April 15, 2019

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks deserve our thanks for making governments more transparent

fromReason:  The world is a better place now that it's harder than ever for governments to keep secrets.

The Government is Not Us       Government is Watching Every Move You Make     

The Washington establishment seems pretty happy about Julian Assange’s arrest

fromReason:  Deep state tyrants figure to sleep a little better if they can eliminate Assange.

The Government is Not Us       Government is Watching Every Move You Make 

Assisted dying: The death panels are coming

fromGaryNorth:  Rationing is inevitable in a world of scarcity. You can ration by price: high monetary bid wins. You can ration by standing in line: first come, first served. You can ration by bureaucratic procedure: fill out forms. 
But there is always rationing.

Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Why an internet regulator is a bad idea

fromSpiked:  We should be stripping away curbs on speech – not adding more.

Indoctrination and Censorship

Looking into surveillance

fromProvidenceJournal:  If our government has improperly used its immense power to spy on citizens for political purposes, it is vital that it be stopped, and those involved be punished, lest we become a police state.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make        Police State America

Your Volvo will soon call the cops on you if it thinks you've been drinking

fromZeroHedge:  It is unclear if demand for Volvos will collapse as a result of big brother watching over every move, or if potential customers will welcome this latest incursion of their privacy.

Government is Watching Every Move You Make        Police State America

The Stupid Things People Do When Society Breaks Down

by Brandon Smith. A frequent mistake that many people make when considering the concept of social or economic collapse is to imagine how people and groups will behave tomorrow based on how people behave today. It is, though, extremely difficult to predict human behavior in the face of terminal chaos. What we might expect, or what         ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Gullible Americans

The willingness to buy a pig in a poke.   Jonathan Swift, satirist, essayist and political pamphleteer, is a favorite of mine. He wrote "Gulliver's Travels." One of Gulliver's voyages was to Laputa, where he visited the grand academy of Lagado, whose scientists have visions not unlike today's politicians who exploit mankind's gullibility. Before ... MORE

Global Warming Fund A Slush Fund For World’s Dictators

by Marian Tupy.  Wherever you stand on the subject of global warming, pay close attention to one under-reported aspect of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Paris Agreement. I am referring to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which is a financial mechanism intended "to assist developing countries in adaptation and mitigation    ... MORE

Jerry Brown Pimps 'Coercive Power of the State' In Paris

by Rob Nikolewski.     For the public good as determined by political elites. California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) raised some eyebrows while attending the United Nations Climate Summit in Paris, proclaiming the "coercive power of the central state" is needed to promote good public policy, specifically when it comes to a cleaner environment.     ... MORE

Shearing The Sheep: Democrats Want To Spend Taxpayer Dollars To Study New Ways To Tax People Even More

by Pete Kasperowicz.     Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) this week introduced legislation that would give states federal grants to study the possibility of imposing a controversial new tax — one that would tax people for every mile they drive in their cars. Blumenauer’s Road Usage Charge Pilot Program Act is the latest effort to move away from a gas  ... MORE

Elite Contempt For Ordinary Americans

by Walter E Williams.       Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist and paid architect of Obamacare, has shocked and disgusted many Americans. In 2013, he explained to a University of Pennsylvania audience: "This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure (the Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate  ... MORE

Andrew Napolitano: Waging War

The War Powers Resolution is a two-edged sword.     James Madison is commonly referred to as the Father of the Constitution in large measure because, in the secrecy of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, he kept the most complete set of notes. He also had a very keen mind and a modest demeanor and an uncanny   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: America's Budding Tyrants

A production of the government education system.      From the Nazis to the Stalinists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, and why is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control and confiscation. Basic to their agenda are the tools of indoctrination, propagandizing, proselytization.  ... MORE

Jury Duty Gives Us Power To Decide The Law

by Jonathan Carp.       In Washington, D.C., Fully Informed Jury Association activist James Babb has placed informative billboards at Metro stations near the courts. These billboards tell passersby about jury nullification, the ancient right of jurors to judge both the facts and the law. The doctrine has a long and venerable history; the right of  ... MORE

Thomas Sowell: Throw The Rascals Out?

Making it harder to be a tyrant.     Polls indicate that the public is so disgusted with Washington politicians of both parties that a surprisingly large proportion of the people would like to get rid of the whole lot of them. It is certainly understandable that the voters would like to "throw the rascals out." But there is no point in throwing the rascals    ... MORE

State Takes Children Because Vet Dad Used Medical Pot

California took couple's children away for a year.      Citing the discovered marijuana as a ‘hazard’ in their official report, the agents removed the couple's two young boys - Cameran, then aged four, and Bailey, aged two - and placed them in an emergency shelter for ‘abused, abandoned, and neglected children’ in San Diego. Even though   ... MORE

Reason Magazine's 45 Enemies Of Freedom

Tyrants, despots, crackpots and crony capitalists.     In 2003, to celebrate 35 years of publishing a monthly magazine dedicated to Free Minds and Free Markets, reason named “35 Heroes of Freedom”—innovators, economists, singers, anti-communists, pornographers, professional athletes, and even the occasional politician who   ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Bit By Bit Strategy

A relentless march of busybodies and tyrants.   There's a move on to prohibit Washington's football team from calling itself "Redskins," even though a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision said that it has that right. Now the name change advocates are turning to the political arena and intimidation. The NCAA has already banned the University of    ... MORE

Erik Rush: The Rise Of America's Gestapo

The enemies of the Constitution.  On March 4, despite hundreds of Coloradans flooding the State Capitol in Denver and honking horns on the streets that encircle the building all day long, and the presence of 25 county sheriffs opposed to seven Democratic gun-control proposals, the measures all passed the Colorado House along party-line votes. ... MORE

Kurt Nimmo: California Lib Wants To Tax Concealed Carry

The latest scheme of a 2nd Amendment denier.      Rep. Linda Sánchez, a California Democrat with a history of attacks on the Second Amendment, introduced H.R. 793last week. The proposed legislation calls for an excise tax on concealed carry and a federal buyback program. It is co-sponsored by a number of Democrats in the House, including the   ... MORE

Gene Healy: The Five Worst Op-Eds of 2012

The New York Times comes on strong.  For three years running, I've closed the Old Year with a seasonal burst of bile, my annual Five Worst Op-Eds column. As before, this year's malicious listicle rewards bad arguments and bad writing, with extra points for warped values. 5. Eric Posner, "The World Doesn't Love the First Amendment,"    ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Middle East Democracy

We should mind our own business.  Here's the first paragraph of my last year's column "Democracy Is Impossible": "After Moammar Gadhafi's downfall as Libya's tyrannical ruler, politicians and 'experts' in the U.S. and elsewhere, including French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, are saying that his death marked the end of 42 years of tyranny and the        ... MORE

Walter E Williams: Tyrants And Human Nature

There are no known exceptions to the law of demand. The agendas of liberals, progressives and assorted tyrants desperately depend on the aspects of human nature they often condemn, such as acquisitiveness, profit motive, self-interestedness and greed. This crossed my mind while reading "How Departures From Economic Freedom ... MORE

Walter E. Williams: Compliant Americans

A nation of sheep. Last month, at a Raeford, N.C., elementary school, a teacher confiscated the lunch of a 5-year-old girl because it didn't meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines and therefore was deemed nonnutritious. She replaced it with school cafeteria chicken nuggets. The girl's home-prepared lunch was nutritious; it consisted of a turkey ... MORE