Thursday, December 31, 2009
Not Quite the 'Decade from Hell'
Friday brings an end to a decade most Americans will be glad to see the back of. What's to like about a 10-year span that started with an embarrassingly botched election, moved on to the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history and ended with a harrowing financial crisis?
The "Aughties" were awful. But all the media-driven doom and gloom is getting a little out of hand. Yes, it was a rotten 10 years for America. But cheer up: Things aren't as bad as they seem, and there's a good chance they'll get better.
This was the "decade from hell," Andy Serwer proclaims in a recent Time cover story: a period of economic apocalypse and unrelenting terror, "the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post-World War II era."
Holy hyperbole, hackman. Has Serwer never heard of the "misery index," the measure of unemployment plus inflation that Ronald Reagan used to pummel Jimmy Carter in the 1980 race? At 11.84, it's at its decade-long peak right now, but it hit 22 in Carter's last months and busted Obama's record in four of the last six decades.
Surely the 1930s -- the decade that saw Hitler's rise to power and a U.S. unemployment that routinely passed 20 percent -- has to count as more "dispiriting" than the 2000s. And how about the '60s -- a decade of assassinations, vicious race riots, rising crime and a pointless war that killed more than 50,000 Americans? READ THE REST
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Cash For Clunkers: Home Edition
by Doug Bandow
This article appeared in Forbes on December 28, 2009.
Cash for Clunkers (cars) is over. Cash for Clunkers (houses) continues. Legislators just extended the scandal-marred $8,000 home- buyer tax credit--which means another $11 billion will be wasted.
Ground zero of last year's financial crash was the politically driven collapse in the housing market. Six years ago, Rep. Barney Frank, now chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, declared: "I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing."
Uncle Sam rolled the dice a lot, and we all are paying the bill.
So far the home-buyer tax credit has cost $10 billion. As few as one-fifth of those taking the credit really were new buyers, which Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post figured meant a $75,000 subsidy per new house sold. When Congress nevertheless renewed the credit, it also expanded the benefit to owners for up to five years, and raised income eligibility.
However, the credit is barely a rounding error compared with continuing losses by Fannie Mae ( FNM - news - people ) and Freddie Mac ( FRE - news - people ). These two "government-sponsored enterprises" (GSEs) promoted both subprime lending and mortgage securitization, which turned bad mortgages into bad securities.
Today Fannie and Freddie underwrite $5.4 trillion worth of private home mortgages. Yet Washington is keeping the GSEs busier than ever. In October, Secretary Timothy Geithner advocated "a one-year extension of the current loan limits" to help "support the continued availability of affordable mortgages for many working families and aiding the recovery in the housing markets." READ MORE @ CATO
How Liberty Makes Health Care Virtually Universal
by Mary J. Ruwart, Ph.D.
Everyone knows that health care costs are soaring every year, making medical bills and insurance unaffordable for many. No relief is in sight with the health care bills being considered in Congress, which are estimated to cost us at least $1 trillion over the next 10 years. Given government’s abysmal record in estimating costs, we should expect to pay much more.
Judging from what has happened in other nations with “universal health care,” many of us, seniors especially, will die waiting for treatment. Health care is so expensive that there is only so much to go around; it has to be rationed.
But why is health care so expensive? Why does it cost so much more every year?
The health care industry is one of the most highly regulated in the country. These regulations drive up costs enormously. About 80% of the costs of new drugs, for example, are due to regulations that are intended to make them safer. In practice, however, these regulations cause millions of premature deaths by adding 10 years to the drug development time of life-saving drugs and favoring new, expensive drugs over nutrients and older pharmaceuticals with good safety records.
Very few nutritional supplements are put through the FDA testing process. Consequently, manufacturers are banned from advertising their products to doctors. Lovaza, a prescription fish oil supplement, is one of the few exceptions. Even with their insurance company paying most of the cost, patients pay almost as much for Lovaza through their co-pay as they would for virtually identical over-the-counter pharmaceutical grade fish oil at the same drug store!
In addition to driving up the costs of drugs, regulations have created a shortage of health care professionals by limiting the number trained each year. When the number of practitioners go down, prices go up. Physicians are more likely to overlook potential treatment options and make major medical mistakes when they put in the long hours generally required of them because of regulation-driven doctor shortages.
Even when doctors do all that is medically possible for their patients, juries often find them liable in order to give patients with poor medical outcomes access to the “deep pockets” of their physicians’ malpractice insurance. Premiums have gone up so much that doctors are leaving some specialties, notably obstetrics and neurosurgery. Those who remain estimate that 10% of health care spending goes to order tests that are done solely as “defensive” measures.
These distortions of the market drive up health care costs. Insurance goes up too. However, some states double these already high insurance costs by “mandating” that every policy cover treatments that many people consider “optional” such as massage therapists, in-vitro fertilization, and hair transplants.
Most insured individuals never realize what their true medical costs are. They have little incentive to shop for the physician or pharmacist providing the best value. What they pay is fixed, especially if they have low-deductible insurance policies through their employer. When workers lose their job, they often lose medical coverage because they cannot afford the high COBRA payments their former employer offers. They discover that their “free” health care is actually quite costly and that if they pay for it themselves, they can’t deduct the cost to the extent that their employer can.
Workers with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) fare better than their coworkers when they leave a job. Workers or their employers make tax-deductible contributions to employee HSAs, which grow tax-free. Individuals pay their insurance deductibles from their HSAs and take the account with them when they leave their employer.
HSAs are available to those who have high deductible insurance. Since individuals can eventually use this money for other expenses, they have an incentive to shop for cost-efficient high quality service. Since high deductible policies are less expensive, employers pay less for insurance and employees benefit from the tax benefits and portability.
Clearly, lowering health care spending by doing away with wasteful practices should be at the top of our health care reform list. Such reforms include:
1. Allowing individuals, as well as businesses, full tax credits/deductions for medical insurance and/or medical expenditures. In the interim, encourage the use of HSAs by increasing the amount of tax-deductible contributions (currently $3000) that a person can make each year.
2. Ending insurance mandates that states impose. As an interim measure, allow insurance sales across state lines so that consumers can choose the insurance plan that best fits their needs, rather than be limited to what state legislatures allow.
3. Making doctors and their insurers liable only for actual negligence and malpractice. In the interim, caps on non-economic damages, such as those in California and Texas, lower insurance costs, but may prevent victims of actual malpractice from being appropriately compensated.
4. Ending the regulation of medical professionals and employing a system of voluntary certification instead. Studies show that certification increases the amount of quality care delivered, especially to the poor. Since practitioners are usually certified on the basis of competence, rather than on politically-correct regulations, their number and quality increases, while prices decrease.
5. Ending FDA regulation of pharmaceuticals and employing a system of third-party certification instead. The FDA doesn’t test any drugs, but simply looks over the data provided by manufacturers. Underwriters’ Laboratory (UL), which certifies electrical appliances, actually tests the products that bear its “Seal of Approval.” Such third-party testing is an excellent model for drug certification.
In the interim, passing bills such as Congressman Ron Paul’s HR 3395 and HR 3394 removes the FDA’s jurisdiction over all nutrient-disease relationship claims and prevents the Federal Trade Commission from taking action against any advertiser that communicates a health benefit unless it can establish that the claim is false and harmful.
Each of these measures by itself can decrease health care costs by at least 10%. Taken together, they can slash health care costs by 50% or more. This is true health care reform.
Your representatives in both branches of Congress now are trying to create a compromise bill. That's why it's more important than ever to call each of them personally. Tell them to vote against this compromise, which will create health care rationing, especially for seniors. Tell them to vote for real health care reform, as outlined above. The life you save may be your own!
Mary J. Ruwart, Ph.D. is an At-Large Representative on the Libertarian National Committee, Inc.
LP Monday Message
Their solution? More government, of course.
But why does the cost of health care keep going up so fast? Most other products and services don't have this problem. Food prices don't skyrocket every year. Electronics don't either. What is so special about health care?
I think the problem boils down to this: the government subsidizes health care very heavily. When you subsidize the purchase of something, the price goes up--that's Economics 101. Then, since politicians use the higher price as an excuse to give even higher subsidies, you get into a vicious cycle, and prices keep rising endlessly.
Michael Munger, 2008 Libertarian candidate for North Carolina Governor, commented on this in a recent op-ed.
If the government would just get out of the health care subsidy business, I think we would see health care--drugs, doctor visits, tests, surgeries, everything--become much more affordable.
Of course, there are other problems too: too much regulation, malpractice lawsuit abuse, and so on. Libertarian Mary Ruwart has written about some of these problems in a recent article.
You won't hear Republicans or Democrats call for ending government subsidies of health care. That would mean getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid, programs which politicians of both parties support strongly. I think they love this situation: increasing government now guarantees they'll have an excuse to increase government even more in the future!
Republicans are railing against the Democrats' current plans, but that's only because the Democrats are in charge. When the Republicans had the majority, they couldn't wait to pass their giant Medicare expansion, costing over $1 trillion (entirely debt-financed, by the way). LP Chairman William Redpath pointed this out in his response to President Obama's health care speech.
Many congressmen are home for the recess. If you have time and are looking for ways to promote liberty and the Libertarian Party, please call your congressman again and tell them you oppose this plan, as we suggested before. Every call helps, even if just a little bit.
If you want to magnify the power of your voice 10,000 times, and have newspapers and television stations quoting you, then run for U.S. Congress.
For example, Libertarian Joseph Kennedy is participating in debates and getting plenty of press coverage as he runs for U.S. Senator in a Massachusetts special election.
Only the Libertarian Party wants the government to get out of the health care business. Only the Libertarian Party recognizes that government intrusion into health care is what causes most of the problems. I hope you'll support us today.
Wes Benedict
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee
Monday, December 28, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Friday, December 25, 2009
Sarah Foxwell Found
The Heart of Delmarva Shows Up in the Search for Sarah Foxwell
Salisbury, MD: The true heart of the Eastern Shore of Maryland was displayed today at Arthur W. Perdue Stadium as thousands of people showed up to volunteer in the search for Sarah Foxwell. Organizers were overwhelmed with volunteers and it took a couple of hours to get things organized.The selfless service provided by local businesses such as Station 7 Restaurant, McDonalds, Panera Bread, Pepsi, and the people who worked to support the volunteers was absolutely incredible. The concern and compassion displayed by law enforcement, firefighters, and local leaders should be commended.
We do ask that everyone please keep the family in your thoughts and prayers.
Merry Christmas
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it."
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Christmas Videos
So stay tuned for some holiday laughs.
-- Post From My iPhone
Reliving the Crash of '29
A half-century ago, America – and then the world – was rocked by a mighty stock-market crash that soon turned into the steepest and longest-lasting depression of all time.
It was not only the sharpness and depth of the depression that stunned the world and changed the face of modern history: it was the length, the chronic economic morass persisting throughout the 1930s, that caused intellectuals and the general public to despair of the market economy and the capitalist system.
Previous depressions, no matter how sharp, generally lasted no more than a year or two. But now, for over a decade, poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness led millions to seek some new economic system that would cure the depression and avoid a repetition of it.
Political solutions and panaceas differed. For some it was Marxian socialism – for others, one or another form of fascism. In the United States the accepted solution was a Keynesian mixed-economy or welfare–warfare state. Harvard was the focus of Keynesian economics in the United States, and Seymour Harris, a prominent Keynesian teaching there, titled one of his many books Saving American Capitalism. That title encapsulated the spirit of the New Deal reformers of the '30s and '40s. By the massive use of state power and government spending, capitalism was going to be saved from the challenges of communism and fascism.
One common guiding assumption characterized the Keynesians, socialists, and fascists of the 1930s: that laissez-faire, free-market capitalism had been the touchstone of the US economy during the 1920s, and that this old-fashioned form of capitalism had manifestly failed us by generating, or at least allowing, the most catastrophic depression in history to strike at the United States and the entire Western world.
Well, weren't the 1920s, with their burgeoning optimism, their speculation, their enshrinement of big business in politics, their Republican dominance, their individualism, their hedonistic cultural decadence, weren't these years indeed the heyday of laissez-faire? Certainly the decade looked that way to most observers, and hence it was natural that the free market should take the blame for the consequences of unbridled capitalism in 1929 and after. Read the Rest
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Democrats Drag In Byrd to Make 60 Votes
As The Gunpowder Chronicle states - Emperor Palpatine enters the Senate. Ahhh yes, the Dark Lord of the Sith and card carrying member of the "The Invisible Empire" is dragged into the Senate Chamber near death. If he was on life support they still would have forced him to vote.
In Defense of Senate 'Obstructionism'
In a party-line vote at 1:17 a.m. yesterday, Senate Democrats cleared a key procedural obstacle to a federal takeover of health care. With Saturday's buyoff of Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., a pre-Christmas vote now looks likely.
But Obamacare's far from a done deal. There are large and contentious differences -- on abortion, taxes, the "public option" -- between the Senate bill and the one that passed by five votes in the House. The GOP Senate leadership intends to filibuster whatever emerges from conference as well.
Liberals are screaming bloody murder about Republican obstructionism. But thank God for obstructionism, and the Senate rules facilitating it -- because the longer this debate goes on, the less Americans like what the Dems are trying to sell them.
No wonder Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is desperate to force a vote before senators go home: As CBS's Nancy Cordes put it, he otherwise runs "the risk that any Democrats change their minds over the holidays or get swayed by all those tea party protests."
Because Senate rules empower a determined minority to shut business down, the Senate has always prized collegiality. The ongoing fight over Obamacare reveals what happens when senators "stop being polite and start getting real." Read More at CATO
Don’t Waste Your Vote: Vote Democratic!
by William Redpath
(originally published in the December 2009 issue of LP News)
I can’t know what each of you thought when you read the headline above, but probably the most charitable thought was “Poor Bill Redpath. He almost made it to the end of his second term as Chair before he cracked up.”
Please be assured that I don’t really mean it. But, until I get a law passed making it illegal to skip past the Chairman’s column when reading LP News, kindly forgive my grabbing your attention by stooping to headlines that would make the editors of the late Weekly World News proud.
But, there is a point to it.
We’ve all heard it many times. “I can’t (sign your petition/vote for you/all of the above), because you’ll take votes from Republicans and then The Really Bad People will win.”
In 2008, when I was the Libertarian candidate for US Senate in Virginia, we had to circulate separate petitions for the Libertarian presidential ticket and me. Many people gladly signed my petition (getting my charm tank topped off beforehand helped, I guess), but when it came to signing for the LP presidential ticket, “Nooooooooo! Barr will screw things up for John McCain!”
Let’s see how that philosophy has worked out for those people.
I just read the recently published Recarving Rushmore, written by Ivan Eland of the small-l libertarian Independent Institute, in which he ranks forty presidents (too early in Obama’s presidency/Cleveland served twice/Garfield and William Henry Harrison both served less than a year) on a “PP&L (Peace, Prosperity & Liberty) scale.”
What appeared to chafe Dr. Eland was the tendency of historians to judge presidents as “great,” or not so, based on the times in which they served, not the actual decisions made by them when they were President. Dr. Eland’s goal is to judge presidents on the extent to which their actual policy decisions contributed to Peace, Prosperity & Liberty for the United States.
As a libertarian, Dr. Eland does not play favorites. Thomas Jefferson is rated a woeful 26th by Eland, who calls TJ “A Hypocrite on Limited Government.” I have not asked Dr. Eland if he thinks we should save our rotten tomaters for whomever next sings that “Thomas Jefferson” song at an LP convention (non-old-timers may not remember this).
Surprisingly, in Dr. Eland’s judgment, the best president in American history was John Tyler (vetoed the revival of the national bank/ended the worst Indian war in US history/responded with restraint to Dorr’s Rebellion in Rhode Island/ditto with a border dispute between Maine and New Brunswick/opposed big government in fact and not just rhetoric), while the second best was Grover Cleveland, a fat guy who liked slim government. The worst president (#40) in his view was Woodrow Wilson (got the US into World War I/post-war policies set the table for World War II/plenty more, but ain’t that enough?).
But, what really struck me, as I reviewed Dr. Eland’s presidential rankings, was how low recent Republican presidents were on his PP&L scale. I know some people will dispute this, but Eland ranks Ronald Reagan as #34 (landing him in Eland’s “Bad President” category), and he has sensible reasons. Eland claims that the Iran/Contra scandal was worse than Watergate, Reagan did not reduce big government, started “surreptitiously” raising taxes soon after his 1981 tax cuts were enacted, and helped keep Social Security limping along in 1983 (with tax increases, of course) when he could have worked to privatize it. Dr. Eland also thinks Reagan’s role in ending the Cold War was overblown, and that the Soviet Union failed largely on its own. Other low recent Republican president rankings (W. at #36, H. W. at #33 and Nixon at #30) are no surprise.
What is somewhat surprising is that Dr. Eland ranks Jimmy Carter as “The Best Modern President” at #8 (restrained foreign policy/evenhanded Middle East policy/deregulated industries/appointed Paul Volcker to the Fed, who then slayed inflation). Eland even ranked Bill Clinton as the 11th best president on his PP&L scale, so he thinks that over the last forty years, Democratic presidents have actually been more libertarian than Republican presidents.
According to Dr. Eland, to find a Republican president who ranks higher in his PP&L rankings than Jimmy Carter, one must go all the way back to Warren Harding. And, to write that pains me; the Marion Harding Presidents (what else would their nickname be?) were rivals with my Findlay Trojans in the Buckeye Conference when I was in high school.
What I took away from Dr. Eland’s enlightening book was that the frequently heard advice to libertarians and supporters of small government to not “waste their vote,” and to hold their nose and vote Republican, makes about as much sense as the headline at the beginning of this column. The people who have done that over the last several decades need to look around and observe what that admonition has wrought.
There Ain’t No Such Thing As a Free Lumpectomy
The folly of a "right to health care"
Jacob SullumThis week Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared that his chamber’s health care bill “demands for the first time in American history that good health will not depend on great wealth.” Reid said the legislation “acknowledges, finally, that health care is a fundamental right—a human right—and not just a privilege for the most fortunate.”
Since more than four-fifths of Americans already have medical insurance, and even those without “great wealth” have been known to enjoy “good health,” Reid was laying it on a little thick. But his premise, which is shared by President Obama, explains the moral urgency felt by supporters of the health care overhaul that is making its way through Congress. It also reveals a radical assault on the traditional American understanding of rights.
The Framers believed the Constitution recognized pre-existing rights, protecting them from violation by the government. The common law likewise developed as a way of protecting people from wrongful interference by their neighbors. If people have rights simply by virtue of being human, those rights can be violated (by theft or murder, for example) even in the absence of government.
By contrast, notwithstanding Reid’s claim that government-subsidized health care is a fundamental human right, it does not make much sense to say that it exists in a country too poor to afford such subsidies or at a time before modern medicine, let alone in the state of nature. Did Paleolithic hunter-gatherers have a right to the “affordable, comprehensive and high-quality medical care” that the Congressional Progressive Caucus says is a right of “every person”? If so, who was violating that right? Read More REASON
2004 LP Presidential nominee Michael Badnarik hospitalized after heart attack
The Libertarian Party headquarters in Washington, DC has received various reports that Michael Badnarik, the 2004 nominee for President, has suffered a heart attack and has been hospitalized in Wisconsin.
William Redpath, Chairman of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC), commented, "While initial indications are that this is possibly a serious heart attack, we're hoping that Michael makes a full and speedy recovery."
Great American Quotes
"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words "no" and "not" employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights."
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Great American Quotes
"One of the greatest delusions in the world is the hope that the evils in this world are to be cured by legislation."
Monday, December 21, 2009
What Is a Right?
In the continually harsh public discourse over the President’s proposals for federally-managed healthcare, the Big Government progressives in both the Democratic and the Republican parties have been trying to trick us. These folks, who really want the government to care for us from cradle to grave, have been promoting the idea that health care is a right. In promoting that false premise, they have succeeded in moving the debate from WHETHER the feds should micro-manage health care to HOW the feds should micro-manage health care. This is a false premise, and we should reject it. Health care is not a right; it is a good, like food, like shelter, and like clothing.
What is a right? A right is a gift from God that extends from our humanity. Thinkers from St. Thomas Aquinas, to Thomas Jefferson, to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to Pope John Paul II have all argued that our rights are a natural part of our humanity. We own our bodies, thus we own the gifts that emanate from our bodies. So, our right to life, our right to develop our personalities, our right to think as we wish, to say what we think, to publish what we say, our right to worship or not worship, our right to travel, to defend ourselves, to use our own property as we see fit, our right to due process – fairness – from the government, and our right to be left alone, are all rights that stem from our humanity. These are natural rights that we are born with. The government doesn’t give them to us and the government doesn’t pay for them and the government can’t take them away, unless a jury finds that we have violated someone else’s rights. Read The Rest
A Tale of Two Libertarianisms
A new book of unpublished critiques by Murray Rothbard reveals a divide in the larger libertarian project
Brian Doherty | December 18, 2009If Murray Rothbard—Austrian school economist, anarchist political philosopher, early American popular historian, and inveterate libertarian organizational gadfly—had never lived, the modern libertarian movement would have nowhere near its current size and influence.
He inspired and educated generations of young libertarian intellectuals and activists, from Leonard Liggio to Roy Childs to Randy Barnett. He helped form and shape the mission of such libertarian institutions as the Institute for Humane Studies, the Cato Institute, and the Ludwig Von Mises Institute. His unique combination of a Randian-Aristotelian natural rights ethic, Austrian economics, anarcho-capitalism (of which he was the ur-source, within the contemporary libertarian movement), fervent anti-interventionism, and a populist distrust of “power elites” both public and private injected modern libertarianism with the distinct flavor that separates it from other brands of small-government, free-market thought.
Let’s put it this way: When the likes of F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman died, conservative flagship National Review could and did praise them pretty unreservedly. But when Rothbard died in 1995, his old pal William Buckley took pen in hand to piss on his grave. Rothbard, Buckley wrote, spent his life “huffing and puffing in the little cloister whose walls he labored so strenuously to contract, leaving him, in the end, not as the father of a swelling movement…but with about as many disciples as David Koresh had in his little redoubt in Waco. Yes, Murray Rothbard believed in freedom, and yes, David Koresh believed in God.”
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Sam Adams on a Sunday Afternoon
"He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections."
Charters Hold Key to Saving State Big Education Dollars
by Andrew J. Coulson
This article appeared in the Detroit News on December 17, 2009.
Michigan is awash in concern over education funding. Recent budget cuts ranging from $165 to $465 per pupil — with another $127 per-pupil cut on hold — have been described as a "tsunami that threatens to push scores of districts into deficit this year." But if Michigan converted all its conventional public schools into charters (also known as public school academies), that tsunami would explode into a refreshing mist — complete with fiscal surplus rainbow.
Based on the latest (2006-07) figures, the average charter school in Michigan spends $2,000 less in state and local tax dollars per pupil than the average district school. So the savings from a district-to-charter student exodus would add up to $3.5 billion annually. To put that in perspective, it would erase Michigan's recent $2.8 billion state budget shortfall and still allow for a $700 million across-the-board tax cut.
And the benefits of migrating completely to charter schools would go beyond the financial. One of the key concerns voiced by parents in response to Gov. Jennifer Granholm's spending cuts is that they will lead to larger class sizes. But Michigan's charter schools not only spend 20 percent less than district schools, they also have 20 percent fewer pupils per teacher.
How is that possible? Charter schools typically employ far fewer nonteaching staff than conventional public schools, so they can hire more teachers and still operate at a lower per pupil cost.
Thus far, the governor and state Legislature seem unaware of the vast savings to be had from universal charter schooling. But they have shown their willingness to promote charters in response to a far smaller financial inducement. Read More @Cato
Maryland Unemployment Rises To 7.4%
We were told the Obama Stimulus plan was to create real jobs and lift us out of the depression we were quickly approaching. All we have seen is unemployment go, government spending going up, and businesses bracing for an expensive Healthcare package.
At some point the Piper must be paid. Baby Boomers are approaching retirement, Social Security is approaching failure, Unemployment is rising, we are fighting two expensive wars, and government leaders are looking for everyway possible to squeeze taxpayers last pennies out of their wallets. The near and distant future are not looking to pretty, and the Piper Must Be Paid (the inflation Piper that is.)
Friday, December 18, 2009
Stuart Smalley - Didn't Take Long
However, I am surprised that it took so long for Franken to show his true colors of idiocy that is his personality. He certainly needs to some home training and thank God he is not a Libertarian.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Dr. Davis' December Letter to Editor
I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. For many, possibly for most, my hope is that they will be merrier and happier than the last two.
I’d like to challenge everyone who reads this to think about what they might do to make the holidays, both religious and secular, happier for all Americans and for people everywhere.
I believe that this country remains the best hope for much of the world. Founders from Washington and Jefferson to Franklin and Adams felt that the only hope for the republic they created lay in a citizenry well educated and informed, virtuous and fair-minded. As our democracy has been extended to more and more of the population, this does not change.
For more than a hundred years we Americans have, in varying degrees, tried to push our ideas of government on much of the rest of the world. In doing so, we have begun to lose much of what our form of government has to offer both ourselves and the rest of the world.
At this time when people seek peace and make New-Year’s resolutions, I challenge you to do all you can to make yourself that educated, informed, fair-minded and virtuous citizen and voter. None of us are perfect, but as we enter another election year, let us try again to become an example of freedom and justice for the world, not a world-policeman or an empire.
Sincerely,
Richard J. Davis, D.D.S.
Libertarian candidate for Congress
www.davis4congress.com
Monday, December 14, 2009
Chris Bush Analyzes The Governor's Race
Originally Posted on the MD-Lib Discussion Board by Doug McNeil
Note: Chris Bush is a well-known Maryland blogger who writes extensively
about utility regulation and other political issues. He's a progressive who
favors re-regulation to reverse the recent electricity rate increases, which
(as he correctly notes) is not a position that we agree with. But he likes
us anyway, and he's happy that we're running.
I'm pleased to see that the word about our campaign is starting to get
out, even at this early stage, and that it's generating considerable interest
on the left. But I think it's premature to conclude that Ehrlich is
finished and that we might throw the election to O'Malley.
The following is excerpted from his "Electricity Crisis 12-11-09."
-- Doug McNeil
~ Bobby was Already Behind in the Polls to O'Malley- Even though MOM
Himself in Trouble Electorally
~ w/ a Libertarian Candidate Running for Governor, Too, Ehrlich will NOT
Win for Sure
~ the Libertarian Party has Nominated Susan Gaztanaga for Governor in 2010
~ The Libertarians Certainly Will Peel Off Ehrlich Votes- the LAST Thing
that Bobby Needs
~ the Tea Party Activists May Also Turn to the Libertarians as Well-or
Possibly the Constitution Party- as the GOP has Become so Corrupt in Maryland
~ AND, Recent Polling by Rasmussen- as Referenced on WBAL 1090 AM's C4
Show on Wed., Dec. 9, 2009, During the 1:37pm Segment- Indicate that MORE
Folks Would Back the Tea Party, if It Were on the Ballot, than the Republican
Party
~ In Maryland, the Libertarian Party or Constitution Party (which Does NOT
Yet Have a Guv Nominee) Will be the Platform to Manifest Those Tea Party
Sentiments
~ While Susan Gaztanaga is Anti-Regulation in General- NOT Good News for
BGE Customers- She's Also HONEST and Would NOT be a Lackey for Constellation
Energy Like O'Malley AND Ehrlich
~ Also, Susan's Husband Lorenzo- Who's Running for Congress in the 2nd
Congressional District Against Dutch Ruppersberger (Chris Bush Supported
Gaztanaga for the Same Contest in 2008)- SUPPORTS Decentralized, Cheap Energy
for Households, the Kind that Comes from Solar
~ Assuming that Susan is of Like View, At Least There'd be a Governor
Trying to Help with Individual Homeowner's Electricity Bills Via Solar
~ However, Solar is NOT a Viable Alternative Currently- ONLY when
Ultra-Thin Film Solar Foil Becomes Available Will this Change- UNless there are Tax
Credits and Renewable Energy Credits: More in a Future EC on Gaztanaga's
View on Solar and Renewable Energy
~ As a Result, the GOP Should Run a PRO-Regulation Candidate for Governor,
Like EJ Pipkin- Who, UNlike Ehrlich, does NOT Have Baggage and Thus COULD
Beat O'Malley: if Not, there's NO REASON Why Phant Voters Should NOT Cast
Their Ballots for the Libertarian Candidate Instead, Again, as Polls Show
Ehrlich LOSING to MOM
~ Many Tea Party Activists in Maryland are ALSO Anti-BGE, so Pipkin's
Position Will Have more Resonance for Them (Although Tea Baggers Tend to be
More Right-Wing than Pipkin on Other Issues)
~ On the Other Hand, Voting for Robert Ehrlich Will be Throwing AWAY One's
Vote Should the Bobster's Arrogance Tempt Him into Running Again
~ Chris Bush Calls on the Green Party to Run a PRO-REGULATION Candidate
for Governor as Well, to Pressure O'Malley on the Left
~ This Writer is NOT in Favor of Splitting the Republican Base to Give
O'Malley a Re-Election
~ Indeed, for You Progressives Out There, Let's Get Behind a Green
Candidate to Pull Votes from O'Malley, Which Will Encourage Anti-GOP Conservatives
to Vote Libertarian
~ Some of Those Independent Righties Might Not Vote Libertarian- Assuming
Pipkin is the Nominee w/ a Real Chance to Win- if they Think O'Malley Will
Benefit, But if They See Progressives Gaining Ground on the Left, They'll
Feel More Comfortable Breaking w/ Ehrlich and/or Pipkin, and Sending the
GOP a Message
~ Picture This: a 4 Party Contest for Governor in 2010: Dem, Repub,
Libertarian, Green
~ the Political Environment Only IMPROVES if the Two Party Duopoly is
Broken Up!!!!
~ (NOTE: more on the "Tea Bagger" controversy, including a recent segment
on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC on 12-04-09, as well as an email from
the caller to WBAL 1090 AM who started it all, James Madigan)-cb
~ (NOTE 2: yours truly does NOT speak FOR, nor speak on behalf, of ANY
other group, individual- including Sen. Pipkin or Susan Gaztanaga)-cb
~ (Source: independentpoliticalreport.com; airamerica.com link; "EC
12-03-09" email attachment)
~ Analysis by Chris Bush
For feds, more get 6-figure salaries
This was recommended under President Bush and is being continued under President Obama. In a time when we should be cutting government spending and reducing it's overall size, we are witnessing an unprecedented period of expansion. This has occurred under the watch of both Republicans and Democrats.
We have a federal government model that is offering services that are outside the scope of it's responsibility. Government has become to invasive, to large, bloated, redundant, and an incredible burden on the back of taxpayers. The debt that has been mounted in the name of the American Taxpayer is criminal and even worse, elected officials are in no hurry to eliminate it.
The other major issue is when State and Local governments follow the failed model of the Federal Government. Every level of government is threatened when these typed of flawed policies are implemented. Taxpayers get stuck with the burden of debt at every level.
The first thing to understand with our current Government Fiscal situations is that we do not have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. Looking at the ridiculous amount of pork that is wasted on a daily basis is a good place to start cutting. Implementing the holy philosophy of "No Sacred Cows" is very important.
Then we need to begin streamlining, consolidating, and eliminating programs, departments, and wasteful services. The IRS is good place to start.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Sam Adams on a Sunday Afternoon
"Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can."
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
Quote of the Day
“We can only save this great country by limiting politicians to two terms -- one term in office . . . one term in prison.”
Artificial Housing Respiration
No major newspaper seriously questions the truism that foreclosures destroy neighborhoods. No news network doubts that “troubled borrowers” are overwhelmingly good Americans who have been set back by a job loss or medical emergency. And what kind of anti-American Shylock would claim that you shouldn’t give bad borrowers government-backed loan modifications, cutting their mortgage payments by 20 percent?
The interesting new wrinkle on those old, false arguments is that real estate interventionists no longer pretend they have any real goal other than keeping house prices inflated. Even a year ago, the arguments for rescuing real estate prices were phrased in broad, spillover-style metaphors—“meltdown,” “implosion”—that suggested a concern for the common bystander. Today, the argument is a lot plainer: We need to keep existing homeowners (or home borrowers) from experiencing any further decline in closing prices. When I ask Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) to explain his support for extending exorbitant Federal Housing Administration loan guarantees even while the real estate market continues to cool, he replies, “The economy of Los Angeles would tank if prices fell another 50 percent.” Here’s how Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), in an October interview with The New York Times, justified his support for the agency’s shoddy lending standards: “I don’t think it’s a bad thing that the bad loans occurred. It was an effort to keep prices from falling too fast.” Economy.com front man Mark Zandi puts it even more bluntly. The housing market, he says, “is showing improvement only because it is on government life support.”
Life support is expensive. When that troubled borrower gets a 20 percent haircut, his bank has to take a loss, and the bank is compensated for the loss by you, through the $50 billion Home Affordable Modification Program. The Treasury Department has paid more than $100 billion to allow the failed government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to keep on guaranteeing questionable loans. Fannie and Freddie, in turn, have been expanding rather than reducing their loan portfolios—the opposite of what you’re supposed to do when you’ve got an unmanageable debt load. Read More Reason
Thursday, December 10, 2009
A Case for Secession – Taxation
We will begin with the area that was one of the primary motivations for the colonists to declare their independence from Great Britain – Taxes. Suffice it so say that the amount of taxes England sought to impose upon those Americans do not hold a candle to the taxes we already pay our imperial national government today. All governments require taxes to perform their functions and we all grudgingly admit the necessity of paying them. Our government has taken upon itself a myriad of functions it was never designed to perform and has therefore required large amounts of money. It is not the purpose of this section to debate the legitimate functions of government. Instead we will concern ourselves primarily with the morality and justice of taxing particular areas of human endeavor and for general purpose those taxes are utilized.
Thomas Jefferson stated that “government should not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” All governments require money to operate. Obviously, the smaller the government, the less it will require. Consider, however, where the government gets this money. Again, obviously, it taxes its citizens and it is right to do so. Governments are a form of voluntary organization among free people to accomplish ends they are not able to do as individuals. Because these individuals have contracted together in such a fashion, there is the expectation that they will support their creation. However, the people retain the rights they received from their creator under the contract and the government has no right to infringe upon those rights. When it does, we consider it tyrannical. READ THE REST
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Quote of the Day, Maybe Year
"Dramatics abounded Monday in Salisbury: Dramatic talk, dramatic allegations, dramatic innuendoes, dramatic declarations. Everything but dramatic action."
Social Security Will Go Bust in 2010
For the third time in my life, the Social Security System will go belly-up.
The first time was in 1977 – well, almost. To head off the bust, Jimmy Carter got Congress to pass a major FICA tax increase – sorry, "contribution" increase – in order to save Social Security. The rate would be hiked in phases from 2% to 6.15% (times two: employee and employer). He promised: "Now this legislation will guarantee that from 1980 to the year 2030, the Social Security funds will be sound." http://tinyurl.com/ybksxs4
Carter's projection was off by a Georgia country mile. In 1983, the SSA program technically went bankrupt. Reagan signed a law that speeded up Carter's rate increases, added Congressional employees to Social Security, and delayed the age of eligibility.
Unless there is another Social Security tax increase in 2010, the system will go into red ink mode and stay there.
The public has not been informed of this, which comes as no surprise. There have been a few scattered stories on the Web, but nothing sustained. The media do not want to admit that the jointly operated Social Security program and Medicare program are going to bankrupt the Federal government if they are not cut back drastically.
They are never cut back. They always expand.
Medicare's Hospital Insurance program has been in red ink mode for two years. The public does not know this, either. To cover the program's insolvency, the government is quietly funding the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund with bailouts from the general fund.
Politically, this creates a problem. When the Treasury taps the general fund, the expenditure appears on the budget – the on-budget budget – as an expenditure. This immediately adds to the deficit, meaning the visible deficit, the one that gets recorded on those wonderful U.S. debt clocks.
When revenues flow into the four Social Security and Medicare trust funds, the money is instantly handed over to the Treasury, which issues non-marketable long-term IOU's to the trust funds. These IOU's are listed as assets by the funds. But, through the wonders of government accounting, they are not listed as liabilities on the government's on-budget budget. They are liabilities only on the off-budget budget, which most Americans are unaware of. This chicanery has been going on ever since the Johnson Administration (Lyndon's, not Andrew's). Read the Rest
The Gatekeeper
How a little bureaucratic office became the biggest impediment to Barack Obama’s health care plans
As the new era unfolded in Washington, plans for overhauling one-sixth of the economy began to take shape. Health care reforms, Democrats vowed, would extend insurance to every American and be fully paid for without requiring middle-class tax hikes, all while cutting costs significantly enough to save the country from financial catastrophe. To sell these claims the party trotted out one of the most respected number-crunchers in town, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, a former Brookings Institution health care expert obsessed with cost cutting. With 60 votes in the Senate, nothing seemed to stand in the Democrats’ way.
Nothing, that is, except the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan federal agency that until this year was run by none other than Peter Orszag. As drafts of various health care bills began to emerge on Capitol Hill, the CBO, responsible for devising Congress’ official legislative cost estimates (known as “scores”), released a series of reports that demolished key Democratic claims. According to the CBO, both the “tri-committee” bill proposed in the House and the bill proposed in the Senate Finance Committee would cost in excess of $1 trillion over 10 years, might leave tens of millions uninsured, and would not curb rising health care costs. Indeed, both would add substantially to the budget deficit in the long term. As the year progressed, the CBO proved a more effective check against key elements of the Democrats’ domestic agenda than anything concocted by Republican strategists or libertarian wonks. In an October article, The Washington Post concluded that the CBO had “essentially condemned two legislative proposals by slapping them with trillion-dollar price tags.”
Created as an afterthought and initially intended as a low-profile congressional calculation service, the CBO has quietly risen to a place of unique prominence and power in Washington policy debates. Widely cited and almost universally respected, it is treated as judge and referee, resolving disputes about what policies will cost and how they will work.
But the agency’s authority is belied by the highly speculative nature of its work, which requires an endless succession of unverifiable assumptions. These assumptions are frequently treated as definitive, as if on faith. In practice, this means the CBO is not merely an impartial legislative scorekeeper but a keeper of the nation’s budgetary myths, a clan of spreadsheet-wielding priests whose declarations become Washington’s holy writ. READ MORE REASON
So Much for the Peace Presidency
by Gene Healy
This Thursday, Barack Obama will swing by Oslo to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize — just over a week after he announced that he'd escalate the war in Afghanistan. Awkward.
When Obama won the prize in October, you had to wonder whether the self-esteem movement, where every kid gets a trophy, had made its way from little league to the Nobel Committee. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr. — and a guy running two wars, who'd been president for two weeks when nominations closed?
Despite the committee chairman's defensive insistence that Obama "got the prize for what he has done," clearly it was awarded for what the committee hoped he might do (which is rather like giving a physics Nobel to a guy who hopes he'll invent cold fusion).
Well, if the committee hoped a pre-emptive prize would influence Obama's behavior, they must feel pretty silly right now. On Dec. 1, the former surge critic spoke at West Point, defending his decision to throw 30,000 more troops into an unpopular, unwinnable, and unnecessary war.
Sure, the president packaged the decision as part of a plan to "begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011." But that's not the beginning of a genuine withdrawal. It's, er, an "inflection point," according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, at which, maybe, "some handful, or some small number" will be able to come home. READ MORE @ CATO
Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency.
This article appeared in the DC Examiner on December 8, 2009.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
LP Monday Message: Global Warming LP Poll Results
Dear Friend of Liberty,
Last week we sent a poll asking for your opinions on global warming. If you haven't already taken it, you can still take the poll here.
The poll has proven to be popular. Below is the poll question, responses, and results after one week.
Which of the following statements best matches your view of global warming?
* 28% (1785 votes) This whole global warming thing is a hoax.
* 6% (347 votes) I don't know whether global warming is real, but the government should limit carbon dioxide emissions just to be safe.
* 10% (639 votes) Global warming is real, it's a threat, and the government should limit carbon dioxide emissions.
* 27% (1676 votes) Whether or not global warming is real, it doesn't justify more taxes or regulations.
* 29% (1835 votes) Global warming is mostly natural and there's not much we can do about it.
6,282 votes total
Several people sent comments about the poll. People asked why they couldn't select multiple answers. One person suggested the questions were biased.
For those of you skeptical about our poll, I'll be the first to admit it is an unscientific poll written by a biased author (me).
My natural inclination is to distrust politicians' proposals that grow government. I also distrust the scientists who live off government grants and benefit from generating hysteria over global warming.
However, just because I distrust politicians and government funded scientists doesn't mean I'm inclined to trust the business community. I certainly understand that big oil companies have an incentive to mislead the public about the impact their products may have on the environment.
This poll question was interesting to me because even though Libertarians generally agree that government should not gain new powers because of popular global warming worries, we don't always have exactly the same reasons.
In any case, I think the vast majority of you agree with me that government should not start restricting people's energy use, whether it's "cap and trade" or some other scheme.
We will continue to advocate against these kinds of schemes for government growth. I'd like to ask you to help support us by making a donation. When you donate, let us know if we're communicating the issues you want to hear about.
Sincerely,
Wes Benedict
Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee
Monday, December 7, 2009
Interesting Comment by Bill Harris
One need not travel to China to find indigenous cultures lacking human rights. America leads the world in percentile behind bars, thanks to ongoing persecution of hippies, radicals, and non-whites under prosecution of the war on drugs. If we’re all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance global credibility.
The drug czar’s Rx for prison fodder costs dearly, as life is flushed down expensive tubes. My shaman’s second opinion is that psychoactive plants are God’s gift. Behold, it’s all good. When Eve ate the apple, she knew a good apple, and an evil prohibition. Canadian Marc Emery is being extradited to prison for selling seeds that American farmers use to reduce U. S. demand for Mexican pot.
Only on the authority of a clause about interstate commerce does the CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) reincarnate Al Capone, endanger homeland security, and throw good money after bad. Administration fiscal policy burns tax dollars to root out the number-one cash crop in the land, instead of taxing sales. Society rejected the plague of prohibition, but it mutated. Apparently, SWAT teams don’t need no stinking amendment.
Nixon passed the CSA on the false assurance that the Schafer Commission would later justify criminalizing his enemies. No amendments can assure due process under an anti-science law without due process itself. Psychology hailed the breakthrough potential of LSD, until the CSA shut down research, and pronounced that marijuana has no medical use, period. Drug juries exclude bleeding hearts.
The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote, which functions like LSD. Americans shouldn’t need a specific church membership or an act of Congress to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. John Doe’s free exercise of religious liberty may include entheogen sacraments to mediate communion with his maker.
Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced conformity. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.
Common-law must hold that adults are the legal owners of their own bodies. The Founding Fathers undersigned that the right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable. Socrates said to know your self. Mortal lawmakers should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Persons who appreciate their own free choice of path in life should tolerate seekers’ self-exploration.
*************************
Bill, thank you so much for your comment.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
GARRETT PECK ON "THE PROHIBITION HANGOVER: ALCOHOL IN AMERICA FROM DEMON RUM TO CULT CABERNET"
Reading People’s Faces
Tattoos, dueling scars, and other rational acquisitions
Katherine Mangu-WardIt is a truth universally acknowledged that messing with a guy who has facial tattoos is a really bad idea.
Getting dirty words tattooed on your eyelids—a popular choice, judging from the mug shots available online—is a serious commitment. It is, as social scientists say, a “signal that is costly to fake.” The bearer of a facial tattoo announces to the world: I expect to be in prison for most of my life, or to hang out with people who consider prison experience a character reference.
Those of us who are not a part of the criminal underworld have a much cheaper system: Asked for a reference, we happily provide our colleagues’ phone numbers and email addresses. But for crooks, broadcasting signals about their professional pasts and current social networks is a good way to wind up with a new pair of concrete shoes. In Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate (Princeton), the Oxford sociologist Diego Gambetta uses colorful stories and a minimum of jargon in his quest to analyze how people advertise when their business happens to be illegal.
Unlike a legal trademark, an underworld brand can’t be defended with little more than an expensive attorney. If another gang steps into your turf, you can opt for a violent defense of your signal of choice. But gangsters who previously relied on large gaudy tattoos to get a message across can hardly go around roughing up every 17-year-old with a tramp stamp on her tailbone.
As tattoos go mainstream, criminals have to adapt. These days, even art on your neck, collarbone, and wrists is barely enough to signal your commitment to subcultures that are totally legal.
But there are still some kinds of tattoos—including those inky eyelid admonitions and the homespun variety created with a shard of a ballpoint pen during long hours behind bars—that retain their signaling power, demonstrating a commitment to the criminal way of life. A guy with extensive Aryan Brotherhood facial tattoos is unlikely to snitch on his buddies. The only thing worse then getting an eyelid tattoo is having one removed. What’s he going to do, go into witness protection and start a new life as a kindergarten teacher in Ohio?
In Japan, members of the yakuza have long favored tattoos covering the entire upper body to signal their mafia status. They also amputate all or part of a pinky finger. One study estimated that between 40 percent and 70 percent of the yakuza had sacrificed a digit, generally making the cut themselves. READ MORE REASON
Time to Wind Down the War on Drugs
It's hard out here for a libertarian in the Age of Obama. From bailout mania to the drive to nationalize health care, those of who want less federal involvement in American life have plenty to be depressed about.
Is there any area in which it's not too audacious to hope for less intrusive government?
Yes, thankfully: Today, more and more Americans are open to winding down our destructive war on drugs.
In October, Gallup recorded its highest-ever level of public support for marijuana legalization, with 44 percent of Americans in favor. There's "a generational rift" on the issue, Gallup reports: A majority of voters under 50 back legalization.
This Election Day, Maine joined a growing number of states that have legalized medical marijuana dispensaries. Meanwhile, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for a "robust debate" on the issue, and activists are on pace to put a marijuana decriminalization initiative in front of the state's voters.
In Congress, unlikely allies Ron Paul, R-Texas, and Barney Frank, D-Mass., recently introduced a bill to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. Most encouraging, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., has called attention to the scandalous fact that the United States has more people in jail per capita than any other nation in the world, in large part because of the drug war. READ MORE @ CATO
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Killing Slaughterhouse
Understanding the controversial 1873 decision at the center of the Supreme Court's upcoming gun rights fight
Brian DohertyThe Supreme Court has set a date of March 2, 2010, for oral arguments in McDonald v. Chicago, the case that will decide whether the revival of the Second Amendment won in 2008’s Heller case will extend to overturning gun control restrictions imposed by local and state governments.
The legal briefs from the plaintiffs, and many of their amici, are now circulating. And an interesting division in the preferred strategy for winning the case has appeared, one based on the daring legal gambit around which most of lead McDonald lawyer (and Heller lawyer) Alan Gura’s brief is built.
To understand Gura’s radicalism, we need to take a quick stroll through a century and more of legal precedent. For decades, the rights contained in the Bill of Rights (both explicitly enumerated and unenumerated) were interpreted to bind only the federal government (see the 1833 Barron case, regarding takings under the Fifth Amendment, for the beginnings of this line of thought). Then in 1868 the 14th Amendment was enacted to impose substantive limitations on the ability of state and local governments to infringe individual rights.
The 14th Amendment was passed in the historical context of Reconstruction, when many southern governments were violating the rights of newly freed blacks. As many of the briefs in McDonald detail quite convincingly, one of the rights that was almost universally understood to fall under 14th Amendment protection (or to use the lingo, one of the rights meant to be “incorporated” on the states via the 14th) was the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
The 14th Amendment lists three distinct ways in which states and localities are prohibited from violating our rights: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” READ MORE REASON
The Discoverer of HIV Speaks Out
by James Foye
The new film House Of Numbers (reviewed by me here) contains excerpts of interviews with almost everyone of significance in the debate about whether or not HIV causes severe immune deficiency (aka AIDS). In a true scientific debate, the defenders of AIDS orthodoxy would jump at every chance to engage in debate with HIV skeptics, in the hope of either clearly refuting their arguments, or else learning something from them. But instead their mantra is:
Some of the people interviewed by filmmaker Brent Leung didn’t realize that his final product was not going to be a one-sided rehash of the nonsense that has been fed to us for the last 25 years by the AIDS establishment, but rather would feature both sides of the story. They therefore regret their participation in the film, and are trying to explain away the comments they made and to portray Mr. Leung as being deceptive. But, had he stormed into their offices telling them that he had doubts about HIV, by their own admission, they wouldn’t have given him the time of day. In any event, is there one question they would have answered differently had they then granted an interview? The answer, one must presume, must be "No." So what difference does it make? Read More"We will not engage in any public or private debate with AIDS denialists or respond to requests from journalists who overtly support AIDS denialist causes."