Like a sickening ooze, governments tend to grow into endless unintended areas – which is known as mission creep.

This past week, the American public was served with two dangerous and destructive examples. The very creepy, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of Homeland Security – who has been a fountain of disinformation (lies) – announced he was setting up an operation to combat “disinformation” by others, i.e. free-speech control. And the Securities and Exchange Commission announced a proposed rule to require all firms under its jurisdiction to implement extensive and expensive “climate-related” information. The fact that neither agency seemed to have the Constitutional authority to engage in such activities appeared to be of no bother.

Most government agencies are set up for a single purpose, which may or may not be useful. Far too often, agencies stray from their original mandates because of a lust for more power, influence, and, of course, bigger budgets. Many times, the focus on the “new” activity so diverts attention from the original mission that the original mission is neglected. President Joe Biden announced at the beginning of his administration that every agency of government must be focused on mitigating climate change.

Read more...

Ukraine is much smaller than Russia in geography, population, per capita economic wealth and military power. Ukrainian leaders have not voiced hostile intent toward Russia. Some Ukrainians have advocated Ukraine joining NATO, a mutual defense organization, not an aggressive military alliance.

If Russian President Vladimir Putin were to invade more of Ukraine’s territory (in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and occupied part of eastern Ukraine with the ongoing war), much of the world would condemn the action, and he could expect immediate and hard-hitting economic sanctions.

An invasion of Ukraine would cause Russia much pain and little gain — so why even threaten military action?  Why indeed.

Read more...

The new Democrat Congress seems intent on passing laws that will result in massive civil disobedience.

Most people, when confronted with an unjust law or one that infringes on what they view as an essential liberty, will not take to the streets like a violent Black Lives Matter mob, but instead use passive resistance.

The passive resistance can take the form of merely refusing to comply with the demanded action and/or paperwork, or finding legal or illegal ways around the intent of the law.  One basic reason is the laws the Dems are passing are simply unenforceable.

Read more...

Barbarism has a history as long as civilization. The Roman Empire in later years was sacked by various barbarian tribes. In the 13th century, the Mongol Horde destroyed civilizations along the Silk Road to the gates of Europe (Vienna) and much of China and Korea.

In recent times, the Nazi barbarians, Soviet Communist barbarians, Chinese Communist barbarians, and the Taliban barbarians of Afghanistan all undertook a reign of terror to consolidate power.

The New Barbarians of BLM, Antifa, and their supporters in academia, the media, and the Democrat Party are acting true to form.

Read more...

Politicians, when they are running for office, claim they love and support small businesses — but many of them lie.

Over the last three months, the political class has waged an intense war against those people who have risked their savings and countless time and effort to build viable small businesses — including personal and business services, restaurants, etc.

Business owners were told that they must shut down because of the spread of COVID-19 — and that mitigation actions such as distance limitations and enhanced cleaning would not be enough — unless, of course, you happen to have a big business like Walmart, Target, a major food chain, Home Depot, etc.

The big-store chains love the fact that politicians have made it illegal for smaller enterprises to compete with them. Do you think the politicians might be rewarded for doing the dirty work for the big guys during this political fund-raising cycle?

Read more...

Good news! If you are under 65, in reasonably good health and do not have a vitamin D deficiency, you have only a tiny chance of dying from COVID-19.

And if you are younger than 34, your chances of dying from the virus are so small as to be almost statistically undetectable.

On the other hand, if you are 85 or older, are in a nursing home, have serious health problems and a vitamin D deficiency, you may be in real danger if you are exposed to the virus — but only a tiny portion of the population is in such a condition.

So, will we all please stop worrying now?

Read more...

The governor and the Democrat legislators in Virginia are proposing restrictive gun laws, which would make it much more difficult for law-abiding Virginians to defend themselves, as well as taking away some of their basic liberty.

The Democrats are doing this, claiming it will save lives (which is rather ironic coming from a governor who endorsed infanticide — “as long as the infants are made comfortable” — for newborn babies if the mother so decides).

Note, the anti-gun mafia ignores all of the lives that are saved by people being able to protect themselves by having guns.

It is no coincidence that many anti-gun zealots are also big-government types, including socialists, who get their highs from taking the property and liberties of others.

Read more...

From the beginning of the American Republic, there has been an ongoing struggle between those who believe in a bigger, stronger government and those who believe in a smaller and less interventionist government. Starting with Bernie Sanders, many who believe in bigger government have, without embarrassment, started calling themselves “socialists.” And increasingly, those who believe in smaller government with more liberty have been referring to themselves as “libertarians.”

 

Political language gets corrupted by those who write about politics. Many in the mainstream media lump libertarian Sen. Rand Paul in with Nazi (national socialist) Hitler, as being on the extreme “right,” when, in fact, Hitler had far more in common with the beliefs of socialist Bernie Sanders, a man of the “left.”

 

Those who believe in limited government and more liberty used to be called “liberals,” and they still are in much of Europe. Bigger-government types started referring to themselves as “liberals” because it was a good word — and so old-school liberals, in response, started referring to themselves as “classical liberals,” which is fine, but most people have no clue as to what it means.

Read more...

Are you amazed about what your fellow humans conceive and create when it comes to technology — the iPhone, 5G, the Tesla, rockets that land upright after being fired, artificial hearts, etc., etc.? Are you also amazed by the willful ignorance of history and economics shown every day by the political and media class?

Engineers who ignore the laws of physics find themselves unemployed. Politicians who ignore basic historical and economic truths often go on to leadership roles with the aid of corrupt and/or ignorant members of the media.

When it comes to economic policy and political organization, it should be obvious to any sentient human that Switzerland has a far better model than Venezuela.  Many in the left-leaning media and certain politicians (such as Bernie Sanders) spent years praising the Chavez revolution in Venezuela, even though the economic and human rights disaster the country has become was easily foreseen by anyone with a basic knowledge of history.

Read more...

You may recall, a number of years ago (2010) an admiral was testifying before Congress about the need to put more military personnel on an island in the Pacific.

A congressman – Hank Johnson, a Dem from Georgia – in all seriousness asked the admiral if he was concerned that the island in question might “tip over and capsize” with all of the additional people on it. Others, who are not that foolish, deny they have an alcohol or drug problem when it is obvious that they do.

And now there are presidential candidates who claim it is possible to have massive tax and spending increases without making most people worse off rather than better off.  Dumb as Hank Johnson – or dumber?

Read more...

If your favorite sports league had no rules to govern the game and the actions of the teams in the league, how long could it last?

The rule of law, along with due process, is the cornerstone of civil society. Even communist countries, with an infinitely elastic definition of the rule of law, understand the importance of rules for sports teams, driver protocols and most day-to-day behavior, in order to avoid chaos.

Unfortunately, the rule of law has been undermined in the United States by crooked and/or irresponsible public officials who ignore the U.S. Constitution and its basic protections. The World Justice Project Rule of Law Index now ranks the United States at only 20 out of the 126 countries measured, as can be seen in the accompanying table.

Read more...

Is the world going into a recession? And if so, can the United States avoid being dragged in? Even though there are many who speak with great certainty as if they did know, the short and correct answer to both questions is no one knows.

The United States is still growing at more than 2 percent, which is not bad, but a reduction from its earlier growth rate after the Trump economic policies were first implemented.

Despite Chinese claims that the world’s second-largest economy is still growing at approximately 6 percent, many outside experts believe it is hardly growing at all. Japan is nearly stagnant at 1 percent growth, and Britain and the Euro-zone economies are not growing much more.

However, there are several reasons why the United States should be able to avoid being dragged down. Let’s take a look.

Read more...

This month is the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first African slaves in Virginia. The New York Times has created what they refer to as The 1619 Project, whose goal “is to reframe American history, making it explicit how slavery is the foundation on which this country is built.

For generations, we have not been adequately taught this history. Our hope is to paint a fuller picture of the institution that shaped our nation.”

Americans know too little about their own history, including of course slavery. Slavery was a horror for those who experienced it — but there is no American alive today who either was a slave or slaveholder. The same cannot be said for parts of Africa and the Middle East, where pockets of slavery still exist.

The 1619 Project ought to be noble, but unfortunately political correctness has pushed itself ahead of good history — particularly economic history. What should have been a good discussion of the economics of slavery and its lingering effects has been turned into an anti-capitalist screed.

Read more...

Did you ever see some old stock certificates from more than a half-century ago?

Many of them would have an engraving of a factory spewing smoke from one or more chimneys. This was meant to imply industrial might with an enterprise that employed many workers.

Now, if you drive around America or fly over the country, you rarely see any factory or power plant emitting black or gray smoke. The white plumes coming from power plants and factories are for the most part nothing more than water vapor condensing when it meets the colder air of the atmosphere.

From 1970 to 2017, the aggregate U.S. emissions of the six primary pollutants — nitric oxide, ozone, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and lead — have declined by 73 percent. Ambient concentrations of these harmful pollutants have declined an average of 64 percent since 1990. Since 1970, real GDP increased almost 400 percent.

Each year, most of the country has fewer days with “hazardous air” and, in many places, it is now zero. Fifty years ago, many of America’s rivers and waterways were unsafe to swim in or to consume the fish from — including the Potomac.

That has all changed;

Read more...

It would be difficult to visualize some of the great world capitals — Rome, Paris, London and Washington — without the statues and monuments celebrating the lives of political, military, religious leaders, as well as great artists, scientists, etc.

To the extent that the statues and monuments are tributes to real people, they necessarily represent flawed people because no one is perfect.

The operative question is, after a full life, was the world better or worse off as a result of the existence of any individual?

Currently, we are witnessing a movement to remove statues and monuments to historic figures because something they did or said during their lives now offends one or more people.

Last week, the City of Charlottesville, Virginia, decided to no longer mark Thomas Jefferson’s birthday as an official holiday.

Read more...

When we were small children, before we had learned the laws of physics and economics, we thought everything was possible. Fantasyland could be real, so we thought.

Twenty of the declared Democrat candidates for president have held their first debate which demonstrated, with the possible exceptions of Gov. John Hickenlooper and Congressman John Delaney, that they have not outgrown Fantasyland.

These same politicians also say that U.S. citizens have a “right” to free medical care. Where did this “right” come from?

Answer:  it came from Fantasyland.

Read more...

Mankind’s penchant for hoaxes goes back at least as far as recorded history. Some hoaxes are harmless and funny, but others do great damage, including causing massive loss of life.

Among the harmless and funny was the “Naked Came the Stranger” hoax back in 1969. The book spent 13 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. The hoax was soon revealed. The nation got a good laugh, and no harm was done.

This is in contrast to the two-year “Russian collusion hoax,” which has been very costly to the country. This hoax was to get rid of the nation’s duly elected president, by whatever means necessary. The details of who did what will be revealed by prosecutors over the next few months.

Yet even that pales in comparison to the biggest hoax of all time.

Read more...

People are easily taken in by scientific, literary, financial and political hoaxes, particularly when they want to believe.

When we search for “truth,” we tend to rely on authority and whether information supplied by the source has been accurate in the past. Serious newspapers, magazines, journals and electronic media sources historically took pride in getting the story right. Reputations could be destroyed and markets lost when a story was shown to be wrong because of a hoax or carelessness.

Nothing illustrates the decline of serious journalism more than the fact that many of the major media, particularly CNN and MSNBC, have participated (and to some extent continue to participate) in massive hoaxes which would have been easily disproved with basic due diligence.

Read more...

Sensible people make sure they understand the exit strategy when making an investment. Too often, people lock themselves into investments, like timeshares, vehicle loans, real estate purchases, etc. for far longer than they wish they had. The same is also true for personal service contracts, like exclusive arrangements with agents, movie studios, sports teams, etc.

One of the beauties of democracy over other forms of government is that the voters normally “hire” (elect) the politicians for fixed and limited terms. If we are dissatisfied, we can always throw the “bums” out during the next election.

One of the many problems with dictatorships is that there is no simple way to get rid of a ruler who has trampled over basic rights and is unpopular. At the same time, the dictator also has a problem — there may be no simple way to say, “I quit” and then pick up his marbles and go home.

Dictators come in all stripes.

Read more...

For most people, particularly in the United States, things have never been better. Yet, the newspapers and airwaves are filled with stories of impending disaster.

Many of the doomsday scenarios have been around for some time but doomsday has yet to arrive.

We were told by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, etc. that the Trump election would be an economic calamity and that we would be in major new wars by now.

It wasn’t and we’re not.  For the past three or four decades, we have been told by environmental zealots that the end of the world is near.  It isn’t, not even remotely close.

Read more...

Athens, Greece. Europe’s most significant contribution to the world economy at the moment is serving as a bad example.

Much of Western culture and law can trace its origin back to this city of 2,500 years ago. The ancient Athenians learned that democracy is fragile and can lead to bad outcomes — not that other governing systems have proved to be more successful over the long run.

One of the fatal flaws of democracy is the recurring irrationality of the people to vote themselves benefits that they are unwilling to pay for. The idea of getting something for nothing is so powerful that politicians have used the same con everywhere on the planet for thousands of years.

The end is always the same. The music stops when the cupboard is empty.  Greece is now Exhibit A in Europe, with others soon to follow.

Read more...

There are some plagues that mankind seems to be incapable of fully destroying. One of these plagues is slavery, which has existed since man moved from being a hunter-gatherer to agriculture.

By 1900, most of the “civilized” world had abolished slavery and serfdom. But then a more lethal variant emerged under the more benign names of socialism, fascism and communism.

The implementation of these ideologies resulted in governments causing the deaths of somewhere between 100 and 200 million of their own citizens in the 20th century.

Yet, here we are, three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with allegedly serious American politicians calling for the re-imposition of socialism as if history had not happened.

Read more...

Will the economy grow in the next two years?

President Trump had a plan to grow the economy when he took office — cut tax rates and get rid of many counterproductive regulations. It worked. The economy grew at a 3 percent rate last year, and employment grew to the point where there were more jobs available than workers to fill them.

The world economy is slowing, particularly in Europe. This slowdown will have a negative effect on the U.S. economy as the global demand for U.S. goods and services will be lessened. The Trump administration needs a new economic game plan or growth will diminish.

Without new pro-growth policies, economic growth will wane, for the following reasons.

Read more...

You may have noticed that there have been a number of people in the top ranks of the FBI and Justice Department — like Robert Mueller, James Comey and Andrew McCabe — who have had powerful jobs regardless of whether the administration is Democrat(Clinton/Obama) or Republican (Bushes).

They are put there, in part, to protect the financial interests of the Washington establishment. The U.S. government dispenses tens of billions of dollars to foreign governments and entities each year, and Washington interests receive billions from foreign countries.

President Trump was an outsider who appeared to be willing to take on the corrupt status quo; so, in the minds of those on the international gravy train, he must be eliminated. Hence, the phony Mueller Russian-collusion investigation. There are dozens of examples, but the following three are illustrative.

Read more...

Last week, there was the pitiful scene of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York begging President Trump to restore a tax provision which unfairly benefitted New Yorkers.

It seems that many high-income New Yorkers have been moving their tax homes to Florida, undermining the New York tax base.

Those who live in New York City may be paying state and local income tax rates, in addition to the federal tax, of over 12 percent, giving some an overall tax burden of approximately 50 percent.

Florida imposes no state and local income taxes in addition to the federal income tax — yet Florida is booming, with a budget surplus, while New York is mired in debt. Only 50 years ago, New York had four times the population of Florida, and now Florida is larger than New York.

New York was the great “Empire State” for well over a century.  It’s flipped from being the Good state to the Bad, replaced by Florida. As for Virginia…

Read more...

“Mankind is doomed!” Headline writers have been writing that headline since the invention of printing — and someday it may come about.

For about four decades, that headline has most often been applied to the threat of global warming. Every couple of years, some notable comes out with a pronouncement that the governments of the world only have 5 or 10 years to make fundamental changes or we are all toast. The deadlines come and go, without action, and most people carry on with life as they always have.

Today, a number of Democrat politicians are telling us we have only 12 years to get rid of airplanes, farting cows and other hazards. Al Gore, of course, endorsed the policy proposals. Let’s thank them for sharing.

Meanwhile, there is a real crisis that is much more likely to adversely affect most people’s lives much sooner and with greater consequences than climate change, and that is the rise in government debt as a percentage of GDP in many of the major countries.

Read more...

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”

These are the first words of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.  They refer to the era of the French Revolution a little over two centuries ago, but they could equally apply to today.

Times have never been better for most Americans. Incomes are at a record high. Jobs are plentiful. People are living longer and better due to both medical advances and increased prosperity.

Yet despite the better life that the free-market capitalist system has enabled for billions of people, there are increased numbers of political voices and their media allies demanding socialism. Given the centuries of failure and mayhem resulting from socialism, for all to see, the new socialists are treated as if their ideas are sensible, rather than ludicrous.

Why would people choose foolishness over wisdom?  Are they stupid, ignorant, mean-spirited, or all three?

Read more...

How many agents should a law enforcement organization send to arrest a highly visible, older, non-violent man, who is not a flight risk, for allegedly lying to Congress — particularly, when the individual has appeared numerous times on national TV saying he expects to be arrested and was obviously making no attempt to avoid law enforcement officials?

Yet, last week, special counsel Robert Mueller sent 29 highly armed agents in 17 vehicles to Roger Stone’s home in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, in a predawn raid to arrest him. Such action smacks of the Gestapo or the KGB.

CNN had been obviously tipped off by the Mueller people so they were there to film the raid. All of this was not only highly inappropriate, but a huge waste of taxpayer money.

One of the many problems with the special counsel set up is that Mr. Mueller operates without a specified budget. He merely draws upon Department of Justice and FBI resources, including personnel, as he sees fit.  Who is authorizing this and why?

Read more...

Who should pay for your health care? For your education? For your retirement?

“Socialism,” we are told by the pollsters, is gaining in popularity at least the romanticized versions of it. It would be a world without poverty where people have everything they need, and all are equal.

Advocates for socialism have a problem naming the specific person who is supposed to pay their medical, school, and food and shelter bills. They often say the “rich” — as if there were millions of random rich people floating around just waiting to have their wealth plucked by some student or snowflake.

Jeff Bezos is the world’s richest man (at least until his divorce is finalized), and some claim that he is not a particularly nice person — but that is not illegal. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and many other well-known Democrats want to make Mr. Bezos their slave — despite the fact that he supports them with his Washington Post.

It's critically important to state that people such as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez are advocates of slavery, nothing less.

Read more...

My New Year’s wish for 2019 is for more of my fellow Americans and others to learn some basic history and try to get a grip on reality.

Such as someone who writes for The New York Times under the name of Michelle Alexander, who wrote a column published December 21, “None of Us Deserve Citizenship”

One of her choice sentences: “But for slavery, genocide, and colonization, we would not be the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world — in fact, our nation would not even exist.” Hmm.

Both North and South America were colonized by European countries that practiced slavery, and the United States was not the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery.  That would be Brazil in 1888.

Ms. Alexander fails to explain to us why the United States became the wealthiest country, when the “genocide” she blames occurred mostly before the English colonization (that is, prior to the mid-1600s) and that slavery was common all through the Americas until the mid-1800s, not long before or after the United States abolished it.

She fails because she failed to get a decent education.

Read more...

Zurich, Switzerland.  What do the Paris riots, Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the dusky gopher frog, and Peter Wallison’s new book “Judicial Fortitude” all have in common?

They are all signs that the peasants have had it with the bureaucratic state and the smug elitists who have been ruling the globe. Despite never-ending attempts to quash it, the basic human desire for liberty keeps re-emerging.

Kings and assorted tyrants have attempted to rule their fellow man from the beginning of time. Democracy was created as a way of allowing the people to express their grievances and obtain change without violence. Constitutional republics, such as the United States and Switzerland, were created as a way of restraining government’s ability to diminish the liberties of the people.

The forces of control retaliated by empowering bureaucracies to ignore the will of the people.  Yet they seem impossible to stop smothering our freedom, much less get rid of them.  How do we do this?  There is a way.

Read more...

Would you vote for a politician who promised to both increase traffic congestion and increase your taxes — and yes, I wrote “increase.”

For those of us who live in Northern Virginia that is precisely what happened last week, when our state and local government officials announced with considerable fanfare that they had bribed Amazon — with billions of taxpayer money — to build one of its new headquarters in Virginia.

With great pride, they also told us that they paid a much smaller bribe to Amazon per promised new job than did the New York governor and mayor. (Virginia Motto: “We are not as dumb as New Yorkers.”)

New York politicians — notably Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio — are even worse than the Virginians. They have not only paid more per promised job, but are giving Amazon benefits not available to existing businesses in New York. How is that for fairness?

No wonder New Yorkers are protesting vociferously.  How dumb is it to give bribes to businesses if they move into the state, which are financed by higher taxes on the workers and businesses that already live there?

Read more...

As I write this, there are so-called “caravans” of several thousand people coming north, primarily from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras with the intent of illegally invading the United States.

Despite 200 years of independence, these three countries never developed the institutions and policies to give them prosperity and liberty. They are functioning democracies, but with considerable corruption.

The United States, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and other foreign and multilateral institutions have provided considerable foreign aid to these countries for decades, with the goal of making them sufficiently prosperous so their citizens would no longer desire to flee to the United States.

These programs have not only failed but many times actually led to more corruption.

There now appears to be a way out that is not dependent on enlightened and competent leadership or traditional foreign aid programs.

Read more...

The modern idea of individual liberty and the right to own and control property is of very recent vintage.

It was not until England’s Glorious Revolution in 1688 that as many as 12 percent of the English population actually had voting rights and clear title to property.

And it was not until the passage of the American Constitution in 1789 that property and voting rights were extended to all males (except for slaves) — which was unique for the world at the time.

Democracy, liberty and property rights expanded in much of the rest of the world from the two centuries from the birth of the United States through the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Unfortunately, there has been some retrogression in liberty and property rights in the past two decades as a new class of bullies has emerged in many parts of the world and the United States.

Read more...

Will China overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy?

Perhaps, because it has about four times as many people as the United States. But U.S. per capita income will still be far greater unless China can institute a rule of law equal to that of the rich nations – or the rule of law continues to weaken in the United States.

The level of economic prosperity is closely tied to the rule of law.

In June, the World Justice Project (WSJ) issued its 2017-2018 Rule of Law Index. There are 113 countries listed.  The United States ranks #19, while China ranks #75.

The United States is no longer in the top 10 countries when it comes to the rule of law. The two main reasons are the administrative state – and corruption in the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI.   Of which the Mueller investigation is Exhibit A.

Read more...

Yellowstone, Wyoming. Why are bison no longer endangered?

Yes, the park rangers here insist on calling them “bison” instead of buffalo.  They don’t appreciate being asked if Bill Cody should be renamed Bison Bill.

There are an estimated 5,000 bison in Yellowstone National Park owned by the government. An estimated almost 100 times as many, from 300,000 to 500,000, are in herds that are privately owned. A century ago, the bison was almost extinct in the United States, and only a few hundred were alive.

Bison, like chickens and cattle, are now abundant because private owners are allowed to own them and sell the meat for food, as well as other parts of the animals. That is, the owners have a strong economic incentive to raise many healthy animals.

The Trump administration has proposed reforms to the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which predictably has caused outrage among some self-identified environmentalists. Winding its way through the courts is The Case of the Invisible Frog — aka, the “dusky gopher frog.”

Read more...

There are a number of international organizations and U.S. government agencies that should be abolished because they both destroy wealth and liberty.

Officials of the Trump administration understand the problem but do not have the ability to take the corrective measures because of the lack of political will in Congress to do the right thing.

Given the situation, the administration has opted for the second-best choice, and that is to select highly experienced and qualified individuals to lead reform efforts in the organizations and agencies they have been appointed to head.

Here are four examples – and note, all four of the President’s appointees are women.

Read more...

Two of the world’s biggest polluters are China and Russia.

You would think that U.S. environmental groups would be major critics of these countries; yet, the reality is some take money from entities controlled by these governments and disseminate their propaganda.

Over the last several years, many articles have been written (including mine on TTP here, here, and here) documenting how Russian groups funneled money into U.S. environmental organizations, which, in turn, was used to oppose fracking in the U.S. and the construction of new pipelines.

The environmental groups used the Russian monies to lobby against U.S. consumers and support their Democrat allies.

This past week (6/05), the Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations wrote a six-page letter to the president of a major environmental group — the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) — asking for information regarding its relationship with the Chinese government.

It looks like the Chinese are copying the Russians with bribes to environmentalists to support their pollution.

Read more...

The problems with the existing government monopoly monetary systems are well known to most economists and financial markets experts; hence, the quest for alternatives to government monies in the search for stable money substitutes.

Cryptocurrencies, using tools like blockchains, appear to many to hold the greatest promise. The noted economist F.A. Hayek crisply explained why nongovernment money, such as those backed by a basket of privately held commodities, is likely to be superior in his landmark book, “Denationalization of Money,” published in 1976.

Mr. Hayek wrote long before the Internet, blockchains and highly secure, easy-to-use encryption. With the new technologies, his arguments have increasingly become a practical reality.

Read more...

The GDP of North Korea is less than half that of Fairfax County, Virginia, and only a little more than half of Vermont’s, which has less than 3 percent of the population of North Korea.

Iran has a GDP smaller than either Virginia (despite having 10 times the population) or Belgium (with seven times the population).

Russia has a GDP which is smaller than that of Italy, Texas or South Korea. The GDP of California is more than twice that of Russia, even though the Russian population is three-and-a-half times that of California.

The Trump administration has made a bet that it can reach agreements with each of these three countries (North Korea, Iran and Russia) to reduce military tensions because it understands that it is dealing with economic pygmies, whose economies are going nowhere.

Read more...