Liberty Drip

By Adolfo Jimenez I am a small business owner. Small, of course, is a relative term. While my business is not as big as Amazon or AT&T, it is pretty big to me. I own two corporations with four distinct lines of business. I work quite hard, even when things are slow and there is not much to do. In my life as a business owner, I have created jobs, and I’ve fired people or let people go. I have created millions of dollars in value, I have served countless customers, and I have, of course, paid more than my fair share of taxes. It’s okay, I’m happy to help those less willing than myself.  I can live with the taxes. No, I can’t. No need to lie, it doesn’t further the story or prove anything. I pay taxes because I would rather not have the problems that come with not paying taxes like going to jail or having my stuff seized by the state. Makes sense, right? But taxes are only one of the unfair burdens placed on business owners in the land of the free. The burdens people don’t talk ab...

  A pharmaceutical company creates a drug. They spend a lot of money to do this. Millions. Tens of millions. Sometimes hundreds of millions. All this before they have a single customer. Not a single pill sold. They’re operating in the red on this particular product. It’s a problem. A corporation exists to make money. It is not tasked with making the world a better place. Sure, there are many socially conscious entrepreneurs out there and there is no denying that they are doing more to make the world a better place than the governments they are regulated, taxed, and restricted by. Pharmaceutical companies are not among these kinder, gentler corporations. They are an enemy of humanity. Back to the development of the latest miracle pill. Big Pharma creates a pill without a single customer existing for it. They need customers. Lots of them. Fast. So they advertise. They produce high quality commercials depicting people enjoying their lives with friends and families. These people go wat...

Ravi Kopparapu and Jacob Haqq-Misra's thought provoking opinion piece in the Washington Post May 26, “We’re asking the wrong questions about UFOs,” suggested a redirection of the recently piqued public interest in answering the question of what unidentified aerial phenomena are, to how we can figure out what they are.  I concur that the latter question is more immediately important than the former; however, two more peels of this onion are necessary. The questions which must come before all others are whether we can figure out what they are and so what if we do? The reason these questions are so important is that the authors and a number of other leading thinkers are advocating the dedication of public resources to the matter of answering the how question. Were they merely putting their own time and energy to the question, I would gladly cheer them on.  Bravo!  After all, who doesn't root for the underdog?  But betting money on the underdog is a different matter, esp...

Dear Fellow LEO:   In Washington there's an old saying: You're either at the table or you're on the menu. Well, if you're like me, you're tired of bites being taken out of your behind by a misled public and by cowardly public officials. This is why I have been gratified to read of the participation of so many police unions in various reform discussions. I believe we serve our own interests, as well as those of our communities, when we adopt a pro-reform agenda in a fashion consistent with police best practices and community safety.    Let's be clear-eyed about what's at stake. While some of us might think that politicians who chant “defund the police” couldn't possibly mean it, I assure you that a certain percentage of them are as serious as an armed robbery. When indoors and away from crowds, what they will tell you is that the chant refers to replacing patrol officers with other forms of civil servants.    The problem posed by this idea is ...

I will admit I am not with the times. I am no pop culture expert. I don’t go to the movies. I don’t stay up late to watch either of the Jimmys. I rarely watch TV. A couple of hours per week is my limit and it’s usually a movie or documentary. But every now and then, I turn on the TV and watch a movie or binge on a National Geographic series. (Yes, I pay for cable even though I never watch it and neither does anyone else in my house.) Yesterday, I came across a film called Red2 starring Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, and some other big names I can’t recall. They are spies or government assassins or something, all older and well passed their prime, and they (gasp!) find themselves in the middle of Russia with only a few hours to save the world from a bomb that has been hidden under the Kremlin for decades. Bruce Willis’ character takes the crew to an old safe house that he hadn’t used since the bomb had been lost in the 1980’s. The apartment is a dusty museum full of relics ...

2020 has been the year of the new normal. Masks have become such a part of our lives that seeing someone in a public place such as a grocery store seems wrong somehow. Signs on the floor and tables in restaurants barricaded by chairs or crime scene tape are expected. But our story begins in 2000. Right here in Broward County, FL. It’s the story of the Chad family. There was Hanging Chad, Dimpled Chad, and all the other little Chads. Broward became the focus of the nation and indeed the world as the charming but incompetent Supervisor of Elections Miriam Oliphant and her department fumbled the presidential election. You know the rest. The 2000 fiasco changed the world in a lot of ways. It made both of the legacy parties aware of the advantages of having an army of lawyers at the ready come election time. The parties also learned to use electoral disinformation more effectively to convince people of the outcome they desired and to get popular opinion on their side. Now, with social media...

  The voters of the state of Florida passed a law which will result in a $15 minimum wage by 2026. The bill passed with just over 60% of the vote. Some will say this is a victory for workers’ rights, and equality and fairness and all that blah blah blah. I am willing to bet it will be the opposite. Full disclosure: I am a business owner. I have hourly employees. All of them make more than the current minimum wage. Not all of them are at or above $15 per hour. I have a problem with the minimum wage that has nothing to do with how it may affect my business. See, I will treat payroll as I treat every other expense. I will pass on the additional cost to my customers. I hope they will benefit from the wage increase as well, because they’re going to pay more for everything they buy and every service they contract. Actually, I take that back. I hope they don’t benefit from the wage increase. I hope they don’t see themselves as minimum wage people. I hope they believe in themselves a littl...