Jim Davies's blog

My least favorite member of PBS' News Hour team is Gwen Ifil; she likes to be Queen Hen. But this week, she met her match when trying to interview Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY.)  It was a pleasure to see.

He was confident and emphatic, very much in control. And though not associated with even the Tea Party, he predicted total failure for Obamacare - possibly for reasons similar to those in Glen Allport's recent STRticle. Referring not to the web-site fiasco but to the whole scheme, McConnell said

           "I don't think Albert Einstein could make this thing work. It can't work. It won't work."

This puts him right out on a limb. Pols don't normally climb there, so he must be very sure. Let's assume he is right. Why would Obama insist on pushing this forward, when it's so credibly predicted to fail?

One answer, that looks more believable every day, is that by design, it was never meant to work; that it is meant to be such a huge failure that the Sheeple will plead instead for a Euro-Canadian style "single payer system" such as the Left really want.

Another chance for us to promote instead a system with 300 million payers and zero government participation.

In recent months I've noticed that members of the "Left" are hot 'n heavy with indignation about NSA spying, and it's been a pleasure to be in sync with their commentators on that issue. Now with health care back in the spotlight, we part company - but the inconsistency is theirs, not ours. Obamacare is wickedly Fascist; it joins big companies in phramaceutical and insurance industries to government, at the hip. And yet the Lefties like it.
 
I thought to mark the occasion by slashing the price of my e-book To Freedom From Fascism, America! to $3 so that anyone can afford it. The book sets out concisely what Fascism really is, shows why America has been Fascist from the get-go, and why it's not good enough (or even feasible) to settle for Fascism in a mild form. And, of course, how Freedom can take its place. Why not get a copy, then recommend it to all statists you know.
 
Yes, it keys in to Aaron Russo's documentary, and picks up where that left off.
 
 

Pat Buchanan is dead wrong about things like international trade and abortion, but is extraordinarily perceptive about many others. Today he has out a fine article about the Obamacare website fiasco.
 
In it he observes that government people contract out real work, rather often. This is a case in point; several components of the sign-up website were farmed out to software developers (plural) and only the task of fitting them together for a coherent whole was kept in-house. Seems the failure was precisely there; the components worked, but the coordination failed.
 
I notice that the Hero of the Year, Ed Snowden, worked not directly for the NSA but for a contractor, Booze Allen. There are presumably exceptions, but really smart people like him apparently don't work directly for gummit.
 
This has implications, for our supremely important task of undermining the State. In my Transition to Liberty I estimate that roughly half of the 40 million who need to be induced to quit their government jobs are actually in the productive sector, but working on government contracts. From the above, it may be that to displace that half may be even more useful than dislodging those who are literally on its payroll.
 
 

Here's an rt.com report on a ProPublica study that suggests all the massive surveillance carried on by the FedGov's spy network has not actually thwarted a terrorist attack.
 
Obama has said it stopped over 50 planned attacks. Most of them are still secret, so nobody can check. A few had the books opened, and none of those were thwarted thanks to the powers assumed by the NSA. Thwart it!

Here is what happens when government and trade unions force distortions on the free market.

Before I was out of short pants, some British Socialist blowhard triumphantly announced that henceforth, health care would be provided to everyone, free of charge, as of right.
 
Half a century later, this news item reports the truth - thanks to Elmo Zoneball for letting me know. The cost isn't measured any more in pounds or dollars, but in delay time. This lady died waiting. It so happens her job, while living, was to administer the health care service.
 
I noticed a detail: she had a major operation, then stayed resident for months in hospital awaiting follow-up surgery, which was postponed four times - one too many. So there was plenty of bed space, but too few surgery resources. Space being readily remodelable, I presume it was the surgeons who were in short supply. What? You mean potential surgeons don't like working in such a system? - say it ain't so!

Today's email included one from the LP, asking me to take part in a survey. Seems some have been leaping the barriers around the WW-II memorial in D.C., and the poll asked Lpers whether the government ought to have “closed” it during the current “shut-down.”
 
At this writing the poll results are shown here, and they make me very sad. Here is the self-proclaimed “Party of Principle” standing for “Minimum Government” (minimum equals zero, of course) asking a dumb question like that. Worse yet: just look at the results, so far with more than 2,600 votes cast.
 
The correct answer is of course that a zero government would have prevented participation by the US in 1941, but the nearest option to that was that “a non-interventionist policy might have prevented WW-II.” So I cast my vote there... yet that option garnered only 10%.
 
Hence: 90% of LP members and hangers-on would not be recognized by Murray Rothbard.

As soon as 800,000 bureau-rats were furloughed, the tear-jerk factory went on overtime to attract public sympathy for their plight. Nowhere has it been done more effectively than on PBS' News Hour on Friday, in a segment bearing the title above.
 
Presenter Jeffrey Brown found some who had been recognized as having done work above and beyond the call of duty, and implied that critics of government have unfairly demeaned this class of person. One in particular was Kevin Geiss, an Air Force deputy assistant secretary for energy, whose conscientious work is said to have saved one billion dollars a year in fuel costs.
 
Apparently the Air Force guzzles $9B a year in jet fuel to keep its fleet aloft, and Kevin found a way to economize with synthetic- and bio-fuels. Good for him!
 
His contribution of 11% saving pales beside the 100% saving that will follow the evaporation of government, but it helps while we wait. And several times on the web site that encourages government employees to leave their jobs, it says “Nothing on this web site implies that you don't give your employer good value for money.” But it goes on to add “The problem is that he pays you with stolen money, and accomplishes purposes that are destructive.” Somehow, Jeffrey Brown missed that bit.
 
If Mr Geiss were to quit the Air Force, I dare say he would find a pile of lucrative job offers waiting for him from airline companies also eager to spend less on fuel. He could actually contribute to the Productive Sector.

They are the kind of drones who inhabit plush offices at our expense, awaiting fat pensions while doing work for which in the coming free society there will be zero demand.
 
In a triumphant announcement yesterday the FBI boasted they had raided and closed down the popular on-line mood-enhancement retailer called Silk Road, by arresting the alleged owner Ross Ulbricht of San Francisco. This PBS News Hour report showed how Silk Road used TOR to enable customers to surf safely to their site, and Bitcoin to make confidential purchases. The fellow explaining that procedure was a little man with big hands and a silly hat, and as an example of caricature propaganda his performance would have earned Dr Goebbels a commendation from his Leader.
 
The transcript does not say, however, that either Bitcoin or TOR have in some way been closed down. Maybe so, maybe not. The bombers have, unfortunately, introduced an element of doubt. The market is springing to offer replacements.
 
The incident removes all shadow of doubt, if any remained, that government is implacably hostile to free enterprise, honest money, privacy and self-directed ingestion. It is utterly beyond hope of redemption or reform. There is zero alternative to its total eradication. The way to achieve that in short order is presented here. If you're not taking part, start now.

The government of the Peoples' Republic of California has just enacted another nasty law to limit the freedom of speech; Gov. Brown signed a prohibition against “Revenge Porn.”
 
Suppose you like a lover so much that you send him (or her) a nude photo of yourself. Then later the two of you break up, and in a fit of peek he (or she) publishes the photo on the Net, for the satisfaction of revenge. The CA prohibition would penalize the publication.
 
It's a vicious thing to do, for sure, but Karen de Coster argues that it should not be illegal. She's right, but then nothing should be illegal, and in the coming free society nothing will be illegal. Why not? - there won't be any government, so there won't be any laws.
 
However the victim of such spite might have a recourse, in that free society – and possibly even in the present one. She (or he) could sue; on the grounds that when sending the lover the nudie pic she did not accompany it with permission to publish to all and sundry; that it was intended and understood to be for his exclusive use, given that the two of them were enjoying an exclusive relationship.
 
I don't know whether that argument would prevail, and damages be granted. But at least the matter could be adjudicated, without the monstrous interference of government. And of course with restitution if it did, instead of retribution.