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241
General / Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty
« on: August 01, 2006, 03:50:01 AM »
Former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar Wins Friedman Prize for Liberty
WASHINGTON -- The Cato Institute today announced that the recipient of the 2006 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty is Mart Laar, the former prime minister of Estonia and main architect of his country's remarkable economic transformation into one of the world's freest and most dynamic economies.
...
Upon hearing that he had been chosen as the third recipient of the prize, Laar said: "I am very happy and proud to receive such an important prize. The Milton Friedman Prize is especially important to me as I am such an admirer of Milton Friedman's works and I am proud that we succeeded to prove in Estonia that Milton Friedman's ideas really work. This is not a prize for me but to all my fellow Estonians, who have made the Estonian miracle possible."
Throughout his public life, Laar has embodied the values of liberty and free choice recognized by the prize, and his dedication to these ideals helped him to lead his country to economic prosperity through a radical free market program.
Today, Estonia is hailed as a model for emerging democracies and is cited as an example that ailing Western European economies should follow too. Consistently near the top of the Economic Freedom of the World Index, Estonia is now a member of NATO, the EU and the WTO, with well over 90 percent of its formerly state-run economy privatized.
When Laar took the reins of power of the newly independent country in 1992, he was only 32 years old, and Estonia was struggling to heal from the wounds of Soviet occupation. Laar believed that the way to ensure success for Estonia was to cultivate freedom and self-determination. In only two years in office, he negotiated the withdrawal of Russian troops from Estonian soil and introduced the kroon, one of Eastern Europe's most stable currencies. He also instituted a flat tax rate, a move which has been widely copiedeven in Russia. Under Laar, Estonia removed price controls, discounted useless regulations, and saw the largest real per capita income of any of the former Communist states.
"I had read only one book on economicsMilton Friedman's Free to Choose. I was so ignorant at the time that I thought that what Friedman wrote about the benefits of privatization, the flat tax and the abolition of all customs rights, was the result of economic reforms that had been put into practice in the West. It seemed common sense to me and, as I thought it had already been done everywhere, I simply introduced it in Estonia, despite warnings from Estonian economists that it could not be done. They said it was as impossible as walking on water. We did it: we just walked on the water because we did not know that it was impossible."
...
http://cato.org/special/friedman/index.html
WASHINGTON -- The Cato Institute today announced that the recipient of the 2006 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty is Mart Laar, the former prime minister of Estonia and main architect of his country's remarkable economic transformation into one of the world's freest and most dynamic economies.
...
Upon hearing that he had been chosen as the third recipient of the prize, Laar said: "I am very happy and proud to receive such an important prize. The Milton Friedman Prize is especially important to me as I am such an admirer of Milton Friedman's works and I am proud that we succeeded to prove in Estonia that Milton Friedman's ideas really work. This is not a prize for me but to all my fellow Estonians, who have made the Estonian miracle possible."
Throughout his public life, Laar has embodied the values of liberty and free choice recognized by the prize, and his dedication to these ideals helped him to lead his country to economic prosperity through a radical free market program.
Today, Estonia is hailed as a model for emerging democracies and is cited as an example that ailing Western European economies should follow too. Consistently near the top of the Economic Freedom of the World Index, Estonia is now a member of NATO, the EU and the WTO, with well over 90 percent of its formerly state-run economy privatized.
When Laar took the reins of power of the newly independent country in 1992, he was only 32 years old, and Estonia was struggling to heal from the wounds of Soviet occupation. Laar believed that the way to ensure success for Estonia was to cultivate freedom and self-determination. In only two years in office, he negotiated the withdrawal of Russian troops from Estonian soil and introduced the kroon, one of Eastern Europe's most stable currencies. He also instituted a flat tax rate, a move which has been widely copiedeven in Russia. Under Laar, Estonia removed price controls, discounted useless regulations, and saw the largest real per capita income of any of the former Communist states.
"I had read only one book on economicsMilton Friedman's Free to Choose. I was so ignorant at the time that I thought that what Friedman wrote about the benefits of privatization, the flat tax and the abolition of all customs rights, was the result of economic reforms that had been put into practice in the West. It seemed common sense to me and, as I thought it had already been done everywhere, I simply introduced it in Estonia, despite warnings from Estonian economists that it could not be done. They said it was as impossible as walking on water. We did it: we just walked on the water because we did not know that it was impossible."
...
http://cato.org/special/friedman/index.html
242
General / Twilight Zone
« on: July 11, 2006, 06:23:03 PM »
You may agree with Vernon Robinson, You may not, but he does have an extremely creative and powerful ad on his side.
http://vernonrobinson.com/twilightzone3.shtml
Vernon Jordan is the Republican Candidate for Representative in North Carolina's 13th District. His ad, above, is truly refreshing and interesting.
Here is a quote from a campaign fund-raising plea:
I am the President of the Carolina Education Opportunity Fund, a nonprofit organization that provides scholarships to private schools for 250 children from low-income homes who would otherwise be sentenced to attend the pre-prison, pre-welfare, training grounds otherwise known as inner-city public schools. After graduating from the Air Force Academy and taking my MBA in Quantitative Methods, I served as an Intelligence Officer and Missile Combat Crew Commander for thirteen years.
Needless to say, I didn't amass any personal wealth when I was a military officer or when I was a college business professor at a public university for ten years or when President George H.W. Bush appointed me to a position in his administration or when I served on the Winston-Salem City Council for eight years. As for my wife, she works as a librarian at the public library. We now have three children, two of whom we adopted.
Simply put, we are people of modest means because I've dedicated my life to public service ever since I was an Eagle Scout.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralph Neas (People for the American Way) is the political assassin who is credited by liberals and blamed by conservatives for defeating President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Now Neas has pledged to do whatever it takes to take me out!
Neas' allies in the liberal media have already begun their vicious attacks. While the Fox News Channel called me "the new face of the Republican Party" and "a rising star," MSNBC host Keith Olbermann told his audience that my ads are so "bigoted" that I am the runner-up in his "the worst person in the world contest."
And Neas' fellow left-wing Democrat politicians have already begun their name-calling and ad hominem insults. While The Wall Street Journal called me "the next black Republican Congressman," the Democrat Party's nominee for Associate Supreme Court Justice called me "a good slave" and "an Uncle Tom."
http://vernonrobinson.com/twilightzone3.shtml
Vernon Jordan is the Republican Candidate for Representative in North Carolina's 13th District. His ad, above, is truly refreshing and interesting.
Here is a quote from a campaign fund-raising plea:
I am the President of the Carolina Education Opportunity Fund, a nonprofit organization that provides scholarships to private schools for 250 children from low-income homes who would otherwise be sentenced to attend the pre-prison, pre-welfare, training grounds otherwise known as inner-city public schools. After graduating from the Air Force Academy and taking my MBA in Quantitative Methods, I served as an Intelligence Officer and Missile Combat Crew Commander for thirteen years.
Needless to say, I didn't amass any personal wealth when I was a military officer or when I was a college business professor at a public university for ten years or when President George H.W. Bush appointed me to a position in his administration or when I served on the Winston-Salem City Council for eight years. As for my wife, she works as a librarian at the public library. We now have three children, two of whom we adopted.
Simply put, we are people of modest means because I've dedicated my life to public service ever since I was an Eagle Scout.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralph Neas (People for the American Way) is the political assassin who is credited by liberals and blamed by conservatives for defeating President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Now Neas has pledged to do whatever it takes to take me out!
Neas' allies in the liberal media have already begun their vicious attacks. While the Fox News Channel called me "the new face of the Republican Party" and "a rising star," MSNBC host Keith Olbermann told his audience that my ads are so "bigoted" that I am the runner-up in his "the worst person in the world contest."
And Neas' fellow left-wing Democrat politicians have already begun their name-calling and ad hominem insults. While The Wall Street Journal called me "the next black Republican Congressman," the Democrat Party's nominee for Associate Supreme Court Justice called me "a good slave" and "an Uncle Tom."
243
General / Tag over gang tags
« on: June 05, 2006, 05:42:47 AM »
Anybody tag FreeTalkLive.com over gang tags?
244
Photoshops / Jenna's Bush
« on: May 15, 2006, 12:39:36 PM »Damn, that's one *** First Daughter!
(I didn't photoshop this)
245
General / San Diego State University Libertarians
« on: May 03, 2006, 11:27:46 AM »
Are there any San Diego State University Libertarians out there besides me? On Monday I passed out a ton of fliers that said
"Deregulate Immigration
Open the Borders
Vote Freedom
Vote Liberty
Vote Libertarian"
www.lp.org
www.freetalklive.com
With a great little cartoon depicting an elephant and a donkey tying down the statue of liberty
Anybody from SDSU willing to join the cause of freedom?
"Deregulate Immigration
Open the Borders
Vote Freedom
Vote Liberty
Vote Libertarian"
www.lp.org
www.freetalklive.com
With a great little cartoon depicting an elephant and a donkey tying down the statue of liberty
Anybody from SDSU willing to join the cause of freedom?
246
The Show / If the state creates a law, and everybody refuses to follow it, what happens?
« on: December 19, 2005, 05:45:23 AM »
After listening to these FTL guys talk about civil disobediance as the only solution to paying taxes, I decided craft a paper that illustrates this issue especially focusing on George Washington and the Whiskey Exise Tax.
1776, The Beginning of A Hypocritical Republic?
By Joel Goldberg
The authors of the Declaration of Independence envisioned a utopia of freedom in the New World; they sought to prove to the world that a state could exist without perpetration of any of the illegitimate and intolerable acts performed by the King of England. Many of the Founding Fathers realized mans natural rights to personal property of all kinds including ones own body and land, and of mans natural authority over his own property. They pursued the construction of a federal government that would perform effectively without the infringement of any of these inherent rights. This important issue was later protected by the Bill of Rights in the drafting of the 1787 Constitution.
1765 was the year of the enactment of the British Stamp Tax, 240 years ago. The Stamps Tax was probably one of the most hated taxes imposed on the colonies by the British and it has been speculated by some scholars that if it had not been repealed the American Revolution might have happened an entire decade earlier and would have carried even greater support worldwide and domestically. The colonists inherited a revulsion of this kind of taxation from the Cider excise taxes in Britain that provoked riots in which protesters upheld the slogan Liberty, Property, and no Excise! So now that the colonists had left England in disgust, their liberties were again facing oppression by the Crown. This motive was not forgotten by the populace after the final success of the revolution, much of the citizenry probably felt something along the lines of the famous 9/11 slogan We will never forget. The right to decide what a man would do with his own property had been firmly implanted in the citizens of what would soon become the United States of America.
29 years later, in 1794, the Constitution had finished being drafted and the first couple of elections had been held, the United States was now a real, legitimate country with its own highly structured federal government based on the principles of Liberty and Republican Democracy. 1794 was a year of domestic rebellion by four counties of western Pennsylvania. In 1791, Alexander Hamilton levied many excise taxes in a plan for federal assumption of states public debts during the war in the preceding years, this rebellion was specifically related the enactment of a whisky excise tax. You see, the citizens were enraged with their new free republic that was allegedly formed specifically to protect its populace against undue seizure of personal property (which is protected under the 4th Amendment of the Constitution in the Bill of Rights). It seemed to them that they were lied to and abused, so these four counties refused to pay this whisky excise tax. American citizens generally understand that the US is not a military dictatorship, and that our government does not impose marshal law as something that is considered very appropriate. However, that is exactly what happened, 13,000 soldiers were sent by Washington to Pennsylvania to repress these rebellious citizens who refused to surrender their personal property to seizure by anybody, including the federal government. Now that the Redcoats were gone and were barred from oppressing, occupying and looting these early United States citizens, it seems that the United States government itself had taken it upon itself to fill the vacuum. Perhaps the phrase vacuum of power applies here, or maybe it was just that the Constitution was simply ineffective at securing the inherent property rights to the populace.
Maybe the whisky manufacturers simply felt that they were being treated unfairly or unequally or on different grounds than other American citizens to whom they were previously legally equal. Despite some of my misgivings with him, I think Aristotle says it best: Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons, and no government can stand which is not founded upon justice. If it was only the whisky or at least only whisky manufacturers being taxed, were they not being treated on different grounds, unequally and unfairly from the rest of Americas citizens?
The cider tax, the Stamp Act, and the whisky excise tax all had one thing in common: a 3rd party had put its guns in the faces of a certain group of people and faced them with the query Your money or your life. The very distillers who had fought the Revolutionary War for their own liberty and independence from invasive government demands and mercantilist style corvée were now being treated exactly as they had believed they had fought to be liberated from. The government that was not even involved in the regulation or the production of whisky at all in the first place was now demanding a portion of these distillers productive energy at gunpoint. In the early free market society that existed during this time in America, distillers often bartered for goods they needed and used distilled whisky as money. They since they had little cash, what bit they had they were careful to conserve to purchase goods that could not be bartered for. Larger distilleries seemed to actually support this excise as they figured it would cripple their small-time backcountry competitors giving them a stronger hold on the market, perhaps even delivering them with a nice secure oligopoly. Soon after the enacting of these excises, these primarily backcountry distillers were presented with wealthy tax collectors with their hands out at their doors; one arm with its palm out and open demanding the money, the other armed with a gun analogically speaking.
It seems that the very reason Hamilton and Washington decided to focus so closely on Pennsylvania is specifically because of these wealthy tax collectors. They had not sent 13,000 soldiers to Kentucky, the frontiers of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia because there were few people there who were even willing in the first place to be tax collectors whose physical and fiscal security was the goal the soldiers were given to protect. According to recent research, not a single person in these areas even paid the whisky tax at all. Pennsylvania had an army of wealthy tax collectors whose homes were being looted, as insurrectionists seized back their property from the perceived government backed thieves. Luckily, for these rebellious re-revolutionists, their wishes were granted during the Jeffersonian Revolution which began after his 1800 election in which Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party eliminated the entirety of the Federalist excise tax program. What is interesting to learn is that the entire American backcountry upheld a non-violent refusal to pay the whisky excise tax, no local juries could be found to bring any tax delinquents to trial, and this widespread popularly supported rebellion was successful with the eventual repeal of the entire excise tax program. This lasted (with exception to the brief excise taxes during the War of 1812) until the Civil War when the North altered the Constitution by centralizing the government and enacting a permanent sin tax on liquor and tobacco.
To say nothing of the issues of slavery and oppressive and questionable Indian land deals, the United States effectively turned its back upon its roots almost as soon as it became an entity of domestic strength. It seems that greedy government agents only wanted more cash to line their unproductive pockets and were prepared to slay thousands of their nations own citizens in order to get it. Luckily, the yearn for freedom lasted long enough to reverse some questionable federal policies, although it seems that today their effort has been forgotten, reversed, and betrayed. So long to Jeffersons and his electorates dreams of economic liberty.
1776, The Beginning of A Hypocritical Republic?
By Joel Goldberg
The authors of the Declaration of Independence envisioned a utopia of freedom in the New World; they sought to prove to the world that a state could exist without perpetration of any of the illegitimate and intolerable acts performed by the King of England. Many of the Founding Fathers realized mans natural rights to personal property of all kinds including ones own body and land, and of mans natural authority over his own property. They pursued the construction of a federal government that would perform effectively without the infringement of any of these inherent rights. This important issue was later protected by the Bill of Rights in the drafting of the 1787 Constitution.
1765 was the year of the enactment of the British Stamp Tax, 240 years ago. The Stamps Tax was probably one of the most hated taxes imposed on the colonies by the British and it has been speculated by some scholars that if it had not been repealed the American Revolution might have happened an entire decade earlier and would have carried even greater support worldwide and domestically. The colonists inherited a revulsion of this kind of taxation from the Cider excise taxes in Britain that provoked riots in which protesters upheld the slogan Liberty, Property, and no Excise! So now that the colonists had left England in disgust, their liberties were again facing oppression by the Crown. This motive was not forgotten by the populace after the final success of the revolution, much of the citizenry probably felt something along the lines of the famous 9/11 slogan We will never forget. The right to decide what a man would do with his own property had been firmly implanted in the citizens of what would soon become the United States of America.
29 years later, in 1794, the Constitution had finished being drafted and the first couple of elections had been held, the United States was now a real, legitimate country with its own highly structured federal government based on the principles of Liberty and Republican Democracy. 1794 was a year of domestic rebellion by four counties of western Pennsylvania. In 1791, Alexander Hamilton levied many excise taxes in a plan for federal assumption of states public debts during the war in the preceding years, this rebellion was specifically related the enactment of a whisky excise tax. You see, the citizens were enraged with their new free republic that was allegedly formed specifically to protect its populace against undue seizure of personal property (which is protected under the 4th Amendment of the Constitution in the Bill of Rights). It seemed to them that they were lied to and abused, so these four counties refused to pay this whisky excise tax. American citizens generally understand that the US is not a military dictatorship, and that our government does not impose marshal law as something that is considered very appropriate. However, that is exactly what happened, 13,000 soldiers were sent by Washington to Pennsylvania to repress these rebellious citizens who refused to surrender their personal property to seizure by anybody, including the federal government. Now that the Redcoats were gone and were barred from oppressing, occupying and looting these early United States citizens, it seems that the United States government itself had taken it upon itself to fill the vacuum. Perhaps the phrase vacuum of power applies here, or maybe it was just that the Constitution was simply ineffective at securing the inherent property rights to the populace.
Maybe the whisky manufacturers simply felt that they were being treated unfairly or unequally or on different grounds than other American citizens to whom they were previously legally equal. Despite some of my misgivings with him, I think Aristotle says it best: Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons, and no government can stand which is not founded upon justice. If it was only the whisky or at least only whisky manufacturers being taxed, were they not being treated on different grounds, unequally and unfairly from the rest of Americas citizens?
The cider tax, the Stamp Act, and the whisky excise tax all had one thing in common: a 3rd party had put its guns in the faces of a certain group of people and faced them with the query Your money or your life. The very distillers who had fought the Revolutionary War for their own liberty and independence from invasive government demands and mercantilist style corvée were now being treated exactly as they had believed they had fought to be liberated from. The government that was not even involved in the regulation or the production of whisky at all in the first place was now demanding a portion of these distillers productive energy at gunpoint. In the early free market society that existed during this time in America, distillers often bartered for goods they needed and used distilled whisky as money. They since they had little cash, what bit they had they were careful to conserve to purchase goods that could not be bartered for. Larger distilleries seemed to actually support this excise as they figured it would cripple their small-time backcountry competitors giving them a stronger hold on the market, perhaps even delivering them with a nice secure oligopoly. Soon after the enacting of these excises, these primarily backcountry distillers were presented with wealthy tax collectors with their hands out at their doors; one arm with its palm out and open demanding the money, the other armed with a gun analogically speaking.
It seems that the very reason Hamilton and Washington decided to focus so closely on Pennsylvania is specifically because of these wealthy tax collectors. They had not sent 13,000 soldiers to Kentucky, the frontiers of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia because there were few people there who were even willing in the first place to be tax collectors whose physical and fiscal security was the goal the soldiers were given to protect. According to recent research, not a single person in these areas even paid the whisky tax at all. Pennsylvania had an army of wealthy tax collectors whose homes were being looted, as insurrectionists seized back their property from the perceived government backed thieves. Luckily, for these rebellious re-revolutionists, their wishes were granted during the Jeffersonian Revolution which began after his 1800 election in which Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party eliminated the entirety of the Federalist excise tax program. What is interesting to learn is that the entire American backcountry upheld a non-violent refusal to pay the whisky excise tax, no local juries could be found to bring any tax delinquents to trial, and this widespread popularly supported rebellion was successful with the eventual repeal of the entire excise tax program. This lasted (with exception to the brief excise taxes during the War of 1812) until the Civil War when the North altered the Constitution by centralizing the government and enacting a permanent sin tax on liquor and tobacco.
To say nothing of the issues of slavery and oppressive and questionable Indian land deals, the United States effectively turned its back upon its roots almost as soon as it became an entity of domestic strength. It seems that greedy government agents only wanted more cash to line their unproductive pockets and were prepared to slay thousands of their nations own citizens in order to get it. Luckily, the yearn for freedom lasted long enough to reverse some questionable federal policies, although it seems that today their effort has been forgotten, reversed, and betrayed. So long to Jeffersons and his electorates dreams of economic liberty.