Angola e Afeganistanismos

O video é muito parcial, tal como seria se fosse feito hoje em dia. O ponto são as entangling alliances de uma política externa intervencionista:


Angola - US, UN, and Communist Revolutionary Tactics in Africa

Bill for the Unborn

A propósito de todo o escândalo provocado pela notícia Governo adia cheque-bebé, é interessante verificar que ninguém de facto se preocupa com as próximas gerações — Bill for the Unborn: $20,000 (FY 2011),

Here we come to the grand irony of the Keynesian worldview: Keynes saw the Great Depression and declared that there is no contract between generations. Spend the next generation’s money! Live for today because “in the long run we are all dead” (J.M. Keynes). But once the really big spending is locked in as an entitlement, the Left dreams up a “contract between generations” on the spending side.

Bastiat would remind us of “what is not seen”: The Keynesians pooh-pooh the “contract between generations” on the tax side: In the long run we all die, but we leave children behind. If the Left believes in its “contract,” then what about the unborn?

The fallout of this fiscal disaster, if it persists, will mean fewer children as taxes rise higher and higher. Another alternative is the hidden tax of inflation (rather than direct taxation) but that would have the same effect: couples could no longer afford two or more children. Welcome to Eastern European demographics.

Greed is Good (2)

Fred L. Smith: Is Greed Good?

The Pretence Of Knowledge

The Pretence Of Knowledge no ZeroHedge:

The "Pretence of Knowledge" was the title of economist Friedrich Hayek's 1974 Nobel speech.

“[this economic condition] has been brought about by policies which the majority of economists recommended and even urged governments to pursue. We have indeed at the moment little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.”

Hayek's words in 1974 were not meant to describe today's condition, although they were extremely prescient. His hope was that the limits of knowledge would be recognized by the economics profession so that we would never reach our current situation. Hayek's call was for professional humility at a time when Keynesians arrogantly believed they could manage the economy and the business cycle.

The incorrect paradigm that has guided government policies for about 70 years is spent. Economies around the world have been crippled as a result of its incorrect prescriptions -- increased taxation, spending, debt and regulation. Even the highly socialistic Western Europe economies appear to be recognizing the error in such stimulus policies.

Cumulative abuses heaped on the economy weakened its resilience. We are at the point where the patient is so weak that additional bloodletting is likely to cause death. For any thinking economist, not blinded by the false Keynesian paradigm, it was obvious where this economy was going at least ten years ago. Our economy is broken and on the verge of collapse. Send thanks to most any economist that has served in government over this period or taught at an Ivy League school.

Greed is Good

Gordon Gekko "Greed is Good"

Greed, in all of its forms; Greed for Life, for Money, for Love, Knowledge has marked the upward surge of Mankind.

BONUS: another Money speech

Luanda e a doença holandesa

The most expensive city in the world...:

According to an annual cost of living survey that is sponsored by international HR consulting firm Mercer, the most expensive city in the world is Luanda, Angola.

When the economy starts booming, demand outstrips the limited supply and prices soar. Meanwhile, expats stay focused on whatever big project they’re working on instead of developing more services, and the locals generally lack capital to start a business... so it takes years for more supply to enter the market and for prices to adjust lower.

I think these sorts of places can spell extraordinary opportunity for hungry entrepreneurs who don’t mind relocating and overseeing the development of new expat-quality products and services, particularly food and lodging. This is the equivalent of selling shovels to gold miners.

A propósito, um fenómeno interessante é a doença holandesa — curiosamente, mais uma reacção adversa do mercado a intervenções estatais.

a arte da fuga

Não é bem uma referência ao nosso blogue A Arte da Fuga, mas merece registo:


E Deus Criou a Mulher

Krugman the political slut

Paul Krugman, the Self-Contradicting Economist:

Deficits and spending are not the only topics on which Krugman has opposed himself -- he has claimed that the Social Security program is unsustainable, and also that it is sustainable .... His arguments on the issues of labor unions and minimum wage, too, run both ways .... Krugman has also argued that governments do not cause recessions .... but he also blames the Bush administration for the current recession. Likewise, Krugman proffers the argument that nothing the government has ever done has had an impact on the economy .... -- but he also claims that the "big government" has saved us.

On the Set of Atlas Shrugged

On the Set of Atlas Shrugged: 53 Years in the Making

central planners & bread and circus

Barack Obama Cannot, Will Not and Does Not Want to ‘Create Jobs’ por Andrew Mellon:

Instead of letting individuals determine how best to allocate land, labor and capital based upon their own subjective values and aspirations, the government in its self-attributed divine wisdom believes it is morally right for it to squander other people’s money.

Then again, in our “social”ist democracy we feel it proper that government take care of our health and our retirement under the auspice of the “public good.” So what of a little more state paternalism?

Any and all government “stimulus” retards growth because it removes current and future wealth from its producers and gives it to central planners who are not subject to the market but to voters, a significant part of which do not pay for the bread and circuses they demand, sadly trading their liberty for a false economic security that ends in the collapse of the welfare state while stripping real job creators of their property and the incentive to create.

Políticos e Burocratas 0 - 2 Cabras

Via Stossel,

- Goats do a better job than government workers
- More Goats Working

[E]xtreme overgrowth and underbrush on the hillside… prompted GSA’s Pacific Rim Region property management to take quick action to avoid summer fires. Ultimately, the choice was easy: Use a herd of goats. The decision meant a cost-saving to taxpayers over hiring manual labor and proved to be better for the environment than bulldozers...

Governments, as usual, don’t make it easy. Tennessee's Knoxville News Sentinel reports that a charity called “Keep Knoxville Beautiful” uses goats to rid the Fort Dickerson area of kudzu. A charity spokeswoman told us that they had to lobby for an entire year before the city would approve the use of goats.

Economic Decadence

Notes on Europe’s Economic Decadence por James K. Glassman:

It is hardly surprising that work produces well-being, and if work diminishes, then well-being, even in the most advanced economy, will slow down [through government monetary and fiscal manipulation], stop, or shift into reverse gear. “Decadence,” with its connotations of self-indulgence and decline, is not too strong a word for the response we have seen to economic success, especially in much of Europe, over the past few decades.

Why are taxes so high in Europe? Certainly not to maintain a strong defense but rather to pour money into a welfare state that provides lavish support to retirees, perennial students, and others who aren’t working. In other words, Europeans have chosen to have workers support non-workers in their leisure. This is a social choice to which voters are, of course, entitled, and a choice that seemed deserved and even prudent given the achievement of the economic success that Keynes had predicted back in 1930.

The paradise of leisure that Keynes predicted is impossible in stasis. To keep it going, a country has to keep growing .... With such anemic growth and with reasonable assumptions of spending and taxes, .... While the United States is not Europe, many of our states clearly have aspirations in the same decadent direction .... As a monetary union, the United States may face a decision similar to that of the eurozone nations.

History of Environmentalism

Robert J. Smith, History of Environmentalism

Government cannot build the Big Society

Government cannot build the Big Society por Ruth Porter:

.... we’ve got Cameron’s definition of the Big Society and it’s a clear and important one. But how we get there is as muddled as ever.

Yet it is hard to see how he makes the leap .... to the conclusion that the main way to improve this situation is for the state to take more responsibility. David Cameron’s primary commitment seems to be that the government will give people the tools to realise their vision for their local communities.

The precise point of civil society is that the tools people need to realise their visions cannot be given by central government .... Cameron fears that if government pulls back, people won’t be there to take up the slack. He suggests that it is up to the government to build the Big Society. But government cannot build the Big Society; a Big Society will only develop by government pulling back and leaving room for people and communities.

A radical reduction in the size of the state is required if philanthropy, community building and personal responsibility are to flourish. This means reducing the number of functions perceived as the responsibility of government .... with a corresponding cut in taxes, regulation and bureaucracy.

Black on black slavery (2)

Runaway Slave Movie Teaser

One Job Forward, Two Jobs Back

One Job Forward, Two Jobs Back por Andrew B. Wilson:

It’s all  I, I, I with this president. The repeated use of the first person singular pronoun illustrates what the economist Friedrich Hayek called “fatal conceit” or “the pretense of knowledge.” .... —what makes Obama and the Department of Energy so sure it’s wise to put .... taxpayers’ money at risk on their behalf? .... does that constitute real knowledge—or simply “the pretense of knowledge”?

The same point may be made about everything the government does with the purported goal of boosting the economy and creating jobs .... The principal effect of an alarming rise in government spending and deficits has been to undermine a normal cyclical recovery. Part of the blame for continued high unemployment (especially long-term unemployment) surely rests on the crazy growth of new entitlements and federal spending, combined with the likelihood of a raft of new taxes—some hidden (e.g., rising health premiums resulting from Obamacare) and some not (e.g., the value-added tax now being discussed)—to pay for more government and government-directed redistribution of income.

Separados à Nascença

Via Dan Mitchell, e à semelhança de outro gráfico já colocado aqui no AADF (cujo paradeiro se perdeu), descubra qual dos dois representa o Obamacare:

Black on black slavery

Racism or Stupidity por Walter E. Williams

A black or white person, now dead, who lived during the civil rights struggles of the 1930s, '40s or '50s, might very well be appalled and disgusted by black behavior accepted today.

It has little to do with slavery, poverty and racial discrimination. Let's look at it. Today's black illegitimacy rate is about 70 percent. When I was a youngster, during the 1940s, illegitimacy was around 15 percent. In the same period, about 80 percent of black children were born inside marriage .... Today, only 35 percent of black children are raised in two-parent households.

.... at a time when blacks were closer to slavery, faced far more discrimination, more poverty and had fewer opportunities, there was not the kind of chaos, violence, family breakdown and black racism that we see today.

.... as Booker T. Washington suggested, "There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."

The Power of One Entrepreneur

The Power of One Entrepreneur:

To champion the cause of the entrepreneur, the Institute for Justice released in July a series of studies called The Power of One Entrepreneur.

Expanding our work to humanize the issue of economic liberty—the right to pursue an honest living in the occupation of your choice free from needless government regulation — .... to document the inspirational lives and impact of five entrepreneurs to show how they improve individual lives and entire communities through honest enterprise.

All the while, each of these slice-of-life narratives shows the reader the many bureaucratic barriers each of these entrepreneurs has faced, barriers with the potential to destroy an entrepreneur’s American Dream. One way or another—either through IJ-initiated litigation or by moving to a freer state—each of the featured entrepreneurs overcame these needless obstacles, but not without serious financial expense and opportunity costs in the form of delays and distractions that prevented them from putting even more people to work and improving the services we use each day.

The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism

The Death Throes of Pro-IP Libertarianism, um excelente artigo de Stephan Kinsella, fica só um excerto provocador:

They accuse "pirates" of "stealing"; when you point out that copying is not theft because the originator still has his copy, then they switch to some other argument, such as claims that the value of the original copy is diminished; when you point out that there are no property rights in value, but only in the physical integrity of property, they switch to arguments about incentives, even though they usually condemn utilitarian arguments. If you explain that every creator's work also built on the thought of others, they come up with a convenient public domain or "fair use" exception. When you point out obviously outrageous injustices of the current IP system, they say they are not in favor of the current IP system … yet they oppose the call to abolish it! And when you ask them what type of IP system they do favor, they have no answer, punting it to judges or Randian legislators to figure out, on the grounds that they are not patent lawyers or specialists!

They say that you need patents to stimulate invention and copyright to stimulate artistic creativity — they are often hyperbolic and say there would be no innovation in an IP-free world. If you point out that there would obviously be some innovation absent IP law, they then say there would not be enough innovation. If you ask them how much is enough, they have no answer.

Obscenity vs. Freedom of Expression

Obscenity vs. Freedom of Expression

BÓNUS: U.S. District judge drops porn charges against video producer John A. Stagliano

Great Moments in Government Waste

the American version por Dan Mitchell:

Untold millions of your tax dollars are paying for recreation in the name of crime prevention: pool parties, rollercoaster rides, and police donut-eating contests. The idea is that fun activities keep kids out of trouble, build self-esteem and prevent crime .... over $100 million tax dollars over five years has been spent on recreation to fight crime.

the European version:

EU bureaucrats have squandered millions of pounds on a study which reached the unsurprising conclusion that fruit is good for you. An astonishing 13.8million euros – some £11.7million – has been spent on research involving 200 scientists which found that ‘two apples a day keep cholesterol at bay’. Much of the money went on developing and promoting a green-skinned EU superhero called Mr Fruitness designed to persuade children to eat more fruit.

Anarchy and the efficient law

Anarchy and the efficient law uma lecture extremamente interessante de David Friedman:


"Anarchy and the efficient law" - David Friedman

Ordem Expontânea e Desenho Constitucional

Hayek on Spontaneous Order and Constitutional Design por Scott Boykin (PDF):

Constitutional design can provide the institutions through which liberal traditions are expressed in law and limit the state’s power, but an ideal constitution is not itself a mouthpiece for political values.

A society’s political values are the product of a spontaneous order, and a well designed constitution accommodates evolving traditions without seeking to shape cultural change. The only value the ideal constitution contains is a formal one: the rule of law. Beyond this, a constitution should be neutral concerning values. A society speaks through its constitution, but the constitution does not speak for society. There are few certainties in a world driven by competition. Hayek’s ideal constitution provides a social arena in which individuals and groups may compete, but it accordingly supplies little assurance of the cultural and hence the political future.

....constitutional mechanics, though important, are inadequate to sustain limited government and .... liberalism ultimately depends on circumstances over which we have no control.

neosocialist, corporatist, statist

Obama's Soft-Core Socialism por Steve Forbes:

The truth is that not even the Franklin Roosevelt Administration was as hostile to and ignorant about free enterprise as this Administration is. Almost every action Obama officials take underscores their belief in the stereotype that businesspeople are mostly amoral, corner-cutting, consumer-shafting, pollution-loving menaces. The economy itself needs to be tightly controlled and rigidly guided by Washington mandarins because free markets are inherently and destructively unstable. One hesitates to bring up the economics of Benito Mussolini and his ilk because fascism means ugly nationalism and racism, as well as mass murder and aggressive war. So let's label the economic part of that ideology as neosocialist, corporatist, statist or — to be sophisticated and use a French word — dirigiste. Under the corporatist state, private companies exist but take their direction from government. Competition is seen as wasteful and destructive and therefore must be "managed." There is a basic hostility toward small businesses precisely because there are so many of them, making them harder to regulate and more apt to do things without government permission.

O modelo suíço

A Suiça foi recentemente referenciada no AADF nos posts
- Por qué los liberales clásicos no ganamos elecciones
- Estatísticas e Estatismo

Happy Fourth, Switzerland! : Considering the “Great Inversion”:

Switzerland’s success makes a solid case for smaller nations. And it’s not just that they’re geographically small. With their subsidiary canton system (a form of federalism) and their size with respect to their European neighbors, one can’t help but wonder at all the Swiss have been able to achieve.

Here’s the idea: what if, through some process, we were able to invert the revenue breakdown between federal and state?

It would be a form of fiscal federalism .... we’d get 50 separate experiments on how to fund and administer entitlement programs. When a program fails, it fails for one state rather than the whole country. When a program looks successful, other states can adopt best practices. In addition, states that have some sense about tax competition (e.g. Texas as opposed to California) might opt not to keep rates that high.

People wanted to live in states with more general welfare states could do so. Those who wanted to find places with lower taxes could seek those places out. With more revenue collection at the state level you can get a lot more voting with your feet. The federal government would still have responsibility for things that need national funding and oversight–like national security and the Supreme Court. Otherwise, we could devolve with the money.

two windows

From Priest to Scientist: An Interview with Dr. Francisco J. Ayala

Por qué los liberales clásicos no ganamos elecciones

Por qué los liberales clásicos no ganamos elecciones por Pedro Schwartz Girón:

No nos engañemos. Los votantes en su gran mayoría no son liberales clásicos. Sus preferencias reveladas son a favor de políticas anti-mercado o al menos de políticas que limiten y palíen los efectos de la libre competencia. Todos los elementos para la puesta en práctica de una política económica intermedia entre la libre competencia y la intervención pública están presentes continuamente en la psique social.

Si los votantes en el fondo no son liberales clásicos es poco realista exigir de los políticos que lo sean. Políticos y votantes, votantes y políticos hacen oídos sordos a las recomendaciones de los economistas ortodoxos mientras luce el sol en un cielo azul, aunque se acuerdan de Santa Bárbara cuando truena.

.... pese a la preferir un liberalismo de bienestar, los ciudadanos en países con tradición de debate racional se inclinan por elegir políticas y programas crecientemente sensatos.

Cuando descubren que los sistemas de pensiones de reparto no son confiables; que el coste de la sanidad gratuita subvencionada es insostenible; que la educación obligatoria lanza al mundo adulto jóvenes ignorantes e indolentes; que el salario mínimo interprofesional agrava el paro; que la proliferación de derechos resulta en una ciudadanía irresponsable; entonces quizá empiecen a votar de manera más sensata, como lo hacen los suizos en sus referendos legislativos.

Bad Will Exporting

Good Will Hunting (1997)

Garbage In, Money Out

Garbage In, Money Out por Warren Meyer, um artigo que merece ser lido na íntegra. Aqui ficam alguns excertos:

This modeling approach yields amazingly circular logic. Like macroeconomic models built by devoted Keynesians, climate models are constructed by academics who passionately believe that a single variable, CO2 concentration, is the dominant driver of the whole complex climate system .... The problem with these models is that when run forward .... they do a terrible job of predicting the future. None of them, for example, predicted the flattening of global temperatures over the last decade.

The climate modeling approach is so similar to that used by the CEA to score the stimulus that there is even a climate equivalent to the multiplier found in macro-economic models. In climate models, small amounts of warming from man-made CO2 are multiplied many-fold to catastrophic levels by hypothetical positive feedbacks, in the same way that the first-order effects of government spending are multiplied in Keynesian economic models.

Our common sense about government stimulus tells us that the government is highly unlikely to invest money more productively than the private entities from whom the government took the money. Unfortunately, we have allowed this common sense to be trumped by computer models .... If your common sense is whispering to you that this seems crazy, listen to it. Otherwise all we get is garbage in, money out.

Ludwig von Mises - A Primer (2)

Philip Booth interviews Eamonn Butler
(author of the IEA Ludwig von Mises primer) about Ludwig von Mises

Estatísticas e Estatismo

The census and government collation of national statistics only serve to perpetuate the illusion that central planning is possible por Phillip Booth:

The census has deeper roots but the vast majority of official statistics arise from a time when the government thought that it should centrally plan and direct the economy. They are not necessary. Indeed, they cause harm by continuing the illusion that central planning is possible. The government is right to scrap the census; it should take an axe to other Official statistics too – perhaps even national income figures should go.

Switzerland has no official poverty statistics. So what? por Kristian Niemietz:

In the early 1960s, Chicago economist Milton Friedman travelled to Hong Kong to meet Sir John Cowperthwaite, the colony’s Financial Secretary. The economic development of Hong Kong had aroused Friedman's curiosity, but, to his surprise, he was unable to get hold of any detailed economic statistics. So he asked Sir John about the peculiar lack of data. Cowperthwaite, a classical liberal economist, explained that he deliberately refrained from having detailed economic data gathered. He argued the bureaucrats of the colonial administration should not even be tempted to intervene in the economy.

Language as the Ultimate Government Program

2010 Porcupine Freedom Festival - Opening Speaker - Stefan Molyneux, Freedomain Radio

Say’s Law of Markets

Understanding Say’s Law of Markets por Steven Horwitz:

Say was making the claim that production is the source of demand .... Wealth is created by production not by consumption.

The key .... is that it is production that must come first. Demand, or consumption, follows from the production of wealth.

Because all market exchanges are of goods or services for money, all markets are money markets, and the only way there can be an excess supply or demand for goods is if there is an opposite excess supply or demand for money .... Say’s Law, properly understood, suggests that the explanation for an excess supply of goods is an excess demand for money.

.... the root of macroeconomic disorder is most likely monetary, as too much or too little money will undermine that translation process.

Matt Ridley on Rational Optimism

Via The Bastiat Society, uma excelente TED Talk de Matt Ridley:

Get Sane, Simplify, and End Government

Get Sane, Simplify, and End Government

Obamacare created 183 brand new government agencies, commissions, panels, and bureaus ....The recent financial reform law was 2,319 pages of bureaucratic banter — seven times longer than the last five banking laws combined .... “Government experts were told to take a complex, decentralized system — in this case the financial markets — and impose, rules, rationality, and order.”

.... no society, however big, or populated, or industrialized, or militarily supreme can long survive under the strangling dead weight of such monstrous interventionism and top-heavy centralism.

History has already shown us, time and again, that centralized government planning only leads to destitution and despotism .... No amount of voting, or “reform,” or seeking political solutions of any kind is going to end this spiraling whirlwind of bureaucratic madness. It’s time get sane. It’s time to simplify. It’s time to reject government altogether, and dump it into the garbage can of history.

Armed Vs Unarmed Victims

Armed Vs Unarmed Victims (contém uma lista de outros vídeos)

Political and Methodological Individualism

Via Organizations and Markets,

....it is .... widely believed that methodological individualism — the chief explanatory principle of economics and rational-choice sociology and political science — implies or justifies political individualism .... “But people are social beings!” cry the critics.

Well, sure. Methodological individualism is simply the view that social phenomena should be explained, or understood, in terms of the values, beliefs, plans, and actions of the individual that make up the social whole.

Restoring a Free Market in Healthcare

Repealing Obamacare and Restoring a Free Market in Healthcare

democracy — an advance auction of stolen goods

Voting for democracy – lambs to the slaughter por Terry Arthur

The chattering classes and the elites of politics love elections .... Yet the process is essentially a very serious game which, by virtue of an advance auction of goods about to be stolen and redistributed elsewhere (with huge commissions to the auctioneers), creates enormous aggregate net losses, just as does any other form of theft.

When government was small this hardly mattered. But now, government doesn’t do small, and as it expands its scope, it attracts people of a very different mind-set. The motivations for a Parliamentary career have changed radically, from a strong wish to do good to exercising power for its own sake and the corruption of the system for personal gain. This fits precisely Hayek’s explanation of “why the worst get on top”.

An unlimited democracy in which all decisions can be settled by a majority vote is essentially the same as two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. A “representative” democracy is potentially even worse, with government itself taking all decisions in an elective dictatorship, such as those of Hitler and Mussolini. Modern Britain is getting ever closer to this position.

Mais um political quiz

Australian Political Quiz:

Secessão e Euro-"Liberdade"

Kosovo independence declaration deemed legal (Reuters):

Kosovo's unilateral secession from Serbia in 2008 did not violate international law, the World Court said Thursday in a decision with implications for separatist movements everywhere.

EEUU: "La situación de Kosovo no es aplicable a Cataluña o el País Vasco":

EEUU ha saludado la decisión de la Corte Penal Internacional e incluso ha pedido a la Unión Europea que adopte una posición común entre todos sus miembros sobre el reconocimiento oficial de Kosovo como un estado.

Contudo...

El portavoz del Departamento de Estado de EEUU, P. J. Crowley, ha dicho que la situación de Kosovo no es "extrapolable" a Cataluña o el País Vasco ... afirmó que "se trata de una situación única y exclusiva de Kosovo" y concluyó que "estos hechos no son aplicables a otras situaciones".

BÓNUS: Secesión e hipocresía

Is Capitalism Evil?

Is Capitalism Evil?

Why Not Another World War?

Why Not Another World War? por Peter Schiff:

If one believes that government spending can create economic growth, then the answer should be simple: let's have a huge pretend war that rivals the Second World War in size. However, this time, let's not kill anyone.

The goal of an economy is to raise living standards. During the War, as productive output was diverted to the front, consumer goods were rationed back home and living standards fell. While it's easy to see the numerical results of wartime spending, it is much harder to see the civilian cutbacks that enabled it.

The truth is that we cannot spend our way out of our current crisis, no matter how great a spectacle we create .... What we need is more savings, more free enterprise, more production, and a return of American competitiveness in the global economy. Yes, we need .... to work in the private sector making things that don't explode. To do this, we need less government spending, not more.

Welfare Reform in Tough Times

Welfare Reform in Tough Times

Privatización del matrimonio (2)

Na continuação de Privatización del matrimonio, Argentina aprueba matrimonio homosexual: una perspectiva anarcocapitalista:

El "problema" del matrimonio homosexual se resuelve fácilmente una vez que nos convencemos de que el estado no tiene nada que ver en el asunto. De hecho, al tomar control del matrimonio el estado crea muchos de los problemas por los que la gente se pelea, pues muchos (o al menos algunos) de los "derechos" que los homosexuales desean les sean reconocidos son en realidad privilegios que tienen que ser costeados por el erario público. Los conservadores, quienes consideran a los homosexuales como seres inmorales y hasta enfermizos, desde luego se niegan vehementemente a apoyar financieramente las actividades de dichas personas.

Si usted es un católico que cree que el matrimonio es por derecho divino exclusivamente entre un hombre y una mujer, pues usted se casaría de acuerdo a las reglas de su religión y no tendría que estar en el mismo "nivel" que las personas del mismo sexo que decidan contraer matrimonio. El "matrimonio" entre heterosexuales sería simplemente una relación contractual diferente al "matrimonio" entre homosexuales. El "matrimonio" homosexual no sería una forma de "destruir" la institución del "matrimonio" heterosexual (como se afirma, por ejemplo, acá), de hecho, no tendrían nada que ver el uno con el otro. Como decimos en Venezuela: "Juntos, pero no revueltos". El problema con el estado es que al tomar el control, obliga a todo el mundo a estar juntos y revueltos y de allí surgen este tipo de conflictos y fricciones.

Free Trade - World Peace and Prosperity

How To Achieve World Peace and Prosperity

Viver à custa dos outros, uma aspiração social

El 72% de los españoles quiere ser funcionario y sólo el 4% empresario:

Según una encuesta del portal de empleo Monster presentada el lunes, a un 72% de los españoles le gustaría ser empleado público. Atrás han quedado los sueños que las novelas atribuyen a la juventud fantasiosa (hacerse rico, montar un negocio, crear algo nuevo con imaginación y trabajo...); en julio de 2010, casi tres de cada cuatro adultos quiere ser funcionario. Además, sólo el 17% alega una vocación, mientras que el 55% se queda con una explicación más prosaica: ganar un sueldo para toda la vida y disfrutar de horarios cómodos.

Why Foreign Policy Matters Most

Why Foreign Policy Matters Most

No More Government Spending

Please, No More Government Spending! por Vernon L. Smith:

So what has been the government’s response in the current crisis? Besides spending stimulus, it was tax incentives for new home buyers and cash for clunkers if you bought a new car. All three are programs for borrowing output, homes and cars from future production and sales. Using subsidies to pump up home sales beyond what people could afford was the problem that led to the crisis. Now the problem is touted as the solution.

Our best shot at increasing employment and output is to reduce business taxes and the cost of creating new start-up companies. Don’t subsidize them; just reduce their taxes even as they become larger; also reduce any unnecessary impediments to their formation .... Reducing barriers to that growth encourage a recovery path which does not mortgage future output.

deficit spending is a boondoggle

Wikipédia:

Boondoggle (project), term for a scheme that wastes time and money

Paul Krugman’s Boondoggle por Chriss W. Street:

During the Great Depression President Franklin Roosevelt brushed away concerns regarding the wisdom of deficit spending by saying; “If we can boondoggle ourselves out of this depression, that word is going to be enshrined in the hearts of the American people for years to come.” Perhaps Professor Krugman is frustrated that so many Americans have not enshrined the boondoggle of deficit spending in their hearts the same way he has.

Since Professor Krugman was bestowed Nobel credibility, the U.S. Federal Government has run a $3.2 trillion dollar spending deficit that is on track to grow to $5 trillion dollars by 2012. For that amount of money we, the taxpayers, could have avoided the cost of bailing out GM and bought a brand new Chevy Impala for every working person in America. If we had a little more patience, in two more years we could be handing every employed person in the country the keys to a fully equipped Cadillac CTS.

Unemployment is near double-digit rates, homes are depreciating in value, healthcare costs are about to skyrocket and they lack savings and income security for their future. It is time for Professor Krugman to learn from history, deficit spending was a boondoggle in the 1930’s and it has been a boondoggle in this cycle.

it’s the power, stupid

Um bom rant de Penn Jillette, variações sobre o tema "não dar à política mais poder do que aquele que seria confortável utilizado pelo mais temido adversário político". É um argumento interessante, mas que é desperdiçado sobre as massas embriagadas pelos almoços grátis da social-democracia. A populaça prefere a promessa de benefícios imediatos mesmo sabendo que passará por crises num futuro mais ou menos próximo.


Even If You LOVE Obama, Here's Why You Shouldn't - Penn Point

ilegitimidade

Via Lew Rockwell, 23% Say U.S. Government Has the Consent of the Governed:

The notion that governments derive their only just authority from the consent of the governed is a foundational principle of the American experiment.

However, a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 23% of voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed. Sixty-two percent (62%) say it does not, and 15% are not sure.

In his new book, In Search of Self-Governance, Scott Rasmussen observes that the American people are “united in the belief that our political system is broken, that politicians are corrupt and that neither major political party has the answers.” He adds that “the gap between Americans who want to govern themselves and the politicians who want to rule over them may be as big today as the gap between the colonies and England during the 18th century.”

Data released yesterday finds that 68% of voters believe the Political Class doesn’t care what most Americans think. Earlier polling shows that 59% are embarrassed by the behavior of the Political Class.

The challenge of immigration: a radical solution

The IEA 19th Annual Hayek Memorial Lecture: Gary Becker from Karim Merie: Kmphotos.com on Vimeo.

Keynesians learn nothing

Today’s Keynesians have learnt nothing por Niall Ferguson:

Certainly. Long before Keynes was even born, weak governments in countries from Argentina to Venezuela used to experiment with large peace-time deficits to see if there were ways of avoiding hard choices. The experiments invariably ended in one of two ways. Either the foreign lenders got fleeced through default. Or the domestic lenders got fleeced through inflation. When economies were growing sluggishly, that could be slow in coming. But there invariably came a point when money creation by the central bank triggered an upsurge in inflationary expectations.

The remedy for such fears must be the kind of policy regime-change Prof Sargent identified 30 years ago, and which the Thatcher and Reagan governments successfully implemented. Then, as today, the choice was not between stimulus and austerity. It was between policies that boost private-sector confidence and those that kill it.

The Rahn Curve

The Rahn Curve and the growth-maximising level of government
###
BONUS - via Dan Mitchell, A Video Attacking Me, and I completely Agree with the Message:

I’m used to being attacked, but usually by statists .... What makes this situation rather ironic is that I agree with the guy tearing me a new you-know-what.

when I put together these videos, all sorts of simplifying assumptions must be made to keep them to a reasonable length. In many instances, the final video only includes about one-half of what was in the original script. So I plead guilty of not fully elaborating, but I limit details because I think too much information would undermine my goal of reaching people who are not already true believers.

the Decline of Newspapers a Market Success

Is the Decline of Newspapers a Market Failure? Or creative destruction? por Edward J. Lopez:

This is not pleasant to see unfold, but it is not a market failure. A policy-relevant market failure is the experience of real net losses in society as a result of purely self-regulated voluntary action. When people choose to move away from lighthouses and newspapers, it’s because they’re moving to new and better substitutes. The lighthouse’s loss has been society’s gain. Similarly, as news producers’ revenue streams have dried up, this has created more than offsetting opportunities for new media producers and consumers of information. It has also spurred innovation in new forms of journalism.

Market-failure theory is of no help in understanding how markets really work and what is happening to journalism. A better framework is creative destruction. Old journalism is failing not because it is a public good that government has not adequately funded. It’s failing because it is being replaced with more innovative alternatives.

Privatización del matrimonio

Privatización del matrimonio:

En el debate relativo al status legal de las parejas homosexuales unos invocan al Estado para salvaguardar la definición tradicional de matrimonio y otros para enmendarla. Ambos recurren al leviatán burocrático para imponer a la sociedad entera su concepción moral particular. En la controversia actual la privatización completa de la institución matrimonial debería satisfacer tanto a los social-progresistas que dicen buscar la igualdad ante la ley para las uniones homosexuales como a los social-conservadores que dicen oponerse a que el Estado las sancione. La solución liberal no es legalizar en positivo un asunto moral sino desestatificarlo, desregularlo. La solución liberal no es nacionalizar el matrimonio homosexual; es privatizar el matrimonio heterosexual.

similarities between Mussolini’s fascism and FDR’s New Deal

Don’t Take Glenn Beck’s Word for It. Take Mussolini’s:

Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan had a point when they pointed to similarities between Mussolini’s fascism and FDR’s New Deal. And, as I wrote in a review of Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933–1939, Mussolini saw the connection, too: In a laudatory review of Roosevelt’s 1933 book Looking Forward, Mussolini wrote, “Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices.... Without question, the mood accompanying this sea change resembles that of Fascism.”

Mauro relates the visit of Grover Whalen, New York’s police commissioner and president of the World’s Fair Corporation, to Rome to persuade Mussolini to authorize an Italian pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair:

Whalen - “The American people would like to know what fascism is,”
Mussolini - You want to know what fascism is like? It is like your New Deal!”

But what isn’t Obama?

fonte

Obama the Socialist Fascist Communist por Scott Lazarowitz:

So far, we have noted that Barack Obama is:

• A Socialist. He supports public ownership of the means of production, redistribution of wealth from some segments of society to others
• A Fascist. He supports State control over private industries and the means of production, and just about every aspect of citizens’ daily lives.
• A Communist. He supports State ownership as well as control of industry and the means of production.

But what isn’t Obama?

• A Capitalist. Barack Obama is not a capitalist because he opposes voluntary exchange, private property rights, voluntary contracts, associations and markets free of State intrusions, and under the Rule of Law.

Bad corporate governance oaths (3)

Na continuação de Bad corporate governance oaths (2), MBA Oath: An Oath and Its Flaws:

Let me be clear. I join the authors in rejecting the argument by some that business and ethics are incompatible. But our agreement ends there.

More worrisome is that what first seems like innocuous language and progressive thinking is really the failed ideologies of history masquerading as enlightenment. Signatories must forswear "decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves." Contrary to fundamental economics, this implies that pursuit of self-interest does not serve the greater good and that the aims of the individual are subservient to the indeterminable goals of "society." MBAs must also promise to "create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide." One is not simply to preserve the environment but to create benefits for it. Of course, "sustainability" in its modern form is invariably code for a wealth transfer from shareholders to third parties. All popular prescriptions for "social and environmental progress" are inevitably the same: socialism.

é preciso um desastre natural para eliminar um desastre humano

Katrina's Silver Lining: The School Choice Revolution in New Orleans

Before hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, New Orleans had one of the worst performing public school districts in the nation. Katrina forced nearly a million people to leave their homes and caused almost $100 billion in damages. To an already failing public school system, the storm seemed to provide the final deathblow. But then something amazing happened. In the wake of Katrina, education reformers decided to seize the opportunity and start fresh with a system based on choice.

Today, New Orleans has the most market-based school system in the US. Sixty percent of New Orleans students currently attend charter schools, test scores are up, and talented and passionate educators from around the country are flocking to New Orleans to be a part of the education revolution.

Os absurdos da regulação

Os seres humanos são criaturas complexas, muito diferentes dos autómatos idealizados tanto pela generalidade dos socialistas, como inclusivamente por muitos economistas que se perdem no ideal do homo economicus. As pessoas pensam pela sua cabeça e agem segundo os seus valores. Muitas vezes, de forma absurda, contrária à realidade objectiva - por exemplo racionalizando aquilo que não convém. Outras vezes, corrigindo as racionalizações de terceiros.

Um dos fenómenos interessantes, uma espécie de psicologia inversa, acontece quando as pessoas são contrariadas por regulação despropositada. É o chamado efeito Peltzmann. Por exemplo, para aumentar a segurança diminui-se a velocidade máxima permitida. Mas, em rigor, poucas pessoas procuram - consciente ou inconscientemente - especificamente a falta de segurança que advém de conduzir depressa. Quem procura emoções fortes, ou não é sensível aos argumentos impostos pela força da lei, ajusta o seu comportamento - com uma condução mais agressiva embora dentro dos limites (e portanto legal).

Agir sobre as consequências do fenómeno que se pretende colocar conduz a absurdos interessantes. Por exemplo, a lança de Tullock - por exemplo, todos os acidentes graves advêm de comportamentos que também provocam acidentes menos graves. Para prevenir todo e qualquer acidente, nada como punir todo e qualquer acidente com a penalidade máxima. Tullock sugeria colocar no volante de cada carro uma lança apontada ao coração do condutor. [este caso também está explicado neste MP3, que recomendo vivamente]. Pela bitola dos reguladores, es método seria preferível aos demais - não fosse a regulação matar a coisa regulada.

Freeing small farms

Freeing Small Farms: Institute for Justice & Minnesota Farmers Fight Protectionism

as novas tecnologias e os velhos parasitas

Washington's parasites take aim at Apple por David Boaz:

For more than a decade, Microsoft went about its business, developing software, selling it to customers, and - happily, legally - making money. Then in 1995, after repeated assaults by the Justice Department's antitrust division .... The political establishment was essentially telling Bill Gates, "Nice little company ya got there. Shame if anything happened to it."

A decade later, it was Google. After a humble start in a Stanford dorm room, Google delivered a cheap and indispensable product and became the biggest success story of the early 21st century. Some policymakers threatened to create a federal Office of Search Engines to regulate Google .... So, like Microsoft and other companies before it, Google opened a Washington office and hired well-connected lobbyists.

And now Apple. After years as a cute little niche player, Apple has suddenly started producing wildly popular products such as the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. The Federal Trade Commission has started rumbling about Apple's threat to competition. Note the absurdity here: Apple creates whole new products and industries, consumer benefits that didn't exist before, and the federal government worries that it's somehow going to "limit" competition in a field it brought to the market.

Politicians, seeing an opportunity to extend their power and rake in some campaign cash, are circling like sharks .... The federal budget has grown steadily over the last 60 years or so to about $3.7 trillion. The number of pages in the Federal Register, where new regulations are printed, grows by about 70,000 every year. Total spending on lobbyists doubled during the Bush administration and reached a record high in 2009.

Do you still think you can control them?

Cabaret: Tomorrow belongs to me

Government-Run Businesses

The Disaster of Government-Run Businesses por Jim Powell:

Barack Obama defied experience everywhere when he stubbornly claimed he could make a government-run health program work. The standard practice of any government-run business is to provide favored interest groups with something for nothing, forcing other people to pay for it, and there always seem to be complications.

If there were any doubt about the folly of government-run businesses, surely the experience of the Soviet Union ought to have resolved it. Consider the Samarkand Refrigerator Factory, which received many awards for meeting its Five-Year Plan production quotas. Paul Craig Roberts and Karen LaFollette reported the refrigerators

were of such dismal quality that most were eventually sent back to the plant -- this rejection was in a country where consumers pounce on goods of even sub-minimal quality. More surprising: every year that factory has asked for and received a higher level of subsidy from the government to produce junk refrigerators nobody wants.

Meanwhile, American taxpayers are stuck with many money-losing government-run businesses. Next year, for instance, Amtrak will mark its 40th consecutive year of losses .... Taxpayers are stuck, too, with the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), government-sponsored enterprises that had special privileges .... Thus far, the government has committed American taxpayers to cover as much as $400 billion of Fannie's and Freddie's losses ....The most costly government-run business is Medicare "insurance" which has an estimated $36 trillion of unfunded liabilities.

Visca Catalunya Lliure! (2)

Raw Video: Spanish Protesters Demand Autonomy

More than a (m) million people gathered on Saturday in northeastern Barcelona to demand greater regional autonomy for Catalonia and protest against a recent court ruling forbidding this prosperous region from calling itself a nation. (July 10)

Tyranny of the majority

The Founders' Vision Versus Ours por Walter Williams:

What would the founders think about our respect for democracy and majority rule? Here's what Thomas Jefferson said:

The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.

John Adams advised,

Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

The founders envisioned a republican form of government, but as Benjamin Franklin warned,

When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.

Visca Catalunya Lliure!

Visca Catalunya Lliure!:

Loyal reader in Barcelona here. For an expatriated libertarian, Catalunya is a great place to live.

Though often known as an epicenter of European leftism, Barcelona itself is filled with a fiercely secessionist history and an anarchy-tinged past. See: Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia.” Even today one can sense the precipice upon which authority hangs, everywhere one can sense the minimal lack of respect for the State and its thugs; and there is often a whiff of administrative collapse, of anarchy, of freedom, in the air.

Government is Theft

Taxation is Theft, and Theft Cannot Be “Reformed” no Center for a Stateless Society:

Markets, which are voluntary and peaceful mechanisms, produce prosperity and hence, peace. Governments only plunder and destroy. They produce precisely nothing — except tyranny and misery. They exist, contrary to popular mythology, only to consolidate their power and continue to exploit and enslave the non-political class. That is their only true purpose.

The real reason this institutionalized slavery exists is fundamentally inherent to the nature of governments themselves. All of them. Democracies, dictatorships, republics, you name it. In order to exist in the first place, governments must steal the earnings of others by force (or by the very real threat of it) in order to finance all the police, guards, soldiers and other agents of the State who work for it. It must also, in addition to providing loot and weapons to its employees in order to insure loyalty, convince them — at least to a certain degree — that what they are doing and defending is both noble and necessary. That without such enforcers as themselves, the world as they know it will descend into butchery, rioting, bloodshed, and chaos. As if governments themselves are not both directly and indirectly responsible for inciting such behaviors on a far greater and more destructive scale than any other groups of individuals.

What’s Great About America

John Stossel - "What's Great About America?" - F

No more Europe

Via No Pasarán!, More Europe? No thanks. de José Manuel Fernandes

The European Union is currently undergoing an anti-democratic coup and nobody seems to object, whether in Portugal or in most other European countries .... – .... an attempt to violate national sovereignty that is bound to encroach on the checks and balances of the Lisbon Treaty and humiliate national parliaments.

The European Union is failing the most vital test of a democracy: it doesn’t know how to replace its own government by peaceful means. The European Parliament can, of course, dismiss the Commission, but it can’t dismiss the Council, nor does anyone think about who will be the next president of the Commission whilst voting for members of the European Parliament.

And this mustn’t be mistaken for a minor obstacle, to be overcome with the “boldness”, “courage” and “vision” of supposed European leaders – .... seeing as there is no way to have more political union without more sovereignty transfers, .... requiring each state to submit its budget first to Brussels (though to whom in Brussels nobody knows)

The Moral Case for the Free Market

TEDxGreenville - Eric Daniels - 3/5/2010

(publicado em paralelo n'O Insurgente)

o socialismo não é menos socialismo por ser democrático

A crise, o capitalismo e o intervencionismo de André Azevedo Alves no OrdemLivre.org:

Contrariamente ao que muitos liberais esperavam, desde a queda do muro de Berlim, as pulsões anticapitalistas aumentaram substancialmente. O colapso da URSS (e da maioria das suas ditaduras satélites) não foi visto pela maioria das pessoas como um triunfo do mercado livre mas sim como a derrota de um determinado modelo de socialismo assente no planeamento centralizado totalitário.

Paradoxalmente, o colapso dos principais expoentes mundiais do socialismo "real" coincidiu com o acomodamento de muitos dos defensores do liberalismo clássico aos consensos vigentes. O problema é que o colapso dos regimes socialistas totalitários em nada impediu a expansão contínua do intervencionismo estatal no âmbito dos modelos (mais ou menos) social-democratas que se tornaram hegemônicos nas economias desenvolvidas.

budgeting

Bad corporate governance oaths (2)

Na continuação de Bad corporate governance oaths, ainda a propósito do MBA Oath — An Impotent, Misguided Gesture:

the oath invites violation of fiduciary responsibilities. In many countries, board members and, as a consequence, managers have a fiduciary duty to maximize the wealth of the shareholders. None of them would accept that managers promote "social and environmental prosperity worldwide" as the HBS oath does.

the idea that we can prevent the next crisis simply because we sign an oath seems excessively naive. Rather than focusing on pledges, businesses should make sure that managers comply with their fiduciary and ethical responsibility to maximize the wealth of the people who pay their salaries, i.e., the shareholders.

The HBS oath aims to achieve exactly the opposite by including the whole world as a stakeholder.

###
BÓNUS: Harvard Business School-created MBA oath por John T. Reed:

Therefore I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term.

No. I will set my goals, whether they be long or short term, and they will relate to me, my family, friends, relatives, and colleagues, not “society.” The word “society” seems to have no meaning other than as leftist straw man to be beat up on or as an obfuscating all-purpose motive.

As I reconcile the interests of different constituencies

Constituencies? That a politician’s perspective. Like I said, this is politically-correct bullshit. You have legal and moral obligations to shareholders, colleagues, and customers, but you are not seeking their votes or affection like the MBA students who wrote this oath seem to be.

Ordem e Regularidade

Benoit Mandelbrot: Fractals and the art of roughness

o Homem Novo é uma ameba obediente

Pastores de almas por Alberto Illán Oviedo:

Si alguien se molesta en comparar esa izquierda de hace 30 años con la izquierda actual podría llegar a la conclusión de que es algo esquizofrénica.

Mientras en los años 70 y 80, el humo, el alcohol, las drogas y el desenfreno eran las constantes, en la actualidad, se tramitan leyes contra el tabaco, se sigue persiguiendo la droga que no se despenaliza y la publicidad de los licores se limita a sitios y zonas donde no molestan ni invitan al desenfreno etílico.

Mientras que en esa época la gente aprendía todo lo que hay que saber sobre el sexo de los amigos y amigas, .... hoy .... El sexo se ha convertido en un asunto de estado, de salud pública, donde cualquier cosa está permitida y a la vez prohibida, dependiendo de si molesta o no a nuestros egregios dignatarios.

Podría ser esquizofrenia, pero no lo es. Es simple ingeniería social. La meta del socialismo, ya sea la del comunismo más totalitario o la de la socialdemocracia más suave, es el paraíso en la Tierra y para eso necesita crear un hombre nuevo.

o keynesianismo falhou, vamos experimentar mais keynesianismo

make drinkers responsible

Mark Littlewood: Don't lecture the drinkers, just make them responsible:

If you drink yourself slowly to death over several decades and need costly long-term health care, I will pick up the bill too. If you commit a violent crime because you're drunk, you will be sent through the criminal justice system. In very extreme circumstances, you may even be sent to prison. In any event, the bill for your irresponsible activity is sent to me.

There cannot be an adult in Britain who is not aware that excessive consumption of alcohol can be damaging – in both the short and long term. So, let's simply make adults responsible for the decisions they make. If you need your stomach pumped because you drank 20 pints rather than two, then you should be footing the bill. If you can't hold down a job because you're permanently drunk or hungover, you need to live with the consequences.

Fighting the Planners

Hayek: Fighting the Planners
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

Somalia (3)

No seguimento de Somalia e Somalia (2),

Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After Government Collapse (PDF):

Harold Demsetz (1969) famously cautioned economists to avoid committing the “nirvana fallacy,” which compares an imperfect reality with a hypothetical ideal state. Instead we should compare the situation we confront with the relevant alternatives actually available to us. The plans for a path from here to there must be grounded in an assessment of how things were, how they are, and how they realistically could be. His caution is especially useful when considering reforms in the developing world and, as Coyne (2006) points out, for Somalia in articular.

.... Somalia’s past and present suggests it is unlikely a new central government, at least in the near future, would resemble anything like a constrained, supportive state .... The factional disagreements that led to civil war in the few years after government’s collapse remain strong. Any ruler to come to power from one of these groups would likely turn the state’s power against its rivals rather than to the good of the country .... any one faction gaining too much power could mean the virtual annihilation of the others.

God and the tsunami

animal sex (3)

No seguimento de animal sex (2), BP and the Obama Agenda:

One disturbing byproduct of the recent Gulf spill is the light it shed on the cozy relationship between BP and the Obama Administration. Despite the usual empty tough talk from the White House, the close association between the White House and BP is a commonly known fact inside the Beltway. The reality is this crisis has brought to light the codependency of BP and the Obama administration – each gaining from the others cooperation.

For instance, Obama is the top recipient of BP money over the past 20 years, and received the largest single donation from BP during the last presidential election. Ken Salazar’s Department of Interior is also known for its close ties with BP, including former company executive Sylvia Baca, who was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. Undersecretary of Energy Dr. Steven E. Koonin was BP’s chief scientist for four years. Additional Obama Administration/BP connections keep emerging, such as former lobbyist Hillary Rosen, who maintains close relationships with Congressional Democrats and now consults for BP. Additionally, close Obama supporter Tony Podesta has earned over $700,000 in lobbying fees from BP.

Keynesian Economics Is Wrong

Keynesian Economics Is Wrong: Bigger Gov't Is Not Stimulus

swine flu - went out like a piglet (5)

No seguimento de swine flu - went out like a piglet (4),

70 million swine flu vaccine doses wasted:

Despite grave warnings by public health officials last April, the swine flu epidemic never materialized, and in fact killed fewer people than the annual seasonal flu varieties -- about 12,000.

.... a World Health Organization advisor, Prof. Ulrich Keil, complained that by calling the early H1N1 outbreak a “pandemic,” countries around the world wasted precious public health money: "We know the great killers are hypertension, smoking, high cholesterol, high body mass index, physical inactivity and low fruit and vegetable intake....instead [governments] wasted huge amounts of money by investing in pandemic scenarios whose evidence base is weak."

The New Financial Regs Won’t Fix Anything

3 Reasons The New Financial Regs Won't Fix Anything