Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 28,2008

Barack Obama has outlined a huge and massively expensive economic package that would spend hundred of billions of dollars on public works projects. He insists that huge public expenditures are necessary to lay a strong economic foundation and to stave off the threat of deflation.

Deflation refers to falling prices that follow the bursting of a speculative bubble. It is a painful but necessary process that purges an economy of toxic mal-investment in much the same way that a fever burns an infection from an afflicted body.

Keynesian socialists seek to treat that fever as if it were the economic disease, rather than a part of the cure. To prevent falling prices, socialist policymakers treat the economy with a larger dose of what caused the sickness in the first place: Inflation.

Building an economy on the foundation of printing press money is literally as foolish as building a home on quicksand.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 27, 2008

Among the blessings for which Americans should give thanks this day is this: We live in a country in which politics is not a life-and-death proposition.

The growth of government has expanded and deepened the role of politics in our culture, as people contend for the power to regiment each other?s lives and live at each other?s expense.

Unwelcome and dangerous as this may be, however, America remains less politicized than many other contemporary societies. We still prefer private action to government intervention, and trust those with whom with do business much more than those who write laws and issue regulations .

The government ruling us little resembles the system our founders created. Our popular culture is openly hostile to the Christian heritage on which our liberties depend. On this Thanksgiving we should pray that our nation will rediscover the truth that it is only through God?s grace, made tangible in His son, Jesus Christ, that we are ultimately made free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 26, 2008

More than a trillion dollars has been spent by Washington in the so-called war on drugs. That war has produced no measurable benefit in terms of a reduction in the rates of drug use or the size of the addicted population.

It has been profitable for police agencies, which receive huge subsidies for militarized enforcement efforts. It has also been a lucrative price support program for narcotics cartels.

In Mexico, where Washington is spending more than a billion dollars in joint enforcement efforts, government officials recently arrested Noe Ramirez Mandujano on charges of receiving nearly a half-million dollars a month in bribes from drug cartels in exchange for intelligence. Until his arrest, Mr. Ramirez was that nation?s ?Drug Czar.?

Is it too much to hope that Americans will soon grow weary of subsidizing drug lords and corrupt foreign governments through the fraudulent, murderous ?war on drugs??

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 25, 2008

In addition to being a self-made billionaire, internet entrepreneur Mark Cuban is owner of the NBA?s Dallas Mavericks and a proponent of libertarian politics.

In early 2007, Cuban expressed an interest in financing the theatrical version of , Loose Change an independent documentary claiming that the Bush administration was complicit in the 9-11 attacks. This prompted an official of the Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) named Jeffery B. Norris to threaten Cuban with unspecified retaliation.

Earlier this year, Cuban provided the financing for a website called BailoutSleuth.com, which documents the corrupt deals behind the multi-trillion dollar Wall Street bailout. A few weeks later, ,the SEC announced that it was suing Cuban for insider trading on the basis of a highly dubious account of a relatively insignificant transaction four years ago.

This is an utterly transparent case of political retaliation against someone who has stepped on the toes of the powerful.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 24, 2008

For all of his weaknesses and errors, George W. Bush has been seen by many a stalwart defender of US independence.

However, at the recently concluded G-20 Summit in Washington, Mr. Bush agreed to what political analyst Dick Morris calls ?the seamless integration of the United States into the European economy.?

A new body of unaccountable foreign officials called the ?College of Supervisors? will now scrutinize and regulate U.S. financial markets and business practices.

The summit?s official Declaration likewise lays the groundwork for a new global tax ? the so-called Tobin tax on international currency transactions, which could seize hundreds of billions of dollars a year to build the infrastructure of a UN-administered world government.

?Will Obama govern from the left?? writes Dick Morris, before going on the answer his own question: ?He doesn?t have to. George W. Bush has done all the heavy lifting for him.?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 21, 2008

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama famously explained his intention to ?spread the wealth around.? Those who understand and cherish America?s tradition of liberty understand that this is not a proper function of any government. But Mr. Obama represents those for whom wealth redistribution is the fundamental function of government.

So far, Obama?s chief accomplishment as a wealth-spreader was his vote in the U.S. Senate on behalf of the Wall Street bailout, a measure that has redistributed trillions of dollars from the Middle Class to corrupt, politically connected financial institutions.

In a series of letters to organizations representing employees of seven federal agencies, Obama likewise promised to redirect more wealth from taxpayers into the pockets of government functionaries who were supposedly starved for funds during the Bush era.

Though he says he intends to represent all Americans, Obama clearly identifies with the parasites, rather than the productive.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 20, 2008

Last summer, Ian Bernard of Keene, New Hampshire, received a citation claiming that a couch stored in the front yard of a rental property he owns was a violation of a local housing ordinance.

Mr. Bernard quite properly perceived this matter to be a question of property rights. So he refused to pay the citation. In early November Bernard wound up in District Court before a judge antagonistic to Mr. Bernard?s beliefs.

Within ten seconds of beginning the hearing, the judge ordered that Bernard be arrested for contempt. His supposed offense was to remain standing an instant longer than the judge thought appropriate after the judge had entered the room.

A special closed trial was held resulting in Bernard receiving 93 days in jail ? three days refusing to pay the original fine, and a total of 90 days for contempt. His supposed crime was to assert control over his own property.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 19, 2008

It?s appropriate that the acronym for the federal program to bail out troubled banks and other financial institutions is TARP, for Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Those who administer that program refuse to account for trillions of dollars in emergency loans issued in the name of the American taxpayers.

Officials in charge of the bailouts maintain that they owe no accounting of any kind to Congress or the public at large. Indeed, this arrangement is actually specified in the text of the measure itself.

After initially rejecting the bailout measure, Congress had several days to study the legislation and modify it to permit Congressional oversight and accountability. Rather than doing so, Congress plumped up the bill with pork projects to make it more palatable to holdouts.

Thanks to Congress, the same TARP measure that shields corrupt crony deals involving trillions of dollars may serve as the burial shroud for the American Middle Class.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 18, 2008

Decades ago, Russian economist Yuri Maltsev was briefly an economic adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Maltsev?s desire was to bring about genuine liberation by dismantling the command economy. Gorbachev?s intention in carrying out his ?Perestroika? campaign was merely to streamline oppression by making the state more efficient.

In a recent essay, Maltsev ? now a college professor in Wisconsin -- commented that the undisguised leader-worship being directed at Barrack Obama ? like that once directed at George W. Bush -- reminds him of similar spectacles in Soviet Russia.

Interestingly, Maltsev?s former boss, Mikhail Gorbachev, has predicted that Obama could carry out his own program of Perestroika in the United States.

Gorbachev?s reforms were largely cosmetic. The same is true of the much-vaunted
?change? Obama promises, which would merely repackage the same degenerate -- and rapidly disintegrating --system of corporate socialism. All of this must strike Yuri Maltsev as tragically familiar.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 17, 2008

Every day, American commercial flights are menaced by the presence of armed men with criminal records and latent sociopathic tendencies. They?re not terrorists, but rather federal Air Marshals deployed on flights by the Transportation Security Administration.

A report recently compiled by the Pro Publica public interest media group concludes that ?Dozens of federal air marshals have been charged with crimes and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct since the government greatly expanded their numbers following the 9/11 attacks.?

The report focuses on thirty-two of the most egregious examples, which run the gamut from drunk driving to child molestation, kidnapping, and attempted contract murder.

Additionally, an Inspector General?s report from 2004 documented more than 750 cases of non-criminal misconduct by air marshals, ranging from sleeping on duty to failing drug tests.

Once again we must ask: Who is going to protect us from our supposed protectors?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.