He's right - this must be watched (0.00 / 0)

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by: obsessed @ Fri May 21, 2010 at 20:30:52 PM CDT

The market doesn't adjust for racism (4.00 / 6)

 Say you were the owner of the Philadelphia Athletics or the St. Louis Browns or the Boston Braves in the mid-1930's. Your team sucks, you hover close to the cellar all year, and you're lucky to draw 200,000 fans a year. Your franchise, needless to say, is struggling financially, making little or no money.

 But it just so happens that there is a motherlode of baseball talent available to you, right there in front of you, that could help your team become a pennant contender almost overnight. And getting into a pennant race means you draw more fans, generate more radio revenues, and make more money. All you have to do is hire a few of these immensely talented players that the other teams are refusing to sign because of their color.

 And -- you don't. You choose to wallow in the cellar. You choose to continue losing money. Anything to keep from having a black player on your team.

 And after the Dodgers finally dipped into that talent pool in 1947, and began a decade of enormous success on the field, other teams were STILL slow to avail themselves of this goldmine. Teams like the Red Sox took their jolly good old time integrating, even as they drifted to the bottom of the league. Racism trumped profit.

 To me, this is the best refutation to the argument that "the market" is always right. Not that there aren't plenty of others...  

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

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by: Master Jack @ Fri May 21, 2010 at 21:05:47 PM CDT

The Redskins refused to integrate in the 50's.... (4.00 / 3)

...and were absolutely TERRIBLE!  The would have stayed all white for at least a decade longer, too, had JFK not stepped in and insisted that the team must integrate if they were to use the new publicly built D.C. Stadium (now RFK stadium).  so the Skins drafted a few token AA players every year until Jack Kent Cooke took over the team in the 70's and the team started acting normally.

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!

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by: lord_mike @ Fri May 21, 2010 at 21:34:55 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

racism is hate (4.00 / 3)

Libertarians should quit pretending it's not.

And as for the supposed rights of private business to make any and all choices regarding public access without the intervention of "the government" - that, my friends, is a fallacy. It is a fallacy because there is no private business that exists without the support and intervention of the government. Roads, air lanes, shipping lanes, communications frequencies, currency, tariffs, subsidies, land and other property grants, leases, commercial laws enforcing contractual agreements -- the list is much longer than this, make possible the existence of the corporation. Without the authority and power of the government, the corporation would never have acquired the legal identity and privilege it presently enjoys.

As for the small business owner -- there is no business without customers and there are no customers without the transportation, communications and enforcement structures (such as zoning ordinances and police protection) necessary to deliver customers to its doorstep. In addition, there is the requirement for electricity, sewage, water and other resources necessary to support the business once the customers pass through the doorway.

Dear libertarians, please quit pretending that you don't owe the majority of your privilege to the power and money and military strength of the U.S. government. You were born a citizen of a global empire. You didn't earn it. You were born into it. Quit trying to deny that same privilege to other people who were born here who don't look like you and who don't have the same "hookup" that your race, education, and other privileges have provided you.

And quit pretending that the your rights to private property obviate the necessity to ensure the civil rights of others. Throughout history people have enslaved each other at every opportunity. You are no different.

P.S. I hate the "empire" part of the deal. I wish we could be a member of the global community of nations in a way that did not require us to do stupid things like wage unnecessary wars over oil and allow corporations to rule over us to our eventual ruin. But that's not the way things are at present.

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by: Michael Harold @ Fri May 21, 2010 at 21:16:31 PM CDT

So where does the right to privacy come from? (0.00 / 0)

Seriously. Its a real question.

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by: Joe Gabriel @ Fri May 21, 2010 at 22:43:32 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Business Is Inherently ALWAYS Somewhat Public (4.00 / 2)

It's pretty much the weakest area for asserting privacy rights as the bottom line.  If you depend on public infrastructure to do you business, as virtually everyone does, then you're inherently in the realm of constitutional balancing tests.

Privacy rights come from any number of places, depending on your point of view.  But the one place don't come from is owning shit.  So-called "libertarians" are actually "propertarians", who care very little for the rights of anyone but themselves, particularly when push comes to shove.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat May 22, 2010 at 10:31:01 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

The Democratic Administration (0.00 / 0)

has just moved the goal posts in the Iranian nogotiations. We are much closer to 'crushing sanctions' - sanction that will kill people and are a legitimate 'causa belli'.

And of course the follow up will be war - once the sanctions have weakened them enough.

In other words, our government has made it clear that the goal was not as previously advertised - reducing the nuclear threat - but 'regime change'.

And you are worried about a guy who is going to have absolutely no influence on domestic politics - at least without a great deal of support.

Pathetic.

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by: tgs1952 @ Fri May 21, 2010 at 22:06:18 PM CDT

It's hard (4.00 / 2)

Not to be sarcastic to this but I'll bite it back and just say:  Paul is important.

As someone who writes a lot about Senate reform, one can't ignore the impact 1 Senator can have on the US federal government.  Paul can do a lot of damage from the Senate.

Secondly I write frequently about ideology and this comports well to that too.  Paul represents a vocal minority who hold radical ideas.  This is the first major airing of those ideas beyond the politically involved on the internet who are familiar with the Ron/Rand Paul set.  

Last your assertion is pretty dubious.  "of course the follow up will be war - once the sanctions have weakened them enough."  What gives you the idea that the United States needs to weaken Iran in order to invade them?    I don't get what Obama is playing at, and don't like it from the sounds of it either, but you haven't exactly persuaded me I need to drop writing about things I find interesting to focus on this.

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by: Daniel De Groot @ Fri May 21, 2010 at 22:24:10 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, Ex-Klansman (0.00 / 0)

A 2001 article to remind us of a long-time member of that non-racist. liberal, Democratic Party. Democrats are still praising Byrd.  Whatever Paul says or does is NOTHING in comparison to the words and history of Robert Byrd.

http://www.capitalismmagazine....

Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, Ex-Klansman
8 March 2001 Michelle Malkin

Ex-Klansman Robert Byrd, the senior senator from West Virginia, casually used the phrase "white nigger" twice on national TV this weekend. Enraged civil rights groups organized a protest campaign against Sen. Byrd and demanded that he undergo sensitivity training ... not. The ex-Klansman, you see, is a Democrat. Democrats can join hate groups and utter the ugliest racial slurs and get away with it because they are Democrats.

The ex-Klansman, you see, is a Democrat. Democrats can join hate groups and utter the ugliest racial slurs and get away with it because they are Democrats. They belong to the party of racial tolerance and understanding. They're paragons of virtue, and the rest of us are bigoted rubes.

The ex-Klansman showed his true colors when asked by Fox News Sunday morning talk show host Tony Snow about the state of race relations in America. Sen. Byrd warned: "There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time. I'm going to use that word. We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much."

(snip)

The ex-Klansman's admirers praise his historical knowledge, mastery of procedural rules, and outspokenness. They refer to the Senate's senior Democrat as the "conscience of the Senate." They downplay his white-sheet-wearing days as a "brief mistake" -- as if joining the Klan were like knocking over a glass of water. Oopsy.

(snip)

The ex-Klansman later filibustered the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act -- supported by a majority of those "mean-spirited" Republicans -- for more than 14 hours. He also opposed the nominations of the Supreme Court's two black justices, liberal Thurgood Marshall and conservative Clarence Thomas. In fact, the ex-Klansman had the gall to accuse Justice Thomas of "injecting racism" into the Senate hearings. Meanwhile, author Graham Smith recently discovered another letter Sen. Byrd wrote after he quit the KKK, this time attacking desegregation of the armed forces.

The ex-Klansman vowed never to fight "with a Negro by my side. Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

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by: BBFmail @ Sat May 22, 2010 at 08:47:01 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

ah yes, the "What about Byrd?" ploy (4.00 / 5)

The favourite Chewbacca defence of the right when their racism is exposed.

Let's say this one slowly, all together now:  Byrd.  Repudiated.  His.  Past.

As wikipedia notes in a section about his KKK affiliation:

In 1997, he told an interviewer he would encourage young people to become involved in politics, but to "Be sure you avoid the Ku Klux Klan. Don't get that albatross around your neck. Once you've made that mistake, you inhibit your operations in the political arena."[13]  In his latest autobiography, Byrd explained that he was a member because he "was sorely afflicted with tunnel vision-a jejune and immature outlook-seeing only what I wanted to see because I thought the Klan could provide an outlet for my talents and ambitions."[14]  Byrd also said, in 2005,

" I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times... and I don't mind apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened."

The point is not that being a racist is some kind of permanent stain that one cannot erase.  One can, by repudiating it, apologizing forthrightly and following that up with actions to bolster those words.  Which Byrd has done:

In the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP)[58]  Congressional Report Card for the 108th Congress (spanning the 2003-2004 congressional session), Byrd was awarded with an approval rating of 100 percent for favoring the NAACP's position in all 33 bills presented to the United States Senate regarding issues of their concern. Only 16 other Senators of the same session matched this approval rating. In June 2005, Byrd[59]  proposed an additional $10 million in federal funding for the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C., remarking that "With the passage of time, we have come to learn that his Dream was the American Dream, and few ever expressed it more eloquently."

This is all in contrast to say, Ron Paul who claims he didn't write nor read the newsletter issued under his own name that was full of overt racism.  What a crock.  

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by: Daniel De Groot @ Sat May 22, 2010 at 09:22:44 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

The Greenspan theory... (4.00 / 1)

Next up: "Fraud corrects itself." The Pauls and libertarianism are the FRAUD! I'm looking forward to seeing it continually corrected - by the marketplace of ideas.

Faith-based governance is a complete fraud. In all of its various incarnations, it's simply cover for economic repression, keeping the rich richer.  

They only call it class war when we fight back.

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by: ezdidit @ Fri May 21, 2010 at 22:35:47 PM CDT