"Economic Democracy" = Economic Despotism

From "Planned Chaos," by Ludwig von Mises:

The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. It is true that the various individuals have not the same power to vote. The richer man casts more ballots than the poorer fellow. But to be rich and to earn a higher income is, in the market economy, already the outcome of a previous election. The only means to acquire wealth and to preserve it, in a market economy not adulterated by government-made privileges and restrictions, is to serve the consumers in the best and cheapest way. Capitalists and landowners who fail in this regard suffer losses. If they do not change their procedure, they lose their wealth and become poor. It is consumers who make poor people rich and rich people poor. It is the consumers who fix the wages of a movie star and an opera singer at a higher level than those of a welder or an accountant.

Democracy is the God of Progressives and socialists. "Majority rule" is their mantra. This belief implies that the wisdom of the masses is contained in the mind of each voter. Yet, when considering the free market, progressives and socialists deny the wisdom of the masses who cast their votes freely for the producer they favor by purchasing his products or services. Instead of the uncoerced vote of consumers in the marketplace, progressives and socialists trust the judgement of unelected government bureaucrats and elected government regulators to pick economic winners and losers.

By taking money out of the pockets of the masses via taxation, progressives and socialists are in effect taking the right to vote away from individual citizens and giving that right to bureaucrats. The larger the size of government as compared to the size of the free market, the more the democracy of the free market is undermined and replaced by the economic edicts of bureaucratic tyrants.

Ask a progressive or a socialist whether they believe in "economic democracy." They will gush about that idea as a man of religion gushes about his God. They, of course, understand "economic democracy" to mean a political system wherein bureaucratic tyrants decide who produces what and how. That "what" is then equally divided amongst all the individual citizens.

These fools do not understand that their "economic democracy" is, in fact, economic despotism. A true "economic democracy" would be a system wherein each individual citizen freely votes to elect economic winners and losers -- the exact system Mises describes.

Thanks To The Federal Reserve...

...Obama: We didn’t have “the luxury” for Michelle to not work

Let's take the President at his word, i.e., nowadays one salary just won't support a family of four. When I was young, one salary could support a family of six. When my father was young, one salary could support a family of five during the Great Depression. So why is this?

It's called price inflation and it's caused by monetary inflation. It's been the policy of the US Federal Reserve since 1913. It's the monetary policy this administration defends and advocates.

Regardless of your personal opinion with regard to "stay-at-home-moms," we can thank the Federal Reserve for making this lifestyle option nearly financially unfeasible for today's "working class" families.

Another wonderful innovation in American life brought to you by the "progressive" political movement.

We're Paying Government To Fry Our Brains!

 I saw this story the other day on the Drudge Report. My first reaction was: Is this real or an article in the onion?

Russia working on electromagnetic radiation guns

WHILE many believed it to be an April Fool's Day joke, Vladimir Putin has confirmed Russia has been testing mind-bending psychotronic guns that can effectively turn people into zombies. 
 
The futuristic weapons - which attack their victims' central nervous system - are being developed by scientists and could be used against Russia's enemies and even its own dissidents by the end of the decade.

Mr Putin has described the guns, which use electromagnetic radiation like that found in microwave ovens, as entirely new instruments for achieving political and strategic goals...

...While the technology has been around for some time, MrTsyganok said the guns were recently tested for crowd control purposes.

“When it was used for dispersing a crowd and it was focused on a man, his body temperature went up immediately as if he was thrown into a hot frying pan," Mr Tsyganok said.

 Those damn, devious, Russian animals will stop at nothing, right?

Maybe so, but a quick Google of the net proves that the Russians aren't the only miscreants in the world testing such weapons. You guessed it, the US has been testing such weapons for years. And if history teaches us anything, the US is far ahead of anyone else in the world in developing these weapons...err, "crowd control" devices. "Crowd control." What a laugh!

How about this article: 6 Creepy New Weapons Police and Military Use To Subdue Unarmed People.

Number One on the list is "The Invisible Pain Ray: The ‘Holy Grail of Crowd Control.’"

Guess what, The Invisible Pain Ray gun "works like an open-air microwave oven, projecting a focused beam of electromagnetic radiation to heat the skin of its targets."

It sounds like Putin's toy, doesn't it?

Does anybody believe developing these weapons, whose primary purpose is "crowd control," is a proper function of the government of a free country?

I've been accused of being an alarmist. Really? Don't these weapons set a chill running up and down your spine?

 Coming to a city street near you?

And then there's this little gadget our Japanese friends are developing: the speech-jamming gun. You read that right. This "crowd control" item "can silence people more than 30 meters (100 feet) away."

These ultra-modern "crowd control" weapons are technically scary, but add to these new weapons the recent news that the government is replenishing their stock of conventional weaponry and ammo in a big way.

The Dept. of Homeland Security has ordered 450-million rounds of 40 caliber ammo and 175-million rounds of 223 cartridges.

The US Forest Service has recently "solicited and secured a bid for over 300,000 rounds of ammunition," including 40 caliber, 9mm, .38 caliber and 223 cartridges along with 12 gauge shotgun shells.

To put all this in prospective, a few months ago the FBI ordered 100,000 rounds of 40 caliber ammo.

Remember how we all went nuts in 2010 when the Department of Education ordered 27 12-gauge shotguns? It seems it's about time they ordered a few million rounds of ammo.

All this crap doesn't help me sleep at night. Does any of it make sense to you?

More Cutesy Fluff From Ezra Klein

[EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this post appeared briefly in this space. That post was in bad taste and I apologize for it. I have a dark and irreverent sense of humor along with a hair-trigger political temper. Combined, they can sometimes result in an embarrassing post. Again, I apologize to my many billions of readers. The post below gets the point across without the shame. SB] 

Ezra Klein's piece in Bloomberg, entitled "Don’t Worry About Deficit That Will Heal Itself," is political and economic nonsense. It's illiterate, illogical, irrelevant and deceitful. I cannot even summarize the point of Klein's printed mush because he doesn't have one, unless maybe it's this:

Nevertheless, I’m confident that we will, one way or another, muddle through. Because when it comes to the deficit, Congress really has two choices: Do something to solve it, or do nothing and let that solve it.

Doing nothing will solve the deficit? How is Congress going to stop short of the "fiscal cliff" Ben Bernanke says the country is approaching in 2012 by doing nothing? Isn't muddling through doing something?

Klein says that Congress has muddled through in the past and will muddle through in the future:

In part for that reason, we don’t balance the budget for 70 years at a time. Indeed, we usually don’t even balance it for 10 years at a time. Instead, we muddle through, striking deals that are smaller than wonks like, but sufficient to keep us out of the woods. That’s what we did in the 1990s, which featured deficit-reduction bills in 1991, 1993, 1995 and 1997. We’ll probably follow a similar path in the decade to come.

So, apparently in the past muddling through meant doing something, i.e., "striking deals...which featured deficit-reduction bills...," but today muddling through means doing nothing. What is Klein smoking?
 
Maybe Klein thinks doing nothing now will "solve" the deficit because Congress has already done something. Klein writes:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke calls the end of 2012 “a fiscal cliff.” The Bush tax cuts are set to expire. The $1.2 trillion spending sequester, enforcing cuts in the defense and domestic budgets, is set to go off. Various stimulus measures -- including the payroll tax cut -- are scheduled to end. “Taken together,” writes the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “these policies would reduce ten-year deficits by over $6.8 trillion relative to realistic current policy projections -- enough to put the debt on a sharp downward path."

OK. The something Congress did reduces ten year deficits by $6.8 trillion and puts "the debt on a sharp downward path." Terrific, but a lie by omission. Here is the full quote from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

At the end of 2012, we face what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke calls a “fiscal cliff.” Taken together, these policies would reduce ten-year deficits by over $6.8 trillion relative to realistic current policy projections – enough to put the debt on a sharp downward path but in an extremely disruptive and unwise manner.

Notice the phrase I bolded but Klein erased? [Isn't it customary to use an ellipsis when omitting part of a quote unless the part omitted is obvious or irrelevant? Does that phrase seem obvious or irrelevant to you? Maybe Klein couldn't fit that phrase into his 1000 word piece.]

Here is how the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concludes its report:

At the end of the year, Congress and the President will face what appears to be a daunting choice: either allow the country to go off of a recessionary “fiscal cliff” all at once, or else doom the country to large deficits that will permanently slow economic growth and increase the likelihood of a fiscal crisis.

Allowing the country to hit the fiscal cliff at year’s end would be a dangerous mistake, but adding $7.5trillion to our debt by extending the expiring policies and repealing the sequester, without putting the budget on a more sustainable path, would be a travesty.

But the end of the year provides the opportunity for a third option – one which avoids many (though not necessarily all) of the abrupt changes at year’s end and replaces them with a gradual and thoughtful plan to stabilize and then reduce the debt. As Chairman Bernanke has argued, Congress should “figure out ways to achieve the same long-run fiscal improvement [as the fiscal cliff] without having it all happen at one date.” A comprehensive deficit reduction plan can offer a win-win by giving the economy space to recover in the short-term while enacting long-term reforms to strengthen the economy and put the country’s finances in order. Policymakers should avoid the fiscal cliff and take this course instead.

Whoa! Am I crazy, or does this say that doing nothing wouldn't solve anything and, in fact, would be a "dangerous mistake?" Doing nothing would propel the country over Bernanke's "recessionary 'fiscal cliff' all at once."

In fact, the report's conclusion strongly recommends doing something, the "third option," which involves Congress coming up with "a gradual and thoughtful plan to stabilize and then reduce the debt."

Maybe this is what Klein means by Congress doing nothing. I doubt it. Klein writes:

Of course, you can muddle wisely or muddle stupidly. I worry we’ll choose the latter. Evidence is already mounting: The sequester is a stupid way to cut spending. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire all at once is a stupid way to raise taxes. And repeatedly forcing the country to the brink of default is a stupid way to manage our budget. 

There he goes again with that muddling through nonsense! At first Klein is comfortable that Congress will "one way or another" muddle through. Now he warns us that "one way" of muddling through is wise and another way of muddling through is stupid!

Maybe Klein is stupid. Maybe the deficit won't heal itself. Maybe we should worry about it!

And what is that little, overlooked phrase that Klein did have room to publish? I'm talking about the phrase: "a stupid way to raise taxes."

As it turns out, doing nothing really means doing something...to you, something Klein is, apparently, very comfortable with, and something President Obama promised would never happen: raising your taxes. Remember? Obama was only going to raise taxes on the "rich!"

Yeah? Well both Klein and Obama are jerking you around. Here's another tidbit from the Report of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that Klein failed to include in his love letter to himself:

Additionally, on the tax side, the fiscal cliff would lead to abrupt increases in taxes for nearly every person without making strategic choices about how to best improve the tax code.

Here's another:

Congress generally “patches” the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) every year to help it keep pace with inflation. As a result, just over four million tax returns currently pay the AMT. If a new patch is not enacted retroactively for 2012, that number will increase to above 30 million for that year and would exceed 40 million by the end of the decade.

If you don't know what the AMT is, you better find out. It's a very, onerous tax meant to penalize "the rich." The problem is in a few years Bernanke's inflation will make us all "rich" on paper. In reality, we'll be poor saps paying a rich man's tax!

These new taxes, along with all the other somethings Congress did and didn't do in 2011, comprise the "fiscal cliff" we'll tumble over if Congress does nothing between now and then. That tumble will plunge us into another deep recession or worse. But Klein is confident. Forget the cliff, he says. Worry about something that really matters:

The same can’t be said for issues such as infrastructure and loose nukes and climate change and preparing for pandemic flu. On those questions, congressional inaction isn’t enough to make the problem disappear. So those are the issues I worry about.

Wait! If Congress did something to solve these all-important, earth-shaking, progressive-talking-point issues, wouldn't that require Congress to spend a bunch of new [stimulus?] money? Wouldn't this bunch of new "doing something" muck up the "something" that Congress has already done, like the $6.8 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years? Wouldn't that mean Congress would have to muddle through again and...?

You know what? I don't give a damn about what Klein says or thinks or smokes. Rather than writing he'd be better off doing nothing. Logic never muddles through his gibberish.

His is the kind of cute nonsense that the stuffed shirts in Washington salivate over. No wonder the country is speeding toward a "fiscal cliff" with it's foot on the accelerator.

My advice? Fasten your seat belt and start worrying.

Please Mitt, Ditch The Plaid

There is a popular, conservative talk show host in Florida who enjoys telling women to step up and vote like a man.

Why would a libertarian-conservative radio host risk turning off half of his listening audience? Because he's making a point. He knows that a huge majority of men will vote for Romney in November, but he also knows that women overwhelmingly favor Obama. He also knows that this gender "gap" will be enough to throw the November election the President's way.

In a news article published Monday the National Journal proves the point. The article, "Women Kick Obama Into Lead Over Romney - Poll," explains:

Women have helped push President Obama into his most significant lead yet over Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, according to a Gallup/USA Today Poll published on Sunday. It shows the president leading Romney 51 percent to 42 percent among registered voters in swing states.

According to the poll of 933 registered voters, women under 50 have swung over to Obama: More than 60 percent support him now, compared with less than half of this group in February. Meanwhile, their support of Romney has dropped 14 points to 30 percent.

It is ironic that while we men pound our chests debating the Presidential election every which way in every which blog, our wives and daughters are calmly nullifying our bluster by making up their minds to vote for the President.

Why do women lean away from Romney and toward Barack Obama?

I put this very question to a very special woman I know. "I just don't like Mitt Romney," she answered.

"But why don't you like him?" I asked.

She thought for a while, then finally gave me an answer that astounded me: "He's too nice."

She must have noticed my surprise, because she immediately explained herself. "He reminds me of dating," she said. "Romney is always on his best behavior. He's polite. He courteously tells you things you want to hear. He gives you compliments. In short, he wouldn't say shit if he had a mouthful. It's after a guy like that gets his hooks into you that he disappoints you, hurts you. Why can't the Republicans nominate a guy, like Chris Christie, who's authentic, who is genuinely passionate about his beliefs, who isn't afraid to tell it like it is no matter who he offends? Where's Romney's conviction? When on a rare occasion he does bow up and get in somebody's face, he can't pull it off because that's not really him. The real him is just too polite...too nice."

"In other words it's the 'girls like bad boys' complex," I suggested warily.

"No," she said sternly. "That would be condescending. Women are attracted to honest passion. Take Romney and his plaid shirts, for instance. Does he think wearing plaid makes him one of us? Does he think we're stupid? Wear a crisp white business shirt, for crying out loud. Don't try to hide the fact you're successful and wealthy. Be proud of it. Women just don't like guys who jerk us around."

"So you're saying Obama doesn't jerk you around?" I asked.

"No. Frankly Romney and Obama are two peas in a pod. Both of them come across as guys who will say anything and do anything to get in your pants."

"Then how do you explain the poll results," I persisted. "Why are women likely to vote two to one for Obama?"

"Look," she said. "Women are not a monolithic voting block. We're all over the map. For instance, I will vote against Obama. If that means I have to cast a vote for Romney, so be it. But there many women -- young single women -- who will vote for Obama because they fear Republicans are going to bogeyman their womb."

"The Republicans are going to what?"

"You know, screw up the progress women have enjoyed. You know it used to be that you men wouldn't let us vote at all. Women have been under the thumbs of men for years. You paid us lower wages. You installed a glass ceiling over our head so we couldn't enter the board room. We put our careers on hold to have your children..."

"But that's all changed!"

"Don't interrupt!" she said. "It's still women who have babies! A woman's womb makes them vulnerable but at the same time the womb is a tremendous source of power."

"Power?"

"Yes, power. Now we can't be forced to have your babies. It's our choice now."

"Ahh," I said. "The old pro-choice argument..."

"I haven't finished!" she glared. "Yes, Obama and the Democrats are pro-choice. And their aim is to make it easy for young, single women who are financially and emotionally vulnerable to choose abortion. Young women like the independence and power they think the government is granting them by giving them a "right" to abortion and contraceptives. But young women are also naive and, frankly, stupid. They don't understand that what the government grants can also be taken away. China, for instance, has taken away a woman's right to have more than one child. Young women here in the US haven't learned that you have to be careful what you wish for. Allowing the government to control your womb eventually backfires. As women grow older and become more financially and emotionally independent, they begin to understand this."

"So what's the solution?" I asked.

"It's just like a man to ask that," she said. "All I know for sure is that Romney should ditch the plaid shirts!"

The lesson I took from this conversation is that the Florida talk show host is wrong. It's stupid to ask a woman to think like a man and vote like a man, even in jest. Women, especially single young women, vote with their hearts and with their own self-interest in mind. To be honest, we all do.

For years men in society have dominated women emotionally and financially. They've used a rigid moral code to force women to stay in their place. Women fought back valiantly. However, for many American women the quest for justice, equality and independence from men has carried them too far. Too many women have now become dependent not on men but on government for emotional and financial stability. They have lost the essential moral values that have served American women well for centuries, values like courage, self-reliance, perseverance and self-respect.

As for men? It's time we stopped flapping our political gums for a second and listened to the women! This next Presidential election isn't going to turn on rising gas prices or a falling stock market. It's going to turn on whether or not the women in our lives like our candidate!

So please, Republican candidates, stop being nice! Stop trying to be everything to everyone.  It's time to stop jerking people around. It's time to be passionately honest!

And Mitt, for God's sake, ditch the plaid!

Is Maximum Leader Obama A Pathological Liar, Or Merely The Most Stupid Man On Earth?

At a press conference yesterday, Maximum Leader commented on the ObamaCare suit now before the Supreme Court. Below is an excerpt from that news conference:



Maximum Leader begins by reminding us yokels that there is not only an economic and a legal element to ObamaCare, but a "human" element as well. No shit Sherlock! Score 10 points in the stupid column.

Maximum Leader goes on to say that he hopes the Supreme Court won't take the "unprecedented" step of overturning a law that was passed by a democratically elected Congress. Are you kidding me? Maximum Leader, have you ever read a history book? My God! Let's make it easy for you. Does FDR ring a bell? 1936? The following is by Anna Sale from an article in It's A Free Country:

It was 1936, and it had been a difficult few years for President Franklin Roosevelt at the Supreme Court. Congress moved quickly to pass Roosevelt’s New Deal agenda, and the nine justices ruled swiftly to throw much of it out.

“No Supreme Court in history had ever struck down so many laws so quickly,” Jeff Shesol wrote in his 2010 book Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court. “Between 1933 and 1936, the Court overturned acts of Congress at ten times the traditional rate.”

The National Recovery Administration’s minimum wages and maximum hours for workers. The Agricultural Adjustment Act’s payments to farmers not to grow crops. The Guffey Coal Act’s price controls on coal. The Supreme Court struck them all down, signaling the clear limits they wanted to impose on the New Deal’s sweep.

Dah! Score 100 points in the stupid column. No! Scratch that. No one could be that stupid. Score 1000 points in the Pathological Liar column.

Maximum Leader then proceeds to describe "judicial activism" as "an unelected group of people...somehow" overturning "a duly constituted and passed law." What? Dear Maximum Leader! We're not all toothless meth heads out here in flyover country! That "group of unelected people" is called the Supreme Court! And what the hell do you mean by "somehow?" Geez, you call yourself "a constitutional law professor!" But you don't understand how the Supreme Court works? It's all in the damn Constitution! Article III, Section 1 and 2:

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court...The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States...blah...blah...blah.

Get it? Oh, forget it! Add a million points to both columns!

Lastly, Maximum Leader says ObamaCare was passed by a "strong majority" of Congress. Even ZIP at Weasel Zippers knows better than that:

Note how he says Obamacare passed with a “strong majority,” which we all know is a crock of shit, they had to resort to reconciliation to ram it through Congress.

Score a trillion points in the pathological liar column!

So what's the final tally?

Do the math.

Chuckie Schumer Dons Hoodie!

NEWS ITEM: Schumer calls for Hill hearings on 'Stand Your Ground'

Shown below is a young Chuckie Schumer decked out in full hoodie regalia standing his ground. Will Chuckie attend his hearings in his hoodie a la Rep. Bobby Rush? I can't say. His office has yet to return my calls.