Liberty or Bust

Ron Paul 2012 Rear Window Decal

I’ve (re)produced the Ron Paul Revolution design in Adobe Illustrator for large format printing, specifically for large car rear window stickers. The design looks like this. I smoothed out the Love portion to make it easier to reproduce in vinyl.

You can download the ai file here.

3 Step Process to Eliminate the National Debt

With the national debt getting ready to break through the $15 trillion mark, its worth noting that we can *easily* eliminate this current debt with 3 easy steps. I should note that this does not address Congress’ ridiculous spending and the deficit, but at least we don’t have the national debt.

1. Eliminate the Federal Reserve
   We need to stop borrowing our own currency. There is no reason to borrow our own money when we inflate our currency. Additionally, we need to allow the market to dictate interest rates instead of the Fed inflating and stagflating our economy.
2. Step up the Required Reserve Rate while issuing new currency without it being backed by debt
   Over the course of 4-5 years, we need to ratchet up the required reserve rate to 100%. To prevent hyper contraction of our economy due to a currency deflation, we would print money at the same rate as the reserve rate increase. This money would be placed in an account to buy back all money issued via debt issuance. The point of this step is to eliminate bank’s ability to inflate the money supply. We only print the money to ensure a relatively stable money supply.
3. Require our new currency be backed by Gold
   The file step after the 4-5 year reserve rate adjustment, we need to tie our currency to gold or silver. We need to maintain our currency going forward and tying it to a precious metal is one of the best ways of doing so. It discourages politicians from printing freely to start wars or other ridiculous ways of taxing their constituents through inflation.

A Collection of Public School Facts

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11432 (http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa662.pdf)

Real spending per pupil ranges from a low of nearly $12,000 in the Phoenix area schools

We find that, in the areas studied, public schools are spending 93 percent more than the estimated median private school.

http://biggovernment.com/acoulson/2010/06/05/the-u-s-economy-needs-fewer-public-school-jobs-not-more/

Costs of public schools in relation to math and reading test scores.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9326 – a paper on school choice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxeP-krUrdU – Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose Series on Education – part 1.

I reserve the right to say I told you so

prop 100 passed.  I reserve the right to say I told you so regarding:

• this sales tax increase will become permanent
• teachers will still be laid off
• our public schools won’t improve in the next three years
• in three years, the state of AZ will not be in a better financial position

Voters of “Yes” enable government to pilfer your wallet, your freedom, your liberty. Its YOUR OWN FAULT. You deserve all that is coming to you.

2010 Maricopa Elections Summary

I’ve tracked down as many links as possible for the May 2010 Maricopa, AZ election.

Maricopa Publicity Pamphlet

Campaign Finance Reports - This is who supported who. It is very insightful to see which Pinal County Supervisors supported.

City Council Member Campaign Links:

1. Peg Chapados – http://pegforcouncil.com/
2. Edward Farrell (incumbent) – http://retainfarrell.com/
3. Julia Romero Gusse – (no known campaign site, google search)
4. Ken Hunt – (no known campaign site, google search)
5. Bridger Kimball – http://www.electbridger.com/
6. Alan Marchione -(no known campaign site, google search)
7. Brent Murphee (incumbent) – http://www.brentmurphree.com/
8. Dallas Paulsen – (no known campaign site, google search)
9. Leon Potter – (no known campaign site, google search)
10. Rosalin Sanhadja – (no known campaign site, google search)

For Mayor

1. Tony Smith – http://www.smithmaricopa.com/

Analysis to Come.

The Payday Loan Industry

The payday loan industry serves a specific market. People with bad credit need a place to borrow money to cover emergencies. In order to provide this service, high interest rates are needed to cover the defaults (remember, these are people with bad credit). Remember, high interest rates do two things. The first is deter people from borrowing unless their emergency justifies the cost. Second, high interest rates get other entrepreneurs into the market, increasing competition, driving down rates. If we prevent this market from existing, we will only be hurting the poor.

Some may say, but people are abusing the system. So! Let them. And when they default on the loans, let the pay day loan industry either absorb the cost of the defaults, or better discriminate between good loans and bad. You will see a diversification of the market. Some will have higher standards for borrowers with lower rates. Others will have higher rates for borrowers with worse credit.

The law’s intent is to protect the poor from high interest rates. Instead it will prevent the poor from making decisions that impact their families, like replacing the air conditioner in July.

To send a message to AZ legislators, see this AZcentral blog post:
http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/EJMontini/77666

Government Protections and the Pony Express

A major part of the socialist platform is to protect industries that may not be feasible without government protections. Hell, one of the over 2000 federal government programs is to compensate milk producers for “lost” profits. Farmers get subsidies to “protect” their industry. GM received a very large check and transferred major chunk of ownership to the United States government to “protect” an American industry. It happens all the time. Its sad and crushes true innovation and prevents true wealth creation.
The reason I bring this up is I visited a train park in Scottsdale. A portion of the train park was a museum which dedicated a small portion of their floor space to Samuel Morse, the inventor of Morse Code, a necessary precursor to the telegraph. Prior the invention of the telegraph, mail traversed the country two ways, train or pony express. If the train system did not reach your area, you were forced to use the pony express. Within a week of the country’s first transcontinental telegraph, the pony express filed for bankruptcy. Now, lets imagine federal bureaucrats wanted to protect an American industry. Retrospectively, we know this would have proved an awful idea. The Telegraph led to the telephone, which lead to the internet and all the other wonderful things modern communications offer, like this blog! Bureaucrats could have placed regulations on evil telegraph companies to prevent the destruction of the pony express. Thank god they didn’t. We need to let businesses die as they lose their competitive edge. This allows the reallocation of resources to other more fruitful tasks. Everyone wins in the long run.

1948 Cartoon

Illegal Immigration

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120601491.html

Many of my Republican friends are very concerned with illegal immigration. They consider it an assault on what I assume to be their American culture. I hear two excuses over and over regarding immigration. The first one is,

“they are breaking the law. If they came here legally, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

First of all, its a civil offense, like speeding. Lets keep the scope of the offense within reality. We don’t like it when our government spends millions of dollars on photo radar cameras, regardless of their reason. Yet, Republicans demand we spend millions to stop illegal immigration. Republicans think if we throw more money at the problem, it will fix it. Republicans have real trouble understanding the demand-side economics of immigration, but we will get into that soon. The second excuse I hear is:

“They only come for free healthcare and welfare.”

While that may be true for some individuals, that is hardly the case generally speaking. The overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants recognize that their home country, Mexico for instance, offer no means to improve their lives, or more importantly, their children’s lives. Mexico is an awful place to live, work, or just plain survive. The wages are pathetic, the government steals what little you earn, and good luck innovating in an environment where bribes speak volumes. These people spend the first half of their lifetime saving up enough money to pay “coyotes” to sneak them into the country. They spend the next half of their lifetimes saving up enough to get their families across the border. Imagine this scenario:

Life is so bad where you live, you leave your family on the chance you will be more prosperous in another country. You risk your life, your life savings, and your family’s future on the sheer chance of achieving American poverty, orders of magnitude better than Mexican poverty.

I can’t imagine leaving my son for a month on a business trip, let alone paying violent drug runners to sneak me into a country for me to mow lawns or wash dishes. Since we mention drug runners here, lets discuss their business model. Illegal immigrants pay thousands of dollars, often offering their lives as collateral, to be smuggled into the United States. These smugglers offer no guarantee of a successful trip. Their cargo, these people’s lives, will be dropped a the first sign of American authorities, abandoned in the middle of the desert. Don’t forget, this is considered orders of magnitude better than life in Mexico.

I do offer a solution. I have mentioned it before. I will mention it again. We need to open the borders and legalize drugs. Here is why. I will discuss drug legalization first. By criminalizing specific activities, you automatically attract unsavory characters to these new black markets. You attract people willing to murder others for thousands of dollars. Then, you give them markets worth millions of dollars. Its simple math at that point – thousands will die because of an arbitrary law. If that market grows to billions of dollars, that’s millions that will die. If you legalize a product of a black market, you immediately crush those black markets, making it no longer worth it to murder of illegal product distribution (drug dealing). Legalizing drugs won’t stop illegal immigration, but it will stop the violence associated with illegal immigration, which is very important to the innocent people surrounded by this mayhem. The next step is to open the border.

Now, I don’t mean kick down the fences and let anyone with a pulse through the revolving doors. My recommendation is to open an office at all major border crossings. Allow individuals to fill out a form (The Feds are great at making forms!) where they provide a thumb print. The form’s information and thumb print are sent through law enforcement databases, and the person gets a Go/No Go designation. A Go designation leads to a tax ID card and the door to the United States. A No Go designation goes to a jail cell which leads to a trial, you know those things mentioned by the Constitution that all men have (you know, rights). Simple.

Liberty is the foundation on which this country was built. Liberty knows no nationality. It knows no political party. It knows only its own morality, natural laws.

Edit: While this is an opinion piece – here are some links related my ideas.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6599
http://www.theagitator.com/2009/04/20/quotable-16/
http://www.theagitator.com/2007/12/24/howley-on-guest-workers/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/06/AR2005120601491.html
http://reason.com/archives/2009/07/06/the-el-paso-miracle

Why Campaign Contribution Caps are the Wrong Solution

A recent Supreme Court ruling changed limits on campaign contributions for corporations. The media is all abuzz regarding this ruling, but are focusing on the wrong part of the issue. The media is focusing on who can contribute and how much can someone contribute? That is an easy answer. As much as they want. Here is the problem: we have created something so valuable, people and corporations are willing to contribute thousands, if not millions of dollars to coerce fellow citizens into their belief systems. These people are investing in a system.

The federal government is too powerful. A politician should not be that valuable. When we reduce the federal government’s power, people will be less willing to invest in politicians. Don’t believe me? How many people contribute millions to city council campaigns? Why? Because its not worth it.