Beyond The Broken Spectrum

During the discussion following one of my recent lectures, it occurred to me that the questions fell into a pattern, and that this pattern was the same — whether in Manila, or Boise, or wherever. Each question was based on something the inquirer had heard or read; no questions appeared to stem from a genuine impasse in the person’s own effort to solve a problem. These people were merely repeating questions someone else had raised for them; they weren’t seeking directions by reason of having lost their way for, in fact, they had done no exploration on their own! Read More

The recent improvement of the global economy, with particularly high economic-growth numbers for the United States, is just one more deception in a long series of deceptions that have plagued policy makers and investors. While official statistics register a rising gross domestic product, the long-term production potential of many economies around the world is actually contracting. The present economic expansion is brought about by massive stimulus policies. This kind of economic expansion does not constitute genuine economic growth. Read More

There have been many complaints recently about the way Washington works — or rather its recent failures to efficiently implement Obama’s policy priorities.

Paul Krugman compares the present state of American politics to the gridlock that afflicted 17th-century Poland. Use of the Liberum Veto froze the Polish parliament (the Sejm). Now senators are holding up new legislation in America. Many others have added complaints about special-interest groups and an alleged need for public financing of elections. Read More

Men have chosen the precious metals gold and silver for the money service on account of their mineralogical, physical, and chemical features. The use of money in a market economy is a praxeologically necessary fact. That gold — and not something else — is used as money is merely a historical fact and as such cannot be conceived by catallactics. In monetary history too, as in all other branches of history, one must resort to historical understanding. If one takes pleasure in calling the gold standard a “barbarous relic,”[1] one cannot object to the application of the same term to every historically determined institution. Then the fact that the British speak English — and not Danish, German, or French — is a barbarous relic too, and every Briton who opposes the substitution of Esperanto for English is no less dogmatic and orthodox than those who do not wax rapturous about the plans for a managed currency. Read More

I was recently involved in a car accident in which I managed to smash the front end of my Chrysler — one consolation is the fact that it was a Chrysler and so was not much of a loss. I sat around for a minute or two, trying to figure out what had just happened. Finally, I got out of my car to talk to the driver of the truck I had hit. While filling out the claims report and talking to my insurance company, I could not help but examine my experience through the lens of Austrian economics and the free market. Read More

by Lester Grinspoon MD

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — A new study in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine. It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine that we still need “proof” of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years.

The study, from the University of California at San Francisco, found that smoked marijuana was effective at relieving the extreme pain of a debilitating condition known as peripheral neuropathy.

It was a study of HIV patients, but a similar type of pain caused by damage to nerves afflicts people with many other illnesses including diabetes and multiple sclerosis. (more…)

By: Russ Belville of NORML

I work this issue every day and am well aware of the racist nature of the War on (Certain American Citizens Using Non-Pharmaceutical, Non-Alcoholic, Tobacco-Free) Drugs. But even I wasn’t aware of the outrageous statistics comparing the Drug War to Jim Crow era. Michelle Alexander lays it all out in her new book, The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste:

• There are more African Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
• As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.
• A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.
• If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

The uncomfortable truth, however, is that crime rates do not explain the sudden and dramatic mass incarceration of African Americans during the past 30 years. Crime rates have fluctuated over the last few decades — they are currently are at historical lows — but imprisonment rates have consistently soared. Quintupled, in fact. And the vast majority of that increase is due to the War on Drugs. Drug offenses alone account for about two-thirds of the increase in the federal inmate population, and more than half of the increase in the state prison population. (more…)

Cable, satellite TV and other video providers have asked the government to intervene in ongoing fee disputes with TV networks — big-money fights that are expected to escalate this year as more contracts expire. Read More

So these people want the government to step in because their tv watching is getting disrupted. This is truly a new level of laziness. When the consumer gets lazy and begins to depend on others instead of themselves, problems arise.

This sort of stuff is actually good because it will make the companies more competitive and open up the market to companies that can do a better job of providing the services that customers want. The consumers only have to vote with their money and feet, when they will though, I’m beginning to wonder.

By Butler Shaffer, LewRockwell.com

It is not surprising that, when culture is in collapse, so too is the level of thinking upon which it is based. This is doubtless the social equivalent of the proposition that water can never rise higher than its source. For a civilization to be creative and to thrive, it must have a substructure capable of producing the values that can sustain it. Our present civilization is dying because it no longer has such a base of support.

Western society has become so thoroughly politicized that it is difficult to imagine any area of human activity that can be said to be beyond the reach of the state. People’s diets, weight levels, child-raising practices, treatment of pets, how he can express anger, whether one can make alterations to his/her home – including replacing a lawn with rocks or plants: these are but a handful of private decisions intruded upon by the state. Other than complaints voiced by those directly affected by the state’s intervention, there are few who consistently defend the liberty of individuals to live as they choose. (more…)

By Ron Paul

Last week Congress voted to encourage participation in the 2010 census. I voted “No” on this resolution for the simple, obvious reason that the census – like so many government programs – has grown far beyond what the framers of our Constitution intended. The invasive nature of the current census raises serious questions about how and why government will use the collected information. It also demonstrates how the federal bureaucracy consistently encourages citizens to think of themselves in terms of groups, rather than as individual Americans. The not so subtle implication is that each group, whether ethnic, religious, social, or geographic, should speak up and demand its “fair share” of federal largesse. (more…)

By Don Cooper, LewRockwell.com

My entire adult life I’ve felt the injustices imposed upon honest, hard-working individuals in our society: frivolous traffic tickets, lying politicians, extorted taxes for things we neither want nor need, abusive law enforcement and the like. I’ve always been passionate about these injustices but not actively so.

After spending nearly a decade abroad living and working in Europe I found myself returning to a country I didn’t recognize. I found it difficult to acclimate and integrate into this politically correct, socially abusive, statist society; a society that seemed to be desensitized to police abuse of all magnitudes. The prevailing attitude seems to be: if the cops have someone in custody then they must deserve it.

Almost immediately I was confronted with the abusive nature of the new state order: driving to get a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning in Syracuse, NY, I was pulled over for talking on my cell phone. Having only been in Syracuse for 3 months I had no reason to believe that such a law existed. Regardless the doughnut feeder pulled me from my car, patted me down in the street, and put me in his car while he ran my license and wrote out the citation. It was humiliating and I felt like a common criminal. (more…)

Everyone seems to have a different take on how to solve Americas health-care problem. But notice that every solution offered involves some elaborate new system of government controls. Different proposals include a public option, mandatory insurance for individuals, government-supported health-care exchanges, government-sponsored efficacy research, government-supported co-ops, and as many other ways of dictating consumer and producer behavior as can fit in a 1,000-page bill.

More government controls, we are told, are necessary to solve problems such as skyrocketing health-insurance prices, lack of competition among insurance companies, the inability of workers to keep their insurance policy when switching jobs, etc. Read More

After railing against the Patriot Act as a senator and campaigning against it while running for President, it seems that the president and most Democrats have had a change of heart. On a Saturday no less, when most underhanded deals seem to be made while hardly anyone is paying attention, he quietly signed a one year extension on the Patriot Act, as is without any sort of reform to the legislation to protect civil liberties.

After the Senate passed the extension Wednesday, the House voted 315 to 97 Thursday to extend the act. The Patriot Act extension wasn’t the main body of legislation though, rather it was an amendment that was added to a Medicare reform bill without any sort of debate or accountability, voted on by voice vote to approve the amendment so that no politician would have to have their name attached to such an outrageous amendment. The vote is known as Roll Call 67, “On Motion to Concur in Senate Amendments” for H.R. 3961, the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act.

After such a grotesque abuse of power, it is assumed that the media would be all over this. However, from taking a look around, most media outlets are either downplaying the extension, or not reporting on it at all. Even the left leaning news agencies are quiet on this one, after years of denouncing former president Bush for the act. The media has failed us, and surely not for the first or last time. They’re just another extension of the political machine that threatens our country. Be wary of what you hear, or don’t hear for this matter, in the mainstream media. They’re here to keep the status quo in power.

It seems the Democrats are no different from the Republicans when they come to power and are just as willing to continue the suppression of our civil liberties. It amazes me how such a man would gain the Nobel peace prize by escalating a war and supporting the encroachment of privacy at home. The Republicans are hypocrites as well, clearly going against their stance against Medicare extensions so that they can have their precious privacy infringing act renewed.

What really amazes me though is how people can continue to support such politicians, basically forgetting that the lesser of two evils is still pretty evil. Its time to break with tradition folks, as its obvious that’s only digging us deeper into the hole. Its time to try something different by giving those independent and third party candidates a chance to step up and lead. Otherwise this is all we’re going to get, more taxes, more war, and more economical problems.

So who in the House voted in favor to infringe on our rights; 162 Democrats and 153 Republicans, with 20 representatives not voting. Lets have a look: (more…)

There’s a major political fraud underway:  the GOP is once again donning their libertarian, limited-government masks in order to re-invent itself and, more important, to co-opt the energy and passion of the Ron-Paul-faction that spawned and sustains the ”tea party” movement.  The Party that spat contempt at Paul during the Bush years and was diametrically opposed to most of his platform now pretends to share his views.  Standard-issue Republicans and Ron Paul libertarians are as incompatible as two factions can be — recall that the most celebrated right-wing moment of the 2008 presidential campaign was when Rudy Giuliani all but accused Paul of being an America-hating Terrorist-lover for daring to suggest that America’s conduct might contribute to Islamic radicalism — yet the Republicans, aided by the media, are pretending that this is one unified, harmonious, “small government” political movement. Read More

By Kaj Grussner of Mises.org

Austrians have long called for a reform of the monetary system. The current, Fed-driven, fiat-money system is on the verge of collapse. But however bad the current system is, a new system won’t necessarily be better.

Many libertarians would favor a return to the gold standard, while others would be content with simply repealing legal-tender laws and allowing competition in currencies. However, even in a great collapse like the one looming now, these reforms may still seem too extreme to the general public. This is especially true if they have an alternative that seems reasonable and gives total control over the monetary system to the state. One such alternative is the 100-percent-reserve solution advocated by Stephen Zarlenga, director of the American Monetary Institute, and author of the book “The Lost Science of Money.” (more…)