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Update, 03/16/10: Thanks to contributors DD, DM, DJ, RD and HH, who took us from 0 to $260 on the first day of the two-week “spring fling” fundraiser. That’s more than a quarter of the way to our goal in one day! Please join them, and our valued “subscribing contributors,” in supporting the freedom movement’s daily newspaper - TLK We’ve been avoiding the “in your face” fundraising for awhile (since early last fall, in fact) but it’s time for a bump. For the last few months, our part-time editors have been taking home less than $100 a month; I’ve been working nearly full time for less than $200 a month. I’ll keep this short, sharp and sweet: Our goal is $1,000 in two weeks — that’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20 cents per reader — after which we’ll revert to the more passive fundraising approach again. Please return value for value to the people who bring you the freedom movement’s daily newspaper. Yours in liberty, | | Report Bad Link |
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“Thailand’s red-shirted protesters have begun donating blood to throw at government offices in a ritual curse of a leadership they say is illegitimate. The protests enter a third day in a still jovial but determined mood. Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Monday rejected a demand from protesters to quit and call elections. The standoff is the latest in a deep political schism in the country which pre-dates the 2006 military coup which deposed Thaksin Shinawatra.” (03/16/10) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8569483.stm | | Report Bad Link |
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‘The United States and other top world economies need to make potentially painful government spending cuts or risk losing the high-grade credit ratings that have kept borrowing affordable, the Moody’s rating agency said Monday. Outlining the dilemma faced by policymakers in the United States, Great Britain, Germany and France, Moody’s said that debt levels in the four large credit-worthy economies had reached the point at which they are at risk of being downgraded — a step that would drive up interest rates, increase borrowing costs and mark a turn in perceptions about the world economy.” (03/16/10) http://tinyurl.com/ygb93bx | | Report Bad Link |
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“Attacks in Sunni areas of Iraq and in Mosul overshadowed election news. At least 16 Iraqis were killed and 43 more were wounded across the country. Meanwhile, the U.S. prison in Taji and its 2,900 Iraqi detainees were handed over to Iraqi authorities. Also, a Shi’ite group that held a British hostage for over two years denied any claims of abuse.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/y9b8om8 | | Report Bad Link |
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“Taxpayers are footing the bill of $14.7 billion for 10 years of Census counting. That price tag supports 500 local offices and a peak staff of 1.4 million workers. But some cost overruns have already plagued this Census, like when tens of thousands of workers fanned out between March and July of last year to verify addresses — a process known as ‘address canvassing.’ The Census Bureau, federal auditors later found, ran 25 percent over budget for a total cost of $444 million.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/ylf5b5p | | Report Bad Link |
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“In the current wave of failures of federally insured banks, none occurred in New York City until late last week, when two small Manhattan financial institutions went under, with each collapse notable in its own way. The chief executive of Park Avenue Bank, which was seized by regulators Friday, was arrested Monday, charged with embezzlement, bribery and fraud, including lying in an application for the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. … the other New York bank that failed, LibertyPointe Bank, was seized Thursday. Because most of LibertyPointe’s employees, like its customers, were Orthodox Jews, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took action late Thursday to avoid doing so during the Jewish Sabbath, which begins at sundown Friday.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/ybcmb8z | | Report Bad Link |
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“Twin car bombs have exploded near the governor’s office in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger delta region, in the middle of amnesty talks with fighters. A police source said one person was killed in the blasts, which took place on Monday in the city of Warri in Delta state. The explosions occurred after the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) emailed a statement saying it had planted three bombs.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/yjs3r5x | | Report Bad Link |
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“French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s center-right party emerged badly battered after regional elections on Sunday, Interior Ministry figures showed Monday. Sarkozy’s UMP party took just over a quarter of the vote, putting it in second place behind the Socialist Party, which took 29 percent. Three leftist parties combined — the Socialists, Europe Ecology and Left Front — took just over 47 percent of the vote. The far-right National Front took 11.5 percent, and the centrist MODEM party trailed in last with just over 4 percent.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/ycktsn2 | | Report Bad Link |
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“The leader of a criminal organization who targeted casinos with card cheating schemes across the country was sentenced Monday to 70 months in prison. Phuong Quoc Truong was sentenced in San Diego for his role in a scheme by the ‘Tran Organization’ to cheat casinos across the United States, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. Truong admitted that he and his co-conspirators stole as much as $7 million during card cheats at as many as 27 casinos across the country, including Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun casinos.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/yd7cqz6 | | Report Bad Link |
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“Voters protesting rising utility bills and transportation costs gave opposition parties a boost in Russia’s regional elections, weakening the ruling United Russia party’s legislative majorities and electing a Communist-backed candidate mayor of the Siberian city of Irkutsk, complete returns showed Monday. Sunday’s vote was a measure of how the global financial crisis, which ended a decade of rapid economic growth, has eroded support for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party.” (03/16/10) http://tinyurl.com/ye5qhso | | Report Bad Link |
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“Dozens of people have been arrested across Europe in a major crackdown on Eastern European mafias. At least 24 were detained in Spain and another 45 were arrested in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Italy. The suspects were said to be members of Georgian and Russian crime gangs. All are accused of drugs and arms trafficking, money laundering, extortion and conspiracy to murder.” (03/16/10) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7062634.ece | | Report Bad Link |
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“Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan is restarting her campaign against wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today, setting up tents and teaching protest seminars near the Washington Monument. Dubbed ‘Camp OUT NOW,’ the protest is geared to pressure President Obama and Democrats, whom Sheehan says have abandoned the anti-war cause now that they have control of the White House and Congress. ‘Obama said there’d be one combat battalion coming home per month, and that has not happened,’ Sheehan says. ‘We still have significant troops in Iraq, and he’s ramped up in Afghanistan. I don’t think this is what people understood they were voting for. I think they were voting for a change.’” [editor’s note: It’ll be fascinating to watch the Obamaphile progressives dance around this one - SAT] (03/15/10) http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-03-14-cindy-sheehan_N.htm | | Report Bad Link |
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“When John Roberts’ niece graduates in May from Butler University this May, the Supreme Court chief justice may attend as a relative — but he has been deemed too controversial to take the stage as commencement speaker. University faculty members scuttled a student-led drive to invite Roberts to speak at the May 8 ceremony, a decision that has disappointed the students and some conservatives on the Indianapolis campus. ‘We try to steer clear of political divides if possible,’ Butler Faculty Senate President Jeanne VanTyle told the Indianapolis Star. VanTyle says the school has made only two exceptions to its no-politicians rule in three decades: once for Democrat Evan Bayh when he was governor and last year for Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels.” (03/15/10) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,589372,00.html | | Report Bad Link |
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“Hingham boasts million-dollar estates along its scenic shoreline, stately antique houses on Main Street, and boutique shops around the town square. The median household income is nearly $113,000 a year, well above the state and national average, while unemployment is well below the statewide rate. Yet Massachusetts has long classified Hingham as ‘economically distressed.’ And Hingham is not the only unlikely-seeming hard luck case. … Though lawmakers originally created the Economic Development Incentive Program in 1993 to nudge businesses to invest in decaying cities and other areas scarred by poverty and unemployment, such as Fall River and Lawrence, the state has, over time, expanded the program to include almost any municipality that applies.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/yhnzmr7 | | Report Bad Link |
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“A northern California man arrested after park rangers allegedly spotted him waving a handgun at a national monument near the Oregon border is expected to face more charges for threatening to kill federal agents and their families, authorities said. Micha Godfrey was arrested Thursday after park rangers at Lava Beds National Monument saw him acting suspiciously and found that the convicted felon was carrying a revolver and wearing a bulletproof vest. Godfrey, 37, was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. … He had already been under investigation for threatening to kill Drug Enforcement Agency agents and their families, and authorities on Friday seized thousands of rounds of ammunition from his home in Tule Lake, which is about 10 miles from the national monument.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/yzlcewh | | Report Bad Link |
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“In an ambitious bid to make high-speed Internet service faster, cheaper, and more widely available, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will unveil a ‘national broadband plan’ Tuesday that outlines a decade-long course to bring more Americans online. The plan that was mandated by Congress is not only an effort to increase the availability of fast Internet and boost speeds to 100 megabits per second (Mbps), about 20 times faster than the current average, but also to put the US on equal footing with nations where broadband adoption is much higher. But the broadband plan is already raising hackles among large telecoms, many of whom view it as a first step toward government regulation of the Internet.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/yfcva3b | | Report Bad Link |
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“In North Dakota, where insurers can cover abortions if customers pay a separate premium, the state’s largest provider says it sells no abortion policies because no one has asked to buy one. Amid a high-stakes debate over abortion that could determine the fate of President Obama’s healthcare initiative, North Dakota’s law offers a test because it is much like the language favored by antiabortion lawmakers on Capitol Hill, notably Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan. … Similar policies are in place in Kentucky, Missouri, Idaho, and Oklahoma.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/yzq2f9c | | Report Bad Link |
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“Former Arizona congressman JD Hayworth is taking some heat after a comment he made about gay marriage on a Florida radio show. Hayworth is challending Senator John McCain is the Republican Senate primary. During a radio interview in Florida, he said the gay marriage law in Massachusetts is so vague, it could open the door to people marrying horses.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/ycgzvmf | | Report Bad Link |
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“Dozens of officials from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and other U.S. agencies joined an investigation Monday into the killings of three people tied to the U.S. Consulate in the Mexican city of Juarez, scrambling to determine whether the slayings marked an escalation in the region’s drug war or were simply cases of mistaken identity, officials said. Lesley Enriquez, 35, who worked in the consulate’s citizens services section, was believed to be the first American consulate employee to have been killed in apparent Mexican drug violence since 1985, when DEA Agent Enrique Camarena was tortured and murdered. Enriquez and her American husband were gunned down near the Santa Fe bridge into the United States about 2 p.m. Saturday, as their infant daughter cried in the back seat, unharmed but terrified. About the same time, assailants in a different part of the city killed the husband of a Mexican who works at the consulate.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/ydywqdt | | Report Bad Link |
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“Jene Newsome played by the rules as an Air Force sergeant: She never told anyone in the military she was a lesbian. The 28-year-old’s honorable discharge under the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy came only after police officers in Rapid City, S.D., saw an Iowa marriage certificate in her home and told the nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base.” [hat tip — Freedom’s Phoenix] (03/14/10) http://tinyurl.com/y8zlt6x | | Report Bad Link |
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“Joseph Casias, 29, has sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor. Despite his condition, he has dutifully gone to work every day for the last five years at a Walmart in Battle Creek, Michigan, where in 2008 he was named Associate of the Year. Casias is also a legal medical marijuana patient under Michigan state law. He uses marijuana with the recommendation of his doctor to relieve the effects of cancer. … Last November, Walmart fired Casias because he tested positive for marijuana during a routine drug screening. … To add insult to injury, Walmart is now challenging Casias’ eligibility for unemployment.” (03/12/10) http://tinyurl.com/yc3c92c | | Report Bad Link |
Commentary
News | Audio and Video | Events and Movement News
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“Aren’t we lucky little boys and girls, to be offered the opportunity to bail out Greece? Yes, I know, no one’s quite said it outright as yet but we can all see what’s coming, can’t we? Some combination of us, the Germans, the eurozone, the IMF, is going to have to send money to Greece so that the three taverna lunch can live on. Which is absolutely fine, I have no problem with that. Those who wish to ensure that a nation with one of the longest lifespans in Europe can continue to have one of the lowest retirement ages, well, have fun and get on with it. Where I do object is the idea that those who do not wish to do so will be forced to by having the money taxed out of their hides.” (03/15/10) http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/tax-and-economy/bearing-gifts-to-greeks/ | | Report Bad Link |
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“Recently, somebody directed my attention to an article, ‘Socrates’ Gun’ by Daniel Johnson on the website of the Salem (Oregon) News, questioning just about every aspect of the character of individuals who make the choice to exercise their unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to openly carry personal weapons in public. For some reason, Mr. Johnson appeared to be particularly upset by a photo he’d come across on a firearms website of people with guns on their hips, enjoying a barbecue in what looked like a park somewhere. He went to great lengths to explain how phony and affectatious they looked to him. To someone who has seen sights like this hundreds of times over the past forty years, it seemed perfectly natural and relaxed.” (03/14/10) http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle561-20100314-02.html | | Report Bad Link |
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“When I heard what Nancy Pelosi said about the health care bill the other day, I did a double-take. And had to double-check the press release issued by Pelosi’s own office. Yikes! She really said it! Then published it on her website to the accompaniment of bugles and trumpets! Okay, maybe I invented the bugles and trumpets. But not the words: ‘Prevention, prevention, prevention — it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting. But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.’” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/ygrnskw | | Report Bad Link |
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“Are there no depths to which conservatives will not sink in their ardent embrace of the war on terrorism? The latest monstrosity from the right came courtesy of Keep America Safe, a toxic organization headed by Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who recently put out a disgraceful TV ad, ‘Who Are the Al-Qaeda Seven?’ The ad questioned the loyalty and patriotism of nine lawyers in the Justice Department who had represented prisoners at Guantanamo before joining the DoJ.” (03/15/10) http://www.fff.org/comment/com1003e.asp | | Report Bad Link |
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“William Patterson’s specialty isn’t clambakes but isotope chemistry, and he’s using it to analyze clamshells buried for centuries off Iceland’s coastline. That and radiocarbon dating of the shells confirms what anyone who knows anything about climate change already knows: the Medieval Warm Period (AD 800 to 1300) and the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850) were real. But the shellfish shell out more stories.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/ygapblv | | Report Bad Link |
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“Once again, it’s time to exercise the misguided practice of Daylight Saving Time. Originally imposed in 1918 to conserve energy for that insane slaughter and rampage known as World War 1, it was immediately dropped a year later — and by public demand. However, it was reinstated during World War 2 and practiced continuously — winter and summer. After the War, states and localities were left to themselves to decide about DST, but in 1966, it became the law of the land. In 2007, the duration of DST was extended from early March until early November — the longest it has ever been — except for the times it was yearlong.” (03/16/10) http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/cinque1.1.1.html | | Report Bad Link |
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“You know things are going badly overseas when the military starts complaining that it’s taking on too much of the burden. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in prepared remarks given at Kansas State University on March 3, all but suggested that the military’s vaunted ‘Government in a Box’ strategy was missing a bunch of pieces, and that the ‘Whole of Government’ approach (that’s Government in a Box 1.0, coined last year by Gen. David Petraeus) was falling short of its goals in Afghanistan.” (03/16/10) http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2010/03/15/government-in-a-box/ | | Report Bad Link |
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“Consider the economics of an organ transplant. Everyone involved gets something of value. The doctors and nurses are paid. The hospital receives money. The organ recipient gets something that will save her life. And the person donating the organ gets a nice, warm feeling inside. We can all admire the selflessness of the donor. But if pure altruism is such a wonderful motivator, why don’t we rely on it to get medical professionals to provide their services?” (03/15/10) http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/15/dying-people-shouldnt-have-to | | Report Bad Link |
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“Having an extra $250 pocket money to spend while jetting around the world’s capitals sounds pretty good to most people. But it’s chump change to some members of Congress. Taxpayers are the chumps. The $250 a day we give members is rarely spent on food, reports the Washington Times: ‘(S)chedules typically are jam-packed on foreign junkets, especially with meals and banquets sponsored by interests looking to curry favor with American VIPs. The fact is, our public servants rarely need their lavish street cash to get fed, so they blow taxpayer money on other things rather than return their leftover per diem.’ Congressional rules say they must return leftover cash to the government. They usually don’t, writes the Wall Street Journal. ‘(L)awmakers use the excess cash for shopping or to defray spouses’ travel expenses. Sometimes they give it away; sometimes they pocket it.’” (03/14/10) http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/03/14/chump-change/ | | Report Bad Link |
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“The circus sideshow that was CPAC folded its tent and left Washington weeks ago. However, its apparent ringmaster and chief snake oil salesman still sweats, struts, and sobs across the ’stage’ of conservative media — that medicine show never stops rolling and never stops hawking its ’solutions’ to Americans in desperate need of something to ease their economic aches and pains, and heal their political maladies. And like the medicine shows of old, Glenn Beck — and others like him — peddle magical ‘miracle cures’ that either poison directly by filling the body politic with toxic bile, or indirectly by distracting us from actual solutions, and aren’t intended to ‘cure what ails us’ so much as to make us think that we feel better even as the illness progresses.” [editor’s note: Gee, sounds a lot like the Big Pharma methodology! - SAT] (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/ygldy2t | | Report Bad Link |
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“Although President Obama has yet to achieve much on jobs, healthcare, or energy, he is on track to transform America’s education. He has pushed many states to reform education laws by dangling $4.35 billion in incentive grants. Now he wants to alter the No Child Left Behind law by rewarding schools that do well and revamping those schools that don’t. … This middle way is necessary in a country that treats public schools as a largely local concern and that is wary of one-size-fits-all federal solutions. It helps, too, that US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan once ran Chicago’s schools and saw firsthand how No Child went too far — and not far enough.” [editor’s note: This one bears watching; if a national standard for rating student (and teacher) achievement sets the bar reasonably, and then gets out of the way, it could be only a small hurdle foe states seeking to rise above it - SAT] (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/ygf747y | | Report Bad Link |
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“The story of how the war on terrorism and the war on lawsuit abuse came together can easily look like a brilliant conspiracy hatched by conservative jurists and their corporate backers. After all, over the past decade, two of the biggest projects for conservative groups have been to increase the power and discretion of the executive branch in national-security matters and to decrease the exposure of corporations to ‘frivolous’ lawsuits. In the Iqbal ruling, the two goals were met in a way that seemed almost choreographed.” (03/15/10) http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=unintended_precedents | | Report Bad Link |
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“Think of Niagara Falls. Think of the onrushing current as the river pours itself toward the massive cascade. Imagine a lone swimmer a hundred yards or so upstream, desperately stroking against the current to keep from being swept over the precipice. That swimmer is President Obama, the river is the world, and the falls is the threat of unchecked nuclear weapons. Henry James used the image of Niagara to describe the rush into World War I: ‘the tide that bore us along.’ Hannah Arendt defined the wars of the 20th century as events ‘cascading like a Niagara Falls of history. …’ But now the image has entered the lexicon of strategic experts who warn of a coming ‘cascade of proliferation,’ one nation following another into the deadly chasm of nuclear weapons unless present nuclear powers find a way to reverse the current.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/ykxj66v | | Report Bad Link |
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“If you’re masochistic — or have a lot of Adderall — economist John Maynard Keynes’ 75-year-old opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, is full of gems that shine light on the modern pickle over regulatory reform and ideological direction. To wit: ‘The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones,’ Keynes wrote. That is an apt summary of the message that Nobel-laureate and New Keynesian economist Joseph Stiglitz is preaching as he tours the country with his new book, Free Fall: America, Free Markets, and The Sinking of the World Economy. The Obama stimulus bill, he argues, was neither big enough nor enacted fast enough.” [editor’s note: This is posted as useful information only; no endorsement of the ideas contained herein is implied or to be assumed - SAT] (03/15/10) http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5683/mr._trust_buster | | Report Bad Link |
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“In the fall of 1964, with the Free Speech Movement roiling the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, 21-year-old Mario Savio felt, with some pride of ownership, that ‘this little place had become … one of the central places on the planet.’ Four years later, Savio was falling off the map — living a few miles from campus in the West Berkeley flats, working on the assembly line of an electrical parts firm and caring with his wife for their infant son, who’d been born with severe developmental problems. The man the New York Times had dubbed ‘the archangel of student revolt’ was finding shelter in quiet anonymity. Even the FBI, which named Savio one of fifteen ‘key activists’ in early 1968 and investigated his bank accounts, phone accounts and workplace, concluded in a report that maybe he wasn’t such a key activist anymore. … Robert Cohen dedicates much of Freedom’s Orator, his absorbing and even-keeled biography of Savio, to this very question, peeling back the layers of myth that have enveloped Savio and the Free Speech Movement while substantiating their achievement.” (03/11/10) http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100329/saul | | Report Bad Link |
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“Brooks’ comparison is not entirely fair, because the Bay Area is built on a fault line and quakes hit very frequently; they are expected, so houses are constructed to survive them. Haiti, in contrast, is said to have seen no major tremor for two centuries and so it was not unreasonable for people to build to somewhat lower standards. Even so, the appearance of the rubble suggests that constructors there may have used what my grandfather (a reputable builder) would have called ‘two of sand and one of water’ — a reference to how his rivals saved costs when mixing concrete. However, Brooks was quite right to point out that lack of money was the prime reason over two thousand died in Haiti for every one in San Francisco. So we need to know: In this era of plenty, why is that country so dirt poor?” (03/15/10) http://strike-the-root.com/quake | | Report Bad Link |
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“A few weeks ago, I received a letter (’Presorted First-class postage & fees paid’) which I assumed was the census, but upon its opening, I found it was yet another piece of federal government propaganda notifying me that I would soon be receiving the census and instructing me to ‘mail it in promptly’ because my response was ‘important’ so my ‘community’ would get its ‘fair share’ since that ‘fair share’ includes ‘government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need.’ … Fact is, I ‘need’ nor want none of what the federal government wants me to excitedly and eagerly take from other people, I need only to be left alone with my full share which is everything I earn, to give or keep as I so choose.” (03/14/10) http://christinesmith.us/wordpress/2010/03/14/getting-your-fair-share/ | | Report Bad Link |
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“Although Democratic attack ads last year branded [Conservative Party congressional candidate Doug] Hoffman a millionaire indifferent to working-class interests, he grew up desperately poor and his rags-to-riches success story was one of the major selling points of his underdog campaign. If the Republican establishment shoves Hoffman aside in favor of Barclay, it would do more than reinforce the Democrats’ traditional class-warfare message that the GOP is the ‘party of the rich.’ It would also send a message to the party’s conservative rank-and-file that their loyalty to Republicans is strictly a one-way street, never to be respected in any instance where grassroots preferences conflict with the political ambitions of party insiders.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/yj7lwob | | Report Bad Link |
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“A new Rasmussen poll has revealed that an overwhelming majority of Americans reject the notion that cities have a right to ban handguns, siding with the Second Amendment Foundation’s position in its lawsuit to overturn the Chicago ban. Oral arguments in the SAF case were heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. Court observers predict the high court will overturn the Chicago ban, thus incorporating the Second Amendment to state and local governments through provisions in the 14th Amendment.” (03/15/10) http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=3965 | | Report Bad Link |
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Environmental agency has some explaining to do
National Center for Policy Analysis by H. Sterling Burnett “Our nation’s capital has always been a place of paradoxical twists. From canings on the Senate floor in the 1800s to President Reagan and Speaker Thomas P. ‘Tip’ O’Neill sharing drinks at the end of the day, it takes a lot for Washington to be surprised. Even so, we find ourselves surprised at events on Capitol Hill likely to take place over the coming weeks. We start at the Supreme Court, where on March 1, Jeffrey Skilling’s attorneys presented their oral arguments appealing his conviction for the Enron debacle.” (03/11/10) http://tinyurl.com/ykkr267 | | Report Bad Link |
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“There are signs of increasing awareness among economists that what they have been discussing in recent years under the name of ‘competition’ is not the same thing as what is thus called in ordinary language. But, although there have been some valiant attempts to bring discussion back to earth and to direct attention to the problems of real life, notably by J.M. Clark and F. Machlup, the general view seems still to regard the conception of competition currently employed by economists as the significant one and to treat that of the businessman as an abuse.” (written 1948; posted 03/15/10) http://mises.org/daily/4181 | | Report Bad Link |
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“From the intellectual, economic, and moral perspectives, school choice is so superior to the overpriced and underperforming status quo that its failure at the ballot box should raise questions about why such a good idea has had so little political success. After decades of promoting the best ideas from the safety of their think tank citadels while losing almost every political battle, some thoughts about strategy are in order.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/yzfqueb | | Report Bad Link |
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“From January 1982 to November 1982, the unemployment rate rose from 8.6 to 10.4 percent. On election eve, unemployment was higher than it had been since the Great Depression, and many voters expected the economy to continue to decline. No party had faced a similar kind of economic downfall since Franklin Roosevelt in 1938, and in that midterm election, the Democrats had lost 72 House seats and seven Senate seats. Using economic models, some political scientists predicted that Democrats would pick up as many as 50 House seats. The Democrats also hoped to win back the Senate, which they had lost in 1980. But when the votes were tallied, the Republicans lost 26 House seats and kept their 54 seats in the Senate. How did Reagan and the Republicans manage to contain their losses in this midterm election? That’s a question not simply of historical interest, but of direct relevance to Obama and the Democrats who are likely to face a similar, although perhaps not as severe, economic situation in November 2010.” (03/15/10) http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/how-stop-the-bleeding | | Report Bad Link |
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“Here’s the pitch: The FairTax — a plan to replace the federal income tax and payroll tax with a national sales tax — will get rid of the IRS forever. It will let workers keep their entire paychecks and retirees keep their entire pensions. It will raise just as much money as the current tax code. It will promote economic growth. It won’t hurt the middle class, and it won’t cause prices to rise. It will even end our illegal-immigration problem. … The FairTax sounds too good to be true. It is. The campaign for the FairTax is deeply misleading, and much more likely to set back the cause of tax reform than to advance it.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/yg3b9wb | | Report Bad Link |
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“The rather extraordinary dust-up between the U.S. and Israel has, among other benefits, shined a light on two of the most taboo yet self-evidently true propositions: (1) our joined-at-the-hip relationship with Israel is a significant cause of anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, fuels attacks on Americans, and entails a very high price for the U.S. on multiple levels; and (2) many American neoconservatives have their political beliefs shaped by allegiance to Israel.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/yauec3d | | Report Bad Link |
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Earth Day, March 20th, 2010 — integrity will set you free
from Reason to Freedom by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster “At the stroke of a moment, the 40th Annual UN Peace Bell Ceremony will take place. This is the Real Earth Day, Saturday, March 20, 2010 at 1:32 p.m. EDT (Equinox). The mission and vision statement for the real Earth Day was not some sappy after school program, with tee-shirt, but a challenge to live our principles with lives framed with integrity. Peace, Justice, and Care of the Earth. … If you thought Earth Day was in April you swallowed a corporate lie perpetrated that 1970 with the blatant use of the same name by a group of corporate hires.” (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/yj8p9j2 | | Report Bad Link |
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“No one has the right to initiate force against others, although retaliatory force is justified as a means of self-defense. Such is the basic principle of libertarianism. Force, as used here, is contact with someone else’s person or property against his or her will. Thus, the initiation of force violates the right to voluntary action (whereas retaliatory force defends that right). However, according to philosopher John Hospers, the nature of voluntary action is not as clear as it may seem, and he argues that wherever we turn, we find problems of interpretation. For what is the definition of a voluntary act?” (03/14/10) http://tinyurl.com/yegvnty | | Report Bad Link |
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“Now we know. Two million of the ‘good jobs’ America needs to create in the next five years are to come from doubling American exports. So President Obama promised Thursday. We are to have a ‘National Export Initiative,’ an ‘export promotion cabinet’ consisting of representatives of several federal agencies, a private sector advisory committee on international trade, and promotion of exports by a president who will get tough with our trading partners who ‘have not played by the same set of rules’ as we have. Push exports, and make it more difficult for our trading partners to send stuff to us, unless they conform to our notions of proper labor and environmental standards. This approach is consistent with the administration’s philosophy that the best way to solve a problem is to erect still another government apparatus.” (03/13/10) http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamas-trade-trouble | | Report Bad Link |
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“By late 2009, as the U.S. dollar flirted with multi-year lows against most foreign currencies, big investment players crowded into trades that shorted the greenback. Commentators noted that the anti-dollar momentum had taken on a life of its own and that the trade had become too crowded. It is true that markets have a nasty tendency to move against the crowd. When a lot of traders agree on a particular trade, it’s more likely that in the short-run the opposite trade will be a winner.” (03/15/10) http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=691 | | Report Bad Link |
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J. Neil Schulman’s classic novel of economic collapse and agorist revolution, serialized. (03/15/10) http://jneilschulman.rationalreview.com/2010/03/alongside-night/ | | Report Bad Link |
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“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) http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/004003.html | | Report Bad Link |
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“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) http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=031410A | | Report Bad Link |
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“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) http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/03/15/we-want-a-fair-tax/ | | Report Bad Link |
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“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.’” http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11445 | | Report Bad Link |
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“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) http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/03/14/free-soil-free-men-free-milk/ | | Report Bad Link |
Audio and Video
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Doug Marks, the Libertarian Party candidate for Congress from Illinois, joins host Kenneth John. 9-10am Central on WRMN 1410 AM, Elgin, IL or live on the web. [live radio or stream] (03/22/10) http://freedomrings.net/ | | Report Bad Link |
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“Croissant Bomb Threat :: UK Cops to Get Mobile Fingerprint Scanners :: Free State Project Reaches 10,000 Participants :: Climate Change :: Keys Locked in Car and Contracts :: Government Land Mismanagement :: Market Medicine in El Salvador :: Beck vs. FTL :: CT Scan Costs :: Irish Muslim Pacifist :: Strange Conspiracy Caller :: Mark Interviews Kevin Hagen.” [MP3] (03/15/10) http://media.libsyn.com/media/ftl/FTL2010-03-15.mp3 | | Report Bad Link |
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“Sixty years ago, Cleveland was a booming city full of promise, opportunity, and people. Today, the city’s population is less half of what it was in its prime and it ranks as one of the poorest big cities in the United States. Hometown hero Drew Carey reflects on how the city became ‘the mistake on the lake’ and wonders about the city’s future. Is a Cleveland renaissance possible or is the city doomed to long, slow death?” [Flash video] (03/15/10) http://reason.com/blog/2010/03/15/the-decline-of-a-once-great-ci | | Report Bad Link |
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“Documenting human rights abuses in Venezuela,” featuring Ian Vasquez. [MP3] (03/15/10) http://tinyurl.com/cato031510 | | Report Bad Link |
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“Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and 9/11 whistleblower, discusses the myth that FISA restrictions (and not incompetence at FBI and CIA headquarters) prevented critical intelligence sharing prior to 9/11, CIA Director George Tenet’s August 2001 ‘Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly’ powerpoint briefing about Zacarias Moussaoui and why the creation of the DHS and increased centralization of intelligence organizations did nothing to fix 9/11 failures.” [Flash audio or MP3] (03/13/10) http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/03/13/coleen-rowley/ | | Report Bad Link |
Movement News & Events
News | Commentary |Audio and Video
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Check our sidebar calendar for this week’s freedom movement events. Don’t see your event? Drop us a line at info@rationalreview.com … or see: www.rationalreview.com/add-your-event-to-our-calendar … for instructions on adding your events directly! http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/4042/ | | Report Bad Link |
