He said agents questioned him, and then told him he could go home. One agent even offered him a ride, Chong said. No criminal charges were filed against him.

But Chong did not go home that night. Instead, he was placed in a cell for five days without any human contact and was not given food or drink. In his desperation, he said he was forced to drink his own urine. Read More

March 9, 2012

3:15 pm — Closing Plenary

The Honorable Larry W. Campbell, Senator, Parliament of Canada, speaks at the Baker Institute on March 9, 2012. Campbell is also a former member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Drug Squad; former Chief Coroner, British Columbia; and the 37th mayor of Vancouver.

For nearly a century, U.S. drug policy has been characterized by the punitive prohibition of illicit drugs, with “zero tolerance” for drug users, producers and traffickers. This bipartisan policy has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and produced an incarceration rate that is by far the highest in the world. And yet, the number of American citizens with substance abuse problems has remained remarkably stable over the last 30 years, and illicit drugs remain easy to obtain for those who want them.

Public support for the war on drugs has dramatically decreased, but there is less agreement over what polices should replace drug prohibition. On Friday, March 9, following a keynote address by noted travel writer, public television producer and public radio host Rick Steves on the previous evening (Thursday, March 8), the Baker Institute will host a conference titled “The War on Drugs Has Failed. Is Legalization the Answer?” Able and respected defenders of current policy, leading advocates for reform and academic researchers will discuss and examine key issues such as alternatives to prohibition, effects of the war on drugs on minority communities and international efforts to reduce the harms of drug abuse.

What was my plan you ask? It’s simple, I went into the Teddy Bear business. How many children go to bed without a stuffed bear by their side? The demand will be through the roof, and just think of the service I’ll be doing for society. I just needed a few things to get started.

First I needed capital to get my business off the ground; a loan so I can build a factory, sewing machines and other equipment, a steady supply of cotton for stuffing, and of course employees.

So I went down to the bank and told them what I wanted to do. Actually I went to several banks, well to be honest, every bank in town. Those people had no idea what they were talking about, telling me that I needed a business plan and even then, the Teddy Bear market isn’t very lucrative, so they’re not willing to risk loaning me any money.

Not to worry though! I have great political connections to help me out. I’ve got a friend who is in congress that crafted some legislation which sets up a federal loan subsidy program for me so long as I cut them and their congressional friends in on the deal by either offering them lucrative positions at the company once they’re out of politics, insider information on stocks, or contribute to their re-election campaigns. Some people are so picky!

Now I’ve got those banks who weren’t willing to give me a loan in the first place to set me up with a fantastic loan at a low interest rate subsidized by the federal government, and the best thing about it is if I default on the loan, the federal program will cover the losses to the bank. It’s a win-win situation for everyone, not to mention that the bank is getting a zero percent interest loan from the Federal Reserve in order to loan that money to me. The extra money just created and added to the economy by the Federal Reserve will cause some inflation, but by the time it catches up I’ll have already made my money so it won’t matter.

With my loan in hand I went searching for a suitable place to build my factory. I found this great piece of land, it’s just right for what I need, but there’s just one problem though; there’s some people living there and they refuse to sell their land. What’s up with these people standing in the way of economic progress? Don’t they know how much better off they’ll be if they’d just go along with my plan?

Luckily I knew someone who was on the local city council and he got me a deal so that the city used eminent domain to get these people out of my way, and the city also paid for half of the construction costs of my factory to boot. Not to mention they exempted me from property taxes for 10 years.

Buying the equipment for the factory was easy. The state has a business development slush fund so I got a grant that payed for all of the equipment. Next was finding a farmer to supply me with cotton. Luckily I was able to get a great deal here. Instead of buying the cotton from local farmers, at the time a lot of family farms went under so I was able to scoop up a lot of the local ones on the cheap. Now I produce my own cotton and thanks to the federal and state agriculture subsidy programs, they essentially pay me to grow the cotton.

Hiring employees was the toughest part. For every employee I have to pay a lot of taxes to employ them, so in order to offset the losses, I just gave them all lower starting pay. Some of them complain about needing to work more hours because the cost of living is going up, but since it’s mandatory that I pay them time and a half for any amount of time spent working over 40 hours, it’s easier to just bring in temp workers every now and then. To save even more money I don’t bother air conditioning the factory either. If I could get a subsidy to do it I would, but hey we can’t always have everything right?

Besides, my office feels great with my indoor temperature control system and 92 inch flat screen tv’s on every wall, not to mention state of the art modern architecture and the $100,000 fountain outside my window, which was a steal since my sister get’s a subsidy for the fountains she designs.

Things were a little rough the first couple of years. Other companies were undercutting my prices and selling their product so cheap that it was starting to get a bit hard to pay the mortgage on my condos in Hawaii and the Bahamas. I figured out real quick that I needed an updated strategy to deal with the issue so I paid some media outlets to run stories about the quality of the bears being suspect and that regulation was needed to ensure consumer safety. The public outcry was sufficient enough to get enough votes to pass the bill my lobbyists crafted, imposing all sorts of new costly regulations.

I knew that these regulations would cut into my bottom-line initially, but in the long run I would make even more money by forcing my competitors to go under due to their inability to cope with the new regulations. All I had to do was wait them out and they’d come crashing down. The resulting layoffs from the industry put me in a prime position to pick up some great talent at extremely cheap prices. However I discovered that I had more problems than just my local competitors. Foreign producers were moving in on my turf.

I still kept in contact with the media outlets that helped me out the first time, so I payed them again, this time to run stories about foreign products being produced by slave labor and how they were killing jobs here. There was another successful public outcry that this time resulted in tariffs being placed on imported Teddy Bears. After this, business was great, revenues were up, and best of all me and the other executives got to party all the time and take our families on vacation, all of which we got to write off as business expenses. You gotta love the tax code in this country, it’s setup just right for people like me.

It was during this time that we really started to expand the business, building factories, hiring more workers, increasing output, and diversifying our holdings. It was boom times for sure and we were living it up. However, the day did come when the economy went bust and we were way overextended. Luckily we got a zero percent interest business loan from the government that really saved us, so while some of our competitors went under, we were able to tread water until the market came back, and of course we took over the market share of those who did go under.

It’s going on 10 years now and the property tax exemption is about to expire. We’re thinking about trying to move to another state and possibly getting the local governments there to pay for most of our new construction costs, but I really think we’re going to be better off just uprooting and moving the company overseas. I’ll just use my private jet to get me back and forth.

Now they’re talking about legalizing hemp too, which would really hurt my cotton growing operations. I guess I just need to give my old media buddies a call.

Last night, as part of this Quixote-like quest, I ventured into the heretofore unexplored dimension of a Ron Paul rally and was witness to something that can only be described as all parts exhilarating, befuddling, encouraging, depressing, moving, maddening and, ultimately, inspiring. More on all that later.

Over the years I have been to more political rallies, events, forums, roundtables, discussion groups, debates and whatever than I care to remember. While a whole range of adjectives from boring to thrilling could be used to describe these events, I have never before been moved to use contradictory metaphors for the same event. Attending a Ron Paul campaign rally is a singularly unique experience. I have never seen anything like it before. Perhaps phenomenal is the word that comes closest in accuracy, not in the ordinary “awesome” sense, but in the other-worldly, spatiotemporal sense.

A little truth in advertising first: I come from an old school of conservatism, a hodgepodge of Strauss, Kirk, Buckley, Reagan and a smattering of other modern day conservative thinkers who shaped my thinking while coming of age in the midst of a persistent nuclear threat during the so-called Cold War, replete with duck and cover, fallout shelters and a young girl sitting in a meadow picking the petals off a daisy. One is shaped by the world one is raised in and then, if playing the game right, uses those experiences to shape the world for those who will inherit it.

The purpose of this piece is not to analyze Mr. Paul’s specific policies, although my worldview does not coalesce with his on many fronts. I do not write this piece from the point of view of a longtime Paul devotee, many of whom (and you know who you are) I have exasperatingly debated over the fallacies I see in some (not all) of his positions. Over the years, though, I have learned (much to my surprise and dismay) that not everyone will agree with my positions on all things and I often frustratingly find myself having internal disagreements with my own stated beliefs. Such is the nature of evolving thought.

I have spoken before a lot of groups in the last several years as we have all grappled with the seeming dissolution of our country. I have half-jokingly said on many of these occasions that the other side doesn’t really have to defeat us politically, they just have to wait for us all to die off so they can implement their plans. My point has been that the greatest issue facing the conservative cause is a demographical one, a lack of diversity that will shortly render the conservative message irrelevant. Where are the youth? I and others have asked. Where are the people of color? Why doesn’t the conservative message resonate?

The answer to where they are could be found last night at the Will Rogers Auditorium. Often at political events there is a sense of excitement, anticipation, a certain buzz in the audience while waiting for the main event. Excitement, anticipation and buzz are weak and inadequate words to describe the pre-rally crowd last night. Energy is even inadequate. What undulated through the thousands who thronged outside before the doors opened last night was a kinetic power, the power of hope, the power of liberation, the power of anger at a system turned upside down, the power of liberation and, yes, the ultimate and emancipating power of freedom. You had to be there to understand it.

Once inside, for the only time in my politically active life, I was transported to a world I had not seen before. There was enough energy in that room to power a skyscraper. Teenagers, college students, whites, Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, middle-aged, elderly, every racial, ethnic, socio-economic, cross cultural ingredient of the American melting pot was there. The auditorium was a cauldron of American citizens who understand and have grasped the true nature of the tyranny which has befallen this nation, a conflagration, if you will, of passion and anger and joy and determination. This is where the fire starts this time. The eruption when Mr. Paul took the stage was deafening.

While I didn’t find much to cheer about on the foreign policy portion of his speech, it is on domestic policy that I find much agreement with Ron Paul. In fact, he could have lifted whole tracks of his speech from my book, Common Ground America. Foreign policy, while a crucial element of any president’s agenda, has slowly shifted from my center of attention to domestic policy, I having long come to the conclusion that the greatest threat to American freedom comes not from foreign governments, but from our own. Sadly, America has become one of the least free nations on earth. Increasingly, everything in our lives is being regulated by a faceless bureaucracy, to a degree that neither Orwell nor Huxley could have imagined. Want to add a room onto your house? Get permission. Want to get married? Get permission. Want to open a business? Get permission. Want to fly a flag in your front yard? Get permission. Want to own a gun? Get permission. Want to open a lemonade stand? Get permission. Want to play Frisbee on the beach? Get fined. Want to preach politics from the pulpit? Get fined. Want to protest your government without permission? Get arrested.

We have become a nation of regulations and licenses and permits, fines and punishment and intimidation by a remorseless, uncaring government. We have become, as Dylan sang in 1971, “One big prison yard”, in which our guards are always watching, always monitoring, always snooping, always threatening, always ready to swoop in with a fine or a cuff or a taser or a bullet should we wander outside the boundaries of what is allowed. The IRS can now revoke your passport should you owe too much on your taxes, making you not just a literal prisoner but a figurative one as well. It has been so long since we were truly free that we don’t even recognize it anymore. Freedom is slowly being snuffed out in American.

Obamacare is only the latest affront to freedom. While lawyers and pundits debate the constitutionality of this provision or that, what goes unstated is the insidious evil of the bill itself. Your very body, your existence, you own life will now belong to the state should Obamacare stand. If your physical body belongs to the state, how then is American freedom defined?

What exactly is our national security securing? Certainly not our liberty. We have been sacrificing ever larger chucks of our liberty to the gods of security for decades now and in the interests of securing our liberty have given it all away. Go to an airport if you want to witness the loss of liberty in all its glorious humiliation. One wonders if we actually were taken over by another power and our Constitution dismantled what exactly could they do to restrict our movements, monitor our activities and control our actions that would be any worse or oppressive than what our own government is doing right now?

This part of Mr. Paul’s message, if I have interpreted it correctly, is what resonates with me. All the other things pale in contrast to our becoming a nation of slaves.

Can Mr. Paul become the next president of the United States? At the risk of inflaming his supporters, I must say I doubt it. The media’s message is that he no longer exists, the question is settled and Mr. Romney is the Republican nominee. It is true Mr. Paul’s most ardent supporters are strenuously working at the precinct level to tilt the delegate count at the Republican convention in his favor. Do they have the numbers to pull that off? I don’t know. But knowing the ones involved locally I would guess their chances are better than 50/50. Will that type of organized effort be successful in enough states nationwide to put Mr. Paul over the top? Your guess is as good as mine. I’m not even going there.

So what did I come away with last night? It can be captured in one picture. Before Mr. Paul was introduced, part of his family took the stage: his wife, one of his sons, a smattering of cousins, nieces and nephews. That picture tells us all we need to know. They are us. They weren’t pulled from central casting, exquisitely coifed and finely tailored, prepped and ready for the cameras. No. They are a family. They are us.

Where personally do I go now? As I said, I have more internal debates than an outwardly sane person should admit. For over three years now I have been looking for an army - an army to take on the anti-Americans, the Communists, the statists, the outright criminals running our government. An army of citizens fiercely devoted to liberty and the founding principles of America. One rose up three years ago but slowly faded away. As I looked around the room last night, I saw a lot of faces I recognized from the past, from the ghost army that either became dispirited or no longer believed in the message. So this is where you all went….

The flame of liberty’s torch is no longer just slowly being extinguished. Each day brings new Executive Orders, new laws, new regulations, each more ominous than the last. Corruption in our government and our financial markets is rampant. The disease of dependency is infecting every layer of society. America is dying. We need an army of citizens, motivated and committed, to restore liberty in America, to breathe new life, new vibrancy into a nation on life support. We will not return our nation’s vitality with lawyers. We will not be prescribed the cures for our ailments by opportunistic politicians pedaling the latest edition of What Will It Take to Buy Your Vote. We simply will not. America is on the brink of flatlining.

Which logically only leads to one question:

Is there a doctor in the house?

Which logically only leads to one answer:

Ron Paul 2012″

————————–

-Adrian Murray, Fort Worth, TX.

In the olden days, it was the Democrats who claimed that everyone was a disadvantaged victim of prejudice, racism, the wealthy, or just society in general. And Democrats had a government program designed to fix things right up for you!

Today, the Republicans have jumped on the victim bandwagon and have started pandering to voters. They call this the tea party wing of the Republican Party, and it is chock full ‘o weak thinkers.

This new breed of Republicans doesn’t believe in the old Republican values of self-reliance, limited government, and limited regulation. On the contrary, they want to enact more and more laws to “protect” people from various alleged nefarious schemes. And the predicaments these folks are in, are, of course, never their own fault - they are victims here, and in America, being a victim is the highest accolade you can achieve.

What sort of victimization are we talking about? Here is a short list:

Victims of high gas prices: Driving an 8 MPG vehicle is a God-given right, and if we elect Michelle Bachmann, she’ll bring gas back down to 78 cents a gallon, where it belongs - you betcha! But the idea that maybe we consume too much fuel for no apparent reason (commuting to work in an 8 MPG vehicle, for example) is beyond them. They are victims here, of high gas prices, and those darn Arabs, who won’t give us our oil or those darn environmentalists who won’t let us drill baby drill!

Unemployment: Americans demand high salaries for very low-skilled jobs, and when these jobs all went overseas or were just eliminated, well, it had to be someone else’s fault. In the past, only Democrats subscribed to the fantasy that the Government could “create jobs” (or create wealth). But today, every Republican candidate promises to transmute tin-into-gold by creating jobs through government action.

Creeping Socialism: This is a hard one to parse, as not much has really changed in the last four years since Obama was elected. But let one of these tea-partiers bend your ear for a while and they will blather on about how “oppressed” they are under Obama, who any day now is going to Gay-marry their son to the boy next door and confiscate their guns.

Obama Care: The major provisions of this don’t kick in until after the next election, and other features are likely to be invalidate by the courts. The few provisions enacted already provide a few benefits to consumers, but nothing drastic. But yet, I have been treated to diatribes by people about how “Obamacare has ruined our health care system” already.

Immigration: One reason people claim they are out of jobs is that Mexicans are taking all those high-paying lawn service jobs. We are lead to believe that “but for” the Honduran busboy at the local restaurant, those $60-an-hour union jobs at the factory would not have left the country. In response to this, Republicans have enacted some of the most onerous government regulations in the employment sector - in several States - since the New Deal. Republican = less regulation? Guess again!

Taxes: The tea-partiers take their name from “Taxed Enough Already!” but Federal tax rates have not changed in the last few years - other than to LOWER the withholding tax in the last year as a stimulus to the economy. Local taxes have, of course, skyrocketed as property taxes have gone up, up and up. But on a Federal level, we have cut taxes (and even suspended the “death tax” for a year). Some crises. And yet, we are in serious financial trouble for doing so - but don’t raise MY taxes - I’m a victim here! I’m taxed enough already!

The problem is, the Republican Party today is a hodge-podge of special interest groups and attempts to pander to the same. So gone for good are “limited government” and “balanced budgets” if new regulations and agencies will pander to the electorate. During the Bush years, the budgets skyrocketed, and numerous new government agencies were created. Our tax code got larger, not smaller. And few, if any government agencies were downsized. Given the helm of government, the Republicans just did what the Democrats did - only worse.

And perhaps this is why they are not doing well in the polls. Americans today don’t want smaller government or fewer regulations - if larger government or more regulations will serve their political ends or even meet their emotional needs (such as the anti-immigration movement). We can’t fix the “mess in Washington” but we can toss a few illegal melon pickers back across the border. That will fix things, right?

Worse yet, is that the crop of candidates we have for the next Presidential election are sad, at best. Each is falling over the other to try to pander to a far-right agenda. And few are qualified to run for any elected office at all. Newt Gingrich? Rick Perry? It is hard to believe that the party takes these people seriously but somehow they do!

Increasingly, it seems the Republican Party is willing to identify itself with only a far-right social agenda but the economic agenda of less regulation, lower taxes, less spending, balanced budgets, limited government, and avoiding foreign wars is just off the table. They chant “lower taxes” but refuse to pass lower spending (they claim they want to cut spending, but the cuts asked for are what raised they voted for several years back!).

Oddly enough, the Democratic Party is becoming more the party of fiscal conservatism - with the Clinton years being the only time in recent memory where we had balanced budgets, an actual surplus in the government, and were paying down our debt - that an 8 years of progress and growth.

I hope the GOP can turn things around, as America deserves serious choices in any election, and strong opposition party is good for America. But so long as they tout the likes of Bachmann, Gingrich, and Perry, the GOP will be relegated to the status of a circus sideshow, not a serious political movement.

And to all you Sarah Palin-lovers out there - few people agree with you - not enough to elect her in a million years. Just drop it and move on. Might I suggest a rational candidate with some sort of formal education? It is a start. Just a suggestion! You’re wasting your money on the “Let’s Get Sarah to Run” campaigns. Even shes not that stupid.

Earlier this month, Huff posted to YouTube audio and video footage of the stop taken from Reichert’s dashboard camera. No shots were fired in the incident. No one was beaten, arrested or even handcuffed. Reichert found no measurable amount of contraband in Huff’s car. But Huff’s 17-and-a-half minute video raises important questions about law enforcement and the criminal justice system, including the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the drug war, profiling and why it’s so difficult to take problematic cops out of the police force. Read More

Political allegiances and views are sticky: if you significantly change them, you are potentially changing your relationships with everyone with whom you have shared them – perhaps including your wife, husband or kids etc.; you are potentially saying that you were wrong in hundreds of conversations when you insisted you were right; you may even have to stop doing things that you have been doing passionately – or start doing things that you’d rather not be bothered with.

When you’re discussing politics, then, you’re really not doing politics: you’re doing psychology. And if you’re a political activist, you are doing sales and marketing. Read More

But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.” Read More

The article gives a very detailed explanation of who Ron Paul is, what his ideas for the federal government are, and what his presidency would somewhat look like. Given its informative nature, getting the information out there in front of people is my primary concern. This whole movement is built on the notion of gaining and sharing knowledge with others.

As far as seeing my work pop up in other places, I love it. Spreading information is a great thing, so my work has always been pretty much “open-source” with the only requirement being that it be reproduced in its entirety with credit given. When reproducing other people’s work, I always ensure that this is done. It’s simply common courtesy and honesty.

The story behind the theft of my article is that it was reproduced in its entirety on SodaHead.com by Teri Whittlinger, however no credit was given and the byline on the article was her own. Wanting to give her the benefit of the doubt, thinking that maybe she had forgot to give credit in the article, I contacted her to rectify the issue. What ensued was her altering the article and claiming that I had just missed it the first time I looked at it.

Upon looking at the article for the first time, I scoured the page looking for the information, and even had a friend check as well. It was agreed that the information was not there. Fast forward to her altering the article, not only had she changed it to give the proper credit, but now the article was no longer there in its entirety, only an excerpt remained. Suffice to say, I was not happy about this bold and blatant lie and attempt at a cover up.

We need all of the contributors in this community that we can get, the more the merrier. However what we do not need are people like this, who will commit theft and then try to lie about it and cover it up. We have to deal with this enough from governments and political parties, we should not have to be wary of our own. Actions like this need to be looked down upon very severely by those in the Ron Paul community.

The main concern here is in ensuring that the integrity of our community and the works that we produce, is upheld. It is hoped that this article encourages others who witness those committing unsavory acts, whether it be theft, misrepresentation, or just being vile in their remarks towards others, to stand up and speak out against these people. These types only serve to hinder our integrity and must be shunned.

In our endeavors to bring our readers more content, this expansion will help us reach a more diverse audience, and with that, more diverse opinions and content. As always, our goal is to foster challenging discussions on a wide variety of political, social, and economical topics while promoting candidates, groups, and events that represent values consistent with Progressive Libertarianism.

Thank you for helping us make this endeavor such a great success!

The Fed purports to stimulate economic growth by expanding the volume of money and credit. This forces down interest rates and makes more money available to start new businesses or expand existing ones. However, while the currency units are created out of thin air, the purchasing power is not. The purchasing power has to come from somewhere.

As I’ve explained before, the expansion of money and credit really redistributes wealth from the holders of existing currency units to whoever receives the new money. When an individual “redistributes wealth” without the consent of its current owner, most people call it “stealing.” Now, the Occupy movement may not have a problem with that if it results in less disparity between rich and poor. However, that’s not what the Federal Reserve System is all about. The Fed steals for the 1%. Read More

It makes you wonder, is this happening in any way today in order to increase the dangerousness associated with drugs?

Read the article

Chances are the process of party politics and how to become involved with them, such as becoming a delegate, has not crossed your mind. It’s a complicated process, it takes a while, it’s difficult to participate, and party officials aren’t exactly pushing for everyone to know what’s going on.

With Ron Paul’s campaign this year to become the GOP nominee, he is using a very unique strategy to obtain the nomination for president, and this has many people learning for the first time how the nominating and delegate process works, and how unrepresentative of the people it really is. Prior to this year, most people have had very little reason to be involved at such depths in party politics. People are content to just vote one time in the general election, if they vote at all. Never mind bothering to participate in a party’s primary or caucus where all of the party’s candidates are selected for the general election.

Let’s go over what a delegate is. There are 2286 delegates that attend the national convention. Each state, based typically on population, is allotted so many delegates. This is similar to the electoral college used in the general election for presidents, where a candidate needs so many electoral votes, 270 to be exact, in order to become president, and picks up these votes by winning states. In the case of gaining the nomination for the party, a candidate needs 1144 delegates which is a simple majority of all of the delegates. Take for example Texas, which has 155 delegates. The Republican Party of Texas must elect 155 people to be delegates, and must elect alternatives in case the people elected as delegates don’t show up to the convention. Delegates vote at the national convention for the party’s presidential nominee.

Different states have different rules for how their delegates are awarded. Some states are winner take all such as Florida, in which Mitt Romney won all 50 delegates by winning the popular vote in the primary. These delegates are now bound to Romney and must vote for him at the national convention. Other states award their delegates proportionally where candidates collect delegates based on the percentage of the vote they take in the primary or caucus. If a state has 10 delegates and you win 30% of the vote during that state’s primary or caucus, you are awarded 3 delegates, which is 30% of 10. Those delegates are bound as well and must vote for you at the national convention. Then there are states where the delegates are both proportional and unbound, meaning that based on the percentage of the vote you win, you get bound delegates that must vote for you in at the national convention, but there are also unbound delegates that do not have to vote for anyone in particular. The simplest explanation for why this is the case, that there are delegates that do not have to vote for any particular candidate, is because this is how the parties designed the delegate rules.

You may be surprised to find out that depending on which state you live in, your primary/caucus vote may not even matter. Take for example Iowa, the first in the nation caucus. The people that vote in this caucus do not matter because it is non-binding. This means that the delegates chosen by the Iowa Republican Party can vote for any candidate at the national convention where the GOP presidential nominee is selected, no matter how well or bad that candidate did in the Iowa caucus.

So what’s the point of voting in states like this? Most people go to the primary/caucus and cast their vote for a preferred candidate and then go home. This is pretty much an opinion poll and nothing more. The real voting begins afterwards. Once the polls close, a precinct convention is held, typically where the voting was held earlier that day, and this is where people are selected as delegates. This can take a couple of hours to complete, to be effective you must have a decent grasp of Robert’s Rules of Order, which is the procedure used to conduct the convention, and to most the whole process is boring. This all serves to allow a small group of people to control the delegate process while the will of the people effectively goes out the window.

The process for selecting delegates varies from state to state but is fundamentally the same. It first begins with precinct conventions, as mentioned in the last paragraph, which take place the day of the caucus/primary. The next step is a county or district convention where delegates elected from the precincts hold votes to decide who will be sent to the state convention as a delegate. The state convention is the last stop before the national convention. The state convention is similar to the county or district convention. All of the delegates that were elected at the county/district conventions now vote at the state convention to decide which delegates will represent the state at the national convention.

This next part is a little tricky. In order to win the presidential nomination a candidate must attain the 1144 delegates needed to win. Often a candidate manages to achieve the required number of bound delegates before the convention rolls around. In this case, everyone already knows who the nominee is. However, when a candidate has not managed to reach the required number of bound delegates before the convention, the courting of unbound delegates begins. As stated previously, unbound delegates can vote for anyone they want. Candidates actively try to persuade the unbound delegates to vote for them in the national convention.

Now for an overview of how the national convention works. It will begin with a bunch of speeches and the setting of party agenda; however the main part of the convention is where the delegates from every state vote on who will be the party’s nominee. During the first round of voting, all bound delegates must vote for the candidate they are bound to, the unbound delegates can vote for anyone they want. If after the first round of voting no candidate manages to achieve the required majority of delegates, which is 1144, things change drastically. At this point all delegates become unbound, meaning they can vote for anyone they want, including people who did not run a candidacy. This means that after the first round of voting, ANYONE can become the party’s nominee, they must only gather the support of the required amount of delegates to win the nomination. This is known as a brokered convention and during this time the people who have become delegates have all of the power.

Earlier it was mentioned that Ron Paul’s unique campaign strategy is what brought this information to light for a lot of new people. Knowing what you now know about the delegate process, it is easy to understand the strategy that Paul’s campaign has employed. His goal is to get as many supporters as possible elected to the convention as delegates. Even if a delegate is bound to Mitt Romney, a Ron Paul supporter can assume that delegate position. During the first round of voting at the national convention, that person must vote for Mitt Romney, however during the second round they are free to vote for anyone they want, in this case Ron Paul.

So what does this mean for the Paul campaign? They have strategically organized in a superior way than all of the other candidates and have learned to use the rules and procedures in order to get as many of their supporters in the roles of delegates as possible. While Ron Paul is very unlikely to go into the national convention with a lead in bound delegates, he will likely go into it with the most supporters as delegates. This means that after the first round of voting, Paul may very well have enough delegate support to become the Republican nominee.

What does this mean for the rest of us? Well for Paul supporters, this is good news in that it is likely that their candidate will win the nomination if all goes according to plan. Overall though, it has opened a lot of new eyes to the nomination process, and with that, scrutiny. It raises many questions such as, just how representative of the people are these primaries and caucuses if ultimately in many cases a person’s initial vote doesn’t matter. How efficient is a system that selects the real power brokers, the delegates, in near secrecy due to the complicatedness and timing of the delegate process? How can a person that gets very little of the popular vote during the primaries/caucuses, or doesn’t run a campaign at all, end up being selected as a party’s nominee? This adds to the already towering list of issues with our system of voting and hopefully these revelations will lead to more representative voting options.

This process is very similar for both the Democrat and Republican parties, as many people heard of the Super Delegates back in 2008 during the Democrat primaries which are essentially unbound delegates. To add a little history here, Abraham Lincoln came into the Republican convention with only 22 bound delegates, and on the third vote managed to win the necessary 233 delegates to become the nominee. A brokered convention where a big underdog has come in and won has happened before, and could possibly happen again.

If inflation is just a general rise in prices as the popular thinking has it, then why is it regarded as bad news? What kind of damage does it do? Read More

“The truth is that government officials have deliberately engineered the system to assure that the jury trial system established by the Constitution is seldom used,” said Timothy Lynch, director of the criminal justice project at the libertarian Cato Institute. In other words: the system is rigged.

In the race to incarcerate, politicians champion stiff sentences for nearly all crimes, including harsh mandatory minimum sentences and three-strikes laws; the result is a dramatic power shift, from judges to prosecutors.”

Read the article here

“If austerity is the new black, the news has yet to reach the people who actually wield power in the capital. And if the Washington elite aren’t serious about cutting spending, they sure aren’t hell-bent on cutting red tape and regulations either. For self-evident reasons, George W. Bush and the Republicans soft-pedaled the fact that over the course of his presidency he hired 90,000 net new regulators; signed the Sarbanes-Oxley bill, which radically complicated corporate accounting practices; passed a record number of “economically significant” regulations, costing the economy $100 million or more per year; and, according to economist (and reason columnist) Veronique de Rugy of George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, spent more money issuing and enforcing federal regulations than any previous chief executive. Obama is continuing the trend, increasing employment at regulatory agencies by more than 13 percent and issuing 75 major rules in his first two years.”

Check out the whole piece, there’s a reason people are talking past one another and not to one another. People can’t even agree on the facts.

Paul 112 (29%)
Romney 101 (26%)
Santorm 23 (6%)
Gingrich 18 (5%)
Uncommitted 130 (34%)

The media is reporting 1 delegate for Paul and 7 for Romney, however delegates are unbound and so far have not been secured by anyone.

Through this contest, Ron Paul has collected 920,693 total votes in the primaries and caucuses. In 2008 his total vote count for all primaries and caucuses was 1,171,079, just 250,000 more than he currently has only half way through the current primaries.

Even if Paul doesn’t win, he looks to double his numbers from 2008.

The current delegate counts being reported by the media are inaccurate as well, as Paul is still very much in this race. Check out the video below for details.

Suing over high concession stand prices, it sets a bad precedent and will ultimately lead to price controls if unchecked. Every time price controls are implemented it never helps to create well-being in the economy, only destruction as the powerful engulf those who aren’t as well off and lead to essentially government sponsored monopolies and cartels.

So do movie theaters overcharge for the concessions and tickets? Hell yes they do and everyone should be rightly pissed about it. No one is going to argue against this.

The real question is, what is the proper course of action here? The answer is consumer activism. The great thing about movies is that we don’t NEED them, and that definitely gives us the upper hand. It will require some sacrifices on our part, but at what part in life has great achievement ever not required sacrifices?

In order to stop the high prices being charged by movie theaters, people must boycott them, refuse to buy their services and products. Not only must people refuse to do business with these movie theaters, but they must make a big public showing of it as well, taking time to write letters to their local newspaper, contacting local news and radio stations about it, sending letters to the theaters, forming groups in order to coordinate their actions, and doing everything they can to inform others of the boycott and the reasons for it. Starving the theaters of profits will force them to come down on their prices.

All it takes is some effort and self sacrifice. Is this too much to ask in order to achieve your goals?

For instance, you might be surprised to learn that right now in the U.S., it’s actually legal for the cops to… Read More

Monetary inflation is coming back to bite us in the form of a devalued dollar. You can thank the Federal Reserve for that.