Paul Benedict

War of Words
by Paul Benedict (libertarian)

Three Reasons Gays Should Not Serve "Openly" in the Military
Published: February 7, 2010
Codifying gays serving openly in the military will cost taxpayers more money, violates the privacy rights of military servicemen, and enshrines weakness as acceptable in the military

Government Reform 101 B: Barney Frank is Right on the Filibuster
Published: January 20, 2010
Do you think that U.S. Constitutional triumphed last night in Massachusetts? Do you really? Well, if you do you must acknowledge that Barney Frank is right about ending the Senate filibuster.

Federal Reserve Policy Transfers Municipal Pension Wealth to Banks Too Big to Fail
Published: January 6, 2010
The Federal Reserve Bank's near zero interest rates are impoverishing publically held pensions.

Government Reform 101: End the Senate's "Gentleman" Filibuster
Published: December 25, 2009
In 1975 a rules change allowed senate filibusters to take place from back rooms, cloak rooms and from the local bar and grill. This change continues to inflate the “price” of legislation faster than the Fed can mint the money. The final price tag is our liberty.

Palin and the Culture of Liberty
Published: August 18, 2009
Most of America, via the health care debate, has now been treated to a taste of the derision that Governor Palin has experienced on a daily basis. The malicious slander sent their way is a badge of honor. Consider, for example, both Governor Palin and President Reagan.

The University of California Fights for its Life
Published: July 17, 2009
Like California and like the United States, the University of California must return to its historic roots.

Rumors of California Prop. 187's Death Highly Exaggerated
Published: July 9, 2009
In 1994 California Proposition 187 made providing state services to illegal immigrants illegal. The rumor is that the ACLU "killed" 187 in United States District Court. But the proposition lives. Requiring applicants for state benefits to report their immigrant status is now federal law.

Thoughts on Independence: Conservative and Libertarian
Published: July 3, 2009
There is a philosophical high ground abandoned by Libertarians and Progressives that Conservatives call their own. This is a quick helicopter tour of the beauties of this highland in honor of our founding fathers on this July 4th. If, after considering the purchase price of these truths, every body of political thought chooses to plant its flag here, so much the better. There is room enough for all.

Reforming CalWorks SSI and Food Assistance Helps Everyone
Published: July 1, 2009
Governor Schwarzenegger’s May balanced budget proposal included almost 650 million in savings from Welfare Reform. These reforms were enacted for the rest of the United States back in the 1990’s, the last time the federal government had even a look at a balanced budget. The reforms are good for everyone. They will work for the individuals involved. They’ll work for the State of California, and they’ll help the nation.

A Budget Compromise that Could Drill California
Published: June 25, 2009
California Republicans should trade a new oil tax for a new offshore oil lease. They are broiling over the proposed oil severance tax, and coastal dwelling Democrats are reeling over a single new oil lease that allows not even one new oil rig to touch California's shining seas. Be Americans: make a deal!

Prize Fight! The Terminator vs. the U.C. Research Budget: a 170 Million Dollar Purse
Published: June 17, 2009
California funding for U.C. research projects is 675 million dollars a year. Even as the state budget has collapsed, the spending of real U.C. research dollars has increased. Much of this "research" shows little evidence of fiscal or moral profit for the citizens of California. War with this behemoth could save CAL Grant aide for California's students. This is a prize fight worthy of the governor's most Herculean efforts.

One Billion Stimulus Dollars to Save California’s Universities
Published: June 12, 2009
Tax cutting Republicans will not trumpet this, and tax-them-ever-more Democrats won't admit this, but over a billion dollars of President Obama's stimulus money is finding a happy home in California's universities. The scandal is not Governor Schwarzenegger's draconian cuts; it's that California's universities' unfettered growth grows unchecked for yet another season.

California's Rejection of "Mark of the Beast" I.D. Could Save Fifty Million per Year
Published: June 10, 2009
California has chosen not to go forward with the biometric facial recognition software required by the federal REAL ID Act of 2005. That will save the DMV 4.5 million dollars in this fiscal year and an estimated 25 million dollars every year thereafter. Though the DC DMV is moving forward on biometrics, it offered a savings plan to offset REAL ID costs. California could apply these savings reforms and double the 25 million per year savings.

Ted Olson and David Boies in Lucrative Gay Marriage Legal Deal
Published: June 3, 2009
Headlines blare that Olson and Boies are joined in a great ideological quest for freedom and equality. Wait! These are some of the best known Supreme Court advocates in the country. They aren’t working for free. This is a practical union, and, like most arranged marriages, it must cement a union of great financial propriety.

Is American Sovereignty on the Open Market?
Published: May 30, 2009
Who spiked the oil in '08? Americans are far too sanguine about our international vulnerability on oil. The left's concerns about all forms of energy play, conveniently, into the hands of the American enemy that can bid the highest.

California's Excessive Liberty Still Shines As Marriage Endures
Published: May 26, 2009
Marriage continues in California as gay rights court submits to California constitutional law. Thousands of gay activists pledge to follow California law by seeking to amend its constitution constitutionally. It's morning in America!

Midwestern Tea Parties, the Militarization of the Conservative Movement, and the Courts
Published: April 22, 2009
Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano is an alarmist. If there ever is a rise in militias that prove a danger to other Americans, history shows that the most likely cause is the failure of America's courts. As the scope of these failures escalate, the greater the deep divisions in American life will be.

How to Cut California's Education Budget and Class Size at the Same Time
Published: April 18, 2009
In addition to the "10% across the board" cuts favored by California's legislature, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, part of the massive K-12 40 billion dollar education budget, is a place for draconian cuts. This part of the budget can be reformed so that it all but pays for itself.

Liberty Counsel's Pro Marriage Brief Unpersuasive
Published: April 8, 2009
Liberty Counsel's Pro Marriage arguments failed to persuade Iowa's Supreme Court because of Americana's endless indulgence in the exaltation of equality above liberty. No social good can be greater than "equality," so Liberty Counsel's propositions about the public good of traditional marriage could not succeed. Why waste the ink?

Bernanke and Geithner's Plan is NOT the Banking Act of 1933
Published: March 27, 2009
Both Timothy Geithner and Ben Bernanke have requested a new authority to step into private sector corporations based on the FDIC's authority to put banks into receivership. A comparison of this request to the facts about the FDIC makes such a model seem, at best, improbable.

PRSST and Why Free Enterprise "Failed" the Loan Markets
Published: March 23, 2009
The reasons that the free enterprise system failed the loan markets are the same reasons we must transform the discussion of Social Security privatization with the PRSST.

Dave Ramsey, Cato Institute's 6.2% Plan, and Transforming Social Security
Published: March 5, 2009
CATO Institute's 6.2% plan for privatizing Social Security provides the most savings of all those examined by Social Security's actuaries. Comparing the CATO plan to one which applies Social Security taxes to primary residences illustrates the superior power of this second strategy to rescue America from its debts.

How Bernanke Should Have Answered Dodd
Published: February 25, 2009
When Chris Dodd assailed the ever erudite Bernanke on privatizing Social Security, the banker had no notes on hand so he apologized for the idea instead. America needs to answer Dodd before the government raises Social Security taxes and lowers benefits again. Applying Social Security payroll taxes to primary residences is the way to go.

Ending Social Security by Applying Payroll Taxes to Primary Residences
Published: February 21, 2009
Because Social Security is a Bernard Madoff style Ponzi scheme, if we can end Social Security today and allow participants to invest the payroll tax in their primary residences this generation pay off the promises to the baby boomers and retire with even greater wealth than those whose bills it will have paid. Do the math yourself.

How to End Social Security in Our Lifetime -- Jack Kemp Style
Published: February 15, 2009
When the Berlin Wall fell and the engines of free enterprise became the models of prosperity, Jack Kemp urged America to look in its own back yard. After ignoring Jack Kemp, America tried other ideas. We've come full circle. Thanks to ACORN the renewal of our inner cities have been dealt the worst setback in a generation.

Ending Social Security with the Youth Vote
Published: February 13, 2009
There are three direct challenges to serious Social Security transformation: the twenty-two trillion dollars we now owe to those at or near retirement age, interpreting for the American public the twenty-two trillion in terms of inflation over twenty years, and an atmosphere of distrust for large financial institutions of investment that is at least equal to, or greater than that faced in FDR's age. These challenges must be met with a bold tranforming proposition that gives young voters a path to financial freedom only a decade away.

Financial Stimulus, Bank Bail Outs, and Ending Social Security
Published: February 4, 2009
The median American family, after forty years, will receive benefits from Social Security that are only a few thousand dollars more than the federal poverty level. If, instead, we ended Social Security today, not only would the ultimate retirement benefits, on interest alone, be almost double those of the Social Security, but we would bail out the banks and stimulate the economy.

Social Security and Bernie Madoff Style Pain
Published: January 27, 2009
If Americans decided tomorrow that they wanted to be rid of Social Security forever, it would cost them about twenty trillion dollars over the course of a generation. It would cost about a trillion dollars a year, every year for over twenty years... and that's in a good economy.

Social Security, Ponzi Schemes, and the Bush Bullet We Didn't Dodge
Published: January 21, 2009
This is the first of several articles proposing a different solution to the problems of social security in America. Many believe that we dodged a bullet when the congress refused to take up social security reform during President Bush's second term. As bad as investing in Wall Street has been since 2004, the outlook for social security is at least as bad.

The Immaculate with Belief, Hope, and Love
Published: December 23, 2008
Happy Holidays to all who have who have bothered to read and comment on my column this year! Though we may often continue to disagree or agree, I fully wish the joy of the Holidays that is in my heart for you wherever you may be.

Pastor Rick Warren's National Heresy
Published: December 20, 2008
The venom of gay activist groups towards President-elect Obama over his choice of Reverend Rick Warren to lead his inaugural prayer reveals the extreme hatred and intolerance on the far left. These gay activist groups are so self-absorbed that they neither acknowledge the magnanimity of President Elect Obama nor the universal right of every man and woman to pray publically on behalf of all despite their sins of against mere political orthodoxy.

Proposition 8 and Revisions of California's Constitution
Published: November 24, 2008
While some argue that the people of California are not worthy of the initiative process the state constitution liberally grants its citizens, the very heart of California's law disagrees. The ballot initiative process is not a twentieth century libertarian whim cooked up by 1960's radicals. Instead, it was adopted to directly address the challenges and pressures of a representative government in the modern era.

How to Recall a California Supreme Court Justice
Published: November 9, 2008
The Constitution of California gives the right and responsibly for government squarely on its citizens. The simple elegance of its recall process makes plain that the authority and duty to control the states judiciary resides with the people.

Ballot Measures: Joe Voter Shoulders the Heaviest Lifting Again
Published: November 2, 2008
Although the practice of direct democracy began primarily with constitutional amendments, it has become more prevalent as our representatives in government have failed more often. Once again, the common man must do the heavy lifting.

Spreading the Wealth, National Banks, and the Communist Family
Published: October 19, 2008
Obama's plan to "spread the wealth" must destroy wealth and Europe's plan to nationalize banks will wreck the wealth of nations. These are things any good student of Marxism understands plainly.

Free Markets, Crashes, and Other Parables
Published: October 15, 2008
Credit expansion, often as a result of government policies, has been tied to the recent series of economic calamities in the banking industry. This isn't the first time that's happened and it won't be the last. It is, however, a story with a moral.

Why the ACLU Opposes Proposition 8
Published: September 20, 2008
There are some altruists who believe that if religion, "the opiate of the people,” were expunged from planet earth, society would be better. Though the ACLU may believe in the right of same-sex couples to call their unions a marriage, perhaps it also has a more nefarious agenda.

Five More Reasons Log Cabin Republicans Ought to Support Proposition 8
Published: September 18, 2008
Log Cabin Republicans are Republicans who identify themselves as having a gay sexual orientation. One would expect Log Cabin Republicans to be in favor of "gay marriage." Sadly, they are being tricked by liberals into voting big government.

Supreme Deception: the Right to Deceive, Part III
Published: July 26, 2008
The very words "same-sex marriage” seem deceitful. Part I and Part II probes various misleading elements of the California Supreme Court's "re Marriages...” opinion on gay marriage. Part III exposes passages of the opinion that seem to confer a "right to deceive" or to order citizens to engage in deceive.

Supreme Deception: the Evidence, Part II
Published: July 25, 2008
The Supreme Court of California presents a great deal of its evidence in "re Marriages" in a misleading way. The impression the opinion gives is that Chief Justice George is basing his conclusions on long standing California law. This gives his ruling weight it doesn't deserve.

Supreme Deception: "re Marriages" Twists the Meaning of Family, Part I
Published: July 24, 2008
This article examines the California Supreme Court's evolving use of "family" in the jargon of domestic partnerships and marriage. Like the reduction of "husband" and "wife" to "Party A" and "Party B" on its marriage licenses, this changing jargon emphasizes California's dehumanization of marriage and the family.

Marriage is Not A School: Gay Marriage's Flawed Analogy
Published: July 19, 2008
The California Supreme Court's majority opinion for "marriage equity" concludes that, based on an analogy that compares marriage as an institution to educational institutions, separate is unequal. The analogy is incorrect because one must posit, assume, postulate what one concludes, and because marriage is not a school.

Why Log Cabin Republicans Should Support Prop. 8
Published: July 16, 2008
Log Cabin Republicans are gay Republicans that have raised funds for and campaigned for Republicans throughout the nation. However, many are also strong advocates for gay marriage. In California the Supreme Court's wrong-headed overreach has put them in a difficult position.

California Supreme Justice: The word 'marriage' not important to the 'right to marry.'
Published: July 15, 2008
In its one hundred and twenty pages of rambling and, at times, seemingly Byzantine opinion, the California Supreme court has moments of startlingly hilarious logic. Here are two that are especially important because they reveal the dehumanizing attitudes toward marriage that the court maintains throughout.

"Bitter" Americans Stick to Their Guns in Kern California
Published: July 11, 2008
On June 10, 2008, the Kern County board of supervisors, ceased all civil ceremonies solemnizing marriage in that county. On July 8, almost month later, this same board considered issuing its own Prop 22 style marriage ordinance and reconsidered, in this light, reinstating civil marriage ceremonies

Dehumanizing Marriage
Published: July 11, 2008
California's Supreme Court claimed to expand marriage to be more inclusive. Instead, the court contracted the definition of marriage, degrading and dehumanizing it for millions. Dehumanization is the inevitable consequence on trampling on the civil rights of free people.

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