Archive for March, 2011

Bureaucrats Tear Down Basketball Hoops

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

The Philosophy of Liberty: Property

Sunday, March 27th, 2011

Rein in PATRIOT and Restore JUSTICE

Monday, March 21st, 2011

From: EFF

Tell Congress to Rein in PATRIOT and Restore JUSTICE!

Congress voted at the end of February to extend the expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, but only for three months — giving liberty-loving citizens a new opportunity to continue to protest this dangerous law and demand reforms before the end of May. A message from you, opposing PATRIOT extension and demanding that Congress pass the important reforms contained in the JUSTICE Act, could make a critical difference. Help EFF defend civil liberties and stop Congress from rubber-stamping the PATRIOT Act!

There’s new hope in the PATRIOT debate.  Thanks to bipartisan opposition from Democratic leaders and an insurgent movement of conservative Republicans, PATRIOT provisions that were scheduled to expire at the end of February were only temporarily renewed for three months.  That means we have three more months to fight against permanent renewal and demand meaningful reform to the government’s broad surveillance powers under that law.  With debate over PATRIOT dominating Twitter and the blogosphere, and with both Democrats and Republicans demanding meaningful oversight and reform, this is our best chance in years to convince Congress to investigate how PATRIOT is being used and establish new checks and balances to protect against abuse.

That’s why Congress needs to hear from you now, as it begins the three-month process of conducting hearings and considering proposals for PATRIOT renewal and reform.  Congress needs to know now that you oppose PATRIOT extension and support meaningful reforms, like the powerful new PATRIOT oversight and accountability measures found in the JUSTICE Act bills that were introduced in the House (H.R. 4005) and Senate (S.1686) in 2009 during the last PATRIOT reauthorization debate. 

The JUSTICE Act not only contained critically important new checks and balances to prevent abuse of the three expiring PATRIOT provisions, but also proposed many meaningful reforms to a wide range of other, permanent PATRIOT powers.  The JUSTICE Act also began to address some of the serious civil liberties problems with the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which broadly enhanced the government’s authority to spy on your international phone calls and emails without warrants and may ultimately be more dangerous to civil liberties than anything in PATRIOT.

Congressional leaders have promised they won’t waste the next three months but instead will spend that time giving PATRIOT reform the attention it deserves.  It’s our job to make sure they keep that promise, and to demand that Congress rein in PATRIOT and restore JUSTICE.   So, please contact your Representative and Senators today!

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White House wants Wiretaps to Enforce Copyright

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

From: Cnet

Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes, a list that was expanded by the 2001 Patriot Act to include offenses such as material support of terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction. The administration is proposing to add copyright and trademark infringement, arguing that move “would assist U.S. law enforcement agencies to effectively investigate those offenses.”

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20043421-281.html#ixzz1GjUNNWr9

The Role of Government

Monday, March 7th, 2011

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

Middle Class White People Incensed by Budget Cuts

Friday, March 4th, 2011
The 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.

Thursday, 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.”

…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.”

http://pajamasmedia.com/zombie/2011/03/01/outside-job-using-the-oscars-to-legitimize-a-political-theory/?singlepage=true

Posted by Jack on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 7:21 pm.

Obama, Mexican president reach trucking agreement «

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

This 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.
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What is a Libertarian?

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Harvard Professor Jeff Miron explains:

 

 

Federal Government’s Duplicate Programs Make Dupes Out of Taxpayers

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

Why 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: