Follow this vote to see who are for peace and who are the MIC’s interventionist puppets.
https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=170410660_1345e9a
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Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Erie Times E-Edition Article-Bill repealing Iraq war powers advances in Senate
Posted by M. C. on August 6, 2021
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Iraq, War Powers | Leave a Comment »
End the Shutdown, Again | Mises Wire
Posted by M. C. on August 6, 2021
Ultimately, we cannot outsource or delegate responsibility for our individual health to doctors, politicians, or medical officials. We cannot live without risk, and we certainly cannot force others to accept vaccinations or inhibit their natural exhalations with masks. Time and time again, politicians mislead us, creating alarmism to justify their own desire for political power and control. America can survive a virus, but we cannot survive lawless government which assumes new powers whenever a novel virus appears.
https://mises.org/wire/end-shutdown-again
Sixteen months ago, in March 2020, we argued for an end to government-imposed shutdowns of businesses, schools, churches, restaurants, and events due to the covid virus:
The shutdown of the American economy by government decree should end. The lasting and far-reaching harms caused by this authoritarian precedent far outweigh those caused by the COVID-19 virus. The American people—individuals, families, businesses—must decide for themselves how and when to reopen society and return to their daily lives.
Our claim was straightforward: government officials are singularly unqualified to consider the tradeoffs, economic and otherwise, behind their blunt and heavy-handed actions. They cannot assess risk for millions of individuals, they cannot decide what activities are essential or nonessential, and they cannot pay Americans to stay home and not work.
Since then, Frédéric Bastiat’s admonition that we consider the “unseen” results of state action has proven exceptionally wise. The economic devastation from shutting down the US economy will take years to fully grasp, especially in terms of opportunity cost. Congress and the Federal Reserve colluded to pump trillions of new dollars into the economy, dollars which unsurprisingly benefited the richest Americans and the biggest businesses. What this portends for inflation and average people’s savings is almost certainly negative. And the human toll, in terms of physical and mental illness engendered by the shutdowns—especially with respect to psychologically vulnerable children—is already enormous.
Beyond America, an estimated 121 million people in Africa, Haiti, and Venezuela may face starvation due to reduced food production last year.
Even accepting official government statistics, covid-19 “cases” (often asymptomatic) in the US are at about 35 million, or slightly more than 10 percent of the population. The infection fatality rate is debated, but certainly the virus is less than lethal for the vast majority who contract it—probably about 99 percent. And those 1 percent deaths are heavily concentrated among the over-eighty elderly and those with existing comorbidities. This is to say nothing of the fact that this infection fatality rate is not uniform for the whole population—it too depends on age and other demographics. Both groups could have been made safer at home while the rest of America simply took standard flu precautions.
This means the risk of hospitalization or death from covid-19 is exaggerated by government officials and media. But even if 10 million people had died, the underlying principle would be the same: government has neither the authority nor the wisdom to force Americans to shut down their lives and stay home.
Few imagined America would face new covid restrictions in fall 2021. Yet the Biden administration now contemplates new federal covid restrictions, while states and cities across America consider new mask mandates and vaccine requirements to enter public places and businesses. The mayor of New York City intends to prohibit unvaccinated people from engaging in many activities come September. Journalists call for the creation of a no-fly list for the unvaccinated, while social media companies deplatform alternative sources of information regarding covid, vaccines, and alternative treatments.1 Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claims the bizarre authority to extend a nationwide eviction moratorium, which represents a blatant regulatory taking without compensation to property owners. Vitiating private rental contracts is an especially disturbing precedent, and a laughable detour from the “rule of law.”
We strongly oppose all of these measures as deeply illiberal and incompatible with a decent, free society. It is not the job nor the right of politicians or health officials to wield authority over our physical bodies, compel medical treatment, or create an underclass of Americans. Whether any of these measures are legal, under federal, state, or local law, is a separate question, however dubious. But it is important to stress there is no public health exception to the federal constitution’s due process requirements.
“Public health” is undefined and undefinable, like any aggregate measure. Individuals value different things, and accordingly make different choices concerning their diet, lifestyle, and personal habits. If government and health officials really care about covid or delta risks, they should focus on obesity, exercise, diet, and sunshine to promote natural immunity. Now we are told the delta variant of the virus justifies new government action. But all viruses evolve, and new ones often present themselves during flu season. If every new virus or variation warrants shutdowns or new vaccines, we will face an unending dystopian hellscape of state intervention in our medical decisions.
Ultimately, we cannot outsource or delegate responsibility for our individual health to doctors, politicians, or medical officials. We cannot live without risk, and we certainly cannot force others to accept vaccinations or inhibit their natural exhalations with masks. Time and time again, politicians mislead us, creating alarmism to justify their own desire for political power and control. America can survive a virus, but we cannot survive lawless government which assumes new powers whenever a novel virus appears.
Good Americans can and must resist new shutdowns, mandates, or restrictions. The 2020 shutdowns were not “worth it,” and we should not make the same mistakes again in 2021.
Enough.
- 1. We offer no opinion regarding the efficacy or safety of vaccines, nor of suggested prophylactic treatments like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine. We stand by the principle of full and free expression, even when such expression takes the form of inaccurate or contested information. More importantly, who in government, social media companies, or publishing houses is so wise as to be annointed the decider of fact? And yes, private companies can deplatform people for spreading “misinformation.” The point is they shouldn’t, and they are illiberal in the broad sense when they do so.
Author:
The Editors of the Mises Institute.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Frédéric Bastiat, shutdown, state action | Leave a Comment »
The Role of Intellectuals and Anti-intellectuals | Mises Wire
Posted by M. C. on August 6, 2021
Indeed, it may well believe that many of your policies are mistaken. However, it must believe in the legitimacy of the institution of the state as such, and hence that even if a particular policy may be wrong, such a mistake is an “accident” that one must tolerate in view of some greater good provided by the state.
Yet how can one persuade the majority of the population to believe this? The answer is: only with the help of intellectuals.
https://mises.org/wire/role-intellectuals-and-anti-intellectuals
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. —Frédéric Bastiat
Let me begin with the definition of a state. What must an agent be able to do to qualify as a state? This agent must be able to insist that all conflicts among the inhabitants of a given territory be brought to him for ultimate decision-making or be subject to his final review. In particular, this agent must be able to insist that all conflicts involving him be adjudicated by him or his agent. And implied in the power to exclude all others from acting as ultimate judge, as the second defining characteristic of a state, is the agent’s power to tax: to unilaterally determine the price that justice seekers must pay for his services.
Based on this definition of a state, it is easy to understand why a desire to control a state might exist. For whoever is a monopolist of final arbitration within a given territory can make laws. And he who can legislate can also tax. Surely, this is an enviable position.
More difficult to understand is how anyone can get away with controlling a state. Why would others put up with such an institution?
I want to approach the answer to this question indirectly. Suppose you and your friends happen to be in control of such an extraordinary institution. What would you do to maintain your position (provided you didn’t have any moral scruples)? You would certainly use some of your tax income to hire some thugs. First: to make peace among your subjects so that they stay productive and there is something to tax in the future. But more importantly, because you might need these thugs for your own protection should the people wake up from their dogmatic slumber and challenge you.
This will not do, however, in particular if you and your friends are a small minority in comparison to the number of subjects. For a minority cannot lastingly rule a majority solely by brute force. It must rule by “opinion.” The majority of the population must be brought to voluntarily accept your rule. This is not to say that the majority must agree with every one of your measures. Indeed, it may well believe that many of your policies are mistaken. However, it must believe in the legitimacy of the institution of the state as such, and hence that even if a particular policy may be wrong, such a mistake is an “accident” that one must tolerate in view of some greater good provided by the state.
Yet how can one persuade the majority of the population to believe this? The answer is: only with the help of intellectuals.
How do you get the intellectuals to work for you? To this the answer is easy. The market demand for intellectual services is not exactly high and stable. Intellectuals would be at the mercy of the fleeting values of the masses, and the masses are uninterested in intellectual-philosophical concerns. The state, on the other hand, can accommodate the intellectuals’ typically over-inflated egos and offer them a warm, secure, and permanent berth in its apparatus.
However, it is not sufficient that you employ just some intellectuals. You must essentially employ them all—even the ones who work in areas far removed from those that you are primarily concerned with: that is, philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities. For even intellectuals working in mathematics or the natural sciences, for instance, can obviously think for themselves and so become potentially dangerous. It is thus important that you secure also their loyalty to the state. Put differently: you must become a monopolist. And this is best achieved if all “educational” institutions, from kindergarten to universities, are brought under state control and all teaching and researching personnel is “state certified.”
But what if the people do not want to become “educated”? For this, “education” must be made compulsory; and in order to subject the people to state controlled education for as long as possible, everyone must be declared equally “educable.” The intellectuals know such egalitarianism to be false, of course. Yet to proclaim nonsense such as “everyone is a potential Einstein if only given sufficient educational attention” pleases the masses and, in turn, provides for an almost limitless demand for intellectual services.
Author:
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is an Austrian school economist and libertarian/anarcho-capitalist philosopher. He is the founder and president of The Property and Freedom Society.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: intellectuals, State | Leave a Comment »
Watch “The Libertarian Movement Has Sunk in a Sea of Buts” on YouTube
Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2021
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: libertarian movement, Sea of Buts | Leave a Comment »
The Prisoner 2.0 – ep9: A CHANGE OF MIND (SirQ Audiovisual Restoration)
Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2021
Fauci as No. 2
You as No. 6
“We will just give him another dose.”
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Fauci, No. 2, No. 6, The prisoner | Leave a Comment »
Spain Complains To EU Over Soaring Cost Of Electricity; But Guess What… | ZeroHedge
Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2021
What you are never and it is the same for all corporate taxes: “Utility companies pass on the cost of that tax to their customers.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/spain-complains-eu-over-soaring-cost-electricity-guess-what
by Tyler Durden
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
Record High Prices
The Independent reports Record-High Electricity Bills Draw Criticism to Spain’s Gov’t.
The government says that the latest hikes in electricity bills are driven by spiraling prices of so-called carbon certificates, which give companies the right to release carbon dioxide, gas imports that Spain needs to complete its energy mix, and the surging power demand of the summer months.
In the latest effort to rein in prices, lawmakers were voting Wednesday on whether to uphold the government’s move last month to cut the value-added tax on most households’ electricity bills from 21% to 10% until the end of this year and to scrap a 7% tax on power generation for at least three months. Utility companies pass on the cost of that tax to their customers.
Facua, one of Spain’s biggest consumer rights platforms, said that Spaniards will see on average a 35% hike on their July electricity bill compared to the same month in 2020. The increase comes at a time when many households are grappling with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
Environment Minister Teresa Ribera said that she had written a letter to the EU’s executive branch stressing the need to reform the bloc’s electricity market, but warned that the upward trend in prices was likely to continue in the coming months.
Spain Urges EU to Act on Soaring Energy Prices
The Financial Times reports Spain Urges EU to Act on Soaring Energy Prices.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Teresa Ribera, Spain’s deputy prime minister for the environment, suggested that high prices and charges could provoke a backlash against carbon-cutting initiatives, with Spain in the “eye of the hurricane”.
Please Iron at at 2:00AM
In addition to complaining to the EU the Energy Department Has Suggestions like iron and cook at night.
The Facua-Consumers in Action organization claims that asking customers to use their appliances at night is “degrading” for the most vulnerable consumers.
“You can’t make the consumer responsible for their bill being high just because they haven’t done the ironing or put their appliances on during the cheapest periods,” Facua states.
“These times coincide with when people should be getting some rest.”
Why Are Spain’s Bills the Highest in the EU?
Spain currently counts on renewable energy sources for nearly 50% of its supply.
Guess what happens when you depend on unreliable sources?
Greens Demand More Clean Energy
But hey, the EU wants more clean energy.
Specifically, the EU seeks an energy tax that would drive up the costs of basically everything.
Sink America Plan
The Socialists and Greens in the US latched on to that idea.
On July 15, I commented The Greens Hijack Biden’s $3.5 Trillion Budget Proposal
On July 30, Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema expressed concerns over the plan to which AOC said “No Climate, No Deal”.
That is the preferred outcome of those with an ounce of common sense.
Previously, I proposed labeling the plan the Stagflation Guarantee Act of 2021.
However, that name is not catchy enough.
“Sink America Plan” is a better name for this proposed boondoggle.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: carbon certificates, electricity, EU, Facua, Spain, Teresa Ribera | Leave a Comment »
Next on the Agenda: War With China | The Libertarian Institute
Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2021
The Navy routinely conducts what it calls Freedom Of Navigation Operations (FONOPS), in the waters surrounding China, sailing warships through the waters, particularly in the South China Sea, usually provocatively close to Chinese controlled or claimed islands. Biden’s regime just conducted its fourth FONOP. Under Trump, in 2020 the U.S. conducted a record high total of nine FONOPs poking China.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/next-on-the-agenda-war-with-china/
In 2014, Lew Rockwell wrote, “Clearly the empire is targeting China…The U.S. seeks to encircle China and make it bow down before the hegemon. The increasing prosperity and freedom of China threatens the empire’s self-image.”
America’s new Cold War with China is a bi-partisan imperial project. In 2011, former President Barack Obama began it in earnest, dubbing it the “Asia Pivot.” The ‘pivot’ entails surrounding China with hundreds of bases and shifting two thirds of all U.S. naval and air forces to the Asia-Pacific, the greatest military buildup since World War II.
Putative outsider Donald Trump took office and sizably enlarged the U.S. military’s footprint in what is now referred to as the “Indo-Pacific” region and significantly increased provocations of China.
Now President Joe Biden and his hawk infested administration are escalating tensions with Beijing to heights previously unseen.
Biden has said bluntly that the U.S. is in “extreme competition” with China. In his first address to Congress, Biden said we are competing with China to “win the 21st century.” Space Force has plans for the moon to be a “militarized front.” They see it as a venue for a future war. Washington is spending more on the military and so called “defense” than at any time in the nation’s history. The Republican Party’s neocons say that even Biden’s 2022 national security budget request for more than $750 billion is not enough to counter China and are demanding that number be increased by tens of billions.
The Pentagon’s excuse for its record high spending is Beijing, the so called “pacing threat.” China poses a threat to the hawks’ world domination, at least that is what has been said by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley. According to the general, since the end of the previous Cold War, America has held “unchallenged global military, political and economic power. With the rise of China, that is changing and changing fast.”
The U.S. Military Is Incessantly Goading China
Last year, while Americans were distracted by the COVID-19 crisis, Trump’s war cabinet seized the opportunity to dramatically expand military activity around China. U.S. warships and aircraft carrier group strike forces sailing in the South China Sea were reported constantly. In July 2020, according to the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI), a Beijing based think tank, the U.S. flew record numbers of aerial surveillance flights in the South China Sea and near China’s coast. The number of reconnaissance flights averaged three to five per day. In the same month, the Trump administration formally rejected almost all of China’s claims to the waters in the South China Sea. This policy has since been reaffirmed by the Biden regime. Under both administrations, the U.S. has been challenging China, using the Navy’s Seventh Fleet, inserting itself into disputes between regional actors there whom all have overlapping claims on the waters including over various, sometimes unmanned, rocks, reefs, islands, islets, and archipelagos.
About Connor Freeman
Connor Freeman is a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com and Counterpunch, as well as the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He has also been a guest on Conflicts of Interest. You can follow him on Twitter @FreemansMind96
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: Asia Pivot, China, FONOPS, Pentagon, South China Sea, war | Leave a Comment »
The Worst O-limp-ics Ever | Chronicles
Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2021
Who needs medals when you’ve got $5 million in glistening lucrative contracts hanging around your neck?
I wonder how the woke would react if they realized the Olympic Games were the original War Games?
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/the-worst-o-limp-ics-ever/
Here if you are bothered.
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Nation of Renters | Chronicles
Posted by M. C. on August 5, 2021
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/nation-of-renters/
There is a storm on the horizon. Rootless corporations, major financial institutions, and the federal government are poised to fundamentally change the way Americans live by separating them from property ownership. The peculiar conjunctures of our time are paving a winding road to villeinage, with each turn bringing to clearer view the future of rent-serfdom awaiting most Americans. As the nation locked down last year, rent protections that continue today sheltered tenants from eviction. Independent of intentionality, these measures kneecapped mom-and-pop landlords—individuals who are more likely to own single units, homes, and duplexes. “The long-term concern here, over the course of a few years, is that a growing share of mom-and-pop landlords will be forced to sell and rents will go up,” Peter Hepburn, an assistant professor of sociology at Rutgers University who researches housing inequality, told Bloomberg News. “There’s a lot of private equity interest and a real possibility of growing consolidation.” Many smaller landlords report vulture-like solicitations to sell from major real estate firms waiting to swoop down on the carcass. With more than 6 million renter households behind on rent, they feel as if the system is stacked against them, and for good reason. Accompanying eviction moratoriums last year was the CARES Act. Americans took home stimulus checks, but wealthy hedge fund investors and real estate firms silently reaped billions in tax breaks while mom-and-pop landlords received comparatively little assistance. Among the financial giants that have taken a renewed interest in real estate is BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager. BlackRock is powerfully connected both in America and abroad. It recently became the first global asset manager licensed to start a wholly-owned onshore mutual fund business in China. Domestically, Chief Executive Larry Fink has raised a shadow government of former Treasury Department officials to insulate BlackRock from regulators. The firm’s influence is felt everywhere; it has even recently dipped into progressive politics. By using its voting power to compel Walmart, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Kroger to stop selling or severely restrict the sale of firearms and ammunition, BlackRock has practically enacted a de facto form of gun control. In April, it announced a racial audit to determine how it may have “contributed to racial inequities in the financial system.”
Pedro Gonzalez
Pedro Gonzalez is the Associate Editor at Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: BlackRock, CARES Act, rent-serfdom, Renters | Leave a Comment »
