Things I've Found

Short and to the point.

2009-10-23T22:49:00.000-04:00

Dollars All The Way Down

2009-10-10T07:15:00.001-04:00

Will Grigg is... well, Will Grigg...

Since the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913, the dollar has lost 96 percent of its purchasing power. The fact that the dollar can be used to purchase anything of value is an abiding testimony to the power of official myths to contort the thinking process of human beings en masse.
There is nothing behind the dollar apart from the "full faith and credit" of the world's most powerful criminal syndicate -- well, that, and the willingness of oil-producing states to accept the dollar in exchange for petroleum. Cut that last lifeline, and there is nothing to impede the dollar's immediate fall into utter uselessness.
I find myself reminded of the old joke about an astrophysicist who is accosted after a public lecture by a crusty old man of decidedly pre-Copernican views of the universe.
"You seem like a very bright young fellow," the old man begins, seasoning his words with condescension he wasn't entitled to express, "but you've got it all wrong. You see, the earth is actually carried on the back of a giant turtle. That's the simple truth."
"But what supports that turtle?" inquires the astrophysicist with a mixture of amusement and annoyance."
"Why, another turtle, of course!" ripostes the old man.
"And what --" begins the increasingly irritated scholar, before being cut off.
"You're a clever fellow, but it won't work!" exclaims the old man. "It's turtles all the way down!"
Commissar Bernanke and other guardians of official monetary superstition are committed to preserving the delusion that prosperity can be sustained on the back of a currency that is backed by nothing but itself. It's dollars all the way down -- an infinite regression into worthlessness.

Pro Libertate: Have a Nice Apocalypse!

This Deserves Quoting...

2009-10-08T23:45:00.003-04:00

It's odd to watch the ethos of public affairs these days. Everyone seems to agree that mistakes were made in the past. People lived beyond their means. The boom created nutty financial arrangements in which people with no money and no jobs and no prospect of paying were able to enter into massive credit obligations lasting decades. Everyone seems to understand that there is something wrong here.

Where the split occurs is what to do about it. The party in power is under the belief that the way to fix a problem is to continue the practices that caused the problem in the first place, and delay for as long as possible the correction that must take place. On the other side are people who believe that reality needs to reassert itself, and the sooner the better.

Take note that I'm not talking about the need for blood in the streets or for lives to be shattered. I'm talking about moving to a different neighborhood, possibly renting rather than "owning," and generally downscaling. Is that really too much to ask? Not really, so the question appears: why is the government not insisting on this? I think the answer comes down to the banks and institutions that continue to hold bad assets. They don't want them repriced because that would be liquidation, and they are powerful enough to concoct policies that prevent that, for now.

Read it all here

Straying of teh Res...

2009-10-04T09:42:00.002-04:00

And we all know where that leads...

Iran is challenging both the U.S. and Israel in a region of the world that we and our allies have long dominated. If they are allowed to get away with it, other “rogue” nations will get ideas, and then there’s no stopping the unraveling of the “world order” we have worked so long and hard to maintain. We may bankrupt ourselves in the process, drive the price of oil up to $200 a barrel, and start World War III—but confront them we will, of that you can rest assured. It’s only a matter of time. ~ Justin Raimondo

Iran, like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, North Korea, Zimbabwe, the Sudan and many other countries, rejects the status of a “second-tier” country. These countries refuse to accept the authority of the Empire.

They have thrown off the yoke of colonial oppressors and have charted their own independent courses on the world stage. Their peoples are like runaway slaves who have established their own modern maroon colonies and as such are viewed as a threat to the orderly administration of the New World Order.

And they must be brought back under control, lest they serve as dangerous examples for those peoples still enslaved. ~Centre for Global Research

This is not to say that I think there is anything admirable about Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, North Korea, Zimbabwe, the Sudan and all the rest, but if you had been on the receiving end of the foreign policy of the people who now stand in judgment of them, say that of the United State, Britain and France, you might be acting like a bit of a terrorist yourself.

We should never, ever forget that we're ruled by psychopaths, deeply disturbed, sick shits who formulate viciously destructive policies while posing with smiles in expensive suits. ~piglipstick

On Demonstrations And What's To Be Done

2009-09-15T23:57:00.002-04:00

I found this on comment on a Bob Higgs post...

[A] simple demonstration in Washington DC is ineffective. The MSM downplay it, and everyone else ignores it.

It also seems that voting and writing to representatives are also ineffective. They are no longer listening, and in most districts have safe seats, so they are not very afraid of being thrown out of office. A Congressional incumbent has a very good chance of remaining in office as long as he or she wishes.

So, what do we do? I have three answers, an easy one, a much harder one, and a much, much harder one.

1) Easy: Withdraw our consent. Stop voting. Stop helping them pretend that they represent us. Volunteer nothing, just do what is absolutely required. Get as many people as possible to stop participating in the political system. Then we wait for the system to collapse due to lack of support. The problem is that the system may not collapse for a long time. Even if effective, this approach could take decades.

2) Much harder: Apply the program of Gandhi, “Satyagraha” or “Holding on to truth”, that gained freedom for India from the British Empire. We would take dissent to the level of breaking the law. This takes enormous courage and dedication as we have to be willing to be put in jail not once, but many times. We have to be willing to suffer injury. And, very important, we _must_ have truth on our side. If so, then, in the words of Gandhi, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Many may say that we are not yet at the point of the people of India under the British Raj. But, it seems we are not far off. They were not citizens, and could not vote, and their protests were ignored.

So, if our votes are ineffective, and our protests are ignored, are we much farther behind? Does being a US citizen mean much of anything any more?

3) Much, much, harder: Secede. The program under 2) can be applied with a small group of people, as long as they have popular support. Secession requires a large organization, and is fraught will difficulties. We have to find or create a suitable political subdivision, and we have to get most of the people within it to adopt our program to create a separate nation-state. Then, we have to try to execute a separation in the face of certain resistance up to the level of civil war. This has been done, of course, in our own “Revolution” 200+ years ago, and more recently in other parts of the world, typically in places were there is a ethnic, linguistic and/or historic basis for a new nation-state. In my view, the situation here is not yet to the point that most people would consider this very serious undertaking justified, even though the taxes and regulations and other invasions of liberty we face today are increasingly heavier that those our ancestors rebelled against in the 1770’s.

So there you are, take your pick, or suggest something else.

The National Security State

2009-09-06T18:34:00.009-04:00

Fifty [two] years ago, Harry Truman replaced the old republic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wage perpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid.

Exact date of replacement? February 27, 1947.

Place: The White House Cabinet Room.

Cast: Truman, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, a handful of congressional leaders

Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that he could have his militarized economy only IF he first "scared the hell out of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Truman obliged. The perpetual war began. Representative government of, by, and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate America enjoys representation by the Congress and presidents that it pays for in an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because those who have bought the government also own the media. Now, with the revolt of the Praetorian Guard at the Pentagon, we are entering a new and dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations but do not pay our dues...we bomb, invade, subvert other states. Although We the People of the United States are the sole source of legitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented in Congress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporate America and its enforcer, the imperial military machine..." ~Gore Vidal.

The More Things "Change"

2009-09-06T16:49:00.001-04:00

In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, President Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course. Everything described, from the continuation of crimes to the efforts to hide them away, from the corruption of corporate power to the assertion of the executive power to legislate, is Obama's presidency in its first seven months.

Which doesn't mean there aren't differences in the two moments. For one thing, Democrats have now joined Republicans in approving expanded presidential powers and even--in the case of wars, military strikes, lawless detention and rendition, warrantless spying, and the obstruction of justice--presidential crimes. ~David Swanson

If You Believe In The Right To Keep And Bear Arms

2009-09-05T08:29:00.004-04:00

but this picture bothers you...

...you might be a Republican

L. Neil Smith on Anger in America

2009-09-01T22:20:00.002-04:00

As I've been saying for decades, there is enormous anger simmering just below the surface of America's Productive Class. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, they have labored hard to supply everything necessary and good in our society—from diesel fuel to lemon meringue pie, from the wheels that get us from one place to another, to the homes in which we find our refuge and comfort—only to have the rewards of their labor snatched away by rapacious parasites intent on controlling every moment and aspect of their lives.
Yet it is they, the Productive Class, who are the first to be blamed, by elements of the Non-Productive Class who couldn't tell a cotter pin from cottage cheese, for everything, real and imagined, that is said to be wrong with that society, from bad taste in color, cars, and clothing, to air pollution, depleted ozone, and global warming.
To the average politician, newspaper columnist, hairsprayed TV commentator, or Hollywood airhead, suburbia is a kind of despicable, disgusting, fetid swamp to be crawled out of, rather than as close to Utopia as humankind has ever come, the locus of all the wishes, hopes, and aspirations of a people whose only wish is to be left the hell alone.
And all these idiots can think of—congressthings and others of the so-called "dominant culture" who believe they own us—is how to suppress that anger for another year, another decade, another century. They desperately want to deny that their opposition is significant and serious. They want to dismiss it as right-wing racism and childish ingratitude. It would never occur to them to consider what that anger might be about, or that it might be justified. They simply want it managed. It's probably too late for that, but they'll be the last to know.
Read it all here...

The Genius of Ben Bernanke

2009-08-28T19:22:00.001-04:00

Obituary

2009-08-26T21:47:00.002-04:00

Ten Lost Years

2009-08-21T20:42:00.001-04:00

Thomas Woods. As usual...

2009-08-20T23:49:00.000-04:00

...right

Tasers

2009-08-10T23:07:00.001-04:00

Representatives of the government torture innocent citizens into unconsciousness, on camera, in United States courtrooms with tasers. They use them on prisoners and on motorists and on political protesters and bicycle riders, on mentally ill and handicapped people and on children And it's happening with nary a peep of protest.

America's torture problem is much bigger than Gitmo or the CIA or the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The government is torturing people every day and killing some of them. Then videos of the torture wind up on Youtube where sadists laugh and jeer at the victims. It's the sign of profound cultural illness.

Digby, Let's talk about tasers

Lodge Doctors

2009-08-08T18:39:00.006-04:00

Lower East Side Tenement Museum: Abraham Rogarshevsky's Doctor - Louis Freedman

Fraternal organizations, like the Sons of Telsh, hired physicians to treat members and their families in return for a set annual fee. Numerous immigrant groups in urban areas engaged doctors in this way, but commentators associated the system especially with New York Jewish burial societies.

The system of hiring doctors gave society members access to primary health care. But just as importantly, it preserved the immigrants' sense of dignity and guaranteed them a great deal of power in the doctor-patient relationship. For the cost of $2-3 (the cost of one or two visits from a private physician), an immigrant family could enjoy the services of a society doctor for the entire year. The services of the lodge doctor resembled those of a private physician in that treatment was carried out at the home, and therefore at the convenience of the patient. Inexpensive access to medical care probably encouraged early treatment, may have prevented the progression of disease, and definitely limited the use of patent medicines and folk healers.

The system also benefited the doctors. A recently graduated physician could build up a practice by securing a society contract, while he built up an independent clientele. Physicians who were immigrants themselves often had a limited pool of potential patients, since they faced social and cultural barriers to practicing outside their immigrant community. The medical profession was particularly popular among Eastern European Jews in New York; a 1906 study reported on the overabundant supply of physicians.

Serving as a society doctor was hard work. Physicians sometimes served as many as ten different fraternal organizations. An article in the Tageblat estimated that the lodge doctor might see upwards of 100 patients a day. Not, surprisingly, the hours were long. For example, Dr. Freedman had office hours from 8-10am, 2-3pm, and 6-8pm. In addition, he had to make house calls, frequently over a wide geographic area. Forced to climb up and down tenement stairs, lodge doctors found their patients exceedingly demanding. Physicians' harried schedules and inexperience sometimes compromised the quality of care provided by lodge doctors. The Tageblat reported, "sad is the life of the lodge and society doctor, but sadder still is the suffering of the majority of patients who are treated by this sort of doctor."

Members of burial societies did not have to resort to public dispensaries, like the Good Samaritan Dispensary at the corner of Broome and Essex Streets, or hospital clinics, the other major healthcare providers for the poor, which carried the stigma of charity. Dispensaries, the main alternative to contract medicine, had all its deficiencies plus the taint of charity. Like their colleagues in society practice, dispensary doctors faced overwhelming workloads. Patients waited for hours in crowded conditions for perfunctory examinations. The doctors, frequently hailing from a different ethnic and class background than their patients, were viewed with suspicion. After 1899, because of a law, only the indigent could visit dispensaries. Thus, use of the clinics constituted a public declaration of penury and left the patients open to a range of intrusive investigations regarding their worthiness for medical care.

Pro:

The services of the lodge doctor resembled those of a private physician in that treatment was carried out at the home, and therefore at the convenience of the patient. Inexpensive access to medical care probably encouraged early treatment, may have prevented the progression of disease, and definitely limited the use of patent medicines and folk healers.

The system also benefited the doctors. A recently graduated physician could build up a practice by securing a society contract, while he built up an independent clientele. Physicians who were immigrants themselves often had a limited pool of potential patients, since they faced social and cultural barriers to practicing outside their immigrant community.

Con:

Physicians sometimes served as many as ten different fraternal organizations. . . .the lodge doctor might see upwards of 100 patients a day. Not, surprisingly, the hours were long. For example, Dr. Freedman had office hours from 8-10am, 2-3pm, and 6-8pm. In addition, he had to make house calls, frequently over a wide geographic area. Forced to climb up and down tenement stairs, lodge doctors found their patients exceedingly demanding. Physicians' harried schedules and inexperience sometimes compromised the quality of care provided by lodge doctors.

Compared to What?

Members of burial societies did not have to resort to public dispensaries, like the Good Samaritan Dispensary at the corner of Broome and Essex Streets, or hospital clinics, the other major healthcare providers for the poor, which carried the stigma of charity. Dispensaries, the main alternative to contract medicine, had all its deficiencies plus the taint of charity. Like their colleagues in society practice, dispensary doctors faced overwhelming workloads. Patients waited for hours in crowded conditions for perfunctory examinations. The doctors, frequently hailing from a different ethnic and class background than their patients, were viewed with suspicion. After 1899, because of a law, only the indigent could visit dispensaries. Thus, use of the clinics constituted a public declaration of penury and left the patients open to a range of intrusive investigations regarding their worthiness for medical care.

Medical Care Before the Welfare State, 1900-1930

On the face of it, a historical study of fraternal societies seems to be a subject fit only for connoisseurs of the arcane. Few Americans these days come into contact with such groups. When many of us hear the word lodge, we think of it as a place where television characters from our youth, such as Ralph Kramden (of the Loyal Order of Raccoons) and Fred Flintstone (of the Loyal Order of Water Buffalos), escaped from their more sensible wives to engage in childish hijinks—parading around with silly hats and mouthing pretentious rituals.

There was a time, however, when fraternal societies could not be so easily dismissed. Before the rise of the welfare state, they were rivaled only by churches as organizational providers of social welfare. By conservative estimates eighteen million American men and women were members in 1920 at least three out of every ten adult males. While fraternal societies differed in ethnicity, class, and gender, most shared a common set of characteristics. In general, this included a decentralized lodge system, some sort of ritual, and the payment of cash benefits in times of sickness and death.

By the turn of the century, an increasing number of societies began to add treatment by a doctor to their menu of services. This arrangement was known as lodge practice. It involved a simple contract under which a physician provided care in exchange for an annual salary determined by the size of lodge membership. To qualify, a prospective lodge doctor had to win an election by the members. Generally lodge practice plans did not extend beyond basic primary care and minor surgery, although a few provided hospitalization.

Lodge practice became particularly extensive in urban and industrial centers. In 1915, for example, Dr. S.S. Goldwater, Health Commissioner of New York City, went so far as to assert that in many communities it had become “the chosen or established method of dealing with sickness among the relatively poor.” In the Lower East Side of New York City, he noted, 500 physicians catered to Jewish societies alone. Among blacks in New Orleans there were over 600 fraternal societies with lodge practice during the 1920s.

The most important beneficiary of lodge practice was, of course, the patient of modest means. He or she was able to obtain the care of a doctor for about two dollars a year roughly equivalent to a day’s wage for a laborer. If translated into 1994 dollars, this annual fee would be equivalent to about 14 dollars, the hourly wage of some construction workers today!

The remuneration paid to the lodge doctor was a far cry from the higher fee schedules favored by the profession. A local medical society in Pennsylvania was typical in setting for its members the following minimum fees: one dollar per physical examination, surgical dressing, and housecall (daytime) and two dollars (nighttime). Such prices, at least for continual service, would have been out of reach for many poor Americans.

And what happened to these what must be judged on the whole as successful private social service initiatives?

Even before the Depression, lodge practice had begun to fall into a state of decline. The pressure exerted by the leaders of organized medicine hastened the demise. By the 1910s, doctors had launched an all-out war against lodge practice. Throughout the country, medical associations imposed a range of sanctions against lodge doctors, including expulsion from the association and denial of hospital facilities. In certain instances, campaigns were organized to deny patient care, even in emergencies, to members of offending lodges. Most commentary from both sides of this conflict indicates that these sanctions were highly effective. In any case, by the end of the 1930s, the once vibrant health care alternative of lodge practice, which less than two decades before had inspired trepidation throughout the medical establishment, had virtually disappeared.

Over time the AMA was successful in establishing a cartel

1913
AMA establishes a "Propaganda Department" to gather and disseminate information concerning health fraud and quackery
1922
Judicial Council amended The Principles of Medical Ethics, outlawing the solicitation of patients by physicians, a policy that remained in effect until the new Principleswere adapted in 1980
1934
During the Depression, the Judicial Council amended the Principles by making it unethical for any physician to dispose of his or her services to any lay body, organization, group, or individual under the conditions that would permit any of them to receive a profit on the doctor's services

A standard response to the suggestion that society can be ordered and organized by non-coercive means is what Stefan Moylneux calls the Argument from Apocolypse.

The basic argument is that if we accept proposition “X,” civilized society will collapse, children will die in the streets, the old will end up eating each other, and the world will dissolve into an endless and apocalyptic war of all against all.

When it is suggested that perhaps the federal government might not be capable of engineering the health care "system" it means, of course, you want to keep things as they are now, only worse because you want old people to eat dog-food and die in the streets of swine flu!

But there was a time when ease of entry, voluntary association and price competition--in other words, a free market--provided normative health care to the "poor" without the enforcement arm of the state.

I Did Not Know This

2009-08-08T17:55:00.003-04:00

The Federal Reserve can enter into agreements with foreign central banks and foreign governments, and the GAO is prohibited from auditing or even seeing these agreements. Why should a government-established agency, whose police force has federal law enforcement powers, and whose notes have legal tender status in this country, be allowed to enter into agreements with foreign powers and foreign banking institutions with no oversight? Particularly when hundreds of billions of dollars of currency swaps have been announced and implemented, the Fed’s negotiations with the European Central Bank, the Bank of International Settlements, and other institutions should face increased scrutiny, most especially because of their significant effect on foreign policy. If the State Department were able to do this, it would be characterized as a rogue agency and brought to heel, and if a private individual did this he might face prosecution under the Logan Act, yet the Fed avoids both fates. More...

Now I do.

H.R.1207: Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009
S.604: Federal Reserve Sunshine Act of 2009

Nock: Turning Every Contingency Into A Resource

2009-08-08T11:12:00.006-04:00

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." ~ Rahm Emanuel.

. . .many of our people were in hard straits; to some extent, no doubt, through no fault of their own, though it is now clear that in the popular view of their case, as well as in the political view, the line between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor was not distinctly drawn.

Popular feeling ran high at the time, and the prevailing wretchedness was regarded with undiscriminating emotion, as evidence of some general wrong done upon its victims by society at large, rather than as the natural penalty of greed, folly or actual misdoings; which in large part it was.

The State, always instinctively "turning every contingency into a resource" for accelerating the conversion of social power into State power, was quick to take advantage of this state of mind. All that was needed to organize these unfortunates into an invaluable political property was to declare the doctrine that the State owes all its citizens a living; and this was accordingly done.

It immediately precipitated an enormous mass of subsidized voting-power, an enormous resource for strengthening the State at the expense of society

~ Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy The State

Hypothetically Axiomatic Praxeology

2009-08-07T22:51:00.002-04:00

With a nod toward Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

In every voluntary exchange both exchange partners must benefit from the exchange, otherwise the exchange would not have taken place.

Is this statement hypothetical or axiomatic?

Is it akin to saying the world consumes twice as much beef than pork or an object cannot be in two places at the same time?

The former could be reversed without saying something patently absurd: The world consumes twice as much pork than it does beef. It can also be tested. The latter, though, an object can be in two places (or more) at the same time is nonsense on the face of it (except perhaps on some quantum level that has nothing to do with faces smacking into windshields). How could you even construct a test to prove, or better, falsify it? According to Karl Popper, if you can't test it it's not true. But you can't test it except to examine every particle in the universe. Is it any less true regardless?

So is the statement about voluntary exchange of the type the world consumes more beef than pork or an object cannot be in two places at once?

The thing is, obscure as that might be, as much as you may see angels dancing on the head of a pin, so much about the study of economics as a science flows from the answer to that question that I shudder to think that the people who have complete control of the economic and political structures of our society have never considered it. Yet on they blather... agreggate consumer confidence... monetary easing... abracadbra... alakazam!

Whenever I get confronted with something like this the first time it clicks it is an almost Zen moment of knowing. Later I want to poke the guy who asked it in the eye with a stick.

Socrates got what he had coming.

Functionally Atheist

2009-08-07T20:56:00.003-04:00

I'm not an atheist, actually, but can make no claims about God, whatever God may be or not be, outside of my own subjective experience. When it comes to God, there is no "out there" out there where God could be. There is only "in here" and I'm the only one in here, besides God.

However, I live in what is, or at least some how appears to be, a real, material universe. By reality I mean what Phillip K. Dick put perfectly: "That which does not go away because you stop believing it." In that place, the only place we exist as far as others are concerned, the only medium through which we can communicate, there is no evidence of God. Nothing objective anyway.

The net effect is, when it comes to material reality I'm a stone cold materialist. I believe some ever more precise combination of physics (and all it entails) and reason will account for all that we experience. This is not to say there is no God, just that everything we've learned as we've turned away from ignorance and superstition has taught us God is not required.

I think that's about as close to falsifiability as you get with respect to God and God does not do well in the encounter.

On the other hand. Inside where I live, where my existence is a continuing play of symbols and metaphor, grasping for patterns in the waves of sensation constantly pouring over me, there is a place where I experience something larger than me. I don't know how else to describe it. I truly experience it rarely, but when I do. mostly in some sort of meditative state, or when genuinely at peace--sitting on a hillside on a warm spring day--I can see forever and feel the all of everything humming. A soft warmth in the darkness. Encompassing.

But totally subjective. I wouldn't think of trying to prove such a thing.

Ain Soph Aur
Ain Soph
Ain
.

God
is
Not!

God=Not

!God

Things I Found August 7, 2009

2009-08-07T19:49:00.003-04:00

Feds at DefCon Alarmed After RFIDs Scanned

LAS VEGAS — It’s one of the most hostile hacker environments in the country –- the DefCon hacker conference held every summer in Las Vegas.

But despite the fact that attendees know they should take precautions to protect their data, federal agents at the conference got a scare on Friday when they were told they might have been caught in the sights of an RFID reader.

The reader, connected to a web camera, sniffed data from RFID-enabled ID cards and other documents carried by attendees in pockets and backpacks as they passed a table where the equipment was stationed in full view.

Read it all here.

AP ENTERPRISE: Federal tax revenues plummeting

AP ENTERPRISE: Plummeting tax revenues starve government just as Obama embarks on big plans

STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
AP News

Aug 03, 2009 19:51 EST

The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation's plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab. The numbers could hardly be more stark...

Agog over Bush's comments on Gog and Magog

It's awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who "got saved." He never should have been entrusted with power to start wars.

For six years, Americans really haven't known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, after all, and wasn't in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq's oil -- or to protect Israel -- or to complete Bush's father's old vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.

Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that arcane, supernatural Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than 4,000 young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.

Read it all here.

Pro Libertate: The Plague of Punitive Populism

2009-08-07T19:45:00.001-04:00

Will Grigg has once again outdone himself...

The Plague of Punitive Populism

By William N. Grigg

"Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there."

-- Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath

I suggest that liberty-minded Americans... can learn much about themselves and those around them through [what] we could call the "Tom Joad Test."

I'm not a fan of Steinbeck's incurably wrong-headed economic views or his idiosyncratic collectivist politics in general, although I must admit a sneaking respect for anybody who attracts the hostile interest of the FBI solely on the strength of his published writings.

His creation Tom Joad isn't among my favorite fictional characters. But there is substantial merit in Joad's pledge to sympathize with those who are victims of Power.

Early in The Grapes of Wrath, Joad--recently paroled after serving four years in prison for killing a man who stabbed him in a fight -- becomes re-acquainted with Jim Casy, a fallen Oklahoma Pentecostal preacher who has embraced a populist version of Emerson's "oversoul" concept: "Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of."

Thus was planted the seed that would sprout into Joad's famous soliloquy, which included the pledge that "Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there."

So here, stated briefly, is the question that serves as the shibboleth/sibbolet dividing line in the "Tom Joad Test":

When you see a cop -- or, more likely, several of them -- beating up on a prone individual, do you instinctively sympathize with the assailant(s) or the victim?

If it's the former, you're an authoritarian, irrespective of your partisan attachments or professed political philosophy.

If it's the latter, you're an instinctive libertarian, whether or not you are consistently guided by that impulse in your political decisions.

It may later be demonstrated that the figure on the receiving end of the beating had committed some horrible crime. However, such a disclosure wouldn't invalidate the results of the Tom Joad Test, because that test reveals a subject's default assumptions about the relationship between the individual and the state.

Read it all here.

Things I Found August 5, 2009

2009-08-05T20:13:00.004-04:00

I will let you in on a secret: the government could never own you even if you tried to sell yourself to it. Government has nothing with which to purchase you, since government can't legitimately own anything. And, if it did try, you would be admitting that you own yourself in order to legitimately sell yourself to the state.

~ Kent McManigal. Government is a Euphemism for Slavery

It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power. There is never, nor can there be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power.

~ Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy The State

The broader question of where we go as a nation pulses with tragedy. History is clearly presenting us with a new set of mandates: get local, get finer, downscale, and get going on it right away. Prepare for it now or nature will whack you upside the head with it not too long from now. Attempting to maintain anything on the gigantic scale will turn out to be a losing proposition, whether it is military control of people in Central Asia, or colossal bureaucracies run in the USA, or huge factory farms, or national chain store retail, or hypertrophied state universities, or global energy supply networks.

These imperatives are so outside-the-box of ordinary experience right now, that to drag them into the arena of politics can only evoke blank stares or nervous giggling. But whether we like it or not, these are the things that will really matter in the years ahead — not whether General Motors can ever make a profit again, or what Target Store’s sales figures are next quarter, or whether the latest high-rise condo-and-gambling complex in Las Vegas will be successfully marketed.

Here, in the dog days of summer, it seems to me that the situation in the USA is so fundamentally bad, so unpromising, so booby-trapped for failure, that I wonder if there has ever been a society so badly deluded as ours. We’re prisoners of our wishes, living in a strange dream-time, oblivious to the forces gathering at the margins of our vision, lost in a wilderness of our own making.

James Howard Kunstler, Monumentally Tragic Disappointment on the Horizon

Things I Found August 4, 2009

2009-08-04T19:32:00.003-04:00

[T]he SEC says that Bank of America executives concealed information from its shareholders prior to the shareholder vote to merge, harming those shareholders. Therefore, the same shareholders who were harmed by the concealment now have to pay another $33 million. Is this justice?

~ Randall Holcombe

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitable he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.

~ H.L. Mencken

One of the most perversely misleading myths about government is that it promotes order within its own bailiwick, keeps groups from constantly warring with each other and somehow creates togetherness and harmony. In fact, that’s the exact opposite of the truth. There’s no cosmic imperative for different people to rise up against one another – unless they’re organized into political groups. The Middle East, now the world’s most fertile breeding ground for hatred, provides an excellent example.

Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together peaceably in Palestine, Lebanon and North Africa for centuries, until the situation became politicized after WWI. Until then an individual’s background and beliefs were just personal attributes, not a casus belli. Government was at its most benign, an ineffectual nuisance that concerned itself mostly with extorting taxes. People were busy with that most harmless of activities, making money.

But politics does not deal with people as individuals. It scoops them up into parties and nations. And some group inevitably winds up using the power of the state (however innocently or "justly" at first) to impose its values and wishes on others, with predictably destructive results. What would otherwise be an interesting kaleidoscope of humanity then sorts itself out according to the lowest common denominator peculiar to the time and place.

The Essence of Government, Doug Casey

Mandatory Binding Arbitration

2009-08-03T21:52:00.006-04:00

In looking for something which I have now forgotten I came across this editorial in the Washington Post on the topic of private arbitration. In truth, I came across the the response from Kia C. Franklin first, then found the original editorial. Since DROs and other methods of stateless conflict resolution rely upon third party arbitration, I though it might be of value to see what the current non-free model is and if it has anything to teach about how it could or would work in a voluntary society.

I suppose the first sticking point I have is with the term mandatory. I'm already halfway out the door when I hear that.

As the editorialist said...

Most consumers aren't aware that many of the contracts they sign include these provisions. Even those aware of the provisions are helpless to do anything about them because consumers generally must accept contracts in their entirety. And some provisions -- such as those that force consumers to travel cross-country to attend arbitration hearings -- can be unfair.

I suppose the caveat of freely entered into could apply. If you signed a contract a contract knowing the provisions contained in it, well, what can I say?

Courts from time to time have struck down extreme provisions, but there are no uniform national standards. Several bills pending in Congress attempt to address these inequities.

As Stefan Molyneux would say, "More guns will solve everything!"

The typical unreasoned response to the suggestion that if you remove coercive monopoly violence from the social equation is to protest that without the restraining hand of the state there would be no rules or order, people would just run around doing whatever they wanted. It would be a chaotic nightmare.

But what is more chaotic, abiding by the terms of a signed contract or facing the agreed upon sanctions or not knowing if the terms will be upheld because a judge or legislator can set them aside later in favor of one party or the other?

The state creates the very uncertainty and doubt it claims to be protecting us from.

Services that require you to accept onerous terms are not monsters of exploitation--well, maybe they are, but that's a different discussion. In this context they represent an opportunity for enterprising entrepreneurs. Offer the same service on better terms if you can. If you can't then don't turn to the someone with a gun to solve your problem for you.

The Washington Post
A Good Arbiter
Congress considers new laws regulating the resolution of disputes between businesses and consumers.
Saturday, April 12, 2008; Page A14
VIRTUALLY everyone who carries a credit card is subject to something called a binding mandatory arbitration agreement. So is almost anyone who owns a cellphone or who recently purchased a car from a dealer.
These agreements are often buried deep in the fine print of consumer contracts; they mandate that any dispute between the consumer and the company be resolved through private arbitration. That means a neutral third party -- often a former judge -- rules on the issue, and both sides are bound by the decision. Arbitration is generally cheaper and speedier than litigation. Surveys show that business strongly favors it, while consumers are also generally approving.
Still, binding mandatory arbitration provisions in consumer contracts have come under attack recently, and for some good reasons. Most consumers aren't aware that many of the contracts they sign include these provisions. Even those aware of the provisions are helpless to do anything about them because consumers generally must accept contracts in their entirety. And some provisions -- such as those that force consumers to travel cross-country to attend arbitration hearings -- can be unfair. Courts from time to time have struck down extreme provisions, but there are no uniform national standards. Several bills pending in Congress attempt to address these inequities.
Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) would prohibit binding mandatory arbitration provisions in all consumer and employment contracts; the bill allows arbitration only after a dispute arises and only if both parties agree. This goes too far and risks eliminating arbitration as a serious alternative to litigation for such routine matters as warranty disputes, as even some supporters of the bill acknowledge. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) provides a better framework to improve the system. Mr. Sessions's bill would, among other things, force companies to more prominently display arbitration provisions and provide an explanation of how the costs of the arbitration are to be split between consumer and business. The bill also would allow consumers to opt out of arbitration in favor of small-claims court. Any hearing would have to take place in a location convenient to the consumer, and arbitrators would be required to apply the laws of the state in which the consumer resides.
This week, Sens. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) introduced legislation to ban mandatory arbitration clauses in nursing home contracts. This narrow exception may be warranted. Nursing home residents are among the most vulnerable in the country, and decisions to place family members in these facilities are often made under the most stressful of circumstances. Allowing residents or their families to sue may be the only way to prod nursing homes to improve care.

The Injustice of Private Arbitration
Monday, April 21, 2008; Page A14
Your April 12 editorial "A Good Arbiter" completely ignored the high upfront costs, the heavy anti-consumer bias and the gross procedural disadvantages that characterize private arbitration as opposed to our public courts of law.
These features are why consumer groups, patient advocates, employment rights activists -- essentially everyone besides the corporate lobby -- generally oppose mandatory arbitration of disputes between corporations and regular people.
Arbitration creates grave injustices for the up to 20 percent of American workers who, to keep or get jobs, must waive their constitutional right to take lawbreaking employers to court. If their employer underpays, discriminates against, denies workers' compensation to or otherwise illegally mistreats employees, the employer's handpicked private arbitration company will hear the dispute.
Unlike the measure from Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), the bill by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) does absolutely nothing for the most financially vulnerable Americans, who in this economy must choose between much-needed employment opportunities and much-cherished constitutional rights. More is at stake here than $200 cellphone contract disputes that can be taken to small-claims court.
KIA C. FRANKLIN
Senior Fellow in Civil Justice
Drum Major Institute for Public Policy
New York

Everyday Anarchy Moving.

2009-08-03T20:50:00.004-04:00

I have been posting Stefan Molyneux' Everyday Anarchy section by section the past few days. I will cease now. The reason being that it is appearing here instead. It is currently at Everyday Anarchy 05: Politics And Self-Interest.

I'm am reserving this space for more informal purposes and day-to-day stuff.

I think getting Everyday Anarchy and Practical Anarchy in HTML format is important. Molyneux makes strong arguments. It's good to have a ready reference for them. Being able to link to them directly as opposed to a PDF will be more likely to drive others to read them, perhaps the ideas will sink in.

One can always hope.