If Saruman the White can abandon reason for madness then so can the U.S. government, its agents and officials.

Stop Granting Special Privileges to the Police

beatyourselfup:

America’s cops need more oversight, not more leeway to evade the law.

The horrific Boston bombings already have led to irrational calls for more security cameras and more police officers, with some Democrats absurdly using this tragedy as a reason to stop the slight sequester-mandated cuts in federal spending growth.

Never mind that police spending primarily is a local matter. The bigger questions that Americans have rarely asked, especially following the 9/11 attacks: Do we really want the government to hire new armies of police officers? Do we really want to pay the price for this?

Knowing my views on the growing public-pension crisis, most readers probably think the “price” I’m worried about the nation’s multi-trillion-dollar unfunded pension liabilities driven largely by the “3 percent at 50” pension deals that cost taxpayers millions of dollars for each “first responder” who retires at 50 after 30 years of service.

That’s a huge problem — the result in part of Americans’ irrational embrace of the “more police” logic after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. But that’s not the main source of my concern. My real concern involves our safety and civil liberties given that police officers, and other groups of public employees, have become a protected class that does not have to follow the same rules as the average citizen.

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Obama Justice Department Graciously Acknowledges that It Shouldn't Snoop Your Emails Without a Warrant

beatyourselfup:

The Washington Post is reporting today that the U.S. Justice Department is finally giving up its unconstitutional claim that the Feds have the right to read your emails after 180 days:

The Justice Department has dropped its long-standing objection to proposed changes that would require law enforcement to get a warrant before obtaining e-mail from service providers, regardless of how old an e-mail is or whether it has been read.

“There is no principled basis” to treat e-mail less than 180 days old differently than e-mail more than 180 days old, Elana Tyrangiel, acting assistant attorney general in the department’s Office of Legal Policy, said Tuesday.

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After they admit guilt, it’s time to sue the shit out of them. But first, we’ll need the email providers to submit the abuse to the user so that damages can be established.

Would Hayek Have Approved Obamacare? - Reason.com

classical-liberal:

Would Friedrich Hayek - the Nobel-winning economist who inspired Margaret Thatcher’s free-market reforms and is a hero to libertarians everywhere - have supported Obamacare?

“He would have been in favor of mandates,” George Mason University philosophy professorErik Angner tells Reason’s Nick Gillespie. “The first thing to know about Hayek is that he was actually for redistribution,” continues the author of 2007’s Hayek and Natural Law.

While stressing Hayek’s aversion to top-down economic planning and governmental interference with the price system, the Swedish-born scholar nonetheless points to works such as The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty in which Hayek flatly endorses a publicly provided social safety net and, like another free-market intellectual giant, Milton Friedman, discusses a guaranteed minimum income.

In a controversial Politco op-ed published in 2012, Angner wrote that while Britain’s National Health System and the price-rigging elements of Obamacare violate Hayekian principles, creating an individual mandate and giving poor Americans some amount of money to spend on health care as they see fit does not. To Angner, vouchers for health care would function similarly to vouchers for education, helping to create stronger market forces and spurring the sort of competition that would lead to a more efficient and robust system.

“You can be for markets without being against redistribution,” says Angner, who argues that Hayek thus offers a true alternative to contemporary liberals and leftists on the one hand and libertarians and conservatives on the other.

moralanarchism:

How Patent Trolls Kill Innovation

Which is why there should be no intellectual property laws.  Ideas aren’t scarce.  Property only needs to be protected because it is scarce. If you copy my idea I don’t lose it.  If you steal my car I now need to find a new way to get to work.  Worlds of difference.  IP laws were just created to reduce competition in the market. 

(via seattle-gadgets)

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Happy Randsday!

moralanarchism:

Ayn Rand: The Age of Envy

moralanarchism:

Joe Kennedy: Not a Bootlegger or a Nazi, But a Hardcore Non-Interventionist


“He’s Zelig, he’s everywhere - from World War I to World War II to the Cold War to the New Frontier,” says David Nasaw, author of the The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy. “If you look at the world the way [Kennedy] looks at it, your understanding of 20th Century American history is enormously expanded.”

Nasaw, a professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, spoke with Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie about his best-selling biography of the father of JFK, RFK, and Teddy Kennedy. Nasaw argues that Kennedy, who served as the American ambassador to Great Britain during World War II, was never pro-Nazi but was consistently against military intervention even during the Cold War. And to the disappointment of Kennedy haters everywhere, Nasaw debunks the myth that Joe made a fortune via bootlegging during Prohibition. In fact, those stories about Kennedy Sr., who passed multiple security checks by the FBI while serving multiple presidents, only surfaced in the late ’60s when JFK assassination buffs tried to tie the family to the mob.

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Robert Poole on Reregulating Airlines

priceofliberty:

About twice a decade someone comes along with a book denouncing airline deregulation as a threat to safety, writes Robert Poole. It always turns out that what the author is really lamenting is the loss of monopoly wages and benefits for the employees of a formerly cartelized industry. This year’s installment in that ongoing series is travel reporter William McGee’s Attention All Passengers.

Here is the tall tale McGee wants us to buy: Back in the 1960s and ’70s, the airlines were wonderful places to work. (McGee was a dispatcher at “the world’s greatest airline,” Pan Am.) Flying was a pleasure for passengers: free meals, leg room, numerous empty seats, big planes going to small towns, etc. Then along came this thing called deregulation, with the ensuing dog-eat-dog competition kicking off a downward spiral that has continued to this day, worsening dramatically during the last decade.

Why are people more scared of Facebook violating their privacy than Washington?

2tuffhuff:

It’s funny(not really) how when Facebook or Instagram changes their privacy policies, people go ape shit that someone might see a private photo of what they ate for lunch. But when the government gives itself power to listen to our phone calls without a warrant, to grope us at the airport for then”privilege” of traveling by airplane, to indefinitely detain US citizens without trial because they might have associations with a group that might be a terrorist organization(and who is it that gets to define which groups are terrorist), gives itself power to read our emails, check our medical records, examine our library records, require us to have national ID papers, take 1/2 of everything we earn, seize our property for not paying homage to the local overlords, regulate what life saving medicines we can or cannot take, interrogate us at unconstitutional roadside checkpoints, declare what zones where free speech is permissible, and create laws that even a 5th grader can see violate the nearly the entire Bill of Rights (maybe the 3rd and 7th are still intact as far as I can tell, but I could be wrong), it’s just an inconvinience in their day. Everything’s cool as long as the food stamps keep working, and Hollywood keeps producing superhero movies.

Reason — How Disney Cashes In on Corporate Welfare

yaeloss:

image

My article on Disney was reprinted on Reason Magazine.

Generations of children and adults worldwide have grown up on Walt imageDisney comics and movies featuring Mickey Mouse and thousands of other characters, visited the sprawling and magical theme parks in Florida and California, and played with toys and games brandishing the familiar Disney logo.

But despite the illustrious international influence enjoyed by Mickey and the Disney Empire, reports Yaël Ossowski, it could not have been possible without substantial help from Uncle Sam. Disney is a major recipient of corporate welfare.

libertyninja:

Nick Gillespie Discusses New ADA Pool Regulations with Erin Burnett

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thelibertyyouth:

Libertarians Online - Tour of Websites, Blogs, and Communities

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California Taxes Rank Worst in US: Tim Cavanaugh Discusses on Good Day LA (by ReasonTV)

Tim Cavanaugh, Managing Editor of Reason.com, talks to FOX 11 Los Angeles about Governor Jerry Brown’s push for higher taxes despite California’s dismal national tax ranking. Air date: January 27, 2011.

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Matt Welch Discusses the Buffett Rule and His Favorite Beatles Songs on Varney & Co. (by ReasonTV)

Reason magazine Editor in Chief, Matt Welch appeared on Varney & Co. to discuss Warren Buffett’s confusion between income tax and capital gains tax and why debt is not a revenue problem but a spending problem. Welch also reveals his favorite Beatles’ songs. Air date: January 26, 2012.

Approximately 2.34 minutes.

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