#craig cantoni

[libertariantaoist]

When in the course of human events the political bonds that used to tie the people together in freedom have become shackles that have made them dependent on government—then at that critical juncture, it is time to officially declare a state of dependence.

This Declaration of Dependence replaces one of the greatest political documents in history, the Declaration of Independence, which, 241 years ago, gave birth to one of the greatest nations in history.

In the context of those times, the former Declaration was a remarkable document, in that it turned upside down the prior belief that man was subservient to the government.  Now, 241 years later, Americans are once again subservient to the government.

Over 60% of Americans now live in a household where at least one family member is dependent on the government in some way—either working for the government, or working in a private-sector job that depends on government regulations (e.g., tax attorneys), or receiving welfare, an entitlement, a subsidy, or a government disability payment.  If the black hole of the government education monopoly is included, the dependency index climbs to over 90%.

The left wants to increase dependency even more, even though the nation has a $20 trillion deficit and many states have such huge public pension obligations that they can’t properly maintain the infrastructure needed to deliver basic government services.  The right, on the other hand, wants to increase military spending even more, talking tough about cutting social-welfare spending while hypocritically collecting some form of government payment.

Americans can’t even go to the doctor without signing a government-mandated privacy form and then having their intimate information compiled with information from other patients and reported to the government and other third parties by medical billing clerks in a backroom—clerks who outnumber doctors and have a certificate in medical billing from a diploma mill, the cost of which was likely paid with a government tuition loan.   In essence, citizens are subsidizing other citizens to learn a trade that subtracts from the nation’s productivity and well-being, drives up the cost of medical care, and results in patients being spied on.

Likewise, physicians and others in the medical profession, having sold their Hippocratic Oath to the government in exchange for a guaranteed income, don’t mind federal agents looking over their shoulder as they are examining patients’ private parts.  In fact, the American Medical Association, which endorses the nationalization of medical care, makes a lot of money from providing the government with a coding system that the billing clerks use to track medical procedures.

Americans obediently comply with such diktats without a second thought, unlike how the colonists reacted to King George’s diktats 241 years ago—diktats that in some respects were less onerous than today’s diktats.  Come to think of it, the king and all of the king’s men didn’t have the imagination, control needs, or the power to impose the number of diktats that Americans live under today.  For example, it didn’t cross their minds to make their subjects fill out a form when they went to a doctor for bloodletting.

The people have become so conditioned to coercion that neither they nor their elected representatives even ask if a social problem can be solved without the use of government force—without the government forcing people to do something they don’t want to do, such as forcing them to subsidize their louche neighbors.  The first impulse nowadays is to resort to force instead of volunteerism, charity, or free exchange.

This conditioning can be seen in the debate over medical care/insurance, where virtually no one in the intelligentsia, media, or government first asked if the problem of the uninsured could be solved without the use of force.  Then Americans wonder why civil discourse is so acrimonious, not understanding that comity is at odds with pillaging and plundering.

When in the course of human events the people become sheep, they will be shorn.  But at least the shearing will be done in compliance with OSHA regulations, overseen by well-paid government OSHA apparatchiks who vote Democrat and by well-paid private-sector OSHA consultants who vote Republican.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are not born equal, at least not in terms of intelligence, drive, determination, attractiveness, or the quality of their parents.  A corollary is that all human organizations are hierarchical, with the most talented, ambitious, lucky, crooked, or ruthless at the top, and with everyone else layered at different levels below, depending on their respective talent, ambition, luck, crookedness, or ruthlessness.

Contrary to what such neo-Marxists as Bernie Sanders and the Occupy Wall Street movement believe, wealth and power are less concentrated in democratic/capitalist countries than in socialist ones, and certainly far less than in communist ones, where a tiny minority has near-absolute power.  They are correct, however, that America is becoming more hierarchical and more unequal in the distribution of income and wealth, with income increasing faster for the capital class (the so-called one percent) than for the working class, because those with capital get returns on their investments that are higher than the returns on labor. But the neo-Marxists don’t acknowledge their own role in causing this to happen—specifically, their tax, regulatory, welfare, and immigration policies, which are hollowing out the middle class and making it difficult for middle-income people to acquire capital and move up.

Or maybe this is exactly what the neo-Marxists want; that is, a two-class society without a thriving middle class.  After all, with a two-class society, the likes of Bernie Sanders would be in the ruling class at the top, and everyone else would be in a homogenously poor and dependent class below, just as it was in the Soviet Union and Red China—and just as it is developing in Venezuela today.

America is well on the way to this socialist nirvana.  The ruling class consists of those with government sinecure and pensions, as well as those in the private sector with government contracts, or government protections from competition, or government subsidies, or lucrative jobs created by the regulatory state, or financial windfalls bestowed on them by the Federal Reserve and Treasury.    The evidence can be seen in the wealth in the imperial city of Washington, which stands in stark contrast to the declining fortunes in the hinterland.

The numbers on the growth of government are just as stark, although you won’t see the numbers in the ignorant media.  For example, in 1941, there was one government employee at the federal, state and local levels for every 27.7 citizens.  Today, the ratio is one for every 14.6 citizens.  If the ratio of government employees had kept pace with population growth since 1941 instead of exceeding it, there would be 10 million fewer government employees today.  (Note:  These figures do not include the private-sector workers who are de facto government workers because they hold jobs outsourced by the government to the private sector.)

Keep in mind that the 10 million excess employees receive compensation (pay, benefits, pensions, and time off) that is about 40% higher, on average, than the compensation of their private-sector counterparts.  In addition, they have job security not found in the private sector.  Equal pay for equal work is the law of the land, but not for government workers.

All levels of government now consume nearly 50% of national income, versus about 12% prior to 1930.    Unlike businesses that operate in a relatively free market, where survival depends on doing more with less, government not only survives but thrives by doing less with more.

As government has grown, the American populace has been transformed from self-reliance to dependency, and from there to entitlement.

The prevailing entitlement mentality can be seen all around us, even in parking lots, of all places; and in particular, handicap parking places.  Most of the spaces are used by ambulatory Americans who are quite able to walk another 100 ft. to a store from a regular parking space but simply choose not to.  This is because the handicap spaces are considered a right by those who park in them, whether they are liberals who drive a Prius with a “Coexist” sticker on the bumper or conservatives who drive a mammoth truck with a “NRA” sticker on the bumper.   Many of the faux disabled are grossly overweight and could benefit from parking at the far end of a lot and waddling the extra distance.

If you think it’s hyperbolic to say that many Americans consider it a right to park in a handicap parking spot, then run for public office and see what happens if you suggest that the spaces be restricted to the wheelchair bound, which was their original purpose.

It’s a short mental leap from thinking that a handicap parking space is a right to thinking that it is a right to get medical care at someone’s else’s expense, or anything else that the majority considers a right.

Of course the founders had different ideas about rights, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.   That some of them were slave owners and men of wealth and privilege made their intellectual feat even more remarkable, for as they were well aware, their ideas would lead to the empowerment of the common man and lay bare the contradiction of slavery and the taking of native lands.

Something else can be seen in parking lots in every part of town:   expensive cars and trucks loaded with gadgets galore.  Americans spend more on vehicles than on medical care/insurance, yet think they have a right to drive a status symbol while sending the bill for their medical care to their neighbors.  It’s a similar story with tuition loans, which, on average, are about $30,000, or about the same amount as the average car loan.  You won’t see this story in the ignorant media, but there are plenty of people who have $30,000 in tuition debt and $30,000 in car debt but expect taxpayers to write off their tuition debt.  As Bernie Sanders and his cadres would say, it’s only fair.   Actually, it’s only fair to forego a new car and take a bus or bike to work so that someone else isn’t stuck with your tuition bill.

In the same vein, it’s only fair to keep yourself in good physical shape if you advocate that others pick up the cost of your medical care, although this point isn’t made by today’s churches, schools, media, politicians, and philosophers.  Instead, they define fairness as collectivism and redistribution, with no expectation of personal responsibility in return.

Envy, which is an unattractive evolutionary trait of humans, is the driving force behind such thinking.  Envy is such a strong influence on human action that, as behavioral experiments have shown, most people would prefer that everyone be equally poor than everyone be wealthier if this means that some people will be wealthier than others.

Envy is particularly disastrous for society when it is coupled with a lack of self-control, because, for both individuals and society as a whole, success depends on the ability to say no to immediate gratification and to save and invest the fruits of one’s labor for self-improvement, a rainy day, a medical emergency, and old age.

Self-control has plummeted in society as immediate gratification has been encouraged by the government, business and permissive parents.   Easy credit, easy money, a constant bombardment of advertisements on TV and the Internet, and depraved entertainment from Hollywood have had a terrible effect on society.   Indebtedness, obesity, single-parent families, and drug overdoses have skyrocketed, with the last reaching epidemic levels, especially overdoses from opioids and fentanyl imported from China.

Few people see the irony of China exporting fentanyl to the West, because few people study history and know that Great Britain had imported opium to China in what became known as the Opium Wars, resulting in scores of Chinese spending their days in a stupor in opium dens.

What goes around comes around, and the West’s imperialism has come around and around and around.  Picking up where the empires of Great Britain, France, Spain, and others left off, the United States has morphed from a republic into an empire; and like all empires throughout history, has stuck its nose into so many corners of the world that it can no longer afford to protect its legitimate interests and prevent the inevitable blowback.  It is not remembered by those who don’t know history that all it took for the almighty British Empire to become a shadow of its former self was one war.  In just several years England went from a powerful creditor nation to a debtor weakling.  Those who think it can’t happen to the United States are delusional and go by the name of John McCain.

Meanwhile, the American media are stuck in the past and thus have sullied their noble and important mission of speaking for the powerless against the powerful.  They don’t realize that the make-up of the powerless and powerful has changed since the Progressive Era and, once again, since the civil rights decade of the 1960s.  Civil rights groups, environmental activists, the welfare industry, government regulators, and law enforcement have become as powerful, elitist, hidebound, self-serving, and corrupt as the stereotypical Robber Barons and corporate fat cats of yesteryear.

At the same time, millions of the so-called poor, disadvantaged and disabled are ripping off their neighbors, by feigning disabilities, falsely claiming discrimination and workplace injuries, taking out student loans with no intention of paying them back or getting a degree, loafing instead of working in spite of being quite able-bodied, and demonstrating great creativity in manipulating the system to their advantage.  Yet you won’t see any exposes on this in the indoctrinated and shopworn news media.  One has to watch “Judge Judy” to see the extent of debasement and debauchery in a large segment of society.

The founders understood the dangers of factions but couldn’t foresee that the nation would move way beyond factions someday.  The polity is now organized around interest groups, or theft rings, which compete against each other, not only to hold onto their government rice bowl but also to fill the bowl with even more government subsidies, handouts, and privileges before another group snatches the loot.  They include, among hundreds of others, the American Association of Retired People, the American Medical Association, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Realtors, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Banking Association, Planned Parenthood, professional baseball and football, the farm lobby, the ethanol lobby, the solar lobby, the sugar lobby, the defense lobby, the welfare lobby, the mass transit lobby, and probably a lobotomy lobby.

We, therefore, the unfree people of the United States, solemnly publish and declare that we have given full power to the central government to make all decisions for us, to coddle us, and to shower us with free stuff until the nation goes bankrupt.  And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of the divine nanny state, we mutually pledge to the munificent government our lives, fortunes, and our sacred honor.

[robertpatrick8]

Artificial turf making a comeback at NFL stadiums, MLB ballparks

Artificial turf is making a comeback at Major League Baseball parks and National Football League stadiums, with new high-tech artificial surfaces ending a trend toward playing fields of natural grass.

A LawnStarter review found that by the 2020 season, two NFL franchises and two baseball teams will switch from natural surfaces to artificial ones. One team, baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, will make the change in time for the 2019 season The other three — The NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, and baseball’s Texas Rangers — will go to artificial turf for their 2020 seasons.

In the NFL, the Rams and Chargers will play their 2019 seasons in separate stadiums on natural turf. For 2020, they will move in together and share a $5 billion stadium expected to open for the 2020 season. It will feature artificial turf. That will mean 15 of the NFL’s 32 teams will be playing on synthetic turf as of the 2020 season.

For 2019, here is the NFL grass versus artificial turf lineup.

NFL stadiums, teams playing on artificial turf in 2019

AT&T Stadium, Dallas Cowboys

CenturyLink Field, Seattle Seahawks

Ford Field, Detroit Lions

Gillette Stadium, New England Patriots

Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis Colts

Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta Falcons

Mercedes-Benz Superdome, New Orleans Saints

MetLife Stadium, New York Jets and Giants

New Era Field Buffalo Bills

NRG Stadium, Houston Texans

Paul Brown Stadium, Cleveland Browns

U.S. Bank Stadium, Minnesota Vikings

NFL stadiums, teams playing on natural turf in 2019

Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City Chiefs

Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte Panthers

Broncos Mile High Stadium, Denver Broncos

Dignity Health Sports Park, Los Angeles Chargers

FedEx Field, Washington Redskins

FirstEnergy Stadium, Cleveland Browns

Hard Rock Stadium, Miami Dolphins

Heinz Field, Pittsburgh Steelers

Lambeau Field, Green Bay Packers

Levi’s Stadium, San Francisco 49ers

Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia Eagles

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, L.A. Rams

M&T Bank Stadium, Baltimore Ravens

Nissan Stadium, Tennessee Titans

Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, Oakland Raiders

Raymond James Stadium, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Soldier Field, Chicago Bears

State Farm Stadium, Phoenix Cardinals

TIAA Bank Field, Jacksonville Jaguars

Two NFL teams —the Atlanta Falcons and the Minnesota Vikings — will be getting new artificial turf surfaces in 2019, but they are both routine replacements of existing artificial turf.

Baseball: Arizona Diamondbacks, Texas Rangers shifting to high-tech turf

Major League Baseball first rolled out its first path of plastic when the Houston Astrodome opened in 1966. Use of artificial turf peaked in the 1990s, when 10 baseball parks had it.

Its use waned because players feared injury on it, and no baseball park opened since the 1990s had it.

That streak is ending in 2019.

In Major League Baseball, the Arizona Diamondbacks will install artificial turf for the 2019 season because the team decided the Phoenix sun and heat were too much for natural grass.

“The challenges with growing natural grass in our climate and stadium have been well documented and we have considered alternate solutions for many years,” Derrick Hall, D-backs president and CEO, told Lawnstarter.com.

Players have had the chance to practice on the new turf at their Scottsdale facility. The new turf will be installed at Diamondbacks’ Chase Field in early March, 2019. Credit: Sarah Sachs/Arizona Diamondbacks

“During the testing, all of the players had great things to say about the playing surface,” Hall said. “Over the past couple of weeks during spring training, our players have had the chance to test out the new grass on our agility field and one of the half-fields at Salt River Fields at Talking Stick and have had great feedback.”

It will help the bottom line as well by saving 90 percent of the water that had been used to keep the natural turf growing, he said.

Their solution was B1K, a new high-tech turf developed by Shaw Sports Turf, headquartered in Calhoun, Ga. The turf is designed to mimic the bounce and feel of natural turf.

The synthetic surface has been installed already on spring training practice fields the Diamondbacks’ practice fields in Scottsdale, Ariz. The turf will be laid out at Phoenix’s Chase Field in time for the 2019 home opener April 5 against the Boston Red Sox.

Said Hall, “We decided to make this change because the technology developed by Shaw is the best in existence and will provide a consistent playing surface and benefits to our players on the field while enhancing our fan experience throughout the ballpark.”

Developing the new turf

Philipe Aldahir, director of turf research and innovation for Shaw, said the B1K turf got its name from the baseball term “Batting 1.000” and was more than two years in development.

One key ingredient: coconut fibers. Traditional artificial turf has an understory of rubber, which affects the bounce of the ball and the spring of the athletes. Shaw set out to match natural turf’s playing surface using, among other tools, a baseball launcher. “We set the speed and angle and shot out baseballs,” he said. They recorded the results, brought them back into the lab, and went to work trying to reproduce the natural bounce.

Like Thomas Edison going through hundreds of materials before finding the right light bulb filament, Shaw’s researchers went through hundreds of materials before the coconut eureka moment.

The result was a next-generation synthetic turf that he hopes will remove the “stigma” attached to playing on artificial turf.

Shaw’s new generation of artificial turf has won two Major League Baseball clients. Photo courtesy of Shaw Sports Turf.

Texas Rangers to follow suit in 2020

In Arlington, Texas, home of the Texas Rangers, Shaw’s B1K turf will be installed when the team’s new Globe Life Field opens for the 2020 season. The new, retractable-roof ballpark will replace Arlington Stadium, the open-air, naturally turfed home of the Rangers since the team moved there in 1971.

“From our first visit with the staff at Shaw Sports Turf, we were clear that a synthetic grass surface for Globe Life Field would only be a consideration if it could deliver the best surface in Major League Baseball and address the concerns we had related to impact on the players,” said Rob Matwick, Rangers Executive Vice President of Business Operations, in a Feb. 1, 2019 news release. “Months of detailed research that included extensive input from our Baseball Operations group from both a health and performance aspect have resulted in this decision.”

When the Rangers make their move, it will double the number of MLB teams playing on turf to four. The two existing baseball parks with synthetic playing fields are Tropicana Field in Tampa and Rogers Centre in Toronto, homes of the Rays and the Blue Jays.

Photos of NFL Stadiums with Natural Turf

Arrowhead Stadium Kansas City Chiefs (Kansas City, Mo.)

Image: YouTube/Burgers R Tasty

Bank of America Stadium Carolina Panthers (Charlotte, N.C.)

Photo: Delaware North

Broncos Mile High Stadium Denver Broncos (Denver, Colo.)

Photo: Flickr/Craig Hawkins

Dignity Health Sports Park Los Angeles Chargers (Los Angeles, Calif.)

Dignity Health Sports Park, the NFL’s smallest field, is the temporary home to the Los Angeles Chargers.

Photo: Flickr, courtesy Ytoyoda

FedEx Field Washington Redskins (Washington, D.C.)

Photo: Redskins.com

FirstEnergy Stadium Cleveland Browns (Cleveland)

  Photo: Turner Construction

Hard Rock Stadium Miami Dolphins (Miami)

Photo: Stadia

Heinz Field Pittsburgh Steelers (Pittsburgh)

Photo: Flickr/fatherspoon

Lambeau Field Green Bay Packers

Photo: Event USA

Levi’s Stadium San Francisco 49ers

Photo: Levi’s Stadium

Lincoln Financial Field Philadelphia Eagles (Philadelphia)

Photo: Gensler

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Los Angeles Rams (Los Angeles)

Photo: Facebook/Los Angeles Rams

M&T Bank Stadium Baltimore Ravens (Baltimo)

Photo: BaltimoreRavens.com

Nissan Stadium Tennessee Titans (Nashville, Tenn.)

Photo: Athletic Turf

Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Oakland Raiders

Photo: Flickr/Brian Cantoni

Raymond James Stadium Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Tampa, Fla.)

Photo: Foresite Group

Soldier Field Chicago Bears (Chicago)

Photo: Twitter/Soldier Field

State Farm Stadium Arizona Cardinals (Phoenix, Ariz.)

Photo: Ephesus Lighting

  TIAA Bank Field Jacksonville Jaguars (Jacksonville, Fla.)

Photo: Creative Commons

Photos of NFL stadiums with artificial turf

AT&T Stadium Dallas Cowboys (Dallas)

Photo: Mail Systems Management Association

CenturyLink Field Seattle Seahawks (Seattle)

Photo: Seahawks.com

Ford Field Detroit Lions (Detroit)

Photo: Levy Restaurants

Gillette Stadium New England Patriots

Photo: Rukkus

Lucas Oil Field Indianapolis Colts (Indianapolis)

Photo: Hunt Construction Group

Mercedes-Benz Stadium Atlanta Falcons (Atlanta)

Image: YouTube/Bossman Show

Mercedes-Benz Superdome New Orleans Saints (New Orleans)

Photo: M-Communications

MetLife Stadium New York Giants New York Jets

Image: YouTube/Robin Fokker

NRG Stadium Houston Texans (Houston)

Photo: The Consulting Engineers Group

New Era Field Buffalo Bills

Photo: Twitter/Buffalo Bills

Paul Brown Stadium Cincinnati Bengals (Cincinnati, Ohio)

Photo: Clermont County Convention & Visitors Bureau

U.S. Bank Stadium Minnesota Vikings (Minneapolis)

Photo: Vikings.com

  Top photo: TheRichest.com

The post Artificial turf making a comeback at NFL stadiums, MLB ballparks appeared first on Lawnstarter.

from Gardening Resource https://www.lawnstarter.com/blog/sports-turf/nfl-mlb-teams-artificial-turf-2019/

[libertariantaoist]

It was almost a certainty that ObamaCare would not be replaced or reformed enough to restore a consumer market in medical care/insurance, one in which the consumer is at the top of the pyramid instead of the bottom.

Why was it almost a certainty?

Because the government has been chipping away at a consumer market in medical care/insurance for at least 75 years, so that what remains today has little resemblance to a market.  To use an analogy, it’s as if a vandal had chipped away for days on Michelangelo’s statue of David and left behind a badly marred chunk of unrecognizable marble.  Even if it were somehow possible to glue the chips back together, it would take a long time to do so, and even then, Michelangelo’s masterpiece would never be restored to its former beauty.

Restoring the medical care/insurance market is even more complicated than restoring a statue, for the restoration has to be done through a political and governmental process, a process that was designed by the Founders to move slowly.   It’s also a process that has been hijacked by powerful special interests, ranging from large corporations, to government bureaucracies, to unions, to physician associations, to hospital associations, and to so-called consumer advocacy groups that pretend to care about the entire populace but in actuality care about some segment of society (e.g., AARP and Planned Parenthood).

And underlying all of this is a political reality:  that once an entitlement, subsidy, handout, or tax break is in place, it is nearly impossible to take away.  The fact is, there is a lot to take away in medical care/insurance to ever have a true consumer market.

Let’s look at what needs to be taken away to have a market in medical care/insurance that is comparable to the markets for food, clothes, housing, cars, furniture, restaurant meals, electronics, entertainment, and insurance for houses, cars, and lives.

We’ll begin in 1942, which is when wage controls were instituted during World War II.  To get around the wage controls, employers began giving employees non-cash benefits in lieu of wage increases, especially benefits in the form of company-provided medical insurance.  The Department of Labor and courts later ruled that such benefits were matters for negotiation in union contracts, just like pay.  And the IRS began allowing companies to get a tax deduction for the expense of the benefits, as well as not taxing the benefits as income to employees.

These developments severely damaged the consumer market for medical care/insurance, as they put employers in charge of much of the market instead of consumers.  It also put the self-employed at a tax disadvantage and a clout disadvantage in purchasing medical care/insurance on their own, as they didn’t get a tax deduction as corporations did and didn’t have the purchasing power of large employer group plans.

Even more damaging was the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s.  Putting aside any moral, philosophical and utilitarian questions about the programs, it is indisputable that the programs are socialistic in nature and not free-market in nature.  The programs pay for about half of all medical care in the nation, thus leaving only the remaining half that can be reformed into a consumer market.  But here’s a rub:  Even the remaining half is affected by the socialized half, because Medicare and Medicaid cause industry-wide distortions in the supply, demand, pricing, and competition for medical services.

Other damage was caused by HMO legislation enacted under the Nixon administration, by ERISA enacted under the Ford administration, by the Medicare prescription drug benefit enacted under the G. W. Bush administration, by the Affordable Care Act under the Obama administration, and by other laws too numerous to name here.  Each one produced thousands of pages of regulations, gave birth to scores of interest groups, affected tens of millions of voters, and put even more distance between medical care/insurance and a true consumer market.

In the spirit of nonpartisanship and honesty, this believer in markets has to admit that medical care wasn’t that great prior to 1942, even though there was less government interference in medical and insurance markets than there is today.  Yes, care and insurance were relatively inexpensive, partly due to expensive medical technologies and treatments not being developed yet; but care and insurance were spotty, and much care was provided outside of a true consumer market.  For example, many workers received care in clinics provided by their employers, especially in rural areas, and many other people received care from charitable hospitals run by organized religions (e.g., Catholic hospitals) or fraternal associations (e.g. Shriners).  So many Americans did not have good medical care (and nutrition) prior to World War II that 20% of enlistees were rejected for service in the war due to physical ailments.

Would these problems have been corrected by the market without the need for government interference as the country became more prosperous? Based on my biases—which in turn are based on the remarkable advances and cost reductions delivered by markets for other goods and services—the answer is yes.  But it’s impossible to prove that.

In any event, that’s not where we are today.  Where we are today is having to live with the results of 75 years of the government chipping away at a consumer market for medical care/insurance.  It would not necessarily take 75 years to reverse the damage and restore a market, but it’s foolish to believe that it can be done in one presidential term and in one congressional term—especially when the other political party will attempt to reverse market reforms when it runs the government again.

Republicans should have been honest about this, should have planned accordingly, and should have closed ranks around some initial reforms that would’ve been difficult for Democrats to rescind when they get back into power.  Instead, the conservative wing of the party thought they were Michelangelo and could create a beautiful consumer market in short order, as if they were starting from scratch with a new block of marble instead of having to deal with a badly damaged block and hundreds of fragments.

[libertariantaoist]

For over a half-century, the government and those in the medical and science community who fed at its richly nutritious teats of grants and subsidies had declared that it was a scientific fact that dietary fats were a primary cause of heart disease, obesity and related diseases.   They were as sure of this as the government and the science community are today about the causes and consequences of global warming.

But they were dead wrong about fats, and millions of people have died prematurely because of their faulty science.  But now we are expected to believe their hypotheses about global warming, although it is exponentially more difficult to isolate and prove causal links between human activity and climate change than it is between nutrition and disease.

After all, in studies of global warming, unlike studies of human disease, it’s impossible to establish a control group or conduct experiments on rats and monkeys or undertake epidemiological studies of humans.  One would have to go to another planet that has life on it to conduct similar research to prove or disprove hypotheses about man-caused global warming.

The story of how Americans were led astray about dietary fat is told in The Case Against Sugar, by Gary Taubes, an award-winning medical and science journalist.  He says that the government, the medical community, and nutrition scientists missed the real culprit:  refined sugar, as well as carbohydrates in general.  Then he provides the science behind this hypothesis, summarizes the related experiments and epidemiological studies, and describes how the sugar industry spent huge sums of money on lobbying, research grants, and marketing to keep sugar and sugar-laden food products from getting the blame.

Correlation is not causation, as Taubes makes clear, but the growth in sugar usage closely parallels the growing incidence of various diseases.  Modern advances in endocrinology (the study of hormones and hormone related diseases) have shown that there is more than correlation between increased sugar consumption and the rise in certain diseases.

“We now eat in two weeks the amount of sugar that our ancestors of 200 years ago ate in a whole year,” wrote nutritionist John Yudkin in 1963.  Since he wrote those words, sugar consumption has skyrocketed even more, not only sucrose from sugarcane and beets but also from the newer invention of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).   At the same time, there has been an 800 percent increase in diabetes in the United States.

An aside:  Millions of acres of rich farmland are now dedicated to the growing of corn, not only for HFCS but also for ethanol for cars and as a feedstock for cattle—which is not their natural diet and causes a host of problems with respect to animal health and the environment.  How crazy is that?

And a confession:  I have anti- and pro-sugar biases.  On the pro-side, I used to work for the candy conglomerate, Mars, Inc.  On the anti-side, because I’ve cut out most sugars and other carbohydrates from my diet, I’m at the weight and waistline of my college days, although those days were many decades ago.

Fifty years ago, one in eight Americans was obese.  Today, more than one in three is obese.  Diabetes has followed:  About 13 percent of Americans have diabetes, with about 95 percent of those having type 2 diabetes.  Another 30 percent are predicted to get the disease during their lives.  By contrast, in the 1930s, only two to three Americans in every thousand had diabetes.

Sixty percent of lower-limb amputations in adults are due to diabetes, totaling over 70 thousand amputations a year in the U.S. alone.  Americans spend over $30 billion per year on diabetic drugs and medical devices.  And as I’ve detailed in previous commentaries, the annual cost of medical care in the U.S. stemming from obesity and overeating in general is between $700 billion and $1 trillion.

This sure seems like an epidemic to this layman.  Yet the epidemic is seldom mentioned in the media coverage of rising medical costs and the political debate over a replacement for ObamaCare.   This is particularly curious given that it is within the control of individuals to cut their medical expenses.  They don’t need some sort of central plan hatched in Congress to do this.  All they have to do is stop eating the foods that make them fat and cause heart disease, diabetes, and other medical problems.  Chief among these is sugar.

Equally curious, there seems to be more media coverage about global warming than the epidemic.  As a result, millennials in particular believe that climate change is the biggest threat to human health—as they chug Gatorade.  Likewise, many Americans have developed a fetish for organic, non-GMO foods while continuing their high consumption of sugar.  True, the consumption of soda has declined, but people are lined up in the morning at the drive-up window of Starbucks and other coffee purveyors to buy a sugar-laden milkshake masquerading as coffee, along with a sugar-laden pastry.

In the 1920s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture actually promoted sugar as an effective energy source and efficient way of acquiring calories.  Then in the 1980s, the National Institutes of Health spent a quarter of a billion dollars on two trials to test the hypothesis that dietary fat causes heart disease and thus the shortening of lives. There were not similar studies about the ill-effects of sugar.

The trials were inconclusive, but that didn’t stop the government from instituting a massive propaganda campaign to encourage Americans to eat a low-fat diet.  Then in the 1990s, after succumbing to pressure from women’s groups, the NIH spent a half-million to a billion dollars, depending on the estimate, on another trial to determine if there was a causal link between dietary fat and chronic disease in women.  Known as the Women’s Health Initiative, the inconclusive results were released in 2006.

Today, those who raise legitimate questions about the causes and consequences of global warming are ridiculed as “climate deniers.”  But what if there had been “fat deniers” fifty years ago—that is, those who questioned the government’s conclusions about dietary fat being the cause of chronic diseases instead of sugar?  Perhaps there would have been a lot fewer premature deaths and a lot less spent on medical care.

As The Case Against Sugar shows, the public interest is not served by shutting down disagreements with the conventional scientific wisdom.  But that’s exactly what is happening with respect to global warming, whatever the facts may prove to be about climate change.

[libertariantaoist]

That’s it!  I’m done with libertarians and regret ever associating with the Fruit Loops.

The final straw was a noted libertarian saying the following about foreign policy:

“The United States should observe good faith and justice toward all nations and cultivate peace and harmony with all, should not have hatreds against some nations and affections for others, should have foreign relations based solely on commerce, and should engage in equal and impartial trade with all, without seeking or granting favors or preferences.”

Geez, how naïve can one be?

A second noted Fruit Loop said, “We should not meddle with the internal affairs of any other country.  Instead, we should have free trade with all nations and political entanglements with none.”

Completely bonkers.

Then there is a third loony libertarian with an entire cranium full of Fruit Loops, who said, “The purpose of our foreign policy is not to bring enlightenment or happiness to the rest of the world, but to ensure the life, liberty, and happiness of the American people.”

This loon went on to say that we should not engage in wars of liberation or otherwise interfere in foreign wars.  Then the crackpot followed with this:  “Erroneous moral principle is the most fruitful of all the sources of human calamity and vice.”

How does someone acquire such dangerous notions?  Well, with respect to the third guy, his mother had drilled him in Horace’s motto about Roman mothers despising war, or in Latin, bella matronis detestata.

Who is this third guy?

Well, he is none other than John Quincy Adams, the son of John and Abigail Adams.

Who is the first guy?

That would be George Washington.

The second guy?

Thomas Jefferson.

(Note:  Editorial license was taken with the quoted comments of each of the three, in order to contemporize the flowery language of the eighteenth century.)

How could these three guys have been so stupid?  Well, John Quincy Adams’ education explains how.  He studied six foreign languages, the classics, history, political theory, the Bible, and a season of “The Apprentice” on TV.  (Note to today’s college-educated millennials:  The last was a joke.)  He also spent seventeen years in European capitals after he accompanied his father to Paris in 1778.  By the age of twelve, he was clerking for the highest U.S. emissaries.  Upon returning home, he earned two degrees at Harvard and began a law practice.  (Source:  The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy, by Walter A. McDougall)

Not having benefited from today’s multiculturalism, diversity, and political correctness, John Quincy Adams didn’t think much of Spanish (aka Hispanic) customs, culture and rule.  He called Latin Americans of his era “the most ignorant, the most bigoted, the most superstitious of all the Roman Catholics in Christendom.”

Yeah, John Quincy Adams was sure a dumbbell and far inferior intellectually to such contemporary political thinkers as Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Wolf Blitzer, Megyn Kelly, and the rest of the media/political highbrows who enlighten the American public about the true meaning of being an American and the indispensable role of America in the world.

Just think of what where we’d be if Americans still embraced the three Fruit Loops of Washington, Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams.  We wouldn’t be in the middle of the Israel/Palestine conflict, we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq or Afghanistan, we wouldn’t be protecting Europeans from the bogeyman named Putin, we wouldn’t have sent 50,000 Americans to their death in Vietnam, we wouldn’t have VA hospitals full of veterans with psychological and physical wounds, and we wouldn’t be in bed with such undemocratic regimes as the Saudis for their oil, because we would have the same understanding as Adam Smith about the wonders of markets in meeting demand for resources.

So why don’t I want anything to do with libertarians?  Because conservatives, neocons, liberals, and neoliberals have convinced me that libertarians are Fruit Loops, even though libertarians embrace the same policy of non-aggression as the Founders.  This means that the Founders also must have been Fruit Loops.

I have a final question, though:  Isn’t it un-American to think that the Founders were Fruit Loops?

[libertariantaoist]

“Outrageous” is the first word that comes to mind.

The next three words that come to mind are “We are screwed.”

The first sentence that comes to mind is:  “It’s outrageous that we’re being screwed once again by the government and its crony capitalists at Fannie Mae.”

While we’ve been distracted by President Trump’s flurry of activity, Fannie Mae has announced that it will be underwriting billions of dollars in debt for Wall Street firms to invest in the building of rental housing.

We should be running down to the nearest farm implement store to buy pitchforks instead of waiting in line at Starbucks to fork over a lot of moolah for a little mocha.  Oh well, I have a dream.

This would be the same Fannie Mae that was established as a government-sponsored enterprise with the mission to increase home ownership.  Now it will be using its federal government backing to increase rental housing, which will compete with residential housing.   It matters not that there is a glut of rental units in many locales.

This also would be the same Fannie Mae that carried out the government’s loony housing policies that caused the last housing bubble and collapse, instantly wiping out the credit of millions of families, causing the Great Recession, and resulting in George W. Bush and his merry band of bandits bailing out Wall Street with your money.  None of the guilty parties is serving prison time.

And it’s the same Fannie Mae that has been used as a source of patronage for pols of both parties, including the likes of Newt Gingrich and Barney Frank, who indeed make strange bedfellows.  Neither of these guys is serving prison time, although it would be entertaining to watch them as bunkmates at Leavenworth.

As with its sugar daddy of the federal government, Fannie Mae is a repository of affirmative action, a place where one’s race and ethnicity are more important than one’s competence or ethics.  Its former Chairman and CEO Franklin Raines was finally fired for cooking the books, but only after he made $20 million in salary, bonus and stock in one year.  He is not serving prison time.  (See a trend here?)

Why is Fannie branching out into the funding of rental housing?  Well, there is the stated reason and the real reason.

The stated reason is that a large swath of peasants can no longer afford to buy homes, due to losing so much money and creditworthiness in the housing bust; and also due to being burdened with student debt and other debt.   Ironically, as already stated, the government caused the housing bubble and bust; now it is going to create a similar problem in rental housing.

The government also caused tuition debt to skyrocket.  It did this in two ways.  First, it enabled students without the IQ to be in college to attend college, oftentimes with the “students” using college as an extension of the welfare state, with no intention to ever pay back the tuition loan.  Second, the government not only flooded colleges with easy tuition money but also with subsidies and grants of every description.  This made colleges insensitive to cost, which caused the price of college to skyrocket and triggered a building spree of Taj Mahal facilities and sports arenas on campuses.

Neither of these two causes of student indebtedness has been covered much in the numbskull media, which shows the true value of a journalism degree.  Imagine going into debt to get such a degree.  A double travesty.  No wonder so many journalists are left-wingers who want to overthrow capitalism.

The real reason for Fannie branching out into the funding of rental housing is the political power of the real estate industry, which is not only one of the most powerful lobbies at the federal level but rivals teacher unions in lobbying power at the state level.  To block any attempts to reduce the flow of money from Fannie to the industry, all the industry has to do is lie that the reduction will reduce home ownership and hurt the little guy.

In a just nation, Fannie executives would be serving time in prison. Instead, they will be serving time in the swank new Fannie headquarters in the Imperial City of Washington, DC.  For a photo of the palace and the cost overruns of the travesty, see the story at the following link.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2016/06/16/growing-cost-of-planned-fannie-mae-headquarters-comes-under-fire/?utm_term=.e22eb503156a

Note that the palace is made of glass, which would make it hard for peasants to climb the walls and overthrow the royalty inside, assuming that Americans would ever have the sense and gumption to do the right thing.

In our defense, it’s awfully hard to be nimble enough to storm the palace with Fannie protruding out of our fanny.

[libertariantaoist]

You’ve no doubt heard about the fanfaronade between Trump and the media over the number of people who watched the Inauguration.

Unlike the brawlers, I know the correct number:  too many.

Too many watched the pomp and ceremony, the plutocrats on the stage, the proletariats massed beneath them on the Capitol Mall, the praising of God for being on America’s side, and the firing of a battery of 105mm howitzers, which had a special meaning to this former Army Artillery officer.

For sure, such displays of government power and leader worship should not be watched by innocent children.

What’s wrong with loving one’s country and admiring a peaceful transition of power?

Well, pomp and ceremony is a strange way of showing love for something.  I love my family dearly but don’t fire howitzers in the street to show my love.  Nor do I stand on my roof with a bullhorn and announce to my neighbors that my family is better than their family and that God is on my family’s side but not their side.  Not only would this piss off my neighbors, but it would be against the Golden Rule and HOA rules.

Regarding a peaceful transition of power, European parliamentary states have us beat in that arena.  The day after a European head of state is voted out of office, a new head of state takes office with minimal fanfare and without months going by.  Of course Europe had bad experiences in the 1930s with mass rallies to honor inspiring and charismatic leaders.  Still, hundreds of thousands of Berliners turned out in 2008 to cheer Senator Barack Obama when he spoke in Berlin as a candidate for the U.S. presidency, near the site of the former Reich Chancellery.  Leader worship apparently still lurks in the DNA of Germans.

Let’s break for a pop quiz.

Which of the following two perspectives of political leaders would have resulted in less pain and misery throughout human history?

seeing politicians as superiors deserving of adulation, salutes, “Hail to the Chief,” and brass bands; or

seeing them as any other worker who fills a disgusting but necessary job that someone has to do given the human condition, similar to such disgusting but necessary jobs as undertakers, garbage truck drivers, port-a-potty cleaners, and the highway workers who remove dead animals from the roadside.

Correct Answer:  b

In this vein, I’d rather stand on the sidewalk and salute the guy who picks up my garbage than salute my U.S. senator, John McCain.  At least my garbage man isn’t a charlatan, doesn’t lie to me, doesn’t have a big ego, and doesn’t want to send my son to die in an unnecessary war.

Of course it’s only human nature (or chimpanzee nature if you believe in evolution) to get shivers up one’s leg from patriotic music, marching bands, stirring speeches, fighter jet flyovers, and the sight of an alpha male or alpha female.

Being only human (or maybe not), I got the shivers quite frequently in my younger days before wisdom began replacing testosterone, especially when I was a Distinguished Military Student in college and later when I was a new gung-ho officer being trained to kill gooks (hey, that’s what the Vietcong were called) with phosphorous rounds, proximity rounds, high-explosive rounds, and fleshette rounds filled with tiny darts, which would nail supposed enemies of the USA to trees while shredding their skin like a cheese grater shreds cheese.

No one in his right mind would have come up with the idea on his own of doing this to scrawny peasants in pants that looked like diapers, in a far-off country that he couldn’t find on a map and that didn’t have the means to attack Guam, let alone Seattle.

The world would be a better place if people saved their shivers for their spouse, or for their kid’s first recital, or for the theater, or for a good movie, or for a hero who risks his life saving another, or for an accomplished scientist or author, or for a superhuman athlete.

The dangerous kind of shivers should be avoided at all cost.  At the first sign of them, one should run away as fast as possible from the source of the shiver, whether the source is a charismatic politician, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a Marine color guard, or Inaugural pomp and ceremony.  The shivers can only lead to trouble—to emotions taking over reason.

You might ask how patriotism and the defense of the country can happen without citizens being inspired by leaders and by symbolism.   The answer is that it can happen the same way it happens with loyalty to family and defense of family—that is, spontaneously and naturally.

Loving mothers and fathers don’t need pomp and ceremony to love their spouse and children.  The same with true patriots.

Likewise, parents don’t need to be exhorted by a president to protect their family from bad guys.  They’ll open an upstairs window and dump boiling oil on a bad guy if necessary to save their loved ones.  The same with Americans when the country is seriously threatened.  They don’t need exhortations from leaders when the threat is real and the cause is just.  They only need exhortations with the opposite situation.

A provocative and sobering book on this point is The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy, by Walter A. McDougall.  It details the many examples throughout American history of Americans being led to believe that it was a civic religion to spread U.S. hegemony throughout the world, regardless of the cost in lives, money, international reputation, or blowback.

Maybe none of this would have happened if every inauguration had been like Calvin Coolidge’s first inauguration, which took place in his family’s living room in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, where the Oath of Office was administered by a justice of the peace and notary.

Come to think of it, it would be in keeping with American values for future inaugurations to be held in Plymouth Notch, out of sight of little children, instead of being held in the Imperial City.

The thought of this is sending shivers up my leg.

[libertariantaoist]

Professor Don Boudreaux of George Mason University says that Trump’s trade policies are unethical.  Boudreaux, who is one of my favorite free-market economists, should stick with economics instead of veering into ethics.

Boudreaux is correct that free trade is an overall positive for America, that trade restrictions and tariffs are an overall negative, that trade deficits can be both good and bad, that creative destruction is good when driven by comparative advantage and true competition, that mercantilism and other forms of political interference in markets is almost always bad, and that President Trump’s stated trade policies are a mishmash of contradictions that will harm working-class Americans.

Now for a big “However…”

However, Boudreaux is not necessarily correct about the ethics of trade.  In a recent letter, for example, he wrote that individuals have a right to buy goods and services from whomever they want, at whatever price they want.  Therefore, he went on to say, it is unethical for the government or Donald Trump to tell them what they can do with their money.  He uses an analogy of a neighbor pointing a gun to your head and telling you that you have to hire his son to cut your lawn instead of using a lawn service across town.  (The letter is reprinted at the end of this commentary.)

Of course a next-door neighbor isn’t a nation state, or a democratically-elected government, or the rule of law.  And economics is not a moral philosophy.  Economics is just one of the social sciences and no more important in understanding human interactions than sociology, psychology, anthropology, and political science.

For a different view of the ethics of trade, consider the cotton trade under slavery, keeping in mind that cotton was a global industry in the nineteenth century that rivaled the oil industry of today in economic importance.

The English bought American cotton produced by slaves, and in the process put tens of thousands of East Indians cotton workers out of work.  Later, New England cotton mills also bought slave cotton, enriching Brahmin families with fortunes that were subsequently passed onto succeeding generations, including some of the current generation of left-liberals who still live on the tainted wealth yet sanctimoniously preach about social justice and fairness.

Was it ethical to buy slave cotton?  Should the British government have stopped cotton merchants from buying it?

Or how about buying rubber from the Belgian Congo during the reign of King Leopold II of Belgium?  Was that ethical? Consider that Belgian colonists inflicted a genocide on natives in the Congo that was worse in sheer numbers than the Holocaust.

Or how about buying goods today from mercantilist China or oil from mercantilist Saudi Arabia?  Does it matter in terms of ethics that neither of these two states is a liberal democracy that protects civil liberties, but both are autocratic states that punish citizens who depart from the party line and social norms?

Or to go back to Boudreaux’s example, how about the ethics of using a lawn service that has a workforce of children kept in chains and flogged mercilessly?

Boudreaux might respond that these aren’t good examples, because his ethical principle is based on perfect competition and total individual freedom, and not on conditions of slavery and genocide—or any other coercion for that matter.  Of course perfect competition is a theoretical construct and not a reality, and individuals don’t live in Galt’s Gulch or some other anarchist fantasyland without any government.

The point is that the ethics of trade is not as black and white as the professor would have us believe.  That’s why volumes have been written on the subject and on moral philosophy in general.

The question of the ethics of trade is further complicated by two other realities.

The first reality is that much trade is conducted by corporations, not individuals.  Take the steel industry.  Individuals don’t buy slab or sheet steel coming out of steel mills; corporations do.

How have corporations done with respect to steel?  Not well.  First, the American steel industry was coldcocked by the rise of the steel industry in mercantilist Japan after the Second World War, when American steel companies had grown fat, lazy complacent and inefficient.   Decades later, the American steel industry was coldcocked again by mercantilist China, which made massive malinvestments in excess steel capacity.  The result was a drop in worldwide steel prices, a gutting of the U.S. steel industry, and the firing of tens of thousands of American steelworkers, who didn’t have much say in the matter.

Economists correctly state that cheaper steel benefits the corporations that buy steel, such as automobile companies.  Likewise, cheaper steel also benefits consumers who buy final products containing steel, such as cars, which would be more expensive if steel were more expensive.  They also say that if other countries want to beggar their own citizens by underpricing steel and other products, that’s good for American consumers, who can import goods at lower prices and spend or invest the savings in more beneficial ways.   No doubt, the same argument was made by the English when they bought cheap cotton produced by American slaves.

This leads to the second reality:  that all trade is not mutually beneficial.  There are winners and losers from some trade, especially trade with mercantilist countries.  In the case of steel, for example, auto buyers have won and steel workers have lost.  Or stated differently, society as a whole has benefited while a segment of society has lost.

But there is a cost to society that is not part of the standard economic calculation.  Taking the steel example again, formerly thriving steel towns are in decay and have seen a plummeting of incomes and a corresponding skyrocketing increase in drug use, divorces, school dropouts, and welfare dependency—all of which are a cost to society at large.  It’s easy to be cavalier about this when one is securely ensconced in George Mason University, which is located near the Imperial City of Washington, D.C.  But it’s impossible for those experiencing the decline firsthand to be cavalier about it.

Which brings us to a final question:  If society has benefited from workers in the steel industry and other industries losing their jobs, doesn’t society have a moral obligation to help these same workers?

Contrary to what Boudreaux seems to think, this is not a question that can be answered by economics.

* * *

Addendum:  Letter from Boudreaux to a Reader

Mr. Eddie Nunez

Mr. Nunez:

Thanks for your e-mail.

You say that while I might be correct that Donald Trump doesn’t understand the economics of trade, I am “out of bounds to write as though it is unethical for our new President to favor additional trade restrictions.”

I disagree for many reasons.  But I’ll here offer only my chief one. Mr. Trump’s ethics tell him that he (or other state officials) have the right to restrict the ways in which I may peacefully spend my own income.  But my income belongs to me; it does not belong to Trump; it does not belong to the government; it does not belong to the country or to ‘the People’; it does not belong to American corporations or to American workers.  It belongs to me and to me alone.  And of course what’s true for my income is true for the income of every other peaceful person.  Yet Trump bellows as if it is not only appropriate, but downright noble, for him to interfere in my and others’ peaceful commercial affairs, conducted with our own incomes, for the sole reason that some of those affairs are with non-Americans.  Such interference is unethical.

You likely doubt me, so let me ask: If your next-door neighbor, Jones, pokes gun at your head to order you to pay to him a fine if you continue to have your lawn mowed by a company located across town rather than by his teenage son, would you not immediately understand such coercion to be unethical?  Of course you would.  Now I challenge you to explain to me how Donald Trump’s actions on the trade front differ in any essential ways from those of this hypothetical Jones.

I can think of no essential difference.  Sure, Trump was elected to a grandiose political office.  So what?  Suppose that a majority of your neighbors vote to empower Jones to threaten you with violence in order to discourage you from buying your lawn-care services from someone outside of your neighborhood: would you then think that Jones’s actions are ethical?  I wouldn’t.

I understand that government has long interfered, and in many different ways, in the peaceful affairs of private citizens, from telling blacks where they could and couldn’t sit on buses to confiscating large chunks of citizens’ incomes for transfer to corn farmers, airplane manufacturers, and other politically powerful groups. I regard all such interference to be unethical.  But because Trump trumpets so loudly and so proudly his promise to interfere in Americans’ commerce with non-Americans – and for no reason other than to enrich some Americans at the expense of other Americans – I focus much of my attention on this particular instance of vile, inexcusable behavior.

Sincerely, Donald J. Boudreaux Professor of Economics and Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center George Mason University Fairfax, VA  22030

[libertariantaoist]

A recent day began with me taking my wife’s new car to a Scottsdale dealer to have a spare tire and mounting bracket installed in the trunk.  The car didn’t come with a spare tire because the manufacturer had to cut weight in order to meet federal mileage standards.

Later, my day continued with a visit to an office of the Motor Vehicle Department for the State of Arizona.

The contrast between the two experiences was stark.  The experience at the dealer was pleasant; the experience at the MVD was unpleasant.   The reason?  Because I was seen as a profit at the dealer and a cost at the MVD.

I arrived at the dealership at 6:55 AM, five minutes before my scheduled appointment of 7:00, which is when the facility was scheduled to open.  It had already opened, and the service representative was awaiting my arrival and had a loaner car waiting.

Part of the Penske conglomerate, the dealership was spotless and the employees were courteous.

Before I could drive away with the loaner car, I had to show my driver’s license and proof of insurance to a cashier.  She looked at the license and said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t give you the loaner because your license has expired.”

Taken aback, I looked at the license, and sure enough, it had expired last November on my birthday.  MVD had never sent a renewal notice, as the department does with the renewals of car registrations.

Someone from the dealer drove me six miles back to my house and offered to pick me up when the car was ready.  Instead of accepting the offer, I decided to wait for the closest MVD office to open so that I could renew my license.  I would get there by taking the public bus that stops a block from my house.

I’m gun-shy (literally) about public transit, because I had been terrorized many times when I had lived in Chicago for nine years and took the El and bus to work.  Fortunately, there weren’t any weirdos or dangerous people on the bus that picked me up.  And unlike public transit in Chicago, the bus was clean and the driver was friendly.

About five minutes into the trip, an elderly woman pulled the cord that notifies the driver with the sound of a bell that someone wants to get off at the next stop.  No ding-dong was heard.  I pulled it again for her.  Once again, no ding-dong.  I then told the driver that the cord wasn’t working.  He responded, “Yeah, just yell ‘Ding-ding’ when you want to get off.”

I yelled “Ding-ding!” at my stop and got off with another passenger who also was going to the MVD, which was several blocks away.  A sixty-something, he looked healthy and had no difficulty with walking.   Along the way he told me that he has been on Social Security disability for 15 years.

Although I arrived at the MVD office before the busy time, there was already a line of about 25 people.  A clerk at the first station explained that my license had expired sooner than normal because I was now at the age where I had to get it renewed every five years, and only after passing an eye test.  I asked why MVD doesn’t notify people in advance.  Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “I dunno.”

After filling out the required form, taking the eye test, and having my picture taken, I stood in another line to see another clerk to complete the process and pay the renewal fee.  After finally reaching the counter, I asked the clerk if I could get a license that is accepted by the TSA at airport security check-ins.  He said, “To get that license, you have to bring other identification papers.”  I responded, “I expected that, so I brought my passport with me.”  He handed me a list of requirements and said, “As this list shows, you need more than a passport.”

Mind-boggling.  A birth certificate and other documents are required to get a passport, and the TSA accepts passports as proper identification at security check-in.  Yet a passport isn’t sufficient to get a TSA-approved driver’s license.  In addition to my passport, I needed evidence of a valid Social Security number and two other documents that show residency, such as a mortgage document or utility bill.

The list of requirements handed to me by the MVD clerk said this about Social Security numbers:  “You are required by A.R.S. 28-3158(D)(5) and 28-3165(F), under the authority of 42 U.S.C. 405(c)(2)(C) and 666 (a)(13)(A), to provide your Social Security number.  It will be used to verify your identity and to comply with federal and state child support laws.”

Whew, that should make you feel safer at airports, as no one in America has a phony Social Security number.  And it’s reassuring to know that terrorists will be current on their child support.

After finishing at the MVD, I walked two miles to the dealer to pick up my wife’s car.  Along the way, I thought about how the MVD is similar to the local Post Office, which never opens early and never increases staffing for busy times during the Christmas holidays or during the winter when tens of thousands of snowbirds move to my hometown of Scottsdale for warm weather.  I wondered why socialists and other assorted leftists can’t see the sharp contrast between being treated as a profit and being treated as a cost.

Then I crossed over one of the canals that provides water to metro Phoenix.  A sign at the bridge thanks two former U.S. senators for building the canal, as if they had dug the canal with their own hands or paid for it out of their own pockets.  In a rational world, the sign would have thanked taxpayers for building the canal.  I was tempted to throw the sign in the canal but realized that a judge wouldn’t understand my pique.

The car was ready when I arrived at the dealer and was cleaner than when I brought it in.  The service representative and cashier thanked me for my business.  The next day I received an emailed customer satisfaction survey from the Penske Company.

I’m still waiting for a similar survey from the MVD.  Maybe it’s stuck in a line at the Post Office.

[libertariantaoist]

Something has to be done about Vladimir Putin directing his spies to undermine American democracy by spreading lies about our presidential candidates.  If this isn’t a casus belli, I don’t know what is.

Take what they did to Hillary Clinton.

This was a woman with the moral convictions of Mother Theresa and the courage of Joan of Arc.  She had lived among the poor in the backwoods of Arkansas and then Chappaqua, New York, where she helped to feed the poor, heal the sick and defend sexually-abused women.  She had not only refused wealth and fame for herself, but she had shunned the rich and famous, or what are known as the one percent, because of their greed and lavish, hedonistic, carbon-dependent lifestyles.  Her daughter followed in her footsteps, choosing to devote her life to the impoverished Seneca Indians in western New York instead of marrying a New York investment banker and living in a million-dollar Manhattan condo.   Hillary was so courageous that on a mission to Iraq, she grabbed a 50-caliber machine gun and bandoliers from the top of a Humvee to escort women and children to safety, as shotgun pellets hit the ground around her, fired by Dick Cheney, who was hunting doves at the time.

By planting false news, the Russians tarnished this reputation and led Americans to believe that Hillary had:

Illicitly made $100,000 in cattle futures while in Arkansas.

Received ill-gotten gains from the shady real estate operation known as Whitewater.

Destroyed subpoenaed records from the Rose Law Firm.

Told a political fixer known as Creepy Carville to destroy the reputation of the woman sexually assaulted by her husband Billy Bob.

Drove her loyal aide Vince Foster to suicide by her temper tantrums and soul-destroying management style.

Summarily fired longtime employees of the White House travel office so they could be replaced with loyalists who had the ethics of a rat, which are at least better than the ethics of a Clinton.

Followed the advice of Tammy Wynette to stand by her man after he had sex with an intern in the Oval Office.

Established a fake charitable foundation as Secretary of State to extort tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments and fossil fuel sheiks, who believe that women should be stoned for infidelity and that gays should meet a worse fate.

Used the Foundation to launder money from a dirty deal that let Russia corner the market in uranium.

Shown no misgivings about her trusted aide Uma being married to a New York politician who emailed photos of his wiener to young women.

Conducted State Department business on a personal server to keep her shady dealings secret.

In short, the Russians tarnished an impeccable reputation and made Americans cynical about the kinds of people who are at the top of the U.S. government.  At the same time, they did the opposite with Donald Trump; that is, they took a tarnished reputation and made it impeccable, in a transformation not seen since Pygmalion.

Look at what they started with:  an egotistical, boorish, bombastic blowhard who made his name in three disreputable industries:  one, in reality TV; two, in the sordid gambling industry that preys on people with no self-control and that left Atlantic City in shambles after receiving city and state financial concessions; and three, in the dirty Manhattan real estate industry, where success depends on getting in bed with corrupt politicians and Mob-owned cement companies, on using the tax code that favors real estate investments over investments in manufacturing,  and on using bankruptcy laws to stick it to suppliers and lenders.

The Russians are so good at spy craft that they were able to transform Donald Trump into an economic genius, a friend of the working man, a get-it-done kind of guy, and an alpha male in the image of Putin who will singlehandedly make America great again.

If the Russians hadn’t spread lies to influence our election, Hillary would be president.  Moreover, when it comes to politics, Americans would still have their heads in the sand or in a place only seen by proctologists.

Hmm, on second thought, we shouldn’t take punitive action against Putin.  We should be awarding him the Medal of Freedom.

[libertariantaoist]

Having worked my way through libertarian quotes from various sources (from A-Z), and begun at the top again, I just want to say that I understand how problematic some of those quoted are. Merely saying “libertarian” things doesn’t make you a libertarian. Being libertarian isn’t about what you say, it is about what you do; or, more specifically, what you don’t do. You don’t initiate force.

Take, for instance, the article by Craig Cantoni which I posted this morning entitled “Do You Agree that Libertarians are Fruit Loops?” In it he quotes some well known fruit loops, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams. And, those quotes certainly sounded libertarian to me. But, I know, just as well as I suspect you know, these men fail the libertarian test.

Still, I am going to continue to post the libertarian quotes each morning at 10am (my time). Tomorrow, we will get to hear from Samuel Adams, my own personal favorite founding father. (I don’t know, maybe I just am a sucker for a guy who dresses up as an “Indian in war paint”) My bad for the lack of political correctness in that characterization. But, hey, I like laughter. Craig Cantoni makes me laugh, too. So, I will continue to post his hilarious articles, as well.