Obamacare

Over the next few days and next few posts, I will be discussing the Democratic plan being pushed through the House and Senate. Stay tuned.

Civil Disobediance

I had a nice little break and a fantastic Turkey Day dinner. I also watched the movie Great Debaters, a Denzel Washington film about a black university's debate team. The final debate in the movie reminded me of this post on civil disobedience, a great read.

Tobacco Ban

The tobacco (not smoking, tobacco) ban went into "effect" yesterday. Richard Becker has a good piece in the Kentucky Kernel about his thoughts. Not only is this unenforceable, the university is making a judgment that only individual students themselves can make. Also, this ban applies to smokeless tobacco as well, which does no harm to anyone around! UK claims they are doing tobacco users a favor and helping them quit.

Where was this "altruism" when it came to naming a new facility that will house basketball players the Wildcat Coal Lodge?

Patrick Lonneman also makes an effective argument, advocating that if UK is trying to provide a healthy campus, they should remove all the soda machines, Chic-Fil-A's, and Sbarros on campus and provide only healthy food.

Who's responsibility are our bad choices now?

Evictions Start

In an obvious move to quash resistance to LFUGC's student housing plan, five students have been evicted from 171 Woodland Avenue for fire code violations. Now I don't have too much of a problem (just a small one) with enforcing code violations (as long as the city keeps its own building up to code -> check here for more on that one or below for the video), but I have a major problem with "Mayor Jim Newberry’s recent aim to address safety fire codes and zoning violations in neighborhoods surrounding UK." If code violations are going to be enforced, they should be enforced in all areas, not just ones containing students that the mayor dissapproves of.

Also at Freedom Kentucky

This video:






"7 Lies in under 2 minutes"

Freedom Kentucky

Bluegrass Policy Blog (a blog I complained about in my last entry) has an update on "an initiative to conduct numerous open records requests to obtain check registers, financial data, and budgets for Kentucky school districts, cities, and state agencies." We need more of this to happen, well done guys!

Check it out here and here.

Veterans Day

Bluegrass Policy Blog reports that Owensboro schools are scheduling activities to honor veterans on veterans day. Don't get me wrong, I am a supporter of veterans as much as anyone, and their service to the nation and fight for freedom should be honored. But coming from the Austrian school, I have a couple of problems with doing this in public school, and I'm quite surprised that a "free-market" or "libertarian" think-tank would support such activities.

First, schools should not be forcing students to celebrate any holiday. If they would like to give the students the day off to do what they (or their parents) please, that would be fine, they are not. If students or their parents wished to attend local Veterans Day celebrations, they could. Having schools put on events and likely forcing students to attend or even participate in presentations is not acceptable.

We can't force anyone to love this country or appreciate veterans. In addition, such activities usually (and I am not too far removed from being forced to participate in such "festivities" myself) involve the glorification of imperialist aspirations of politicians, not the sacrifice many have made for freedom. Most celebrations take on a joyous mood and lack the sobering reminder that war is something that should never be excitedly entered into and should be avoided at all costs. Forcing students to do this is not in line with libertarian or Austrian beliefs.