Frum: There is no 'libertarian' movement

I hate to use the term "libertards," but... if the orthopedic shoe fits.... 

Why the 'Libertarian Moment' Isn't Really Happening

By David Frum

August 11, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/the-illusion-of-a-libertarian-moment/375844/?single_page=true

Ames: Apple, Google, Adobe, Pixar colluded to depress tech wages

Ever trenchant muckracker Mark Ames reveals here that tech giants like Apple and Google not only outsource their manufacturing to suicidal sweatshops in China that revolt against their masters, not only do they avoid U.S. taxes by registering in Ireland, they also conspired to hold down wages for U.S. tech workers, the alleged winners in this whole globalized, "We got the brains, you got the brawn" value chain. 

Tell me again why we celebrate these "American" companies?  

The Techtopus: How Silicon Valley’s most celebrated CEOs conspired to drive down 100,000 tech engineers’ wages

By Mark Ames

January 23, 2014 | Pando Daily

URL: http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/

UPDATE: There's this far-right libertarian Nazi that I correspond with, he says he's a millionaire, let's call him Old Dirty Bastard, who responded to this post. I think this thread is pretty instructive for all you not-so-crazy folks, and shows why we need unions and collective bargaining to protect us from the ODBs of the "free market":

(ODB): Wake up and smell the coffee---it's been happening forever. They are dumb if they don't get their best deal. They do it to states by incorporating in states like Nevada also.

(Me): Employers have always colluded to keep wages down in a given sector? Did you read the article?  You don't even believe your own libertarian mumbo-jumbo!  What a cynic you are! Don't preach to me anymore about your free-market beliefs, etc. because you believe in the Law of the Jungle, where Might Makes Right. 

(ODB): Explain the difference between free market and the law of the jungle. I do not see it

(Me): That's your definition of libertarianism.  The Sherman Anti-Trust Act, Teddy Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland... they were all long-haired hippy commies "ruining" the free market.  There's no use arguing with you, you are so far to the right that you're back on the left with Hitler and Pinochet. 

UPDATE (20.02.2014): Mark Ames followed up his original report with more court documents and e-mails, this time between Apple's Steve Jobs -- "an American hero" -- and Palm's Edward Colligan: "Steve Jobs threatened Palm’s CEO, plainly and directly, court documents reveal."

Black: Conservatives should back Glass-Steagall

My man Bill Black explains why real conservatives should support re-instituting Glass-Steagall.  Bottom line: if President Obama is against it, they ought to be for it!

Conservatives and Libertarians should Support the Return of Glass-Steagall

By William K. Black

July 21, 2013 | New Economic Perspectives

Glass-Steagall prevented a classic conflict of interest that we know frequently arises in the real world.  Commercial banks are subsidized through federal deposit insurance.  Most economists support providing deposit insurance to commercial banks for relatively smaller depositors.  I am not aware of any economists who support federal “deposit” insurance for the customers of investment banks or the creditors of non-financial businesses.

It violates core principles of conservatism and libertarianism to extend the federal subsidy provided to commercial banks via deposit insurance to allow that subsidy to extend to non-banking operations.  Absent Glass-Steagall, banks could purchase anything from an aluminum company to a fast food franchise and (indirectly) fund its acquisitions and operations with federally-subsidized deposits.  If you run an independent aluminum company or fast food franchise do you want to have to compete with a federally-subsidized rival?

Deposit insurance is a material federal subsidy, but it pales in comparison to the implicit federal subsidy we provide to systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) (so-called “too big to fail” banks).  The SDIs are precisely the banks most likely to purchase non-commercial banks. The general creditors of SDIs are protected against all loss so they funds to SDIs at a substantially lower interest rate than smaller competitors.  The largest SDIs are commercial banks that get both the explicit subsidy of federal deposit insurance and the larger subsidy unique to SDIs.

No conservative or libertarian should want the SDIs to maintain their political and economic dominance.  The SDIs’ dominance comes about not due to their efficiency but their size and the size of their lobbying wallet and force that allows them to extort greater federal subsidies than their rivals.  If conservatives and libertarians have any uncertainty about their position on Glass-Steagall they should consider these facts: (1) President Obama opposes ending the SDIs, (2) has done nothing effective to end the large federal subsidy provided to the SDIs, and (3) opposes bringing back Glass-Steagall and removing the explicit federal subsidy to banks that indirectly provides a competitive advantage to their commercial affiliates.

The (international) battle for RonPaul.com

Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters? Nope, not if you're Ron Paul. Then you go whining to the United Nations like a hypocritical little bitch.  

Forget what I wrote earlier about Ron Paul's consistency. 

Ron Paul Calls on United Nations (Which He Doesn’t Believe In) to Confiscate RonPaul.Com

By Max Rivlin-Nadler

February 9, 2013 | Gawker

In 2008, a group of Ron Paul supporters founded RonPaul.com, a Ron Paul fan-site that became one of the leading sources for information about and support for the perennial Libertarian presidential candidate. The creators of the site "put our lives on hold and invested 5 years of hard work into Ron Paul, RonPaul.com and Ron Paul 2012." His presidential campaign fell short, but the enthusiasm lived on as supporters continued to rally around this free enterprise Messiah.

Yesterday morning, Ron Paul repaid their support by filing a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization, an agency of Paul's much-reviled United Nations, seeking the expropriation of both RonPaul.com and RonPaul.org from his supporters without any compensation.

The editors of RonPaul.com explained the situation,

Last month, after Ron Paul expressed regret on the Alex Jones show over not owning RonPaul.com (in an interview titled "Ron Paul: The Internet Is Our Last Chance to Awaken America"), dozens of supporters urged us to contact Ron Paul to work out a deal.

We sent Ron Paul the following respectful offer [View/Download PDF File], explaining that we'd prefer to keep RonPaul.com due to reasons explained in our letter.

At the same time we offered him RonPaul.org as a free gift so we could keep using RonPaul.com and he wouldn't have to use something like RonPaulsHomePage.com.

Ron Paul rejected their offer. They then told Paul exactly how much their site was worth:

Our offer went on to explain that in case Ron Paul insisted on obtaining RonPaul.com, we would prepare a complete liberty package consisting of RonPaul.com and our 170k mailing list.

The value we put on the deal was $250k; we are getting our mailing list appraised right now but we are confident it is easily worth more than $250k all by itself.

Their offer is consistent with their beliefs: In Libertarianism, nothing is free, except Freedom, which isn't really all that free anyway. What happened next is outstanding: instead of engaging in Free Market bargaining, Ron Paul (RON PAUL) appealed to an international governmental organization for help.

The editors of RonPaul.com have reprinted some very choice words that Paul had to say about the United Nations while he was in office:

Those bureaucrats are not satisfied by meddling only in international disputes, however. The UN increasingly wants to influence our domestic environmental, trade, labor, tax, and gun laws. Its global planners fully intend to expand the UN into a true world government, complete with taxes, courts, and a standing army. This is not an alarmist statement; these facts are readily promoted on the UN's own website. UN planners do not care about national sovereignty; in fact they are actively hostile to it. They correctly view it as an obstacle to their plans. They simply aren't interested in our Constitution and republican form of government.

The choice is very clear: we either follow the Constitution or submit to UN global governance. American national sovereignty cannot survive if we allow our domestic laws to be crafted by an international body. This needs to be stated publicly more often. If we continue down the UN path, America as we know it will cease to exist.

Down is up. Cats are doing dogs. Ron Paul has asked the United Nations for help.

Sandy relief vote shows the New GOP's true colors

You can criticize 67 "No" votes in the House of Representatives -- all Republicans -- against the Superstorm Sandy relief bill that passed unanimously in the Senate on a few grounds. Take your pick:

Man-made global warming. Total free-market fail: we're consuming too much, using too many fossil fuels, and Sandy is the blowback (pun intended). How are free enterprise and hands-off government supposed to deal with this? Republicans' reply: they're not. Learn to swim. That goes for your house and belongings, too.

If, "You made your bed [by consuming too much], now swim in it," was their answer, I might give them some points for scientific principle, but that's not their point of view. In their world, free markets are supposed to fix everything.

Not MMGW. Ditto the above. Although we didn't do anything wrong and burning everything we can dig out of the ground has no effect on our climate, nevertheless, the climate inextricably smacked us down and it's beyond the power of rugged individualists or "free markets" to fix the damage in a time frame and a cost that's allocable and acceptable. So then what?  [Crickets chirping.]

Government exists to keep us safe. So... a super storm that knocks out basic services in the Center of the Universe, New York City, doesn't meet that standard?  So WTF is government for then? To dole out radio spectrum frequencies to Clear Channel?

So by Republicans' logic and ours, opposing relief for victims of Sandy makes no sense. So what is their logic, if any? It's simple: government shouldn't do jack, ever, except fight the Nazis and maybe some bearded baddies who live in caves 5,000 miles away. Er, uh... just like the Founding Fathers wanted.

Even the next GOP Presidential nominee unloaded on Speaker Boehner and the House GOP for its failure to act.

This is an object lesson, folks. The GOP is being taken over by a "devil-take-the-hindmost" philosophy, otherwise known as libertarianism. (But with the 2 P's -- pot and prostitution -- to make it make this jagged pill more palatable to youths and corporate hotshots.)  Don't be fooled!

The temporary triumph of the Tea Party

Here's an interesting take on the Tea Party movement:

The twist in the Obama-era is that some of the conservative backlash has been directed inward. This is because the right needed a way to explain how a far-left anti-American ideologue like Obama could have won 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes in 2008. What they settled on was an indictment of George W. Bush’s big government conservatism; the idea, basically, was that Bush had given their movement a bad name with his big spending and massive deficits, angering the masses and rendering them vulnerable to Obama’s deceptive charms. And the problem hadn’t just been Bush – it had been every Republican in office who’d abided his expansion of government, his deals with Democrats, his Wall Street bailout and all the rest.

Thus did the Tea Party movement represent a two-front war – one a conventional one against the Democratic president, and the other a new one against any “impure” Republicans.

But I have a slightly different take. 

In politics, power is not always about numbers, it's about intensity. At the base level, at the grassroots of the GOP, the Tea Party movement is still the most intense. These folks -- mostly older white men, well off -- are still attending weekly meetings, publishing newsletters, attending local hearings, scrutinizing candidates, etc.  And they are totally supported by talk radio, which sees in them its core audience who is at once an echo and an amplifier of every disproved and crazy conservative idea to come down the pike the past 20 years.  And so big-time Republican politicians ignore them at their peril. 

Way above them, we have big-money, ego-driven right-wing donors like the Koch brothers, Peter Thiel, Sheldon Adelson, et al, who basically subscribe to the Tea Party philosophy of small government with government-enforced Christian morality. 

In the middle are caught the actual majority of Republicans (let's call them fiscally conservative, morally ambivalent) who are hesitant to criticize the Tea Parties whom they mostly agree with and want to defend against unflattering portrayals in the mainstream "liberal" media; and who either don't understand, or don't see anything wrong with, the big-money donors who wildly skew our politics in their favor.

The upshot is that the Tea Parties are stronger in the GOP than their numbers might suggest because they have the hard-core conservative minority supporting the base, and the nutjob, let's-go-Galt, libertarian billionaires at the top throwing silly amounts of money at elections.  

Meanwhile, we all know how well Tea Party-affiliated candidates fared in the November 2012 elections.

The upshot for Democrats is: let this crazy drama play itself out. These are the pathetic death throes of a sick, wounded animal. We shouldn't seek to commiserate with the GOP, or advise it, or even hasten its demise... for who knows what will succeed it? 

Nay, we should relish this last "rage against the dying of the light" in the Republican party, since it's sure to garner us a few more elections and delay the advent of the more libertarian-leaning party that will take the GOP's place in U.S. politics and might possibly be much, much worse....

Triumph of the Tea Party mindset

By Steve Kornacki

December 27, 2012 | Salon

URL: http://www.salon.com/2012/12/27/triumph_of_the_tea_party_mindset/

Ames: 'Libertarianism' started by Big Business lobbyists

This one's worth re-posting in full, since libertarianism -- or somebody's naive understanding of it -- is making something of a comeback lately.  

At the heart of libertarianism is a disdain for democracy and an abiding belief in the right of corporations to rule the nation.  

Think what Ames revealed history is telling us: in 1946, 11 years before Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the real-life titans of corporate America were already pooling their funds and lobbying the hell out of the U.S. Congress in the guise of a "think tank."  And their pseudo-intellectual front for corporate lobbying has grown tremendously in size and influence since then.

So either Big Business has been "under siege" for the past 65 years... or else they've been in control all along, outspending and out lobbying everybody else, to their benefit.  It can't be both.  If you're not sure what's true, just remember this quote from a Congressional Committee looking into libertarian lobbying in 1946:  "It is ... difficult to imagine that the nation’s largest corporations would subsidize the entire [think tank] venture if they did not anticipate that it would pay solid, long-range legislative dividends."

When Congress Busted Milton Friedman (And Libertarianism Was Created By Big Business Business Lobbyists)

By Mark Ames

November 16, 2012 | NSFW Corporation

Last Friday, November 9, saw the big “Milton Friedman Centennial” celebration at the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. It was a big day for fans of one of the Founding Fathers of neoliberal/libertarian free-market ideology, and those fans are legion on both sides of the narrow Establishment divide —as Obama’s economy czar Larry Summers wrote in 2006, “Any honest Democrat will admit that we are all Friedmanites now.”

One episode in Milton Friedman’s career not celebrated (or even acknowledged) at last week’s centennial took place in 1946, the same year Friedman began peddling his pro-business “free market economics” ideology.

According to Congressional hearings on illegal lobbying activities '46 was the year that Milton Friedman and his U Chicago cohort George Stigler arranged an under-the-table deal with a Washington lobbying executive to pump out covert propaganda for the national real estate lobby in exchange for a hefty payout, the terms of which were never meant to be released to the public.

The arrangement between Friedman and Stigler with the Washington real estate lobbyist was finally revealed during he Buchanan Committee hearings on illegal lobbying activities in 1950. But then it was almost entirely forgotten, including apparently by those celebrating the “Milton Friedman Centennial” last week in Chicago.

I only came across the revelations about Friedman’s sordid beginnings in the footnotes of an old book on the history of lobbying by former Newsweek book editor Karl Schriftgiesser, published in 1951, shortly after the Buchanan Committee hearings ended. The actual details of Milton Friedman’s PR deal are sordid and familiar, with tentacles reaching into our ideologically rotted-out era.

It starts just after the end of World War Two, when America’s industrial and financial giants, fattened up from war profits, established a new lobbying front group called the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) that focused on promoting a new pro-business ideology—which it called “libertarianism”— to supplement other business lobbying groups which focused on specific policies and legislation.

The FEE is generally regarded as “the first libertarian think-tank” as Reason’s Brian Doherty calls it in his book “Radicals For Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement” (2007). As the Buchanan Committee discovered, the Foundation for Economic Education was the best-funded conservative lobbying outfit ever known up to that time, sponsored by a Who’s Who of US industry in 1946.

A partial list of FEE’s original donors in its first four years includes: The Big Three auto makers GM, Chrysler and Ford; top oil majors including Gulf Oil, Standard Oil, and Sun Oil; major steel producers US Steel, National Steel, Republic Steel; major retailers including Montgomery Ward, Marshall Field and Sears; chemicals majors Monsanto and DuPont; and other Fortune 500 corporations including General Electric, Merrill Lynch, Eli Lilly, BF Goodrich, ConEd, and more.

The FEE was set up by a longtime US Chamber of Commerce executive named Leonard Read, together with Donaldson Brown, a director in the National Association of Manufacturers lobby group and board member at DuPont and General Motors.

That is how libertarianism started: As an arm of big business lobbying.

Before bringing back Milton Friedman into the picture, this needs to be repeated again: “Libertarianism” was a project of the corporate lobby world, launched as a big business “ideology” in 1946 by The US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. The FEE’s board included the future founder of the John Birch Society, Robert Welch; the most powerful figure in the Mormon church at that time, J Reuben Clark, a frothing racist and anti-Semite after whom BYU named its law school; and United Fruit director Herb Cornuelle.

The purpose of the FEE — and libertarianism, as it was originally created — was to supplement big business lobbying with a pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-economics rationale to back up its policy and legislative attacks on labor and government regulations.

This background is important in the Milton Friedman story because Friedman is a founder of libertarianism, and because the corrupt lobbying deal he was busted playing a part in was arranged through the Foundation for Economic Education.

False, whitewashed history is as much a part of the Milton Friedman mythology as it is the libertarian movement’s own airbrushed history about its origins; the 1950 Buchanan Committee hearings expose both as creations of big business lobby groups whose purpose is to deceive and defraud the public and legislators in order to advance the cause of corporate America.

The story starts like this: In 1946, Herbert Nelson was the chief lobbyist and executive vice president for the National Association of Real Estate Boards, and one of the highest paid lobbyists in the nation. Mr. Nelson’s real estate constituency was unhappy with rent control laws that Truman kept in effect after the war ended. Nelson and his real estate lobby led what investigators discovered was the most formidable and best-funded opposition to President Truman in the post-war years, amassing some $5,000,000 for their lobby efforts—that’s $5 million in 1946 dollars, or roughly $60 million in 2012 dollars.

So Herbert Nelson contracted out the PR services of the Foundation for Economic Education to concoct propaganda designed to shore up the National Real Estate lobby’s legislative drive — and the propagandists who took on the job were Milton Friedman and his U Chicago cohort, George Stigler.

To understand the sort of person Herbert Nelson was, here is a letter he wrote in 1949 that Congressional investigators discovered and recorded:

"I do not believe in democracy. I think it stinks. I don’t think anybody except direct taxpayers should be allowed to vote. I don’t believe women should be allowed to vote at all. Ever since they started, our public affairs have been in a worse mess than ever."

It’s an old libertarian mantra, libertarianism versus democracy, libertarianism versus women’s suffrage; a position most recently repeated by billionaire libertarian Peter Thiel —Ron Paul’s main campaign funder.

So in 1946, this same Herbert Nelson turned to the Foundation for Economic Education to manufacture some propaganda to help the National Association of Real Estate Boards fight rent control laws. Nelson knew that the founder of the first libertarian think-tank agreed with him on many key points. Such as their contempt and disdain for the American public.

Leonard Read, the legendary (among libertarians) founder/head of the FEE, argued that the public should not be allowed to know which corporations donated to his libertarian front-group because, he argued, the public could not be trusted to make “sound judgments” with disclosed information:

"The public reporting would present a single fact—the amount of a contributor’s donation—to casual readers, persons having only a cursory interest in the matter at issue, persons who would not and perhaps could not possess all the facts.

These folks of the so-called public thus receive only oversimplifications or half-truths from which only erroneous conclusions are almost certain to be drawn. If there is a public interest in the rightness or wrongness of corporate or personal donations to charitable, religious or education institutions, and I am not at all ready to concede that there is, then that interest should be guarded by some such agency as the Bureau of Internal Revenue, an agency that is in a position to obtain all the facts, not by Mr. John Public who lacks relevant information for the forming of sound judgments...Public reporting of a half-truth is indeed a significant provocation."

So in May 1946, Herbert Nelson of the Real Estate lobby, looking for backup in his drive to abolish federal rent control laws, contacted libertarian founder Leonard Read of the FEE with an order for a PR pamphlet “with some such title as ‘The Case against Federal Real Estate Control’,” according to Schriftgiesser’s book The Lobbyists.

What happened next, I’ll quote from Schriftgiesser:

"They were now busily co-operating on the new project which the foundation had engaged Milton Friedman and George J. Stigler to write. It was to be called Roofs and Ceilings and it was to be an outright attack on rent controls.

When Nelson received a copy of the manuscript he wrote Read to say, “The pamphlet...is a dandy. It is just what I wanted."

The National Association of Real Estate Boards was so pleased with Milton Friedman’s made-to-order propaganda that they ordered up 500,000 pamphlets from the FEE, and distributed them throughout the real estate lobby’s vast local network of real estate brokers and agents.

In libertarianism’s own airbrushed history about itself, the Foundation for Economic Education was a brave, quixotic bastion of libertarian “true believers” doomed to defeat at the all-powerful hands of the liberal Keynsian Leviathan. Here is how Brian Doherty describes the FEE and its chief lobbyist Leonard Read:

"[Read] would never explicitly scrape for funds... He never directly asked anyone to give anything, he proudly insisted, and while FEE would sell literature to all comers, it was also free to anyone who asked. His attitude toward money was Zen, sometimes hilariously so. When asked how FEE was doing financially, his favorite reply was, “Just perfectly.”... Read wanted no endowments and frowned on any donation meant to be held in reserve for some future need."

And here is what the committee’s own findings reported—findings lost in history:

"It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Foundation for Economic Education exerts, or at least expects to exert, a considerable influence on national legislative policy....It is equally difficult to imagine that the nation’s largest corporations would subsidize the entire venture if they did not anticipate that it would pay solid, long-range legislative dividends."

Or in the words of Rep. Carl Albert (D-OK): "Every bit of this literature is along propaganda lines."

The manufactured history about libertarian’s origins, or its purpose, parallels the manufactured myths about one of big business’s key propaganda tools, Milton Friedman. As the author of The Lobbyists, not knowing who Milton Friedman was at the time, wrote of Friedman’s collaborative effort with Stigler:

“Certainly [the FEE’s] booklet, Roofs or Ceilings, was definitely propaganda and sought to influence legislation....This booklet was printed in bulk by the foundation and half a million copies were sold at cost to the National Association of Real Estate Boards, which had them widely distributed throughout the country by its far-flung network of local member boards.”

Which brings me back to last Friday’s “Milton Friedman Centennial” celebration at the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute, featuring a distinguished panel of economists from Stanford, Princeton and of course U Chicago, among them two Nobel Prize winners — James Heckman and Robert Lucas —all gathered together to “explore both aspects of Friedman's legacy: the impact of his policy insights and his enduring scholarship”...

Like everything involving modern economics and libertarianism, it was a kind of giant meta-sham, shams celebrating a sham. Even the Nobel Prizes in economics awarded to people like Milton Friedman, George Stigler, or Friedman’s contemporary fans Heckman and Lucas, are fake Nobel Prizes — in fact, there is no such thing as a Nobel Prize in economics; its real name is the “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel” and it was first launched in 1969 by the Swedish Central Bank and has since been denounced by Alfred Nobel’s heirs.

And yet — in the words of Larry Summers, "Any honest Democrat will admit we are all Friedmanites now." Of course, there are no honest Democrats. And there are no honest economists. And these are the people who are framing our politics, the people who have told Greece and Spain they have no choice, and the people who today are making sure that the number one item on Obama’s and Congress’s agenda is cutting Social Security and cutting Medicare and cutting "entitlements" — and the only thing that divides the elites in charge of this mess is “how much of these moochers’ lifelines can we cut?”

'Mullet libertarianism' is bunk

Penn Jillette: The original "mullet libertarian?"

You recall I posted about this recently, you know, the supposed shift of young Americans toward unfettered free-markets and no welfare state combined with social liberalism.  Or, as Connor Kilpatrick labels it, mullet libertarianism: "business up front, party in the back."

Mr. Kilpatrick gives the lie to that baloney that "the kids have all gone Galt"  Actually, he doesn't doubt it's real in a certain sense, it's just overblown.  Drill down issue by issue, and today's young American libertarians sound a lot like European social democrats.

What's worse is that 79 percent of Millenials don't consider themselves politically engaged, i.e., their views don't count for s**t until they decide to get their white hands dirty in our filthy-corrupt political system.  The ones that do join the Occupy movements, not the Young Republicans.

And here's the kicker.  When these so-called libertarian kids -- who aren't politcally engaged, mind you -- are polled about a hypothetical matchup between Obama and libertarian hero Ron Paul, 41 percent pick Obama and only 27 percent pick Paul.

It's hip! It's cool! It's libertarianism!

By Connor Kilpatrick

July 31, 2012 | The Exiled

URL:  http://exiledonline.com/its-hip-its-cool-its-libertarianism/

U.S. youth becoming libertarian by default?

Hmmm....  Well, assuming these polls mark a real trend, there is plenty in this article to implicate both parties.  But also, as Rush Limbaugh likes to say, youngsters' heads are "full of mush."  I'll be more charitable and say they've been spoiled by their solicitous helicopter parents, on-demand consumer culture, and lack of experience.

More precisely, I'd say younger kids (younger than me, let's be clear), grew up in a society where they believed all adults were honest and had their best interests at heart, and stuff was supposed to work as advertised.  And if not, there were all kinds of consequences and avenues for formal and informal complaint.  Because their parents outdid themselves teaching them they were growing up in a world that was basically fair and just.

The trouble in politics is, it's quintessentially a liar's game, and stuff never works like it's supposed to, because too many cooks always spoil the broth, and half the cooks can't even cook, and the menu's in 3 languages, etc.  Gen. Yers or Millennials or whatever the New Yorker is calling them this year, have no patience for all that.  Stuff is supposed to work as advertised, they say.  Or they shop somewhere else.  Trouble is, there are only two stores.  

What these young folks don't understand is that our government -- thanks to electoral politics -- has never run smoothly, and probably never will. 

Sooner or later they'll get off their high horses, wisen up, and realize they have to get dirty and compromise and choose the worst of two (or three) evils just like their parents and grandparents always did.  This does not mean they have to abdicate.  From from it!  But they have to realize that democratic politics is a brawl, and things get messy and bloody and the judges don't always call the scorecard correctly.  Politics is not a product and they are not its consumers choosing from a menu.  THEY ARE THE PRODUCT; AND they are the customer service department.  And until they realize that, they are doomed to irrelevance and stupidity.   

The only real reaction I've seen to this are the Occupy movements.  Mark my words: they will lead to something.  I don't know what yet.  But enough of these kids (and older activists) have realized that they have to get their hands dirty to get attention.  They don't know what to do yet, but they know they need to do something.  Calling the 1-800 number isn't going to work this time.

The Kids Are All Libertarian

By Vinnie Rotondaro

July 12, 2012 | Vice.com

URL:  http://www.vice.com/read/the-kids-are-all-libertarians

Free markets work: Privatize firefighting!

Thanks to the recession and local budget shortfalls, libertarians' dream of citizens paying for all city services on a per-usage basis is coming true.

In this case, the cost of putting out fires will be borne by insurance companies and passed onto policy holders....  The next step is privatizing the fire department.  The next step is having all fire departments purchased by insurance companies, who will put out fires only if you are a policy-holder... or agree to sign on the dotted line for a policy while your house/car/office is on fire.

That's the free market in action, baby!  No free lunch!

Passaic, N.J. Considers Charging For Emergency Calls

How Does $1,000 For House Fires And $600 For Car Fires Grab You?

March 30, 2012 | CBS 2 New York

URL:  http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/30/passaic-considers-charging-for-emergency-calls/

'Libertarian' Koch bros. are hypocrites taking gov't subsidies

Even worse, the evil Koch bros. take their $41 million in government agricultural subsidies and plow it back into unregulated campaign spending, lobbying, and their army of think tanks.

We're paying for these pro-laissez-faire hypocrites to buy our political system.

Biofuel companies awarded bulk of state aid

Critics have questioned the amount of public money pumped into the industry

January 15, 2012 | AP

URL: http://thegazette.com/2012/01/15/biofuel-companies-awarded-bulk-of-state-aid/

Ames: CATO, Reagan said 'Deficits don't matter'

Everybody gets duped once in a while. Hell, I voted for Obama, thinking I was getting a real anti-war progressive. Alas, I got duped. Obama is in fact a moderate Republican... or what used to be called a moderate Republican until about 10 years ago.

What matters is how you react when you're finally faced with the truth: Do you double down on your delusion, go permanently schizo with cognitive dissonance, or do you face up to it and admit you were fooled?

This article is full of quotes that should bring on that moment of truth for you slash-the-debt/tea-party types.

Let me know which way you go.

Libertarian Liars: Top Reagan Adviser, CATO Institute Chairman William Niskanen: "Deficits Don't Matter"

By Mark Ames

November 21, 2011 | The Exiled

URL: http://exiledonline.com/libertarian-liars-top-reagan-adviser-cato-institute-chairman-william-niskanen-deficits-dont-matter/

Koch lured libertarian Prof. Hayek to U.S. with Social Security!

Levine and Ames conclude their scoop on the Koch's and Hayek's hypocrisy thusly:

"Why didn't Charles Koch offer to put up some of his enormous wealth to pay for Hayek's temporary medical insurance? One obvious answer: because the state had already offered a better and freer program. But perhaps Koch's stinginess also reveals the social ethic behind libertarian values: every man for himself; selfishness is a virtue."

Charles Koch to Friedrich Hayek: Use Social Security!

By Yasha Levine and Mark Ames

September 27, 2011 | The Nation

URL: http://www.thenation.com/article/163672/charles-koch-friedrich-hayek-use-social-security

Libertarians patently wrong on theory of money, barter

Hey, you libertards (a term I use with the utmost possible affection) who hate paper money, listen up!

Here's a history + economics lesson all in one. Read, learn, and enjoy. E-mail me if you have any questions.

Just another case of actual human/historical fact absolutely contradicting Randian/libertarian wishful thinking about how human beings actually interact.

On the Invention of Money – Notes on Sex, Adventure, Monomaniacal Sociopathy and the True Function of Economics

A Reply to Robert Murphy's 'Have Anthropologists Overturned Menger?

By David Graeber

September 13, 2011 | Naked Capitalism

URL: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/david-graeber-on-the-invention-of-money-%E2%80%93-notes-on-sex-adventure-monomaniacal-sociopathy-and-the-true-function-of-economics.html

Ron Paul's campaign mgr. couldn't afford medical care

Can't afford health care? Join libertarian Ron Paul's presidential campaign! Up to $400,000 for loyal idiots! It's that easy. (No guarantee you'll survive, though. Ayn Rand is an angry God.)

Ron Paul's Ex-Campaign Manager's Death Backdrop For Health Insurance Position

By Sam Stein

September 14, 2011 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/14/ron-pauls-health-care-campaign-manager-kent-snyder_n_961812.html

Libertarian 'thinkers' prefer autocracy to democracy

Lind sums up his well-cited takedown of libertarianism's leading lights thusly:

The dread of democracy by libertarians and classical liberals is justified. Libertarianism really is incompatible with democracy. Most libertarians have made it clear which of the two they prefer. The only question that remains to be settled is why anyone should pay attention to libertarians.

The basic problem libertarians have with constitutional democracies is that, no matter what country or culture you look at, over time the mean majority tends to vote for things which take resources from some people with a lot (taxation) and give them to other people with less (redistribution), which libertarians equate with tyranny, while normal people call it fulfilling the social contract and promoting the general welfare.

And since we live in the real world and not an Ayn Rand novel where there is nowhere for our libertarian masters to run away to, they have to stay put and pout about how unfair it all is. And CATO, Mises, etc., are their well-funded and credentialed pouting, er, think tanks.

Why libertarians apologize for autocracy

By Michael Lind

August 30, 2011 | Salon

URL: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/30/lind_libertariansim/index.html

Poor comedian Ron Paul: 'I get no respect, I tell ya!'

It's an interesting journalistic conundrum: Should the MSM give Ron Paul "equal time," when they, Republicans, and everybody else knows Ron Paul is a joke candidate with a reckless ideology sprinkled with a few good ideas (like, end the trillion-dollar wars -- doy!) that even most libertarians are afraid of realizing 100% but don't care because they know their worldview never will accepted, and who doesn't have a shot in hell at getting nominated by the GOP, much less get elected President?

My first response is, No, the media should not give Ron Paul equal time. Contrary to what some people think, the media's job is not to act as human dictaphones relaying to us the talking points of famous and powerful people. Instead, journalists are charged with providing us facts in their proper context, with analysis where appropriate. And the facts that Ron Paul does well in early primaries, has a small but rabidly loyal fan base, and raises lots of small contributions on the Internet are not the whole story; his repeated pathetic failure to attract his own party's attention despite having lots of chances is the real story.

I digress, but: If Ron Paul is so hardcore about being a libertarian, why doesn't he run as a libertarian anymore? At a certain point, don't you get the message that your party doesn't want you? Ralph Nader got that message a long, long time ago. Is it because Ron Paul likes being a 13-time Congressman from Texas a little too much? Even worse than ignoring him though, his party took the Tea thing that Paul invented before there was astroturfing, and then not so politely told Little Ronnie to go back to the kids' table empty-handed. His party shamelessly stole from him, and then refused to give him any credit, and continued to roll its eyes at him like a lunatic. I mean, his son, who was elected to the Senate from Kentucky for the first time by watering down his dad's nutty speeches, instantly became more famous and influential than Ron. What a slap in the face that must have been for dad!....

Upon reflection, however, perhaps there is an important place for the perennial losers like Ron Paul and Ralph Nader, who, one could argue, act as the party's conscience, and who tug more electable candidates back in the correct ideological direction. Another way to spin this is, they give us voters a chance to see how far the front-runners are willing to go, how much they are willing to pander to the ideological fringes just to get nominated -- all the while sweating how they're going to take it all back in the general election when faced with moderate/independent voters who want bland oatmeal.

In the end it doesn't really matter. In any case, Ron Paul supporters will blame the lib'rul media for Paul's "invisibility cloak," -- the same invisibility cloak that liberal Ralph Nader wears, courtesy of the same lib'rul media -- although it was lib'rul comedian Jon Stewart who busted FOX and the MSM for going out of its way to make Paul the veritable "13th floor" of the GOP Hotel. Watch it:

The Daily Show - Indecision 2012 - Corn Polled Edition - Ron Paul & the Top Tier
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Study confirms: Nice guys finish last

To sum up: being a selfish jerk is good for individuals, but bad for the collective.

These findings contradict the idea that "rational self-interest" (read: being a selfish jerk) is the best way to improve the general welfare, as Randroids, libertards, and teabaggers argue.

Indeed, we can see this dissonance writ large at the firm level, where there isn't much evidence that being a "good corporate citizen" is good for the firm's bottom line. There is much more evidence that firms which disregard regulations and moral behavior benefit from such behavior financially.

Hey, You! Mean People Earn More, Study Finds

By Rachel Emma Silverman

August 15, 2011 | Wall Street Journal

It may not pay to be nice in the workplace.

A new study finds that agreeable workers earn significantly lower incomes than less agreeable ones. The gap is especially wide for men.

The researchers examined "agreeableness" using self-reported survey data and found that men who measured below average on agreeableness earned about 18% more—or $9,772 more annually in their sample—than nicer guys. Ruder women, meanwhile, earned about 5% or $1,828 more than their agreeable counterparts.

"Nice guys are getting the shaft," says study co-author Beth A. Livingston, an assistant professor of human resource studies at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

The study "Do Nice Guys—and Gals—Really Finish Last?" by Dr. Livingston, Timothy A. Judge of the University of Notre Dame and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario, is to be presented on Monday in San Antonio, Texas, at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, a professional organization for management scholars. The study is also forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The researchers analyzed data collected over nearly 20 years from three different surveys, which sampled roughly 10,000 workers comprising a wide range of professions, salaries and ages. (The three surveys measured the notion of "agreeableness" in different ways.) They also conducted a separate study of 460 business students who were asked to act as human-resource managers for a fictional company and presented with short descriptions for candidates for a consultant position. Men who were described as highly agreeable were less likely to get the job.

For men being agreeable may not conform "to expectations of 'masculine behavior,'" the researchers write in the study. People who are more agreeable may also be less willing to assert themselves in salary negotiations, Dr. Livingston adds.

Other research shows that rudeness may not always benefit employees or their firms. A paper presented earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association found that 86% of 289 workers at three Midwestern firms in the manufacturing and health-care industries reported incivility at work, including public reprimands and making demeaning comments. Incivility was bad for the organizations as a whole, though, increasing employee turnover, found the researchers, Jeannie Trudel, a business professor at Indiana Wesleyan University-Marion, and Thomas Reio, a professor at Florida International University.

"The problem is, many managers often don't realize they reward disagreeableness," says Dr. Livingston. "You can say this is what you value as a company, but your compensation system may not really reflect that, especially if you leave compensation decisions to individual managers."

Lockerz, a 65-person Seattle, Wash., social-commerce company, has what it calls a "no jerks and divas" policy that is stressed in its employee handbook and orientation, says Chief Executive and founder Kathy Savitt. She notes, though, that there is a difference between being respectful and being agreeable. "We are not about being 'nice' or 'agreeable' or 'civil,'" she says. "We have a lot of robust debates about all kinds of things. But we do stress the notion of being respectful."

Paul Purcell, chairman, president and chief executive of Robert W. Baird & Co., a Milwaukee financial-services firm, says that his 2,700-employee company "doesn't hire or tolerate jerks. That's frankly a large percentage of people in our business. They don't get through the interview process." The firm has fired at least 25 offenders of its "no-jerk" policy, he says.

Human-resources consulting firm Development Dimensions International, of Pittsburgh, offers courses in "Interaction Management," covering interpersonal skills such as teamwork, managing conflict and giving and receiving feedback. "They are very trainable skills," says Jim Davis, DDI's vice president of work force and service development, who says that its interaction-training business is up 20% so far this year.

[Is the flip side also trainable? Because if you are out to do well, at least as a man, then you should enroll in training how to be disagreeable. That'd be the rational self-interested thing to do anyway. - J]

Every type of libertarian explained

I'm not a big fan of political cartoons but this one very accurately, completely, and humorously dissects homo libertariunus.

My favorites are the "Denial-ican" and "The Island."

24 Types of Libertarian

By Barry Deutsch

June 29, 2010 | Ampersand

URL: http://www.leftycartoons.com/the-24-types-of-libertarian/

Conservative Reason.com: The myth of nuclear power

Gee, I can't believe I missed this article. And I can't believe my free-market-loving rightwing friends didn't forward it to me. Oh well. Anyhoo, this article gives the lie to those who say we should put our faith -- and our investment dollars -- into nuclear power.

I don't agree completely with de Rugy's analysis. For example, taking the 60-odd years of nuclear power as a reliable data set for the entire future safety of nuclear power is just poor risk management. Harmful radioactive materials last thousands of years! (This is taking the rightwing "don't pass the debt onto your grandchildren" argument into extreme "don't pass the waste onto your great-great-great-great-great...grandchildren" territory). According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "At this time there are no facilities for permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste." High-level radioactive waste has a half-life of 24,000 years.

Her article also fails to mention the scary reality that U.S. nuclear regulators are in the pocket of the heavily subsidized nuclear industry -- that worst-of-all-worlds nexus of corporatist democracy -- whose fleet of aging plants is coming up for re-licensing, so our safety cannot be guaranteed. And although she correctly points out that there is no such thing as a "private" nuclear industry, her analysis ignores the fact that all sources of energy, including oil, are heavily subsidized, whether it's necessary or not.

Also, she makes sure to draw the distinction between electricity generation and fuels, which is true as far as it goes, but let's take the U.S. interstate highway system, for instance: it is a sunk cost (not considering the need for constant repairs) in economic terms, but without it our devotion to gas-guzzling cars would make no economic sense. So it's dishonest and wrong to analyze our current energy situation but refuse to ask, "How did we get here?" She also ignores the fact that the U.S. spends hundreds of $ billions protecting market access to fossil fuels, especially petroleum. With wind and solar there's nothing to protect and nothing to restrict: it's there for everybody. Finally, her analysis ignores that plug-in electric cars are now a reality, not science fiction, so if we can switch to renewable sources of electricity production, then the dichotomy of electricity- vs. fuel-producing technologies would largely disappear.

There are other problems with de Rugy's analysis but I want you to actually read it and appreciate its merits, my pro-nuke comrades, so I won't say any more.

P.S. -- I respect Germany more all the time. After the Fukushima disaster, Germans revolted democratically at the ballot box to reject unequivocally a nuclear future for their country, and -- can you believe it? -- Germany's government actually listened, and pledged to shut down all nuclear power plants by 2022 at the latest, and increase Germany's share of renewable energy consumption to 35 percent in 2020, 50 percent in 2030, 65 percent in 2040, and more than 80 percent in 2050. Since they're Germans and not at given to silliness they will almost certainly succeed. As in the health care field, we Americans don't have to be innovators, we can simply borrow the best policy ideas from other countries and implement them to our benefit; but alas, we are oh-so "exceptional," to our detriment.


The Truth About Nuclear Power
Separating economic myth from economic fact
By Veronique de Rugy
March 25, 2011 | Reason.com

URL: http://reason.com/archives/2011/03/25/the-truth-about-nuclear-power