Lew Rockwell Linkorama

Lew Rockwell has a few posts that I'm linking below. He's an old school conservative (like Taki or Ron Paul) and since one of my favorite things to read about that I never get from the Pajamas Media Right is stuff about the evil of big government. LR's site has been one of my everyday stops on my web travels.

Trevor Bothwell has a piece over there entitled "The Sordid, Wretched, Self-Serving State"

Also, is there such a thing as a "prison industrial complex"? Don Bacon makes the argument that there is one in California:

The California Prison system is the third largest penal system in the country, costing $5.7 billion dollars a year and housing over 170,000 inmates. Since 1980 the number of California prisons has tripled and the number of inmates has jumped significantly. In the past few years controversies involving prison expansion, sky-rocketing costs, and claims of mismanagement and inmate abuse have put the California prison system under heightened public scrutiny.

What caused prisons to be a growth industry in California? Did Californians suddenly become lawless? We need look no further than the CCPOA, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. "The Power this prison guards’ union wields inside our prisons, legislative chambers and governor's office disturbs me. It should disturb every citizen." ~ Judith Tannenbaum, formerly an English teacher at San Quentin State Prison

Read the whole thing here

Lastly, the thing about Cali is that trends that first appear there have a habit of spreading across the country here's one I'm sure everyone will be happy about. There is a special license plate issued by the state that basically gives immunity from all traffic laws to anyone privileged to work for the government. Since there are nearly a million of those plates out there, the math works out to about 1 out of every 9 cars in California having these plates.

Read about the rest of this outrage here.