Archive for August 29, 2011

A World Without FEMA?

22
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Rep. Ron Paul (R-​​Texas)

I often dis­agree with Con­gress­man Ron Paul, who is run­ning for the Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, but I always respect his views.

Rep. Paul has declared a ver­bal war on the Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (FEMA), tar­get­ing it for destruction.

Paul’s view­points are con­sis­tent with a purely Lib­er­tar­ian per­spec­tive, which holds that local com­mu­ni­ties and indi­vid­u­als should band together for dis­as­ter response, a role that is nowhere for­mal­ized in the United States Con­sti­tu­tion. (Lib­er­als would pre­sum­ably define “provid[ing] for the com­mon defence” as laid out in the Pre­am­ble to include dis­as­ter response.)

A state can decide. We don’t need some­body in Washington.

Refer­ring to the pre-​​FEMA 1900 Galve­ston hur­ri­cane, which took over 6,000 lives, Paul said:

I live on the Gulf Coast, we deal with hur­ri­canes all the time. The local peo­ple rebuild the city. Built a sea wall and they sur­vived with­out FEMA. We should be like 1900, we should be like 1940, 1950, 1960.

Paul said the only pur­pose of FEMA is a

great con­tri­bu­tion to deficit financing

What do Log­a­rchism read­ers think? Would Amer­ica be a bet­ter place if FEMA no longer existed? Do you accept Paul’s premise that 1960 was “bet­ter” than 2011?

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The Loss of Jack Layton

24
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Jack Lay­ton, 1950–2011

Amer­i­cans, even those who have a strong polit­i­cal bent and pop­u­late web­sites such as Log­a­rchism, tend to be blind toward the pol­i­tics of other countries.

So it was that a major Cana­dian polit­i­cal fig­ure died a week ago today, and few on the south­ern side of the bor­der marked his pass­ing. I’m here to rec­tify that, at least for the cor­ner of the world I control.

New Demo­c­ra­tic Party leader Jack Lay­ton died Mon­day, August 22, at the age of 61.

Since 2006, the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment (a par­lia­men­tary sys­tem) has been con­trolled by the minor­ity party, the Con­ser­v­a­tives, led by Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harper. In the 2011 elec­tions, Cana­di­ans stirred up the House of Com­mons, giv­ing the Con­ser­v­a­tives a major­ity but weak­en­ing the tra­di­tional Lib­eral oppo­si­tion. Con­ser­v­a­tives now con­trol 166 of a total 308 seats in the House of Com­mons. There are four oppo­si­tion par­ties hold­ing seats — the New Democ­rats (102 seats, with Layton’s now empty), Lib­er­als (34), Bloc Québé­cois (4), and Greens (1). Tra­di­tion­ally, the Lib­er­als and Con­ser­v­a­tives have alter­nated gov­ern­ments, with the Bloc Québé­cois (formed as a Que­bec sep­a­ratist party) and New Democ­rats (formed from a fusion of Social­ists and labour/​workers par­ties) rel­e­gated to shout­ing on the side­lines. For the first time in Cana­dian his­tory, the New Democ­rats (formed in 1961) are the offi­cial oppo­si­tion party, with the Lib­er­als and Bloc Québé­cois weak­ened con­sid­er­ably from their ear­lier pow­er­ful role. (more…)

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