Peter Navarro on the Afghan War!

Originally posted on Peter Navarro's website in Sept' 09-
Excellent piece on ending the Afghan War!

Orange Grove: Get out of Afghanistan now
By PETER NAVARRO

2009-09-24 17:16:02

During my senior year in high school, in 1966-67, our local congressman came to speak to us soon-to-be-draftees about the necessity of the Vietnam War. His basic pitch was a frothy combination of Red menace, yellow peril, and domino theory. While not particularly versed in geopolitics at the time – although, as a paper boy delivering and regularly reading the Washington Post, I wasn't a complete ignoramus – the speech rang as hollow as a beer keg after a frat party.


Today, I get the same kind of hollowness in my gut every time I hear President Barack Obama and a gaggle of Democratic and Republican hawks offer eerily similar arguments for the Afghanistan war. Terrorism is the new Red menace. Yellow peril has morphed into radical Islam. Dominoes, perhaps surprisingly, are still dominoes. In fact, sober analysis of the two major arguments in support of the war leads me to the same conclusion as my gut – let's get the hell out.


Consider the first argument: Afghanistan must not be allowed to be a staging area for al-Qaida terrorists. Of course, it was from Afghan soil that Osama bin Laden oversaw the 9/11 attacks so this argument seems at first glance compelling. However, Afghanistan is now just one of many possible staging areas for al-Qaida. In fact, hot zone that Afghanistan is, it is now much easier for al-Qaida's decentralized networks to conduct operations in numerous other places, with Algeria, Somalia, and Yemen emerging as the newest strongholds. Why aren't we invading them?


The second pro-war argument is domino theory redux. If the Taliban and Islamic extremists once again control Afghanistan, they will spread their poison to neighboring Pakistan. If the domino Pakistan falls to Islamic extremists, they will inherit Pakistan's nuclear weapons capability and use it to attack Israel and the U.S.


This argument fails to acknowledge that America's presence in Afghanistan is inflaming tensions on Pakistan's border and doing more to destabilize the country than protect it. The broader important issue is whether the United States can, or should, baby-sit a country like Pakistan. After all, with its own standing army and a growing middle class, Pakistan should be able to protect its own territory and political and economic institutions.


Even if you buy the pro-war arguments, consider this: The war can never be won in any quick or decisive fashion – if at all. As the British learned in two wars with Afghanistan in the 1800s and the Soviets learned in their bloodbath of the 1980s, Afghanistan is no country at all. Rather, it's a diverse collection of primitive tribes occupying a harsh landscape pockmarked with tens of thousands of hiding places ideal for guerrilla warfare. On the quagmire scale, it rates a full 10 and makes Vietnam look like a cakewalk. Why we want to send American sons and daughters into that trap is the question for this age.


In fact, our very presence in Afghanistan (and Iraq) is doing more to help al-Qaida recruit new members and develop new military and terror tactics than any other event Osama Bin Laden could have dreamed up. While American troop numbers are constrained by both the size (and battle fatigue) of our military and what American political opinion will bear, al-Qaida has an ever-deepening well of recruits. Why we want to help al-Qaida build its network on the back of anti-American sentiment is a mystery.


The saddest fact is that our new president has taken ownership of this war less for strategic and military purposes and more to show his backbone. As a strong and early opponent of the Iraq war, Barack Obama had to protect his dovish flanks during the 2008 campaign by talking tough on Afghanistan. Now, as he gets deeper into the quagmire, the supreme irony is that he doesn't have the backbone to realize this is an unwinnable war without any compelling strategic rationale.
Navarro on TheStreet.com

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Published in August '09-South Park, the Nevada Senate Race, and the Political Cycle of Death!!

Trey Parker and Matt Stone brilliantly summed up the horrible choices (or rather lack of choices) the American public faces when going to the voting booth in their episode Douche vs. Turd. As a Nevada voter forced to choose between Harry Reid and Sharon Angle, I think the political parody is still timely and we must rescue ourselves from this vicious two party cycle if we are to stand even a chance against coming crises.
In the 2004 South Park episode, Douche vs. Turd, the school puts up two candidates for the next school mascot-a giant douche and a turd sandwich. One of the boys voices his disgust with these two options and is hounded out of town for voicing the obvious. After his adventures he sees that "every election is about a choice between a douche and a turd."

In 2010 Senate Campaign in Nevada, the two candidates who stand a chance at winning are Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Tea Party Favorite Sharon Angle. On one hand we have someone who voted for the Bankruptcy Bill in 2005 and has many pieces of legislation passed for a Democratic agenda by the House sit by the wayside because of the lack of a "supermajority" (despite George W. Bush getting everything his greedy corrupt heart wanted to when his party had nowhere near these numbers).

And on the other hand we have Sharon Angle, who seeks to implement "Biblical Law" (Strike 1 if you've ever actually read what's in that book and the trivial offenses for which it mandates death), supports eliminating Social Security and Medicare (Strike 2 if you have paid into these most of your adult life and shiver when Conservatives talk of scaling them down or eliminating them), and says that bringing industry to this state is "not her job" (Strike 3 because that is a direct quote)!

So I have to give the "I can't do anything because I don't have a supermajority" guy 6 more years or put in a woman whom I not only feel is an imbecile but wrong in pretty much every stance she takes. I have to say that I feel like a character in South Park!

And not only that, but both choices lead down a road that repeats history to the detriment of our lives, liberties and property. If history repeats itself and we are looking at a repeat of the 90's (a Democratic president being a rubber stamp for a Republican agenda), then the result will be a sequel to the Bush years when the Republicans regain control of the White House and all the death, tyranny and debt that entails.

I always felt there was an inherent dishonesty when Bill Clinton (and all who came after him) made a case for deficit reduction. Granted we had to cut back domestic programs (a Gingrich favorite) to get where there was a projected budget surplus in 2005. And those programs were cut back. But what happened to fiscal responsibility when Bush came to office? The deficit was run up to even beyond what it was in the Reagan years! Most of the money went to the DOD and it's lackeys. Defense contractors have never had better friends than George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden!

I'm old enough to remember the 1980 election. I remember Carter being killed in the campaign ads for the $73 billion dollar deficit in 1980. When Reagan got in, reducing the Deficit was so important that he ballooned it to an average of $167 billion per year of Reagan's administration (most of it spent on weapons). Deficits seem to be important only when the Democrats control the White House.

When we are being manipulated by fear into compromising our Constitution, when Defense Contractors are making out like bandits, and when Wall Street is getting handout after handout-deficits are not important. When we need our infrastructure updated and repaired, when businesses need to see activity so that they start hiring, when the whole economy needs to get people back to work with shovel ready projects so that then they would take their paychecks and spend them-deficits are important and must be reduced!

The double standard is not only disgusting but it produces unneeded deaths on a massive scale. Because of this double standard, as of this writing 4,732 US troops have died in an Iraq War fueled more by G.W.Bush's vanity, hunger for oil dominance, revenge for 9-11 and greedy Defense Contractors than any threat to the United States from Iraq. Because of this double standard, as of this writing 1991 US troops who should be alive today aren't because they died in a mismanaged conflict in Afghanistan that should have been over in Tora Bora in Dec 2001! And lest we forget, there are also 97,172-106,047 Iraqi civilians who should be alive but are not because their country became a battle zone for the past 8 years.

My point is that this dishonest double standard regarding the deficit is part of a cycle of death. One side, the ones who manipulate their followers with fear of Big Business and then gives Big Business (with maybe breaking up a monopoly or oligopoly as the exception) whatever they want, has strict limitations on what they can spend money on when in the White House. The other side, the ones who manipulate their followers with fear of Big Government and then grow the deficit and take away liberties, has no limitations on what they can spend as long as it kills.

And don't think we are immune as U.S. Citizens. As Dr. Phil said, "If they'll do it with you, they'll do it to you." Boehner wants to "reexamine the 14th Amendment" to determine if people he doesn't like can be stripped of their citizenship. He may turn into the next Speaker of the House. Cheney tied to override Posse Comitatus (the legal precedent that prevents US troops from being used domestically) so he could send troops to a US city. We are not immune from these people just because we live here!

George Orwell put it best in 1984-

" ...it does matter if the war is not real, or when it is that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchal society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation."

That declining standard of living that we are all so familiar with will only get worse as this cycle repeats itself. If you are outraged by the Douchebag, a vote for the Turd Sandwich will only bring death and debt to us so fast it will be as if Bush never left office. If you are outraged by the Turd Sandwich, you leave in power a Douchebag who sits in power ignoring the agenda you sent him there to fulfill. If you are like me, you are outraged at having to make such a horrible choice to begin with and watch with despair and disgust as we repeat the dishonest elective hypocritical cycle of Death!

Published in November '10-The Great Economist Quote Quiz

Can you differentiate between a quote from Adam Smith and a quote from Karl Marx? Would you know a Keynes quote from a Friedman quote? Let's find out.
The competing schools of economics can be a confusing contradictory cacophony of misinformation, distortions, huge errors, outright lies sitting side by side with solid facts. I have found some Libertarians whom I know personally arguing for the top-down autocratic ability of the Federal Government to arbitrarily change the contract and raise the age in which I collect Social Security. I have found adherents of Deregulation honestly tell me that the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act was not the cause of the Housing implosion. Banks (private institutions!) were issuing Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and buying them back in order to artificially prop up the prices caused by because of this deregulation, and I'm confronted with people who insist that it was "all the government's fault". We have people with such blind loyalty to their school of economics that they insist that we have more deregulation.

This has been an era of deregulation spawning scandal after crash after rewriting history (off the top of my head, Lincoln Savings and Loan, Enron, Tyco International, Adelphia, Peregrine Systems, WorldCom. Fannie-Mae, Freddie-Mac, AIG, Bear Stearns, British Petroleum, Xe-Blackwater, Halliburton are all modern stories of what people who implemented the those regulations were trying to prevent.) Isn't all of this a confirmation of Karl Marx's comments on Overproduction? ( I know, the modern financial press uses the word Bubble not Overproduction or Oversupply)

Regardless of your answer, I think you must agree that it is absolutely essential to know what you believe and why you believe it! It is very important to be able to sift disinformation, distortions and lies from facts. In that spirit, I've prepared a quiz of four great and very influential economists.

Your Choices are-

ADAM SMITH-Regarded as the father of Modern Capitalism for his work "Wealth of Nations". In his argument against the economic system of the day, mercantilism, he stressed a laissez-faire attitude which stated that the Crown or government should cease to limit imports and allow commerce to flourish. However, most modern free market advocates consistently ignore his criticism of permanent corporations, division of labor, imperialism, and business control of state policy in that same volume.

KARL MARX-Critic of 19th Century Capitalism. Held that Industrial Capitalism, unlike Market Capitalism, causes a great deal of harm because the worker is divorced from the profit of his labor. Warned against the Problem of Overproduction (or Bubbles) a century before Lincoln Savings and Loan, Enron, Tyco, Countrywide, AIG financial implosions.

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES- Author of "General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" and father of the Aggregate Demand Equation which, although he is personally vilified in many circles, is still used as the Macroeconomic standard to this day. An investor and British Lord whose Fund grew five-fold in a period of turmoil that included 2 World Wars and the Great Depression. Often regarded as a Communist or Socialist in some modern circles.

MILTON FRIEDMAN-Nobel Prize Winner and father of the Monetarist Economic School and the tax withholding system. Held that the Money Supply has a direct proportional relationship with the price level. Publicly advocated abolishing the Federal Reserve System, legalizing marijuana and prostitution, and a volunteer military.

1."Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

2. "Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

3."No society can be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable"

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

4."Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

5."To feel much for others and little for ourselves, to restrain our selfishness and exercise our benevolent affection, constitute the perfection of human nature."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

6."For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him"

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

7."The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

8."The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

9. "Democracy is the road to socialism."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

10."The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing policy of inflation, governments can confiscate secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of its citizens."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

11. "All money is a matter of belief."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

12."The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

13. "The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people."

____ A Adam Smith

____ B Karl Marx

____ C John Maynard Keynes

____ D Milton Friedman

We all should fearlessly ask ourselves what we believe and why we believe it. That goes double for the economic schools of thought we subscribe to. It was not that long ago that free market advocates were being quoted by predatory lenders and laying the groundwork for the malaise we see now. The large economic concepts do affect our lives, and we should be very skeptical of all claims made on authority. There were people, I mean supposedly responsible adults, like Kevin "Dow 36,000 by 2008" Hassett, who were claiming with complete authority that there was no housing bubble back when CDOs were being sold by banks to banks to prop up prices.

Mr. Hassett, by the way, was an economic advisor to the McCain campaign. He would have influenced policy if Obama had not been elected.That's right, we came that close to having a man who didn't see or care about the Housing Bubble when it was forming in 2003 and saw the Dow going to 36,000 by 2008 at the hieght of the dot bomb bust in 2000 influencing policy during the height of the Great Recession!

These concepts affect our lives and even if you don't agree with Keynes or Von Mises-it is important to know what you believe and why you believe it!

And here are the Answers

Adam Smith wrote #1, #3, #5, and #11

Karl Marx wrote #6, #9 and #13

John Maynard Keynes wrote #4, #7, #10, and # 12

Milton Friedman wrote #2, and #8

I am not a teacher of any sort. Any grade or scale I offered you on this quiz would be meaningless. If you felt the need to cheat and indulged you have admitted to yourself the unfamiliarity with these large economic concepts.

The worst thing we can do is allow the Noise Machine to rob words like "Socialist", "Fascist", "Capitalist" and "Bubble" of their meaning.

To allow this is to be at the mercy of charlatans and crackpots to look at one side of the Mixed Capitalist situation we find our selves in and see "Government bad-Private sector good".

So I'll close with one of my favorite quotes, not from an Economist but from George Clinton's P-Funk All Stars-

"My mind is mine and mine my mind will always stay! No way of life, no man no law's gonna take it away"

Parliament-"Fantasy is Reality"

Published in November '10-Sorry, Mr. Paul. It's not the Death of Keynesism, it's the old Bait and Switch!

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Published in September '10-We should implement Asimov's 3 laws to protect us from our inhuman creations-not robots but corporations.

The Citizen's United Supreme Court decision may unleash the legal equivalent of Brainiac and Ultron upon our country. We can thwart this by implementing the protections Issac Asimov recommended and applying them to these newly legal persons, the 3 laws of Robotics.
When it comes to a precaution against the human race creating something that is not human, it can not control and is potentially lethal to us, Asimov recommended the 3 laws of robotics to guard against accidentally creating a monster. Why would we, as a species, create something that had more power than we did, that had the potential to kill us and which we did not control?

The 3 Laws of Robotics are, for those unfamiliar with Asimov, as follows-

1.A robot may not kill or injure a human being or through inaction cause a human being to come to harm.

2.A robot must obey orders except when in conflict with the 1st law.

3.A robot must protect it's own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the 1st or 2nd law.

Now if you replace the word robot with the word corporation in the above list, you have a very reasonable approach to dealing with the arch betrayal of the US people and the US Constitution that the Supreme Court committed on the 21st of January of this year. That Constitution, by the way, doesn't start out with "We the Robots" any more than it starts out with "We the Corporations"! And considering that both robots and corporations are creations of human beings, most corporations with considerable more legal power than the average human being, that's a good thing. We, the People of the United States, must keep it that way.

A staple of science fiction has long been the evil robot. SkyNet, Ultron, Bender, Lore, Nomad, and Brainiac are in our collective consciousness and what fantastic villains they do make. Why is it that when we see an inhuman oppressive machine fight, torture, and sometimes kill human beings in science fiction we cheer for their defeat but when it comes to the inhuman oppressive machinery of a health insurance company, a defense contractor, or a coal company in real life some of us hit the streets in an effort to insure this machine's "rights" are not even mildly compromised.

And if this machine is to have the same rights as a human being, doesn't it follow that we should inquire, "What kind of a person is a corporation?" In the film, The Corporation, by Mark Achbar, this question was posed and, using the World Health Organization guidelines, they came up with a personality profile that fits a psychopath.

And that leads to another question, "Wouldn't it be foolhardy of us to let Blackwater, Union Carbide, Halliburton subsidiary Kellog, Brown, and Root and the next Enron enjoy the same legal rights as we enjoy?"

We would not do that for known violators of the 3 Robotic laws- Ultron, Lore, and Brainiac. Unless we all work together and reverse the Citizen's United decision, we embrace a future where inhuman forces with a proven record for causing harm to humans are subjugating us worse that Ultron, Lore, and Brainiac would be if they granted citizenship.

Kellog, Brown, and Root has enjoyed no bid contracts and moved itself offshore to Dubai, a Muslim city, when it's thefts and incompetence at the expense of Iraqi civilians and our troops in post Invasion Iraq proved excessive. Blackwater has literally gotten away with murder. Union Carbide showed a callous disregard for the citizen's of Bophal when that Indian city lost more lives in that accident than we lost on 9/11. And the financial forces that brought about the Enron debacle were never corrected so we wound up with a worse mess in 2008. And now, they are actively lobbying against financial reform. Honestly, we'd be safer with Ultron and Brainiac!

How do we start to defend ourselves against this monstrous creation of ours? If we apply Asimov's three laws to corporations it becomes easy! As a thought experiment, let's explore the consequences

1. A corporation may not kill or injure a human being or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. That means the current Health Care proposal of doing away with the pre existing conditions would be only the beginning (which is a good thing and long overdue). It also means that DynCorp can't be a shadow military for US State Dept backed genocide and chemical warfare in Columbia anymore. It also means that any corporation that moves jobs oversees so that it doesn't have to comply with OSHA standards can keep those jobs here at home where they belong. And those are just the beginning. That's just 3 examples I can come up with off the top of my head.
2. A corporation must obey orders except when conflicting with the 1st law. Here's where I expect to win over some conservatives. I keep hearing the refrain "Don't pass new laws, just enforce what's already on the books!" when it comes to variety of topics. This may vary state by state so I'll just stick with my own, Nevada Revised Statute 78.060 subsection (f) already provides for Asmovian law #2. It reads- "Any corporation organized under the provisions of this chapter: To make bylaws not inconsistent with the constitution or laws of the United States, or of this state, for the management, regulation and government of its affairs and property, the transfer of its stock, the transaction of its business, and the calling and holding of meetings of its stockholders." It's already there. If a corporation knowingly breaks the law, it sacrifices it's legal standing (at least in Nevada). Now all that has to happen is for some teeth to be put behind this law. That way the next time an executive wants to knowingly implement a policy that will cost human life because settling the lawsuits would be cheaper, he could wind up costing the shareholders everything. They would lose their corporate personhood because of a law that's already on the books.
3. A corporation must protect its own existence as long as such protection doesn't interfere with the 1st or 2nd law. If a corporation knowingly endangers or harms any human life, it may not use its resources to defend itself. It loses the human right of self-defense when it has become a threat. That would mean no think tanks financed by said company could try to spin a positive face on this monster, no elite corporate law firms could obstruct an investigation, no appeals trying to whittle down the sum of a judgment when a jury of humans decided that a punitive damage is in order.

The Citizen's United decision isn't two months old. The effects are not being felt yet. And granted in an atmosphere of Willie Horton ad style politics it is often difficult to imagine how political discourse in this country can sink any lower. But only a few people could imagine the dishonest intellectual sewer that would be opened up by passage of the 1996 Telecommunications bill. And without that bill, we would have no Fox News today.

I don't think that I could find one person who calls himself a libertarian that would advocate that the rights of a robot were equal to or superceded the rights of a human being. Not even the most tortured logic or bastardized quote would be offered to imply that Ultron or any other robot should not even be mildly inconvenienced if he wished to buy airtime during an election to further his nefarious schemes. But change the word robot to corporation and tortured ideological arguments return to assure that something inhuman is not mildly inconvenienced!

Would we let Ultron, Brainiac or Lore devote their considerable resources to interfering in an election? They are not human so of course we wouldn't. But the Citizen's United decision says inhuman corporations have the same rights as human beings and can pour their considerable resources into the election process.

This is a modest proposal to be sure. But in science fiction, the difference between a good robot like Adam Link or a Data and a bad robot like Ultron or Lore is the restraint of the 3 Laws or something like them. The results of elections can be the difference between life and death for many humans. A corporation would be bound not to interfere in any election if we had the wisdom to implement the equivalent of Asimov's 3 laws on our inhuman and dangerous creation.

It gets down to where your loyalty is. Is it with the human race or with Ultron? Which side are you on, boy, which side are you on?

Published in June '10-IS THERE ANY WAY OF SPREADING BONEITUS TO OTHERS ON WALL STREET?

As the third and final installment in my Futurama series, I call attention to That Guy from the episode Future Stock, a resurrected 80's style financial whiz and his untimely death from the unfortunately fictional disease Boneitus. I'm looking at the behavior of Wall Street lately and sincerely wishing someone would spread boneitus to people like That Guy.
"Fry, I'm an 80's guy. Friendship to me means that for 2 bucks I'd beat you with a pool stick until you got detached retinas."-That Guy (a.k.a. Steve Castle)

Okay, I know in advance that I publish this in a Libertarian forum and the potential consequences of criticizing the Free Market on these pages are bad. And I already realize that anything offered by any cartoon is going to be more caricature than character. Hence it is unfair for me to take Steve Castle (in the episode in question he was known only as That Guy), and say he is typical of Wall Street. In the course of the episode, he died a very funny death from boneitus, the disease he had himself cryogenically frozen to avoid after he engineered a hostile takeover of the company that was working on a cure (and pocketing a cool 100 million).

Yes, it would be unfair of me to lump in all of Wall Street with this caricature. Maybe I shouldn't give examples like the people who lost everything in the Enron or World Com or Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers or 80's S&L debacles and point out that it's people like That Guy (Steve Castle) who are directly responsible! So I won't.

I'll just point out that despite the damage done to our economy by this entire culture of shortsighted greedy traders; Libertarians still can make a persuasive case for fiscal conservatism. I don't think anyone could miss the foreclosures, unemployment and poverty that are rampant today. There is just a much higher percentage of them dragging down the economy.

But this proves the point of the danger and potential abuses of fiat currency and central banking. Alan Greenspan made money available at a negative interest rate when adjusted for inflation. Free money was a betrayal of his supposed Libertarian principles. Who knows what he was thinking when he was making those decisions. Who cares, the results of this were tragically inflicted on people who believed hype from people like Greenspan and That Guy (Steve Castle).

And it was people like That Guy (Steve Castle) who were playing hard and fast with the rules driving housing prices up beyond what was reasonably affordable.

I've heard one of the most eloquent local Libertarian speakers say that in spite of all of this we want avoid Government Price Controls. He's actually preaching to the choir to me on this one. The argument was that it only causes shortages where there shouldn't be shortages and surpluses where there shouldn't be surpluses. However, it is seldom one word is ever said about Price Controlling or Price Fixing when the Free Market does it.

Do you feel that the Free Market never indulges in Price Controls?

Please allow me to introduce you to a form of Free Market Competition known as Oligopoly. Oligopolies exist when you have a handful of firms producing from 75%-100% of the Marketshare. In this kind of Marketplace, they are the one who establish the price-a phenomenon known as being a Price Maker. Examples are Batteries, an industry where Four companies: Duracell, Eveready, Ray-O-Vac, and Kodak control 94% of the Marketplace and Toothpaste where another Four companies: Proctor & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Lever Bros, and Beecham control 91% of the marketplace. And you will notice that the prices for these products don't really vary that nuch when you shop for them. When's the last tine you saw a hot new toothpaste or battery try to capture marketshare by dramatically reducing its price. You don't see new brands for $0.50 when you shop for toothpaste do you?

Well, there's a good reason. Such forms of Oligopolistic competition encourage collusion, both legal and illegal, between firms so that no outsiders are allowed to infringe on their marketshare and a few companies are able to control production and pricing.

In the Futurama episode in question, Mom, the head of Momcorp, is so afraid of competition that she is willing to buy the Planet Express delivery company That Guy (Steve Castle) is running rather than give up her control over price and production. This had the effect of making everybody who held onto his or her stock momentarily rich until Phillip Fry opened his big mouth.

My point is that if you really are fiscally conservative, private sector price controls particularly the illegal kind, should be just as much an abomination to you as government price controls. And the system really isn't set up in a way to discourage this in big companies that are Price Makers. Just the opposite, if you are a CEO of a monopoly or an oligopolic company, there is pressure on you to increase earnings no matter what. Even if it's a secret illegal meeting in Las Vegas during a trade show with bigwigs from your competition where you decide on what price and production should be, you feel pressure to do it. And if you won't for ethical reasons, one of your executive vice presidents will. And the guy putting pressure on you to do behave this way probably thinks and behaves a lot like That Guy (Steve Castle).

The best argument for Libertarian thought I've ever read was from Michael Shermer in his book Mind of the Market. He is very clear on the role of government as the creator of a level playing field where the Free Market can flourish. To his credit, he has denounced the safety and environmental shortcuts indulged in Massey Energy and BP that have lead to disaster and death.

He makes the case that bottom up capitalism is easier to change (because of marketplace pressures) when a mistake is made. Top down government is very difficult to change once legislation is enacted, but still plays a vital role in the marketplace. The purpose of government is to ensure a level playing field so that markets can thrive. It's my understanding that this mirrors the thesis of Ludwig Von Mises, the father of Austrian Economics.

If that's the case, then we're comparing apples and oranges when we discuss the merits of Austrian Economics and letting sociopaths in executive offices, like those whom That Guy (Steve Castle) was a parody of, fix prices and bribe legislators for ideological reasons only. Those are two different proposals!

By the way, in the process of enacting Financial Reform, Wall Street lobbyists have recently proved Democrats can be bribed just as easy as Republicans can. It was a Democrat, not a Republican, who has been sabotaging reform legislation and enabling the next big financial crisis. An amendment submitted by Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) would eliminate an Obama administration-supported proposal to protect average investors from unscrupulous brokers on Wall Street just like the kind parodied in Futurama as That Guy (Steve Castle). The move puts the entire Financial Reform bill into joke status. Tim Johnson's actions undercut a move to require brokers to act in the best interest of their clients. While financial advisors are already legally bound to do this, huge investment firms like Goldman Sachs are not! The average guy who got his Series 7 license and is acting on behalf of his investors is not the one who deserves boneitus. That Guy (Steve Castle) does deserve the horrible cartoonish death of boneitus!

And Democratic Senator Tim Johnson just enabled That Guy (Steve Castle) to continue to risk huge companies at taxpayer expense, while the Senate is debating Financial Reform. He told the world that despite the horrendous recent record of Wall Street, Big Financial Firms should get to play by different rules than the ones average investors have to play by.

I don't rejoice in anyone's death. A cartoon's death is always reversible. But there are those in real life whose passing leaves the world a better place (Adolph Hitler, Ayatollah Khomeni, Ted Bundy, just to name a few off the top of my head). I feel the same way about That Guy (Steve Castle) and his real life counterparts. I think Morrisey, of the band the Smiths said it best in the song Unhappy Birthday-"...You're evil and you lie. And if you should die, I may feel slightly sad, but I won't cry".

I wouldn't cry if someone found a way to spread boneitus to those who cut corners regarding worker safety and environmental protections in the two recent lethal disasters. Nor would I cry if suddenly executive officers had to pay for price-fixing in the marketplace with a bad case of boneitus. And unfortunately, if a fictional disease can't make these people behave, it looks like the only entity with enough power to do so is the government a.k.a. We, the People.

Published in June '10-JACK JOHNSON OR JOHN JACKSON-THE CHOICE IS OURS!

The 2nd in a three part series celebrating the return of Futurama by using its imagery to point out some of the flaws in our political economic idiocracy, we look at the candidates for election in the Futurama episode A Head in the Polls and the lack of choice we have when we go to the ballot box.
They appeared in only one episode as the two mainstream candidates representing the Fingerlicans and Tastycrat parties. But it was a very accurate parody of the lack of choice we Americans face come election time. The show portrays two clones running for President in the General Election. Leela warns not to let the identical DNA fool you, they differ on some key issues. They are able to issue such bold statements during election time as "I'm against those things that everybody hates!" and " I agree with everything my opponent just said".

And we have very similar bland and lackluster choices every election cycle.

For example, during the last election, the turning point came when McCain gave a speech pronouncing the economy as fundamentally strong on the same day the Dow had a record drop in value. The response was a proposal to suspend the campaigns and deal with the crisis. What was the way of dealing with the crisis? Hank Paulson created the TARP, Troubled Asset Relief Program, or 700 billion of dollars of our tax money given to institutions like AIG that made the bets/option trades to pay of Goldman Sachs if the economy went in the tank. I'm glad they avoided massive bank failures that we were looking at and thus another Depression, but that's not my point.

The point is that both candidates voted for this bailout during the election. McCain was even taking money from Fannie Mae during the campaign while it was failing. As deeply unpopular as this use of the taxpayer money was, there was no choice offered between the two major candidates. You can have this candidate who voted for the bailout while denouncing the need for it or the other candidate who voted for the bailout while denouncing the need for it. If you thought as the marginalized far left did, that the money could be better spent helping out troubled homeowners directly for less money you had the choice of being ignored or of being brushed aside. If you thought as the marginalized far right did that the marketplace has spoken and these institutions should fail, damn the consequences, well, you had the choice to be condescended to or to be talked down to. Do you want to be ignored or brushed aside? Do you wish to be condescended to or be talked down to? It's completely up to you, the voter/citizen/taxpayer.

And as hard as Sarah Palin is railing against the bailout now, when she was on the ballot she went along with it as part of the McCain ticket, saying at the time "inaction was not an option."

Both John Jackson and Jack Johnson seem to have been for the bailout. And that's not an isolated incident. We find the same thing on issue after issue election after election.

Ron Paul was very vocal (and very correct) when it came to criticism of President Bush during the Republican debates. As a matter of fact the Democrats took a lesson from the embarrassing smackdown Paul had given his fellow Republicans and pulled strings to censor one of it's own candidates with a knack for embarrassing Status Quo deadwood during the debates, Dennis Kucinich.

They did not want there to be an actual choice presented to voters.The three pre-approved choices were Hillary Clinton, Barry Obama, and John Edwards. Dennis Kucinich was invited to the Nevada primary debates in Las Vegas and NBC had told him that he had met requirements to be included. Rather than include a candidate that brings up Hillary's vote for the Iraq War, Barry's corporate sponsors, and John Edwards' lack of any bold stand on any issue, forces in the Nevada Democratic party had NBC change the requirements and uninvite/censor Dennis Kuccinich.

Paul and Kuccinich (neither of whom voted for the bailout) if they had won the nomination of either party would have been a welcome change from the Jack Johnson/John Jackson dichotomy we usually get. And either one of them would have put in a superior administration compared to what we wound up with.

Democratic or Republican, the two major parties are notorious for installing machinery after an election that rolls over and gives lobbyists everything they want. That's why, prior to the BP Oil Spill, Barack Obama was comfortable giving the middle finger to every environmentalist that canvassed for him in 2008 and state that he was going to be expanding oil drilling. Apparently the potential votes of people who hate him and didn't vote for him are more important than the votes of people who actually did.

The only difference is the manipulative demagoguery that is indulged in come election time. One side manipulates its base with fear of Big Business, the other side manipulates its base with fear of Big Government. All of which is well and good during the primaries provided you don't say anything of relevance. If you do, you can be censored by having the rules of who gets to debate change at the last minute. But after the primary, it devolves into a PR campaign that focuses on the personality and avoids issues.

How do they stand up when actually elected?

Well, the Democrats fight Big Business so much that they "fix" Health Care by requiring people to purchase from the industry that is causing the problems. Clinton favored big agribusiness over the family farmer. He lobbied NAFTA into law against labor, consumer, environmental and human rights groups. Gifts of land in Mexico to Agribusiness are a huge source of the lack of work in Mexico and immigration into the United States.

Which brings us to Republicans and their fight against Big Government. NAFTA, WTO, CAFTA also have huge amounts of support on the Right. Throw in a lot of taxpayer subsidies for Corporations throwing people off their land in Mexico and you can expect to find the predictable Free Market rhetoric not far away. And when those people immigrate to Arizona you have conservative hypocrites saying that the Constitution doesn't mean what it actually says when it comes to a US Citizen who is poor and Latino. Poor Latino US Citizens have already been detained while they are forced by the state to prove their citizenship in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Then there are the Bush-era illegal warantless wiretaps, Military Commissions Act of 2006 that took away your right to habeus corpus (Obama has not repealed this thus far),The REAL ID act (nothing says getting Big Government out of my life better than longer lines at the DMV), and Cheney saying he wanted to ignore the Posse-Comitatus decision and send troops to a US City.

And this is typical of our choices at pretty much every election for every Federal office. Do you want John Jackson, the Fingerlican who tells you pleasant but manipulative falsehoods about protecting you from Big Government? Or would you prefer Jack Johnson, the Tastycrat who tells you pleasant but manipulative falsehhoods about protecting you from Big Business? The choice is yours.