Nock's Critique Of The Tariff, 1927: A License To Rob The Domestic Consumer

Here:

The great desideratum in a tariff, for instance, is its license to rob the domestic consumer of the difference between the price of an article in a competitive and a non-competitive market. Every manufacturer would like this privilege of robbery if he could get it, and he takes steps to get it if he can, thus illustrating the powerful instinctive tendency to climb out of the exploited class, which lives by the economic means (exploited, because the cost of this privilege must finally come out of production, there being nowhere else for it to come from), and into the class which lives, wholly or partially, by the political means.

The Origin Of Our Enemy, The State

Albert Jay Nock, 1927, here:

The State originated in conquest and confiscation, as a device for maintaining the stratification of society permanently into two classes — an owning and exploiting class, relatively small, and a propertyless dependent class. Such measures of order and justice as it established were incidental and ancillary to this purpose; it was not interested in any that did not serve this purpose; and it resisted the establishment of any that were contrary to it. No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose than to enable the continuous economic exploitation of one class by another.

Albert Jay Nock Prophesies Abortion On Demand in 1927

Here:

Everyone knows that the State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime that I spoke of a moment ago, and that it makes this monopoly as strict as it can. It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. 

Albert Jay Nock, Detective of Fascism in 1927

As reproduced from The American Mercury, here:

"[T]he primary intention of government was not to abolish crime but merely to monopolize crime . . .."

Amity Shlaes Thinks The Mortgage Interest Deduction Is The Only One Distorting Markets

Amity Shlaes is in full-throated opposition to the mortgage interest deduction, here:

The distortion of the housing market, we now know, stemmed not only from the tax deduction but also from the subsidies of government-sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (FMCC) and from inappropriately loose monetary policy promulgated by the Federal Reserve. ...

Opponents of deduction abolition today argue that abolition will make the market crash some more, as per Thomas of the Realtors. One could argue this the other way. Now Americans see houses for what they really are: boxes that depreciate. This is therefore the least expensive time to abolish the deduction. We have already taken the hit -- and 2012 is also the time when we most need the $100 billion or so from the elimination.

No mention here of the cost of, say, the reduced rates of taxation on capital gains and dividends, which came to $91 billion last year. Nor of the costs of any of the other tax loss expenditures which benefit everyone.

She's worried about the distorting effects of the deduction on house prices, but fails to address the distorting effects on stock prices of the lower capital gains tax rate. All tax loss expenditures have distorting effects, not just the one for housing. 

Worse to me is her objectification of the home as a depreciating box. The fact is housing was long stable in America, until Republicans in league with Bill Clinton started fiddling with it and the tax law surrounding it in 1996. What they did was turn the home into a commodity, which abnormally shot up in value and now has shot down.

The question going forward isn't whether to gut the home some more by removing the tax deduction. Even with it home values have declined dramatically today, and could go even lower despite it as they have in the past. And they probably should and probably will decline without any change to the tax deductibility of mortgage interest. If you aren't old enough to have experienced the housing crash of 1980, you aren't old enough to really understand how relatively small changes in housing values compared to now felt a lot bigger from time to time.

When you attack housing you don't just hurt people where they live in the economic sense, but you hurt them also spiritually. The home in America has been much more than a mere store of economic value, a treasury which greedy government enticed Americans to unleash in a torrent from 1997. The home is the incubator of the next generation of Americans, the place where we engage in the most important work we do as a people: replacing ourselves.

The question is what are we going to do about all the distorting effects of government tax policy, not just the distorting effects of one of them.

That Amity Shlaes leaves them all out except as they impact homeowners suggests not just an economic hostility to housing, but a cultural one, part of a broader hostility which has resulted in family dissolution, not family formation.

If the profane bottom line is tax revenue, the way to achieve it is through more taxpayers. You know the kind: the ones who get up everyday, get to work on time, and work hard.

And the most reliable way we have found to produce them is in families, families which overwhelming still prefer to live in houses.

Subsidizing this enterprise comes with a cost.

So does not subsidizing it.

Can We All Agree Now That Both Sides Intend To Cut The Growth Of Medicare Spending?

We once hoped Paul Ryan was a real spending cutter instead of a spending growth cutter, but is now just a defender of Medicare spending growth, or something.

In other words, you are either going to vote for a Republican Welfare State in Romney/Ryan sans ObamaCare, or a Democratic Welfare State in Obama/Biden with it, but not for a Fiscally Conservative State, and certainly not for a Limited State. 

The Investor's Business Daily doesn't seem to care that failing to cut the overall size of a program over time, adjusted for inflation, means you are not a fiscal conservative, here:

Media fact-checkers also complained about Ryan's charge that Obama is cutting $716 billion from Medicare to fund ObamaCare. Not true, they said. Medicare's growth is just being slowed.

But Obama achieves that slower growth by making real cuts in provider payments. And in any case, the media always and everywhere call a reduction in the rate of federal spending growth a "cut." So why suddenly charge Ryan with being misleading for using that same term?

In any case, Obama himself admitted that he's doing what Ryan says. In a November 2009 interview with ABC News, reporter Jake Tapper said to Obama that "one-third of the funding comes from cuts to Medicare," to which Obama's response was: "Right."

Reducing the size of government is different than reducing how much it grows.

Plans like the Penny Plan -- if they threw out the ever-rising baseline which makes government bigger every year because spending on programs must rise to accommodate increased population -- would work in a fiscally conservative sense because they essentially freeze programs in time and lop-off 1 percent annually until revenues grow enough to balance the budget.

But in no sense can even such a plan be construed as a limited government plan because such plans do not commit to paying off the debt, which by my calculations would take $850 billion annually or so for 30 years at 3.5 percent on top of balanced budgets each and every year over the period. This is how households used to work and no longer do, which is why government no longer does.

A country is only as good as its people. If Americans will not control their own spending, the government which represents them never will.

It begins with us, not with Barack Obama or Paul Ryan.

Election 2012: Romney v. The Utopian

Whatever Mitt Romney is, he's not a utopian.

As reported here:

After electing a man of huge promise and ambition, voters might welcome a candidate with curbed enthusiasm. That seems to be Romney’s calculation, anyway. “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family,” Romney said, drawing perhaps the loudest cheers of the night.

Palin 2008 v. Ryan 2012: Not Even Close At 37.2 Million Viewers to 21.9 Million

So says Nielsen according to the Wall Street Journal, here:

An average of 21.9 million viewers tuned into the nine broadcast and cable networks that were broadcasting convention proceedings Wednesday night between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., according to Nielsen. That was 41% less than the 37.2 million who tuned in the same night four years ago, the research firm said.

Gee, when Romney loses will they blame the conservatives again?

Rep. Ryan Falls In Line: Frames Obama's Reduced Rate Of Medicare Growth As Big Cut

William Saletan for Slate mocks Paul Ryan, here:

Since Mitt Romney tapped you as his running mate, you haven’t stood for fiscal restraint. You’ve attacked it. You warned voters in North Carolina and Virginia that cuts in the defense budget would take away their tax-supported jobs. ... Four days after Romney put you on the ticket, you began parroting his Medicare shtick. You protested that Obama’s $700 billion savings in the future growth of Medicare payments to providers—a spending reduction that any sensible conservative president would have sought, and that you had previously included in your budget plan—would “lead to fewer services for seniors.” You depicted a horror scenario: “a $3,600 cut in benefits for current seniors. Nearly one out of six hospitals and nursing homes are going to go out of business.” You assured seniors that the Romney-Ryan agenda for Medicare “does not affect your benefits.” And you promised future retirees “guaranteed affordability” of health care. In short, you adopted every tactic in the liberal playbook. You framed a reduced rate of growth as a draconian cut. You inflated the likely impact of the reduction. You denounced any loss of services as unacceptable. You promised not to touch seniors’ benefits. And you reaffirmed a fiscally unsustainable guarantee. By my count, you’ve now done this in at least six speeches and rallies. Every day, you’re reinforcing the culture of entitlement and making it harder to rein in retirement programs.

This isn't quite right. There was no fiscal restraint in the Ryan budget to begin with. It simply returned the trajectory of the growth in spending to the status quo ante Obama, which was bad enough. This is why Ryan's budget doesn't achieve balance for decades: it supports the continued growth in spending in programs like Medicare, sans ObamaCare. Obama cuts that growth to help pay for ObamaCare. In other words, it's just business as usual with the Republicans, made to look like fiscal conservatism because it wipes away the really insane spending trajectory threatened under more of Obama.

Bait the conservatives, and switch.

Yea, shame on you, Paul Ryan.

Flashback 2008: McCain Called For Spending Freeze During Crisis. In 2012 Romney Won't.

Who is the more conservative, Mitt Romney, who has said he won't cut spending dramatically in his first year for fear of causing another recession, or John McCain, who was quite radical by current standards in calling for a freeze on spending?

September 26, 2008|Russ Britt

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Sen. John McCain proposed a possible spending freeze on virtually every federal program except the Department of Defense, for veterans and entitlement programs in a presidential debate with rival Barack Obama Friday night. Obama countered that approach is too broad-based, saying it was the equivalent of "using a hatchet where you need a scalpel."

Anybody seen the scalpel? The debt back then was $10 trillion. Now it's $15 trillion. And we're no longer AAA.

Video here.

Election 2012: Rasmussen Now Has 7 States As Toss Ups, Not 6

His map is here.

He now shows Missouri no longer leaning Romney.

Election 2012: It's The Yeomanry Vs. The Clerisy

Joel Kotkin's formulation of the class war, here, between

"people engaged in farming, fishing, forestry, transportation, manufacturing and construction"

and

"an ever-expanding class of minders — lawyers, teachers, university professors, the media and, most particularly, the relatively well paid legions of public sector workers — who inhabit Washington, academia, large non-profits and government centers across the country."

Good News For Obama: Initial Claims For Unemployment Hit Lowest Level Yet

The latest figures are reported here.

They show initial claims, not-seasonally-adjusted, revised for August 18 falling to their lowest level yet during Barack Obama's tenure: 311,787.

And the advance number for August 25 is just a hair under 310K, while August 11 came in just under 318K. At the end of July he posted a number just under 313K.

In March of this year, Obama achieved numbers as low as 319K and 315K, but the trend melted up after that. Now he has five weeks in a row between 310K and 320K.

Expect him to say this is reason for hope that the skies are finally clearing.

The Nadir For Housing Prices Since The 1950s Came In 1974

The low point for housing values since the 1950s was reached in 1974 when the Case-Shiller Home Price Index bottomed out at 111.

That bottom could easily be plumbed again, and indeed overshot to the downside in view of the massive bubble on the upside topping out at 218 in 2005, which was completely contrary to historical experience. Housing values fluctuated for a long time around the 120 level, but there is no reason why a bottom should be anchored around that number given the huge oversupply today.

What's really preventing the market from clearing is the banking system. It holds the bad paper on all this oversupply, and to clear the banking system needs to clear. Which means bankruptcy.

And as we all know, bankruptcy is failure, and failure is no longer acceptable in America. Which is why your kids will get no Fs in the upcoming academic term, and why housing will be a Zombie indefinitely.

Are We Still In The Eye Of The Housing Hurricane?

Anthony Randazzo thinks so, here:

RealtyTrac data suggests a 1.6 million home foreclosure backlog at present. Add this to the roughly 2 million foreclosures currently in progress, according to Barclay's Capital research, the 1.5 million to 4 million homes that are at least three months behind on their payments, and the 10 million mortgages that remain underwater and candidates for defaulting down the road, and you get headwinds of several different storms coming together to create a potential foreclosure hurricane headed right for the shores of today's supposedly bottoming out housing market.

Obama has done nothing important to address this problem, or the unemployment problem, during his entire tenure. 

And Romney actually INTENDS to do nothing about housing if he is elected.

So expect more of the same, with downward pressure on housing prices.

2nd Estimate of Q2 GDP Rises to 1.7 Percent from 1.5, Q1 Still at 2.0 Percent

The news release is here.

The awful number is no longer 1.5 percent, but 1.7 percent. An annualized growth of this small magnitude is about half of the historical average up until the year 2000. In the post-WW2 period GDP averaged about 3.5 percent per annum until the turn of the century.

From 2000 to now, however, GDP growth has been far less robust, with year 2004 the lone year as high as 3.5 percent. All the rest have been lower, with some negative in the little depression of 2008 and 2009.

The pdf is here.

Has it occurred to anyone we were spending too much money taking the war to the enemy, and making war on the American people in the name of security, and subsidizing too much stuff like drugs for seniors, food stamps, and healthcare? Ratcheting up these expenditures during the last decade has coincided with a streak of terrible growth numbers.

The necessity of spending cuts has never been greater, but our politicians, of both parties, seem bent on doing anything but cut spending. Which is why AAA went away.

Roman Catholics Avoid Abortion Hypocrisy Of Republicans, Slam Libertarianism Instead

Most of the commentary I'm reading from Catholic critiques of the Republicans is avoiding the manifest hypocrisy of the "life of the mother" and "cases of rape" excuses for abortion advocated by many Catholic Republicans and the Romney campaign.

Those excuses are contrary to Catholic teaching, yet there they are, so-called Catholics, so-called conservatives, hounding out of the Republican Party a man whose point was that pregnancies resulting from rape are rare, which they manifestly are, and that allowing them to come to full term and enjoy life isn't an "option" in some policy world. It's a moral imperative. In this Rep. Todd Akin, a conservative Presbyterian from Missouri, is a better Catholic than the Catholics.

Instead, the critiques are focusing on the libertarianism of Rep. Paul Ryan.

This makes excellent sense, after some reflection, for the simple reason that Catholicism sees in libertarianism a rival ideology, not unlike what Bolshevism saw in National Socialism. The point says more about Catholicism than it does about libertarianism. Catholicism fell victim to the ideological habit of mind long enough ago that Spengler in the 1930s could say:

"[A]ll Communist systems in the West are in fact derived from Christian theological thought . . . Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism."

This observation makes the history of political economy necessarily a topic under the study of the history of religion. The concept of the church, which was totally foreign to Jesus, took the place of the failed imminent coming of the kingdom of God in his teaching, and immanentizes the eschaton he expected before the disciples had finished preaching in Israel. That false kingdom is now administered by popes, cardinals, bishops and priests. As such the church has been responsible for spinning off rival, "heretical", ideologies ever since. And if not the ideologies themselves, at a minimum the ideological habit of mind.

The conservative response to this is most certainly not to keep thinking ideologically. A dead Catholic named Russell Kirk also tried hard to tell us these things before he died.

Like Spengler's, his remains a voice crying in an impoverished wilderness of idealisms.

New Book By Navy SEAL Contradicts Regime's Account Of Getting Osama

Discussed here:

The author writes that bin Laden ducked back into his bedroom and the SEALs followed, only to find the terrorist crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood with a hole visible on the right side of his head and two women wailing over his body.

Bissonnette says the point man pulled the two women out of the way and shoved them into a corner and he and the other SEALs trained their guns’ laser sites on bin Laden’s still-twitching body, shooting him several times until he lay motionless. The SEALs later found two weapons stored by the doorway, untouched, the author said.

It was a kill, not a capture, operation from the get go, and the regime's story that Osama went for a gun just proves that there is still a moral majority in America which has to be mollified, as usual, with lies.

Romney Has Just Passed Party Rules To Weaken The Power Of The Grassroots

Mark Levin is all over this like a chicken on a June Bug.

Romney obviously hates the primary process because it exposes his weaknesses as a candidate conservative. By having power over the rules between conventions and the delegate selection process, if he wins election in four years he'll be burying every Tea Partier under six feet of concrete.

The time for a national conservative third party has arrived.

I won't vote for Obama. I would never do that. But I sure as hell won't vote for Romney now.

It was "Mickey Mouse" for me before, but now it's probably Virgil Goode.

Again, Sean Hannity Repeats His Hypocritical Roman Catholicism

In teh last segment, so-called conservative Sean Hannity affirmed his position on abortion as allowing abortion in the cases of rape or the life of the mother being in danger.

This amounts to self-excommunication because abortion in all instances is prohibited under Catholic dogma. For taking this position he should be denied communion as bishops have threatened against prominent Democrat politicians who support abortion. The same goes for Rep. Paul Ryan.

When is the Roman Catholic Church going to make a public statement rebuking this man who is much more public than any politician because he has microphones to the millions and is a routine and vocal proponent of Roman Catholicism?