Miscellany: 3/31/15

Quote of the Day
Do not desire to fit in. Desire to lead.
Gwendolyn Brooks

Chart of the Day: Those "Underpaid" Public School Teachers in Michigan

Not bad for a job you work half the days in a year....

Via Reason

Image of the Day

Reason's Nanny of the Month: March 2015



Milton Friedman on Unions



A Non-Politician Earns a JOTY Nomination

Ed Schultz is a predictably hypocritical "progressive" who apparently cuts off the mikes of those who fail to agree with his "truth".



Choose Life: An Abomination: An Abortionist Strangles Born Alive Baby Girl Who Refused to Die Quickly...

In this case, Mary gave birth to a living 2-lb., 8-oz. baby girl. [Waddill] reportedly chased all the nurses out of the room and made a call to another physician, Dr. Ronald Cornelson. The law at that time stated that two doctors needed to be present to pronounce a premature baby dead. Dr. Cornelson later testified that he believed that the baby was closer to 31 weeks than 28 weeks. He heard Waddill say, “Sorry to get you into this mess, we had a baby that came out alive from a saline abortion, and it can’t live!” Dr. Cornelsen said in testimony: I said, ‘Why not just leave the baby alone?’ Waddill said, ‘This baby can’t live or it will be a big mess.’ Finally, Waddill began strangling the child in full view of Cornelson and other nurses. No one stopped him. He was quoted saying, “This baby won’t stop breathing!”

Facebook Corner

(National Review). [Martin O'Malley will] do the same to the country if he makes it to the White House.
He's the reason I moved out of Maryland and now live in Virginia. Maryland rated 2nd to last in a poll of people that were asked if they wanted to stay in their state or not, with 48% of Maryland residents polled stating they'd like to move away from the state.
As a former Maryland resident, I can definitely agree the toxic combination of O'Malley and the one-party rule legislature made it so I took the first lousy out-of-state job offer that came my way.

(Jeffrey Tucker). So far as I can tell, these religious freedom laws that have everyone in a frenzy are, as written, 100% compatible with the principle of liberty, which permits association or non-association. The reason they are causing such division is that they are laws passed by legislatures and enforced by bureaucrats and courts, in a cultural and historical context of the persistent denial of freedom to those who believe they will be adversely affected by the new laws. It's like a human rights business cycle: those denied rights afflict the same denial on others when it is their turn, then the blow back occurs. Freedom shouldn't be this way. It should be the default condition of humanity. It shouldn't be something allowed or disallowed by legislatures, which are always and everywhere at war with the harmony of interests of humankind.
Whereas I concur that majoritarian tyranny was responsible for tragedies like the Jim Crow laws, we also have the evil of unaccountable jurists and bureaucrats, like human rights commissions, which sanction politically incorrect refusals to exchange by private entities without a monopoly of force.

Political Cartoonist

Courtesy of Chip Bok via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

John Denver, "Welcome To My Morning (Farewell Andromeda)"

Miscellany: 3/30/15

Quote of the Day
Politeness is the flower of humanity.
Joseph Joubert

Chart of the Day

Courtesy of National Review

Image of the Day

What is Libertarianism?

The great Austrian School economist, Walter Block...



Facebook Corner

Via LFC

Guess where they're invading next....

(Libertarian Catholic). The illogic is palpable. ‪#‎boycottIndiana‬ ‪#‎boycottYourself‬
These hypocritical pseudo-liberals should realize that unprovoked economic warfare has consequences. The idea that a state not cracking down on religious liberty should be sanctioned is morally confused and contemptible. The state itself is not engaging in "discrimination" but is recognizing the same sort of tolerance towards matter of conscience that we see extended by the federal government to conscientious objectors to the military draft. I hereby announce my own boycott against Connecticut until it revokes its unconscionable attack on Indiana and apologizes.

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Lisa Benson via IPI

Courtesy of Gary Varvel via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

John Denver, "I'd Rather Be a Cowboy"

Miscellany: 3/29/15

Quote of the Day
An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi

Image of the Day

Via Econlib

Facebook Corner

(IPI). 95% of today’s prison population will return to our communities. We must find ways to help them enter the work force.
IPI is spot on. We have one of the highest porportionate and absolute incarceration rates among the economically developed nations. It's not because Americans are more "evil" but because we have a prison industrial complex, a perversion in an allegedly "land of the free". No one is arguing about protection of lives and property; but we have an increasingly burdensome, arbitrary legal system which traps victimless criminals and which makes it all but impossible for former prisoners to get a fresh start. For the law and order populists, freedom is not an unalienable right but an inconvenience to authoritarian rule.

Political Humor



Sports Wishes Come True









Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

John Denver, "Rocky Mountain High". I'm not sure which hit constitutes Denver's signature tune, but along with "Take Me Home, Country Roads", this has to be a candidate. I had obviously known about the latter, but one hit doesn't make the artist in my book. I would say that this hit grabbed my attention to him as an artist; it was unlike anything I had ever heard, sort of fusion country-folk, with verses you could yodel to (like "Calypso").

Miscellany: 3/28/15

Quote of the Day
A good hockey player plays where the puck is. 
A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.
Wayne Gretzky

Image of the Day

I'm sure the radical environmentalists love the North Korean compliance with climate change legislation.
via the Independent Institute

Via the Independent Institute

via Libertarianism.org

via Protect Internet Freedom

Facebook Corner

(Libertarian Catholic). Not to mention that the Indiana law is modeled after an active US law and no one is boycotting the entire country because of it... ‪#‎boycotIndiana‬ ‪#‎fools‬
(I'm not going to republish some excessively long LGBT-agenda rant here which wants to revisit the history of alleged sins of straights against the gay community.)
This is convoluted and ill-focused. I'm not even going to attempt to read it in its entirety--the ex-professor in me would flunk the OP. Are you seriously attempting to argue that any self-anointed special interest group has the right to compel that other people have to do business with them at the point of a gun? That's the issue, man: in real life, you can't force other people to like you, to date you, to invite you into their home for dinner. Some guys may date women for superficial reasons, like their looks, their ethnicity, hair color, body type, etc. So what if some bakery doesn't want to bake you a cake? For example, you can buy a standard wedding cake and decorate it yourself; I've never been asked about my (straight) sexual orientation in buying items from a local or online baker; I'm sure that there are LGBT bakers available (baking is not exactly rocket science). 

If I own a business, I do not have to tolerate abusive customers, and if I choose to sell my rare stamp to my nephew rather than on some politically correct/protected interest group member, that's none of your business. I don't have to explain myself to some Statist.

The LC is exactly right: the idea of a politically favored laundry list violates the rule of law. You cannot force other people to accept you on your own terms; it may not be fair, but you have no right to use force, directly or through the authorities that be, to get your way. You have every right not to do business with vendors for whatever reason--but if you want to enforce business policies of your preference, compete in the marketplace of voluntary transactions. Forcing other people to do business they feel violates their religious and/or economic liberty, a matter of conscience, is authoritarian and morally corrosive.

(IPI). Thoughts? (Re: Illinois constitutional change to deal with pension reform.)
It is a contract. Breaking it breaks the law. Period. Would it be ethical to take your 401k or other investments to help pay your bosses debt? Where is the thinking on this? I am sick of the worker being picked over for broken policies and budgets. Fix the problem, politicians that took from the fund should be incarcerated and stripped of their pensions and pay. This is the same crap with social security. They steal our money and cry broke. It is wrong and people should be held accountable for once!!!
How many self-interested morally corrupt parasites are going to preach to us taxpayers that we have to bail out their asses because Democrats made them promises that EVERYONE with a functioning brain KNEW they could never pay. So many ignorant government whores keep repeating false rhetoric of politicians raiding their pension fund That's not the issue; the issue is you have overly generous payouts, sometimes to people who will live longer in retirement than in their career, whose contributions are barely a down payment on what future taxpayers (without pensions of their own) are being forced to make up the difference from what corrupt legislators and greedy employers/retirees have pushed off. There's no reason to engage in union propaganda conspiracies--businesses since the 1980's realized that a tsunami of the largest, longest living Baby Boomer retirees was simply unaffordable. Why public employees think they are more equal, that a different set of actuarial statistics reflect their own retirements, is simply hubris.

I particularly loathe the pretentious simpletons who repeat "a contract is a contract". Here's the reality--everyone else who makes a contract with the state/local government for goods or services has just as much, if not more standing than overcompensated public employees/retirees. What the hell makes the corrupt public sector retirees' contracts "more equal"? If and when the government has run its finances into the ground, somehow the multiple claims on government assets have to be reconciled--that's what bankruptcy is all about, where the rule of law prevails, not the rule of cronies.

(IPI). The state’s 2016 pension cost is projected to increase to nearly $8 billion – or $0.25 of every dollar the state spends during the next budget year
I do not have an Illinois pension. But I am astonished that those in Illinois who have pensions are not crowding the streets with protests. If having your pension stolen by corrupt officials like Madigan does not inspire you to civil disobedience, we are doomed as a state. I guess the answer is to keep voting for incumbents and pray for a miracle. What a sound financial retirement strategy.
State employees are entitled to their pension. Because, it's their money. We, as state employees have No Choice but to put money into our pension fund. Then some Republican f*** comes along wants to steal it from the people that put it there in the first place? S*** is messed up.
Okay, some self-entitled parasites like Ms. XXX are so ignorant about finances, it boggles the imagination. Nobody is "stealing" from the pension fund; if state loans are in the pension fund, there is still an obligation to pay those off. The problem is that the pension fund is not self-sustaining--it's not big enough to cover the distributions of pension payments.

No, you did not pay for decades-long distributions of half-pay or better. The figures I've seen is the average pension-eligible worker contributes under $200K over his/her career while expecting up to $1M or more in payouts. There's a reason why the top-heavy retiring Baby Boomers are requing escalating taxpayer bailouts at up to a third of local/state government budgets or more. Decades of governments and their employees have illegally shifted the burdens of pensions to future taxpayers. And there's not an investment guru on the planet that can make up for decades of underfunding.
(separate comment)
To the OP: keep in mind that Illinois government workers have politically supported Democrats for decades, whom have agreed to ever-more generous retirement perks without fully paying for the promises they were making--and everybody, including the unions, were aware that the Baby Boomer tsunami would sharply strain pension resources; they knew on a paygo basis that a rising proportion of retired to active government workers meant the money had to come from somewhere.

The real question is not why pensioners aren't taking to the streets but why the private sector taxpayers aren't--being asked to make up for decades-long underfunding by governments and their workers. Asking those of us--who don't have gold-plated million dollar pensions funded by the State--to guarantee the greedy, self-serving government retirees who made their corrupt bargain with Democrats at the expense of taxpayers: where were the unions, whose actuaries must have been aware of what most businesses have known since the 1980's or earlier and have shifted to 401K (defined contribution) plans, over the past few decades while their favored Democrats were frittering away stolen tax dollars on other failed priorities at the expense of union-member retirements?

An even bigger mystery is why the union members are directing their frustrations at the GOP and taxpayers, versus the Democrats and union leadership which have been scamming them for decades. Asking taxpayers without gold-plated retirement pension plans of their own to bail them out is unconscionable.

Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Gary Varvel via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocaalists

John Denver, "Rhymes and Reasons"

Miscellany: 3/27/15

Quote of the Day
Time and money spent in helping men do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.
Henry Ford

Image of the Day

Why Liberty?







Facebook Corner

(Rand Paul 2016). Out with the bad, in with the...
worse. This is the guy who wanted to ban Chinatown buses, endlessly wants to sanction China on currency, etc. Economically illiterate Senate leaders, like Harry Reid, are not a good sign.

(Libertarian Catholic). Hopefully people won't confuse the religious freedom of the Indiana bill with this religious totalitarianism, but that would require more critical thinking than our schools are expected to deliver. ‪#‎libertarian‬ ‪#‎Catholic‬
 Unconstitutional. Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion. No need to discuss Jefferson's theme of independence of church and state.

(Politico). Clinton’s campaign-in-waiting is plotting a listening tour to re-introduce her to Real America.
 Hillary's idea of a listening tour is that she talks and we listen.

Wishes Come True









Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Chip Bok via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

John Denver, "Goodbye Again"

Miscellany: 3/26/15

Quote of the Day
Knowledge is power.
Thomas Hobbes

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Add caption

Via Reason

Economic Liberty V. Competitor's Veto



Hockey Inspiration









Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Dana Summers via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

John Denver, "Everyday"