Full body scanners coming to an airport near you.
Tim Andrews has already written a good post on this issue, The Terrorists have already won (I particularly like the title). But I note that the ALS blog has been fairly quiet over the last week so I thought I’d post this video.
The forces of comedic ridicule are in my opinion far more effective at social change than most political speeches. So hopefully the TSA’s full body scanners become the butt of many more jokes to come in the future.
As of November 20, 2010, the TSA reported that there were 385 full-body scanners now in use at 68 United States airports
Entertaining and Intelligent Movie Reviews
Over the last couple of months I have been enjoying the movie reviews done by Mr. Film and Mr. Movie at http://www.moviefilmshow.com/movies-films/
I think these are excellent reviews for my purposes anyway. Mr. Film and Mr. Movie review the latest releases succinctly without giving away too much of the story. They also include some brief technical discussions on theme, plot and style.
These are audio movie reviews in a podcast format.
The two reviewers are pro-freedom and pro-capitalsim. And while this quality isn’t essential to good movie reviews, it’s certainly a nice change from the typical biases of the main stream media. I thought the folks around these parts may like to listen to the reviews done on these movies:
I want your money!
http://www.iwantyourmoney.net/
I have just discovered this new movie, which looks quite professional and may have some promotional dollars behind it. It certainly looks like a conservative movie to me but I still hope that it may do some good spreading the word about the harm of socialism. I particuarly liked the use of the word “theft” in the trailer. From the website:
We have had the pleasure of getting great interviews from economic experts and politicians including:
The following people are interviewed: Mike Huckabee, Stephen Moore, Michael Reagan, William Voegeli, Star Parker, Kenneth Blackwell, Edwin Meese lll, Thad McCotter, Newt Gingrich, Lee Edwards, Pete Wilson, Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer, Kate Obenshain, Chris Edwards, David M. McIntosh, Lila Rose, John Stossel, Allen Icet, Rob Schaaf, John Stossel, Tom McClintock, Andrew Breitbart, George Runner, Alison Fraser.
(Don’t ask me why they listed John Stossel twice, are there two?)
Thoughts?
Freedom in the UK?
http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/
It will be interesting to keep an eye on developments from this initiative courtesy of the UK’s new coalition government: “Your ideas, your freedom“.
Apparently:
“The Coalition Government is committed to restoring and defending your freedom – and we’re asking you to participate”
According to the site:
“We’re working to create a more open and less intrusive society. We want to restore Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness, and free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations – both for individuals and businesses.
This site gives you the chance to suggest how we can do this. Your ideas will inform government policy and some of your proposals could end up making it into bills we bring before Parliament to change the law.
So if there are any laws or regulations you’d like us to do away with, then first, check if there are any similar ideas here already and then add your comments to it and rate it to move it up the list. If it’s not here, then add it! And remember – we want you to suggest ideas for removing laws and regulations, rather than ideas for creating them.”
Hopefully something positive will come out of the submissions.
Social security woes in the USA. A change I can believe in.
USA continues cruisin for a bruisin with this news from the NY times:
Social security to see payout exceed pay-in this year
“This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.”
“Analysts have long tried to predict the year when Social Security would pay out more than it took in because they view it as a tipping point — the first step of a long, slow march to insolvency……….”
“Mr. Goss said Social Security’s annual report last year projected revenue would more than cover payouts until at least 2016 because economists expected a quicker, stronger recovery from the crisis. Officials foresaw an average unemployment rate of 8.2 percent in 2009 and 8.8 percent this year, though unemployment is hovering at nearly 10 percent.”
Political Activism Anyone?
The purpose of this post is to get people’s ideas on the most effective way to change our society towards being more and more capitalist.
A theory that I’ve come across over the last few years (I think Nicholas Gray was fond of this one – but feel free to correct me) was that people around the world needed to see first hand the negative effects of increasingly socialistic economic policies as precursor to them rejecting these gradual increases in socialism.
In basic terms the idea can I think be summarized as follows: The shit has to hit the fan before we would do anything about it. The idea is that a generation or two has past since the disastrous communist regimes implemented full blown state ownership of business, and that people have forgotten just how bad socialist central planning is to human prosperity at all levels.
Before I go on, it is indeed true that around the world, the trend is that governments are again growing as a % of GDP. This has been true for most western countries since about the year 2000 or so. (My source is Hamish McRae’s recent presentation, “What is happening to the world economy and what this means for global business” but if you have another source please share). Read more »
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