Tuesday
June 17, 2014
615pm - 745pm
North Scituate Library
(more info)

Access past articles, videos and audio posted on this site.

Print this poster for our next meeting
(Left or Right click to download)

“What’s Really Wrong with Entitlements”
Don Watkins from the Ayn Rand Institute is going to be giving his talk at Brown on Monday, April 16 at 7pm. Location: Hunter Laboratory Auditorium.
Summary:
"It's an open secret that America's entitlement state is in disarray, and that the U.S. faces a crushing debt thanks to programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But according to Ayn Rand Center analyst Don Watkins, that's not the biggest problem with entitlements.
In this talk, you will discover the unknown history of life in America before the entitlement state, and discover the surprising reason why the U.S. went from a limited government to an entitlement nation. In the process, you will find out why all of the usual solutions to our entitlement crisis cannot work?and what kind of solution could."
Poster Print and post this.

"Capitalism Without Guilt - The Moral Case for Freedom"
Received this from Terrence George, President, Republican Club of Brown University . . . For those of you who missed it, our friends at the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity have written a lovely synopsis of Dr. Yaron Brook's lecture that the Republican Club sponsored Wednesday 9/28/11.
Summary:
You can find it here. Here is the direct link:  http://www.rifreedom.org/2011/09/selfishness-as-the-means-to-restore-prosperity/

The Democrats’ secret technology is a massively powerful – yet easy to use – web-based campaign system called “VoteBuilder.” It has often been referred to as “Obama’s Secret Weapon. It has been improved, tightened and matured by it's inventor into rVotes. rVotes Software is ready and available NOW – exclusively for Conservatives and their allies.

A picture (or spreadsheet graph) is worth a thousand words. An example of how to use government statistics to disprove government statistics. (Courtesy of our NW Tea Party resident statistician with a black belt in spreadsheet weaponry a.k.a. LeoRI)

Here is a book review of The Blueprint written by Dr. Ellen Kenner

See your RI Tea Party facilitators and their guests on Tea TV
Channel 15 (Cox) and channel 34 (Verizon)
Wednesdays at 8:00 PM and Fridays at 9:30 PM.

Here are some words you should never use but probably do without realizing they hurt the defense of individual rights:

• Austerity. Good only when self imposed by the government upon itself. Bad when imposed by the government upon the private sector. See more below under "package deals"
• Crony Capitalism. There is no such thing. There is crony socialism. There is crony anti-capitalism. But it is not as though there are two types of capitalism: crony and non-crony.
  "Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned. The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control." Ayn Rand
• Democracy. We are not a democracy. We are a constitutional republic. A democracy is a system where the majority can vote away the rights of a minority. A constitutional republic is a system where even the smallest minority, the individual, has his rights protected by a constitution. This is an example of a package deal.
• Selfishness. This word combines two opposite types of people: a narcissistic "me only, my way or the highway" person is treated the same as an upstanding individual who properly pursues his own rational goals and happiness without violating the rights of others. These two types of people are vastly different morally but the single word "selfish" is used to describe both. This too is an example of a package deal. See more below under "package deals"
• The right to . . . (a living wage, health care, public schooling, fill in the blank). Never use these expressions. There is no such thing as the right to any tangible thing, only the right to be left free to pursue non violent goals. ex: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. If you claim your right to a thing, you violate another man's right to not give it to you for free.
• Market Failure. There is no such thing as “market failure” because there is no such thing as arithmetic failure. If you put $1 in the bank every day and then want to withdraw $3 after only two days, you don't complain that arithmetic failed because 1+1 does not = 3. The 'market' is simply the expression of how people trade with one another.
  The following are my notes from a source I do not remember
  <<The market isn't even a thing, so the term “fail” cannot be applied to it. What the pushers of the term actually mean is: “freedom failure.” They are saying, “I was patient with you; I let you make your own decisions, but you botched it. So you will take orders from me, from now on.”
  The other side of the coin is a term that's never used, but should be: “government failure.” All alleged cases of “market failure” are cases of government failure—government intervention to “improve” the market—i.e., to force people to act against their own judgment of their interests. It is not “market failure” but government failure that has recently kept unemployment high, embarked on “Green energy” fiascoes, held the stock market unmoved for 11 years, bankrupted Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, and is taking us down the road of European cases of government failure. Government failure? Think Greece.>>
• Unfunded Liabilities. Using this term implies that the taxpayer is somehow cheating by not paying his "fair share". It really reflects how politicians have over promised and overspent. Put the blame where it belongs by calling these "overpromised liabilities". (see letter to editor)
• The greatest good. "Good" is an ethical term. For example, it is good to live a happy productive life at no one's expense. It is good to never interfere with your neighbor's peaceful pursuit of happiness and values. But this is not what is meant by "The greatest good", which is a collectivist defense for socialist schemes. It is used in a way that assumes that the purpose of an individual's efforts and justification for his rewards is some undefined "good of the group" or society, etc., rather than a respect for individual rights and justice for the individual. In this view, man is just one of the parts in a process that are to be managed in order to maximize the production and distribution of some desired product . . . in accordance with whatever statist premise is held by those politicians and their economists in power.
• More - see package deals below
  

• Tea Party Twitter and Facebook - How to set up and enjoy an individual rights-promoting Twitter or Facebook account.
  ——Twitter and Facebook 101 - A very basic explanation of how to use there tools
  ——How to set up a Twitter account
  ——How to set up a Facebook account
• The most effective thing you can do without leaving home is to let your legislators know how you feel about any particular issue. Here is an easy way to email or write them a letter: Use this online form to send senators or representatives (or both) an email or letter. You can edit the text in the form to be about any issue you wish. Otherwise it will be about an issue chosen by Engage RI.
  You select whether to send an email or a printed letter. There are two places to edit their choice of a letter or to write your own. One place is for state representatives, the other is for state senators. If you are hesitant, try it but don't send it. It will be good practice and make it easier for you to try again later.
• Legislator Contact Information Link
  
• The RI Tea Party is looking for individuals to view the actual bills submitted daily in the legislature and to inform them of any that you think they should be concerned about.
  You can view actual bills submitted daily, and their status, by visiting the Bill Status page.
  - At the bottom choose either House Bills or Senate Bills.
  - Then select the date you are interested in (or "in which you are interested" for us older citizens :-)
  - After clicking on a date, decide on a bill that interests you and click the bill number (in blue)
  Let NWTP know if you find anything of interest.
• Be a "citizen staff" for your legislator. We all have talents from our unique life experiences. If your legislators need information about some issue, chances are they will need to research extensively for it. If you register as being able to answer questions by phone on certain subjects, you will save them much time.
  Use this list  (Left or Right click to download) as a guide to list your areas of knowledge. Email this to the NWTP. We will get the information to selected legislators.

Clear, logical thinking and being able to express yourself accurately--using your best thinking to guide your actions --are critical to your success in life: in romance, in your career and your hobbies, and with with friends and family. Words are the tools with which we think. If words become fuzzy and are used improperly, our reasoning and our communication become fuzzy, approximate, unclear. That is what is happening politically. The battle against freedom is being fought, fundamentally, by fogging our thinking. One key way to fog thinking is to use "package deals". These are words or phrases that attempt to treat as similar, things that are essentially different. It includes expanding how you use a word to include both its original meaning AND its opposite meaning. No one would attempt to call poison a healthy food. However, read any paper today and you will see the word "democracy" thrown around as if it's the equivalent of a constitutional republic protecting individual rights. But a democracy, properly defined, is unlimited majority rule--and the majority many times votes in politicians who violate those very rights which a constitutional republic is supposed to protect. Package deals have a veneer of plausibility, just as half truths do. Here are some samplers of such words or phrases:

• "Stimulus package"
• "Health care reform"
• "Social security"
• "Islamophobic"
• "McCarthyism"
• "Equality"
• "Diversity"
• "The poor" A person can be poor due to factors outside his control, like losing his business and all his possessions to a flood, or he can be poor because he is lazy. Using this term lumps the lazy with the industrious.
• "Austerity" Economics has often ignored the critical distinction between austerity for the government and government-imposed austerity on the private sector. Government austerity is absolutely necessary for economic growth in both the short and long run. But when governments impose new taxes and mandates on the private sector while maintaining their own personnel, salaries and pensions, that's the antigrowth version of austerity prevalent in Europe's austerity programs. (Extracted from The Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2012. (full opinion piece)
• "Judicial activism" This is the process of passing rulings suspected of being based on personal or political considerations rather than on existing (constitutional) law. Now it's use has been expanded to include it's opposite - passing constitutional laws. A judge who attempts to defend a constitutional law might now be accused of judicial activism.
• "Selfishness" (It's misuse is the all-time destroyer of happiness.) The word "selfishness" combines two opposite types of people: a narcissistic "me only, my way or the highway" person is treated the same as an upstanding individual who properly pursues his own rational goals and happiness without violating the rights of others. These two types of people are vastly different morally but the single word "selfish" is used to describe both.
• "Purist" A purist is someone who is clear and consistent. To accuse one of being a "purist" is an attempt to combine the rationally consistent individual with the irrational one, thereby tainting the rational one.
• "Extremism" This is similiar to "Purist" in that it concerns consistency.

Using or allowing your opponent to use words that appear legitimate but are actually package deals and anti-concepts will destroy your ability to defend individual rights.

Package Deals Audio Presentation
by Peter Schwartz $1.75 mp3 download (more)