Sheriff Mack’s Keynote from Liberty Fest 2010

September 3rd, 2010 by admin

From WyomingReporter.org

Keynote Speaker at the Wyoming Liberty Fest 2010 was Sheriff Richard Mack. Mack served on the Provo, Utah, Police Department for 11 years. He then returned to his native Arizona and was elected Graham County Sheriff.

Mack made a name for himself nationally with his 1994 challenge of the Brady Bill’s requirement for local sheriffs to perform background checks at their own expense. He won the case three years later.

Since that victory, Mack has traveled the country speaking out about the 10th Amendment and the importance of local sheriffs. He also educates law enforcement personnel in the constitution.

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Chutzpah Redefined

August 21st, 2010 by Charles Curley

By Charles Curley

Remember the Yiddish word “chutzpah”? It means noticeable effrontery above and beyond the call even of a Hollywood PR agent. The classic definition is “murdering your parents, and then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you’re an orphan”.

The United States Congress runs the world’s largest and longest running Ponzi scheme (it’s called “Social Security”). These are the people who are going after Bernie Madoff?

But wait, it gets worse.

The United States Congress is trillions of dollars in debt. It runs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which made the recent boom and bust possible, and which aren’t covered by the Frank-Dodd financial regulation bill. It has shown itself an utterly incompetent trustee for the tribes, the highways, the public lands, the parks, etc., etc. These are the people who are going to tell the financial industry how to straighten out and fly right?

These people lecture the Karzai government about fiscal responsibility and transparency?

There is only one possible response: “Oy vey!“

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The Real Solution to Social Security Insolvency

August 19th, 2010 by Sven Larson, Ph.D

By Sven Larson, Ph.D.

Originally published on HawaiiReporter.com

As this is written, in August 2010, the Social Security system is running a deficit. Its ability to support future retirement benefits for Americans is rapidly withering away. Fixes have been offered, but they all center in on postponing the inevitable: neither higher taxes nor cuts in benefits will save the system from its demise. Those methods have been tried before and failed.

Unsurprisingly, this truth has not yet set in everywhere. Many still offer regurgitated versions of the same old “fixes.” One example is the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s plan, which was presented by Lowell Kalapa in Hawaii Reporter on August 3.

The Peterson plan essentially combines higher taxes with benefit cuts, thus representing a concentrate of a half-century long stretch of “fixes” during the latter half of the 20th century.

Instead of repeating old mistakes it is time for America to face the hard truth: the government cannot provide us with sustainable retirement security. In the case of Social Security this is manifested in three flaws.

  • First, it does not save your taxes for your retirement, but uses them to pay other people’s retirement. All you get is an IOU from the government.
  • Secondly, the IOUs that one generation accumulates over time will by necessity always exceed what the average working American can pay in taxes, at a given tax rate. As a result, Congress needs to repeatedly cut benefits or raise taxes, or both.
  • Third, the Social Security system was constructed at a time when economic growth was much higher than it has been the last few decades. It was designed for a different kind of American economy, one with much smaller government and economically more free citizens and businesses.

As a result of its inherent flaws, Social Security has become a perpetual problem for the president and Congress since 1950 when they raised the Social Security tax for the first time. Over the next half-century Congress raised the Social Security tax another 19 times and made numerous adjustments to erode benefits. And Social Security still is not solvent – on the contrary, its future is more precarious than ever.

It is not enough to match the current system with a small system of private accounts. Nor is it enough – or even desirable – to raise the taxes and cut benefits in the current system. Small private accounts in today’s system will not address the second flaw mentioned above, and higher taxes with lower benefits will only save Social Security when everyone is a taxpayer and no one is a beneficiary.

There is but one sustainable solution to the problem that Social Security represents. Only a complete phase-out of the current system, and a complete phase-in of private accounts, will provide the sustainable retirement solution we all need and want.

In a model currently being developed at the Wyoming Liberty Group, private accounts will be phased in gradually over a long period of time. The current system will have obligations to honor for decades, and will need cash until the last entitlement is paid out. At the same time, a gradual phase-in of private accounts will allow the financial industry to gradually develop responsible investment products to care for people’s retirement savings.

Private accounts are better because they shore up our own money and can be invested against an annual return. Those in most urgent need of the financial safety that private accounts provide are low-income families. Therefore, the Wyoming Liberty Group model suggests a phase-in strategy that has a bias in favor of low-income families.

Privatizing Social Security is not easy, but a slow, steady phase-in of private accounts combined with a low-income bias secures a stable, predictable transition out of a flawed government system and in to a properly managed, responsible private system. It will take up to 30 years before private accounts have completely replaced the government system, but it is worth the long stretch.

It will also take a tremendous amount of political fortitude and bipartisanship, both of which are all too absent in today’s politics. At the same time, our elected officials in Washington, DC have summoned enormous fortitude and bipartisanship to maintain the current system, which is full of flaws and constantly heading for insolvency. It is only fair to expect similar commitments behind a privatization reform.

Sven Larson, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow with the Wyoming Liberty Group, a free-market think tank in Cheyenne, Wyo. Larson wrote this piece for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, www.grassrootinstitute.org.

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Political Elite, Phone Home

August 18th, 2010 by Charles Curley

By Charles Curley

While doing some research on Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070, I came across some interesting poll data. Apparently, the new law is quite popular. According to a Rassusen poll of July 8, “Voters by a two-to-one margin oppose the U.S. Justice Department’s decision to challenge the legality of Arizona’s new immigration law in federal court. Sixty-one percent (61%), in fact, favor passage of a law like Arizona’s in their own state, up six points from two months ago.”

So far, so good. However something else I found interesting in the same article:

“On the other hand, the nation’s Political Class thinks the legal challenge is a great idea. Seventy-three percent (73%) of Political Class voters agree with the Justice Department decision to challenge the Arizona law, while 67% of Mainstream voters disagree and oppose that challenge.

“But then 71% of Mainstream voters favor passage of an Arizona-like immigration law in their home state. Seventy-two percent (72%) of Political Class voters oppose passage of such a law.”

In other words, once again, the political elite are out of touch with the people of this country. That’s no surprise, but it is disheartening to see that they still haven’t learned. They may never learn.

What to do about that disconnect is a subject for a long essay, not a blog entry. But you already have some ideas, or you wouldn’t be reading this blog, would you?

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Separation of Marriage and State

August 16th, 2010 by Charles Curley

By Charles Curley

The Tenth Amendment movement across the country is gathering an interesting coalition that spreads across the political spectrum. From gun owners (viewed by the mainstream media as conservative) and tea partiers (viewed by the MSM as right wing nut cases and racists) to medical marijuana activists (viewed by the MSM as leftists), people are embracing the Tenth Amendment as a way to end federal regulation on issues they care about. Full marijuana legalization and taxation are on the California ballot this November, with an implied Tenth Amendment defense against federal drug laws.

Now comes Massachusetts with a new wrinkle: It is Massachusetts, not the feds, who get to define marriage. Judge Joseph L. Tauro of United States District Court in Boston held, among other things, that the Tenth Amendment makes the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. The feds have used DOMA to deny federal benefits to married homosexual couples. But Judge Tauro held that the feds have no authority to define marriage, and must rely on Massachusetts to define it. Tauro’s ruling isn’t result-oriented judging: It simply reflects the truth that individual states possess the power to define and regulate the institution of marriage, not the federal government.

This places some conservatives in an awkward position. They see constitutional principles they like (enumerated and limited powers) being used to bring about a result they dislike (homosexual marriage).  Fortunately, we don’t get to pick and choose when the constitutional protections of sovereignty apply.  Being consistent in supporting sovereignty means honoring Judge Tauro’s result. While traditional conservatives get all knotted up because they don’t care much for particular end results, they enjoy an ample remedy in civil society: Persuade your fellow citizens that your take on a given issue is the best.

There is a very simple solution, actually. Get all governments out of the business of defining marriage. For civil purposes, marriage should be strictly a matter of private contract. That approach served Rome well for over a thousand years. Anyone who sees marriage as a sacrament should be aghast at the notion of government at any level defining sacraments.

Egypt provides a perfect example of why the state should not be in the marriage business. Egyptian civil law, like Muslim sharia, allows divorce and remarriage. But when the Coptic Orthodox church refused Hani Wasfi Naguib a second marriage, he sued Pope Shenouda III in civil court, and won. Coptic clerics are defying the courts, insisting that “there is no power on earth that could make us violate the teachings of our Lord Christ”. As the case wends its way to the Supreme Constitutional Court, Egyptians are discussing getting the state out of the marriage business entirely. If Egypt, conservative as it is, is willing to discuss the separation of marriage and state, it’s past time Americans did too.

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Oh Give me a Home – Where the Camels Roam?

August 12th, 2010 by Benjamin Barr

Somewhere due Northeast of San Diego rests the nation’s largest camel dairy – some 22 strong.  Gil and Nancy Riegler are dairy entrepreneurs of sorts.  Through careful cultivation and care of their herd, they are able to deliver the health benefits of camel milk.  But selling camel milk would be illegal – consistent with the regulatory approach taken by the Food and Drug Administration since 1938.

Under the cumbersome requirements of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act of 1938, the FDA, or more particularly the “Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition,” is invested with authority to decide which new food offerings are appropriate, and which are not.  When buffalo and buffalo milk became popular a few years back, it took close to six years for government bureaucrats to determine that the milk was “permissible” for you and me to purchase. The FDA itself enjoys broad oversight of issues that go to the core of our individual sovereignty – like the authority to pick what kind of milk we drink.   Sporting a budget over $2 billion annually, the FDA’s inflated powers are hard to digest.

Internationally, camel milk has shown itself valuable as a natural health supplement to help reduce heart disease and limit diabetes.  But stubborn facts are unlikely to get in the way of the FDA’s regulatory ambit.  By most conservative accounts, camel milk devotees could expect another six years plus for an authoritative ruling that camel milk may be sold in the U.S.

Maybe camel products aren’t your cup of milk, but the antics of the FDA should concern everyone – especially those of us interested in natural ways to improve and balance our health.  Imposing daunting six-year moratoriums on individuals offering natural products, like camel milk, is certain to inhibit entrepreneurial offerings.  What’s worse, the FDA’s penchant for regulatory zeal dampens our own individual sovereign ability to make sense of what works best for our bodies, or doesn’t.  Surrendering that authority to however noble a regulatory commission only poisons us from within.

As the reach of the FDA achieves its most absurd zenith, perhaps states will build their own oases of food freedom.  The concept is rather uncomplicated – create the legal framework appropriate to protect the contours of food freedom appropriate for your state.  Those frameworks should be divergent, embracing the local values, diets, and geographic needs of their populace.  Then again, that kind of policy innovation is the genius of federalism as promised by our framers – and far superior to the kind of unhealthy homogeneity practiced by the FDA.

So meanwhile the Rieglers can expect to feed their camels for the next six years. And not make any money off of them. That sounds like a lot of hay to us. And they’ll have to deal with the obvious byproduct of feeding camels along with the byzantine FDA approval process to sell their milk. That sounds like a lot of camel excrement to us.

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Nebraska Governor Balks at More DC Dough, Will Gov Dave Follow?

August 12th, 2010 by Sven Larson, Ph.D

By Sven Larson, Ph.D.

In 2009 Governor Freudenthal initially resisted taking the bulk of the Obama administration’s “stimulus” money. He eventually caved in, but he now has the chance to remedy at least part of that mistake. In another reckless spending package, Congress is throwing yet more federal funds at states. This time the the Democrats are doing it to save teachers’ jobs and please the teachers’ unions while yanking funds for food stamp programs. Fortunately, there are politicians at the state level who have the backbone to stand up to another round of federal debt pile-up. Nebraska governor Heineman is balking at taking any of the money, an example Governor Freudenthal should follow:

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman is worried that state lawmakers might have to spend $30 million more to qualify for $59 million in new federal funds for teacher salaries. The federal money is part of a $26 billion aid package the U.S. House approved Tuesday in a special, one-day session during its August recess. The 247-161 vote went mainly along party lines, with Midlands members voting against. The bill was intended to help states that are struggling to balance the books in the face of recession-devastated tax revenues. Nebraska is eyeing a projected $751 million budget gap. Heineman said state officials are seeking clarification but said it appears that Nebraska would be required to spend an additional $30 million on K-12 education to qualify. “I don’t think the federal government should be dictating that we spend more money to get more money,” Heineman said after a State Capitol event.

For every dollar the federal government forces states to spend as part of the Obama administration’s flawed, failed and fiscally reckless “stimulus”, state taxpayers will lose another dollar they could have spent at local businesses to get their local economy going again. When the federal government is using taxpayer money to bail out its pet interest groups, the waste and mismanagement is even more egregious.

Hopefully Governor Freudenthal will make the right decision.

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Sales Tax Holiday in Wyoming?

August 3rd, 2010 by Sven Larson, Ph.D

By Sven Larson, Ph.D

Tax Foundation has released its report on sales tax holidays. In 2010 a total of 18 states will be giving consumers a temporary break from sales taxes. Wyoming is not one of them:

Sales tax holidays are periods of time when selected goods are exempted from state (and sometimes local) sales taxes. Such holidays have become an annual event in many states, with exemptions for such targeted products as back-to-school supplies, clothing, computers, hurricane preparedness supplies, products bearing the U.S. government’s Energy Star label, and even guns. High-tax New York State sparked the trend in 1997 as a way to discourage border shopping. In 2010, 18 states will conduct sales tax holidays.

Consumers tend to take advantage of sales tax holidays which shows that taxes negatively affect private economic activity. While exempting one day or a few days from sales taxes is not the ideal tax policy, it has nevertheless motivated politicians in high-tax states like Connecticut and Illinois to provide some relief for consumers. It is worth discussing whether Wyoming should create its own sales tax holiday or find other tax cuts that will help boost economic activity in the state.

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Wyoming Liberty Group Applauds Legislators’ Free Speech Lawsuit

August 2nd, 2010 by Benjamin Barr

Benjamin Barr

Recently, something oddly appropriate occurred – state legislators sued the state over portions of its election law.  The litigation is born of noble origin:  Four legislators filed suit to preserve the constitutional rights of residents to criticize or applaud them.  The cause of controversy is quite simple.  In January, the US Supreme Court declared that government could not ban grassroots and corporate organizations from speaking out about political issues and candidates for public office.  While other states moved to amend their laws in the wake of the Citizens United opinion, the Wyoming Legislature decided to go it alone – leaving its unconstitutional speech ban in place.

Wyoming’s decision not to purge unconstitutional laws runs counter to the rule of law and the preservation of constitutional rights – like states deciding not to comply with Brown v. Board of Education, which abolished state segregation in public schools.  Application of the Constitution to the states is not optional.  Definitive rulings of the high court compel states to comply with its holdings and secure the fundamental rights of its residents.

Senator Case, Representatives Tom Lubnau, Tim Stubson and Kermit Brown’s decision to sue will work to achieve two principled end goals.  As Wyoming law currently stands, residents gathered together in grassroots and civic associations are gagged.  They may not applaud, criticize, or discuss the relative merits of candidates for public office.  Without judicial intervention, speakers can be fined up to $10,000 just for speaking.  The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled these types of speech bans remain unequivocally unconstitutional – the only question remains why Wyoming clung to such an unprincipled ban in the first place. The legislators’ suit is also important because it will preserve Wyoming’s public purse.  Faced with the prospect of private litigation with high costs and protracted length, the suit represents a responsible move to protect public funds.

It is of assurance to the residents of Wyoming that these legislators took the initiative to uphold and defend the Constitution.  We expect a quick determination from the court upholding the natural right of citizens to assemble together, speak, and otherwise participate in the essential workings of civil society.  We celebrate the initiative to take a principled stand in defense of our fundamental rights, opening the floodgates of free speech and voluntary association in Wyoming.

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Minerals Committee Covers Many Issues

July 23rd, 2010 by Charles Ware

(Editor’s note: This is the first in an ongoing series designed to inform the public of the activities of the Wyoming Legislature’s interim committees. If you would be interested in attending and covering a one of these meetings, contact Charles Ware, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

By Charles Ware

The meeting’s content, originally planned for two days, was presented in one day to accommodate a tour. Committee members and guests took a tour the of energy projects in the Campbell County area. The result was a very packed meeting with delays in covering topics and frustrated presenters.

Reports were made by the taxation department, the Aeronautics Commission, the DEQ, the Business Council, the Pipeline Authority, and UW’s coal research project. All agencies had important information to give the Committee regarding the 2011 legislative session. I am selecting two reports for analysis from a liberty perspective because of their relationship to limited government and free enterprise.

The first liberty topic is about changing the Infrastructure and Pipeline Authorities by turning them into state agencies. There is a bill drafted to do this. Committee members (e.g. Senator Bebout and Rep. Dave Zwonitzer) want to keep the Authorities “instruments of the state” rather than have them be formal state agencies. Their reasoning, and the general reasoning, is the “authority” can make decisions more quickly, can raise money by floating bonds, and can react more quickly to the marketplace than a government department. By operating this way, Wyoming has increased its pipeline capacity by 25% over a five year period. The bottom line here is that Wyoming’s increased delivery capacity has made it more competitive in the national market. The increased capacity has shrunk the price differential between Henry Hub (Louisiana) and Opal (Wyoming) from $1.25/mcf to $.50/mcf. This is a major difference in the gas delivery market which increases sales of Wyoming gas.

The liberty position is that the results the two “Authorities” have achieved since they were formed supports keeping them as “instruments of the state.” Since they can move at the speed of business, they can compete in the real world of business. They are small groups of decision makers, they have the authority to raise money, and they can speak for the state in making contracts.

They are not slowed by the internal checks and balances found in a government agency. Some Legislators question whether or not these “Authorities” should have the power to commit the State to financial obligations without the full vetting of the legislative branch. Yet, it is this ability that has produced the 25% growth of capacity in the last five years. It is noted that the two authorities have never sold bonds or raised money. Just having the authority to do so has led to timely decisions backed with financial power to support those decisions.

The second liberty topic is also about limited government and free enterprise. The Business Council has always been a department under the Mineral Committee’s jurisdiction. The Council has done good work, but has the challenge of being perceived as a true business development company since it is a quasi government department. They always question if they should recruit new business to Wyoming, or expand current businesses.

Director, Bob Jensen, pointed out that other states envy Wyoming because it has such close working relationships with local economic development groups, the Governor’s office, the Department of Employment, and the Department of Workforce Services. These close working relationships can happen since the Business Council is a “quasi” government/private sector business. Still the Committee and the Legislature have a concern regarding their results based on the appropriation to run the Council ($914 million) per biennium.

The liberty position is that mixing of state monies in economic development to reduce the risk a business owner would otherwise take does not ensure free enterprise. Further is the fact there is less accountability of success or failure when public money is part of the equation.

The Committee has asked the Council to give them a more detailed report showing the amount of new jobs the Council’s grants have generated as well as the number of business successes created by the grants they have awarded. This information will assist the Committee in making a better judgment as to the value of this quasi government/private sector state economic development group.

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