Good Stuff From The Internet

Once again, it's time to purge the photo files.....
Most of these are from Libertarian Reddit, Facebook, Instapundit, or emails. 

This one is for my little Aggie, who has been a Denver Broncos fan since the earliest days of the John Elway era. 

I'm from Drew, Mississippi, home of Archie Manning, father of Peyton and Eli (and Cooper). 

The Aggie is SICK of hearing about Mannings and their Super Bowl wins. 

This one is for her. 

Looks like an almost perfect correlation to me !!

You either think that this photo is funny, or you don't. 

How's that Hope'n'Change working out for you????

"Invisible Backhand", this one is for you.  I really do like having you around. 

This one isn't apropos of anything, really.  I just thought it was odd. 

I got ordained.  Let me know if you need marrying or burying. 

Gag me with a dirty diaper. 

P.J. O'Rourke on Libertarians

P.J. O'Rourke has penned an essay on the Koch brothers' attempt to take over the revered Cato Institute (which was founded with a lot of Koch brothers startup money, BTW.) 
The essay is good, but the best part is where he describes the thinking, behavior, and all-around hardheadedness of my chosen tribe:

And Cato couldn’t be involved in partisan politics. Everyone there is a libertarian. You might as well command your cat to bring you your pajamas as tell a bunch of libertarians to get on the same political platform. I know these people. Ron Paul is a bien-pensant by comparison. Cato scholars prize contentious thought. Get in a debate with one and you’ll find out he doesn’t even agree with himself.


This is why I'm generally opposed to some of the "Purity Tests" that some of my co-libs want to apply to guest speakers, candidates and policies.  Because there really isn't a policy that will perfectly reflect what Milton Friedman said on page 309 and what Henry Hazlitt really meant on page 106 and the content of that Hayek speech from 1946, AND that plank in the party platform that we put in place just to end the freakin' meeting .  Sometimes, the Best really can be the enemy of the Good Enough For Now. 
Here's some more P.J.

More to the point, the Koch brothers will lose the think tank’s impressive roster of thinkers and scholars. I haven’t polled them as to who would stay and who would go under a Koch regime. But, as I said, I know libertarians. If the Kochs win the pot, they’ll have to piss in it. It will be empty otherwise.


Meanwhile we neocons and paleocons and rank-and-file Republicans should understand how important Cato is. Libertarianism is of great worth even to those who consider Atlas Shrugged useful mainly as dead weight to keep the tarp on the above-ground pool from blowing away.

It can be said, with some justice, that libertarians apply only one measure to every issue. But what a sublime yardstick it is. Libertarians ask, about each thing they encounter in public life, “Does this promote the liberty, responsibility, and dignity of the individual?” Libertarianism can have political implications, but politics is, by definition, mass action. And libertarians don’t believe in the masses. They believe in the individuals huddled in those masses. A pure libertarian is opposed to politics down to the soles of his shoes (or, libertarians being libertarians, down to the bottom of his sandals worn with socks). Libertarianism is contra-political, an emetic dose to be given to politics. As we’ve seen lately, all politics needs one sometimes.

Precisely.  If it really matters who wins these upcoming elections, then our government is too big. 
Vote for the emetic.  Vote Libertarian !!!! 

In praise of Al Gore

It looks like Al Gore finally did something on his own to fight Man-made Global Warming, instead of dumping more burdens on taxpayers, manufacturers and other producers. 

Go here for details. 

Good job, sir !!!

Thank You All !!

I want to say thank you to the oil riggers, metal foundry workers, Chinese coffee growers, truckers, shippers, dockworkers and lumberjacks who made my morning Starbucks double-espresso possible. 

My Starbucks "double-espresso to go" has a plastic lid made of petrochemicals.  Thank you to the people working on that oil rig who brought that gooey black stuff up to the surface.  The mold for the lid was made on a machining center by someone who knew what the heck he was doing.  A big thank you to the machinists and everyone working at that foundry ! 

Someone had to cut down the tree that produced the paper for the cup.  Thank you, Mr. Lumberjack !!  Thank you to the pulpwood haulers who got the tree to the mill.  Thank you to the people who made the machine that turned the raw cardboard stock into cylinders.  Thank you to the chemists who produced the ink that put the Starbucks logo on the cup, and the glue that holds the cup together. 

Another big thank-you to the bean farmers in China, Ethiopia, or Latin and South America.  Thanks for growing the beans and harvesting them.  Thank you to someone else for curing them and roasting them.  And a big thanks to all the truckers, shippers and dockworkers who pulled all of these things together and got them to the Starbucks at I-30 and Western Center Boulevard in North Fort Worth. 

None of these good people did their jobs with me in mind.  They were only thinking of their own selfish selves.  Those oil rig guys, lumberjacks, pulp-wood haulers, chemists, coffee growers and shippers all have to compete with others in their profession to get me the best coffee for the lowest price possible.  They have to constantly work harder and harder and innovate more and more to keep up with my demands.  Otherwise, I'll buy my double espresso someplace else.  None of them work for me or for Starbucks.  The system simply works.     

Thank you to Thomas Jefferson, for not setting us up with a "planned" economy.  Thank you to Milton Friedman, who did more than anyone else about letting markets work.  I won't even bother thanking Howard Schultz and the hundreds of thousands of Starbucks employees worldwide.  They're the ones who take my whopping $2.11 and spread it around to the millions of other people I named earlier. 

They didn't have to be thinking of me for the system to work.  Someone upstream from them let it be known that they had a need.  That person was me.  These great people stepped up to meet that need, and dang it, I'm happy about it.   

So thank you, thank you, thank you ! 

P.S. - There is no government double-espresso czar mentioned anywhere in this process.  I hope there never will be.  Imagine some government munchkin trying to plan everything about the system I just described, and making it happen all over the world every time someone wants a cup of coffee.  Even worse, imagine what horrors await us when government munchkins, hobbits and trolls get even more involved in medicine.   

Stuff Libertarians Say !!!

Bruce Beckman, Libertarian candidate for the Texas Legislature

If you live in Texas State District 93, which is this unnatural collection of real estate that stretches from East Arlington to Haslet....

....Please consider voting for my new friend Bruce Beckman.

Here's the intro from his homepage:

My name is Bruce Beckman and I hope you will vote for me to be your Representative in the Texas Legislature.


Like other Libertarian candidates, I believe in free markets, civil liberties, and peace.

I'm unhappy with the results the Democrats and Republicans have delivered, and that's why I have decided to run for office myself as a Libertarian.

May his tribe increase ! 
Here's his Issues Page:

Cut Taxes and Spending


Taxes are too high. That's because government spending is too high. I want to reduce both.

Today our state government spends money on almost everything: education, health care, cancer research, business incentives (i.e. corporate welfare), and poverty programs. These may be worthy goals, but they are not proper functions of government.

Steps I would take:

•I would vote to repeal the business margins tax that was proposed and signed in 2006 by Republican Governor Rick Perry, and filed by Rep. Jim Keffer (Republican from Eastland).

•I would file a bill to cut the state sales tax from 6.25% to 4%.

•Those two tax reductions would reduce state revenue by about $25 billion over the next two years*. I propose cutting expenditures to match. (The current total budget is about $172 billion.) I support across-the-board cuts, and I note that most of the cuts will need to come from the two largest areas of state spending: education and health and human services.

*Estimate based on Comptroller's 2012-2013 revenue estimate.

End the War on Drugs

Selling and using drugs may be personally unwise, but those activities don't violate anyone's rights. By establishing drug prohibition, our government has taken a modest problem and turned it into a huge problem. Now we have to deal with drug gangs and black markets, and taxpayers have to pay to keep thousands of people in jail. We need to end this nonsense which has cost taxpayers over $1 Trillion since the War On Drugs began in 1970. None of the goals of the War on Drugs have been met in its 42 year history- not one- so why do we as taxpayers keep throwing bad money after good?

Money spent on arresting and prosecuting people for marijuana -related crimes would be far better spent on pursuing and prosecuting child sex offenders, gangs, and other violent criminals.

Steps I would take:

•I would vote to reduce spending on the War On Drugs programs in Texas and seek to re-appropriate those funds to other law enforcement programs such as prosecuting and monitoring sex offenders and other violent criminals.

•I would vote for a bill to allow medical marijuana like HB 1491, filed last year by Rep. Naishtat (Democrat from Austin).

•I would vote for a bill to reduce marijuana penalties like HB 548, filed last year by Rep. Dutton (Democrat from Houston).

Relief for Small Businesses

State and local governments make it much harder than it should be to start your own business. Both native citizens and immigrants often wish they could start a business, but get frightened away by the mountain of red tape, fees, and regulations.

Politicians do this partly to protect well-connected businesses by shielding them from new, lower-priced competition. Government should not pick winners and losers.

I want to make it easier to start a business in Texas by reducing the power of government to get in the way.

Steps I would take:

•I would file legislation to reduce the power of cities to use permitting ordinances to limit and block businesses.

•I would file legislation to repeal many anti-competitive occupational licensing laws.

•I would file a bill to prohibit local governments from using tax subsidies to pick winners and losers.

Liberty for Latinos

Texas has a fast-growing Latin American population. I want Texas Latinos to leave behind big-government welfare and the big-government bigotry of the two dominant parties, and join the Libertarian Party instead. We don't want the government to prop people up, and we don't want the government to hold people down. I think that's consistent with the desire of most Latinos to have a level playing field where hard work pays off.

Steps I am taking:

•I'm encouraging Latinos to volunteer for Libertarian campaigns.

•I'm encouraging Latinos to run for office as Libertarians


Here's where you go to send Bruce some money ! 

Now They're Wanting To Ban Car Radios !!

Well, they wanted to. 

Go here for the entire sordid story of Ray LaHood's predecessor, a Nanny-Stater named George Parker.  He thought that you would never be able to operate a car radio without being a danger to yourself and others. 

My favorite paragraph:

Two state senators were more than happy to empower Parker, according to an Associated Press report from the hearing. Senator James C. Moran offered legislation that would enlist “neighbors of an applicant” to “sign affidavits as to the driver’s moral fitness”; Senator William E. Weeks sponsored a bill that would “require a physician’s certificate for an applicant for a driver’s license.”


And that, ladies and gentlemen is why right-thinking people must always watch out for the busybodies amongst us.  Vote them out. 

Vote Libertarian. 

On Unpopular Opinions

Hey, Libertarians ! Getting tired of being called "outside the mainstream"? Or too radical?

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw

Have dinner with Gary Johnson !!!!

This is going to be great !!!
I can't yank 1K out of The Aggie College Fund to attend right now, but I'm going to enter 1/20th of that amount for the drawing.

Gary Johnson was governor of New Mexico for eight years.

He boasts that in that eight year period, the government didn't create a single job. Why? Because that's not the government's job, and when government tries to get involved in job creation, we get....well, what we're currently getting.

He was nicknamed Governor Veto.   As governor, Mr. Johnson maintains he worked overtime to do just that, issuing an astonishing 685 vetoes in his eight years in office - more than the combined total of vetoes by the nation’s other 49 governors in those same eight years.  “Any time someone approached him about legislation for some purpose, his first response always was to ask if government should be involved in that to begin with,” said former New Mexico Republican National Committee member Mickey Barnett.

He laid off 1,200 state employees.

He's on the Advisory Council of "Students For A Sensible Drug Policy". 

He supports gay marriage. 

He left the state of New Mexico with a large budget surplus. 

His small government credentials are impeccable. 

Can you imagine getting this guy onto a debate stage with Barack and Barack-Lite? 

Let's make it happen !!!!