It’s A Deal
Happy approximate 5th anniversary to The Agitator.
Libertarianism
Trains, Planes, Roads and Ships
Kip calls senator lautenberg to task for calling for more subsidies for Amtrak:
How much more remedial can one make it: Amtrak loses money because people don’t use it. People don’t use it because people neither need nor want to use it. People are — gasp! — relying entirely on airplanes and roads.
……
So when Lautenberg says, “We cannot depend entirely on airplanes and roads,” what he really means is “I get a warm fuzzy feeling from the thought of having Amtrak, and that’s more important than any other use that you might have for your tax dollars.”
Amtrak, roads, planes (airports), public transit and shipping are all heavily subsidized at the federal, state and local levels. Non-Amtrak trains have been historically heavily subsidized.
I don’t pretend to know which mode(s) of transport would win out without tax subsidies but it is time to find out. Let’s eliminate all the tax subsidies and put the mechanisms in place to assure that the folks using a particular transportation service are paying the full cost per use.
It will take time but I suspect that we will see dramatically different answers rise up than we have seen with the centralized planning of the last 150 years.
An Amtrak like service may or may not be one of the answers.
The Whole Thing is A Disaster
Scott Thill aptly describes* the current state of the war on drugs:
The war on drugs is a fucking disaster, except for the law enforcement and prison industries, who make a pretty penny off its wrongheaded persecution of small-timers when white-collar cocks grift billions in wars we don’t need using the bodies of those they would save from the horrors of marijuana.
Unfortunately he forgets his own lesson:
Uh, first of all, we’re talking about differentiating weed from heroin and coke, so kudos to Riley for linking the two back together again in attempt to keep the guilt-by-proximity criminalization streak alive.
Sorry Scott, but what you said: the war on drugs is a fucking disaster. Sure, you might get pot legalized someday. You will, though, still be left with a war on drugs that is a fucking disaster perpetrated by a bunch of immoral thugs.
Isn’t it about time to remove the perps from power?
*Also cross-posted here.
The International Traveler
Kafka would be hard put to one up the folks at homeland security:
Under the proposed rules, orders by the CBP [Customs adn Border Patrol] to common carriers not to transport specific persons would not be based on restraining orders (injunctions) issued by competent judicial authorities. Instead,they would be based on an undefined, secret, administrative permission-to-travel (“clearance”) procedure subject to none of the procedural or substantive due process required for orders prohibiting or restricting the exercise of protected First Amendment rights.
I remember watching Sound of Music when I was a child and feeling my heart race as the Von Trapp family made its escape from Nazified Austria. I could never have imagined that a day would come when those wanting to leave the United States would be forced to “make a run” for the border to evade a myriad of obstacles placed by an American government in the path of those who wished to exercise their fundamental human right to emigrate.
That day has not yet arrived. But it will on January 14.
Don’t count on the Mexican or Canadian borders being your safety valve. The fences and the electronic surveillance can be just as effective at keeping people in as at keeping people out.
The newly powerful dems need to put the elimination of this star chamber behavior close to the top of their early 2007 agenda . If they don’t then a free people would be well within their rights to take the job into their own hands.
Orange Coast College Student Government Gets Rid of the Pledge
There will be no more reciting of the pledge of allegiance at Orange Coast College student government meetings:
Student leaders at a community college voted to drop the Pledge of Allegiance after a tense meeting in which one flag-waving pledge supporter berated them as anti-American radicals.
Orange Coast College’s student trustees voted Wednesday not to recognize the pledge, with three of the five board members saying it should be dropped from their meetings.
Board member Jason Ball argued that the pledge inspires nationalism, violates the separation between church and state with the phrase “under God,” and is irrelevant to the business of student government.
To which Edwonk suggests:
Since these student “leaders” have taken it upon themselves to make a “statement” by rejecting the United States Flag, I wonder if these same student “leaders” would be willing to make an even bigger “statement” by rejecting all government-supplied financial aid as well.
Nope, not until the government stops collecting the funds used for financial aid via taxation.
Update (11/21/06): It’s back for now:
At an intense two-and-a-half-hour meeting in the faculty lounge, the student trustees listened to — and often expressed — passionate opinions both for and against making the pledge an official item. In the end, by a 3-2 vote, the board opted to reinstate the pledge as an “opportunity” for any attendees who wish to recite it and promised to hold a forum or take an opinion poll in the near future to determine students’ feelings on the matter.
“In my view, this is a fair compromise,” said student body president Lynne Riddle, who suggested the compromise that the trustees accepted but is not a voting member of the board. “I feel strongly still that the board made no mistake. However, we have heard additional voices from students and the community.”
If they can create an environment that supports those who do and those who don’t choose to recite the pledge great. If not, then eliminating it was the correct choice.