United Liberty

Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan, a conservative turned liberal, wrote a post criticising the Tea Party movement for standing by while George W. Bush broke the bank only to protest Barack Obama for his spending measures. According to Sullivan, this isn’t based on disagreement with Obama for his big spending ways, rather the fact that he is black:

[T[he Tea Party, utterly indifferent to massive spending in good times by a Republican, had a conniption at a black Democrat’s modest measures to limit the worst downturn since the 1930s. Conniption isn’t really he right word: this was a cultural and political panic in the face of a president who was advocating what were only recently Republican policies: tax cuts, Romneycare on a national level, cap-and-trade, a W-style immigration reform, and a relentless war on Jihadism. They reached back to a time, when there were only three kinds of Americans - native, white and slaves. They even wore powdered wigs.

While I don’t necessarily disagree that conservative opposition to immigration reform is based on more than public policy, I completely disagree that the Tea Party movement opposes Obama’s policies just because he is black.

I don’t disagree that Bush was a fiscal nightmare, and it’s my belief that he set the Republican Party back several years. And shortly after the Tea Party movement started in early 2009, I criticized them for not calling out Bush’s spending spree.

Thomas Jefferson once said, ” I don’t care what my neighbor does as long as he doesn’t pick my pocket or break my leg.” I wish Rush and Rand Paul believed the same thing.

Recently President Obama changed his mind on gay marriage. That’s not a big surprise since one out of six of his bundlers, those who raise huge amounts of cash for his campaign, are gay. Neither is it a big surprise that Rush Limbaugh and the Religious Right are still against gay marriage. What is surprising is that Rand Paul agrees not with those who want more liberty for folks but with those who want some people to have less. I had hoped that Rand Paul would carry the Torch of Liberty into the 2016 presidential race, but I don’t think so after his remarks he made last Friday.

Rand Paul has been an ardent supporter of Liberty in the Senate since being elected. Often times he has been the lone dissenting voice arguing against war in Syria and Iran and the expansion of the federal government at home. That is why it shocked me to hear what he said about Obama and the president’s stance on gay marriage. Rand Paul said that “Obama’s remarks could not get any gayer.”

As I have previously mentioned, I am a Ron Paul supporter and have served as a grassroots coordinator and served in the delegate process. These write-ups are not so much “news” as they are “views of the revolution” from an activist’s point of view. I had originally done a recap of this past weekend’s state conventions. That can still be found below after I discuss the big developments from yesterday.

So yesterday afternoon I started seeing twitter postings that caught my eye, I then proceeded to open up my email inbox and read the following message from Dr. Paul.

Almost instantly, I saw a few retweets from Drudge Report on my feed. “Paul’s Out,” screamed the headline…it was yet another example of why I’m so glad I started boycotting that hack’s site almost a month ago over his complete silence of anything relating to CISPA (can’t make Republicans look bad). But I digress…

What proceeded over the next couple of hours was nothing short of information overload: Media outlets basically running with the MSM fallacy of Paul leaving the race or suspending his campaign mixed with Paul-friendly sites trying to squelch that misinformation with their own media surge. It finally got to the point where the campaign had to send out another communication. There were also fellow activists either talking like it was the end of the world or theorizing about how it was this Machiavellian stroke of sheer genius. And naturally, there have been surly comments of Paul “selling out” or trying to set up his son’s political future.

With the conservative sphere beginning to finally coalesce around Mitt Romney, like a soap opera that has just gone on way too long, the conservatives are now going into full defense mode of the Mitt and his hairdo. He may not be the best choice, but as far as they’re concerned, he’s the only choice.

Which leads to idiotic tweets like this:

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. That means if you’re not for Mitt Romney, you’re for Barack Obama.

— Kevin Eder (@keder) May 7, 2012

Or this:

At this point, not voting for Romney is like being in a plane w/ no working engines but not jumping bc you don’t trust parachutes. cc @keder

— Will Antonin (@Will_Antonin) May 12, 2012

Or maybe even this:

Hardcore libertarians should vote for Romney because he’ll at least give you something and Obama would take everything @kesgardner

— Adam D Seidel (@AdamDSeidel) May 13, 2012

No doubt these tweets are emerging because of fear that disgruntled Republicans may vote for Ron Paul or, heaven forbid, Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party, instead for the GOP’s presumptive nominee.

The filibuster has been brought back up in American politics. Frustrated by the failure to move the Import-Export bill out of his chamber (though it did pass last night), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has once again brought up the idea of the so-called “nuclear option” to get rid of the procedural tactic to stall legislation:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will not attempt to strip Republicans of their power to filibuster before the November election but is leaving open the possibility if Democrats hang on to the Senate.

The Democratic leader caused a stir on Thursday when he slammed a Republican objection to passing Export-Import Bank legislation without amendments and said he should have listened to colleagues who pushed for changes in Senate rules.

But Reid on Monday said he has no plans to attempt to limit Republicans’ ability to block legislation by a tactic known as the constitutional option — or, by critics, as the “nuclear option.”

“We’re not going to do it this Congress,” Reid told The Hill.
[…]
Democrats are leaving open the option of rewriting the filibuster rule if they keep their Senate majority. Republicans are unlikely to push for such reform if they capture the chamber because they are ideologically opposed to curtailing the power of the Senate minority.

Gary Johnson, the former two-term Governor of New Mexico (1995-2003) and 2012 Libertarian Party presidential nominee, has dropped his first ad of the general election campaign.

The ad, which has no narration, only captions, notes that Johnson vetoed 750 bills during his eight years in office, has the best record of job creation of any candidate running in the fall, including Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and left New Mexico with a $1 billion budget surplus at the end of his last term. The end of ad notes that the Libertarian Party isn’t just a party, rather it encompasses the “People,” urging voters to “participate in [their] freedom”:

Earlier this week it was reported that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin had renounced his United States citizenship rather than pay taxes on his share of the revenues of Facebook going public, saving him upwards of $100 million in capital gains taxes. The move raises eyebrows, it is becoming increasingly more popular rather than to face the higher tax burden in the United States, though Saverin, who was born Brazil, will owe some money, what is being referred to as an “exit tax.”

But some Senate Democrats aren’t willing to let Saverin off that easy. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has introduced legislation that would target Saverin and other people who renounce their citizenship to leave the United States for more tax friendly confines:

Presuming that Saverin moved to avoid paying taxes, Schumer and Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania on Thursday unveiled legislation to stop what they called a “despicable trend.”

Under their legislation, any American who renounces his or her citizenship for the purpose of avoiding taxes will be punished in two ways: They will be barred from re-entering the U.S., and their future investments in the U.S. will be taxed at a 30 percent rate.

Taking advantage of every Facebook one-liner available, Schumer said of Saverin, “Sen. Casey and I have a status update for him: Pay your taxes in full, or don’t ever try to visit the U.S. again.”