First S.2433, now this:

Sens. Diane Feinstein D-Calif. and Mel Martinez R-Fla. authored a bill with 11 co-sponsors, including Sen. Barack Obama that was incorporated into a housing bill passed by the Senate Banking Committee 19-2 before the Memorial Day recess — a bill that creates a national fingerprint registry.

The outcry from the the mainstream media here in the United States — the very same people who complained about our privacy and liberties in the wake of the news that the NSA was listening in on phone calls involving known terror suspects — is where? Their silence is deafening.

Barack Obama is showing us through his actions exactly who he is. But are we paying attention?

You need to make your voice known. Use The Mailbox to contact your senators. Tell them since it is an affront to liberty and privacy, vote “no” on the SAFE Mortgage Licensing Act (S. 2595). And monitor the progress of this bill in our Action Center.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, taxpayers across the nation will foot the bill for federally-backed hurricane insurance.

Democrats in Congress, with the backing of insurance industry giants Allstate and State Farm, want to nationalize “reinsurance”, or insurance bought by insurance companies. This reinsurance would protect the insurance companies from “catastrophic losses” in the event of a natural disaster.

The legislation passed the House with a bipartisan vote of 258-155.

While it could save Florida homeowners as much as $500 annually in insurance premiums, the cost for the proposed legislation would be born by all taxpayers, even ones in states that are far from hurricane, earthquake, mudslide, and wildfire zones.

The end result of such legislation has two consequences:

1. With the lowered insurance premiums, people are more likely to do stupid things like build in hurricane zones and flood zones. For example, New Orleans bears witness to the catastrophic results of the National Flood Insurance Program. Such programs increase the likelihood that when a natural disaster occurs, there will be loss of property and life.
2. People far removed from the disaster zone, having already paid for federal agencies like FEMA with their tax dollars, are now getting taxed further to fund this kind of legislation. As a result they have less disposable income, which means in the event of  natural disaster they’re less likely to donate money to charities like the Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

Capitalism works. We need to remember this. Capitalism keeps people from doing stupid things because it makes the cost proportional to the risk. People are less likely to engage in risky behavior if there’s no one there to help pick up the pieces in the event something bad happens. This saves money, and in the case of natural disasters, it saves lives.

If people want to build in hurricane and flood zones, they should have the liberty to do so. No one should prevent them from it. But they should also bear the burden of financial responsibility on their own shoulders, not on ours.

Action to take: use The Mailbox to write your representatives. Tell them to vote no on  H.R.3355, the Homeowners’ Defense Act of 2007.

The Democrats in this country is on a never-ending march toward a larger, more powerful government. They have been since the beginning of the progressive movement, and really gained momentum under FDR.

Look at recent news. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, across the nation the three levels of government added 76,800 jobs to their payrolls in the first quarter of 2008. [1]

Meanwhile Michelle Obama tells people “Don’t go into corporate America,” and her husband and presidential hopeful Barack Obama blasts executives with the tired old line ”Some CEOs make more in one day than their workers make in one year.” Never mind that corporate America is where the best-paying jobs with the best benefits are. Never mind that these “greedy” executives are in charge of multi-billion-dollar corporations that employ tens of thousands of people, and their stock is owned by many retirement plans. According to the Obamas, these “greedy companies” should be punished by taxing them into oblivion.

But are the Republicans any better? Now we have headlines trumpeting the fact that McCain is promising billions in spending.

Republican John McCain is making promises that would cost billions of taxpayer dollars, yet he is vague about how he would pay for them. 

McCain is handing around a campaign grab bag of goodies. There are little treats like a summer gas-tax holiday and new mortgages for struggling homeowners, and there are big plums like tax breaks for corporations and families with children.

Aren’t all politicians vague about how they intend on paying for their campaign bribes promises? They all fail to do the math. Which is why we’re in the situation we’re in, forced to choose between three trains with the same destination — socialism — just different speeds in which we’ll get there:

The expected GOP presidential nominee has nothing on the Democrats. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama would spend billions of dollars themselves on things like paid family leave, universal health insurance and preschool for kids.

John McCain: The local commuter train who’s top speed is 20mph and will stop at every station.
Hillary Clinton: The freight train chugging along at 60mph with few or no stops between here and there.
Barack Obama: The 200mph express bullet train that will get us from liberty to tyrannical socialism in mere minutes.

Perhaps this is the reason that there’s been such an interest in Libertarian-leaning candidate Ron Paul. His new book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, has hit #1 on Amazon. [2]

The question is: can we turn this train around before it is too late?