The Freedom Bulletin

Photo by Gage Skidmore

Check out the Plan to Restore America if you haven’t already. What I love about Ron Paul is that he doesn’t just talk about balanced budgets, freedom, and the Constitution; he actually has has concrete, bold ideas to change America for the better. Paul’s budget plan would…

• Cut $1 trillion in federal spending in one year
• Eliminate the departments of Energy, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, and Interior
• Eliminate the TSA
• End foreign aid
• Repeal the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare)
• Audit the Federal Reserve
• Allow people to opt out of Social Security

None of these things is surprising if you are familiar with Paul and his libertarian brand of Republicanism, but it’s great to see them all spelled out together in one report, with graphs and tables to support them. Bruce Fein wrote a great column explaining the plan.

Congressman Ron Paul, photo by Gage Skidmore

Yet another Republican presidential debate took place tonight, this one in Las Vegas, Nevada. The candidates included Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum. Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman skipped the debate, and the awesome Gary Johnson, libertarian and former New Mexico governor, was left out, as usual. Ron Paul Flix has a roundup of everything Paul said, which I would highly recommend watching.

The low point of the debate, in my opinion, was Santorum’s argument against Cain’s 9-9-9 plan. I’m still not sure exactly what I think of the plan, but Santorum didn’t make a good argument against it. He said that Cain’s plan ”doesn’t have anything that takes care of the families,” such as child tax credits. But this should be an argument in favor of the 9-9-9 plan. First of all, population growth is not a good thing for the environment or for people’s quality of life as natural resources and open spaces become scarcer. How can anyone think it is a good idea to have the population keep growing and growing, as the amount of land stays the same? Plus, to use the tax code to reward people for having children is essentially the same thing as punishing people who do not have children. Taxing people the same, regardless of their marital or parenthood status, is much fairer.

Later, Santorum added, ”The basic building block of society is not the individual, it’s the family.” What a completely wrong idea, and completely contrary to the principle of individual liberty.

On a more positive note, here are my favorite quotes from Paul, who is definitely my favorite of the candidates who got to be in the debate:

“I don’t think that we should even things up by raising taxes.” (on the 9-9-9 plan)

“He asked the question, what are you going to replace the income tax with, and I say nothing, that’s what we should replace it with.”

“If you want better competition, better health care, you should allow the American people to opt out of government medicine. And the way to do this is to not de-emphasize the medical savings account but let people opt out, pay their bills, get back to the doctor-patient relationship.”

“Too long, this country has always put people in groups. They penalize people because they’re in groups, and then they reward people because they’re in groups…We need to see everybody as an individual, and to me, seeing everybody as an individual means their liberties are protected as individuals, and they are treated that way, and they’re never penalized that way. So if you have a free and prosperous society, all of a sudden this group mentality melts away.”

“I think Mr. Cain has blamed the victims. There’s a lot of people who are victims of this business cycle.” (on the Occupy protests)

“Foreign aid, that should be the easiest thing to cut. It’s not authorized in the Constitution that we can take money from you and give it to particular countries around the world…I would cut all foreign aid. I would treat everybody equally and fairly.”

“To cut military spending is a wise thing to do. We would be safer if we weren’t in so many places.”

GQ had an excellent article about GOP presidential candidate and former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson:

“With Gary, and it’s okay to call him Gary, it’s not so much the things he says and does that are spectacularly unusual (or spectacularly misguided, depending on your point of view) for a presidential candidate. It’s the things he doesn’t say and do.

Like now. He’s in a bike shop in Hooksett, New Hampshire. Elsewhere in this fine state, Mitt Romney has been back and forth, back and forth, being his robotic self. Shaking hands, slapping backs, lifting babies, smiling. Sarah came through on her bus tour. Even Ron Paul has been doing the hustle at donor house parties.”

Thank you GQ for bringing attention to Gary and his campaign. His pro-liberty views deserve to be shared with as many people as possible. Read the rest: “Is This the Sanest Man Running for President?“

Last night was yet another Republican presidential debate, this one in Orlando, FL and sponsored by Fox News and Google. And finally Gary Johnson was allowed to participate! He made some good points about cutting the federal budget by 43% and replacing the tax code with a consumption tax, but I thought the best moment of the debate was when he was asked who of the eight other candidates on stage he’d choose as his running mate – and he chose none other than fellow libertarian Republican Ron Paul.

“Well, that would be the guy three down, Congressman Paul,” he said to cheers and applause. “That would be the notion that this country is about liberty and freedom and that right now we are facing an extraordinary crisis, that if we do not address it now, we’re going to find ourselves in a monetary crisis that is going to leave us all with nothing.”

Now wouldn’t that be an awesome ticket?

Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has support from at least a couple of celebrities.

Grammy-winning singer Barry Manilow was in Washington, D.C. this week to speak to Congress about atrial fibrillation, and while he was there he told the Daily Caller about Paul, ”I like him. I like what he says, I do. I like what he says. I think he’s solid. I agree with just about everything he says. What can I tell you?”

Also, comedy actor Vince Vaughn is planning to introduce Paul at the Liberty Political Action Conference in Reno, Nevada. But his support is not exactly new. According to USA Today, the two have been friends for a while. Vince invited Ron and wife Carol to the premiere of his movie, Couples Retreat, and endorsed his book, End the Fed.

Pretty cool, huh?

Tonight’s Tea Party debate was an exciting one. The candidates seemed to treat Texas Governor Rick Perry as the frontrunner, and like at the last debate, they hammered him about his 2007 executive order requiring all sixth-grade girls in his state to be vaccinated against HPV.

Moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Perry point blank if that order was a mistake. He replied, “It was, and indeed, if I had it to do over again I would have done it differently. I would have gone to the legislature and worked with them.” But then he defended his decision, saying that he was just trying to prevent cancer and that, “I am always going to err on the side of life.” So Perry’s position on mandatory HPV vaccination seems to be that it is wrong to implement such a policy through an executive order, but it’s perfectly fine if the legislature does it.

Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was not happy about this. ”To have innocent little 12-year-old girls be forced to have a government injection through an executive order is just flat out wrong,” she said. “That should never be done. It’s a violation of a liberty interest.” Later she also brought up Perry’s ties to Merck, the company that produces the vaccine. Perry’s former chief of staff was a lobbyist at the company, and it donated to Perry’s re-election campaign.

Former senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) wasn’t too happy about Perry’s stance either. “I believe your policy is wrong,” he said. ”This is big government run amok. It is bad policy and it should not have been done… Let them opt-in but do not force them to have the inoculation.”

Thank you Wolf, thank you Bachmann, and thank you Santorum!

Some of my other favorite pro-liberty quotes from the debate:

“People are tired of spending money we don’t have on programs we don’t want.” ~ Rick Perry

“They say, ‘You don’t know how Washington works.’ Yes, I do. It doesn’t.” ~ Herman Cain

“An executive order should never be used to legislate.” ~ Ron Paul (on whether he would issue executive orders as president)

“What he should do is whatever he wants to do… That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks… We should actually legalize alternative healthcare. We should allow people to practice what they want.” ~ Ron Paul (on what a person who decides not to purchase health insurance should do if he gets sick and incurs large medical expenses)

“No state has a constitutional right [to force a person] as a condition of citizenship, to buy a product against their will… It’s unconstitutional, whether it’s the state government or whether it’s the federal government.” ~ Michele Bachmann

“This whole ‘Muslim world is attacking us because we are free and prosperous,’ it is just not true… We’re under a grave threat because we occupy so many countries.” ~ Ron Paul (he got booed for this remark but he handled it well, and it makes sense to me)

“There’s no authority in the constitution to be the policeman of the world.” ~ Ron Paul

Massachusetts might have a lot of questions on the 2012 ballot. On Wednesday, 23 ballot initiatives passed Attorney General Martha Coakley’s review and now will need to get 68,911 signatures by this November and (unless the legislature takes action) 11,485 more by next July.

They include:

• Giving people 3 days to cancel car purchases
• Expanding the do-not-call law to include charitable organizations that use telemarketers
• Amending the state constitution to require legislators to ensure that all people have “comprehensive, affordable, equitably financed” health insurance (this won’t appear until the 2014 ballot because constitutional amendments require the approval of 25% of the state legislature two sessions in a row)
• Limiting annual increases in water and sewer rates to 2.5%
• Legalizing medical marijuana (website)
• Legalizing assisted suicide for people with terminal illnesses (website)
• Creating a Citizens’ 9/11 Investigation Commission
• Requiring car manufacturers to share information with repair shops that they need to repair vehicles (website)
• Banning car insurance companies from setting prices based on credit score, education, or occupation
• Banning certain types of fishing equipment that could endanger whales
• Establishing consequences for teacher evaluations (website)
• Expanding the bottle deposit law to include water, juice, and other drinks
• Repealing the state’s individual health insurance mandate (website)
• Allowing grocery stores to sell wine
• Requiring the RMV to notify drivers, when suspending or revoking their licenses, of the exact laws they are accused of violating
• Legalizing secretly recording public officials who are performing their official duties in a public place

Among the initiatives that did not make it through were one to develop three casinos, one to require competitive bidding for energy contracts, and one to require people to provide photo ID in order to vote. The latter question’s backer, Olivier Kozlowski (and radio host Michael Graham) criticized the AG’s decision, saying, ”In Massachusetts, the cheapest ID you can get from the Registry is $25. If there’s someone out there who doesn’t need an ID for anything else in their entire life other than voting, then their ‘freedom of elections’ has been infringed upon, under the Massachusetts constitution.” I actually agree with the AG on this one. A similar ID requirement was upheld by the Supreme Court in Indiana, but photo IDs are free there. To charge $25 for an ID and to require an ID in order to vote is to charge $25 to vote. While I understand why people want to make voter fraud more difficult, requiring people to purchase an item in order to vote is tantamount to a poll tax, and this simply infringes upon the right to vote.

Sources: Mass.gov, MassLive.com, Boston Globe