A Free Man's Mind

evilteabagger:

Richard Epstein on Barack Obama, Former Colleague at Chicago Law

I have the Reason magazine with the full interview. It’s awesome.

(Source: antigovernmentextremist)

Very important points at the end there about the U.S. debt crisis. Mainly that - using sound accounting standards - the debt (incl. unfunded liabilities from medicare/social security and guaranteed Fanny Mae/GSE debt) to GDP ratio is more like 500%. That in turn means that the potential problem/existing problem is four to five times the problem that Greece faces right now.

Serious across the board spending cuts of at least 10% have to be made right now, if America wants to avoid an inflationary crisis that will undoubtedly end in civil unrest of unimaginable proportions. Stop the soviet style five, ten and eleven year plans that are nothing short of an embarassement. The only budget that counts is this year’s budget and in order to cut politicians need to quit playing on the drums of fear and start leveling with the public.

Everyone aware of the problem should speak out with conviction.

How to energize your Republican base! Epic Ron Paul speech in New York. 

(via libertariancontrarian)

Sir Richard Branson | Global reformers say it’s time for change on drugs (via fuckyeahdrugpolicy)

(via yaeloss)

littlerrepublican:

Tom Woods at Nullify Now in Los Angeles

(Source: baseballlibertarian)

“A lady named Kathy wrote this to me from Dubois, Indiana the other day:

“What big ideas are important to little kids? Well, the biggest idea I think they need is that what they are learning isn’t idiosyncratic — that this is some system to it all and it’s not just raining down on them as they helplessly absorb. That’s the task, to understand, to make coherent.”

Kathy has it wrong. The first lesson I teach is confusion.

Everything I teach is out of context… I teach the unrelating of everything. I teach disconnections. I teach too much: the orbiting of planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural drawing, dance, gymnasium, choral singing, assemblies, surprise guests, fire drills, computer languages, parent’s nights, staff-development days, pull-out programs, guidance with strangers you may never see again, standardized tests, age-segregation unlike anything seen in the outside world… what do any of these things have to do with each other?

Even in the best schools a close examination of curriculum and its sequences turns up a lack of coherence, full of internal contradictions. Fortunately the children have no words to define the panic and anger they feel at constant violations of natural order and sequence fobbed off on them as quality in education. The logic of the school-mind is that it is better to leave school with a tool kit of superficial jargon derived from economics, sociology, natural science and so on than to leave with one genuine enthusiasm.  But quality in education entails learning about something in depth. Confusion is thrust upon kids by too many strange adults, each working alone with only the thinnest relationship with each other, pretending for the most part, to an expertise they do not possess.

Meaning, not disconnected facts, is what sane human beings seek, and education is a set of codes for processing raw facts into meaning. Behind the patchwork quilt of school sequences, and the school obsession with facts and theories the age-old human search lies well concealed. This is harder to see in elementary school where the hierarchy of school experience seems to make better sense because the good-natured simple relationship of “let’s do this” and “let’s do that now” is just assumed to mean something and the clientele has not yet consciously discerned how little substance is behind the play and pretense.

Think of all the great natural sequences like learning to walk and learning to talk, following the progression of light from sunrise to sunset, witnessing the ancient procedures of a farm, a smithy, or a shoemaker, watching your mother prepare a Thanksgiving feast — all of the parts are in perfect harmony with each other, each action justifies itself and illuminates the past and future. School sequences aren’t like that, not inside a single class and not among the total menu of daily classes.  School sequences are crazy. There is no particular reason for any of them, nothing that bears close scrutiny. Few teachers would dare to teach the tools whereby dogmas of a school or a teacher could be criticized since everything must be accepted. School subjects are learned, if they can be learned, like children learn the catechism or memorize the 39 articles of Anglicanism. I teach the un-relating of everything, an infinite fragmentation the opposite of cohesion; what I do is more related to television programming than to making a scheme of order.  In a world where home is only a ghost because both parents work or because too many moves or too many job changes or too much ambition or something else has left everybody too confused to stay in a family relation I teach you how to accept confusion as your destiny. That’s the first lesson I teach.”

Read the other six lessons.

“The artificially engineered U.S. recovery is already starting to falter as a continuous procession of disappointing data continues to confirm the sad truth. Recent numbers on GDP, durable goods, housing, regional manufacturing, initial unemployment claims and leading economic indicators all indicate a sharp slowdown in GDP growth. Just today the ADP Employment report showed that the private sector added a paltry 38,000 jobs in May, down from 177,000 jobs in April, significantly below expectations, and the weakest number since September 2010. Just yesterday Case Shiller announced that the U.S. housing market had officially achieved a “double dip,” in that national home prices have given up the entire 5% bounce that they had achieved after the May 2009 lows. These signs of continuing malaise comes at a time when the government is contemplating ways to dramatically cut spending. But given the economic weakness, is America really ready to accept the short term consequences that a government spending cut would cause?

Free market disciples (like me) believe that government intervention is anathema to a healthy economy. In contrast, we believe genuine government stimulus comes from low taxes, stable prices, reduced regulation and low debt. Our economic policy makers have scrupulously avoided such remedies. However, in the short term, it is possible for government central-planning to artificially boost GDP. But as the short term has come and gone, Washington’s heavy hand is now inflicting lasting demand on the economy.”

Read more at EuroPacificCapital.com.