Here are some of Thomas Sowell’s recent Random Thoughts (click here). Dr. Sowell’s greatest gift is he always makes us think.
-“It is astonishing that some people think that the answer to the problems of ObamaCare is to go to a “single payer” system. But “single payer” is just another way of saying “government monopoly.” does anyone pay attention to how government monopolies operate – from the local DMV to Veterans Administration hospitals?”
-“Politics has turned the lofty ideal of equality into the ugly reality of resentments of other people’s achievements – and a feeling that the world owes you something, while you owe nobody anything, not even common decency.”
-“Why should the fate of the economy depend on the guesswork of the Federal Reserve – and the guesswork of the stock market about what the Federal Reserve will guess?”
–“Politicians have learned to call their spending of the taxpayers’ money “investment, ” even when it is just pouring money down a bottomless pit, in order to win votes from the recipients.”
-“Hillary Clinton has performed the verbal magic of turning her years of repeated disastrous decisions in foreign policy into a political asset called “experience.”
-“The political left’s hatred of Donald Trump is ironic, because both he and they have the same pattern of automatic demonizing of those who disagree with their views, rather than confronting opposing arguments with hard evidence or convincing logic.”
–“Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?”
-“If the media seriously wanted to report the news – instead of spinning it – they could stop calling rioters “protesters” and stop calling terrorists “militants.”
–“Each political party has picked a loser this year. Unfortunately, one of them is going to win, and then the whole country can lose, big time.”
-“One of the mysteries of the ages is why the political left has, for centuries, lavished so much attention on the well-being of criminals and paid so little attention to their victims.”
–“The monumental tragedies of the 20th century – a world-wide Great Depression, two devastating World Wars, the Holocaust, famines killing millions in the soviet Union and tens of millions in China – should leave us with a sobering sense of the threats to any society. But this generation’s ignorance of history leaves them free to be frivolous – until the next catastrophe strikes, and catches them completely by surprise.”
Never attempt feats of Olympian proportion outside your area of expertise.
Just as swimming is a specialized skill, so too is lying.
If anyone should know this it is Ryan Lochte. He has trained for years to become one of the most decorated swimmers in Olympic history. As a youngster he perfected each swimming stroke through constant repetitions. These strokes became second nature to him, almost a part of his DNA.
If lying was an Olympic sport, Ryan Lochte wouldn’t have made the US team. Heck, he wouldn’t have even performed the Olympic qualifying standard.
Of course if lying was an Olympic sport, Hillary would be equivalent to a Michael Phelps type of performer. She has perfected the art of lying through constant repetitions over her career. It has become second nature to her, almost a part of her DNA.
Lochte made the mistake of trying to tell a whopper of a lie at the Olympics where there would be great media scrutiny. This would be like Hillary trying to swim against Lochte and Phelps in the Olympic 200 IM finals.
In other words, “Don’t try this at home, leave it to the professionals.”
Lets look at Lochte’s attempt at lying.
What an amateurish attempt.
Lets look at a real professional.
Lets try to help Lochte craft his lie in true Clintonesque fashion.
Let’s try something like this: “We were out late celebrating after the swimming competition was completed. One of our guys had a little too much to drink. I was the designated driver so I wasn’t drinking. We stopped at the gas station to use the bathroom because he was feeling sick. As we entered the bathroom he started to fall. We tried to catch him but we fell on the sink knocking it loose as well as knocking the soap dispenser off the wall. We tried to pay for the damage, but the Security guard tried to make the situation into something much bigger than what it was. The Security guard acted stupidly.”
What do you think?
WHEN YOUR STORY IS CHALLENGED, WHAT DO YOU DO?
Here is what we’ve learned from Hillary.
1)Stick with your story no matter what.
2)After a week say this is old news, we have to move on.
3)Say it was a mistake and nothing intentional when the lie starts to show cracks.
4)And finally say “What Difference at this point does it make?”
WATCH SOME MORE GOLD MEDAL PERFORMANCES BY HILLARY.
What is meant by “the rule of law”? For the answer I’ll refer to the book “The Quest For Cosmic Justice” by Thomas Sowell. In the last chapter titled “The Quiet Repeal of the American Revolution”, Dr. Sowell says:
“All societies proclaim duties and prohibitions which they are prepared to enforce, but not all societies have the rule of law. Neither the individual tyranny of a despot nor the collective tyranny of a totalitarian political party under communism of fascism represents the rule of law, even though there may be many individual laws under both forms of government. The rule of law -“a government of laws and not of men” – implies rules known in advance, applied generally, and constraining the rulers as well as the ruled. Freedom implies exemptions from the power of the rulers and a corresponding limitation on the scope of all laws, even those of democratically elected governments. ….Democracy implies majority sanction as the basis for laws, but democracy by itself implies nothing about either freedom or the rule of law.”
Volumes have been written about the subject Dr. Sowell sums up in this short paragraph. His ability to explain complex concepts with clarity and conciseness, allow us to spend less time and mental effort to gain understanding. We are going to focus on the part about the rules “constraining the rulers as well as the ruled” as we look at Hillary Clinton’s e-mail transgressions.
DOES IT MATTER IF POLITICIANS BREAK THE LAW?
I’ve talked to many true believing Democrats who are not interested in looking at the facts of the case. They say it’s just a Republican witch hunt (right-wing conspiracy). When I tell them that the FBI and the Justice Department are being run by their Democratic President, they don’t even pause to “think” about that fact. At that point I have some fun by saying I agree with the “witch” part in their assessment.
Although the facts we present will fall on many deaf ears, these aren’t the people we are trying to reach. We are trying to talk to people who are willing to listen to the facts and then decide what to think. We call them ‘the people on the margin’.
If you look at the Hillary email scandal through the lens of the R and D political paradigm, the facts don’t matter. If you look at Hillary’s email scandal through the lens of the rule of law, there is no doubt that the case should have been taken up for prosecution. Would a jury have convicted her? That would be a roll of the dice since it would be tried politically. Lets take a look at some facts.
“ (f) Whoever, being entrusted with of having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, codebook, signal book, sketch, photo, graph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information relating to the national defense, (1) THROUGH GROSS NEGLIGENCE permits the same to be removed from its property place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
The highlighted area – GROSS NEGLIGENCE – is the standard that has to be met. Section (f) says nothing about intent. The definition of Gross Negligence is – extreme carelessness that shows wilful or reckless disregard for the consequences to the safety or property of another. Section (f) says nothing about intent. The definition of Intent is – the will or purpose which one does an act. Now lets look at what the FBI director said.
STATEMENT BY FBI DIRECTOR COMEY
On July 5th FBI Director James Comey made his statement on the FBI’s investigation into Hillary’s use of a private e-mail system (read the full text here).
He started by stating the purpose of the investigation:
“Our investigation looked at whether there is evidence classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on that personal system, in violation of a federal statute making it a felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or in a grossly negligent way, or a second statute making it a misdemeanor to knowingly remove classified information from appropriate systems or storage facilities.”
He said that it is a felony to, either ‘intentionally” OR in a “grossly negligent” way, mishandle classified information on a personal system.
He then went on to lay out the evidence they found which showed the mishandling of classified information on her personal system. You can read it by clicking on the link to Comey’s statement above.
Then he uses verbal sleight of hand to try to change the law to mean the standard for prosecution is intent and not gross negligence. Here is what he said:
“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information”.
By starting with the word although, “Although we did not find clear evidence that …. intended to violate laws….”, he makes you think that intent is the standard that has to be met. He then finishes off the although by saying “there is evidence that they were extremely careless in ….”. By using the phrase “extremely careless” he erases “gross negligence” (the standard for this law) from your mind. This is the verbal equivalent of making a coin disappear in front of your eyes. Politicians and bureaucrats make a living performing this kind of verbal magic. But by definition extremely careless is gross negligence (look at the definition above). That’s all you need to know.
This next statement tells you all you need to know about our ruling aristocracy being more equal than the serfs.
“To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now”
Why did they go through this exercise if they were not deciding whether there should be consequences for illegal actions? He is essentially saying that even though Hillary got away with illegal activity, don’t you try doing the same thing because you will face the legal consequences that she escaped.
COMEY ANSWERS QUESTIONS
Congressman Trey Gowdy asked Comey questions about the FBI investigation. Here is the short video. It is very good. It sums up what we talked about. Even Director Comey agrees with Gowdy.
THE RULE OF LAW
Does it matter to you that the laws don’t apply to the ruling aristocracy? If “your guy” breaks the law can you rationalize it because he is on your team? What are the results of continual law breaking by our government betters?
When we see government officials at every level getting away with breaking the law, they can’t help but think the legal system is set up for the politically connected and it pisses us off. As I have said before, there will be a push back by the benighted masses.
What we are witnessing in our country right now is the break down of the rule of law, or the erosion of a civil society. This didn’t start last week. What happened last week with Hillary, the cops shooting citizens in Minnesota & Louisiana, and the cops getting shot in Dallas was built on a foundation of decades of onerous rules imposed by our ruling elite and law breaking by the ruling elite with no consequences.
Most of us want to be left alone. We don’t need all this government intervention in our lives. Our ruling elite shouldn’t make many rules that go beyond dealing with a person physically harming another or stealing their property. I think we can all agree that our government bureaucrats have driven far past that exit. There are so many rules and regulations on the books I bet you have probably broken a law today without even knowing it. You will get dinged for breaking laws you didn’t even know existed, while Hillary was let off for breaking laws that she absolutely did know existed.
The next time you get pulled over for a traffic violation try saying this and let me know how it turns out: “Officer, Hillary Clinton didn’t intend to break the law and neither did I. There is no clear evidence that I intended to violate the law, and although I was extremely careless, no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case to court.”
If I was the cop I would say, sir you’re right. Here’s your license, have a good day.
Bernie Sanders’ War On Chinese Bobbleheads, at reason.com. Protectionist trade policies like the ones socialists like Bernie Sanders pushes, sound similar to many of the things Donald Trump says about trade with China. These policies sound plausible at first glance, which is why many people fall for these ideas. If people would look below the surface at the economic reality of these policies they wouldn’t be fooled by slick or ignorant politicians. This short video should help.
This is just my subjective value judgement; I think economics is much more riveting when explained by an attractive woman with an Australian accent.
On Third World Sweatshops, at economicpolicyjournal.com. Many sanctimonious do gooders want wages payed to these workers increased, even though they freely chose to work in these “sweatshops”. These do gooders want to export minimum wage (floors) laws to these third world countries. Do they understand that Minimum Wage Laws Create Unemployment? How can we expect them to understand what the results will be in other countries when they are ignorantly pushing the same policies in our country. Berkeley To Consider Raising Minimum Wage To $19:00 Per Hour, at economicpolicyjournal.com.
High School Football Team Defies Atheist Bullies By Doing THIS, at thefederalistpapers.com. The Bell County Bobcats say their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion allows the students to lead a pre-game prayer. First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech….... I don’t see how this can be construed to mean anything else.
The Newest Obamacare Fail: Penalties of $36,500 Per Worker, at economicpolicyjournal.com. This new IRS penalty is a result of different interpretations of the Affordable Care Act. Or is it a money grab by the IRS. We should not be surprised that a 2500 page bill that allows bureaucrats to make more laws as they desire could be interpreted differently by the IRS. Since the IRS had to be expanded to enforce the Obamacare fine/tax, logic would follow that they have to find more money law breakers to justify their existence. Because there wasn’t enough money mined from the tax payers as only 6.6 Million Americans Were Forced To Pay The Individual Mandate Tax In 2014 for a total of only $1.2 billion. That’s chump change when you’re talking 3 plus trillion in government spending.
“Fannie And Freddie Are Back Bigger And Badder Than Ever“: NY Times Warns, at zerohedge.com. The only difference this time is “the government has decided to “sweep” almost all the duo’s profits into its own coffers, to be used as a slush fund for general government expenses“. This won’t end well will it! “What do you expect to happen when the people responsible for running the economy into the ground are rewarded with bailouts and deemed “Too Big To Jail?”
A Criminal Inquiry Is Being Sought Over Hillary Clinton’s E-Mail Use, at targetliberty.com. Two inspectors general are asking the justice department to investigate Hillary Clinton. I don’t expect anything to be done because the Clintons are above the law. But as this scandal drags on, Hillary may not escape being found guilty in the court of public opinion.
Black Cop: Why I Helped That White Supremacist, at usatoday.com. The people of South Carolina didn’t riot after blacks were killed in a church by a racist. Officer Leroy Smith gives everyone a lesson on how to handle the situation when he helps a man who was suffering from heat stroke at a KKK rally. South Carolina must have a different set of values than a lot of other places in this country, like Ferguson and Baltimore. Actions speak louder than words.
The left always comes up with words or phrases that ridicule the ideas and/or policies of their opponents with the intent of stopping any intelligent debate about the merits. In the 80’s, the policy of lowering tax rates for the purpose of economic growth, was called “trickle down economics” by the left in an attempt to convince shallow thinking people that this idea couldn’t possibly work. The term “trickle down” has been used by the left since the 80’s to torpedo any economic policy, especially tax cuts.
HILLARY: ECONOMIST EXTRAORDINAIRE
Here is Hillary Clinton using this tactic in a speech yesterday (10/24/14) at a campaign rally for Martha Coakly. At the start of this short video she says, “…don’t let anybody tell you that, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”, which is similar to the President saying, “..if you got a business, you didn’t build that“, in a campaign speech from the 2012. Mrs. Clinton’s statement reveals either her total ignorance about economics, or her great insight into the economic ignorance of the audience. We could write a post answering this statement, but it’s the next line; “You know that old theory, trickle down economics. That has been tried. That has failed. That has failed rather spectacularly.”, that this post will be about.
THOMAS SOWELL AND WALTER E. WILLIAMS SPEAK ABOUT “TRICKLE DOWN”
Economist Thomas Sowell has challenged anyone to name an economist from any economic school of thought who had actually advocated a “trickle down theory”. In this article from 2001, Capital Gains And Trickle Down, he states that there is no such thing as “trickle down theory”. The left uses the term to attack tax cuts by saying, their opponents want tax cuts that will help the rich first and the money will supposedly trickle down to the masses. So just to be clear they are saying that letting everybody keep more of what they produce by reducing tax rates is a “trickle down theory”. This theory they created is simply a straw man.
Economist Walter E. Williams talks about the fake war that has been fought against the “Trickle Down” straw man in this article, Trickle Down And Tax Cuts. This is a tactic used by all politicians in which they misrepresent (lie about) an opponents idea or policy, setting up a straw man, in order to argue against this false premise instead of debating their opponent head on. In this case the left sets up the “Trickle Down” straw man to try to win the tax cut argument.
These two articles are really great especially the examples they give. Here are some excerpts from Thomas Sowell’s article.
“But free-market economics is not about “distributing” anything to anybody. It is about letting people earn whatever they can from voluntary transactions with other people.”
“Those who imagine that profits first benefit business owners — and that benefits only belatedly trickle down to workers — have the sequence completely backward. When an investment is made, whether to build a railroad or to open a new restaurant, the first money is spent hiring people to do the work. Without that, nothing happens.”
“Money goes out first to pay expenses and then comes back as profits later — if at all. The high rate of failure of new businesses makes painfully clear that there is nothing inevitable about the money coming back.”
” No one who begins publishing a newspaper expects to break even — much less make a profit — during the first year or two. But reporters and other members of the newspaper staff expect to be paid every payday, even while the paper shows only red ink on the bottom line.”
“In short, the sequence of payments is directly the opposite of what is assumed by those who talk about a “trickle-down” theory.”
Here are some excerpts from Walter E. Williams article.
“Trickle down is a nonexistent theory. Those who use it simply argue against a caricature rather than confront an argument actually made.”
“You can bet that the White House has people reading every bit of the news, including this column and Dr. Sowell’s article. You can bet some people in the news media will read it, as well. Despite the facts that Sowell has marshaled, they will continue to use trickle down theory and “tax cuts for the rich” demagoguery, even though they now have hard evidence to the contrary, because they can count on widespread gullibility and inability to do critical thinking.”
THE FEDS MONETARY POLICY, IS THE TRICKLE DOWN STRAW MAN
Getting money in the hands of the rich with the idea that it will trickle down through the rest of the economy is the straw man the left says won’t work. They are correct. The Feds loose money policy since 2000 is proof that it doesn’t work. Instead of letting individuals keep what they produce by lowering taxes, the Fed electronically prints counterfeit money and gives it to the top 1%. The Fed has printed a total of $7 trillion since 2000 (click here) with $4 trillion of that being printed since 2008. Click here to see what has happened to the real median household income since this counterfeiting started before 2000. It has gone down.
The Fed injects electronically printed counterfeited money into the economy by purchasing mortgage-backed securities, from banks, and treasury bonds, from the Federal Government. The banks and the Federal Government have first access to the counterfeit money. Everyone in the immediate orbit of the banks and the Federal Government benefit secondarily from this printed money, you and I don’t benefit. Look at the charts in this article, Abolish The Engine Of Inequality: The Federal Reserve, by Charles Hugh Smith. They show that the income and wealth of the people with access to the Feds counterfeit money has grown. And the wealth of the rest of us is stagnant or shrinking. The more the Fed prints the bigger the gap.
CONCLUSION
The Feds experiment of giving their counterfeit money to the people at the top and hoping it will trickle down has been going on since before the tech bubble popped in 2000. The tech bubble lead to the housing bubble that popped in 2008, which lead to the current financial bubble that will eventually liquidate itself at some point. The counterfeiting by the Fed created these bubbles in the first place. In the words of economist extraordinaire Hillary Clinton, “It has failed rather spectacularly“. She is correct. Trickle down economic theory defined by the left, as giving money to the wealthy in the hopes that it will trickle down, doesn’t work. Unless the goal was to make the first receivers of the money wealthier at the expense of the rest of us. But who could possibly be cynical enough to think that?
A cleaner is a person who gets rid of incriminating evidence at the scene of a crime. A cleaner is usually related to crime fiction novels, but in the case of the Clintons the line between fiction and reality may not be as blurry as you might think.
SHARYL ATTKISSON ARTICLE ABOUT BENGHAZI
I read an article last week by Sharyl Attkisson about former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the State Department, Raymond Maxwell, alleging that Hillary Clinton cronies cleaned potentially damaging documents, from State Department headquarters, concerning the Benghazi terrorist attacks (read article here). Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff Cheryl Mills was at the cleaning party. I’m not going to go over the whole article, you can read it for yourself. I’m much more interested in one question: Do you believe these allegations or not?
ISOLATED INCIDENT OR DISCERNIBLE PATTERN OF ACTION?
If you look at this incident in isolation your first question would be: is the reporter credible? Sharyl Attkisson was a CBS news investigative journalist for 20 years before she resigned in March 2014 (read why she resigned here). She has main stream media credibility, until such time that the mainstream media decides to undercut her credibility for writing this article. In isolation this incident comes down to who you believe, Sharyl Attkisson”s reporting and the credibility of Raymond Maxwell, or a State Department spokesman who called the allegations that documents were withheld, “totally without merit”.
The question really isn’t who do you believe? The question should be: is this an isolated incident or is this part of a discernible pattern of action? Lets see if we can find a discernible pattern.
SANDY BERGER CLEANS EVIDENCE
Remember Sandy Berger former National Security Adviser Under Bill Clinton. He was convicted of stealing classified documents from the National Archives, concerning Clinton’s efforts to thwart terrorist threats. He did this before the 9/11 commission could get these documents. His actions suggest he was cleaning documents to protect the Clintons from looking weak on terrorism. These documents were never recovered. Read this article, Berger Thefts Still Weigh On Archives Agents, if you need your memory refreshed.
CLEANERS TAKE CARE OF ROSE LAW FIRM RECORDS
In the summer of 1992, before the election, and in December of 1992, after the election, Couriers of the Rose Law Firm, which Hillary worked at in Little Rock Arkansas, said Hillary called them to the Governor’s Mansion giving them her and law partners Foster, Hubble, and Kennedy’s records to have them shredded at the Rose Law Firms Offices. When special counsel began to investigate in early 1994, Rose Law Firm partners admitted they shredded more files but stated these were unrelated to Whitewater. When Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster committed suicide on July 20, 1993, White House aides entered his office that evening and the next day. The fact that Foster was in possession of Whitewater files was not mentioned (read Shredding Foster’s Files here). On July 22, White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum gives the box of Whitewater files to Hillary’s chief of staff Margaret Williams who took the files to the White House living quarters on the third floor and locked them in a closet, after talking to Hillary. These files were discovered on Janruary 4th, 1996 by Special Assistant to the President Ms. Carolyn Huber, and delivered to the Whitewater Committee the next day by Clintons lawyer David Kendall (read Rose Law Firm Billing Records here).
There is a clear pattern of cleaners being used by the Clintons. The question now becomes: Is this enough of a pattern of action to help you make up your mind about the most recent cleaning of records pertaining to Benghazi? Remember human action is purposeful behaviour used to reach a particular end. The end aimed at is believed to be a better state of affairs than what exists at the moment of the action. The preferred end can be revealed by looking at the action taken. At the very least we can say the Clintons don’t want us to know about their previous actions. I think we can take a guess as to why the cleaning took place.
The pen is mightier than the sword… (Photo credit: mbshane)
Thomas Sowell On Immigration, short video, at libertypenblog.blogspot.com. It’s probably as simple as enforcing the laws that are already on the books, instead of passing a new law that won’t be enforced.
Study Finds Craigslist Took $5 Billion From Newspapers, by Jeff Bercovici, at forbs.com. I saw this at mungowitzend.blogspot.com, No one took anything from anybody. The consumer has decided that Craigslist provides a better advertising bang for the buck than newspaper advertisement. These two professors don’t understand that loses are just as important as profits in allocating scarce resources to their most productive uses. Creative destruction is a good thing for the economy as a whole.
Advanced Crony Payment: Hillary To Speak To Carlyle Group Investors, at economicpolicyjournal.com. The Carlyle Group is not at fault. The fact that Government has exceeded its constitutional power, and intervened in the market, forces businesses to essentially, pay a bribe, either for protection or favors from the Government.
Progressives And Blacks, by Walter E. Williams, at jewishworldreview.com. Progressives and liberals should be considered covert racists, because they seem to think minorities can’t achieve to an equal level as these progressives have achieved, unless they are helped by these same progressives.
The hearings last week about Benghazi have put politicians, and the witnesses who were on the ground, on opposite ends of the truth. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who understands what a politician values the most, which is his own political power. I wrote a post two days after the Benghazi attack titled, Real Analysis About Middle East Insurgency at SOFREP.com, in which the truth about the attack was known within 24 hours. The way the administration lied about what happened in the weeks following the incident is standard operating procedure for 99% of politicians and bureaucrats.
POLITICAL INCENTIVES CONCERNING BENGHAZI.
In a post titled, Mises “Human Action” Explains Lies About Libya, written two weeks before the last election, I talk about how to analyze political decisions in general, and the Benghazi situation in particular through the lens of “Human Action”. Here are a few excerpts from the post that are as true today as they were seven months ago. (more…)
"THE COORDINATION OF MENS ACTIVITIES THROUGH CENTRAL PLANNING OR THROUGH VOLUNTARY COOPERATION ARE ROADS GOING IN VERY DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS, THE FIRST TO SERFDOM AND POVERTY THE SECOND TO FREEDOM AND PLENTY."
"THERE IS NO SUBTLER, NO SURER MEANS OF OVERTURNING THE EXISTING BASIS OF SOCIETY THAN TO DEBAUCH THE CURRENCY. THE PROCESS ENGAGES ALL THE HIDDEN FORCES OF ECONOMIC LAW ON THE SIDE OF DESTRUCTION, AND DOES IT IN A MANNER WHICH NOT ONE MAN IN A MILLION IS ABLE TO DIAGNOSE."
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F.A. Hayek - "Since the value of freedom rests on the opportunity it provides for unforseen and unpredictable actions, we will rarely know what we lose through a particular restriction of freedom."
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Matthew McCaffrey - "Building a freer society means winning the battle of ideas, not the empty contests put on by the central Government every four years. Freedom is never obtained by endorsing the least offensive applicant for the position of chief villain."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The middle system of property that is hampered, guided, and regulated by government is in itself contradictory and illogical. Any attempt to introduce it in earnest must lead to a crisis from which either Socialism or Capitalism alone can emerge."
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F. A. Hayek - "While it may not be difficult to destroy the spontaneous formations which are the indispensable bases of a free civilization. It may be beyond our power deliberately to reconstruct such a civilization once these foundations are destroyed."
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Murray Rothbard - "The market promotes and rewards the skills of production and voluntary cooperation. The Government enterprise promotes the skills of mass coercion and bureaucratic submission...and those who get to the top will be those with the most skill in that particular task."
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John Adams - "Government is instituted for the common good: for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people. And not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men..."
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Milton Friedman - "Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
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Chris Rossini - "The state is a monster that destroys. Those who gain control of the levers, choose the targets."
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Murray Rothbard -"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics...but it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."
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Murray Rothbard -"Democracy can be only a possible route toward a free society rather than an attribute of it. In a purely free society there would be nothing for democratic electors to vote about."
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Robert Bradley Jr. - "When Government tries to pick winners and losers, it typically picks losers. Why? Because the Free market consumers pick winners to leave the losers for Government."
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Benito Mussolini - "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Men must choose between the market economy and socialism....some agency must determine what should be produced. If it is not the consumer by means of demand and supply on the market, it must be the Government by compulsion."
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F. A. Hayek - "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know, about what they imagine they can design."
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Detlev Schlichter - "Any intervention in the market (by the state) must direct resources away from how private owners would have employed them and toward how state officials and their economic advisers would like to see them employed."
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Henry Hazlitt - "The question is not whether we wish to see everybody as well off as possible....the real question concerns the proper means of achieving it. And in trying to answer this we must never lose sight of a few elementary truisms. We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces."
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Murray Rothbard - "Whether or not man lives at the level of poverty or abundance depends upon the success that he and his ancestors have had in grappling with nature and in transforming naturally given resources into capital goods and consumers goods.... Free markets tend to lead to abundance for all of its participants.... violent intervention in the market and a hegemonic society tend to lead to general poverty."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Inflation and credit expansion are the means to obfuscate the fact that there prevails a nature-given scarcity of the material things on which the satisfaction of human wants depends. The main concern of capitalists private enterprise it to remove this scarcity as much as possible and to provide a continuously improving standard of living for an increasing population.....but however remarkable these improvements may be, there will always be a strict limit to the amount that can be consumed without reducing the capital available for the continuation and, even more, the expansion of production."
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Ludwig von Mises - " It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of Governments. Ideologically, it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights."
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Murray Rothbard - "To reduce the working population while the consuming population remains undiminished is to lower the standard of living."
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Murray Rothbard - "Increasing the money supply confers no social benefit. It relieves no economic scarcity. It simply benefits some at the expense of others."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments, they must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe."
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Milton Friedman - "A society that puts equality- in the sense of equality of outcome- ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests."
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F. A. Hayek - "It has already been suggested that it is not necessary, for the working of this free market capitalist system, that anybody should understand it. But people are not likely to let it work if they do not understand it."
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C. S. Lewis - "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; But those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
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Ludwig von Mises - "For the naive mind there is something miraculous in the issuance of fiat money. A magic word spoken by the Government creates out of nothing a thing which can be exchanged against any merchandize a man would like to get."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Many think that governments are free to achieve all they aim at without being restrained by an inexorable regularity in the sequence of economic phenomena....they maintain that the state is God."
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George Gilder - "Under capitalism, economic power flows not to the intellectual, who manipulates ideas and basks in their light, but to men who gives himself to his ideas and tests them with his own wealth and work."
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Thomas Sowell - "Perhaps the greatest achievement of market economies is in economizing on the amount of knowledge needed to produce a given economic result. That is also their greatest political vulnerability."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Anti capitalistic policies sabotage the operation of the capitalist system of the market economy. The failure of interventionism does not demonstrate the necessity of adopting socialism. It merely exposes the futility of interventionism. All those evils which the self-styled "progressives" interpret as evidence of the failure off capitalism are the outcome of their allegedly beneficial interference with the market."
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F.A. Hayek - "The battle for freedom must be won over and over again, the socialists of all parties must be persuaded or defeated if they and we are to remain free men."
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F. A. Hayek - "Planning, or central direction of economic activity, presupposes the existence of common ideals and common values; and the degree to which planning can be carried is limited to the extent to which agreement on such a common scale of values can be obtained or enforced."
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Thomas Sowell - "In political competition accurate knowledge has no decisive competitive advantage, because what is being sold is not an end result but a plausible belief about a complex process"
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Thomas Sowell - " Taxing away what other people have earned, in order to finance one's own moral adventures via social programs, is often depicted as a humanitarian endeavor, while allowing others the same freedom and dignity as oneself, so that they can make their own choices with their own earnings is considered pandering to greed. Greed for power is no less dangerous than greed for money, and has historically shed far more blood in the process."
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Peter Earle - "In a world of infinate desires and limited means, choices must be made; a study of history and economics reveals that, while markets make no promises, they never lie. The only choice is whether distribution, or redistribution as the case may be, is to be accomplished by the organic, apportioning hand of the price system, or by the corrupt, spoilative claw of states."
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Thomas Jefferson - "....To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with public debt....we must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude....if we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements.... if we can prevent the Government from wasting the labor of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy."
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F. A. Hayek - "The democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans."
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Jean Baptiste Say - "...The encouragement of mere consumption is no benefit to commerce, for the difficulty lies in supplying the means, not in stimulating the desire of consumption; and we have seen that production alone, furnishes those means. Thus, it is the aim of Good Government to stimulate production, of bad Government to encourage consumption."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The middle-of-the-road policy is not an economic system that can last. It is a method for the realization of socialism by installments."
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Thomas Sowell - "What is politically defined as economic planning is the forcible superseding of other people's plans by Government officials."
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Thomas Sowell - "The market is simply the freedom to choose among many existing or still to be created possibilities. The Government establishes an army or a post office as the answer to a given problem.... The diversity of personal tastes insures that no given institution will become the answer to a human problem in the market."
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Thomas Sowell - "Just as a poetic discussion of the weather is not meteorology, so an issuance of moral pronouncements or political creeds about the economy is not economics."
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Paul Craig Roberts - "We should all be thankful to the Soviets, because they have proved conclusively that socialism doesn't work. No one can say they didn't have enough power or enough bureaucracy or enough planners or they didn't go far enough."
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Alexis de Tocqueville - "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man, socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality, but notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."
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George Gilder - "The Real Issue is between the rule of law and the rule of leveler egalitarianism, between creative excellence and covetous "fairness", between admiration of achievement versus envy and resentment of it'.
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Thomas Jefferson - "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."
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Judge Leonard Hand - "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; if it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Modern civilization is a product of the philosophy of laissez faire, it cannot be preserved under the ideology of Government omnipotence."
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Ludwig von Mises - "The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution."
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H.L. Menken - "Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is an advance auction on the sale of stolen goods"
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F.A. Hayek - "Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's Government is not necessarily to secure freedom."
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Detlev Schlichter - "Economics is the science of how we use social institutions such as private property and voluntary exchange on free markets to make the best use of scarce resources. The printing press tries to do away with scarcity."
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Thomas Sowell - "The God like approach to social policy ignores the diversity of values and the cost of agreement among human beings."
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Henry Hazlitt - "Whenever men are allowed liberty, and freedom of choice, they will make mistakes. Liberty is not a guarantee of omniscience. But neither are the mistakes of free men a valid excuse to take away their liberty, and impose Government controls in its stead, on the ground that all wisdom and disinterestedness resides in the people who are going to do the controlling."
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Thomas Sowell - "Nothing is easier than to confuse broader powers with deeper insight. But almost by definition, those with the broadest powers are the most remote from the specific knowledge needed for either deciding, or for knowing, the actual consequences of their decisions."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Credit expansion is the Government's foremost tool in their struggle against the market economy. In their hands it is the magic wand designed to conjure away the scarcity of capital goods, to lower the rate of interest or to abolish it altogether to finance lavish Government spending."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Economic history is a long record of Government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics."
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Chaderov - "Since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by it's avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus in pulling society down it pulls itself down."
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Thomas Sowell - "If an informed citizenry is the foundation of democratic Government, than an uninformed citizenry is a danger."
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Thomas Sowell - "The free market works best when there is a level playing field but politicians win more votes by tilting the playing field to favor particular groups."
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Thomas Sowell - "However dramatic or attractive a particular vision may be, ultimately everyone must live in the world of reality. To the extent that reality has been filtered to fit a vision, this filtered information is a misleading guide to making decisions in an unforgiving reality, to which we must all adjust because it is not going to adjust to us."
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Thomas Sowell - "Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name "Social Justice"."
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Murray Rothbard - "Bureaucracy incompetent enough to plan a stationary system, is vastly more incompetent at planning a progressing one."
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Ludwig von Mises - "Freedom is incompatible with equality of wealth and income. Men are born unequal and it is precisely their inequality that generates social cooperation and civilization."
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Murray Rothbard - "Government subsidy systems promote inefficiency in production and efficiency in coercion and subservience, while penalizing efficiency in production and inefficiency in predation (plundering)."
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Francisco Capella - "The right of property is a negative right of noninterference. Humans do not have natural positive rights that imply that others must do something for them, and there is no natural duties towards others (present and future). Positive rights and duties arise by means of contracts."
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Victor Davis Hanson - "Social justice sees the Government's proper moral obligation not as ensuring equality out of the starting gate, but as guaranteeing that we will all reach the finish line at the same exact moment."
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F.A. Hayek - "A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a Government with totalitarian powers."
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Thomas Sowell - "People who are very aware that they have more knowledge than the average person are often very unaware that they do not have one tenth of the knowledge of all of the average persons put together. In this situation, for the intelligentsia to impose their notions on ordinary people is essentially to impose ignorance on knowledge."
"Credentialed ignorance is still ignorance."
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Thomas Sowell - "People have to be aware of the dangers in letting economic decisions be made through political processes."
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Winston Churchill - "Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."
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George Gilder - "Socialist and totalitarian Governments are doomed to support the past, because creativity is unpredictable, it is also uncontrollable. If the politicians want to have central planning and command, they can not have dynamism and life. A managed economy is almost by definition a barren one.
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George Gilder - "The ambitious agenda of contemporary liberalism simply ensures that Government will do nothing well, except to expand itself as an obstacle of growth and innovation. Government best supports the future by refraining as much as possible from trying unduly to shape it."
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Francisco Capella - "Markets are never perfect because human beings are limited in their abilities; proposing state fixes to alleged problems that individuals cannot solve freely seems to forget that the state is also made up of humans; and perhaps not the best ones. ( Bureaucrats are not disinterested angels, and the worst might get to the top.)"
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George Washington - "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force, like fire it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "I think we have more machinery of Government than is necessary, to many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "I sincerely believe with you that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, it's but swindling futurity on a large scale."
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Thomas Jefferson -- "The two enemies of the people are criminals and Government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT 