Free Republic

<p>GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. - The Mesa County Board of Commissioners voted to implement the “Free to Choose” mask resolution beginning on Friday, Apr. 16. Under the new guidelines, businesses and individuals will be able to decide whether to wear a mask or not in public indoor spaces. Businesses will also have the option of limiting indoor capacities or not. However, businesses will still be able to require customers to wear masks.</p>

In this classic Free To Choose Network footage (1978), Milton Friedman takes three questions from an audience member and crushes them all. The real problem is, that as we move from the local community to the state, from the state to the Federal government, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to control the mechanism we have established and that mechanism tends to control us. That was the great wisdom of the founding fathers of this country, of the people who wrote the Constitution. That constitution was designed to limit government’s powers in order to preserve the freedom of the individual,...

Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, promoting "Free to Choose" on the show Donahue.Worth watching....Donahue...actually conducted a decent interview.

Yesterday would have been the 103rd birthday of Milton Friedman, who was one of the most brilliant economists of the last century. In honor of Friedman, here are his 20 best quotes. 20) “A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.” 19) “Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny,...

Two days ago I ordered online a used copy of Milton & Rose Friedman's classic "Free to Choose," hoping a liberal loved one would be willing to read it. That doesn't look like it's going to happen, so now I'm tempted to send the book to Barney Frank—since it's apparent that, like many liberals, he doesn't understand the most basic notions of how free markets work. On Steve Kornacki's MSNBC show today, Frank described business creators as being "given privileges." Barney then added this mind-boggler: "there's only a limited amount of space, there's only a limited amount of businesses. Your...

Engineering Thinking principle: comparative analysis When you make a decision to purchase an auto or a cell phone or a home, you have lots of choices, because you have a lot of companies competing for your business. You can compare features and prices -- do a comparative analysis -- and arrive at a rational decision of which is best for you. Of course, what is best for you may not be best for others, so having many options helps to ensure that most people can select a choice that best satisfies their particular needs and preferences. Comparative analysis leads to...

Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a compelling case for school choice Tuesday at The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice dinner honoring Milton Friedman’s 100th birthday. Friedman, who died in 2006, was universally known as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. His free-market philosophy had a strong influence on the policies of world leaders like President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and helped convince leaders of many developing nations to reform their economic strategies. Less known is the fact that Friedman was the father of the American school choice movement, advocating...

(video at link) - Happy 100 to Milton Friedman

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here is Joan in East Liverpool, Ohio. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello. CALLER: Hi. RUSH: Hi. CALLER: You're my hero. RUSH: Wow. CALLER: Always have been. RUSH: Wow. Thank you very much. CALLER: You know, Milton Friedman wrote a book back in the seventies, I think, called Free to Choose. RUSH: Yes, ma'am. CALLER: And then they made it into -- or maybe it came first, made it into a ten-part series that they put on PBS. RUSH: Exactly right. You are exactly right. CALLER: And I'll tell you, back then, nothing was being done in...

Milton Friedman's brilliant PBS series, "Free To Choose" is back online - for free. If you have not seen it and are even remotely interested in economics, this is a MUST SEE series. Much more so in light of our nation's current backslide into the cesspool of Socialism and Statist thought, 'neo'keynsian economics and police state regulation.

Mitch Daniels on American Conservatism In this interview, which helps define an emerging political figure, possible Presidential contender for 2012 Mitch Daniels plants himself firmly on the dynamist, anti-traditionalist side of the conservative divide. Two of the books you’ve chosen are about freedom and two are about social dynamism. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, I would say, is about both. It’s also the first of these books to be published, in 1944. Do you want to start with that one? Hayek, when I thumb back through it and look at what I marked when I first read it, was the book...

Two things that those on the far left who support big government cannot abide by are private gun ownership and homeschooling – and largely for the same reason. I know it may sound surprising, and perhaps some people might roll their eyes and say former NRA Presidents must feel an uncontrollable urge to think everything should somehow equate to supporting gun rights. But it's a fair statement to say those on the liberal end of the spectrum oppose both gun ownership and homeschooling for the same reason: There are core values in common between gun ownership and homeschooling. These commonalities...

Every well-traveled cosmop­olite knows that America is mind-numbingly monotonous—the most boring country to tour, because everywhere looks like everywhere else,” as the columnist Thomas Friedman once told Charlie Rose. Boston has the same stores as Denver, which has the same stores as Charlotte or Seattle or Chicago. We live in a “Stepford world,” says Rachel Dresbeck, the author of Insiders’ Guide to Portland, Oregon. Even Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall, she complains, is “dominated by the Gap, Anthropologie, Starbucks, and all the other usual suspects. Why go anywhere? Every place looks the same.” This complaint is more than the old worry,...

Our correspondent on the legacy of a great economic guruThe leading economists of history can be divided into two classes. There are those who mainly contribute to the development of economics as a science; they usually have most influence on their fellow economists. There are others who become global gurus, and have direct influence on politicians, bankers, businessmen and journalists. There is some overlap between them, though it is possible to be a third-rate economist but a first-rate guru. The gurus are usually remembered by the world for two or three interconnected ideas that provide rules of thumb in later...

BREAKING NEWS: Economist Milton Friedman has died. Full story to follow shortly.

SAN FRANCISCO - Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three U.S. presidents, died Thursday at age 94. Friedman died in San Francisco, said Robert Fanger, a spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in Indianapolis. He did not know the cause of death. "Milton's passion for freedom and liberty has influenced more lives than he ever could possibly know," said Gordon St. Angelo, the foundation's president and CEO, said in a statement. "His writings and ideas have transformed the minds of U.S. presidents, world leaders, entrepreneurs and...

FREE TO CHOOSE: Who Protects the Worker? Friedman: People who earn their living in a modern heavy industry seldom engage in the kind of back-breaking toil that was the everyday lot of most workers a century ago. And yet they earn far more. What has produced these improvements? The offhand reaction of most people is likely to be that labor unions are largely responsible for the enormous progress workers have made in the past two centuries. But clearly, at least for the U.S. that cannot be true. After all, in the 19th Century when workers did very well, there were...

Friedman: The 1960's Corvair, condemned by Ralph Nader as unsafe at any speed. Since Nader's attack it is being increasingly accepted that we need government protection in the marketplace. Today there are agencies all over Washington where bureaucrats decide what's good for us. Agencies to control the prices we pay, the quality of goods we can buy, the choice of products available. It's already costing us more than $5 billion a year. Since the attack on the Corvair the government has been spending more and more money in the name of protecting the consumer. This is hardly what the 3rd...

FREE TO CHOOSE: What's Wrong with our Schools? Friedman: These youngsters are beginning another day at one of America's public schools, Hyde Park High School in Boston. What happens when they pass through those doors is a vivid illustration of some of the problems facing America's schools. They have to pass through metal detectors. They are faced by security guards looking for hidden weapons. They are watched over by armed police. Isn't that awful. What a way for kids to have to go to school, through metal detectors and to be searched. What can they conceivably learn under such circumstances....

FREE TO CHOOSE: Created Equal Friedman: From the Victorian novelists to modern reformers, a favorite device to stir our emotions is to contrast extremes of wealth and of poverty. We are expected to conclude that the rich are responsible for the deprivations of the poor __ that they are rich at the expense of the poor. Whether it is in the slums of New Delhi or in the affluence of Las Vegas, it simply isn't fair that there should be any losers. Life is unfair __ there is nothing fair about one man being born blind and another man being...