E-Recycling is Garbage

I was interviewed by the Heartland Institute for an article on New York City’s new law mandating recycling of electronic equipment. A key part of the e-recycling bill, as it was originally proposed, would have required manufacturers to take back their products for recycling free of charge, but that provision was scrapped (no pun intended). Since they interview me for the article before the bill was revised and most of the quotes from me that the writer chose to use had to do with that excised provision, the article is a bit confusing, IMO.

“The city is attempting to force manufacturers to recycle electronics, which it has no authority to do,” said Jim Lesczynski, media relations director for the Manhattan Libertarian Party.

New York City “is refusing to [implement] curbside electronics recycling for residents,” Lesczynski said, even though the city’s Department of Sanitation has a monopoly on waste removal within the city.

“In a free market, some private sanitation companies may also refuse to pick up electronics, but competitors would surely step in to provide a needed service,” Lesczynski said.

Lesczynski said such a market-based solution in the New York proposal is currently out of the question because the city “actually [makes] it illegal to ’steal’ garbage set out for recycling.”

The new law goes into effect in 2012 and impose fines of $100 on citizens who fail to recycle their electronics.

Showdown at the Statehouse Corral

We interrupt our coverage of New York and national politics to bring you this scene from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where Governor Deval Patrick wants to prosecute online poker players:

The video is from the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society, whose founder Dr.  Charles Nesson will be the guest speaker at the Manhattan Libertarian Party’s May 12th meeting.

Taking Money from Me for My Own Good

The new state budget isn’t official yet, but one certain outcome is that it will boost the state cigarette tax by $1.25 per pack, making it the highest in the nation. The state’s $2.75/pack tax, combined with New York City’s own $1.50 tax, will push the cost of major brands to over $9 per pack in the city.

The American Cancer Society is claiming the tax hike will somehow prevent over 200,000 teenagers from ever taking up smoking — an absurd assertion. Audrey Silk, the 2005 Libertarian Party candidate for NYC mayor, cuts right through the crap and tells it like it is:

“This is putting a gun to my head and saying you are taking money from me for my own good,” said Audrey Silk of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, based in New York City. “It’s no different than a robber saying that when he’s sticking you up.”

Amazing George McGovern Op-Ed

My friend Mark Axinn, an elder statesman of the Manhattan Libertarian Party, often boasts that his first presidential vote was for George McGovern back in 1972. And apparently with good reason. I don’t think McGovern was really all that libertarian back then, except for the anti-war thing, but his guest editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal is indistinguishable from anything that might be published by Cato or FEE. He makes a principled yet pragrmatic free-market case for subprime mortgages, interstate sales of health insurance, payday loans and other bogeymen of the left:

Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don’t take away cars because we don’t like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don’t operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.

The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.

Excellent stuff. Simply wonderful.

New York Politics Bizarro World

What’s going on here? Is there a full moon? Two of my most favorite New York politicians to despise actually came out with positions that I agree with!

First Congressman Anythony Weiner said the FBI and Congress should give it a rest already on whether Roger Clemens lied about HGH use.

“I do believe that public embarrassment is a sanction. The real consequences are a loss of revenue from endorsements and a loss of respect in the eyes of the fans. It may be that Roger Clemens’ entry into the Hall of Fame is in question. It may be that future employers won’t have an interest in his services.”

As Weiner views the role of the federal government, that should be enough.

That should be enough? Limit the federal government’s role?! Okay, buddy, what have you done with the real Anthony Weiner.

Second, the loathsome Dr. Thomas Frieden, NYC Health Commissioner — the instigator of the smoking ban and the trans-fat ban — actually came out with a pro-freedom proposal. He wants to change state law to allow pharmacists to give flu shots, just like they already can in 47 other states. Currently only doctors and nurses are permitted to give flu vaccines. According to Frieden, expanding access to the vaccine would save lives. Imagine that — greater freedom benefiting mankind.

I’m going back to bed before I read that Charles Barron thinks maybe some white folks aren’t so bad after all.

The Nanny State Reaches Its Apex

It’s finally come to this. They’ve outlawed guns, banned smoking, criminalized fatty foods. You’d think New York’s nanny statists had done just about everything possible to protect grownups from themselves, right? I mean, what else could they do — make it illegal to jump off a tall building?

Well, yes.

Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. (who else) continues his quest to be New York’s #1 all-around wet blanket — remember his war on art supplies? – by introducing a bill essentially outlawing daredevils. Specifically, his bill would prohibit climbing and jumping off any structure taller than 25 feet.

Vallone claims he is trying to “protect citizens from being landed on,” but that of course is pure unadulterated baloney. Vallone is a garden-variety spoilsport and bully, the sort of neo-puritan who is afflicted with, as Mencken put it, “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

Or as my friend Ernie Hancock likes to put it, “There are two kinds of people in the world, those who just want to be left alone and those who won’t leave them alone.” Vallone is the epitome of the latter.

Yes we can, but what?

By Ignacio Gutiérrez
February 10, 2008

It was only a matter of time until someone successfully invoked JFK’s image alongside Barack Obama’s timely call for change and hope beyond mere comparison. And with Theodore Sorensen endorsing Obama, it’s no accident either. The legendary speechwriter for JFK has claimed giving Obama “a phrase or suggestion or two”.

And for “the cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion” as Obama stated after winning the South Carolina primary, there’s something for them too. A video making it’s rounds on the internet, replete with celebrities singing out the phrase “Yes we can” along with excerpts from other speeches.

OK, so I’m one of those cynics. And yet, I personally like Obama. He’s refreshingly honest, genuine and an optimist to say the least. It’s great that he’s managed to thwart apathy among voters and is getting more and more people involved. But his message and his following are starting to get a little creepy.

Democracy is the worst form of government if people choose evil, Churchill once said. While it would be an incredibly far stretch to label Obama as such, for anyone familiar with the Spanish translation of “yes, we can”, “si se puede”, and it’s overt use by the Castro regime in Cuba, this subtle call for socialism hits a little too close to home.

Ask anyone who has even traveled to Cuba and seen the inordinate amount of communist propaganda that puts Nike ad campaigns to shame. It’s unspoken and subtle reminder to everyone of its citizens that “yes we can” imprison you for decades without even so much as a trial by judge or jury for daring to question the common good and supposed “will of the people”, reverberates from every other street corner throughout the country.

Were it not for the fact that “si se puede” is actually referenced in the video, with someone even pumping their fist into the air, perhaps this connection would be superfluous. But whether by accident or design, the actual speech’s message is unmistakable. And just like clockwork, it’s timed to the best and noblest of intentions.

“It’s not about rich vs. poor” Obama mentions. However, the part where we “can’t afford another four years without decent wages because our leaders couldn’t come together and get it done” misses one obvious point. It’s not up to government to decide wages, its up to the marketplace, ie the people speaking with their dollars. And what better way for them to lose their jobs to foreign markets than by imposing mandatory wage increases on companies and increasing their costs of production, not to mention the cost of living for everyone overall.

“There are those who will continue to tell us that we can’t do this, that we can’t have what we’re looking for, that we can’t have what we want, that we’re peddling false hopes.” Intentionally peddling false hopes, maybe not. But then again, informing and educating people as to how the economy of any society functions most effectively and efficiently when government gets out of our way and stops mixing up our rights with entitlement programs has never been the hallmark of any Democratic, let alone socialist rhetoric.

Hopefully Sorensen will pen a more compelling line for Obama and all of us to follow. One as inspiring as “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. At least that one didn’t foster an entitlement mindset. Instead it motivated people to give more than they took and drove many to find and even create their own opportunities and destinies as opposed to expecting prosperity to be doled out like some welfare check. It almost demanded people take responsibility for themselves, and yet still be there for one another.

“Yes, we can heal this nation.” Sure, as soon as government stops intruding in our lives and the marketplace and ends the slow and steady pace towards a nanny state that could imperceptibly morph into a totalitarian one. Then there’ll be no doubt that “yes, we can seize our future” once again.

The Redistribution of Debt

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It’s a saying as old as history, and just as toxic. It’s misled millions to believe they’re doomed to poverty and that wealth is just an elusive dream for a select few. But the 2008 Economic Stimulus package may help put us all on equal footing. By ensuring everyone experience poverty through massive inflation.

Both Democrats and Republicans are in favor of the plan. The proposal would pay up to $600 to individuals, married couples up to $1,200, plus $300 per child, and even many who don’t earn enough to pay taxes, can receive up to $300. The total plan will cost an estimated $150 billion dollars. But despite it’s good intentions, the program may turn a mild recession into a full-blown one, or worse.

There’s only three ways it can be paid for: taxes, new currency or credit. Through taxes, while it would force government to cut spending in the short term, which is a good thing, there’s no doubt taxes will be raised in the long run to compensate. If it’s paid by printing new currency, the dollar would definitely devalue even further and our current inflation would spiral out of control. But the real problem is credit. By merely tacking it onto the national deficit, which is currently at $9 trillion, it will still devalue our dollar with taxpayers footing this seemingly endless debt.

There’s no doubt spending stimulates an economy. It was lack of spending which fueled the panic from the 1929 Stock Market Crash into the Great Depression. Which is why it’s ironic to hear those who at one time swore the “trickle down theory” only benefited the wealthy, are now clamoring for the potential spending behind the stimulus package. Some, such as the AFL-CIO Labor Union, claim it isn’t enough.

But spending on credit, especially amounts that can’t be realistically paid for, creates serious problems. After all, that’s what got us here in the first place thanks to the subprime mortgage crisis. This is why the Economic Stimulus package is nothing short of a welfare handout. Simply giving money away and conditioning people to an entitlement mindset every time they make mistakes will never address this fundamental problem.

And deficit spending by a government comprised of career politicians who believe they can manage our money better than we can, creates disastrous results. Especially when they simply take our money out of one pocket just to put into the other. Minus inflation no less, not to mention compounding interest. That’s not even the redistribution of wealth. It’s the redistribution of debt.

Presidential Poker

Harvard Professor Charles Nesson has an interesting proposal — he wants Stephen Colbert to host a televised poker tournament among the presidential candidates. I this is a terrific idea — as long as it’s not strip poker. (Yeesh, sorry, that’s a mental picture I didn’t need to conjure.)

You have to wait til the end of the interview to get to the presidential tournament idea, but the rest of the interview is good stuff about the stupidity of the federal ban on online poker:

Hat tip: the lovely and talented Karol at Alarming News

Eminent Domain: Just face it Bruce Ratner is more important than you are

And the City’s politicians and bureaucrats just like him better.  And why shouldn’t they - he’s providing tax revenue that helps pay for their salaries and their pensions. Of course so does your tax money - but you have no choice and Bruce Ratner does.  Don’t like it? Who cares?  You are just an ordinary citizen.  Bruce has friend’s in the government.

Eminent Domain is no longer about replacing slums with hospitals (if it ever was). Admit it - It’ s now just the latest trick politicians use to feed their unquenchable thirst for more money and more power over every aspect of your life. 

Michael White has a great piece “Columbia Pulls a Kelo”in yesterday’s New York Sun (online version) that points out how there is money to be made in the business of seizing what you thought was your property.

A few actually seem to believe the process is moral or productive. Mayor Bloomberg once commented that potential federal limits on eminent domain would limit NYC’s ability to control it’s own future.  Our mayor seemed to miss the point that eminent domain rather limits property owner’s ability to control their futures.   Our mayor is famous for thinking he knows best how we all should live.
 
But even good soldiers in the war against personal freedom seem to admit that the process by which government seizes people’s homes and businesses is flawed at best.  In August, Supreme Court Justice Stevens lamented his Kelo position saying that “the free play of market forces is more likely to produce acceptable results in the long run than the best-intentioned plans of public officials.”   DUH!  Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Dan Doctoroff  - the guy that said the free market and the interests of the city were incompatible -  has now admitted that he never should have agreed to let Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project ignore the City’s ULURP process.   OOPS - None Killed.  A few people lost their homes but who’s counting? We have to assume the government knows best right?  If they don’t like the law - they can just get the Supreme Court to “clarify” it or ignore it altogether.
 
It almost looks as if they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore.  They will take your home or your business - because they can.  Big government costs big money.  Somebody has to sacrifice.  And you can bet it won’t be Bruce Ratner, or the New York Times, or Columbia or Michael Bloomberg or Dan Doctoroff.