Cell Phones Are 'Stalin'S Dream,' Says Free Software Movement Founder
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/031411-richard-stallman.html
"I don't have a cell phone. I won't carry a cell phone," says Stallman, founder of the free software movement and creator of the GNU operating system. "It's Stalin's dream. Cell phones are tools of Big Brother. I'm not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I'm not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop."
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Cell phones are 'Stalin's dream,'
March 14, 2011 05:47 PM ET
Cell phones are 'Stalin's dream,'
says free software movement founder Richard Stallman: iPhones and Androids are 'Big Brother' tracking devices
By Jon Brodkin
Nearly three decades into his quest to rid the world of proprietary software, Richard Stallman sees a new threat to user freedom: smartphones.
"I don't have a cell phone. I won't carry a cell phone," says Stallman, founder of the free software movement and creator of the GNU operating system. "It's Stalin's dream. Cell phones are tools of Big Brother. I'm not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I'm not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop."
Stallman firmly believes that only free software can save us from our technology, whether it be in cell phones, PCs, tablets or any other device. And when he talks about "free," he's not talking about the price of the software -- he's talking about the ability to use, modify and distribute software however you wish.
Nearly three decades into his quest to rid the world of proprietary software, Richard Stallman sees a new threat to user freedom: smartphones.
"I don't have a cell phone. I won't carry a cell phone," says Stallman, founder of the free software movement and creator of the GNU operating system. "It's Stalin's dream. Cell phones are tools of Big Brother. I'm not going to carry a tracking device that records where I go all the time, and I'm not going to carry a surveillance device that can be turned on to eavesdrop."
Stallman firmly believes that only free software can save us from our technology, whether it be in cell phones, PCs, tablets or any other device. And when he talks about "free," he's not talking about the price of the software -- he's talking about the ability to use, modify and distribute software however you wish.
Stallman founded the free software movement in the early- to mid-1980s with the creation of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation, of which he is still president.
When I asked Stallman to list some of the successes of the free software movement, the first thing that came up was Android -- not Google's version of Android, but rather a third-party version of the mobile OS in which all proprietary software has been stripped out (see also: Stallman supports LibreOffice).
"It just recently became possible to run some very widely used phones with free software," Stallman said. "There's a version of Android called Replicant that can run on the HTC Dream phone without proprietary software, except in the U.S. In the U.S., as of a few weeks ago there was still a problem in some dialing library, although it worked in Europe. By now, maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know."
Although Android is distributed with free software licenses, Stallman notes that manufacturers can ship the devices with non-free executables, which users cannot replace "because there is a device in the phone that checks if the software is changed and won't let the modified executables run." Stallman calls it "tivoization," because TiVo uses free software but lays down hardware restrictions to prevent it from being altered. "If the manufacturer can replace the executable but you can't, then the product is a jail," he says.
Theoretically, Stallman says, phones that use only free software can protect themselves from the danger of electronic eavesdropping. "If it's all free software, you can probably protect yourself from that, because that's caused by the software in the phone," he says.
Ironically enough, Stallman was speaking to me on a cell phone. Not his own, of course, but one he borrowed from a friend in Spain while on a European speaking tour. Over the course of 38 minutes, our connection was lost five times, including just after Stallman's comments about electronic eavesdropping and free software for phones. We tried to connect again several hours later but were unable to complete the interview via phone. Stallman answered the rest of my questions over e-mail.
Sacrificing convenience is something Stallman is used to. He won't use Windows or Mac, obviously, and even software such as Ubuntu, perhaps the most popular operating system based on GNU and the Linux kernel, does not meet his free software requirements.
Few people are willing to make the sacrifices he will for the goal of software freedom, Stallman acknowledges.
"The decisions anyone makes depend on values," he says. "And most people are taught to think about software purely as a matter of price and performance, not whether it respects your freedom. People who make decisions on those values will not make any sacrifice of convenience to get free software, whereas I am willing to work for years and years and years to have no proprietary software in my computer."
Stallman does his computing on a Lemote Yeeloong laptop running gNewSense, a GNU/Linux distribution composed only of free software.
"There are some things I can't do. I'm using a rather slow computer because it's the only laptop with a free BIOS," Stallman says. gNewSense is the only totally free distribution that will run on the Lemote, which has a MIPS-like processor, he says. The Lemote had come with another GNU/Linux distribution that included non-free software, and Stallman replaced it with gNewSense.
Stallman, 57, experienced software sharing for the first time when he began working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971. The sharing community broke down in the early 1980s around the same time that Digital Equipment Corp. discontinued a mainframe hardware platform the community relied upon. Stallman could have joined the proprietary software world if he had been willing to "sign nondisclosure agreements and promise not to help my fellow hacker," he says. Instead, he pioneered the free software movement.
Stallman is a fascinating figure in the world of computing, admired by many individuals and reviled by companies such as Microsoft which see a threat from software they can't make a profit from.
Stallman has failed to break the Microsoft/Apple dominance of the desktop computer market, not to mention Apple's dominance of tablets. But the free software movement he created did lead to the proliferation of Linux-based servers which are prevalent in data centers and power much of the Internet. This is perhaps ironic because Stallman expresses resentment about the credit given to the Linux kernel at the expense of his own GNU operating system.
Stallman says he is "somewhat" proud of the proliferation of free server software, "but I'm more concerned with the size of the problem that needs to be corrected than with how far we have already come."
Free software in data centers is nice, but "with the goal of giving users freedom, their own desktops, laptops and phones are the computers that affect their freedom most." The focus is mainly on software rather than hardware, but the movement insists on "hardware that comes with specs so that we can write free software to support it fully," he says. "It is unconscionable to offer hardware for sale and refuse to tell the purchaser how to use it. This ought to be illegal."
Before agreeing to an interview with Network World, Stallman demanded that this article use his preferred terminology -- e.g. "free software" instead of "open source" and "GNU/Linux" instead of just "Linux." He also requested that the interview be recorded and that, if the recording were distributed online, that it be done so in a format that works with free software.
There are four essential software freedoms, Stallman explained. "Freedom Zero is the freedom to run the program as you wish. Freedom 1 is the freedom to study the source code, and change it so the program does your computing as you wish. Freedom 2 is the freedom to help others; that's the freedom to make and distribute exact copies when you wish. And Freedom 3 is the freedom to contribute to your community, which is the freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions when you wish."
Stallman came up with the term "copyleft" to indicate licenses that ensure free software code cannot be redistributed in proprietary products.
The key to Stallman's philosophy is this: "Without those four freedoms, the owner controls the program and the programs control the users," he says. "So the program is simply an instrument of unjust power. The users deserve freedom to control their computing. A non-free program is a system of unjust power and shouldn't exist. The existence and use of non-free software is a social problem. It's an evil. And our aim is a world without that problem."
"That problem" wasn't caused by one company in particular, but Microsoft is usually the most frequently criticized by people like Stallman.
"They continue regarding us as their enemy," Stallman says. Ten years ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously called Linux a "cancer." Microsoft has softened its public tone since then, but Stallman is not impressed: "They have in some ways learned to be a bit more subtle but their goal is that people should use Windows and not a free operating system." After that thought, our phone connection was lost again.
Other than Microsoft, Stallman calls out "Apple and Adobe, and Oracle and lots of others that make proprietary software and pressure people to use it."
Google "does some good things and some bad," Stallman says. "It has released useful free software such as the WebM codec, and is moving YouTube to distribute that way. However, the new Google Art Project can only be used through proprietary software."
Stallman is also at odds with some people in what is known as the open source community. Open source advocates clearly sprung out of the free software movement, and most open source software also counts as free software. But Stallman says that people who identify as open source advocates tend to view the access to source code as a practical convenience and ignore the ethical principles of software freedom. Various vendors have jumped on the open source bandwagon without embracing the principles that Stallman believes should be at the heart of free software.
"I don't want to make this seem too one-sided," Stallman says. "Certainly a lot of people who hold open source views have worked on useful programs that are free and also some of those companies have funded work on useful programs that are free. So that work is good. But at the same time, at a deeper level, the focus on open source leads people's attention away from the idea that they deserve freedom."
One of Stallman's targets is Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel and one of the most famous figures in the world of free software.
Stallman and his crew worked on the GNU operating system for most of the 1980s, but there was one missing piece: a kernel, which provides resources from the hardware to programs that run on the computer. This gap was filled by Torvalds in 1991 when he developed Linux, a Unix-like kernel.
Systems using the Linux kernel are usually called just "Linux," but Stallman has fought for years to get people to use his preferred term, "GNU/Linux."
Stallman "wanted to make sure GNU got proper credit," says Miguel de Icaza of Novell, who created the free software program GNOME but has been criticized by Stallman for partnering with Microsoft and selling proprietary software. "When Linux came out, Richard didn't take it very seriously for a while, and he kept working on his own kernel. It was only when Linux took the spotlight that he felt, to some extent, his project had not been given enough credit. The problem is, what happened at the time was there was a new community that was created out of the blue that wasn't necessarily aligned with GNU."
The GNU kernel, called Hurd, is still "under active development," according to the project's Web site.
Torvalds' contribution to free software will be widely celebrated this year during the 20th anniversary of the Linux kernel. But Stallman won't be one of his cheerleaders, and it's not just because of the naming dispute.
"I don't admire a person who says freedom is not important," Stallman says. "Torvalds set a bad example for the community by publicly using a non-free program for the maintenance of Linux (his kernel, which is his main contribution to the GNU/Linux system). I criticized him for this, and so did others. When he stopped, it was not by choice. More recently, he rejected [the] GPL version 3 for Linux because it protects the users' freedom from tivoization. His rejection of GPLv3 is why most Android phones are jails."
Even Red Hat and Novell, known widely as open source supporters, don't get a ringing endorsement. "Red Hat partly supports free software. Novell much less," he says, noting that Novell has a patent agreement with Microsoft.
Despite outward pessimism, Stallman does see a few positives spurred by his quest for software freedom. When he's not at his Cambridge, Mass., home, which is most of the time, Stallman is roaming the world giving speeches and holding discussions about free software. Before traveling to Spain, Stallman stopped off in London to give a speech in which he called Windows "malware," and met with a couple members of Parliament to explain free software issues. He often gets a better reception in Europe than at home.
"In the U.S., awareness of free software has been almost completely pushed under the rug by open source. As a result, you'd never find people in any government position who'd want to talk to me," he says.
Outside of North America, some governments are embracing free software. "I found out yesterday that in France, the state agencies are continuing to move to free software," he says. "There's no systematic policy requiring them to but they're doing so more and more. And in some countries, for instance in Ecuador, there is an explicit policy for state agencies to move to free software and any agency that wants to continue using non-free software has to apply for a temporary exception, permission to do so."
Although Stallman didn't mention it, the Russian government is requiring agencies to replace proprietary software with free alternatives by 2015 in a bid to improve both economics and security, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In addition to free software, Stallman is devoted to political issues, and writes a blog for The Huffington Post. In fact, he sees little distinction between the corporations threatening software freedom and "the scoundrels in Washington" who are beholden to corporate donations.
In the recent Wisconsin union protests, Stallman sees something of his own spirit.
"Sometimes freedom requires a sacrifice and most Americans are not willing to make any sacrifices for their freedom," he says. "But maybe the protesters in Wisconsin are starting to change that." Corporations and mass media "have to a large extent convinced Americans ... that they're not entitled to refuse businesses whatever businesses want. Well, we need a spirit of resistance in America. We need to recover the spirit of freedom with which we created the United States."
copyright 1995-2011 Network World, Inc.
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/031411-richard-stallman.html
Muammar. He’s Back!
Muammar. He's Back!
by Eric Margolis
I recently wrote that Libya's "Leader," Muammar Gadaffi, had used up all of his nine lives. After being written off by great powers and world media, Gadaffi, the dictator we love to hate, is still in power and making rude gestures at his assorted foes.
We should call Gadaffi Mr. Lucky. As the western powers were edging ever closer to a war to "liberate" Libya's high-grade oil, along came Japan's awful tsunami which washed Libya off the front pages of the news.
Chances of a nuclear and financial meltdown in Japan gripped world capitals, overshadowing Libya's civil strife.
Meanwhile, the normally do-nothing Arab League had bestirred itself to pass a resolution calling for the United Nations Security Council to impose a no-fly zone over Libya – a euphemism for war. Most of the Arab states hate Gadaffi and would love to see him strung up. For decades, Libya's "Leader" has been calling them American and Israeli stooges, cowards, and thieves.
Gadaffi's choicest barbs were reserved for the Saudi royal family, whom he scathingly described as "old women in robes." Ouch! This from a zany despot who loves to wear comic opera military uniforms made by Italian tailors.
But note, the Arab League did not propose action itself. It merely kicked the Libyan problem over to the UN Security Council which may not take decisive action due to Chinese and Russian opposition.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, who would have had a lot of fun with all the righteous hysteria over Libya, reports of Gadaffi's demise are premature.
It seems Libya's Muammar Gadaffi is not a goner, at least not this week. His military and mercenaries have counterattacked and are driving east towards the center of rebellion, Benghazi.
There has not been all that much fighting, in spite of overheated reports by the media, thanks to the military ineptitude of both Gadaffi's forces and the Benghazi-based rebels who are little more than an armed mob making warlike gestures for TV cameras.
Real, seasoned war correspondents seem to have vanished from the media, replaced by amateurs who can't tell a tank from an armored personnel carrier.
Desert warfare is akin to naval operations: vast distances are covered, often back and forth. Supply bases are of paramount importance. Logistics rule everything, as we saw during the North African campaigns of Word War II.
If Libya's opposition starts making gains again, suspect that foreign special forces are involved. I've reported for some weeks that British SAS forces were secretly in Libya. A bunch were recently rounded up and deported.
I've seen Libya's Army at war before. In the later 1980's, Libya and Chad, backed by its neocolonial master France, fought a little war over the disputed Aouzou Strip, which was believed to have rich uranium deposits.
Aouzou was sort of ceded by France, which then ruled neighboring Chad, to Italy, which then ruled Libya. Italy was given Aouzou by the British and French as one of the prizes it received after World War I for joining the Allied side. But after uranium was discovered in the 1970's, the French decided they should never have ceded Aouzou to Italy and reneged on the deal, leaving the desert strip in limbo.
In what was called the "Toyota War," (both sides used the splendid Toyota Land Cruiser), Libya's Army proved laughably incompetent. French Foreign Legionnaires disguised as Chadian tribesmen quickly routed the Libyans.
I ran into some of these tough Legionnaires in Alsace and they told me delightful tales of their Beau Geste–type colonial operations in Chad and Aouzou. On their muscled arms was tattooed, "marcher ou crever" (march or die).
This time around, Gadaffi's military and mercenaries have the ragtag anti-Gadaffi forces on the defensive. To the horror of the US, Britain, Canada, and France, all of whom are calling for Gadaffi's head, Libya's eccentric leader appears to be winning.
As Washington and NATO stumble, dither, and look plain silly over Libya, the awful realization is growing: what if Gadaffi survives and continues to rule Libya? Will he have the last laugh?
France's neoconservative president, Nicholas Sarkozy, whose popularity is almost as low as Gadaffi's, just recognized the Benghazi-based Libyan opposition and calls for air strikes against Libya. This after France was revealed to have offered riot police to Tunisia's embattled dictator, Gen. Ali. French prime minister, François Fillon, vacationed in Egypt, with travel goodies supplied by former president-dictator Husni Mubarak.
I'm surprised Gadaffi did not riposte by recognizing the Corsican Liberation Movement on the restive French-ruled island, or endorse a Basque state in southwestern France. Touché! He could have declared an embargo on French perfume, for which Libya is a significant market.
In a huge embarrassment for President Barack Obama, who has been demanding Gadaffi resign, the gutsy new US national intelligence director, Gen. James Clapper, told Congress that Gadaffi's forces were winning. Fortunately, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates put the brakes, at least for now, on Republican hawks and the-only-good-Arab-is-a-dead-Arab neocons who were urging the US impose a no-fly zone over Libya.
There will also be many red faces in Europe. Libya is a major oil supplier. If Gadaffi survives and reconsolidates his rule, Europe will have to continue buying oil from him. Germany's Angela Merkel and her pal Sarko will look very foolish.
That means the leaders of France, Germany, and Britain, who have been calling for the overthrow of Gadaffi, may have to make nice to him again, and even, horror of horrors, go to Tripoli and be filmed holding hands with the smirking Libyan dictator, decked out in one of his Marx Brothers military outfits. Revenge, Libyan-style, will be oh so sweet.
The British are very good at reversing course. "Oh, it was all a terrible misunderstanding. Fault of those Americans, don't you know."
Sarkozy could patch up relations by sending his gorgeous Carla Bruni to visit Gadaffi, who has an eye for the ladies.
The Americans, not so adept at U-turns, will continue to huff and puff at Gadaffi until the New York Times runs a lead article about how poor, misunderstood Gadaffi is really secretly a friend of Israel. (If you think this is crazy, Gadaffi told me he admired Israel and wanted to invite all of Libya's former Jewish residents to come home.)
All this reminds me of a wonderful story told to me by the late Count Alexandre de Marenches, the longtime head of France's hard-fisted foreign intelligence service, SDECE (today, after big scandals, it's called DGSE).
During the Aouzou conflict, French President Francois Mitterand, highly annoyed at Gadaffi, ordered Marenche's SDECE to assassinate the Libyan leader. The count related to me how his agents managed the feat of secreting a pressure-fused bomb aboard Gadaffi's private jet, set to explode at 7,000 meters. Luckily for Gadaffi, he did not use his jet in that period.
But after Libya gave up Aouzou and Franco-Libyan relations improved, Mitterand ordered SDECE to remove the bomb. That, said Marenches, was ten times harder than getting it aboard. But SDECE did manage to remove the bomb, and Libyan oil and cash flowed to France.
But in 1989, Libya's intelligence chief, with whom I had dined in Tripoli, allegedly ordered the bombing of a French UTA airliner over Niger, killing 170. Gadaffi denied any knowledge of this crime or of the downing of a PanAm US airliner over Scotland. Libya was subjected to crushing western sanctions.
In 2008, Gadaffi bought his way out of trouble by forking out $1.5 billion to the US citizens and other claimants for the UTA and PanAm Lockerbie aircraft – but without admitting Libya's guilt.
President George W. Bush ordered all sanctions on Libya lifted. Washington even declared Gadaffi a valued ally in the so-called war on terror.
Money and oil trump moral outrage. This time, the wily Libyan colonel has a reported $50 billion in his war chest to buy his way out of his latest troubles.
www.ericmargolis.com
Japan and the broken-window fallacy: Natural disasters do not stimulate the economy
Japan and the broken-window fallacy: Natural disasters do not stimulate the economy
By Matt Kibbe 12:42 PM 03/14/2011
In the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, our hearts and thoughts are with the people of Japan. This is a terrible tragedy that has cost thousands of lives and destroyed infrastructure, homes and businesses.
We cannot prevent natural disasters but we can put an end to economic fallacies. One of the most common and dangerous economic fallacies is the notion that destruction will boost the economy. Over two centuries ago, French economist Frederic Bastiat debunked this myth by introducing the broken-window fallacy.
Many prominent economists have claimed that the natural disaster will boost Japan's already fragile economy. After expressing sorrow for the people of Japan, former White House economics adviser Larry Summers said, "it may lead to some temporary increments in GDP as a process of rebuilding takes place. In the wake of the earlier Kobe earthquake, Japan actually gained some economic strength." Any economist is dead wrong to claim that there is a silver lining in a natural or man-made disaster. As it turns out, earthquakes and tsunamis are not stimuli. Destruction will not create prosperity.
As economics Professor Steven Horwitz notes, "If one really believes such disasters are good for the economy, even in the short run, then one should positively recommend burning down neighborhoods and destroying farm machinery. After all, think of the demand for construction workers and equipment, as well as the demand for manual labor on farms that would generate. Why we'd be rich as kings in no time, right?"
In Frederic Bastiat's famous piece "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen," he explains the elementary fallacy. Imagine that you witness a small child breaking a window by throwing a rock through the local bakery. The correct response would be to scold the child for causing harm. Bastiat notes, however, that spectators will usually comment that the broken window will provide employment for the glazier, thus boosting the economy. He writes:
- But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, "Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen."
- It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way which this accident has prevented.
- It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way which this accident has prevented.
It's troubling to hear that such a terrible natural disaster may turn out to be a good thing for Japan. The Wall Street Journal reports, "Some economists have argued that a quake could actually lift the economy in the long run, by requiring a surge in rebuilding spending." Following this flawed logic, these people believe that the more destruction, the better for the economy.
Late great economists warned us against advancing this economic fallacy. Ludwig von Mises stated that "the earthquake means good business for construction workers, and cholera improves the business of physicians, pharmacists, and undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest."
Those in the Obama administration are famous for touting the broken-window fallacy. Frederic Bastiat's broken-window fallacy explains why high taxes, subsidies, tariffs and "stimulus" programs have made our economy worse. Advocates of these government programs only focus on what can be visibly seen while ignoring the unintended consequences. The "stimulus" may create some public works jobs but it does so at the expense of taxpayers. It has taken away money from taxpayers in the private sector and sent it through the hands of politicians in Washington to spend for us. These taxpayers would have spent their money on goods and services that they value, which would have created jobs in the private sector. We just cannot visibly see all the jobs that would have been created without the $819 billion "stimulus" package.
Let's put an end to one of the most dangerous and popular economic fallacies. We are all poorer as a result of natural or man-made disasters.
To read more on economic fallacies, please see Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, courtesy of the Foundation for Economic Education.
Matt Kibbe is the President and CEO of FreedomWorks.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/14/japan-and-the-broken-window-fallacy-natural-disasters-do-not-stimulate-the-economy/#ixzz1Ggh3iOW2
http://dailycaller.com/2011/03/14/japan-and-the-broken-window-fallacy-natural-disasters-do-not-stimulate-the-economy/
The clarifying Manning/Crowley controversy
Monday, Mar 14, 2011 08:15 ET
The clarifying Manning/Crowley controversy
By Glenn Greenwald
(updated below)
The forced "resignation" of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley -- for the mortal sin of denouncing the abusive detention of Bradley Manning -- has apparently proven to be a clarifying moment for many commentators about what the President is and how he functions in these areas. Writing at Time's Swampland, Mark Benjamin identifies the real crux of the controversy:
Denunciations of the President from his own supporters are as intensive and pervasive here as they have been for any other prior incident, if not more so. Matt Yglesias wrote that "to hold a person without trial in solitary confinement under degrading conditions is a perversion of justice" and that it's a "sad statement about America that P.J. Crowley is the one being forced to resign over Bradley Manning." Andrew Sullivan -- writing under the headline "Obama Owns the Treatment of Manning Now" -- said that Crowley was forced out "for the offense of protesting against the sadistic military treatment of Bradley Manning," that "the president has now put his personal weight behind prisoner abuse," and that "Obama is directly responsible for the inhumane treatment of an American citizen." Meanwhile, Ezra Klein previews his denunciation of the President's treatment of Manning and Crowley by announcing that it's his first ever lede "that isn't about economic or domestic policy" but rather is "about right and wrong," and then questions "whether the Obama administration is keeping sight of its values now that it holds power." Those strong words are all from supporters of the President.
Elsewhere, The Philadelphia Daily News' progressive columnist Will Bunch accuses Obama of "lying" during the campaign by firing Crowley and endorsing "the bizarre and immoral treatment of the alleged Wikileaks leaker." In The Guardian, Obama voter Daniel Ellsberg condemns "this shameful abuse of Bradley Manning," arguing that it "amounts to torture" and "makes me feel ashamed for the [Marine] Corps," in which Ellsberg served three years, including nine months at Quantico. Baltimore Sun columnist Ron Smith asks: "Why is the U.S. torturing Private Manning?," while UCLA Professor Mark Kleiman -- who only last year hailed Obama as "the greatest moral leader of our lifetime" and eagerly suggested on Friday (before Obama's Press Conference) that Crowley was speaking for Obama -- mocked Obama's defense of the Manning treatment as "clueless on the Bush level" and now says of Crowley's firing: "The Torturers Win One," while lamenting Obama's overt support for a policy that he calls "unconscionable and un-American and borderline criminal."
But the news isn't all bad for the President. Aside from his shrinking though still-vocal The-Leader-Can-Do-No-Wrong loyalists ( whose mirror image counterparts stood behind George W. Bush to the end no matter what he did), Obama is finding support for his conduct in the Manning/Crowley episode from the Far Right. HotAir's Ed Morrissey, as but one example, lavishly praises the President's decisions: "The White House acted appropriately in kicking Crowley out at State, and should be commended for taking quick action," and goes on to defend the conditions of Manning's detention as appropriate and necessary. It really is quite striking -- and quite revealing -- how, at least in the areas about which I wrote most (civil liberties, secrecy, surveillance, privacy, war, due process, detention, etc. etc.), and for many of the specific controversies on which I've focused (WikiLeaks, Manning, indefinite detention, Afghanistan, drone attacks, the due-process-free assassination program, legal immunity for Bush officials, state secrets, etc.), the greatest support for the President's policies (with a few early exceptions) are found, by far, among the same faction of America's Right who so eagerly supported the Bush/Cheney policy framework. That's just a fact.
* * * * *
When Obama was asked on Friday about Manning's treatment, he said in part: "I've actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures . . . are appropriate. They assured me they are." When George W. Bush, in his book, attempted to justify his torture regime, he wrote, as summarized by Newsweek 's Jacob Weisberg: "When [Bush] asked 'the most senior legal officers in the U.S. government' to review interrogation methods, 'they assured me they did not constitute torture.' Case closed. You can't argue with the choices Bush defends in this book, because he doesn't argue them himself. He describes, asserts, and cites any authority handy, usually the authority he hired to defend his decisions" (h/t WLLegal).
* * * * *
When Anderson Cooper last month accurately described statements from the Mubarak regime as "lies," numerous colleagues of his criticized him for "taking sides," but then patronizingly suggested that he had likely lost his "objectivity" because he had been beaten by regime supporters in Egypt -- as though only being beaten could cause a journalist to become so emotional and reckless as to describe an official lie (from America or its allies) as a "lie."
Now, a similar tactic is being used to discredit Crowley and impugn the reliability his comments. Politico's Mike Allen, as he always does, conveys the Washington conventional wisdom today: "Crowley is unusually sensitive to the treatment of prisoners because his late father, a B-17 pilot, was a prisoner of war for two years in a camp that at the time was part of East Germany." In other words, one would object to abusive detention only if one were "unusually sensitive" because of some overwrought, emotional family issue; no rational, objective person -- with Beltway power -- could possibly find anything wrong with inhumane detention. So Crowley is just a weird, emotionally affected outlier because of his "unusual sensitivity" to such matters.
* * * * *
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a sitting member of Congress and member of the President's own party, has repeatedly sought to visit Manning and view his detention conditions, yet has been endlessly thwarted and given the runaround by Pentagon officials. He talks about that situation in an interview with Scott Horton here (it includes a transcript).
* * * * *
Last Tuesday, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I spoke at a newly inaugurated speakers series sponsored by the Lannan Foundation; the topic of my speech was WikiLeaks and the war against transparency. The roughly 45-minute speech can be seen (or downloaded) here. It was preceded by two introductions (the second of which, from radio host David Barsamian, quoted several passages from my forthcoming book), but the speech itself begins at the 9:35 mark; for those unable to watch all of it, the section of my speech discussing why WikiLeaks is such a vital battle begins at 41:30. A 30-minute Q-and-A session hosted by Barsamian took place after, and it can be viewed or downloaded here.
UPDATE: The New York Times has a good, new Editorial on Manning -- its first -- entitled "The Abuse of Private Manning," which, says the paper, "conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects." The Editorial also lambasts Obama for supporting "an abuse that should never have begun."
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/14/manning/index.html
The clarifying Manning/Crowley controversy
By Glenn Greenwald
(updated below)
The forced "resignation" of State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley -- for the mortal sin of denouncing the abusive detention of Bradley Manning -- has apparently proven to be a clarifying moment for many commentators about what the President is and how he functions in these areas. Writing at Time's Swampland, Mark Benjamin identifies the real crux of the controversy:
- Free speech advocates are shocked, and, as I wrote last week on TIME.com, concerned over Obama's record as the most aggressive prosecutor of suspected government leakers in U.S. history.
- Those advocates have wondered whether the penchant for secrecy in the Obama administration comes from the President, or those around him. Obama's statement on Manning, followed by Crowley's resignation, seem to suggest some of this comes from the President himself.
- Those advocates have wondered whether the penchant for secrecy in the Obama administration comes from the President, or those around him. Obama's statement on Manning, followed by Crowley's resignation, seem to suggest some of this comes from the President himself.
Denunciations of the President from his own supporters are as intensive and pervasive here as they have been for any other prior incident, if not more so. Matt Yglesias wrote that "to hold a person without trial in solitary confinement under degrading conditions is a perversion of justice" and that it's a "sad statement about America that P.J. Crowley is the one being forced to resign over Bradley Manning." Andrew Sullivan -- writing under the headline "Obama Owns the Treatment of Manning Now" -- said that Crowley was forced out "for the offense of protesting against the sadistic military treatment of Bradley Manning," that "the president has now put his personal weight behind prisoner abuse," and that "Obama is directly responsible for the inhumane treatment of an American citizen." Meanwhile, Ezra Klein previews his denunciation of the President's treatment of Manning and Crowley by announcing that it's his first ever lede "that isn't about economic or domestic policy" but rather is "about right and wrong," and then questions "whether the Obama administration is keeping sight of its values now that it holds power." Those strong words are all from supporters of the President.
Elsewhere, The Philadelphia Daily News' progressive columnist Will Bunch accuses Obama of "lying" during the campaign by firing Crowley and endorsing "the bizarre and immoral treatment of the alleged Wikileaks leaker." In The Guardian, Obama voter Daniel Ellsberg condemns "this shameful abuse of Bradley Manning," arguing that it "amounts to torture" and "makes me feel ashamed for the [Marine] Corps," in which Ellsberg served three years, including nine months at Quantico. Baltimore Sun columnist Ron Smith asks: "Why is the U.S. torturing Private Manning?," while UCLA Professor Mark Kleiman -- who only last year hailed Obama as "the greatest moral leader of our lifetime" and eagerly suggested on Friday (before Obama's Press Conference) that Crowley was speaking for Obama -- mocked Obama's defense of the Manning treatment as "clueless on the Bush level" and now says of Crowley's firing: "The Torturers Win One," while lamenting Obama's overt support for a policy that he calls "unconscionable and un-American and borderline criminal."
But the news isn't all bad for the President. Aside from his shrinking though still-vocal The-Leader-Can-Do-No-Wrong loyalists ( whose mirror image counterparts stood behind George W. Bush to the end no matter what he did), Obama is finding support for his conduct in the Manning/Crowley episode from the Far Right. HotAir's Ed Morrissey, as but one example, lavishly praises the President's decisions: "The White House acted appropriately in kicking Crowley out at State, and should be commended for taking quick action," and goes on to defend the conditions of Manning's detention as appropriate and necessary. It really is quite striking -- and quite revealing -- how, at least in the areas about which I wrote most (civil liberties, secrecy, surveillance, privacy, war, due process, detention, etc. etc.), and for many of the specific controversies on which I've focused (WikiLeaks, Manning, indefinite detention, Afghanistan, drone attacks, the due-process-free assassination program, legal immunity for Bush officials, state secrets, etc.), the greatest support for the President's policies (with a few early exceptions) are found, by far, among the same faction of America's Right who so eagerly supported the Bush/Cheney policy framework. That's just a fact.
* * * * *
When Obama was asked on Friday about Manning's treatment, he said in part: "I've actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures . . . are appropriate. They assured me they are." When George W. Bush, in his book, attempted to justify his torture regime, he wrote, as summarized by Newsweek 's Jacob Weisberg: "When [Bush] asked 'the most senior legal officers in the U.S. government' to review interrogation methods, 'they assured me they did not constitute torture.' Case closed. You can't argue with the choices Bush defends in this book, because he doesn't argue them himself. He describes, asserts, and cites any authority handy, usually the authority he hired to defend his decisions" (h/t WLLegal).
* * * * *
When Anderson Cooper last month accurately described statements from the Mubarak regime as "lies," numerous colleagues of his criticized him for "taking sides," but then patronizingly suggested that he had likely lost his "objectivity" because he had been beaten by regime supporters in Egypt -- as though only being beaten could cause a journalist to become so emotional and reckless as to describe an official lie (from America or its allies) as a "lie."
Now, a similar tactic is being used to discredit Crowley and impugn the reliability his comments. Politico's Mike Allen, as he always does, conveys the Washington conventional wisdom today: "Crowley is unusually sensitive to the treatment of prisoners because his late father, a B-17 pilot, was a prisoner of war for two years in a camp that at the time was part of East Germany." In other words, one would object to abusive detention only if one were "unusually sensitive" because of some overwrought, emotional family issue; no rational, objective person -- with Beltway power -- could possibly find anything wrong with inhumane detention. So Crowley is just a weird, emotionally affected outlier because of his "unusual sensitivity" to such matters.
* * * * *
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a sitting member of Congress and member of the President's own party, has repeatedly sought to visit Manning and view his detention conditions, yet has been endlessly thwarted and given the runaround by Pentagon officials. He talks about that situation in an interview with Scott Horton here (it includes a transcript).
* * * * *
Last Tuesday, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I spoke at a newly inaugurated speakers series sponsored by the Lannan Foundation; the topic of my speech was WikiLeaks and the war against transparency. The roughly 45-minute speech can be seen (or downloaded) here. It was preceded by two introductions (the second of which, from radio host David Barsamian, quoted several passages from my forthcoming book), but the speech itself begins at the 9:35 mark; for those unable to watch all of it, the section of my speech discussing why WikiLeaks is such a vital battle begins at 41:30. A 30-minute Q-and-A session hosted by Barsamian took place after, and it can be viewed or downloaded here.
UPDATE: The New York Times has a good, new Editorial on Manning -- its first -- entitled "The Abuse of Private Manning," which, says the paper, "conjures creepy memories of how the Bush administration used to treat terror suspects." The Editorial also lambasts Obama for supporting "an abuse that should never have begun."
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/14/manning/index.html
Condolences Yes, Assistance No
Condolences Yes, Assistance No
by Laurence M. Vance, August 15, 2011
Thanks to the tremendous technological advances in communications that have taken place over the past few years, the whole world has now heard of and seen the destruction wrought by the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. With thousands already confirmed dead, and many thousands more missing and presumed dead, the thoughts and prayers from people of every nation are with the Japanese people.
Although the focus of the world is on the tremendous amount of destruction and loss of life in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, there are some important observations that can and should be made that relate to the situation in Japan, and they have nothing to do with seismology, building codes, nuclear power, insurance, disaster preparedness, or relief efforts.
These observations are of a philosophical nature. President Obama's former chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel once infamously remarked that you shouldn't let a serious crisis go to waste since it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. Although I don't discount in any way the horrific destruction and loss of life that has just occurred in Japan, I don't want this serious crisis to go to waste in the sense that it provides us with an opportunity to examine on a philosophical level some facets of U.S. foreign policy that would not get much attention otherwise.
Although much of what I want to say that relates to the catastrophic disaster in Japan can also be applied to other recent national disasters in other countries the earthquake in 2010 in Haiti, the cyclone in Myanmar in 2008, the earthquake in China in 2008, the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, and the very recent earthquake in New Zealand which has now been overshadowed by events in Japan the case of Japan, because of the relationship that has existed between the United States and Japan since World War II, lends itself to even more observations than could be made about those other disasters.
" U.S. offers condolences, assistance to Japan," reads the headline in a CNN article. Let me first give some relevant information from the article, and then proceed to what I think are some important points of observation that can and should be made about U.S. foreign policy.
President Obama says he is offering "our Japanese friends whatever assistance is needed." He also promised assistance to American citizens in Japan. The president spoke with his energy secretary, Steven Chu, "to make sure that if in fact there have any breaches in the safety of the nuclear plant, they are dealt with." "The U.S. government is taking inventory of how many military personnel are in Japan to provide help," Obama also said.
Vice President Biden chimed in that "the thoughts and prayers of the American people ... are with our friends in Japan." "We the United States stand ready to do anything we can to help our Japanese friends as they deal with the aftermath of this tragedy," he also said.
Secretary of State Clinton spoke about the delivery to Japan, via U.S. Air Force planes, of coolant for its nuclear reactors. She also stated that "we're really deeply involved in trying to do as much as we can on behalf of the Japanese and on behalf of U.S. citizens." Clinton pledged "immediate disaster relief assistance" and further said that "we are working closely with the government of Japan to provide additional help."
The Pentagon announced that "five U.S. Navy ships were heading to Japan, and two others were already docked in the country." President Obama specifically mentioned an aircraft carrier already in Japan, another on the way, and "a ship en route to the Mariana Islands to assist as needed." A spokesman from the Pentagon also mentioned that "among the 38,000 U.S. military personnel, 43,000 dependents and 5,000 Department of Defense civilians assigned to Japan, there are no reports of loss of life and no reports of major damage to U.S. warships, aircraft or facilities in Japan."
First of all, when the president, vice president, or secretary of state talk about "I" or "we" pledging assistance to Japan, they mean the U.S. government. This does not, of course, mean that they personally will be doing anything to help anyone in Japan. It is easy to sound concerned and compassionate when you are pledging other people's money.
Second, why does the U.S. government presume to speak for all Americans? And why is it just accepted when the U.S. government makes official pronouncements or issues official statements about affairs or events in the rest of the world? Why is it considered the business of the U.S. government to even say anything? This is what leads to the U.S. government taking sides in foreign disputes, trying to police the world, and forbidding Americans to travel to other countries or trade with their citizens. How much longer will the 1960 embargo against Cuba last? You know, the one that President Obama maintains "is in the national interest of the United States."
Third, even when government officials say that the "U.S. government" or the "United States" will be providing aid, what that ultimately means is that Americans, involuntarily, through the taxes confiscated from them, are the ones that will be providing the assistance. But what if an American for whatever reason doesn't want to help in the relief effort? Suppose someone is so xenophobic that he doesn't care about what happens to the Japanese? Suppose someone is a descendant of an American POW from World War II who was tortured by the Japanese and, thus, doesn't want to help the Japanese? Should these Americans be forced to provide aid to Japan? The fact that their beliefs might be irrational or mean-spirited is irrelevant when it comes to the question of whether we are to have a society based on freedom or a society based on coercion.
Fourth, the only case that could possibly be made for forced aid is that people would not send aid themselves. But it is a myth that there would not be sufficient aid to Japan without the U.S. government's being involved in some way. Americans are generally very charitable, generous, compassionate, and genuinely concerned about those in foreign countries who are poor, oppressed, or suffering. Charitable organizations like Mercy Corps, Peace Winds, and the Red Cross are already soliciting donations. There is no doubt in my mind that Americans will give liberally to alleviate the suffering of the people of Japan. But whether they give or don't give, it is still the case that it should be the decision of each individual American.
Fifth, disaster relief, humanitarian aid, and financial assistance are types of foreign aid. Since World War II, the U.S. government has dispensed hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid in a variety of forms to over 150 countries. Foreign aid is, of course, really foreign government aid. There is no telling what percentage of foreign aid actually makes it into the pockets of people in real need instead of lining the pockets of corrupt foreign regimes and their privileged contractors. But even if every dollar, every blanket, every bottle of water, every vial of medicine, and every morsel of food was handed directly to individual Japanese people in need, foreign aid is still nothing more than the forced looting of American taxpayers. The purpose, recipient, cost, and benefit of the aid are irrelevant. The U.S. government simply has no business providing disaster relief or humanitarian aid to Japan. The purpose of government is supposed to be to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of the people who form it, period.
And besides, there is a calculation problem here. How much aid should the U.S. government provide? What type of aid should be given? What strings, if any, should be attached to the aid supplied? How long should the aid be maintained?
Sixth, the U.S. government shouldn't even be providing assistance to American citizens in Japan. There was a time in this country when it was recognized to be improper for the federal government to provide humanitarian relief even within the United States. President Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill in 1887 that would have provided seed for farmers in drought-stricken Texas. In his veto message, he wrote that aid from Washington only "encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." The Texas farmers ended up getting ten times as much in private assistance as they would have received from Uncle Sam.
Seventh, it is not the job of the U.S. military to provide disaster relief, dispense humanitarian aid, conduct evacuations, rebuild infrastructure, or reestablish basic services in Japan or any other country. Although I would rather see all U.S. ships, planes, and troops involved in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to instead embark on a humanitarian mission in Japan that is, to save life instead of take life it would still be a perversion of the use of the military which, to be consistent, all believers in a government strictly limited to the powers delegated to it in the Constitution should oppose. The purpose of the U.S. military is to defend America from attack or invasion, period. Yes, it would be better if the U.S. military delivered bread and butter instead of bombs and bullets, but that is not the real issue.
And finally, what are "38,000 U.S. military personnel, 43,000 dependents and 5,000 Department of Defense civilians" doing in Japan 65 years after the end of World War II? This is perhaps the thing that is more readily accepted than anything else I have mentioned. Yet, it is the most dangerous and the least defendable. Not only does it likewise pervert the purpose of the U.S. military, it is completely unnecessary since Japan has the third highest GDP in the world.
The true amount of destruction, death, and suffering in Japan from the earthquake and tsunami is incalculable. The thoughts and prayers of the vast majority of Americans are with the Japanese people. Although every American is certainly welcome to contribute to the relief effort in Japan, no one should be forced to do so via his taxes or otherwise. A free society includes the freedom to be unconcerned, insensitive, or stingy. It all comes down to the purpose of government. If an exception can be made for a crisis in Japan, then an exception can be made for any other crisis real or imagined. The case of Japan is an acid test of the consistency of one's commitment to the philosophy of freedom and nonintervention.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com1103i.asp
DEA Raids of Medical Marijuana in Montana
Live Blog: DEA Raids of Medical Marijuana in Montana
http://blog.montananorml.org/2011/03/14/live-blog-dea-raids-of-medical-marijuana-in-montana/
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
http://blog.montananorml.org/2011/03/14/live-blog-dea-raids-of-medical-marijuana-in-montana/
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
State of the Police State: Dallas
State of the Police State: Dallas
http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-dallas/state-of-the-police-state-dallas
"The issue is about out-of-control, unprofessional bullies hiding behind badges to commit their violence like Catholic priests hiding behind their collars to molest young boys."
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-dallas/state-of-the-police-state-dallas
"The issue is about out-of-control, unprofessional bullies hiding behind badges to commit their violence like Catholic priests hiding behind their collars to molest young boys."
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
How Did You Get More Human Rights Than Me?
How Did You Get More Human Rights Than Me?
By tzo - March 11, 2011
Chicago’s now ex-mayor Daley is back in town. He’s talking about guns. Typically, those who want gun laws “abhor violence” and yet they use violence to try and get what they want. Ironic.
Yes, if there were no guns, there would be no gun violence. But let’s return to the real world for a moment.
Fewer guns may translate into less gun violence, but if I can’t possess a gun then the only gun violence that can occur in my world is gun violence against me. You know very well that gun laws do not prevent the bad guys from acquiring guns, because bad guys break laws. That’s why they’re the bad guys. Knowing they are armed, you recommend that I be unarmed? No thank you.
Now, do you want to force me to comply? Do you support gun-restriction legislation?
That would mean that if I wish to own a gun but you, the reader, do not want me to, then I cannot. I do not possess the proper authority to own a gun, you might claim, but the only way you can enforce your wish is to point a gun at me. Somehow, you possess the authority to wield a gun, either directly or through some agent to whom you have granted your authority, but I do not.
You obviously have been born with more human rights than have I. How did that happen?
I really do abhor violence, but I don’t think the rational solution is to wish it didn’t exist. It is also not rational to use violence in a misguided and ineffectual attempt to enforce nonviolence.
If my concerns for my own personal safety do not count against the utilitarian end of saving lives in society, please consider that many, many more people die every year due to car accidents than from being shot by guns.
If you want to deny my human right to defend myself by not allowing me to own a gun in the name of saving lives, then I insist on denying your “privilege” to travel by automobile. My action will save many more lives than yours.
If the end result—saving lives—is all that matters, how can you justify all the dead bodies that are a result of you insisting upon a mere convenience?
Credit: tzo, “How did you get more Human Rights than me?” with no copyright claimed. tzo is trying to build the case for the viability of human society built solely upon voluntary interactions.
http://dallas.libertarianleft.org/blog/2011/how-did-you-get-more-human-rights-than-me
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
By tzo - March 11, 2011
Chicago’s now ex-mayor Daley is back in town. He’s talking about guns. Typically, those who want gun laws “abhor violence” and yet they use violence to try and get what they want. Ironic.
Yes, if there were no guns, there would be no gun violence. But let’s return to the real world for a moment.
Fewer guns may translate into less gun violence, but if I can’t possess a gun then the only gun violence that can occur in my world is gun violence against me. You know very well that gun laws do not prevent the bad guys from acquiring guns, because bad guys break laws. That’s why they’re the bad guys. Knowing they are armed, you recommend that I be unarmed? No thank you.
Now, do you want to force me to comply? Do you support gun-restriction legislation?
That would mean that if I wish to own a gun but you, the reader, do not want me to, then I cannot. I do not possess the proper authority to own a gun, you might claim, but the only way you can enforce your wish is to point a gun at me. Somehow, you possess the authority to wield a gun, either directly or through some agent to whom you have granted your authority, but I do not.
You obviously have been born with more human rights than have I. How did that happen?
I really do abhor violence, but I don’t think the rational solution is to wish it didn’t exist. It is also not rational to use violence in a misguided and ineffectual attempt to enforce nonviolence.
If my concerns for my own personal safety do not count against the utilitarian end of saving lives in society, please consider that many, many more people die every year due to car accidents than from being shot by guns.
If you want to deny my human right to defend myself by not allowing me to own a gun in the name of saving lives, then I insist on denying your “privilege” to travel by automobile. My action will save many more lives than yours.
If the end result—saving lives—is all that matters, how can you justify all the dead bodies that are a result of you insisting upon a mere convenience?
Credit: tzo, “How did you get more Human Rights than me?” with no copyright claimed. tzo is trying to build the case for the viability of human society built solely upon voluntary interactions.
http://dallas.libertarianleft.org/blog/2011/how-did-you-get-more-human-rights-than-me
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
Continuing Stubborn Ignorance
Continuing Stubborn Ignorance
Walter E. Williams
Within the past decade, I've written three columns titled "Deception 101," "Stubborn Ignorance," and "Exploiting Public Ignorance," all explaining which branch of the federal government has taxing and spending authority. How can academics, politicians, news media people and ordinary citizens get away with statements such as "Reagan's budget deficits," "Clinton's budget surplus," "Bush's budget deficits and tax cuts" or " Obama's tax increases"? Which branch of government has taxing and spending authority is not a matter of rocket science, but people continue to make these statements. The only explanation that I come up with is incurable ignorance, willful deception or just plain stupidity; if there's another answer, I would like to hear it.
Let's look at the facts. Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution reads: "All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills." Our Constitution grants the president absolutely no authority to raise or lower taxes. The president is permitted to propose tax measures or veto them. Congress can ignore proposals and override vetoes.
The Constitution grants Congress the final and ultimate say on taxes. The same principle applies to spending. A president cannot spend one dime that Congress does not first appropriate. Therefore, statements such as "Under Barack Obama, government spending has increased 21 percent," and "Under Barack Obama, welfare spending has increased 54 percent" are just plain nonsense, if they are suggesting that Obama has increased spending. Credit or blame, whether it's a balance budget, budget surplus, budget deficit or national debt, lies with the U.S. Congress.
Knowing where constitutional authority for taxing and spending is vital to our nation. No matter how we feel about President Obama, if we buy into the notion that it's he who's doing the taxing and spending, adding to our debt and deficits, we will focus our attention on trying to restrain the president.
That will leave Congress less politically culpable for our deepening quagmire. Of course, if you're a congressman, not being held accountable is what you want.
Adding to the political deception in Washington is the notion that nearly 60 percent of the federal budget is off limits for spending cuts, the so-called non-discretionary spending such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Congress has the constitutional authority, through a simple majority vote, to change whatever laws associated with those "nondiscretionary" spending programs.
As an example, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Flemming vs. Nestor (1960) there are no "accrued property rights" to a Social Security check. That means Congress can do anything it wishes with Social Security and that includes means-testing payments, raising eligibility age, reducing payments, increasing "contributions" or eliminate the program altogether. The same applies to any of the other so-called non-discretionary spending programs.
By the way, thinking about the looming Social Security disaster, I believe that a person who's 65 years old and has been forced into Social Security is owed something. But who owes it to him? Congress has spent every penny of what he put into Social Security. Any check he receives comes out of the hide of young workers in the labor force. I think that's unfair. The young worker has no obligation to that senior citizen, but Congress has.
I have a one-time fix to give us some breathing room to make reforms. The federal government has huge quantities of wasting assets -- assets that are not producing anything, 650 million acres of land -- almost 30 percent of the land area of the United States. It owns 80 percent of the land in Nevada, 70 percent in Alaska, 60 percent in Idaho and 50 percent in California and Oregon. I would be willing, and I suspect many others, to make a deal with Congress whereby I forsake all Social Security and Medicare benefits for, say, 50 acres of land in Alaska.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com .
COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM
http://www.creators.com/opinion/walter-williams/continuing-stubborn-ignorance.html
IL: Amish Gun Owners Face Tough Choice
Amish Gun Owners Face Tough Choice
Police want photos of Amish for FOID cards
Amish gun owners in Illinois face a showdown over their religious teachings and their Second Amendment rights, after a change in policy may require them to have their picture taken for their Firearm Owners Identification card, according to the Mattoon Journal-Gazette.
The Amish have a religious edict against having their photo taken. Up till now, the state had allowed them to obtain an FOID card without a photo, as is required of every other gun owner. But last month, the state police director reversed that policy, and said photos would be required of every gun owner, Amish or not.
The sheriff of Douglas County, considered to be the heart of Illinois' Amish country, said many of them are rifle hunters to bring home food. If the new policy is enforced, many Amish would find themselves facing a tough choice – lose that source of food and protection, or violate their religious teachings.
The issue is complicated even further by the state attorney general recently ruling that FOID information can be made public. The Amish lead sequestered lives and strive to keep society at large out of their affairs. The possibility of making their photos public would make the whole prospect doubly offensive.
Illinois state police officials and some state representatives held a meeting last week to discuss the concerns and any possible alternatives. There’s been no word of if, or when the new photo requirement for the Amish will be enforced.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Amish-Gun-Owners-Face-Tough-Choice-illinois-photo-requirement-FOID-second-amendment-religious-freedom-117898199.html
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
Police want photos of Amish for FOID cards
Amish gun owners in Illinois face a showdown over their religious teachings and their Second Amendment rights, after a change in policy may require them to have their picture taken for their Firearm Owners Identification card, according to the Mattoon Journal-Gazette.
The Amish have a religious edict against having their photo taken. Up till now, the state had allowed them to obtain an FOID card without a photo, as is required of every other gun owner. But last month, the state police director reversed that policy, and said photos would be required of every gun owner, Amish or not.
The sheriff of Douglas County, considered to be the heart of Illinois' Amish country, said many of them are rifle hunters to bring home food. If the new policy is enforced, many Amish would find themselves facing a tough choice – lose that source of food and protection, or violate their religious teachings.
The issue is complicated even further by the state attorney general recently ruling that FOID information can be made public. The Amish lead sequestered lives and strive to keep society at large out of their affairs. The possibility of making their photos public would make the whole prospect doubly offensive.
Illinois state police officials and some state representatives held a meeting last week to discuss the concerns and any possible alternatives. There’s been no word of if, or when the new photo requirement for the Amish will be enforced.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Amish-Gun-Owners-Face-Tough-Choice-illinois-photo-requirement-FOID-second-amendment-religious-freedom-117898199.html
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
FL: Independent Poll Shows Strong Support For Open Carry Of Firearms
Independent Poll Shows Strong Support For Open Carry Of Firearms
Florida - Independent poll by Open Market Research, Inc. shows strong support for open carry bill, says WCTV-TV
WCTV-TV in Tallahassee is reporting results of two new independent polls show strong support for Florida Senate Bill 234.
The bill, would reverse the current general ban on the open carry of firearms, and would remove Florida from the list of only seven states in which the practice is prohibited.
Taken by marketing research, advertising, and public relations firm Open Market Research, Inc., the polls show broad support for the measure across a wide range of demographics, including sex, age, and political preference in Districts 2, 3, and 4 of Northern Florida.
Respondents were first asked whether or not they supported the issuing of concealed weapons permits. In all three districts, support was overwhelming, with a margin of over 7 to 1 among men and between 3 and 4 to 1 among women. The respondents were then asked if they favored removing criminal prosecution for concealed weapons license holders who expose a holstered weapon. Men approved by greater than a 4 to 1 margin with women also approving at greater than a 2.5 to 1 margin.
Senator Charlie Dean is widely viewed as the deciding vote as to whether or not the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice will give SB 234 a favorable report. A former Citrus County sheriff, Senator Dean is believed to be relying on the opinion of the Florida Sheriff’s Association who, despite having no published legislative agenda on their website with regards to SB 234, historically has been against the citizens’ right to keep and bear arms in self-defense. However, males age 18 – 29 in Senator Dean’s own home district overwhelmingly approve of the bill by a whopping 91% in favor to 9% against.
In 1987, the Florida Sheriff’s Association was vehemently opposed to shall-issue concealed carry, predicting shootouts over parking spaces and blood in the streets. A year later, after extensive efforts to document problems arising from shall-issue concealed carry, the head of the association was forced to admit the virtual absence of such problems. According to the Florida Department of Agriculture’s own statistics, only 168 licensees lost their licenses for gun related crimes in the over 23 years since.
http://www.ammoland.com/2011/03/13/independent-poll-shows-strong-support-for-open-carry-of-firearms/
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
Florida - Independent poll by Open Market Research, Inc. shows strong support for open carry bill, says WCTV-TV
WCTV-TV in Tallahassee is reporting results of two new independent polls show strong support for Florida Senate Bill 234.
The bill, would reverse the current general ban on the open carry of firearms, and would remove Florida from the list of only seven states in which the practice is prohibited.
Taken by marketing research, advertising, and public relations firm Open Market Research, Inc., the polls show broad support for the measure across a wide range of demographics, including sex, age, and political preference in Districts 2, 3, and 4 of Northern Florida.
Respondents were first asked whether or not they supported the issuing of concealed weapons permits. In all three districts, support was overwhelming, with a margin of over 7 to 1 among men and between 3 and 4 to 1 among women. The respondents were then asked if they favored removing criminal prosecution for concealed weapons license holders who expose a holstered weapon. Men approved by greater than a 4 to 1 margin with women also approving at greater than a 2.5 to 1 margin.
Senator Charlie Dean is widely viewed as the deciding vote as to whether or not the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice will give SB 234 a favorable report. A former Citrus County sheriff, Senator Dean is believed to be relying on the opinion of the Florida Sheriff’s Association who, despite having no published legislative agenda on their website with regards to SB 234, historically has been against the citizens’ right to keep and bear arms in self-defense. However, males age 18 – 29 in Senator Dean’s own home district overwhelmingly approve of the bill by a whopping 91% in favor to 9% against.
In 1987, the Florida Sheriff’s Association was vehemently opposed to shall-issue concealed carry, predicting shootouts over parking spaces and blood in the streets. A year later, after extensive efforts to document problems arising from shall-issue concealed carry, the head of the association was forced to admit the virtual absence of such problems. According to the Florida Department of Agriculture’s own statistics, only 168 licensees lost their licenses for gun related crimes in the over 23 years since.
http://www.ammoland.com/2011/03/13/independent-poll-shows-strong-support-for-open-carry-of-firearms/
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
Re: Microsoft Adds Do-Not-Track Tool to Browser IE9
IE9 is linked to Windows 7 -- it won't run on Windows XP. So unless you recently bought a new computer with Windows 7 installed or you are ready to fork over yet more money to Microsoft, you won't be able to use it.
Firefox is adding the same non-feature in version 4 -- in beta testing now -- so why would anyone want to support Microsoft? Internet Explorer has been behind the times for years.
On 03/15/2011 06:48 AM, Travis wrote:
Firefox is adding the same non-feature in version 4 -- in beta testing now -- so why would anyone want to support Microsoft? Internet Explorer has been behind the times for years.
On 03/15/2011 06:48 AM, Travis wrote:
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Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
Q: What do you call 1,000 Republican politicians chained together with 1,000 Democrat politicians at the bottom of the ocean? A: A good start.
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Tea Party Cements Patriot Act Into Place
Tea Party Cements Patriot Act Into Place
Written by Bob Adelmann
Monday, 14 March 2011 12:50
In light of recent extensions of the Patriot Act, it can be concluded that many Tea Partiers are reneging on parts of the Tea Party agenda. Of the 41 Tea Party-backed candidates, 31 voted to extend the Patriot Act, eight voted against it, and one did not vote. As John Tyner stated at Lewrockwell.com: "Despite the eight nea votes, Tea Party-backed candidates overwhelmingly backed an extension of the Patriot Act."
It took Congress scarcely six weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to write, deliberate, and then overwhelmingly pass the Orwellian-named USA PATRIOT Act on October 26, 2001, and the Bill of Rights hasn't been the same since. In its chilling summary of the law, Wikipedia noted
The Act dramatically reduced restrictions on law enforcement agencies' ability to search telephone, email communications, medical, financial and other records … expanded the Secretary of the Treasury's authority to regulate financial transactions … [and] expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which [the Act's] expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.
From its inception, government agents are now free to "search a home or business without the owner's permission or knowledge [and use] National Security Letters (NSLs) which allows the FBI to search telephone, email, and financial records without a court order … including library and financial records."
The Act has 10 Titles, the most onerous of which is Title II, entitled "Enhanced Surveillance Procedures." It covers all aspects of surveillance of suspected terrorists, including American citizens, who may, among many other activities, be engaging in "computer fraud or abuse." The unconstitutional powers granted under this Title allow government agencies to gather "foreign intelligence information" from both U.S. and non-U.S. citizens. Niceties such as "probable cause" are addressed through the creation of a special court (FISA, or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) which, when asked, will "approve" fishing expeditions if there appears to be the slightest suspicion of illegal activity, far below the "probable cause" requirement under the Fourth Amendment.
Title II includes the infamous "sneak and peak" warrants, "roving" wiretaps (without having to name the suspect or his location), and the ability of the FBI to determine, without permission, "the patterns of U.S. citizens. "
Title V is the home of National Security Letters (NSLs), which are a form of administrative subpoena now frequently used by the FBI to "demand" that a specific entity or organization turn over various records and data pertaining to individuals. There is no probable cause here, nor any judicial oversight, and the terror is compounded by a gag order that prevents the recipient of the demand to inform the individual that his rights have been violated. Ex-FBI agent Michael German said: "What the national security letters do is allow them [the FBI] to collect information about people they don't suspect of doing anything wrong."
Liberal movie mogul Michael Moore, in his Fahrenheit 9/11, quoted Congressman Jim McDermott that no one had read the bill before voting on it, and Representative John Conyers as saying: "We don't read most of the bills. Do you really know what that would entail if we read every bill that we passed?"
The Rutherford Institute's John Whitehead said that the Patriot Act "drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments [including] the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments and possibly Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments as well. " He said also that the Patriot Act
redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were [now] considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.
Suddenly for the first time in American history, federal agents and police officers were authorized to conduct black bag "sneak and peek" searches of homes and offices and confiscate personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence. The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you've checked out in any public library and Internet sites you visited. At least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act.
Brandon Mayfield experienced early on the vicious power of the Patriot Act when, in 2004, he was arrested as a material suspect in the Madrid train bombings. The FBI said that his fingerprints were on a bag containing detonating devices following the bombings and arrested him, holding him in an undisclosed location under an assumed name. He had no contact with his family or his attorney, and only when an agent leaked to the press the nature of the charges did his family learn of his whereabouts on the evening news!
Prior to his arrest, the FBI, using the power of the NSL statute in the Patriot Act, entered his home several times and planted eavesdropping bugs and wiretapped his phone. Mayfield suspected something was going on, discovering that his home had been entered, but noting that nothing had been taken.
On May 20, 2004, his story broke in the press, and the FBI was forced to back down and issue an apology. Mayfield filed several lawsuits, claiming that the law was unconstitutional and that his rights had been violated. It turned out that the fingerprints weren't Mayfield's after all, but the FBI refused to change its story.
On September 26, 2007, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken ruled that two provisions of the Patriot Act were unconstitutional. She wrote that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) "now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment. " The government settled with Mayfield for $2 million but contested Judge Aiken's decision, which was later overturned by a higher court.
Susan Lindauer's story is even more harrowing. As a CIA agent covering the Iraqi Embassy at the United Nations for seven years, she was personally acquainted with conditions prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She said,
My team gave advance warnings about the 9/11 attack and solicited Iraq's cooperation after 9/11. In August 2001, at the urging of my CIA handler, I phoned Attorney General John Ashcroft's private staff and the Office of Counter-Terrorism to ask for an "emergency broadcast alert" across all federal agencies, seeking any fragment of intelligence on airplane hijackings. My warning cited the World Trade Center as the identified target.
Thirty days afterwards, Lindauer was indicted under the Patriot Act, and effectively silenced. She now writes for The People's Voice, where she noted caustically, "The Patriot Act is first and foremost a weapon to bludgeon whistleblowers and political dissidents. Indeed, it has been singularly crafted for that purpose."
All of this was foreseen by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act. On October 25, 2001, Feingold said,
Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept you email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live…in short, that would not be America.
There was a recent flicker of hope that new members of the House supported by the Tea Party would vote against extending three measures of the Patriot Act, but, in the end, the extensions were passed overwhelmingly, 275-144. A recent poll by The Public Record asked prominent civil and human rights leaders "to explain their relatively passive positions on the renewal of the Patriot Act. Most did not respond. One who did requested that his name not be used, but said this: "Many of my colleagues have just given up on the Patriot Act, either expressly or implicitly. They don't seem to understand or recall just how foundational this supposedly 'emergency' law was in setting the stage for the infringements that came later."
This was borne out by another poll by Pew Research showing that 42 percent of those polled view the Patriot Act as "a necessary tool that helps the government find terrorists," up from 33 percent in 2004, while only 34 percent hold that the Act "goes too far and poses a threat to civil liberties," down from 39 percent.
As noted by Susan Lindauer,
Some things are unforgivable in a democracy. The Patriot Act should be right at the top of that list. Nobody who has supported that wretched law should ever be allowed to brag of defending liberty again. That goes for the Tea Party. By voting to extend surveillance of American citizens, they have abandoned the principles of freedom that brought about their rise to power. They have shown their true face.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/6687-tea-party-cements-patriot-act-into-place
What Can We Do about Gasoline Prices?
What Can We Do about Gasoline Prices?
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
by Mark Brandly
Rocketing gasoline prices are causing consumer unrest. Government officials blame oil speculators, corporate greed, and OPEC, anyone but themselves. However, the US government has spent decades implementing policies that drive up gasoline and oil prices. From the oil-price controls of the 1970s to the windfall-profits tax of the 1980s to George W. Bush's order to purchase oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the aim of government policy appears to be to hurt gasoline buyers.
Because government is a main cause of high gasoline prices, the solutions for alleviating this problem are obvious; stop government intervention in energy markets and allow private markets to determine oil and gasoline prices.
First, the federal and state governments should eliminate the gasoline tax. The federal gasoline-excise tax is 18.4 cents per gallon and the combined federal and state gasoline taxes run from 26.4 cents per gallon in Alaska to 66.1 cents in New York. Federal and state taxes average 48.1 cents per gallon.
Increases in the price of gasoline do not have a large effect on the volume of gasoline purchases, so most of the gasoline taxes result in higher gasoline prices for buyers.
Even though gasoline sellers are legally liable to pay the tax, the tax burden is shifted onto the buyers in the form of higher prices. Therefore, eliminating the gasoline taxes would result in an average savings of nearly 48 cents per gallon. Of course, eliminating these taxes would result in a reduction in state- and federal-tax revenues. Given the bloated state of the government budgets, this would be an additional benefit of ridding ourselves of these taxes.
The next issue is the government policies that restrict oil production. Before I discuss these policies, I would like to point out the hypocrisy of our government officials. Our political leaders criticize other countries, particularly the OPEC countries, for restricting their oil production in order to drive up oil prices. But many US government policies restrict US oil production. Beyond the hypocrisy in this issue, it's important to point out that US policies seem to be geared to helping OPEC maintain high oil prices.
It's estimated that oil costs are 68 percent of gasoline prices. Lower oil prices would lead to lower gasoline prices. So the second necessary reform would be the elimination of oil taxes. Many of the oil-producing states impose heavy taxes, called severance taxes, on oil production. Alaska leads the pack with top rates that exceed 25 percent of oil revenues. Severance taxes are taxes on revenues, not profits. If an oil well has a 5 percent profit margin, but the severance tax rate is 7 percent, then that well is no longer profitable. Such wells are plugged and abandoned. The tax also results in fewer wells being drilled. Eliminating severance taxes would increase oil production, leading to lower gasoline prices.
My third recommendation is to lift the drilling bans on federal lands and offshore areas. The federal government owns about 650 million acres of land nearly 30 percent of all of the land in the United States and much of this land contains oil reserves. While drilling is allowed in some of these regions, in some oil rich areas, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, drilling is off-limits.
The federal government also claims to own the "submerged lands" up to 200 nautical miles off of the coast of the United States. Because it owns these lands, it can ban drilling in the outer continental shelf. These areas should be opened for offshore drilling. If the drilling, either in the OCS or in ANWR, violated anyone's property rights, say in the form of oil spills, the offending parties should be required to pay the victims for any damage to their private property.
Even if these areas were opened up for drilling, it would take years to develop this production. Nevertheless, we would see the benefits of this drilling before any oil was actually produced. Oil markets are forward looking. If oil producers anticipate increased production in the future, this will tend to lead to lower prices today. Producers will want to sell more of their oil today instead of holding it until prices are lower in the future.
We see the reverse occurring today. Part of the reason that oil prices are rising is that sellers anticipate higher future prices. If they anticipated lower future prices, today's prices would tend to be lower.
Fourth, the oil in the federal Strategic Petroleum Reserve should be sold and the SPR program should be abandoned. The SPR was started in the 1970s in response to the Arab oil embargo. Since then, the government has purchased oil and stored that oil in this reserve. The reserve currently has about 730 million barrels worth more than $70 billion at current oil prices. The purported purpose of the SPR is that it is to be used in case of an emergency in the oil markets. However, instead of using it to relieve us from the burden of high oil prices, it has sometimes been used to keep oil prices up. When the price of oil started to fall during the Bush regime, George Bush ordered an increase in the SPR in order to "stabilize" oil prices.
The SPR program is ridiculous: Oil companies invest in drilling oil wells. They pump the oil out of the ground. The federal government then uses tax dollars to purchase the oil and pump it into salt caverns 2,000–4,000 feet beneath the ground. If we want to use the oil, we will have to pump it out of the ground a second time. We pump oil out of the ground, pump it back into the ground, and then pump it out again. It would be more efficient to store the oil in its original underground formation and allow private oil companies to decide when to pump it out.
The government should sell the oil in the SPR and use the revenues to reduce the deficit. I recommend that they announce that they are going to sell one million barrels a day. At a price of $100 a barrel, that sale would generate $100 million of revenue daily that could be used to reduce federal borrowing by an equivalent amount.
The million barrels a day of SPR sales will offset the decrease in oil production cause by the political unrest in Libya. Regardless of what happens in Libya, however, the feds should continue to sell one million barrels a day. In two years, the SPR would be empty and the federal government would be out of the oil business. The two-year time horizon would give oil producers time to adjust their production decisions based on this change in government policy.
So, if the government removed the taxes on gasoline sales, eliminated the severance taxes on oil production, allowed drilling in the areas where it's now banned, and sold the oil in the SPR, we would actually get some lower oil prices.
Other government policies, such as destroying the value of the dollar and fighting wars in and around Middle Eastern oil-producing countries, also drive up gasoline prices. But that is a discussion left for another day.
On March 19, Mark Brandly will be appearing at a high-school event in Michigan. Admission is free, but space is limited. For more info, call 269-345-0225.
Mark Brandly is a professor of economics at Ferris State University and an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
http://mises.org/daily/5111/What-Can-We-Do-about-Gasoline-Prices
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
by Mark Brandly
Rocketing gasoline prices are causing consumer unrest. Government officials blame oil speculators, corporate greed, and OPEC, anyone but themselves. However, the US government has spent decades implementing policies that drive up gasoline and oil prices. From the oil-price controls of the 1970s to the windfall-profits tax of the 1980s to George W. Bush's order to purchase oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the aim of government policy appears to be to hurt gasoline buyers.
Because government is a main cause of high gasoline prices, the solutions for alleviating this problem are obvious; stop government intervention in energy markets and allow private markets to determine oil and gasoline prices.
First, the federal and state governments should eliminate the gasoline tax. The federal gasoline-excise tax is 18.4 cents per gallon and the combined federal and state gasoline taxes run from 26.4 cents per gallon in Alaska to 66.1 cents in New York. Federal and state taxes average 48.1 cents per gallon.
Increases in the price of gasoline do not have a large effect on the volume of gasoline purchases, so most of the gasoline taxes result in higher gasoline prices for buyers.Even though gasoline sellers are legally liable to pay the tax, the tax burden is shifted onto the buyers in the form of higher prices. Therefore, eliminating the gasoline taxes would result in an average savings of nearly 48 cents per gallon. Of course, eliminating these taxes would result in a reduction in state- and federal-tax revenues. Given the bloated state of the government budgets, this would be an additional benefit of ridding ourselves of these taxes.
The next issue is the government policies that restrict oil production. Before I discuss these policies, I would like to point out the hypocrisy of our government officials. Our political leaders criticize other countries, particularly the OPEC countries, for restricting their oil production in order to drive up oil prices. But many US government policies restrict US oil production. Beyond the hypocrisy in this issue, it's important to point out that US policies seem to be geared to helping OPEC maintain high oil prices.
It's estimated that oil costs are 68 percent of gasoline prices.
Lower oil prices would lead to lower gasoline prices. So the second necessary reform would be the elimination of oil taxes. Many of the oil-producing states impose heavy taxes, called severance taxes, on oil production. Alaska leads the pack with top rates that exceed 25 percent of oil revenues. Severance taxes are taxes on revenues, not profits. If an oil well has a 5 percent profit margin, but the severance tax rate is 7 percent, then that well is no longer profitable. Such wells are plugged and abandoned. The tax also results in fewer wells being drilled. Eliminating severance taxes would increase oil production, leading to lower gasoline prices.My third recommendation is to lift the drilling bans on federal lands and offshore areas. The federal government owns about 650 million acres of land nearly 30 percent of all of the land in the United States and much of this land contains oil reserves. While drilling is allowed in some of these regions, in some oil rich areas, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, drilling is off-limits.
The federal government also claims to own the "submerged lands" up to 200 nautical miles off of the coast of the United States. Because it owns these lands, it can ban drilling in the outer continental shelf. These areas should be opened for offshore drilling. If the drilling, either in the OCS or in ANWR, violated anyone's property rights, say in the form of oil spills, the offending parties should be required to pay the victims for any damage to their private property.
Even if these areas were opened up for drilling, it would take years to develop this production. Nevertheless, we would see the benefits of this drilling before any oil was actually produced. Oil markets are forward looking. If oil producers anticipate increased production in the future, this will tend to lead to lower prices today. Producers will want to sell more of their oil today instead of holding it until prices are lower in the future.
We see the reverse occurring today. Part of the reason that oil prices are rising is that sellers anticipate higher future prices. If they anticipated lower future prices, today's prices would tend to be lower.
Fourth, the oil in the federal Strategic Petroleum Reserve should be sold and the SPR program should be abandoned. The SPR was started in the 1970s in response to the Arab oil embargo. Since then, the government has purchased oil and stored that oil in this reserve. The reserve currently has about 730 million barrels worth more than $70 billion at current oil prices. The purported purpose of the SPR is that it is to be used in case of an emergency in the oil markets. However, instead of using it to relieve us from the burden of high oil prices, it has sometimes been used to keep oil prices up. When the price of oil started to fall during the Bush regime, George Bush ordered an increase in the SPR in order to "stabilize" oil prices.
The SPR program is ridiculous: Oil companies invest in drilling oil wells. They pump the oil out of the ground. The federal government then uses tax dollars to purchase the oil and pump it into salt caverns 2,000–4,000 feet beneath the ground. If we want to use the oil, we will have to pump it out of the ground a second time. We pump oil out of the ground, pump it back into the ground, and then pump it out again. It would be more efficient to store the oil in its original underground formation and allow private oil companies to decide when to pump it out.
The government should sell the oil in the SPR and use the revenues to reduce the deficit. I recommend that they announce that they are going to sell one million barrels a day. At a price of $100 a barrel, that sale would generate $100 million of revenue daily that could be used to reduce federal borrowing by an equivalent amount.
The million barrels a day of SPR sales will offset the decrease in oil production cause by the political unrest in Libya. Regardless of what happens in Libya, however, the feds should continue to sell one million barrels a day. In two years, the SPR would be empty and the federal government would be out of the oil business. The two-year time horizon would give oil producers time to adjust their production decisions based on this change in government policy.
So, if the government removed the taxes on gasoline sales, eliminated the severance taxes on oil production, allowed drilling in the areas where it's now banned, and sold the oil in the SPR, we would actually get some lower oil prices.
Other government policies, such as destroying the value of the dollar and fighting wars in and around Middle Eastern oil-producing countries, also drive up gasoline prices. But that is a discussion left for another day.
On March 19, Mark Brandly will be appearing at a high-school event in Michigan. Admission is free, but space is limited. For more info, call 269-345-0225.
Mark Brandly is a professor of economics at Ferris State University and an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
http://mises.org/daily/5111/What-Can-We-Do-about-Gasoline-Prices
10 Economic Disaster Stories the Leftist Media is Hiding From You
10 Economic Disaster Stories the Leftist Media is Hiding From You
Posted By Rob Taylor On March 9, 2011
We all remember the media claiming the sky was falling during the Bush presidency, yet since Barack Obama got elected our journalist friends have bent over backward to paint a rosy picture of a country in crisis. Whether this is because of the leftist tilt of the media or an attempt to prevent the urban apocalypse a collapse of the dollar would cause is an argument that ultimately doesn't matter. What does matter is that you see these ten economic facts and understand what they mean to you and your family.
Then you can decide why this information is downplayed by the media.
10. There are at least 884 "problem" banks on the FDIC books.
The FDIC problem bank list has continued to grow even as the media claims the the economy is improving. As of December 2010, "problem banks' made up 12% of all the FDIC insured institutions. That doesn't count the failed banks for which the FDIC is already on the hook. In 2010 a total of 157 FDIC insured banks failed with combined total assets of $96,514,000,000. The FDIC, when all was said and done, lost "only" $22,355,300,000 to their Deposit Insurance Fund.
Of course this year we're on course to surpass those numbers. At the end of February the FDIC listed 29 failed banks. If the increase in "troubled" banks represents actual risk of failure than it stands to reason that we'll see a steady increase in bank failures which the FDIC insures. What does that mean to you? Simple, your money isn't safe.
A year ago it was known that the FDIC was running out of money. Back in 2009, even Bloomberg couldn't avoid reporting FDIC chair Shelia Bair's call for increased taxpayer funding because of the FDIC's dire financial straits. The FDIC is operating in the red and relying on the federal government to keep it afloat, which means using our tax money. That makes their recent announcement that they are extending their non-interest bearing checking account deposit insurance from $250,000 to infinity all the more transparent. Bair is desperate to make you keep money in the bank because the FDIC can't afford a bank run.
So where are the talking heads telling you to protect your savings? If you keep more than $100,000 in any one bank you're setting yourself up for a shock when the FDIC finally admits they can't cover everyone. One bank run is all it will take to wipe out the FDIC, millions of Americans' savings, and the illusion perpetrated by the leftist media that the government can protect your money.
By the way, Sheila Bair was the subject of an investigation by the FDIC Inspector General over her role in forcing large banking firms to donate tens of millions of dollars to a Chicago bank that ultimately failed. Fox Business has a copy of the letter the IG sent to the Financial Services Committee. If you want to really lose faith in the Bair led FDIC, look no further than the Shorebank scandal.
Next: an unreported meltdown –>
9. Meredith Whitney is right about the coming municipal defaults.
The media has been doing their damnedest to discredit Meredith Whitney, who is most well known for predicting the financial meltdown. Whitney appeared on 60 Minutes late last year where she predicted that 50-100 municipal entities would go bankrupt and default on their bonds, wiping out "hundreds of billions" in investments. The savaging of Whitney by media talking heads was immediate.
Charlie Gasperino wrote a piece at the Huffington Post claiming Whitney should "show her cards," which basically accused her of making wild accusations she couldn't back up … ignoring the 600-page report her company has made available to customers. Dishonestly he used the fact that this report was proprietary to attack Whitney's credibility. Bloomberg columnist Joe Mysak made an even more specious attack with an argument that defies logic:
Why would a governmental entity go out of its way to provoke or alienate its best source of finance? In the old days you might say that bondholders were a distant class of banks and plutocrats mainly centered in the Northeast. That's no longer true, and hasn't been since at least the passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which made bonds less attractive for banks and insurance companies, among other things. Today, a city's bondholders might live in the municipality itself, and almost certainly reside within the state.
Why would a governmental entity choose to default on its bonds, especially if they make up a relatively small proportion of its costs?
"Debt levels for U.S. local and state governments are relatively low, with annual debt service representing a relatively small part of budgets," Fitch Ratings said in a special report in November.
Entitled "U.S. State and Local Government Bond Credit Quality: More Sparks Than Fire," the report said, "The tax- supported debt of an average state is equal to just 3 percent – 4 percent of personal income, and local debt roughly 3 percent – 5 percent of property value. Debt service is generally less than 10 percent of a state or local government's budget, and in many cases much less."
The answers to these questions are simple, bond holders are the easiest people to stop paying. The majority of state and local budgets go to entitlements and pension obligations that they can't get out of. Worse, if they do try to cut them they face Wisconsin-like push backs from special interest groups. There is no bond holder union however, and it's unlikely that bond holders will make bomb threats against public officials, threaten local businesses and cause millions of dollars in damages to government buildings.
State and local governments will simply have no choice but to default, because they won't be able to trim the budget in other places without risking civil unrest. Would you want to be in New York City the day the local government discontinues all bus services?
Boise County just filed for bankruptcy and they don't have overwhelming public debt – just financial problems like hundreds of other municipalities. The expiration of the Obama administration's Build America Bonds has led to the sharpest decline of bond issuance in recent history which will exacerbate the financial woes of states which are already suffering loss from the recession driven decline of tax revenue. Property taxes have declined along with property values, and high unemployment has not just lowered tax revenues but increased government liability. How can bonds be considered a safe investment in this environment?
The talking heads in the media are smart enough to be afraid of the consequences of a municipal bond meltdown and are desperate to try to keep people from panicking. But this is one part of the economy that is not driven by psychology. There isn't enough money for state and local governments to continue to operate, and there's nothing anyone can do about it unless the people within the municipalities will accept cuts to services that make Greek austerity measures seem modest. Wisconsin proves that isn't possible, so what exactly do the talking heads think will happen?
Next: When emergency services cut corners –>
8. High oil prices are disrupting police and emergency services.
In Pickens County, South Carolina police on second and third shift are riding two to a car to save money, taking approximately half the cruisers off the road during prime crime hours. In nearby Greenville County where I live, the police haven't taken those drastic measures–yet. They are cutting corners in other ways to keep patrols but their budget has already been hit hard by the spike in gas prices.
And that was when gas was just $3.23 a gallon. What happens when it hits $3.75? Or when it reaches $5.00 a gallon?
Urban sprawl and growing suburbs have created a society in which local law enforcement relies on mobility to provide even mediocre service. That goes double for non-police emergency services who need to move quickly carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment. This model of service is challenged by high energy prices, but where's the media?
It is unlikely that only South Carolina is experiencing these problems, but how many reports have you seen address this reality? Higher gas prices in Los Angeles are limiting well funded charities like the American Red Cross and Meals on Wheels, but even reports on that story say nothing about how those same prices effect police, fire and emergency services.
Garden City, Georgia paid $10,000 a month last year for fuel, and the spike in prices have them taking steps to cut money in other areas. But where is the media on this? Are we to believe that the L.A.P.D. is not as dependent on gas as Meals on Wheels? Are only southern states dealing with tight budgets?
As gas prices increase state and local governments will not be able to provide you with he same amount of protection they do now. That should be a big story, but for most news agencies it isn't. Why?
7. The alternative currency movement is growing.
Aside from the occasional fluff pieces on local news broadcasts there's very little discussion of a trend that could have dire consequences for the economy if it gains momentum. The Alternative Currency Movement has been around for a while, but the Federal Reserve's inflationary actions since the beginning of the financial crisis have given the movement new life:
Clearly this may be a good move for individuals but the parallel economy that this activity creates removes economic activity from the already struggling U.S. economy. How does the government collect taxes on a privately printed currency that represents a promise to do chores, like the "time banking" schemes many alternative currencies use?
If businesses in an area start using alternative currencies for transactions with each other they will keep less money in already "troubled" banks.
I happen to be a fan of alternative currencies because for individuals it protects the wealth they have from currency debasement by the government. However, I'm cognizant of the pressure this movement puts on state and local economies. There will be severe consequences to the alternative currency movement picking up steam, including economic balkanization.
One would think that the media would dig a little deeper into this.
Utah introduced a bill to use gold and silver as a currency which would also create a committee to study switching to an alternative currency. South Carolina is introducing similar legislation. Even if these bills go nowhere, the fact that not just citizens but state lawmakers have lost confidence in a unified American currency should be a bigger story than it is – because it has dire implications for our country going forward.
Next: The counterfeit crisis –>
6. The market is flooded with counterfeit gold and silver.
China has taken advantage of the spike in the price of silver and increased demand for it by creating large scale counterfeit silver coin operations which are said to ship thousands of fake silver coins into the U.S. every month.
From KOMONews.com:
PORT ANGELES, Wash. – Counterfeit coins by the thousands are turning up in Washington state, and authorities are warning coin collectors to be on the lookout for them.
All or most of the counterfeits appear to be from China.
"Stacks of ingots, bars, all kinds of stuff – they make everything from pennies all the way up to silver dollars," says Port Angeles police officer Duane Benedict. "China is making these things by the thousands."
Several of the fake coins were recently sold to a Port Angeles business, EZ Pawn, for $400. They would have been worth more than $1,500 had they been real, Benedict said.
Officer Benedict got a call from EZ Pawn.
"They brought me in there to look at something they thought was fake. So I was pre-warned. But I picked it up and said, 'What's fake about it?'"
The 20 counterfeit U.S. Morgan silver dollars were supposedly from a century ago. Brian Winters of EZ Pawn has bought coins for years – and even he was fooled.
Unlike most counterfeits, the coins did not all have the same dates. One was a super rare 1893S, worth thousands and thousands.
It was at that time Brian pulled out a loupe and looked at a real coin and a suspect one. He found the "T" and the "I" too thick. All the coins were fake.
Fake gold has also been found in investor holdings. About a year ago a German news crew found that W. C. Heraeus in Hanau, Germany, the world's largest privately owned refinery, had received counterfeit gold bars from an unidentified bank. Video shows the bar being broken open to show that it is made from tungsten with a thin gold coating on the outside.
The foreign press has long used this sort of story to question the gold holdings of the United States. Additionally, in recent years financial bloggers have begun to question whether we have as much gold as we claim in reserve – especially after a highly publicized incident in 2009 where China received a shipment of counterfeit gold bars as part of a debt settlement. Did I say highly publicized? In America this story has continued to fly under the radar for years, even though it has international import.
One would think the idea that there might even be less gold and silver in the world than people think would garner at least some attention. But the mainstream media spends little time on this story. People seeking to protect their wealth with gold and silver investments could lose everything, and governments may even now be sitting on reserves of cheap gold plated metal instead of actual gold. That sounds like a disaster to me, but apparently not to the media.
Next: Chilling food stamp data –>
5. 44,000,000 Americans are on food stamps.
The media is pushing the new jobs report that shows extremely modest gains in employment, but they aren't mentioning that while this "recovery" is on the way there are more people than ever on government assistance. The government's own numbers are chilling. They show that not only are more Americans than ever before in history getting food stamps, but that the number of people collecting those benefits is increasing each month.
You don't need to get into the arcane data points about how the government fudges employment data to see the problem here. Even if the government and the talking heads are right and we're in a recovery, it would be years, if not decades, before we get back to full employment at this pace. Meanwhile more and more people are dependent on a debt laden government for their income.
This trend is partly due to the Left promoting the idea of middle class entitlements, leading to outrages like City Year volunteers collecting food stamps. People with part time or off the books jobs are collecting food stamps because we've created a society where people think they have a "right" to taxpayers feeding them. But what happens when we run out of money?
For every person who got a job in February there were dozens collecting food stamps. If the media truly doesn't see this as a disaster waiting to happen I question their sanity.
4). Four out of every ten rows of corn go to fuel production
The anti-human greens are starving the world with their policies and nowhere is this more apparent than in the amount of the world's corn that's being diverted into fuel production. The stark immorality of radical environmentalism is on full display when you understand how our push for "clean fuel" is literally starving poor people worldwide.
From WSJ:
In 2001, only 7% of U.S. corn went for ethanol, or about 707 million bushels. By 2010, the ethanol share was 39.4%, or nearly five billion bushels out of total U.S. production of 12.45 billion bushels. Four of every 10 rows of corn now go to produce fuel for American cars or trucks, not food or feed.
This trend is the deliberate result of policies designed to subsidize ethanol. Note the surge in the middle of the last decade when Congress began to legislate renewable fuel mandates and many states banned MTBE, which had competed with ethanol but ran afoul of the green and corn lobbies.
This carve out of nearly half of the U.S. corn corp to fuel is increasing even as global food supply is struggling to meet rising demand. U.S. farmers account for about 39% of global corn production and about 16% of that crop is exported, so U.S. corn stocks can influence the world price. Chicago Board of Trade corn March futures recently hit 30-month highs of $6.67 a bushel, up from $4 a bushel a year ago.
Demand from developing nations like China is also playing a role in rising prices, and in our view so is the loose monetary policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve that has increased the price of nearly all commodities traded in dollars.
But reduced corn food supply undoubtedly matters. About 40% of U.S. corn production is used to produce feed for animals. As corn prices rise, beef, poultry and other prices rise, too. The price squeeze has already contributed to the bankruptcy of companies like Texas-based Pilgrim's Pride Corp. and Delaware-based poultry maker Townsends Inc. over the past few years.
This damage coincides with a growing consensus that ethanol achieves none of its alleged policy goals. Ethanol supporters claim the biofuel reduces U.S. dependence on foreign oil and provides a cleaner source of energy. But Cornell University scientist David Pimentel calculates that if the entire U.S. corn crop were devoted to ethanol production, it would satisfy only 4% of U.S. oil consumption.
In other words, a green pretension is making it more expensive for Americans to feed their families, destroying businesses, and starving people in the third world. The U.N. has already expressed concern about the ability of the world's poor to feed themselves due to high food prices, which I suppose is considered a small price to pay for "environmentally conscious" liberals.
Food riots have occurred with increasing frequency worldwide and rising food prices have played a role in the Middle East unrest. Yet the media continues to ignore the responsibility of silly and ineffective environmentalist policies in harming the ability of the poor to eat. It will take food riots here for the media to admit that using food as fuel is bad policy.
Next: Are our cities unsustainable islands? –>
3. It will take less than one month for America to collapse if trucks stop running.
In 2006 the American Trucking Association released a white paper that described what would happen if commercial truck traffic was disrupted for any reason. The report was called When Trucks Stop, America Stops and it shows just how vulnerable America is to even minor disruptions of goods. Trucks not only are essential to keeping supermarkets stocked due to our "just in time" inventory model, but bring the chemicals used to treat our water and the medical supplies to stock our hospitals.
The paper claims that food shortages would be seen within one day of trucks not running while hospitals would run out of catheters and syringes around the same time. Within two to three days ATMs will be empty and gas stations will be out of fuel. A week later hospitals would be out of oxygen and within four weeks no water coming out of a faucet would be safe to drink. It's a stunning report that you've probably never heard of.
But the implications of the report are wider than just the unlikely event of a full shut down of commercial traffic. What if high fuel prices put independent owner operators out of business and decrease the number of trucks on the road by 25%? The same vulnerabilities would come into play, causing shortages and price hikes. The last gas crisis we had came before the majority of businesses used the JIT system. If we see skyrocketing fuel prices now, will we see severe shortages at the stores as commercial truckers make fewer runs?
Our large cities have grown in the last 30 years into unsustainable islands of dependent populations who rely on a near constant stream of trucks to keep going. Even minor disruptions in that delicate web will cause near chaos in the streets as essentials become too expensive for the average consumer – or disappear completely. This is something people need to think about, but they aren't.
Our media figures often talk about sustainability in regards to the leftist green agenda, but here where sustainability is truly at risk there is nothing but the sound of silence. If we see oil prices hit $200 a barrel as some predict many people will suffer from this silence.
2. George Soros is hoarding gold.
Early in 2010 George Soros, despite talking down gold as an investment in a series of sound bites, doubled his gold holdings. At the same, Soros-funded leftist groups and prominent Democrats, perhaps doing Soros' bidding, were busy attacking gold sellers and the idea of gold as a legitimate investment.
One would think this would pique a reporter's curiosity.
It is especially curious to see Soros buying the commodity he claimed was a bubble after he was on record talking about a "managed decline" of the dollar. Soros' goal of destroying global capitalism can only be achieved by destroying the U.S. dollar (which the Obama administration is doing now) and as the dollar is destroyed gold will become more and more valuable. As usual Soros is poised to enrich himself from the collapse of a currency he orchestrated, but the leftist media says nothing.
And finally: the looming food crisis in America –>
1. Food distribution companies are warning of severe food shortages in the coming weeks.
Sysco is one of America's largest food distribution companies. Early in February they sent out this release to customers which warned of a looming food crisis – in America:
THE EXTREME FREEZING TEMPERATURES HIT A VERY BROAD SECTION OF MAJOR GROWING REGIONS IN MEXICO, FROM HERMOSILLO IN THE NORTH ALL THE WAY SOUTH TO LOS MOCHIS AND EVEN SOUTH OF CULIACAN. THE EARLY REPORTS ARE STILL COMING IN BUT MOST ARE SHOWING LOSSES OF CROPS IN THE RANGE OF 80 TO 100%. EVEN SHADE HOUSE PRODUCT WAS HIT BY THE EXTREMELY COLD TEMPS. IT WILL TAKE 7-10 DAYS TO HAVE A CLEARER PICTURE FROM GROWERS AND FIELD SUPERVISORS, BUT THESE GROWING REGIONS HAVEN'T HAD COLD LIKE THIS IN OVER A HALF CENTURY. THIS TIME OF YEAR, MEXICO SUPPLIES A SIGNIFICANT PERCENT OF NORTH AMERICA'S ROW CROP VEGETABLES SUCH AS: GREEN BEANS, EGGPLANT,CUCUMBERS, SQUASH, PEPPERS, ASPARAGUS, AND ROUND AND ROMA TOMATOES. FLORIDA NORMALLY IS A MAJOR SUPPLIER FOR THESE ITEMS AS WELL BUT THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN STRUCK WITH SEVERE FREEZE DAMAGE IN DECEMBER AND JANUARY AND UP UNTIL NOW HAVE HAD TO PURCHASE PRODUCT OUT OF MEXICO TO FILL THEIR COMMITMENTS, THAT IS NO LONGER AND OPTION.WITH THE SERIES OF WEATHER DISASTERS THAT HAOCCURRED IN BOTH OF THESE MAJOR GROWING AREAS WE WILL EXPERIENCE IMMEDIATE VOLATILE PRICES, EXPECTED LIMITED AVAILABLITITY, AND MEDIOCRE QUALITY AT BEST. THIS WILL NOT ONLY HAVE AN IMMEDIATE IMPACT ON SUPPLIES, BUT BECAUSE OF VERY STRONG BLOSSOM DROPS, THIS WILL ALSO IMPACT SUPPLIES 30 – 60 DAYS FROM NOW. SOME GROWERS ARE MEETING WITH THEIR BOARDS RIGHT NOW TO DETERMINE WHETHER THEY SHOULD IMMEDIATELY RE-PLANT, HOPING FOR A HARVEST BY LATE-MARCH-TO-EARLY-APRIL, OR WHETHER THEY SHOULD DISC THE FIELDS UNDER AND WAIT FOR ANOTHER SEASON.
Right now we're just about to enter the 30-60 day period they warn about.
For months the news has reported crop failures, droughts and storm related damage to farm land but there have been no follow up reports on the shortages these incidents would necessarily create. Sysco did not release their report in the dead of night hidden from the news media; they sent it out to thousands of people. The crop failures they are speaking about are common knowledge, or should be.
But where is the media on this story? It's up to news agencies to tell people these shortages are coming so people can prepare for them. Instead the media is ignoring what could be a spike in food prices so dramatic it will limit the ability of Americans to obtain several types of fresh vegetables. Imagine, in a few weeks it's possible that Americans will not be able to afford fresh tomatoes and eggplants, or they may find that those vegetables aren't available at all. I would think this news would earn more coverage than it is currently receiving, don't you?
The media is often accused of selective reporting and in the case of financial reporting the charges are doubly true. Perhaps if Barack Obama loses his re-election bid we will see the media stop cheerleading a dying economy and report the news as it is. There is no greater indictment of the media, no better example of the corruption within, than the fact that America can't rely on them to report stories like these.
Article printed from NewsReal Blog: http://www.newsrealblog.com
URL to article: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/03/09/10-economic-disaster-stories-the-leftist-media-is-hiding-from-you-1/
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