An Exclusive interview, Alex Jones speaks with Sen. Rand Paul on NDAA, TSA undercover on Houston busses, Obama’s overall neglect of the Constitution, his possible impeachment and much more. This is a must see video.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

I was late watching this debate, as I had to check the replay. Unfortunately, I wasn’t home and I was unable to take serious notes on it. I was at my boss’ house due to it being the annual national sales meeting for my real job and between the alcohol and festivities, this thing was hard to watch in any serious sort of manner. I regret not being able to give it my full attention but the whiskey and wine were flowing, the girls were distracting to say the least and the copious amounts of food transplanted from several of the world’s most exotic regions somehow took precedence over watching the most recent episode of ‘Three Tyrants and a Wizard’. I do apologize as I have been trying to chronicle every damn one of these things but there are just so many, seven this month alone, and turning down a chance to literally spend the night at a party thrown at the mansion of the Indian version of Caligula is incredibly hard to pass up. Bourbon soaked tits are better to stare at than three dudes arguing over their dicks and the fourth shaking his head because America’s fallen so far that we’re literally having a debate about three dicks.

Now I did go back and read the transcripts from the debate and I did watch Ron Paul’s highlights – the only important parts, as the other three’s highlights would’ve put me to sleep in my hungover stupor. If it wasn’t for my boss’ brother handing me a Bloody Mary when I walked through the office door this morning, I’d probably be curled up in a ball under my desk hiding from the flickering power-draining headache-inducing fluorescent lights over my head. Needless to say, I am not a Bloody Mary fan by any stretch of the word, as it just conjures up the thought of drinking vodka with some ketchup spilled in it, but that fucking cocktail hit the spot today and I’m about 70 percent recovered from guest-starring in the Bollywood version of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’.

I know I’m rambling about my drunken escapades and that might disinterest you, as you came to this article to experience my certain style of critique on these things, so for that I’m sorry. I will do my best to give you the rundown of the debate, as I saw it between nude champagne showers and Chilean sea bass dodgeball.

So I’m just going to go down the line and analyze the candidates one-by-one starting with Rick Santorum. He started by talking about illegal immigration, border fences and telling the story about his immigrant family for the umpteenth time. He got into it with Ron Paul on foreign policy and failed miserably as he tried to cover up the fact that he’s a goddamned idiot on the affairs of Central and South America. I’ll write more on this when I get to Ron Paul, who owned Santorum like a twenty dollar prostitute. Santorum goes on to bitch about Fannie and Freddie and in turn blasts Newt and Mitt for playing personal politics and distracting everyone from discussing the real issues. On the subject of space, Santorum said that America is a frontier country and space is the next frontier to conquer. He calls for the private sector to be more involved with NASA but doesn’t fully support government being out of it. On health care he goes on and on about how awesome he is for trying to create health savings accounts. If you were so awesome, you would’ve got it done pal! He then gets into a health care argument with Romney that is neither interesting or worth writing about but what the hell, I’ll give you the nutshell version. Basically it went something like this:

Rick Santorum: “Fuck Romneycare”
Mitt Romney: “But it was only at the state level Ricky Baby!”
Rick Santorum: “I don’t care Mitt! You’re a bitch and you gave Obama the blueprints to evil!”
Mitt Romney: “Ricky Baby, you’re so silly!”
Rick Santorum: “Jesus Bible! No health care for the gays!”

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich spent most of their time arguing about who was a bigger bastard while both looked like big bastards. Mittens talked about “self-deportation” again. If these guys believe in such a thing as an effective way of handling a situation, can we get them to believe in “self-governance”? If they trust those illegal immigrants to leave on their own accord after sneaking in here in an effort just to come back in a way that is much more difficult, they’ve got to believe that we’re all capable of managing every other aspect of our lives? I mean, they are putting blind faith into something so farfetched that they’ve got to be down with just saying “fuck it” and letting us run our own shit, right?

On the immigration subject, Newt says that Romney is the most anti-immigrant candidate out of the four. Romney gets all pissy and pulls his two Latino cards. The first he pulls is Marco Rubio, the Cuban American senator that came to his defense on immigration. The second card Mitt pulled was Mexico, as his father was born there. I was born in a hospital bro, that doesn’t make me a doctor!

Romney and Gingrich argue about immigration for awhile and then they argue about Fannie and Freddie and who is the biggest crook. Newt, once he gets away from the lame feud for a minute, goes on some tangent about making a moon base. Newt later said that Jacksonville was going to get big pimpin’ because the Panama Canal was widening and would bring them more boat traffic. Shortly after that we were treated to a Santorum-Gingrich-Romney three-way which was like stumbling upon a middle-aged homosexual version of Cinemax at three in the morning. It was a bitch and rant fuck fest that no one in their right mind needed to see, unless of course you’re into middle-aged gay men. If you are, I mean absolutely no disrespect. Do ya thang homegirl!

Fuck all these queens, let’s get to Ron Paul, the only adult in the room. On immigration, he says that if we had a working healthy economy we wouldn’t be so worried about the immigration issue as we’d be looking for workers to fill jobs. He adds that the way we are handling our borders is actually harming our economy. He points out that we don’t have the right amount of resources on the border and that we should pay more attention to our border instead of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On the Latin America issue, Ron Paul says, “Free trade is the answer.” He throws in the fact that we’d be a lot better off if we practiced free trade with Cuba. He adds that he doesn’t like the idea that America thinks that they can go down to Central and South America and try to dictate which kind of leaders they need down there, as it is none of our business. He says that the best way to influence other nations isn’t by telling them what to do, it is by practicing friendship and free trade. Paul then references Santorum who said that we have to stand up for these nations. Paul explains that standing up for nations often times comes with us imposing ourselves on the people of these countries while picking their dictators, undermining their government and sending them a lot of money. He warns that this sort of tactic always backfires and the people we are “supporting” end up hating us. Ron Paul calls Rick Santorum’s ideas on foreign policy the “bully way”. Paul adds that he knows a better to way to work with people other than using force. Santorum shakes his head, mumbles some stupid crap and then changes his tampon while wiping his bitch tears. Checkmate Paul!

Ron Paul is asked if Mitt and Newt should return the money they’ve made off of Fannie and Freddie and he responds to thunderous applause when he says, “That subject doesn’t interest me a lot.” Paul says that Fannie and Freddie should have been auctioned off right after the crash came. He said that if it was sold, the problem would’ve been “cleansed” by now. Ron Paul says that he’s been trying to prevent this stuff which is why we need to end the Federal Reserve.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asks says that Ron Paul, if elected, would be the oldest president ever. He asks Paul if he would make his medical records public to show the people that he is healthy. Blitzer basically wants to paint Ron Paul as a geezer who could croak tomorrow and I find the question to be repugnant, just as I found it distasteful when the same issue was brought up with Ronald Reagan years ago. Paul said that he’ll prove how healthy he is by delivering an open challenge to all the other candidates to face him in a 25 mile bike ride in the heat of Texas. Ron Paul face-palmed the shit out of Wolf Blitzer and the other candidates with that answer. He also took a shot at Wolf himself when he jokingly pointed out that there are laws against age discrimination and that Blitzer should be careful. Wolf, after getting bitchslapped, tries to cover up the stupid question by asking the other candidates if they’d release theirs. What a tool.

On space spending, Ron Paul says that he would only approve funding on stuff that fits under defense. He says that going to the Moon and Mars is fantastic but that it could be done better by the private sector if their hands weren’t tied. Ron Paul then takes a shot at Newt, saying that he has stretched the truth with all his “balanced budget” claims from the days when he was Speaker of the House. Ron Paul is taking solid shots backed by facts and there is nothing that can be done about it when he brings these guys a dose of the truth. Strangely, Newt Gingrich was very polite and gracious to Ron Paul all night and gave him props for his ideas in several areas.

In the end, the debate was lightyears better than the NBC debate a few days prior. CNN does the best job, in my opinion, and I’ve watched every single one of these debates. Kudos to Wolf for rocking the house, even with a few prickish questions. Ron Paul owned the motherfucker, Santorum did decent if you are into his religio-fascist bullshit while Newt and Mitt looked like a few bickering Tinas arguing over the last pack of Lee Press-On Nails at K-Mart.

And that’s all I got because I immediately returned to my whiskey-scented orgy on the south lawn.

Grading Scale:
Grade A+: Ron Paul
Grade C-: Rick Santorum
Grade D+: Newt Gingrich
Grade D: Mitt Romney

*Best debate moment in recent memory:

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Introduction:

I don’t hate Mitt Romney but I am certainly not a fan, which should be obvious at this point. I do hate the goddamned media for giving him an unfair advantage over the other candidates but truthfully, that isn’t his fault. Romney isn’t the absolute worst presidential choice out there, which many of my colleagues and readers may disagree with vehemently, but he is still a progressive statist bastard that is hellbent on controlling the lives of all of us in an effort to keep the giant wheel of the establishment machine rolling. I have been nasty to the guy many times in my countless diatribes about the 2012 election but my distaste and malcontent has been for a very good reason. Point being, I know that Romney can’t save this country and I feel that this is painstakingly obvious even though I find myself completely befuddled over the fanfare and support that this guy gets, not just form the media – their support is understandable, but from the conservative voting public who are all pretty much in unison behind this guy’s idea of smaller government, less taxes and squashing the budding police state. This guy will not solve any of those problems. In fact, he will only magnify them and dig our giant pit of legislative bullshit deeper and deeper. Hell, the pit is practically bottomless at this point but electing Mitt Romney will only solidify that fact even further.

I’m certainly not saying that Obama is a better choice out of the two. Realistically, I don’t think there is much difference between one or the other. This is a prime example of there being just one big government party with two wings: one that wears blue shirts with donkeys on them and one that wears red shirts with elephants on them. The worst part about this is that most “conservatives” are following Romney, as well as Gingrich and Santorum, believing in the hypocritical rhetoric that they’ve got a small government guy on their side who will fight for them. Realistically, those who support these guys are ignorant in economics and foreign policy. It is incredibly unfortunate but as Ron Paul said in a recent debate, “Conservatives have lost their way.”

Now I can’t completely cover every negative thing on Romney’s record, as there is a lot, but I am going to talk about a few points. In the end, it is really your decision as to where you want to put your vote but you really need to think this through and ask yourself where you want to be in four years. Do you want to be climbing out of the hole or do you want to be yelling at the guys that are still digging and digging?

Smaller Government:

The first thing worth getting into is definitely the issue of Mitt claiming that he’ll work towards making government smaller. Mitt Romney, who has preached for this over the course of all these debates, has a really shitty record of practicing what he’s been preaching. In reality, Mitt has been feeding into the desires of the voter base and has been stringing them along with his version of the popular rhetoric of the day. The sad thing is that many of the people who support this douchenugget are taking all this bullshit at face value and not looking at reality. Truthfully, maybe Romney actually believes his empty words and his supporters might not be adept enough to see through the Orwellian doublespeak. Let me rundown his track record of big government bullshit by ripping the fucking band-aid off: exposing the man’s economic sores.

I could write a whole damn article about the monstrosity that is Romneycare but I won’t bore you or myself with the details that have already been recycled a million times and beaten into the ground with Thor’s hammer by every critic for several years now. I’m over the Romneycare issue personally. I don’t like it, I think it’s shit, it was the blueprint for what became Obamacare but it was done at the state level, not the federal level and most Bay Staters still approve of it, so that is their economic cross to bear.

One thing that many Romney supporters don’t know or just choose to ignore is the fact that he significantly raised taxes in Massachusetts while he was governor. While preaching fiscal conservatism and pimping himself out as friendly to business, Governor Romney increased the tax bill on businesses by $300 million! He and his cronies also approved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of higher fees and fines on businesses in just four years! Many business owners were incredibly dissatisfied with Romney as governor. Essentially, corporate taxes under Romney almost doubled in just his one term.

I guess the tax hikes were necessary though, as Romney drastically increased spending in Massachusetts. In 2006, Ol’ Mittens increased spending in just that year by 7.6 percent. In 2007, he increased spending again, this time all the way up to 10.2 percent. During just his four years in office, he increased state spending by a total of 20.7 percent! That’s a lot of debt thrown on the taxpayer but at least those hefty tax hikes on corporations absorbed some of the burden. Maybe this tax burden accounts for the fact that Mitt Romney managed the 47th ranked state, out of 50, in the realm of job creation. That brings me to my next point.

Romney has been touting his job creation success while working at Bain Capital. He proudly boasts about creating corporations like Staples, Sports Authority and Steel Dynamics, all of which have created hundreds of thousands of jobs. However, as governor, unemployment was a real problem in Massachusetts. Sure, he did great in the private sector and as Romney himself has said, “Jobs are created in the private sector.” However, all of his job creation skills didn’t translate to success when he reached office. So what makes the public think that this job magician’s magic wand will suddenly work this time? Yes he is a self-professed business master but he couldn’t tap into that while running Massachusetts so essentially his trial run at it was a failure. On the issue of Romney’s job creation woes, Boston Herald business reporter Bret Arends wrote:

During the four years Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, it had the second worst jobs record of any state in America…it wasn’t a regional issue. The rest of New England created nearly 200,000 jobs.

The question no one ever seems to ask Governor Romney is how many jobs were destroyed in an effort to build his monstrous corporations. Now I am not attacking him for building giant successful businesses, as that is the nature of the beast – good or bad. I am just trying to point out how skewed these sorts of statistical claims are because if you created say 300,000 jobs but your new businesses eliminated the jobs of say 250,000 people whose businesses you closed down through competition, well then you’ve only really created 50,000 jobs. This is a simple ballpark example but it should show you how some statistical claims can be made when you only tell one side of the story. Hell, government has been using these sorts of statistical tactics for years when releasing inaccurate numbers to sway public opinion for a candidate, a bill or whatever else they have needed public approval on.

Another issue that shows how non-small government this ass clown is, is the TARP bailouts. Mittens hates when people bring the subject up and has gone as far as lying and completely denying that he ever supported it but there is tons and tons of evidence that says otherwise. In fact, Romney was incredibly passionate about poorly run banks getting a massive taxpayer funded bonus for sucking at business. On CNN, a few years back during the bailouts, Romney said:

I think there is a need for economic stimulus. Americans have lost about $11 trillion dollars in net worth. That translates into about $400 billion dollars a year less spending that they’ll be doing, and that’s net of additional government programs like Medicaid and unemployment insurance. And government can help make that up in a very difficult time. And that’s one of the reasons why I think a stimulus program is needed.

Sounds like small government to me! So why would he be so pro-big bank? Well, let’s look at his top campaign contributors from a recent list. His top contributor is Goldman Sachs who gave $354,700. Next up is Credit Suisse Group at $195,250 and Morgan Stanley at $185,800. Every other contributor in the six figures is also in the banking industry. You’ve got HIG Capital, Barclays, Kirkland & Ellis, Bank of America, PricewaterhouseCoopers, EMC Corp. & JPMorgan Chase. His top ten contributors are all fucking banks! Occupying Wall Street should start on Mitt’s front lawn! This shows a sharp contrast from Ron Paul whose top three campaign contributors are the Air Force, the Army and the Navy. Paul’s biggest contributor is also a lot less than six figures. So who really understands the plight of the average person? Romney is so far up on the Wall Street crony capitalist ladder than he can’t remember how to get down – not that he wants to.

People that call Barack Obama the Wall Street president haven’t seen anything yet. On campaign contributions from the big banks, Obama has made significantly less than Romney. Goldman Sachs gave Obama $49,124, Morgan Stanley coughed up $28,225, Bank of America gave $46,699, JPMorgan Chase came in at $38,038 and Citigroup was at $36,887. You do the math but it is obvious who the bailed out banking industry supports.

Another thing worth noting is that Romney has gotten more money from lobbyists than all other Republican candidates combined. I guess you need all that special interest money to work towards smaller government. Damn it! That Mitt Romney doublethink is taking over my brain!

The fact of the matter is, love it or hate it, Mitt Romney has a proven track record of being nothing less than one of the heads on the big government hydra. He is an economic nightmare but because people take him at his word and don’t look at his record, he can continue to dupe the masses into thinking that he’s on their side.

Mitt Romney will say anything to get elected.

Continued in Part II: Foreign Entanglements..

*Taken from Statesman.

The financially troubled Postal Service is suspending its employer contribution to the Federal Employee Retirement System.

The agency said Wednesday it is acting to conserve cash as it continues to lose money. It was $8 billion in the red last year because of the combined effects of the recession and the switch of much mail business to the Internet. It faces the possibility of running short of money by the end of this fiscal year in September.

“This move underscores the need for Congress to make bold, quick and substantive reforms to the Postal Service. The USPS is hanging by a thread, along with 8 million private sector jobs that depend on the mail,” said Art Sackler, coordinator for the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, a group representing the private sector mailing industry.

The post office said it has informed the Office of Personnel Management that the $115 million retirement payment made every two weeks will be suspended effective Friday. The action is expected to free about $800 million in the current fiscal year. The post office’s FERS account currently has a surplus of $6.9 billion, the agency said.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Reason. Written by G. Pascal Gregory.

In the provincial capital of Mbale, in eastern Uganda, it’s not uncommon to start your morning commute riding shotgun on a bicycle. I visited this metropolis of more than 400,000 people frequently in the late 2000s, and I often began my day as a passenger in the tacked-on second seat of one of these bodas, wheeling from my hotel to a place on the other edge of town where shared taxis congregated. Three other travelers and I would pile into one of these taxis for a 20-minute ride down a main road, and then I would hop out and hail another boda for the final mile of my journey.

Once overwhelmingly rural, Africa is urbanizing at a faster rate than any other region on the planet. With the world’s lowest rates of automobile ownership, urban Africans also have the world’s greatest demand for mass transit. And they are meeting their own needs with enterprise and creativity, largely fueled by private resources. The successes of the continent’s ad hoc urban transit systems are partly due to government neglect. Unable to keep pace with growth, governments are simply staying out of the way and letting private operators assemble inexpensive networks of buses and taxis that can adapt quickly to shifting consumer needs.

CONTINUED..

*Written by Rob Rimes.

*This article is broken into five parts with each being released a few days apart. This is due to the size of the article. Here is PART I, PART II & PART III.

5. Stage Four – Lyndon B. Johnson and the Great Society:

“I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.” – Lyndon Baines Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson became the 36th President of the United States of America after tragedy struck and President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. LBJ was a progressive leader that wanted to deliver just as much “change” to the United States as his predecessors, FDR and Woodrow Wilson did. Just like the last major progressive in the office before him, LBJ wanted to significantly change the landscape in America with a monster set of programs like the New Deal. LBJ called his monster the Great Society.

The Great Society was not only the second coming of the New Deal, it also borrowed many ideas from JFK’s New Frontier, which was never really implemented on a large scale due to his death just a few years into his first term. The basic make-up of the Great Society consisted of civil rights and the war on poverty, as well as programs for education, health care, the arts, transportation, consumer protection and the environment.

The first of these factors I want to look at is civil rights. To be clear, I am definitely in favor of civil rights in theory. Everyone deserves equality and no one should be discriminated against due to race, color, creed, etc. Civil rights and women’s rights were huge victories in their day. However, apart from all the fanfare and all the glory, there is a lot of tyrannical and evil bullshit. The thing I am talking about specifically is the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Now this bill was written by Republicans and most of the GOP supported it, while the Democrats were strongly opposed to it. In fact, I talk about this in greater detail in my article “Republicans: The Party of Racism?“. Essentially, the Republicans were all for civil rights, while the Democrats, today’s race baiters and favorite party of most minorities, were against them. Interesting, eh?

One Democrat seemingly saw the light however and that was Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ adopted the Civil Rights Act as a part of the Great Society. Even though it was drafted by the opposition, LBJ wanted desperately to make sure that blacks and other races had the same rights as whites. While this is quite noble and admirable, his efforts have grown to become counterproductive. Now the liberals will sneer at that and think it is some form of right-wing propaganda that I am trying to push off but I am only concerned with the facts. The facts clearly show, that in some aspects, parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have violated the Constitution and have also given a lot of minorities a sense of dependency on the federal government.

One way that it goes against the Constitution, is that it forces business owners to have to comply with a set of laws that makes it so they have to service everyone, no matter what the color of their skin is. Sure, this sounds good but if someone doesn’t like a certain group of people, should they be forced to do business with them? That goes against their individual rights and if it is their business, it goes against their property rights. I’m not turning a blind eye to bigotry, but that person, no matter how they feel, should be able to do business however they see fit. Now, that doesn’t mean that he won’t be negatively effected by his bigotry. He’d most likely loose business as word quickly spreads that he refuses to service a race that isn’t his. The government doesn’t need to regulate this, people can figure these things out for themselves. This was Barry Goldwater’s argument against the Civil Rights Act and by taking that stance, he lost the presidential election against LBJ. Nowadays, the Democrats like to paint him out as a bigot when, in reality, it was the Democrats who were the bigots of the day.

Also, as far as the unconstitutionality of the Civil rights Act goes, there is no power given to Congress that allows them to regulate employee and employer relations. This would fall under the 10th Amendment where the ability to make such laws would fall into the hands of the states themselves. Essentially, the Civil Rights Act is a violation against state’s rights in addition to the Constitution. Revisiting FDR, as governor of New York, he stated:

“..as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere.”

If only FDR practiced as president, what he preached as governor. Too bad LBJ didn’t listen either.

Now, let’s look at the fact that the Civil Rights Act had counterproductive results. It was Congressman Ron Paul who said on the House floor:

“..contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the sponsors of HR 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.”

So, how did it do that?

Well, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government a huge surge in power. Their reach could literally go further than it ever had before in regards to the regulation of business at the employment management level. The government now had power of the hiring process, employee relations and customer service. In regards to this, Ron Paul said:

“The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society. The federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form (or not form) contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties. The rights of all private property owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent, must be respected if we are to maintain a free society.

This expansion of federal power was based on an erroneous interpretation of the congressional power to regulate interstate commerce. The framers of the Constitution intended the interstate commerce clause to create a free trade zone among the states, not to give the federal government regulatory power over every business that has any connection with interstate commerce.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not accomplish its goals of creating racial harmony and promoting equality. You cannot regulate what is in a man’s mind. If he is a racist, you cannot legislate it out of him. If anything, this sort of action will create strong resistance, which in many cases is what has happened. People generally are good, but you can’t force them into being good. It has to be something that they are by their own accord.

Forcing employers to hire based on a racial quota is ridiculous. If you are giving minorities an extra edge then that certainly isn’t equal. Affirmative action in all its forms is racist in itself and a giant oxymoron. Ron Paul also had something to say about this aspect:

“Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife.

Of course, America has made great strides in race relations over the past forty years. However, this progress is due to changes in public attitudes and private efforts. Relations between the races have improved despite, not because of, the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”

I keep quoting Dr. Paul here because he has a way with words that eloquently portrays the reality of this controversial subject. Well, “controversial” if you seemingly oppose it.

Trying to put a price tag on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is impossible. However, the vast majority of the programs under the umbrella of this bill have been incredibly costly over the years. The biggest cost however, has been the cost of individual liberty. If we all just got behind individual liberty and respected it, laws like this one wouldn’t even be necessary.

According to Wikipedia, “The most ambitious and controversial part of the Great Society was..” the War on Poverty. Man, seems like we’re always at “war” with someone or something, doesn’t it? I don’t want to go to war with the poor! Apparently, this wasn’t a war against the poor, it was a war to “help” the poor. Funny, how can you help the poor when wars are expensive? No one ever helped the poor with wasteful spending. Hell, wasteful spending is why many people are poor. So apart from the obvious, how was this a costly, counterproductive, horrible idea from the minds of progressives?

Well, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 was comprised of a laundry list of programs guaran-damn-teed to end poverty in the United States. It didn’t matter to LBJ that the experts of the day were stating that poverty was on a sharp decline in America. No, no, no! LBJ had to try and meddle with it and force the turnaround quicker. Don’t these tyrants ever learn from the “good intentions” of their predecessors? No, they don’t. They don’t concern themselves with facts and data, they concern themselves with guilt and ego. In fact Johnson championed in what progressives before him had done when he declared:

“The Act does not merely expand old programs or improve what is already being done. It charts a new course. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty. It can be a milestone in our one-hundred eighty year search for a better life for our people.”

LBJ claimed that the Economic Opportunity Act would accomplish five goals. They first goal would provide half a million underprivileged young Americans with the opportunity to develop skills, continue education, and find useful work. The second goal would give every American community the opportunity to develop a comprehensive plan to fight its own poverty—and help them to carry out their plans. The third goal would allow Americans to enlist in helping fight the War on Poverty. It was voluntary however. The fourth goal would destroy the barriers holding back workers and farmers. The final goal was the creation of the the Office of Economic Opportunity, a federal HQ for the War on Poverty. Man, all that shit sounds expensive! Why not just give the money to the people charitably, as opposed to forcibly taking it via taxpayers’ dollars and distributing it into these expensive and expansive programs? I guess having a gun to one’s head to force their charity is more romantic.

LBJ and the newly refurbished Magical Progressive Problem Solving Machine created the Welfare State. In a typical case of “unintended consequences”, the welfare system has failed miserably and created a society that is further dependent on government handouts, whether through the abuse of food stamps or unemployment benefits. Just look at how out of control unemployment is now. The government now allows people to collect unemployment checks for 99 weeks! That’s a month shy of two years! I know unemployment is bad in this country right now, but my-fucking-god, is it really going to take two years to find a job? I’ve never in my entire life been unemployed for a quarter of that time. When I was, I was too proud to take unemployment benefits. Maybe that was a mistake on my part but I still went from being homeless and penniless to making a pretty good salary and holding a pretty sweet job. If there is a will there is a way! I’ve said it again and again. However, the government takes that will away.

You se, the length of unemployment benefits allows people to be overly selective with the jobs they choose. People turn down menial hard-working jobs for little pay because they are getting little pay to sit at home to browse TMZ and play Farmville between casually scanning Monster, Craigslist and CareerBuilder. Yes, I realize the unemployment benefits are small and near impossible to make a living off of, but with all the other entitlements and handouts added in on top of that, one can live pretty phat for an unemployed person. People can debate this to death but I have seen this in action with my own eyes throughout my life. This IS what motivated me to not become one of those people. Guess who’s gotten further in life between those people and I? I did, and I was even worse off than most of them when at my lowest. We have created a nation of lazy entitled whiners because of these progressive programs. If you think I am an asshole for stating that, you are a blind idiot for not understanding the concept of “cause and effect”. Truth is, the Great Society created the Weak Society.

Another part of the Great Society was education. LBJ dropped a few new laws on us with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Higher Education Act and the Bilingual Education Act. With these acts came some unintended consequences born out of good intentions like every goddamned progressive invention. With the Elementary and Secondary Education Act came the Head Start program. With the Higher Education Act came the Teacher Corps.With the Bilingual Education Act came special federal aid to schools that had students with limited English speaking ability.

This bilingual idiocy has led us to a country that is overly sensitive to the needs of non-English speakers. Instead of promoting our national language, we force our citizens to conform to the needs of those who aren’t even citizens. It makes it so that immigrants to America don’t have to learn the national language. We are the only country in the world promoting such nonsense. If you, as an American, move to a foreign land and refuse to learn their language, not only will you be laughed at, but you will fall behind immensely. It is not a nation’s job to adapt to an outsider, it is an outsiders job to adapt to the nation. Maybe it is just me but that’s common sense. Our political correctness has made us a nation of pacifist pussies always trying to belittle, demoralize and demonize ourselves and our culture for the sake of those escaping their situations for the American life. Hell, we’re cheating them as much as we’re cheating ourselves here.

The Great Society also created the medical monsters Medicare and Medicaid. Just like with FDR’s Social Security plan, one doesn’t have to look too far to see how these entitlements are ruining our economy still to this day. In fact, the combination of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid took up 43 percent of our national budget in 2010! Nearly half of our federal budget goes to just these three pieces of progressive legislation! It’s fucking insanity! Problem is, even the fiscal conservatives, for the most part, refuse to give up these entitlements. What these programs are, in layman’s terms, is welfare for the senior citizen crowd. Medicare and Medicaid also opened the door to socialized health care and eventually, Obamacare. I’ll cover that in the next section of this article.

LBJ’s Great Society also thought it was necessary for the federal government to involve itself in the arts and broadcasting. Why the hell government needs to be involved in art or broadcasting is beyond me. Many liberals have tried to explain this to me but their explanations continually fall short. First of all, art is open to interpretation and what some sees as art, someone else might not. Art is subjective. So who the hell is the government to think that they can funnel tax dollars to a subjective thing? How do you quantify that even? This is why we end up with our tax dollars paying for museum exhibits of ant-covered Christs. I plan to write an article about government and art in the near future.

As far as broadcasting goes, the federal government has given us PBS and NPR. To some, mainly the lefties, this is a great thing. To those on the right or in the middle even, this is ridiculous. First of all, it would be great if government funded broadcasting was non-partisan or even bi-partisan. It is neither of these. NPR for instance, is a hardcore leftist entity. Why should someone who is opposed to that ideology have to pay for it? Hell, NPR themselves have been on record saying that they would actually do much better without government funding. Okay assholes, then why are you stealing from us then? Give us back our money and go private. As long as you’re public and taking my money, you have no right to shove socialist and progressive bullshit down my throat. Now you can argue that I don’t have to listen to it. Good point, and I don’t. But I DO have to pay for it, and that is the problem. PBS is leftist too and I don’t feel like I should have to pay for them either.

Idiot shitcock Ralph Nader wrote a stupid ass book called “Unsafe at Any Speed”. Because of that stupid ass book, the LBJ administration added some transportation legislation to the Great Society. The biggest of these progressive programs was the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. What this law did was it empowered the federal government to establish safety standards for motor vehicles, as well as overseeing traffic safety. Once again, the progressives thought that they could do something more efficiently than the private sector. There are already several agencies that test countless things with motor vehicles and other items. Nader’s big stink against the Corvair, which was a focal point of his book, ended up being complete bullshit. The car was considered “unsafe to drive” and was pulled off the market. A few years later, the vehicle was tested to see if these claims were valid, and they weren’t. All this was created on a lie. Nader’s attack was complete bullshit and used as a catalyst to get the people to believe that we need government to protect us from those evil automakers. On this topic Milton Friedman said:

“Nowadays there are Corvair fan clubs throughout the country. Corvairs have become collectors’ items. Consumers have given their verdict on Ralph Nader and the government regulations.”

The last area of the Great Society I want to talk about is the environmental portion. Where the two Roosevelts and Wilson wanted to protect existing resources and promote conservation, LBJ took it even further. During his time in the Oval Office, he signed several environmental bills into law. These bills were the Clear Air, Water Quality and Clean Water Restoration Acts and Amendments, the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Preservation Act, the National Trails System Act, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Land and Water Conservation Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Aircraft Noise Abatement Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. All of these bills come with their own forms of tyranny built in. Most of them have created some ridiculous laws that negatively impact economic growth. By putting the rights of a single endangered bird over the rights of thousands upon thousands of people to go into a Wal-Mart and buy their necessities is pretty fucking ludicrous. Analyzing each of these in full detail would take up a whole book. What I can say here though, is that with each of these programs comes a heavy price tag which we are still paying today. With each also comes a loss of liberty, especially individual and property rights.

There are several other aspects of the Great Society that I haven’t mentioned, but I am sure you get the idea. This being the fourth huge section in my giant article about the roots of progressivism should probably prepare you for the fact that the fifth and final part will also not have a positive ending.

Looking back at LBJ here, it is pretty apparent that his performance as POTUS was greatly influenced by the progressive masterminds before him. Because of that, LBJ’s legacy was just as tyrannical and maddening as the legacies of his predecessors. When you dump the Great Society on top of the New Deal, Wilsonian policy and Teddy Roosevelt’s programs, you are left with a giant beast risen from the ashes of liberty. The Great Society, the New Deal and all the other progressive bullshit programs did not empower people like they promised, instead they stripped great Americans of their already existing power, their resourcefulness, their drive, their pride and their self-reliance. All that was replaced with apathy, complacency and dependence on the State.

No need to worry though, there was another progressive who rose from the ashes promising “hope” and “change”. He is the subject of the fifth and final part of this article.

6. Stage Five – Barack H. Obama, Hope, Change & Health Care:

“This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many.” – Barack Hussein Obama

This article will be continued in PART V

My Two Cents: Proof that liberalism is a disease of the mind. End Two Cents.

*Taken from Reason.

On March 26, 2011, the Our Communities, Our Jobs Rally in Los Angeles brought together the Teamsters, AFL-CIO, SEIU, the United Teachers of Los Angeles, and many, many more to protest a local Ralph’s grocery store and to show solidarity with public-sector unions in Wisconsin.

Reason.tv was on hand to document the rally and speak with some of the thousands present. While the protest ostensibly targeted various businesses such as Ralph’s and Chase Bank, there was a continuity in the overarching message: Collective bargaining rights are under attack, and they must be saved—both for private-sector and public-sector workers. According to participants in the rally, enemies of organized labor include big business, foreign labor, Republicans, the Koch brothers, and the capitalist system itself.

Approximately 4 minutes long. Shot and edited by Zach Weissmueller. Interviews by Tim Cavanaugh.

For Reason.tv coverage of other rallies (inlcuding Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor Rally, the 9/12 Freedom Works Rally, and One Nation Working Together Rally), go here.

*Taken from Reason’s YouTube Page.

“Any time you give unlimited capacity to print money, then the government’s going to grow,” says filmmaker Tad Lumpkin.

Lumpkin created the animated feature The American Dream, which is available on YouTube, to explain U.S. monetary policy and its consequences in a way that would be accessible to a mass audience. Although some in the media, and at the Federal Reserve, blame a lack of regulation for the financial crisis, Lumpkin argues that the Fed itself is the primary cause for the collapse of the housing sector.

Lumpkin sat down with Reason.tv’s Tim Cavanaugh to discuss the folly of central banking, why Ron Paul is an important political force, and why it’s time to end the Fed.