Women are more tribal-oriented. It’s inherent to their reproductive strategy and their greater burden of raising children. They’ve been voting for decades now to have the state replace the father. Unneeded, unwanted, denounced as oppressors, and burden with bias legal standards, men are reverting to individualism and/or a grossly prolonged child-hood.

Fatca calls for foreign financial institutions to file an annual report to the I.R.S., either directly or through its own national tax authority, on each U.S. taxpayer for whom it holds more than $50,000 in assets at the end of the year.

This is why a friend in Singapore gave up his US citizenship. He couldn’t get any financial institution to do business with him. It’s also why some Swiss banks have dumped US clients.

The law also requires account holders to file an I.R.S. form themselves, 8938, detailing their foreign holdings, though American expatriates need file only if their financial assets exceed $200,000 at year’s end. To make sure account holders stay in touch, the agency levies a $10,000 penalty for failure to file a required 8938, and any underreported income will be subject to an additional 40 percent penalty. (Read more)

$200k — I aspire to have these problems. :)

It’s funny. I’m actually in Ukraine as an ex-pat. Many people in this country save money for years, and stand in lines for many hours to get permission to go to the US and work at Walmart-like jobs. When they succeed in doing so, they are grateful and their friends are envious.

How much do these clowns think they deserve for wrangling shopping carts and putting boxes onto shelves????

These guys are privileged, ungrateful and under-educated. Their rising political power makes me very happy to have chosen life as an ex-pat.

If you take almost any human being from any point in the history of man and put him in the middle of Walmart, and express the prices to him in terms of hours of unskilled, manual labor, he will think he arrived in heaven! But instead of praising this modern miracle of capitalism, we condemn it, because the people who CHOSE to work there want more money and better conditions.

At least they didn’t have one of the morbidly obese employees deliver the line about not having enough to eat:

I don’t know how to stop creeping socialism in the US or anywhere else, but I have much more hope for entrepreneurs than voters and political activists.

Entrepreneurs demonstrate that problems can be wonderfully solved without coercion. They demonstrate the government is an irrelevant nuisance.

Of all the things to criticize about Russia, I wouldn’t put this high on the list. It seems like they were trespassing in order to ridicule Orthodoxy.

Imagine how little support they’d get if they had desecrated a synagogue. They’d be called Nazis and Western governments would be falling over each other to condemn them most strongly.

Imagine if they’d desecrated a mosque. They’d be called anti-immigration nationalists. Then a story about their murder would probably appear on the back pages of some newspaper.

Instead, they desecrated a church, and the world weeps over their imprisonment.

Obama spokesman condemns ‘disproportionate’ prison term for Russian punk band membersThe White House on Friday condemned the “disproportionate” two-year prison sentence a Russian judge imposed on members of the punk band Pussy Riot, found guilty of “hooliganism” for an event mocking Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The United States is disappointed by the verdict, including the disproportionate sentences that were granted,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. (Read more)

Interesting, but I’d rather keep my tax dollars. I can’t help but think the hype is a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

I encourage curious readers to look at THIS, my favorite TED lecture ever.

When I first began studying free market economics, it felt exciting to find the faulty assumptions in news articles. I assumed they mattered.

Now, I don’t even bother, unless someone refers an article to me, like this one: The Post Office is not broke — it hasn’t taken any of our tax money since 1971.

The reason I don’t bother, is because correcting the media, even a very small part of it, is a lifetime of work. Furthermore, I don’t even think they’re trying to be factual, or logical, or accurate. There is so much smug, hysterical, illogical leftist propaganda that I sometimes believe their strategy is to create reality by repeating it, and simply drowning out dissenting voices.

For whatever it’s worth, I make my case:

1) The article starts by pointing out how few things cost 50 cents or less and then triumphantly declares that a stamp is one of them. This does not prove that the Post Office isn’t broke. It’s an empty jingle. Many things cost less than 50 cents, like pens and pencils, but they are packaged for convenience. Many things are also free, like email or online translation tools.

The mention of prices would be a great segue into a discussion of WHY nothing costs less than 50 cents anymore. I’ll only say that the reason is because government is destroying our money. It’s easier to debase a currency than it is to tax. To do this effectively, you need to resort to force against people who attempt to use something other than the government currency. Debasing only works where people are FORCED to use paper money.

2) The article then then says “UNPROFITABLE. So what?” I think the author just punted the title of his article. When you’re unprofitable, and you’ve spent all your reserves, you are broke. That’s the definition of the word. He writes that the FBI, CDC, FDA, State Department, and Pentagon don’t worry about profit either. I think all these agencies are disasters as well.

Yahoo News reported that this year, the post office is losing $8 Billion: http://news.yahoo.com/never-write-more-well-hardly-anyone-does-173946650.html.

You may think that losing money is inevitable because the task of delivering little pieces of paper is so essential and complex, but this history of the post office is the history of using brute legal force to put cheaper, more efficient, for profit delivery companies out of business:

– In 1971, a federal district court prohibited a private firm from carrying Christmas cards in Oklahoma on the basis that the plaintiffs, a postal employees union, suffered ‘significant loss of work time, overtime, employment benefits. . and morale.’ The court concluded that private delivery of Christmas cards would be a ‘widespread public nuisance.’ The result was that the public suffered slower service and higher costs to support postal workers’ ‘morale.’

- In 1976 in New York, a pack of Cub Scouts tried to raise money by delivering Christmas cards: Postal Service lawyers ordered them to stop, and threatened the ten-year-olds with a $76,500 fine. A New York Times editorial regretted that the Postal Service’s carriers were not as fast as its lawyers.

- In 1978, the P.H. Brennan Hand Delivery Service offered same-day delivery of mail in Rochester, New York, for 10 cents a piece; the Postal Service could not guarantee overnight delivery even for 15 cents. The Brennan Service operated during snowstorms (when the Postal Service did not even try to deliver), never lost a letter, and never had a complaint. When U.S.P.S. attorneys closed in on the Brennans, Rochester lawyers provided them with a free legal defense. But the Postal Service persuaded a judge to issue a ‘cease and desist’ order on account of the ‘threat to postal revenues.’ (http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj15n1-1.html)

It is illegal to do for profit, what the government loses $8 billion / year doing.

3) The article uses government failure to criticize free enterprise. It says the Nixon presidency in 1971 created some sort of reform (details unspecified), which apparently was free market reform (this part is important), and it failed . . . therefore . . . . . . wait for it . . . . . . . . the free market doesn’t work.

As you can see from the above examples, the government was still threatening private individuals with prison. When you’re still threatening to put people in jail for offering a service, then the reform is NOT a “free market” reform.

Also, pay attention to the logic. Any failure which even has the name free market associated with it is used without examination to condemn the free market. Forget the fact that the reform had nothing to do with allowing people to offer a service for profit. On the other hand, colossal failures of government are met with profound analysis and tinkering and promises that things will be better after a little more work, a little more power is given to the agency, a little more taxes are collected. The article ends on such a note, suggesting changes in schedules, a Postal Banking System, wine delivery, sale of fishing licenses.

4) “Since 1971, the postal service has not taken a dime from taxpayers.” Also, “the Service actually produced a $700 million operational profit [time period unspecified]“ I don’t understand this. Yahoo News reported that this year, the post office is losing $8 Billion: http://news.yahoo.com/never-write-more-well-hardly-anyone-does-173946650.html. The New York Times reported losses of $6.5 billion in the first half of 2011: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/opinion/nocera-free-the-post-office.html.

This newletter is L-Y-I-N-G.

5) The article goes on to to espouse about the general importance of of the post office, it’s proud history, and schemes which will definitely, gloriously, inevitably restore the service to it’s rightful glory.

My reaction is this: If you insist on taxing me to fund this antiquated, inefficient, bureaucratic leviathan, at least stop threatening to put people in jail who want to deliver little pieces of paper for profit.

(FED EX and UPS are only allowed to deliver packages. If you bring them a letter, they’ll immediately put it in a package. Even permission for this reckless privilege — a for profit package delivery — was hard fought. Thankfully, our overlords allowed it.)

America, now that your neighbors are FORCED to pay for your healthcare, expect them to take interest in your diet, exercise and smoking habits.

If, God forbid, a major naval engagement happens somewhere in the world, we will likely see the end of surface warfare. The economics favors the defender. It is easier to hit a ship with a missile than it is to hit a missile with a bullet. Also, if shooting missiles at ships, a 1% success rate is devastating. In contrast, for the side trying to shoot missiles with bullets, a 99% success rate can be disastrous.

The idea of an empires military supremacy generally outlives the reality. Given the characteristic arrogance of our political leaders, it is unlikely that this will end well.

And once it happens – Lord help us. It will be another 9/11. No dissenting opinion will be able to withstand the rhetoric surrounding hundreds of dead sailors. Every tyranny and every tax will be introduced to re-established the refuted idea of surface warfare and American military invincibility.

The U.S. has made no secret that it’s pulling its focus from the Middle East and directing military attention to the Pacific, and now China is pushing back.

The Economic Times reports China is increasing its conventional missile capability to carry out multiple launches, the one tactic that could overwhelm a Navy ship’s defenses and cripple its abilities.

Tan Weihong, Commander of China’s Second Artillery Force says, “Conventional missiles are a trump card in modern warfare. So we must be ready at any time. We must be able to deliver a quick response to attacks, hit the targets with high accuracy, and destroy them totally. Of the 114 missiles [our brigade] has launched so far, all have accurately hit the target.”

For each incoming missile a U.S. Navy ship will have to perform some variation of the following actions:

First it will launch a long-range air defense missile, like a SM-2ER. If that fails, then a shorter range missile like the ESSM (Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile) will go out — then the ship’s main deck guns will fire anti-air rounds with fused airburst shells.

Surviving missiles will be engaged by close-in weapons systems like the Mk-15 Phalanx or the RAM (Rolling Airframe Missile). Any incoming missiles struck by these systems will be so close, and moving so fast, that incoming shrapnel and debris would likely be unavoidable.

While all these “Hard Kill” options are going on, the ship’s electronic warfare systems will have been trying to jam the incoming missile, offering the missile a false target, while firing off chaff (for radar guided weapons) and flares (for infrared guided weapons).

All that for every single missile, so if China can send off several at once directed at the same ship, the chances of success on their part may increase exponentially.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/china-announces-how-it-will-decimate-the-us-fleet-should-conflict-ever-break-out-2012-6#ixzz1yWakyV3B

The creation of the AMA was supposed so ensure quality healthcare for everyone. The creating of the FDA was supposed to ensure quality healthcare for everyone. The HMO act was supposed to ensure quality healthcare for everyone. Medicare was supposed to ensure quality healthcare for everyone. Medicaid was supposed to ensure quality healthcare for eveyone. When this too fails, I predict two things:

- a hunt for and demonetization of saboteurs
- calls for more intervention

Below are some excerpts from a great essay by Chris Hedges. The only thing I disagree with is his surprise that the state chooses to increase its authority.

I’m no longer surprised when government courts rule that the government is right, and we underlings are wrong. This is Hoppe’s argument for what he calls “a private law society” (what others call anarcho-captialism). A monopoly on justice will always rule in its own favor.

Historian and author Tom Woods makes a strong case for nullification being a better protector of the Constitution than the panel of providentially appointed judges.

The government also gets to unilaterally decide how much to charge you for this “service” and kidnaps you if you refuse to pay, labelling you a “tax evader.”

Totalitarian systems disempower an unsuspecting population by gradually making legal what was once illegal. They incrementally corrupt and distort law to exclusively serve the goals of the inner sanctums of power and strip protection from the citizen. Law soon becomes the primary tool to advance the crimes of the elite and punish those who tell the truth. The state saturates the airwaves with official propaganda to replace news. Fear, and finally terror, creates an intellectual and moral void. . . .

And a conviction of Bradley Manning, or any of the five others charged by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act of 1917 with passing on government secrets to the press, would effectively terminate public knowledge of the internal workings of the corporate state. What we live under cannot be called democracy. What we will live under if the Supreme Court upholds the use of the Espionage Act to punish those who expose war crimes and state lies will be a species of corporate fascism. And this closed society is, perhaps, only a few weeks or months away.

Few other Americans are as acutely aware of our descent into corporate totalitarianism as Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 to The New York Times and is one of Manning’s most ardent and vocal defenders.

. . . .

The Supreme Court has yet to hear a case involving the Espionage Act. But one of these six cases will probably soon reach the court. If it, as expected, rules that the government is permitted to use the Espionage Act against whistle-blowers, the United States will have a de facto official secrets act. A ruling in favor of the government would instantly criminalize all disclosures of classified information to the public. It would shut down one of the most important functions of the press. And at that point any challenges to the official versions of events would dry up.

The Obama administration, to make matters worse, has mounted a war not only against those who leak information but those who publish it, including Assange. The Obama administration is attempting to force New York Times reporter James Risen to name the source, or sources, that told him about a failed effort by the Central Intelligence Agency to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer, is charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking information about the program to Risen. If Risen confirms in court that Sterling was his source, Sterling probably will be convicted. A Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Espionage Act would also remove the legal protection that traditionally allows journalists to refuse to reveal their sources. (Read more)

This well-meaning man, despite his degree in economic is wrong in a number of ways. Money is not evil. Only being FORCED to use a particular type of money is evil.

Money allows fr the division of labor. Without the division of labor, we are destitute, and must endure poverty as this man does. It is only mitigated by the huge amount of wealth around him which he benefits from in a variety of ways.

1) His statements are vague and rambling. What I hear him saying is: “everything sucks, so you need me (and people who think like me) to set up a benign dictatorship.” He does not explain WHY things suck. That’s where I can educated him.

2) He speaks from two typical paradigms: profits and business vs. workers, and white vs. black. The first is Marxism the second is cultural Marxism, which, as a Ukrainian, I’m largely immune to :).

Both see not individual human beings but only “classes” — a vague, never-defined term at the center Marxism. There is no solidaridy within any class. Everybody struggles to be the best employer, the best customer, the best worker. Look closely, and his paradigm falls apart.

3) Inequality. Only if you accept the Marxist paradigm of class war, and stop seeing people as individuals can you make inequality a leading issue.

Rallying behind the idea of inequality is dangerous for three reasons: it calls for state-sponsored violence as a equalizing force, it inspires emotions useful to politicians — jealousy and hatred, it is impossible — thus lending it to what Lenin called “permanent revolution.”

No society in the history of the world has ever improved itself by taking money from one “class” of people and giving it to another. Many who’ve tried it turned into gigantic meat grinders. The Cambodian attempts at an agrarian based communist society slaughtered almost 1/3rd of the population.

Don’t believe the leftist claim that they simply didn’t do it right, and that we need to try again.

Inequality is also a very, very small price to pay for liberty and prosperity. Without exception, conditions for poor people have been best in the countries with the free-est economies.

4) He, quickly and loosely, attributes our economic crisis to freedom. Bullshit. The economic crisis was caused by inflating the monetary supply, a long history of bailouts which enouraged recklessness, and laws which **** REQUIRED **** banks to make bad loans. The only regulation that works is the free market regulation of letting people go the hell bankrupt when they’re irresponsible.

5) Quickly and loosely, he says that the people want gov’t insurance and that it’s opposed by big pharma and big insurance companies. I don’t want gov’t insurance. Don’t I count? I’ll remind you that one of the first things Obamacare did was REQUIRE people to buy medical insurance. That’s not exactly sticking it to the insurance industry. And no, finding a better, stronger, kinder, more benevolent dictator will not work. The search for one is called “the road to serfdom.”

6) His faith in democracy is charming. Reminds me of when I was a child.

7) When the hell were intellectuals on the side of free markets? It’s always been a heterodox movement.

During WWII, American culture became indistinguishable from war propaganda. If judged by how much invasiveness they tolerated from their government, the WWII generation was not the greatest, but one of the worst.

The caption to the above picture reads:

May 22, 1944 Life Magazine Picture of the Week, “Arizona war worker writes her Navy boyfriend a thank-you-note for the Jap skull he sent her”

“War is the health of the state.” ~Randolph Bourne

Originally published on Ad Libertad:

The battle lines are forming in Washington DC. Barring any tricks which the embattled (racist, redneck, kooky, backward, radical, unelectable) libertarian wing of the Republican Party may still have up its sleeve, it seems to be another contest between Marxist-Leninist Socialists who will take everything we have in the name of social welfare, and National Socialists who will take everything we have in the name of national security. Much like in Alien vs. Predator, whoever wins, we lose.

I think we’ve crossed the Rubicon toward tyranny and fiscal ruin long ago, and the important thing now is to brace for calamity. A fiscally conservative friend of mine is appalled by my cynicism. He invokes America’s greatness and my veteran status in an attempt to bring me back to the noble cause of shutting up and blindly supporting the Republican Party. He recently encouraged me to watch Allen West’s speech at CPAC 2012. He wants, presumably, for me to give people like Allen West my time, money, attention and respect, because nothing is more important that defeating Obama (. . . says the Predator about the Alien).

In the speech, Allen West goes on at length about the virtues of the Constitution. He said, “[The founders] laid out in no uncertain terms the types of things government would have the right to do, and the types of things it wouldn’t.” I’d love to hear him reconcile this with his discussion of “a Chamberlin-Churchill moment,” and “kinetic solutions” to Iran’s nuclear research, and “the precipice of World War Three.” Does he know the Constitution requires presidents to seek congressional declarations of war? Or does he, like most politicians, only believes in the Constitution when it foils his political opponents.

He said, “The founders knew that if government were allowed to restrict the freedom of the people . . . freedom would not long survive,” yet he voted in favor of renewing Patriot Act provisions.

He decries reckless spending: “We’ve allowed the federal bureaucracy to balloon out of control,” yet he voted in raise the debt ceiling. When questioned by Young America’s Foundation’s Ron Meyer, he asked for the thing all politicians have always requested: unity and support. Presumably, Allen West’s rapid betrayal of the principles he invoked in his campaign would be remedied if only I gave him more money, time, attention and respect. . . .

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