadening the capital gains tax, an income tax “surtax,” a tax on tanning – and of course the tax on private health insurance to pay for the expansion of government insurance has moved to the top of the list…”

David Boaz at The Cato Institute looks at new taxes being considered  @ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/01/18/democrats-voracious-search-for-new-tax-revenue/

“The temporary increase in the national debt ceiling approved this month — combined with the prospect of a huge trillion-dollar-plus increase early next year — has once again prompted criticisms of President Obama for runaway spending and record deficits.”

“All this borrowing is only necessary, we are told, because Obama ran up $1.4 trillion of debt in his first year.”

“It’s true that the White House is pushing big spending items, not least of which is his multitrillion-dollar scheme for government-run health care. But many critics, either out of ignorance or malice, are blaming Obama for deficits that are not his fault.”

Daniel J. Mitchell of The Cato Institute aportions the blame @ http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11094

Some Republicans, for instance, complain that Obama tripled the budget deficit in his first year. This assertion is understandable,