Archive for January 29th, 2007
Both the Grover Cleveland Library and the Libertarian Hall of Fame will be valuable cultural assets to the City of Buffalo honoring the past and celebrating the future.
The following essay appeared on Lewrockwell.com last night. Lewrockwell has a good sized national following drawing well over a half million visitors per month. The articles are informative and entertaining, provided by a highly skilled staff of columnists, including the most highly principled member of Congress, Rep. Ron Paul, Texas. The complete list of Jim Ostrowski’s columns can be viewed here.
A great irony has occurred to me just in the last few months of jousting on the web about politics.
I’ve been a libertarian since I was in college. I’ve never hidden that fact and have always been proud of it. I’m always amazed when liberals complain about being called “liberals.” What are you ashamed of? If you’re ashamed of what you are, change! And calling yourself “progressives” changes nothing. The concept is the same. In fact, if you know anything about libertarians, you should know that while we have some fondness for the term “liberal,” which was stolen from us fair and square about 100 years ago, we have little use for Progressives with a capital “P.” Most of what’s wrong with the country now we owe to them.
Anyway, people on the web have frequently used the word “libertarian” as a term of derision. They often ask, “What have you libertarians ever accomplished?”
One of the purposes of Free New York’s new Libertarian Hall of Fame will be to answer that question. Like the Grover Cleveland Library, the Hall of Fame will be an exploration of history that has direct and palpable relevance to what is happening now in politics, locally, nationally, and internationally.
Some people think history doesn’t matter. Henry Ford said, “History is more or less bunk.” Sometimes I think that history is the only thing that matters! Churchill said, “History is written by the victors.” The first few drafts of history are usually bunk as Ford said because those who write them have an axe to grind as the historian Churchill understood. Orwell sums it up: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” If you are ignorant of history, you become history’s slave.
Read the rest: What Do We Owe the Libertarians by James Ostrowski
The full column is available at the link above. If you would like to show your support for the projects of Free New York, Inc., cruise on over to their website or blog. Secure PayPal donations are graciously accepted. If you want to stop by and offer opinions on the blog, feel free to do so.
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George Bush did it when he spoke of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Hitler describe it in Mein Kampf.
“All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.“
Now Eliot Spitzer is combing the sound bite, which he perfected during his campaign, with the big lie.
“From now on, health policy, not health politics, will guide us.”
That was from a speech Spitzer gave on Friday, January 26, addressing the high cost of health care. What he completely ignores is the fact that government involvement in health care is what has led to the spiraling costs. He is now advocating further involvement in the form of price controls. Price controls are another method that falsely lures the public into thinking good is being done, when in fact, just the opposite occurs.
But despite the frequent use of price controls, and despite the superficial logic of their appeal, economists are generally opposed to them, except perhaps for very brief periods during emergencies. The reason is that controls on prices distort the allocation of resources. To paraphrase a remark by Milton Friedman, economists may not know much, but they do know how to produce a surplus or shortage. Price ceilings, which prevent prices from exceeding a certain maximum, cause shortages. Price floors, which prohibit prices below a certain minimum, cause surpluses.
If Eliot Spitzer really wanted to get the politics out of health care, he would get the government out of health care. Instead he is playing politics by making empty promises.
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LOCKPORT - Lockport stockbroker Lee J. Bordeleau has followed through on his plan to erect a billboard declaring that Niagara County has the nation’s highest taxes.
Bordeleau’s billboard on South Transit Road (Route 78), just north of the border with Erie County, will be up for two months.
It states: “Welcome to Niagara County. We’re # 1. We pay the highest property taxes in the United States. Too many government agencies employing too many workers, making too much money! Help us free Niagara! Go to FreeNewYork.org.”
The Web site is Internet headquarters for a small-government group that arose out of Buffalo attorney James Ostrowski’s Free Buffalo movement.
The reaction from politicians to the billboard was mixed.
County Legislature Chairman Clyde L. Burmaster didn’t approve of the billboard, especially near a main entrance to the county.
“I don’t think it’s a good way to get your point across. If the idea is to make Niagara County a better place to live, I don’t think that’s the way to do it,” said Burmaster, a Ransomville Republican. “That’s not putting our best foot forward.”
City of Lockport Mayor Michael W. Tucker said, “People can do whatever they want to do as long as they’re not hurting anyone. Whether it hurts or helps remains to be seen. I really don’t have an opinion on that.”
But Lockport Supervisor Marc R. Smith said, “I applaud Mr. Bordeleau. All of us in New York State need to do a better job and take a critical look at how we provide services.”
Smith, in whose territory the billboard stands, added, “I want to be part of the solution, not the problem. Things are what they are. We’re not going to bury our heads in the sand. The Town Board hasn’t taken that approach.”
Marc Smith gets it. You have to identify the cause of a problem in order to devise an effective solution. Lee Bordeleau gets it. Taxpayers need to speak up in order to affect change. Lee has accomplished a lot to help expose government waste to the light of day. As more people support the cause to reduce government waste, the size and scope of victories will increase.
Anyone interested in making a donation to support the cause to expose government waste and inefficiency can make a secure donation at Free New York, Inc.’s main website or at the blog.
Source: Buffalo News - Billboard not so welcome a sign
[tags]Niagara-County, Free-New-York, Free-Buffalo, taxes, rate, tax, property, government, waste, billboard[/tags]
I visited the CitiStat Buffalo website and was very disappointed by the lack of data available. What was available was spotty, infrequent and inconsistent data. The site mainly consisted of a sparse number of glossy looking PDF files with no real substance.
Judging from the information found, CitiStat appears to be another waste of the taxpayers’ money.
[tags/]citistat, Buffalo, New+York, Byron+Brown, Mayor, government+waste[/tags]
I ran across a very interesting viewpoint while surfing some enlightened blogs. Everyone knows that the military has been struggling and failing, for the most part, to meet its recruiting goals in light of the toll Iraq is taking on our troops. What better way to increase recruiting than increasing the number of potential recruits? Increasing the federal minimum wage is the perfect answer.
Everybody knows that an increase in the federal minimum wage constitutes a “raise” to all those who work now or will work in the near future at the lowest legal rate of pay. Why, 650 prominent economists, including five Nobel Prize winners, recently signed an open letter in support of raising the minimum wage.
Now, the minority, non-Nobel-Prize-winning view that is found, for example, among Austrian economists and 13,000 labor economists, holds, along with the Law of Supply and Demand, that if the price of a good (or service, like labor) is raised, less of it will be bought.
This means that employment among the young, the inexperienced, and unskilled will decline with the institution of a higher minimum wage. And at last count, 1.9 million Americans were working for the minimum wage. Not only these jobs, but all the millions more jobs between the present minimum wage and the new minimum wage, are threatened.
The civilian alternative for fresh high-school drop-outs and graduates will indeed seem superior to the military alternative by an increased margin. And it will be unattainable to that many more of them. Now, the recruiter will be able to choose, not just among those who can’t compete for the scarce jobs that pay $5.15 per hour, but among those many more who can’t win one of the even-scarcer jobs that pay $7.25 per hour — not only more cannon fodder, but better as well, all thanks to that “raise” the government “gave” them!
Who ever said welfare and warfare don’t go hand in hand?
Source: Cheryl Cline: Welfare and Warfare Go Hand-in-Hand
[tags]minimum wage, military, recruits, government, economics, libertarian[/tags]
