I’ll probably come back and fill this article in with some commentary later.  Well worth watching.

In a repeat of Iowa, where a Mitt Romney State Chairman held up accurate results of the vote for weeks, the Arizona State Convention has gone into overtime. Ballots are supposedly locked up, waiting to be counted “tomorrow.”

But citizens and journalists on the floor had no trouble discerning that Ron Paul forces had seized the day and if the vote is fair, he will likely win the majority of delegates from Arizona to the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

If the victory in Arizona proves true, and remember, there is a tantalizing and suspicious delay, then Ron Paul will likely win the right to be nominated on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

It isn’t over yet, there are some Ron Paul states that have been won at the County or District level, that still need the formality of winning the state convention, but barring parliamentary jujitsu, it is on track to happen. It is big news.

However, I suspect Romney will walk away with the delegates because of vote stuffing:

Hamdan Azhar authored an article that covers numerous allegations of vote fraud at this election proceeding.

From this video, you can clearly tell that Ron Paul supporters dominated the convention in AZ.  If Romney wins the delegates, it can only be because of vote fraud.

Veterinary care, while still heavily regulated by the commissars of the state, is still essentially a free market service. The state doesn’t subsidize it, which means people have to pay out of pocket to treat their animals. Animal health insurance, which is not heavily regulated or subsidized, is cheaper than your cell phone bill. For example, pet health insurance costs about $100 a month or less for total coverage with a $100 annual deductible and a 10% co-pay. Those prices are unheard of for human coverage!  There is absolutely no reason why human medical care should cost what it does when a dog can get better care for the a tenth of the cost! Anyone know what the cost of human cancer treatment is running these days? $70,000 per case, as of 2010.

Consider that your dog is able to get instant treatment, no wait times, full access to experimental drugs, and all the pampering he deserves for the price of a nice two week vacation to the Bahamas.  Meanwhile, you are paying through your nose for basic coverage! Does that sound right to you? Do you think that more regulations and subsidies will bring down health care costs?

The state is spending nearly a trillion dollars a year on health care subsidies, and that’s just the federal programs. Has all this spending served to bring down costs, increase efficiency, improve service and help people live better lives? – Of course not. Which naturally means we must exponentially increase spending to the billionth power to save ourselves. Only Ben Bernanke can save us from ourselves!

Even if there were no programs to help the poor, isn’t it reasonable to think that the poorest among us would be capable of coming up with $10,000 to treat a dying family member? Don’t you think that charities would help cover the cost for those of us who are simply too poor to make the payment?

The poor in America today are driving around in cars and watching big screen TVs. I feel confident that even a McDonald’s employee making minimum wage could afford health insurance if he was able to buy it tax free on the open market for $100 a month. And if he couldn’t, someone would be there to help him out. Unlike our present system that hands out money to anyone and their brother, private charities would ensure that only those most in need would get donor’s cash.

Our present health care system isn’t an overpriced disaster because insurance companies are greedy. It is an overpriced disaster because the state is using violence to control the market and subsidize the medical industry. It is interesting to note that PolicyMic lists the “Health Care” category under the “Politics” topic listing. Would it strike you as odd if you saw technology listed under politics on a news site? Everyone knows that the health care industry in America isn’t a free market, even if they don’t consciously admit it to themselves.

Listen to Dr. Jane M. Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), speak at the 2009 Darden Health Care Conference. Orient lays down the reasons for our present unhinged medical costs, along with presenting some solutions that would solve our problems.

This article originally appeared on PolicyMic.

I was inspired to buy this Merkur 180 double edged safety razor after reading this article on Art of Manliness.com.

Previously, I was shaving with a Gillette Fusion cartridge razor that was costing me 30 bucks for an 8 pack of blades. I felt like I was being ripped off.  The prices for the cartridges are outrageous.  I also dislike the cheaper disposable razors because they seem to cause me too much irritation.

I was a bit hesitant to make the leap to an old school double edged razor because I didn’t want to risk hacking up my face, but after a few shaves with it, I’m so glad I did.  I did give myself a little nick on the first run, but it didn’t really bleed much and it was my fault for not shaving with the grain.  After a few shaves my confidence improved to the point where it seems just as natural as shaving with the cartridges.

The shaving process itself feels phenomenal!  For starters, the razor actually feels like a real machine in your hands. It’s got some heft to it, making it feel substantial instead of like a cheap plastic toy.  I also purchased some mentholated Poraso shaving soap to go with it.  The Poraso gives a tingling feeling that is a thousand times more refreshing than the crap out of a can, and by all appearances, it will last ten times longer.  The soap requires the use of a badger hair brush to apply, which also feels really good on the face.

After reading through lots of reviews on various blades, I decided to go with a 30 pack of Feather brand blades.  The blades are paper thin and platinum coated.  They seem to work quite well, so I’ll probably stick with them.  They only cost $.50 per blade, saving me an epic ton of money over the course of my life.  If you change your cartridge once a week, that’s a savings of $2.75 a week over a top quality cartridge, adding up to a $143 per year in savings.  If you really want to save some money, you can find blades that are half the cost of the Feathers, although I prefer to spend a little more if it means the shave will be cleaner.  I also purchased a razor stand to go with the razor and brush to keep them clean, dry and out of the way.

Shaving itself with this type of razor is a slightly different process.  As the Art of Manliness article explains, you don’t want to put pressure on the blade when you are shaving with it.  I found that a very mild pressure is necessary, but not too much.  After a few tries you’ll see what I mean.  If you apply absolutely no pressure, the blade will still cut, but it will feel like its bouncing off some of your whiskers instead of cutting through them.  With just a touch of pressure, you’ll feel the whiskers slide right off your face.  To start off with, don’t apply any pressure, and adjust from there till it feels right.

Give it a try!

You’ll feel more manly and save a ton of money in the process

Our story starts out at the U.S. border crossing into Canada, where three terrorists a day are apprehended by our men in blue.  In case you were unaware, there is a terrorist invasion going on right now and they are all coming here from CANADA!  Screw the Mexican border, we need a minefield on our borders to the north!

At any rate, the extreme threat level that Canadians pose to our citizens demands that the U.S. border patrol ask all sorts of invasive and meaningless questions.  This is simply for your own protection citizen.  So, in the process of determining whether or not our married couple were actually terrorists, a border patrol agent demanded to know what specific store they were planning to shop at.  The agent’s suspicions were aroused when the couple replied that they weren’t sure and that they just wanted to walk around the mall for a while.

Clearly the fact that our married couple was unsure about what store they wanted to shop at could only mean one thing.  THEY MUST BE TERRORISTS!

Our intrepid agents haul the couple off to the side for further questioning.  Of course, given that the couple are actually Al Qaeda terrorists in disguise, they begin demanding to know why they must obey the officers orders when they haven’t done anything wrong.

Obviously this is completely unacceptable behavior.  As every good citizen knows, police officers in America have total authority over you at all times.  The police don’t actually need a reason to detain you or demand you obey their orders.  They can simply walk up to you and order you to do jumping-jacks if they feel like it.  If you don’t obey, clearly you are a terrorist.

If you refuse to obey an officer’s arbitrary and capricious orders, and then have the gall to demand what the officer is going to do about it, you can bet your bottom dollar it’s not going to end well for you.  And this is where our story ends.  With our Canadian terrorists behind bars, and a safer America for all.

Sibel Edmonds’ new book, Classified Woman, is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence.

The experiences she recounts resemble K.’s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity.

I’ve read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government that referred to them as “page-turners” and “gripping dramas,” but I had never read a book that actually fit that description until now.

The F.B.I., the Justice Department, the White House, the Congress, the courts, the media, and the nonprofit industrial complex put Sibel Edmonds through hell. This book is her triumph over it all, and part of her contribution toward fixing the problems she uncovered and lived through.

Edmonds took a job as a translator at the FBI shortly after 9-11. She considered it her duty. Her goal was to prevent any more terrorist attacks. That’s where her thinking was at the time, although it has now changed dramatically. It’s rarely the people who sign up for a paycheck and healthcare who end up resisting or blowing a whistle.

Edmonds found at the FBI translation unit almost entirely two types of people. The first group was corrupt sociopaths, foreign spies, cheats and schemers indifferent to or working against U.S. national security. The second group was fearful bureaucrats unwilling to make waves. The ordinary competent person with good intentions who risks their job to “say something if you see something” is the rarest commodity. Hence the elite category that Edmonds found herself almost alone in: whistleblowers.

Two other translators, Behrooz Sarshar and Amin (no last name given), told Edmonds this was typical. They told her about an Iranian informant, a former head of SAVAK, the Iranian “intelligence” agency, who had been hired by the FBI in the early 1990s. He had warned these two interpreters in person in April 2001 of Osama bin Laden planning attacks on U.S. cities with airplanes, and had warned that some of the plotters were already in the United States. Sarshar and Amin had submitted a report marked VERY URGENT to Special Agent in Charge Thomas Frields, to no apparent effect. In the end of June they’d again met with the same informant and interpreted for FBI agents meeting with him. He’d emphatically warned that the attack would come within the next two months and urged them to tell the White House and the CIA. But the FBI agents, when pressed on this, told their interpreters that Frields was obliged to report everything, so the White House and other agencies no doubt already knew.

Reams of documents and audio files from before 9-11 had never been translated. Many more had never been competently or honestly translated. One afternoon in October 2001, Edmonds was asked to translate verbatim an audio file from July 2001 that had only been translated in summary form. She discovered that it contained a discussion of skyscraper construction, and in a section from September 12th a celebration of a successful mission. There was also discussion of possible future attacks. Edmonds was eager to inform the agents involved, but her supervisor Mike Feghali immediately put a halt to the project.

One has to wonder what U.S. public opinion would make of an Iranian having tried to prevent 9-11.

continue reading

Recently released FOIA documents support all of Edmond’s claims.

Sibel Edmonds Deposition, 8/8/09: PART 1 of 5

part 2

part 3

part 4

part 5

 The OECD’s Task Force on Tax and Development, meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, has launched the concept of Tax Inspectors Without Borders/ Inspecteurs des impôts sans frontières – a new initiative to help developing countries bolster their domestic revenues by making their tax systems fairer and more effective. Building on that concept, the OECD will  establish an independent foundation, to be up and running by the end of 2013, that will provide international auditing expertise and advice to help developing countries better address tax base erosion, including tax evasion and avoidance.

So the plan is to advise developing nations how to “address tax base erosion” – I assume that means they will teach tin pot dictatorships how to more effectively monitor and steal from the private entrepreneurs who happen to have the unfortunate luck of living within the arbitrary boundaries of their fiefdoms.

What a great goal.

A little background on the OECD:

The Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) was established in 1947 to run the US-financed Marshall Plan for reconstruction of a continent ravaged by war. By making individual governments recognize the interdependence of their economies, it paved the way for a new era of cooperation that was to change the face of Europe. Encouraged by its success and the prospect of carrying its work forward on a global stage, Canada and the US joined OEEC members in signing the new OECD Convention on 14 December 1960.  The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was officially born on 30 September 1961, when the Convention entered into force.

About the Marshall Plan:

The Marshall Plan aid was mostly used for the purchase of goods from the United States. The European nations had all but exhausted their foreign exchange reserves during the war, and the Marshall Plan aid represented almost their sole means of importing goods from abroad.

Initial criticism of the Marshall Plan came from a number of economists. Wilhelm Röpke, who influenced German Minister for Economy Ludwig Erhard in his economic recovery program, believed recovery would be found in eliminating central planning and restoring a market economy in Europe, especially in those countries which had adopted more fascist and corporatist economic policies. Röpke criticized the Marshall plan for forestalling the transition to the free market by subsidizing the current, failing systems. Erhard put Röpke’s theory into practice and would later credit Röpke’s influence for West Germany’s preeminent success.  Henry Hazlitt criticized the Marshall Plan in his 1947 book Will Dollars Save the World?, arguing that economic recovery comes through savings, capital accumulation and private enterprise, and not through large cash subsidies. Ludwig von Mises also criticized the Marshall Plan in 1951, believing that “the American subsidies make it possible for [Europe's] governments to conceal partially the disastrous effects of the various socialist measures they have adopted”. 

Former U.S. Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan gives most credit to Ludwig Erhard for Europe’s economic recovery. Greenspan writes in his memoir The Age of Turbulence that Erhard’s economic policies were the most important aspect of postwar Western Europe recovery, far outweighing the contributions of the Marshall Plan. He states that it was Erhard’s reductions in economic regulations that permitted Germany’s miraculous recovery, and that these policies also contributed to the recoveries of many other European countries.

With that kind of a history, who wouldn’t want them poking around their finances?

Abraham Lincoln had this to say about blacks:

“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people…

I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.” — [Debate at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858]

Confederate General Robert E. Lee had this to say about blacks:

In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. — [Freeman, Douglas S. (1934). R. E. Lee, A Biography]

The fact that Lincoln was an ardent racist, as were his slave owning Union Generals, should tip you off to the fact that the institution of slavery wasn’t the root cause of the violent conflict.  The U.S. is the only country in the world where a civil war occurred prior to the abolition of slavery.  The notion that the abolition of slavery required some kind of war is absurd.  In fact, the institution of slavery was on its way out the door prior to the Civil War, and it would have ended all on its own thanks to jury nullification and state nullification of federal laws.

How could this be so?

Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston explains:

 …the division of the country would give the slaves of the border Southern States so near and safe a refuge that those states would soon cease to have slaves and be compelled … to abandon the Confederacy.’ — [Craig L. Symonds, Joseph E. Johnston: A Civil War Biography, p. 93]

You see, when a slave state is bordered by a free state, the slaves now have somewhere to run.  Just as we saw in East Germany, and countless other socialist wastelands throughout history, people will run to where they are free if they are violently oppressed.  My own father escaped from communist Hungary by hopping a fence and running through a minefield into Austria.

In the articles of secession, the South is quite explicit about why they sought to leave the union.  South Carolina stated its reason for leaving the union as:

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made….

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. 

You see, the Southern states viewed the Constitution as a voluntary contract.  The South believed that since the feds weren’t holding up their end of the contract, they had every right to void it.  As far as the South was concerned, their union with the Northern states was entirely voluntary and dependent upon the North abiding by the Constitution they agreed to.

Slavery as an institution is impossible without the State imposing it.  If the State took no position on slavery, for or against it, the free market could not impose it on its own.  There were no electric fences around the plantations in the South.  The slaves could have walked off any time they wanted to.  What kept them there was the fact that they had no where to run to.  Government agents would have set about capturing them if they tried to flee, and anyone who harbored them would have been thrown into prison.  Without the State, the cost of keeping a slave tied to a plantation through force would have exceeded the revenues that slave would have generated.  Prisons are money losing propositions by nature.  They make money only because the state funds them with stolen tax money.

The North aggressed against the South in order to keep the flow of Southern tax money flowing into its coffers.  If the North had simply let the South walk away from the union, slavery would have collapsed on its own, just as it did everywhere else around the world.  While it is true that the South fired the first shots of the Civil War, they only did so because of threats made by the North leading them to conclude that an invasion was imminent.

The Civil War didn’t need to happen.  It was caused by the pure greed of Northern bureaucrats.  The Civil War may have brought about a quicker end to slavery, but it was at the cost of untold misery and hundreds of thousands of lives lost.  Further, the war destroyed the concept of a voluntary union of states.  Now the states are nothing more than puppet governments which are ruled by the high throne in Washington to the determent of all.

 If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. — [Washington, August 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Horace Greeley]

For more information on this subject, by historians who aren’t a bunch of communist sympathizers, listen to these lectures:

The Smoking Gun reports:

 Hollywood, Travolta explained, is “controlled by homosexual Jewish men who expect favors in return for sexual activity,” adding that he had “done things in his past that would make most people throw up.”

* Travolta remarked that when he started out, “he wasn’t even gay and that the taste of ‘cum’ would make him gag.” But he was smart enough to “learn to enjoy it, and when he began to make millions of dollars, that it all became well worth it.”

I almost feel sorry for Travolta.

Almost.

I disagree with some of what Herbener is presenting, so let’s go over the part of his speech that bothers me.

Herbener states:

The profit and loss test applies to all production in the market, including mining gold and minting coins. A gold mining company will produce when the revenues from the sale of its output exceed the costs of buying its inputs. The company moves labor, mining equipment, land, and other resources away from uses consumers find less valuable into gold mining, which consumers find more valuable. A minting company will produce when the revenues from the sale of its service in certifying gold exceed the costs of buying its inputs. The company moves labor, minting equipment, land, and other resources away from uses consumers find less valuable into minting coins, which consumers find more valuable.

Like the production of all other goods, production of money left to the market is regulated by profit and loss. Additional money is produced when demand for money increases or demand for other goods produced by the same resources decreases. If the demand for money increased, the value of gold coins would rise. Minting companies would increase production to capture the profit. As they increased the supply of certification service, its price would decline and as they increased their demands for resources to certify gold, resources prices would rise and the profit would dissipate. If demand for other goods declined, input prices would fall. Minting companies would increase production to capture the profit and, by doing so, eliminate profit from further production. In this way production of money in the market is socially optimal.²

While I fully agree with what Herbener is saying as it pertains to profit and loss governing the production of money (gold) in a free market, I disagree with his assertion that free market gold-as-money creation is the most “socially optimal” form of money and money creation.

Consider the following:

Imagine if all the gold in the world was used to represent the value of all the material goods in the world. The current global supply of gold in existence is roughly ten billion ounces.  Those ten billion ounces would have to be divided up to represent trillions of “things”.  The total dollar value of all assets in existence is in the quadrillions of dollars.  Exactly how much each ounce of gold would be worth if the entire world were to use gold as its primary money is hard to say, but it is safe to say that it would be enormous.

Given that we know this to be true, how much of a shift in production to the mining of gold could be expected following a transition to the gold standard?  I would wager that such a production shift would be epic in proportion.  Gold mining stocks would shoot through the roof, and absolutely massive amounts of resources would be shifted into the production and mining of gold.

What social benefit does humanity derive from gold bricks sitting in bank vaults?

What social benefit does humanity derive by diverting tremendous amounts of resources into the mining of gold, just so that after the gold is mined it can sit in bank vaults, completely unappreciated for its aesthetic beauty.  Those same resources could have been used to mine iron and make steel for the production of consumer goods.

The argument might be made that humanity needs money to trade with, so therefore the social benefit is derived from the existence of a money.  However, I would argue that is not true.  Humanity needs a money that cannot be arbitrarily inflated and is created through the free enterprise system, but this does NOT necessitate that the money be backed by anything in particular.

It is not any less feasible to fix the number of fiat dollars in circulation through a government decree than it is to fix the number of dollar units to an arbitrary weight of gold.  Congress could simply dissolve the Fed, mandate that all banks move to a 100% reserve system, and that the Treasury stop the issuance of new debt.  In fact, this would probably be less chaotic than a forced transition to a government mandated 100% reserve gold standard.  The key here is that the units of account cannot be arbitrarily inflated, which is the only thing the Austrian theory cares about as far as bad economic effects are concerned.   Austrian theory doesn’t particularly care what is chosen as a money, as long as whatever is chosen cannot be arbitrarily inflated.

Ron Paul argues for competition in money, whereby private mints would issue their own gold backed notes along side the existing fiat dollar framework.  As an anarchist, I’m all in favor of competition in the supply of money.  However, I want to make the case that gold-as-money is a poor choice in comparison to digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, because gold requires that massive real physical resources be diverted away from the production of consumer goods into the mining sector.  Further, the supply of gold is always increasing, thereby undermining the value of the existing money.

Additionally, there is a limit to the feasible division of gold as a money.  Once an arbitrary dollar amount is chosen to represent a specific weight of gold, should the economy experience tremendous growth over time, those units of account are not easily divisible beyond the smallest unit of account.  Imagine if a penny was worth a car, and the penny was the smallest unit of account.   Smaller and smaller fractions of gold would have to be created to deal with this problem over the long term.  While I think the market would find someway to cope with this problem, the problem doesn’t need to exist in the first place if the money is infinitely divisible to begin with.  Clearly gold is not infinitely divisible.

From this assessment, we can say that a “socially optimal” money should have the following characteristics, in addition to those already laid out by the Austrian School:

• A socially optimal money should not precipitate the mass diversion of physical resources into the production of money.
• A socially optimal money should be infinitely divisible to deal with deflation over the long term.
• A socially optimal money is one in which the units of account are prevented from being inflated or co-opted by the state.

Gold does not meet any of those characteristics.  As we have seen from our past history, the state can easily co-opt a gold money supply and inflate the units of account.  The units of account are simply ledger entries or paper notes, either of which can be manipulated by unscrupulous bureaucrats.  There is nothing that would mechanistically prevent this should the government decide to do it.

So let us contrast this with Bitcoin:

• Bitcoin is infinitely divisible, so deflation is never an issue.
• Bitcoin prevents the co-opting of the money supply through strong encryption and a decentralized ledger.  The state could not take over the supply of Bitcoins no matter how badly it may want to do so.
•  Bitcoin “mining” does not divert tremendous physical resources into the production of money, and in fact, mining adds to the security and efficiency of the network itself.
• Further, the maximum number of Bitcoins in existence is capped by its own algorithms. Any attempt to inflate the supply of Bitcoins would cause a fork in the block chain leading to a money that was incompatible with the existing money supply.  Inflated coins would be easily identifiable and people would have the option to reject them by refusing to use a software client that accepted them.

In short, Bitcoin addresses all of gold’s shortcomings.  Bitcoin is clearly a more “socially optimal” form of money than gold.  Further, since Bitcoin is entirely digital, it can be transmitted across a wire transaction, thereby eliminating the need for expensive insurance and shipping costs.  These costs needed to be accounted for under free banking, where banks would accept notes issued by other banks at a discount to cover the cost of transporting the gold between banks.  With Bitcoin, this is not an issue.  In fact, since Bitcoin is a global network, it would retain its full value between banks on differing continents!

While I appreciate the gold standard and Herbener’s address to Congress, I think it is time we stop advocating for Roman era money and start advocating for a 21st century upgrade.

This article appeared on PolicyMic.com