Liberty Maven

Quote of the Day: “Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying “No” to any authority — literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.” — Ignazio Silone (1900-1978) Source: The God That Failed, 1950

The politicians are trying to tax the Internet again. Let’s stop them.

I just sent the letter below using our “Hands Off the Internet” campaign.

The hardwired message on this campaign reads . . .

“Please oppose any attempts to undermine Internet freedom.”

To this I added the following personal comments, from which you can copy or borrow . . . Read More »

What do we demand from government? Jobs? Prosperity? These days those come to mind first, but during the post World War II years we had prosperity and jobs and discontent was rampant. Did we want something else then? I came of age with the first Boomers in the 50’s and 60’s and the country’s prosperity did little to dampen our discontent. What were we so mad about? I believe we were mad because we didn’t have a good national story that pertained to our generation.

And I think that in addition to our clamoring today for jobs and a return to prosperity, mine and succeeding generations have continued the yearning for a good national story. Now we have the makings of the sort of compelling story we lacked before. The only problem, as I shall conclude, is that sometimes stories can be too satisfying, too soon.

First let’s rid ourselves of the idea that a story is essentially fiction. After all, the words “history” and “story” share the same root. This is not to say that stories and history are equally non-fictional- they may be equally fictional. Their truth or falsity is beside the point. We eagerly adopt stories of either kind to underwrite our lives.

Hitler is relevant to this discussion, as he was the most strident and successful storyteller of the generations just before mine. He told different stories to different people, and everyone believed him. He told Germans that Jews and the rest of the world generally had conspired to destroy the destiny of the German people. This story was a bestseller, so to speak. Great swaths of German society devoured it as precious mental nourishment, because it made them feel good, made them feel part of something important and justified, as an effective story does. Then he told the rest of the world that he was a ferocious megalomaniac, poised to take over and punish all states and societies that were not in his thrall. That story too was a great hit, in the sense that people followed it and adopted it as their story.

The stories told by Roosevelt and Churchill were predicated on Hitler’s story: We were the defenders against Hitler, the homicidal maniac. Of course Hitler was a homicidal maniac, but as I say my use of “story” denotes neither fiction nor non-fiction. It was Hitler’s story telling capability that put him on the map. Our mental wards are full of crazed megalomaniacs whose stories are listened to by no one but bored staff. Hitler might well have been one of these isolated souls, but as a powerful storyteller, his story became, well, “real.”

Then what was wrong with post-war America’s story? Looking back I see a few things: the dreadful Hitler-enhanced war story that our parents lived, with its heroism and triumph, was not available for us to identify with, partly because it had not happened on our soil, and partly because we were so definitively post-war. Nor could we derive self-esteem from the earlier Depression, with its tales of injustice and endurance, awash as we were in surplus. We had for our coming of age rituals- not recognition of triumph over adversity- but endless exhortations conveyed via the new wonder, TV, to spend our parents’ money on keys to popularity like Brylceem (a little dab ‘ll do ‘ya!). We were just consumers of hair grease always on the look out for new products. I think I sensed even then the potential for Tom Brokaw to slander my entire generation as something less than “great.”

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Ron Paul is on fire. That is my opinion of his performance in this first GOP debate. Of course, I’m biased. Feel free to make your own judgement after watching the entire debate below. There were a few stellar moments from Ron Paul, including his answer when asked about legalizing drugs, and his answer about being the “Founding Father” of the Tea Party movement regarding Michele Bachmann.

I don’t agree with a lot of what Herman Cain says, but I have to admit he has charisma that will give him a lot of support. Expect the other candidates to start attacking him if his poll numbers go up. I think they will.

Gary Johnson did very well with a few odd moments. If I’m looking at him through social-con or neo-con eyes voting for him would likely be impossible. He did come off as a very honest “make the hard choices” candidate. Sort of like Cain without the charisma.

Pawlenty seems to be channeling John McCain a bit too much and Santorum just comes off as angry. Both seem to be going after the George W. Bush voting block; however small that is these days.

Enjoy the entire debate below.

by John Browne, Senior Market Strategist at Euro Pacific Capital

As a result of active “demonetization” efforts by the IMF and its member central banks, gold and silver have experienced the type of volatility that has given conservative investors reasons not to perceive the metals as dependable cash alternatives. Instead gold and silver have become known as the asset class to hold as a hedge against inflation.

However, during the 1990′s, when inflation was in general much higher than it has been since the turn of the millennium, gold and silver prices drifted lower and stagnated. However, since 2000, gold and silver have risen by over 400 and 700 percent respectively. Remarkably, this has occurred over a time frame during which, by most accounts, low inflation has prevailed.  How can this be explained?

In 1944 when the U.S. dollar was considered ‘as good as gold,’ it was made the international reserve currency. This unique status is the reason that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was recently able to say that, “The U.S. Government has a technology, called the printing press that allows it to produce as many dollars at it wishes at essentially no cost.”

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: “By preventing people and companies from taking care of themselves, government feeds its own growth.” – Downsize DC co-founder Harry Browne (1933-2006)

Many of Obamacare’s opponents believe that if we can’t outright repeal it, perhaps it would be easier to defund its implementation.

But even that is harder than it sounds.

That’s because the Obamacare bill contained obscure provisions requiring $105 billion in MANDATORY spending over the next nine years.

This means Congress can’t merely defund this amount in a budget bill. It must specifically REPEAL these provisions.

If they aren’t repealed, the federal healthcare bureaucracy will continue to grow.

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Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, and host of The Peter Schiff Show, broadcasting live from WSTC Norwalk CT from 10am to noon Eastern time every weekday, and streaming at www.schiffradio.com

One of the immediate financial consequences of the catastrophic Japanese earthquake is that Japan needs to call on its huge cache of foreign exchange reserves to rebuild its shattered infrastructure. To pay for domestic projects, Japan will require yen - not dollars, euros or Swiss francs. As a result of these conversions, the yen rallied considerably after the quake struck.

But a surging yen runs counter to the macro-economic currency plans favored by most global economists. In order to maintain Japan’s position as a net-exporter of manufactured goods and net-buyer of US debt, the yen needs to stay down. So, the G-7 group of the world’s leading economies has intervened in the foreign exchange market by selling yen holdings, thereby pushing the currency down. In the short-term, their efforts appear to have been ”successful,” with the yen dropping sharply today.

Theoretically, this action is being taken to preserve export earnings, but this is only a secondary effect. Primarily, in making this move, the G7 is saying that the key to rebuilding Japan’s earthquake-ravaged economy is to raise the price of everything it needs to buy.

After all, absolute purchasing power is far more important than nominal export earnings. When the yen gains in strength, Japan earns more dollars from its exports, which could now be used to purchase the raw materials necessary to rebuild its infrastructure. However, by weakening the yen, Japan earns fewer dollars for its exports, increasing the economic burden of reconstruction.

Conventional wisdom is that a weakening currency is a boon for economic growth and exports; however, history does not support this view.

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Here is video of Ron Paul’s most recent hearing on Capitol Hill on the relationship of monetary policy and rising prices. Paul begins by explaining the difference between monetary inflation (expansion of the money supply) and price inflation (rising prices). Enjoy it below.

by Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Precious Metals and author of the hit economic parable How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes

In the world of precious metals, silver spends a lot of time in the shadow of its big brother gold.

Gold, with its high price-to-weight and distinctive yellow tint, has always occupied a special place in the human psyche. To many people across many ages, gold is simply the ultimate form of money – and, as a long-term, stable store of value for one’s personal wealth, I agree it’s hard to beat.

However, rare circumstances are aligning today that I believe will make silver the true champion of this bull run.

WHAT’S DRIVING PRECIOUS METALS?

Gold and silver are both benefitting from a perfect storm in the sector.

Dollar devaluation means that much of the ‘gains’ we see are really just losses by people holding dollars. In other words, if your dollars lose 50% of their value, it’s going to take twice as many of them to buy the same ounce of gold.

But the rally is based on more than simple inflation. Precious metals are regaining their role as the ultimate reserve asset. That means many, many more people are buying and holding these metals than at any time in the last thirty years.

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As a retired public school teacher, I find it useful to define terms by imagining how I would define them to children. The trick is to present a term with its most basic meanings. This works particularly well with political terms, since the media already defines them in childlike ways. Thus, if children ask me what Republicans and Democrats are (and they have) I might lift a simple definition right out of the media: “Republicans are people who don’t want to spend money, while Democrats want to spend money.” That would, of course, be an oversimplification, but it would satisfy the needs of the typical adult newspaper reader and might lead a child to ask more.

These days I don’t talk to as many kids as I used to, but the discourse is surprisingly similar. Consider, for instance, the reply of a California Democrat to this question: “What do you think state money should be spent on?” You’ll get a simple answer: “It should be spent on services for society’s most needy: children, the indigent,” etc. That’s an answer a child could understand. And most children, hearing such a statement, would think, “Well, why would anyone not be a Democrat? We should help children and poor people.”

Thus partisanship, the adherence to one party over another, is born. The problem, of course, is that adult political life is not so simple. To put it bluntly, Democrats don’t particularly care about children and poor people. Quite the reverse, in fact.

Take, for instance, the question of President Obama’s Race to the Top (RTTT) grant, which, we’re told, is supposed to help children. In California, as in the rest of the nation, almost all office-holding or appointed Democrats are for it, while many Republicans are against it. What I am arguing here is that, while this is a partisan struggle, it is not about whether or not we should help children.

To begin with, RTTT applicants must commit to adopting new federal “Common Core” academic standards (CCS). The reason given is that many states have poor standards. But California, in the estimate of virtually everyone who has studied its standards, is not in that category. Nonetheless, the Schwarzenegger appointed state school board approved paying, according to the non-profit group EdSource, up to $1.6 billion to cover the costs dropping our standards and adopting the CCS, and the board’s new members, appointed by Democratic governor Jerry Brown, are not perturbed at the prospect. Meanwhile our RTTT application was rejected and we will receive no federal money, so we will be paying the $1.6 billion with state funds, increasing by that amount our $25 billion deficit.

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Last night’s appearance by Senator Rand Paul on David Letterman’s late night show was quite interesting. Rand answered the barrage of somewhat contentious questions with plain facts and well-reasoned arguments. Apparently this was strange to Letterman who had no better response than to more or less say, “well your wrong and I’m right but I don’t know why.”

Some are saying it was a disaster for Rand Paul. I don’t see it that way. What do you think? Check out the video below.