The Forgotten Depression of 1920

The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent. No wonder, then, that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover — falsely characterized as a supporter of laissez-faire economics — urged President Harding to consider an array of interventions to turn the economy around. Hoover was ignored.

Instead of "fiscal stimulus," Harding cut the government's budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding's approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third.

The current regime is doing the exact opposite of what is needed to stabilize the economy.

The bankruptcy of the United States is now certain

As they say on Wall Street, "a rolling debt collects no moss." What they mean is, as long as you can extend the debt, you have no problem. Unfortunately, that leads folks to take on ever greater amounts of debt… at ever shorter durations… at ever lower interest rates. Sooner or later, the creditors wake up and ask themselves: What are the chances I will ever actually be repaid? And that's when the trouble starts. Interest rates go up dramatically. Funding costs soar. The party is over. Bankruptcy is next.

When governments go bankrupt it's called "a default." Currency speculators figured out how to accurately predict when a country would default. Two well-known economists - Alan Greenspan and Pablo Guidotti - published the secret formula in a 1999 academic paper. That's why the formula is called the Greenspan-Guidotti rule.

The grinding of the federal bureaucracy is coming to a halt as it collapses under its own weight.

Digits and Revolution

Here is my slogan for political reform: Replacement, not capture; then de-funding.

Let us take this slogan and begin to apply it to all the government institutions that we deal with on a regular basis. Apply it especially to the Federal government.

We are seeing the creation of a new economy in which we really do not need the Federal government, except for welfare services for the aged. It is going to go bust because of these welfare services. So, the primary objective that we ought to have is to create alternatives to the welfare system. We don't need to call for the shutting down of a particular government agency tomorrow, although in principle that would be the best way. But that would be an overnight political revolution, and I really don't believe in overnight political revolutions.

Gary North has a plan to sever our dependence on government bureaucracy.

Gold Versus the State

Gold is an alternate currency. It competes with the paper promises of panicked politicians, which throughout history have yielded less than a junk bond and harbored three times the risk. Which investment do you think will hold up better going forward?

Since that prior rant over a year ago, Gold is up about 35% or so and our currency is down around 9% - and I don't even have a PhD in paper economics like Paul Krugman! I am an adult with an education, not a vapid 6 year old child. If demand is too high for American Gold coins, BUY SOME MORE FREAKIN' GOLD TO KEEP UP WITH DEMAND! This, of course, is the mandate of the U.S. Mint, but anyhoo...

Of course, anyone with the appropriate intellectual and analytical skills knows the high demand is not the problem for the U.S. Mint. The problem is that Gold ownership is anathema to a paper fiat regime, particularly in its later stages (i.e. towards the end of the road, as all fiat currencies go away and are replaced). If everyone starts clamoring for Gold and it's easy to get, then gosh darnit, fewer people will need to rely on the government for everything in their lives! This is bad for Big Government, Inc. - a menacing corporation that has shown a wonderful propensity for aggressive growth in any economic environment and regardless of whether democratic or republican "candidates" are in control.

Adam Brochert speculates on why government is making it difficult for you to buy gold.

The Inclination to Love Liberty

I particularly enjoyed meeting Louis Carabini, the event's sponsor. So after I got home, I read his book Inclined to Liberty, which he generously provided to all the participants. Like virtually all of the works available from the Mises Institute, it offered useful insight and inspiration. So, both in thanks and in hopes of getting more people to read his short book, I would like to share a few of its gems...

In the real world, someone must work to provide and pay for all the free benefits that others receive — and that "someone" isn't the State.

A claimant of a right to a free ride, such as free health care, is a disclaimer of the natural inalienable rights of the person upon whom the claim is made.

The democratic State simply provides an attractive means for some to acquire the resources produced by others at little or no cost to themselves, while preventing any real recourse for those from whom those resources are taken.

A sample of the excerpts gleaned from a book review.

Dubai in deep water as ripples from debt crisis spread

Fears of a dangerous new phase in the economic crisis swept around the globe yesterday as traders responded to the shock announcement that a debt-laden Dubai state corporation was unable to meet its interest bill.

Shares plunged, weak currencies were battered and more than £14 billion was wiped from the value of British banks on fears that they would be left nursing new losses.

Nervous traders transferred the focus of their anxieties from the risk of companies failing to the risk of nation states defaulting. Investors owed money by Mexico, Russia and Greece saw the price of insuring themselves against default rocket.

All debts must be repaid, either by the borrower or the lender. ~ John Wrisley

Imagine the panic when the U.S. has to default on its unsustainable debt.

In the Himalayas

I wondered what it must be like to grow up in a remote Himalayan village. The people are not poor. Or maybe they are. Or maybe we are, but go at it differently. These things are hard to judge. The villagers are not hungry certainly, have adequate clothing, and sleeping on a good mat next to the kitchen stove is neither uncomfortable nor lacking in dignity. The contrivances and nuisances of what we regard as civilization are perhaps not as crucial as we tend to think.

But what must it be to live all of a life under the looming quiet mountains, horses wandering free and yak ambling through, with people known since birth? They live closer to the bone, I think. We live, we die. In the mountains the rest seems to matter less.

Fred is off on another adventure and is ruminating on life in remote regions as compared to civilization back home.

Gold, Freedom and the Fed

As taxes go higher, the taxpayers starting getting upset. Tax resistance and tax revolts becomes more popular, inducing the IRS to more severely crack down on people by sending more of them to jail, producing more anger and resentment. High taxes have even been known to result in revolutions. In a democracy, high taxes create a problem for incumbents because a disgruntled citizenry tends to vote them out of office.

So, what's the solution to this problem? It's simple. The grandiose big spenders simply go out and borrow the money to cover the difference between what they're spending and what the IRS is collecting from people.

Government shenanigans and how they affect us.

The Great Thanksgiving Hoax

This official story is nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away from Thanksgiving's real meaning.

The official story has the pilgrims boarding the Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the colonists die. But the survivors are hard working and tenacious, and they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621 is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God. They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given them.

The official story then has the Pilgrims living more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for this prosperous new land called America.

The problem with this official story is that the harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hardworking or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were lazy thieves.

Is this a calumnious assault on the story of the Pilgrims and our Thanksgiving rituals? You decide.

Obamacare is Unconstitutional

Shouldn't the Constitution be part of that debate? By what authority, after all, could Congress force all Americans to buy health insurance?

In a recent press release, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., argues that constitutional objections to the individual mandate are "nonsensical," because "the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited." We eagerly await your orders, ma'am!

Pelosi is wrong, but that doesn't mean the court can be counted on to strike down Obamacare. Legislators have an independent obligation to consider the constitutionality of the laws they're debating -- and the individual mandate is flagrantly unconstitutional.

Reminding politicians of the Constitution is like reminding armed robbers of the gun laws.

We Pay Them to Lie to Us

How do they do that?

The key to magic is misdirection, fooling the audience into looking in the wrong direction.

I happily suspend disbelief when a magician says he'll saw a woman in half. That's entertainment. But when Harry Reid says he'll give 30 million additional people health coverage while cutting the deficit, improving health care and reducing its cost, it's not entertaining. It's incredible.

The politicians have a hat full of tricks to make their schemes look cheaper than they are.

John Stossel takes all the fun out of watching our politicians by revealing how they work their "magic".

Reply to Paul Krugman

As the Republicans of 1919 put it, "What this country needs is a good 5¢ cigar." Cigars had cost 5¢ in 1914 and had risen (along with the general price level) to 10¢ in 1919. What the Republicans were trying to achieve was a general reduction in prices back to their 1914 level. Since prices were the same in 1914 as they had been in 1793, this was simply a return to the normal way of doing things. Prices fell sharply in 1921 and again in 1930-33. By '33, the Republican program had been achieved, and prices in America were back to their 1793 level.

In the teens and '20s in America, pretty much everyone saved. They put their money in the savings bank and received 5% interest per year. If you do the compound interest calculation, then money saved over a 50 year working lifetime will multiply in amount by about 4¼ times. (The first year's savings multiply by 11 times, the last year's savings only grow by 5% and the middle years grow proportionally.) This multiplication is what makes it possible to retire. As a result, in America virtually everyone saved. What the Democrats did from 1914-1919 was to cut the value of the working man's savings in half.

A detailed account of government's manipulation of the currency and the economy.

Solving Whose Problem?

The current economic downturn that has cost millions of people their jobs began with successive administrations of both parties pushing banks and other lenders to make mortgage loans to people whose incomes, credit history and inability or unwillingness to make a substantial down payment on a house made them bad risks.

Was that stupid? Not at all. The money that was being put at risk was not the politicians' money, and in most cases was not even the government's money. Moreover, the jobs that are being lost by the millions are not the politicians' jobs-- and jobs in the government's bureaucracies are increasing.

The politicos are looking out for themselves, not us. If you analyze their actions with that thought in mind, you will start to understand the lunacy of their conduct.

"No Right to Know": A Wall Street Financial Site's Attack on Congress and Ron Paul

The Federal Reserve System has been described as the Temple. That is because, ever since 1914, it has been sacrosanct: above politics and above the law. It has also been the inner sanctum. No unauthorized person is allowed to open its door.

Congressman Ron Paul dared to introduce a bill, H.R. 1207, that would require an audit of the FED by a government agency. The House of Representatives agrees with him. He got over 300 co-signers of the bill. Barney Frank at first tried to bottle it up in committee. Then he tried to substitute a watered-down version. The committee voted for Paul's version last week. This was a palace revolt against Frank. This does not happen often in any committee.

This is the first bill in Paul's long career that has had widespread support. This indicates that the Federal Reserve, for the first time since 1914, has serious opposition in Congress. This in an historic event. The FED can no longer presume that Congress will treat it with kid gloves.

The Wall Street establishment understands the threat.

Ron Paul's bill to audit the Fed is rankling the Wall Street establishment. They had much rather operate in the shadows than in the light of day.

Spitting on the Boomers’ Financial Legacy

Okay! We’ll say what we’ve been thinking…

…that our children are going to spit on our graves!

First, Americans made a colossal mistake in the ’90s and the ’00s. They partied…they spent…they borrowed…running up huge debts in the private sector. Most kids could forget about inheriting anything from their parents; the geezers spent it years ago.

The boomer generation also made a mess of the biggest success story in world history – the United States of America. In the ’60s and ’70s – when boomers matured and began to take over – the US was still on top of the world. It had a positive trade balance…huge savings…massive investments abroad…and the strongest companies in the world.

They ruined it.

Bill Bonner thinks the party is over.

Will Obama war with SNL as he did with FOX?

Last Saturday, "Saturday Night Live" opened with a scathing skit that portrayed Obama at a news conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao; it is not only hilarious but also politically dead-on. (Click here for the YouTube.)

This isn't the first SNL reaming of Obama, to be sure. The October 3rd show had an "Obama Does Nothing" skit that I thought was lame but which I applauded because it signalled a break in the comedic stonewall that surrounds Obama. Never before have I seen comedians (who are not Jon Stewart) so reluctant to skewer a President, especially when they show no remorse about drawing and quartering other politicians like Palin. (I'm not defending Sarah here; I'm pointing to the extreme discrepancy in how Obama has been treated.) Whether it is because he is black or liberal or XYZ, Obama got a free pass...and that ticket is now being torn in half by SNL. About damned time!

SNL skit is probably closer to what really happened in China than what was published in the newspapers.

The Sponge Is a Mess!

I see our economy headed into a period of dire "pay-back time." Economic laws of cause and effect are always at work with the only unknown being how people will respond as the force of these inexorable economic laws come down upon us. Whatever comes surely will be unpleasant because of the massive economic harm that government has already inflicted upon our economic liberty and the market order. Government caused malinvestments and past pricing distortions must be eradicated for any real recovery to evolve, demanding a necessary time of "devolution" before any real economic progress can be realized.

An old geezer prognosticates about our economic future.

All debts must be repaid, either by the borrower or the lender. ~ John Wrisley

A Minority View: Excused Horrors

Unfortunately, it matters little whether there is a Democratically or Republican-controlled Congress and White House; the march toward greater government control continues. It just happens at a quicker pace with Democrats in charge.

You say, "Come on, Williams, there will never be the kind of socialist oppression seen elsewhere here!" You might be right because Americans have become very compliant with unconstitutional and immoral congressional edicts. But what do you think would happen if some Americans began to rise up and heed Thomas Jefferson's admonition "Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force." and decided to disobey unconstitutional congressional edicts?

Professor Williams asks a hypothetical question - hypothetical because it seems unlikely that Americans have the motivation, at least not yet, to rise up and resist.

What Has Government Done to the Dollar?

The U.S. dollar has changed from being a paper certificate for a tangible asset to a fiat currency - a paper note declared legal tender. By looking at the history of American paper money one can clearly see the distinction.

The following image shows two one-dollar bills from different years (click to enlarge).

At a glance, the two bills appear similar, but look closely.

The wording on the first bill, a 1957 Silver Certificate, reads:

THIS CERTIFIES THAT THERE IS ON DEPOSIT IN THE TREASURY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ONE DOLLAR IN SILVER PAYABLE TO THE BEARER ON DEMAND

This statement is completely missing on the second bill, a 2003 Federal Reserve Note.

A look at the dollar's demise.

Thoughts from a Disordered Mind

The train ain’t got no driver and no tracks. Congress is a subcommittee of the Knesset and crooked as kite string in a ceiling fan, the Supreme Court an unlicensed morgue, and the president a shiny ball with pretty teeth bouncing around in a corporate pin-ball machine.

What’s really slick is how the criminal element in DC has fogged the alleged mind of that vast, sprawling, larval critter, the public. Tell those salt-of-the-earh suckers out there that some hideous danger crawls ever closer, tell them you are going to protect them, and you can pick their pockets till there’s not an ounce of meat left on their bones. Think buzzards circling a dying horse.

Fred Reed observes the passing scene from a distance, safely ensconced in his expatriate Mexican digs. We think it gives him a slightly different perspective and look forward to his latest scribblings.

Chasing Corporations Out Of The U.S.

Unemployment is foremost on everyone's mind today. Yet jobs can continue to leave the U.S. because of the threat of new taxes, the convergence of technology, the ease of digital collaboration and ready access to abundant foreign engineering talent.

Multinational corporate executives may have to move R&D, product development, management and manufacturing overseas when there is no longer a comparative advantage to staying in the United States. A shocking thought for sure, but it's the new reality.

After Japan, the U.S. has the world's highest corporate tax rate, and there is seemingly no willingness by Washington to bring rates down.

Government cannot create productive jobs but it can create the taxes and regulations which prevent or encourage their formation. Sadly, government is choosing to chase businesses overseas with punitive laws and restrictions.

Kiss Your Freedoms Goodbye If Health Care Passes

We do not have two political parties in this country, America. We have one party; called the Big Government Party. The Republican wing likes deficits, war, and assaults on civil liberties. The Democratic wing likes wealth transfer, taxes, and assaults on commercial liberties. Both parties like power; and neither is interested in your freedoms.

Think about it. Government is the negation of freedom. Freedom is your power and ability to follow your own free will and your own conscience. The government wants you to follow the will of some faceless bureaucrat.

The potentates in Washington, D.C. want to regulate our relationship with our family doctors and force us to buy medical insurance which they deem acceptable.

Health-Care “Reform”: It’s All About Power

Medical care is too expensive. Prices for services rise faster than other prices, and there’s reason to believe much of the money is wasted. Expensive medical care equates to expensive insurance, which prices some people out of the market.

This has been called a failure of the free market, but that can’t be: There is no free market. I defy the advocates of government control to name one aspect of medicine or insurance that government doesn’t dominate.

Government intervention is the cause of many of our medical care and insurance problems. More government intervention will create more problems, not solve them.

Merkel Joins the Fool’s Parade

One thing Americans take for granted is that they will always be the richest, most successful people on earth. They think that because that is what they have always known. The US economy became the biggest in the world before 1900. Americans had just what it took to become the richest people on the planet. They worked hard. They saved their money. They had little government interference. They had the industrial revolution at their backs…and nothing in their way. And they had a dollar that was ‘as good as gold.’ By the time the baby boomers were born the US had such a big lead over the rest of the world, it seemed like nothing could stop it. Free enterprise guaranteed new innovations and new wealth. Democracy guaranteed a political system that would adapt to the needs of the evolving economy.

But nothing lasts forever.

We spurned the values of sound money, hard work, frugality and freedom and handed over our liberty to politicians who seduced us with their siren songs.

THERE OUGHT NOT TO BE A LAW

One danger of arguing for or against a position is that everyone thinks you are saying, "there ought to be a law."

Take the issue of discrimination on the basis of sex or gender as an example. If you argue against it, people assume you want to prohibit discrimination. If you argue for the right to discriminate, they assume you want to return to Jim Crow laws and force women back to the kitchen.

"There ought to be a law" is the unspoken message underlying much of public discourse. And that message makes people reluctant to listen impartially because agreement might lead to yet another regulation.

On most of the issues I address, my underlying message is "there ought not to be a law."

Wendy McElroy on repressive laws.

Job Losses Demystified

As our economy becomes less competitive due to higher taxes, burdensome and uncertain regulations, and capital flight, more manufacturing and services will be outsourced to foreign firms. However, the flaw in GDP calculation allows the output of those foreign workers to be included in our domestic tally. Since we count the output but not the worker responsible for it, government statisticians attribute the gains to rising labor productivity. To them, it looks like companies are producing more goods with fewer workers.

The reality is that we are producing less with fewer workers. The added "productivity" comes from higher unemployment and larger trade deficits. This is a toxic formula that will have lethal economic consequences.

Government economists are manipulating statistics in an attempt to support mistaken policies. Who are they attempting to deceive? Us or themselves?

The End-of-everything Blues

Remember April, 2006? The boom was still making people rich but some cranky old buzzards were circling, singing their songs of warning. Our own staff curmudgeon wrote:

"I picture [Bush] as the helmsman aboard the Ship of State, which is not sailing well because it is burdened with far more cargo than the Constitution declared reasonable for this vessel. The ship is laboring along, sunk almost to the gunwales, and Captain Bush is steering it directly toward the shoals!

"Doesn't anyone care? No. When you've spent your entire life being told that your homeland is the greatest on the face of the earth and is invincible, it blinds you to the record of other once mighty nations that spread themselves too thin trying to run the world and were forced to debauch their currency in order to try to pay the bills and keep the folks at home happy. Forgotten is the story of the once mighty British Empire. The saga of the great Roman Empire is also forgotten. Spain's glory days and those of the great Byzantine Republic have faded from memory. No one will wonder about the American Empire until an Asian Empire replaces it. Historians will write about the transition and possibly explain the role that rotting money played." The Blues

America's debt is so immense that it is inconceivable that it can ever be repaid. That being the case, we wonder what our creditors will demand from us as recompense for their losses when we are forced to repudiate it.

A Free-Market Operative in the Bowels of Bureaucracy

Because the bureaucracy is an employer of last resort, most people are hired and promoted in an attempt to achieve socially desired goals — race or gender balancing, for example. In such a situation, the best and the brightest do not find their way to the top. Frustrated, they seek their interests elsewhere. Those that remain, in most cases, are the ones lacking an entrepreneurial drive. This situation is reflected in the product of bureaucratic action.

The bureaucracy is also clouded by ideology. Certain solutions are never considered because they go against the grain of bureaucratic thought... A free-market approach was never considered because it went against the ideological grain of the administration. This thinking filtered down through the ranks of the bureaucracy.

An analytical look at the inner workings of bureaucracy.

Cowards and War Heroes

IABR featured this video earlier on Memorial Day 2009. It is also appropriate fodder for contemplation on this Armistice Veteran's Day. As the politicians extol the virtues of their imperial wars and laud the sacrifices of the fallen, IABR would like to remind them of some of the less heroic and unintended consequences of war.

A Minority View: Constitutional Contempt

Speaker Pelosi's constitutional contempt, perhaps ignorance, is representative of the majority of members of both the House and the Senate. Their comfort in that ignorance and constitutional contempt, and how readily they articulate it, should be worrisome for every single American. It's not a matter of whether you are for or against Congress' health care proposals. It's not a matter of whether you're liberal or conservative, black or white, male or female, Democrat or Republican or member of any other group. It's a matter of whether we are going to remain a relatively free people or permit the insidious encroachment on our liberties to continue.

Power grabbing politicians have been usurping the Constitution since FDR; at first by loose interpretations of its meanings and recently by ignoring them altogether.

Healthcare Reform is Economic Malpractice

The past century should have taught us one thing: that government intervention is expensive. Government programs lend themselves so easily to waste, fraud and abuse. Combine that with overall inefficiency and it all adds up to a hefty price tag for the taxpayer, with not much leftover for actual services. An outright takeover of an entire sector of the economy, especially one as important as healthcare, is something that we just cannot afford for the government to do right now. Not to mention the fact that it is completely unconstitutional. But Washington insists on torturing the numbers and tinkering around the edges rather than facing this truth.

Hello, Congress! Hello! We're broke! Stop it! Just stop! Oh. Never mind. I forgot about your "in" with the Fed.

School Children Performing Praises to Obama

11 Uncovered Videos Show School Children Performing Praises to Obama...

Don't click on the link if you have a heart condition or a queasy stomach. Seriously.

Thank the Fed For Your Lack of Purchasing Power

Bloomberg reports, “Economic policy makers are signaling they plan to leave emergency stimulus in place even as the global economy pulls out of recession, delivering what Credit Suisse Group AG and Bank of America Corp. call a ‘sweet spot’ for financial markets.”

Well, being a guy who almost never turns down a chance to be scornful and gratuitously rude in response to ridiculous things being said by people who are supposed to know better than to sound so abysmally stupid, let me interpret that for you.

By “sweet spot” they mean a spot where Ben Bernanke and the other central bankers produce excess money and credit by pulling it right out of their nasty butts, and as for how “sweet” it is, look around you! Doesn’t it resemble a world going down the (in keeping with the “butt” theme) toilet? How sweet is that? Hahaha!

We can learn a lot from the bellicose rants of the irascible Mogambo Guru.

Bozos and NINJAS

Everything sells in a free market at a price that somebody is willing to pay, stick the mortgages on Ebay and trust me, they will sell, at what price who knows? That is for the free market to decide.

They are only "troubled assets" because the bankers do not like the valuation that the free market is putting on all this junk. Which is why we have had TARP, which is nothing more than socializing the Bankers losses. It is a disgrace.

Nobody forced these bozos to lend all this money to people touchingly known as NINJAS or NO INCOME & NO JOB.

Well, actually, Congress did pass legislation which incentivised banks into making bad home loans in the name of "fairness". The bankers should have known these loans would not result in a good outcome.

SEPTA… and a Gun

“They just went on strike and got an 11% pay increase, how can they go on strike again?” my nearest co-worker, who often relies on SEPTA for transportation, complained this morning as I tried to jolt myself awake with a cup of black coffee. “It’s an economic recession, I didn’t get a raise this year… why should they?”

SEPTA employees argue that they want more contributed to their pensions, but on what basis can a state protected monopoly determine whether their “sales” are sufficient to warrant such an increase?

The answer is this: Everyone is asking the wrong question about the SEPTA strike.

The question is: What about that guy waving the gun around?

Another question is: Why does SEPTA have zero competition in the transportation market?

The SEPTA strike is a result of governmental suppression of capitalism.

The Real Intelligence Failure

[T]he CIA remains stuck in a post-9/11 mindset, with the Mandarins at Langley seemingly oblivious to the fact that there even exists a new security environment that they should be thinking about. Intelligence should stop looking for dragons and should instead be the key to explaining the world in a way that precludes involvement in situations that are not vital interests and are not subject to any resolution short of war. Intelligence is information and information is politically neutral but when properly applied it can just as easily be a tool for avoiding confrontation as for instigating it.

Understanding the world and "speaking truth to power" are the principal roles of intelligence agencies when they are doing their job properly, but there is always a potential political spin to every story. Recent government warnings that al-Qaeda continues to be serious threat are one good example, trotted out as they are at intervals to raise the fear level in spite of mounting evidence that Usama bin Laden is actually dead.

We are squandering resources based on mistaken assessments of our enemies.

Boulder's Naked Halloween Streak May Be Coming to an End

Ms. Buja knows a jury might not see it her way, and she can't risk a conviction as a sex offender. "I'm going into education," she says, "and I don't know that's necessarily the best thing to have on my record."

With so many runners spooked, some organizers are quietly planning to outflank the police by taking their pumpkins elsewhere. Come nightfall, they intend to doff their clothes and don their gourds in a nearby, unnamed but presumably less prudish city. A restaurant called Hapa Sushi offers an alternative for those who remain loyal to Boulder: It's handing out free orange undies, including barely-there thongs, imprinted with the slogan "Run Responsibly."

Is the last bastion of liberty being usurped by the Pumpkin Nazis? Can we no longer run unencumbered by nothing but our pumpkins? If we cannot run naked with pumpkins on our heads in the USA, where can we?

Opium, Rape and the American Way

“In eight years less than 2,000 Talib have been killed and more than 8,000 innocent civilians has been killed,” she [Malalai Joya] went on. “We believe that this is not war on terror. This is war on innocent civilians. Look at the massacres carried out by NATO forces in Afghanistan. Look what they did in May in the Farah province, where more than 150 civilians were killed, most of them women and children. They used white phosphorus and cluster bombs. There were 200 civilians on 9th of September killed in the Kunduz province, again most of them women and children. You can see the Web site of professor Marc Herold, this democratic man, to know better the war crimes in Afghanistan imposed on our people. The United States and NATO eight years ago occupied my country under the banner of woman’s rights and democracy. But they have only pushed us from the frying pan into the fire. They put into power men who are photocopies of the Taliban.”

So, how is the war in Afghanistan going? An assessment from an insider, Malalai Joya, does not jibe with the news we get from our mainstream media.

Government Statistics and Lies

There has been a lot of talk in Washington recently about senior citizens, mostly about how various healthcare reform models would help or hurt them. But there is another critical issue that has quietly devastated seniors financially over the last few decades. It concerns how the cost of living is calculated. How does the administration justify not giving a cost of living increase to Social Security recipients this year?

Ron Paul thinks Congress is ripping off senior citizens and offers a solution.