Politics

What Ron Paul Thinks of America–Rebuttal

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Here is a letter I sent to the editor of the Wall Street Journal regarding an article published on December 22. (I imagine they get millions of letters after they slam Ron Paul, so I doubt it’ll get published there, but hey, this is what the Internet is for!)
Dear Sir:
In her opinion piece, “What Ron Paul Thinks of America,” Dorothy Rabinowitz implies that Ron Paul, like Barack Obama, hates America.  This could not be further from the truth.  Dr. Paul loves America, but it’s an America that makes people so proud and patriotic that they take certain basic principles for granted, blinding them to the realities of the New American Way.  Ms Rabinowitz also suggests that Dr. Paul disregards the suffering of the victims of 9/11.  This too is untrue.  Dr. Paul actually wants to prevent such suffering in the future by objectively evaluating what it is in our power to control. While, as Ms Rabinowitz points out, President Obama traverses half the globe making speeches apologizing for Bush’s America, the President’s actions reflect and even magnify his predecessor’s foreign policy–a policy that on the campaign trail he claimed to abhor and then was elected to reverse.  In contrast, Dr. Paul has a deep respect for America and would not renege on his promise to return her to her principles. 
The voters want the War on Terror to end if only because it’s not working:  Radical Islam continues to fill the voids we leave in our wake and there’s no end in sight to our destabilizing policies.  We The People are being forced to look more critically at our government’s actions.  Unfortunately, it’s hard for us to get the facts and think for ourselves with both wings of the mainstream-media spouting the same propaganda in support of endless war.  At least Dr. Paul prompts us to look past the jingoism and think a few things through.
Sincerely,
Monica Perez
I just read a great article in the Foreign Policy Journal also rebutting this WSJ article.

Also, Hornberger’s Blog at The Future of Freedom Foundation goes into great depth in his rebuttal of Rabinowitz’s piece.

"Merry Christmas, Sheriff!" Homeland Security Treats Texas Town to a Brand New Surveillance Drone!

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“What? You Don’t LOVE It?!”

I read in today’s Wall Street Journal that Homeland Security bought Montgomery County, Texas, a $300,000 surveillance drone. Not only does this smack of both the surveillance state and crony capitalism–the US government is promoting drone sales abroad as well–but it’s an abuse of taxpayers’ money to use federal funds to pad the policing power of municipalities. Federal funding of municipal responsibilities eliminates even the indirect possibility of connecting the costs and (alleged) benefits of government spending. (In this case in particular, the benefits themselves are clearly mixed. The title of the article tells the story: The Law’s New Eye in the Sky: Police Departments’ Use of Drones Is Raising Concerns Over Privacy and Safety.)
The Articles of Confederation and Thomas Jefferson’s own philosophy both forbade forced taxation at the federal level. American citizens were meant to have control of their government and that meant keeping taxing and spending decisions close to home. It is the disconnection of spending decisions from even the implied consent of the taxed that allows government to get out of control. Faced with the direct connection between spending and taxation, a citizenry will push back when an expense is clearly not worth the money, or worse is actually potentially harmful to the people–local governments reject such initiatives all the time. However, as taxes go underground and spending decisions become more remote, it’s harder for taxpayers to identify when enough is enough, much less to stop the madness.
The government, of course, does all it can to forestall tax resistance. Providing the mechanism to obfuscate excessive taxation and circumvent tax resistance is what makes the Federal Reserve such an insidious tool of big banksters and crony capitalists. The Fed, which is and always has been a private corporation owned by large banks, makes an agreement with the Treasury: abdicate to us your right to control the money supply, and in turn we will print money to buy the bonds that finance your profligate spending and allow you to shift the tax burden onto a future constituency.
The withholding method of taxation is similarly devious. By forcing one’s employer to make it a condition of employment that he pays your tax bill before he pays your wages, the government has eliminated its traditional stooge, the tax collector, and the natural resistance he engenders.  Co-opting employers masks the use of force inherent in all taxation and emasculates a powerful tool of taxpayer resistance, the tax revolt.
In the case of Montgomery’s drone, not only is the tax side of the equation manipulated by using federal funds for a purely local purpose, but also the spending side is manipulated by masquerading cronyism and intrusiveness as a public good, i.e., defense. Nothing will push the tax resistance threshold higher than fear of physical danger. . . .Enter the Drug War and the War on Terror.
In these cases the government creates an ever-increasing demand for its own services because it is both the antagonist and the hero.  The more the government spends battling reactionary and amorphous opponents such as drugs and terror, the greater the dangers become, and there can never be a definitive victory because there is no definitive enemy. The Drug War is surging in Mexico and Guatemala and at the same time heroin production in Afghanistan is going through the roof thanks to both the Great American Drug War and the Glorious War on Terror. In its own right, the War on Terror has eliminated the two most powerful opponents of radical Islam in the Middle East, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. (I am not defending these two murderers, just making a point.) The government gets bigger, the cronies get paid, the people acquiesce to higher and higher spending, and it can go on forever.
Well, almost forever.
The obvious underlying horror of Montgomery’s drone is not that you and I paid for it, it’s that Homeland Security didn’t donate the drone in an altruistic effort to help local law enforcement investigate accidents and keep good citizens safe. There are myriad self-serving reasons that Homeland Security would want down-home drones like this one. Among these reasons, I fear, is to monitor those same good citizens for signs they’ve had enough of spendthrift and overreaching government and might finally be mounting a resistance. When that day comes, the citizens of Montgomery County might wish they had left this particular present under the tree.

Feds Seize 150 Websites for Selling Counterfeit Merchandise–Kind Of

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I saw this article titled “Feds seize 150 websites in counterfeit crackdown” and thought to myself, could the Feds actually be acting within the confines of normal law enforcement? After reading last week about a fisherman who was robbed by the Feds of the largest tuna ever caught, I was in the mood to have my faith in government restored. (As if!) So I was willing to overlook two of my own peeves in the case at hand, specifically:  I don’t want the Feds anywhere near the Internet, and as an anarcho-capitalist I don’t actually believe in using government to enforce copyrights, patents and trademarks (more on that below).  But busting counterfeiters is at least an example of government action NOT in the service of gratuitous revenue generation or the ubiquitous Drug War, so I was encouraged and read on. I was at once amused to read that even the federal agent being interviewed for the article found it noteworthy that the Feds were cracking down on real crime. The article actually quotes ICE Director John Morton as saying, “This is straight crime. This is people being duped into buying a counterfeit.”

This quote demonstrates to me that Mr. Morton knows full well that most of what he does has nothing to do with “straight crime” (mala in se crime, or crime that is bad in itself), but rather he is almost always enforcing prohibitions (mala prohibita crime)–drugs, guns, prostitution–and fighting the inevitable violence that arises in black markets that perforce operate outside the law. The way I see it, mala prohibita crimes are crimes created by the government because authorities not only refuse to enforce otherwise valid contracts but actually attack people for making voluntary arms-length transactions. It drives me near to madness to think my tax dollars go to creating and then enforcing immoral laws that result in so much death and destruction. (I have actually thought that if there’s a Judgment Day the greatest sin I will have to answer for will be having paid taxes that were used to finance theft, murder and injustice.)

Director Morton’s quote genuinely delighted me, though, for another reason:  he was claiming to fight counterfeiting as the fraud of selling knock-offs under false pretenses and not for trademark infringement. As I mentioned, anarcho-capitalists such as I don’t believe the government can tell people what to do with their private property even if what they do with it is copy an idea someone else came up with and then put out in the world for all to see. It’s rather a nuanced argument and it was my last reservation about anarcho-capitalism, however, through the persuasive arguments of Stephan Kinsella, I am now totally convinced of the correctness of this position. (Concidentally, patents et al are powerful tools of crony capitalists.)

I should have stopped reading this article right there, though, ’cause wouldn’t ya know it? Director Morton was so uncomfortable with the idea of fighting “straight crime,” that he felt he had to further justify his actions. He went on to say, “Typically we don’t track the volumes of sales of these particular sites. . . . We are worried about organized crime and [that profits] are going to fuel other criminal activity.” So it IS about the Drug War after all! Or he hopes it is. In any case, it most certainly is NOT about protecting taxpayers from fraud–that would be too paltry a goal for the mighty federal government!

Maybe I shouldn’t get bent out of shape about something as apparently minor as this, but earlier today I read about a former marine, Jose Guerena Ortiz, who was suspected of selling pot. A SWAT team snuck up to his house and he, awakened by his fearful wife, grabbed his gun and the cops mowed him down in his living room in front of his four-year old. This counterfeiting article made me hope that law enforcement was doing something OTHER than trying to figure out the next guy who might be selling something they don’t like and killing him. But I guess that’s what it was all about anyway. I should’ve known.

Read the article here: Feds seize 150 websites in counterfeit crackdown

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

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A Congressional Budget Office report reveals that income inequality is increasing.  In this excerpt from Saturday’s show, I explain that the progressive tax system and expansionary monetary policy are at the root of the growing disparity between rich and poor in America. Monica Perez income inequality debunked If like I do, you crave economic truth … Read more

CDC: More People Die in the US from Prescription Painkillers than from Cocaine & Heroin Combined

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How much are we spending on the Drug War? How about the FDA? According to the Drug War Clock at drugsense.org, the Drug War cost the US $15 billion so far this year. In addition, President Obama’s budget request for the FDA topped $4 billion. Unfortunately, these programs not only cost an insane amount of money and keep the government all up in our shorts, they apparently do more harm than good. I have long noticed that government-controlled drugs seem to be killing people. Heroin felled quite a few stars back in the day: Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Sid Vicious and John Belushi to name a few. Celebrities of today, however, die from drugs that are highly regulated and controlled: Anna Nicole Smith, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and Brittany Murphy all died from prescription drugs.
It seems that the more we spend to have the government protect us from ourselves, the more we suffer at its hands. It could be gross incompetence, or it could be that government and its controllers are self-protecting entities who are not going to make us safe if our fear is the source of their power. The current mentality of citizens who fear an end to the Drug War or who cannot envision free market regulation of drugs reminds me of what I have heard about the behavior of the abused child. The abused child clings to his parent thinking, “If this is how someone who loves me treats me, how would someone who doesn’t love me treat me?!” It’s time to realize things will NOT be worse without government control of everything from the food we eat to the thoughts we think. Unfortunately, this study will probably be used to justify more government control, not less.
Here are a few highlights of the CDC study from the Sydney Morning Herald (sometimes you have to go out of the country just to get away from the spin!)

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