All of the gold since the time of Christ…

Wow.  The cost of “bailing out” the present economy is already up to six times the value of all of the gold in existence since the time of Christ.

At last count, the Federal Reserve and the government have either lent, guaranteed or spent $12.8 trillion in their efforts to get the economy back on track. We know that these numbers  lose their significance after a while and it’s hard to relate to them but we’ll try…

You may remember a couple of years ago when a study was done by two respected economists estimating that the total cost of the Iraq war would eventually reach $2 trillion. At the time, people were shocked. But compared to the nearly $13 trillion for the economy, the Iraq war expenses now seem small in comparison.

Looking at it another way, the value of all the gold in existence since the time of Christ is currently worth about $2 trillion. In other words, just the costs to bail out the economy and nothing else, like Social Security, military, infrastructure, is so far going to be more than six times all of the gold that’s been produced over the past 2000 years. (Just last December the cost was three times, which illustrates how quickly the costs have multiplied over the past five months.)

That is the cost.  And what do we get for our “money” (I use the term loosely)?  A soon-to-be-worthless fiat currency, devalued savings, redistributed wealth, more crony-capitalism, fascism, legal plunder, socialism, war, and the destruction of what little was left of the free market.

Can the media really be this clueless about the Tea Parties?

I watched the video posted here of the Rachel Maddow show–a piece from MSNBC, and I was amazed at how apparently clueless these ladies were about the ideas behind the tea parties.  They revealed a slight amount of knowlege in linking them to Ron Paul’s supporters, but other wise they appeared to have no idea what they were all about.  There are two possibilites:  either these ladies are too lazy to simply pull up the reteaparty.com website, or they are purposely trying to confuse people and misrepresent the movement.   Their strange fixation/obsession  on the word teabagging was a notable.  Journalism is truly dead.

They also engaged in the standard “crazy ideas” assessment of Ron Paul and his movement.  I believe it may seem crazy to them.  As Carabini writes in his new book:

 

I have often wondered why those with strong opinions about social affairs are always attracted toward one of two opposing poles. There are those inclined to liberty—freedom of the individual to live his or her life in any peaceful way. And there are those who are inclined to mastery—permitting others to live their lives only as another sees fit. 

 

 

 

 

Ron Paul Tea Party? « America’s Independence Day Tea Party.

 

This just in from the Ministry of Information: 90% of Mexican drug guns come from U.S.. Really?

Not according to the facts:

You’ve heard this shocking “fact” before — on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.

– CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.

– California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing…

There’s just one problem with the 90 percent “statistic” and it’s a big one:

It’s just not true.

In fact, it’s not even close. By all accounts, it’s probably around 17 percent.

What’s true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency’s assistant director, “is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.”

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S….

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced — and of those, 90 percent — 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover — were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

So why is the Ministry of Information misinforming us?  You guessed it:  They don’t want us armed.  Why don’t they want us armed?  You guessed it:  Guns and freedom go hand in hand..

Submit a question for Obama’s online town hall-only 45 minutes left.

Please go online and submit a question, or vote on one.  Supposedly Obama will use this to pick the questions he will answer in his online town hall.

Peter Schiff vs. Chris Dodd: Money Bomb Today!

Help encourage Peter Schiff to run against Chris Dodd in CT.  Donate as part of the Pater Schiff 2010 Money Bomb Today!

www.schiff2010.com

One Question for Marxists.

Are you a Marxist?  My question for you is this: 

If labor determines value, how did you determine the value of your soul when you sold it to the devil?

 

(Tongue-in-cheek)

Stimulus vs. Liberty

The Keynesian idea that government deficit spending is the way to stimulate the economy is immoral and erroneous.  The government gets their money either from present taxes, or by borrowing (future taxes).  I won’t mention the third option, fiat creation of currency.  

It is true that I may find it desirable at times to borrow money in hopes of making more money.  I may borrow money to finance a new business, for example.  In such a case, I hope that my investment will pay off in the long run and I will not only pay back my debt, but be better off in the end than I would have been otherwise.

Government stimulus is the government doing all of this for me, against my will.  The government takes out a loan that I must eventually repay.  This is bad news for two reasons.  First, even if it would work out for my financial advantage, it is coercive and violates my freedom to dispose of my property as I see fit.  And in fact, it will not work out for my benefit because the government cannot know better than the free market how best to grow the economy.  

When they presume to know what products should be produced, they presume to know what the self-organizing free market will do (or worse, what it should do).  They set themselves, and my money, against the natural laws of economics.  And what is worse, their decisions are almost certain to be controlled by political expediency and the whims of elite academics and lobbyists, or by some imagined “common good” which is never “good” for any individual.    

Allow the natural forces of the free market to self-organize the economy, and it will grow.  These elitist interventionists think they can better manage an ant mound than the colony can on its own.  Hubris, plain and simple.

The State as Parent: Study Suggests Regulation of Fast Food Ads

Where will it end?  I t will not.  A new study links fast food ads with childhood obesity. 

A ban on such commercials would reduce the number of obese young children by 18 percent, and the number of obese older kids by 14 percent, researchers found.

They also suggested that ending an advertising expense tax deduction for fast-food restaurants could mean a slight reduction in childhood obesity.

Some experts say it’s the first national study to show fast-food TV commercials have such a large effect on childhood obesity. A 2006 Institute of Medicine report suggested a link, but concluded proof was lacking.

“Our study provides evidence of that link,” said study co-author Michael Grossman, an economics professor at City University of New York.

The study has important implications for the effectiveness of regulating TV advertising, said Lisa Powell, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Institute for Health Research and Policy. She was not involved in the research but was familiar with it.

Regulating TV advertising.  Why?  Because people can’t take care of themselves and their children, so the government must do it.  Just remember, all you who desire to be coddled by the government:

“Time is running very short for us to realize that personal freedom and personal responsibility have always been, and always will be, inseparable.”

-John Galt, Dreams Come Due

PS:  Of course, a tax break for advertising is also suspect.

What is the role of government, anyway?

If you listen to any of the candidates these days, you would think that the role of the government was to take care of us financially and even physically.  Just listen to Barack’s speech from October 13:

The credit crisis has left businesses large and small unable to get loans, which means they can’t buy new equipment, or hire new workers, or even make payroll for the workers they have. You’ve got auto plants right here in Ohio that have been around for decades closing their doors and laying off workers who’ve never known another job in their entire life…

 

 

I know these are difficult times. I know folks are worried. But I also know this – we can steer ourselves out of this crisis. Because we are the United States of America. We are the country that has faced down war and depression; great challenges and great threats. And at each and every moment, we have risen to meet these challenges – not as Democrats, not as Republicans, but as Americans.

 

We still have the most talented, most productive workers of any country on Earth. We’re still home to innovation and technology, colleges and universities that are the envy of the world. Some of the biggest ideas in history have come from our small businesses and our research facilities. It won’t be easy, but there’s no reason we can’t make this century another American century.

 

But it will take a new direction. It will take new leadership in Washington. It will take a real change in the policies and politics of the last eight years. And that’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.

So according to Obama (and most other candidates, America has major problems (hard to deny), and the Government can and should fix them.

That is false.  The government is not Mommy and Daddy, and we are not the children.  Since when did we sign over the responsibility for our own lives to the government?  The purpose of government is not to take care of us, but to only to protect our liberty.  As Bastiat said:

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

When the government gets involved in the details of our lives, regulating and subsidizing, planning and providing, and plundering, it has perverted it role from the maintainer of justice into the greatest perpetrator of injustice.  And this is the very principle that Obama is running on, and this is why people are voting for him!  The absurdity of it is maddening.