:: walterindenver ::

:: Saturday, March 01, 2003 ::

Radley Balko,

...otherwise known as The Agitator, has a series of six posts detailing AG Ashcroft's anti-freedom actions. He summarizes:

Seems to me, one could have made one of two conclusions vis-a-vis Ashcroft at the time: either he's a racist, or he's a principled "states' rights conservative," willing to weather the racist label in order to uphold the principles of federalism.
Seems clear to me now that Ashcroft doesn't give two shits about states' rights or federalism (see the five posts below). Seems to me he's hellbent on imposing his morality on the rest of us, the Tenth Amendment be damned.
Draw your own conclusions.

As I've said before, there's no way anyone calling himself a libertarian can be happy with this administration. Balko's Ashcroft series is enlightening for those who think otherwise.

:: Walter 11:41 PM [+] ::
...

The Party of Principle

One of the reasons I remain a registered Libertarian is it's the only party I see taking principled stands on anything. A Libertarian Party activist wrote this letter which appeared in the Denver Post today.

Re: "Mandated primaries, conventions sought," Feb. 21 news story.
The Post's report on HB 1142 was misleading. It suggested that the effect of HB 1142 would be to force minor parties to have primaries. While this is true, it is like forcing a child to eat ice cream. Minor parties will be pleased to accept free publicity afforded by a primary election forced on them by state law.
This new law also would force counties to have otherwise unnecessary primaries at county taxpayer expense. Can you imagine requiring a primary in every precinct for the sole purpose of choosing the Libertarian nominees for governor and U.S. Senate? This would have happened in August of 2002 if HB 1142 had been in effect at that time. Yes, some counties would have had primaries for other reasons. But HB 1142 would have required a primary in every precinct of every county, even if there were no registered Libertarian voters in the entire county.
The House has passed HB 1142 and we await the Senate's decision. Should this law ever force a minor-party primary on the counties of Colorado, we Libertarians hope that citizens will remember that Libertarians vigorously opposed this law. We detest the idea of requiring taxpayers to fund a primary to select our nominees. We are quite capable of doing this ourselves without taxpayer assistance.
NORM OLSEN
Golden

To summarize, this bill would provide an ENORMOUS amount of 'free' publicity for the Libertarian Party but they are opposing it because it uses lots of public money. If you think taxation is theft you ought to stand behind your principle, and in this case the LP comes through with flying colors.

:: Walter 7:02 PM [+] ::
...

The Bell Curve

Atrios wraps up a five part discussion of the book by that name here. I added, in the comments (typos corrected):

I read the book. Or at least I tried to. I read through the first chapters as the authors laid out their case, and the more I read the more I found it to be irrelevant. So what if they were right? So what if IQ is an accurate predictor of economic achievement, or that IQ is largely hereditary? (I'm not arguing that any of that is true) What are the policy implications? They may have tried to make the case for dismantling the welfare state but it seems to me that they make the opposite case, that some people are less capable of caring for themselves and will need permanent state subsidized assistance.
Eventually I put the book down and wrote it off as irrelevant to intellectual debate or public policy.

That book certainly doesn't do libertarianism any favors.

You may remember the most controversial aspect of the book is the authors' attempt to tie racial disparities in IQ scores to genetic differences. To be fair this is a small part of the book, and I could never understand why they included it in the book at all. The most cynical explanation would be that the authors were racist and were trying to give racist theories a boost.

:: Walter 12:26 PM [+] ::
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