MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Ditch SMS! How to convince your friends

Posted by M. C. on August 23, 2024

Most of our conversations are digital, and our privacy hinges on our ability to convince others to use a private messaging platform. Getting friends and family to switch isn’t easy though! Here are some strategies you can try, ranging from educational methods, to downright sneakiness!

Ditch the megaphone, use Signal.

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Thomas Sowell / Walter E. Williams on Congresspersons

Posted by M. C. on August 23, 2024

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“Boeing LIED! NASA Finally Revealed What Exactly Happened with Boeing Starliner”

Posted by M. C. on August 23, 2024

TECH MAP

A “Jobs Program”. Boeing has a 1.6 $billion loss since 2016. Boeing’s loss or ours?

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The Taiwan Problem You (Probably) Don’t Know

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2024

The foolish insistence of FDR that Taiwan be granted to Chiang’s crumbling ROC regime, then Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower’s determination to keep that regime in power, played an obviously critical role in creating the circumstances that prevail to the present day: a Chinese Civil War never concluded.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-taiwan-problem-you-probably-dont-know/

by Joseph Solis-Mullen

chiang ching kuo and chiang kai shek 83b330

Taiwan is today lauded for its vibrant democracy, open economy, and progressive society. However, behind this shining exterior is a dark and brutal history that is frequently overlooked; or in the case of Washington and its loyal corporate mouthpieces, purposefully ignored.

For before its democratization in the 1990s, Taiwan was a harsh authoritarian police state under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek and his son Chiang Ching-kuo. This period, marked by severe repression and systemic terror, is an essential chapter in Taiwan’s history that Americans should know, particularly given the enduring resentment Washington’s vital support for the regime engendered and the purported reasons for the necessity of the island’s defense.

The roots of Taiwan’s authoritarianism can be traced back to the retreat of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government (Kuomintang, or KMT) to Taiwan after losing the Chinese Civil War to the Communists in 1949. The local population had already received more than an inkling of what awaited, the KMT authorities having already in 1947 brutally suppressed a popular protest against KMT corruption, mistreatment, and misrule on the island. Facing a precarious situation and the ever-looming threat of a Communist invasion, once arrived on the island Chiang established a regime that relied heavily on surveillance, repression, and brutality to maintain control.

Central to this regime was the role of Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek’s son, who was instrumental in the creation and operation of Taiwan’s police state. Having spent formative years in Stalin’s Moscow, Chiang Ching-kuo learned from the Soviet Union’s tactics of surveillance, infiltration, and terror. Upon his return, he applied these methods to serve his father’s regime, becoming a formidable spy chief whose skills ensured the perpetuation of KMT rule in Taiwan.

Chiang Ching-kuo’s police force penetrated almost every facet of life in Taiwan. Officially, their task was to arrest enemies of the state, countering Communist subversion; in practice, this mission translated into the suppression of virtually any source of potential dissent, contributing to what became known as the White Terror.

See the rest here

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9th Circuit: Feds Free to Censor ‘Anti-Vaccine’ ‘Misinformation’ Via Pressure on Social Media Companies

Posted by M. C. on August 21, 2024

What a wild coincidence: one branch of government (judiciary) doesn’t mind another branch of government (executive) doing whatever it likes extraconstitutionally.

That’s called Democracy™, boys and girls, and it’s sacred.

The Daily Bell

By Ben Bartee –

Originally published via Armageddon Prose:

What a wild coincidence: one branch of government (judiciary) doesn’t mind another branch of government (executive) doing whatever it likes extraconstitutionally.

That’s called Democracy™, boys and girls, and it’s sacred.

Via Reuters (emphasis added):

Meta Platforms defeated an appeal by Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., challenging its censorship of Facebook posts that spread misinformation about vaccines’ efficacy and safety.

In a decision on Friday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, California, said the nonprofit did not show that Meta worked with or was coerced by federal officials to suppress views challenging “government orthodoxy” on vaccines.

Children’s Health Defense sued in 2020, saying that Meta had violated its constitutional rights by flagging “vaccine misinformation” as false, and taking away its right to advertise on Facebook.”

Not being a legal scholar, I’m sure there’s a good answer to this, but I’m not clear: why would CHD sue Meta and not the government for violating its First Amendment rights, when it was at the government’s behest that Meta acted?

Via Children’s Health Defense (emphasis added):

CHD’s suit accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal agencies of “privatizing” the First Amendment by teaming up with Facebook to censor speech which, “under the Bill of Rights, the Government cannot censor.”

According to the lawsuit, filed in August 2020 — and amended in December 2020 — the CDC and the World Health Organization “collaborated closely with Facebook to suppress vaccine safety speech by using a ‘warning label’ and other similar types of notices which, while purporting to flag misinformation, in reality censor valid and truthful speech, including content posted by plaintiff on its Facebook page regarding vaccines.”

This collaboration amounted to “state action” and was in violation of the First Amendment, CHD said

See the rest here

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Neil deGrasse is ABSOLUTELY wrong about this

Posted by M. C. on August 20, 2024

Thomas SowellTV

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The Frogs Will Boil Themselves

Posted by M. C. on August 20, 2024

by Jeff Thomas

If this does occur, the public will, in effect, “boil themselves.” They will have demanded that the Government act, and, when the dust has settled, each side will claim some sort of victory but will fail to understand that they have brought about their own loss of rights.

It is hoped that, when the day comes that a Constitutional Review is proposed, Americans refuse to take the bait.

There’s a well-known old fable that describes a frog being boiled alive. It states that if a frog is dropped in boiling water, it will hop out. But if it’s placed in lukewarm water, it will be comfortable. Then, if the heat is turned up slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be boiled to death.

In political terms, this translates into a slow increase, say, the slow rise of taxation or the gradual removal of freedoms.

But there’s another way to boil the electorate of a country: have them become willing participants in their own demise.

This method is a common practice in many countries, particularly the US. Americans have repeatedly been conned into begging for their second amendment rights to be diminished.

The method is to make use of the media to shine a light on the horrific murder of innocents through the use of firearms.

In recent years, this effort has been ramped up through regular senseless massacres of people, particularly children, in public places, such as schools and movie theatres.

Whether or not these incidents are actually created by the ruling elite is a moot point. What matters is that their proliferation has been extremely effective in providing the media will the fodder to repeatedly ask, “When is the Government going to make the possession of guns illegal so that the killing will stop?”

Many citizens are wary of such suggestions, but countless others quickly take the bait and demand that the Government “do something.”

Eventually, this becomes a point of pride for many citizens — a badge of righteousness — for standing up for those who have been victims.

Through such efforts, the US constitution has slowly lost its ability to serve as a limitation to Government power. A proliferation of laws that redefine what the Constitution means has, over time, eviscerated the Constitution.

Not surprisingly, those who support this effort are largely liberal, which creates a backlash from those who are conservative and vehemently oppose any erosion of the Constitution.

Those who are liberal may reinforce their beliefs by watching propaganda networks on television and regularly pump up the dangers of the Constitution. Likewise, conservatives have their propaganda network, which can be counted on to reinforce their views.

Whichever side Americans take on such issues, they would be wise to keep an eye out for what may be the next development in this wrangle.

See the rest here

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Back to the Future with Price Controls

Posted by M. C. on August 20, 2024

But that $2 trillion in new paper money has consequences. It lowers the value of everyone’s money. And there is only one way that that lower value can be reflected: through higher prices of most everything in society. In other words, people’s money simply doesn’t buy as much as it did before the government’s monetary debasement.

Unfortunately, however, in the 1930s, the Franklin Roosevelt administration abandoned that monetary system and replaced it with one of printed money. The FDR regime did this without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment. The Supreme Court, whose job it was to enforce the Constitution, buckled and upheld what was clearly an unconstitutional act.

Ever since the enactment of FDR’s paper-money system, the American people have suffered the consequences of monetary debasement. Of course, it’s bad enough to be plundered and looted in a fraudulent, surreptitious way. The situation is made worse with the scapegoating and shortage that come with price controls.

by Jacob G. Hornberger

Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris is demonstrating why monetary debasement has always been a favorite way for government officials to plunder the citizenry. Rather than focusing on the Federal Reserve as the root cause of prices rising across society, she’s blaming rising food prices on grocery-store owners. Consequently, she says that if she is elected president, she’ll get a federal “anti-gouging” law enacted that prevents grocery stores from raising prices.

In other words, she’s going to impose price controls, which inevitably means that we are going to have to deal with shortages of everything in grocery stores that has a price control imposed on it.

Of course, this is what governments have done since the invention of the printing press. Debasing the currency by printing ever-increasing quantities of money and then blaming the resulting rising prices on greedy, rapacious, evil, profit-seeking, capitalist swine has always been the way that government officials plunder the citizenry without having the citizenry figure out what the government is doing to them.

Let’s assume that the government is spending $2 trillion more per year than what it is bringing in with taxes. Let’s also assume that the government is already $34 trillion in debt.

Where does the government get that $2 trillion? One way is to raise taxes. Another way is to borrow it and add it on to the overall federal debt. But people get angry when taxes get too high. They also get concerned when they see the government’s debt getting excessively high because they know that ultimately taxpayers are on the hook for paying it off.

1907 $20 gold coin.

Thus, the government has to figure out a way to tax people without their realizing that they are getting taxed. That’s where a central bank (i.e., the Federal Reserve) and the printing press come into play. The central bank simply prints up that $2 trillion and the government goes out and spends it.

But that $2 trillion in new paper money has consequences. It lowers the value of everyone’s money. And there is only one way that that lower value can be reflected: through higher prices of most everything in society. In other words, people’s money simply doesn’t buy as much as it did before the government’s monetary debasement. Let’s say it buys 20 percent less than it did before. That’s the same as if the government had taxed people an additional 20 percent of their income.

See the rest here

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Kamala Harris Proposes Empty Shelves & Shortages

Posted by M. C. on August 19, 2024

Government printing money—->Inflation—->government price fixing—–>less production/availability—->government rationing—->government…

The Ron Paul Liberty Report

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Curious About Boeing, Starliner and How They got Where They Are?

Posted by M. C. on August 17, 2024

jets, planes

During her nomination process to become the chairman of the Export-Import Bank, Kimberly Reed promised Senator Patrick Toomey that she would be an agent of reform at the bank. The bank has a long track record of serving mostly large foreign and domestic companies in higher income nations, and distorting capital markets to fund projects that would likely be funded otherwise. It’s called cronyism and it has a negative impact on the economy and our political system. 

On Tuesday, she is testifying again before the Senate Banking Committee and this piece is a warning to them that what the chairman may call reforms will lead to the exact same crony outcomes as we have seen for decades at the Bank. Sadly, few people care these days as we are all preoccupied with many other restrictions of our freedom. Yet, I have to try to send the alarm one more time. 

Ex-Im Bank’s “No-Reform” Reform to its Additionality Guidelines

Ex-Im Bank Chairman Reed apparently has put to rest a few of the reform commitments that she made to Senator Toomey in her confirmation hearing nearly two years ago. These commitments included improving protection for domestic companies from economic harm that might arise from Ex-Im Bank financing their foreign competitors, and ensuring that the Ex-Im Bank is not crowding out private financing options that would otherwise be available but for Ex-Im Bank’s involvement. 

This piece focuses on the second of these commitments, as reflected in a recently published “Additionality Guidelines and Checklist” document that purportedly will lead U.S. exporters and their overseas buyers to use Ex-Im Bank only when they have no commercial alternatives. I testified a few months ago before the Bank’s Board of Advisors on this same issue. My oral comments can be found here and my written testimony is here

Unfortunately, a cursory reading of the new guidance suggests the continuation of a longstanding philosophy that will result in few, if any, changes in Ex-Im Bank’s decisions about which borrowers will receive government-backed loans. In fact, if Chairman Reed wants to show how effective her new guidelines are, she should tell us which companies and deals that were approved in the past would not be approved under these new guidelines.

Following is a summary of what appear to be the core elements of the Ex-Im Bank philosophy on Additionality.

The “Foreign Export Credit Agency Under the Bed” Standard

See the rest here

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-export-import-bank-says-board-backs-811-mln-loan-guarantee-aid-boeing-sale-2022-06-17/

WASHINGTON, June 17 (Reuters) – The Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) on Friday said its board of directors approved an $811 million loan guarantee to help finance the sale of Boeing wide-body aircraft to French-Dutch airline Air France-KLM SA (AIRF.PA)

EXIM said in a statement that the loan guarantee would support aircraft assembled at Boeing’s Everett, Washington, and North Charleston, South Carolina, factories, which produce 787 jetliners. It did not specify the number of aircraft involved, but KLM had ordered some 15 787-10 aircraft and began to take delivery of them in 2019.

Since then, Boeing experienced severe delays in 787 Dreamliner deliveries because of production flaws and has advised airlines and suppliers that deliveries would resume in the second half of 2022, but is still awaiting regulatory approvals. read more

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