So Cuba’s mulling over state-sponsored transsexual surgeries. Check this shit out:
Now President Castro’s niece is pushing for passage of a law that would give transsexuals free sex-change operations and hormonal therapy in addition to granting them new identification documents with their changed gender.
How about that? If you’re a woman in a man’s body, […]
From Hammer Of Truth
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
Bill Ferguson has one of those pro-nanny state articles up that tries to explain how we have to ban smoking… for the children of course. But what gets my goose is that he’s claiming to be a libertarian all the while:
That’s why this libertarian supports efforts to restrict smoking in public places not clearly designated […]
From Hammer Of Truth
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
"IRS headquarters will remain closed for at least a month", reports Businessweek.com, "to repair extensive flood damage that destroyed electrical systems and computer equipment, the agency said Thursday." Another sort of "invisible hand" at work perhaps? Hah! Pray for more…
From Strike The Root
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
The pediatrician asked six-year-old Johnny, who watched lots of TV ads, “Johnny, if you were given a couple of dollars and had to spend them, what would you buy?”
“A box of Tampax,” the boy replied.
“Tampax?” said the doctor. “What would you do with that?”
“Well,” said Johnny, “I do not know exactly, but it’s sure worth two dollars. It says on TV that with Taxpax you can go swimming, go horseback riding, and go skating any time you want to.”
From Adam Smith Institute
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
Few people noticed, but last week – significantly – the UK Treasury announced that Britain’s controversial Financial Services Authority (FSA) would get a going-over from the National Audit Office (NAO).
The FSA is the agency designed to keep banks, insurers and financial advisers in order. But it has grown into a regulatory leviathan. It costs billions to run: staff numbers (average salary: £56,000) have grown 70% in just the last two years. And the firms it regulates spend more billions on compliance – a huge burden on small firms in particular. It is exactly the sort of body that needs the NAO rooting through it, to see if all that money is being well spent.
But the FSA has always argued that it is a private company, because it is not funded from taxation, but from levies that it imposes on the firms it regulates: so should not come under official scrutiny. The government too tried to save it from inspection, saying that this funding scheme – though effectively a tax on all financial-services firms – means it “has no financial relationship with Government or Parliament and is not to be regarded as acting on behalf of the Crown”.
That is unbelievable dissembling. It is amazing what officialdom will do to avoid coming under the beady eye of NAO head Sir John Bourne, whose record in exposing its incompetence and inefficiency is truly legendary. However the FSA is funded, it is a public agency enforcing public laws, and should be subject to public scrutiny.
Eventually, thank goodness, the government has had to back down and let the NAO pore through the FSA’s management, methods and performance. Its report will not be restful reading. From what I know of the FSA, I am sure that Sir John will find it just as bureaucratic, incompetent, and bad value as many of the other arms of government that he is called in to assess. Watch this space.
From Adam Smith Institute
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
Next week’s Royal Society summer science exhibition is attracting lots of attention, especially the mind-reading computers covered by CNN and the Telegraph science editor, Roger Highfield.
Peter Robinson, professor of computer technology at the university, said: “Imagine a computer that could pick the right emotional moment to try to sell you something, a future in which mobile telephones, cars and websites could read our minds and react to our moods.”This is over-hyped; what the technology does is to read facial expressions. The computer program is fed data from a camera and tracks 20 facial movements which correspond to different moods. Actors have helped in the programming, and visitors to the show will be invited to do likewise. As with voices, there are small variations in the way different people do it, so the computer has to fine tune its interpretations as it learns.
One possible use is driver safety, with computers watching for complex expressions linked to confusion, boredom or tiredness. Another possible use is in smart ads, which will see when people look glum and try to sell them something cheerful like a holiday. Researchers
are also working with colleagues in America to develop a headset version of the system to help people who find it difficult to read others’ facial expressions and emotions, as happens with autism and Asperger’s syndrome. The headset would interpret other people’s moods and communicate them to the wearer.Of course it will not be long before police and security services think of new and distinctive uses of mood recognition technology. No doubt it will be connected to the ubiquitous CCTV cameras so that the authorities can scan us constantly and will know if any of us are feeling moods they don’t approve of.
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
Energy security rather than global warming is expected to dominate the current G 8 meeting. No sensible outcome is likely given the current level of political information and debate, and the use of climate and energy to drive other political agendas.
Commodity markets tend to be similar. They are persistently susceptible to instability, shortage followed by surplus, wildly fluctuating prices, with producers earning more from short supply rather than from large output. It’s hard not to conclude that Government intervention exacerbates intractable energy policy problems. According to Paul Driessen
US crude oil output has declined 43% since 1985, as demand increased by 31% and imports have skyrocketed to 58% of the oil we use (compared to 28% just prior to the 1973 OPEC oil embargo). Meanwhile, China and India’s booming economies have intensified global demand for oil. Political unrest and muscle-flexing in Iran, Iraq, Chad, Nigeria, Bolivia, Venezuela and Russia have generated jitters and further price hikes. Additional upward pressure on gasoline prices results from air-pollution laws that mandate 16 expensive specialized gasoline blends for individual markets, highly subsidized and hard-to-transport ethanol for broader markets, and a 54-cent tariff on imported ethanol. Not surprisingly, crude oil is now over $70 a barrel, and gasoline hit a national average of $2.90 per gallon in April.Congressional actions, including plants that provide essential backup electricity for the unreliable wind turbines that Congress and state legislatures promote, subsidize or even mandate increased demand for natural gas. So demand is up, while production has stagnated, and natural gas prices have soared from $2 in the 1990s to nearly $9 per thousand cubic feet today.
There is oil and gas aplenty off America’s Outer Continental Shelf, but legislators in thrall to environmentalists will not let them drill for it. Instead the drive is to promote dubious, expensive and unreliable energy sources which happen to be fashionable. There is no energy security to be gained from any of this.
In a few weeks, the same legislators will consider global-warming legislation that could push energy prices up another 20% for no perceptible environmental benefits. As Will Rogers famously observed, Every time Congress makes a joke, it’s a law. And every time it makes a law, it’s a joke.Things are no better elsewhere. As Irwin Stelzer says
Nor is there any reason to doubt that the political duplicity and irrationality that have characterized energy policies will continue. Opec’s cartelists will continue to pretend that they are willing and able to expand oil production to prevent prices from soaring. China will continue to pretend that it is not providing zero or low-cost capital to its oil companies as they compete with western oil companies for new supplies. And the environmental lobby will continue to pretend that some combination of conservation and renewable energy makes it unnecessary to build more “dirty” coal plants, or “dangerous” nuclear plants.All this expensive nonsense is threatening the future security of our energy. Politicians don’t seem to care. They charge like Gadarene swine toward the cliff, egged on by colluding grant-seeking scientists. Energy security might dominate the G8, but it will be astounding if anything good or sensible comes from it.
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
This story about a drugs bust at a drive-thru restaurant may get some folk chuckling but I am not getting the joke. One of thousands of examples, in fact, of how the war on drugs is a waste of time, energy and law-enforcement talent. At a time when we live with the threat of terrorism, one would like to think that priorities were a touch different on both sides of the Atlantic….
From Samizdata.net
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
In connection with my regular writing duties here (at one of the blogs that Alex Singleton was recently so kind about) I have been unable to avoid learning about the huge takeover battle that now surrounds Arcelor. I hazarded the guess over a month ago that Lakshmi Mittal, one of the protagonists, seemed to be doing okay, despite much opposition, and now it does indeed look as if he will win. Cécille Philippe’s latest piece…
From Samizdata.net
Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom
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