Friday, February 23, 2007
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Quote of the Week:
Social Security's advocates continue to push it as moral. Why?
The answer lies in the program's ideal of "universal coverage"--the idea that, as a recent New York Times editorial preached, "all old people must have the dignity of financial security"--regardless of how irresponsibly they have acted. On this premise, since some would not save adequately on their own, everyone must be forced into some sort of "guaranteed" collective plan--no matter how irrational. Observe that Social Security's wholesale harm to those who would use their income responsibly is justified in the name of those who would not. The rational and responsible are shackled and throttled for the sake of the irrational and irresponsible.
Those who wish to devote their wealth to saving the irresponsible from the consequences of their own actions should be free to do so through private charity, but to loot the savings of untold millions of innocent, responsible, hard-working young people in the name of such a goal is a monstrous injustice.
- Alex Epstein
COMMENTARY
Religion vs. Liberty
Peter Schwartz, Capitalism Magazine
America's war on terrorism is being undercut--by the administration's efforts to inject religion into politics.
Our enemy in that war is the ideology of Islamic totalitarianism--an ideology which holds that one's life is to be lived entirely in service to Allah, that the dictates of the mullahs must be unquestioningly obeyed and that jihad must be waged against all who refuse. Islamic totalitarianism, which pervades Muslim societies, is a sweeping repudiation of reason in favor of faith, and of freedom in favor of force. That is what makes it America's deadly enemy.
When reason is categorically abandoned, people can deal with one another only by force. People who accept reason as their sole means of knowledge can settle differences by persuasion; the one with facts and logic on his side will prevail. But if faith--i.e., the embrace of beliefs contrary to reason--is one's ruling principle, there is no peaceful way to resolve conflicts.
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Global-warming theory and the eugenics precedent
John Linder, Washington Times
"Global Warming" had a precursor in capturing the hearts and minds of the world. Michael Crichton, in his novel "State of Fear," brilliantly juxtaposes the world's current political embrace of "global warming" with the popular embrace of the "science" of eugenics a century ago. For nearly 50 years, from the late 1800s through the first half of the 20th century, there grew a common political acceptance by the world's thinkers, political leaders and media elite that the "science" of eugenics was settled science. There were a few lonely voices trying to be heard in the wilderness in opposition to this bogus science, but they were ridiculed or ignored.
[…]
One must ask, "How in the world did university researchers come to conclusions that defended this outrageous affront to society?" A look back at the research concluded that the researchers adjusted their outcomes to support the theory of those paying for the research. This is not unusual. It is very easy to believe that the settled science regarding climate change is just as suspicious, and indeed may be another example of pseudo-science capturing the imagination of politicians, actors and the media elite who have a desperate need to embrace some "science" which may force us to change the way we live our lives. H. L. Mencken once wrote, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it." We see pictures of huge blocks of ice crashing into the sea from the Antarctic Peninsula, which comprises about 2 percent of the continent. The fact that the remaining 98 percent of Antarctica is growing by 26.8 gigatons of ice per year is ignored.
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FCC Violates Free Speech on Principle
Robert Garmong, Capitalism Magazine
Each year since the early days of radio, every broadcast station must apply to the FCC for permission to use the airwaves. In exchange for their licenses, broadcasters must promise to serve the "public interest." Stations that the FCC regards as having failed to do so can be fined, or even shut down, at the FCC's sole discretion.
The putative justification for the FCC's regulation of broadcasters is that the airwaves are public property. But just as the government does not own--and so has no legitimate control over--the presses of the New York Times, so it has no business regulating what may be broadcast over airwaves. The airwaves, which would be useless without the transmission networks created by radio and television stations, belong to the individuals and companies that developed them. Broadcasters should not have to plead to the authorities for annual licenses, any more than a homeowner should have to beg for an annual license to use the patch of land he has developed.
No other media in America is subjected to such persecution. If the New York Times or Barnes & Noble publishes and distributes content some members of the public disapprove of, the government cannot threaten them with fines or penalties. But let Howard Stern offend a listener, and Clear Channel is hammered with over a million dollars in fines.
So far, only "indecency" has been targeted by the FCC's crackdown--but politicians on both sides of the aisle have begun whispering demands to censor PBS or the Fox News Channel, on the grounds that their alleged biases violate the "public interest." Both the liberals, with their political correctness, and the conservatives, with their puritanical religious ethic, claim to speak for the "public interest." Can it be long before the two sides begin the battle over which ideas and values Americans are allowed to see and hear on-air?
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Other links
The Ayn Rand Institute
The Objective Standard
Capitalism Magazine
4Commonsense.net
OpinionJournal.com
Junk Science
Activism Humor
The Intellectual Activist
Web Logs
Principles in Practice– Principled commentary on cultural matters and current events from “The Objective Standard”
Cox and Forkum – Political cartoons and commentary
Noodle Food
The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid – Donald Luskin
Dollars and Crosses – CapitalismMagazine.com
Rule of Reason – The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
4CommonSense
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Friday, February 16, 2007
This Week on the Web (February 10 – February 16)
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New Wage Boost Puts Squeeze on Teenage Workers across Arizona
Oh, for the days when
That's certainly not the case under the state's new minimum-wage law that went into effect last month.
Some Valley employers, especially those in the food industry, say payroll budgets have risen so much that they're cutting hours, instituting hiring freezes and laying off employees.
And teens are among the first workers to go.
COMMENTARY
Michael Hurd, DrHurd.com
Expectations are what you impose on others, consciously or subconsciously--accurately or not. Expectations are frequently disappointed, and usually not advisable because you cannot force another individual person to adopt, integrate and act upon your values.
Standards are what you hold to be true, correct and good. To live with integrity, as well as with psychological peace of mind, you require standards. Implicitly, you will hold some mixture or contradictory "hash" of standards whether you know it or not; it's obviously best to know, choose and act upon your rationally, consciously accepted standards.
Life without standards is impossible. Life without expectations is more possible than you think. If you hold to your standards, the right people will find you, and you will find them. Disappointment will be the exception, and not the rule. If you run around life with nothing but expectations of other people, you're doomed to needless frustration and even despair.
Wayne Dunn, Capitalism Magazine
Imagine that you spent years of research and millions of investors' dollars developing an idea that could save or prolong hundreds of thousands of lives. You put your product on the market and advertise.
But a few weeks later, various columnists and "talking heads" begin deriding you for it. Advertising, they say, harms consumers by raising the cost of the product they so desperately need (a product which wouldn't exist had you not created it). Soon there's a movement afoot to prevent you from advertising¾ in the name of "the public good," of course.
Unfair? That's exactly what's currently happening to drug companies.
The main fallacy of the anti-drug-advertising crowd is based on the premise that an individual (or group of individuals, i.e., a company) has a moral obligation to be charitable, e.g., to sell cheaply the product of his mind. Well, if your moral code demands charity, fine. Go invent a new lifesaving drug and simply give it away. No one will stop you. You certainly have the right to be generous with your own goods, but not with your neighbor's, even if he's the CEO of a pharmaceutical corporation.
Washington 's Make-Believe Policy on Iran
Elan Journo, The Ayn Rand Institute (via Principles in Practice)
The Bush administration claims to have a way to deter the militant theocracy of
In fact this policy is a pathetic sham. It is a cover-up for
The defenders of the war in
It's easy to be against the
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Web Logs
Principles in Practice– Principled commentary on cultural matters and current events from “The Objective Standard”
Cox and Forkum – Political cartoons and commentary
The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid – Donald Luskin
Dollars and Crosses – CapitalismMagazine.com
Rule of Reason – The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
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Friday, February 09, 2007
This Week on the Web (February 3 – February 9)
Quote of the Week:
“We gave them a civil war? Why? Because we failed to prevent it? Do the police in
Editorial Cartoon of the Week:
Cox and Forkum
NEWS
Wash. initiative would require married couples to have kids
NWCN.com
An initiative filed by proponents of same-sex marriage would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriage annulled.
Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. That group was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld
Under the initiative, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children in order to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their marriage would be subject to annulment.
All other marriages would be defined as "unrecognized" and people in those marriages would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits.
COMMENTARY
Fred Singer,
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its "Fourth Assessment Report," but just in the form of a 12-page "Summary for Policymakers." The report itself, about 1,600 pages, will be available only in May. The IPCC explains it needs time to "adjust" the scientific report to make it consistent with its summary.
The summary actually is a semipolitical document negotiated by delegates from 150 governments. Evidently, the IPCC, which prides itself on being strictly scientific and policy-neutral, wants to make its report politically correct.
This raises legitimate doubts about the scientific credibility of the IPCC's conclusions.
[…]
Some cite the fact that the climate is currently warming and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing. This is true, but correlation is never proof of causation. In Europe, the birth rate is decreasing and so is the number of storks. Does this correlation prove that storks bring babies? Besides, the climate cooled for much of the 20th century, between 1940 and 1975, even while carbon dioxide was increasing rapidly.
Andrew
The dust of those doomed towers had barely begun to settle before some Americans began asking themselves who, beyond Al Qaeda, was really responsible. Suspects included the Jews (as usual), the sinister Bush White House, the complacent Clinton White House and, in the view of Jerry Falwell, God. It's a tribute to the power of his imagination that, despite this strong competition, in "The Enemy At Home" (Doubleday, 333 pages, $26.95), Dinesh D'Souza has managed to come up with a startlingly original selection of fresh suspects ranging from Madonna to Robert Mapplethorpe's awkwardly positioned whip. In essence, argues Mr. D'Souza, it's the "depravity" (a word he savors with a little too much enthusiasm) of our culture that has provoked a violent reaction among some fol lowers of Islam, and threatens to push large numbers of those he de scribes as "traditional" Muslims into the extremist camp.
[…]
But, as history shows us, there are some adversaries who can never be appeased. Mr. D'Souza may be conveniently vague about exactly what it is we are supposed to do to our lifestyle to win over our putative Muslim friends in waiting (Ban the bottle? Bring the burqa to Berkeley?), but he does find plenty of room for the grumbling and raving of one Sayyib Qutb. Poor, peculiar Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian philosopher whose writings have been a major inspiration for many of today's Islamic radicals, was disgusted by the "animalistic behavior" he claimed to have witnessed on a visit to
You see, Dinesh, there really is no pleasing some people.
UCLA Penalizes Student Group's Exercise of Free Speech
ARI Media (via Principles in Practice)
UCLA has cravenly scuttled a student-sponsored forum on
Scheduled for Feb. 6, the canceled event was to feature a debate between Carl Braun of the Minutemen and Dr. Yaron Brook, an open-immigration advocate and president of the Ayn Rand Institute. The forum, sponsored by the UCLA student group L.O.G.I.C., was approved by the administration weeks ago. When the student group learned that protesters from outside the university threatened to disrupt the event, it asked UCLA to protect the group's exercise of free speech by providing security for the event.
UCLA refused either to let the student group pay for its own security—claiming not enough security would be available—or to hold the event without security.
"The administration's decision is a double injustice," said Dr. Yaron Brook.
[…]
"By preventing the event from taking place, UCLA apparently hopes to appease the protesters by doing their work for them. That an American university is suppressing, rather than enshrining, freedom of speech is a moral travesty."
[…]
"Free speech protects the rational mind: it is the freedom to think, to reach conclusions and express one's views without fear of coercion of any kind. And it must include the right to express unpopular views. UCLA—which like other universities grants tenure to protect intellectual freedom—ought to recognize the crucial importance of this principle and defend it," said Brook.
Quotable
At the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee, the senator from
Take? Isn’t that a confiscation of private property? Author P.J. O’Rourke framed it perfectly on a recent edition of CNBC’s Kudlow & Co.: She’s “Hugo Chavez in a pants suit.”
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Web Logs
Principles in Practice– Principled commentary on cultural matters and current events from “The Objective Standard”
Cox and Forkum – Political cartoons and commentary
The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid – Donald Luskin
Dollars and Crosses – CapitalismMagazine.com
Rule of Reason – The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
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Friday, February 02, 2007
This Week on the Web (January 27 – February 2)
Video of the Week:
Cspan (via YouTube)
Editor’s note: But don’t worry, it’s all for the common good (as she defines it).
NEWS
With Iran ascendant, U.S. is seen at fault
MSNBC.com
Four years after the
Investor’s Business Daily
"Savings at 74-year low," screams one headline. "Baby-boom crisis," shouts another. No question, the savings rate is low. Time to panic? No, time to stop fretting about a statistic of such marginal importance.
'People once again spent everything they made and then some last year, pushing the personal savings rate to the lowest level since the Great Depression more than seven decades ago," went the lead on the Associated Press story, typical of many others like it. But nothing could be more misleading.
It seems the media and even some economists who should know better have no problem pushing the panic button over any data that suggest the economy is struggling — but studiously ignore anything that suggests we're actually thriving economically.
George Will, Townhall.com
There they go again. House Democrats should at least provide variety in their venality. Last Wednesday, fresh from legislating new ethics regarding relations with lobbyists, they demonstrated that there are worse forms of corruption than those involving martinis and money.
They again voted to give the delegates to the House from
[…]
What part of the words "several states" do House Democrats not understand? Their cynical assumption is that "the people of the several states" will not notice this dilution of their representation in the House.
[…]
The 58,000 Samoans pay no federal income taxes, but their delegate will be able to participate in raising the taxes of, say, Montanans.
Free Markets or "Corporate Social Responsibility"
Wayne Winegarden, Townhall.com
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) advocates and business magazines point to these companies and claim that CSR is not only the right thing to do, it also enhances profits. These companies can “do well by doing good!” Such simplistic claims miss the grander danger that CSR, as a movement, represents.
CSR activists start the discussion with the answer: GE should invest in wind power; Wal-Mart should pay its workers more. By its very name, “Corporate Social Responsibility” activists are advocating the socially responsible position. If you disagree with CSR policies, you are obviously socially irresponsible. The CSR activists’ policies forget one fundamental fact of life that dooms their policies from the start: scarcity.
Executive Camp: Congress tries again to hit CEO pay. Watch out, middle class
Opinion Journal
Here we go again. This week Democrats are partying like it's 1993 in the Senate, where they are about to fire what promises to be only the first salvo in their latest war on "excessive" CEO pay.
By an overwhelming majority yesterday, the Senate voted for cloture on the minimum-wage hike. But in order to get the provision past the Republican minority, Senate leaders attached it to tax cuts that are supposed to help the small businesses that stand to be hurt by the minimum-wage increase. And, in order to "pay for" those tax breaks, our solons had to find offsetting "revenue raisers"--that is, tax hikes. So, to review: To raise the minimum wage, the Senate had to cut taxes. But to cut taxes, the Senate had to raise taxes.
Specifically, to raise taxes on "the rich"--for which, read: corporate executives.
[…]
Jim Webb and his "new populist" mates can flog CEOs all they want in their speeches. But the people who will end up paying will be shareholders and the ordinary Americans who don't have the luxury of avoiding yet another millionaire's trap when it gets sprung on them.
Rich Lowry, Jewish World Review
Once something officially becomes a crisis, that means that it is certain there will be a raft of foolish proposals to address it, and sure enough, legislative measures to crimp corporate pay already are bubbling up. There are, of course, some abuses in CEO compensation packages, but the broad picture justifies the truism, "You get what you pay for." Skyrocketing CEO pay has coincided with two decades of wondrous economic performance, during which the value of all stocks traded in the
The scolds of corporate pay yearn, in effect, for the bad old days of the 1970s. Then, CEOs were paid relatively small amounts, but corporations weren't particularly innovative and were run with little concern for the interests of shareholders. The hostile-takeover revolution of the 1980s changed all that. Buyout firms sought out undervalued companies, which they bought and turned around. This required top-notch managers who had to be rewarded handsomely for their performance.
As The Economist magazine puts it, CEOs had been paid like bureaucrats; now they are paid like entrepreneurs.
John Stossel, Jewish World Review
The
This is not the way it was supposed to work. The constitutional plan presented in the Federalist Papers delegated only a few powers to the federal government, with the rest reserved to the states. The system was hailed for its genius. Instead of having decisions made in the center — where errors would harm the entire country — most policies would be determined in a decentralized environment. A mistake in
It made a lot of sense. It still does. Too bad the idea is being tossed on the trash heap by big-government Republicans and their DEA goons.
Drug prohibition — like alcohol prohibition — is a silly idea, as the late free-market economist Milton Friedman often pointed out. Something doesn't go away just because the government decrees it illegal. It simply goes underground. Then a black market creates worse problems. Since sellers cannot rely on police to protect their property, they arm themselves, form gangs, charge monopoly prices, and kill their competitors. Buyers steal to pay the high prices.
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Other links
Web Logs
Principles in Practice– Principled commentary on cultural matters and current events from “The Objective Standard”
Cox and Forkum – Political cartoons and commentary
The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid – Donald Luskin
Dollars and Crosses – CapitalismMagazine.com
Rule of Reason – The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
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