United Liberty

“You raise the taxes, people pack up and leave, you f**king retards. You guys don’t understand that concept?” - Adam Carolla

Reason TV recently sat down with Adam Carolla, a comedian, former co-host of The Man Show and host of The Adam Carolla Show, to discuss taxes, how big government has destroyed Los Angeles and Hollywood, individual liberty, drug laws and much more.

There is some language, but it’s hilarious.

This is frightening. There is a proposal in the United Kingdom that would require all earned income to pass through the government before it goes into the pockets of workers:

The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.

The proposal by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) stresses the need for employers to provide real-time information to the government so that it can monitor all payments and make a better assessment of whether the correct tax is being paid.

Currently employers withhold tax and pay the government, providing information at the end of the year, a system know as Pay as You Earn (PAYE). There is no option for those employees to refuse withholding and individually file a tax return at the end of the year.

If the real-time information plan works, it further proposes that employers hand over employee salaries to the government first.

They already have the income tax withholding, just as we do in the United States. However, this proposal would essentially make all income property of the state. They’ll decide how much you can have of what you’ve earned. You’re just property of the state. They own you.

I wonder how long it’ll be before thisiidea is pushed in the United States.

The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press.” - Thomas Jefferson

Today is Constitution Day, a day set aside by Congress, a body that largely ignores our nation’s founding document. What were once viewed to be basic natural rights, the concepts of life, liberty and property are subject to the will of the mob for the benefit of the “common good.”

This isn’t something that happened when Barack Obama or when Democrats took office, it has been going on for some time (more on that in a second). Not only are Democrats and Republicans to blame, but “We the People” also deserve a share of the blame,

While testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in 2008, Bob Barr warned, “Every administration that comes in takes the powers that it inherits from its predecessor as a floor, not a ceiling.” During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama promised to reign in the power of the executive, including some of the expansions claimed by his predecessor. However, we seen a further erosion of esstential liberties and limitations placed on our government by the Constitution.

I’m going to say that Round 1 was everyobody draw Muhammed day.  Round 2 is the Cordoba House.  Round 3 is the no-name pastor from FL who threatened to burn some Korans.

I’m not going to keep score, that will be decided by history, but am I right in assuming that Islam is opposed to Free Speech?  We are seeing again and again how Muslims around the world threaten violence and take violent action when Westerners exercise Free Speech.  I’d even go so far to say that it’s American to be offensive and get offended.

I wanted to share several quotes from a well written article on newsjunkiepost.com, where Liam Fox analyzes the offensive actions of Free Speech and their affects.

When demonstrations started in Indonesia, the President of that country, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, called President Obama and requested that he intervene and stop the planned burning of the Korans in Gainesville, Florida. American and NATO embassies were threatened by angry mobs. Rather than hold the protesters in his own country accountable for their violent and destructive actions, the chosen strategy was to ask the President of the United States to require one of his citizens to adhere to Islamic law. No one asked what President Yudhoyono did, or said, to have his citizens take responsibility for their own reaction.

The principle that offence trumps the right of expression is the foundation of the censorship that allows blasphemy laws. The fact that the restriction is imposed by society on itself, because of a sense of fear, creates an even greater chance that such an injustice may take hold and become institutionalized.

Last month, Missouri had the opportunity to weigh in on ObamaCare as 71% of primary voters cast ballots in favor of Proposition C, a referendum rejecting the individual mandate, a centerpiece of the “health care reform” law.

A similar ballot measure, Amendment 63 or the “Right to Health Care Choice” amendment, will be on the ballot in Colorado this fall. If passed, this amendment would make it unconstitutional for the state government to force individuals to purchase health insurance and asserting the Tenth Amendment and federalism against the individual mandate of ObamaCare.

And in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican assumed to have presidential aspirations, is doing what he can to stop ObamaCare:

Pawlenty, R-Minn., today signed an executive order forbidding his state’s agencies for applying for new grant programs made available under President Obama’s health care law.

Pawlenty said he has identified some 15 categories where he believes the new law would conflict with Minnesota policies, including a new sex education program, where the governor rejected an $850,000 grant yesterday.

Reason TV recently spoke with legal scholar John Eastman about the Commerce Clause, myths of the “living Constitution” and how we got to the point that government believes it can do anything it wants without limitations. This is a must watch video:

It’s been a long time since I last interviewed Dan Carlin, host of the Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts. That doesn’t mean that he’s stopped being interesting, however. In this installment, I asked his unique, historically based perspective on China, Iraq, the United States military and marijuana.

I think that’s going to be a pretty accurate statement in any society where warmaking becomes a regular feature of the system. Once you develop a major societal infrastructure to support such a military establishment, you begin to build up a vast array of interests (both in supplying and providing for such an entity, but also for ways to employ it that would benefit someone). These interests have a way of bending and warping the nation-state’s priorities and interests.  I think that is something that is one of the lessons the writers of Classical Antiquity try to pass on to us.  The people who founded the United States read those authors and understood those lessons, and tried to heed the warnings of the Greek and Roman writers and keep those “perverse incentives”  under control by limiting the growth of a large standing army and by counseling an avoidance of things like “  entangling alliances”   that could drag you into someone else’s wars.

Brace yourself for a shocking revelation. The New York Times called for Congress to let those evil tax cuts for the evil “rich” to expire:

Americans need to hear a serious debate about how the country can meet the twin fiscal challenges of supporting the weak economy now and taming the budget deficit as things improve. That debate is not happening in Washington, and it is certainly not happening on the campaign trail.

The Republicans are insisting on extending each and every one of the tax cuts forever. It is impossible to square that demand with their calls to reduce the deficit, so they do not even try.

President Obama is right when he says the country cannot afford to extend all of the tax cuts. He wants to let the tax cuts expire on the top 2 to 3 percent of American households (couples making more than $250,000 a year, individuals making more than $200,000) and permanently extend them for everyone else. The problem is that a permanent extension of the so-called middle-class tax cuts is also unaffordable.

It makes sense to extend them temporarily, because the weak economy needs the boost. But more revenue will be needed in years to come to keep rebuilding the economy and meet health care and other obligations to retiring baby boomers. That means more Americans — and not just the rich — are going to have to pay more taxes. For all the politicians’ talk about deficits, no one is saying that.

Did you catch that? Not only is the editorial board pushing for the cuts for the “rich” to expire, which I would submit to you includes the job creators in our economy, they are also advocating that the tax cuts for the middle class also be allowed to expire.

A new video from Reason examines how the Obama Administration has helped bring the libertarian electorate, and libertarian ideas, to the forefront of American politics:

Penn Jillette, a magician, comedian and libertarian, recently spoke with BigThink.com about distrust of government and misconceptions of libertarianism. The interview opens with this:

I believe that our country, uniquely for the time, was founded on mistrust for the government, which is such a heady and beautiful idea. The idea that we have all the rights in the world. We have complete and utter freedom and we give up very specific freedoms in order to have a government that will protect the other freedoms.

Such a profound idea and so deep, and so wonderful. And I think that it was so weird to see all the people who said that dissent was part of their job during the Bush Administration turn around and say that we were all supposed to rally behind Obama. I mean, I disagreed with Bush and Obama tremendously… and on the exact same issues. And the only issue that really matters to me is wars and killing people overseas. I’m against them… and I was against them when Bush was doing it and now that Obama is doing it more I’m against it too. And I think that it’s part of the joy and the wonder and the brilliance of the ideas of the United States of America that whoever is in power is questioned and beat up.

I was asked… and I’m going on the Joy Behar Show later today and you get questions ahead of time, unlike here. They lay stuff on you ahead of time. And it was Obama said he wants to figure out whose ass to kick and that before he was busted for being not emotional enough—too cold. And now he’s being busted for being too straight. How can he win? And my answer is: he’s not supposed to win. He’s the President. They’re supposed to be millions of people disagreeing with him on everything and busting him on everything.