Thanks in advance!

The only person consistently talking about the Constitutionand constitutionality: Ron Paul. The deficit, spending, and how to fix it: Ron Paul. The others — what you can get from government.

Just remember — those “favors” always come with a price.

It will remove legal safeguards for internet providers, big pharma will be able to knock generic drugs out of the running and keep prices artificially high, and big media will be able to do the same with small media providers. It’s cronyism and monopolism on a global level, and yet another excuse for a massive, bloated, overpowered supranational bureaucracy. And it’s no surprise the law originated in the United States and Japan.

To be fair, the pharmaceutical industries are most healthy in these two nations, where there is enough of a profit margin to develop new drugs, but where the most intrusive, convoluted, and abusive regulations keep their products from getting to the market in a timely manner. Often European markets see the roll out of these products before the US and Japan ever do, but they are also price fixed — another drain on the profitability of creating medicines. I can see why they are looking to protect themselves, but I would rather see a streamlining of FDA rules and the end of price fixing in other nations. We could see a quicker adoption and recouping of the massive investment it takes to get a drug to market (and that doesn’t touch the hundreds of medicines that either fail or never get through testing.)

Drugs are an interesting problem for intellectual property laws — there is a manifest product that comes out of them; I would think defending a patent on the physical product is more appropriate than to tie it to IP legislation.

This is an infinitely more aggressive and dangerous bit of legislation, and people need to come together to stop it.

“If [copyright infringement] was theft and it was property, we wouldn’t need a copyright law, ordinary property laws would suffice,” founder Rick Falkvinge told the Guardian in a recent interview. He is partially correct — intellectual property is a slippery thing; once an idea, invention, orbit of art is out in the public sphere, it is no longer exclusively the property of the artist, his estate, or the big conglomerate that probably claims ownership (worse, they have begun trying to snap up IP that is not theirs, including material already in public domain [spurring a recent court case where the Supreme Court found public domain works could be recopywritten.])

Here’s the problem: once an idea is out in the public sphere, people will use it as they wish. You cannot, for instance, control the use of a popular song — once people can hum, play, or sing it for themselves, it’s not really property anymore. You hope people will be honest enough to attribute the work to the proper folks, but as someone who has had my material show up — uncredited — on the internet, you can’t do too much. I recognize that anything I throw up on the web is no longer mine.

More important than the copyright issue, the Pirate party shows a trend that I’m seeing in young folks here in the United States, and in other countries: pirates are part of a greater struggle — the main ideological struggle of the 21st Century, I would suggest — between crony-authoritarianism and individual freedoms. We see it in the libertarian-based arguments pushing the Republicans (unwillingly) toward fiscal conservatism over the central planning of Progressivism. We see it in the SOPA/PIPA fight. We see it in the vast pushes in the US for more self-defense rights over the British “wait for the police and hopefully we’ll get there before you bleed out” model. We see it in the youth movements in the Middle East which are being perverted by authoritarian religious fanatics. Most especially we see it in the battle for free use and speech on the internet — perhaps the most liberating, democratizing, and for that reason, dangerous to centralized authority (be it corporate or governmental) technology since the printing press.

1) Obama has learned nothing. Bill Clinton got spanked in a mid-term election and realized that his mandate was razor-thin. Obama has learned nothing: he intends to continue poking Congress with governance through executive order (a direct attack on Congressional power which was purposefully designed to stop royal dictates from the Oval Office), he wants to continue with cronyism in green energy — and apparently wants to expand it to the military, he cannot see any of the mistakes he has made. In short, he is the typical bureaucrat: full of conceits — believing his intellect is great, his wisdom more powerful, and his plans incapable of failure (and when they do, it’s the subject in question’s fault.)

2) Cronyism and corruption will remain enshrined in the administration. The president gave us the same speil on degrading infrastructure — (You borrowed trillions of dollars…did you spend any of it on rebuilding roads and bridges? All we saw in New Mexico were signs declaring the still-degraded road was part of the federal reinvestment.) We heard about green energy and a “we don’t have enough oil” toss off line. (Incorrect, more oil is being found all the time.) Federal-backed mortgage refinancing. Because we haven’t lost enough money on Wall Street, GM, and green energy companies…now we’re going to lose money on over-priced houses that people were stupid enough to buy. And he still wants to tax millionaires and higher more…because taking more money from the people that use it to hire people is a great idea. But hey! he’s going to cut regulations! We’ve heard this before and the new regulations cost about $230 billion. The cuts will take $2 billion in BS red tape out of the way. That’s equivalent, right..? At least in bureaucratic math (zeros count for nothing, right?) Oh, and we’re going to go after banks for predatory lending…that’s sure to loosen up the money supply. And, of course, they won’t go after the banks they bailed out (the worst offenders); it’ll be that neighborhood bank that is doing well and it managed honestly.

3) They still don’t understand economics at the White House. Paraphrased: The tax code is too complex! So let’s add another rule to the tax code to stick it to those people who were successful! Worse — he has a “blueprint” for the economy. Blueprints are for building static objects. The market and economies are living things that change quickly, based on the needs, wants, and innovations of those millions involved in it. At every attempt, economic planning has failed. Look at Europe now. Look at the Soviet Union, China prior to unleashing their economy, the mercantilism of Spain in the 16th Century and forward.

It does not work. Politicians do not know better. Even the few that are smarter than a mushroom cannot plan the interactions of 307 million people.

4) The president really like imperial power. He complained about Congress and gave us statements like, “With or without this Congress, I will keep taking actions…” He love those executive orders. He killed a massive construction project (you know, the ones he keeps touting as our salvation, economically) with a stroke of the pen, as well as denying Americans more and cheaper fuel. But hey, that means Warren Buffett’s railroad gets to keep moving oil more expensively. Even more chilling to me is the president’s implication at the beginning and end of his speech that the military is a good model for the nation.

Mussolini thought so, as well. So has every dictator. The military is a centralized, top-down arrangement that seems very efficient from the outside. That’s because it has one purpose: kill people and break their stuff. The people in the military have no right to speak against the chain of command (politicians included.) You have no freedom of movement, no ability to call out sick, crappy health care (no dental, practically, when I was in) — you are property of the state.

The SOTU speech gives us a glimpse into the authoritarian, conceited, and myopic thought processes of the Progressives (in both parties.) It’s not a pretty picture.

There’s Mitt Romney — a robotic establishment hack that is just as big government progressive as Obama, but with half the black. Worse, he can’t get through a debate without apparently running a pre-recorded set of responses. But I guess that’s needed when you’re animatronic. he’s very proud of his budget busting health care boondoggle in Massachusetts – the model for the so-to-be disastrous Obamacare. But like Obama, he’ll throw our tax money to those big money folks that anointed him, but with more to the military-industrial complex.

There’s Newt Gingrich — a man so unlikable and corrupt that the Democrats are salivating for his nomination. He might be good at throwing down on debate moderators, but that gets old; his response on the merits of work over welfare are brilliant and spot on…but his tendency to authoritarian statements about executing marijuana users, firing federal employees who don’t express his lordship’s opinion, and his desire to bankrupt the nation on space exploration (and I like space exploration — I just want the FAA out of the private developers’ way) all make him not just a terrible choice, but a truly terrible choice. And you know why? Because he’s obviously a terrible choice. Here’s a bit more: he was tossed out of Congress by his own party for corruption.  His contracts from Fannie Mae show he was a lobbyist for the most ineffective government secured business in history, and one of those responsible for the collapse of the economy. He talks a big game about balancing budgets and cut deficits, but this guy couldn’t even spend wisely with his own credit…how’s he going to handle ours?

And just in case these three weren’t intrusively meddlesome for you, there’s the petulant sweater vest model from Pennsylvania — a man who voted for every big budget item the Bush administration tossed their way, who wanted to insert the Congress into the life and death choices of a family not even in his state, and who is wholly unelectable outside of Iowa and a few places in the deep south.

That leaves the “crazy” candidate: Ron Paul wants to end our overseas adventurism (which would save money and lives.) That doesn’t sound too crazy to me. He wants to downsize our military commitment in Europe and South Korea — both fully capable of funding and mustering their own defenses. That doesn’t sound crazy to me. He wants to downsize government, and hold legislation to constitutional mandates — something the Congress oath requires them to do. That doesn’t sound crazy to me. He wants to stop spying on other nations. I think that’s naive. It’s not crazy. Most point to his blaming the US for the 9/11 attacks, and I agree it has a “you shouldn’t have been wearing such provocative clothes” sort of feel to it…but he’s not entirely incorrect. We’ve been meddling in the Middle East since the 1950s with little to show for it. He’s being accused of racism…and maybe, personally, he is. But he’s held to constitutional governance and budgetary and monetary policies that are solid and move power out of the hands of unelected and quasi-treasonous bankers at the Federal Reserve. That’s not crazy. And unlike the others, it’s consistent and in keeping with American principles regarding the danger of big, powerful government.

On the Libertarian Party side, there’s Gary Johnson — who has all the best ideas of Paul, but without the naivety on foreign policy.

So who’s the crazy choice? Paul or Johnson…or voting for yet another progressive thief looking to take your rights and money like Obama or the other Republicans?

Just imagine if they had the House again….

The senator refused. To his credit, he did not remind them of Article 1, Section 6 of the United States Constitution that denies law enforcement the detention of an elected congressional official while on route to the capitol unless under charges of treason, or the commission of a felony. (In other words, they had zero legal right to stop him.)

While he was held, the TSA officers refused to allow him to leave a holding cubby. The TSA does not have the authority to detain you; they can have law enforcement remove you from the airport — their charter does not allow for detention. It also does not require you to submit to their molestation — you may simple refuse to travel. Do not let them tell you otherwise.

The TSA trotted out their usual “we don’t profile” line of crap, even though it’s peculiar that they would choose a senator bent on the dismantling of their heinous organization. I like Paul’s take on it: that the machines are rigged to go off randomly to excuse the fondling of travelers. Either that or they don’t work.

Typically, this administration sided with authoritarianism. I’m surprised they didn’t nuke the airport with a Reaper drone, just to be sure. It’s not like the president has been shy about killing US citizens with the things.

It’s time to end the TSA, as well as the Department of Homeland Defense. Maybe a good cleaning of the CIA and other intelligence agencies is in order (that was sarcasm — they need to fire just about everyone in a assistant direction postion and above and hire some actual operators to run the place.) That should save us a bit of coin right off the bat.