A Call to Arms

American populist angst has been rising for some time now. The optimist in me hopes that the Tea Party movement, and with it the rekindling within Americans of the vision of the founders and the defense of our Constitution can "fundamentally transform the United States of America" to coin a phrase from our old socialist pal in the Oval Office.

Yet while my heart tells me that there is a chance to turn this ship around, the overwhelming evidence that I have documented in my more sober if not brutally honest moments speaks to just the opposite. The progressives have been hammering away at our freedoms for well over a century, aggressively indoctrinating the citizenry with their perspicacious propaganda campaign. While our ideas are better, we have not adequately defended them.

Today it occurred to me that the perturbed conservatives I saw on Ailes' evil news network harping on the blasphemous spendthrift blowhards in Washington were missing the point in blaming our politicians for their actions. Sure I am just as outraged as the next fellow at the spending of taxpayer money on projects fraught with waste and corruption, the sheer arrogance of our leaders in running roughshod over our economic liberty and in general the out of control growth of the nanny state.

But just as it was these political leaders who were the great enablers for the bankers in the financial crisis, through the gobs of cheap government credit provided by the head of the banking cartel - the government's Federal Reserve, through their implicit guarantees of too-big-too-fail taxpayer protection and through their push along with the ACORN thugs for providing housing for even the least creditworthy among us, so too was it the American people that have enabled this government.

James Madison said of democracies that they "have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." Perhaps more prescient, Marx posited that "Democracy is the road to socialism." But alas, this is the system that we allowed to take hold though the Constitution never once mentions it, and we the people, who were supposed to vigilantly defend our liberty, have allowed our government to devolve into an instrument whereby each group plunders each and every other group. And what is this instrument of plunder of government but a representation of the people?

Herein lies the problem with blaming the politicians. It is we that have elected these scallywags. Their sole goal is retaining power in office, future of the nation-be-damned. Like for the bankers, though they know the system to be unsustainable in the long run, what matters to politicians is reaping the rewards before the storm. It is the American public that has let them continue to be irresponsible, leaving us with over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities. We have condoned the profligacy and pillaging of our rights.

Throughout history in this country there has been a constant battle waged between those who espouse liberty and those who would sooner trade liberty for tyranny than live in a society based on self-reliance, merit and morality. Even if we have voted against the bad apples, we are complicit in having not convinced our fellow citizens to do so. Instead, we allowed the so-called elites, the political entrepreneurs to take over Washington, D.C., promising the people healthcare, housing and the rest of the hogwash spelled out in the Second Bill of Rights. They debauched our great nation by our sanction.

Now let me turn from criticizing us Americans (I am as complicit in this lack of vigilance as all my Libertarian brethren), lest I start to sound like Barack Obama. What we must do as the antidote to the growing Leviathan is to fight the intellectual fight for liberty on every street corner, in every classroom and through every other media possible. We must infiltrate corrupt and destructive institutions and reveal the truth to our fellow countrymen. We must seek out candidates with no interest in political power - no desire to cut deals but a sheer wish to restore America to its rightful place in the world; to serve as honest and capable stewards aiming to leave a better country for their children and children's children. We must seek people willing to take unpopular positions with a firm and steadfast resolve, equipped with the knowledge of and confidence in the tenets of classical Liberalism. A good start would be to seek out those who have no desire to hold office.

Good government requires a populace that seeks good government. Further, it requires representatives with the courage to fight for prudent policy, not the petty politics of payoffs and plunder. Most importantly, it beckons those who wish to honor the vision of our Founders, in which the liberty of the most important minority, the individual is protected, in which free market capitalism is advanced through the protection of private property and contract rights and in which the defense of our citizenry and by extension the securing of our freedom is the highest priority of government.

Demoralizing as our situation as a nation may be as a result of a government that we have allowed to run amok, I should say that in some ways I am optimistic no matter what direction this country takes. Should we rally to fight the fight against the socialist sophists and begin to roll back the last hundred-plus years of disgraceful governance, we will succeed. On the other hand, if we continue to hurtle towards the day of reckoning of default and/or hyperinflation in von Mises' "crackup boom," the welfare state will collapse of its own weight, and those of us armed with the right ideas will be able to step out of the darkness and help lead the country back to peace and prosperity.

Either way, we must fight on every front to advance the ideals of liberty and engage the leftists (many Republicans included) in debate. We can no longer blame our politicians, but must heed our own advice and take the individual initiative and personal responsibility to ourselves battle to make this country once again a shining city upon a hill. Nothing less than the future of the nation depends on it.
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Credit Cards and the Collapsing Country

The policy of credit card companies charging an annual fee for those cardholders with solid credit is a good proxy for the state of the nation, and also a microcosm of both the progressive (read socialist) movement in this country and the unintended consequences of an economic policy destined to fail -- or succeed if you measure success by increased impoverishment.

Those two solvent, reputable, dare I say creditworthy institutions Bank of America and Citi are reportedly

starting to charge fees to reliable customers in response to a slew of new credit card industry regulations that will limit when banks can hike interest rates. Cardholders who get a new annual fee notice in the mail will be in a no-win situation.

"They can either pay that fee or they can close the account, and if they have had the account for a while and they close it, they are potentially going to hurt their credit card score," said Woolsey (Director of Consumer Research at CreditCards.com).

This response to government intervention provides great insight into the problems with regulations the government claims will help the consumer. By preventing banks from increasing their rates in response to a lack of creditworthy borrowers in the markets, those who have proved creditworthy customers over time will be forced to subsidize those less reliable to make up the difference, proving yet again that there is no such thing as a free lunch. We could examine the further consequences for the macroeconomy of these creditworthy people being incentivized to become less creditworthy or if nothing else losing purchasing power as a result of this policy, but the above synopsis should do.

This policy reflects what happens every time the government tries to set prices - in this case the price of credit. Some people are aided, while others lose as a consequence. Further, as with the way in which government seems to favor the debtor over the creditor today, here the less responsible is favored over the more responsible. Adding insult to injury, the more responsible cardholder must subsidize the less responsible one. In essence, this is the basis of the welfare state. Those who generate more wealth must have a significant percentage of it expropriated to help out those who do not create as much wealth. We can argue over whether wealth generators are more responsible than the indigent, but I think you understand my point.

As I have mentioned before though, this liberal system in the end devours itself. First, it is economically unsustainable. At some point, those continually forced to subsidize the reckless and feckless will either go broke or go Galt. As a consequence, so too will the whole system (go broke that is). Second, from a moral perspective, the values engendered in rewarding people for being unproductive and penalizing those who create will pervert society, leading to its malaise.

As I have harped on continually here, the problem with the development of a capitalist system is that if not constantly fought for on both economic and perhaps more importantly moral grounds, it ends up sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Wealth begets wealth until it begets redistribution of wealth. Redistribution of wealth destroys the mechanisms that create it in the first place and weakens the moral fiber of a society. Much like organisms in nature that grow beautiful and strong only to decay in old age, capitalism seems to grow great only to end in grief.


Tax the rich
Feed the poor
Til' there are no, rich no more Continue reading
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Blogging Geert Wilders at Columbia

Greetings readers. I know it has been awhile and my has the news continued to come at a dizzying pace. The man most likely to cause America's long term destruction at the face of our enemies has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his geniality towards despots. Russians may have the opportunity to inspect OUR nuclear sites. It appears there are more Communist-lovers in the Obama administration, an administration that happens to not be the biggest fan of Glenn Beck and the RNC shills over at Fox News. And as always, Israel has been thrown under the bus by the western world. The more the world changes the more it seems it stays the same.

This evening I want to turn to a topic that has been largely thrown under the bus in light of our depression and the push for socialized healthcare. It is an issue that admittedly I have been mum on because of my own reservations about the sensitivity of the topic, and a lack of clarity in my views in trying to reconcile security with liberty. I will address these points later. But I digress.

The mainstream media has barely blinked (and what a surprise it is) as terrorist attacks have been foiled, court cases involving potential honor killings on our homeland have transpired and investigations proving the infiltration at the highest levels of our government by Muslim groups intent on destroying our way of life have been carried out. While I have been well aware of these issues from the first time I picked up a Steve Emerson book, it seems that based upon an event I attended tonight, our future leaders remain blissfully, suicidally ignorant of the dangers that lie ahead.

Tonight I saw a man speak who has had a fatwa declared against him. A man who has been censored by western nations because they are too afraid of the frankness with which he speaks; frankness which threatens western nations because it alienates a people espousing a hateful ideology living partitioned in their midst. A man who has called for an awakening at a time when our collective slumber threatens to cause us to lose before we even fight. Tonight Geert Wilders spoke at my alma mater, that old bastion of tolerance Columbia University. To the crowd's credit, this time there was no rushing of the stage.

Wilders' main argument centered on the fact that the ideology of Islam is a hateful one, given the laws imposed on people dictated by the Koran, and the hateful, violent and strongly anti-Judeo Christian bent of the book. He explained how this ideology has led Muslims throughout Europe to seek the destruction of western civilization, and that given their population gains, soon they would be able to take over Europe through democratic means. This was no news to myself or anyone who has been following the developments over in Great Britain, where Sharia law is being implemented and the society has been split in two with the British legislature, frankly cowardly MIA. This was no news to anyone who has witnessed the barbarism in France where chaos broke out in the streets largely driven by Muslim immigrants. This was no news to anyone who remembers the murder of Theo Van Gogh or the outrage at the Mohammed cartoon.

But what was refreshing was the fact that Wilders spoke the truth, unafraid of the consequences. He said things that any student here would be afraid to say (a fear which is probably the first sign that a battle is being lost). On cultural relativism, Wilders boldly asserted that Judeo-Christian values were superior to those of Islam promulgated in the Koran. He cited our ability to speak freely, protection from government and granting of civil rights to all groups as being superior to the rights engendered in Muslim culture and law. He overtly referred to the Koran as an evil book, though he rightly separated the hatefulness of the surahs from condemnation of all Muslims themselves. He even posited that Jefferson had acquired the Koran used to swear in Congressman Ellison so he could understand his enemy when the US took on the Barbary pirates during the early 19th century. He condemned the US government for supporting a UN resolution to ban free speech when it comes to stereotypes deemed offensive. He noted that fundamentally, criticism of religion is in fact the most important measure of free speech, and that it is being thwarted throughout the western world.

He also did something that no European politician has done in my lifetime that I can recall, stating that Israel is the canary in the coal mine, the "beacon of light in a pitch black area" in the Middle East. He boldly asserted much to the chagrin of his haters in the audience that the homeland of the Palestinians was Jordan. He noted, invoking a point similar to that of George Gilder in his fascinating new book The Israel Test, that Israel is fighting the war that we are losing - the fight for freedom against Islam, and that it is our moral obligation to protect her as the first line of western defense. He cited a handful of pieces of legislation that should be implemented, including: a Constitutional amendment that each European nation's identity is one of Judeo-Christianity, a loyalty oath for Muslims in Europe, suspension of Muslim immigration given the grave problems facing Europe's already exploding Muslim population, and expulsion of all those who wish to carry out jihad or commit crime on European soil. Most importantly, he urged all Europeans to vote into office "fewer Chamberlains and more Churchills."

Personally I got a vicarious thrill listening to a man who said certain things that I wish I could say but am afraid to for fear of reproach or worse a fatwa against me. I was proud that he gave a voice to those of us afraid to express our First Amendment rights in the supposed last, best hope of this Earth.

Yet at the same time, this event was a sobering one. As I intimated, many people scoffed at Wilders' ideas, decrying him for his belief that Muslims want to take over Europe, and guffawing at his poignant criticism of the Koran. These people have no idea about the struggle we are facing. When our enemies are willing to blow themselves up for a cause, and we quell free speech so as to appease them, you know that we are losing this battle. Americans are no more awake today than they were on September 11th. They remain as complacent as ever because they either do not wish to believe that a large enough percentage of the Muslim population is out there ready, willing and potentially able to destroy us, or because they are simply blind to it.

Sitting in a room with supposedly informed, intelligent students, I was struck by their utter ignorance when it comes to people who wish to take away the liberties both social and political that they so cherish. I sat in astonishment as women criticized Wilder's, a man who opposes the very ideology that subjugates women and leads them to be killed out of honor when they reject Islam. I have news for these people -- if you do not wake up soon, one day this country is going to be lost. Laugh at and deride those who warn you, but it is we who are trying to defend your freedom to be ignorant, naive socialists. It is we who defend your freedom to try to shout down those who are upholding our Constitution.

As I mentioned, I wanted to address some general points that I have been grappling with on liberty and security in our country. I have always on this blog defended classical Liberal values. Generally speaking, I believe that any infringement on our rights no matter how small will lead to the eventual collapse of all of our rights and thus must be stopped. However, we cannot have liberty without security. Our Constitution lays out our liberties, but also seeks to ensure their protection. In Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, it is stated: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States." When an enemy threatens the values of your Constitution, this enemy must be defeated. We are not serious about defeating this enemy.

Right now, our odious politically correct atmosphere has paralyzed our country. We are working to appease the enemy within. We are going about our daily lives blind to the reality that the threat is growing and that our enemies are putting a happy face on their movement by naming their fronts things like "CAIR."

I would argue that if we were serious, our attitude might be more like this: If there are people in this country who wish to implement Sharia law, a law diametrically opposed to our Constitution and more important opposed to our natural rights granted to us by our Creator, than these people should be sent back to their homelands. If there are people who wish to carry out jihad on US soil and blow up our great centers of commerce and our Synagogues and Churches, then these people should not be given student visas, they should be deported. If there are people in this country who shun granting individual liberties to all, and special privileges to none then please exit stage left. If you don't agree that our Constitution is the supreme law of the land, then go someplace where you can live under Sharia law, don't attempt to impose it on us. Unfortunately today there are Mosques all around this country where undoubtedly anti-American views are being spewed. Reverend Wright probably looks like Kahane compared to some of the other imams here. The people who attend these Mosques and support terrorism either directly or indirectly should not be allowed to enjoy the fruits of this country.

For those who are moderate Muslims, you must speak up and declare to the American people the nature of our enemy. To sit back in silence for fear of being outcast by the Muslim community is a small price to pay for the total loss of freedom for everyone in this land. I cannot stress enough the importance of the so-called moderate Muslims working to help awaken this nation to see the folly of and the danger inherent in the road that we are going down (if for no other reason than because all of us white, fear-mongering teabaggers have lost legitimacy as we are mere racists and bigots). To continue down this suicidal path where we live in fear of offending people who wish to undermine our way of life is a slap in the face of the forefathers who fought to make this a free nation. We must get serious or we will lose. In closing, let me hearken back to Reagan who said: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." Friends, we must courageously take up this battle. Continue reading
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Kalamitous Krugman

In a recent New York Times Op-Ed entitled "Till Debt Does Its Part," Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman rebuffs those few reactionary souls who argue that all this debt we are incurring is a bad thing. He assures us,

...don’t fret about this year’s deficit; we actually need to run up federal debt right now and need to keep doing it until the economy is on a solid path to recovery. And the extra debt should be manageable. If we face a potential problem, it’s not because the economy can’t handle the extra debt. Instead, it’s the politics, stupid.

Sometimes you really have to wonder what the standards are for winning a Nobel Prize. We have an economy built on consumer debt which relative to disposable income increased from a low in 1945 to its peak in 2007. As the Daily Reckoning further notes, we have $20 trillion in excess debt to work through over the coming years. Yet while on the private side, we need to pay for our sins, liquidate our debts, allow malinvestments to go belly up and start over on more solid fiscal ground, apparently the public sector can just keep on trucking.

As the sage Mr. Krugman notes,

Right now deficits are actually helping the economy. In fact, deficits here and in other major economies saved the world from a much deeper slump. The longer-term outlook is worrying, but it’s not catastrophic. The only real reason for concern is political. The United States can deal with its debts if politicians of both parties are, in the end, willing to show at least a bit of maturity. Need I say more?

Explain this to me exactly. When are deficits a help to an economy in distress? If the whole reason we are in economic distress is because of a glut of debt, then why is the answer to pour more gasoline on the fire? Any company that still functions in any semblance of a free market knows that if it can't service its debt, it will be forced to make difficult decisions, potentially opting for bankruptcy. It cannot continually slop at the trough of the debt market.

But Krugman seems to think that the government can have its cake and eat it too. Where a sober person might argue that in hard times, a government must tighten its belt, like a business or a man, Krugman seems to think that incurring more and more debt, in essence stretching out the inevitable painful liquidation whilst creating another debt/currency crisis down the road is better. Why have one financial crisis when you can have two or three stretched out over a longer period of time? You get the sense that Krugman's agenda is more political than economic sometimes.

Which brings me to my next point. Krugman believes the only reason for concern over the debt is "political." Proud of this claim, Krugman states, "Need I say more?" Well yes, I think you need do so. Our currency, and the debts run up by our government denominated in our currency are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government; which is to say our money and debt are backed by our economy, our people. If we are in for a prolonged period of negative private sector growth, high unemployment and increased intervention in all aspects of life, especially our economy, how can Krugman make the assumption that the ability to continue adding to our debt solely rests on the "maturity" of the politicians? Can Barney Frank snap his fingers and suddenly make the world buy our paper?

If the politicians wish to be "mature" they can remove themselves from the private sector, slash spending and taxes, let whole swaths of industry go belly up and allow people to foreclose on their homes and pay off their debts. Alternatively, if the politicians wish to be immature, they can do so through intervention and coercion.

Krugman as one might expect opts for the latter, immature route. Mind-numbingly, he proclaims:

If governments had raised taxes or slashed spending in the face of the slump, if they had refused to rescue distressed financial institutions, we could all too easily have seen a full replay of the Great Depression.

As I said, deficits saved the world.

In fact, we would be better off if governments were willing to run even larger deficits over the next year or two. The official White House forecast shows a nation stuck in purgatory for a prolonged period, with high unemployment persisting for years. If that’s at all correct — and I fear that it will be — we should be doing more, not less, to support the economy.

Krugman, going along with his Keynesian (read socialists) brethren, forgets about the failures of all of the interventionism even before his idol FDR ever got into power during the Depression, in addition to the disastrous results of similar policies (which he of course advocated) over the last two decades in Japan. These frauds continue to peddle the same illogical government gobbledygook that prolonged the Depression, all the way to "cash for clunkers", the modern day equivalent of FDR's forced killing of crops and slaughtering of pigs.

Mr. Krugman seems to think that interventionism is what saves economies. Might I ask then, why not intervene from the start? If the state is so good at managing crises, why not let it manage all industry in good times as well? Is the free market only sufficient when the Dow is rising? And if deficits are the cure-all, then why do nations ever default on their debt? Why is Zimbabwe the way Zimbabwe is? Could it be that perhaps the central planners are not so divine after all?

To be fair, Krugman, digressing notes:

But what about all that debt we’re incurring? That’s a bad thing, but it’s important to have some perspective. Economists normally assess the sustainability of debt by looking at the ratio of debt to G.D.P. And while $9 trillion is a huge sum, we also have a huge economy, which means that things aren’t as scary as you might think

Here’s one way to look at it: We’re looking at a rise in the debt/G.D.P. ratio of about 40 percentage points. The real interest on that additional debt (you want to subtract off inflation) will probably be around 1 percent of G.D.P., or 5 percent of federal revenue. That doesn’t sound like an overwhelming burden.

Even though all this debt we're adding on might not actually be so great, we have a huge economy. Ah, the panacea of the huge (albeit shrinking) economy - an economy based on consumption, services and debt, the hallmarks of any economic powerhouse. He also argues that a rise in debt/GDP of 40% is OK, since this debt will only be 5% of federal revenue, which doesn't sound so overwhelming. So essentially, because it's only 5% of a massively-sized federal government which will have ever-decreasing tax revenues necessitating continued debt financing (to pay for more boondoggles), we should be OK to pay off our debt (with devalued dollars I suppose?).

What might our lenders think about that? Krugman has an answer for this too.

Now, this assumes that the U.S. government’s credit will remain good so that it’s able to borrow at relatively low interest rates. So far, that’s still true. Despite the prospect of big deficits, the government is able to borrow money long term at an interest rate of less than 3.5 percent, which is low by historical standards. People making bets with real money don’t seem to be worried about U.S. solvency.

I would challenge the assumption that the US government's credit will remain good. As Krugman notes, our debt/GDP is going to rise significantly, "The official White House forecast shows a nation stuck in purgatory for a prolonged period, with high unemployment persisting for years," and as I mentioned government is intervening in the economy on an unprecedented scale, but relax, our friends in the Far East will continue to bankroll us. Krugman should take a page from Milton Friedman's playbook (along with those of Hayek, von Mises and Bastiat) and remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch. All government can do for "revenue," is directly tax, or indirectly tax through issuing debt (taxing future generations and/or devaluing the currency) or printing money.

While Krugman argues that the people "making bets" don't seem worried about our solvency, as numerous publications have noted, the Chinese are buying less treasuries and stockpiling commodities (however short-lived the Times may think it will be), indicating that they are diversifying out of dollar-denominated assets. Meanwhile, the government has had to take the drastic measure of purchasing its own Treasuries, with the Fed committing to buy $300bn in notes (i.e. printing $300bn) and also monetizing the debt more discretely. In other words, the government has had to keep its own borrowing costs down artificially, making up for the lack of demand of its primary dealers by bidding for its own debt. But look at the YTD yield curve for the 10-Year Treasury, and tell me that the markets aren't reacting at all to our fiscal recklessness:


Moreover, just because rates haven't spiked by 500bps in the last year, does that mean that market participants really aren't scared about our solvency? Markets can stay irrational for long periods of time, just look at the housing bubble or any of the other bubbles which after the fact have seemed so obvious. Further, I would argue that creditors like China are being perfectly rational. The Chinese are trying to shift their money towards assets with real tangible value like commodities, while doing as little as possible to spook the government debt markets, because doing so would hurt the value of their own paper. If they flooded the markets with Treasuries, all of their dollar-denominated assets would plummet in price. It's not in their interest for there to be a run on the US government yet. But that doesn't mean that they won't slowly but surely make their exit from US paper assets, leading to higher borrowing costs for our government and less confidence in our dollar. As I mentioned, there is no free lunch.

Krugman notes that other governments that have practiced similar profligacy like Belgium and Italy never faced financial crises in the early 1990s, but there are obvious notable differences. We are the biggest economy in the world. We were the most prosperous one. We have the world's reserve currency. We are not accustomed to the kind of fiscal stagnancy faced in Europe. I just do not see that Krugman's comparisons hold water. A more apt comparison in my eyes would be the US versus the British Empire circa its collapse.

Regardless, I want to return to the fundamental point that going into more debt to solve a problem caused by too much debt makes no sense. One might argue that sometimes debt can be beneficial and not cause long term harm. One might cry that parents are right to take out a mortgage on a house to raise their children. If the family can reasonably expect to generate the cash flows to retire this debt over time, then this will certainly be fine. But the US is like one giant family of drug-addled deadbeats looking to buy a mansion in the Hamptons, having already foreclosed on its subprime mortgage, maxed out all of its credit cards and traded in its Rolexes to the local pawn shop. And its only cash flows are those it can obtain by plundering its citizenry.

Debt is OK if you can reasonably expect to pay it off. To incur even greater debt in the face of debt that you will already be unable to service is downright immoral and will lead to severe consequences for the people.

These deficits in and of themselves are also not productive. They represent a stealing of wealth from future generations. As I mentioned, the only way to pay down the debt will be to tax future Americans, either directly or indirectly through inflating the money supply and thus devaluing the currency. Further, regarding what the debts are actually being used to finance, as I have argued in accordance with sound Austrian economics, the deficit spending for bailing out failing ventures stops the market from naturally adjusting, and leads to less productive if not downright destructive "jobs," and labor being diverted from the private sector.

So in some respects again, Krugman is right that our politicians need to be mature. But the people get the government they deserve, and as of yet though there have been some bright signs, the majority of people don't seem to want to deal with the pain that mature servants would bring them today for a brighter tomorrow.

It is worth noting that in Krugman's delusion, he actually makes a redeeming comment:

Over the really long term, however, the U.S. government will have big problems unless it makes some major changes. In particular, it has to rein in the growth of Medicare and Medicaid spending.

He actually has me for a second, until the subsequent stanzas:

That shouldn’t be hard in the context of overall health care reform. After all, America spends far more on health care than other advanced countries, without better results, so we should be able to make our system more cost-efficient.

But that won’t happen, of course, if even the most modest attempts to improve the system are successfully demagogued — by conservatives! — as efforts to “pull the plug on grandma.”

Keep it classy, Paul.
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Community Organizers Owe Their Livelihood to Capitalism

The community organizers' struggle is one of class warfare. As Saul Alinsky wrote, "A People’s Organization is the banding together of large numbers of men and women to fight for those rights which insure a decent way of life...A People’s Organization is dedicated to an eternal war. It is a war against poverty, misery, delinquency, disease, injustice, hopelessness, despair, and unhappiness."

Interestingly enough, the very system that defeats the conditions that Saul laments is capitalism. It has improved the lot of many, leading to higher living standards and a more moral economy than any to come before it. Yet it is this very philosophy that these groups decry - one which is also ironically their lifeblood.

As a WSJ editorial notes, ACORN is "a union-backed, multimillion-dollar outfit that uses intimidation and other tactics to push for higher minimum wage mandates and to trash Wal-Mart and other non-union companies...its organizers are best understood as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even the Democratic Party." Indeed, much of the steering committee for HCAN (Health Care for America NOW), a good proxy for the socialist movement is tied in one way or another to labor, labor which would not exist without capitalism.

Without capitalism (the antithesis of the socialism they relish), the jobs that it creates, the living standards it furnishes and the varying degrees of wealth that it naturally leads to, these comrades would have nothing to fight against.

Without capitalists to build businesses, there would be no jobs save for those provided by the state, and no labor unions. Living conditions would be miserable. The poorest would only dream of televisions, cars, cell phones and computers, not to mention cheap generic drugs, food, clothing and running water. FDR's "Second Bill of Rights" would not have been conceived of because these so-called "rights" (if they had developed at all) would have been reserved solely for kings and queens, not middle class Americans.

The community organizers use the fruits of capitalism to fund themselves. Many of these groups are taxpayer-subsidized. Donors also consist of private charities and fat cats like George Soros. All government funds come out of the pocket of the taxpayer, who earns his income from his work, work attributable to the market. Others such as private foundations and "Soros-ites" use their own funds, again resulting from labor in the (nominally) free market to bankroll these radicals.

The socialist groups use instruments created by capitalism to propagandize. They use the computer to disseminate information (I grant that R&D for the internet was partially attributable to government, but practically all of the applications were created by the private sector), signs, t-shirts and other merchandise all produced by private enterprises to advertise and lastly books put to market by private publishers and sellers to spread their message.

Read "I, Pencil" and tell me that the tools the organizers use are attributable to anything other than the spontaneous order of capitalism.

The aforementioned groups all fight to kill capitalism, but without capitalism they would not have their natural enemy. Without capitalism they would not have a conception of what "decent" living standards were. Without capitalism they would not have jobs besides those provided by the state (which admittedly they might prefer), let alone their precious unions. Without capitalism they would not have the means to mass propagandize. Without capitalism these parasitic groups would perish. But instead they feast on the fruits of capitalism, drinking the sweet nectar of the productive members of society.
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Five Things to Get Your Morning Started

1. Van Jones - Continuing in the line of moderate, sane czars prudently chosen by President Obama, we have this man:

It's not as if Obama just surrounds himself with lefties. He goes for the most radical, vitriolic and just plain batty people. There is no real oversight over these aptly named czars, and this extra layer of government allows Obama free rein over the system of checks and balances. It is very telling that the people in our government who he has sole power to pick are the craziest and most destructive.

2. A White House report shows that H1N1 may kill 90,000 - I'm going to come out out right now and say that I don't know how exactly the White House is going to play this, or what tactics they are going to use, but they are going to try to use this virus as a crisis to increase federal power. They can use it to sell national healthcare, or they can intervene with the states' handling of an outbreak, or try something far more nefarious like using the flu to declare martial law and subvert our liberties. Right now, they are just releasing these reports to pave the way for increased intervention down the road.

3. NY AFL-CIO head named chairman of the NY Fed - I couldn't believe this the first time I read it, but then again when you look at the big picture this makes perfect sense. The banking cartel needed to make amends for having their political brethren in important government positions. Labor is gaining inordinate power under the Obama administration and are probably the constituency that he is most banking on for his re-election in 2012. This move follows the strategy of the politicians to a tee - the government will do whatever it takes to bail out the moneyed interests and the union laborer's interests, while screwing everyone else in-between. They bribe the moneyed interests to keep them paying the taxes to subsidize the poor. They bribe labor at the expense of the real capitalists and entrepreneurs who create labor's jobs. The middle class and those who create the prosperity around us pay the price.

4. Eric Holder will pursue CIA interrogators - "Holder said that he realizes the move is controversial, but that it was the only responsible course to take. The decision does not reflect a sharp division between the Justice Department and the White House, government officials said, given the limits of the preliminary review and the respect that Obama says he maintains for the role of an independent attorney general." I mean wow. First, what brilliant politics by Obama. He allows Holder to go after prosecuting members of the CIA because of the role of the "independent attorney general," so he gets what he probably wanted all along but can always tell the critics that he is merely allowing for the proper separation of powers. Second, WTF is wrong with you Eric Holder. You go after the people that are doing their job to defend our country ex post, threatening the CIA and deterring anyone from ever joining the agency from this point forward, yet fail to go after members of the Black Panthers threatening to bludgeon people at the voting booths.

5. Obama on the Vineyard - The President always seems to come up smelling like roses. While the world goes to hell, and his party is taking bullets at townhalls (sometimes arguing that they should use bullets themselves), Mr. Obama gets to hit the links and sip on cocktails. Now I have absolutely no problem with President's taking vacations (though it is garbage that they use taxpayer dollars to do so), as I understand that a "vacation" for a President is hardly a real vacation, and that their job is highly stressful all the time. That being said, imagine if a Republican President during a time like this when the country is running $9 trillion deficits over the next ten years (Barry's guys were $2 trillion off on the math there mind you) and unemployment numbers are high decided to head to a ranch in Crawford or worse some lush pad out in Orange Country for some R&R. The media would be up in arms. But it seems that hypocrisy is the way of the world today. At least Obama should have the courtesy to invite some of his poor community organizing friends out to the 29-acre estate.
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On the Principle of National Healthcare

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." – Frederic Bastiat

Pundits, pontificators and plebeians all have polarized around the issue of national healthcare. Many have spoken wisely on the pros and cons of the proposed system, a heartening fact given the relative deafening silence when it came to the other government boondoggles of the last few years (really the last hundred to be exact). At the heart of the matter is a debate fundamental to our liberty that the public has failed to have. This regards the broader ramifications of a government-granted right to health.

Aristotle said that man seeks pleasure while avoiding pain. Healthcare is a means to prevent physical pain, and thus I would argue secure pleasure. However, a need for healthcare is dictated by one’s physical condition. One’s physical condition is attributable to a variety of factors. First, there is the question of diet. Then, there are one’s living conditions, namely shelter and clothing. Surely there is a psychosomatic factor as well. Finally of course, there is the question of one’s physical activity level.

If we are to allow healthcare to fall under the purview of government, then certainly it must follow that all things that contribute to one’s health must also be regulated by the government.

Thus, necessarily each and every citizen will have a responsibility to provide ample food, sufficient shelter and clean clothing for each and every other citizen. Likewise, it should follow that the types of food be regulated to ensure an optimal diet, and the shelter and clothing be comfortable enough and of high enough quality to meet government standards. Since one needs a stable living environment, should not the government also have a say as to how children are raised within their homes? Naturally one’s mental health might also be tied to access to diversions, so should not all entertainment such as the arts, film and sports also be government-controlled and taxpayer-subsidized? Should not exercise be mandated, with government-run physical fitness centers for all? What scares me most is that in writing this list, government already controls many of these things in one way or another.

Naturally, a government-run system of healthcare will lead to arbitrary, whimsical intrusions into our daily lives. Who is to set the bounds as to what constitutes proper controls to make the system “competitive” and “affordable,” when the Ezekiel Emanuel’s of the world will influence the system?

Much like the Necessary and Proper Clause, nationalized healthcare will serve as a Trojan horse; it will lead to the greatest infringement on our natural rights of all, infringement on our lives. You’d think the state would already be satisfied having devoured our liberty and property (pursuit of happiness if you prefer), but always hungry for more power, under this system it will get personal.

Perhaps scarier than the details of this system, devilish as they may be is the principle that from the first day we spend on this Earth, given a right to health for all, our responsibility will be to provide for our fellow man, valuing the community above ourselves. If one were to choose to dedicate one’s life to supporting others, of one’s own volition, than this would be fine. The merits of sacrifice for others are numerous and in many cases commendable. However, under a national healthcare system, because of a handful of politicians, we will be forced from day one to work to support everyone else, because the state says so. In the end, we will all be enslaved to each other. Our common lot will be one of misery.

Call me selfish. Call me greedy. Call me immoral. I value my life above yours, insofar as the Leviathan is forcing me to subsidize your eating habits, drinking habits, smoking habits mental health and genetic predisposition. I do not want to be forced to pay for your healthcare by government decree, nor should I. The Founders guarantees my right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To presuppose that the collectives’ right supersedes my own destroys these very rights. It ensures pain for all and pleasure for none.

I leave you with some prescient words from Grover Cleveland – the last respectable Democrat - regarding his reasoning for rejection of an act to appropriate federal funds for drought-stricken Texas farmers. He declared:

The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of the kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

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