"Why Marxism?" An Evening at FEE with C. Bradley Thompson

The video above is a lecture by C. Bradley Thompson of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism.

Hat Tip: Trevor Loudon


Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism

The Lecturer

C. Bradley Thompson is the BB&T Research Professor at Clemson University and the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He has also been a visiting fellow at Princeton and Harvard universities and at the University of London.

Professor Thompson is the author of the prize-winning book John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty. He has also edited The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams, Antislavery Political Writings, 1833-1860: A Reader and was an associate editor of the four-volume Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. His current book project is on “The Ideological Origins of American Constitutionalism.”

Dr. Thompson is also an occasional writer for The Times Literary Supplement of London. He has lectured around the country on education reform and the American Revolution, and his op-ed essays have appeared in scores of newspapers around the country and abroad. Dr. Thompson's lectures on the political thought of John Adams have twice appeared on C-SPAN television.

For more information on why Marxism is so evil: (Occupiers should read this to learn why their movement, if successful, would lead to the deaths of millions of Americans)

Why Socialism, Communism and Marxism Don’t Work and Never Will

Why Marxism Always Fails

How Many People Did Communism Kill?

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Teachable Moment: John Kerry Slips Yacht in Low Tax Haven Lesson for Progressives: High Taxes Chases Money Away

The object lesson here is that higher state taxes forces people to move and hold assets and businesses out of state, even out of the country.

Sen. John Kerry, who has repeatedly voted to raise taxes while in Congress, dodged a whopping six-figure state tax bill on his new multimillion-dollar yacht by mooring her in Newport, R.I.


Isabel - Kerry’s luxe, 76-foot New Zealand-built Friendship sloop with an Edwardian-style, glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage - was designed by Rhode Island boat designer Ted Fontaine.


But instead of berthing the vessel in Nantucket, where the senator summers with the missus, Teresa Heinz, Isabel’s hailing port is listed as “Newport” on her stern.




Could the reason be that the Ocean State repealed its Boat Sales and Use Tax back in 1993, making the tiny state to the south a haven - like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Nassau - for tax-skirting luxury yacht owners?


Cash-strapped Massachusetts still collects a 6.25 percent sales tax and an annual excise tax on yachts. Sources say Isabel sold for something in the neighborhood of $7 million, meaning Kerry saved approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $70,000.

Source: Inside Track
Hat Tip: Drudge Report
Yacht Builder: Friendship Yachts of New Zealand

Commentary

I also note that the Kerrys use a holding company, Great Point LLC of Pittsburgh, to hold ownership of the 75 ft long yacht. That allows them to save paying even more in taxes to the Massachusetts State Treasury. He also avoided the higher taxes on the construction of his yacht by having it built overseas in New Zealand. It is funny that his votes to raise taxes on the rich have hurt and mostly destroyed the luxury yacht-building industry in the United States, and have sent American jobs, and the money of rich Americans (like John Kerry) overseas.


I suppose this makes US Senator John Kerry a hypocrite, one of those people who tells us to do as he says, not as he does. His berthing of the $7 million-dollar yacht in a low-tax state not only saves him money, but hurts the people who work in Massachusetts. The only people who suffer are the working people and small business owners in the shipyards and ports of Massachusetts. They suffer from the ruinously high tax-rate that forces even billionaires like the Kerrys to place assets in a low tax haven like Rhode Island. The workers, and the treasury, of Rhode Island certainly benefits from having lower taxes, now don't they?


I love the hypocrisy of the left!!! They claim to be for 'the little man', but I can't tell. All I see is that they are chasing money from their states and the country with their insane tax policies.

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President Barack Hussein Obama Wins the Now-Worthless Nobel Peace Prize

President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, citing his outreach to the Muslim world and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation.


The stunning choice made President Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. President Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.


"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."


The committee said it attached special importance to President Obama's vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.


"Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play," the committee said.


Theodore Roosevelt won the award in 1906 and Woodrow Wilson won in 1919. Former President Jimmy Carter won the award in 2002, while former Vice President Al Gore shared the 2007 prize with the U.N. panel on climate change.

Source: Wall Street Journal




Commentary


I note that all the previous Presidential (or Presidential wannabees) who won can be described as "Progressive". That should be the end of the story right there. Right-thinking peoples should recognize that the Nobel Prize for Peace, or anything else, is driven by politics, and not by science. I am utterly disgusted by this decision. 


Obama, like Jimmy Carter, got this prize for sticking it to Israel.

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Hugo Chavez continues to charm America-hating Tyrants and Lefties

Photo: Hugo Chavez, Sean Penn and Che Guevera, Lefty Peas in a Lefty Pod
The Dictator of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is back in the news as he is being feted and celebrated by the likes of Muammar al-Gaddafi and Oliver Stone. This is a reminder that he is still an enemy of Freedom and an enemy of America, just like his fellow leftist travelers around the world and in America.

Here are a couple of blogs where you can find out who Hugo Chavez is and what he represents, Fausta's Blog [click here for Chavez Articles] and Venezuela News and Views [click here for Chavez Articles]. They are doing the job that journalists used to do, but no longer do because they serve their Lefty Masters now, and cannot afford to step out of line.

Here are there latest articles, along with a Reuters article for comparison...

Oliver Stone, whose career is way beyond salvation at this point, has made a propaganda movie about Hugo Chavez titled South of the Border, which gives us a chance to see Hugo break and fall off a little kid’s bike.
Stone invited Chavez to go to the Venice Film Festival, where South of the Border will premiere outside of competition.

Well, what is a fashionable traveling tyrant to do?

Chavez has now taken time off his tour of Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iran, Belarus and Russia and headed to Venice...

Source: Fausta's Blog (an excellent source for news from Latin America)

Chavez was in Venice for the world premiere of "South of the Border," director Oliver Stone's sympathetic portrait of a leader he says has championed the poor and who has been unfairly demonized by the U.S. media.

"I have no reason to call him (Obama) the devil, and I hope that I am right," Chavez told reporters in Venice.

"With Obama we can talk, we are almost from the same generation, one can't deny that Obama is different (from Bush). He's intelligent, he has good intentions and we have to help him."

Stone's documentary argues that the economy has grown under Chavez's rule and poverty levels have fallen sharply, all without the help of bailout loans from foreign lenders.

Source: Reuters (I link to Reuters instead of the AP b/c the AP would charge me for excerpting a portion of their article and linking to them)

[Updated] So Chavez took some time off from his visit of the world's tyrants to visit the Venice film festival where his paid accomplice Oliver Stone (1), noted director of movies dedicated to conspiracy theories, was presenting his "South of the Border", an alleged documentary of "progressive" leaders of South America.

Now, I was not planning to write on this silly event. After all, since the in-famous and duly debunked "Revolution shall not be televised", I know that this type of movies is mere propaganda presented in a relatively palatable form. You know, like the movies of Eisenstein, but without the gorgeous scores of Prokofiev or the stunning symbolism of the Odessa staircase.

However watching the news tonight on French TV made me write this note. See, the French are not buying it. They reported of the Venice visit by Chavez in the fluff section at the end of the newscast, right before a report on the world championship of plowing in Slovenia, won this year by a Belgian plower. I am not making this up.

They started by mentioning that "after having visited Ahmadinejad, Qaddafi ... Hugo Chavez stopped in Venice". Clearly, the French viewer is placed in front of the reality, a guy that spends days visiting such creepy leaders cannot be taken seriously. That impression is of course confirmed when we see scenes of Chavez AGAIN taking pictures of the journalists, and the words "il est très fort" which in the context they were say did not mean he is good, but rather he got chutzpah and media manipulation savvy. Then we hear some of the silly words of Stone defending his

hero by stating that he was some kind of superhero, you know, comic book like. He said that Chavez was open and tolerant, something I am sure his latest political prisoner would agree with if he is ever shown the movie in his new jail quarters.

Source: Venezuela News And Views (a very good source of news in Venezuela)

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Thunder Pig Boycotts Radio Shack for Boycotting Glenn Beck

A member of the Barack Obama Administration, Van Jones, has launched a boycott against the advertisers of the Glenn Beck TV Show[see his effort] . That effort has been successful, and many advertisers have dropped advertising on his show. They are still advertising on the Fox News Channel, but not on his show.

This should be a lesson about the differences in opinion between Censorship and Freedom. I believe that Glenn Beck has as much right to say what he says as the Lefty heroes John Stewart, Chris Matthews or Rachael Maddow do. I disagree with what the Lefties say, but I am not able to condone a boycott of their shows just because they say something I consider outrageous. I even took people to task for their boycott of David Letterman [see post]. I also noted back in March that the Left (I consider the MSM, or Legacy Media, as lock, stock and barrel of the Left) would be coming for Glenn, and gave my reasons why I thought so.

You can find a more detailed background on the effort to destroy Glenn Beck at World Net Daily, including a link to this article at News Busters detailing the backgrounds of those leading the effort and even a little bit of webscrubbing in an attempt to downplay the Van Jones involvement. Be sure to download the pdf of how the website looked before the alarm was sounded about Van Jones. Also look at the current website. This act reminds me of the "Memory Hole" from George Orwell's 1984. History has been revised...but there are people out there with the capability to monitor the changes and preserve the evidence.

Glenn's show is doing well in the ratings, as evidenced by these numbers from August 14th:

5PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)

Glenn Beck– 2,502,000 viewers (658,000) (1,224,000)
Situation Room—610,000 viewers (114,000) (218,000)

Hardball w/ Chris Matthews—487,000 viewers (123,000) (227,000)

Fast Money—206,000 viewers (a scratch w/ 52,000) (100,000)

Prime News–146,000 viewers (84,000) (112,000)

Source: TV by the Numbers

Hat Tip: Andrea Shea King

Commentary

What can you do to help Glenn?

You can contact advertisers who have continued to advertise on the show, and thank them for not giving in to the bullying tactics of the Left. Send them email, call them, and write them letters or send faxes. Get your friends and family to do the same.

A good place to get contact information on these companies, including the ones who have been bullied, at Defend Glenn, a website set up by a husband and wife team who did what any of us could have...they stepped forward and said, "Not on my Watch!!!" Join their effort and protect Glenn's right to Free Speech. It is obvious that President Obama won't, for his Green Jobs Czar is the very man leading the effort to muzzle Glenn Beck. If that does not concern you on any level, then you are part of the problem. Leave this blog, and never come back, I never knew you.

As part of my personal effort to help defend Glenn, I am composing messages to be sent by email (with copies sent by regular mail as backup). Here is one I have sent to Radio Shack, and you can also send yours via this email address... media.relations@RadioShack.com:

It is with great regret that I must inform you that I will not be shopping at my local Radio Shack due to your company pulling it's advertising from the Glenn Beck program.

Until such time as you return to advertising on his show, I will not support your business with my money.

Here are some viewer numbers for you to consider regarding the Glenn Beck Show:

5PM – P2+ (25-54) (35-64)

Glenn Beck– 2,502,000 viewers (658,000) (1,224,000)

Situation Room—610,000 viewers (114,000) (218,000)

Hardball w/ Chris Matthews—487,000 viewers (123,000) (227,000) Fast Money—206,000 viewers (a scratch w/ 52,000) (100,000) Prime News–146,000 viewers (84,000) (112,000)

Source: TV By the Numbers [click link to see] or try http://is.gd/2mtlR

I have been a shopper at Radio Shack since the early 1980's, and have puchased countless components for building numerous electronic projects over the years, and the majority of the radio frequency scanners I have came from Radio Shack. Radio Shack has been the first place I go for electronics, and I am sad that your actions have forced me elsewhere.

Here is a recent Tweet I sent out to my followers regarding the Glenn Beck Boycott, which is politically motivated, and led by a man who is a member of the Obama Administration:

http://is.gd/2ms8S They are coming for Glenn Beck (http://is.gd/2ms0C), what will you do to stop them?http://is.gd/2ms44

Source: Twitter

Respectfully,

Bobby Coggins

Franklin, NC

**Note I will be posting this to as many forums as I can in order to get more people to take action.

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