It's getting too burdensome to have my personal blog here, and also post at Booker Rising - our daily news site targeting black moderates and black conservatives. So we're consolidating the two blogs, and material here is being moved over there. Go check out Booker Rising!
Sen. John Kerry's campaign discusses ad nauseum about skyrocketing health care costs. Of course, costs are high: Americans are fatter than ever! According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity costs USA $75 billion a year. So obesity makes up a significant — and preventable — percentage of the health care expenditures.
Yet in its quest to force socialist health care upon us, Kerry-Edwards refuse to discuss how lifestyle choices (along with the high cost of malpractice insurance, and the American Medical Association’s collusion with state legislatures) jack up health care costs.
Casey Lartigue, another black blogger who leans libertarian, has a piece up about the debate over Washington, D.C. should build a baseball stadium. I agree with Casey that city subsidies of baseball teams involves public risk and private profit, and are therefore problematic. I say: Build your stadium and get off the mama’s milk of taxpayer dollars!
Fear of Black Man With a Gun?
Cincinnati Black Blog asks this question, while responding to a local case involving Gary Smith (pictured). The Cincinnati Post reports that Smith shot four men in 2001, killing one in a case where he initially faced the death penalty. He was instead sentenced to 47 years, but then it was overturned a year or so later because he wasn't allowed an opportunity to be his own attorney, and the new case just ended in a mistrial.
Why did he shoot?: Smith was accused of shooting Jimmie Gordon to death and convicted of wounding three other men in a shooting rampage Smith started when he tried to get crack dealers away from his home. They responded by robbing him, killing his cat, urinating on his home and slicing his tires.
Like Cincinnati Black Blog, I have mixed opinion. For one, no one shot at Smith. Robbing, urinating, tire slicing, and yes even cat killing are no justification to murder and almost murder folks. However, did Smith believe his life was in danger? Probably. And the larger question: why were the crackheads messing with his property in the first place?! Had they not be up to no good, Smith wouldn't have shot them in the first place.
Had Smith been some white suburbanite - like the suburban Chicago man who wounded a robber who broke into his home twice, and charges were later dropped against the suburbanite for illegal gun possession - he wouldn't have almost faced Death Row or 47 years in prison. Just the amount of time that he's already served, as it would've been viewed as self-defense. And I've previously argued (as has The Mulatto Advocate and our sister site Booker Rising) that gun control laws are racist anyway, hampering common black folks' right to defend our bodies and our property.
The austerity policies imposed on developing countries by the International Monetary Fund undermine the global HIV/AIDS fight, says a new report by several prominent public-health and development groups. They charge the IMF conditions on its loans and debt relief makes it much harder for governments to finance the rapidly rising expenses of fighting the epidemic. I thought shared needles, infidelity and multiple sex partners without protection spread AIDS.
Pardon me, for I’m misinformed! This ridiculous report seeks to leech onto AIDS/HIV to promote its real goal: socialism.
French President Jacques Chirac is the latest leader to call for a global tax on arm sales and financial transactions to help fight poverty. Both he and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva hope the proposal will cut global poverty in half by 2015. 110 countries have signed a document urging governments to consider the proposal.
Leave it up to a de facto socialist to back such a proposal. Why should countries pay for the results of other countries’ jacked-up fiscal policies? What’s the incentive for a country to learn from its mistakes and try a different path? And why arm sales? Why not, oh say, wines, cheese, cigarettes, and clothes? Ah, that would affect the French too much.
The way to reduce poverty is how Ireland, Portugal, China, India, Singapore, and other countries have done: reduce trade barriers, reduce regulations that inhibit business creation, reduce corruption, and reduce taxes.
A recent World Bank report, “Doing Business in 2005,” shows that poor countries impose three times the administrative costs and double the red tape as rich countries. The Economist illustrates:
Incorporating a business takes two days in Canada, but 153 in
Mozambique.…
In Haiti, for example, it takes 203 days to register a company, which
is 201 days longer than in Australia. In Sierra Leone it costs 1,268% of average
income, compared with nothing in Denmark. To register in Ethiopia, a would-be
entrepreneur must deposit the equivalent of 18 years’ average income in a bank
account, which is then frozen. In Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, recording
a property sale involves 21 procedures and takes 274 days. Official fees amount
to 27% of the value of the transaction. In Norway the task takes less than a day
and costs only 2.5% of the price of the property.
Libertarianism, with a black American twist
