Dr. Charles Krauthammer, MD... A must read

 

 

 

 

   Fast Facts About Dr. Charles Krauthammer , MD 

1. Born: March 13, 1950
2. Birthplace: New York City, New York
3. Raised in Montreal, Canada
4. Attended Mc Gill University and Harvard Medical School
5. 1972 diving accident left him paralyzed from the neck on down.
6. Directed psychiatric research for the Carter administration
7. Began writing career in 1981 with The New Republic
8. Helped develop the "Reagan Doctrine" in the 80's
9. Appointed to Presidential Council on Bioethics in 2002

 

Dr. Charles Krauthammer , MD

Dr. Krauthammer is frequently on the Fox News Channel.  He is an M.D., a lawyer and is paralyzed from the neck down.  A friend went to hear Charles Krauthammer.  He listened with 25 others in a closed room.  What he says here is NOT 2nd-hand but 1st.  The ramifications are staggering for us, our children and their children.

Last Monday was a profound evening.  Dr. Charles Krauthammer spoke to the Center for the American Experiment.  He is a brilliant intellectual, seasoned & articulate.  He is forthright and careful in his analysis and never resorts to emotions or personal insults.  He is NOT a fear monger nor an extremist in his comments and views.  He is a fiscal conservative and has received a Pulitzer Prize for writing.  He is a frequent contributor to Fox News and writes weekly for the Washington Post.

 

 

 

The entire room was held spellbound during his talk.  I have summarized his comments, as we are living in uncharted waters economically and internationally.

 

 

 

Even 2 Dems at my table agreed with everything he said!  If you feel like forwarding this to those who are open minded and have not drunk the Kool-Aid, feel free....

 

Summary of his comments:

1. Mr. Obama is a very intellectual, charming individual.  He is not to be underestimated.  He is a cool customer who doesn't show his emotions.  It's very hard to know what's behind the mask.  The taking down of the Clinton dynasty was an amazing accomplishment.  The Clintons still do not understand what hit them.  Obama was in the perfect place at the perfect time.

2. Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan and Clinton.  He has a way of making you think he's on your side, agreeing with your position, while doing the opposite. Pay no attention to what he SAYS; rather, watch what he DOES!

3. Obama has a ruthless quest for power.  He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself but rather to change everything, including dismantling capitalism.  He can't be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along.  He has a heavy hand and wants to level the playing field with income redistribution and punishment to the achievers of society.  He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada .

4. His three main goals are to control ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION and NATIONAL HEALTHCARE by the Federal government.  He doesn't care about the auto or financial services industries but got them as an early bonus.  The cap and trade will add costs to everything and stifle growth.  Paying for FREE college education is his goal.  Most scary is his healthcare program because if you make it FREE and add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type single-payer system, the costs will go through the roof.  The only way to control costs is with massive RATIONING of services, like in Canada .. God forbid!

5. He has surrounded himself with mostly far-left academic types.  No one around him has ever even run a candy store.  But they are going to try and run the auto, financial, banking and other industries.  This obviously can't work in the long run.  Obama is not a socialist; rather he's a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution.  He ran as a moderate but will govern from the hard left.  Again, watch what he DOES, not what he says.

6. Obama doesn't really see himself as President of the United States but more as a ruler over the world.  He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate & coordinate various countries and their agendas.  He sees moral equivalency in all cultures.  His apology tour in Germany and England was a prime example of how he sees America as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made errors.  This is the first President, ever , who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies!

7. He is now handing out goodies.  He hopes that the bill (and pain) will not come due until after he is reelected in 2012.  He would like to blame all problems on Bush, from the past, and hopefully his successor in the future.  He has a huge ego and Dr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcissist.

8. Republicans are in the wilderness for a while but will emerge strong.  Republicans are pining for another Reagan but there will never be another like him.  Krauthammer believes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty & Bobby Jindahl (except for his terrible speech in February) are the future of the party.  Newt Gingrich is brilliant but has baggage.  Sarah Palin is sincere and intelligent but needs to really be seriously boning up on facts and info if she is to be a serious candidate in the future.  We need to return to the party of lower taxes, smaller government, personal responsibility, strong national defense and State's Rights.

9. The current level of spending is irresponsible and outrageous.  We are spending trillions that we don't have.  This could lead to hyperinflation, depression or worse.  No country has ever spent themselves into prosperity.  The Media is giving Obama, Reid and Pelosi a Pass because they love their agenda.  But eventually the bill will come due and people will realize the huge bailouts didn't work, nor will the stimulus package.  These were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama's allies, unions and the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4 above.

10. The election was over in mid-September when Lehman brothers failed, fear and panic swept in, we had an unpopular President, and the war was grinding on indefinitely without a clear outcome.  The people are in pain and the mantra of change caused people to act emotionally.  Any Dem would have won this election; it was surprising it was as close as it was.

11. In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power.  If it's under 8%, the Dems continue to roll.  If it's between 8-10%, it will be a dogfight.  It will all be about the economy.  I hope this gets you really thinking about what's happening in Washington and Congress.  There is a left-wing revolution going on, according to Krauthammer, and he encourages us to keep the faith and join the loyal resistance.  The work will be hard but we're right on most issues and can reclaim our country before it's far too late.

 

 

 

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.  Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it." - Abraham Lincoln

 

 

 

Do yourself a long term favor.  Send this to all who will listen to an intelligent assessment of the big picture.  All our futures and children's futures depend on our good understanding of what is really going on in DC and our action pursuant to that understanding!! 

 

 

 

It really IS up to each of us to take individual action!! 

 

 

 

Start with educating your friends and neighbors

 

If you are not interested in justice or in truth

delete this .  However,

If you hold sacred the freedoms granted to you by the

U.S. Constitution…

By all means, please… PASS it ON!

 

__._,_ 

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Obama Likens Himself to Mandela and Ghandi While Making Case for 2nd Term

New post on Scotty Starnes's Blog Obama Likens Himself to Mandela and Ghandi While Making Case for 2nd Term by Scotty Starnes The most narcissistic under-achiever in the history of the world. From Free Beacon: President Obama spoke Thursday night at a campaign fundraiser at ABC Kitchen in New York City. It was the first of four fundraisers the president attended Thursday. OBAMA: Around the world, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela–what they did was hard. It takes time. It takes more than a single term. It takes more than a single president. It takes more than a single individual. What it takes is ordinary citizens who are committed to fighting and pushing and inching this country closer and closer to our highest ideals. I said in 2008, that I am not a perfect man and I will not be a perfect president. But I promise you, I promised you that I would always tell you what I believe. I would always tell you where I stood. Bullshit. The man has flip-flopped on many issues. Obama took one position as Senator and an entire different position as President (Patriot Act, Indefinite Detention, Gitmo, Signing Statements...just to name a few). Scotty Starnes | March 2, 2012 at 11:41 AM | Tags: Ghandi, narcissist, Nelson Mandela, President Obama | Categories: Political Issues | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-6L5 Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://scottystarnes.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/obama-likens-himself-to-mandela-and-ghandi-while-making-case-for-2nd-term/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

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iFoodstamps

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Omed Buper <bovinescatologists@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 4:44 PM
Subject: iFoodstamps
To: beowulf@westerndefense.net

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Scotty Starnes's Blog <donotreply@wordpress.com>
Date: Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 12:43 PM
Subject: [New post] iFoodstamps
To: bovinescatologists@gmail.com

New post on Scotty Starnes's Blog iFoodstamps by Scotty Starnes Obama is the Food Stamp President so someone should develop an app for that. From ZeroHedge: Think Apple is the only thing allowed to hit new records every month? Think again: presenting iFoodstamps - the number of Americans living in poverty (or at least doing a damn good job of fooling the government in pretending they do). As of December, per SNAP this number just hit another record high of 46.5 million, an increase of 384,000 in one month (and ending the trend of declines from October and November), 2.4 million in 2011 (about as many as have dropped out of the Labor force, hmmmm), and 14.3 million since Obama took office. Continue reading>>> Scotty Starnes | March 2, 2012 at 1:43 PM | Tags: Food Stamps, iFoodstamps, poverty, President Obama, SNAP | Categories: Political Issues | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-6Ld Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://scottystarnes.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/ifoodstamps/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

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Anti-bullying Pink Project 2012 - YouTube

Anti-bullying Pink Project 2012 - YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ6ItjtlakQ&feature=player_embedded

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Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy

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Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy

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mistake or the right thing to do?

http://blog.chron.com/hottopics/2012/02/texas-teacher-tells-brat-student-to-%E2%80%9Cgo-back-to-mexico%E2%80%9D/

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Bishop McFadden and “Totalitarian” Public Schooling

Bishop McFadden and "Totalitarian" Public Schooling
by Michael Tennant, March 2, 2012

"In a totalitarian government, they would love our system [of public education]," Bishop James McFadden of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told WHTM-TV. "This is what Hitler and Mussolini and all of them tried to establish -- a monolith, so all the children would be educated in one set of beliefs and one way of doing things."

McFadden's remarks touched off a firestorm of complaints from the usual suspects.

Barry Morrison, Eastern Pennsylvania/Southern New Jersey regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said McFadden "should not be making his point at the expense of the memory of six million Jews and millions of others who perished in the Holocaust," arguing that the bishop had "inappropriately [drawn] reckless comparisons" to that horrific event.

Andy Hoover, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, declared McFadden's comments "completely inappropriate."

Harrisburg University professor Dr. Mehdi Noorbaksh, who is also vice president of the local World Affairs Council, told WHTM, "As soon as you throw in those words and you take the debate and the conversation to another level and another context, it is not right."

In a statement responding to his critics, McFadden apologized to "those who may have been offended by [his] remarks." He is not, however, retracting them, pointing out that he "purposely did not mention the holocaust" to avoid giving offense ­ an assertion backed up by the TV station, which stated that "in the 20 minute interview he never mentioned the word holocaust."

"The Church recognizes the holocaust as a terrible atrocity and evil emanated against humanity and especially those who were the victims of these crimes," McFadden wrote. "I would never minimize or trivialize the devastating suffering that took place."

He also elaborated on his analogy:

The reference to dictators and totalitarian governments of the 20th century which I made in an interview on the topic of school choice was to make a dramatic illustration of how these unchecked monolithic governments of the past used schools to curtail the primary responsibility of the parent in the education of their children. Today many parents in our state experience the same lack of freedom in choosing an education that bests suits their child as those parents oppressed by dictators of the past.

[An] absolute monopoly in education, where parents do not have a right or ability to choose the education that best suits their children due to economic circumstances or otherwise, runs counter to a free and open society.

McFadden could not be more correct.

"In 1936," writes the History Place,

all of the Catholic parochial and Protestant denominational schools [in Germany] were abolished. Christian holy days which had usually meant a day off from school were now ignored and classroom prayers were banned. Celebrations of Christmas and Easter were discouraged, replaced by pre-Christian Yule or Solstice celebrations. The Nazis later forced all teachers to renounce any affiliation with professional church organizations.

Moreover, says the article, indoctrinating students with Nazi ideology became the sole purpose of the schools, to the detriment of genuine education:

National Socialist teachers of questionable ability stepped into grammar school and high school classrooms to form young minds, strictly abiding by the Party motto: "The supreme task of the schools is the education of youth for the service of Volk and State in the National Socialist spirit." They taught Nazi propaganda as fact which was then recited back by their students as unshakable points of view with no room for disagreement or discussion.

Fascist dictators weren't alone in recognizing that controlling the schools meant controlling the minds of the youth. "Free education for all children in public schools" is one of the demands of the Communist Manifesto; and Karl Marx's disciples in the former Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, and elsewhere have always abolished private schools in favor of state-run indoctrination centers.

It is hardly a coincidence, then, that the public schools of 21st-century America are turning out students thoroughly steeped in environmentalism, socialism, and moral relativism but unable to read their own diplomas. The objective of government schooling is to produce cogs for the state machine, not well-rounded, independent thinkers.

With the facts on McFadden's side, his critics have been forced to attack his remarks' propriety rather than their truthfulness, which also reveals the critics' true agenda: sticking up for government schooling.

The bishop, meanwhile, is seeking to allow parents more options in schooling their children. Believing it is unfair for parents to have to pay twice to send their children to parochial and other private schools ­ once in taxes and again in tuition ­ and faced with declining parochial-school enrollment, McFadden and other church leaders are calling for the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to enact a school-voucher program whereby parents' tax dollars that are earmarked for education can be directed to whatever school, public or private, parents choose for their children. (A proposal that would have allowed that under certain limited circumstances was rejected by the state legislature in December.)

McFadden's diagnosis of the problem is correct; his proposed solution, however, leaves much to be desired. School vouchers might very well end up co-opting private schools into serving the state, which would be an even worse situation than the one that currently exists. Private colleges -- minus a handful of brave resisters who have chosen to forgo federal dollars -- have been forced to obey Washington's dictates in exchange for accepting federal student aid. Why would anyone expect state governments to hand out money to schools with no strings attached? Instead, private schools would very likely become dependent on such aid and would compromise their integrity by bowing to the state's demands, ultimately becoming the state's handmaidens in training the youth to serve Leviathan.

McFadden and other Christians, of all people, ought to recognize the dangers inherent in mixing the state with the private sector. Separation of church and state -- in the sense that neither controls the other -- has served Americans well over the centuries. Why not separation of school and state as well?

http://www.fff.org/comment/com1203d.asp

Buchanan Against the Conservatives

Buchanan Against the Conservatives
by Laurence M. Vance

It's not just the liberals who are against Pat Buchanan.

When it comes to the issue of foreign policy, the conservatives are against him as well. Most all of them.

With the exception of Ron Paul, the current and former Republican presidential candidates are against him – Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain. And so are previous candidates like John McCain and Sarah Palin

Conservative magazines are against him. Publications like National Review and the Weekly Standard.

Conservative think tanks are against him. Organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.

Conservative talk show hosts are against him. Levin, Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh – take your pick.

Republicans in the House are against him, including the leaders: John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Kevin McCarthy.

Republicans in the Senate are against him, including the leaders: Mitch McConnell and John Kyl.

Other members of Congress are against him – like interventionist, warmonger, and imperial vulture Lindsey Graham.

Conservatives in general are against him. At the recent CPAC presidential straw poll, Ron Paul received only 12 percent of the vote. It is Congressman Paul's views on foreign policy – which are very similar to Buchanan's – that are unconscionable to most of the conservatives in attendance.

Republican primary voters in general are against him. Most of them are picking warmonger A, imperialist B, or militarist C instead of noninterventionist Ron Paul.

Pat Buchanan has been a conservative fixture in politics and the media for decades. His new book, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?, has much in it that conservatives will agree with. However, it also has some gems in it that are anathema to most conservatives and music to the ears of libertarians. True, the book has some things in it that libertarians will question, but back in 1991, when George H. W. Bush invaded Iraq the first time, Buchanan was a sane and consistent voice for nonintervention while some libertarians were defending Bush's foray into the Middle East.

In the last two chapters of Suicide of a Superpower, Buchanan is at his best. The first cause of America's recent decline is the "wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have cost us 6,000 dead, 40,000 wounded, and over $1 trillion." These wars "destroyed our post 9/11 national unity, alienated the Islamic world, and enlarged the pool in which al-Qaeda fishes." These wars "have bled us for a decade and done less to make us safe than to inflame the Islamic world against us."

Buchanan understands exactly why the United States is hated by many in the Muslim world:

We came to Afghanistan as liberators, but are seen now as occupiers, imposing our ideas, values, and satraps. After eight years of war in Iraq and ten in Afghanistan, we are coming home with Iraq going its own way and Afghanistan tipping toward the Taliban. . . . We failed to understand what motivated our attackers. They did not come to kill us because they abhor our Constitution, or wish to impose Sharia on Oklahoma. They were over here because we are over there. They came to kill us in our country because we will not get out of their countries. . . . . Osama bin Laden ordered 9/11 because U.S. troops were stationed on sacred Saudi soil that is home to Mecca. We will never end terrorist attacks on this country, until we remove our soldiers from those countries.

We fight them over there, it is said, so we will not have to fight them over here. Yet not Afghan or Iraqi or Somali or Yemeni or member of Hezbollah or Hamas ever attacked us – over here. September 11 was largely the work of fifteen Saudis sent by a Saudi, Osama. And while we are able to smash armies and depose despots, we have proven incapable of building nations or winning the hearts of peoples whose lands we have occupied. . . . Across the Islamic world, we have broadened and deepened the reservoir of hate in which Al Qaeda fishes.

But not only must "the United States must bring an end to its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," once these troops come home "the U.S. bases in Central Asia should be closed." The empire must be ended:

This worldwide archipelago of bases may have been justified when we confronted a Communist bloc spanning Eurasia from the Elbe to the East China Sea, armed with thousands of nuclear weapons and driven by imperial ambition and ideological animus against the United States. But the Cold War is history. It is absurd to contend that 1,000 overseas bases are vital to U.S. security. Indeed, it is our pervasive military presence abroad, our support of despotic regimes, and our endless interventions and wars that have made America, once the most admired of nations, among the world's most resented and detested.

Why are scores of thousands of U.S. troops still stationed in Europe when the "evil empire" against which they were to defend Europe collapsed twenty years ago? Why can't Europe defend itself from a Russia whose army is but a fraction of the Red Army of 1990 and whose western border is hundreds of miles east of where it was under Nicholas II?

The United States should declare its intent to withdraw from NATO, transfer leadership of the alliance to the Europeans, and begin to vacate air and naval bases.

The United States should also renegotiate its security treaties with South Korea and Japan and remove U.S. ground troops from both countries. We are not going to fight another land war with China or North Korea. No vital interest could justify such a war, and the American people would not support sending an army to Korea like the 330,000 soldiers we sent in the 1950s.

The empire should have been dismantled after the Cold War:

Liquidation of this empire should have begun at the end of the Cold War. Now it is being forced upon us by a deficit-debt crisis that the cost of that empire helped to produce. We cannot continue to kick the can up the road, for we have come to the end of the road.

As Russia had gone home, some of us urged back then, America should come home, cede NATO and all the U.S. bases in Europe to the Europeans, and become again what UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick called "a normal country in a normal time."

But instead,

George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan, declared Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an "axis of evil," warned the world that we would maintain military supremacy in every vital region of the globe, declared a Bush Doctrine of preventive war and used it to invade and occupy an Iraq that had never threatened or attacked us, and launched a global crusade for democracy that feature demonstrations to dump over governments install pro-American regimes in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Lebanon, as Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA had done in Iran in 1953.

Clinton and Bush II pushed NATO right up to Russia's front porch, bringing six former Warsaw Pact nations – East Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Romania – and three Baltic states that had been part of the Soviet Union into an alliance created to contain Russia. Only European resistance stopped Bush II from putting Ukraine and Georgia on a fast track to NATO membership, which would have meant that should there be a Moscow-Tbilisi clash, American would instantly be eyeball to eyeball with a nation possessing thousands of nuclear weapons.

Barack Obama doubled U.S. forces in Afghanistan, began done strikes in Pakistan, and launched a war on Libya.

Buchanan then asks: "And what has all this compulsive interventionism availed us?" And then answers: "We are less secure, less respected, less confident, and less powerful than we were in 1991." And then asks again: "And is the world a better place?" The answer, of course, is a resounding no.

Recognizing the disastrous consequences of the Iraq and Afghan wars, Buchanan sees no point in threatening Iran over its non-existent nuclear weapon's program:

The immediate goal must be to derail the War Party campaign to have America launch a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities that would trigger acts of terror against U.S. soldiers and civilians from Baghdad to Beirut. An early result of such a war could be the closing of the Persian Gulf, crippling the U.S. and world economies.

If America could deter the Russia of Stalin and the China of Mao, who declared himself willing to lose three hundred million Chinese, why can't we deter an Iran that has no bomb and no missile to deliver it?

In contrast to the sane foreign policy ideas of Buchanan, all we hear in the Republican presidential debates is calls for more war and more bloodshed. Here are Gingrich and Romney at the Fox News Channel–Wall Street Journal debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina:

We're in South Carolina. South Carolina in the Revolutionary War had a young 13-year-old named Andrew Jackson. He was sabred by a British officer and wore a scar his whole life. Andrew Jackson had a pretty clear-cut idea about America's enemies: Kill them.

And Speaker Gingrich is right. Of course you take out our enemies, wherever they are. These people declared war on us. They've killed Americans. We go anywhere they are, and we kill them.

Santorum, of course, is no better, and especially because of his tremendous hostility toward libertarianism. In an interview last October, Santorum made himself perfectly clear: "I am not a libertarian, and I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement."

If conservative warmongers and Republican war party members won't listen to libertarians like Ron Paul on the subject of foreign policy, then fine. But they will have to deal with their elder statesman Pat Buchanan. And I think they will have their hands full.

http://lewrockwell.com/vance/vance281.html

I gotta have one of these

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/DPS-adds-boat-to-border-arsenal-3375660.php

the next I'm fishing in an urban area I'll be able to clear the
parking lot of thugs

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Gasoline Price Heads toward $4

Gasoline Price Heads toward $4
"Pump prices continued to march toward $4 a gallon Thursday, as signs of a stronger U.S. economy helped push benchmark oil past $108 per barrel." ( Christian Science Monitor)

And the peak driving season is still to come.

The High Cost of Misunderstanding Gasoline Economics
Why Do Prices Rise after Disasters?
Arthur E. Foulkes
April 2006 • Volume: 56 • Issue: 3 •

National emergencies, wars, natural disasters­all these things tend to bring about expanded government power.¹ Hurricane Katrina was no exception. In addition to promising to spend billions of dollars of other people's money allegedly to "rebuild" New Orleans and other stricken areas, politicians have been equally generous with other people's gasoline supplies. In many states, anyone attempting to sell gasoline at prices deemed socially "unconscionable" risks heavy fines.²

Government officials all across the country joined the expanding chorus. President Bush led the way early in the disaster's aftermath calling for "zero tolerance" for looters, scammers, and price gougers" at the gasoline pump."³ Other politicians echoed his message.

None of this is surprising. Even before Katrina knocked out half the Gulf of Mexico's oil production (sending gas prices soaring to over $3 per gallon Labor Day weekend), politicians and "consumer advocates" were calling for investigations into gasoline prices, which had been rising for about two years, reaching $2.64 per gallon by last August 30.⁴ Indeed, this has become commonplace; since 1973 the government has investigated the oil industry about once every two years.⁵ A 2002 Senate investigation into the oil industry purported to have discovered oil companies "manipulating the market." However, the report, sponsored by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, was in the words of economist William Anderson "an exercise in economic illiteracy."⁶

There is no mystery about recent rising gas prices. Strong economic growth in China, along with improved growth in the United States, has been pushing on the demand side of the gasoline market for some time. Meanwhile, political unrest in Venezuela and Iraq along with strict environmental restrictions and regulations in the United States have helped keep the supply side anemic and uncertain. The result is unsurprising­strong new demand with insufficient new supply (coupled with uncertainty) means higher prices at the pump.

Environmental regulations are often blamed for the fact that no new refineries have been built in the United States since 1976; however, the Cato Institute's Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren point to other reasons. They write that "meager" profits in the refining business over the past 30 years, cheaper imports, and the fact that it is less expensive to add capacity to an existing refinery than to build a brand new one have all kept the number of refineries from rising. They note further that while there are fewer refineries than 30 years ago, "[d]ramatic improvements in the operational efficiency of oil refineries" have actually permitted domestic gasoline production to increase "by 20 percent since the last oil refinery was built."⁷

Hurricane Katrina merely made the prevailing situation worse. Oil prices peaked at over $70 per barrel shortly after the storm, while average U.S. gasoline prices peaked at $3.07 in early September, "just a nickel shy of the inflation-adjusted record of $3.12 averaged over March 1981."⁸ Prices fell significantly after that, before creeping up again as the winter came on. The public was nervous and angry; politicians were quick to respond.

No one likes paying more for gasoline (except maybe folks who have always resented America's relatively cheap gasoline, its SUVs, and other signs of bourgeois opulence), but government-imposed price restrictions would only make matters worse. By interfering in the market's pricing mechanism, price controls simply hinder the ability of entrepreneurs and investors to provide the goods and services consumers desire most.

Much of the support for price controls stems from a lack of understanding of where prices come from. Many politicians and other critics of markets believe that market prices (or at least "fair" market prices) can be calculated using production costs. For example, they believe it is evidence of gouging if a gas station raises its pump price on news of higher oil prices­even if the gas sitting in the station's fuel tanks was purchased days or weeks earlier at a lower price. This thinking is mistaken on at least two counts.

First, "production costs" (themselves actually impossible to calculate since they are, in reality, subjective opportunity costs) don't determine a good's current market price. While it is true an entrepreneur will use his estimated accounting costs of production when deciding whether to produce a good or service, the actual market price of the finished good is a result of consumer desire to obtain the particular good as well as the ability and willingness of sellers to provide it. In other words, price is a function of supply and demand.

Second (and along the same lines), prices for final goods do not have to wait for immediate input prices to rise before they can change. The fact that retail gas prices skyrocketed on the news of Katrina's devastation to the Gulf's oil production­long before new, more expensive gasoline from the Gulf reached those stations­is no proof of any wrongdoing. On the contrary, it is a blessing that the price system can work so quickly.

News of increased demand for housing in a community (say, a new factory is coming to town with 10,000 employees) would immediately drive up the price of housing there. Housing prices might double or triple in a month, regardless of how much people paid for their houses. In a free market these higher prices would rapidly signal producers to redirect scarce resources­lumber, labor, cement mixers, and soon­from places where they are less urgently sought to where housing prices are rising. Likewise, if a plant closing in a community meant there would soon be a housing glut, home prices would immediately fall, discouraging the investment (and waste) of scarce resources. Because these prices change quickly, regardless of production costs, resources are redirected to more urgently desired areas more quickly than would otherwise be the case. Thus rapidly changing gasoline prices are a blessing because they send a clear signal early in a supply disruption, before things become much worse.


Emergent Phenomena

Politicians and others are undoubtedly frustrated by the teachings of economics because they more often than not tell political leaders what they cannot or should not do, not what they can do to change reality. In a recent essay Freeman columnist Russell Roberts wrote of the human desire to control what he calls "emergent phenomena," which he defines as things that are the result of human action but not subject to human design or control. Such phenomena include language and market prices. Efforts to control emergent phenomena, Roberts writes, confuse engineering problems (which are subject to human design) with economic problems (which are not). "[T]he engineering way of thinking doesn't work with emergent phenomena. Trying to change emergent results is inherently more complex than building a bridge or expanding your kitchen or even putting a man on the moon. Understanding the challenge involved is to begin to answer the old question that asks why we can put a man on the moon but we can't eliminate poverty."⁹

Despite talk of inelastic markets for retail gasoline, higher fuel prices over the past two years have started to have their anticipated effect on both supply and demand. The world's largest oil producers have recently and significantly increased their spending on oil exploration in response to higher prices, while consumers have started to move away from SUVs and large trucks to more fuel-efficient autos.¹⁰

Left unregulated and unsubsidized, markets would lead human beings to cooperate and prosper in ways unimaginable by interventionist-minded government officials and politicians. And prices play a central role, acting as signals that help direct diverse and disconnected people into activities that serve other people's most urgently felt wants and needs. Entrepreneurs also play a critical role by directing scarce resources toward ends most valued by consumers. If an endeavor proves mistaken, an entrepreneur fails and tries something else. All the while, consumers are likewise seeking out the most "profitable" (in a psychic sense) goods and services they can find. Thus a free market is in a never ending flux, constantly shifting resources from less-valued to more highly valued uses. This is not a process that can be improved on by political means.

Government officials may wish to magically or legally make gasoline more plentiful or less expensive, but they cannot change the forces of supply and demand. Indeed, their tampering only makes matters worse. The gas lines, shortages, and occasional violence that accompanied gasoline price caps in the 1970s should serve as an effective reminder. Politicians should he lessons of history and sound economics. To be sure, end all privileges for the oil companies, but leave gasoline prices alone.

1. See Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan(Oxford University Press: NewYork, Oxford, 1987).
2. In the words of University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee, "States tend to make their anti-gouging laws purposely vgue, forbidding 'unconscionable profiteering' during a state of emergency or the like." " Pump It Up," Slate, September 7, 2005, www.slate.com/id/2125814/.
3. Nedra Pickler, "Bush: Rebuilding Must Address Inequality," Associated Press, September 16, 2005, www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/9/16/134806.shtml.
4. "What Not to Do About Rising Energy Prices," Research Reports, American Institute for Economic Research, September 12, 2005.
5. Rob Bradley, "Gasoline Prices: Still Good News," Cato Institute Daily Dispatch, April 13, 2002, www.cato.org/dailys/04-13- 02.html.
6. William Anderson, "Congress and Oil Prices: The Outrage Mises.org Daily Article, May 6, 2002, www.mises.org/story/951.
7. "High Pump-Price Fairy Tales," National review.com, June 3, 2005, www.nationalreview.com/nrof_comment/taylor_van_doren200506030857.asp .
8. Figures provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Department of Energy, http://tonto.eia.doe.gov./oog/info/twip/twip.asp.
9. Russell Roberts, "The Reality of Markets," Library of Economics and Liberty, September 5, 2005, www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2005/Robertsmarkets.html.
10. Carola Hoyos and Javier Bias in London, "Search for Oil Stepped up as Price Rises," Financial Times, September 12, 2005; Amy Lee and Brett Canton, "Gas Costs Stall Used Truck Sales," Detroit News, July 11, 2005.


http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-high-cost-of-misunderstanding-gasoline-economics/

Sebelius: Decrease in Human Beings Will Cover Cost of Contraception Mandate

New post on Scotty Starnes's Blog Sebelius: Decrease in Human Beings Will Cover Cost of Contraception Mandate by Scotty Starnes What else would one expect from left-wing loons who believe in population control through the murder of children? Obama has surrounded himself with these types of individuals. See John Holdren or listen to Obama talk about being "punished with a baby." (CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a House panel Thursday that a reduction in the number of human beings born in the United States will compensate employers and insurers for the cost of complying with  the new HHS mandate that will require all health-care plans to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions. "The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for the cost of contraception," Sebelius said. She went on to say the estimated cost is "down not up." Watch the video>>>   Scotty Starnes | March 2, 2012 at 9:08 AM | Tags: abortions, contraception mandate, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Population control | Categories: Political Issues | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-6KP Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://scottystarnes.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/sebelius-decrease-in-human-beings-will-cover-cost-of-contraception-mandate/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

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How England Helped Start the Great War

Revisions
How England Helped Start the Great War
by Paul Gottfried
March 01, 2012

A vastly underexplored topic is the British government's role in greasing the skids for World War I. Until recently it was hard to find scholars who would dispute the culturally comfortable judgment that "authoritarian Germany" unleashed the Great War out of militaristic arrogance. Supposedly the British only got involved after the Germans recklessly violated Belgian neutrality on their way to conquering "democratic" France.

But British Foreign Secretary Lord Edward Grey had done everything in his power to isolate the Germans and their Austro-Hungarian allies, who were justified in their concern about being surrounded by enemies. The Triple Entente, largely constructed by Grey's government and which drew the French and Russians into a far-reaching alliance, encircled Germany and Austria with warlike foes. In July 1914 German leaders felt forced to back their Austrian allies in a war against the Serbs, who were then a Russian client state. It was clear by then that this conflict would require the Germans to fight both Russia and France.

The German military fatalistically accepted the possibility of England entering the struggle against them. This might have happened even if the Germans had not violated Belgian soil in order to knock out the French before sending their armies eastward to deal with a massive Russian invasion. The English were anything but neutral. In the summer of 1914 their government was about to sign a military alliance with Russia calling for a joint operation against German Pomerania in case of a general war. The British had also given assurances to French foreign minister Théophile Delcassé that they would back the French and the Russians (who had been allied since 1891) if war broke out with Germany.
"The British were more hostile to the Germans than vice versa."

Grey spurned attempts by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg to woo his government away from their commitments to Germany's enemies.

German concessions in 1912 included:

• The acceptance of British dominance in constructing railroads and accessing oil reserves in what is now Iraq
• Investments in central African ventures that would clearly benefit the English more than the Germans
• Meekly following England's lead in two Balkan Wars where Austria's enemy Serbia nearly doubled its territory.

The Russians and French were also vastly expanding their conscription to outnumber the German and Austrian forces, but neither German concessions nor the saber-rattling of England's continental allies caused the British government to change direction. Lord Grey, who remained foreign secretary until 1916, never swerved from his view that Germany was England's most dangerous enemy.

A book that makes this clear is Konrad Canis's study of German foreign policy from 1902 until 1914. A massive volume of more than seven hundred pages, Canis's Der Weg in den Abgrund (The Road Into the Abyss) is a groundbreaking revisionist account of the entanglements leading up to the war.

Canis makes several points one is not likely to encounter in ordinary historical scholarship:

1. The German Second Empire's foreign policy was largely passive. This was true not only of Bismarck after German unification in 1871 but almost equally true of German foreign policy from 1902 onward.

2. The British were more hostile to the Germans than vice versa. They viewed Germany as an upstart economic competitor which had established itself as the continent's dominant military power. Both German public opinion and German leaders were strongly Anglophilic; the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg considered English friendship to be something worth striving for even at the cost of German interests.

3. The German government and most of the German press made a sharp distinction between hoping to see their country become a world power and aspiring for dominance over all other countries. Canis's sources suggest that influential Germans were hoping to become a power "on the scale of England," a country they respected and had no interest in fighting.

In 1914 Russia posed more of a threat to England than either Germany or Austria did. England was struggling with Russia for dominance in Central Asia. Instead of reassessing its geopolitical priorities, Lord Grey offered Russia a third front against the Germans by promising to make British ships available for a landing in northern Germany. This was how the British government tried to settle its conflicts with Russia, as both of them were expanding into the same region. In these British commitments, it is unclear whether a distinction was still being drawn between offensive and defensive wars.

And then there's the US. When the German ambassador approached Teddy Roosevelt to join the Germans in upholding open trade in China's Yangtze River Valley and other regions then being closed off by the British and French, TR refused. He said he could not sign such a document before first consulting the British. This may be further proof for those who believe the US was a vassal state of England's before the First World War.

The autocratic Russian government, which entered the war from the east, was not quite as "democratic" in 1914, but by the time Woodrow Wilson pulled us into the European cauldron, Russia had undergone the first of two revolutions, this one a democratic revolutionary change in March 1917. Thus the US could ally itself with Russia's morally acceptable provisional government when it took up arms against putative German warmongers.

George Kennan's The Fateful Alliance and Sean McMeekin's The Russian Origin of the First World War both document the role the aggressively expansionist Russian government played in bringing about the Great War. But such revelations are no longer surprising.

What is more of a discovery is England's role in creating this catastrophe. This oversight may be attributed to certain obvious causes: the mistaken view that England only entered the war because of the violation of Belgian neutrality (this confounds a pretext with a cause); the Anglophilic disposition of American political and academic elites; and more recently, the tendentious notion that "democracies never fight each other." Unfortunately for this generalization, the governments of Germany and England (and certainly their societies) in 1914 looked much more like each other than either would resemble the present American or Canadian regime.

Canis does not defend Germany's ultimately disatrous decision in 1914. The Germans should have restrained the Austrians even after Serb agents killed Austria's Archduke Ferdinand. The ensuing war wrecked the Old Europe. The war industries that Grey, Churchill, and others of their kidney were lavishly funding were not what the populace wanted. The war hawks were diverting revenues from social reforms. Although I am hardly in favor of the welfare state, creating one in England in 1910 may have been less ruinous than Grey's foreign policy.


http://takimag.com/article/how_england_helped_start_the_great_war_paul_gottfried#ixzz1ny7IAEnF