Dec 10

Public High School Shuts Down “Conservative” Speech Because it “Crossed the Line”

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America’s youth concentration camps , er . . . public schools, offer very little education, but provide a great deal of government-supremacist indoctrination. Facts about the relationship between capitalism and prosperity are deemed too radical to be presented to impressionable minds. Students are taught to seek all blessings from the state and its omnipotent ministers.

Here is shocking video of a public high school administrator shutting down a “conservative” lecture mid-speech in a Chula Vista, California high school. The administrator claimed the lecture–by annoying “conservative” speaker Ben Shapiro–“crossed the line.”

Ben Shapiro had been invited onto the high school campus by a “conservative” student club, Young Americans for Freedom. The club had gone through channels, applied to the administration, and filled out the proper paperwork.

But Shapiro said that poor people who win the lottery “disproportionally end up poor again” (a well-known phenomenon, shown by numbers of studies). The reason poor people stay poor, continued Shapiro, “isn’t that they don’t have money; it’s because they suck with money.”

At this point, the Administrator had heard enough and barged toward the podium to stop Shapiro’s talk. The video can be seen here.

Dec 09

France has become anti-Muslim police state

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It is unfortunate that today’s Muslim societies are authoritarian strongholds where there is little due process of law (in the Anglo-American sense).

It is even more unfortunate that France–one of the great fountains of liberty over the past 1000 years–appears to be embracing an almost-Islamic level of authoritarianism, ironically aimed at suppressing the French Muslim population.

According to John Stossel, a Halal-Mexican restaurant near Paris “was raided by upwards of forty police armed with rifles and clad in body armor, helmets, and riot shields” in the week after the recent Paris terror attacks.

“After terrifying diners, who were ordered to sit still and not touch their phones, officers proceeded to the basement, where they smashed several doors with battering rams, reportedly in search of a ‘hidden prayer room.'”

The restaurant owner asked them not to break down doors because he would simply unlock them, but he was ordered to “lay on the floor and stay silent.” The raid did not find weapons or anything “linked to terrorist activities.”

Read Stossel’s column here.

Dec 08

Lysander Spooner University Planning New Glacier Photography Dates

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After the success of our September 2015 Glacier Research trip, we are planning new glacier photography field trips in the northern Rockies.

Many people do not realize that there are hundreds of glaciers in the Rocky Mountains around Livingston, Montana.

Here is a website detailing the numbers of glaciers and perennial snowfields in the Crazy, Beartooth and Absaroka Mountain ranges. There are 57 glaciers and perennial snowfields in the Crazy Mountains, and 401 glaciers or perennial snowfields in the Beartooth and Absaroka mountain ranges (about 35% of the total number in Montana).

Some of these glaciers are within 30 miles of Livingston, Montana.

We are seeking to coordinate glacier-hunting trips on the following dates:

December 26, 2015: The day after Christmas and the first Saturday after the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. We will meet in front of the Coffee Crossing coffeehouse in Livingston at 9:00 a.m. and embark for the local Crazy Mountains by 9:35 a.m. Bring cross-country skis, snowshoes and/or snowmobiles and dress for freezing (Everest level) conditions. If there is sufficient interest, we may snowcamp overnight.

Then, on Saturday May21, 2016, just before the average date of last spring frost in Livingston, Montana, we will meet in front of the MT Cup Coffee Shop (around the corner from the Coffee Crossing) at 8:30 a.m. and embark around 9:00 a.m. for further glacier hunting. This will be an overnight backpacking trip.

We are also aiming to add a glacier-hunting trip in the Beartooth Mountains on July 16, 2016, just after the average date of last Spring frost in Cooke City, Montana. (We will meet at 8:00 a.m. at the Cooke City visitors center and museum and embark around 8:30.)

Check out any zip code on this website, which tells you the average date of first freeze and last freeze for the location.

Dec 08

Lost? Need Directions? Ask a Man

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Fascinating psychological research from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology suggests that male brains are better at judging directions than female brains. See here.

The research involved MRI scans of brain activity.

Dec 06

Hatred for Wal-mart Reached a Climax in Puerto Rico

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Wal-mart, America’s largest private employer and retailer, is a frequent target for those who hate markets and worship the state.

Witness this “documentary” on the megaretailer, frequently shown in union halls, schools and colleges by socialist-leaning professors. Like Michael Moore’s film “Roger and Me,” its target can do nothing right. In “Roger and Me,” General Motors is despised for being in Flint, Michigan—and then despised for moving away.

Similarly, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price chastises Wal-Mart for forcing its workers to work too many hours, or having them work too few; for enriching its own shareholders, and for impoverishing the shareholders of “mom and pop” stores which charge higher prices than Wal-Mart.

For years, governments have sought to devise legislation to slay the beast of Wal-Mart. Earlier this year (2015) Puerto Rican legislators passed a law tripling (from 2 % to 6.5 %) a tax on goods imported from offshore affiliates to local companies with gross revenues of more than $2.75 billion. The law was clearly aimed solely at Walmart: an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder.

According a lawsuit filed by Wal-Mart, the new tax will cost “an astonishing and unsustainable 91.5% of its net income.”

Dec 04

How Government Regulation Crushed Lysander Spooner’s American Letter Mail Company

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In 1844, Lysander Spooner launched a mail company called the American Letter Mail Company. Spooner’s company competed directly with the U.S. Postal Service, delivering letters and parcels between major cities in the eastern United States at a lower price than the government’s rates. Spooner’s company had offices in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, and delivered letters for 6 and ¼ cents per ounce, or twenty letters for a dollar. This significantly undercut the government’s rate of 12 cents per letter.

Spooner designed a ‘hub’ system between the major offices (similar to the system that was later developed by Federal Express and UPS). Upon receiving mail shipments at the hub offices, regional carriers would scurry across regional landscapes by railroad, steamboat and on foot. Soon, Spooner’s mail company was more efficient—and cheaper—than the U.S. Mail.

Spooner’s success was not lost on the U.S. government, which had previously held something of a monopoly. The U.S. government went after Spooner with a vengeance. U.S. Marshals descended on Spooner’s Philadelphia office and arrested office manager Calvin Case, on the ground of conveying letters contrary to the laws of Congress.

By 1851, after a brief legal battle, the government forced Spooner’s American Letter Mail Company out of business.
Spooner’s experience is the experience of thousands—perhaps millions—of poor Americans who have seen their dreams shattered by government regulation.

There was one positive outcome, however. U.S. Post Office was compelled to lower its rates significantly. Such is the nature of competition in a marketplace.

Dec 03

Health Care Costs Accelerating Faster

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It is the dream of every truster of government: universal, government-dispensed health care, made cheaper by eliminating the profit motive from the industry.

Unfortunately, it never works. Every government program which subsidizes health care simply increases demand without increasing supply, causing prices to rise faster than inflation.

Now, after Obamacare has come completely on line, there are new data showing that health care costs are skyrocketing faster than during any year of the Obama presidency. See here. So much for “affordable” care.

Dec 03

Socialist Venezuela Descends into Primitive Bartering

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Socialism is a curse that should only be wished on a hated enemy. Any society that embraces it will eventually become sick and weak.

The Miami Herald reports that the impoverished people of Venezuela–suffering from decades of socialist ‘rulership’–have developed a primitive bartering system to obtain basic goods.

Dec 03

French Government Begins Closing Mosques

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So much for freedom of religion in France. For that matter, so much for the relative freedom of the western world.

In the wake of the Islamist-generated terrorist attacks at a Paris heavy metal concert two weeks ago, French SWAT teams are raiding and shuttering Muslim religious facilities across France.

The mosques are being shut down for promoting “radicalism.” See here.

Dec 03

Bankrupt Greek Government Demands that Citizens Report all Jewelry, Coins, Private Cash

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Are mass confiscation raids about to be unleashed in Greece? The Greek newspaper Enikonomia reported days ago that Greek taxpayers will be forced to declare all private cash held outside the banks, and all jewelry boxes containing more than 15,000 euros or gold or other metals worth over 30,000 euros. See here.

The Greek government is bankrupt and has placed its people in perpetual slavery to international creditors.