Government Price Controls Are Fascist, And They Don’t Even Work

From 1971, Murray Rothbard writes about the end of economic freedom.

Some More Misc. Items

In an article today, Laurence Vance asks the question, “shall we abandon the non-aggression principle?” And my answer is: “No.” And that is what I have to say about that.

Wendy McElroy has some criticisms for modern mainstream feminists who seem to want to persecute men because they are men.

William Grigg asks, “why isn’t Dana Rohrabacher in prison?”

Gary North supports organic food (Who knew?)

Jacob Hornberger says that the war on terrorism is a big scam.

James Bovard discusses the Obama administration’s racial profiling in education.

Robert Murphy comments on the bogus “97% of climate scientists agree” claim.

Whistleblowers? State Apparatchiks? Opportunists?

In the past I have written about Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald in a somewhat skeptical manner. And so have Sibel Edmonds, Robert Wenzel and Naomi Wolf. Snowden had said from the beginning of his releasing of NSA documents that he carefully picked which reporters or journalists to confide in and who would only reveal particular information that he, Snowden, determined should be revealed to the general public. And he also has shown faith in the national security state and stated that he really believes that we need a NSA to keep us safe. In contrast, Bradley Manning (now known as Chelsea Manning) had said that all information which reveals the government’s intrusions and criminality must be in the public domain, and he has stated that the people have a right to know the truth.

In my view, government bureaucrats do not have a right to any secrets to be kept from the people. If you want to believe that that is necessary for ‘security’ reasons, then that is up to you. For government bureaucrats it’s all about power and control, and not “security.” This is why they want to have access into your private, personal life matters, but they don’t want to allow you any access to any information about their activities.

But Edward Snowden now confesses that he is really a CIA asset and was trained to be a “spy,” as well as being an NSA operative overseas. Given his control-freakish manipulating of which NSA documents to be “carefully” released, redacted or suppressed, I am not sure as to where his loyalty is really directed: the American people, the U.S. government, the NSA? In a recent interview (via Infowars), Dr. Steve Pieczenik, a psychiatrist and former intelligence op official, stated that Snowden has been trained to portray a traitor or a whistleblower (depending on what NSA flunkies determine at whatever given moment), as a means of manipulating the American people.

So, I don’t know if I’d call Snowden an opportunist as I may have implied in the past, but perhaps more an intelligence operative who is playing his role according to what the NSA and CIA bureaucrats want to be accomplished, more of a psy-op on the American people. But who knows why, if that’s really the case. As we’ve seen from people like David Petraeus and Keith Alexander, some of these bureaucrats are real loonies. But that’s just my opinion on that.

Now, Glenn Greenwald, that’s a different story. He has this new book out detailing his experiences with Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations and their relationship of “whistleblower” and journalist-advocate. In his new endeavor with Pierre Omidyar’s The Intercept and the new book, Greenwald is profiting not from his work as a journalist which he has a right to profit from, but from his control over the manner in which documents are released, which documents get redacted or not, and which documents are suppressed completely, a control which seems to show a bit of arrogance on Greenwald’s part, as though he himself is a government bureaucrat. Further, Greenwald has stated that he will have a “finale,” a grandiose ending to his series of revelations provided by Snowden, the listing of the names of those targeted by the NSA. He compares the finale to a “fireworks show”: “The last one is the one where the sky is all covered in spectacular multicoloured hues,” which seems overly sensational and pretentious if you ask me. These latest expressions by Greenwald certainly do not exhibit the most respectable qualities from a “journalist,” that’s for sure. Chris Floyd has expressed a similar criticism of Greenwald’s “fireworks show” brand of journalism.

Now, before anyone compares me to the State-apparatchik du jour Michael Kinsley, I am critical of Greenwald for reasons opposite of why Kinsley has been critical of him, because of Greenwald’s censorship and suppression on behalf of the State. As I stated above, the State has no right to keep any secrets from the people. This censorship and control “in the name of national security” really is a cover for bureaucrats who are “up to no good.” Don’t be bamboozled into believing otherwise.

Regarding the slow, year-long (so far) careful control over what gets revealed and how much the American people are permitted to know about what crimes are being committed against them by their own government, unlike Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, Snowden and Greenwald have gotten the approval of that very government, the State and its minions. Arthur Silber has compared and contrasted Greenwald and Snowden’s NSA releases to the WikiLeaks releases, and Silber does note that these more recent “whistleblowers” seem to be serving more the interests of the State than the American people. Silber has addressed that here, here, and here as well. I would add that Greenwald seems to me to be exploiting the situation to serve his own financial interests. Another whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, has written about that as well.

I wish there weren’t so many gullible sheeple in America who have been indoctrinated from earliest years to believe that politicians and bureaucrats have the people’s interests at heart. The State is inherently a criminal racket, because it is an institution of monopoly in which the people are compelled by law to use its “security” provisions with no alternatives allowed. So of course such an apparatus will attract those who crave power over others. The State will never “protect” the people from aggressors as the State is itself institutionalized aggression whose agents have the power to intrude into the lives of anyone they want and get away with it with impunity.

Woods Interviews Rockwell

Tom Woods interviews Lew Rockwell on liberty and the State, and his new book Against the State: An Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto.

Congress Will Not Change America for the Better

According to Robert Wenzel, the Philadelphia Inquirer has endorsed libertarian Republican Murray Sabrin for U.S. Senate from New Jersey. Wenzel has been promoting Sabrin quite a lot. My own view is that Murray Sabrin seems to be a good guy but his getting elected to the U.S. Senate really won’t effect any change for the better. Call me a gloomy gus. Call me pessimistic. Whatever.

Sabrin has stated that two huge welfare-state entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, which are tens of trillions in debt, should be “phased out” over the next 20-30 years. While he does mention that the younger generation now will at some point be paying the fedgov more than half their income and that it is better to instead “give young adults the opportunity to save and invest for their own retirement based on sound financial principles,” my own real concerns with these programs is that they are compulsory and fraudulent. The fact that the government orders you to have to submit your personal information to the government which promises to pay you certain benefits when you retire whether you want to participate in this scheme or not, is itself an immoral scheme.

That is certainly not the kind of free society that this was meant to be. But then, Thomas Jefferson et al. didn’t know that later there would be an FDR who would exploit Americans’ fears and vulnerability after the Crash of ’29 and during the Great Depression to institute a huge, compulsory federal scheme of redistribution between the working class and retirees. It was nothing but smoke and mirrors from the get-go, an intentionally misleading promise to Americans that the earnings that were being confiscated from their paychecks would be returned to them when they retired. It was nothing but a new way of the federal government to add more than what they were already taking via the federal income tax to add to the general treasury.

Therefore, when you have a scheme that is essentially a criminal racket, a criminally invasive scheme based on fraud and theft, and you are able to recognize it for what it is, you must get rid of it, immediately. You don’t “phase out” a criminal scheme. A criminally fraudulent scheme that is based on theft and is intrusive and invasive of the people’s private lives can’t be allowed to continue. Now, for those who think that it’s there and there’s nothing we can do about it and that’s the way it is, well no, you might as well say that about the gangsters and mobsters, bank robbers and home invaders, the violent drug gangs who murder innocents and so on. They exist and that’s the way it is, well no, sorry. There is a criminal racket that’s been used by the politicians as a plot to steal more wealth from the people and live extravagantly off the loot while the people suffer.

But regarding my point about the ineffectiveness of a U.S. Senator Murray Sabrin in getting the message across as far as what needs to be done with Social Security or Medicare or welfare, he won’t be able to reach the others on Capitol Hill. There may be some there who might agree with him but they will not say so publicly, because they are afraid of losing votes. That’s the bottom line with the unprincipled and power-addicted gutless wonder politicians in Washington. And amongst the American people, they should not fear the thought of having actual freedom, in which they can save and manage their own retirement without any governmental intrusions, or if they are elderly and have nothing, once there is freedom after the income tax is repealed and the system is decentralized their working adult children who will then have all their earnings at their disposal will be able to take care of the elderly parents as it used to be before FDR came in and exploited the sheeple and shook them down of their life savings.

Post-Memorial Day – Let’s Memorialize Everyone Murdered by the State

On his blog yesterday, Jacob Hornberger compared libertarian patriotism to statist patriotism. The statists’ version of patriotism is one in which no matter what U.S. troops are doing overseas, being patriotic means blindly supporting the troops and obediently taking the word of government bureaucrats. The libertarian view of patriotism, however, is one in which government bureaucrats’ assertions and policies must be questioned and challenged. And whenever the government’s policies are wrong, that is, immoral, impractical, corrupt, illicit, etc., then it is our patriotic duty to say so and not support the government’s wrongdoing. If U.S. soldiers are engaged in actions which are immoral and in fact counter-productive to protecting Americans’ security, then it’s actually patriotic to say so. And in his blog post today, Hornberger discusses how U.S. troops did not die defending our freedom. But apparently generations of Americans are indoctrinated to believe that they did.

Laurence Vance writes about the “patriotic blasphemy” of the militarism in the churches.

Wendy McElroy discusses the effectiveness of idealism, particularly in advocating a more peaceful and civilized, i.e. libertarian society. And regarding the old “gradualism vs. abolitionism” debate, one type of gradualism is that the society can become more libertarian gradually, it obviously can’t do so immediately. The other form of gradualism, that involves policy, is for example either we keep a particular government intrusion but make it a little less intrusive or make the involuntary-coerced tax a little lower, then we’d be better off even though we’d still be a slave of bureaucrats by law. Abolition means end the criminal life and property intrusions and thuggery taxes immediately. If a criminal act is in progress, end it.

Chris Hedges praises Thomas Paine and wonders whether we are headed into actual revolutionary times. (As opposed to some others on the Left who are more concerned about people who might be sexists, racists and “homophobes,” etc.)

Lew Rockwell talks about speaking truth to monetary power. There is really no need for “monetary policy,” no need for central planners’ interventions.

Jeff Berwick points out how people who say things like “without government who will build and maintain the roads?” really misunderstand what they think about the real purpose of government (to forcibly extort earnings and wealth away from some and live high off the hog and expand one’s power, etc. etc.).

Walter Williams discusses the crazies in today’s government schools who are indoctrinating the kids with this “white privilege” nonsense. I really can’t believe all this. So your taxes (and not just local taxes but the state and federal governments give aid to the school systems as well) are paying for this extremely lunatic stuff? You like that? And the people on the Left call anti-Common Core protesters crazies and nutjobs! Arg!

And Lenore Skenazy writes about CPS investigating Will and Jada Smith for a photo involving their 13-year-old daughter lying on a bed with a 20-year-old guy. CPS is itself a criminal racket and needs to be abolished.

‘Libertarianism and Privilege,’ Harvard Hypocrites, and the Supreme Court

Copyright 2014 LewRockwell.com (Link to article)

The arguments over “thick vs. thin,” humanitarian vs.”brutalist” libertarianism seem to be quite a distraction away from the more important argument of the State vs. liberty, in my view. I know equality is important, that is, equality under the law, but I don’t understand why some people are attempting to infiltrate the more politically-correct form of egalitarianism into libertarianism.

On his blog, left-libertarian Philosophy Professor Roderick T. Long has announced an upcoming Molinari Society Symposium on “Libertarianism and Privilege.” Long writes that “‘privilege’ has become the default model for most of the Left’s critical discussion of structural oppression, resistance, and challenges to social justice. Critical discourse today recognizes many forms of structural social privilege, including white privilege, male privilege, and privilege based on heterosexuality, gender identity, and economic or political class.”

While he does note that “Libertarianism has been described both as essentially an opposition to privilege, and as essentially a rationalization of privilege,” in the past Long has insisted on making feminism and egalitarian social equality a part of libertarianism, and now wants to “reclaim” the term libertarian with the added egalitarian aspects as its “default meaning.”

Well, having that kind of constructive discussion in a Symposium should be helpful, I suppose. But I am not sure whether there really is that much “white privilege” or “male privilege” in our society anymore.

It just seems that the cultural influence by the Left has turned things upside down and turned the society into one of intolerance, political correctness and reverse discrimination.

And just how valid is this “male privilege” stuff now anyway, given the anti-male discrimination, oppression and feminization of America, especially in the schools?

The female-dominated government schools have been banning dodge ball, omitting recess play time, and suspending or arresting little boys who draw pictures of a gun, as well as putting the kids on psychiatric drugs to repress their independence. By college the helicopter moms call their boys every night and argue with the professors over the boys’ grades.

And then there’s the college dorm and classroom “Two Minutes Hate” against males (and white people), the initiation ritual called “Tunnel of Oppression.” Here, the white students are indoctrinated to believe how privileged they are and what “racists” they are because they are white. And the male students are told about the “rape culture,” in which they inherently have the guilt of a rapist, simply because they are male.

Yes, this is the mentality today in what is considered “academics.” The more serious offenses perpetrated by these asinine academic activists include attempts to expel or convict young men of “rape” that actually isn’t rape according to the traditional legal definition, and in fact when, as libertarian feminists have noted, there is no such thing as a “rape culture” in the first place.

To make matter worse, many of the younger people now do not seem to even understand what actually is a “sexual assault.” (Thanks to the government schools, of course, which no longer teach youngsters how to read and comprehend concepts and how to think and analyze critically.)

Now, this is not to trivialize when actual incidents of actual rape or attempted rape occur, on or off college campuses. The true libertarian solution to those actual crimes is to recognize the individual’s right to self-defense and right to bear arms. But sadly, the feminists tend to side with the disarmament crowd, thus advocating making women more vulnerable by legally disarming them and making them defenseless.

And libertarians should be more concerned not that some men are allegedly privileged or are sexists but that some people are being falsely accused and even expelled or convicted of crimes they did not commit.

And regarding “white privilege” and racial issues, will the Symposium discuss Attorney General Eric Holder’s dropping the DOJ’s open-and-shut case against the Philadelphia black activists accused of intimidating and threatening white voters on 2008 election night? And what about Barack Obama’sreferring to his white grandmother as a “typical white person”? Or Obama’s wanting the schools to refrain from disciplining black students?

But in addition to discussing “white privilege” and “male privilege,” will the “Libertarianism and Privilege” Symposium also be discussing affirmative action privilege?

Affirmative action gives special advantages to some people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, or other superficial characteristics that have nothing to do with their achievement or qualifications, at the expense of discriminating against some other people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, etc. Thus, affirmative action is not only a privilege, but a discrimination-based privilege that goes against the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s philosophy that people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

But I don’t want to suggest that only black people (and other minorities) have benefited from affirmative action. Take Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, who benefited from Harvard Law School’s affirmative action policy of hiring more women to the faculty, despite her questionable qualifications at the time. And further, while she is clearly a white person, she has also benefited from affirmative action at Harvard Law School based on her claiming to be part Native American. A very small part. Some people allege that the paleface did so fraudulently, in fact.

Regarding the Harvard Law School and affirmative action controversies, perhaps libertarians ought not be discussing “libertarianism and privilege” as much as they should be suggesting that government subsides and research grants be removed from Harvard and all other universities, as such money is first taken from workers and producers by force or coercion, a very un-libertarian method of funding.

And several years ago, by the way, some Harvard professors, including law professor Lawrence Tribe (as well as other Cambridge elitists such as Julia Child) signed a NIMBY petition to oust a school of mostly black kids from the limousine liberals’ Brattle Street neighborhood. So, a lot of people have their biases and prejudices. As Fred Reed would say, “So what?”

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is Hispanic, had in the past stated, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

So she thinks that white males wouldn’t make decisions as good as hers. So what?

Before Sotomayor was appointed to the Supreme Court, she had described herself as a “product of affirmative action,” having been accepted to Princeton University and Yale Law School even though she had lower scores on the standardized tests than her other classmates.

Sotomayor claimed that those tests were examples of “cultural bias,” despite lack of evidence of such assertions.

But we do have evidence of these privileged bureaucrats’ ideological biases. One can see that they clearly are not objective jurists.

And the Supreme Court’s alleged reputation as reining in Big Government is a myth as well, as most of their decisions are biased toward the State, the expansion of government and police power, and against the individual. This is the kind of “bias” that libertarians should be concentrating on, and the undeserved privilege given to fools toward aiding and abetting the government’s criminality is what libertarians should be discussing at these Symposiums.

The totalitarian-minded Justices of the high court conclude cases with decisions as though they are saying, for example, “If cops smell marijuana in your home and hear you flush the toilet, then of course the cops have a right to criminally break into your home without a warrant.” And the Justices also have asserted that everyone arrested for non-arrestable “offenses” such as walking a dog without a leash can be strip-searched and anal-searched for drugs or weapons. After all, a jaywalker might attack a jail guard with a concealed pen knife, and he might be hiding drugs up his rectum, and he might be a terrorist.

So, according to the “originalists” of the high court, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution contain exceptions for “drugs” and “terrorism”!

And the overly privileged Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the approval of the Affordable Care Act, after changing his mind (Hmmm. I wonder what could have done that?), incoherently opining that the government has the constitutional authority to order us to buy health insurance.

But now we have a Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, who would dismiss as “foolish” the possibility of the Supreme Court even considering the constitutionality of NSA warrantless wiretapping, while the high court’s refusal to even hear the appeal of NDAA due process-free indefinite detention of innocents shows what fascists or total fools (or both) these people really are.

I think that a Symposium on “Libertarianism and Privilege” should include discussion of those nine lettered fascists whose ultimate authority rules our lives. These privileged backstabbers are a despicable bunch. They were when they rubber-stamped FDR’s power grabs, and they are now as well.

These are the true unjustly-privileged ones, and we can see that having them as our ultimate judicial decision-makers is pointless and irrational.

Now, I understand the concern that some libertarians have that some women make less than some men, that some workers are exploited by their employers, and that some people are racists. But those are not libertarian issues. Libertarianism and egalitarianism are two separate philosophies and movements.

Libertarians ought to be spending more time concerned with the police state, Obama’s executive power grabs, the Federal Reserve’s destruction of our money, and the government’s war on journalists, whistleblowers and the truth.

Another Junket for Hackachusetts Governor

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has headed on over to Israel and UAE for yet another “trade mission,” i.e. taxpayer-funded 9-day free vacation. Another one. (Talk about “privileged“!)

Libertarianism, Political Correctness, and Race

Tom Woods interviews Will Grigg on the race-obsessed hypocrisy of leftists, and the politically correct “thick” libertarians.

Immigration and Labor Freedom

Bryan Caplan”s opening statement for the Reason Immigration Debate.

(h/t FFF)

A Rally to Free Justina Pelletier

Justina Pelletier is the teenager from Connecticut whose life has been stolen by Massachusetts medicrats and DCF child snatchers. More recently, a bureaucratic decision was made to transfer her from the Framingham, Massachusetts mental health facility where she has been falsely imprisoned and unjustly tortured, to a mental health facility in Thompson, Connecticut. Her case has always been a medical, cell-related disease and not a mental health issue, but the medicrats and the DCF fascists made it a mental health issue. Her parents disapprove of the decision, as she should be brought home with her family, obviously.

And tomorrow, Justina’s 16th birthday, there will be a rally at the State House in Boston from 2 to 4 PM (ET), a protest directed at Gov. Deval Patrick to bring Justina home to her family. Now, I don’t see the point of politicizing this, as their appealing to the master governor and his minions to free any serfs would seem pointless to me. Soviet-like bureaucrats don’t listen to their victims or their tax-slave supporters. The state government mental health flunkies seem to be intentionally delaying any release of this innocent victim of sadists. In my view, if you are told by doctors or DCF “social workers” that your child is to stay involuntarily at some facility that you suspect could do her more harm than good, you have a right to insist that you take her home or somewhere else. If they don’t take no for an answer, have the child snatchers arrested right away, press charges of criminal child endangerment, false imprisonment, etc. People have to protect themselves and their families.

And also, I have received a few emails from people who say they are in similar predicaments. I wish there were something I could do about their cases. There certainly isn’t anything I can do about Justina. And I am sure that there are many, many families that state DCFs all across the country are ruining and attempting to steal children away from, and for devious reasons, in my view. That the sheeple have given so many people of such questionable character so much power over others is very sad.

Corporate America, Forced Wealth-Redistribution, and LBJ’s Welfare State

Ralph Nader writes about “who owns America?”

Randall Holcombe writes that this popular Piketty guy doesn’t advocate as much to raise the incomes of those at the bottom as he does advocate to lower the incomes of those at the top. THAT’s what matters to these people, acting out their envious impulses. Oh, well.

And the Washington Times discusses LBJ’s “not-so-Great Society.”

U.S. Government Hypocrisy Strikes Again

The U.S. government accuses China’s bureaucrats of cyber-spying on America’s Fortune 500 businesses, security contractors, etc. And last year the New York Times disclosed that Chinese hackers associated with the Chinese military had hacked the Times‘ computers and compromised reporters’ passwords.

But what about the NSA who admits to stealing American companies’ industry secrets, or the NSA targeting private networks of global bank transfers and energy companies, or the NSA breaking into Google and Yahoo! communications links, or the NSA spying on U.S. journalists, or Britain’s GCHQ (their NSA equivalent) intentionally leaking confidential business information to companies to “stop deals and ruin business relationships,” etc. etc. etc.

It’s all in a day’s work for government bureaucrats entrusted with security and “defense.”

Some More Misc. Items for Today

Jonathan Turley discusses Barack Obama’s imperial presidency.

Laurence Vance fisks an article from Heritage about marijuana myths, and notes that it is the drug warriors who are harmful, certainly more harmful than the drugs themselves. I can’t believe how either corrupt, stupid or crazy those goons in “law enforcement” (cringe) would have to be to enforce drug laws.

Wendy McElroy explains why the U.S. Department of Agriculture needs submachine guns. (But I say it’s to raid those dangerous raw milk producers and consumers. God forbid someone should drink that poisonous raw milk.)

Ron Paul on why the globalists, warmongers, neocons and merchants-of-death hate peace.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe writes about the popularity and importance of his 2001 book, Democracy: The God That Failed.

James Bovard explains how he learned not to shovel.

And Ladar Levison explains why he had to shut down Lavabit

Amerika’s Police State

John Whitehead writes about how the government police have become court-sanctioned judge, jury and executioner.