What a follow up Vaclav Klaus is to Sarkozy! Read his speech before the EU parliament. He basically says (my liberal paraphrasing), wait a minute, I thought we in Eastern Europe already escaped from that lovely blend of socialism, one-party rule, and economic basket-case-ism. Now we're all marching right back to it under the banner of an EU central planning board!?His argument that the positive meaning

Here's another fascinating entry on the "miles per gallon illusion" from the energy policy blog, Master Resource. Excerpt:"it saves more gas to coax people to upgrade from their 10 mpg vehicles into ones that get a still-paltry 15 mpg, than it does to coax people to give up their 25 mpg vehicles and get into Star Trek material that achieves 100 mpg."Read the full post to get the math on this.

Congressman Ron Paul writes:"Proponents of reinstating the draft claim it is needed to protect liberty from enemies abroad. But what about the enemies of liberty right here at home? I am convinced that there are more threats to American liberty within the 10 mile radius of my office on Capitol Hill than there are on the rest of the globe. If we would get our troops off of foreign soil, those

First impression: This is an outstanding example of a speech, with many inspiring messages and positive statements. The negatives consist almost entirely of eloquent repetitions of popular fallacies of economic theory and history. We will be forced, then, to leave the overall good feelings aside and examine the content.I will begin with a summary of key positives and negatives. When I use the words

Since the following letter to two Bloomberg reporters concerning a statement in their article has elicited no response for about two weeks, I will publish a slightly condensed version here as an open letter. I note that the article has gone through two updates since I wrote to these reporters, but the unsupportable claim I pointed out to them remains unaltered.Dear Ms. Goldman and Mr. Miller,I sometimes

I just came across a very specific, devastating analysis of US mainstream media coverage of the Gaza invasion over at AlJazeera, entitled, "In the US, Gaza is a different war."The basic values of journalism are apparently quite dead in the US MSM, and this analysis helps explain in concrete form some of the reasons for my instinctual nausea at MSM coverage. I am finding the AlJazeera coverage, while

While the application of false but popular economic theories continues to wreak havoc on civilization, it is comforting at least to know that there are a lot of people out there who have better ideas than the ideas that have led directly to the need for the current depression (a depression, by the way, which is essential to correct all the damage that was already done during the boom).I'm trying to

To start with, one person is the only one who can do anything, ever. So get over it.This one person is getting toward the end of reading Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles (pdf) by Huerta de Soto.This book cannot be recommended too highly. For what it's worth, reading this enables one to understand the exact manner in which the financial elite, the state, and their pet money-crank academic economists

"POLITICAL POWER. All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights."Well, that was the ideal once upon a time in America, even when the constitutional convention of Washington State adopted this language in 1889.A "modern" (and ancient) version better matching contemporary

A blog post I took note of the other day over at NoThirdSolution, and elements from a recent conversation with my German teacher congealed into one formula that may help avoid pitfalls for those of us who sometimes face what I will call the Inevitable Question: “(But) How would the purely free market society handle X?”The postThe post cited argued that the New Orleans/Katrina fiasco was a result