Michigan Presidential Primary Scheduled for January 15

The Detroit Free Press reports that Michigan's presidential primary is all set for January 15, 2008.

Michiganders should vote for and support Ron Paul when that day comes. Go Ron Paul!

Michigan House Democrats to Crack Down on Employers Hiring Illegal Immigrants

The House Democrats in my home state of Michigan are looking to penalize the state's private employers who hire illegal immigrants. Their aim is to make it a felony for private sector employers who knowingly hire "undocumented workers" (a politically correct term for illegal aliens) in the state.

Today's online edition of the Detroit Free Press reports:

LANSING – House Democrats want to make it a felony for employers to knowingly hire illegal or undocumented immigrants in Michigan.

A four-bill package would require employers to verify documents for new hires under federal rules, such as driver's licenses, passports or Social Security cards.

Businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants could be jailed and fined – up to five years and $250,000 for repeat offenders.

Also, legitimate state residents who lose their jobs to illegal workers could sue their employers for restitution, under one of the bills.

'Every job that goes to an illegal worker is one more job that is stolen from our own hard workers here in Michigan,' said Rep. Mike Simpson, D-Jackson, a sponsor of one of the bills.

Simpson said he’s heard many complaints from many construction companies that they are underbid for jobs by others who use cheaper illegal laborers, some of them from out of state.

Excuse me, but by what right does the state have to dictate to private employers who they can and cannot hire? Private employers have every moral and ethical right to hire whoever is qualified for the jobs in the state. It's called freedom of association, and private property rights also have a hand in this as well. Their call for "tough sanctions" or even "criminal penalties" for employers, whether they "knowingly" hire "illegal" immigrants (I prefer to call them "independent migrants," a term coined by prominent libertarian commentator Sheldon Richman) or not, is an assault on free enterprise. Moreover, the Democrats, who are just as imperalist and statist as the Republicans, are employing Republicanese on the illegal immigration issue, simply to buy special interest votes. This pretty much showcases the fact that immigration policy reveals much about who we are.

Considering the fact that independent migrants have rights as much as nativist Americans do, the sad fact is that government operation and control of the borders have proved to be nothing less than disastrous. When the Democrats decided to adopt the xenophobic rhetoric of the Republicans, they became, by default, very much like the Republicans, and in most cases, even worse than the GOP on the issue.

The fact of the matter is this: this is a country, not a country club. The attitude that independent migrants have "broken the law" by coming into the country, especially when they weren't even aware of our laws beforehand, is just plain ridiculous. As convoluted and vague as our immigration controls are, how any migrant would be expected to know every provision of U.S. immigration law is perplexing. When you hear xenophobic conservatives make arguments against immigration (legal and/or illegal), their chief complaints are that such migrants are here in the U.S. for the cardinal purpose of sucking the welfare teat. Other objections to their presence here are that they are taking away jobs, filling up our schools at taxpayers' expense, and receiving free medical care and getting drivers licenses at taxpayers' expense as well.

The fact of the matter is that hardly any immigrants that do come into the U.S. (whether legal or illegal) are going on the dole (anyone who claims otherwise is being intellectually dishonest and disingenuous). Migrants actually subsidize the U.S. economy more so than we subsidize them, a fact that is often obscured by the xenophobes in both major parties (although the xenophobes have dominant control of the GOP). They even pay taxes into the system (sales taxes, property taxes, rent taxes, and even Social Security), a fact that is also concealed from the public by the xenophobes and their Neo-Con allies. In a nutshell, the "employers-are-hiring-illegals" racket is a red herring that's served to ignore the real issue, which is government control of immigration.

The second part of the nonsense -- that the migrants are taking away their jobs -- is just putrid to the core. Migrants are mostly taking agricultural jobs, jobs that most Americans will not take, considering they pay way below minimum wage. Plus, the working conditions are a big factor as to why most Americans will not accept them. How many Americans (show of hands, please!) are more than willing and excited to take those very low-paying jobs, when it's cheaper to offer them to the migrants, thus lowering their labor costs?

Finally, the third part of their arguments -- the migrants putting their kids into our public "government" school system and seeking medical treatment at our hospitals -- is just another red herring. Those issues are government school and government health care issues. They must be separated from each other and from the "illegal" immigration issue, even though xenophobes like to smear migrants by implying that so-called "illegals" are at fault for causing the implosion of the welfare state, when it's actually the xenophobic conservatives and their statist allies on both the Left and the Right who are responsible for this, considering they refuse to abolish the welfare state and eliminate government management, central planning, and operation of immigration.

One more thing: the reason that most immigrants come into the country "illegally" is that it's too expensive for them to arrive here in the U.S. via the legal channels. It costs hundred, if not thousands, of dollars just to apply for a green card or a work VISA. Plus, waiting in line at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service) is a nightmare, considering you can be standing there for hours. Moreover, if you lose your legal paperwork to come into the country legally, the bureaucrats wouldn't give a hoot about it; in fact, they would tell you to fill out the forms again and possibly pay thousands of more in application fees (something that most poor immigrants can't afford to do). Those who do pay those fees are either wealthy immigrants or immigrants who have loved ones living in the U.S. and willing to sponsor them. All others are either unlucky or fair game.

I suspect that most of the anti-immigration arguments are mostly racist and xenophobic in origin. I realize that some conservative commentators object to the migrants being here, but I suspect that a lot of their thinking is rooted in inherent bigotry.

The solution is to get the government out of the immigration business and allow individuals cross freely, while establishing real free trade. While we're at it, let's abolish the state, legalize freedom, and restore a true free market domestically and abroad.

Ron Paul: More Than $12 Million For Fourth Quarter?

Ron Paul is expected to raise more than $12 million at the end of the fourth quarter. Unsurprisingly, this is making the Neo-Con talking heads very nervous, as they see him as more of a threat now than they ever did months ago.

According to Bloomberg.com:

Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Presidential candidate Ron Paul said he has raised more than $9 million in the past two months and he predicted his campaign will exceed its $12 million fourth-quarter goal.

'It looks like we can't stay under it,' Paul, a long-shot candidate for the Republican nomination, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's 'Political Capital with Al Hunt,' scheduled to air today. Paul said organizers expect a Dec. 16 fundraising blitz to bring in more than the $4.2 million a similar event raised on Nov. 5, an 'astounding' amount.

Paul said he has begun 'spending generously' in key early- primary states. He is competing in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada, and said he expects to have money to campaign through Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, when at least 22 states may hold primaries and decide the nomination.

Paul called his Republican presidential rivals, including frontrunner Rudy Giuliani, 'neo-conservatives' whom he couldn't support in the general election should his own bid fail.

'They think we're supposed to spread our goodness through force,' Paul said. For example, none will pledge not to wage war on Iran, he said. 'How could I support something like that?'

The Facts on Congressman Ron Paul

The Facts, a newspaper in Ron Paul's congressional district, has, since Paul's first foray into congressional politics, been -- if not terribly hostile -- very unfriendly to him.

The paper, as of recent late, has done an about-face for the most part by showcasing its support for him, considering it has been keeping a close eye on him for years.

It's an honorable thing for the paper to change its mind on the good Dr. Paul. After all, Ron speaks the truth about the issues. He sticks to his guns and has always and consistently voted in favor of principle over politics. The paper and its allies know that he can't be bought, not even by special interest groups who want to expand the size, cost, and scope of government.

It also shows that Ron means what he says. After all, given his clearly-consistent voting record, he is FOR constitutional government, unlike the other lame presidential contenders who pay lip service to freedom and consistently vote to kill it.

Ron Paul Supporters to Pack the Iowa Caucuses

Ron Paul is #4 in the polls behind Ghouliani (#3), the Huckster (#2), and Slime-ney (#1). However, he is ahead of McLame (#6) and Chumpson (#5).

According to the Iowa Independent regarding Paul:

Paul's support comes from the least likely corners of Iowa, making it very difficult to measure with "likely voter" polls. Cynics expect his unlikely coalition to stay home on caucus night, and they might; but if the depth of a candidate's support is one measure of his likely success in the caucuses, Paul has the rest of the field beat. While Huckabee, Romney, Giuliani, former Sen. Fred Thompson, and Sen. John McCain appear to swap supporters every few weeks, Paul's fans remain squarely in his corner. And there is the oft-ignored fact that polls show that a majority of likely GOP caucus-goers favor withdrawal from Iraq within six months, which many analysts are hard-pressed to explain.

(Hat tip to Lew for mentioning this.)

'Ron Paul Baffles His Pundits'

"With His Maverick GOP Bid." And frankly, it terrifies them.

The Detroit Free Press piece further notes:

STRAFFORD, N.H. -- There's no mistaking which house on Lake Shore Drive, about 45 minutes northeast of Manchester, is the one full of Paulites -- the almost fanatical supporters of Rep. Ron Paul. Signs are everywhere. On the back window of a brand new black Toyota, on the bumper of a green Geo: 'Ron Paul 2008.'

'We can run the whole New Hampshire campaign right here,' says Jim Forsythe, 39, from his driveway. "We're the hard-core supporters."

Like Paul himself, the Paulites are against the war in Iraq, against the growing federal bureaucracy, against the Department of Homeland Security, the income tax, against, as Forsythe says, 'politics as we've known it.'

(Thanks to Lew for his blog posting on this.)

The End of Billary

Murray Sabrin believes it's the end of Hillary as we know her.

(A nod to Lew for informing us freedom lovers.)

Nine Million and Counting

Here's a Ron Paul widget, showing Ron's total donations having surpassed $9 million.

(Thanks to Daily Paul for its coverage of that.)

Ron Paul Bad for Libertarianism?

Self-described "militant moderate" and political hack Jason Steck of The Van Der Galiën Gazette mimics the Ron Paul bashfest that was provoked by prominent "libertarian" Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy. Both Steck and Volokh claim that Ron Paul is "bad for libertarianism," simply because he isn't as libertarian as he claims to be.

Both of them take issue with Ron's position on the war, but more importantly, their biggest beef with him is his views on free trade, immigration, and school choice. While I find their issue with him on the immigration matter is a valid one, their issue with him on the other two stands are simply moronic and do not dignify a response.

Here's what Volokh and Steck say about Ron in their prospective blogs:

As the Club for Growth describes here, Ron Paul has opposed virtually all free trade agreements. Few ideas are more fundamental to libertarianism than free trade. As the Club has documented, Paul also has opposed school voucher programs. In both of these cases, in fairness, Paul claims that his position is based on the idea that some other approach - unilateral free trade or home schooling - is even more libertarian than what he opposes. Even if he is correct on these points, I see no libertarian virtue in supporting the far less libertarian status quo against free trade agreements and school vouchers respectively. Even if trade agreements and vouchers are not the optimal libertarian policies, they are surely superior to the status quo of tariffs and government monopoly schooling.

Perhaps worst of all, Paul has bought into the conservative nativist line on immigration. He not only favors a massive crackdown on illegal immigration but even seems to endorse the view that immigration should be "reduced, not expanded" whether legal or not. To my mind, the freedom to choose where you live and the right to move to a freer and more prosperous society are among the most important of all libertarian principles. From a libertarian perspective, our relative openness to immigration is one of the most admirable aspects of America.

Unlike in the case of free trade and school choice, Paul doesn't even pretend to argue that his position is based on the idea that there is some other policy that will be even more libertarian than the one he opposes. Instead, he clearly endorses the big goverment option of a "allocat[ing] far more resources, both in terms of money and manpower" to cracking down on illegal immigration and perhaps reducing legal immigration as well.

While I do disagree with Ron on the immigration issue (I concede that, to a minor degree, he has embraced the nativist line on immigration), I find it intellectually dishonest of these men to paint Ron as being against all free trade (all because he oppose free trade agreements that are managed by government) and education freedom (all because he opposes government-subsidized vouchers). Their grievance with him on the war in Iraq is also moronic, because the war itself was unconstitutional, illegal, and unjustified, and the American people were lied to about the war and snowed into supporting it (even though it's an unwinnable one) in the first place.

Finally, even though Ron hasn't adopted the neolibertarian line that these liberventionists prefer him to do, what Steck and Volokh fail to understand is that libertarianism is a political philosophy that advocates the absence of government intervention in all of our lives, foreign and domestic. By selectively supporting certain interventionistic policies and opposing a few others, these two men are hypocritical for criticizing Ron for being anti-libertarian on the issues, when they are far more anti-libertarian than Ron ever will be. By adopting the conservative mindset and mixing it with their libertarian ideology, these men are not libertarians, but actual conservatives who talk the talk but never walk the walk.

While Ron isn't exactly the most perfect candidate in this race and most certainly not one in the libertarian movement, he is far more libertarian than most of the hucksters that we seen in both the Libertarian and Republican camps (Wayne Allyn Root comes to mind). He may be 97 percent libertarian on the issues, and 3 percent anti-libertarian on several issues, but I'd rather take a candidate who is 97 percent right as opposed to a candidate who is 20 percent right (or worse yet, 2 percent right).

One more thing: Volokh pulls the "guilt-by-association" scheme on Paul by criticizing him for not publicly distancing himself from certain dubious parties who have come to endorse him and his campaign, parties such as the Stormfront neo-Nazi racists, 9/11 Truthers, and other loopy groups. While he is correct that Ron has not publicly spoken against these groups, he has no control of what groups flock to him. As long as he doesn't adopt their dubious and racist rhetoric, Ron has no formal and official associations with them, other than the fact that he has received donations from them.

UPDATE (11/23/2007): My good friend Chris Kemp has wanted me to correct one part on here. It turns out that he's right: Ron has spoken out publicly against Stormfront and other groups just like it. He has denied any kind of relationship with the group whatsoever. Therefore, the statement made by Volokh is out of line. My apologies for any misleading statements or misunderstandings on my part.

New York Times' Paul Krugman: 'Ron Paul Is A Friend of Corporate Fraud'

New York Times' columnist and Democratic shill Paul Krugman writes a short hit piece on Ron Paul in his Times' blog today. He claims to have done some research for tomorrow's column (possibly on Ron Paul?) and discovered a horrifying revelation that Paul opposes one of the most diabolical, vile, and putrid anti-free enterprise, anti-business regulations known in America: (gasp!) the Sarbanes-Oxley law. (Horrors!!!)

Krugman block quotes a paragraph of an April 2005 Times piece, in which it stated, in part, that Ron Paul, in his official capacity as a Republican congressman from Texas who outright espoused his opposition to the provisions of the act, introduced a bill to repeal Section 404 of the law completely. Ron was quoted as saying in the piece:

[The provision] has raised the costs of doing business, thus causing foreign companies to withdraw from American markets and retarding economic growth.

Section 404 states:

Section 404 requires companies and their auditors to assess the companies’ internal controls, which are the practices or systems for keeping records and preventing abuse or fraud.

Krugman then proceeds to sandbag Paul with the following:

Ron Paul, enemy of the Iraq war — and friend of corporate fraud?

This is the same Krugman who hints that Ron Paul supporters just "doesn't know about" these "scathing" skeletons in Ron's closet.

Krugman would have a clue if he had done his homework by learning that:

1. Ron Paul supporters, who are fairly libertarian/intellectual on the issues and honest to a fault, know exactly the destructive effects of Sarbanes-Oxley and are far more knowledgeable about this matter and other things than the Mitt Romney and Billary groupies who don't know a thing about the law. After all, those who are not affected by Sarbanes-Oxley have no clue as to what the law is about and how it hurts businesses and their employees from the top down.


2. Anti-totalitarian, anti-statist, anti-collectivist, anti-social engineering, and pro-freedom people support Ron Paul because he opposes Big Government and does dare to speak out against the establishment's pet programs.


3. Sarbanes-Oxley is totally unfair, unjustified, and ridiculous, considering it micromanages private management by forcing them to do costly internal audits of their financial operations, when most of them can find ways around them or just ignore them altogether. Plus, it is terribly convoluted and very vague in specifics. Moreover, it has led to significant stock decline and utter bankruptcy for companies, some big and mostly small.

If Krugman thinks that companies should and must be regulated, especially when their financial reporting must be closely watched by the government, then perhaps he's forgotten that the SEC has been outed as a failure for efficiently auditing its financial operations and keeping itself under financial control.

(Special thanks to KD for her look into Krugman's nonsense as well.)

Democrats Push Bill That Will Not End The Iraq War

The cowardly spineless and gutless Democraps, who never opposed a pro-Iraq War bill they didn't like, are at it again. They are touting a bill that will rescind a majority of the troops on Iraqi soil; however, the bill, if passed by both Houses of the Congress and signed into law by Herr Bush, will ensure that tens of thousands of the U.S. forces remain assigned to Iraq.

Here's a snip of the first paragraph of an article from AP Google News:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democrats' flagship proposal on Iraq is aimed at bringing most troops home. Yet if enacted, the law would still allow for tens of thousands of U.S. troops to stay deployed for years to come.

Of course, the proposal has come under fire from anti-war groups that want the troops out of there. As Tom Andrews, national director of the anti-war group Win Without War and an ex-congressman from Maine, appropriately put it:

[Y]ou've got more holes in here than Swiss cheese.

The story continues further:

The Democratic proposal would order troops to begin leaving Iraq within 30 days, a requirement Bush is already on track to meet as he begins reversing this year's 30,000 troop buildup. The proposal also sets a goal of ending combat by Dec. 15, 2008.

After that, troops remaining in Iraq would be restricted to three missions: counterterrorism, training Iraqi security forces and protecting U.S. assets, including diplomats.

It is terribly pathetic that the Democrats, who were elected to Congress on an anti-war platform in November of 2006, have long since cowardly backpedaled on the issue, considering they are deathly afraid of being pegged as "anti-American," "unpatriotic," and "pro-terrorist" by the neoconservative hawks in the GOP. Moreover, they refuse to show a backbone to their Republican counterparts, despite mouthing off their anti-war rhetoric. Why? Because they are as pro-war as the Republicans, proving furthermore that they never intended to pull the troops out of the war.

Interestingly enough, the Party of Jefferson and its cowardly sycophants, who keep making excuses for their unprincipled, self-serving leadership, have publicly noted in recent months that they weren't elected to bring the troops home from Iraq but to change the war strategy because of their dislike of how Bush managed the war. That certainly shows that they snookered the American people into voting for them in office, all the while remaining entirely loyal to the imperialists running the show in Washington.

Additionally, because of their true intentions having come to light by their own actions, it is a sign that they have betrayed their very own anti-war base. It goes without saying that most of them, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich and maybe Mike Gravel, have no convictions whatsoever. However, it is good that many others from that camp have turned to Ron Paul because of his consistent, principled record on the war, one that neither any of the top-tiered Democratic presidential contenders (including Hillary and Obama) doesn't have.

Things I Am Thankful For

A pro-freedom blogger sounds off on the things that she is thankful for on Turkey Day.

This is a great Thanksgiving post for freedom lovers of all stripes.

The Government Ruins the Lives of Families Blessed by Extreme Makeover Home Edition

The American Empire and its state regimes are destroying millions of lives of families helped by the hit ABC show Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

So much for the Bush regime's much-touted, much-beloved "ownership society" racket that Dubya was pushing as part of his unpopular "partially-privatized" Social Security program.

Happy Thanksgiving, Pro-Liberty Patriots

I want to wish my fellow pro-liberty patriots a Happy Thanksgiving today. Remember, as we celebrate Thanksgiving Day today, we must never forget the evils of the state.

Enjoy this holiday while it lasts!

Invade Pakistan?

Antiwar.com's anti-Big Government columnist and Washington watchdog Justin Raimondo on the American Empire's quest to invade Pakistan.

(Hat tip to RRDN for providing the link to the op-ed.)