A Magic Bullet that Ends Agenda 21

I just wrote the following to Congressman Chris Gibson's campaign staff:

Dear Messrs. Westcott, Quigley, and Czajka:

I’m sorry that you had to miss Ms. Rosa Koire, the speaker in Olive tonight (please note that the speaker was tonight, not last night).   The information provided in Ms. Koire’s lecture was consistent with what I had heard in previous talks by Tom Deweese and others.  I am still interested in Congressman Gibson’s position on Agenda 21.

(1) As you know, Article Four, section four of the Constitution delegates the authority of guaranteeing a republican form of government in each state to Congress. This process has been adjudicated in at least two Supreme Court decisions, both of which held that Congress bears responsibility for ensuring that states retain republican forms of government.
(2) The claim that Agenda 21 is irrelevant to state governance does not change Congress’s responsibility to ensure a republican form of government.  If Agenda 21 does what Ms. Koire and Mr. Deweese claim or not, Congress still must ensure that the states have republican forms of government.
(3) Delegation of state power to private corporations is inconsistent with a republican form of government.  Whether or not Agenda 21 has coordinated this kind of delegation, it is still desirable for Congress to prohibit it.
(4) Therefore, whether or not Congressman Gibson agrees that Agenda 21 poses a threat to republican government, he should have no trouble supporting a law that (a) prohibits states from allocating governmental authority to non-governmental organizations and (b) prohibits federal funding of any locality or state that allocates governmental authority to a non-governmental organization.

I would appreciate a statement from Congressman Gibson on two points:

(1) His position on Agenda 21 and its congressional abrogation
(2) Whether he will be willing to propose a law that would prohibit states from being governed by NGOs and would prohibit federal funding of any governmental organization that so delegates.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

Read More

Article IV Section 4 and the NGO Virus

The environmentalist movement is attacking America's republican form of government.  Republicanism, by definition, requires the election of public officials.  In turn, the public officials appoint executive agencies overseen by the president to implement policies. In a republic government is by elected officials and appointed officials who answer to the elected officials.  Alternative forms of government involve non-elected officials.  These can involve officials who use violence to obtain office, as in the case of a dictatorship, or it can involve a hereditary system whereby the descendants of those who used violence to win power are given power as monarchs.   A form of government where the government hires a firm, the firm appoints officials, and the firm's appointed officials then govern without public redress is not republican.

Article Four section four of the US Constitution requires that states maintain a republican form of government.  It states:

The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.

The environmentalist movement has advocated replacing the states' republican forms of government with non-governmental organizations that are appointed and then become organizational dictators.  For example, Agenda 21, chapter 27 states:

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play a vital role in the shaping and implementation of participatory democracy. Their credibility lies in the responsible and constructive role they play in society. Formal and informal organizations, as well as grass-roots movements, should be recognized as partners in the implementation of Agenda 21. The nature of the independent role played by non-governmental organizations within a society calls for real participation; therefore, independence is a major attribute of non-governmental organizations and is the precondition of real participation.


In practice, NGOs have replaced governmental decision making in the name of regionalism and globalism.  A resident of the Town of Olive wrote the following of a group called the Central Catskills Collaborative, an NGO:

Far more troubling than amusing is the stated goal of this group to become a state agency such as the Tug Hill Commission or the Hudson Valley Greenway. Although Peter Manning is removing such references from the CMP rewrite, the intentions of this group are well stated. They refused a Shandaken board member's request for language that would limit the CCC from becoming such an agency at the April 19 meeting. Anyone voting on this byway resolution must take a close look at these groups and see what the CCC has stated they wish to become.

A non-governmental organization cannot be a government agency in a republic.  In Canada, this process has proceeded to the point where NGOs are making zoning and other dictatorial decisions without public scrutiny.  Such an arrangement would be unconstitutional in the United States; it is incompatible with republicanism.

To the extent that NGOs have been granted governmental authority in the United States, such arrangements need to be ended because they are unconstitutional.

Wikipedia covers history about Article Four section four.  In the 1840s in Luther v. Borden  and in 1912 in Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Company v. Oregon, the Supreme Court held that Congress, not the courts, must establish guidelines for defining republicanism. The one exception to the Supreme Court's deciding that the definition of republicanism is one for Congress has been the equal protection clause  Most of the debates about republicanism have centered on whether direct democracy and republicanism are equivalent.

Few Americans had contemplated supplanting republican with dictatorial authority until the global environmental movement began to advocate elimination of home rule.  Agenda 21 was signed by a Republican president, George H. W. Bush, but has been most aggressively implemented by Barack H. Obama. 

It is up to Congress to define republicanism, and it would seem that to define it as consistent with NGOs' assumption of political power would be to end republicanism, despite Agenda 21's Orwellian claim that NGOs' sharing power enhances democracy.  

Congress needs to pass a law defining republicanism as inconsistent with the delegation of political power to non-elected and non-publicly appointed officials of NGOs.  Congress needs to end all federal funding to any state and any locality which attacks republicanism by delegating political authority to NGOs.

Read More

Wendy Long for Senate

Read More

Town of Olive Activists to Host Agenda 21 Discussion

Author Rosa Koire Will Discuss Agenda 21's Impact on the Catskills and the Scenic Byway Plan on Thursday, June 28, 7:00 P.M. at the Olive Free Library on Route 28A in West Shokan (just past the post office). You are invited.

Read More

Stop the NGO Virus

 I just sent the following e-mail to state- and federal- level politicians:

I urge you to propose a bill that will prevent the transfer of governmental power to non-governmental organizations (NGOs).  This is a tactic that the extremist environmentalist movement has used to attack democracy. 

There needs to be  a law that will stop all federal funding to localities (states or local authorities, including school districts) that transfer any political authority to non-elected, non-democratic, non-governmental organizations.  Towns that permit non-elected officials of NGOs to decide on zoning, for example, should be prevented from receiving federal funding.

This was proposed recently with respect to the 28 Corridor By-Pass by the Catskill Watershed Commission.  It is outrageous that taxpayer money is being used to replace democratic processes with a totalitarianism based on UN Agenda 21.  If you haven't read Agenda 21, I urge you to do so:

http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/

Read More

Tuesday's Republican Primary

I received an e-mail from Robin Yess about Tuesday's primary.  I did a bit of homework about the three candidates, Wendy Long, George Maragos, and Bob Turner. Like most Republicans, the three say that they favor lower taxes; however, they are vague about how low.  Turner says that Obamacare should be repealed and tax increases should be avoided.  Avoided? How about tax cuts to eliminate the Departments of Energy, Education, and Labor?

Wendy Long is a lawyer. Her website says this:

 The main purpose and idea of my campaign is not original. I can't claim authorship. An inspired group of New Yorkers and other Americans came up with the idea, about 225 years ago.
It's called limited self-government, of the people, by the people, and for the people.

No one in this country is above the law, and no one is beneath it. The law is what protects the weak from the strong, affirms the dignity of every person, and overlooks no one in its demand of equal justice.


That sounds good, but what does it mean?  Would she have opposed the Bush-Obama bailout of Wall Street and the Fed's $29 trillion subsidization of global banks?  Her Republican colleagues believed those actions were constitutional. Local news sources such as Cayuga County's Auburnpub.com offer sketchy information about the three candidates.

When you log onto George Maragos's website, there is a video that does not work properly. How come Netflix can stream two hour movies into my television, but Maragos can't get a one-minute video to work?  Also, his secure e-mail (the site doesn't give any other contact information) limits questions to 245 characters (characters, not words), so I could not ask him a few simple questions.

According to Maragos's site:

We must take action now to reduce the deficit, eliminate wasteful spending, and reform entitlements in order to restore America's economic strength, provide for individual opportunity and guarantee future prosperity for our children. Government programs which have proven ineffective and wasteful should be terminated...Medicare and Social Security are a sacred commitment to our seniors and should be protected. Senator Gillibrand voted to kill these programs by her vote against raising the national debt ceiling.

I thought the Bible is sacred, but Medicare is a political program.  Maragos puts Social Security up there with the Ten Commandments.  On the one hand he says that government programs that are ineffective should be terminated.  On the other he says that one of the most ineffective programs, Social Security, is sacred.   Might we conclude that Maragos is a Three-card Monte dealer who says one thing to attract conservatives' votes and another thing to attract special interest money?

I have a basic question for any candidate: Where did you stand on the bailout?  None of the coverage in New York's all-thumbs media answers that question.  I attempted to send e-mails to the three candidates.  Only Ms. Long has an e-mail program that allows voters to send her an e-mail to inquire as to her positions.  The following is the e-mail I sent to her aide, Lynn:

Dear Lynn:

What are Ms. Long’s position on local governments’ transferring political authority to NGOs (as has been recommended with respect to the Route 28 Bypass proposal in Ulster County)? This is a longstanding strategy of environmental extremists like the WWF that has been supported by both Republican and Democratic politicians.

What is Ms. Long’s position on Ron Paul’s proposal to audit the Fed?

What is Ms. Long’s position on the 2009 bailout?

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

Within minutes, Lynn responded with the following message:

 

From: Lynn Krogh [mailto:lynnkrogh@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 24, 2012 12:50 PM
To: Mitchell
Subject: Re: NGOs, Fed, Bailout

I just passed on your inquiry to Wendy.  She's traveling in Buffalo right now, but I'm hoping to have these answered asap.

Thnx

Lynn Krogh

518.618.7074

Lynn@wendylongfornewyork.com

M

My response to her was as follows:

Thank you. You’re the only campaign that has a way to e-mail questions, and I’m very impressed that you got back to me so quickly. 

Of the three, Wendy Long seems to be the one who knows how to run a campaign.  So few candidates do.  I don't think we can expect a true limited government candidate at this point in history.  The best we can do is split the nation's governance between Democrats and Republicans and hope that they will do as little as possible. Unfortunately, both parties seem to like Agenda 21 and both love the Fed, so unless the public gets tired of being milked like cattle we can expect an increasing degree of totalitarianism no matter who gets elected. 

 

Read More

Canadian Radio Discusses Agenda 21

http://johnconner1984.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/city-planning-and-the-un/

Mike Marnell sent me the above-linked radio show concerning Agenda 

21. The hosts, Ron Stephens and John Conner, and their guest, 

Jessica Lauren Annis, are knowledgeable. Annis is a trained city 

planner who blanched at the indoctrination in her education in 

Canadian universites. She heads a group called Operation Pushback. 

Be patient with the tape's quality. I listened to the whole show. It is well 

worth your time. 

Mike Marnell, publisher of The Lincoln Eagle, asked me to listen to it. 

I had just written the following introduction to Agenda 21 for The Eagle: 

Introduction to Agenda 21

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Agenda 21 celebrated its 20th birthday this month.  It is an environmentalist plan of action that aims to reduce your standard of living.  It is not a fantasy or theory.  It was signed under the administration of a Republican president, George H.W. Bush.   According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Division for Sustainable Development's website (http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/):

Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment…

The United States has agreed to be subsumed under the "United Nations System" without public debate.  According to an informal straw poll that The Lincoln Eagle has conducted, no politician in Kingston has heard of Agenda 21; Mayor Gallo and his colleagues cannot assess the degree to which the proposed city plan reflects it. 

The text of UN Agenda 21 is posted on the aforementioned website.   It combines environmental extremism with economic illiteracy.  It advocates globalization and concentration of corporate economic power.  It claims that because Americans have a high standard of living other countries are poor.  This claim is incorrect. Human capital, entrepreneurship, and technological innovation create wealth.  In the 1940s Henry Hazlitt wrote an excellent book, Economics in One Lesson, which anticipated and refuted the fallacies that the UN now perpetuates through Agenda 21.  

UN Agenda 21 serves as a coordinating document for numerous initiatives, including town and city plans that have been proposed by politically connected consultants in Olive, Woodstock, and other towns in Ulster County and around the country.  The initiatives tend to reduce or attack small landholders' property rights while facilitating land grabs by banks and large developers.   Using terms like smart growth, cluster housing, and green development, the plans combine a pretense of environmentalism with intended subsidization of well-connected banks and developers.  The US Green Building Council's Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) is linked to Agenda 21.  I interviewed LEED's sponsors; they told me that they have designed a building code that they would like to see implemented everywhere in the country.  The code would coerce new building standards; some proponents advocate making it retroactive, which would force moderate-income homeowners who cannot afford tens of thousands of dollars in retrofitting costs into city projects.   President Obama's failed Cap and Trade bill would have enforced expensive regulations on individual homeowners and initially called for retrofitting.   The Olive Town Plan mentioned, but did not insist on, refitting.

Under Agenda 21, commercial banks benefit by lending for city projects; developers profit from sweetheart deals; politicians like Senator Bonacic and Congressman Hinchey benefit from campaign contributions; environmentalists empty the rural regions of human population;  special interests celebrate while the average homeowner's life is diminished.  

Read More

A Short History of Progressivism

The Progressives claimed that they could expand government, but freedom's improvement in the standard of living and lessening of income inequality would continue.  The improvement in the standard of living stopped and income inequality increased, but the Progressives said that it wasn't due to Progressivism; it was, they said, due to freedom.

Read More

Ineptocracy

H/t Jim Crum.

Read More

Johnson Threatens Romney's Viability

Gary Johnson may prevent Mitt Romney's election in November. Real Clear Politics says that Johnson aims to utilize increasingly important social media; if the strategy is successful and Johnson wins 15% in three national polls, he will participate in the national debates. This will be an important step to ending the two-party system, which has led to increasing corruption and ever bigger government.  Politico notes that an Arizona survey found that Johnson will receive nine percent. The poll, published by Public Policy Polling on May 23, notes that, in a head-to-head race, Romney leads Obama by 50 to 43 percent in Arizona. Although 80% of Arizona voters say that they are not sure of their opinion of Gary Johnson, question 11 indicates this:

11. If the candidates for President this year were Democrat Barack Obama, Republican Mitt Romney, and Libertarian Gary Johnson, who would you vote for?
Barack Obama................................................ 41%
Mitt Romney................................................... 45%
Gary Johnson ................................................. 9%
Undecided....................................................... 6%

According to The New Mexico Watchdog, also based on a Public Policy Polling poll, Johnson was polling at seven percent in a three-way race among himself, Obama, and Romney. Obama wins against Romney in a two-way race, but wins by a 75 percent larger margin (48-44 versus 46-39) if Johnson is included. 

Johnson says that he has an eight percent support level nationally.  Public Policy Polling is a Democratic poll.  Unfortunately, the Republican Rasmussen poll so far has excluded Johnson.  Its results may therefore be distorted in Romney's favor.  If Johnson is polling more than five percent, polling firms should include him. Their margin of error (confidence interval in percentage terms) is smaller than Johnson's support.  In other words, they can't argue that Johnson's effect will be overwhelmed by random noise. It is bigger than random noise, and it will hurt Romney.

It is unfortunate that the GOP has chosen to pursue a big-government strategy.  I would like to see Obama unseated, but the cycle of pitting a corrupt, big-government Republican against a corrupt, socialist Democrat needs to end. Those who oppose the expansive state that Romney advocates will be drawn to Johnson.  His name recognition is still low, so six to eight percent may be significantly less than his ultimate support. The law suits being planned against the Romney campaign by Lawyers for Ron Paul (h/t Mike Marnell) may add to Johnson's support. Lawyers for Ron Paul alleges significant voter fraud and criminality in the Romney campaign.  If these allegations are extended over the next five months, they may raise the support level for Johnson.   The 15 percent target means that anyone who favors less government wastes their vote by supporting Romney.

Read More

Lawyers for Ron Paul Alleges Massive Voter Fraud by Romney Campaign

Audio Recording: 'WTPN presents The Liberty Hour - EPISODE19' From 'WTPN presents The Liberty Hour'

About 19 minutes, 50 seconds in: "I am accusing the Romney campaign of organized criminal acts...the Romney campaign moves from state to state like locust committing criminal acts in convention after convention..."

Read More

Two Takes on Rand Paul's Compromise

Jack Hunter gives a perceptive political analysis of Rand Paul's endorsement of Mitt Romney (h/t Mike Marnell and The Daily Paul).  His analysis is based on realpolitik.  It is a question whether realpolitik will work because the people with whom Paul is compromising are as likely to change him as vice versa.   Paul is compromising with entrenched GOP financial interests.    

Hunter's argument is coherent, but is it realistic to think that the bulk of Republicans will ever side with an opponent of the Fed and Wall Street? In other words, the majority of GOP voters parrot network television; network television will never oppose Wall Street or GOP corruption because it is enmeshed in both. Paul's strategy may be futile.  The claim that Paul will be a winnable presidential candidate in 2016 is far fetched.

Libertarian strategy should be oriented toward the endgame:  As the nation's economy collapses because of Democratic and GOP policies,  libertarians need to be an independent force.



Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig von Mises Institute says that Rand Paul is not a libertarian; rather, he is a neoconservative.  Rockwell says that you can't change the current regime from the inside any more than you can change the Mafia from the inside. The Republican Party is run by an oligarchy.  Rockwell says that the primary is over, and Ron Paul lost, so it's not surprising that Rand Paul is supporting Romney.  He aims to be a career politician, and he does not necessarily aim to be a libertarian.

Rockwell is right that Ron Paul represents liberty, not a cult of personality.  The announcer asks: "Why cater to an establishment that has shut out Ron Paul?" Rockwell calls the Establishment, the Fox network and the GOP, disgusting.  He also points out that Rand Paul cannot be seen as the same as Ron Paul.  Partisan politics is corrupt, and Rand Paul participates in it.

Rockwell's analysis is right.  Rand Paul must prove himself to be a supporter of liberty; we cannot assume that he is so.  If his support for Mitt Romney excludes libertarians from supporting him in the future, it may just mean that we should not. Better candidates may well appear.  So far, the jury is out on Rand Paul.

Read More

Is Rand Paul a Bismarck, a Quisling, or a Chamberlain?

Rand Paul's endorsement of Romney may be realpolitik, or it may be an appeasement policy.  Barry Lyndon of Policymic argues that it was a political masterstroke. Nevertheless, realpolitik is difficult to execute; it frequently fails.  In choosing to play ball with the GOP, Rand entangles himself in the GOP's all-encompassing nexus of corrupt special interests.  Few politicians have so entangled themselves and survived without fundamental compromise.  Did it make sense for Neville Chamberlain to appease Hitler?  My point is not that Romney is Hitler; rather, Romney is a more powerful competitor who has little to lose from deceiving the Pauls.

The best example of realpolitik is its inventor, Otto von Bismarck, the German minister president who fashioned the German Empire, created the modern welfare state, and developed a complex set of alliances.  Yet Bismarck's system led, in a little more than two decades, to World War I, and I would argue his welfare state contributed to the rise of totalitarianism.  It is just as likely that Rand Paul's realpolitik will turn out to reflect that of  Vidkun Quisling.   Quisling was a Norwegian prime minister who assisted Germany as it invaded Norway; his aim was to lead a puppet government. 

Realpolitik is sometimes necessary, and Barry Lyndon may be right that Rand Paul's strategy will turn out to be effective.  At the same time, even Bismarck's realpolitik led to Germany's humiliation.  It is understandable that the Pauls' supporters are concerned.  Might Rand inadvertently be exploding the movement that his father has assiduously developed?  Even if his tactic works in the short run, might he be diverting and confusing the nascent millennial libertarian movement, causing its ultimate abortion?

Read More

New Gary Johnson Commercial

The other day, I was speaking to a waitress who supports Obama. She said that she dislikes the Republicans because they pander to special interests.  I suggested that Obama has overseen $29 trillion in swaps and other subsidies to global banks.  He has overseen bigger subsidies to Wall Street and banking than all of the preceding presidents in history combined contributed to all other special interests combined.  The waitress did not reply.  Mike Marnell, with whom I was having lunch, suggested that she would not change her vote. The American voter is a mindless drone. Voting for continuing the current system is a matter of habit. It is not going well; Americans are not doing well; the real hourly wage has not increased in four decades.  The conservative (in the European sense) philosopher Joseph de Mistre said: "Oute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle mérite," that is, "Every nation gets the government it deserves."  Perhaps America deserves Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. I hope that Gary Johnson proves that possibility wrong.

Read More

Spread the Truth

H/t Spread the Truth on Facebook

Read More

Whither Public Unions?

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's victory in his recall fight has renewed interest in public sector unions.  Rasmussen suggests that Walker's win will spur other states to cut back on benefits to state-level unions.  Nevertheless, Rasmussen finds that 49% of Americans favor public unions while 46% oppose them.  However, Rasmussen's numbers don't disaggregate respondents who belong to unions and so have a financial incentive opposed to other taxpayers'.

Some of the support for public sector unions comes from the 11.8% of Americans who belong to unions.  This includes both public and private sector unions. (According to the OECD, 11.4% were unionized as of 2010.  Whether you go with 11.4% or 11.8%, the numbers are lower than all of the other countries' union densities listed on the linked OECD chart, with the exceptions of Estonia and Turkey. Germany's union density is 18.6% and Japan's is 18.4%.) The Bureau of Labor Statistics  finds that while 11.8%  of US workers are unionized (14.8 million workers), 37.0%  of public sector workers (7.6 million workers) are unionized.  Public sector workers constitute a bit more than 51% of all unionized workers.  Without public sector union members, the labor movement would be more sickly than it is. Unionized workers likely know this and so tend to support public sector unions.

If the employed US labor force, including farm workers not counted in the BLS's official union density numbers, is about 139.8 million, as of  May the density (percentage) of union workers, including farm workers, is about 10.5% (assuming farm workers don't belong to unions).  Note that 139.8 million is only about 44% of the total US population of 320 million.  About a quarter of the population is under 18 and about 12.5% is over age 65 and receives Social Security.  Unionized government employees are about 5.4% of the employed labor force and about 4.9% of the total labor force.  I don't believe that this number includes union retirees.

Comparing the 11.4% (which excludes farm workers) to the 1920s, which was before the National Labor Relations Act, 9.9% of non-farm workers were union members in 1928 and 13.2% of private sector workers were in unions in 1925.  In other words, the current private sector unionization density of 6.9% is a little over half of the private sector density (13.2%) in 1925.  The labor movement is now largely a public sector movement.  Private sector union workers have an incentive to support public sector unionism because without it union institutions like the AFL-CIO might not exist, or at least would be diminished.

If one excludes union members from the Rasmussen poll, the three percent balance in favor of unions (49% to 46%) will shift to a significant opposition to public sector unions.  Let's say 80% of union members favor public sector unionism. Let's also say that of the 243 million Americans over 18, 11.8% either belong to  a union or have a spouse or parent who does. If so, the 49% is reduced to about 40% and the 46% is reduced to 44%.  Public opinion among non-union Americans would then be 47.6 % for public unions and 52.4% against. 

The statistics for taxpayers not in unions are likely even more opposed.  Taxpayers are a subset of the total population. They must subsidize union members' pay.  If unions boost pay, then taxpayers likely have a conflict of interest with the unions unless the government manages to efficiently enhance productivity in step with wage increases.  Since governments and their unions do not implement incentive pay and are famous for bureaucracy, it is difficult to imagine how that would be accomplished. Government employment levels in highly unionized states are no lower per capita than employment levels in states with right-to-work laws or without bargaining laws.

Prior to the adoption of bargaining laws for public sector workers, Wellington and Winter argued that public sector unions would have excessive bargaining power because services like police and sanitation are monopolies with price-inelastic demand.  In other words, governments tend to monopolize services that are price inelastic.  As is well known to labor scholars, industries with price-inelastic demand tend to have high wages.  Wellington and Winter could not have foreseen that unions would not only increase wages but lobby to increase demand for their wage bill--the employment level multiplied by the wage.

Mancur Olson and George Stigler wrote articles and books in the 1970s and 1980s that showed that special interests can extract rents from the public through lobbying.  Public sector unions are well-placed to extract rents because they are easily organized and can develop close relationships with elected officials.  New York, where I live, has seen a high public sector union density and a high number of taxpayers leaving the state.  I am a public sector union member.  Unless one is in an ultra-high-wage profession such as investment banking, law, advertising, or other financial services, or is otherwise subsidized by the state as a public sector employee or health-care worker, it is very difficult to flourish economically in New York State.  New York's population has hardly grown since 1960, when public sector unionization became prevalent. 


As the burden of increasing costs has become difficult for taxpayers to bear, there is increasing resistance to unions.  People who do not pay taxes and beneficiaries of public sector spending constitute a large percentage of those who oppose cutbacks.  Tax systems are typically set up so that those who are the wealthiest have the most loopholes.  Those who work hard and generate the wealth necessary for public sector services are burdened with high taxes.  Generally, public sector services range from mediocre (police, roads) to non-existent to destructive, as is the case with drug enforcement, New York's Department of Environment Conservation and Department of Environmental Protection, its bogus building code, its dismal school system, and its destructive welfare system.

Come to think of it, life would be much better if we cut public sector employment by 80%.

Read More

Jon Stewart Interviews Gary Johnson

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Read More

Ron Paul, Not Alexander Hamilton, Can Save Europe

In its May 26, 2012 issue,  The Economist has several excellent lead stories on the European crisis. It argues for democratic reform, political integration, and EU-wide supervision of banking.  It suggests that the costs of an EU break-up would be high, but the European public lacks an appetite for additional integration. Besides a European banking bureaucracy, The Economist argues for a European assumption of debt, which it calls mutualisation. Quoting Professor Vernon Bogdanor of King's College, London, its writers remind us that Alexander Hamilton fashioned American federalism through the federal government's assumption of debts. 

Europe needs Ron Paul, not Alexander Hamilton.

I do not doubt that a breakup of the European Union would be costly.  As well, I do not doubt that most Europeans, especially the innovative and hardworking ones, would have been better off without it.  In a letter to the editor in the same issue, Alexander Singer of Athens points out that the use of the catchword austerity with respect to recently mandated Greek reforms, in effect rejected in the May 6 election and now being re-polled on June 17,  is misguided.  Peloponnese garbage truck drivers are paid monthly pensions that are 50% above the wage of starting schoolteachers, according to Singer.

Regardless of the merits of Greek public pension policies, they are not market driven. A garbage truck driver who has saved and accumulated a fortune of one million dollars is entitled to an $80,000 pension.   One who has spent 15 years' worth of wages on hookers while sleeping in the back of his truck, only to retire at age 50 on a generous public pension, is not.

Nevertheless, the question is not whether a garbage truck driver should be paid a generous pension, but rather whether the driver produced value to justify it. Decisions about the equilibration of supply and demand are best left to markets; unions' political power allows them to divert wealth from poorer and less politically influential workers to themselves. 

The Greek government has made no attempt to equilibrate marginal wages and productivity, nor does the question matter to most Greeks, who are like children harping for an extra candy bar without an inkling as to from whence candy bars spring. It is evident that, to gratify a nation of childish fools,  the Greek government has, in yet another display of failed democratic processes, stolen the wealth used to pay that garbage truck driver from French banks. Now, French workers will be asked, through a ridiculous election outcome in France, to subsidize the French banks through monetary expansion, supposedly a "growth" strategy.

The economic incompetence advocated by the world's economists offers a convenient rationale for bankers to force workers to pay for their frivolous errors. Workers pay through inflationary policies that reduce real wages.  This is done in the supposed name of the workers themselves. Of course, The Economist's readers (bankers, lawyers,  politicians, public employees, executives, and university professors) are the true beneficiaries of stimulus policies and monetary expansion.  Since the ending of the world's reliance on gold in 1971, workers' real wages here in the US have not increased. 

The solution to Greece's and Europe's problems is recognition that more government causes greater harm.  The way out is through stabilization of money and long term stimulation of innovation and hard work through elimination of unnecessary government bureaucrats, starting with pointless institutions like the European Commission, a body whose purpose requires a Kant-sized metaphysics tome to explain.

Although there were inequities in the federal assumption of the Revolutionary War debt in the United States, there was at the time no doubt that every state had to some degree contributed to the war. There were reasons for states like Virginia and Maryland, which had repaid their war debts, to object to paying off less conservative states' debts. Nevertheless, Hamilton asked none of the states to subsidize unearned pensions for 50-year-old buffoons. In fact, many of the valiant soldiers were deprived of their pay, which was in by-then-valueless continentals.

To stabilize Europe's monetary system, the gold standard should replace the euro.  The European Central Bank should be shuttered, and the profligate French and German banks, which respectively lent to Greece and Spain, according to The Economist, should be put into whatever European equivalent to chapter 11 there may be.

One of the great ironies of the 1980s was that just as the USSR had proved itself a failure, Europe adopted a central authority akin to the Soviet Kremlin's. Every step of the way infertile bureaucratic wasters in the EU have advocated increasing government, regulation, and bureaucracy.  These privileged halfwits, who have produced nothing of value and have overseen a massive real estate bubble and debt collapse, have destroyed value.

As a European currency, gold is a better alternative than the euro  because it is not subject to quack economic theories advocated in places like The Economist, The New York Times, and most university economics departments.  Not one important economist in the world, including The Economist's staff, which spends all its time studying Europe, foresaw the current default-and-banking problems. The European bankers who lent to Spain and Greece are almost as dumb as the bankers in the US who have made one failed investment after the next for the past 60 years and who have survived only by means of one public subsidy after the next.   It is time that the global banking cancer was excised. Businesses that do not produce value, and $29 trillion in subsidies from the Fed so far say that the US banking system has not, need to die.

Recall that it was Hamilton, advocate of federalism, who favored central banking and opposed hard money.  Today, Ron Paul and his colleague Gary Johnson offer a set of solutions that can free Europe from the Carolingian dream of its uniting under a central authority.  Let Europe free itself from the medieval ideas of the Council on Foreign Relations, The Economist and The New York Times.  

A gold standard is how Europe should begin to reform itself.

Read More

Crying for Assemblyman Jim Conte

 On May 10 Long Island Politics.com re-posted and then Alex Jones's Infowars re-posted an article about a heart-breaking bill put forward by one of New York's Republicans, Jim Conte (h/t Mike Marnell).  Increasingly, the two party system is irrelevant because both parties have become totalitarian. Democrats advocate socialism and bonuses to rapacious public officials.  Republicans like Conte advocate fascism and ever greater suppression. Conte gives us a good reason to support Gary Johnson this year.

Conte proposes to illegalize anonymous Internet posting.  While I almost never post anonymously, most who have posted on my blog do.  I'm not big on anonymous posting because I think people should take responsibility for their ideas. But illegalizing it?   Is Conte an American? What kind of slime has the two-party system produced?  What rock did Conte climb out from under?

I suspect Conte is ignorant enough not to know that the entire Federalist Papers was written anonymously under the pseudonym Publius.  Anonymous opinion pieces were typically written by both the Federalist and the Jeffersonian press throughout early America.  Since Republican Conte is ignorant of the basic values on which America is based, he does not know that he is attacking one of the great traditions of American freedom.

Like a good fascist, Conte uses a pretext to attack free speech: Internet bullying. That is how totalitarians have whittled away freedom since the dawn of time. 

According to the Wikipedia article about the Federalist Papers:

At the time of publication, the authorship of the articles was a closely guarded secret, though astute observers guessed that Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay were the likely authors. Following Hamilton's death in 1804, a list that he drew up became public; it claimed fully two-thirds of the essays for Hamilton, including some that seemed more likely the work of Madison...The authors used the pseudonym "Publius," in honor of Roman consul Publius Valerius Publicola...

All of this is well-known to Americans but not to Jim Conte.  Watching today's America implode through pond scum like Conte drives me to tears.  In Conte's honor, I'm listening to Roy Orbison's "Crying."

Read More

Gary Johnson's Watermelon Commercial Shows How Republicrats Blew It

Robin Yess forwarded this great Gary Johnson video. While it is likely that a Democrat or a Republican will win the presidential election, either will harm America.  

Read More