Requiem For Dissent

NEW BLOG ADDRESS

2009-05-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

Please see my new blog at http://www.coreyjsax.com

Thanks,

Corey

Putting the "Mock" in Democracy

2009-02-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

-9th Amendment to the United States Constitution

"Did you want to know who is John Galt? Iam the first man of ability who refused to regard it as guilt. I am the first man who would not do pennance for my virtues or let them be used as the tools of my destruction. I am the first man who would not suffer the martyrdom at the hands of those who wished me to perish for the privilege of keeping them alive. I am the first man who told them that I did not need them, and until they learned to deal with me as traders, giving value for value, they would have to exist without me, as i would exist without them; then i would let them learn whose is the need and whose is the ability--and if human survival is the standard, whose
terms would set the way to survive."

- John Galt
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Where we have once been a nation of persevering individualists, we have become a country of adult infants. Where we were once the economic engine that powered the world, we are now sinking the world into ruin. Where we once held intelligence, ability and reason as ideals towards which to strive, we now praise and honor unintelligence, inability and primal emotional responses. The status of our fallen republic and the celebration of our worst traits, was evident at the Minnesota State Budget town hall meeting in Minneapolis last tuesday.

While, I'm not a fan of Tim Pawlenty, I do support his budget cut proposal. We are facing an economic collapse that is as bad or worse than the Great Depression. Pawlenty's call for fiscal responsibility on behalf of Minnesota's legislature is a demonstration of real leadership and for that he should be commended.

I also give Pawlenty credit for standing for what is right, despite the fact that many in this state (especially in the city) are clamoring for more and more handouts that our government can't afford. It's never easy being the guy who has to shut down the party, and kick drunk folks home. Hopefully after all is said and done Minnesota with thank the governor for taking a stand and speaking frankly about our economic problems. We certainly cannot afford to keep the government credit card going.

At our town hall meeting, I spoke to this point as a businessman and a citizen. I work for a company (and have contributed to it's success over the past 10 years) that has played by the rules, operated ethically and has been financially responsible. We employ hundreds of people and pay a very significant chunk of taxes. I believe that the only way that Minnesota can get out from under this financial collapse is to allow businesses to succeed and to grow. Businesses that grow, hire employees and attract investors like flowers attract birds and bees. It is capital that produces wealth and prosperity, not consumption and deficit spending. Sadly, I was one of 3 out of 500 who argued this point. The other 497 who spoke or sat in the audience lined up at the trough to petition the government not for redress of their grievances, but for the fruits of someone else's labors, as if they were a legless man sitting on a street corner with a dixie cup hungry for change. Of those 497, many were those who headed or were employed by various state government funded support services; such as dental care for those who can't afford it -or choose not to get insurance, those who work for art and "culture" programs, those who operate Park and Recreation facilities and many others that I can't even begin to remember. It was not these particular pleadings that angered me, but it was when CEOs of the large hospitals: North Memorial, HCMC, and Fairview Medical Center, got down on their hands and knees and asked their legislatures to tax smaller businesses, so that they can get their "bailouts". Such moves are anti-American at best, and morally reprehensible at worst.

I didn't cause this economic collapse, nor did my employer. The Government and it's irresponsible fiscal policies caused this pain and suffering, and they intend to deepen the people's wounds by punishing responsible producers and saddling them with unsustainable tax increases. This will not grow jobs, it will not feed the hungry and it will not help us out of the current economic climate. Instead such moves will prolong the poeple's misery and make the situation worse.

Furthermore I just learned that Mayor RT Rybak, whose is running a reelection campaign for mayor, that he doesn't even plan on completing, has proposed to shut down the Mpls Department of Civil Rights Investigative Unit. One of the core responsibilities of government is to protect the Civil Rights of her Citizens. It is sickening that RT proposes that we spend $5.2 Million on a "green" roof for the target center, and $9.2 Million for a ONE MILE stretch of bike path, while eliminating organs of government dedicated to maximizing freedom and individual liberty. It also appears that RT Rybak is a little thin skinned when it comes to criticism. Rybak actually blocked me from his facebook page for openly criticizing him for bashing Governor Tim Pawlenty and pointing out problems with his budget. I think it show the true character of the mayor, to reject opposing positions from his constituents.

It time for us to stop being Good Democrats. It is time for us to stop being Good Republicans. It is time for us to be good Americans.

If we are to reclaim our country, we must first reclaim our neighborhoods and our cities. It is time to stand up for that which is right. It is time to work together to lift those up who need our help, instead of punishing those of ability and those who work hard to create opportunities for our communities. Elected officials at the state and city level have opted to plunder and loot one group of people to give favors to those who've helped elected them. This is not only UNAMERICAN, but it is also morally wrong.

Let us see past the partisan lies and work together to rebuild our country. Let us allow the people to have their Life, Liberty, Freedom and Happiness. Let us allow the people to keep their wealth, and to prosper, rather than allowing government to raid whatever remains of our grandchildren's piggy banks.

The R3VOLUTIONARY next door

2009-02-08T17:02:00.000-08:00

"An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot."

-Thomas Paine

The Revolution will not be televised. The Revolution will not be immortalized through the silk screened posters disseminated by aging hipsters or marketed on iconic no shrink cotton t-shirts sold at the mall. Our revolution will lead to a "political correction" that will come as the result of practical and hard working American's losing their faith in their elected officials. These Americans don't trust our government, yet still have faith in their countrymen and the idea of a free American Republic. These Americans will reignite the idea that once lit the world.

Like the American Revolution, ours will have no armed military, there will be no olive green fatigues, no rebels, no repudiation of debt and no reign of terror. Instead there will be a resurgence and reclamation of our nation's Communities and the inevitable Civic Activism that is required to maintain a free republic. This new Civic Participation will be much more localized and downscaled than we are presently used to. It will also require that people deal with each other outside of the bounds of doctrine or ideology. There will be no "Republicans and Democrats" in this new world. There will only be individuals and their interests. We will not be able to discredit those with whom we disagree with simply because of their political affiliation. Nor will we use some preconceived rubric based on our imagined political identity. Instead the preservation of our lives, liberties and our property will be the new means of determining whether or not we enact a policy or not. Instead of passing the buck to city council, the state legislature or the federal government, the buck will stop with each of us. No longer will we be able to ask the state to infringe upon the rights of our neighbors, just because they have something that we may want or because we may not like they way in which they conduct their life. Such Civic Activism will emerge spontaneously. We will not need or desire to resort to a "forced" program of service, like what is advocated by the current administration. As has happened throughout history, when free to act, the people will come together of their own accord.

This Revolution is not a planned event or a human instigated affair. There are no bomb wielding anarchists wearing black coats scheming over plans to overthrow the state. This coming "political correction" is just as inevitable as or current economic correction. This is natural course of affairs cannot be stopped, and as the state fights to maintain it's centralized control of power, the political correction will only become more evident to the rest of the population. Most likely this dynamic political shift will come on the heels of the total collapse of the American economy. As the Federal Government fails to bail out the states, the states will stop funding the counties and municipalities. There will be slashing of budgets, loss of local public services such as police and fire, and an astronomical increase in taxes. When it becomes apparent that these services have be greatly reduced or altogether eliminated, and that crime is on the rise, neighborhood groups and "block clubs" will self organize in defense of their communities. There will be plenty of unemployed former policemen and security guards to do the job. As the new private police service gains credibility and consistency in the eyes of their clients, the state funded security monopoly will wane. This will lead to further loss of faith in the state and the population will ask themselves why they continue to pay taxes or follow pointless laws and regulations, thus further undermining the state.

As the economic upheaval slowly metamorphosizes into a political transformation, old party identities and the current parties as they exist today will no longer be relevant. Most if not all political energies will be focused at the local and neighborhood level. Those who presently consider themselves on the left and the right, will need each other to build sustainable and lasting local communities. The "green" liberal who hates guns will need to learn how to defend his family from criminals and learn about gun safety. The gun toting conservative will need to learn from his liberal neighbor how to raise chickens in an urban area or how to bring city grown vegetables to the local farmers market for trade. Home schooling advocates and leftist community involvement advocates will need to work together to provide goods and services that the government and big business used to provide.

This puts Libertarians in the position to be ambassadors between both sides in the transition period. Libertarians more than anybody else can identify with elements of both sides and bring them together in a way that will be needed to build a stable and harmonious local community. Whether we like it or not, this places us into an informal leadership role. This is beginning to become evident with people like Ron Paul and Peter Schiff. Where once these figures we're laughed off TV, they are now sought out for their advice. This phenomenon will occur at the local level, and it is important that we prepare. It is imperative that we do the work now to start preparing our local neighborhoods and communities. Going to or organizing "block clubs" or neighborhood organizations is a good start. Forming networks and even an online means of social networking could become the foundation for what in the future will become a neighborhood trade or barter market. Above all we must keep our heads. There are still many people who have no idea what is coming and who are not prepared. There will be nothing more debilitating than trying to adjust mentally during the actual chaos. Prepare now, get yourself mentally able to deal with it before it happens. When it does you will be a voice of reason and a voice of comfort to your neighbors and friends.

I am not condoning the physical overthrow of the government, nor am I arguing for a violent attack on the powers at be. I am proposing the our current government will begin to collapse as a result of our current unsustainable economic practices and as a result of misguided attempts to fix the problem. While this will be a painful period for many people, it also provides exciting opportunities for liberty and reorganizing our society so that we might achieve unprecedented future prosperity. Even if these things do not occur, it is still a worthwhile effort to pursue building stronger and more independent communities and reorientation of political energies toward the local level. Thomas Jefferson referred to this as the "Ward Republic". If I am wrong and we spend our energy on pursuing community reorganization, then we gain better and more wholesome lives. If I am right, it may be the difference between Freedom and Slavery.

Donate for my Minneapolis City Council Race Here.

2009-02-02T23:28:00.000-08:00

The Government Delusion

2009-01-12T17:00:00.000-08:00

"If only everybody would agree to be a dove, every single individual would benefit. By simple group selection, any group in which all individuals mutually agree to be doves would be far more successful than a rival group sitting at the ESS (Evolutionary Stable Strategy) ratio.... Group selection theory would therefore predict a tendency to evolve towards an all-dove conspiracy... But the trouble with conspiracies, even those that are to everybody's advantage in the long run, is that they are open to abuse. It is true that everybody does better in an all-dove group than he would in an ESS group. But unfortunately, in conspiracies of doves, a single hawk does so extremely well that nothing could stop the evolution of hawks. The conspiracy is therefore bound to be broken by treachery from within. An ESS is stable, not because it is particularly good for the individuals participating in it, but simply because it is immune to treachery from within."

-Richard Dawkins

"Governments and the military purport to protect the public from enemies, and if there were no enemies they would have to invent some, for the simple purpose of rationalizing their existence ...."

- Laurance Labadie

I'm not an economist. Nor am I a politician, a sociologist or any other kind of "social scientist" that makes use of fancy graphs and theories obtained from an ominous and distant ivory tower. I consider myself a scientific realist and a skeptic. As a result, reality is the crucible by which I obtain my truths and test my ideas of what and how things should be. Regardless of how valid I think that my assumptions might be, based on my vigorous pursuit of knowledge via reason, I too will err. The human mind seems ill-suited to naturally grasping exponential functions, and as a result is unable to understand much of how the world works. Of course we can understand, analyze and derive conclusions and sometimes test these assumptions; however, we get into real trouble when we try to create models for dynamic systems as we are rooted in time and place. In short, something in our evolution requires the human species to welcome conformity and the warm hovel of the known. We are wired to fear the unknown, new ideas and change. Of course many of us don't like accepting our inherent genetic disposition and we attempt to swim against the grain, and through blood and guts we push the human race forward. But alas, this too is wiring and part of our failure to understand the dynamic system which we are all a part.

The Model Statue -- Portrait of Authority

We are born Tabula Rasa and without purpose, meaning or motivation. Upon our arrival on planet Earth, we are looking for someone to tell us who and what we should be and what the point of all of this really is. As a person grows and develops their personal experiences and free will in combination with social, political, religious, educational and economic forces create a model statue and defines a ideal to which he strives. This co-opted identity is a kind of life long beacon that defines the purpose or lack thereof in our individual lives. It is what motivates, inspires and compels us to fight for survival, against the inevitable fact that we will one day perish. As each of us will form our own model statues in our own likenesses we all have them, for they are our will to live. Furthermore, whether our statue is spiritual, political, artistic, emotional or whatever else, there is always competition among all of the statues.

As economies of scale dictate, those statues or leaders with the most followers will be more successful than those with less. In order to maximize their success, leaders will seek to limit competition from opposing interests. But this too is part of the system. If we consider Dawkin's quote in regards to doves and hawks, we find that the most sustainable strategy for the ecosystem ––or in our example, society––is for there to be many hawks and many doves. While this seems counterintuitive as one might argue that a society of doves might be more peaceful, the fact remains that a society of doves is also more easily conquered as soon as a hawk decides to pop up. Dynamic systems abhor imbalance and naturally correct themselves, unless of course they are prevented from doing so by interventionists intent on cheating nature. In the dove/hawk example hawks must compete for doves. If the doves are being threatened they have a far greater chance of survival by dividing and conquering those hawks that seek to devour them. If we extrapolate this to society we find that most of what the government does is unnatural and imbalanced.

Dynamic Equilibrium -- The Sustainable Society

We are so incredibly conditioned and so socially conformed to the vision of the few hawks that seek to control our society, that when the nature of our controlled system is merely questioned, we close our minds and dismiss contrary perspective as a matter of habit. Our current society is run by a small group of powerful interests who possess a disproportionate amount of influence with those who make, execute and interpret the law. Few can deny that the individual alone has little affect on government on the national, state and even municipal level. It appears that the number of doves is so large and the number of hawks is so few that we've become powerless to truly change the course of our society.

From the economic perspective our Hawk/Dove dichotomy is especially relevant. Critics of the sustainable economics of the free market argue that the laissez-faire approach creates an unfair playing field and will result in the supposedly inevitable control of the economy at the hands of a few powerful interests or hawks. Scientifically speaking this is exactly the opposite of what would happen. The economy like the ecosystem, or like any other dynamic system operates under the same set of natural laws and abhors imbalance. People however, do seek imbalance as we have difficulty understanding the non-linear means in which dynamic systems function. We perceive their mechanisms as chaotic, when really they are ordered and our own attempts to cheat nature are truly chaotic. The economy brings especially brings this to light.

Once upon a time, economies were made up of those who sought to trade with each other. At this time there were two ways of getting what you needed; brute force, or persuading your neighbor to trade with you. Contrary to popular opinion, brute force is not a sustainable option in terms of acquiring the goods you need to survive. In a society with many hawks and many doves, brute force doesn't work, because brute force requires that someone give up what is rightfully theirs to another who has used force against them. In a situation with many hawks and many doves, or a market free to compete, brute force is frowned upon and punished by market. Doves who seek to protect themselves against hawks who use force will hire other hawks to deal with the bad hawks. As there is greater economic incentive to trade, there will always be more who hire hawks than those who seek to do harm. Additionally those who resort to brute force will not be able to hire others to create crime. This is similar to insuring yourself against damages. Insurance companies want customers who are risk adverse. Just as you can't buy insurance to burn your home down, or if you did it would far more expensive than the cost of your home, you wouldn't be able to get insured against hawks if you yourself were a hawk. Thus, those who commit crimes have no "crime insurance" and are subject to the others hawks who seek to steal from him. This is how crime would be handled in a monopoly free law enforcement system.

In our current system, the State is the sole entity legally able to initiate the use of force. Thus, the state has a conflict of interest in resolving conflict between citizens. If Mr. Jones steals $500,000 from Mr. Brown and Mr. Jones knows the Judge or gives him money for reelection, then there would be a conflict of interest. Can we trust the judge to be fair or just? Has our current government been fair or just? History shows us that without competing hawks, or government with become exponentially corrupt until nature kicks in and forces a political correction or what some would call a change of power, or revolution.

A sustainable system is one marked by longevity, local control and stability. When a small few are able to manipulate or exercise excessive influence within a system's structure, that system becomes unstable, unsustainable and subject to an increase in entropy and eventual collapse. It is irrelevant whether this system is an ecosystem, economic system, weather system or a political system.

Historical precedent suggests that the most powerful States have the most violent collapses.

Empire vs. Republic -- Unsustainable vs. Sustainable

"The founding Fathers hated two things, they hated Democracy and they hated Monarchy and they saw to that we would have neither." --Gore Vidal

The public school system fails to educate students on one of most fundamentally important concepts in a free society; the difference between a Democracy and a Free Republic. Most of the founders were crystal clear in their rejection of democracy as a valid form of government that would stay free and embrace individual liberty. The founders, as students of history, understood that any majority rule system that failed to make the protection of INDIVIDUAL Liberties it's highest calling and only reason for existence, would devolve into tyranny. The founders understood that a majority rule system would limit the amount of hawks, decrease competition of interests and increase conformity. Furthermore, such a system would enable large corporate and banking interests to develop via regulation and legislation. The founders also understood that such a system could be milked if these large interests ever got their hands on the issuance of our then fledgling nations currency. The founders took every step possible to create a constitutional republic with an almost non-existent government. The constitution calls for Gold and Silver as our currency to be issued by Congress, not a central bank, such as the Federal Reserve Bank. They also knew that Gold and Silver backed money would force the government to balance it's budget and not borrow up to it's eyeballs.

Every step that has been taken at our nations founding was intended to keep our nation a Republic, as limited and responsible government are the anti-thesis of Empire. Empires require exponential growth of government and thus need to feed off of an ever increasing amount of it's subjects property. This is done first through taxation and then through inflation. When our money was backed by gold and silver, the people owned the wealth and it was distributed fairly evenly across the population. Unfortunately the Myth that an ever growing Big Government enriches us all has caught on faster than the Facts that an ever growing government is a metastasizing cancer that threatens to choke off every free cell left in the body.

The simple fact remains: In an Empire, big government and the powerful elite of society work together for their own mutual interests, to wipe out their competition. This is manifest in war on behalf of the state and regulation and legislation on behalf of big business. Big business loves regulation, especially when the create the regulations to wipe out their smaller competitors. Much like the State and it's monopoly on the initiation on force, big business seeks their own monopolies or cartels. This IS NOT Free Market capitalism. By this regard, the United States hasn't been Free or Capitalist since before the New Deal. The Unites State has a Corporatist system much like Italy under Mussolini.

Many of those on the left don't understand that they're leaders are not creating a more fair and just world, or one that has greater opportunity for all. Instead the left in collaboration with the NeoCon Republicans seek to enrich and benefit their enormous corporate interests. Obama is already showing his Coporatist tendencies.

The problem isn't human nature or greed as many would argue. The problem is that there is only one hawk and hundreds of millions of doves. The hawk however has hand selected the doves he wants to roll with, and has left the others to their own devices.

If we drastically downsized our government and decentralized the banking system, there would be many, many, hawks to contend with and the hawks would regulate each other. If we are to prevent the collapse of the United States of America, and we are to protect whatever is left of our LIFE, LIBERTY and PROPERTY, then it will up to us to tear down the Empire in Washington DC. It will be in our hands alone to restore The Republic of The United States of America.

The Struggle Within -- Relearning Community

2008-12-31T17:09:00.000-08:00

“Political ideology can corrupt the mind, and science.”
-Edward O. Wilson

"Only entropy comes easy."
-Anton Chekhov

"Empires die, but Euclid's theorems keep their youth forever."
- Vito Volterra

In the field of Biology the concept of community describes a framework that binds all interactions between all species within a geographic location, all of whom which exist in a life and death struggle for their survival. For an organism to thrive, it must follow one or more of the following four strategies -– competition, predation, parasitism, and mutualism. When organisms singularly thrive, then the species will thrive. If the individual organisms cannot thrive and survive, then the species will fail and become extinct. Organisms and consequently entire species will adopt and execute the previously listed survival strategies and an equilibrium will be attained within the community if all organisms and all species are free to act, and a fixed set of rules govern all. The rules are important, and they maintain the integrity of the community. The Law of Gravity does not treat one species differently than another. There are naturaul rules that governs all within the community; however, individual species and organisms will react and adapt differently to these rules. Birds will evolve wings to navigate the gravity and beavers will use Gravity's power to move water to build a dam. How these individual organisms and species react to natural law in their varying different ways in combination with competition, predation, parasitism and mutualism creates and maintains the complexity of interactions between all organisms and maintains the equilibrium between energy and entropy within the system. This is known as emergence, grass roots or an organic system.

Human societies (and economies) operate by the same principles as natural systems. Like natural systems, interference by unnatural agents can throw off equilibrium and create huge unintended consequences. Consider the havoc that an invasive alien species can wreak on a small ecosystem. Just as introducing the foreign zebra mussel has damaged the equilibrium of Lake Superior and the St. Louis river, government intervention into society and the economy can create havoc with the existing social and economic balance and thus throw off equilibrium. A system that is balanced maintains a minimal cycle of change, whereas an unbalanced system has excessive, even bipolar fluctuations. Consider healthy eating habits, healthy eating habits consist of 3 modest meals per day. If one doesn't gorge himself and doesn't starve himself, he'll never get too hungry or too full. A non balanced binge and purge diet results in vomiting and starvation. What the Federal Reserve and the Federal Government are doing with their policies is the economic equivilent to bingeing and purging. The government has committed to ensuring that the boom time never ends, thus warping the business cycle and ensuring that after we vomit, we shall all starve.

Elements within the left and right sides of the so called "political spectrum" understand and embrace different parts of this concept. The left does a better job at fighting for and preserving Civil Rights (with the exception of 2nd amendment rights) than the right does. On the converse, the right does a better job of fighting and preserving Property Rights than the left does. The moderates are the worst, they have given up on both Civil Rights and Property Rights and campaign for an ever increasing malignant Statism in the form of a "Benevolent Leviathan"that seeks to dominate, control and direct every single aspect of human life. The Liberal Left and Libertarian Right both oppose the Statist middle, and yet are distracted by the false dichotomy of Left vs. Right. It is now clear that George W. Bush wasn't a conservative and didn't not dedicate himself to protecting property rights, the free market or limiting the size of the Federal Government. While it has become clear to most conservative Republicans, that they've been sold out, it is not yet clear to Liberal Democrats that that President Obama is not dedicated to preserving Civil Rights or any other pet project of the left. Obama has dedicated to continue Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney's immoral war of aggression against Iraq and has further promised to take on Pakistan (a nuclear power). Obama has also pledged to increase deficit spending and to cut taxes. These policies mirror the policies of the last 8 years.

This post isn't about Obama or Bush, but about the need for the Left and the Right to work together for their common goals. The Liberal Left and the Limited Government Right want to make this country a freer and better place. Both sides want to increase individual liberty and to decrease tyranny on behalf of the State. The false dichotomy of the Left vs. Right has confused both the left and the right into thinking they are working for opposite ends. This could not be further from the truth. The Left blames the Right and the Right blames the left. Those who can't see the Emperors new clothes, blame the State.

While it is becoming clear to most people that what the government is doing to the economy is not working, and that things seem to be getting worse, it is not so clear to the public how we got into this mess. Think back to when I wrote about community in the biological sense. Competition, predation, parasitism and mutualism are the strategies for survival. The state as a super citizen with a monopoly on the initiation of violence, has a clear advantage and upsets the balance against the individual citizen.

Competition

In nature organisms compete for resources and the chance to reproduce and pass on DNA. In a human society or a human economy competition is a method of allocating resources. If I sell sell widget X and my neighbor sells sprocket Y, we are competing for the same customers. Our competition with each other will determine how we move forward. Perhaps one of us alters our product to make up for the others shortcomings. Or maybe one of us will go out of business and start a different business. Another option is that there is enough customers for both of us ad we coexist within the same niche. When the State becomes involved it throws the entire equallibrium out the window. Let us say that I manage to donate a large sum of money to my elected representative in our local government. Let us say that I have 75% market share and my competitor has 25% because he charges more money but makes a superior product. I have very costs because I use sweat shops and have a lower quality production line. My competitor makes his goods by hand. I call up my representative and tell him that we need to sell more sprockets because they improve the standard of living. To do this we need regulation that sets a maximum price for the sprockets sold. I suggest $2 below what I currently sell my sprockets for, but $25 below what my competitor sells them for. This law passes and now my competitor has to adopt a sweat shop assembly line like I do, and he has to decrease the quality of the materials he uses in his sprockets. He begins to lose customers because his customers uses to buy his goods BECAUSE they were higher quality. His customers now become my customers because I build a better cheaper sprocket then my competitor does.

The State through regulation has thrown off the balance and given my company an unfair advantage while stripping the consumers of choices in the marketplace. This is similar to introducing an alien predator into an ecosystem to bring down the jack rabbit population. Not only does the introduction of the alien species kill off more jack rabbits than intended, but now the ecosystem is overfilled with dandelions that the jack rabbits used to eat. The dandelions choke off the strawberries that the monkeys used to eat etc etc. In our example, not only are the people worse off, but anyone who worked for sprocket company X, or who sold them sprocket parts. These are known as unintended consequences because they were the result of the imperfect knowledge of government planners.

Predation

In nature some species and organisms prey upon others. Predators do not produce anything for the community, they merely consume and move on. In an economy, a predator takes the form of the criminal, especially the murderer, rapist or thief. In nature predators move from area to area and consume and in some sense can help provide balance by devouring an overgrown population. In the economic sense predators steal from the wealthy in a misguided attempt to balance wealth. While the individual criminal is a problem, state sponsored predation is a far larger problem. This takes the form of War, Police Violence and theft through taxation and other redistribution programs. The State in this regard doesn't produce, it merely destroys.

Mutualism

Mutualism is the foundation of community and the most successful biological strategy. It is also the most successful social and economic strategy and one that is fundamentally opposed to Statism. The humming bird the pollinates the flower is an example of this kind of natural free market cooperation. The humming bird and the flower are both better off by working together or else they wouldn't do it. They also work together out of free will and self interest, not duty or decree. In a human economy mutualism is private charity, the church or even local trade and interaction. Just like the Government can not force the hummingbird and the flower to work together if it isn't in their best interest, the State cannot create mutualism in the market place.

The natural world is many things including harsh and dangerous as well as nurturing and kind. Despite the wishes of individual members of any given species, survival depends on the success of the entire system. This is reality, natural law, biological necessity or whatever else you choose to name it. The success of the system requires a state of constant equilibrium. In this regard Government coercion always creates more problems than it solves.

Vote of No Confidence for the MN GOP LEADERSHIP

2008-12-13T12:14:00.000-08:00

"Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives."
~Ayn Rand

Just when I thought that the Minnesota Republican Party couldn't possibly disgrace itself any more than it did during this year's election cycle, circumstance has a peculiar way of surprising even the most cynical of people. With Ron Carey being the establishment's paper target, each of the other establishment contenders are wetting themselves to talk "change" while resorting to the same old failed tactics and bankruptcy of both character and integrity. Meanwhile the RNC is gearing up for it's next chance to pull the state party's strings like Mister Geppetto; however it's my job to make sure that this Pinocchio learns that he really is a "real live human boy" and not some woodcarver's plaything. And just like that little puppet who wanted to be a boy, we'll have to prove to each other that we're brave, truthful and unselfish and maybe we can become a real state party. Like Pinicchio, we'll have to learn to choose between right and wrong and of course we'll need to listen to our conscience, rather than the babbling of the RNC and whoever it is that controls them.

Currently, Tony Sutton, Dorothy Fleming, Joe Repya and Brandon Sawalich. I can't really speak about Brandon Sawalich, as I don't him and haven't met him in person. He is of course part of the establishment, so I immediately do not trust him. My interactions with the others named above have led me to believe that they are not fit enough to work in a local DMV office, let alone run the Minnesota state party. They do all of course share that same desire to "command and control" much like the clerks at the DMV, so there may be a role for them there. Where to begin, where to begin.

Tony Sutton seems like a nice enough guy. He's in the Restaurant business, much like myself. He talks a good conservative game. I recently sat down with him and some others to have lunch at Town Hall Brewery in Minneapolis. He mentioned his intention to run for State Party Chair. I asked him if he realized how the State Party's actions have fractured the party and hurt not only John McCain's chances, but the chances of all of our candidates running for office. He acknowledged this and went on to say that the RNC gave the Minnesota State party an undisclosed sum of money for our races in return for being the de-facto leadership of the party. Essentially Sutton told me that he and Ron Carey sold the State Party to the RNC and John McCain's campaign. If this happened 200 years ago, I'd be able to smell the tar AND the feathers. In light of this it is now clear why the Ron Paul delegates like myself were fought by sold-out-to-the-Devil RINOs. Folks like Tony Sutton and Ron Carey have probably spent hours justifying why they did what they did. We've all heard the end justifies the means argument. Despite how "good intentioned" Sutton and Carey think they were, the fact remains that they reneged on their duties and their integrity and handed over the party machinery of power to John McCain's campaign, rather than follow due process and the will of the People.

Dorothy Fleming and Brandon Sawalich claim to have supported Ron Paul delegates and to have been sympathetic to our causes. This is clearly a lie. According to www.opensecrets.com Sawalich paid John McCain's campaign the maximum donation of $2300 and he also gave another $3000 to the MN Conservative Delegate team. For those who don't know, the MN Conservative Delegate team was run by the RNC and had picked their slate of candidates to run for RNC delegates slots prior to being interviewed by the nominating committee. At the Minnesota State convention the MN Conservative Delegate team and those who ran the State Convention hired John McCain staffers to run interception against Ron Paul delegates who wished to make motions on the convention floor. Both of these infractions are in violation of the State Convention rules.

As a Ron Paul Republican and a Pro-Freedom, Limited Government Conservative, I have no dog in the fight for State Party chair. There is clearly no option for those who hate RINOs. As such I give my vote of NO CONFIDENCE and will focus my time on more important ventures, including rebuilding the BPOUs and Precints abandoned by our current leadership.

The only way any of these candidates will have my support is under the following conditions:

1. Publicly apologize for the dirty tricks and unfair practices in violation of State Convention rules.

2. Admit that Ron Paul, his delegates and his supporters were right about the Federal Reserve and the Dollar Crisis.

3. Admit that the War was a mistake and that we should bring our troops home as soon as possible.

4. Refuse any salary or payment for your service as State Party Chair or any other elected leadership position.

If these conditions, I might have enough confidence to believe that the candidates running for State Party chair have learned from their mistakes and are authentically seeking to improve the Republican Party, rather than attempting a sloppy grab for power.

Republican "bloggers" Don't Seem to Understand Liberty, So I'll Explain It

2008-12-08T20:16:00.000-08:00

“I didn't know I was a slave until I found out I couldn't do the things I wanted”

Frederick Douglass

"None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

These days, it seems every so called "Republican" blog is about maintaining the status quo and failure of the Republican Party, by ignoring our conservative roots. The typical Republican blog usually reads as follows:

1. Take Sean Hannity's position on the topic of the day. By the way, Sean Hannity is not really a Republican.

2. Blame Democrats for spending increases and budget excesses, while defending increases and excesses for "morality" spending and war.

3. Call Obama a communist, even though he is just another moderate, like John McCain.

4. Slam Conservatives who actually embrace and live by REAL conservative ideals, like defending their country from enemies both foreign and DOMESTIC.

5. Maintain a 5th grade vocabulary.

Note: Of course this is an exaggeration, but I had to bring the topic up. Much like most of the Republican party, most Republican bloggers have absolutely no imagination and piss poor writing skills. In an attempt to do a service to the Burkean ideals that the GOP was founded upon, and to attract NEW bodies to our party (rather than quote Hannity to the 80 year old's that probably don't use the internet anyway), I'm going to write about why Free Political Systems cannot exist without Free Economic Systems and vice versa.

The single worst aspect of higher education in this country is the segregation and compartmentalization of knowledge. The end outcome in this method of instruction is the propagation in the collective mind of an anti-intellectual reductionism that discards consilience and maintains that the Universe cannot be understood, and that universal truths cannot exist. This is especially evident where Economics and Political Theory intersect in the realm of public policy. Under the reductionist mindset, there can exist contradictory truths in the domains of Economic and Political Science and through the Heglian Dialectic the contradictory truths will be resolved through synthesis. The core problem with this system is that reductionist philosophic methods cannot solve scientific problems. In science a thing is either true or false, and only through empirical analysis can this be determined. Approaching social, economic or political problems through the lens of a consilient perspective can provide a big picture framework from which each of the formally fragmented disciplines can work in harmony, while at the same time fostering the same kind of pursuit of truth that exists in the hard sciences. This "bottom up" educational process is what is required to promote the discovery of real knowledge.

The most glaring failure of our current system is in the field of economics and the political domain. Unlike the enlightenment thinkers who established this country, our current leaders have mostly forgotten that economic theory and political theory are exhaustively intertwined, as they are both parts of a larger framework of human action. If we are to know satisfactory economic or political policy we must take a praxeological approach and get to the root of what drives human behavior. Economic and Political policies that fail to address the human behavior issue, are destined to fail, with mutated and unforeseen consequences as the inevitable result. The point of this blog is not to discuss praxeology, but rather to address the relationship between Free Citizens and Free Markets, as one cannot exist without the other, and the show the converse is equally true and that Controlled Citizens cannot exist without Controlled economies.

The Enlightenment thinkers placed a high value on the pursuit of Life, Liberty and Property. John Locke was among the most influential Enlightenment thinkers among the first of the British Empiricists. Locke's influence is directly responsible for the rise of the individualistic and emergent Common law legal system which exists in the Anglosphere as opposed to the legislative based Civil Law system of Continental Europe. If separation of powers and the Common Law are the hallmark of "free republics" then laissez-faire capitalism is the hallmark of a "free economy", and again one cannot not exists without the other. If one is to understand the nature of political liberty, then one must also understand the relationship between economics and the concept of "life, liberty, and property".

Life = The Present

Liberty = The Future

Property = The Past

Life > A Free Man owns his life and is free to "be" in the present. The present in economic terms represents time. How one spends his time is how one chooses to live his life. Of course the consequences of how one spends his time can affect both the future (Liberty) and the past (Property). But we'll get to that later. If a man is held against his will, by another he loses his present, his time and thus his life. If a man is enslaved and forced to work against his will for another, he also loses his present, his time and his life, for the time he is enslaved.

Liberty > The future represents the economic potential of a Free Man's life. If a man is in debt, then he must spend his Time and Present or his Property and the fruits of his Past labors to pay off the debt. If a Man is free from debt, then he can choose to spend his Future time to benefit himself, his family or others. A Man who has Liberty and is Free, is able to plan his life and to spend his future time to achieve the goals that he sets. When a Man is Unfree, enslaved, held captive or killed, his future is taken from him. When the government spends beyond it's means and creates debt that cannot be paid off, the State is taking the future and thus the liberty from it's citizens. In this sense Government debt enslaves the people, as they must spend an increasing amount of time to pay off the balance, and they have less of their future and liberty available to themselves.

Property >Property is a measurement of your past time and the fruits of your past labor. A College degree or acquired skills are a measurement of your past time spent learning or upgrading the value that your time can command in the market place. The balance of your savings account is the measurement of the product of your past labors, the result of what you were able to sell your time and skills in the market place for. Goods that you purchase with money earned by your past labors is also a measurement of your past time. A new car, a pair of shoes or food are things that you've purchased from others who've spent their past time to create those things. Money is the vehicle by which we trade our past time or property among each other. When the State taxes us, it asks us for our property and our past, and if we refuse to give up our past or our property we are put in prison, and thus the State takes away our present and future, and thus our life and liberty. Remember that the State is any organization that claims a Monopoly on the legitimate (To the State) use coercive violence within a given geographical location.

When a State is created, the justification is that the State exist only to protect the Life, Liberty and Property of the Citizens that live within it's geographic boundaries. At this point, the State is small, weak and uses it's monopoly on force to protect the people's rights from those who seek to initiate the use of violence against individuals. The infantile State's sole responsibilities exist to protect the people from foreign invasion, and to protect the people's rights to Life, Liberty and Property thought the use of Common Law, Contract Law and for Police Enforcement via Marshals or elected Sheriffs. As the State grows is size and strength, the Citizens become more dependent upon it, and petition the State to use it's Monopoly on Force against others to achieve some perceived "good" end. To do this it must increase it's use of force to acquire the Life, Liberty and Property of it's citizens through increased legislation, regulation, and taxation. This creates a perpetual cycle of unsustainable government growth at the expense of the Life, Liberty and Property of the People. Where the State once existed to protect Life, Liberty and Property and the Labors of the people, it now exists to "farm" the people for their Life, Liberty and Property in order to fulfill it's social obligations. Thus the mature State is more of a hindrance for the people than it is a benefit.

There is always a limit to how much a State can grow simply because there is a limit to how much the State can tax the people before they stop producing. Remember that the State doesn't have any productive value of it's own. It doesn't "create" anything, it doesn't posses Life, Liberty or Property of it's own. The State can only take the Life, Liberty and Property from Individuals. If we think back to praxeology and consider human nature, we'll see that regardless of how highly citizens revere the State, they will not continue to pay taxes at the point which they feel that it is more profitable to work in the black market and avoid the system all together. Of course the government realizes this, and in order to prevent people from dropping out of the system, the IRS requires that you jump through all sorts of bizarre hoops, like reporting tips and reporting non-currency bartered trades. The government even realizes that they can only raise taxes so high before people stop paying. This is why we have the Federal Reserve and a Fiat Money system. Fiat money is money that is backed literally by "faith". It has no intrinsic value, and is not backed by anything. The next time I hear someone insist they are an Ayn Rand fan, or an objectivist and then argue that the gold standard is "old fashioned", so help me god. To trade ones life, liberty or property for an article of faith, with no real value, is utter theft.

When the State can no longer collect taxes, or can not tax at a higher rate, the State always and will resort to printing money to pay the bills. This is what has happened throughout history as States have always opted to destroy the currency and this take the untaxed wealth of the people through inflation rather than give up their power. This is what is known politically as transition from a Republic to an Empire. Under a Republic the State exists to protect the Life, Liberty and Property of the people (in theory), but under an Empire the State exists to maximize it's power and dominion over it's subjects. A Republican form of government serves it's people, whereas an Empire uses it's people as cattle.

America's only truly worthy president, Thomas Jefferson, wanted a state of perpetual revolution to ensure that fledgling states would never grow into tyrannical empires. This is about as conservative as one can get. If we are to restore the American Republic, and to regain our Life, Liberty and Property Mainstream Republicans will need to take the time to Learn the roots of what it means to defend liberty and promote Limited Government.

ROAD TO SERENITY

2008-12-03T22:25:00.000-08:00

"Evil people are doing evil things with our economy and money. And manipulating the price of gold to keep it from rising alarmingly, which would provide stark testimony of their staggering incompetence, is just a relatively benign part of their nefarious activities!

And by this I mean the infamous Plunge Protection Team, where the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, big banks and unnamed others all get together to bail us out of any market mishap by buying, buying, buying, using money created by the Federal Reserve expressly for the purpose. And you can be sure that they are out there, right now, doing exactly that thing, in response the to recent market losses. And furthermore, the market will obediently go up as long as they keep buying, buying, buying and all the money floods into the economy, which will also, theoretically, benefit from this deluge of new spending, and thus, they think, mission accomplished, applause, applause, applause.

But whether or not they succeed this time or not, their efforts to prevent the collapse of such a preposterous economy will one day fail, and the dollar will fall to relative worthlessness, and money and wealth will be lost by the supertanker-full, and there will be misery and suffering to extents beyond your nightmares. This is the classical end to an eternally-classic situation; a government spent a country into bankruptcy."

-Richard Daughty, The Daily Reckoning

"The more laws and order are made prominent,
The more thieves and robbers there will be."

-Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu

When I began writing this post just a few days ago, I was originally intending to focus my words in a more negative fashion. Since then I've realized something that I feel is of vast importance. While many intelligent people have come to realize that the American economy, once the marvel of the world, is entering a "great unraveling" and as many have grasped the austere path that lies ahead, there remains a number of educated people who do not clearly identify the true source of our economic ills, nor the inevitable consequences of these ills. In the past this scenario has frustrated me, and has prevented me from seeing the big picture.

There is a rather bitter pill that must be swallowed if we are to eek out a living for ourselves, much less put food on the table. During the last several years of warning my friends and family of this impending financial holocaust, I've learned that the Human species is fundamentally opposed to processing news or information that directly contradicts it's worldview. While this ignorance is mostly the case, there are some exceptions. Perhaps 5% of the population is able to see what lies ahead and perhaps 1% of the the 5% who 'get it' will take action to prepare and profit from the crisis. Until this afternoon, I used to believe this was enough. I somehow thought that those who didn't choose to acknowledge the danger, wouldn't effect me, and this may still be true.

Sure I bring this "bad news", but who am I, and why would anyone care to listen to what I have to say? This is a very valid consideration, and up until this afternoon, a consideration that I would have asked myself. During the month of November, the Doom and Gloom that I've been preaching has become mainstream and in some parts of the world, have become public opinion. While the Austrian School of economic thought still remains a small minority in the "intellectual" circles of the world, People like Paul Krugman, a notoriously liberal, Keynesian economist has come to the conclusion that there will be a run on the dollar due to our massive and historically excessive international trade deficits. Krugman concludes that the laws of supply and demand will not alter themselves even for the grandeur of the United States of America, nor for it's acres of McMansions or suburban sprawl.

Krugman aside, I was personally surprised then that even such a prestigious publication like the Harvard Business Review suggested that a combination of government subsidies for farmers and world wide expansionary monetary policy and credit creation would lead to inflation and excessive increases in commodities prices during 2009. The HBR went on to argue that even if the United States got it's financial house in order (which is impossible), that 3rd world nations wishing to prevent political upheaval, riots, rebellion and the like would be forced to increase the money supply to pay subsidies, thus driving world commodities markets upward.

Then there was this article at www.telegraph.co.uk about a Citigroup memo to it's clients that gold would reach $2,000 an ounce by 2009. While to some gold more than doubling in value may not seem like like a big deal, but what frightened me was the statement by Citigroup's chief technical strategist, Tom Fitzpatrick, "The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles...and the money they have pushed into the system will feed though into an inflation shock...This will lead to political instability. We are already seeing countries on the periphery of Europe under severe stress. Some leaders are now at record levels of unpopularity. There is a risk of domestic unrest, starting with strikes because people are feeling disenfranchised."

Essentially the argument was that we would see hyperinflation as the inevitable consequence of the massive money printing and the bailouts at the hands of the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury.

But the common people aren't the only ones who stand a lot to lose. Perhaps the most striking and most indicative of financial indicators is what a buddy of mine likes to call the "Ebay Used Ferrari Index", which of course is a listing of the number of used Ferraris that are for sale on ebay.com. The number as of the date of this post is about 341, and this number is up 50% from last month. Of course the "Ebay Used Ferrari Index" isn't scientific, but it is evident of the massive financial liquidation that is happening to not only the middle class, but also and perhaps more so to the uber-wealthy.

Now that I have got the doom out of the way, I've come to realize that all of this will result in a cathartic renewal of American Culture and our Civilization. It's been quite a vary long time since I've felt proud to call my self an American. It's been even longer since I could say that I saw eye to eye with the rulers of our City, State and Country. During these past twenty-five years we as a Country, as a State and as Residents of our Cities and Neighborhoods, have lost our way. Our journey off of the road of Humanity has replaced compassion with cynicism, gratitude with greed and a appreciation of our fellow man with bias and hatred towards those who are different from ourselves. We have become a people, many times divided and if we fail to use this one opportunity to relearn those things that really matter, we risk losing everything once and for all. Of course this is much easier written, that it is practiced.

It's time to downsize our priorities. We need not worry about the federal government, the president or even the congress. We should stop worrying about what the "wealthy" are paying into welfare. Instead we should start helping the less fortunate that live two houses down. Do you know the names of all of the people on your block? Today, I realized that I form a lot of opinions about people whom I know nothing about. This is human nature. If we fight our natural-born frailties and work with others to build a world of tolerance, respect and sustainability, because it is in our best interest,we will have EARNED a world free of inequity and strife. Old habits can be hard to break, and our prejudicious natures are not easily overruled.

In times like these I hope that we, the people will come together and learn to TRUST those with whom we disagree and fail to identify with. This is a necessity for survival. Our government, the bankers and the corporate elites have let us down. This let down can foster violence and chaos, or it can be the moment of singularity that transforms our society and the lives of every Man, Woman and Child. As an optimist I believe that we are all innately good intentioned. It is always our failure to authentically understand each other and the resulting failure of cooperation that causes problems. This is the core cause of the problems we now face. We must become more localized and more communitarian if we are to live fruitful lives. During the next few years, each of your lives will be increasingly dependent on the insights and skills of those who live two houses down from you. When this is the case, you will not have the option of surrounding yourself with only those who share your frame of mind.

If we can find the will to work together and to build our independence from those who've put us in this current mess, then the problems that are to come will not be such a burden upon us. If we continue down the unsustainable road which we now travel, we will all suffer. A grave responsibility lies in our hands.

Akeem's Story - Resisting Minneapolis City Tyranny

2008-11-05T17:02:00.000-08:00

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
- Thomas Jefferson

"So here and now, in our rotting nation
The blood, it pours, its all on our hands now
We live, in fear, of our own potential
To win, to lose, its all on our hands now"
-Rise Against

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”
- Patrick Henry

I've lived in Northeast Minneapolis for over five years. I'm a property owner and a landlord and I have a vested interest in keeping my community a livable place. During the last five years many of my neighbors have become quite uppity about an immigrant owned convenience store that is on the corner of our block. Despite a lack of police reports that might give some authenticity to the claims of some of my more Statist neighbors, nonetheless they are asking the City of Minneapolis to initiate the use of force against this innocent small business owner merely because they "perceive" that his business attracts crime. This became an issue back in 2005 when the City of Minneapolis forced a nearby SuperAmerica station about 10 blocks away on Broadway Street. The reason for the SuperAmerica closing was also resident complaint related. It seems Northeasters were also concerned about "crime". These complaints are racist in nature. On evenings and especially weekends a large number of African American young adults would visit the Super America on their way from North Minneapolis to Downtown Minneapolis. The closing of the Super America spread the traffic to the Stop 'N' Go on my block. This is always the problem I've had with uppity white liberals. They claim to be pro equality and anti-racist and then they assume crime is happening because a bunch of young black dudes with 20" spinners congregate at a gas station. It would be bad enough if my neighbors were to keep their racism private; however, they are now asking the State to shutter a mans business on behalf of their racism.

I've spoken to Akeem, the owner of the gas station about this problem and how the "mob" on my block are urging the police to shut down his business and his livelihood. Obviously, Akeem is angry. His business feeds his immediate and extended families. He is also disappointed in the illusionary and broken promise of this country being about freedom and hard work. He asks, "what is the point of me spending all of this money on the community, if someone else can shut me down?" Akeem is determined and vows to fight this madness. I have also dedicated whatever resources I have to help Akeem and to Save the Stop 'N' Go. Below is a letter I've written to the City and I've also included a document that was mailed to me by the Mpls police department urging me to "speak out" against the gas station. Notice how the request for information already assumes guilt on Akeem's part.

This is the letter from the City of Minneapolis:

This is my response:

This letter is in response to a request for information about the Stop 'N' Go gas station about 4 houses down from my house. I've lived in this neighborhood for five years and during that time the police have "forced" the immigrant owners of this gas station to buy thousands of dollars of security cameras, plant thousands of dollars of landscaping, and pay tens of thousands of dollars in protection money to the police by hiring off duty officers for security at night.

1135 Adams Street NE
Minneapolis, MN 55413
November 5, 2008
Carol Oosterhuis
Second Police Precinct
Community Crime Prevention Specialist
350 South 5th Street - Room 130
Minneapolis, MN 55415-1389

Dear Carol Oosterhuis,
Subject: Stop and Go 641 Broadway St. NE.
I received your memorandum about the possibility of the Minneapolis Police department taking enforcement action against the Stop ‘N’ Go at 641 Broadway St. N.E. I strongly believe that such proposed action will have the unintended and detrimental effect of encouraging increased crime in the Logan Park neighborhood.
I have lived at 1135 Adams Street for over five years. My wife and I rent out the top floor of our Duplex and we live on the lower level. In the time that we have lived on this block we have seen small amounts of litter being dropped in our yard from individuals who frequent the Stop ‘N’ Go, and while this is a small irritation, the positive benefits of the Stop ‘N’ Go far outweigh the effect of a small amount of litter. As a responsible member of the community I take the time to clear my property and the City owned boulevard adjacent to my land. I do this because I believe that it requires responsible property owners to improve their neighborhoods.
The Stop ‘N’ Go being open twenty-four hours daily is a deterrent to crime. I frequently see Minneapolis Police squad cars parked at the Stop ‘N’ Go as law enforcement officials stop for refreshment or to take a mid shift break. I feel lucky to live 4 houses down and to have nearby Police as a deterrent to crime. The Stop ‘N’ Go also draws traffic to the area. Studies have consistently shown that violent crime decreases in areas of traffic and high visibility. If the Stop ‘N’ Go were to close at midnight, I would feel less safe and violent crime and theft would likely increase.
The employees at the Stop ‘N’ Go are professional and have always been polite. They are quick to eject unsavory characters and do an excellent job of improving our community.
I urge the Minneapolis Police Department to reconsider any possible action on behalf of the Stop ‘N’ Go. It is likely that possible action could financial impair this small business and this consideration is increasingly relevant in the current economic climate. Please reconsider action against the Stop ‘N’ Go.

Sincerely yours,
Corey J. Sax

In an effort to put an end to this madness and to help save Akeem's business from the morally ambiguous rule and will of the mob, I'll be organizing a meeting at the local Park and Rec building where I will invite all of my neighbors who support the shut down of the Stop 'N' Go. I will also invite Akeem and his family in the hopes that these people will allow Akeem to tell HIS side of the story. However, we should not have to do this in America. We should be free to own and run our own businesses free from State or Mob coercion.

An Open Letter to Minnesota Republicans

2008-11-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

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"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
-Abraham Lincoln

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
-Winton Churchill

This election is the most important election of your lifetime. While it is the most important election, it is not for the reasons that Senator McCain or Senator Obama suggest. It is not important for the reasons that the pundits talk show hosts or even members our own political parties tell us. This election is important because it is a referendum on YOU and YOUR life. Barack Obama has a plan for how the government will use you and the fruits of your labor to someone or something else's benefit. John McCain has a very similar plan for how the government will use you and the fruits of your labor for the benefit of others. The details of these men's plans may be different; however, the intent is the same. Both men believe your life is a tool that the government can use to get what it wants. These men believe that you are a means to their end, and not a sovereign and free individual with inalienable rights.

The current Republican establishment argument for McCain is evidence of the unprincipled and immoral tactics of the current GOP leadership. The party argues that we must support McCain because Obama is a socialist anti-Christ. McCain is such a weak candidate that he has no merits besides his military service on which he can run. He has nothing on which he can build his justification for why he should be president. All he can do is shit talk Barack Obama. I am ashamed that the Republican Party has come to this. There was once a time, when the Republican Party stood for hope, optimism and the "shining city on the hill". There was once a time when we stood for something even while it was unpopular. We once stood for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Our party under leaders like Lincoln, Senator Taft and Ronald Reagan, stood as a beacon of Freedom and Human rights for the world. We once stood for "Truth, Justice and the value of a single Human being".

At the present our party stands for endless war, corporate welfarism, Federally controlled state schools, mass militarization and a constant domestic state of emergency brought on the by the Patriot and Military Commissions acts. While we lambast the left for their wild eyed and irresponsible promotion of social welfarism, we have not done any better. We've expanded the national debt by more than any other administration in our nation's history, we've spend more money on State education (indoctrination?) than any nation in the world and American students are some of the worst educated in the entire industrialized world. This has all happened under a Republican administration and a Republican dominated congress. We have failed America, and have done so miserably. We've broken our promises to the people.

We once took pride in defending liberty at home and abroad. We were the party that defended the virtue of self-government and self-determination. We demanded that the former Soviet Union grant their people political freedom and the basic legal protections granted by habeas corpus. We lambasted the Soviet Union for their Kangaroo Courts, for their use of torture and for their spying on their citizens. We were a beacon on light to a dark world that didn't know freedom and liberty. The world’s people once strived to be like us, to be free. Under our watch we've arrested American Citizens without cause and denied them their right to a speedy trial. This administration spies on our phone calls, our emails and the contents of our luggage. Our armed forces now interrogate and torture innocent people from the countries we illegally invade and occupy. We have betrayed our commitment to lighting the world with freedom and we have failed the people of the world who once looked up to us. We failed our forefathers who fought and died to preserve our constitution and the freedoms and liberties that she protected. Again we've broken our promises and destroyed the trust. I wonder how history will judge us for our actions...

This letter is not intended to lambast our party. This letter is intended to identify where we have failed, and to change our course and rediscover our legacy of limited government and freedom. The cost of losing this election is far less than losing our identity as a country. We must remember that if we lose liberty in America, we lose it for good. There are those in the party who argue that we must rally behind John McCain on Tuesday and vote for him. I will not. It is not because I want to sink the party or lose elections, which are the reasons I will not support McCain. It is because supporting candidates we don't believe in is why our party is in such miserable shape. We've lost our identity and we've lost our faith in the soundness of our ideals.

The cost of losing this election is far easier to pay than the cost of losing America. We must spend our time from now until 2012 and purge those who would rather bend and fold than defend our liberties and our constitution. It is time to rediscover our convictions and relearn that our very purpose for existence is to preserve the freedom and the liberty of the individual and to fight to protect our citizens from the shackles of tyranny, abroad or at home.

I have not forgotten why I am a Republican, despite our party running off the track during the last eight years, something I wish I could undo. At the RNC I learned that there were millions who felt as I do. That was the greatest victory that I could have ever experienced. It is for this reason that McCain must lose this election. Every day that goes by that we do not rediscover who we are, we will lose more and more of our best people. We will lose more and more of America. There is no one able to pick up our legacy, should we fail. We must steer our ship around so that we can save our country.

I am voting my conviction this election and I pledge to support only those Republicans who've proven their dedication to preserving the liberties and freedoms of America. Some will call me a traitor to the party and rebuke me from encouraging defeat on Election Day. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Much like those members of our party who've stood up for what is right, even when it was unpopular or illegal, I'm going to stand for what I know deep in my heart to be right. Freedom and Liberty must persevere. Without it America will not be the kind of country that our children deserve to live in. Time is short and much must be done.

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2008-11-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

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Stranded On A Primate Planet

2008-10-23T16:29:00.000-07:00

"There's no point for Democracy when ignorance is celebrated,
political scientists get the same one vote as some Arkansas inbred
majority rule, don't work in mental institutions."
-NOFX

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
- Thomas Jefferson

“The more there are riots, the more repressive action will take place, and the more we face the danger of a right-wing takeover and eventually a fascist society.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

As the United States of America continues to descend into a seemingly endless financial black hole, it appears that the people are waking up, and they do not like what they see. The black and white mentality that polarizes this country is the most extreme that I've witnessed during my life, and ironically Obama and McCain and the Democrats and the Republicans this election cycle are for all practical purposes, utterly undistinguishable. The die-hard, kool-aid chugging cheerleaders of the Red Party and the Blue Party are too busy clinging to the lukewarm platitudes of party apparchiks as unthinkingly mouth along with the myriad of campaign commercials they witness as if such action represented critical thought. This "Faith" in their very own Straw Man fighter either illustrates how much TV Americans watch or how bad the public school system has become. For those like myself who have chosen a more rational route and have spent the better part of the political season trying to kick the Neo-Cons out of the Republican Party. After our defeat at the hands of the RNC and Bill O'Reilly's big stupid and vile mouth, I'm opting out of the national political scene.

Here's a great video of Bill O'Reilly (I'm utterly embarrassed that I share Irish ancestry with this man) getting crushed by Ron Paul.

The severe disconnect between what the Mainstream Media passes off as truth, and reality and what is really happening to this country is mind boggling. Due to some mental short circuit, many refuse to acknowledge what has happened and what is happening to our society and our economy, until Cooper Anderson's perfect face blesses it and the same goes with the Fox crowd. Somewhere along the way we have been date-raped into believing that what passes for news on the idiot box is MORE real than our lives and our experiences. We foolishly believe that the government reported inflation rate is a mere 4% while the cost of food and clothing increases by 40%. We believe that we're winning in Iraq, that we're the strongest nation on earth and the somehow Americans are "better" than the rest of the world's people. We've even succumbed to the laughable and childish notion that we are the "freest" people on earth even though we are the world's largest jailer with more our our population behind bars than even China or Russia. Despite what people choose to ignore, this country is not the America that our countrymen once fought and died for. This is no longer an America of Free Enterprise but an America of Central Planning, Fiat Money, Business Collusion with Big Government, Cartels, Government Created Monopolies and Oligopolies. We are a Socialist nation, just of the Fabian type, not the Marxist type.

The reason that I believe that we are in this mess, is because people who've known better have refused to act. Mindless drones of both parties get the blame on this one. The RIGHT to govern ourselves, the RIGHT to self-determination and the RIGHT to be left alone is not wearing a T-shirt or slapping a faded bumper sticker on your car. These RIGHTS are RESPONSIBILITIES and if we do not act on our principle we lose our RIGHTS. I express a special anger at those who have taken over my party, the Republican Party. The Republican party over that last 20 years has sold itself to the highest bidder and now is an empty hollowed out shell of what it once stood for. The Party that once championed Liberty, Individual Rights, Non-Interventionism and Capitalism has now committed to undermining all of those precious ideals. There is now corruption within the party, unethical election tactics bred from a "win at all costs" attitude and a moral bankruptcy and failure to stand on principle. This is our fate.

America is poorer for having two candidates that wish to expand the war, Increases taxes, Increase government waste, further inflate the currency, support future Wall Street bailouts, and that seek to further undermine our civil liberties. The drones on both sides of the aisle who ignore these truths and think only of ensuring that "their guy" wins, are destroying America. The Neo-Conservatives who tell me that I "must" vote for John McCain because we can't let Obama win are not real Republicans they are merely opportunists and power mongers. I know deep in my heart that John McCain and Barack Obama are not fit to be President of our country. They do not believe in our RIGHT to live our lives as we choose. They do not believe in Peace with other nations and they do not believe in the principles on which this nation was established as written in the Bill of Rights. Instead, these candidates give lip service to whatever special interest promises to tip the balance of power in their favor. McCain and Obama are reckless and anti-American, but it is our inaction and our laziness that has led us down this twisted and treacherous road. Our passive support for whomever the Media and the Parties shove down our throats threatens to destroy whatever is left of America. We cannot allow this to happen.

If you believe as I believe and If you see what I see, then I urge to stop being a "Good Republican". I urge you to stop being a "Good Democrat". I urge you to start being a "Good American". Obama or McCain will be elected and the next four years will be some of the toughest that this nation has ever had to face. If we are to make our land Free once again and if we are to win back our liberty, then we must pick up the pieces. We must work together as Americans, as Minnesotans, as Minneapolitans and most importantly as Individuals. We must resist the Media and the Party Officials who ask us to vote loyalty over principle. I promise to you that I will vote my heart and my conscience because it is the highest form of patriotism there is and it is my duty to my country.

Time is short and we have much to do.

The Bailout Must Not Pass, We Must Act Now.

2008-10-01T20:20:00.001-07:00

The Wall Street bailout bill before the legislature is indicative of the utter contempt that many our elected representatives have for you, me and the People of our great nation. It is also a sign of how far our government has descended from a democratic republic founded upon the rule of law, to a regime of pro-corporatism largess and imperial ambition. Over 90 percent of the calls to Minnesota’s Representatives and Senators urged them not to support the bailout and not to seize our precious and small wealth to pay for the sins of a distant far away economic and political elite.

As a conservative, the abuses of the past eight years have been very hard to witness and almost unbearable to know that members of my party have been the source of America’s failure to live up to her reputation as a Defender of Liberty. I have been ashamed and sickened to watch our elected Representatives and Senators deny the Tired, the Poor and the Huddled masses yearning to breath free, but to instead pursue reckless warfare against the innocent and squander the wealth of America’s own.

While the past eight years have been difficult enough to watch, and harder to live through, watching those who are legally entrusted with protecting my constitution, my liberties and the wealth of my family, vote against doing so is beyond unbearable. This irresponsible and traitorous act will ruin the poor and it will destroy Main Street. Every Man, Woman and Child, Republican, Democrat or Third Party member should be beyond outraged, for if this bill passes America will become a third world nation. Everything that we hold dear will be but a whisper. Our children will wake up homeless on the continent that their fathers conquered.

The Representatives and Senators who voted against the bailout should be honored as American Revolutionaries who have not shirked their duties to the People, and I hope that they know how proud that we are of them. Those who chose to vote away this nations wealth should be tried for treason, and in a past day and age these spineless sellouts would have been tarred and feathered and laughed at in the town square.

Time is short, and this is the last chance we have before our Representatives vote for or against America. Republicans and Democrats must come together and realize that we share more in common than many of our representatives who went to Washington to deal with the Devil. While we may not agree on all of the issues, we share a common bond as Americans. Those who voted for the Bailout share no such bond. We must hold them accountable and we must take action. Time is short and the fate of our children is in our hands.

Corey J. Sax
Republican National Alt Delegate Minneapolis

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

2008-09-22T07:57:00.000-07:00

“A dog starved at his master's gate, Predicts the ruin of the state”
-William Blake

"But I was born free."
-Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress)

While the downpour of dropping shoes continues to lambast Wall Street, the retirement accounts of the baby boomers and the economic futures of their children, Americans are busy ferreting out a nice and ugly pariah they can rally around to hate. Unfortunately in a glaring example of the failings of our public school system this new "American Enemy" will be Capitalism, Free Markets and Deregulation proponents. While the mainstream media peddle the anti-liberty snake oil to the masses, what's left of the banking cartel that profited so handsomely from government intervention is sucking the blood out of the small banks. This transformation will undoubtedly leave us with a super borg quasi "peoples" bank thus ending private banking as we know it. Prior to the fiat money system, individual banks "invested" in borrowers that they determined were in their best interest. Just as you determine to whom you lend money or other goods, banks did the same. Once Nixon ended the last peg to gold, banks slowly began securitizing loans and making use of derivatives to pump up their portfolios. This placed emphasis not on the quality of borrowers, but on quantity. It was at this point that banks stopped being stores of value for their communities and became parasites designed to suck money from the poor to the elite.

Ultimately the United States Dollar and the economy is destined for collapse, with or without a bailout. While all things on the horizon appear gloomy and grim, there is some amount of hope. We must remind our friends and neighbors, our communities and our nation, that we must replace the Corporatist model with one of Sustainable Capitalism. The term Sustainable Capitalism is redundant, as emergent grass roots models are always sustainable and can solve complex problems far better than a hierarchical top down approach. Just as Man cannot "create" or "run" the ecosystem due to it's complexity and his imperfect knowledge, the State cannot "create" or "run" the economy. Many advocates of Statism and State intervention into transactions between private individuals argue from a "moral" or "altruistic" perspective. Some believe that using the State to achieve a proposed ideal is worth the use of force and theft against the individual. There is a better, more organic and humane method of bettering our schools, helping the poor and protecting the environment.

When the State interferes in the economic transactions with others it distorts the market, much as when Man releases an alien species into a local ecosystem. The end result is a scenario where the natural checks and balances of the system are either missing completely, or they've been perverted. Such a system always produces vast unintended consequences that more often than not, create far bigger problems than they solved or they achieve an end that is counter to the original intention. One has only to look at the our current system to see this. The current monetary crisis illustrates this phenomenon perfectly. Prior to the Bretton Woods agreement the supply of money in the economy was "regulated" by gold and thus goods. This ensured that money kept it's value, and there was almost no inflation for many years. Due to Government escapades like War, and the enormous growth of socialist welfare programs under President Franklin and President Johnson, the government didn't have the gold to pay for all of the things that they wanted. Rather than maintain fiscal responsibility, they went ahead and did it anyway, by running deficits and printing money. This adversely affected the "real" value of the dollar and the fixed value of $35 per oz of Gold was causing other nations to pull United States gold from our banks as they realized that the dollar was really worth far less than the gold. This led Nixon to completely abolish Bretton Woods and thus back the value of the dollar by nothing except the supply of dollars in the economy. With this change and fractional reserve banking the government could spend whatever it wanted without any real world limitations. This is why we've seen the debt, deficit and the M3 Money supply grow at astronomical levels. In fact after 2005 the Fed stopped publishing the M3 Money Supply levels. The end result of this was that banks had to mass produce lending debt, in order to make a profit. This in combination with the deplorable Community Reinvestment Act took away the natural market checks and balances from banks so that they couldn't decide for themselves to whom they would lend. There were surely many people who had intended for the Community Reinvestment Act and "loosened" lending standards to help the lower income earners and those with poor credit; however, the reality is that these very people have been hit the hardest by the failure of these programs and any attempt to keep this system afloat can only result in more malinvestment and further dire consequences.

Here is a great video on how Money is created:

Now that you some background in the issue, it becomes fairly clear that Capitalism and Free Markets are not the cause of our problems. Instead, moving away from Capitalism and Free Markets has gotten us into this mess.

Conspiracy of Stupidity

2008-09-16T02:01:00.000-07:00

“The wise understand by themselves; fools follow the reports of others”
Tibetan Proverb

"A demagogue is one who will preach doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots."
H.L. Mencken

Right about the time that the bastion of filth and utter despair that is the United States Corporatist Propaganda machine, or the mainstream media for short, had the plebes convinced that Ron Paul was as insignificant to the American political scene as fleas on a dog about to be euthanized, then the attacks start up. The attacks this time aren't aimed at Ron Paul, but rather his supporters and perhaps more intentionally at anyone who merely bothers to question the rigid and stale jail cell gray tyranny of "public opinion". America isn't the first State to use the media to manipulate her citizens, nor is she the first to use propaganda to consolidate and preserve the power of the State at the expense of the individual and his liberties.

As a child I often wondered how the people of Germany could have allowed their government to extinguish the lives of 40 Million Jews during the holocaust. I could see how the lesser minds of the 3rd Reich could have agreed to this, much as the lesser minds on the school yard playground were always adept at inflicting violence onto the innocent. However, I could never understand how millions of Doctors, Scientists, Actors, Teachers, Veterinarians, and otherwise educated individuals could ever agree to be complicit in such ordained violence by the State against individuals. The answer is rather simple: The Nazis used propaganda to control Public Opinion with the goal of obtaining a political outcome that they favored.

In America, we have long been taught that our institutions are free, and that our nation is "freer" than any on earth. And while this sentiment is a topic for another day's post, you should keep in mind that freedom is nothing more or nothing less than the ability to THINK and to ACT unrestrained from coercion at the hands of others. While the talking heads wax sentimental about our supposed freedoms, they do so using the sickly paintbrush of Doublethink while lambasting those who choose to think and act even if their thoughts or actions oppose the interests of the powers that be. Whatever your personal thoughts about Ron Paul, his followers or his ideas, you must accept that Ron Paul is a free thinker. Some of his supporters may hold non-uniform views about a variety of topics and they may be overly passionate about their desire to see change in the status quo in this country. While this may all be true, it certainly doesn't and shouldn't discredit the ideas of Ron Paul and furthermore of the Liberty Message.

During my time at the Republican National Convention, I managed to slip away for a few hours to visit Ron Paul's Rally for the Republic. At the Rally I was interviewed by a "reporter" from the Red Eye show on the Fox News network. The purpose of the segment that my interview was included in was to portray Ron Paul's advocates and Ron Paul's message of limited government as crankish, naive, and uneducated.

Here is a clip of this segment:

One would think that from watching this "fine" example of "New(s) Propaganda", that anyone who believes that Limited Government coercion and violence against the innocent is a quack and in the minority. Think about that. If you want to be free to live your life as you see fit, free from interference so long as you don't interfere with any one else, should you be considered a quack? Of course not. It is clear that a majority of Americans believe in the Liberty message, and it is clear that what ever powers control Fox News Corp have set the agenda to discredit the liberty message and instead reinforce the pro-"things as usual" candidacies of John McCain and Barrack Obama.

The Mainstream media has a history of attempting to show Ron Paul as a crank:

Now that Ron Paul and his ideas are merely dismissed as dog shit, there remains no need to critically analyze them, and there is certainly no room in the Public Consciousness for them, right? Wrong. While the battle for liberty is tough, it is getting easier by the day. It has not only been discovered that the emperor's clothes are lacking, but that the emperor himself has gone AWOL. The unwashed masses are one by one waking up to the sad reality that our nation has lived beyond it's means for too long, and that we can't innovate our way out of a currency failure, despite the promises of a bunch of Che Guevara t-shirt wearing Google employees. The media can spin fantastic tales of Iranian or Pakistani invasion, lie about the dollar and the state of the American economy and portray John McCain and Barrack Obama as polar opposites; deep down American's understand that this is all bullshit.

Although we realize the lies, it is not merely enough to KNOW, it is time that we now ACT. Wall Street is collapsing and it threatens to bring the whole of our junk economy with it. When the school yard bullies get their mansions foreclosed on, and their Beamers and Ferraris take a ride on the Repo man's tow truck, who's hide do you think it will come out of? It will come from you and I. I can hear the demagogues in the wings waiting to slice and serve whatever remains of this country to the highest bidder. It is time to declare your independence from the Mainstream media and from the status quo. It is time to use our freedom of mind to achieve a life of freedom from coercion.

Most importantly of all, don't accept the cult of stupidity advocated by the smooth skinned, blank personalities of TV Land. You are better than that, and you know it.

Is Someone Getting the Best of You?

2008-09-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

“Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them”
-Voltaire

Somehow I was born with a certain type of DNA, and in my conception my chromosomes aligned in a particular fashion in which I was born to resist and to not be abused. I share something with my ancestors in this regard, those brave homo sapiens 100,000 years ago had to crawl out of the trees and take their first steps upright, as men. Since that time Man has had to fight numerous sorts of unsavory characters wishing him doom, dominance or destruction. Man's enemies these days, are more cunning than the lions and tigers of our ancestors, and even more cunning than the Kings and Queens of past times. In the past we had no illusions of our liberty, we fought for it, or we died trying. It was in our nature to be adversarial and free, and our evolution didn't hinge upon passivity. Being adversarial and free, in a time and place where such behavior is portrayed as "paranoid and reactionary" at best, and treasonous at worst, can be a stressful experience.

I attended the Republican National Convention last week as an elected Ron Paul delegate from Congressional District 5 in Minnesota. While I realized months ago that my candidate had virtually zero chance of taking the Republican nomination away from John McCain, I was compelled to fulfill my obligations to those who elected me. When on the convention floor, I futilely voted against the National Platform for it not being conservative enough, all the while bravely enduring the dirty looks of my fellow delegates, and the Red and Black hats of the McCain operative hired to "manage" the Ron Paul People. In addition to my symbolic stands on principle, I spent a vast portion of my time at the convention "educating" the public. This time was spent engaging in debate with the Pro-War, Pro-Recession, Neo-Con delegates and talking to the media.

If I didn't already have my work cut out for me, then the dolled up for TV land, fascist charade that was masqueraded around like some kind of stinking Bernie Lomax portrayal of Democracy, definitely made my battle that much more difficult. First Ron Paul delegates were prevented from making our own signs and bringing them into the convention hall. While I didn't like this, I was greatly angered when I saw homemade McCain signs and homemade Palin signs. I was forced to follow the rules, lest I become of stripped of my credentials, while the McCain people were not. This was the first of many examples that has led me to believe that the Convention was not intended to be fair, representative or democratic. The only purpose of the RNC was to falsely portray the illusion that Republicans support John McCain for president.

This illusion was further parroted during the vote count roll call. Ron Carey, Chairman of the Minnesota GOP, told us that Ron Paul votes would be counted during the roll call. This is in line with Ron Paul and his campaign's wishes for a fair and accurate vote. This is also in line with standard practice for all previous Republican National conventions. Consider the 1976 Republican convention, where Reagan challenged incumbent President Gerald Ford for the nomination. In this convention Reagan was allowed to speak to the delegates and his votes were counted. The totals were as follows:

Gerald Ford (inc.) - 1,187 (52.57%)
Ronald Reagan - 1,070 (47.39%)
Elliot Richardson - 1 (0.04%)

Here is a short clip covering the 1976 convention.

During this year's RNC, Ron Paul was still in the running for the nomination. While he only made up about 10% of the delegates the RNC nonetheless did not report his results during the convention. In Minnesota contrary to Ron Carey's promise the 6 out of 41 delegate votes were simply ignored. Tim Pawlenty the ranking Republican officer in our delegation simply read, "All 35 of Minnesota's delegates go to John McCain". When we confronted the governor about this, he claimed, "The RNC shut off my microphone before I could announce the Paul delegate totals". I couldn't believe what I was hearing. At first I erred on the side of Carey and Pawlenty, but after I had received word from other states like North Carolina, Texas and Kentucky that those people's microphones were also turned off, then I became suspect of foul play.

Here is a short clip of the Kentucky count.

If all the chicanery around the recording and the telling of the votes for presidential nomination, wasn't enough, then the "brown shirt" tactics of the McCain people surely was. The RNC hired McCain operatives and the Secret Service to "watch" over the Ron Paul delegates. I'm not even sure if there was much of a difference between the two. A fellow delegate and friend Nathan Hansen who is also an attorney, attempted to pass off his guest credentials to his guest, Paul Koering a sitting Minnesota State Senator. Trying to meet Koering outside of the fortress of security that separated east and west Berlin, a Secret Service agent stopped Nathan and told him, "If any of you Ron Paul people try anything in here, we will remove you from the convention". What did "Trying anything" entail? Was it voting against the party platform? Making a motion to the chair? Wearing a Ron Paul T-shirt?

We soon found out what the goal of all of the security and the $100 Million bill to tax payers that had to pay for it. The purpose of the security and all of the precautions was to falsely portray the illusion to the public of a united party, and a united America, who would rally around the War, Inflationary Monetary Policy, and John McCain. This become evident when a North Carolina delegate brought his state flag which was signed by Ron Paul.

The flag as you can see is not even political in nature. It supports no candidate, or no policy. It does say Liberty, but do you know of anyone who disagrees with that? The North Carolina delegate was using the flag as a backdrop to take a photo of the Ron Paul delegates from North Carolina. The McCain people came up to him and gave him the option of handing over his credentials or his flag. He handed over the flag and still has yet to get it back. For more information on this story please read Nathan Hansen's blog.

I also saw press who interviewed Ron Paul delegates get stripped of their credentials, especially if those reporters were on the convention floor. A CBS radio reporter interviewed myself and 3 other Ron Paul delegates from Minnesota. The next day when that reporter came back on the floor to interview, a black hatted McCain operative escorted him away. The reporter said, "I'm getting a story!" and the McCain guy replied, "You've already got enough stories yesterday". I've never seen anything like this during my lifetime. When I shared this information with some of the older delegates, folks who were in their 60's and 70's and had attended many conventions during their lives, they told me that they had never before seen such a "Kangaroo Konvention" and these are THEIR words not mine.

While there were plenty of abuses to protesters and folks outside the Convention Watchtowers and barb wired fences, there were plenty of abuses within the convention. There was recently an article by MPR about Jesse Ventura being "talked to" by the CIA about how he managed to win the election. If this is true that the CIA was "concerned" about who might win a gubernatorial race, then I can only begin to imagine how they might be involved in the process of electing a president. Either way, I am fearing that as each day passes, this country looks increasingly unfree. The major media like CNN and Fox News are used to portray and promote the status quo, while independent media is squashed.

If this is how the Republican Party treats it's own, then how will they treat their enemies? See you inside the "freedom cage".

Concord Hill

2008-08-30T08:57:00.000-07:00

Most Americans realize that there is something terribly wrong with our nation. Some can articulate their presupposed reasons for their anxiety, whereas others intuitively sense a collective sigh, that seems to wash over the American mental landscape. Two things are certain, it is always easier to point out problems than it is to create workable solutions for those things that need fixing; and secondly, it is much easier to point out problems with perspectives we do not, or choose not to identify with. The result of these truths is a political landscape that represents an irascible school yard Battle Royale. Obama Supporters blame the Republican Party for the nations ills, and Republicans blame the Democratic Congress. Meanwhile we marvel at a the significance of some 70,000 people who wanted to "feel" good about America again, all packed in the Mile High Stadium to see their candidate, Barrack Obama. This spectacle is indicative of America's abandonment of her philosophical principles, and the precipitous manner in which we've collectively traded our constitutional obligations in for a set of 2nd hand demands for things like free healthcare, more war, corporate bailouts, and perhaps even more shockingly artificially low interest rates, and guaranteed home loans for all.The last time the world saw such a spectacle, and a candidates promised to "restore hope" their country, it took several million peoples lives to undo the damage.

John McCain is no better. Despite the fact that McCain seems like a non-person, some kind of cancerous, octogenarian teddy ruxpin doll, with a hard on for Iranian centrifuges and porous national borders. "My Friends", our country can't afford this teddy. We haven't got enough war, money or will left in us to sustain the corporal damage to the American citizen body that a McCain presidency will thrust upon us. Plus, McCain would probably steal all our guns.

Despite this election cycle being an American rollerball match between hordes of self righteous, know it all, political hacks intent on striping every last liberty from the American citizen body, like a vulture doing up two week old road kill, it appears that the two men vying for the job were stand-ins for Hitler and Mussolini in a past life, with the minor adaptation that these men don velvet gloves, rather than those cast of iron.

I'm attending the RNC tomorrow to represent the Ron Paul Republicans in my district. While Ron Paul is still in the running for the Republican Presidential nomination, the mainstream media has done all that it can do to portray this 30 year congressman like a kook. Forget the fact that he is the most knowledgeable man in congress or perhaps the federal government on economics issues. You may also choose to forget that every economic circumstance that he has predicted since the 1970's and Richard Nixon's boarding up of the Gold Window and the crucifixion of the Bretton Woods system, has come true. You may also choose to forget that Ron Paul's desire to see a US Treasury based currency backed by gold and sliver to compete with the fiat Federal Reserve currency, was also signed into law through executive order 11110 by John F Kennedy, five months prior to his assassination. Regardless of what you choose to consider, embrace or forget, a Ron Paul presidency would do this nation some good, but it would all be for naught without educating the people.

We are the last bastions of liberty. There's no reserves, there are no tri-corne hat wearing, musket holding minutemen waiting to go on Paul Reveres midnight ride. There is only us, you and I, and whatever determination and passion we can bring to the table. We have the mainstream media, an inflationary monetary policy, corporate raiding of our nations wealth - on the watch of both parties, sociopathic and power hungry McCain and Obama, and a population that the media portrays to care more about whether or not Paris Hilton washed her ass, than about their way of life and the prosperity of their children.

I'm foolishly optimistic, and I believe that the people are smarter than Sean Hannity and Cooper Anderson make them out to be. That's why I'm going to the RNC to carry Ron Paul's message to as many people as I can. I may be unable to prevent McCain from taking the Nomination, and I may be fruitless in my fight to change the Republican Party during this convention. But what I will succeed at is by gaining converts to my movement, to our movement and to the preservation of the American Republic. I have nothing to lose, and we have everything to lose by continuing on with the status quo of the Democrats and Republicans and the apathy of the American population. While I will not win this battle, much as this nation lost the Battle of Concord against the British, at least I will fight for our Liberty. The battle is on. On this note, wish me luck and I leave with the words of a man far greater than I, Patrick Henry:

"They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Corey

Who Will Pay for the Violence of the State?

2008-05-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

"We are nothing. Mankind is all. By the grace of our brothers are we allowed our lives. We exist through, by and for our brothers who are the State. Amen." -- Ayn Rand (Anthem)

"It is thus necessary that the individual should come to realize that his own ego is of no importance in comparison with the existence of his nation; that the position of the individual ego is conditioned solely by the interests of the nation as a whole ... that above all the unity of a nation's spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual. .... This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture .... we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow man." (Adolph Hitler, 1933)

"Our nation must come together to unite."
(George W. Bush)

"You're either for us or against us"
(George W. Bush)

"We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated."
(Barack Obama)

The intellectual battle that each and every American faces today, is not about Liberalism, Conservatism, the Right Wing, or the Left Wing. The battle that we face is about one central question; do we want a Government for and by the people? Do want want a Government that is afraid of it's people, or do we want a people who are afraid of their Government? Do we want to live in a country that placed the State above the individual, or do we want a nation that respects, honors and empowers it's citizens to exercise their god given liberties. This is our battle, and those of us that happen to love liberty are outnumbered and outflanked.

While those who yearn for a "freer" society are outnumbered, misunderstood and generally laughed at, in the end our perspective will be the norm; however, then it may be too late. Thomas Jefferson understood that Liberty requires individual responsibility. We are individually responsible for the actions of our government. Those of us who voted for the Bush administration are personally accountable for the war in Iraq, and the loss of our liberties at home. We are accountable for the abuses of Guantanimo and Abu Gharib and even accountable to those American citizens who have been black bagged and whisked off to some secret military prison. Those who did not vote for Bush are also responsible, all us have handed the government the power to become the size that it has become. Long ago we chose to be selfish and ask the government to play Robin Hood and to steal from some, to give to others. We demanded that they pay for our kids to go to college, demanded that they force businesses to force their customers to not smoke, we have also individually ruined our neighborhoods and created a police state by forcing the government to keep drugs illegal. It is now time for us to pay the price of asking the State to perpetrate violence on our behalf.

Who will pay for the hundreds of thousands of innocents that we murdered? Who will pay for those whose lives we destroyed? We shall pay, and in some respects we already have. We've paid for our thugs with our liberty. WE NO LONGER HOLD THE CONTROLS. We no longer run the system. The state is lumbering about, like Dr. Frankensteins monster, about to attack his master who created him. Individually we can't destroy the Frankenstein, and we can't win by dealing with it rationally. The only means of restoring our liberty and thus our power, is through millions of angry Americans with pitchforks and flaming torches. This is not a day that I look forward to, but I assure you it will come.

The next time that you petition the State to perpetrate violence against another on your behalf, ask yourself, "Are you willing to hold a gun to your neighbor's head and to do it yourself?"

Our day of reckoning is at our doorstep, so take heed to these words. As the cost of fuel and food start to become out of reach for many people, the government will have only one course of action: locking people up.

Resisting The Leviathan, Fighting for My Life

2008-05-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

Founding Father and our nations 2nd President, once wrote, "Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide". In our present age, this 'Age of Information' as some say, perhaps one out of a hundred can explain the difference between a constitutional republic and a democracy. I argue that this so called age of information is an Age of Ignorance. What passes for public discourse in this country is much like a rancid frankfurter, squishy, foul and utterly gut wrenching. The utter intellectual sloth that dominates the airwaves is an insult to anyone with even half a brain. "Is America ready for a black president" one network asks. "Is America ready for a Woman President" another network blurts like an awkward school boy amped up on caffeine, bursting at the seams to get his voice heard.

What passes for intellectual discourse in this day and age is putridly disgusting, and frankly rather embarrassing. We have three candidates running for the Office of President of the United States of America, who have political and public records that show nothing but disdain for the constitution, and nothing but disdain for every Man, Woman and Child born of circumstance rather than privilege. Yet the brainwashed masses march on into the abyss waving their "Obama Change!", "Hilary!" and "McCain 100 years of war!" banners. Never mind that fact that if you asked the common man what policy issues they admired about any of the three candidates, as I have done, they wouldn't be able to tell you. Instead you get a kind of pathetic answer, something along the lines of, "I like So-and-So because they seem presidential", or "This guy seems like he really wants to change things". The last time I checked, such techniques were known as showmanship. During the 1990's teenagers didn't accept such inauthenticity from rockstars on MTV, and yet now it's the status quo for those seeking the highest office in the land?

We are in this mess because we've lost our ability to think. Sure we can buy cars, houses and designers jeans, but when was last time someone you knew actually had a free-formed thought? Our citizenry are to busy watching lost, 24, or getting high. If Liberty requires individual responsibility, and we've abdicated that, then surely we deserve the fascism that is marching ever closer and closer? When you ask the rapist in the alley for mercy do you really think you'll get it?

If we are to maintain our dignity and to preserve whatever precious little liberty that we have left, then we must GET INVOLVED. As Jefferson once argued, The preservation of liberty is the responsibility of the individual. That means resisting the State when it wants to give you a free education, but stealing from others. That means fighting back, when they pass a law that not only infringes on your rights, but also your neighbors rights, such as the smoking ban. That's my rant for now.

In Liberty,

Corey

OBEDIENCE AS A RADICAL ACT

2008-04-15T22:20:00.000-07:00

Obedience as a Radical Act

by Butler Shaffer

A recent news story told of cities that are removing their cameras that photograph cars running red lights at certain intersections. The reason? Drivers are aware of such devices and, rather than run the risk of getting a ticket in the mail, they stop in time. One would think making intersections safer might be a cause for self-congratulatory celebration at city hall. Not so. By reducing red-light violations, cities have also reduced the revenues coming from the traffic tickets.

This report reminded me of another phenomenon of local policing: the use of parking meters. On first impression, one might conclude that city governments would want car owners to keep meters filled with the necessary coinage for the duration of their stay. Quite the contrary. City officials count upon time expirations on meters so that motorists can be given tickets by the battalions of meter-maids who prowl the streets in search of prey. An additional dime or quarter in a meter pales in monetary significance to a $25 parking violation. This is why most cities have made it a misdemeanor for a person to put coins in a meter for cars other than their own.

A former student of mine once made an inquiry into the revenues cities derived from parking violations. Without such monies, he concluded, most cities could not sustain their existing municipal programs. This leads to an obvious conclusion: if you would like to reduce the scope of local governmental power, keep your parking meters filled!

Decades ago, I read a most important book: Humphrey Neill’s classic The Art of Contrary Thinking. While Neill focused largely on the world of market investing, his ideas carry over into almost all fields of human endeavor. The contrariness to which he addressed himself was not simply a reactive antagonism to existing practices or policies, but a challenge to use intelligent, reasoned analysis in considering alternatives. Unlike what passes for thinking in our world, "truth" is not necessarily found either in consensus-based opinion or in middle-ground "balances" of competing views: it is to be found wherever it may reside, even if only one mind is cognizant of it.

I have long found Neill’s book a useful metaphor for extending human understanding into realms he did not contemplate. One of these areas relates to the assessment of political systems. Government schools and the mainstream media condition us to take both the purposes and the consequences of governmental decision-making at face value; to believe that the failure of the state to accomplish its professed ends represents only a failure of "leadership" or inadequate factual "intelligence." But what if there are dynamics beneath the surface of events in our world that reflect alternative intentions or outcomes?

More so than in any other area of human behavior, the world of politics is firmly and irretrievably grounded in contradictions and illusions. If you were to ask others to identify the purposes for which governments were created, you would likely get the response: "to protect our lives, liberty, and property from both domestic and foreign threats." This is an article of faith into which most of us are indoctrinated since childhood, and to suggest any other explanation is looked upon as a blasphemous social proposition.

"But what," I ask, "are among the first things governments do when they get established? Do they not insist upon the power to take your liberty (by regulating what you can/cannot do), and your property (through taxation, eminent domain, and regulations), and your life (by conscripting you into their service, and killing you should you continue to resist their demands)?"

The marketplace – not that corporate-state amalgam that so many confuse with the market – doesn’t operate well on a bedrock of contradiction. If the manufacturer of the Belchfire-88 automobile starts producing vehicles with defective transmissions, consumers will cease buying this car, despite the millions of dollars spent on glittering advertising. Unless the company is resilient enough to respond to its failures, it will go out of business.

While contradictions confuse the information base upon which marketplace transactions are conducted and, thus, impede trade, political systems thrive on them. If the police system fails to curb crime, or the government schools continue to crank out ill-educated children, most of us are disposed to giving such agencies additional monies. The motivations for state officials become quite clear: "the more we fail, the more resources we are given." Contrary to marketplace dynamics, contradictions arise between the stated incentives of government programs (e.g., to reduce crime, to improve the quality of education) and the monetary rewards that flow from the failure to accomplish the declared purposes. Like the intersection cameras now being dismantled, public expectations end up being sacrificed to the mercenary interests of the state.

Perhaps there is a lesson for libertarian-minded persons in all of this. It is both useful and necessary for critics of state power to condemn governmental policies and practices. But there is a downside to just reacting to governmental actions on an issue-by-issue basis: state officials are in a position to control both the substance and the timing of events to which critics will respond. This allows the state to manipulate – and, thus, control – its opposition.

While such ad hoc resistance is essential to efforts to restore peace and liberty in the world, it is not sufficient. As we ought to have learned from the Vietnam War experience, opposition to war is not the same thing as the fostering of peace. We will not enjoy a peaceful world just by ending the slaughter in Iraq, if the thinking and the machinery for conducting future wars remains intact. What is needed is a broader base from which to demonstrate to others – as well as to ourselves – how the functional and harmful realities of state action contradict the avowed purposes for which such programs were supposedly undertaken.

Drawing from the earlier examples, one such tactic might be – depending upon the circumstances – to foster a widespread and persistent obedience to the dictates of state authority. As valuable a tool as the ACLU is in using the courts to attack governmental programs, judicial decisions upholding a right to privacy are not what is bringing down traffic cameras. It is the fact that such devices are inadvertently – through motorists’ obedience to them – promoting traffic safety (the stated purpose by which they were sold to the public) at the expense of their actual purposes (i.e., to generate more revenue for local governments).

Many cities have ordinances making it a misdemeanor for a homeowner to fail to cut his/her grass before it reaches a stated limit on height. Someone told me of an acquaintance who let his grass grow almost to the maximum height allowed. When one of his neighbors commented on this, the property owner went into his house, brought out a yardstick to measure the grass, then commented that the grass still had two inches to grow before reaching the statutorily-defined limit. He then reportedly asked the neighbor "you don’t want me to violate the ordinance, do you?"

A friend of mine told me of the practice of one of her male friends who was subject to the Selective Service System. One of the mandates of this agency was that those subject to conscription had to keep it advised of any relocations. This young man carried a stack of pre-addressed post-cards, upon which he would write: "I am now at the Rialto Theater at 3rd and Main" and drop it in a mailbox. After leaving the theater, he would send another post-card reading: "I am now at the Bar-B-Q Rib House at 10th and Oak." How much more effective might such a widespread over-compliance be in challenging the draft than hiring a lawyer to argue a 13th Amendment case to a court of law?

Along the same lines, I was at a conference where a man spoke of the compliance problems banks had in providing the Treasury Department with the information it demanded regarding customer banking transactions. In order not to be in violation of the government requirements, the banks were over-reporting such data, a practice that inconvenienced both the banks as well as the reporting agency that was suffering an information overload. The speaker suggested that the legislation be amended to provide a more narrowly-focused definition of what was required. During the question-and-answer session, I suggested that no such amendment be made; that the banks continue to report – and, perhaps, to increase the scope – of such transactions, thus providing the government with more information than it could control. As banking customers, each of us might choose to comply with the avowed purposes of such regulations – to combat "terrorism" and "drugs," right? – by sending the Treasury Department a monthly listing of all checks we had written!

During the Reagan administration, the government mandated the taking and reporting of urine samples to test for drug usage. At the time, I raised the question: what impact might it have on this program to have each one of us mail a small bottle of our urine to the White House every day, so as to satisfy the curiosity of the president? Rather than opposing this program, it might be brought down by our daily compliance – an act of obedience!

One of the more enjoyable demonstrations of the libertarian value of being overly obedient is found in the wonderful movie Harold and Maude. For those who have not seen this film, Harold is an iconoclastic denizen of the dark side. His constant faking of suicides to get the attention of his mother finally leads her to set up a meeting with her brother – an Army general – in an effort to get Harold interested in a military career. During his conversation with the general, Harold asks if he would be able to gather some "souvenirs" while in combat, "an eye, an ear, privates" or "one of these," whereupon he presents his uncle with a shrunken head. After earlier efforts to persuade Harold to join the Army, his uncle now tells him that he believes the military is not for him.

Such examples may open the minds of some to a wider variety of creative responses to statism. Neither blind obedience nor knee-jerk reaction are qualities to be embraced by intelligent minds. It has been the combined influence of such behavior that has made the world the madhouse that it is. But when engaged in selectively and with reasoned insight, obedience can occasionally produce beneficial consequences for a free and peaceful society. In helping the state play out the unintended consequences of its contradictions, an over-zealous cooperation may cause the state to dismantle itself.

Butler Shaffer teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival.

JESSE IS SO FUN TO HAVE AROUND...

2008-04-13T21:03:00.001-07:00

And he did get rid of those pesky emissions tests!

The George W. Bush of 1929

2008-04-13T03:24:00.000-07:00

Hoover's Attack on Laissez-Faire

by Murray N. Rothbard

This article is excerpted from chapter 7 of America's Great Depression.

f government wishes to alleviate, rather than aggravate, a depression, its only valid course is laissez-faire – to leave the economy alone. Only if there is no interference, direct or threatened, with prices, wage rates, and business liquidation will the necessary adjustment proceed with smooth dispatch.

Any propping up of shaky positions postpones liquidation and aggravates unsound conditions. Propping up wage rates creates mass unemployment, and bolstering prices perpetuates and creates unsold surpluses.

Moreover, a drastic cut in the government budget – both in taxes and expenditures – will of itself speed adjustment by changing social choice toward more saving and investment relative to consumption. For government spending, whatever the label attached to it, is solely consumption; any cut in the budget therefore raises the investment-consumption ratio in the economy and allows more rapid validation of originally wasteful and loss-yielding projects.

Hence, the proper injunction to government in a depression is cut the budget and leave the economy strictly alone. Currently fashionable economic thought considers such a dictum hopelessly outdated; instead, it has more substantial backing now in economic law than it did during the 19th century.

Laissez-faire was, roughly, the traditional policy in American depressions before 1929. The laissez-faire precedent was set in America's first great depression, 1819, when the federal government's only act was to ease terms of payment for its own land debtors. President Van Buren also set a staunch laissez-faire course, in the Panic of 1837. Subsequent federal governments followed a similar path, the chief sinners being state governments, which periodically permitted insolvent banks to continue in operation without paying their obligations.[1] In the 1920–1921 depression, government intervened to a greater extent, but wage rates were permitted to fall, and government expenditures and taxes were reduced. And this depression was over in one year – in what Dr. Benjamin M. Anderson has called "our last natural recovery to full employment."

Laissez-faire, then, was the policy dictated both by sound theory and by historical precedent. But in 1929, the sound course was rudely brushed aside. Led by President Hoover, the government embarked on what Anderson has accurately called the "Hoover New Deal." For if we define "New Deal" as an antidepression program marked by extensive governmental economic planning and intervention – including bolstering of wage rates and prices, expansion of credit, propping up of weak firms, and increased government spending (e.g., subsidies to unemployment and public works) – Herbert Clark Hoover must be considered the founder of the New Deal in America. Hoover, from the very start of the depression, set his course unerringly toward the violation of all the laissez-faire canons. As a consequence, he left office with the economy at the depths of an unprecedented depression, with no recovery in sight after three and a half years, and with unemployment at the terrible and unprecedented rate of 25 percent of the labor force.

$35 $29

Hoover's role as founder of a revolutionary program of government planning to combat depression has been unjustly neglected by historians. Franklin D. Roosevelt, in large part, merely elaborated the policies laid down by his predecessor. To scoff at Hoover's tragic failure to cure the depression as a typical example of laissez-faire is drastically to misread the historical record. The Hoover rout must be set down as a failure of government planning and not of the free market. To portray the interventionist efforts of the Hoover administration to cure the depression, we may quote Hoover's own summary of his program, during his presidential campaign in the fall of 1932:

We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put it into action…. No government in Washington has hitherto considered that it held so broad a responsibility for leadership in such times…. For the first time in the history of depression, dividends, profits, and the cost of living, have been reduced before wages have suffered…. They were maintained until the cost of living had decreased and the profits had practically vanished. They are now the highest real wages in the world.

Creating new jobs and giving to the whole system a new breath of life; nothing has ever been devised in our history which has done more for … "the common run of men and women." Some of the reactionary economists urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until we had found bottom…. We determined that we would not follow the advice of the bitter-end liquidationists and see the whole body of debtors of the United States brought to bankruptcy and the savings of our people brought to destruction.[2]

The Development of Hoover's Interventionism: Unemployment

Hoover, of course, did not come upon his interventionist ideas suddenly. It is instructive to trace their development and the similar development in the country as a whole, if we are to understand clearly how Hoover could so easily, and with such nationwide support, reverse the policies that had ruled in all previous depressions.

Herbert Clark Hoover was very much the "forward-looking" politician. We have seen that Hoover pioneered in attempts to intimidate investment bankers in placing foreign loans. Characteristic of all Hoover's interventions was the velvet glove on the mailed fist: i.e., the businessmen would be exhorted to adopt "voluntary" measures that the government desired, but implicit was the threat that if business did not "volunteer" properly, compulsory controls would soon follow.

When Hoover returned to the United States after the war and a long stay abroad, he came armed with a suggested "Reconstruction Program." Such programs are familiar to the present generation, but they were new to the United States in that more innocent age. Like all such programs, it was heavy on government planning, which was envisaged as "voluntary" cooperative action under "central direction."[3] The government was supposed to correct "our marginal faults" – including undeveloped health and education, industrial "waste," the failure to conserve resources, the nasty habit of resisting unionization, and seasonal unemployment.

Featured in Hoover's plan were increased inheritance taxes, public dams, and, significantly, government regulation of the stock market to eliminate "vicious speculation." Here was an early display of Hoover's hostility toward the stock market, a hostility that was to form one of the leitmotifs of his administration.[4] Hoover, who to his credit has never pretended to be the stalwart of laissez-faire that most people now consider him, notes that some denounced his program as "radical" – as well they might have.

So "forward-looking" was Hoover and his program that Louis Brandeis, Herbert Croly of the New Republic, Colonel Edward M. House, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and other prominent Democrats for a while boomed Hoover for the presidency.[5]

Hoover continued to expound interventionism in many areas during 1920. Most relevant to our concerns was the conference on labor-management relations that Hoover directed from 1919 to 1920, on appointment by President Wilson and in association with Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson, a former official of the United Mine Workers of America. The conference – which included "forward-looking" industrialists like Julius Rosenwald, Oscar Straus, and Owen D. Young, labor leaders, and economists like Frank W. Taussig – recommended wider collective bargaining, criticized "company unions," urged the abolition of child labor, and called for national old-age insurance, fewer working hours, "better housing," health insurance, and government arbitration boards for labor disputes. These recommendations reflected Hoover's views.[6]

Hoover was appointed Secretary of Commerce by President Harding in March 1921, under pressure from the left wing of the Republican Party, led by William Allen White and Judge Nathan Miller of New York. (Hoover was one of the first of the modern breed of politician, who can find a home in either party.) We have seen that the government pursued a largely laissez-faire policy in the depression of 1920–1921, but this was not the doing of Herbert Hoover. On the contrary, he "set out to reconstruct America."[7] He only accepted the appointment on the condition that he would be consulted on all economic policies of the federal government. He was determined to transform the Department of Commerce into "the economic interpreter to the American people (and they badly need one)."[8]

Hardly had Hoover assumed office when he began to organize an economic conference and a committee on unemployment. The committee established a branch in every state having substantial unemployment, along with subbranches in local communities and mayors' emergency committees in 31 cities.[9] The committee contributed relief to the unemployed, and also organized collaboration between the local and federal governments.

As Hoover recalls:

We developed cooperation between the federal, state, and municipal governments to increase public works. We persuaded employers to "divide" time among their employees so that as many as possible would have some incomes. We organized the industries to undertake renovation, repair, and, where possible, expand construction.[10]

Standard Oil of New Jersey announced a policy of laying off its older employees last, and it increased its repairs and production for inventory; US Steel also invested $10 million in repairs immediately upon conclusion of the conference.[11] In short, the biggest businesses were the first to agree.

Happily, the depression was about over by the time these measures could take effect, but an ominous shadow had been cast over any future depression, a shadow that would grimly materialize when the 1929 crash arrived. Once again, these measures bore the characteristic Hoover stamp; the government compulsion and planning were larded with the rhetoric of "voluntary cooperation." He spoke of these and other suggested measures as "mobilization of cooperative action of our manufacturers and employers, of our public bodies and local authorities." And there came into use the now all too familiar war analogy: "An infinite amount of misery could be saved if we have the same spirit of spontaneous cooperation in every community for reconstruction that we had in war."

While the government did not greatly intervene in the 1920–1921 recession, there were enough ominous seeds of the later New Deal. In December 1920, the War Finance Corporation was revived as an aid to farm exports, and a $100 million Foreign Trade Financial Corporation was established. Farm agitation against short-selling led to the Capper Grain Futures Act, in August 1921, regulating trading on the grain exchanges. Furthermore, on the state level, New York passed rent laws, restricting the eviction rights of landlords; Kansas created an Industrial Court regulating all key industries as "public utilities"; and the Non-Partisan League conducted socialistic experiments in North Dakota.[12]

Perhaps the most important development of all, however, was the President's Conference on Unemployment, called by Harding at the instigation of the indefatigable Herbert Hoover. This was probably the most fateful omen of antidepression policies to come. About 300 eminent men in industry, banking, and labor were called together in September 1921 to discuss the problem of unemployment. President Harding's address to the conference was filled with great good sense and was almost the swan song of the Old Order's way of dealing with depressions. Harding declared that liquidation was inevitable and attacked governmental planning and any suggestion of Treasury relief. He said, "The excess stimulation from that source is to be reckoned a cause of trouble rather than a source of cure."[13]

To the conference members, it was clear that Harding's words were mere stumbling blocks to the wheels of progress, and they were quickly disregarded. The conferees obviously preferred Hoover's opening speech, to the effect that the era of passivity was now over; in contrast to previous depressions, Hoover was convinced, the government must "do something."[14] The conference's aim was to promulgate the idea that government should be responsible for curing depressions, even if the sponsors had no clear idea of the specific things that government should do. The important steps, in the view of the dominant leaders, were to urge the necessity of government planning to combat depressions and to bolster the idea of public works as a depression remedy.[15] The conference very strongly and repeatedly praised the expansion of public works in a depression and urged coordinated plans by all levels of government.[16] Not to be outdone by the new administration, former President Wilson, in December, added his call for a federal public-works-stabilization program.

The extreme public-works agitators were disappointed that the conference did not go far enough. For example, the economist William Leiserson had thought that a Federal Labor Reserve Board "would do for the labor market what the Federal Reserve Board did for the banking interests." But the wiser heads saw that they had made a great gain. As a direct result of Hoover's conference, twice as many municipal bonds for public works were floated in 1921 and 1922 as in any previous year; federal highway grants-in-aid to the states totaled $75 million in the autumn of 1921, and American opinion was aroused on the entire subject.

It was no accident that the conference had arrived at its interventionist conclusions. As usually happens in conferences of this type, a small group of staff men, along with Herbert Hoover, actually prepared the recommendations that the illustrious front men duly ratified.[17] Secretary of the crucial Public Works Committee of the conference was Otto Tod Mallery, for a long time the nation's leading advocate of public-works programs in depressions. Mallery was a member and guiding spirit of the Pennsylvania State Industrial Board and Secretary of the Pennsylvania Emergency Public Works Commission, which had pioneered in public-works planning, and Mallery's resolutions thoughtfully pointed to the examples of Pennsylvania and California as beacon lights for the federal government to follow.[18]

Mallery was one of the leading spirits in the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL) an organization of eminent citizens and economists devoted to the promotion of government intervention in the fields of labor, unemployment, and welfare. The Association had held the first national unemployment conference in early 1914. Now, its executive director, John B. Andrews, boasted that the presidential conference's recommendations followed the standard recommendations formulated by the AALL in 1915. These standard recommendations featured public works and emergency public relief, at the usual hours and wage rates – the wage rates of the boom period were supposed to be maintained.[19] Neither was the conference's following of the AALL line a coincidence. Aside from Mallery's critical role, the conference also employed the expert knowledge of the following economists, all of whom were officials of the AALL: John B. Andrews, Henry S. Dennison, Edwin F. Gay, Samuel A. Lewisohn, Samuel McCune Lindsay, Wesley C. Mitchell, Ida M. Tarbell, Mary Van Kleeck, and Leo Wolman.[20]

It seems clear that the businessmen at the conference were not supposed to mold policy; their function was to be indoctrinated with the Hoover-AALL line and then to spread the interventionist gospel to other business leaders. Andrews singled out for particular praise in this regard Joseph H. Defrees, of the United States Chamber of Commerce, who appealed to many business organizations to cooperate with the mayors' emergency committees, and generally to accept "business responsibility" to solve the unemployment problem. President Samuel Gompers of the American Federation of Labor (AF of L) also hailed the widespread acceptance by industry of its "responsibility" for unemployment, as an outcome of this conference.

Hoover did his best to intervene in the recession, attempting also to stimulate home construction and urging banks to finance more exports. Fortunately, however, Harding and the rest of the cabinet were not convinced of the virtues of governmental depression "remedies." But eight years later, Hoover was finally to have his chance. As Lyons concludes, "A precedent for federal intervention in economic depression was set, rather to the horror of conservatives."[21]

It is, of course, a sociological law that a government bureau, once launched, never dies, and the conference was true to this law. The conference resolved itself into three research committees, run by a staff of experts, with Hoover in overall command. One project bore fruit in Leo Wolman's Planning and Control of Public Works, a pro–public works study published in 1930. A second committee published a study on Seasonal Operation in the Construction Industry, in 1924, in cooperation with the Division of Building and Housing of the Department of Commerce. This work urged seasonal stabilization of construction, and was in part the result of a period of propaganda activity by the American Construction Council, a trade association headed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Its foreword was written by Herbert Hoover.[22] The most important project was a study of Business Cycles and Unemployment, published in 1923.

Hoover invited the National Bureau of Economic Research (headed by Wesley C. Mitchell) to make a "fact-finding" study of the problems of forecasting and control of business cycles, and then appointed a Committee on Business Cycles to draft policy recommendations for the report. Chairman of the committee was Owen D. Young, and other members included Edward Eyre Hunt, who had been secretary of the President's Conference, Joseph Defrees, Mary Van Kleeck, Clarence Woolley, and Matthew Woll of the AF of L. Funds for the project were considerately supplied by the Carnegie Corporation. Wesley C. Mitchell, of the National Bureau and AALL, planned and directed the report, which included interventionist chapters by Mallery and Andrews on public works and unemployment benefits, and by Wolman on unemployment insurance. While the National Bureau was supposed to do only fact-finding, Mitchell, in discussing his report, advocated "social experimentation."[23]

Meanwhile, Hoover had not been idle on the more direct legislative front. Senator W.S. Kenyon of Iowa, in late 1921, introduced a bill supported by Hoover, embodying recommendations of the conference and specifically requiring a public-works-stabilization program. In the December 1921 hearings, the Kenyon Bill was supported by numerous leading economists, as well as by the American Federation of Labor, the American Engineering Council (of which Hoover had just been named president), and the United States Chamber of Commerce. One of the supporters was Wesley C. Mitchell. The bill never came to a vote, however, largely due to healthy senatorial skepticism based on laissez-faire ideas.

The next public-works-stabilization bill before Congress was the Zihlman Bill in the House. This was promoted by the National Unemployment League, formed in 1922 for that purpose. Hearings were held in the House Labor Committee in February 1923. Hoover backed the proposal, but it failed of adoption.

Finally, Hoover presented the report on business cycles and unemployment to the Congress, and strongly urged a public-works program in depressions. Later, in 1929, Hoover's Committee on Recent Economic Changes would also support a public-works program.

In 1924, the AALL continued its agitation. It participated in a national conference proposing public-works planning. The conference was called by the Federated American Engineering Societies in January. In 1923, Wisconsin and Massachusetts were persuaded to adopt a stabilizing public-works program. Massachusetts was directly swayed by testimony from the ubiquitous Andrews and Mallery. These state programs were never translated into effective action, but they did indicate the developing climate. In January 1925, Hoover had the satisfaction of seeing President Coolidge adopt his position. Addressing the Associated General Contractors of America (a group that stood to gain by a government building program), Coolidge called for public-works planning to stabilize depressions. Senators George H. Pepper and James Couzens tried to pass public-works-planning legislation in 1925 and 1926, but they failed, along with later attempts by Senator Wesley Jones, who submitted bills that had been drafted in Hoover's Department of Commerce. The Republican Senate was the most recalcitrant, and one Pepper Bill was filibustered to death there. Even favorable reports by its Commerce Committee could not sway the Senate. By this time, not only Hoover and Coolidge, but also Secretary Mellon, the Democratic Party in 1924, and later Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, had endorsed the public-works program. In May 1928, Senator Robert F. Wagner (D, NY) introduced three bills for comprehensive public-works planning, including the creation of an employment stabilization board, but the plan was not considered by Congress.[24]

After Hoover was elected president, he became more circumspect in presenting his views, but he carried on the fight with renewed vigor. His technique was to "leak" the "Hoover Plan" to trusted associates, who would obviously be presenting Hoover's views. He chose as his vehicle Governor Ralph Owen Brewster of Maine. Brewster presented a public-works plan to the Conference of Governors in late 1928, and waxed eloquent about the plan as designed to "prevent depressions."[25]

His use of the term "Road to Plenty" was hardly a coincidence, for Hoover had adopted the plan of Messrs. Foster and Catchings, which had recently been outlined in their famous book, The Road to Plenty (1928). The authors had submitted the plan to Brewster, and, after Hoover's endorsement, Brewster brought Professor William T. Foster along to the Governors' Conference as his technical advisor. Foster and Catchings, bellwethers of inflation and the bull market and leading underconsumptionists, had been closely involved in the public-works agitation. Foster was director of the Pollak Foundation for Economic Research, founded by investment banker Waddill Catchings. The pair had published a series of very popular books during the 1920s, agitating for such panaceas as public works and monetary inflation.[26]

Although seven or eight governors were enthusiastic about the Hoover-Foster-Catchings Plan, the conference tabled the idea. A large part of the press hailed the plan in extravagant terms, as "prosperity insurance," a "prosperity reserve," or as a "pact to outlaw depression"; while more conservative organs properly ridiculed it as a chimerical and socialistic effort to outlaw the law of supply and demand. It was not surprising that William Green of the AF of L hailed the plan as the most important announcement on wages and employment in a decade, or that the AF of L's John P. Frey announced that Hoover had now accepted the old AF of L theory that depressions are caused by underconsumption and low wages.[27] The press reported that "labor is jubilant, because leaders believe that the next President has found … a remedy for unemployment which, at least in its philosophy and its groundwork, is identical with that of labor."[28]

The closeness of Foster and Catchings to Hoover is again demonstrated by the detailed account of their own plan that they published in April 1929. In an article entitled "Mr. Hoover's Plan: What It Is and What It Is Not – A New Attack on Poverty," they wrote authoritatively that Hoover should wield a stabilization public-works reserve, not of $150 million, as had often been mentioned in previous years, but of the gigantic sum of $3 billion. This plan would iron out prices and the business cycle, and stabilize business. At last, scientific economics was to be wielded as a weapon by an American president: "The Plan … is business guided by measurements instead of hunches. It is economics for an age of science – economics worthy of the new President."[29]

The Development of Hoover's Interventionism: Labor Relations

We cannot fully understand Hoover's disastrous interference in the labor market during the depression without tracing the development of his views and actions on the labor front during the 1920s. We have seen that his Reconstruction Program and his Economic Conference of 1920 praised collective bargaining and unionism. In 1920, Hoover arranged a meeting of leading industrialists with "advanced views" on labor relations to try (unsuccessfully) to persuade them to "establish liaison" with the American Federation of Labor.[30] From 1919 through 1923, Hoover tried to persuade private corporations to insure the uninsurable by adopting unemployment insurance, and in 1925 he praised the American Federation of Labor as having "exercised a powerful influence in stabilizing industry." He also favored the compulsory unemployment of a child labor amendment, which would have lowered the national product, and raised labor costs as well as the wages of competing adult workers.

Most important of Hoover's activities in the labor field was his successful war against United States Steel and its chairman, Judge Elbert H. Gary, a war conducted as a "skillful publicity campaign" (in the words of a Hoover admirer) against "barbaric" hours of work in the steel industry.[31] The success of this battle made it much easier later on to persuade businessmen to go along with his labor policies during the 1929 depression. Hoover had decided that the 12-hour day in the steel industry must be eradicated and replaced by the 8-hour day. He persuaded Harding, lapsing from his usual laissez-faire instincts, to hold a conference of steel manufacturers in May 1922, at which Harding and Hoover called on the magnates to eliminate the 12-hour day. An admiring biographer notes with satisfaction that Hoover made the steel leaders "squirm."[32] It was of course easy for Harding and Hoover, far removed from the necessity of meeting a payroll or organizing production, to tell other people how long and under what conditions they should work. Hoover was supported by such "enlightened" steelmen as Alexander Legge and Charles R. Hook, but bitterly opposed by other leaders like Charles M. Schwab, and of course by Judge Gary, chairman of the board of US Steel and president of the American Iron and Steel Institute. The war was on.

The steel agitation, it should be pointed out, had not been begun by Hoover. It originated back in September 1919, when Gary refused to engage in collective bargaining with a workers' union. The workers struck on that issue, and the strike was led by Communist leader William Z. Foster. By the time the strike had failed, in January 1920, public opinion, properly regarding the strike as Bolshevik inspired, was squarely on the side of US Steel. By this time, however, the Interchurch World Movement had appointed a Commission of Inquiry into the strike; the commission issued a report favorable to the strikers in July 1920, and thereby initiated the 8-hour day agitation.[33] The report started a propaganda war, with the nation's leftists attempting to change the whole temper of public opinion. The Reverend A.J. Muste, the Socialist New York Call, Labor, and The Nation backed the report, while business associations strongly attacked the inquiry. The latter included the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Civic Federation, the Wall Street Journal, and others. Many religious papers, however, were persuaded by the prestige of the committee (a prestige in religion that somehow carried over to secular matters) to change their previous views and to line up on the antisteel side.

It was at this critical point in the battle that Hoover entered the fray and persuaded President Harding to join him. Hoover "deliberately broke the story" of the unsuccessful private meeting with Gary, Schwab, and the others to the press. He told the press that President Harding was "attempting to persuade industry to adopt a reasonable working day."[34] Thus did the government mobilize public opinion on the side of the union. Hoover managed to have the national Engineering Societies – effectively dominated by Hoover – issue a report (again outside of their competence) endorsing the 8-hour day in November 1922. Hoover eulogized the report, wrote the introduction, and persuaded Harding to sign it.

Under the presidential pressure, Judge Gary appointed a committee of the steel industry, headed by himself, to study the question. The committee reported on May 25, 1923, unanimously rejecting the 8-hour day demands. US Steel also issued a reply to the Interchurch Report, written by Mr. Marshall Olds, and endorsed by the prominent economist, Professor Jeremiah W. Jenks. Abuse rained down on the steel industry from all sides. Forgotten were the arguments used by US Steel, e.g., that the steel workers preferred the longer 12-hour day because of the increased income, and that production would suffer under an 8-hour schedule.[35]

This and other arguments were swept away by the wave of emotionalism whipped up over the issue. The forces of the Social Gospel hurled anathemas. "Social Justice" and "Social Action" committees of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish organizations set up a clamor on issues about which they knew virtually nothing. Attaching a quantitative codicil to the qualitative moral codes of the Bible, they did not hesitate to declare that the 12-hour day was "morally indefensible." They did not elaborate whether it had suddenly become "morally indefensible" or whether it, and even longer work days, had also been morally wicked throughout earlier centuries. If the latter, it was certainly strange that countless preceding generations of churchmen had overlooked the alleged sin; if the former, then a curious historical relativism was now being mingled with the presumably eternal truths of the Bible.

The American Association for Labor Legislation of course entered the fray, and threatened federal maximum-hour legislation if the steel industry did not succumb to its imperious demands. But the most effective blow was a stern public letter of rebuke sent to Gary by President Harding on June 18, written for the president by Hoover. Faced by Harding's public requests and demands, Gary finally surrendered in July, permitting Hoover to write the notice of triumph into Harding's Independence Day address.

The Hoover-Harding victory over US Steel effectively tamed industry, which, faced by this lesson, no longer had the fight to withstand a potent combination of public and governmental pressures.[36]

Nor did this exhaust Hoover's labor interventionism during the 1920s. Hoover played a major role in fostering railway unions, and in foisting upon the railroad industry the Railway Labor Act – America's first permanent incursion of the federal government into labor-management relations. The railroad problem had begun in World War I, when the federal government seized control of the nation's rails. Run by Secretary of the Treasury McAdoo, the government's policy was to encourage unionization. After the war was over, the railway unions tried their best to perpetuate this bastion of socialism, and advocated the Plumb Plan, which called for joint operation of the railroads by employers, unions, and the government.

The railroads were returned to private owners in 1920, but Congress gave a dangerous sop to the unions by setting up a Railroad Labor Board, with tripartite representation, to settle all labor disputes. The board's decisions did not have the force of law, but they could exert an undue pressure on public opinion. The unions were happy with this arrangement, until the government representatives saw the light of economic truth during the depression of 1921, and recommended reductions in wage rates. The nonoperating railway unions conducted a nationwide strike in defiance of the proposed reduction in the summer of 1922. While Attorney General Daugherty acted ably in support of person and property by obtaining a federal injunction against union violence, the "horrified" Mr. Hoover, winning Secretary of State Hughes to his side, persuaded Harding to force Daugherty to remove the injunction. Hoover also intervened privately but insistently to try to wring pro-union concessions from the railroads.

After the unions lost their strike, they determined to rewrite the law so that they could become established with the help of federal coercion. From 1923 on, the unions fought for a compulsory arbitration law. They achieved this goal with the Railway Labor Act of 1926, which, in effect, guaranteed collective bargaining to the railway unions. The bill was drafted by union lawyers Donald Richberg and David E. Lilienthal, and also by Herbert Hoover, who originated the idea of the Railway Labor Mediation Board. Seeing the growing support for such a law and lured by the promised elimination of strikes, the bulk of the railroad industry surrendered and went along with the bill. The Railway Labor Act – the first giant step toward the collectivization of labor relations – was opposed by only a few far-sighted railroads, and by the National Association of Manufacturers.[37]

Even more mischievous than Hoover's pro-union attitude was his adoption of the new theory that high wage rates are an important cause of prosperity. The notion grew during the 1920s that America was more prosperous than other countries because her employers generously paid higher wage rates, thus insuring that workers had the requisite purchasing power to buy industry's products. While high real wage rates are actually the consequence of greater productivity and capital investment, this theory put the cart before the horse by claiming that high wage rates were the cause of high productivity and living standards. It followed, of course, that wage rates should be maintained, or even raised, to stave off any threatening depression. Hoover began championing this theory during the Unemployment Conference of 1921. Employers on the manufacturing committee wanted to urge lowering wage rates as a cure for unemployment, but Hoover successfully insisted on killing this recommendation.[38] By the mid-1920s, Hoover was trumpeting the "new economics" and attacking the "old economics" that resisted the new dispensation. In a speech on May 12, 1926, Secretary Hoover spread the gospel of high wage rates that was to prove so disastrous a few years later:

not so many years ago – the employer considered it was in his interest to use the opportunities of unemployment and immigration to lower wages irrespective of other considerations. The lowest wages and longest hours were then conceived as the means to obtain lowest production costs and largest profits …. But we are a long way on the road to new conceptions. The very essence of great production is high wages and low prices, because it depends upon a widening … consumption, only to be obtained from the purchasing-power of high real wages and increased standards of living.[39]

Hoover was not alone in celebrating the "new economics." The National Industrial Conference Board reported that, while during the 1920–1921 depression, wage rates fell by 19 percent in one year, the high-wage theory had taken hold from then on. More and more people adopted the theory that wage-cutting would dry up purchasing power and thus prolong the depression, while wage rates held high would quickly cure business doldrums. This doctrine, allied with the theory that high wage rates cause prosperity, was preached by many industrialists, economists, and labor leaders throughout the 1920s.[40] The Conference Board reported that "Much was heard of the dawn of a new era in which major business depressions could have no place." And Professor Leo Wolman has stated that the prevailing theory during the 1920s was that "high and rising wages were necessary to a full flow of purchasing power and, therefore, to good business."[41]

As the final outgrowth of the famous conference of 1921, Hoover's Committee on Recent Economic Changes issued a general multivolume report on the American economy in 1929. Once again, the basic investigations were made by the National Bureau. The committee did not at all foresee the Great Depression. Instead, it hailed the price stability of the 1920s and the higher wages. It celebrated the boom, little realizing that this was instead its swan song: "with rising wages and relatively stable prices we have become consumers of what we produce to an extent never before realized." In the early postwar period, the committee opined, there were reactionary calls for the "liquidation" of labor back to prewar standards. But, soon, the "leaders of industrial thought" came to see that high wages sustained purchasing power, which in turn sustained prosperity.

They began consciously to propound the principle of high wages and low costs as a policy of enlightened industrial practice. This principle has since attracted the attention of economists all over the world – its application on a broad scale is so novel.[42]

This change in the industrial climate, according to the committee, came about in a few short years, largely due to the influence of the Conference on Unemployment. By the fall of 1926, steel magnate Eugene Grace was already heralding the new dispensation in the Saturday Evening Post.[43]

The conclusions of the Hoover-appointed economic committee were ominous in their own right. "To maintain the dynamic equilibrium" of the 1920s, it declared, leadership must be at hand to provide more and more "deliberate public attention and control." In fact, "research and study, the orderly classification of knowledge … well may make complete control of the economic system a possibility." To maintain the equilibrium, "We … [must] develop a technique of balance," the technique to be supplied by economists, statisticians, and engineers, all "working in harmony together."

And so, President Herbert Hoover, on the eve of the Great Depression, stood ready to meet any storm warnings on the business horizon.[44] Hoover, the "great engineer," stood now armed on many fronts with the mighty weapons and blueprints of a "new economic science." Unfettered by outworn laissez-faire creeds, he would use his "scientific" weapons boldly, if need be, to bring the business cycle under governmental control.

Hoover did not fail to employ promptly and vigorously his "modern" political principles, or the new "tools" provided him by "modern" economists. And, as a direct consequence, America was brought to her knees as never before. Yet, by an ironic twist of fate, the shambles that Hoover abandoned when he left office was attributed, by Democratic critics, to his devotion to the outworn tenets of laissez-faire.

Notes

[1] For an appreciation of the importance of this fact for American monetary history, see Vera C. Smith, The Rationale of Central Banking (London: P.S. King and Son, 1936).

[2] From his acceptance speech on August 11, and his campaign speech at Des Moines on October 4. For a full account of the Hoover speeches and antidepression program, see William Starr Myers and Walter H. Newton, The Hoover Administration (New York: Scholarly Press, 1936), part 1; William Starr Myers, ed., The State Papers of Herbert Hoover, (New York. 1934), vols. 1 and 2. Also see Herbert Hoover, Memoirs of Herbert Hoover (New York: Macmillan, 1937), vol. 3.

[3] See Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization (New York: Viking Press, 1959), vol. 14, p. 27.

[4] Hoover, Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 29. Hoover's evasive rhetoric is typical: "I insisted that these improvements could be effected without government control, but the government should cooperate by research, intellectual leadership [sic], and prohibitions upon the abuse of power."

[5] Cf. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), pp. 81ff.; Harris Gaylord Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 24ff.

[6] Hoover records that the "extreme right" was hostile to these proposals – and understandably so – and notably the Boston Chamber of Commerce. Also see Eugene Lyons, Our Unknown Ex-President (New York: Doubleday, 1948), pp. 213–14.

[7] Hoover to Wesley C. Mitchell, July 29, 1921. Lucy Sprague Mitchell, Two Lives (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953), p. 364.

[8] Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, p. 26.

[9] See Hoover, Memoirs, vol. 2; Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression; and Lloyd M. Graves, The Great Depression and Beyond (New York: Brookmire Economic Service, 1932), p. 84.

[10] Hoover, Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 41–42.

[11] See Joseph H. McMullen, "The President's Unemployment Conference of 1921 and its Results" (unpublished M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 1922), p. 33.

[12] See Graves, The Great Depression and Beyond.

[13] See E. Jay Howenstine, Jr., "Public Works Policy in the Twenties," Social Research (December, 1946): 479–500.

[14] See Lyons, Our Unknown Ex-President, p. 230.

[15] In reality, public works only prolong the depression, aggravate the malinvestment problem, and intensify the shortage of savings by wasting more capital. They also prolong unemployment by bolstering wage rates. See Mises, Human Action (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1949), pp. 792–94.

[16] The payment of charity wages as high as market rates began in the depression of 1893; public works as a depression remedy started on a municipal scale in the recession of 1914–1915. The secretary of Mayor John Purroy Mitchell's New York Committee on Unemployment urged public works in 1916, and Nathan J. Stone, chief statistician of the US Tariff Board, urged a national public works and employment reserve in 1915. Immediately after the war, Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York and Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois urged a national public-works-stabilization program. See Raphael Margolin, "Public Works as a Remedy for Unemployment in the United States" (unpublished M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 1928).

[17] McMullen, "The President's Unemployment Conference of 1921 and its Results," p. 16.

[18] Pennsylvania had established the first public-works-stabilization program in 1917, largely inspired by Mallery; it was later repealed. Mallery had also been made head of a new Division of Development of Public Works by States and Cities During the Transition Period, in the Wilson administration. See Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization," vol. 4, p. 7.

[19] See John B. Andrews, "The President's Unemployment Conference – Success or Failure?" American Labor Legislation Review (December, 1921): 307–10. Also see "Unemployment Survey," in ibid, pp. 211–12.

[20] American Labor Legislation Review (March, 1922): 79. Other officials of the AALL included: Jane Addams, Thomas L. Chadbourne, Professor John R. Commons, Professor Irving Fisher, Adolph Lewisohn, Lillian Wald, Felix M. Warburg, Woodrow Wilson, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.

[21] Lyons, Our Unknown Ex-President, p. 230.

[22] The American Construction Council was formed in response to the hounding of the New York construction industry by state and federal authorities during the depression of 1920–1921. The governments charged the industry with "price-fixing" and "excessive profits." Hoover and Roosevelt together formed the council in the summer of 1922, to stabilize and organize the industry. The aim was to cartelize construction, impose various codes of operation and "ethics," and to plan the entire industry. Franklin Roosevelt, as president of the council, took repeated opportunity to denounce profit seeking and rugged individualism. The "codes of fair practice" were Hoover's idea. See Daniel R. Fusfeld, The Economic Thought of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Origins of the New Deal (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), pp. 102ff.

[23] Wesley C. Mitchell, "Unemployment and Business Fluctuations," American Labor Legislation Review (March, 1923): 15–22.

[24] The following economists, businessmen, and other leaders had by now served as officers of the American Association for Labor Legislation, in addition to those named above: Ray Stannard Baker, Bernard M. Baruch, Mrs. Mary Beard, Joseph P. Chamberlain, Morris Llewellyn Cooke, Fred C. Croxton, Paul H. Douglas, Morris L. Ernst, Herbert Feis, S. Fels, Walton H. Hamilton, William Hard, Ernest M. Hopkins, Royal W. Meeker, Broadus Mitchell, William F. Ogburn, Thomas I. Parkinson, Mrs. George D. Pratt, Roscoe Pound, Mrs. Raymond Robins, Julius Rosenwald, John A. Ryan, Nahum I. Stone, Gerard Swope, Mrs. Frank A. Vanderlip, Joseph H. Willits, and John G. Winant.

[25] Ralph Owen Brewster, "Footprints on the Road to Plenty – A Three Billion Dollar Fund to Stabilize Business," Commercial and Financial Chronicle (November 28, 1928): 25–27.

[26] The Foster-Catchings Plan called for an organized public-works program of $3 billion to iron out the business cycle and stabilize the price level. Individual initiative, the authors decided, may be well and good, but in a situation of this sort "we must have collective leadership." William T. Foster and Waddill Catchings, The Road to Plenty (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), p. 187. For a brilliant critique of the underconsumptionist theories of Foster and Catchings, see F.A. Hayek, "The 'Paradox' of Savings," in Profit, Interest, and Investment (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1939), pp. 199–263.

[27] See Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, vol. 4, pp. 349–50.

[28] "Hoover's Plan to Keep the Dinner-Pail Full," Literary Digest (December 8, 1928): 5–7.

[29] William T. Foster and Waddill Catchings, "Mr. Hoover's Plan – What It Is and What It Is Not – The New Attack on Poverty," Review of Reviews (April, 1929): 77–78. For a laudatory survey of Hoover's pro–public works views in the 1920s, by an official of the AALL, see George H. Trafton, "Hoover and Unemployment," American Labor Legislation Review (September, 1929): 267ff.; and idem, "Hoover's Unemployment Policy," American Labor Legislation Review (December, 1929): 373ff.

[30] Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920–1933 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), p. 147. As early as 1909, Hoover had called unions "proper antidotes for unlimited capitalistic organizations," ibid., p. 250.

[31] Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, p. 28.

[32] Lyons, Our Unknown Ex-President, p. 231.

[33] See Marshall Olds, Analysis of the Interchurch World Movement Report on the Steel Strike (New York: G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1922), pp. 417ff.

[34] Lyons, Our Unknown Ex-President, p. 231.

[35] Also forgotten was the fact that wages were involved in the struggle, as well as hours. The workers wanted shorter hours with a "living wage," or as the Inquiry Report put it, "a minimum comfort wage" – in short, they wanted higher hourly wage rates. See Samuel Yellen, American Labor Struggles (New York: S.A. Russell, 1956), pp. 255ff.

[36] On the 12-hour day episode, see Frederick W. MacKenzie, "Steel Abandons the 12-Hour Day," American Labor Legislation Review (September, 1923): 179ff.; Hoover, Memoirs, vol. 2, pp. 103–04; and Robert M. Miller, "American Protestantism and the Twelve-Hour Day," Southwestern Social Science Quarterly (September, 1956): 137–48. In the same year, Governor Pinchot of Pennsylvania forced the anthracite coal mines of that state to adopt the eight-hour day.

[37] For a pro-union account of the affair, see Donald R. Richberg, Labor Union Monopoly (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1957), pp. 3–28; also see Hoover, Memoirs, vol. 2.

[38] See McMullen, "The President's Unemployment Conference of 1921 and its Results," p. 17.

[39] Hoover, Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 108.

[40] One of these industrialists was the same Charles M. Schwab, head of Bethlehem Steel, who had bitterly fought Hoover in the 8-hour day dispute. Thus, in early 1929, Schwab opined that the way to keep prosperity permanent was to "pay labor the highest possible wages." Commercial and Financial Chronicle 128 (January 5, 1929): 23.

[41] National Industrial Conference Board, Salary and Wage Policy in the Depression (New York: Conference Board, 1932), p. 3; Leo Wolman, Wages in Relation to Economic Recovery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931), p. 1.

[42] Committee on Recent Economic Changes, Recent Economic Changes in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1929), vol. 1, p. xi.

[43] Committee on Recent Economic Changes, Recent Economic Changes in the United States, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1929), vol. 2; Henry Dennison, "Management," p. 523.

[44] Another important foretaste of the later National Recovery Act (NRA) was Hoover's use of the Department of Commerce during the 1920s to help trade associations form "codes," endorsed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), to curtail competition in the name of eliminating "unfair" trade practices.

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) was the author of Man, Economy, and State, Conceived in Liberty, What Has Government Done to Our Money, For a New Liberty, The Case Against the Fed, and many other books and articles. He was also the editor – with Lew Rockwell – of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report.

Copyright © 2008 Ludwig von Mises Institute
All rights reserved.

Public Transit? No, Private Transit!

2008-04-11T00:31:00.000-07:00

Socialists, wannabe college professors and anyone promoting a political agenda that they garnered from the glistening screens of CNN utopianism, often times utilize a certain mental trickery to portray those they disagree with seem "extremist". The trick involves an unspoken assumption that the State and Society are one and in the same. For example, if I state that, "Public transit is a poor and inefficient means of carting people around, not to mention a waste of tax payer dollars", then the Cooper Anderson struck, "government is awesome" do-gooder might respond with, "Why are you against Mass Transist? Are you some kind of oil company lobbyist?". This mode of reasoning is anti-intellectual at best and terribly dishonest at worst. Just because I think pointing a gun to hard working people of Minnesota and forcing them to empty their wallets to the tune of $1,000,000,000 to build a poorly (if at all) managed train and tracks that hauls people from downtown Minneapolis to the Mall of America seems like THEFT to me, doesn't mean that I don't like mass transportation. I just don't like government owned, operated mass transportation that uses force to steal my property to pay for it.

Once upon a time the Twin Cities had a privately owned mass transit system that was the envy of the nation. Did you get that? We had a PRIVATELY owned mass transportation system that made a profit, and provided a service that individuals were willing to pay for WITHOUT the threat of force on behalf of the government. Twin City Rapid Transit was started back in 1867 and was considered the best mass transit option in the entire United States, . TCRT operated for almost a hundred years, until GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil formed a holding company that bought and destroyed the company. The media and the history books like to blame the "evil capitalists" for doing such a terrible thing, but these were no capitalists. These were corporatists, who had the go ahead of a federal government who promised cheap subsidized oil, and free federally funded multi-lane highways. If the government would have never subsidized the automobile, gas and highways, we'd still have a highly functional, privately paid for and maintained transportation system. We'd be $1,000,000,000 better off as tax payers and only the people who actually used the train would pay for it. I'm guessing that it would probably offer free wireless internet also.

The point of this rant is that just because someone argues against a government program, likes public schools, public transit or public health care, it doesn't mean that they are against those programs. They just believe that someone else can do them better, cheaper and without the use of a gun pointed at the individuals head.

OBAMA SUCKS

2008-04-10T01:35:00.001-07:00