The Soda Pop Shop

I love this video for a variety of reasons. It’s the story of a man who loves what he does which itself is an inspiration for us all.

If you watch the whole thing (and I hope you do), you’ll hear about how government grants protection to giants like Pepsi-co by placing restrictions on businesses like the Soda Pop Shop. He would have been charged with “restraint of trade” if he began reusing bottles. He explains how recycling laws were a

Some highlights:
5:30 — The case against Corn Syrup. He doesn’t say it, but the reason everybody uses corn syrup is because of government tariffs on imported sugar. This comes form pressure both from the American sugar industries who want protection, and corn industries who want more reasons to grow corn.

7:40 — “Big business loves big government.” His disdain is evident even his voice.

9:40 — On recycling laws. [They] were written so that coke and pesi didn’t have to wash bottles and could transfer costs to consumers. Their hypocrisy is evident in the story about how he’d be charged with “restraint of trade” if he ever reused bottles.

Government is top employer in southern Calif., report reveals

The most recent Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) from the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) reveals that the majority of jobs for the top principal employers in six counties are government jobs.

In the six southern California counties of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura and Imperial, more than half of the top employers in those counties, on average, are government entities. (Read more from examiner.com)

Operation Health Freedom

I’m extremely impressed with this video series from the Campaign for Liberty. I learned something from every single one of the videos:

Optometrist & Senatorial candidate Rand Paul. Who are the uninsured?

British MEP Daniel Hannan talks about the National Health Service (NHS):

Peter Schiff on taxes, incentive, & free markets in healthcare:

Judge Andrew Napolitano on the regulation of interstate commerce & healthcare:

Economist Tom Woods and life before Medicare/Medicaid and its effect on society.

Full list of voters on the Paul/Grayson amendment

Statement from Campaign For Liberty: “Thanks to your quick action in contacting Congress, the House Financial Services Committee earlier today rejected Representative Mel Watt’s attempt to hijack Audit the Fed by voting 43-26 to pass Ron Paul’s amendment to the financial regulatory reform bill.”

Full list of voters on the Paul/Grayson amendment:

AL-06 Rep. Spencer Bachus – yay

CA-12 Rep. Jackie Speier- yay
CA-22 Rep. Kevin McCarthy – yay
CA-27 Rep. Brad Sherman – yay
CA-35 Rep. Maxine Waters – nay
CA-40 Rep. Edward R. Royce – yay

CA-42 Rep. Gary G. Miller – nay
CA-43 Rep. Joe Baca – nay
CA-48 Rep. John Campbell – yay
CO-07 Rep. Ed Perlmutter – yay
CT-04 Rep. Jim Himes – nay

DE-01 Rep. Michael N. Castle – yay
FL-08 Rep. Alan Grayson – yay
FL-12 Rep. Adam Putnam – yay
FL-15 Rep. Bill Posey – yay
FL-22 Rep. Ron Klein – nay

FL-24 Rep. Suzanne Kosmas

GA-06 Rep. Tom Price – yay
GA-13 Rep. David Scott – yay
ID-01 Rep. Walt Minnick – yay
IL-04 Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez – nay

IL-08 Rep. Melissa L. Bean – nay
IL-13 Rep. Judy Biggert – yay
IL-14 Rep. Bill Foster – nay
IL-16 Rep. Donald A. Manzullo – yay
IN-02 Rep. Joe Donnelly – nay

IN-07 Rep. Andre Carson – nay
KS-02 Rep. Lynn Jenkins – yay
KS-03 Rep. Dennis Moore – nay
MA-04 Rep. Barney Frank – nay
MA-08 Rep. Michael E. Capuano – nay

MA-09 Rep. Stephen F. Lynch – nay
MI-09 Rep. Gary Peters – yay
MI-11 Rep. Thaddeus McCotter – yay
MN-03 Rep. Erik Paulsen – yay
MN-05 Rep. Keith Ellison – nay

MN-06 Rep. Michele Bachmann – yay
MO-01 Rep. William Lacy Clay – yay
MO-05 Rep. Emanuel Cleaver – nay
MS-01 Rep. Travis Childers – yay
NC-03 Rep. Walter B. Jones – yay

NC-10 Rep. Patrick T. McHenry – yay
NC-12 Rep. Melvin L. Watt – nay
NC-13 Rep. Brad Miller – nay
NH-02 Rep. Paul W. Hodes – yay
NJ-03 Rep. John Adler – yay

NJ-05 Rep. Scott Garrett – yay
NJ-07 Rep. Leonard Lance – yay
NY-03 Rep. Peter King – yay
NY-04 Rep. Carolyn McCarthy – yay
NY-05 Rep. Gary L. Ackerman – nay

NY-06 Rep. Gregory W. Meeks – nay
NY-12 Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez – yay
NY-14 Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney – nay
NY-25 Rep. Dan Maffei – yay
NY-26 Rep. Christopher Lee – yay

OH-01 Rep. Steve Driehaus – yay
OH-06 Rep. Charles Wilson – nay
OH-15 Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy – nay
OK-03 Rep. Frank D. Lucas – yay
PA-06 Rep. Jim Gerlach – yay

PA-11 Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski
SC-03 Rep. J. Gresham Barrett – yay
TX-05 Rep. Jeb Hensarling – yay
TX-09 Rep. Al Green – nay
TX-14 Rep. Ron Paul – yay

TX-15 Rep. Rub̩n Hinojosa Рyay
TX-19 Rep. Randy Neugebauer – yay
TX-24 Rep. Kenny Marchant – yay
WI-04 Rep. Gwen Moore – nay
WV-02 Rep. Shelley Moore Capito – nay

(from PrisonPlanet.com)

Fed Beaten: Bill To Audit Federal Reserve Passes Key Hurdle

This is my favorite account of HR 1207’s recent clearance of the House Finance Committee.

In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter.

The measure, cosponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), authorizes the Government Accountability Office to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed’s opaque deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions. The Fed has never had a real audit in its history and little is known of what it does with the trillions of dollars at its disposal. . . . (Read more from huffingtonpost.com)

Candy and Fruit Flavored Cigarettes Now Illegal in United States

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today a ban on cigarettes with flavors characterizing fruit, candy, or clove. The ban, authorized by the new Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, is part of a national effort by the FDA to reduce smoking in America. Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in America. (Read more from fda.gov)

Expect more interference in our private lives as government increasingly forces us to rely on it for our health.

Italy convicts CIA rendition agents

An Italian judge has convicted 23 US secret agents over the 2003 abduction of an Egyptian imam from a Milan street in an extraordinary rendition by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The trial was the first in the world to centre on the agency’s controversial programme, in which “terror” suspects are thought to have been transferred to countries known to practise torture.

The case concerned the seizure of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, and his transfer to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured.

All of the Americans were tried in absentia, with 22 sentenced to five years in jail and Robert Seldon Lady, the Milan CIA station chief, handed eight years in prison. (Read more from english.aljazeera.net)

HR 1207 made it out of committee!

Campaign for Liberty email:

Dear Friend of Liberty,

Thanks to your quick action in contacting Congress, the House Financial Services Committee earlier today rejected Representative Mel Watt’s attempt to hijack Audit the Fed by voting 43-26 to pass Ron Paul’s amendment to the financial regulatory reform bill.

Dr. Paul called me right after the vote to personally express his thanks to C4L members for all of your efforts!

It is an incredible testament to the growing power of the liberty movement that we were able to get such an audit passed by a major House committee, but this is by no means the end of our fight. . . .

See Also: Ron Paul wins a key battle in war to open Fed’s books

Give Up Meat!

Technological advances, not “live more simply” environmentalism, will deliver a greener planet, argues Madsen Pirie. Lord Stern, whose 2006 report set out the consequences and costs of various levels of global warming, has now called for humans to stop eating meat. His reasoning is that our farm animals, especially cows and pigs, expel methane, which is 23 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, making meat-production account for 18 percent of all carbon emissions. He says that it will become as socially unacceptable to eat meat as it is to drink and drive. The proposal is not surprising, since it is but the latest in a series of proposed behavioural changes which are claimed to be essential to the planet’s survival. . . .

Free-Market Analysis: It is very hard to deal with the idea that a powerful group of men create dominant social themes (memes) designed for the consumption of the rest of the world. It is even harder to wrap one’s mind around these memes being marketed the control and profit of those who generate them. But how else to explain many of the memes currently circulating?

These dominant social themes include the deadly swine flu, the ticking time bomb of overpopulation, the flooding of the world from global warming, the freezing of the world from peak oil – and on and on. We are even supposed to be scared of a meteor hitting earth. In all these instances – every one – a government solution is proposed that will ameliorate the difficulty. And all the solutions, we note, are increasingly international and involve the United Nations and other global bodies.

This can all be construed as coincidence – luck, etc. – but when one looks at the actual mechanism it is evident, in our opinion, that many of these dominant social themes are created and marketed by only a few highly placed, powerful, (often-titled) and wealthy people. (Read more from thedailybell.com)

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Ron Paul on Healthcare & government competition

by Ron Paul

Last Saturday many concerned Americans watched in horror as the House passed the healthcare reform bill. If this bill makes it through the Senate, it would massively overhaul the way healthcare is delivered in this country. Today, obviously, we don’t have a perfect system, but this legislation takes all the mistakes we are making with healthcare and makes them worse. Most of what is wrong with healthcare stems from decades of government intervention and the resulting unintended consequences.

But the government’s prescription for the ills caused by intervention is always more intervention. We see this not only in healthcare policy, but also in foreign policy, in economic policy, and in monetary policy – basically, in all areas of public policy. It was even claimed that the House bill would increase competition in healthcare, and thereby improve the private sector’s business model for insurance.

It is fascinating that politicians would use the language of the free market in this way to justify more corporatism. This demonstrates a couple of things. One, that politicians truly do not understand the very basic tenets of a free market. By definition, a free market is free from government intervention. But once a little intervention is accepted as legitimate, politicians will blame the problems created by their intervention on the free market and present themselves as saviors that must intervene even more.

It also demonstrates that politicians know that Americans still believe the free market is a good thing. People know and understand that competition among businesses is better for the consumer than a monopoly. However, competition between a private business and a government or government-favored entity is not real competition.