Mar 05

Another Example of How Government Licensing Rules Harm the Poor and Suppress Innovation

lavatory

The Institute For Justice reports a bizarre case of government licensing overreach. The State of North Carolina sought to shut down the blog and Facebook page of a man who shared advice on losing weight with a “paleo” diet (heavy on nuts, fruits and meats, light on grains and breads). The State claimed that Steve Cooksey was “practicing nutrition” without a government license! The State Board of Dietetics/Nutrition has waged a war to destroy Steve’s nutritional-advice blog for several years now. After the Institute intervened on Steve’s behalf, the State backed down. See the story here.

Mar 05

FCC Dissenters: So-Called Net Neutrality is a Solution That Won’t Work to a Problem that Does Not Exist

fspeechzone

Last week, 3 of 5 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioners voted—without the slightest enabling legislation by Congress and in the face of substantial case law against their position—for the government to take over control of the internet and to treat the internet as a “public utility.” The two dissenting commissioners offered the following observations:

Commissioner Ajit Pai: net neutrality regulatory regime is a solution that won’t work in search of a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Commissioner Mike O’Rielly: “Rates are going to go up because of this.”

Commissioner Pai: “This issue has been largely fact-free for the better part of a decade, and I think it’s frankly shocking that decision-making on something as important as this has been thrown by the wayside in favor of what I consider to be an ideological agenda.”

Pai: the majority of the FCC commissioners are ideologically committed to trust in expansive government, and their decision was largely focused on the ends of Internet regulation rather than the means. Despite these government trusters’ promises of regulatory restraint, “a lot of these promises of regulatory restraint are pretty ephemeral.”

Just as with other government agencies, the FCC is seeking to expand government power for its own sake. The FCC’s new regulations are ideological, wide-ranging, costly and baseless. The FCC is an agency whose central role is of very questionable constitutionality. Is it time to abolish the Commission?

Mar 04

Bombshell News: Feds Now Claim Their ‘Smoking Gun’ Video of Boston Bombing Suspects Doesn’t Exist!

change4th_dees

Remember that press conference when the governor of Massachusetts, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with FBI officials, claimed he had seen “the video” of the Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev placing a bomb-filled backpack at the finish line of the Marathon? Remember how government officials reassured the public that they had the right guys by claiming that a ‘smoking-gun’ video exists of the brothers planting the backpack bomb? Remember that they offered these reassurances in response to questions such as: “Was this another false flag staged attack to take our civil liberties and promote Homeland Security . . .?”

Now the government is admitting (or claiming) that no such video exists. See this story by crusading journalist Lara Turner.

Many commentators have questioned the government’s official story, especially after it has been revealed that the two suspects were themselves CIA and FBI contacts, and it came out that there were obvious drills and the very highest security in place at the Marathon finish line before the bombing. Numerous amateur videos have surfaced of government-contractor personnel at the scene appearing to be wearing similar backpacks. And there were attempts to silence the surviving Tsarnaev brother by slashing his throat at the time of his arrest.

Mar 02

Washington Post Offers Dire Warnings About Private Policing; Even While Private Policing is Shown To Be Cheaper and Safer than Government Policing

tyranny

The Washington Post, the voice of the Washington government establishment if there ever was one, has launched a scary news story about the purported growth of private (meaning, in this sense, contract, or privately-owned police companies licensed under a special Virginia statute) policing. The Washington Post story warns of private officers who may be undertrained. The story is long on anecdotes of imperfections but short on any details of serious abuses or mistakes by private officers.

Importantly, private security is much more liable to lawsuits than public-sector officers, whom are generally cloaked in expansive immunity from lawsuits. Such personal-injury liability makes private security workers MUCH LESS LIKELY to misbehave, use improper force or cause property damage than public officers.

And most data show that where police security has been privatized, there are fewer false arrests and malicious prosecutions, less police-caused property damage, fewer wrongful discharges of firearms and lower actual crime rates. See, for example, “Crime Falls After Houston Neighborhood Ditches Police; Hires Private Security.”

Mar 02

real disposable income per capita for Americans has remained flat for almost a decade

mhiker

The great economist Robert Higgs has recently pointed out the importance of “real disposable income per capita” as a measure for economic health.

Arguably the best single, currently available measure of the entire public’s payoff from economic activity is real disposable income per capita. This is the average amount per annum that Americans receive in exchange for the use of their labor and other input services, after taxes, corrected for changes in the purchasing power of the dollar. …this measure of economic well-being has scarcely increased at all since 2007.

Higgs’ research is complimented by a recent essay by the economist Daniel Mitchell of Cato Institute.

Mar 02

Government Hydrologist Says World Temps Will Rise 2 Degrees in 10 Years If Voters Adopt More Socialism; “Double That” If Voters Fail To Do So

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Many government officials and others seeking to build an even more socialistic and centrally-planned global economy offer alarming predictions. Now we hear that a federal government official—National Weather Service Senior Hydrologist Gina Loss—told Montana audiences in 2014 that there are two possible future weather patterns. If policymakers adopt more central planning and empower governments to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, there would be a 2 degree increase in world temperature in 10 years, and “double that” if voters and policymakers fail to do so. Source: Conrad Nystrom, “2014 Area III Meeting” (of the Montana Association of Conservation Districts), Conservation On the Land, p. 5 (January 2015).

Mar 02

Another Climate Heretic Comes Under Government Investigation

dyingfreedom

For a decade, governments worldwide–already gorged on money and power–have been demanding ever more power under the guise of climate policy. Untold millions–and probably billions–of dollars taken by force from taxpayers have been channeled into research and development of alleged climate science which supports expansive government control over industry and commerce. The most common tool of this government-funded research and development has been modeling: university professors supported by government grants punching hypothetical numbers into computer models.

Unfortunately for the world’s governments, the actual temps appear to be trending lower than even the lowest government-supported-computer-model predictions. And a few scientists have been brave enough to voice disagreement. Such scientists are threatened with loss of career rewards and even physical violence and death in some cases.

Now we hear that another climate blasphemer, professor Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado Boulder, is under investigation by a member of the government. The top Democrat on the House Committee on Natural Resources, Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, has sent a formal letter to Professor Pielke’s university demanding information about any private sources of funding behind Professor Pielke’s research. This comes in the wake of similar witchhunts last week into the funding sources of another noteworthy science heretic, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics scientist Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon.

Feb 28

China Employs More than 100,000 Bureaucrats To Regulate the Internet

statlib

In the wake of this week’s takeover of the internet by the FCC, paleolibertarian economist Gary North points to a 2013 Economist article reporting that the government of China employs 100,000 government workers to monitor and regulate Chinese internet users. (We think that number is probably quite low.)

Gary North writes today that “The FCC is not in a position to hire 100,000 bureaucrats.”

North continues: “The genie is long out of the bottle. . . . The Internet has stayed ahead of all regulators. It will continue to do so.”

“The essence of bureaucracy is this combination: lack of innovation, lack of courage, lack of vision, lack of long-term planning, and lack of collective IQ.

Government is dumb.”

Feb 28

Courts Continue Abandoning Surveillance Restrictions, While Congress and the President Slowly Abandon Plans to Limit NSA

surveilcops

February 27, 2015. In the immediate wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations that the NSA is unconstitutionally intercepting, seizing and storing virtually every American email and phone record, there were many promises by congressional candidates and President Obama to stop the NSA’s mass surveillance. Now, months later, a federal court has again renewed an order allowing the National Security Agency to continue its bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (“FISA”) Court approved this week a government request to keep the NSA’s mass surveillance of U.S. phone metadata operating until June 1, coinciding with when the legal authority for the program is set to expire in Congress.

The extension is the fifth of its kind since Obama said he would effectively end the Snowden-exposed program as it currently exists during a major policy speech in January 2014.

Feb 28

THE DATA IS IN: AMERICA BECOMING LESS “EXCEPTIONAL”

copen_dees

We often hear of “American exceptionalism.” America has been—since its inception—the world’s flagship of freedom, property rights, invention and capitalism. Hard work and ingenuity has fueled thousands of economic miracles, and produced a nation of unparalleled abundance and prosperity. The poor in modern America live better than the kings and queens of Europe a hundred years ago.
But recent economic data reveals a rapidly changing country. “In the 14 years between 1998 and 2012,” writes veteran Washington insider Terence P. Jeffrey in a recent column, “government spending in the U.S. more than doubled in current year dollars.” Analyzing data from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Census Bureau, Jeffrey revealed the following startling facts from 2012:

NET COMBINED LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL SPENDING PER PERSON: $49,813
MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME: $51,017
MEDIAN INCOME OF FULL-TIME YEAR-ROUND WORKERS: $42,799

Did you catch that? Government spending per person is now substantially higher than the median income of full-time American workers. Obviously this means that a mathematical majority of Americans are now “on the dole” (at least to some extent) and that a shrinking sector of the population (“the rich” as politicians might call them) are paying much more than their shares. In fact, America has increasingly become like most of the countries of the earth. Half of the population lives off of the other half—through government.

Government licensing obstacles now keep most of the poor from rising. It takes 1500 hours of government-approved “training” just to get a barber license in Nebraska. Merely getting a CDL truck-driving license now requires a seven- or eight-step process, annual inspections, medical checkups, etc., etc., etc.

Meanwhile those in government have hit the lottery. Seven of the richest ten counties in the United States are the counties surrounding Washington, D.C. where overpaid bureaucrats live in large numbers. A federal employee is now statistically more likely to die than to quit. The pay and benefits for government workers have become so high that hundreds now apply for most entry-level federal job openings. If you visit your local bookstore you will find multiple books on “How to get a federal job,” “Applying for a Federal Job,” etc.

The same phenomenon can be seen in the government employee parking lots of Lincoln, Pierre, Cheyenne or Helena. Hummers. BMWs. Mercedes. This while many Americans hold their pickups together with duct tape and baling wire.

In just a short while, America has been transformed into a society like most others on earth. Is there anyone who doubts that politicians will soon seek to make us bow before government employees? And—trust me—not long after we get used to bowing, we will be made to kneel.