Bloody Mary Breakfast

Upcycling

2012-01-31T12:59:00.000-08:00

Continuing the "what can you make from these?" theme.

You can also make something like this (on the bottom left) which can be made into the thing in the background:

Or, this:

Or, after a bit more machining and some brass bushings, this:

All these parts are going to fit together. Any guesses on what I'm making from (decidedly empty) beer cans?

One more hint. Here's another part:

Recycling

2012-01-18T11:06:00.000-08:00

What can you make with a bunch of these?

One of these.

What can you do with that?

Guide to Western Media Terms

2011-11-22T15:05:00.001-08:00

Anarchist: someone who is willing to use violence and property destruction to demand additional social programs and handouts from the current government.

Freedom Fighter: someone who is willing to use violence and property destruction to demand additional social programs and handouts from a new government

Nihilist, kook, crank, radical: someone who verbally advocates a fractional reduction of the second derivative of the government budget with respect to time.

More Propaganda by Statistics

2011-10-31T12:06:00.000-07:00

Given:
A youth basketball league, ages 11 – 15. Every player in the league has been a participant as long as they are eligible. The kids play basketball five days per week, for several hours per day.

Annual skills assessments are taken of the players at the beginning and end of each year. Not surprisingly, the mean skills score for each age group is higher than all the younger groups.

As the league matures and becomes more competitive, the mean skills score for the entire league increases. The 11-year-olds enter the league with approximately the same mean skill level every year (league participation isn't magically conferred to kids who haven't yet participated).

Without putting any numbers to our assessments, we can make several observations about our league.

First, year-over-year, the 11-year-olds as a group enter the league at a greater skills deficit compared to the rest of the league than previous groups of 11-year-olds. That is, although the league mean increases year-over-year, the 11-year-old mean score remains static.

Second, therefore, year-over-year increases in mean skills scores are skewed towards the older kids. As the league mean increases over time, and each age group's mean is higher than all younger age groups, the 15-year-olds have to increase as much or more (on average) every year than any other age group. The 14-year-olds have to increase as much or more (on average) than the 13, 12, and 11-year-olds, and so forth.

Third, although (and because) each group of 11-year-olds enters at a greater skills deficit and the league mean is increasing, each group's mean skills at a given age are increasing at a greater rate than any older group. In other words, this year's 12-year-olds will gain more skills this year than the 13, 14, and 15-year-olds did when they were 12.

Fourth, if the entire league was divided into five groups, not by age but by skills assessment, we would expect a strong correlation between the two methods of division. Furthermore, that correlation would be strongest for the top and bottom quintiles.

Fifth, as the bottom quintile is strongly correlated with 11-year-olds, and the 11-year-olds enter the league with approximately the same skills every year, the mean skills of the bottom quintile will also be static year-over-year.

Sixth, some 11-year-olds may not start out in the bottom quintile, nor may they reach the top quintile of skills by the time they turn 16. However, for the givens to hold true, only strong outliers from the mean could enter the league in the bottom quintile and remain there for the entire five years.

Leaving other considerations aside, it would be nonsense to conclude from the scenario given that any of our observations are a priori bad (or a priori good). Rather, they are what they are.

That's not to say that the other considerations (whatever they are) are negligible. Rather, it's to say that the givens and observations do not support on their own the idea that the other considerations skew the skills distribution and skills increases. The observations are wholly expected and explained by normal league play.

Put another way, it is not valid from the information given to make the statement (or inference) that, because the skills of the bottom quintile are static and the skills of the top quintile are increasing at a higher rate than any other quintile:

a) the noted increases are due to some consideration other than normal league play; and
b) that is a priori bad.

Better, more granular data would be required to validly draw those conclusions. This is obvious, I believe, because no matter how large we envision our league to be, we can conceptualize the league and the individual players entering as Gumby-esque 11-year-olds and progressing to 15-year-old league veterans.

We would (rightly) recognize and denounce unsupported statements (or inferences) a and b above as feeble attempts at propaganda by statistics.

However, that hasn't stopped the propagandists from presenting the front cover of this CBO report with inferences a and b, while conveniently ignoring the weak caveats in paragraph 7 of the summary:

The growth in average income for different groups over the 1979–2007 period reflects a comparison of average income for those groups at different points in time; it does not reflect the experience of particular households. Individual households may have moved up or down the income scale if their income rose or fell more than the average for their initial group. Thus, the population with income in the lowest 20 percent in 2007 was not necessarily the same as the population in that category in 1979.

As it turns out, not only is the population not the same, but what constitutes a household has changed. The aggregation of aggregates into household income hides other important data as well:

American households in the top income quintile have almost five times more family members working on average than the lowest quintile, and individuals in higher-income households are far more likely than lower-income households to be well-educated, married, and working full-time in their prime earning years. In contrast, individuals in low-income households are far more likely to be less-educated, working part-time, either very young or very old, and living in single-parent households.

Please note that by making these observations I am not saying the other considerations are trivial and that there aren't real problems concerning private profits and social losses. Neither does my linking to the analyses of others constitute approbation for their possible biases (nor, certainly, any ad hominem attacks). Rather, the time I would spend recreating the work of others and presenting it here wouldn't add to the point of this exercise.

The point is, real problems aren't discovered and cannot be solved by witchcraft, propaganda, or any other mysticism. I'm not sure there is any desire to have a meaningful conversation free of preconceptions and propaganda, I just know such a conversation cannot start with unsupported conclusions drawn from meaningless aggregates.

Gateway NV75S02u Touchpad + Ubuntu Natty

2011-09-30T19:49:00.000-07:00

Ubuntu Natty (2.6.38-11-generic) doesn't seem to embrace the ELAN Smart Pad on the Gateway NV75S02u. This can be confirmed:

xinput list

Under "Virtual core pointer", it lists a "PS/2 wheel mouse" and no touchpad.

After much searching, I found a fix. I don't know who to attribute it to or how I'd ever find it again, but it worked like a charm so I'm going to reproduce it and give credit to anyone who speaks up.

The original.

Step 1
IMPORTANT: BACK UP THE EXISTING MODULE FIRST! You can revert to the .backup copy if things go wrong.

sudo cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko.backup

Step 2
Get the kernel source and headers for your installed kernel along with some prerequisites:

sudo apt-get install linux-source linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential libncurses5 libncurses5-dev kernel-package fakeroot

Step 3
Now extract the kernel sources to a folder named src in your home directory, where VERSION is the version of your kernel sources. If you aren't sure, just do a ls /usr/src/linux-source*.bz2 to find it:

mkdir ~/src
cd ~/src
tar jxvf /usr/src/linux-source-VERSION.tar.bz2
cd linux-source-VERSION

Then copy your config file in and make oldconfig:

cp /boot/config-`uname -r` .config
make oldconfig

Step 4
Make sure that the elantech option is on:

grep -i elantech .config

It should return this if it is set:
CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2_ELANTECH=y

If it is not set it will return:
# CONFIG_MOUSE_PS2_ELANTECH is not set

If the elantech option is not set, run make menuconfig and navigate to Device Drivers->Input device support->Mice and press space on the Elantech PS/2 protocol extension so that it has an asterisk like this:[*]. Then press the right arrow and enter repeatedly to back out of the menus, and then answer YES to save your config.

Step 5
Get and apply the patches:

wget -O 01elantech_2.6.38.patch https://launchpadlibrarian.net/71387234/01elantech_2.6.38.patch
patch -p1 < 01elantech_2.6.38.patch

Step 6
Next, build the module:

make -C /usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r` SUBDIRS=`pwd` drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko

Step 7
Try the new module to see if it works:

sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo insmod drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko

If it doesn't work, DO NOT continue to step 8. You can reload the psmouse module and your touchpad will function again:

sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse

There are no permanent changes to your system until step 8 below.

Step 8
Note: This step will make a persistent change to your system.

If the patched module worked, you can move it into its place in /lib/modules/ if you want to keep using it:

sudo cp drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko

It'd be a good idea to try this copy of the module to make sure it works:
Code:

sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse

IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG
If for some reason your touchpad will not work after following these directions, move the backup back into place and you should be fine:

sudo cp /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko.backup /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/input/mouse/psmouse.ko
sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo modprobe psmouse

That's it. xinput list now shows an ETPS/2 Elantch ETF1059 Click-Pad.

Again, thanks whoever! You're a lifesaver!

Tripoli Gets New Zoning Commission

2011-08-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

For reasons unknown, pawns of would-be benevolent rulers of the Transitional National Council (they have a president AND a prime minister!) and The Libya Stabilization Committee have stormed a park in Tripoli, spawning victory celebrations throughout the cartographic region known as Libya.

I fully understand the desire to be rid of their eccentric dictator and his cronies. 41 years is a bit long, even for such a snappy dresser, to be calling the shots.

What is mystifying, to me anyway, is the rush to forget the past 41 years and rush into a new set of corrupt state actors.

Oh, and the symbolism! You can't miss that. Flag waving, dancing on Quadffi's posters, taking Green Square (and promptly renaming it Martyrs' Square), chanting. Yee-hee-hee.

Not content to sit idly by, US talking heads are happy to opine that their own dictator should not now be the target of trial for the high crime of using the Navy and Air Force as his personal goon squad because, you know, he won!

Except, as we've been repeatedly reassured, he didn't because this was a NATO action. Led by an American. It's all very confusing.

Maybe Quadaffi's spokes-bureaucrats could get together with Obama's spokes-bureaucrats and let us know what the official line is. Baghdad Bob can consult. NATO spokes-bureaucrats are already distancing themselves from the charge of being the rebels' personal air force.

Meanwhile the International Criminal Court burst the bubble in Benghazi, somewhat, by announcing the Libyan Transitional Stablization Whatever cannot be trusted to conduct their own criminal trials, but must turn over Quadaffi's kids for an international show trial.

Still no word on when the ICC will demand George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the CIA torturers stand trial. Hunh.

Well, congratulations, I guess, go to the rebels demanding more of the same in Libya. It's too late for August elections like in Egypt (oh, wait...) but I'm sure you know what you want and will eventually get it good and hard.

Knappster

2011-06-18T00:41:00.000-07:00

The purpose of government is to screw us all, en masse. It's a wholesaler, and no wholesaler likes its employees moonlighting in discount retail.

Heh.

Central Planning has Failed. Long Live Central Planning

2011-04-17T08:33:00.001-07:00

H.T. writes in The Economist Banyan column:

As seen during 17-hour drives to and from the tsunami-hit north-east of Japan this week, the country appears to have ground to a halt, hit by a mystifying shortage of fuel. Added to rolling power cuts, I predict the consequences for this quarter's growth will be severe. From Tokyo northwards, drivers turn off their engines and park in single file for hours, waiting for their 20-litre rations.

Ooh! Ooh! I know the answer to this one!

As supply stocks fall, pump prices rise as a flashing neon signal to producers to load up tankers and steam full speed to the northern prefectures, right?

It was only on March 21st that the first seaborne petrol-tanker since the tsunami reached the area. What’s more, only this week have the railways been able to ship fuel up north.
Yet the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), which handles fuel distribution from its darkened offices in Tokyo (the lights are switched off to save energy), acknowledges there has never been a supply shortage in Japan as a whole. Refineries in western Japan have increased output to make up for the shortfall further north.

About a week ago, officials dispatched 200 lorries with fuel to the stricken areas, but another 100 appear to be waiting in reserve.

Hunh. Well, if I knew a bunch of local producers actually have the supply, they are just being prevented by unpredictable bureaucracies from distributing it, I wouldn't be in a hurry to send tankers, either.

I suppose it makes sense. If producers were able to respond in a rational fashion to price signals, what would be the point of a Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry? I'm sure the people waiting in gas lines, instead of working to get their lives and livelihoods back on track appreciate the need for central planning and the inevitable results it brings.

Of course I'm being sarcastic. Once again, the settled science of how central planning must fail is illustrated. How many human tragedies must be suffered before The Economist shrugs its central planning fetishism?

If Japan’s establishment were not so bunker-headed and convinced that it knows all the answers, it would have created a war room, brought in experts from the real world, and declared a state of emergency to get the fuel up north.

I guess at least one more.

Real American Heroes

2011-02-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Don Boudreaux's "Cleaned by Capitalism" series and an unfortunate remark delivered by John McCain during the 2008 Republican presidential debates, I've posted the first installment of what I hope to be a fun series of articles on Freedom's Phoenix, Real American Heroes.

The first installment features one of America's lynchpins that I have never seen given a fraction of the recognition they deserve, grocers.

The grocer, a Real American Hero, is the public face of a long line of millions of strangers from around the world who, pursuing their own self interests, truly enable the American standard of living.

...

All this is done to satisfy customers from every class, color, creed and occupation who, in turn, freed from the necessity to hunt, fish and farm to provide a basic, precarious level of sustenance for their families, can spend their precious time in pursuit of their own self self interests.

Unlike McCain, I find the idea of measuring success by "patriotism, not profit" to be ideologically disgusting and practically nonsensical. Say all you want about displacement and buoyancy, the only thing that makes an aircraft carrier float is the profit generated by productive Americans.

Raiders of the Last Mubarak

2011-01-31T22:44:00.000-08:00

via Boing Boing and the (apparently) awesome Furrygirl

A Question for White House Press

2011-01-31T11:03:00.000-08:00

I've only seen Robert Gibbs speak a handful of times and feel the need to take a long shower and scrub with brillo pads every time.

As you are actually in the room with him, I have to ask. Is there a stench of burning flesh to accompany his slime?

Suleiman the Wizard

2011-01-31T10:46:00.000-08:00

The falling Egyptian dictator, Mubarak, has appointed a new vice president and has directed him to "provide jobs, preserve subsidies, and control inflation."

When I heard that, I was struck by two thoughts:

1) Sulieman is a wizard!
2) How amazing that Barack Obama could continue support someone so obviously delusional.

Oh, wait...

Hokey Religion

2011-01-04T08:22:00.000-08:00

The "profession" of economics is broken. The peer review process doesn't work, the majority of the schools teach numerology and mythology as religious dogma, reward is given to crass, disfigured scientism, while beautiful, descriptive, self-evident science is regarded as magical.

Russ Roberts has a string of questions offered as a litmus test. The science of economics cannot answer these questions definitively; only "economic" religion and its mystics will offer final answers.

Suppose the economy does well this year–growth is robust and unemployment falls. What is the reason for the improvement? Will it be because of the natural rebound of an economy after a downturn that has lasted longer than people thought? The impact of the stimulus finally kicking in? The psychological or real impact of extending the Bush tax cuts? The psychological or real impact of the November election results? The steady hand of Obama at the tiller? All of the above? Can any model of the economy pass the test and answer these questions?

The reason macroeconomics is not a science and not even scientific is that the question I pose above is not answerable. If the economy improves, there will be much talk about the reason. Data and evidence will be trotted out in support of the speaker’s viewpoint. But that is not science. We don’t have a way of distinguishing between those different theories or of giving them weights to measure their independent contribution.

I know other sciences have their kooks and cranks. I know there are political games played within their peer review, also. I realize that science is not perfect (or else it wouldn't be science).

My question is, though, how do the other sciences protect the kooks and cranks from dogma, while protecting the science from being overrun with kooks and cranks? How is the bright line between conclusion and opinion enforced? How do they punish games of three-card-monty being played with the data and math?

Or, do they?

Government Work

2010-12-28T10:19:00.000-08:00

New depths of lazy and stupid:

Feeling Gassy

2010-11-30T12:37:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard an elder reminisce about 25-cent gas? Silver's at $28 per ounce.

Wikileaks Threatens the State Dept's Ability to Continuously Operate in Exigency Mode

2010-11-28T09:44:00.000-08:00

It's no fun when bureaucrats don't even try anymore.

Publication of documents of this nature at a minimum would:
* Place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals -- from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace and security;
* Place at risk on-going military operations, including operations to stop terrorists, traffickers in human beings and illicit arms, violent criminal enterprises and other actors that threaten global security; and,
* Place at risk on-going cooperation between countries - partners, allies and common stakeholders -- to confront common challenges from terrorism to pandemic diseases to nuclear proliferation that threaten global stability.

Why? Because the information to be released is supposedly frank about bureaucratic and political corruption.

Anticipating the fallout from the latest publication, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Philip Murphy wrote a letter to the German Sunday weekly Bild am Sonntag that the WikiLeaks revelations would be an embarrassment.
"Regrettably we will soon have something new to see: alleged confidential diplomatic messages from U.S. embassies around the world, including mine. It's hard to say what effect it will have, but it will at the very least be uncomfortable -- for my government, for those mentioned in the reports, and for me personally as American Ambassador to Germany."
The newspaper reported that some German politicians were severely judged in the reports.
On Friday, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey told reporters he was worried about the documents coming out.
"WikiLeaks are an absolutely awful impediment to my business, which is to be able to have discussions in confidence with people," he said.

Just so the score is straight here, to fight people who would use violence to achieve political and economic goals, people who use violence to achieve political and economic goals have to work with other people who use violence to achieve political and economic goals, but in secret. And, with corruption. And, your money.

Otherwise H1N1 will be unleashed.

Now Call me a Whore!

2010-11-26T09:31:00.000-08:00

Mark Ames:

Anytime anyone says anything libertarian, spit on them.

Anything libertarian like this? "I will not initiate force or fraud against any person or property."

FYI, Mark, that means that no matter how wrong, hurtful, or hate-filled you are, I will never advocate for or condone any attempt to silence you. I will condemn any attempt by anyone else to silence you.

Now, spit on me so we can begin the lesson on a libertarian response to initiation of force.

Libertarians are by definition enemies of the state

True and false. The vast majority of people who call themselves libertarians are actually very big promoters of the state.

[Libertarians] are against promoting American citizens’ general welfare

False. Libertarians are for promoting everyone's general welfare. To the extent that everyone includes "American citizens" (whatever that is) libertarians are for promoting their welfare also.

[Libertarians are] against policies that create a perfect union.

A perfect union of what? Royalty? No. Voluntary human cooperatives? Libertarians are very much in favor of those policies.

Like Communists before them, they are actively subverting the Constitution and the American Dream, and replacing it with a Kleptocratic Nightmare.

If the non-initiation of violence entails subversion of "the Constitution and the American Dream" (whatever those are) and replaces them with a kleptocracy, so be it. This very much assumes facts not in evidence, but, as such an outcome is self-defeating, not alarming in the least. What is alarming is the thought of someone with your brand of authoritarian sociopathy initiating force against your political and ideological enemies.

[HT to Glenn Greenwald]

Yep

2010-11-25T07:21:00.000-08:00

Understatement:

Once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth they take absurdity to its logical conclusion. - Paul Craig Roberts

Junk Man

2010-11-16T13:58:00.000-08:00

I'm sure there are a lot of reasons to like John Tyner in addition to his outstanding poise when dealing with officious bureaucrats.

But, I'm going to say the best thing about Tyner is his ability to get the entire country talking about touching their junk in nationwide media outlets.

Immature Punks

2010-11-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

Now that all the seasonal political attention whores have gone home, or their caves, or wherever it is they go when they are not making post-season baseball a sickening experience to watch, the news has turned to more substantive subjects: cat fights between full-time political attention whores.

Really? There's nothing better to talk about than what this state mouthpiece said about that state mouthpiece?

9 Principles of Economics

2010-09-09T08:13:00.000-07:00

Art Carden boils down the first chapter of the The Economic Way of Thinking into nine principles:

1) People act.
2) Every action has a cost.
3) People respond to incentives.
4) People make decisions at the margin.
5) Trade makes people better off.
6) People are rational.
7) Using markets is costly, but using governments can be costlier still.
8) Profits tell businesses they are helping others, while losses tell businesses they are wasting resources.
9) We shouldn't ignore the long-term and unintended consequences of policies and actions.

Carden amplifies the list a bit, there are full-course seminars that basically follow this outline, and there are books written on each of these principles individually, showing that this list can be the basis for just about any project you want to do in economics, big or small.

Three projects spring to mind: a one-hour "intro to econ" lecture, a series of one-page abstracts on each of the principles, and a bibliography encompassing the principles.

Of course, all that work's already been done. It's just a matter of arranging it into a nice, neat package and making it accessible to folks tasked with explaining econ to non-economists.

Talk About Missing the Object Lesson

2010-08-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

NRO's Jason Lee Stoerts quit re-reading Atlas Shrugged about two-thirds of the way through. Reaching the point of the novel where the Comet is sent into the tunnel behind a coal-fired locomotive and 300 people died, “it got too painful to look any longer, and so, exercising the right of any self-interested reader, I simply closed the book.”

I can't imagine the type of reader that wouldn't find that scene horrifying, for many, many reasons. The looter Kip Chalmers is insisting the train go through the tunnel immediately. The railroad employees and managers, who know better, are faced with the black-and-white choice of sending the train through the tunnel and condemning the passengers to death, or holding the train until a diesel locomotive can be found, thereby condemning their families to death.

Ultimately, the train is sent through the tunnel with the coal-fired engine and a drunk crew; everyone on-board died.

But, that's not the part that bothered Stoerts. No, he was willing to read on. What bothered Stoerts is Ayn Rand's insinuation that the passengers shared some sort of moral culpability in their own demise.

What Stoerts leaves out of his description of the scene is that, when apprised of the lethal danger of proceeding through the tunnel, Kip Chalmers dismisses the danger as “just theory.” It can't be proven that they will all die in the tunnel, so any notion of risk is conjecture.

Conjecture won't stand scrutiny before the Board of Equalization, so the railroad employees who might have erred on the side of caution faced the certain knowledge of dismissal and their families starving in the streets. In this way, the job of risk management is transferred from workers who know the risk to politicians and looters who know absolutely nothing about running a railroad.

Stoerts doesn't bother to mention that the entire novel, up to this point, describes in excruciating detail how the notion of competence was so completely turned upside down. In a nutshell, the lure of the mystics' woo and propaganda had turned vast swathes of the populace into enablers; the politicization of life and death decisions was not what the Comet's passengers wanted, but – to a person - it is exactly what they demanded and enabled.

In fact, Rand could have saved countless trees and innumerable hours of her readers' time by composing Atlas Shrugged as a one-page pamphlet that read simply, “be careful what you wish for.”

Stoerts describes Rand as “ghastly” for suggesting the Comet's passengers may have deserved what came to them but seems completely non-plussed by the ghastly societal order that had emerged as a direct result of the actions of the Comet's manifest.

It's as if he looked into the lighted window of the literary train wreck waiting to happen and saw himself staring back.

Weird, Completely Nonpredictable Results

2010-06-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

So, let me get this straight. The US government destroys the Iraqi infrastructure, enforces 13 years of sanctions, invades (destroying the remaining infrastructure), and begins a reconstruction effort.

Oil fields, which could have made the average Iraqi healthy and wealthy, are given to the new Iraqi government, with the expectation that the revenues will be used for security and reconstruction. Additionally, the US government pours $4.6 billion into the effort to build a new electrical grid.

7 years later, Baghdad residents enjoy less than two hours of electricity per day and pay $100 per month for the privilege.

Whoodathunk?

When is Your Birthday This Year?

2010-05-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

Completely for national security reasons, and having nothing to do with decreasing the incidents of driving while brown, to get a driver's license the state now requires proof of birth (I'm not kidding) and two proofs of residence as indicated by bills that happen to indicate the same address.

Since I don't have a birth certificate, I was happy to see on the DMV website that a US passport was sufficient for proving birth. I grabbed my expired passport and the mail and headed off to the local branch.

The way it works here is you get in a single-file line to have your documents checked. The document-checking bureaucrat then issues you a "now serving" number. It's not as good as the appointment system in California, but it sure beats the CA method of handling walk-ins.

After standing in the document check line for an hour, it was finally my turn to spin the take-a-number wheel. First thing, the bureaucrat opened my passport and, mournfully, noted that it is expired.

"Yeah, but it's still me," I said. "I didn't expire with it."

"Yeah, but it's expired,” she explained patiently. “We have no way of knowing if any of the information has changed. Don't you have a birth certificate?"

"There's the rub. I can't get a birth certificate without a driver's license," I said. "But, how would a certificate from the '70s, with no identifying information about me, give you better information than a passport from the '90s with my picture?"

"Your name might have changed. Then we would have copies of the court order changing it."

I could see where she was going, but the route she's chosen has a bridge out. "But, I'm applying for a license under this name. If my name has changed since that passport was issued, I'm not going to give you those court orders, am I?"

Unconvinced, the bureaucrat delivered, I kid you not, the master stroke. "Well," she said in that grasping-for-justification tone, "your birthday might have changed."

An Agorist Manifesto in 95 Theses

2009-12-27T10:11:00.000-08:00

From Fr33Agents / Kyle Bennett, a work of art "suitable for nailing to an appropriate door near you..."

agora (1) - n. A place of congregation, an ancient Greek marketplace.
agora (2) - n. A market free of forceable regulation, taxation, and government
(The) Agora - The aggregate of all such markets of any size.

95 Theses
1. Free, unregulated, untaxed, and unmonitored trade is the natural right of all human beings
2. In a voluntary trade, both parties receive more than they give up, otherwise neither would trade.
3. Nobody gets taken advantage of through mutually voluntary trade.
4. Taxation forces people to pay for things that aren't worth the cost
5. Government regulation forces people to abstain from trades they would otherwise voluntarily make.

6. Markets collect, organize, and distribute information more rapidly, accurately, fairly, and efficiently than any central authority could ever do, even with superior resources.
7. Prices are information.
8. Force distorts market information.
9. Governments' only means of action is force.
10. Governments operate blindly because they only see information distorted by force. The more information they gather, the less clear their vision becomes.
11. Aggression is a reaction to unpleasant or unwanted information. It's motto is "kill the messenger".
12. A market is smarter than any of it's participants. A government is stupider than most of it's participants.

13. Governments require markets for their survival; markets thrive in the absence of government.
14. The more efficient a government is, the more dangerous it is.
15. Markets improve the material well-being of all people. Governments improve the material well-being of some people at the expense of other people.
16. Markets are more powerful than governments.
17. Human survival and well-being require free markets.
18. Human survival and well-being require the absence of government.
19. The best humanitarian aid that can be brought to impoverished people is to allow them access to the Agora, usually by removing their governments.

20. Productivity is the application of intelligence to labor for creating something of value to someone.
21. Labor is equivalent to value in the same way crude oil is equivalent to a vacation.
22. The non-productive have always and will always try to live off the value created by the productive.
23. The productive will by right decide how much, if any, to allow it.
24. Charity is offered and received face-to-face, or it is no longer charity.

25. Wealth is the natural and honorable reward from trading value for value.
26. Wealth is a store of productivity, not a store of value.
27. In the Agora, the rich have already given back far more than they received. That's the only way to get rich in the Agora.
28. Those who get rich outside the Agora could never give back all they have taken.

29. Money laundering is an invented crime, the concept cannot exist in the Agora.
30. Price gouging is an invented crime, the concept cannot exist in the Agora.
31. Unfair competition is either not one, or not the other, or not in the Agora.

32. Market price is an observation of history.
33. Market price is related to value in the same way news photographs are related to current events.
34. "Intrinsic value" is a lie told by parasites to try to steal from producers.
35. Companies advertising their product as "an $XX value" are lying to you.

36. Fiat currency is theft by fraud.
37. Gold and silver are usually the bases for real money because they have properties that best serve that purpose.
38. Paper is the basis for fiat currency because it has properties that best serve that purpose.

39. Communication strengthens markets and undermines governments.
40. Markets are the way communities stay organized when they are too large for face-to-face interaction.

41. All resources are human. The term "human resources" is demeaning to the nature of both humans and resources.
42. Competition is not the purpose of a market, it is one of its methods.
43. Natural selection in the Agora is more Lamarckian than Darwinian.
44. Natural selection in the Agora does not destroy resources, it reallocates them.
45. Natural selection in the Agora does not kill people, it frees them to be more productive.
46. "Dog eat dog" is a feature of governments, not of markets.
47. Monopolies can only be created and sustained by governments.

48. Freedom to fail is every bit as important as freedom to succeed.
49. The Agora guarantees neither, and resists the perpetuation of both.
50. Markets don't have goals, values, or ambitions. Markets are a tool for human beings to pursue those things.
51. "Market Failure" is an oxymoron. People sometimes fail to use markets properly.

52. Innovation is an inherently Agorist activity, even when it happens outside the Agora.
53. A primary goal of government is to restrain innovation.

54. Raw materials in the ground are not resources until they are brought to market.
55. The owners of private property tend not to destroy it. Commons are routinely destroyed or exhaustively consumed.
56. Agorist exploitation of the environment increases resources, and protects the environment. Government "protection" of the environment reduces resources, and harms the environment.
57. No species is endangered when it is owned. The best way to keep a species from extinction is to allow it to be property in the Agora.

58. "Public property" is an oxymoron, and privatization of profits is not privatization.
59. Property is authority. It's not a market without private property and private authority.
60. Where there is private property authority, there is an agora..
61. Private property let open to the public is not a commons.

62. Shortages do not exist in the free market, government obfuscation of price information is the only way to acheive a general shortage.
63. Being unable to buy something at the price you want to pay is not a shortage.
64. Markets are, in part, a process of voluntary rationing.

65. Corporations are evil only to the extent they rely on government power. Corporations with a monopoly are branches of government.
66. Markets rely on trust. Markets rely on suspicion.
67. Individuals in the Agora expect suspicion and earn trust. Governments demand trust, and earn suspicion.
68. A government truly of the people, by the people, and for the people would have no powers whatsoever.
69. If the measure of virtue for a society is how it treats the least among it, then the Agora is the most virtuous society ever known to man.

70. Governments thrive on opposition, antagonism, provocation, confrontation, and defiance. What they cannot tolerate is to be ignored.
71. The central idea behind the Agora, and one of the things it does best, is to ignore governments.
72. The effectiveness of the Agora's self-regulation is proportional to the extent to which external regulation is absent.
73. The Agora cannot be managed, controlled, regulated, or destroyed. It can only be interfered with.
74. Voting is nothing more than an expression of the voter's preferred way to interfere with the Agora.
75. The Agora is a network, and like all networks, it routes around damage.
76. Government is damage.

77. Public education is an oxymoron.
78. One of government education's primary functions is to instill fear of the Agora.
79. The Agora is all around you. It's nothing to be afraid of.
80. The Agora is peaceful. Violence and war are results of failure to embrace the Agora.
81. Guns are often required to deal with people who operate outside the Agora, because guns are the primary way people outside the Agora operate.

82. The Agora does not require permission.
83. Anyone with the power and inclination to grant the Agora permission is a threat to all honest men.
84. Anyone offering the Agora permission will be ignored.
85. Most true heroes end up in prison or murdered. This is even more true for Agorist heroes.

86. The Agora ignores creed and color.
87. When it comes to markets, black is beautiful.
88. Wherever there are human beings, there is an agora. It may be hiding, but it is there.
89. The Agora is a select community - the strict qualification for membership is to want it. Most people don't.
90. The Agora does not recognize borders or artificial boundaries. It is everywhere, and it is no where.
91. The Agora welcomes you, but does not need you.
92. You need the Agora. Even if you oppose it, you benefit from it.
93. An Agorist movement is an oxymoron. Agorism is the natural state of humanity.
94. Practicing agorism is the only way to achieve agorism. Isolated networks will eventually find each other.

95. Governments are on notice the world over: your days are numbered.

Copenhagen Orgy

2009-12-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

Copenhagen mayor tries to screw the city's sex workers.

By sending out fliers advising climate summit attendees not to screw with the city's sex workers.

Sex workers screw the mayor right back.

By offering free sex to anyone who produces one of the mayor's warnings.

Poetic. Screw government and anyone who would use government against other human beings.

Coconut-Crusted Salmon will be Served in the First Class Cabin

2009-11-30T17:54:00.000-08:00

Amid the constant moaning and wailing, Joe Public may be forgiven for failing to notice the astounding changes he has seen in his standard of living over the last forty years. No, he doesn't have a yacht and the proletariat revolution has left him still working 40+ hours per week, but he has traded in his plaid pants and 8-track tapes for more comfortable digs.

Steven Horwitz has the numbers:

[L]ife for the average American is better today than 35 years ago, life for poor Americans is much better than it was 35 years ago, and poor Americans today largely live better than the average American did 35 years ago. Hard to square with a narrative of economic stagnation or decline.

Mark Perry took Horwitz's description of what has happened and started us down the path to explaining why that has happened. Using a similar basket of household appliances, Perry expressed their cost in terms of labor hours:

Now, cautions abound at jumping to conclusions that the data quality doesn't support. But, in terms of this selected basket of common household appliances coupled with the BLS wage statistics, saying nothing about the quality of the appliances listed, we can safely observe an astounding increase in average American worker productivity over the last 36 years.

This runs counter to the narratives describing Americans as fat and lazy, and declaring that “Americans don't make anything anymore.” However, the increase in productivity is absolutely unsurprising given the advances in technology, materials science, and industrial processes over the same period. In other words, with better capital goods and factors, workers (all workers, not just American) can make more in less time and with less effort.

But, it is not right to say that the increase in productivity and advances in production methods are a product of the last forty years. It is not correct to attribute exponential growth in human productivity to the last few seconds of human history, nor to the actions of any person, group, or even all humanity alive during that period.

Rather, the seeds that allowed that growth to happen were sowed thousands of years ago with a simple, evolutionary discovery that has led man on a path from precarious existence to jetting over the oceans at 45,000 feet as a matter of course.

Specialization
We don't know what day Ug and Ur made their discovery, nor do we know the circumstances that led to it, because they were too busy living another day to properly document it for us. But, we can be relatively sure it started with a few seconds of rest and relaxation. Since their cave is about as far as we can get from iPods and nanotechnology, please forgive me a few moments of poetic license in imagining how those few seconds of R&R led to millions of man hours of R&D.One day, Ug and Ur followed their normal routine of catching fish in the morning and foraging for coconuts in the afternoon. Ug noticed that he caught three fish faster than Ur. But, even with that extra time, he lagged behind Ur in coconut-finding. That night, with his head on a rock pillow, in the moments before falling asleep Ug hit upon a wild idea.

The next day, using a series of grunts and gestures, Ug convinced Ur to spend the entire day collecting coconuts while Ug spent the day catching fish. At the end of the day, he reasoned, they could share the fish and coconuts.

But, an amazing thing happened when they got back to the cave. Instead of the usual six fish and six coconuts, Ug and Ur counted seven fish and seven coconuts. That night, Ug and Ur feasted on their unexpected windfall.

They continued their pattern of specialization and feasting for a few days when Ur came up with a great idea of his own. Rather than eating the extra coconut, he would store it in the cave for the time of year when coconuts were scarce. After a few weeks, the cave was overflowing with coconuts and Ur had to limit the number of coconuts he brought back every day.

Ug was extremely jealous of Ur's new found leisure time, so he persuaded Ur to use that time to build a pen in the water so they could stockpile fish, too. When the pen was completed, Ur built himself a ladder to help his coconut collection. Once the pen was full, Ug used his leisure time to weave a net.

This trend continued for years. With each iteration, fishing and foraging consumed less time and took less effort, moving Ug and Ur further from living precariously on the day's labor and giving them more leisure time. In turn, they used some of their food savings and extra time to develop better and better capital goods, making their labor ever more productive.

At some point, Ug and Ur became so productive that they could feed the rest of the population. Freed from the necessity of hunting, fishing, and foraging, those people spent their time producing other capital and consumer goods like mud huts, clay pots, ovens, and forges. Over thousands of years, productivity increased to the point where some people's entire productive lives were spent producing R&D on better materials, processes, and products but never actually building anything.

And so, we can see that 747s are just a hop, skip, and a jump from an extra coconut per day.

Division of Labor
Tool use almost certainly preceded the regular division of labor, but it is impossible to get from stone hammers to today's tools without the division of labor. By specializing in the area of their comparative advantage, Ug, Ur, and early humans like them carved the foundations of human existence a few extra seconds at a time.

In the story above, Ug and Ur had absolute advantages in their respective specialties, but that is not necessary. As long as Ug and Ur do not have the exact same production capabilities, each specializing in the area of their comparative advantage results in greater total production than the sum of their individual efforts at being self-sufficient, even if Ur is less productive than Ug at both specialties.

And, then, Came the Non-Productive
It is worth noting that, in some parts of the world, existence today is more on the scale of Ug and Ur than the average (or even poorest) American household. One has to wonder why, if Ug's discovery of the division of labor is so incredible, all of humanity hasn't benefited from it equally (or at least similarly). The simple explanation is that one consequence of the wealth delivered by the division of labor is the ability of an unproductive class to exist that actively and violently prevents what should be a natural spread of wealth through human interaction.

Actually, to label this class unproductive is charitable as unproductive puts them on par with infants and the infirm. This class is negatively productive, destroying the production of other people in their day-to-day actions. For lack of a better term, we group this class under the name “government”.

In the tables created by Horwitz and Perry, we can see that the vast majority of American households choose to partake in the quality of life increases available to them. However, even those that choose a simpler lifestyle have a buffer between them and death due to famine, disease, or other disaster. This is because the negatively-productive government class has not enjoyed the same trust or commanded the same fear in the populations of Europe and the Americas as it has in some other parts of the world.

It is no coincidence that populations who have benefited least from the division of labor are the populations most plagued by the government class' negative productivity.

It would be a simple, and very economic, process to provide these workers with the latest capital goods and technology; as in America, the vast majority of them would intelligently cry, “exploit me! Please!” In fact, the only thing that could possibly stop the spread of wealth and productive capacity is physical violence. And, the only people with the time to violently restrict that spread are those living off the production of others: the government class.

It's a shame that Ug and Ur didn't use some of their leisure time to beat the snot out of the first person to come along (probably named Richard) and demand a portion of their labor at the point of a sharpened stick. Hopefully we can do that in the next human evolution.

Ignoring the State for Fun and Profit

2009-08-25T12:11:00.000-07:00

Consider a normal, monetary transaction where you take a pair of pants to a dry-cleaner. In that transaction, you assume that the dry-cleaner will accept your government money in return for cleaning your pants. You also assume that the dry-cleaner will return your pants in serviceable condition, cleaner than when you dropped them off. Lastly, you assume that, if the dry-cleaning is not to your satisfaction, you will have a legal recourse in a government court, the mere threat of which should be sufficient to coerce the dry-cleaner into satisfying your demand for recompense.

In a Stateless transaction, you would not make those assumptions.

Rather than assuming recourse in government court, you would make specific allowance for examining the quality of work prior to acceptance and payment. Or, you may make allowance for third-party arbitration in the case of dispute. Rather than assuming any dry-cleaner will return your pants clean and serviceable, you would seek referrals and treasure the relationship once you found a good, quality dry-cleaner. Last, rather than using government money, you may negotiate the transaction in some other currency or barter, however, even a transaction that used government money could be Stateless as long as you both specifically agree to the use.

Functionally, the two transactions differ very little. However, the first transaction regards the State as an unseen third party with some interest in the transaction while the second totally disregards the State, making it an explicit two-party transaction.

With a little reflection, I'm sure you can identify transactions and relationships in your life that are conducted exactly like the hypothetical. In fact, you specifically delineate those relationships in normal speech; they are the relationships you refer to using a possessive pronoun.

When you use the words "my brother-in-law", "my friend", or "my mechanic" you are not intimating that you own that person, you are saying that you possess proprietary information about that person – that you have a defined relationship with that person. In the cases of "my mechanic", "my doctor", or "my dry-cleaner", you are describing an ongoing economic relationship that you cherish sufficiently to openly advertise that you have that relationship.

You already conduct those relationships without regard to the State – it's a short but profitable trip from there to conduct those transactions with specific disregard to the State.

One may be tempted to recognize, in the second transaction, a transaction cost greater than in the first: negotiating terms and recourse. However, just as the State is the unseen party to the first transaction, the cost it imposes on the transaction is also unseen.

That is not to say that the Stateless transaction cost will necessarily be less than the unseen cost imposed by the State. Rather, as a one-off transaction, it is likely the Stateless transaction cost will be much higher. However, once a relationship is established with a Stateless trading partner, the transaction cost is significantly reduced on all subsequent transactions.

Just as it would be inefficient to renegotiate the contract you have with your dry-cleaner every time you drop off a pair of pants, it is inefficient to pay the State-imposed cost on every transaction as if you were complete strangers. Rather, by specifically disregarding the state in everyday transactions, you lower the transaction costs, and the difference stays in your pocket where it belongs.

If you expand and extend your Stateless trading network, before long the cost savings will multiply. The savings will be invested by individuals in the trading network, expanding the types and quality of services offered by network partners, and lowering the costs of those services.

Of course, the State is involved in so many things it has no business in and in so many different ways, specific disregard doesn't eliminate the cost and presence of the State entirely, but it does significantly reduce its cost and influence on you, one pair of pants at a time.

The State of Perpetual Emergency

2009-07-29T19:59:00.000-07:00

The standard government response to exigent circumstances takes one of two forms:

1) In order to prevent A, we must do A.
2) In order to accomplish B, we must do not-B.

Both responses are clearly contradictory, but go largely unchallenged. The seeming presumption is that, faced with an emergency, humans reject their uniquely-defining morals, ethics, subjective values, and, especially, deductive reasoning. Therefore, emergency government actions may also reject these human concepts and the contradictions become moot.

But, as these characteristics define a human and give his frail body a comparative advantage over the hostile environment of nature, the human response to emergency should be a magnification of the importance of these inputs to decision making, not rejection.

That is not to say that human reasoning is infallible and will always triumph against nature. The curse of reason is that we are born with very little innate knowledge. Without instruction or prior experience, a man's wits are his only protection in an unfamiliar environment. Also, charitably, humans are optimistic when it comes to judging risk and therefore tend to underestimate the benefits of emergency preparedness and planning.

The assumptions behind having government do anything in an emergency situation now lie naked before you:

A) People who underestimate preparedness and planning elect people to appoint people to undertake emergency preparedness and planning.

B) Those people do not underestimate preparedness and planning.

C) In an emergency, those people will retain reasoning behavior while everyone else reverts to animalism.

D) By virtue of their experience and instruction they have received, those people are qualified to supplant their morals, ethics, subjective values, and especially deductive reasoning for the unnamed populace.

No honest evaluation of assumptions A-C could possibly conclude that they could be true. The idea that there exist among us superhuman beings and that, as if by magic, they are all currently appointed or elected government emergency planners is ludicrous. However, a government emergency planner could be more experienced and/or learned in emergency planning and operations than, say, the owner of the corner gas station, so we must take a closer look at assumption D.

Imagine Government Emergency Evacuation Plan I, written, edited, vetted, and exercised in non-exigent circumstances. The goals of Plan I would be continuity of government, protection of human life, and protection of property, in that order. To those ends, Plan I would list the actions to be undertaken by various agencies and personnel upon plan activation.

As an emergency plan, Plan I would have, as one of its tenants, reliance on in-place stocks for initial operations. As an evacuation plan, one of the in-place stocks necessary to execution would be fuel for evacuating vehicles. Rather than stockpile millions of gallons of gasoline for every family truckster leaving the evacuation area, Plan I would, sensibly, rely on commercial gas stations and private stocks to fuel non-government vehicles.

Not surprisingly, with all the local families needing fuel for their minivans to leave the evacuation area, and fuel trucks prevented from entering the evacuation area, fuel is in high demand and supplies are limited. The basic law of supply and demand predicts an increase in fuel prices, therefore, also unsurprising. Invariably, government enacts response #1, preventing A by doing A.

To prevent Mr. Jones from undervaluing his dollars with respect to gasoline, in the name of preventing price gouging the government forces Mr. Smith to undervalue his gasoline with respect to dollars. With no incentive for Mr. Jones to conservatively purchase fuel, and no incentive for Mr. Smith to sell gasoline that will cost him more to replace, government response #1 guarantees a quick and lasting shortage of gasoline in the evacuation area.

By failing to properly account for the subjective valuations of Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith, Government Plan I fails in its reliance on in-place stocks. This failure is evident at the moment government response #1 is enacted.

Oh, but it's worse than that. As high demand and limited supply of gasoline are wholly unsurprising, Government Plan I likely includes, as one of its agency actions, government response #1 as part of its reliance on in-place stocks. In other words, to ensure the availability of gasoline, Plan I calls for an action ensuring a shortage of gasoline (government response #2).

Our not-so-imaginary Government Evacuation Plan I, developed in non-exigent circumstances by our supposed learned and/or experienced government emergency planners, is a plan to fail*. Since they cannot even plan reasonably, there is no reason to believe that, in an actual emergency, they will discover their senses and thus have some moral, ethical, reasoned superiority over other individuals responding to emergency conditions in their own way.

Emergencies Everywhere
Having taken that trip to demonstrate that a government effectively responding to an emergency fails on first principles, I must regretfully inform you that politicians and bureaucrats nevertheless insist on emergency authority. Shocking, isn't it?

What is shocking is that people grant and defer to that authority. It may be a herd mentality, or perhaps fear of being shot by someone who has declared their superiority; whatever it is, people are amazingly willing to surrender their humanity to any clown with an emergency services baseball cap. Someone yells, "I'm in charge here," and everyone around him immediately relaxes their normal intellectual standards.

Think of the awesome power of the person in charge of emergency response. There's no time to argue, it's an emergency. We can't wait for all the details, it's an emergency. Do as I say and we'll talk about it later. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Don't think for a moment that emergency power isn't like an open flame to political and bureaucratic mothmen.

Sure we can torture; there's a ticking time bomb. We don't have time to debate this PATRIOT Act or that $787 billion bailout, we're responding to a crisis. We must have this emergency appropriation to continue this war into its eighth year. 12,000 deaths in two years is a small price to pay in this war on drugs. Emergency flu shots for everyone. My god man! Don't you realize we're in the middle of a GLOBAL ECONOMIC MELTDOWN?

The phenomenon of treating everything as an emergency is familiar and well understood. Many, many business organizations and government agencies have fallen into the trap of reacting to emergencies as a normal course of business. It is very destructive behavior, and easily recognized – from without.

Within the organization, perpetual crisis mode is alluring because of the perception of relaxed moral, ethical, and intellectual standards. But, it is very taxing on human and capital resources. Perpetual crisis mode is symptomatic of an actual crisis: a crisis of leadership. If the leaders do not recognize the problem and rigidly enforce intellectual standards, the organization will eventually self-destruct.

Your Emergency Plan
With government as a whole, the "leaders" who must recognize the destructive behavior are the individuals comprising the body politic. After all, it is their labor and resources that are being taxed. If these individuals wish to end the cycle of perpetual crisis, they must rigidly enforce moral, ethical, and intellectual standards, first within themselves.

It does absolutely no good to "vote the bastards out" if you retain the same relaxed standards you used to vote the bastards in.

At this point the pragmatist and realist are both busy rationalizing, "if I raise my standards and the majority of the electorate doesn't, I'll fall on my sword of principle!" That is why, as a second step to ending the perpetual crisis mode, you must also withhold your consent and your resources until such time as the government operates in accordance with your higher intellectual standards.

Or, you can keep doing as you have been, with one small data point in mind. The US Federal Government, which operated through most of the 20th century under declarations of national emergency, has been operating under a continuous declaration of national emergency by executive order since 1979.

----
* Could Plan I exist without government response #1 and #2? Sure. You just have to know the fuel levels of all family trucksters and corner gas stations at the time of the emergency with enough prior notice to have extra fuel delivered AND know the amount of cash all those families could bring to bear on filling the family truckster with fuel.

Or, you could allow the price system to ration fuel between consenting actors at the time they actually know that information. That negates a government emergency response, so I didn't take the time to explore it here.

Funniest Thing I've Heard All Day

2009-06-15T16:46:00.000-07:00

Way back in my day, I could drive around on California roads, talking on a cellphone and smoking a vanilla cig. It’s just not the free country it was back in 2007. - Anthony Gregory

Aw, crap. Now I'm committed and have to explain what impresses me about Gregory. Basically, he's a prolific dynamo (I could be that prolific if I didn't have to spend all my time reading Anthony Gregory). And, to beat that, he actually knows what he's quacking about.

Here's a list that I'll add to as time goes by:

- Lew Rockwell archives
- Independent Institute Research Analyst (giggity)
- Mises Daily archive
- Berkley hippy personal website

I noticed that Scott Horton, who I consider a "good kid" signed off with Gregory the other day by calling him "kid".

When did age happen?

Nope. Not Here. Couldn't Happen.

2009-06-12T16:21:00.000-07:00

Take my love, take my land, make me where I cannot stand. I don't care, I'm still free. You can't take the sky from m[SCREEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!]

A spokeswoman for the Washington headquarters of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) says the drawing of weapons in the ramp inspection of an aircraft in Long Beach, Calif., last month was justified but not "normal." Kelly Ivahnenko also told AVweb that general aviation pilots can expect more ramp checks by CBP agents thanks to the newly-instituted Electronic Advance Passenger Information System (eAPIS).

...

In an interview and podcast with AVweb, Perry said he and his passengers were put in unnecessary peril by gun-wielding enforcement officials. Ivahnenko stressed Perry's experience is not what most pilots should expect if they're checked by the CBP. "This I would not classify as common or routine," she said. She said the Long Beach action was justified, even though the search turned up nothing illegal. "While the involvement of more than one law enforcement agency and the heightened alert of the situation were slightly unusual, it is within (CBP's) authority to inspect inbound and outbound travelers, vehicles, planes, cargo, etc.," she told AVweb. She also said that only the Long Beach police officers assisting the operation actually drew weapons and CBP agents kept theirs holstered, something Perry vehemently disputes. "Every one of them had their weapons out," Perry said. (via AVweb Flash)

Oh, man. This Perry guy must be one bad dude with a 10-foot rap sheet to have CBP and Long Beach Police violate 14 CFR 91.11.

Hmmm...maybe not. Check out AVweb's podcast with Perry.

Wait, these thugs just randomly pulled a tail number, executed a SWAT-style raid on an aircraft under operation, and sorted through the contents and passengers without even mere suspicion?

Wait, this was on an aircraft LEAVING the country?

I think my suspicions of who the real terrorists are have been confirmed.

Do you Know Russell Roberts?

2009-06-11T15:38:00.000-07:00

If not, why not?

The econ department at George Mason University makes me want to unlearn everything I think I know and just sponge up their knowledge. Just look at this staff directory; what a great collection of economists and lovers of liberty to boot.

One of the great professors (that would be THE standout prof in any other econ department) is Russ Roberts. I look forward to reading his multiple posts every day on Cafe Hayek and I'm fascinated with his EconTalk podcast where he talks to the great economists from around the country (world?).

Here's a great speech he gave in Salt Lake City. How much fun would it be to take a course with this guy (other than tests, reading, and paying for the course and books)?

Coming to a Detroit Near You

2009-06-06T19:02:00.000-07:00

h/t Greg Ransom @ mises.org

Everything Will Be Different in 17 Minutes

2009-04-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, President Obama challenged his cabinet to ~~put a man on the moon this decade~~ trim $100 million from the budget. I hope he didn't spend too much time explaining this sweeping change from George Bush's spending bonanza.

FY2009 Budget: $3.107 trillion
FY2009 Budget per minute: $5.91 million

There you have it, 16 minutes, 55 seconds of change we can believe in. Really. Change. As in the stuff you find under the couch cushions. Here's how Don Boudreaux expressed his under-exuberance:

To put this budget "cut" in perspective, suppose that the typical American family, earning $50,000 annually, plans this year to run a budget deficit proportionate to the deficit that Uncle Sam will run. Such a family would plan to spend $75,000. Now suppose that this family, seeking to signal its faux-commitment to financial prudence, promises spending cuts equal, in proportion to its budget, to the cuts announced today by Mr. Obama.

This family would declare - surely with much fanfare - that it will reduce its planned expenditures for the year by $2.08! Perhaps it might promise to survive the year with one less gallon of gasoline or with one less cup of coffee.

The Resurgence of Main Street

2009-03-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Small towns often seem fragile in booms. If the town is within commuting distance of an urban center, they transform from close-knit ecosystems to bedroom communities. The longer the boom continues, the greater the percentage of the population that works and shops outside of the community. Higher wages in the urban centers offset the commute costs, and local businesses, with their limited market, cannot compete on wages.

The result is easily seen. Drive down Main Street of any small town and you will be greeted by the empty storefronts on either side; what businesses remain are boutique shops and hair salons, where the customer to employee ratio at any given time is at or near 1:1.

Main Street is plagued by infrastructure problems, not the least of which is adequate customer and employee parking. The age of the buildings and their layout are not conducive to employee-intensive operations like manufacturing, and power may be inadequate even if floor space for that type of business can be found. Main Street is built and structured for one-to-one business operations; personalized services like shoe and watch repair, dress shops, smoke shops, a butcher, a cafe, etc.

The decline of Main Street during the boom is often attributed to the big box retailers. And, to the extent that the Super Center on the edge of town offers convenience and commoditization of day-to-day staples, there may be some truth to that. However, the big box retailer doesn't come to town with the intention of shutting down main street; the specific demographic and economic factors that attracted the retailer were preexistent and already working against Main Street businesses.

When a customer can buy a new pair of work boots for $15, there is little or no demand for the services of the Main Street shoe repair shop. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth as the mom-and-pop shop turns off the lights for the last time and the owners move on to other lines of work. The sense of loss is not for the building owner who finds himself without a tenant, but rather a nostalgia for the tidy shop permeated by the smell of new leather and mink oil.

But, beyond the emotional, what has really happened? Simply, it is a reallocation of resources. The owners and employees of the shoe shop have moved on to produce goods and services that are in demand, thus enabling them to make more money than before. The people in the community can purchase shoes for $15, thus increasing their real wages. And, most importantly, the building previously occupied by the shoe shop is available for other, more productive uses*. In real terms, the community as individuals and as a whole are better off.

As all booms must, however, the recent one ended. Some investments made during the boom have been revealed as unsustainable, and capital held by those investments is being reallocated to other, more productive uses. Labor will be displaced until those reallocations can occur. Driving patterns and consumption habits of the residents of the small town will change.

Among the ranks of unemployed will be a multitude of ersatz entrepreneurs. Perhaps they are naturally inclined to risk taking, but found it more advantageous to work for someone else. Maybe, they will stumble onto an entrepreneurial venture. Or, maybe they will grow tired of looking for employment and decide to make their own job out of sheer necessity. You will know who they are; they're the ones who will be able to match consumer needs and newfound habits with an ability to deliver the demanded goods and services at the right place and price.

You may object on grounds that it will be impossible for customers with no money to pay for the goods and services, so the new entrepreneurs will fail. Doubtless this is true. Many will fail. However, many more will flourish. You may find the answer to your objection in its flip side; that is, how do people get money to purchase the goods and services they demand? By producing goods and services that other people demand, of course.

The farmer trades with people who need food. The plumber trades with people who need plumbing repairs. The HVAC technician repairs furnaces that need repairing. The prices may change to match the amount of money in circulation, but the producers will still produce in their newfound occupation as entrepreneur.

These new entrepreneurs will not have a lot of capital to invest in new buildings and equipment. Some may be able to work from their kitchen table, but others will require low-cost retail space. They will find that space in the empty storefronts on Main Street and long-forgotten strip malls. In other words, the correction precisely reverses the economic trends that drained employees and businesses from Main Street in the first place, with one major difference.

This time, the business owners on Main Street have $15 shoes.

The businesses that will open will not compete with the big box retailer, but rather, compliment the retailer while the owners avail themselves of the lower-priced goods sold by the big box store. The new homes that were built as bedrooms for urban center workers are now new homes for local workers and business owners. The community has come full circle; true wealth creation is not measured in the paper profits of the boom, but rather the standard of living at the low point of the correction.

There are many who correctly predicted the current correction, and still more who have jumped on the negative sentiment to make dire predictions of the future. I do not disagree that there are reallocations which have not been completed and more reallocations to come. However, I believe that the vast majority of any pain to come is in urban areas; in fact, I would predict a lot of up for small towns from here, with a caveat.

Small towns and rural areas will lead the urban centers until the next credit-created boom. However, government statistics and financial reporting is focused on the urban areas, so the resurgence of the small town will be wholly missed. The proof of the resurgence will only be found in the store windows on Main Street.

But, here's the caveat. No one, from Washington D.C., the states' capital buildings, or city hall has realized what a correction means to their fiefdoms. Workers, who come to town to sleep at night, mow the lawn on weekends, and go to the park with the kids, are content to let them play at their petty politics and central planning. Entrepreneurs, risking whatever savings they have left to earn a living, won't.

They will demand that local politicians get out of their way. To the extent that city hall fights them, entrepreneurial progress will be delayed or simply occur in the next town over. It may take an election cycle to remove the current crop of petty tyrants, but they will be removed. That is one of the many good things that come with a correction. Unfortunately, they'll be replaced with a new crop of petty tyrants, but that's a different article.

Gerald Celente looks at empty Circuit City stores and asks, “who will replace them?” as a rhetorical question. I ask the same question, but not rhetorically; I look forward to seeing what some visionary entrepreneur will do with that property, very soon.
_____
*There are many factors that determine whether the building is put to new use, including the owner's willingness to let the building sit empty rather than reduce rents or sell the building outright. The number one factor, however, is political. A productive, new use is necessarily transformative; the community may prefer to wax nostalgic at an empty storefront than allow the property owner and his new tenants to transform the structure to its new use. Local politicians may require prohibitive kickbacks or favors in return for demolition or building permits. Historical societies may suck whatever remaining value the building has for productive use through arbitrary rules imposed on the property owner.

It may well be that the best use of the property is as new infrastructure for the downtown area: a parking lot. That is a decision that could easily be made by the property owner. The political tide of a thousand petty tyrants, however, too often makes that an impossible use until extensive, expensive “downtown rejuvenation” studies have been completed and the land deeded to the town willingly or through eminent domain.

Take a Number, Wait Your F'ing Turn

2009-03-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

(h/t The Agitator)

The new nationalized Citibank (very strong language alert!)

The New F***ing Citibank - watch more funny videos

Trust Me

2009-02-26T10:18:00.000-08:00

I sympathize, kid.

Of Course They Did

2009-02-07T10:10:00.000-08:00

A TARP watch-dog is shocked that Hank Paulson's Treasury overpaid for assets it acquired.

Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the bailout funds, told the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday that Treasury in 2008 paid $254 billion and received assets worth about $176 billion.

The figures were reached by extrapolating the results of a study of 10 government transactions, comparing the price paid by Treasury and the value of the asset at the time of purchase. Warren did not present details of the transactions the panel analyzed. A full report will be released Friday.

If the TARP was supposed to buy assets at their market value, what was the all-pressing need for a TARP?

Again, overnight lending had not "frozen up" it was just more expensive than banks would like (anyone who purchased gasoline in Sep 08 knows the feeling). There were plenty of buyers for so-called "toxic assets", just not at bids the banks liked (anyone who has tried to sell a home since Sep 08 knows the feeling).

The entire point of the TARP was to overpay for assets. When you give a $350,000,000,000 blank check to somebody, with a mandate to "spend, spend, spend" you aren't encouraging thrift.

I would never defend Paulson and Kashkari but, Senator Dodd, what did you expect them to do with the money? Barney Frank, did you expect the former heads of Goldman Sachs to survey money managers they don't like as to
what to buy and how much to pay for it?

Is it really so surprising that the assets purchased were those of friends at inflated values?

Chris Dodd must also sit at green lights wondering where everybody went.

The New Low Hurdle

2009-01-28T08:35:00.000-08:00

As everyone else tightens their belts, US government anti-reason is crafting a multi-grazillion dollar expansion in spending. The first non-story is that only 12% of the bill is going towards projects that could remotely be considered stimulus-typey. The second non-story, only because it is being flatly denied at this point, is the question of whether all this "found" money to pet projects of the party will be considered the new baseline in future budgets.

The larger fiscal issue here is whether this spending bonanza will become part of the annual "budget baseline" that Congress uses as the new floor when calculating how much to increase spending the following year, and into the future. Democrats insist that it will not. But it's hard -- no, impossible -- to believe that Congress will cut spending next year on any of these programs from their new, higher levels. The likelihood is that this allegedly emergency spending will become a permanent addition to federal outlays -- increasing pressure for tax increases in the bargain.

And, why not? If there is some positive return to all this stimulus, why not repeat it every year? Why not double it every year?

If the multiplier is positive, is there a diminishing return at some point? What point? How do you know that point is beyond this trillion-dollar hootenanny?

What prevents raising the baseline? There's nothing mechanical stopping it. There are no repercussions. You are electorally safe. No one will even pay attention to your denials today.

Of course it will be the new baseline.

Obama's Magic Speedometer

2009-01-11T10:30:00.000-08:00

A two-part article at Freedom's Phoenix describing the Myth of Aggregate Demand: Part I , Part II

Think of aggregates, like GDP, as a simple speedometer. Assuming your vehicle is not on a treadmill, the speedometer tells you how fast you're going, but it doesn't contain any of the quality measurements like direction or gas mileage. With aggregates, though, you can't even make the non-treadmill assumption because of the lack of quality measurements.

With any aggregate, you introduce bias. That was the heart of Hayek's dissection of Lord Keynes, it is the fundamental flaw in hedonics (and, actually, the reason hedonics even exist), and is, in fact, the major failing of the entire field of macroeconomics.

Paul Krugman noted, in The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, that models are essential to understanding economic phenomena. Fair enough, but why-oh-why does he refuse to acknowledge the importance of including quality measurements in his models? No one would consider even riding a tricycle in a Krugman-esqe style, so how in the world can you drive an entire economy in that fashion?

In Part I of the article linked above, I give a tiny glimpse into just how massive the model would have to be to encompass just one consumer good in a strictly-defined scenario. To model an entire economy, with even a hint of usefulness, would require calculations of unimaginable complexity. But, even those calculations would only tell you something of a point in history; they would say nothing of the world as it exists now or in the future.

Lucky for us, though, we have at our disposal a model which includes ALL the quality data IN REAL TIME. That model is systematically rejected, though, because it reveals all the flaws in macroeconomic methodology and the futility of government intervention.

That all-encompassing model is the market itself.

At any given moment, the market is reacting to the latest-and-greatest data it has. Functionally, that means all economic actors are constantly making conscious calculations about the best use of resources under their control. That is not to say that anyone, including that actor, will be happy with the results ex post (after the fact). But, ex ante (before the fact), any other use of those resources is contrary to the best data at hand, an impossibility in a praxeological sense.

To entice an actor to use resources in a manner inconsistent with the best data, one must alter or supplant the data at hand. This is what a mugger and the tax collector do; by threatening violence, they entice the actor to relinquish their resources rather than take a bullet to the head.

The only way government can alter or supplant the data is to appropriate those resources via taxation, borrowing, or printing. When any of those things are done, though, the resources are no longer available to that actor, so the altered data can have no bearing on how the resources are used. Those resources consumed in altering the data are wasted, with much less chance of post ante satisfaction, since the use was contrary to the best data at hand.

With that in mind, consider the newest remarks made by President-elect Barack Obama to George Stephanopoulos in an interview that aired today:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me press you on this, at the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your presidency some kind of a grand bargain? That you have tax reform, health care reform, entitlement reform, including Social Security and Medicare where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?

OBAMA: Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And when will that get done?

OBAMA: Well, the -- right now I'm focused on a pretty heavy lift, which is making sure that we get that reinvestment and recovery package in place. But what you describe is exactly what we're going to have to do.

What we have to do is to take a look at our structural deficit, how are we paying for government, what are we getting for it, and how do we make the system more efficient?

STEPHANOPOULOS: And eventually sacrifice from everyone.

OBAMA: Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game.

Mr. Obama, respectfully, if you don't know that everybody already has skin in the game...

"The Economy" is doing nothing different than it does all day, every day. It is reallocating and repricing resources to meet expected future demand. Functionally, again, that means all economic actors are making the conscious decisions they make all day, every day to use resources in a manner consistent with the best data at hand.

The difference between today and a "normal" market day, is that massive reallocations and repricing are occurring. That introduces pain in the form of revealed misconceptions for everybody as the entire structure of production is being transformed; factories, offices, raw materials, houses, and, yes, even labor is being put to different uses by different actors.

The only difference between the reallocation and repricing that is already occurring and the "reinvestment and recovery" package you propose, is that the work being done in the market is based on the best data available, and your package is based on aggregates that say nothing useful about how resources are allocated and priced.

Quite simply, Sir, you are focusing on Krugman's speedometer while the individual actors of the world are pointing out the sign that says, "Road Ends - Right Turn to the Destination".

Every dollar you spend, every barrel of oil you burn, every stapler you use, and every worker you entrench is unavailable for this much-needed reallocation and repricing; every bit wasted perpetuates the misalignment of the structure of production to that extent and prolongs this downturn by exactly that much.

Before you drive off the cliff do everyone a favor and make these macroeconomic policy experts show you the quality in their data. Make them satisfy you that their aggregates differentiate between tuna, tractors, and rolling mills in terms of who uses the resources, what the resources are used for, why the resources are used in that way, IF the resources are even used, and when the resources are used.

If they can't show you (and, they can't), then let the microeconomic actors, who DO use that data, complete their own reinvestment and recovery.

Highly-Paid People Poo-Poo Profits

2008-12-26T19:11:00.000-08:00

From the Washington Post, a passive-aggressive dig at for-profit loan modification firms. The gist: anyone who charges for a service that others do for free must be running a scam.

So, who are these angels dispensing loan modification miracles? Let's meet a couple.

"You don't need to go out and hire someone to help you," said Michael Gross, managing director of mortgage servicing for Bank of America. "It is very, at times, frustrating to find a homeowner who has paid a for-profit company $3,000 to $5,000 in an upfront fee, when they could have gotten the same or better assistance free."

I'm pretty sure managing director of mortgage servicing for Bank of America is at least a full-time job. Mr. Gross must truly have a heart of gold to work full-time for a for-profit company (especially a for-profit company on the dole).

"We are extremely concerned about the huge proliferation of for-profit companies making a buck on these people," said Laurie Maggiano, senior policy adviser at HUD's Office of Housing. The department has certified 2,300 nonprofit housing counseling agencies across the country, which are required have at least one year of experience administering a housing counseling program, Maggiano said.

I'm shocked that HUD has unpaid senior policy adviser positions. You would think with all those taxpayer dollars under HUD control, Ms. Maggiano could get at least minimum wage for her work.

Or, perhaps I'm being intentionally obtuse about the nature of a not-for-profit entity, mocking Ms. Renae Merle. As it turns out, the only differences between a for-profit and a not-for-profit is the manner in which they are taxed, and the disposition of net income (a for-profit has the ability to distribute some of net income as a return on capital to the owners). Both have bills and salaries to pay, and both provide services for a payment.

For-profit and not-for-profit are just two different business models, not a basis for delineating saints and sinners.

As for Mr. Gross and Ms. Maggiano? They are for-profit entities in their own right, providing services to the highest bidder and taking home extraordinarily large paychecks. The irony of disparaging quotes from that pair, along with Ms. Sarah Raskin, Maryland's commissioner of financial regulation, is that all of them work for entities that coercively extract payment for their services at the point of a gun.

I would not begin to defend fraud, if indeed fraud exists as you intimate, Ms. Merle. However, I sure don't need ethics lessons from people who profit from armed robbery.

Arm Twisting as Art

2008-12-22T21:25:00.000-08:00

A review of Adam Knott's A Praxeology of Coercion. Seriously, it's a great read and answered a lot of questions that have been dogging me for some time.

I told Adam I really want to read a critique of his monograph from somebody steeped in praxeology.

Adam Knott sites (see if you can spot the trend):

AdamKnott.com
Adam Knott Blog
Praxeology.com
Praxeology.org

Zombie Furriners Strike Again

2008-12-22T21:18:00.000-08:00

Really?

It was stupid when he stood in front of the cameras. Ten minutes later, when everybody had their chuckle, it was just a Bushism.

But now, you want to revisit the "Damn Furriners and their Propensity to Save" argument again?

Really?

Won't Somebody Think of the Children?

2008-12-18T19:05:00.000-08:00

Is there any blog that doesn't use that as a headline at least once?

EVERYBODY's looking for their bailout. The latest:

US Manufacturing Crisis

2008-12-18T04:58:00.000-08:00

That is, crises that are manufactured.

First, Wall Street provided proof of a credit crunch by...not lending. With absolutely no clue about how banks or Wall Street even works, congress was cowed into diverting $700 billion from other, worthier investments.

With that lesson in mind, Chrysler is manufacturing a crisis in Detroit by...not manufacturing. And, to prove that auto sales are down due to the non-existent credit crunch, Chrysler Financial is threatening...not to lend. And, to prove that dealers are having a rough go of things, Chrysler is going to start fining dealers for rolling stock left on the lot too long.

See how that works?

But, here's the deal. Michigan credit unions say they have plenty to lend on autos. There's no outcry from the UAW; Chrysler employees are getting an extra two weeks' paid vacation. And, by the way, if you've got too much inventory, curtailing production is the only sensible thing to do (which explains why it didn't happen sooner).

Chrysler is making all the right moves to extort $7 billion (just a downpayment to get them into January) in diverted funds from other, worthier investments. One of those other, worthier investments may just be loaning money to Chrysler at market terms. Ask yourself just how bad the market terms have to be to extort taxpayers while opening your company up to the dictates of the federal government.

Who says the US doesn't manufacture anymore?

Taming the Tiger

2008-05-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

Three scientists, Maynard, Frank, and Ludwig, stood in front of the door of a tiger cage. On the other side of the cage a tiger calmly walked back and forth, exploring the boundaries of his home. The scientists were discussing the best way to get the tiger into the next room.

Ludwig proposed a simple solution. The tiger was obviously curious about his surroundings; why not just get out of the way and let the tiger explore on his own. Eventually the tiger will pass through the door into the other room.

Maynard scoffed at Ludwig. “The tiger must be pushed into the other room,” Maynard exclaimed. “Otherwise, who knows how long it will take to explore this area? It may even retreat from the door before it actually walks through it. For its own good, we must shove it continually in the right direction.”

With that, Maynard called two assistants over and instructed them to push the tiger towards the door whenever it wasn't making progress (as defined by Maynard). The two assistants walked behind the tiger and shoved on the animal's rump. “Be careful!” yelled Ludwig, but the assistants didn't listen. They shoved and, predictably, the tiger spun around and effortlessly mauled them both.

“Stop this infernal noise,” Ludwig told Maynard. “You're just going to get more assistants hurt if you keep this up.”

Undeterred, Maynard called over a team of assistants and armed them with cattle prods. The assistants formed a line and began prodding the tiger. Any time the tiger lunged at an assistant, two others would jump in and shock it. Retreating from the shocks, the tiger slowly backed towards the door.

Thrilled with the success of the Maynard method, the lab manager, overlooking the cage, quickly dictated a lab-wide memo declaring, “we're all Maynards now!”

Suddenly, the tiger stopped his retreat and crouched. “Shock him!” yelled Maynard, but each time a lab assistant moved to shock the tiger, it would swipe at the assistant's ankles. Soon, all the assistants had their cattle prods on full power, delivering continuous voltage, yet the tiger refused to budge. As the cattle prods began to overheat, the lab assistants dropped them and ran off to tend the blisters rising on their hands.

Frank just chuckled. “You can't push a tiger and you can't herd cats,” he said. “Tigers are going to go where they want to go. The key is providing the proper incentives for him to want to go where we want him to go. We'll just toss some steak in the other room and this beast will go right to it.”

“How much steak are you going to put out for him?” asked Ludwig. “If you put too much out, he'll get going too fast and break his neck running through the doorway.”

“We'll monitor his speed," said Frank, "if he's going too slow, we'll add some steak. If he gets going too fast, we'll take some steak away. We're fully capable of outsmarting a tiger.”

“What if he moves away from the door?”

“Ludwig, what a silly question,” Frank chided. “The tiger isn't going to move away from the door when there is steak to be had. But, in theory, if he did we'd just have to pile on more steak until he started moving in the right direction.”

Frank directed an assistant in the other room to toss out a porterhouse. The tiger, slightly dazed from riding Maynard's lightning, raised its head and sniffed the air. “It's working!” yelled Frank. “More steak!”

The assistant, who couldn't actually see the tiger from the other room, added a steak.

“More! More steak!” yelled Frank as the tiger stood and started walking towards the door. The tiger broke into a trot and soon began loping towards the door. “Take some away!” yelled Frank.

The process continued with Frank relaying instructions to his assistant until a breeze blew through the tiger cage. Confused by the breeze, the tiger began drifting off course and was soon moving in an arc about the door not towards it.

“More steak, more steak! Get some more steak out there now!” yelled Frank.

“That's too much steak,” Ludwig offered. “If he starts moving towards the door, your assistant won't have time to slow him down!”

Frank ignored him and screamed at his assistant. “More steak! Now! Use it all!”

Just then the breeze quit. The tiger regained the direction of the steak pile and, with cat-like reflexes, sprang towards the doorway, sending the three scientists skittering out of its way. The big cat roared as it galloped towards the treasure he smelled, completely drowning out Frank's pitiful wail, “Too much! Take it away, take it away!”

In a blind fervor to get to the steak, the tiger misjudged the width of the door and ran headlong into the door jam. The cat hit the door jam so hard that it bounced half way back into the cage where it sat in a dazed stupor.

“Enough!” crackled a voice over the intercom. The voice belonged to Hillary, one of the lab's management trainees. “Just shoot the damn cat and drag it into the other room. Once it's in there you can unkill it.”

All three scientists spun around and looked up at the observation window. “What?” they asked in unison. “That won't work. You can't unkill a tiger.”

“You can,” Hillary insisted. “You just have to do it the right way. I don't hold with you scientists and your science. I can unkill it.”

“Yes,” said Carly, the spokesperson for another MT. “You scientists are always arguing about your theories and hypotheses. John and I both agree with Hillary. In fact, killing and then unkilling the cat was John's idea in the first place.”

“John?” asked Ludwig. “You mean 'I don't know much about science' John? His solution, then, is to just ignore the science? We could have had the tiger in the other room hours ago of its own volition if we would have just left it alone to do its thing, but now you want to kill it? Wow! I hope none of you actually ever becomes the lab manager!”

Developing...

Helicopter Ben Begs for an LZ

2008-05-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

Via AP and RawStory:

"High rates of delinquency and foreclosure can have substantial spillover effects on the housing market, the financial markets and the broader economy," Bernanke said in a dinner speech to Columbia Business School in New York. "Therefore, doing what we can to avoid preventable foreclosures is not just in the interest of lenders and borrowers. It's in everybody's interest," he said.

Bernanke (is he really still at the Fed's helm?) wants to end a banking crisis by just changing the numbers on the bank accounts. Forgive debt (contracts? We don't need no stinking contracts!). Let Fannie and Freddie put those of us who actually made good investments and make our payments every month on the hook for neg-am arms.

There's nothing more to be said for the failure named Bernanke. This says it all:

In his remarks, Bernanke did not talk about the interest rate policy or the state of the economy.

Sentencing Disparities

2008-04-24T23:04:00.000-07:00

You think the disparity between cocaine and crack is bad? Try the disparity between regular Chicago dogs and bacon dogs.

45 days. In jail. For selling a bacon-wrapped hot dog.

She'd get five years easy if she offered mayo as a condiment.

It's a Gas, Baby

2008-04-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

Pop quiz:

You own a gas station. Your cost for gasoline is 4-6 cents cheaper than the price on your pumps. Congresscritters, in their infinite wisdom, declare a federal tax holiday, reducing wholesale and retail prices by 9 cents per gallon (which it won't, but let's just say it does).

Knowing, then, that you can purchase gasoline at a retail price today lower than your wholesale cost in six months, and that any "taxes" collected on the sale of stocks purchased during the tax holiday and sold after it go in your pocket, not to the government, what do you do?

What do you do?

Extra Credit: While you have your supply and demand curves out, show, also, the resultant effect on the equilibrium price of storage tanks and fuel trucks.

Dumbing it Down for NYT Readers

2008-04-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

Smart Guy: If you do those things, bad things will happen.

Stupid People: Aw, go piss up a rope.

Government: Now, now. Smart guy is really smart, so we should definitely use his catch phrases. We can do all sorts of amazing things if we use Smart Guy's names for the programs!

Stupid People: Baaa. Yes, I would like a subscription to the New York Times.

Smart Guy: Changing the name is just plain stupid. If you do those things, bad things will happen.

Government: Nonsense! We're using the catch phrases. What could go wrong?

-- bad things happen --

New York Times: See? Smart Guy wasn't so smart after all!

More on the Cat Fight

2008-03-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

I mentioned the libertarian cat fight here, but I didn't go into specifics because, well, just because. I didn't notice at the time that Libertarian Think Tank covered the CATO involvement pretty well, so I'll link it now.

Even though someone from CATO read my post on the cat fight (twice) they didn't bother to comment, which is probably just as well. I just don't think CATO has anything to offer any more.

Tax-Time Merry-Go-Round

2008-03-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

We must be getting close to April 15, that magical date on the US calendar by which taxpayers must “voluntarily” reconcile taxes payed with taxes owed for the government. I can tell because the California Attorney General, Jerry Brown, is holding press conferences decrying the evils of refund anticipation loans (RALs) at H&R Block.

RALs are short-term loans to cover the period between the time a customer files a tax return electronically and the time the IRS transmits the refund to the lending bank. The loan period, then, is somewhere between 5 and 12 days (the IRS estimates a direct deposit refund on an e-file at 7-14 days and it may take the bank up to two days to process the loan).

Because the loan period is so short, we can calculate using simple interest. In an blatant effort to hide the fact that a RAL is a loan, Block estimates on its website that a RAL on a $2,400 refund would cost the customer $26.04 in interest plus a “Refund Account Fee” (loan origination fee) of $29.95. The math, if you're interested: 36% / 365 days * $2,400 * 11 days.

Why 11 days? Good question. That's the number that Block uses in their estimates, and, for such a short-term loan the number of days makes all the difference. Jerry Brown insists that the interest rate is 80% or more plus fees, so let's see how many days he uses: $26.04 / (80% / 365 days * $2,400) = 4.95 days

Why do I always hear Claude Rains in my head when I work with government math?

Last year, when it was Jackson-Hewitt's turn in the barrel, the buzz-phrase in regards to RALs was that this system "preys on the financially illiterate". I could not agree more.

To get a RAL, Block's customers must fill out a 1-page loan application. Prior to that, though, they must fill out a minimum two-page IRS Form 1040. To fill that out, they either have to wade through the 44,000-page US tax code, or pay a tax preparer to fill it out for them. Then, they have to swear, under penalty of perjury, that the statements made on the 1040 are true and correct, something that gives even tax attorneys pause.

Oh, and by the way, to be due a $2,400 refund, the withholding from the prior year must have been too high by an average $200 per month. This amounts to an interest-free loan to the government for a year or more. A system which did not prey on the financially illiterate would increase their tax refund by at least the risk-free rate compounded over the period of the loan.

Look, stones are cheap and everybody lives in a glass house these days. But, this. This pandering by Jerry Brown is so blatant, and so over the top, and so slimy! And, it happens every year all over the country. And, no one ever calls them on it.

Who on earth devised a tax code so convoluted and overarching that it requires a person or family that qualifies for the Earned Income Tax Credit to even file a tax return or have money withheld from their paycheck? Who, in their right mind, feels that someone, who is so desparate to get their hands on a couple of hundred dollars of their own money that they would apply and pay for a five or eleven-day loan, should have to pay hundreds of dollars to a tax preparer to lessen their chances of being indicted for perjuring themselves on their tax return?

How are the tax dollars these people are paying used? In California, besides paying Jerry Brown's salary, the majority of the dollars go to public schools so the children of people who are financially illiterate can raise a bumper crop of people who are financially illiterate. Instead of suing H&R Block, Brown should be suing the schools that aren't teaching kids to compute simple interest!

Ground Floor Opportunity

2008-02-22T11:22:00.000-08:00

I get really, really tired of always being part of the "acceptable collateral damage" in the government's wars. I'm not hypocritical enough to become a government warrior (what an ironic label to apply to bureaucrats and politicians), and I'm not involved in anything they've declared war on, so I just get to pay for the war and watch it ravage the wealth and property my hard work has bought me.

For once, though, I foresee a government war that I can really get behind. No, I still won't take the side of the government - I'm going to join the underground plaque economy.

Via The Agitator, police in Lawrence, MA are up in arms over plaques they received in the mail. The plaques, received by the police chief and three others, are awards for corruption. With all other crime in Lawrence solved, Chief Romero has dedicated Lawrence's world-renowned investigative unit to discovering the identity of the sender.

Even stranger than the chief's Roscoe P. Coltrain-esque response to criticism is the breathless treatment given to the story by Eagle-Tribune staff writer Jill Harmacinski:

LAWRENCE — They were real looking enough. Three wooden plaques each embossed with a gold police shield, a small gun piece and each engraved with an officer's name.

But these "plaques" sent to the police department Sunday were no awards. They came from a bogus address in Puerto Rico, supposedly sent from a former assistant district attorney and were in recognition for the officers being "corrupt." They were dated "9-11-2007."

Now, I've made plaques before. It's kind of fun to watch the engraver work and to be creative with elements to make something unique to present as an award. I was unaware, however, that my plaques could be considered "fakes" or even "plaques." I didn't know you needed the king's stamp for them to be real (or maybe just the foil sticker on the back identifying the trophy shop that made them).

Heck, when I receive a plaque I typically toss it in the garbage as soon as I get home. Little have I known that I might be complicit (even actively engaged) in the heretofore unknown scourge on society of plaque counterfeiting.

Thanks to Romero's vows of pressing for a federal government War on Plaques and Harmacinski's expose of the underground plaque trade, I now know that I possess skills and knowledge valuable in this market. Hell, if the black market profits are a fraction of those created by the War on Drugs, I'll be living in style on my mega-yacht in no time!

Harry Reid, report to your office! I'll be mailing a draft copy of a bill I would like you to introduce in the Senate immediately declaring officially a federal War on Plaques. I expect this bill will get broad, bipartisan support - it's just the kind of thing this congress specializes in!

Oh, and we need to keep the precursors under lock and key! Planers, shapers, and engravers all need to be strictly controlled by Home Depot. I've already got mine, so I'll be able to set up a plaque lab in my garage and a backup plaque lab in Mexico.

Harry, this may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship! I just hope Romero and Harmacinski don't make us look stupid.

Fixins

2008-02-17T17:02:00.000-08:00

I wonder what they're making here?

The Government We Choose for You

2008-02-07T04:59:00.000-08:00

With the ouster of South African President Thabo Mbeki, three free-market fellows see hope for Ben Bernanke's model economy, Zimbabwe. In the Washington Times, Tom Woods of the Heritage Foundation, Roger Bate of the American Enterprise Institute, and Marian Tupy from CATO pin their hopes on the newly-elected Jacob Zuma with the aid of US President George Bush.

While praising the US State Department's free-market, targeted sanctions and deference to Mbeki's leadership in the past, the trio hope that Zuma adopts a more proactive, free-market “tightening of the noose on the Mugabe regime.” Additionally, they hope that George Bush, the champion of English teachers and civil libertarians worldwide, will host the Zimbabwean opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, in the Oval Office and break away from the talks between Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC. Rather, the UN should engage Zuma and the ANC's Executive Council on the future of Zimbabwe.

There is no doubt that the Zimbabwean people are suffering through THE humanitarian crisis in the world right this moment. As noted, a third of the population has fled the country, and those that remain burn old mattresses and furniture for fuel and scramble for whatever food they can purchase on the black market. But, there is also no doubt that the Zimbabwean people do not suffer from a lack of government intervention.

Quite the contrary, and unsurprisingly, the Zimbabwean people suffer and die because of government interference, a fact that three supposed free-market fellows should acknowledge.

I've made no secret of my opinion of Mugabe. He's a thug; a tin-pot dictator not worth the price of the bullet to execute him. But, the only people who can morally seize control of their country, try Mugabe for crimes against humanity, and establish their chosen rule of law are the Zimbabweans. Woods, Bate, and Tupy, seemingly, will have none of that.

“None can fault past U.S. policy, which has featured tough rhetoric and sustained effort to coax the world to act by embracing targeted sanctions,” they write. Well, let me be the first, then.

Throughout history, US sanctions have had two effects in the nations they were imposed against: they impoverish and starve the people of that nation and enrich the ruling elite. The people, who have not just the moral right, but also the obligation to overthrow a dictatorial regime are left decimated and too weak to mount a credible defense of their own lives. The sanctions strengthen the power of the regime over the people and grant them the ability to quell any dissent.

One need not make a scholarly study of the history and writings of Woods, Bate, and Tupy to recognize that, while the plight of the Zimbabwean people pains them, they are grateful for the opportunity that plight presents to establish a Zimbabwean regime beholden to the UN and ANC. Despite their “democratic reform” rhetoric, a quick glance at the trio's CVs reveals their preference for the soft fascism that so often seeks cover under the guise of “free market.”

A truly free market would unconsciously use, as it already does, the extensive underground economy that has developed in Zimbabwe to undermine the Mugabe regime. A truly free market would, as it already does, develop alternative communication mechanisms – the people of Harare hide their satellite dishes in water barrels on the roofs of their tenements. A truly free market would get food within days to starving people.

Woods, Bate, and Tupy, however, choose to ignore the underground economy that is actually feeding people and instead cheer lead for sanctions to thwart that mechanism and UN, ANC, SA, and US interference to establish democratic elections, regardless of the cost in Zimbabwean life.

I'm sure Zimbabwean ballots are just as nutritional as Florida ballots, chads and all.

$15M Hamburgers

2008-01-17T17:19:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since we checked in on the economic blueprint for the United States, Zimbabwe. Today, the AP reports a situation that will turn Helicopter Ben green with envy:

Zimbabweans will be soon lining their pockets with 10-million-dollar bills.

At the current black market exchange rate of $2.5 million (ZD) to $1(USD) the new notes will be worth a whopping $4 (USD), about two-thirds of the price of a hamburger. The new notes will supplement last month's new notes where $750,000 was the highest denomination issued.

As always, soldiers, police, and other uniformed services will have special pay-lines, "because it is not desirable to see them queuing for cash."

Echoing his American colleague Ben Bernanke's remarks on the current "liquidity crunch" faced by US and European banks, Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono said, "businesses might be tempted to again raise prices of scarce goods. 'If this happens, the whole objective of solving the cash shortages ... will be defeated,' he said."

Two Fed Chiefs with the same prescription for the same perceived problem. The good news for both of them is that former Senator/bad actor/sleepy candidate Fred Thompson trusts 'em!

A Cat Fight Breaks Out in the Herd

2008-01-16T12:28:00.000-08:00

If you ever run into a long-time Libertarian, make sure to ask them for a good story or two. They can always pull some doosies out of the hat when they need to.

There are always juicy "who did what to whom" stories from the conventions, shady deals involving shady people, and the inevitable "once he got out of jail" vengeance; you know, pretty much the juvenile behavior that typifies politics and government in general. The difference is, when Libertarians fight it pretty much just degenerates into a nerd-off and doesn't involve actual homicide like Republican and Democrat fights.

This fight is one that has simmered on the back burner for decades and had to boil over sooner or later. It's always been a war of words, but now that blogs are much more important than magazines and newsletters, the volleys are coming in near real-time. Folks who are new to libertarianism are in for a real treat without even having to go to convention: a good old-fashioned Libertarian cat fight.

On one side you have "government that I agree with is good government" beltway hacks and the A/V club. On the other side, you have the holier-than-thou academics. The basic premise of the fight is simple. The academics say that the beltway hacks see compromising principle as a virtue, and the A/V club will only take a break from rockin' the ganj long enough to address "hip" issues. The hacks fault the academics for not going-along-to-get-along (with Republicans and Democrats) and the A/V club thinks the academics are harshing their mellow.

The latest dust up is a prime example of cannibalism at its finest. An associate of the academics had a damn fine year, for a libertarian, and the academics have been breaking their arms patting themselves on the back. The hacks have become increasingly grumpy about the situation because it hasn't required compromise, and the A/V club, while grudgingly giving support, has their share of reservations because he's a devout Christian and talks too wonkishly.

The thing about Libertarians, though, is in addition to being freakishly nerdy, they are also insufferably transparent. At the beginning of 2007, when it appeared the libertarian was going to have an OK year, the hacks and A/V club warned against involvement because there was a strong possibility of failure (you see, you can't fail if you never try). In mid-2007, when the candidate was merely having a good year, the hacks continued to attack while the A/V club prepared to jump aboard. In late 2007, the candidate was not only having a phenomenal libertarian year but also a great year for a Republican. The A/V club, seeing where the cool-kid money was going, conveniently forgot their reservations and the hacks suspended their attacks just in case they had to jump aboard this new-found gravy train.

Then came January 3, 2008. Iowa Republicans soundly repudiated any notion that they should be counted among the cool kids (as if there were a question).

With blood in the water, the hacks pulled the trigger on an attack that must have been in the making for some time. The hacks had revealed the secret burial grounds of some bones the candidate and the academics just as soon stay buried. As late as January 7th, the A/V club agreed to coordinate a "New Hampshire surprise" with a liberal mag that had dusted them off and inspected them.

Rather than the "boom" they all expected from their bombshell, a solitary "pop" echoed in the blogosphere for all of 24 hours and much less than that in the old media.

Why the bomb didn't have the planned impact is simple: the bones that were uncovered were disgusting rants about gays and minorities, hateful to libertarians, but, frankly, strictly in line with the Republican base. Ah, but sweet, sweet irony, how I love thee. The rants were, apparently, penned by the academics specifically to appeal to the Republican base.

With the candidate's die already cast (6-10% of Republicans who bother to show up and vote), the hacks and A/V club are still trying to get some shrapnel to hurt the academics, saying that the hateful rants "taint" libertarian philosophy. While I agree with that, I don't think it taints it any more than condoning preemptive war or smoking dope.

I remember something about glass houses.

Anyway, I don't think the beltway hacks or A/V club can have any effect on the candidate. Any recent loss of support is just the familiar Libertarian post-election burnout and actual Republican support is continuing to rise (or, at least, not falling). It sure is fun to watch, though.

QFT

2007-12-03T18:04:00.000-08:00

via inRich.com:

Republican officials dismissed the poll's outcome, noting that Paul has been concentrating on winning straw polls all over the country.
"He brought people in here. What is more critical to look at is who finished second and third. That is a more true indicator of the feelings of the Republican Party of Virginia," said Tucker Watkins of Randolph in Charlotte County, a former 5th District GOP chairman.

Exactly. The true feelings of the Republican Party have nothing to do with the people. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Ronald Reagan RIP

2007-11-28T17:19:00.000-08:00

Reagan's 11th commandment is broken, dead, kaput, finis, done, gone.

Thank God.

I Found Four of Them

2007-11-04T15:56:00.000-08:00

There are three popular myths that always astound me. I've always figured that it took a lot of hubris and self-flattery to actually believe any of these three. I hate to burst your bubble, but here are the real truths:

1) Random child molesters are not interested in waylaying your ugly kids. If someone is molesting your kids, it's someone you and your child know, probably very well.

2) Terrorists do not want to kill you or your family. Unless you are famous or have done something to really tick somebody off (see government), no terrorist even knows you exist. How can someone give a damn about you either way unless they know you exist.

3) Government does not exist to protect you or your family (see #2). Government exists only to protect government.

None of those three truths need much explanation. You know they're true, but denial is a defense mechanism so you can go right back to your servile, cowering state in a few moments. First, though, I've got one more truth that the 34% of you who are deeply in denial apparently need to hear.

A March 2007 Pew Research poll that showed 34% of Americans agree with the statement, "most elected officials care what people like me think."

Look at the person on your left, then the person on your right. According to this poll, one of you agrees with that statement. That's a special form of denial that should scare the bejezzus out of the other two of you.

So, what kind of person acts on that belief? Via Crooks and Liars comes a story of four such individuals who really should know better. It seems that four former Judge Advocate Generals (two former JAGs of the Navy, one JAG of the Army, and an SJA to the Commandant of the Marine Corps) sent a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In this letter, the former JAGs express the insanely obvious - waterboarding is torture and Americans don't torture.

Now, those who express that waterboarding is not torture are another special class of people in deep denial, but that's not the point of this post (nor of any other; I won't waste my time engaging with these psychopaths). The point is, these four educated, career lawyers with plenty of experience in the asylum district of Washington D.C. actually think that Patrick Leahy gives a damn what they think.

For these four flag officers and the rest of the 34% of the American public in deep denial, I give you bubble-bursting truth #4:

Regardless of your family name, education, experience, or title, no elected official (or bureaucrat) cares about what you think unless you present them with a thick wad of $100 bills in a freezer bag.

You may now return to your river barge. Say "hi" to Cleopatra for me.

Your Pimp Hand is Long on Palaver But Short on Slap

2007-10-21T16:38:00.000-07:00

Passionate response to yesterday's wisdom from Freedom's Phoenix editor, J Shelton:

How is our home boundary any different than our boundary with Mexico or Canada? Since when did our the Constitution reflect that America has no boundaries? Are people so delusional that they believe there is a place called amnesty land with no boundaries or rule of law? If so, they can pack up and go there! (his emphasis)

Is exclusionary collectivism an oxymoron?

Shelton seeks to set the record straight about illegal border crossings:

Now, it may be a civil penalty to jaywalk in Tucson but entering into our home [America] without presenting yourself before you enter is danger to the American people and it is a CRIME, sorry!

Specifically, Shelton refers to 19 U.S.C. 1459 which describes the requirement for any individual arriving in the United States to report to a customs officer at a customs office. He reveals that 19 U.S.C 1459 provides for a criminal penalty for "intentionally violat[ing] any provision of subsection (e) of this section" in subsection (g). However, he glosses over subsection (f) which provides for a civil penalty for violating any provision of subsection (e).

The criminality of subsection (g) is triggered by specific intent to violate subsection (e).

Now, intent (mens rea) is an element of any illegal action and easily proved by a preponderance of evidence. If a "reasonable person" would determine that the result of a defendant's actions (or inaction) would be illegal, basic intent has been proven.

Specific intent, however, carries a higher burden of proof. One must prove not only that a "reasonable person" would foresee a violation of the statute, but that the defendant took that action specifically to violate that statute beyond a reasonable doubt.

While "ignorance of the law is no excuse" is the accepted legal standard in the United States it is not without exception. Since specific intent requires the willful violation of a specific statute, it is one of those exceptions. To prove specific intent, one has to prove that the defendant had knowledge of the statute that was violated.

19 U.S.C. 1459 is buried in Title 19 (Customs Duties), Chapter 4 (Tariff Act of 1930), Subtitle III (Administrative Provisions), Part II (Report, Entry, and Unlading of Vessels and Vehicles), Section 1459 (Reporting requirements for individuals). To prove that a defendant had knowledge of that statute, one would have to show that person is either an expert in Title 19 of the US Code or had read and understood one of the signs pictured by Shelton.

Unless the defendant is a smuggler, given the high burden of proof for the criminal penalty in 19 U.S.C. 1459, no prosecutor is going to try to get that conviction. Take Shelton, for example; while his writeup would definitively prove that he has knowledge of the statute, it also proves that he doesn't understand it.

But heck, I'm not a lawyer. Let's see what actual lawyers have to say about this. First a former immigration defense attorney, Ron Abramson:

The flaw in using local police to treat the undocumented as criminals is that an immigration violation is neither a local legal matter nor a crime.

The rationale for the perceived nobility of Chamberlain's actions is that undocumented non-citizens are inherently criminals. Chamberlain's efforts are part of a developing trend, which Boston College Law Professor Daniel Kanstroom has described as "criminalizing the undocumented."

While it may be against the law, being undocumented is not a crime, and thus immigration violators should not be treated as criminals. Still, despite all the blustery rhetoric that seeks to equate immigration violations with criminal -and often terrorist - activity, the law simply does not support the equation.

Because the distinction between criminal and civil law violations can trouble even an otherwise acute mind, an example may be useful. If a person walks out of a store without paying for an item, she commits the criminal offense of shoplifting. If the same person purchases the item with a credit card and then defaults on the bill, she may have broken the law (the contractual agreement to pay the credit card company), but the breach is not a crime. The rights, procedures and consequences implicated by the civil violation are substantially different.

Supportive, but since we all know defense attorneys lie for fun, let's hear from a former US attorney and Presidential candidate. Mayor Rudy Giuliani was interviewed on the Glenn Beck show on Sep. 7 about this very question:

GLENN: [I]sn't illegal immigration a crime in and of itself?

GIULIANI: No.

GLENN: Aren't you saying --

GIULIANI: Glenn --

GLENN: You're protecting criminals by saying that being treated as a criminal is unfair.

GIULIANI: Glenn, it's not a crime. I know that's very hard for people to understand, but it's not a federal crime.

GLENN: It's a misdemeanor but if you've been nailed, it is a crime. If you've been nailed, ship back and come back, it is a crime.

GIULIANI: Glenn, being an illegal immigrant, the 400,000 were not prosecuted for crimes by the federal government, nor could they be. I was U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York. So believe me, I know this. In fact, when you throw an immigrant out of the country, it's not a criminal proceeding. It's a civil proceeding.

GLENN: Is it --

GIULIANI: One of the things that congress wanted to do a year ago is to make it a crime, which indicates that it isn't.

GLENN: Should it be?

GIULIANI: Should it be? No, it shouldn't be because the government wouldn't be able to prosecute it. We couldn't prosecute 12 million people. We have only 2 million people in jail right now for all the crimes that are committed in the country, 2.5 million. If you were to make it a crime, you would have to take the resources of the criminal justice system and increase it by about 6. In other words, you'd have to take all the 800,000 police, and who knows how many police we would have to have.

Of course, Giuliani went on to describe a magical border fence with ninjas and Imperial spy drones in his next answer, so, to counteract that nonsense I'll close with another quote from Abramson:

[C]riminalizing the undocumented provides people like Chamberlain with a soapbox from which they can spew anti-immigrant invective and seek to shame the federal government into further diverting its limited resources away from measures that would truly increase national security.

While the distinction between violating a law and being a criminal may be lost on some, the fact is that a person does not check his humanity at the border. It is all too easy to target those who lack a political voice, to scapegoat them for everything from unemployment rates to suburban sprawl to rising medical costs.

Jaywalking in Tucson

2007-10-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

Under Arizona statute and the Tucson Code of Ordinances, "[b]etween adjacent intersections at which traffic control signals are in operation, pedestrians shall not cross at any place except in a marked crosswalk." In other words, it is illegal to jaywalk.

If you jaywalk in Tucson, you may be cited for a "civil traffic violation." While illegal, jaywalking is not a crime, but an infraction. In the same way, speeding and parking violations are infractions, not crimes.

The thing about jaywalking, though, is that you can not undo it. If you are speeding, you can simply slow down and no longer be speeding. Or, you can move your car and no longer be parked illegally. But, once you jaywalk, you are on the other side of the street via illegal means. No amount of backtracking and reversing course can erase the fact that, from curb to curb, you jaywalked.

However, being the scofflaw you are, you look both ways for uniformed peace officers, jump off the curb, jog across the road, and pop up on the other curb. Having committed the infraction of jaywalking, is the infraction ongoing because you choose to remain on that side of the street? Of course not; it would be absurd to think otherwise.

Since you can't undo the jaywalk, an ongoing infraction of "remaining" would apply wherever you went. Your entire life would become one ongoing commission of an illegal act. Your very existence would be illegal.

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Well, there is another statute, a Federal statute, similarly worded, that applies to Arizona (and many other states). It can be found at 8 U.S.C 1325 and states in part (emphasis mine),

Sec. 275. [8 U.S.C. 1325]

(a) Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or b oth, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.

(b) Any alien who is apprehended while entering (or attempting to enter) the United States at a time or place other than as designated by immigration officers shall be subject to a civil penalty of-

(1) at least $50 and not more than $250 for each such entry (or attempted entry); or

(2) twice the amount specified in paragraph (1) in the case of an alien who has been previously subject to a civil penalty under this subsection.

Civil penalties under this subsection are in addition to, and not in lieu of, any criminal or other civil penalties that may be imposed.

Note that an illegal border crossing is an infraction that carries a civil penalty, just like jaywalking. It is only a crime (and subject to Title 18) when accompanied by fraud. And, just like jaywalking, an illegal border crossing is only punishable if one were caught in the act.

Once the border crossing has taken place, is the infraction ongoing because the border crosser chooses to stay on the US side of the border? Of course not; to think otherwise would be absurd. Since, just like jaywalking, the border crossing cannot be undone, the rest of the border crosser's life would become one ongoing commission of an illegal act. That person's very existence would become illegal whether he chose to remain in the United States or left for any other country.

And yet, in the United States, so chock full of civil liberties and equality, the rhetoric is constantly replete with reference to "illegals" and sometimes "criminals" when referring to undocumented migrants.

Now, I understand that some people are passionately anti-immigrant; the US has a history of anti-immigrant fervor since its very inception. However, I would think that someone who is so passionate about the topic would take the time to educate themselves that an illegal border crossing is not a "crime" it is a civil violation, no different than jaywalking, and that no person can be "illegal" by their very existence.

You'll excuse me if I don't hold my breath.

A Big Thank-You

2007-10-02T17:32:00.000-07:00

A gigantic thank you to Ian & Mark from Free Talk Live for their on-air read of "There Is No War on Drugs". Although I normally listen to the podcast the day after the show, I just happened to be listening live that night while I was cleaning out a storage shed. Imagine my surprise to hear words from my little corner of the Internet broadcast live on a nationally-syndicated radio show!

Free Talk Live Podcast - 9/29/07 (.mp3 27.3 MB)

Free Talk Live has enjoyed a permanent spot on my "kick-ass podcasts" list from (I believe) the beginning of this blog. I'm certainly not alone in my admiration - FTL has won the Podcast Awards' "Best Political Podcast" award 3 years in a row!

But, Free Talk Live is much more than a podcast. In a little more than four years, Ian Bernard has taken Free Talk Live from an experiment in local content on a radio station in Sarasota, FL to a nationally-syndicated show broadcast on 29 affiliates nationwide. TALKERS magazine has listed FTL in their "TALKERS 250" for two years in a row. It seems like every month I get an email from Ian telling me that two more stations are carrying Free Talk Live.

Ian & Mark, along with day hosts Gardner Goldsmith, Wayne, Toby, Nick, and Julia broadcast Monday through Saturday from 7-10 ET. They also stream the show live.

The Free Talk Live website has the last year of the show archived, its own wiki, and the only forum (the BBS) worth participating in on the entire Internet. The cost to you? Free!

Oh, and the only presidential candidate with the cajones to go live with Mark & Ian? That'd be Ron Paul! (.mp3 4.4 MB)

Is Armageddon at Hand?

2007-09-14T12:25:00.000-07:00

Lew Rockwell notes what has to be a sure sign of a coming apocalypse:

BTW: About 200 enthusiatic, sign-carrying young people accompanied Ron [Paul] on a walk from his breakfast fundraiser to his luncheon event. I never thought I'd be part of Republican parade on the streets of San Francisco chanting antiwar slogans!

UPDATE: Now with video!

So, What Does a Bank Run Look Like?

2007-09-14T09:10:00.001-07:00

Despite backing by the Bank of England, customers of Northern Rock PLC are flocking to withdraw their funds:

Northern Rock has 76 bank branches, according to Hunter. By 11 a.m., dozens of people formed queues on the sidewalk outside the Moorgate office, the Maddox Street branch in the West End shopping district, and the Kingston Upon Thames outlet in southwest London.

The Bank of England is stepping up to the plate, what's the issue here?

The issue is that financial markets are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. Savings is low, demand for funds is high, so the interest rate rises both encouraging savings and lowering demand. It should be a great time for the average wage-earner to toss his extra quid in a savings account and let his money work for him.

But, Northern Rock was fully loaned out. Not content to quit making more loans until their customer deposits increased, the bank went to the Bank of England and complained about the "liquidity crunch." They wanted a lower discount rate (the rate at which the Bank of England loans money to commercial banks). The problem is, a lower interest rate is a signal to consumers to save less and entrepreneurs to borrow more, thus exacerbating the "liquidity crunch."

So, Northern Rock's customers did what depositors do when their bank starts making noises about needing funds; they rushed to pull out their deposits.

"It's scary,'' said Peter Pye, 60, a retired university lecturer standing in a line of about 30 people outside the Moorgate branch in the financial district. "I have my life's savings in Northern Rock.'' He said he would withdraw a "six- figure'' sum and leave 5,000 pounds in the account.
...
"Why leave your money in a bank that obviously has some major problems?'' said Michael Ribotham, 74. "I'm not young and don't have a chance to make it back again.'' Ribotham was waiting at Moorgate for about 40 minutes.

What does "backed" by the Bank of England really mean? Well, at the end of the day, Northern Rock compares the total amount of funds they have loaned out and the total reserves they have deposited with the Bank of England. If their reserves are below the required reserve ratio, they write an IOU to the Bank of England, and the Bank of England increases their reserve account in the computer.

However, the Bank of England doesn't have a pile of money sitting there to make the loan. It increases Northern Rock's reserve account without making a corresponding decrease in another account. So, in other words, the money it loans to Northern Rock is created out of thin air.

Now, if you happen to have a few pounds in your wallet or bank account, those funds are now competing with the newly-created funds for the goods on the grocery store shelf. Through the magic of central banking, the Bank of England stole a bit of your purchasing power right out of your wallet and handed it to Northern Rock.

Keep in mind, there is no law that says Northern Rock has to be fully loaned out. There is also no law that says the Bank of England has to create new money to bail them out. But, there are things called legal tender laws which say that if someone presents you with this fiat money (which is now worth less than it was this morning) to pay a debt, you have to take it.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England is richer to the tune of the interest they charge for the loan to Northern Rock.

Is anyone concerned about the failure of this Ponzi scheme?

"There is no risk,'' said James Hamilton, an analyst at Numis Securities in London. "The Bank of England said Northern Rock is solvent.'' Hamilton said that "as credit turmoil will return to normal, Northern Rock's business will.'' The British Bankers' Association said there's "no reason for either mortgage customers or savers to worry.'' The group provides London interbank offered rates, or Libor, a benchmark for money- market rates in the dollar, the euro and 11 other currencies.

Guess not.

Something Fun for Once

2007-09-12T13:52:00.000-07:00

Patrick Rishe takes on pro sports salaries on his ProfCorner Blog. It's always dangerous to criticize a professor, but I've got a few nits to pick with his methodology.

Rishe starts out strong, noting that nobody holds a gun to your head forcing you to consume mass quantities of pro sports entertainment:

No one puts a gun to my head when I sit on my BLEEP for 6 hours at a sports bar to watch the opening day of the NFL season.

No one is twisting my arm to shell out marked-up prices for sporting events on Stubhub.

Free will...it's a BLEEP sometimes isn't it.

Pro athletes, no different from highly paid movie stars and music icons, entertain the masses, and possess the rare attributes to do so...like it or not.

If I had a body like Matthew McConaughey and taught my econ courses shirtless and simulcast to an audience of millions worldwide that expected to gain Alan Greenspan-like wisdom from merely watching me speak, I'd be a millionaire to.[sic]

Then Rishe derails. If the customers are buying entertainment, what does Rishe say the players are producing?

...one could argue that NBA players deserve more compensation because one player's marginal contributions to production (i.e. wins) is more significant.

Oops. I've got news for the professor: in every game, there is a winner and a loser. You can't have one without the other; the losing team is just as productive as the winning team in producing a "win".

The true product is the one that the customer consumes: entertainment. While Rishe may contend that the losing team's product is inferior to a winning team's, in doing so he would deny the existence of the "die hard fan." In other words, the quality (and value) of the entertainment product is purely in the eye of the beholder.

In fact, an individual consumer of pro sports entertainment could very well be ambivalent about the winner or loser of a specific game and still place a very high value on the entertainment. Additionally, if the consumer doesn't particularly care for a rival team, an individual consumer may place a higher value on a loss by that team.

Given that, the only accurate value judgments one could make about an individual customer are that, assuming the consumer is a fan of the team in question:

1) that customer values the entertainment of a winning season over a losing season;
2) that customer values the entertainment of specific superstars over other superstars, and;
3) that customer therefore values the entertainment of a winning season with the preferred superstars over a losing season with or without the other superstars.

The method one would use to aggregate individual consumers into a market demand necessarily varies from one market to another. Due to a whole host of variances from market to market, you can not determine aggregate demand in Milwaukee the same way as in Los Angeles or even Charlotte. Those markets demand entirely different equations.

Which leads to another problem with Rishe's analysis:

The Biggest Misnomer in Sports

Higher ticket prices are not caused by higher salaries.

...

Truth is, teams raise prices either because they feel they can or they feel they must. If a team believes that demand for their product is sufficiently high and that raising prices will not cost the team lost attendance, then prices will increase...irrespective of team payroll.

First, the revenue equation is price times attendance, not price plus attendance. Revenue maximization depends on the elasticity of demand not (necessarily) filling the bleachers. Second, this is a sure case where, due to locality effects, a rising tide floats all boats.

If, by raising the amount they are willing to bid for contracts (salaries), Anaheim is able to attract the talent with a broad enough appeal to decrease the elasticity of demand for Angel's tickets, then indeed the higher salaries cause an increase in ticket prices. Even if Anaheim is not revenue-maximizing, scalpers sure will be. Additionally, if Padres and Dodgers tickets are the next best use of entertainment dollars, ticket prices will also go up in San Diego and LA (otherwise there will, again, be a demand surplus that scalpers will fill).

Note, those are both "if"s. Another "if" is that if the salaries are raised and the elasticity of demand is unaffected or increased, then raising ticket prices will decrease attendance and revenue. The point to be made is not that higher salaries have to cause increases in ticket prices, it's that they may.

Lastly:

Practically speaking, many teams have set their ticket prices for the upcoming season before knowing what their payroll for that season will be. So again, this fact partially debunks the myth.

There is no way to set ticket prices without at least a, wait for it, ballpark payroll figure. That's why, I'm sure, that owners employ a small army of accountants, economists, and market research firms like Sportsimpacts to prognosticate.

A Parable on the Use of the US Armed Forces

2007-09-06T16:30:00.000-07:00

Imagine you and I live on a farm, with separate houses on either side of a pond. As part of our contractual arrangement for living on the same farm, you are to do the fishing for both of us, and I'm to tend to the fields.

Now, the area we live in is fertile and normally receives more than enough rainfall to keep the crops healthy. Being wise planners, however, we install an irrigation system that draws water from the pond in case there is a drought. Since use of the irrigation system will affect your fishing, we decide that I will hold the key to the pump motor, but that you are the one to determine that there is, in actuality, a drought.

For years, our arrangement works nicely, and we survive a few tough summers with both fish and crops aplenty. At some point, however, you notice that I've been doing some irrigating when there is no drought and confront me on what you see as an overstep.

"It's simple," I explain, "sometimes the crops need a little extra water even though there is no drought. Since I'm the one in charge of the pump motor, it's my call to use it when I need to."

"No," you reply. "By the intent of our agreement, I'm the only one who can authorize the use of the pump motor whether or not there is a drought. I'm reasonable and know that emergencies may crop up where you can't get my authorization beforehand, but in those cases you need to get ahold of me as soon as possible and let me make the decision to keep the irrigation system on or turn it off."

Well, we never really come to a meeting of the minds on this. I maintain that, since I have the key to the pump, I determine when it gets used and you maintain that I need your authorization. Instead of arguing about it, though, I just declare every use as an emergency and back-brief you on the situation. That keeps the peace, but the pond is slowly being drained until it seriously threatens your ability to fish.

You check with your lawyer to see what you can do to restrict my use of the irrigation system without destroying the crops. Your lawyer tells you, "unfortunately, the original agreement made only contemplates use of the irrigation system during a drought. Since you didn't mod the original agreeement to include non-drought use, whether or not you provide authorization is irrelevent."

My advisor acknowledges the same circumstances, but comes up with a different read. "It's true that the original agreement only contemplates a drought and hasn't been modded. Therefore, non-drought use is purely by your discretion. Besides, even if the 'non-drought authorization' garbage were binding, he has given you open-ended authorization to use the system."

This parable has no end or moral, it is just meant to bypass impassioned rhetoric to show the two reads on the use of the US Armed Forces. You are the US Congress, I am the President, our original agreement is the US Constitution, the irrigation system is the armed forces, drought is war, and the "non-drought use authorization" is the War Powers Resolution of 1973, vetoed by President Nixon, overridden by the congress, and considered unconstitutional by every President since.

After the second GOP debate, my adviser was Sean Hannity and your lawyer was Presidential candidate Ron Paul (who is not a lawyer but a strong constitutionalist). At the end of this clip is the quick exchange about declaration of war:

Who is right? Well, it's certainly not cut-and-dried (as the parable shows), but Dr. Paul has every President from Nixon to the current President Bush on his side that the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional (although I doubt any would agree with him that the use of the armed forces is constitutionally limited to declared wars). Hannity, who rarely expresses any rationale beyond gut instinct, seems to accept that the War Powers Resolution IS constitutional, although he is contradicted on this point in the book Let Freedom Ring by...Sean Hannity.

Last night, Hannity was more civil toward Congressman Paul. I get the feeling that Hannity knows he's going to be dealing with Dr. Paul for a long while, but also that, as he mentions at the very end of the clip, "it's always good to spar with you":

Taking Just One Aspirin Raises Danger of Headaches by 40%

2007-08-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

A single aspirin raises the risk of migraine headaches by more than 40 per cent, a disturbing study warns.

The Government-commissioned report has also found that taking the drug regularly more than doubles the risk of serious physical pain.

Overall, aspirin could be to blame for one in seven cases of migraine headaches and other life-shattering chronic pain, the Lancet reports.

The grim statistics - the latest to link teenage aspirin use with physical pain in later life - come only days after Gordon Brown ordered a review of the decision to downgrade aspirin to class C, the least serious category.

The Prime Minister is said to have a 'personal instinct' that the change should be reversed, with more arrests and stiffer penalties for users.

Aspirin has been implicated in a string of vicious killings, including the recent stabbing of fashion designer Lucy Braham.

The authors of the latest study, the most comprehensive of its kind and commissioned by the Department of Health, said: 'Policymakers need to provide the public with advice about this widely-used drug.

'We believe there is now enough evidence to inform people that using aspirin could increase their risk of developing migraine headaches later in life.'

The analysis does not look at the age at which migraines are likely to develop. However, previous studies have shown that taking the drug as a teenager raises the risk of developing migraines in one's twenties or thirties.

The researchers, from four British universities, analysed the results of 35 studies into aspirin use from around the world. This suggested that taking aspirin only once was enough to raise the risk of migraine headaches by 41 per cent.

At greatest risk, however, were heavy users, with those who took aspirin over 100 times having more than double the risk of those who never touched the drug.

With up to 40 per cent of teenagers and young adults in the UK believed to have tried aspirin, the researchers estimate that the drug could be behind 14 per cent of cases of migraines and other physical pain.

'Although individual lifetime risk of chronic pain disorders such as migraine headaches, even in people who use aspirin regularly, is likely to be low - less than three per cent - aspirin use can be expected to have a substantial effect on physical pain at a population level because exposure to this drug is so common.'

Cardiff University researcher Dr Stanley Zammit added: 'Even if aspirin does cause an increased risk of developing chronic pain, most people who use aspirin will not develop such an illness.

'Nevertheless, we would still advise people to avoid or limit their use of this drug, especially if they start to develop any chronic pain symptoms, or if they have relatives with physical pain.'

In an accompanying editorial in the Lancet, Dutch psychiatrists said the focus on heroin, cocaine and other Class A drugs meant the dangers of aspirin had been overlooked.

'In the public debate, aspirin has been considered a more or less harmless drug compared with alcohol, central stimulants and opioids.

'However, the potential long-term hazardous effects of aspirin with regard to pain seem to have been overlooked, and there is a need to warn the public of these dangers, as well as to establish a treatment to help young frequent aspirin users.'

Previous studies have shown a clear link between aspirin use in the teenage years and physical pain in later life.

Research completed by leading psychiatrist Professor Robin Murray in 2005 showed that those who took the drug regularly at 18 were 1.6 times more likely to suffer serious physical pain problems, including migraine headaches, by their mid-20s.

For those who were regular users at 15, the stakes were even higher, with their risk of physical pain by the age of 26 being 4.5 times greater than normal.

It is thought that, used during teenage years, the drug can cause permanent damage to the developing brain.

Professor Robin Murray, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, warned yesterday that the risks were likely to be heightened by the increasing use of powerful ultra-strength ibuprofen.

'My own experience suggest to me that the risk with ibuprofen is higher. Therefore their estimate that 14 per cent of cases of migraine headaches in the UK are due to aspirin is now probably an understatement.'

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity SANE, said: 'This analysis should act as a serious warning of the dangers of regular or heavy aspirin use, doubling the risk of developing migraines - a condition in which a person may suffer from frequent and persistent headache pain to the point of nausea and sensitivity to light.

'The debate about classification should not founder on statistics but take into account the potential damage to hundreds of people who without aspirin would not develop physical pain.

'While the majority can take the drug with no mind-altering effects, it is estimated that 10 per cent are at risk.

'You only need to see one person whose mind has been altered and life irreparably damaged, or talk to their family, to realise that the headlines are not scaremongering but reflect a daily, and preventable, tragedy.'

However, others questioned the link, pointing out there has been little change in rates of migraine headaches in recent years despite the rise in aspirin use and the increasing strength of the drug.

Story from The Onion? No it's an article by Fiona Macrae and Emily Andrews with the word "aspirin" substituted for "cannabis," "migraine headaches" substituted for "schizophrenia," and "physical pain" substituted for "mental illness." These simple substitutions highlight the absurdity of the original article and confusing correlation with causation.

From a commenter at Pete Guither's Drug WarRant:

This isn't an original study. It's a review or more precisely, a meta-analysis of existing studies. Regarding psychosis, 7 longitudinal observational studies are pooled to generate the odds ratio of 1.41 i.e. the 40% increase in risk.
The 7 studies did not all measure the same thing. Some looked for the presence of any psychotic symptom; others looked for presence of symptoms necessary to diagnose schizophrenia (and schizophreniform disorder in one study). So, one may infer about odds of experiencing psychotic symptoms but not the odds for schizophrenia or any other clinical diagnosis of a disorder.
Continuing the usual mathematical ignorance displayed in journalism, the analysis does NOT suggest that smoking cannabis even once or 'infrequently' increases odds of schizophrenia by 40%. First, the study does not report on odds of schizophrenia. But relevantly, the 40% increase is for the whole group of those who ever used cannabis compared to those who never used cannabis viz. the former contains all users i.e. experimenters, occasional smokers, regulars and dependents. The risk specific to experimenters or infrequent users is not reported.

Of course, there is no war on drugs.

We've Learned Our Lessons

2007-07-20T10:04:00.001-07:00

Last night a friend advanced the hypothesis that "we've learned our lessons." His implication was that the Federal Reserve Board is firmly in control of the money supply and there won't be a complete dollar meltdown. Ironically, that statement was made in the context of the Las Vegas housing market which is in the throws of a Fed-induced meltdown.

Even people like my friend that know we should all be as liquid as possible and heavily weighted toward hard asset investments aren't grasping the significance of the writing on the wall. The dollar is at all time lows, the current-account deficit is staggering, real price levels of staples (not the faux CPI-U which even ticked up hard last month) are rising incredibly fast, and, most tellingly, foreclosures are moving past sub-prime mortgages and cutting huge swaths in regular mortgages.

I think my friend treated the stats I threw at him incredulously, even though deep down he knows they are right. Not surprisingly, they are the exact stats that came up during Ben Bernanke's recent visit to the House Financial Services Committee (which I hadn't seen until this morning):

It doesn't appear to me that Bernanke has learned his lessons at all (even beyond the belief that the Federal Reserve can magically manipulate the money supply without doing a lot of damage).

Cheap TVs and Cars - A How-To

2007-07-16T15:45:00.000-07:00

Photograph: Bishop Asare/EPA

At night, retailers dream about throngs of customers storming the aisles and snapping up the highest-priced items. The customers flood the check-out lanes with their purchases and fist-fulls of cash. It would be better than the day after Thanksgiving. Or, would it?

As with most questions the answer is, "it depends."

Zimbabweans are shopping like there's no tomorrow. With police patrolling the aisles of Harare's electrical shops to enforce massive government-ordered price cuts, the widescreen TVs were the first things to go, for as little as £20. Across the country, shoes, clothes, toiletries and different kinds of food were all swept from the shelves as a nation with the world's fastest shrinking economy gorged itself on one last spending spree.

Car dealers said officials were trying to force them to sell vehicles at the official exchange rate, effectively meaning that a car costing £15,000 could be had for £30 by changing money on the blackmarket. The owners of several dealerships have been arrested.

President Robert Mugabe's order that all shop prices be cut by at least half, and sometimes several times more, has forced stores to open to hordes of customers waving thick blocks of near worthless money given new value by the price cuts. The police and groups of ruling party supporters could be seen leading the charge for a bargain.

For the monetary-exchange challenged, that's $US 61.10 for a $US 30,550 car. I'll bet the vast majority didn't even have to finance.

What's the penalty if you don't comply with the government?

The price cuts were ordered by the joint operation command, a committee of army, intelligence and police officers closely tied to the ruling Zanu-PF and chaired by Mr Mugabe.

The government despatched security personnel and party cadres, including its notorious "green bomber" thugs, to enforce the price cuts, in some cases by beating up shop managers who did not implement them quickly enough.

Sounds awfully peaceful to me. So, what is the result of "Operation Reduce Prices"?

The impact of the price cuts was felt almost immediately as fuel virtually disappeared from sale after garages were forced to sell petrol for 23p a litre, less than they paid the state-owned supplier.

The police and army broke the locks on petrol pumps at some garages and tanks ran dry amid panic buying. Now petrol is available only on the blackmarket, at more than seven times the official price and three times what garages had been charging. By Saturday, most minibus taxis had gone from the roads because drivers could not find petrol. Crowds of workers were left on kerbs for hours trying to get to or from their jobs.

The riot police had to be called out to the South African-owned Makro super store in Harare after thousands of people stormed the shop after it was forced to slash prices. The scenes were replicated in stores throughout Harare. The Bata shoe chain's shops were stripped bare in two days by people snapping up pairs for as little as 20p.

Food is still available, although bread, sugar, cornmeal and other staples are hard to find, and meat has all but disappeared because livestock owners say it is now uneconomic to slaughter their animals. Much of the meat that is available is goat slaughtered in backyards and sold in informal markets.

The rest of the food supply - already severely undermined by drought and lack of production on land seized from white farmers - is also under threat after Mr Mugabe threatened to take over manufacturers if they shut down their plants on the grounds that they were uneconomic. "Factories must produce. If they don't, we will take you over ... We will seize the factories," he said.

Darn. If only there was some type of science that could predict such an outcome. Oh, wait! Here it is:

Economists say the price cuts will only deepen the national crisis, leaving many shops bare because they will not be able to afford to restock while official retail prices remain lower than the cost of buying wholesale or importing. Mr Mugabe has dismissed such warnings as "bookish economics".

The sick part of that statement is that he's right. Economists tend to be extremely bookish - if it can't be observed from their desk chair, they aren't interested in it. Until progenitors of the "dismal science" learn to actually use the scientific method "bookish" is the best you can say of them. The Zimbabwe scenario, repeated so many times throughout history, will continue until they do.

However, to do so would require work (something that economists tend to praise, but eschew at all costs). It would require proofs and controlled experiments. It would require hypothesis and testing. It would require publishing results incongruous with personal bias.

Worse, it would require funding. Funding that would have to come from sources open to the possibility of results antithetical to their social agendas.

It's much more fun, I guess, to live in a world where governments promote mass starvation and genocide at the point of a gun.

Fiat Money and the Business Cycle

2007-07-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

2008 Presidential candidate Congressman Ron Paul has, as one of his campaign issues, returning sound money from its current outlaw status. It's an easy process, actually, of reversing the steps by which fiat currency gained its hegemony. It is as simple as removing capital gains taxes on the items people may choose to use as money and calling off the dogs at the Treasury Department that are currently spreading personal opinions as legal fact in regard to alternative currencies.

Congressman Paul is promoting sound money with a populist message: the Federal Reserve is exacting an "inflation tax" by debasing the very dollars in your wallet. It's a simple message (simplified further by his supporters to "abolish the Fed") as far as it goes, and non-controversial from the standpoint that no one other than Ron Paul supporters has even bothered to notice it.

What I've noticed, though, is that Paul seems to be studiously avoiding the subject of fiat money and the business cycle. I have to wonder if he isn't missing an opportunity right now to talk about this far more lecherous effect of the federal reserve system. This will be a controversial topic - what better time to broach something controversial than when everybody seems to be ignoring you?

Respected economists and high finance types are going to start throwing bolts of lightning if an "abolish the Fed" campaign gains the least bit attraction. The axes that unions and corporations will throw at a non-corporatist candidate will pale in comparison.

Big investors, lenders, and borrowers are far too addicted to easy credit to give up without a big fight.

33 Questions

2007-07-10T13:54:00.000-07:00

What could possibly rival a good, long economics rant in terms of yawn-inducement? Paint drying? Grass growing? Paris Hilton?

Nope. It's an astrophysics lecture. I mean, come ON! All math, no theory; just plug in the numbers and launch the rocket already! Open the book the night before the final, memorize the formulas and presto: you've got a B.

In close second comes a history lecture. It's not the subject matter; history has a certain [voyeuristic?] allure where you get points for the details and for discovering the nasty secrets of dead people who can't spin the conversation. Nevertheless, most history profs have a way of taking a fascinating subject and turning it into a torture session.

When a historian starts speaking, I immediately flash to the scene in Mrs. Doubtfire where William Newman drones on about ornithischia.

One historian, though, has captured my attention for the past couple of years. He's got a way of parsing out the important details of an historical event, teasing you with the most interesting tidbits, and then leaving you with a never-ending stream of source material. Not surprisingly, this makes Thomas E. Woods, Jr. the envy of historians who don't understand why people sleep through their lectures.

More importantly to Professor Woods, however, they are also envious of his books. They are written as he speaks: more information than you could possibly want to know presented in a way that leaves you wanting more. Unable to compete with him for eyeballs and attention spans, the history-trolls attack him in reviews without offering any contradiction to his work.

You know the best reads, music, and movies are the ones most castigated by the New York Times. Woods' book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, was definitely targeted by the Times and, yes, it's great. (I gave a copy of it to my mother-in-law for Christmas, and I love my mother-in-law!)

So, I got a little excited this morning when I received an e-mail reminding me that today is the official release of Woods' latest book, 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask. From everything I've read, Woods wrote this book just to poke sticks at the history-trolls. Here's an example:

How wild was the "wild" West?

The standard story there, seared into the American consciousness and folklore by motion pictures and other tall tales, is one of constant chaos and peril. But historians have been rejecting that old view for some time. In fact, implausible as this may sound, what is most impressive about the old West was how peaceful and cooperative it was. Although you'd never know it, scholars have repeatedly shown that the old West was actually safer than most American cities today.

In the absence of formal government, voluntary institutions emerged that defined and enforced property rights and adjudicated disputes. Far from a land of lawlessness and violence, a myth spun from tales designed to sell dime novels, the old West actually constitutes a fascinating case study of the ability of market institutions, even in apparently impossible conditions, to facilitate peaceful interaction and to carry out functions we normally associate with government.

The story is all the more impressive when we recall the inauspicious circumstances in which these events occurred. The settlers were men of vastly different backgrounds. They had no intention of putting down permanent roots; they intended to make their fortune and return back home. They were complete strangers with no pre-existing community camaraderie on which to build. And yet, according to Andrew Morriss of Case Western Reserve University School of Law, "This amazing polyglot of men seeking rapid wealth, and with virtually no intention of building a lasting society, created a set of customary legal institutions which not only flourished in California but successfully adapted to conditions across the West."

Seems pretty tame, but watch the book reviews over the next few weeks. The more vicious the attacks are, the more you know you want to read this book.

UPDATE: Thomas Woods on WHO's "Mickelson in the Morning".

2007-07-02T16:51:00.001-07:00

Corey Maye, who attempted to repel invaders in his home remains in jail on a life sentence. Maye, who apparently wasn't master of his castle when the Sheriff's son broke in, has gotten the "break" of no longer being on death row. He should consider himself lucky he didn't suffer Kathryn Johnston's fate.

Canadian Stephen Lawrence faces five years in jail for founding the Internet payment processor Neteller PLC after being kidnapped by US Marshalls in January 2007. His co-founder, John Lefebvre, who hasn't been with the company since 2005, still faces charges.

Almost a year after his kidnapping, David Carruthers remains under house arrest in St. Louis. He and Gary Kaplan will face testimony against them from their own company, BetOnSports PCL, for the same reason Lawrence plead guilty - so their customers could get their funds.

But, hey, Scooter's free, so I guess everything else is OK.

On a totally related note, read Lysander Spooner's No Treason.

Speaking of...

2007-07-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

...fiat currencies, sound money, and inflation, here's Congressman Ron Paul giving a speech at a campaign rally in Des Moines, IA, yesterday:

Part I

Part II

Part III

For the Love of Money

2007-06-30T10:26:00.000-07:00

A well-managed fiat currency can outperform commodity money under certain circumstances.

That is a simple statement all economists can agree with. It is vague and sufficiently qualified to be uncontroversial. The qualifiers, however, should be sufficient to keep that statement purely normative with no practical application. To see why, consider this equally true statement:

Given perfect information, a perfect monopoly can maximize profits by controlling supply.

If, however, a would-be monopolizer did not have perfect information or did not have a perfect monopoly and attempted to exercise monopoly power, market forces would act to decrease any actual monopoly power the firm held. Any exercise of monopoly power increases the incentives for both competition to arise and consumers to seek suitable substitutes. This can be seen every day: telephone monopolies are challenged by wireless, cable monopolies are challenged by satellite, etc.

And, so it is with governments which issue fiat currency. Long before 1961, when Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Mundell penned his article, "A Theory of Optimum Currency Areas," states issued fiat currencies. Although Mundell argued against it, governments seized on his ideas as rationale for issuing fiat as a matter of nationalistic pride. Every government, no matter how powerless or underfunded, fancies themselves as being the monopoly provider of currency as a divine right.

Right off, there is an obvious problem. Between the presence of commodity money and every nation issuing their own fiat currency, there is certainly no lack of suitable substitutes. This means that an individual nation actually has very little in the way of monopoly power; to maintain the charade, governments have to resort to the use of force against their own people, commanding that they use only that nation's fiat currency and confiscating other fiat and commodity money.

Another problem, which should be obvious but which is a topic rarely broached, is that a government cannot begin to assemble perfect information. Perfect information would require the instantaneous knowledge of the preferences and actions of every man, woman, child, nation, and force of nature now and in the future. That information would have to be analyzed (correctly) and changes to the fiat supply planned (with laser accuracy).

There is no question that this information cannot be known, therefore all analysis and planning is based on assumptions about assumptions. The end result is not management of the fiat currency, it is educated guessing, and more often wrong than not. This causes recessions, depressions, boom and bust, inflation, and inevitably hyperinflation.

Since the management of fiat currency is based on speculation and not fact, it cannot be well-managed, and thus the first qualifier of the top statement can never be met. That leaves us, then with the statement, "a fiat currency can outperform commodity money under certain circumstances."

At the turn of the 20th century, Georg Simmel wrote, "although money with no intrinsic value would be the best means of exchange in an ideal social order, until that point is reached the most satisfactory form of money may be that which is bound to a material substance." We can safely conclude that Simmel would not consider the current state of human affairs an "ideal social order." Even if we temper his requirement, we can confidently predict that nothing approaching the certain circumstances qualifier of our statement is likely to ever occur.

With no hope of ever satisfying the qualifiers, our fine, universally-agreed upon normative statement boils down to the following when practically applied: a fiat currency can not outperform commodity money.

Why, then, when the consequences of failure are so destructive in terms of human lives and resources, do nations persist in issuing fiat currency, and why do otherwise-rational economists give such a system their blessings?

With the US dollar in free-fall mode, the soundness of this system should be in serious doubt. But, in the American Idol contest for the Presidency in 2008, only one of the candidates even understands the danger of a fiat monetary system, let alone has the courage to broach the subject publicly.

Congressman Ron Paul has written extensively on the subject of sound money, and yet columnists, whose monetary expertise consists of picking up a dinner check now and then, have described him by saying his "economics are wacky." Not a moment too soon, though, economists and journalists are being forced to admit that Paul's injection of real economic hazards into his Presidential campaign is going to make him look very prescient in the coming months and years.

After nearly a century of happy-go-lucky welfare and warfare, such a large portion of the world is dependent on the hegemony of the US dollar that its eminent collapse will trigger a world-wide depression. But, as Ron Paul knows, all that is needed to prevent such a calamity is to reject the monopolist charade and allow sound, commodity money to compete on the market with US dollars. Let the users of the currency decide on their own schedule whether they prefer the fiat currency or sound money.

Open competition between sound and fiat currencies will ultimately result in a stronger system than we have now, even if consumers decide to stick with a fiat system!

Life With Hyperinflation

2007-06-30T07:38:00.000-07:00

I popped out for a Z$25,000 loaf of bread last Friday. It had gone up to Z$30,000 dollars. I ran home for the extra, ran back to the shop - and the price of my loaf had risen to Z$44,000.

Those are the words of Moses Moyo, a pseudonym for a journalist in Zimbabwe who details life with Mugabe. He details a horrific economy where the government is forcing businesses to liquidate their stocks at less than half their value.

An order went out to all manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers to slash their prices by half. Any who showed the slightest reluctance to do so were visited by the Green Bombers - young graduates from the Zanu-PF terror camps whose economic arguments are enforced with a smack on the head with a stout stick.

Those shops that obeyed the edict and reduced their prices were invaded by fervent shoppers, and the result was chaos, with many businesses threatening to close their doors for the rest of the week at least, if not for good.

And the end result? Where it worked best, where prices were cut by a genuine 50 per cent, the government succeeded in reducing the cost of living to almost exactly what it was 10 days ago.

If you think that can't happen where you live, you are sorely mistaken. As part of my new Squidoo habit, I'm working through the causes and problems of inflation under fiat currency schemes. There's more to come on a simple, effortless, and, best of all, non-government solution to this government-made problem.

Dog Biscuits

2007-05-28T17:02:00.000-07:00

Sunday night dog blogging just torques me. I want to see real news and opinion, not pictures of people's damn dogs. But...

There's always a "but" isn't there.

I recently fed my meathead some new biscuits. Nothing new there, she gets training treats and an occasional pig's ear. But, these were different. Fresh baked.

Who the heck would be so enamored with their dog to actually bake for them? The Mrs. No kidding - she won't bake for me, but she felt it necessary to bake for the dog. Lucky for her, the dog actually digs her cooking.

That's the wrong way to put it. The dog freakin' LOVES her cooking! I've never seen a hound drooling and begging for more like this. Anyone with greyhounds knows that they whine and steal food, but begging isn't in their blood.

Offhandedly, I suggested that there might be a business opportunity available for her in baking for dogs. Actually, it was a smartass remark that ended up taken seriously. The next thing I know, there's a whole menu of dog and cat treats and the inevitable website. MyOtherKids.com (has there ever been a more fitting url?) has the entire menu as well as clothing, collars, leads, and toys.

Next time, I'll just keep my mouth shut!

UPDATE:
It gets worse for me. Now, she's got me working on Squidoo lenses with dog health care advice, cat health care advice, and gifts for dog lovers.

We've also had a lot of articles published recently:
Dog Food Quantity - Why you Must Count Calories for Your Dog
Your Dog's Health - 7 Easy Ways to Beat the Heat This Summer
Your Dog's Health - How You Can Save the Family Picnic With a Well-Stocked First-Aid Kit
Dog Training - The Amazing Trick a Stong-Willed Dog Taught Me
Dog Health Care - Keeping Coats Clean and Healthy
Help! My Cat Is Destroying My Furniture
Cat Health Care - What You Need to Know Before You Adopt
Cat Health - Do Cats Self-Administer Ultrasound Therapy?

A Missed Opportunity

2007-04-08T11:01:00.000-07:00

If you haven’t received the following e-mail yet, you probably will. It’s an old Soviet fable re-enacted in an Arkansas classroom as described by Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2005.

In September of 2005, a social studies schoolteacher from Arkansas did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent, the principal, and the building supervisor, she took all of the desks out of the classroom. The kids came into first period, they walked in; there were no desks. They obviously looked around and said, "Where's our desks?"

The teacher said, "You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn them."

They thought, "Well, maybe it's our grades."

"No," she said.

"Maybe it's our behavior."

And she told them, "No, it's not even your behavior."

And so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the classroom. Second period, same thing. Third period. By early afternoon television news crews had gathered in the class to find out about this
crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the classroom. The last period of the day, the instructor gathered her class.

They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of the room. She said, "Throughout the day no one has really understood how you earn the desks that sit in this classroom ordinarily. Now I'm going to tell
you."

She went over to the door of her classroom and opened it, and as she did 27 U.S. veterans, wearing their uniforms, walked into that classroom, each one carrying a school desk. And they placed those school desks in rows, and then they stood along the wall. By the time they had finished placing the desks, those kids for the first time I think perhaps in their lives understood how they earned those desks.

Their teacher said, "You don't have to earn those desks. These guys did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it's up to you to sit here responsibly, to learn, to be good students and good citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that desk, and don't ever forget it."

This is a poignant tribute to veterans who certainly have done their part to keep empirical governments and fascism at bay. But, most likely due to its Soviet roots, the teacher’s enthusiastic tribute obscured a far greater miracle and the true story of how those desks came to be in that classroom.

Somewhere in Taiwan, hundreds of workers labored to transform iron ore into steel, roll, cut, and form that steel into the various parts of the desk, and weld the numerous pieces together. Other workers fabricated the hardware – screws, rivets, and bolts – and still other workers molded and trimmed the plastic seats. All these workers used machines and tools built by other workers (in China, India, Viet Nam, and the United States) in factories built by still other Taiwanese workers. The production processes, heating, cooling, and lighting of the factories were driven by electricity generated in power plants manned by other workers burning coal mined by more workers.

The plastic and steel parts were loaded on container ships by crane operators, and the sailors navigated the Pacific ocean to Los Angeles or Seattle, where other crane operators unloaded the ships. Truck drivers hauled the parts to assembly points, where workers combined the steel and plastic with pressboard tops manufactured by workers in Canada and covered in laminates manufactured in the United States. The workers packed the individual desks in new shipping cartons – manufactured by some other company and its employees – with plastic bags of hardware, including rubber feet made from petroleum products from around the world and gum harvested by Brazilian farmers.

The desks were stacked in the warehouse by a forktruck operator until trucks with new drivers came to haul them to distribution warehouses and eventually on to the school in Arkansas. At the school, maintenance men unpacked the cartons and assembled the desks just in time for the new school year.

The great miracle and true story of the school desks involves hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of complete strangers – factory workers, miners, sailors, truck drivers, machinists, managers, engineers, carpenters, lumberjacks, doctors, dentists, grocers, software developers, electricians, salesmen, graphic designers, bankers, and entrepreneurs. Each of them, motivated only by what they thought best for themselves and their families, accomplished what all the central planners and militaries in the world could not. All these strangers from all these nations voluntarily and peacefully (albeit unconsciously) cooperated to put those desks in that classroom and increased the real and total wealth of the world’s population at every step of the way.

This free, open, and voluntary trade happens every day, all over the world without bullets or bloodshed. Only when governments interfere in this system is military force necessitated. The short history of the US government (alternatively dominated, almost from the beginning, by leftists and mercantilists) is rife with direct and indirect intervention in free trade. In each instance the results have been disastrous and, in each instance, the US military has been called upon to clean up the mess and pick up the pieces.

This Arkansas teacher could have taken the opportunity to explain the miracle of free trade and the terrible consequences of government intervention in a peaceful, voluntary process. Perhaps that knowledge would kindle a renewed spirit of freedom and liberty and someday result in the end of the interventionist policies of the US government and no need for the grandchildren of the veterans to answer, once again, the call of a nation in distress.

That’s the best tribute a veteran can get.

eBay Has Federal Marshals?

2007-01-17T07:03:00.000-08:00

While kidnapping victim David Carruthers continues to wait for the kangaroo court to try him, word comes now that the founders of Neteller have been abducted.

Canadians Stephen Lawrence, 46, and John Lefebvre, 55, were arrested on Monday--Lawrence in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Lefebvre in Malibu, Calif.--U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said.
They were charged on Monday in Manhattan federal court with conspiring to transfer funds with the intent to promote illegal gambling, according to two complaints made public on Tuesday.

Neteller PLC is located on the Isle of Man and is traded on the London junior stock exchange. Lawrence and Lefebvre took the company public in 2002. Lefebvre left the company in 2005. Lawrence left his post as a non-executive board member on October 13, 2006, the day President Bush signed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and a day after Neteller issued a statement that the company would not immediately cease processing payments from US customers, but would monitor how the regulations were structured and enforced for 270 days.

I guess they have their answer.

So, just like Carruthers, foreign citizens from a publicly-traded, foreign company engaged in business that is perfectly legal in those countries have been abducted by US "authorities". Unlike Carruthers, however, this time the executives have not had anything to do with the company (other than owning its stock) since the US law in question has been enacted. It's stickier than that, but essentially Lawrence and Lefebvre are in jail for founding a company that goes where Ebay fears to tread.

eBay? Yes, eBay.

In 2002, PayPal, the #1 online payment processor, owned by eBay, swore off processing gambling payments, citing legal risks. A year later, it "paid $10 million to settle Justice Department allegations that it violated provisions of the Patriot Act barring the transmission of funds known to have been derived from a crime" (the "crime" in this case being online sports betting). The bulk of those transactions went to online rival Neteller.

As congress debated the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006, eBay lobbied heavily for it. You can't gamble on eBay, and PayPal hadn't taken a gambling transaction in four years. However, PayPal's brush with the DOJ taught them an important lesson; they, too, could use the brickbats of state to crush their competition.

This is just more proof that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act is not about gambling, protecting families, or even tax revenues. It is about paying government officials to enact anti-competitive laws. It is about protecting state lotteries, horse racing, bricks-and-mortar casinos, and PayPal.

The link is unmistakable, and clearly on the minds of DOJ officials. The press release issued yesterday by the DOJ contained these two lobbed-on sentences:

Additionally, in July 2003, one of Neteller’s competitors, PayPal, and its parent eBay, entered into a civil settlement agreement with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri to settle allegations it aided in illegal offshore and on-line gambling activities. As part of the agreement, PayPal agreed to forfeit $10 million, representing proceeds derived by PayPal from the processing of illegal gambling transactions.

The presser also mentions charges against BetOnSports founder Gary Kaplan, but strangely fails to mention Carruthers, who lobbied against eBay during the debates on the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

There is No War on Drugs

2006-11-29T12:09:00.000-08:00

There is no war on drugs, but there are drug warriors. They wear the drug warrior badge proudly; they brag about it at parties. They create an environment in which vast sums of money are traded for controlled substances. They allow the very worst citizens of the world to amass untold economic gains, fund their arsenals of weapons, and permit them to trample on the lives and liberties of the rest of the population.

Many drug warriors have family members who are drug users or dealers; many are drug users themselves. The most ardent drug warriors are scared of their own weakness; they don’t trust themselves to “Just Say No”. They also know that the drug battles won’t be fought in their neighborhood or by their children.

Instead of fighting the battles they create, drug warriors appropriate tax dollars to hire enforcers: border patrol, customs agents, drug enforcement agents, treasury agents, prosecutors, police, and para-military SWAT teams. Because it’s these enforcers and their families that will actually face the danger, drug warriors feel free to ratchet up the rhetoric and policies.

There is no war on drugs, but there are drug suppliers with armies of soldiers. They are the captains of industry in the black market. Like any industry, they have vendors, distributors, transportation networks, and retailers. They compete for business and profits. They collude to set prices high and monopolize their territories. As with all unnatural cartels, the incentive to cheat is high and the collusion frequently breaks down, usually in a hail of bullets.

Drug suppliers are extremely adept at collecting and leveraging information. They know their competitors and they know the drug warriors. They know their names, where they live, and what schools their children attend. They know what time they go jogging in the morning, and the route they take to work. They know information about the drug warriors that the drug warriors would not want public. They know that any drug warrior that actually posed a threat to their operation could be easily discredited or eliminated.

But, the black market for drugs is high stakes because it is high risk. Drug suppliers know that their enormous profits come not in spite of the environment created by the drug warriors, but because of it. They recognize drug laws for what they are – protectionism. They applaud and encourage the anti-competitive actions of governments around the world and thank the drug warriors for erecting high barriers to entry in their market.

There is no war on drugs, but there are spies and double agents. The soldiers of drug suppliers are better-paid and more heavily armed than the enforcers of the drug warriors. Looking the other way for an hour can earn an enforcer more than a life-long career of enforcement. Even the most principled enforcer recognizes the danger posed against his family and possessions by the soldiers of the drug suppliers. Even the most strident enforcer knows that any victory produced by all-out combat would be pyrrhic at best and personally devastating at worst.

The enforcers are also adept at using information from spies and double agents. They know that the weakest participants in the black market can be exploited as informants, but only if they remain in the black market. The stronger, more violent participants can also be exploited in return for plea deals and reduced sentences. The price of information is aid and comfort to the enemy.

There is no war on drugs, but there are weapons laboratories. Drug profits fund research and development for stronger drugs and designer drugs. Drug suppliers fund R&D on cheaper, more addictive substances (meth and crack cocaine being the most notable examples) to expand their customer base. Despite that evidence, drug warriors are often found on the same stage as pharmaceutical companies swearing that prescription drug R&D will only happen if taxpayers fund it.

It bears repeating: meth and crack cocaine would not exist if not for the policies of the drug warriors. The demand for these sickening substances only exists because pharmaceutical-grade cocaine is not available for purchase at the local drug store. Additionally, it is probable that alcohol and tobacco-related deaths would be much lower if marijuana cigarettes were available at every convenience store.

There is no war on drugs, but there is collateral damage. Houses of innocent people are burglarized, convenience stores are knocked over, and cars are stolen to provide the cash for drugs. Innocent bystanders are wounded or killed by stray bullets from drive-bys and police shoot-outs. Family pets are executed in drug raids. Life savings are invested in homes, only to find that the structures are contaminated from the production of methamphetamines. Farmers’ fields are burned and salted.

Drug warriors are re-elected and their enforcers are paid by the assets seized from innocent, law-abiding citizens. Sometimes the assets are seized for the “crime” of transporting cash; mostly it’s seized through excessive taxation. These assets are diverted from drug treatment and education. The collection plates of churches are lighter and community centers have fewer basketballs because these assets are appropriated to enforce the policies of drug warriors.

The destruction of innocent, law-abiding families is the most egregious example of the collateral damage. If drug-related crime is not visited on them directly, they are subjected to higher insurance premiums because of it. Because so much of their money is taken by the government, parents must work longer and harder to afford health care, clothes, food, housing, and education for their children. The extra time spent at work comes directly out of family time; not surprisingly, that decrease in parental supervision results in more children coming in contact with and joining the drug trade. This cruel cycle is complete when the drug warriors decry the erosion of family values and pledge to spend more family dollars prosecuting a “war on drugs.”

There is no war on drugs even though there are armies, weapons, tactics, spies, and collateral damage. There are no definable or achievable objectives, no overwhelming force employed, and no ground gained or lost. The phrase “war on drugs” dehumanizes the victims: enforcers, families, farmers, legitimate businesses, and, yes, drug users and the soldiers. The phrase provides a smoke screen for the profiteers: drug warriors and suppliers. It’s time to start naming and exposing the people and quit using the phrase.

Cancelling Your Influence

2006-11-20T13:34:00.000-08:00

Boortz spent a lot of time on pre-hype of his book today. Specifically, he talked about a recurring theme of his: I Will Never Listen To Your Show Again. It's self-defeating; if you're not going to listen to the show any more, why should Boortz change his mind to suit you?

The same effect happens when you go to the bank and say, "I'm taking all my money out and putting it in the bank across the street because you did _____." Or, when you call a magazine and say, "The last cover article was crass! Cancel my subscription." At the point where a company has lost you as a customer, they have also lost all benefit in trying to satisfy you. If you really want the bank, magazine, or cable company to make concessions or change the way they do business, you have to be either a customer or owner. A much better approach is to say, "I've been a customer since 1994 and I really enjoy your product, but _______ issue has really soured me. I would like some assurance that this won't happen again."

We have seen the "not a customer anymore" effect over and over with UN trade sanctions. The offensive notion that my government should "allow" or "disallow" my trade with another nation aside, limited sanctions may goad some desired effects, but strong sanctions just don't work. If a nation has close trade ties with other nations, they will change their behavior to maintain those trade ties. But, once relations sour to the point that strong sanctions are levied, there is no partnership to salvage; those nations are no longer customers of the offending nation.

Yet, that's not stopping anyone in the US government from pushing for more sanctions against Iran and North Korea. For obvious reasons, they recognize that the strong sanctions that are already in place haven't worked. I'm stupified by their suggestion that even stronger sanctions somehow will!

Hello? McFly? If you want to affect the governments of Iran and North Korea, you MUST be a valued trade partner. It is quite obvious that they are not scared of your stronger sanctions, guns, planes, and bombs. They would be scared of limited sanctions if they had economies that were dependent on trade with other countries!

The Consumer Goods Bomb has drawbacks, I admit. Mississippi residents won't think too kindly of its nation filling Iranian households with refrigerators and dishwashers when they are still rebuilding from Katrina. Without severely hobbling the government's ability to piss other nations off, a Consumer Goods Bombing policy will get very expensive, very quickly. But, given the disgusting cluster-f**k our foreign policy has become, use of the Consumer Goods Bomb in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea is the ONLY VIABLE PLAN.

From the "Unclear on the Concept" Desk

2006-11-17T07:46:00.000-08:00

No, no, no! That's just going back to "stay the course".

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. funds intended to promote democracy in Cuba have been used to buy crab meat, cashmere sweaters, computer games and chocolates, according to a U.S. congressional audit published on Wednesday.

...

To protect recipients from prosecution, none of the money from the U.S. Agency for International Development or State Department is paid in cash to people in Cuba. A Cuban law sends citizens to jail for receiving money from the U.S. government.

Instead, the funds are distributed to Cuban-American groups in Miami, the heartland of opposition to Cuban President Fidel Castro, and in Washington, and used to buy medicines, books, shortwave radios and other goods that are smuggled into Cuba.

See, you have to drop a Consumer Goods Bomb directly on every household. If you run through a middle man, CG Bombs will just be used to trade political favors (no different than the rest of the taxes you pay). And no luxury items; once you've dropped the CG Bomb and the recipient has responded to all the credit card offers, then THEY can purchase the luxury items. Get it?

More Money Mean More Power

2006-11-17T06:38:00.000-08:00

The Pentagon is set to ask congress for $127-160 billion for the Iraq war, over and above the $378 billion already approved. This is great news! The only logical conclusion is, the Pentagon immediately recognized the wisdom of the Consumer Goods Bomb!

Follow me through: to date, we've spent $343 billion on the war. We have appropriated $378 billion, so $35 billion of that remains. Add $160 billion from this request, and the Pentagon will have $195 billion with which to win the war. Divide $195 billion by the 5.2 million households in Iraq. The result is $37,500 per household.

That just happens to be the cost of a Consumer Goods Bomb without a car plus a 10% contingency!

To ride the wave of the coming boom in government spending, I suggest you go long all appliance and auto makers immediately!

I Miss Him Already

2006-11-16T13:13:00.001-08:00

Milton Friedman opened a whole new world to me. Without his teaching, his easy-going way of bringing complicated concepts back to earth, and the verifiable truths he and Ms. Rose brought to the world I'm not sure I would have the same love of the science and philosophy of economics. I know I wouldn't think or act with such vigor or clarity of purpose.

Thank you, Professor. You will be missed.

Update: Love for Uncle Milty - Reason, Cato, Mises, Balko, Coyote, Kirkendall, Tabarrok, Warbs, Maticonis

Bombing the Axis of Evil

2006-11-15T07:51:00.000-08:00

I've been kicking around an idea for a while. It involves the merciless bombing of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea with a new weapon I've designed. The effects of this weapon are insidious - it has the ability to completely eliminate the will of the people to fight. I'm sure I'm not the first person to conceive of this weapon, but I know it's an original design (because I just finished the design this morning).

I estimate* that it will take 5.2 million of these bombs for Iraq, 4.6 million for North Korea, and 13.6 million for Iran. While the per unit cost of the bomb is low (compared to $200,000 for a Tomahawk) the large numbers will make them very expensive. But, given the raw power of this weapon, the bang for the buck is tremendous. Furthermore, my cost estimates are based on the retail price of the components. Even the US government should manage to get some sort of quantity discount for 23.4 million units!

It's important to note that the power of the bomb's components are proven and well documented. To my knowledge, however, they've never been combined in this way - I can only estimate the power of the weapon based on the sum of the demonstrated effects, but I would not be surprised if the combined effect is some order of magnitude higher than that.

Components: All of the components of the bomb (I call it the consumer goods or CG bomb) are readily available off the shelf. In fact, you could easily assemble one in your home without drawing any attention from authorities. Here's the list: a refrigerator, a washer, a dryer, a free-standing range, a range hood, a microwave, a television, a window heater/air conditioner, a dishwasher, a satellite dish, a desktop computer, a blender, a mixer, a toaster, a five-piece dining set, a five-piece living room set, three 4-piece bedroom sets, three queen mattress sets, a car, and a truck. The quality of the individual components is only marginally important. Note: do NOT buy any extended warranties.

Assembly: First, do NOT throw away the documentation that comes with the components. All the warrantee registration cards, user manuals, credit card applications, videos, software, etc. that comes with the components will be important in the implementation phase. Assemble the components in a compact package. For example, put the big stuff in the truck and the smaller stuff in the car.

Implementation: Drop a CG bomb in the middle of the house of each family in each of the offending nations. Walk away with a sly smirk, knowing you've just defeated the enemy. By the time these poor, unsuspecting bastards figure out that you've doomed them to a life of sitting on hold with customer support reps and worrying about their credit reports, the US government will have ticked off a whole new set of people!

CG Bombing Cost: At retail, I figure** the unit cost of a CG bomb at $50,000. If CG bombs would have been used in Iraq, the country would have saved $125 billion (based on current appropriations of $378 billion). Even if a reduced-cost CG bomb were used today (delete the car, truck, and one of the bedroom sets) we could save $1.6 billion over current appropriations with little decrease in weapon effectiveness.

Total cost to carpet CG bomb Iran: $660 billion. North Korea: $222 billion.

CG Bomb Damage Assessment: Complete loss of will to fight the US. Overthrow of tyrannical governments. Credit card debts out the wazoo. Of course, that's just the first wave. Wait'll the publicly-traded home builders and mortgage companies get ahold of them!

Collateral Damage: Unfortunately, very high. Once we show a willingness to CG bomb offenders, France and West Virginia will provoke us just to get bombed! But, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

* Googled the population of each country and divided by five to estimate the number of families.
** Googled each of the components and added up the low-cost version of brand-name products.

Update: Coyote's asking for a third option from "Stay the Course" or "Cut & Run". The CG bomb IS the third option - it will win the war in Iraq!

Drag Racing

2006-11-07T12:49:00.000-08:00

This post sponsored by Speedtv.com and earns $10 for the American Red Cross!
Here's how.

I've never thought of myself as a race fan. I've always liked to fly low and fast, I love working on mechanical things, and appreciate the sheer lunacy of spending that much money just for the thrill of it, but I've still never had the patience for NASCAR, IRL, or NHRA. During my annual pilgrimage to see the World's Fastest Motorsport this year, however, it occurred to me that maybe I AM a race fan.

Since the airplanes were going as fast as they were going to go with pistons and props, I've spent the last couple of years designing and building engines - from scratch, from billets I've poured. This summer, however, the attention turned to performing undetectable mods to 50cc Comers to help a friend's kid gain an edge in Kid Karts. I stared raptly as my partner in crime dumped a ton of money into a 135 inch motor for his Dyna - to race. I nodded appreciatively as that same guy picked up an 11-second Camaro - to race. It all hit home as I stood among the pit crews readying their airplanes for the next day's races, and got regular updates from the drag strip as the Camaro inched below 11 seconds - I guess I am a race fan.

There're worse things. An all day marathon of PINKS followed by the premier of PINKS All Out on Speedtv isn't one of them (November 23). Drag Racing Clips

Update: Pinks video for your watchy pleasure!

Coyote's Running Wild

2006-10-05T12:46:00.000-07:00

Coyote is on a tear (must be catching up from all the summer work). That's good news for everyone! He has a way of cutting to the chase on issues away from the SNAFU du jour, and has the relevent experience to back it up. He also has an extremely uncharacteristic blogger trait: intellectual honesty. Here's just a sample from the last two days:

First, he muses the value of restrictions on free speech at his beloved Princeton. He links a very weird letter to the editor of the Daily Princetonian that both recognizes that Princeton is a private institution free to set its rules regarding allowable speech and then blasts it for doing, well, that. Today, Coyote clarified his consternation with a horrifying story from Columbia - horrifying in that Columbia felt providing a stage for the Minutemen was the right thing to do, and then has not taken action against protestors that stormed the stage.

I probably would not have attended the play at Princeton, and I certainly have heard enough of Gilchrist's rhetoric to know that I would have been as tempted as anyone to storm the stage (if nothing else, just to stop the annoying ringing in my ears whenever Gilchrist talks). Both Princeton and Columbia have customers and supporters to please; if they make the decision to provide a stage for things I may not find particularly engaging, so be it. Their students and alumni (I am neither of either) will let them know if their decisions are wrong. However, once they provide the stage they have the responsibility to, for lack of a better term, protect the voice from the stage.

In another great observation, Coyote takes on the "compassionate" bureaucrat. Point well taken: thousands of people went to work every day to earn the taxable income to buy the taxable houses, cars, DVD players, TVs, couches, and coffee tables that provided this park built on land that was possibly extorted from the owner under the threat of (or actual use of) emminent domain.

"I hate it when politicians are called "caring" or "compassionate" when the sole evidence for this is the fact that they take my money and give it to someone else or build something with it that they can put their name on."

Exactly.

Update: the Columbia video

2006-09-25T05:41:00.000-07:00

From the AP via Macon.com (with H/T to Reason.com):

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - Food trailers peddling $1 tacos are a thing of the past in Gwinnett County after a crackdown on street vendors.

....

The new rules, which apply countywide, have "done away with some of the gypsy mentality that had become the norm," Commissioner Bert Nasuti said.

Commissioners also didn't want mobile food stands to siphon customers from businesses leasing space in shopping centers, Nasuti said. "I'm all for capitalism," he said. "But there's a right way and a wrong way."

Bureaucrats enacting anti-competitive measures on behalf of struggling food-court franchises is not surprising. After all, who can resist the siren song (La Cucaracha) of the roach coach? What caught my eye was the name selected by the County Council for their War on Tacos.

The move is part of a larger effort called Operation Fixing Broken Windows, aimed at creating a cleaner environment and spurring commerce.

I spit coffee onto the desk when I read this. I imagined some wise-ass suggesting "Broken Windows" and chuckling himself to sleep every night. Then, it occurred to me that the name was "Fixing Broken Windows", which makes the operation just as hysterical and ironic. Apparently, the "right way" to clean up the county is to snatch the entrepreneur's livelihood out from under him.

Hubris, irony, technocracy, nepotism - this short story's got it all! Too bad the humor comes at the expense of a bunch of little guys and gals who were pulling themselves up by the bootstraps.

Ron Paul's 9/7/06 Address to Congress

2006-09-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

Wow. This is required reading. I'll get a link to the video as soon as I can find it.

Think what a different age we'd be living in if we would have been smart enough to make him the President.

Dear Foreign Businessmen:

2006-09-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

We will kidnap you if you step foot in our country. David Carruthers was just the first in what is apparently a long list of law-abiders the feds have in their sights.

(VIA Hit & Run)

LONDON/NEW YORK, Sept 7 (Reuters) - The United States has arrested a second Internet gaming executive, adding to fears it is cracking down on the lucrative industry and sparking share price falls on Thursday that wiped over $1.5 billion off the market value of the sector.

Online bookmaker Sportingbet Plc said its chairman, Peter Dicks, had been detained by U.S. authorities, mirroring the detention in July of another online gaming CEO on racketeering charges.

Dicks was arrested on Internet gambling charges as part of an ongoing investigation into Sportingbet.com, said Senior Trooper Dwight Robinette of the Louisiana State Police.

Robinette said the arrest warrant was issued for Dicks and others in May. The arrest warrants are sealed and there are no indictments, he said.

Let me point out (again) that Peter Dicks is the Chairman of a publically-traded company. Note (again) that Peter Dicks does not do anything that is illegal in the countries in which he does them. Observe (again) that both Carruthers and Dicks seem to be guilty of nothing more than changing planes - the last I heard it was just a pain in the butt, not necessarily illegal.

On a related note: WHAT THE HELL WAS PETER DICKS THINKING? DID HE NOT HEAR ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO CARRUTHERS?

This Real Estate Market is Killing Me!

2006-09-06T18:14:00.000-07:00

This post earns $2.50 for the American Red Cross!

Everything - and by that I mean the all-inclusive every-damn-thing - here is selling at a $20,000 premium. The comps say X, the actives are all at X + $20,000, and the asks are getting hit faster than I can figure out a way to make a reasonable offer! How the heck are these folks getting appraisals? If there's any truth to the bubble bursting, I'm gonna clean up after these quick-draws. If not, well, I'll still be a dirt-poor investor.

Dad bought a nice place in Arizona. His wife pressured him into an emotion-fueled HIGH price, while he could do nothing but complain to me how Scottsdale real estate was tanking.

At least they've got a nice pool.

Washington Appeals Court Finds a Constitutional Limit on Taxable Income

2006-09-05T17:38:00.000-07:00

Bruce Bartlett examines a district appeals court decision in the Washington Times:

In the case, a woman named Marrita Murphy was awarded a legal settlement that included compensation for physical injury and emotional distress. The former has always been tax-exempt, just as insurance settlements are. Obviously, it makes no sense to tax as income the payment for a loss that only makes one whole again. One is not made better off, so there is no income. But under current law, compensation for nonphysical injuries are taxed.

Ms. Murphy argued that just as compensation for physical injuries only makes one whole after a loss, the same is true of awards for emotional distress. In short, it is not income within the meaning of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. The appeals court agreed and ruled her award for emotional distress is not income and therefore not taxable.

Bartlett shows that the ruling overturns the accepted definition of "income" posited by Robert Haig and Henry Simons - consumption plus change in net wealth over a period of time - on its ear. He (rightly, I believe) focuses on the possible implications this ruling could have on the interest income that is permissably taxed per the Constitution.

Given the logic of the Murphy decision, it is quite possible the risk-free, inflation-adjusted rate of interest could also be excluded from taxation on constitutional grounds.

Bartlett uses John Stuart Mill's idea that interest is the payment for forgoing immediate consumption. Certainly, it can be shown that we suffer a real loss by forgoing immediate consumption. Therefore, interest just makes the receiver whole - under the appeals court ruling, it doesn't meet the definition of taxable income. Bartlett stops short, however, of showing the effect of this ruling on individuals and businesses beyond simple interest.

Perhaps the greatest import to this ruling is to tax treatment of individual wages. An individual's time can be used in a variety of ways. If he chooses to use that time working for someone else, he suffers a loss, if no more than the opportunity cost of doing the next best thing. At least a portion of his wages is remuneration - making him whole again. The portion of his wages that is not income (and therefore not taxable) can most permissibly be determined by the treatment of his wages with respect to his employer. The taxable income of his employer is reduced by the whole of his wages; in other words, the whole cost of his labor is not only a necessary cost, but also just compensation for the work performed. To be consistent, therefore, all wages must be treated as non-taxable.

The next greatest import of this ruling concerns net income of businesses. Businesses are taxed on their revenues less allowable expenses (basically all inputs to production and sales). This net
profit or loss is the result of investing in capital, materials, and labor to produce their good or service. Continuing Bartlett's logic, only net income in excess of the risk-free, inflation-adjusted
rate of interest could constitutionally be taxed. Any other treatment of net income while excusing that rate would drive investment dollars to treasuries, ultimately tanking yields and scaring away international investment.

This ruling and its implications will certainly be one to watch.

My Card Fetish

2006-09-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

I've come to the inescapable conclusion that my lot in life is collecting business cards. If I ever feel the need to heat my home with a wood-burning stove, I won't have to split any logs for years. In fact, I could probably start a small electrical-generating plant with zero fuel costs for the first 90 or so days!

But, it's worse than that. I also have a fondness for creating business cards. As a never-sleeping seeker of the almighty dollar, I find myself wearing different hats several times a day. Sometimes, I'm the manager of an investment trust. Other times, a property manager. Add in corporate pilot, flight instructor, and aviation consultant, and you can see that carrying a fist full of different cards to describe my work is a must. I consider it one of life's little challenges to create the perfect business card to match each hat.

My business card is an advertisement for my services and nothing else - if I just wanted to give someone my number and e-mail address, I could whip out a pen and write it on their hand! Like any advertisement, it's a waste of time and money if it doesn't jar the recipient into specific action. I use every inch - front and back - to invite the reader to start a relationship with me (and invite their friends to play).

There are certain conventions for a business card. You can avoid making your new contact play hide-and-seek by following these tips about free business cards. But, once the expected information is in the design, it's time to start turning your business card into a tool instead of a tooth pick.

Colors: white or linen background, black text. Save the color for something really special. My favorite use of color is to highlight the job title. This requires striking a balance between size and weight to make sure that your name and job title flash into the reader's mind first and second when looking at the front of your card. Something like this:

Tom Jones
Anarcho-Capitalist

There is a very specific reason for highlighting your job title. That specific reason is to make the card recipient ask, "What the heck is a (your job title here)?" to which your only response can be, "I'm glad you asked. I help companies just like yours..." That's sooo much more profitable than "Nice to meet you." "Nice to meet you, too." If your job title doesn't make people ask what the heck it is, get a new job.

Font: pick one easy-to-read font and stick with it. If you are a party clown, sell it with the text not with the font. If you're not a party clown, don't make your biz card make you out to be one!

Logos: keep 'em small. Your business card is to advertise your services, not your company's. Unless you work for an internationally-recognized, publically-traded corporation, the brand recognition (if there is any) is worth zilch. Your company's logo is ONLY used to say, "Hey, we employ this guy." Anything bigger or flashier just detracts from the "do this now" message you are trying to convey.

Contact Info: only include it if it links the recipient DIRECTLY to you. Direct phone (even better if it's toll-free), fax, cell phone, e-mail. Strongly consider including your home phone. It's been my experience that NOBODY calls the home phone, but I know it gives folks a warm fuzzy (especially if you engage in personal services). Any web site addresses on your card should link to a business offer from YOU PERSONALLY without requiring any forward slashes. For example:

www.mikejones.com - include it
www.ge.com - forget it
www.zippylube.com/offers/tjones.php?qid=115254 - are you kidding me?

Back of the card: prime real estate to advertise you and your services! An unscientific poll of the cards stacked on my desk reveals that about 10% of folks put some sort of message on the back of their card. Out of approximately one million cards I've collected in the last two years, though, only two have used this area somewhat effectively. One had a table with 16 coupons to various businesses printed on the back - the card looked expensive, and I'm sure it's retained more than most, but I would never give up the space on a card I'm paying for. The second had a copy of a form that I use daily for transmitting flight plans to the Flight Service Station, so it stays in my wallet at all times. Others list benefits of working with the company or regional office numbers. The all-time hall-of-fame example of the WORST use of the back of the card, however, has to go to the company that prints their mission statement on the back of their agents' cards. Worthless!

When you hand your business card to someone, make sure you hand it with the back up so they can see it. On that face, your introductory, every-one-can-benefit offer should be printed:

For a free copy of my e-book

Six Car-Shopping Tips that
Salesmen Don't Want You to Know

go to www.mysite.com

Another good one is:

I BUY UGLY HOUSES

$500 Cash Referral Fee

go to www.mysite.com for details

Designers: the free business card site linked above mentions using designers if you aren't very creative. I don't recommend using designers for logos or any other marketing reason because their goal is to make money making flashy things. Your goal is to sell your services. Those goals are rarely reconcilable.

As always, have fun making your cards and handing them out. I do!

Who Won Today's Battles?

2006-08-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

From the command post, it looks to me like the terrorists are waaaay ahead today. No investment, no plans, just the scared populace (via CATO) doing their bidding. It's been sport watching the stories shape up and lose their glitter on cable news today:

- American Airlines (NYSE: AMR) plane enroute from London to ORD escorted by Canadian jets to a precautionary at Bangor. First, there was a phoned-in bomb threat. No, turns out it was suspicious conversation on board. Now, it looks like somebody is possibly on board with a similar name as somebody on the no-fly list.

- US Airways (NYSE: LCC) enroute from Phoenix to Charlotte. Unruly passenger on-board forced a precautionary at OKC. Oops, looks like it was just a drunk.

- Continental Airlines (NYSE: CAL) Flight 52 rescreened at Houston after a college kid has low levels of explosive residue on one of his bags. Turns out, a souvenir he bought in Buenos Aires alerted a dog after he'd taken it off the plane and was going through customs!

- Turns out, there were a lot more airline incidents today.

- Suspicious device on the windshield of a car along the street in San Pedro, CA (note to MSNBC: it's pronounced San PEEdro. You may have noticed on the Google map you inset that the peninsula is called Portuguese Bend? It shouldn't be too hard to figure out a Spanish pronunciation isn't appropriate.) Funny, the guy rummaging through the trunk doesn't look too concerned. What's that, the car was parked along the street with it's hood up, and somebody read too much into the breakdown of a crappy car? Hunh.

I'm really beginning to suspect that the money and liberty the .gov wants me to hand over with a smile to protect me from the terrorists is a slow motion, knee-jerk reaction. It sure seems that the costs far outweigh the expected benefit. I'll take a closer look to confirm, but the irrefutable fact is that the people who are engaged in spending my money on the project have the most to benefit from spending my money. In today's political climate, fomenting fear and promising strong action (at my expense) gets you votes. It's a great example of unconsumated, unholy alliances. There is no conspiracy, but the terrorists and bureaucrats have the same incentives: create enough fear in the populace to justify bilking me of my liberty and property.

OK, I'm a numbers guy, so here's the numbers for today. According to NTSB statistics for 1986 - 2005, US airlines have a .220 per 100,000 hour accident rate. 94% of those accidents occur in phases of flight other than cruise (Boeing's Statistical Summary of Jet Airplane Accidents). The first two "events" today resulted in an additional approach, landing, taxi, takeoff, and climb. Therefore, for those two flights, the risk of accident increased by 94%. Meanwhile, the sabotage, suicide, and terrorism risk never rose above .055 per 100,000 hours. Assuming all terrorist risk was totally ameliorated by the extra landing, the accident risk of both flights was all but doubled!

As a commercial pilot, I know two things that non-commercial pilots probably don't. First, the guys in the cockpit of the jet you fly on are not the smartest individuals in the world. Second, the biz is centered around one inviolate rule: NEVER increase risk! So, the airlines must have a good reason for allowing the savants up front to DOUBLE the risk of the flight. Here's the gouge: the corporate risk of crashing an airplane is LESS than the almost-imperceptible risk of not over-reacting to a possible terrorist incident!

Take a moment to digest that. You have allowed your pols to scare you so much about a non-event, that you will give your blessings to DOUBLING the real risk of injury or death. Compared to that, how can I possibly ask you to reclaim your liberty and property?

UPDATE: This has to be the funniest thing I've ever read. I tell you, I'm going to invest in clear plastic suitcases that I can check and wear a tyvek suit and booties when flying on a crowd-killer from now on. (H/T: Homeland Stupidity)

Dispatches from the War on ... Koi?

2006-07-25T07:02:00.000-07:00

Balko always comes up with the best stuff.

FREEPORT, Maine --Armed game wardens seized 10 exotic fish from the tank of a popular Chinese restaurant, leaving its owner shaken and outraged.
"They treated me like a criminal," said Cuong Ly, who escaped from Vietnam 25 years ago. "I lived under communism and I felt like I'm back there again."

Ly, 45, said his pet koi were like family members and their confiscation in what he described as a heavy-handed raid made him "want to explode inside."

After obtaining a search warrant, two uniformed wardens and a biologist, accompanied by Freeport police, visited China Rose on Wednesday, taking away the 10 fish that ranged in size from 12 to 14 inches.

The koi had been on display since Ly opened the restaurant nearly 15 years ago and he credited them for bringing good luck to the business in a way akin to the arrangement of articles in the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui.

A few years ago, however, Maine outlawed the importation and possession of koi, and Ly was charged with importing freshwater fish without a permit.

I learned something very poignant in this article. I had no idea that koi were such a hazard to the republic. It also appears that koi may be a gateway fish. I'm very disappointed that the Maine Warden Service spokes-bureaucrat didn't make it clear to the Boston Globe that in the post-9/11 world, we have to know that koi owners support global terrorism.

I want to do my part in this war! I hereby announce that Bloody Mary Breakfast will soon field the Koi Offender Registry. Why? Because I care about the kids!

Tariffs & Quotas? Nah, we'll just kidnap your CEO!

2006-07-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

This is one of those stories that you just have to read several times - and then STILL can't believe it!

Apparently, the CEO of BetonSports PLC a PUBLICLY TRADED AND LICENSED UK COMPANY, David Carruthers, made the mistake of changing planes in the United States. So, the US government kidnapped him. While the details from Reuters are less than complete, here are the facts as they seem now:

- David Carruthers is a UK citizen
- Carruthers runs a PUBLICLY TRADED AND LICENSED UK COMPANY (I know I already said that, it just bears repeating)
- BoS PLC maintains offices in the UK, Antigua, Costa Rica, and Malaysia
- While BetonSports PLC has a number of brands, their most well-known is BetonSports.com
- BetonSports.com allows customers to wager on sporting events online and over the phone
- The US government is working overtime to ensure US citizens cannot use services such as those offered by BetonSports.com
- Carruthers actively opposes such legislation (for obvious reasons)
- Enroute to Costa Rica, Carruthers changed planes in Dallas
- Though Carruthers broke no UK laws nor broke any US laws while on US soil, he was detained and is currently being held in Fort Worth, Texas

This action has been very effective (and not without precedence). Trading in BoS PLC has been suspended, and other companies in the sector are down by as much as 19% on the news. I imagine that thousands of shareholders are burning their stock certificates to destroy any evidence of their involvement with a PUBLICLY TRADED AND LICENSED UK COMPANY.

It's just the tip of the iceberg. Executives in banks and credit card companies who do business with BoS PLC will be next. CEOs of Canadian companies who produce and sell non-FDA approved drugs soon after that. This should be fun to watch!

On an unrelated note: rumor has it that the CEOs of Remington, Baretta, and S&W have all canceled summer trips to London. I can only assume that it's because of the unseasonably warm weather.

(Thank you Radley Balko for the heads up)

UPDATE: I WAS KIDDING, YOU JACK-BOOTED THUGS!!! (H/T Hit & Run)

Dear Cable Company:

2006-06-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

Please take C-SPAN off my TV.

Thanks.

Every once in a while, the remote lands on C-SPAN. Today, the ammendments to the 2007 Defense Appropriations Bill caught my eye. Paraphrasing Rep. Ray La Hood (R-IL):

This is a heat-resistant battery. It wouldn't have been created if not for a public/private partnership.

$2.5 million for a heat-resistant battery. As La Hood commented later: to me, this is a no-brainer.

The Agitator on Hudson

2006-06-17T07:20:00.000-07:00

Radley Balko was interviewed on WBT in Charlotte Friday. The callers after the substitute host let Radley go are precious. To his credit, the host stuck to his guns, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that he was wrong.

Bill of Rights? Wha Bill of Rights?

2006-06-12T20:13:00.001-07:00

The Law of Unintended Consequenses hits home. Ha!

Bill of Rights? Wha Bill of Rights?

2006-06-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

The Law of Unintended Consequenses hits home. Ha!