I found two speeches from 2012 Bill failed to disclose.
http://peureport.blogspot.com/2014/06/bill-clintons- undecleared-carlyle-group.html
One was The Carlyle Group annual investor meeting and the other Michael Milken's Global Institute. They don't fit the narrative for Hillary's "common lady" Presidential run.
We tried a community organizer as president, maybe it's time we put a CEO in the White House. I've had the good fortune to work with Bob Dole, Steve Forbes and Tommy Thompson and I can honestly say that I've never quite seen the groundswell of excitement that I'm seeing for Herman Cain.Grubbs was ousted as Iowa chair by the anti-Ron Paul forces. Bottom line, Grubbs played a very sloppy hand in Iowa and RANDPAC is bailing him out.
The business cycle, RIP?...
The Great Recession has inflicted enduring economic damage. Business investment has lagged; many workers have dropped out of the labor force. By early 2014, calculates the BIS, U.S. gross domestic product — the economy’s output — was 13 percent below where it would have been if pre-crisis growth trends had continued. In Britain, the gap was 19 percent; in France, 12 percent; even Germany had a shortfall, 3 percent.
Conventional business-cycle analysis didn’t anticipate these steep losses. It also missed other features of the post-crisis economy. Unlike earlier recessions, countercyclical policies — especially low interest rates by the Fed and other government central banks — have only modestly helped recovery. Low rates fail if borrowers don’t want to borrow or lenders don’t want to lend... The many failures of economics before, during and after the financial crisis have left an intellectual vacuum. There’s a scramble for policy ideas.
Forbes’ columnist John Tamny executes an inspired and wonderfully savage critique of GMU economist Tyler Cowen’s dotty blog post touting the positive effects of war on economic growth. Tamny takes his cue from Henry Hazlitt and writes in plain and muscular language. Here is a juicy sampler that should whet your appetite for the full meal:
Read the rest here.
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| Judge Debra S. Nelson |
At issue in the case were several broadcasts from NBC News that edited the 911 call that Zimmerman had made not long before shooting Trayvon Martin on the night of Feb. 26, 2012 in a subdivision in Sanford, Florida. As a result of edits by NBC News, Zimmerman sounded as if he had volunteered that Martin is black. The full tape reveals that he was asked by the dispatcher whether the person he was following was “white, black or Hispanic?” Zimmerman’s complaint contends that NBC News knowingly misportrayed Zimmerman...
[T]he incontrovertible part of the story is that the perception of profiteering in Paducah, Ky., and his tendency to use the words “profiteer” and “Jew” interchangeably, provoked a written outburst from Grant, commander of the Territory of the Department of the Tennessee, which included Paducah.As a result of an outcry from Jews that included stuff like this:
Isaac Leeser, editor of The Occident, a Jewish publication: “Why are tears shed for the sufferings of the African in his bondage, by which his moral condition has been immensely improved, in spite of all that may be alleged to the contrary, whereas for the Hebrews every one has words of contempt or acts of violence?”
Just finished your Rothbard book on ABCT. Excellent work, great slice of Rothbard that puts everything in easily understandable language. A job well done!
Also picked up copy or your "Fed Flunks" speech. Will be picking up more copies to give to colleagues. Everyone needs to read it!
Just received the ASBCT book...It's very nicely put together, I probably won't get to reading it until my trip to SoCal in a couple of weeks(on the plane!), because I'm swamped here at work and recovering from flu/cold...but I wanted to drop you a note and let you know it's well done in terms of manufacture, I look forward to reading it.Order Austrian School Business Theory by Murray Rothbard, here:
In the Georgetown gated community of Hillandale, residents live in secluded calm governed by some 50 pages of rules banning fences, motorcycles, certain paint colors, tree species and excess dogs and cats (no more than two total per household).-RW
"People come to live in Hillandale because of the quality of our residential community, and that is something that we need to maintain," says resident Sallie Forman.
Then one of the most powerful economic policy makers in the world moved in and, in the words of some here, ruined the neighborhood.
As neighbors tell it, earlier this year, the security detail protecting new Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen barreled through the cul-de-sac where she lives in oversize vans loaded with guns, cameras and takeout pizza. It established an "armed camp" next door to Ms. Forman's townhome, according to a written bill of grievances presented by concerned neighbors deeming the uniformed police presence "uncomfortable for residents of various religious persuasions," such as Quakers.
Security trucks, it continued, "weighing approximately 7,000 pounds each" sit idling on the street for "approximately 22 minutes daily" at each Yellen morning pickup. When Ms. Yellen leaves her home, a second truck then "speedily pulls out of the security driveway…all the while spilling fluid onto the street, which has now left a permanent stain." Hillandale bylaws expressly prohibit car fluid spills in the common areas.
Neighbors seem especially put off by the aesthetics of the security detail, in particular their blue uniforms and—in the words of one resident—"doughnut bellies."...
T[F]ormer Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller, a Hillandale resident who has been a guest at neighborhood block parties.
After Ms. Yellen became the nation's top banker, her security detail moved into a rented townhome down the block from hers. They mounted on the roof a camera that looked like a streetlight on an interstate and proceeded to monitor—and disgust—the neighbors.
" Bob Mueller, who you would think would have a much more dangerous job dealing with terrorists all over the world, had people who were businesslike, didn't socialize and waited for him outside the gate," says one unhappy resident, sitting in a living room decorated in chintz, silk topiary and family silver. "Now we have this group, overweight, wearing the most ridiculous blue uniforms with the most ridiculous blue caps, and they have guns that are visible." She declined to be named because she is worried about federal-government reprisals.
@FriedrichHayek || Pope is confused. Liberation theology was informed by Marxism. Little of Marxism was infused w/ inspired by Christianity
— Turin (@Shroudedindoubt) June 30, 2014
Robert,Gerald O'Driscoll wrote a book --- the first such book -- on Hayek's ideas back in the 1970s, it is entitled Economics as a Coordination Problem.The point being, that economic theory must explain the complex coordination of plans in an economic system such that even a common pencil can be produced. The idea is that coordination is the problem, but it is the entrepreneurial activity of individuals within the market place that provides the solution.We have said this repeatedly when folks have asked the question such as you. Why you would think that coordination implies planning is beyond me. The coordination of plans must occur if an economic system is going to work, the question is who does this coordination --- the planning by the state is one answer that folks like you and I reject for various incentive and calculation issues; the "planning" by market actors is a solution that you and I accept.Confusion occurs in science when folks use the same words to mean different things and different words to mean the same thing. Greg Ransom is wrong to challenge the received vocabulary of a scientific discipline (the term "rent" has been used since at least Ricardo). And the same is true with respect to the term coordination --- it is a term used by classical economists, early neoclassical economists (including the Austrian economists), and modern economists.Anyway, let me make this clear once more --- I do not believe coordination implies planning, I believe it is one of the central puzzles of economics to explain how the production plans of some come to mesh with the consumption demands of others. That coordination of economic activity through time is brought about by the individual purposive action market participants. In short, as I have said before, coordination is the puzzle, entrepreneurship is the solution.All the best,Pete--Peter BoettkeBB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
University Professor of Economics & PhilosophyDepartment of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22032Director, F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus CenterCo-Editor, The Review of Austrian EconomicsAuthor, Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (2012)
Forget Officer Friendly. A new report finds that local police departments are becoming excessively militarized, equipped with weapons, uniforms and even vehicles formerly used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan...
As the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have wound down, police departments have been obtaining military equipment, vehicles and uniforms that have flowed directly from the Department of Defense. According to a new report by the ACLU, the federal government has funneled $4.3 billion of military property to law enforcement agencies since the late 1990s, including $450 million worth in 2013. Five hundred law enforcement agencies have received Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, built to withstand bomb blasts. More than 15,000 items of military protective equipment and “battle dress uniforms,” or fatigues worn by the U.S. Army, have been transferred. The report includes details of police agencies in towns like North Little Rock, Ark., (pop: 62,000), which has 34 automatic and semi-automatic rifles, a Mamba tactical vehicle and two MARCbots, which are armed robots designed for use in Afghanistan.
“More Americans are becoming aware of the militarization of policing, but the use of paramilitary tactics to fight the war on drugs has been going on for a very long time,” says the ACLU’s Kara Dansky.
The bloodless coup was widely expected after forces loyal to Gov. Terry Branstad officially seized control of the party’s governing body from close allies of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) at a state convention earlier this month. The former chairman, A.J. Spiker, stepped down this spring and became a senior adviser to RAND PAC. Carroll is a former lobbyist for the evangelical Family Leader and supported Branstad’s primary challenger in 2010.
Chad Olsen, who stepped down as the party’s executive director in May 2012 after Paul’s forces took control, will get his old job back. Cody Hoefert, from conservative northwest Iowa, replaces the co-chair, who resigned before the meeting.
The big problem with making murders disappear (apart from it being illegal and immoral) is that, compared to other crimes, it's much more likely that you'll be caught. For example, Patrick Walker was found injured and unresponsive in a crashed automobile, taken to a hospital where he died, then during an autopsy they found a gunshot wound in his head and a bullet casing in the back seat of the car. Owing to the fact that he was clearly shot and killed, this was filed on his death certificate as a murder. But the Chicago Police Department has classified the case as a death investigation, making it disappear from their stats.Chicago Magazine reports:
On October 28, a pathologist ruled the death of Tiara Groves a homicide by “unspecified means.” This rare ruling means yes, somebody had killed Groves, but the pathologist couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause of death.
-RWGiven the finding of homicide—and the corroborating evidence at the crime scene—the Chicago Police Department should have counted Groves’s death as a murder. And it did. Until December 18. On that day, the police report indicates, a lieutenant overseeing the Groves case reclassified the homicide investigation as a noncriminal death investigation. In his writeup, he cited the medical examiner’s “inability to determine a cause of death.”That lieutenant was Denis Walsh—the same cop who had played a crucial role in the alleged cover-up in the 2004 killing of David Koschman, the 21-year-old who died after being punched by a nephew of former mayor Richard M. Daley. Walsh allegedly took the Koschman file home. For years, police officials said that it was lost. After theSun-Times reported it missing, the file mysteriously reappeared.But back to Tiara Groves. With the stroke of a computer key, she was airbrushed out of Chicago’s homicide statistics.The change stunned officers. Current and former veteran detectives who reviewed the Groves case at Chicago’s request were just as incredulous. Says a retired high-level detective, “How can you be tied to a chair and gagged, with no clothes on, and that’s a [noncriminal] death investigation?” (He, like most of the nearly 40 police sources interviewed for this story, declined to be identified by name, citing fears of disciplinary action or other retribution.)Was it just a coincidence, some wondered, that the reclassification occurred less than two weeks before the end of the year, when the city of Chicago’s final homicide numbers for 2013 would be tallied? “They essentially wiped away one of the murders in the city, which is crazy,” says a police insider. “But that’s the kind of shit that’s going on.”For the case of Tiara Groves is not an isolated one. Chicago conducted a 12-month examination of the Chicago Police Department’s crime statistics going back several years, poring through public and internal police records and interviewing crime victims, criminologists, and police sources of various ranks. We identified 10 people, including Groves, who were beaten, burned, suffocated, or shot to death in 2013 and whose cases were reclassified as death investigations, downgraded to more minor crimes, or even closed as noncriminal incidents—all for illogical or, at best, unclear reasons.
Sumner Redstone’s live-in girlfriend, Sydney Holland, is a control freak...
.
Redstone, the majority owner of CBS and Viacom, is being dragged into a bitter court battle between Holland and his former protegee Heather Naylor.
Holland, 43, is suing Naylor, 33, for $1 million — claiming the star of the short-lived MTV show “The Electric Barbarellas” stole her laptop computer containing “private and confidential” photographs.
That usually means X-rated.
Naylor countersued, charging that Holland used her influence, as she took control of Redstone’s life, to get the show canceled.
Redstone is 91 and worth $6.2 billion.
edstone reportedly pushed MTV execs to air the show — about a girl group described as a cross between the Pussycat Dolls and the Spice Girls, but raunchier — and gave Naylor $157,000 worth of Viacom stock.
In motions filed Friday, Naylor’s pit bull lawyer Neville Johnson states, “Because Holland is a beneficiary under Redstone’s will, she did not like that Redstone was spending his time and his resources with a free thinker like Naylor.”
Court papers state that “Holland grew jealous of Naylor’s relationship with Redstone and made efforts to cut off all ties between Redstone and Naylor so that Holland could control Redstone for her own economic advantage.”
Holland allegedly had all the phone numbers changed so Naylor couldn’t reach Redstone — and all of Naylor’s contacts removed from Redstone’s database so that he couldn’t reach her, a source familiar with the case told me.These boys need to take some lessons from J. Paul Getty, once the world's richest man, who kept a dozen, or so, women floating around him. One for his cultural tastes, one for his intellectual pursuits etc.. In his will he left them only on average about $500,000 each. From PEOPLE:
After his death last month at the age of 83, it was disclosed that a dozen women he had loved, was charmed by or did business with would share in his multimillion-dollar estate...The largest personal bequest—5,000 shares of Getty oil stock valued at $826,500 and $1,167 a month for life—went to Penelope Ann Kitson, 53, an English interior decorator and mother of three. Recently divorced from her third husband, industrialist Patrick De Laszlo, tall, elegant Penelope Kitson was constantly at Getty's side during his final weeks...Getty also claimed that Aristotle Onassis knew how to deal with difficult women. According to Getty, Ted Kennedy was severely outmatched by Onassis when he met with Onassis to hammer out the financial arrangements for Jackie's marriage to him.
Penelope's closest rival, in terms of inheritance, is Mary Teissier, 50, a Russian-born French interior decorator and art expert. She was willed 2,500 shares valued at $413,250 plus $750 a month for life. "The last few years," she says of Getty, "were very close, very sweet and very generous. Don't try to make a romance out of that. He was as old as my father!" ...
Getty left 1,000 shares worth $165,000 to widowed Lady Ursula d'Abo, 59, a celebrated prewar society beauty he had known 22 years. She shared his interest in gardening and served as a sometime hostess at Getty's parties where guests ranged from French esthetes to Oklahoma wildcatters.
Rosabella Burch, 42, a Nicaraguan widow who was one of Getty's companions for the last 15 years of his life, received $82,625 in stock....
Oddly enough, only one of Getty's five ex-wives was mentioned in his will: Louise Lynch Getty of Santa Monica, once a professional singer, who received $55,000 per year for life.
He bestowed lesser amounts on an astonishing variety of women about whom little is known: Countess Marianne von Alvensleben, 54, of Düsseldorf, West Germany; Karin Mannhardt (another German); Hildegard Kuhn, 69, of West Berlin; Gloria Bigelow of Los Angeles; Mary Maginnis of Malibu and Belene Clifford of West Covina.
[About] his plan to build Titanic II, a life-size replica of the doomed liner that would run transatlantic cruises for tourists...“Everywhere it goes, people will want to see it,” he assures me. “When it arrives at ports, we’ll charge $100 for a tour and a photo.”What he thinks about Australia's parliament:
“Parliament”, he says, “is like having lots of people on one side that know nothing. They are opposed by a lot of other people on the other side who also know nothing. They are all advised by a lot of people, who know absolutely nothing – it’s a fine art, parliament,” he says with a grin as he scans the room for any MPs within earshot.And his take on Rupert Murdoch:
Last year he threatened to sue one of Rupert Murdoch’s titles for defamation over articles alleging Palmer exaggerated his wealth and qualifications. “Rupert doesn’t like me,” says Palmer. He adds a little more cryptically: “He is someone who has sworn an oath of allegiance to the US, and he is controlling all of our media [in Australia]. I suppose that is an issue for some people.”
A vicious Twitter smear campaign against the Harry Potter author may have been the work of secret agents, says one British pol.
British spies may have orchestrated the abusive messages sent to JK Rowling after she spoke out against independence, a leading SNP politician has claimed.
Christina McKelvie said the torrent of online attacks aimed at the Harry Potter author could have been the work of "secret service plants".
Consumer Robotics Is Finally Ready For Prime Time...
In the past few years, there have been major investments by large players that have helped to validate and reinvigorate the robotics market. IBM’s Watson platform, and Google’s driverless car and string of recent acquisitions in AI/machine learning come to mind. As most breakthrough technology innovations require large entities to lay down the costly foundations, we are now seeing that happen in AI. For example, Watson has reduced the barrier to creating innovative AI applications that process large amounts of unstructured data to arrive at accurate answers.
What do the next five to 10 years of consumer robotics look like? Will cars drive themselves? Will household robots assist with our daily chores? And will robots ultimately interact and transact on our behalf and even with other robots? We predict the following developments will take shape.
Redefined Robotic Form Factor
The humanoid robot popularized by media will not be the dominant form of consumer robotics. Artificially intelligent devices will take on a multitude of forms where the form factor will more closely match its functions and use case. Many more will be in the form of embedded intelligence within everyday systems we are already familiar with. One thing we can predict: goodbye flat, rectangular devices; hello, form factor diversity.
Technology Cost, Productivity Gain
Robotics will initially augment and eventually replace high-cost human labor. The market acceptance of this progress will be driven by reliability and safety and there will be interim solutions. For example, driverless cars are preceded by cars with heads-up displays and automated sensory-enabled breaks already in the market.
Service-based Monetization
As devices learn and begin to anticipate consumer needs, they make more recommendations and even make transactions on the consumer’s behalf. In the Internet of Things world, device providers will be more willing to lower prices of the hardware and appliances if they get a cut of revenue from services that are delivered on those platforms. Consumers will be able to download “apps” (either paid or free), which then connect to the cloud to deliver functionality via a subscription model, for example.
A New Platform and Ecosystem
Finally, the computer industry structure will loosely map to the robotics landscape. There will likely be a dominant open OS platform adopted and supported by large vendors (like Linux/Android) and a few manufacturer specific closed OS’s (like Windows), a number of “app” stores (like iTunes), and a wide variety of apps and API-based services offered by small and large companies. A new wave of education providers, engineers and service professionals, security providers, financial/insurance products, and legal frameworks will also emerge.
Later that day, Bill, Hillary, and two of her friends gathered in the converted red barn that served as Bill’s home office. The women drank Chardonnay; Bill favored a Pinot Noir.
It wasn’t long before Bill brought the conversation around to politics.
“We started too damn late last time,” he said, referring to the 2008 campaign. “That’s why I’ve been working on this thing for the past five years, since that one ended. We’re on course to raise the money, well over a billion dollars, and we’re getting our people in place everywhere.”
He said that he was writing what he called “playbooks” — thick notebooks outlining positions for Hillary to take on the major issues of the day — everything from immigration reform to gun control and education.
He felt strongly that Hillary was going to have to distance herself from Barack Obama and his amateurish handling of domestic and foreign policy.
“You’ve got to hit hard at the Obama record,” he continued, getting up from his chair and circling the barn while he spoke. “Your administration would be a third Clinton term, not a third Obama term. We have to be very harsh, because the voters are turning on him like a bad dog, and we have to do the same.”
The conversation continued in that vein for some time, and then, quite unexpectedly, Bill changed the subject and began talking about his health.
“I’m worried how my health will affect your campaign,” he said. “I have to do all I can to prepare the campaign playbooks, but I also have to accept the fact that if I fall by the wayside, you have to continue without me and make a positive thing out of it.”
“A positive thing?” Hillary said. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Obviously, you have to have a big state funeral for me, with as much pomp and circumstance as possible,” he said. “I’m thinking maybe I should be buried at Arlington [National Cemetery] rather than at my library in Little Rock. After all, I was commander in chief for eight years and have every right to be buried at Arlington.”
“Bill!” Hillary said, trying to interrupt his train of thought.
“I’m going to plan this thing out in detail,” he said.
“I don’t want to hear this!” Hillary said.
“Wear your widow’s weeds, so people will feel sympathy for you. Wear black for a decent mourning period and make my death an asset. The images on television of the funeral and the grieving widow in black will be priceless.
“When I’m gone, people will think only of my good points and forgive, if not forget, the bad. I’ll be remembered in a positive light more in death than I was in life. That always happens.
Everybody knows that. So you’ll have to take maximum advantage of my death.”
“Bill…,” Hillary said.
“It should be worth a couple of million votes,” he said.
A Silicon Valley venture capitalist by the name of Tim Draper, has proposed that perhaps it is time for the various regions of California to part ways. His goal, is to let California be divided into six different states. This isn’t exactly a new idea. There have been proposals to divide the massive state since California achieved statehood. Of course, none have succeeded. As a matter of fact, there have only been a handful of times in American history, when part of a state has managed to secede to form its own state, and none of them have occurred since the Civil War.
So what makes this time any different? Well for one, Tim Draper appears to represent the monied interests of the Silicon Valley. He’s dumped 2 million dollars of his own cash to fund the movement, which is now gathering signatures for a ballot in the next election. Most state secession movements fail because they are grassroot affairs, something that most state governments (or frankly any government) don’t share the same interests with. If breaking up a state doesn’t benefit the people at the top, then they won’t let it happen.
Which is why it’s interesting that the proposal is headed by a Silicon Valley mogul. While there’s no proof that Tim Draper is being backed by larger corporate interests, it would certainly make sense. Part of his proposal is to grant the Silicon Valley its own state. It would obviously benefit the major tech companies of this region to have a state to themselves, where they could wield massive influence. Considering the amount of money these tech interests hold, I doubt California stands a chance.
Leading central banks should not fall into the trap of raising rates “too slowly and too late”, the BIS said...It almost sounds as though some at the BIS understand Austrian School Business Cycle Theory.
“Particularly for countries in the late stages of financial booms, the trade-off is now between the risk of bringing forward the downward leg of the cycle and that of suffering a bigger bust later on,” it said...
The BIS, the bank for central banks, has been a longstanding sceptic about the benefits of ultra-stimulative monetary and fiscal policies and its latest intervention reflects mounting concern that the rebound in capital markets and real estate is built on fragile foundations...
Global markets are currently “under the spell” of central banks and their unprecedented monetary policy settings, it said.
After seeing the letter in EPJ yesterday about the Fed (SEE:EPJ Reader Gets the Word Out on the Fed) , I am sending my letter in the NYT, May 19, 1976, an oldie but goody. I gave it to New Jersey Republican senate candidate Jeff Bell who loves it.
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.@PeterBoettke can't we get a better word than "rent"? Why is it economists are so unskilled at coining unambiguous technical vocabulary?
— TakingHayekSeriously (@FriedrichHayek) June 28, 2014
Facebook’s News Feed—the main list of status updates, messages, and photos you see when you open Facebook on your computer or phone—is not a perfect mirror of the world.
But few users expect that Facebook would change their News Feed in order to manipulate their emotional state.
We now know that’s exactly what happened two years ago. For one week in January 2012, data scientists skewed what almost 700,000 Facebook users saw when they logged into its service. Some people were shown content with a preponderance of happy and positive words; some were shown content analyzed as sadder than average. And when the week was over, these manipulated users were more likely to post either especially positive or negative words themselves.I am not sure how this is significantly different from companies running A/B tests on ads, direct advertising etc. But capitalist haters are going to jump on this.
This tinkering was just revealed as part of a new study, published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Many previous studies have used Facebook data to examine “emotional contagion,” as this one did. This study is different because, while other studies have observed Facebook user data, this one set out to manipulate it.
“all individuals, their families, and care providers should be able to send, receive, find, and use health information in a manner that is appropriate, secure, timely, and reliable.”Government, even in its wildest dreams, cannot possibly create anything like this 'vision'. It does not operate with the profit & loss signals that private entrepreneurs use to allocate resources. Government is always flying blind, and creating mountains of waste as it does so.
Amanda Blackhorse, a Navajo who successfully moved a federal agency to withdraw trademark protections from the Washington Redskins because it considers the team’s name derogatory, lives on a reservation where Navajos root for the Red Mesa High School Redskins...
The name “Redskins” is more problematic than, say, that of the Chicago Blackhawks or Cleveland Indians presumably because “Redskins” refers to skin pigmentation. People offended by this might be similarly distressed if they knew that “Oklahoma” is a compound of two Choctaw words meaning “red” and “people.”...
Blackhorse...says “someone” once told her that teams’ mascots “are meant to be ridiculed,” “to be toyed with,” “to be pushed around and disrespected” and “have stuff thrown at them.” She should supplement the opinion of that someone with information from persons more knowledgeable. But she considers “any team name that references Native Americans” an injurious “appropriation of our culture.”
Stuart Banner's book seriously complicates tidy narrative of America as stolen from Indians.From the blurb to How the Indians Lost Their Land:
Between the early seventeenth century and the early twentieth, nearly all the land in the United States was transferred from American Indians to whites. This dramatic transformation has been understood in two very different ways—as a series of consensual transactions, but also as a process of violent conquest. Both views cannot be correct. How did Indians actually lose their land?
Stuart Banner provides the first comprehensive answer. He argues that neither simple coercion nor simple consent reflects the complicated legal history of land transfers. Instead, time, place, and the balance of power between Indians and settlers decided the outcome of land struggles. As whites’ power grew, they were able to establish the legal institutions and the rules by which land transactions would be made and enforced.
This story of America’s colonization remains a story of power, but a more complex kind of power than historians have acknowledged. It is a story in which military force was less important than the power to shape the legal framework within which land would be owned. As a result, white Americans—from eastern cities to the western frontiers—could believe they were buying land from the Indians the same way they bought land from one another. How the Indians Lost Their Land dramatically reveals how subtle changes in the law can determine the fate of a nation, and our understanding of the past.
by William H. Patterson Jr:Heinlein is happily remarried and settled into an environment as bizarre as anything in his fiction: the postwar American suburb. It's a land of martinis, barbecues, wife-swapping parties, fallout shelters and political extremism. Heinlein, a lifelong devotee of nudism, alternative lifestyles and radicalism both left and right, fits in perfectly...
Heinlein in the postwar years was a successful writer, and successful writers don't really do much besides work. The colorful adventures recounted in the earlier book are gone; as Patterson tells it, whatever shenanigans may have been going on out on the patio, Heinlein was invariably sitting inside the house writing. He churned out 40 books in the years covered by this volume, and Patterson, helplessly unable to omit or abridge any detail, takes us through the publication history of every one. The drafts, the fights over rewrites, the serialization rights . . .
[T]here's a fascinating drama here. Heinlein began the '50s on a remarkable high. He made an unpromising deal with Scribner's to write a series of outer-space adventures for the teenage market. But he lavished so much skill and imagination on these books that today they are regarded as the defining masterpieces of old-school sci-fi. He followed the 12 "juveniles" (as they're usually called) with three classics for adults: "Starship Troopers" (1959), "Stranger in a Strange Land" (1961) and "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" (1965). All three won the Hugo Award for the year's best science-fiction novel...
His work had from the beginning the virtues of the finest pulp: a swift narrative line, an easy conversational manner and a strong uncluttered prose style. But there is also a quality almost unheard of in pulp writing and pretty rare in literature generally: conviction. Heinlein's worlds aren't built out of genre cardboard or adolescent fantasies: They feel like real places, weathered and inhabited. He achieved this effect through a careful accumulation of details. As characters are talking, Heinlein would just drop in an unobtrusive line: "They stepped on a glideway which picked up speed until walls were whizzing past." He didn't explain what a glideway is any more than Raymond Chandler would stop to explain an elevator, but by the end, Heinlein's imaginary worlds seem as beautifully realized and substantial as Philip Marlowe's Los Angeles...
But this isn't why the juveniles are still being read now, 60 years later, when the realities and dangers of space exploration can be taken for granted. They have another quality behind their scrupulously naturalistic surface: an intensely persuasive optimism. With each book, the dramas grow more serious, the moral lessons more adult and the sense of space exhilaratingly larger...
"The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" is a visionary epic of a lunar colony breaking free from earth's government and establishing an anarchist-libertarian utopia. But even as it was being enshrined by the libertarian movement as a foundational text...Heinlein turned cagey and evasive about whether he was advocating its revolutionary agenda. Once again, it was as though his own persuasiveness was making him uncomfortable.
Hillary Clinton might be hoping no one buys “Nixon’s Secrets” — Roger Stone’s new book marking the 40th anniversary of the Watergate scandal.
Stone — a Nixon staffer who is so partisan he has a tattoo of his old boss’ face on his back — reports that Clinton was fired as a staff lawyer for the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee for “writing fraudulent legal briefs, lying to investigators and confiscating public documents.”
Yale Law School grad Clinton was 26 in 1974 when she started working for the committee that was investigating whether or not there was enough evidence to impeach or prosecute President Nixon for the Watergate affair.
Clinton’s boss, Jerry Zeifman, the general counsel and chief of staff to the Watergate Committee, claims he fired her because she was working to impede the investigation and undermine Nixon’s defense.
“Hillary’s lies and unethical behavior goes back farther — and goes much deeper — than anyone realizes,” Zeifman told Fox News in 2008. When asked why he fired Clinton, Zeifman responded, “Because she is a liar.”
I think a Republican could defeat Biden fairly easily. Even if Biden won, he would be less of a threat to our liberties than Hillary Clinton. He has a marvelous ability to put his foot in his mouth. He would become, not so much a bone of contention as a source of amusement. I don't think he has the stomach for becoming a dictator. There is something flaky about him. Flaky people make rotten dictators. It is why I would have voted for John Kerry in 2004, had I not written in Ron Paul's name.North also makes this interesting point:
I wanted to see Clinton torn down, but I did not want to see him impeached and convicted. So, I was not envious against him; it was simply a matter of political strategy. I am always happy to see some President whacked on the knuckles by political reality, so that he cannot exercise as much power. National politics is usually a zero-sum arrangement. The President wins; I lose. When he loses power, I gain a little bit of freedom.
