Tom Wood's New Book: Rollback

Tom Woods, the same New York Times best selling author that gave us "Meltdown" which explained the current financial crisis, the "Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" , "Who Killed the Constitution" and others has a new book out. He talks a little bit about the book in this video clip and criticizes the government is our savior and all that is holy mythology we are all taught in the 6th grade.

What the book is about in Tom's own words:

The book does two things. First, it lays bare the true fiscal position of the U.S. government, and shows why some kind of default is not merely possible but inevitable. But this is not a book full of numbers about the impending collapse. The collapse is merely the jumping-off point. By far the more central part of the book is this: the critical first step for reversing this mess and checking the seemingly unstoppable federal advance is to stick a dagger through the heart of the myths by which government has secured the confidence and consent of the people.

We know these myths by heart. Government acts on behalf of the public good. It keeps us safe. It protects us against monopolies. It provides indispensable services we could not provide for ourselves. Without it, America would be populated by illiterates, half of us would be dead from quack medicine or exploding consumer products, and the other half would lead a feudal existence under the iron fist of private firms that worked them to the bone for a dollar a week.

and some of the topics covered:

Could we survive without the welfare state?

Was the Industrial Revolution a disaster for workers, and evidence of the wickedness of the free market?

The market vs. global poverty

How the market, in spite (not because) of government, leads to higher living standards for everyone

How the market leads to improved working conditions and does away with child labor

Federal education programs: a critique

Doesn’t Sweden prove a large welfare state is compatible with lasting prosperity?

If government shrinks, won’t big business fill the void and oppress the public via predatory pricing?

Why it’s impossible to design a wealth redistribution program that does not cause net harm

The truth about "affordable housing" programs

Iceland and the financial crisis: a case study of free markets run amok?

California energy "deregulation" – proof that free markets don’t work?

The real record of Sarbanes-Oxley

OSHA and workplace safety

The FDA

Don’t we need to make an exception for government science funding?

A primer on the War on Drugs

Obamacare: the problems and the solution

Why "stimulus" programs make things worse

Are some firms "too big to fail"?

Did the "repeal" of Glass-Steagall contribute to the financial crisis?

The real story of "deregulation" and the financial crisis

The Pentagon’s impact on the U.S. economy

Has the Federal Reserve really made the U.S. economy more stable, as so many proponents try to claim?

What caused the bank panics of the nineteenth century? Are they evidence of the need for a central bank?

The separation of money and state

Do we need the Fed to protect us from deflation?

Regulation as an anti-competitive device

The book goes a long way to dispelling a lot of myths and conventional wisdom about the role of government, government and quasi-government agencies and easing a lot of distrust and fear about the free market.

So, help keep your local Borders or Barnes & Noble in business by grabbing a copy or snatch one from Amazon.com.

Where's Gadhafi?

As news reports of the day question the whereabouts of Moammar Gadhafi and Libya revolts against his leadership, my significant other, Ms. Lisa Kelly, had a funny idea. Here it is graphically represented.

Some Wisdom On The Patriot Act

Excerpted from Rand Paul's Feb 15, 2011 letter to his Senate colleagues:

In the words of former Senator Russ Feingold, the only "no" vote against the original version of the PATRIOT Act, "[T]here is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists. But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America."

Ron Paul, CPAC and Loathing by the Ideologically Unprincipled and Intellectually Dishonest

Conservatives have a real problem in Texas congressman Ron Paul.

Ron Paul doesn't think the United States should claim to be all about "freedom" and "democracy" while sending billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to foreign dictators. The people of Egypt just rose up and booted out Mubarak whom the U.S. sent billions of dollars to each year. The Ba'ath Party in Iraq was supported early on by the U.S. and Saddam was all buddy-buddy with America for many years before we sought "regime change". In 1979 the people of Iran tossed out the increasingly brutal Shah Pahlavi whom the U.S. and Britain had put put in power, replacing their secular (non religious) democracy in 1953. I mean, it's not like the people in these countries are backwards cave people who don't know that the United States has funded and supported the same governments and leaders that have secret police kidnapping political dissenters off the streets, won't let women drive or vote or sometimes even punishes them with whippings, jail or being stoned to death for having gotten raped.

Former Pakistani President Musharraf, a military dictator, whom the U.S. sent billions and billions of dollars to each year just had an arrest warrant issued for him over the assassination of his political opposition, Benazir Bhutto, prior to the election. Yay! Hey, thanks U.S. Government for sending my tax money to a murderous, anti-democracy dictator who has women assassinated.

Ron Paul doesn't think the Federal Reserve should be able to just print money out of thin air, decreasing the value of the money already in circulation (including our savings) so that they can cover the massive deficits and out of control spending of our ridiculously bloated government while the rest of the world laughs at us. Has anyone else noticed the rest of the world starting to demand that the U.S. Dollar no longer be a key reserve currency and even China, a Communist Country whom we will borrow our entire military budget from (and then some) this year, is starting to rethink how far they will let us extend ourselves with them.

Ron Paul doesn't think that the Federal Government should be regulating religious rituals like marriage that a lot of us really think should be controlled by each person's respective church or religious beliefs. Nope, he doesn't think that the opinions of some people should be forced, by threat of government violence, on everyone else.

Ron Paul really means it when he talks about shrinking the Federal Government, making sure it minds its own business and actually protects not just the personal safety and freedom of Americans but our economic freedom and security as well.

A lot of conservatives like to talk about how they want the U.S. Government out of their lives and wallets. Yeah, well people in other countries want the U.S. Government out of their lives and wallets too. You want to stop terrorism against the United States? Heaven forbid we consider starting by not pissing off a whole region of the world with a hypocritical foreign policy.

Small government conservatives shouldn't be calling for the Government to not only take over marriage from the church; but, as the proposed Constitutional Amendment in Indiana would call for - actually banning voluntary, contractual agreements between people that might look too much like some kind of arrangement similar to that married people have. Yeah, banning voluntary, contractual agreements between consenting adults is exactly what small government conservative folks should be promoting. Idiots.

One of the elected politicians that represents me in the Indiana State House, and one of the few I respect quite a bit, pointed out how some of the same people who praised Governor Mitch Daniels' great speech at CPAC spent the very next day blasting and criticizing CPAC for Ron Paul's victory in their Straw Poll. Well, just keep this mind. As a Facebook post pointed out, "Ron Paul won that straw poll with 30% of the vote by INSPIRING people to be there. Mitt 'RomneyCare' Romney came in second place with 23% by PAYING people to be there." Nobody else garnered more than 6% and, thank goodness for small miracles, Sarah Palin only got 3% with the much more deserving Mitch Daniels ahead of her at 4%.

For all of the railing against the government takeover of healthcare under Obama where was all the fuss when George W. Bush pushed through the trillion dollar prescription drug benefit to Medicare? Where are the loud calls and protests to repeal that? Where is the acknowledgement about Mitt's involvement with Massachusetts so-called "RomneyCare" program? Hey! If the CPAC results are any indication 23% of conservatives agree that government takeovers are okay so long as a Republican does it!

So, yeah, there are a bunch of us out there who want a little (or a lot of) intellectual honesty and consistency from our politicians and our government. But, until we get it from the followers and supporters of the two major political party cults (and that's what they've devolved into), we aren't going to have it from government. And, so, people like Ron Paul pose a problem because he continues to point out the inconsistencies in the current political dialog and our own hypocrisy. Supporters of the status quo, of an oppressive global American empire or people who want to use government to push their hateful, religious anti-gay people agenda really, really hate that.