Monthly Archives: April 2010

Austrian Economics Rising

The name of this free-market economic school acknowledges the fact that many of the school’s “founding fathers” were Austrian nationals and disciples of the Austrian economist Karl Menger. Of course, the “Austrian school” is not a school in the traditional sense of the word denoting a physical structure; the term defines those who believe in pure free-market economics and laissez-faire principles. The Austrian school has a long history of amazingly accurate economic predictions while at the same time being completely ignored by the political establishment and virtually ignored by the mainstream media.

Prescient Predictions
But that lack of credibility to the public faded entirely once the Austrian school’s predictions again came true. One of the few exceptions to the media blackout against the Austrian school before 2008 was Euro Pacific Capital President Peter Schiff, now a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut, who had given a number of television interviews in advance of the current recession. Schiff repeatedly pointed out with astonishing accuracy what would happen and — more amazingly — why it would happen. Among the more famous of these interviews was an August 28, 2006 CNBC-TV debate with Reagan-era “supply-side school” economist Arthur Laffer. (Read more from thenewamerican.com)

TSA to download your iTunes? Government moves to expand Constitution-free zones

Federal security workers are now free to snoop through more than just your undergarments and luggage at the airport. Thanks to a recent series of federal court decisions, the digital belongings of international fliers are now open for inspection. This includes reading the saved e-mails on your laptop, scanning the address book on your iPhone or BlackBerry and closely scrutinizing your digital vacation snapshots.

Unlike the more common confiscations of dangerous Evian bottles and fingernail clippers, these searches are not being done in the name of safety. The digital seizures instead are part of a disturbing trend of federal agencies using legal gimmicks to sidestep Fourth Amendment constitutional protections. This became clear in an April 8 court ruling that found admissible the evidence obtained by officials who had peeped at a passenger’s laptop files at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. (Read more from washingtontimes.com)

San Francisco’s Unionized Garbage Monopoly squashes entrepreneur

Here in San Francisco picking up a garbage costs about $37/can per week.

A contractor I know got fed up, canceled his service as did his neighbor. They simply loaded both houses garbage into his truck, took it to the dump and paid the $40 to get rid of it. He charged his friend $10.

As a contractor he had to go to the dump all the time anyway. Pretty soon he had a small business, neighbors paying him $10 instead of $37, a difference of over $1400 per year or the price of a vacation or plasma TV for the family.

He sorted their garbage and turned in the recycling for more money. Normally the neighbors had to keep two cans, sort their garbage themselves and the Garbage monopoly took all the recycling fees anyway.

Pretty soon he hired a couple of neighborhood kids and his crew of 3 did both sides of residential streets at the same time. If you had an old monitor or TV, motor oil, or paint to get rid of he’d take that too, sometimes he’d charge you $5 + what the dump charged for the special item. Need an extra pickup? No problem. He’d work from 5am to 8am and he was earning $200 per day and his workers $75.

. . . .

When the local garbage company and its union found out about “Joe” they complained to the city. Within a year a law was passed stating that garbage service was now mandatory for all residents at the price the city’s monopoly charged, which was shortly raised. And Joe? For a while he still took our recyclables until he was fined $4000, even though he had our permission. It appears our household recyclables are owned by the Garbage company, not us, as it subsidizes our low cost of garbage service!
(Read more from globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com)

See also: Seattle Trash Collectors Make Average of $109,553 But Want More; 1,600 Apply to Haul Trash if Teamsters Strike

Governments target unpaid internships / in related news, college grads have no marketable skills

With job openings scarce for young people, the number of unpaid internships has climbed in recent years, leading federal and state regulators to worry that more employers are illegally using such internships for free labor. (Read more from nytimes.com)

All voluntary agreements between people should be legal. Government enforcers are pathological busy bodies trying to justify their generous tax-payer funded salaries.

Obama authorizes assassination of U.S. citizen

In late January, I wrote about the Obama administration’s “presidential assassination program,” whereby American citizens are targeted for killings far away from any battlefield, based exclusively on unchecked accusations by the Executive Branch that they’re involved in Terrorism. At the time, The Washington Post’s Dana Priest had noted deep in a long article that Obama had continued Bush’s policy (which Bush never actually implemented) of having the Joint Chiefs of Staff compile “hit lists” of Americans, and Priest suggested that the American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was on that list. The following week, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, acknowledged in Congressional testimony that the administration reserves the “right” to carry out such assassinations.

Today, both The New York Times and The Washington Post confirm that the Obama White House has now expressly authorized the CIA to kill al-Alwaki no matter where he is found, no matter his distance from a battlefield. I wrote at length about the extreme dangers and lawlessness of allowing the Executive Branch the power to murder U.S. citizens far away from a battlefield (i.e., while they’re sleeping, at home, with their children, etc.) and with no due process of any kind. I won’t repeat those arguments — they’re here and here — but I do want to highlight how unbelievably Orwellian and tyrannical this is in light of these new articles today. (Read more from salon.com)

Debt for Diploma Schemes

Financial aid programs are supposed to improve access and affordability in higher education. The effectiveness of these programs is increasingly being questioned as college attainment figures stagnate and the financial burden on students and families continues to climb year after year. This report identifies the main culprit for this unsatisfactory state of affairs as a misunderstanding of the effect of financial aid on schools.

Currently, financial aid programs take costs per student as a given, and attempt to offset some of those costs. However, costs are not given. In fact, it is widely acknowledged that colleges and universities are engaged in an academic arms race. Thus, when financial aid programs make more money available to schools, this money is spent and results in higher costs per student. The end result is more costly higher education, generally accompanied by higher tuition, which has negative implications for access and affordability. (Read more from globaleconomicanalysis.com)

Iowa City Tea Party draws diverse crowd

The movement doesn’t have a uniform platform, a national committee, or many names on ballots.
In general, Tea Party members oppose large government spending and congressional Democrats like Loebsack.

But beyond that, there are few commonalties among Iowa City’s self-described Tea Partiers.

While a number of attendees donned GOP gear, one Tea Party speaker, University of Iowa student Jeff Shipley, voiced his distrust of Republicans and Democrats alike.

“You have the stupid party on the right and the evil party on the left. Sometimes they do something that’s both stupid and evil; they call that bipartisanship,” he said. “I see no difference between Obama and Bush.” (Read more from dailyiowan.com)

Criminalize everything, because guilty men are easier to rule

This morning’s web browsing took me to a recent post by The Devil’s Kitchen, on a slightly different topic. Mr. Kitchen quotes this passage from Atlas Shrugged, on the topic of manufacturing criminals.

“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against—then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be enforced nor objectively interpreted—and you create a nation of law-breakers—and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.

Whether you know it or not, you are probably commiting an average of three felonies a day. Do these crimes harm anyone? No. But they’re a good source of funding when Uncle Sam needs some more food for the machine.

(Read more from thewhitedsepulchre.blogspot.com)

Obama sets Mars goal for America

“By 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first ever crew missions beyond the Moon into deep space,” he told his audience. “So, we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history.”

And then he added: “By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth, and a landing on Mars will follow.” (Read more from news.bbc.co.uk)

Sounds like an excellent use of other people’s money to me!

Ron Paul 41% Obama 42%

Ron Paul is a long-shot for the Republican nomination for president by any standard, but a Rasmussen poll finds him in a statistical tie with President Barack Obama.

The survey, released Wednesday by the conservative-leaning organization, finds Obama edging out Paul by 42 points to 41 in a hypothetical 2012 matchup. Eleven percent said they would prefer a different candidate, while 6 percent were undecided. (Read more from rawstory.com)

WSJ shills for big government

The Wall Street journal reports (here) that

The U.S. government’s rescue of wobbly companies and financial markets is starting to look far less expensive or long-lasting than once feared.

As momentum grows at companies that looked like zombies just a few months ago to repay taxpayers for lifelines they got during the financial crisis, the projected cost of the bailout is shrinking to just a fraction of previous estimates. Treasury Department officials say the tab is likely to reach $89 billion, which includes the Troubled Asset Relief Program, capital injections into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, loan guarantees by the Federal Housing Administration and Federal Reserve moves such as buying mortgage-backed securities and propping up the commercial-paper market.

completely ignoring the Fed’s balance sheet which ballooned by over $2 trilling since January.