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The Futility and Cruelty of Washington’s Economic Sanctions
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A perennial favorite tactic for officials running U.S. foreign policy has been to impose economic sanctions on countries whose governments defy Washington’s wishes. Sanctions enjoy a reputation among the policy elite of being the responsible "middle option" between relying solely on diplomacy or using military force when dealing with an adversary. Political leaders resist the former approach because they fear being portrayed as weakling appeasers. Conversely, launching military interventions... Read the rest of the story by clicking on the Title link, below... The Futility and Cruelty of Washington’s Economic Sanctions Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute
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By washing its hands of responsibility to hear the Texas challenge to the 2020 presidential election, the nine Justices of the US Supreme Court may have sealed the country’s fate and made a kinetic civil war much more likely. On Friday, the highest court in the land decided that Texas “lacked standing” to challenge the conduct of elections in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin under Article 3 of the US Constitution. Yet the article in question explicitly states that the SCOTUS... Read the rest of the story by clicking on the Title link, below... The Supreme Court had one last chance to keep the American Republic together. It failed. Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute
Hunter Biden announced Wednesday he is under federal investigation for his financial dealings in foreign countries, including China. While the news sent shockwaves through Washington, D.C., it shouldn’t have been surprising. The announcement confirms many of the allegations of corruption that were leveled against Hunter Biden in the months leading up to the November elections – allegations the media steadfastly refused to cover. The nation’s largest social media companies went further: They... Read the rest of the story by clicking on the Title link, below... Hunter Biden News Should Shame Dismissive Media Outlets Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute
Everyone knows how government policies implemented this year have caused suffering for adults and small businesses. But government policies have also negatively affected the young in so many ways as well. One-size-fits-all policies in a world of individuals runs contrary to the ideas of Liberty. It has produced the dire circumstances that we currently find ourselves in. Individual liberty is our only life vest. Watch today's Liberty Report: Read the rest of the story by clicking on the Title link, below... Has The 'Village' Failed The Children? Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute
Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was caught violating his own warnings against multiple households dining together indoors. The Democratic governor was spotted at the French Laundry, an exclusive restaurant north of San Francisco, where he was celebrating the birthday of longtime friend Jason Kinney. The dinner controversy was more than just an opulent display of political double standards — it also highlighted the backroom efforts to maintain special treatment during the pandemic.... Read the rest of the story by clicking on the Title link, below... Hollywood Deployed Lobbyists to Win Exemptions to Strict California Lockdown Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute
Libertarian educator Tom Woods famously quipped that “no matter who you vote for you end up with John McCain.” Unfortunately Woods was proven right for about the thousandth time this past week, as Washington again showed us that it is all about war. First, we learned that if Joe Biden ends up in the White House next month he intends to put a deep state member of the military-industrial complex in charge of the Pentagon. General Lloyd Austin will be only the second Defense Secretary in decades... Read the rest of the story by clicking on the Title link, below... Congress Again Proves that the Business of Washington is War Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute
As President-elect Joe Biden names his cabinet and other chief advisers, what has escaped wide attention is the fact that none of his hawkish national security advisers — except for his nominee for defense secretary, Gen. Lloyd Austin — has served in the military. Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who is reportedly on Biden’s short list for CIA director, shares that non-veteran status, one of the reasons along with other skeletons from Morell’s past that make him singularly unfit to... Read the rest of the story by clicking on the Title link, below... Why Michael Morell Cannot Be CIA Director Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute President-elect Joe Biden promises the “most ethically rigorous administration in American history,” according to a spokesman. But with the nomination of retired general and Raytheon board member General Lloyd Austin III as secretary of defense, the strength of that promise is quickly faltering. And while some may see concerns about industry ties as a purity test, we’ve seen that disregard from presidents and Congress for these concerns creates preventable problems and encourages the revolving door between the Pentagon and the defense industry to continue to spin with impunity. First things first: Secretaries of defense who came from the defense industry were a rarity. As the New York Times recently pointed out, until the Trump administration we hadn’t had a secretary of defense come directly from a major defense contractor for 30 years (going back to the Reagan administration, when Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger came from Bechtel). Presidents seemed to have little trouble finding qualified candidates from Congress, the non-defense business community, or other executive branch offices. That’s one of many reasons it’s so disappointing that the top three names the incoming Biden administration floated to lead the world’s most expensive military sat on boards of major defense contractors. Austin, the nominee who won Biden’s approval, marks an important milestone in choosing the first Black man to lead the Department of Defense. It’s a change that’s overdue, and particularly poignant as the military continues to confront systemic racism. The lack of diversity in national security leadership is a major problem that must be confronted. Prior to the incoming Biden administration, neither a woman nor a Black person had ever been nominated for this role. All three of Biden’s main choices were attempts to address this disparity. The lack of racial diversity is acutely evident in Congress in general, and even more so on the committees that are tasked with overseeing the department. But Biden’s nomination of Austin also raises a number of concerns. First, he sits on the board of Raytheon, one of the top five contractors for the Department of Defense. In that role he has received $1.4 million in compensation since joining the board in 2016. He is also a partner at Pine Island Capital Partners, a private equity firm that boasts “a group of deeply-connected and accomplished former senior government and military officials.” In layman’s language, they leverage the revolving door between the government and private sector to try to get more contracts for their clients. When it comes to conflicts of interest, Austin will have to divest his financial interests in, and recuse himself from matters involving, Raytheon and other defense companies he’s worked with. In the case of Raytheon, that recusal is becoming increasingly difficult as the defense behemoths consolidate, and the vast majority of contract dollars goes to fewer companies. Just this year Raytheon completed its merger with United Technologies, another giant in the defense world, further reducing the number of defense contractors. Recusal isn’t a panacea. During the Trump administration, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive, admirably committed to not only recuse himself from Boeing matters for the required cooling-off period, but also for as long as he served in the Department of Defense. As we wrote at the time, his connections to Boeing raised a number of potential conflict issues. And soon enough, he was accused of being biased in favor of his former company when he made accurate criticisms of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 production, and was later investigated by the Department of Defense inspector general for his remarks. Though he was cleared, the perception of bias undermined his credibility and authority, as well as the credibility of the department. In some cases, maneuvering around ethical restrictions was so insurmountable that a waiver was issued. That’s what happened with William Lynn, the first deputy secretary of defense under President Barack Obama. Obama pledged he wouldn’t have any lobbyists in his administration, and then he nominated former Raytheon lobbyist Lynn, issuing him the first waiver. (Lynn wasn’t the only one; the Washington Post counted 65 former lobbyists in the Obama administration as of August 2014.) It’s little surprise that when Lynn left the government he went right back into the defense industry as the chief executive officer for DRS Technologies, which, while not a top contractor, still did $1.1 billion in business with the Pentagon the year Lynn joined the company. Read the whole article here. In Search of Pentagon Officials Not Captured by Industry Click on the headline to read the full story from Most people today regard America’s experiment with alcohol prohibition as a national embarrassment, rightly repealed in 1933. So it will be with the closures and lockdowns of 2020, someday. In 1920, however, to be for the repeal of the prohibition that was passed took courage. You were arguing against prevailing opinion backed by celebratory scientists and exalted social thinkers. What you were saying flew in the face of “expert consensus.” There is an obvious analogy to Lockdowns 2020. My first inkling of this prohibition history came in reading transcripts of the then-famous Radio Priest James Gillis from the 1920s. He was against prohibiting alcohol production and sale on grounds that the social costs far outweighed the supposed benefits. What surprised me was the defensiveness of his comments. He had to assure his listeners that he was personally for temperance, that alcohol was indeed demon rum, that it’s true that this nasty stuff had caused terrible things to happen to the country. Still, he said, outright bans are too costly. Why was he so cautious in his rhetoric? It turns out that during the 1920s, he was one of the few famous American public figures (H.L. Mencken was also among them) who dared to speak out against what was obviously a disastrous policy. Reading this sent me down a rabbit hole of literature at the time in which it was argued by many leading intellectuals that Prohibition made perfect sense as a necessary step to clean up the social order. To sum up the “science” behind Prohibition, society had tremendous numbers of pathologies on the loose and they all traced to one dominant variable: liquor. There was poverty, crime, fatherless households, illiteracy, political alienation, social immobility, city squalor, and so on. You can look carefully at the data to find that in all these cases, there is a common element of alcohol. It only stands to reason that eliminating this factor would be the single greatest contribution to eliminating the pathologies. The evidence was incontrovertible. Do this, then that, and you are done. To be sure, the argument wasn’t always this clean. Simon Patten (1852-1922) was chair of the Wharton School of Business. His late 19th-century argument for alcohol prohibition featured a complicated argument concerning the weather in America. It gets cold then hot then cold and alcohol consumption seems to track these changes, driving people to drink ever more until their lives fall apart. As summarized by Mark Thornton, who is the leading scholar on the economics of Prohibition and its history, “For Patten, alcohol is a product with no equilibrium in consumption. One is either good and abstains from alcohol, or one becomes a drunkard and self-destructs.” The most influential pro-Prohibition economist of the next generation was the rock star academic and social progressive Irving Fisher, whose contributions to making economics more about data than theory are legendary. So was his push for eugenics. No surprise if you know this period and such people, but he was also a passionate opponent of all alcohol. It was he who made a decisive difference in convincing Congress and the public that a complete ban was the right way. His oddly titled book Prohibition at Its Worst (1927) lays it all out. The same year of its publication, Fisher called for a roundtable at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association. His own account is revealing. I got a list of the economists who are supposed to be opposed to Prohibition, and wrote to them; they all replied either that I was mistaken in thinking that they were opposed to Prohibition or that, if we were going to confine the discussion to the economics of Prohibition, they would not care to respond. When I found that I was to have no speaker representing the opposite point of view, I wrote to all American economists listed in “Minerva” and all American teachers of statistics. I have not received from any one an acceptance.Clearly his colleagues were either bamboozled by the prevailing “science” or afraid to disagree with the reigning orthodoxy. Even as political establishments were being corrupted, crime and liquor lords were rising up all over the country, and tens of thousands of speakeasies were thriving. Claiming that Prohibition had created $6 billion in wealth for the US – a figure that was frequently cited as authoritative, Fisher wrote the following: Prohibition is here to stay. If not enforced, its blessings will speedily turn into a curse. There is no time to lose. Although things are much better than before Prohibition, with the possible exception of disrespect for law, they may not stay so. Enforcement will cure disrespect for law and other evils complained of, as well as greatly augment the good. American Prohibition will then go down in history as ushering in a new era in the world, in which accomplishment this nation will take pride forever.To see how the $6 billion figure was calculated and to observe the rest of the astonishing mathematical gymnastics behind the “science” backing Prohibition, have a look at Thornton’s detailed presentation. It’s a perfect picture of pseudoscience in action. But it was hardly unusual for the time. The Journal of the American Medical Association said of alcohol prohibition in 1920: “Most of us are convinced that it is one of the most beneficent acts ever passed by a legislature.” Reading through all this literature, I’m reminded of the CDC scientific conclusion that closing restaurants during a pandemic will save lives – a conclusion based on a study so weak that anyone with a passing familiarity with statistics and causality can immediately observe its failings (the same study, if it demonstrates that, would also demonstrate that masks make no difference in virus spread). Another obvious case was the brutal and unscientific closures of schools. Also true is that the opponents of Prohibition were routinely and publicly denounced as secret drunks, shilling for bootleggers, or just not following the science. They were the outliers and stayed that way for a decade. What finally broke Prohibition was not the replacement of one scientific orthodoxy for another but the noncompliance on the part of most of the population. When enforcement became unviable, and FDR saw opposition to Prohibition as politically advantageous, the law finally changed. When we look back on American history, Prohibition stands out as one of the craziest social and economic experiments of modern times. The very idea that the government, on its own authority and power, was going to purge from a Western society the production and distribution of alcohol, strikes us today as a millennarian pipedream, one that turned into disaster for the whole country. We could say the same about lockdowns in 2020. Indeed, measuring the absurdities on a scale of extremism, the idea of lockdowns, with forceful human separation, mandatory masking, and the practical abolition of all large gatherings, fun, art, and travel, seems even more sadistically preposterous than alcohol prohibition. The madness of crowds, often backed by the “best science,” never goes away. It just finds new forms of legal expression in new times. Only once the crowds come to their senses do the real scientists make a comeback and prevail, while the fake science that backed despotism pretends like it never happened. The 'Expert Consensus' Also Favored Alcohol Prohibition Click on the headline to read the full story from California is the Grinch killing Christmas small businesses and maybe even the Democratic Party12/10/2020 Governor Gavin Newsom has locked down California as though a tropical storm were about to make landfall. Yet the ‘safety’ measures mostly target the ‘small guy’, and this hypocrisy could be the Democratic Party’s undoing. Residents of America’s largest state once took pride in the maxim that commanded “as goes California, so goes the country.” Today those words sound more like a curse than the promise it once held. But it didn’t have to be that way. Gavin Newsom, resembling a Roman consul drunk on power on the edges of empire, has announced stay-at-home measures that may ultimately prove deadlier than the pandemic it was meant to halt. Here are just some of the businesses his regime has ordered shuttered: hair salons and barbershops; personal care services; movie theaters; wineries, bars, breweries and distilleries; family entertainment centers and amusement parks. Newsom’s rules dictate that retail outlets must operate at no more than 20 percent capacity, while restaurants are only allowed to provide take-out service. Religious services, in a throwback to more pagan times, must be held outdoors, amongst the trees and furry creatures. The governor says the measures were necessary as hospital intensive care unit availability dropped below 15 percent. Like so many other Democratic leaders who have taken draconian steps to halt the virus, Newsom’s brutal strategy assumes people cannot be trusted to protect themselves; therefore the brilliant idea of wrecking the economy in the name of ‘safety’ is considered the best possible solution. That's a cold slap in the face to his constituents, coming as it does in the middle of the holiday shopping season, which is make or break time for many small businesses. Daniel McAdams, executive director at the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, described the grim situation in Barstow, a town in San Bernardino County. “Didn't realize that California had become such a third world country, so 90 percent of the outlet mall is shut down,” wrote McAdams, who was in California attending to urgent family matters. “Kids are riding dirt bikes where once thousands of people crowded in to purchase name-brand clothing at a discount.” “Went to one of the very few stores still open,” he continued on his Facebook post. “As we approached the door a drill sergeant-looking woman with a shrill and husky voice barked out, ‘Ok guys, I can't let you in right now because we are at capacity in the store.’ We looked in and it looked empty. In fact the whole place was a ghost town. A bad Western film.” The good thing about Western films, however, is that the tragedies and mishaps are all scripted and acted; the situation on the ground in California is happening in real time against real people. If there was a single story that captures the palpable anger and frustration that has gripped citizens in this state of some 39 million souls, it would be hard to top that of Angela Marsden, the owner of Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill in Los Angeles. In an effort to keep pace with the ever-mutating anti-Covid regulations, Marsden spent over $80,000 to construct an outdoor patio so she could keep serving customers amid the pandemic. With the latest lockdown measures, however, city officials denied her permission to serve clients on location – even in the parking lot. Unfortunately, the story does not end there. To add insult to injury, the city granted permission for a film company to set up a large outdoor eating pavilion for its employees just yards away from where Marsden had built her outdoor patio. In a Twitter video that has been watched over nine million times, the restaurant owner makes an impassioned plea for help. “I’m losing everything,” she exclaimed, choking back the tears. “Everything I own is being taken away from me. They have not given us money and they have shut us down. We cannot survive; my staff cannot survive…” The cruel irony of Marsden’s plight, however, seems to have escaped that group of people living in the alternative zip code known as Hollywood, and particularly involved in the art of filmmaking, which Newsom decreed as an “essential activity” and therefore exempt from the crazed crackdown. In yet another one of those jarring moments of total disconnect, Seth McFarlane, creator of the television series Family Guy, tweeted triumphantly that his latest television project, The Orville, “is back in production.” That must have been such a relief to millions of middle-class Californians, now teetering on the edge of insolvency and poverty, that at least they won’t be deprived of McFarlane’s slapstick comedy to see them through the gloom. Not to be outdone by McFarlane, Saturday Night Live ‘comedian’ Pete Davidson took aim at lockdown protesters on the other side of the country, in New York City, which has become yet another Democratic-run ghost town. Davidson took issue with Mac's Public House, a restaurant where owners have declared it a Covid-19 restriction ‘autonomous zone’, saying the protesters were “looking like babies” for demanding their pub back. What seems to have been lost on the young and clueless Davidson, however, is that he has a cozy seven-figure Hollywood salary, whereas the bar employees back in New York, who work just as hard for their money, are staring down the barrel of bankruptcy. Meanwhile, not even the Grinch governor could abide by his own rules. Last month, Newsom and his bejeweled wife were photographed at a lavish birthday party for some lobbyist at the upscale French Laundry restaurant, which included about a dozen people from several households – and not a surgical mask in sight. In other words, exactly the type of gathering – minus the filet mignon and Dom Perignon – Newsom’s administration has cracked down on. California’s harsh response to the coronavirus, combined with the double standards from elitist Democrats, is already having consequences. First, conservatives are reportedly fleeing the state in droves. Although the reasons given vary – high cost of living, wildfires, and rolling blackouts being among them – the liberal political culture is certainly a contributing factor. That should come as no surprise given that the country is still at odds over the outcome of the most consequential and potentially fraudulent presidential election in many decades. In any case, many conservatives no longer find the state very accommodating to their political tastes and are hitting the road. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Republicans were nearly three times as likely to have considered moving as their Democratic counterparts – 40 percent compared with 14 percent. For the other conservatives who wish to remain in California those numbers are disturbing as they suggest the state will never experience another ‘red wave’ of pro-Republican voters that Trump garnered in the 2020 election. While it is doubtful that many California liberals will shed many tears over the departure of their conservative neighbors, Newsom’s lockdown has had another unexpected effect – the police don’t seem very keen to enforce the lockdown regime. This week, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes have both said their departments will not enforce Newsom’s lockdown. In a released statement, Sheriff Barnes said: “To put the onus on law enforcement to enforce these orders against law-abiding citizens who are already struggling through difficult circumstances, while at the same time criticizing law enforcement and taking away tools to do our jobs, is both contradictory and disingenuous.” “Conversely, policy makers must not penalize residents for earning a livelihood, safeguarding their mental health, or enjoying our most cherished freedoms,” he added. That’s a pretty amazing statement, and one that really captures the hypocritical nature of Newsom’s demands. On the one hand, he removes the ability for millions of Californians to provide for themselves through a time-honored tradition known as ‘work’, which has never stopped despite many pandemics over the millennia. On the other, Newsom is so detached from reality that he can’t see the problem with himself and his elite friends breaking the rules with impunity (it is doubtful that Newsom would have changed his duplicitous ways had he not been caught). At the same time, the power drunk governor wants the California police – the very organization that has been on the receiving end of fierce criticism from Democrats ever since the killing of George Floyd – to enforce his draconian decrees. That’s certainly one up on Marie Antoinette’s ‘let them eat cake’ quip. At least, the King Louis XVI’s queen granted her subjects the right to eat. Newsom seems hard-pressed to do even that, while expecting his berated and underfunded police to arrest the dissenters. Call me crazy, but that doesn’t sound like a recipe for long-term peace and tranquility in the ‘Golden State’. Gavin Newsom is playing with fire, and if he’s not careful he may just destroy California and the Democratic Party with it. Reprinted with permission from RT. California is the Grinch killing Christmas, small businesses, and maybe even the Democratic Party Click on the headline to read the full story from |
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