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…the state is not your friend. Ira Stoll over on Reason.com has an excellent article drawing the obvious parallel between the Nazi era Reichsfluchsteuer tax imposed on fleeing Jews and the ‘exit taxes’ being imposed on US subjects seeking to leave the USA. Read the whole thing. May 22nd, 2012 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I have a sense that, if what writers such as Roger Kimball of Pajamas Media say is correct, that it will become more politically palatable for parts of the mainstream media to address the sensitive issue as to whether Mr Obama actually is, by the usual tests required of a POTUS, American.
The article then goes on to address to the extent to which various records about Obama (medical and college stuff,) have been sealed. And one commenter on the PJM site had this observation:
But in the end, how much of this stuff about “Who is Barack Obama?” matters. He’s been in the job for four years. Although his period of office coincided with the very welcome disposal of Bin Laden, I cannot really think if a single serious positive accomplishment by Obama during his time in office, although I suppose his greatest might be his unintended one: the birth of the Tea Party movement, and an associated invigoration of the small government, libertarian strain within the Republican Party (well, even that might be debatable). Whatever doubts I might have about Mitt Romney, I just cannot go along with the idea of “to save the village we must destroy it” point of view, nor do I think we can finesse the situation if Obama wins, as argued by Tim Sandefur recently. (I don’t share Tim’s fear that we will see a dramatic loss of freedoms to the religious right, although I suppose anything is possible). May 20th, 2012 | 51 comments - (Comments are closed)
There has been a bit of a buzz in the internet and elsewhere about a new development off the US West Coast, known as Blueseed:
One of the bitter ironies of recent years has been how the US, a country that operates a worldwide system of taxes, as well as tightening its visa and other regulations, has made it not just harder for people, including the likes of software engineers, to enter the country, but also far less easy for expat Americans on short- or long-term trips abroad to do so and gain access to even basic financial services. (To view more on the latter point, see this entry of mine about the FATCA Act.) But as the Blueseed venture demonstrates, entrepreneurs and other liberty-loving people will try and find a way around the tentacles of Big Government. No doubt the Eyeores will say this is all futile, that the authorities will shut this sort of thing down, yadda-yadda, but the very fact that such ventures are being worked on at all is itself a kind of victory for certain ideas. Reason magazine has a nice roundup on the Blueseed venture. And Patri Friedman’s Seasteading Institute is still going strong. Here is a great book on the subject, How To Start Your Own Country, covering the failed attempts and the mini-victories along the way. May 10th, 2012 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
At the moment I am a daily Instapundit reader, which is because at the moment I find American politics a whole lot more interesting than British politics. At least Obama is interesting! Cameron just makes me want to give up thinking about British politics altogether. But the interesting American question for me is not who will win their next Presidential election. Personally – in defiance of our Dear Leader (although time may well prove to me the error of my ways), for all the grief it may bring, and for whatever miniscule difference it may make to anything – I support Anyone-But-Obama for President rather than the man himself. No, what interests me about America just now is to what extent the old mainstream media really are in the process of being dethroned. This is what is so interesting about things like the Obama Eats Dogs story. In itself it is about nothing. Its only significance is that Obama’s cheerleaders want this story to stop, while Obama’s detractors want it to rock on. But that is exactly why it is so interesting. It is pure media. It’s like one of those enemas that doctors inflict upon you, to enable them to see what is happening inside you. It does nothing to you, other than make your insides trackable. Obama Eats Dogs stories tell you about the power of The Media either to suppress a story which they now don’t like, or maybe not to suppress it. My take on the alleged bias of the American mainstream media is that they have been monstrously biased in a statist direction for well over a century. Every other Media story since the year dot has been about (a) a Problem; and (b), all intertwined with that, what the government is doing about the Problem or ought to be doing about the Problem. There is now a huge constituency of idiots who really do think that the answer to any problem of any sort is for the government to take charge of it, and screw it up some more. What is now changing is not the bias. What is changing is that now, because of the rise of other media (barium enema media?), this bias is trackable. Don’t kid yourself that an earlier generation of Old Gents In Suits Who Worshipped Facts were not almost as biased as their now visibly biased progeny. The point about bias is not – or not only – whether you lie. The point is what you say is a story in the first place. Problem!!! Facts. What is the government doing about it?!? More facts. What does Everyone Important say about what the government ought to be doing about it?!? More facts. There’s no need to lie about anything to skew the way you present the world. Imagine, on the other hand, a world in which The Media all assumed that problems were there to be solved by humans, and that the “politicians” are just another of those problems that we humans have to deal with from time to time. The “News” would be completely different. And what interests me about America just now is that this kind of thing is all becoming so much more visible, to the point where it might even be changing, in a good direction. May 2nd, 2012 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Nice to see I am not the only Obama detractor who nevertheless wants Romney to crash and burn. Shikha Dalmia over at Reason writes 5 Reasons why conservatives should root for a Romney defeat:
That is more or less how I see it as well. May 2nd, 2012 | 66 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Wisconsin Recall election on June 5 is national news and a much discussed political watershed moment. And, conveniently, voter ID laws have been temporarily blocked during the recall. If this bastard wins the Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial primary, expect all hell to break loose. His platform is available courtesy of Occupy Wisconsin. I didn’t know about the Republican primary and thought that what everybody is calling “The Democratic Primary” didn’t have any Republican elections on the ballot. I hadn’t planned on voting. That bastion of unbiased neutrality, aka Wisconsin Public Radio, even put up an article saying that “Gov. Walker is urging Republican voters not to meddle in the Democratic primary recall elections on May 8th” . Notice the NPR article has the exact same date that the Government Accountability Board (notice 5 to 1 Democratic appointees) announced that they had qualified an additional 369 petition signatures that they had previous determined to be ineligible and Kohl-Riggs would be running against Walker. Their plan might even work. If it does, expect what we’ve seen so far to look like it was a warm-up. April 27th, 2012 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Instapundit today links to this report, about how a blogger and diabetes sufferer called Steve Cooksey is being told by a North Carolina regulator that he is breaking the law by giving tips, based on his own experience, to others about how to deal with diabetes. Good for Instapundit. This is the kind of spat which, if it gets a decent slice of publicity, can be won by the forces of free speech and freedom of expression. Hence this posting of mine in response to the Instapundit posting, which I offer as another straw on the bureaucratic camel’s back. It will surely not be the only such straw. I like to think that, if Steve Cooksey finds out about this posting here, the fact that it is happening Abroad may cheer him up that little bit more. “Hey, this damn regulator is making me world famous!” It helps that they have a Constitution over there, which includes a bit about how you can say what you want, even if a mere state law says otherwise. Is Steve Cooksey, who has no “license” to offer the advice he is offering, in fact giving bad dietary advice? If so, the correct response from those who think this is to say so, and to explain why they think this. Perhaps one of them could start another blog, saying things like: “Steve Cooksey is talking nonsense.” “Don’t do what Steve Cooksey says, and this is why you shouldn’t.” And so on. That is, or ought to be, the American way. (It ought to be the way everywhere.) April 25th, 2012 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just what I was thinking:
John Hinderaker said it, and Instapundit has just linked to it. The one word being “Maldives” for “Malvinas”. Causing this much derision and contempt with just the one word is indeed quite an achievement. I’m betting the Maldiveans are not that impressed either. The British media, the BBC in particular, mostly treat Obama, still, as some kind of Holy Sage, whose every word is Truth and whose every enemy is Evil and Stupid. How could any American with brain cells in the plural possibly object to “free health care”? In the BBC’s parallel universe, only the previous President was capable of gaffes on this globe-spanning scale. But can anyone think of a GWB jnr gaffe that is any gaffer, as it were, than this “Maldives” clanger? Thought: they should call Obama “The Gaffer”. It will be very interesting to see what the BBC now makes of this, if anything. The Daily Telegraph’s Jonathan Gilbert describes this error as uncharacteristic, saying that this was the kind of thing Bush did do, but Obama doesn’t. Hinderaker says different:
Anyone? I can’t remember anything from Bush that was this doltish. Comically non-existent new words, yes. But blunders like this on matters of diplomatic significance? Not that I can remember. But then I never did think Bush was an idiot, and preferred to listen to what he said rather than dwell on the errors he sometimes committed while saying it. (I don’t think Obama is a complete idiot either. He was, after all, clever enough to get the Presidency, in defiance of the wishes of the Clinton clan. And clever enough then to use it to do real damage to most Americans’ idea of what America is, even if not as much as he might have managed, had he been even cleverer.) Our own Perry de Havilland wants Obama to win. He reckons the Republican chap with be a Cameronian disaster, who will, by talking free markets but by doing business as usual, will ensure that our side gets blamed for all the ordure that has yet to hurtle towards the fan. This sort of equal opportunities offensiveness from Obama makes it that much harder for Perry to get his way. April 17th, 2012 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
Sheila Bair, Washington Post. The article gets even better from here. April 16th, 2012 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Paul Marks of this parish commented on an article in the Economist called ‘A lament for America’s Jews’… …whereupon the magazine deleted it. However, for your edification and as if by some black internet magic, here is that deleted comment…
… the comment taking form once more like some vengeful revenant risen from that un-quiet place where deleted comments supposed slain by a moderator go, reaching through the screen and grasping ‘Lexington’ by the throat. April 15th, 2012 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Former Samizdata contributor and full-time Tea Party/libertarian rabble-rouser Andrew Ian Dodge has been endorsed by the Libertarian Party of Maine for his independent US Senate run. Libertarian Party of Maine Chairman, Shawn Levasseur spoke on Dodge’s change in party affiliation, “Andrew has been a long time friend of the LP in Maine. So when the news broke that he was leaving the Republican party, and would be petitioning to get directly onto the November ballot, we asked him to run as a Libertarian. He has often described himself as a libertarian. The only difference now is that he’s now capitalizing the ‘L’.”” Maine is an odd state that goes against the logic that only two parties matter in US politics. Maine, like Vermont, is perfectly happy to elect independents to high office. Not content to just run for office he continues to publish his writing, despite being banned by his campaign from blogging. Andrew and his wife Kim just published Drifting into Oblivion about his, so far, successful battle against colon cancer. The irony is that he will be 5 years free of cancer on election day in early November. Good luck mate! March 19th, 2012 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
It can’t be a lot of fun working for Goldman Sachs these days (unless you are still making big dollops of money, that is). A former employee has, famously, come out with a fairly spectacular rant about his old firm. Some might regard this as a sign of speaking truth to power, others might say that if this man really felt as he did, he perhaps could have quit the Wall Street giant earlier than he did. It adds to the gaiety of nations. Even the Daily Mash website has got into the act. (I love that site). And Michael Bloomberg – good businessman, not-so-great NYC Mayor – has come to Goldman’s defence. But while the Goldmans of this world, with their privileged access to central bank funds, bailouts, political pull and so on, represent that form of crony capitalism that has even normally friendly pro-market people up in arms, there are, maybe, signs that new banking businesses are being formed. Over at the Cobden Centre, Steve Baker MP has a nice piece contrasting the Goldman Sachs affair and the launch of a new bank. In the meantime, my only caveat about all this piling on at the expense of Goldman Sachs is to point out that it is only one of a number of Western banks that have enjoyed the privileges of our quasi-statist monetary order. Goldmans may be a powerful, well connected institution, but it is hardly the only one of its kind. March 16th, 2012 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
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