The government of Greece, like many world governments, has been on a slow-motion ride toward solialism for decades: redistributive taxes to take money from nonapproved groups and transfer it to approved gropes by force; welfare and entitlement supports to incentivize sloth and disincentivize hard work; the constant empowerment of organized labor, which slowly decreases the …
June 2015 archive
Jun 04
The Ultimate Victims of Socialism: Those Who Seek It
Fascinating story on Yahoonews today. “Paradise for $20.” The nation of Venezuela was once a thriving, hard-working industrious outpost in South America. Then the country went hard-core socialist, with the elections of Hugo Chavez for more than a decade. Chavez nationalized industries, drove out evil capitalists, and took command of the Venezuelan economy. Rationing, shortages, …
Jun 04
NSA Secretly Expands Its Powers Without Authorization–Again!
The New York Times is reporting today that the TSA has once again expanded its spying on Americans’ internet and email communications, despite the lapsing of the USA Patriot Act and a total lack of congressional authorization. The new spying apparently does have the approval of President Obama, who campaigned in 2008 that he would …
Jun 04
The Government’s TSA Screening Fails 95 Percent of the Time
by Dr. Roger I. Roots Back in 2003, I authored a peer-reviewed article entitled “Terrorized Into Absurdity: The Creation of the Transportation Security Administration.” See here. (Scroll down.) I predicted that the TSA (which was brand new at that time) would cost 6 times more than the private-screening efforts that had previously operated at America’s …
Jun 04
The 3 Greatest Paragraphs ever written on Juries
Lysander Spooner was not just a brilliant scholar; he was a great writer. He wrote the three greatest paragraphs ever written on trial by jury. The three paragraphs introduced his readers to his brilliant essay/book Trial by Jury in the nineteenth century: For more than six hundred years — that is, since Magna Carta, in …
Jun 02
Ninth Circuit Justice: the Ancient Writ of Habeas Corpus has Collapsed as a Protection for the Powerless
Stephen R. Reinhardt is one of America’s most premier “liberal” (in the old, traditional, suspicious-of-government sense) judges on the high federal bench. For years he has used his seat on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to protect criminal defendants from the overreach of the American police state. Now Reinhardt has authored an enlightened …
Jun 02
The New York Times–or at least the business model it is based on–is doomed
The New York Times reported a net loss of $14.4 million for the first quarter of 2015. This is startling enough. But the details foreshadow even darker “times” ahead for the Times. It seems that the New York Times corporation, which has long been dominated by a far-left, pro-labor and (generally) pro-government business philosophy, has …
Jun 02
FBI Now Using Secret Airforce to Monitor Citizens’ Communications and Movements
It has now come out that the FBI has been operating a fleet of small aircraft to monitor and surveil Americans’ movements and communication without warrants. The story is here.
Jun 01
Rand Paul States the Obvious: Government Has a Stake in Promoting Terrorism So It Can Increase its Control and Power
Great USA Patriot Act theater as May turns into June 2015. U.S. Senator Rand Paul, arguing to allow the unconstitutional USA Patriot Act to expire, states that many people are hoping for new terrorist attacks on American soil, so that such attacks can be blamed on Rand Paul. The video and commentary are here. This …
