Oct 05

U.S. Postal Service Lost $5.5 Billion in 2014; Its Average Vehicle Gets 10 M.P.G.

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The U.S. Postal Service lost $5.5 billion in 2014 and has lost many more billions over the past decade. Even as global trade, communications and shipping has skyrocketed, the Postal Service can’t operate efficiently.

U.S. Postal workers are greatly overpaid. Hundreds, even thousands, apply for every opening. It might be said that the PRIMARY purpose of the Postal Service is to pad the accounts of U.S. Postal workers. Delivering mail is secondary.

The Postal Service’ old fleet of delivery vehicles averages about 10 miles per gallon. “To illustrate how silly this is, a 2015 Ford F-150 pickup truck has a combined mileage of 22 mpg—more than double that of the much smaller [U.S.P.S. vehicle].” Read Ken Blackwell’s article here.

During the mid-1800s, Lysander Spooner started a mail delivery business that easily delivered mail at lower prices than the government postal service. Spooner’s prices were lower, and his delivery times were shorter. Hundreds of thousands of smiling customers benefited.

But the U.S. government did not appreciate the competition. They shut Spooner down using the full military and law enforcement powers of the government–claiming (falsely) that the Constitution grants a postal monopoly to the government. In fact, the Constitution merely authorizes Congress to provide mail service.

As Spooner pointed out in the 1800s, the Constitution’s “freedom of the press” provision required that mail could not be a government monopoly. There can be no freedom of the press when government controls the delivery of the printed word.

Oct 02

Law School Professors Overwhelmingly Promote Expansive Intrusive Government

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Many people have noticed that today’s legal profession is overwhelmingly composed of trusters of expansive government. Where are the Jeffersons, the Lord Camdens and the George Masons of today?

One reason why the public cannot find lawyers to challenge government power is the law school industry. Today’s law schools are overwhelmingly staffed by professors who promote a one-sided, pro-government, socialist agenda. See this essay by Professor John McGinnis.

Oct 01

Tables Turned: Government-Funded “scientists” who sought to have their Skeptics Jailed are now Under Investigation Themselves

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A widely-circulated narrative proposes that scientists who dispute the government’s manmade-global-warming-by-carbon-dioxide claims are bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry.

There is a basic logic behind this claim: demand for oil, gas and coal would decrease if government made the products more expensive or regulated. The industry benefits from the spread of information disputing the government’s “carbon-is-causing-warming” narrative.

But no one claims that all scientists who dispute or question the government’s theory are supported by the fossil fuel industry. And no one has EVER CAUGHT any skeptical scientist stating his skepticism is owed to funding.

The opposite, however, is true regarding the promoters of the government’s theory: THE VAST MAJORITY OF PROMINENT SCIENTISTS WHO PUSH THE GOVERNMENT’S CLIMATE-SOCIALIST AGENDA ARE FINANCIALLY SUPPORTED BY A SOURCE THAT DOES HAVE AN INTEREST IN THE DEBATE: GOVERNMENTS.

Now it appears that the professor who initiated the recent demand that climate-skeptics be prosecuted under the RICO Act is himself the beneficiary of vast millions of dollars of governmental support for his alleged scientific research.*

Here is a link to a story indicating that a congressional committee may soon be investigating this alleged scientist’s funding sources.

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* perhaps the word alleged is a bit harsh. But science is skepticism, and the absolute first rule of science is that every hypothesis should invite disputes–not seek to have disputers punished.

Sep 29

Another prominent voice calls for the imprisonment of climate skeptics

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The debate is over! Jail the skeptics! Prominent pro-government extremist Thom Hartmann (who loudly calls for a constitutional amendment to overturn the First Amendment in order to stop (private sector) money from having any influence on politics), is now calling for the imprisonment of those who disagree with him regarding the world’s climate. See here.

“I am talking about racketeering, organized crime. I am calling you a criminal,” shouted Hartmann on his radio show. Hartmann was yelling at writer Paul Driessen (who writes skeptically of the government’s CO2-driven-global-warming claims). The “debate” then degenerated into defamatory accusations against Driessen and demands that Driessen be jailed for his opinions.

Sep 29

Trust in government-supported media is at an all-time low

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A government-trusting hack writing in yesterday’s Washington Post (see here) complains that the public’s trust in the media is at an all-time low–as measured by Gallup polling.

Just four in 10 Americans say they have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of trust in the media to report the news fairly and accurately, according to new data from Gallup.

As previously reported (see here), the state-controlled, pro-government media outlets (including the Washington Post) present a continuous monologue of advocacy for intrusive, expansive government and elitist control over the American people.

The government has been repeatedly caught paying “journalists” to report the news from a pro-government perspective. See here.

Sep 29

People continue fleeing totalitarian states

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The history of humanity is a history of people wanting to control their neighbors through government–and of their neighbors (and ultimately, themselves) fleeing the governmental environments they created for freer shores.

England, for example, was widely known to be freer than continental Europe throughout the past thousand years. Vagabonds, exiles and wandering gypsies from throughout the world came to her. Then there were the British colonies: America, Canada, Australia, etc. These were free societies compared to most of the world, and millions fled to them.

North Koreans flee to China. East Germans fled to West Germany, etc.

Even within the U.S., people flee from high-tax, overregulated states to low-tax, less regulated states. Nevada, Florida, and Texas offer lower-tax alternatives for the overburdened taxpayers of New York, Illinois and New Jersey. See here.

In 2013, Florida gained $8.2 billion in adjusted gross income from new arrivals. Texas gained $5.9 billion. Five of the seven states with the biggest income gains — Florida, Texas, Arizona, Washington and Nevada — have no income tax.

New York again was the big loser, with another 112,236 tax filers leaving and taking $5.2 billion with them. Illinois lost nearly 67,000 tax filers and $3.7 billion of income that it can no longer tax.

Sep 29

Government has made housing less affordable–while claiming a desire to make housing more affordable

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Thomas Sowell: “nobody has done more to make housing unaffordable than [government officials proclaiming a desire to make housing affordable].”

“A recent survey,” says Sowell, “showed that the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco was just over $3,500. Some people are paying $1,800 a month just to rent a bunk bed in a San Francisco apartment.”

See here.

Government “planning” and construction restrictions have caused the unaffordability problem. “When a growing population creates a growing demand for housing, and the government blocks housing from being built, the price of existing housing goes up.” “[L]ocal government laws and policies severely restricted, or banned outright, the building of anything on vast areas of land. This is called preserving “open space.”

Sep 27

Associated Press cites “lack of regulation” as cause of increased prescription drug prices, even as overregulation is the primary cause of high drug prices

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A case study in how the government-supporting media report business news through the lens of government. This weekend, dozens of prominent newspapers (including the Bozeman Daily Chronicle) reprinted an Associated Press (AP) story entitled “Side Effects: Lack of regulation, competition, research costs increase prescription drug costs in the U.S.” See the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s republication of this story here.

Note especially the statement in the subtitle that “lack of regulation” has increased drug costs.

Almost no conceivable statement could be more false. The “business news story” goes on to cite the U.S. government’s failure to regulate prices as grounds for this preposterous assertion.

The reality, of course, is that the U.S. government’s vast overregulation of pharmaceutical products is the primary cause of America’s high drug prices. As Professors Tomas J. Philipson and Eric Sun found in an exhaustive 2010 study (see here), the FDA’s regulations produce billions of dollars of extra costs.

Moreover, the FDA’s regulations and delays have led to at least $19 billion of higher costs for marketers of a single AIDS drug, and billions of dollars of higher costs for other drugs. All-told, government regulations have undoubtedly caused hundreds of billions of dollars of higher prices to American patients.

Moreover, the total cost to pharmaceutical companies of such regulations is surpassed by the total costs to patients of such regulations. The FDA’s regulations and delays have cost AIDS patients at least $330 billion, lymphoma patients at least $8 billion, and breast-cancer patients at least $137 billion.

Sep 26

Castro lived like a king among the impoverished subjects of socialist Cuba

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Haters of capitalism routinely invoke the specter of “income inequality” and talk often of the gap between rich and poor.

Yet never is that gap larger than in socialist countries which have driven out capitalism. Witness North Korea, where government leaders reside in palaces surrounded by fearful starving servants.

Or witness socialist Cuba under Fidel Castro. Fidel Castro’s former bodyguard Juan Reinaldo Sánchez says that the communist leader “lived like a king” and “ran the country like a cross between medieval overlord and Louis XV.” While ordinary Cubans stood in breadlines and watched as their society descended into poverty and slavery, Castro owned a luxurious private yacht and had his own private island. The opulent island was complete with dolphins and a turtle farm. When in Havana, Castro lived in a sprawling estate with a rooftop bowling alley, expansive well-groomed lawns, a basketball court and fully equipped medical center.

See the Guardian report here.

Sep 25

Another government college bans free-market student clubs

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Another government college has been caught seeking to ban student free-market clubs from campus. Hagerstown Community College (HCC) Student Activities Coordinator Heather B. Barnhart told students they were forbidden from starting a chapter of the free market advocacy student group Turning Point USA (TPUSA) on campus. Barnhart reportedly told a student that she (the student) would be permitted to instead start a Republican Club on campus (but only if a Democrat Club was formed at the same time).

According to the Foundation for Equal Rights in Education, “Dean of Student Affairs Jessica A. Chambers later clarified that DeMartino could not start a TPUSA chapter, or even a Republican or Democrat Club, and stated that DeMartino [the student] should instead join HCC’s already-existing Political Science Club, which Chambers judged to be sufficient for all politically oriented students.”

See the report here. America’s government colleges have become dens of pro-government extremism, where a doctrinaire message of socialism displaces all discourse on markets, freedom and libertarianism. Although public universities are government institutions which are presumably subject to the free-speech, free-press and equal-protection provisions of the Constitution, many engage in overt discrimination and repression of anti-government thought.