Voice For Liberty

Tag: Liberty

  • The Threat of Big Brother in Green Clothing

    From the Competitive Enterprise Institute. This organization, particularly its site GlobalWarming.org, is a great place to look for information about the true nature of global warming and climate change. The following announces the release of a video message that spotlights the real threat of global warming fear mongering.

    Sixty Years After the Publication of George Orwell’s Classic, Do We Face a Real “1984”?

    Washington, D.C., June 8, 2009 — Sixty years ago this week, George Orwell’s most important work of political fiction, 1984, was published. Orwell’s novel warned of the centralization of political power and the lengths that a totalitarian regime, led by Big Brother, would go to maintain its control over society.

    On this anniversary, the Competitive Enterprise Institute reminds those who value freedom of a more current threat — the crusade for global governance led by environmental activist groups in the name of combating global warming. With calls for limits on energy use, new global taxes and the regulation of individual behavior, the recent development of environmental policy has tended ever more toward greater government control and less personal freedom.

    “Environmental campaigners have long benefitted from the assumption that they have good intentions,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “Unfortunately, the modern environmental movement has focused increasingly on policies that increase government control over what business can sell, what consumers can buy and what individuals can do with their lives. Truly harmful emissions have been successfully restricted for the most part. But with the war on carbon dioxide being escalated to extreme levels, as demonstrated in the new Waxman-Markey bill, we see expanding government control become a goal unto itself.”

  • New audio version of “I, Pencil” makes case for freedom, not government planning

    The Foundation for Economic Education has released a new audio version of the booklet I, Pencil. Written by FEE’s founder Leonard E. Read and first published in 1958, its message proclaiming the importance of freedom has not diminished with the passage of time.

    This audio recording, which you can listen to on your computer or Ipod, is just just short of 15 minutes in length. But it this short span it makes a compelling case for freedom instead of government control and planning.

    In Wichita, we have a mayor, city council, and business leaders that are steering us down the path of government control instead of freedom. We locally — and nationally too — need to heed the lesson of I, Pencil:

    I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies — millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding! Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.

    The above is what I meant when writing, “If you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing.” For, if one is aware that these know-hows will naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand — that is, in the absence of governmental or any other coercive master-minding — then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.

    Listen to the recording by clicking on I, Pencil. Or, read it by clicking on I, Pencil.

  • Sammies Awards celebrate, award liberty

    Tonight in Northbrook, Illinois, about 300 people gathered to attend an awards ceremony presented by the Sam Adams Alliance.

    The Sam Adams Alliance inspires, trains, and links allies to advance economic and individual liberty through a strategic combination of new media tools and traditional communications.

    The Sam Adams Alliance is a “to-do tank” that educates, informs, and empowers citizens about important political issues through a set of new media tools (i.e. Blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia) that allow ordinary people to fight big government.

    So far awards in three categories have been given.

    “Best Microblogger of the Year” award went to Melissa Clouthier of The Woodlands, Texas. Just since November, she has used Twitter to advance the causes of liberty.

    Ruth Bendl of Portland, Oregon received the “Voter Watchdog Award.” Her work included digging up records of dead voters in Oregon. According to Bendl, Oregon has sloppy voter registration rules. This is a matter of homeland security, she said. Our adversaries know our weaknesses. It’s not just about stealing elections, it could be a case of stealing our country. She urged citizens to clean up the voter roles nationwide.

    Three men won “Wikiteer Awards” for their work on wiki sites that the Sam Adams Alliance sponsors. These sites — Ballotpedia for ballot access issues, Judgepedia for information about judges, and Sunshine Review for government transparency — are important contributions to creating an informed citizenry.

  • AIG hysteria tramples liberty

    From Dave Trabert, president of the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy.

    The Founding Fathers, who took such deliberate care to preserve personal liberty in our Constitution, would be ashamed by the hysteria and pandering that have consumed Washington, D.C., over bonuses paid to employees of American International Group.

    There is no justification for rewarding people for failure, but the conduct of elected officials calling for legislative retribution is far more egregious.

    Members of both parties are tripping over one another in a rush to endorse legislation that would tax bonuses paid to employees of companies receiving bailout money at rates as high as 90 percent.

    Not that Congress should be giving away taxpayer money for handouts to failed companies, but it easily could have prevented this mess by putting some restrictions on the money.

    Taxpayers are justifiably angered by the lack of fiduciary responsibility, and Congress is predictably responding with diversionary tactics.

    House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, hit the nail on the head, saying, “This bill is nothing more than an attempt for everyone to cover their butt.”

    As unseemly as that is, it pales in comparison with the assault on the Constitution and our personal freedom. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, called the legislation “an ex post facto bill as well as a bill of attainder, which is unconstitutional, so they’re using the tax code to punish people.”

    “Ex post facto” is a legal term referring to an attempt to go back in time and apply new circumstances to something that already has occurred. A bill of attainder is a legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment. Both are prohibited by the Constitution.

    Some members of Congress may be acting like children, but this isn’t a game in which the rules can be changed to alter the outcome. It is of paramount importance that Congress act responsibly to preserve the principles of liberty and freedom. Today the issue is bonuses paid to AIG employees, but there are endless opportunities to use the tax code punitively.

    For example, House and Senate leaders are pursuing the elimination of secret balloting in order to make it easier for unions to form. Imagine if they decided to encourage the behavior they wanted by imposing special taxes on nonunion workers.

    Using the tax code to punish people who raise the ire of Congress is wrong under any circumstance.

    If Congress really wants to show leadership in going after those responsible for this latest abuse of taxpayer money, it should pass the hat at the next joint session.

    In the meanwhile, we must send a very strong message to Washington:

    Knock off the grandstanding, start acting like the leaders you promised to be, and keep your hands off our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and liberties.

  • Free to Choose

    Milton Friedman’s best-selling book Free to Choose: A Personal Statement is based on a television series by the same name. This book, and the television episodes, are important works that explain the importance of economic and political freedom.

    You can view the television episodes at IdeaChannel.tv by clicking here.

  • How does Kansas fare in freedom, compared to other states?

    The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just published a fascinating paper that ranks the states in several areas regarding freedom. According to the authors, “This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres.”

    What is the philosophical basis for measuring or determining freedom? Here’s an explanation from the introduction:

    We explicitly ground our conception of freedom on an individual rights framework. In our view, individuals should be allowed to dispose of their lives, liberties, and property as they see fit, so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others. This understanding of freedom follows from the natural-rights liberal thought of John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Robert Nozick, but it is also consistent with the rights-generating rule-utilitarianism of Herbert Spencer and others.

    It’s something that Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius wouldn’t understand. At least she doesn’t want to trust us with these freedoms.

    According to the authors, “No current studies exist that measure both economic and personal freedom in the fifty states.” So this is a ground-breaking work.

    How does Kansas do? Surprisingly, not too badly. Not outstanding, but not as bad as I might have thought.

    For the four areas measured, here’s how we did: In fiscal policy, Kansas is 28. In regulatory policy, 4. In economic freedom, 18. In personal freedom, 15. (In all cases, a ranking of 1 means the most freedom.)

    Our overall ranking is 12.

    Some of our neighbors do pretty well in the overall ranking. Colorado is 2, Texas is 5, Missouri is 6, and Oklahoma is 18.

    Nebraska is not as good at 28.

    In case you’re wondering, for overall ranking, New Hampshire is best. The worst? It’s no surprise that it’s New York by a wide margin, with New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and Maryland rounding out the bottom five.

    The full study contains discussion of the politics surrounding these rankings, and a narrative discussion of the factors present in each state.

    You may read the entire study by clicking on Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom.

  • Another inept Kansas smoking analogy

    In today’s Wichita Eagle, Wichita busybody Charlie Claycomb makes another inept analogy in an attempt to press his anti-smoking agenda statewide.

    A while back he tried to compare a smoking section in a restaurant with a urinating section in a swimming pool. This is ridiculous to the extreme, as I show in the post It’s Not the Same as Pee In the Swimming Pool.

    Now in today’s letter in the Eagle, Claycomb says that although the United States Constitution gives us the right to bear arms, since that right is heavily regulated, government has license to regulate smoking, as smoking isn’t mentioned at all in the Constitution.

    Here’s why this is another ridiculous analogy (without conceding the regulations on arms are justified or effective): A person in, say, a bar that’s carrying a gun can’t be detected as you enter the bar. You just can’t tell upon entering an establishment whether someone has a concealed gun and intends to cause harm to patrons. This is the case even if there’s a law prohibiting carrying guns into bars, and even if the bar has a “no guns” sign.

    But you sure can tell if people are smoking.

    Smoking ban supporters might argue that since there may be smoking in some establishments, my rights are being infringed since I can’t patronize those places without exposing myself to harmful smoke.

    That’s true. But there’s definitely no right in the Constitution to be able to go everywhere you want on your own terms.

    By the way, did you know that Claycomb is treasurer for Wichita city council candidate Janet Miller? Expect more nonsense like this if she is elected.

    “Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.” — John Stuart Mill

    “Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.” — Milton Friedman

  • Articles of Interest

    Budget woes linked to how justices are chosen (Kris W. Kobach in the Wichita Eagle). Explains how with a better method of selecting Kansas state Supreme Court justices, the Kansas budget might not be in such a mess. “The Montoy decision represented a court determined to advance judicial power and the liberal policy of limitless spending on education. Which brings us back to the current fiscal crisis. The reckless decision of the court in Montoy is taking its toll. Kansas’ current budget crisis is largely due to the extraordinary increases in spending ordered by the court.”

    Pitchfork Time (Human Events). “We are there” says Pat Buchanan about our journey down the road to socialism. The article explains.

    The Public Mischief Of Public Unions (Richard A. Epstein at Forbes). Explains the need for pension reform in the public sector. Tim Carpenter of the Topeka Capital-Journal explains the problems as they relate to KPERS, the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System in the article KPERS problems compound: Stock market, past decisions strain retirement system. “The economic recession and a legacy of costly mistakes leave KPERS with more than $6 billion in unfunded obligations to future retirees. Current contributions by employers and employees are insufficient to sustain the fund over the long haul.”

    Will Obama Stand Up for These Kids? (William McGurn, Wall Street Journal). Illinois Senator Dick Durbin has introduced legislation that will kill the Washington D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. This piece highlights two children who attend the same exclusive private school that the Obama children do, thanks to this program. “And it points to perhaps the most odious of double standards in American life today: the way some of our loudest champions of public education vote to keep other people’s children — mostly inner-city blacks and Latinos — trapped in schools where they’d never let their own kids set foot. This double standard is largely unchallenged by either the teachers’ unions or the press corps. For the teachers’ unions, it’s a fairly cold-blooded calculation. They’re willing to look the other way at lawmakers who chose private or parochial schools for their own kids — so long as these lawmakers vote in ways that keep the union grip on the public schools intact and an escape hatch like vouchers bolted.”

  • Editorial Board Pen Names at the Wichita Eagle

    Some comment-writers to this blog make very good points that deserve more visibility. This is the case with the following comment left anonymously to the post In Wichita, let’s disclose everything. I mean everything.

    It looks like Wichita Liberty has broken another unreported story and has exposed the fact that a portion of the Wichita Eagle’s editorial board operates under a pen name.

    Perhaps “Ms. Holman’s” editorials should be placed next to the equally anonymous opinion line comments. I must note that the anonymous comments appearing in the Eagle are usually much more pointed than the signed editorial commentary.

    I wonder how conflicts of interest by employees and their families are handled by the newspaper? If “Ms. Holman” was married to a school administrator that might be a very useful fact to know when evaluating her credibility on government school spending issues.

    What if she was married to an attorney involved in suing the state over school finance? Full disclosure can lead into a number of interesting places.

    There was very little publicity provided to the very salient fact that the Wichita Eagle was a donor to the group backing the 2000 Wichita school bond issue with a sizable donation. I’ll have to ask Wichita Liberty to look into any news media contributions to either side of the 2008 Wichita school bond issue campaign.

    In response to the question posed at the end of this comment: The campaign finance report for groups involved on both sides of the Wichita school bond issue in 2008 showed no contribution by the Wichita Eagle.

    Is this issue of Rhonda Holman not using her real name a substantive issue? My name was in the Wichita Eagle quite a few times last year in my role as an opponent of the Wichita school bond issue. What would have been the Eagle’s response — in both the newsroom and editorial board offices — if I had used a pen name? What would the use of an assumed name indicated about my willingness to be held accountable for the things I said and wrote?