Andrew Colclough

The first video covers the so-called culture wars, including gay marriage, abortion and immigration:

More videos after the jump.

In the second video they discuss the role of government in providing aid to the poor:

In the third video, the panelists discuss libertarian views of war. Should the United States leave Afghanistan and Iraq? What should we do about Iran? Watch:

Some interesting and varying opinions on a wide range of issues.

For 15 years, the B & B Do it Center, a local hardware store in the small California town of Camarillo, has been putting out coffee and doughnuts for its morning customers. Actually longer, says owner Randy Collins; the previous owner did it too. Customers liked the courtesy, but... well, you know where this is going.

An anonymous customer complaint to the county brought health inspectors to the store, who determined its tradition of more than 15 years of offering coffee and doughnuts to customers violated food-handling regulations...

Inspectors told Collins that unless he was willing to install stainless-steel sinks with hot and cold water and have a prep kitchen to handle the food, he was violating the law.

As California government has solved all of its other problems, it seems appropriate to regulate coffee and doughnuts. The county bureaucrat, apparently with a straight face, described what Collins must do before he can offer the doughnuts to his customers:

“What some establishments do is hire a mobile food preparation services or in some cases a coffee service,” said Huff. “Those establishments have permits.”

It’s amazing that they still allow people to have children without permits.

You know - because you and I just aren't quite capable of judging for ourselves whether or not eating something could be a health risk. While they're at it - why doesn't California spend some tax dollars sending a team of people into the forest to put health warning labels on berries, mushrooms, and other potentially dangerous plants.

America is becoming the Tyranny of Nice.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

-C. S. Lewis

Interesting discussion. The core issue, as usual:

"The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best."

 -Thomas Sowell

Today’s Wall Street Journal profiles the world’s largest wind farm.  One local politician, Greg Wortham, hailed the Roscoe, TX farm as a model for the rest of the country, citing all the jobs it’s brought:

… 20% of Nolan County's jobs are related to the wind-development rush here -- as many as those in oil and gas…

Oops. It turns out most of those jobs were temporary.

… At the peak of its building, the Roscoe wind project employed 600 people, said Patrick Woodson, chief development officer for E.On Climate & Renewables. Now the project employs about 10 permanent staffers … 60 contractors … .

The article fails to mention one thing: The farm was built with $121,903,306 in subsidies.

So did this project actually create new jobs?  No. This is another example of Frederic Bastiat’s broken window fallacy.  Applauding the jobs that result from the subsidy ignores the fact that, had the money not been taxed away and given to the wind farm, it would have been spent elsewhere.  All the subsidy did was steal money from other activities to give to a politically-favored business. That makes for good headlines and allows bureaucrats to feel good about themselves. But it doesn’t create jobs – green or otherwise.

If “green” jobs make sense, the market will create them. Viable businesses don’t need a multi-million handout to get started. Private entrepreneurs will invest their own money to profit from investments that really work.

If green energy is good idea, it’ll just happen.

If it’s a good idea.

Stossel nails this one. The Broken Window Fallacy may be the most prevalent thinking error in modern day politics and economics. And it may also be the oldest. Read Bastiat! He wrote about it this in the 1800s when the French politicians were promoting the same ludicrous notion that you can "create jobs" by simply removing wealth from one place, and placing it someplace else. Anyone with a basic grasp of mathematics should be able to see that you are simply shifting wealth around - not creating wealth -- something which actually creates jobs.

Bastiat's writings are easy reading, free, and as certainly as relevant today as there were in the 1800s. Read them all at Bastiat.org.

"No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate)."

-Frédéric Bastiat, The Law