Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances. That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.
Author: Redactor
Categories
A Smear Is Not an Argument
Given that former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has been so frequent a target of smears himself, one would hope he’d be loathe to engage in same.
But at a recent forum, the software maestro was less than his moral best when asked about the book Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, by Zambian writer Dambisa Moyo. Gates, now a full-time philanthropist, charged that Moyo “didn’t know much about aid” (a topic she’s been investigating for years) and that “books like that are promoting evil.”
Moyo’s book considers the long-term effects of non-emergency aid. She argues that it can encourage corruption and discourage the development of free enterprise. For example, when Western aid organizations distribute large quantities of mosquito nets, they can put a native seller of mosquito nets out of business.
Moyo is not arguing against all aid regardless of circumstances (as Gates seems to assume), but rather against ongoing or “structural” aid that fosters long-term dependency, lines the pockets of dictators, and makes it easier to defer basic reforms. Her diagnosis may be arguable. But Gates didn’t argue. He just smeared the woman and her book.
Evil? For considering costs? Cause and effect? The long run?
Businessmen are lucky, so to speak: They exist in a system that tells them when they are doing well, no matter what critics say. Gates thrived at Microsoft, despite choruses of critics. Now he has entered a field dominated more by good intentions than accepted standards of output. Hence the ugly nature of this dispute, and perhaps why he eschewed what Moyo identifies as “logical counter-argument.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Isaiah Berlin
Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.
Seeing how the IRS flagrantly violates the civil rights of Americans, do we really need more government agents, more bureaucracies to ride herd over our political endeavors?
Arkansas’s Senate Bill 821, an unconstitutional slap at citizens who dare propose ballot measures, was passed despite my many, many, many complaints, and is being implemented as Act 1413.
The law mandates that every paid petitioner read the Secretary of State’s booklet explaining the state’s initiative process. But the booklet didn’t even exist . . . until now.
It explains: “The Secretary of State’s Office has attempted to incorporate the changes made by Act 1413 into the procedures that follow. However, since the changes in the law were extensive, it may be helpful to review Act 1413 of 2013.”
How nice of the Secretary of State not to use the term “extreme” and to go, instead, with “extensive.” Call it Arkansan generosity.
One of Act 1413’s more draconian provisions throws out an entire page of voters’ signatures on a petition if one signature is a voter from a different county.
“Determining whether a Petitioner has signed the correct petition is not always obvious. Many cities cross county boundaries,” the booklet sympathizes, noting that such honest mistakes happen “frequently with voters whose homes are near a county border.”
And will now be used against you.
The main thing the booklet advises? Hire a lawyer:
“If the reader has questions concerning Act 1413 of 2013 . . . the reader should contact his or her own attorney for a legal opinion as to specific facts.”
Should only citizens with their “own” attorney be able to participate?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Apple is on trial for refusing to pretend that the company has done something wrong.
In 2009, Apple invited five major publishers to sell e-books through the forthcoming iPad, on the basis of the “agency model.” The publishers would set the prices, Apple would take a 30% cut. Apple also required that the e-books not be sold more cheaply elsewhere.
The publishers were happy to agree because Amazon had been buying new e-books wholesale and steeply discounting them, sometimes at a loss to itself, in order to sell them at $9.99. In the eyes of the publishers, this price seemed too low a benchmark. Apple’s deal gave them new clout in negotiating with Amazon.
The government says average book prices rose in the wake of this “conspiracy.” Apple says prices declined. It’s irrelevant.
To charge a price that some persons dislike violates nobody’s rights. Nor does stipulating terms of contract that a prospective partner dislikes and may reject. Anti-trust law has nothing to do with justice. It’s a bludgeon that some businesses — in conspiracy with the government — use to thwack competitors.
No violation of anyone’s rights has even been claimed in this case, let alone established. Yet five innocent parties have been forced to pay tens of millions to the government and accede to curtailment of their right to contract. And Apple, having refused to be bullied, must defend itself in court.
That’s the crime, and government officials are the ones committing it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Isaiah Berlin
Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance — these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.
Categories
F. A. Hayek
With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.
Categories
End the IRS?
Every day: more revelations, more questions.
Was the IRS’s repressive targeting of Tea Party and similar groups seeking tax-exempt status “accidental”? Were only a few rogue or harried clerks responsible for the repressive targeting? Did anybody in the White House know about the repressive targeting as it happened? What does the frequency of IRS commissioners’ visits to the Obama White House tell us? What about the IRS union chief’s visit with Obama just before the repressive targeting began?
And that’s not all. How similar is the latest IRS repressive targeting of the enemies of those in power to previous IRS repressive targeting of the enemies of those in power? What about all the other forms of riding roughshod over individuals’ rights that the IRS routinely perpetrates?
And then there’s the practical question: What do we do about the mess?
Well, we could try to curtail the allegedly “unusual” abuses of government power and rights violations.
But what if the problem runs deeper?
Former presidential candidate Ron Paul argues that the problem lies “in the extraordinary power the tax system grants the IRS.” He very plausibly puts the current scandals in the context of the bureau’s central mandate: “The very purpose of the IRS is to transfer wealth from one group to another while violating our liberties in the process. Thus the only way Congress can protect our freedoms is to repeal the income tax and shutter the doors of the IRS once and for all.”
Hard? Yes. Doable? Yes — but only if such ideas catch on with more leaders than just the indefatigable Ron Paul.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
F. A. Hayek
It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depends.
The most important thing we could do to protect the American people and win the War on Terror would be to end the War on Drugs.
That’s the logical conclusion from what Admiral James Stavridis, the former head of U.S. Southern Command and then NATO supreme allied commander, wrote for The Washington Post on Sunday, in a column titled, “The dark side of globalization.”
The admiral didn’t actually call for an end to drug criminalization in the U.S., or even for a less militaristic approach to it. But he did importantly warn us that, after 40 years as a Navy officer, what “keeps him awake at night” is the “convergence” of narco-terrorism.
“Drug cartels use sophisticated trafficking routes to move huge amounts of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines. Terrorists can in effect ‘rent’ these routes by co-opting the drug cartels through money, coercion or ideological persuasion,” wrote the admiral. “These organizations can then move personnel, cash or arms — possibly even a weapon of mass destruction — clandestinely to the United States.”
Preventing the delivery of mayhem to our shores, “a weapon of mass destruction” being top of the list, ought to be Job 1 — right up there with scrutinizing the non-profit status of tea party groups and paying Lois Lerner while she’s on leave.
Seriously, if we can remove the most likely nasty network for that dark delivery in one fell swoop, why wouldn’t we?
Plus, according to one estimate, we’d save more than the $17 billion we’ve already spent this year on a losing police-and-courts approach to a health issue.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.