Jun 07

Government health care and medical regulation has cost thousands if not millions of lives.

suffering

Veronique de Rugy has written an insightful column. Rugy writes

At the federal level, that means, among other things, radically reforming the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA is the perfect example of an agency that works by the “precautionary principle” norm. In the name of protecting people from everything at any cost — even against their will, if need be — it imposes an incredible regulatory burden on health care innovators, which then translates into higher costs and fewer new products available to consumers.

In some cases, the FDA’s intervention in the health care market slows down access to certain drugs, or it makes some drugs and technologies unaffordable to low-income individuals. In other cases, it actually drives innovators out of the market. In extreme cases, it kills people who could have been saved if they had had access to a drug or a technology.

Jun 07

Economist points out the uncomfortably close relationship between high taxes and slavery

john c. goodman

Most people, if candid, would admit that a 100 percent tax rate would be akin to slavery by definition. What about a 90 percent tax rate? How about a 75 percent tax rate? Would that mean that the taxpayer is under a state of 75 percent slavery? The analogy is not perfect. (Slavery, after all was supported by a vast array of laws and government policies, including fugitive slave laws, slave-harboring laws, etc.)

The noted economist John C. Goodman is out with a critique of leftist Paul Krugman’s desired tax policy. Like most trusters of expansive intrusive government, Krugman proposes high taxes on the rich, as much as 75 to 95 percent.

As Goodman writes:

So why doesn’t Krugman want to admit that, by his own criteria, LeBron [James] would be taxed to the hilt? I was perplexed.

Then I realized something that I’m sure every basketball fan already knows. LeBron James is black. What Paul Krugman wants to do to James today uncomfortably resembles what slave owners did to his ancestors more than a century and a half ago.

[W]hen it comes to confiscating the product of someone else’s labor, the parallel is unmistakable.

Jun 05

The Wages of Socialism: Greece Rolls Out Its Slow-Motion Slave Status

shelves_dees

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 profitibability of businesses and disincentivizes entrepreneurs.

Recently, the national government of Greece confiscated the money of all lower-level governments including cities and towns. Now, as Greece nears (another) default, . . . er, “deferment,” the government’s ministers flirt with having their country taken over by outside entities. The story is here.

Jun 04

The Ultimate Victims of Socialism: Those Who Seek It

sociallism

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, censorship, suffering and poverty soon followed.

And today the country is victim to such inflation (having printed so much money to “stimulate” itself in traditional Keynsian fashion) that almost any tourist can travel to Venezuala and live like a king among peasants. There are tales of lobster dinners for under a dollar, lodging at the country’s finest hotels for $5 a night, and guided trips into the rainforest for $25 a day. Hookers can reportedly be had for pennies.

We should wish socialism only on our enemies. Every society that embraces it will inevitably become sick and weak.

Jun 04

NSA Secretly Expands Its Powers Without Authorization–Again!

chippedamericadees

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 carve back on President Bush’s unconstitutional NSA spying on the American people without warrant.

Jun 04

The Government’s TSA Screening Fails 95 Percent of the Time

grope_dees

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 airports, and that the TSA would NOT make air travel appreciably safer.

Now it has come out that the TSA–which now costs MORE THAN TEN TIMES MORE than private-sector alternatives–produces a 95 percent failure rate. See here.

Jun 04

The 3 Greatest Paragraphs ever written on Juries

Lysander-Spooner-sepia

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 1215 — there has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law, than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the right and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what was the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their right, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge of the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.

Unless such be the right and duty of jurors, it is plain that, instead of juries being a “palladium of liberty” — a barrier against the tyranny and oppression of the government — they are really mere tools in its hands, for carrying into execution any injustice and oppression it may desire to have executed.

But for their right to judge of the law, and the justice of the law, juries would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters of fact; for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence. That is, it can dictate what evidence is admissible, and what inadmissible, and also what force or weight is to be given to the evidence admitted. And if the government can thus dictate to a jury the laws of evidence, it can not only make it necessary for them to convict on a partial exhibition of the evidence rightfully pertaining to the case, but it can even require them [*6] to convict on any evidence whatever that it pleases to offer them.

Jun 02

Ninth Circuit Justice: the Ancient Writ of Habeas Corpus has Collapsed as a Protection for the Powerless

Reinhardt

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 article, published in the Michigan Law Review, in which Reinhardt has observed the near-total collapse of the writ of habeas corpus as a protection for those facing the iron heel of prosecution and persecution. The article can be found here.

Jun 02

The New York Times–or at least the business model it is based on–is doomed

wash_dees

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 some far-reaching pension liabilities.

Specifically, The New York Times Company incurred a $40.3 million pension settlement charge in the first quarter of 2015. The Times itself admits that its “qualified defined benefit pension plans” for present and past employees have been underfunded by approximately $264 million as of December 28, 2014.

With ad revenue sinking below half of its former levels, we can expect that the New York Times will continue to operate at a loss for years to come. A fascinating essay on Lewrockwell.com can be seen here.

Jun 02

FBI Now Using Secret Airforce to Monitor Citizens’ Communications and Movements

Tanks_dess

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.