Teeing it up: A Round at the LINKs (crony capitalism edition)

The other day I read a story from the Las Vegas Review-Journal that went largely unreported for the most part with the exception of a few outstanding blogs like Conservative Hideout, Bunkerville, and America’s Watchtower.  It was a story about how with the stroke of a pen the entire roll-your-own cigarette industry nationwide was put out of business.  These roll-your-own cigarette machines are used by customers who buy their own loose tobacco and paper tubes from the shop and then turn out a carton of finished cigarettes.  They can do this in less than 10 minutes and cut the price of a carton of smokes in half.  Sounds like the free market responded to a need and solved it at a much lower price.  Well we can’t have that.   Apparently an amendment completely unrelated to the transportation bill was added to the bill that places a massive amount of regulations to businesses that own the machines used to roll cigarettes.  Robert Weissen a Las Vegas small business owner who owns nine of these roll-your own cigarette shop said the amendment was pushed for by Montana Senator Max Baucus.  Mr. Weissen stated, “The man who pushed for this bill is Sen. (Max) Baucus from Montana, and he received donations from Altria, a parent company of Philip Morris. Interestingly enough, there are also no RYO machines in the state of Montana. It really makes me question the morals and values of our elected speakers.”  Since when did elected officials have any moral values?

If Senator Baucus was bribed…er supported by big tobacco companies to push for legislation that would put their competitors out of business, this is something we should all write our elected officials about.  This is a textbook example of crony capitalism and how it destroys the free market.  However Mr. Weissen’s real anger should be directed towards his own Senator Reid who as Senator Majority Leader could have stripped this amendment out of the bill.  How a Senator from Montana who has no skin in the game in regards to roll-your-own cigarettes machines in his own state can push for legislation that impacts the industry in other states is something we should all take a good hard look at.  What’s next?  I know maybe they should craft legislation that creates a massive amount of regulation or even perhaps makes it illegal for people who reload their own ammunition because some ammunition manufacturer is losing money over it.  All the companies that make these reload machines will go out of business because they’re cutting into the profits of the established ammunition companies.  Do you think this is too much of a stretch to believe this could happen?  Not me because it falls under the same principle.  Folks this is the kind of stuff we can not allow to continue in our free markets.  As much as we are defenders of our constitution so must we be defenders of our free markets.  We can no allow this kind of crony capitalism to go unchecked anymore.  This is exactly the kind of thing that is killing our free markets and in-turn eroding America.  Now on to the links.

Below are some links to some great articles by conservative bloggers.  These folks work hard each day to bring you the truth and expose the lies of the MSM and the left.  Please take a few moments out of your day to hit the links and hit their tip jars if they have them.

A Conservative Teacher: List of Ways Government Can Now Control You After Obamatax Decisions

Ace of Spades: Bill Kristol: If Romney Keeps Talking About the Economy, He’s Going To Lose

Adrienne’s Corner: Tom Woods answers Bill O’Reilly about the Constitution…

America’s Chronicle: “We Are Heading In The Right Direction” – What?

American Glob: 30 TIMES: Obama Told America Not To Read Too Much In Bad Job Reports

American Perspective: O’CareTax Is Invalid, All Tax Bills Must Originate In the House

America’s Watchtower: The Air Force’s drone training program includes tracking American citizens

ARRA News Service: Food Stamps Spending More Than Doubled Under Obama

Atlas Shrugs: Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Leader Calls for Jihad on Israel

Be Sure You’re RIGHT, Then Go Ahead: In The Obama Nation, Liberty Sleeps With The Fishes

Blog de KingShamus: Fourth of July 2012–Ronald Reagan Firing An Uzi While Riding A Velociraptor

Breitbart: Media Refuses to Make Obama Pay Price For Lies

BUNKERVILLE: Say good-bye to roll your own cigarettes

Capitol Commentary: Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital Is Evil (But We Love Staples…

Catholibertarian: After doing research documentarian changes his mind on Islam

Conservative Hideout 2.0: Why are More Americans Renouncing their Citizenship?

Conservatives on Fire: LIBOR Manipulation _ It Matters

COMMON CENTS: WOW! Listen to Barack Obama dismiss CREATION of 310,000 jobs in 2004!

Courage in America: The Final Week of Judicial Activism

Doug Ross@Journal: The Horrifying Employment Charts You Were Never Supposed to See

Elephants in the Blue Grass: Pauls Shift Emphasis From Fed to Internet Freedom

EYE OF POLYPHEMUS: Formspring Question #431–ObamaCare Tax v. Penalty Edition

Feed Your ADHD: I Am a Democrat: You Owe Me

Freedom’s Lighthouse: Obama in Interview Refers to ObamaCare Mandate as a “Tax”

Hot Air: Stop with the “I inherited a bad economy” excuse, says …

iOwnTheWorld: Initiative would let AZ voters overrule federal law

J O S H U A P U N D I T: Fascism And Theft Surfaces In California

Laughing Conservative: Under Obama, disabilities outgrow new jobs

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: Important message from the Alaska DOT

Libertarian Republican: CO Jewish leader turns away from Obama over ties to radical Islam

Maggie’s Notebook: Obama’s “Civilian National Security Force”

Manhattan Infidel: My Exclusive Interview with the Statue of Liberty

Mind Numbed Robot: Tribes – New Addition to the “Prime” Collection Thanks to…

Moonbattery: What’s at Stake and Who Will Lead the Fight

Motorcitytimes: IRS & HHS: 13,000 pages of new ObamaCare regulations…

NoOneOfAnyImport: Well It Makes Sense . . .

NUKE’S: Jimmy Copens “I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK”

Pirate’s Cove: Who I Think Mitt Romney Will Pick For VP

Politics et al: Dodd-Frank Price Controls Put Barriers to Jobs, Economic Growth

Political Clown Parade: Headwinds: Sky-High Taxation, Regulation And Scofflaw…

Political Realities: Political Realities – New Home, New Theme, and New Banner

Proof Positive: Obama’s “Evolution” on Gay Marriage

Randy’s Roundtable: Massive IRS Expansion To Handle Obamacare “Penalty”

Right Klik: Get Five People

Right Truth: Why Marxism is on the rise again

Rjjrdq’s America II: Obama’s Immigration “Policy” Emboldens California

Say Anything Blog: ND House Candidate Pam Gulleson Refuses To Answer If She’d Vote To Repeal…

teresamerica: Beautiful call to duty, and words of wisdom, encouragement by Rose Tennent

That Mr. G Guy’s Blog: Atheist Hypocrites

THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS: OBAMA HAS DONE MORE HARM THAN GOOD

The Bitter Americans: It’ll be Fine. Just Throw Some More Public Money at It!

The Camp Of The Saints: The Spot-On Quote Of The Week…

The Classic Liberal: War in Concord, CA

The Country Thinker: Is the Obomneycare Mandate Really a Tax?

The Daley Gator: Our government, BOTH parties, and their dishonesty needs to go

The Libertarian Patriot: Nullification May Be On The Ballot In Arizona

The Lonely Conservative: Now Obama’s Lying Just for the Sake of Lying

THE OTHER McCAIN: Reminder: VA Must Elect George Allen

The Reaganite Republican: Reaganite’s Sunday Funnies

THE rightscoop: Mark Levin exposes Obama’s lies about so-called ‘trickle down economics’

The TexasFred Blog: Poll: 1-in-4 uncommitted now in White House race

Theo Spark: Beware: DNSChanger Malware set to strike Monday, July 9th!…from Mike Haltman at TPC

Thomas Jefferson Club Blog: Obama Turns His Back on Israel – Again

ToBeRight: Grievances Against the King – Then and Now

TOTUS: Guess What’s Missing in Japan? The Entitlement Crowd!

Virgina Right: Obama LIED! Promised 5.6% Unemployment By Now if Stimulus Passed

WARD WORLD: Mitt Romney: The Best of America

What Would The Founders Think: I Still Can’t Find My Tin-Foil Hat

WESTERN HERO: Homosexuality is a Sin

WyBlog: Obamabots don’t have to think, apparently Rachel Maddow does that for them

Zilla of the Resistance: RadioZilla – Updated

Is this NEXT?

Thanks for all the great articles.  As always you guys are the heat.  Have a great week!

Liberty forever, freedom for all!