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.

Sep 25

NASA satellites document that polar ice has grown, not declined

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James Taylor of Forbes Magazine:

Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims – that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.

See the article here.

Sep 25

Utah Public College Banned Criticism of Government Officials, Established “Free Speech Zone” Comprising 0.1 Percent of Campus

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Publicly Owned universities are premised on two arguments: (1) that such schools meet the needs of the poor in ways that private schools do not, and (2) that such schools allow more free exchange of ideas in ways that private (often religious) schools do not.

Both claims have been shattered by known data. Government colleges (and government funding of colleges, through programs such as the Student Loan Program) have DECREASED THE PROPORTION OF POOR PEOPLE IN HIGHER EDUCATION. See here, here and here. In fact, the true poor must labor in fast-food restaurants and on construction sites to pay for college life for the children of the middle class.

And government (and government-funded) colleges now engage in wide-scale discrimination and repression of anti-government thought.

Dixie State College (a public college in St. George, Utah) banned students from distributing flyers which criticized former President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama, and Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara—because they “disparage[d]” and “mock[ed]” individuals.

On another occasion, a Dixie State administrator decided that the Young Americans for Liberty club’s “free speech wall” event would have to take place in the university’s unconstitutional “free speech zone,” comprising roughly 0.1 percent of campus. Neither the student-plaintiffs nor other administrators knew the free speech zone’s location, and it was not specified in any published university policy.

After a lawsuit, the University has backed down. See here.

Sep 25

Montana Health Insurance Rates to Increase 22 to 34 Percent

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Government’s slave-plantation-healthcare agenda continues. The Affordable Care Act has now triggered insurance rate hikes of between 22 and 34 percent in a single year for Montanans. See here.

Sep 24

EPA spends millions on high-end luxury office furnishings

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by Roger Roots

All of us know that government officials love to pad their government temples of power with gleaming marble, oak and precious metals. I remember the first time I ever argued a case at the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis. Upon first seeing the government building, I almost vomited on the sidewalk. The audacity and arrogance on display turned my stomach.

Now we learn that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has (again) spent extravagantly on “office” furniture. Over 90 million dollars; roughly $6,000 per EPA employee. See here.

The EPA doesn’t buy office furniture at Office Depot or Staples. They buy the very highest-end furniture available from the catalog at Herman Miller, Inc. Here is the link to that furniture supplier for those interested in seeing what a thousand-dollar office chair looks like.