Thursday, July 7, 2011

Fwd: please note we need better legslation in the following areas



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 1:40 PM
Subject: Fwd: please note we need better legslation in the following areas
To: Senate Canada <info@parl.gc.ca>




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 1:39 PM
Subject: please note we need better legslation in the following areas
To: info@earthshare.org


1. concerning the clc agreement and any others concerning rail and transport employees  where staff must use a bed and breakfast or hotel where employees are in transit their hotel rooms or suites must have a kitchenette and laundry facility ( part of the bathroom area).
2. public restaurante wash/toilet  rooms need  a  sign that tells when the room is occupied so privacy is guarateed and cleaning is done when the facility is not in use.
3. rental units need better management so no one is oppressed or illegaly segregated or caste through any leese or rental policy or particulars.
4. education funding, job-share rules, economic development programes for single persons must be regulated by a fair-trade and customs authority that does not allow any form of predjudicial disqualifiction disruption in progress or oppression.
5. see petition  attachments

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Amazon Taxes Rely on Economic Fallacy


Amazon Taxes Rely on Economic Fallacy
by Fergus Hodgson, July 7, 2011

The "Amazon" tax neither generates revenue nor creates a level playing field. It does eliminate profitable relationships and drive companies out-of-state, but that hasn't stopped elected officials from plowing ahead obstinately.

Concerned that people can avoid sales taxes by shopping online, seven states have passed legislation to place out-of-state retailers within their jurisdiction. Fourteen more have either considered it or have pending legislation. So long as the retailers have in-state affiliates -- advertisers with mere hyperlinks -- officials shall attempt to tax them.

California is the most recent to pass this initiative, amid claims that it would generate $200 million to $317 million annually. However, of the previous six states to attempt this, only New York has managed to generate additional sales tax revenue. And even New York, which is engaged in a legal battle with online retailers, will most likely have to refund this revenue due to the law's more-than-questionable constitutionality. (California faces even stiffer legal challenges, and a member of the agency responsible for implementation has acknowledged the largest firms have no intention of complying.)

In fact, in at least Rhode Island and North Carolina the initiatives appear to have reduced the overall tax intake. Rather than pay the tax, large online retailers such as Amazon.com and Overstock.com have simply cut ties with in-state affiliates. So the affiliates have either had to move out or see their business plummet, along with their income-tax payments.

This forgone economic activity, known as the "deadweight loss," is an inevitable pattern with taxation, and it is more pronounced in portable industries. However, as Henry Hazlitt wrote in the classic Economics in One Lesson, the tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy allows fallacious thinking to creep in. As they crave another tax source, the affirming legislators appear to be ignoring the secondary consequences.

Hazlitt also noted the special pleading of vested interests as a source of fallacies, since ignorance of an economic outcome may sway an argument in one's favor. In this case, the biggest proponents and beneficiaries, brick and mortar retailers such as Walmart, are concerned with fighting back online competitors, not the broader outcome.

They call for a level playing field, and their chief lobbying organization is the Alliance for Main Street Fairness. The hypocrisy of these businesses, though, is hard to stomach. From 1997 to 2007, Walmart, for example, lobbied for and used corporate loopholes, rebates, and subsidies to pay only about half of its statutory state taxes. The latest estimate has this number at an annual $400 million.

Even if the goal were sincere, an Amazon tax does not achieve a level playing field. As the Tax Foundation has pointed out, affected online retailers collect taxes based on where the customer resides, while conventional retailers collect taxes based on where the business is located. All the while, online retailers without in-state affiliates retain their competitive advantage and sell items tax-free, regardless of where the customer may be.

The reality is that the Internet is allowing people to more easily avoid taxes, and flailing about with an Amazon tax is not going to change that. It's untenable to enforce a uniform sales tax on people who buy and sell on Craigslist and eBay or those who sell from outside the United States, and the heightened presence of sales taxes will drive even more people to those outlets. Even the more easily policed, larger companies like Amazon.com have demonstrated their ability to shift activities to lower-tax jurisdictions.

While the fiscally mismanaged and desperate states like Illinois, California, and New York blindly pursue the Amazon tax, five states don't have a sales tax to begin with. That's a level playing field: zero for all. These five states are the ones that will win out as their status as Internet tax havens grows in importance. Ironically, through migration of people and companies, they will also benefit from expanded tax bases.


http://www.fff.org/comment/com1107f.asp

Fwd: new petitions to view



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:33 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to view
To: jones soda co <info@jonessoda.com>




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:32 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to view
To: info@linguaserviceworldwide.com




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:32 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to view
To: info@quantumjumping.com




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:31 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to view
To: info@landmarkcinemas.ca




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:30 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to view
To: georgia.governor@gov.state.ga.us




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:29 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to view
To: gfarfaras@safebeauty.gr




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:28 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to view
To: faithalive2004@yahoo.com




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:27 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to vie
To: employment@msnbc.com




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:27 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to view
To: dreams@dreamresearch.net




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:26 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to view
To: dan@universitymalltheatres.com




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:24 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to view
To: Juan Di Bella <juan_dibella@yahoo.com.mx>




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:23 PM
Subject: Fwd: new petitions to view
To: admin@cupid.com




---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: noelle finnerty <skylark.nf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:21 PM
Subject: new petitions to view
To: Raymond Shupena <rshupena@hotmail.com>




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yorkton environment directorate




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yorkton environment directorate




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yorkton environment directorate




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yorkton environment directorate




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yorkton environment directorate




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yorkton environment directorate




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yorkton environment directorate




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yorkton environment directorate




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yorkton environment directorate




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yorkton environment directorate




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yorkton environment directorate

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The Force of Law



July 6, 2011
The Force of Law
Rights vs. Privileges
By KEVIN CARSON

Law'n'order conservatives frequently challenge civil libertarians to show what concrete loss of freedom they've experienced under the USA PATRIOT Act and other "counter-terror" (aka "police state") legislation.

Well, first of all it's hard to say, since the Patriot Act makes it an offense even to inform the public that you've suffered an unconstitutional loss of liberty under that "law." If an FBI thug goes sniffing around the public library to find out what books you've been reading, the librarian can go to jail for informing you. If your house gets searched or your phone tapped under a so-called "national security letter," you may never know.

More importantly, though, government has the paper authority -- and the administrative and enforcement infrastructure -- to suspend your liberties entirely. If you've experienced little concrete loss of freedom so far, it's entirely because the state has not seen fit -- yet -- to exercise the dictatorial powers it holds over you.

Liberty was originally recognized by the state, not as a concession of sovereign grace or because the people in charge were such nice guys, but because the people forced it to. Liberty is not something given by the state -- it's something taken from it, against its will. As Frederick Douglass said, "power concedes nothing without a demand."

But our freedom today exists not because we're in a position to compel recognition of it, but because the state has exercised some discretion in its exercise of absolute power. Liberty today is entirely at sufferance of government.

The government's de facto powers of surveillance over telephone and Internet traffic are virtually infinite. A long series of executive orders gives the President power to nationalize essentially every aspect of American life in the event of a declared "national emergency," from seizing control of factories and communication and transportation systems to conscripting civilian labor -- not to mention rounding up subversives and detaining them without trial.

Compare this state of affairs -- in which we owe our liberties to the good will of the government -- to the view of the state shared by the revolutionary generation in America. According to Forrest McDonald, in "Novus Ordo Seclorum," the radical Whig or Anglo-republican ideology of the revolutionary period sought to structure government so that it couldn't exercise power against the wishes of even local majorities of the people.

Suppose a tyrannical party came to power in the national government, and passed laws depriving the people of their liberties. The Anglo-republicans saw three institutions as bulwarks against such arbitrary power. Rather than the standing army and professional police forces we have today, the radical Whigs envisioned militia units drawn from the local populace, and a posse comitatus (the ordinary citizenry acting as auxiliaries to the local sheriff or constable) raising a hue and cry against murderers or robbers. The central government would be entirely dependent for enforcement of the law on the civilian population of the area in which it was to be enforced. In addition, local juries, with their power to nullify laws considered unjust by the local population, could refuse to enforce tyrannical laws even if those in violation were brought to trial.

In law, procedure is almost everything, and substance is comparatively unimportant. This country could have the drug laws of Turkey or Singapore, and with a strict interpretation of common law procedural rights it would be nigh impossible to enforce. For example, say the state prescribed execution for simple possession of less than a lid of pot. Without the judicial doctrine of "reasonable expectation of privacy" which subverts the plain meaning of the Fourth Amendment, without civil forfeiture, without no-knock warrants and SWAT teams, without undercover sting operations and other forms of entrapment, without testimony coerced from jailhouse snitches, the drug laws would be essentially unenforceable except against the most stupid and careless.

The state's "laws" cannot be enforced without illegality.


Kevin Carson is a research associate at the Center for a Stateless Society. his written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective, and The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto, all of which are freely available online. Carson has also written for such print publications as The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty and a variety of internet-based journals and blogs, including Just Things, The Art of the Possible, the P2P Foundation and his own Mutualist Blog.

http://www.counterpunch.org/carson07062011.html

Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal


Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal
July 7, 2011 by Trevor Lyman
225Share

Drug warriors often contend that drug use would skyrocket if we were to legalize or decriminalize drugs in the United States. Fortunately, we have a real-world example of the actual effects of ending the violent, expensive War on Drugs and replacing it with a system of treatment for problem users and addicts.

Ten years ago, Portugal decriminalized all drugs. One decade after this unprecedented experiment, drug abuse is down by half:
Health experts in Portugal said Friday that Portugal's decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.

"There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal," said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.

The number of addicts considered "problematic" ­ those who repeatedly use "hard" drugs and intravenous users ­ had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.

Other factors had also played their part however, Goulao, a medical doctor added.

"This development can not only be attributed to decriminalisation but to a confluence of treatment and risk reduction policies."
Many of these innovative treatment procedures would not have emerged if addicts had continued to be arrested and locked up rather than treated by medical experts and psychologists. Currently 40,000 people in Portugal are being treated for drug abuse. This is a far cheaper, far more humane way to tackle the problem. Rather than locking up 100,000 criminals, the Portuguese are working to cure 40,000 patients and fine-tuning a whole new canon of drug treatment knowledge at the same time.

None of this is possible when waging a war.

http://breakthematrix.com/health/ten-years-decriminalization-drug-abuse-portugal/

War Upon America By Convicted Felon George Soros & Barry Soetoro, The Left Wing Fascist Insurgency.




War Upon America By Convicted Felon George Soros & Barry Soetoro, The Left Wing Fascist Insurgency.

Designed catastrophe, attempted totalitarianism, war --not a prediction, but a present reality What is about to happen in America? Gerald Celente of Trends Research Institute warns it will come within months:

Read more of this post

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NMA National Alert: Watch for Fake Traffic Ticket Email and Don't Open It







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Watch out for Fake Traffic Ticket Email and Don't Open it

Dear NMA Member,

A hoax email is being circulated that is made to look like a traffic ticket, but actually contains a computer virus. Such an email should not be opened, but rather, deleted...!

The bogus email, which may contain the title "Uniform Traffic Ticket" in the subject line, urges the recipient to open an attached zip file that contains a copy of the traffic ticket before filling it out and sending it to a town court. (You can read the BuffaloNews.com story here.)

We just figured that "legitimate" traffic tickets are bad enough, and you don't need the additional aggravation of a crashed computer.

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What a shame - he will be missed - or maybe not

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2011/07/06/2011-07-06_eliot_spitzer_talk_show_in_the_arena_canceled_i_thoroughly_enjoyed_my_time_at_cn.html

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Re: CAYLEE'S LAW PETITION

I skimmed it....seems that they want Congress to pass a law that would require a time frame for a parent to report a missing child.  I think what happened to her is tragic.  I did not keep up with the case and don't know the facts.  Her death was unfortunate and her mother probably not high up there with parenting priorities.  But does there need to be a law for the obvious?  If my son wet missing, it would take me two seconds to report it....just seems like common sense.
 
S

On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 10:57 AM, Bruce Majors <majors.bruce@gmail.com> wrote:
what's so bad about it

I partly wanted to see what people would say

I didn't read it in detail


On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Sharon Fuentes <oneforentropy@gmail.com> wrote:
Keith-I was wondering how long it would take you to reply. Sharon


On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Keith In Köln <keithintampa@gmail.com> wrote:
I can't believe you are forwarding this kind of a thing Bruce.
 


 
On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Bruce Majors <majors.bruce@gmail.com> wrote:


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Re: CAYLEE'S LAW PETITION

what's so bad about it

I partly wanted to see what people would say

I didn't read it in detail

On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Sharon Fuentes <oneforentropy@gmail.com> wrote:
Keith-I was wondering how long it would take you to reply. Sharon


On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Keith In Köln <keithintampa@gmail.com> wrote:
I can't believe you are forwarding this kind of a thing Bruce.
 


 
On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Bruce Majors <majors.bruce@gmail.com> wrote:


---------- Forwarded message ---

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Illegal Immigration From Mexico At Lowest Level In Nearly 60 Years


Illegal Immigration From Mexico At Lowest Level In Nearly 60 Years
Doug Mataconis
Wednesday, July 6, 2011

People from Mexico aren't as interested in coming to the United States as they used to be:

Douglas S. Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton, an extensive, long-term survey in Mexican emigration hubs, said his research showed that interest in heading to the United States for the first time had fallen to its lowest level since at least the 1950s. "No one wants to hear it, but the flow has already stopped," Mr. Massey said, referring to illegal traffic. "For the first time in 60 years, the net traffic has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative."
The decline in illegal immigration, from a country responsible for roughly 6 of every 10 illegal immigrants in the United States, is stark. The Mexican census recently discovered four million more people in Mexico than had been projected, which officials attributed to a sharp decline in emigration.
American census figures analyzed by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center also show that the illegal Mexican population in the United States has shrunk and that fewer than 100,000 illegal border-crossers and visa-violators from Mexico settled in the United States in 2010, down from about 525,000 annually from 2000 to 2004. Although some advocates for more limited immigration argue that the Pew studies offer estimates that do not include short-term migrants, most experts agree that far fewer illegal immigrants have been arriving in recent years.

The logical response to such a stark change in circumstances is to ask why it's happening. Part of it, assuredly, is a reflection of the stagnant economy in the United States, and especially the stagnant housing and construction markets, which were a huge source of employment for illegal immigrants over the past several decades as they excelled at the skilled labor required by carpentry and other jobs. But there's another factor, and it's got nothing to do with the United States:

In simple terms, Mexican families are smaller than they had once been. The pool of likely migrants is shrinking. Despite the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico, birth control efforts have pushed down the fertility rate to about 2 children per woman from 6.8 in 1970, according to government figures. So while Mexico added about one million new potential job seekers annually in the 1990s, since 2007 that figure has fallen to an average of 800,000, according to government birth records. By 2030, it is expected to drop to 300,000.
Even in larger families like the Orozcos' ­ Angel is the 9th of 10 children ­ the migration calculation has changed. Crossing "mojado," wet or illegally, has become more expensive and more dangerous, particularly with drug cartels dominating the border. At the same time, educational and employment opportunities have greatly expanded in Mexico. Per capita gross domestic product and family income have each jumped more than 45 percent since 2000, according to one prominent economist, Roberto Newell. Despite all the depictions of Mexico as "nearly a failed state," he argued, "the conventional wisdom is wrong."

(…)
Another important factor is Mexico itself. Over the past 15 years, this country once defined by poverty and beaches has progressed politically and economically in ways rarely acknowledged by Americans debating immigration. Even far from the coasts or the manufacturing sector at the border, democracy is better established, incomes have generally risen and poverty has declined.

Both of these are, of course, highly positive developments. That Mexico might stabilize politically and economically and become, if not as prosperous as Canada just yet, at least a far more prosperous southern neighbor than we've ever had is a development we should welcome and encourage. Not only because it will reduce cross-border illegal immigration, but also because a strong Mexican economy is good for the U.S. economy. Of course, Mexico won't be entirely free of its problems as long as it has to deal with drug lords and the gangs that they employ, but that phenomenon is due more to our own War On (Some) Drugs than anything else. If drugs like marijuana were legal, the Mexican drug lords wouldn't be nearly as powerful and the drug gangs wouldn't be holding the country by the throat.

Mexico's former President Vincente Fox said pretty much the same thing just a few months ago:

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox believes the current strategies employed against Mexico's drug cartels are not working and he is advocating a different approach.
Speaking passionately about the issue, Fox said he has a team of experts tracking drug-related violence in Mexico. He is concerned the government crackdown and cartel violence that has left about 34,000 dead in the past 4 years is also affecting trade, investment, and tourism.
Fox said he's looking at other countries for possible solutions. One is Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs 10 years ago and has since seen a 25 percent decrease in drug consumption .
"We might have an answer there because we have to separate the health problem (caused) by consuming drugs, and the crime and violence associated with it to distribute in the black market," he said.

A country in eternal chaos on our southern border will just make illegal immigration more likely if current conditions that are keeping people home don't last. Perhaps we need to look at how our own laws are impacting our neighbors and act accordingly.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/illegal-immigration-from-mexico-at-lowest-level-in-nearly-60-years/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OTB+%28Outside+The+Beltway+|+OTB%29&utm_content=Twitter

Re: CAYLEE'S LAW PETITION

Keith-I was wondering how long it would take you to reply. Sharon

On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Keith In Köln <keithintampa@gmail.com> wrote:
I can't believe you are forwarding this kind of a thing Bruce.
 


 
On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Bruce Majors <majors.bruce@gmail.com> wrote:


---------- Forwarded message ---

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Re: We Should Be Free Because We Are Equal

We Should Be Free
---
freedom only belongs to those who can protect it

Because We Are Equal
---
huge lie!!!
people are not equal ... some are stronger, smarter, faster, more
charitable, work harder, etc.
Liberals and socialists try, to no avail, to make people equal through
legal rights, but the fact remains ... people are not equal.

On Jul 7, 9:19 am, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> The CallingWe Should Be Free Because We Are EqualYou can't be one without the other.Steven Horwitz
> Posted July 07, 2011
> Last week's column, "The Other Principle of Classical Liberalism," generated some interesting comments, as did similar arguments I made atBleeding Heart Libertariansand on my Facebook page. One criticism raised was that libertarianism has little to do with equality because it's all about liberty. I tried to argue in that column that libertarianism's classical-liberal intellectual ancestors were deeply concerned about equality in addition to their obvious commitment to liberty. Apparently I was unsuccessful, so this week I want to go at these issues from a somewhat different angle.
> At the core of classical-liberal arguments, especially in the nineteenth century, was what economists Sandra Peart and David Levy call "analytical egalitarianism." Classical liberals, going back at least as far as John Locke, began their analysis of the social world by assuming that human beings were equal both in their moral standing (everyone's preferences count equally) and in their capacity for making economic decisions. As Adam Smith phrased it, there was no difference between the street porter and the philosopher.
> Peart and Levy contrast "analytical egalitarianism" with what they call "analytical hierarchicalism," in which some people are thought to be different from others and therefore, in the view of those at the time, superior or inferior. Such differences might be attributed to any variety of inborn traits, from race to ethnicity to gender. By contrast, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and other classical liberals believed that the observed differences among human beings were not due to inborn traits and capacities, but rather to factors such as incentives, luck, and history, as Peart and Levy put it. In the view of most early classical liberals, no inborn trait or capacity consigns some groups to inferiority while marking others for superiority. In understanding the social world, we must treat people as equalwith respect to the things that matter for our theories and therefore for the policy conclusions that emerge from them.Racial EqualityAs Levy demonstrated in an earlier book, this mattered at a practical level in the nineteenth-century debates over racial equality. Classical liberals such as Mill supported racial equality because they believed race was irrelevant to people's moral standing and capacity for choice. Classical economics assumed its models applied to all human beings, including the theorists themselves. They believed that free markets and a free society were desirable because all people were equal and capable of acting in the way their theories described, leading to the peaceful and prosperous world they promised. By contrast the Romantic critics of capitalism hated it for exactly those reasons: Their starting point was the assumption of hierarchy, specifically among the races, and they understood correctly that free markets would undermine that hierarchy, which is why they opposed it. This is also why the Romantics called economics the "dismal science" -- they saw a future without hierarchy as dismal. (See David Levy'sFreemanarticleon the subject.)
> If there really were morally relevant differences among human beings, or if some groups were unable to engage in reasonably rational decision-making, it would be easier to construct an argument that these humans should ruled by their superiors -- and this is precisely the argument that a good number of critics of classical liberalism constructed. They wanted the State to treat some people differently from others because some groups were not equal to others in their capacity for free choice. Lest you think this went on only in the nineteenth century, these views manifested themselves again in the early twentieth century, asProgressive Era critics of capitalism used eugenic argumentsto limit the economic rights of nonwhites and women.Two PrinciplesThe classical-liberal argument for freedom waspremisedon equality, both in people's moral worth and in their capacity for free choice. In other words, the arguments for equalitycame first and the desirability of liberty followed from them. (See also Roderick Long's"Liberty: The Other  Equality.") Classical liberalism's critics denied that people should be free because they denied that people were equal. It was classical liberalism that defended the principles of both equality and freedom.
> No doubt the concept of equality has been altered in the last 150 years. Too often it is used to mean "equalizing outcomes" by the hand of the State as opposed to treating people equally and accepting that unequal, but just and socially desirable, outcomes will result. Libertarians who rightly defend such inequalities of outcomes need to recognize that those are only possible in a world where the assumption of analytical egalitarianism operates and where the State treats all humans as having equal moral standing and equal capacity for free choice. Equality should not be a dirty word for libertarians since equality of liberty and equality before the law are in our intellectual DNA. Equality is one of our foundational concepts without which the argument for freedom would be that much weaker, if not nonexistent.I thank Aeon Skoble for comments on an earlier draft.http://www.thefreemanonline.org/headline/we-should-be-free-because-we-are-equal/

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Re: Number One? 20 Not So Good Categories That the United States Leads the World In

The U.S. remains the most powerful nation in the world.

Americans make up less than 5% of the world's population, yet the U.S.
leads the world in Nobel Prize-winners, the number of billionaires,
and the number of Olympic medals. We grant the most patents and
produce the most energy and electricity. We have the most Internet
users and the most roads, airports and railway tracks.

MILITARY. U.S. weapons and equipment are the most advanced in the
world, and the U.S. spends almost as much on the military as all other
nations combined. We have more deliverable nuclear weapons than anyone
else, and we also lead the world in the value of the arms we sell to
other governments.

TRADE. We lead the world in total imports.
The Global Innovation Index, a ranking of 130 countries, calls the US
the world's number one innovator.

ECONOMY. The U.S. has the largest gross domestic product ($13.3
trillion) and the largest gold reserves (worth nearly $158 billion).

ENERGY. The United States leads all nations in the consumption of oil,
using a quarter of the world's annual supply. In our search for
alternative energy sources, the U.S. is first in the production of
nuclear and geothermal energy.

CRIME PREVENTION. Similarly, the U.S. has a greater rate of
incarceration than any other nation.
Upholding the law is what separates us from the other animals on the
planet.

HEALTH. In the realm of health, the United States has the most access
to clean water and sanitation facilities. We spend more money per
person on health care a year than any country, and a greater
percentage of our gross domestic product goes to health care.


On Jul 7, 8:39 am, MJ <micha...@america.net> wrote:
> Number One? 20 Not So Good Categories That the United States Leads the World InEconomic Collapse BlogIs the United States "number one"? Many Americans take deep pride in their nation and the truth is that the U.S. has a lot going for it. The United States has the largest economy in the world. The United States also has the most powerful military on the entire planet. The United States has produced most of the greatest movies that the world has ever seen. But the United States is also number one in a lot of categories that are not go great. If we ever want to turn this country around, we need to be very honest with ourselves. We need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and realize that it is not a good thing that we are number one in divorce, drug addiction, debt, obesity, car thefts, murders and total crimes. We have become a slothful, greedy, decadent nation that is exhibiting signs of advanced decay. Until we understand just how bad our problems really are, we won't be able to come up with the solutions that we need.
> A lot of people that write articles like this have a deep hatred for America. But that is not the case with me. I love the United States. I love the American people. America is like an aging, bloated rock star that has become addicted to a dozen different drugs. America is a shadow of its former self and it desperately needs to wake up before it plunges into oblivion.
> If you do not believe that America is in bad shape, just read the list below. The following are 20 not so good categories that the United States leads the world in....#1The United States hasthe highest incarceration ratein the world and thelargest total prison populationon the entire globe.#2According toNationMaster.com, the United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.#3The United States hasthe highest divorce rateon the globe by a wide margin.#4The United States is tied with the U.K. forthe most hours of television watched per personeach week.#5The United States hasthe highest rate of illegal drug useon the entire planet.#6There are more car thefts in the United States each year than anywhere else in the worldby far.#7There are morereported rapesin the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.#8There are morereported murdersin the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.#9There are moretotal crimesin the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.#10The United States also hasmore police officersthan anywhere else in the world.#11The United States spends much more on health careas a percentage of GDPthan any other nation on the face of the earth.#12The United States hasmore people on pharmaceutical drugsthan any other country on the planet.#13The percentage of women taking antidepressants in Americais higherthan in any other country in the world.#14Americans havemore student loan debtthan anyone else in the world.#15More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe.89 percentis made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.#16The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world every single year. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficitof 6.1 trillion dollarswith the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balanceevery single yearsince 1976.#17The United States spends7 times moreon the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATOcombined.#18The United States hasfar more foreign military basesthan any other country does.#19The United States hasthe most complicated tax systemin the entire world.#20The U.S. has accumulated the biggestnational debtthat the world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now, U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of$40,000 per second.
> So are you convinced that we are in trouble yet?
> The truth is that America has changed. Most of us don't even say hello to our neighbors anymore.
> In fact, we have become so self-involved that many of us don't even notice when someone around us dies.
> Just consider the following two examples.USA Todayrecently reported on the body of a dead woman that was not found for approximately a year even though a whole bunch of people walked right past the car where she died....Bank contractors, inspectors and even the new owner of a foreclosed home walked past the silver Chevy Nova in the garage numerous times before discovering the former homeowner – dead on the front seat.In an even more shocking case,the CBS affiliate in Bostonrecently reported that a dead woman was lying on the bottom of a public pool for two days while large numbers of people swam right over her. How in the world could something like this possibly happen?....It's a mystery as murky as the water at Veteran's Memorial swimming pool in Fall River public pool: how did swimmers, lifeguards, or inspectors not notice a woman's body at the bottom of the pool for a few days?Marie Joseph, 36, was last seen at the pool on Sunday. The pool was open to the public Monday and Tuesday with six lifeguards on duty, and no one noticed the body under 12 feet of water.Most Americans have become so self-involved that they barely even notice anyone other than their family and close friends.
> The love of most Americans is growing cold and whenthe collapse of the U.S. economyhappens it is just going to make things worse. Instead of working as a community, most Americans will only be concerned with making sure that their own needs are taken care of.
> The United States was once the most blessed nation on the face of the earth, but now we are literally falling to pieces.
> Does anyone have any ideas about why this could be happening?http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/number-one-20-not-so-good-categories-that-the-united-states-leads-the-world-in

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We Should Be Free Because We Are Equal


The Calling
We Should Be Free Because We Are Equal
You can't be one without the other.
Steven Horwitz
Posted July 07, 2011

Last week's column, " The Other Principle of Classical Liberalism," generated some interesting comments, as did similar arguments I made at Bleeding Heart Libertarians and on my Facebook page. One criticism raised was that libertarianism has little to do with equality because it's all about liberty. I tried to argue in that column that libertarianism's classical-liberal intellectual ancestors were deeply concerned about equality in addition to their obvious commitment to liberty. Apparently I was unsuccessful, so this week I want to go at these issues from a somewhat different angle.

At the core of classical-liberal arguments, especially in the nineteenth century, was what economists Sandra Peart and David Levy call "analytical egalitarianism." Classical liberals, going back at least as far as John Locke, began their analysis of the social world by assuming that human beings were equal both in their moral standing (everyone's preferences count equally) and in their capacity for making economic decisions. As Adam Smith phrased it, there was no difference between the street porter and the philosopher.

Peart and Levy contrast "analytical egalitarianism" with what they call "analytical hierarchicalism," in which some people are thought to be different from others and therefore, in the view of those at the time, superior or inferior. Such differences might be attributed to any variety of inborn traits, from race to ethnicity to gender. By contrast, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and other classical liberals believed that the observed differences among human beings were not due to inborn traits and capacities, but rather to factors such as incentives, luck, and history, as Peart and Levy put it. In the view of most early classical liberals, no inborn trait or capacity consigns some groups to inferiority while marking others for superiority. In understanding the social world, we must treat people as equal with respect to the things that matter for our theories and therefore for the policy conclusions that emerge from them.


Racial Equality

As Levy demonstrated in an earlier book, this mattered at a practical level in the nineteenth-century debates over racial equality. Classical liberals such as Mill supported racial equality because they believed race was irrelevant to people's moral standing and capacity for choice. Classical economics assumed its models applied to all human beings, including the theorists themselves. They believed that free markets and a free society were desirable because all people were equal and capable of acting in the way their theories described, leading to the peaceful and prosperous world they promised. By contrast the Romantic critics of capitalism hated it for exactly those reasons: Their starting point was the assumption of hierarchy, specifically among the races, and they understood correctly that free markets would undermine that hierarchy, which is why they opposed it. This is also why the Romantics called economics the "dismal science" -- they saw a future without hierarchy as dismal. (See David Levy's Freeman article on the subject.)

If there really were morally relevant differences among human beings, or if some groups were unable to engage in reasonably rational decision-making, it would be easier to construct an argument that these humans should ruled by their superiors -- and this is precisely the argument that a good number of critics of classical liberalism constructed. They wanted the State to treat some people differently from others because some groups were not equal to others in their capacity for free choice. Lest you think this went on only in the nineteenth century, these views manifested themselves again in the early twentieth century, as Progressive Era critics of capitalism used eugenic arguments to limit the economic rights of nonwhites and women.


Two Principles

The classical-liberal argument for freedom was premised on equality, both in people's moral worth and in their capacity for free choice. In other words, the arguments for equality came first and the desirability of liberty followed from them. (See also Roderick Long's "Liberty: The Other  Equality.") Classical liberalism's critics denied that people should be free because they denied that people were equal. It was classical liberalism that defended the principles of both equality and freedom.

No doubt the concept of equality has been altered in the last 150 years. Too often it is used to mean "equalizing outcomes" by the hand of the State as opposed to treating people equally and accepting that unequal, but just and socially desirable, outcomes will result. Libertarians who rightly defend such inequalities of outcomes need to recognize that those are only possible in a world where the assumption of analytical egalitarianism operates and where the State treats all humans as having equal moral standing and equal capacity for free choice. Equality should not be a dirty word for libertarians since equality of liberty and equality before the law are in our intellectual DNA. Equality is one of our foundational concepts without which the argument for freedom would be that much weaker, if not nonexistent.

I thank Aeon Skoble for comments on an earlier draft.

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/headline/we-should-be-free-because-we-are-equal/

Re: CAYLEE'S LAW PETITION

I can't believe you are forwarding this kind of a thing Bruce.
 


 
On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Bruce Majors <majors.bruce@gmail.com> wrote:


---------- Forwarded message ---

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