@reasonmag: Life for Half an Ounce of Medical Marijuana? http://ow.ly/2oKfi Draconian and perverse
2:17 PM Aug 12th
@wsjfree: Study Finds Illegal Immigrants Account for 1 in 12 U.S. Births http://on.wsj.com/bqzFPO They’re lawful citizens & should be so
2:12 PM Aug 12th
@IJ: Licensing Gone Wild: Monks face jail for selling caskets: http://iam.ij.org/8XXWEU
2:08 PM Aug 12th
RealClearPolitics – Wealthy Dems Stand by Obama (a class in themselves but not for themselves) http://bit.ly/cRM9wF
7:46 PM Aug 10th
Objections and Replies on Independent Commentary » FREE WHITEWATER http://bit.ly/cqcNIe
1:58 PM Aug 10th
@davidgumpert: Raw milk or no raw milk, why can’t we accept that people sometimes get sick from food? http://bit.ly/97IrOc
4:00 PM Aug 9th
….Most economists believe a dip back into recession — as well as an equally debilitating bout of deflation, or broadly falling prices — will be avoided. But many have nonetheless warned that the prospects are rising, and say the more probable scenario isn’t much more appealing: a protracted economic malaise with imperceptible growth and stubbornly high joblessness.
“We are mired in a jobless recovery, and the government has run out of ammunition to help out the economy,”said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at Cal State Channel Islands. “The current situation doesn’t look very good….”
Although I certainly can’t predict whether we’ll have a another recession, these reports bolster views that I expressed yesterday when posting about David Rosenberg’s assessment that odds of another recession (soon) were greater than 50/50:
It’s telling that no major analyst seems to be predicting better times soon.
It’s a national story now – Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times covers the Milwaukee Teachers’ Union’s demands and dubious legal basis for those demands —
The Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Assn. has gone to court asking a judge to order the financially strapped school board to reinstate coverage for Viagra, Levitra, Cialis and other erectile dysfunction drugs in union members’ healthcare plans. The union claims that excluding such coverage discriminates against the male gender.
In clearly less important news, facing growing benefit costs and shrinking revenues, the board in June had to lay off about 400 classroom teachers, the first such cuts there in decades.
At this time of stubborn national unemployment for millions, some silly people might question the wisdom of a labor union representing people with actual jobs launching legal action over a $20 pill to improve the functioning of a member of a member….
The school board claims the famous little starter pills are recreational, not medically necessary, and would cost the city $787,000 a year. Offhand, that seems like a lot of educators’ erections, but it’s also enough money to employ 12 full-time teachers of either gender.
John Merline asks, “Where Did All Those ‘Green Shoots’ Go?”
In an Aug. 2 op-ed headlined “Welcome to the Recovery,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that “we are on a path back to growth.” Eight days later, the Federal Reserve issued a report saying the “pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months.” The next day the Dow tumbled 265 points, and on Thursday initial jobless claims hit a nearly six-month high….
There’s nothing wrong with a little cheerleading. But there’s a real danger with all this “turning the corner, things are getting better, recovery is on the way” talk. If you don’t think so, just ask Herbert Hoover, who infamously claimed that “prosperity is just around the corner” right before the worst of the Great Depression.
At some point, someone is going to have to level with the American people about just how bad things really are and why, despite all the ministrations from Washington over the past two years, they don’t seem to be getting much better.
Merline’s column offers a “Timeline of Pollyannaish Economic Prognostications” along which he shows how ten predictions of better times were wholly at odds with actual conditions.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that Americans arent simply in the midst of hard times. They are in the midst of one of the most volatile political environments since World War II.The immediate cause of this volatility is clear enough to see. Just a few months ago, there was a chance that an improving economy and progress in the war in Afghanistan might calm national nerves and return the political world to a more normal setting before Novembers midterm elections.
Instead, trend lines in both the economy and Afghanistan now seem to be heading in the wrong direction, and that is producing a public attitude hovering somewhere between anxiety and apprehension. If hope was the watchword for the 2008 campaign, fear may be more apt for 2010.
I have no way of calculating the likelihood of another recession. More meaningfully, and without any predictions, one can see that present conditions are already hard for millions of unemployed Americans.
It’s telling that no major analyst seems to be predicting better times soon.
We can assure a return of better times sooner, however, if we reduce tax and regulatory burdens on ordinary Americans and small businesses.
Whitewater’s forecast calls for a sunny day with a high temperature of ninety-one degrees.
On this day in 1899, Alfred Hitchcock was born. Eighty years later, the New York Times recalled his life upon his passing:
In a characteristically incisive remark, Mr. Hitchcock once summed up his approach to moviemaking: “Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake.” The director of scores of psychological thrillers for more than half a century was the master manipulator of menace and the macabre, and the leading specialist in suspense and shock.
His best movies were meticulously orchestrated nightmares of peril and pursuit relieved by unexpected comic ironies, absurdities and anomalies. Films made by the portly, cherubic director invariably progressed from deceptively commonplace trifles of life to shattering revelations, and with elegant style and structure, he pervaded mundane events and scenes with a haunting mood of mounting anxiety.
In delicately balancing the commonplace and the bizarre, he was the most noted juggler of emotions in the longest major directorial career in film history. His distinctive style was vigorously visual, always stressing imagery over dialogue and often using silence to increase apprehension. Among his most stunning montages were a harrowing attack by a bullet-firing crop-dusting plane on Cary Grant at a deserted crossroad amid barren cornfields in “North by Northwest,” a brutal shower-slaying in “Psycho” and an avian assault on a sleepy village in “The Birds.”
Here the trailer from North by Northwest. It’s dated, but interesting, and the film is fantastic —
The Friday Comments Forum will be on holiday today, but back next week. Many thanks for your contributions, and the feature will be resume with a new topic on next Friday.
For today, there are more posts on the way. more >>
In A Libertarian’s Misplaced Attack on the Constitution, Ken Connor defends the common law — and later U.S. Constitution’s Seventh Amendment protection of trial by jury: “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”
Connor lakes libertarian John Stossel to task for an attack on tort lawyers, and on the tort law system — for litigating civil wrongs like personal injury — in America. Connor’s correct that the Seventh Amendment addresses civil lawsuits, including actions for negligence, etc. He contends that one should reject Stossel’s attack on tort lawyers, as it’s really an attack on the Seventh Amendment:
What this really boils down to, then, is a question of principle. With regard to other questions constitutional, conservatives (and libertarians, for that matter) argue that an exception should not be allowed to undo the rule. We shouldn’t revoke the 2nd amendment just because some individuals commit crimes with guns. We shouldn’t axe the 1st amendment just because some choose to exercise their free speech in a hateful manner. And we shouldn’t do away with the 7th amendment just because some tort lawyers and their clients make frivolous claims in court.
One can have tort reform (or more reform, so to speak, as we don’t seem ever to get it right) and trial by jury in civil cases. The two aren’t exclusive of each other. Still, for those who’d like to see a defense of current tort law, Connor goes to town (so vigorously I’d almost think he made his living as a tort lawyer). One sledom sees defenses of the current system, and Connor’s catches one’s attention.
Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics asks, Will Feingold Get Swept Away by GOP Wave? I don’t know if Senator Feingold will be re-elected; I do know that his possible defeat should leave libertarians with mixed feelings. For although we oppose campaign finance restrictions and a big (spending) government, in many other ways Senator Feingold has been a strong advocate of civil liberties.
Feingold’s defeat would leave civil libertarians with one voice fewer on many rights issues. (Most Wisconsinites know little about Feingold’s likely Republican opponent, Ron Johnson. They do know that Feingold has supported individual privacy rights against state overreach time and again. It hasn’t always made him popular; it’s made him right.)
In a way, this is a risk that President Obama’s sagging popularity presents for libertarians: we oppose his economic policies, but we see his administration offers good policies in other areas. In any event, movement libertarians have no personal dislike toward him. (I don’t understand why some dislike Pres. Obama so personally; he seems generally likable to me, and surely no less so than Sen. McCain. Quick disclaimer: I voted for Libertarian candidate Bob Barr in 2008, and Barr’s a curmudgeon if ever there were one.)
This is a conservative year; some liberal politicians will feel its sting. After November, however, many libertarians may find that they’ll have a harder road ahead, with fewer officeholders in support of their commitment to individual privacy rights. Having no alternative, we’ll push on. We’ve never been the big-crowd type, in any event.
We have become so regulated, and government has become so much a tool of particular businesses over others, that in Louisiana monks of Saint Joseph Abbey cannot even build and sell caskets for those who would prefer a simple casket.
Fortunately, the Institute for Justice is prepared to defend the right of a monastery to build well-made and simple caskets for those might prefer them. Were that defense not available, monks at an American monastery would find themselves unable to continue doing do what they’ve been doing for one hundred years.
(It’s not whether one style is better, but rather that people should be able to choose, and the monks should be able to satisfy some of those choices.)
Louisiana’s government may be under the sway of funeral directors seeking to maximize profits for themselves, and exclude legitimate alternatives for grieving families, but it’s a violation of Americans’ economic liberty. (It’s also a despicable collision between Louisiana’s politicians and avaricious businesspeople.)
Here’s a video that explains what’s at stake, with accompanying commentary from the Institute afterward:
The Institute summarizes the fundamental right that’s now threatened:
Can the government restrict economic liberty just to enrich a group of politically favored insiders?
That’s the question the Institute for Justice and its client, Saint Joseph Abbey of St. Benedict, La., have taken to federal court in challenging the constitutionality of Louisiana’s outrageous requirement that the monks of the Abbey must be licensed as funeral directors and convert their monastery into a licensed funeral home in order to sell their handmade wooden casket.
Under Louisiana law, it is a crime for anyone but a licensed funeral director to sell “funeral merchandise,” which includes caskets. To sell caskets legally, the monks would have to abandon their calling for one full year to apprentice at a licensed funeral home, learn unnecessary skills and take a funeral industry test. They would also have to convert their monastery into a “funeral establishment” by, among other things, installing equipment for embalming human remains.
On August 12, 2010 [today], the Institute for Justice teamed up with the monks of Saint Joseph Abbey to file a federal constitutional lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana to vindicate their right to earn an honest living. In a time of 10 percent unemployment and widespread economic pessimism, this case raises one of today’s most important constitutional questions: May the government restrict economic liberty just to enrich a group of politically favored insiders such as licensed funeral directors?
One of the freedoms we enjoy as Americans is the right to earn an honest living in the occupation of our choice without arbitrary government interference. Louisiana’s casket licensing law violates that right.
For more about the case, readers can visit a helpful resource page.
Best wishes for IJ client Abbott Justin Brown and for the monks of Saint Joseph Abbey. more >>
