You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light.
Vicomte de Chateaubriand
Guest Quotation of the Day
For unlike the rest of us, government sells no productive good or service and therefore earns nothing. It can only get money by looting our resources through taxes, or through the hidden tax of legalized counterfeiting known as “inflation.”...The government gets the money by tax-coercion; and the public creditors, far from being innocents, know full well that their proceeds will come out of that selfsame coercion. In short, public creditors are willing to hand over money to the government now in order to receive a share of tax loot in the future...Both parties, therefore, are making agreements about other people’s property, and both deserve the back of our hand .- Murray RothbardPro-Liberty Thought of the Day
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| Courtesy of LFC on FB |
I always knew, this time would come
still I'm not ready, is anyone?
As a child I believed daddies lived on and on
I guess I was wrong.
Daddy your love for my mother, your wife,
moves me more deeply than all else in my life.
In the hospital bed, she holds you 'till dawn
loves all that lives on
As a child I believed daddies lived on and on
perhaps I wasn't wrong.
The GOP and Spending: Hypocrites?
This includes the trite observation that Republicans are little more than Big Spenders Lite, that Washington is just one big Kabuki dance, maybe a $200B difference off a $3.7T budget. If you read the above-cited Rothbard piece, he talks about Republications crying over being asked to approve the first trillion dollar debt ceiling; they had hoped that Reagan would have pushed hard for a balanced budget, making raises in the debt ceiling unnecessary. He doesn't quite put it in these terms, but once you've lost your virginity, it's easier to rationalize subsequent indiscretions. They tried to rationalize it, of course: deficits don't matter, we owe it to ourselves, and similar nonsense.
I tend to be more empathetic; in fact,in a recent FB post, I started off telling commentators to knock off the GOP bashing; I mean comparing the GOP to the Dems on spending is like comparing the minimally sexually active young adult to a whore. Few of the programs were GOP initiatives, and voting to cut spending is like handing your next election populist opponent a gift issue. I want the GOP to talk about various proposals forwarded by tax and spending watchdog groups, agency resource sharing, across-the-board spending cuts, business process reengineering, asset sales, privatization efforts--in short, anything cities and states have been doing to close budget gaps. You are not going to close a $700B deficit by just attacking Big Bird... I understand the GOP is wary of facing MediScare campaigns, etc., but I think the public will be supportive of bold action. I think the Demagogue-in-Chief is paying a political price for his handling of this, down to 37% approval in a recent poll.
This Will Anger Sarah Palin: The Obama Shutdown is Hurting Joe Six-Pack...
From the AP (HT ABC and Bastiat Institute):
The shutdown has closed an obscure agency [the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, or TTB, a little-known arm of the Treasury Department] that quietly approves new breweries, recipes and labels], which could create huge delays throughout the rapidly growing craft industry, whose customers expect a constant supply of inventive and seasonal beers. Mike Brenner is trying to open a craft brewery in Milwaukee by December. His application to include a tasting room is now on hold, as are his plans to file paperwork for four labels over the next few weeks.On the Reading List
There are actually a couple of podcast items I like and recommend;
- "Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government": I want to read this book. Cato Institute often offers authors of certain liberty-related books a platform to give a related talk and invites one or more discussants to review it. I found Clark Neily, an Institute for Justice attorney (I heart Institute for Justice) a compelling speaker. I draw your attention to his indirect reference to Footnote 4, or as I call it "the Footnote From Hell"; he makes reference "fake judging", how in many circumstances, judges will become de facto government legislative advocates in finding a rational basis in dubious laws. He points out that the government is given ludicrous wide discretion (he makes a good example of the atrocious Kelo decision and the sophistic gymnastics to reinterpret the Fifth Amendment) and how it's easier for the legislature, say, to ban a product than challenge the messaging on the same product, a patently absurd outcome.
- Tom Woods Show, episode 11. I'm no Lincoln fan. I've cited a couple of talks by economist DiLorenzo. Woods, a historian with a similar Austrian School perspective, says that of the thousands of pages he's written, only a few have been about Lincoln. He is responding to a reader whom found herself rebuked by her condescending Lincoln-loving pastor. Woods does an epic rant here with a multi-point indictment of Lincoln and points out the smears of the conventional Lincoln apologists on Lincoln critics, often libertarians, as suspect Confederacy sympathizers. Libertarians, of course, see slavery as a violation of the unalienable right of liberty but felt that the institution would have gone away as it did in England and Brazil, without killing thousands of fellow American citizens, atrocities against innocent civilians, or ignoring the Bill of Rights.
Facebook Corner
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| Via LFC on FB |
Since questions seem to be popular lately, I'd like to pose one of my own. Was the Great Depression caused by excessive economic growth of the Roaring 20's, and the failure of the Fed to reign it in? Much like Alan Greenspan used the Fed to put the brakes on the economy in the mid-90's? I'm a college student, and I've been getting every library book on economics and libertarianism I can. Thanks in advance. (LFC group question)
There's so such thing as "excessive" economic growth (maybe bad monetary policy). Most of us agree that American banks were hobbled by dysfunctional regulations that constrained, say, diversifying their customer base across state lines. We had numerous panic and depressions that were relatively short-lived before the Fed (turning 100 this year). Also Canadians before 1935, with a more deregulated banking system, did not have the nature and extent of bank failures that we did. My understanding (I'm not an economics historian) is the Fed engaged in errors of commission and omission, so monetary policy had a lot to do with it, but Hoover and FDR's economic policies, exacerbating regime uncertainty among other things, also hampered recovery
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| LFC on FB |
This year for Halloween I'm going as IRS commissar Sarah Hall Ingram! - Matt Drudge
A penny saved is a penny taxed.
Is Keynesianism the only school of economics with an answer to long term unemployment? (submitted via LFC on FB)
Loaded question, like did you kill your mother with an ax? Keynesian economics offers no answer to long-term unemployment. We promote employment by eliminating barriers to entry to the labor market, like wage controls, occupational licenses, benefit mandates, etc., and by promoting economic growth through a limited tax/regulatory burden, less regime uncertainty, etc. In short, promote free markets and free trade .
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez and Townhall |
Barrett Strong, "Money"
