May 7, 2020

Apple data shows shelter-in-place is ending, whether governments want it to or not

fromForbes: Apple’s Mobility Trends report shows that traffic in the US and other countries like Germany has pretty much doubled in the past three weeks. It had been down up to 72%.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

What's the real story behind continuing lockdowns?

fromPJMedia: While the lockdowns began as a public health measure, their continued extension appears to have more to do with power than safety.

The Government is Not Us

Why I didn’t rat on my neighbor for cutting hair

fromTheFederalist: It brings up an interesting question about the nature of American civil life. Is my primary duty to my government or to my neighbors? For me the answer is clearly the latter.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle          Regulation Nation

VIDEO: Tyranny in America: What Can't They Do?

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: America’s governors have been flexing the political muscle by violating the rights of citizens by proclamation. Is there any limits to their power? Tucker Carlson, Andrew Napolitano.
The Government is Not Us                  Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

The case Of General Flynn: Exposing Washington's "big game of liars' poker"

fromTheZMan: One thing that is now confirmed with these new revelations is that the Special Counsel was always just part of a larger effort to cover-up this conspiracy. In fact, that was the whole point of it.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

For better health, find a cure for government

fromReason: In a time of health crisis, government has proven to be a crippling underlying condition.
The Government is Not Us

February 6, 2018

VIDEO: Want to make an untraceable handgun at home? Cody Wilson can help.

fromReason/YouTube: Cody Wilson's Ghost Gunner milling machine and 3D printed firearms are destroying the concept of gun control.
2nd Amendment Assaults

Students hate Trump's SOTU quotes...until finding out they're actually Obama's

fromCampusReform/YouTube: Some students reacted negatively to quotes they believed were from President Donald Trump’s recent State of the Union Address, until realizing they were actually quoting Barack Obama.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Leave right now or arm yourself to the teeth: life in Caracas

fromBloomberg: A frightening look at end-stage socialism in Venezuela.
Economic Policy Statism Versus The Free Market     Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Vacant lots, empty homes and dying orchards on bullet train route attract squatters, vandals and thieves

fromLATimes: State lawmakers believe parents who homeschool their children are more likely to become child abusers and should be subjected to involuntary home visits to prove they are acceptable parents.
Economic Policy Statism Versus The Free Market     Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Proof that 50 years of drug policy is based on lies

fromTheDailyBell: More terrifying than monsters, murderers, snakes, and rats: politicians. They create horror stories that go on for decades. And their tales are real.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

VIDEO: Milton Friedman - Enemies of the Free Market

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: Professor Friedman identifies the two primary enemies of economic freedom.
Economic Policy Statism Versus The Free Market     

January 27, 2018

Businesses are being forced to pay the police to let them spy on customers

fromMassPrivateI: In Michigan, politicians are mandating businesses install surveillance equipment connected to the police department.
Police State America     Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Why no gadget can prove how stoned you are

fromReason: The truth contained within this article is for your consumption only. Don't expect it to influence authorities to who are vested in the prevailing wisdom being otherwise.
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange   Regulation Nation    Police State America

Venezuela's economy circles the drain, inflation jumps 1000 % in just one day

fromEconomicPolicyJournal: Prof Steve Hanke reports: Yesterday, Venezuelan inflation surpassed 6,000% for the first time. Today, it has surpassed 7,000%, sitting at 7,155%. #Venezuela is in an economic free fall.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

New York governor wants taxpayers to fund college education for illegals

fromReason: Andrew Cuomo refuses to take a back seat to Jerry Brown in the crazy car.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption      Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Tyrannical Law will throw waiters in jail who offer customers unsolicited plastic straws

fromReason: Busybodies minding your own business. Lawmakers will use the barrel of a gun to enforce a tyrannical state laws to reduce customer service.
Regulation Nation

The plan is for driverless police cars to patrol freeways to insure zero speeders

fromDigitalTrends: The filings explain Ford’s autonomous patrol car would primarily rely on a vehicle-to-vehicle communication system. 
Regulation Nation    Police State America    Government is Watching Every Move You Make

January 22, 2018

Government-approved workouts? The fight against fitness licensing.

fromReason: Crossfit is fighting to keep the government from regulating how Americans are taught to exercise. The health of the nation may be at stake.
Regulation Nation

California Dems propose surcharge on businesses to fund social programs

fromFoxNews: State busybodies have a new scheme to drive business out of the state.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

VIDEO: Sean Hannity - The Deep State Assault on Democracy

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: Often chided as a conservative puppet, Sean Hannity has earned his stripes with brilliant and insightful investigative reporting on Clinton-FBI collusion and corruption.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

VIDEO: Cops taser, assault handicapped vet—then arrest him for half a gram of cannabis

fromTheFreeThoughtProject: Crossfit is fighting to keep the government from regulating how Americans are taught to exercise. The health of the nation may be at stake.
Police State America     The Government is Not Us

Sweden is preparing for a "civil war": PM wants to deploy army in no-go zones

fromReason: Can we admit there is something very wrong going on in Sweden?
Defense Versus The War Machine

Google has an actual secret speech police

fromReason: It’s not just terrorist videos that Google is censoring.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

September 27, 2017

When the government declared war on the First Amendment

from Reason: It all started with President Woodrow Wilson a hundred years ago.
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle

Mel Brooks: Political correctness 'is the death of comedy'

from CNS News: Blazing Saddles could not be made today. Too many snowflakes might melt.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

The coming war on business

from NY Times: So much more than the title suggests. A great article to explain how racism has polluted an otherwise worthwhile move to embrace traditional American principles.
The Government is Not Us

Brazil’s latest outbreak of drug gang violence highlights the real culprit: the war on drugs

from The Intercept: Legalization is their answer. "The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success.”
The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

John Stossel: Entrepreneur saves free college courses from government ban

from Reason: An internet entrepreneur saved 20,000+ free online college lectures after the government declared them illegal.
Indoctrination and Censorship

California considers following China with combustion-engine car ban

from Bloomberg: This makes sense -- but only in explaining where California's goofy Governor Brown gets his guidance.
Economic Policy: Statism vs The Free Market

VIDEO: Stossel - Trump: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

David French: Let’s Not Mince Words About PayPal

The PC bankers.    PayPal has announced that it will not open a new operations center in Charlotte, North Carolina, because of the state’s new “bathroom law” — a law that sensibly requires people to use public, multi-occupancy bathrooms that correspond with their biological sex. PayPal thinks this is horrible. To put it bluntly, PayPal’s “corporate     ... MORE

Jaana Woiceshyn: Making Moral Business Choices

On rational self-interest. Having recently concluded teaching an MBA business ethics course, I received unusual feedback from a student. He liked the course but told me that all of it should have been spent on covering the moral code of egoism—rational self-interest—because that is the code he liked the best and considered the most applicable    ... MORE

Steven Greenhut: How Regulators Quietly Drive Up Costs

Seen and unseen.    California political observers are understandably fixated on the goings-on in the state legislature, which is the living embodiment of what New York Judge Gideon Tucker wrote in an 1866 ruling: "No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session." Reporters and commentators also focus on major legal  ... MORE

California’s Carl’s Jr. Says So Long, Golden State

They know when they are not wanted.  States: To hear Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, you’d think that taxes can go up to 60% or even 80%, and businesses and investors will just … pay up. But the growing number of businesses stampeding out of high tax areas suggest that they’re very wrong. We got more evidence of that this week when CKE   ... MORE

Pot Will Pump $44 Billion A Year Into Economy By 2020

by Jonah Bennett.  A profitable growth industry.  Marijuana in the U.S. will become a $44 billion a year industry by 2020, according to a Monday report by Marijuana Business Daily. Currently, the cannabis industry in the U.S. is projected to be anywhere between $14-$17 billion in 2016. If existing economic and legal trends continue at the current rates, ... MORE

Gov’t Regulations Weigh On Gloomy Small-Business Owners

an Investor's Business Daily editorial.        Red Tape: Two new surveys of small-business owners show they’re “treading water,” and the government isn’t throwing them any lifelines. Instead, it’s weighing them down with more and more costly and burdensome regulations. Optimism about economic conditions last month hit a two-year low     ... MORE

John Stossel: Joy and Bad Law

Oscar Sunday.     According to Betfair.com, Jennifer Lawrence probably won't win best actress at the Oscars Sunday. I'm rooting for her, though — not because of her acting, but because the movie she stars in, "Joy," celebrates the difficulty of entrepreneurship. Lawrence's character is based on real-life entrepreneur Joy Mangano, who invented the   ... MORE

Mike Hopper: The Federal Government Is Launching A Criminal Investigation Into Chipotle, And It’s A Bad Sign

Criminalizing mistakes.   Law enforcement is a growth industry. 2015 was full of high-profile safety cases. Blue Bell Ice Cream had to take all of its products off the shelves after several cases of listeria, Chicago-based Aspen Foods recalled over 2.5 million pounds of frozen chicken over salmonella concerns, and, most recently, Chipotle saw cases of   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Unappreciated Tax On The Poor

High risk neighborhoods are taxing themselves.  A few years ago, BET had a commentary titled "Where Are the Grocery Stores in Black Neighborhoods?" One wonders whether anyone thinks that the absence of supermarkets in predominantly black neighborhoods means that white merchants do not like dollars coming out of black hands.      ... MORE

Politically-Correct Food Keeps Poisoning Its Customers

by Roberto A Ferdman and Abha Bhattarai. Chipotle became the darling of the fast-food world by attracting millennials, blue-collar workers and even whole families with its promise of high-quality, sustainably sourced Mexican-inspired cuisine. But a series of food poisonings and other challenges are threatening its reputation and underscoring the  ... MORE

Coming: America’s First 24-Hr Firearm Shopping Channel

by Michelle Gorman. GunTV debuts in 2016.     As the fractious debate over American gun laws continues, two people in California are preparing to launch the country’s first all-gun home shopping television channel. Created by Doug Bornstein and Valerie Castle—both of whom previously worked for home shopping networks—the new channel, named    ... MORE

Home Ownership Not The American Dream For Millennials

Has the American Dream become unattainable?    Or has it just changed? Ask your parents what the American Dream meant to them growing up and you’ll probably find it differs from the ideals of millennials today. In fact, according to the Fusion 2016 Issues Poll, only 16 percent of people ages 18 to 35 believe the American Dream is still “very    ... MORE

J. D. Tucille: Red Tape And Licensing Remain Powerful Deterrents To Starting Businesses And Creating Jobs

by J.D. Tuccille.  Serial failed businessman Samuel Clemens might have a lesson or two to offer to his hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. Thwarted in his riverboat-piloting career, unsuccessful as a miner, and disappointed (to put it mildly) in his investments in an automated typesetting machine, "Mark Twain" could have told officials in his old stomping ground  ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Protected Out Of Work