Milton Friedman on Unions

"When unions get higher wages for their members by restricting entry into an occupation, those higher wages are at the expense of other workers who find their opportunities reduced. When government pays its employees higher wages, those higher wages are at the expense of the taxpayer. But when workers get higher wages and better working conditions through the free market, when they get raises by firm competing with one another for the best workers, by workers competing with one another for the best jobs, those higher wages are at nobody's expense. They can only come from higher productivity, greater capital investment, more widely diffused skills. The whole pie is bigger - there's more for the worker, but there's also more for the employer, the investor, the consumer, and even the tax collector.

That's the way the free market system distributes the fruits of economic progress among all people. That's the secret of the enormous improvements in the conditions of the working person over the past two centuries."
— Milton Friedman (Free to Choose: A Personal Statement)

State of Ohio

The Grand Bargain is Dead from Matt Mayer on Vimeo.

Is the Mayor of Columbus being used as a political tool by the federal government?

Tuesday, May 18th 2010: Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman visited the White House for a security meeting. The meeting focused on the large Somali population in Columbus and online recruiting for terrorist activities in the US. Remember Nuradin Abdi (scroll till you see NEFA Series "Target America": The Columbus Mall Plot)? Christopher Paul? Iyman Faris?

So he attends the meeting behind closed doors (while Mexican President Calderon is in town) and the very first day back in Columbus he states the immigration law in Arizona is "un-American" and will no longer fund city trips to the state. Coincidence? Judge for yourself.

UPDATE: The mayors of Minneapolis, and St. Paul, were in attendance and are now in on it too. The jury is still out on Cory Booker (Newark NJ).

Arms

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes ... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.