In a Tuesday interview in Britain, Sky News editor Adam Boulton asked George W. Bush: “There are those who would say look, lets take Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib, and rendition and all those things and to them that is the complete opposite of freedom.”
BUSH: “Of course, if you want to slander America.”
This is the same tripe Bush has been shoveling ever since the Abu Ghraib photos first surfaced in 2004. Anyone who accurately labels Bush’s policies slanders America.
Sadly, there are still some Americans who swallow this crap. Unfortunately, Bush has gotten away with bastardizing American freedom for six years now.
It’s great that a British journalist had the guts to ask Bush the kind of question that American White House correspondents almost never touch. [h/t Think Progress]
I doubt if there really is much point in reacting to this kind of thing from Bush anymore. Anyone that reflects seriously on the matter realzes that with Bush, the Republican Party effectively has ceased to exist and that what you hear from him and from it is the full throated voice of National Socialism and I say that without intending to be hyperbolic in any way. We can be grateful that the Supreme Court just the other day put a stop to the ominous trend toward the throttling of liberty these criminals have instigated. The lesson here is the one the SPD failed to learn in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s. And I wouldn’t be too sure that with 2009 we’ll be seeing the last of him. There is always the possibility of the imposition of martial law should some further Reichstag fire be set.
Comparing the policies of our President, however much you may disagree those policies, to Nazi Germany, is at the very least unwarranted hyperbole. To be more accurate, it is an utterly preposterous exaggeration. What I don’t understand is why people can’t forcefully disagree with the President and his policies without name-calling and comparing him to Hitler.
Whether you like George Bush or you can’t stand the sight of him, the fact of the matter is, he is still the President of the United States and millions of your fellow Americans voted for him. When you mock and disresprect him–as oppossed to simply disagreeing with his polices–you are, in effect, disrespecting not the man himself but the office of the Presidency and thus, all the millions of your fellow Americans who voted for him, and thus America itself.
It is time for people to grow up and to be able to have an adult level discussion without using insulting and degrading language towards the President. For example, personally, I am not supporting Mr. Obama and I don’t trust him one bit, based on the nefarious people he has associted with. HOWEVER, if Mr. Obama wins the election he will have my full support and I will respect him for the office that he holds. Even though I will vote against him and work hard to see that he not be elected, if he wins I will respect him. If he walks into a room and I am seated, I will rise. I will respect the will of the American people. Is it too much to ask to do that with regard to our current President? If you think he is a criminal then get your Congressman to vote for impeachment, but unless and until then, start showing some respect.
I find it striking how people are so quick to invoke the name of Hitler in order to disparage someone they don’t like.
Tim,
Two questions: 1) Is the will of the American people, however fraudulently it may have been obtained, above the will of the Iraqi people when it comes to their country? The vast majority of Iraqs want the Americans to leave. Will you respect that?
2) A German pastor called Bonhoeffer was part of a plot to kill Hitler. Was he wrong? Hitler was his country’s ruler and used an election victory and fraud to hold onto power.Shouldn’t Hitler have been respected rather than killed?
Hitler annexed country after country in Europe claiming, like Bush, that he was doing that to save the people of those nations - Checkoslavia and Austria - from their rulers. American policies in the middle east have led to many civilian deaths This is not any different from the way people died in Gas Chambers. So a comparison to Hitler is not so far out.
George Kurian
Ok, last time I checked the Iraqis were glad we are there, and I’m getting my information directly from the marines that are over in Iraq not from the biased media. Bush is not like Hitler, yes Hitler claimed he liberated countries but then he took direct control of the country, Bush on the other hand has overthrown a dictator and set up a democracy were the Iraqi people are free to vote. We are not in Iraq so that we gain from it we are there as a selfless act to help the Iraqi people get their country back.
So when LBJ lied about the Tonkin Gulf attack and started a war that killed a couple million Vietnamese and 56,000 Americans, we should have mindlessly supported him because he was the president? Why can’t we call him a piece of disgusting detritus?
When Wilson manuevered us into WWI “to make the world safe for democracy,” getting 116,000 Americans killed and guaranteeing another World War, we should have mindlessly supported him because he was the president? Why can’t we call him a piece of disgusting detritus?
When Bush junior lied us into the Iraq war getting more than 4000 Americans killed for nothing, anywhere from a quarter to a million Iraqis killed, and a couple million more turned into refugees (the count goes on for all categories), we should have mindlessly supported him because he was the president? Given that America under Bush has just broken the number one Nuremberg trials charge against the Nazis–waging aggressive war–it seems to me that sane Americans have more than just a “policy difference” with Bush. Why can’t we call him a piece of disgusting detritus?
You’re damn right when I mock Bush I mock my fellow Americans, especially after they re-elected this buffoon smeared with the blood of innocents. How corrupt and stupid can you get? And what kind of American advocates that we lick the boots of whatever murderous quarter-wit gets into the White House? I can’t help but think that early Americans would line up for miles just to stooge-slap a disgusting little toady like you, Tim. Pathetic.
Let me end with a quote uttered by Lord Acton in a somewhat different context: “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.”
R. Nelson,
Perhaps, you misunderstood. Of course, one can and should loudly and forcefully disagree with any President, if that President has polices you believe to be unjust.
My only point was that you can do it in a dignified way, where you still show at least a modicum of respect for office he holds.
Gentlemen,
I think that Tim exhibits a particularly virulent form of that common-day malady (coined by Doctor-and-Diagnostician-in-Chief Jim Bovard) called the 9-11 Servility Reflex. Only Jim’s particular strain is the Authority Servility Reflex, which can be just as devastating although it has been plaguing mankind for much, much longer. Patients suffering Jim’s form of the disease usually utter such phrases as “we must obey authority” and “don’t rock the boat” and “show some respect for X” (a power-grabbing person) or “show respect for the Y” (some office that is available to X). In case anyone becomes confused about the particular symptoms of the disease, the patient with Authority Servility Reflex is utterly incapable of uttering the following sentence: “please, show some respect for this powerless individual, who cannot kick my ass and is doing something harmless that I despise and has been victimized by the majoritarian mob after that has been stirred up by that political (or religious) leader X.”
Too, now and then the seemingly powerless have hidden talents:
One movie, John Ford’s classic Cheyenne Autumn, featuring Navajo actors pretending to be Cheyenne, has an almost cult following in Navajo country.
Navajo members watching the movie today roar with laughter when Cheyenne leaders speak in Navajo, supposedly discussing treaties and tribal needs. What the Navajo actors in the film really said in somber tones generally concerned the size of the colonel’s privates (not the ones who march) or some equally disrespectful or bawdy double-entendre….
[http://www.nmgastronome.com/nm/american/rancho.htm]
Senator John McCain implicated in Dineh-Navajo genocide:
http://acsa2000.net/cain2004.org/Dine-Navajo-PressRelease.htm
Ach, Tim, you can’t show respect to an office. So you have to show it, if you think you should show it, to the office’s occupant. Thus you’re still saying that we should show respect to and speak respectfully of men who have caused a world of needless grief and pain. Set aside the thousands of American dead and wounded, the trillions spent to pay for the Iraq war, the irreparable damage done to our liberties and the Constitution, and the corruption of what’s left of the American mind. How can we ever make the Iraqis whole again? I disrespectfully beg to differ with your unAmerican belief in bootlicking.
I don’t think we should be likening anyone to Hitler. Neither George Bush nor Saddam Hussein. It’s all just propaganda.
Subsequently, as the Dineh were removed from their farms by the “Relocation Commission” authorized by the US Senate at the behest of the revisions to the Public Law 93-531 introduced as S.1973-1 (1996 Partition) and S.1003 (2001 and 2005 accelerated removal of the Dineh by amendment) by Senator McCain, expanded Coal Mining Rights to their lands were granted to Peabody Western who with Bechtel Corp, have been mining the lands formerly occupied by the Dineh, and piping the coal to the Mohave Generating Station in Nevada, which serves the Las Vegas and Reno, areas power needs. A map of the Mining and Piping operations are found depicted below.
[link above]
McCain must be some kind of Communist or Collectivist, right–like many Republicans and supposed “conservatives”.
Gee, imagine how much more quickly the Corporate Fascists would have emancipated the land had it been oil or gold rather than coal, eh?
Bikini Islanders Helped By Guantanamo Detainees’ Court Ruling
Johnson Pacific Magazine June 21, 2008
Bikini Islanders attempting to overturn the recent dismissal of their billion-dollar compensation lawsuit against the United States government have received help from an unexpected source.
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week on the rights of terror suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay could help the Bikini case, which is now pending in a U.S. federal appeals court, Bikini attorney Jonathan Weisgall says.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Lakhdar Boumediene case 5-4 that the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay have a constitutional right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention, which in legal language is a procedure known as “habeas corpus,” said Weisgall, who is based in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. tested 23 nuclear weapons at Bikini, including “Bravo” in 1954, the largest American hydrogen bomb ever tested. The tests were conducted while the Marshall Islands was under a United Nations Trusteeship administered by the United States.
The Bikinians filed suit last year in the U.S. Federal Court of Claims seeking more than $1 billion in compensation, but the judge dismissed the claim earlier this year.
The recent Supreme Court decision is important for Bikini because the judges said a Defense Department alternative that stripped U.S. federal courts of jurisdiction to hear petitions from Guantanamo detainees was inadequate — a situation similar to the Bikini islanders who are battling the U.S. argument that U.S. courts should have no jurisdiction to hear their claims because an alternative mechanism already resolved nuclear testing compensation claims.
“The court not only struck down the administration’s contention that the detainees have no rights but also said the system the (U.S.) administration has put in place to classify them as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate,” Weisgall said.
“As with Guantanamo, the U.S. has plenary power over the Marshall Islands and is attempting to pretend otherwise in order to create a Constitution-free zone where none of its actions have consequences,” Weisgall said. “The wrinkle here is that the U.S. entered into an ‘agreement’ with its wards and dependents, but the effect is similar to (the) Boumediene (case): the U.S. tried to arrange things so that the Bikinians’ claims cannot be heard by ordinary federal courts, but rather could only be heard by a specially created forum (the Nuclear Claims Tribunal) that would not meaningfully address those claims.”
Shortly after the first Compact of Free Association came into effect in 1986, U.S. courts dismissed an earlier Bikini claim because the courts said the U.S. Congress had approved a political settlement that included establishing the Nuclear Claims Tribunal by giving it $45 million to satisfy unresolved nuclear test claims in the Marshall Islands.
The Tribunal awarded Bikini nearly $1 billion in damages and clean up funding as a result of the 23 U.S. nuclear tests, but paid only a small fraction of that amount for lack of funding.
Weisgall said the bottom line is that this Supreme Court decision “helps us, but by no means turns the case into a slam dunk.”
http://www.pacificmagazine.net/news/2008/06/21/bikini-islanders-helped-by-guantanamo-detainees-court-ruling
I’m not so sure the SCOTUS “put a stop to” anything. This administration has already indicated that it will simply not implement the decision. And you know what will happen? Somebody will sue them for not implementing the decision; that will go to the Supremes, a new ruling will be issued against the administration, and the administration will simply not implement THAT. That’s what you get when the “opposition” party insists that impeachment is “off the table” no matter what Bush and Cheney do.
Well, you are right about that, Eric. And you will get no impeachment at any time as the “opposition party” to whom you refer will simply feed on the very same executive power this bird arrogated to himself when they get into office. The solution comes when the economic consequences these clowns together have created for us have the people in the streets. I sense that that time is not far off. I would give up on “constitutional means” as a way of righting this situation, we no longer have a constitution. We have an illusion in which the two party apparatus operates as a kind of black hole into which outrage gets funneled. When there are no jobs for all those the education establishment has conned into financing its high priced, effete life-styles, a dollar that no longer operates as the world’s reserve currency, and no further manipulations left to the Bernaches and Berschmakes usually showcased as the wizards that solve such problems, the whole thing just might come tumbling down in a fashion not unlike the GDR or the Czechoslovak Peoples Republic in the late 1980s. But don’t count on the constitution. It doesn’t exist any longer.
Exactly right, Eric.
Very interesting! The neo-cons ,as I recall ,are the ones who are always comparing countries and their presidents to Nazi Germany and Hitler!?
One problem (among many) is that the average American is blissfully unaware of what’s going on. I suspect that it’s dawning on many that all is not well, but they haven’t a clue as to the causes or who is responsible for this mess.
They could engage their minds, seek out sites like this and educate themselves, but that would require effort. It’s so much easier to turn on the idiot box and listen to the talking heads chatter.
I also believe that it will take a complete economic meltdown before anything meaningful happens in this country. The parasitic class will milk this for all it’s worth, then leave the rest of us holding the bag. It ain’t going to be pretty.
Once the U.S. dollar ceases to be the world currency reserve all hell is going to break loose. Your certainly right. It ain’t going to be pretty. But if this is what it takes to collapse the American empire and put the neoconservatives out of business, so be it.
USD is no longer the “world reserve currency”.
The American economists’ flaw was believing that the USD would be the world reserve currency until another currency replaced it in volume.
That is not the case.
All that was necessary was a major alternative.
One is waiting for a major craft union to demand cost of living increases keyed on the price of a barrel of oil.
The Fed’s numbers game is over.
Disattaching oil from the USD might stabilize the currency a bit over the short-term.
Price controls, as with Nixon, don’t work.
Taxes on windfall profits will do nothing for the economy. In order for them to work, they would have to be in the form of instant rebates and in regard to all petroleum-based items, including not only gasoline and diesel, but, just for examples, insecticide and fertilizer.
Nationalizing oil is also almost inevitable. Done rationally it would be put under a National public entity independent of the politicians and providing domestic oil at cost or close to cost, and thus disattached from the world market price, at least while the world market price is above a certain level.
Oil would be both untaxed and not sold at profit.
Oil would still have to be imported, but low cost domestic supplies would help lower the price.
This might provide enough breathing space for economic expansion, and it would moderate inflation and recovery, but it would not solve the currency problem or the weaknesses in the US economic structure described so well, and almost singularly, by Paul Craig Roberts.
With oil at $140 per barrel it is already virtually rationed.
Long term energy policy would still be complex. Corn-based ethanol is economically inefficient and the US does not have the climate, or many climatic areas, where sugar cane can can be grown cheaply and efficiently enough to provide sugar cane-based ethanol, which is seven times more efficient than corn-based.
Publicly owned oil could also expand drilling offshore and in Alaska.
corr: “moderate inflation and aid recovery”
Yes, Roberts is outstanding, and, for an economist, relatively easy to follows. Expand if you will on this notion of nationalizing oil, Eugene.
Nationalizing the oil industry would only (tenuously) make sense IF the USA was self-sufficient in oil supplies. This is anything but true. Also I see no reason why a government owned oil company would be any superior to private enterprise. And where would the money come from to buy out all the oil companies of today? Canada did something in the early 1980’s very similar to what you are advocating (the national energy program). It was an unmitigated disaster. The safest prediction for oil? Higher prices, lowered supplies and more problems.
Sorry, but the notion that anyone can successfully nationalize any industry, let alone something as imperative for a complex economy as oil, is simply laughable. You are, in effect, placing trust in the same band of incompetent boobs who gave us this disastrous foreign policy. See anything wrong with picture?
So forget Bush and his henchmen. Imagine a world where we elect well meaning geniuses who selflessly work night and day planning our lives minus an effective price system and wait for the inevitable collapse. To believe otherwise is what Hayek termed the “fatal conceit.”
Face the obvious: you cannot centrally plan an economy. It fails every single time, and with calamitous results for the people unfortunate enough to be under such a regime. If you doubt my claim, please cite an example to the contrary. You have all of human history to work with.
I guarantee you that even under the best of circumstances, the centrally planned system you think is worth emulating will be riddled with corruption, bribes and other nefarious activities. You are dealing with very flawed human beings, after all.
One has no truck with any economic ideologies, such as the Austrian School, which is as naive in the extreme as the devotees of centralized economic planning.
Nor does one have any intention of presenting more than the gist as above.
Oil will be nationalized one way to another, almost inevitably.
It can be done rationally and to public benefit, or irrationally.
Neither Canada nor Mexico are pertinent save in mistakes to be avoided.
To turn over public resources in Alaska and offshore to be sold at high world market prices, which private oil companies will do, is sheer lunacy.
Bastiat, on the other hand, who is no precursor of the Austrians save in the fantasy of the ideologues, has a much, if subtly, different stance.
The underlying reason to nationalize oil, however, is not the private companies’ profits (which are concealed to a large degree, and much higher than the %10 claimed save for book-keeping purposes and taxes) but the connection to the currency collapse and the economy.
In fact one is not witnessing a rise in the price of oil so much as a collapse of the dollar.
At any rate, exploration, for high bounties within US controlled territory, would remain private.
Incidentally, Bernanke’s initial response to the credit and real estate collapse, which was to lower interest rates, was either incompetent in the extreme or as corrupt and sinister as is imaginable, which is, after its own fashion, also incompetent in the extreme.
I fully agree that the price rise for crude oil is almost entirely due to the dollar depreciation and the political climate our government has created through its belligerent policies. That is not an argument for nationalization of oil.
I still await your example of a centrally planned scheme that is sustainable and prosperous minus a legitimate price system. You will search high and low and one will not be found.
You want to nationalize a critical commodity essential to a modern economy. If this is feasible, surely it has been accomplished somewhere….right?
My dear fellow, “wanting” or “not wanting” has nothing to do with it.
Nor does nationalization necessarily mean “central planning”.
You are seeing what an ideologue sees. Read the above more closely with an open mind and actually think perhaps.
Most important politically, nationalization is completely constitutional with compensation.
Taxes and profits on oil from private companies, mostly multinational, go exactly where they have no economic benefits for the United States at the present juncture, and that includes the Federal government.
“Nor does nationalization necessarily mean ‘central planning.’” Hello! Supply and demand on the market has been replaced with a bureaucratic dictate in your system. Please explain how this is not central planning. If producers and consumers are not trading based on prices, how is production planned absent a central board? What planet are you living on?
Replace the word “oil” in your last statement with any other product or service and tell me this isn’t central planning.
Who is the ideologue in this debate?
Now and then the gullibility and economic naivety of the American public is unveiled in its full glory, namely, in the wool both corporate fascists and the politicians they partner with manage to pull over the ordinary citizen’s eyes.
Thus Bush’s “rebates”, which is nothing but a return to the tax-payer of his own money which he then must spend on higher fuel and food prices, which are both functions of higher oil prices.
In both cases the gain goes immediately back to the private oil companies and the politicians who tax them.
“Supply and demand on the market has been replaced with a bureaucratic dictate in your system”
You are not reading closely. Nothing of the kind.
At any rate, at the moment the spikes in oil prices are not supply and demand at all.
This is one of but many egregious flaws in current economic thinking.
Hofmeister, for example, recently argued that if Alaska and offshore drilling were not allowed by Congress, even higher oil prices would follow.
Since he is a human resources man, with a BA in political sceince, he may be just spouting what he is programmed to soput.
On the other hand what he spouts, and its implied cause and effect, is an arrant untruth. For, even if private oil companies were allowed to exploit Alaska and offshore, and the benefits accrued overnight (rather than after a decade), the private oil companies would still be selling at world market price.
corr:”programmed to spout”.
corr: “but one of many”
“Neither Canada or Mexico are pertinent save in mistakes to be avoided”,,
Yeah sure, Americans will get it “right”, unlike the dumb, stupid, Canadians and Mexicans, because there, well,,, Americans. This is the same arrogance that led right to the war in Iraq.
Brace yourselves for what might be a perfect storm next year. Combine a stagnant economy with relatively high inflation, oil prices making everyone more than a little edgy, an aerial attack on Iran, a left-wing dolt in McCain making war across the earth or an even harder leftist in Obama pumping up tax rates–with both of them licking Israel’s boots, a witch’s brew of useless “green” regulations, and you have 1932 all over, or worse.
Fasten your seatbelts, everyone. This could be a rough ride.
Well put Steve.That’s why Americans accepet the simplistic answers without any question:
They hate us!
They hate our freedom!
They hate our way of life!
They want to convert us!
We are good,they are evil!
Bush IS the slander. SCROTUM IS the slander. Congress IS the slander. Well and there’s that torture, rendition, detention, lies, genocide, atrocity, John Yoo, treason, Tom Delay, Republicans, Democraps, Ari Fleischer, Dana the ‘talking Barbie’, Donny Death, John Torquemada Ashcroft, and wow, America is arm pit deep in treacherous slander. The stain on America courtesy of the Bush regime, will take an inordinate number of years to scrub off! “Slander” seems mostly minor compared to the treason.
Bush explicitly demands the power to torture people and deny them any rights; but he also claims that anyone who claims that he is actually *doing* any of these things is an anti-American liar:
“These extraordinary circumstances require that I be given permission to do all these terrible things — but of course, if you don’t believe me when I say I’m not doing them, it’s only because you hate America.”
George Bush is sounding a lot like LBJ. Anybody out there remember when LBJ (like Bush another Texan and a chickenhawk) used to suggest that people who protested against the Vietnam war disaster were “unpatriotic” and not “real” Americans. Slandering the morally bankrupt Bush administration is NOT “slandering” the United States. I guess in Dubya’s “mind” he equates himself with America much like the Prussian aristocracy came to believe they embodied all the “qualities” of being a German.
George should retire to Cumberland, MD. rather than Texas. The Republican Chamber of Commerce would appoint him mayor and the police force would arrest “anti-American” demonstrators who might show up to disrupt his daily bicycle rides. These locals would just be tickled pink to have ol’ George around here, living in one of those big Victorian mansions on Washington St. The heck with all that Abu-Grahaib torture photo stuff–everyone knows that girl was just from nearby Mineral County, West Virginia, anyway. And unlike us, she’s trailer trash. Besides, all those secret service agents will have to live somewhere, and our real estate agents are sooooo professional….
If you trust Wonkette.com, he’s bought a ranch in Paraguay! To practice his Spanish, I suppose. :-) Of course, it would be easier for him to be kidnapped, hauled off to trial somewhere, too.
Lester Ness
Eugene, please define ‘a public resource’. Also please demonstrate how Bastiat, who despised the governmental thieves (I repeat myself) of his times, would appreciate the theft that you propose. Love how central planners such as yourself deny your identity, propose to use the State’s fist to do your dirty work, and then act so arrogantly dismissive of your intellectual betters such as von Mises and Rothbard.
You too are not reading closely and you are wholly in error.
You also do not understand Bastiat, who was no ideologue, but a keen observer and analyst, as well as a systematic thinker. Nor did he think most of the Socialists were thieves, as you say–but mostly muddled economic thinkers insofar as they looked for purely statist and authoritarian solutions to economic problems.
So what was seen and not seen.
As muddled, indeed, as you seem to be in regard to multinational private oil companies, who, working with the Fed and the politicians, are stealing an enormous of every American’s money and are in the process of bankrupting the nation.
Stealing their own money as well, and that of their children and grandchildren, but in their case they are stealing so much more from the public at large that what they are losing is miniscule.
Yes, let them drill oil in Alaska and sell it at world market prices in collapsing USD (accelerating the collapse by the way, since the process is recursive).
Surely someone like Hofmeister will be able to skim enough to put away a tidy nest egg of several hundred million at least in Euros and Amstersdam (pardon the syllepsis).
It’s a bit analogous to the Likudites buying off American politicians with Americans’ own money, don’t you think?
Perhaps not.
Among other things, the Austrians and Hayek and the rest do not understand currency, nor that there is not such thing as a tangible, static market price for any commodity, based solely on “supply and demand”.
Nor is there, after Smith, any invisible hand.
Most importantly, if material self-interest is the whole story, and it is both immediate and convertible into some monetary instrument, the very wealthy and successful will always buy whatever “state” that is formed.
They also always manipulate any currency.
Indeed, it is a logical contradiction to argue either that they will not, or that those running the state will not be buyable, since they obviously have something to sell, if only their power and position.
So much for the idiocy of Rand, and also of John Locke and self-ownership. The latter makes much sense as the wholly predicateless “thing-in-itself.”
Come again?
corr: “no such thing”, ‘makes as much sense”.
I also point out that Bastiat, like many of the men who wrote the American Constitution, thought that a state was necessary, but is best minimal.
Dans trois ans tous les Français peuvent savoir lire. Croyez-vous que nous en serons plus avancés ? Imaginez au contraire que, dans chaque commune, il y ait un bourgeois, un seul, ayant lu Bastiat, et que ce bourgeois-là soit respecté, les choses changeraient!
Gustave Flaubert
“… the Austrians and Hayek and the rest do not understand currency, nor that there is not such thing as a tangible, static market price for any commodity…”
No more further evidence is required to demonstrate your ignorance of the matter. Identify the Austrian or the Hayekian passage that postulates the existence of “tangible, static market price(s) for any commodity”. In all the time I’ve been coming here, it’s the arrogance and confidence you ooze when spouting off half-cocked that is the defining character of your public profile.
There is no such passage because, as with Smith, it is assumed, and what is assumed, partly by virtue of the nature of any currency, and partly for other more complex reasons, does not exist any more than does the “invisible hand.”
One of these days you really must read Ricardo with an open mind, including his essay on gold.
It is too much to wish perhaps, that you are also familiar with Marcuse, or, as example of the ultimate perversion of the idea of “market”, with Jacob Bernays.
In fact, the Marxists, when not mesmerized by their own traditional ideology, are excellent and penetrating critics.
When it comes to solutions, on the other hand, like the cake mix, it pays to add an egg.
Eugene, I haven’t seen so much hand waving since the last good-bye party. It is you who do not understand Bastiat, von Mises or the rest of the true free-marketeers. Let me try to help you. Never noticed the free-market advocates claim prices are static, based on supply and demand (Mises claimed prices are always subjective). Your concept is daft but I am interested in where you read it. The wealthy would buy whatever state is formed? Many of the wealthy do work with the State, partially out of cupidity and partially of self-preservation (I be interested in seeing the fate of the first Big Oil exec who spilled the beans on the centgov’s extortion racket, as well as the true cost of oil if we factor in the cost of our empire that lords it over most of the oil-supplying countries). Get rid of the State and let the consumer and the business man make transactions as they can. Big Business steals? Exxon has its own IRS? Walmart forces me into its stores? GM duns me to pay for its military bases around the world? Gold standard in the hands of private institutions would minimize currency manipulations (history’s greatest counterfeiters have always been State structures. Nick some books about the Roman empire and John Law and give them a go.) Seems you see Bastiat as a quasi-libertarian - we can agree on that. But how does a limited state mesh with nationalization of one of the few remaining industries, Oil, in which American industries maintain some comparative edge? You believe that the devil State can be somehow tamed in the case of oil nationalization, and not wind up like the Mexican nationalization? Sorry to burst your oil bubble, but even in the ’70’s I learned in grad seminars how corrupt Pemex and Petrobras were, and how inevitable cronyism and wide-spread theft are in such settings (too much money and too much power by unaccountable elites locked into a monopoly). An oil exec (small company at odds with the big boys) explained how Mexico could have had a SOL similar to the US by the ’70’s if it had not nationalized the oil companies(Pemex was still using lots of Americans and US knowledge, but the inefficiency, malinvestment, waste, and theft was and is staggering). Eugene, oil is no more a ‘public resource’ than are gold, wheat, or any other commodity. It takes a load of work to discover, tap, pump, and transport. The State, not the public, owns the oil in the same way it owns my house (by regs and property taxes). The State’s ownership is merely a parasitical one backed by superior firepower. The State produces nothing but war and tax slavery. It is also good at pitting various groups against one another, whether domestically or internationally. The oil industry is just about an arm of the centgov anyway. But for a moment lets say you get your nationalization. You will not charge the world market price (distorted as it is by various centgovs). If the price of US oil is less than foreign oii, we get a huge incentive to get exemptions to send it abroad, or smuggle it out (great, more fedcops to keep oil at home). Now we have shortages at home. If more is charged for the oil to keep it off foreign markets, why nationalize it in the first place? Solution is to get the centgov out of the oil industry, save oil by reducing the appetite of its greatest consumer, the US centgov (bring home all overseas troops, make the Navy a coastal defense force only and dismantle or sell every foreign base), and let the individual states decide who drills where. The moral of this story is also it’s not the right of the State to steal the oil companies from their executives, managers, and stockholders. Please re-read your von Mises, Rothbard, and even throw in de la Boetie. I appreciate your polite response (and scholarship) above even though you are full of little green apples when it comes to economics. And I do enjoy most of your posts that trash the State regarding its imperial machinations. To your Health. ST
You haven’t said anything worth replying to.
Nor do I intend to give you a detailed analysis of your various unquestioned assumptions for free.
To Robert Brager,
Your second paragraph is spot-on (harsh, but concise and true). Please don’t be too hard on EC. At least he professes opposition to Leviathan and often makes sense in matters other than economics. Given time he may shape up. Perhaps he is a secret Misean testing our understanding? Freedom. ST
You fellows, like the Austrians, have never examined either the concept “market”, nor “supply and demand”, nor have you any idea of what “monetary economy means”.
It is exactly that naivety that has allowed the present collapse to occur under the empty rubrics “privatization” and “capitalism.”
The Austrians were also quite ignorant of economic history, including the economic history of the ancient world.
Paul is a hilarious example of sham Libertarian–his whole medical career is based on state certification, pure and simple.
corr:”monetary economy”
Bush’s terms are rapidly approaching the end. It is my hope the miseries he has foisted domestically and internationally are approaching the end, as well. I will not hold my breath, however. As I listen to those who intimate they are better than Bush at doing his job, I wonder what they mean. Will the winner foist a greater police state on us? Kill more people who have done us nothing? Make sure all children are left behind in gulags that should be labelled “indoctrination camps”? Etc, etc, etc. If all we can muster are a warmonger and a socialist enabler among our 300+ millions for “leadership”, it is no wonder we look around and wonder what has happened to us and our freedoms.
EC, I read Bastiat’s “The Law” several years ago, but I am still struck with the emotional contempt that he held for those who wish to rule over other men, overriding individual ownership of property with the whims of princes and bureaucrats who view us as playthings to be experimented with. Whatever label you wish to place upon Bastiat’s tombstone, his contempt for government and idiotic socialist schemes was parallel to what I encountered in reading Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard. I am not in a cult nor do most self described austrians seek to be in one, so differences of opinion on the millions of grey areas are expected amongst these philosophers. None of these people ever said anything that would have indicated they supported nationalizing the oil industry, because they were all very smart people.
All three recognized that a fiat, fractionalized banking, centrally organized monopoly of the monetary system was a pretty bad thing. Most Austrians agree with this…I have never heard a good argument arguing to the contrary. I’ve heard plenty of arguments between austrians arguing the best way to fix the monetary system, but the only people I’ve heard saying this current system is great are uneductated on the topic, unwilling to debate the topic, shills or all three.
Nationalizing the oil industry is a idiotic idea, and if it is done(fear not) it will be done “rationally” ….it is just that the people putting the scheme into place will be doing it to fulfill certain goals opposed to what most people in this country would want. It is you who is naive if you think otherwise.
EC, we are glad you are against Leviathan! We all hope you continue to help us fight the warmongering plunderers. If you must, you can keep calling us naive, at least your not calling us anti-semites! However, can you tell us why you think it is optimal for the people of this country to give a private group the monopoly power to conjure new quantities of money and lease it out at rates that it subjectively sets in secret meetings? it doesn’t make sense to me or a lot of Austrians.
We must be reading different Bastiats. He surely does not exude contempt for the Socialists of his time, and indeed many times indicates that he shares the same goals.
In one essay he goes out of his way to compliment the Socialists he often worked with.
Rather he refuses to accept the illogic of economic schemes that work exactly against those goals and that exchange state domination by one group for state domination by another.
You are right exactly that he opposes anything but a minimal state power, but he opposes it on purely rational grounds and on a case by case basis.
Why does one suppose the oil companies and their politicians are not opposed to schemes involving corn-based ethanol? It is very simple: growing corn in the United States is petroleum-based. As a consequence turning it into fuel is economically inefficcient, but continues to consume petroleum in the form of fertilizer, insecticide, and fuel for machinery.
Talking about “supply and demand” as if it has anything to do with privately owned oil is absurd.
The corporate fascists controlling the metastasizing US government should really change their name to the candlemakers’ guild.
At any rate, offshore oil and Alaska are public resources, owned by the American people as a whole, as is the state itself.
At some point the ideologues who have fallen for the nonsense of Rand and Hayek and the other Austrians should really put that part of their “ownership” into the equation.
There are also aspects of what is seen and not seen that are pertinent, especially over time.
Might one also mention that “Captialism”, which has very little to do with free enterprise or individual rights, was invented by Karl Marx?
The subtilty of Bastiat, who was no ideologue, may escape many who are.
corr:”economically inefficient”, “Capitalism”.
At any rate, offshore oil and Alaska are public resources, owned by the American people as a whole, as is the state itself.
The oil drilling in Alaska is offshore and on public land. The “state” referred is the Federal government.
The context, which is where Hofmeister and ilk want to drill when they say “Alaska”, makes this clear enough, but when dolts jump to conclusions there is no telling there they will land.
I can hardly wait for the day when Bush retires to Israel and Cheney to Dubai.
They will go to Texass and to Maryland, respectively, unless they both have to seek asylum in Paraguay!
Lester
“Though money developed naturally in the marketplace, as governments grew in power they assumed monopoly control over money. Sometimes governments succeeded in guaranteeing the quality and purity of gold, but in time governments learned to outspend their revenues. New or higher taxes always incurred the disapproval of the people, so it wasn’t long before Kings and Caesars learned how to inflate their currencies by reducing the amount of gold in each coin– always hoping their subjects wouldn’t discover the fraud. But the people always did, and they strenuously objected.
This helped pressure leaders to seek more gold by conquering other nations. The people became accustomed to living beyond their means, and enjoyed the circuses and bread. Financing extravagances by conquering foreign lands seemed a logical alternative to working harder and producing more. Besides, conquering nations not only brought home gold, they brought home slaves as well. Taxing the people in conquered territories also provided an incentive to build empires. This system of government worked well for a while, but the moral decline of the people led to an unwillingness to produce for themselves. There was a limit to the number of countries that could be sacked for their wealth, and this always brought empires to an end. When gold no longer could be obtained, their military might crumbled. In those days those who held the gold truly wrote the rules and lived well.
Ron Paul
As an historical and economic analysis, this, like the Austrians Paul says he follows, is outright laughable.
“…money developed naturally in the marketplace”–I cannot read this without smiling.
Pardon not closing Italics.
Speaking of the candlemakers’ guild, most Americans don’t seem to realize that they have close to the worst cell phone infrastructure in the world. Nor, even if most of them realize it, are they economically equipped to figure out why. Most important, they, many of them, fall for the idiocy that what they have in the way of that infrastructure, is the glorious result of “the free market and competition”, when it is exactly the reverse.