YouTube | Ron Paul Booed by Insane Debate Audience for Endorsing the Golden Rule 

Oh, boo yourselves.

NPR: Fresh Air | Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists In America

Listen to this, and then listen to ron Paul speak on the issue of the War on Drugs and its effect on minorities. Come back and tell me more about Ron Paul’s alleged racism.

Opposing Views | Video: Ron Paul Says Drug War is Racist

Ron Paul, speaking around the time of the publication of his infamous newsletters, condemns what he perceives to be the racism inherent in America’s War of Drugs.

Huffington Post | How to Write a Clichéd, Unpersuasive Argument Against Drug Legalization

I’m relieved to witness these recurring fallacies finally put to rest. We’ll never hear of them again, I trust, and thank goodness. I so look forward to actual thoughtful, constructive drug policy discussions from here on out. 

Truthout | Ron Paul’s False Founding Narrative

So, even a very conservative legal scholar examining the Constitution and precedents could not find a convincing argument to overturn “Obamacare” – and that is because the Founders intentionally empowered Congress to address national economic problems.

I don’t think the author of this piece quite grasps the nature of Ron Paul’s objection. Ron Paul’s objection is that courts throughout American history have mangled the Constitution beyond recognition. To counter the objection, the author cites the most recent U.S. Appeals Court mangling of the Constitution as an authority on the meaning of the Constitution. The author quotes actual founders but once. There is nary a reference to the Federalist papers. The only thing the author proves is that modern conservatives like Judge Laurence Silberman continue to screw up the Constitution just as well as anyone else.

That said, I’m somewhat put off by the founder worship and the constitution worship surrounding the Ron Paul campaign. The founders did not speak with one voice. The Constitution is often a puzzle.

All in all, I give this article five phooeys for shallow research: phooey, phooey, phooey, phooey, and phooey.

On Point with Tom Ashbrook | SOPA, Internet Piracy And Power

Better hear this debate late than never. The enlightening moment occurs at about 35:35, when Tom asks Sandra Aistars, a SOPA proponent:

What’s the club that’s over these American firms [like Google and Twitter]? What’s your leverage to get them to stop including these foreign websites where you say piracy is going on?

Proponents first response:

I’m not following your question.

Tom keeps digging. Proponent’s second response:

The bills would establish a process by which a case could be brought by the Attorney General or by an individual copyright owner that has been harmed.

Tom digs further:

With what threat? With what threat? With what threat to the American web company?

Proponent’s third response:

We’re not talking about American web companies.

Tom digs further. Proponent’s fourth response:

The federal district court has the right to enforce the orders that they issue. … If Google thumbed its nose and ignored an order that was issued to stop directing people to infringing sites, there would be a federal remedy.

Tom keeps digging:

Like what?

Proponent’s fourth response:

The remedy that applies in civil cases.

Tom digs. Proponent’s fifth response:

The court would select the remedies.

Those, like Sandra, who propose government solutions to any problem often either fail to connect or minimize the connection between government and the use of force. Tom Ashbrook does an excellent job of reminding the listeners of the gun in the room. Remember: There’s a gun in the room. There’s a gun in the room. There’s a gun in the room. Stefan Molyneux would be proud.

Wikimedia Foundation | English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout

Thoughts from a leader in internet information sharing.

Common Dreams | Why Romney’s “Firing” Gaffe Really Resonates

But most of all, we don’t see the health insurance company as providing us a service. … The same goes for the rent/mortgage, for the utilities, for the car, for the cell phone bill, for nearly everything. Most of these things are necessary commodities for most Americans. Many are socially expected, even if not technically necessary.

I found the problem right here. There’s a bit of a disconnect between the author’s expectations and reality. These expectations have so skewed his perception that he simply can not recognize a service to see it. The author labors under the misapprehension that he is entitled to the fruits of other people’s efforts.

YouTube | Police Brutality goes wrong! Police officer gets beat down!

Here is a fun video. The running dude is probably a trespasser, and deserves to be removed from the premises–forcefully, if necessary. But does it take four guys to do that, kneeling on him and jabbing at him? The police officers may have became aggressors through over-reaction. The valiant soccer player’s karate kick to the head of one of the police officers could be seen as an act in defense of another. Tough calls all around. The lesson is: Just because the principles are often difficult to apply, that doesn’t mean they should be abandoned.

PRI: Living on Earth | Replanting Kenya / Ingrid Lobet

“In the beginning I was intrigued because it’s such a benign activity. It’s development, exactly what every leader speaks about and so I thought that we would be celebrated and we would be supported by the system. But what I did not realize then, and do now, is that in many situations, leaders, especially leaders in undemocratic countries, have not been keen to inform their people, to empower their people, to help them solve their problems. They almost want them to remain needy, to remain poor, to remain dis-empowered so that they can look up to them, almost like gods and adore them and worship them and hope that they will solve their problems. Now, I couldn’t stand that.”

TED.com | Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0

What aspects of religion should atheists (respectfully) adopt? Alain de Botton suggests a “religion for atheists” — call it Atheism 2.0 — that incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence.

I had always been skeptical of the subtitle of Christopher Hitchen’s book: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poison’s Everything. From community support to art, here are some things that religion actually does well and might be emulated. This was a great talk right up until the end, when the guy in the suit to suggests:

But you did leave out one aspect of religion that a lot of people might say your agenda could borrow from, which is this sense of … spiritual experience: some kind of connection with something bigger than you are. Is there any room for this kind of experience in Atheism 2.0?

Alain politely responds, “Absolutely…”, but the answer is really “No”.

The Daily Show | Jon Stewart Defends Ron Paul’s NH Finish

Rigodddamndiculous.

Daily Intel | How Ron Paul’s Libertarian Principles Support Racism

This is an analysis that makes sense only within the airtight confines of libertarian doctrine. It dissipates with even the slightest whiff of exposure to external reality. The entire premise rests upon ignoring the social power that dominant social groups are able to wield outside of the channels of the state. Yet in the absence of government protection, white males, acting solely through their exercise of freedom of contract and association, have historically proven quite capable of erecting what any sane observer would recognize as actual impediments to the freedom of minorities and women.

Here is the libertarian response: Yes, there is a grain of truth to this. Yes, there are social powers that dominant social groups are able to wield outside of the channels of the state. But this is not a free process. This comes at a cost to the racist and the harasser. The businessman who refuses to hire a qualified worker because of the color of her skin misses an opportunity to be productive and incurs further costs while waiting for and finding an alternatively pigmented replacement. The sexual harasser risks losing the value of an employee who may not be as effective in a hostile environment. Quitting a job and finding a new one may not be as easy as 1, 2, 3, but it is not impossible. The harasser would incur the costs of slowed output and/or finding a replacement. Markets punish these unsavory behaviors and reward those who do not engage in them.

Contrariwise, government regulations banning the thought-crime of racism in the workplace tend to over-punish. When every employer who fires a minority opens herself to a potential lawsuit, that puts economic restrictions on the types of minorities that will be considered for certain jobs. Furthermore, fighting meritless discrimination lawsuits carries a opportunity costs that businessmen might apply more effectively toward running their businesses.

In summary: Markets punish racism. Governments over-punish racism.

ThePresident.com | History of U.S. Intervention in Iran – 1953 Until Present

ThePresident.com endorses Ron Paul. Here is a clip they posted about Ron Paul’s blowback theory. A little history goes a long way. I’d like to research this a bit earlier to see whether the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s interest in Iranian oil was legitimate. Nationalizing the oil industry of Iran is not legitimate, in my view.

Mother Jones | Mitt Romney: “I Like Being Able to Fire People Who Provide Services to Me”

I’m not a Romney fan, but, SRSLY? This seems to me to be as uncontroversial as it gets. What will MoJo write up next? “Rick Santorum: ‘I Ate a Ham Sandwich For Lunch’”.

CBSNews.com | Mitt Romney: “I like being able to fire people” for bad service

Whoops! Looks like I spoke too soon. Here comes the lamestream media! And notice the pattern here. All these wonks are saying: “We all know he meant something completely uncontroversial, but look how bad it sounds when taken out of context!” Lame. Lame, lame, lame.

Democracy Now! | Laid-Off Steelworker: Mitt Romney and Bain Capital Profited by Shutting Down Kansas Steel Plant

On the eve of the New Hampshire vote, Romney unintentionally provided campaign fodder to his rivals with an offhand remark. Touting his health policy as a means to increase competition among health insurers, Romney said he likes to fire people.

“When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” -Sherlock Holmes

Whoops! Looks like I spoke too soon again. I know that Amy Goodman is smarter than this. She did not misunderstand Mitt Romney. That’s impossible. Like the shills above, she understood exactly what he said. Unlike the shills above, she reported that he said something else. What remains, however improbable, is that Amy Goodman deliberately misquoted Mitt Romney for the purpose of confusing the issue. That is unfortunate.

Democracy Now! also cut all the great context out of their clip. DN! listeners did not hear Romney criticize the employer-based health care system that limits competition and obscures the costs of health care. I’m not endorsing Mitt Romney, but the full “I like being able to fire people” clip was one of the smartest things I’ve heard him say yet.

Democracy Now! | Buddy Roemer: GOP Pres. Candidate Who Backs Occupy, Campaign Finance Reform, Excluded from Debates

Amy does right by her listeners and viewers by introducing them to this alternative Republican candidate: Former senator and Louisiana governor Buddy Roemer. You probably will not learn about him from the lamestream media in a timely fashion. See? Democracy Now! is a valuable program. I just hate to see these occasional lapses in judgment.

Libertarianism.org | An Introduction to Libertarian Thought | David Boaz

What is libertarianism? Well, we might say that it’s the presumption of liberty in human affairs. That is, sometimes we may need government to act, but you have to demonstrate that. You have to make the case for government action. It is the exercise of power, not the exercise of freedom that requires justification.

Libertarianism.org: a new project of the Cato Institute to explain the basics of the philosophy. I like what I see. It looks a lot like LearLiberty.org, but with longer videos. Let a hundred flowers blossom.

Naomi Klein | The Shock Doctrine

This video adaptation of Naomi Klein’s critique of “disaster capitalism” of 2009 is summarized in three words: Guilt by association. Nary a criticism of the merits of Milton Friedman’s free market economics is to be found, but his free market economics get a bad rap because they are associated with various campaigns of State violence. I have not yet read Naomi Klein’s book of the same title.

The New Hampshire Institute of Politics | Vermin Supreme: When I’m President Everyone Gets A Free Pony

“Free ponies for all Americans. One of the overlooked issues in America today. My free pony platform is, of course, a jobs creation program. It will create lots and lots of jobs. Once we switch to a pony-based economy, we’ll also lower our dependence on foreign oil. We’ll also be able to turn all that pony poop into methane gas and wonderful compost so we’ll be able to re–uh–up our soil that is being depleted by agro-chemicals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And, of course, the important thing to realize is that it is a federal pony identification program, where you will need your pony with you at all times. Thank you very much.

DebtLimitUSA.org | Debt Limit – A Guide to American Federal Debt Made Easy

A variation on a theme explored earlier by reason.tv, among others. Tell it again. Keep telling it until people wake up. Let a hundred flowers blossom.

IFC | Whitest Kids U’Know: Clint Webb

More juicy satire pours forth. In libertarian circles, we call this libido dominande, or, the lust for power.

Philadelphia Inquirer | Former FM ‘pirate’ works to change rules

A low-power station . . . can only be owned by a nonprofit organization. It has to be noncommercial, [100 watts, with a three-mile signal radius], and primarily devoted to a neighborhood or small town. [It has to broadcast at least 12 hours a day, with at least eight hours of locally produced programming.]

What could possibly be the purpose of these regs? What great harm will come to the people if a licensed radio station broadcasts only 11 hours a day with only 6 hours of local programming? This is simply libido dominande on the part of government. They do it because they can.

NORML SHOW LIVE #828 – Paul Armentano on Top Ten Marijuana Stories of 2011

It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed a good NORML podcast. I used to listen years ago, when Chris Goldstein used to host. Back then, you got a ten minute podcast once a week of condensed marijuana news and you stayed informed. Now, it’s like an hour a day every day, with a whole lot of weed culture, cheesy songs, and commercial stuff mixed in that I don’t particularly appreciate. That aside, you’ll still get yourself a decent education about the American justice system by tuning in and sticking around for the Hemp Headlines. Kicking off the new year in 2012 is a countdown of the biggest pot news stories of 2011, plus a segment on the dog sniff Supreme Court case, Florida v. Jardines.

MoveOn.org | The Most Heartbreaking 99% Graphic You Will See This Week

A twisted anecdote about AHCCCS, Arizona's Medicaid agency.

It makes perfect sense. This is how the regulatory/welfare state works: Government intervention reduces the availability of health care and distorts the price of health care until nobody can afford it. Government welfare programs then incentivize unemployment. If it looks messed up, that’s because it is.

Orange Juice Blog | San Diego man alleges CHP brutality in OC

A facebook friend posted this story from a socialist web site, sans video. You can never take what these socialists say at face value, so I had to take a closer look. The Orange Juice blog posted the video in question.

Right in the beginning, you kinda see what this is about. The police ram his car several times, and he’s still going. I don’t know where he thinks he’s going. He said he was “trying to pull over to a well-populated area,” but that seems a stretch to me. Once you get rammed, I think it’s game over. If the police think you are leading a chase, they don’t show mercy when they catch you. I don’t know how well that justifies a dog attack and a beating, but it sort of at least explains it.

The trumped up charge of “harming an officer’s horse or dog”, of course, is bizarre and Kafkaesque. The man needs to be defended from that crap regardless of what he was really up to.

Reason.com | Do Libertarians Care More about States’ Rights or State Abuses of Power?

States don’t have rights. People do.

DSBac | SCHIFFOGRAPHY

One of my favorite parts of one of my favorite lectures.

Salon.com | Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies – Glenn Greenwald

I can only imagine what the “horrible aspects of his belief system” are, but that aside, this is one hell of a great article.

Mother Jones | All Work and No Pay: The Great Speedup

I’m noticing a pattern. It goes like this: Step 1): Progressives make some empty, bogus, polemic accusations against businesses and markets. Step 2) Libertarians and free-marketers see right through the accusations and expose their fallacies. Step 3) Progressives return from the drawing board after some time with slightly better developed versions of their accusations. Step 4) These new versions are a little trickier to unravel, but libertarians and free-marketers unravel them just the same. Lather, rinse, repeat. This link and the next link are examples of this pattern in action: 

Now the word we use is “productivity,” [as oppposed to "speed-up"] a term insidious in both its usage and creep. The not-so-subtle implication is always: Don’t you want to be a productive member of society? … Except what’s good for American business isn’t necessarily good for Americans. We’re not just working smarter, but harder. And harder. And harder, to the point where the driver is no longer American industriousness, but something much more predatory.

This article is more artillery in what Mike Rowe has called the War on Work. Here’s the progression of arguments:

Argument 1) Businessmen will pay the workers as little as possible and grind them under their boot heels at any opportunity.  Without government protection, workers will be forever condemned to lives of poverty. Response: Tom DiLorenzo taught me that businessmen must compete for labor on the labor market. This will create an upward pressure on wages that is limited by worker productivity.

Argument 2) Productivity has increased, but wages haven’t. Businessmen are riding their workers harder and not paying them any more! Well, no, actually. Advances in technology have made workers more productive without so much extra labor. Furthermore, expansions of the labor pool have caused average wages to stagnate while significant advances have been made for traditionally excluded classes, such as women, minorities, foreigners, etc.

3) This article is the next step in the progression. Better technology allegedly makes workers work harder because they are now tethered to the office 24/7 via mobile devices. There also hasn’t been a huge leap in technological development since the latest economic crises, yet productivity is up and wages are still down.

The authors knit a pretty tight sweater, but fortunately they have left a thread dangling to help us unravel it. When speaking to an Illinois college instructor, they found:

I can’t complain of overwork, because everyone is competing to get enough classes to pay the bills. If you lose a class, you lose a chunk of your paycheck. If we can’t handle it, the class can always be given to another teacher who will be desperate for the work or money.

More desperate? More Industrious? Either way, the thief who stealing this guy’s hard earned leisure is not the greedy bourgeois employer. Rather, it is the competing worker who is more willing to do the work. Where is the two-page article condemning this worker’s masochism? I’ll be following this issue for the next generation of arguments….

New York Times | Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs

Okay, here is the progression of arguments:

Argument 1) The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.–Response: No. The rich get richer and the poor get richer. The people who say this are ignoring income mobility. Back to the drawing board with you.

Argument 2) This article, in which progressives claim it is now harder for the poor move up the income ladder. At least they’re not claiming something as foolish as that “the poor are getting poorer”.–Response: Free market skeptics get mention in the article, but they don’t get a headline. Here’s the good part:

Skeptics caution that the studies measure “relative mobility” — how likely children are to move from their parents’ place in the income distribution. That is different from asking whether they have more money. Most Americans have higher incomes than their parents because the country has grown richer.

Some conservatives say this measure, called absolute mobility, is a better gauge of opportunity. A Pew study found that 81 percent of Americans have higher incomes than their parents (after accounting for family size). There is no comparable data on other countries.

Since they require two generations of data, the studies also omit immigrants, whose upward movement has long been considered an American strength. “If America is so poor in economic mobility, maybe someone should tell all these people who still want to come to the U.S.,” said Stuart M. Butler, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

The income compression in rival countries may also make them seem more mobile. Reihan Salam, a writer for The Daily and National Review Online, has calculated that a Danish family can move from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile with $45,000 of additional earnings, while an American family would need an additional $93,000.

SSDP | Romney Doesn’t Know What Hemp Is

Should I expect a mainstream presidential candidate to know what “industrialized” hemp is?

NPR | Raising The Minimum Wage: Who Does It Help?

It’s Econ 101: The more you raise the price of something — employment, in this case — the less of it there’ll be.

Kudos to Morning Edition for plainly stating this fundamental economic truth. Here’s another astute observation:

For one thing, many of the people earning the minimum aren’t poor at all; they’re teenagers or middle-class part-timers looking for extra income.

People should decide for themselves the terms upon which they will work. Period.

Mother Jones | A Conversation About Greece

So if they want their economy to grow again, they have to (a) default, (b) exit the euro and readopt the drachma, and (c) devalue the drachma. This will cause massive amounts of pain, but it will also make Greek exports super cheap, which will eventually revive their economy. So why not just let that happen? It’s just too catastrophic to consider.

Another Kevin Drum special report. There doesn’t seem to be any denial that government profligacy and European Union central banking caused this mess in Greece and distributed it to Germans. But severing ties, allowing the recession to occur, and rebuilding the Greek economy on a sound foundation would “too catastrophic to consider”. This sounds to me like a stereotypical abusive relationship.

PoliticusUSA | Ron Paul Ups The Ante And Claims Sexual Harassment Shouldn’t Be Illegal

What Ron Paul was saying here is that there should not be any federal laws against sexual harassment. There should not be any civil rights protections for women and some men in the workplace. In other words, sexual harassment should be legal.

Absolutely ridiculous. The author needs to go back to a fifth grade civics class. Key word: federal. The 50 states all have laws about this. Just because Ron Paul doesn’t think the federal government should make a case out of every rude joke, that doesn’t mean he intends to make all forms of harassment legal in all 50 states. Even from a moral standpoint, Ron Paul would still criminalize harassment that amounts to aggression.

New Jersey cops destroy BMW searching for weed that wasn’t there

Neither this guy, nor GEICO, will ever see one red cent from the police in restitution for the damage that the police have caused.

An infamous newsletter.

Bleeding Heart Libertarians | How Did We Get Here? Or, Why Do 20 Year Old Newsletters Matter So Damn Much?

The paleo strategy, as laid out here by Rockwell, was clearly designed to create a libertarian-conservative fusion exactly along the lines Jacob lays out in his post. It was about appealing to the worst instincts of working/middle class conservative whites by creating the only anti-left fusion possible with the demise of socialism: one built on cultural issues. With everyone broadly agreeing that the market had won, how could you hold together a coalition that opposed the left? Oppose them on the culture. If you read Rockwell’s manifesto through those eyes, you can see the “logic” of the strategy. And it doesn’t take a PhD in Rhetoric to see how that strategy would lead to the racism and other ugliness of newsletters at the center of this week’s debates.

An eye opening expose from Steve Horwitz at Bleeding Heart Libertarians. It’s all news to me, and it explains so much: Just as the memories of past indiscretions were fading, the infamous Ron Paul newsletter controversy arrives like a rotting ghost ship to disembark its regrettable cargo of base cultural pandering and other brain-eating zombies. Sikha Dalmia at Reason follows up. Ron Paul should confront the past. He might be able to salvage his campaign if only he were up front about this ill-considered and long abandoned political strategy of playing on middle America’s latent bigotry and fears. The truth, I think, is the only thing that could set him free.

Reason.com | Who Wrote Ron Paul’s Newsletters?

Lamenting that mainstream intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an “Outreach to the Rednecks,” which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. Paul’s inner circle learned between his congressional stints that “the wilder they got, the more bombastic they got with it, the more the checks came in. You think the newsletters were bad? The fundraising letters were just insane from that period.”

An earlier reason piece that I missed in 2008. I can almost imagine some people almost forgiving Ron Paul for playing politics in a political world–but nobody who actually thinks Paul is an actual bigot will forgive him for being a bigot. Ron Paul should come clean. The truth will set you free, Ron. Just do it.

Tom Woods | The Ron Paul Newsletters

Thomas E. Woods, Jr. reacts to the newsletters with a dose of common sense. Which will you weigh more heavily: twenty-year-old dead words on a page, or the positively destructive policies that the other candidates now proudly support? Tom also offers a short list of further reading.

Taki’s Magazine | Why the Beltway Libertarians Are Trying to Smear Ron Paul

The first item on Tom Woods’s reading list. Justin Raimondo begins with a disappointing series of ad hominems against Reason.com’s fashion statements. He more-or-less dodges the authorship and motive questions and focuses primarily on minimizing the damage by adding context to the newsletters, including the racially charged LA riots, and the promiscuous gay scene. He is somewhat successful, but that success must be balanced against Steve Horwitz’s recollection of the paleo-strategy, and his requests to be removed from the Mises Institute mailing list due to what he considered to be inappropriate content.

The Ron Paul Newsletters

Links purportedly to the Ron Paul Newsletters. I, myself, still have not read them.

Mother Jones | Old Ron Paul Video Warns of One-World Religion, UN Dictatorship

Another transparent Ron Paul smear from Mother Jones. Is there any particular reason this article references a “Ron Paul video” rather than a “John Birch Society video”? Surely MoJo editors do not mean to attribute everything said in the video to one of the videos interviewees. Also, has everyone already forgotten the furor over the U.N.’s recently abandoned anti-blasphemy code? If so, here is a reminder. Without defending the John Birch Society’s alarmism, perhaps a better title for this article would have been, “Ron Paul was right…again”.

Reuters | Paul builds campaign on doomsday scenarios

Here is another lame example of the same sort of criticism I posted last week. There is very little in the way of counter argument. The author/editor just applies a few select pejoratives–or not even–and voila! Instant smear. The only thing coming close to an actual argument goes like this:

“We would still have monetary policy – it would be set by gold miners in South Africa and Uzbekistan, rather than bureaucrats in Washington,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist with JPMorgan Chase.

Srsly? Conflicts of interest aside, this argument is as thin as the paper that federal reserve notes are printed on. What is easier to manipulate: money that comes from a printing press or a computer keystroke, or money that comes out of a mine? Draw your own conclusions. Tom Woods responds.

NPR | Johnson Discusses Seeking Libertarian Nomination

Reason.com | Gary Johnson Goes Full Libertarian: “I am excited. I am liberated. And I am committed to shaking the system as it has never been shaken before.”

Gary Johnson switches to the Libertarian Party.

Exactly what it says on the tin. Reason.com publishes Johnson’s e-mail announcement.

Freedomain Radio Forums | The Little Red Hen – An Anti-Libertarian Short Story Written by a Friend. Please comment.

Cute re-working of the Little Red Hen story, intended to expose the alleged immorality of capitalism, and posted on a libertarian web forum as a respectful critique. The libertarian commenters saw right through it, as did I. The moral of the story is: Be sure to understand the terms under which you work before you launch into it.

WhiteHouse.org | Vice President Biden Holds a Campaign to Cut Waste Cabinet Meeting

You’ll see right here a case study in exactly why I dislike government, for some few people still fail to understand: Congress ordered the U.S. Mint to make these things without much of a clue as to whether its captive customers (i.e. taxpayers) would be interested. Modern Americans have never accepted dollar coins so long as paper dollars have been available, even though the coins would save them tax money over the long term. Seeing the success of the state quarter gimmick, Congress figured the public would eat up these dollar coins, too. No such luck. So the coins have continued to be minted, under congrssional order, since 2006. They have been filling warehouses unused for almost as long. We in the coin world have looked on and rolled our eyes for YEARS.Now, five years later, here comes the government, tra la la, laughing at how it’s been screwing over taxpayers: “Ho ho ho! He he he! Ha ha ha! How funny it is when the government fleeces its subjects! So okay, fun’s over. We’ll put the program on hold now. …”A private company would have put the kabosh on this dibacle at the first sign of unprofitablility. Government gets to it when it gets to it, and then laughs at how wasteful it’s been. Ha ha ha! Funny, right? Of course, government representatives only laughs when government wastes money on innocuous things like coins. When government wastes money on positively destructive programs government, and is ideologically convinced that these programs are proper, there is no laughter. There is an air of righteousness. But the government has no idea whether it is serving people or injuring them. The government gets paid either way.

Gamma Squad | The $25 Computer’s First Batch Is In Beta

The free market wins again. The digital divide continues to shrink.

Wired.com | The Secret Cause of Flame Wars

Something to keep in mind when debating people over facebook, forums, or e-mail.

Reason.tv | Stop Spending Our Future!

After a while, these become just a bunch of numbers, unhinged from any consequences.

reason.tv | Weed Wars: Medical Marijuana Hits Reality TV

Look at the inside of their facility. You might mistake it for a bank at first glance. Look at the paperwork. Look at the oversight. Face reality: people buy drugs. Now ask yourself: would you rather people buy drugs in places like this, or from criminal thugs on street corners?

Philadlephia Weekly | PW Exclusive: DEA Takes Down N.J. Weedman’s California Pot Operation

Meanwhile, he says, the 17 people he employed at the Liberty Bell Temple and grow site are now out of work—”right before Christmas, too”—

What am I gonna do, go back to driving a truck? Nobody’s gonna hire me, and I don’t have money to get my own truck back on the road.”

A fixture of New Jersey’s marijuana culture is the latest victim of the government’s medical marijuana crackdown. 17 + 1. Why, that’s 18 people out of work. ….

The Young Turks | Cenk Uygur Cuts Off Peter Schiff’s Mic Then Kicks Him Off The Show!

Cenk blabbed over Peter several times before the final exchange. I don’t think Peter once ended a thought with a period and a full stop (not that he ever really does that). Then Cenk asks a question, answers it himself, embarks on a soliloquy, stuffs words in Peter’s mouth.

Cenk did not have Peter on the show because he was in any way interested in Peter’s insight. Cenk invited Peter on so he could talk down to Peter.

Wall Street Journal | What Ron Paul Thinks of America

Dorothy Rabinowitz repeats Ron Paul’s statements on American foreign policy while sprinkling in some colorful epithets, such as “the best-known of American propagandists for our enemies”. The only thing missing is a counter-argument. Ms. Rabinowitz simply could not be troubled to offer an alternative narrative.

SlateV | Rachel Maddow: Why Liberals are More Coherent Than Conservatives

Rachel Maddow rightfully accuses the Republicans of general incoherence. One example, of many, that she offers is Mitt Romney’s abiguity about war. I welcome this descussion about coherence, because I think this is where libertarians have it all over the competition, hands down. When pressed to think of an example of Democrat incoherence, Rachel’s first and only response is that Democrats are incoherent about how to move their poilitcal agendas forward against their fellow incoherent Republican legislators. Really? Is that the best she can do? If you want to see incoherence laid bare across the mainstream political spectrum, watch Jan Helfeld’s many varied interviews with legislators. Just listen to both Rep. Joe Hoeffel (D-PA) and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev) babble incoherently about the ethics of taxation. This is fundamental stuff, here.

ars technica | Victory! Boycott forces GoDaddy to drop its support for SOPA

Facing intense economic pressure, GoDaddy changes its tune on SOPA in 24 hours flat. Boycotts actually work if one ticks off enough people. Noam Chomsky once called corporations “completely unaccountable” “tyrannies”. Here is a clear example to the contrary.

ABC | Christopher Hitchens, Author and Television Personality, Dies at 62

“I’m a member of no party. I have no ideology. I’m a rationalist,” he told USA Today in 2010. “I do what I can in the international struggle between science and reason, and the barbarism, superstition and stupidity that’s all around us.”

Crestfallen, but not surprised. Those who have looked online for images of Christopher Hitchens over the past year have seen this coming. I often took comfort in believing that every few months there would be another fresh crop of Hitchens debates on YouTube to inspire abd encourage. Alas, that is no longer true, but he has left behind an impressive catalog to visit and revist.

Much will always be made of his Trotskyite past, but I had often wondered whether to count Hitchens as among the libertarians, given his occaisonal appearances at reason.com-sponsored events and the libertarian-sounding rhetoric he used against the notion of a celestial dictator. His support for the Iraq war seemed to weigh against the proposition. He has been quoted as saying of himself that he had a “libertarian gene“. I don’t know if that’s quite enough, but either way, I’m grateful for the what he has given us. Devotion to rationalism is the highest ideal—higher even than the devotion to liberty. It isn’t good enough to do what only seems virtuous. One must also be right.

FORA.tv | Christopher Hitchens Debates Alister McGrath, Georgetown University

Yes, it would be nice if you could throw your sins and your responsibilities on someone else, and have them dissolve, but it’s NOT TRUE!

I cherish all of the long nights during my law school days that I spent on YouTube with Christopher Hitchens, who had the courage to say, loudly and clearly, what ought to be plain. Of all that time, this is probably the video I remember best as having the earliest and greatest effect. What a lousy ethical doctrine it is to believe that one can be absolved and forgiven by throwing one’s sins on another’s back and then murdering him, ruthlessly. If that’s the way to salvation, then count me out.

YouTube | Christopher Hitchens – The Best of the Hitchslap – Part Two

People always demand respect for their faith. You’ve noticed this happening. Why should I respect someone who makes enormous claims on no evidence, and when confronted with that fact says, “Well, I don’t need any evidence. I’ve got faith.”? I think extraordinary claims—such as that they know not just that there is a God, but that they know his mind, they know his instructions, they’ve had revealed truth from him—a claim like that demands extrordinary evidence. Instead of which they say, “No. How about no evidence at all, and just take me on faith.” Why am I supposed to respect that? I don’t respect it. I suspect it.

Many theists consider Atheism to be just another religion. Fair enough. I consider to religion to be just another philosophy, and an unsound one at that. Religion is to be evaluated and criticized as harshly any other philosophy. If it is to stand, then it must stand on its merits. It must receive no deference on account of its adherents’ sensitivies and cultural attachments to it.

YouTube | Best Christopher Hitchens Moments on Religion and God

“Do you think that onto such as you, a maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew, God gave a secret and denied it me? Well, well! What matters it? Believe that, too.” This magnificent astronomer, and scientist and physician and humanist of Persia [Omar Khayyám], who opposed the cruel, sadistic, verminous, ignorant, mullahs of his day, I borrow the question: What is your authority for saying that you know something I don’t?

…

The difference between the Theist and the deist is as follows: The Deist says, “It may not make sense without some kind of designer.” The Theist says, “When I tell you what to do, Christopher, I have God on my side.” The [theist] says that he can tell what God wants of me, what length I should shave off the end of my penis, if I’m a boy of have a male child, or off the clitoris if it is a female child. He knows to the exactitude what the proportions of that should be, what the diet should be—what the dietary laws ought to be—who I should sleep with and in what position. And various other—and since God doesn’t ever directly appear and say, “Do it this way”, it’s done for him—and this is really convenient—by human representatives who claim to act in his name. So that’s why I think your standard of proof should be a great deal higher, because if you—the reason this point is important to you is that it would mean real power in the only world that actually exists, which is the material world, of you, over me. And you wonder why I’m not keen.

If religion were merely a philosophy, it might be harmless. If it were merely a philosophy, one could be excused for letting it pass without the normal scrutiny. Instead, religion is often the basis of enforcing demands on other people. When used in that way, the stakes are much higher, and the theists must bear the burden of proving their claims. That burden must be at least as heavy as the demands they wish to place on others.

Bausch College | Christopher Hitchens debates George Galloway

Only once, to my recollection, had Christopher Hitchens met his rhetorical match on stage. I found this exchange to be as informative as it was entertaining. The issue is the Iraq war. Watch the irresistable force and the immovable object collide!

NY Students Suspended For ‘Tebowing’

District Superintendent Nancy Carney says the tribute posed a safety hazard by blocking others from getting to class.

I don’t know about this “safety hazard” stuff, but they could have respected their fellow classmates more by ‘Tebowing’ against the lockers rather than blocking the hallway.

Breitbart.tv | Newt: FDR Was The ‘Greatest President’ Of The 20th Century

Of course! Taking command and control of the economy is what “great presidents” do! I think that by “he was the greatest practitioner of self-government”, Newt means that FDR was great at governing by himself.

Businessweek | Correlation or Causation?

Did high tax rates in the 1950s create prosperity? Did rising wealth inequality lead to an unstable economy? Lesson: correlation is not causation.

Ron Paul “IMAGINE” FOREIGN POLICY RON PAUL 2012

A little intimidating, but true.

Wired | Senate Wants the Military to Lock You Up Without Trial

There is a lot of buzz about this goin’ ’round my online circles. One of my faceook friends was kind enough to link to the actual bill text. I don’t want to say too much about it before I study it. Things often don’t live up to the hype.

S. 1867: An Act to authorize for fiscal year 2012 for military activities f the department of defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes

“Other purposes,” indeed. Attention is called to Sections 1031 and 1032. It sounds more like the inane ranting of a conservative pundit than an actual bill before congress:

SEC. 1032. REQUIREMENT FOR MILITARY CUSTODY.
(a) CUSTODY PENDING DISPOSITION UNDER LAW OF WAR.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in paragraph (4), the Armed Forces of the United States shall hold a person described in paragraph (2) who is captured in the course of hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40) in military custody pending disposition under the law of war.
(2) COVERED PERSONS.—The requirement in paragraph (1) shall apply to any person whose detention is authorized under section 1031 who is determined—
(A) to be a member of, or part of, al-Qaeda or an associated force that acts in coordination with or pursuant to the direction of al-Qaeda; and
(B) to have participated in the course of planning or carrying out an attack or attempted attack against the United States or its coalition partners.

It’s like the arguments in favor military tribunals for Gitmo detainees, now applied to everyone “who is determined” to be a “covered person”. The bill’s drafters write is determined in the passive voice, as if such determinations float infallibly down from the high heavens. You’d think maybe they would have cared to mention who, exactly, is to make such determinations, and how such determinations are to be made. 

Anonymous | Message to the American People

Here’s one interpretation of the defense bill. Sounds kind of alarmist to me, but I don’t know, you know?

Patrick Meighan | My Occupy LA Arrest

Certain things just don’t ring true. You gotta be able to spot them. If you see quotation marks, look for a citiation. Quotation marks without a citation is like, I don’t know…eyes without a face.

If this were a courtroom I would object, under Federal Rule of Evidence 602, that Patrick Meighan lacks personal knowledge of what Citigroup executives internally called their securities. Patrick Meighan likes to quote well enough, but he doesn’t like to cite. Very well. That’s what Google is for. If you Google up the infamous “collection of dogshit” quote, you’ll find that CNN Money reported it, but attributed it instead to an SEC comlpaint against citigroup, which in turn, quoted “one CDO trader”. The orginal SEC complaint is available. The quote is on page 19. The report does not identify the trader but describes him as among “certain sophisticated market participants”. I’m not sure I’ll ever know how “one CDO trader” became “citigroup executives”, but it sounds to me like a kindergarden game of ‘whispering down the lane’. And it’s not as if an SEC complaint against citigroup is anything close to a neutral exposition of facts. I’m recalling the Orewellian spin throughout the DOJ’s comlpaint against Bernard von Nothaus and the Liberty Dollar.

Patrick Meighan’s personal knowledge about the arrest tactics are very valuable. I would encourage everyone concerned about the state of liberty in this country to read that. In contrast, I would call his third-hand accout of the causes of our economic troubles ‘junk journalism’. I’ll take it for what it’s worth, which isn’t very much.

WoodTV NBC8 | Contempt of court: judge vs attorney

This young lawyer is a hero and a role model. Off the cuff, I’ll say that, when setting bond of bail, the judge is to consider only the danger to the community of letting the accused go free and the risk that the accused will flee and fail to return for trial. I don’t know what the judge expects to glean from either of those two issues by asking the accused when he last used controlled substances and whether he expects traces amounts of such substances to appear in his urine. I would consider these to be illegitimate bond questions.

Democracy Now! | Richard Wolff: Eurozone Woes Result from Mating of Our “Dysfunctional” Political, Economic Systems

I’m trying to get back into Democracy Now!, or, as I used to call it, the Real News. Guess who is the guest: our new friend, economist Richard Wolff. He’s shaping up to be my go-to guy for the anti-capitalist perspective on economics. Here he says some things that I can’t abide, mostly his definition of austerity as “making the mass of people pay” for the crisis. The opposite is true. When governments confiscate money from the public, in the form of either taxation or inflation, and pay off special interests with it, that, literally, is “making the mass of people pay” for the crisis.

Austerity is a boo word throughout the interview. There seems to be some argumentum ad baculum going on here. That the mass of people will “rise up” if governments continue with austerity programs does not make austerity a bad idea. It just makes the mass of people thugs.

PBS NewsHour | Richard Epstein on Inequality and High Taxes

I with Epstein here on pretty much every point.

Toom Woods | Didn’t We Used to Have High Taxes and Prosperity?

This response applies to the Rick Wolff radio show posted last week, as well as some questions asked of Richard Epstein above. Yes, top marginal tax rates were high, but few people paid them due to extensive loopholes and fraud. Peter Schiff gave this same response to the 99%ers that he addressed on Wall Street: People simply didn’t pay those taxes. I’m sure there’s more to the story. I’d like to learn more details.

Grey’s Blog | Gerrymandering Explained

Which is more harmful to democracy: this monkey business, or the Citizens United decision? I say this monkey business.

The Salt Lake Tribune | Gold, silver legal tender in Utah, but a long way from replacing dollar

The state of Utah made gold and silver legal tender earlier this year, but refuses to accept it as payment of property taxes. Hey, Utah State Tax Commission: go play in traffic.

“It doesn’t allow much,” Senate Majority Leader Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City, said of the bill he co-sponsored recognizing gold. “But the concept behind it is powerful. Little by little our currency is being devalued. … It’s a little pushback on one hand, but on the other, maybe it will make us look at the value of our currency and strengthen it.”

No, the concept behind it is impotent. It does not push back unless it is actually practiced.

ABC News | Obama Administration to Delay New 15-Cent Christmas Tree Tax

I can tell you unequivocally that the Obama Administration is not taxing Christmas trees. What’s being talked about here is an industry group deciding to impose fees on itself to fund a promotional campaign, similar to how the dairy producers have created the ‘Got Milk?’ campaign.

Economic Freedom responds here:

The Christmas tree industry has tried programs like this in the past, but after a few years the programs fail because of their “voluntary nature.” So what is the solution? Make the program involuntary!

Industry groups can impose fees on themselves whenever they want without any help from the government. Growers need government’s help when they want to impose fees on others. I hope this has been delayed indefinitely.

Rick Perry | Strong

I vote no. Next?

PV Pulse | Bolivia Set to Pass Historic ‘Law of Mother Earth’ Which Will Grant Nature Equal Rights to Humans

So, if you slap a mosquito, is that murder?

Gizmodo | Motorola Wins Europe-Wide Sales Ban Against iOS Devices

By the time all this shakes out the only tablets left on shelves will be refurbished Etch-a-Sketches.

The unfortunate side effects of patent wars.

MSNBC | Prime-time religion: Catholics to air national TV ads

IMO, the most effective thing the Catholic Church could do to increase membership would be to invent some more believable truth claims.

Occupy Philly Media | Occupy Philly Eviction – This is what a police state looks like

In spite of the “police state” rhetoric, I think Philly has still handled the Occupy movement better than other municipalities. This eviction was undertaken so that a long-planned construction project could begin in Dilworth Plaza.

6abc.com | RAW: Mounted patrol moves Occupy back.

A facebook friend wrote, “This is how Philadelphia police treat non-violent protesters.” Not quite. Police did not just up and drive a horse through a permitted demonstration. Those who disobey orders to disperse are no longer mere protesters. They are then civil disobediencers. Police up the ante at that point. I’m not denouncing the protesters. Good for them–but let’s be honest about what happened.

New York Times | Brief Details Jury Nullification Case Against Julian Heicklen

Prosecutors are offering their first detailed explanation for why they charged Mr. Heicklen, arguing in a brief that his “advocacy of jury nullification, directed as it is to jurors, would be both criminal and without Constitutional protections no matter where it occurred.”

The key phrase is “directed as it is to jurors”. 

No legal system could long survive,” they added, “if it gave every individual the option of disregarding with impunity any law which by his personal standard was judged morally untenable.

Either Heicklen broke the jury tampering law or he didn’t. Wild, self-serving speculation about the robustness of our legal system is beside the point and does not belong in a legal brief.

DoucmentCloud | Heicklen Indictment

An essential element of the indictment is that Heicklen distributed the pamphlets “immediately in front of an entrance to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York”. I believe that only this fact even implies that Heicklen’s message was “directed as it was to jurors”.

Newt talks some sense, but not enough to win my support.

Reason.com | Newt Gingrich candidate profile

Behind Gary Johnson and Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich looks like the third most reasonable person on the stage. Still, he holds some positions disqualify him from my support. See Drug War and Personal Freedom, above.

Townhall.com | Gingrich and Immigration

One of my favorites, Thomas Sowell, criticizes Newt on an issue that I hear Newt is actually okay on: immigration.

The more doctrinaire libertarians see the benefits of free international trade in goods, and extend the same reasoning to free international movement of people. But goods do not bring a culture with them. Nor do they give birth to other goods to perpetuate that culture.

I am a more doctrinaire libertarian.

When you import people, you import cultures, including cultures that have been far less successful in providing decent lives and decent livelihoods. The American people have a right to decide for themselves whether they want unlimited imports of cultures from other countries.

I do not recognize this alleged right of “the American people” to exclude on the basis of culture. Let the immigrants in and enforce the culture of freedom over their objections.

Reason.com | Newt Gingrich Says Drug Use Is “Antithetical to Being an American,” Wants to Escalate Drug War by Impoverishing More Users

You can either be in the Ron Paul tradition and say there’s nothing wrong with heroine [sic] and cocaine or you can be in the tradition that says, These kind of addictive drugs are terrible, they deprive you of full citizenship and they lead you to a dependency which is antithetical to being an American.

A load of straw here from Newt. Recognizing the failure of waging war on American citizens is not the same as condoning drug use.

You have to admit, Ron Paul has a coherent position. It’s not mine, but it’s internally logical.

Well, then?

Governor Christie |  The War on Drugs Isn’t Working

Will Governor Christie get smart on crime? Let’s hope.

Vox Magazine | Meet Dan Viets: marijuana’s leading man

Dan Viets hosted a visionary radio show on KOPN called Sex, Drugs, and Civil Liberties that I listened to constantly during my law school days. I haven’t heard from that show in a while, but it looks like Dan is still busy.

GaryJohnson2012.com | Governor Gary Johnson Announces Support for Gay Marriage

Earth to GOP. Come in, GOP. If you are looking for a candidate who might actually beat Barack Obama come next fall, you are missing a golden opportunity.

NBC-2 News | 75 Years in Prison For Videotaping Police 

Illinois man faces 75 years for “eavesdropping”. This case was dismissed.

New York Times | A Banker Speaks, With Regret

The bigwigs of the corporations knew this, but they figured we’re going to make billions out of it, so who cares? The government is going to bail us out. And the problem loans will be out of here, maybe even overseas.

Peter Schiff always talks about the moral hazard that comes with government bailouts. Here is a great example. The regretful banker still celebrates the Fed.

Law and Disorder Radio | Law and Disorder November 21, 2011

Two proud socialists, Michael Smith and Richard Wolff, discuss the economy toward the end of the broadcast. Americans are in debt and can’t control their consumerism, apparently, because they’ve had the American Dream crammed down their throats. Remember that these people who are allegedly so easily hypnotized by consumerism are the same ones that choose our government leaders on election day.

Rick Wolff makes a good point that there are two sides to borrower/lender relationship. Who is lending these people money and why? Where did all this money come from? Wolff mentions the Federal Reserve, our nation’s central bank, monopoly money printer, and lender of last resort, only in passing. Then there’s this at 56:08 :

It is irrational of any economic system to have, as we do in the United States today, twenty to twenty-five million unemployed people side-by-side with roughly 30% of our productive capacity unused: store space, factory space, machines, equipment, and computers. We have the people who want the work. We have the raw materials and the equipment for them to use. The output would be a vast wealth with which could solve our social problems. We live in a capitalist system that can not put these three together–can not take the people who want the work, put it together with the equipment we need to produce the output we desperately require. That’s a grade of F for an economic system.

Those who do not constantly marvel at what markets can produce take too much for granted. That markets can produce such conveniences as a toaster is nothing short of miraculous. Markets certainly can put these three together. The question is: What is stopping them? My guess would be government’s ever-growing regulatory obstacle course, whose stated purpose is to limit the ways in which people may agree to work and in which the factors of production may be utilized.

Now, socialists generally lump government and business together into a sprawling, kraken-like monster that they call the “capitalist” ruling class. They will therefore blame what they call “capitalism” for every problem that governments cause. Tomayto tomahto. I don’t care what they call it. Just make sure you understand what is happening.

Truthout | Economic Update: Your Weekly Dose of Revolutionary Economics

Richard Wolff has his own show here, also available from WBAI.org. I’ve occasionally searched for high-quality, Mises.org-like economic podcasts explaining socialist economics. I’ve usually been disappointed, but this might be half decent. Too bad it does not seem to be available in a proper RSS podcast, but I think I’ll manage.

Embedded above is (supposed to be) what I believe to be the first episode, from March 26th of this year. The topic is how the government should get more loot to blow by raising top tax rates to 1940s post WWII levels. These were apparently better economic times, but Wolff does not demonstrate how higher taxes cause better economies. Correlation is not causation.

The Onion | 54 Iraqis Die In Not Our Problem Anymore

Well, yeah.

Mother Jones | Map: Is Adultery Illegal?

In the wake of the Penn State Scandal, I had thought a lot about closing the gap between immorality and illegality. Laws should reflect morality. If an act is immoral, legal sanction should follow from engaging in it. One could argue that adultery is a form of fraud and that the aggrieved spouse should be entitled to legal redress. I haven’t heard out all sides of the issue, but I can see it.

University of Chicago Press |They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, an excerpt

A sober reminder of what happens when people trust governments to think for them. I have this book, but I haven’t read it. Maybe it’s time to get on that.

Reason.com | Believers Rate Atheists About As Trustworthy As Rapists, Says New Study

The feeling is mutual. I have this hankering distrust of people who claim to offer “eternal salvation” in exchange for obedience.

Israel National News | Tovia Singer to Discontinue Program

From July 2010. I’ve been trying to find some of the old podcasts I used to listen to in law school to load anew into my banshee media player. The Tovia Singer show was always a good ideological counter-balance to progressivism’s relentless criticism of the Israeli occupation. It is a shame that he will not return to my podcast rotation. I’m sure Arutz Sheva has had a good backup, I trust.

This image accompanied the article at Phawker. What emotion toward Chinese workers is this image calculated to instill?

Philly.com | Apple’s American job disaster

I first caught this article re-posted at Phawker.com under the title, How Steve Jobs F*cked Over The American Worker. Steve Jobs could have sat at home and played his Atari all day. He chose instead to revolutionize the way we communicate. This is the thanks he gets.

But in 1996, the moneymen on Wall Street decided Apple was not living up to their expectations. Earnings had sagged. To raise cash and bolster the bottom line, the company was forced to unload assets. The Fountain plant was sold, just four years after it had opened. The plant was profitable and well-run, but Wall Street’s relentless focus on short-term earnings demanded results.

It’s called efficiency. Those who see jobs as ends in themselves don’t seem to care a lick about it. Chinese sweatshops are described on pages 6 and 7:

Most young workers live on-site in cramped high-rise dormitories near the factories, where as many as a dozen workers squeeze into small rooms with three tiers of bunk beds. Most of them are peasants in their late teens or early 20s who have been lured to the city in hopes of earning money for themselves and their families back home, only to find themselves yoked to brutal production schedules that can become unbearable.

The author goes on to describe some of the beatings and subsequent suicides that have occurred at the plants and surrounding dormitories:

Ma, a 19-year-old native of Henan province, was found dead near a stairway of his dormitory Jan. 23, 2010. An autopsy concluded that he had fallen to his death. His sisters later insisted their brother died from a beating after he had accidentally damaged equipment at work.

Of course, I am against the beatings. I don’t know if anyone who voluntarily accepts a job agrees to be beaten. As far as the long hours and repetitive tasks go, so long as the workers are free to resume their rural peasant lives when the work becomes unbearable, then the factory can not be harming them in that regard.

New York Times graphs purports to show wages falling away from productivity.

New York Times | The Great Prosperity, 1947-1979; The Great Recession, 1980-Now

The graph from this article hits a major libertarian talking point. Wages ought to rise with worker productivity. I need to do a bit of research on what has apparently interrupted this process. One explanation offered by a facebook commenter was that women joining the (paid) work force has caused the supply of labor to increase and therefore the price of labor to decrease. Discussions with another friend of mine have centered around competition with cheap foreign labor. I would not act to stop either of these. I welcome all workers into the labor market. It may not be convenient for everyone, but it’s only fair.

 xkcd: Money

Wow, today’s comic was fun and exhausting. There’s a poster of it in the store!

The xkcd guy really outdid himself this time. Here is a visual representations of all the dollar figures that are bantered about in current economic talk. I can see this as being a valuable reference point for economic discussion. Calling this a “comic” sells it a little short, wouldn’t you say?

Cato @ Liberty | Supercommittee Tax Fight Is About Increasing Spending, not Reducing Deficits

The headline and graphs say it. This is why I can not accept “tax the rich” as a solution to our government’s budget problems. The government will not use that money to close the deficit. They’ll just blow it. They have no discipline.

Mother Jones | Raw Data: Student Achievement Over the Past 20 Years

Critics of the public schools often reference flat or falling test scores in their criticisms. See, e.g., the Reason.tv video entitled To Surly With Love: Are Teachers Overpaid? Kevin Drum shows us some evidence there that the scores are actually rising be rising. That’s good news, but critics also allege that real per-pupil costs have risen five-fold since the 1960′s. See Surly again. It is not enough to show us some improvements in scores. One must justify these steeply increasing costs.

Slate | Paying Students To Quit Law School

It’s kind of a dumb “solution” to the tight job market for graduating law students. Who would pay this, and why? An example is made of the Zappos company, which will pay employees to quit if they don’t like the job. It’s an interesting strategyfor weeding out workers who don’t really want to be there, or who can’t cut it. But students are not analogous to employees. Students are analagous to customers. Would Zappos ever pay its customers not to shop there? Doubtful.

Fox News | Baby Hitler Parents Lose Custody Of All Three Of Their Kids

If this is about the names, then the government should get out of that. There were also apparently allegations of neglect, which the parents have denied, which the parents say a judge denied, and for which I see no immediately apparent evidence (no bruises, emaciation, etc). Shop-Rite, btw, should reserve the right to decline to write “Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler” on a birthday cake. Get a blank cake, dude. Icing tubes cost two bucks. Just mosey on over to the baking goods aisle. Write the name yourself. This is America.