Monthly Archives: May 2010

Tea party wins victory in Utah as incumbent GOP senator loses bid for nomination

The national “tea party” movement toppled its first incumbent Saturday as long-serving Sen. Robert F. Bennett was defeated at the Utah Republican Party’s nominating convention, the most powerful demonstration yet of the anti-Washington tide that is altering the nation’s political landscape.

Bennett, seeking a fourth term after 18 years in office, became the first sitting senator to fall in the ideological battle being waged in his party. Although he has long been viewed as a reliable conservative with deep Mormon roots, Republicans rallied behind two other candidates — neither of whom has held political office — who will compete for the nomination at a June primary.

National tea party organizers embraced the victory as a major first step toward returning the Republican Party to its conservative foundations of limited government and low taxes. (Read more from washingtonpost.com)

Kagan: Government should decide if free speech is good for society

Freedom of speech, religion and other First Amendment issues are likely to be among the most visible during the coming Senate confirmation hearings on President Obama’s nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court.

As an illustration why, consider this quote dug up by the First Amendment Center’s David L. Hudson, who found it in a government brief signed by Kagan in United States v Stevens: “Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs.”

The case concerned a statute that made it criiminally unlawful to depict animal cruelty. The Court rejected Kagan’s reasoning, but had the justices accepted her assertion, it would have effectively repealed the First Amendment’s protection of speech and replaced it by granting government the authority to decide what speech should be permitted. (Read more from washintonexaminer.com)

How Changes in Accounting Standards Threaten Your Freedom

This is the most exciting discussion about accounting I’ve ever heard.

There is a confluence of interest leading to:

– our surrendering the power to establish accounting standards to an international body
– top down enforcement of standardized accounting standards
– devilish details which will tax businesses even more — Obama’s budget already project over $50 billion in increased tax revenue
– less transparency for international corporations — which will likely be an excuse for the government to take an even bigger policing role in the future
– even more obstacles for small businesses who want to compete with big corporations
– a lower standard of living

The interests are as follows:

– Academics who like things standardized and centralized, and think, like Lenin, that the entire world should be run like the post office
– International accounting firms who will make a bundle as the world
– The government who will be able to wrest even more wealth from the people who actually produce things
– International corporations who will have yet another government-imposed advantage over small businesses

(Listen at RadioFreeMerket.com)

Greece Needs Capitalism and Freedom

The mainstream media would have us believe two myths about the Greek financial crisis: one, that the inability of the Greek government to meet its debt payments is a threat to the Euro and perhaps to the European Union itself; and, two, that Greek “austerity” would be a disaster for the Greek people.

The mainstream media takes it for granted that the proper “solution” is for some entity to bail out the Greeks—perhaps the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or some combination. Furthermore, the assumption is that when markets go up it is due to speculation that a bailout is imminent and that when markets go down it is due to some roadblock to an expected bailout. When the governments and their agencies agree upon the proper form of new loans, and/or loan guarantees, along with a token reduction in Greek spending, all will be well. In other words, the mainstream media portrays this financial crisis as one that can only be resolved by more government intervention.

First lets look at the so-called threat to the Euro, which is equated as a threat to the EU itself. Greece uses the Euro as its legal monetary unit. When Greece joined the EuroZone (not all EU members are members of the EuroZone, meaning they have not yet exchanged their national currencies for Euros), the Greek drachma was exchanged for Euros. Now all transactions in Greece are denominated in Euros. Greek citizens buy and sell using Euros. The Greek government spends Euros and, when it runs a budget deficit, it borrows Euros from private banks…the ECB being restricted by treaty from buying sovereign debt. The Greek crisis is simply that the Greek government is spending more Euros than it receives in tax payments, and private banks are balking at lending it more.

Since the Greeks no longer have a national currency, they cannot debase it and pay off their creditors with cheapened drachmas. So, the Greek government is left with the choice of raising taxes, cutting spending, or some combination of the two that will satisfy its creditors. Now, would someone please tell me why and in what form this Greek financial crisis, serious as it is to the Greeks themselves, constitutes a threat to the Euro? (Read more from patrickbarron.blogspot.com)