October 2011
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“It’s the same state! The one that is arresting [the Wall Street protestors] is...”
– Stefan Molyneux (via fuckyeahemergence)
Precisely.
September 2011
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I am the 100%
I am a son of exiles/immigrants. Spanish is my first language.
I’ve been working since I was 14. I’m in my 30’s and my student loans are paid off (I purposefully chose a cheaper in-state college instead of my dream university to avoid the massive debt later) - though I’m still paying off my wife’s student and car loans.
Due to a writer’s strike...
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“Also, during the Bush years, civil libertarians who tried to convince...”
– Glenn Greenwald
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Why Americans Still Support The Death Penalty →
[A] little less than two years after David Grann made a convincing argument in The New Yorker that the state of Texas had [executed an innocent man], public support for capital punishment hasn’t wavered. In October 2009, Grann wrote about Cameron Todd Willingham, executed in 2004 for setting the fire that killed his three young children. Willingham was convicted because of forensic...
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“The very idea that one can effectively battle Wall Street’s corruption and...”
– Glenn Greewald
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“Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the...”
– Michael Rivero (via fuckyeahemergence)
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The Importance of Choice in Currency →
The fact is, the modern welfare state is bankrupt. It is bankrupt ideologically; no one really any longer believes that the Interventionist- Redistributive State will bring mankind material happiness or social harmony. Everyone knows that it is nothing more than a vast and corrupt political machine through which, as Frederic Bastiat said long ago, everyone tries to live at everyone else’s...
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The Tax-the-Rich Truth Squad →
President Obama has unveiled his so-called deficit reduction plan. Besides spending cuts that aren’t really cuts, he has proposed ending the Bush-era tax cuts for individuals making $200,000 (couples $250,000) or more and an additional surtax on those earning a million or more. The President’s argument for the surtax is that no millionaire should pay a lower tax rate than his or her secretary....
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jeffmiller:
“My home has been seized, I’m unemployed, there’s no job prospects on the horizon. I have two children and I don’t see a future for them. This is the only way I see to effect change. This isn’t a progressive issue. This is an American issue. We’re here to take our country back from the corporations…”
—
Matthew Prowless (via azspot)
Instead of buying a house, I put my money in a...
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“[O]ur zombie economy does not need to be perpetuated by more [Quantitative...”
– Peter Schiff - Fed’s ‘Twist’ Paves the Way for QE III
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“[A]m I right to conclude that libertarians simply don’t have the same central...”
– Ari Kohen: Libertarian ideas don’t match majority of society - Opinion - Daily Nebraskan - University of Nebraska - Lincoln : News, Husker Sports, Opinion, and Video
This is an odd observation to make at a time when a Democratic Governor jokes about skipping the next election, when Peter Orzag...
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“U.S. officials had once thought there was little chance that terrorists could...”
– Nightmare in Libya: 20,000 Surface-to-Air Missiles Missing - ABC News
So, this is bad.
(via jeffmiller)
More war folly under the watch of the peace president.
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WatchRon Paul on The Daily Show - 2011/09/26
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Ron Paul On A Palestinian State →
The Palestinian Authority’s recent announcement that it would seek UN recognition as an independent state dominated the news and the political debate in the United States last week, though in truth it should mean very little to us. Only a political class harboring the illusion it can run the world obsesses over the aspirations of a tiny population on a tiny piece of land thousands of miles...
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re: Anarchy doesn't work in practice.
hypn0tech:
It normally takes me a half hour to drive from my house to school on Monday mornings. I take all back roads, and it’s normally pretty barren. This morning was different.
As I was approaching the first major intersection on the road I was driving on, I was greeted with a line of cars a mile long. I sat behind this line of cars for 20 minutes before I finally got up to the light, and I...
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“The New York Times highlights the impact of mandatory minimum sentences on plea...”
– The Escalating Penalty for Asserting Your Right to a Trial
My own personal observation: Among the many sad consequences of this is that we are no longer producing great criminal defense lawyers. Because it almost never makes sense to risk taking a case to trial (even for the innocent), young...
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Arrests and Brutality during "Occupy Wall Street"...
Simply barbaric.
The images of non-violent people being rounded up and brutalized are disturbing. To state-sympathizers, these events have been shocking; but to libertarians who have documented the long history of police brutality against peaceful people, it is not unexpected.
Here’s one point I hope the protesters don’t miss: they were not aggressed against by Wal-Mart managers,...
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“That’s the first sign you know you’re a libertarian. You see the red light. You...”
– Gary Johnson
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Turn Left on Red →
Well, why not?
If the way is obviously clear in both directions, if it’s obviously safe to enter the intersection, make your turn and proceed… why not proceed?
Because of The Law.
It is (usually) illegal to make a left turn on red. Sometimes, a right turn, too.
But why is it illegal?
Because The Law assumes a very low standard of competence – and applies it generally. If you think...
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In 2010, One Person Was Arrested for Manufacturing... →
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Man With Down Syndrome Beaten By Police Over... →
anarchyagogo:
A twenty-two-year-old man with down syndrome is recovering from his injuries nearly a week after Miami-Dade police officers beat him outside his home. According to police reports, a violent confrontation ensued after officers tried to handcuff Gilberto Powell to investigate a bulge they spotted in his pants. After he was detained they realized the bulge in his waistband was a...
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Ron Paul and the Death Penalty →
kohenari:
Some of the vocal libertarians bloggers who use Tumblr as their platform — and some other libertarians who have written to me through other social networking channels — have taken issue with the criticism of Ron Paul that I raised in my post before last night’s debate. Here’s one example:
Ron Paul is against the death penalty. This is one of the few positions he has changed his mind...
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Elizabeth Warren’s Non Sequitur →
In today’s society, as in Bastiat’s, great wealth can be made by what Franz Oppenheimer, echoed later by Albert Jay Nock (pdf), called “the political means.” That is, many business people (preaching the gospel of “the free market”) make fortunes from government interventions that directly or indirectly, intentionally or unintentionally, obstruct entry into their industries or limit...
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“Those who compose the state have estranged themselves from their fellows and...”
– Robert Higgs
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Re: Let's Eat the Rich
squashthebox:
laliberty:
Let’s Eat the Rich
When President Barack Obama unveiled his new un-passable “deficit reduction plan,” many accused him of playing class envy. The plan ostensibly calls for $1 in budget cuts (cuts that would never happen) for every $1 in tax increases ($1.5 trillion). And if we’re not willing to ask more from the rich, says the president,...
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kohenari:
Despite last night’s high profile execution of Troy Davis, I wouldn’t hold your breath for a hard-hitting question about the death penalty in tonight’s GOP debate; that issue, as we all know, was settled earlier this month when Rick Perry expressed his certainty that no innocent person has ever been put to death and the audience cheered wildly about all of the killing he’s overseen.
...
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Let's Eat the Rich →
When President Barack Obama unveiled his new un-passable “deficit reduction plan,” many accused him of playing class envy. The plan ostensibly calls for $1 in budget cuts (cuts that would never happen) for every $1 in tax increases ($1.5 trillion). And if we’re not willing to ask more from the rich, says the president, “then the logic—the math—says everybody else has to...
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I didn't "enter a contract" just for being born.
Much less one that demands my subservience and property for unrequested services rendered inefficiently.
America’s Unique Fascism →
American fascism is one of a kind. Its economic system is neither free enterprise nor pure egalitarian socialism, but more akin to a buffed-up, modernized, globally dominant Mussolinian corporate state. Its militarism rivals and in many senses exceeds any of history’s fascist regimes, in power, uninterrupted belligerence, and sheer size. Its presidency is the most revered and powerful Fuhrer in...
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“[I]f you’re the kind of person who thinks Che Guevara was cool, a movie about...”
– Andy Levy
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I wonder if Pol Pot's face will one day be a...
Apparently, that Che Guevara was a murderer and a racist is a matter of opinion. And even so, Che has evidently been transmogrified beyond what he was as a human and now exists as a symbol for “hope and change that has positive and inspirational connotations for many people,” the families of his victims be damned.
At least, according to this person.
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The Real Peace of Ron Paul →
[Ron Paul] has been extremely consistent in his view of a non-interventionist stance on foreign policy and its benefits to the United States, [a view] which continues to elude the other presidential candidates. I’ve seen many fellow political activists who truthfully promote a peaceful foreign policy yet plan on voting for Obama due to ignorance of the man’s own agenda that is eerily similar to...
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Troy Davis Declared Dead at 11:08 PM EST →
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U.S. Supreme Court Denies Stay, Troy Davis to be... →
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The Fable of the Shoes →
In his 1973 “Libertarian Manifesto,” the late Murray Rothbard argued that the biggest obstacle in the road out of serfdom was “status quo bias.” In society, we’re accustomed to rapid change. “New products, new life styles, new ideas are often embraced eagerly.” Not so with government. When it comes to police or firefighting or sanitation, government must...
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Pharma-backed legislation to allow secret... →
anarchyagogo:
According to The Healthy Home Economist (HHE), California’s Assembly Bill 499 has already quietly passed both the California House and Senate, and today sits on the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown where it awaits his signature. The bill, which is only a single page in length, contains specific language that will allow children as young as 12 to opt for sexually-transmitted disease (STD)...
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BREAKING: Troy Davis execution delayed while US... →
The execution of Troy Davis was delayed temporarily by the US supreme court on Wednesday night, in a dramatic intervention just as he was due to be put to death by lethal injection.
Let’s see if the supreme court has a better idea of what constitutes “reasonable doubt.”
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Government Is Force →
Some pundits really don’t understand why libertarians dislike government and therefore want it to do little, if anything at all. Unable to grasp the reason, the pundits assign bad motives to those who disparage government: They don’t like poor people, or workers, or the sick, or education.
But what’s so hard to understand? Government is significantly different from anything else in society. It...
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Nine Ways to Break All The Rules! →
In our youth we are butterflies, flying everywhere and trying everything. But in the end, life and obedience eats our dying bodies like maggots unless we truly fly free.
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To Serve and Protect — the State →
Protect yourself, because the police are not paid to care.
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“In 48 of the 50 states, you can’t be convicted under and sentenced to jail for...”
– Radley Balko, on the right to record police.
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“Two defense lawyers say Georgia’s pardons board has rejected clemency for...”
– Georgia pardons board denies clemency for Troy Davis – USATODAY.com
We are going to execute an innocent man, and no one with any power cares. (via jeffmiller) 