Beyond The Broken Spectrum

Not even a 520-square-foot billboard in Times Square could induce Santa Cruz to allow a 3rd medical marijuana dispensary on Tuesday.

Instead, as expected, the council voted unanimously to limit the dispensaries in this town of about 54,000 to the two currently existing.

Nor has anyone been able to name a single city or county in California that has reversed itself on a ban or moratorium since Oakland passed the first sin tax on marijuana in July of 2009, which taxed medical marijuana the same as alcohol. Read More

Medical marijuana patients should not be taxed under any circumstances for their medicine, however this bill is a step in the right direction, and should be supported by all marijuana activists.

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In a move that was widely expected, Obama Administration officials headed to the Senate to press for approval of a $33 billion war supplemental bill, with most of the money going to pay for the Afghan War.

The $33 billion supplement would be in addition to the record $708 billion military budget reported in January. The Obama Administration had defended the record military funding by saying that the war costs would be folded into the military bill instead of being part of a supplement, though at the time they had already conceded that they would need a supplement. Read More

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I had to bribe them. What other choice did I have?

My lecture at Princeton had just ended with smiles and enthusiastic questions.

At the same time, I knew that most students would go out and promptly do the opposite of what I preached. Most of them would be putting in 80-hour weeks as high-paid coffee fetchers unless I showed that the principles from class could actually be applied.

Hence the challenge.

I was offering a round-trip ticket anywhere in the world to anyone who could complete an undefined “challenge” in the most impressive fashion possible. Results plus style. I told them to meet me after class if interested, and here they were, nearly 20 out of 60 students. Read More

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The Question of Monopolies

Nathaniel Branden, PhD
This essay was originally published in the Intellectual Ammunition Department of “The Objectivist Newsletter” in June 1962.

A reader asks:

In a society of laissez-faire capitalism, what would prevent the formation of powerful monopolies able to gain control over the entire economy?

Nathaniel Branden responds:

One of the worst fallacies in the field of economics—propagated by Karl Marx and accepted by almost everyone today, including many businessmen—is that the development of monopolies is an inescapable and intrinsic result of the operation of a free, unregulated economy. In fact, the exact opposite is true. It is a free market that makes monopolies impossible.

It is imperative that one be clear and specific in one’s understanding of the meaning of “monopoly.” When people speak in an economic or political context, of the dangers and evils of monopoly, what they mean is a coercive monopoly—that is; exclusive control of a given field of production which is closed to and exempt from competition, so that those controlling the field are able to set arbitrary production policies and charge arbitrary prices, independent of the market, immune from the law of supply and demand. Such a monopoly, it is important to note, entails more than the absence of competition; it entails the impossibility of competition. That is a coercive monopoly’s characteristic attribute-and is essential to any condemnation of such a monopoly.

In the whole history of capitalism, no one has been able to establish a coercive monopoly by means of competition on a free market. There is only one way to forbid entry into a given field of production: by law. Every single coercive monopoly that exists or ever has existed—in the United States, in Europe or anywhere else in the world—was created and made possible only by an act of government: by special franchises, licenses, subsidies, by legislative actions which granted special privileges (not obtainable on a free market) to a man or a group of men, and forbade all others to enter that particular field.

A coercive monopoly is not the result of laissez-faire; it can result only from the abrogation of laissez-faire and from the introduction of the opposite principle—the principle of statism. (more…)

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Republicans were for President Barack Obama’s requirement that Americans get health insurance before they were against it.

The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that’s been around at least two decades. It was once trumpeted as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s failed health care overhaul in the 1990s. These days, Republicans call it government overreach.

Mitt Romney, weighing another run for the GOP presidential nomination, signed such a requirement into law at the state level as Massachusetts governor in 2006. At the time, Romney defended it as “a personal responsibility principle” and Massachusetts’ newest GOP senator, Scott Brown, backed it. Romney now says Obama’s plan is a federal takeover that bears little resemblance to what he did as governor and should be repealed.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/ap/republicans-were-for-obamas-health-insurance-rule-before-they-opposed-it-89318292.html

Remember to vote Independent/Third Party

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After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it. Read More

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President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation’s economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday. Read More

How’s those Democrats and Republicans working out for ya?

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Examiner J.D. Tuccille

Many years ago, I had a law school professor who opened his very first lecture by telling us, “law is violence.” His point was that any use of the law — or of government power in general — involves force or the threat of force. That professor and I disagreed on many issues, but we both knew that to call for the passage of a new law or the enforcement of an existing one is to invoke men with guns, handcuffs and prisons — and, ultimately, to be willing to kill in order to achieve a desired goal. So it strikes me as absurd to see members of Congress — professional makers of law — get their knickers all knotted because some of the people affected by controversial health care legislation have responded with harsh words, disturbing letters and even bricks and bullets.

The apparently unfeigned outrage comes because our legal and political culture largely agrees with Max Weber’s old assertion that government is defined by a monopoly on the use of legitimate violence. The state may allow others to use force (for self-defense, perhaps), but that’s at the discretion of government authorities, who always retain the right to initiate force themselves to achieve their goals, and can expect acquiescence on the part of the public. Basically, that means government officials get to boss us around, and we’re not supposed to fight back.

So, when people react to legislation that threatens them with fines and arrest, backed by armed men, by tossing a few bricks through windows, they’re stepping out of the cozy system in which members of Congress have grown accustomed to operating. Don’t they know that the peasants are supposed to just lie there and take it?

This isn’t to say that threats and vandalism are wise reactions to the passage of the health care bill — or any other of the many intrusive and oppressive policies that officials from both major political parties have foisted on us over the years. If nothing else, it’s playing on the government’s home turf, since lawmakers can call on large cadres of people who are trained and paid to smash and kill. It also tends to be bad public relations in a world in which most people drink the same Kool Aid as their political masters. Americans may accept thousands killed by soldiers and police, but they tend to be horrified when individuals smash a few officials’ windows.

Then again, as legislators engage in violence through legislation, perhaps there’s a value in reminding them that not everybody agrees that the state should be unanswered when it pushes people around.

And we can hope we’ll someday achieve a world in which nobody, not even government officials, gets to initiate force to achieve their goals.

Posted in Editor's Picks, Government, Judicial/Crime, Life In General, Politics | | No Comments »

The Department of Public Safety and Williamson County sheriff’s deputies conducted simultaneous raids Wednesday on six sophisticated indoor marijuana-growing operations in Williamson and Travis Counties. Read the article

Our society is more dangerous due to the criminalization of this relatively harmless plant, which is safer to use than both alcohol and tobacco, and has never resulted in the death of a user as it is impossible to OD on.

If marijuana is legalized, crime would decrease as drug dealers no longer have the funds to operate or a reason to cause violence as they protect their “turf.” Drug cartels in Mexico and South America would fall apart as their vital revenue, most of which comes from marijuana, is sucked away from them to provide new businesses, jobs, and taxes here in Texas.

Police could also stop wasting their time busting people for victimless crimes and begin focusing their efforts on preventing rapes and murders.

Remember, drug dealers don’t card, and have every incentive to get your child hooked on a hard drug. Are we really better off keeping marijuana illegal?

I recommend this article for more information: http://brokenspectrum.com/2009/09/22/the-great-legalization-debate-marijuana/

Posted in Drug Related, Government, Judicial/Crime, State Issues, The News | | No Comments »

The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices and now Social Security.

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Read More

By 2037, the program is expected to be flat broke, and everyone that was forced to pay into the program will never see their hard earned money ever again. Bernie Madoff must have learned well from the fed, he just didn’t have the same clout the government does to steal from people though. In the end, all of these scams will collapse, and the tax payer will bear the burden, only this time no one will go to jail for the massive fraud.

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AUSTIN, TEXAS – March 23, 2010 — Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, along with attorneys general from dozens of other states, are planning to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Democrat’s healthcare bill as soon as it is signed.

“The audacity of the Democrats to pass an unconstitutional healthcare reform law is only matched by the Republicans’ recent posturing as anti-government crusaders,” said Patrick Dixon, Chair of the Libertarian Party of Texas. “If the Republicans were serious about their constitutional concerns, they would raise the legal argument that no healthcare spending by Congress is anywhere authorized by the US Constitution.

“Republicans passed the largest government takeover of healthcare in 30 years when they granted senior citizens an unfunded Prescription Drug benefit known as Medicare Part D,” said Dixon. “The Prescription Drug benefit will cost taxpayers $727 billion in the next nine years. The Democrat’s current plan will cost an estimated $950 billion over the next ten years. Both parties have dramatically increased the federal government’s role in healthcare. The Republican response to the Democrats appears to be complete theater.”

The Republican Party has a long history of supporting the Federal government’s expansion into healthcare. In 1997, the Republican Congress passed CHIP, the largest expansion of taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage for children in the U.S. since Medicaid began in the 1960’s. It was sponsored by the late Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy in a partnership with Republican Senator Orrin Hatch with the support of then First Lady Clinton. The Republican Congress repeatedly voted to expand SCHIP throughout the 2000’s.

“Let’s not forget that the Democrat’s original plan to take over healthcare this year was copied from Republican Mitt Romney’s plan for Massachusetts,” said Libertarian Executive Director Robert Butler. “Apparently it’s OK when Republicans reform healthcare, but when Democrat’s enact a similar plan it’s an ‘obamanation’.”

The Libertarian Party has a completely different approach to the current high prices of healthcare. Libertarians propose that all federal regulation of the healthcare industry be repealed so that prices can fall back to the market-determined prices.

Consumers do not realize that healthcare prices would dramatically drop if the government ended its monopoly of the industry. In 1910, 56% of hospitals were privately owned and for-profit; that number shrank to only 10% of hospitals in 1989, according to the late Nobel-laureate economist Milton Friedman. And this small number of private, for-profit hospitals actually hire more staff to administer government compliance than patient care.

Butler concluded, “We know that government alternatives cost more than the private sector, so decreasing cost by expanding government is a plan doomed to failure.”

About the Libertarian Party of Texas

The Libertarian Party of Texas supports more freedom and less government. We follow the Golden Rule: we treat others as we would like to be treated.

We seek to restore the great American free enterprise system that made us the strongest, most powerful economy in the world: lower taxes, free markets, free trade, less regulation, and less red tape for businesses big and small.

We respect your right to live your life the way you see fit, and expect you to take responsibility for the consequences.

Find out more at:
http://lptexas.org

Libertarian Party of Texas
Robert Butler, Executive Director
512-758-9134
director@lptexas.org

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The U.S. Mint unveiled the designs for the first five coins in its America the Beautiful Quarters Program. The series will feature designs from 56 national parks and other sites in the 50 states, D.C. and U.S. territories.

The coin designs will be presented in the order they were first designated as national landmarks by the federal government. The first quarter in the series, Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas, will be released April 19, followed by four additional coins in 2010.

The other 51 quarters will roll out periodically through 2021, when Alabama’s Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site completes the series.

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On Tuesday at the 2010 Owners’ Meetings, the NFL passed a new alteration to the overtime rule, which will give one team a chance to score even if the opposing team scores by way of a field goal in “sudden death”. If that first team scores a touchdown on first possession, the game would be over, but if both teams exchange field goals, actual sudden death, with the first team to score winning, would then occur. Teams voted the new change in by a margin of 28-4 for a postseason-only modification, but it’s entirely possible that in the next meetings in May, the rule could get the required 24 votes to be implemented on a full-time basis. Read More

Well its about time they changed this horrible rule, hopefully they’ll go another step further and implement it during the regular season as well.

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Tanning salon customers may be paying a little more for their skin tone under the new federal health care legislation.

Beginning in July, salon operators will have to collect a 10 percent federal sales tax on tanning sessions.

The tax is meant to help fund health care system costs with money from a product that some doctors and others in the medical community say may have health risks, chiefly an increased risk of skin cancer.

Clement Moore, owner of Equator Tans in Waco, said his customers will have to cover the cost.

“It will just mean we have to pass the cost down,” he said.

Moore said he does not think the tax is fair. Without a major lobbying effort behind it, the tanning industry makes an easy target, he said. Read More

Just another instance of a “sin tax” driving up the costs of doing business and sucking ever more money from our pockets.

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The prospect and reality of Obamacare have woken up many people to the need to stop the socialization of medical care in America. It will produce here what it has produced everywhere: stagnation, overutilization, rationing, and the sacrifice of individual well-being in the name of collective justice.

This is the result not only of every experiment in socialized medicine but of every experiment in socialism generally. The reasons were spelled out by Mises in 1922. He explained that, without property and market prices, economic rationality disappears. The result is unworkable, chaotic, and impoverishing. Read More

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