by Jake, the Champion of the Constitution
Originally published Friday, April 10, 2009 at http://www.nolanchart.com/article6273.html

I recently resigned my job in Shanghai, China and repatriated to Pennsylvania.  It has been a bit of a reverse culture shock, and I keep most of my posts on message, but this is a little weird.

I don’t watch TV, but my family does. Recently, I was trying to read while this cop show “The Mentalist” was on.  Someone wanted to switch channels and lo and behold it was just another cop show.  I got curious and started asking how many cop shows there were, and was surprised to hear a list of over 10 rattled off. Here’s the results of a 2-minute brainstorm… geez.

1. 24 (FOX) – A Federal Agent can’t afford to always play by the rules. As a member of a counter terrorist unit, he must stop bombs, viruses, assassination attempts, etc.
2. NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigation Service (USA) – Team operates outside of the military chain of command under a highly skilled investigator and interrogator who is smart, tough and willing to bend the rules to get the job done.
3. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS) – An elite team of police forensic evidence investigation experts work their cases in Las Vegas.
4. CSI: Miami (AETV) – Same as above but in Miami.  (Pete)
5. CSI: NY (SPIKE) – Same as above but in NYC.  (and Re-Pete)
6. Law & Order (TNT) – The show follows a crime, usually adapted from current headlines, from two separate vantage points police fieldwork and in the courtroom. (Fascinating.)
7. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (USA) – The crimes they deal with are painful, emotional, disturbing, horrific and scarring – and every day there’s more of the same… (Sounds pretty boring)
8. Law & Order: Criminal Intent (USA) – Stars a detective hellbent on getting inside the minds of the city’s worst criminals in order to bring them to justice. (Booooring!)
9. Southland (NBC) – Stars a rookie cop intent on solving crime and adapting to life as a cop.  (Ooo, drama!)
10. Bones (FOX) - A cynical and lonely forensic anthropologist and a cocky FBI agent partner up to solve long-ago murders. (Now this sounds fun!)
11. Monk (USA/NBC) – A “defective detective” with a obsessive-compulsive disorder who investigates cases the police can’t solve to pay the bills with a single mom.
12. Castle (ABC) - A famous mystery novelist who is initially called in to help the police solve a copy-cat murder based on his novels teams up to solve murder cases with a young, attractive female detective.
13. The Shield (SPIKE) – The story of an inner-city police precinct where some of the cops aren’t above breaking the rules or working against their associates to both keep the streets safe and their self-interests intact.
14. Psych (USA) – A young crime consultant for a police department whose “heightened observational skills” and impressive detective instincts allow him to convince people that he is psychic.
15. The Mentalist (CBS) – A mentalist turned private investigator uses his skills to help the police.
16. Life (NBC) - A former police officer returns to the force after having been wrongly imprisoned for years.
17. In Plain Sight (USA) – US Marshals keep people in the Witness Protection Program alive.
18. Burn Notice (USA) – A spy recently disavowed by the US Government uses his Special Ops training to help others in trouble.
19. Chuck (NBC) – When a twenty-something computer geek inadvertently downloads critical government secrets into his brain, his former college friend turned CIA recruits him as a secret agent, all while keeping him out of evil hands.
20. Medium (NBC) – A wife and mother of three works at the District Attorney’s office and uses her psychic abilities to help crack criminal cases.
21. Saving Grace (TNT) – An angel offers a jaded Oklahoma City police detective the chance to redeem her life.
22. The Closer (TNT) – A female police chief runs a homicide division with an unorthodox style and obtains confessions helps her and her team solve the city’s toughest, most sensitive cases.
23. Cops (TRUTV) – Follows real-life law enforcement officers from various regions and departments.

I thought I would ask to see if any brave souls will tell me why there are at least 23 spy/cop TV shows on?  Is the viewing public supposed to be fearing for their collective safety?  Is this a result of content meeting consumer demand, or the mainstream media setting the tone for the population?

At least it’s still an improvement over China.  There are only a few state channels but no matter what time of day it is, at the gym they always had on a pro-Communist military soap opera.  Usually the “valiant” forces of Mao overcoming the mighty Japanese “bastards” type of deal. What was a bit shocking was one day at a friend’s home they turned on some scenes of trench warfare to occupy their 3-year-old son.  Geez.

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Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009

The show will be cross-broadcast on Alex Jones’ radio show from 2pm – 2:10pm.

Also joining the Judge this week will be:

In studio: Cody Willard (Fox Business Happy Hour) and new guest Andy Levy (Fox Red Eye).

On phone: Lew Rockwell and Peter Schiff.

Live video feed (2nd half of show): Ron Paul and new guest Michelle Muccio (Acton Institute).

Also, there may be one more surprise guest added to the lineup at the last minute.

It sounds like another great show with some new blood (so to speak). Please spread the word and tune in to the show tomorrow at 2pm if you can. The more people that watch the show online the better chance it has of making into the normal Fox TV lineup. You can watch the show here: http://foxnews.com/strategyroom (Foxnews.com Strategy Room online channel).

These ideas should be commonplace, but over the years they’ve been usurped by statism–the belief that the government is the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-do-good god. But the devil is in the details and Stossel once again reveals the devil in statism

The show is in six parts.

1. Economic crisis?
2. Should roads be private?
3. Should drugs be legal?
4. Should the federal government (our tax dollars) pay for preschool for every child?
5. Is combating illegal immigration doomed to fail?
6. Is America still the land of opportunity?

Watch all six in the playlist embedded below. (Thanks go to youtube user wisted for uploading the videos)

Visit FreedomWatchOnFox.com

This is yet another effort to demonstrate the popularity of the Judge’s show so that it may get on the Fox News TV channel at some point. So, please visit the new site, watch, comment, and rate the videos, then spread the site around to friends and colleagues.

On the site you will find all the show archive videos (and audio for the first show), a link to the live show, links to guests’ sites, and upcoming guest announcements.

Regular guests to the show include Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, Lew Rockwell, Cody Willard, and Tracy Byrnes.

Tune in next Wednesday at 2pm EST for the liberty power hour known as Freedom Watch.

Also joining those regulars will be Glenn Beck (via telephone) who now hosts his own television show on Fox. While Beck differs on foreign policy with Paul, they are on the same footing when it comes to the economy and free markets.

If you listen to Beck enough you will find that he really isn’t too far away from Paul on foreign policy. He claims that we need to do something to fight terrorism abroad and that we don’t have the luxury of being complete non-interventionists when it comes to “protecting” our borders. It’s like he “wants” to believe in non-interventionism, but he just can’t seem to get there. He is constantly quoting the Founders to his guests, using their words to emphasize his own beliefs.

Perhaps at some point he’ll quote the non-interventionist “entangling alliances with none” and come back with an argument FOR bringing our troops home. If that never happens, at least there is another voice out there preaching the free market message.

It should be another interesting hour of discussion on The Judge’s show. You can watch it live at: http://www.foxnews.com/strategyroom

We also plan on capturing video of the show and making it available on YouTube tomorrow evening like we did last week.

Also, in other freedom message media news, Ron Paul is scheduled to be on Glenn Beck’s TV show this afternoon during the 5pm EST hour.

Well according to the great yet elusive Jesse Benton, Ron Paul will be appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher again. The episode airs Friday at 10pm EST on HBO.

The man who spoke to me about Dr. Paul in the airport was not the first nor last person that told me they first learned of Ron Paul by watching him on Maher’s show.

Outside of the Leno, Meet The Press, and Comedy Central appearances his appearance on Real Time was probably the one that gave him the most exposure. This is especially true since it occurred fairly early in his campaign, following the debate where Paul and Giuliani exchanged blows regarding the Iraq war.

Look for video of his appearance here tomorrow after it airs.

I said a long time ago that I thought Glenn Beck was the “main stream” media equivalent of Alex Jones. I don’t think this is too far off the mark. In fact as time goes by it becomes more evident.

Watch the doom and gloom below then check out Celente’s Trends Journal.

“When companies get too big and make mistakes they should fail.”

“We’re propping up all the bad mistakes.” (which penalizes the people that made the right choices)

“Governments can’t make the correct decisions. They aren’t smart enough.”

“This whole idea that Washington are genuises… that they can do central economic planning. In this country we don’t call it socialism we call it interventionism and a planned economy.”

Obama coming in is a lot like “Hoover leaving and Roosevelt coming in.”

Quote of the Day: “Bad ideas can only bear the weight of reality for so long.” — Greg Jesson

Today we’ll compare the cases of Alan Greenspan, Ron Paul, and John Stossel, beginning with this . . .

If you oppose fiat currency and centralized government banking, and would like to abolish the Federal Reserve and legal tender laws in favor of free market banking and free market money . . .

And you think the best way to achieve these things is to put the right people — people who believe as you do — in positions of power, then . . .

It would have been reasonable to assume, prior to seeing him in action, that Alan Greenspan was the “right person” to head the Federal Reserve.

You could have justifiably assumed, based on Greenspan’s previous writings and statements, that he would use his position to not only control the damage done by the Fed, but also to argue for its abolition.

None of these things happened. Instead, the opposite happened. Greenspan betrayed every economic principle he had previously professed. Putting a presumed “right person” in a position of power did not have the right result.

To contrast with this example we can compare the case of Ron Paul. Ron Paul has always said the right things, and done the right things too.

Two different “right people” have produced two different results. What are we to conclude from this?

We conclude that you cannot tell in advance whether or not you’re entrusting power to the “right person.” The person you trust might turn out to behave like Ron Paul, or like Alan Greenspan. This means there is a huge probability that the time and money you invest in a presumed “right person” will turn out to be wasted.

Even if your chances of actually choosing a “right person who will behave in the right way” is as good as 50-50, that still means your time and money will have been invested to zero result. The good work of the 50% of “right people who do right” will be cancelled out by the bad actions of the people who betray your trust.

But we think it’s even worse than that. We do not think the attempt to choose “right people who will actually do right things” can possibly produce anything close to 50-50 results, even assuming that a majority of other voters choose as you do. The reason for this is simple . . .

The incentives of government power are structured to entice the people who have power to do bad things. We could choose many examples to bolster this claim, but there is one huge example that should suffice . . .

The Republicans told us for years that they would reduce the size of government, if only the voters would give them full control of both Congress and the White House. Eventually they gained that full control, and look what they delivered — the hugest spending increases ever.

We believe this example is devastating to the “elect the right people” strategy. And lest you think the problem is merely a Republican problem, just get ready for what the Democrats do. Obama has already betrayed his supposed principles in the case of his warrantless spying vote, and we predict more betrayals to come. Obama is not change, he is stasis.

We are supposed to be able to rely on the Democrats to protect civil liberties, and upon the Republicans to control government spending, but we cannot, because the incentives encourage the constant expansion of centralized government power in all directions.

And the prospects for a third-party solution are even worse, given winner-takes-all voting, gerrymandering, campaign finance laws, and a persistent partisan tribalism that limits the extent to which any third party can ever grow.

But there’s a further problem. How do you get a majority of Americans to vote for your supposed “right person?” You might argue for education to achieve this goal, but assertions are easier than results. The difficulty is highlighted by the example of John Stossel of ABC . . .

John Stossel has a mighty megaphone. His voice is far larger than that of any other person or institution advocating for downsized government. Every few months he produces excellent hour-long shows puncturing the myths of government programs. He reaches more people more powerfully than all other downsizing advocates combined. If you missed his latest installment, we strongly urge you to watch it.

But . . .

Even John Stossel’s mighty megaphone produces but a whisper in a hurricane. Aligned against Stossel’s one-hour shows are around-the-clock news coverage, political advertising, and teaching in our schools that constantly promotes the idea of more-and-more government “solutions.”

Even John Stossel, with his mighty megaphone, is fighting a losing battle.

The only way to win the battle is to have superior forces and superior funding. It will require a huge army that funds outreach capable of reaching everyone, everywhere, EVERY DAY. But what kind of institution could build such a force?

Will a think tank or a political party do it? We think not. Think tanks are think tanks. They are NOT grassroots organizing vehicles. Political parties ARE grassroots organizing vehicles, but to convince someone to join you must NOT ONLY convince them of your ideas, you MUST ALSO convince them to betray their old identity. It’s a doubly difficult task. Or . . .

If the vehicle you choose is a third party then the task is triply difficult, because the rules are rigged against you, and to change the rules you would need resources of people and money that the rules themselves prevent you from obtaining. We speak from experience.

We are humbly suggesting that we need a non-partisan, or even anti-partisan institution that educates, recruits, and imposes pressure on the politicians, all at the same time. We further suggest that such an institution should be structured so as to impose the smallest possible cost on each individual participant, so as to maximize both recruitment and participation.

We’ve built DownsizeDC.org to do exactly that. It educates, recruits, and imposes pressure on the politicians, all at the same time. It aims at changing the incentives the politicians face through key reforms such as the “Read the Bills Act” and the “One Subject at a Time Act.” And our strategy imposes only a very small cost on each participant . . .

* A few mouse clicks and key strokes
* A few phone calls to Congress
* And financial investments that can be as little as a few cents per day

Even so, we well recognize that there’s one weakness to our plan — human nature.

Human nature assumes that if a problem is complicated, the solution must be too. Human nature also prefers to continue doing what’s always been done. Our only weapon against these natural tendencies is constant repetition of our strategic arguments. It’s the same tactic we believe is needed to win the American mind for the cause of downsized government.

Just as some amount of repetition is needed to memorize, so repetition is needed to persuade. What is not absorbed cannot convince.

It will take a lot of repetition to achieve our goals. Progress, like everything else in life, will be slow at first, but more rapid later, as the message takes hold. We do not expect to overturn what people “have always done” quickly. And so today, we’re hoping to slowly convince a few more people that our strategy is worthy of their financial support.

We need more monthly pledges to grow, and one-time contributions to help us make budget for October. We hope you can do one or the other using our secure contribution form.

Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC army.

Perry Willis
Communications Director
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

D o w n s i z e r – D i s p a t c h
is the official email list of DownsizeDC.org, Inc. & Downsize DC Foundation

Will Ferrell reprises his impression of George Bush, which was one of the most famous in SNL history. In the bit, Bush endorses McCain-Palin with some of the best humor and satire I’ve seen in awhile on SNL… probably since Ferrell was one of the Saturday Night Live regulars. Watch the video below.

Humor, especially satire, is always the best escape from the futility of watching the markets tank and the country move further away from the principles of liberty.

Tonight catch Barr on PBS with Jim Lehrer between 6pm and 7pm Eastern.

Watch the CSPAN Bob Barr segment here.