The Kuhl Position

Don’t Sacrifice Liberty for Security

*Disclaimer*: I’ll begin by acknowledging that this is a very brief post, and as such won’t provide the detailed, logical, and principle based arguments that I typically make in defense of my ideas. However, I want to make sure I caution people from overreacting.

As the investigation into the recent shooting in San Bernardino, CA evolves, there are initial indications that the tragedy may be connected to radical Islamic inspired terrorism. While the fear of similar events occurring is a very understandable reaction, we should not base our reaction on emotions alone. As I’ve listened to the news over the last 18 hours, I continually hear pundits and “security experts” alike calling for more efforts to increase the security of the “homeland”.

Maintaining a feeling of safety and security is an innate desire for most people. However, I fear that the proposed means of achieving this will lead to a much greater tragedy than any one attack – the elimination of personal liberty. I’ve already heard more times than I can count that we need to re-establish the NSA’s meta-data collection (i.e., spying on US citizens) program. I understand the knee-jerk reaction, but the fact remains that throughout the use of that program, no evidence was provided to show that it effectively prevented any terror attacks. I adamantly oppose the concept that individuals should lose their liberty and privacy in a largely failed attempt at preventing a future attack. That is the inherent cost of a free society; there is a greater risk that certain people may do things that we don’t want, like, or accept.

My greatest fear is that by turning over our liberties and granting the State more powers to “protect us”, we’ll actually end up less safe, and with fewer liberties to boot. It’s conceivable that we may be safer from terrorists, but are we any safer from the State? A common refrain in response to meta-data collection is, “I don’t care if the government monitors my cell phone or emails, I’m not breaking any laws”. My response: yet. Who’s to say the State won’t pass a law next week that turns you into a criminal. You’ve then granted the State the ability to easily identify you as a criminal because you “weren’t worried about being monitored”. To quote the late Paul Harvey:

“They [politicians] began telling us we don’t want opportunity, we want security. They said it so often we started to believe them. We wanted security. And they gave us chains and we were secure”

When viewing the State through the lens of a libertarian, which I clearly do, I don’t view a mass-shooting or a terrorist act as the greatest threat to my safety. Instead, I fear the deprivation of my liberty by the State, which operates as though violence against citizens is justified because of their authority granted to them by the people. (This is a topic I’ll write more on later – how does the State get its consent to govern?)

To end I want to leave you with one of my favorite quotes, which I think succinctly captures the choice we are facing:

“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” – Benjamin Franklin

Poll Taxes are Good

It’s Friday, the wife and I have some friends in town, and I am more than ready for the weekend. But first, let’s quickly discuss a concept that’s germane to the current election environment – a poll tax. Who says I can’t kick off the weekend with fun?

For those of you who don’t know, poll taxes are exactly what they sound like – fees that individuals must to pay before they can vote. While I don’t support the idea of individual poll taxes, I do favor the idea that we should only allow voting rights to individuals that have “skin in the game”. Let me elaborate.

From a principle perspective, if we allow everyone to vote regardless of whether they’ll end up being a net tax payer or net tax receiver, there will be a tendency for those who don’t have to actually pay taxes to vote to take money from others. Essentially, those individuals who are dependent upon receiving money from the State, (which is actually just transfer payments from other private citizens, since the State has no money), will tend to elect people that will allow them to continue to collect money without having to contribute to the funding of the government. In practice this amounts to a group of people voting to have a coercive State with the power to “redistribute” (i.e. STEAL) the income away from the individuals who earn it.

Some may argue that a restrictive voting law is discriminatory. I disagree. I do not care what race, color, religion, or any other group a person belongs to. What I do care about is that those who are voting to grant the State its powers have something at stake based on their decisions. There is some historical precedent for this. When the country was founded, there was a requirement that one be a land owner to be eligible to vote. Many folks have argued this was put there to exclude slaves because they were banned from owning property. I also realize that women were not able to vote, which I as a libertarian completely oppose. While these were certainly factors pertinent to that time period, I would argue that the intent of requiring voters to own land was not just focused on precluding races or genders. In my opinion, its primary intention was to limit the growth of government. If you were a land owner and the State was trying to expand its powers, you would have every incentive to elect people that would prevent the State from exercising its monopoly of force against you. I’m not suggesting that this specific land ownership requirement would be valid today, but I do think we should establish some method for preventing those individuals who are net beneficiaries of State theft from voting to “legitimize” that theft.

A topic to be continued…

I Respond to GOP Debate Questions

As a slight change of pace, rather than providing my commentary around the candidates in the GOP debate on Tuesday, I’ve decided instead to provide my own answers to the questions posed to them. Since many of the questions were very specific to a certain candidate’s positions or plans, I will use a generalized versions of the questions.

Neil Cavuto: Are you sympathetic to minimum wage?

Absolutely not. If we think about basic economics and go back to the law of supply and demand, we know that when the price of something increases, the demand decreases. There is no difference between a simple consumer product and the price of labor. If the cost of employing people increases, the demand for their services will decrease. Additionally, as the price of labor is artificially increased, the return on the investment curve shifts downward. This in turn creates an environment where investment in machines and robots becomes more tenable. This is the business aspect of the argument, but doesn’t really touch on the principle of restricting people’s freedom, which is an important component of the issue. The minimum wage outlaws each person’s right to contract and sell their services at a price that they find fair. If an individual decides that they would be willing to walk someone’s dog for an hour for 10 dollars, they would be committing a crime if we were to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. This is a violation of that person’s freedom. If two people agree to a voluntary exchange, we can surmise that both parties have benefited. For the State to interject is tantamount to telling people that they don’t know what’s best for themselves. I think for a bureaucrat in Washington D.C. to dictate what’s “good” for millions of individuals in this country is ridiculous.

Maria Bartiromo: What plans do you have to cut federal spending?

This is a pretty easy one for me. First, end the empire. We should not be engaged in perpetual war around the world and “occupying” so many countries. Germany is well able to defend itself – we don’t need troops there. We can close all of our overseas military bases. The second thing I’d do on my first day in office would be to require the head of every executive agency to prepare an argument for the existence of their agency based on the Constitution. If they cannot identify where in the Constitution the role of their agency is authorized, they’d be closed. I’d remind them that the interstate commerce clause is intended only to prevent tariffs between the States, and that the general welfare clause is intended only to allow the Federal Government to carry out actions directly related to those powers expressly delegated to it within the Constitution (e.g., build a building to allow it to establish post offices). I will allow these agencies to defend themselves out of fairness. However, here are some that I’m quite certain won’t be able to defend their existence and will be shut down.

Department of Education – ~$78 Billion
Department of Commerce – ~$10 Billion
Department of Energy – ~$30 Billion
Department of Agriculture- ~$140 Billion
Department of Transportation – ~$77 Billion
Department of Health and Human Services- ~$150 Billion (discretionary only)
Department of Housing and Urban Development – ~$33 Billion
Department of the Interior – ~$20 Billion
Department of Labor – ~$104 Billion
Department of Homeland Security (this is redundant to the Department of Defense) – ~$55 Billion

Cutting these departments alone would cut nearly $700 Billion from federal spending. With the recent collection of taxes reaching $3.2 Trillion and a total federal spending of $3.7 Trillion, my spending cuts would immediately eliminate the federal deficit.

Maria Bartiromo: What specific regulations would you change and how would that lead to 4% growth?

I would repeal nearly all regulations. I think as a consequence of the cutting of various departments I’ve outlined before, you’d see a drastic reduction in the regulatory state. Dodd-Frank should be repealed. Sarbanes-Oxley should be repealed. The Bank Secrecy Act should be repealed. The free market has its own way to regulate itself. In a free market, the only exchanges that occur are between two voluntary parties. The idea that adding in government regulations that can restrict people’s liberty to transact “protects” people is absurd. I don’t believe people need protection from the market, they need protection from the State.

Gerard Baker: How can you respond to the claim that Democratic presidents are better at creating jobs than Republications?

The first thing I’d say is that Presidents don’t create jobs. Citizens and businesses create jobs. But I understand the thrust of the question. I would caution people to refrain from drawing a direct correlation between the current strength of an economy and the person that is currently occupying the oval office. The “levers” of taxes, regulation, and monetary policy that the federal government has the power to influence on the economy have lagging effects. In my opinion, any time the government pulls these levers, it only has negative impacts on the economy. Those impacts aren’t felt immediately but after a certain period of time. That means that the current president could be suffering or benefiting from the decisions the previous politicians made. So I think a better question is, why do Democrats always seem to be lucky enough to enjoy the economic decisions made by previous presidents and Republicans seem unlucky enough to inherit recessions?

Gerard Baker: Does it matter at all that gap between the rich and everyone else is widening?

On its face I don’t think that it matters from an economic perspective. I constantly hear the refrain, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. I’m not sure I entirely agree with this. I think a more accurate phrase is the poor are getting richer and the rich are getting richer faster. I would like to discuss the “rich”. There are really two ways of amassing wealth. The first is through voluntary exchange. In this instance a person creates a product or service that so many other people want that they voluntarily give up their money for that product or service. There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone making millions, billions, or trillions of dollars in this manner. The other way of gaining wealth is through coercion; through the use of force and taking away other people’s wealth to enrich themselves. This is at the heart of our growing disparity in “income inequality”. The Federal Reserve is currently trying to target 2% inflation. To achieve this, the Federal Reserve purchases securities in the marketplace from the large financial institutions on Wall Street. The Federal Reserve prints money, gives it to Wall Street, and simultaneously takes 2% of the value everyone else’s money to enrich the too big to fail banks. This is theft on a massive scale. It’s not the rich business man that should be vilified, it’s the crony capitalism, cozy relationship between government and big business.

Maria Bartiromo: How do you feel about the appeals court ruling to prevent President Obama from implementing his immigration plans?

There are really two topics here that I’d like to discuss. The first is whether the ruling of the court was justified. Absolutely it was. The President had overstepped his constitutional authority and the courts were correct to stop him from acting unconstitutionally. We are supposed to be a nation of laws and no one is above the law, including the President.

The second topic is whether our immigration laws are good or bad. I personally favor open borders. I don’t think we should prevent people from immigrating or emigrating from this country. However, in order for that to be functional, we need to remove the welfare and regulatory state. No one should be receiving transfer payments from the government, including immigrants, and no one should be prevented from selling their services at a price they agree to. This comes back to my position on eliminating minimum wage laws. In my opinion, one of the key drivers of the immigration is the allure of handouts. The idea that if you can just cross the border, there’s a possibility that you’ll be able to get something for nothing. I don’t think it’s appropriate for the Federal government to steal the property of US citizens and give it to other US citizens, let alone give it to people in this country whose first experience was to violate our laws.

Neil Cavuto: What’s the best tax plan?

I have an innate aversion to taxes in general. The best tax plan is no tax plan. Taxation is theft from the productive private sector of the economy to fund the parasitic government. But since we have a government that needs funding at some scale, the least punitive taxation plan would be a system that only taxes the non-productive aspect of an economy, consumption. So I would favor repealing the 16th Amendment and abolishing the income tax. I would rather have an excise tax that taxes only consumption of final goods. I do not in any way, shape, or form favor any sort of a value added tax (VAT).

However, assuming we need to operate under the existing structure, then I would support a flat income tax. I would completely eliminate the corporate tax. Corporations do not pay taxes. The owners of the corporations (i.e., shareholders) pay those taxes, and today they pay it twice – once that the corporate level and again on dividend income or capital gains. I would also eliminate the estate tax. That again is double taxation and discourages the productive savings and investment of people. I would propose a rate of 3%. During the greatest expansion period in the history of this country, in the 1800’s, total federal spending averaged 3% of national income. If the Federal government was limited to its expressly delegated role, that should provide plenty of money for the government to function.

Maria Bartiromo: Do you support the presidents decision to put 50 Special Forces troops into Syria and leave 10,000 troops in Afghanistan?

No. I have a problem with meddling in other people’s wars in general. It’s interesting to me that with all the fear mongering about terrorism that we don’t ever discuss why we may be a target of the terrorists. In the 1700’s I’m quite certain the British crown considered our founding fathers terrorists or insurgents. We felt that we were being occupied by a foreign power. The Third Amendment specifically speaks to quartering of soldiers as a result of the British soldiers living in our country. However, when we go to the Middle East and take over their land and set up military bases we somehow think that’s different. Then, while we’re there, we bomb “suspected” terrorists, kill thousands of innocent people and call it collateral damage. The families that survive the deaths of our collateral damage instantly have an incentive to get revenge.

My view is that we need to use our military for its true purpose, national defense. If we would limit our military action only to responses to attacks against our country, we would have more wealth, fewer enemies, and more freedom. It’s interesting to me that Osama Bin Laden specifically laid out his reasons for declaring war against the United States. Those included the US embargo on Iraq, the establishment of US military bases in their home country, and US support of their enemy Israel. All of these issues are symptomatic of the American impulse to act as the world’s nanny and impose our our agenda on other sovereign nations.

Ironically, those are almost the same exact reasons that Japan gave for attacking Pearl Harbor. Japan accused the US of supporting China, invading their territorial waters with our ships, in combination with a US oil embargo against Japan. It seems to be a common refrain. It’s also interesting to point out that Switzerland has been a completely neutral country and has not experienced any terrorist attacks, did not get destroyed as part of World War II, while simultaneously don’t squander their capital on military adventurism. Cause and effect seems pretty obvious here.

Bottom line, I’m not saying that we are responsible for all terrorist activities by any means, but we aren’t doing ourselves any favors.

Neil Cavuto: Would you let the large financial institutions fail?

Yes. The free market system is a profit and loss system. The losses are just as important as the profits. Losses are a way of removing actors from an economy that have done a poor job at managing the scarce capital that exists within that economy. There have been many claims that letting one of these large financial institutions fail would have resulted in the depositors suffering. I feel that scenario is highly overblown. The fact that certain divisions of these institutions were insolvent doesn’t mean that all the assets of the firm were gone. Many firms go through bankruptcy and return to operation. The best thing we could have done would have been to let these large institutions go bankrupt, then be divided and put under new ownership. The best way to prevent “too big to fail”, let firms fail!

Are we already in recession?

The US Department of Commerce has released its latest stats, and they are not exactly impressive. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth comes in at a measly 1.5%, and with the US economy reaching the end of a growth cycle (we’re 7 years into a business cycle that averages 6 years), some say that the US economy is heading for a recession. I’d take this a bit farther and argue that we are already there; further, it’s possible we’ve actually been in recession for the entire “recovery”.

Let’s begin by analyzing the evolving method the State uses to calculate inflation, specifically the Consumer Price Index, which is considered the broadest measure of inflation. To understand how this could impact an expansion or a recession when measured by GDP, First, let me explain how the GDP number is calculated. It’s a pretty simple formula – GDP = C + I + G + (X – M). That translates in English to – GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports – imports). This formula calculates what is referred to as “nominal GDP”. In an effort to seem “scientific”, the State then coverts that number into “real GDP”. This is done by adjusting (i.e., deflating) the nominal GDP for the rate of inflation in an attempt to normalize the projection.

There’s the rub. Since the State deflates the Nominal GDP to normalize it, the rate of inflation is a key variable in the final GDP results that are reported. This rate is derived from the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures changes in the price level of a market basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. It shouldn’t be surprising, but in case you are unaware, the State has changed the formula for calculating CPI/inflation over the years. There’s something I frequently say, but it always seems to apply to economic data the State produces – “If you don’t like the results, change the formula”. I’d like to walk you through an example that illustrates how a change in this formula could produce vastly different results than what is currently being reported, and ultimately show that the US may be in recession.

During the 1970s, the biggest ailment of the economy was high inflation. The US had inflation reaching nearly 13%, as measured by the State at that time. In the 1980s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) changed the way it calculated the CPI by allowing for product substitution (e.g., buying pork instead of beef) and the quality of products (e.g., if a product increases in price but the BLS says the quality has gone up, then it’s not included in the calculation), along with other adjustments.

If inflation were measured using the methodology leveraged prior to the 1980s and compared it to the current methodology, we would see a stark contrast. Luckily for us, the folks at shadowstats.com have done so for us:

The spread between State reported inflation levels using the current/80s model and the levels calculated using the pre-80s approach ranges from ~2% to ~10%. When you’re talking about trillions of dollars flowing through the economy, that spread is pretty staggering, and represents two very different economic climates. If we were take a median of that range and assume, on average, that the current inflation calculations are understated by 6%, this indicates that the US economy has been under deflated by 6% each year. If that’s true, the economy has really been in recession for the entire “recovery” period, given that we haven’t seen a single year with growth greater than or even close to approaching 6%.

The official definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP. The last two quarters as reported by the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis were Q3 – +1.5% and Q4 +3.9%. If we were to further deflate those numbers by 4%, which is in the bottom quartile of the range in the variances above, we would *officially* be in recession. I’m not unequivocally stating that we are or aren’t, but these example illustrates the point that a good statistician can get the data to confess to anything. When those statisticians work for the State, who have every incentive to show economic growth, it’s no surprise that when the results of the formula won’t fit their desires, they change the formula.

A Patriot’s Death & Taxes

With the recent passing of Irwin Schiff, father of Peter Schiff, I feel that it’s an appropriate time to discuss the message that Irwin spent most of his life trying to share with people. Irwin Schiff wrote several books and gave many speeches trying to prove, using the government’s own laws and documents, that the payment of income tax is not actually required by law. As a libertarian, I think this is a compelling topic that is worth examination. I’d like to outline some of the key arguments against the payment of income taxes, comment on a few other tax issues, and finally, summarize my position on what I think an acceptable tax regime could look like.

Let’s start with Irwin Schiff. In my opinion, his key and most powerful argument is based on the fact that our current income tax laws require individuals to “self-assess” their tax liability. Irwin argues, and I tend to agree, that being forced to file an income tax return violates an individual’s 5th Amendment protections against self incrimination. If your tax return can be used against you in a criminal proceeding for tax evasion, which it can, then you should not be forced to “testify” against yourself by filing an income tax return.

“…we may disclose your tax information to the Department of Justice to enforce the tax laws, both civil and criminal, and to cities, states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. commonwealths” – Disclosure, Privacy Act, and Paperwork Reduction Act Notice: Internal Revenue Service Form 1040

Another key claim made by Irwin Schiff is that individuals cannot be held liable to pay income tax because “income” is defined, not in the internal revenue code because that would be unconstitutional (“Congress cannot by any definition it may adopt conclude the matter, since it cannot by legislation alter the Constitution, from which alone it derives its power to legislate, and within whose limitations alone that power can be lawfully exercised” – Eistner vs. Mcomber), but through a series of supreme court cases. The most comprehensive of which is:

The Corporation Excise Tax Act of August 5, 1909 ( 36 Stat. 11, 112), was not an income tax law, but a definition of the word ‘income’ was so necessary in its administration that in an early case it was formulated as ‘A gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined.’ – Stratton’s Independence v. Howbert

There are two key things to take from this. The first being that the Corporation Excise Act of 1909 defined income and applied it to “every corporation, joint stock company or association, organized for profit and having a capital stock represented by shares”. That would suggest that income really only exists for corporations and not individuals. The second is that the definition of income indicates it’s the “gain derived from”, not just the receipt of compensation. That would suggest that individuals should be able to offset their “gross income” with all of their expenses to determine what their “gain” would be. That is the appropriate “taxable income”.

The last point I’ll highlight is the argument that the income tax is unconstitutional because it violates Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution which states:

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons” – CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, ARTICLE 1, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 3

This clause of the Constitution should make it clear that the amount of income taxes collected by the Federal government should be based on the population of the states, similar to the number of representatives granted to each state in the US House of Representatives, and not based on each individual’s income.

Mr. Schiff developed a long list of what I consider very valid legal arguments against individuals’ liability to pay income taxes. I would recommend everyone read his book The Federal Mafia: How the Federal Government Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes. However, while I agree with his points of view and find his legal positions quite sound, I would still caution everyone from following his advice. The federal courts of the United States government have erroneously interpreted the powers of the government in favor of the government (shocking, I know) and imprisoned Mr. Schiff until his recent death.

Mr. Shiff spent his life arguing against the income tax specifically. With that in mind, I’d like to spend a bit of time on another tax that I find reprehensible – property taxes.

Continue reading A Patriot’s Death & Taxes

Unconvinced by “Settled Science”

One of the recurring topics discussed by the Democratic candidates during the debate last week was the threat of ~~global warming~~ climate change. This has been an ongoing topic of discussion for the past few years, and I’d like to provide a few comments related to the issue. First, I’m going to tell you that I’m neither a climate change “denier” nor am I convinced that man’s influence on the climate is as dramatic as many climate change alarmists say. More importantly, I’m not convinced that the potential impacts of climate change outweigh the costs many are proposing to combat it. I’ll walk through a few varied topics to try and show that the climate change debate isn’t much of a debate; it’s a monologue of those on one side of the argument.

The first item I want to discuss relates directly to the title of this post. In broad terms, I am immediately skeptical of someone who says “the science is settled”. I don’t think that anyone who makes that claim understands the scientific method. I assume most of you reading this studied this concept in middle or high school, but I’d like to provide a refresher – the point being that science is never really “settled”.

The main steps of the scientific method are as follows:

Make an observation
Ask a question about said observation
Construct a Hypothesis
Conduct an experiment to test the hypothesis
Analyze the results of the experiment to accept or reject hypothesis

A key component of the experiments or tests performed is the attempt to isolate a single variable (i.e., keep all conditions but the key variable being tested constant). It’s important to note that if testing results do not confirm the hypothesis, the original hypothesis must be rejected, and a revised hypothesis should be subjected to testing.

With this rubric in mind, let’s discuss how the climate change alarmists seem to miss key components of the scientific method. When discussing the human impact on climate change, this generally refers to our collective carbon footprint, or the contribution of carbon dioxide to the environment as a result of the production of goods and industry. The first clear challenge in trying to test carbon dioxide impact on the climate is trying to isolate that variable. The global climate is influenced by a litany of factors, and while we know a lot about these factors, we can’t claim to understand with certainty the intricate ways that these factors work together and impact one another. Some other factors that are known to impact the climate are solar activity, convection, cloud cover, and complex oceanic models. As such, it’s nearly impossible to isolate the carbon factor with our current scientific knowledge.

This has led climatologists to produce computer models that make large assumptions on the impact of all the variables included. These assumptions are a red flag for me, and indicate a flaw in the attempt to “validate” the man-made climate change hypothesis. (That being said, I can concede that using computer models may be the only way to attempt to test and predict the impact of variables on the climate.)

However, even conceding that point, we find other issues. One relevant issue is the fact that all the climate models being used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have overestimated the warming of Earth. In fact, when using their current model they are also unable to accurately calculate historical temperature levels.

Climate Model Predictions — Source: Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH)

This raises a fairly obvious question – if their current “hypotheses”, as translated to their models, cannot be validated using hard data, why would we consider the hypotheses valid?

Continue reading Unconvinced by “Settled Science”

Democratic Debate Roundup

I apologize for missing this past Sunday’s weekly post, but had some personal commitments that prevented me from getting to it. To make up for that, I’ve put this post together. As always, I aim to be fair and provide critiques of both the Democrats as well as the GOP, so here’s my take on the Democratic debate that occurred last night (10/13/15).

DISCLAIMER: As a libertarian, I find the State to be inherently detrimental to liberty, so I am biased against any positions that embrace State intervention vs. allowing the true free market to function. I’ll provide as brief of a summary as I can on my impressions of the candidates and their policy stances.

Lincoln Chafee – Let’s just come out and say it – he’s by far the worst candidate on the stage. He has switched parties when it was politically expedient, and when you feel the need to say “I have high ethical standards” in your opening statement, I immediately question your ethical standards. If you have high ethical standards, why the need to make that statement? It’s like someone who prefaces a statement with the phrase “to be honest” – should I then assume all your other statements are dishonest? He did profess an aversion to getting into another “quagmire”, referring to a war – that I support. Other than that, I’m not sure he actually said anything worth commenting on. I wouldn’t be surprised if he dropped out of the race next week, because I can’t imagine him getting elected.

Jim Webb – My first impression of him was….BOOORING. He seems like a robot. I actually imitated a robot walk for my wife when he first started speaking. However, he actually is the only person on stage that is close to the old traditional democratic positions. I feel like day by day, the democrats become more Marxist. However, Jim Webb seems like an old-school Dem. He showed his strong support for the 2nd Amendment and I *loved* when he called out the hypocrisy of Democrats who, with their armed guards by their side, call for restricting law-abiding citizens’ rights to defend themselves with firearms. He did, however, seem to flip flop on affirmative action. He says that he supports affirmative action for African Americans in this country because of their historical exposure to slavery and Jim Crow laws. A few thoughts on this. First, I’d like to ask, “Do you support affirmative action for those African Americans that are immigrants to this country and are not descendants of slaves nor lived through the Jim Crow era”? I think this is a relevant distinction to make. Second, remember that the existence of Jim Crow laws, and the abuse and discrimination that resulted from them, wasn’t the product of racism exercised through free people alone, but were rather statutes enforced by the State. If everyone in the south was vehemently racist, there would have been no need to pass laws and enforce those laws with the guns of the State. The reason the State had to enforce segregation was because the free market and free peoples would have embraced integration of African Americans into the economy. That said, if there was one person onstage that I think would be the least harmful to liberty, it would be Jim Webb.

Martin O’Malley – He seems pretty stiff to me. I wasn’t overly inspired and didn’t really hear any policies that I thought would be a benefit to the country. He was bad on guns, kept bragging about raising minimum wage, and thanked President Obama for all that he did with the economy. Maybe I’m alone in this, but I wouldn’t say we’re in a booming economy right now. He also wanted to make college a “debt free option”, which is a great thought, but who will pay for it? He didn’t say – shocking! He repeatedly called climate change the biggest threat to the country and harped on it over and over. I’m going to write an entire post on this topic, but I’m not sure the church of climate change is really being self critical. I’m not sure imposing trillions of dollars of penalties on the US while other countries continue to emit carbon dioxide will actually shrink the “rich-poor” gap he was complaining about. Overall, he’s really nothing to get excited about.

Bernie Sanders – As most of you can imagine, Bernie is the hardest person for me to stomach. As a professed Socialist, his positions are diametrically opposed to liberty. I can understand the appeal he may have for many people who feel like they are victims of the current economy or are envious of the success of other people. However, many of these people fail to realize it’s not capitalism (which we no longer have in this country; we have corporatism or crony capitalism) that is to blame for their woes, but rather the distortion of the market brought on by government intervention. Let’s drill down on a few of the positions that Bernie addressed:

Continue reading Democratic Debate Roundup

Another Mass Shooting, Another “Gun Free” Zone

The tragedy at Umpqua Community College last week was just that – a tragedy. It was a senseless act of true evil that is almost impossible to comprehend. But what is also tragic is the demagogic language that was immediately rolled out by politicians and pundits alike. Even the President weighed in with his gun control agenda, as vague as his plans are. The irony of a President who is from a city with the some of the tightest gun control laws in the country and still one of the highest gun murder rates in the country, yet still advocates for similar federal laws, hopefully wasn’t lost on the public.

With this event in mind, I’d like to provide some commentary on a couple of items in this post. First, whether calls for gun control can prevent these types of mass shootings. Second, I’d like to poke some holes in the idea that the government has the right to regulate guns in this country.

Let’s start with whether gun control can prevent future mass shootings. I’ll start by saying unequivocally – no. The idea that passing laws against the possession of firearms will prevent criminals from possessing firearms is laughable on its face. The only effects of gun restrictions, including so-called “gun free zones”, is to disarm and victimize law abiding citizens. The reality is that law abiding citizens will obey the restrictions while criminals do not, leaving innocent people without protection against those who would do them harm.

Continue reading Another Mass Shooting, Another “Gun Free” Zone

GOP Debate Roundup 2.0

My commentary on the second GOP Presidential debate. Again, I realize this happened a while ago, but wanted to provide my commentary I wrote up at the time.

Marco Rubio – He tries so hard. Too bad his opening joke fell flat. I want to like him, but he seems like the awkward teen just trying to fit in. He seems like a nice guy, he seems pretty smart, I just don’t ever really hear anything that’s really differentiating about him. He doesn’t have any “front-page” grabbing policy positions, so I’m not really into Rubio.

Mike Huckabee – The only thing about him I can support is that he’s in favor of the “fair” tax plan. While I’m not in favor of government taxes in general, we definitely should not be taxing production. If we’re going to have any tax, it should be on the activity that detracts from economic growth (i.e., consumption). However, we shouldn’t go so far as to create a value added tax (VAT) which taxes every step of production. I’m worried moving to a consumption tax will open the door to implementing that sort of tax regime.

Continue reading GOP Debate Roundup 2.0

GOP Debate Roundup (1st Debate)

Here’s a bit of commentary that I had following the first GOP Presidential debate. I know this happened weeks ago, but worth posting to provide some insight into how I view these candidates.

Donald Trump – The best thing about Trump is that he doesn’t care about being politically correct. He’s correct that being PC is one of the biggest issues in this country. Too many of us libertarians or mostly conservatives let the left bully us around. We don’t say what we NEED to say because we know we’ll be called racists, bigots, poor haters, etc. (which is the way the left debates – no substance so revert to name calling) Other than that, Donald Trump is a democrat in republican’s clothing (i.e., RINO). I’m on the fence on whether the world would consider us a laughing stock for electing him, but I then remember Ronald Reagan was a Hollywood guy too. Either way, he’s not for me.

Ted Cruz – He’s possibly the only republican I could really get behind. I do love that he stands on principle and isn’t afraid to shut the government down over something that’s actually important. In fact, we’d all be better off if we just let the government shut down for a couple of years. I’m not sure he would get elected in a general because he can’t move left on social issues, which is what most independents care about.

Continue reading GOP Debate Roundup (1st Debate)