Libertarian Youth

Monad of the imago

2009-12-14T20:40:00.001-06:00

This will form the monad of the imago of society. So says Daniel Bell, who is a hack.

How about voting for some real people next time?

2007-01-05T11:27:00.000-06:00

The op-ed page of the newspaper seems to alternate between filled with people trying to sound nuanced by creating an "opinion" out of a hodgepodge of rhetoric from the "right" and the "left" and people that might as well be fellating an elephant or a donkey. But today, the Dallas Morning News published a piece by David Brooks of the New York Times pointing out that neither the Democrats or the Republicans have what I would call "real people" as their leaders:

I have a dream that Ms. Pelosi, who was chauffeured to school as a child and who, with her investor husband, owns minority shares in the Auberge du Soleil resort hotel and the CordeValle Golf Club, will look over her famous strand of South Sea Tahitian pearls and forge bonds of understanding with the zillionaire corporate barons in the opposing party.

Zing. Let the quotes continue, because they're awesome:

[Nancy Pelosi] is part of the clash of the rival elites, with the dollars from Brookline battling dollars from Dallas, causing upper-class strife that even diminutive dogs, vibrant velvets and petite salades can't fully soothe.

And you expect people who own such things to use the guns of government for the "greater good" why?

The main fact to know about Ms. Pelosi is that she is a creature of the modern fundraising system. Some politicians rise because they run political machines.

Some rise because they are great communicators. Ms. Pelosi has risen because she is a master of the thousand-dollar-a-plate fundraising circuit.

Note what wasn't included in that list: being smart, understanding the economy, or any other skill that actually makes one qualified to run the country. Maybe it's time to elect some real people.

Drowning in a sea of dogma

2007-01-02T08:33:00.000-06:00

Being a libertarian environmentalist can be frustrating. Take the most obvious issue, global warming. Many of my favorite Libertarian personalities (like Ian Bernard of Free Talk Live) insist that global warming is either a myth, not anthropogenic, or not a problem. Many environmentalists scream about the need for more government intervention. In reality, they're both being dogmatic. I believe that the market is the best solution to environmental problems, not government or ignorance.

It's the statist environmentalists that are pissing me off now. A Sioux Falls, SD company has genetically engineered cattle that almost certainly cannot be infected with BSE, otherwise known as mad cow disease. Average beef-eaters would say "Awesome, now I can eat beef without worrying about slowly dying from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease."

But it's easy to imagine what would happen if this company tried to bring the cows to market. People wearing funny costumes would protest, the FDA would be required to go through a multi-year process to ensure the safety of something that almost certainly carries zero risk. I have a better solution than regulation: let those of us who feel the risk of vCJD is worse than the risk of something going wrong with the cows eat them, and let those other people eat "natural" cows.

This is a surprise?

2006-12-22T09:31:00.000-06:00

364 news agencies (as of 10:34 AM CST) apparently think it's "news" and therefore "surprising" that teens are increasingly turning to their parents' medicine cabinets to get high. I've known this for four years - and I haven't used any of them, either.

If the nation's drug warriors and educators were unaware of this phenomenon for so long, which apparently they were, what on earth makes them think they can prevent teens from using drugs? We've seen that making the drugs which psychonauts found before doctors did illegal only causes violence and forces those who search out psychoactive drugs to abuse legal ones.

One solution is to stop letting parents think the government will make their kids into good people and actually do their job. Another is the government's solution:

...apply the prevention tools that have apparently succeeded in combating illegal drug use to fight the abuse of legal medicines.

No, you idiots, "prevention tools" didn't stop teens from using illegal drugs, the realization that you could get high by chugging a bottle of cough syrup did. Nothing the government can do will do anything to stop teen drug abuse. Only good parenting can do that. Unfortunately, America's parents are afraid to tell their kids to do their homework, much less have a serious talk with them about drugs.

Why I like George Phillies

2006-12-16T15:39:00.000-06:00

I've been trying to stay fairly neutral in the race for the 2008 Libertarian presidential nomination, simply because it's a long, long time until the 2008 convention, but I kinda suck at neutrality, and I've found myself pretty consistently favoring George Phillies. Here's why:

He's respectable and electable. (I really wish those didn't rhyme, but they do.) His credentials would impress anyone - he's an MIT-educated physics professor at a high second-tier school (Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts) and is a constant and respected member of WPI's elected faculty committees.
He's focusing on issues that average Americans - not just Libertarian Party members - care about: the war in Iraq, property rights, energy issues, etc. He has sensible Libertarian solutions to these answers without delving into weird Libertopia-style stuff.
Most importantly - he's running for the Libertarian Party, not for George Phillies. He will help Libertarians get elected to many tiers of government while running a competent campaign for President. He's already shown he's serious about this - his campaign produced free radio commercials for Libertarian campaigns for the November 2006 elections.

I think Steve Kubby (the other major candidate for the LP nomination) is a good person and a good Libertarian, and would certainly be the best president since at least Calvin Coolidge if elected. But Kubby is known only for his sometimes flippant marijuana legalization activities - which, although I totally support them, will lead to his being marginalized as "the stoner candidate" no matter how much he cares and talks about other issues, as shown in this video (Kubby appears at 3:18). That's a hard image to shake, and Libertarian candidates have enough of a glass ceiling to break through already.

Dealing with something does not imply consent.

2006-12-15T12:30:00.000-06:00

People often attempt to cut short my explanations that government is equivalent to coercion by saying "you're still here, so you've consented to the US government."

...Right. And slaves consented to slavery because they stuck around, not wanting to risk the other forms of repression they'd encounter elsewhere, even if they technically weren't slaves? Blacks in the American South before the Civil Rights Act consented to segregation and a government machine designed to repress them? The German Jews on the MS St. Louis consented to the Holocaust because nobody would allow them into their countries?

Even if some psychobeasts would answer "yes" to all of those, their argument still makes fails: rights cannot be taken away from somebody, even if they consent to their removal. North Koreans still have the right to free speech, even if their government punishes them for exercising it. We still have the right to our property, even if the government takes it by force. Simply because you aren't constantly fighting to maintain your rights doesn't mean you've given them up.

Big government: Like big corporations, but actually bad.

2006-12-14T13:16:00.000-06:00

"Progressives" like to rail against big corporations, especially big oil companies as "exploitative". But when I think "exploitative", I don't think ExxonMobil. (Well, not in America, at least. Chad is another story.) I think OPEC - a multinational organization composed of governments - big ones. The governments of the OPEC nations don't just regulate their countries' oil industries, they are their countries' oil industries. Today, OPEC announced that it will make a cut in production. They did this not because they believe that's what's in the best interest of the "global community" (whatever that means), but rather because they "want to balance supply and demand". In other words, they want to maximize profit.

There's nothing expressly wrong with that, if you think of the OPEC governments as corporations. But if you think of them as governments just trying to do what's best for the little guy - which Hugo Chavez, a member, would certainly like you to - then it's reprehensible. And even the overtly for-profit nations spend oil money on weird stuff: financing Sudan's murderous Janjaweed militia (experts in ethnic cleansing and mass rape), funding other Muslim militias in the Sahel, and, in the case of Saudi Arabia, paying a huge annual stipend to tens of thousands of men who do no work but apparently are Saudi princes by birthright.

Either way, government control of the energy industry certainly doesn't help "the people". It helps some people, sure, but those people seem to have a talent for being scumbags.

Oh, brilliant idea!

2006-11-14T19:33:00.000-06:00

The Dallas suburb of Farmer's Branch voted unanimously to make English its official language and fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants. It is also enrolling its police officers in a federal program which would functionally make them into immigration officers.

Huh?

Texans don't realize how good we have it. Illegal immigrants make everything cheaper, because there's not a government-set price floor on their labor - no minimum wage. Construction is cheaper. Cleaning services are cheaper. Landscaping services are cheaper. And when those prices fall, other things often get cheaper too, because fixed costs are cheaper.

Plus, it's a ridiculous infringement of property rights to limit who landlords can rent to, especially as it's hard for landlords to know - illegals could send somebody else to sign the lease, or landlords might refuse to rent to anybody who has difficulty speaking English. This will be a disaster for landlords and a disaster for Farmer's Branch.

Well, crap.

2006-11-12T21:07:00.000-06:00

As anyone who was paying attention knows, the elections held on the 7th were pretty dismal for Libertarians. It's not that we lost any ground; we didn't. Ballot access was maintained in many states; in Wyoming, we were awarded major-party status, for what that's worth. But neither Bob Smither or Michael Badnarik were elected to Congress; neither Phil Maymin nor Bruce Guthrie broke 1%. None of those names probably mean anything to many of y'all, and that's kind of a problem too.

So what do we need to do? The candidates the Libertarian Party ran in November 2006 were, from what I can tell, the best group of candidates it's ever run. The problem is that they were running for the wrong offices. Nobody will elect somebody they'd question on their city council to Congress. Libertarians need to put their best candidates in low-level races where they can get elected and make positive moves towards liberty, as opposed to living in a state of perpetual electoral martyrdom.

Guaranteed profitability hurts the little guy.

2006-10-29T14:19:00.000-06:00

I've written before about Bolivia's nationalization of its oil and gas industry. Now it's cutting deals with large international oil companies - and guaranteeing them profit.

Of course, what this means is that if the companies make bad decisions, they won't suffer - the people of Bolivia will. This is a gross perversion of what nationalization of the energy industry was supposed to do, that is, stop exploitation by the oil companies and protect Bolivians. (There was no chance that nationalization would accomplish this, but it's a nice goal at least.)

This sort of thing demonstrates something we libertarians have issues convincing people of - big government quite frequently advances the goals of big, exploitative corporations, and the only way that exploitative corporations can continue harming their customers is with government help. Markets don't guarantee profitability, and nothing should. Guaranteeing reward for something that may or may not be beneficial is the best way to guarantee that no benefit will come from it.

You have more than two choices.

2006-10-26T09:06:00.000-05:00

The Democrats appear to think that they can win this November by pointing out that George W. Bush isn't a member of their party. They are trying to position themselves as the only alternative to two more years of Republican control. But that simply isn't the case - in fact, voting for Democrats isn't too much different from voting for Republicans in the grand scheme of things. To really show how sick you are with the Republicans (and the Democrats), vote for a third party. If you want to run your own life, vote Libertarian. If you want the government to run your life, vote Green. If you're a crazed fundamentalist, vote Constitution. If you agree with one of the other more niche parties, vote for them. But if you're discontented - which, if you're an American, you statistically probably are - don't vote for Republicans or Democrats.

The Democrats don't get it either.

2006-10-22T21:09:00.000-05:00

Except for the most hardcore of rightists, it is generally acknowledged by Americans today that invading Iraq was a mistake. Most won't look at you funny if you tell them that it was a morally reprehensible, completely unjustifiable act, even if they disagree. Naturally, the Democrats are capitalizing on this mistake by attributing it to Republicans (even though many Democrats voted to invade as well), hoping to score points with voters so that they'll have a chance to screw up your life - the Democratic way.

An easy lesson to learn from the situation in Iraq is non-intervention except in the case of an attack (for example, I contend that the invasion of Afghanistan was justified, although why we're still there is a mystery to me.) The Democrats should logically be arguing for a less aggressive foreign policy. Instead, everybody's darling Barack Obama is arguing that the United States should put its soldiers in harm's way in Darfur.

I disagree not because I'm a heartless icicle who has no concern for the victims of Darfur, but because our troops should not be sent abroad and put in dangerous situations except to defend America. If I had any confidence that the various schemes to help Darfur would do something besides put money in the pockets of the dictators causing the problems, I'd help. If people wish to protect the natives of Darfur with military might, they can (and ought to be free to) raise a group to protect a village, a family, whatever. But those who signed up to protect America should not be forced to protect Darfur.

Arguing with socialists is fun!

2006-10-18T22:18:00.000-05:00

I encountered two girls handing out copies of Socialist Worker magazine today. Naturally, I stopped to convince them that they were errant in their views. Naturally, they refused to listen to reason. Most of our exchanges went something like this (they were power-to-the-people types, but evidently power-to-the-individual wasn't in there):
Me: So you recognize a right to self-determination?
Them: Yeah.
Me: So how can you advocate socialism, where everybody is rubber-stamped and isn't allowed to decide for themselves what they want?
Them: Well, we more advocate a central revolution of the people.
Me:...

They also said "we don't really understand economics" when I explained how the free market prevents monopolies from forming. I suppose I should have already guessed that from the fact that they were handing out copies of Socialist Worker.

Are they trying to scare us?

2006-10-16T12:05:00.000-05:00

I'm being hunted all over campus in a game of Zombies vs. Humans here at Cornell, so perhaps all this is just collateral paranoia. But the conflicting reports on whether or not North Korea really set off a nuclear bomb or not, plus the very small yield of the bomb (far less than the Hiroshima bomb, logically the least advanced nuke ever detonated) is making me wonder whether both the governments of North Korea and the United States are hyping up the DPRK's nuclear capabilities to cause fear. First, the conflicting reports:OK, well, that's exciting. (If it's compressed too much, the top headline says "North Korea: Radioactive Debris Found in US Test" and the bottom one says "Official: No Radioactive Particles Found".)

Now, the question of "is it crazy to believe the government would hype something up or lie". No. I don't believe that the government perpetrated 9/11, but many instances of the government lying to or concealing things from us have already been documented (in other words, everything classified, and the various propaganda machines that have been openly set up in times of "national emergency"), even though, since they are our employees, we ought to know everything they do.

Maybe I'm just being crazy. But I'd like independent, non-governmental confirmation of radioactive debris before anything is done regarding North Korea. (Obviously it's too late for that, but folks can dream, can't they?)

More proof that socialism is all about repression

2006-10-12T16:44:00.000-05:00

The opposition Socialist party managed to limply pass a law through France's lower house of Parliament making denying that the mass killing of Armenians by the Turkish government during World War I a crime. Naturally this infuriated Turkey, but that's not really the issue. The issue is that even though denying that fact is stupid, this violates the inherent right of people to say whatever they like - even when that stuff isstupid and damaging, like, say, socialism.

North Korea's tugging at our chain. Again.

2006-10-09T17:02:00.000-05:00

Every time North Korea decides the rest of the world has forgetton it exists, Kim Jong Il, its Daffy Duck-obsessed leader, does something crazy to get attention. Yesterday, it was detonating a powerful explosive device equivalent to 550 tons of TNT that it claimed was a nuclear bomb in the barren northeastern part of the country. (I personally believe that it's far more likely that they detonated 550 tons of TNT, but that's just me.) By doing this, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (three lies in one name!) calls the bluff of the United States, which has said it will not tolerate North Korean nuclear power. Kim Jong Il knows we don't have the cojones to invade.

Obviously we shouldn't invade. So what should we do? We should stop sending North Korea aid through the UN. Every dollar we send in aid is another dollar the DPRK can spend on weaponry. If the UN stopped its aid to North Korea, the government would have to feed its people or face a revolution.

The immediate response to this argument is that stopping aid to North Korea (which is sent mainly in the form of food) would precipitate a humanitarian crisis. The people that make this argument evidently fail to recognize that every day that the DPRK continues as the government of the northern half of the Korean Peninsula is another day in a humanitarian crisis that has been going on since the government was established in 1948.

LP Ballot Base

2006-10-08T17:16:00.000-05:00

I just used the new LP Ballot Base program to conduct polling in Texas's 22nd Congressional District, where Bob Smither running a very strong campaign for Congress. The tool was certainly interesting to use. I made 57 calls and was allowed to complete the survey by a grand total of one person. She told me to "put Democrat all the way down", which was not possible. When I explained to her that there was no Democrat in the special election for who will serve out Tom DeLay's term from November until the new Congress is inducted, she said she wouldn't vote.

I think my timing was probably not so good for most people, and I'll be trying again tomorrow. If you'd like to help, go to www.BallotBase.org.

If X is causing a problem, don't add more X.

2006-10-04T18:17:00.000-05:00

Especially when X is government.

Since I'm part of Cornell University's Solar Decathlon team, which aims to build a solar house, I had to attend a construction training seminar this afternoon done by some OSHA-trained guy. It was pretty much along the lines of "Here's when to use safety goggles. Here's a guy with a nail in his eye." None of the regulations were particularly stupid - most of them were common-sense, like "use safety goggles when operating a nail gun."

But why is OSHA around anyways? Surely in a capitalist system, employers would want to protect their workers, since they wouldn't want to replace them and they wouldn't want to be liable. Unsurprisingly, government shows up here too. Employers could be safe from liability if their greased representatives made sure they were, and so employers greased their representatives. The solution was, unfortunately, to add more government, when it should have been to prevent laws from being passed which would prevent the normal handling of liabilities.

Who do you blame now, Jack Thompson?

2006-10-02T12:06:00.000-05:00

Jack Thompson has been one of the most outspoken advocates of banning and censoring video games and other forms of entertainment to "protect" children from their "harmful" influence. He blames such tragedies as school shootings and teenage drug abuse on violent video games and their supposed psychological effects. Today, there was, unfortunately, a school shooting at an all-Amish high school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. In case you don't recall, the Amish reject all industrial and post-industrial technology - in other words, this kid didn't get the idea from video games.

I don't want to make light of this situation, but it does make anti-free speech advocates like Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton look pretty dumb.

UPDATE: Apparently the shooter was not an Amish person, in which case, this is just sad and does not serve an argument.

Jameson could knock out Hutchison

2006-10-01T16:02:00.000-05:00

The race for Texas Senior Senator could take an interesting turn after Libertarian Scott Lanier Jameson debates Democrat Barbara Radnofsky and Republican incumbent Kay Bailey Hutchison, one of the highest-ranked Republicans in the Senate. The latest poll to include all three candidates has Hutchison at 45.2%, Radnofsky at 36.8%, and Jameson at 7.1%. Since the debate had not happened when the poll was taken (it is scheduled for October 19), it's likely that Jameson's support will rise, since many Texans will not have heard about him. In fact, it wouldn't be surprising if he got into double digits. Since there is currently an 8.4% difference between Hutchison and Radnofsky, it is possible that an increase in suport for Jameson would knock out Hutchison, severely shaking up the Senate.

Progressives in Fantasyland

2006-09-28T08:48:00.000-05:00

Whoever invented the phrase "single-payer health care" was either an evil genius or a moron. Single-payer health care (in other words, government-paid health care) really means everbody pays through taxes. "Single-payer health care" is thus amazingly misleading and erroneous.

This comes up because on Tuesday, while I and some other Cornell Libertarians were protesting the exclusion of third-party candidates from the New York gubernatorial debate that was going on, a slightly (not by as much as you'd think) larger group was rallying for "single-payer health care". They held signs saying "I'm a Health Care Voter" and pontificated into a loudspeaker. They proclaimed, frighteningly enough, that they would "remove the profit motive from health care". This would clearly not help anything. Do they somehow think that it would be cheaper if all health care providers were forced to charge the same price? The problem with health care is not that the industry wants profits, it's the current labyrinth of rules and regulations which prices health care to employers which get tax credits for providing health insurance to their employees and out of the range of most individuals. Ron Paul explains how this works.

One of the handmade signs held by the rally participants said "Health Care for Profit is Sick." I contend that it's sick because it's infected by government.

Digg it.

It's Banned Books Week.

2006-09-25T10:07:00.000-05:00

The America Library Association maintains a list of well-respected novels that have been challenged or banned. Some of these, I can almost understand (though I disagree with) why parents wouldn't want their kids reading the books - Lolita, for example. Others, however, demonstrate beautifully the silliness and futility of censorship:

The Call of the Wild. Are you kidding? I read this book somewhere around fourth grade. Sure, it contains some graphic scenes of cruelty to animals, which were kind of shocking, but unfortunately, those things happen.
1984. It was challenged, oddly enough, because "Orwell's novel is 'pro-communist and contained explicit sexual matter.'" I don't know what version they were reading in Jackson County, Florida in 1981, but if any book is pro-Communist, it isn't 1984. Its hero rebels against a government which goes by a shortened form of "English Socialism". What was wrong with those people?
The Great Gatsby. It was challenged at the Baptist College in Charleston, South Carolina "because of 'language and sexual references in the book.'" Evidently the English department didn't notice that it portrays the people engaging in "language and sexual references" as fake disasters of people.

Ban the ban.

Three leaders who belong in the loony bin

2006-09-22T10:39:00.000-05:00

Let's start close to home, with President George Bush, of course.

Bush seems to believe that he can continue focusing on the weird political fetishes of the religious right (stem cells, gay marriage, flag burning) instead of dealing with the very real problems that America is facing. Every time something bad happens, we find a new "wedge issue" that nobody cared about five minutes ago. At this point, with his reelection no longer an issue, he's just trying to do what's best for his party, but it's hard to say if anything can save them from disaster this November. He's flailing about like a madman.

Now let's go south, to Hugo Chavez.

Chavez seems to have been having problems with hallucinations recently: he sees the devil, smells sulfur in the UN building, and calls George Bush a whole bunch of invalid insults when there are plenty of valid ones to go around. He fancies himself to be far greater than he is, a uniter of the world against hte United States, but his country has no chance to ever become a great power, simply because it is too small and too unstable. He is, in the words of a Facebook group I'm in, a "megalomaniac autocrat".

Finally, let us head east, to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He's quieted down in recent weeks as Chavez has attempted to breathe fire, but there's still plenty of crazy lurking over there. This is the man that suggested Israel should have been placed in "the United States or Alaska", who wants Israel destroyed, and who funds Hezbollah, which set of the chain of events which brought misery to Lebanon. (Like it or not, Hezbollah did "start it". I won't go into whether the misery was Israel's or Hezbollah's fault.)

Of course, a thirty-page paper could be written on why each of these men has no business leading a country - these are just examples. Regardless, it's a scary world when these are our leaders.

Paper candidates asked to buck up

2006-09-20T21:09:00.000-05:00

I just got an email from Dallas County LP chair Tim Lebsack, ending with this:

P.S.
the next time someone uses the phrase "but I'm just a paper candidate" in my face, I will be in prison and speaker will be in pain.

Remember, I love you and only want what's best for you and thank you for allowing me to vent.

If you are an LP candidate, please contact your local League of Women Voters at your earliest convenience. Never mind that your haven't been coached on how to answer the questions. You won't be punished for making a mistake.

If you quit the party because I've huuut youww feeewings, please continue to send your donations. We need the dues.

Zing.

40% of Texans planning on not voting D or R

2006-09-20T09:27:00.000-05:00

The latest numbers in the Texas Governor's race (courtesy of Politics1.com):
Perry (R): 35%
Bell (D): 23%
Friedman (I): 23%
Strayhorn (I): 15%
Werner (L): 2%

That's 40% against the major parties, 40% not voting straight-ticket D or R. That means a huge minority of Texans are liable to think about voting Libertarian, since the LP is the only third party with ballot access in the State of Texas. That raises the possibility of interesting things this November.

Will boosting third parties become a Republicrat strategy?

2006-09-19T17:33:00.000-05:00

Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum seems very intent on helping out the Green Party candidate, Carl Romanelli, in the three-way race this November. He paid petitioners to collect signatures to meet Pennsylvania's absurdly high ballot access requirement of 67,070 signatures. Now he's going to debate Romanelli, presumably to lend him more credibility. All this is a blatant attempt to take votes away from Santorum's Democratic opponent so that he can maintain his seat in the Senate. If it works, however, helping third-party candidates could become a real strategy for the Republicrats - Democrats helping Libertarians and Republicans helping Greens. This could catalyze a move towards a four-sided political spectrum that looks more like the Nolan Chart than our current artificial two-party system.

I'm all for this, and if it's to happen, I hope that the Democrats actually gain significant control this November and then make little orno progress with it, so that they'll be in the same position that Republicans are now, meaning that both Republicans and Democrats will be funding third-party candidates. I also hope that strategy backfires on them, for obvious reasons.

I'm not too worried about them realizing that it could - they've never passed up short-term gains for long-term rationality before.

Digg it.

Smither campaign looking serious online

2006-09-19T17:24:00.000-05:00

The Bob Smither (TX-22, Tom DeLay's old seat) campaign for US House started looking a lot more serious today on the web - a major facelift that puts his site on par with that of the Nick Lampson's, his Democratic opponent. He's got a YouTube video of one of his television appearances, a timeline of upcoming events, and his site has definitely lost the Geocities vibe it had originally.

(No, I haven't been posting much lately. I had to go back to Texas for a family event, then got really screwed up in my schoolwork. All is well now, however.)

The Bureau of Indian Affairs: Killing Native Americans since 1824.

2006-09-12T10:39:00.000-05:00

A recent study indicates that Native American men have the shortest life expectancy of any group in the United States - at a paltry 58.8 years in some parts of South Dakota. (Asian women from northern New Jersey have the longest life expectancy, at 91 years.) Native Americans are also the group subjected to the most governmental control, since the Bureau of Indian Affairs runs reservations where many live (and which cover large parts of states like South Dakota, Montana, and Alaska). One tribe in Mississippi kicked the BIA off their reservation, attracted an auto factory, and now not only has full employment of its members, but employs residents of the areas outside the reservation, too.

Obviously government management is a disaster when it comes to quality of life. So why do people want a government-managed health care system?

Five years on, what's changed?

2006-09-11T07:35:00.000-05:00

Five years ago, at about the time that I'm starting to write this, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. At 9:03, United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. At 9:37, American Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. At 10:03, passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 forced it down near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after a fight with hijackers.

This was huge, and even now it's hard to capture the profundity of the shock it sent through America. We united behind the first strong leader who presented himself, which turned out to be President George W. Bush, who suddenly acquired the ability to speak. We trusted him, giving up many of our civil liberties to fight this threat. We figured we could get them back later, I guess. Soe of us even trusted him so far as to believe that Saddam Hussein needed to be overthrown.

And where has that support of a leader taken us? Are we any safer? No, we're not. Are we any freer, since this is a war for "freedom"? Far from it. Is hatred of America any less prevalent? No, the opposite. Uniting behind big government and aggresive foreign policy didn't work.

LPTX knows what it's doing

2006-09-09T18:06:00.000-05:00

The yard sign that I had requested from the Libertarian Party of Texas arrived today. Since my dorm room doesn't have a yard, I ignored the metal stand and sticky-tacked the sign to my wall:It also came with one of the World's Smallest Political Quiz door hangers that the LPTX is distributing across the state. My neighbors who were intrigued by the size of the package that the materials came in (it was about four feet long) all hopped on the quiz, one of them scoring as a Libertarian. That's what the WSPQ is great for: it seems so simple and is so novel that people are eager to take it. I'm expecting encouraging results this November from Texas because of it.

Oh noes, the terrorists online poker players are coming!

2006-09-08T18:54:00.000-05:00

Now that the brilliant populace of these here United States are bored with flag-burning and gay marriage, the next big thing for the Morality Police to go after appears to be online gambling.

This new focus is more hypocritical than most, because apparently gambling is OK if it's sponsored by the state and goes towards indoctrinating small children with love of that state. Even worse is that American police are arresting British owners and executives of betting sites on their layovers inside the United States. At least China prevents it citizens from accessing sites that it doesn't want them to see. It wouldn't arrest Lew Rockwell if he visited there, even though I'm sure lewrockwell.org is blocked.

Voting Rights Act: Don't bother.

2006-09-07T18:00:00.000-05:00

(Note: I recognize this is an outdated issue. I had to write it as an assignment, so I figured I'd post it on here since it's politically-related.)

There are two ways to get between the heavily Mexican west side of Chicago and the northern Puerto Rican neighborhoods. Most maps recommend taking the Kennedy Expressway. The Illinois state legislature, however, recommends going west about eighteen miles to Interstate 294, turning right, and turning right again about seven miles later for another eighteen-mile drive east. These are the approximate dimensions of Luis Gutiérrez's Fourth Congressional District, a shape that has been compared to a pair of earmuffs or the bread of a sandwich, the meat of which consists of Chicago's more African-American neighborhoods and is in a different district, the Seventh.

Illinois's Fourth District may be one of the most egregious examples of racial gerrymandering in the country, but with the aid of computers and the Voting Rights Act, which requires majority-minority districts, it is far from alone. Some gerrymandering is done to create “safe” seats, like Texas's Twenty-Second district, until recently held by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, which looks like a desiccated thyroid gland. This practice is outlawed in many states, but it is difficult to enforce prohibitions on gerrymandering when federal law requires it and society expects it. The DeLay-instigated 2003 redistricting of Texas was supported by minority groups because another “black district” was offered for their support, leading to a split in the already mangled Democratic opposition.
This part of the Voting Rights Act must be changed, because the current extent of gerrymandering is a disaster for representative government. The remainder is less obviously noxious, but this part clearly does more harm than good.

The most suspicious part of the rest of the Voting Rights Act is the requirement of Justice Department approval for changes to voting laws in certain areas of the country. Not only does this give certain states and counties special privileges (or the negative form of that, which amounts to the same thing), but the Supreme Court, not the extraconstitutional Justice Department, is supposed to decide on the legitimacy of laws. This ends up being what happens anyways, as in recent years, only an insignificant number of changes in voting laws have been declared impermissible in the Justice Department's preclearance process. Some of those laws that were “precleared” by the Justice Department were then invalidated in the federal court system.

Section Two of the Voting Rights Act is the least suspicious and the most geared towards the problems which the Act was supposed to solve: it simply prohibits any voting discrimination whatsoever, to be enforced and interpreted by federal court rulings. Section Two is also permanent, meaning that any debate over its renewal, as opposed to its repeal, is moot.

With the permanence of Section Two in mind, the usefulness of the sections requiring renewal is questionable. Minority-majority districts, as seen in Illinois's Fourth Congressional District and in only slightly less ridiculous examples throughout the country, hurt the concept of representative government and helps in the societal condonement of non-racial gerrymandering, further hurting the representation of Americans in their state capitals and in Washington, DC.

Justice Department preclearance is also a pointless bureaucratic process, especially as essentially everything that comes before the preclearance division seems to get cleared by them, with the courts making the final decisions in cases where their assistance would have been called on anyways under Section Two. Thus it should be repealed not because it has any particularly negative effects, but because it adds another meaningless layer of government to a government already swimming in red tape.

Thus, the parts of the Voting Rights Act that come up for renewal should not be renewed, because their effects range from deleterious to annoying. Section Two, which is permanent, accomplishes the goals of the entire act with negligible harm done. The renewal of the Voting Rights Act is thus a political game by Democrats who want to keep the “black vote” and Republicans afraid of being called racist, rather than a decision which Congress believes is in the best interest of the American people.

Two LP Presidential hopefuls I won't be voting for

2006-09-04T13:21:00.000-05:00

I'm planning on being a delegate to both the Texas and National Libertarian Party conventions in 2008. This means that I'll have a chance to vote on who I want the LP to nominate. The current field of LP presidential hopefuls is enormous, but I've found two that I'm definitely not voting for: Gene Chapman and Robert Milnes.

Gene Chapman is insane, and he brags about an IQ of 96, so that's an easy decision.

Robert Milnes proposes an alliance with the statist Green Party, which predisposes me to disapprove of him. The following exchange then took place in the comments section of that TheNextPrez blog post:

Nigel Watt (me):I will not eat Green eggs and ham. I do not like them Libertarian I am.
Robert Milnes: Nigel, you are 17? Well, I rest my case.
Jake Porter (George Phillies's main volunteer, it seems): Robert,

I am only 18 and have had that line used against me many times.

I find that it is best not to attack people because of their age. It is much better to try to debate young people and get them to agree with you.
RM: Jake, your link goes directly to Phillies website. Who are you? Do you even exist? ///I was 17, 18, a long time ago. I assure you I was quite typical. I thought I knew just about everything when I actually knew just about nothing.
RM: Cannonfodder. (I have no idea what he meant by that.)
Me: Robert, my age is not a functional argument against my points.
Me: Also, Robert, I plan on attending the 2008 LP convention, and you have my assurance that I will not vote for you.
RM: Nigel, like it or not, your age is a factor in your arguments, as is everyone's. Do you plan on being a delegate at the 2008 convention?
Me: Age may be a factor in understanding perspective, but it shouldn't be all you consider, which in my case it evidently was.

Yes, I do plan on being a delegate, sorry for the screw-up.
RM: No it wasn't. It was what you wrote, then your age. How would you like to spend years, decades, of frustration & misery & wrack your brains & search your gut & take care to find certain ingredients & finally come up with a special recipe of Green eggs & ham for the starving then carefully prepare it & serve it up-to you? & you come up with this one liner. Not even a "thank you"? I guess I'll just have to do without your vote.
Me: Many people have spent years on many philosophies, and yet I disagree with them. Does that make me an ungrateful wretch? No; agreeing with all of them would make me a confused idiot.

I appreciate any effort you have put forth to helping the LP and getting Libertarians elected. However, mixing the LP with anything "progressive", especially the ridiculous Green Party (water is a natural right and should not be bought or sold? Huh?), can only hurt the LP, and I cannot muster nor will I pretend to have any appreciation for such an effort.

Well, that narrows down the field a little bit, doesn't it?

Opium means terrorism?

2006-09-03T15:40:00.000-05:00

Afghanistan's economy is struggling, so citizens are returning to a reliable income producer, assuming you don't get caught: opium poppy farming. This year's crop is estimated at enough to make 610 tons of heroin. Why is this a problem?

The top U.S. narcotics official here said the opium trade is a threat to the country's fledgling democracy.

"This country could be taken down by this whole drugs problem," Doug Wankel told reporters. "We have seen what can come from Afghanistan, if you go back to 9/11. Obviously the U.S. does not want to see that again."

The connection between opium and terrorism that Wankel is implying here is absurd. The Taliban cracked down very hard on Afghan opium production (for religious reasons, as opposed to America's delusional reasons), so if anything, opium production pushes Afghanistan towards a less theocratic, more open state, which doesn't sound like an entirely bad idea.

Digg it.

Alaska could have used the FSP more than NH

2006-09-01T12:16:00.000-05:00

The FBI raided legislative and other offices around the state of Alaska yesterday (and when anybody coordinates something across the state of Alaska, you know it's big), including that of Alaska Senate President Ben Stevens, son of the man who holds the analogous position in the United States Senate, Ted "Bridge Builder" Stevens. This, combined with Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski's defeat in the Republican gubernatorial primary (Murkowski is the father of Alaska's other US Senator, Lisa Murkowski), seems to indicate that Alaskans have reason to be, and are sick of, their current Republican leadership.

So where's the logical alternative for disgruntled Republicans, the Libertarian Party? Well, the LPAK doesn't appear to have many candidates running (one "active race" at the moment), so these Alaskans will probably end up voting Democratic, against their beliefs and wishes.

Evidently the Free State Project chose the wrong state.

Digg it.

For once, Rumsfeld's right

2006-08-31T10:37:00.000-05:00

Donald Rumsfeld, August 29, 2006:

"We face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising of a new type of fascism."

"And that is important in this 'long war' where any kind of moral and intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere."

It's surprisingly true. America is fighting against a new form of fascism, and it threatens Americans at home, at work, at school, at birth, at death, in their cars, on the road, in the air, in their hearts, in their minds; it threatens Americans everywhere because it is an all-pervasive evil: totalitarian "democracy".

Digg it.

Government can't follow its own regulations

2006-08-29T19:01:00.000-05:00

49 more innocent people would be alive today if government followed its own rules. The Federal Aviation Administration has admitted that it violated its own rules by only having one air traffic controller in the tower at the Lexington, Kentucky airport from which Comair Flight 5191 took off using a runway too short for the plane, causing it to crash into some trees at the end of the runway.

Though Canada's government-controlled health care system is even worse then our government-meddled one, its privatized air traffic control system is far superior, because it actually suffers when it fails to produce results. Let's take a cue from the Far North and give our air traffic controllers a reason to care.

Preemptive emergence?

2006-08-27T17:27:00.000-05:00

Preemptive strikes on perceived threats have been healthily and soundly excoriated since the months immediately preceding the current debacle in Iraq. The government doesn't restrict its ridiculous preemptive tactics to the military, however. Preemptively declaring a state of emergency has become accepted practice among the governors of those states subject to natural disasters, which, considering that a thunderstorm is now considered a "natural disaster", means all of them.

Declaring a "state of emergency" isn't just an obviously chronologically challenged statement of concern. It opens the area covered to a flow of taxpayer dollars. Considering the state of modern telecommunications, any governor could declare such a state as soon as there actually was a disaster.

These declarations days before anything bad could possibly happen are thus political games, serving as another example of politicians enriching themselves with your money right before your eyes, in a completely legal (but repugnant) manner.

What's worse than a hurricane? Government help.

2006-08-26T10:18:00.000-05:00

The general consensus in America seems to be that the government hasn't done enough to help Americans after hurricanes. If you agree with this, however, you have several difficult questions ahead of you (as well as a hurricane):

How much government help is "enough"? The government already provides housing and food for hurricane victims, as well as insurance to encourage people to live in areas vulnerable to hurricane damage.
Why is it the government's responsibility to help people who have been living irresponsibly (by living in areas vulnerable to hurricane damage)? Why is it an Iowan's responsibility to pay for the flood damage incurred by a Louisianan, or that Louisianan's responsibility to pay for an Oklahoman's tornado damage?
What do you do when the government doesn't do everything perfectly? Elect people who promise bigger, "better" government? That's worked well the past 230 years, hasn't it?

The bottom line is, about the only thing that government natural disaster help has ever done well is proven that it sucks. Private charity did more for Katrina victims than public charity did, and had FEMA gotten out of the way, it could've done even more. The next hurricane will be bungled even more by the government, and eventually, people will realize that governemnt is never the answer.

UN can't keep Congolese from civil war

2006-08-22T13:46:00.000-05:00

Despite the fact that the United Nations has its largest "peacekeeping" force in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it cannot keep election issues from rapidly decaying into civil war in the capital nad largest city, Kinshasa. 17,000 well-armed troops ought to be able to bring most such situations under control, so why don't they?

That's a mystery, but the bottom line is that they don't, and that UN peacekeepers rarely, if ever, effectively stop fighting from happening, whether they're in Congo, Lebanon, or anywhere else in the world.

John McCain: Proof that Republicans are unprincipled.

2006-08-21T08:44:00.000-05:00

The New York Times had a front-page story today about John Mccain's assemblage of helpers for his 2008 presidential campaign. They include Republicans who helped him with his 2000 campaign, Republicans who are anit-neocon, and hardcore neocons.

McCain's apparent belief that all these people will work together demonstrates his lack of concern for what his right - he wants to win, and principles can go crawl in a hole. The Times's lack of surprise at the combination - the obvious possibility for conflict was not mentioned in the article - demonstrates how little most Americans care.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: A true authoritarian

2006-08-20T09:08:00.000-05:00

Concerned that his huge spending programs are angering California Republicans, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is sliding further toward the "authoritarian" or "populist" corner of the Nolan Chart. He now wants to crack down on illegal immigration by aligning himself with the foamy-mouthed, hydrophobic Minutemen and Constitution Party types.

Schwarzenegger, who has recently requested huge amounts (tens of billions of dollars) in bond programs, also had this wonderfully hypocritical exchange with the group of hardcore GOP supporters he was talking to:

"What do we say to more taxes?" he shouted.

"No!" they called back.

"What do we say to more government spending?"

"No!"

The poor Californians duped by this farce are truly wasting their votes. They've got a better choice: Libertarian Art Olivier, the former mayor of Bellflower, CA. He would agree with "no more taxes" and "no more government spending", but he would actually mean it.

Unfortunately, Arnold Schwarzenegger is closer in political philosophy to European socialists than heis to where these Republicans think they are. This is because of a significant barrier to spreading the Libertarian message: most people's political opinions are based on what they think government should do, not what it shouldn't do. In fact, I have no answer to what I think government "should" do (at least long-term). I'll let you figure out why.

FDA delays another great idea

2006-08-19T16:08:00.000-05:00

The FDA just approved a meat treatment of six bacteriophage viruses to disinfect meat. It's nice that they're not preventing such a great idea from coming to market, but why did it need to be approved? No company would put out a product that killed its customers, and no company would put something like this out without testing it to make sure it doesn't kill people. Neither the FDA approval nor that testing would eliminate all possibility of something tragic happening, but if people decide that eating harmless viruses is less frightening than dying from food poisoning (which happens to hundreds of Americans each year), they'll buy it. Otherwise, they won't. If the product does kill somebody, the company will be appropriately sued.

Dictators in need of attention

2006-08-18T15:16:00.001-05:00

Certainly the personal lives of American presidents have been occasionally splashed acoss the headlines, especially when moronic opposition leaders decide that offenses related to personal mistakes are what they will choose to impeach on, rather than their blatant disrespect of Constitutional government (of course, they'd have to censure themselves, too, if they went the second route).

But with dictators, especially, recently, Communist ones, it seems that they want the personal attention. Fidel Castro releases pictures of himself in a sickbed, ostensibly recovering, and sends letters filled with encouraging personal details to "his" people.

Kim Jong Il, however, is the true master of using his government to get attention. Enormous statues of him adorn public places. Whenever he decides that the rest of the world isn't freaking out over him enough, he threatens to blow something up. The rest of the world spoon-feeds him the attention he wants, by encouraging him with incentives to not split atoms. These incentives help him feed the people that are left behind by a command economy with insane military spending.

Communism is a sad thing for the people that it controls and a frustration for the leaders of the "free world", but it would help the people under it most if those leaders simply ignored it, did not send it their people's money via the UN, and let it collapse.

Could we get two declared Libertarians in Congress?

2006-08-16T13:26:00.000-05:00

Michael Badnarik has long been the favorite to win a seat for the Libertarian Party in Congress this November. Now, however, Bob Smither appears to have as good a chance at a seat, if not an even better one. A Google News search for him shows why: the GOP, as well as the numerous Republican voters in TX-22 (formerly represented by Tom DeLay), is in a bind: No GOP candidate will appear on the ballot, and a write-in campaign is essentially a pipe dream.

Smither is already picking up endorsements from Republicans around the state and nation, especially now that he's promised that if elected, he would vote for a Republican Speaker of the House. Smither is no wolf in sheep's clothing, though - his website shows that he is a true Libertarian. Two Libertarians in the House, plus Ron Paul, would be a significant step towards the LP becoming a national force.

New airport rules are a placebo

2006-08-15T09:29:00.000-05:00

It isn't exactly a huge surprise, but some of the new airport security measures don't accomplish anything. The federal government's fear-and-security package deal is looking increasingly lame.

Since when are these felonies?

2006-08-14T21:25:00.000-05:00

I'm gratified to read about recent terrorism charges being dropped against American-born Muslims who were arrested in the Midwest last week, but one paragraph confused me:

The men - brothers Adham Othman, 21, of Dallas and Louai Othman, 23, of Mesquite, and their cousin Awad Muhareb, 18, of Mesquite - were stopped by police Friday outside a Wal-Mart store in Caro, Mich. They were charged with gathering material relating to terrorism and surveillance of a vulnerable target - apparently the bridge - felonies with a 20-year maximum penalty.

So if I buy some ammonium nitrate fertilizer and photograph the American Airlines center more than most people would think is normal, I can be charged with not one, but TWO felonies, felonies which have no discernable victim and are already covered in some form of conspiracy charges?

It seems that these men were simply being good capitalists:

While local authorities in Michigan and Ohio feared the cell phones could be used in terrorism attacks - they've been used to detonate bombs in Europe, the Middle East and Asia - the men's relatives and friends said the men are innocent entrepreneurs buying cheap phones for marked-up resales. They were targeted, supporters said, because of their Arab heritage.

Pretty much any electronic device can be used to set off a bomb, if you're creative enough. Random Arabs being creative entrepreneurs should not be charged with obtuse felonies simply because they're Arabs being creative entrepreneurs.

How much doesn't get done because we have too many rules?

2006-08-14T16:52:00.000-05:00

One of my wierd habits is browsing bash.org, which even though I don't know that much about computers I find entertaining. Today I happened upon this, which made me think: how many people would be productive in "RL" (real life), but aren't, simply because there are too many rules?

Obviously such people are lazier than they should be, but there's a spectrum of laziness among humanity, and the harder it is to do something the further up the spectrum the line distinguishing between who does do something and who doesn't moves. Furthermore, those people who do choose to be productive in a difficult environment will be less productive because they must deal with those rules.

It's a question that bears extrapolating to other arenas. How many drugs aren't developed because of the FDA's silly and cruel (to animals) regulations? How many inventions aren't invented because high taxes make it too hard to get the capital to invent them? How many businesses aren't founded because the goods they deal in are pointlessly illegal or simply difficult to obtain?

When anything goes wrong in the business world, the solution of both the left and the right is to impose more rules, ignoring the fact that things like Enron wouldn't have happened had there not been regulations for those companies to play with. They need to take away rules to let the free market rule.

A choice that has to be made

2006-08-14T14:39:00.000-05:00

As everyone who hasn't been living under a rock since about 1999 knows, America is currently threatened by Islamist terrorists who want to destroy it. This is bad.

This has presented America with a choice: fight the terrorists and anybody who might be a terrorist, or attempt to placate them. This is also bad, because one choice involves war, and the other feels like giving up.

The parties in power have made their choice. They chose war, and the results are obvious: the number of people killed by terrorists has not decreased, and the Muslims world harbors ever more hate for us. This is really, really, really bad.

Since our first choice has backfired, only one rational option remains: to switch gears and make the second one: Pull our troops out of the Middle East (except, for the moment, Iraq, where some semblance of stability, and by stability I mean partition, must be established), leaving nothing for the Islamists to stir hate over but memories, which fade rapidly when they lead to death. Use our troops and intelligence agencies to guard our borders, preventing people and equipment associated with the residual organized hatred from coming in until it wears itself out.

That is the only way America will ever be secure, and the faster we do it, the faster security will return.

The failure of "progressive" social policies

2006-08-13T16:59:00.000-05:00

Europe is renowned worldwide (most especially in Europe itself) for being very "progressive". The etymology of the word makes it so that anything "progressive" is regarded as inherently good. But the astounding amounts of anger seen in Europe's minorities put the effectiveness and rightness of social progressivism into doubt.

Last year's French riots demonstrated the failure of French socialism, as the abject misery of life in France's immigrant housing projects spilled into anger, paralyzing the country. France's enormous taxes make it difficult for anybody to hire anybody else, and with the hint of racism inherent to a people who have rarely before shared a country with anybody else, those who get hired are the "real" French. Instead of lowering taxes, the French government instead builds housing projects, leading to disaster.

The radicalism of Britain's Muslim population (note how many more British Muslims have been arrested in conjunction with terror plots than American ones) despite an official British policy of forced integration of schools and to some extent neighborhoods also demonstrates how poorly "progressive" social policies fare in the real world. Let people do what's best for them, and soon enough, racial and religious tensions will ease.

(The American South was kept in a state of permanent racial inequality because of government, before somebody brings that up.)

Why disgruntled Texas Republicans should vote Libertarian.

2006-08-13T09:21:00.000-05:00

My mother mentioned to me that she was planning on voting for James Werner, the Libertarian candidate for Governor of Texas, in this November's election. Wanting to capitalize on this opportunity, I did some research and found some good reasons why disgruntled Texas Republicans like her should vote Libertarian:

US Senator:

Republican Incumbent: Kay Bailey Hutchison

Libertarian Challenger: Scott Lanier Jameson

Hutchison is Texas's most popular politician. Banking on this, her campaign site completely ignores issues. History shows, however, that she is one of the “good ol' boys” allied with the religions right in the Republican party.

Jameson aligns closely with the general Libertarian platform. He also wants a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a public review period for all Congressional bills, to help eliminate pork-barrel spending.

Lieutenant Governor:

Republican Incumbent: David Dewhurst

Libertarian Challenger: Judy Baker

Dewhurst played a key part in the mid-decade re-gerrymandering of Texas US House districts, suspending the rule that 2/3 of the Legislature must be present to vote on a bill. He also opposes school vouchers.

Baker's main issues are education, prisons, and property. She supports devolving education control to localities and individual citizens. She wishes to focus law enforcement on violent crimes to end the overcrowding of prisons with nonviolent, victimless offenders (which also catalyzes the release of violent criminals), and opposes the use of eminent domain.

Attorney General:

Republican Incumbent: Greg Abbott

Libertarian Challenger: Jon Roland

Greg Abbott was crippled when a tree fell on him while he was jogging in Houston. Abbott promptly sued the owner of the tree as well as a company that had trimmed the tree a few weeks before the accident. In other words, he's an opportunistic scumbag. This should be about all you need to know to vote against him.

For the rest of them (minimal data is available on any candidates for these offices):

If you're disgruntled with the current direction of the Republican party, they'll only get worse if you continue voting for their candidates. There's only one rational choice for disgruntled Texas Republicans, and that is voting Libertarian.

Kentucky's governor is above the law

2006-08-11T20:33:00.000-05:00

According to Judge David E. Melcher, the governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Ernie Fletcher, cannot be prosecuted while in office because of executive immunity. This was, scarily enough, a compromise - the charges are essentially delayed until Fletcher is impeached or his term expires. Fletcher had requested that the charges be eliminated altogether.

Far from the righteous anger that ought to be coming out of the Kentucky attorney general's office (and when I call for righteous anger, something is seriously wrong), a spokeswoman said that the ruling "affirms the principle that no person is above the law."

Fletcher's lawyers are still arguing for a full dismissal:

there are other considerations as well which lead to the motion to dismiss. That is the important need of this state to return to normalcy, and get back to the operation of government as it should be without the cloud hanging over it.

I'm sure if Arthur Andersen's lawyers had argued that they needed corporate America to "return to normalcy" and therefore the charges of mega-corruption dismissed, they would have incited furor. Yet apparently nobody in Kentucky remembers that we are the government's boss, that the government can answer to nobody above us, and that the government must answer to us. For this man to want to keep giving special political appointments or at least not to get in trouble for his last ones so that government can run smoothly should be offensive to every American.

If you're not annoyed yet, this final bit should push you over the edge:

Mr. Fletcher pleaded not guilty last month. Last summer, he issued a blanket pardon for any administration member who might face charges, except himself.

Clearly the best interests of the people of Kentucky are not this man's main focus. Even if they were, I imagine he'd do a crappy job, but as it stands, his actions are not merely the misguided ones I expect of jackyderms, but criminally reprehensible.

Fun with referrals.

2006-08-10T13:26:00.000-05:00

Part of the reason I use Sitemeter (on the sidebar at right) is to determine how many people are coming here, but part of why I use it is to see what bizarre ways people get referred here. A disturbing number of people have been referred by searching Google for "nudist youth". "Getting made fun of" is still a popular search that leads to this site, and this site is still No. 1 for that search. Today provided a mildly amusing search referral and one that either gives me hope for India's future or greatly concerns me, depending how it's interpreted. The first was somebody searching from Cornell University who was led here by a Google search for ""easiest classes" at cornell". The second was somebody from Pande, India searching for "why does government need taxation?"

The public interest does not require public money.

2006-08-10T10:18:00.000-05:00

Bill Gates, no matter what you may think of his corporation, is a great boon to humanity - and to the arguments that libertarianism is practical.

Gates has donated billions to research cures for and treat diseases which are not especially profitable for drug companies, like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. Evidently, government isn't needed for science in the public interest to continue.

Lieberman loss a "loss for centrists"? Good riddance.

2006-08-09T12:51:00.000-05:00

The Dallas Morning News published an editorial today decrying Senator Joseph Lieberman's loss in the Democratic primary as a "loss for centrists".

If being a "centrist" means adopting the worst ideas of both the Republicans and the Democrats, Senator Lieberman's primary demise is nothing to cry over. While Republicans favor economic freedoms and are willing to compromise personal freedoms, while Democrats do the opposite, Joseph Lieberman is quite willing to compromise both, putting his political philosophy closer to authoritarianism than either of the philosophies the two major parties claim to champion.

As Hammer of Truth writer (and LPHQ worker) Stephen Gordon said, "what America needs is not watered down tyranny, but extremism in defense of liberty."

Surprise! The UN is ineffective!

2006-08-08T21:24:00.000-05:00

The United Nations, having supposedly been helping the world's peoples beat their swords into plows for the past sixty years, can't seem to do anything to prevent Israel and Hezbollah from blowing up each other's plows, and civilizations, for that matter.

Along with the fact that the UN helps totalitatarian governments like that of North Korea survive (via food aid), its utter ineffectiveness, reminiscent of the Articles of Confederation, should demonstrate adequately that it does not merit United States support.

Unfortunately, our federal government is busily conferring with other nations on things which it has no business interfering with - namely, the foreign policies of Israel, Lebanon, and Iran. (Iran overtly funds Hezbollah.)

A write-in candidate to replace DeLay?

2006-08-08T17:54:00.000-05:00

Doing just about the only thing he could, Tom DeLay has withdrawn from his US House race and hopes that the TXGOP will get a write-in candidate to run in his place. This will make that district's race very interesting, as it is a race between a Democrat, a moderate Libertarian, and a write-in Republican in a highly Republican district.

Real ID chokes

2006-08-07T22:03:00.000-05:00

A German hacker has figured out how to clone biometric passports such as those used in the UK, Australia, and to be introduced in the USA under the Real ID Act. This is amusing in light of this post, but it's also awesome, in that it demonstrates that in the modern world no tyranny can function.

What candidates in need of credibility shouldn't do...

2006-07-26T20:06:00.000-05:00

...is endorse anything remotely associated with unpopular conspiracy theories. I know my tendency to think that parties should actually care what people think has been healthily excoriated in the past, but why must Michael Badnarik make so public his undying love for a film which is generally regarded as conspiracy-theorist nutjobbery outside libertarian circles?

I haven't seen America: from Freedom to Fascism, and I sure agree with its title, but sometimes it really is a good idea to think of what other people will think when you're running for office.

(As a side note, trying to put me as a "purist" or a "pragmatists" as if they're mutually exclusive is impossible. Don't bother.)

Why hello there!

2006-07-24T19:19:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I've been gone for awhile. I've been here, which is awesome, but the Internet connection there is awful and I haven't been able to post, and I've really been kind of afraid to check up on the news. I'm going back there on Friday, but I'm at my aunt's in Boston now, and imagine my horror to find that the Middle East is flipping out again.

So what should we do about it? The Bush administration's position appears to be to crisply waffle, instead of doing what they should do - get all American troops out of there, get all American government money out of there, and allow for true self-determination of nations, even if it is sometimes ugly.

Fun with cops!

2006-07-12T14:51:00.000-05:00

I thought my post today would be about a chat that the Dallas Morning News held at 10 AM this morning with Governor Rick Perry, but it was set up so that he didn't have to answer questions he didn't want to, meaning that none of my questions were answered.

Thankfully, the Highland Park Police Department came to the rescue by pulling me over for an expired inspection sticker. I'm not quite sure how that protected the people, but it did give me an opportunity to use the lessons of this video, courtesy of the ACLU and the Flex Your Rights foundation. Yes, it's 45 minutes, but it's quite useful.

(Note: I had nothing to hide, in case you're wondering.)

Whoa, backtrack.

2006-07-10T17:54:00.000-05:00

My post from yesterday about the Libertarian Party of Kansas being prevented from holdling a fundraiser at a nudist colony generated a few C130s of furor at Hammer of Truth, so taking a second look at what I wrote, here's a better way to state it:

Some libertarian group should be fighting the blatant disrespect of property rights in Kansas. However, the job of the LPKS is to elect people to change it, not to fight it in court and especially not to attempt to break the law and end up with headlines like "Kansas Libertarians stopped from holding event at nudist camp".

Even Dennis Kucinich isn't out there shouting at the headquarters of big corporations. Not that I'd pay attention if he was.

That better, y'all?

Why taxation really is theft.

2006-07-10T10:36:00.000-05:00

I often tell people that "taxation is theft". They give me horrified looks.

But, assuming you'll agree with me and the 56 million people killed by their own governments in the 20th century, it's fairly easy to arrive at that conclusion. Firstly, it must be recognized that government has no inherent moral authority. Examples abound of why this was true: our own government supported and condoned racism and slavery up to the 1960s, at least, for example.

If government has no inherent moral authority, it is therefore not qualified to make an infallible judgement as to what is right and what is wrong. Since government does not use its own property to accomplish its ends and thus cannot be permitted to have free will (hence voting), it cannot be permitted to use other people's property in a way which is not infallibly correct. Since this will never happen, government should not use other people's property, and taxation is wrong, and a form of theft.

OK?

Nice bad publicity. Good job, LPKS!

2006-07-09T16:58:00.000-05:00

I have a "Libertarian" section on my Google News homepage. "Kansas Libertarians stopped from holding event at nudist camp" is the last thing I want to see there.

Now, from the article, it appears that the Libertarian Party of Kansas was in the right - nanny-statist county officials had a court order on the property forbidding assemblies from being held there, essentially - there are battles worth fighting, and this wasn't one of them. 2006 is a great opportunity to elect Libertarians, and holding an event at a nudist colony can only push the door shut.

Update: At Hammer of Truth, Rob Hodgkinson, the LPKS chair, said the following:

Nigel, I understand your point - I gave it a lot of thought about even holding the event due to the Edun connection.

The reality is this area gives search warrants to dog catchers - I am not kidding.

We are going to continue this battle - the events Friday were simply the start of the positive press we will continue to get fighting a corrupt government. We taped the entire thing and every TV station in town was there.

I have been contacted by bible thumpers (Topeka is in the middle of the bible belt) who don’t agree with the naturist activity - but are scared to death about where type of action this could continue to lead. The response so far has been very good! They understand this is a property rights issue.

If this is part of a larger campaign, then it makes perfect sense. An isolated standoff at a nudist colony, however, is more absurd than it is useful.

DeLay sounding like he'll appear on ballot

2006-07-08T10:23:00.000-05:00

When it seemed like the race for Tom DeLay's House seat was going to be between a Libertarian and a Democrat (in a very, very, very, red district), things were looking up for Bob Smither, the LP candidate. Now, however, DeLay is saying that he'll run if the judge doesn't allow the GOP to substitute another candidate. That would return the spotlight for winning a Congressional seat to Michael Badnarik in TX10, where I think it belongs. (Smither still has a relatively good chance, but less of one.)

Scientology: The most statist religion of them all.

2006-07-06T09:27:00.000-05:00

Most religions seem to have at least one branch that is highly statist in nature. But the "religion" of Scientology seems to only be able to exist because of the state. Whenever somebody posts information about its disturbing characteristics - the amazing number of weird deaths associated with it, etc. - Scientology tells the host of the website to remove it or face a copyright lawsuit. Oddly enough, nobody at the hosting company seems to check up on the site, and the sites are removed unthinkingly. An annoying legal process is required to get the host to post the site again.

(And yes, Google and you Scientology nuts, if you try and take this down, I will fight you.)

This blog has been slow lately because I've been trying to launch a new site, Freelancify.com.

Mexico to Chavez lapdog: Stop yapping.

2006-07-04T13:00:00.000-05:00

Though I have no idea what kind of leader Felipe Calderón will be, it would appear that he has won the Mexican presidential race by a slim margin over Hugo Chavez lapdog Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Unfortunately (and oddly reminiscent of Gore in 2000), Obrador says that he has different numbers than the Mexican government and Calderón, and will challenge the election results - which is frightening, considering how muh the sitution degraded in the United States with its 224 years of elections in 2000, since Mexico has nowhere close to that long a tradition of electoral government and Venezuela's powerful enough that it could exert some force on Mexico. (Even if that does happen, the United States still shouldn't get involved.)

Tellingly, Mexico's stock exchange rose 4.8 percent on the news. Chavez-style neocommunism has been a disaster for Venezuela, and it would have been a disaster for Mexico too.

2006-07-02T16:33:00.000-05:00

There seem to be rumors abounding that categorical opposition to the War on Drugs has been deleted from the LP platform. That's a little ridiculous, considering that that has been one of our signature issues. But will it really affect what the party means?

Any libertarian, if presentd the opportunity, would stop the War on Drugs. Any elected Libertarian would vote for bills that diminish it, and vote against those that augment or maintain it. Most would be willing to sponsor bills eliminating it, and most would work to pardon those convicted of drug-war crimes.

Eliminating any specific platform plank won't change the goals of libertarians, nor will it change what we actually do when we get power, which is to shrink that power. It's chilling to know that there are people who believe the election hopes of the Libertarian Party lie in hiding its principles, but we'll survive.

Maybe we don't need to wait for LibertyMix.

2006-07-02T14:17:00.000-05:00

George Phillies, one of the LP's 2008 presidential contenders, just launched a "libertarian community site", LibertyForAmerica.net. It does a lot of what LibertyMix was supposed to do, and it's actually here. So, I'll be double-posting things here and on LFA for the forseeable future.

Hugo Chavez: Classy like a trailer park.

2006-07-01T17:12:00.000-05:00

Calling the United States "Count Dracula" and saying that low royalty payments by oil companies are "robbery" isn't just offensive, it's simply astounding. Hugo Chavez and Iran's President Ahmadinejad were in Banjul, Gambia at the African Union summit to try and forge a southern anti-American alliance. Chavez's attacks on capitalism are tired and stupid, so I'll ignore them. But actively trying to hurt the United States is pretty scary.

Of course, had Roosevelt never whipped out his big stick, this wouldn't be a problem. The United States would have remained like Washington wanted it to - its only foreign relations being trade - and everyone would be better off. But it hasn't, and we're faced with a problem: what do we do with those that hate America now?

Radical Islamic terrorists are one thing - get the government out of the Middle East, and they will calm down fairly soon. But those that wish to wage economic war - Venezuela, Iran, and, apparently, Africa - will have a hard time for a while distinguishing between American government and American traders. During that time, more anti-American sentiment will arise, and these countries will work harder to destroy our economy.

Part of their goal is the removal of the dollar as a universal currency. The United States needs to get off of fiat money anyways, and if the government can be reduced enough that our debt can be paid off, currency will not be a method of hurting the economy. But for that to happen, Libertarians need to be elected.

Taxing our natural resource development companies is another big part of their arsenal. That's something which is entirely within the bounds of foreign governments to do, though if I were a citizen of those governments I would oppose it. Even if they completely forbid American companies from doing business there, however, they will only hurt themselves in the long run, and the sooner they hit rock bottom with nationalization, the sooner those markets will open back up. To allow them to hit bottom quickly (it's something that will happen regardless), they need America to stop interfering in their domestic policy. And only by electing Libertarians can we get there.

How will the Supreme Court's redistricting ruling affect the LPTX?

2006-06-29T07:54:00.000-05:00

As most everybody probably knows, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that in the mid-decade redistricting by Tom DeLay-backed Republicans in the Texas legislature, only District 23 was required to be redrawn. The Libertarian candidate for that seat is Cecil Lamb, who lives in Boerne. Boerne is in Kendall County, which as you can see from this map of the district is on its edge.

Considering, however, that Boerne is not near Laredo, which is the main area of contention (the Legislature split the 95% Hispanic city in two so that they wouldn't elect a Democrat), it's worth hoping that Lamb is safe.

The other district involving Laredo is District 28. The Libertarian candidate is Glenda Moyes, but considering that she doesn't have a site up yet, I'm not especially concerned about her getting moved.

Wouldn't it be nice for East Timor...

2006-06-27T18:31:00.000-05:00

...if they didn't have to worry so much about their government? The only reason that East Timor is in a civil war is that different groups want to have control over the (presumably major) powers of government.

The Office of the Prime Minister kindly obliges with an organization chart of the executive branch. On the plus side, this site probably could have loaded instantly in 1995, but that doesn't have any relation with how much bureaucracy the poor East Timorians are supporting. With that much power in government, it's small wonder that a new republic has trouble adjusting to the idea of elections. The Federalists would have had a much harder time in 1800 if they knew how much power Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans planned on wielding - hence the Hartford Convention when they found out.

Ooh! Let's escalate vs. North Korea!

2006-06-26T18:30:00.000-05:00

American forces in Japan are setting up equipment to ward off any North Korean missles that might find their way west. This all seems like a great idea, until you realize that the only reason Kim Jong Il is such a psychobeast is the attention we give him whenever he waves a stick.

Of course, with US troops in the area, it's hard not to be concerned about an off-the-wall dictator running an archaic Stalinist state with a sprinkle of Nazism. There's an easier solution, however, to North Korean grandstanding than diplomatic whirlwinds, one that would keep our troops even safer.

In 1950, there was some rationale to having troops in Japan and South Korea. (None of this would have been an issue had Roosevelt not finagled the Japanese into declaring war, but that's another issue). The economies of both areas were in shambles, and they couldn't protect themselves. In 2006, the economies of both nations are vibrant and very capable of supporting defense forces that could crush a North Korean invasion.

It would be a benefit both to the people of North Korea who are being strangled by the Kim Jong Il's need for the appearance of weaponry and to the people of the United States who are supporting our troops abroad to bring them all home, and let the governments of South Korea and Japan do their jobs.

The real solution to crime

2006-06-26T08:21:00.000-05:00

The city of Dallas, which even before this year's jump in crime across the nation had one of the worst crime rates in existence, is now focusing on banning realistic-looking toy guns. This would almost be excusable if Dallas had the same amount of crime as Boise, but it doesn't. Banning toy guns is an enormous waste of time and contraction of liberty that doesn't solve a single problem.

First crash coming up

2006-06-25T21:12:00.000-05:00

Assuming my wisdom teeth extraction doesn't go horribly wrong, on July 6th some friends and I will be distributing these fliers at a meeting of Dallas-area union "progressives". More help is always welcome, so contact me if you're interested.

The Civil War: Why?

2006-06-24T14:20:00.000-05:00

It's hard to argue that the Civil War didn't have a huge effect on America. It destroyed the infrastructure of the South, it created a lasting resentment across much of the area, and it provided a catalyst for the elimination of many Constitutional limitations on government, among other things. Southern political extremism still wields power over the United States and, to a great extent, the world.

Should the Civil War have been fought? Obviously no moral justification can be assigned to either side - both did too many horrible things for one to be justified. What would have happened if the Southern states had just been allowed to secede?

Had the Southern states been allowed to secede, the North and West could have gotten on fine without them, and as the South slowly decayed (their form of government was disastrous, and slavery was on its way out anyways), eventually the South would have wanted back in. Many of the current tensions consuming the country would have been avoided.

Bird Flu v. Big Government: We're so screwed.

2006-06-23T09:37:00.000-05:00

Bird flu is now being transmitted between humans. Naturally governments everywhere will use this as an excuse to increase their power. I posted a long time ago about why big government wasn't the solution to bird flu, but there's one major reason that could use refreshing: the FDA and other regulatory agencies hamper the development of drugs and vaccines with their silly rules. This isn't just a problem with bird flu, but when it comes to pandemics that could kill billions of people, it's especially frightening.

Responses to my earlier LTE

2006-06-21T14:26:00.000-05:00

Wes Benedict, the Executive Director of LPTexas, sent out my earlier LTE to whoever's on the LPTX mailing list this morning. He apparently received several responses, which he was kind enough to pass on to me. The first:

I disagree with this letter to the editor by Nigel Watt. The
Libertarian Party has always been about increasing individual liberty.
A Republic does not ensure that. Only constitutionally protected
government with a Bill of Rights, whether a Republic or a Democracy,
can do so.

I'm not quite sure what his disagreement is, but OK. I never said republics were perfect, just that they were better than democracies.

With respect to Nigel Watt he makes a false distinction between Republic and Democracy.

A country is a Democracy if the Head of Government is elected, directly or indirectly by a vote of the citizens.

A country is a Republic if the Head of State is not an hereditary prince.

The United Kingdom is a Democracy BUT NOT a Republic. Tony Blair is head of Government and Queen Elizabeth is Head of State, It is a Democratic (or Constitutional) Monarchy.

The United States is a Democracy AND a Republic. President Bush is Head of Government and Head of State). It is a Democratic Republic (or Representative Democracy).

The error of describing a Representative Democracy as a Republic and using this world as if it was a synonym is sufficiently widespread that many dictionaries, especially on-line ones, also make it.

One need only consider that Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, and Saddam's Iraq were also Republics to see how foolish the mistake is.

Presumably if several dictionaries say there's a difference, in many educated circles there is. We'll ignore this semantic nit-picking and go on to the last paragraph.

Germany, the USSR, and Iraq were all one-party governments. Clearly this ineffectualizes the republican form of government. What a government ostensibly is does not matter - and that's something all libertarians should be well aware of.

Dallas Country Commissioners have it together

2006-06-21T07:50:00.000-05:00

Apparently the government of Dallas County is sending a bill to Mexico and the surrounding counties for indigent care given to constituents of those governments at county-run Parkland Hospital. I'd prefer that free are wasn't paid for by taxpayers at all, but if it is, this is the right way to send a message to make the siphoning of the welfare state stop.

Five Reasons Government is Bad for Labor

2006-06-20T22:18:00.000-05:00

1. Historical precedent. Most of the time governments have intervened in labor disputes, it's been to the detriment of the workers. Governments have forced workers back to their jobs, condoned violent strikebreaking efforts, and rescinding support when labor needs it most.

2. Freedom to associate. When government involves itself in labor, it is regulating our constitutional freedom to associate. A government which is allowed to give powers to certain groups can take them away and even reverse them after the next election.

3. Corruption. With major corporations funding the elections of most members of Congress, trusting those same legislators with the welfare of labor is dangerous, at best.

4. More government means more taxes, eliminating many of the gains that labor has made. Programs that benefit labor may be taken away, but the taxes won't be – and that's taking one step forward and two steps back.

5. The rising debt of the federal government will almost certainly lead to hyperinflation sometime in the future. Inflation makes it harder for those with small incomes to make ends meet.

Protest is the only way things get done.

2006-06-20T22:17:00.000-05:00

Pledge (despite the poorly spelled webpage) to burn a flag if the anti-flag burning amendment passes. Hopefully it won't, but if it does, in the interest of patriotism I will have to desecrate the flag. Scary, isn't it?

Sweet 1950's video

2006-06-20T12:46:00.000-05:00

Adblock

Ron Paul "threatened" by fascist running as Democrat

2006-06-19T18:30:00.000-05:00

Shane Sklar, Ron Paul's Democratic challenge, describes himself as a "conservative Democrat". What that really means, it turns out, is "unapologetic fascist":

Sklar said he is against abortion and gay marriage.

Does that put him anywhere close to the liberal camp, even ignoring the abortion stance? No, that puts him close to Hitler, who hated homosexuals and supported big government.

Decentralization pushes forward in Spain

2006-06-18T17:19:00.000-05:00

Hodgepodge nations like Spain and Iraq have always annoyed me with the obviously coercive nature of their existence. Iraq, unfortunately, is being kept together by outside influence, but Spain seems to be waking up to the absurdity of its existence.

The only reason such things even matter is that countries like to impose trade barriers. It's been suggested that a lot of the reason that the United States has been so succesful is that it constitutes one of the world's largest free-trade zones. I'm sure, however, that if Catalonia and the Basque areas completely seceded from Spain, they would impose tariffs on each other, ruining any progress that had been made.

Endowments: A solution to taxation?

2006-06-17T17:39:00.000-05:00

The school district that services my area, Highland Park ISD, announced a few months ago that it was trying to raise an endowment to, among other things, reduce taxation. (Unnamed critics of using private money to reduce taxation were named in the newspaper article, so I sent, and they published, an angry letter.) This got me thinking as to whether municipal endowments would be an effective way to end taxation without being what Tim West calls "Anarchy Next Wednesday" nuts. Parts of the municipal budget that can be eliminated would be, and that money would be put into the bank until it reached a point where the interest would be able to pay for the remaning municipal government. (Banks might be willing to give high interest, since it would be guaranteed that the money would never be removed.)

As an experiment, I tried it with my town's budget (.pdf). Parks and pool, library, and half of public safety (we have lots of extra cops) can be eliminated - a nice 29.3% of the budget. Assuming 10% interest , (100-29.3)/(29.3 * 10%) = 24.1297 years until taxation ends, completely - and I'm sure there's more that can be eliminated, like some of the administration fees. Assuming a halving of administration fees, it's 18.5714 years until taxation ends. That's not bad, right?

Somalis want self-determination. Still.

2006-06-16T17:12:00.000-05:00

How many times do they have to tell you, interventionists?

Oh, please no.

2006-06-16T10:31:00.000-05:00

Somebody just found their way to this site by searching Google for "diseconomies of scale in public education". (I know this because I use Sitemeter.) Whenever I see a hit from a search, I do the search to see how highly this site is ranked by the search engines. In this case, it's ranked fourth. (It is still ranked first for "getting made fun of".) The first and third Google hits for "diseconomies of scale in public education" didn't interest me, but the second one did: the Coalition to Invest in Texas Schools. The first paragraph on the site:

The Texas public school system is at a crossroads. We have an opportunity to shape school funding for generations to come, but we must do it right: Texas schools can only keep pace with those in the rest of the country with additional student funding per capita.

"Keep pace with those in the rest of the country"? "Those in the rest of the country" are still awful. Let's invest in Texas schools effectively - let's take them private. In fact, I'd like to introduce a three-step plan to eliminate public education in Texas:

Determine a specific amount of money per student that is necessary to educate that student. Allow students to pick any public school within size limits set by that school and send that money with the student. Students outside any school-bus serviced area would be responsible for providing their own transportation.
Eliminate the TEA except to administer the program in step 1 and remove state oversight from schools. Schools will devolve to local control or, more logically, non-profit privatization.
Spin off the monies used to send students to school into an independent charity with a sizable endowment and reduce taxes accordingly so that Texans can donate to that charity.

Hilarious Libertarian running for Congress in CT

2006-06-16T09:50:00.000-05:00

Phil Maymin, the Libertarian candidate for US House of Representatives CT-4, has one of the funniest (but also most effective) campaign sites I've ever seen. His page on his opponents is especially gratifying:

Shays Dumps on You. In essence, he took by force thirty bucks out of every Stamford household and gave back feces. "Stamford will receive $1,500,000 to support its Waste-to-Energy Project project, the low-emissions waste-to-energy electric generation facility that will turn dry, pelletized sewage sludge into 5 megawatts of electric power in a region facing major electricity shortages and electric grid congestion." If it's such a brilliant idea, he should quit his day job and do it in the free market. If the free market doesn't want it, why should we be forced to pay for his smelly excrement?

(Shays is the Republican incumbent.)

Maymin's site is also very consistent as to the source of his views: stealing is wrong. It's a good read in Libertarian thought.

If anybody who reads this is in Connecticut's 4th district, Maymin needs 2,909 signatures to get on the ballot. He's got a good chance to influence this election, and it would be a great help to the cause.

Torts are bad enough...

2006-06-15T21:12:00.000-05:00

...but adding big government to help the process they create is even worse.

Palestine can't keep their bureaucrats under control

2006-06-14T22:25:00.000-05:00

The Palestinian government apparently has 165,000 employees, all of whom are owed four months back pay. Because of this, angry Palestinian bureaucrats stormed the Parliament building today, forcing the speaker to flee. Oddly, the only donors that banks are transferring money from are other Arab governments - for some reason, private donors aren't allowed to pay.

The obvious solution for Palestine is to pay off its employees and then fire every single one of them who does an unnecessary job, so that it can focus on the important things, like the brewing civil war, for example.

TV Safety: Something else for you to wet your pants about

2006-06-14T12:31:00.000-05:00

I happened upon an interesting factoid in New Scientist today: "2300 American children are injured every year when TV sets fall on them. Doctors have called for better safety devices and warning labels."

Huh? Firstly, I cannot imagine a "safety device" to protect against the combination of gravity and heavy things. Secondly, a warning label that says "WARNING: THIS PRODUCT IS HEAVY. MAY CAUSE INJURY WHEN FALLING." wouldn't help the people reading it, who would be the ones lifting it into its position - they would already know just how heavy it is.

Regional "help" for Somalia

2006-06-13T13:11:00.000-05:00

An association of Horn of Africa governments is trying to interfere in the ongoing civil war in Somalia, and surprisingly enough, some of the success of the Taliban-style militia which recently took over the Somali capital, Mogadishu, is due to a UN arms embargo preventing the ostensibly legitimate and secular government from buying guns to defend against the warlords.

Dallas Morning News publishes third

2006-06-12T08:03:00.000-05:00

This qualifies me for a Lights of Liberty award (I've already nominated myself):

It frightens those of us who know what democracy means that President Bush said that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death will make the world safe for it.

Democracy – in which the government does exactly what more than 50 percent of the electorate tells it to do – has been a failure since democratic Athens lost the Peloponnesian War to tyrannical Sparta in 404 BC.

The United States is, and always has been, a republic, in which the people elect trusted representatives to run the government. Sadly, only the Libertarian Party seems to recognize this.

Scared dollars might tank? Invest in Monopoly money!

2006-06-11T13:10:00.000-05:00

Well, Monopoly money has at least had the same value for the past 70 years. I wish this was satirical, but sadly, it isn't. The more I think about the fact that greenbacks aren't actually backed by anything - they're only money because the Fed durn well says they are - the more I realize that any day now the bottom could fall out and we'd be screwed - and the national debt only makes it worse.

FDA to track pharmaceuticals from factories

2006-06-10T14:16:00.000-05:00

The FDA is apparently planning on putting RFID chips in drug containers to track them from factories to pharmacies - somehow fixing a problem with counterfeit drugs in the process. (A law requiring this to happen is 18 years old but has never been enforced due to whining from the pharmaceutical industry; the FDA now says that RFID allows it to be enforced.)

I have a better idea to stop the counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals: if I buy a drug that doesn't do squat, I ask for my money back from whoever sold it to me. Easy.

Oh great, destroy the free market more.

2006-06-09T19:53:00.000-05:00

The Dallas Morning News reports that in the effort to remove the Wright Amendment, a compromise may be in the works to remove both Southwest and American from "each other's" airports and allow Southwest to finally fly its planes where it wants to from Love Field - but only out of 15 to 18 gates. Evidently the free market and that whole capitalism thing no longer ring a bell with any of the governments involved.

Bad for business, but none of the court's business

2006-06-09T16:02:00.000-05:00

Geno's Steaks, a Philadelphia cheesesteak establishment, has an English-only policing for customers - if they, with clerk help, can't get out "cheeseburger" in English, they don't get one. In a diverse city like Philadelphia, this is obviously a bad business decision. But some aren't willing to leave it at that:

Juntos, a Hispanic neighborhood organization, said it plans to send people to Geno's to try to order in Spanish and may pursue court action, depending on what happens.

That is ridiculous, and I hope any reasonable judge would throw that case out, and let Geno's Steaks continue on its stupid policy.

Making the world safe for American fascism

2006-06-09T07:53:00.000-05:00

Two of the presidents I despise the most, Bush II and Wilson, have often spoken of something along the lines of "making the world safe for democracy". This is odd, because America isn't a democracy itself - it's a republic, as I have explained earlier.

Democracies, where the government does what the majority of people say it should do, have failed since Athens lost the Peloponnesian War to tyrannical (even proto-communist) Sparta in 404 BC. Much of the reason why Athens lost was that the impressionable masses controlled the military instead of the skilled generals, causing the Athenians to launch an ill-advised expedition to Sicily, for example.

Republics, on the other hand, put a wall of separation between the people and governmental decisions. It's my opinion that because of this, a republican government should do as little as possible, but certainly most republics have not followed this train of thought. The fact that most representatives are politicos who try to pander to the every wish of their constituents is a frightening thing and a bad sign for the oldest surviving republic in the world. Unfortunately, the only party that recognizes this is the Libertarian Party.

Zarqawi's dead? Whoop-tee-doo.

2006-06-08T18:46:00.001-05:00

Zarqawi, the recently-dead leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, was a despicable murderer, and for that reason I'm glad he's dead. But his death does not solve the fundamental problems that lead to radical Islamism - the pervasive hatred of America which stems from our long history of intervening in their lives. It's wrong - I've said it many times here and I won't say it again - but it's obviously wrong, and it's damaging our reputation and our quality of life. Let's get out before a mushroom cloud appears over a million of us.

Harvard finally decides to thumb its nose at the statists

2006-06-07T21:13:00.000-05:00

Harvard may not be the first school that comes to mind when you think "libertarian", but they're at least getting the idea and setting up a privately funded therapeutic cloning program, since the government won't fund it. This goes to show that pulling out government funding won't hurt science, it will just put fewer rules on it.