I am tired;
my heart is sick and sad.
From where the sun now stands
I will fight no more forever.
Chief Joseph
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Trump's economic nationalism is hypocritical. Unlike Ford, his foreign investments are HUGE deals he can't make here. http://t.co/AoCBOVmsu0
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) August 19, 2015
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Rand Paul on Ending the Federal Meddling in Education
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(exchange from yesterday's Rockwell comment)
There are no free markets, and there is no free trade. We can talk about how classically liberal these things are, but we need to face the reality that they don't exist, and open immigration, while benefiting some nations, is a nightmare for others.....just like the so-called free trade and free markets.
Open immigration (with some racist exceptions) was the policy of this country before WWI and should be our current policy. Your saying there are no free markets or free trade is like saying there is no liberty in America either; however imperfect they are in America as a result of "progressive" policies and mercantilist trade, we, who have a vast, diversified economy, have benefited from liberalized markets, trade, and immigration, and your failure to acknowledge these makes you spectacularly uninformed.
Before World War 1, there was no welfare state. Bring back that policy and we'll talk about opening up immigration.
Stop with the economically illiterate propaganda. It's like cutting off your nose to spite your face. All immigrants, including unauthorized ones, contribute to the economy, as consumers, workers, and taxpayers. Most of you try to misquote Friedman to support your position; in fact, he spoke out in favor of unauthorized Latino immigrants. Let's also point out that unauthorized aliens have propped up federal entitlements by up to 3/4 $1T. Not only are unauthorized aliens ineligible for federal programs, but (this is from HHS), "With some exceptions, Qualified Aliens entering the country after August 22, 1996, are denied Federal means-tested public benefits for their first five years in the U.S. as qualified aliens."
Keep in mind the generally accepted 11M figure for unauthorized aliens include about a third of which have overstayed visas. And we are talking a mere fraction of a national population of 319M. Whatever impact exists is on the state/local level, and a 2007 CBO study of that showed typically less than a 5% burden of relevant expenditures in most states (under 10% in California). And keep in mind some of that, say, education, is more of a long-term investment in future employment and related tax collection. It's more difficult to estimate, say, the net benefit of upper-income households being able to hire a nanny/maid or lawn services. As an IT consultant, my skills are more valuable than my doing unpaid tasks that aren't worth as much. What Griswold and others have pointed out is that there is a growing shortage of workers needing less than a high school education in our aging, higher-educated economy. The problem with immigration is not a wall Pablo can tunnel under or making business the State's bitches in tax withholding and employment eligibility, but the nature effects of labor prohibitions on an existing market. Griswold also points out that 1M aliens were arrested on the Southern border in the early 1950's; the Bracero program led to a 95% reduction in immigrant arrests. The Democrats under JFK/LBJ were warned that problems would resume if they ended the Bracero (temporary worker permits) program, but the Dems are union whores. The real problem is the government, which Rockwell and libertarians-in-name-only, like you, should know.
[Troll comes back with a personal attack, dismissing the concepts of free markets and free trade.]
Saying that free markets and free trade don't exist is like saying men aren't perfect (you being the obvious example). It's a trite insight. That's why I've carefully framed my words as open or liberalized immigration and liberalized trade and markets. The fact that the left-fascist Dems have nearly snuffed out our economic growth engine with mindless regulations doesn't mean we can't repeal stupid regulations--of all things, we had transportation deregulation under the otherwise failed Carter Administration. The fact of liberalized economies in China or India, hardly poster boys for libertarians, has resulted in millions joining the middle class out of poverty. The point is our ideals aren't irrelevant whereas simply dismissing the concepts like you're doing is like pointing out men can't run the 100 meters in 4 seconds. Yeah, so what? The point is you're adding nothing to the conversation,
(Rand Paul). Ben Carson wants to use drone strikes on American soil.
Doesn't anyone remember 2 years ago Rand Paul had a 13-hour filibuster on the Brennan nomination in opposition to the use of drone strikes on American soil? Once again, Rand Paul proves himself to be the only Constitutionalist among the GOP contenders--and what a disaster it would be to nominate political amateurs like Trump and Carson
There is a difference between "Ben Carson wants to use drone strikes on American Soil" and "I suggest we use all things that are available to us." Sounds more like he's promoting security and open to the possibility of drone defense.
It sounds to me like an idiot who thinks immigration is a capital offense--without a judge and jury of his peers.
Ben Carson would make a way better president than rand Paul
This is crackpot bullshit. Carson should have stayed with his day job.
(Reason). The GOP once prided itself on being the big-tent party on abortion that—unlike Democratic fanatics—didn't have a litmus test on its candidates. Those days are long gone.
This article is pure rubbish and polemical. I'm a pro-life libertarian and nominally Republican, but I have known a number of pro-abort Republicans, and Slate just did a piece in January, pointing out many New England Republicans are pro-abort, as well as a number of governors (e.g., in NV, IL and MA). And although Reagan ran as pro-life for President, he signed abortion liberalizing legislation as California. And Goldwater, another prominent conservative icon, was also pro-abort, not to mention every GOP First Lady since Roe.
If the issue arose on the national level in the mid-1970's, it's because of the recent Roe v Wade decision which essentially invalidated a number of state laws protecting life.
I do not know why, after the 2012 debable of Akins and Mourdoch, GOP Presidential candidates like Rubio are pushing the issue, because the pro-aborts in Congress are more than enough in either chamber to block a Constitutional amendment--which doesn't need a President's signature anyway. The corrupt federal subsidies helping prop up the nation's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, should be stripped by all conservatives and libertarians, whether or not they are pro-abort, on political principle alone.
(CNN). Donald J. Trump said that he doesn't think people born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants are American citizens.
Economically-retarded right-fascist demagogue Donald "Four Bankruptcies" Trump not only fails at business, but is too ill-tempered, corrupt, incompetent, and unqualified to serve as Asshole-in-Chief. The Fourteenth Amendment makes it crystal clear by the Fourteenth Amendment and then Sen. Howard who introduced the clause and specifically spoke of filtering only the children born of high-level diplomats. We should also note that US immigration until WWI, with some unjust exceptions for certain Asians, was relatively open-ended.
Recall that only about 4% of the population is unauthorized, mostly due to corrupt special interest anti-immigrant (unions, xenophobes, bigots) restrictions prohibiting legal temporary worker status, like the highly successful Bracero program. We know what happens to a given market when government tries to prohibit it (e.g., drugs, alcohol, low-skill labor); manipulated shortages create large profits attracting organized crime. We have politicians from both sides of the aisle treating symptoms, not diseases; the Democrats, under union pressure, will not allow for open-ended temporary worker programs, and the Republicans want to crack down on victimless crimes: while extolling limited government, they throw money at the border. A much simplier solution, which would be a great stimulus for our economic growth engine, would be to restore open immigration policy.
But discriminating against American-born children in their home country because their parents may not have been born here? This is morally unconscionable. No Christian would ever justify or condone such a horrible thing. Trump is also a Christian in name only.
(IPI). Chicago politicians are focused on the wrong kind of belt tightening.
A proposed soda tax would be the third city-level tax imposed on the sale of soft drinks, and would hike the cost of a $4 12-pack of Coca-Cola to $5.44 — a 36% increase.
The fat tax is a particularly cruel regressive tax that would particularly hit lower middle-class households. You might think that the well-known failures of the Danish government would make an impact on economically illiterate Chicago politicians; when city retailers started bitching about losing sales to collar counties we might finally see an end to this madness.
(Cato Institute). "Eliminating licensing of medical professionals would remove one formidable barrier to innovations that would make healthcare more accessible, affordable, and valuable to consumers.”
Brilliant article. It illustrates to us laymen how the cronyism and rigged markets by government-sanctioned cartels have operated at the expense of the consumer's standard of living. This is from a piece from Steinreich:
"The American Medical Association (AMA) was founded in 1847 around two propositions: one, all doctors should have a "suitable education" and two, a "uniform elevated standard of requirements for the degree of M.D. should be adopted by all medical schools in the U.S." In the days of its founding AMA was much more open--at its conferences and in its publications--about its real goal: building a government-enforced monopoly for the purpose of dramatically increasing physician incomes. It eventually succeeded, becoming the most formidable labor union on the face of the earth.Dalmia notes:
"To accomplish the twin goals of artificially elevated incomes and worship by patients, AMA formulated a two-pronged strategy for the labor market for physicians. First, use the coercive power of the state to limit the practices of physician competitors such as homeopaths, pharmacists, midwives, nurses, and later, chiropractors. Second, significantly restrict entrance to the profession by restricting the number of approved medical schools in operation and thus the number of students admitted to those approved schools yearly.... In six years the Council managed to close down 35 schools and its secretary N.P. Colwell engineered what came to be known as the Flexner Report of 1910... state medical boards used the Report as a basis for closing 25 medical schools in three years and reducing the number of students by 50% at remaining schools....Since AMA's creation of the Council a century ago, the U.S. population (75 million in 1900, 288 million in 2002) has increased in size by 284%, yet the number of medical schools has declined by 26% to 123. In terms of admissions limits, the peak year for applicants at U.S. schools was 1996 at 47,000 applications with a limit of 16,500 accepted. "
"Milton Friedman, the late Nobel laureate, noted in 1961 that the AMA’s licensure and other efforts to control the supply of doctors and services had produced a net diminution of care. “Licensure has reduced both the quantity and quality of medical practice,” he wrote in Capitalism and Freedom. “It has retarded technological development both in medicine itself and in the organization of medical practice.”"Anyone who believes that a state confers legitimacy on a medical practitioner. The author notes that a number of other existing parties, e.g., medical malpractice insurers, have a cost incentive in judging a physician skills. Never mind political factors often trump intrinsic factors: "The Center for Equal Opportunity found that at a sample of six medical schools, more than 3,500 white and Asian candidates were not admitted in spite of having higher undergraduate grades and MCAT scores than Hispanic and African-American applicants who were admitted in their place." (Note that I'm not arguing against qualified diverse candidates, but the quotas, not unlike artificial immigration caps.) Just like the AICPA (at least until Sarbanes-Oxley) maintained an independent presence in setting standards for auditing financial statements, these duties can easily be privatized. I would have a lot more confidence in independent organizations than in the crony relationship between the AMA and government: "The American Medical Association and state medical lobbies... push to limit competition, as is seen by state-level lobbying efforts to restrict telemedicine, retail clinics, and the practice of non-physician clinicians. These actions reduce access to care and preclude low-cost delivery systems."
Marriage and Family
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| Courtesy of Jerry Holbert via Townhall |
Kenny Rogers, "Buy Me a Rose". His last #1 country song. There are roughly a week of other performances, especially duets, to wrap up my retrospective.
