Liberty Maven

No, this isn’t the punchline to a joke. The Institute For Justice has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a group of monks from Saint Joseph Abbey to permit them to participate in an unfettered market for selling caskets in Louisiana.

Mark Meranta from IJ writes:

To sell caskets legally, the monks would have to abandon their calling for one full year to apprentice at a licensed funeral home, learn unnecessary skills and take a funeral industry test. They would also have to convert their monastery into a “funeral establishment” by, among other things, installing equipment for embalming human remains.

The monks face crippling fines and up to 180 days in jail. This is classic economic protectionism, and this case has a great chance of making it to the Supreme Court.

Here is a short video about the case:

The Institute for Justice does some wonderful work. This is no exception. For more information see their page regarding the suit.

As fiscal conservatives continue to seek avenues through which to derail the federal gravy train, it helps from time to time to take a look at the mind-numbingly long list of federal departments and agencies that are on board. Of course, this list is hardly exhaustive – just one that is publicly available – but it can certainly give us some concrete ideas on how and where to cut the spending.

Today: Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA)

About: “[The FHFA seeks to] provide effective supervision, regulation and housing mission oversight of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks to promote their safety and soundness, support housing finance and affordable housing, and support a stable and liquid mortgage market. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) was created on July 30, 2008, when the President signed into law the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.”
FY 2010 Budget: $139.3 million (Source)

In response to the housing crisis in 2008, media pundits and politicians were quite convinced that there simply wasn’t any regulation in the housing market. Pay no attention to the fact that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – two monstrosities created and backed by the federal government to “encourage affordable housing” – were the main culprits in driving the demand for housing astronomically above the free-market levels. Pay no attention to the fact that we already set up a regulating body – the FHFB – in the wake of the S&L crisis of the late 1980′s. (Apparently, changing the “B” to an “A” will solve our problems.) The solution is to regulate the government with more government! Surely, there will be no conflict of interest here. The fact that the director can call the FHFA an “independent regulator” while keeping a straight face truly boggles the mind.

The $139.3 million budget for the FHFA seems small, but is fairly misleading. Part of their mission statement is to “support a stable and liquid mortgage market.” This means calling on Congress and the President to throw more money at Fannie and Freddie if, in the opinion of the FHFA director, they could become insolvent. Their cost to taxpayers goes far beyond their own budget, as they are tasked with regulating the agencies which back more than $5 trillion in mortgages – most of which should have never been made.

Of course, the mission statement of the FHFA itself is a collection of laughable contradictions. On the one hand, the agency wishes to “support housing finance and affordable housing.” They are not ashamed to admit that the goal is to continue the same easy credit policies of Fannie and Freddie that caused the housing boom and subsequent bust. However, with their attempts to prop up housing prices to prevent an increasing number of mortgage defaults, by bailing out homeowners and extending tax credits, they are doing just the opposite of making housing prices affordable. While the pain of foreclosures would hurt many Americans, it would also accelerate the recovery by allowing people who had accumulated savings to buy the cheaper housing, even without the phony credit of the GSEs.

The best way to ensure a stable housing market is to stop distorting it with trillions of dollars of money in mortgages, impossibly low interest rates set artificially by the Fed, and regulators on top of regulators who obviously don’t have a clue. Rather than setting arbitrary goals that make us feel warm and fuzzy about helping the underprivileged in the boom, maybe we should be observing the plight of those same people in the bust – people who are now not only underprivileged, but underwater on their mortgages or bankrupt to boot.

One could argue that, as long as Fannie and Freddie exist, it is “Necessary and Proper” to regulate them, and thus constitutional for the FHFA to exist. Of course, I’d counter that with “Are Fannie and Freddie constitutional themselves?” The “necessary and proper” clause applies only to functions pursuant to “the foregoing powers” in Article I, Section 8. One would be hard-pressed to find the clause authorizing the federal government’s backing of mortgages, financing of banks with money to make more mortgages, or packaging of mortgages for sale as financial assets. Get the federal government out of the mortgage and loan industry, and perhaps the banks who make these mortgages have a bit more incentive to be prudent and cautious with their lending standards.

Of course, we know that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I’d add that those who choose to blatantly ignore the past deserve what they have coming to them. After all, it isn’t as if we couldn’t see this coming the first time.

Results
Constitutionality: None
Visibility: Moderate
Ease of Abolishing: Fairly difficult
Taxpayer Expense: Deceptively high
Priority: Fairly high

Ron Paul has often come out in support of abolishing legal tender laws and the idea of having other currencies compete with the dollar.  Well, in Michigan the legal tender laws may still be in place but many businesses now accept alternative currency such as gold, silver, and copper coins when doing business:

New types of money are popping up across Mid-Michigan and supporters say, it’s not counterfeit, but rather a competing currency.

Right now, you can buy a meal or visit a chiropractor without using actual U.S. legal tender.

They sound like real money and look like real money. But you can’t take them to the bank because they’re not made at a government mint. They’re made at private mints.

“I sell three or four every single day and then I get one or two back a week,” said Dave Gillie, owner of Gillies Coney Island Restaurant in Genesee Township.

Gillie also accepts silver, gold, copper and other precious metals to pay for food.

Read the rest of the story and watch a short news clip on this topic.

Today presents a fantastic fundraising opportunity for the Liberty movement. Justin Amash, who recently won the endorsement of the Club for Growth, is described by the press as being a serious contender in a two-way race. Amash’s status as a viable candidate is bolstered by recent attacks in the established media against his campaign.

For those who are interested in donating to Amash, a popular message circulating the internet has been posted below. It outlines over 20 reasons as to why one should donate to this campaign.

1 – Ron Paul has endorsed Amash, calling him “one of the most principled young leaders I have seen in a generation.”
2 – Justin Amash supported Ron Paul in 2008, donating over $1000 to his campaign.
3 – Amash has a great chance of winning, with the Grand Rapids Press calling the primary a “two-man race.” With no incumbent and a conservative district, winning the primary virtually guarantees his election.
4 – The big-government GOP establishment is supporting his opponent.
5 – He’s the only legislator to post all of his votes on Facebook in real-time! If you don’t think he’s a true defender of liberty, just see for yourself!

Read More »

by John Downs, Assistant Manager of the Los Angeles branch of Euro Pacific Capital

Although China is not the biggest economy in the world by GDP, (it is third, after growing a remarkable 8.7 percent last year), its exports are increasingly seen as the needed lifeline for many shaky economies. But as China plots its future as the world’s largest exporter, it must be of some concern to them that their top two clients (the US and EU) are broke. As a result, China knows that it will have to look beyond developed markets for continued growth.

While a rebalancing of the Chinese economy towards domestic consumption is increasingly evident, the Chinese are also aggressively focusing investments toward emerging markets. By securing precious natural resources, developing infrastructure and deepening trade relations with the developing world, the Chinese are lessening their economic dependence on the mature markets of the US and EU.

In the developing world, China’s influence is hard to miss. Direct trade agreements with Brazil (China is its largest trade partner) and Argentina reflect its growing influence in South America, long considered the United States’ sphere of influence. Africa has experienced influx of Chinese investment, with resource-for-development contracts being signed with several African countries. Unlike the West, China rarely let’s other interests trump commerce. China has concluded agreements with international pariah states like Sudan, Iran and Venezuela. The warm welcome these countries receive in Beijing stands in sharp contrast to the reception many Chinese companies have received on American shores – just ask CNOOC.

But nowhere is China’s growing influence felt more than in its own backyard.

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An interesting discussion is ongoing at Daily Kos over the merits of Keynesian economic thought.

VA Classical Liberal writes:

If John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Hayek got into a fight, who’d win?

If it was a real knock-down, drag-out brawl, my money would be on Keynes. At 6’ 6”, he’s got the size, the weight and the reach. Hayek couldn’t lay a glove on him.

But what if they were cutting heads and throwing down rhymes? Then, Keynes could have a real fight on his hands.

You can read the rest of the discussion, and comment, here.

Obama campaigned on “Yes, We can!”, but he’s governing on “Yes, You Will.”

He’s so similar to George W. Bush, and in some cases worse (drone bombing fetish?), on foreign policy that I expect to hear him start mis-pronouncing the word “nuclear” any day now.

He, like his fellow progressives, believes government is the solution to all the problems of the world. Will it take someone hurling a shoe at him to wake him up to the fact that the government doesn’t have such a great track record when it comes to solutions? That probably wouldn’t work. He’d just accuse the shoe-thrower of being a Right-wing extremist and/or a Tea Party racist and/or a domestic terrorist and/or a misguided soul who has been brain-washed by “my opponents” to believe that government is the problem.

Then he may calm down a bit and suggest that perhaps he just needs to explain things better so the stupid peasants that live around his DC castle and beyond understand that the proper role of government is to be involved in every aspect of their lives.

For instance, let’s investigate the health welfare individual mandate.

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There are many gigantic horses’ hindquarters milling about in Washington DC trying to figure out ways to save us from ourselves. I have to say though that Joe Lieberman is the biggest of them all.

Earlier, I wrote of his bill to give the president the power to shutdown the Internet in the event of a “cyber-attack”. Here he attempts to assuage the public by crying, but “it’s for national security!”:

And yes… the climax of his argument is that having the power to shutdown the Internet has worked so well for China that it should be done in the United States.

Joe, if you like China so much, just go there and leave us freedom-lovers the hell alone.

What if there was a third choice for reality-seekers? Something other than the red pill or the blue pill. What if there was a purple pill? The purple pill is the gateway drug to liberty for those that aren’t quite ready to have an ice-cold-water-on-the-face wake-up call.  It is a soothing alarm clock that gradually opens eyes to the truth. Rand Paul is the purple pill.

He already has his foot in the libertarian door thanks to his father, Ron Paul. This gives him legitimacy and support from many of his father’s more libertarian-minded supporters. Yet he softens what many Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh conservatives would call the crazy edges of his father. Ron Paul is a true red pill. There is no doubt about that.

Rand represents someone conservatives, Republicans, and even neo-conservatives can be comfortable supporting without wounding their own interventionist-minded pride. This becomes a problem for the more steadfast libertarians among the Ron Paul faithful who demand an A+ on the libertarian purity test.

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Declan McCullagh writes at CNET:

A new U.S. Senate bill would grant the president far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of or shut down portions of the Internet.

I wish this surprised me. I wish I didn’t just nod and say, “of course”, when I read this.

It appears that  “national security” ranks right up there with the Constitution’s Commerce Clause as the top two excuses given by the U.S. government to bend you over and forcibly extract freedom from your nether-region.

Apparently, our elected masters aren’t happy with just killing humans in no-win wars. Now they want to be able to “kill” the Internet, whatever that means.

The idea of an Internet “kill switch” that the president could flip is not new. A draft Senate proposal that CNET obtained in August allowed the White House to “declare a cybersecurity emergency,” and another from senators Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to “order the disconnection” of certain networks or Web sites.

How can anyone support something like this? Apparently it’s something to “laud” and “commend”.

On Thursday, both senators lauded Lieberman’s bill, which is formally titled the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA. Rockefeller said “I commend” the drafters of the PCNAA. Collins went further, signing up as a co-sponsor and saying at a press conference that “we cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government realizes the importance of protecting our cyber resources.”

I’d much rather our lawmakers laud, commend, and follow the Constitution. You know, that document that they swore an oath to defend, but apparently is now so dangerous that it must come with a warning label.

I hope for a timely mass awakening before the alarm clock sounds signifying the end of freedom. Remember, there is no snooze button on this alarm clock.

When lawmakers think it is perfectly fine to propose liberty-sucking bills such as this isn’t it time to realize that they firmly believe this is their world and we just live in it?

Make no mistake. It is not us and them.

It is us or them.

The strategy is threefold: nullify, repeal, and vote them out.