From the Headlines: Home Power and Reason magazines
Having just read over the latest edition (Feb/March) of Home Power and the March issue of Reason I couldn’t help at least mentioning a few interesting articles. Home Power is a magazine devoted to renewable energy sources for your home, such as solar and wind energy. Reason is a Libertarian publication devoted to topics pertaining to free markets and government actions.
In Home Power author Michael Welch takes a time out near the end of the magazine to write an article entitled “Presidential Energy“. He makes an objective statement in the opening “When it comes time to select the next President, the majority of Americans will choose between a Republican and a Democrat. Why? Tradition, allegiance, ignorance, or perhaps to make sure the lesser of two evils ends up in the White House..”
At the end of this poorly written article is another statement which directly contradicts his opening “So vote your conscience in this primary, but just moderate it by a strong dose of reality: Consider which candidates you feel could actually win the presidential election if nominated.”
It’s that type of mentality that continues to insure that America’s House, Senate, and Oval Office will be filled with a group of corrupt legislators. The hopefuls that can be elected can only do so because of the financial backing they possess. A candidate accepts financial backing from organizations which he or she is then indebted to with the understanding that as a legislator, they will pass legislation in the interests of his or her financial supporters. Failure to play this game means no money. Even if you can come up with some dinero - political and economic interests will back your opponent and they’ll bury you. The guys and gals that are elected have already agreed to play this game. So much for the idea of having a representative government.
In the rest of the article Michael does a decent job of objectively describing each candidate’s position. Now knowing that Home Power has a vested interest in our nation’s citizens moving towards renewables it’s no surprise that Michael spoke positively of the Democratic platform “it is tempered somewhat by an underlying belief that government can make a positive difference in people’s lives.” The problem with this article is that the author assumes that a movement towards renewable energy sources is impossible without the forceful hand of government legislation. However, it is government legislation that has led to this problem.
The Federal Government took upon itself the task of providing electricity to every home in America as part of the New Deal during the 1930’s. Since Big Government took on this responsibility - rather than the free market - we have seen relatively no change to the manner in which electricity is distributed throughout this country (other than to tinker with the existing system).
Now imagine if Big Government hadn’t taken on this responsibility. I envision a system of electrical power in rural areas that is based on solar, wind, and hydro - with local citizens taking care of providing power within free market means. However, we see that solar, wind, and hydro power is virtually non-existent in the most powerful country on the planet. The New Deal eliminated the need for free market solutions that would have been naturally developed due to a demand in rural areas.
So in response to Michael’s atricle I would like to propose some legislation of my own. We’ll call it “The Greenest of Green Energy Bill to Reclaim America’s Hazeless Sunsets and Clean Mountain Water.”
1) Every new home or building built within the USA will not be wired into the existing government electrical utility grid.
2) Every home worth over $100,000 and every business must be energy independent within ten years - because the government is going to unplug them from the grid.
And there you have it. We’ll move America towards renewable energy not by telling companies what to do or investing tax payer dollars into solar or wind power companies. No, instead our government will foster interest in renewables by what their not going to do. Now that sounds like some government action worth reading about.
From Reason magazine, it seems that Zimbabwe is suffering from the ugly hands of inflation (currently around 8,000 percent). So the President, Robert Mugabe, “has banned increases in wages, prices, rents, and service charges. Anyone caught raising prices or salaries without government approval faces fines, up to six months in jail, or both.”
Would someone please send this Robert fellow a translation of “Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell. Perhaps the sentence which reads “In economics, as elsewhere in life, while we are free to do whatever we wish, we are not free to have the consequences be whatever we want them to be” will come to mean something in the years ahead. I’d wager that half the country will be starving to death this time next year thanks to this type of economic suicide.
Nick Gilespie has moved on from Editor of Reason, but he didn’t move far. He’s now in charge of reason online (reason.com) and reason.tv (the video journalism website launched in 2007). Nick did manage to slip in an excellent interview with the Institute for Justice founder Chip Mellor. Everyone in America interested in preserving liberty and justice needs to read up on this public interest law firm. This organization is?standing tall against eminent domain abuse by winning some impressive cases against some outrageous city and state officials. Here’s a link to the Reason article “Litigating for Liberty.” This interview gives plenty of information about how eminent domain is being abused throughout this country thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1954 which twisted the words ‘public use’ into ‘public purpose’. Meaning that a city can confiscate any private land, home, or business if they can replace it with an economic deal that will increase the cities tax revenue.
Also in the article, the difficulty of obtaining a florist license in the state of Louisiana was discussed. In fact, more people pass the BAR exam each year than the florist license charade. For example, to keep you from receiving a license to practice floristry (sell flowers) the floristry board might say that your flower arrangement “doesn’t have the proper sense of balance. It doesn’t have the proper perspective. It’s not artistic enough.” And of course the floristry board (who issues licenses) is composed of……..florists already licensed in the state.
So the established florists use the power of government to prevent other people from entering into their market. Oh yeah, they need licenses for florists because “someone could prick their finger on a corsage”, so it’s a public health/safety issue. This reminds me of trying to legally cut hair in exchange for monetary compensation. You have to attend cosmetology school because of all the public health issues regarding cutting hair. Not surprisingly, this law was also passed by established business people in the cosmetology field. If the cow manure is this deep when it comes to cutting hair and arranging flowers, imagine how deep it gets with corporate regulation.
March 24th, 2008 at 6:40 am
[...] Bass presents From the Headlines: Home Power and Reason magazines posted at Debt Prison, saying, “I would like to propose some legislation of my own. We’ll [...]