US Bond Market Debt Climbs To $37.7 Trillion In Q3 2012

According to sifma.org, here.

Just Under 47% (!) Of Households Own Stocks

As reported here:


The percentage of households owning stock mutual funds has also fallen, dropping every year since 2008 to 46.4 percent in 2011, the second-lowest since 1997, according to the latest ICI [Investment Company Institute] annual mutual fund survey.

Hm.

Investors "All In" 10/1/07 To 10/1/12 Are Down 1.19% Per Year

Investors who have remained "all in" the Standard and Poor's 500 Index for the last five years from October 2007 to October 2012 are still down 1.19% per year in real terms, with dividends fully reinvested.

If you've been taking your dividends, say as a retiree, you are down 3.35% per year.

This is pretty grim news when you consider that one school of thought for a conservative retirement drawdown from a portfolio is $40,000 a year, a 4% rate on a $1 million.

If you have been "all in" the SP500 with that sum, which you probably shouldn't be but let's say you are, it is throwing off just about $21,000 in dividend income right now (a little over 2%), so you've got to make up the difference from capital which over the last five years is already posting a 3.35% loss per year. So on top of that 3.35% loss you are taking another 2% per year from the seed corn to make up the difference, meaning your drawdown rate has been really more like 5.35% per annum.

This means that over the last five years such a $1 million retirement portfolio has been plundered by market vicissitudes and the retiree's human necessity by about $268,000. Nothing lasts forever, especially at that rate.

Chart and data here.

New York Magazine Spells Just Fine. Real Clear Markets? Not So Much.

What If Most Of What You Buy Made In China Is Made By Slave Labor?

"If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persicution of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever."

"People who work here have to work 15 hours a day without Saturday, Sunday break and any holidays. Otherwise, they will suffer torturement, beat and rude remark. Nearly no payment (10 yuan/1 month [$1.61])."

"People who work here, suffer punishment 1-3 years averagely, but without Court Sentence (unlaw punishment). Many of them are Falun Gong practitioners, who are totally innocent people only because they have different believe to CCPG. They often suffer more punishment than others."

-- From a letter written by someone from Unit 8, Dept. 2, Masanjia Labor Camp, Shenyang, China, found by an American in a Halloween toy.

Story here.

Libertarian Spoils Race For Republican In NH-1, Bringing Back Shea-Porter

Here's another race in 2012 which the libertarians helped throw to the Democrats. Democrat Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, defeated in 2010 by a Republican, regained her seat thanks in part to a libertarian in the race in 2012 who bled enough votes from the Republican to put her back in the seat.

The case was nearly the same in NH-2 where the Democrat faced a Republican and a libertarian but won in her own right.

Libertarians view themselves as successful, as having an impact, when they deprive Republicans of their victories. Libertarians suffer from a kind of bipolar disorder which is distinguished by a predominating social liberalism which trumps their economic conservatism and thus manifests itself politically as alliance with Democrats, which is what they really are, if only they went to therapy.

We know whose side the libertarians are on, and it isn't ours.

Follow the label in the footer to see other races libertarians helped spoil for Republicans in 2012.

Republicans need to grow a quatrain and start attacking not just Democrats, but libertarians as well.

Journalists' Guide To Firearms Identification

h/t Scott

The Greatest Economic Boom Of Our Time Coincided With The Cheapest Gasoline

Arguably the greatest economic boom period of the 20th Century, the period between 1986 and 2000, was fueled, quite literally, by the cheapest gasoline prices on an inflation-adjusted basis since the end of The Great War. Real gas prices during those years in today's dollars ran down from $2.00 a gallon in the mid 1980s to $1.50 by the late 1990s and up again.

Chart and discussion, here.

Say what you will about former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's presidential run in 2011-2012, he's the only public figure who has had the vision to understand the imperative of getting the price of gasoline below $2.50 a gallon to gun the economy.

With four more years of a regime which is the enemy of all things fossil fuel, expect little more than idling in the driveway.

Interest Payments On The Debt Are Not Counted As GDP

So says this guy, here, discussing government spending for GDP purposes:

d. Interest paid on government bonds is NOT counted as part of GDP; the argument is that the interest is not usually for a loan purchasing capital equipment, and therefore is not connected to production; whereas net business interest typically is for a loan used to purchase capital equipment and is counted as part of GDP since it is related to production.

Interest Payments On The Debt Continue To Consume GDP Gains

Interest payments on the debt are reported here.

For the 7 fiscal years from 2006 to 2012, interest payments have totaled $2.898 trillion.

GDP has gone from $13.399 trillion in 2006 to $15.811 trillion annualized in the third quarter of 2012 (using BEA and Federal Reserve z.1 Release figures), up just $2.412 trillion, which means we're still in the hole $486 billion after 7 years.

I don't see the so-called money multiplier working too well here. And for all I know, these interest payments are probably double-counted, so to speak, showing up as GDP, so it's even worse than it looks. It's government spending, isn't it?

You can't borrow your way to growth.

Real Personal Income Still Remains Below The 2008 Peak

Real personal disposable income per capita remains in depression, over 5% lower than it was on May 1, 2008, the all-time high, when it reached $34,641.

As of November 1, 2012 it is at $32,868.

Graph and data here.

Obama is presently swimming the holiday away in warmer climes as his party happily prepares to see your taxes increased on your reduced and stagnating dreams.

Real Retail Sales Still Remain Below The 2006 Peak

Real retail sales still remain below the December 1, 2006 peak of $180.016 billion. The latest report of real retail sales for November 1, 2012 puts them at $178.51 billion.

Graph and data here.

We still remain in a consumption depression nearly six years since the onset despite extending the Bush tax cuts for two years beyond their original expiration date, and despite the first ever emergency reductions to the payroll tax, rolled back 32% for both 2011 and 2012 from 6.2% of each paycheck to 4.2%:

"[F]or the economy as a whole the payroll tax cut amounted to about $112 billion in 2012 – or the equivalent of at least $300 for each person in the US," reports the Christian Science Monitor, here.

Given the 100% propensity to spend everything in a paycheck, the expiration of the payroll tax cut will remove that sum from current retail spending levels. And going back to the Clinton era tax rates in less than two weeks, on January 1, 2013, will mean transferring about $235 billion annually from taxpayers to federal coffers, according the Congressional Budget Office, as discussed here.

Together that's a theoretical annual hit to spending by the American people of nearly $350 billion.

Yet Democrats cry Forward! to these tax rates of the past despite the damage they are likely to cause.

We're not going to get over the hump that way.

Taki is Old and Stupid for giving Oliver Stone a Pass

Here, where Stalin's crimes get a total pass, of which Taki would surely have been a victim had he lived under him:

"Stalin never trusted the West, but he had no designs on taking us over from the outside."

Which just goes to show one good pass deserves another.

Q3 2012 GDP Revised Up To 3.1% From 2.7% In Third Estimate

Full pdf report from the BEA here.

master of scratch

Since Obama was elected in 2008, the average report of GDP has been . . . 0.93%, still far and away the worst average report on record since World War II.

Lefty FDLAction Calls Obama Pathological Liar

Took 'em long enough. They're shocked, I tell you. Shocked.

Here.

Get Ready America. Here Are Your New Obama Tax Increases.

These are the tax rates scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2013. The dollar figures shown are the 2001 dollars adjusted for inflation to 2011. Have fun stormin' the castle!

Sen. Manchin Wants To Know Why We Need 30-Round Clips?

To fight back against these when they can't, or won't.

Story here:

“I don’t know anyone in the hunting or sporting arena that goes out with an assault rifle,” Manchin said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I don’t know anybody that needs 30 rounds in the clip to go hunting. I mean, these are things that need to be talked about.”

Tax Equality Would Expose The True Horror Of Federal Spending

The true horror of federal spending in America would be understood by everyone if we actually had tax equality, by which I mean if everyone paid the same rate of taxation on all income, regardless of source.

SocialSecurity.gov reports that there were 151,380,749 people in America in 2011 with net compensation of about $6.2 trillion. However, personal income was actually more like $12.95 trillion from all sources according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This total probably was distributed to more individuals than the above referenced 151.4 million workers, but that number will be close enough to illustrate the horror I am describing.

Let us assume we tax each person earning income individually, which we do not do presently for conservative reasons, and grant to each person earning income a poverty exception to taxation of the first $11,170, which is the federal poverty guideline for a one person household in 2012. Times the 151. 4 million workers or so, this exempts $1.7 trillion from taxation, leaving $11.25 trillion of personal income in 2011 to be taxed.

In order to generate the $3.8 trillion or so we spent at the federal level in the last year, everyone earning income from whatever source would have to pay a tax rate of 33.8% on that $11.25 trillion in order to have a balanced budget for the year.

I seriously doubt the 47% who pay next to nothing in taxes would be too happy to get that tax bill, but maybe they should, if we truly want to cut government down to size.

Besides, it's only fair.

Rush Limbaugh Repeats The Rich Man's Lies: Middle Class Has "Bulk Of The Money"

Here:

Where this is all going to end up, I'm pretty sure -- we'll see if I'm right; won't be too long, maximum next year sometime, maybe two years -- where this is all going to end up is that the middle class is going to get soaked.  The middle class is going to see their taxes go up, and the reason is, that's where the bulk of the money is. 

You could confiscate all the money the middle class has and run the government for quite a while.  Much longer than if you confiscate all the money the rich have.  There's a reason why the rich are called the top 2%.  There aren't very many of them, folks.  They're only the top two, the top 1%.  And the idea that 98% of the country is not going to have a tax increase under this president is absurd.  Everybody is going to see a tax increase under this president, because his objective is to shrink the private sector and expand the government so that the government becomes the primary source of prosperity and benefits for the vast majority of people.

In 2011, the poorest Americans, those making between $0 and $20K, had total net compensation of $501 billion in the aggregate. The so-called middle class, those making between $20K and $75K per year where net compensation aggregates every $5K up the income ladder constitute piles of cash in excess of $200 billion each, had total compensation of $2.9 trillion in 2011.

The income tranches of the middle are what greedy liberal tax-farmers focus on, as do disingenous rich people, because they stick out like a sore thumb, representing as they do the largest individual tranches for ordinary income purposes and constituting an unbroken line of 11 of them just begging to be ogled. See them here for yourself. You will not find any tranches among the so-called rich in excess of $200 billion. But they make a lot of money nevertheless.

Add it all up and everybody making beyond $75K per year in 2011, which includes the upper middle class, if you piled all their net compensation for Social Security purposes together, would total another $2.8 trillion, just shy of the middle's $2.9 trillion.

If you think this proves Rush's point, you would be wrong. Such net compensation isn't all there is to it, not by a long shot. It's much, much more complicated, and obscure, than that. And that's the way rich people like it. If you can't see their income you can't know how rich they are and they can thus escape becoming a target. That's why so many rich people, and their advocates like Bruce Bartlett who want to tax the middle class and deflect taxes from themselves, insist so strongly that they are middle class just like you.

While net compensation totaled about $6.2 trillion in 2011, personal income was more than twice that. The Bureau of Economic analysis, here, reports that personal income was $12.95 trillion in 2011.

People like Jeffrey Immelt, Jamie Dimon, Mitt Romney, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates receive tons of income from stocks, bonds, capital gains, dividends, rents, royalties, et cetera et cetera et cetera, adding at least another $6.75 trillion to that $6.2 trillion in net compensation for Social Security purposes in 2011.

To be sure, lots of people who aren't the very rich receive such income, too, but there is no way on God's green earth that there are enough of them in the so-called middle receiving it to say that the bulk of the money is in the middle. The middle class would like to be receiving the bulk of its income as unearned income like the investor class does, but it doesn't for the most part. It works for its money (unless you're a government employee).

No matter how much the boob with the microphone and the subscription to The Wall Street Journal tells you otherwise, the bulk of the money is not in the middle, most people know it, and that's why Obama is succeeding with his class warfare rhetoric. He has picked his targets, personalized them, polarized them and frozen them, and all the rich can do, because there aren't enough of them, is surrender (Warren Buffett), create diversions (the home mortgage interest deduction flap) or tell lies (The Wall Street Journal).

It really is quite pathetic that we do this to rich people in America and pat ourselves on the back for it. It's actually disgraceful in a country which claims to believe in equal treatment under the law that a wealthier earner is discriminated against because we say he must pay taxes at a higher percentage rate on his ordinary income than a poorer earner must pay. And we feel guilty enough about it that we then turn around and create exceptions to these unjust tax rules when taxing income which is not ordinary. Is it any wonder then that more than half of the personal income in the country has fled for refuge to be classified as other than ordinary? The founders thought a tax was equal only if everyone in the country paid the same amount. This consensus necessarily kept federal taxation low and infrequent because the great masses of people could not afford to pay very much.

The least we could do in homage to that old idea of America would be to tax everyone's income in the country in similar fashion, at one low rate, making no distinctions between the income from a job and the income from an investment. Of course, that would mean a pretty low rate compared to what's exacted today, and would necessitate some pretty drastic cuts to spending. A 10% tax on the personal income of the country of $13 trillion in 2011 would have yielded only $1.3 trillion in revenues, far short of the $3.8 trillion or so we spent.

And that, as we on the right keep saying, is where the real problem lies. Unless we slay the spending monster, there will never be taxation equality in America.

Today's Civilian Employment/Population Ratio Was First Achieved 35 Years Ago!

The ratio of employed to population today is 58.7, a level first achieved way back in December 1977.

Persons not in the labor force, that is, persons not counted as unemployed by the federal government, reached an all-time high recently of 88.9 million. Between 1975 when records started being kept and 1992, this number increased by about 0.7 percentage point per year. Under Clinton this number increased by about 1.04 percentage point per year. Under George W. Bush, 1.7 points per year. Under Obama, 2.7 points per year. 

The trend is not our friend.

Obama's Popular Vote Climbs To 50.96%

Monitor it here.

Real Rates Of Return, SP500 Index, 1980-2000 v. 2000-2012

Up nearly 13% per annum for two decades v. down 0.57% per annum for twelve years. Ouch!

As shown here.

Real Rate Of Return, SP500 Index, 2002-2012, 4.85% Per Annum

As shown here.

Real Rate Of Return, S&P500 Index, 1997-2012, 2.15% Per Annum

As shown here.

Gold Has Soared Over 325% Between 2002 and 2012

Oil Is Up 335% Since The Summer Of 1999

Oil prices have soared over 300% since leaving the $20/barrel range for good in early 2002.

The first time oil hit $19/barrel was in the summer of 1979.

The last time it hit $19/barrel was in January 2002.

Real GDP Per Capita 1980-2000 v. 2000-2012

Up 55% over the earlier twenty year period v. only 6.7% up over the most recent 11 year period.

Consumer Prices Are Up 9.5% In 5 Years

Expensive Oil Since 911 Has Coincided With Slow GDP Growth

Reagan-Bush-Clinton era low energy costs coincided with economic "good times" when real GDP increased 83% over twenty years.

By contrast the last twelve years have witnessed real GDP growth of barely 24% in the face of soaring energy prices.

The country's most urgent need is for lower energy prices, not tax increases. Revenues take care of themselves when the economy is growing well.

Crude Oil Is Priced About Where It Was 5 Years Ago

5yr Gold, NY Spot, Up Over 100% 12/07 to 12/12

From $800 to $1,700 the ounce in five years.

The late 2008 collapse was just a head fake.

5yr GLD Is Up Over 100% 12/2007 to 12/2012

Vanguard Precious Metals and Mining Down 50% 12/07 to 12/12

Your Real Five Year S&P500 Rate Of Return Since October 2007 Is Negative

I've got your real annual rate of return right here. Actually this guy does, but I love showing it. You are down 1.19% every year for the last five years in the S&P500 Index, October 2007 to October 2012.

Buy and hold. Buy and hold. Buy and hold. Buy and hold. Buy and hold. ...

Bye.

"Babes Shall Rule Over Them. And The People Shall Be Oppressed."

"And I will give children [to be] their princes, and babes shall rule over them.

"And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable."

-- Isaiah 3:4f.

"Ben Bernanke and other central bankers, like promiscuous parents, compensate and indulge political leaders acting irresponsibly in their stewardship of national economies.

"Sooner or later spoiled children turn out badly, and economies juiced with too much money have their bubbles, inflation and collapse.

"This will all end badly."

-- Peter Morici, Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, here

Crazed Bomber Killed 38 School Children In This Building In 1927

In Bath, Michigan, northeast of Lansing.

Story here.

Human evil is not a recent invention.

Workin' Farmer Style

See it here.

Bank Failure Number 51 In 2012

Bank failure number 51 in 2012 is Community Bank of the Ozarks, Sunrise Beach, Missouri, costing the FDIC $10.4 million.

When asked to show me the money, they didn't have it.

Rare Sighting Of The Equally Rare "Green Whale"

Time Magazine's Unperson Of The Year

Libertarian Louis Woodhill Panders Left And Right

Louis Woodhill, here, who wants to go over the cliff to save the country:


"The electorate, as a whole, understands economics. ... (collectively) the voters know everything . . .."

Which is why they voted for divided government. Democrats were right! Republicans were right!

Uh huh.

Internet Pioneer Comes Out For Gridlock

Marc Andreessen, here:

"The presumption is that we want the government to do things. I'm pro-gridlock," Andreessen said. "It doesn't bother me in the least if government is all ground to a halt." ...

"'Rise above' I completely disagree with it," Andreessen said, speaking of the motto coined by CNBC to resolve Washington's budget woes. "I think it's well-intentioned, but I think it's undesirable and I think it's dangerous."

Growth Of Single Person Households To Blame For Income Inequality

The lesson? Get married and stay married. The tax code is your friend.

As reported here:

Without a corresponding increase in the measured income inequality for U.S. individuals, the increase in the measured income inequality for U.S. households has been almost entirely driven by the increase in the number of single person households over time.

So income inequality among U.S. households isn't increasing because the rich are getting richer. That means that policies intended to right this situation by going after the rich in the name of "fairness" are guaranteed to fail, because the real cause of the increase in income inequality among U.S. households over time is something that cannot be fixed by such actions.

If only the people pushing such policies could see that....

Boosting Minimum Wage 40% Reduces Youth Employment 25%

You talkin' to me?

Way to go, Brownie!

Story here:

In November 2007, teens represented 4.0% of the entire U.S. workforce. In November 2012, teens account for just 3.1% of the reduced U.S. workforce. At this point, jobs that were most likely to have been held by teens are 14 times more likely to have been negatively affected by the employment situation over the past five years than their numbers among the entire U.S. workforce would suggest.

In retrospect, it seems that the U.S. Congress' action to boost the minimum wage by nearly 41% in three stages from 2007 through 2009 without doing anything to boost the revenues of teen employers by an appropriate percentage to compensate them for their higher costs of doing business during this period of time wasn't such a hot idea.

Now Color Michigan Blue Like Indiana

Forced unionism states are in yellow.

Rules For Radical Republicans: Bush Tax Cuts Edition

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.

The enemy knows the Congress is a coequal branch of the government. The problem is the Republicans and the Speaker of the House do not. You actually have more power even than that. You have 30 Republican governors. Start using them.

Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people.

"New revenues from the rich" is the enemy's idea, not Republicans'.

Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of the enemy.

Bush is ancient history. Time to make your own and repudiate the past. Pass something in the House which goes farther than Bush ever dreamed, and send it to the Senate to enrage the enemy.

Rule 4: Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

The enemy is funding gold-plated union jobs and pensions for federal and state workers at the expense of middle class Americans in the private sector who enjoy neither. It's time you reminded the middle class about that.

Rule 5: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.

Use surrogates saying: Moochelle. Crony capitalist. Ideologue. Bolshevik. Dictator. Muslim sympathizer. Race baiter. Panetta flies cross country too much at taxpayer expense. The vice president thinks FDR talked to a television camera.

Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

Republicans can campaign, too. Go frequently to friendly territory and bring 2016 hopefuls with you.

Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long becomes a drag.

The idea of compromise became a drag a long time ago. Stop waiting for it. Go on the offensive instead.

Rule 8: Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period.

The enemy is trying to combine everything into one event, "the fiscal cliff", which tells you they perceive they are at a disadvantage. They are. You need to keep the events separate and do things piecemeal. Raising the debt ceiling should come later, crossing the tax rates fiscal cliff should come first. Fight for spending cuts later with the debt ceiling, not now. Sequestration already gave you some spending cuts, which you should embrace.

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.

The greatest fear of the Democrats is a debt ceiling fueled government shutdown over spending cuts, but it wasn't the end of the world under Bill Clinton, and it won't be the end of the world if it happens in 2013. You actually won that in 2011. Do it again, except bigger, to satisfy the ratings agencies. Besides, it's red meat for the base.

Rule 10: Maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.

No more appearances with the enemy, especially on the golf course. You are third in line for the presidency. Start acting like it. Visit Afghanistan to encourage the troops.

Rule 11: If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.

The place you need to get to is the same place you were at two times when the president extended the Bush tax rates, so you should know the way. An uncompromising new insistence on tax reform and much lower tax rates might get you there. It changes the subject and focuses the argument on relieving the taxpayers. The president upped the ante. You need to see him and raise him. Aim for the moon, and you might get into orbit.

Rule 12: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.

You might not get the radical tax reform, about which you must be deadly serious, but settling for making the Bush tax cuts permanent is a constructive alternative.

Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.

Focus your attention on answering the partisanship of individuals in the pundit class. Don't fire Tea Party men. Enlist them in attacking the enemy. They are good at it, and they will repay you with support later.

The Ignorant Statement Of The Day Comes From Jeff Immelt, Chairman Of GE

The ignorant statement of the day comes from Jeff Immelt, chairman of GE, here:

"The one thing that actually works, state run communism a bit– may not be your cup of tea, but their [Chinese] government works."

Communism is nothing if not "state-run", as in, run by the Communist Party. As it stands, the statement is meaningless.

Actually China's Communist Party practices a form of state capitalism, just like we do, which in the good old days was called fascism. And it only works until it doesn't, at the price of human repression, which goes unreported in the west. You know, like how many abortions were performed this week in Peoria or Shanghai. Still, I don't see a lot of people flocking to China. I see Chinese who have gotten rich trying to get out.

And whereas we build things that actually get used, using fiat currency, China builds things using fiat currency which don't get used, including massive numbers of buildings and highways. Of course, the grandmothers of Bolshevism in our country do the same thing as the Chinese. They build massive numbers of churches which are for the most part vacant all week.

You say socialism, I say national socialism, but let's call the whole thing off.

If You're Unemployed, Just Remember . . .

. . . you're expendable, just like an abortion.

TAC Analysis Of Montana Senate Race Never Mentions Libertarian Spoiler

Michael Tracey for The American Conservative here spends zero time contemplating how the Libertarian Party candidate easily spoiled the race for the Republican by bleeding off his votes, thus electing the Democrat to the US Senate in Montana.

Criticizing libertarianism at TAC evidently conflicts with the program.

Obama's Popular Vote Total Reaches 50.93%

They keep working on that tax increase mandate!

Memo To Jim DeMint And Heritage Foundation: Limited Government, Conservative v. Libertarian

Memo To Senator Jim DeMint and The Heritage Foundation:

Conservatives and libertarians DO NOT share the same understanding of limited government.

Libertarians believe in limited government in order to be free to do anything they want, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody.

Conservatives believe in limited government as the larger, necessary and inevitable political expression of the moral limitations they place on themselves as individuals who respect the laws of Nature and of Nature's God, transgressions against which hurt others and especially the individual whether he recognizes it or not.

Limited government can only exist where there is self-limitation pre-existing. It cannot be voted into existence.

It begins with the personal moral experience of a conversion taught variously in human experience, but well-expressed by the ancient Greek maxim "Nothing too much". We know it more vaguely in our time, for example, as conservation and good stewardship of resources as opposed to relentless consumption and production, or as savings and thrift in economics as opposed to repeatedly rehypothicated credit and debt, or as abstinence outside of marriage and fidelity within it, or in law as a scale of punishment of infractions against these appropriate to their severity.

Libertarians can know these things only because conservatives have told them, otherwise they do not have it in them, deluded as they are that the possibilities in life are infinite. Libertarianism is thus an infantile idea from which one should grow up. 

How To Distinguish Between A Libertarian And A Conservative

The libertarian is the pot-smoking fudge-packer and the conservative would be the guy running away from him as fast as he can.

I Don't Call Sen. Jim DeMint "Demented" For Nothing

Here he is in all his confused glory:

"I think the new debate in the Republican Party needs to be between conservatives and libertarians. We have a common foundation of individual liberty and constitutionally limited government, and we can rationally debate some of the things we disagree on. I don’t think the government should impose my morals or anyone else’s on someone else, but at the same time I don’t want the government purging morals and religious values from our society. We can find a balance there. It really gets back to decentralization. The tolerance is going to come from decentralization and letting people make their own decisions, but we have to be able to put up with societal stigma of things we don’t like."

No, we don't have a common foundation.

Libertarians believe in freedom as license. Conservatives believe in ordered liberty, that there cannot be true freedom unless we respect the transcendent moral order. In recent times libertarians were easily allied with Democrats on social issues, and finally gave up on that and moved rightward on economic concerns. In doing so they demonstrated their unprincipled shape-shifting for what it is, and that Republicans have been too stupid to reject them. For example, I can't recall a single prominent Republican or so-called conservative descrying the many Republican victories spoiled by libertarians in either of the recent elections in 2010 and 2012. What is more we have idiot conservatives like Sarah Palin telling us we must make room for libertarians in the Republican Party while the Libertarian Party itself is encouraged by the races it has spoiled for Republicans by electing Democrats. This from the woman who vigorously supported John McCain and TARP.

Libertarians are not natural allies of conservatives, but they are of Republicans just as they are of Democrats, because the Republican Party has been liberalized beyond recognition. That a so-called conservative like Jim DeMint is friendly toward libertarianism tells you all you need to know about the state of conservatism in America. Conservatism in America is really and truly dead.

One of the favorite ideas of libertarians illustrates my point. The idea comes by analogy from Adam Smith's invisible hand at work in economics, namely, that the electorate always gets it right (Jude Wanniski). Is there a Republican who voted for Romney saying any such thing anywhere in the country now that Obama is re-elected? I doubt it. But that is the position of John Tamny and his ilk at Forbes Magazine. John Tamny, by the way, would like you to be a completely rootless person, with no house, no wife, no children, paying no property taxes for good schools and contributing no commitment to church and community but owning just two bags and a passport so that his beloved capitalist boss can send you wherever and whenever he needs you.

Good government, as the Scriptures teach, is a terror to bad behavior, not to good. That means there are moral absolutes, against which all libertarians do chafe, now more, now less, starting with "It is not good that the man should be alone."

To Demented Jim there are no such absolutes. He's a moral relativist who doesn't have the courage of his own moral convictions. "My morals" he says, as if they belong only to him and didn't come from the Author of Life. St. Paul, I remind you, ridiculed the Corinthian Christians for such an attitude, saying "What do you have that you did not receive?" Our faults are as ancient as the way of escape.

The Heritage Foundation had become reprehensible enough for having embraced Reagan liberalism, which contributed materially to what became the tyranny of the ObamaCare mandates. Now Heritage is to be headed up by the confused conservative DeMint, if he really isn't just a stealth libertarian. Doesn't that tell you everything you need to know about Heritage, that it remains to this day so intellectually confused about the meaning of conservatism that it welcomes a libertarian sleeper?

Conservatives should revolt against Heritage's choice of Sen. Jim DeMint, but don't count on it. I reckon there are only 500,000 of us in the whole country, and that's being generous. In the end, Sen. DeMint and Heritage will come to nothing, and the Republicans too if they are not careful.

"SAVE YOURSELVES FROM THIS CROOKED GENERATION!"

Food Stamps In September Hit New Record 47.7 Million Americans

Hm. There's that number "47" again.

Data here.