Southern Bread Blog

Had to post Dr. Paul’s excellent video on the reality in Iran:

Of course, he’s right on each of his points, but I think it’s worth noting one thing. The main concern from the standard conservative side is always Israel. It’s said ad-nauseum that Israel will be the first shot fired when Iran gains a nuclear weapon. And, I think they are probably right. If there is going to be a shot fired, it would probably be toward Israel. But, what follows from that is what should be debated. Does is mean that we should intervene on Israel’s behalf? I don’t think so. They can take care of themselves just fine. They’ve done it a million times before and they’ll do what they think is best. Whatever that is, it’s not our privilege to interfere one way or another.

Part of being a sovereign nation is being responsible for your own matters. If Israel’s intelligence determines that Iran is a real and serious threat then they should do something about it. There’s nothing wrong with defending yourself. In fact, it’s the moral thing to do. We(the U.S.), on the other hand, should stay out of it. Our interference will do nothing but complicate matters, and at this point in the game we can’t afford getting involved in yet another middle east conflict. But, in the end, I find it hard to believe that Iran will go off and nuke Israel. Maybe I’m naive, but they have to know, just like any other nuclear power, that as soon as they push that button they have signed their own death warrant as well. Ahmedinijad might be radical, but I find it hard to believe that he’s that stupid.

There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants.  This, too, is false.  The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  You lie!  (Boos.)

THE PRESIDENT:  It’s not true.  And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up — under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.  (Applause.)
–President Obama, Speech to Joint Session(9/9/09)

Another day, another reason why nobody trusts anything this man or this congress says. The above paragraph is from Obama’s highly touted speech to the joint session of congress on September 9th. But today we get this story in the NY Times:

As if it were not complicated enough, the debate over health care in Congress is becoming a battlefield in the fight over abortion.

Abortion opponents in both the House and the Senate are seeking to block the millions of middle- and lower-income people who might receive federal insurance subsidies to help them buy health coverage from using the money on plans that cover abortion. And the abortion opponents are getting enough support from moderate Democrats that both sides say the outcome is too close to call. Opponents of abortion cite as precedent a 30-year-old ban on the use of taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions.

The question looms as a test of President Obama’s campaign pledge to support abortion rights but seek middle ground with those who do not. Mr. Obama has promised for months that the health care overhaul would not provide federal money to pay for elective abortions, but White House officials have declined to spell out what he means.
–David Kirkpatrick, NY Times

Oh, so his promise in the speech actually had no basis in reality?  Surprise, surprise.  This is just the same ol’ song and dance’.  Politicians feign adherence to public opinion, then go off and do exactly what they need to do in order to keep the campaign contributions flowing in from their biggest backers.  How many times have we seen this same scenario play out at all levels of government.  A politician pushes a big issue and then brings it up for a vote.  Then, when it gets voted down, they go right ahead and use some loophole or something to just push it through and do it anyway.

As I said in the last post, it’s the contradictions and blatant lying that’s killing this whole thing for him.  I honestly believe that if he came out and said flatly that he wants government run healthcare, federally subsidized abortion, etc. that the poll numbers would probably be about the same or even higher.  It makes me sick to believe that, but I’m afraid it’s true.  Maybe I’m too cynical.  I hope so.

Last week Michelle Obama officially joined the fray on behalf of her hubby to try and pitch the healthcare bill to all the middle-class soccer moms.  This is actually great news, because every time she opens her mouth she ends up saying something stupid that the Axelrod machine has to scramble and cover for.  There was nothing major this time around, but there was one thing that caught my ears.  It was this statement:

Wait just one second.  Haven’t we been told for months that if we like our current coverage and plans that we can keep them?  So, what exactly is this “change” that’s going to be so “hard?”  Somebody’s lying here.  It’s either Michelle or Barack.  They can’t both be singing the same tune if one says nothing will change and the other says change is hard.  I’ll give you two guesses on which one it is that’s lying.  It’s this type of blatant contradiction that’s killing his own health care legislation.  He can’t keep a consistent message to the American public to save his life.  And what’s making it worse is that it’s not the run of the mill type of Washington contradictions that we normally get.  It’s not telling one group one thing and another group something different.  No, these contradictions are of the fundamental type.  He’s telling us he’s going to do one thing and then speaking about the results of those things that don’t at all fit logically with what he just said.  I don’t know what you call that, but it’s creepy.

I’m going to tell you that quite frankly, the above paragraph from Michelle Obama’s speech chills me to the bone.  What’s all this crap about “moving into a new place in society?”  I don’t remember signing up for that.  If I want to move into a new place in society I think I can handle that on my own Mrs. Obama.  I don’t want or need your help.  I can handle my own family and life.  But, it’s the ease with which she makes that statement that creeps me out so much.  She’s basically speaking about how they’re going to remake American society, and doing it with an air of casual nonchalance. As if the authority to do such a thing has ever been given to her.

But, there are so many contradictions coming out of politicians about healthcare “reform.” It’s my opinion that it’s these glaring contradictions that are the main reason the polling on the issue is so low. I’m not believing that all of the sudden the American public is growing tired of handouts from the government en’ masse. No, what’s making them so skeptical is the glaring inconsistency of the rhetoric. When Obama comes out and says he wants a public option to “keep the market honest” and provide competition, and then turns around and says that private insurers have nothing to worry about because government competition always stinks. “FedEx and UPS are fine. It’s the Post Office that’s always messing up”, he says. Well, which is it?

And just last week we found out that there’s not only a fine for not having insurance, there’s also jail time involved. This doesn’t jive with any of Obama’s claims so far that opposition to this is fearmongering. It’s for this reason that the poll numbers dive every time he starts making fresh speeches on healthcare. The more he tries to tell people that government-run healthcare really isn’t government-run healthcare, the more people are going to distrust the whole thing. As well they should. Nobody chooses the government over private enterprise for anything. Why in God’s name would we want the government running health insurance.

Pardon the interruption in blogging as I move the blog to WordPress. I’m moving from a very unconventional blogging platform so it’s taking a little while to get everything sorted out. Be back soon!

Update: Ok, looks like the migration is done. It’s going to take some time here and there to move all the posts into the appropriate categories and get some of the little naggy stuff done, but everything looks like it’s working good. At least now I can join the 21st century of blogging and allow commenting and such.

One of the hardest things about having meaningful dialogue in today’s political climate is how so many words and phrases have taken on the wrong meaning, or been culturally redefined into something they are not. I find myself constantly having to search for new ways to explain things or even make up new terms entirely, simply to avoid being misinterpereted. It’s frustrating, and we see it all over the current media. For instance, 60 years ago, if you had been speaking of “capitalism”, it would have been understood as simply a condition where private entrepeneurs own the means of production in an economy. Today, the word “capitalism” is somehow synonomous with fascist transnational corporations and jingoistic right-wingers. Those definitions are totally innapropriate and one certainly doesn’t follow from the other. So we go in search of new terms. Thus we have ended up with crazy nonsense like neo-liberal anarchism and paleo-libertarianism. Give me a break. The truth is always much less nuanced. In fact it’s often quite simple. The concept of “hard money” is no exception.

Despite what is commonly implied today, hard money isn’t just some cooky thing cooked up by Ron Paul. It’s the only way of doing money that works long term. And I’ve got good reasons for saying this. Imagine for a moment that there is no such thing as money of any kind. How would people acquire the items they need in that situation? Well, there are only two ways that are possible. Theft or trade. In the absence of money, people have to either trade for what they want/need or else they have to steal it. This is pretty self-evident. This is going to apply to governments as well. Taxation is theft in the eyes of the one who doesn’t want to pay it and trade in the eyes of the one who does. We still are only left with two options. Even benevolence is the same way. If I give some food to a poor man, it’s basically trade. I gave him the food in return for the knowledge that I did something good and moral. It’s still trade. If someone forces me to give the food to the poor, it’s theft.

So, with that basic principle in mind, what happens when we apply money to that same economy? Do we all of the sudden have some new third option? No. Remember that money’s primary role is as a medium of exchange. It evolves naturally in a society as the fulfillment of a need. That need being that it’s exceedingly difficult to do direct barter transactions. At any given time person A would need to have exactly what person B wants and vice versa in order for any transaction to take place. That’s very hard. Money makes this much easier on a society by filling in as a value proxy. The money simply represents the value of a good in a generic way so that it doesn’t matter which good it is. This makes exchange much simpler. But, observe that the intrinsic value placed on a given good by the person who wants it is the same whether there is money involved in the exchange or not. Money is simply a generic placeholder of value. A medium of exchange.

With all of that groundwork in the can, let’s talk about why “hard money” (i.e. gold, silver, labour) has always been what has evolved naturally in society. The inherent risk of any money is that the money itself will be produced, absent of any exchange of value. This is why counterfieting is illegal. When you produce more money, the marginal utility of each unit of that money goes down. That’s the process of devaluation/inflation of a currency. The best mechanism to combat devaluation is to make the money extremely difficult to produce. That’s why gold and silver have always been such good choices. They are very rare and hard to mine, so the threat of an independent producer being able to devalue it as a whole is very slim. But, with paper money there is virtually no barrier at all. It can be mass produced with virtually zero cost. The only thing holding that back would be the good sense of the government, which is to say nothing at all.

The bottom line here is that a hard money is what best represents the value it stands in for. Fiat money is too easily(and inevitably) devalued and therefore will always undervalue the labour it represents. An honest wage for honest work is not possible with paper money since it is constantly being inflated, and therefore devalued. Some people are afraid of the idea of a money like silver that can be dug up out of the ground by anyone. They see it as a risk to the value of the currency. Their answer has been to give government the sole power to create money. Well, we see how that has turned out. The dollar is worth three cents of what it was less than a hundred years ago. On the contrary, gold and silver are worth $1000/oz. and $17/oz. respectively. Hard money isn’t some crackpot idea. It’s the only idea that places people before money. It’s the best money we can have that properly holds the value of the labour it’s supposed to represent.

Think filibustering is just a technique used on the floor of the Senate? Not so. Harry Reid breaks it out here, but in a different variation that is often used by politicians in interviews. David Kramer posted this over at LRC. This is a classic example of the way all politicians do their thing:

I love this video because it shows clearly how a politician manipulates speech to mislead the audience. Here’s how this technique works. Obviously, every single viewer of this clip knows exactly what the question is, and knows exactly what the interviewer means by the word “voluntary.” And so does Harry Reid. But, he acts like he has a dispute with the way the interviewer is defining the word “voluntary” and wants to redefine it in some totally non-standard definition. He then keeps steamrolling the interviewer long enough by saying different variations of the same statement over and over. After a minute or so of this filibustering, the idea is that he has established the perception that he is confident in his position. He’s then safe to pull out the “I don’t understand your question” ruse. At this point, the interviewer explains again, clearly, what he is asking. But the technique is done then, because the perception has been established that the interviewer, by having to re-ask the question again and again is somehow making an obscure, complicated point, while the politician is just baffled that the interviewer can’t see how simple the answer is. These people make me sick.

This is the title of a book by Hans Hoppe that systematically shows the failings of Democracy, specifically when compared to Monarchical government. I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m familiar with Dr. Hoppe’s ideas enough to glean it’s probably content. I don’t really want to get into the whole monarchy thing, but his principles on the failings of the Democratic approach are very sound. There’s no better way to hush a party than to pronounce that “democracy is a failed system.” That will get you a few head turns and a few cat calls of “socialist!” But, that’s not it at all. Anyone who knows libertarians, knows that it would be idiotic to accuse them of being socialists or any type of collectivists. No, the point is that democracy is not the infallible political “god” that modernity has made it out to be. That’s all.

The closest we can come to finding the birth place of a centralized democracy is Greece around 500 BC. Cleisthenes instituted a one man, one vote type of government after the overthrow of the Pesistratus tyrrany by the mob. Votes were cast with either a white stone or a black stone signifying a yes or no vote. The wonderful thing about this arrangement is obviously that it takes the power out of the hands of an all-powerful aristocracy and places that power in the hands of the people. One man, one vote. From that perspective, democracy is just as revolutionary as it appears. There are problems though. And they surfaced immediately in Greece. The first problem is the idea of the “tyrrany of the majority.” One man, one vote means that 51% of the population is able to rule the other 49%. This arrangement is only slightly better than an aristocracy. What if 51% of the people vote to take all black children and force them into concentration camps? Obviously, a majority vote doesn’t make something moral if it’s not.

The tyrrany of the majority problem was perhaps nowhere more evident than in the practice of ostracism. The word comes from the greek word ostrakismos. Each year, the Athenian’s could hold an ostracism and choose to expel one citizen from the country for a period of ten years by majority vote. Ironically, Cleisthenes himself may have been a victim of ostracism by the very democracy that he helped develop. It’s not clear from the historical record. Anyway, you can see the point. Direct democracy is a large improvement in some areas, but it introduces a new set of problems from the majority rule approach. So, we can say that maybe a representative democracy would surely be better. That way, the raw wishes of the majority can be tempered by an assembly of semi-independent minds. Wouldn’t that make things better?

I’m not sure this really helps any. It seems, in fact, that it probably makes things worse. Sure, you have a smaller body on which to focus and lobby, but this smaller body also brings with it a much greater risk of corruption. It’s extremely difficult, although not impossible, to organize a coalition of millions of people to go along with a certain policy. Contrastly, it’s much easier to get 50 or 60 assemblymen to go along with that same policy. At least a direct democracy diffuses political whims. Boiling all the power down into the hands of a few just seems like killing the patient to cure the disease. It no longer takes a simple majority to bring about the tyrrany problem. Now all it takes is a few self-interested politicians. That’s hardly an improvement.

But, what about the United States then? We are a democracy, but in the form of a constitutionally restricted republic. Isn’t that a much better scenario? Well, yes and no. The U.S. has all kinds of constitutional mandates that attempt to resolve many of the traditional problems of pure democracy. Separation of powers, splitting of the assembly into two houses, the electoral college, congressional rules allowing filibustering, etc. These are all great, but it’s still a representative democracy at it’s core, so the problems associated with that system might be somewhat masked, but they still exist. Only now we have a new problem: skewed time preference due to term limits.

Let me paraphrase Hoppe as best I can here, since I couldn’t find a transcript. He gives the example of a house that is given to a person to do with as they will versus a house given to a person only to use for a period of a few years and then they must give it to someone else. In the first scenario, the incentive is clearly on the side of a low time preference, since the house is now an permanent asset of the beneficiary. In the second example, the beneficiary’s time preference is skewed high so that he only wants to get as much as he can out of the house in the shortest period of time before he loses it. The long term condition of the house is not important to him at all. This distinction is one of monarchy vs. republic. We started in the very beginning with the notion of taking the power out of the hands of a permanent aristocracy and have come full circle back to it being necessary to do so. Clearly, something is wrong here.

This is why the founders wisely chose to build into our government the idea of dual-sovereignty. Having 50 individual states constantly fighting the Federal government for power basically deadlocks many of the processes that would ultimately lead to high time preference decision making. It wasn’t the republican part of our system that was genius. It was the dual-sovereignty part. But Lincoln destroyed any last remnant of state sovereignty at Appomatox. That basically leaves us now with a pure representative republic. That’s where we are now in the U.S. and that’s why we are seeing such horrible decision making coming out of D.C. There is a built-in inability to make good long term decisions that would do things like reduce the national debt or end the Federal Reserve. Our system rewards short-term gain. Unless there is a resurgence of balls amongst state Governors to defy the Feds, and bring back the checks and balances that a pure democracy needs, we will continue to go rapidly down hill.

If you aren’t familiar with Karl then start tracking him. He’s a very sound economist. This might be the scariest video I’ve seen in a while. He is right of course. Everything he says makes sense. This country will never make it to a 60 trillion debt load. The system will come apart long before then. The only hope we have is that the American people continue to do what they are doing now and contract their debt voluntarily. This will at least keep things at bay for a while until we can get somebody in office that will do what’s right and end the Federal Reserve once and for all. But if Bernanke and company inflate another credit bubble then you can kiss the U.S. goodbye. We would see a total economic collapse within 20 years. The problem is that this President and Congress, just like the last one and the 20 before them, show absolutely no willingness to swallow the bitter pill now. They are going to try and kick the can down the road. The problem is that there is no more road, just a cliff.

Just when you thought that the American people were waking up to the fact that government corrupts everything it touches, one speech by the most flamboyant demagogue the country has ever seen sends them right back into sheep mode. Two new Rasmussen polls just out show that Obama’s speech to congress last week gave his healthcare abomination a bounce. His approval index is now back up to -3 and Obamacare is now supported by 51% of the population. That’s up from a low of just 42% in mid-August. I swear. Sometimes I think I should just give up, go with the flow and make the most of it. But then I think about how I wouldn’t be able to live with myself knowing that I’m just letting myself and my family be drug deeper into dependence and fiscal servitude to a bunch of millionaire beauracrat overlords. I just can’t. So, I guess we’re gonna have to go back to square one here. Buckle up.

These are going to be the main 5 reasons I oppose healthcare “reform.” This is back to basics, ok? Here is how my thought process works and I think your’s should too:

I’ll expand on this last point tommorrow. It’s such a rich topic and I can’t do it justice in just a paragraph or two. But please people. This healthcare bill has nothing to do with healthcare. All it’s going to do is make life harder on everyone of us. The poor and the middle-class alike. One speech full of demagogic platitudes won’t change that.

With football season now in full swing I’m going to repost all the gameday food posts from the past. Let’s start things off with the must have of all gameday snacks. It’s Rotel cheese dip. Mix up some of this in one of those tiny crock pots and serve with tortilla chips. Nothing else needed. Just don’t keep the heat on it all day or you’ll end up with a large dried out cheese brick. If you don’t like this cheese dip, you’re a communist and not allowed in my house.