If I die tonight in my sleep:
Let me have hugged and told my children that I love them,
Let me have told my mother how much she is loved and appreciated,
Let me have helped a friend or better, a stranger,
Let me have worked very hard these past hours in the name of my personal progress, and,
Let me have gone to sleep with the knowledge that I did the very best I could do today.
Rick Beneteau
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
Image of the Day
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| Via LFC |
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| Via Drudge Report |
Chart of the Day
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| Courtesy of the Mercatus Center |
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| Courtesy of IPI |
Obama Showing Off His Golf Moves On Yet ANOTHER Vacation
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| Courtesy of AP |
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| Via Citizens Against Government Waste |
Obama Redux
Towards More User Fee Based Infrastructure
There is a topic raised by Reason's Robert Toole in my FB Corner I want to expand on here. The piece is basically advocating Obama's suggestion to allow states to set up tolling on Interstate highways, pointing out that it's a no-brainer for conservatives and libertarians on the principle of federalism. One of the issues I have with Toole's style; in fact, I've long believed in user-fee funding of relevant infrastructure. Road maintenance is often hidden in fuel charges. In this piece on value-added tolling, Poole identifies 4 concerns of highway users that get scant coverage in the piece. He also discusses public-private partnerships here; To give another example, he uses the terms greenfielding and brownfielding in his conclusions, but doesn't even use the term brownfielding in his earlier discussion. Just in case the reader isn't aware, brownfielding essentially refers to projects that involve repairing/replacing infrastructure with proven usage patterns; greenfielding projects have higher risk, where one anticipates traffic to justify the resources.
One starts with the fact that the 50's era birth of the interstate system was started with the design being a 50-year expected life of the highways. Obviously we are running up against the end of the highway life. Now I would prefer privatization outright; Toole only discusses this in passing, basically arguing that the regulatory structure really makes this practically impossible, but sees a brighter future for public-private partnerships, e.g., competitive bidding for long-term contracts which would replace politically-related uncertainty for public funding with more committed private financing. There are the usual populist concerns about high toll prices under a private partnership, but the toll operators would face competition from alternative routes or modes of transportation.
Finally, Toole talks about electronic tolling technologies. Of course, I have been used to tolling on public roads, especially in the Chicago suburbs. Some of the DC Virginia suburbs have tolls (especially parallel to the road to Dulles; you can go nonstop to Dulles off the Beltway without a toll). In Baltimore, the I-95 tunnel has a toll, and there are tolls in the Maryland-Delaware areas as you near Philadelphia. What's fairly new as I mentioned in a post several months back is the all electronic tollroad without your typical manual pay booth; for instance, I-270 splits off from I-70 in Frederick, MD; I-270 eventually intersects the Beltway around Bethesda. I used to live a few miles south of I-70 in the Baltimore suburbs. I occasionally had gigs, e.g., in Rockville (along I-270). I had two unpleasant alternatives: hit 70-S to Frederick and head up I-270, or go 95-S to the Beltway (and the stretch between College Park to Bethesda is never pleasant) to I-270 and head down to Rockville. MD-200 would have allowed me to go from I-95 at Laurel down to I-270 at Gaithersburg; I said "would have" because it opened after I needed the connection. What I did note in passing the Laurel access roads is that it was all-electronic; I was wondering how that worked. I'm not saying this is how it works for MD-200 or other all-electric tolls (but I searched a few other tollways), but usually tolls are deducted from your EZ-PASS (or similar) account balance via the the mounted transponder. MD and other authorities provide discount incentives to use EZ-PASS--so the question is: what if you don't have a transponder? Typically they'll photograph your license plate tag; there's an Internet portal for you to pay your "video toll" (see here for an example); if you do so promptly after using the tollway, you get a more favorable charge (but higher than a transponder charge). I believe that in the case of delinquent tolls, they can put a hold on your auto registration renewal, etc. (I'm not sure what happens if you're driving without a tag, but presumably you would risk being pulled over by a trooper.)
Facebook Corner
(Bastiat Institute). Support the local economy! Ban cheap foreign competition!
"The moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us..."
Protectionism has also some similarity to broken window parable:
With protectionism the domestic producer wins, the foreign producer loses, but the consumer loses because of higher price. One party wins, two parties lose. Without protectionism the domestic producer loses, the foreign producer wins, but the consumer also wins (lower price). Two parties win, one loses.
Actually, I disagree the domestic producer loses. Competition forces him to innovate and/or reduce his uncompetitive cost structure.
(Sen. Mike Lee). Today the Senate is voting on the "Protect Women's Health form Corporate Interference Act." The most extraordinary feature of this bill is the incongruity between its title and its content.
The title—the “Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act”—is clear and straightforward. It suggests the bill is aimed at the important and worthy goal of protecting women’s health.
But the text of the legislation plainly demonstrates that the true objective of the bill is to circumscribe Americans’ religious liberties within the narrow confines of the Democratic Party’s partisan agenda and the whims of politicians and bureaucrats.
While maintaining the appearance of preserving all the current legal protections of religious freedom in America today, this proposal quietly adds to them a subtle, yet deeply problematic and inappropriate, qualification: the federal government will not prohibit the free exercise of religion…until the federal government decides it wants to.
Under this bill, your religious liberties stop at the doorstep of the Democratic National Committee.
The authors of this bill know all this. They know the American people reject their intolerance of diversity and indifference to the First Amendment. We know their bill cannot become law. Indeed, we know this for a fact, because if the regulations they support were actually written in the law, Obamacare itself never would have passed. It was slipped in after the fact, by bureaucrats not subject to public accountability.
This legislation is more than an insult to the people it would target; it is an embarrassment to the party leadership that has embraced it. #NotMyBossBusiness #HobbyLobby
Vote NO on the Democrat Gut the First Amendment Act
(a response to a feminist troll arguing the Democrats are "restoring rights" stripped by SCOTUS)
Yes, I do hold 3 advanced degrees and am a former professor. The fact is that Hobby Lobby did not take away a female worker's right to pay for any birth control with her own take-home pay; either the cost is trivial or not trivial. If it's not trivial, Hobby Lobby's insurance costs should lower and pass along the savings to the workers. And like I previously said, the Obama Administration illegally excluded for-profit corporations from religious liberty accommodations required by the RLRA. Hobby Lobby did not subsidize baby-killing drugs before the fascist mandate.
(The Libertarian Catholic). One of our members asks a great question here: can one be Catholic (submit to authority) and libertarian (always question authority) at the same time? My response is that authority here means two different things. Though you must obey Church doctrine in order to be in communion with her, there is no one holding a gun to your head forcing you to go to Mass or adhere to Church moral teaching, whereas there are people holding a gun to your head forcing you to do that which the government prescribes. A moral action requires free will and the Church (for the most part) recognizes that.
And while many say that religion is a blind devotion, I think Catholicism especially is the merging of faith and reason—it is the rational faith.
Here's a brief summary of the discussion in St. Thomas's favorite format: http://jsbmorse.com/the-summa-of-liberty-catholicism/
Thanks for the post. I'd be interested to hear different perspectives on this.
Before I left for college at 16, I used to serve 6:30AM daily mass for the AFB chaplain; as an unexpected gift, he gave me a 4-volume set of Aquinas' Summa Theologica. I loved Aquinas' style and would be thrilled when I anticipated his responses to the challenges of the opposing viewpoint. Nice post simulation of his style.
I think I've mentioned in this forum that I find it interesting that many Catholic libertarians (e.g., Tucker and Napolitano) and conservatives (Santorum) are more traditionalist in their Catholicism. I am, too; in fact, I'm one of the few altar boys whom served Mass during the tenure of transition after Vatican II. But I've been a particularly harsh critic of Pope Francis in his anti-capitalism nonsense, which I won't discuss here.
I think the Church's authority rests in faith and morals. I personally think it's a mistake for the Church to get involved in politics; I think, among, other things, that the Church should be an independent source to protest, e.g., the war on the preborn. I am not going to defend the often fallible nature and excesses of the Church, e.g., the religious wars, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the sex abuse scandal, etc.
Jesus' challenge is an individual mandate, not a group one. He was not an insurrectionist. John the Baptist did not attack Herod's social policies but his personal behavior. Jesus emphasized individual responsibility; He did not tell the prospective disciple to sell his belongings and hand the money to the Roman occupation or tax collectors. He make it clear in the question of paying the imperial tax and the Passion that the true authority is God, and we are accountable to God for what we do with our gift of life.
Thomas Aquinas' writings are consistent with a libertarian perspective, including a variation of the Non-Aggression Principle, and his writings on tolerance, where he points out that we should not attempt to pass laws to eliminate all vices, but just the key ones, presumably murder and theft. He thinks our authentic response is a voluntary one.
(Reason). Conservative should embrace Barack Obama's plan to use tolling to rebuild highways. Here's why.
The problem I have with this piece is that the writer doesn't talk much about Obama's other bill spending, like subsidies of transit operations, which is a more pernicious form of taxpayer bailout of users. We need to understand more why Obama is offering this concession, and in particular, what he's proposing in terms of taxes and spending. For example, are the feds going to decentralize control over the Interstate system, are they going to reduce federal fuel faxes in exchange for tolls or simply reduce federal funding of highways? I find it difficult to believe this President who's done everything he can to centralize control over healthcare, education, etc., has suddenly rediscovered the Tenth Amendment; I want to know the inevitable strings attached. Plus, getting the feds to give back on their taxing authority is like pulling teeth...
(Sen. Rand Paul). The interstate highway system is of vital importance to our economy. All across the country, bridges, and roads are deficient and in need of replacement.
We can help fund new construction and repair by lowering the repatriation rate and bringing money held by U.S. companies back home. This would mean no new taxes, but more revenue, and it is a solution that should win support from both political parties. READ: http://www.paul.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1186
Whereas I do agree with the concept of repatriation--in fact, we should be adopting a territorial tax system, I think as a matter of principle, taxpayers should not be subsidizing users, and the correct pro-liberty response should be to privatize and/or at least delegate control and funding of the interstate system to the state/local authorities consistent with the principle of Subsidiarity.
I thus welcome Obama's offer to allow tolling at the state level which is one of the few constructive ideas he's had during his Presidency (although I oppose his nearly doubling transit subsidies--we should not be subsidizing public works boondoggles like rail projects or riders using fuel tax revenue). We need to stop depending on a highly regressive funding scheme like fuel taxes, while yuppies driving Teslas and other high-cost fuel-efficient vehicles get away without paying their fair share of road costs. If we do transition to a more toll-based system, we need to ensure that the government accordingly reduces/eliminates the fuel tax instead of using the people's money for other corrupt purposes.
(Drudge Reports). Homeless Upset Over LA Mayor Working To Provide Housing For Immigrants...
Why is Drudge trying to exacerbate the morally corrupt and economically illiterate nativists? We are not even talking about the distribution of taxpayer money--just coordination with the private sector; we need more, not less of this. As far as I know, the private sector has repeatedly stepped up to help the cause of the homeless...
they are not immigrants they are ILLEGALS!!!
Our immigration laws are unduly restrictive and directly responsible for the involvement in organized crime. As usual, the nativists in this thread are economic illiterates and ignore the win-win nature of immigration.
(commenting on yet another clueless troll rants arguing that corporate tax brackets aren't too high)
I see the idiotic "progressive" trolls are in this thread. Some of the major integrated oil companies do pay the high rates. And don't you notice how pathetic they are in opposing bracket cuts that they claim nobody pays?
More Marriage Proposals
Political Cartoon
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists
Anne Murray, "Could I Have This Dance?"
