The American Guesser

I mean, what’s next? A press release from the Green Party stating that they kinda suspect there are Democrats who really aren’t as anti-war and anti-corporation as they say they are.

Anyway, here’s the opening paragraphs of the paragraph posted in LP.org:

Following Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, and the support of the massive bailouts by Republican members of Congress, the Libertarian Party says it has replaced the GOP as the party of free market advocates.

“The Republican Party no longer represents advocates of capitalism and the free market,” says Libertarian Party Director of Communications Andrew Davis. “The GOP’s mindless support of regulatory economic policy indicates it no longer has any philosophical or pragmatic opposition to government intervention in the marketplace. This abandonment of free market principles makes the Republican Party no more opposed to big government than their Democratic counterparts.”

I know! You coulda knocked me over with a feather when I read that.

Longtime readers of Peoria Pundit know that I do not think highly of Lew Rockwell or his business partner Ron Paul. Both of them spent decades building support for the Libertarian Party in the South by peddling the idea that the Confederacy was a victim of illegal government aggression. It’s as if freeing the slaves was somehow an act that set back the cause of freedom, instead of promoting it.

Feh. I was born and raised in the Land of Lincoln. Honest Abe was no tyrant, and I have no use for anyone who promotes the idea that he was. That kept me from supporting Paul at all.

So, I was king of amused with I saw an article on LewRockwell.com titled: “I’m a Bad Libertarian.” I wasn’t written by Lew or Congressman Ron, but it’s still ironic.

The other problem I have with the Libertarian Free Market is this. I loathe Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buys, MacDonald’s and even Piggly Wiggly. The problem there is corporations result when the market is totally free. With corporations we enjoy… offshore outsourcing of manufacturing. That means some guy in Asia who will work for next to nothing gets jobs that should go to Americans. It also means the death penalty to the mom and pop businesses. How can they compete? Usually they can’t. What happened to Uncle Bill’s hardware and Fishing Supplies? Oh, Home Depot and Sports Chalet replaced that. Bill now works the floor of the Lowe’s in the plumbing department at $9 per hour. He’s surly, doesn’t care and pounds down a six-pack a night. Joe the Plumber didn’t have any openings on his staff for Bill.

I guess I have trouble with the totally free market, not that I have a better solution. But I’m none too thrilled by the strip malls all looking the same and owned by nameless faceless corporations. They have destroyed the American dream and replaced service, adventure and good neighborly shops with Pop Tarts.

Here’s the thing: Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton WAS a mom & pop business owner. He was also a shrewd businessman. He risked his own money to expand his business. He didn’t do anything that any one of the people he competed out of business could not also have done.

Mr. Sam is dead now. Sure, some of his family members are still alive and have a role in the family business. But all them are short-term greed-heads. There is no doubt in my mind these idiots will nick and dime themselves to death and someone will come along and eat their lunch.

And as a free-market guy, I do the mom & pop thing as much as I can. That’s my choice.

One of the hardest things Libertarians face is that concept that’s been ingrained into the brains of Americans: It’s the government’s job to tweak the rules so the outcome benefits them. Or, benefits people they find more deserving.

In other words, when other people are allowed to make choices, sometimes it’s not the choices you would make. It’s price you pay for living in a free society that lets YOU make the choices YOU want to make.

I know it’s frightening, but that’s what being an adult is all about.

So grow up already.

Peoria Pundit Bill Dennis has been complaining about handicapped parking spaces for a while. This prompted C.J. Summers of the Peoria Chronicle to complain about another way the government makes things worse by trying too hard to help. In this case, it’s a new law mandating that all programs — including church service broadcasts — include closed captioning:

Now, I’m all for closed captioning. But the problem is that it’s expensive. The first thing you have to do is transcribe your program. You can do it yourself (labor-intensive) or hire a professional stenographer (or “stenocaptioner”) at $1.50 to $3 per minute, or $90-$180 per one-hour show. Then you have to get it into the video stream using an encoder. Encoder services can run you $300-$400 per one-hour show. Alternatively, you could buy encoding equipment and do it yourself, but then you have your own labor costs, plus equipment that can cost as much as $20,000. Your closed-captioning cost is now almost as much as the fee you’re charged to broadcast the program on a local TV station. So what do you think smaller operations are going to do? Stop broadcasting their programs, of course. Or at least remove them from some smaller markets, like one show in New York is doing.

What Mr. Summers is saying is that the government’s heavy-handed approach to increasing the number of closed captioned programs actually made is too expensive to produce programing?

The phrase “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” is pretty much the same as “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”