From the AZ Secretary of State Website
General Election Info
Propositions
General Election People --> A more useful list with links to candidates websites: The Green Papers
The Freedom Index for National Politics (Look up Kirkpatrick & McCain, it's useful to look up McCain when he was working during Bush Era)
The Financial Scorecard. This is also for national politics.
The Report Card for local politics. For Bennett see this old report card from 2006. The 2005 was better but not by much.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Marijuana
As Arizona votes to legalize medical marijuana it necessitates understanding how we can become free by making drugs freer.
Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies
On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not "legalized." Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense.
While other states in the European Union have developed various forms of de facto decriminalization — whereby substances perceived to be less serious (such as cannabis) rarely lead to criminal prosecution — Portugal remains the only EU member state with a law explicitly declaring drugs to be "decriminalized." Because more than seven years have now elapsed since enactment of Portugal's decriminalization system, there are ample data enabling its effects to be assessed...
Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies
On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not "legalized." Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense.
While other states in the European Union have developed various forms of de facto decriminalization — whereby substances perceived to be less serious (such as cannabis) rarely lead to criminal prosecution — Portugal remains the only EU member state with a law explicitly declaring drugs to be "decriminalized." Because more than seven years have now elapsed since enactment of Portugal's decriminalization system, there are ample data enabling its effects to be assessed...
Anarchy = Practicality = Liberty?
Jesus the Anarcho-capitalist?
James Redford makes an interesting case.
The Stateless Society: An Examination of Alternatives
The practicality of anarchy.
James Redford makes an interesting case.
The Stateless Society: An Examination of Alternatives
The practicality of anarchy.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
We Are Not Free: The War On Ourselves
In the news we often see how the government is using scare tactics against its own citizens. You know the end of a great nation is coming when the government starts attacking its own citizens. We saw how the FBI has created "terrorists" groups in our own country and charge them with crimes and sometimes the people, if they're lucky, are acquitted. (See stories found in LewRockwell.com and http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/).
The latest of these incidents was the witch hunt on anti-war protesters.
The latest of these incidents was the witch hunt on anti-war protesters.
We Are Not Free: The System
One of my arguments against government is the system within it works. It operates in a monopoly of force and hence enables people do that which they might otherwise not do.
When people become cogs in a wheel they tend to do things they otherwise wouldn't, like not use force on others to get them to do something that doesn't even have any consequence. Or hurt someone because they are in a position of power.
A great example of this is a recent fire fighting incident where the firemen refused to put out a fire because the person didn't pay the annual fee (the firefighters were city employees and the house was on county land, so if the person would have liked the service they could have paid the city $75/year). People blamed this incident on the free market. But they don't understand that this incident had nothing to do with the free market. The firefighters were city employees taking instruction from bureaucrats with no customer satisfaction incentive for them to put the fire out. Instead of acting with compassion or offering to put the fire out for a certain amount of money or having the customer pay full price they just let the house burn down. This is not an example against the free market but against government and bureaucracy. Just as we see this incident we will see similar incidents in the new universal health care as more and more people just follow orders and have no incentive (as found in the free market) to go above and beyond their station in life.
Power Corrupts
It's useful to keep this in mind because, while the overwhelming lesson of the last half century of social psychology is that situational influences can easily swamp the effect of individual differences in character, our political rhetoric takes scant account of this. Political campaigns focus heavily on questions of “character”—which especially in the case of “outsider” campaigns should be of limited predictive value. Republican candidates and officials try to portray Democrats as arrogant and out of touch, while Democrats cast Republicans as callous and greedy. In each case, the message is that these are bad people, and their character flaws are somehow related to their specific ideologies. The remedy is, invariably, to replace them in positions of power with better people from the other team. These social science results suggest that this is unlikely to work: The problem is power itself.
When people become cogs in a wheel they tend to do things they otherwise wouldn't, like not use force on others to get them to do something that doesn't even have any consequence. Or hurt someone because they are in a position of power.
A great example of this is a recent fire fighting incident where the firemen refused to put out a fire because the person didn't pay the annual fee (the firefighters were city employees and the house was on county land, so if the person would have liked the service they could have paid the city $75/year). People blamed this incident on the free market. But they don't understand that this incident had nothing to do with the free market. The firefighters were city employees taking instruction from bureaucrats with no customer satisfaction incentive for them to put the fire out. Instead of acting with compassion or offering to put the fire out for a certain amount of money or having the customer pay full price they just let the house burn down. This is not an example against the free market but against government and bureaucracy. Just as we see this incident we will see similar incidents in the new universal health care as more and more people just follow orders and have no incentive (as found in the free market) to go above and beyond their station in life.
Power Corrupts
It's useful to keep this in mind because, while the overwhelming lesson of the last half century of social psychology is that situational influences can easily swamp the effect of individual differences in character, our political rhetoric takes scant account of this. Political campaigns focus heavily on questions of “character”—which especially in the case of “outsider” campaigns should be of limited predictive value. Republican candidates and officials try to portray Democrats as arrogant and out of touch, while Democrats cast Republicans as callous and greedy. In each case, the message is that these are bad people, and their character flaws are somehow related to their specific ideologies. The remedy is, invariably, to replace them in positions of power with better people from the other team. These social science results suggest that this is unlikely to work: The problem is power itself.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Friday, October 1, 2010
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