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The Costs Are Mounting in this Government-Imposed Economic Collapse | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on March 24, 2020

In such circumstances, they demand “solutions” that only can make things worse, and there is no better way to make the masses vulnerable to disease than to impoverish them.

…that the default position is to assume the worst-case scenario and act accordingly.

The official’s decision was entirely logical given the incentives he faced. If anyone in Monterey were to die of COVID-19, he and other officials would be blamed. However, if the economy were to tank as a result of governmental actions, he would not be blamed. For that matter, officials and the media would blame capitalism, an explanation that almost certainly would sell with most of the population.

Politicians are rationally risk averse, and when they shift the costs of their decisions upon the people they ostensibly wish to protect, they are not acting out of character, either of themselves or of the political system. That they wreck the livelihoods of millions of people in the process is of no concern to them and their adoring media. Instead, blame the capitalists.

https://mises.org/wire/costs-are-mounting-government-imposed-economic-collapse?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=934aaa93c0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-934aaa93c0-228343965

Many of us have experienced the empty grocery shelves, the mad run on toilet paper (Calling Mr. Bidet?), and the ubiquitous face of Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes for Health on television broadcasts. Federal and local authorities are stretching their constitutional limits well beyond anything our ancestors would have recognized in their attempts to keep people away from each other and prevent social contact. (I am currently in Sacramento, California, which just has enacted a de facto version of local martial law.)

Almost everyone affected by this cascade of government orders—which pretty much means all of us—has an opinion ranging from that this is not a serious health threat (compared even to the common flu) to the possible need for martial law (from California governor Gavin Newsome). Military terms such as “shelter in place” now are part of ordinary language as governments at every level issue orders, with governors competing to see how they can be perceived as being “in charge” as they bark out increasingly draconian commands, threatening deadly force if necessary.

The New York Times, perhaps not surprisingly, has declared that “The sky is falling” and calls for near-total government takeover of everything. Likewise, Rod Dreher of the American Conservative demands that government arrest and imprison so-called price gougers. (The irony is that much of what Dreher writes in his TAC column condemns the political atmosphere that former totalitarian communist governments of Eastern Europe and the USSR created. He now is calling for the imposition of “economic crimes” that were absolutely central to governance in those societies.) Sojourners blames Ronald Reagan and Billy Graham for the current crisis, claiming they didn’t love government enough.

What we are seeing is how many people want governments to respond to a situation characterized by uncertainty. In such circumstances, they demand “solutions” that only can make things worse, and there is no better way to make the masses vulnerable to disease than to impoverish them. Furthermore, theNew York Times and the American Conservative‘s one-two punch demanding total subjectivity to the whims of government makes it very difficult for there to be even a smidgen of rational discussion as to what is taking place no matter what one’s ideological stance might be.

There are some things we do know. We know that this is not 1918, contra Fauci, and that COVID-19 is not the Spanish flu, which ravaged the globe for more than a year, killing more than a half million people in the USA alone. In 1918, the world was at war, and even without war, life expectancy in the United States was about fifty-three years (compared to near eighty today). Epidemics from measles, polio, whooping cough, yellow fever, cholera, and even malaria were a way of life for Americans, not to mention those in other parts of the globe that were poorer.

World War I brought malnourishment to Europe and belligerents elsewhere; medical care was vastly inferior to what exists today; military authorities regularly crowded people together on troopships; and political authorities held bond rallies in which the vast crowds help quickly spread disease. Hospitals used the ward system, which meant that sick people were warehoused together, many of them just waiting to die.

According to reports from that era, the Spanish flu claimed its victims quickly, sometimes within hours. Its mortality rate was about 2.5 percent (compared with about 0.1 percent or less with the common flu), and despite Fauci’s false assertion that the mortality rate of COVID-19 is “ten times” that of the regular flu, even those extreme numbers don’t come close to matching 1918.

Yet, that has not stopped politicians from making wild claims, including Elizabeth Warren’s declaration that up to 2.2 million Americans will die from this newest threat and that the worldwide death toll could be more than 10 million. Not surprisingly, Warren calls for a huge and immediate expansion of the welfare state—and for the government to print lots and lots of money—and near-dictatorial economic controls.

As noted earlier, all of this is a response to the uncertainty of just how much this virus will spread and what its actual effect will be on the health of Americans. What we do know (at least at this point), however, does not exactly raise our confidence in American politicians and the media, especially the elite media.

If the New York Times claims that “the sky is falling,” one would like to see some proof. We do know that up to this point—several weeks into this health situation—about 220 people have died (at this writing, although that number likely will rise today). Furthermore, as the link demonstrates, the vast majority of recorded COVID-19 cases in the USA are classified as “mild.” Were the threat from this virus like what was seen in 1918–19, the dead among us would be much greater.

Indeed, we are hearing so many conflicting views. The New York Times proclaims itself to be the “newspaper of record,” yet most of us doubt that the paper will give us anything but the most extreme versions or outright disinformation, and only those versions that will call for the imposition of unlimited government power and for Americans to surrender the few liberties they have left. The NYT, after all, is a “progressive” newspaper, and for more than a century, progressives have been declaring that ours should primarily be a government led by “experts,” not elected officials, as this recent NYT editorial column declares.

Unintended Consequences or Intended Results?

I recently spoke to the economist David Henderson, who lives in Monterey, California, where residents were ordered by local authorities to “shelter in place” even before Governor Newsome locked down the entire state. He told me that one of the local government officials who voted for virtual home confinement justified his actions by stating what we already know about politicians who are making decisions about things with uncertain outcomes: that the default position is to assume the worst-case scenario and act accordingly.

The official’s decision was entirely logical given the incentives he faced. If anyone in Monterey were to die of COVID-19, he and other officials would be blamed. However, if the economy were to tank as a result of governmental actions, he would not be blamed. For that matter, officials and the media would blame capitalism, an explanation that almost certainly would sell with most of the population.

When there is uncertainty, government officials generally will make the safest decision. And who can blame them? I am reminded of the “Baptists and Bootleggers” article that economist Bruce Yandle wrote for Regulation nearly forty years ago. As a young academic economist just coming to work for the Federal Trade Commission, Yandle was full of great ideas on “fixing” damage done by some regulations that seemed to defy common sense. He writes:

Not only does government rarely accomplish its stated goals at lowest cost, but often its regulators seem dedicated to choosing the highest-cost approach they can find. Because of all this, I and others in academia became convinced years ago that a massive program in economic education was needed to save the world from regulation. If we economists could just teach the regulators a little supply and demand, countless billions of dollars would be saved.

Using a term from the Bible, Yandle stated: “The field was white unto the harvest, and I was ready to educate the regulators.” However, he notes, it turned out that the FTC economists understood plenty of things and that the problem was not the ignorance of officials, but rather the structures of costs and incentives. Writes Yandle:

That marked the beginning of a new approach to my research on regulation. First, instead of assuming that regulators really intended to minimize costs but somehow proceeded to make crazy mistakes, I began to assume that they were not trying to minimize costs at all—at least not the costs I had been concerned with. They were trying to minimize their costs, just as most sensible people do.

There are a number of pictures that come to mind in the current situation. One is the picture that people such as Donald Trump and Anthony Fauci would like us to see, which is of experts in charge who are monitoring changes on the ground as they occur and giving orders to fix problems. However, there is another picture out there, one that will not be as well publicized: a herd of politicians careening from one crisis to another, giving conflicting orders and creating chaos and economic ruin.

Reality is much different. It is not that officials are trying to protect Americans from COVID-19 but unintentionally creating an economic train wreck as a consequence of their actions, which is what Heather MacDonald seems to be saying:

the damage to people’s livelihoods through the resulting economic contraction is real and widespread. Its health consequences will be more severe than those of the coronavirus, as Steve Malanga shows in City Journal. The people who can least afford to lose jobs will be the hardest hit by the assault on tourism. Small entrepreneurs, whether in manufacturing or the service sector, will struggle to stay afloat. Such unjustified, unpredicted economic havoc undermines government legitimacy.

No, if they are seen to prevent any deaths from this novel virus (or at least attempting to prevent deaths), then whatever the economic damage that results from imposing a virtual quarantine on working Americans and shutting down their livelihoods will be ignored, since many in the media and elsewhere already have blamed capitalism for the current meltdown. Don’t forget that prominent Democrats already are calling for charging Trump with negligent homicide because, in their opinion, he didn’t act quickly enough against COVID-19. Contrary to popular opinion, a successful economy does not grant government legitimacy; if that were true, then Franklin D. Roosevelt would be as universally derided as Adolph Hitler, given that his New Deal prolonged the Great Depression.

Note that politicians facing uncertain circumstances are going to act very differently than entrepreneurs, who also must act within the bounds of uncertainty. Politicians decide on the basis on what is best for themselves, something the ancients once called self-interest. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, even when operating in the realm of self-interest, must make decisions they believe will satisfy the needs of their consumers. The entrepreneur does not profit unless consumer choice says so; the politician prospers by ordering resources to be directed in a way that will best enhance the politician’s own public image and gain the most favorable media coverage.

The final irony is that in today’s media-driven world, the entrepreneur is vilified as a greedy capitalist parasite while the politician and government apparatchik are hailed as the savior. More than a decade ago, former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke engaged in irresponsible monetary behavior that helped trigger a massive financial meltdown and a subsequent recession. Because he turned on the printing presses full blast afterwards, trying to paper over the damage that he had had a major hand in creating, Time magazine put his picture on the cover and called him the man who “saved the world.” It is as though Time were praising an arsonist who burned down his family home—with all his family inside—but who then held the fire hose to help pump water into the building.

MacDonald concludes her article with the following statement:

One might have thought New York governor Andrew Cuomo a voice of reason when, a few days ago, he tried to tamp down the hysteria in a press conference, saying: “This is not Ebola, this is not SARS, this is not some science fiction movie come to life. The hysteria here is way out of line with the actuality and the facts.” And yet since then he called a state of emergency in New York, and he and Mayor Bill de Blasio have all but shut down the New York City economy. They, like most all U.S. politicians nowadays, have shown an overwhelming impulse to be irrationally risk averse.

She is wrong. Politicians are rationally risk averse, and when they shift the costs of their decisions upon the people they ostensibly wish to protect, they are not acting out of character, either of themselves or of the political system. That they wreck the livelihoods of millions of people in the process is of no concern to them and their adoring media. Instead, blame the capitalists.

 

 

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Why We Need Free Markets To Fight Pandemics | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on March 24, 2020

But what if I told you that none of that was true? What if I told you that all you need in this situation is what you need every day in a free society: prices that can rapidly and easily adjust to changes in supply and demand?

Allowing prices to work in healthcare is of the most vital necessity. Rather than the crude strategy of canceling care not considered “urgent” while stockpiling resources in preparation for the worst, it is better to allow resources to be directed to where they are most needed via the price mechanism.

https://mises.org/wire/why-we-need-free-markets-fight-pandemics?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=934aaa93c0-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-934aaa93c0-228343965

The natural response in the face of a pandemic like the one we are experiencing today with COVID-19 is to take immediate and direct action to curb the crisis. We are told we need to have extensive quarantines, citywide lockdowns, and shelter-in-place orders. We supposedly need to limit the number of goods people can buy so they don’t hoard them up, and definitely keep prices where they are at so people can afford to get what they need. Hospitals and clinics must cancel surgeries and new treatment plans to ensure that they are prepared for the waves of patients catching the illness. Restaurants need to switch to takeout models! Stores need to switch to online-only, close their retail establishments, and prioritize important shipments! Government needs to make sure everyone does what they should to ensure we all make it out alive!

But what if I told you that none of that was true? What if I told you that all you need in this situation is what you need every day in a free society: prices that can rapidly and easily adjust to changes in supply and demand?

I can almost hear teeth grinding and fists shaking in response, with exclamations that I must not care about my fellow man. But hear me out as I walk through the effects that such prices would have.

Let’s start with what has occurred so far. People have flooded grocery stores to stock up on everything from canned goods to toilet paper, emptying the shelves in the process. Hospitals and clinics have, “in line with CDC guidance” (this phrase is ubiquitous), canceled various appointments and planned treatments or surgeries. Amazon has limited third-party shipments to its warehouses to “high-demand” items. Increased remote work has crashed remote coordination services.  Governments everywhere have engaged in various levels of forced quarantining and shut down numerous businesses or ordinary ways of doing business.

None of these effects or approaches of mitigation and avoidance are a problem per se. Much of this would naturally be done in response to a pandemic and the effects on demand would be similar. But what can be said is that such measures are taken crudely and mostly blindly in the absence of free prices.

The empty shelves would not be so prevalent were prices allowed to rise in contradiction of governmental laws against “price gouging.” Such a result would lead to natural rationing by consumers and would incentivize the ramp-up of production of goods in high demand. At current prices, it is true that some companies could potentially bear a short-term loss to increase production as a charitable endeavor. However, marginal producers (and even nonmarginal ones as the crisis continues) will only be able to ramp up production, even temporarily, if the prices rise.

A rise in prices informs producers of shifts in relative demand. That hypothetically the price of milk does not rise as much as the price of eggs or canned beans is a vitally important piece of information that cannot be conveyed through empty shelves alone. Rising prices would induce makers of the latter goods to expand production much more than producers of the former, and they would also encourage new entrants to prioritize accordingly.

We can observe the same mechanism at work in price drops, which are normally allowed to happen. The decreased demand for certain goods, such as tickets to events, flights, or crowded dine-in restaurants, signals these industries to find alternatives. These may include restaurants shifting to a takeout model, closing their main dining areas for the duration of the crisis, as has occurred in some places, or turning those dining areas into temporary warehouses for needed items (though this option seems foreclosed due to frozen prices disincentivizing the additional production that would make this helpful). Firms may also temporarily shutter their doors and send their workers into the labor force as potential temporary employees in areas that need them to produce vital necessities. (Instead, the government approach has been to propose bailouts and universal income checks while in some cases mandating the clear waste of resources.)

Price changes also differ by location, which naturally encourages the market to focus on the hardest-hit areas. A pandemic will not hit the entire country all at once, and although it may seem obvious (particularly at first) which areas are the worst off, the information that prices convey is vital to determining what the actual needs are. It may be that Seattle and New York City are the worst hit right now, but that alone does not tell you that Seattle is really needing ventilators while New York is short on nurses.

Allowing prices to work in healthcare is of the most vital necessity. Rather than the crude strategy of canceling care not considered “urgent” while stockpiling resources in preparation for the worst, it is better to allow resources to be directed to where they are most needed via the price mechanism. Regulations restricting the supply of care, including the construction of new facilities, the licensing of existing ones, and the number of people allowed to be licensed should be suspended (or, better, repealed). High prices for care, particularly for specialized laborers such as doctors and nurses, would invite the sector to expand its capacity by accepting med school trainees or professionals with lapsed licenses as temporary employees. High prices for emergency coronavirus care, particularly if permitted to be higher in the worst-off regions, would induce medical professionals to temporarily switch specialization and move to areas where they can do the most good. People taken in from shuttered businesses might be able to provide basic care and monitoring with minimal training, allowing those with more specialized training to prioritize the care that needs it most.

Insurance companies facing these high emergency costs would be heavily incentivized to come up with additional ways to mitigate the risk of spreading the illness. Tests that people could take at home and drop off at collection points, for instance, might allow for testing to be done without queues of potentially sick people that will almost certainly be sick when they get done. Even payments (and possibly delivery of necessities) to at-risk patients to incentivize a self-quarantine would be possible. And, most importantly, there are likely very many other possibilities that I, as a single person, have not and might not even be able to come up with. This kind of innovation and adaptation can only be optimally handled by entrepreneurs responding to changing prices, not central planners, no matter how intelligent, knowledgeable, or well intentioned.

The free market price system allows for the rapid and intensive reallocation of resources that is necessary in a crisis scenario like a pandemic. What needs to be done in such a crisis is not to attempt to steer the market to ensure that it provides what is needed (this approach is almost guaranteed to make the situation worse than it has to be), but to let it free to do what it always does: match the goals of entrepreneurial producers with the needs of the populace.

Originally published at disinthrallment.com.

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Clyburn Brazenly Admits What We Suspected: Dems Using COVID To Change America To Fit Their Vision

Posted by M. C. on March 24, 2020

“This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,” the South Carolina Democrat reportedly told his fellow Democratic lawmakers during the conference call.

…Rahm Emanuel, who once quipped in 2008, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/clyburn-brazenly-admits-suspected-dems-using-covid-change-america-fit-vision/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=PostBottomSharingButtons&utm_campaign=websitesharingbuttons

By Ben Marquis

On Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tossed a purely partisan grenade into the Senate and utterly destroyed a bipartisan legislative package intended to provide desperately needed economic relief to the country amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Both Republican and Democratic senators had spent several days negotiating a nearly $2 trillion package that would provide financial assistance to workers, small businesses, large corporations and certain industries hit particularly hard by the economic shutdown in response to the public health crisis.

Then Pelosi showed up and declared the package not good enough while touting a number of demands that, at best, were only tangentially related to the coronavirus issue, which prompted Senate Democrats to essentially scuttle the whole thing on Sunday afternoon.

In retrospect, however, we all should have seen this coming, based on a rather telling comment days earlier from one of the California Democrat’s top allies in the House.

The Hill reported that, on Thursday, House Democrats held a conference call to discuss both the efforts in the Senate to construct a coronavirus fiscal relief package as well as ideas for a package of their own for the same alleged purpose.

Based on what was reportedly discussed during that call, however, it was clear that House Democrats viewed the current moment as an opportunity worth seizing to try and push through some of their preferred policies. Some of those policies had little or no bearing whatsoever on providing economic relief to laid-off workers, small businesses on the brink of closure, or large corporations struggling to avoid bankruptcy.

In fact, it was House Majority Whip James Clyburn, third in line among House Democratic leadership, who gave the whole game away with one single comment.

“This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,” the South Carolina Democrat reportedly told his fellow Democratic lawmakers during the conference call.

That remark from Clyburn bears a strong resemblance to an infamous quote attributed to former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who once quipped in 2008, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

In other words, exploiting the opportunity presented by a crisis — when the political opposition is certainly more inclined to compromise in order to address an emergency — to press forward with certain agenda items and policy prescriptions that otherwise would be non-starters or be bogged down by debate.

Getting back to Clyburn’s comment and the report from The Hill, a number of proposals put forward by Democrats in that conference call were mentioned. Some were related to providing economic relief amid the growing financial crisis, while others were merely priority items on the Democratic wish list that had nothing to do with dealing with a global pandemic or saving the nation’s economy from an impending depression.

Clyburn himself suggested that the current crisis would be a great time to legislatively provide for 100 percent broadband internet coverage for the entirety of the United States. He used the fact that schools across the nation are currently shut down for weeks, if not months, and students were being forced to continue their schooling online from home as the reasoning behind his suggestion. Read the rest of this entry »

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In Spain You Can’t Use Your Own Back Yard. Police Make Sure of It. | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on March 24, 2020

https://mises.org/wire/spain-you-cant-use-your-own-back-yard-police-make-sure-it?utm_source=Mises+Institute+Subscriptions&utm_campaign=3a1ddeaf83-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_21_2018_9_59_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8b52b2e1c0-3a1ddeaf83-228343965

The last days and weeks of the coronavirus epidemic give an interesting insight into the human psyche. Elementary liberties are restricted all over the world, such as the freedom of movement or private property. Yet most people accept these restrictions without blinking, as the state declares their indispensability.

A chronology of the events in Madrid: on Sunday, March 8, a large World Women’s Day demonstration against the alleged rule of the Patriachate was held. There were 120,000 particiants, and members of the government took part in it, marching side by side in the first row. They had called for strong participation. Just one day later it was announced that starting on Wednesday, March 11, kindergartens, schools, and universities in Madrid would be closed. Since Sunday, March 14, there a curfew has been in place, which is enforced by police and military force. Cyclists and joggers trying to keep fit in the fresh air have been fined heavily. Spaniards are no longer even allowed to be in the private gardens of apartment blocks, even if families take turns using them. In short, we are no longer allowed to use our own gardens. They have been temporarily expropriated.

Most people are little bothered by the fact that the state is violating their freedom massively. They regard it as necessary and good. They do not question the state´s authority to restrict our freedom at all. Rather, they denounce those who want to move freely and make use of their property rights. When two brothers were seen playing soccer in the garden of an acquaintance’s apartment block, the police were called.

People denounce playing children, who are regarded as harmful to public health, and put up posters saying “Quédate en casa” (stay at home). This is a block warden mentality. The most worrying thing is the high number of willing state collaborators. The parallels with the past are unnoticed. No one seems to care, and it is not even discussed.

If people are just scared enough, they entrust themselves to a (temporary) dictatorship without grumbling. They give up their freedom in the hope of being saved by state leaders advised by wise experts. Fear makes people controllable. Instead of protesting against the violation of their property rights, they clap their hands every day at 8 p.m. in Spain. Initially, the applause was mainly to show support for doctors and nurses, but in the meantime cheers for the police have been mixed in.

The state leaders plan the violation of liberty centrally. They do not have the necessary information to give a rational answer to the coronacrisis. They take into account the benefits of the curfew and economic shutdown but not the costs, because these are not quantifiable.

One of the immediate costs is the loss of a more rapid immunization of the population. But there are other health costs. Being confined to one’s own four walls, with the corresponding lack of physical exercise, will lead to increased cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, strokes, and thromboses, among other things. The psychological burden of being locked up is especially immense. The psychological strain will cause some marriages and families to break up; trauma and depression will be created.

The economic collapse triggered by the political reaction to the coronavirus has its own health costs, such as entrepreneurs who suffer heart attacks and unemployed people who fall into depression or alcohol.

And then there are the economic costs in the narrower sense. The standard of living will fall, perhaps considerably. That depends on how long economic life remains switched off. Sooner or later, supply chains will be threatened, even for essential medicines and food. Already today the range of products in Spanish supermarkets is reduced. This too can shorten lives. Worldwide, a decline in the standard of living will hit especially the poorest of the poor, whose supply of food and medicines will be greatly diminished.

As the costs and benefits are not quantifiable, it is hubris to rely on central planning to address the COVID-19 epidemic and come to the decision to paralyze an entire country—even entire continents (not to mention the (temporary) disappearance of freedom). Unfortunately, frightened people seem to shed few tears for freedom. There is a shortcut to serfdom, and it is called fear.

 

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Like Freedom? Then You Won’t Like the FREEDOM Act

Posted by M. C. on March 24, 2020

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/march/23/like-freedom-then-you-won-t-like-the-freedom-act/

Written by Ron Paul

Last Monday, a bipartisan group of Senators and a coalition including libertarian and progressive activists thwarted a scheme to ram through the Senate legislation renewing three provisions of the USA FREEDOM Act (previously known as the USA PATRIOT Act). The bill had already been rushed through the House of Representatives, and most expected it to sail through the Senate. But, instead, Senate leadership had to settle for a 77-day extension.

Senate leadership was also forced to allow consideration of several amendments at a later date. Included is Sen. Rand Paul’s amendment that would forbid the FISA court from issuing warrants targeting American citizens.

Deep state supporters claim the expiring business records provision (which authorizes the collection of our communications and was at the center of Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations), lone wolf provision (which allows government to subject an individual with no known ties to terrorists to warrantless surveillance), and roving wiretaps provision (which allows government to monitor communications on any device that may be used by a targeted individual) are necessary to keep Americans safe. But, since Congress first passed the PATRIOT Act almost 20 years ago, mass surveillance, warrantless wiretapping, and bulk data collection have not stopped a single terrorist attack.

The legislation does have “reforms” aimed at protecting civil liberties, but these new protections contain loopholes that render the protections meaningless. For example, the bill requires those targeted for surveillance to be notified that the government spied on them. However, this requirement can be waived if the government simply claims — not proves but just clams — that notifying the target would harm “national security.”

The notice provision also only applies to the target of an investigations. So, if you were caught up in a federal investigation because a coworker is being targeted and you shared an office computer, or if a store clerk reported to the government you and others bought pressure cookers, the government could collect your phone records, texts, and social media posts without giving you the chance to challenge the government’s actions.

The bill also makes some reforms to the special FISA court, which serves as a rubber stamp for the intelligence community. These reforms are mainly aimed at protecting political campaigns and candidates. They would not stop the FISA court from rubber-stamping surveillance on organizations that oppose the welfare-warfare-surveillance-fiat money status quo.

Anything limiting warrantless wiretapping and mass surveillance should be supported. However, nothing short of repeal of the USA FREEDOM Act will restore respect for our right to live our lives free of the fear that Big Brother is watching. The path to liberty, peace, and prosperity starts with eliminating all unconstitutional laws and returning to a system of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, sound money, and a foreign policy that seeks peaceful commerce and friendship with all instead of seeking new monsters to destroy.

Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
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Quarantine Meditations: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on March 24, 2020

FYI if your government is pushing the suspension of civil liberties before coming up with a healthcare plan or providing you with financial security in an unprecedented economic crisis, then their desire to suspend civil liberties has nothing to do with fighting the pandemic.

Powerful people will work to advance authoritarian agendas which they have no intention of reversing during this pandemic. They are working on it right now. This is not a possibility, this is a certainty.

Sanctions are the only form of warfare where it is considered legal and acceptable to deliberately target a civilian population with deadly force. That’s what they’ve been doing this whole time. It’s what they want. The pandemic only helps them.

Maybe I just oppose warmongering.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/03/24/quarantine-meditations-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix/

author: Caitlin Johnstone

The world is messed up because powerful people think in terms of narrative control, and ordinary people don’t. Change that and you change the world.

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Hot tip: Dump all stocks and invest in becoming the kind of decent human being who people will want to help in chaotic times.

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Let’s go humans! The sooner we can put aside our differences all around the world and unite to beat this virus the sooner we can get back to exploiting each other over an imaginary monetary system and murdering each other with bombs!

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FYI if your government is pushing the suspension of civil liberties before coming up with a healthcare plan or providing you with financial security in an unprecedented economic crisis, then their desire to suspend civil liberties has nothing to do with fighting the pandemic.

~

Protecting the citizenry in situations like this is the thing governments are supposed to be for. It’s the single most compelling argument for their existence, by a very wide margin. Any government which doesn’t take good care of its people right now does not deserve to exist.

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If this virus hasn’t yet caused you to seriously re-evaluate your priorities in life, it should. For better or worse we appear to be standing on the brink of some very significant worldwide paradigm shifts. Where you choose to put your mental energy right now should reflect this.

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Powerful people will work to advance authoritarian agendas which they have no intention of reversing during this pandemic. They are working on it right now. This is not a possibility, this is a certainty.

~

I love that so many people are pleading with the Trump administration to end Iran sanctions during the pandemic because it’s killing civilians, but it won’t work. They know it’s killing civilians, and they know it will kill a lot more. That has always been the objective. Pompeo has openly admitted that Iran is being sanctioned no so that its government will change its behavior, but so that the Iranian people will get so desperate from all the suffering and devastation that they rise up and overthrow their government.

Sanctions are the only form of warfare where it is considered legal and acceptable to deliberately target a civilian population with deadly force. That’s what they’ve been doing this whole time. It’s what they want. The pandemic only helps them.

Every single Iranian who is dying because of these sanctions is on Trump. The MAGA narrative that he’s better on war than Obama has been thoroughly invalidated by every metric.

~

Humanity is uniting against this common crisis. We’re uniting in our desire to beat this virus and protect our more vulnerable populations, and in a shared awareness that this thing could technically kill any of us. If ever there was a catalyst for a shift in consciousness, this is it.

~

We appear to be watching a confluence of factors on a trajectory to push the world toward vast changes which may leave it unrecognizable in some ways within a matter of months. Maybe we don’t need to pour as much mental energy as we used to into sectarian infighting and petty social media spats.

~

Nothing’s the same and it never will be again. Fuck seizing the means of production. Seize this moment. Take back everything they took from us and refuse to give it back.

Also seize the means of production because you can and why not.

~

Every time there’s a major mainstream narrative shift half my mentions are people going “Caitlin I’m so disappointed in you for saying something I disagree with. Normally I agree with you but now here you are not agreeing with me, like you’re an independent person or something.”

~

Imagine being such a bleating, brainwashed NPC cuck that you believe China is your enemy.

~

The nation that is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and engaging in countless undeclared military operations around the world is the belligerent rogue nation. Everyone else is, at worst, acting in self-defense in response to this belligerence.

Governments using force to dominate the planet put every human being on a trajectory toward extinction via nuclear armageddon, and should be vehemently opposed. One government is the worst offender in this area, by a very, very, very wide margin. And it ain’t China.

~

Every few weeks, depending on who the empire is targeting at a given moment, I swing from arguing with liberals about a nation liberals hate to arguing with conservatives about a nation conservatives hate, or vice versa. And they always think they’re different from the others.

“Caitlin I normally agree with you, but I don’t know what’s gotten into you supporting Evil Nation X like this!” they say, firmly believing that they’re doing something original and unique.

“This Official Bad Guy is different from all the others, Caitlin!” they say. “This one’s real!” It’s like listening to a serial loser-dater explain that her new boyfriend with the neck tattoo is actually a really great guy.

~

I oppose warmongering against Venezuela and China and they say it’s because I love communism.

I oppose warmongering against Iran and they say it’s because I love theocracy.

I oppose warmongering against Russia and Syria and they say it’s because I love autocracy.

Maybe I just oppose warmongering.

~

Rank-and-file Dems unwittingly consented to cold war escalations against Russia out of concern for election interference. Rank-and-file Republicans are now doing the same with China out of concern for a virus outbreak. But both escalations were pre-planned by government agencies.

~

The only reason people don’t worry about cold war escalations against China and Russia like they do about hot wars with non-nuclear powers is because we got lucky in the last cold war. But that’s all it was: sheer, dumb luck. No one was ever in control during that time. Not once.

Nobody likes to think about the fact that we came within a hair’s breadth of total annihilation on multiple occasions during the last cold war due to communication breakdowns and tech malfunctions. That can easily happen again, but without getting lucky. People have a tendency to believe they succeeded because they were in control and lost because they lost control, but nobody was ever in control. We survived by sheer, dumb luck.

With hot wars they take a few lives here, a few lives there. With cold war it’s an all-or-nothing dice roll that nothing goes wrong; no tech glitches, no miscommunications, even when things get very tense. And you roll those dice every single day. And with every escalation you add more dice.

~

All arguments the US government makes against any “regime” it dislikes are completely invalidated by its alliance with Saudi Arabia alone, to say nothing of all the other tyrannical governments it’s allied with.

~

If you find yourself thinking more thoughts about China’s authoritarian government than about the abusive authoritarian governments of US allies like Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, the Philippines etc, it’s because you’ve been propagandized to align you with US interests.

~

Establishment narrative managers aim their publications not at their followers but at other establishment narrative managers, seeking their approval. Alternative media should always do the opposite and address the people; too many also engage in upward-looking approval-seeking.

~

Everything’s been in a steadily accelerating pattern of unpatterning for a good while now, since well before the virus. There are people who think they’ll be able to shore up control through this thing, but you have no control in a tornado. Nature, which includes homo sapiens, wins out.

_________________________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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“The Coming War On China”  –  Watch John Pilger’s Powerfully Relevant Documentary – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on March 24, 2020

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/03/23/the-coming-war-on-china%e2%80%8a-%e2%80%8awatch-john-pilgers-powerfully-relevant-documentary/

author: Caitlin Johnstone

“The aim of this film is to break a silence: the United States and China may well be on the road to war, and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable,” Pilger says in his 2016 documentary The Coming War on China, which you can watch free on Youtube here or on Vimeo here.

“In a few years China has become the world’s second-biggest economic power,” Pilger’s introduction continues. “The United States is the world’s biggest military power, with bases and missiles and ships covering every continent and every ocean. China is a threat to this dominance, says Washington. But who is the threat? This film is about shifting power, and great danger.”

As we’ve been discussing for years now, the relentless quest of the US-centralized empire-like power alliance for total world domination has put it on a collision course with the surging economic powerhouse of China which refuses to be absorbed into the imperial blob. The empire’s continued existence depends upon its ability to undermine China before it grows too powerful or the empire grows too weak to stop its ascent, at which point global hegemony becomes impossible and we are living in a truly multipolar world.

China has therefore always been the final boss fight in the global campaign of violence and domination by what Pilger calls the “empire which never speaks its name”. And the ramping up of anti-China narrative management by the US government indicates that we are being psychologically primed to accept this world-threatening confrontation, just as Pilger warned in 2016.

“The danger of confrontation grows by the day,” Pilger says.

The powerful film breaks down the way the USA has been encircling China with a “noose” of military bases since the Korean War, which all have massive amounts of military firepower, including nuclear firepower, pointed right at China’s cities. Pilger shows the psychopathic toll this has inflicted upon the people who live in the areas where the US war machine has set up shop in the Pacific, including an especially enraging segment on the use of Bikini Atoll natives as human guinea pigs to test the effects of nuclear radiation on people. Also deeply disturbing is the revelation of just how close the US came to launching nuclear warheads at China due to a miscommunication during the Cuban missile crisis.

The film describes China’s recent history and explains its climb in economic power which led us to this point, and the USA’s generations-long history of provocation and hostility toward its government. It also addresses the silly projection so many westerners harbor that if the US wasn’t bullying and slaughtering the world into compliance, China would take over doing the same.

Back in 2016 it was harder for people to see this escalation on the horizon, but now in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic we’re hearing a frantic, disproportionate amount of anti-China sentiment from the Trump administration and its supporters, in the same way we heard Russia hysteria amplified over the last three years by Trump’s enemies. Trump was politically pressured to dangerously escalate cold war tensions with Russia, and he’s now being politically incentivized to pass the blame for his administration’s spectacular failures in addressing this pandemic on to the Chinese government in a way which manufactures support for escalations on that front as well. Two different narratives, same agenda.

“The new president, Donald Trump, has a problem with China,” Pilger says at the end of the documentary. “The urgent question now is will Trump continue with the provocations revealed in this film and take us all to the edge of war?”

The answer to that question appears to be coalescing. It’s a good time for us all to watch this film.

__________________________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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No Respite for the Wicked, Pompeo Unleashed

Posted by M. C. on March 24, 2020

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/03/23/no-respite-for-the-wicked-pompeo-unleashed/

 Tom Luongo

There are few things in this life that make me more sick to my stomach than watching Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talking. He truly is one of the evilest men I’ve ever had the displeasure of covering.

Into the insanity of the over-reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak, Pompeo wasted no time ramping up sanctions on firms doing any business with Iran, one of the countries worse-hit by this virus to date.

It’s a seemingly endless refrain, everyday, more sanctions on Chinese, Swiss and South African firms for having the temerity in these deflating times to buy oil from someone Pompeo and his gang of heartless psychopaths disapprove of.

This goes far beyond just the oil industry. Even though I’m well aware that Russia’s crashing the price of oil was itself a hybrid war attack on U.S. capital markets. One that has had, to date, devastating effect.

While Pompeo mouths the words publicly that humanitarian aid is exempted from sanctions on Iran, the U.S. is pursuing immense pressure on companies to not do so anyway while the State Dept. bureaucracy takes its sweet time processing waiver applications.

Pompeo and his ilk only think in terms of civilizational warfare. They have become so subsumed by their big war for the moral high ground to prove American exceptionalism that they have lost any shred of humanity they may have ever had.

Because for Pompeo in times like these to stick to his talking points and for his office to continue excising Iran from the global economy when we’re supposed to be coming together to fight a global pandemic is the height of soullessness.

And it speaks to the much bigger problem that infects all of our political thinking. There comes a moment when politics and gaining political advantage have to take a back seat to doing the right thing.

I’ve actually seen moments of that impulse from the Democratic leadership in the U.S. Will wonders never cease?!

Thinking only in Manichean terms of good vs. evil and dehumanizing your opponents is actually costlier than reversing course right now. Because honey is always better at attracting flies than vinegar.

But, unfortunately, that is not the character of the Trump administration.

It can only think in terms of direct leverage and opportunity to hold onto what they think they’ve achieved. So, until President Trump is no longer consumed with coordinating efforts to control COVID-19 Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper are in charge of foreign policy. They will continue the playbook that has been well established.

Maximum pressure on Iran, hurt China any way they can, hold onto what they have in Syria, stay in Iraq.

To that end Iraqi President Barham Salei nominated Pompeo’s best choice to replace Prime Minister Adil Abdel Mahdi to throw Iraq’s future into complete turmoil. According to Elijah Magnier, Adnan al-Zarfi is a U.S. asset through and through.

And this looks like Pompeo’s Hail Mary to retain U.S. legal presence in Iraq after the Iraqi parliament adopted a measure to demand withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country. Airstrikes against U.S. bases in Iraq continue on a near daily basis and there have been reports of U.S. base closures and redeployments at the same time.

This move looks like desperation by Pompeo et.al. to finally separate the Hashd al-Shaabi from Iraq’s official military. So that airstrikes against them can be carried out under the definition of ‘fighting Iranian terrorism.’

As Magnier points out in the article above if al-Zarfi puts a government together the war in Iraq will expand just as the U.S. is losing further control in Syria after Turkish President Erdogan’s disastrous attempt to remake the front in Idlib. That ended with his effective surrender to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The more I watch these moves by Pompeo the more sympathetic I become to the most sinister theories about COVID-19, its origins and its launch around the world. Read Pepe Escobar’s latest to get an idea of how dark and twisted this tale could be.

It is sad that, to me, I see no reason to doubt Pompeo and his ilk in the U.S. government wouldn’t do something like that to spark political and social upheaval in those places most targeted by U.S. hybrid war tactics.

But, at the same time, I can see the other side of it, a vicious strike back by China against its tormentors. And China’s government does itself, in my mind, no favors threatening to withhold drug precursors and having officials run their mouths giving Americans the excuse they need to validate Trump and Pompeo’s divisive rhetoric.

Remaining on the fence about this issue isn’t my normal style. But everyone is dirty here and the reality may well be this is a natural event terrible people on both sides are exploiting.

And I can only go by what people do rather than what they say to assess the situation. Trump tries to buy exclusive right to a potential COVID-19 vaccine from a German firm and his administration slow-walks aid to Iran.

China sends aid to Iran and Italy by the container full. Is that to salve their conscience over its initial suppression of information about the virus? Good question. But no one covers themselves in glory by using the confusion and distraction to attempt further regime change and step up war-footing during a public health crisis, manufactured or otherwise.

While Pompeo unctuously talks the talk of compassion and charity, he cannot bring himself to actually walk the walk. Because he is a despicable, bile-filled man of uncommon depravity. His prosecuting a hybrid war during a public health crisis speaks to no other conclusion about him.

It’s clear to me that nothing has changed at the top of Trump’s administration. I expect COVID-19 will not be a disaster for Trump and the U.S. It can handle this. But the lack of humanity shown by its diplomatic corps ensures that in the long run the U.S. will be left to fend for itself when the next crisis hits.

Be seeing you

 

 

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Back to Work by March 30: A Coronavirus Imperative | The American Spectator

Posted by M. C. on March 24, 2020

An opinion piece by John P. A. Ioannidis, professor of medicine, epidemiology, and population health at Stanford University, is headlined, “A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.”

All healthy Americans who want to work must be allowed to return to work no later than March 30. This common-sense approach will allow new production and for the healthy to support those in need.

https://spectator.org/back-to-work-by-march-30-a-coronavirus-imperative/

by

China and Russia are open for business and working at close to capacity, as America shutters most all business and industry in states such as Pennsylvania, New York, California, New Jersey, and Connecticut. In many cases only select manufacturing companies are allowed to operate, which means most manufacturers will be short of parts and services necessary to produce goods.

Our leaders are creating an economic crisis and a major national security risk with limited data. The cure is far worse than any perceived impact by COVID-19. Our economy is both fragile and interdependent, an economic reality not understood by our leaders as they order mass closings of many states’ business and industry.

Thomas Sowell wrote, “There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.” Sowell was informing us that wise and sound judgments are imperative during any crisis.

An opinion piece by John P. A. Ioannidis, professor of medicine, epidemiology, and population health at Stanford University, is headlined, “A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.”

This season the flu has killed 22,000 Americans versus 388 dead from COVID-19. This the hard data available. There has been no national discussion about the flu but complete panic on the coronavirus.

The restaurant industry, which is the largest employer in America, is closed in most states. Now we will begin to witness the industries that support restaurants and hotels begin to shutter.

Marriott Corporate in Bethesda, Maryland, has furloughed 66 percent of its employees and cut the pay of the remaining employees by 20 percent. Such actions by major employers will have a devastating impact on the U.S. economy.

The Big Three automakers and their suppliers are closed, which means hundreds of thousands of workers are laid off and at home. This will quickly lead to more layoffs and many small business failures. There is no amount of government money that can make up for an economy closed and workers staying home.

We all know that food and supplies are critical to families. Most individuals assume these products and services will be available. But as we have witnessed, when demand exceeds supply and businesses are shuttered, supply runs out.

Supply of goods and services is quickly becoming a more important national issue than the COVID-19 panic. The virus will not adversely impact most Americans, but they will sustain substantial financial losses and at some point supplies will run out.

Schools can shut down, and sick people should stay home, along with older or at-risk individuals, until the panic subsides, but the healthy must be allowed to work.

Every family, state, city, and business can make the best decisions during this crisis, but we cannot have simplistic top-down mandates.

We are quickly moving toward a supply problem. Just-in-time inventory means we make products as needed. If the producers are closed, we run out of goods quickly.

Wiring $3,000 to most Americans may seem like a solution, but unless we have a supply of the goods families need, the money will not help. The best way for families to have income is for America to be open for business and not risk shortages and civil unrest. It is noteworthy that liquor, ammo, and guns sales are robust.

The federal government has no money and is $23 trillion in debt. Now Congress contemplates a $2 trillion economic bailout, which is pushing the limits of how much Congress can borrow and will eventually create a major financial meltdown. The solution is a robust economy producing goods, services, and financial stability.

All healthy Americans who want to work must be allowed to return to work no later than March 30. This common-sense approach will allow new production and for the healthy to support those in need.

I urge our President Trump to speak to Americans from a Midwest manufacturing plant, away from the Swamp, and appeal to all governors and Americans to overcome their fears and take reasonable precautions, but allow America to open for business by March 30.

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Social Distancing

Posted by M. C. on March 23, 2020

Image may contain: 1 person, motorcycle

 

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