Power can be rightfully exercised over someone else, against his will, only to prevent harm to others. His own good is not sufficient warrant.

The governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, is probably going to resign after being tied to a prostitution ring today. Details are sketchy, and Spitzer hasn't admitted much, but he has apologized and says he's let people down. Apparently he was (is?) a patron of a high-end prostitution ring that was busted recently.

Now... I'm not a Spitzer fan. I completely disagreed with many of his policies, and I won't be sorry if he resigns. However, I think it's ridiculous that prostitution is illegal. Why shouldn't women (and men) have freedom to sell sex? You can give it away, but you can't sell it... That doesn't make much sense to me. I know that Americans are prudish, but it's ridiculous for it to be illegal (especially when people who strongly condemn it, like Spitzer, are probably patrons).

Because prostitution is illegal, when prostitutes are victims of crimes they are often unwilling to go to the police. This is not only because they're afraid of going to jail for selling sex, despite being crime victims, but because there have been many instances of police threatening and abusing prostitutes. Outside Las Vegas, where prostitution is legal, not only is violence against the prostitutes negligible, but so are the rates of disease.

Ok, so you don't care about the well-being of prostitutes. Well, how about this: estimates say prostitution enforcement costs major cities an average of $7.5 million per year. In New York City, over $23 million is spent each year outlawing prostitution. After all, someone will always sell sex as long as there is someone else who's willing to buy. It doesn't matter whether it's illegal, people will do it anyway.

Any time the government makes something illegal, all it does is create an underground economy in that something- and spend a lot of our money in the process. Isn't it time we start asking asking whether imposing certain morals and values on everyone else is worth it?

The title of today's post is a quote by John Stuart Mill.

Whenever there is a paternal government, there is state education. The best way to ensure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.

Here are a couple of recent news stories that demonstrate just how wonderful our government school education is. (I'm just kidding about the wonderful part, by the way; if I had kids, they would definitely not be going to government schools.)

This first one is about the girl who mentioned Jesus in her commencement speech a while back. She's filing a lawsuit alleging her free speech rights were violated, because she was told she couldn't get her diploma unless she apologized. How great is that.... a student can't get her diploma because she mentioned Jesus in her speech. What if someone was offended?! What's the First Amendment again?! http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295432,00.html?sPage=fnc.national/education

It gets better. In this next one, three university administrators who were fired when they admitted lying to cover up the rape and murder of a student last year. All three got severance packages giving them a year's salary, and two will retire and collect pension and benefits. Gee... reading this you could almost think they weren't punished at all. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,289748,00.html?sPage=fnc.national/education

And here's the best (worst) of all: a recent study found that government school teachers' sexual abuse of childen is widespread, and most of the time nothing is done about it. There's nothing else really to even say about it, you have to read it for yourself to believe it. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303780,00.html?sPage=fnc.national/education

The point is: do you really want to entrust your kids to these sorts of people? The other point is, teacher's unions are horrible, horrible things. They're the reason why an administrator can cover up a murder and still get his six-figure severance package, and the reason why most of the molestors who pose as teachers continue teaching after they're caught. Parents should demand better for their children.

The title of today's post is a quote by Benjamin Disraeli.

P.S. In his Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx said government education for all children was of the utmost importance for purposes of indoctrination.

A democracy cannot exist permanently. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

In the spirt of today's dog and pony show, today's post is about voting. Specifically: there ought to be limits on who can vote. There's no legal reason why the right to vote can't be restricted, and there are many practical reasons why some portions of the population should have to stay home on election days.

The Constitution does not guarantee a right to vote (look it up yourself). The 15th and 19th Amendments simply prevent the denial of the right to vote on the basis of race or gender, resprectively. But you won't find anything that says everyone is guaranteed the right to vote. The Supreme Court said as much in Bush v. Gore, in fact.

With that in mind, some restrictions do need to be put in place. If you're accepting a government check, you don't vote. If you're living in government housing, you can't vote. Basically, if you're living off the fruits of someone else's labor- you have no right to vote. (With the exception of disabled veterans; after all, they actually did something for our country.) If you're sitting on your ass, not working, and you're too lazy to do anything but have kids or sit on the stoop and blame someone else for your failures- you have no right to my money. Or anyone else's.

Some people argue that this is too harsh. I disagree. These people have made their own choices, and they were bad ones. They shouldn't be able to keep voting for the candidates who will reward them for making those choices by giving them money. The Democratic candidates are falling all over themselves promising to raise taxes and proving that they'll be the one to help people not take care of themselves by having the government do it for them. It's ridiculous that instead of rewarding the people who work hard and do the right thing, the Democrats are rewarding people who do the exact opposite.

This misguided nonsense could be changed simply by revoking voting privileges from people until they are longer living off the government (and by government I mean taxpayers). They won't starve, but they'll no longer be able to vote taxpayer money into their own pockets in reward for contributing nothing to society. Let the Democrats court the people who are making good choices for a change. It won't make them happy to lose such a huge chunk of their voters, but it'll be great for those of us who can actually (gasp) take care of ourselves.

The title of today's post is a quote by Alexander Tytler. It has been edited.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

Apparently, the Supreme Court may take up the issue of what constitutes an "indecent broadcast" again, since it's been about 30 years since they last considered it. What the Court is being asked to address now is the "problem" of "fleeting expletives" - when Bono and Cher curse on live TV when they're accepting awards, for example. In the cases of both Bono and Cher, the FCC was inundated with calls from viewers and organizations who felt very offended that they, or perhaps their children, were subjected to expletives.

Who are these people? Problem one: they watch award shows. Don't they have anything better to do with their time? Problem two: they call and complain to the FCC. Who does that? Problem three: have they, or their children, never heard anyone say "fuck" before? Or do they just feel that if it's on The Sopranos or on their kid's video game it's fine, but on regular TV it's a problem? It perplexes me.

I feel the same way about the Superbowl halftime show that was a big deal a few years ago- the one with Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. If I understand correctly, it's ok for their kids to be up till 10 or 11 watching guys hit eachother, and it's ok for them to watch the two performers grind against eachother in a very sexual way... but it's not ok to see a nipple plate and part of a breast? It's puzzling. I don't agree with Europeans about much, but you wouldn't see people getting (hypocritically) bent out of shape about something so ridiculous over there.

And now, because people don't feel like facing reality and/or because they want TV to raise their kids for them, we're asking the government to erode our First Amendment rights some more. After all, we can't have our precious children hearing expletives while they watch their four unsupervised hours of TV a day. How wonderful. It's always enlightening to see how much our freedoms are worth to these people.

Here's the link to the article: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/03/03/court_may_consider_broadcast_decency_rules/
The title of today's post is a quote by H.L. Mencken.

Popular suffrage is in itself no guarantee of freedom. People can vote themselves into slavery.

Neal Boortz had some very interesting information about the costs of illegal immigration on his website yesterday, so because I'm pressed for time today I'm going to share it here too. It's also informative and all around good stuff (scary stuff) to know.

1) $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year. http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2) $1.9 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens. http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3) $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens. http://www.cis.org/articles/200/fiscalexec.html

4) $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English! http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

5) $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6) $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

7) 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

8) $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by the American taxpayers.http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html (Link not active ... was not able to verify this information)

9) $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

10) The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US. http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11) During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border. Homeland Security Report. http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12) The National Policy Institute, estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period. http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf

13) In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

14) 'The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States. http://www.drdsk.com/articles.html#Illegals

Total cost is a whopping... $338 BILLION A YEAR!!!

Incredible. Or should I say incredibile? Either way, something's very wrong with this picture.

The title of today's post is a quote by Frank Chodorov.

P.S. In case this piqued your interest, Boortz's website has very interesting news every day- stuff that you don't see on CNN.

The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation.

This is the best story I've read in a while:

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN2237297620080222?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&rpc=22&sp=true

To summarize, the Vice Chairman of GM told reporters last month that he thinks global warming is a "total crock of shit." He got a lot of flak from bloggers, and probably from environmentalist moonbats also. But he stands by his statement. I love it for two reasons: first, because he came out and said something that needs to be said a lot more often; and second, because he didn't back down when people got upset, as so many people seem to do. I say, good for him.

And while I'm at it, let me agree with him: all this global warming nonsense is a crock of shit. It continually amazes me that people are not only believe it, but are willing to accept all sorts of government restrictions and regulations because they believe it. In California, lawmakers are trying to make global warming be taught in schools and addressed in textbooks. Environmentalists are telling us we shouldn't drink bottled water anymore, and some are actually pushing for a ban. In San Francisco, lawmakers want to make it illegal to use your fireplace. Companies are falling all over themselves to "go green," whatever that even means. Car companies are being told that all cars are going to have to get 30 miles to the gallon in ~10 years. Environmentalist groups advocate carbon quotas (once you've used yours up, you wouldn't even be able to take an airplane flight). Oh, and now some Alaskan village is suing dozens of companies for relocation costs, because they have to move due to melting ice- because of global warming. And the list goes on.

Meanwhile, there are studies and studies done which prove that 1) global warming is not really happening and 2) any climate change that is occurring isn't caused by man. Did you know that the Earth has only warmed by 1 degree in the last 100 years? How about that temperature fluctuations are normal and have been happening since before man even existed? Or how about that polar ice caps aren't really melting: there's the same amount of ice as ever, it's just in different places.

If you don't know this, I'm not surprised. CNN doesn't report it, and most people are too lazy to do their own research. There's not enough time or space to discuss all the studies that have been done to disprove the global warming nonsense, but they are out there and easily found with a simple google search. In fact, more scientists believe that global warming doesn't exist than believe that it does. There's so much evidence out there to the contrary, it's unbelievable that people still think it's real. Of course, due to the laziness and ignorance of the masses, the mainstream media can ignore all the evidence and report what they want people to think.

If you want to know the real reason why this global warming hoax has been forced down our collective throats, just look at all the government restrictions and regulations that have been passed under the guise of preventing global warming. Once you recognize that the government (with the help of the mainstream media) is just trying to get you scared enough to give up your freedoms, you'll be most of the way there.

As has been my theme for the past couple of days: ignorance is a curable disease. Just pick up a book.

The title of today's post is a quote by John Shuttleworth, environmentalist (and nutjob?).

P.S. Did you know that 15 years ago the media was reporting that the Earth was cooling? Good book: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.

I saw on CNN this morning (I was at the gym, and couldn't change the channel to a better news station) that Clinton and Obama are making free trade a major issue in Ohio. Apparently Ohio has lost manufacturing jobs since President Clinton signed NAFTA into law, and the Democrats are both eager to show that they don't support free trade.

There are two issues here, as I see it. The first is econonmic: the government can't protect every industry or everyone's job. They can protect some industries, and so protect some jobs, but this will be at the expense of other industries. Take steel as an example. The government protects the steel industry (through trade restrictions), and steel workers' jobs are safe. But the steel industry needed protection in the first place because the U.S. just can't make steel as cheaply as some other countries can. As a result, the American auto industry has to pay more for steel (because they can only buy U.S. steel, not cheaper foreign steel) and has to lay people off to offset some of the added cost. At the same time the cost of American cars goes up to offset some of the rest of the added cost, while countries that are free to buy cheaper steel can sell their cars more cheaply. The American auto companies then lay off more jobs, because people are buying cheaper foreign cars.

The steel industy is just an example; the same effects are seen any time the government protects an industry. Politicans know this, and economists know this- but most Americans don't. The problem is that is takes years for the effects to be felt, and by that time most people won't connect the dots. This is wonderful for politicians, who can look like the champions of the working class for protecting an industry- and escape all the blame once the effects are felt.

The second issue is possibly even more distressing than the lack of basic economic knowledge evinced in this election season: the growing desire of most Americans for the government to take care of them. The Ohio example: they want the government to guarantee them jobs (and not just any jobs- the ones they want). If an industry is struggling and has to lay people off, they look to the government to end free trade and bring jobs back to that industry. (Apparently finding a job in a different industry or learning a more marketable skill is out of the question.) Compare the reactions to the Democrats, who want to "bring jobs back" (cheers), and to Mitt Romney, who said in Michigan that people need to face the fact that some jobs may not be coming back ("backlash"). People don't want to be self sufficient anymore, so they certainly don't want to be told that the government can't protect their jobs: they just want the government to take care of them. Nevermind that it is impossible for the government to protect everyone- most people don't know that and don't care to find out.

I'm really hoping that the people who are willing to educate themselves and who don't need the government to take care of them don't let ignorance win this election.

The title of today's post is a quote by Thomas Jefferson.