Click-it or Ticket…Resist it!!!

A state campaign to convince you that the state knows best and that it is willing to further steal from you to force its will upon you, is now underway in the "Click-it or Ticket" campaign. Now I am not saying you shouldn't wear your seatbelt. Depending on the kind and amount of driving you do, seatbelts may indeed be an advantage should you get into an accident. On the other hand, if each time we left the house we were to assume that we would be involved in an accident, how many of us would stop leaving the house? I for one have not been in a serious accident in over 20 years and I wasn't belted in for that one. The state has no authority to compel seatbelt use as it has no authority to interfere with private decisions that do not intrude on another citizen's rights.

Walter Williams covers this in this weeks column…

Virginia's secretary of transportation sent out a letter announcing the state's annual "Click It or Ticket" campaign May 22 through June 4. I responded to the secretary of transportation with my own letter that in part reads:

"Mr. Secretary: This is an example of the disgusting abuse of state power. Each of us owns himself, and it follows that we should have the liberty to take risks with our own lives but not that of others. That means it's a legitimate use of state power to mandate that cars have working brakes because if my car has poorly functioning brakes, I risk the lives of others and I have no right to do so. If I don't wear a seatbelt I risk my own life, which is well within my rights. As to your statement 'Lack of safety belt use is a growing public health issue that … also costs us all billions of dollars every year,' that's not a problem of liberty. It's a problem of socialism. No human should be coerced by the state to bear the medical expense, or any other expense, for his fellow man. In other words, the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another is morally offensive."

More here…

My suggestion is to wear your seatbelt…or not…but do it because you have made a free choice to do it and not because of your fear of a state compulsion… My freedoms are worth more than the cost of a seatbelt tax or a day in court to get the unholy charge dismissed.

"Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; …. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. "
– Frederick Douglass

The State Senate of Alaska Raises Gas Price at the Pump…

… Well they are trying to, anyway. It still has to be approved by the house. This is from the state with the highest per capita budgets in the country and the highest per capita spending on its estimated ~700,000 population. All corporate taxes are passed onto consumers who provide the revenues for businesses to operate. So any increase in operating costs transfer to the pump price and the price of other petroleum products.

Alaska Senate Approves New Profits Tax

"The intent of the tax is to increase the state's share of profits when the price of oil is high. At today's oil prices, state economists estimate the tax would raise $1.2 billion or more next year above what Alaska collect now."

Interestingly, there were a few "no" votes against this bill. I bet you can't guess why! Because they thought the tax was TOO LOW!!!

"The "no" votes came from Senate Democrats worried the proposed tax rate is too low and that oil companies will be able to manipulate their deductible costs to reduce their tax burden."

So at a time when gas prices are rising (due to a falling dollar) and at a time when the major profiteer in the gasoline game is already government, the State of Alaska wants to raise the costs to fill up, not just for its own population, but for the entire country. How nice. At a spending level of almost $12,000 per person, they should be focusing on ways to reduce government spending, not raising the cost of doing business.

And before you moonbats out there who don't understand how markets work, start whining about oil company profits, you need to look at two very important issues…

1.) Oil company profits on a gallon a gasoline run between 7-10 cents per gallon with the average just about 9 cents. Government taxes on that same gallon of gasoline run 59 cents per gallon, and are continuing to rise.

2.) Most of the recent rise in oil and gasoline costs are because of a declining dollar. Priced in gold and silver (read, inflation adjusted dollars), the cost of gasoline has been declining for awhile, though global strains (read supply/demand issues) may reverse that. A big reason for the dollar decline is OUT-OF-CONTROL GOVERNMENT SPENDING!

Treasury Secretary Snow (and the Bush adminstration) is talking out of both sides of his mouth when he tells you on the one hand that China needs to revalue its currency to allow it to gain against the Dollar, resulting in a weaker Dollar, and then turns around tells you that the Treasury Department (and the Administration) support a strong Dollar policy. Their excuses for this are that a falling Dollar will improve trade figures abroad and thereby lower trade deficits. What they don't tell you is that the markets react to such things and reprice on-the-fly. The other thing they don't tell you is that import prices go up at the same time, so everything we buy that is imported (including oil and gas) go up on the home front. And they go up faster than wages, so the plight of the American family is to try to get the same goods with less money.

Good luck with that.

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
– Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

Proof Positive…

That voters get the government that they deserve…

Mayor Nagin Re-Elected in New Orleans

 

UK wants power to demand encryption keys

And lets not forget that…

Bush Hates Us For Our Freedom!!

"Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."
– Frederic Bastiat

What If…

…Santa Anna was killed at the Alamo! And, what if because of this and the delay in engaging Houston, the Mexican army was defeated, and Texas became a limited government Republic, maturing side by side with an already doomed United States!

L. Niel Smith's new graphic novel explores the libertarian possiblities in his usual entertaining fashion in "Roswell, Texas". New chapters out every week. Go! Have some fun and imagine the possibilites!!!

In a famous incident in 1854, President Franklin Pierce was pilloried for vetoing an extremely popular bill intended to help mentally ill. The act was championed by the renowned 19th century social reformer Dorothea Dix. In the face of heavy criticism, Pierce countered: "I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for the public charity." To approve such spending, argued Pierce, "would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded."

Blogroll Restored…

…had to load it all manually, but there it is.  Got my silver and gold links working, too!!

 HoooRAAA

 

Well…Alrighty Then!!!

This seems to be working.  Even imported my previous posts and my archives!!!  Kewl!! 

I am still working on the blogroll…please be patient.  

Thanks!

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."
– James Madison, National Gazette essay, March 27, 1792

Bye, bye Google/Blogspot???

To my dismay, I have found that certain of my readers are unable to get to my blog because of filtering by Google (they own Blogger). This is an unacceptable situation for me and I am looking into alternative blog sites right now.

If/when I am forced to relocate, I will post updates and revise settings in the forums and to as many co-bloggers as I can contact. Thank you for your continued support and patience.

Cashiers and a sign of the times…

…Morrigan has fun shopping at WalMart!!!

Just one of the many strange goings ons, by a people becoming more and more desperate…

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."
– Thomas Sowell

Doug Kenline…

…the King of Bloggers, has revamped his updated site and is making money doing his favorite thing. We should all have it as good as Doug. Go and visit and see what he is up to…

What Have Conservatives Wrought???

Only the final destruction of the republic. Supposedly conservative republicans have controlled the House of Representatives since 1994, the Senate since 1996 and the White house since 2001. It took over 200 years for American government to amass a one million, million (a Trillion) dollar debt. Our current president and congress add one million, million (again, a Trillion) dollars to the debt every 18 months. They fight phantom wars against plant extracts and social methods. They can create a criminal out of thin air. They kill more civilians than they do soldiers, and call it an acceptable ratio.

How anyone can morally support such a system is beyond me. I think mostly they do it from fear. Fear makes them irrational. They won’t think it through, because to do so puts them face to face with their own fear of being responsible for themselves.

Pericles once said, “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” I think that was around 430 B.C. (BCE for all you nimrods who think that changing the name of a measurement term gives you some moral superiority over everybody who wants to keep things simple) Even that statement provokes the people to try to participate out of fear.

I tend to go with the Riddick philosophy. In “Pitch Black” the Imam counsels Riddick, “Can we pray together? I have already prayed with the others. It is painless.” Riddick replies that, “It’s pointless” The Imam responds, “Because you do not believe in God, does not mean God does not—” at which point Riddick interupts him and firmly states… “You think someone can spend half their life in the slam, with a horse bit in their mouth, and not believe? Think he could start out in some liquor store trash bin with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, and not believe? You’ve got it all wrong, holy man. I absolutely believe in God. And I absolutely hate the fucker.” (For those of you who don’t like that word, feel free to join the nimrods against simplicity.)

Substitute state for God in the above (or maybe in addition) and you get my sentiments on the matter of conservatives and liberals and politcal parties, in general.

Lew Rockwell puts it quite succinctly…

“The problem with American conservatism is that it hates the left more than the state, loves the past more than liberty, feels a greater attachment to nationalism than to the idea of self-determination, believes brute force is the answer to all social problems, and thinks it is better to impose truth rather than risk losing one’s soul to heresy. It has never understood the idea of freedom as a self-ordering principle of society. It has never seen the state as the enemy of what conservatives purport to favor. It has always looked to presidential power as the saving grace of what is right and true about America.

“I’m speaking now of the variety of conservatism created by William Buckley, not the Old Right of Albert Jay Nock, John T. Flynn, Garett Garrett, H.L. Mencken, and company, though these people would have all rejected the name conservative as ridiculous. After Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR, what’s to conserve of the government? The revolutionaries who tossed off a milder British rule would never have put up with it.

“For my part, I’m hoping that the whole conservative movement will go down in flames with the decline and fall of the Bush administration. The red-state fascists have had their day and instead of liberty, they gave us the most raw and stupid form of imperial big government one can imagine. They have given America a bad name around the world. They have bamboozled millions. They have looted and bankrupted the country.”

More here…

The Bene Gesserit Littainy against Fear.
From “Dune”, by Frank Herbert

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.