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Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on civil asset forfeiture - that states are bound by the Eighth Amendment - may be a step in the right direction, but it's only a baby step. Police are still free to steal from individuals not even accused of a crime, let alone convicted of a crime. They are just now told to not steal too much.
In an astonishing Washington Times article this week, unnamed Trump Administration officials (who may or may not be called "John Bolton") are claiming that Iran, which has been battling al-Qaeda in Syria for nearly four years, is actually secretly allied with al-Qaeda and therefore Iran can be attacked with no further Congressional authorization. Are we seeing the old "babies thrown from incubators" lies resurrected to gin up a war with Iran?
The recent Warsaw and Munich summits have proven disastrous to Trump's foreign policy as elucidated by his neocon top advisors. They were supposed to line up for war on Iran and further isolation of Russia and China, yet none of the war bugles sounded. Have the Europeans had enough of "US global dominance"? Geopolitical analyst Tom Luongo joins today's Liberty Report to discuss.
By Ron Paul
In a fitting legacy for my friend Walter Jones, Jr. who passed away last week, the US House made history by voting in favor of H.J.Res. 37, a resolution “Directing the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen that have not been authorized by Congress.” As George O’Neill wrote in the American Conservative magazine this week, the historic 248-177 victory for a bill demanding the end of the US participation in the nearly five year Saudi war of aggression “reflects how many hearts and minds were influenced by the late Congressman's tireless efforts.” Walter Jones did not care who controlled Congress. He was happy to join forces with any Member to end the senseless US global military empire, which sends thousands of young men and women off to patrol foreign borders, overthrow foreign governments, and needlessly put themselves at risk in missions that have nothing to do with the safety and security of the United States. US participation in the Saudi war on Yemen is a classic example of the abuse of the US military that made Walter Jones most angry. When the Saudis decided in 2015 that they wanted their puppet to be Yemen’s president, they launched a brutal and inhuman war that many call the worst humanitarian disaster of our time. Millions face starvation as Saudi bombs and US sanctions combine to create a hell on earth that is unrelated in any way to US national security. Why this ongoing support for Saudi death and destruction in Yemen? Washington’s neocons have successfully promoted the lie that the Saudi attack on Yemen is all about preventing Iran from gaining more strength in the Middle East. Ironically it was the neocon-backed US attack on Iraq in 2003 that provided the biggest boost for Iranian influence in the region. Now, after Iraq’s “liberation,” Baghdad’s ties to Tehran are closer than ever. Meanwhile, who exactly are we supporting in Yemen? Even CNN, normally a big backer of US military actions overseas, has noticed something funny about US participation in the Saudi war on Yemen. As a CNN investigation found this month, “Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons to al Qaeda-linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, and other factions waging war in Yemen, in violation of their agreements with the United States.” Does that sound like we are on the side of the “good guys” in this battle? We are helping the Saudis arm al-Qaeda? Is this really a smart move? So we should be encouraged that Walter Jones’ legacy is being honored in the House vote to end the US participation in the Yemen war. While US “humanitarian” aid is being used as a weapon for regime change in Venezuela, the warmongers in Washington have never lifted a finger to help those suffering from a real genocide in Yemen. If the Yemen War Powers resolution passes the Senate, which is likely, Congress will have provoked the first veto from President Trump. Such a veto should not discourage us. Even the strongest army cannot stop an idea whose time has come. Ending senseless US wars is an idea whose time has come. We can thank Walter Jones for his role in making it so. 
By Thomas DiLorenzo
The so-called Green New Deal that was recently posted as a congressional Resolution and endorsed by many high-profile Democrats is essentially a twenty-first century version of the 1888 utopian novel, Looking Backward, by the Marxist-inspired writer Edward Bellamy. The main character of the novel, one Julian West, falls asleep for 113 years and awakes in the year 2000 delighting in the fact that America had been turned into a socialist utopia. A major theme of the novel is that all the evils of society can be eradicated by more-or-less totalitarian government controls, mandates, and regulations. That is also the theme of the Green New Deal. In Bellamy’s utopia private property is abolished and all industry is nationalized. Government guarantees “jobs for everyone,” as does the Green New Deal. Education is “free” (another Green New Deal promise) and everyone is paid the same by the government, the sole employer. Special efforts are made to assure that men and women are all paid the same. This is another key point of the Green New Deal. Everyone retired at age 45 with a good taxpayer-funded pension. Numerous Edward Bellamy Societies sprung up, established by socialist intellectuals of the day such as John Dewey, who founded the Edward Bellamy Society of New York. Looking Backward also spawned numerous small socialist communes, all of which collapsed in failure – a warning sign of what would become of twentieth-century socialism everywhere. Bellamy did not want to use the word “socialism” to describe his scheme, for most Americans considered it to be dangerous, destructive, and un-American. They were of course right. Ever since then the socialist Left has continued to attempt to bamboozle the public with euphemisms for its socialist schemes like “liberalism,” “progressivism,” “economic democracy,” “social justice,” “liberation theology,” “industrial policy,” “Medicare for All,” and now, “The Green New Deal.” But green socialism is still socialism. The Green New Deal is a bundle of absurdities founded on a fallacy. The fallacy is that the original New Deal saved America from the Great Depression. It did not. In 1929 the U.S. unemployment rate was 3.2% and skyrocketed to 24.9% by 1933. But by 1938, after five years of the New Deal, the unemployment rate was still 19% and was stuck at 14.6% in 1940 on the eve of World War II. The Great Depression did not end until the war was over, the military was demobilized, and the federal budget was cut by about two-thirds from 1945 to 1948. The year 1946 was the most vigorous year of private-sector economic growth in all of American history, with private consumption and investment spending increasing by 30%. No other year has ever come close. That the New Deal not only did not end the Great Depression but made it more severe and longer-lasting has become the accepted wisdom of the economics profession. In a 2004 article in the prestigious American Economic Review economists Harold Cole and Lee Ohanian concluded that “New Deal policies did not lift the economy out of the Depression . . . the abandonment of these policies coincided with the strong recovery of the 1940s” (emphasis added). The Green New Deal is even more ambitious – and potentially far more economically destructive – than FDR’s New Deal and is even more utopian than Edward Bellamy’s novel. It calls for a fifteen-member congressional committee to centrally plan most of the U.S. economy. It calls it a “Ten-Year Plan,” reminiscent of the old Soviet “Five-Year Plans.” As with Soviet socialism, it presumes that a small committee of politicians can “plan” the entire economy better than the millions of workers, business people, investors, consumers, and all other market participants can. This was called “the fatal conceit” of socialism by Nobel laureate economist F. A. Hayek, and is a key reason for the worldwide failures of socialism, a failure that is on vivid display today in “democratic socialist” Venezuela. Congresswoman Sandy Ocasio (as she is known to those with whom she grew up and went to school with in affluent Westchester County, New York), the most outspoken champion of the Green New Deal, can be thought of as a modern-day Julian West. Upon waking from a 29-year slumber she envisions a green utopia that would include a government rebuilding of the entire infrastructure of the U.S.; the elimination of all fossil fuels, cars, and airplanes; the refitting of all houses and other buildings in the country to her liking; “rebuilding” of all of manufacturing and agriculture by government bureaucrats; government mandates that all jobs be “high-paying union jobs”; government-mandated “family-sustaining wages”; mandatory paid vacations; enforcement of “wage and hour standards”; taxpayer-funded, socialized health care, housing, and “economic security”; government guarantee of clean water, air, and access to nature”; and the payment of salaries of those who are “unwilling to work.” And as she says, this is just the beginning. The Green New Deal is The Road to Serfdom on steroids and a recipe for totalitarian socialism. This article was originally published at LewRockwell.com
Sen. Rubio (R-FL) travelled down to the Colombia/Venezuela border over the weekend to threaten a US invasion of Venezuela if a US "aid" convoy is not allowed to cross the bridge. Rubio's sudden concern for the humanitarian situation in Venezuela smacks of hypocrisy, as he supported all US sanctions that have made life for Venezuelans miserable. This is "regime change" masking as humanitarian concern. Will the neocons succeed?
Authoritarians always rely on "intellectual" justification when selling their schemes to the public. This is why you constantly hear the term "experts say" before your liberty and property are taken from you. Democratic Socialists have been latching onto "Modern Monetary Theory" in order to justify their takeover of American life. Ron Paul discusses on today's Liberty Report!
Democratic US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) set off a firestorm on Sunday with a one-line Tweet on a third rail topic. The aftermath continues four days later. Canadian philosopher and public intellectual Marshal McLuhan famously observed that "the medium is the message." How is messaging changing with the advent of such radically different mediums? Is news/reality accelerating?
While former Speaker Paul Ryan turned himself into a pretzel to prevent a War Powers challenge to Trump's ongoing military action in Yemen, Speaker Pelosi is allowing a vote to the House Floor today. Has the House turned against the war? Or is something else at play?
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