Cato Institute To Host 'The Law And Politics Of Marijuana Legalization' Forum | The Weed Blog

Cato Institute To Host 'The Law And Politics Of Marijuana Legalization' Forum | The Weed Blog - Johnny Green:

November 21, 2012 - "In another sign that marijuana is invading all levels of American politics, the Cato Institute is scheduled to host a policy forum dedicated to marijuana reform. Below is the information from the Cato Institute website....

"POLICY FORUM
 Wednesday, December 12, 2012
 4:00 PM (Reception To Follow)

"Featuring Asa Hutchinson, Former Administrator, Drug Enforcement Administration; and Robert A. Mikos, Professor of Law and Government, Vanderbilt University Law School; moderated by Timothy Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute....

"If you can’t make it to the Cato Institute, watch this event live online at www.cato.org/live and join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #CatoEvents. Also follow @CatoEvents on Twitter to get future event updates, live streams, and videos from the Cato Institute."

Read more: http://www.theweedblog.com/cato-institute-to-host-the-law-and-politics-of-marijuana-legalization-forum/
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Libertarian classic 'I, Pencil' now available as video

Libertarian classic 'I, Pencil' gets modern makeover - Garry Reed:

November 16, 2012 - "The Competitive Enterprise Institute has remade Leonard E. Read's I, Pencil as an animated film, released on their website Thursday....

"I, Pencil was first published as an essay that appeared in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman, generally regarded as one of the oldest and most respected libertarian journals in the US, a publication of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) which was founded by Leonard E. Read in 1946.

The essay, under its full title, I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read, had a simple goal: 'to show that economics cannot be "planned" since no one, no matter how smart, can create something as incredibly ordinary as a pencil.' Instead, its creation requires a highly complex global industrial network organized not by a master planner but by the spontaneous supply-and-demand workings of the 'invisible hand' in the peaceful, voluntary, libertarian, laissez-faire free market.

"The goal of the project, CEI announced in a news release, 'was to translate Leonard Read’s story into an exciting and accessible film for the Internet age.'"

Read more: http://www.examiner.com/article/libertarian-classic-i-pencil-gets-modern-makeover
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Echoes of 1937, big government and a new market collapse?

Echoes of 1937, big government and a new market collapse? | StarTribune.com - Amity Shlaes, Bloomberg News::

November 22, 2012 - "Will 2013 be 1937? This is the question many analysts posed as the stock market dropped after the election. On Nov. 16, they noted that industrial production, a crucial figure, dropped as well.

"In this case, '1937' means a market drop similar to the one after the re-election of another Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1936. The drop wasn't immediate in that case; it came in the first full year after the election. Industrial production plummeted by 34.5 percent. The Dow Jones average dropped by half by 1938.

"It's hard to imagine stock indexes dropping by half today, or unemployment rising past 15 percent, as they did in the 'depression within the Depression.' But the parallels are visible enough to be worth tracing. "

Read more: http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/180436241.html?refer=y
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The GOP’s growing Libertarian problem

The GOP’s growing Libertarian problem - Aaron Blake and Shaun Sullivan, The Fix, Washington Post:

November 20, 2012 - "It was a historic election for the Libertarian Party.... Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson took about 1 percent of the vote, winning more raw votes than any Libertarian candidate ever has (about 1.2 million)....

"On the Senate front, Libertarian candidates pulled around 6 percent of the vote in two key contests in Montana and Indiana — the party’s best showings in three-way Senate races in at least the last decade ... in those two races and seven others, the Libertarian candidate’s share of the vote was actually bigger than the victorious Democrat’s margin of victory.

"The suggestion some make, of course, is that these Libertarian candidates can — and in some cases might have already — cost Republicans winnable seats by siphoning off GOP votes....

"The question from here is whether the Libertarian Party continues to be an occasional nuisance, or whether it continues to build on its nascent progress and becomes a real headache for the Republican Party.

"Given the GOP’s ongoing problems with its brand, it’s not hard to see voters continuing to desert that brand and pick an increasingly valid third-party option."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/11/20/the-gops-growing-libertarian-problem/
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Congress will miss Paul's principled libertarianism | News-JournalOnline.com

Congress will miss Paul's principled libertarianism | News-JournalOnline.com (Daytona Beach):

November 20, 2012 - "The GOP cannot fully embrace Paul's minimalist approach to government. Americans are still a freedom-loving people, but the federal government has become a major presence in American life. Most voters aren't ready to accept a very limited government. But Paul's calls for lower taxes, less federal spending, and an end to foreign interventionism have resonated with many voters.

"If the Republican Party is to expand its base, especially among young people and Hispanic voters, it needs to incorporate into its agenda more of Paul's love for individual freedom.

"Paul's views are really no more radical than those of America's third president, said to be one of the founders of the Democratic Party. In 1801, Jefferson told the nation in his inaugural address that 'a wise and frugal government .. shall leave (people) otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.'"

Read more: http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20121120/OPINION/311199978/1027?p=2&tc=pg
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Without You Meddling Libertarian Voters, Romney Could Have Lost By Only 2.7 Million Votes!

Without You Meddling Libertarian Voters, Romney Could Have Lost By Only 2.7 Million Votes! - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch:

November 19, 2012 - "Over at National Review, Jim Geraghty takes to task those 1.22 million of us who voted for Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson....

"Even if a vote for Gary Johnson was 100% transferable to any Republican (which it is not), let alone to the hands-off-my-Medicare-and-military-spending Mitt Romney (which it definitely is not); and even if applying that bogus math would have changed the outcome in even one state (which it did not), it does not automatically follow that causing the lesser of two evils to lose is a bad strategy."

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2012/11/19/without-you-meddling-libertarian-voters
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Ron Paul's Last Speech to Congress

Ron Paul's Last Speech to Congress: 30+ Strangely Ordered Questions - Conor Friedersdorf - The Atlantic;:

"The longtime legislator, doctor and three-time presidential candidate is retiring at year's end."

November 15, 2012 - "On Wednesday, Ron Paul stood on the floor of the House of Representatives, where he has spent 23 years, to deliver his last speech to the body prior to his impending retirement at year's end.

"His sprawling, poorly organized, deeply principled remarks lasted nearly 48 minutes. The video is [below]. A transcript is here. "He wrote this speech out and read it, not his usual style," Brian Doherty explained at the libertarian magazine Reason. "For my taste, the extemporizing Ron Paul of the campaign trail is a little more appealing, but this was still a good and important talk." It is basically impossible to summarize it, but reading through the successive questions Rep. Paul posed during one particularly engaging stretch is a pretty good way to get a flavor of his full remarks."

Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/ron-pauls-last-speech-to-congress-30-strangely-ordered-questions/265263/
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