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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Proposition 1, to end the Massachussetts income tax did not pass. Few of us expected it would this first try. But despite massive counter efforts by the entrenched interests, it came damn close:
With 2155 out of 2157 precincts reporting,
881,738 people voted Yes on 1 — 45.4%
1,060,525 people voted No on 1 — 54.6%
Despite a total news black out from the major Boston news outlets, Michael Cloud managed a respectable showing against the very senior “safe seat” incumbent John Kerry:
With 2155 of 2157 precincts reporting,
John F. Kerry (Dem): 1,596,350 – 81%
Michael Cloud (Lib): 368,304 – 19%
Richard Winger, Third Party authority and Editor of Ballot Access News, said the following: “This was the best U.S. Senate result for a Libertarian in Party history, and the best by any nationally organized Third Party candidate in a U.S. Senate race since 1932.”
Carla Howell only managed 1% on the hotly contested governor race between two indistinguishable candidates. Insiders feel she sacrificed her own campaign to push Proposition 1 ahead at every opportunity.
All of this was done in campaign efforts outspent by factors of 100 to 1 and higher by candidates whose campaigns were partially State funded.
“You done good”, guys. Or as Ms O’Hare said, “Tomorrow is another day.”
The BBC Protection Ministry (sometimes knowns as the ‘Independent’ Television Commission), has banned the US news program “The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board With Stuart Varney” and threatened CNBC with fines. As the Opinion Journal puts it:
“Let us see if we get this straight. The ITC thinks it is protecting viewers by refusing to let them hear the viewpoints of a roundtable of American newspaper editors? These same editors may state their views in a newspaper that bears the name of The Wall Street Journal, but if they utter them on a TV program that bears that newspaper’s name, their views are somehow tainted? That sure sounds like a free-speech issue to us.
Which leads to the question of what the case is really about. The answer–and we wish we could say this with the requisite plummy accent–is the BBC. The ITC’s actions against CNBC Europe and CNN amount to little more than the British government harassing private competitors of the publicly funded British Broadcasting Corp.”
I’ll be a bit less compromising than our friends across the water. What the bureaucracy really doesn’t like is the non-Tranzi slant of the WSJ. They don’t want the BBC to have to compete with ideas.
I hope our Russian ex-pat friend succeeds in taking the Beeb down a peg or two!
An investor of a company well known to us is being sued: the classic tactics of a certain over the edge group. Read this. Make sure you save a personal copy of the page.
Need I say more?
This from Friedrich Blowhard is right on the money. It’s a piece about the financing of “high” art in America, and identifies one of the the key facts: the tax laws.
It was not clear that there would be an endless succession of extremely wealthy art-fanatics who would be willing to spend their money behind the scenes to prop up these institutions. The solution, oddly, was the 1894 income tax law, which included a provision that charitable donations to nonprofit corporations organized for “educational” purposes would be tax-deductible. This presented the wealthy with a choice of paying the government taxes or donating to nonprofit enterprises, which was a choice many less-than-religious supporters of the arts were willing to make – especially if they got to be a certifiable member of the social-cultural elite in return. In short, the income tax provided the incentive, and the nonprofit corporation the vehicle, to broaden the group “supporting” the uneconomic arts.
The biggest givers, while no longer required to assume a heroic burden like that of Mssrs. Morgan or Higginson, got another perk as well: they got control of the enterprise because they sat on the board. These wealthy, prestige-seeking board members, often determined to use their art institution to civilize the masses, had an intensely conservative effect on the material that was actually presented and how it was presented – no more of the wild and wooly hybrids of “low” and “high” art which we saw were financially successful for decades in New Orleans-style opera and on the vaudeville stage. No, by jingo, we were all going to take our “high” culture straight. So much for giving the customer (the American public) what they wanted.
→ Continue reading: High art – low art – art
The Gibraltar government called a referendum and Gibraltarians have turned out in force to vote in a referendum that is expected to overwhelmingly reject attempts by Britain and Spain to negotiate joint sovereignty over the British colony. Here are just a few things that caught my attention:
- Both London and Madrid say the referendum carries no legal weight. I know, I know, legal is far from democratic, let alone commonsensical but are they not even going to pay lip service to the wishes of the governed population?
- A party atmosphere prevailed in Gibraltar, where streets were decorated with red and white pennants and many houses flew Britain’s Union Jack or the Gibraltar flag. One man walked down the street wearing a “Proud to be British” tee-shirt. Yeah, that’s how you can tell it wasn’t in Britain…
- There is no official “yes” campaign. The overwhelming sentiment of campaign posters and of people ready to give their opinion was a rejection of joint sovereignty. What are the chances of replicating this in the UK with a rejection of abrogating our sovereignty to the EU?
Gibraltarians say they have been British since the 18th century and culturally are not Spanish nor do they want to be. They also believe they are better off economically as a British colony than they would be if they joined Spain. (Spain ceded Gibraltar to Britain under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, but has been attempting to recover it ever since.)
At least the Gibraltarians seem to know what is at stake in their referendum…
By which I mean blogs which have ‘link buttons’ such as those below. In addition to the plain brown wrapper blog links in the sidebar of Samizdata.net/blog, I am collecting complimentary graphic links to other blog for our External Links page sidebar.
If you have one and we are linked to you (or even if we are not), e-mail us with your nifty graphic and we will probably add it.
Please consider this modest posting as an addendum to David Carr‘s article As good as it currently gets. I have little in the way of words to add to his observations but it seemed to me that the picture below, which I have just taken here in London whilst returning from the supermarket, is a delightful addition.
Alas, grotesque self-publicist, leading Idiotarian and BBC favourite Michael Moore is currently blighting the shores of these sceptred Isles by his rotund presence… but it would seem that some passing Brit with an impeccable interest in Anglosphere affairs has seen fit to ennoble Moore’s poster with some pithy observations of his or her own…
Paul Marks puts on his kevlar battle-bowler and sticks his head above the ramparts to criticize the Libertarian Party for its role in… helping statism!  Now duck, Paul!
Both the proposition to legalise the growing of hemp (rather than importing hemp products from Canada) and the proposition to put ‘jury nullification’ (i.e. returning to the traditional practice of juries judging both fact and LAW) into the South Dakota Constitution have voted down.
One of the main reasons these propositions were voted down seems to be that they were associated with the Libertarian Party (which is seen, rightly or wrongly, to be a bunch of freaks).
The Republicans have failed to gain the South Dakota seat by 500 votes.
And the Libertarian Party (with its normal 1 percent or so of the vote) has cost the Republican party the Governorships of Alabama and Tennessee.
This will mean (for example) that Tennessee will now get a State Income Tax (the Republican was a very good man – utterly opposed to a State income tax).
True the L.P. failed to prevent the Republicans retaking the Senate (despite a very big effort to defeat a good man in New Hampshire – Sununu managed to beat the Democrats and their de facto allies the Libertarian Party).
However, this can go on. The Libertarian Party people must understand that their work simply helps expand government (see the Tennessee example above). If Libertarian Party people do not think that the Republican party is free market enough (and I agree with them that the Republican Party is not free market enough) then they should join the “Republican Liberty Caucus” and make the Republican party more free market. If the Republicans had backed the two pro-freedom propositions in South Dakota they might well have passed.
The energy of Libertarian Party activists is helping statism. The Libertarian Party takes just enough votes to cost the Republicans close elections and the statement “the Libertarian Party backs X proposition” is enough to defeat that proposition.
This is madness, please stop it.
Paul Marks
There is an interesting interview with Frank Shostak over on the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
The US Federal Reserve discourages savings whilst at the same time encouraging mal-investment. Simple common sense would suggest that if interest rates of a mere 1.75 percent have not jolted the US economy out of its torpor, then 1.25 percent is not going to do it either. Interest rates are effectively at zero in Japan and that has produced little or nothing in terms of economic revival.
Yet again the state’s capacity to do harm far outweighs its capacity to do good. The problem is not so much the policies of the Federal reserve, but that there is such a thing as ‘The Federal Reserve’.
Alas so many people everywhere cannot seem to imagine the world continuing to spin on its axis without things like The Federal Reserve, The Department of ‘Education’, The Bundesbank, the BBC, The National Health Service, Income Tax etc. etc… they are just part of their fabric of reality. I have often found that any person who suggest they simply be abolished is treated as if they had suggested amputating a limb, rather than excising a tumour. The truth hurts and no one ever thanks you for hurting them.
We had everything required for a conspiracy by sinster globalist illuminati: Gothic setting, endless supply of Guinness & crazy camera angles
I must confess the the activities of the UK governments for the past couple of years have been watched with frank admiration and amazement by Lord Vetinari. Outright theft as a policy had never occured to him.
-Terry Pratchett [Lord Vetinari is the rather Machiavellian ruler of the fictional city in Pratchett’s books]
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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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