[O]ur masters mostly expect "educated" Americans to sit down and shut up (apart from perhaps expressing gratitude for whatever bread and circuses the ruling class might care to bestow upon them to produce a contented state).
That's the program for most of us. But there are always some who don't do well in the combination day care centers, minimum security prisons and bureaucratic money sinks sold to us as "schools." And an increasingly high-tech economy requires new layers of workers with skill sets that require more cultivation than such "public" institutions can provide.
Enter "school choice" programs, through which students (via their parents) can take "their" government funding to institutions other than the one-size-fits-all schools laid out by geographic districts.
[Read the rest of "'School Choice' is a Stopgap Measure for the Ruling Class"]
Anyone who doesn't live under a rock (or whose rock gets bombed periodically) knows that the US government spends more on its military than any other nation-state. A useful way of understanding how MUCH more: If the US "defense" budget was cut by 90%, it would remain the first or second largest military spender in the world (depending on fluctuations in China's military expenditures).
That 90% -- and then some -- is the single largest welfare entitlement program in the US government's budget, even omitting "emergency supplementals" for the military misadventure of the week and military spending snuck into other budget lines.
[Read the rest of "The Best Defense (for the Welfare State) is an Expensive Offense"]
And my first two op-eds at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism:
Capital punishment is incompatible with "limited government" in any meaningful sense of the word. If the state may kill its subjects -- not in the heat of the moment when life and death decisions must be made instantly, nor in actual defense of life, liberty or property, but merely in leisurely pursuit of revenge and "deterrence" -- what may the state NOT do to those subjects?
How can we plausibly dispute lesser state impositions like gun control schemes or the "individual mandate" requiring us to buy health insurance, having already cheerfully ceded power over life and death to the same authorities?
[Read the rest of "Capital Punishment Means Unlimited Government"]
Obama's public justification for the veto is that the State Department should be allowed to complete its review in its own good time. That's bureaucratic window-dressing. The real constituents for Obama's regulatory foot-dragging are environmentalists concerned about the pipeline's potential for disastrous leaks and spills, aquifer damage, etc.
But any excuse for the Keystone veto will satisfy the environmentalists. They don't care how Obama justifies it; they'll happily chalk it up as a victory for Mother Earth, move on, and continue to vote Democrat. So why not address the elephant in the room (pun very much intended) and openly side with libertarians against this GOP boondoggle on property rights grounds?
[Read the rest of "One Cheer for Obama on the Keystone XL Boondoggle"]
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