99.9% Libertarian; or, We miss you, Kate Smith

Posted in LFA Flashback by R Lee Wrights on September 5th, 2008

by Della Croft

Della CroftRemember those old Ivory soap commercials?  A bar of soap floating in a bathtub of water, demonstrating that it was 99.9% pure. No one knew why we needed pure soap or what was in that other 0.1%, but the real advantage of soap that floats was obvious; you didn’t have to reach into cold, dirty bathwater to retrieve it.

It took a little while, but finally it occurred to someone that even an ice cube made with water from Boston Harbor would float, so perhaps the fact that this soap floated was no indication of its purity or even that it was good for us.  Using the word pure to conjure up visions of something pristine and unpolluted, the Ivory soap people sold millions of those floating bars.

The notion of purity is something that has always interested me; it can be used in so many ways.  We can be pure of thought, pure of action, purely ridiculous and some of us can be purely evil. The one constant is that each and every one of us is purely human - changeable, fickle, and impossible to pigeonhole. Get two humans in a room and you can count on three opinions on any topic.  If there was any good to come of the events of September 11th, it was that we put aside our differences for a few moments and stood as one.  All across this country we sang off-key renditions of God Bless America, waved flags, and cried - together.

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US Constitution Day 2008

Posted in Carolinus, Doing Something by R Lee Wrights on September 4th, 2008

by R. Lee Wrights

R. Lee WrightsA few years ago I had the great honor of penning a resolution that was sponsored by the Libertarian Party of Forsyth County (North Carolina), which was eventually passed and adopted by my hometown’s Town Council.  So, I decided to see if we couldn’t get the same resolution sponsored and adopted by some of our other affiliates.  What began as a local endeavor quickly grew into a national movement. I am proud to report that the US Constitution Resolution has either been adopted or being considered for adoption in over half the states in the union.  Every effort is a local one.

I believe it is important to reiterate that each effort is a local one. This is an excellent opportunity for libertarian organizations at the grassroots level to do something positive. All too often libertarians are perceived as being “against” one thing or the other, or even worse, that we are against everything. This resolution gives us the opportunity to bring something before governmental officials that we favor. We have the chance to show communities all across American that libertarians are actually “for” something.

And, it is easier than you think to get this resolution accepted by local governing boards. After all, what self-respecting politician would vote against recognizing the US Constitution in an open meeting? Not one, to my knowledge, has ever voted against it once it was under consideration by the board to which they belonged. If you can get one board member to offer the resolution for consideration, you are virtually guaranteed passage.

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Why I’m going to vote Democrat in November

Posted in Random Thoughts by R Lee Wrights on September 3rd, 2008

by Author unknown

courtesy of Kevin TumaI’ve finally made up my mind on this November’s election.  I don’t know why it has taken this long.  It was right in front of me!

I’m voting Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

I’m voting Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

I’m voting Democrat because when we pull out of Iraq I trust that the bad guys will stop what they’re doing because they now think we’re good people.

I’m voting Democrat because I believe that people who can’t tell us if it will rain on Friday CAN tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don’t start driving a Prius.

I’m voting Democrat because I’m not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

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Catching wild pigs

Posted in Dangerous Politics by R Lee Wrights on September 2nd, 2008

by Author unknown

Gadsden FlagThere was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Professor noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back, and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, ‘Do you know how to catch wild pigs?’

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke.

‘You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs that are used to the free corn start to come through the gate to eat, and then you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

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Top activities performed by my federal coworkers

Posted in Serious Levity by R Lee Wrights on September 1st, 2008

by Oritte

courtesy of Kevin Tuma1. Sleep in your cubicle under the desk on a purple yoga mat.

2. Complete 10 standard graphic design projects a year knowing that the norm is between 40 and 70 a year.

3. Keep complete records of all household affairs, shop for antiques and furniture, get a green card for your husband, and keep hardcopies of all family e-mails, work on your scrapbook.

4. Wait five minutes outside your supervisor’s door until she says, “I love you too” and hangs up.

5. E-bay.

6. Take half hour smoke breaks every hour.

7. Walk back and forth to the coffee room throughout the day to add hot water to your tea.

8. Move your chair into your neighbor’s cubicle and spend half the day gossiping while feeding the birds out the window.

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Media misreports study: Stepdads better than dads? Not so fast

Posted in Liberated Musings by R Lee Wrights on August 31st, 2008

by Mike McCormick and Glenn

Glenn Sacks“Stepdads beat biological fathers in parenting, study says.” “Stepdads do better than real dads in ‘fragile’ families.” “Stepfathers make better parents.” This is how dozens of major newspapers and media outlets are reporting a new study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family which compares stepfathers to biological fathers.

Conventional wisdom says that biological fathers are more committed to their children than stepfathers are to their stepchildren. While media accounts of the study claim that research contradicts this wisdom, a closer look at the study shows that this simply isn’t true. Moreover, the study’s misconstrued findings could have a harmful impact on family law and child custody cases.

For one, the researchers did not study fathers as a whole, but only a limited cohort–”fragile families,” defined as “low-income urban families prone to nonmarital births.” Also, fathers were not studied independently-all assessments of them were based entirely on the children’s mothers’ reports.

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Success and empty promises

Posted in NtheDrgWar by R Lee Wrights on August 30th, 2008

by Tony Ryan

Tony RyanMy wife and I have been doing the “snowbird” routine in Southern Arizona again this winter.  Being interested in local “goings on”, we have noted that, unless one lives under a rock, one cannot avoid hearing and seeing stories about drug arrests and seizures.  On an almost daily basis the local news outlets run an item about another “record” seizure from across the border (62 miles from Tucson) by the Border Patrol, the DEA or a local enforcement agency (sometimes all three combined after a multi-year investigation).

 The news items are frequently spiced with an announcement by some ranking enforcement official noting the large amount of the drug seizure and related cash and that the multi-agency effort has resulted in the destruction/ruination/serious curtailment of a major drug organization’s operation.  To do a horrible paraphrasing of Shakespeare, “I think the enforcers brag too much.” Case in point:  On March 1st, The Arizona Republic (Phoenix) posted such an article which reporter Dennis Wagner headlined, “Raids target Mexico drug ring, yield 7 arrests, $12 million in narcotics!” Wagner continues by saying the bust was “…part of a nationwide crackdown aimed at a Mexican smuggling cartel…”Phoenix DEA spokeswoman Ramona Sanchez stated recent seizures in the Yuma area included 28,000 pounds of marijuana, 93 pounds of cocaine, 4 pounds of meth and nearly a kilo of heroin.  And then, there came the pronouncement.  She added, “We got that much dope off the streets, and more importantly we disrupted the organization.  They’re out that much money, and it really does cripple them.”

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Enron: The real fraud

Posted in LFA Flashback by R Lee Wrights on August 29th, 2008

by George Squyres

Independence HallFor two months we have been subjected to the media’s latest meal ticket: the Enron collapse. While the investors, shareholders and employees have been burned pretty badly, it has become embarrassingly obvious that the media’s real concern is to find political scandal in what is otherwise only a spectacular business collapse. Finding no improper political influence on the part of the Bush White House with which to make scandal, the media then does a 180 and screams that they are at fault because they didn’t exert their influence.

The real political influence being studiously avoided by the press is the attempt by former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who still has considerable pull, to strong-arm Moody’s Investment Service to not downgrade Enron’s debt rating last fall.  Rubin chairs the executive committee at Citigroup, which held a lot of Enron stock. That’s the political muscle that should be getting the third degree by the media, but is being ignored except for a short note in the Economist. Obviously media integrity doesn’t extend much beyond the Tea Party.

The truth of the Enron collapse is way too simple.  It’s called fraud.  Enron cooked the books and defrauded their shareholders and numerous others. The only other question is whether the employees agreed to relinquish their rights to sell their stock or if that condition was imposed on them.  If they agreed to this condition in an employment agreement or any other freely entered contract, then they have no right to complain about their loss.  According to the Wall Street Journal they did agree to such “blackout” periods, and had ample notice of their occurrence.  The employees do have a valid complaint on the fraud issue, but on that one they will be standing in a long line.

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The health care mess: A free market proposal

Posted in The Freedom Beam by R Lee Wrights on August 28th, 2008

by Roderick T. Beaman

Liberty Bell“The right of the state to deal with the entire subject (health care) can assuredly not be gainsaid.  The physician is a social instrument.”  This is just one of Flexner’s statements that bespoke a deep socialist paternalism.  It could have been made by John Dewey, the radical socialist educator and Flexner’s contemporary.   In retrospect, Flexner was a cog in the wheel of socialism and an authoritarian one to boot.

All socialists are opposed to anything that smacks of the profit motive, especially when someone else makes the profits.  They also are never above using their reforms for their own profits.  Flexner was vehemently opposed to proprietary medical education, and like all the socialist minded, he never recognized that his reforms would result in an even greater financial cost to society.

Licensing has been a disaster and does not protect the public, in any way.  If anything, it institutionalizes incompetence and avarice.  No matter how it begins, authority always has to be passed up the line to a higher authority.  Discipline is filtered through these layers which usually acts only to protect the licensee.

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Harrold, TX school officials right on change in campus gun policy

Posted in Student Union by R Lee Wrights on August 27th, 2008

by CCRKBA staff

Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear ArmsHarrold, Tex. School district trustees and Supt. David Thweatt deserve accolades for changing school policy to allow staff and teachers to carry concealed handguns to protect against school shootings, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“When classes open August 25 in Harrold, school buildings will be safer than normal, thanks to this decision,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Critics of the plan will argue about liability, or suggest that the school could have hired a security officer or off-duty policeman. But we all know that such officers can’t be everywhere, and in an emergency, every second counts.

Gottlieb, co-author of America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age, noted that a full chapter of the book is devoted to the folly of gun free zones, including public schools. He said such places are magnets for cowardly mass killers who have nothing to fear because the victims cannot fight back.

“Gun control extremists despise this kind of common-sense approach to the potential of school violence,” Gottlieb observed. “But the time has come to challenge their head-in-the-sand philosophy. How many lives have been lost on public school and college campuses because of these insane victim disarmament measures? How many students and teachers might be alive today if only lawmakers and school officials had acted as responsibly as the Harrold administration?”

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