When Border Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were arrested and convicted for crimes surrounding the 2005 shooting of drug smuggler Osvaldo Aldrete Davila, they became a symbol of the immigration problems facing the United States. They were given a prison sentence of more than 10 years for what some believed to be them "just doing their job," causing conservatives to scream for a pardon from President George Bush. 

"But, sweatshops are evil!" you say.

Tell that to the kids collecting plastic out of smoking piles of refuse in the landfills of Cambodia for $.05 a pound.

At least in the sweatshops you don't get run over by garbage trucks.

Not everybody is pumped about Obama's $825 billion stimulus plans, especially the part that includes billions of taxpayer dollars being spent by the government in the hopes of jump-starting the economy.  Here's what we've said about it:

As we move closer to Jan. 20 and the end of the Bush administration, the push to salvage the legacy of the Bush administration becomes stronger and stronger.  However, even from an objective standpoint, there is little that Bush has done in the last eight years that has made America safer, stronger or freer.  As a result, the clamoring to save-face have pushed Bush sycophants to unprecedented levels of absurdity.

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation recently released a video with Cato's Daniel Mitchell explaining the failed logic behind Keynesian economics.  It's a great watch, since Keynesian theory is the driving force behind President-Elect Barack Obama's latest stimulus plans:

Are cutting taxes really raising taxes? It's an interesting proposition, and one that economists are discussing in relation to President-Elect Barack Obama's proposed stimulus plan.  In Obama's projected $775 billion dollar stimulus plan, up to 40 percent of the (borrowed) money is anticipated to go towards tax cuts, while the rest will be put into infrastructure projects like bridge and road building. 

by George Getz (former Director of Communications for the Libertarian Party)
 
When Santa Claus comes to town this week, he'd better watch out -- because the federal government may be making a list of his crimes (and checking it twice), the Libertarian Party warned today.
 
"Hark the federal agents sing, Santa is guilty of nearly everything," said Libertarian Party press secretary George Getz. "The feds know when Santa's been bad or good -- and he's been bad, for goodness sakes."
 

There has been a recent push in third-party circles for a move to "direct democracy" in the United States.  Direct democracy, where the citizens govern by majority vote, is often favored by those who wish to circumvent elected officials who those individuals feel cannot properly represent the interests of every U.S. citizen.  In terms of direct representation, direct democracy truly does meet these goals.  After all, every citizen has a voice—technically.

When we say that we want to keep government out of the economy, people often ask, "Isn't that economic anarchy?"

At first our "Wall of Separation" commitment (that is, a commitment to keeping a wall of separation between economy and State) may seem a little bit like anarchy; however, we do believe government has a function in the economy. It's just that its role is very limited, and it is centered around the protection of property rights from fraud and abuse.

From our platform:

It doesn't take much to go from "bad" to "really bad" when government gets involved.  This is especially true when those in power have the philosophy that, "If it's broken, government can fix it."

Unfortunately, far too often government tries to force itself into problem situations with good intentions that have disastrous consequences.  Because many times these consequences aren't immediate, government officials and the voters who elect them to office don't learn from these mistakes.