Voice For Liberty

Tag: Politics

  • Let representatives know about Chemical Facility Antiterrorism Act

    As reported in this website, Congress is considering legislation that threatens to harm the American economy, while at the same time accomplishing little or none of its stated goals.

    Articles like Chemical Facility Security Authorization Act threatens American economy give more detail.

    It’s important to let your elected representatives in Washington know how harmful this proposed law will be to a vital American industry.

    An easy way to let them know is by clicking on this link: Ask Your Legislator to Oppose the Chemical Facility Antiterrorism Act. This will take you to a form where you fill in your name and address. The site will determine who are your representatives and show you the letter it has created. Then, you can choose to have the site send it for you, or you can print it and mail it yourself.

    Either way, it’s important to act.

  • Chemical facilities act would increase cost, not safety

    Update: Let your elected representatives in Washington know about this legislation. Send them a message by clicking here.

    As reported earlier, the United States Congress is considering legislation — the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards — that will increase regulation on chemical plants and facilities. Even the Wichita Water Works is on a list of facilities that would possibly be required to undergo expensive modifications if this new law passes. (See Chemical security law goes beyond protection)

    The proposed legislation, however, would extend government control into another of our nation’s most important industries. It would require companies to change their manufacturing processes and substitute products in the name of safety.

    But the legislation may not produce its intended effect. Congressional testimony found that this could actually increase risk to the businesses that the bill intends to protect.

    Here’s a letter from a Texas industry group that explains the problems with the proposed legislation.

    (This is a Scribd document. Click on the rectangle at the right of the document’s title bar to get a full-screen view.)

    Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Facility Standards Letter From Texas Chemical Council

  • Seven principles of sound public policy

    Lawrence W. Reed, now the president of the Foundation for Economic Education, has a short booklet available that can help citizens analyze whether a government policy is sound.

    Titled Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy, it’s a comfortably short pamphlet of just 11 pages. But it’s full of a lot of wisdom.

    The seven principles are these:

    • Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free.
    • What belongs to you, you tend to take care of;
      what belongs to no one or everyone tends to fall into disrepair.

    • Sound policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people.
    • If you encourage something, you get more of it; if you discourage something, you get less of it.
    • Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
    • Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and a government that’s big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you’ve got.
    • Liberty makes all the difference in the world.

    In the booklet, Reed expands on each principle.

    Click on Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy to read the booklet. There’s a pdf version available for downloading and printing.

  • Government-run health care focus of June 6 demonstration

    This Saturday, Wichita-area citizens will have an opportunity to let their fellow citizens and the Obama administration know of the dangers of government control of health care.

    The event will be on Saturday, June 6, 2009, from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. The location is the pedestrian bridge over Kellogg (US 54/400 highway) at Pattie Street. Meet on the south side of Kellogg. You can click on a Google map of the location.

    Protest event organizers say this is your opportunity to wake up the public, to get people talking to each other about government control of health care, to watch these videos to become informed, and to spread information throughout the country. Please send an email to students@cox.net for more information on the protest event, to ask your questions, and to volunteer to hand out literature, send emails, etc.

    This is a follow-up event to this protest event. More information can be found there.

  • Video message can’t rehabilitate Wichita’s reputation

    The Wichita organization ROKICT.com has produced a video that attempts to rehabilitate Wichita’s reputation in light of the events of yesterday.

    Introduced as “About wichita — a reaction from the arts community to the kansas stigma after the murder of dr. tiller” it’s been viewed over 750 times on YouTube.

    Early on, the video spotlights activist Jason Dilts speaking at the candlelight vigil for murdered doctor George Tiller.

    Obviously speaking from the heart, Dilts said “Wichita’s better than this. This is not Wichita. (Cheers from crowd.) … We’re a community that brings people together. Some of us are pro-choice, some are pro-life, but we’re all pro-community.”

    That’s all the video speaks to about abortion, except for its ending message “We are more than a stigma, we are stronger than violence.” The rest of the video promotes Wichita in much the same way a chamber of commerce commercial would — although to a younger, hipper, edgy audience.

    The problem is that this message — concern that only now, after the murder of Dr. Tiller, does Wichita bear the stigma of violence — resonates only if you believe that a woman truly does have the right to a late-term abortion.

    But if you believe, as many Americans do, that abortion kills a human life, then Wichita has born the stigma of violence for many years, as our community was home to one of our nation’s few late-term abortion providers.

    This difference of opinion can’t be overcome by the suggestion that we’re all “pro-community.”

  • Kansas campaign press release archive started

    To help people in Kansas keep up with campaigns, I’ve started a collection of Kansas campaign press releases and related material.

    To view the documents, click on Kansas campaign press release archive.

  • Politics impossible to ignore in Tiller murder

    George Tiller vigil 2009-05-31 11

    About 500 people gathered in Wichita’s Old Town Square last night in a vigil to remember the life of murdered Wichita doctor George Tiller.

    Tiller was notable as one of the few doctors in the United States who performed late-term abortions.

    One speaker at the vigil said that Tiller was the victim of a hate crime. One spoke of Wichita’s “sense of community.” “We’re a city that brings people together … we’re all pro-community.”

    One person attending the vigil said “This is grass roots terrorism.”

    Another person in the audience told me that it’s a shame that Wichita — and the city’s image — will be in the news for the next several days because of this story. Another wanted to make sure that I reported how peaceful the vigil attendees were, perhaps drawing a contrast with a small group of protesters from Westboro Baptist Church who carried anti-abortion signs and shouted before the vigil started. There, a group of abortion rights supporters returned the insults in kind.

    I agree with the assessment of Bud Norman that last night’s vigil was more a demonstration for abortion rights than anything else. Part of the problem, as Norman noted, was the lack of sound reinforcement equipment. That, coupled with the water fountain noise — not to mention the street traffic and trains — meant that only some of the people who attended the vigil heard the speakers. That didn’t seem to bother many of the people who attended.

    The politics of abortion are impossible to separate from this murder, and those politics are emotionally charged.

    As an illustration, it didn’t take long before an online forum, the Wichita Eagle’s WE blog, descended into vicious and hateful name-calling, with writers on both sides making threats against others.

    At this time, it seems that neither side is willing to trust the other. Some pro-choice people are not willing to accept pro-life groups’ condemnations of Tiller’s murder, claiming instead that pro-lifers are secretly glad that Tiller is dead.

    There is also an attempt to blame all pro-life demonstrators for Tiller’s death. One Kansas blogger wrote “… blame for that tragedy is at the feet of every person who has ever called a pro-choice person or a doctor who performs abortions a baby killer or who has ever marched at clinics or rallies holding signs with pictures of dismembered fetuses. Those words and those pictures are intended to elicit violent reactions like revulsion, hate, and, in their most extreme, murder.”

    Language like this fails to recognize the sincerity of the beliefs of many pro-life people, including those who protested peacefully nearly every day at Tiller’s clinic. Truly believing that abortion is equivalent to murder, they acted on their strongly-held beliefs — just as pro-choice people act on theirs.

    Despite President Obama’s recent call for “open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words” he recognizes that “the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable.” The murder of George Tiller will likely provide another example of how true this is.

  • Chemical Facility Security Authorization Act threatens American economy

    Update: Let your elected representatives in Washington know about this legislation. Send them a message by clicking here.

    Earlier this week I reported on legislation being considered by Congress that would, under the lofty goal of national security, impose a huge burden on the American chemical industry. (Chemical security law goes beyond protection)

    Our agricultural industries need to be concerned, too. The article Homeland Security To Regulate Farm and Ranch Inputs? details some of the harm that excessive government interference will cause.

    For example, the legislation “proposes to mandate the government to take a large measure of control over products and processes in the chemical industry, much like it has taken over leadership, compensation and control functions at some banks, insurance and auto companies. … A government bureaucracy would be given power to mandate product substitutions, formulation changes and changes in processes … But interference with product formulation and the complicated processes worked out scientifically over years of research and experience is not the proper purview of government security regulators or environmental activists. It is a separate issue from security and terrorism. Such interference is more likely to create new manufacturing and worker safety hazards.”

    This article gives us a hint at what may be the real motivation behind this legislation: “Interestingly, it is environmental activist groups, many of whom oppose mainstream agriculture’s use of any chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and fossil fuels to produce America’s robust food supply, who are pushing this legislative reach to mandate private industry’s products and processes.”

    Wrapping an extremist environmental agenda in the trappings of national security may be an effective scare tactic, but it’s not a good way to formulate national policy.

  • Kris Kobach campaign in Wichita

    Republican Kris Kobach stopped by Wichita yesterday afternoon in his trip across Kansas supporting his candidacy for the Kansas Secretary of State.

    Kobach’s main reason for running, he says, is ACORN and the voter fraud it spreads. “It is a political organization, but it is also a criminal enterprise. It’s a criminal enterprise that is either under investigation or has been successfully prosecuted in 14 states.” ACORN is to receive $400 million in the federal stimulus plan, he said.

    Kobach outlined several things he wants to do to reduce voter fraud.

    Kobach says we need to require photo ID to vote in Kansas. This has been approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.

    We also need to require voters, when they register to vote for the first time, to prove that they’re U.S. citizens.

    We also need to purge the voter rolls, eliminating those who have died, are not U.S. citizens, or have moved away.

    Purging the voter rolls of non-citizens will prompt a lawsuit by the ACLU, Kobach said, but it has lost these suits.

    We also need to change the method of prosecution of voter fraud. There have been documented cases of voter fraud, he said, but no prosecutions. Currently the Secretary of State’s office refers suspected cases to local district attorneys, but these cases are judged as less important than other crimes, and therefore aren’t prosecuted. He advocates having an attorney in the Secretary’s office that would prepare cases and assist local district attorneys in prosecutions.

    Kobach said that “if you actually start enforcing the law, people start following the law,” the point being that starting to enforce the law will make the difference.

    Kansas is one of the most vulnerable states to voter fraud, Kobach said. His aspiration is to make Kansas a model of election security.

    The Wichita Eagle’s Dion Lefler attended the event and contributes coverage in Two area lawmakers back Kobach secretary of state candidacy. His previous coverage is at Kobach to run for secretary of state. The Eagle’s Rhonda Holman voices her skepticism of widespread voter fraud in her editorial Beware of claims of voter fraud.