Security and Self-Governance. by Ron Paul
The senseless
and horrific killings last week at a movie theater in Colorado reminded
Americans that life is fragile and beautiful, and we should not
take family, friends, and loved ones for granted. Our prayers go
out to the injured victims and the families of those killed. As
a nation we should use this terrible event to come together with
the resolve to create a society that better values life.
We should also
face the sober reality that government cannot protect us from all
possible harm. No matter how many laws we pass, no matter how many
police or federal agents we put on the streets, no matter how routinely
we monitor internet communications, a determined individual or group
can still cause great harm. We as individuals are responsible for
our safety and the safety of our families.
The Problem, as Usual, Is the Government. by Ron Paul
Before
the United States House of Representatives, Committee on Financial
Services, Hearing on the Annual Report of the Financial Stability
Oversight Council, July 25, 2012
Mr. Chairman,
I welcome this hearing to receive the report of the Financial Stability
Oversight Council (FSOC). The creation of FSOC underscores perfectly
the complete intellectual bankruptcy underpinning the government's
behavior towards financial markets. In the opinion of government
leaders, the financial crisis was not caused by misguided regulation,
interest rate manipulation, or government-caused distortions to
the structure of production, but by a financial sector that was
completely deregulated and laissez-faire. The response of legislators,
therefore, was to create a new super-regulator with vast new powers
to control the financial system.
Those who truly
believe that the financial sector is deregulated might want to test
their hypothesis by starting their own bank without the government's
imprimatur, assuming that they are prepared to spend some time in
a federal penitentiary. To say that the financial sector is deregulated
could not be further from the truth. No other sector of the economy
is as intertwined with the government as the financial industry.
The Rise of the Fisheries and the Merchants. by Murray N. Rothbard
Attempts of
the government to subsidize the beginning of fisheries also proved
fruitless. During the 1630s, fish were either imported or came from
Englishmen fishing off Newfoundland and the Maine coast. But the
civil war of the 1640s crippled the English fishing fleet. New England
fishermen, without need of government coercion, expanded their activities
to fill the gap. There sprang up along the New England coast communities
of fishermen-farmers, who fished and farmed in alternate seasons.
These settlements , in such towns as Marblehead, Nantucket, and the
Isles of Shoals, were conspicuously non-Puritan. In 1644,
for example, not one resident of Marblehead qualified as a freeman;
in short, not one was a church member. In 1647, in fact, so solicitous
was the General Court of the morals of the Isles of Shoals that
no women were allowed to live in the town.
Abortion and Rape. by Andrew P. Napolitano
The criticisms
of the recent absurd comments by Missouri Republican Congressman
Todd Akin, who at this writing is his party's nominee to take on
incumbent Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November
in a contest he had been expected to win, have focused on his clearly
erroneous understanding of the human female anatomy. In a now infamous
statement, in which he used the bizarre and unheard-of phrase "legitimate
rape," the congressman gave the impression that some rapes of women
are not mentally or seriously resisted. This is an antediluvian
and misogynistic myth for which there is no basis in fact and which
has been soundly and justly condemned.
Akin also stated
that the female anatomy can resist unwanted impregnation. This,
too, is absurd, offensive and incorrect. Medical science has established
conclusively that women cannot internally block an unwanted union
of egg and sperm, no matter the relationship between male and female.
I think even schoolchildren understand that.
Max Keiser: Ludwig von Mises Is a Fake Austrian Economist. by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
"If
it ain’t Menger or his direct student Eugene [sic] Von BB, it ain’t
Austrian. Sorry #Mises : respectfully, too many mistakes were made."
~
August 10 tweet by Sandeep Jaitly
Last week the
Keiser Report, hosted by Max Keiser, featured a
segment with Sandeep Jaitly, a follower of Antal Fekete and
the author of the above tweet. Now Jaitly doesn’t seem like the
worst fellow in the world, so I don’t relish criticizing him, but
saying Mises made too many deviations to be considered an Austrian
economist is really too much.
Jaitly’s tweet
evidently piqued Keiser’s curiosity. What, he asked, are these Misesian
mistakes?
"His mistakes
were too great to elaborate on on the show," Jaitly replied,
and proceeded to list a few (see below). But after saying Mises’
mistakes "were too great to elaborate on," he went on
to say, "It’s not insulting or denigrating what von Mises has
done. He was certainly the greatest economist of the twentieth century.
It’s just that he made a slight few errors of observation. That’s
all."
Cutter: I'm Just Going to Make S%&t Up about Jobs
Cutter: I'm Just Going to Make S%&t Up about Jobs
by
Mike Flynn
Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager for Obama's reelection effort, seems more a character out of fiction than a real person. A high-octane spokesman, she is willing to say anything to win the 30-second sound byte cycle. She will lie, contradict herself and make up stats on the fly to get through any single cable news appearance. Its something real people, with a credibility gene, wouldn't do. Fortunately, she's a Democrat, so the media will never really hold her statements to account.
McCaskill on Bill Clinton in '06: 'I Don't Want My Daughter Near Him' 6 0 1
McCaskill on Bill Clinton in '06: 'I Don't Want My Daughter Near Him'
6
0
1
by Dana Loesch 23 Aug 2012, 3:08 PM PDT 2 post a comment
Senator Claire McCaskill had some choice words to say about the 2012 DNC
speaker Bill Clinton.
"I think he's been a great leader but I don't want my daughter near
him."
McCaskill said this a few years ago while in a hotly contested senate
race against Republican Jim Talent.
In light of the recent discussion on rape, does the Senator feel the
same way today, and will she be in attendance cheering on an accused
rapist at the DNC?
President Lists Anti-Israel Activists Among 'Rabbis for Obama'
by
Jeff Dunetz
Earlier this week the Obama campaign announced the formation of “Rabbis For Obama," featuring over 600 rabbis from across the country and across all Jewish denominations dedicated to four more years of big government and anti-Israel policies.
The Divine Providence of Voters: Akin Down 10 Points in Missouri
It was the gaffe heard-round the political world. In an interview with a local St. Louis public affairs show aired Sunday, Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin gave an absurd and, to many, offensive answer to the question of an abortion exemption for rape. While most anger was focused on the use of the word "legitimate" as a qualifier for rape, Akin's entire statement was disturbing. In the aftermath of the scandal, Akin defied all rational political thought or analysis and committed to staying in the race. According to a new poll, the Senate seat in Missouri has now swung decisively to the Democrats.
Actually, It Was Obama Who 'Redefined Rape' in January 2012
The Obama campaign, its surrogates, and its media allies are accusing Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan of having tried to "redefine rape"--but it was President Barack Obama himself who redefined rape in January 2012, expanding the official federal definition to include male victims and different forms of non-consensual sex. The definition of "forcible" rape to which Ryan--and other legislators, including 11 Democrats--referred in a 2011 bill was in line with the federal definition of rape before Obama changed it. The claim that Ryan tried to "redefine rape" is therefore anachronistic, and provably false.
President Infanticide: Dem Abortion Platform Does Not Exclude Partial-Birth Abortion
by
John Nolte
President Clinton believed abortion should be "safe, rare; and legal." But Clinton also believed in a work requirement in his welfare reform bill.
President Obama apparently disagrees on both counts.
After unilaterally allowing states to
waive the central pillar of the landmark and bipartisan 1996 welfare
reform act -- the work requirement -- Obama has also proven himself to be
a wild-eyed extremist on the issue of abortion and way out of step with
at least two-thirds of the American people. And his convention platform
backs this extremism up.
In 2008, the Democrat Party platform on abortion read this way:
The Democratic Party strongly and
unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe
and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay, and we oppose any and
all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.
Obama was in charge of the Democrat
Party in 2008, and there's been no scuttlebutt whatsoever about any
change that might include an exception for children who are already
partially born and very much alive -- but still aborted. The practice
known as partial-birth abortion is infanticide -- nothing more, nothing
less. It's a horrifying procedure (more here) that over two-thirds of Americans believe should be illegal.
And there's little hope the 2012
platform will calibrate towards sanity and include this exception. After
all, Obama is still in charge of the Democrat Party, and while running
for the U.S. Senate in 2003, Obama defended late-term abortion:
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Who Is Paul Ryan?
By John Stossel -
I wanted to like Paul Ryan.
Before he was nationally known, Rep. Ryan visited me at ABC, and we went to lunch. He was terrific. He was a rare politician, one who actually cared about America's comingdebt crisis
and the unfairness of entitlements. He even talked about F.A. Hayek's
"The Road to Serfdom"! If only more politicians thought that way.
Before he was nationally known, Rep. Ryan visited me at ABC, and we went to lunch. He was terrific. He was a rare politician, one who actually cared about America's coming
Will the Obama Administration Push Government Motors Into Bankruptcy Once More
Shikha Dalmia|
That taxpayers are never going to recover their “investment” in
Government Motors has been a foregone conclusion
for a while.
But their losses are mounting beyond what many, including me, had
predicted. Last year, top auto analysts had expected GM’s stock
prices right now to be around $43 per share. Even that price, I had
noted at the time, would represent a $13 to $19 billion loss on
the 500 million or so shares (26% of the company equity) that
taxpayers still hold in the company.
But, as it turns out, that figure was too rosy! GM stock prices have been hovering around $20 lately – even though the market is at a recent high. This means the losses will be closer to $26 to $38 billion – and that’s not including the $15 billion in tax write offs that the administration illicitly handed GM duringbankruptcy .
But the depressing thing is that despite this taxpayer moolah, GM might be headed for yet another bankruptcy. That at least is the claim of Louis Woodhill’s provocative piece in Forbes. And the main reason, says Woodhill, is that GM makes crappy products. He notes:
for a while.
But their losses are mounting beyond what many, including me, had
predicted. Last year, top auto analysts had expected GM’s stock
prices right now to be around $43 per share. Even that price, I had
noted at the time, would represent a $13 to $19 billion loss on
the 500 million or so shares (26% of the company equity) that
taxpayers still hold in the company.But, as it turns out, that figure was too rosy! GM stock prices have been hovering around $20 lately – even though the market is at a recent high. This means the losses will be closer to $26 to $38 billion – and that’s not including the $15 billion in tax write offs that the administration illicitly handed GM during
But the depressing thing is that despite this taxpayer moolah, GM might be headed for yet another bankruptcy. That at least is the claim of Louis Woodhill’s provocative piece in Forbes. And the main reason, says Woodhill, is that GM makes crappy products. He notes:
Creating an Effective and Ethical Foreign Policy. by Ted Galen Carpenter
Liberal democracies such as the United States face an
acute dilemma in the conduct of foreign relations. Although many states
around the world are repressive or corrupt, U.S. national interests
sometimes demand cooperation with such actors. During World War II, the
United States even allied with Josef Stalin's barbaric, totalitarian
regime to defeat an especially dangerous adversary, Nazi Germany.
But such partnerships have the inherent danger of compromising, even
badly undermining, America's values of freedom and human rights—and
sometimes America's long-term security as well. Close working
relationships with autocratic regimes or political movements, therefore,
should not be undertaken lightly. U.S. officials have had a less than
stellar record of grappling with this dilemma, either during the Cold
War or during the more recent campaign against radical Islamic
terrorism.For U.S. foreign policy to be both effective and reasonably consistent with American values, certain conditions have to be met.
The Bipartisan Imperial Presidency. by Gene Healy
This may be the most important election of our
lifetimes, conservative opinion leaders keep insisting. We stand on the
precipice of socialism; we can either plunge over or be led gingerly
back from the brink by... the governor who pioneered the individual
mandate. Oh, and also his running mate, one of "only six Republicans who
voted yes on the auto bailout and both bank bailout votes," as Tim
Carney reported yesterday.
In fairness, there are some important differences between Romney-Ryan
and Obama-Biden on economic policy. Romney and Ryan at least see the
need to downplay their past sins; for President Obama and Vice President
Biden, bailouts and mandates are matters of principle and marks of
pride.But on other core questions of federal power — in areas where the president has much more discretion than he does over the budget — there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two tickets. Among those questions: Can the president launch wars at will, subject American citizens to military detention and assassinate them via drone strike?
Defining Ryan. by Michael D. Tanner
With more than a third of American voters
telling pollsters that they don't yet know enough about Republican
vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan to have an opinion of him, the
race to define the Republican congressman is fully joined.
Democrats clearly want to paint Ryan as an unbending ideologue who
refuses to compromise and is unwilling to work with his opponents.
Already Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod has taken to calling Ryan a
"right-wing ideologue" and "quite extreme." President Obama himself
refers to Ryan as "the ideological leader of Republicans in Congress."It's impossible to deny that there has been an ideological component to Ryan's career in Washington. He has been an articulate spokesman for the idea of smaller, less costly government, and he is perhaps Congress's best-known advocate of entitlement reform. There is no doubt that in his heart he prefers
But any effort to paint him as an inflexible ideologue runs up against his demonstrable tendency toward pragmatism.
Throughout his time in Washington, Ryan has been the classic "half a loaf" type of conservative. Time and again, he has shown that he is willing to compromise and take far less than he had originally sought, as long as he is moving incrementally in the direction he wants to go. You won't find Ryan on the short end of any 434-to-1 votes.
Any effort to paint him as an inflexible ideologue runs up against his demonstrable tendency toward pragmatism.Take, for example, the infamous "Ryan budget." Yes, it cuts spending and reforms Medicare — though not Social Security — but it was far from the most fiscally conservative budget offered by Republicans this year. Just compare Ryan's budget with the one proposed by Senator
In fact, Senators Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) and Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) also offered budget proposals that cut spending more than Ryan's budget did. Ryan was willing to push the envelope on spending cuts, but only as far as he could while still getting the votes of moderate as well as conservative Republicans. Yes, his budget is conservative, but it is hardly radical.
According to the National Journal, Ryan works with Democrats about as often as any Republican does. Most famously, he collaborated with liberal senator Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) to develop the latest iteration of his Medicare reform plan. In fact, the evolution of Ryan's
Ryan's first Medicare reform plan was fairly accurately described as a voucher program: Seniors would each receive a support payment roughly based on the current per-capita amount of Medicare spending. Wealthy seniors would receive somewhat less, poor and sicker seniors somewhat more. The Ryan-Wyden plan, on the other hand, abandons the voucher concept in favor of a pure premium-support model.
Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Bad Medicine: A Guide to the Real Costs and Consequences of the New Health Care Law.
More by Michael D. TannerRyan also gradually agreed to loosen his proposal's cap on overall Medicare spending. In his original plan, Medicare spending would not be allowed to grow any faster than the overall economy. In Ryan-Wyden, the cap is GDP growth plus a full percentage point. At the same time, the burden for exceeding growth caps has shifted from seniors themselves, who would have been required to pay more out of pocket under the original Roadmap for America's Future, to providers, who will have their reimbursements reduced under Ryan-Wyden.
The budget passed by the House this year was in some ways closer to Ryan's original Medicare proposal than to the Ryan-Wyden plan. But Ryan has clearly shown that he is willing to water down his ideas if doing so garners Democratic support.
The downside of Ryan's pragmatism is that each change has weakened his proposal. His original proposal would have reduced Medicare spending by far more than Ryan-Wyden. Given that even the most optimistic scenarios show Medicare running $38 trillion in the red, Ryan's retreat is not a step in the right direction.
Still, it might have been justified if Ryan's willingness to compromise had attracted substantial Democratic support. But, in the end, it was the Democrats who refused to budge. Senator Wyden was the only Democrat to join with Ryan, and even he later backed away from his support under pressure from his caucus.
Ryan's pragmatic streak has also led him to cast many votes that seem to contradict his reputation as a budget hawk. Ryan would no doubt say that he won important concessions in exchange for those votes — for instance, getting health savings accounts included in the Medicare prescription-drug bill — or that the alternatives were worse. But any way you look at it, those votes hardly make Ryan an inflexible budget cutter.
All of this means that Ryan is not really the government-slashing savior envisioned by some conservatives. It also means that he is not the ideological hard-liner portrayed by some liberals. He is, in fact, likely to disappoint his conservative backers on occasion. But he may also be able to work across party lines to really change the disastrous course we are now on.
How the State Promotes Authoritarianism
Posted by Kevin Carson
Apparently he’s never read the Bible. The list of things in Leviticus that call for death by stoning would take out not only gays and lesbians, but most everybody else as well. Then there’s that wonderful stuff about dashing out the brains of Philistine babies and
Zenawi: The Ethiopian Marriage of Marxism-Leninism and Capitalism
Posted by Thomas L. Knapp
In reality, Zenawi, who ruled Ethiopia first as president and then as prime minister for more than 20 years, after leading the putatively Marxist-Leninist Tigrayan Peoples’ Liberation Front to victory over the previous regime, was a premier example of the modern managerial statist.
The economic and political fusions he orchestrated in Ethiopia — between state socialism and multinational corporations the one hand, pan-Africanism and US client statism on the other — are the
The Security State: An Ever Bigger and Dumber Dinosaur
Posted by Kevin Carson
Meanwhile, the NSA is building a gargantuan data-crunching facility — the Utah
Civil libertarian reactions to this stuff consist mainly — and quite understandably — of horror at the newly augmented power of the automated police state. In terms of the state’s intent and its legal figleaves for justifying it, this is obviously yet another step in America’s slide into full-blown security state authoritarianism a la the movie “Brazil.”
9 killed, 68 injured in blast in southeast Turkey, PKK denies responsibility
ANKARA, Aug. 21 (Xinhua) -- At least nine people, including four children, were killed by a remote-controlled car bomb in southeastern Turkey, Turkish officials said Tuesday, while the banned Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) denied responsibility for the blast.
A total of 68 people were injured in the blast near a police station in southeastern Turkish province of Gaziantep on Monday night, four of them in critical condition, Turkish Deputy Prime
Most of the others suffered slight injuries caused by shattered glass, said Atalay, adding that Monday's blast set several vehicles ablaze.
"The vehicle used in the attack was a stolen one. It was brought to the site of the blast by a
Is Leon Panetta a Saint—or a War Criminal?
David R. Henderson’s Introduction:
The first part of this article’s title is absurd, right? How could the head of the CIA, a man who sends drones to kill alleged terrorists and ends up killing not only terrorists, but also many innocent people, be a saint? Well, you probably don’t live in the Monterey area. I do. Leon Panetta is thought of as the local boy who made good. After President Obama decided to nominate Panetta for secretary of defense, the local newspaper, the Monterey County Herald, ran a pro-Panetta editorial making the case that he would be a fine secretary. Then, after Panetta’s participation in the successful plot to kill Osamabid Laden,
many locals, including the Herald’s executive editor, Joe Livernois,
advocated naming some local landmark after him. (For a letter of mine
regarding an earlier disagreement with Livernois, see this.)
Some, including a fairly smart local lawyer I used to be friends with,
even advocated calling the local airport simply “The Leon.”
Every few days in the Herald appears another encomium to Panetta.
The first part of this article’s title is absurd, right? How could the head of the CIA, a man who sends drones to kill alleged terrorists and ends up killing not only terrorists, but also many innocent people, be a saint? Well, you probably don’t live in the Monterey area. I do. Leon Panetta is thought of as the local boy who made good. After President Obama decided to nominate Panetta for secretary of defense, the local newspaper, the Monterey County Herald, ran a pro-Panetta editorial making the case that he would be a fine secretary. Then, after Panetta’s participation in the successful plot to kill Osama
The Drug War Finds New Ways to Fail
The federal government’s effort to battle drug abuse has
been a tragic and expensive failure. But of course, admitting that
would make politicians, who regularly endorse it to sound tough, seem foolish and careless with taxpayer
dollars. So the War on Drugs continues, while of necessity it
slowly morphs into new forms of federal waste and unnecessary
intrusion into people’s lives.
Militarized federal law enforcement just can’t cope with trendiness in recreationaldrug use . Cocaine use is so yesterday
(the 1980s, to be exact) and is a declining problem. Even at the
height of the crack cocaine epidemic in the mid-1980s, only 5.8
million people in a population of about 240 million were
using the drug; the latest National Survey on Drug Use and Health
estimated that only 1.5 million in a population of 313 million use cocaine. In recent years, methamphetamine use has also
declined. Lately, heroin use is up slightly but still affects a
minuscule portion (less than .08%) of the American
population.
Militarized federal law enforcement just can’t cope with trendiness in recreational
Wars Have Unpredictable and Dangerous Collateral Effects
Wars Have Unpredictable and Dangerous Collateral Effects
by Ivan Eland,
The recent bloodless (referring to American blood — the most important to U.S. policymakers) overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya has been touted as a low-cost model for future U.S. military interventions. The recent Libyan election is said to have vindicated America’s “leadership from the rear” strategy — supporting indigenous armies on the ground and allied air forces with key items such as air-defense suppression, intelligence, and logistics. Yet U.S. military assistance to the rebellion in Libya is having unintended ill effects, much as have past U.S. interventions.
Romney the Businessman?
Romney the Businessman?
by Philip Giraldi,
Bibi’s War. We don't have to fight it
Bibi’s War
We don't have to fight it
by Justin Raimondo,
“Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘is determined to attack Iran before the US elections,’ Israel’s Channel 10 News claimed on Monday night, and Israel is now ‘closer than ever’ to a strike designed to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive… The report added that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak believe Obama would have no choice but to give backing for an Israeli attack before the US presidential elections in November.”
Football and economics
Mexico 4, Brazil 2
by T.W. | MEXICO CITY
CONGRATULATIONS are due to Mexico, which on August 11th won its
first gold medal in the London Olympics, beating Brazil in the men's
football final. After 93 frantic minutes, the final score was 2-1 to
Mexico. Mass celebrations followed in Mexico City.
This blog’s headline isn't a misprint, but a reference to the score in a longer-term competition: economic growth. In recent years Brazil has outplayed Mexico, growing at 6% or more as Mexico bumped along in the slow lane. But lately that has changed. Last year Mexico grew by 4% and Brazil by 2.7%. This year Mexico is expected to get close to 4% again, whereas some economists reckon that Brazil's rate could dip below 2%. A recent report by Nomura predicted that Mexico’s economy, currently half the size of Brazil’s, could end up the bigger of the two within the next decade.
This blog’s headline isn't a misprint, but a reference to the score in a longer-term competition: economic growth. In recent years Brazil has outplayed Mexico, growing at 6% or more as Mexico bumped along in the slow lane. But lately that has changed. Last year Mexico grew by 4% and Brazil by 2.7%. This year Mexico is expected to get close to 4% again, whereas some economists reckon that Brazil's rate could dip below 2%. A recent report by Nomura predicted that Mexico’s economy, currently half the size of Brazil’s, could end up the bigger of the two within the next decade.
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