Economic Liberty... too old fashioned?!

"A point that a lot of liberals tend to ignore... is that the people who need constitutional protection for economic liberty the most are the poor and members of minority groups. It's not rich white guys who are driving taxi cabs. Unfortunately just about all the Supreme Court Justices are hostile to the idea of economic liberty,with the possible exception of Clarence Thomas."

-----------------------------
On another note...

I was just talking to John and found myself smiling at the thought of going into restaurants with my kids sans the old fashioned cloud of smoke hanging in the air. (Michigan just instituted a smoking ban in bars and restaurants last spring)

Apparently I am a very wish-washy Libertarian, because I do not think it is good idea to burn tires or cigarettes inside. Even if there were no health implications, both smell like sh*t.

I find it strange that it ever became socially acceptable to smoke indoors. Could you imagine being allowed to bring small tire shavings, or even incense, into a restaurant and set it on fire? ...even if it was in a nice little bowl? I am sure the owner would come over and put a stop to it promptly!... but that would be the owner of the property, not the government, setting the standard.

Restaurant owners were coming around and becoming smoke-free voluntarily, but the law definitely sped things up. Both the free market trend of smoke-free restaurants and the no-smoking law were responses to the opinion of the public at large. It often takes a movement among the people to create free-market or government responses.

Republicans deregulate?! ...Really?!

Graph from kick butt Reason article

And we wonder why the Bush tax cuts did not result in more job creation?! It was counter-acted by a regulatory spree!!! Sure, you can keep your money... but you can't do anything with it! ...Would you like some chains with your tax cut? That on top of huge spending that will result in the necessity of huge tax burdens in the future.

It pays to be a lobbyist!!

(one of the strongest unintentional arguments for term limits)

--------------------------------------------------
Article

The Market for ‘Pull’ on Capitol Hill

Posted by Walter Olson

Economists can actually measure the value of insider connections:

[L]obbyists connected to US Senators suffer an average 24% drop in generated revenue when their previous employer leaves the Senate. The decrease in revenue is out of line with pre-existing trends, it is discontinuous around the period in which the connected Senator exits Congress and it persists in the long-term. … Measured in terms of median revenues per ex-staffer turned lobbyist, this estimate indicates that the exit of a Senator leads to approximately a $177,000 per year fall in revenues for each affiliated lobbyist.

The fall is steeper, the researchers find, when the departing member of Congress sat on a powerful committee such as Appropriations, Senate Finance, or (on the House side) Ways and Means. Lobbyists who are ex-staffers are also more likely to quit the lobbying business once “their” member departs office. Incidentally, actual per-lobbyist revenue is lower than you might assume from the above figures, because many lobbying contracts are shared out among several participants with each individual getting only a portion of the proceeds. (Jordi Blanes i Vidal, Mirko Draca, and Christian Fons-Rosen, “Revolving Door Lobbyists,” via Alex Tabarrok).

If you needed another reason to vote against that unsatisfactory incumbent this fall, reflect that by doing so you’ll also be dimming the stars of his or her unsatisfactory ex-staffers.

481 degrees in Escanaba?!

What's up with that?!... That's funny! I don't remember it being 481 degrees this fourth of July!!!

The web pages at the center of this latest climate storm were created by NOAA in partnership with Michigan State University.

--------------------------------------
Articles

Boiling Great Lakesgate
Killer Global Warming Causes Temperatures of 315 Degrees Celcius

Official records have been confirmed as evidence that a handful of temperature records for the Great Lakes region have been hiked up by literally hundreds of degrees to substantially inflate the average temperature range for the northeastern United States.

US Government in Massive New Global Warming Scandal
NOAA Disgraced

The tax-payer funded National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has become mired in fresh global warming data scandal involving numbers for the Great Lakes region that substantially ramp up averages.

Massive New Global Warming Scandal NOAA

A beleaguered federal agency appears to be implicated in the most blatant and extreme case of climate data fraud yet seen. Official records have been confirmed as evidence that a handful of temperature records for the Great Lakes region have been hiked up by literally hundreds of degrees to substantially inflate the average temperature range for the northeastern United States.

Consumer Reports vs the FDA

If Consumer Reports (a free market watchdog for product safety and quality) had the track record of the FDA, they would have been out of business a long time ago!!!!

The FDA is not subject to the market forces of public opinion because it is a government instituted monopoly. If it were a private free-market venture, it's terrible reputation and track record on public safety would have destroyed it a long time ago.

Many cases of corruption have been documented, and their inspectors proven less than competent (recent egg recall). Special interests hired and put on the payroll, creating a conflict of interests that endanger the health of every American. Non-fermented Soy and Canola oil are only two examples of failures of the FDA, causing the safety of our food supply and pharmaceutical products to fall well behind that of other nations.

Also, the FDA is becoming known for restricting products from the market for reasons far removed from product safety, but rather special interest pandering or consistently enforcing the government agenda of the day .

By contrast, Consumer Reports protects its reputation by strict adherence to truth in product testing and is largely immune from special interests and corruption because they rely on the purity of their reputation for their entire existence. If it had the reputation of the FDA, it would not exist.

---------------------
Articles

Consumer Reports Slams FDA

Consumer Reports today slammed the FDA's decision to allow the risky diabetes drug Avandia to remain on the market.

The agency "falls short of its counterpart across the ocean, the European Medicines Agency, which decided Avandia was too risky" to remain available, a Consumer Reports editor wrote in a blog post.

Breaking the FDA Monopoly

Many readers might consider my proposal to be quite radical, but it simply returns us to the FDA’s role prior to 1962: certifying that a drug is safe.