No Hillary, Donald et al, The President's First Job is Not to Keep Americans Safe

The Democratic debate on Saturday proved one thing: powerful interests that transcend the political parties have an agenda. That's the only explanation for the talking point mindlessly repeated by virtually all of the presidential candidates in both parties: "It is the first job of the president to keep Americans safe."

Maybe it's a slogan that's been thrown around in Council on Foreign Relations meetings or some other gathering of the wonderful people who make all the decisions for us rubes. But wherever it came from, it was certainly no coincidence Americans heard it from virtually every candidate, Democrat or Republican, during the past two debates. It would have been only slightly spookier if they heaped effusive praise on Raymond Shaw.

More important than it being creepy and patronizing is that it's completely wrong. The first job of the president is not to keep Americans safe. It is to defend their liberty.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

There is nothing new about the neoconservatives

Robert Eno of Conservative Review named Rand Paul the “standout of the night” after the December 15 Republican Presidential Debate on CNN. Eno laments that the mainstream media, including “conservative media pundits,” will proclaim Rubio the winner. Eno implies these pundits aren’t true conservatives, referring to a species of unicorn sought by millions of self-identified conservative voters.

Rand Paul himself has called out Rubio and other proponents of the U.S. military empire as failing to adhere to authentic conservative principles. The self-named “neoconservatives,” we’re told, are really progressives in Republican clothing, failing to promote the true conservative principles of small government, free markets and a noninterventionist foreign policy.

Rand is right about nonintervention, but he’s wrong about conservatism. There is nothing new about the neoconservatives. The essence of conservativism itself is belief in the need for an all-powerful government that regulates every area of life domestically and dominates every other nation in the world. This has been the conservative worldview for thousands of years. It has never changed.

Conservatives see the world as Thomas Hobbes did. Human nature is so depraved that the government must be powerful enough to “keep them in awe.” Like other enlightenment philosophers, Hobbes saw the relationship of nations to one another as virtually identical to the relationship between individual people. They are all in a de facto state of war unless one nation dominates the rest.

This explains the otherwise puzzling compulsion by generations of U.S. politicians to interfere in the affairs of destitute Third World countries thousands of miles away. Just as individual liberty within society is a threat to the commonwealth, self-determination by any individual nation is a threat to the world order. The “domino theory” offered as justification for the Korean and Viet Nam Wars was firmly rooted in Hobbesian conservatism. So was the British Empire.

Many conservatives would object and point to Edmund Burke or Russell Kirk as representing the true tenets of conservatism. There’s only one problem: Burke and Kirk agree with Hobbes on just about everything.

Read the rest at TomMullen.net...

Edward Snowden Is Still a Hero, Regardless of ISIS, San Bernardino and Paris

It's official. The terrorists are winning. They have achieved the one and only goal of terrorism itself: to achieve a political outcome based on the "terror" caused by highly publicized attacks on civilians.

Just days after Dagen McDowell of Fox Business blamed the San Bernardino shooting on Edward Snowden and the USA Freedom Act, Joe Scarborough called for "post-Edward Snowden legislation that stops this person-to-person encrypted messaging" on Morning Joe. He also said, "We're going to have to give the CIA powers to interrogate these terrorists to see where the next attack's going to come from."

As the CIA has always had the power to interrogate anyone it wishes to, this can only be code for "torture." Lest this be written off as the ravings of MSNBC's token Republican, his Democratic guest agreed wholeheartedly. Scarborough had either the audacity or the cluelessness (it's always hard to tell) to end the segment by riffing on a Bush/Cheney mantra, saying: "The world changed after Paris."

Anything both Fox and MSNBC are trumpeting in unison can reasonably be assumed to be completely wrong.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Press Release: Tom Mullen destroys conventional wisdom on American politics with new title

Contact: Tom Mullen (tom@tommullen.net)

Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness Part One available November 27, 2015

Buffalo N.Y. - Author and columnist Tom Mullen reveals the truth about the American conservative and liberal movements and their incompatibility with the American Creed – the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

Contrary to conventional wisdom that Republican politicians who expand government are “RINOS” or that totalitarian Democrats aren’t “true liberals,” Mullen proves conservatism is an inherently big government philosophy, liberalism is antithetical to inalienable rights and neither inspired the founding fathers.

With in-depth analysis of seminal political thinkers, including Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke and Marx, Mullen exposes the true nature of conservatism and liberalism, proving both in their purest forms are poison to American liberty.

About the author

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America. His work has appeared in The Washington Times, The Huffington Post, Rare and numerous other publications. Tom holds a B.A. in English from Canisius College and an M.A. in English from Buffalo State College. Tom is also a singer/songwriter with several CD releases, both as a solo musician and with his band, The Skeptics. He resides with his family in Western New York. More information can be found on his website at www.tommullen.net.

Another Voice: We don’t need a federal law limiting ticket ‘bots’

Paul McCartney scheduled a visit to Buffalo for the first time in his legendary career. I am a lifelong fan who had mouse poised at the precise moment tickets went on sale. I did not get a ticket. “Scalper bots” had apparently bought them faster than virtually anyone else could click on a seat. I was disappointed.

But I’m even more disappointed to hear there is support for a federal law prohibiting these kinds of programs. Under the guise of protecting the environment (but really just more crony capitalist scams), we already have the federal government telling us what light bulbs we may use and how much water our toilets are allowed to flush. We don’t need a law telling us how to buy and sell tickets to a rock concert.

The first and foremost reason is principle. Concert tickets are private property. They belong to the promoters of the concert, who have a right to sell 100 percent of them to customers using purchasing software. They also have a right to develop software to prevent bots from buying their tickets. The government’s role in exchanges of property is to ensure these property rights are secure, not to violate them as this bill proposes to do for the convenience of those who seem to believe someone owes them a concert ticket.

Read the rest at The Buffalo News...

The Libertarian Moment Is Alive and Well, Regardless of Rand Paul's Campaign

Rand Paul's campaign reported $2.5 million in donations for the entire third quarter, a precipitous drop from his previous reports and a fraction of what rivals Ben Carson ($20 million) and Jeb Bush ($12 million) brought in. That and anemic poll numbershave inspired many to not only pronounce Paul's presidential campaign dead, but to gleefully declare the so-called "Libertarian Moment" over.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Anyone who believes the presidential election is a barometer of how libertarian America is becoming doesn't understand libertarianism and isn't paying attention to what's happening in the real world. Libertarians don't believe government solves anything, no matter who is running it. The purest libertarians refuse to vote on principle.

As radical as that might sound, almost half of all eligible American voters behave the same way, if not for the same reasons. Let's face it, most Americans couldn't name three policies held by the frontrunner in either party and couldn't explain one in detail.

This is often ridiculed in the myriad You Tube videos where men and women "on the street" are asked basic policy questions and don't have a clue what policies their candidates support. You're supposed to assume they're stupid.

For the most part, they're not stupid. They just don't care. They may say they support this or that candidate when a microphone is shoved in their face, but in reality they live their lives, do their jobs and run their businesses without giving politics a second thought. This is an inherently libertarian worldview and it's growing.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

What if school shootings are caused by drugs instead of guns?

What if the entire schooling paradigm of having children sit at a desk for 8 hours is especially unnatural for boys?

What if schools have been decreasing opportunities to release pent up energy and making boys even more repressed while participating in this compulsory institution?

What if society has responded over the past several decades by inventing new pseudo-diseases like “ADHD” to describe normal, boyish behavior and then recommended treatment of these non-diseases with psychotropic drugs whose known side effects are homicidal and suicidal thoughts?

What if these drugs succeed in keeping boys at their desks but for a small percentage result in them flipping out and acting on the homicidal and suicidal thoughts caused by the pills they are taking?

Read the rest at TomMullen.net...

Why Can't Russia and China Help Police the World?

President Obama today announced his administration's reluctant agreement to work with Russia and Iran to defeat ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Middle East. This will no doubt be met with howls of "Weakness!" and "leading from behind" by Mr. Obama's Republican detractors.

We may even hear the tired "appeasement" argument trotted out regarding both Russia's and Iran's supposed ambitions to expand their territories.

Republicans have consistently criticized Obama for not being aggressive enough on the world stage and for pulling back too early from Iraq and Afghanistan. With the emergence of ISIS, the GOP has seized the opportunity to quash more reasonable foreign policy positions from candidates like Rand Paul and push for sharper increases in military spending and even more aggressive foreign intervention.

The argument we hear repeatedly from Republican presidential candidates is that Obama has "eviscerated the military" and "led from behind." If the United States is not "engaged" (i.e., bombing or invading) in all crises at all times in every part of the world, emerging powers like Russia or China are going to fill the resulting vacuum. That raises an obvious question:

So, what?

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

The Real Reason Rand Paul is Losing to Trump and Carson: Republican Voters Want Bigger Government

Rand Paul's campaign actually showed faint signs of life in the last ABC/Washington Post poll, where his 5 percent showing has him within striking distance of Jeb Bush and every other candidate besides Donald Trump and Ben Carson. That's little consolation considering the poll shows Carson at 20 percent and rising sharply and Trump doing the same at 33 percent.

There has been a lot of digital ink and hot air expended on why Paul fell from the GOP lead as "the most interesting man in politics" to a long shot candidate fighting for scraps with the Walkers, Bushes and other members of the rejected "establishment." There have been reports of infighting among the campaign staff, Paul's failure to energize his father's activist base and even his reluctance to woo big money donors.

One would think that last "shortcoming" would be appealing to voters fed up with Washington insiders, but apparently not so for Paul.

The most prevalent theory is that in trying to avoid alienating mainstream Republican voters while championing his father's libertarian platform, Paul has alienated both groups: libertarians and traditional Republicans. That sounds good, but it doesn't add up.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

What If Opposition to the Iran Nuclear Deal Is All About Oil?

Republicans jumped the shark last week in apoplectic frenzy after President Obama secured enough support in the Senate to ensure Congress will not block U.S. participation in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), popularly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said it would lead to a "holocaust" and that the United States is "at existential risk."

Rep. Steven King (R-IA) said the Iran nuclear deal represented "a seminal moment in the history of the world," saying it "means to [sic] tens of millions of lives down the road."

Marco Rubio said lifting the sanctions would allow Iran to bolster its defensive capabilities and "raise the price of us operating in the region," apparently unaware of the millions of Americans who don't want the U.S. military operating in the Middle East at all.

At the same time, CNN reported Iran plans to increase oil production as soon as possible after the sanctions are lifted, adding approximately 1.5 million more barrels per day to the world oil supply by the end of 2016.

Isn't anyone even curious if there is a connection?

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

Iran is giving up far more than the United States in nuclear deal

Republicans in Congress are ramping up their rhetoric against the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by President Obama. The president wants this deal badly enough to once again play fast and loose with the constitutional limits on executive power. The Republicans want to snuff the deal badly enough to say anything, no matter how ridiculous, to incite opposition.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told Stuart Varney Thursday: "This is a treaty. The Constitution requires that a treaty have two thirds of those present concur, in the Senate, on ratification."

He is right about that. The Constitution doesn't say anything about "executive agreements." Any international agreement negotiated by the president is either a treaty or unconstitutional. But then, Gohmert went on to make this ridiculous statement:

"There is a holocaust looming and we have an obligation to stop it and not play politics like this does. We can stop this if we call it what it is, call it a treaty and quit playing political games because Israel is at stake. They're the Little Satan, but we are the Great Satan and this nation is at existential risk."

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

It's not labor unions that destroy the economy; it's the New Deal and its awful progeny

Two small minorities on either end of the political spectrum have strong feelings about Labor Day. One side sees the holiday as a celebration of all the victories hard working folks have won in securing their rights against greedy capitalists who would otherwise have them working twenty-three hours a day in sweat shops. The other side sees it as overt Marxism, so dangerous to all that’s good and holy that the holiday should be renamed.

The other 95% are just damned glad to have the day off.

That the right wingers are paranoid doesn’t mean no one is out to get them. There is a very real connection between the holiday, the unions that proposed it and Marxism. American Marxists are firm supporters unions, as were Marx and Engels themselves.

Neither is there any denying the damage unions appear to have done. Wherever labor unions are firmly entrenched, economic hardship proliferates. Outside the politically correct zone, everyone knows unions destroyed Detroit. If you have any doubt, just look at General Motors’ 2006 balance sheet. Either capitalists mysteriously ceased being greedy for the preceding fifty years or something forced them to be overly generous with pay and benefits, resulting in the bizarre preponderance of legacy benefit costs reflected there.

This would seem to be something of a paradox. How can this free association, an expression of the free market itself, be so harmful to our economic well-being?

Read the rest at tommullen.net...

Trump's Protectionist Fallacies Have Been Refuted By Free Market Economists for Hundreds of Years

It's easy to understand the visceral attraction to Donald Trump's campaign. My own libertarian heart beats a little stiff when he waves the one finger salute at establishment institutions that crush our freedom, including the Republican Party leadership, the mainstream media and the useless D.C. politicians themselves.

It's not what Donald Trump is against that bothers me. It's what he's for. So much attention has been paid to his immigration stance from a race perspective that no one seems to care how anti-free market his platform is. Trump is running on economic fallacies that have been consistently refuted by free market economists for hundreds of years.

When Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations, it wasn't to refute the "godless socialists" 21st-century Republican voters believe are taking over the world. It was to refute the kinds of protectionist ideas championed by conservatives like Edmund Burke and Alexander Hamilton in Smith's day, Abraham Lincoln eighty years later, and Trump today.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

Job growth in WNY has speed, but does it really have credibility?

A July 26 article in the Buffalo News rejoiced, “Job growth in WNY gains speed, credibility.” There is no doubt about the speed. The credibility may be another story.

Writer David Robinson gave due credit to “high-profile projects, from the Medical Campus to Solar City’s 1,500-employee solar panel factory, that are giving a jolt to the local job market, first because of all the construction associated with those projects, and eventually with the hiring that will take place as those businesses ramp up.”

What he didn’t mention was why those two sectors were enjoying such spectacular growth: tax breaks and other incentives provided by local, state and federal governments.

It has become fashionable to call tax breaks “subsidies,” based on the perverse idea the government not only has a legitimate claim to all wealth you’ve created in the past, but any you may create in the future. Tax breaks aren’t subsidies, but they are part of a larger economic system that has never worked.

Step One is to tax and regulate everyone into a state of complete economic paralysis. Buffalo’s local governments perfected that fifty years ago. They never got around to Step Two until now.

Step Two is to grant limited relief to those businesses who either represent something politicians like or who promise to deliver something politicians need. Solar City delivers both. They represent the green energy movement, the cause célèbre of politicians everywhere. They have also promised to create a significant number of jobs, which helps politicians get reelected.

Read the rest at tommullen.net...

A practical solution: Run police departments like fire departments

Do you lie awake at night in constant fear a fire will break out and nothing will be done to put it out?

For the 99% of the population not suffering from pyrophobia or a similar neurosis, the answer to that question is "no," even though firefighters aren't patrolling the streets in their big red trucks. They still manage to arrive at the scene of a fire within minutes of an emergency call.

Why can't police departments be run the same way?

If they were, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and Sandra Bland would be alive today. All three encountered police doing what would be considered outlandish for any other institution charged with public safety: roaming the streets, looking for trouble.

No one had called 911 asking for protection from Scott, Gray or Bland. No judges had issued warrants for their arrests. All three were, at least at the time of their arrests, just walking or driving down the street, minding their own business. They were detained in what are generally considered "routine" but are in reality wholly unnecessary encounters with police.

There has been a lot of digital ink and warm air expended on whether these victims of tragedy were treated differently because of their race. There are compelling arguments on both sides of that question, but no practical solutions offered by anyone. At the end of these discussions there is invariably some vague reference to "more training" or bland platitudes. Everyone knows nothing will change.

I'm going to suggest a solution that will sound radical, even in a country that styles itself "the land of free." Let's get cops off the streets, unless responding to a 911 call or serving a warrant issued by a judge. Everyone would be freer and safer, including the police officers themselves.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

Sandra Bland's Arrest Wasn't Racism; It Was Something Even Worse

It's easy to assume racism when watching the video footage of Sandra Bland's arrest. Admittedly, the first question that entered this writer's mind when watching it was, "Would a white woman have been treated this way during a routine traffic stop?"

I believe the answer is "yes," if the white woman committed the cardinal sin Sandra Bland committed. It wasn't her being black that started the tragic chain of events. It was refusing to follow a police officer's orders.

At some point between ratification of the Fourth Amendment and the death of Sandra Bland, the entire principle underpinning that constitutional protection has been lost. The Fourth Amendment assumes armed agents of the state can't be trusted to issue their own orders. That's why we have warrants in the first place. They are permitted only to enforce the orders of an impartial judge, who authorizes them to apprehend suspects upon the judge's determination of probable cause.

That's not to say many or most officers aren't well-intentioned or trustworthy. But their job is to use force. That role must be separated from the issuance of orders.

Read the rest at the Huffington Post...

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Greek "no" vote on austerity isn't remotely heroic or "libertarian"

The 21^st century global banking system based on fiat currencies and redistribution of wealth through inflation is immoral and destructive. That doesn’t mean stiffing your creditors is at all justified, heroic or remotely “libertarian,” as many on my newsfeeds are suggesting.

The Greeks who decided to take two month vacations, vote themselves useless government jobs and then retire at 50, all on someone else’s dime, aren’t the victims today. They are as much the perpetrators as the so-called “banksters.”

Photo: Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP

The real victims are those hardworking Greeks who have hitherto paid for all of this and the honest creditors who lent them money, although the latter have some culpability for bad judgment.

The Greek “no” vote on accepting "austerity" measures in return for additional loans from the European Central Bank (ECB) was more like a childish tantrum than a blow for freedom.

Read the rest at tommullen.net...

Dear Queen Elizabeth: Can we come back?

Dear Queen Elizabeth,

It’s been 239 years and we’re finally ready to admit we made a mistake. Just as your predecessor warned us, taxes are much higher, the government more intrusive and oppressive, and liberty more non-existent than it ever was under the British monarchy.

We’re willing to bury the hatchet and rejoin the British Empire with that sweet tax deal you had for us in 1775. Don’t worry about representation. We tried it. Taxes skyrocketed.

Everything else we complained about got worse, too. Representative government issues more general warrants than the king ever did. In most cases, it doesn’t even bother with warrants. It just vacuums up our electronic data and peruses it at its pleasure.

Read the rest at tommullen.net...

Buffalo doesn't need another "master plan"

BUFFALO June 22, 2015 - A June 19 Buffalo News Opinion piece entitled, “Welcome new master plan aims at making downtown core more people-friendly” said this:

“Yes, continued development could happen by accident, but it’s dangerous to leave growth up to chance and likely to produce less desirable results.”

Wrong. Leaving growth up to the market is Buffalo’s only hope for escaping the economic blight that has plagued it for over a half century.

Let’s not forget what killed Buffalo in the first place: central planning by the government, which destroyed untold billions in waterfront property with wrongheaded expressways and disastrous public housing projects, built the Subway to Nowhere and generally taxed and regulated the economy to death.

The alternative to central planning isn’t “leaving growth up to chance.” It’s leaving growth up to the uncoerced choices of producers and consumers. Instead of government officials seizing money from taxpayers and deciding how it will be spent, consumers spend their own money as they see fit.

When consumers have choices, entrepreneurs face the prospect of losses if they produce products people won’t buy voluntarily. When the government plans and subsidizes, taxpayers don’t have a choice. They pay whether they want to or not. This steals capital from projects that can make a profit and employ people and leaves us with projects that need subsidies to survive.

Read the rest of the article...

No one really believes the Federal Reserve or the BLS

Last Friday was anything but good for news on the economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a dismal jobs report that missed expectations by fifty percent. This followed a press conference two weeks ago by Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen during which she indicated rate hikes might not come as soon as expected because “room for further improvement in the labor market continues.”

Yellen’s statement would be fairly unremarkable if it were not for one troublesome fact: the U.S. economy is supposedly at “full employment,” according to the measures the Fed uses to guide their interest rate policies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has it at 5.5% as of today. That is the rate most economists consider full employment for the U.S. economy and we’ve supposedly been there since February.

How could there be room for improvement in the labor market if we’re at full employment? There can’t be. But everybody knows real unemployment is much higher than the manipulated BLS statistics represent. Janet Yellen knows it. The markets know it. Tens of millions of unemployed Americans know it.

Yet everyone keeps talking about the BLS unemployment rate as if it were true.

Read the rest of the article at Rare...

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

The Federal Reserve runs the economy, not Congress or the President

BUFFALO, March 18, 2015 - Janet Yellen told the markets what they wanted to hear today and the indexes rocketed out of negative territory to finish up over 1 %. As usual, speculation abounds on precisely what was in the minds of investors.

Journalists tend to overstate the causal importance of breaking news when the market makes big moves. Often, those moves were predicted months in advance by serious traders and what happened that day had little to do with what the market did. Not true for the Fed's announcements. They do move the markets immediately.

What most people don't know, or at least don't acknowledge, is that the Federal Reserve really runs the entire economy. When the Fed inflates the supply of money and credit, indexes go up, growth occurs and the economy "improves." When it deflates the supply of money and credit, indexes go down, contraction occurs and the economy "slows."

That's really the whole story of the American economy. Think about that for a moment.

It doesn't matter who is president, which party controls Congress or what any of those people do or don't do. Yes, regulations and tax rates have some effect on the economy. Liberals might say more regulation is a good thing, conservatives might say it is bad.

But taxes and regulations haven't really had much effect at all in the past 40 years. Before that, when taxes were at 90%, they mattered, but not when the top rate fluctuates between 35% and 39%. Do the math. It's not that significant.

Read the rest of the article at The Huffington Post...

Republicans like Ben Carson are wrong to make freedom of association about religion

Joe Biden invoked Jesus on Friday responding to Ben Carson’s bizarre argument that prison inmates “turning gay” after going into prison straight proves homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, rather than a genetic or otherwise innate trait.

As a libertarian, this debate holds little interest for me. Even if homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, it is one that does not harm other people and thus falls into that vast category of human behavior called “liberty,” which should be beyond the reach of any government.

What does concern me is Carson’s argument on why homosexuals “don’t have a right to be served in every single store.” Carson argues that store owners should be able to “refuse service if it violates their religious convictions.”

I’m immediately reminded of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where a law at the beginning of the book reads “No animal should kill another animal,” but by Chapter 8 reads, “No animal shall kill another animal without cause.”

Read the rest of the article at 

LewRockwell.com...

Why Progressives Should Want Republicans to Repeal Obamacare and Close the Borders

Last week, Senate Republicans were given bad news by Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough. She doesn't believe Republicans can bypass cloture and repeal Obamacare with a simple majority by attaching its repeal to a spending bill.

As a libertarian, I'm glad to hear it. No, I do not like Obamacare any more than I like most other government programs, especially those that further enrich multi-billion dollar corporations on my dime. But I'm glad it's still difficult to get things through the Senate. That's how it's supposed to be.

But progressives should feel differently. The should want to see at least two bills pass both houses, one repealing Obamacare and one blocking the president's immigration policies. Progressives profess a belief in democracy and the Republicans have been democratically elected to both houses. Whether you agree with them or not, there's no question repealing Obamacare and reversing the president's immigration agenda were two of their strongest mandates.

Read the rest at The Huffington Post...

Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.