Via Andrew Roth

Interesting, just as Flake calls for an Earmark moratorium, he gets cut off.

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

God help us if Hillary is elected…
Congress approves Internet-tax moratorium
The House unanimously approved a seven-year extension of a moratorium on Internet-access taxes, which the Senate passed last week. The move cleared the way for President Bush to sign it before the current ban expires Thursday.
For consumers, the legislation largely maintains the status quo: No Internet-access […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

The latest Zogby poll has bad news for those of us who think that preemptive military action against Iran would portend worse consequences for the United States than the Iraq War has:
A majority of likely voters – 52% – would support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon, and 53% […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

The News Virginian, a major newspaper in Virginia’s 24th district, has officially endorsed Libertarian candidate Arin Sime. Sime is running for the Va. Senate in the 24th district.

While we do not expect a victory, Sime gets our vote. Fresh thinking such as his is a rarity in an era of knee-jerk, party-line politics…Our support of Sime is not so much a reflection of Hanger [Sime’s Republican opponent] as it is driven by an interest in a candidate whose approach reaches outside traditional boundaries.

-The News Virginian, Oct. 31, 2007

A copy of the article is listed below:

Click HERE for Arin’s blog announcement.

From US Libertarian Party

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

A useful thought for My Lord the Archbish of York, who today insisted that we should all buy Fairtrade chocolate. In praise of sweatshops.

The direct result was that Bangladeshi textile factories stopped employing children. But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets — and that a significant number were forced into prostitution.

One of the reasons for increasing inequality is what Simon Baron Cohen calls assortative mating. Will the egalitarians now insist that we should not be free to marry as we wish as a result?

The problem the poor have is that they’re poor: they don’t have enough money. So the solution is to give them more money, yes, not give them things?

On the subject of poverty, it looks like as a nation we’re not going to be as rich in the future as we could have been before the Government started “helping”.

The justification for much of that “help” is well explained here.

Politicians might not be the brightest blades in the knife drawer? Really, who would have thought it?

And finally, the 688 page report on issuing too many reports.

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

In case, like me, you missed The Tonight Show last night and forgot to TiVo it, here’s the video of the Congressman’s appearance last night:

All in all, more substantive that I would’ve expected from late-night television. And, I’m fairly certain that this is first time the term “Austrian Economics” has been mentioned on late […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

There’s been much blogosphere commentary on an article earlier this week from Rasmussen Reports showing that Hillary Clinton only leads Ron Paul by ten percentage points in the most recent, and first to my knowledge, head-to-head matchup poll between them.
Rasmussen contends that the poll says more about Clinton than it does about Paul:
First, because just […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

So is that pumpkin you bought over the weekend something you intend to eat, or is it just a decoration.
If you live in Iowa, it apparently makes a difference:
The Iowa Department of Revenue is taxing jack-o’-lanterns this Halloween. The new department policy was implemented after officials decided that pumpkins are used primarily for Halloween decorations, […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

An article at The Volokh Conspiracy pointed me to a month-old profile of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and, in particular, his role in one of most pivotal events of the Second World War:
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago in 1941, Stevens enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 6, 1941, […]

From The Liberty Papers

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom

Now, here’s a tough one. On the Downing Street website, the petition opposing the Chancellor’s changes to Capital Gains Tax has accumulated over 15,000 signatures. “We the undersigned,” it says “petition the Prime Minister to Keep the CGT taper relief as a major incentive to enterprise.”

Humm. Normally I’m happy to sign any petition opposing anything that politicians do on the grounds that 99 percent of the time I’ll be opposing rank stupidity. This one I’m not so sure about.

Yes, I’m appalled that thousands of people who have built up a small business and want to sell it and retire in peace will face a rise in their capital gains tax bill. Taper relief meant that up to now, they would pay only 10 percent on the value of the business they had built up: from April they will be paying 18 percent. Not quite a doubling, but an 80 percent rise.

But then, I’d like to see a flat rate of capital gains tax, just as I’d like to see a flat rate of income tax. The complexities of these taxes has led to avoidance and evasion, making investment less efficient, discouraging people from work, and causing the tax authorities to introduce even more complicated regulations and even more draconian penalties in order to try to make the tax bite as intended.

So in fact I’m against taper relief – I’d just like to see a single rate of capital gains tax. But I would do that by bringing the whole lot down to 10 percent. Or less.

From Adam Smith Institute

Tags: Libertarian, Politics, Liberty, Freedom