The Humble Libertarian original

This is what's wrong with public education: Hell no, he won’t go. In a defiant raspberry to the city Department of Education — and taxpayers — disgraced teacher Alan Rosenfeld, 66, won’t retire. Deemed a danger to kids, the typing teacher with a $10 million real estate portfolio hasn’t been allowed in a classroom for more than a decade, but still collects $100,049 a year in city salary — plus health benefits, a growing pension nest egg, vacation and sick pay. Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo can call for better teacher evaluations until they’re blue-faced, but Rosenfeld and six peers with similar gigs costing about $650,000 a year in total salaries are untouchable. Under a system shackled by protections for tenured teachers, they can’t be fired, the DOE says. “It’s an F-U,” a friend of Rosenfeld said of his refusal to quit. “He’s happy about it, and very proud that he beat the system. This is a great show-up-but-don’t-do-anything job.” Accused in 2001 of making lewd co...

This is something we need to start taking more and more seriously. Looks like South Carolina's Attorney General is : COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - South Carolina's attorney general has notified the U.S. Justice Department of potential voter fraud. Attorney General Alan Wilson sent details of an analysis by the Department of Motor Vehicles to U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles. In a letter dated Thursday, Wilson says the analysis found 953 ballots cast by voters listed as dead. In 71 percent of those cases, ballots were cast between two months and 76 months after the people died. That means they "voted" up to 6 1/3 years after their death. The letter doesn't say in which elections the ballots were cast. The analysis came out of research for the state's new voter identification law. The U.S. Justice Department denied clearance of that law. Wilson told Nettles he asked the State Law Enforcement Division to investigate. Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Art...

Reuters : (Reuters) - Now bankrupt MF Global lobbied the New York Federal Reserve heavily to become a primary dealer, eventually succeeding after a delay sparked by a regulator flagging internal control problems. Thomas Baxter, the New York Fed's general counsel, revealed the regulator's behind-the-scenes dealings with the futures brokerage, including a personal meeting with former MF Global chief Jon Corzine, in testimony prepared for a congressional hearing on Thursday. The Fed delayed approving MF Global's application for primary dealer status after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission warned the Fed in April 2009 it had uncovered major compliance issues. Primary dealers are the financial firms authorized to deal directly with the government to help carry out monetary policy and distribute U.S. debt. MF Global was eventually given primary dealer status in February of this year. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has previously said it did not constitute a "seal...

Glen Allport writes : Much of the growing transfer of wealth to the rich is in fact only possible because of government coercion. Many of today's corporations (some portion of our military contractors, for instance) would not even exist in a free society, and those which did exist would have to be selling something that people (not government) were willing to pay for. But today, we don't have a free society, and government power is massive enough to make or break any corporation or industry. Government power is now being used to hand billions and even trillions of dollars to failed businessmen (many of whom failed due to serious fraud, as with "liar loans" in the banking industry) and to connected corporations and other groups. Today, government control of various industries (misleadingly called "regulation") enables bad corporate behavior, stifles competition, allows massive pollution to go unpunished, and raises prices to artificial and even absurd le...

A memorable demonstration followed by a simple explanation: what the Fed does is and ought to be illegal... just like it is for everyone else! This is a video I made back in September of 2009. Thought I'd repost it. Please excuse the goofy hat that I thought was cool: Apologies to the Secret Service. Please don't come after me... I'm NOT a counterfeiter! Promise! Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

There has been mixed responses to Occupy Wall Street by libertarians. Some see the movement as a positive, while others see them as little more than lazy hipsters. But libertarians must be sensitive to why people feel the way they do about issues. The occupiers point out a legitimate concern that "the 1%" control vastly more power and wealth than "the 99%", and corporations have accumulated more power and privilege than is healthy for an open society. Some other concerns and demands are absurd, but the heart of the matter is on track. The question is why has this happened? While many on the left are quick to blame a nebulous thing called "greed", or lack of regulation, the matter is more complicated than that. This calls for a Lord of the Rings metaphor. Let's say that Sauron, the big cheese bad guy of Lord of the Rings, is the corporate hegemony. The 1%. Most people in Middle Earth agree that this is a problem, but there are a few differ...

"The Obama Administration fast tracked Solyndra's loan application and now $535 million dollars of American tax payer money is gone along with 1,000 green jobs. How many more examples of green jobs failure do we need before we realize you can't centrally plan economic prosperity?" Hat tip: Young Americans for Liberty Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page

Bush 2.0: 100 Ways Barack Obama Is Just Like George W. Bush The election of President Obama was in no small part, a referendum on the administration of George W. Bush, and his victory was interpreted as a sound rebuke to eight years of open ended warfare, a vast and growing police state, the destruction of civil liberties, disregard for the Constitution, unchecked executive power, lies and broken promises, hypocrisy and arrogance, a lack of transparency in government, out-of-control federal spending, fever-pitch fearmongering, rampant corruption, and some really stupid gaffes. But what have we gotten instead? More of the same. A LOT more of the same. In fact, every negative aspect of the Bush Administration has come back with a vengeance in the presidency of Barack H. Obama. Everything the American people detested so strongly about Bush has not only characterized the presidency of his successor, it's gotten much worse. Don't believe me? The following is a list of 100 ways...

Sitting at Mafioza 's with a beer in hand, just a little south of Downtown Nashville, an establishment whose libertarian owner allows Middle Tennessee's libertarians to meet once monthly for "Liberty on the Rocks," I found myself both captivated and repulsed by the stories that Reason Magazine 's Radley Balko was telling me across the table. This was early last summer, shortly before I left Nashville to move to Washington DC, which Radley had just left. He had just moved to Nashville to work on a book he was writing about the horrific corruption in Mississippi's justice system. After hearing some grisly tales, I didn't have to ask why he moved to Tennessee instead of Mississippi to write the book: he needed to be closer to the state, but didn't quite feel comfortable living in it while writing this telling exposé. That scary. In this July's issue of Reason Magazine , Radley Balko shares some of these stories from Mississippi and elsewhere, and...

Whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, who warned the American people about the executive malfeasance of Nixon's administration during the war in Vietnam, had the following harrowing statement to say in a recent interview. CNN reports: 'In this interview, Ellsberg says, "Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, would feel vindicated that all the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal. " (Thanks to the Patriot Act and other laws passed in recent years.) And he says all presidents since Nixon have violated the constitution, most recently President Obama, with the bombing of Libya.' Read more at CNN . Wes Messamore , Editor in Chief, T H L Articles | Author's Page