Per Bylund, Senior Fellow at The Mises Institute, joins the Liberty Report to discuss his new book 'How To Think About The Economy'. Get your copy today on Amazon or from the Mises Store: https://store.mises.org/How-to-Think-about-the-Economy-A-Primer-P11241.aspx
Ukrainian parliamentarians are set to descend on Capitol Hill to make sure newly-elected US Representatives and Senators continue to shovel endless dollars into their black hole. The irony is that the trip to lobby us for MORE money is paid for in the first place by OUR money! Also today: this week's election makes it clear that a national divorce is needed...but the Fed's tyranny keeps all of us shackled together whether we like it or not.
Yesterday's midterm elections have left us with more questions than answers. How could Republicans have blown it so badly given the level of voter dissatisfaction across-the-board? How could Republican Congressional leadership have botched their message so badly? How did so many weak candidates emerge in key races like for the Pennsylvania Senate? How can we continue to pretend we are a first-world country with a voting system that is completely dysfunctional? Where to now?
With polls suggesting a Republican victory in the House and Senate today, the mother of all battles seems to be brewing between old-guard Republican leadership which favors endless money for Ukraine and a populist/conservative wave that is increasingly skeptical. GOP voters are trending strongly away from Ukraine support. Who will win? Also today: what to think while voting, and finally...a new US base in Syria!
By Walter E. Block
Suppose experts A claim that theory A is correct, and experts B claim that theory B is correct. We the people, non-specialists, know nothing about A or B. It concerns a field we’re not familiar with. Maybe physics or math or astronomy or global temperature change or virology or some other esoteric field. However, there is one difference between them: the A’s accuse the B’s of being “deniers” (we all know where that comes from) of spreading “misinformation.” They attempt not only to get the B’s cancelled from the media and fired from their jobs, but, also, shamefully, to put them in jail! That is exactly the result of passing laws which prohibit “denying” and spreading “misinformation.” I would be inclined in the direction of thinking B was more correct than A. My reasoning would be that if the A’s really had better access to the truth than the B’s, they wouldn’t have to resort to such nefarious tactics. The essence of science, after all, is open inquiry. The B’s are adhering to science; the A’s are not. According to John Stuart Mill: “Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other explanation possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it has to be shown why that other theory cannot be the true one: and until this is shown, and until we know how it is shown, we do not understand the grounds of our opinion. But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary's case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of; else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition; even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess.” Note that the A’s are trashing this magnificent statement of Mill. The B’s are doing no such thing. Rather, they acting entirely compatibly with it. Who are the A’s and who are the B’s in this little tale? And what theory do each of them hold? If you don’t know immediately who’s who, you’ve been Rip Van Winkling it for the last 3 years or so. The A’s believe, heart and soul, even though they keep changing their minds about such matters, that masks, frequent hand-washing, isolation, the covid shot, social distancing are all efficacious, that covid arose from natural non-laboratory causes and that neither Hydroxychloroquine nor Ivermectin can be of any help. They deny that covid shots are implicated in rising rates of heart problems. The B’s demur. If ever the human race is to escape from this morass, we’ll need all the help we can get. Traditionally science is the way we make progress. Too bad the A’s, the people in charge, are anti science. P.S. this bad news has just come in. Here is the scare headline: “Scientists Fear New COVID Strains Are Deadly—Just Like 2020 Wave.” This reporter continues: “The new COVID-19 subvariants that are becoming dominant all over the world aren’t just more contagious than previous variants and subvariants—they might cause more severe disease, too. That’s an ominous sign if, as experts predict, there’s a new global wave of COVID in the coming months. It’s one thing to weather a surge in infections that mostly results in mild disease. Cases go up but hospitalizations and deaths don’t. But a surge in serious disease could lead to a surge in hospitalizations and deaths, too. It could be like 2020 or 2021, all over again. The big difference is that we now have easy access to safe and effective vaccines. And the vaccines still work, even against the new subvariants.” The big question is, of course, what do the other scientists and doctors think about this, the ones who are too scared to speak up? The answer is, we will never know. They have been muzzled, cancelled. We didn’t accomplish other things in this manner: the discovery of electricity, the airplane, the Salk polio vaccine. Hearing from only one side is no way to run a railroad. This is science? If we want the benefits of science, we have to allow science to operate. It would appear that we are now more dependent on science than many times in the past. Too bad it is not now being allowed to operate, for our benefit, by the A’s. --------------------- Just in: Axe, Dave. 2022. “Scientists Fear New COVID Strains Are Deadly—Just Like 2020 Wave.” October 28. https://ca.news.yahoo.com/scientists-fear-covid-variants-deadly-015437963.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=ma Mill, John Stuart. 1947 [1859]. On Liberty, Northbrook, IL: Ahm Publishing, p. 36; http://www.bartleby.com/130/ Evil acts of the A’s: California to Doctors: Agree or Shut Up https://www.google.com/search?q=California+to+Doctors%3A+Agree+or+Shut+Up&oq=California+to+Doctors%3A+Agree+or+Shut+Up&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i59.2561j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Cancellations: https://www.google.com/search?q=cancelation+of+covid+deniers&oq=cancelation+of+covid+deniers&aqs=chrome..69i57.7616j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
The US government announced that it's sending half a billion dollars worth of guided multiple launch rocket systems near Finland's border with Russia. The escalation and out-of-control spending continues. The Pentagon argues that the move will "support the foreign policy and national security of the United States." Also today, US HIMARS missiles are said to have hit a major dam in Ukraine and US progressives have found a new foreign policy home...with the neocons!
By Ron Paul
Tomorrow is election day and polls suggest that Americans are going to overturn Democratic Party control of the House and Senate. Politicians and the media always say that this is the most important election ever, but all too often once the voting is over and the smoke has cleared, not much changes. The Washington uni-party takes over and makes sure the status quo is maintained. It doesn’t have to be this way. An incoming Republican House and Senate, for example, could take early steps to reassure their supporters that their votes weren’t wasted on Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum in Washington. Here are three suggestions to get things off to a good start. First, Republican Party Leadership must vow to end the massive money spigot opened by the last Congress for Ukraine. By some estimates some $60 billion dollars have been authorized for Ukraine to fight a proxy war between the US/NATO and Russia. This would be a move strongly supported by the Republican base. A recent Wall Street Journal poll showed that only 37 percent of Republicans support sending more US aid to Ukraine. Republican firebrand Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene said recently that under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. While I am skeptical that her party leadership would support such a move, it’s clear Republican voters would. Plus, ending this proxy war would carry with it the benefit of reducing the dangerously high possibility of global nuclear war. That’s not a bad trade-off. Second, Republicans can signal that they will de-fund the Department of Homeland Security. At the time this monstrosity was created, I said this on the House Floor: “The list of dangerous and unconstitutional powers granted to the new Homeland Security department is lengthy. Warrantless searches, forced vaccinations of whole communities, federal neighborhood snitch programs, federal information databases, and a sinister new ‘Information Awareness Office’ at the Pentagon that uses military intelligence to spy on domestic citizens are just a few of the troubling aspects of the new legislation.” Unfortunately all of these things came to pass…and more. As we recently learned, the DHS has been colluding with social media companies to try and prevent Americans from being able to say or post opinions the government doesn’t want others to hear. They promised that a Department of Homeland Security would keep us safer, but there is nothing that makes us less safe than the destruction of our Constitution. Finally, the third task an incoming Republican House and Senate can take is maybe the easiest one: pass the Audit the Fed bill. Ten years ago the US House voted in a bipartisan manner to pass my Audit the Fed legislation only to see it stall in the Senate. With Republican control of both houses of Congress there is no reason a broadly-supported bill to open the books at the Federal Reserve cannot find its way to President Biden’s desk. We all support transparency, right? Inflation is out of control and causing real harm to the American middle class. The Biden Administration seems determined to lead us to a potentially life-ending war with Russia. The Department of Homeland Security has turned into a weapon mobilized against the American people and our Constitution. A Republican-controlled House and Senate can actually do something to fix these problems and thus make us more safe and more free. Will they?
President Biden delivered a speech from Union Station in DC - a once-thriving marketplace that is now empty - that smacked of desperation. He avoided mentioning the economy - which polls show concerns Americans the most - and instead focused on the "dangers to democracy" if his party does not win the midterm elections in a few days. He again trotted out the January 6th "insurrection" as his proof. Will it fly? Also today, realizing the economic price they are paying for Russia sanctions, a new poll shows UK citizens souring rapidly.
Faced with French Government demands that free-speech video platform Rumble censor Russian news channels, the company's CEO simply said "no." No more Rumble for France. It's a brave example of how to resist "cancel culture." Also today: US weapons to Ukraine continue to end up in the hands of criminals. And: Anti-sanction parties surge in Germany and Austria - is the backlash gathering steam?
An amazing investigative report from The Intercept has brought "the receipts" proving the deep - and corrupt - relationship between the US Department of Homeland Security and social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter. Government agents actually had special access to directly request takedowns of any posts at odds with Biden Administration policy on a range of issues from Covid to Afghanistan to Ukraine. Will the next Congress investigate this shocking attack on the First Amendment?
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