July 25, 2016

More and more of what we do depends on government permission

fromReason: The granting or withholding of that approval is a powerful lever over our lives.  
Regulation Nation     The Government is Not Us

VIDEO: Tony Podesta Vs Paul Manafort - The Equality Under the Law Myth

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: The myth of equal justice under the law exposed for all to see.  
Justice is a Result, Not Just a Process       The Government is Not Us

New Kamala Harris bill asks federal taxpayers to subsidize California's high housing costs

fromReason: Expensive tax credits for renters are not the solution to America's housing woes. As with high speed rail, California asks the nation's taxpayers to save them from their own nitwittery.  
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Trump to propose blocking California’s clean car standards: report

fromTheHill: Revokes California's waiver from the Clean Air Act. Would end mandate to continue making cars lighter and less safe. Throws a monkey-wrench into Brown's plan to force electric cars.  
Regulation Nation

Trump administration plans to offer $12 billion in emergency aid for farmers hurt by tariffs

fromCNBC: Crony capitalism kicked up a notch. Trump ushers in a new era of tariffs, subsidies and bailouts.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Walter E Willliams: Can we trust experts?

fromCreators: People whom we've trusted as experts have often been wrong beyond imagination. 
It's nothing new.  
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market     Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

October 28, 2017

The war on standards: illiterate teachers edition

from PowerlineBlog: The New York Board of Regents eliminated a requirement that aspiring teachers in the state pass a literacy test to become certified. Why? Hispanic and black candidates had a harder time passing it than whites.
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Feds crack down on new national security threat: unlicensed massages

from Reason: American police are currently obsessed with enforcing exactly which body parts can be massaged and by whom.
Regulation Nation

The myth of natural monopoly

from Mises: The very term "public utility" is an absurd one. Every good is useful to the public, and almost every good may be considered necessary. Any designation of public utility is completely arbitrary and unjustified. — Murray Rothbard
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

🎬  Ayn Rand - How to Rule Mankind

from LibertyPen: The guiding philosophy of the left revealed in one four minute video (excerpt from the Fountainhead).
The Government is Not Us

Chuck Grassley calls for special counsel in Uranium One scandal

from Breitbart: Given that Mueller was the head of the FBI a the time, he really shouldn't be heading an investigation that involves looking into the FBI's actions.
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

Arrested, cuffed, raped, and Brooklyn DA sees a consent question?

from NY Times: The relationship between security and liberty is often described as a balancing act. This act can’t take place if we’re not informed about the technology used to safeguard our security.
Police State America

NY Values: Big Apple To Make It Legal To Pee In Public

by Sylvia Van Peebles.    Of all the things one could think of that New York City needs more of, public urination doesn't immediately come to mind. But New York's City Council, which is so far left it almost collides with the right, is about to make it happen thanks to it's Speaker, a Puerto Rican nationalist who supports terrorists and rejects the       ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Education Insanity

The problem is not money.       Some credit Albert Einstein, others credit Benjamin Franklin, with the observation that "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing year after year and expecting different results." Whomever we credit, he was absolutely right. A perfect example of that insanity is education in general and particularly black     ... MORE

Multiculturalism Trumps Protecting Women From Rape

by Dennis Prager.   Since the scores of New Year's Eve sexual attacks on German women by hundreds of men identified as Arab or North African, the left in Germany has faced a dilemma: which to fight for first -- women's human rights or multiculturalism? This was the same dilemma that faced British authorities between 1997 and 2013. During those  ... MORE

Protection For Cops Who Kill Unarmed Civilians

"We don't second guess police officers."   A grand jury's decision not to indict an officer who killed a 12-year-old holding a toy gun sheds light on a criminal-justice system that gives fairly broad deference to police officers' version of events. As Business Insider's Natasha Bertrand reported, the prosecutor in the case of the 12-year-old said,     ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Misleading And Using Blacks

Sacrificing blacks in the name of diversity.       Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ran headlong into the leftist meat grinder by questioning whether college admission of blacks with academic achievement levels significantly lower than the rest of the student body is beneficial to blacks. His question came up during oral arguments   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Our Timid Military Leaders

Sending the weaker sex to battle.    This month, President Barack Obama's defense secretary, Ashton Carter, decreed that there will be 220,000 combat military jobs offered to women — including in Army special operations forces and the Navy SEALs. He said, "They'll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars and lead infantry soldiers into combat ... MORE

Victor Davis Hanson: The University Gone Feral

Where PC intolerance trumps free speech.   The university, long exempted from social norms and rules, has gone wild in the 21st century — or rather, regressed to pre-puberty. The University of Missouri campus police now request that students — a group not known for polite vocabulary — call law enforcement if someone disparages      ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Education Disaster

It is not for too little money.      The 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress report, also known as The Nation's Report Card, shows that U.S. educational achievement, to put it nicely, leaves much to be desired. When it comes to reading and math skills, just 34 percent and 33 percent, respectively, of U.S. eighth-grade students tested     ... MORE

Henry L. Miller: The Dirty Truth About "Organic"

In denial of reality.       Passionate advocates of organic farming and foods resemble members of a religious cult, one founded on a “back to Nature” mentality. They are not so fundamentalist, however, that they do not make concessions to reality. For example, organic standards arbitrarily define which pesticides are acceptable, but allow “deviations”   ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - Shortage Scares

Thomas Sowell: Opportunity Versus Outcomes

Inequity fetishes don't help the poor.  A hostile review of my new book — "Wealth, Poverty and Politics" — said, "there is apparently no level of inequality of income or opportunity that Thomas Sowell would consider unacceptable." Ordinarily, reviewers who miss the whole point of a book they are reviewing can be ignored. But this particular confusion  ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Attack on Teachers

School violence is going to get worse.   As the new school year begins, you might like to be updated on some school happenings that will no doubt be repeated this academic year. After this update, I have some questions one might ask the black leadership. The ongoing and escalating assault on primary- and secondary-school teachers is not a       ... MORE

Common Core: Who's Watching the Kids?

by Mary Anne Marcella and Cort Wrotnowski.   Common Core is about more than just a shift in educational standards.  The architects of Common Core have always planned to integrate computer technology with Common Core standards under the guise of “closing the digital divide” and “preparing our children for the 21st-century workplace.”  They   ... MORE

Common Core Resistance Gains Steam In New York

When the state won't act, individuals must.    The resistance to one-size-fits-all education is gaining steam. This is evidenced by the latest display of power from concerned parents who are saying no to the Common Core State Standards while the New York legislature fails to do so. An excess of 175,000 parents in the state of New York alone     ... MORE

No Consequences For Cop Who Killed Innocent Cooperative Man Standing In His Own Home With His Hands Raised

White privilege didn't protect John Geer.     That's not to say he didn't have it. As a middle-class kitchen designer living in the pleasant Washington suburb of Fairfax, Va., he had nothing whatsoever in common with the impoverished black men killed by police in Missouri and Brooklyn last year. Those deaths triggered riots, marches and       ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Scary School Stories

Poor education is not stemming from racism. New York's schools are the most segregated in the nation, and the state needs remedies right away. That was Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch's message to New York's governor and Legislature. She said that minority children are disproportionately trapped in schools that lack teaching talent,  ... MORE

VIDEO: Should We End The Fed?

Explaining the function of the Federal Reserve system.

Walter E Williams: Is There Wage Stagnation?

The answer may surprise you.     Many economists, politicians and pundits assert that median wages have stagnated since the 1970s. That's a call for government to do something about it. But before we look at the error in their assertion, let's work through an example that might shed a bit of light on the issue. Suppose that you paid me a straight $20  ... MORE