The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.
-John Stuart Mill
The Role of Government
March 7th, 2011Middle Class White People Incensed by Budget Cuts
March 4th, 2011The interior of the Wisconsin capital building is covered with banners protesting the budget cuts, the largest one proclaiming “Tax the Rich”! Please remember that the protestors in this case are by-in-large not the minorities on welfare so often villianized, but middle class white people incensed that they will no longer be able to live like the rich at public expense. During the “adjustment” phase of the budget crisis, be ready to re-evaluate who you consider “compatriates” and who you consider “adversaries”.
Blog Archive » Oscar for best propaganda: “Inside Job†is a snow-job. Greenlining Institute was the villian, not the hero.
March 3rd, 2011“The head of the Greenlining Institute is in the film warning against subprime loans???
…This short post not only posits the exact opposite theory than does Inside Job, but it actually points the finger of blame at Robert Gnaizda’s Greenlining Institute as the ultimate cause of the problem, rather than as the heroes who tried to prevent the crisis…
Everything shown in the film pretty much did happen as depicted. But here’s the key point: It may be true, but it’s irrelevant. The filmmakers are focusing on the glorious gory details of the financial explosion caused by the subprime loan crisis, but they aren’t showing you who lit the fuse…
Why did banks start making countless risky untenable loans to unqualified customers?
And the answer is: Because they were afraid of being called racists by the legal bullies at the Greenlining Institute and other similar “community organizers.â€
…How does this connect to the presidential election? According to this 2007 article in the Chicago Sun-Times, Barack Obama’s mysterious years as a “community organizer†were spent doing this exact thing: Accusing banks of racism for not giving loans to underqualified minority borrowers:
Obama represented Calvin Roberson in a 1994 lawsuit against Citibank, charging the bank systematically denied mortgages to African-American applicants and others from minority neighborhoods.
(A case which, by the way, Obama won. Add another risky loan to the pile.)
…using the bullying tactics described above (and in the original article which first inspired my post), the Greenlining Institute (and similar groups) twisted the banks’ arms to make risky loans, for the purpose of “social justice,†to use the activists’ own terminology.â€
Posted by Jack on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 7:21 pm.
via phyrfight.com
Obama, Mexican president reach trucking agreement «
March 3rd, 2011This is fraught with so many possible unintended consistences that it boggles the mind as to how people sworn to protect this nation could think there is a possible upside. But then again maybe the “upside†they are looking at only applies to scenarios we (liberty loving free men) would not consider positive. I’m not trying to be obtuse I’m trying to temper my consternation. Maybe that is a lost cause.
Excerpts from The Courier Press and AP contain obvious double-speak/right-think phrases implying that it is the Mexican government that is concerned about guns from our country causing the violence in Mexico and how a more open border might make that worse. Hmm, maybe we should rethink the whole second amendment thing while we are at it?
President Barack Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Thursday will announce a plan to open up U.S. highways to Mexican trucks, removing a longstanding roadblock to improved relations between the North American allies.
…The meeting comes three weeks after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata was shot to death in northern Mexico with a gun smuggled in from the U.S.
more
via warriortimes.com
What is a Libertarian?
March 3rd, 2011Harvard Professor Jeff Miron explains:
Federal Government’s Duplicate Programs Make Dupes Out of Taxpayers
March 2nd, 2011Why fund a wasteful government program once when you can fund it twice—or, for that matter, 82 times? According to a report on duplication and overlap in the federal government released by the Government Accountability Office today, the U.S. government has 82 distinct programs to improve teacher quality (which, judging from our schools, is clearly working quite well). Many of those programs “share similar goals,” according to the report, yet “there is no governmentwide strategy to minimize fragmentation, overlap, or duplication among these many programs.” Which probably helps explain how we got so many programs designed to do the same damn thing in the first place.
Teacher quality programs were just one area in which the GAO found significant duplication at the federal level. Indeed, the whole thing reads like a nightmare version of a Pete and Repeat joke. According to The Wall Street Journal’s summary of the report, the U.S. government has “15 different agencies overseeing food-safety laws, more than 20 separate programs to help the homeless, and 80 programs for economic development.” Eggs are given double scrutiny:
www.Govit.com
April 28th, 2008I found this cool site that shows you all of the bills that are on the table and allows you to vote on them. Then you can send a letter to your reps. about your opinion on the subject. It also tracks how your representatives and congress in general vote as compared to your votes.
New York’s Idiotic Ban on Geiger Counters
January 14th, 2008From: The Technology Liberation Front
 Steve Bellovin points out a silly proposal to require licenses for Geiger counters. Like Bellovin, I’m at a loss as to why anyone would think this was a good idea. The police department says the legislation would “prevent false alarms and unnecessary public concern,†but it’s not clear either that false alarms are a major problem, or that this registration requirement would prevent them. Strangely enough, the article doesn’t cite a single example in which “false alarms†created serious problems for anybody.
Big Brother Wants to Control Your Thermostat
January 14th, 2008From: Fox
California energy regulators are considering taking control of residents’ thermostats, giving them the ability to control the temperatures of homes during energy crises, the New York Times reports.
The California Energy Commission is expected to vote on the rules next month, which would give utilities the power to control home thermostats via radio control to manage electricity shortages, the paper reports.
Bernard Siegan – Propery Rights Advocate Dies at 82
March 30th, 2006From: Best of the Web
“Bernard Siegan: Reaganite and University of San Diego law professor Bernard Siegan, died on Monday at age 82.
In a pathbreaking 1980 book, Mr. Siegan challenged the view set out by the New Deal Supreme Court in 1937 that property rights are somehow inferior to other rights and deserve lesser protection. Gail Heriot, a colleague at the University of San Diego, summarized Mr. Siegan’s thinking this way: “What’s yours is yours, what’s mine is mine, and the government does not have unlimited power to take that property or to tell us what to do with it.” Who could have given him such a crazy idea? It was James Madison, the father of the Constitution, who wrote: “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort… that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”
Sherriff May Be Prosecuted for Distributing FEMA’s Ice to Katrina Victims.
March 24th, 2006Did you hear about Sherriff Billy McGee in Hattisburg, MS who is being prosecuted by the Federal Government because he and his deputies went to a national guard base and hijacked two FEMA trailers full of ice and distributed them to the people of his county because FEMA was failing to act in the wake of Katrina. I want to put togehter a legal aid fund to help him. I may even become one of those worthless people who go and stand outside the courthouse with a sign that says “Let Billy Go!”.
“McGee and several unidentified deputies are accused of handcuffing and detaining a National Guardsman who tried to prevent them from seizing two Federal Emergency Management Agency trucks at Camp Shelby on Sept. 4, six days after Katrina battered Hattiesburg.”
How to talk to a Muslim Extremist
March 22nd, 2006I like this guy Mike Adams. Be sure to also read The Queer Muhammad: an experiment in tolerance.
“Well, I guess it had to happen. Several weeks after writing my “Queer Muhammad†column, I finally got a call from a Muslim extremist – one who mostly shouted at me over the phone in broken English. I have decided to reprint our conversation in today’s column, hoping that it will shed some light on how to deal with the fundamentalist Muslim disdain for free speech, not to mention the fundamentalist Muslim disdain for satire.” (more)
What is “Poor” In America
March 14th, 2006From: The Heratage Foundation
“Poverty is an important and emotional issue. Last year, the Census Bureau released its annual report on poverty in the United States declaring that there were nearly 35 million poor persons living in this country in 2002, a small increase from the preceding year. To understand poverty in America, it is important to look behind these numbers–to look at the actual living conditions of the individuals the government deems to be poor.” (more)
“You have been chosen for extra attention” – TSA
February 27th, 2006This from Peggy Noonan.
Please read the whole article. It’s getting scary out there.
“Ahead of me, throwing bags in bins, is a young mother with a two or three year old girl. The mother is tense, flustered. Bags, bottles, a stroller to break down and get on the conveyer belt. A security agent yelling: “Keep your boarding pass in your hand at all times.” The little girl is looking up, anxious. All these yelling adults, and things being thrown. “My doll!” she says as her mother puts it quickly in a gray bin. “We’ll get it on the other side!” says the mother. She grabs her daughter’s hand roughly.
“Take off your sneakers!” a clerk yells.
The mother stops, hops, quickly removes her sneakers. Her daughter has already walked through the magnetometer and is wandering on the other side. She looks around: Where’s mommy?
Mommy gets her sneakers in a bin, on the belt, gets through the magnetometer.
I’m relieved. Her daughter holds her mother’s leg. They begin to walk on.
A TSA clerk shouts to another, “You didn’t check the sneakers. You have to put the sneakers through.”
The second clerk yells–“Your daughter has to go through again!”
The little girl is scared–What did I do wrong? I’m sorry, mommy.
The mother is tense, gets a look.
I lift my chin at the TSA agent, smile, and say softly, “Miss, that poor girl with the child, she is having a tough time. The little girl is scared and–”
“We are following procedures!” said the TSA agent. Her mouth was twisted in anger.
I nodded and said softly, “I know, I’m just saying–a little gentle in your tone.”
She looked at my ticket and smiled.
“You have been chosen by the computer for extra attention.”
“What?”
“You have been chosen by the computer for extra attention.”