Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

How the "space cult" crippled the Libertarian Party.

"After the great breakthrough events of 1978 — the victory of Proposition 13, the subsequent tax revolt, the election of the first Libertarian Party candidate in History (Dick Randolph to the Alaska State House), and Ed Clark's fantastic 375,000 votes for governor of California — the Libertarian Party stands ready to enter the mainstream of American political life. It has the glorious opportunity to turn America around, to move us swiftly and rapidly in the direction of liberty. In September, it will choose a Presidential candidate who could easily gain a million votes in 1980, and possibly a great deal more."

Boy did Rothbard get that wrong. It shows how everybody is seduced into believing that politics can work. It seems to be in our genes. It's a mass delusion.

"A number of critics of the proposed program began to whine: "The program is all about politics." "Politics is a downer." "Who cares if we become one of the major parties?" And most incredible of all, "None of this motivates people." I was astonished! How could an LP leader fail to become ecstatic over actually becoming a major party, over molding real-world politics in the direction of freedom? And if they are not so motivated, why in blazes are they in the Libertarian Party at all?"

"As one of the space cadets admitted, when charged with promoting a religion instead of a political philosophy, "Yes, we want a religion!" The millennial religion of a thousand cults, the promise that wishing hard enough will make their vision of the Garden of Eden come true. All it lacks is a guru, a Messiah, a Moses, to lead the flock to the Promised Land."

Apparently the Libertarian Party had a powerful contingent that wanted the party to remain a religious institution instead of a real party even back then.

ECONOMY:

Ron Paul predicts we'll suffer a Soviet Union-style collapse, but not a revolution. He thinks we'll experience an awakening. If we don't avert the first, and I don't think there's a chance in hell we will, I hope he's right about the second.

TAX AND SPEND:

Senate committee holds hearing about seizing 401ks and IRAs.

"The point of the meeting was to figure out ways in which private 401(k) plans could be more "fairly" distributed as taxpayer-funded pensions."

There are probably a lot fewer people with IRAs or 401ks than without, so there are votes to be bought by stealing that money and giving a portion of it to others. Much of it will be kept by the aristocrats and their cronies though.

Whenever I read criticisms of Keynesianism, I'm left with one overriding thought: you have to produce before you can consume.

"But for Krugman it is demand and only demand that drives the economy."

But only people who have something to trade can create demand. You have to produce before you can consume. You can sit around and demand a mansion and a pool and a horse stable filled with horses, but you must produce and save enough before you can afford it. Otherwise, dream on. Demand doesn't drive the economy. Production does. And saving drives production. In Rothbard's words:

"The market economy and the modern world's system of division of labor operate as follows: a producer supplies a good or a service, selling it for money; he then uses the money to buy other goods or services that he needs. Let us then consider a hypothetical world of pure laissez-faire, where the market functions freely and government has not infringed at all upon the monetary sphere. This system of selling goods for money would then be the only way by which an individual could acquire the money that he needed to obtain goods and services. The process would be: production→"purchase" of money→ "sale" of money for goods."

I think I said it better.

I often talk about taking back the definition of words, greed being one of the most important to take back. I define greed as desiring the property of others without wanting to pay for it. Government is greed. The political economy is greed. Welfare is driven by greed. A system of voluntary exchange, in which people make voluntary trades with each other, is not greedy. Unfortunately, I never hear anybody else talking about this. Fortunately, Thomas Sowell wrote an essay on it. We have to take back the definition of words so we can change the terms of political debate.

REGULATION:

Here's a great reminder that insider trading laws are a scam: Congress blocks bill preventing congressmen and staffers from insider trading:

"Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) is making a renewed push to apply insider trading laws to Congress after a newspaper report showed that at least 72 congressional aides traded shares of the companies that their bosses helped oversee.

But Baird says his congressional colleagues have flatly indicated that they would block his legislation, which is aimed at preventing members of Congress and staff from trading stocks in companies where there’s a potential conflict of interest."

Insider trading laws don't stop the politically connected from insider trading. You know Goldman-Sachs execs trades on insider information all the time. It just stops the rest of us. Like all regulations, this just transfers wealth from the people to the aristocrats and their cronies. Not to mention preventing insider trading is bad for everybody. It keeps information out of the marketplace. It keeps information from investors. It makes the market inefficient. It makes the market more volatile. I love this line:

"“There are some members who seem to think the rules just shouldn’t apply to us,” said Baird in an interview with POLITICO. “There’s money to be made, lots of it, and in ways that aren’t clearly illegal.”"

Gosh, ya think?

FEDERAL RESERVE:

The Chinese central bank orders banks to increase reserve requirements which reduces loans in an attempt to dampen any bubbles. Our Fed isn't that smart.

Our Fed continues to inflate because Bernanke wants more inflation than we already have. You think I'm kidding?

"The Fed statement said, "inflation is likely to remain subdued for some time before rising to levels the Committee considers consistent with its mandate." Notice that there is no mention of a deflation threat here – as quantitative easing has effectively quashed that possibility – but rather "subdued inflation for some time."

The Fed defines inflation differently than I do, as an increase in consumer prices rather than the amount of dollars in circulation. By my definition, massive inflation has already been created, which is reflected in the fact that prices for houses, consumer goods, stocks, and bonds haven't fallen steeply and stayed down since the dot-com and mortgage bubbles popped.

But even by the Fed governors' definition, they acknowledged that we are experiencing inflation – just not enough for their taste."

Bernanke isn't happy with how fast he's wiping out Americans' savings accounts, so he's going to ramp up the pace.

"Apparently, according to the renegade policy of the Fed, we're not paying enough for food, energy, clothing, healthcare, or education. No matter that nearly 20% of the population is unemployed or underemployed, that each US taxpayer's share of the federal debt is now some $121,000, or that average tuition at a private university is set to rise 4.5% this year to $27,325. Apparently, these factors do not affect "price stability.""

Nothing like rising prices when you're unemployed or under-employed. This is harmful. This is evil. Inflation is theft.

"What is overlooked is that when the Fed prints more dollars, it typically uses them to buy bonds. Traders know this, so they are stocking up on bonds at ridiculous prices just to flip them to the Fed. They don't care that, in the long run, the Fed's policies will destroy the bonds' value because in the short run, the weak dollar policy serves as a tremendous subsidy to bond sellers."

Scary how much this sounds like the housing bubble, isn't it?

"Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading" Bye, bye dollar. We can thank Greenspan and Bernanke for this.

"Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq."

Yikes again.

Peter Schiff explains we've yet to experience the big crash he predicted, only the housing bubble meltdown which he also predicted, but we will. He thinks this next round of inflation by the Fed may finish the dollar.

"Most people assume that the "crash" I referred to in my 2007 book Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse occurred in 2008. Those who actually read the book know otherwise. The financial crisis that resulted from the bursting of the housing bubble, accurately foretold in my book, was not the crash itself, but merely the overture to a much more tragic economic opera for which the curtain is just now rising.

I argued that the housing bust would threaten the financial system with collapse and that the government would react with stimulus and bailouts – thereby making the situation much worse. That is exactly what happened. I did not believe then, and I don't believe now, that the process of liquidating bad debt would kill us. But I do believe we will succumb to Washington's "cure" of endless stimulus.

Many now claim that government deficits and Fed easing prevented a repeat of the Great Depression. From my perspective, calamity was not averted but merely delayed. The price for the reprieve will be a far more severe downturn, which I now think will surpass the Great Depression."

As I wrote in America's Looming Debt Crisis, we're going to experience a worse collapse than the Great Depression.

"The wrong choice is for the Fed to continue quantitative easing as planned, allowing the government to grow at the expense of the economy. This will widen the economic imbalances that lie at the root of our problems. As a side effect, the US dollar will continue spiraling downward as it becomes clear to foreign creditors that the Fed has no interest in protecting their investments. A weaker dollar will lead to higher inflation and higher interest rates, which will make the Fed's task that much more difficult.

In the end, our bubble economy will not just deflate, it will burst. The dollar will collapse, consumer prices will skyrocket, real credit will completely evaporate, millions more will lose their jobs, and our economy will change in ways few of us can imagine. Our standard of living will plummet and legions of middle- and upper-class Americans will be impoverished. It is not a pretty picture, but unfortunately, it's the one our government is painting. Unfortunately, we are running out of time to change artists."

That's where Greenspan, Bernanke, Bush and Obama are taking us.

EDUCATION:

School district settles lawsuit over staff spying on children through school issues computers, but the lawyer gets three times as much money as the victim. Huh?

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Chinese oil companies buys stake in Texas shale oil field. This is another sign that the Chinese government is far more intelligent than ours.

Arctic ice extent is suddenly greater than at any time in the last six years for this date. It's going to be a real cold winter.

One of many benefits of natural climate warming is longer growing seasons, meaning increased crop production. This dovetails with a benefit of man-made CO2: because CO2 is plant food, it also increases crop production. When natural global cooling hits, food prices are going to spike.

Obama acknowledges his oil rip regulations will kill jobs. Mr. Anti-business strikes again.

Obama seizing control of home appliances.

A new study shows that the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 is impossible to determine and it cuts recent warming previously attributed to CO2 by the global warming frauds by 65 percent.

US physicist calls the global warming fraud the most successful pseudo-scientific fraud in his lifetime. Tell me about it. That's what we get for allowing government to fund science with stolen money. This guy gets it.

"When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago)."

"It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist."

"I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise."

Thank you, sir, for speaking out.

Now cigarettes are being blamed for adding to global warming. This is a perfect marriage of two corrupt, pseudo-scientific crusades funded by government money stolen from us at the point of a gun.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Boortz is against the war on drugs, but he rarely mentions it because he's a conservative talk show host. Today he links an article advocating ending the war on drugs to save money. Don't forget saving lives.

Another life destroyed by the war on drugs.

"[M]y husband and I are the only ones in our family who can buy Sudafed. I will and have been the first to admit that in order to keep enough of the medicine for all of us, both my husband and I made purchases from more than one drug store. I knew we were exceeding our allotted amount but I also knew that the code of Alabama stated that purchasing over the allowed 6 grams per month was only unlawful "with intent to manufacture." So, since we had no intent to manufacture anything, I didn't see it as we were breaking the law."

You know how this story is going to end...

"[My husband] and I were arrested for "buy/sale precursor chemicals" which on the first offense is a Class C Misdemeanor. My husband is a USMC veteran so he has a criminal record (bar fights, etc.) but never any drug charges. I have never had so much as a speeding ticket and I'm a criminal justice major in college.

Even after explaining the situation to the judge and pointing out that we are law-abiding citizens just trying to offer some comfort to our kids during allergy season, the judge still found us guilty."

Now these parents have "drug dealer" branded on their foreheads for the rest of their lives. Why are lives being destroyed to keep people from allergy medication?

"It's been five years since the feds took aim at nasal decongestant. Under George Bush, a normal part of everyday civilized life became a criminal act, namely the over-the-counter purchase of Sudafed and many other products containing pseudoephedrine. You can get it now, but it is seriously rationed. You have to present your driver's license and no one without one may purchase it. The limits on quantities you are permitted to purchase fall far below the recommended dosage, and buyers rarely know when they are buying too much.

The rationing and criminalization of this product appeared as part of the Patriot Act. The replacement drug phenylephrine is far less effective on noses but more effective in Washington: the company that makes it, Boehringer Ingelheim, spent $1.6 million lobbying Washington in 2006 (the latest data) and the same amount the year before. The makers of the drug everyone actually wants are diffuse and spread all over China. Pseudoephedrine was targeted in the name of the drug war because apparently you can use it to make methamphetamine. Since the near ban, there are indications that production of the drug has gone up, mostly due to smuggling in Mexico. Even a quick google demonstrates that the gray market is thriving."

Another black market created by the power-hungry freaks in Washington so they can enrich themselves and their cronies at our expense and destroy lives in the process.

WAR:

We will win the war on terror when our government stops using violence and the threat of violence to impose its will on Muslim countries, and we won't win it any other way. Terrorism against the US is a reaction to our government's aggressive foreign policy.

America's transformation into the National Security State.

POLITICS:

Showing once again that Obama is tone deaf, he's campaigning for Democrats. As despised as he is, he would help them more by hiding under a rock. Maybe that's too harsh. He probably will get Democrats a few extra votes from the base by running around, demagoguing Republicans.

The American people describe the federal government as "too big". By far.

Out of the top 50 donors to Congress, all but Oil and Gas, commercial banks, general contractors, repub/conservative, food and beverage, automotive, and food process-sales give more to Democrats than Republican. That's 43 out of 50 that give more to Democrats, and most give lots more to Democrats. But one more institution that does not give more to Democrats and is leading the battle to expose Obama and Democrats as anti-business is the US Chamber of Commerce. That's why Obama is attacking them.

Sarah Palin positioning for a 2012 run. Maybe that's why she's being seen on Dancing with the Stars.

MEDIA:

CNBC makes stupid claim that saving hurts the economy.

"Behind all of the sophisticated models and diagrams, the basic intuition of Keynesianism is thatspending leads to prosperity. This is such a crude, layperson view, that it is shocking to find it still so resilient in academia. Perhaps the only thing even cruder would be the theory that printing up dollar bills leads to prosperity. I hate to break it to you folks, but I've just described the two leading schools of thought on the matter."

That's a fantastic quote. Murphy's frustration really comes through.

"So if households across the country are opting for less consumption today in order to have more wealth in the future, why are the politicians (and CNBC) trying to thwart their plans?

The sophisticated Keynesian will come up with a story about the "paradox of thrift," in which we all try to save more and end up broke. But c'mon, that's crazy. For one thing, countries with high rates of savings also have high rates of economic growth. Far from impoverishing a country, higher savings leads to higher investment."

Funny how that works. Keynesianism is a pseudo-scientific hoax propagated to give aristocrats cover for robbing us blind.

"If it were really as simple as consumers "spending," why doesn't the government just levy a 95% tax on dividends and capital gains? Better yet, why not give the electric chair to anyone who saves more than 2% of his income?

I'm being serious. The federal government kills people to get its way all the time, so why should it be different when it comes to saving the entire global economy? If the American consumer is too dense to realize that it's in his own interest to blow his whole paycheck at the mall, then why not use some good old-fashioned coercion? That's what we do when it comes to drugs and the draft."

I really like this essay. The Mises scholars don't usually cut loose like this.

LOCAL:

Asking government agents to restrict the power of government is a fool's errand.

"In a 7-0 decision, the Ohio Supreme Court upheld a provision of a state law that puts a $10 value limit on prizes that may be awarded for one play of a legal skill-based game.

The decision, announced Tuesday, held that the limit is rationally related to legitimate government interests and does not violate the equal protection clauses of the U.S. and Ohio Constitutions."

Does not? How can it not?

MISC:

Follow-up analysis of the date used to justify the claim than an earth-like planet was discovered 20 light years away casts doubt on the conclusion. This is how science is supposed to work. Scientists make their data available to others for follow-up analysis. But the global warming frauds refuse to make their data available because they know skeptics will use it to expose their fraud.

Mark Sisson explains why Asians have been healthy despite eating all that rice and in the process explains why our ancestors even 50 or 100 years ago were healthy despite eating all that grain like wheat and oats.

"The Asian Paradox

This probably deserves a full post, but I’ll briefly discuss it here. I’m not going to sit here and claim that Asians don’t actually eat rice. They do. And they have for centuries while maintaining pretty good health and staying fairly lean. That’s changing nowadays, though, with the Westernization of their food. They’re eating more sugar and using vegetable oils for cooking, rather than traditional animal fats. These factors are deranging their metabolisms, turning the relatively benign rice starch into an enemy. It just suggests that carbs, in and of themselves, are benign in a metabolic vacuum. If you have everything else going right – insulin sensitivity, regular activity, absence of metabolic deranging foods like fructose, lectins, and excessive linoleic acid – pure starchy carbs aren’t going to be a big problem. But, especially in the States, we live in anything but a nutritional vacuum. We aren’t starting from ground zero. The overweight perimenopausal wife and mother of three working 50 hours a week is not starting from square one. She has an issue with glucose, one that might not be cured in a lifetime. For a person like that, avoidance of rice is recommended and probably necessary.

We have to face facts. Deranged has become normal. Glucose intolerance – or perhaps “mishandling” is better – has become standard. Where rice belongs in your life depends on where you fall on the metabolic derangement continuum."

This provides some support for my theory: because a significant portion of people's diets were healthy, their bodies were able to overcome a lot of damage. Like from wheat and oats. Smoking is a perfect example. In the past, almost everybody smoked with little consequence. That's because they ate healthy. Today, since very little we eat is healthy, everything bad we do causes lasting and ever growing damage to our bodies, like smoking. Like eating those grains.

Is Google putting a target on its back?

"If any institution can make wind power work, and make it economically viable, it is Google. Announcement of its plans here. “When built out, the Atlantic Wind Connection (AWC) backbone will stretch 350 miles off the coast from New Jersey to Virginia and will be able to connect 6,000MW of offshore wind turbines. That’s equivalent to 60% of the wind energy that was installed in the entire country last year and enough to serve approximately 1.9 million households.”

Then there’s the Google Price Index, which surely shows a “deflationary” trend, meaning that prices are falling.

Oh, also, there’s the car that drives itself.

With all this incredible activity, it is surely only a matter of time before the government crushes the company."

Government threats already forced Google to open a Washington lobbying office to pay tribute.

Rothbard celebrates Hayek's Nobel Prize.

Is France headed toward another revolution? It's certainly headed off a fiscal cliff even faster than the US.

"But the French have one of the world’s highest life expectancies – in spite of smoking, drinking, eating fats, driving like maniacs, unprotected sex and grumbling about everything."

Or maybe they live longer because of those things.

"Like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Sarko and Carla are looking out the window of their palace at the angry mobs, wondering what on earth to do next. The problem this time around: how to take the French people’s cake away without provoking another French Revolution."

Yikes.

Branson's SpaceShipTwo flies first solo flight unpowered.