"Side by side with the word 'property' in the program of liberalism one may quite appropriately place the words 'freedom' and 'peace.'" Ludwig von Mises, "Liberalism, In The Classical Tradition"
Mises believed that property, freedom and peace are and should be the hallmarks of a satisfying and prosperous society. I agree. Mises proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the prospect for general and individual prosperity is maximized, indeed, is only possible, if the principle of private property reigns supreme. What's yours is yours. What's mine is mine. When the line between yours and mine is smudged, the door to conflict opens. Without freedom (individual liberty of action) the principle of private property is neutered and the free market, which is the child of property and freedom and the mother of prosperity and satisfaction, cannot exist. Peace is the goal of a prosperous and satisfying society of free individuals, not peace which is purchased by submission to the enemies of property and freedom, but peace which results from the unyielding defense of these principles against all who challenge them.
In this blog I measure American society against the metrics of property, freedom and peace.
According to reports, Jay Carney, the President's silver-tongued Press Secretary, said: "I never lie."
What an opportunity for the nation's media! A chance to question a 100%, guaranteed, truth-telling Washington parasite on some very significant issues. Like...
Are the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds assets or liabilities of the US Treasury? In other words, are the Trust Fund bonds real, stored up value, or merely worthless pieces of paper, liens on future parasitic taxes, borrowing and money supply increases?
Did Christy L. Romero, the special inspector general for the TARP bailout program, recently write the following?
After 3½ years, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”) continues to be an active and significant part of the Government’s response to the financial crisis. It is a widely held misconception that TARP will make a profit. The most recent cost estimate for TARP is a loss of $60 billion. Taxpayers are still owed $118.5 billion (including $14 billion written off or otherwise lost).
Mr. Carney, in the interests of the truth, please keep your answers short and to the point.
"I believe that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history."
Then he reminded us that:
"There’s [sic] some things we don't do well on our own."
Ever wonder what those things is?
Don't stress your brain. He listed them for us yokels. He had in mind some things like doing research, inventing technology, creating industries, building railroads, educating our children, not to mention saving for our retirement and finding a job without starving to death.
Add to those things other things he's already said he doesn't think we do well on our own -- other things like health insurance, health care, energy production, food production, manufacturing light bulbs and automobiles -- and you wonder what the hell he thinks we can do well on our own.
This is like a man who says he believes in arithmetic except for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
Of course, he's not stupid. He has to know that there are a plethora of things we do very well, like fight and die in his wars, get felt up at airports by his government thugs and willingly pay taxes through the nose so he and his wife and his fellow government employees can jet off to lavish vacation spots and blow through our hard-earned money on booze, gambling and prostitutes.
Another thing we do well is build monuments to past Presidents.
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!
Jackson describes Maximum Leader Obama's recent campaign stop in Cushing, Oklahoma:
I'm not sure if I have ever seen such a blatant and dishonest attempt by any politician to spin the facts and weave a web of lies around the truth."
LD is too much the gentleman to say it plainly. I've never been accused of being a gentleman, so I'll say it: Barack Obama is a bald-faced liar.
This is not news, of course. Anyone who follows the Drudge Report or Weasel Zippers or Fox News is exposed to a daily barrage of lies dripping from the flapping lips of Maximum Leader and his cronies. Naturally, leftists will say these news sources are tainted with the bias of conservative hatred and dissembling, which is itself a lie.
The point is lying has become the modus operandi of Maximum Leader and his administration. Why? It's due to a variety of moral hazard perpetrated by the mainstream media. If those charged with reporting the news fail to report lies, it becomes that much easier for liars to tell lies. They are enabled to lie with impunity.
The Bible tells us that "the wages of sin is death..." In this case it is not the officious liar who will suffer death, i.e., the loss of eternal life, but our society.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that Obamacare facilitates the type of “liberation” that the “Founders had in mind” because it allows you to quit your job and become a “photographer,” a “writer,” a “musician”--or “whatever.”
Of course, Pelosi's statement is a blatant lie. Don't get me wrong. Obamacare does allow Americans to "quit" their job, do "whatever" and still get health insurance and health care, at the expense of the rest of us slobs who remain working and paying taxes. Pelosi's lie is that this type of welfare statism is what the "Founders had in mind."
If pressed by the media, Pelosi couldn't produce a single word from a single Founder who endorsed this type of "liberation." But Pelosi's lie will never be challenged by a member of the mainstream press. However, that same press will see to it that Pelosi's lie is broadcast to every nook and cranny of the country multiple times.
At her press conference Pelosi added that under ObamaCare: "You won’t have to be job locked." Again, this is not a lie per se. It seems the goal of every piece of legislation that issues forth from Obama and Pelosi is meant to free Americans from the hell of being "job locked," meant to allow them the freedom to do "whatever" and still eat well and live well...at the expense of others. This last part is the part the media and Pelosi and Maximum Leader never emphasize. It is their lie of omission.
To be fair, Maximum Leader and company have been truthful about their intention to soak the 1% of super-rich Americans with new taxes to pay for their job unlocking schemes. The lie is that the numbers don't add up. Confiscate all the wealth of the evil one or two or three percent and you come up short a few trillion dollars!
No matter. What's the harm of another unreported and unexposed lie here and there? The wages of this sin is hardly the death of society.
Wait. The death comes later, when those who believe the lies cast their votes for Maximum Leader and company, when those eager constituents demand that this newly elected, wondrous group of liars actually reproduce the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
Nancy Pelosi articulated the lie better than anyone. She said that ObamaCare incorporates...
"a cap on your costs, but no cap on your benefit."
Don't laugh, you Doubting Thomases. It's essentially what Christ said at the sermon on the mount, isn't it? A cap on your tithes, but no cap on the free fish and bakery?
We all know the Founders said basically the same thing at Independence Hall a couple of hundred years ago when they were founding this great nation: A cap on your job-locked, pioneering misery, but no cap on the neat stuff your new government can extort from your rich bastard neighbors.
What a great country! What could possibly go wrong?
The money quote: "There are a few spots we’re not drilling. We’re not drilling in the national mall. We’re not drilling at your house." By "we're not drilling" Maximum Leader Obama means, of course, that private oil companies are not drilling. The US government doesn't drill for a drop of oil. The implication is that private oil companies are exploiting every known oil reserve in this country, which is a lie. Obama might also have said that that "we're not drilling" on public lands in Alaska or in areas of the Gulf of Mexico wherein significant oil reserves are known but where drilling is prohibited by the US government.
Maximum Leader criticizes Hayes for not seeing the potential of Alexander Graham Bell's newly invented telephone. Politico explains: "Obama was speaking about the need to be forward-thinking in developing new sources of American energy — and how "unnamed" Republicans running for a "certain office" had positioned themselves against alternative energy." Maximum Leader apparently can't distinguish between innovation demanded and supported by the free market and innovation subsidized by a dictatorial government with dollars coercively hijacked from the free market. Coincidentally, Rutherford B. Hayes presided over this nation when government was a small fraction of the size it is now, when the private market was vastly freer and when the nation experienced the greatest advancement in prosperity of individuals in its history. No, Mr. Maximum Leader, this was not mere coincidence.
Am I wrong? Didn't Maximum Leader tell us during the ObamaCare debate that no one would lose coverage?
No, I guess I'm not mistaken. I'm mindful also of what another, political demagog said during the ObamaCare debate, Ms. Nancy Pelosi: Obama care means...
"a cap on your costs, but no cap on your benefit."
Maximum Leader knows so much better than the rest of us freely acting by expressing our wishes by means of our dollars spent in the private market. The implication is not only are Republicans ignorant Luddites and troglodytes, but so is the American consumer, in short, you and I.
Ah, that old chestnut! First it was disreputable and untrustworthy doctors who'd amputate a patient's foot rather than treat his diabetes because Medicare pays more for amputation than preventative care. Then it was the evil insurance companies who had to be kept honest by the creation of a "public health insurance option" in ObamaCare. Now it's the robber baron oil companies and commodity speculators that must be held in check by our oh so virtuous and honest Maximum Leader and company. How did we ever survive without his help?
Oops. This is, as Zip tells us, "only $820 billion or 87% more than we were told when the law passed." Chalk it up to the price of economic ignorance and demagoguery.
Oops again. Well, it costs scads and scads of borrowed money to "fix" the mess created by that pesky law of supply and demand working in the free market. I'm sure things will work out better for our children now that Maximum Leader has bitten the bullet and saved us from our own free market foolishness.
Au contraire, Mr. White! Yes you can! You can fix stupid, and here's "Renaissance Man" who is about to prove it...
You see, the White House (no pun intended!) just announced a billion dollar government program guaranteed to "improve the nation’s manufacturing industry" which, apparently, is too stupid to improve itself on its own.
How is our modern day Leonardo da Vinci going to fix stupid in US manufacturing?
He's going to build a national "network of up to fifteen Institutes for Manufacturing Innovation around the country, serving as regional hubs of manufacturing excellence that will help to make our manufacturers more competitive and encourage investment in the United States."
Wow! I have to say that's super impressive. Remember, this is the same Renaissance Man who fixed stupid in our American energy industry earlier this year for a measly $14-million. Remember? In Florida? Earlier this year? Maximum Leader said: "You’ve got a bunch of algae out here, right? If we can figure out how to make energy out of that, we’ll be doing all right."
Our course we'll be all right. He's our Renaissance Man. If he can't do it, no one can!
Well, now it's on to bigger and better things than the energy crisis. The Renaissance Man's new plan will "encourage insourcing, support investment in our manufacturing sector, and create good jobs here in the United States." We'll be all right. He's got it figured!
(More good jobs created as an added bonus! I like that too.)
Renaissance Man could hardly contain his excitement yesterday as he explained his $1-billion plan by exclaiming: “These are going to be institutes of manufacturing excellence where some of our most advanced engineering schools and our most innovative manufacturers collaborate on new ideas, new technologies, new methods, new processes..."
KISS, right? Keep it simple, stupid! Collaboration!?! (Frankly, the plan is so simple I'm kind of surprised American manufacturers didn't think of collaborating with our most advanced engineering schools all by themselves. That's why the federal government needs to tax these bozos through the nose. Smart guys in Washington can make better use of private industry's capital every day of the week and twice on Sunday.)
Anyway, Renaissance Man and company aren't dilly-dallying around waiting for Congress to fund the plan. "We’re not going to wait," he said confidently. "We’re going to go ahead on our own later this year." Apparently, the White House found $45-million gathering dust in the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce and the National Science Foundation. They're using it to set up a pilot program.
Why a pilot program, you ask? Don't they know what they're doing?
Hey, don't fret. Renaissance Man's brilliant ideas don't come to him fully fleshed out! However, his plan for fleshing out his plan is even more brilliant: competition. You know, like "American Idol" for inventors! “We’re going to choose the winner of a competition for a pilot institute for manufacturing innovation," Renaissance Man explained excitedly, "help them get started. With that pilot in place, we’ll keep on pushing Congress to do the right thing because this is the kind of approach that can succeed. We’ve got to have this all across the country.”
Duh! It never occurred to the stupid manufacturing bigwigs themselves that competition just might bring out the best in them?
Renaissance Man says his new proposal is sure to bring about a new golden age of American innovation, a "new renaissance of American inventiveness," as he put it.
I try to be objective and realistic in my analysis of political events. I have never, ever, experienced anything close to the intemperance of this President and his political lieutenants. Mr. Obama’s rhetoric is nothing less than poisonous. He recently called Republicans a threat to “the very core of what this country stands for.” I don’t know about you, but in my household that comment is not a mere insult, but an invitation to a brawl.
Jay Carney is about as truthful and straightforward as a carnival barker, twisting and shaping the truth into absurdities. Ms. Wasserman-Schultz has been the the political “hit man” for the Democratic Party since her appointment. Her caustic allegations are well-documented…on the internet.
Monday of this week in a speech at a campaign event, President Obama said that what's "on the line" in the 2012 election is the "very core of what this country stands for." I propose that Mr. Obama does not know what the "core" principles of this country truly are.
Why would I say such a thing? Because Mr. Obama proceeded to tell us what he thought these core principles were. He said they are...
