Next time you hear Tom Friedman or some other supposed ‘sophisticate’ praising China’s enlightened, technocratic government or it’s vaunted economic wisdom, remind them of these prisons and prisoners. This is an ongoing human rights violation and a crime against humanity. Friedman once longed for the U.S. to be “China for a day” so the U.S. president could just order the policies he knows that would be best for the U.S. How delusional!

Watch the video and weep for these poor souls.

Technorati Tags: china, prison labor, slavery

Watch this video. Jon Stewart skewers Fox and CNN for their willful exclusion of Ron Paul from their coverage. It’s too good to not pass on!

Alan Blinder, Ph.D. of Princeton, laid out the case for not cutting government spending right now due to it’s economic impact in today’s Wall Street Journal. In this article, he posits such half-truths and simplistic questions as the following:

“The generic conservative view that government is “too big” in some abstract sense leads to a strong predisposition against spending. OK. But the question remains: How can the government destroy jobs by either hiring people directly or buying things from private companies? For example, how is it that public purchases of computers destroy jobs but private purchases of computers create them?” Alan Blinder, WSJ 6/21/11

This the worst kind of  dissembling, and doesn’t withstand the slightest scrutiny. A few points to refute his quisling-like defense of the indefensible.

1. Creating jobs – As Bastiat said, he is focusing on the ‘seen’, not the ‘unseen effects’ of government spending. Every tax dollar the govt spends it is taken from an individual who would have otherwise saved, invested or spent it. So, there is no new economic activity created when the govt spends tax revenue, it is merely shifting it elsewhere. Every study of the “velocity” of govt spending shows that a dollar of govt spending has far less impact on GDP growth than private spending due to the vastly greater efficiency of markets allocating resources. This last bit was proven despite decades of socialists trying to develop models for centralized control of resources, but even the hardiest leftist economists gave  up, such as Robert Heilbronner did in 1989. Govt spending is never better for the economy than private spending in any real, fully accounted for sense. It’s necessary for certain things we want the govt to do, but every dollar it spends is reducing our GDP, not increasing it based simply on its proven lower velocity. Game, set, match, dipstick.

2. Borrowed money – When we are spending borrowed money, all we are doing is borrowing future economic activity as real dollars need to be taken from tax payers to pay that debt off. There is no free lunch. Since we are now borrowing so much, yes, in the very short term, we would see some reduction in economic activity from reduced spending, but contnued borrowing is also a very real threat to our economy in other ways. By manipulating interest rates to keep them low so we can afford all this debt, the Fed has distorted our savings and investment rate, leading to malinvestments and real problems in capital formation. And since capital isn’t homogeneous, it’s isn’t fungible, so govt tricks to try and spur capital formation such as pouring liquidity into the system don’t work. Free market economists in the Austrian and Chicago school, so derided by the simpering sophisticates at places like Princeton, seem to be able to ignore all these facts and just land on the current moment. with a very narrow view to correctly state that cutting federal govt spending dramatically would impact economic growth, while ignoring the very real problems with deficit spending. As well, as soon as interest rates rise, the servicing of this debt will consume huge amounts of our federal budget every year, crippling govts ability to do what it was tasked to do by our constitution.
3. GOP claims – It is technically correct that money left in private hands will create more GDP growth than when spent by the government because of the universally agreed to superior efficiency of free markets versus central planning. It is also true that significant cuts to spending of borrowed money will cause some short term pain, but is much better for us in the long run. If Blinder tells the whole truth, he’s really saying. screw your children and grandchildren, we want to party now!

I’m no fan of the GOP, but if Blinder thinks making simplistic, populist points is helpful, people should know he’s just prattling the monetary and fiscal voodoo of the left/Progressives. The cause he’s flacking for is the school of economics that got us in this mess in the first place.

Technorati Tags: alan blinder, deficit spending

Wow, rarely have I read such a direct and damning assessment of our relationship with Pakitan. I’m not sure what to think of it. Here’s an excerpt, from Christopher Hitchens in July’s Vanity Fair.

“Salman Rushdie’s upsettingly brilliant psycho-profile of Pakistan, in his 1983 novel, Shame, rightly laid emphasis on the crucial part played by sexual repression in the Islamic republic. And that was before the Talibanization of Afghanistan, and of much of Pakistan, too. Let me try to summarize and update the situation like this: Here is a society where rape is not a crime. It is a punishment. Women can be sentenced to be raped, by tribal and religious kangaroo courts, if even a rumor of their immodesty brings shame on their menfolk. In such an obscenely distorted context, the counterpart term to shame—which is the noble word “honor”—becomes most commonly associated with the word “killing.” Moral courage consists of the willingness to butcher your own daughter.

If the most elemental of human instincts becomes warped in this bizarre manner, other morbid symptoms will disclose themselves as well. Thus, President Asif Ali Zardari cringes daily in front of the forces who openly murdered his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and who then contemptuously ordered the crime scene cleansed with fire hoses, as if to spit even on the pretense of an investigation. A man so lacking in pride—indeed lacking in manliness—will seek desperately to compensate in other ways. Swelling his puny chest even more, he promises to resist the mighty United States, and to defend Pakistan’s holy “sovereignty.” This puffery and posing might perhaps possess a rag of credibility if he and his fellow middlemen were not avidly ingesting $3 billion worth of American subsidies every year.”

And this is just a start. He goes on to re-publish a letter from a Pakistani friend who expresses his deepshame about Bin Laden being found in Abottabad, especially given that KSM was found in Rawalpindi, the city which just happens to be home to the headquarters of the Pakistani Army. And that’s not all. Hitchens take on their betrayal of the U.S. reads like an indictment. He puts it in historical context as well, comparing it the treachery visited upon us by other “partners” in the past. It’s riveting, and to my thinking, a must read for anyone who’s thinking hard about what we are doing in that part of the world.

Read the full article here. I’d love to hear what you think.

Technorati Tags: christopher hitchens, pakistan

Warning, the images in this video are not suitable for children or the faint of heart. Real images of stoning, genital mutilation and honor killings are shown so be prepared. While I’m actually opposed to our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I also think that we shouldn’t kid ourselves about what the Islamic faith is about. The treatment of women depicted in this video is supported by mainstream Islamic doctrine – these are not “radicals” – these are mainstream  Imams in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran and elsewhere upholding these practices. Why should we be tolerant of this? I’m not tolerant of a religion that oppresses women so horribly, are you? Shar’ia is not just religious – it is also a governing structure for society, hence it is not comparable to other religions we “tolerate” in the U.S. Political Islam is a movement that seeks to expand the Muslim world and Shar’ia along with it. Are you actually prepared to say that this belief system is an alternate way of life that we should accept? I’m not, it’s pre-modern and horrific in its very nature – no thanks. No tolerance here for this repressive, violent, authoritarian and totalitarian belief system – how about you?  If you are “tolerant” of it, well perhaps you should watch this video again…

I love this video! It uses the hip-hop genre, in a kind of ‘battle’ set up between Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek. Each present their theory and you are left to choose (but i guess it’s  biased towards Hayek). I you ever really wanted to know the difference between free market economics and Keynesianism – but were afraid to ask, this is perfect for you. Click and enjoy.

For those of you who don’t know, Libertarians are in principled alignment with the so called ‘Austrian School of Economics’ and F. A. Hayek was an Austrian School Economist who made major contributions to our understanding of free enterprise. Okay, bye for now – I hope you all like this.

Technorati Tags: Hayek, Keynes

I just saw an interview with J. Craig Venter, famous for his participation in the human genome project and now CEO of Synthetic Genomics, in which he stated that he is creating a microbe which eats C02 and creates hydrocarbon fuel. That’s right, you heard me correctly. Using genetic engineering, they essentially assemble this little bug and it does this biologically. HOLY *^&%!

The interview is incredibly telling. Venter describes how this work is feasible and scalable, and how energy companies are investing to develop it as commercially viable. He describes how the resultant fuel would be usable in current combustion engines with no modifications. As I listened, I began to get angry though. First, you’ll note the questioner’s insistent tone when asking has about whether the current inaction in Washington, DC is hurting him and his obvious disappointment at Venter’s answer, which is essentially that he doesn’t need any help from the government. I can almost hear the gasps from AGW fetishists who believe the AGW is more evidence of the flawed nature of capitalism.

I then went to the web to research this topic and found myself a bit stymied. The green type of sites reporting on this interview focused on one comment, taken utterly out of context, in which Venter says that without scale, the companies working on this are ‘just playing’. They completely downplay the fact that he claims he has the funding to move ahead already from private industry, including 600 million usd from Exxon Mobil. There was very little other reporting on this topic. Can you believe that? I think that this is due to the fact that Venter isn’t singing from the AGW hymn book about needing to completely change our societies, economies and lives in order to survive. Rather, he proposes a solution that negates fossil fuel dependency and consumes vast quantities of C02 in one fell swoop, a solution that is at once breathtakingly elegant and simple, and that works with our existing industrial infrastructure.

Wow. Okay, I don’t want to get too excited because obviously this has a ways to go. But if he’s right, and look for yourself, he’s not claiming this is some whacked out idea, no, he has the science down pat and he’s a legitimate, credible serious person. He’s already rolling out a significant pilot program. So this isn’t just some hope – it’s real and viable. Do you realize what this means? First, all govt spending on ‘Green Everything’ is unnecessary. Worst case, from a public policy standpoint, we might want to put a carbon tax in place (I love the revenue neutral idea being proposed, btw, if we have to have one at all) to create stronger incentives to adopt it, although I don’t think it’s needed. But that’s it. We are done. No more IPCC, no more green proselytizing from every progressive political hack – no more teaching our children that doomsday is coming! We can stop giving vast sums of money to oil producing countries that prop up their evil regimes with petro-dollars. Okay, you get the picture.

My biggest question is why this isn’t leading every newscast in the world? Answer: Because the AGW issue is so politicized that it’s no longer about the environment. They simply couldn’t take it if their crisis was actually solved by the free market, not government, and all of their rent-seeking, anti-capitalist garbage was invalidated. Check it out – tell your friends, this could be the ‘game changer’ we’ve all been hoping for.

Technorati Tags: capitalism, global warming

I watched some of the speechifying from the Tea Party convention this weekend (as much as I could stomach) which showed that it is the new home (and probably only the temporary one) of the ‘moral majority’ types from the Republican party. You know, the big C Conservatives, who are mostly Christian evangelicals, mostly white and very sure that their way of life is the way that everyone should live.

I wonder if they know how their insistent talk of God in the poltical sphere, replete with quotes from the Bible, sounds to those of us who are not very religious or, heaven forbid, atheist? It makes them sound like exclusionary zealots – in case you don’t know. What I find most galling is the implicit message that somehow or another, Chritianity had some necessary role in being free, that somehow we wouldn’t have developed into the free superpower we are without Christianity.

The ignorance of the broader sweep of history that this position demands is nothing short of breathtaking. Let’s look at the most obvious of them, in no particular order:

1.Many immigrants to America came here because of religious persecution by various forms of Christianity in the first place.

2. Our founders were very careful to separate church and state in the formation of this country – they put it in writing. While many of them were very religious, they were not by any means looking to build a “Christian Country.” They didn’t write anything about being “God-fearing” into the Declaration of Independence or Constitution – and I think this is intentional.

3. More central is the fact that the entire idea of individual sovereignty – you know the whole idea of what it means to be free, to own oneself – was a convulsion against the very Christian idea that one is a subject of his King and God. Before this radical thought – which only came to life some 500 years ago, a person was the property of his king, tribal leader or other tyrant, as well as his God. There was no end to the depredations one or all could heap upon its people before this idea of individual sovereignty took hold.  The entire line of reasoning  that leads to the assertion of man’s natural rights was born of reason rather than faith, was found in philosopher’s writings not in the bible, and requires no belief in God to subscribe to it.

The truly pathetic aspect of this attitude is that whatever credence the Tea Party  was gaining as an alternative to the religious fundamentalists in the Republican party, it now has lost. They should look at the polls. 59% of Americans identify themselves as Fiscally Conservative and Socially liberal. These ‘Moral Majority’ types are only about 20% of the voting public and they will never be a majority, so their only home is in the Republican party.

In case people don’t understand my anger at them, these are the same people who gave us George Bush – I didn’t like them then, and I like them even less now. How ’bout you?

Technorati Tags: libertarian, libertarian economics, tea party

See this from Downsizer Dispatch

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h

You may copy or borrow from the following letter . . .

I’m disturbed by Congress’s behavior last year . . .

* You passed fewer laws, but they were 3 times as large
* You created 3,486 pages of new laws, whereas the nine-year average is 2,160
* Your 2009 laws averaged 28 pages, whereas the nine-year average is 10!

Longer bills are far more difficult for either Congress or the people to scrutinize and understand.

Part of the problem is combining multiple bills and subjects into one package . . . http://www.gpoaccess.gov/plaws/111publ.html

* the 407-page “stimulus” bill (Public Law 111-3) was a bundle of spending programs, handouts, tax cuts, and unrelated laws
* the 466-page Omnibus Appropriations bill (Public Law 111-5) combined 9 different federal agency spending bills into one
* the 466-page Wilderness, Interior, and Ag bill (Public Law 111-11) created scores of new laws and programs that were unrelated to each other
* the pork-laden 656-page Defense and Military Construction bill (Public Law 111-84) contained the completely-unrelated Hate Crimes Act

I believe the intentions behind such gigantic bills were to . . .

* pass unpopular bills by combining them with supposed “must-pass” legislation
* provide opportunities for logrolling, pork, and other special favors
* deny time for scrutiny by the public and by conscientious members of Congress

With more gigantic bills such as healthcare and cap & trade on the agenda, 2010 could be even worse.

But I demand that you represent me better this year . . .

* cut down on the total number of pages of legislation you pass
* whenever possible, break down large bills into smaller, understandable bills containing only one subject that must pass or fail only on its own merits
* make these objectives mandatory by introducing and passing DownsizeDC.org’s One Subject At A Time Act

END LETTER

(NOTE the length of bills cited above are not based on large-print bill pages, but on the more condensed Public Law pages. For instance, bill H.R. 2647 was 1,158 pages, but is found here as Public Law 111-84 and is 656 pages.)

You can send your letter using DownsizeDC.org’s Educate the Powerful System.

We also want to thank the following people for donating to support our work last week . . .

1-Time Contributions: Alexander Gunkel, David Ripley, Perry Sheetz, Edward Hudgens, Chelsea Moller, Richard Linchitz, plus 5 donors who asked to be unlisted

New monthly pledges: Kristina L Shull, Daniel H Fylstra, Eli Sutton, plus 1 new pledger who asked to be unlisted

Please make a contribution or start a monthly pledge using our secure online contribution form.

Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h
is the official email list of DownsizeDC.org, Inc. & Downsize DC Foundation
Normally published 3 – 6 times per week.

CONTRIBUTE in support of the “Educate the Powerful System”

http://www.DownsizeDC.org is sponsored by DownsizeDC.org, Inc. — a non-profit educational organization promoting the ideas of individual liberty, personal responsibility, free markets, and small government.  Operations office: 1931 15th St. Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44223, 202.521.1200

IF you have difficulties or inquiries, simply hit reply to this message. We’re eager to help, including with requests to unsubscribe.

The Downsize DC Team would like to thank you for subscribing to the Downsizer-Dispatch, which you did by going to http://www.downsizedc.org/page/newsletter or by using our Educate the Powerful System to send a message. Your subscription comes to this email address: glennd7962@yahoo.com

You are encouraged to forward this message to friends and business associates, and permission is hereby granted to reproduce any items herein as long as attribution is provided for articles and the subscription instructions above are included.

If you do not want to receive any more newsletters (to unsubscribe), click this link

To update your newsletter preferences visit this link

Technorati Tags: bloated government, downsizer-dispatch, libertarian, libertarianism