Letter to Senator Grahm Re Moore Nomination

Dear Senator Graham:

I noticed your comments about Stephen Moore.  I appreciate the importance of shallow grandstanding in politics, but you might consider the one-sided bias of the media in "outing" conservative Republicans and protecting leftists.  Saying that Moore's nomination is "problematic" does much to empower Antifa and its media mouthpieces like the New York Times.

Sincerely,

Professor Mitchell Langbert

FAIR Files 501 (c) (3) Complaint Against the Southern Poverty Law Center

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, has filed a formal legal complaint with the Internal Revenue Service  respecting the tax exemption of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the racketeering-and-political-advocacy group founded by Morris Dees, who along with chief executive Richard Cohen, has resigned from the organization amid a flurry of scandals.

FAIR writes:

SPLC went way over the line in this last election. It publicly engaged in deep, deliberate, and unlawful participation during the 2016 presidential election cycle, flagrantly violating its non-profit tax status,”  “The IRS should investigate all of these instances, and take appropriate steps to either sanction and fine the SPLC, or remove its tax-exempt status as a public charity. We are alleging – via meticulously-detailed documented evidence – that it repeatedly engaged in widespread, illegal electioneering in 2015 and 2016.”

The New York Times has used the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source more than 2,000 times.  The organization has, using extortion and fraud tactics, amassed an endowment in excess of $300 million dollars, larger than the wealth accumulated by many of the leading mafiosi. 

Trump's Fake Fix for a Bad Economic Policy

Last week, Walter Block, who has come to my classes to speak, published an excellent New York Times piece about Donald Trump's tariff-and-farm-subsidy policies.  I have heretofore been a Times skeptic, and this may just be a case of politics makes strange bedfellows.  The Times, however, has also taken an interest in Heterodox Academy.  Is there reason for hope?

Heterodox Academy Open Mind Conference

I just returned from the first Open Mind conference of Heterodox Academy, founded by Jonathan Haidt. I've been involved with the academic reform movement for more than 25 years, and this meeting was a watershed, not least because of the large audience of academics from all over the country who have taken an interest in campus speech issues and political correctness.

Haidt's strategic and organizational skills are impressive. The meeting integrated important mainstream and left-wing academics into some manner of organized expression of concern about an issue that heretofore conservatives have dominated. There have always been Democrats involved in leadership roles of the academic reform movement, such as Greg Lukianoff of FIRE (who has just coauthored a book with Haidt) and KC Johnson of Brooklyn College, but this meeting was different, for Heterodox is a mainstream academic and even left-organized group.

Among the speakers were President Robert Zimmer of the University of Chicago; President Michael Roth of Wesleyan; and a former president of the University of California, Mark Yudof.

They also included Heather Heying, who had resigned from Evergreen State with her husband, Bret Weinstein, in a bizarre controversy. (Weinstein has received a $500,000 settlement from Evergreen.)  Alice Dreger, a professor who had resigned from Northwestern over a censorship issue, also spoke. Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Education, moderated one of the panels.

The meeting was held in an auditorium on the ground floor of the New York Times building. In other words, the New York Times has lent support to Heterodox Academy.

The speakers were mostly from elite institutions, with the exceptions of Angus Johnston,  a left-oriented scholar of protest movements, a public scholar, and an adjunct at CUNY’s Hostos Community College, and Heather Heying, with whom I had a conversation during the breakfast hour. There were several speakers associated with Yale, Haidt's alma mater, including Michael B Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, and philosophy professor Jason Stanley.

Only a few of the speakers, like Robert George (founder of Princeton's James Madison program), were conservatives or libertarians. John McWhorter of Columbia (see his Atlantic article) made some comments that conservatives might like. ACTA's Michael B. Poliakoff also spoke.

There are strengths and weaknesses to organizing a higher ed protest movement from inside the higher ed Leviathan.  A strength is that the Republicans have dropped the ball on this issue, so reform from outside is unlikely in the short run.  A weakness is that this movement might forestall such reform. Moreover, many of the important failings of higher ed, such as the failure of higher ed institutions to do much in the way of real education, might get overlooked.

There may be a tendency to follow the mainstream Progressive patterns that led to political correctness in the first place. Insiders who oppose groupthink may offer Caspar Milquetoast prescriptions. It's not at all clear that moderate reform of some speech issues addresses what is required. 

Most of the speakers were on the obvious side of issues like opposition to shouting down campus speakers, but several said things like “free speech is just a justification for racism” and one or two defended shouting down.

I was skeptical of the degree to which President Zimmer painted Chicago as a center of academic freedom. I have no doubt that it’s better than most places, but I wonder what their D:R ratios look like, especially when you exit the economics department. (Illinois doesn’t provide voter registration information.) Also, although I had a pleasant conversation with Michael Roth before his talk,  I am skeptical that places like Wesleyan will become centers of free speech in the next 25 years.

That said, the brilliance of the movement that Jonathan Haidt and Heterodox Academy are creating is certain. Let's hope that great things will result.

The Media's Trump/Cuomo Double Standard

In 2014 Andrew Cuomo dissolved a Moreland Act commission that was investigating corruption in Cuomo's administration. Neither the New York Times nor MSNBC called for Cuomo's impeachment. In 2017 Donald Trump made a comment to an FBI director investigating his presidency. The reverse was true--the media called for Trump's impeachment. Can we at least agree that there is a double standard here?

I'm Betting on a Rising Stock Market

The belief that the stock market will go up forever is  a bubble psychology that goes back to the South Sea Bubble, which fooled even Sir Isaac Newton. Since 2009, and especially since President Obama's reelection in 2012, the stock market has been going at a tear. The tear will continue. The editorial page of the New York Times proves it.  The Times wrote this yesterday: 

On one side is a small yet vocal minority of Fed officials who want to head off inflation by raising rates sooner rather than later. On the other is a majority that thinks a near-term rate hike would stifle growth and, with it, any chance of restoring health to the labor market. That group includes Janet Yellen, the Fed’s chairwoman, and most members of the Fed’s policy committee…The economic evidence indisputably favors Ms. Yellen, who has indicated that rate increases should not begin until sometime next year, at the earliest. It will take until then to be able to say with confidence whether recent improvements in growth and hiring are sustainable.

The reason that the Times's editorial is important is that the nation's hierarchy of decision making with respect to interest rate policy is as follows:

Investment banker cronies--> Ochs Sulzberger family-->The New York Times--> public opinion among Democrats --> President Obama's opinon --> Janet Yellen's opinion --> Federal Open Market Committee decision

If a Republican were in office, the Wall Street Journal would play the equivalent role.

Rates will be lower, or will increase less, than stock market participants expect because the Democrats have a commitment to boosting the stock market. The Times goes on to make the curious claim that keeping interest rates low will improve real wages; that real wages have declined while interest rates have been kept at historically low levels for the past 43 years does not deter them.  Recall the old saying about insanity.  

 Seeking Alpha says that George Soros is currently hedging the S&P 500. I'm sure that there is a logical or statistical basis for his tactic  because all evidence says that the stock market is high now.  The support of the Fed will continue to keep the market at high levels into next year, though.  I'm not buying the S&P short ETF, SH, just yet. However, I have about 1% of my portfolio in the VIXX index and an interest rate short index, both of which have declined and are near all-time lows. The VIXX index measures market volatility, and it goes up when the stock market goes down.  It is at all-times low, which is an indicator that the stock market will go down.  

From a policy standpoint the New York Sun's Seth Lipsky continues to offer a still, small voice of financial sanity among the Sodom and Gomorrah of the American media.  Sadly, Paul Krugman will have to turn into a pillar of salt before any change in America's addiction to print-and-spend economics ends. 

For now, I'm buying a little more Chicago Bridge and Iron (CBI).  It's gone up a few percent since Buffett bought a second set of shares; according to Seeking Alpha several other hedge funds are piling in.  The sharp decline due to rumors about improper accounting and the firm's president's illness seems to have offered Buffett and other hedge funds a buying opportunity; including pension fund holdings, Berkshire may own 25%. 

New York Times Finds That Brooklyn College Grads Have Trouble Finding Jobs

The New York Times  has published an article about the difficulty that Brooklyn College business program students, in effect the students whom I teach, are having trouble finding jobs.  That is not surprising because the program does little to identify what jobs are available and what the program can do to offer skills that specifically target the job market that the students face.  My response to the Times is as follows:

Dear Editor:

Thank you for “Degree? Check. Enthusiasm? Check. Job? Not So Fast” (New York Region, June 8, 2014), concerning the inability of Brooklyn College grads to find jobs.  Over the past decade one or two Brooklyn business faculty have proposed that the college establish an objective outcomes assessment system to measure  job placement,  but Brooklyn College has resisted.  The public ought to demand that higher educational institutions publish measures not only of job placement but also of objectively measured performance improvement in skill areas like writing, mathematics, and interpersonal skills. In order for Brooklyn College to improve the job placement outcomes that you describe, the first step for us educators is to objectively know what the outcomes are.  The second is to deliver competencies to our students that enable them to do better. The Brooklyn business program has resisted objective measurement; you have done it for us. 

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

How Embarrassing for the New York Times

The Buffalo News reports that the socialist advocates of welfare for bankers at the New York Times have endorsed a socialist advocate of welfare for bankers, Rick Lazio.  How embarrassing for the Times.

Michelle Obama Describes Barack as a Kenyan in 2007

Article II, section I of the US Constitution states that the president must be a natural born citizen.  The meaning of natural born is subject to numerous interpretations.  These have been debated elsewhere.  In the video below (h/t Contrairimairi) at around 2:00 minutes (fast forward because the speech is painfully dull and the tape is of poor quality) Michelle Obama describes Barack as a "Kenyan."  This is intriguing because he had spent several years in Indonesia, not Kenya.

Perhaps the Democratic Party media's indifference to Mr. Obama's citizenship originates from its ignorance of basic facts.  Recently, a professor I know who reads the New York Times and scoffed at "birther conspiracy theories" was surprised to learn that the Constitution mandates that the president be a natural born citizen.  In other words, this individual has a master's in law from Harvard; reads the New York Times and other Democratic Party media; but was ignorant of basic information, information that any decent high school student should know, about the Constitution

Given the media's incompetence and their readers' poor information base and dismal lack of citizenship skills, it is not surprising that the New York Times's readers can be convinced that it is not constitutionally mandated that the president be a US citizen.  Woe is us.

 

New York Times, Huffington Post Are Turkey Farms

I was just doing a little web surfing.  I Googled the words "tea party" and "racism".  There was an article on Huffington Post recently calling the Tea Partiers ignorant racists. As well, the New York Times had an article about Confederate History Month and someone commented on the Times's  blog about the Woodstock Times article, specifically alluding to my statement on this blog that I am a Confederate. Of course, that has nothing to do with race or slavery. It is an allusion to the 10th Amendment and decentralization.  I conclude from looking at the articles and posters on both the Huffington Post blog and at the New York Times that both are turkey farms. Their readers are turkeys.  And that goes for the so-called journalists as well. And it goes for whoever wrote that dull-witted post.

I celebrated with a letter to Brian Hollander, editor of the Woodstock Times:

----- Original Message -----

From: Mitchell Langbert

To: woodstocktimes@ulsterpublishing.com

Sent: Monday, April 19, 2010 5:28 AM

Subject: Fw: Corrected: American Breakfast Tea

Dear Editor Hollander: 

Thank you and Paul Smart for the coverage of our nascent Tea Party group ("American Breakfast Tea", April 8).  However, a point of clarification regarding Mr. Smart's reference to my belief in the Confederacy, John Calhoun and Andrew Jackson is in order.  I write in part because one of the Woodstock Times's  readers quoted the article and libelously alluded to it on a New York Times blog.  Please note that my reference to the Confederacy, John C. Calhoun and Andrew Jackson had nothing at all to do with slavery or race. This is a common libel concerning the Tea Party among the benighted social democratic press.  It is false that the Tea Party has to do with racism.

If you read my blog regularly you know that Mr. Smart took my point out of context.  My chief interest is in decentralization of government. John C. Calhoun and Andrew Jackson were two of the most important advocates of decentralization. This is closely related to modern management theories of Alfred Chandler and Oliver Williamson. 

Moreover, I am surprised that any of your readers are unaware that the primary issue over which the Civil War was fought was not slavery but states' rights and decentralization. This appears to be one more application of the rule that the more leftists and "progressives" preen themselves about their supposed superior intellects, the more limited their educations turn out to be.  In addition, your reader quoted Mr. Smart's quotation from my blog, which was deliberately selected to be incendiary (we love you anyway, Paul), without having taken the trouble to read it. If your readers wish to read my blog rather than draw libelous conclusions without having done so, it is located at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

The Ineluctable Violence of New York Times Democrats

The Other McCain blog (h/t larwyn) features the above Boston Herald photograph of Democratic staffer Michael Meehan assaulting Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack. Also see the discussion on Greg Sargent's blog, Plum Line and the photo as it originally appeared in the Boston Herald.

Weekly Standard, a corporatist, neo-conservative publication, is one of a small handful of Republican news sources. There is mostly overlap between the Democrats' progressivism and Weekly Standard's version of Republicanism. But Democrats become violent at the slightest ideological divergence. Republicans are to be hated, even when they aren't that different. Why?

Socialism, to include social democracy, is inherently violent. One cannot re-distribute wealth without violence. If anyone disputes the Times's socialist ideas when turned into law by zealous Democrats, they must comply anyway or be thrown in jail for tax evasion. The essence of socialism is that those who disagree cannot be permitted to live on their own terms. They must comply, pay and obey, or be incarcerated. It is a small step from the violent, socialist ideology of the New York Times to Michael Meehan's violence pictured above.

American conservatism in its present, non-European form (in the 18th and 19th century the term conservatism referred to supporters of monarchy, state establishment of religion and the like) began in 1908, with the election of Progressive William Howard Taft. Democratic Party style social democracy began earlier, with the Populists and with William Jennings Bryan, who first ran for president in 1896. The conservative version of Progressivism claims that because of their superior intelligence, government bureaucrats and bankers (they seem to seriously believe this, although I've never been certain) must decide for everyone else.

In contrast, social democrats believe that democracy should rule, and that the meaning of democracy is that bureaucrats and bankers should make decisions for everyone else. The difference between "conservatives" and social democrats was always small. Both ideologies grew out of Progressivism and both are opposed to libertarianism, the view of Sam (but not John) Adams, Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland.

Main Street Republicans have scratched their heads for 100 years as to why people like Bush call themselves "conservatives" and then act like corporatist Democrats. The reason is that they were the original corporatist Democrats. The Democrats copied them and upped the rhetoric a bit by untying the hands of the Fed to give unlimited subsidies to the money center banks and Wall Street. The Democrats both out-corporatized and out-rhetorically-democratized the Republican Progressives. No wonder they hate each other. In rational language, the two are a twin headed hydra.

Michael Meehan is a good Democrat. He is violent. He is politically correct. He has a short time horizon. Let us hope that Scott Brown wins. But let us not deceive ourselves about for whom we vote. I know nothing about Scott Brown. But if we continue to allow Progressives to dominate the conservative movement, we will continue to see the same Rockefeller-Bush version of New York Times socialism.

Libertarians, The New York Times and Saul Alinsky

My blog on the irrelevance of the New York Times appears on the Republican Liberty Caucus site:

Libertarians, The New York Times and Saul Alinsky

>The small but growing New York State chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus recently had a spirited debate on our Yahoo! group site as to the best way to respond to the New York Times and its writers. My claim is that it is malevolent neglect. Don’t talk about them. Laugh when they are quoted. Several other New Yorkers argue that a rational response is necessary.

Those who favor free minds and free markets gravitate toward reason and tend to assume that it is through reasonable debate that minds are changed. Ayn Rand argued for reason as the cornerstone of morality and claimed that man is the “rational” as opposed to the “political” animal. But Aristotle considered both to be critical, and was concerned with the inculcation of moral as well as intellectual virtue in the minds of his students. Whether he was successful or not can be judged from the success of his most famous graduate: Alexander the Great.

Putting aside Oscar Wilde’s observation that “man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason”, human rationality is a useful philosophical concept (and one on which the subject of economics thrives) but has limited practical use. In the long run the rational survive and prosper, but in the short run psychological, political and symbolic behavior prevail. The institutionalist economist Thorstein Veblen noted both conspicuous consumption and academic caps and gowns as symbolic phenomena that flourish in their respective arenas, even as we who are rational prefer to drive Hyundais and wear jeans.

The Federalist Papers and the debate about the Constitution reflected the highest degree of reason. But we too often forget that in the late eighteenth century only a propertied minority was allowed to vote. Even so, the Founding Fathers put little stock in the voter’s rationality. The Senate was to be elected by state legislatures and the President was to be elected by the Electoral College. Only Congress was to be directly elected.

There were three steps to the expansion of democracy. The first was the granting of universal white male suffrage in the Age of Jackson. The second was the Progressives’ institution of direct election of Senators and, in some states, referenda, recalls and initiatives, along with female suffrage. The third was the fulfillment of the 15th Amendment in the 1960s, giving African Americans more equal ballot access.

By the time of the second extension of democracy in the Progressive era, Progressives were noticing public opinion’s malleability. John Dewey argued that the public needed to be provided with simplified pictures of public issues and this was to be the responsibility of the press. Walter Lippmann, the most conservative of the three founders of the New Republic magazine (the other two were Herbert Croly and Walter Weyl), was pessimistic about the ability of the public to make rational decisions. Lippmann was critical of the press as well. By the 1950s, left wing sociologists like C. Wright Mill were arguing that the centralization of mass media enabled a power elite to dominate public opinion.

The history of Athens reminds us that public emotion and demagoguery threaten democracy. In part because the Founding Fathers were concerned with classical history, they favored republicanism as opposed to direct democracy. After a century of democratized republicanism, it is safe to say that the broad extension of democracy has dimmed the expression of public will. The majority is easily misled and manipulated, and finds itself supporting policies whose results are opposite of what it expects. The symbolism of the New Deal and the Great Society is sufficient to generate public support for these policies even as they have caused diminishing real hourly real wages since 1970.



Read the whole thing at:

http://www.rlc.org/2009/07/12/libertarians-the-new-york-times-and-saul-alinsky/

It is Time for Republicans to Drop the New York Times

Sharad Karkhanis, Professor Emeritus of Kingsborough Community College, has forwarded the above link.

I have just been on the Yahoo! Group of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New York State (membership group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RLCNY), and I have been debating with someone who aimed to refute Paul Krguman and the New York Times.

There is a link between what the former KGB agent is saying in the above video and the discussion whether or not to pay attention to the New York Times. As the former KGB agent points out, American liberalism is not a rational or pragmatic belief system but rather a programmed ideology. Because it is not reasonable, it is pointless to attempt to argue rationally with the Times or its ideological acolytes, whether academics who advocate socialism after socialism's repeated dismal failures; Keynesianism; or other forms of state-activist liberalism. As the former KGB agent points out, brainwashed ideologues cannot be convinced through evidence or rational argument.

By attempting to refute the New York Times, we give it credence. Yet it does not deserve credence. I start with my concluding comment and work backward.

Mitchell Langbert: The influence of economists is not so great...The main reason Krugman is well known is the New York Times itself. It is a circular process, so you empower him and it by paying attention. Moverover, the only reason that the New York Times has influence is that Republicans continue to read it and pay attention to what it says. If they stopped, then the Times would become just another partisan voice.

There are lots of economists who publish many articles of whom no one has ever heard. Krugman may have some influence with students, but so did many other economists whose ideas have been forgotten or ignored and whose students forgot them when faced with the realities of the job market and economic events. The repeated failure of the ideas of most (statist) academics has not stopped the current crop from making the same old (failed) arguments. Their chief motivator is power. If the public shows boredom with the Times, et al., and does not pay attention to the nonsensical statist approach that has made inroads this year, the Times will die or change.

Within the past few years there was a takeover attempt by financial interests, but the Ochs Sulzbergers were able to ward them off. The precipitous decline in the newspaper's stock price can be pushed further, and possibly the Times into bankruptcy, which would be a major victory for freedom. Within the past few months the Times has had to obtain a 200 million dollar emergency loan from the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. They can be pushed over the edge. This is not your father's world. The Times can be killed.

I would wager that about 1/4 or more of the Times's readers are from the conservative/small government side. Even if it's only 1/8th, including yourself, a drop in readership from roughly one million to 875 thousand would have a devastating impact on the Times. If conservatives stopped taking them seriously and if Republicans stopped referring to them at all, their influence would be reduced. Partisan sources are not influential. Equally important, they might be subject to a takeover by interests with a different perspective. Even a more moderate perspective would be a major improvement.

The Times is a partisan source, but somehow conservatives and libertarians have been convinced to pay attention to them. There may have been a time when their quality was good enough to warrant the attention, but that time is long past. With the advent of the Internet, the Times is facing a major extinction event that conservatives delay by paying attention to them.

The Times has enjoyed a faux reputation as an accurate newspaper and a representative of mainstream views. It is neither. If a large segment drops it, then its claim to objectivity and to being an influence on mainstream opinion is less credible. And if Republicans scorn it or ignore it, not argue with it as though it has a voice of importance and integrity, but scorn it as the fraud that it is, then its influence will end. Which it, as a fringe voice, deserves.

Let's reverse the situation. Do big government types read each issue of "National Review" or the von Mises website and argue with them? Does the New York Times regularly present the Cato Institute's arguments and dispute them? I don't think so. They simply do not pay attention. They characterize the American liberal view as fringe. They win victory by not acknowledging the alternative views and arguing with them, but disparaging them. That is how the two party system has become two versions of state-activist "liberalism": the Times has defined conservatism as the Rockefeller-T Roosevelt-Straussian view, and "liberalism" as the FDR-Obama view, and has ignored the American view. If the Times ignores us, why should we pay attention to them?

There are thousands of economists who disagree with Krugman yet do not get any coverage. The coverage is what gives him influence. And by paying attention to the coverage, conservatives make the coverage possible. If the conservatives laugh at the Times, it will no longer have authority.

Ultimately social science is a smoke and mirrors scheme. There is no interest in what works, only what increases the power of the ruling group, the military industrial complex and the special interests that the Times and Krugman represent. Their arguments need not be taken seriously. They are ideology and can be safely ignored, with no loss in intellectual rigor. So why bother arguing with frauds?

Brian:

I should not have limited my last post to the NY Times. The main issue at hand is not the considerable damage that rag has done to our nation, though if anything that is all the more reason to refute rather than ignore it. My father knew in the late 1950’s who the real Castro was from reading Robert Welch; rather than ignore the NY Times as they praised Castro, he was able to point out to friends the stark contrast between the truth and the lies on its pages. By doing so, he did his part to erode its influence.

The main issue is not the exact number of millions of readers the print edition of the NY Times reaches either; the circulation of its print version hardly defines its influence. I skim its headlines daily online, as I am sure millions more do, and as the ideas are digested and influence the thinking of those millions, the effects ripple outward through myriad channels.

The main issue is the original contention that we should not concern ourselves with Paul Krugman. Lets’ assume, merely for arguments sake, that the NY Times is “fringe” and inconsequential. Krugman’s influence is hardly limited to readers of the Times. He is a major economist and perhaps one of our most influential intellectual foes.

Krugman is one of the most widely read and influential economists in the world today. He has written many widely read books and edited even more than he has written. He has written hundreds of papers and articles that are published all over the world. He has written for Fortune, Slate, The Harvard Business Review, Foreign Policy, The Economist, Harper's, and Washington Monthly and had his articles and ideas published, reprinted, or otherwise disseminated in countless others, from the Huffington Post and USA today to Newsweek . And that’s just print media CNN, MSNBC

Students have been infected with Krugman’s economic virus in his classes at MIT, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and the London School of Economics. He won the Nobel Prize for Economics. He is a Fellow or Associate or prominent member of a variety of groups and organizations. He has advised the Federal Reserve. If this thumbnail sketch isn’t enough to deem him worthy of refutation, consider that his influence hardly stops at our borders. He has the ear of the World Bank, the IMF, and the UN, as well as other nations. The Asia Times and The Economist have both noted his influence, and the King of Spain gave him an award. (Speaking of awards, how many has he won, including the Nobel Peace Prize?)

Krugman is a dangerous enemy and, as such, we must keep a close eye on him; he must be met head to head, toe to toe, issue by issue, point-by-point.

Last thought: I don’t consider the Libertarian Party “fringe” because of its tiny influence in elections. Our ideas are exponentially more influential than our total votes. While we may only garner a few precious percent nationally, look at the major strides we made in this last election with Ron Paul carrying the ball. Without that effort, we would never have been able to garner support for auditing the Federal Reserve. We are at war. We must renew our spirits and redouble our efforts now, while words can me our most effective weapon. Fight on compatriots!

Mitchell Langbert

Why bother concerning ourselves about Paul Krugman? We're at a point where attention paid to the Times and its writers merely serves to empower them. They don't need to be debunked any more than a writer for the ACORN or AFL-CIO newsletters, or any other partisan group. The best policy toward the Times is to forget its existence and to regard anyone who refers to it as a crank or a flake.

Brian:

1) Krugman's Intellectual Waterloo
Mises Daily
http://mises.org/story/3530#


2) Related resources:

One of the links in the von Mises article is to an excellent list of Krugman quotes arguing for the Fed to inflate a housing bubble: Krugman Did Cause the Housing Bubble (url:http://blog.mises.org/archives/010153.asp).

One of the comments under that blog adds another example of Krugman Gnawing on His Foot (NY Times 8/2/02) (url: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html): "To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

Another comments links to: Reason Magazine: "Dr. Krugman: This Patient Needs More Blood-letting" - Comment by "Ben" (url: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/134131.html#1305886), which is worth the read just for this Vintage Inflation Propaganda Clip (10:00 min) and the comments under it.

Richard:


While I can't stand Krugman, he is an actual economist and not a journalist. He
won a Nobel prize for something that was sensible on location factors in trade,
not nonsense. As he is influential, it pays to be aware of what he says. He is
not a fringe, marginal figure.

I made a narrow escape from Krugman. I dated his sister-in-law years ago.
Imagine if things had developed and I would have to talk to him.

Howard S. Katz on Floyd Norris

Howard S. Katz is back on Kitco and he has written an interesting piece in response to New York Times columnist Floyd Norris entitled "Response to Floyd Norris":

Dear Mr. Norris:

I approach the subject of economics from a slightly different point of view than the writers for the Times, and I wanted to take issue with your comments in Saturday’s paper about the “recession.”

First, there was an event that happened at the very beginning of the New Deal which sets the tone for the economic controversies of the past 80 years. F.D.R’s Brain Trust., freshly in office, came up with a plan to get the country out of the depression by means of killing pigs and plowing under crops. The plan, however, ran into one difficulty. (I owe this story to my good friend Warren Roberts.) The jackasses who pulled the plows had been carefully taught to walk between the rows. Now that they were being ordered to walk on the rows they rebelled. The reason for this is that the jackasses had more brains than the Brain Trust.

Supporters of the New Deal had an effective way to deal with this. They all carry a mental eraser in their heads, and when something embarrassing occurs, they simply erase it from their minds. To claim that you are going to save the country from depression by destroying wealth is akin to the math student who enters the class with the theory that 2 + 2 = 27. There is really no point in debating him. One is dealing with a nut case, and to attempt an intellectual discussion to show him the error of his ways is itself a mistake.

Further evidence of the Times’ incompetence in economics can be seen from their failed predictions over the past 30 years.

In 1982, with the DJI at 800, the Times kept telling the country that Henry Kaufman was the nation’s top economist. Dr. Kaufman was then known by the nickname “Dr. Doom” because he was predicting higher interest rates and lower stock prices. Millions of people took your advice and sold their stocks, just months before the greatest stock bull market in American history.

In 1985, with the DJI at 1350, the Times’ Op Ed page developed the theory that the chart pattern of the DJI bore an uncanny resemblance to late 1928 and early 1929. This implication was that stocks were on the verge of a massive decline which would cause them to lose 90% of their value. All over the country people were thrown into a panic and sold their stocks, knocking the DJI down below 1300. From there it turned and, over the next 2 years, rose to 2700. It never got below 1300 again.

In 1987, a gentleman named Ravi Batra wrote a book entitled The Great Depression of 1990. The Times, and the remainder of the nation’s media, became very excited over this prediction. Lester Thurow went ga-ga over the book. Leonard Silk, Christopher Lehmann Haupt and Thomas Hayes gave him high praise. The pessimism generated by the book may have contributed to the crash of October 1987. But when 1990 rolled around, the worst that happened was a 1.3% (2 quarter) decline in GDP. J. Scott Armstrong called this the seer-sucker theory: for every seer there is a sucker.

In 1999, the Times turned bullish and published Dow 36,000 by Glassman and Hassett, predicting that the DJI would rise to that number between 2002-04. By 2002, the DJI had declined to a low of 7,200, and its 2004 high was still below 11,000. Carried away by its own irrational exuberance the Times invested $2.7 billion in its own stock (then trading around 40). At present, one share of Times stock sells for about the same price as a Sunday paper, and the loss on those turn-of the century investments is about $2.3 billion. This has forced the Times to mortgage its new headquarters and to take a loan from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
In short, this record of prediction is pretty much what one would expect if the student who believed the 2 + 2 = 27 theory were to take over the math class and start investing the school’s money.

Read the whole thing here.

America Died while The New York Times Lied

I just wrote the following e-mail to my old friend, Richard, who sent me an e-mail on Facebook about universities.

>Dear Richard: Universities have failed but they are irredeemable. The problem is that government is a violent institution and I abhor violence. To end the violence we must end government, as Henry David Thoreau urged in the 1840s. The fraud that universities perpetrate on graduate students is but one more product of governmental compulsion. Without government, the university scam would not exist.

Universities' dysfunction goes back to 1810's when Nazism's earliest origins appeared in the German university via Fichte and the hep hep riots at the University of Berlin. It was only a matter of time before the reinvention of medieval communism under Bismarck would transform into racial categories and mass murder. The US chose to adopt the German form of university and ideology and so has been marching toward totalitarianism since the early 20th century. The outcome won't be as bad here because America has no history of tribal unity, although the advocacy of unity under Barack Obama is indeed reminiscent of the rise of Nazism--"change" in German was one of Hitler's slogans--"alles muss ander sein"-- and extension of universal health care was one of Hitler's chief platforms.

I am in favor of ending the cultural hegemony of higher education by ending the discriminatory practice of requiring advanced degrees for jobs that require a fourth grade education in fields ranging from human resource management to investment banking. Store managers in malls now have MBAs. Once universities are debunked as authoritarian shams, then we can move on to government.

The hue and cry for regulation is a subset of the greater effort to institutionalize the power of investment banks and the military industrial complex. The mouthpiece of this systemic effort by the Demopublican Party is of course the New York Times, including Krugman and all the rest of the Times's apologists for the bailout and state power on behalf of the Ochs Sulzbergers' cronies-- Goldman Sachs and its clients.

Regulation is but a manifestation of state violence. All who advocate regulation advocate violence. Goldman Sachs and the banking system would end without government support, and America would become a free country for the first time since 1913.

The mainstream of popular opinion cannot avoid the consequences of a move toward greater regulation. The consequences are slowed intellectual and economic progress; declining living standards and increased suppression of ideas. America has become poorer because of regulation---especially the abolition of the gold standard in 1971 which allowed the commercial banking community unfettered power to transfer capital into its hands via the Federal Reserve Bank. This has been done at the expense of the productive sector of the economy. The investment banking community's favored candidate, Barack Obama, was elected to facilitate ever greater transfers of wealth into their hands. America died while the New York Times lied.

America has become increasingly divided and so must be broken up into parts. There is no longer a viable America. The country has turned into a United States of Goldman Sachs, a tyranny run by violent thugs in Washington and the state capitols.

The election of the bankers' marionette, Barack Obama, is but one more step toward institutionalization of totalitarianism here. Universities have done their job. But let us start with root causes, not with their ridiculous manifestation--universities.

Break Out the Champagne--New York Times Stock Sinks to $3.65/Share

Previous Close: $3.77 (2/17/09)
Open: $3.78
Bid: NA
Ask: NA
Day's Range: $3.65 - $3.83
52 Week High: $21.14 (4/25/08)
52 Week Low: $3.65 (2/18/09)

Markets do work. Too bad we didn't sell short. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger seems to be mismanaging his inherited firm into the ground. The Times reports that Carlos Slim Helú has lent the firm $250 million to help it pay off debts in light of flagging readership. The Times stock sold on the market is non-voting. Only the Ochs Sulzbergers, who advocate inheritance taxes for everyone but themselves, have voting stock.

The question is not so much when the Times will fold, but rather, whether anyone will care (other than Mr. Helú and the Ochs Sulzbergers) when it does. (H/t Howard S. Katz.)

Lipset on The New York Times, Republicans and Fidel Castro

"...True, the United States worked with Batista before he was overthrown, as did the Cuban Communist party. But Castro's rise was made possible by American help and sympathy. The New York Times, the paper with closest connection with the State Department, was the first to bring Castro's struggle to the attention of the American people and world public opinion in a highly sympathetic series of articles, published at a time when his armed supporters numbered in the hundreds. Although the American military co-operated with Batista until his fall, Castro was able to secure arms from America, and the State Department clearly opposed Batista long before he left Cuba, and demanded he hold genuinely free elections and give up office. Right wing senators and organs of opinion in the United States have, in fact, blamed State Department policy for Castro's rise to power. American officials, including then Vice-President Nixon have reported that they sought to discuss financial aid to Castro during his first tour of the United States, but that he refused, a contention that has been confirmed by Castro's former finance minister and others of his entourage before they broke with him."

---Seymour Martin Lipset, Political Man: the Social Bases of Politics.

Fidel Castro can truly say, "I got my job through the New York Times." And what of the difference between Republicans and Democrats? It would seem that international relations and the State Department reflect a field dominated by quacks.

New York Times Aims to Destroy Your Pension

In a December 22 editorial the New York Times openly advocates inflation as a "cure" for unspecified "ailments" in the economy. Goldbug Howard S. Katz, who runs an investment newsletter, brought the article to my attention earlier today. Katz has been tracking the rapid expansion of Federal Reserve Bank Credit, monetary reserves and the money supply and argues that the safest way to secure your retirement is to take a pro-gold, anti-dollar position despite recent run-ups in the dollar. The stimulus the Fed is providing will lead to a bull market in stocks but a super-bull in commodities. Katz also argues that the current "crisis" has been a media phenomenon fabricated in response to bankers' demands for extra liquidity in order to extract additional wealth from America's declining economy (by declining I mean suffering from long-term, century-long misallocation of resources due to Federal Reserve and "Progressive" policies).

Allow me to quote the from the December 22 article entitled "The Printing Press Cure":

"The Federal Reserve as much as admitted last week that lowering the benchmark interest rate — even to zero — would not be powerful enough medicine to revive today’s ailing economy. And so it has opted for the printing-press cure, pledging for the foreseeable future to pump vast sums into banks, other financial firms, businesses and households.

"Economic history — of the Great Depression of the 1930s and Japan’s lost decade in the 1990s — suggests that the Fed is doing the right thing. Confronted then, as now, with the twin scourges of deepening recession and incipient deflation, governments did more damage with too little intervention than they would have done with too much.

"But that doesn’t make such intervention 'good.' It’s a big and unfortunate risk in itself."

One of the outcomes of inflationary Fed policy will be the destruction of retirement benefits based on wages earned prior to the inflation (that is, pensions of people who retired prior to the inflation during the coming 5-10 years). Many boomers will likely fall into this category. As boomers retire on annuities, traditional pensions or hold assets in Guaranteed Investment Contracts, savings accounts, safe bonds or other dollar-denominated assets, their well-being will be destroyed as the Times and Wall Street cheer on.

As well, wages do not typically keep pace with inflation. Thus, the already stretched worker will be stretched ever tighter in a Wall Street drawn noose. Employment relations, already weakened by past rounds of inflation, regulation, and globalization, will become weaker. Employers will find it in their interest to terminate post-retirement medical insurance and other benefits that keep pace with inflation. During the 1970s and 1980s employers resented indexing and escalator clauses that caused wages to keep pace with inflation. It is likely that they will be encouraged to reduce or terminate benefits just at the time that health care costs go under exponentially increasing pressure because of the retirement of the baby boomers. The problem cannot be solved by nationally sponsored health insurance because the cost pressures are demographic. All nationally sponsored insurance can do is ration care so that none of the fingers will be sewn back on, just as they wouldn't be in Cuba or France.

The Times does not say exactly why it thinks the economy is in so much trouble that inflation is necessary. Is there a law of economics that states that a few years of excessive mortgage lending necessitates inflation? Why was late nineteenth century America able to produce rising (instead of falling, as the Times advocates) wages, rising productivity, rising employment levels, absorption of massive amounts of immigration and the very deflation that the Times so dreads? Why was it possible to thrive before the Fed was founded, and why are we now in so much trouble after a century of the Fed's existence?

Two of the funnier sentences in the editorial are these:

"To jump-start the economy requires getting money to those who will spend it fast and in full. That includes unemployed workers, low- and middle-income families, and state and local governments."

Back in the 1940s and 1950s the Times supported urban renewal on the pretext that it would lead to better housing for the poor and middle class. Instead, the funding, which was huge in New York City, was given to developers, some of whom were friends of the Times's owners, the Ochs Sulzbergers. The developers used it to exercise extensive private-use eminent domain, banishing factory jobs from New York, destroying low-income neighborhoods and building expensive office buildings and co-ops for millionaires. The middle class was set up in dreary suburbs on Long Island like Levittown under the same programs (of Title I and Title II) and high-crime urban ghettos for minorities were established featuring dreadful public housing projects built with the Times's glowing support. Yes, the Times always has the interests of the poor and middle class in mind.

Now, the Times tells its readers that there is a "crisis" (what it is is never specified) and that Barack Obama's leadership in the interest of inflation is essential.

I do not normally pay attention to what the Times has to say, and this article sums up why. There are two categories of people who read the Times. The first is the people who take them seriously as an information and opinion source. Such people are lost souls at the fringes of society, and I feel sorry for them. The second is the people who read the Times in order to find out what the lost souls are thinking. But the lost souls are headed for the poor house, and the times when the Times's opinions mattered are passed. Let us bury the last copy of the Times in Adolph Ochs's grave.

As far as your own retirement goes, I would seriously consider gold, gold stocks, silver, agricultural commodities, the "DBC" and Swiss Francs. Keeping your money in US dollars is akin to flushing it down the drain.