Austro-Jeffersonian Empire of Liberty: Recent Episodes

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Time Stamps:

• Blago on the Kamala Moment (0:00)

• Opening Remarks (1:21)

• Democracy in Irony Only (2:00)

• A Big Old Cup (n’ Coup) of Joy (6:33)

• The Oliver Anthony Vibe (7:28)

• Michael Moore Predicted Trump's 2016 Victory (11:21)

• Brion McClanahan on JD Vance and the Propositional Nation (14:45)

• Larry Elder's Forecast on Cackle-Mania (17:50)

• The Wildest Election Cycle of Our Lifetime (21:13)

• The Ultimate Puppet's Agenda is Crickets - For Now (23:44)

More Show Notes Information to be Added…

The Oliver Anthony Vibe

What's missing from the Trump campaign in terms of messaging?

It's so crystal clear that it's frustrating, but Trump (especially with JD Vance as his running mate) needs to tap into the Oliver Anthony vibe.

What does this mean?

1. You don't necessarily have to know a lot about economics, but you should have enough experience on the ground to reflect on how the managerial monstrosity fails the common man (and by design). Are Americans who make an honest living going to get any hint of relief from a dishonest, thieving government?

2. Respect your roots and defend them accordingly. They're being pulled out by those who have debased our culture as surely as anything else, and frankly only possess a vision of ruling with as much power as they can get their hands on. No community life? Much easier to nationalize a dystopian vision. No creativity? That's okay, we've got twerk rap to fill the void. Kamala Harris can run on BS platitudes like "we're not going back." Why, of course. We're not going back to 1965, either. This topic draws passion, and for good reason.

What's actually happening? Trump used to use media hype to his advantage, even if it meant making an outrageous remark. Have they figured him out and ignored him accordingly? Has he had anything interesting to say other than being better looking than Kamala?

Did Trump spend too long in the Truth Social silo to account for how his message needs to resonate with more people, and not just the Catturd MAGA cult?

The Wildest Election Cycle of Our Lifetime

A lot can happen very quickly in an election season. This year, a lot has happened. In fact, 2024 stands out as an extraordinary example.

The cliché may be a tired one: “this is the most important election of our lifetime.”

But the most prominent personalities involved in this cycle are acting as though they actually believe it this time. As are others whose names we've never heard before until the fate of history was put to the test.

Joe Biden was (most likely) thrown out of his bid for re-election after a dismal debate performance against Donald Trump. Mr. Trump himself was nearly assassinated, and took a bullet wound to the ear after turning his head just in time to save his own life. Kamala Harris went from a widely disliked Vice President to a serious contender credited with bringing new life into the Democratic Party.

See Also:

• Biden Nukes the Cheap-Fakes Narrative

• The Cognitive State of the Biden Regime

External Resources:

• Read Michael Moore's eerily accurate prediction of Donald Trump's victory by The Week Staff

• Michael Moore Wrote a Prescient Essay Predicting Donald Trump’s Victory in July by E. Alex Jung

• JD Vance and the "Proposition Nation" by Brion McClanahan

• Larry Elder on Gavin Newsom, the Condition of California, and a Brighter Future by the Tom Woods Show

• Why Dem lawmakers are giving Harris a pass on policy proposals by Nicholas Wu and Daniella Diaz

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• Tip with Cash App

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Before Julian Assange founded Wikileaks, a groundbreaking effort was made by Daniel Ellsberg in releasing the Pentagon Papers, which revealed forbidden truths about the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons.

Time Stamps:

• Opening (0:00)

• Little Old Ladies and SOBs (3:57)

• A Special Spy Ring Project (8:44)

• The Fatal Flaw of No Questions Asked (14:49)

• The Scope of Death and Destruction (19:46)

Little Old Ladies and SOBs

Daniel Ellsberg hoped that by exposing damning top secret information, he could persuade President Richard Nixon to end the Vietnam War, as the previous administration would suffer the bulk of the embarrassment. Instead, out concern for the office of the presidency, Nixon's administration created the Special Investigations Unit, aiming to “plug” the leaks and destroy the reputation of those who would dare to publicize them.

On July 17, 1971, Egil “Bud” Krogh was summoned to a closed-door meeting by John Ehrlichman, who gave him responsibility for conducting the Special Investigations Unit, later known as “The Plumbers.”

Following the leak of top secret government documents, including the Pentagon Papers, the Plumbers were formed to “investigate.” To “investigate” in this Nixonian context meant circumventing the role of the courts, the FBI, and the Justice Department. The SIU - “the Plumbers Unit” - would report to John Ehrlichman, and their activities would remain as top secret as once were the documents themselves.

The leaks made Nixon furious, and the New York Times Company v. United States decision that affirmed the right to publish them put him at war with the law itself. To Nixon, this was a national security crisis, and such “treason” was not to be tolerated. He needed a national security task force, and “a real [SOB] to take it by the horns. One whose sense of loyalty and toughness would far outweigh his regard for “legal niceties.”

This disqualified Attorney General John Mitchell, who was known for his concern for the “technically correct,” and White House Counsel John Dean, who was viewed by senior staff as a “little old lady.” The Kroughs have given notably more favorable treatment to Dean than the authors cited in our coverage of Watergate. Dean is credited with urging Ehrlichman to call off the break-in at the Brookings Institution, which may explain his reputation for a time as not nearly aggressive enough for the Plumbers Unit.

Krogh pondered endlessly as to why he qualified as an ideal choice. Why not Chuck Colson? Why not G. Gordon Liddy? Both of them could “play political hardball” and appealed to Nixon's dark side. Accounts less charitable to Dean highlight his willingness to cast aside ethical considerations, but also, to rat out co-conspirators to avoid facing consequences for his own actions.

Even towards the end of his life, Bud Krogh remained perplexed as to why Nixon chose him to co-direct the Special Investigations Unit.

As he addressed in The White House Plumbers:

So why did I get the assignment? l speculate that I can hardly have been the first choice. Nixon had wanted a black ops kind of guy, a "real [SOB]." I was the very thing he said he didn't want, a "kid," and quite interested in the "technically correct” myself...

Even though I don't think I fit the dark profile the president wanted for the job, perhaps a simpler reason l got it was that it was understood that I would do it to the best of my ability and not ask questions. At that point in my White House career, I wasn't given to lengthy reflection on whether I was competent or experienced enough to do the jobs assigned to me. I certainly wasn't in the habit of questioning the orders or wisdom of my superiors, Ehrlichman and Nixon, to whom I gave complete loyalty.

A Special Spy Ring Project

Then-GOP Minority Leader and eventual President Gerald Ford helped Liddy land a job in the Nixon Administration. E. Howard Hunt was brought into the unit by Chuck Colson. Hunt had a long career with the CIA and at least two false retirements. While Hunt claimed he was not officially with “the Agency” at the time, he retained connections that might prove useful to the Plumbers. Krogh observed that Hunt “could blend easily into any group without drawing undue attention.”

As described in the product description of The White House Plumbers:

Driven by blind loyalty, diligence, and dedication, Krogh, along with his co-director, David Young, set out to handle the job, eventually hiring G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, who would lead the break-in to the office of Dr. Fielding, a psychiatrist treating Daniel Ellsberg, the man they suspected was doing the leaking. Krogh had no idea that his decisions would soon lead to one of the most famous conspiracies in presidential history and the demise of the Nixon administration.

Daniel Ellsberg undoubtedly shared the conclusion that the break-in of psychiatrist Lewis Fielding's office marked “the beginning of the end” for the Nixon Administration.

Had my lawyers and I known about the break-in from the beginning, [John] Ehrlichman would have had to shut down the illegal plumbers operation, and the Watergate break-in of June 1972 might never have taken place.

While short-sighted research into the matter failed to conclude that Ellsberg's file was ever obtained, Ellsberg himself disagreed, citing material he had written for the American Political Science Association, which alluded to the Pentagon Papers. That only Hunt's team was to be “directly involved” in the break-in at Fielding's office suggests that the CIA may have gotten Ellsberg's file and kept its various contents out of the hands of the Nixon Administration. Some of it, however, was conspicuously left at the scene of the crime.

According to Henry Kissinger, Ellsberg was “the most dangerous man in America.” In a rush to judgment, Nixon considered him a traitor, and suspected he may have an allegiance to the Soviet Union.

New York Times columnist R.W. Apple Jr. observed:

"Though the Pentagon Papers dealt with a foreign war, they taught a lesson applicable to domestic politics as well: It is almost always better, once trouble breaks, to get out all the damaging evidence at once, rather than stonewalling and allowing it to trickle into the public domain, thus creating the impression of an ever-mounting crisis. It is a lesson mostly unlearned.

Why? Partly the natural impulse for self-protection, partly the deep-seated governmental belief that the public should not be allowed to watch the sloppy business of policy-making because it would not understand and partly the conviction that the policy makers know best and mean well."

Apple had taken part in exposing the “Five O'Clock Follies” - a derisive term for military briefings that members of the press considered unreliable - in his pointed lines of questioning.

H.D.S. Greenway explains:

It wasn’t that the American briefers were actually lying to us. They were, as the journalist Sebastian Junger wrote about American optimism in Afghanistan, simply inviting you to join a conspiracy of wishful thinking.

The question that should follow is obvious: How can policy-makers make sensible decisions when the public is subjected to false impressions and the “conspiracy of wishful thinking” fed to them by the military-industrial complex?

Unaware of the break-in - casually titled "Hunt/Liddy Special Project No. 1" in John Ehrlichman's notes - Daniel Ellsberg potentially faced a maximum sentence of 115 years, in a trial conducted by an unsympathetic judge. As the Watergate scandal came to light, revelations of this “special project,” which forced Judge Byrne's hand through gross governmental misconduct and illegal intelligence gathering, and gave way to Ellsberg's exoneration.

The Fatal Flaw of No Questions Asked

In recent memory, the phrase “just asking questions” has been viewed as a red flag against a line of inquiry that demonstrates a refusal to operate within a set of established perimeters, and instead, leads an audience down a rabbit hole to embrace a conspiratorial cynicism.

This view was perhaps most vividly on display by Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire, expressing his exasperation with other political commentators in their coverage of Israel's attacks on Gaza.

You blame society [that] you don't have an answer, so it must be conspiracy… This is the game that is played by so many corrupt commentators “just asking questions.”

I don't have to show you evidence that something terrible is happening. I don't have to actually demonstrate how the thing is happening. I don't have to tell you who the problem is, wink wink.

But I can just tell you right now that there is [something going on] and if I'm asked about it, “hey, I'm just asking questions.” Now, let me tell you something, not just asking questions… is a game for children. My son is seven, he can “just ask questions.” My daughter is ten. She can “just ask questions.”

If you're 50 and you're “just asking questions,” I don't think you're just asking questions. I think that your level of curiosity is actually quite low. I think that you don't care enough to know or know enough to care. I think that the vast majority of people who are in the “just asking questions” business have an answer that they want to suggest, but they know there's no evidence for it. So instead, they hide behind “just asking questions.” In other words, they're completely full of sh*t.

As pointed as this rant may be, let us suppose it may apply to some in the business of political analysis. We might call it a bad application for a conspiratorial approach, since it involves an answer without much supporting evidence. Timing is “always suspect,” and coincidental factors may properly raise more questions than answers.

But to reverse the implication of “just asking questions” is to suggest that “no questions asked” has a stronger foundation. Such was the tone of Nikki Haley on sending aid to Israel.

If the production of knowledge is largely built upon questions to obtain answers, one wonders what could possibly substitute the role of inquiry.

• Are some questions more “allowable” than others?

• Who decides, and on what basis?

• If the process of inquiry begins to shatter the sacred Overton Window, is it best to bleach the inquiry out of existence?

• What if people in power have motives that we need to know about?

By now, it should be obvious that there's a fatal flaw at a certain point in embracing the extremes of “no questions asked.” The arbitrary line for “allowable” and “unallowable” inquiries also represents a hindrance for the production and revelation of knowledge, albeit one of degree. It seems that motive is ultimately the best judge, but that may be left to guesswork. As to say, determined by the assumptions of the listener, which are so often flawed to begin with.

Perhaps wading through such a gray area is a matter of faith. The good along with the bad, in whom and what. But of all things, asserting a benevolent actor against a malevolent one in the fog of war leads to a blind eye when the former resorts to an expedient measure, as the assertion is to be defended at all costs. This leaves Mr. No Questions Asked to hide behind that mantra, even if “there's no evidence for it.”

The realm of undue absolutes quickly forces one to hide behind a twisted sense of loyalty.

It is here we must further investigate the account of Egil “Bud” Krogh, the co-director of Richard Nixon's infamous White House Plumbers Unit.

The Scope of Death and Destruction

Following the first Plumbers meeting in Room 16 of the White House, the FBI and the CIA assessed that a full leak of the Pentagon Papers had reached the Soviet embassy before the New York Times had published them. “[R]aw and unconfirmed as it was,” tells Krogh, “I was confident that we all agreed that Ellsberg was very likely at the center of a Soviet-sponsored conspiracy to diminish U.S. influence in the critical theater of Vietnam.” The next leak (SALT I) only intensified this notion, along with the efforts to plug the leaks.

Felipe de Diego, Bernard Barker, and Eugenio Martinez were contacted by Hunt to participate in a national security operation, which appealed to their sense of patriotism.

On the Friday evening of September 3, the operation was carried out. The intruders inflicted damage intended to give the appearance of a drug burglary. Liddy had called Krogh to confirm a clean break, but claimed not to have obtained information on Ellsberg.

The plan, which called for a “covert operation,” had been documented in Polaroid pictures of damage intending to make the break-in less traceable to the White House, and more akin to a drug burglary. Both Krogh and Ehrlichman were appalled by the damage done, and shut down any further investigation of Ellsberg, as it had already gone well beyond the scope of what either of them had envisioned.

When Liddy was questioned about a combat knife he carried during the operation, he told Krogh (who had little to no experience in covert operations) that he would have killed if necessary to protect himself and the team if they felt threatened. For Krogh, it was a shocking admission.

Nixon was informed the next day about a “little operation in California” that yielded nothing, and it was best that he knew nothing further about it.

This foreshadowed the story of Watergate, as Nixon seemed to set the stage for an “investigative group” adopting lawless means, however desirable the ends may have been, while making his exit into oblivion once those seeds were planted. An “investigative group” with a familiar cast of characters, with varying degrees of loyalty.

Following Liddy's departure from the Plumbers Unit to join the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP), a leak appeared in a piece by Jack Anderson that originated from within the National Security Council staff. Bud Krogh was relieved of any further participation with the Plumbers Unit when he disagreed with a wiretapping operation, leaving David Young to carry out an intrusive investigation that produced a “massive report” that remains unavailable to the public to this day.

While Krogh had no knowledge of the Watergate break-in prior to a front page story in the St. Louis Dispatch, he correctly suspected Liddy as its mastermind, and Jeb MacGruder approving it. Tasked with handling the cover-up, John Dean had advised Krogh to suppress any information that linked Watergate with the White House.

US Attorney Earl Silbert assigned his assistant to conduct interviews on various White House staff. The activities of the Plumbers Unit were to be bound by a secrecy requirement, and to avoid answering questions pertaining to national security. Dean did not consider the Fielding break-in relevant to Watergate, and encouraged the Plumbers to deflect accordingly.

Krogh was asked of any knowledge he may have had about travel by Hunt and Liddy to California in 1971, which he dodged away at the time. The question was prompted by a photograph left in the camera by Liddy and Hunt that was obtained by the CIA, and sent to the Department of Justice.

While Krogh saw Dean stuck with a “thankless task” and no real involvement in Watergate, the Nixon tapes reveal Dean stating that Watergate started as "an instruction to me from Bob Haldeman." Dean would deny this for many years, and find himself cast unfavorably by revisionist accounts of Watergate that detail his involvement. These accounts suggest that Dean advanced in the ranks and achieved “real [SOB]” status in his ambition and commitment to opposition research. And driven by that ambition, he metastasized the “cancer on the presidency.”

Diego, Barker, and Martinez eventually faced prosecution for taking part in the break-in at Fielding's office, and dozens Nixon's own men would end up paying a price between the Fielding break-in and the Watergate scandal.

But if the Nixon Administration ultimately gained nothing but eventual exposure for corrupt and criminal conduct, why didn't they change course?

• How did Nixon figure that he could win a deeply unpopular war “in honor?”

• Why was the decision made to “protect the presidency” with increasingly secretive and lawless behavior when the Pentagon Papers revealed information that would have primarily damaged his predecessor and his party?

• Why wouldn't an administration that spoke of “law and order” seek to exemplify this creed in its own conduct, and regard the rights of its citizens as sacred and inviolable?

In the end, “protecting the presidency” cost Nixon his job, his reputation, and his legacy.

See Also:

• Binders Full of Women at Watergate

• Privacy: From Snowden to the Global Digital Currency

External Resources:

• The White House Plumbers: The Seven Weeks That Led to Watergate and Doomed Nixon's Presidency by Egil "Bud" Krogh and Matthew Krogh

• Memo to Bush White House staff by Egil "Bud" Krough

• Meet the White House Plumbers by Laura Dail and Matthew Krogh

• 25 Years Later; Lessons From the Pentagon Papers by R. W. Apple Jr.

• What I Saw in Vietnam by H.D.S. Greenway

• The World’s Most Famous Filing Cabinet by Owen Edwards

• Ehrlichman is Convicted of Plot and Perjury in Ellsberg Break-In; Liddy and 2 Others Also Guilty by Linda Charlton

• Cuban Says He and Two Others Broke Into Psychiatrist's Office by the New York Times

• John Dean Slams "Revisionists" and Nixon Foundation in Talk at Library by NixonTapes.Org

• Egil Krogh tells his story in "Integrity" by Chuck Leddy

• Leaning on Journalists and Targeting Sources, for 50 Years by David E. Sanger

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Biden's handlers and allies in the Corporate Press largely scoffed away the elephant in the room, but as it turns out, there's only so much wool to pull over our eyes.

Time Stamps:

• Cheap-Fakes Intro (0:00)

• The Scoff-Away Ends, the Panic Begins (2:44)

• Signs of Slipping You Weren’t Supposed to Notice (7:39)

• We Finally Beat Medicare? (10:05)

• A Very Aggressive Panic in the DNC (13:00)

The Covid Era allowed Joe Biden some leeway to make limited appearances in public, and dodge off any concerns about his mental fitness. Fast forward to 2024, there was no way of getting around the long-anticipated Presidential Debates.

Biden's handlers and allies in the Corporate Press largely scoffed away the elephant in the room, but as it turns out, there's only so much wool to pull over our eyes. If anything, they insisted that Joe Biden was in his prime and lent his wisdom to lead the United States towards greener pastures after Donald Trump disgraced the Presidency and democracy itself.

But don't believe me. Believe them.

I hereby give them the floor.

The Wall Street Journal piece referenced is, most likely, the article entitled Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping by Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes.

Let's skim through a few highlights.

When President Biden met with congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal, he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him, according to five people familiar with the meeting. He read from notes to make obvious points, paused for extended periods and sometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.

...

The 81-year-old Biden is the oldest person to hold the presidency. His age and cognitive fitness have become major issues in his campaign for a second term, both in the minds of voters and in attacks on him by Republicans. The White House and top aides said he remains a sharp and vigorous leader.

...

This article is based on interviews with more than 45 people over several months. The interviews were with Republicans and Democrats who either participated in meetings with Biden or were briefed on them contemporaneously, including administration officials and other Democrats who found no fault in the president’s handling of the meetings. Most of those who said Biden performed poorly were Republicans, but some Democrats said that he showed his age in several of the exchanges.

...

In January, he mixed up two of his Hispanic cabinet secretaries, Alejandro Mayorkas and Xavier Becerra. During a February fundraiser in New York, he recounted speaking to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl—who died in 2017—at the 2021 Group of Seven meeting. That same month, at a different fundraiser, he said that during the 2021 G-7 summit he had spoken to former French President François Mitterrand, who died in 1996.

At one point in the debate, Biden said “we finally beat Medicare” after a particular cognitive stumble. There were several similar moments. Donald Trump's team was quick to capture these in a 95 second video made for social media. Trump made priceless faces throughout that seemed to say, “make it make sense.” It didn't. And there is little doubt that many viewers felt the same way.

Donald Trump's own messaging - especially pertaining to Stop the Steal and January 6th - isn't supposed to sit well with the public if conventional wisdom is the standard. Yet, he stands by these positions in confidence next to a man who fumbles on a scripted conventional narrative.

Trump was not supposed to walk away in one piece after facing these issues.

The controversy over Trump's messaging has driven an appeal to hysteria by the Democratic Party for years. Now that the season of “the most important election in our lifetime” is upon us, they've only doubled down about Donald Trump representing “the end of democracy as we know it.”

But after several episodes of superdelegates, Russia hoaxes, plots to squash Bernie Sanders, a war on democratized media, a literal proxy war waged on the side of autocrats and neo-Nazis in Ukraine, something doesn't quite add up.

Much effort has been invested in lawfare against Donald Trump, driven by the “save democracy” narrative. It makes little sense logically to weaponize the law against your political opponents as in a Banana Republic, in the name of “democracy” of all things. But hysteria has driven the narrative for the Democratic Party since Donald Trump rode down the escalator to announce his presidential bid for 2016.

But even the “convicted felon” label - hard-earned as it is - is not enough to shift public opinion. Rather, it's energized Trump's base and fed into his narrative of a rotten system in the hands of nasty people who stop at nothing to attack their opposition. And after this debate, Biden has to win back his own allies.

See Also:

• The Cognitive State of the Biden Regime

External Resources:

• Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping by Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes

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The Cathedral's opinion molders are remarkably deceptive about the American Founding Fathers’ belief in the republican form of government, which contrasts quite a bit with “democracy.”

Time Stamps:

• Opening (0:00)

• Introduction Statement (1:42)

• Who's Planting the Narrative? (2:06)

• The Founders of the Republic on Democracy (4:28)

• Joe Biden: The Sage of Democracy (9:02)

• A Time Capsule of Legacy Media Malpractice (12:15)

• Hunter Biden Takes a Fall (19:52)

Who's Planting the Narrative?

CNN Correspondent Donie O’Sullivan intended to deliver an alarming report on Trump supporters who correctly responded to the anti-Trumpian “democracy” narrative, stating that it is a republic.

With a stage set with all the theatrics - gloomy music, defiant street interviews, and eyebrows propped up high - O’Sullivan spoke for the rightful molders of allowable opinion, dutifully horrified by more historically accurate answers than his own.

One thing we've been hearing [at] Trump rallies like this over the past few months is that America isn't really a democracy. But for centuries, America has celebrated its democracy. But some Republicans and pro-Trump media [personalities] are pushing the idea that America is not a democracy.

Eventually, the time came for Anne Applebaum to come in, seemingly to reinforce O’Sullivan's faulty premise and spin it as a phenomenon that began just over the past year.

DONIE O’SULLIVAN: Is America a democracy?

ANNE APPLEBAUM: America is a democracy. It was founded as a democracy.

O’SULLIVAN: I've heard a lot of conspiracy theories. I hear a lot of things out on the road. But to hear Americans - people who describe themselves as patriots say that America is not a democracy - that stopped me in my tracks.

APPLEBAUM: You are hearing people say America is not a democracy because there are people around Trump who want them to be saying that, who been planting that narrative. Honestly, the word '“democracy” and the word “republic” have often been used interchangeably. There isn't a meaningful difference between them.

• So, were the United States founded as a democracy?

• Did the Founding generation have anything to say about meaningful differences between a republic and a democracy?

It didn't take long to find some quotes that drew a stark contrast.

The Founders of the Republic on Democracy

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

• John Adams

"Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos."

• John Marshall

"Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death."

• James Madison

In the 39th installment of the Federalist Papers, James Madison prescribes a “strictly republican” form of government “which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior.”

For Madison, neither Holland, Venice, Poland, nor England qualified as “a genuine republic,” but instead, demonstrated “the extreme inaccuracy with which the term has been used in political disquisitions.” Undoubtedly, North Korea fails the sniff test to an extreme that would horrify James Madison.

It is evident that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government. If the plan of the convention, therefore, be found to depart from the republican character, its advocates must abandon it as no longer defensible.

• How can we imagine a scenario in which power was willfully delegated by the governed, and not simply obtained as a matter of conquest?

• Is - or rather, are - the United States “no longer defensible” if its central government no longer holds self-government as a defining tenet of its existence?

• What does it mean to abandon the convention if the central government is “found to depart from [its] republican character?”

If no other form than a republic is “reconcilable with the genius of the people of America,” that necessarily includes democracy itself, as CNN demands, absent of the “honorable determination” that Madison prescribes in the Federalist Papers.

But should we yield to the journalistic integrity of Donie O’Sullivan and Anne Applebaum, James Madison was a “conspiracy theorist” who simply “planted a narrative” with no genius to his name. Because, leaving aside his status as a Founding Father - “the Father of the Constitution,” some would say - and simply described his view of a republic, that's ultimately the profile that leads CNN and legacy media to peddle such a label.

Orange Man bad, Little Jimmy bad.

Joe Biden: The Sage of Democracy

Just as a reminder where we left off with CNN:

O’SULLIVAN: So much of the warnings and criticism about Trump is that he is a threat to democracy, that he is anti-democratic.

APPLEBAUM: Absolutely. If if they can convince people that we don't have a democracy then it's okay that Trump is attacking democracy because it doesn't really matter.

Good thing we have this great mountain top sage.

Perhaps unwittingly, Joe Biden made a reference to Thomas Jefferson, who said, “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” We'll leave it up to others to speculate on the natural manure that may or may not have been an issue during Joe Biden's most recent D-Day appearance.

"What is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." - George Mason

In 1833, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story had this to say.

"The right of a citizen to keep and bear arms has justly been considered the palladium of the liberties of the republic, since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers, and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."

Hunter Biden Takes a Fall

Hunter Biden has been found guilty on all three charges:

The jury, which deliberated for just under three hours, returned guilty verdicts on all three charges, which stemmed from a revolver Hunter Biden bought in October 2018 at a Delaware gun shop. The first two counts were for lying about his drug use on a federal background check form, and the third count was for possessing a gun while addicted to, or using, illegal drugs.

Hunter Biden could face up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000 at sentencing, though he likely will receive far less than the maximum as a first-time offender. Before dismissing the parties, the judge told them sentencing is usually set for 120 days following a verdict, which means it is likely to happen before Election Day.

While some have celebrated, our response should be somber.

He was convicted of victimless crimes. The conviction undermines the right to own a gun. He had a gun? You're a gun-grabber. He was on crack? You're a crack-grabber.

But puns aside, narcotics are widely obtained by putting oneself in a potentially dangerous situation run on turf warfare. Dealers and gang members likely have plenty of access to firearms to enforce their will. Why shouldn't a user have the access necessary to protect himself?

Are you willing to put your own liberty at risk when this low-hanging fruit is picked off, and the state isn't content with their limits of power?

This case represents a false assurance that nobody is above the law. Really? So, why isn't Burisma being investigated by Merrick Garland? Would he gladly implicate his own boss? Or does Hunter serve their narrative as a fall guy and justify their lawfare monsoon against Donald Trump, whom they refuse to run a fair campaign against?

If democracy itself is chaotic, violent, and suicidal - in reference to what the Founders actually said - imagine topping it all off with Deep State information operations and lawfare.

External Resources:

• Federalist Papers No. 39 by James Madison

• Hunter Biden convicted on all 3 charges at federal gun trial By Marshall Cohen and Holmes Lybrand

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The dopest libertarian cope ever, believe me. I've never heard anything like it, but here it is.

Time Stamps:

• Introduction (0:00)

• Zombodied in Washington, DC (2:55)

• "Chased" Out of the Presidential Nomination (3:49)

• A Rodent in the Studio? (9:48)

• Just Asking the Most Qualifying Questions (11:14)

• Chris Cuomo Gets Zombodied by Dave Smith (17:18)

• Clint Russell and Vivek Ramaswamy at the LP Apocalypse (24:46)

• Donald Trump Speaks to the Libertarian Party Convention (35:58)

• Trump Concessions and the Lolbert Bubble of Hostility (45:25)

• Rectenwald, “Charisma,” and “GummyGate” (47:35)

"Chased" Out of the Presidential Nomination

Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate Chase Oliver never left the Democratic Party. One wonders if the Democratic Party ever even left him.

Two years ago, the Mises Caucus decisively took over the Libertarian Party in a landslide victory in Reno, Nevada. That moment should have changed everything, and given the libertarian movement a home; the actual libertarian movement based on the philosophy of non-aggression and private property, rigorously debated by serious, principled individuals who understood the value and vision of a free society.

Such individuals would scoff at the notion of libertarianism at an effort to combine fiscal conservatism with social liberalism that picks and chooses its positions from the Duopoly. No, these die-hards would not take kindly to such a trespass, and frankly find their intelligence insulted.

The refried Duopoly leftovers would be sent home to discover their speaking fees now earning pennies on the dollar in a room of ten people.

All of this seems like a given for the glove.

But instead, we must observe:

• Philosophical libertarians don't necessarily run the Libertarian Party.

• Refried Duopoly leftovers have little trouble renting the LP soapbox.

• There is as much enthusiasm in the LP for “voluntarizing” compliance with the Regime and advancing Cultural Marxism as there is for a grounded resistance to the Cathedral.

As a result, the Libertarian Party chose Chase Oliver as its Presidential Candidate.

Tom Woods had some words on this matter in a recent newsletter entry:

During the Covid period, the party's leadership had been as useless as the Covid masking and lockdowns they barely lifted a finger to oppose.Then of course they went in for every left-wing fad and every bit of dumb-guy wokery you can imagine.That had to stop. Whatever the future was to hold, that right there had to stop.How you let a craving for mainstream respectability destroy the greatest opportunity libertarians have ever had is beyond me.

Woods continues:

The same people who congratulated themselves on booing the former president [Donald Trump] just handed him the best gift the party could have given: a cultural leftist who will attract zero disaffected right-wingers (and since no disaffected left-wingers are considering the LP, it's a gratuitous minus with no upside), who will now simply hold their noses and vote for Trump.

Just Asking the Most Qualifying Questions

Liz Wolfe of Reason Magazine found herself at a loss with Oliver's views on gender reassignment.

Chris Cuomo Gets Zombodied by Dave Smith

Patrick Bet-David of Valuetainment hosted a three-hour debate between former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo and libertarian comedian Dave Smith.

Although Cuomo's post-CNN career has been characterized as a rehabilitation tour, he apologizes for nothing. When Cuomo failed to own up to his record, he humiliated himself.

Save the suit and tie, Cuomo brought very little to the table. I'm surprised how his defensive conciliatory act bought him enough space to get through most of it in one piece, but there was otherwise nowhere to run from his record of unsubstantiated proclamations that were later debunked. If he expected Smith to be a low-IQ jokester, he fell for it hard.

That was worth some serious Silverback smackers.

Donald Trump Speaks to the Libertarian Party Convention

See Also:

• Salvaging the Human Personality

• Southern Poverty Law Center's Ridiculous Attack on LP Mises Caucus

• GOP and LP Mises Caucus Leaks Exposed!

External Resources:

• What just happened at the Libertarian Convention by Tom Woods

• 2024 Libertarian Convention Debate: Vivek Ramaswamy vs. Clint Russell

• Trump Conviction: Kangaroo Court or Al Capone? by The Political Orphanage

• Libertarian Party Press Conference

• Presidential Hopeful Admits Eating Weed Gummy Before Remarks by Rachel Dobkin

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How deep is the relationship between monetary policy and the human personality? A proper examination might surprise us. Does a dissatisfied human personality lead to a toxic political culture? How then can we reconceptualize the world around us?

Time Stamps:

• Opening Introduction (0:00)

• A Calculation Problem Made Personal (2:22)

• Bourgeois Personality as a Mode of Being (4:41)

• Property as the Foundation of Human Personality (6:54)

• Konrad Heiden on the German Hyperinflation of 1923 (8:51)

• Never Accept a Central Bank Digital Currency (10:56)

• The Personal is Political (13:02)

• The Human Personality Replaced by Politics (15:43)

• A Hint of Reimagination (19:00)

A Calculation Problem Made Personal

In The Misesian, professor and economist Joseph Salerno wrote a piece entitled Hyperinflation and the Destruction of the Human Personality, which explored the surprising links between monetary policy mismanagement and turmoil at the most personal level.

It begins:

"Economists and historians have clearly shown that the destruction of the value and function of money by hyperinflation makes economic calculation impossible and leads to economic and social disintegration and widespread poverty. What is not so clearly understood, even by many economists, is that during periods of rapid inflation, the inability to economically calculate undermines the very nature of property and causes a withering of the human personality, which is intimately connected with property ownership. By eliminating the means of appraising and rationally allocating one’s property, hyperinflation eliminates the very basis of independent human existence and personality under a system of social cooperation. The inevitable result is the dissolution of the society of voluntary contract and its replacement by a hegemonic order in which property and personality are collectivized.

Already, we see the bonds of social cooperation threatening to break away. The same social bonds that allow an individual to tend to his own property in a sufficient manner, and exercise his rational faculties in doing so.

We also see a Calculation Problem at the heart of this matter. Essentially the same problem that Ludwig von Mises examined that caused so much dysfunction in communism taking a different form. Instead of total abolition of the price system, the market is technically retained, but under a vast array of distorted market signals that incur upon one's ability to manage his resources wisely.

Bourgeois Personality as a Mode of Being

The central role of money and property in the formation of the individual human personality under the division of labor has yet to be investigated in any depth, and I will not attempt to do this here. However, I will note that in speaking of the human personality, I am referring to what has been called, usually derisively, the “bourgeois personality.” This is the common state of thinking and being that characterizes the modern individual operating in a private-property social order. The bourgeois person is goal oriented, self-interested (but not necessarily selfish), thrifty, and uses time as a scarce resource to improve his productivity and enhance his future well-being. In pursuing his own interests, this person must consciously and repeatedly act socially. That is, he must specialize in producing goods and services that are valued by people whom he most likely does not know. By producing for and exchanging with these unknown persons, he integrates himself into what Ludwig von Mises calls the social division of labor.

Although it is common for “thin libertarians” to assert there is no “Libertarian Man” in direct contrast to the archetype of the “New Soviet Man,” who respected public property as his own, possessed a strong sense of class consciousness, and other characteristics that modeled the will of a Marxist regime.

The Bourgeois Personality is one who is simply bound by the demands necessary to function rationally and socially in a market economy. He must participate in the division of labor, in accordance with his abilities and the need to satisfy a productive demand.

As Salerno put it:

Human personality, as the term is used here, therefore, does not refer to a cluster of psychological attributes and qualities; rather, it is a mode of being and becoming someone that is based on economic calculation and the ownership of property.

Property as the Foundation of Human Personality

As we explore the phenomenon of hyperinflation, we uncover its potential to damage this personality on a deeply concerning level:

Inflation does not just wipe out the savings of the productive classes and divert their energies into sterile and corrupt pursuits, however; it also deforms and attenuates their personalities. Whether we like it or not, men and women exist in a world where they cannot live and flourish physically or spiritually without property. As the founder of the Austrian School, Carl Menger, pointed out, “Property is not . . . an arbitrarily combined quantity of goods but a direct reflection of [a person’s] needs, an integrated whole, no essential part of which can be diminished or increased without affecting realization of the end it serves.” Thus property is the foundation of human personality—no meaningful motion, activity, or expression of thought is possible without it, for human personality is not the spontaneous projection into the external world of random inner urges that characterizes the unreflective behavior of a human infant. Personality is the external projection of a deliberately planned mode of individual being and becoming. As such, it involves a conscious arrangement of activities whose pursuit requires a carefully chosen structure of means; that is, property. Property therefore is not a haphazard collection of things that can be completely described in physical terms but rather the coherent, objective embodiment of the yearnings and aspirations of the human spirit.

When money and property are no longer on a sound footing, economic calculation is disrupted to the point where entrepreneurs cannot properly assess their next move. They can no longer enjoy the conditioning of a predictable environment to pursue a desired outcome.

Everyday workers who could otherwise support themselves and their families are then forced to consider second jobs. Their lives at home and their commitments to social relationships are deeply hindered. Their prospects for retirement seem grim.

Konrad Heiden on the German Hyperinflation of 1923

The concrete effects of the destruction of money and property on human personality are demonstrated most vividly in the historical episode of the German hyperinflation of 1923.

In the extreme case of hyperinflation, as the value of money hurtles toward zero, property loses its meaning, human personality withers, and society disintegrates. This all-important connection between money and property on the one hand and human personality on the other was dramatically expressed by the German historian and sociologist Konrad Heiden, a shrewd observer of the great German hyperinflation. Wrote Heiden: “The German people was one of the first to witness the decay of those material values which a whole century had taken as the highest of all values. The German nation was one of the first to experience the death of the unlimited free property which had lent such a royal pride to modern humanity; money had lost its value—what, then, could have any value? Of course, many were accustomed to having no money; but that even with money you had nothing—that was a twilight of the gods. . . . A cynical frivolity penetrated men’s souls; no one knew what he really possessed and some men wondered what they really were.”

Salerno continues on Heiden:

Heiden concisely summed it up: “The state wiped out property, livelihood, personality, squeezed and pared down the individual, destroyed his faith in himself by destroying his property—or worse, his faith and hope in property. Minds were ripe for the great destruction. The state broke the economic man beginning with the weakest.” Heiden is here not referring to the abstract “economic man” but to the flesh-and-blood bourgeois man, the social being whose existence is rooted in private property and the market economy.

Never Accept a Central Bank Digital Currency

While this cautionary tale is rather alarming, there are feasible measures that can be taken to mitigate the harm done, and tame the giant before he ultimately destroys us. Nebraska, for example, abolished income taxation on gold and silver, and explicitly refused to recognize a central bank digital currency as money.

Jp Cortez writes:

With Gov. Jim Pillen’s recent signature, Nebraska has become the 12th state to end capital gains taxes on sales of gold and silver.

LB 1317 is the fourth major sound money bill to become law this year, as state lawmakers across the nation scramble to protect the public from the ravages of inflation and runaway federal debt...

Meanwhile, LB 1317 revises the state’s formal definition of money by adding language that states: “Money does not include central bank digital currency.”

The Personal is Political

“The Personal Is Political” is a phrase commonly traced back to Carol Hanisch, a second-wave feminist who wrote an essay given the same title. In her 2006 introduction to the essay, originally published in 1969, Hanisch does not claim credit for the title. Also for clarity's sake, the word “political” is used in the broader form of addressing power relationships, as opposed to its narrow (and I'd argue, correct) form of calls for legal and electoral action. The intent remained to enact various solutions, as theory is “just words” until put into action.

Hanisch's essay is surprisingly mature as it is individualistic, casting various proposals as “personal solutionary,” as to stress the subjective nature of a fitting course of action. “There is no ‘more liberated’ way,” she suggests, “there are only bad alternatives.”

The terms “personal” and “political” enter the fray as the term “therapy” is discarded due to its connotation with being sick and in need of a cure.

Hanisch explains:

This is not to deny that these sessions have at least two aspects that are therapeutic. I prefer to call even this aspect “political therapy” as opposed to personal therapy. The most important is getting rid of self-blame.

I don't offer praise for certain elements to endorse the essay in its entirety, or second-wave feminism more generally, but to stress what certain voices within the older New Left counter-culture had gotten right. And that has been abandoned by the current wave of the “woke” social justice movement. As stated in her 2006 introduction, Hanisch observed, “these ideas have been revised or ripped off or even stood on their head and used against their original, radical intent.”

There seems to be a meeting of the minds with subjective value theory vis a vis relational value judgments and Thomas Sowell's observation that there are no “solutions,” but only tradeoffs. And what is sometimes dubbed the Penn Principle, that an outsider doesn't know what is ultimately best for you.

The Human Personality Replaced by Politics

A passage in Michael Rectenwald's landmark memoir, Springtime For Snowflakes, this consideration for individuals has been obliterated in the hyper-collectivist identity identitarian character that is the “woke” social justice movement today:

[T]he old New Left slogan - "the personal is political" does not adequately capture the change in politics represented by social justice ideology. The New Left's mantra meant that individual behaviors matter, but also that they reflect broader political and social trends, while contributing to them. As a New Leftist might have put it, being a jerk to one's wife is not only wrong in itself but also points to the strong possibility that one discriminates against women more broadly, and thus contributes to a generalized misogyny. Whatever one might think about its goals or actual outcomes, in New Left politics, individual change was believed to be both local and universal; the New Left sought personal and broader political change at one and the same time.

With social justice, on the other hand, politics is restricted to and distorted by the personal, while the personal is effectively effaced and replaced by politics. The personal is not political; it does not flow into and become part of a political movement. Instead, the political is made narrowly personal, while the personal becomes nothing but politics. The individual person is reduced to a mere emblem of political meaning, while politics is reduced to the political (moral) worthiness, or lack thereof, of individual persons. Politics becomes individual morality based on social justice standards.

Rectenwald links everything from status updates to kneel-downs during the national anthem - and every virtue signal in between - to the French deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida, who proclaimed “there is nothing outside of text.”

We can also observe the tactics taught by Saul Alinsky from his treatise, Rules For Radicals, put into action. Here are some examples:

• Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.

• Rule 3: Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy.

• Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

In reference to René Girard's contributions on Scapegoat Theory, there is a crowd that demands the sacrifice of a scapegoat, and an assumed authority figure performing the act as to avoid more violence and societal collapse.

A Hint of Reimagination

On the Friday evening of May 10th, author, former NYU professor, and current Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate Michael Rectenwald hosted an X Spaces event, Libertarian Poetry Salon, which featured some of his original poems, as well as contributions by John Milton and Allen Ginsberg (the latter whom he actually studied with), along with some original contributions by the audience participants. Among the participants was poet and podcaster David Lilley, who hosts the Pardon Will Podcast.

Rectenwald began the event by addressing the derision expressed towards poetry as sometimes “effete… or even… effeminate,” but as a counter, stresses that it allows us to reimagine and reconceptualize the world around us.

Material presented focused on the common themes of breaking away from the grip of institutions and finding purpose as an individual soul. It was nevertheless an escape from any ideological litmus test, while maintaining a thematic sense of tension between individuals and the ruling class.

See Also:

• Biden Greased the Skids For a CBDC

• No, You Cannot Save Captured Institutions

• Building the Parallel Media Empire

External Resources:

• Hyperinflation and the Destruction of Human Personality by Joseph Salerno

• Nebraska Ends Income Taxes on Gold and Silver, Declares CBDC’s Are Not Lawful Money by Jp Cortez

• The Personal is Political by Carol Hanisch

• Springtime for Snowflakes: "Social Justice" and Its Postmodern Parentage by Michael Rectenwald

• Saul Alinsky, community organizing and rules for radicals by Mike Seal

• René Girard on Sacrifice & Violence: Why Does Scapegoating Happen? by Klejton Cikaj

• Libertarian Poetry Salon - X Space Hosted by Michael Rectenwald

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President Biden has "concerns" about a form of currency used by a niche of the population, but believes that its nationalized form that subjects an entire population - and beyond - is the answer.

Time Stamps:

• Introduction (0:00)

• Strong Steps Are Being Taken (2:24)

• The Highest Urgency Because, Issues (8:27)

• Where Did the Plot Begin? (11:33)

• From the Junkyard to Your Junk Mail (18:13)

• Alice Gives Bob a Coin (21:56)

• The Steelman Speech For Bitcoin (25:54)

• Did the Deep State Create Bitcoin? (27:53)

Strong Steps Are Being Taken

In 2022, citing a “dramatic growth in markets for digital assets, with profound implications for the protection of consumers, investors, and businesses,” President Joe Biden issued Executive Order 14067—Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets.

After observing the milestone of non-state digital assets reaching $3 trillion in value a of November 2021, the document quickly cuts to the potential implementation of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) across the globe.

According to the Atlantic Council's Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker:

134 countries & currency unions, representing 98% of global GDP, are exploring a CBDC. In May 2020 that number was only 35. Currently, 68 countries are in the advanced phase of exploration—development, pilot, or launch.

While Biden's Executive Order acknowledges that “many activities involving digital assets are within the scope of existing domestic laws and regulations,” he cites “inconsistent controls to defend against certain key risks” as a justification for the US government to intervene.

The United States has an interest in responsible financial innovation, expanding access to safe and affordable financial services, and reducing the cost of domestic and cross-border funds transfers and payments, including through the continued modernization of public payment systems. We must take strong steps to reduce the risks that digital assets could pose to consumers, investors, and business protections; financial stability and financial system integrity; combating and preventing crime and illicit finance; national security; the ability to exercise human rights; financial inclusion and equity; and climate change and pollution.

The language of “strong steps” and a host of issues impacted by the trade of digital assets should suggest that political action hardly ends with an Executive Order as a mere statement that the nation's top economists are simply exploring the phenomenon of cryptocurrency and may recommend a few tweaks here and there to improve upon the security concerns it presents.

To be sure, plenty of lip service is paid to a non-threatening vision of custodianship. There's plenty of ear-tickling on “safeguards,” “responsible development,” “privacy,” and “human rights.” A familiar appeal is made for applying the principle of "same business, same risks, same rules."

This all sounds like basic oversight; the kind of functions necessary to pursue in any social order. But in laws both good and bad, assurances are all part of the routine. They present us with many clues as to how a public official will wiggle out of otherwise pointed questions and criticisms.

The Highest Urgency Because, Issues

“[C]limate change and pollution” was also mentioned.

If cryptocurrency mining for a niche market is causing pollution anywhere on the radar, how bad will it become for a CBDC? Haven't we been through this with the NSA's Utah Data Center, which uses over a million gallons of water a day to cool their computer systems?

Theres no problem acknowledging the “national security risks posed by [the] misuse of digital assets.” At least, not in of itself. But one doubts this is simply a night watchman's vision, which would be reasonable enough. The pretext of “national security” all too often entails a quest to exercise broad executive powers that risk the rubber-stamping of the judicial system. Congress has the tendency to pass the buck to the President, as they've done with the power to declare war and determine what our “national interests” are.

Which brings us to perhaps the most troubling part of the order, Section IV, where under no uncertain terms, a CBDC is set out in the “highest urgency” for research and development.

The policy of my Administration on a United States CBDC is as follows:

(i) Sovereign money is at the core of a well-functioning financial system, macroeconomic stabilization policies, and economic growth. My Administration places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC. These efforts should include assessments of possible benefits and risks for consumers, investors, and businesses; financial stability and systemic risk; payment systems; national security; the ability to exercise human rights; financial inclusion and equity; and the actions required to launch a United States CBDC if doing so is deemed to be in the national interest.

And there's that magic mantra, “the national interest.” A term given the stamp of approval in the minds of all but the most suspicious critics of governmental activity. Preceded by a list of noble-sounding assessments, it must have the teeth to chew off any reasonably held reservations. After all, who doesn't want “financial stability?”

Did the CBDC suddenly qualify for “the highest urgency on research and development efforts?”

Very shortly, you'll see how this objective has its roots laid out in the mid-1990s by none other than the NSA.

Where Did the Plot Begin?

Michelle Makori of Kitco News conducted an interview with Lynette Zang, who repeatedly hypothesized that Bitcoin has served as a Trojan Horse for a central bank digital currency. When pressed for evidence, Zang cited the NSA's 1996 report entitled How to Make a Mint.

The references are provided, which is all the more revealing. Writings related to cryptology and its potential relationship with a digital currency span back to 1988, from what we can extrapolate.

From the Introduction:

With the onset of the Information Age, our nation is becoming increasingly dependent upon network communications. Computer-based technology is significantly impacting our ability to access, store, and distribute information. Among the most important uses of this technology is electronic commerce: performing financial transactions via electronic information exchanged over telecommunications lines. A key requirement for electronic commerce is the development of secure and efficient electronic payment systems. The need for security is highlighted by the rise of the Internet, which promises to be a leading medium for future electronic commerce.

Electronic payment systems come in many forms including digital checks, debit cards, credit cards, and stored value cards. The usual security features for such systems are privacy (protection from eavesdropping), authenticity (provides user identification and message integrity), and nonrepudiation (prevention of later denying having performed a transaction).

The type of electronic payment system focused on in this paper is electronic cash. As the name implies, electronic cash is an attempt to construct an electronic payment system modelled after our paper cash system. Paper cash has such features as being: portable (easily carried), recognizable (as legal tender) hence readily acceptable, transferable (without involvement of the financial network), untraceable (no record of where money is spent), anonymous (no record of who spent the money) and has the ability to make "change." The designers of electronic cash focused on preserving the features of untraceability and anonymity. Thus, electronic cash is defined to be an electronic payment system that provides, in addition to the above security features, the properties of user anonymity and payment untraceability.

From the Junkyard to Your Junk Mail

Recently, we covered tech corporatism, and how it followed an age where governments lagged behind technologically to the point of ridicule. Even the FBI at the time “was not quite computerized,” to quote Eric O'Neill, from his recounting on American Scandal, when he was chosen to assist inbringing down their notorious mole, Robert Hanssen. O'Neill was chosen as a surveillance operative at the time because, in addition to possessing expertise in working undercover, he knew “how to turn a computer on.”

While the government had an embarrassing lag technologically, they possessed remarkable foresight when it came to an electronic payment system. And in contrast to Paul Krugman's own embarrassment, they saw the Internet's promise as “a leading medium for future electronic commerce.” Insofar as the fax machine goes, if you were there, you know.

At face value, it does seem strange that this template for a cryptocurrency would be modeled after cash, for some of the reasons cited. “Untraceable?” “Anonymous?” Maybe it seemed that way in an era where intelligence memoes were still done on a typewriter. But cutting forward, internet access makes your inputs vulnerable to anyone with the ability to monitor your keystrokes, and that emphatically includes the intelligence community.

And how about the push for a cashless society? Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan publicly declared his desire for just that in 2019. And he's not alone.

Journalist and author Brett Scott observes four primary institutional “conspirators” as follows:

• The Banking Sector - “They can get data and fees via digital payments.”

• Payment Card Services - “Every cash transaction is a transaction they're not making fees from.”

• The Fintech Sector - “Cash has an offline form of money that it doesn't gel well with automated systems.”

• Governments - “I'd say, hey, we can watch payments more easily if they're digital, so let's attack the paper cash system.”

Alice Gives Bob a Coin

Here’s another passage from How to Make a Mint:

In general, electronic cash schemes achieve these security goals via digital signatures. They can be considered the digital analog to a handwritten signature. Digital signatures are based on public key cryptography. In such a cryptosystem, each user has a secret key and a public key. The secret key is used to create a digital signature and the public key is needed to verify the digital signature. To tell who has signed the information (also called the message), one must be certain one knows who owns a given public key. This is the problem of key management, and its solution requires some kind of authentication infrastructure. In addition, the system must have adequate network and physical security to safeguard the secrecy of the secret keys.

Coinbase, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange service, employs very similar language as the NSA document when addressing the issue of a digital signature.

Digital signatures are almost impossible to forge because they are based on number theory. In what is called “public key cryptography”, users own a public key and a private key, which form a pair. Public key cryptography uses encryption to guarantee security and protect sensitive key information.

Perhaps that's just information being information. But it's downright eerie to see the names “Bob” and “Alice” appear in both the NSA document and the Coinbase article, as though it's “copy-pasta,” or as though it had the same writers involved.

From How to Make a Mint:

[A] payer or consumer, whom we will name Alice. [A] payee, such as a merchant. We will name the payee Bob. [A] financial network with whom both Alice and Bob have accounts. We will informally refer to the financial network as the Bank.

And here is how a payment transaction is explained in that document:

• Alice gives Bob the coin.

• Bob contacts Bank and sends coin.

• Bank verifies the Bank's digital signature.

• Bank verifies that coin has not already been spent.

• Bank consults its withdrawal records to confirm Alice's withdrawal. (optional)

• Bank enters coin in spent-coin database.

• Bank credits Bob's account and informs Bob.

• Bob gives Alice the merchandise.

And now, we return to the Coinbase article:

For digital signatures… Alice uses her private key in the signing algorithm to link a signature to her message and public key. No one can derive Alice’s private key, or forge a valid signature for her, using only her signature and public key. However, anyone who knows Alice’s public key can easily verify that the message was signed by her private key.

The Steelman Speech For Bitcoin

Now, we've beaten up on the crypto world quite a bit. So we're going to take in the steelman argument for a minute or so.

Research Director Peter Van Valkenburgh of Coin Center pitches Bitcoin as a revolutionary currency that requires no middleman in sending and receiving units of value, thus ultimately no corporate intermediary between sender and recipient, making way for a public (but non-state) trading infrastructure.

In an age where cancel culture has in some cases been enforced against certain individuals for holding controversial political views, this feature seems like a godsend.

But does it withstand the scrutiny? Or is it in fact a Trojan Horse for a state-controlled CBDC that serves the very institutions that private cryptocurrencies were promoted to escape?

Did the Deep State Create Bitcoin?

To the chagrin of most Bitcoiners, it has been alleged that its designer, Satoshi Nakamoto is actually the NSA in disguise. Other suspicious minds suspect “Satoshi” refers directly to the CIA.

The Cointelegraph explains:

The name of Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, can be interpreted as a reference to the U.S. spy agency. Nakamoto, loosely translated from Japanese, means “central,” while the name Satoshi means “intelligent.”

Some key points referenced in my presentation are confronted by a popular YouTube video from Bitcoin University called Did the NSA Create Bitcoin?

There are now too many connections to deny a clear link, or even that Bitcoin has in a sense become “part of the system” it was once pitched as an escape from. But even with that acknowledgement, plenty of Bitcoiners in the responses simply doubled down.

One comment reads:

If the government created a global currency exit, with permissionless, trustless, transparent transactions on an immutable blockchain & gave users the private keys; then l'd say my tax dollars were well spent! Literally the governments greatest contribution to mankind.

Here is another response:

The gov also invented the internet and a lot of other tech we use for peaceful reasons. So if they created it it doesn't matter. What matters is it's there and open source and the full node network effect is unstoppable at this point.

To be sure, there were also plenty of comments suggesting that the government lacks the intelligence to develop such a phenomenon as cryptocurrency. But it is here we return to Hans-Hermann Hoppe's observation that to reach your way to the top in the present system, “you must be an intelligent bad guy.”

And if that holds water, and a CBDC is now inevitable, let's ask one more time: was Bitcoin - and other such cryptocurrencies - a Trojan Horse for the central bank digital currency?

And is this an irreversible jujitsu move that has turned the sharpest dissent on its head?

See Also:

• The Bloodbath of Tech Corporatism

• Privacy: From Snowden to the Global Digital Currency

External Resources:

• Executive Order 14067—Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets by President Joe Biden

• Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker by the Atlantic Council

• Utah city ordered to release NSA center water usage numbers by the Associated Press

• How to Make a Mint by the National Security Agency

• FBI Agent Turned Russian Spy: Going Undercover, Part 5 by American Scandal

• Understanding the War on Cash by Chris Hill

• Why digital signatures are essential for blockchains by Coinbase

• Big Questions: Did the NSA create Bitcoin? by Felix Ng

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The topic of taking back captured institutions provokes an interesting discussion, but when was the last time "marching through the institutions" worked for the political right? Spoiler alert: it works for the left because the tactic aligns with their agenda.

Time Stamps:

• Introduction (0:00)

• Working For NPR Would Be Fun? (1:59)

• Ignorance From the Icebox is Their Strength (7:33)

• Weak Little Fish in the Pond (9:06)

• Frankenstein Turns On His Maker (15:44)

• A Call From Anthony the Jipsqueak (17:56)

Working For NPR Would Be Fun?

Rich Cromwell is a senior contributor at The Federalist. This particular piece, The Right Shouldn’t Defund NPR, It Should Work There, was published by Thinkspot. We need to run through this thought experiment, and before long, we should notice how atrocious and vacuous it really is.

"For the first time in its 54-year history, NPR is enjoyable. The entertainment is not coming from the programming, though, but from the fallout from Uri Berliner’s whistleblower report at the Free Press about the ideological silo that is the broadcaster. Once Berliner got people’s attention, the extremely public record of insane proclamations from NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher came to light. That’s when the fun really began...

Take note of the word “entertainment,” and how it serves as the lense of Cromwell's view of the situation: ultimately unserious. Notice how this is unwittingly stressed with words like “fun” and “enjoyable,” as we just read through. Nevermind the “insane proclamations” or the “ideological silos.” No matter how much they “came to light,” the entertainment value took back whatever “light” we can speak of.

She can rally conservatives, who prefer to cede territory in a hopeless attempt at containment, into action. Alas, now is not the time for a really stupid and futile gesture, but something actually meaningful. Nonetheless, we’re just the guys to do it, especially since what I’m proposing will be even more entertaining than the current fracas.

There it is again, “entertaining.” And it captures Cromwell's ability to properly assess the situation to a degree we should find embarrassing. Who is he talking about, who “cedes territory?” As we saw with Tucker Carlson, those who drift away from the institutional narrative will be forced to “cede territory” to those who will. Even the perception of a drift, like that of Ronna McDaniel turns out to be enough in the circles of legacy media.

Apply for jobs in the most dreadful institutions in the land. Sue for discrimination when we don’t get them, because two can play at that game. Go to work for the government, which, I get it, but war is never easy. Land a gig in academia. Find your way inside an NGO."

“War is never easy,” but thankfully, Cromwell reminds us that it's a game. One “even more entertaining than the current fracas.” Sure, it didn't end well for Jordan Peterson. Or Michael Rectenwald. Or even Bret Weinstein. Definitely not for James Demore. What if two can't “play at that game?” Maybe it's not “entertaining” at all, but purely “dreadful.”

I would hate to say it if it didn't help. But this sounds like advice from an out of touch grandfather who doesn't see his own proposal for the fool's errand that it is. And I'm being generous to assume it's a matter of being out of touch, as opposed to a sadistic view of a meaningful task. One that Grandpa Cromwell admits is "dreadful." But he otherwise sounds like a man who's been stuck in an ice box since the Soviet Union fell.

Go subject yourself to an employer who hates you. See how far your discrimination suit can prove "two can play at that game." You'll look like a whiny little white man who forgot how privileged he really is in the eyes of anyone immersed in politically accepted stereotypes.

I'm not calling him Grandpa Cromwell to be mean-spirited, but to stress his commitment to a Cold War era of conservatism, which is completely naive and defined by blind optimism in a time where it's no longer warranted.

Sacrifice your well-being and your quality of life because we're at war, and "war is never easy." That's anything but "a really stupid and futile gesture." That's ultimately "meaningful."

But suppose Ms. Maher calls it a day after hiring one milquetoast conservative in the mold of David Brooks. Then what?

Ignorance From the Icebox is Their Strength

Fox News is perhaps the best example for the right "marching into the institutions," but what happened? They became a center-right outlet captured by government and massive corporate interests.

Michael Malice is fond of saying we don't need a majority, we just need an alternative. Lousy "official" media gave way to a right-wing talk radio empire, and more recently, Substack and Rumble. Whatever their faults, they are nowhere near as captured as Fox News.

Again, Grandpa Cromwell argues that two can play in the same game as institutional left-wing statists. How did that go for Pat Buchanan? How about Ronna McDaniel, who barely made it a day through NBC?

We've seen so many instances of things that would've been fine before the iterations of second-wave applied postmodernism, critical theory, and "social justice" ethos took over the left, and by extension, the institutions run by old school universal-values, modernist-leaning left-liberals.

What has worked for anyone else?

It seems for the "neoconservative right," it's the projection of strength. For the "populist right," the projection of a common struggle against the system. And for libertarians, the projection of intelligence, even if what they offer is compromised at best by those who have given them a hearing.

Weak Little Fish in the Pond

Shortly after Cromwell posted this piece on his Twitter-X page, Southwest Public Policy Institute President Patrick Brenner enthusiastically agreed and shared his own piece with the same essential conclusion.

Brenner correctly opens with a deeply troubling realization:

As the head of the American Federation of Teachers, [Randi] Weingarten wields tremendous power over the nation’s public schools.

But as we continue through Benner's framing of the situation suffers the same malinvested hope in a wasteland that has long withered away from its prime. It seems that a phrase like “tremendous power” is used for theatrical effect when the stakes are downplayed to offer a false assurance that public schools as an institution qualifies for salvation in any way.

When Oakland school board member Shanthi Gonzales resigned in disgust after getting nowhere past the chokehold of teachers’ unions, Brenner's response was to identify the episode as a symptom of a greater problem: right-wingers abandoning institutions where they're obviously unwelcome, powerless, and disillusioned, and going their own way.

Gonzales’ resignation is a symptom of a deeper underlying condition; when things go wrong, Conservatives abandon the institutions. This mass exodus is typical of the Right and needs to stop.

Why should it stop?

How long have you fought the “tremendous power” over public schools, and have gotten nowhere?

You're not projecting strength as the little fish in the big pond. You're not projecting intelligence if you're being harassed and shouted down. You're not winning the war when the best you've got is a butter-knife in front of a firing squad.

Gonzales, we're told, lacked “courage to stand up against such radicalization.” But was it really a matter of courage? When there's a clear dead end preventing a proper learning environment for students and a hospitable work environment for school board members, clearly outnumbered by those pushing “racial and social justice” issues into the curriculum, maybe it requires the courage to provide alternatives. What if it's best to let the city deal with the headache of saving face while having to hire another institutionalist who gives their schools a bad name?

To his credit, Brenner's piece does well in correctly diagnosing the institutional rot.

In the 1960s, a communist student activist Rudi Dutschke coined the slogan “the long march through the institutions,” a concept of working against established institutions by working within them. This subversive movement has served the Left well, as we see how transformative schools have become in recent decades. And the conversation is more polarized than ever.

What works for the left does not work for the right. Leftist subversion seeks that level of polarization, and often benefits from it. Conservatives want stability, and they have a weak record for anything relating to a “long march” anywhere, or anything “subversive,” with the possible exception of the MAGA movement qualifying for the latter.

Herbert Marcuse responded to Dutschke in the early 1970s. One passage is particularly frightening: “the fact that the radical Left has no equal access to the great chains of information and indoctrination is largely responsible for its isolation.”

If the Left of the 1970s was considered isolated, yet we see today how their abusive censorship and “misinformation” campaigns are effective at isolating the Right through mass media, it is worth questioning how this change happened. Yet we already know the answer. The long march through the institutions has resulted in this paradigm shift.

Marcuse's point was that the radical left found itself in an ideological silo while the neoliberal establishment left possessed “great chains of information and indoctrination” that was then impossible to compete with. As a result of the “march,” the rift between “social justice” radicals and the so-called “mainstream media” is much harder to discern. The “mainstream” was captured. Officially, they may not like Marxism, but they're easily indoctrinated.

The right may be isolated from many “mainstream” circles, but social media and other venues have the potential to break through the silos. The Donald Trump phenomenon has managed to attract the attention of “mainstream” media to a remarkable degree, eager to make hay out of any comment they find divisive. The silos aren't so occupied once people get to talking, whether in his defense or passionately opposed.

One hopes that conservatives would possess a sense of opportunity cost. In the time and effort they spend wasting their efforts trying to save these fallen institutions, they could have spent it building educational outlets in line with a vision of what the next generation needs to succeed. That time can be spent bypassing teachers’ unions and other institutional setbacks, and pay off quickly.

Even if the Marxian “march” was an unfortunate success story to serve their ideology, it was accomplished sporadically and patiently. It was done with a clear objective and a program. The right seldom offers a coherent program, but rather finds itself defined by its reaction to the left. We don't have the luxury to react with any “patience” for the harm done, or any such patience with red tape. And fortunately, that's not required.

Frankenstein Turns On His Maker

We recently covered the Lockean Proviso on homesteading, and how the "taxpayer ownership" model is most suitable for the present system. On this basis, CHAZ was an interesting experiment, but also an illegitimate occupation. If this equates to CHAZ, it goes beyond the threshold of a legitimate protest (which I'll readily defend when I see it).

Below, Andy Ngo compares the temporary closure of Humboldt State University to CHAZ due to a pro-Gaza encampment.

Returning to the homesteading issue, is the university system legitimately occupied in its current state? Are they not tax-funded, price-gougung propaganda factories? A high price to pay for a credential if you have any sense that you're not dealing with institutions comprised of reasonable people who are even close to providing an open environment for the exchange of ideas.

Clint Russell's “let them fight” response prompts many considerations.

How often do conservatives overstate their commitments to their (allegedly held) principles? All the time.

Perhaps the "conservative agenda" is far too vast for much of any effect. Choose your battles and don't interrupt your enemies while they turn on one another. Take the "W" even if it doesn't require your "help."

See Also:

• Roads, Memes, and Mayhem

• Sleepwalking Into Iran w/ Cranky Pete

• Getting Monarcho-Tropism Right w/ Cranky Pete and Anthony

External Resources:

• The Right Shouldn’t Defund NPR, It Should Work There by Rich Cromwell

• Conservatives, Stop Abandoning The Institutions by Patrick M. Brenner

• OUSD board member Shanthi Gonzales resigns by Ashley McBride

• The ‘Great Resignation’ hits school boards. Only 38% of members want to run for reelection by Kayla Jimenez

• Episode 162 - Popular Liberty by Naturalist Capitalist

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• Tip with Buy Me a Coffee

• Tip with Cash App

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The Hoppean view on public property being "owned by the taxpayers" necessarily requires embracing a sovereign people as a concept. Privatization in action demands the abolition of cancel culture.

Time Stamps:

• Intro/Tipshow Announcement (0:00)

• Taxpayer Ownership Requires a Sovereign People (1:15)

• Homesteading and the Lockean Proviso (5:39)

• Privatization Demands the Abolition of Cancel Culture (6:59)

• Memes to Mayhem: Conquering the Digital World With Our Souls Intact (8:30)

• Mixing Labor With Webspace (13:15)

Taxpayer Ownership Requires a Sovereign People

The Hoppean take (in reference to political philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe) on public property being "owned by the taxpayers" necessarily requires embracing a sovereign people as a concept.

This isn't reconcilible with corporate monarchy, which seemingly divorces political authority and representation. If a public road is "owned by the taxpayers," a "practical Jeffersonian" approach necessarily follows with regard to the present system.

This also comes to blows with the view that public property can be homesteaded by original appropriation. There's no way for theory to be justly realized. Its absurdity is perhaps best demonstrated by protesters blocking the flow of traffic.

The problems with democracy that Hoppe identifies are minimized when they're in the form of a local referendum. The difference, I suppose, is that the posterity incentive is in the hands of voters, instead of a hereditary line.

Homesteading and the Lockean Proviso

In his 1690 work, The Second Treatise of Government, Enlightenment philosopher John Locke advocated the Lockean Proviso which allows for homesteading.

For Locke, the mixing of labour with land is the legitimate source of its ownership:

Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are [likewise] properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.

Furthermore, Locke held that individuals have a right to homestead private property from nature only so long as "there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.” In other words, the Lockean Proviso requires that appropriation of unowned resources must regard the rights of others and cannot make anyone else worse-off.

Privatization Demands the Abolition of Cancel Culture

It's clear that the public is made worse off when they cannot reach their destination by using a public road - which they've paid for- and find themselves... Jammed. Forestalled. Entrapped. The injustice this situation creates is undeniable.

But even leaving aside the "worse off" qualifier, the Lockean Proviso deals with that which is taken out of its state of nature. The soil which has not been mixed with human labor. Territorial virginity.

This is not the case with a public road, already made of human labor. We can say it wasn't a legitimate action. Fair. But we cannot play the tape in reverse and make anyone whole. We certainly can't entrap the public away from their jobs, their families, and their lives, as all depend on the function of access that has been established. Where would they go?

Instead, the road can be privatized with a tax dividend paid back to the tax base. Once privately-owned and operated, the importance of culture is all the more clear.

You cannot have a functional private property system in a pervasive climate of cancel culture. If you do, vast portions of the population are at risk with the same problems as presented with a spontaneous act of protest, blocking the road for attention.

It is here that we take a rather sharp exit onto the metaphorical superhighway, the Internet.

Memes to Mayhem: Conquering the Digital World With Our Souls Intact

A lot has unfolded since the advent of widespread Internet access. The prospects of a digital profile spark the imagination and free us from the constraints of stressful face to face interaction. We may even assume a pseudonymous identity that allows us to escape ourselves.

We may also “go pseudo” as a buffer against the threat of doxxing, a phenomenon where strangers seek to damage your reputation and any way they can. If you're not Sean Hannity, you probably work a day job. Maybe your employer can hear the most outlandish tale ever told about who you supposedly are when you're dealing with such a troublemaker.

Does he hate you, your digital persona, or perhaps both? Does their digital persona hate you, and has it conquered what may otherwise have been a decent person on a different path?

Netflix recently released The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem, a documentary focused on the intersection between internet culture and real-world politics.

Viewers are guided through a chain of developments…

• From 2Chan to 4Chan

• 4Chan to Anonymous

• Anonymous to Occupy

• Occupy to Qanon

That all serve as an outgrowth from one another.

A central figure in this story is Aubrey Cottle (also known as Kirtaner or Kirt), who was central to the creation of Anonymous, which grew out of 4Chan.

Anonymous would adopt a form of activism that unleashed a trolling culture onto the streets. A group of clever agitators known both for their hacking abilities and the iconic Guy Fawkes masks put fear into their targets.

Their anonymity and knack for “hacktivism” proved a temptation in walking the line. The sense of empowerment. The ego trip. The upper hand in mastering a modern “life hack” in the art of deception.

Just as the line between internet culture and reality had been tested.

As 4Chan founder Christopher Poole (aka “moot”) would find, the original vision would be superceded by the will of its member participants who seemed to view any lines drawn as not only an undesirable suggestion, but an attack on their personalities - albeit, digital personalities - which nevertheless served as their primary vessels of expression.

This was equally true of Anonymous.

In a movement without a leader or a gatekeeper who commanded respect, no lines could be drawn regarding who to hack, who to threaten, or how to handle the information obtained, legally or not.

It is here that we concede Curtis Yarvin's argument against decentralization in its most extreme form. That is to say, we cannot identify the single person responsible, hold them accountable, and correct the wrong done with any level of satisfaction.

Mixing Labor With Webspace

Is there a digitized version of the Lockean proviso?

When one mixes their digital labor with open webspace, for example, does he have a claim to its contents? Does his claim “die” once he contracts with an institutional distributor - a “platform” - or are there terms properly assumed when not explicitly stated in the agreement?

If the content creator can be held legally liable for unlawful speech, what does he retain on the other side of the equation? Does he forfeit the contents of speech that is protected, but retain it when it is libelous or threatening?

Should certain considerations override the sovereignty of a platform that's a state-chartered corporation, with artificial personhood, that enjoys multi-billion dollar government subsidies, that profits from the sale of metadata, but ultimately serves as a digital town square?

The Section 230 privisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 would seem most sensible if the service providers involved couldn't flip the switch of designation between publisher and platform.

The word “platform” doesn't appear in the law, but the phrase “information content provider” served the designation. The courts have adopted the term “platform” without altering the relevant provisions in any obvious way.

How often would a free society even need to entertain these questions? As Ron Paul said, “[l]iberty is not complicated.” Not if the people are sovereign and their institutions are constrained.

See Also:

• The WEF's Technocratic Dystopia vs. John Smith's New World Vision

• Getting Monarcho-Tropism Right w/ Cranky Pete and Anthony

• The Uninvited Caretaker

External Resources:

• Gaza protest shuts down Golden Gate Bridge for hours, causing gridlock on both sides of span by Dave Pehling

• Golden Gate Bridge protesters released without charges by Pat McMahon

• Seattle's CHAZ: Homesteaders or Illegal Squatters? by Jeff Deist

• Second Treatise of Government by John Locke

• Publisher or Platform? It Doesn't Matter. by David Greene

• The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem by IMDB

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This is the stupidest $5 I've ever made. And the stupidest $5 you'll ever spend is buying Mr. Menger here a Coffee. You can also tip him on Cash App. But you know who won't be buying Mr. Menger a coffee? Me.

• Cranky Pete

Time Stamps:

• Introduction/Tipshow Announcements (0:00)

• Spirals Hypnotize You (2:33)

• Striking Back the Bibi Way (6:55)

Spirals Hypnotize You

From the New York Post:

Biden ‘sleepwalking’ into ‘catastrophic war,’ expert says, as Israel mulls retaliation against Iran

President Biden is “sleepwalking” the US into another “catastrophic” war in the Middle East, one expert says, as Israel prepares a retaliatory strike against Iran following an unprecedented drone and missile bombardment over the weekend.

Biden, 81, has been slammed by both supporters of Israel and opponents of the Jewish state for his handling of the six-month-old war between Israel and Iran-backed Hamas terrorists, which threatens to spiral into a wider conflict following Saturday’s assault.

MR. MENGER: Spirals do make you sleepy. They hypnotize you.

CRANKY PETE: I don't think the sleepwalking is necessarily literal here.

The strategy of the Biden administration has failed miserably,” Fawaz Gerges, professor of international relations and Middle Eastern politics at the London School of Economics, told NBC News Sunday.

“His overarching goal of preventing the war in Gaza from escalating into neighboring countries has failed. Biden has failed to influence [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s decisions either in Gaza or towards Iran.

Surprise, surprise. It turns out, he can't keep Bibi on a leash. If you recall John Kerry admitting they couldn't control Daesh (aka ISIS) in Syria.

Cranky Pete believes corporate monarchy solves this, and Biden would not be the monarch.

Striking Back the Bibi Way

Here is a clip about the Israeli war cabinet.

MR. MENGER: The subtitle of that video is "Damage Iran, But Do Not Start a War." It's just that precise, just that surgical, as to avoid an all-out war, but to strike back the Bibi way.

CRANKY PETE: And what if they can't control Iran?

MR. MENGER: If you can't control the "good guys" like Daesh in Syria, what control do you have on Iran, your adversary? You can play shell games with the Orange Man, but unlike him, these guys actually read books.

CRANKY PETE: They read more in a war zone than anyone ever did in Trump Tower.

Cranky Pete's favorite part of show is the money.

See Also:

• Getting Monarcho-Tropism Right w/ Cranky Pete and Anthony

External Resources:

• Biden ‘sleepwalking’ into ‘catastrophic war,’ expert says, as Israel mulls retaliation against Iran by Nika Shakhnazarova and Snejana Farberov

Donate to Mr. Menger:

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This week, Senator Rand Paul exposed a groundbreaking revelation: government officials from 15 federal agencies knew in 2018 of a gain of function project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that led to the lab leak of the coronavirus pandemic that claimed an estimated 16 million lives worldwide.

Time Stamps:

• Introduction and Tipshow Announcements (0:00)

• Rand Paul Unmasks the DEFUSE Project (2:25)

• Rocky Mountain Lab Horror Show (5:09)

• The Lizard People Who Knew (8:00)

• Denials Haven't Aged Well (11:14)

• Rixey's Myth of the Blind Watchmaker (16:26)

Rand Paul Unmasks the DEFUSE Project

This week, Senator Rand Paul exposed a groundbreaking revelation: government officials from 15 federal agencies knew in 2018 of a gain of function project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that led to the lab leak of the coronavirus pandemic that claimed an estimated 16 million lives worldwide.

These officials knew that the Chinese lab was proposing to create a COVID 19-like virus and not one of these officials revealed this scheme to the public. In fact, 15 agencies with knowledge of this project have continuously refused to release any information concerning this alarming and dangerous research.

Government officials representing at least 15 federal agencies were briefed on a project proposed by Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

As though we had accountability, it seems like the walls would be closing in on those responsible for the leak, the cover-up, and for lying under oath to Congress. But that's really up to Merrick Garland at this point, as he is the Attorney General of the United States.

Time and again, Senator Paul has fought to obtain records from federal agencies about the origins of Covid-19 and the DEFUSE Project. When the administration was finally forced to do so, they did release some documents that have that have brought these revelations to light.

But of course, what we're finding is that out of all the federal officials involved, not one in any of these 15 agencies even bothered to warn the public at all. About the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its part in this research.

And this was a man-made virus.

Rocky Mountain Lab Horror Show

EcoHealth Alliance's Peter Daszak concealed the proposal, while scientist and DEFUSE Project collaborator Ralph Baric failed to reveal the proposal of the Wuhan Institute of Virology to create a virus similar to Covid-19.

When the Wuhan lab was proposed the creation of the virus, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was a participant in the initial pitch, and Anthony Fauci's Rocky Mountain Lab was named as a partner along with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

EcoHealth recipient Ian Lipkin was among the participants in this original plan to create these coronaviruses. Lipkin was commissioned by AnthonyFauci and Francis Collins to rip on anyone who speculated - however credibly - that the virus may have come from a lab.

We are forever indebted to whistleblower Lt. Col. Joseph Murray, who worked for DARPA, for exposing these revelations.

The Lizard People Who Knew

Senator Paul has subsequently sent letters to the leadership of all 15 agencies who were aware of the DEFUSE Project, requesting all related documents records and communications.

Here are the agencies that were aware of the DEFUSE project:

• National Institutes of Health

• National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

• Department of Health and Human Services

• Secretary Becerra of the DHS

• Assistant Secretary O'Connell for Preparedness and Response of the DHS

• Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

• Agency for International Development

• Department of Agriculture

• Department of Homeland Security

• US Navy

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• US Army

• US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases

• National Institute of Food and Agriculture

• Military Operational Medicine Research Program

• Defense Health Agency

Denials Haven't Aged Well

Obviously, it wasn't just all those governmental agencies that were downplaying the lab leak hypothesis. One such piece came from Stephen Silver of The National Interest, dated January 17 2022.

The headline reads, No, the Government Isn't Hiding Proof That It Created COVID-19.

That's a pretty certain statement there, don't you think?

Such a proclamation sounds really bold.

As do Silver's proclamations insofar as what's at stake for the scientific establishment.

It all started with a recent report from Project Veritas, a controversial conservative media outlet, alleging that Dr. Anthony Fauci lied about a grant for “gain-of-function research” projects in China.

Per the report, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) rejected a proposal for a questionable research project that was submitted by EcoHealth Alliance in 2018. But Project Veritas claims that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which Fauci leads, went ahead and funded the grant or one like it.

When Dr. Fauci testified on January 11, he claimed that Project Veritas was referencing a grant that was submitted to DARPA that had been distorted to implicate the NIAID, and that he never saw or funded it.

Silver addresses whistleblower Joseph Murray's disclosures of grants and potential treatments as “very extraordinary claims that the scientific consensus does not support.”

While Silver's own article jumps to conclusions we now know to be wholly unwarranted, he marvels at Project Veritas leaving any room for reality to play out.

Even Project Veritas portrays the memo somewhat skeptically, saying that “Major Murphy makes claims in his report to the Inspector General that, if true, could be damning to the official narrative that has been played out to the world over the past two years.” The “if true” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

• Who's creating smoke without the fire?

• Who's dropping the mic without a truthful conclusion?

• What if the disclosures part ways with the established consensus because the scientific establishment enforced a cover-up?

• What if Silver's appeals to authority are “doing a lot of work” in that article?

Silver's blind appeals to authority follow a long pattern of “fifteen agencies right here that they are not confirming this that are denying that,” and yet, we find later that it's dishonest institutional politics at work.

“Top officials” say this and that.

But sometimes it actually does take a whistleblower. Sometimes it actually does take someone who is in a position to actually dissent from these official channels. Imagine dissenting from the position of high office. What do you think's gonna happen to you? You're gonna get canned.

Rixey's Myth of the Blind Watchmaker

Dr. Charles Rixey has investigated the origins of Covid-19 with a group of scientists known as DRASTIC. Rixey has a publication about the origins of Covid-19 called The Myth of the Blind Watchmaker.

From the preface:

This work remains, unequivocally, the most important thing I’ve ever written. It attempts merely to synthesize the efforts of DRASTIC and numerous other independent researchers with whom I’ve collaborated directly [the left-hand column below], as well as the outstanding research of those scientists who’ve fought against the censorship and false narratives that obscured their findings.

No doubt can be retained upon Dr. Rixey's courage and sincerity as he stands by his conclusions:

Without hesitation, I would testify under oath to the veracity of the evidence in support of these conclusions. They involve implications that are horrific regardless of which scientists, from which country, may have been responsible for creating SARS-CoV-2. I propose the list of questions that follows on behalf of the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, who cannot ask them themselves. I promise you, however, that all of them are waiting to hear the answers.

In a Twitter thread, Dr. Rixey makes his case and answers his critics one step at a time.

What does all this suggest about our institutions, even the ones that are proposed as checks on one another? They all seem to collude. And what if they all seem to work in one direction? What if scientists who are just as qualified are squashed for telling the truth?

What if they're silenced and besmirched?

This is not a system where they're meant to thrive.

My content on Substack remains entirely free to access. Paid subscriptions are available, but there is no bonus content available at this time.

See Also:

• The Coof Clown Censorship Conspiracy

External Resources:

• The Great COVID Cover-up: Shocking truth about Wuhan and 15 federal agencies by Sen. Rand Paul

• Dr. Paul Sends Letters to Fifteen Federal Agencies After Discovering Their Knowledge of Risky DEFUSE Project by U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs

• Rand Paul says he will investigate Dr. Anthony Fauci's 'secret trips' to the CIA before COVID-19: Top Republican to prove 'off the books' visits to spy agency that questioned the Wuhan lab leak theory by Jon Michael Raasch

• Bombshell emails show a top Fauci aide used his personal Gmail to 'intentionally' HIDE discussions about COVID origins... and would delete anything 'incriminating' by Jon Michael Raasch

• The DIFFUSE Proposal by The Intercept

• Unraveling the Origins of COVID-19: A Closer Look at the DEFUSE Proposal by Medriva Correspondents

• No, the Government Isn't Hiding Proof That It Created COVID-19 by Stephen Silver

• The Myth of the Blind Watchmaker by Dr. Charles Rixey

• Blind Watchmaker Tweet Thread by Dr. Charles Rixey

Donate to Mr. Menger:

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• Tip with Cash App

Substack Companion Article:

• They Covered Up the Coof From the Beginning

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The very premise of Jimmy Kimmel's “Rest in Peace, Wheezy” bit is that a democratic society largely sharing his attitude should have a say over your health care.

Time Stamps:

• Opening/Announcements (0:00)

• Demonstrating the Worst of Us (2:05)

• The Absurd Fantasy of Democratic Socialism (7:10)

• A Moral Compass Cast Aside (9:00)

• Please Make it Sound Much Nicer (12:06)

• The Gushers of Bidenomics (15:26)

• Vodka on the Crypto Train (18:59)

• Pump to the Moon? (23:09)

Demonstrating the Worst of Us

There's something about Jimmy Kimmel's rightfully reviled “Rest in Peace, Wheezy” bit that demonstrates something so profound and worth our examination.

The number of new cases is up more than 300 percent from a year ago. Dr. Fauci said that if hospitals get any more overcrowded, [we may have to] make some very tough choices about who gets an ICS. Choice doesn't seem so tough to me.

Vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right in and we'll take care of you. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, Wheezy.

I'd love to do it justice, as it opens up the portal as a dispiriting reflection of our culture. Frankly, it demonstrates the worst in us and our potential for evil.

And Wheezy? What kind of stupid insult is that?

The potential for evil and power and what seems to be a reinforcing relationship.

Andrew Breitbart famously said politics is downstream from culture. If it starts with culture, somehow it's quickly co-opted into the political world. Those pervasive vices come to infect the body politic. Perhaps it's gotten to the point where you can't even tell the chicken from the egg.

I want you to relate that to power itself.

The very premise of Jimmy Kimmel's “Rest in Peace, Wheezy” bit is that a democratic society largely sharing his attitude should have a say over your health care.

If you make decisions for yourself and your own family that Jimmy Kimmel disagrees with or doesn't understand, he’d forcibly deny your access to medical care. If he had the following to tilt the balance, that's precisely the implication.

The Absurd Fantasy of Democratic Socialism

Should we acknowledge that perhaps democracy reaches a point where it's excessive?

Richard Wolff, an economist, professor, and democratic socialist, was recently asked what his preferred system would require in order to obtain a PlayStation 5.

Here's the clip.

So think about that for a minute.

What follows from this can be applied to anything you enjoy. A video camera? A dog?

You better check with all the co-workers first and make sure that they approve of your recreational desires in some way.

If it isn't ridiculous by now, I don't know what to say to you. It's profound that this is the kind of society that anyone wants to live in.

A Moral Compass Cast Aside

Former Congressman Ron Paul wrote a book called Liberty Defined, which was published in 2011. It has a chapter called Morality and Government, which says:

The US government has been operating without a moral compass for decades, and without a moral compass, the rule of law is meaningless…

The prevailing attitude in Washington has evolved because there has been no moral compass or respect for the rule of law or individual liberty. Regardless of what party is in power, social welfarism, government regulation of personal non-violent habits, and foreign military entanglements never change despite the campaign promises regarding the Constitution, or freedom. Policies are dictated by prevailing attitudes and influenced by the ideology of the establishment that supports unlimited government.

So-called conservatives’ support for premium for preventative wars, or preventive wars, and so-called liberals’ support for social welfare policies always prevail in the moral vacuum that exists. Everything that happens in Washington is done in defiance of the moral precepts that undermine individual liberty.

Without a foundation to government policies. The purpose of government no longer has any resemblance to the intent of those who settled our country and rebelled against the tyranny of King George.

Erosion started early, and it can be argued that even the Constitution itself weakened this principle. That was embedded in the Articles of Confederation in spite of the early erosion of personal liberty, it was in the 20th century that the moral compass guarding our liberties was completely cast aside.

What moral system should government follow? The same one individuals follow. Do not steal. Do not murder. Do not bear false witness. Do not covet. If governments would merely follow the moral law that all religions recognize we would live in a world of peace, prosperity and freedom. This system is called classical liberalism. Liberty is not complicated.

Please Make it Sound Much Nicer

You may recall in Sarah Palin, John McCain's running mate, when she got herself in a little trouble with both the Obama camp and the McCain hacks when she suggested that Obamacare would be tied to death panels.

Now it's interesting to note that President Obama also told the New York Times that an “independent group” would have to make difficult ethical decisions when the government has a role in the delivery of health care.

Thomas Sowell offers additional details.

As for a "death panel," no politician would ever use that phrase when trying to get a piece of legislation passed. "End of life" care under the "guidance" of "some independent group" sounds so much nicer-- and these are the terms President Obama used in an interview with the New York Times back on April 14th.

He said, "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out there." He added: "It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. That is why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance."

This makes for a great politician's cop out.

“Do you mind? I'm trying to buy votes here!”

But isn't that implicit in what Jimmy Kimmel said?

The death panel says, “rest in peace, Wheezy.”

The sleazy omnipotent state has spoken.

The Gushers of Bidenomics

I recently covered corporate welfare as a defining feature of “Bidenomics,”and a set of legislation passed that was characterized as “the biggest gusher of corporate welfare ever,” and quite possibly the largest upward redistribution of wealth in American history.

From Forbes, Willy Shih reports of another subsidy grant to TSMC, as well as plans to build another chip fab.

The Department of Commerce CHIPS Program Office announced a $6.6 billion grant to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) this morning. As part of the announcement, the company said it will build a third semiconductor chip fab in Arizona, and that it will also bring its most advanced manufacturing processes to the U.S. This is on top of the $40 billion the company is already spending for the first two fabs, which was the largest foreign direct investment in the history of Arizona.

...The rapid rise of generative AI and applications like ChatGPT is fueling arms race level spending for chips and data centers, and this boom is centered in the U.S. These systems use large language models, and they consume a tremendous amount of computing power for every query. Companies are racing to build data centers to support this demand, which one firm estimated were growing at a compound annual rate of 44% over the next six years. It seems like we will run out of electricity before that happens, but it is driving insatiable demand for chips in the meantime.

Governments are also subsidizing the AI craze and thereby creating the demand mentioned in the article. Seemingly, a propped-up demand is being chased by more corporate welfare, which is taking away what is Taiwan's most important tech asset, the semiconductors.

Is it becoming inevitable that China will attack Taiwan militarily?

As the world hegemon, your biggest fear in this situation is losing the semiconductor technology to China, bearing in mind how reliant American industry is on that technology, and how they would suffer as a result.

Vodka on the Crypto Train

Perhaps one expression of fantastic thinking coming from right-libertarian circles is the fanaticism for cryptocurrencies.

It's been said that cynicism motivates people towards gold, while optimism inspires the interest in cryptocurrencies.

While the problems of a fiat monetary system are properly identified for the most part, you might think that the optimism for the choice alternative of crypto bears a warrant. You're in good company.

With thousands of years under its belt, gold has proven to age in value like fine wine. Perhaps a belly full of vodka is a suitable illustration for the Crypto Bros.

Apart from stablecoins, cryptocurrencies are either here to stay, due to perpetual interest and enthusiasm, or it's one giant bubble, highly volatile in the long run. I'm afraid there is no middle ground.

In an effort to get a crash-course in this crypto phenomenon, one may find social media influencers all over the place who seen to wrap their identities in Bitcoin or some other cryptocurrency. At face value, they must have expertise. They must have answers. They must be doing well, and that's how it's done. And maybe you were one assurance away from getting in on it.

But then, you find the silo of influencers has little patience for reservations. The worst among them dismiss your knowledge altogether, apparently astonished at how little you know about the most important development of our time. The more polite ones insist “Bitcoin solves this,” seemingly, to every conceivable social problem presented.

It feels like a facade, as though you're talking to someone selling you a pyramid scheme. “Bitcoin solves this,” but it sounds like a slogan that nobody can really explain to your satisfaction. All the crypto signaling in their profiles begins to resemble NASCAR, with the sponsors plastered all over the place. Their digital personalities have become one massive infomercial. Perhaps it's all a cloning operation, and the whole point is to get you on the Crypto Train.

Now, again, maybe this optimism is in some way warranted by Bitcoin hitting an all-time high, yet again. And crypto pre-sales generate curiosity, excitement, and opportunity to get on the next big wave, ahead of time. For pennies on the dollar? Who knew Dogecoin would go from a joke to a competing speculative asset?

But if the more cynical side of this analysis is correct, I'm afraid it's a speculative bubble. Afraid, but not exactly certain.

Pump to the Moon?

I recently Tweeted this most basic concern:

Replied with spam on pumping. Oh, the irony!

But what if the hype proves temporary?

Perhaps the best-known illustration of economist Ludwig von Mises is the Master Builder analogy. The builder commits to a construction project with a finite number of materials. He surveys the groundwork and its foundations, oversizing them, but little does he know, he's made a fatal miscalculation. As the project progresses, the builder realizes that his supply of materials is insufficient to complete the project.

This metaphor served as a powerful illustration for the boom-bust cycle as a result of credit expansion, but it can just as easily demonstrate the crypto bubble if, heaven forbid, things don't exactly work out for the “Bitcoin maximalists.”

See Also:

• Biden's Trickle-Down Manufacturing Crony Bomb

• The Coof Clown Censorship Conspiracy

External Resources:

• Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom by Ron Paul

• Whose Medical Decisions? by Thomas Sowell

• TSMC’s CHIPS Act Grant: Has Arizona Reached A Tipping Point? by Willy Shih

Donate to Mr. Menger:

• Tip with Buy Me a Coffee

• Tip with Cash App

Substack Companion Article:

• Evil Flows Downstream From Culture

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The Power We Forfeit

At the risk of sounding like a Keynesian, I offer the following observation:

In an environment so far removed from any real semblance of a free market, we should be particularly concerned about the upward redistribution of wealth, because less of it is coming back to us.

Downward redistribution, for all its evils, will still be exchanged within the economy, and not tied up in investments and savings of the uber-wealthy.

Time Stamps:

• Opening/Announcements (0:00)

• The Power We Forfeit (1:36)

• Fairness Need Not Apply (2:25)

• The Biggest Gusher of Corporate Welfare Ever (3:51)

• Large, Complex, and Ambitious (7:03)

• Economic Life Can Only Be Understood Looking Backwards (12:41)

• Massie Throws a Diluted Tea Party (14:24)

Obviously, I'd rather see taxation cut directly - lots of it - and consumers reclaiming their rightful role in picking winners and losers. But when we demand that government actors strengthen a certain set of industries, that's precisely the power we forfeit.

Fairness Need Not Apply

In President Joe Biden's recent State of the Union Address, he proclaimed:

I want to talk about the future of possibilities that we can build together — a future where the days of trickle‐​down economics are over and the wealthy and the biggest corporations no longer get all the tax breaks…

It’s my goal to cut the federal deficit another $3 trillion by making big corporations and the very wealthy finally beginning to pay their fair share…

The way to make the tax code fair is to make big corporations and the very wealthy begin to pay their share.

But if you're running a massive corporation that might potentially benefit Biden's political agenda, none of this “fairness” talk applies to you. Instead, you can enjoy a massive subsidy in the name of Bidenomics, an embarrassing slogan that's grown synonymous with debt, waste, and inflation. And even if you weren’t targeted to benefit, you can purchase tax credits from other companies.

The Biggest Gusher of Corporate Welfare Ever

At face value, Biden is delivering the script that motivates voters by their sense of “fairness” and “progress” into supporting the Democratic Party. But in practice, these values are two-faced. We can say as much by noting that Biden signed three big-spending bills…

• Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021

• CHIPs and Science Act of 2022

• Inflation Reduction Act of 2022

And all three largely stood to benefit large corporations, best collectively described by Chris Edwards as “the biggest gusher of corporate welfare ever.”

Or, as Veronique De Rugy put it:

Unfortunately, when you look behind the smoke, mirrors, and rabbits hidden in hats, you'll see that promises to rebuild America through industrial policy are just plain old corporate welfare.

“But hey,” you say.

“Didn't it create jobs?”

Based on the manufacturing data from the March jobs report, it didn't even create a total of one in that sector.

Arjun Singh of the Daily Caller explains:

The number of manufacturing jobs in the United States remained at 12,956,000, the same figure as February, following a decline of 10,000 jobs from January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Situation Summary released on Friday. The figure comes despite the Biden administration launching an aggressive campaign to increase manufacturing employment through public subsidies enacted under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022."

If it's the same figure as the previous month, there is no net gain. None.

Large, Complex, and Ambitious

Even if you're a corporate welfare recipient, you'll have to take a number. From the red ribbon to the red tape, you'll find yourself in line for a different kind of hold up.

After a year in a half since the passage of the CHIPS Act, Christopher Tang voices such concerns in Industry Week, as plants for electric vehicle battery and semiconductors are being delayed.

[T]he complexity of the application process and the slow pace of fund approvals have dampened enthusiasm. And high labor and material costs, coupled with the difficulty of meeting subsidy eligibility requirements—specifically, that high percentages of building materials and components must be sourced from U.S. suppliers—have posed significant challenges. With many firms concurrently building new facilities, certain components like switchgears and transformers provided by U.S. suppliers are in short supply. As a result, firms face wait times exceeding 100 weeks...

Over 170 firms have applied for funding under the CHIPs act. However, apart from a $1.5 billion grant awarded to GlobalFoundries in February, only two minor grants had been issued, to manufacturers of less advanced chips, by the end of January.

Without a concerted effort to fund various projects, doubts may arise about the U.S. government’s commitment to semiconductor and EV manufacturing. This could lead to cancellations and delays, making it challenging to compete with China.

Infrastructure spending has long been a crowd-pleaser for Democrats to run on, and for Keynesian economists to embrace.

James Madison reluctantly vetoed an infrastructure bill as his last act as President because it was unconstitutional. But that's a story for another time.

For now, we will walk through the rough economics of it, and see if it even makes sense to begin with.

Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg boasts that the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allows for project grants “so large, complex, and ambitious that they could not get funded under the infrastructure programs that existed prior to this administration.”

At the time of its passage, the general consensus was that it was a year of economic recovery. After all, we'd just been through Covid-19 and the setbacks entailed from its policy response. Plenty of haggling took place over whether it was technically a recession.

Keynesian economist Paul Krugman stressed the situation as to say, “spend, on anything, quickly.”

The key thing, when you're in a situation like this, is realizing that normal rules don't apply. Ordinarily we'd welcome an increase in private saving; right now we're living in a world subject to the "paradox of thrift," in which private virtue is public vice. Normally we want to be careful that public funds are spent wisely; right now the crucial thing is that they be spent fast. (John Maynard Keynes once suggested burying bottles of cash in coal mines and letting the private sector dig them up — not as a real proposal, but as a way of emphasizing the priority of supporting demand.)

Economic Life Can Only Be Understood Looking Backwards

Economists often note that idle resources are definitive of a depressive economy. Market signals alone fail to put men on machines, working to complete ostensibly useful projects. On its own, the cost-benefit calculation renders such projects as less than optimal.

But as Soren Kierkegaard famously put it, if life is to be lived forward, it must be understood backward. And to understand the situation properly, we must ask how we ended up with it to begin with.

Austrian School economist Bob Murphy breaks down the disconnect that this retrospective assessment reveals.

Writers such as Krugman and Thoma act as if recessions are caused by massive bouts of irrational consumer anxiety, and that all problems can be patched up by a simple boost of "aggregate demand."

On the contrary, the economy's capital structure really was thrown into an unsustainable condition during the boom years, and it takes time for the mess to be sorted out. When the government runs up a deficit to fund "stimulus" projects, all that really means is that it is forcing taxpayers to pay for projects that they wouldn't buy with their own money...

Private investors are fleeing to real goods because they are uncertain, and making trillions of dollars subject to political deals, rather than consumer choice, only increases the uncertainty over future conditions. Pro-stimulus economists can keep bringing up new aspects, but each new consideration just proves how counterproductive their proposals are."

Massie Throws a Diluted Tea Party

It was eventually acknowledged that the Inflation Reduction Act was never actually designed to combat inflation.

Economist Peter St. Onge called the sluggish trend of subsidized manufacturing out in a devastating takedown article from August of last year:

The key is that, like all government handouts, the dollars are big, but they're not "investment," they're waste. Most of the new factories are taxpayer-subsidized, especially in "green energy," including many built by foreign companies from, above all, China…

In truth, the manufacturing PMI, which measures the broad health of American manufacturing, has been dropping since March of 2021 -- 2 and a half years now. And it's at the lowest level since just before the 2008 crisis.

Very little has changed, and “waste” is hardly unwarranted. Since Biden took office as President, so-called “investments” in manufacturing have gone through the roof. And for what?

Adam Michel has pointed out that if made permanent, the subsidies in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act could exceed $1.8 trillion.

I'd love to believe that the next Congress - and hopefully, the next Administration - is absolutely energized to toss this legislation out of existence. But as Milton Friedman famously said, “[n]othing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”

External Resources:

• Politicians Are Showering Manufacturing Companies With Crony Subsidies for 'Job Creation.' It Won't Work. by Veronique De Rugy

• Biden’s Corporate Welfare Bonanza by Chris Edwards

• Biden's Fake Manufacturing Boom by Peter St. Onge

• Not A Single Manufacturing Job Was Created In March Despite Biden Admin Spending Billions To Do So by Arjun Singh

• Energy Tax Subsidies Could Top $1.8 Trillion by Adam N. Michel

• Speed Up CHIPS Funding, Before It’s Too Late by Christopher S. Tang

• Does "Depression Economics" Change the Rules? by Robert P. Murphy

Donate to Mr. Menger:

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• Tip with Cash App

Substack Companion Article: Biden's Trickle-Down Manufacturing Crony Bomb

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Time Stamps:

• Opening (0:00)

• Francis Boyle Takes an Early Hit (3:33)

• YouTube Gatekeepers Canceling Medical Professionals? (5:58)

• TV Doctor Truth Science Takes Reign (8:31)

• Hey Rubes, Don't Drink the Bleach (10:20)

• Essentially Two-Faced From the Beginning (13:33)

• Jabs, the Ivey, and Propaganda Transmission (17:12)

• You Are Not a Horse - Or a Physician (19:05)

In the midst of an international viral outbreak, a certain level of anxiety is understandable, and perhaps even natural. But far be it from me to tell you that would sum up our experience with the advent of Covid-19.

That would make me evasive and dishonest. That would make me a liar. That would make me a shill. That would make me a fraud.

It cannot be argued in good faith that in a nation that boasts about its virtues of openness and free speech, embodied in the very law of the land, that the powers that be were simply just doing their jobs.

That goes for you...

• The public health establishment.

• The complicit legacy media.

• The politicians.

• The multinational corporate apparatus.

In a full-blown panic, you silenced any dissent you could through any means you had, and villainized every challenge - even virologists and immunologists with years of experience and prestige - because you convinced yourselves that you had to play God.

Repent relentlessly, because panic itself will always steer us wrong.

Culturally. Politically. Intellectually. Spiritually.

Now, we could end it right there if we could assume more honor in these institutional actors than we ever should. But it would also be an injustice to their victims - which are too many for one episode to acknowledge - but perhaps the general critique can speak far and wide.

Francis Boyle Takes an Early Hit

YouTube banned the video, Francis Boyle : We Are in a War Against the Scientific Elite, This is WWIII that Dr. Boyle did with Geopolitics and Empire (itself banned on Patreon and PayPal). Facebook banned the link to an article by Great Game India that transcribed Boyle's appearance.

In retrospect, Dr. Boyle's observations are astute and overwhelmingly ahead of their time.

There's one thing off about it - at least from any evidence I'm aware of - his theory that Chinese biowarfare agents smuggled the virus into Wuhan.

But he was absolutely right that it didn't come from a wet market in a time where it was an act of apostasy in mainstream circles to say as much.

It was an alternate theory that takes a different rabbit trail with most of the right information guiding it.

Compare that to the Coof Clown Cathedral, who couldn't be outdone as superspreaders of misinformation that the public and every major institution in the developed world relied upon.

YouTube Gatekeepers Canceling Medical Professionals?

Journeyman Pictures conducted two interviews with immunologist and biostatistician Dr. Knut Wittkowski that were removed from YouTube for "violating Community Guidelines."

Dr. Wittkowski advocated for herd immunity, a basic concept of epidemiology, and a policy akin to the Great Barrington Declaration. This strategy would promote focused protection for those most vulnerable, while simultaneously burning out the virus through transmission among the healthier residents of the population.

The banned YouTube videos featuring Dr. Wittkowski in the series are available on Daily Motion (see External Resources). The third installment featured essentially the same arguments, which YouTube has retained:

Multitudes of professionals in relevant fields found themselves in the pickle of the Sovietized public health regime, and canceled from “polite society” for daring to dissent. Canceled often by gatekeepers with far fewer credentials to their name for the crime of not falling in line against their better judgment.

Others - like cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough and biochemist Dr. Robert Malone - have gained a sizable following, and remain prominent figures.

More trouble would surface in Big Tech censorship, as unlawfully directed by the Biden Administration's heavy-handedness and the FBI's misinformation campaign to influence the 2020 election.

TV Doctor Truth Science Takes Reign

As you may recall, Dr. Anthony Fauci became the public face of the Covid pandemic. Many found confidence in his demeanor in a time where Donald Trump represented punchlines, meme warfare, and edgelord politics.

Surely, this man of expertise could take the handle on a serious issue, right?

The politics of professional wrestling, late night tweet storms, and lobbing random insults is one way to master the sport, but none of it transfers towards conquering a pandemic.

Even the Trump Administration seemed convinced that the time was right to lend the spotlight to America's new favorite TV doctor. When optics governs the narrative, the messaging strategy may have to take a sharp turn.

And towards that end - for a time - it seemed to work. But not for long.

Hey Rubes, Don't Drink the Bleach

A legacy media class, eager to keep this novel coronavirus in the news, found a goldmine of material in these frequent updates. Most of which kept the public on their toes, boosted trust in public health authorities, and put Donald Trump in the tangled position of scrutiny and sharing the spotlight more than he'd usually prefer.

These updates were disorganized and increasingly awkward. Trump in his off-cuff style would mention possibilities such as hydroxycloroquine (HDC), while Fauci would quickly discard the idea. Mike Pence, the head of the task force, would attempt to stand sanctimoniously throughout, but looked lifelessly stiff.

The mess of frequent “task force updates” came to a grinding halt when President Trump mentioned on-air but off-the-cuff the potential for a bodily injection with a disinfectant. In a climate where sloppy but sensational stories sold like hotcakes, the Corporate Press went into overdrive. Trump's comments were taken as though he literally advised Americans with Covid-19 to drink bleach.

By now, it was obvious that the lines were set. You can be on the side of the technocrats, headed by a media star TV doctor, the great side of Truth Science (TM), or you can join the dumb, backwards rubes who drink bleach and take horse dewormer because their contempt for science.

Eventually, even PolitiFact would retract the “bleach” claim, but the damage had been done. The momentum built with the war on defiant anti-maskers, “anti-vaxxers” - with mass censorship and every kook-science stereotype as the strawman - made way for some of the most disgusting behavior ever conducted in the name of “public health.”

Essentially Two-Faced From the Beginning

Even at the very beginning of the pandemic, a gaslit citizenry of Regime Karens were literally yelling at their neighbors for leaving the house, accusing them of being willing to kill grandma for a haircut. Right. Let's not forget that if Karen wants a multi-trillion dollar Covid stimulus passed, someone has to go to work. Hopefully, they're “essential.”

This hysteria took different stages, beginning with “Flatten the Curve,” a cooked up PR campaign to lock the door and throw away the key. Don't worry, it's just fifteen days. Well, actually, it would be as long as people could possibly put up with it.

Not only did Anthony Fauci deny pushing the lockdowns, he also committed a very public flip-flop on masking. Initially, he had discouraged the use of masks due it inefficiency, but backtracked once it was assured that medical staff throughout the country were adequately supplied.

The mask became the new weapon for compliance, the new carrot and stick. The new symbol of respectability. The virtue signal that you, in fact, didn't want your grandmother dead.

But was it effective?

In an email from as far back as February 5, 2020 - obtained from a FOIA request - Fauci had advised a high-ranking public health official that masks were “really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection.”

The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however, provide some slight benefit in keep out gross droplets if someone coughs or sneezes on you.

Jabs, the Ivey, and Propaganda Transmission

The formula for masking was transferred to the so-called Covid vaccines.

You were simply deemed a terrible and ignorant person if you questioned them and ultimately refused the injection. You were demonized as selfish if you even considered that the costs might outweigh the benefits.

When Ivermectin gained momentum as a potential alternative to treat Covid-19, it was vilified by the media and the political class. Yes, even in spite of winning a Nobel Prize for saving countless lives in the fight against malaria. Not to mention, even the government's own data collection showed some promise in repurposing the drug for Covid-19. Nevertheless, it was to be ridiculed as “horse paste” and scorned out of polite society.

In federal law, the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) can only be granted to new vaccines if there are “no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.” What did this mean for Hydroxycloroquine and Ivermectin? For the medical establishment, it meant make believe they don't exist. For the political class, they were to be excoriated.

Karma would eventually catch up.

In October 2020, NIH director Francis Collins emailed Anthony Fauci and two other public health officials, calling for “a quick and devastating take down” of the Great Barrington Declaration, written by “three fringe epidemiologists.”

The email, made public following a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Institute for Economic Research, would prove pivotal in altering the reputations both of Fauci and Collins, and by extension, the public health apparatus.

You Are Not a Horse - Or a Physician

The Fifth Court of Appeals recently determined that the FDA went beyond their legal authority in their treatment of Ivermectin.

Susan Shelley explains:

While refusing to admit any wrongdoing, the FDA has now agreed to remove from its website a page titled, “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19.” The agency will also remove its social media posts linking to that page, including two memes from August 2021 that featured pictures of horses. One was captioned, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

“FDA is not a physician,” said the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal. “Even tweet-sized doses of personalized medical advice are beyond FDA’s statutory authority.”

…Because the government wanted to distribute the new mRNA vaccines for COVID, “Emergency Use Authorization” was necessary. But the vaccines and expensive new drugs to treat COVID could not receive emergency authorization if doctors were out there prescribing long-approved drugs and having success treating COVID with them.

Why would Anthony Fauci badger the public to wear an uncomfortable face diaper for hours on end if they weren't effective against transmission? Why would he exaggerate the safety and efficacy of an experimental vaccine? Why would he berate drugs that could be repurposed to fight Covid-19? Did he lie just to keep Covid-19 in the news? How did the public benefit from anything the “public health” authorities were telling them? Was it all to keep a blathering doctor from Brooklyn on TV, who was clearly on a high from the partisan following he generated? Was it worth the domestic tension and the pent-up rage and despair?

For the public health establishment, it was worth it all. Every lie, every deception, every cancellation, every hysterical soldier they could create. The value of individual rights has always stood in their way, and the harder they could smash its foundations with a wrecking ball, the more power it gave them.

External Resources:

• Francis Boyle: We Are in a War Against the Scientific Elite by Geopolitics and Empire

• TRANSCRIPT: Bioweapons Expert Dr. Francis Boyle On Coronavirus by Great Game India

• Perspectives on the Pandemic | Professor Knut Wittkowski | Episode 2 by Journeyman Pictures

• Perspectives on the Pandemic | Professor Knut Wittkowski Update Interview | Episode 5 by Journeyman Pictures

• No, Trump didn’t tell Americans infected with the coronavirus to drink bleach by Jessica Calefati

• Fauci Said Masks 'Not Really Effective in Keeping Out Virus,' Email Reveals by Darragh Roche

• At a time when the U.S. needed Covid-19 dialogue between scientists, Francis Collins moved to shut it down by Vinay Prasad

• The FDA overstepped against ivermectin by Susan Shelley

• Four Years Later, Conservative Voters Haven’t Forgotten How Covid Tyrants Acted In Crisis by Christine Whitmore

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• Tip with Cash App

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Time Stamps:

• Opening (0:00)

• Finger-Pointing - A Two-Way Street (3:32)

• What if Actual Security is Vulnerable? (5:44)

• A Bloodbath For American Consumers (8:50)

• What About the Asset Managers? (9:59)

For some time, tensions between China and the United States have appeared to escalate. Navigating the digital age and the cyber-security issues involved is the educational process of our time.

As the Trump-era Wikileaks data dump was released, the late John McAfee had this to say:

It's clear now that we're living in 1984. The only difference is we're free to walk around, so far. But we are spied on by everything from our TVs to the cameras in the streets to our smartphones.

This is now true of all major governmental bodies, foreign and domestic. Opportunities for nation-states, the data sales industry, and everyday hackers are endless. Potential victims are widely unguarded and practically doomed to fall prey on one level or another.

Finger-Pointing - A Two-Way Street

The fog of war - hot and cold alike - has gotten more complicated, even for seasoned observers.

Perhaps you're familiar with the phrase “confession through projection.”

And maybe you're familiar with the tactic of accusing your enemies of everything you're doing.

According to recent revelations, then-President Donald Trump had authorized the CIA to conduct a covert operation of disinformation on Chinese social media to turn the population against their government.

China, of course, bears its own hostility towards the West.

The Department of Justice has alleged that seven Chinese hackers targeted businesses and politicians in an espionage operation.

From the press release on March 25:

An indictment was unsealed today charging seven nationals of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for their involvement in a PRC-based hacking group that spent approximately 14 years targeting U.S. and foreign critics, businesses, and political officials in furtherance of the PRC’s economic espionage and foreign intelligence objectives.

The group, APT 31 is now facing sanctions for a long-running espionage scheme that spanned over a decade.

The treasury office named two Chinese nationals, Zhao Guangzong and Ni Gaobin, affiliated with the Wuhan company, for cyberoperations that targeted US critical infrastructure sectors including defense, aerospace and energy. It also listed these threats as part of the cyber hacking group APT 31, which stands for “advanced persistent threat” and includes state-sponsored contract hackers and intelligence officers.

What if Actual Security is Vulnerable?

During this time, the United States had its share of domestic drama between Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured private server for official national security purposes, and Donald Trump's presidential campaign being spied upon under false pretenses and flimsy oversight by the FISA courts.

Today, both major presidential candidates have generated controversy with improper handling of classified documents.

For years, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, had a Chinese spy fundraising for his campaign and making staffing recommendations. Fang also had a political relationship with Ro Kanna and Tulsi Gabbard, and even romantic relationships with two Midwestern mayors.

The hackers indicated by the Department of Justice have also perpetrated the UK. Hawkish politicians in particular found themselves targeted. Is hawkishness on China becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy?

And if so, how much trouble would it save us to concentrate on strengthening - not weakening - our commercial ties? Though undoubtedly, they have their own problems, economic ties mean economic strength.

Just look at where countless showings of “military strength” has gotten us: Iraq. Afghanistan. Yemen. Russia. Israel. Libya. Syria. Cuba. Vietnam. Cambodia.

All justified by one false pretense after another, and ending in one failure after another. What if the American way truly is commerce with all nations, and entangling alliances with none?

Hat tip to Thomas Jefferson.

If we're going to talk about a literal “bloodbath,” that's where to go.

A Bloodbath For American Consumers

What if Donald Trump is only energizing his base with bad economics at the end of the day, when he is confronted with hysteria instead of any thoughtful objections?

Again, it's true that there have been problems with America's commercial relationship with China. Hollywood often answers to the demands of the Chinese Communist Party. There are well-founded concerns about China's tech ambitions and vulnerabilities of US cybersecurity.

Has anything remotely constructive been tried, or are tariffs and espionage operations the only acceptable measures to consider for the powers that be?

To put it in Trumpian terms, what if all they've done is build a wall, and forced American consumers to pay for it?

China already has a “Great Wall,” and apparently, walls represent “greatness” in both cases to ruling class actors.

What About the Asset Managers?

Let us also consider this, both from a cultural and strategic approach. The American media is ultimately run by six mega-corporations that dictate the Overton Window.

Let's name names:

• Comcast

• Walt Disney

• AT&T

• Paramount Global

• Sony

• Fox

The largest stockholders of every last one of them are the world's largest financial firms. Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street. And the media is but one industry of many where this trend persists.

It's even worse than most people think.

Their CEOs and board members ultimately set the perimeters they find acceptable in an increasingly activist-driven brand of state capitalism.

It may well be good news then to know that their commercial agenda with China is having more difficulty than they anticipated. Vanguard, for example, has openly spoken of closing their office in Beijing.

Richard Nixon's approach to China is rightfully cited as the most pronounced pivot, vis a vis US-China relations. At the time, even Henry Kissinger thought the idea was nuts. Yet, it drastically weakened the security threat of China's ties to the Soviet Union.

Here we are again with Russia and China moving closer together in spite of their historically antagonistic relationship.

But there is little to be argued in favor of Blackrock and Vanguard having their power over American consumers artificially inflated. Competition is the tool that ensures that capitalism can function and face corrections through market discipline that is presently lacking.

External Resources:

• Beijing Responds to Trump's Covert CIA Operation Targeting China by Aadil Brar

• DOJ charges 7 Chinese spies with targeting US political leaders, major businesses by Matt Lamb

• Seven Hackers Associated with Chinese Government Charged with Computer Intrusions Targeting Perceived Critics of China and U.S. Businesses and Politicians by the US Department of Justice

• US and UK unveil sanctions against Chinese state-backed hackers over alleged ‘malicious’ attacks by Nick Robins-Early

• Britain says China hacked electoral watchdog, targeted lawmaker emails by Andrew Macaskill and James Pearson

• Here’s What We Know About Rep. Swalwell’s Connection To A Suspected Chinese Spy by Nicholas Reimann

• The Real Reason So Many Asset Managers Are Struggling in China by Hazel Sheffield

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Time Stamps:

• Opening (0:00)

• Lobbied Out of Optimism (1:55)

• A New Age of People Power (4:33)

• Big Tech's Oppressive Blob (8:54)

• Forming a Ruling Class Conspiracy (10:42)

• De Facto State Actors (13:26)

• Amazon Boasts About its Chokehold on Government Cash (14:13)

• Bloodbaths, Mob Wetwork, and Media Hotheads (15:33)

• Google's Orwellian Newspeak Stunt (18:07)

Lobbied Out of Optimism

Your Dictionary provides the following definition of corporatism:

Political / Economic system in which power is exercised through large organizations (businesses, trade unions, their associated lobbying efforts, etc.) working in concert or conflict with each other; usually with the goal of influencing or subsuming the direction of the state and generally only to benefit their own socioeconomic agendas at the expense of the will of the people, and to the detriment of the common good.

This definition will be instructive as we wade through a recent article by Jeffrey Tucker.

In the 1990s, it was common to ridicule the government for being technologically backward.

We were all gaining access to fabulous things, including the web, apps, search tools and social media. But governments at all levels were stuck in the past using IBM mainframes and large floppy disks.

I recall the days of thinking government would never catch up to the glories and might of the market itself. I wrote several books on it, full of techno-optimism.

The new tech sector had a libertarian ethos about it. They didn’t care about the government and its bureaucrats. They didn’t have lobbyists in Washington. They were the new technologies of freedom and didn’t care much about the old analogue world of command and control. They’d usher in a new age of people power.

For many of us, this is looked back upon as a golden era of Western innovation. But while we fell in love with the “Wild West” era of the internet, the powers that be had vowed to impose gatekeepers. And in turn, a very different world had arisen.

An industry we once embraced as the modern face of optimism eventually sold us down the river.

Big Tech's Oppressive Blob

Tucker continues:

Here we sit a quarter-century later with documented evidence that the opposite happened. The private sector collects the data that the government buys and uses as a tool of control.

It’s determined by algorithms agreed upon by a combination of government agencies, university centers, various nonprofits and the companies themselves. The whole thing has become an oppressive blob.

Without shame, Amazon Web Services boasts of “[p]aving the way for innovation and supporting world-changing projects in government, education, nonprofit, and healthcare organizations" on their official site.

The language of public service is employed to tout the attraction of billions in tax dollars and counting.

Public sector leaders engaged in true cloud computing projects overwhelmingly turn to the power and speed of Amazon Web Services (AWS) when they want to serve citizens more effectively, accelerate innovation and digital transformation, and put more of their time and resources into their core missions.

Bloodbaths, Mob Wetwork, and Media Hotheads

It's essentially campaign season, so obviously, the Hoax Machine plans to make do with whatever floats the boat. Or doesn't.

The latest example is Donald Trump's use of the word “bloodbath” to describe the economy if he fails to get elected in 2024, and thus tariffs on automobile imports from China would fall short of 100 percent.

Instead of asking if the “"tariff bloodbath” would fall on American consumers - already overwhelmed by the expenses of car ownership - the media and the Biden Administration took the context elsewhere to foment the hysteria necessary to win ratings, sell papers, and garner political support.

Trump is not to be questioned or opposed with any sensible inquiry, but with panic. Electoral politics is served to the lowest common denominator, and establishment commentators are stumped as to why nobody trusts them anymore.

“Misinformation?”

They aren't even attempting to inform you.

Somewhat understandably, less attention was given to James Carville for his own inflammatory rhetoric.

President Biden is not the best attack politician I’ve ever seen in my life and hopefully [we can] leave it at that. But there are a lot of people to do what I call a quote, the wetwork, unquote.

But unlike Carville, Donald Trump - wittingly or not - manages to trigger Google into twerping out revisions into their Newspeak Dictionary.

External Resources:

• From Capitalism to Corporatism by Jeffrey Tucker

• AWS in the Public Sector by Amazon Web Services

• Carville: Biden Should Let Surrogates Do the 'Wetwork' Against Trump by Pam Key

• Google Just Changed a Definition by Tom Woods

• The Latest Hoax by Tom Woods

• America's Intellectual "Bloodbath" by Matt Tiabbi

• Why the Apple Antitrust Suit Matters by Matt Stoller

• Goodbye Google by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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Time Stamps:

• Opening (0:00)

• Unfairly Remembered as a Silly Old Chap (1:30)

• Why the “Appeasement” Narrative Distorts Our Judgment (6:10)

Winston Churchill once said of him, he had a choice between war and dishonor, and he chose dishonor.

I refer of course to Britain's most unpopular Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.

Unfairly Remembered as a Silly Old Chap

Graeme Donald sheds light on the Munich Agreement in his book Loose Cannons.

Neville Chamberlan (I869-1940) is unfairly remembered as a silly old chap bamboozled by Hitler over the Munich Agreement, by which Germany and Britan agreed to sort out any further dispute by diplomatic means rather than conflict.

After the conference, Chamberlain's plane landed at Heston Aerodome on 30 September 1938, and it was here that he held aloft the infamous "piece of paper" and spoke to the assembled crowd of "peace with honour" and "peace for our time."

He later repeated these comments outside the Prime Minister's residence at Number 10, Downing Street. Although the PM spoke of peace for our time, it was misreported by the British Press and the BBC through confusion with "Give us peace in our time, O Lord," a popular line from the Book of Common Prayer.

At Chamberlain's next formal address to Parliament following the Munich Agreement, he had this to say:

l am told that the policy which I have tried to describe is inconsistent with the continuance, and much more inconsistent with the acceleration of our present programme of arms. I am asked how I can reconcile an appeal to the country to support the continuance of this programme with the words which I used when I came back from Munich the other day and spoke of my belief that we might have peace in our time. I hope honourable Members will not be disposed to read into words used in a moment of some emotion, after a long and exhausting day, after I had driven through miles of excited, enthusiastic, cheering people - I hope they will not read into those words more than they were intended to convey.

And yet, it is with thanks to that policy that England was bought time needed to build its defense to face Nazi Germany.

Why the “Appeasement” Narrative Distorts Our Judgment

In 2021, Janan Ganesh wrote an article entitled The right must stop treating ‘appeasement’ as the root of all evil for the Irish Times.

Time and again, the hawkish “Chamberlain and Churchill” framing oversimplifies the conflict of the day, and drives political leaders astray with its false sense of conviction.

A quirk of the Anglo-American right is its obsession with one historical event as the key to all others. Munich has come to stand for the folly of compromise and the wisdom of toughness, almost always and everywhere....

[T]he cry of appeasement will keep bouncing presidents into bad decisions until we learn not to grade their every foreign doing on a spectrum of Chamberlain to Churchill…

...A misreading of one historic event has distorted so much subsequent statecraft. It has encouraged the idea that, in foreign relations, a sort of blanket pugnacity gets results in the end. When it fails, the problem is held to be insufficient will: that Iraq wasn’t invaded earlier and with more troops, that America only gave it the 20 years in Afghanistan, that Iran hasn’t been made to taste the reality of US power yet.

• External Resources:

• Neville Chamberlain beyond Munich: The real story by History West Midlands

• Loose Cannons: 101 Myths, Mishaps and Misadventures of Military History by Graeme Donald

• The right must stop treating ‘appeasement’ as the root of all evil by Janan Ganesh

• This Is What America Must Do by Ben Shaprio

• Is Tucker Carlson The New Neville Chamberlain? by the Thom Hartmann Program

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Time Stamps:

• Plausible Deniability - Opening Skit (0:00)

• Introduction (2:54)

• When a “Private Company Bro” Won't Leave You Alone (4:01)

• Gabriel Kolko and the Triumph of Cronyism (7:19)

• Karl Hess’ Exodus to Self-Management (11:01)

• Banksters Serve Innocent Customers to Feds (18:22)

• The Gaming Industry's Deep State Hunt For “Extremists” (24:30)

• The OnStar Chamber Rules to Raise Rates on Car Insurance (26:51)

• The Getaway Car of the Covid Regime (29:01)

• The WEF's Pervasive Specter of Censorship (32:02)

• The TikTok Ban is a Power-Grab and a Giveaway (35:57)

• Closing Remarks (38:33)

The Fate of Liberty Under Crony Capitalism

Is it time for your state to consider a Consumer Bill of Rights?

I'm not talking about price controls or any other predatory intervention that ends up harming the people it claims to help.

I'm talking about protecting the same rights you demand unimpeded by a power-hungry government in an environment where corporate actors are encouraged to trample on them - often as a deputy for the state - and never in the service of activities that consumers wish to patronize.

• How about the right to speak as you wish?

• The right to keep and bear arms?

• The right to go about your everyday life without having your pocket picked, your privacy compromised, or being profiled without any suspicious activity in your life to warrant such attention?

Libertarian circles are an excellent place to find passion for the defense of our liberties, but it always struck me as odd that many people within them only demanded the respect for their God-given rights from one institution in public life.

It was always odd that for some, "private company bro" justified activities by artificial persons operating in the same manner as the state that presumes your consent and asserts itself the weilder of power over your life.

Is there a functional distinction between the FBI showing up at your doorstep, demanding to see your internet history... and Best Buy assisting their warrantless snooping when all you did was take your electronic device to the Geek Squad for a repair?

How about your financial records?

Are you secure in your papers when Bank of America hands over your statements as though you're a criminal under investigation?

Or Dick's Sporting Goods?

What if you're glancing by the firearms section, and their video footage is handed off to the feds, eager to justify their suspicions of possible "extremists?"

They'd be poor sports, and that ain't good.

But they're "private," does that make it okay?

Gabriel Kolko and the Triumph of Cronyism

When Murray Rothbard wrote about the history of the Progressive Era, one of his main sources was Gabriel Kolko.

While Kolko was a man of the left, he understood and emphasized the dangers of collusion between big business and big government.

In 1963, Kolko published The Triumph of Conservatism, an indictment and revision of the so-called “Progressive Era.”

What Kolko calls "conservatism," we can observe as crony capitalism, not driven by honest dealings and customer satisfaction, so much as the obtainment of powerful connections and special privileges from the state.

While the semantics can be disputed, the elements of Kolko's points are to be considered and observed:

I use the attempt to preserve existing power and social relationships as the criterion for conservatism because none other has any practical meaning. Only if we mechanistically assume that government intervention in the economy, and a departure from orthodox laissez faire, automatically benefits the general welfare can we say that government economic regulation by its very nature is also progressive in the common meaning of that term. Each measure must be investigated for its intentions and consequences in altering the existing power arrangements, a task historians have largely neglected.

Kolko adds a startling realization.

"It [the 'Progressive Era'] was never a question of regulation or no regulation, of state control or laissez faire; there were, rather, the questions of what kind of regulation and by whom."

Furthermore:

Why did economic interests require and demand political intervention by the federal government and a reincarnation of the Hamiltonian unity of politics and economics? In part the answer is that the federal government was always, involved in the economy in various crucial ways... But the significant reason for many businessmen welcoming and working to increase federal intervention into their affairs has been virtually ignored by historians and economists. This oversight was due to the illusion that American industry was centralized and monopolized to such an extent that it could rationalize the activity in its various branches voluntarily. Quite the opposite was true.

Karl Hess’ Exodus to Self-Management

Another notable figure is the former speechwriter to Barry Goldwater, Karl Hess. From early on, Hess understood the many problems inherent in a powerful government. But later in life, Hess observed a similar case of bureaucracy and red tape that was holding many people back in corporate America, sucking away their potential and creativity.

Hess also saw a tremendous difference when it came to productive endeavors that weren't beholden to the suits of mega-corporations.

"During his exodus from political life, Hess began working welding jobs at night to make some extra money, repairing bulldozer blades, dump trucks, and trailers. Hess discovered that working on the construction site was a completely different dynamic than the corporate world of offices and spreadsheets. The experience led him to identify what he now considered contradiction in his thought. He believed people had enough common sense to run their lives without interference from government bureaucrats. However, Hess also believed people would only work efficiently with corporate bosses. But at work with other welders, mechanics, heavy-​equipment operators, carpenters, steel riggers, electricians, pipefitters, and engineers, he discovered that the people he met absolutely could manage themselves and undertake productive work. In fact, unlike the corporate world Hess was accustomed to, the workers he met were not insular and competitive but cooperative when dealing with concrete situations. After he confronted this tension, Hess’s thinking evolved: He believed people could function without being managed and, in fact, might work better."

Perhaps his most notable contribution was his essay, The Death of Politics, originally published in Playboy magazine.

Big business in America today and for some years has been openly at war with competition and, thus, at war with laissez-faire capitalism. Big business supports a form of state capitalism in which government and big business act as partners. Criticism of this statist bent of big business comes more often from the left than from the right these days, and this is another factor making it difficult to tell the players apart. John Kenneth Galbraith, for instance, has most recently taken big business to task for its anticompetitive mentality. The right, meantime, blissfully defends big business as though it had not, in fact, become just the sort of bureaucratic, authoritarian force that rightists reflexively attack when it is governmental.

Furthermore:

Monopoly is a case in point. To suppose that anyone needs government protection from the creation of monopolies is to accept two suppositions: that monopoly is the natural direction of unregulated enterprise, and that technology is static. Neither, of course, is true. The great concentrations of economic power, which are called monopolies today, did not grow despite government's anti-monopolistic zeal. They grew, largely, because of government policies, such as those making it more profitable for small businesses to sell out to big companies rather than fight the tax code alone. Additionally, Federal fiscal and credit policies and Federal subsidies and contracts have all provided substantially more assistance to big and established companies than to smaller, potentially competitive ones.

Circling back to Live like a Libertarian:

"In his 1975 book Dear America, Hess disparages both corporate or crony capitalism and state socialism. Hess had a high opinion of free markets but a low opinion of large businesses. Crony capitalism is naked theft where business interests and the political class collude to live extremely high off of the work and creativity of others. Less brazen, state socialism cloaks itself in the aspirations of humane and cooperative living. Those aspirations are betrayed, however, by state socialism’s ruling class: obsessive book-​keeping bureaucrats with absolute authority. Crony capitalism and state socialism, thought Hess, hold the same ultimate purpose: to produce a social order in which docile people follow the commands of a ruling class. Hess believed there were only two classes in America: the ruling and working classes. But for Hess, the working class is much larger than usually recognized by socialists and progressives. The working class starts with privileged professionals such as engineers, scientists, and managers insofar as they have much more in common with farmers, mechanics, and grocery clerks than the joint chiefs of staff, the leaders of political parties, and owners of corporate conglomerates."

Banksters Serve Innocent Customers to Feds

From the “secret portal” of 650-plus companies that have colluded with the FBI, Bank of America apparently went well beyond what the agency requested in a data dump against American citizens.

From the Interim Staff Report by the Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government:

The Gaming Industry's Deep State Hunt For “Extremists”

Ken Klippenstein at The Intercept reports that multiple gaming platforms are “in dialogue” with the federal government in an effort to root out “domestic violent extremist content.”

"GAMING COMPANIES ARE coordinating with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to root out so-called domestic violent extremist content, according to a new government report. Noting that mechanisms have been established with social media companies to police extremism, the report recommends that the national security agencies establish new and similar processes with the vast gaming industry.

The exact nature of the cooperation between federal agencies and video game companies, which has not been previously reported, is detailed in a new Government Accountability Office report. The report draws on interviews conducted with five gaming and social media companies including Roblox, an online gaming platform; Discord, a social media app commonly used by gamers; Reddit; as well as a game publisher and social media company that asked the GAO to remain anonymous."

Because anonymity is good for business.

The OnStar Chamber Rules to Raise Rates on Car Insurance

Car insurance rates up as drivers are shocked by data collection reports by Alex Hernandezhttps://techaeris.com/2024/03/14/car-insurance-drivers-data-collection/

And why are your rates going up?

Because, citizen, you're being monitored as though you're under house arrest.

According to the New York Post, Kenn Dahl says his car insurance costs soared by 21% in 2022 after GM’s OnStar Smart Driver computerized system installed in his Chevy Bolt collected information about the particulars of his driving habits. Dahl said that his insurance agent told him the price increase was based on data collected by LexisNexis, which compiled a report tracking every time he and his wife drove their Chevy Bolt over a six-month period.

21 percent.

So, are these due to auto accidents? Speeding tickets? Racing in the parking lot?

I would think an auto insurer has plenty to go on with both the public knowledge available and the standard set of questions they ask in a quote assessment.

They can always adjust if you piled up speeding tickets or get in accidents.

Is it just me, or do we call it hacking when a natural person does this without permission?

The WEF's Pervasive Specter of Censorship

A Lily Bit breaks down the WEF's hostile stance against free speech in a recent Substack entry.

The World Economic Forum steadfastly attributes the crisis of trust in media to the pervasive specter of “disinformation.” This diagnosis, however simplistic, underpins their call for a societal crusade against misinformation, ostensibly to reclaim the lost sanctity of media trustworthiness.

It's a position that holds “trust” as the ultimate currency in the realm of media—a trust that emanates not from the relentless pursuit of truth, but from the ability to shape perceptions unchallenged.

The TikTok Ban is a Power-Grab and a Giveaway

The War on TikTok proposes a very limited benefit with a cost we were never meant to pay.

What I mean is this: the American Big Tech companies that acquiesced to the will of the Deep State to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and promote lies about Russia and Donald Trump just got a lot more powerful with this giveaway.

Is Ron Paul correct in asserting that Congress' actions against TikTok may be the most dangerous infringement since the PATRIOT Act?

Maybe so.

Americans are being sanctioned economically now through demonetization and censorship through public and shameless pressure by the US government, and the corporate apparatus will almost always do their bidding as a proxy.

See Also:

External Resources:

• The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History by Gabriel Kolko

• The Death of Politics by Karl Hess

• Live like a Libertarian: Karl Hess by Portraits of Liberty

• PDF: Financial Surveillance in The United States: How Federal Law Enforcement Commandeered Financial Institutions to Spy on Americans Interim Staff Report of the Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

• The Feds Are Coming For "Extremist" Gamers by Ken Klippenstein

• Car insurance rates up as drivers are shocked by data collection reports by Alex Hernandez

• Your car is secretly spying on you and driving your insurance rates through the roof: report by Ariel Zilber

• WEF Complains About Free Speech by A Lily Bit

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Time Stamps:

• Introduction (0:00)

• Where's the Podium? (1:40)

• The State of Inflation (2:37)

• A Secret Portal to a Social Credit System (3:39)

• BRICS Eyeing Blockchain to Bypass US Dollar (7:29)

• Sir, the Hot Mic is On (12:20)

• Even the Aid is Killing People (14:17)

• Where's the Exit? (15:43)

Where's the Podium?

President Joe Biden's 2024 State of the Union Address began with a mental fumble as handlers had to direct him to the podium.

The State of Inflation

After some 40-odd minutes of “lively” (i.e., suspiciously loud and overly enthusiastic) remarks about Ukraine, abortion, and January 6th, Biden made a few runaway remarks about the US economy.

Wages keep going up and inflation keeps coming down. Inflation has dropped from 9% to 3% - the lowest in the world - and trending lower.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin and gold saw an all-time high this very week, indicating a devastating state of affairs regarding the value of the US dollar.

Greg Robb of MarketWatch expects even worse news next week.

With the confusing U.S. February unemployment report in the rear-view mirror, economists will be looking at the consumer inflation data next week for get a better sense of what the Federal Reserve might do with interest rate policy.

The February jobs report had a so many moving parts and revisions that it will put more weight on the inflation data than usual, said Drew Matus, chief market strategist for MetLife Investment Management.

In summary:

• A rebound in gasoline prices likely helped drive inflation higher last month.

• The CPI is expected to see its biggest gain since September.

A Secret Portal to a Social Credit System

This week saw the revelation of profiles kept on American citizens by the US government, in collusion with 650 companies.

The federal government created 'profiles' on the American people kept in a 'secret portal' shared with companies to identify customer's levels of extremism, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan revealed.

An interface shared between over 650 companies and federal officials holds a 'secret portal' containing sensitive data on American citizens, Jordan warned during a House Weaponization Committee hearing Thursday."

Where did they find 650 corrupt companies, and where is the market discipline to run them all into the ground?

And no whistleblowers from Corporate America?

This mirrors the NSA scandal that Edward Snowden exposed.

BRICS Eyeing Blockchain to Bypass US Dollar

The growing economic bloc known as BRICS is moving towards a blockchain-based currency to circumvent the US dollar.

Mike Maharrey reports:

In an interview on the Russian news agency TASS, Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov announced that the BRICS nations plan to develop a new payment system based on the blockchain.

This sets the stage for further de-dollarization and could further undermine the status of the dollar as the global reserve currency.

"We believe that creating an independent BRICS payment system is an important goal for the future, which would be based on state-of-the-art tools such as digital technologies and blockchain.”

Rachel Savage of Reuters had previously covered the talks of a common currency late last year.

Brazil's President called on Wednesday for the BRICS nations to create a common currency for trade and investment between each other, as a means of reducing their vulnerability to dollar exchange rate fluctuations.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made the proposal at a BRICS summit in Johannesburg.

Officials and economists have pointed out the difficulties involved in such a project, given the economic, political and geographic disparities between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Lesetja Kganyago of South Africa explains the challenges involved with the process:

"If you want it, you'll have to get a banking union, you'll have to get a fiscal union, you've got to get macroeconomic convergence," Kganyago said.

"Importantly, you need a disciplining mechanism for the countries that fall out of line with it... Plus they will need a common central bank... where does it get located?

Sir, the Hot Mic is On

Shortly following the speech, Biden confided to a Congressman that he told the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to expect a “come to Jesus meeting.”

Biden was confronted shortly after by a reporter, whom he accused of “eavesdropping” on him.

I guess a private hot mic is a thing?

Even the Aid is Killing People

The official death toll of the current Hamas-Israeli conflict reached 30,000 during a food aid delivery.

Israeli troops fired on a crowd of Palestinians racing to pull food off an aid convoy in Gaza City on Thursday, witnesses said. More than 100 people were killed in the chaos, bringing the death toll since the start of the Israel-Hamas war to more than 30,000, according to health officials.

Israel said many of the dead were trampled in a chaotic stampede for the food aid and that its troops only fired when they felt endangered by the crowd.

The violence was quickly condemned by Arab countries, and U.S. President Joe Biden expressed concern it would add to the difficulty of negotiating a cease-fire in the nearly five-month conflict.

A parachute failed to open, killing two and injuring 11.

Where's the Exit?

Joe Biden's “fiery” State of the Union Address ended the way it began: with a President who didn't know where to go next.

External Resources:

• Expect ‘plenty of handwringing about hotter inflation’ next week by Greg Robb

• Federal government created 'profiles' on Americans kept in a 'secret portal' shared with 650 companies to track 'extremists' who searched 'MAGA,' 'guns,' and 'Biden' say Republicans by Jon Michael Raasch

• BRICS to Develop Blockchain-Based Payment System to Bypass the Dollar by Mike Maharrey

• What is a BRICS currency and is the U.S. dollar in trouble? by Rachel Savage

• Palestinians say Israeli troops fired at people seeking food. Israel says scene was deadly stampede by Wafaa Shurafa, Kareem Chehayeb, and Melanie Lidman

• Transcript of the State of the Union Address by CBS News

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View Details

Time Stamps:

• Opening (0:00)

• Don’t We Have Capitalism? (1:46)

• Introduction to the Communist Manifesto (2:44)

• 1. Abolition of Private Property (3:55)
• 1. A Heavy Progressive Income Tax (5:43)
• 1. Abolition of All Rights of Inheritance (7:04)
• 1. Confiscation of the Property of all Emigrants and Rebels (8:00)
• 1. Centralization of Credit Through a Central Bank (9:18)
• 1. Centralization of the Means of Communication and Transportation in the Hands of the State (10:26)
• 1. Instruments of Production Owned by the State (12:00)
• 1. Equal Obligation of All to Work and Industrial Armies (13:26)
• 1. Combine Agriculture and Manufacturing, Abolish the Distinction Between Town and Country (15:22)
• 1. Free Education For All Children in Government Schools (16:16)

• Hans Hermann-Hoppe on Social Democracy (20:44)

• Consequences of Democratic Socialism (24:43)

• Naivete on the Benevolence of a Socialist State (26:16)

The Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto

1. Abolition of private property in land and application of all rents of land to public purpose.

• The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in 1868 expanded the scope and potential for eminent domain.

• Various zoning, school & property taxes. Zoning ordinances proposed by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover widely adopted.

• The Supreme Court ruled "zoning" to be "constitutional" in 1921.

• Private owners of property are required to get permission from government relative to the use of their property.

• Federally owned lands are leased for grazing, mining and timber usages. The fees arepaid into the U.S. Treasury.

• The Bureau of Land Management.

• Today, the governments at all levels have "allodial" title to all property and permit those who have paid for those properties to have possession in exchange for a property tax.

• Owners are actually renters.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

• The Corporate Tax Act of 1909, a misapplication of the 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

• The Revenue Act of 1913, Section 2,

• Income Taxation.

• Joint House Resolution 192 of 1933.

• The Social Security Act of 1936.

• Taxes on Medicare and Medicaid.

• State, county, and local taxes.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

• The Federal & State Estate Tax.

• Reformed Probate Laws

• Limited inheritance via arbitrary inheritance tax statutes.

• Partially accomplished by enactment of various state and federal "estate tax" laws taxing the "privilege" of transferring property after death and gift before death.

• Inheritance taxes are up to 50 percent after paying a lifetime of taxes.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

• Government seizures and tax liens.

• Public Law 99-570 in 1986.

• Executive order 11490, Sections 1205 and 2002, which gives private land to the Department of Urban Development.

• The imprisonment of "terrorists" and those who speak out or write against the government in the 1997 Crime/Terrorist Bill.

• IRS confiscation of property without due process, and persecution of those critical - "rebels" - of government policies and actions, frequently accomplished by prosecuting them in a courtroom drama on charges of violations of non-existing administrative or regulatory laws.

• The DEA and other enforcement departments have actually implemented quota systems on the value confiscated.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

• The Federal Reserve Bank, the system of privately-owned Federal Reserve banks which maintain a monopoly on the valueless debt "money" in circulation.

• The system was nationally organized by the Federal Reserve act of 1913.

• All local banks are members of the Fed system, and are regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

• This private bank has an exclusive monopoly in money creation which in reality has ended the need for revenue from taxes.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transportation in the hands of the state.

• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Transportation (DOT) mandated through the ICC Act of 1887.

• The Federal Radio Commission in 1927.

• The Commissions Act of 1934.

• The Civil Aeronautics Act and Interstate Commerce Commission, both established in 1938.

• The Federal Aviation Administration in 1958, becoming part of the Department of Transportation in 1966.

• Federal Highway Act of 1916 (federal funds made available to states for highway construction).

• The interstate highway system, 1944. Funding began in 1956.

• Interstate Commerce Commission given authority by Congress to regulate trucking and carriers on inland waterways, 1935-1940.

• Executive Orders 11490 and 10999.

• State mandated driver's licenses.

• Depaartment of Transportation regulations.

• Internet censorship, and warrantless monitoring of communications.

• The postal monopoly, AMTRACK and CONRAIL.

• Vehicle licenses control the highways at the state level.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

• The Desert Entry Act.

• The Department of Agriculture in 1862.

• Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1933 - farmers will receive government aid if and only if they relinquish control of farming activities.

• Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933.

• The Hoover Dam in 1936.

• The Department of Commerce and Labor.

• The Department of Interior.

• The Environmental Protection Agency.

• The Bureau of Land Management.

• The Bureau of Reclamation.

• The Bureau of Mines.

• The National Park Service.

• The IRS control of business through corporate regulations.

• Incentives for some industries, excessive taxation on others.

• Regulation of minutia on a grand scale.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of Industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

• The first labor unions, known as federations, appeared in 1820.

• The National Labor Union, established in 1866.

• The American Federation of Labor, established in 1886.

• The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 placed railways under federal regulation.

• The Department of Labor, 1913.

• Labor-management negotiations sanctioned under the Railway Labor Act of 1926.

• The Civil Works Administration, in 1933.

• The Social Security Administration.

• The national debt and inflation caused by the communal bank has caused the need for a dual family.

• Woman in the workplace since the 1920's.

• The 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

• The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, whose stated purpose was to free interstate commerce from disruptive strikes by eliminating the cause of the strike.

• The Works Progress Administration in 1935.

• The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which mandated the 40-hour work week, time-and-a-half for overtime, and set the "minimum wage" scale.

• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 - effectively the equal liability of all to labor, and assorted unions, affirmative action, the Federal Public Works Program and Executive order 11000.

• Forced unionization.

• Regulatory control of market pricing.

• The Equal Rights Amendment - women do equal work that men do including the military, and since passage it would make women subject to the draft.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

• The Planning Reorganization Act of 1949.

• Zoning (Title 17 1910-1990) and Super Corporate Farms, as well as Executive orders 11647, 11731 (ten regions) and Public Law 89-136.

• Subsidized creation of networks of utility services to build vast amounts in locations.

• Food processing companies, with the co-operation of the Farmers Home Administration foreclosures, are buying up farms and creating "conglomerates."

10. Free education for all children in government schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form.

• Taxation for public schools, which train the young to work for the communal debt system.

• The gradual shift from private education to publicly funded began in the Northern States in the early 1800's.

• In 1887, federal money unconstitutionally began funding specialized education.

• The Smith-Lever Act of 1914, vocational education.

• The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 and other relief acts of the 1930's.

• The federal school lunch program of 1935.

• The National School Lunch Act of 1946.

• The National Defense Education Act of 1958, a reaction to Russia's Sputnik satellite demonstration, provided grants to education's specialties.

• A federal school aid law passed in 1965, which greatly enlarged federal role in education.

• Head Start programs, textbooks, library books.

• The Department of Education, the NEA and outcome-based education.

The Folly of Democratic Socialism

In 2010, Hans-Hermann Hoppe published a book called A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism. It was reprinted in 2018 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and they made a brochure out of it called Social Democracy.

Here's a passage addressing the origins of social democracy:

Much more so than any theoretical argument, it has been the disappointing experience with Russian-type socialism which has led to a constant decline in the popularity of orthodox Marxist socialism and has spurred the emergence and development of modern social-democratic socialism.

Both types of socialism, to be sure, derive from the same ideological sources. Both are egalitarian in motivation, at least in theory, and both have essentially the same ultimate goal: the abolishment of capitalism as a social system based on private ownership and the establishment of a new society, characterized by brotherly solidarity and the eradication of scarcity; a society in which everyone is paid “according to his needs.”

From the very beginnings of the socialist movement in the mid-nineteenth century, though, there have been conflicting ideas on the methods best suited for achieving these goals. While generally there was agreement on the necessity of socializing the means of production, there were always diverging opinions on how to proceed. On the one hand, within the socialist movement there were the advocates of a revolutionary course of action. They propagated the violent overthrow of the existing governments, the complete expropriation of all capitalists in one stroke, and the temporary (i.e., until scarcity would indeed, as promised, be eradicated) dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., of those who were not capitalists but who had to sell their labor services, in order to stabilize the new order.

On the other hand there were the reformists who advocated a gradualist approach. They reasoned that with the enlargement of the franchise, and ultimately with a system of universal suffrage, socialism’s victory could be attained through democratic, parliamentary action. This would be so because capitalism, according to common socialist doctrine, would bring about a tendency toward the proletarization of society, i.e., a tendency for fewer people to be self-employed and more to become employees instead. And in accordance with common socialist beliefs, this tendency would in turn produce an increasingly uniform proletarian class consciousness which then would lead to a swelling voter turnout for the socialist party. And, so they reasoned, as this strategy was much more in line with public opinion (more appealing to the mostly peacefully-minded workers and at the same time less frightening to the capitalists), by adopting it, socialism’s ultimate success would only become more assured.

Further on in this work, Hoppe asserts that as a consequence for this gradualist social democratic version of socialism there would be less investment in the development and improvement in one's skill set that takes place and as a consequence it's going to be harder for you to earn income on your own.

That's interesting, given the criticisms that we just went over from Marxist doctrine reflecting on capitalism.

At the same time, as a person’s income simultaneously becomes dependent on Politics, i.e., on society’s decision on how to redistribute taxes (which is reached, to be sure, not by contracting, but rather by superimposing one person’s will on another’s recalcitrant one!), the more dependent it becomes, the more people will have to politicalize, i.e., the more time and energy they will have to invest in the development of their special talents for achieving personal advantages at the expense (i.e., in a noncontractual way) of others or of preventing such exploitation from occurring.

Marxist-Leninists understand the brutality of the state, but see it as instrumental and necessary to enforce their orthodoxy. That is, until society can become classless and the state withers away.

Democratic socialists have a naive view that the state can be resculpted into a benevolent force. You can vote, tax, spend, and regulate your way out of problems.

What Marxist-Leninists fail to grasp is that rather than wither away, the state in all of its component parts seeks to retain and expand often for its own sake.

Have you seen a teacher's union organize full stop when their gravy train faces even a modest reform?

External Resources:

• Social Democracy by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

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Time Stamps:

• The Great Kerfuffle Rant (0:00)

• Background on Yemen and the Houthi Rebellion (2:48)

• Placating the Saudis and Siding with Al Qaeda (6:46)

• Iran Claims Antarctica (10:20)

• The Russia Russia Song (16:19)

• Closing Remarks (16:46)

The Great Kerfuffle Rant

Does "kerfuffle" belong on a tombstone?

I think not.

Listen for my rant.

Background on Yemen and the Houthi Rebellion

Guiding my introduction to the Yemeni conflict is Enough Already by Scott Horton.

Here are some essential highlights:

• "The Houthis had formed... as a reaction against Saudi Arabia’s attempt to export radical Wahhabist Islam to their region."

• "A major excuse for Saudi and American intervention against the Houthis in Yemen is that they are backed by Iran."

• "For years, the Saudis have deliberately bombed the country’s infrastructure and other civilian targets such as the electricity, water and sewage works, schools, hospitals, factories, bridges, farms, markets, car and truck dealerships, fishermen in their boats, weddings, funerals, civilian apartment buildings, refugee camps and even near-ancient homes that had been passed down within families for centuries."

Placating the Saudis and Siding with Al Qaeda

The US government has reported of a missile attack on a cargo ship.

The BBC reports:

Two missiles have hit a ship off Yemen and caused a fire on board, authorities say, in another apparent attack by Yemen's rebel Houthi movement.

The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency said the unnamed vessel was in the Gulf of Aden when it was attacked and that US-led coalition forces had responded.

A maritime security firm identified it as a Palau-flagged cargo ship.

Dave DeCamp at Antiwar.com reports on findings from a recent investigation, linking former Al Qaeda members to the US-backed Yemini forces.

An investigation from BBC has revealed that the UAE recruited al-Qaeda members who now work for the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a Yemeni southern separatist group that is part of the US and Saudi-backed Yemeni government.

The UAE joined Saudi Arabia in invading Yemen in 2015 to fight the Houthis, who are officially known as Ansar Allah. The US threw its weight behind the Saudi/UAE coalition, and previous reporting revealed the coalition had recruited al-Qaeda fighters to join its ranks over the years.

The new BBC investigation cited a document obtained by a whistleblower that revealed 11 former members of al-Qaeda now work in the STC, which wishes to separate north and south Yemen, restoring the borders before Yemen unified in 1990.

Yemeni sources told BBC that a former senior al-Qaeda official and suspect in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, Nasser al-Shiba, is now a commander in an STC military unit. The STC is part of the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), which was formed in 2022 when the Saudis reached a ceasefire with the Houthis and gave up on reinstating former President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

Iran Claims Antarctica

The Hindustan Times reports that Iran has claimed Antarctica for "military and scientific work," according to Navy Commander Rear Admiral Shahram Irani.

What are they going to do with it?

I suppose you can argue that technology, territory, and geography all have its advantages. But it's Iran. Even at their worst, are they going to have terrorist training camps where they figure out how not to melt like icicles? It's obviously not the climate they're used to at all.

According to Cool Antarctica:

There has never been any commercial mining in Antarctica, there are no current plans to mine Antarctica and mining is currently completely banned by the Antarctic Treaty until 2048. There are no known future plans by any of the Antarctic Treaty nations to reverse this decision.

But apparently, Russia has at least winged the idea around.

In 2022, PBS reported:

Supergiant oilfields are simmering below the Southern Ocean, the warming waters at the bottom of the Earth that wrap around the melting, icy Antarctic, a litany of Kremlin sources suggest.

Despite the 1998 Antarctic mining ban — ratified by Russia and 28 other states — some of the so-called loot in the Kremlin’s crosshairs appears cached within large marine sedimentary basins off East Antarctica’s Indian Ocean sector.

That supposed loot may equal a climate-busting 500 billion barrels of hydrocarbon “resources” — the building blocks for oil and gas — claims a bombshell statement released by the Kremlin’s mineral explorer, Rosgeo.

Issued February 2020 from the Antarctic gateway port of Cape Town, and first reported by S&P Global, the statement hardly cracked a nod in media swamped by pandemic news. Yet, its revelations were staggering — it did not say how much of those stocks were recoverable, but at 500 billion barrels such largesse would outstrip global annual oil consumption of 35 billion barrels by about 15 times.

So many measures are taken in the US to keep oil prices propped up, and overseas to keep adversaries from competing and supplying it.

I don't want to have to say the Nordstream pipelines were likely among them, but...

External Resources:

• BOOK: Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism by Scott Horton

• Ship on fire in Gulf of Aden after missile attack by BBC News

• Investigation Reveals Former Al-Qaeda Members Are Part Of US-Backed Yemeni Government Forces by Dave DeCamp

• Iran claims Antarctica; US State Department responds to safety challenge against global treaty by Ashima Grover

• Human Impacts on Antarctica and Threats to the Environment - Mining and Oil by Cool Antarctica

• ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’: Despite Mining Ban, Russia Scours Antarctica for Massive Fossil Fuel Deposits by Tiara Walters

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Time Stamps:

• Dean Recruits Liddy (Skit) (0:00)

• What Happened at the Watergate Complex? (2:38)

• Meet the “Ex-CIA” Burglars (4:48)

• Was Liddy a Dupe? (7:45)

• An Eye For the Dirt (10:25)

• What Did Dean Know, and When Did He Know It? (13:53)

The following is based on revised historical accounts that challenge a widely accepted view of the events surrounding Watergate.

On June 17, 1972, the second of two break-ins at the DNC Headquarters at the Watergate Complex occured.

Most Americans know that President Richard Nixon disgraced himself in a cover-up, and was eventually forced to resign or face impeachment and removal.

But what most of us don't know is what truly motivated the break-in to begin with. Mark Felt, famously known as "Deep Throat," believed it may have been “a White House operation, a CIA operation, or both.”

Meet the Burglars

Known then only by the monikor "Deep Throat" at the time, Felt secretly guided the reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post through their investigation.

This reporting set the standard for modern investigative reporting.

While to be sure it has its value in policing and potentially exposing wrongdoing by the rich and powerful, it's often coupled with bias, sensationalism, and a hidden agenda.

At approximately 2:30 a.m. on June 17, 1972, five men in suits, with rubber gloves, cash, and scores of electronic equipment were arrested. Four of them were Cuban emigres who fled the Castro regime and participated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion with the CIA.

Here's a real curveball:

Eugenio Rolando Martinez, a Cuban-American burglar, fought the Metropolitan Police for a notebook with a key taped to it, matching the desk of DNC secretary Ida “Maxie” Wells.

The fifth burglar was James McCord, then-director of security for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CRP, or more crudely, dubbed "CREEP"). McCord was also a recently retired CIA agent, who served as an advisor in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The same burglars made their way into the Watergate Complex just two weeks ago.

E. Howard Hunt, an ostensibly retired CIA agent (who had falsely retired twice before), was soon identified as a supervisor for the burglary. For some time following this "retirement,” Hunt pushed hard to make his way into the Nixon administration on a part-time basis.

On December 8, 1972, Hunt's wife, Dorothy, was killed in a plane crash. Next to her body was $10,000 in cash. McCord eventually described Dorothy Hunt as a courier for "hush money" to the Senate, a claim met with substantial contention.

Not only was this mysterious event a personal tragedy for Howard Hunt, it also complicated his legal defense. Indeed, Hunt's lawyers would struggle to retain his notebook, which would have been of use in a "CIA defense."

More on that in a bit.

Was Liddy a Dupe?

G. Gordon Liddy, also a supervisor for the break-ins, was the only participant of the seven without a history with the CIA. Previously, Liddy had worked as an FBI agent. He had worked with the Plumbers unit, famous for the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Soon after, Liddy joined the CRP by the insistence of John W. Dean, who promised exciting intelligence opportunities and a handsome budget.

Between Liddy's blind loyalty and Dean's blind ambition, the pair were like fire and kerosene. Liddy, who offered to take a bullet in service to his country and the administration he served, made for the perfect dupe, had there been any hidden agenda behind the Watergate affair.

Liddy, who had thought the break-ins were aimed at opposition research and obtaining strategic information from the DNC headquarters, came to terms with the much stronger possibility that he was a dupe for a larger plot after reading Silent Coup by Len Colodny, a powerful, groundbreaking counter to the conventional Watergate narrative.

By involving Liddy, the CIA could concoct a defense that their operation had the blessing of the Nixon administration.

The CIA's charter confines its operations to foreign territory, but the federal courts often gave them leeway domestically if they could demonstrate that their actions were requested in the service of the President. This defense could be bolstered by pointing to the CRP funding and the notebooks that kept records of even the most trivial suggestions by the President and White House personnel.

An Eye For the Dirt

In many historical accounts is the testimony of an ambitious but inexperienced lawyer with an inflated job title by the name of John W. Dean. In fact, John Ehrlichman, formerly the White House Counsel, now Nixon's Chief Domestic Advisor, retained many of the responsibilities traditionally performed by the White House Counsel, now Dean's position.

But most of these accounts fail to provide a sufficient backstory to explain how Dean got himself into the darker forces of the Nixon camp (and as we will find, brought in much of this darkness, himself).

Dean was fired from his first position as a lawyer upon the discovery that he pursued a television license in secret for a client's competitor. He developed a reputation as an idea thief, prompting co-workers to lock away their papers out of fear that Dean would help himself to their contents.

Dean climbed the latter through a series of political connections, demonstrating himself as a shrewd opportunist bent on seeking compromising information on political opponents. Including - perhaps particularly - an interest in sexual dirt on high-profile Democrats.

Maureen Biner, soon to be his wife, had been best friends with Heidi Rikan, who under an alias ran an escort service in Washington DC that attracted the attention of a nosy CIA known for surveillance of prostitutes and their johns.

Remember the key that Eugenio Rolando Martinez had in his possession at the time of his arrest, matching the desk of Ida "Maxie" Wells at the DNC? Allegedly, this desk had, as Mitt Romney may word it, "binders full of women" that Democrats could hook up with for a night of adult entertainment.

Dean was not new to the subject. The last time he attempted any investigation of sexual dirt, he found plenty of it. The only problem was, it also included many Republicans.

What Did Dean Know, and When Did He Know It?

By early June of 1972, neither Hunt nor Liddy saw the benefit of a second break-in at the Watergate complex. While Dean denies ordering the break-in, Howard Hunt and Jeb McGruder have affirmed otherwise. This conclusion was shared by Silent Coup author Len Colodny.

Over the next nine months, Dean professed no knowledge of White House involvement in the break-ins. Far from a bystander in the dark, some believe Dean to be the architect of the cover-up. As the cover-up fell apart, Nixon assigned Dean to write up the details of the break-in. After Dean failed to explain the break-in without incriminating himself, Nixon fired him.

Remember the notebook that kept the operational notes of E. Howard Hunt? Apparently, it was destroyed by John Dean. Dean also advised Hunt to plead guilty, in effect, revoking any Fifth Amendment plea. Between this and the death of his wife, Hunt's hands were tied, and his "CIA defense" would never see the light of day.

Earl Silbert, Jr. was assigned to prosecute the Watergate break-ins. According to Colodny, Silbert believed the aim of Watergate was "embarrassing tapes of a sexual nature" that could be used as political blackmail. However, the prosecution would avoid making any connections to CIA participation, as it would facilitate the CIA defense, which would drastically weaken their case.

As for Dean, he became preoccupied with obtaining immunity once the Watergate cover-up had failed. He was willing to implicate everyone but himself if it bought him time outside of a jail cell.

External Resources:

• John Dean’s Watergate Whitewash by James Rosen

• BOOK: The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened by John O'Conner

• PODCAST: The Mysteries of Watergate by John O'Conner

• VIDEO: The Temple Lectures by Geoff Shephard

• PODCAST: The Fighter by Red Pilled America

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Time Stamps:

• Introduction/Putin Phone Call (0:00)

• Chris Wallace's Shell Game (3:05)

• Hillary Clinton Attacks Tucker - Without Evidence (6:14)

• Useful Idiots, Puppy Dogs, and Beltway Roadkill (7:45)

• Unprepared For an Honest Interview (9:31)

• Armstrong's Real Fact Check (12:22)

• Closing Remarks (15:24)

Chris Wallace's Shell Game

Some so-called reporters make their shell games obvious to anyone attuned to suspect a hidden agenda that they can't conduct a presidential debate without looking like a third debater. Lester Holt is among the ranks. So is Chris Wallace, a shell of a man with a shell of a game.

Wallace responded to the Carlson-Putin interview by taking to social media a short clip of him asking Putin why journalists seem to die or face a serious injury if they dissent in Russia.

The clip, it must be said, cuts off immediately after.

It's not that the question isn't warranted. Journalists - even the most despicable among them - should not be in prison or murdered for being adversarial.

But what was omitted?

I'd have appreciated hearing the exchange instead of a sensational snapshot. Unless we're throwing punches for its own sake, and buying every baked-in assumption of "good Zelensky, bad Putin," this omission tells us as much as it discards.

What's behind the Western media slugfest? Do we have a right to know, or is that being a Russian apologist?

It's curious to include Tucker Carlson in that bunch, as he took the opportunity to push Putin to free an American journalist who works for the Wall Street Journal.

But maybe you can do that without poisoning the well. Even if it takes the edge off of whatever sensation Chris Wallace was after.

Hillary Clinton Attacks Tucker - Without Evidence

Even after running one of the worst political campaigns ever known to mankind, you still feel the need to crawl out of the gutter and do an interview once in a while.

We may or may not be talking about Hillary Clinton.

Tom Luongo recently published a response entitled What Everyone Is Missing About the Putin/Carlson Talk. He was keen to call Hillary Clinton out on her “useful idiot” attack on Carlson.

Hillary Clinton was trotted out to lie about Tucker Carlson, calling him a “useful idiot,” and “puppy dog” and a joke in Russian media, which is an outright lie. Hillary’s harpy laugh made an appearance alongside a sycophant interviewer as they joked about Carlson’s having been fired from every legitimate news agency.

We were treated to a common sight: Two Beltway insiders laughing inside their echo chamber and only our sick fascination with roadkill makes it even remotely interesting.

So, the whole exercise is reframed as Puppy Dog Tucker throwing softballs to Liar Putin to distract us away from the sum and substance of their talk."

Unprepared For an Honest Interview

Some of the greatly exaggerated "backlash" against Tucker Carlson for interviewing Vladimir Putin involves a snippet of Putin's own words.

So, let's go to their source, The Kremlin (as long as it's convenient), to see the broader context.

Putin prepared himself for a more hostile interview, and went on to say:

To be honest, I thought that he would behave aggressively and ask so-called sharp questions. I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give me the opportunity to respond in the same way. He tried to interrupt me several times, but still, surprisingly for a Western journalist, he turned out to be patient and listened to my long dialogues, especially those related to history. Honestly speaking, I did not fully enjoy that interview.

You can take that any way you like. Putin wanted to get "sharp" in return, and kinda looked goofy telling Tucker something like, "thank God the CIA turned you down when you wanted to join them," since he was patient all the while asking questions that Westerners wanted answers for.

The less intriguing part of Putin's comments for the Regime Lapdogs was:

But [Tucker] acted strictly according to his plan, and he did what he intended. As for how informative it turned out to be in the end, that is not for me to judge. It is for the viewers, listeners and possibly readers of this material to judge.

As in this podcast episode, you will find a misalignment between Putin's response and the attempt by regime apologists to resculpt it to their liking.

Armstrong's Real Fact Check

Martin Armstrong offers a pinpointed historical analysis of the interview.

I paid very close attention to Tucker’s interview with Putin. I found Putin honest but curiously restrained. He could have easily gone off on the interference in the Russian 2000 election, his request to interrogate Bill Browder and the fake dossier manufactured for Hillary Clinton and her co-conspirator, the grandfather of the Neocons, John McCain. When Tucker pressed Putin about talking to American presidents, he explained that they really do not make the decisions – it is the Deep State where he carefully avoids naming anyone.

Then, I have seen people claiming everything Putin said was propaganda. Sorry – he was very honest. I have the declassified documents from the Clinton Administration, and Russia was offered the chance to join NATO. That was why the old hardline Communists, who saw that as Russia’s surrender to America, attempted a coup against Gorbachev. That is when Yeltsin stood on the tank and pleaded with the military not to fire on the people. The military stood down, the coup collapsed, and Yeltsin became the new head of state. These are facts that cannot be disputed. The West has perpetually sought to take over Russia since the days of Napoleon because it is perhaps the richest country on the planet insofar as natural resources are concerned...

The US orchestrated the blowing up of Nordstream, and in return, they promised Germany to keep their mouth shut, and the US taxpayer would pay for a pipeline from Nigeria to Europe. Nigeria would also be the first test for CBDCs, and everything was going well until there was a coup in Niger where the pipeline had to go through. Victoria Nuland jumped on a plane because this was messing up the Neocon scheme to cut off the energy income for Russia again. This has always been an economic war to destroy Russia. Putin was a gentlemen and did not want to get into a blame game.

External Resources:

• What Everyone Is Missing About the Putin/Carlson Talk by Tom Luongo

• Tucker interview with Putin – Real Fact Check by Martin Armstrong

• Answers to questions from journalist Pavel Zarubin by the Zarubin Report

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Time Stamps:

• Opening: News Ruckus

• Background on Israel and Hamas

• King Bibi Loses His Grip

• What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas

• Why Hamas Outfoxed Israeli Security

Since the horrific Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7th, some of the most notable advocates of free speech have failed the test of their convictions.

Dave Rubin is Exhibit A, but by no means is he alone.

A Woke Left neither demands nor necessitates a Woke Right.

Background on Israel and Hamas

What is Israel?

• "A Concentration Camp?"

• "An Open-Air Prison?"

• "A Democracy?"

Who are the Palestinians?

Are they Hamas?

What is the distinction - if any - between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority?

Hamas is based on an acronym interpreted as "Islamic Resistance Movement," and was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a cleric and activist of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Its charter calls for the destruction of Israel.

So, who is funding them?

The governments of Turkey and Iran are among their major contributors. As Egypt allowed some commercial goods to enter Gaza, Hamas has reportedly collected $12 million a month from taxes.

It seems that the closer you get to the heart of the issue, the more divisive - and irreconcilable - it becomes.

What's the heart of the issue?

Whether Israel has a right to exist as a nation-state. And, why there seems to be a hang-up on the much-touted two-state solution that would benefit the Palestinians, who see the Israeli government as an occupying force, asserting control over land that doesn't rightfully belong to them.

The Abrahamic religions also share claims to holy sites within the region that is Palestine. How can such a complex dispute be peacefully resolved?

Property claims at the individual level require an order ex ante that would prevent such a conflict when more than one party will inevitably discover an interest in the same property title.

Add that to entire civilizations, and the entire course of history to the known universe, and no sage in the human flesh seems qualified to adjudicate an agreeable resolution.

The ex ante orders - plural - rest upon which holy book is referenced, and which religious scholars are deemed best suited to interpret them. In other words, the question of whom shall control the land of Palestine.

King Bibi Loses His Grip

Despite rousing acclaim by neoconservatives and interventions in the past for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the October 7th attacks have called his leadership into question.

So much so that Max Boot has called for his resignation, critically denouncing Netanyahu's attention given to the warning signs, internally and otherwise.

This summer, as tens of thousands of Israelis protested Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul bill and some Israeli reservists vowed they would refuse to serve if it passed, Israeli intelligence warned the prime minister that “the enemy perceives the summer of 2023 as a historic weak point for Israel.” The success of Saturday’s assault simply confirmed to Hamas that Israel is weaker than it looks. “We were surprised by this great collapse,” an exiled Hamas leader told the Associated Press. “We were planning to make some gains and take prisoners to exchange them. This army was a paper tiger.”

Although Boot disputes certain elements of this portrayal, he maintains his condemnation of Netanyahu.

The awful events of last weekend have exposed Netanyahu’s sham. Far from keeping the nation safe, he divided it and gave Israel’s enemies the impression that it was weak. He disregarded warnings from his own intelligence chiefs — and reportedly, more recently, from Egyptian intelligence about “something big” brewing in Gaza. Netanyahu denies getting the warning from Egypt, but he can’t deny hearing from his own intelligence chiefs. Nor can Netanyahu deny that he spent years propping up Hamas so as to lessen any pressure on Israel to compromise with the Palestinians."

What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas

One of the most insightful pieces on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is from Foreign Affairs. Polling data revealed that prior to the October 7th attacks and Israel's subsequent retaliation, a major disconnect existed between Hamas and the majority of Palestinians.

Arab Barometer, a research network where we serve as co-principal investigators, conducted a survey in Gaza and the West Bank days before the Israel-Hamas war broke out. The findings, published here for the first time, reveal that rather than supporting Hamas, the vast majority of Gazans have been frustrated with the armed group’s ineffective governance as they endure extreme economic hardship. Most Gazans do not align themselves with Hamas’s ideology, either. Unlike Hamas, whose goal is to destroy the Israeli state, the majority of survey respondents favored a two-state solution with an independent Palestine and Israel existing side by side.

Why Hamas Outfoxed Israeli Security

Based on accounts from both sides of the conflict, the Israeli government believed it could contain the threat from Hamas with economic incentives for the people of Gaza.

"Since a 2021 war with Hamas, Israel has sought to provide a basic level of economic stability in Gaza by offering incentives including thousands of permits so Gazans can work in Israel or the West Bank, where salaries in construction, agriculture or service jobs can be 10 times the level of pay in Gaza.

“We believed that the fact that they were coming in to work and bringing money into Gaza would create a certain level of calm. We were wrong," an Israeli army spokesperson said.

"While Israel was led to believe it was containing a war-weary Hamas by providing economic incentives to Gazan workers, the group's fighters were being trained and drilled, often in plain sight, a source close to Hamas said.

..."Hamas gave Israel the impression that it was not ready for a fight," said the source close to Hamas, describing plans for the most startling assault since the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago when Egypt and Syria surprised Israel and made it fight for its survival.

"Hamas used an unprecedented intelligence tactic to mislead Israel over the last months, by giving a public impression that it was not willing to go into a fight or confrontation with Israel while preparing for this massive operation," the source said."

IDF Spokesman Major Nir Dinar put it this way:

This is our 9/11. They got us. They surprised us and they came fast from many spots - both from the air and the ground and the sea."

External Resources:

• What is Hamas? What to know about its origins, leaders and funding by Kali Robinson

• Israel doesn’t need an inquiry to decide: Netanyahu must go by Max Boot

• What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas by Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins

• How Hamas duped Israel as it planned devastating attack by Samia Nakhoul and Jonathan Saul

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(0:00) Opening

(4:59) Peanuts on the Floor

(8:07) What to Know About Vacating the Speaker

(10:56) Matt Gaetz' Press Release

(12:53) Strange Developments in “Chaos”

(16:46) Is Gaetz "Chaotic" Enough?

(18:10) Phone Call with Vladimir Putin

A transcript of this episode is available.

Peanuts on the Floor

Chaos tends to spark an interest in the political world. It upsets a certain crowd, while another embraces it.

But who is allowed and permitted to orchestrate it? And in what form is it allowable before our Platonic overlords who reign over the Potomac?

$33 trillion of debt, no problem. And not one trash can to be cut, even in a more modest year. If we have to make work for workers in the federal government, we will throw peanuts on the floor if we have to.

But when the temptation comes to act decisively in the other direction, "Get behind me, Satan!" We wouldn't want to label you "far-right" in every lackey newspaper. So you better play ball.

You see, Nancy Pelosi is allowed to rip up the speech of a President we find unacceptable. Donald Trump was just lucky she didn't rip off his wig.

But when Matt Gaetz wants to remove the Speaker of the House, that's beyond the pale.

That's why Hillary Clinton wants half the voting population formally re-educated. Nevermind that Trump had endorsed McCarthy for Speaker. Anything to make America say "oh, great" again.

You don't think we're actually here to represent them, do you? Who do they think they are, Saudi Arabia? By the way, the guy from Lockheed should be here any minute.

But you see, the Speaker is supposed to be boring. You're supposed to be his waterboy. If he wants another omnibus bill, it's all or nothing. With thievery and slush funds for all.

You think he wanted a deal with you? Another day, another dollar to answer to. Where'd it come from this time? It wasn't you. Scram, big boy.

What to Know About Vacating the Speaker

Louis Jacobson from PolitiFact summarizes the situation.

Critics say McCarthy has worked too closely with the House’s Democratic minority, most recently in the battle over a possible federal government shutdown. That battle ended Sept. 30 with an agreement to extend funding through Nov. 17, allowing negotiators to cobble together a new, yearlong funding bill.

Here’s what may lie ahead.

...The difficulty of bringing a motion to vacate the chair has waxed and waned in recent years. Under former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Democrats made the process harder, blocking such motions unless "by direction of a party caucus or conference," presumably meaning the party leadership. A speaker representing the majority likely wouldn’t allow such a vote. A minority leader could try it, but probably would lack the votes to topple a speaker under ordinary circumstances.

After Republicans secured control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections, McCarthy agreed to make it easier to file a motion to vacate the chair. After initially failing to win the speakership, McCarthy made a concession to the GOP bloc opposing him: In the next Congress, any single member could offer a motion to vacate.

Having an easily deposed speaker makes legislating harder. It empowers dissident members and factions at the incumbent speaker’s expense.

Strange Developments in “Chaos”

Since Speaker McCarthy's dismissal, some strange developments have taken shape.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez laid out an interesting tweet that calls out "the Chaos Factory."

But if memory serves us correctly, Ms. AOC wasn't always one for the Decorum of Boredom.

Now, does this just apply to protesters?

We've seen AOC rally around with them, with their bullhorns, agitating against the supposed illegitimacy of the Dobbs decision.

And didn't she vote with the "Chaos Agents" to remove Speaker McCarthy?

Biden shill Harry Sisson dutifully echoed the line.

Is Gaetz "Chaotic" Enough?

Rep. Gaetz has hinted at a change in tone for the next Speaker, even expressing an openness to changing the rules that allowed him to remove Speaker McCarthy.

Rep. Matt Gaetz said Thursday he is "open-minded" on a House rules change that would abolish the tool he used to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker, while telling Fox News Digital that he would support either Rep. Jim Jordan or Rep. Steve Scalise as his replacement.

...Lawmakers voted to oust McCarthy Tuesday from the speakership for the first time in the history of the House of Representatives.

"I’m leaning against changing our exiting rules for any particular purpose," Gaetz told Fox News Digital during an interview Thursday. "Though, I am open-minded and would be willing to hear anyone’s presentation if they were offering a rules change."

External Resources:

• Congressman Matt Gaetz Files Motion to Vacate Against Speaker McCarthy Press Release From Matt Gaetz

• Matt Gaetz’s motion to vacate the House speakership: what to know by Louis Jacobson

• Gaetz 'open-minded' on rules change to eliminate motion to vacate, would support Jordan or Scalise as speaker by Brooke Singman

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The Podcast Edition of the Four-Part Series

(0:00) Intro

(3:06) Part I: Reemergent Nations

(13:10) Part II: The Crucial Flaw of Wilsonian Foreign Policy

(22:40) Part III: Rethinking Secession

(31:53) Part IV: The Anarcho-Capitalist Model

Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/murray-rothbards-nations-by-consent#details

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And a Strange Sanctions Fight With China (0:00) Introduction (1:00) The Problem For Nero the Police Dog (4:52) Incorporation Doctrine: A Century Old Sin (9:31) Nero Answers to Idaho (11:05) How Dare China Sell Itself Tech Supplies Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/nero-the-police-dog-and-the-incorporation#details

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Passing the Buck and Their Pellets, Too Time Stamps: (0:00) Introduction (1:58) The Great $2 Trillion Voice Vote of 2020 (8:29) Chris Farley's Newt Gingrich Impersonation (9:03) A Moment of Extreme Regime Stupidity: Mitt Romney Talks Hot Dogs (9:50) Vivek Ramaswamy vs. the "Service" Canard (17:01) Karl Rove, the 2004 Conspiratorial Demogoguery Salesman of the Year (23:13) Public Ignorance, Captured Institutions, and David French Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/talk-is-cheap-and-a-voice-vote-is#details

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A Victory Lap Full of "Technical Difficulties"

(0:00) Technical Difficulties

(1:05) Corporate Landlords and Private Debt

(9:16) The Abolition of Disney's Special Privileges

(14:27) "Alex Jones" on the J&J Vaccine

(15:08) Vivek Ramaswamy Goes Overboard on the Fentanyl Crisis

(21:28) Durham's Dirty Look - and Phony Report

(27:25) Chris Christie's TDS Tweet Storm

(33:19) Closing Remarks

Substack Companion Article:

https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/popcorn-party-a-best-of-compilation#details

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Behind the Appeal of the America First 2.0 Hybrid Candidate Time Stamps:

(0:00) Opening

(1:53) Vivek's Advantages Over Trump and DeSantis

(3:26) The Administrative State, Anti-Wokeness, and Anti-ESG

(8:49) Is Ramaswamy Eligible to Serve as President?

(14:11) The Fentanyl Crisis and… a Military Confrontation at the Border?

(20:32) Closing Remarks Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/vivek-ramaswamys-presidential-prospects#details

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A Revealing Look at Bronze-Age Republican Leftovers

Time Stamps:

(0:00) Opening

(1:59) If We Don't Deserve Joe Biden

(2:47) Nikki Haley's Accountability Problem

(7:16) Haley Stumped on Nord Stream Pipeline Attack

(11:07) Did The US Blow Up the Nord Stream Pipelines?

(13:30) Pence's “Non-Concern” Rests On American Cold War Mythology

(17:21) Putin Vows to Avenge Kerch Bridge Attack

Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/neocon-swamp-walruses-are-not-our#details

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And the Deep State Intends to Get Deeper

Time Stamps:

(0:00) Opening

(2:20) Pompeo is MAGA's Deep State Neocon

(9:21) Chris Christie's TDS Tweet Storm

(15:13) DeSantis Won't Actually Eliminate Anything

(20:06) Austro-Jeffersonian Class Theory

(23:20) Mr. Menger's Final Thought

Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/the-only-thing-conservatives-will#details

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And Speaking Freely On All Things

Time Stamps:

(0:00) Opening

(3:15) White House Cocaine Scandal

(8:19) Biden's Tech Censorship Shot Down

(13:12) Politico on Biden's Censorship Injunction

(14:48) Tommy Smith Phone Call

Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/snorting-into-the-white-house-hazmat#details

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Plato hoped to see "philosopher-kings" take reign, as hypothetically, they'd establish goodness and justice in a way others could not.

But clearly, we are not "philosopher-kings," nor are we ruled by them.

Time Stamps:

(0:00) Opening

(0:21) Man is a Political Animal

(1:13) Neither Philosophers, Nor Historians

(4:11) What is an Austro-Jeffersonian?

(5:47) Ridicule and Irreverence in Pop Media

(6:49) Please Clap For the Crony Cabal

(9:04) Paine, God, Democracy, and Discord

Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/platonic-philosopher-kings-they-are?sd=pf

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Privacy: From Snowden to the Global Digital Currency

Defending Our Sacred Right to be Left Alone

Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden courageously exposed the NSA's illegal spy ring ten years ago. Also, what are the dangers of a central bank digital currency going global?

Time Stamps:

(0:00) Opening

(1:24) Glenn Greenwald, Dissident Journalist

(3:13) A Bald-Headed Man Tells a Bald-Faced Lie

(4:45) PRISM and Big Tech Collusion

(8:02) A Thought Criminal Serves the Public

(9:50) What Underpins the World Order

(13:18) What if it Goes Global, Pippa?

(17:57) Central Banking Digital Currency Gains Steam

(21:42) Global CBDC: The Next Creature From Jekyll Island?

Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/privacy-from-snowden-to-the-global?sd=pf

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From Owning Land and Labor to Owning Nothing

Time Stamps:

(0:00) Opening

(3:07) John Smith's Vision For the New World

(7:18) The Fertile Assumption and Labor Ownership

(11:00) Unpacking The Great Reset

(17:23) It's All (Crony) Capitalism

Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/the-wefs-technocratic-dystopia-vs?sd=pf#details

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Also: AI's "Trad" Bias, and a Firewall Against ESGTime Stamps: (0:00) Opening (1:27) TPUSA's Con Inc. Shakedown of Ashley St. Clair (4:26) Election Transparency Tweetstorm (7:56) AI is So Trad (15:41) A Firewall Against ESG Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/ashley-st-clair-takes-on-election#details

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Florida Governor Enters 2024 Presidential Race With Twitter "DeSaster" Announcement Time Stamps: (0:00) Opening (1:35) Man, Elonery, and Space (4:20) Should DeSantis Stay in Florida? (7:55) Can Trump Get Out of Florida? (9:13) Witches, Witchhunts, and Goony Leadership (13:33) Yellen’s Obi-Wan Kenobi Stunt (15:24) Hazlitt on Wealth vs. Money (17:47) Jeff Herbener Owns the Libs Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/desantis-sinks-in-on-jet-lag#details

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Clowns, Criminals, and Charlatans Have Loads of Fun Debasing Our Currency Time Stamps:(0:00) Opening(1:41) Felix Salmon on Firing Line(3:53) Rashida Tlaib Wants Two Trillion Dollar Coins(6:42) RFK Tweet Addresses Inflation, Links LewRockwell.com(10:39) Lower the Debt Ceiling(13:03) Clown World Roundup - the Durham Week EditionSubstack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/the-trillion-dollar-clown-mint#details

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Corruption, Debt, and the American WayTime Stamps: (0:00) Opening (1:54) A Dirty Look Isn't Enough (8:03) Manufactured Respectability and the Debt Ceiling (9:43) Maharrey on the Jeffersonian Debt Solution There's a good chance that Special Counsel John Durham was born with a dirty look. Too bad he's controlled opposition. What's the point of a debt ceiling if you have to keep raising it? Luckily, Mike Maharrey at the Tenth Amendment Center has taken this occasion to remind us of how Thomas Jefferson handled the federal debt he inherited.Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/the-buck-stops-where#details

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Fox News Parts Ways With One of the Most Important Newsmen of our Time.(0:00) Opening (4:48) Shut Up and Take My Money(6:40) When CNN Hands You a Lemon(12:25) Behind the Veil at Fox(16:15) Did Zelensky Get Tucker Carlson Canned?In recent years, Tucker Carlson has established himself as a commentator with not only a large following, but a dissenting perspective, often challenging the bandwagon of the day.The tension had been brewing between Tucker and the gatekeepers, and it would boil on from there. It was only a matter of time before it reached a breaking point.Substack Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/is-twitter-the-right-move-for-tucker

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As we dig into the character of Donald Trump that convinced Michael Cohen of a likelihood that a peaceful transfer of power was less than certain, let's affirm this much: stolen elections are not unheard of. Neither are hotly contested election results. Dominion explicitly claims their voting machines are rock solid, even as the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) just recently warned state election officials that electronic voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems were vulnerable to hacking in at least 16 states. Anything against Trump that can be substantiated, Michael Cohen would be eager to confirm. Some things were left unsettled, even in this account. Timestamps:

Historical Precedents For Contested Elections

Real, Real Complicated, But Unsophisticated. Timestamps:

Opening and Skit

Historical Precedents For Contested Elections (1:16)

Real, Real Complicated, But Unsophisticated (11:12) Companion Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/michael-cohens-disloyal-book-predicted?s=w#details

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President Joe Biden recently published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to present a plan to fight inflation as Americans continue to face uncertainty with everyday life and lose confidence in his leadership. The Federal Reserve's raison d'etre as stated has been to "maintain price stability." Yet, since 1913, the US dollar has lost over 96 percent of its value. This was not an accident by the wrong people being appointed to head the organization. This has always been the method and the intent behind spearheading a debt-driven economy.

Substack Show Notes Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/the-feds-cronyism-and-kamikazi-economics?s=w#details

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It's an occasion to commemorate the bravery of those who served throughout our history. But also, one that calls for a proper self-reflection. In 2017, anti-war activist Scott Horton released the book Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan, which predicted the disastrous withdrawal and called out high-ranking officials well before the Afghanistan Papers were released by the Washington Post. Show Notes Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/memorial-day-calls-for-a-proper-reflection?s=w#details

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Jason Lange of Reuters recently covered President Biden's declining approval ratings as they hit an all-time low this week. But is this attributed solely to the Democrats, or are we also paying the “eventual tax” for the trillions spent under President Trump in the name of Covid relief? Show Notes Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/bipartisan-flation-butchers-bidens?s=w#details

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On the eve of the Libertarian Party's national convention in Reno, the Southern Poverty Law Center launched an attack on the Mises Caucus. It was an obvious attempt to associate the Caucus with white nationalism. Also, Henry Kissenger speaks out against expanding the war in Ukraine. https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/southern-poverty-law-centers-ridiculous?sd=fs&s=w#details

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Corporate Monarchy is the best idea since ideas became an idea.

Monarcho-tropism solves the tendency for easy times to create weak men because a strong man will not allow for easy times.

Show Notes Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/getting-monarcho-tropism-right-w?sd=nfs

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Napoleon famously said “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Joe Biden thought he had a knockout punch with the line “Ultra-MAGA,” intended as a term of derision. Instead, it was a remarkable embarrassment that followed a six-month left-wing focus-group study. In terms of trolling warfare, he is MAGA's self-made punching bag. Joe Biden has helped the MAGA movement forget about the Swamp it ultimately failed to drain.

Show Notes Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/joe-biden-is-solving-magas-identity?s=w#details

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Building the Parallel Media Empire: What Must Be Done About Info-Warfare. We live in interesting times. That’s okay. We can find common cause with interesting people, and rock the boat in interesting ways. At the end of the day, the Corporate Press is a managerial construct that serves the powerful by design and weakens the will of those who aren’t. The remedy begins with you and me. Special Shout-Outs to The Jeffersonian Tradition, Going Agrarian, Ragnar Forseti's Newsletter, and Aviel's Libertarian Academy. Show Notes Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/building-the-parallel-media-empire?sd=nfs&s=w

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Is a coherent convergence between the radicalism of market anarchism and pacifism possible, and perhaps even desirable?

Both of these fields of thought require a strong set of convictions and the imagination necessary to navigate accordingly. Far from merely being passivity and weakness, nonviolence as an ethic can be described as a form of power and a force of strength. A willingness to endure mistreatment and hardship without repaying evil with evil. A refusal to cooperate with evil, even in the face of bodily harm. The libertarian Non-Aggression Principle, in essence, qualifies as a subset of Conditional Deontological Pacifism. Show Notes Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/a-glimpse-into-market-anarcho-pacifism?s=w

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In this episode, I conduct a (spoof) roundtable discussion with

Comedian Dave Smith, Peace Activist and ex-CIA Analyst Ray McGovern, Commentator Alex Jones, Charismatic Reverend Joseph Rogers, and Anti-War activist Scott Horton. Topics Discussed: The Attack on Dave Chapelle, Restrictions on the J&J Covid Vaccine, The SCOTUS Roe v. Wade Leak. This is satire for the purpose of entertainment. These impersonations are my own, and not to be construed as actual comments made by actual people. Show Notes: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/real-news-with-a-fake-roundtable?s=w

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Twitter Randostream of Will Chamberlain Thread. Is Elizabeth Deutsch - law clerk for Justice Breyer - responsible for the leak on the Dobbs abortion case? A paper trail covered by Will Chamberlain suggests a strong possibility. Substack Link: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/elizabeth-deutsch-scotus-draft-leaker?s=w Tweet: https://twitter.com/willchamberlain/status/1521685968939630592?t=C8jHBOqGQFTM0NuYbzm5qQ&s=19

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Disney loses its status as a state-favored company with massive monopoly privileges. Or was it just a nice tax break we should all embrace? Does embracing the relief of one party receiving such a break out of an ideological zeal blind us from considering its long-term consequences? Does this create an exclusive symbiotic relationship with the powers that be will grow its arms and legs, and reinforce an artificial disadvantage for its competition? For decades, Disney had served as a most pervasive example of this. Show Notes Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/mickey-mouse-gets-his-due?s=w

Articles Discussed: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-disney-shell-companies-20160408-story.html

https://mises.org/wire/disneys-corporate-welfare-modern-mercantilism

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Though Frank Meyer undoubtedly valued tradition, he synthesized it with individualism, which became known as “fusionism.” On April 16, I published a piece on Substack entitled The Ethics of a Fusionist Liberty, in which I explore this critique, as well as Frank S. Meyer’s radical transformation from a high-ranking member of the Communist Party to what Murray Rothbard would recognize as “by far the most intelligent, as well as the most libertarian-inclined” member of the National Review’s original staff. Show Notes: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/reason-operating-within-tradition?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&s=w Articles Discussed: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/the-ethics-of-a-fusionist-liberty?s=w https://mises.org/library/frank-s-meyer-fusionist-libertarian https://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/the-conservative-anarchist/ https://www.lewrockwell.com/2002/10/ryan-mcmaken/deadly-conservatism/ https://www.lewrockwell.com/2007/05/thomas-woods/do-conservatives-hate-their-own-founder/

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A reluctant rebuttal of Jon Stewart for his treatment of Andrew Sullivan in what came off as a set-up shoutdown interview, when guest Lisa Ross accused Sullivan of racist dog-whistling. Is reconciliation off the radar? A snippet of Brion McClanahan's writing on Reconstruction. An amusing follow-up on my satire episode on the GOP and the LP Mises Caucus. Articles Discussed: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/misinformation-fake-news-and-repressive?s=w https://www.foxnews.com/media/jon-stewart-audience-laughs-agrees-guest-andrew-sullivan-racist https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/reconstruction-and-recreation/ Podcast Episodes Discussed: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/gop-and-lp-mises-caucus-leaks-exposed?s=w https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/misinformation-fake-news-and-repressive-2e7?s=w

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A shocking leak from a neoconservative Republican Party candidate who may be a Frankenstein AI disaster, raising serious questions about an agenda to ditch our European allies. Another hot mic catches prominent members of the Libertarian Party Mises Caucus literally singing praises to Vladimir Putin.

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What's in the news today? More Biden corruption and family trouble. Trump endorses Dr. Oz, takes fallout. Mark Brandly explains why demagogues dominate the political scene. Articles Discussed: https://nypost.com/2022/04/10/biden-family-scheme-unravels/ https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumpworld-figures-go-into-meltdown-after-donald-trump-endorses-dr-oz-in-pennsylvania-senate-race https://mises.org/library/how-win-election

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Will the removal of Title 42 be a disaster for the Biden Administration? It seems so. I offer an invitation-based framework guided by local control, as attempt to reconcile a philosophical conflict on immigration.

Articles Discussed:

Title 42: Biden’s Next Major Blunder? https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/title-42-bidens-next-major-blunder?s=w

The Uninvited Caretaker https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/the-uninvited-caretaker?s=w

Join the AJEL MeWe Group: https://mewe.com/join/f4193661195605qjgl1

And Follow Mr. Menger on Substack

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Interview with Mr. Jeffersonian, host of the Jeffersonian Tradition podcast. The corporate form of enterprise, friend or foe? What should we expect from corporate landlords as a result of a Rentership Society? Is this the Great Feudal Reset? Do product features become bugs when tied to subscriptions? What are the holes in standard libertarian legal theory? What can we learn from the Southern Agrarians? Podcast Episode Discussed: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-jeffersonian-tradition/id1574514521?i=1000554470954 Article Discussed: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/the-great-feudal-reset?s=w

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The connection between Herbert Marcuse's doctrine of Repressive Tolerance and current events. Jon Stewart defends Joe Rogan in response to a "misinformation" critic. Recall the BLM riots, the Covid Big Pharm narrative, and the deception surrounding Ukraine. Article Discussed: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/the-cathedrals-repressive-tolerance MeWe Group: https://mewe.com/join/f4193661195605qjgl1 https://m.facebook.com/102211914645745/

https://twitter.com/mrmenger

https://parler.com/MrMenger Jon Stewart, Judith Miller, Joan Donovan, Herbert Marcuse, Joe Biden

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Spencer Heath MacCallum developed the proprietary community model that inspired the privately-run covenant community of Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Article Discussed: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/the-art-of-the-proprietary-community?s=w MeWe Group: https://mewe.com/join/f4193661195605qjgl1

Facebook Page: https://m.facebook.com/102211914645745/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrmenger Mises, Pete Quinones, Murray Rothbard, Localism, Great Reset, Blackrock, Public Goods

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Scott Horton's Analysis Side By Side With Biden's State of the Union Address Article: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/the-state-of-the-putin-narrative?s=w Facebook Page: https://m.facebook.com/102211914645745/

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MeWe Group: https://mewe.com/join/f4193661195605qjgl1 Mr. Menger - Austro-Jeffersonian Empire of Liberty

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What is natural born citizenship, as defined by the US Constitution? Learn about The Law of Nations by Emmerich De Vattel, and the doctrines of Jus Soli and Jus Sanguinis that shaped this qualification for Presidential Eligibility. Article Discussed: https://mrmenger.substack.com/p/natural-born-citizenship-and-presidential?s=w Facebook Page: https://m.facebook.com/102211914645745/

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Western media has glorified Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Is this waving incense before a woodchuck?