Archive for the ‘Immigration’ Category

The great debate… Sort of…

September 8, 2011

The much anticipated Republican Presidential candidates debate was, well, for myself a lot of hooey that didn’t cut to the chase. It reminded me more of a game of dodge ball in that Romney and Perry pretty much stole the show. My lasting question being, “who squirmed be best?”

I seriously have to wonder about these people. Between obamnycare, and illegal immigration I have doubts about both the leading candidates. Then we have the Social Security red herring issue. Look folks, it’s a rip off that I myself am going to have to live with just because of how many times I have seen the sun set in the west. That does not mean that Americans should be saddled with this big government rip off forever, and allowing the democrats to frame that debate leaves me wondering just how much true leadership really exists within the Republican Party. Tell you what? Perhaps the Republicans should once again co-opt the Libertarians positions and strategies on that issue. Those from back in the day when the Libertarians still had brains, and were indeed the Party of Principle.

On that note: All of you that so hate the Libertarians, the philosophical Libertarians, not the LP whack jobs? Take a look at the real positions taken by the TEA Party folks… Looks an awful lot like the LP platform from the eighties... Complete with a serious lack of real leadership!

Even after all the bally hoo, I still see no real plan to:

  • Get the economy back on track in a meaningful way.
  • Restore the Bill of Rights and Constitution as it was meant to be.
  • Reestablish American pride and exceptionalism.
  • Restore the faith of the people across the world in America as a bastion of freedom and liberty.

As much as I admire many of those running for the office of President I have serious doubts about most of them.

 

 

Rick Perry: A New Face in the POTUS bid

August 15, 2011

Rick Perry, Governor of Texas has entered the fracas to become President. I for one am glad that he has. He brings experience and effective leadership ability into the contest. The usual suspects are already taking shots at him, and that, IMO, is a good thing. For as it is said; “That one is known by the enemies that he keeps.” HERE is a hit list that has already started.

The arguments against Rick perry that are listed are, at best, paper tigers that can easily be dismissed.

They say that his economic policy’s had nothing to do with how Texas is doing..? Then how did places like New York and Illinois, and let’s not forget the whacked out state of my birth California get into the current messes that they find themselves in if not from terrible executive leadership?

Next, that he is too conservative. Hell, just the other day he was being called a Libertarian with values, or something along those lines. In any case? Now hear this you closet commies. The United States of America is in fact a mostly Conservative nation when it comes down to the wire. Yes, I know, it’s wiki, but this one appears to be pretty solid.

Then they say that he is too cozy with special interests… That, coming from supporters of the obama..? Can you say preposterous..? I knew you could. Well, if the obama can get support from the Joyce Foundation, George Soros, the Brady Campaign, and the list goes on ad nausium why can’t Rick Perry have a few powerful supporters?

Untested at the national level? So was Barack H. obama, and the obama has failed the test in an epic manner.

Bush Fatigue? What..? Oh yeah, we are all so damned sick of the blame Bush rhetoric it’s pathetic! Or do they mean that because he is a Texan? Well, a long time ago, a Texan took on the chore of raising the son of a dead Marine. This Marine Corps Brat will never forget the kindness and direction given freely by a Texan, that just happened to be a Sergeant Major in the United States Marine Corps! So that’s what this Son of California thinks of Texas, and Texan’s!

Now for the disclaimers: I will be on Rick Perry’s ass full time if he turns RINO. He’s silent on the politically correct law that made ex post facto law the law of the land. If his balls were half the size of Texas he would issue a proclamation of pardon for the gun ban that involves ex post facto law as well as the taking of rights for less than felony crimes, any crime. His position on illegal immigration is unacceptable, period.

Enraging organized labor and Democrats; Sorry about that…

August 9, 2011

Seems that Labor Unions and Communists, I mean Democrats, sorry. Got a little peeved when a few brave souls decided to do what was right, and said to hell with political correctness.

What happens when the votes are counted after the massive recall election will be a signal to the rest of the nation, and the world, about what really matters to mainstream America anymore.

We can only hope that the voters in Wisconsin will use their brains and not follow the populist rhetoric.

Read more about this HERE.

This election can be viewed as a referendum on contemporary America. On our collective morals, our dignity, and our pride.

Our forefathers were not at all about handouts, or people living at the government trough. They fought, bled, and in many cases died so that we, as a people, have the freedom to succeed or fail as individuals and as a corporate whole.

We are a representative democracy for a reason. We have a Bill of Rights for a reason. We have a Constitution for a reason as well.

Think about it.

This nation has many problems besetting it. Will we allow others to dictate to us what freedoms we shall have, and exercise? Let’s draw up a list of those problems, and in the coming months go a little deeper into what is going on, the implications involved, and history around them.

  • The Economy; Khrushchev’s shoe at the U. N?
  • Race Wars; Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh, and the KKK?
  • The Bill of Rights; Private Property, Search and Seizure, The Patriot Act, GCA 1968, Brady Bill, and the Lautenberg abomination?
  • Taxation; “User Fees” and other taxes that are not taxes?
  • Political Correctness; Populism unleashed, full blown social democracy, mob rule anyone?

This is a short list to be sure. However, any of those things could, and very well might trigger a full blown civil war.

Bureaucratic belligerence and official oppression..?

Fast & Furious Hearing Sending Shockwaves towards White House & Eric Holder

July 30, 2011

Fast & Furious Hearing Sending Shockwaves towards White House & Eric Holder

Thursday, 28 July 2011 20:36

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee conducted another hearing this week on Fast and Furious — the operation spearheaded by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) which knowingly put thousands of guns into criminals’ hands.

Tuesday’s hearing exposed the anti-gun animus of several people within the Obama Administration, and their answers continued to beg the question:  Was Operation Fast and Furious all about drumming up more support for gun control?

Gun Owners of America met with three persons from the House committee prior to the hearing.  The meeting was “off the record,” so we can’t report on the details.  Only to say, GOA brought up a hard-and-fast link between the White House and “Fast and Furious” — and encouraged committee members to pursue a line of questioning that would publicly expose this connection.

We were pleased to see that Representatives did just that.  Here’s what Tuesday’s hearing revealed for the record:

1. The White House WAS BEING BRIEFED by Fast and Furious manager Bill Newell.  In fact, a “smoking gun” email establishing the clandestine link between ATF Agent Newell and the White House begins with Newell saying:  “You didn’t get this from me ….”

2. ATF agents DID KNOW that “Fast and Furious” guns were going to Mexico.  During much of the hearing, ATF Agent Newell denied this, but intense questioning by Pennsylvania Republican Patrick Meehan revealed Newell’s lie.  The fact is, Newell and others DID KNOW that Mexican cartel bosses were expecting to get illegal firearms funneled into Mexico.

3. ATF agents have been deceptive when they claimed that Operation Fast and Furious was going to provide information for Mexican authorities to prosecute drug kingpins south of the border.  Cross-examination revealed that Mexican authorities already knew who the drug kingpins are and that ATF did not share any information with Mexico that would help them bring down these cartels.

4. Under oath, ATF agents admitted that Fast and Furious was a TOTAL break with their normal standards and procedures.  Normal police work would mean arresting straw buyers and “flipping them” — in other words, turning them against their superiors and bringing down the higher-ups in the smuggling ring.

But Fast and Furious involved a complete break with this strategy, in that gun smugglers were allowed to “go free” — even to the point where the guns were smuggled south of the border and permanently “out of sight” of ATF agents (or Mexican authorities, for that matter).  Indeed, one straw buyer bought some 720 guns for his bagman.

So the question is:  Why would an anti-gun administration knowingly let guns get into the “wrong hands”?  They claim the purpose was to help take down drug cartels in Mexico.

But given the fact that ATF was not sharing information with Mexico … and that they were TOTALLY breaking with standard law-enforcement procedures … and that they knew that “Fast and Furious” guns were winding up at crime scenes in Mexico … another more likely explanation is raising its ugly head.

The better explanation is that anti-gun officials in the Administration were trying to bring disrepute upon our Second Amendment freedoms and that this would lead to calls for more gun control.

Remember Rahm Emanuel’s famous line:  “Don’t let a crisis go to waste?”

Well, it seems that the Obama Administration was doing whatever it could to create a crisis that would supposedly show that most of the Mexican crime guns were originating in U.S. gun stores.

The Washington Times picked up on this obvious motive earlier this month:

The White House often claimed that 90 percent of the weapons used in Mexican crimes had been traced to the United States, but the number has never been substantiated. By all appearances, Fast and Furious delivered statistics to back up the figure.  (“Too fast, Too Furious,” July 13, 2011.)

Apparently, the ATF was not the only organization involved in Fast and Furious.  Tuesday’s hearing confirmed that the Drug Enforcement Administration, Internal Revenue Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were all involved.

In other words, Fast and Furious was a giant operation being run out of the Justice Department.  And that means that all roads are starting to point to Attorney General Eric Holder.

As stated by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman Darrell Issa:

How is it that the Number Two, Three, Four at Justice all knew about this Program but the Number One [Attorney General Eric Holder] didn’t?  Is it because he said “don’t tell me”?  Is it because they knew what they were doing was wrong and they were protecting their boss?  Or is it just that Eric Holder was so disconnected ….

Either Holder is lying about the fact he didn’t know early on about Fast and Furious or he is inept.  Either way, Eric Holder needs to step down.

We asked you earlier this month to urge your Senators to call for Holder’s forced retirement.  It’s now time to communicate this to the House.

ACTION:  Ask your Representative to call for Eric Holder’s resignation.  And don’t forget to circulate this alert to your pro-gun family and friends.

Click here to send your Representative a prewritten email.

 

Let’s see now… Economics revisited; The epic failure known as obama.

July 26, 2011

Quick! Blame it on Bush! Blame it on Congress! Blame it on racism! But remember to do it For the Children!

Let’s get back to the basics, and stop the blaiming and finger pointing. Supposedly we have adults working on the economic woes that have beset our nation. What is needed are solutions. Not more he did this or she did that type of whining…

If a house is on fire put the damned fire out. NOW! The investigation into the cause can come later. If a patient is in V-Fib shock him, and do it now! What caused it can be determined at a later date…

Here, are a few guidelines to help the uninformed. So as to not try putting out that fire by spraying it with gasoline.

There are four basic laws of . When these laws are applied correctly in a society the society achieves explosive prosperity. Conversely when these four laws are violated that society will spiral down into recessions, depressions and wars.

The following are The Four Basic Laws of Economics.

  1. All money value is created through and backed by the production of goods and services.
  2. The individuals who create this production own the money exchanged for it.
  3. All production must be marketed on an Open Market (open to all on equal terms, absolutely no exceptions.)
  4. The money supply must be held constant forever with no exceptions. This Law standardizes the economic system like the metric system is standardized with a titanium bar in the length of 39 centimeters. So a constant money supply standardizes economics

These are the four basic laws of economics.   When I studied the History of Economics, I found  Societies using these laws knowingly or unknowingly achieved roaring prosperity.    When these laws fell out of use that Society found itself  in a recession, depression and/or war.

Societies using these laws are rewarding Production.   Societies not using these laws are rewarding non-production.    When you reward production you will get more production.   When you reward non-production you will get more non-production.

If we look back at the last 48 years we can see Laws 2, 3 and 4 were very out. The first law cannot be violated because production always creates money value if production is taking place. It is always in, man cannot change this law.    Without production money will have no value.

SOURCE

Economic principles are crucial not only to arguments for economic freedom, but also for personal and political liberty and for peaceful coexistence. Yet many people are ignorant of economics, or have heard some misleading or incorrect information. Still more people don’t see how economic principles can be applied to everyday life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is the job of the libertarian to show the world how closely tied economics is to freedom.

Economics and Abstraction

The trouble that many people seem to have applying economics, or accepting the libertarian view that economics is much more widely applicable than traditionally believed, is that they view economics as an abstraction, a set of patterns or guidelines, or some philosophy or social science that attempts to model reality. Since economics is viewed only as a model, when economics and reality do not coincide it is simply assumed that the model is flawed, and thus economics is seen as just one way of looking at things, that is sometimes useful and often inaccurate.

Some economics is abstraction. The supply and demand curves, for example, are abstract, not real. There are no actual curves, physically manifest in the real world, that are supply and demand curves. They are a mathematical model, and as such, they are useful only in helping us to visualize the data they represent – not to predict outcomes with great accuracy.

On the other hand, the core principles of Austrian economics are real, universally applicable laws. In the real world, physically, things are produced and consumed; they are supplied and demanded; the laws governing these actions are just as real as the laws of the physical world.

Every action one takes involving any resource that is scarce, anything that can be spent, is an economic action. Whether you are spending money or material goods, or time, attention, or effort, or whether you are spending any social capital, good will, influence, or credibility – any time you shrink your pool of anything that’s available to you, for any reason, you are engaging in an economic action. Taking these actions while ignoring the rules governing them is just as potentially hazardous as driving a car without knowing how to steer, or walking around on top of a steep mountain while ignoring the laws of gravity.

The problem the libertarian faces in convincing people of the veracity of these claims is that there is, within the field of economics, a lot of junk science. Every time a war, hurricane or tsunami hits, someone proclaims that the economy is stimulated, promptly convincing practically everyone within earshot that what’s good for “the economy” – an abstraction – is not necessarily good. Actual economists cringe at this, pointing out the fallacy that Bastiat is credited with exposing, which is that this view does not consider the opportunity cost of the resource being spent repairing the damage. In fact, disasters – natural or man made – are disasters, and throwing the economy in front of the train of public opinion is generally an attempt by those in power to placate the population and maintain the status quo. After all, a public that can see the positive side of hurricanes and tsunamis is that much more likely to buy into a war or some other State-sponsored disaster.

The Market – Real or Abstract?

People speak of the market very often in economics, so it’s of paramount importance to determine the reality behind this term. Is the market a real, actual thing, or is it an abstraction? The answer is both, and neither.

In some cases, the market is a real, physical place. When you buy groceries, you buy them at a supermarket, or a mini-mart, or a convenience store (the name convenience store is all too accurate, since their main commodity for sale is not groceries, but convenience, and you certainly pay for it), which is just as much a market as the supermarket is. Generally, any place where you buy something can be called a market. So in this sense, the market is real.

In other cases, the market is not physical but inferred. You can buy things on the Internet – web sites are “places” in one sense, but not another. The market becomes a facilitator. When we refer to the market value of a thing, we aren’t referring to the price we saw the thing for sale for at the actual market. We are in this case speaking of a metaphorical market. The black market isn’t an actual place one goes that is actually colored black. It’s an abstract term. (One could argue that the place where an exchange takes place becomes a de facto market, so if I sell things at my house, my house is an actual market for those things for that time. Either way, the term market is sometimes used as an abstraction, sometimes not.)

In this sense the market is both real and abstract, depending on the circumstance. However, the sense in which the term is often used is neither a physical location nor an abstraction of such. It is a situation, or a description of the state of things. When things are traded “on the market” it means that ownership of the things has been exchanged publicly, voluntarily, and legitimately. When we refer to a market as free, we mean that there are no barriers to these exchanges placed by others – in other words, no taxes, tariffs, price controls, or other interferences. When we say that something is “placed on the market” we mean that it is being offered for sale or trade.

It is important to distinguish between the abstract and situational uses of this term. For instance, if something is “on the market,” it’s available to be purchased – there is an actual good or service that is really available. If something has a “market value,” however, you can’t infer anything about that thing itself. “Value” is subjective, and relative; “market value” simply refers to the price one could fetch for the item if it were sold publicly. It might be based on the MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail price), or on the appraisal of a third party, or on the price that previous, similar items have sold for. There’s no way to predict or know market value – you can only guess, estimate, extrapolate, or average.

The Reality of the Free Market

Detractors of libertarianism complain that the free market is idolized and worshiped by libertarians, and that it is just another abstraction, that can never come true; they say it is idealistic or Utopian to expect a free market to ever arise.

The term “free market” often does not refer to a market at all. For instance, some would claim that the free market reduces prices and increases quality as time passes. However, there isn’t an actual marketplace that accomplishes this feat. Rather, “free market” is an abbreviation; what we are really referring to is the collected efforts of individuals acting on the free market. Markets don’t act – people do. The “free market” is simply the state of people acting without barriers to exchange.

Economic law proves that when individuals act without barriers to exchange they bring about states of affairs more desirable to themselves than if they act with barriers to exchange. When the “free market” reduces the price of a commodity, what’s really happening is that individual suppliers are reducing the prices of their goods in order to maximize their profits in the face of competition. When the “free market” increases the quality of a good, what’s happening is that suppliers are making better products, in order to maximize profit in the face of competition. When the “free market” bankrupts one supplier and makes another a millionaire, what is really happening is that individual consumers chose to spend their money on the latter supplier’s product, in order to maximize the utility of their money.

Libertarians do not worship the free market; however, we hold as an ideal that state of affairs brought about by the free market – a situation where everyone is free to act to benefit him or herself, as long as they do not harm others. Theory holds that this leads to maximal prosperity. Empirical evidence shows that the fewer restrictions on non-harmful, non-coercive behavior, the greater the prosperity that is achieved. This is not because of an abstraction or a model, but because of human nature and physical reality.

As for the final accusation, the situation described by the free market is not Utopian. Free exchanges are made every day. What prevents many people from seeing this fact is the limitation of economics to financial matters.

The Scope of Economics

Economics govern not merely financial exchanges but the allocation of all scarce resources, and the actions people take to satisfy their desires. People desire material goods, but they also desire other things. Let us consider the example of interpersonal relationships, and the applications of the free market scenario vs. the hampered market.

Daily, we trade our affections for the affections of others. Friends, family members, lovers, even pets, are capable and willing partners in exchanges of time, energy, favors, and good will – and these things are scarce resources. Governments do not currently place a tax on any of these things; however, I am certain that if a politician could figure out a way to do it it would happen. However, there are plenty of limitations or restrictions. A person cannot legally give a large monetary gift to their spouse, parent, child, or best friend without the government taxing it, even if the giver initially paid income tax on the money. A man cannot legally engage in sexual relations with another man. Consenting adults are limited in their behavior to varying degrees in different states.

Consider the question of voluntary exchange in a romantic relationship. You exchange affection, love, intimate relations, and promises of exclusivity, among other things. In a free market, these exchanges are voluntary and unrestricted. However, imagine if you had to pay a fee to love someone. This is relationship tax. Imagine if you had to give affection or romantic relations to a person who claimed to be unable to attain these things from free exchange! This is relationship welfare. Imagine if you had to marry someone of a specific race because statistics showed it to be harder for people of that race to find spouses! This is relationship affirmative action. Imagine if the State paid some people to have relations with each other, but not others. This is relationship subsidy. Imagine if the government provided everyone with a pet and demanded extraordinary amounts of money from them to take care of this pet. Yet this is what State roads, schools, and every other State bureaucracy is.

We live in a society with a relatively free market in interpersonal relationships. Very few filial, friendly, and romantic relations are taxed, limited, restricted, or forbidden. Many agree that the few restrictions there are should be lifted. Most people would be outraged by any further limitations or by any of the policies outlined above. It is clear to everyone that when it comes to matters of the heart, the freer the better.

But when it comes to matters of the wallet, it’s not clear to them at all. People are willing to force others to spend their money to contribute to the good of society. Money is seen as the root of all evil. Desire for material goods is looked down upon. The only reason for this is that it’s easier to benefit from someone else’s material goods than from their affections. Armed with enough firepower you could steal a million dollars but couldn’t make one person love you. Politicians have spent ages, for this reason, convincing us that it’s their right to steal money from us practically at gunpoint, and they have largely ignored our love lives – except to appease their religious constituency.

Due to centuries of influence by the political apparatus, many people believe that we rely on government interference for our safety and security and that it is necessary to sacrifice some freedom toward this end. However, when we consider that our finances are not the only economic situation we’re in, it becomes easier to see the stark differences between liberty and oppression.

Conclusion

Whenever an individual acts to meet his or her desires, he or she is subject to the rules of physical reality – of cause and effect, of scarcity, and of gravity and other physical laws. He or she is also subject to the rules of economics. Free trade allows the most efficient specialization, which means the greatest productivity. Disasters are bad. People trade things they have for things they want more. Scarcer goods are more expensive. These and other laws are immutable and both empirically and aprioristically proven.

Abstraction is a tool some economists overuse, but this should not be construed to deny the validity of economic laws. The free market is not an abstraction but an actual state of affairs, one that is to be striven for. The scope of economics is wide, and the rules thereof apply to things you might not expect them to – they apply to any action taken to meet a desire.

The denial of economic reality can be as disastrous as the denial of physical reality. The belief that you can defy economics is similar to the belief that you can fly by sprinkling fairy dust on yourself and thinking happy thoughts – it’s a fantasy that could prove harmful or fatal if taken too far. Libertarians should stress the applicability of economic principles and attempt to educate the public about them if we are ever to have victory for the cause of freedom and liberty.

 

SOURCE

 

And then there is…

 

 

The story of the Austrian School begins in the fifteenth century, when the followers of St. Thomas Aquinas, writing and teaching at the University of Salamanca in Spain, sought to explain the full range of human action and social organization.

These Late Scholastics observed the existence of economic law, inexorable forces of cause and effect that operate very much as other natural laws. Over the course of several generations, they discovered and explained the laws of supply and demand, the cause of inflation, the operation of foreign exchange rates, and the subjective nature of economic value–all reasons Joseph Schumpeter celebrated them as the first real economists.

The Late Scholastics were advocates of property rights and the freedom to contract and trade. They celebrated the contribution of business to society, while doggedly opposing taxes, price controls, and regulations that inhibited enterprise. As moral theologians, they urged governments to obey ethical strictures against theft and murder. And they lived up to Ludwig von Mises’s rule: the first job of an economist is to tell governments what they cannot do.

The first general treatise on economics, Essay on the Nature of Commerce, was written in 1730 by Richard Cantillon, a man schooled in the scholastic tradition. Born in Ireland, he emigrated to France. He saw economics as an independent area of investigation, and explained the formation of prices using the “thought experiment.” He understood the market as an entrepreneurial process, and held to an Austrian theory of money creation: that it enters the economy in a step-by-step fashion, disrupting prices along the way.

Cantillon was followed by Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, the pro-market French aristocrat and finance minister under the ancien regime. His economic writings were few but profound. His paper “Value and Money” spelled out the origins of money, and the nature of economic choice: that it reflects the subjective rankings of an individual’s preferences. Turgot solved the famous diamond-water paradox that baffled later classical economists, articulated the law of diminishing returns, and criticized usury laws (a sticking point with the Late Scholastics). He favored a classical liberal approach to economic policy, recommending a repeal of all special privileges granted to government-connected industries.

Turgot was the intellectual father of a long line of great French economists of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, most prominently Jean Baptiste Say and Claude-Frederic Bastiat. Say was the first economist to think deeply about economic method. He realized that economics is not about the amassing of data, but rather about the verbal elucidation of universal facts (for example, wants are unlimited, means are scarce) and their logical implications.

Say discovered the productivity theory of resource pricing, the role of capital in the division of labor, and “Say’s Law”: there can never be sustained “overproduction” or “underconsumption” on the free market if prices are allowed to adjust. He was a defender of laissez-faire and the industrial revolution, as was Bastiat. As a free-market journalist, Bastiat also argued that nonmaterial services are subject to the same economic laws as material goods. In one of his many economic allegories, Bastiat spelled out the “broken-window fallacy” later popularized by Henry Hazlitt.

Despite the theoretical sophistication of this developing pre-Austrian tradition, the British school of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries won the day, mostly for political reasons. This British tradition (based on the objective-cost and labor-productivity theory of value) ultimately led to the rise of the Marxist doctrine of capitalist exploitation.

The dominant British tradition received its first serious challenge in many years when Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics was published in 1871. Menger, the founder of the Austrian School proper, resurrected the Scholastic-French approach to economics, and put it on firmer ground.

Together with the contemporaneous writings of Leon Walras and Stanley Jevons, Menger spelled out the subjective basis of economic value, and fully explained, for the first time, the theory of marginal utility (the greater the number of units of a good that an individual possesses, the less he will value any given unit). In addition, Menger showed how money originates in a free market when the most marketable commodity is desired, not for consumption, but for use in trading for other goods.

Menger’s book was a pillar of the “marginalist revolution” in the history of economic science. When Mises said it “made an economist” out of him, he was not only referring to Menger’s theory of money and prices, but also his approach to the discipline itself. Like his predecessors in the tradition, Menger was a classical liberal and methodological individualist, viewing economics as the science of individual choice. His Investigations, which came out twelve years later, battled the German Historical School, which rejected theory and saw economics as the accumulation of data in service of the state.

As professor of economics at the University of Vienna, and then tutor to the young but ill-fated Crown Prince Rudolf of the House of Habsburg, Menger restored economics as the science of human action based on deductive logic, and prepared the way for later theorists to counter the influence of socialist thought. Indeed, his student Friederich von Wieser strongly influenced Friedrich von Hayek’s later writings. Menger’s work remains an excellent introduction to the economic way of thinking. At some level, every Austrian since has seen himself as a student of Menger.

Menger’s admirer and follower at the University of Innsbruck, Eugen von Boehm-Bawerk, took Menger’s exposition, reformulated it, and applied it to a host of new problems involving value, price, capital, and interest. His History and Critique of Interest Theories, appearing in 1884, is a sweeping account of fallacies in the history of thought and a firm defense of the idea that the interest rate is not an artificial construct but an inherent part of the market. It reflects the universal fact of “time preference,” the tendency of people to prefer satisfaction of wants sooner rather than later (a theory later expanded and defended by Frank Fetter).

Boehm-Bawerk’s Positive Theory of Capital demonstrated that the normal rate of business profit is the interest rate. Capitalists save money, pay laborers, and wait until the final product is sold to receive profit. In addition, he demonstrated that capital is not homogeneous but an intricate and diverse structure that has a time dimension. A growing economy is not just a consequence of increased capital investment, but also of longer and longer processes of production.

Boehm-Bawerk engaged in a prolonged battle with the Marxists over the exploitation theory of capital, and refuted the socialist doctrine of capital and wages long before the communists came to power in Russia. Boehm-Bawerk also conducted a seminar that would later become the model for Mises’s own Vienna seminar.

Boehm-Bawerk favored policies that deferred to the ever-present reality of economic law. He regarded interventionism as an attack on market economic forces that cannot succeed in the long run. In the last years of the Habsburg monarchy, he three times served as finance minister, fighting for balanced budgets, sound money and the gold standard, free trade, and the repeal of export subsidies and other monopoly privileges.

It was his research and writing that solidified the status of the Austrian School as a unified way of looking at economic problems, and set the stage for the School to make huge inroads in the English-speaking world. But one area where Boehm-Bawerk had not elaborated on the analysis of Menger was money, the institutional intersection of the “micro” and “macro” approach. A young Mises, economic advisor to the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, took on the challenge.

The result of Mises’s research was The Theory of Money and Credit, published in 1912. He spelled out how the theory of marginal utility applies to money, and laid out his “regression theorem,” showing that money not only originates in the market, but must always do so. Drawing on the British Currency School, Knut Wicksell’s theory of interest rates, and Boehm-Bawerk’s theory of the structure of production, Mises presented the broad outline of the Austrian theory of the business cycle. A year later, Mises was appointed to the faculty of the University of Vienna, and Boehm-Bawerk’s seminar spent a full two semesters debating Mises’s book.

Mises’s career was interrupted for four years by World War I. He spent three of those years as an artillery officer, and one as a staff officer in economic intelligence. At war’s end, he published Nation, State, and Economy (1919), arguing on behalf of the economic and cultural freedoms of minorities in the now-shattered empire, and spelling out a theory of the economics of war. Meanwhile, Mises’s monetary theory received attention in the U.S. through the work of Benjamin M. Anderson, Jr., an economist at Chase National Bank. (Mises’s book was panned by John Maynard Keynes, who later admitted he could not read German.)

In the political chaos after the war, the main theoretician of the now-socialist Austrian government was Marxist Otto Bauer. Knowing Bauer from the Boehm-Bawerk seminar, Mises explained economics to him night after night, eventually convincing him to back away from Bolshevik-style policies. The Austrian socialists never forgave Mises for this, waging war against him in academic politics and successfully preventing him from getting a paid professorship at the university.

Undeterred, Mises turned to the problem of socialism itself, writing a blockbuster essay in 1921, which he turned into the book Socialism over the next two years. Socialism permits no private property or exchange in capital goods, and thus no way for resources to find their most highly valued use. Socialism, Mises predicted, would result in utter chaos and the end of civilization.

Mises challenged the socialists to explain, in economic terms, precisely how their system would work, a task which the socialists had heretofore avoided. The debate between the Austrians and the socialists continued for the next decade and beyond, and, until the collapse of world socialism in 1989, academics had long thought that the debate was resolved in favor of the socialists.

Meanwhile, Mises’s arguments on behalf of the free market attracted a group of converts from the socialist cause, including Hayek, Wilhelm Roepke, and Lionel Robbins. Mises began holding a private seminar in his offices at the Chamber of Commerce that was attended by Fritz Machlup, Oskar Morgenstern, Gottfried von Haberler, Alfred Schutz, Richard von Strigl, Eric Voegelin, Paul Rosenstein-Rodan, and many other intellectuals from all over Europe.

Also during the 1920s and 30s, Mises was battling on two other academic fronts. He delivered the decisive blow to the German Historical School with a series of essays in defense of the deductive method in economics, which he would later call praxeology or the logic of action. He also founded the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research, and put his student Hayek in charge of it.

During these years, Hayek and Mises authored many studies on the business cycle, warned of the danger of credit expansion, and predicted the coming currency crisis. This work was cited by the Nobel Prize committee in 1974 when Hayek received the award for economics. Working in England and America, Hayek later became a prime opponent of Keynesian economics with books on exchange rates, capital theory, and monetary reform. His popular book Road to Serfdom helped revive the classical liberal movement in America after the New Deal and World War II. And his series Law, Legislation, and Liberty elaborated on the Late Scholastic approach to law, and applied it to criticize egalitarianism and nostrums like social justice.

In the late 1930s, after suffering from the worldwide depression, Austria was threatened by a Nazi takeover. Hayek had already left for London in 1931 at Mises’s urging, and in 1934, Mises himself moved to Geneva to teach and write at the International Institute for Graduate Studies, later emigrating to the United States. Knowing Mises as the sworn enemy of national socialism, the Nazis confiscated Mises’s papers from his apartment and hid them for the duration of the war. Ironically, it was Mises’s ideas, filtered through the work of Roepke and the statesmanship of Ludwig Erhard, that led to Germany’s postwar economic reforms and rebuilt the country. Then, in 1992, Austrian archivists discovered Mises’s stolen Vienna papers in a reopened archive in Moscow.

While in Geneva, Mises’s wrote his masterwork, Nationalokonomie, and, after coming to the United States, revised and expanded it into Human Action, which appeared in 1949. His student Murray N. Rothbard called it “Mises’s greatest achievement and one of the finest products of the human mind in our century. It is economics made whole.” The appearance of this work was the hinge of the whole history of the Austrian School, and it remains the economic treatise that defines the School. Even so, it was not well received in the economics profession, which had already made a decisive turn towards Keynesian.

Though Mises never held the paid academic post he deserved, he gathered students around him at New York University, just as he had in Vienna. Even before Mises emigrated, journalist Henry Hazlitt had become his most prominent champion, reviewing his books in the New York Times and Newsweek, and popularizing his ideas in such classics as Economics in One Lesson. Yet Hazlitt made his own contributions to the Austrian School. He wrote a line-by-line critique of Keynes’s General Theory, defended the writings of Say, and restored him to a central place in Austrian macroeconomic theory. Hazlitt followed Mises’s example of intransigent adherence to principle, and as a result was pushed out of four high-profile positions in the journalistic world.

Mises’s New York seminar continued until two years before his death in 1973. During those years, Rothbard was his student. Indeed, Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State (1963) was patterned after Human Action, and in some areas–monopoly theory, utility and welfare, and the theory of the state–tightened and strengthened Mises’s own views. Rothbard’s approach to the Austrian School followed directly in the line of Late Scholastic thought by applying economic science within a framework of a natural-rights theory of property. What resulted was a full-fledged defense of a capitalistic and stateless social order, based on property and freedom of association and contract.

Rothbard followed his economic treatise with an investigation of the great depression, which applied Austrian business cycle theory to show that the stock market crash and economic downturn was attributable to a prior bank credit expansion. Then in a series of studies on government policy, he established the theoretical framework for examining the effects of all types of intervention in the market.

In his later years, Mises saw the beginnings of the revival of the Austrian School that dates from the appearance of Man, Economy, and State and continues to this day. It was Rothbard who firmly established the Austrian School and classical liberal doctrine in the U.S., especially with Conceived in Liberty, his four-volume history of colonial America and the secession from Britain. The reunion of natural-rights theory and the Austrian School came in his philosophical work, The Ethics of Liberty, all while he was writing a series of scholarly economic pieces gathered in the two-volume Logic of Action, published in Edward Elgar’s “Economists of the Century” series.

These seminal works serve as the crucial link between the Mises-Hayek generation and the Austrians now working to expand the tradition. Indeed, without Rothbard’s willingness to defy the intellectual trends of his time, progress in the Austrian School tradition might have come to a halt. As it was, his wide and deep scholarship, cheerful personality, encyclopedic knowledge, and optimistic outlook inspired countless students to turn their attention to the cause of liberty.

Though Austrians are now in a more prominent position than at any point since the 1930s, Rothbard, like Mises before him, was not well treated by academia. Although he held a chair in his later years at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he never taught in a capacity that permitted him to direct dissertations. Nonetheless, he managed to recruit a large, active, and interdisciplinary following for the Austrian School.

The founding of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in 1982, with the aid of Margit von Mises as well as Hayek and Hazlitt, provided a range of new opportunities for both Rothbard and the Austrian School. Through a steady stream of academic conferences, instructional seminars, books, monographs, newsletters, studies, and even films, Rothbard and the Mises Institute carried the Austrian School forward into the post-socialist age.

The first issue of the Rothbard-edited Review of Austrian Economics appeared in 1987, became a semiannual in 1991, and becomes a quarterly in 1998, The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. The Mises Institute’s instructional summer school has been held every year since 1984. For many of these years, Rothbard presented his research into the history of economic thought. This culminated in his two-volume An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, which broadens the history of the discipline to encompass centuries of writing.

Through the Mises Institute’s student fellowships, study guides, bibliographies, and conferences, the Austrian School has permeated, at some level, virtually every department of economics and the social sciences in America, and in many foreign countries as well. The annual Austrian Scholars Conference at Auburn University attracts scholars from around the world to discuss, debate, and apply the entire Austrian tradition.

The fascinating history of this great body of thought, through all its ebbs and flows, is the story of how great minds can advance science and oppose evil with creativity and courage. Now the Austrian School enters a new millennium as the intellectual standard bearer for the free society. That it does so is thanks to the heroic and brilliant minds that make up the family history of the School, and to those who are carrying that legacy forward with the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Source ; See blogroll

Time for Attorney General Eric Holder to resign; Is this a recording..?

July 11, 2011
Well, the other shoe has dropped.  We’ve known for several months that the Obama Administration was turning a blind eye to — and even encouraged — suspected gun smugglers who were purchasing firearms from gun stores in the southwest.
However, now we know the rest of the story:  Your tax money was used to buy many of those guns that were later sent to Mexico.
But why?  That’s the recurring question.  Why would the Obama Administration — that is filled with anti-gun cronies — knowingly approve the sales of firearms to bad guys?  Why would they knowingly put thousands of guns “into the wrong hands,” when they’ve spent years advocating gun control laws to supposedly get guns “out of the wrong hands.”

 

Well, well, well… Here we go again!

June 6, 2011

Politics. It’s an ever interesting field for many, and it does have a direct impact on our lives. What do you look for in a politician?

Are you a “bring home the bacon” supporter type? As in what will this or that person do for my home area?

Perhaps you are a singular social issue type. Mysandry (male hating sexist that believes that a woman can do no wrong.) Or you beat dead horse’s over gay rights, and look for insinuations or attacks at every opportunity based upon a belief. Then toss out red herring’s as though they are facts..?

Perhaps you are really into the Constitution and Bill of Rights? (Yup, I plead guilty to belonging in this group!)

Then there are always those that are going to save the world. After all, why should some have more than others..? Why are some more powerful than others, and so on goes the line. All Gore and the man made global warming extremist’s are a fair example of this group. Even if they are going to get rich by proclaiming themselves our saviors…

Are you an anarchist pretending to be a libertarian? A Libertarian with a solid streak of anarchist inside of you..?

Believe in pure democracy? That the majority position should always rule? Does the Utilitarian come out in you more often than not?

Just food for thought…

 

2012 is Coming Folks…

June 6, 2011

My good friend and fellow blogger Texas Fred has yet again hit one out of the ball park. This one is so good that it simply has to be shared. Please hit the links to really get the flavor of this article.

I have a blogging buddy out in California that goes by the handle of *wirecutter*. His blog
Knuckle Draggin’, is rude, crude, socially unacceptable in some circles, brutally honest and absolutely hilarious, in a SICK sort of way. Needless to say, I LOVE IT!

This is one of his posts that is not unacceptable, not in the circles I run in, it is that brutally honest thing I just mentioned. Please read 2012 is coming, folks and comment here, and on wirecutters blog too!

2012 is Coming Folks

An old West Virginia Hillbilly saying: Ya can’t get the water to clear up until you get the pigs outta the creek.

*If any other of our presidents had doubled the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?*

*If any other of our presidents had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved? *

*If any other of our presidents had criticized a state law that he admitted he never even read, would you think that he is just an ignorant hot head? *

*If any other of our presidents joined the country of Mexico and sued a state in the United States to force that state to continue to allow illegal immigration, would you question his patriotism and wonder who’s side he was on? *

*If any other of our presidents had pronounced the Marine Corps like Marine Corpse, would you think him an idiot? *

*If any other of our presidents had put 87,000 workers out of work by arbitrarily placing a moratorium on offshore oil drilling on companies that have one of the best safety records of any industry because one foreign company had an accident, would you have agreed? *

*If any other of our presidents had used a forged document as the basis of the moratorium that would render 87,000 American workers unemployed would you support him? *

*If any other of our presidents had been the first President to need a Teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes? *

*If any other of our presidents had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to take his First Lady to a play in NYC, would you have approved? *

*If any other of our presidents had reduced your retirement plan holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved? *

*If any other of our presidents had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved? *

*If any other of our presidents had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved? *

*If any other of our presidents had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought it a proud moment for America ? *

*If any other of our presidents had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia would you have approved? *

*If any other of our presidents had visited Austria and made reference to the nonexistent “Austrian language,” would you have brushed it off as a minor slip? *

*If any other of our presidents had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current in their income taxes, would you have approved? *

*If any other of our presidents had stated that there were 57 states in the United States, wouldn’t you have had second thoughts about his capabilities? *

*If any other of our presidents would have flown all the way to Denmark to make a five minute speech about how the Olympics would benefit him walking out his front door in his home town, would you not have thought he was a self-important, conceited, egotistical jerk. *

*If any other of our presidents had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to “Cinco de Cuatro” in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, wouldn’t you have winced in embarrassment? *

*If any other of our presidents had burned 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to go plant a single tree on Earth Day, would you have concluded he’s a hypocrite?*

*If any other of our presidents’ administrations had okayed Air Force One flying low over millions of people followed by a jet fighter in downtown Manhattan causing widespread panic, would you have wondered whether they actually get what happened on 9-11? *

*If any other of our presidents had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans, would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence? *

*If any other of our presidents had created the position of 32 Czars who report directly to him, bypassing the House and Senate on much of what is happening in America, would you have ever approved. *

*If any other of our presidents had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved? *

*So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive?

*Can’t think of anything? Don’t worry. He’s done all this in 24 months — so you have that much time to come up with an answer .*

*An’ how about all those vacations he & Michelle take constantly, (with a more than a full entourage’) paid for by American tax-payers? *

Every statement and action in this post is factual and directly attributable to Barrack Hussein Obama. Every bumble is a matter of record and completely verifiable.

Wirecutter and Knuckledraggin’, not for the weak hearted… But I really feel a distinct kinship with the guy! :P

If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you’re not a racist, you’ll have to vote for someone else in 2012 to prove you’re not an idiot!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Immediate Action Needed – Window Closes Tuesday!!

May 27, 2011

Copy the text of the email below or rewrite it in your own words and email it to:

oira_submission@omb.eop.gov

The comment period for the ATF’s proposed “temporary,” emergency regulation requiring firearms dealers to file reports every time someone purchases more than one semi-auto long gun was reopened, but that comment period closes this Tuesday, May 31.

During the last comment period on this gun owners were outnumbered by the prohibitionists.  That should NEVER happen!  We outnumber them 10 to one and our response to outrageous proposals like this should reflect that numbers advantage.

 

The ATF claims the reporting is necessary to combat the flow of firearms across the border into Mexico, but in light of the “Gunwalker” scandal currently being investigated in Congress and by the Justice Department Inspector General’s office, it looks like ATF is the problem, not the solution.

Some implications of the Project Gunwalker scandal are that ATF has already been receiving significant, voluntary cooperation from gun dealers in the border states, but that the agency has used that cooperation more to build inflate the numbers of illegally “trafficked” weapons as a way of justifying their existence.

Beyond the complications of Project Gunwalker, the idea of requiring reporting of multiple long gun sales is clearly in conflict with established congressional mandates and restrictions on ATF’s authority.  By attempting to push through this major regulatory change without congressional approval (which they could not get), ATF is seriously overstepping their legal authority.

Please copy and paste the following note into an email or write your own and get it submitted as soon as possible.  Also, please do the following: Cc info@FirearmsCoalition.org so we have some record of responses; Send copies to your Senators and Representative and ask that they send their own notes of opposition to ATF; Be sure to repost this Alert to all of your friends and every pro-gun forum you can find.  We must have an overwhelming response to this.

 

Sample comment:

 

To: oira_submission@omb.eop.gov

Subject: Oppose Regulation Expanding Multiple Sale Reporting

 

I am writing to oppose the Information collection action to register multiple sales of certain rifles with BATFE  from the 04/29/2011 Federal Register: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-04-29/pdf/2011-10355.pdf

This information collection is both illegal and unnecessary.

*  The action proposed is outside the statutory grant of authority to record information about multiple sales of firearms.  Title 18 U.S.C. § 923(g)(3)(A) specifically grants the authority to collect multiple sale information on handguns and revolvers.  Other firearms are excluded and there is no implied authority to extend this reporting requirement to rifles or any other type of firearm.

*  Analysis of the number of firearms seized shows that Mexico is being primarily supplied with firearms by South American countries, NOT the United States.  In fact, a STRATFOR report indicates that fully 90% of of the firearms traced in Mexico are NOT coming from the United States, contrary to assertions in the mainstream media: http://wwwprod-1756134246.us-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com/index.php?q=weekly/20110209-mexicos-gun-supply-and-90-percent-myth.

Additionally, Wikileaks cables have shown the US Government is at least partially responsible for supplying Mexico from the United States: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2011/02/pentagon-fingered-source-narco-firepower-mexico.  These firearms are NOT from the US commercial market.

*  Source documents of the BATFE uncovered by US Senator Grassley and US Representative Issa show that BATFE has been complicit in supplying Mexican Narco-terrorist forces with firearms: http://www.scribd.com/doc/49971654/2011-03-03-CEG-to-DOJ-ATF.

*  ”FFL” holders are already required by law to respond to BATFE requests for information on firearms distribution pursuant to criminal investigations:  Title 18 U.S.C. § 923(g)(7).

*  The regulation contains no provision for the destruction of information collected, which establishes a nationwide registry of “certain types of firearms” as proposed. Because of this the regulation, as proposed, is illegal under Title 18 U.S.C. § 926(a).  ”No such rule or regulation … may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or disposition be established.”

There is a grave potential for this regulation to unduly burden citizens who are collectors or must obtain purchase permits at the local or state level to possess firearms. The proposed regulation does not say what the agency intends to do with the information but ostensibly it would be for criminal investigations. Subjecting law abiding gun owners to this type of investigation under the guise of “information collection” is an overt attempt to prevent them from exercising their 2nd Amendment rights to purchase and own firearms.

This regulatory action should not be approved.

 

 

# # #

 

Whether you use this specific language, edit it, or compose a letter of your own, please take action immediately!  Do not put off sending a comment!

Comments must be received by Tuesday May 31, 2011.

Repost — Repost — REPOST!!

Please Send Your Comments Immediately and cc to info@FirearmsCoalition.org.

 

Thank you for your Action!

Jeff Knox

Director, The Firearms Coalition

www.FirearmsCoalition.org

Voters Unhappy with Congress; and other things of note

May 18, 2011

Voters are, again, not so pleased with Congress, so says USA Today / Gallup poll. (Wednesday May 18,2011, front page USA today, by Susan Page.)

No kidding..? My, my, I never would have guessed that… Seems that the peoples mandate was in fact ignored by many that reside in hallowed offices in foggy bottom.

Just say what people want to hear, and go on about your merry ways.

Well folks, that, is specifically what the TEA Party is all about. Make it local, and in their faces, period. All this national TEA Party noise simply ignores why people joined together in this movement against higher taxes and ever expanding government. Government that intrudes on your life, right at home… Texas Fred does a great job exposing threats such as intrusion by government under color of law HERE.

Perhaps greeting politicians locally that are failing with a pot of tar and an opened down pillow will open their collective eyes..?

On to other things.

Seems that Emergency Rooms are still going the way of the passenger pigeon. Yet, the various stories that I have read, or watched on the news have been quite politically correct, and refuse to acknowledge one of the primary causes of closures nationwide. Use by illegal aliens, and others, of Emergency Departments for primary care; with no intent whatsoever of paying for the services rendered. It’s called fraud people, plain and simply put.

The Socialist scum head of the IMF get’s popped for alleged sexual assault. All fine and good; however as pointed out by Michael Savage on his show the other evening no proof is needed in this day and age for a woman to be able to destroy a man simply based upon her complaint of sexual or domestic battery. Sorry Michael, but you did not lead the charge. Do a search of “mysandry.” Better late than never though, and welcome aboard!

The middle east… What a mess to say the least. I’ve been calling for Dear Leader Gadhafi’s head to adorn a fence post for more years than I care to admit to. But just who will run the place after he has been ousted..? More Muslim Brotherhood types? Simply exchanging one despot for a group of despots is no solution. Same thing goes for Syria. While we are at it (examining ) the region. The U.N. will be voting on recognition of the Palestinian National State soon. Since epic fail obama, and his cronies are forever kissing the butts of Arabs / Muslims I suppose we can all guess what sort of support Israel will get from the U.S. on this issue of great importance. What’s yet another friend tossed under the bus..?

The Queen visits Ireland. Land of my forefathers never forget “Bloody Sunday.” But at the same time don’t allow Erie to whither because of old grievances.

The economy continues to falter, while the administration continues to tell us all how great things are becoming. This is a recording… (or so it seems!) If this lie can be pulled off, the epic fail obama is indeed assured a second term, and the destruction of America will be at hand.

That’s all for now folks.