Matt Damon's new anti-fracking film is called "Promised Land," but it doesn't look as if the film will ever get there. In fact, Damon's revised script seems to be wandering in the desert with hopes of receiving manna from Oscar-heaven fading. "Promised Land" tells the story of one man caught between his hometown values and his job working for the oil and gas industry. The subtext is the ongoing political battle over fracking, i.e. hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting gas from shale which has led to a boom in gas production around the country.
Most people don't understand this process, especially the hair-obsessed people in the news media.
If you were the worst terrorist in the world, 1000 times more evil than Osama Bin Laden, and wanted to poison the entire country, the best thing you could possibly do, is drill a bunch of holes, into the water table, and puncture the complex networks of aquifers that provide irrigation to all your crops and supply all your drinking water, and pour toxic chemicals into it.
Supposedly what makes fracking safe, is that, after they drill through and puncture your water aquifer, they supposedly seal the drill hole up (or mabye they don't, depending on how profitable it is, you will never know whether they did or not)
Did printing vast quantities of money work for the Weimar Republic? Nope. And it won't work for us either. If printing money was the secret to economic success, we could just print up a trillion dollars for every American and be done with it. The truth is that making everyone in America a trillionaire would not mean that we would all suddenly be wealthy. There would be the same amount of "real wealth" in our economy as before. But what it would do is render our currency meaningless and totally destroy faith in our financial system. Sadly, we have not learned the lessons that history has tried to teach us. Back in April 1919, it took 12 German marks to get 1 U.S. dollar. By December 1923, it took approximately 4 trillion German marks to get 1 U.S. dollar. So was the Weimar Republic better off after all of the "quantitative easing" that they did or worse off? Of course they were worse off. They destroyed their currency and wrecked all confidence in their financial system. There was an old joke that if you left a wheelbarrow full of money sitting around in the Weimar Republic that thieves would take the wheelbarrow and they would leave the money behind. Will things eventually get that bad in the United States someday?
Pretty much every effort to increase productivity by debasing a currency by central banks and governments throughout history has failed. The roman empire dilute it's Denarius, cutting it with other metals until no one would accept them. The Denarius went down to nearly 0.4% by the time the empire collapsed. The Weimar republic was no different, they simply debased paper money that already had no value. Then there was Zimbabwe, who ended up with 20,000,000 dollar notes through hyperinflation by the end of their run. Why would anyone believe that the same thing can't happen in the United States?
There's something funny here. Notice the guys in jeans an hoodies helping the police assault the protestors toward the end of the video...
Police fire rubber bullets and beat protesters with truncheons at an anti-austerity demonstration near Spain's parliament in Madrid.
Protesters clashed with police in Spain's capital on Tuesday as the government prepares a new round of unpopular austerity measures for the 2013 budget that will be announced on Thursday.
At least 22 demonstrators were detained and 28 injured, as clashes continued late into the evening near the Spanish parliament, Spanish broadcaster TVE reported.
More than 1,500 police in riot gear had been deployed throughout the day in preparation for the demonstration, with barricades being set up.
Police fired rubber bullets and beat protesters with truncheons, first as several protesters were trying to tear down barriers and later to clear the square.
The peaceful protest turned violent after a series of clashes began at 7pm local time.
The protest, promoted over the Internet by different activist groups, was younger and more rowdy than recent marches called by labour unions. Protesters said they were fed up with cuts to public salaries and health and education.
The 2013 budget is the second one conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has had to pass since he took office in December. Spain must persuade its European partners that it can cut the budget shortfall by more than 60 billion euros by 2014.
Also on Tuesday, the treasury ministry said the central government deficit to the end of August had reached 4.77 per cent of GDP, already above its year-end target of 4.5 per cent of GDP.
It looks like someone took a page from the Bernanke open-ended playbook, who when tasked by Chuck Schumer to "get to work, Mr. Chairman", and realizing his job is on the line, literally bet the Fed's political ranch on the biggest liquidity tsunami ever conceived in Keynesian history with consequences which as Gary Kaminsky explained earlier, will be akin to a Kamikaze pilot, if one who has over 310 million passengers. That someone was one or more German safecrackers in the town of Nottuln-Darup, who were eagerly pursuing their New Normal patriotic duty to release some bank reserves into broad circulation by blasting through a safe on Sunday night, when they used some extra laced C-4, in the process blew up the entire bank, shattering windows across the street, and causing hundreds of thousands of euros worth of damage. Perhaps this, more than anything, is the best visual of just what Bernanke's attempt to unclog the "bank plumbing" will look like in the end, even better than Zimbabwe coordinated 1 million man flush. The silver lining: at least they added to German GDP: if today's Ifo number is any indication, Germany desperately needs it.
From Spiegel, which for once is not reporting about 4x Eurozone bailout leverage citing "sources":
Thieves in Germany would seem to have been a bit overeager in their attempt to crack open a cash machine using explosives on Sunday night. The resulting blast destroyed the entire bank branch, causing hundreds of thousands of euros in damage.
Thieves are, of course, well known for extreme creativity when it comes to getting their hands on money that doesn't belong to them. But if all else fails, one can always turn to explosives.
That, at least, seems to have been the preferred strategy of bank robbers in the tiny western German town of Nottuln-Darup. The miscreants, however, appear not to have had the training required to adequately estimate the size of the detonation necessary to crack open the cash machine they had chosen as a target. Instead, the explosion destroyed the entire bank branch with one massive blast.
It was also unknown on Monday afternoon who might have been responsible for the outsized explosion. Police have, however, been able to locate the getaway car some 500 meters from the destroyed bank branch. The vehicle had been stolen earlier.
It is unclear if the getaway car was also a Volvo.
And here is how others have historically prepared to unclog "stuck" liquidity:
"It is the continuing decline in faith in the politicization of society that has, for well over a year, made the 2008 presidential race the preoccupation of the mainstream media. The media must continue to advertise the products and services of the establishment owners, just as it does for the sellers of prescription drugs and other nostrums. Still, the outcome of the 2008 election will confirm the truth of the proposition that it really doesn't matter for whom you vote. Regardless of whether Obama or McCain prevails, the government will be re-elected, and will continue to increase its powers over you. Should you remain dissatisfied with the behavior of the system, the media will be right back to begin its campaign on behalf of 'Election 2010,' urging you, once again, to continue supporting the process that continues to frustrate your expectations. In the words of Emma Goldman, 'if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.'''
There are some questions that tend to recur whenever one talks to almost anyone outside the realm of radical libertarianism. Actually, these questions seem to recur not only in debates with statists, but also in debates among those who share a radical libertarian, i.e., market anarchistic, point of view. One such question is the sanctity of the democratic process, voting and all that.
I love this position, and it makes me have less faith in voting than ever. It also makes me more convinced that voting itself in not only ineffective, but immoral, and I thus can not use such a method to inflict my will upon others without their consent.
Is voting a necessity for a free society or simply busy-work for the unwashed proletariat, completed while the rulers continue to do what they've always done? Russell Langcore's recent column reminded me that this question has, thankfully, pretty much been decided among radial libertarians. However, he also reminded me of a couple of issues that almost always come to the fore when one discusses voting.
A Really Short Answer for a Relatively Short Question
Here's the question: Do I vote? Here's the answer: No.
While some folks would argue that he's no philosopher, I'll still take George Carlin's argument on non-voting as excellent justification. (I realize that I may be in the minority on that.) I cannot think of a single scenario whereby I might vote in a national election such as that for president. Not one.
Voting is immoral in that the act of voting is empowering individuals to act our our behalf, yet those representatives tend to act in their own interests, using the force of the state to direct their will. I can not condone using force against any individual, hence I can not support a system which uses force against anyone where I would not do so myself. Funny, I never heard this bit by George Carlin, yet it is the correct position regarding the failure of electoral politics.
I don't care who the candidate is. I don't care what issues to which he seems to gravitate. I don't care about his record, his leadership qualities, the apparent first-lady-ness of his wife (or her husband), his insider-ness or his outsider-ness, his race, his height, his weight, how well he speaks, how wonderfully he photographs, the nation of his birth, how likely it might be that he's fun to drink with, or his appreciation for unique uses for a fine cigar.
They're all aggressors, despite any misconceptions and media bias
More importantly though, given two other observations, voting strikes me as an incredible waste of time for anyone who is ultimately interested in two rather vital issues: personal liberty and personal responsibility.
First of all, under the U.S. "first-past-the-post" electoral system, one is assured of only two viable parties. Secondly, with the use of a secret ballot, one is assured that no one will assume personal responsibility for the actions of their ostensible candidate or his party. Every voter is automatically absolved for doing that which his vote suggests that he is doing: selecting the implementer of the policies he supports.
We get to cast guilt onto those who we vote for, so or hands are clean when our government bombs the innocent residents of some foreign land for opposing American empirical policies. It's not our fault, but we'll vote those crooks out next election and vote in others who probably won't do anything remotely like that again. I'm sure of it.
When I say the U.S. system guarantees only two viable parties, I'm simply citing Duverger's Law. While there may remain debates about whether or not there are exceptions to Duverger's Law, the U.S. system seems not to be one. (This is a striking irony given how rarely the resulting pseudo-kings obey any laws after they are elected!) When I say that there will be no responsibility for the action of either party, I am referring to two other phenomena.
I believe that Duverger's Law distills down to less than the likely two-party system, but to a single party which eventually collapses and leave a stateless society. I think it's an eventuality, as no population chooses to remain oppressed indefinitely. It is simply a matter of time before the common people rise up against tyranny, no matter how colorful and pleasant it looks, and strike down the idea that government is necessary in any regard.
One, the inherent incentives of a coercive state virtually assure that only those who ascribe to either megalomania or theft-is-good as a paradigm will survive the electoral process. The overwhelming bulk of the money necessary to elect a candidate is given with 'strings' attached to it. Lobbying is widespread because it works. But much more importantly, everyone who contributes to a candidate hopes that their candidate will enact their version of control over everyone else, and everyone knows it! There is no other alternative for a coercive state.
At least the likely eventual dollar collapse will help bring an end to electoral politics, at the unfortunate cost of productive markets which will have to go through a transition back to a trade system using tangible goods and items of value, which do not include fiat currencies. Every fiat currency eventually devalues to the level of zero. It's another unavoidable eventuality.
Two, people who vote are quick to distance themselves from the guy to whom they gave their support. It seems to me that if your candidate lies, cheats, steals, or gets a whole bunch of people killed, you--the voter who supported him--might share some blame. (I also realize that with the amount of graft in the U.S., even if no one voted, the 'elected' cretins would probably still find a way to keep spending money and killing people.) With the secret ballot, everyone can claim to be disappointed with the guy they actually helped elect!
I think that the candidates distance themselves from the campaign promises that helped them achieve public office faster than their supporters lose faith in those for which they voted. George Carlin was right on this point as well. Imagine that...
Becoming president is a viable quest only for those too stupid to know better or too smart to not realize the availability of responsibility-free power and plentiful stolen cash to the holder of the office and all his friends. Notice I said 'viable' quest. There may be those who would use the incredible power of the office for good. Frankly though, I rather think the Presidency of the United States is rather like the One Ring from Tolkien's classics. It eventually corrupts all who possess it, even if they were initially pure of heart. I won't comment on my own cynicism regarding the existence of any such person. Let's just say that 40-plus unrepentant rights infringers and counting is enough evidence for me.
Conclusion
While I have conveyed my view, better erudition than mine is available. There is a plethora of non-voting--both pro and con--and general free market prose already out there. A rather awe-inspiring (although still somewhat incomplete) bibliography in testament to that fact, put together by Johan Ridenfeldt, with some additions from yours truly and others, may be found below. (Please note that some of the essays listed are "answers" to others. The listings are in alphabetical order, regardless of intended target.)
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been around since the Vietnam era. They were used as reconnaissance platforms. In the 1980s, Harpy air defense suppression system radar killer drones were employed. In the Gulf War, unmanned combat air systems (UCAS) and X-45 air vehicles were used.
On January 13, 2010, the ACLU petitioned Washington under the Freedom of Information ACT (FOIA). It requested legal justification claimed for conducting predator drone targeted killings abroad.
Since when does the state defend its actions with any validity? I wouldn't expect anything beyond "because we can" from the US government.
The Israeli West Jerusalem municipality Wednesday handed two Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan notices to demolish their homes and a shop one of the families owns under the pretext they were built without permit, according to the Silwan-based Wadi Hilweh Information Center.
RT's beautiful Abby Martin on weapons of mass distraction in the US media, and how the MSM can't get the story straight.
Muslims and Arabs envy our freedoms, they hate our CIA and military messing with their worlds. They want the freedoms we have (or used to) but our warfare state's existence will not likely ever allow that.
New record of $66.3 billion. The U.S. war machine rolls on.
On a global basis, U.S. companies are responsible for 80% of all arms sales.
Fear is good business, especially for the war machine. According to a recent Congressional Research Service report, within the last year the U.S. has tripled weapons sales to $66.3 billion, more than half of which went to allied Gulf states.
Radiation from Japan's nuclear accident has turned up in seaweed on the coasts of California, Washington and other parts of the West Coast of North America.
The ocean is so big … how could this be happening? Why didn't the gigantic Pacific Ocean better dilute Fukushima radiation?
On 9/11/2012, Minamisoma city government announced they measured cesium from 169 of 693 products in this August. They measured radiation in products for self-consumption. They measured over 100 Bq/Kg of cesium from 18 of 169 items.
The highest reading was 2,880 Bq/kg from edible wild plants taken in Haramachi ward.
These products are taken from sea, mountain, or home-grown. They are not supposed to be distributed.
Caesium-137 levels are fatal at 140 MBq/kg in smaller animals, but luckily it has a shorter shelf life than some radioactive material, and it I water soluble.
This is a drawing of a locked box which a Libyan man says U.S. interrogators once stuffed him into. It's said to be about three feet long on each side. Only once during his two years in detention was the detainee put in the box; his confinement there lasted over an hour. The circles are small holes, into which his interrogators "prodded him with long thin objects."
It wasn't the only box that the CIA allegedly placed him inside. Another was a tall, narrow box, less than two feet wide, with handcuffs at the top. The detainee, Mohammed Ahmed Mohammed al-Shoroeiya, says he was placed into that one with his hands elevated and suspended by the handcuffs, for a day and a half, naked, with music blasting into his ears constantly through speakers built into the box. A different detainee describes being placed into a similar box for three days and being left with no choice but to urinate and defecate on himself.
The CIA was created to operate outside of the law, to be unaccountable to those who fund it (involuntarily). Don't expect anything to change how this agency operates, but call for it to be disbanded. That is the only way to end the violence its agents inflict on others.
Getting shoved into those boxes was only the start of Shoroeiya's woes. The CIA would later deliver him and at least four others into the hands of the Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who further brutalized them for opposing his regime. Accordingly, a new Human Rights Watch report telling the stories of those detainees strips away a euphemism in the war on terrorism: how the CIA says it holds its nose and "works with" unsavory regimes. "It can't come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats," spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood told the Wall Street Journal. What may indeed come as a surprise is what that actually means in practice, as recounted by at least five Libyan ex-detainees Human Rights Watch interviewed.
Media reports on Thursday morning understandably focused on what Human Rights Watch called "credible allegations" of waterboarding by CIA officials, since the U.S. has only ever acknowledged waterboarding three detainees. But what Human Rights Watch has uncovered in Libya tells a broader story. It's a story about how repressive governments used the war on terrorism to get the U.S. to deliver their political opponents to their custody. It was as easy as calling them terrorists — which was enough for the U.S. to play along.
In the case of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), that was simple enough. The organization formed in 1990 to overthrow Gadhafi and replace him with an Islamist government. Human Rights Watch concedes, "Clearly some prominent LIFG members did sympathize with and even joined al-Qaida."
But the relationship was a complicated one. Former commanders like Noman Benotman, who now works on countering jihadist radicalization in Europe, have said that the relationship was at most transactional, as the LIFG needed a safe haven from Gadhafi. Al-Qaida helped provide one such safe haven. On the other hand, individual members of the LIFG joined al-Qaida outright; one was killed in a U.S. drone strike in August 2011. But by 2009, what remained of the group renounced its ties to al-Qaida. "We don't know whether there is a current relationship between LIFG and al-Qaida," says Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a terrorism researcher at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
A trained doctor who bitterly disputed rulings by his homeowners association about his property opened fire at a meeting, killing the board president and a member, authorities said Monday. It is an uncommon case of deadly violence involving the often elected group volunteers whose job it is to make sometimes unpopular decisions about their neighbors.
HOA boards ate volunteers, but a likely reason for the violence is a pattern of corruption and abuse of the power the board holds. As communities without HOAs are harder to find and less conveniently located, many residents end up in these communities with no voluntary option to withdraw consent from the organization.
Mahmoud Yousef Hindi, 55, of Louisville pleaded not guilty to murder charges and other counts in Jefferson Circuit Court Monday and said he needs a public defender. Prosecutors have said they are considering seeking the death penalty for Hindi, a Jordanian-trained doctor whose medical license had expired.
I'm not sure why nationality and career ate even relevant...
Authorities have not pinpointed what exactly caused the outburst on Sept. 6 in a community church. Police did say that Hindi angrily had confronted the Spring Creek Homeowners Association over a fence it said didn't meet its height or design requirements in the upscale neighborhood of Louisville. It also objected to his driveway.
Frustration over such decisions can boil over into shouting matches, fistfights and, in the rarest of circumstances, the kind of violence that surprised Hindi's neighbors, some of whom said Hindi's threatening demeanor caused the family who lived next door to move out.
"I have never seen a situation where emotions become so raw," said David F. Feingold, an attorney who represents homeowners associations in the San Francisco Bay area. "It's like carrying around nitroglycerin. You just have to handle it very carefully."
Maybe if we just give residents the option to withdraw from the association there would be less anger and tension in the situation.
Deadly violence is not unprecedented. In Arizona, a man was convicted of murdering two women when he opened fire at a homeowners meeting in 2000. Richard Glassel, who was sentenced to death, had run-ins with his HOA over awning and air-conditioning units.
In Chicago, a man was convicted of murder in the 2004 shooting death of a 75-year-old woman who was a board member of his condominium association. Another woman was wounded. The shooter, Zdislaw Kuchlewski, had been evicted from his condo, the result of more than a year's dispute with his condo association's board over infractions of building rules.
The man said at his trial that he was distraught over his eviction but did not plot the attack.
The problem is that homeowners don't always buy into the group concept of an association, one expert said.
"They feel that my home is my castle and I should be able to do what I want," said Evan McKenzie, an associate professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Imagine that, homeowners believe they have rights over their property which others do not.
There are approximately 300,000 homeowners associations in the United States, according to HOA-USA.com, a website that tracks and provides advice to associations nationwide. That number represents over 40 million households, and 70 percent of associations are managed by volunteers, the group says. And the job is not for everyone, with people not wanting to get involved in judging their neighbors' property.
Maybe there is a reason for the general dislike of associations?
Killed in the Louisville shooting were association president 73-year-old David Merritt and board member 69-year-old Marvin Fisher, according to papers filed with the Kentucky Secretary of State office. Hindi also faces seven counts of first-degree wanton endangerment as several other people were at the meeting.
"Associations are seen as the bad guys," Feingold said. "They've got a rap for being overreaching and overbearing. In America, we have 'My home is my castle.' You're really challenging that proposition."
Maybe it's because, typically, they are. Why do you feel compelled to attempt to dictate what rights I have to my property, and why am I forced to pay you dues to facilitate that aggression toward me?
When you are in the business of buying and selling volatility you can get sort of cynical about whether volatility is a thing, and whether it is appropriate to buy and sell it. We talked earlier today about the fact that if you have a client who doesn't care about something valuable…
(NaturalNews) Lithium, the psychiatric drug prescribed for depression, mania and bipolar disorder, is now being viewed as the new fluoride by some experts. These experts are calling for the addition of lithium to the water supply as a cure-all for social problems, including suicide, violent crime and drug use.
Dr. Gerhard Schrauzer, who published the first paper in 1989 connecting lithium in water supplies to a decrease in certain undesirable social behaviors, became interested in lithium after growing up next to a "miracle spring" in Franzensbad, Czechoslovakia. This lithium-containing spring was alleged to moderate the temperaments of women in particular.
For centuries, people worldwide have been attracted to springs like these for their calming benefits, and scientists have since found the benefits to be credited to unusually high natural lithium levels.
Of course this is how the addition of fluoride to the water supply came about. It was discovered that people with "Colorado Brown Stain" or "Texas Teeth", names that described a mottling and staining of the tooth enamel (http://www.fluoridealert.org/dental-fluorosis.htm), lived in areas in Colorado and Texas that had higher naturally occurring levels of fluoride (http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2009-11-27/921482/). It was believed that the naturally occurring fluoride in the water made the enamel of the teeth harder and more resistant to cavities, so it was suggested that fluoride be distributed through the water supply to benefit public health (http://www.fluoridealert.org/cdc.htm).
This reminds me of the film Serenity, where a planet was terraformed and it's air supply was laced with a compound intended to pacify the population, with disastrous unintended consequences. Fluoride, lithium... I only wonder what accidental combination might create real reavers?
A 2009 study across 18 communities in Japan showed that those with higher levels of naturally occurring lithium were significantly less vulnerable to suicide. A study from this year corroborated the findings, showing that 4 to 15 percent of the variation in suicides across 99 counties in Austria was due to lithium content in regional water supplies.
Adding lithium to the water supply could also have the unintended consequence of widespread personality homogenization, according to Peter Kramer, a psychiatrist at Brown Medical School.
But there is a much more obvious problem. Dr. Paul Connett, director of Fluoride Action Network, has been fighting to get fluoride out of the water in the remaining 2 percent of countries worldwide that still fluoridate, and one of the major arguments against adding fluoride, or any drug -- lithium included, to the water supply is that you cannot control the dose that any one person will get. Connett argues that, to mass medicate in this way, the government would need to ensure that the dose for every individual in the society was at such a level that it would be safe and completely non-toxic -- this means accommodating an adequately safe dose for everyone including infants to large males or different races, ethnicities, ages and sexes (http://austintx.swagit.com/player.php?refid=05182011-21).
If it were even possible to arrive at such a dosage, Connett argues that such a policy would violate informed consent because those drinking the water are not being made aware of the risks associated with the drug and do not have the right to opt out if they do not wish to assume those risks.
Here's the odd part; there is also a bomb threat at North Dakota State University at Fargo. Coincidence?
NDSU is requiring all employees and students to leave campus by 10:15 a.m. This includes residence hall students, who, if necessary, should walk to locations off campus. This also includes the downtown buildings and agricultural facilities.
NDSU received a bomb threat, prompting this evacuation. Updates will follow.
Do not call local emergency numbers for further information in order to permit emergency lines to remain open for emergency calls. Updates to this announcement will be made when information becomes available. This message is authorized and transmitted by the University Police Communications Call Center.
My question is this: If banning large sodas truly saves lives, why not ban all unhealthy food in restaurants? Why not regulate all food portions? What's stopping us? Why is Mike Bloomberg allowing millions of Americans to perish while the murderous doubledecker taco and gigantic fruit punch freely walk the streets of Manhattan?
"NYC's new sugary drink policy is the single biggest step any gov't has taken to curb obesity. It will help save lives," tweeted the mayor after New York's Council of People's Commissars approved a plan to ban sales of large sodas and sugary drinks at restaurants, street carts and movie theaters.
As usual, Bloomberg offers no real data to back up his paternalistic pronouncement – because none exists. The soda ban will not save a single life, unless we're rescuing some unfortunate souls from falling into Big Gulps and drowning.
Fruit juices, dairy drinks, alcoholic beverages and most diet sodas are not part of the NYC ban. Fast food places that self-service drink fountains will only be allowed to have a 16 ounce cups – and hopefully people will re-fill those bad boys often.
The net effect is that those who drink larger volumes of sugary drinks will simply have to refill more often, negating any gains made by prohibition. And prohibition always works as advertised :/
My favorite quote from this New York Times story on the ban comes from a twinkie fascist named Sandro Galea, new to the New York board, who says:
"The argument that this is restricting choice is a false argument" Mr. Galea said, noting that customers could purchase as many smaller drinks as they would like. "The identification of threats to the health of the public is a core function of the department."
It is useless, I assure you, to point out that banning something is by definition removing a choice, but it is fun to see Galea admit that consumers can simply buy many more smaller drinks to bypass this ban.
When I wrote Nanny State, I was often told that I was getting worked up over nothing. No one is ever going to ban salt, or try to restrict portion sizes. It's crazy talk. The slippery slope is a fantasy. Yet, the precedent is clear: Anything unhealthy – not deadly, simply unhealthy – can be banned. Too much salt. Certain oils. Surely, sugar could be banned. Why not? And have you seen the size of some of these steaks?
These kind of arbitrary bans may make anti-consumer choice crusaders like Bloomberg and Galea feel good about themselves, but they offer nothing of value when it comes to obesity. What they do is create one precedent after the next that normalizes paternalistic government intrusion.
Data from the European Central Bank shows that outflows from Spanish commercial banks reached [$92 billion] in July, twice the previous monthly record. This brings the total deposit loss over the past year to 10.9 percent [of deposits]…
Mariano Rajoy en Bilbao. Imagen tomada por Iker Parriza (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In any capitalist economy, bank deposits represent capital in liquid form. Spain is bleeding to death. Evans-Pritchard quotes another expert:
This is highly significant. Deposit outflows are clearly picking up and the balance sheet of the Spanish banking system is contracting.
This is called deflation: a contraction in the supply of money. I give blood on a regular basis. But I'm only allowed to give one pint at a time, and I can't go back in less than six weeks to give another pint. Once, when I was into bike racing, I was reminded by Penrose Hospital that it was time to give blood again. I waited until after the race was over. I wanted to be at my best. The politicians in Spain don't know about bike racing, and I have serious doubts about their understanding of capital flows. They're much more interested in continuing to spend other peoples' money without hindrance. Says Evans-Pritchard:
The drip-drip of grim figures came amid fears of a constitutional crisis after the Spanish region of Catalonia requested a €5 billion rescue package yesterday from the central government but refused to accept any political conditions.
There it is in a nutshell: loan us more money so we can keep spending, but without conditions on the loan! Evans-Pritchard reiterated:
Nothing can happen until Spain requests a loan package and signs a "memorandum" giving up fiscal sovereignty. It remains unclear whether Mr. Rajoy [Spain's prime minister] will agree to this.
It's the socialist mindset: only banks and governments can revive the sinking economy. Investors with their own funds in the banks see the lie, and are getting their money out while the getting is good. Spain is bleeding to death.
Thanks so much. This action alert is incredibly urgent: Please ask your friends to join our efforts right away, as Obama will make a decision about appealing the lawsuit any day now, and the vote on indefinite detention will take place in a matter of weeks.
The federal government's designation of September 11 as "Patriot Day" raises an obvious question: What does it mean to be a patriot, especially in the context of 9/11?
The statist version of patriotism entails citizens who rally to their government in time of crisis. When the 9/11 attacks took place, the statist patriot did not hesitate. "We have been attacked," the statist patriot declared. "This is not the time to debate and discuss. We must all rally behind the president and support whatever actions he takes. He is our commander in chief. We are now at war and we must do whatever is necessary to win the war. If our freedoms must be temporarily sacrificed, so be it. They will be restored after the war is won."
The libertarian version of patriotism is totally different. We say that genuine patriotism entails a critical analysis of government conduct, especially during crises, and a willingness to take a firm stand against the government if it is in the wrong.
Thus, after the 9/11 attacks, libertarians pointed to the role that the U.S. government had played, with its policies in the Middle East, in engendering the anger, rage, and hatred that finally culminated in the 9/11 attacks. We argued the importance of changing the direction of U.S. foreign policy not only because it was wrong but also because it was destructive to the freedom and best interests of the American people.
That sent statists into orbit. To them, criticism of the government in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was unpatriotic and perhaps even treasonous. To them, the patriot had one duty after those attacks — to rally to the defense of the president and support whatever he decided to do in retaliation.
Notice the difference between statist patriotism and libertarian patriotism when it came to Iraq. Libertarians opposed the invasion of Iraq. We didn't buy into the government's fear-mongering regarding an imminent WMD attack by Saddam Hussein on the United States. We knew that public officials were using people's fear of nuclear bombs to get them to support an undeclared war of aggression, which was decreed a war crime at Nuremberg, on Iraq.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union each invaded Poland in September of 1939, having divided the country into separate spheres of influence under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. While the Germans began a massacre of Jews and Poles in western occupied Poland, the Red Army arrested and imprisoned thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, and intelligentsia during their occupation of eastern Poland. Prisoners of war and civilian internees captured by the Soviets were placed in several camps in the western USSR, run by the Soviet People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD, a predecessor organization to the modern FSB-camps including Kozielsk, Ostashkov, and Starobielsk.
In April 1943, in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk in the Soviet Union, occupying German troops discovered eight large graves containing the remains of thousands of the Polish Army officers and intellectual leaders who had been interned at the prisoner-of-war camp at Kozielsk. Bodies of the prisoners who had been housed at Ostashkov and Starobielsk were discovered near Piatykhatky and Mednoye, respectively. Collectively, these murders are known as the Katyn Forest Massacre.
An internationally-staffed medical commission organized by the Germans excavated the area in early spring 1943. As the excavation progressed, the Germans brought in several groups of observers, including some American prisoners-of-war. This commission determined that the massacre occurred in 1940, when the area was under Soviet control -- a determination which was then used as a propaganda tool intended to disrupt the alliance between the US, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. This effort was successful in part, as Polish intelligence sources immediately blamed the Soviets for the atrocities, leading to a break in diplomatic relations between Poland and the USSR.
Too bad this news never made it to American media outlets (state media), for the war might have lost significant support, just as if the truth about Pearl Harbor was public knowledge in it's time. The number of false flag events in American history are unconscionable methods to drag a nation of unwilling participants into immoral campaigns of aggression.
After their recapture of Smolensk in the autumn of 1943, the Soviet government organized its own excavation. This second enquiry concluded that the Polish prisoners of war had been captured and executed by invading German units in August 1941.
Ah, public "education." That should be known as a textbook example of a contradiction in terms, what an oxymoron...
Jeff Foxworthy made a career and a fortune telling redneck jokes.
"If you believe you got a set of matched luggage when you have two shopping bags from the same store, you might be a redneck."
"If you think the last words to The Star Spangled Banner are 'Gentlemen, start your engines,' you might be a redneck."
"If you think Sherlock Holmes is a housing project down in Biloxi, Mississippi, you might be a redneck."
I thought about coming up with a "you might be a racist if" routine. After thinking about it for awhile, I'm sure someone would say, "If you tell 'you might be a racist' jokes, you might be a racist." So switching careers is just not in the cards or stars until stupid people stop breeding and infecting the gene pool.
"Verenice Gutierrez picks up on the subtle language of racism every day. Take the peanut butter sandwich, a seemingly innocent example a teacher used in a lesson last school year.
"'What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?' says Gutierrez, principal at Harvey Scott K-8 School, a diverse school of 500 students in Northeast Portland's Cully neighborhood.
"'Another way would be to say: "Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?" Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.'"
To ensure that there are no tinges of overt or subconscious racist thoughts, words, or actions, "Guitierrez, along with all of Portland Public Schools' principals, will start the new school year off this week by drilling in on the language of 'Courageous Conversations.'"
Their time would be better spent teaching their students to read, write, add subtract, divide, and multiply, and speak well in order to help them get good jobs so they can buy peanut butter, jelly, torta, and pita.
Who frequents ethnic restaurants more than any other group in the United States? White people! Go to your favorite Chinese, Mexican, Thai, or Cuban restaurant, and what will you find? The seats loaded with people from all types of national backgrounds. Americans love ethnic food and don't care one whit who's cooking and serving it.
I grew up in an ethnically diverse neighborhood and never thought someone else was being "insensitive to my Italian heritage" because some of my German friends ate knockwurst or "pigs in a blanket."
On September 10th the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) in the straits of Hormoz chopped (turned around), went to Battle Condition II, and prepared to invade Iraq. The order to stand down came 5 hours after the 2nd tower collapsed at free fall speed and turned largely to dust. [1]
I know those who think that the 9/11 truthers are crazy will dismiss this, but stay with it, it gets interesting.
The USS Carl Vinson was in the Persian Gulf with orders to invade Iraq. Logic would dictate the invasion would go forward when the buildings collapsed and not be called off.
The same USS Carl Vinson that allegedly lowered Bin Laden's body into the sea after he was killed by Navy SEALs on May 2, 2011. [2]
What's going on here? I tried the World Wide Web but couldn't find any answers.
So I got out my Matrix Mind-ray Scanner, delivered before The Sharper Image and our way of life filed for bankruptcy and Googled "Who can I interview that can tell me why the invasion of Iraq was called off 5 hours after the 2nd tower collapsed at free fall speed and turned largely to dust?
The Matrix Mind-ray returned the following results: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Alex Jones, and Nikola Tesla.
Tesla, it seems, designed the interplanetary magnifying transmitting tower in the Matrix Mind-ray Scanner, so I set the device on "Interview" and selected Nikola Tesla.
Singer: Nikola Tesla, can you hear us?
Tesla: Yes, you are coming in loud and clear.
Singer: Mr. Tesla did you know that you are now among the 100 most famous people to have lived in the last 1,000 years? Tesla Memorial Society of New York
Tesla: I am humbled, to say the least.
Singer: Mr. Tesla, can you explain why the invasion of Iraq was called off 5 hours after the 2nd tower collapsed at free fall speed and turned largely to dust?
Tesla: The Invasion of Iraq (the cradle of civilization) was cancelled because 9/11 was a Metaphysical Test of the Earth's energy.
Singer: Huh?
Tesla: The Powers That Be or TPTB, armed with the lost knowledge from the ancient world, Atlantis, are in a metaphysical struggle and are using humans to weaken the Earth with environmental damage and pollution. 9/11 was a Metaphysical Catechism (a test) to determine if the Earth was weakened enough to take over and start a New World Order on 9/12/2001.
President Obama's auto bailout is being touted as a great success of his Administration. Speaking in Detroit at a Labor Day rally, Vice President Joe Biden used it to explain how Americans were better off. "Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," Biden boasted.
In Charlotte, former President Bill Clinton cited the bailout as a manufacturing success story, and former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm (D) sang its praises. But taxpayers lost $25 billion. Plants were closed, jobs were lost, and nearly three years later, the government still owns one-third of General Motors.
In 2008, candidate Obama said that pension protection was a "top priority." But Heritage's James Sherk, who wrote about the bailout in June with George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki, explained how union workers benefited from the bailout while the non-union employees at Delphi, an auto parts manufacturer and former GM subsidiary, weren't as fortunate.
When Delphi filed for bankruptcy the maximum pension benefits were $54,000 a year for retirees aged 65 and above, with lower benefits for early retirees. About half of Delphi's union and non-union workers faced reductions in their pension benefits [if the plan was terminated and transferred to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp.
The termination would normally mean pension cuts for both Delphi's union and non-union workers. However, the United Auto Workers' members got special treatment. According to Heritage's James Sherk:
New GM no longer had an obligation to supplement the Delphipensions. The bankruptcy filing eliminated its contractual obligation to do so. However, New GM's management—while being overseen by the Obama Administration—nonetheless agreed to spend $1 billion to supplement the pensions of Delphi's UAW retirees. The non-union employees were not so fortunate— GM did not supplement their pensions.
The left, led by President Obama, is touting this as one of the biggest successes of the Obama Administration, but where is the success? It was successful for the United Auto Workers and their special interests, but not many others. Especially not for Delphi's nonunion retirees.
Yesterday we examined Bernanke's dishonesty; today we'll examine his insanity.
If the definition of "insanity" is, as Albert Einstein asserted, "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is insane. And if he is insane, he deserves our pity, rather than our scorn.
Therefore, your editors here at The Daily Reckoning pity the Federal Reserve Chairman…poor ol' "Crazy Ben." They also pity the rest of the folks on the Federal Open Market Committee who repeatedly endorse Crazy Ben's failing tactics.
After several years of pursuing "nontraditional policy tools," as Chairman Bernanke described them in his speech last week at Jackson Hole, the US economy continues to exhibit a nontraditional lethargy.
Nevertheless, Crazy Ben credits his non-traditional — we call them "wacky" — tools for making the economy stronger than it would otherwise have been. And if the economy doesn't improve soon, Ben promises to do more of what hasn't worked.
In simple English, Bernanke's non-traditional policy tools consist of manipulating and/or "communicating" his intention to do so. [Other tools include clandestine market manipulations that do not make their way into the minutes of FOMC meetings or the transcript of Jackson Hole addresses].
"Now, with several years of experience with nontraditional policies both in the United States and in other advanced economies," the Chairman explained last week at Jackson Hole, "we know more about how such policies work. It seems clear, based on this experience, that such policies can be effective, and that, in their absence, the 2007-09 recession would have been deeper and the current recovery would have been slower than has actually occurred…"
The Chairman even goes so far as to put hard numbers on the "better than" economy he claims to have produced.
So there you have it; the US economy is better by three percentage points of growth and by 2 million jobs, thanks to the fact that Bernanke printed $2 trillion and used the funds to purchase distressed bonds from Wall Street banks.
Even if we were to accept Bernanke's guesses as Gospel, the results would be pathetic. In round numbers, Bernanke printed up dollars equivalent to about 15% of GDP and, therefore, enabled the nation's GDP to grow by 3%.
Sanctions (and embargos) are an act of war. The revisionist effort to change the meaning of words doesn't change the words, only the perception. There are few statesmen opposing the collectivist politicians in government these days. Does anyone really believe that sanctions are not an act of war? Statists are likely to say no, but those of us who study history, foreign policy, and economics know better. Anyone care to argue the statist view?
Some economic phenomena can result from a variety of causes. A temporary increase in unemployment, for example, might be caused by a sudden, disruptive change in production technology, or in trade patterns, or in labor or tax laws; or it could be caused by natural disasters or wars, or by recessions due to monetary or fiscal policy. In such cases the exact cause is unclear.
By contrast, a few economic phenomena have one and only one root origin; when we see the effect, we can be sure of the cause. One of these is inflation. Its root cause is a settled matter for most economists. In the words of the great Milton Friedman, whose masterwork with Anna Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States, did a lot to settle the matter, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Unfortunately, many educated commentators have not learned this important truth. One of these is Robert Samuelson, who wrote in the Washington Post (“The Upside of Recession?” April 25) that government subsidies can increase inflation and that recessions can reduce it. But that ain’t so.
Growth of the monetary base is the primary reason for inflation, but there actually are other factors. It's easy for collapsitarians to focus on that one issue and fail to recognize the complexity of the situation.
To understand Friedman’s aphorism, let us consider this thought experiment: Suppose tonight, as we sleep, Harry Potter flies across the country and waves his magic wand to cast a money-doubling spell. The spell has no effect on the amount of goods and services; it affects only money. Every nickel becomes a dime, every quarter becomes a 50-cent piece, every dollar becomes two, every ten-dollar bill becomes a twenty, every checking account doubles its balance—in short, the money supply doubles overnight. What would we expect to happen to prices over the next day or two?
Even if no one knew that everybody else’s money holdings had also increased, we would expect to see prices rise very fast as sellers discover that they can charge more for their goods than they could yesterday. Picture automobile dealerships. As people perceived an apparent sudden increase in their “wealth”—it’s not wealth, it’s just money, but they don’t know that yet—many of them would head out excitedly to buy a new car. The dealerships would see many more customers than yesterday, all willing to pay much more than yesterday. The dealers would quickly raise their prices, realizing that they can charge more for their cars (which are no more numerous than yesterday). A similar process would occur at every store, market, online retailer, and real-estate agency in the land, and soon the price of just about everything would (to oversimplify a bit) approximately double.
Thanks so much. This action alert is incredibly urgent: Please ask your friends to join our efforts right away, as Obama will make a decision about appealing the lawsuit any day now, and the vote on indefinite detention will take place in a matter of weeks.
