Buffalo doesn't need another "master plan"

BUFFALO June 22, 2015 - A June 19 Buffalo News Opinion piece entitled, “Welcome new master plan aims at making downtown core more people-friendly” said this:

“Yes, continued development could happen by accident, but it’s dangerous to leave growth up to chance and likely to produce less desirable results.”

Wrong. Leaving growth up to the market is Buffalo’s only hope for escaping the economic blight that has plagued it for over a half century.

Let’s not forget what killed Buffalo in the first place: central planning by the government, which destroyed untold billions in waterfront property with wrongheaded expressways and disastrous public housing projects, built the Subway to Nowhere and generally taxed and regulated the economy to death.

The alternative to central planning isn’t “leaving growth up to chance.” It’s leaving growth up to the uncoerced choices of producers and consumers. Instead of government officials seizing money from taxpayers and deciding how it will be spent, consumers spend their own money as they see fit.

When consumers have choices, entrepreneurs face the prospect of losses if they produce products people won’t buy voluntarily. When the government plans and subsidizes, taxpayers don’t have a choice. They pay whether they want to or not. This steals capital from projects that can make a profit and employ people and leaves us with projects that need subsidies to survive.

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No one really believes the Federal Reserve or the BLS

Last Friday was anything but good for news on the economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a dismal jobs report that missed expectations by fifty percent. This followed a press conference two weeks ago by Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen during which she indicated rate hikes might not come as soon as expected because “room for further improvement in the labor market continues.”

Yellen’s statement would be fairly unremarkable if it were not for one troublesome fact: the U.S. economy is supposedly at “full employment,” according to the measures the Fed uses to guide their interest rate policies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has it at 5.5% as of today. That is the rate most economists consider full employment for the U.S. economy and we’ve supposedly been there since February.

How could there be room for improvement in the labor market if we’re at full employment? There can’t be. But everybody knows real unemployment is much higher than the manipulated BLS statistics represent. Janet Yellen knows it. The markets know it. Tens of millions of unemployed Americans know it.

Yet everyone keeps talking about the BLS unemployment rate as if it were true.

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Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

The Federal Reserve runs the economy, not Congress or the President

BUFFALO, March 18, 2015 - Janet Yellen told the markets what they wanted to hear today and the indexes rocketed out of negative territory to finish up over 1 %. As usual, speculation abounds on precisely what was in the minds of investors.

Journalists tend to overstate the causal importance of breaking news when the market makes big moves. Often, those moves were predicted months in advance by serious traders and what happened that day had little to do with what the market did. Not true for the Fed's announcements. They do move the markets immediately.

What most people don't know, or at least don't acknowledge, is that the Federal Reserve really runs the entire economy. When the Fed inflates the supply of money and credit, indexes go up, growth occurs and the economy "improves." When it deflates the supply of money and credit, indexes go down, contraction occurs and the economy "slows."

That's really the whole story of the American economy. Think about that for a moment.

It doesn't matter who is president, which party controls Congress or what any of those people do or don't do. Yes, regulations and tax rates have some effect on the economy. Liberals might say more regulation is a good thing, conservatives might say it is bad.

But taxes and regulations haven't really had much effect at all in the past 40 years. Before that, when taxes were at 90%, they mattered, but not when the top rate fluctuates between 35% and 39%. Do the math. It's not that significant.

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Republicans like Ben Carson are wrong to make freedom of association about religion

Joe Biden invoked Jesus on Friday responding to Ben Carson’s bizarre argument that prison inmates “turning gay” after going into prison straight proves homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, rather than a genetic or otherwise innate trait.

As a libertarian, this debate holds little interest for me. Even if homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, it is one that does not harm other people and thus falls into that vast category of human behavior called “liberty,” which should be beyond the reach of any government.

What does concern me is Carson’s argument on why homosexuals “don’t have a right to be served in every single store.” Carson argues that store owners should be able to “refuse service if it violates their religious convictions.”

I’m immediately reminded of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where a law at the beginning of the book reads “No animal should kill another animal,” but by Chapter 8 reads, “No animal shall kill another animal without cause.”

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LewRockwell.com...

Why Progressives Should Want Republicans to Repeal Obamacare and Close the Borders

Last week, Senate Republicans were given bad news by Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough. She doesn't believe Republicans can bypass cloture and repeal Obamacare with a simple majority by attaching its repeal to a spending bill.

As a libertarian, I'm glad to hear it. No, I do not like Obamacare any more than I like most other government programs, especially those that further enrich multi-billion dollar corporations on my dime. But I'm glad it's still difficult to get things through the Senate. That's how it's supposed to be.

But progressives should feel differently. The should want to see at least two bills pass both houses, one repealing Obamacare and one blocking the president's immigration policies. Progressives profess a belief in democracy and the Republicans have been democratically elected to both houses. Whether you agree with them or not, there's no question repealing Obamacare and reversing the president's immigration agenda were two of their strongest mandates.

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Tom Mullen is the author of A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.

Earth to Bill Maher: Edward Snowden isn't the crazy one

TAMPA, January 21, 2014 - Bill Maher interviewed journalist Glenn Greenwald following President Obama's speech on Friday in which the president discussed his proposals to reform the NSA. Greenwald is the journalist who first reported on the information released by Edward Snowden on the government's domestic surveillance activities.

While Maher was respectful of Greenwald and, to some extent, Snowden, he went out of his way to smear some of Snowden's claims about the government's activities as "completely nuts." He also found it necessary to take a shot at Ron Paul, who wasn't even involved in the issue at hand.

For Maher and too many likeminded people, anyone who doesn't view the government as a benevolent force for good is a tinfoil-hat-wearing kook who believes all civilian life is the target of a massive conspiracy involving the government, secret societies, aliens, etc. Thus Maher's retort, "Everyone in the government isn't out to get you."

That's what's known as "framing the debate." You're either with Bill Maher and President Obama or you're with the kooks. You may also be somewhere in the middle, where Maher apparently places Snowden. It completely ignores the many other perspectives one might have, including that of most libertarians.

Libertarians don't believe that the people who work for the government are evil. It's the institution of government itself, a monopoly on the use of force that can martial the resources of the entire nation. That kind of power is dangerous even when used by good people with good intentions.

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Huffington Post...

Obama’s proposed NSA reforms prove he doesn’t understand checks and balances

President Obama delivered a speech on Friday outlining his plans to address the widespread outrage over the domestic surveillance activities of the National Security Agency. However well-intentioned, the president’s proposals indicate he just doesn’t get the constitutional notion of delegated powers.

Implicit in the Fourth Amendment is the principle that the government should remain powerless unless and until an individual is reasonably suspected of having committed a crime. It isn’t even allowed to search one’s person or papers (viz. phone records, emails) to collect the proof it needs until it persuades a judge that it has probable cause.

The only reason the Fourth Amendment offers any protection is it prescribes an adversarial process. The judicial branch is predisposed to refuse to issue a warrant until the executive branch provides sufficient evidence of probable cause.

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