Beyond The Broken Spectrum

A strange tale of oral sex, a knife fight and the most unlikely of pregnancies recently brought to light by the blogosphere has doctors touting the triumphant persistence of sperm.

In 1988, a 15-year-old girl living in the small southern African nation of Lesotho came to local doctors with all the symptoms of a woman in labor. But the doctors were quickly puzzled because, upon examination, she didn’t have a vagina.

“Inspection of the vulva showed no vagina, only a shallow skin dimple,” so doctors delivered a healthy baby boy via Caesarean, the authors wrote in a case report published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Her birth defect — called Mullerian agenesis or Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome — didn’t necessarily surprise doctors, but her pregnancy did. Even the 15-year-old girl could not believe she was pregnant. Read More

Mises Daily: Monday, February 08, 2010 by Robert P. Murphy

I’m a professional economist, which means I can’t just be happy when people try to help others. Instead, I feel compelled to analyze whether their altruistic actions are efficient or if they seem to be a waste of resources. In a recent flash of insight, I came up with a way to make charitable impulses more productive, but I had to abandon the idea once I realized the government wouldn’t approve.

Bell Ringing and Marathons

I really hope I don’t offend anyone by saying this, but I find a lot of standard fundraising in this country to be silly. For example, when I was younger I lived for a few months in a fairly rough suburb of Chicago. Sometimes at night, when I’d get off the “el” train to walk back to my apartment, a woman in her 20s would be standing outside the station, collecting money for the Salvation Army.

Now, this always struck me as ludicrous, but, not being a complete jerk, I just smiled and kept walking. Yet here’s what I was thinking: Read the rest of this entry »

Mises Daily: Monday, February 08, 2010 by Doug French

Despite the juiced-up GDP numbers of the last two quarters, there is no illusion that the depression is over and the boom has resumed. While GDP is reported as being positive, the employment numbers remain weak. The headline jobless number has one in ten people out of work. Include those who have become discouraged and dropped out of the labor force, and the number is one in five. Since the start of the depression at the end of 2007, 8.4 million payroll jobs have been lost.

Gaining employment has been especially hard for young people. “From December 2008 to December 2009, the employment of 16–24 year olds in the United States fell by 1.78 million, or a third of the total drop in employment of 5.4 million,” reports David G. Blanchflower in The Peninsula. Even college graduates are suffering as wages fall with fewer opportunities.

The artificial boom that misdirected so much capital into financial services, real estate, and other areas of consumer and investor excess also misdirected human resources. The bust now is cleansing those unneeded and redundant jobs. But those professions were what college students had been preparing for. Read the rest of this entry »

Mises Daily: Thursday, February 04, 2010 by Morris and Linda Tannehill

Many people ask, “But how in the world could a laissez-faire society deal with aggression by foreign nations, since it would have no government to protect it?” Behind this question are two unrealized assumptions: first, that government is some sort of extra-societal entity with resources of its own — resources which can only be tapped for defense by the action of government — and, second, that government does, in fact, defend its citizens.

In reality, government must draw all its resources from the society over which it rules. When a governmentally controlled society takes defensive action against an aggression by a foreign power, where does it get the resources necessary to take that action? The men who fight are private individuals, usually conscripted into government service. The armaments are produced by private individuals working at their jobs. The money to pay for these armaments and the pittance doled out to the conscripts, as well as the money to pay the salaries of that small minority comprising the other members of the armed forces, is confiscated from private individuals by means of taxation.

Government’s only contribution is to organize the whole effort by the use of force — the force of the draft, taxation, and other, more minor coercions, such as rationing, wage and price ceilings, travel restrictions, etc. So, to maintain that government is necessary to defend a society from foreign aggression is to maintain that it is necessary to use domestic aggression against the citizens in order to protect them from foreign aggression. Read the rest of this entry »

Richard Nixon once said, “We’re all Keynesians now.” But that was a long time ago, and it’s certainly not the case anymore (if it ever was).

While influential 20th Century economist John Maynard Keynes would say it’s best to increase deficit spending in tough economic times, only 11% of American adults agree and think the nation needs to increase its deficit spending at this time. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 70% disagree and say it would be better to cut the deficit.

In fact, 59% think Keynes had it backwards and that increasing the deficit at this time would hurt the economy rather than help.

To help the economy, most Americans (56%) believe that cutting the deficit is the way to go. Read More

For years, Pastor Lamar Beverly-Davis has been opening the doors to the faded-red carpeted sanctuary of his Word Is God Worship Center at 3320 W. Vliet St. as an overnight shelter for the homeless during Milwaukee’s bitterly cold winter nights.

For about three months during the winter, the homeless can get food, a sleeping bag and a spot on the sanctuary floor for the night before heading out the next morning, he says.

“We do more for cats and dogs than for people,” he said. “I do this as an act of compassion and because there’s a need,” he explained with conviction.

He added that he doesn’t ask for money or permission from anyone.

Wearing an orange baseball cap with a white cross on the front, Beverly-Davis said Wednesday he believes he’s doing the right thing by sheltering the cold and homeless.

City officials don’t totally agree. Read More

More phony-white-liberal crocodile tears have been shed over the issue of academic freedom than perhaps over any other. More academics have waxed more eloquent over it than over perhaps any other topic receiving their tender attention. In the eyes of some, it has been equated with the very basis of Western civilization. In the eyes of others, judging by their anguish, it has been equated with the Second Coming!

There is not a day that goes by that does not see the American Civil Liberties Union in a virtual state of apoplexy over some real or imagined violation of academic freedom. And all this seems pale in comparison with the gnashing of teeth and frothing at the mouth by labor unions of professional academics and teachers in this fair land of ours.

From the name itself, academic freedom would seem to be innocuous enough. All it would seem to mean would be that academics, like anyone else, should have freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom to come and go, and freedom to quit a job. The usual freedoms that everyone has.

Such is not the case, however. “Academic freedom” has a very special meaning: the freedom to teach the subject matter in whatever way the academic in question wishes the subject taught, despite any wishes to the contrary that his employer may harbor. In other words, the employer may not fire the academic as long as he teaches the subject matter in any manner that the academic, not the employer, wishes. Read the rest of this entry »

Mises Daily: Friday, January 29, 2010 by George F. Smith

Having failed to learn what causes depressions and how to treat them when they arrive, our nation’s leaders are steering us straight into a monetary catastrophe. Predictably, the major media voices are clinging to the assurances of Keynesians, who see new wads of debt and paper money and conclude that the good times are ready to roll again; don’t pay any heed to the millions still looking for work.

The free-lunch Keynesians even tell us how we got into the crisis and what saved us. Paul Krugman speaks for many when he blames market deregulation for the meltdown and hails the Fed’s printing press as our savior.

What does this mean? It means we can laugh at rumors that the Fed’s cheap credit brought on the crisis. We can laugh even harder at the claim that Fed monetary pumping will ensure an even greater disaster down the road. And we can save our biggest laughs for that lucky guesser, Peter Schiff, whose knowledgeable detractors laughed at him in 2006 when he predicted the current meltdown. Read the rest of this entry »

Drug companies manipulated the World Health Organization into downgrading its definition of a pandemic so they could cash in on a swine flu outbreak, it is claimed.

An inquiry heard yesterday that the WHO allegedly softened its criteria for declaring a H1N1 flu pandemic last spring – just weeks before announcing there was a worldwide outbreak.

Critics said the decision was driven by pharmaceutical companies desperate to recoup the billions of pounds they had invested in researching and developing pandemic vaccines after the bird flu scares in 2006 and 2007.

Read more: Daily Mail

By Ron Paul, LewRockwell.com

You may not have heard of the American Community Survey, but you will. The national census, which historically is taken every ten years, has expanded to quench the federal bureaucracy’s ever-growing thirst to govern every aspect of American life. The new survey, unlike the traditional census, is taken each and every year at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. And it’s not brief. It contains 24 pages of intrusive questions concerning matters that simply are none of the government’s business, including your job, your income, your physical and emotional heath, your family status, your dwelling, and your intimate personal habits.

The questions are both ludicrous and insulting. The survey asks, for instance, how many bathrooms you have in your house, how many miles you drive to work, how many days you were sick last year, and whether you have trouble getting up stairs. It goes on and on, mixing inane questions with highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. One can only imagine the countless malevolent ways our federal bureaucrats could use this information. At the very least the survey will be used to dole out pork, which is reason enough to oppose it.

Keep in mind the survey is not voluntary, nor is the Census Bureau asking politely. Americans are legally obligated to answer, and can be fined up to $1,000 per question if they refuse! Read the rest of this entry »

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

All this talk of unemployment is preposterous. Think of it. We live in a world with lots of imperfections, things that need to be done. It has always been so and always will be so. That means that there is work to be done, and therefore always jobs. The problem of unemployment is a problem of disconnect between those who would work and those who would hire.

What is the disconnect? It comes down to affordability. Businesses right now can’t afford to hire new workers. They keep letting them go. Therefore, unemployment is high, in the double-digits, approaching 17% or more. Among black men, it is 25%. Among the youth, it is 30% or higher. And the problem is spreading and will continue to spread so long as there are barriers to deal-making between hirers and workers.

Again, it is not a lack of work to be done. It is too expensive to pay for the work to be done. So ask yourself, what are those things that prevent deals from being made?

Let me list a few barriers: Read the rest of this entry »

Mises Daily: Thursday, January 28, 2010 by Mateusz Machaj

A few days ago, the Fed announced that it had “earned” a record-high amount of money in 2009. Then it turned $46 billion over to the Treasury. Here we are in the midst of a serious recession, with the unemployment rate high, the housing market still in a slump, and the stock market making only small steps toward recovery. In this climate, the Fed is making profits.

That’s impressive, isn’t it? Unfortunately, the Fed’s huge earnings are a signal that the economy is still in terrible shape and that its condition is worsening.

Let us take a closer look at the Federal Reserve’s balance sheets, at least to the extent that they are available to us. One year before reaching their record-high profits, the Fed’s assets consisted of nearly $500 billion in government assets. These consisted of Treasury bonds and assets issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giants of the real-estate market whose solvency is guaranteed by the federal government. Since Fannie and Freddy are currently owned by the state, their assets should be treated as state securities. Read the rest of this entry »

The first night of class, this little man with thick glasses perched on a Durantesque nose, sporting a bow tie and a pocketful of pens, shuffled into the room. He began talking the moment he stepped through the door, poking fun at the silly politicians who were deriding the “evil” oil companies for supposedly using the Gulf War to gouge consumers.

It was a typical Rothbard tale, illuminating how the free-market price system efficiently distributes goods, while government intervention mucks things up. He then launched into his History of Economic Thought story, which during the fall 1990 semester had a monetary theme. There was no time to take roll or go over a syllabus; we had centuries to cover. Read the rest of this entry »

Ron Paul delivers an address on the state of our republic. Notice how his address is straight forward, filled with facts and examples, and does not pander to people’s emotions. Compare this to President Obama’s State of the Union address, which will lay blame everywhere except at the feet of the government or federal reserve and will try to play on the emotions of people without citing any real facts or examples.

According to the National Taxpayers Union, 42 senators in 2008 voted to spend more tax dollars than socialist Bernie Sanders. They include his neighbor Pat Leahy; Californians Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, who just can’t understand why their home state is in fiscal trouble; and the Eastern Seaboard anti-taxpayer Murderers’ Row of Kerry, Dodd, Lieberman, Clinton, Schumer, Lautenberg, Menendez, Carper, Biden, Cardin, and Mikulski. Don’t carry cash on Amtrak! Not to mention Blanche Lambert Lincoln and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who apparently think Arkansans don’t pay taxes so federal spending is free. Sen. Barack Obama didn’t vote often enough to get a rating in 2008, but in 2007 he managed to be one of the 11 senators who voted for more spending than the socialist senator. Read More