We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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WASHINGTON, DC—After months of aggressive campaigning and with nearly 99 percent of ballots counted, politicians were the big winners in Tuesday’s midterm election, taking all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, retaining a majority with 100 out of 100 seats in the Senate, and pushing political candidates to victory in each of the 36 gubernatorial races up for grabs.
The Onion notices the awful truth. Their overall election coverage is quite chuckle-inducing, too.
Update: All right, there are a couple of decent ones in there. I like Dr No.
(h/t: Avatar Briefs)
It looks like we have caused the Republicans a bit of grief:
So far, losing because of libertarians hasn’t caused Republicans to move toward the libertarians ideologically. But maybe things will change this time.
Our election results are available as they come in via our party headquarters.
For years I have felt alone on election nights with nothing to follow except the voting tallies and changing balance between the left and right wings of the ruling party. Kudos to LPHQ!
Over on Antoine Clarke’s Election Watch, I am running results and commentary on the U.S. mid-term elections tonight.
The most reliable source last time was RealClearPolitics. However, they’re admiting a huge range of possible outcomes in the Senate, from only two Republican losses, to six, which would mean a change of majority.
Well, I am off to bed and despite my interest in politics, have not really the desire to wait up to see what happens in the U.S. Congressional races. My hunch is that by the time I wake up here in London, the Democrats will have taken the House and the Republicans might just hang on to the Senate, but it will be a very close call. I sympathise with the argument, put by various libertarians and small-government Republican supporters, that Bush needs what we Brits call a mighty kick in the bollocks for a number of bad moves, such as the explosive growth of spending on non-defense items, tariffs, the Patriot Act, growing interference in people’s private lives, etc, etc. I can see why many voters, even hawkish ones, have become bitterly angry over the mess in Iraq and wondered whether the Coalition should have heeded the voices of caution and pursued a containment/deterrence line rather than pre-emption. (I backed the ouster of Saddam pretty much from the start but have had my doubts about how the power vacuum might get filled without a sufficiently strong effort to help rebuild the country). The Republicans might, just might learn a valuable lesson: they have had power in Congress since 1994 and more recently, the White House. People do not tend to vote for centre-right parties in order to see a big rise in the size and power of the state. Maybe someone should send Bush a copy of Barry Goldwater’s old classic, The Conscience of a Conservative.
My main worry, drawn from the experience of Britain’s Conservative Party, is that a defeat for the Republicans may not lead to the sort of questioning of the Big Government philosophy known as “Compassionate Conservatism” as championed by Bush in recent years. We have seen how David Cameron has sought to meld the Tories into a pale imitation of NuLabour, in some ways trying to outdo Blair in the spending and taxation stakes. For all the talk that American politics is deeply polarised, perhaps the real truth is that the choices in front of the electorate are not distinct enough.
In case you want to scare off a mugger, why not buy some of these and put them on your coat? Tastes may vary.
Greg Allison claims this title because instead of finding junked cars hidden in the back yard grass when he mows, he finds rockets. If you ever wondered what happened to the wreckage of the DCX rocket, now you know. Its remnants have been serving as a parts source for Alabama space entrepreneurs.
Here is what the stripped spaceframe looked like as of a few days ago.
The DCX rests in pieces. Photo: Courtesy Greg AllisonIt kinda reminds me of ‘The Rolling Stones’. No, not the band… the Heinlein novel!
[I]f they have got drug dealers living in the street, you know, love is not the answer to that I am afraid, evicting them from their houses and locking them up is the answer.
– The Right Honourable Tony Blair MP, at his monthly press conference yesterday (At least the cleaned-up transcript from No.10.).
Lobby correspondents are united in thinking the Prime Minister was belligerent and bad tempered about everything. Has he finally gone completely round the bend? The people he wants to evict and lock-up are implicitly those suspected of being Bad People. The rest of the conference made clear he is not interested in due process, civil liberties, all that old-fashioned nonsense.
Take my advice, never trust a politician. When a politician tells you they are going to look after your child’s education, it’s perhaps time to go private – or even to home educate. When a politician tells you they are going to ban guns – expect vast increases in gun crime. When a politician tells you they are going to ban dangerous drugs – watch out for your community being awash with these substances. My heart sinks when politicians get involved in anything. Invariably, they promise the earth, coercively tax you out of your hard earned money, and then they deliver bugger all when you really need the service.
– Helen Evans in the Nurses for Reform blog today (I thought it might liven up)
Today I received, from the Globalisation Institute, a press release, which began as follows:
Monday 6 November – A new report released today by the Globalisation Institute says that microfinance is not being taken seriously by the Department for International Development.
In October, it was announced that the Nobel Peace Prize would go to the founding father of microfinance, Dr Muhammad Yunus, who created the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. However, microfinance remains tiny in Africa and receives scant support or encouragement from DFID.
Okay, cards on the table. I am a big fan of the Globalisation Institute and of its bosses Alex Singleton and Tom Clougherty. I write quite frequently for the Globalisation Institute blog, my latest posting there, about mobile phones (which makes much of a comment at my blog by Michael Jennings on the subject), having gone up there only last Friday. Tonight, I am attending a Globalisation Institute do, to which I have been invited so that I can take photos. David Cameron will be present, and they want to be sure that his presence there is immortalised pictorially, so that they can blog about it and impress their many donors with their political plugged-in-ness. Very sensible.
But… and you could hear that word coming a mile off couldn’t you?… I have severe doubts about these latest pronouncements of theirs. → Continue reading: Memo to DFID – please do not take microfinance seriously
If there is one thing that statists of all parties hate, it is being ignored. They cannot abide the idea that there could be a solution to any problem anywhere that does not involve the state and its force backed regulations.
And so the Charities Commission is to have its powers vastly increased so that the state, and only the state, gets to say what is a Charity and what constitutes a ‘public benefit’. Not only can the state decide who gets preferential tax treatment, soon it’s bureaucrats will be able to test for ‘public interest’ according to their own judgement and if they are not satisfied…
…the Commission will declare the organisation no longer a charity. And then, under the new Bill, its endowments can be seized and given to a charity of whose aims the bureaucrats do approve.
The fascist approach has clearly won out over the old socialist approach of simple ‘nationalisation’. In the fascist way of doing thing, individuals and companies and indeed ‘private’ charities could remain in ‘ownership’ of the means of production, but only if they actually used them in accordance with the government’s national objectives. Clearly this is Britain’s future. You can set up a charity and get endowments from willing people, but if the state decides it disapproves, it will simple take the money are give it to someone more politically correct. Can you imagine a charity in the future saying anything that might displease or embarrass a future British government?
So Saddam Hussain will be hanged… what is there left to say except ‘sic semper tyrannis’?
Ordinary Britons struggling to get on with their lives are being menaced by a small number of bullies who do not care about the rights of their victims. These ‘Tsars’, as they are sometimes known, impose themselves and their lifestyle choices on others with an almost psychopathic disregard for other people’s viewpoints, and regardless of all attempts by police and others to maintain traditional values.
When the Government’s antisocial behaviour tsar was out on patrol with the police on a housing estate last week, she was amazed to find that the officer was handing out sweets rather than enforcing Asbos.
– according to The Independent on Sunday
“Family intervention projects – I really believe this is the approach that will work,” she said. “It ain’t cheap and it also isn’t easy. Basically it’s the end of the road.”
“The priority was to do families, because they have children, first. But we are working on doing something for chaotic adults where the same approach will be taken.”
Ms Casey added she was working with Whitehall to adapt the centres to cater for single people.
She said other measures to tackle anti-social behaviour included plans to extend parenting courses across the country, and powers for imposing compulsory parenting orders.
“If you are not going to take parenting help then we are going to make you take parenting help,” she said.
As the same interview is (puzzlingly) slightly differently reported by the BBC. Anyone would think that the Indy report did not sound tough enough, and was re-spun for presentation to the Beeb.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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