Sunday, January 30, 2011

NEW WEBSITE: Ontario Libertarian Party - The Party of Choice

Introducing the new banner for the new look website of the Ontario Libertarian Party.
The OLP is gearing up for its biggest ever campaign in the provincial election to be held on October 6, 2011. We need everybody's help to have an impact.
We have a committed, excellent organizational team, lots more candidates, and we are up against a provincial government that is financially and morally bankrupt. Worst of all, the chief opposition party, is not much different.
Ontarians have a chance to change the direction of the province and move Ontario from the nanny state/have-not province that we have become, under the leadership of Dalton McGuinty's Liberals, back to its rightful place as the dynamo of Canada.
Visit our site, contribute to our War Chest, and tell your friends.    

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Revolution

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable." John F. Kennedy









Thursday, January 27, 2011

Global warming is a marketer's dream

I always read the letters-to-the-editor in the paper each day. It's a reflection of the editor, and the newspaper's bias, as well as what the readers are thinking. Of course my choice of newspaper reflects my bias, and reading this blog post may reflect yours.
A letter from Glen Leis of Newmarket Ontario (a northern suburb of Toronto) was very insightful. Mr. Leis responded to this column in the Financial Post and his comments are worth sharing.

Climate change (the commonly used euphemism - I prefer global warming) is an ideal cause célèbre because it cannot be observed or measured in real time (you won't see: "Breaking News - Global warming is happening RIGHT NOW!"). No honest scientist would suggest that the record snowfall in the US north east this winter (2010-11), or the very mild Vancouver Olympics (2010) were actually caused by global warming. Those were weather events, not to be confused with climate. However, as Mr. Leis points out, because global warming cannot be definitively measured (in real time), (more and more) money needs to be sent to allow scientists to find a way to do just that.
The media (and Al Gore) however, are not scientists and they have no compunctions about saying that every hurricane, snowstorm, cold weather event, hot weather event, swarm of tornadoes, flood, every weather extreme, is somehow related to the ongoing crisis that is climate change. For them its like the War-on-Terrorism without the Jihadists, an ongoing story that can be milked day-in-and-day-out. Everyone knows who the culprits are, it's understood that global warming always underlies the event. To push that agenda, CNN now has "Extreme Weather" reports. And all of it sells TV time thank you very much!
Mr. Leis continues, the global warming scam, "creates a partnership between industry and government, paid for by the average taxpayer."
In Ontario we are blessed with government-subsidized solar and wind power generation, subsidized hybrid, and electric cars, in fact an entire green industry created by government fiat that could never exist without the crutch of subsidy it's so uncompetitive.
Climate change is a marketer's dream. It plays on fear as well as a person's desire to do the right thing. Put a hybrid label on a car, and people will buy it without thinking about the large expensive battery that will need to be exchanged within the car's lifetime. Call yourself a "green-politician," and people will blindly vote for you regardless of qualifications. That's how powerful the confirmatory bias has become.
Leis concludes by saying that this is "activism spoon-fed to the masses by corporations and governments." "Any movement that espouses massive transfers of wealth to the likes of Robert Mugabe and Communist China must be questioned."
I'm certain I have not convinced the followers of the Gorical, so strong is their zealotry. My real purpose is to save you and me a lot of misdirected expense. In Ontario election day is just nine months away. 

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

"This ain't Canada right now..."

More fallout from last summers G20 riot in Toronto.
The video below presents a scene that would make a civil libertarian cringe. The police officer is using his experience when he approaches the bearded young man dressed in black with a backpack walking around the downtown near the G20 conference.
The cop is profiling, a technique that I think needs to be used in the broader context of airport security searches and beyond. Does profiling work? Have a look at this article that explains why the Israeli security experience has been so effective for the past 40 years.
Back to the video below, yes it looks bad, but as George Jonas points out in the National Post recent events regarding the rights of individuals and their property have been far more egregious. What is the cause of our apparent loss of freedom here in the Great White North? Jonas thinks, and this may seem counterintuitive, it's the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He may have a point.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

"Factories of Death"

That is the phrase James Hansen used to compare coal-fired power plants to places like Auschwitz. Its welcoming front gate is seen there in the picture.
Is it any wonder why anthropogenic global warming skeptics have been called deniers since Hansen's unfortunate comment.
Coal has been used by people as a fuel since the Bronze Age, maybe earlier. It was the fuel that drove the Industrial Revolution which ultimately gave us the modern world, and it is still the fuel that is responsible for producing 40% of the world's electricity production, 69% of China's electricity production and 90% of American electricity production. Coal is going to be around for a very long time indeed.
Niel Reynolds points out in a recent column, that coal is still the future and Alberta is a laboratory in this link

Monday, January 24, 2011

School Choice

How can we make our schools better? Competition.
Spend 5 minutes and open your mind to other possibilities, watch this from ReasonTV.














Sunday, January 23, 2011

Evolution and Economics

An off-the-cuff remark last week about two of my favourite topics set me off on todays rant. I was at an Institute for Liberal Studies seminar at the University of Toronto. The theme for the day was "From the Great Depression to the Great Recession - How should governments respond to crisis?" One of the speakers, Professor Steven Horwitz, compared the evolution of the eye to Austrian Economics. Huh?
In the war between creationism and evolution, one of the most decisive battles was the evolution of the eye. The creationist argument is captured in the phrase 'a design implies a designer,' and the eye is an intricate design. The argument, often called the "watchmaker analogy," claims that there could be no random series of events (the inaccurate view of evolution) that could possibly result in a complex timepiece or an eyeball. Of course that view is held because creationists have a false understanding of the theory of evolution.
Evolution is directed (not random), yet directionless (without purpose), orchestrated but disorganized, and no intelligent designer is required, thank you very much. How? Natural selection is the mechanism of evolution that Darwin and Wallace discovered more than 150 years ago. The secret to Natural Selection is time, huge almost incomprehensible spans of time; that, combined with differential reproduction (selection), genetics, and variation has given us the diversity of species that inhabit this planet.
So how does that relate to Austrian Economics? Simple, proponents of the Austrian School of Economics advocate for the smallest possible amount of governmental intervention in the economy, remove the so-called 'intelligent guiding hand of government' and let natural economic selection operate freely.
The point is, if you can believe that the eye evolved by Natural Selection over huge spans of time, surely you can believe that economies can function independent of government regulation and intervention. Of course the analogy isn't perfect, but in the case of Austrian Economics time is not the secret, the secret is hundreds of millions (billions?) of economic transactions that occur within an economy, each transaction is directed by a presumably intelligent individual (or company). Each individual or company seeks to improve their economic position by their transactions. The sum total of the economic transactions, represents the productive abilities of the individual, the company or the nation. There is nothing random about that kind of economy and it is definitely purposeful. The most successfully adapted individuals or companies will thrive, and grow their value and wealth. Those not well adapted will fall away, their value and wealth assimilated by the survivors.
I can hear the statists among you mumbling their "what abouts." What about the poor, the indigent and so on? Look around you, if you live in Canada or the United States, our partially unfettered economies has lifted everyone, even the poorest of the poor here, exceed the wildest dreams of the poor in most other jurisdictions. It's not an accident and it certainly is not a result of intelligent design. Imagine if the economy was truly unfettered.

In the picture (thanks to Redmond Weissenberger) left to right: George Bragues (Business Program Head, University of Guelph Humber and a regular contributor to Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada ), Steve Horwitz (Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University) and Niels Veldhuis (Vice President Research, Fraser Institute)      

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Strange Bedfellows? Ralph Nader & Ron Paul Interviewed Together!

Obama equals Bush, two years later

See the picture? That is irony defined.
Reason TV demonstrates in the video below, that George Bush's war has become Barak Obama's war. No different, no hope, no change.
Where is the anti-war movement two years later? Has anything really changed?

The most distressing comment in the video is that the Republicans who started the wars, handed them to the Democrats, who will likely hand them back to the Republicans, possibly as soon as 2012.
Peace!