Krugman: The Fiscal Gap Is a Problem

Paul Krugman is out with a goofy post today arguing that there is no need to cut government spending:

Dr. Evil-type invocations of two hundred trillion dollars serve no purpose at all, unless your real goal is to scare people into preemptively dismantling the welfare state.

Yet, in the same post, he recognizes reality (if only for a paragraph)

 It’s true that if current policies are continued with no change, we’re highly likely to face an unsustainable fiscal gap — a gap that can’t go on forever — if we look far enough away. Stein’s Law therefore applies: if something can’t go on forever, it will stop. Sooner or later, we will have some combination of benefits cuts and/or revenue increases.

Kennedys Pushing Warren to Run Against Hillary in 2016

Ed Klein, author of Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas, reports for NyPo that "members of the Kennedy clan have been quietly wooing Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and encouraging her to throw her hat in the ring."

Klein continues:

The question of whom to back in the 2016 presidential race has split the Kennedys down the middle. Robert Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, and their eldest son, former US Rep. Joe Kennedy II, favor Warren — the darling of the party’s left-wing base who now sits in Ted Kennedy’s old seat — while Bobby Jr. and Max Kennedy remain loyal to Hillary Clinton.

Over the past several weeks, the Kennedys have tried to settle their family quarrel by inviting Clinton and Warren to their compound in Hyannis Port, where each woman has been put through a kind of audition for the role of party standard-bearer.

Clinton and Warren were feted on separate occasions at a catered buffet lunch under a large tent. In addition, Hillary and Bill Clinton were treated to a sail aboard the Kennedy schooner, the Maya.

Despite the death of the family patriarch, Ted, the Kennedys still consider themselves the torchbearers of the Democratic Party...

Wilt 'The Stilt' And Dick Nixon

By Roger Stone

On a typically warm spring morning in Atlanta, Richard Nixon would be sweating through his suit. April 9, 1968 would be no exception. The world was watching Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral and the former vice president was in town with dozens of others of dignitaries to pay his respects.

The King funeral caused great debate within Nixon's campaign. Nixon's Campaign Manager John Mitchell opposed his attendance. Law partner Len Garment insisted Nixon attend. Nixon, who had enjoyed a good relationship with King, decided to split the difference-he would go to the service but not join the King Family on their three and a half mile march from Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the reverend had preached to Morehouse College.

The conservative South was key to his presidential campaign yet Nixon knew he must attend. Still, he had to keep a low profile to appease his white southern supporters. His advisors feared some far right southerners might bolt to George Wallace, who was running on an Independent line.

To cover his bases Nixon flew in early to pay his respect to the newly widowed Coretta Scott King in the privacy of the family home in Atlanta, far from the lenses of news photographers.

In his new book The Greatest Comeback, former Nixon aide Pat Buchanan says Nixon and Senator Eugene McCarthy agreed in advance to march to the cemetery. Nixon, travel aide Nick Ruwe told me, was adamant about not marching.

Bodyman Ruwe accompanied Nixon to King's funeral. Ruwe told me the former vice president decided he would arrive late and take a back row seat in the church's VIP section. To keep it short and sweet, he would avoid the march with Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Senator Eugene McCarthy, Bobby, Ethel and Jackie Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Hosea Williams, Dr. Ralph Abernathy, Daddy King, and the others. Instead, Nixon told Ruwe to pick him up at a side door of the church as the dignitaries queued up to march.

As Rev. Abernathy finished his sermon, calling King's assassination "one of the darkest hours of mankind," Nixon turned to slip out. He was stopped short with a huge black hand on his shoulder."Mr. Nixon, you ready to march?" It was Los Angeles Laker Wilt Chamberlain, whom Nixon had met at a previous event.

All eyes were surely on the 7' 1" black Los Angeles Lakers center as he towered over the 5'11" Republican candidate for president. Nixon wisely obliged.

"Why, yes of course" said Nixon. Ruwe was confused to see his boss lining up behind the funeral procession, led by two local mules pulling a simple wooden wagon bearing the murdered Martin Luther King Jr.'s coffin.

Ruwe waved frantically to Nixon as he maneuvered the car down an adjacent street at the same slow speed of the procession. "Nixon seemed to look right through me," he later told me. "He was continually looking at his watch."

Three blocks into the march, Nixon told Chamberlin he had to get to the airport. The NBA star, who had impeded Nixon's exit earlier, stepped out of the procession and paused for a moment, staring down upon the presidential hopeful. "Can I get a lift?" asked Chamberlain.
The former Vice President and the LA Laker both bolted the funeral march for Nixon's waiting car. Wilt "The Stilt" would soon go to work as a paid Nixon surrogate thereafter, and the 1968 presidential campaign unfolded.

When he was out of public office and lived in New York Nixon belonged to the prestigious Baltustrol Golf Club in New Jersey. When Nixon first began his come back campaign he came under fire because the club had no black or Jewish members. Some demanded that Nixon resign. Instead Nixon wrote the board of directors that membership should be open to all and punctuated his letter by playing the golf course with Wilt the Stilt the next day.

Chamberlains sexual appetites were legendary. The NBA star boasted of bedding over 1,000 women. The Nixon campaign was no exception. "Wilt fucked his way through the campaign staff and volunteers," said Ruwe. "At the end the advance men were hiring hookers just to keep Wilt happy and on the road for RN".

The above originally appeared at the StoneZone.com and is an excerpt from Roger Stone's new book, Nixon's Secrets: The Rise, Fall and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate, and the Pardon.

Buy the book here:

Here’s One Way You Might Have Landed on the NSA’s Watch List

By Julia Angwin and Mike Tigas

Last week, German journalists revealed that the National Security Agency has a program to collect information about people who use privacy-protecting services, including popular anonymizing software called Tor. But it's not clear how many users have been affected.

So we did a little sleuthing, and found that the NSA's targeting list corresponds with the list of directory servers used by

Politico: Rand Paul Doesn't Attack Republicans Anymore

Politico says Rand Paul has become a "team" player. Following Rand's speech for McConnell today at the Fancy Farm picnic in Kentucky, Politico explained Rand's development as an establishment player :

As McConnell geared up for reelection, he hired Paul confidante Jesse Benton to manage his own campaign. The two senators now frequently appear at events together.

Paul’s endorsement gave McConnell vital cover during a contentious GOP primary challenge from businessman Matt Bevin 

And McConnell is looking for ways to return the favor.

“I can say this without fear of contradiction: he is the most credible candidate for president of the United States since Henry Clay,” the minority leader reportedly told a county GOP breakfast earlier Saturday, a reference to the Kentucky senator who ran unsuccessfully for president in 1824, 1832 and 1844...

Paul’s speech [at the Fancy Farm] reflected just how much he’s grown as a politician since 2009. There was no criticism of other Republicans. He’s now much more a team player and crisper on the stump

Labor Department May Change Way Inflation Survey Data Is Collected

John Crudele writes:

The inflation survey might undergo another change. Currently, field reps for the monthly inflation survey, the Consumer Expenditures Survey, leave a booklet at households, in which someone fills in purchases.

But if Census workers want to be dishonest — or just meet a quota for completed surveys — the paper document could be mishandled.

Census is now contemplating the use of an electronic device that will be left with families being surveyed about household purchases.

Today on The Robert Wenzel Show: Jeffrey Rogers Hummel on Slavery and the Civil War

Today's Guest:

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel

Author of Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War

Miss a show? Here's the archive.

**Thanks to John Daubert, Head of Editing and Mastering.**

What the Fed Has Done to the "Stability"of the Dollar Since 1917

In The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, I provide some numbers on how much the value of the dollar has declined since the start of Fed operations in 1914, but there is nothing like comparing specific prices from that era and now, to get a sense of the damage the Fed has done to the value of the buck.

The lobby, Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco

Here's is a 1917 letter from a manager of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco to a person complaining about prices, back then, at the hotel.

Here's what you can buy now at the Fairmont for around what you could get a room for in 1917:

Sold in the gift shop of the Fairmont Hotel, today.

-RW

SmackBack: Paul Krugman Gets Smacked By the Hayek Center

What you don't ever see in Krugman's column is evidence that he knows any science, philosophy or political economy: http://t.co/trbSBP5JTn
— TakingHayekSeriously (@FriedrichHayek) August 2, 2014

Who is Paul Krugman calling anti-intellectual? This is a guy who admits he doesn't read "old books" & proves it daily http://t.co/trbSBP5JTn

— TakingHayekSeriously (@FriedrichHayek) August 2, 2014

How to Deal with Police

By Robert Wenzel

With the news that the NYC medical examiner has declared the death of Eric Garner a homicide (SEE: BREAKING: NYPD Chokehold Death Ruled a Homicide), it is worth considering once again how to respond in a confrontation with police.

I continue to believe it makes little sense in almost all occasions to directly confront government and this includes the police, especially police on the street.

If a cop questions you, it's okay to try some verbal jujitsu (SEE: The Citizen's Guide to Surviving Police Encounters) to attempt to limit a confrontation, but if a copper is about to put you under arrest, it makes no sense to physically resist. You are very, very unlikely to win that battle. It makes much more sense at that point to get things resolved in court.

Police, during any confrontation, are very likely to be better armed than you are.They will have billy clubs, mace, stun guns, and  loaded weapons. And they can call back-up pronto.

They are also professionally trained in street combat. Watch once again the confrontation between Spiderman and a New York copper, here. I don't know much about street fighting, but it looks to me like this cop is executing skilled street fighting. He is staying close to Spiderman, which makes it difficult for Spiderman to get off any roundhouse punches. He attempts to uproot Spiderman, with eventual success, and he controls the fall so that he ends up on top with a leg on top of Spiderman. That looks like a very well trained copper to me.

Courts are certainly not completely fair but you will have a much better chance than by resisting on the street.

That said, there is a lot of talk in the media about "police brutality," but when it comes down to it, all police confrontations are about, at a minimum, implied police violence. You are either going to have to follow a copper's requests, or he is going to escalate as far as he has to---to death (yours), if necessary.

To lower the amount of "police brutality," a society needs to lower the number of potential confrontations police have with the public.

The confrontation the police had with Garner was allegedly over his selling loose cigarettes. It was probably a bogus claim, but the police needed some cover story.  The question remains, though, why should police be enforcers preventing private transactions over loose cigarettes? Forget government cigarette tax laws, one would  think that police on patrol are supposedly on patrol "to protect the public" against violence, not enforce government edicts.

If we remove police from enforcing cigarette regulations, drug regulations, etc., then the number of potential confrontations between police and the pubic drops dramatically.

I personally think that in most cases it is a waste of time to call police after a robbery or some damage to personal property. Rarely are you going to get stolen property back.

The only time the police might be of some use is when you are facing an immediate physical threat, but, even here, the logic of the timeline is against the police helping you. If you are under physical attack, you really don't have a lot of time, in most cases, to pick up a phone and have an excited chat with 911. In other words, government police are of little value for safety purposes. If I want to stay safe, I stay in areas where there is private security that can respond immediately to a threat, such as in a mall or a quality hotel or apartment complex.

Police providing safety is largely a myth. Indeed, if they aren't stopping you from beating on someone or damaging a person's property, then any police action action against you is police brutality.

The best thing to do, generally, is avoid interaction with them. If fate puts you in harms way, the best thing to do, generally, is to respect the potential physical attack that could be unleashed against you, the way you would respect the potential attack that a lion right in front of your path could unleash against you.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

The Best Libertarian Intellectual Discussions in San Francisco

Michael Edelstein, author of Three Minute Therapy: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life, tells me:

Of all the libertarian discussion group meetings I attend [and he attends them all], your Circle Rothbard has the best intellectual discussions. 

-RW

Now I Know the Establishment is Behind Rand Paul

I am not making this up. The elitist, establishment, insider Washington Post has just come out with its list of 30 of Washington’s ‘Most Beautiful’ people. The list includes these beauties:

And, oh yeah, Rand made it on to the same list:

-RW

Three Myths About the Brain

By Gregory Hickok

IN the early 19th century, a French neurophysiologist named Pierre Flourens conducted a series of innovative experiments. He successively removed larger and larger portions of brain tissue from a range of animals, including pigeons, chickens and frogs, and observed how their behavior was affected.

His findings were clear and reasonably consistent. “One can remove,” he wrote in 1824, “from the front, or the back, or the top or the side, a certain portion of the cerebral lobes, without destroying their function.” For mental faculties to work properly, it seemed, just a “small part of the lobe” sufficed.

Thus the foundation was laid for a popular myth: that we use only a small portion — 10 percent is the figure most often cited — of our brain. An early incarnation of the idea can be found in the work of another 19th-century scientist, Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, who in 1876 wrote of the powers of the human brain that “very few people develop very much, and perhaps nobody quite fully.”

But Flourens was wrong, in part because his methods for assessing mental capacity were crude and his animal subjects were poor models for human brain function. Today the neuroscience community uniformly rejects the notion, as it has for decades, that our brain’s potential is largely untapped.

Read the rest here.

Guido Hülsmann: Inside the Mind of Mises

Some Numbers from Louis Farrakhan

Louis Farrakhan writes to his people:

Did you know this? Black people spend:

$3.3 billion per year on tobacco.
$3 billion per year on whiskey, wine and beer.
$2.8 billion per year on the non-alcoholic beverages.
$3.1 billion per year on leisure time.
$3.5 billion per year on toys, games, and pets.
$19 billion per year on telephone services.
$10 billion per year on buying gifts for one another.
$13 billion per year on gambling.
$29.3 billion per year on clothing.

And after all these things that we spend in the billions, do you know how much we spend on books? We spend $321 million.

We must follow the moral and financial guidance of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to unlearn the behaviors that keep us poor, and the merchants of other communities rich.

Time Cannot Kill A Great Idea

By Chris Rossini

Yesterday, Robert Wenzel pointed to some fantastic thoughts by Robert Ringer. (SEE: It’s counter-intuitive thinking, but …)

Let's go back 41 years to 1973. Here's Harry Browne driving the same point home in "How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World":

Working through government to get what you want is a classic example of an indirect alternative. The success of your plans depends far more upon what other people do than upon your own decisions. First you have to rally public support so that Congress will act; then you must hope that the President and the bureaucracy will carry out the plan as you intended it. You have to go through thousands of people to get to your objective.

Whatever it is you want, there’s bound to be a direct alternative available that requires only your own decision. If there are people you want to aid, for example, you can accomplish far more by keeping the taxes and paying the money directly to those people.

The government can’t carry out your plans for you, but you can.

---

Chris Rossini is author of Set Money Free: What Every American Needs To Know About The Federal Reserve. Follow @chrisrossini on Twitter.

Robbing Peter To Pay Pedro

By Ilana Mercer

When it comes to the vexation of immigration, the goalposts have shifted in mere weeks. Overnight has the barking fest on TV turned from how much immigration and amnesty the country can sustain, to an acceptance of a borderless America as the American way.

“No deportation without representation,” declared the minority leader in the lower chamber. Unabashed, Nancy Pelosi had previously held a meet-and-greet with the in-coming Democrats in the Rio Grande Valley. “We are all Americans,” she gushed to the Guatemalans, Hondurans and El Salvadorians streaming into South Texas. The hapless American taxpayer has no say in the matter. Drunk with power, wicked representatives like Pelosi now believe they
represent the world.