Clark Howard Stopped By the Studio!
What a great show! I was truly honored by a visit from WSB star, Clark Howard. My hour with Clark was the most fun I’ve ever had on the radio. If you missed it, you can check out show archives on wsbradio.com. At first I thought Clark was annoyed that I was destroying the planet with incandescent light bulbs but really he was just giving me his! He insists that the new light bulbs save money in year one and that they’re worth having for economic reasons alone. I found that argument pretty persuasive. And just for the record…It’s NOT that I want to destroy the planet, it’s that I think the current governmental regime stimulates supply AND demand for fossil fuels so strenuously that nothing I can do on a personal level will make a difference. Only if governments stop stimulating energy consumption through transportation subsidies, real estate tax advantages and depressed interest rates, and stop subsidizing supplies by fighting wars for access to foreign oil, will we reach a natural, sustainable, free market equilibrium of supply and demand for energy–feel-good environmentalist propaganda notwithstanding.
A big, big thanks to Clark for coming on the show!
Hookers in Cartagena
The fact that the biggest story of the week by far is that Secret Service agents got hookers while waiting for Obama to arrive in Colombia is kinda like the big news that Snoop Dogg got busted for pot–why is anyone surprised and who really cares? Not to mention, prostitution is legal in Colombia! The real crime is having Secret Service agents who are so stupid that they brag about being connected to ostensibly the most powerful person in the world, POTUS, in a country known as first in the world for kidnapping for ransom rich and high-profile people. These dopes are lucky the pimps didn’t call some goons to round them up and start cutting off body parts to send to Obama with ransom notes! And what’s really stupid beyond description is that this all started because one of these self-important bruisers refused to pay his girl! In my mind, stiffing a prostitute (no pun intended) turns a perfectly consensual economic transaction into a kind of rape. Seriously–Dania, the prostitute, consented to sex for money–yet the agent was trying to trick her into free sex–maybe that qualifies as date rape, but in any case, the guy is a low-life and probably a bully.
Apparently, the agent had agreed to $800 but tried to pay Dania only $30. $800 does seem a little steep, but he shouldn’t have agreed to pay it then! What do you think? Here she is:
Operation Fast & Furious
To me all these “scandals” are red herrings–distractions from the real issues. Just as I feel the GSA scandal pales in comparison to the Solyndra scandal, yet seems to have gotten much more press; similarly, the Secret Service prostitution scandal is no big deal compared to the U.S. government arming and funding a drug cartel that killed 20,000 people in five years. In my mind, Operation Fast & Furious is Obama’s Iran-Contra and not just because of the enormity of the crime but because of its nature as well. I’ve been following Fast & Furious pretty closely and recommend you listen to my podcast on the subject if you want a full overview. The most recent development, however, has flown so far under the radar that I’m beginning to smell a rat with respect to Republican leadership and the media letting Obama and Holder slide on this one.
Although Congressman Darryl Issa is conducting an investigation, he seems to be focusing on who-knew-what-when when clearly the big question is WHY? Why did we send thousands of guns to one side of the Mexican Drug War?
But my real problem with the Republican leadership is that House Majority Leader John Boehner will not join other Republicans in demanding Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation over this matter, nor is he facilitating the investigation in any way–he may even be stalling it! Perhaps the Republicans are implicated in similar arrangements themselves. The Bush Administration engaged in similar tactics though on a much smaller scale and with real differences that make that operation (Wide Receiver) less suspicious, however, that Administration’s involvement in the drugs-guns-money trade is probably deeper than we know. I say this because of the crashing of a plane in 2007 that had 4 tons of cocaine in it. The plane was en route from Colombia to the U.S. when it ran out of gas over Mexico. The smoking gun though is that the plane itself was a plane that flew in and out of Gitmo (which is exclusively the realm of the U.S. government) SEVEN TIMES!
And what’s more mysterious to me is why Fox News and The Wall Street Journal are not all over this story! I searched Fox News for references to Operation Fast & Furious and got approximately 1,000 hits; I searched Fox News for references to Secret Service Prostitution Scandal and got approximately 100,000 hits! Similarly, The Wall Street Journal didn’t even report on the fact that the White House is illegally refusing to allow its former staffer, Kevin O’Reilly, testify in the matter, and even shipped him off to Iraq! My totally unfounded speculation is that Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox and The Journal through Newscorp, is soft-pedaling this because of an investigation by Eric Holder into the possible phone-hacking of 9/11 victims by a NewsCorp newspaper. Apparently, Murdoch had kept similar investigations at bay in the UK through backroom dealings with the highest ranking leaders of both major parties there.
I don’t know what’s really going on, of course, but I do know I smell a BIG, FAT, DEAD RAT!!!
Great Calls!
I got some great calls last night and I just wanted to follow up on a couple of references made by the callers. The first reference was to SIFTA, an international gun control treaty that some believe will be signed by an American president at the earliest opportunity–perhaps even justified by a false flag operation–a scenario fabricated by the US government to promote public acquiescence in further curtailing our fundamental rights. The second important reference was to the explosion in heroin production in Afghanistan since the US took over for the Taliban. And the third important reference was to a book that is now on my shortlist of “to reads”: The Underground Empire, by James Mills, which the caller said was the story of how the US was winning the Drug War and FOR THAT REASON shut down the most successful operation. I hate believing this stuff, but at certain point it’s hard to deny. Another book I mentioned on the air that I am hoping to get to and comes highly recommended is The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, by Alfred W. McCoy, or McCoy’s newer book, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.
I hope you enjoyed the show. If you missed it, check out the show archives on wsbradio.com.
3 thoughts on “Clark Howard, Hookers and Operation Fast & Furious: On & About This Week's Show”
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Wow i just got through with the show and found it quite infuriating to listen to the economic fallacies Clark was espousing. Are you sure he agrees with you on anything? First i could only listen up to around 34 minutes of the show on the first hour don’t know what the issue is with that. The fist obvious fallacy was when he said the free market failed in roads way back when and proceeded to give a none free market example. He claimed that it was a mess under capitalism when road would stop at state lines. State Lines, i believe states are governments also. So the question is why would a road stop at a state line. Without any research one can image ,just as Clark was imagining market failures, states not allowing road companies they didn’t favor to build a road through their state or due to the interstate commerce clause road companies not wanted to come under the jurisdiction of the feds, or state only subsidizing road companies to build within their state. This is easy to imagine because this all happens today. At least he could have brought up real objections to private roads like the free rider issue or something. His arguments make no sense , since there is an example of a non subsidized railroad created by James J Hill across most of the country vs all almost all other government subsidized railroads that would create loops, destroy track, and build railroads to nowhere because they were paid by the mile. He sounds like people who say look at the depression we are in must be evil capitalist banks screwing people. Well no the banking industry is the most heavily regulation and centrally planned industry we have. It follows both a fascist and socialist model, i guess to cover all the statists basis, and what do we get more failure than ever. Or how about the BP oil spill. I read an article the quoted MMS officials saying that one year prior to the spill that the exact rig that exploded was an example of safety to the rest of the industry. Also the oil spill happened on government owned land where no property rights are allowed, the oil companies were given better subsidizes to drill in deeper water, and the cost to the company is limited to something like $75 million cap under the Oil Pollution Act (OPA), which limits the company’s liability. So I would guess that coal companies and energy companies in general are heavily regulated. Also does he not get that subsidized and regulated industries lead to evil companies. For example suppose i was a good libertarian oil company drilling for oil and I said no i will not take that royalty to drill deeper no i will not lobby congress to get friendly regulation (that are supposedly for safety but really to raise barriers to entry into my market) how long would such a company last not very i would suppose. And voils the only companies left are the ones that steal money from taxes payer, pay congressman for noncompetitive laws, and generally socialize cost to the taxpayer ie only the evil companies left. That is not free market. I think Clark needs to start with the basics of economics and go back and read economics in one lesson and bastiats lesson on the broken window fallacy, or even I, Pencil if thats not to hard for him. If he did he would see that government roads for example also fail because they dont have any pricing mechanism which cause misallocation of resources and an unresponsiveness to consumers needs. The reason its so hard for people to understand what goes on is that we live in a fascist country. This is one where there is a veneer of free market capitalism with the heavy command control of said market behind the scenes. The above cases are examples of this. So people see the cooperation failing and the evil CEO, which i agree that some of these people are evil, but dont see all the control placed on them from government and when they fail or deceive people which they will eventually do the benevolent government steps in and cries market failure more government. I don’t understand how Clark can say on the one hand roads are an example of market failure therefore we need more government but light bulbs should not be pushed on us by governmnet. His own logic dictates that if there is a market failure then government needs to step in. So a lefty says health care – market failure then that dictates more government. This is not a difference in kind but degree. So Clark cant have it both ways. Another issue with Clark’s roads argument. He says we need government coordination in road because of market failure and in antoher section he says “would you allow a person to die in a hospital” implying markets would further implying he is concerned about the deaths of people from market hospitals. Well what about the 40,000 people that die on government roads every year. That’s right 40,000 a year. What about thier lives. Seems if his argumnet holds true if a system causes death of people then we should reject that system. Also he mentioned that he wants to get off foreign oil in the name of national security so that the people that want to kill us wont get paid.(neverminding that trade is the best way to peacefully coexist with other people around the world, and neverminding the issue of national security in his view which I dont want to imagine what that would be) Well the people that wanted to kill us only managed to kill 3000 of us a while back, but letting 40000 people a year die on governmnet roads in the US is ok i guess. Some caller asked him why all the stupid packaging on light bulbs. I believe Clark said he couldnt understand why some capitalist didnt take advantage and give the consurmer better packaging. I will give you three guess why the packaging is the way it is. http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/06/lightbulbs.shtm That took me all of 5 seconds to google. Is Clark intellectually curious this about stuff at all? This alone makes me question any of his arguments because he claims to be the light bulb guru or something. aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! ok i let it out. back to the grind.
WOW! This is why you have to listen in real time and call in! I could have used you on the air!
Sorry for this insults. I will be more polite with my criticisms