January 2011
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“New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody...”
– Mark Twain (via bushranger)
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Austrian Economics is the Answer →
For mainstream economists, the certain outcome of the current crisis will be the realization that macroeconomics needs a face-lift. … [T]he monetarist and Keynesian policies so influential in the United States are already being severely challenged.
The sad reality is that the Austrian economists have been warning us for a long time of these weaknesses.
statehate asked: "A Libertarian in Leftywood"
So where is LA do you live? Since you're a mysterious, faceless, nameless blogger, do you have a Facebook? Haha.
So where is LA do you live? Since you're a mysterious, faceless, nameless blogger, do you have a Facebook? Haha.
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8 Smears and Misconceptions About WikiLeaks Spread... →
The first four are critical to dispute:
Fearmongering that WikiLeaks revelations will result in deaths.
Spreading the lie that WikiLeaks posted all the cables.
Falsely claiming that Assange has committed a crime regarding WikiLeaks.
Denying that WikiLeaks is a journalistic enterprise.
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The top 10 violations of the Constitution by Obama... →
Edit: As statehate noted, I disagree with AZ’s SB 1070 and the neo-con position about it - but I do think the federal government should not interfere with the state in this instance (though technically, my position is that neither governments should interfere with peaceful individuals).
Here’s how I would ‘fix’ our ‘issues’ with immigration. I’m sure I...
“New Year’s is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody...”
– Mark Twain (via bushranger)
December 2010
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“The socialist… has an intuitive urgency for power, power over other...”
– Frank Chodorov
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Sanitation Department's slow snow cleanup was a... →
combattant-de-la-liberte:
The snitches “didn’t want to be identified because they were afraid of retaliation,” Halloran said. “They were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file.”
...
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Abolish Drunk Driving Laws →
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(Upper) Class War →
California, you may have heard, is broker than than Steve Garvey on alimony day. Pick a horrifying number: There’s theimmediate $28 billion budget hole, themore than doubling of both debt and debt service since Arnold Schwarzenegger took office, or the estimated half-trillion shortfall in funding the Golden State’s pension obligations. Incoming Gov. Jerry Brown has taken his first...
Clause Escape →
Are you committing interstate commerce by doing nothing?
Over the years, the Supreme Court, acceding to the legislative branch’s power grabs, has transformed a provision aimed at eliminating internal trade barriers into an all-purpose excuse for nearly anything Congress decides to do.
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“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit...”
– Frédéric Bastiat
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit...”
– Frédéric Bastiat
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Cracked Climate Crystal Ball →
Some Chicken Little environmental predictions the watermelons got wrong.
Tariffs and Freedom →
Low taxes and minimal regulation paved the way for entrepreneurs to create, investors to invest, and consumers to reap the resulting benefits. America’s economic growth in the nineteenth century owed a great deal to this freedom. …
Of course, the fact that America’s economy grew impressively during the 1800s despite Uncle Sam’s restrictions on foreign trade does not mean that these...
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WikiLeaks Roundup - 12/30
Julian Assange: Man of the Decade
Billions if not trillions of dollars have been made in the business of war, while tens of thousands of people have perished, millions left homeless, maimed, orphaned, imprisoned. In the United States, society has become militarized and more criminalized, while police and politicians are increasingly less accountable for their own crimes and misdeeds. Citizens...
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Here come 'death panels' →
A Libertarian’s New Year’s Resolution →
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Please Stop "Helping" Us →
How consumer protection laws harm consumers
Outlook: 2011 →
The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the U.S. government of U.S. law, international law, the Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust from allies, more hostility from the rest of the world, and new heights of media sycophancy.
Also, a less-than-positive...
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“This is the basic libertarian idea: that people should be free to do ‘‘anything...”
– Jacob H. Huebert (via laliberty)
from joinakibbutz:
that’s actually quite aggressive. ‘acts of force or fraud against any other peaceful person’ is terribly vague. anytime you have a philosophy which gives a kind of ambiguous kind and amount of power to reprimand and discipline you will have the...
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“[W]hen [the Cuban people] sense that the tiny portion of seed is no longer being...”
– Yoani Sanchez on Cuba potentially phasing out the communist “ration book”
Economic Truths →
The economic way of thinking … starts with a few basic truths about reality. Here are some of these truths.
• Nothing is free; to get more hamburgers means that you get fewer hot dogs.
• No one is a saint who can be trusted to govern strangers’ lives as reliably as they govern their own lives.
• Intentions are not results. Government can no more make low-skilled workers as highly...
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At What Point Does a Scholarship Athlete Own... →
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“This is the basic libertarian idea: that people should be free to do ‘‘anything...”
– Jacob H. Huebert
“This is the basic libertarian idea: that people should be free to do ‘‘anything...”
– Jacob H. Huebert
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“The ‘private sector’ of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and the...”
– Henry Hazlitt (via coeus)
Rethinking Charity →
Our health and living standards have virtually nothing to do with charity and virtually everything to do with entrepreneurs solving problems. Had we depended on only alms and goodwill to elevate our living standards, we would still be squatting in mud huts. …
One of the more cerebral criticisms of charities is that they fail to perform charity. True charity requires anonymity and the...
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“Fear and guilt are the usual tools used to rob citizens of their liberty and...”
– Rod Rojas
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“Fear and guilt are the usual tools used to rob citizens of their liberty and...”
– Rod Rojas
Free or Fair? →
At first blush, the mercantilists’ call for “free trade but fair trade” [may sound] reasonable. After all, who can be against fairness? Giving the idea just a bit of thought suggests that fairness as a guide for public policy lays the groundwork for tyranny.
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Travelers ‘Feel a Little Safer’ Seeing Rape Victim... →
In an example of how quickly many members of the public have become not only comfortable with by comforted by the harsh and seemingly arbitrary treatment received by others at the airport, 56-year-old rape victim Claire Hirschkind was hurled to the ground and dragged across the airport by police yesterday, reassuring others that the TSA was right on top of things.
“It makes me feel a little...
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Obamacare Criminalizes Medicine →
[T]he administration is defining Medicare fraud down to include “unnecessary” and “ineffective” care. And to root this out, it plans to make expanded use of private mercenaries—officially called Recovery Audit Contracts—who will be authorized to go to doctors’ offices and rummage through patients’ records, matching them with billing claims to uncover illicit charges. What’s more, Obamacare...
Why a Socialist Economy is "Impossible" →
[U]nder socialist central planning, there are no means of economic calculation and… therefore, socialist economy itself is “impossible” — not just inefficient or less innovative or conducted without benefit of decentralized knowledge, but really and truly and literally impossible.
At the same time, … the necessary and sufficient conditions of the existence and...
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Outlook: 2011 →
The year 2011 will bring Americans a larger and more intrusive police state, more unemployment and home foreclosures, no economic recovery, more disregard by the U.S. government of U.S. law, international law, the Constitution, and truth, more suspicion and distrust from allies, more hostility from the rest of the world, and new heights of media sycophancy.
Also, a less-than-positive...
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State-Corporate Healthcare: No “Right to Choose” →
The peculiar challenge for free market anarchism… is to explain not just how authentic interchange in goods, services and ideas benefits real, working people, but also to revisit the accepted account of business/government relations, contributing a revision that more accurately express those relations. The continuing debate surrounding healthcare reform offers a classic example of the...
The Fed Vastly Expands Moral Hazard →
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Attack Tyranny at Its Weakest Link: Enforcement →
Goo-goo liberals and “good citizens” of all stripes are fond of saying that “We must continue to obey the law while we work to change it.” Every day I become more convinced that this approach gets things precisely backwards. Each day’s news demonstrates the futility of attempts at legislative reform, compared to direct action to make the laws unenforceable.
The principle was stated most...
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Enumerated Powers Make a Comeback →
It was always for our own good. It was always for a very good reason. It was always within the American tradition of this, that, or the other.
That’s what they’ve told us, that’s how they’ve patronized us, for generations, as the long tendrils of the federal government have spread and multiplied into every realm of American life. It had become so utterly unremarkable,...
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Napolitano Announces Expansion of Gestapo Zones →
As we predicted, Homeland Security and national security state officialdom are in the process of expanding the police state and citizen humiliation grid from airports to hotels and shopping malls.
See my Case Against the TSA.
Privatize the FAA →
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A Remedy for Beggar States →
The nation’s menu of crises caused by governmental malpractice may soon include states coming to Congress as mendicants, seeking relief from the consequences of their choices. Congress should forestall this by passing a bill … [that] would define the scale of the problem of underfunded state and local government pensions and would notify states not to approach Congress like Oliver...
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Taxes and Slavery: A Parallel →
Also, follow up here.
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Will the Fed be able to survive Ron Paul? →
Q: [S]ome would consider ending the Fed is a bit extreme, don’t you think?
A: No, I think printing money is extreme and crazy. I think the obscenity is allowing the Federal Reserve to print $3.3 trillion and we don’t even know where it went. That to me is what’s so extreme. And that’s what the American people are waking up to. Government is extremely out of control.