Consider the following.

1. If you pay an income tax to the United States government, this can be interpreted as saying a percentage of the time you spend laboring is not your own, but the government’s. (In principle, so long as the government can tax labor, then all your labor is the government’s, but that aside …) If your income tax is say 20%, then 20% of the hours you work is labor done for the government. What is it called when no matter how hard you labor, a certain percentage of what you gain will be given to someone else?

2. One of the largest expenses the United States government must pay is to service its debt. The United States government currently has a debt that numbers in the trillions of dollars (perhaps $9.1 trillion). Just as you must pay interest on your credit card debt, the US government must pay interest on its debt. While I’m not sure what the number is, I would guess that perhaps about 10% of money raised through income tax is to pay interest on debt that the US government owes. Note that’s only interest. Debt is never paid down. (Here’s a link to the Federal budget. Net interest payments for 2007 are estimated to be about 8.6% of the budget. )

3. Now putting 1 and 2 above together, that means that if you are a United States citizen and you pay income tax, then a percentage of your labor is for interest payments on the money the government has borrowed (and has no plan to pay back). So 2% of your labor is to make interest payments on government debt. You have no choice over this, as the government legally owns this portion of your labor.

4. Now that’s not all. I would guess that about 25% of United States debt is held by foreigners. That would be mostly Chinese and Japanese along with some others (Saudi Arabia for example). So what’s that mean? If you consider all of the above, a portion of the time that you labor each day is so you can pay foreigners interest payments on money that your government has borrowed from them (and has no plans to pay back). Very roughly about 0.5% of your time. If you work 250 eight hour work days in a year, then about 10 hours for that year would have been spent laboring for foreigners.

These are admittedly very loose numbers. However, they do make their point. Every year, if you are an American and pay income tax, you spend a portion of your time laboring for foreigners.

Note, that as you are only laboring to pay interest, this claim on your labor is infinite. So long as the debt is never paid down, you must pay interest payments to your foreign creditors forever. The claim they have on you and your labor is infinite and forever so long as the debt continues to exist.

To the extent that creditors own their debtors, and to the extent the US government owns your labor, then these foreign creditors own you, at least if you are a US citizen.

For now all they ask you to do is to labor about one and a quarter days a year for them. It’ll probably be more next year and more the next.

Only a day or so you say. Hm. Well, the point is, you’ve been bought and paid for, by foreigners. And it’s your government that has sold you. Is that what you sent your local representative to Washington to do? Ironically, the revolution of 1776 was to end tax payments to foreigners (the British). How strange it would have sounded to the founding fathers if you told them all Americans labor over a day a year to send money to foreigners.

Anyway, that’s how income tax and foreign debt work. When deciding which candidate to support in next year’s presidential election, look for the one who wants to reduce government debt and end the income tax. That’s the candidate who is fighting to have your liberty returned to you. That’s the one who doesn’t want you to spend a portion of your time each year working for foreigners.

That would probably be Ron Paul.

How should political donations be handled? Should any American have the inalienable right to donate money to his or her candidate of choice? Or should a litmus test be done in regards to each person’s belief system, such that they have to qualify in order donate? How’s this supposed to work in a free society?

Donating money to a political campaign is a free expression. It is a fundamental right we should all have. No one should ever seek to remove that right from a person.

Is America the type of country where such a right could be lost? Where a person’s freedom to express their opinion through political donations can be curtailed? Unfortunately yes. Returned donations are all too common, in fact. An accusation is launched in the media that such-and-such a person represents such-and-such an idea and that he or she donated to so-and-so’s campaign. Candidates react so fast in kowtowing to the media, that one gets whiplash just watching them. Candidates react this way, despite the fact that it is unethical to do so.

Political donations, so long as they are lawful, should never be returned. It’s a fundamental right that people have. We don’t allow people the freedom to express their opinion, only when we agree with that opinion. That’s nonsensical and dangerous. In this campaign only one man has actually followed this principle, and the media is making a big deal about it, but sending out the wrong message.

On December 16, 2008 Ron Paul set a record for one day political donations. He brought in over $6,000,000 from over 58,000 individual donors. Despite how big this news was, I didn’t get a CNN news bulletin in my email box. (For comparison, I’m pretty sure I got one when Paris Hilton was arrested.) The media did note the story, but it was hardly front page news. That Romney criticized Huckabee for criticizing Bush, now that was a top story.

Now one month ago, an idiot racist, who runs a idiot white supremacist site called Stormfront, donated $500 to Ron Paul’s campaign. Now, suddenly that’s news. Huh? Who cares whether this guy donated to Ron Paul’s campaign or not? That’s his right. Maybe he likes Ron Paul’s views on eliminating the IRS. Whatever. Who cares. Clearly, he doesn’t represent Ron Paul’s views.

To give you an idea here of how the media is treating this, if I go to Google news and search, “Tea Party” and “Ron Paul” I get a little over 350 hits. If I type in “Stormfront” and “Ron Paul” I get over 200 hits.

So Ron Paul having the biggest political contribution day in the history of the world is only marginally more important than Ron Paul getting $500 from a white supremacists one month ago?

One is huge news, the other isn’t even newsworthy.

Ironically, the effect here is that not only do the mainstream media have a stranglehold on traditional media, they are also (perhaps unintentionally) attempting to restrict how free individuals express their opinion through their political donations. It doesn’t matter whether the man is an idiot with evil views or not, that’s his money and he should be free to donate it as he sees fit.

The real problem, as I see it, is that so many candidates really are bought and paid for. They stand for nothing. They pander to a bunch of special interest groups. They take money from those groups, then through the main stream media push a phantasmagoria of sugar coated special interest views on the people. The views go from the special interests to the candidate to the people. So, when we learn that this or that special interest group funded a candidate, it does cause one to get disconcerted.

However, in Paul’s case he isn’t serving up some kind of Frankenstein-ish platform forced together willy-nilly, so that he can appeal to a bunch of interest groups. Instead, Paul actually has a platform based on — gasp — principles. He has placed his platform out there, and people can support it or not support, as they see fit.

To simplify. The so called “mainstream” candidates have a platform crafted together to get money. The money comes first, the platform is only secondary.

In Paul case, the platform comes first, the money is only a secondary concern. Therefore there’s no influence from the money.

Ron Paul is running a campaign the way it is supposed to be run, so there’s no sense that he needs to be returning money to anybody. There’s no need to be curbing anyone’s individual and inalienable right to express their opinion through a political donation to a candidate.

When you stop and think about it, Ron Paul is running his campaign the way a campaign ought to be run. Principles first.

Why is it that the mainstream media is telling us otherwise?

“I don’t want to be elected for the purpose of being elected.”
– Ron Paul

That about sums them up, doesn’t it? The other candidates, I mean. Almost all of them want to be elected for the purpose of being elected. They pander to this special interest or that and try to curry favor. There’s a terrible sense that they don’t really stand for anything. They’re political entrepreneurs.

Great sit-down interview with Paul here.

Huckabee in his own words:

People look at my record and say that I’m as strong on immigration, strong on terror as anybody. In fact I think I’m stronger than most people because I truly understand the nature of the war that we are in with Islamo fascism. These are people that want to kill us. It’s a theocratic war. And I don’t know if anybody fully understands that. I’m the only guy on that stage with a theology degree. I think I understand it really well. And know the threat of it is absolutely overwhelming to us. As a president, nobody’s going to be stronger on building border security, not having amnesty, no sanctuary cities, having a process in place that forces a process that is legal. When it comes to national security, I understand that the threat that we face is not about our grandchildren having better homes and better cars, it’s about whether they’re going to have a breath and a pulse. [Link]

He understands the threat coming from Islam because he has a degree in theology? So it really is a holy war after all? (And actually, speaking truthfully, Huckabee doesn’t actually have a degree in theology. See here.)

And what’s this about “better homes and better cars” not being important. This type of anti-consumption nonsense is much better suited for a democrat than a republican. This is anti-business stuff you’d expect from a socialist, not someone running on the republican ticket.

Kimberley A. Strassel is the Wall Street Journal’s political writer. She has a column every week in which she discusses politics in Washington.

This week she devoted her column to Ron Paul.

There is one thing that stands out in the article:

Only Paul supports small government.

She admits this again and again in the article. Do you want less government? Do you want more liberty? Do you want more responsibility for your own life? Only Paul is addressing these fundamental issues. Only Paul is pushing these issues.

So should I be happy that a mainstream article has finally pointed this out? Let’s examine the article.

First, Strassel calls Paul “kooky.” Well, a spades a spade. If Paul’s a kook, then perhaps he should be called one. But exactly why is it she thinks he’s a kook? Let’s look at some quotes from the article.

He trails in national polls, in no small part because his lack of a proactive foreign policy makes him an unserious candidate in today’s terror world.

So we live in a terror world. Just roll that one across your tongue a few times. Terror World. In a Terror World, you need a proactive foreign policy. In other words, you need to go out and kill those guys before they kill you. That’s Terror World.

I mean, can you be any more statist than that? Don’t worry the government is here to protect you. You can’t protect yourself, it’s a Terror World.

Let me tell you this, the government was supposed to be protecting you on 9/11. Did they? So what is the answer? More government? And to say otherwise is to be kooky?

Paul offers a serious challenge to the established statist position (fully embraced by nearly all Republican and Democratic candidates.) He argues:

• If individual Americans had been allowed to take more responsibility for their own security, 9/11 might not have happened. (According to Federal regulations pilots can’t have guns, even if the pilot, the airline, and the passengers want them to have a gun. No guns for pilots. Guns are too dangerous.)
• If American policy in the middle-east had not been so invasive and overbearing, people would have been much less lacking in incentive to carry out any attack. American foreign policy is not a free lunch. There is blowback.

Could Ron Paul be wrong on these issues? Yeah, he could be. But he’s offering — gasp — an alternative view. The Democrats and the Republicans share virtually an identical view:

• You are not responsible for your security.
• America must secure the world.

Shouldn’t at least one party being arguing against this? Is it really kooky to say we want more responsibility for our security? Is it really kooky to suggest the world might not crumble to pieces without a super power holding it together?

Fine, disagree with Paul. Argue for a big powerful state that is responsible for your security and the security of the world. But please recognize the seriousness of Paul’s challenge. Don’t dismiss it as kooky.

I mean, my God, both conservatives and liberals have embraced the concept that the state must protect you and the world, and to argue otherwise is now kooky? If that’s how far we come, then we really, really, really need Ron Paul.

Another quote from the article.

One shame of this race is that for all the enthusiasm the Texan has generated among voters, he hasn’t managed to pressure the front-runners toward his positions. His more kooky views (say, his belief in a conspiracy to create a “North American Union”) and his violent antiwar talk have allowed the other aspirants to dismiss him.

This is plainly false. Why is it that the WSJ can print something that is plainly false. Ron Paul does not believe in a conspiracy to create a “North American Union”. What he has stated is that it will be a natural consequence of both the actions and the ideas fully embraced now by both Republicans and Democrats. And he is exactly right.

Ron Paul has noted that the North Atlantic Free Trade agreement is not really about free trade, which Ron Paul supports. Instead, it is about managed trade. It is about making sure that the big government oversight, regulation, and controls that exists in America also exist in Canada and Mexico.

Now let me ask you something. What could possibly fulfill that goal better than integration? Ron Paul knows what the statists are headed towards better than they do themselves, because he understands the logical consequences of their actions and ideas. There’s nothing kooky about it.

Now Lou Dobbs, he might be kooky:

But then again.

Go back and look at the last quote I gave. Note the bizarre twist. Ron Paul is “violently anti-war”. So it’s violent now to be anti-war? Who is Strassell kidding? Moreover, Ron Paul believes in a strong national defense, and he believes in defensive war. He supports just war theory. He has never advocated passivism.

So his anti-war views are only extreme when you juxtapose them against the view America needs to be providing security for the entire world.

To not want America to maintain security for the entire world is to be “violently anti-war”? Breathtaking.

Finally the biggest blooper of them all.

Mr. Paul isn’t going to be president.

We’ll we’ve seen this before, haven’t we?

10 Ron Paul can’t win
20 Ron Paul can’t win
30 Ron Paul can’t win
40 Ron Paul can’t win
50 Ron Paul can’t win
60 Ron Paul can’t win
70 Ron Paul can’t win
80 Ron Paul can’t win
90 Go back to line 10

They just keep saying it over and over and over and over again.

Well, whether he wins or not is not up to them. It’s up to you. What are you going to do about it?

Here’s the link –>

Ron Paul 2008.

Click it already.

In oder to facilitate the war on terror, America fingerprints all incoming foreigners, here is how much it costs:
“Pressing to meet that goal, the Homeland Security Department last year awarded one of the most ambitious technology contracts in the war on terror — a 10-year deal estimated at up to $10 billion — to the global consulting firm Accenture. In return, the company and its subcontractors promised to create a “virtual border” that would electronically screen millions of foreign travelers.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/22/AR2005052200613.html

For $10 billion you get a system that doesn’t work. Here’s the info on that:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050516192544.htm

But fear not. The system is being upgraded. Now people who want to enter America will have all ten fingers scanned:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/12/10/visitors.fingerprints/

Despite the $10 billion system having been a failure, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff still boasts about the previous system:
“Since we’ve begun collecting biometrics in 2000, and that was just the two prints, we’ve stopped almost 2,000 criminals and immigration violators based on their fingerprints alone. Let me give you some examples. Here at Dulles airport, a man arrived here with all of the appropriate travel documents, but when his fingerprints were collected, they matched a different name, the name of someone on our watch list. Although the person claimed never to have been arrested on changes related to a controlled substance and claimed never to have been deported, his fingerprints told us a different story. Biometrics revealed that we had deported the person after we had arrested him for conspiracy to distribute a narcotic controlled substance. And today, he is being held at a nearby U.S. Marshal facility for criminal prosecution. In February of this year, Oakland police and San Francisco ICE officers were contacted regarding victims of alien smuggling. Fingerprints were lifted from a suspect’s car to a local motel used by the smugglers. The prints were sent to US-VISIT to be run against all latent prints and a positive match was made to a person with an immigration criminal history. He was placed on a watch list and later arrested by the border patrol in Arizona. And in 2002, a person obtained a visa and visited the U.S. Three years later, he attempted to return to the U.S., but was refused admission because he had not complied with the terms of his original 2002 visit. In 2007, he wanted to come back again. So he applied for a visa at a U.S. embassy using fraudulent documents. When his fingerprints were checked against US-VISIT’s watch list, as part of the application process, it was revealed that he had previously been denied entry to the U.S. and that he had committed fraud. And therefore, he was denied a visa.”
http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/pr_1197326672447.shtm

Note, he doesn’t provide an example of a terrorist being stopped. No security clearance perhaps?

Anyway, that’s 2000 people who were probably doing things that at least some argue they should be free to do anyway; sell drugs and sell their labor. $10 billion dollars divided by 2000 people puts the price tag at $5,000,000 per “criminal” stopped. I would guess that’s a conservative estimate.

And people think Ron Paul is radical? I guess common sense is as well.

America fingerprints all foreigners entering the country.

This is part of the war on terror.

In 2005 a study was published showing that the $10 billion dollars system that had been put in place to fingerprint foreigners didn’t work. The problem? Well, people with worn down fingerprints could not be accurately scanned. (Supposedly the chance of inaccuracy was about 50%, but I mean what kind of random sample were they using?) As a result, a determined individual could thwart the system.

Yesterday, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff stated that America would be switching to a new system in which all 10 fingers are now scanned. Here’s the link. Mr. Chertoff did not mention the 2005 study, but surely these changes were a result of that study.

Now, what’s amazing is Mr. Chertoff sites the previous system (which only scanned two index fingers) as having been a rave success. In his own words:

“Since we’ve begun collecting biometrics in 2000, and that was just the two prints, we’ve stopped almost 2,000 criminals and immigration violators based on their fingerprints alone.”

First, what’s that mean stopped 2000 criminals. You mean lead to 2000 arrests followed by convictions? Or 2000 people apprehended, but over half never convicted? Or what?

Anyway, as we know the system cost about $10 billion dollars that means the system cost $5,000,000 per stopped criminal. Pretty expensive, I’d say. (Of course, the $10 billion price tag doesn’t include training and implementation and electricity and waiting time and so on and so forth.)

Worse, Mr. Chertoff sites three handpicked examples of who these 2000 people are. Does he name any terrorists? Nope. Not a one. He mentions someone who was supposedly selling drugs, another person who was helping “illegal” workers come into the country, and an “illegal” alien.

$1,000,000 per person and no mention of any stopped terrorists. That’s a success? If you’re a bureaucrat, I guess so.

Something else to recall, the fingerprint system would not have stopped any of the 9/11 terrorists as they all entered the country legally.

Your fingerprint is part of your person. It’s something very private. It might not feel like a strip search every time you dish it out, but then again maybe it should. America should stop fingerprinting foreigners. The result is that Americans are now being forced to dish out their own fingerprints more often now when they travel abroad.

If I was Romney, I would have to say ouch.

Latter-day Saints for Ron Paul.

Iran will no longer take the American dollar. AFP reports.

This is what Iraq did about two years before America removed Saddam Hussein from power.