By Liberty Report Staff Senator Robert Taft from Ohio served from 1939 until his death in 1953. He was known as "Mr. Republican" and was a powerful voice against the militaristic foreign policy that took over America (and that is sadly still with us today). What words would Taft have for our current president? Let's start with Taft's opposition to the war in Korea: “My conclusion, therefore, is that in the case of Korea, where a war was already under way, we had no right to send troops to a nation, with whom we had no treaty, to defend it against attack by another nation, no matter how unprincipled that aggression might be, unless the whole matter was submitted to Congress and a declaration of war or some other direct authority obtained.” Taft could not have been more correct. In fact, Taft's campaign manager was modern-day billionaire Warren Buffett's father --- Howard Buffet. Howard Buffett also warned: “Even if it were desirable, America is not strong enough to police the world by military force. If that attempt is made, the blessings of liberty will be replaced by coercion and tyranny at home. Senator Taft said that a permanent war footing would be all-consuming at home: The truth is that no nation can be constantly prepared to undertake a full-scale war at any moment and still hope to maintain any other purposes in which people are interested and for which nations are founded. How true, especially today as military propaganda is literally everywhere one turns. Echoing Howard Buffet, Senator Taft concurred that this must lead to tyranny at home. In the first place, it requires a complete surrender of liberty and turning over to the central government of power to control in detail the lives of the people and all their activities. Remember, this was the 1950's! Taft would be saddened (but not surprised) that by 2017, Americans would live in a total surveillance state. Heroic individuals like Edward Snowden, and organizations like Wikileaks continue to spill the beans on the electronic prison that has be erected. As the federal government seeks to punish those who tell the truth to American citizens, Taft had this to say: Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government. If he were around today, Senator Taft would surely be advising Trump to reverse course while he still can.
Would Trump even listen? By Liberty Report Staff Even though President Trump was sold as the "peace candidate," he laced his cabinet with hawkish generals and we're now bombarded by the constant threat of more unnecessary wars. Ron Paul had a much different strategy for the Commander-in-Chief and his Generals. Enjoy this classic moment:
By Chris Rossini
If you're going to flip your positions, at least spread it out. Entertain us for awhile. No, not President Trump. He's flipping his positions so fast, that it's getting hard to keep up: - The warmongers and deep state are now happy as militarism continues to run wild across the globe. - Obamacare is still draining the very life out of us, and Trump was furious with the congressmen that actually wanted to abolish it! - Trump's former antagonism towards The Fed has disappeared. - The "swamp" hasn't been touched. - Trump's travel expenses make Obama look like a penny-pincher with our tax dollars. - NATO (which absolutely is obsolete) is no longer obsolete in the president's eyes. And now, Trump appears to be flipping on Wikileaks? Can this be true? What happened to this?
It's all unravelling so quickly.
We haven't even hit the 100 day mark yet. How sad that the following tweet actually holds water:
At a time when politicians are fabricating "rights" into existence on a regular basis, Ron Paul addresses the fictional "right" to never be offended. Don't miss today's Myth-Busters!
By Liberty Report Staff Trump's Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly gave his first major public speech since taking over. The Hill gives us a glimpse of what he said: “Make no mistake — we are a nation under attack,” A population that is perpetually afraid becomes like sitting ducks for those who want to snatch away liberty. And boy, have we lost a boatload of liberty already.... This seems like a very good time to revisit the memorable moment when Ron Paul shattered the myths on why "they hate us": Secretary of State Rex Tillerson openly threatened Iran yesterday, accusing the country of sending troops to fight in Syria and of destabilizing the region. He vowed that the US would solve the Iran problem and not leave it to the next US Administration. Another war?
By Ron Paul I'm very happy to see that the people of Texas don't think very much of the border wall. I've always argued that walls would hinder the American people as much as anybody else. The idea of a wall (that will no doubt cost us a fortune) is detrimental to the concept of liberty and just won't work. It can only end up being a failed way to treat a symptom of our problems, instead of the cause. I discuss this in detail with Maria Bartiromo below: By Jonathan Newman A new program just passed by New York’s state government promises “free tuition” for middle-class students to attend a public college or university in the state. While there are similar programs elsewhere in the US, this is the first to include four-year schools. All of the headlines include some variation of the term free college, which makes this a great opportunity to discuss what actually happens when a government provides something for “free.” Let us consider this program from three different perspectives. From the student’s perspective, this is another scholarship program. Indeed, it is called the “Excelsior Scholarship,” and students may apply for it to cover any tuition not already covered by other forms of financial aid. It does not cover other fees, room and board, or books, so any headline advertising “free college” is misleading. One estimate based on the cost of attending a State University of New York campus says that the new program would pay about $26,000, leaving $60,000 for the students and their families to pay. Nevertheless, before any further increases in non-tuition prices, this may encourage more students to apply and attend. SUNY has seen enrollment increases every year at least since 2002, which is the earliest data at data.ny.gov. The question, however, is whether using government policy to funnel even more students into four years of public education is a good idea. Nationwide, enrollment has recently dropped, but this has mainly been in for-profit and community colleges. Public schools have seen steady increases in enrollment, tuition, and borrowing. From the university’s perspective, the Excelsior program is a large third-party payer. In a 2016 NBER paper, Grey Gordon and Aaron Hedlund found strong evidence for the Bennett hypothesis: increases in financial aid lead to increases in college tuitions. The authors’ quantitative model showed that increases in financial aid accounted for 102% of the 106% total increase in tuition. In 1987, then Secretary of Education William Bennett made this prophetic observation: “increases in financial aid in recent years have enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions, confident that Federal loan subsidies would help cushion the increase.” This became known as the Bennett hypothesis. Considering the rise in tuition since then, even relative to CPI, he may have been onto something (data from CollegeBoard.org and BLS.gov). From the taxpayer’s perspective, this is what Bastiat called “legal plunder.” Governments have nothing they did not first extract from their citizens. Bastiat argued against any law that “performs, for the profit of one citizen, and, to the injury of others.” The Excelsior Scholarship funds were not donated voluntarily by generous alumni or an organization whose members value higher education. The funds were taken from hard-working New Yorkers. Families had to forgo more or better education. Businesses had to employ fewer people. Grocery store carts had to be less full at the checkout. Tourists stayed for the weekend instead of a week, or chose not to travel to New York at all. Is it worth it? In one sense, we can’t know. It’s impossible (and therefore arrogant) to say that one person is better off with some amount of money compared to another person. Also, government programs are not subject to any sort of profit and loss test. Even when a program is a clear failure, more funds and resources are usually allocated to it. In another sense, we can say absolutely that New Yorkers will be worse off. The way we know that resources are used in the best possible way is that an individual has to voluntarily dedicate those resources to his or her most important goals. When funds are taken from individuals and used in a way those individuals would not have used them, then we can say for sure that those people are worse off. There are only two possibilities for the goal that is pursued with the stolen funds: (1) it is less important to the taxed individuals than what they would have done with the money, or (2) it is something the taxed individuals would not want at all. Said another way, if and to the extent that New Yorkers wanted to help students by paying for their tuition, they would have done so on their own. This article was originally published at The Mises Institute.
By Liberty Report Staff
Dean Acheson was President Harry Truman's Secretary of State during the Korean War. Truman formed the CIA and the National Security State that we currently live under. Acheson once gave his opinion about how the arrangement works between the Deep State and the President. He said: “If you truly had a democracy and did what the people wanted, you’d go wrong every time.”
The people in 2016 elected a President who said he was going to put "America First". That's what they wanted: "Make America Great Again."
Not "Make Syria Great Again," or "Make North Korea Great Again". According to Acheson's thinking though, that would be "wrong." Acheson further explained: “One fact…is clear to anyone with experience in government: The springs of policy bubble up; they do not trickle down.”
Americans were expecting that the brash billionaire businessman would go in to 'drain the swamp'.
"America First" would "trickle down"....So it was hoped... Where are Trump's foreign policy ideas "bubbling up from?" Ron Paul once did a program on The Deep State. Have you seen it? By Jeremy Scahill WIKILEAKS FOUNDER JULIAN ASSANGE is hitting back at Trump’s CIA director Mike Pompeo following a speech last week in which Pompeo accused WikiLeaks of being a “hostile nonstate intelligence agency” operating outside of the protections of the First Amendment. “We can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for,” Pompeo declared, adding an ominous assertion: “It ends now.” Speaking from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been living since June 2012, Assange said Pompeo appeared to be issuing a threat. “So how does he propose to conduct this ending? He didn’t say. But the CIA is only in the business of collecting information, kidnapping people, and assassinating people. So, it’s quite a menacing statement that he does need to clarify,” said Assange. Assange made the remarks during an exclusive interview for the Intercepted podcast. “The reason why Director Pompeo is launching this attack, is because he knows we’re in this series exposing all sorts of illegal actions by the CIA,” Assange said, referring to WikiLeaks ongoing publication of secret CIA hacking documents as part of its “Vault 7” project. Pompeo, he said, is “trying to get ahead of the publicity curve and create a preemptive defense.” When he watched Pompeo’s speech, Assange said he was struck by what he perceived as a lack of gravitas. “We thought it was quite a weak speech in that it put Director Pompeo, it put the CIA, in a position where they looked like they were frightened and worried that we were the better intelligence service,” Assange said. Regarding Pompeo’s declaration that WikiLeaks was not entitled to First Amendment rights, Assange said: “For the head of the CIA to pronounce what the boundaries are, of reporting or not reporting — is a very disturbing precedent. The head of the CIA determining who is a publisher, who’s not a publisher, who’s a journalist, who’s not a journalist, is totally out of line.”
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