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Source: J. Neil Schulman @ Rational Review Author: J. Neil Schulman Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp J. Neil Schulman’s classic novel of economic collapse and agorist revolution, serialized. (03/15/10) Link: http://jneilschulman.rationalreview.com/2010/03/alongside-night/ Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The Free Liberal Author: Paul Jacob Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The Mitchell Slough, in the Bitterroots of Montana, is a century-old irrigation ditch. Newcomers to the area, including rocker Huey Lewis, worked on the slough to make it better for fish. Though farmers were at first skeptical, the redigging and unsilting made the slough better for agriculture as well as for fish. But those fish are valuable. Other folks covet them. In Montana, natural water bodies must be accessible to the public. So the recreation lobby took the slough’s owners to court.” (03/15/10) Link: http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/004003.html Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: TCS Daily Author: Bill Costello Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Within South Korea, the three most prestigious universities are Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University. Collectively, they are referred to by the acronym SKY. Graduating from a SKY university often leads to a prestigious job with a high salary — especially if the graduate is in the field of education. Opinion polls show that South Koreans view teachers as high-status professionals who make greater contributions to society than any other profession. I recently visited the SKY universities to learn why SouthKoreans feel this way.” (03/14/10) Link: http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=031410A Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Intellectual Conservative Author: Alan Caruba Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Despite what you will be told, the Fair Tax will collect the same amount of revenue as the income tax, but it will spread the burden more equitably and transparently. It would literally eliminate any need for the Internal Revenue Service because it is a tax of 23% on what consumers spend ‘instead of an average of 30% of all the money they earn.’” [editor’s note: Actually, it’s a 30% tax, not a 23% tax, and if it’s money you earned and banked before the “Fair” Tax is implemented, you get to pay the 30% sales tax when you spend it, ON TOP of the income tax you paid when you earned it. It’s hard to come up with a worse idea than the income tax, but the “Fair” Taxers somehow managed it - TLK] (03/15/10) Link: http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/03/15/we-want-a-fair-tax/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Cato Institute Author: Alan Reynolds Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “On the March 9 anniversary of the stock market implosion a year ago, a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal featured one of the same bears making the same bad argument he made a year ago. The article, ‘Worries Rebound on Bull’s Birthday,’ was almost entirely devoted to trying to explain a graph by Robert Shiller of Yale, titled ‘Stocks Still Expensive.’ The New York Times ran the same graph on March 15, 2009, to warn us that the ratio of stock prices to earnings ‘hasn’t fallen as far as the market bottoms of 1932 and 1982.’” Link: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11445 Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Sean Scallon Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Raw milk is basically unpasteurized milk. Farm families have drank such milk for years and would sell it to customers through cow-boarding or farm-share arrangements even though the practice was technically illegal. State Ag officials in the past basically looked the other way. That was until now when officials decided to crack down on the practice threatening the livelihood of small farmers like Brunner. This prompted several bills in the legislature to be written and a state taskforce has been set up to look into the issue. Drinking such milk may or may not cause health problems. Some drink it because it ‘does a body good’ to coin a phrase or like the taste. 25 states and many counties in Europe allow such sales. Regardless of why, do they not have the right to drink it if they are aware of potential health risks?, especially if it’s sold by licensed farms on one-to-one basis. Is this not what a free market is about? And yet who stands in opposition? Government bureaucrats and the big farmer, big agribusiness dominated Farm Bureau. One wishes to regulate behavior and the other wishes to regulate out of existence a product that may cut in on their business.” (03/14/10) Link: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/03/14/free-soil-free-men-free-milk/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Ideas Author: David Friedman Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Imagine that you are considering investing in the political marketplace, as candidate, party official or contributor. What party should you invest in? The obvious choice is one of the two majors. Most of the time, one of them is running things and so in a position to provide benefits to its supporters — opportunities to influence policy and legislation, cash, status. There is, however, another option. The more supporters the party in power has, the more thinly the loot will have to be spread; seen from this standpoint, the ideal electoral victory produces a majority of one. Most of the time, one of the major parties is in power and someone who invests in the third party gets little or no return for his time or money. But once in a while …” (03/13/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yajovo6 Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Center for a Stateless Society Author: Thomas L. Knapp Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “‘Smaller government’ movements invariably fail (sometimes in their attempts to seize power, sometimes when they’ve done so and can’t deliver the goods) because they refuse to become what their opponents call them: anti-government. With few if any exceptions, ’smaller government’ movements quickly find themselves plagued with contradictions and reservations, either from the get-go or after hard work by their co-optors to shoehorn those contradictions and reservations into the movement’s rhetoric. Sooner or later, it turns out that they’re for ’smaller government’ … except where they’re for bigger government.” (03/12/10) Link: http://c4ss.org/content/2010 Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: AntiWar.Com Author: Justin Raimondo Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here. That, you’ll recall, was the message pounded home in the early days of the Long War — essentially the same tired old cold war line trotted out by the neocons and revamped for the age of terrorism. If we don’t stop them in Central America, the (Sandinistas, Cubans, Salvadoran rebels) will be in Texas soon enough. As it turned out, the Sandinistas never made it to Baja California, but an alarming development — or perhaps I should say alarmist — seemingly indicates al-Qaeda may have made inroads in the US.” (03/15/10) Link: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/03/14/al-qaeda-in-america/ Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: LewRockwell.Com Author: Michael Boldin Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “While the media generally portrays nullification as being solely aligned with the efforts of the nullifiers of the South and the Civil War, this is certainly false, and reeks of misinformation. Nullification has a long history in the American tradition and has been invoked in support of free speech, in opposition to war and fugitive slave laws, and more.” (03/15/10) Link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/boldin10.1.html Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Liberty For All Author: Melinda Pillsbury-Foster Posted on 03.14.10 by R. Lee Wrights “Karen Emery bought her first 1 oz coin of silver in New Hampshire just last year. The token, which cost $16.00, made an enormous difference in the life of one woman, opening the way for people in the Delaware Valley area of Pennsylvania, to see what it is like to use money which will hold its value. Karen was attending the Free State’s Liberty Forum at the Crown Plaza in Nashua, NH, when she picked up a silver token at an after hours party. It was her birthday, March 5, 2009, and she had been thinking about how good it would be if, as once was the case, money had weight and substance.” (03/14/10) Link: http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=3963 Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Town Hall Author: Paul Jacob Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “In the grand scheme of things — among all the wasteful, foolish, corrupting things engaged in by members of Congress — earmarks are one small item. We read about the latest insider deals in the morning paper, but earmarks certainly don’t capture the intense media attention that congressional groping and tickling do. Nor do earmarks account for much of the gross spending, relatively. In the last fiscal year budget, out of roughly a trillion dollars in discretionary federal spending, only $16 billion was blown via thousands of earmarks. So, why all the fuss? It’s not merely that a little corruption, unchecked, tends to lead to bigger corruption. It is also that a little corruption is still, well … corruption. And corruption of any size, shape or partisan color is wrong. Allowing individual congressmen to personally bestow chunks of federal money to various for-profit businesses or non-profit groups can only corrupt.” (03/14/10) Link: http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulJacob/2010/03/14/deaf_on_earmarks Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: In These Times Author: David Sirota Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “Is the Internet everywhere or is it nowhere? This question will strike many readers as a navel-gazing exercise in post-modern existential inquiry, prompting reflections on the 21st-century meaning of location and space. But thanks to Amazon.com, it’s become a question about more concrete and imminent issues like budget deficits and tax fairness. Following a 70 percent earnings increase last quarter, the company this week terminated its business relationships with its Colorado affiliates. The move was a response to new Colorado legislation compelling online retailers to either collect the sales taxes that every other business collects, or at least disclose that customers must pay the levy to the state themselves. … The company, you see, fears that most capitalist of principles: fair competition. It instead relies on a rigged market.” (03/12/10) Link: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5673/the_tax_war_goes_online/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Sam Pizzigati Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “The Republican Party, critics like to quip, has become the ‘party of no.’ That tag no longer works. The GOP has now become, thanks to a sweeping new legislative proposal from the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, the ‘party of whoa’ (as in, ‘Whoa, they can’t be serious’). Rep. Paul Ryan could hardly be more serious. … In a nutshell: With one in ten Americans jobless and one in eight home mortgages delinquent, Rep. Ryan wants to raise taxes on the middle class and slash them on the rich, shove Social Security retirement savings onto Wall Street, and hand insurance companies even more control over the nation’s healthcare.” (03/14/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yzoe2ss Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Patrik Jonsson Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “Emergence of the grass-roots ‘tea party’ movement as a major force on the American political right is having a quiet but fundamental effect on the Republican tribe: Social conservatives have been voted off the island. … Of course, many say tea-party rhetoric emphasizing a basic constitutional framework is code for a return to Christian values these activists see as enshrined in the Constitution by the Founders — a foundation that would seem to give them much in common with social conservatives. … But among grass-roots tea party leaders, social issues such as abortion, gay rights and marijuana legalization are held at arm’s length in favor of fiscal issues that can appeal to independents, Democrats and, most important, suburban conservatives.” (03/13/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ykhwxdw Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Justin Charity Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “The question of whether transparency in foreign aid poses the same problems or actually yields greater accountability is as important as ever, with money continuing to pour into Haiti after the January earthquake. TAP asked Karin Christiansen, director of Publish What You Fund and former policy manager for the ONE Campaign, about her group’s push for better transparency in foreign-aid spending.” (03/12/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=an_eye_on_aid Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Jeff Jacoby Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “In India each year, it is estimated that as many as a million baby girls are aborted by parents determined not to raise a daughter. Those unborn girls are the victims of a fierce cultural preference for boys — and of modern imaging technology that makes it easy to learn the sex of a baby in the womb. Ultrasound scans started becoming widely available in India in the 1980s; since then, an estimated 10 million female babies have been destroyed during pregnancy. Sex-selection tests are illegal in India. So are sex-selective abortions. But the laws are rarely enforced and easily circumvented. … It isn’t only in India that unborn girls are being killed on such a mass scale.” (03/14/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yfefscu Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: Mike Davis Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “The biggest hole in California, with the exception of the current state budget, is Rio Tinto’s huge open-pit mine at the town of Boron, near Edwards Air Force Base, eighty miles northeast of Los Angeles. Seen from Google Earth, it is easy to imagine that the 700-foot-deep crater was blasted out of the Mojave Desert by an errant asteroid or comet. From the vantage point of Highway 58, however, the landscape is enigmatic: a mile-long rampart of ochre earth and gray mudstone, terminating at what looks like a giant chemical refinery. At night, when a driver’s mind is most prone to legends of the desert, the complex’s intense illumination is startling, even slightly extraterrestrial, like the sinister off-world mining colony in Aliens.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100329/davis Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute Author: Antony P. Mueller Posted on 03.14.10 by R. Lee Wrights “The recent improvement of the global economy, with particularly high economic-growth numbers for the United States, is just one more deception in a long series of deceptions that have plagued policy makers and investors. While official statistics register a rising gross domestic product, the long-term production potential of many economies around the world is actually contracting. The present economic expansion is brought about by massive stimulus policies. This kind of economic expansion does not constitute genuine economic growth.” (03/14/10) Link: http://mises.org/daily/4158 Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: LiberaLaw Author: Gary Chartier Posted on 03.14.10 by R. Lee Wrights “No, as far as I know, I don’t need a gumshoe personally. But I think the anarchist movement does. The most fun and cost-effective exercise in anarchist consciousness-raising I can imagine (at least at this point in the morning, before breakfast) would be the creation of a set of PI novels set in a stateless society.” (03/14/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yae3kq9 Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Heartland Institute Author: Maureen Martin Posted on 03.14.10 by R. Lee Wrights “If politicians are addicted to giving handouts to the American people, it’s because the American people are addicted to receiving them. Just ask Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), who has barely survived furious attacks from Democrats and Republicans for defending fiscal responsibility. This is the fundamental reason government spending is out of control. It won’t be reduced until Americans renounce the handouts, let politicians know they don’t want them, and force politicians to internalize this concept.” (03/12/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y9cpff6 Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Hawaii Reporter Author: Daniel de Gracia, II Posted on 03.14.10 by R. Lee Wrights “Lately it seems like Washington D.C. just can’t go to sleep at night without introducing at least one new policy or bill to make life for Americans more unbearable. As if going to jail for not buying health insurance, declaring carbon dioxide a hazardous poison that must be taxed or the National Intelligence Director announcing that his people reserve the right to perform extra-judicial ‘hits’ on American citizens perceived to be terror threats wasn’t enough, the icing on the cake comes in the form of biometric ID cards as the so-called solution to America’s illegal immigration problem.” (03/12/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ycydou2 Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Future of Freedom Foundation Author: Jacob G. Hornberger Posted on 03.14.10 by R. Lee Wrights “A battle in Texas provides a good example of the socialist central planning that takes place in public (that is, government) schools. All sorts of people are lobbying feverishly before a 15-member state board to try to get their favorite historical, political, and economic perspectives included in the social studies textbooks, which will be used in Texas public schools for the next 10 years. According to an article on FoxNews.com, the issue is of importance to all Americans because ‘90 percent of American textbooks are based on Texas’ curriculum.’” (03/12/10) Link: http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2010-03-12.asp Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Foundation for Economic Education Author: Sheldon Richman Posted on 03.14.10 by R. Lee Wrights
Link: http://tinyurl.com/yleylm3 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Campaign For Liberty Author: Jack Hunter Posted on 03.14.10 by R. Lee Wrights “In a recent commentary, I called 19th century insurrectionist Denmark Vesey a ‘terrorist,’ a term I define as someone who intentionally targets civilians to advance an objective or agenda. Vesey, who planned to murder every white person in Charleston in 1822, certainly fits this description, as does President Harry Truman, who dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. I made this exact same comparison in my column. Liberals cursed my portrayal of Vesey, while thanking me for bringing up Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Conservatives cursed my portrayal of Truman, yet thanked me for my comments on Vesey.” (03/13/10) Link: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=679 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Beat The Chip Author: Jim Harper Posted on 03.14.10 by R. Lee Wrights “Compromise is catnip in Washington, D.C. That’s my best guess at why Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) would endorse New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D) widely reviled plan to create a mandatory biometric national ID system. Schumer’s national ID plans have no more definition today than when he wrote about them in his 2007 campaign manifesto Positively American.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y9eff5o Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Liberty For All Author: Bruce P. Majors Posted on 03.14.10 by R. Lee Wrights “Democrats are widely seen as the pro-gay political party, at least of the two dominant parties, because they have more gay office holders, receive over two thirds of the gay vote, talk about gay issues, and publicly seek gay dollars and endorsements. At the same time, it is President Bill Clinton who enacted the Defense of Marriage Act and the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policies.” (03/13/10) Link: http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=3961 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Dallas Libertarian Examiner Author: Garry Reed Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Mavis B. Knight, a Dallas Democrat, tried to require that students study the reasons why ‘the founding fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring the government from promoting or disfavoring any particular religion above all others.’ When her amendment failed she complained, ‘The social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.’ As opposed, say, to social liberals perverting accurate history to fulfill their own agenda? Meanwhile, Republican board members adopted an amendment ‘presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.’ But what are those ‘Republican political philosophies?’” (03/14/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ya4gkr5 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Under Penalty of Catapult Author: Skip Oliva Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “A key source of intra-libertarian factionalism is how to view ‘big business’ and regulation. Ayn Rand, the standard-bearer of the libertarian right, famously proclaimed that policies such as antitrust rendered big business a ‘persecuted minority.’ Knapp and the libertarian left disagree with that assertion; they say government is the primary cause of ‘big business,’ and that removing the state’s infrastructure would produce a radically different free market. What strikes me, though, is how close Knapp’s description of ‘bourgeois libertarians’ matches the views of most antitrust regulators.” (03/14/10) Link: http://www.underpenaltyofcatapult.com/?p=53 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The New London Day Author: Marc Guttman Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “People are again complaining about partisanship in Washington D.C., believing it to be self-serving and to cause undesirable legislative gridlock. Recently, President Barack Obama was praised for “courageously” speaking ‘across the aisle’ to a meeting of Republicans. Well, to many of us, this is all mostly theater and it is rather the overwhelming bipartisanship that is our problem. It’s the policies these players agree on and implement that are harming individuals and communities here and abroad.” (03/14/10) Link: http://www.theday.com/article/20100314/OP05/303149996 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Daily Speculations Author: Victor Niederhoffer Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The recent moves by central banks over the world to spend and add trillions of dollars to their balance sheet leads one to revisit the great coup when an investment firm speculated that the British pound was too high, took a short position against the pound, and was so powerful and correct that the central bank succumbed and devalued thereby leading to a 10 figure profit for the investment firm. I knew and spent considerable time in both business and personal activities with the head of that investment firm before he severed his connection with me, and thought that it might be apt to reconsider what I should have learned from him so that I and others might learn from his wisdom for the future.” (03/14/10) Link: http://www.dailyspeculations.com/wordpress/?p=4524 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Albuquerque Libertarian Examiner Author: Kent McManigal Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “As much as I value individual liberty, and probably to a large extent because I value individual liberty, I must admit I enjoy seeing governments fighting one another. I just try to stay out of the way and not get caught in the crossfire. This is why I support the ’state sovereignty’ and secession movements, at least in spirit. Even though I owe a ’state’ no more loyalty than I owe a ‘nation’ (none at all), it amuses me to think of the two governments posturing and fighting.” (03/14/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ydnk4rr Filed under: RRND Commentary and RRND Symposia | |
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Source: Economic Policy Journal Author: Robert Wenzel Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “In fiction, billionaires are larger than life characters, lighting cigars with burning $100 notes and bathing in solid gold bathtubs. But fact is rarely as colourful as fiction, and the Mexican man who last week replaced the nerdy, smaller than life Microsoft founder Bill Gates as the wealthiest man in the world sadly does not drink margaritas made with gold leaf or fire platinum pistols in the air to celebrate a good day at the market. Telecoms mogul Carlos Slim, with an estimated wealth of $53.5 billion, crunches numbers in a tattered notebook and wears cheap ties from his own department stores. Until recently few people outside Mexico had heard of the self-made billionaire who likes to boast that he doesn’t own a computer.” (03/13/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ylgjb5a Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Center for a Stateless Society Author: Kevin Carson Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Under marginalist economics, any production input with a price has ‘marginal productivity’ equal to what it adds to the final price of the good. So under that orthodox paradigm, the toll-gate owners would have ‘marginal productivity’ equal to whatever cost the toll added to total production costs and prices, and economists would be stroking their beards and intoning learnedly about the ’service’ the toll collectors perform in not impeding traffic on the roads. And of course, GDP would increase by the amount of the tolls. In other words, anything anyone can do to make it more costly to produce anything, to increase the amount of money you have to pay to receive a given good or service, or in general to increase the cost of living our daily lives, will show up as an increase in the GDP.” (03/12/10) Link: http://c4ss.org/content/2023 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Ayn R. Key Author: Ayn R. Key Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “In the blog entry The TSA Wants you Dead, strong accusations were made against the TSA based upon this blog entry at the TSA blog. The accusations were quite harsh, and quickly picked up on by critics of the TSA in the comments section of that entry of the TSA blog as well as on the Flyer Talk Forums Travel Safety and Security forum. The general harshness of the response has prompted a rapid response by the TSA. The argument made by the TSA is that the dosage of X-Ray in an X-Ray backscatter is so low that it is safe. This ignores a couple of scientific facts: first, no level of ionizing radiation is actually safe, merely that some doses are safer than others, and also that ionizing radiation is cumulative so even safe doses contribute to a lifetime unsafe level.” (03/13/10) Link: http://aynrkey.blogspot.com/2010/03/and-tsa-actually-reponds.html Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Adam Smith Institute Author: Tim Worstall Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “While the definitions of some crimes may have changed over time, or be either way crimes, murder is murder so that’s the gold standard to look at. Changes in the murder rate will therefore be the best guide to whether crime is increasing or not. This isn’t, I sorry to have to say, entirely true. Yes, we can indeed measure murder rather better than we can all other crimes. But we’re still missing something. That is that medical treatment of trauma victims has got a great deal better over the decades: people attacked who would have died in earlier times (ie, would have been murdered) now survive (and are thus not murdered). So by counting only the number of people successfully murdered we’re confusing two entirely different things.” (03/14/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ykv33eb Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Freedom's Phoenix Author: Doug Hornig Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “It’s now been a year since the dark days of early March 2009, when, although no one knew it at the time, the stock market hit rock bottom. From there, all of the indexes went on a tear through the rest of the year, moving almost uninterruptedly higher before easing slightly in the first two months of 2010. At this writing (March 5), the Dow is still up 60%, the S&P 500 68%, and the NASDAQ 83%. Virtually no one was calling for this kind of rally a year ago. But it happened. So investors are either seeing the ‘green shoots’ supposedly sprouting from the moribund economy or believe that they’re about to break ground any day now. That sentiment is continually reinforced by government officials and media talking heads who almost universally proclaim that ‘the worst is past,’ ‘we’re back from the brink,’ or other words to that effect. It’s often said that stock market action is a leading indicator, reflecting what investors think the economy will be like six or nine months down the road. Are they right? Will good times soon be here again? Or is this just a big dead-cat bounce?” (03/12/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yj6oods Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Tibor's Space Author: Tibor R. Machan Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “It may be pretty early in America’s experiment with a reasonably free country, given that throughout human history in most regions of the globe governments have run nearly everything, extorting the funds needed for this from citizens (subjects!) who have only very limited powers to give them direction. It would seem, however, that part of that experiment should by now extend to education, just as it is so clearly manifest in the publishing sphere. Here is a part of culture that addresses the human mind and if there is anywhere that government ought to have zero influence it is precisely here.” (03/13/10) Link: http://tibikem.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!B2FD693F4B9A5746!1915.entry Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Human Events Author: Valerie Richardson Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Colorado Democrats predicted that revoking what they described as the Internet sales-tax exemption would bring an additional $5 million to the state’s depleted coffers. Instead, it appears the Democrat-controlled legislature has killed an entire industry at the cost of as many as 10,000 jobs. Almost immediately after Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter signed the legislation, Amazon struck back. The company sent out emails to its associates informing them that it would cease its affiliate program in Colorado. That means Colorado website operators can no longer earn income by referring customers to Amazon through links and advertising on their sites.” (03/12/10) Link: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35993 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The Weekly Standard Author: James C. Capretta and Yuval Levin Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Beyond taxes and spending, Obama-care would also wreak havoc on the labor market. Because employers would get penalized if any of their low- and moderate-wage workers ended up in the new subsidized insurance pool, they would avoid hiring such workers. Democrats claim they want to jam through health care reform so they can turn their attention to jobs, but the bill provides a strong disincentive for businesses to hire those who need jobs the most.” (for publication 03/22/10) Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/anti-jobs-bill Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Libertarian News Examiner Author: Garry Reed Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “‘Pizza and ice cream makes a winning team’ go singer-songwriter-comic Fred Stein’s lyrics in ‘At the Mall,’ just as powerhouse freedom philosophers made a winning team in Stein’s intellectual development.” (03/13/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y9lggc8 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Mother Jones Author: Corbin Hiar Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “By sending UBS informant Bradley Birkenfeld to prison, did the Obama Justice Department discourage more financial insiders from exposing malfeasance?” [editor’s note: Helping people hide their stuff from thieves is not “malfeasance” - TLK] (03/12/10) Link: http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/ubs-whistleblowers-tax-haven Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: J. Neil Schulman @ Rational Review Author: J. Neil Schulman Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “There is nothing innocent about any public service — even the public library … not when being late returning a DVD borrowed from the library turns a speeding ticket into being handcuffed and taken to jail. Rip up your library card. Netflix may cost more but it’s a whole lot safer.” (03/13/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yaqvy95 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Independent Institute Author: Emily C. Schaeffer Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Considering the massive recalls by Toyota for problem accelerators, whom should consumers trust to protect them from unsafe products — government or the free market? If you answered government, you’re probably in the majority. You’re also incorrect. The market does a much better job. And even massive product recalls should be seen not as examples of market failure, but as signs that markets work as they should.” (03/08/10) Link: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2747 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Reason Author: Shikha Dalmia Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Even if Democrats extract the votes to put ObamaCare over the top, it will at best be a Pyrrhic victory for them. Regardless of the outcome, this monstrosity might cost the Democrats the Congress this November, ruin the party for a long time, and prematurely render Barack Obama a lame duck president for the rest of his term. So why didn’t the Democrats pull back when they still had the chance? The reason is that both the Democratic Party and President Obama have mutually reinforcing blind spots that have rendered them incapable of seeing what’s crystal clear to every other sentient being in the country: This was the wrong bill at the wrong time.” (03/12/10) Link: http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/12/obamacare-the-coming-president Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Austin Bramwell Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “That sprawl opponents want to restrict development is well-known; less well-known is that existing laws make it impossible to develop anything but sprawl. To save cognitive resources, libertarians rationally overestimate the importance of available information (being anti-sprawl means being anti-development!) at the expense of information that takes time and effort to gather (being anti-sprawl also means being anti-central planning). This doesn’t excuse John Stossel, who presumably had time to research his vindication of sprawl before broadcasting it, but it does explain why others make similar mistakes. Indeed, the availability heuristic explains why both libertarians and their opponents so often assume that the free market causes sprawl.” (03/12/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y95cmcm Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: J. Neil Schulman @ Rational Review Author: J. Neil Schulman Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Nowadays it’s not only socially acceptable, but socially encouraged, to be intolerant of people who engage in activities which are generally regarded as anti-social. Right-thinking people, often thinking themselves tolerant, would pour a glass of water on someone’s cigarette if he lit up in a restaurant, and would likely be applauded by other people who think themselves tolerant. There is equally little tolerance for the man or woman who wears an animal’s fur as a coat but, practically speaking, there seems to be more tolerance for people who wear animal skins tanned into leather. Maybe the reason is that if you splash red paint on some ‘rich bitch’s’ fur coat you might get sued, but if you splash red paint on a biker chick’s leather jacket, you’ll be talking to your lawyer from a hospital burn ward. But if there is one class of people whom almost everyone seems to agree it’s okay to be nasty to, it’s the person who gets in your face and wants to give you a message.” (originally published 1996; posted 03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yc5vnrx Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: KN@PPSTER Author: Thomas L. Knapp Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Bourgeois libertarianism is a failure not of theory or of ideology, but of imagination: Bourgeois libertarians simply can’t get their heads around the idea that a real free market or a real free society might produce outcomes or phenomena that they aren’t already familiar and comfortable with. The bourgeois libertarian’s Libertopia is the same house he lives in now, on the same suburban street that house is on now, with the same brands of clothing in the closet and the same shows on TV (minus Keith Olbermann, perhaps). … the bourgeois libertarian reacts negatively and viscerally to the suggestion that Libertopia may not turn out as a carbon copy of the present-day Peoria metro, only with private label police cruisers.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yahl2jd Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: LewRockwell.Com Author: William Norman Grigg Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “‘If I’m the bad guy to the average citizen … and their taxes have to go up to cover my raise, I’m very sorry about that, but I have to look out for myself and my membership,’ grunted Chris Mesley, president of the Albany, New York Police Officer’s Union. ‘As the president of the `local,’ I will not accept `zeroes’ [no increase in salaries or benefits]. If that means … ticking off some taxpayers, then so be it.’ It would be difficult to find a more candid expression of the parasite class’s predatory contempt for the productive than the words that departed Mesley’s snout. The police union capo will occasionally remove that appendage from the public trough just long enough to spew demands for an ever-larger share of the wealth produced through the honest labor of others, or to justify some corrupt privilege he claims as a ‘cog in the mighty machine of state.’ In all of this he is entirely typical of the army of public employees pillaging what little remains of America’s wealth.” (03/12/10) Link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w135.html Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Liberty For All Author: Donald Beezley Posted on 03.11.10 by R. Lee Wrights “Economics is actually very simple. Human beings, by their nature, must be free to take action to achieve their goals. We don’t have fur, claws and instincts like lower animals. We must apply our minds to goal-directed action to satisfy our needs. Freedom works because it is consistent with our nature — our requirement to be free to take action to survive and flourish. Political liberty, in turn, is designed to protect that requirement.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=3926 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: AntiWar.Com Author: Justin Raimondo Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The virulent anti-Americanism of the Israeli government, underscored by its recent very loud slap in the face of the Vice President of the United States, is nothing new. Yet many are shocked — shocked! — at Israel’s behavior. The official spin out of Tel Aviv is that the announcement of more settlement-building — at the very moment when Biden was pleading with his good friend ‘Bibi’ to cease and desist — is all due to a single minister in a very fractious cabinet: yet Netanyahu and indeed the entire Israeli government supports this move to throw more Palestinians off their land and build exclusively Jewish settlements. What gives this public rebuff a particularly sharp sting is that it subverts the very idea of the ’special relationship,’ which Biden cravenly insisted on even as he was being humiliated …” (03/12/10) Link: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/03/11/biden-in-israel/ Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox News Forum Author: Kelly Shackelford Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “Everyone’s heard the advertisement that claims, ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.’ While that’s questionable, one thing that is not questionable is that what happens in the Texas education battle will not just stay in Texas. What your kids learn about historical figures like Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein most likely depends on what happens in Texas in the next two days. Texas is in the process of adopting its social studies standards, which only happens every ten years. The standards cover U.S. Government, American History, World History and more, and they affect how students in grades K–12 see America, its founding principles, and its heroes for the next decade. … [W]hat happens in Texas will impact the nation.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ylqxngs Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Richard L. Scott Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “Which is better in war? Wipe out a nation completely and start fresh? Merely disarm the enemy through aggressive tactics? Or subdue through nonaggressive means altogether? Philosophers from Niccolo Machiavelli to Carl von Clausewitz to Sun Tzu have been debating the most effective means to approach warfare for centuries. Today, the United States has been actively fighting two wars with high casualty rates for both sides. It would be valuable for the commander in chief and senior military leaders to consider the merits of a nonlethal approach to warfare.” [editor’s note: It would be far more valuable if societies were to stop starting wars in the first place, but as long as the thirst for empire and “We’re Number One” continues, it’s unlikely to occur - SAT] (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yb6haas Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: Tom Hayden Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “A plain reading of yesterday’s vote on the Kucinich war powers resolution is that an overwhelming majority of the House has authorized the Afghanistan war, including a majority of Democrats. The war now has greater legitimacy. The vote was 356-65-9. (If Rep. John Conyers had been present, the dissenting bloc would have been 66, including just five Republicans. Few members took the option of abstaining.) Strong Kucinich supporters will feel vindicated that their hero took a lonely stand and forced the House to a moment of choice. Critics will note that a dubious war has been legitimized, and that it will be more complicated for those who voted ‘aye’ to reverse course in the months ahead. The outcome will make the anti-war forces appear weaker for now than they are, and appearances do matter.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/hayden2 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Adam Serwer Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “The sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine is a national disgrace. Both President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have called for it to be ended, and prominent Republicans like Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn have indicated they’re sympathetic to the idea. Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider the Fair Sentencing Act, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin’s proposal to eliminate the disparity entirely. ‘It is plainly unjust to hand down wildly disparate prison sentences for materially similar crimes,’ Holder said at a D.C. Court of Appeals Judicial Conference last summer. … Under current federal law, it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to trigger the same mandatory minimum sentence as 5 grams of crack cocaine.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y8vjc75 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Sabin Willett Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “Last week in Washington, right-wingers rallied to a demand by Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley for the names of Justice Department attorneys who used to be with law firms representing Guantanamo detainees. Elizabeth Cheney’s Keep America Safe group released on YouTube a video denouncing the ‘Department of Jihad.’ Breathless announcers at Fox TV began publishing the names. The right has long asserted that the Obama administration is coddling detainees. Now they had an explanation. Lawyers were the enemy within. … So last week’s news was confusing. The much-maligned Justice Department lawyers are working against lawyers like me, Senator Grassley. If they are your enemy, they sure conceal it well.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yjbbwre Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Idious Buguise Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “Back then. way before all this bloodshed and carnage and butchery. When there were no sirens and riots and bombs, and the lipsticked, powdered, mascaraed and coiffed women sauntered down pavements on bright red stilettos and the men came up to me, grabbed my elbow and demanded to escort me across busy intersections, I wandered the avenues and alleys and cul de sacs and shopped in the souk and ate late cream- and sugar-heavy breakfasts with the civil servants in brightly lit, music-booming cafes and sat by the Tigris and watched young Iraqis flying kites and old Iraqis reading newspapers and discussing the local and national politics and listened to the ‘English TV News for Foreigners.’ Back then. Way before rape and kidnap and sniping were commonplace. Back in 1977 and the world was full of disco and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Amnesty International won the Nobel Peace Prize and Jimmy Carter pardoned draft evaders and Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem. It was different.” (03/10/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ybt6tcr Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Cato Institute Author: Michael D. Tanner Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “President Obama’s attempts to ram health-care reform through an increasingly reluctant Congress are starting to resemble a really eventful episode of ‘The Sopranos.’ Whether or not you believe former Rep. Eric Massa’s bizarre accusations of locker-room confrontations and conspiracies to drive him from office, there is no doubt that the Obama administration and its congressional allies are willing to use every trick in the book to get this bill passed.” (03/10/10) Link: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11436 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Independent Institute Author: Ivan Eland Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “President Obama has been so chastened by his failure to meet the pledge of closing Guantanamo prison within a year that Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, is trying to negotiate with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to gain Republican support for doing so. In exchange, Graham wants Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged 9/11 attackers tried using a military tribunal instead of a civilian court and also wants unconstitutional legislation allowing the indefinite detainment of terrorism suspects without trial. Closing Gitmo is designed to revive a tarnished U.S. image abroad rather than being a substantive change in policy, and it now apparently may come at the expense of using unconstitutional and discredited means of holding and trying terrorism suspects.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2748 Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Reason Author: staff Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The ongoing recession has raised a troubling question for otherwise resurgent Keynesian economists: How can the American economy keep getting worse under the intensive care of an interventionist economic team almost universally praised for its brilliance? The answer may be that the Obama administration is dealing with a fictional economy, one that bears little resemblance to the economy the rest of us inhabit. And when the difference between fact and fiction becomes too apparent, they just make stuff up. Herewith, five big lies the administration loves to tell and the mainstream media (with some notable exceptions) love to repeat …” (for publication 04/10) Link: http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/11/five-lies-about-the-american-e Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Sean Scallon Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “It’s not surprising that only 65 members of the House of Representatives voted for a resolution that would have called for the end of the war in Afghanistan. Certainly the Democrats in charge were not going to approve a resolution that would have repudiated their own President’s foreign policy so recently after our ‘glorious victory’ in Marjah. What is surprising is so few Republicans voted for the resolution. Only five were willing do so: Ron Paul, Jimmy Duncan, Walter Jones Jr., the most consistent of the antiwar Republicans, along with John Campbell of California and Tim Johnson of Illinois.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/03/11/you-vote-for-it-you-own-it/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Disloyal Opposition Author: JD Tuccille Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Fundamentally, the argument for mandatory treatment comes down to two fundamentals: all drug use is abuse, and drugs make people do bad things they wouldn’t otherwise do. But not all use is abusive — in fact, most drug use is not. And an asshole who does bad things and takes drugs is, at the end of the day, just an asshole. Forgetting those points creates an invitation to the government to intervene in our lives if we simply engage in behavior that rubs officialdom the wrong way — and it also allows the powers-that-be to let real criminals off easy for their bad decisions.” (03/10/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y9qglse Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Mother Jones Author: Matthew Power Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Anticipating hordes of black-masked, Starbucks-smashing anarchists, the Pittsburgh police and the Secret Service coordinated nearly 4,000 law enforcement officers, outfitting them with the latest in riot-dispersal technology. Crowds marching on the summit were met with pepper spray, stun grenades, and — for the first time on US soil — acoustic cannons that blast painful sounds as far as 1,000 feet. But the protesters had their own crowd-control methods, and that’s what had brought the state troopers to the CareFree Inn. What they found when they broke down the door were a couple of middle-aged housemates from Queens, New York. Elliott Madison sat at a desk with a laptop and a cell phone. A police scanner lay nearby. Michael Wallschlaeger was at the minifridge grabbing some hummus when the police rushed in. According to the criminal complaint filed against them, the two men had been ‘communicating with various protestors, and protest groups … [via] internet based communications, more commonly known as ‘Twitter.’” (03/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yd8womf Filed under: LAND Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Weekly Standard Author: Matthew Continetti Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Paul Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future would drastically overhaul the American welfare state in a free-market direction. The Congressional Budget Office says it would solve the entitlements crisis through a series of changes to Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. The Roadmap also includes a fundamental tax reform — one that Ryan says, and the CBO assumes, would bring in revenues equivalent to the long-term historical average of 19-percent of GDP. Two new studies dispute that figure, however. I talked to Ryan this evening to get his response.” (03/10/10) Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/paul-ryan-roadmap-warrior Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Slate Author: Timothy Noah Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “As currently devised, the individual mandate, which would be phased in between 2014 and 2016, would impose a tax penalty on people who fail to acquire health insurance. Under the Obama proposal, it would be 2.5 percent of income or $695 (whichever is higher), with exemptions for people who either fall under the tax-filing threshold or who, if forced to purchase health insurance, would end up spending more than 8 percent of their annual income. The majority of those subject to the mandate would receive a government subsidy whose precise size is being worked out in House-Senate negotiations. The answer, then, to the question What happens to people who don’t buy health insurance? is simple: They have to pay a $695 fine. But as Jost points out, that begs the question, What happens to people who don’t pay the fine? Uh … nothing.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2247580/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute Author: Jonathan M. Finegold Catalan Posted on 03.11.10 by R. Lee Wrights “I was recently involved in a car accident in which I managed to smash the front end of my Chrysler — one consolation is the fact that it was a Chrysler and so was not much of a loss. I sat around for a minute or two, trying to figure out what had just happened. Finally, I got out of my car to talk to the driver of the truck I had hit. While filling out the claims report and talking to my insurance company, I could not help but examine my experience through the lens of Austrian economics and the free market.” (03/11/10) Link: http://mises.org/daily/4165 Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Heartland Institute Author: Maureen Martin Posted on 03.11.10 by R. Lee Wrights “President Barack Obama has larded $50 million into his latest iteration of a health care bill, for grants to the states so they can ’study’ innovative ways of controlling medical malpractice costs. Please spare us. Malpractice reform has been studied to death over the past three decades and more. All 50 states have already enacted reform measures of one kind or another. The last thing we need is more study, more meddling by the federal government in state affairs, and more unnecessary federal spending.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yhshpha Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Hawaii Reporter Author: Christopher G. Adamo Posted on 03.11.10 by R. Lee Wrights “Among the many absurdities proffered by Barack Obama sycophants in the media and throughout the liberal establishment is the notion that Obama possesses great leadership qualities. Throughout his public life he has consistently proven himself to be the antithesis of leadership. And ever since the ‘healthcare’ debate reached its present impasse, he has resorted to the manner of pettiness and bullying that would embarrass any truly great leader of the people.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yhn2moq Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Future of Freedom Foundation Author: Jacob G. Hornberger Posted on 03.11.10 by R. Lee Wrights “In that one paragraph lies the plunderbund society in all it majestic glory. Everyone is supposed to feel morally obligated to answer all those intrusive questions in order to ensure that his community receives its fair share of the loot forcibly collected by the Internal Revenue Service during the course of the year, but especially on April 15. You see, all that IRS-collected money goes into a gigantic pool that the president and Congress then have at their disposal to distribute to people.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2010-03-11.asp Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: FreedomWorks Author: BPeck Posted on 03.11.10 by R. Lee Wrights “Democrats such as House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd have continued to press for what they consider to be necessary financial reform. Considering the track records of government officials who have overseen private industries (i.e., Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd, and former SEC Chairman Christopher Cox’s role in the 2008 meltdown of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Charlie Rangel’s corrupt House Ways and Means chairmanship, and the near insolvency of direct programs such as Social Security and Medicare) it makes me wonder why exactly we would need more government regulation in the credit markets.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ygv5qco Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Foundation for Economic Education Author: Steven Horwitz Posted on 03.11.10 by R. Lee Wrights “A recurring economic theme of President Obama’s election campaign and presidency has been that previous administrations neglected fundamental structural problems that need to be addressed if we are to continue at our accustomed standard of living in the 21st century. This view was nicely encapsulated in his original budget proposal, which emphasized education, health care, and the environment, especially the ‘green jobs’ concept.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yaaqcsc Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Competitive Enterprise Institute Author: John Berlau and Jonathan Moore Posted on 03.11.10 by R. Lee Wrights “The flash point of last year’s health care debate was the public option. The proposal, which calls for a government-created health insurer to compete with private insurers, was praised by President Barack Obama and its liberal supporters as a way of ‘keeping insurance companies honest.’ Conservatives criticized it as a slippery slope to a government-run single-payer system.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ykhteyy Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Campaign For Liberty Author: US Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) Posted on 03.11.10 by R. Lee Wrights “Since my 2008 campaign for the presidency I have often been asked, ‘How would a constitutionalist president go about dismantling the welfare-warfare state and restoring a constitutional republic?’ This is a very important question, because without a clear road map and set of priorities, such a president runs the risk of having his pro-freedom agenda stymied by the various vested interests that benefit from big government.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=685 Filed under: RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Adam Smith Institute Author: Nikhil Arora Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The American healthcare system does not represent a free market any more than the British one does, or the Cuban one for that matter. Firstly, out of every dollar spent on healthcare in the USA, 50 cents is spent by the government — The US government spends more on Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP than is spent on defence by The Pentagon. Secondly, despite the government using the ‘commerce clause’ of the U.S Constitution to legitimise just about every reprehensible thing it does, it still hasn’t managed to use it for its proper purpose of breaking down barriers to trade — like those that forbid the selling of health insurance across state lines. Thirdly, enterprising people who have tried to set up small, cheap clinics aimed particularly at the uninsured have found themselves the targets of massive bureaucratic red tape, and been forced to close.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ycgnb5f Filed under: RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The American Spectator Author: David N. Bass Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Tea partiers gunning for a thorough congressional purge still have reason to hope — if not for mandatory term limits, at least the voluntary brand. Prompted by the wave of anti-establishment sentiment sweeping the nation, candidates are increasingly following in the footsteps of George Washington by self-limiting their tenure in office. Bonded term limits are an innovative way of doing that. The Alliance for Bonded Term Limits, a national nonpartisan group based in North Carolina, is spearheading the effort. It encourages candidates vying for elected office to put their money where their mouth is by promising to stay in office a maximum of three terms or forfeit a hefty chunk of their net worth. Five congressional candidates, all Republicans, have signed the pledge, and others are in the pipeline.” (03/11/10) Link: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/11/us-house-cleaning Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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