The Return of Odysseus
June 10, 2009 by FCD Administrator
Filed under Current, Featured, Principle 05
FCR Podcast. Day 141 of the Revolution. The “relaunch” of FreeCapitalist Radio, 3 years to the day of the tragic death of Les McGuire & Ray Hooper. “The Barnacles of Les McGuire,” Gov. Palin’s recent remarks & Homer’s Odyssey, Pres. Obama’s Cairo Speech to Muslims.
Today’s FreeCapitalist Radio show marks the fourth iteration of FreeCapitalist Radio first started by Rick Koerber on October 31, 2005. New features of the show include an “ask Rick” section where listeners who email radio@freecapitalist.com with questions can have their topic fully discussed. Also those interested in being on the show to discuss their questions are encouraged to apply.
Union’s Expect Obama Payback – Seek to End Secret Ballots
February 23, 2009 by FCD Administrator
Filed under Current, Guest Articles, Principle 03
Updated Guest Editorial | On Tuesday’s Glenn Beck Show, a discouraging statistic was shown. In 1999, all government spending as a portion of our national GNP was 33%. In 2009, that number stands at 39%.
An astonishing number when you consider that the United States produces over $14 trillion in goods and services annually. If that number frightens you and raises red flags about the growth of government, then something is on the horizon which will make that number worse. And that is why we need your leadership today.
Big Labor is expecting a pay back from President Obama. For the hundreds of millions they spent on his election, they expect him to sign an innocent sounding, yet deceptive bill called Employee Free Choice Act – better known as “Card Check.”
Card Check is a cunning device that will make unionizing companies less democratic in the process of union organizing and more prone to intimidation and harassment. Currently, unions must have at least 30% of the employees sign cards voicing their support for a union. In the vast majority of cases the employer will then require a secret ballot election to determine if a union will be formed. If the new “Card Check” federal legislation is passed, unions may contact employees directly, and when they get 51% of the employees to sign a card, the right of the employees to vote by secret ballot is abolished and the workplace is automatically unionized.
Card check will dramatically speed up the unionization of America by harassment and intimidation. As a result, government will grow bigger and mandatory union dues – the main objective to Card Check – will increase Big Labor political donations to Democrats and left wing causes. In 2008 alone, 91% of all union contributions went to Democrats. A staggering number when you realize that Big Labor can simply take dues out of union employees’ paychecks. This is one of the biggest power grabs in recent memory.
It is inconceivable to believe government will not grow bigger and more confiscatory with a larger union presence. Government’s 39% total of our GNP will soon grow to the mid-to-high 40s if card check passes. Do we want that? Will that help or impede innovation, freedom and entrepreneurship?
Big Labor and their allies hope to accomplish this power grab by taking away a working man and woman’s right to a secret ballot. Can you imagine if your elected officials knew how everyone voted in their districts? How many more votes do you think they would receive on Election Day? The same logic applies to union voting. Without the privacy of the secret ballot, people become more acutely aware of the need of their jobs and their unwillingness to go against the pressure of union leaders. That is why Save Our Secret Ballot (www.sosballot.org) was organized – to protect the right of the secret ballot for all Americans.
Save Our Secret Ballot is doing this by placing on the ballot in 15-20 states a state constitutional amendment (not federal) to protect the right to a secret ballot (for exact language go to www.sosballot.org). We want voters to know exactly what is at stake and what unions want to accomplish. Holding a public debate is the last thing unions want. House Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid are ready to take away your right to a secret ballot and President Obama is ready to sign it. All that stands in its way is you!
Where you and I want public discourse and debate like the famous Lincoln – Douglas debates over 150 years ago, unions want to treat this issue like a Venezuelan policy debate – the less discussion the better.
Unions want to pass this without the American public knowing about it. Like a thief, they want to do this in the darkness of night without the glare of daylight. Unlike a thief who steals material goods which can be replaced, they want to steal freedoms that cannot be replaced.
We need your help today – not tomorrow. Today, Monday, this freedom protecting legislation will be up for a vote in the Utah House of Representatives. We have some Republicans still frightened of the unions. Please help today by getting your family, friends, business associates and YOU to call your Utah State Legislator and State Senator and ask them to vote YES for HJR-8 (Save Our Secret Ballot).
You can call them at the Capitol Hill
Utah State Senate 801-538-1035
Utah House of Representatives 801-538-1029
Without your help and leadership, unions will take away a fundamental freedom. For more information, go to www.sosballot.org and help stop this power grab today!
Chuck Warren is a partner at Silver Bullet, LLC (www.silverbulletllc.org).
Was Ayn Rand Right, 52 Years Ago?
January 11, 2009 by FCD Administrator
Filed under Current, Guest Articles
By Stephen Moore (Wall Street Journal) | Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read “Atlas Shrugged” a “virgin.” Being conversant in Ayn Rand’s classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only “Atlas” were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I’m confident that we’d get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.
Many of us who know Rand’s work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that “Atlas Shrugged” parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.
Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity <<<Read the Full Story>>>
UT Ranked Among Most Corrupt
January 6, 2009 by FCD Administrator
Filed under Current, Guest Articles, Utah Gov't Corruption
A recent survey published in the New York Times as part of its article “Which is the Most Corrupt State?” where researchers asked state house reporters to assess their subjects and ranked responses on a scale of 1 (clean) to 7 (crooked). Utah’s State Officials ranked #15, among the most corrupt in the nation.
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Where is officialdom most crooked? Last week, many guessed it must be Illinois, after news that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was taped making brazen personal demands in exchange for his selection of a Senate successor to President-elect Barack Obama. <<<Read the Full Story >>>
Hillary’s Credentials, Obama Hipocracy?
December 9, 2008 by Stephen Anderson
Filed under Current, Guest Articles, Principle 04
By Matthew Coper – CNSNews.com | (CNSNews.com) – President-elect Barack Obama designated Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to be his next secretary of state Monday, despite having spent much of the previous two years questioning her foreign-policy credentials.
During the campaign for the Democratic nomination, Obama mocked Clinton’s primary claim that she possessed the necessary foreign policy experience to be president.
“What exactly is this foreign policy expertise?” Obama said to reporters in March, while flying from a campaign event in Texas. “Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no.”
In spite of these doubts, Obama praised Clinton’s credentials Monday, saying she would be able to advance America’s interests due to her knowledge of world affairs and familiarity with world leaders.
“She is an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence, who knows many of the world’s leaders, who will command respect in every capital, and who will clearly have the ability to advance our interests around the world,” he said.
Obama said that his new foreign policy team, which will be led by Clinton, would change America’s foreign policy for the better.
“I am confident that this is the team that we need to make a new beginning for American national security,” he told reporters at the announcement.
However, Obama had expressed exactly the opposite view of Clinton during the primary campaign.
“It’s what’s wrong with politics today. Hillary Clinton will say anything to get elected,” Obama said in a January radio ad. “Hillary Clinton. She’ll say anything and change nothing.”
Obama also said Monday that he>>>>Read the Full Article
President Obama! Now What?
November 5, 2008 by FCD Administrator
Filed under Featured, Guest Articles, Principle 13
By Fouad Ajami (Wall Street Journal-Opinion Page)
The morning after the election, the disappointment will begin to settle upon the Obama crowd. Defeat — by now unthinkable to the devotees — will bring heartbreak. Victory will steadily deliver the sobering verdict that our troubles won’t be solved by a leader’s magic.
There is something odd — and dare I say novel — in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics. We associate them with the temper of Third World societies. We think of places like Argentina and Egypt and Iran, of multitudes brought together by their zeal for a Peron or a Nasser or a Khomeini. In these kinds of societies, the crowd comes forth to affirm its faith in a redeemer: a man who would set the world right.
As the late Nobel laureate Elias Canetti observes in his great book, “Crowds and Power” (first published in 1960), the crowd is based on an illusion of equality: Its quest is for that moment when “distinctions are thrown off and all become equal. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd.” These crowds, in the tens of thousands, who have been turning out for the Democratic standard-bearer in St. Louis and Denver and Portland, are a measure of American distress.
On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds. After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish. The coalition that has propelled his quest — African-Americans and affluent white liberals — has no economic coherence. But for the moment, there is the illusion of a common undertaking — Canetti’s feeling of equality within the crowd. The day after, the crowd will of course discover its own fissures. The affluent will have to pay for the programs promised the poor. The redistribution agenda that runs through Mr. Obama’s vision is anathema to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the hedge-fund managers now smitten with him. Their ethos is one of competition and the justice of the rewards that come with risk and effort. All this is shelved, as the devotees sustain the candidacy of a man whose public career has been a steady advocacy of reining in the market and organizing those who believe in entitlement and redistribution.
A creature of universities and churches and nonprofit institutions, the Illinois senator, with the blessing and acquiescence of his upscale supporters, has glided past these hard distinctions. On the face of it, it must be surmised that his affluent devotees are ready to foot the bill for the new order, or are convinced that after victory the old ways will endure, and that Mr. Obama will govern from the center. Ambiguity has been a powerful weapon of this gifted candidate: He has been different things to different people, and he was under no obligation to tell this coalition of a thousand discontents, and a thousand visions, the details of his political programs: redistribution for the poor, post racial absolution and “modernity” for the upper end of the scale.
It was no accident that the white working class was >>>> Read the Full Article
Obama Addresses Voter Who Called Him “Socialist”
November 3, 2008 by Stephen Anderson
Filed under Featured, Guest Articles, Principle 04, Principles
By Maria Gavrilovic – Fayetteville, N.C. (CBS) | John McCain’s charges that Barack Obama is socialist may be resonating with some voters.
At a BBQ stop this afternoon, Obama received an unwelcome greeting from one woman who yelled “socialist, socialist, socialist – get out of here!” as he met with other customers.
The woman, Diane Fanning, who works at Sam’s Club, then asked the Democratic nominee about the North American Union, which he opposes.
“I know some people have been hearing rumors about it. But as far as I can tell that’s just not something that’s happening. We would never give up our sovereignty in that way. Any other questions?” Obama asked Fanning.
She reluctantly responded, “No, I’m not going to say it.”
At a rally after the stop, Obama brought up McCain’s accusations that his tax plan is a form of socialism and dismissed it as a political attack.
“He has been attacking the heck out of me,” Obama said, “Lately, he and Governor Palin actually accused me of socialism. Socialism. It’s kind of hard to figure how Warren Buffet endorsed me, Colin Powell endorsed me and John McCain thinks I’m practicing socialism.”
He accused McCain of wanting to cut taxes for Fortune 500 CEOs, “who’ve been making out like bandits, adding, “John McCain thinks>>>>Read the Full Article
McCain: Obama tax policies are socialist
October 31, 2008 by Stephen Anderson
Filed under Featured, Guest Articles, Money & Economics, Principle 11
By Glen Johnson (Associated Press) | CONCORD, N.C. – Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Saturday accused Democratic rival Barack Obama of favoring a socialistic economic approach by supporting tax cuts and tax credits McCain says would merely shuffle wealth rather than creating it.
“At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives,” McCain said in a radio address. “They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Sen. Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it’s just another government giveaway.”
McCain, though, has a health care plan girded with a similar philosophy. He proposes providing individuals with a $5,000 tax credit to buy health insurance. He would pay for his plan, in part, by considering as taxable income the money their employer spends on their health coverage.
McCain leveled his charge before a pair of appearances aimed at restoring his lead in critical battleground states. In both North Carolina and Virginia, where McCain was to speak later in the day, his campaign has surrendered its lead to Obama in various polls. President Bush, a Republican, won both states in 2004.
During a rally outside Charlotte, N.C., McCain returned to the socialism theme, although he did not use the more tart language of his radio address.
He also was sharply critical of the Bush administration, saying it should be more aggressive in buying>>>>Read the Full Story


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