Virginia's Liberty Tree

What Rights do You Have and Where do They Come From?

2011-03-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

In our last installment we tried to make the case that in order to lay out the foundation for a truly liberal society we must first agree that each of us has full and complete ownership of ourselves. Not only do we own ourselves, but no one else may lay claim to our person-hood. Since we live in the complete time continuum of past, present and future represented by property, liberty and life no one may lay claim to these without our consent either.

From this basic premise flows the basis of all of our rights. First among these rights, after life and the free expression of that life in the form of liberty, is property. The mixing of natural resources, time and creative energy is what produces property and value to each individual. This property once justly acquired is ours to keep or dispose of as we see fit. This right to exchange our justly acquired property with others through mutual consent is the basis of contract law and the free enterprise system, and as long as neither party is engaging in force or fraud in this exchange then both parties are morally and legally, in most cases, subject to the contract.

If you have a right to your property then you also have a right to keep that property from the force or fraud of others up to and including deadly force if that is what it takes. From the earliest times societies have recognized that the right to self-defense is a fundamental right. In the Old Testament we find the following, "If the thief is caught while breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there will be no blood guiltiness on his account”, (Ex 22:2, NASB). Cicero the great Roman scholar and writer on natural law put it this way

“There exists a law, not written down anywhere, but inborn in our hearts; a law which comes to us not by training or custom or reading but by derivation and absorption and adoption from nature itself; a law which has come to us not from theory but from practice, not by instruction but by natural intuition. I refer to the law which lays it down that, if our lives are endangered by plots or violence or armed robbers or enemies, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.”

This right to self-defense can extend to groups who choose to band together for the common good to defend themselves against other groups who otherwise would take away their liberty, their property or even their life. You can even transfer this right to a government entity to act on your behalf to defend you and your possessions. The transference of rights will come up later in the discussion of what rights can and cannot be transferred.

You do not have the right, through the use of force or fraud, to acquire other people’s property, liberty, or their lives. To take someone else’s property in this manner is called theft. To take their liberty is called slavery and to take their life is called murder. Since you do not have these rights you may not transfer this behavior to others including the government. If it is morally wrong to kick in your neighbor’s door to plunder his property then it is still wrong to do so even if the plundering is done by government officials on your behalf.

Tyranny exists when governments ignore the natural rights of man and pass laws contrary to these rights. Our founding Fathers knew that government in and of itself was inherently evil and in order to protect the natural rights of man they felt that a government split into three equal parts supplied with checks and balances all overseen by a written Constitution that gives limited power to that government would be the best and safest way to start a new country. James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers 51 the following;

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

What Madison is saying here is that we might expect that a government run by virtuous people should be able to control itself, but that the primary control of the government should still come from the people. Unfortunately none of these has ever worked in the past and so to rectify this, our founders tried to come up with an iron clad document that would bind the hands of government and prevent them from passing tyrannical laws that abrogate the natural rights of man. And thus the need for a written constitution.

For many though these three levels of protection were not enough of a guarantee for them against the natural encroachment by the government upon our liberties. These hardy few demanded that with the first Congress ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, be added to ensure that laws could not be passed that would encroach on these basic rights. Now we have four levels of protection from government tyranny, and they have all failed us in less than 150 years. What does this say about the determination of evil men to take and hold power for themselves against the better interests of the people and the country at large?

Next week I plan to look at each of the provisions of the Bill of Rights and show how carefully it reflects the natural rights of man as spelled out by Cicero, and the basic premises of the Philosophy of Liberty. Until then keep this in mind. Any law that requires the government to do something on your behalf, that you by natural law or by the concept of self-ownership are prevented from doing, is morally wrong. It may be legal but is it moral?

Lame Stream Media at it Again

2011-03-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

While CNN and Fox News are busy trying to scare the pants off of the easily frightened and simple minded by creating a story of nuclear disaster where none exists, Japanese engineers and power plant workers are working around the clock to bring an unimaginable situation under control. After being hit with an incredibly powerful 8.9 magnitude earthquake, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was hit an hour later by a 30 foot tsunami. These two events comprise a one two disaster punch scenario that was never planned for, and that the site was not designed to withstand. It did anyway.

Here are the facts that seem to be so absent in the MSM. Within seconds of the start of the earthquake, the automatic systems in place began to insert control rods into the reactor core that effectively shut down the nuclear processes from 100% down to 7%, 7% being the lowest level that the core will run at due to normal decay processes in the fuel rods. Unfortunately this earthquake was so powerful that it knocked out external power to the plant coming in from the grid, and since the plant itself was not producing power the AC water pumps stopped. This is not a problem because at this point the backup diesel generators kicked in and provided the AC power necessary to run the pumps.

This is how the system was designed to work, and it worked flawlessly for about an hour. That is when the tsunami hit and destroyed the generators. At this point the backup backup plan kicked in, which was to run the pumps on battery power. This also worked as planned until the batteries ran out after eight hours. This is when the trouble started. Without the cooling pumps operating, the water in the reactors core began to boil. In order to prevent excessive pressure inside the containment facilities and possibly compromising the containment building itself, the engineers began to vent the excess steam into the atmosphere. This steam contained hydrogen gas which has a nasty habit of violently exploding when mixing with oxygen. This is exactly what happened when the reactor buildings exploded.

It was the reactor buildings that exploded and not the containment structures. These are all very much intact. The situation on Friday morning March 18th is still serious but stable. As of 17 March at 4:00PM the radiation levels at the edge of the power plant site was measured at .64 millisieverts per hour which means that you would have to stand there for about 15 hours to receive the same radiation levels that a typical airline crew receives flying the New York to Tokyo route in a year. The amount of Radiation released into the atmosphere and its potential effects are negligible at best.

Even if 100 people were to contract cancer and die from this event, it would be more people than have ever died in all nuclear power accidents combined including Chernobyl. Even still this does not compare to the thousands who are dead, hundreds of thousands who are without shelter, food and clean water. Heck this number pales in comparison to the 150,000 children that are estimated to have been aborted in Europe due to fears of radiation induced deformities from Chernobyl that never materialized.

Please remember that the job of the MSM is not to provide you with accurate news and information but is, instead, to sell advertising and make money. They do this best by selling fear and by all accounts they seem to be doing a great job. Let’s see here, by checking the headlines this morning I find that we have a stampede in China to get iodized salt for the iodine content which is ridiculous, retailers on the west coast of the U.S. are selling out of potassium iodide tablets along with gas masks and chemical suits, and panicked residents are fleeing Tokyo. Folks, you just can’t make this stuff up. Thank you MSM.

I have a suggestion. Instead of buying iodine tablets and salt and chemical suits why don’t we all send the money to the Japanese Red Cross who at this very moment are feverishly working to prevent a massive humanitarian crisis from getting worse. Here is a link to a Google Site that has all the info and here is a link to a guy that is selling t-shirts and donating the profits to the Japanese Red Cross. What could be better than helping out some hard hit folks who could really use our help and get a t-shirt to boot?

Liberty: Who Owns Me?

2011-03-18T03:50:00.000-07:00

There is a great little video on YouTube called The Philosophy of Liberty that I would recommend to anyone who has not seen it yet. It is about as concise a primer on liberty that you will find anywhere. The very first premise that we must agree on in any discussion of liberty is who owns me. If I do not fully and completely own myself then I am accepting the premise that someone else has some claim on my life. If this is true then I am not completely free and to the extent that others have a claim on my life; I am in fact that much a slave to those others.

The problem with this acceptance of non-ownership of self is that whatever assertion is used to determine the legality of this non-ownership will always be subject to the whims of change by those who create the rules, and that change is almost always for the worse. One only has to take a random walk down the main street of history to appreciate that the normal state of our human existence is one of slavery and subjugation, all based on the premise that we do not in fact own ourselves. Therefore the basis for a truly free society has to be complete and sole ownership of the individual by themselves. Thus the first rule of the philosophy of liberty is, You Own Yourself.

While self-ownership may seem like a simple and self-evident concept, I believe that most Americans residing in the land of the free would become very uncomfortable when the full implications of self-ownership become evident. We know for example that many of our fellow Americans are Statists in one form or another and the premise of all Statists is that we are actually owned by the state and that all of our liberties and rights come from the state. They also believe that the product of our lives is first the property of the state and what the state chooses to give back to us then becomes ours.

The other group that completely rejects the concept of self-ownership is what I will call the moralists. Most of these people in the U.S. believe that they are Christian. In a country like Saudi Arabia they are Muslims. Either way they are convinced that whatever life choices that they have made for themselves is also good for their neighbors and seek to impose, through the force of government, that way of life on others. What I find so dangerous about these people is that they believe that their right to impose their morality on others comes not from a manmade philosophy, like Socialism or Fascism, but from God himself. Because of this aberrant belief, arguing with these folks takes on the equivalent, to them at least, of the appearance of arguing with God, and we all know only a fool would argue with God.

Regardless of what these two groups and others like them believe only the philosophy of self-ownership is consistent with a free and liberal society (since liberal means liberty and not statist, I believe it is time to take back the language of liberty). It is consummately American to believe in self-ownership. Our founding document, The Declaration of Independence, states that it is “self-evident”, that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights and that among them are, “Life, Liberty, and Property” (I know it says pursuit of happiness, but trust me they meant property).

By saying that these are self-evident truths these men were saying that these declarations stand on their own and need no further proof. At this point I might be inclined to say that our founding fathers hadn’t met the average American living here today, but that will have to be a subject for another day. Let’s just go with self-evident for now. If our founders were right then, not only do we have an unalienable right to life, but that life can only rightfully belong to us in its entirety and therefore implies 100% self-ownership, there cannot be any form of dual ownership here. Not only is this concept universal in my opinion, but fundamentally American according to the Declaration of Independence.

The next step in the philosophy of liberty is the concept of owning your life in all three dimensions of time; past, present, and future. The tangible evidence of our past life is in the property that we accumulate. Our life in the present is represented by the liberty that we experience day in and day out. Our future is represented by the promise of life. All of these are representations of our life and self-ownership throughout the time continuum. Our founders understood this. It is why they chose to put life, liberty, and property in the Declaration of Independence.

One of the many manifestations of present day America’s wholesale rejection of the concept of self-ownership is the taxing of labor, or the income tax. Our founders understood that if we gave the government the ability to directly tax the people it would be the beginning of tyranny. They were right. It is interesting to note that the same people who forced the Federal Reserve and Prohibition on us are also the same ones who overturned the concept of no direct taxation and passed the 16th amendment. The taxing of labor is one of the most onerous things that a government can do because the underlying assertion here is that that government does have a claim on some portion of the fruit of your labor and therefore by extension your personhood. Once a people have ceded the argument that the government does have a claim to a portion of your life it is just up to the politicians to determine how much of your life they should be allowed to own and control.

Self-ownership is a concept that is so important and fundamental to the principles of liberty that unless it is considered sacrosanct by a society and protected at all costs by that society then they will never be able to enjoy true liberty. The history of humankind on this planet teaches us that once the foundations of liberty are breached in a once free society it is just a matter of time before the entire house is washed away. We know that the foundations of our own liberty here in America have already been breached. The question that we must ask ourselves today then is this: Have we lived so long as slaves to the state that our fate now is much like that of the ancient Israelites who God would not let pass into the Promised Land, because of their slave mindset? Have we become so utterly lost in the wilderness of dependence, that we may never find our way back to the Promised Land of liberty?

…Stay tuned my brothers and sisters.

Christmas

2009-12-21T11:41:00.000-08:00

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.(And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

Luke 2:1-20

2009-11-28T04:38:00.000-08:00

If you have been confused by the mindless spending by this Democrat Congress and the Obama administration the following article might help to clear things up.

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The Cloward/Piven Strategy of Economic Recovery
By Nancy Coppock

Using borrowed money for a band-aid bailout of the economy should seem backwards to most people. However, it likely is a planned strategy to promote radical change. Those naively believing that President Obama is simply rewarding his far-left base, and will then move to the political center, must wise up.

The assumption that Obama will need the nation to prosper in order to protect the 2010 mid-term election incorrectly assumes that he esteems free market capitalism. He does not. Rather than win through superior ideas and policies, the Democrat plan for success in the mid-term elections is to win by destroying political opposition.

Obama adheres to the Saul Alinksy Rules for Radicals method of politics, which teaches the dark art of destroying political adversaries. However, that text reveals only one front in the radical left's war against America. The Cloward/Piven Strategy is another method employed by the radical Left to create and manage crisis. This strategy explains Rahm Emanuel's ominous statement, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

The Cloward/Piven Strategy is named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Their goal is to overthrow capitalism by overwhelming the government bureaucracy with entitlement demands. The created crisis provides the impetus to bring about radical political change.

According to Discover the Networks.org:

Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation... [Emphasis added.]

Making an already weak economy even worse is the intent of the Cloward/Piven Strategy. It is imperative that we view the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan's spending on items like food stamps, jobless benefits, and health care through this end goal. This strategy explains why the Democrat plan to "stimulate" the economy involves massive deficit spending projects. It includes billions for ACORN and its subgroups such as SHOP and the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Expanding the S-Chip Program through deficit spending in a supposed effort to "save the children" only makes a faltering economy worse.

If Congress were to allow a robust economy, parents would be able to provide for their children themselves by earning and keeping more of their own money. Democrats, quick to not waste a crisis, would consider that a lost opportunity.

The Cato Institute reports that the plan will harm a faltering economy, intentionally causing increased job losses leading to increased demands for the aforementioned programs. Even the jobs to be created are set apart to render social justice, not economic revival. Robert Reich believes new infrastructure jobs should not go to white construction workers. Meanwhile, workers at Microsoft, IBM, Texas Instruments, and the retail market find themselves experiencing the life of the welfare poor.

If highly educated and trained workers continue to lose jobs and business falters as a whole, where will these jobless workers go? Could this be construed as revolutionary social reorganization that puts the underachiever above the achiever? Where is the future economic strength when jobless professionals collect welfare and unemployment while dreaming of a minimum wage job? For whites, there's not even the hope of a good paying construction job.

Because these programs are financed with deficit spending, the effect of the Cloward/Piven Strategy becomes doubly destructive. Talk about a perfect storm! The Democrat stimulus plan is a mechanism whose goal is the destruction of the traditional American way of life. It is bitter irony that the American taxpayer will actually fund the destruction of his own ability to live according to the values of our Founding Documents. It is not alarmist to identify this situation as a coup d'etat.

As the flow of money from the top of the economy dries up, job losses and mortgage busts will mount exponentially. The Democrat stimulus plan provides for welfare expansion but not for a robust economy that creates high paying jobs. Is this what Obama means when he warns, "It's going to get worse before it gets better?" If we are not bailing out corporate America so they can regain profitability, we must conclude Obama is working toward another end goal. Recognizing these attack methods reveals the only logical response -- an unwavering wall of "No!"

Fed Audit in Jeopardy

2009-11-02T16:05:00.000-08:00

Below I have listed an entry from Mish's blog about the "Audit the Fed" bill in Congress. I have always said that if the Federal Reserve gets a fair and thorough audit they would not last another three years, after the American people find out what they have done. Well democrat Mel Watt from North Carolina has made sure that the fair audit will not happen. Did you really expect that the Fed was just going to roll over on this one. It is time to make some phone calls.

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This should come as no surprise but Ron Paul says Federal Reserve Policy Audit Legislation ‘Gutted’

Representative Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who has called for an end to the Federal Reserve, said legislation he introduced to audit monetary policy has been “gutted” while moving toward a possible vote in the Democratic-controlled House.

The bill, with 308 co-sponsors, has been stripped of provisions that would remove Fed exemptions from audits of transactions with foreign central banks, monetary policy deliberations, transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee and communications between the Board, the reserve banks and staff, Paul said today.

“There’s nothing left, it’s been gutted,” he said in a telephone interview. “This is not a partisan issue. People all over the country want to know what the Fed is up to, and this legislation was supposed to help them do that.”

Paul, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said Mel Watt, a Democrat from North Carolina, has eliminated “just about everything” while preparing the legislation for formal consideration. Watt is chairman of the panel’s domestic monetary policy and technology subcommittee.

Keith Kelly, a spokesman for Watt, declined to comment and said Watt wasn’t immediately available for an interview. Watt’s district includes Charlotte, headquarters of Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender.

Call The Capital Switchboard

Conservative For Change has this advice in Ron Paul's Audit the Fed Bill Gutted.

It is time to get on the phone with everyone in Washington...Congressman and Senators and demand action against the illegal Federal Reserve. Call the Capitol Switchboard 202-224-3121 and speak with everyone you can!

Call Democratic Central Committee

On October 8, in Audit The Fed Revisited Jacob Dreizin offered this advice.

Without a flood of citizen lobbying, they will most likely water down H.R. 1207 into something meaningless, or else ignore it altogether.

The committee Democrats' central phone number is (202) 225–4247, and the fax is (202) 225-6952. Alternately, and perhaps more effectively, you can politely email some or all of the committee's most senior Democrat staff directly, as follows:

Committee staff director and chief counsel: Jeanne.Roslanowick@mail.house.gov

Committee deputy chief counsel: Lawranne.Stewart@mail.house.gov

Committee communications director: Steven.Adamske@mail.house.gov (or possibly Steve.Adamske@mail.house.gov)

Phone Your Own Representative

For a list of phone and fax numbers for Congress please see Speak Out - Audit the Fed, Then End It!

More Boondoggling

2009-10-31T05:03:00.000-07:00

Here is a related article to the one below. We taxpayers payed over $24000 per clunker according to Edmunds. The White House disputes their figures. Who do you trust?

So for every 4 clunkers we bought, for $24,000, we lost another job. Thanks democrats and Tom Perriello.

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Cash for Clunkers survey by Edmunds has White House peeved

A shocking report released by Edmunds Inc. stating the Cash for Clunkers program cost taxpayers 24,000 per vehicle has attracted the not so favorable attention of the White House. Earlier this week, Edmunds.com released their research that stated only 125,000 of the 690,000 total car sales figures should be counted in the national statistics. Their assumption is that the large remainder of new vehicles would have been purchased anyway, regardless of the Cash for Clunkers program.

Edmunds based their figures on the 3 billion dollars of government money spent on the program and divided it by their own estimate of 125,000 vehicles that should have qualified, equaling $24,000 per vehicle.

One day after the results were publicized, the official White House blog site disputed Edmunds figures and discredited their method for determining the controversial number. The blogger went on to state that Edmunds ignored the positive impact that Cash for Clunkers had on the economy by drawing large numbers of customers into dealerships, even if their cars didn’t qualify for the program. The blogger also takes issue with Edmunds for ignoring the possible creation of an estimated 70,000 automotive jobs in the second half of 2009, and attributes Cash for Clunkers for increased production by several major auto makers.

The battle of wits is likely to continue as the White House blogger asserts that Edmunds.com is more interested in grabbing headlines than offering factual information.

Edmunds Inc. publishes four web sites including Edmunds.com which they promote as being the premier online resource for automotive consumer information.

$323,000 per Obama Job

2009-10-31T04:50:00.000-07:00

Here is an great article I found On Mish Shedlock's site. Remember our jobs rule of thumb; for every $100,000 taken out of an economy we lose one productive job. That means that for every 1 stimulus job created, the Democrat Congress and the Obama Administration cost this country 3.5 jobs, and that is about par for the course. I have always contended that for every dollar that the government brings to a district it will cost that district 2.5 to 3.5 dollars in taxes.

So when we are told by Tom Perriello, our current Congressman, that he is responsible for bringing a 1.5 million dollar firehouse to Fluvanna County please remember that it will cost the citizens of Fluvanna County at least 3 to 5 million dollars in additional taxes to pay for their 1.5 million dollar gift from Tom. There still is no such thing as a free lunch.

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Obama creates 640,329 jobs at a cost of $323,739.83 per job

Inquiring minds are asking the question "How many jobs were created out of the various stimulus programs so far and at what cost per job?"

That is a good question. Not that we can believe the reported number of jobs created, but let's assume for the sake of argument that the figures provided by the administration are correct.

White House Hails Stimulus Jobs

The Financial Times is reporting White House hails 650,000 stimulus jobs.

According to White House sources, The US economic stimulus program has directly created or saved 640,000 jobs so far, in an effort to find ways to show that its $787bn package is working, despite persistently high unemployment.

Data this week showed that the US economy had started to grow again but the Obama administration has faced rising criticism that it wasted taxpayers' money on the stimulus.

The White House tried to counter this by championing the jobs figures and even uploading videos to its website showing the dollars in action. The figures showed around half of the jobs were in education and 12.5 per cent were in construction.

"These reports are strong confirmation that…we are on-track to create and save 3.5m jobs through the Recovery Act by the end of next year," said Joe Biden, vice president.

But criticism has mounted this week over the accuracy of some preliminary stimulus data released by the White House. Even the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think-tank which has fervently supported the stimulus, said there were serious problems with the figures.

Bear in mind it is impossible to prove how many jobs were created and it is beyond preposterous to think one can estimate the number of jobs saved.

However, let's take the administration's estimates at face value.

Inquiring minds want the official numbers on which to base the cost per job created. So please consider the administration's own numbers as reported on Track The Money Recovery.Gov as of October 30, 2009.

Let's do the math.

Math To Date

Funds paid out so far = $83.8 billion + $52.1 billion + $71.4 billion = $207.3 billion
$207,300,000,000 / 640,329 = $323,739.83 per job created

Plan Goals Math

Now let's assume this stimulus package will eventually create (or save) 3.5 million jobs and all the money (but no more) will be spent.

Here's the math again.

$787,000,000,000 / 3,500,000 = $224,857.14 per job created

Top States

There is much more information on the site and a quick look at the projects shows many of them are for temporary jobs such as highway repair and weatherizing homes.

Amazingly, the White House is championing the above numbers. Apparently they forgot to do the math (or they are praying no one else will).

Got Sound Money?

2009-10-13T07:20:00.000-07:00

One of the core principles of our campaign is Sound Money. I find it very unfortunate that today so many Americans are bewildered by our monetary system and unaware of the dangers of central banking. It does not have to be this way. Money and what it is, is no more complicated that any other commodity in an economic system and pretty much follows the same rules of supply and demand.

Most people understand that in an economy a fixed supply of a commodity such as wheat for example, will command a certain price based on the demand. If the supply of wheat and the demand for wheat remains fixed, then in general the price also will remain fixed. If the farmers have a good year and supply goes up, prices will naturally go down as sellers try to under cut their competitors to distribute their product. The same process occurs in reverse. If farmers have a bad year and supply goes down, prices naturally will rise. One added feature to this system is that as prices climb consumers begin to buy less and less of the commodity thus reducing demand and slowing the rate of price increase.

If on the other hand farmers hold back their product in order to get a better price in the future, this has the effect of lowering supply and thus driving prices up. If more farmers produce more wheat thus increasing supply and effectively lowering prices, it is likely that some of the less efficient farmers will then need to go out of business. This not only makes the farming business more efficient as a whole, it also has the effect of lowering overall prices for wheat, because the production of wheat is now being accomplished in a much more efficient manner.

This is just a very simple explanation of the free market setting the fair value of wheat in a free market economy. Money is no different; it is just a commodity like wheat. Its price is set by supply and demand, and is reflected in its cost which is the interest rate. In a productive society, where people are working and earning money that they do not immediately need, they will save it. As that money accumulates in the banks, the banks will lower the cost to borrow that money in order to get it out of the door, so to speak. This is a signal to the producers in an economy to borrow money and expand productive capacity. When less money is being saved or actually being withdrawn, because of a downturn in an economy, the cost associated with borrowing money increases and thus sends a signal to the producers to slow or stop borrowing. The time to begin increasing production is when there is pent up demand for this production in the form of accelerating saving rates. This will occur at the beginning stages of an economic upturn. This is the economic model described by Ludwig Von Mises and the Austrian School of Economics.

Notice that all of this occurs without anyone’s approval. The market sets up the forces that determine when expansion and contraction should occur, not a central planning authority. In our system with a central bank, we appoint a group of men who determine what the cost of money should be by manipulating the interest rates and other not so obvious methods. This does not work any better with money than it would if our system were dependent on a group of men determining the price of wheat.

The basic principle of sound money says that if you earn a dollar today you should still be able to purchase a dollar's worth of goods tomorrow. Money is just a temporary storage of wealth and a means to transfer wealth between people and institutions. The one thing that money should always be is stable and trustworthy. If due to manipulations the people begin to lose faith in the soundness of the money, then the money itself begins to be a driver in the marketplace and the decisions the people make. This should never be allowed to happen, but in fact this happens all the time now, with the Federal Reserve.

After the attacks of 911 the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to near zero. Unfortunately, this was not the time to do this. Our economy had just come off of a Fed fueled boom in the late 90’s and needed to contract to shake out the non productive producers. Instead of becoming more efficient, our economy was becoming less efficient. The unwarranted new money, created by the Fed, found its way like it always does into mal-investment in the form of the housing boom. There was no genuine call for this increase in production, but because the economy interpreted the low interest rates as a genuine signal to increase production it did.

These asset booms and busts, recessions and depressions will continue as long as we continue to believe in the myth that 12 men sitting a room are best qualified to absorb the trillions of data points in an economy, and from that information determine what the exact cost that money should be. We would do better by going to the Oracle of Delphi, or perhaps reading the entrails of sacrificial lambs.

Stay tuned for the next installment when we discuss the Gold Standard.

Senator Warner's Report Card

2009-10-08T02:37:00.000-07:00

My second installment from Donna Holts website

Mister I'm-a-new-kind-of-conservative-Democrat-who-understands-business-but- doesn't-know-enough-to-understand-that-you-can't-tax-and-spend-and-print-your-way- back-to-prosperity,-and-would-rather-keep-my-new-boss-Harry-Reid-happy-than-to-stand-up-for-Virginians-Warner. How many of these new kind of Democrats can we take before they completely destroy this economy? Sheesh! Can't we just have the old kind of Democrat that is at least honest about what he believes, so we can just not vote for him?

Mr. Mark R. Warner (D)
Term ends in 2014 (not soon enough)

Grade F-

Sir, you are a disgrace. Even Jim Webb managed to get an F. I don't normally share grades of other students, but I thought you should know.

Voted for HR 1: ["The Scamulus Package"] American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Voted for PN64-07-111: Confirmation of anti-rights Eric Holder for Attorney General [More info]

Voted for HR 1388: ["Obama's Camps"] Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act [More info]

Voted for HR 1256: Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act [More info]

Voted for HR 2346: 2009 $106B War Supplemental [More info]

Voted for HR 1424: Senate: Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (Bailout 2008)

Voted for : Confirmation of John Holdren, who considered forced abortion and sterilization as population control methods, to head OSTP [More info]

Voted for amend HR 3183: to penalize gas suppliers doing business with Iran [More info]

Voted for Senate Roll Call No. 237: Out-of-state carry law reciprocity [More info]

Sorry for the Absence

2009-10-07T13:31:00.000-07:00

I truly apologize for not writing for so long. As many of you know, I announced my candidacy for the Republican nomination for the Fifth Congressional District of Virginia last week. If you did not know, the little link in the upper left corner should have been a clue. At any rate, I have been running around going to meetings and talking to people with very little time to myself. It really is exciting to see so many people getting lit up when I talk from my heart about my message of liberty which is so very dear to me.

I don’t know if they truly believe I can win or not, but I think just having someone who actually believes in the founder's vision and liberty run for Congress is really just very new and refreshing for people.

Today I found a great website that I would like everyone to check out. It is Virginia’s Campaign for Liberty and it is run by Donna Holt. At the end of her site she lists all of Virginia’s Political leaders in Congress and all the anti liberty votes they have taken. She has also color coded the votes, which is good for an old Naval Aviator like myself.

I have decided to list the first one here but I still would like all of my readers to go to her site anyway. As an added bonus I will grade each of their votes.

U.S. Congress, with local office addresses and votes of interest

Mr. Jim Webb (D)
Term ends in 2012

GRADE: F You fail, sir. Go home and cease harassing the people.

Voted for HR 1: ["The Scamulus Package"] American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Voted for PN64-07-111: Confirmation of anti-rights Eric Holder for Attorney General [More info]

Voted for HR 1388: ["Obama's Camps"] Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act [More info]

Voted for HR 1256: Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act [More info]

Voted for HR 2346: 2009 $106B War Supplemental [More info]

Voted for HR 1424: Senate: Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (Bailout 2008)

Voted for : Confirmation of John Holdren, who considered forced abortion and sterilization as population control methods, to head OSTP [More info]

Voted for amend HR 3183: to penalize gas suppliers doing business with Iran [More info]

Voted for co-sponsoring HR 1207: The Federal Reserve Transparency Act [More info]

Voted for Senate Roll Call No. 237: Out-of-state carry law reciprocity [More info]

Smoke and Mirrors Part II

2009-10-01T05:38:00.001-07:00

• Guarantee 100% deficit neutrality, stating that “any health care reform legislation that increases our national deficit or debt is a non-starter for us.” Specifically, the letter suggests triggered across-the-board cuts in federal discretionary spending to ensure that savings goals are met;

Are these guys serious? First off the best health care plan, as far as deficits go, was scored by the non partisan Congressional Budget Office as costing 200 billion per year. Common sense should tell you that bringing in 30, or is it 47 million, extra people into the health care system is going to cost money. The only way that you can get that kind of money is to raise taxes on the middle class, because there just aren’t enough rich people. Now when they say, “Non Starter”, that is pretty definitive language and it means that none of them will vote for this if it is not deficit neutral. Time will tell.

The second sentence here is the get out of jail card or the smoke and mirrors part as I like to call it. What they are saying here is that if the program goes over budget, as all government programs do, that will trigger discretionary spending cuts that some future Congress will have to follow. There is only one problem with that idea. Each Congress is sovereign unto itself. Mr. Perriello and his friends can not force a future Congress to do anything. You would think that a Congressman would know this.

More Smoke and Mirrors

2009-09-30T12:03:00.000-07:00

Here is a post that I found on Tom Perriello’s web site outlining a letter that he and other freshman democrat congressmen wrote to the democrat leadership. In it they claim that they are pushing for the following ideas to be incorporated in any health care bill that comes up for a vote. Here they are:

• Protect Medicare and extend the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund, including closure of the Medicare Part D prescription drug “doughnut hole” and empowering Medicare to negotiate cheaper drug prices;
• Guarantee 100% deficit neutrality, stating that “any health care reform legislation that increases our national deficit or debt is a non-starter for us.” Specifically, the letter suggests triggered across-the-board cuts in federal discretionary spending to ensure that savings goals are met;
• Increase competition across state lines as a key component of reducing costs, “allowing all businesses and individuals the opportunity to purchase insurance from entities beyond their state lines;”
• Address tort costs by reducing litigation, medical error, and overutilization, proposing real reforms such as “Certificate of Merit” provisions and “Early Offer” programs;
• Allow every American the opportunity to choose the same quality healthcare that Members of Congress enjoy, or what Perriello calls “the congressional option;”
• Incentivize wellness and preventive care and encourage personal responsibility for living healthier lifestyles; and
• Protect small businesses and allow them to calculate for themselves how health care reform would impact their bottom line. Previously, Perriello and other freshmen had pushed successfully to expand protections of S-corporations and other small businesses from proposed surcharges associated with the broader plan.

Well now we have just a few inconsistencies here. First of all there is no Medicare trust fund because all the money goes into the general fund; you would think that a Congressman would know that. They say that they want to extend the solvency of this imaginary trust fund, not make it sustainable mind you, just kick the can down the road for someone else to deal with. Nice.

Now, how do you think they are going to extend the solvency of yet another bankrupt government program? There are only two ways to do this; cut benefits, or raise taxes. If they mentioned this in their plan I must have missed it. Congressman Perriello says that he went to Washington to do the right thing. Wouldn’t the right thing to do here be to explain to the Speaker of the House and we the people, what your plan is?

The real problem here is that this is just an old political trick being played out for the constituents of the fifth district. The first thing that they do is communicate to the voters how much they support the majority viewpoint, and how hard they are working to make these views part of the upcoming legislation. Then as the votes are being counted, if the leadership doesn’t need the votes of these “principled” democrats, then they are off the hook. They will be able to go home and say see I voted against it, but the darn thing passed anyway. If the votes are close as it was for “Cap and Trade”, then the leadership will start to pick them off one by one. If Congressman Perriello is unfortunate enough to be forced to vote for this bill, he will come back to the fifth district and say, “well it is not what I wanted, but [insert latest democrat excuse here].

If Congressman Perriello and his friends truly believed in these ideas, the letter should have said make sure these provisions are in the legislation or we will not vote for it. This wasn’t in the letter because this whole facade is just political window dressing for the masses. Congressman Perriello is becoming a very good politician.

Second Amendment alive and Well

2009-09-28T15:33:00.000-07:00

If anyone out there loves their God given rights to keep and bear arms as much as I do then you will probably love this offer from Dr. Piazza at Front sight Training. Here is the link. You have to get to the end to see the offer but I hope you like the pictures too.

Webb Strikes Again

2009-09-28T11:09:00.000-07:00

As if Virginia’s families were not having a tough enough time in this rough economy Senator “Born Fidgeting” strikes again. This weekend the Republicans proposed an amendment to speed up implementation of a new law to expand oil and gas drilling in the offshore areas. This would speed up Americas march toward energy independence and lower energy costs for Virginia’s families.

It was a tough vote for Senator Webb and Warner. The choice was clear, either give the Republicans a minor victory and help Virginia’s struggling families or vote with Harry Reid and the Democrats and stick it to Virginia’s families. Of course the dynamic duo voted against Virginia. I wouldn’t have expected any less. I think we should reconsider those six year terms.

Senator "Born Fighting" Scores Hat Trick

2009-09-24T08:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to an article in the Weekly Standard on Virginia’s own Senator “Born Fighting” Webb, and his cozy relationship with the murderous regime in Burma. Not only did this guy hand this regime a diplomatic victory when he showed up there a few months back, but now he arranges to have one of their top murderers get a visa to travel to Washington and visit the Whitehouse. Wow! The Obama administration and Senator Webb giving aid and comfort to one of the most tyrannical and brutal regimes in the world. Who could have seen that coming?

Let me see if I have this straight. In the last month Senator Webb supported and voted on a bill that would tax tourists coming into the state of Virginia thereby insuring a reduced number of visitors, decreased business activity, and a subsequent loss of jobs. He voted to take more money out of the pockets of hard working Virginians and spend it on an airport that serves as nothing more than a private airport for the completely corrupt and dysfunctional Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania, a fellow Democrat. Is this what they mean by birds of a feather? And finally he bends over backwards to support a murderous and thuggish regime in Burma.

This is what we call a political hat trick in the “Born Fighting” world, I guess. According to the article Senator Webb’s excuse for playing footsie with these thugs is to “check Chinese influence in Burma”. Are you kidding me? Isn’t this exactly how we get ourselves in trouble almost every time? We align ourselves with some of the world’s worst actors like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, and always end up regretting it later? I have an idea, Senator Webb, why don’t we let China have Burma, and we can let them be the nation that supports human rights abuses, and we can go back to being the nation that just supports human rights. We can start by supporting the constitutional government in Honduras and work our way up.

VICFA

2009-09-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

I noticed that at this years annual farm food voices event hosted by Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers association (VICFA) there were three politicians in attendance; Creigh Deeds, Tom Perriello, and Cynthia Neff, all democrats. I have no doubt that these three were invited by VICFA but the question is why? The two biggest issues on the VICFA website are HR2749 and NAIS. These two issues are like kryptonite to these people.

HR 2749 is called the “Food Safety Enhancement Act”, which does nothing to enhance the safety of anything except the size of big government. This bill is an anathema to small farmers and gardeners everywhere. The bottom line on this bill is that if you have a small farm or even a small vegetable garden in the back yard the government now has the right to inspect that garden in the name of food safety, without need of that bothersome search warrant thingy or any other paperwork. I know that this sounds too Orwellian, but it is true. NAIS is the National Animal Identification System. This is just another big government plan to control the production of farm animals. Yes if you have a chicken in the backyard you will be included and there will be paperwork to be filled out.

The funny part here is that these are both big government democrat plans. They were both introduced by democrats and they were both supported primarily by democrats, which brings us back to the question of why would VICFA be inviting democrats to their annual gathering? They should have used the opportunity to throw rotten tomatoes at them.

If you are a small farmer, a family farmer, an organic farmer, or a micro farmer, I have news for you. The Democrats are not your friends. Big government (read Democrat party) is at war with the independence and freedom that comes with being a small businessman and a small farmer. Learn it, live it, love it.

Why Honduras Matters

2009-09-23T07:55:00.000-07:00

This week Honduras’s ex-president, Manuel Zelaya, slithered back into Honduras and found refuge in the Brazilian embassy, in Honduras’s capital Tegucigalpa. He then demanded to have a meeting with the government leaders, that he now claims to be illegitimate, in order to restore him to power. None of this would be an issue except for the fact that the leftist governments of North and South America including the U.S., all support the return of Zelaya to power. Zelaya’s biggest supporters outside his own country are, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Fidel Castro of Cuba, and of course Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, sadly of the United States. What do these 5 people and Manuel Zelaya have in common? That’s easy; they are all Marxists. Do you really believe any of these people are supporting Zelaya because his strict support of the Honduran Constitution.

Let’s review the facts of this case. President Zelaya wanted to have a constitutional referendum to change the law, so that he could continue as president for another term in office, ala his friend Hugo Chavez and Mike Bloomberg. But according to the Constitution of Honduras only the Congress of that country can call for a referendum, so that should have been the end of it, because the Congress had no intent of doing any such thing. At the prodding of his friend Hugo Chavez, Zelaya had the ballots printed up in Venezuela and shipped into the country anyway. The Supreme Court ruled that his referendum was unconstitutional and ordered the military not to carry out the logistics for the vote. When informed that the military would comply with the legal orders of the Supreme Court, Zelaya fired his top military commander. The Supreme Court ordered him reinstated and Zelaya refused. Are you starting to get a picture of who this guy is yet?

Not satisfied with the way things were heading Zelaya gathered up a mob of supporters (probably a local branch of ACORN Nicaragua) and stormed the local military base where the ballots had been stored and began the process of handing them out. The Attorney General of Nicaragua had already announced that he would prosecute anyone involved with trying to go ahead with this very illegal referendum, as Zelaya obviously was, and so therefore Zelaya was arrested. According to the Attorney General he was given the choice of standing trial or stepping down and being exiled. He chose exile, but as most good leftists know your word only counts if your fingers are not crossed, and now he is back in the country.

This would not be an issue today if it were not for the heavy handed approach of the Obama administration. The very fact that Hillary Clinton had the visas of the Supreme Court justices pulled because they did not agree with her interpretation of their Constitution, displays for all to see the hubris and arrogance of this administration. This is the same administration that claimed if it said anything about the stolen election in Iran this summer it would unduly interject itself into the internal affairs of a foreign country. I guess the litmus test for this administration as to whether to interject themselves or not, has more to do with what side is advancing in the internal dispute in question. If liberty and the rule of law is advancing, as it is in Honduras, then this administration feels it must put a stop to it. On the other hand, if state power is advancing at the expense of individual liberty, as in the case of Iran this summer, then this administration will take the stand of, “it is an internal matter and we must remain hands off”.

Honduras is a tiny country and our staunchest ally in the region. They are a Constitutional Republic trying to remain free and out of the grips of becoming another leftist dictatorship within the sphere of influence of Chavez and Castro. Their fight is our fight, as long as we are on the side of liberty. While we as the land of liberty should be supporting them, our government is actively working against them, to thwart the rule of law in their country. I believe that one day our country will once again be that country that promotes liberty throughout the world. We will show by example the power of liberty, expressed here at home, through free markets, sound money, and a respect for individual rights. But not today, today we have an administration that does not believe in the power of the individual but instead believes in the power of the state. This must change and we must be the ones to change it.

Missile Defense Treachery

2009-09-18T05:52:00.001-07:00

The announcement yesterday by the Obama administration to abandon the Third Site missile defense system, in the Czech Republic and Poland, is going to have far reaching implications into the future defense capabilities of the U.S., and a devastating impact on our relationship with our allies in Eastern Europe. Poland and the Czech Republic, both staunch allies of ours in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, have both gone out on a precarious limb to help us with this critical defense system. What happened to them was the diplomatic equivalent of having the rug pulled out from under them, and then being kicked, Chicago style, while they were on the ground. Then to announce this on the 70th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland further underscores the hubris, insensitivity, and complete lack of historical perspective that this President has.

Just 6 months ago, this President was lauding this missile defense program as a great step forward, and now he just changes his mind? This day will be the day that historians will note as the point when the west began to lose influence and stature in Eastern Europe, and ceded hegemonic control of this crucial part of the world back to Russia. In 1961 Nikita Khrushchev looked into the eyes of a young President and saw weakness, which in turn brought our countries to the brink of nuclear destruction. Today KGB agent Vladimir Putin looked into the eyes of an extremely inexperienced, community organizer President, and also saw weakness. Yesterday this weak President signaled to Mr. Putin all he needed to know about what the United States response would be to his foreign exploits.

Fortunately the Obama administration sent over to Poland, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control Ellen Tauscher, who received her Bachelor of Science degree in Early Childhood Education, to explain why we were taking this action. I suspect that she will be very effective using construction paper cutouts to make her point. Folks, you can’t make this stuff up. This is truly a sad day for our country and the new democracies of Eastern Europe.

RPV

2009-09-17T09:40:00.001-07:00

In researching my post on Conservatism, I decided to go to the Republican Party of Virginia's website to see what they would have as their core beliefs. Not that I consider the Republican party a particularly conservative party yet. I thought I would go just to see what I could find. Here is what they had.

That the free enterprise system is the most productive supplier of human needs and economic justice,

That all individuals are entitled to equal rights, justice, and opportunities and should assume their responsibilities as citizens in a free society,

That fiscal responsibility and budgetary restraints must be exercised at all levels of government,

That the Federal Government must preserve individual liberty by observing Constitutional limitations,

That peace is best preserved through a strong national defense,

That faith in God, as recognized by our Founding Fathers is essential to the moral fiber of the Nation.

Wow! Where is this guy, I want to vote him into office.

Conservatism

2009-09-17T09:33:00.001-07:00

I had been thinking about posting something on what it means to be a Conservative in today’s political climate, mostly due to the fact that I have become increasingly skeptical of politicians wearing the robes of conservatism and usually acting in a contrary manner. I am no longer interested in having politicians tell me they are Conservative, as I have my doubts whether most of them know what it means to be a real Conservative. Instead tell me what you believe, and why you believe it, and then explain to me how these ideas of yours sync with the vision of the Founding Fathers. I was rather appalled, to say the least, at the slate of presidential candidates on the Republican side last year. It seemed that at every debate whenever anyone of them was asked a policy question, they would always have to hesitate, as if trying to channel the spirit of Ronald Reagan, to help them come up with the right answer. If you are a true conservative then you do not need Ronald Reagan, or anyone else for that matter, all you need to do is to search your own core for the right answer.

In my quest to find what it means to be a conservative what I found was quite eye opening and also answered questions that had troubled me for quite some time. My first stop was at of all places Wikipedia. (Yes I know that wikiality is the reality we can all agree on, but go with me on this one.) Wikipedia says that modern American Conservatives can be broken down into the following camps. Neo, Paleo, Christian, Right Wing, Libertarian, Fusionism, Social, Fiscal, and probably a lot more, but this will make my point. What this means is that you can pretty much believe anything you want and still call yourself a Conservative and not be misrepresenting the truth about yourself.

This is what the American Conservative Website had to say on this subject.

“We believe conservatism to be the most natural political tendency, rooted in man’s taste for the familiar, for family, for faith in God. We believe that true conservatism has a predisposition for the institutions and mores that exist.”

Well this seems a little squishy, now doesn’t it. For one thing I am very unhappy with most of the institutions that exist in my government today, and what seems natural to most people around the world is Stateism/Collectivism. Now here is how Ronald Reagan described Conservatism in 1975.

“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”

The Libertarians took over the mantle of liberty from the Classical Liberals, around the turn of the last century, when the Stateist took to calling themselves Liberals. The founders were Classical Liberals because they focused their political actions towards increasing the liberty of their fellow man, and not increasing the power of the state at the expense of individual liberty.

This is, in my opinion, what lies at the heart of real Conservatism; a desire to revert back to the founding documents, and the principles, that this country was established on. To view the political spectrum in the same manner that our founders did, we would see the extreme left as pure Stateism and the extreme right as pure anarchy, or no government at all. Just to the left of pure anarchy we have a very small government that is large enough to govern, but still small enough so as to not infringe upon the rights of the people. This point is exactly where the Constitution places our Federal Government, and is also the point that Ronald Reagan would explain as, “maximizing individual liberty consistent with order”.

Any other philosophy that strays from this point of view, and still considers itself a Conservative philosophy, I would call Conservatism with an asterisk, or I believe this stuff but. I believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion, however when you stray from the founders original ideas to propose that government be a little bigger for this great new cause, then you invalidate your Conservative credentials, by exposing your own lack of understanding of the founders vision. You become like the Gnostics of the early Christian period who believed that their understanding came from God and did not have to follow a logical course, or to be explained. The heart of Conservatism is, promoting the principles of life, liberty, and property. Conservatism is a strict belief in the rule of law, i.e. the government must follow the law that we the people lay down via the Constitution. There needs to be nothing else at the heart of Conservatism, because everything else flows from these essential truths.

2009-09-14T19:37:00.000-07:00

As if our economy wasn’t suffering enough, now the Obama administration is threatening to pull us into a trade war with China. Here is a great article by Mish Shedlock outlining some of the basic principles in the latest trade dispute with China. Once again we have evidence of how naïve, inexperienced, and yes ignorant this administration really is. Tariffs help no one. In the early 1980’s the Democrats in Congress convinced Ronald Reagan against his better judgment to slap import tariffs on cheap steel coming in from Japan and Korea. The argument at the time as I recall was that they were dumping their steel on our market. Dumping is a procedure where a country will conspire with domestic manufacturers to sell products at lower than production costs to other countries in an effort to prop up the domestic work force. The theory here is that in the long run it is cheaper to take a small loss at the retail end, and have the government subsidize that loss, than to have to pay benefits to unemployed workers.

The immediate effect of these tariffs was to protect the bloated, and inefficient American steel industry. The long term effect was quite a bit different. Because American manufacturers had to use either expensive American steel or cheap imported steel with a huge tax applied to it, they were at a distinct disadvantage, globally, when selling their manufactured items here and abroad. A perfect example is the competition between Caterpillar and Komatsu, both heavy equipment manufacturers heavily dependent on cheap steel. Before 1983 Komatsu had no real presence here in this country. During the period that the tariffs were in effect Caterpillar had a very hard time competing against Komatsu at home and abroad, because Komatsu had the advantage of cheap steel that Caterpillar did not have. The jobs that Caterpillar lost were far greater than what was saved in the steel industry, and Komatsu was able to establish a strong foot hold in the American market, that continues to this day. The jobs that Caterpillar lost to Komatsu never came back. In fact this scenario played out all across the manufacturing spectrum, and the type of jobs lost in manufacturing were generally higher skilled and higher compensated than those saved in the steel industry.

So here we are again 25 years later and what have we learned? Apparently nothing. It seems as if this administration just woke up yesterday and collectively said, “Hey I got an idea, let’s try this”, without anyone ever asking the question, “Has this ever been tried before and if so did it work”? Let’s go down a real short list. Since being inaugurated last January, a mere eight months ago, here is what we have. The Stimulus Bill which was sold to the American people as a do or die bill. We were told that passing this bill would prevent a catastrophe. If this was not passed immediately, unemployment would shoot up to 8 %. We are now sitting just under 10% officially and over 16% in reality. After taking just two days to ram it through, the President went on a 3 day vacation without signing it until after he returned.

This bill relied on the failed Keynesian theory that government spending during a downturn could help to turn the economy around by stimulating economic activity that otherwise would not exist. The problem with this theory is twofold. It first assumes that the government is going to know the best places to spend the money, and second that this money taken out of the private marketplace has no negative effect on the economy. The first question I would want an answer to is, has this ever been proven to work, and if so where?

The free market stipulates that each individual, acting in his own self interest, is the absolute best determinate of where goods and capital should flow. Either the free market works or it does not. If the free market only works during good times and not during bad times then as a theory it does not work at all, and we should all be clamoring for a better economic system that includes central government planning as its main tenant. I come to this conclusion based on the evidence that if central government planning works during rough economic times then it must work during good economic times, or it doesn’t work at all. The rules of economics do not change because the economy is in a downturn instead of an upswing. The rules of economics are constant and either the free market is a superior way to determine the flow of goods and capital or Keynesian government central planning is, but you cannot have it both ways.

Next we have Cap and Trade passed by the House earlier this year. All you need to know about this bill is that it will take over 5.7 Trillion dollars out of our economy in the next 30 years. If you believe the figures that were quoted in an article that I blogged about a few days ago then for every 1 million dollars taken out of the private sector it costs the economy 11 jobs. This is a pretty accurate figure and works both ways so I am going to use it. This equates to about 2 million jobs in the U.S. and about 5000 jobs in the 5^th district of Virginia. And while we are losing these jobs the average family of four will be paying an extra 3900 to 5000 dollars per year in increased energy costs. So, how’s that hope and change working out for you now.

When you hear the President and the Democrats talk about all the jobs their stimulus bill saved, try to remember that this is called, “whistling past the graveyard”. The fact of the matter is this, these yahoo’s have no idea what they are doing. At no time in the history of the world has central government planning, and massive borrowing (the stimulus bill), or gargantuan tax increases (cap and trade), or trade wars (tariffs on Chinese tires) ever helped to grow an economy or to bring an economy back from the brink. Quite the contrary in fact; the empirical evidence over the last 100 years and in numerous countries suggests that these efforts on Washington’s part will put our economy into a deep and sustained depression for many years to come.

The Rights of Man

2009-09-13T21:55:00.001-07:00

Rights are non obligatory. I do not have the right to require anyone else to do something for me or to give something to me in order to enjoy my true rights. If someone else is required to do something for me, so that I may enjoy some imagined right, then what I am trying to realize is by definition not a right. While it is noble to want for all men to have food, clothing, housing, and health care, these are values and not rights.

The first right that we are given by our creator is life. This right is given to us at conception and is an unalienable right from that point on according to our foundational belief expressed in the Declaration of Independence. A human being begins at conception because this is the point that all chromosomes, human in nature, first appear. This small group of cells looks exactly as God intended a human being should look, at this stage of development.

After we are born into the world and are separated physically from our mother we immediately begin to express our second right, that of liberty. The right of property comes shortly thereafter as we receive gifts and property in our name that we may or may not have actually traded labor for. The true and full expression of property comes when we act as a completely independent and autonomous human being trading our labor as property for the property of others.

All rights that we have are only extensions of these three basic rights. The right to self defense assumes a natural right to defend that which we own from those who would take it away from us by force or fraud. The right to keep and bear arms is a further extension of this natural law to self defense. If a man has a right to defend his life then he also has the right to use any means possible to express that right. It would not make any sense to say to a man that he can protect himself from another man who has a firearm, only he is not allowed to use a firearm himself. To deny a man the use of any tool that prevents him from protecting himself is immoral, contradicts the concept of natural rights, and is contrary to the foundational principles in which our nation was established.

If America is ever going to find her way back from the wilderness that she is currently languishing in, it is going to be, "We the People", that will do it. Before a journey can begin two critical elements must be ascertained; first the origin and then the destination for our journey. If we are ever going to steer our country back to a constitutional republic as it was intended to be then we must be very honest with ourselves as to its present condition. Practically every law that our Congress passes today, tramples on somebody’s property rights, liberty, or life. This is the exact opposite of what was intended by our founders. Governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, not destroy them.

The only way we will ever find our way back to the safe harbor of true liberty is to demand that our representatives in Congress adhere strictly to the principle of maximizing individual liberty while voting on any new bills before them. Demand that they ask one simple question before any vote. Does this bill increase or decrease the individual liberty of the people. If the answer is increase then the vote is aye, otherwise nay. This rather simple step would alone be a tremendous victory for liberty and would have the metaphorical effect of turning the ship around and setting the right course for home. The continuing journey would require the unwinding of 50 to 100 years of anti-constitutional, stateist/collectivist, laws and precedents.

This by any measure is a very tall order. I know that I will never see the harbor of liberty in my lifetime. This will take a concerted effort by succeeding generations to be fully realized. I believe that if this is to become a reality a new spirit must move across the land, much like the spirit that moved across the land prior to the American Revolution, in what was called the Great Awakening. Perhaps we will have our own Great Awakening, and take up the scriptural quote from Revelation, “I make all things new”, as they did, and make it our own. None of us can know if or when this new Great Awakening might happen, so we must always be ready for its arrival, and continue to evangelize the message of liberty.

Senator Webb Sticks it to Tourism in Virginia

2009-09-12T03:08:00.001-07:00

Here is a glowing article about how Senator Webb sponsored a bill to increase tourism in Virginia. Wow what could be better than that? This completely non biased and non critical article goes on and on about all the jobs that are going to be created by this bill. I can already hear all the alarm clocks going off over the state of Virginia as people are getting up for their first day of work at their new tourism job.

The only problem is that it is not going to happen and here is why. What the article fails to state is that each tourist that comes into the country will be charged $10. Believe it or not this will discourage many visitors from coming at all. Those who do come will have $10 less to spend in the local economy. In the article it states that the tourism industry will also kick in some undisclosed amount to fund this operation. These charges will find their way back down to the consumer level as increases in the cost of tourism services, further increasing the costs incurred by our foreign visitors. This will help to put further downward pressure on tourism and tourist spending in our state.

The good news about this is that we get another government bureaucracy with czars and staffs, and plush offices. We can be assured that these hard working bureaucrats will never go over budget and need actual tax dollars from hard working citizens. Even better news is that the tourism industry paid the lobbyists to help convince Webb to support this bill and now there is a better than even chance that we will see some really big checks being deposited in the James Webb reelection fund.

People who have the means to travel to the United States know we are here. They do not need to be reminded what a great place this is. What they would like, is to quit being treated like common criminals by our customs and TSA people. What they would like is to quit having to pay confiscatory local taxes when ever they rent a car or a hotel room. It is interesting to note also that the article boasts about how many jobs are created when money is put into the private sector, what they also need to point out is that the same number of jobs are also destroyed when that money is taken out of the private sector in taxes and fees.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could get a few less Senators who are good at writing fantasies, and a few more that took and understood Economics 101. If the tourism industry wants to increase its business then it should do what every other corporation is required to do and buy advertising with its own money, and quit influencing feeble minded Senators to loot the hard earned wealth of their constituents, in order to provide corporate welfare for them.

Heath Care

2009-09-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

Well it looks like we are going to get a health care bill passed whether we want it or not. As you listen to all the debates back and forth the one thing to remember, is to listen to your gut and trust that, and not the politicians. For example, does it make any sense at all, when the President claims that illegal aliens will not be covered, when you know that an amendment to the current bill, to specifically deny coverage to non citizens, was voted down by the Democrats? What does your gut say to you about this?

When the President claims that if you like your health care you can keep it, and the bill says if you change your health coverage by any small amount you must move into the government plan, is this just an oversight by the President? My company forces me to change my plan options every year, which means at best I will be able to keep my current plan for one year before being forced into the government plan, by law.

When the President says that abortions will not be funded under his plan with Federal dollars (as if the Federal Government had its own dollars), and you understand that amendments were introduced that specifically prevented abortion coverage in the bill, and all of them were defeated down party line votes, should red flags start to go up? Always go with your gut.

President Obama doesn’t know what is or is not in the health care bill because there are at least 5 different versions floating around the House and Senate, each over 1000 pages. I don’t think He has been in office long enough to read over 5000 pages. He continues to refer to his plan, but the White House does not have a plan, Congress writes the bills, Congress has the plans not the President. No matter what the President says today, this is such a vaguely written bill that it will be in the amendment process for the next 20 years, and he will always be able to come back and say, “well that was an unintended consequence”. Of course it was Mr. President.

Here is something to think about. It is estimated that defensive medicine costs over 137 billion a year. This is medicine that otherwise would not happen except for doctors performing extra, often unneeded, procedures to protect themselves against frivolous lawsuits. Medical malpractice insurance costs all of us over 100 billion dollars a year. Passing comprehensive tort reform would not eliminate all of these costs but a reduction of 50% would not be unreasonable to expect. That works out to be around 120 billion dollars saved every year. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the current health care bill will cost the taxpayers around 100 billion dollars a year more than we are already paying as currently proposed. President Obama could make this health care bill deficit neutral, just by pushing for tort reform, but he won’t. Why? Because he and the rest of his fellow democrats are owned by the trial lawyers, the richest of the special interests. Business as usual, nothing has changed, just go with your gut.

A Reasonable Democrat?

2009-09-09T03:25:00.000-07:00

Make no mistake about it Camille Paglia is a Barrack Obama supporting liberal democrat, but after reading this article don't you wish more democrats were at least as honest as her. I could even believe it would be possible to sit down with her and have a reasoned debate without it degenerating into me being called a racistbigotedhomophobicsexisthatethepoor Republican. Wouldn't that be refreshing?

I especially like the part where she says;

"I rarely watch TV anymore except for cooking shows, history and science documentaries, old movies and football. Hence I was blissfully free from the retching overkill that followed the deaths of Michael Jackson and Ted Kennedy -- I never saw a single minute of any of it. It was on talk radio, which I have resumed monitoring around the clock because of the healthcare fiasco, that I heard the passionate voices of callers coming directly from the town hall meetings. Hence I was alerted to the depth and intensity of national sentiment long before others who were simply watching staged, manipulated TV shows."

I couldn't agree more. However I would add, House, The Office, and any show about warriors. Here is the link.

The Economy

2009-09-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a listing of some headlines today;

UN Wants New Global Currency

China Alarmed by US Money Printing

Dollar Hits New Low

Barrack Obama Accused of Making Depression Mistakes

Do you see a trend here? The Democrats have been running Congress now for just under 3 years, and what do we have to show for it? An economy that is literally at the breaking point, a dollar that is on the verge of collapse, and an unemployment rate that we are told is only 9.7% but is actually somewhere north of 16%. You can believe with all your heart that all of this is George Bush’s fault, but at some point all of us are going to have to wake up to the fact that Congress spends the money and writes the laws, not the President.

Even if you wanted to assign blame to George Bush, you would be forced to answer a very simple question, what policies of George Bush led to our current problems, and were conservative in nature? Tax cuts perhaps? No! There is a direct correlation between those tax cuts passed by a Republican Congress and job growth in the aftermath of 9/11 and the recession of 2000/2001. Besides I wouldn’t call those conservative tax cuts. What kind of self respecting conservative would support temporary tax cuts anyway? Either taxes are too high or they are not. Temporary tax cuts cede the argument to the Statist that high taxes are legitimate, when they are not.

All of these things that we see happening to the economy are not happening in a vacuum. They do have root causes and it is incumbent upon us as citizens to find these root causes and attempt to prevent them from occurring in the future. I will address just one of these problems today and address others in future posts.

The dollar is collapsing because it is a fiat currency and has no intrinsic value. It is not backed by gold or silver, it is in fact backed by the word of our politicians. You could call it a faith based currency. The dollar used to be the international reserve currency (actually it still is but probably not for long), which required all central banks to keep dollars on account in order to pay off international debts. If you wanted to buy oil you had to do it with dollars. The world accepted this because they believed that our government would keep the value of the dollar stable. Silly international community, have you met Barney Frank yet?

A major component in the value of any fiat currency is the faith that the holders of that currency have in it. When these entities lose faith in the dollar, then the dollar will crash. So why are they losing faith? The congress is spending more money than it is taking in. In the past this shortfall was made up by borrowing the money through treasury bond auctions. At these auctions the more people that wanted your bonds the lower the interest rate on those bonds would be. Conversely the fewer the bidders the higher the interest rates would go. Lately no one has been showing up to buy our bonds because the smart ones know that the value of the dollar is going to sink faster than the low interest rates can make up for the loss.

To rectify this situation the Federal Reserve has been buying the excess bonds and printing new money to pay for them. This is called monetizing the debt. I call it counterfeiting. These abuses of the system will show up as inflation in the next year or so and all of us will pay for these Congressional excesses, in the form of higher prices on everything we buy. To make matters worse, all imported items that we depend on will also increase in price due to the loss of faith in the dollar. As those foreign countries attempt to distribute their dollar holdings, those dollars now held overseas will eventually be repatriated here at home causing even higher rates of inflation, by flooding our domestic market with excess dollars.

All of this could have been prevented if we had sent to Washington fiscally conservative representatives who understood the nature of money and debt. Deficit spending, no matter how good the cause, always hurts the people, and always profits the Fed. We are going to be paying for the mistakes of the last two Congresses for a long time to come. I pray that as a country we get it right next year.

Labor Day

2009-09-07T08:39:00.001-07:00

Happy Labor Day everyone. I hope that as we spend time today with our families and loved ones, we will all remember that Labor, the ability to do and the ability to hire, is truly a gift from God. Labor and property are the second fundamental right given to us by God, after the first right, that of life. A mans labor is truly his own and even the Supreme Court has ruled in the past that labor is in fact property. When a man exchanges his labor for something of equal value such as money, he is not earning that money, but instead he is participating in an equal exchange of previously owned items. To tax this activity is immoral and counter productive to the ends of encouraging economic activity.
As we celebrate Labor Day let us not forget how much work has been done to dismantle our beloved Republic, and therefore how much labor God laid out before us to do in the rebuilding of that Republic. So today be of good cheer for we have work to do and struggles to overcome that will last us for generations.

Liberty

2009-09-04T08:11:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up, we referred to America as the land of liberty, land of the free, the country where Lady Liberty greeted all who came to her shores with open arms and a promise of the American dream. The early Americans took pride in what was called rugged individualism. Rugged Individualism is that quality of being able to rise or fall based on the individual making choices in the exercise of their God given liberty. The early Americans took their liberty seriously, very seriously in fact. In 1791 when the Federal Government tried to impose a whiskey tax, the people of western Pennsylvania rose up in insurrection. How dare the Government try to impose a tax, all of 9 cents per gallon, on the fruit of my labor!

In the following months tax collectors were chased out of town after being tarred and feathered, stills of compliant distillers were destroyed, and militia groups were formed to fight the Federal Government, if that is what it came to. This wasn’t just a 9 cent tax; this was an assault on the very liberty that God had given them, the second right the right of labor and of property. Where are those Americans today? Where is the outrage today? Today our liberties are being taken away at a breathtaking pace and there seems to be more outrage from the supporters of this liberty theft, towards the few who do voice their complaints, than from the Americans whose liberty is dying like the last few rays of sunlight at the end of a perfect summer day.

I don’t hear much talk these days about the importance of individual liberty, or of American exceptionalism. On one of his many apology tours abroad, President Obama said the following, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." This is quite profound. If this is the best that the President of the United States can come up with, then what must he really think of this country? What this says to me is that the President does not see the role that the United States plays in the world as being markedly different from any other country in the world. Shouldn’t the President of the United States be the strongest advocate for his own country even if he doesn’t believe it?

America isn’t exceptional because the people are better than anyone else, that would be an absurd notion, because we are every one else, after all. America is exceptional because of the principles that it was founded on. In particular the following; “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal”. This belief alone makes America exceptional. While other countries mouth these words, there is little evidence that others actually believe this, or practice this. Here in America it is belief in this core foundational principle that makes us uniquely American. The Declaration of Independence goes even further by stating, “..that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Right here in black and white it could not be any clearer. The primary function of government, in the American view, is to protect the rights of the individual. This concept alone makes America exceptional among the nations of the world.

The very concept that men have rights given to them by God that are unalienable, and existed before the State, is unique in all of history. To my knowledge, it is unique in all of the world today. At the time of the writing of the Constitution most western societies believed that God gave the power to rule to the king and that the king alone controlled the individual liberties of the people. The people were little more than slaves to the king and his nobles. Today roughly 2/3rds of the world’s people still live under statist forms of governments with little regard to the rights of the individual. The rest of the world, that does enjoy some modicum of liberty, experiences liberty as a function of the liberty that America expresses. We are not just the lamp of liberty to our own people, but to all of the people in the world yearning to breath free.

This means that the weight of history is upon us to preserve our liberty at all costs. This is not just for our children, but for the future generations in other countries, that hope one day to break the chains that bind them to servitude to the state, and dream of the day when they can proudly proclaim, “in our country we also hold these truths to be self evident.”

In the final analysis America is really about one thing and one thing only; liberty. Not just any liberty but an identification with and a strong defense of individual liberty. Without this fundamental belief we are just another first world country trying to get by, and therefore not exceptional. America went from being a small group of British colonies in a backwater part of the world to the most prosperous and powerful nation the world had ever known by strictly adhering to, and upholding the principles of individual liberty. The wealth of any nation is directly correlated to the amount of individual liberty celebrated and enjoyed by the citizens of that nation. If we as a nation continue down this path towards statism and the destruction of individual liberty, we will also be witness to the destruction of the very prosperity that gave rise to our power. If America is to survive then we as a people must always remember what made America great, even if the current occupant of the White House never understood it.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

2009-08-31T04:48:00.000-07:00

I read the following on a post in the weekly Standard today…

“Of 47 economists responding to a survey by the Wall Street Journal, 27 say the recession has ended, and 11 say the trough has been reached or will be by next month. They expect the economy to grow at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the current quarter, and many are looking forward to a 2.75 percent to 3 percent growth rate by year end.”

Remember this. The current quarter ends on September 30. How does an economy grow when it doesn’t hire back the workers it originally laid off. What bothers me about this is that these guys are just flat wrong, and when none of this comes to pass no one will point it out so that when they make this same absurd prediction next quarter they will once again get away with it. Back in 1981 and 1982 when the Reagan administration attempted to pull this country out of the Jimmy Carter/Democrat Congress Recession, they had the Fed jack up interest rates to 18% to get all of the inflationary cash out of the economy. They then got the Congress to pass a massive tax cut with tax simplification in order to jump start the economy. After that they convinced the Saudis to increase oil production that caused the price of a barrel of crude to drop from $40 bbl to below $10 bbl. Finally they started a program to build a 600 ship navy that saw tens of thousands of people going back to work in high paid high skilled jobs in the shipyards and high tech support firms.

Even with all this it took the economy nearly two years to fully recover. In August of 1982 the Dow Jones Industrial average sat at just under 800 and began its meteoric rise that did not see its peak until November of 2007, 25 years later.

In 1932 FDR also inherited a Recession, and also tried government intervention to end it, but his efforts had just the opposite effect that Reagan’s had. Instead of cutting taxes Roosevelt raised taxes, he devalued the dollar after forcing all American citizens to sell their gold to the government at confiscatory rates. He instituted wage and price controls, threatened businesses with the full force of the government, and ultimately wasted billions of the people’s hard earned money on stimulus projects that for the most part were utter failures. During this time other governments around the world did pretty much nothing and allowed the recessions in their countries to run their course, and they did in about 2 to 3 years. By 1939 here in the US unemployment was still at 15% and we were still in the throes of the Great depression due primarily to government obstruction of a recovery.

So here we are in the third quarter of 2009, and we have 10% unemployment, the economy has been in recession since the end of 2007, even though helicopter Ben didn’t know we were in a recession until 9 months after the fact. What has the Obama administration done to turn things around? First they authorized $800 billion in the non-stimulus bill to be spent on pure pork, only not much has actually been spent so far. They have raised taxes on cigarettes, raised taxes on energy through “Cap and Tax”, and raised taxes through inflation by monetizing the debt. They have threatened banks and insurance companies, taken over two automobile companies, and accused doctors of amputating feet in order to pad their pockets. In other words this administration has declared war on American business. Who’s next?

If you are an American businessman what do you see in the future that would encourage you to hire more employees or take the huge risk of expanding your business. Why would anyone want to take a risk like that when none of us know what this administration is going to do next that will adversely affect your business vis-à-vis taxes and regulation. The fact of the matter is that this economy will not turn around as long as this administration and this Congress continue to declare war on American businesses. A real and meaningful recovery will not begin until the following occurs. First Congress must pass significant and permanent across the board tax cuts, to put more money in peoples pockets to spend as they see fit not the government. Second, the Fed must raise interest rates to soak up all the money that they have flooded the market with, and to encourage saving and investment instead of consumption. Third, the Congress must cease its reckless campaign of excessive spending and cut the size of the federal government in order to free up even more capital for the private market. Until you see these reforms occurring I would rule out any sort of recovery anytime soon.

2009-08-28T17:01:00.000-07:00

Why does anyone listen to this guy anymore?

Yesterday chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke said the following

“Prospects for a return to growth in the near term appear good,” while “critical challenges remain,” including possible further losses for financial firms.

Then why are interest rates below zero, Ben? What are these prospects exactly? There is a great video on Youtube that every one should see. It shows Bernanke from 2005 to 2007 being wrong on just about every question he is asked about the economy. I will just go over a few. Here is the link.

July 2005

Answering a question about the possibility of a housing bubble.

BERNANKE: Well, unquestionably, housing prices are up quite a bit; I think it's important to note that fundamentals are also very strong. We've got a growing economy, jobs, incomes. We've got very low mortgage rates. We've got demographics supporting housing growth. We've got restricted supply in some places. So it's certainly understandable that prices would go up some. I don't know whether prices are exactly where they should be, but I think it's fair to say that much of what's happened is supported by the strength of the economy.

This guy was wrong on all counts, and shows what appears to be a complete misreading of what is occurring here. Low interest rates caused low mortgage rates which caused the housing bubble, which caused a growth in housing related jobs and by extension incomes. Not the other way around, Ben.

July 2005

Again on the bubble issue

BERNANKE: Well, I guess I don't buy your premise. It's a pretty unlikely possibility. We've never had a decline in house prices on a nationwide basis. So what I think is more likely is that house prices will slow, maybe stabilize: might slow consumption spending a bit. I don't think it's going to drive the economy too far from its full employment path, though.

Really, Ben? Why don’t you look at the last major recession this country had? You can even go back to the 1930’s if you want to see house prices decline on a nationwide basis. Massive excesses in housing inventory, fueled by artificially low interest rates, can only lead to one thing according to the most basic rules of economics 101, that of supply and demand, and that is LOWER PRICES. Shouldn’t we have someone running the Fed that at least understands this?

November 2006

BERNANKE: This scenario envisions that consumer spending, supported by rising incomes and the recent decline in energy prices, will continue to grow near its trend rate and that the drag on the economy from the [inaudible] housing sector will gradually diminish. The motor vehicles sector may already be showing signs of strengthening. After having cut production significantly in recent months, in response to the rise in inventory of unsold vehicles, automakers appear to have boosted the assembly rate a bit in November, and they have scheduled further increases for December. The effects of the housing correction on real economic activity are likely to persist into next year, as I've already noted. But the rate of decline in home construction should slow as the inventory of unsold new homes is gradually worked down.

Here Ben explains how a momentary and transient downturn in energy prices and a momentary up tick in automobile production is going to turn the economy around. Once again false signals from the fed helped to create an environment that encouraged Detroit to build automobiles that were not wanted or needed, moving both Chrysler and GM closer to collapse.

February 2007

BERNANKE: We expect moderate growth going forward. We believe that if the housing sector begins to stabilize, and if some of the inventory corrections still going on in manufacturing begin to be completed, that there's a reasonable possibility that we'll see some strengthening in the economy sometime during the middle of the new year.

Our assessment is that there's not much indication at this point that subprime mortgage issues have spread into the broader mortgage market, which still seems to be healthy. And the lending side of that still seems to be healthy.

2007 sub-prime lending healthy and not a problem, 2008 huge problem. Isn’t it amazing the difference a year can make.

July 2007
BERNANKE: The pace of home sales seems likely to remain sluggish for a time, partly as a result of some tightening in lending standards, and the recent increase in mortgage interest rates. Sales should ultimately be supported by growth in income and employment, as well as by mortgage rates that, despite the recent increase, remain fairly low relative to historical norms…
Really, just who exactly is supposed to buy those homes? In 2006 the median price for a home in the U.S. was around $260,000, or about 5 times the median income of $50,000
…However, even if demand stabilizes as we expect, the pace of construction will probably fall somewhat further, as builders work down the stocks of unsold new homes. Thus, declines in residential construction will likely continue to weigh on economic growth in coming quarters, although the magnitude of the drag on growth should diminish over time. The global economy continues to be strong, supported by solid economic growth abroad. U.S. exports should expand further in coming quarters. Overall, the U.S. economy seems likely to expand at a moderate pace over the second half of 2007, with growth then strengthening a bit in 2008 to a rate close to the economy's underlying trend.

As we can see in hindsight all of this is completely wrong. But today whenever Ben speaks he keeps saying the same thing and we must assume that he is still wrong. The sad part is that this is not just another Keynesian academic making inaccurate pronouncements from on high, which of course all of us could just ignore if we wanted. This man has the power to control the most important indicators in the world’s largest economy, that being interest rates. Wouldn’t it be safe to assume that if Ben Bernanke gets so many things about the economy wrong, that he then should not be given control of any part of the economy? In fact should any man at all, be given this much power?

Not to worry. He was just re-nominated for another four years! Good grief!

Senator Warner Comes to Town

2009-08-26T07:59:00.000-07:00

Senator Mark Warner came to Charlottesville yesterday to hold a round table with business leaders, and the local paper ran this headline, “Warner calls for lower health costs”. Well folks it doesn’t get any braver than that. With this controversial stand, I say that this is exactly why Virginians love Mark Warner. Hey senator I’ve got a news flash for you, we would all like lower health care costs, where’s your plan?

Senator Warner also said that, “Doing nothing will absolutely undermine our economy”. Really? Well I agree, but I also know that a man running into a burning house with a bucket filled with gasoline, is doing something, but perhaps not the right thing. The senator also said that he would not support a bill that did not lower premiums, and would add to the deficit. The only way that the democrats are going to do that is to invite free market reforms into any health care bill they try to pass, which they will not do. The only other way will be through rationing of health care to the losers in the health care lottery, i.e. the middle class.
I wonder if the good senator would be willing to resign his position if it turns out that the bill he votes for does in fact raise costs, and does add to the deficit, in order to assuage his guilt and shame. I won’t hold my breath.

According to the article, Warner spent most of the time explaining how the Federal Government could help small businesses. Isn’t this really the root of the problem; The idea that the Federal Government can actually help anyone more than it hurts. Overall the Federal Government is, and always will be, a net drag on the economy and by extension small businesses.

Remember Liberty Tree’s rule number 37, if the Federal Government is offering you one dollar in aid or loans, it first had to take three dollars, of your hard earned money, from you to begin with. The corollary to this is if someone from the Federal Government is boasting about some job they brought to your district; remember they first had to destroy three jobs in your district, in order to create that one government job.

Senator Mark Warner would do well to spend some time studying the underlying causes for the large price increases in health care going back to the mid 1960’s. It might surprise him to know that before government got involved in health care in the mid 1960’s that costs for health care were reasonable for everybody. Not cheap but reasonable. It might also surprise Senator Warner to find out that since the Government is the biggest net spender of health care dollars they might also be the primary source for inflationary pressure within the system. Maybe if Senator Warner actually did his homework he would realize that as in most cases, government is not the solution to this problem, but is in fact the source of the problem.

Death Panels Revisited

2009-08-25T15:28:00.000-07:00

8/24/09

As Michele Malkin said, “Death Panels? What Death Panels, Oh those Death Panels”. Even if section 1233 of the Obama care bill floating through Congress wasn’t designed to be a deliberate attempt to install an official “Death Panel” in the American health care system, are we really going to be able to afford government run health care without some form rationing that will lead to death panels. The only way we can know the real answer to this is to look at past experiences of other government run systems similar to what the current crop of Democrats want to impose upon us, and see what they did.

In the Canadian system we have countless stories of people denied timely access to adequate health care, ultimately leading to their deaths. Canada accomplishes rationing by limiting access to specialists and other high cost providers. Waits for some of these specialists can exceed six months or more. For most Canadians this does not pose any more of a problem than the inconvenience of having to wait, but for a small handful this in fact does become a real life death sentence (pardon the pun). Death Panel? No. Same effect? Yes.

In Great Britain they passed a law called the “Mental Capacity Act”, in 2005. This law says that if a patient is unable to communicate with hospital personnel then they may be considered “Due to Die”. At that point food and water are with held and the patient will die a gruesome death by dehydration. This happens every day in the British NHS. Death Panel? Well yes. Same effect? Definitely.

But wait isn’t there another example closer to home that might help to further illustrate this point? Perhaps we could find a government run health care system right here in the U.S. that has something akin to death panels. As it happens we can and we do. The Veterans Administration provides government run health care services to our veterans. By all accounts it is really bad. Remember when they found all those problems up at Walter Reed hospital and tried to make it look like it was Bush’s fault, when all along it was just government run health care business as usual. But I digress, the VA doesn’t have death panels per say, but the do have a death book, called “Your Life Your Choices”. All physicians at the VA are required to provide end of life counseling to patients using this book. As you might imagine no faith groups were consulted in the latest version, and the only group listed in the latest version is the Hemlock Society. Hemlock Society, Hmmm, I wonder what they could add to an end of life discussion? Death Panel, of course not, but pressure to coerce the brave men and women who served our country to end their lives early to save the Obama administration a few bucks? Absolutely.

Let’s take a look at some of the top people in the Obama administration advising it on health care issues.

Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, brother to Rahm Emmanuel has stated the following, "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008). Savings, he writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008). Emmanuel wants doctors to consider “social justice” or “communitarianism” when making their decisions about what type and amount of health care each person should be allowed to have access to. No greater insight into the mindset of the Stateist/Collectivist are you going to receive than this. To the Stateist you are nothing more than property of the State. If you are 20 years old with 45 years of potential tax paying years in front of you then you are valuable, if on the other hand you are 70 years old and drawing Social Security and Medicare you are a liability that needs to get in the back of the line when it comes to the allocation of government resources. He further states,”…medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (JAMA, Feb. 27, 2008). Folks you can’t make this stuff up. Does Dr. Emmanuel support the concept of “Death Panels”, you be the judge.

Dr. David Blumenthal, appointed by Obama as his national coordinator of health-information technology, recommends slowing medical innovation to control health spending. So Obama’s advisor on technology recommends less of it. Now that is what I call putting science back into its rightful place. Blumenthal also recommends that the government be used to control health spending costs. How you ask; by limiting spending of course. He does concede that, "cost controls are associated with longer waits" and "reduced availability of new and expensive treatments and devices" (New England Journal of Medicine, March 8, 2001). But says it is"debatable" whether the timely care Americans get is worth the cost. But from the Canadian experience we know delay equals death for many people.

I saved the best for last. John P. Holdren, is Obama’s top science and technology advisor. In 1977 he co authored a book called, “Ecoscience”, which among other things called for a planetary regime that could use a global police force to enforce, population control through various means such as forced abortions, mass sterilization, and mandatory birth control. One way he advocated to implement his birth control measures was to spike the water and food supplies with birth control drugs. Nice. He has also advocated that trees have the right to sue in court. He also wrote the following, “The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being,”. So even years after birth a child is not a human being and therefore not entitled to basic rights, or perhaps even health care if they are deemed “undesirables” by Dr. Emmanuel.

What about President Obama. How can we discern how he might feel about the question of death panels? Here is all you need to know. In 2003 a bill came before the Illinois Senate Health and Human Services Committee, and its chairman Barack Obama, which would allow doctors to treat infants who survived an abortion, as human beings deserving of health care. He voted not once or even twice but three times to force hospital personnel to allow these tiny and helpless infants to just die of exposure. Death Panels? Yes we have much to be concerned about with this administration and government run health care in general.

2009-08-12T08:52:00.000-07:00

8/12/09

Tom Perriello Comes a Calling

This post was from an earlier entry after I attended the August 11th town hall in Charlottesville, VA.

I attended the town hall meeting at Charlottesville High School last night, and what a night it was. Walking up to the entrance was like walking up to the entrance of the DNC headquarters in Washington DC. We had the posters and the signs and all of the major democrat constituencies represented right there in living color. Even the Lyndon LaRouche crowd was there (I thought he was dead). What I did not see was the booth for the vast right wing conspiracy mob. I was hoping to pick up my “Yes, I’m a mobster bumper sticker”, from their booth. I guess they did not get the memo that the meeting was last night.

When I walked into the loud and crowded auditorium. I noticed a rather large number of people wearing blue armbands and carrying professionally printed Moveon.org “Health Care Now” signs. Hmmm, I think I smell a rat. No, not my congressman, but the obvious attempt to pack the house with government health care supporters. Well it worked. I would estimate that the crowd was easily 60/40 in favor of government run healthcare, you know, like they have in Cuba. I was almost expecting a completely non-orchestrated, spontaneous chanting of yes we can half way through the event, but it did not happen, not even a chorus of Kum-by-ya.

My first impression of Congressman Perriello was actually pretty good. I hate to say it, but I thought he handled himself quite well. He does seem very comfortable in front of a crowd, however he does tend to bloviate a lot more than I would like. Unfortunately, many of his answers were shall we say less than truthful.

Now on to the awards. The funniest guy of the night gets up and says, “Now that we have seen the failure of the free market and we have seen that it does not work, only government can be trusted to effectively run anything, why hasn’t the stimulus money been spent? 40% of the audience laughed hysterically, while the rest wanted to know the answer to this very deep and probing question. I mean, how could a completely competent organization, like the Federal Government, seem to be so utterly incompetent? It doesn’t make any sense.

The dumbest idea of the night was from a guy who wanted to tax junk food so people wouldn’t get fat anymore. How are you supposed to have dialog with these people? Good grief.

Finally, we have the most deceptive and duplicitous person of the evening, and the award goes to ….Tom Perriello! I know, hard to believe but true. What is scary about this guy is that he really can talk the talk, and do it with sincerity. They must have sent him to some Blue Dog Democrat school somewhere, because he almost sounds like a conservative, and he is convincing. On missile defense he says he is in total support of protecting the homelan, but missile defense technology is unproven so he doesn’t support it. Hey Tom, read much? Since 2002 the U.S. military’s missile defense testing hit to miss ratio has been 97%. I would call that proven technology. I find it interesting that one thing that the Constitution demands of the President and Congress is to provide for the common defense, not provide health care, and once again Tom Perriello talks the talk but does not walk the walk. Some other highlights of the night; Congressman Perriello does not want to tax businesses but voted aye on Cap and Trade, the largest tax increase in our country’s history. He would like to see some sort of tort reform, and even brought it up in committee. That’s our Tom, fight’n for the fifth. So even though none of the bills presently in congress have any sort of tort reform included, you can bet they are a slam dunk for Tom to aye. (for the record he did say that he hadn’t made up his mind how he was going to vote. Translation: I know how I am going to vote, I am just not going to tell you right now because I don’t want to get yelled at)

The best whopper of the night was when someone asked how the private companies could expect to compete against the government, and wouldn’t this lead to single payer system? Tom’s explanation was it would not because it would be like going to a super market and just picking your favorite plan off of the shelf, and they could all compete equally. Except that one of those plans will not be required to make a profit and has the unlimited backing of the U.S. Government. No matter how poorly the government plan is run it will always be there undermining the private plans. On top of this we have the President saying in 2003 that he favors a single payer plan. We also have Barney Frank saying just last week that he wants a single payer plan and that the best way to get to it is to start with a “public option” first and that will lead to a single payer by eliminating the private companies. Now Tom is either naive or not being truthful with us when he says that this public option will not lead to a single payer when leaders in his own party believe it will.