In related news, common sense and personal experience suggest low income and/or low net worth are, conversely, related to eating lots of fast food and being obese.

In other words, poor people aren’t fat because they’re poor, they’re poor because they’re fat.

Leon, my guess that was a gimme to both the big stores and to those who hate this law but at least it won’t let liquor be sold in every corner store/7-11/circleK etc.. That was one of the ads against the law on tv the last few weeks before the vote. Some mother whinging that her son was killed by a drunk who had gotten his beer from a convenience store and the new law would make it worse.

Hopefully it will get Oregon to change its laws. Though there are already companies that complain that a true free market would mean they lose shelf space to bigger brands of booze. I look forward to occasionally shopping at Costco across the border in WA when visiting friends and paying far less than 10 miles south across a river. Ironically, WA folks usually cross into OR to avoid sales tax.

The other day, “somebody” smeared feces on a FHP car. And now the Miami police chief disciplined an officer for pulling over a FHP trooper.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/mh-officer-disciplined-fhp-trooper-111011,0,1322361.story

No, last year Costco tried an initiative that would have allowed smaller stores to sell liquor and the people voted it down, because it allowed small stores (c stores and the like) to sell liquor. This year’s initiative also backed by Costco says stores have to be 10,000 sq. ft (or thereabouts) and it passed.

The legislature can change it in two years anyway.

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/11/02/18696728.php

http://news.yahoo.com/photos/signs-read-occupy-seattle-capitalism-crisis-shown-current-photo-173824121.html

http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Anti-Capitalism.jpg

http://www.mrc.org/biasalert/uploads/2011-10-05-NBC-TDAY-CapitalismCrisis.jpg

http://singularitycometh.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/occupy-montreal-fuck-capitalism.jpg

If I had to sum up my view of the Occupiers in one sentence, based on what I’ve seen, it would be “politicians in bed with huge corporations = suck”. That’s not anti-capitalist.

Well, one only has to look at former LEAP speaker, and now former cop, Bradley Jardis. Brad was a full time active duty cop in New Hampshire, when he had an epiphany about drug prohibition. He publicly announced that he would no longer arrest anyone for drug possession, in a letter to the state’s largest newspaper. LEAP’s response? They immediately revoked all ties to Brad, saying they would not tolerate police not enforcing the law.

Also in New Hampshire, Cheshire County jail superintendent Richard Van Winkler is a LEAP member and speaker. He dutifully enforces the drug laws.

Now as a former Washington State resident, I always found the state-run liquor stores incredibly frustrating: in Seattle, it was incredibly difficult to get liquor on Sundays, as there were maybe two inconveniently-located stores in the entire city that were even open. I’m all in favor of opening up the state’s licensing system to any size establishment, but the semi-deregulation of this initiative may end up being worse than doing nothing (as far as freeing up the market is concerned). Now that large retail establishments have achieved this benefit, expect to see those businesses fight tooth-and-nail to prevent opening up the licensing process to smaller establishments. Basically, this looks like it’s creating an anti-small seller, pro-large retailer giveaway.

They’re inconsistent with what (some) libertarians mean by the word capitalism. They’re perfectly consistent with what most people mean by the word, whether they’re for it or against it. They’re using the word correctly*. Even Milton Friedman was thoughtful enough to distinguish between capitalism (structural economic and political dominance by professional capitalists) and liberty. Most (almost all) of the Occupiers of them are deeply confused in the substance of their beliefs, of course. But their terminology, at least, is correct.

*One can pull out the tired dictionary definition of capitalism as a system with private property or whatever. Then you’re faced with the fact that North Korea or a similar dictatorship – essentially a whole country that is the private property of one guy – is a perfect example of total capitalism. Honestly libertarians would do well to simply drop the word ‘capitalism’ as a term for free markets, since it’s bound up in too much unlibertarian baggage. It was a stupid idea to try to appropriate the word for that meaning in the first place, though to be (un)fair the people primarily responsible for doing so (von Mises and Rand) were not particularly libertarian.

One of the problems OWS is concerned about is that socialism is currently in effect, but only for the 1%, TBTF companies, etc. The free market does not exist in the US for sufficiently large players.

Now some dork who “contributes” to Forbes writes an article using all sorts of straw man arguments to discredit them (e.g. sex assault = they’re all rapists) gets linked up by one of the few respectable bloggers I read.

Except for the part where the Forbes contributor never said or implied that the incidents of sexual assault at some OWS camps means that all OWS folks are rapists. He was very clearly talking about maintaining some aspects of law in order to prevent such assaults. Of course, you can disagree with that point, but it’s a little too rich to misrepresent his statement with such a transparent straw man in the very same sentence in which you decry straw man arguments.

BTW, I agree with the thrust of the second paragraph: In any group courting media attention, the group’s most controversial outliers often get the most attention and it’s up to us to recognize that those outliers aren’t necessarily representative of the group as a whole.

Okay. Here is the starting point:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.

I tried that once but it didn’t work out:

Lame.

“I-1183 was a scaled-back version of a voter measure Costco backed in the 2010 election, which voters resoundingly rejected. That measure would have allowed minimarts and gas stations to sell liquor, deregulated beer distribution and meant lost revenues for the state and local governments — all issues Costco revised in I-1183.”

It sounds to me like the 10,000 square foot portion of the law was a response to the rejection of the earlier law, not an outright attempt to restrict smaller competition. I mean, yes, I’m sure Costco is not shedding any tears for their smaller competition, but it doesn’t appear as if that was their direct goal here.