KA-POW! #25 - Read

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Leonard Read for “Find the Wrong, and There's the Right” :

Man, on the other hand, does not now possess a like set of instinctual do-nots: built-in prohibitions. Instead, he must enjoy or suffer the consequences of his own free will, his own power to choose between what's right and what's wrong. In a word, man is more or less at the mercy of his own imperfect understanding and conscious decisions.

Beating the Drums of Olds

I had been relying on a very tired twenty-year-old sedan...

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KA-POW! #24 - Casey

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Doug Casey for “How to Survive Financial Collapse Right Now” :

Because governments are not living persons who care and can be motivated to do the right thing. They are collections of individuals — politicians and bureaucrats, not exactly the most desirable types — who pursue their own interests. Regardless of the rhetoric, their interests coincide with the public good only on occasion, like a broken clock being right twice a day. Even in the most enlightened times — even in the best of times — governments have huge incentives to spend more than they take in. These are not the best of times; the population has been trained for generations to expect subsidies and freebies as their due, without regard to who pays or how they will be paid.

KA-POW! #23 - LeFevre

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Robert LeFevre for “Self-Ownership” :

If one contemplates the situation, it will be seen that the slave relationship is wholly improper for it presumes to transfer the control of one living man into the hands of a second living man. The condition is contrary to nature and can only be maintained if both play their specific assigned roles. The slave must act as though he did not control himself, as though, indeed, the slave-master did control him. The slave-master must act as though he really could and did control the slave. But the slave always controls himself, even though he may do so in harmony with his owner's wishes.

“Cera”

~Pratt~

"Where the hell are we?" Pratt demanded...

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KA-POW! #22 - Schiff

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Peter Schiff for “Don’t Bet on a Recovery” :

Beyond the question of “how” the spending could be achieved, is the deeper question of “why” such activity should be sought at all. Excessive spending, fueled by an insane housing bubble and catalyzed by reckless monetary and fiscal policy, was the reason that our current recession became unavoidable. Why would we want to go down that road again?

“Buick Skymaster”

ULTIMATE FREEDOM Can Be YOURS!...

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Calculator Rage

My first calculator was a TI-55-II...

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Beware of the Dog!

I was recently rummaging among some recordings...

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KA-POW! #21 - Bonner

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Bill Bonner for “A Propensity to Screw Up” :

Price movements are neither good nor bad; it depends on the cause of them. In a properly functioning economy, prices go up and down. Rising prices suggest scarcity, signaling to consumers that they should switch to substitutes. And they tell producers to get on the ball and stock the shelves with new supply. Falling prices send the opposite message…trimming profit margins and telling producers to cut back.

Here at The Daily Reckoning, when we go into a liquor store and find lower prices, we are delighted. We stock up. But we are clearly out of step with mainstream economists.

KA-POW! #20 - Bonner

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Bill Bonner for “The Expanding Industry of US Government” :

Have you wondered why the costs of running for public office have soared? That’s obvious too – because the stakes are higher. As the federal budget grows so does the pork that each member of congress can pull out of the barrel.

The number of congressmen is more or less constant (though it grows with population…after a 10-year lag for the census). But the amount of money given out increases…making each congressional seat more lucrative. You can do the math yourself, but the point is – crime pays. At least, for a while…

The trouble with crime is that it only makes the criminals rich. Everyone else gets poorer.

“The Most Blessed Person in the World”

“Good – a-choo – morning, Father, thank you for seeing me...

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KA-POW! #19 - Barnes

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Harry Elmer Barnes for “Revisionism and the Historical Blackout” :

The First World War and American intervention therein marked an ominous turning point in the history of the United States and of the world. Those who can remember "the good old days" before 1914 inevitably look back to those times with a very definite and justifiable feeling of nostalgia. There was no income tax before 1913, and that levied in the early days after the amendment was adopted was little more than nominal. All kinds of taxes were relatively low. We had only a token national debt of around a billion dollars, which could have been paid off in a year without causing even a ripple in national finance. ...

“Whispering Meadow”

It was remarkable how such a forbidding edifice...

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KA-POW! #18 - Wollstein

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Jarret B. Wollstein for “The Nature and Morality of Government” :

Despite the lofty pretensions of most governments, the fact remains that they, like any other group of men, are nothing more than a collection of individuals. The "rights of a government," like the rights of any other association of men, can be morally no different than the rights of the men who comprise it. All that which is immoral for men acting individually is equally immoral for men acting in association. There is nothing a government can morally do, which individuals by themselves cannot morally do. The group is ethically no different from the individual.

"Boop-Oop-a-Doop"

Betty Boop, virginal vixen of the silver screen...

...West End Blues."

...music video

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KA-POW! #17 - Chodorov

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Frank Chodorov for “The Profit of Reform” :

When we reduce the abstraction "political power" to its operational reality, to the way it actually works, we see how it feeds on reform. Every proposal to improve man's lot by political measures calls for the enactment of a law or an official edict. The law presupposes that some people are not doing what they ought to do or are doing something that ought not to be done. Hence, the purpose of the law is to regulate human behavior. The very premise of the law is that violation or evasion will ensue from its enactment, that it will not be self-enforcing; therefore, the heart of the law is a punishment clause. No law is worth the paper it is printed on without such a clause, and no law has any effect unless it is implemented with a corps of enforcers. Therein lies the secret of the accumulation and perpetuation of political power.

KA-POW! #16 - Bonner

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Bill Bonner for “Government Spending Economic Theory” :

Yesterday, we went on at some length as to why government jobs weren’t the same as private sector jobs. Since they’re never put to the test of the market, you never know whether they are worth having, let alone saving. Do they add to the sum of human wealth and happiness…or do they subtract from it? No one knows for sure.

But here’s the strange and remarkable thing; modern economists actually would prefer jobs that are NOT worth doing.

"Geezer Wii-zer"

Does your GEEZER just sit there moping...

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‘Little Jazz’ and the Meaning of Life

WKCR-FM just aired its forty-third annual Roy Eldridge Birthday Broadcast...

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