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Post by jdredd on Jun 9, 2018 13:34:51 GMT -5
Here's something that warms my heart: Any land that is created by the lava flows on the big island automatically become property of the feds (if it is created off the National Park, otherwise it becomes State of Hawaii property). I bet that chaps the hide of Libertarians, which of course makes MY day.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 20, 2018 3:06:10 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-transit.html?action=click&module=Trending&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer&contentCollection=Trending"NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A team of political activists huddled at a Hardee’s one rainy Saturday, wolfing down a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. Then they descended on Antioch, a quiet Nashville suburb, armed with iPads full of voter data and a fiery script. The group, the local chapter for Americans for Prosperity, which is financed by the oil billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch to advance conservative causes, fanned out and began strategically knocking on doors. Their targets: voters most likely to oppose a local plan to build light-rail trains, a traffic-easing tunnel and new bus routes. “Do you agree that raising the sales tax to the highest rate in the nation must be stopped?” Samuel Nienow, one of the organizers, asked a startled man who answered the door at his ranch-style home in March. “Can we count on you to vote ‘no’ on the transit plan?” In cities and counties across the country — including Little Rock, Ark.; Phoenix, Ariz.; southeast Michigan; central Utah; and here in Tennessee — the Koch brothers are fueling a fight against public transit, an offshoot of their longstanding national crusade for lower taxes and smaller government." Another glimpse of what the Libertarian Utopia will be like: No public transit.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 22, 2018 5:59:12 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/opinion/sunday/libertarians-in-the-age-of-trump.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region"A little over a week ago, in the brief historical entr’acte between the Brett Kavanaugh nomination and our president’s Helsinki rendezvous, I was in Las Vegas for the annual libertarian convention known as FreedomFest. Like most interesting ch u rches, libertarianism is a diverse and fractious faith, and FreedomFest brings together all its different sects: the think-tankers with their regulatory-reform blueprints, the muckraking journalists taking on government abuses, the charter city backers and Burning Man attendees, the Ayn Rand fans wearing dollar signs on their lapels, the eccentric-genius businessmen and pot legalizers — and the converts eager to tell you how everything changed when I got really into gold. In principle I am not a libertarian: The teenage nerd enters conservatism through either Atlas Shrugged or Lord of the Rings, and between Tolkienists like myself and the Randians a great gulf is often fixed. But even if libertarianism seems an insufficient philosophy of human flourishing, its defense of individuals and markets can be a crucial practical corrective to all manner of liberal and conservative mistakes." OK, I understand how Ayn Rand's cheesey Atlas Shrugged promotes Libertarianism. But Lord of the Rings I don't get. And Burning Man? Now there is one more reason never to go to THAT.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 27, 2019 13:24:30 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/business/boeing-737-max-faa.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage"SEATTLE — In the days after the first crash of Boeing’s 737 Max, engineers at the Federal Aviation Administration came to a troubling realization: They didn’t fully understand the automated system that helped send the plane into a nose-dive, killing everyone on board. Engineers at the agency scoured their files for information about the system designed to help avoid stalls. They didn’t find much. Regulators had never independently assessed the risks of the dangerous software known as MCAS when they approved the plane in 2017. More than a dozen current and former employees at the F.A.A. and Boeing who spoke with The New York Times described a broken regulatory process that effectively neutered the oversight authority of the agency.The regulator had been passing off routine tasks to manufacturers for years, with the goal of freeing up specialists to focus on the most important safety concerns. But on the Max, the regulator handed nearly complete control to Boeing, leaving some key agency officials in the dark about important systems like MCAS, according to the current and former employees."
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Post by jdredd on Aug 5, 2019 2:31:22 GMT -5
Another day, more shootings. If the American people really gave a crap they would vote in anti-2nd Amendment politicians and repeal it. But they don't, so I guess we have to live with these shootings in a libertarian America.
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Post by jdredd on Oct 12, 2019 2:01:13 GMT -5
Q: Why is there so little traffic enforcement? A: Population growth has outrun the number of cops. Q: Why don't we hire more? A: Cheap-ass taxpayers. So we all have to live with traffic anarchy.
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Post by jdredd on Oct 21, 2019 10:57:41 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/10/21/us/california-homeless-backlash.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage“I do think this is, in a lot of ways, a test of who are we as a community,” said John Maceri, the chief executive of the People Concern, a social services agency in Los Angeles, who has noticed a stark uptick in hostility toward the homeless in recent months." California may pride itself on its commitment to tolerance and liberal values, but across the state, record levels of homelessness have spurred a backlash against those who live on the streets. “Some people who I’d put in the fed-up category, they’re not bad people,” he continued. “They would describe themselves as left of center, and sometimes very left of center, but at some point they reach the breaking point.” For many, that breaking point was the worsening squalor in the streets of cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, where open-air drug dealing is rampant in some spots and where human feces and scattered needles and syringes have been found lying about. Those scenes have also proved a potent symbol for Republicans like President Trump to showcase what they call the failures of liberal urban enclaves." I'm not sure, but wouldn't a true Libertarian let the homeless sleep and crap wherever they'd like as long as it wasn't on THEIR property? On the other hand, would Communists round them up and put them in labor camps? I think most people are somewhere between those two solutions. I would think most true Leftists would realize these people were the victims of a corrupt economic and social system. But right now they are a convenient tool to bash liberals.
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Post by jdredd on Dec 31, 2019 17:09:48 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/world/americas/mexico-environment-trade.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage"EL SALTO, Mexico — By the time the polluted Santiago River bursts over a waterfall on the outskirts of Guadalajara, in western Mexico, its stench seems to be everywhere: hovering over crops, seeping into homes, fouling the tap water. The river smells of industrial waste and sewage — a catastrophe years in the making, with far-ranging consequences. Activists say the chemicals streaming from factories have contributed to a toxic brew that has killed and sickened many along its banks. The environment minister recently called it an “environmental hell.” “This town is a slow-motion Chernobyl,” said Enrique Enciso, whose house in El Salto is perched just a few blocks from the river, and whose family has fought for more than a decade to clean it up. The river is a powerful example of Mexico’s failure to protect its environment: A New York Times analysis of 15 years of efforts to clean up the Santiago found that attempts floundered in the face of legal loopholes, deficient funding and a lack of political will." Mexico must be the Libertarian Utopia: They have laws. They just don't enforce them.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 4, 2021 22:45:04 GMT -5
At one time I would have probably commented on Libertarianism and the Florida condo collapse but Libertarianism has seemed to faded since the arrival of the Trump Cult.
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Post by jdredd on Jul 7, 2021 11:51:01 GMT -5
www.newsmax.com/ronpaul/air-bagram-base-taliban/2021/07/07/id/1027786/"Speaking of money wasted, in April, Brown University’s Cost of War Project calculated the total cost of the Afghanistan war at more than two trillion dollars. That means millions of Americans have been made poorer for a predictably failed project. It also means that thousands of the well-connected contractors and companies that lurk around the U.S. Capitol Beltway pushing war have become much, much richer.That’s U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell: taking money from middle-class Americans and transferring it to the elites of the US military and foreign policy establishment. It’s welfare for the rich.Meanwhile, the Costs of War Project also estimated that the war took more than a quarter of a million lives." I don't agree with Ron Paul on much but on this we see eye to eye.
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Post by jdredd on Aug 10, 2021 15:08:23 GMT -5
Seems to me that rising Libertarianism took a hit from the pandemic, since it didn’t have a solution for it. Now, though, it looks to be on the rise in the backlash of government mandates. Senator (Ayn) Rand Paul is leading the charge.
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Post by jdredd on Feb 9, 2022 21:36:00 GMT -5
While Libertarianism went into eclipse at the start of the pandemic having no solutions for Covid, now that it’s been two years and the mandates seem excessive to lots of people, I suspect Libertarianism is making a comeback. It’s great at tearing things down, which is why even I share some of it’s views. Certainly on the border and on abortion I’m a libertarian. And on foreign policy. Not so fond of it when it comes to traffic, though, now that for many drivers stop signs, red lights, and speed limits are just suggestions. I never thought I’d feel nostalgia for traffic cops, wherever they have disappeared to. Buy the way, looking at the last post, I see how much I repeat myself, not that I was unaware of it. I learned it from Roger Hedgecock.
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Post by jdredd on Jun 27, 2022 15:22:38 GMT -5
Sorry, Libertarians, your irrelevance is becoming even more obvious with the SC abortion ruling.
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Post by jdredd on Dec 3, 2022 13:33:55 GMT -5
Listening to right wing god Milton Friedman. I didn’t realize he was a hard core Libertarian. It explains a lot.
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Post by jdredd on Dec 5, 2022 17:52:06 GMT -5
Watched a video of a walk through Tokyo. Everybody was wearing a mask. I don’t think Libertarianism has much appeal there.
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