Liberty Worth The Social Opportunity Costs

As the ECOMINOES brand grows, I find myself increasingly shut out of social opportunities. I'm perplexed by this, as I don't understand how one's personal politics--kept separate from interpersonal relationships--could make someone socially undesirable in the eyes of others. I ask myself: how could perpetuating the ideas of great men such as Thomas Jefferson--at the appropriate times--be considered a social liability? How is perpetuating the ideas of liberty in one's own time be something of which to be ashamed?

In these tumultuous times, perpetuating the ideas of liberty is honorable. Those who have accepted the responsibility of spreading the word must accept that being shunned socially is one of the costs we must bear. But liberty and the future of this country are well worth the price we pay.

ECOMINOES Radio Archive: Julie Borowski From FreedomWorks

We enjoyed speaking with the young libertarian firecracker Julie Borowski from FreedomWorks. Julie was surprisingly reserved, but she provided a lot of good insight about what her organization does and what she's been seeing as a grassroots libertarian activist. The rest of the show went great. Not to toot my own horn, but Eric and I are developing some great chemistry. I think ECOMINOES Radio is really going to take off.

See episode 4 of the archive page.

The GOP Establishment Is Toxic To Independents and Libertarians

The MSM and the conservative media said little about it, but the Republican establishment changed RNC rules at the 11th hour so Ron Paul's delegates would be disenfranchised and the convention would play out as a scripted coronation of their candidate, Mitt Romney. As far back as the beginning of the primary process the establishment has ensured that everything about their candidate has been scripted. They barred Romney from speaking live on conservative talk radio (the campaign offered surrogates instead), and they even disallowed media access to several key campaign events. The Republican establishment controls candidate Romney, and they would control a President Romney, whose cabinet would "operate like a board of directors".

The establishment wants everything that scares independents and libertarians away from the GOP. They want the police power of government to control what people do with--and put into--their bodies. They want military adventurism and the big defense spending that enables it. They want erosion of civil liberties in the name of national security. The establishment is banking on independents and libertarians holding their noses and voting for their candidate for the simple fact that he's not Obama. But independents and libertarians are so turned off by what the establishment supports that Romney trails in most polls to an incumbent who has presided over the worst economy since the Great Depression.

The Karl Rove strategy for the GOP is a zero sum game. The gains the party has made with evangelicals and neoconservatives is negated by the loss of independents and libertarians. And, as the older evangelicals and neoconservatives die off, the strategy will become a losing one. The 2010 elections were an anomaly based upon knee-jerk reaction to the nascent Obama presidency and the über-liberal 111th Congress. The Republican establishment will never repeat that success.

I'm thoroughly convinced that the United States will always have a two party system, and independents and libertarians must influence the Republican party in order to rise to prominence. The Republican establishment's obstinacy is frustrating and will cost the party more and more elections as the political disparity between the establishment and the average American grows. Unfortunately, all we independents and libertarians can do is continue running as Republicans and let nature take care of the evangelicals and neoconservatives. It's just a matter of time.

ECOMINOES Blasts From The Past

Those who recently discovered this site might not have seen some of the more popular posts from the past. Here's what you may have missed:

Liberal Economist Advocates Nationalizing Retirement Funds
Teresa Ghilarducci, Chair of Economic Policy Analysis and director of the Government Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis, advocates nationalizing retirement funds.

THIS Is How The Unemployment Rate Is Derived
Our nation's unemployment problem is much worse than the BLS has been reporting. The methodology the BLS uses to calculate the unemployment rate is fundamentally flawed.

The Embarrassing History Of The Pledge Of Allegiance
Created by a socialist as a means to teach school children to worship the state. I kid you not.

THIS Is What It's Like To Be Long-Term Unemployed
I've discussed unemployment and underemployment at length, but I haven't discussed the human impact of long-term separation from employment. Until now.

Obama Lies About Top Earners' Importance To The Economy
Obama stated that the nation's highest earners don't contribute the most to the economy. This is a lie.

Ocean Of Oil Discovered In Western Site! Now Only The Government Blocks U.S. Energy Independence
A largely vacant area of mostly federal land contains "about as much" recoverable oil as the rest the world’s proven reserves combined. But the government has made it clear that, until it's faced with public pressure to recover the oil, it will continue to resist efforts to increase domestic oil excavation.

A Real-Life Galt’s Gulch...In Honduras?
The Honduran government is actually pressing ahead with a plan to develop two libertarian microstates.

Deadbeat Uncle Sam: Bringing Down The Whole Family
Studies suggest that, at the current rate of growth, the national debt will eventually pull us into perpetual recession.

California: The GDP, Budgetary Woes, And Resistance To Austerity Of A PIIGS Nation
In terms of GDP and fiscal woes, California is to the U.S. what Spain is to the Eurozone. California, unlike Spain, however, cannot be forced out of its currency union should it become insolvent.

VIDEO: Texas Legislators Commit Voter Fraud On Floor Of The State Legislature
A newscast reveals several Texas legislators committing open voter fraud on the floor of the state legislature.

We Are The Lost Economic Generation
As the years of economic stagnation and exploding national debt pass, the likelihood of my generation achieving the "American Dream" gets smaller and smaller.

The Green Shoots Of Civil Unrest
Long-term unemployment is a pestilence that, left unchecked, will eventually tear at America's social fabric.

ECOMINOES Radio With Julie Borowski of FreedomWorks

On this week's episode (Friday 4-6 PM EST on kinetichifi.com) we'll have the young libertarian firecracker Julie Borowski from FreedomWorks on the phone from DC. We'll talk with Julie about her experience as a libertarian activist and also get her insight on the Ron Paul delegate snafu at the RNC. Don't miss it!

Dodd-Frank: Bank Employee Fired Over Cardboard Dime From 1963

It's clear that the ghosts of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd will haunt us long after the diabolical pair's political careers are put to rest. Not only did Frank and Dodd help crash the economy, not only did they walk away unscathed from the economic disaster they helped create, but they created the most intrusive set of financial regulations this country has ever seen in Frank-Dodd. The legislation is so intrusive, in fact, that the House Financial Services Committee has estimated that financial companies will have to hire 10,000 full-time employees just to ensure their companies are complying with the onerous new rules.

How onerous are the rules? Well, in order to comply with Dodd-Frank, Wells Fargo was recently forced to terminate a long-time, loyal employee because he tried to stick a cardboard dime into a washing machine in 1963, when he was a teenager. As per Dodd-Frank, see, no financial institution can have on its payroll anyone convicted of a financial-oriented crime, regardless of how petty or how old the conviction. I really, really dislike Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

Prepare Yourselves For Spike In Food Prices

With gas prices setting a record for the 3rd week of August and the heartland experiencing its worse drought since 1956, food and energy bills are going to be steep this winter. While the weekly gas record foreshadows the pain we'll feel at the pump during the invernal months, we've not yet had a taste of the high prices we'll pay for food as a result of the historic drought. As you can see from the following chart, food prices have actually leveled off after having risen steadily in the wake of the Fed's QE programs and Operation Twist.

But the stabilization of food prices will only be temporary. As a result of the drought, supplies of two stapes of the American diet, corn and soybeans, are down more than 50% from last year. Starchy foods and all foods containing corn syrup will be the first to rise, then meat--especially beef (.pdf)--as feed corn supplies run low in the winter. (Too bad cotton isn't edible.)

Heavy rains in the heartland from remnants of Hurricane Isaac won't help one bit. Or any other weather system for that matter. It's too late to save corn and soybean crops. Prepare yourselves.

Profile Of A Totalitarian Federal Government

Filmmaker Laura Poitras wrote an op-ed for the New York Times to accompany her new mini-documentary of the NSA's "Stellar Wind" domestic spying program. The documentary, entitled The Program, centers around testimony from William Binney, an NSA whistle-blower who claims to be the godfather of the program. As I reported this past spring, Binney claims that Stellar Wind is an aberration of a data mining program that he spearheaded and is used to create profiles on every living person in the United States. In the film, Binney explains the mechanics of Stellar Wind and recounts the harassment by federal agents he has experienced as a result of speaking out about the program.

In her op-ed, Poitras, who has produced a number of films exposing infringements of civil liberties under the guise of national security, recounts the numerous instances of harassment she has experienced at the hands of federal agents: She's been detained at the border on numerous occasions, she's had her luggage rummaged through countless times at the airport, and she's even been denied entry to the country by Customs.

Given Binney's testimony, Poitras's op-ed, and the recent detention of Brandon Raub, I'm starting to build a profile of my own: a totalitarian federal government.

Appellate Court: Nanny State Cigarette Warnings Unconstitutional

A small victory against the nanny state. Last Friday a federal appeals court ruled that the FDA's new graphic cigarette labels violate the First Amendment. The court concluded that the labels, which would occupy half of each cigarette pack's front and back panels as well as 1/5 of each cigarette ad, surpass the "purely factual and uncontroversial" disclosures that the Supreme Court has said the government may require to prevent "deception of consumers."

If you haven't seen the labels, prepare to be shocked. They're so over-the-top they'd make a Nazi propaganda artist blush. It's unsettling to think they were approved for use and it took an appeals court ruling to prevent them from hitting stores.

CNBC *And* Dallas Fed Tell Truth About Fed Liquidity Pumping

Today I found not one, but two, arguments against Fed liquidity pumping in the most unlikely of places: CNBC.com AND--gasp--the Dallas Fed's website!

First, from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a direct benefactor of the Fed's pumping, CNBC's Rick Santelli made the case that the Fed is politicized, and its historic (and unwise) money printing has been a function of political expedience:

 

Second, the Dallas Fed published Bank for International Settlements economist William White's white paper about the unintended consequences of liquidity pumping (.pdf). In the paper, Dr. White made the connection between liquidity pumping and bubbles and crashes, inflation, malinvestment, and zombie companies.

Wow. Let's hope the truth tellers are allowed to continue telling the truth!

ECOMINOES Radio: Show Archive With Brad DeVos, Executive Director Of The Bastiat Society

We had a great time hanging out with Brad last Friday. All together, we probably only spent 30 minutes talking about the society. The rest of the time was a great conversation about economics, politics, and all things libertarian. Just like with Dr. Hefner, the episode felt like drinking beer with a buddy (which is exactly what we're shooting for).

Show archive page: http://kinetichifi.com/ecominoes/

Decline Of Middle Class Has Accelerated

The AP reported the obvious today: with the economic depression hitting households in the $39,000-118,000 range harder than any other income group, the decline of the middle class has accelerated. According to the Pew Research Center, who compiled the data cited in the AP article, 85 percent of middle class Americans say it's more difficult now than a decade ago to maintain their standard of living.

With scant employment opportunities outside of dead end McJobs and chronic unemployment derailing many middle class Americans' careers, "upward mobility" is quickly becoming a term of the past. Indeed, the middle class holds the majority of the more than $1 trillion in outstanding student debt (the next bubble to burst), but is not advancing through higher education. As Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, has pointed out, Washington has made it nearly impossible for a middle class American to replicate his American Dream story, and, despite what many conservatives claim, you often have to come from money to make money in the "new normal".