Previously I posted about government created unemployment and gave an example of how they create unemployment by impeding two free people from free exchange. Well, today the Wall Street Journal has some real world examples from people who are running businesses out of their houses….well trying to anyway. Many of these people were either laid off or had a business else where, but could not afford to keep a rented space. All of them though should be commended for taking responsibility for themselves and engaging in the free market to support themselves instead of becoming government welfare recipients. Instead they are faced with harassment by busy body government officials.

The recession is causing a growing number of people to venture into home businesses, a boost for the economy but a nuisance for neighbors.

As jobless people trade their desks for kitchen tables, or as businesses reduce costs by giving up commercial storefronts, cities and states are grappling with problems caused by a rise in home businesses such as traffic and noise.

Thanks for the Wall Street Journal framing the issue to make it seem like government is trying to prevent the complete chaos working people make at home. I work at home and know many people that do, and guess what? I don’t know anyone who creates traffic and noise. Cities and states aren’t grappling with these issues. They are grappling with not being able to milk higher taxes out of commercial properties and not being able to force people to run businesses where they want them to run businesses. It goes against their “master plan”.

Officials in Nashville, Tenn., are discussing ways to loosen restrictions governing the operation of home businesses as high unemployment prods a growing number of entrepreneurs into offering everything from hair perms to piano lessons out of their living rooms. (Oh the horror. The traffic and noise from piano lessons and hair perms must be horrendous!)

Nashville’s planning code allows home-based businesses as long as no customers come to the house—a rule that is causing problems for front-porch barbers and others. City officials are now drafting less-stringent zoning to bring before the planning commission this month.

Oh my world. The government is telling people who can come to their house, that you supposedly own and have property rights to. How does the government know if its a customer or a friend? I guess that just means they need more code enforcers to find out. This must be one of the ways government looks out for the little guy. Obviously, these people must be rich and greedy. Who do they think they are trying to earn money giving haircuts out of their house. Damn “Big Business”. They are evil.

Unemployment in the Greater Nashville area hit 9.4% in December, compared with 6.5% a year earlier. Mr. Bernhardt estimates there are now 14,000 business with licenses that are operating illegally because they are located in residential areas, in violation of zoning codes.

Sounds like we have at least 14,000 criminals on the loose. Better hire more cops and build more prisons. Nah, they can just fine them out of their profits. Like the mob, if they want protection, they have to pay. More proof that chances are you break some law everyday, and the only real role of government now is to make everyone law breakers. These people must be a threat to society for the crime of trying to put food on the table. The moral decay of our society is shocking. Don’t you know if there is a law, it means you are immoral if you break it?

Along with the rising number of home shops come complaints. Code-enforcement officers in Gilbert, Ariz., 20 miles outside Phoenix, received a complaint in October about a fishy smell and flies around a town garage.

The “guy had 50 40-gallon fish tanks full of live fish that he delivered to pet stores,” recalled Michael Milillo, the town’s senior planner. The resident said he previously had a warehouse for his fish, but that to reduce costs in the downturn, he moved them to his garage, according to Mr. Milillo.

While Gilbert does allow home-based businesses, code officers thought the fish entrepreneur was running a home-based warehouse, which isn’t permitted. They moved to close it, but a town zoning board narrowly agreed—over Mr. Milillo’s objections—to allow the business, partly based on the resident’s claims that the storage was a temporary solution in a rough economic climate, Mr. Milillo said.

The resident’s employer, Tropaquatics Inc., declined to make him available for an interview.

Not only are municipalities becoming sympathetic to home-business owners, but many neighbors are, too. While one neighbor spoke at the Gilbert zoning meeting against the fish operation, 10 others said it wasn’t causing any problems and should be allowed to remain given the tough times.

“Seeing everything they’ve gone through with having to move from a big warehouse because of the economy and bring their business back into their garage—that’s the only thing that’s kept them alive. If that’s what they need to do to keep the business thriving, and it’s not endangering my family or causing any unwanted stress on our house, than I am all for it,” said neighbor Matthew Tidwell, a 34-year-old corporate-relations representative.

Go figure, one busy body stirring up trouble. The surprising thing was 10 people coming to stick up for the guy. Usually only the busy body has time to go to the zoning meetings. Other people actually have work to do. I guess the busy body couldn’t just go over to the guys garage and talk to him, ask him if there is a way to minimize the smell, or how long he plans on being in the garage. Maybe he did, but considering how busy bodies operate, I doubt it. Instead he figured, he’d use the gun of government to point it as his neighbor, who is just trying to get by. Apparently, it would be better for the guy to go out of business and live off the state.

Ok, time for the most horrendous case of a home owner causing such chaos with her evil business.

In Nashville, the lightning rod was a beauty parlor. Code-enforcement officers paid a visit to Dot Moon, a 61-year-old woman who, with her daughter, runs a shop with one chair and a tanning bed out of her detached garage. A small sign with a pair of scissors and a comb and the name “Crystal’s Hair and Tans” hangs from her mailbox.

Ms. Moon said she was told a few months ago that she was in violation of city codes because customers came to the house. “We don’t understand why they are picking on us,” she said.

Mr. Bernhardt, the city planning director, said that under current city rules, “it’s impossible to have a hair salon” in a home in a residential neighborhood. He said cases such as Ms. Moon’s are being considered as city officials look at loosening the rules.

Nashville Councilman Bruce Stanley proposed a narrow expansion of the city code to allow for home beauty parlors. Nashville’s Planning Commission rejected that idea in January as being unfair to other businesses. But realizing that more and more of these living-room operations are cropping up, the City Council has since begun work on broader rules for home-based businesses in residential areas.

Oh the traffic and noise must have been overbearing. I can only imagine who much traffic and noise was generated by this gigantic 1 chair and 1 tanning bed salon. Oh and the blight of the neighborhood must have been horrible with the small sign hanging on the mailbox.

Sara Marie Jenkins, who is 26 and designs bridal gowns in her home studio in Nashville, says “financially it helps a lot to work at home in this economy—not having to pay rent for a space or pay a second electric bill.”

Sara… Sara….Sara, but who are you to decide what is financially in your best interest. You are just a serf, and should do what your overlords tell you to do. Your family’s well being is not of concern to their master plan for the community. If you have to live off the state, that is better than you having a business that provides for you financially and provides value through your products and services to your community. Oh Sara, so naive you are.

via States Revisit Home-Businesses Rules – WSJ.com.

Ok, I probably tried putting too much sarcasm into text, which usually doesn’t come across right when I do it. Anyway, when are people going to wake up and realize we do not need government telling us how to live every aspect of our lives. Not only does it create unemployment, but it creates a community of adversaries. Do you think communities were closer when we had less government, and they worked problems out themselves; or do you think they are closer and more involved with each other, now that the government gun is laying around for everyone to try and get a hold of to impose their wishes on their neighbors?

We also need to wake up to realize most government rules are idiotic. They should be ignored by the masses. Saying you cannot have a business in your house goes against all three components mentioned by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence,  as well as the edited out part of “right to property”.  Liberty is taken away by every government rule and action. Pursuit of happiness is taken away if you cannot pursue commerce to put food on the table, and life is hard to have a right to when you can’t provide for yourself. Oh sure, the state can take care of you, but do you then have control of you life? Do you have a right to your life or does the state?

Last is “right to property”. This has been taken long ago with local property taxes and zoning codes. Like I said, you are a renter of your land and you will agree to pay on time or pay a late fee, and you will only use “your” property based on your lease agreement, which unlike a regular leases changes at the whim of local zoning boards and the like.

Nick Gillespie was on Stossel and got into a heated exchange with a lady who thinks she knows how to live your life better than you do. Underlying her entire argument is that you do not have the right to choose what to eat or what is best for you. You gave up that right when our government decided they had a role in our health care system. While food is the main focus, if we have socialized health care for all, this will spread into every aspect of our lives.

YouTube – Nick Gillespie pwns Blond Health Nazi.

This is a must read. Click the link at the end to read the entire article. It is definitely worth the time.

I’m finding it ever more difficult to describe to people the kind of world that the Mises Institute would like to see, with the type of political order that Mises and the entire classical-liberal tradition believed would be most beneficial for mankind.

It would appear that the more liberty we lose, the less people are able to imagine how liberty might work. It is a fascinating thing to behold.

* People can no longer imagine a world in which we could be secure without massive invasions of our privacy at every step, and even being strip-searched before boarding airplanes, even though private institutions manage much greater security without any invasions of human rights;

* People can no longer remember how a true free market in medical care would work, even though all the problems of the current system were created by government interventions in the first place;

* People imagine that we need 700 military bases around the world, and endless wars in the Middle East, for “security,” though safe Switzerland doesn’t;

* People think it is insane to think of life without central banks, even though they are modern inventions that have destroyed currency after currency;

* Even meddlesome agencies like the Consumer Products Safety Commission or the Federal Trade Commission strike most people as absolutely essential, even though it is not they who catch the thieves and frauds, but private institutions;

* The idea of privatizing roads or water supplies sounds outlandish, even though we have a long history of both;

* People even wonder how anyone would be educated in the absence of public schools, as if markets themselves didn’t create in America the world’s most literate society in the 18th and 19th centuries.

This list could go on and on. But the problem is that the capacity to imagine freedom – the very source of life for civilization and humanity itself – is being eroded in our society and culture. The less freedom we have, the less people are able to imagine what freedom feels like, and therefore the less they are willing to fight for its restoration.

This has profoundly affected the political culture. We’ve lived through regime after regime, since at least the 1930s, in which the word freedom has been a rhetorical principle only, even as each new regime has taken away ever more freedom.

Now we have a president who doesn’t even bother to pay lip service to the idea of freedom. In fact, I don’t think that the idea has occurred to Obama at all. If the idea of freedom has occurred to him, he must have rejected it as dangerous, or unfair, or unequal, or irresponsible, or something along those lines.

To him, and to many Americans, the goal of government is to be an extension of the personal values of those in charge. I saw a speech in which Obama was making a pitch for national service, the ghastly idea that government should steal 2 years of every young person's life for slave labor and to inculcate loyalty to leviathan, with no concerns about setting back a young person’s professional and personal life.

How did Obama justify his support of this idea? He said that when he was a young man, he learned important values from his period of community service. It helped form him and shape him. It helped him understand the troubles of others and think outside his own narrow experience.

Well, I’m happy for him. But he chose this path voluntarily. It is a gigantic leap to go from personal experience to forcing a vicious national plan on the entire country. His presumption here is really taken from the playbook of the totalitarian state: the father-leader will guide his children-citizens in the paths of righteousness, so that they all will become god like the leader himself.

To me, this comment illustrates one of two things. It could show that Obama is a potential dictator in the mold of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, for the presumptions he puts on exhibit here are just as frightening as any imagined by the worst tyrants in human history. Or, more plausibly, it may be an illustration of Hannah Arendt’s view that totalitarianism is merely an application of the principle of the “banality of evil.”

With this phrase, Arendt meant to draw attention to how people misunderstand the origin and nature of evil regimes. Evil regimes are not always the product of fanatics, paranoids, and sociopaths, though, of course, power breeds fanaticism, paranoia, and sociopathology. Instead, the total state can be built by ordinary people who accept a wrong premise concerning the role of the state in society.

If the role of the state is to ferret out evil thoughts and bad ideas, it must necessarily become totalitarian. If the goal of the state is that all citizens must come to hold the same values as the great leader, whether economic, moral, or cultural, the state must necessarily become totalitarian. If the people are led to believe that scarce resources are best channeled in a direction that producers and consumers would not choose on their own, the result must necessarily be central planning.

via The Misesian Vision by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr..

I’ve tried staying away from foreign policy, because I’m a recovering neo-con. I must ask though, what are we trying to accomplish by agitating Russia? Didn’t the cold war end 20 years ago? Then why are we still fighting it? Who is benefiting from it continuing? (I have some ideas, but I’ll save that for a conspiracy blog)

Russia will strengthen its Baltic fleet in response to U.S. plans to deploy Patriot missiles in Poland, Russian state news agency RIA reported on Thursday, citing an unnamed senior navy official.

“The surface, underwater and aviation elements of the Baltic Fleet will be strengthened,” RIA quoted the unidentified Russian navy official as saying.

The United States is dispatching the missiles to Poland after dropping an earlier plan to deploy interceptor missiles in the NATO nation as part of an anti-missile system in Europe.

“In connection with the plans to install the Patriots on Polish territory in the next 5 to 7 years, there may be significant changes in the approach to define the tasks and the military potential of the Baltic Fleet,” RIA quoted the same source as saying.

Moscow has expressed concern about what it calls U.S. military encroachment and threatened to respond to any change in the current military balance on its western borders with NATO nations.

President Dmitry Medvedev had previously warned Moscow would station Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad if Washington went ahead with its original anti-missile plan. U.S. President Barack Obama‘s decision to revise it pleased the Kremlin.

But the plan to install Patriot missiles has resurrected longstanding Russian suspicions about the motive for the strengthened NATO presence near its borders, said Alexei Fenenko of the Institute of International Security Studies in Moscow.

“Russia was very concerned about the anti-missile system being installed in Poland and the Czech Republic and didn’t understand the need for it in these locations, if it was intended against Iran,” he said.

“If it’s not against Iran, then who is it against? The new missiles will be now be close to the territory of both Kaliningrad and Belarus” (a Russian military ally that borders Poland), he said.

via Russia responds to U.S. missile plans for Poland – Yahoo! News.

How long do we think we can keep this up? Reagan’s strategy was to bankrupt the Soviet Union, and he was successful. Instead of being humble and trying to build a long lasting relationship with Russia, we have constantly slapped them in the face. This is the latest example. Unfortunately, because we decided after the Cold War was over that we needed to be an empire, we are now moving towards bankruptcy ourselves.

We can no longer be the protectorate of all the world. Most of the world does not even have to spend their own money to protect themselves, because they let us be the useful tools to do it. We are not only doing this in Eastern Europe with Russia. We do it to China with the Koreas, Taiwan and Japan. We do it in South America with Columbia. Look at this map of our military footprint. How long can a country that is aging, becoming less free and less capitalistic sustain such an empire?

While I would love to believe that our intentions are good and we only want to promote freedom around the world, I cannot see how building up militarily in every corner of the earth does that. It isn’t the threat of military force that drives people to want freedom. It is in the human spirit to want freedom, and it was the American example of liberty that inspired much of the world.

I am not arguing that we should weaken ourselves as a nation. We should have a ferocious homeland defense. Our second amendment rights should be reaffirmed as unquestionable by any legislation whether domestic or foreign. A heavily armed citizenry would dissuade any tyranical government from becoming our oppressors, including our own.

History is full of dead empires who thought they could control the world beyond their borders. George Washington warned us not to fall for it. In his fairwell address he said:

“If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism; this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated.

George Washington was right too when he said “I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish..“. We long ago forgot his warnings. Maybe it’s about time we take up these “counsels of an old and affectionate friend”.

Everytime Democrats lose elections, they default to the same line. “We didn’t get our message out.” Lanny Davis didn’t take long at all. He had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this morning, just hours after the loss in Massachusetts. (bold letters for emphasis)

Liberal Democrats might attempt to spin the shocking victory of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts by claiming that the loss was a result of a poor campaign by Martha Coakley. Would that it were so. This was a defeat not of the messenger, but of the message—and the sooner progressive Democrats face up to that fact, the better.

It’s the substance, stupid!

According to polls, fears about the Democrats’ health-care proposal played a prominent role in Mr. Brown’s victory yesterday. In the last several months, the minority congressional Republicans have dominated the message on health care—and stamped on the Democratic Party the perception that we stand for big government, higher taxes, and health insecurity when it comes to Medicare.

How is that possible? The Democrats have a simple message on health care that has still not really gotten through: If our bill passes, you never have to worry about getting, or losing, health insurance for the rest of your life. How is it that so few people have heard that message?

Then there were the two “deals” that put congressional Democrats in a worse light than the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere”—as impossible as that might have seemed—as an emblem of the special interest politics Barack Obama ran against. We Democrats had to explain to Massachusetts voters and other Americans why non-Nebraskans and nonunion members have to pay more taxes, while Nebraskans and union members get to pay less. Those two deals seem to have alienated most people across the political spectrum. That’s not easy.

via Lanny J. Davis: Blame the Left for Massachusetts – WSJ.com.

There you have it. The Democrats have a simple message, but Americans are just too stupid to get it. NO LANNY! They did hear it. People are finally waking up to realize there is no free lunch from either party. They get that in order to get your health care handouts from your master, you must be subservient to your master. You must re-elect your master and continue to empower him. You must give him your liberty.  It is no different with the war on terror and the Republicans (Confession: I’m a registered Republican). They think they can keep the threat of terrorism over our heads, so that we have to keep empowering them.

WE GOT THE MESSAGE! DID YOU GET OUR MESSAGE BACK? Let’s hope Scott Brown got it too.

One of my favorite quotes from Ben Franklin is, paraphrasing, “People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both”. Not only does it apply to us giving up our liberties for security from terrorism, foreign nations, or even the local drug dealer. It can also apply to economics. It could easily be…

“People willing to trade their economic freedom for temporary economic stability deserve neither and will have neither.”

Think about it. We have handed over our economic liberty to the Federal Reserve, who is supposed to prevent the business cycle and inflation. How’s that working out? We’ve lost 30% of our spending power just this past decade and had the biggest economic crisis since the great depression. Since the inception of the Fed, the dollar has lost 98.3% versus gold.

We’ve handed over 12.4% our income to the government for social “security” in hopes that we’ll have a decent retirement. As everyone knows, it is bankrupt, already been spent, and for those already on it, it sure does not provide any quality retirement.

Now the government is going to force us to buy health insurance and steal money from some of us to pay for health insurance for others, so that we don’t go bankrupt when we are sick. To provide the economic stability of knowing you have health insurance coverage, we’re giving up the economic freedom to make the best financial decision for ourselves. While it is not enacted yet, I’m sure the same principle will apply. If it works like the UK’s health system, everyone will still have to buy private insurance if they want to see a doctor in this life time. Doctors will be restricted in what they can offer, leading some to travel over seas for restricted procedures. We’ll still be locked into the closed drug market that prevents us from buying drugs outside our borders. All of this will lead to an economic disaster down the road and a massive economic collapse.

In the end, we never get what is promised in exchange for our freedom. We’ve given up our liberty, and as Ben Franklin said, we’ve got neither security nor economic stability.

I watched a documentary this weekend called The Listening Project, and it made me think about my post Public Education – A View From Outside The Matrix. The documentary has a group of people traveling around the world asking people what they think about these United States (notices these instead of the!).

The one thing that I noticed is most of the people knew a lot more about history than most Americans do. They were talking about Rome, Julius Ceasar, etc. While many Americans may have heard of both, they probably aren’t able to explain either and how they relate to modern times. To tell you the truth, I don’t even remember being taught about Rome in school. What I know of Rome has been self taught as an adult. I guess that wasn’t part of what the government mandates us to learn. Study hall was no doubt more important to society.

What the people recognized was we are no doubt the last empire of the world. Now conservatives will argue that we don’t want to conquer lands, so there for we aren’t an empire. We cannot have bases in well over 100 countries, claim we use our bases to look out for our national interests, and then say we aren’t an empire. We use our military and economic power to push countries in the direction we want. Anyways, this is all besides the point. The point is the rest of the world recognizes that we are an empire, and that we are no different than the Roman Empire. Countless people said we are the Rome of today, and that like Rome our empire will perish. They didn’t say this in a way that they want it to happen. They were stating the obvious. It’s too bad most Americans don’t recognize this, because all it would take to avoid it is getting back to what we were founded on.

The other thing that was noticeable in the documentary was that most of the people love the idea of America. They love the people and the spirit that is America. They love the idea that someone can pursue their dreams and make it. What they didn’t like was our government. This goes back to our foreign policy and how we try to force the world to be more like us. It was a bit shocking to see how many of them specifically stated there is a difference between the people and the government. Considering we elect these bums, that was pretty charitable. So here we are socializing everything under the sun, but it isn’t the social programs other nations love. It wasn’t our stimulus bills or our banking system. It’s our liberty. It’s what they believe we have. They don’t realize that we have lost so much liberty, but then again most Americans don’t recognize how much liberty we have lost.

Anyway, it was a pretty good documentary. It’s definitely worth watching. I’m guessing it was made to bash Bush, but I’m sure the people that were interviewed would probably still have the same opinions with Obama in the White House. He has only been a change for the worst. It’s just a shame that public education in this country is leading us down a path of ignorance compared to other parts of he world. When people in South Africa are explaining how Rome fell and how that relates to the US, yet most Americans wouldn’t know what they are talking about, you know it won’t be long before the new Rome is no more.

Happy New Year to all that happen to dwell upon these pages.

Hopefully, 2010 will go down in history as the year American’s began taking back their liberty. There are some good, liberty loving folks running for office like Rand Paul in Kentucky and Peter Schiff in Connecticut. With a big win by these guys, we can send a signal to Washington that the people are taking their liberty back.

Hopefully, we can all keep up the momentum this year. Have a great year everyone!

Here’s a great post I found by way of The Daily Paul.

For the past few days, I’ve received loads of emails urging me to get active regarding the healthcare vote – most of which had a subject line similar to: “Last Chance to Stop National Healthcare!”

Well, if you believe the only way to protect your rights is by begging federal politicians to do what you want, then these emails are certainly right. The vote went as expected, and so will the next.

So if you think marching on D.C. or calling your Representatives, or threating to “throw the bums out” in 2010 or 2012 or 20-whatever, is going to further the cause of the Constitution and your liberty – you might as well get your shackles on now. Your last chance has come and gone.

But, those of you who visit this site regularly already know that the Senate’s health care vote is far from the end of things – and you also know that even when it goes into effect (which I assume some version will), it’s still not the end of the road for your freedom.

The real way to resist DC is not by begging politicians and judges in Washington to allow us to exercise our rights…it’s to exercise our rights whether they want to give us “permission” to or not.

Nullification – state-level resistance to unconstitutional federal laws – is the way forward.

When a state ‘nullifies’ a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or ‘non-effective,’ within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as that state is concerned.

It’s peaceful, effective, and has a long history in the American tradition. It’s been invoked in support of free speech, in opposition to war and fugitive slave laws, and more. Read more on this history here.

Regarding nullification and health care, there’s already a growing movement right now. Led by Arizona, voters in a number of states may get a chance to approve State Constitutional Amendments in 2010 that would effectively ban national health care in their states. Our sources here at the Tenth Amendment Center indicate to us that we should expect to see 20-25 states consider such legislation in 2010.

20 States resisting DC can do what calling, marching, yelling, faxing, and emailing has almost never done. Stop the feds dead in their tracks.

For example, 13 states are already defying federal marijuana prohibition, and the federal government is having such a hard time dealing with it that the Obama administration recently announced that they would no longer prioritize enforcement in states that have medical marijuana laws.

Better yet, in the last 2+ years more than 20 states have been able to effectively prevent the Real ID Act of 2005 from being implemented. How did they do that? They passed laws and resolutions refusing to comply with it. And today, it’s effectively null and void without ever being repealed by Congress or challenged in court.

While the Obama administration would like to revive it under a different name, the reality is still there – with massive state-level resistance, the federal government can be pushed back inside its constitutional box. Issue by issue, law by law, the best way to change the federal government is by resisting it on a state level.

That’s nullification at work.

Over the years, wise men and women warned us that the Constitution would never enforce itself. The time is long overdue for people to start recognizing this fact, and bring that enforcement closer to home.

The bottom line? If you want to make real change; if you want to really do something for liberty and for the Constitution…focus on local activism and your state governments.

Thomas Jefferson would be proud!

via Health Care Nullification: Things have just gotten underway | Tenth Amendment Center.

Here’s a sliver of good news on the health care front.

Senate Democrats on Monday evening dropped a plan to expand Medicare, winning the support of moderates and the reluctant acquiescence of liberals, in another major step toward building enough support to pass a health-care overhaul.

The idea of letting people ages 55 to 64 buy into Medicare, announced just last week, had threatened to explode the Democrats’ hopes of getting a bill through the Senate when Sen. Joseph Lieberman came out against it.

via Democrats Drop Plan to Expand Medicare – WSJ.com.

While I don’t believe this prevents the government from create a disastrous government health care program, it is still good news. The problem now is the debate has already been framed, and it’s been framed by socialists. The debate is between health care reform and the status quo, and you know the status quo just means you hate people. The problem is government cannot reform the private sector. If the government was not involved in health care, reform would not be needed. Resources would be properly allocated, which would mean they would be allocated where they are needed the most at the least cost.

All this talk about health care reform by socialist pigs makes me sick. The only reform we need to fix health care is government reform. It needs to be reformed back into a limited government that protects liberty. That is all that needs done to fix most of our societal ills. The rest can be figured out by free people.