The Sesquicentennial Is Upon Us

by Kirkpatrick Sale   As an editor at large, I get to be considerably at large and so I am in fact living these days across the Cooper River from Charleston, South Carolina. That was the place, as you may remember, where the phenomenon erroneously called the "Civil War" began some 150 years ago, and where some folks now are determined to remember what went on and some others are determined to protest whatever went on then and is going on now. It seems to have become something of a national issue, and being in a good position to take a look at the events this spring commemorating the sesquicentennial of what they like to call "the late unpleasantness," I thought I'd try to shed a little light amid the considerable murkiness of ignorance all around. But first I think it's important to remember that the secession that took place 150 years ago was in a grand old American tradition. The American "Revolution" was, in fact, a war of secession – 13 colonies breaking away from the British Empire – not a war of conquest, and most of the Founding Fathers understood that to be a given right when they created the Articles and then the Constitution. The creation of the Republic of Vermont in 1777 was another act of secession, from both New Hampshire and New York. And just 25 years after the new nation was born, representatives from all New England states (only one from Vermont) met at a convention in Hartford to consider secession from the United States if their grievances against President Madison's conduct of the war of 1812 and limitations on Atlantic trade were not satisfied; in the event, they did not vote for secession, but its spirit was in the air. So in that context, let's make clear that what began 150 years ago this April was not a true civil war, except in the sense that there were two sides in one country, because there was no attempt by one side to take over the other, as in the more familiar English civil war between Parliament and Charles I. The South did not want to run the Union, it wanted out of the Union. That makes it a war of secession (similar to the war of 1775-1783) or, as various forms have it, the War of Southern Secession, the War Between the States, the War of Northern Aggression, or the War to Prevent Southern Independence – all more accurate than "Civil War." Next, let's see who really began it. The first conflict had to do with Washington's unwillingness to give up Federal forts and bases in states that had declared their independence, or even to negotiate some kind of settlement. After declaring independence in December 1860, South Carolina sent two delegations to Washington with the express purpose of working out terms, including monetary compensation, for the turning over of Federal outposts in Charleston Harbor, including Fort Sumter. Refusing to negotiate, President Buchanan in January sent ships with 200 troops intending to restock and reinforce Fort Sumter, an island only four miles from downtown Charleston. The first one was fired on and forced to turn back, and the South looked for some reconciliation. But when Lincoln took office two months later he still refused to negotiate and, a month after saying he had no intention of invading the South, accomplished that in effect by ordering a second flotilla of armed supply ships to force its way into the harbor. Upon learning of the second fleet, in what seemed a clear and deliberate act of war, the government of South Carolina repeatedly demanded that the Unionists in the fort surrender. When they refused, the Carolina battalions gave warning on April 12, and after an hour began firing. The fort, low on munitions as well as provisions, finally surrendered the next day, the soldiers were transported by Confederate steamers to Union ships outside the harbor, and the only casualties were two Union soldiers that blew themselves up by accident during a cannon salute during the lowering of the U.S. flag. Exactly what Lincoln wanted. It mattered not who committed the first act of war, which was the North, but who fired the first shot; that would work in the Union propaganda machines sufficiently to have it understood not only in the North but in the Border States and territories that the South had started the war. A Union invasion of a revolutionary Confederacy that fired first seemed only a fit and proper response. Which in turn brings up the next nettlesome issue that always surrounds this issue: slavery, and the motive for Northern invasion. In fact, after the fall of Fort Sumter the Union armies descended on the South in 1861, or tried to, in order to put down what Lincoln held to be a revolution by a federation of states that had illegally left the Federal compact. They did not, nor would their generals or soldiers have even so formulated it, invade the South to eliminate slavery, in the cause of abolition, or for the liberation of Negroes. It was not formally or informally, in the minds of either the Union armies or their civilian instigators, a war about slavery. The great myth that the Union was fighting for a high moral cause, the elimination of chattel slavery and freedom for four million oppressed people torn from Africa, was ultimately a very convenient falsehood that served Northern ends later on in the war, particularly in distorting world opinion so that neither England nor France, though they might have had some allegiance to the cause of independence, were able to take the side of the Confederacy. But even then, the ultimate welfare of black Americans and their peaceful economic and social integration into white American society was never, but to a tiny few – and certainly not to Lincoln or his government – a moral (or even political) principle even thought much less expressed. The deep racism of the American North, though the victors would try to go on to forget it, was as dark a stigma against the Union as anything it would project on the South. And the Emancipation Proclamation? Well, in the first place, it had nothing to do with slavery, per se. It did not abolish slavery. It decreed that slaves in the Confederacy only were to be free, but not those elsewhere in the Union or the territories (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri all had slavery, as well as Washington, D.C., until 1862). It was at bottom a military ploy, hoping to create rebellion and civil unrest on the South's plantations at a time when the war was not going all that well for the Union. ("It has no constitutional or legal justification, except as a military measure," its creator acknowledged.) It had no particular moral implications, and it made no provision for how the liberation was to be effected, what would happen to the slaves after they were emancipated, what the slaves would in fact do for a living, or even where they were to go if they left the plantations that had been their home for generations. (They could not, incidentally, go north, because no state there would welcome them and a good many, including Lincoln's own Illinois, had laws forbidding immigration and settlement of Negroes.) Unlike a number of serious schemes that had been proposed, North and South, before the war, the Proclamation did not deal with necessary issues of compensation for deprived slave-owners, integration of ex-slaves politically or economically into white societies, or even for their deportation to Africa, an idea that Lincoln in particular had favored. It was, in short, a military ploy without moral or humanitarian foundation. Finally, we should understand that the issue of slavery, strictly, was not the cause of Southern secession or the reason for the war on the Confederate side. The South did not want to protect slavery from a Northern attempt to abolish it, because no such attempt was ever intended or expressed by any serious party, and indeed Congress in 1861 had explicitly defended the continuance of the institution in the South. Nor did the South want to extend slavery into the Western territories, because it was clear it was neither a useful nor a welcome practice there, and besides when it formed the Confederacy it no longer had any constitutional claim to influence in those sections. What the South wanted was to continue an economic system that it had inherited for 200 years, that had been fostered and maintained by Northern interests (particularly New England shippers and textile barons) that entire time, that had been the foundation of the United States economy both North and South from the beginning of the nation, and that was a way of life now so entrenched no one knew how to alter or ameliorate it even if, like quite a few, they wished to do so. And the South wanted to be free of Northern interference: the continued attempts by abolitionists (as John Brown in 1859) to foster slave rebellions and terrorism in the South, the refusal of Northern states to return illegal runaway slaves (or to return Brown's companions who had fled North), the threat of increased tariffs on Southern goods, the stated purpose of the new Republican party to expand federal power in the interest of Northern industrialists, and the clear perception that Lincoln had come into office with a hidden agenda of limiting if not eliminating Southern influence on the national scene (he was elected with not a single Southern electoral vote). So, is all that clear? Now we can go on with four more years of sesquicentennial commemorations without all the myths and misunderstandings. Maybe. Reprinted from Vermont Commons.

Liberals for Slavery?

Liberals for Slavery Jack Hunter April 14th, 2011       On the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the battle of Fort Sumter, MSNBC television host Rachel Maddow said on her evening program: "The fact that the first shots were fired in South Carolina specifically came as no surprise… the great pride of the South Carolina secessionists was Senator John C. Calhoun, a beloved pro-slavery politician who… championed the cause of nullification." The obviously anti-secession liberal host then defined the term: "Nullification—the idea that states could and should refuse to follow federal laws they didn't like, that they thought went beyond the powers of the federal government." In addition to Calhoun, some of the earliest examples of nullification in the United States were in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This act declared that slaves who escaped to free states must be forcibly returned to their masters. Many abolitionists became rabid advocates of nullification. When South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860 it specifically listed nullification of fugitive slave laws as one of its grievances. When US Senator Jefferson Davis left Congress to become the President of the Confederate States of America he specifically denounced nullification in his farewell address. Southern leaders denouncing nullification where it undermined the institution of slavery reinforces liberals' argument that the Civil War was exclusively about slavery. It also seriously contradicts liberals' argument that nullification is exclusively about slavery. Still, was the Civil War just about slavery? Not according to President Abraham Lincoln, who wrote in 1862: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." For Lincoln, preserving the Union was more important than abolishing slavery. Not surprisingly, Lincoln's primary concern for the supremacy of federal law over state law had formerly led him to be a strong proponent of the Fugitive Slave Act. Lincoln was for slavery before he was against it. The same is true of his opposition to secession, Southern or otherwise. Said Lincoln in 1848: "Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world." At that point in American history some of the most significant rumblings about secession since the Revolution had been in the North—with the loudest voices often coming from abolitionists who wanted to sever their political union with the slave-holding states. I bring up these contradictory historical views concerning what were once considered all-American decentralist concepts, not to prove that slavery wasn't a major issue during the Civil War. It obviously was. But it was not the only issue, not always the primary issue, and was quite frequently a wedge issue, exploited by those on both sides for the purpose of empowering political, corporate or special interests. Do liberals believe that George W. Bush's Iraq War was just about spreading "freedom" and liberating Iraqis, as the president contended, or were there political, corporate and special interests also at stake? Is it possible that Lincoln, too, wasn't as wholly benevolent as his speeches reflect, his flip-flopping suggests and his many critics in the antebellum South and North insisted? If a liberal like Maddow's primary reason for denouncing nullification or secession is these concepts' popular association with the Old South and slavery, would Maddow have respected the Fugitive Slave Act—or nullified it? Would the liberal host have agreed with Lincoln that runaway slaves should be returned to their masters? Would Maddow have opposed abolitionists' Northern secession? If she is opposed to nullification and secession in each and every instance—as her rhetoric heavily implies—would liberals like Maddow have occasionally found themselves in the strange position of supporting slavery? What about today, where a de facto nullification remains in effect in California which continues to openly flout federal drug laws? Does Maddow believe residents in that state who are stricken with cancer or glaucoma deserve to be arrested for alleviating their pain with medicinal marijuana? Or does Maddow support nullification? Liberals do not want to be confronted with these uncomfortable philosophical contradictions concerning centralization vs. decentralization—the debate that raged in 1776, 1861 and still rages today—because any such intellectual exploration toward this end threatens the very heart of the Left's collectivist historical narrative. For progressives, the ever-increasing power of the federal government represents human liberation and political liberalization—period. This has been the Left's clarion call from FDR to Barack Obama, and any talk of devolving centralized power—even in the name of what would typically be considered liberal causes—is heresy. In this light, for liberals, not only was the Civil War just about slavery—it must be just about slavery. And that Lincoln simply freed the slaves is not just the end of the story—it is the only story—lest Americans begin down the dangerous path of looking at their history and government with honest and open eyes.

Believe in the American Dream

Rand Paul spoke on the Senate floor Thursday to challenge his colleagues to get serious about cutting spending and tackling the debt crisis. He also urged them to trust in the American people's creativity and innovation instead of government power.

Global Warming Debate Lost Under an Avalanche of Corruption

By Roger F. Gay

In case you haven't noticed the subtle redefinition of the global warming question, it's a lot like the last 1000 or so re-definitions. It could be described as several parts deception that have been partially digested by a straw man. Let's start by taking a look at an article in the Los Angeles Times entitled; Critics' review unexpectedly supports scientific consensus on global warming.

A team of UC Berkeley physicists and statisticians that set out to challenge the scientific consensus on global warming is finding that its data-crunching effort is producing results nearly identical to those underlying the prevailing view.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project was launched by physics professor Richard Muller, a longtime critic of government-led climate studies, to address what he called "the legitimate concerns" of skeptics who believe that global warming is exaggerated.

But Muller unexpectedly told a congressional hearing last week that the work of the three principal groups that have analyzed the temperature trends underlying climate science is "excellent.... We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups."

In fact, Richard Muller is a warmer, always has been. He seems to like playing the diplomatic mitigator of the apparent difficulties with global warming theory. In a Technology Review article in 2003, he characterized criticisms of Michael Mann's hockey stick as part of a complex scientific process, a parley into defending Mann. This is about as far as his longtime criticism of government studies goes in recognizing the legitimate concerns of skeptics. In the same article, he says:

Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate. I would love to believe that the results of Mann et al. are correct, and that the last few years have been the warmest in a millennium.

Not exactly the model global warming skeptic. In fact, use of the word “pollutant” suggests a path straight from Muller to the EPA's unconstitutional attempt to take control of private industry. I can't imagine that many were really surprised that he supported the left in a congressional hearing.

Pretending warmers are converted skeptics has become a common ploy, but the deception goes deeper. It's fundamentally important to look at the main straw man. It's apparent enough in the LA Times article. I'll start with that and add another to partly illustrate its appetite for deception.

The enormous surprise, as the story goes, was some kind of confirmation that there's been a warming trend. Put this on the back of 100s of “environmental journalists” and left-wing bloggers constantly characterizing “skeptics” as “climate change deniers” and so on. It's typical for warmers to complain that non-believers are people who don't believe that average temperatures vary over time, as though they believe that climate is entirely static.

More-so, they don't believe there's been a warming trend. They couldn't of course, if they believe climate is static. If you've fallen for it, it could very easily seem that confirmation of a warming trend would crush the opposing argument. If you're not so naive, and knowledgeable enough about the debate, you would have immediately recognized the title phrase “scientific consensus on global warming” as an unscientific leftist fantasy.

What might be called the “consensus” criticism is that temperature variations occur naturally and always have. (Which actually puts warmers in the dunderhead class for not readily acknowledging the fact.) Warmers have shown neither that recent changes in average temperatures are unusual nor that they are scarey. The weight of the evidence indicates that modern industrial human activity has very very little to do with it – even if atmospheric CO2 were a major contributing factor. This case has been strengthened enormously in recent years as the lack of cause and effect between CO2 and temperature change has become so extremely obvious. But what about the warming trend? Most critics of global warming politics generally accepted that there was a warming trend in the latter half of the 20th century.

I learned about the LA Times article through a link at AccuWeather where I had read a short article entitled, Coolest March since 1994. Here we find another similar deception that's become popular among warmers. The title pretends that the article supports skeptics and invites the common every day ordinary citizen skeptic to post the link to all their favorite web hangouts. All the information above the first image supports the idea. This March was the coolest March globally since 1994.

The article gives warmers the last word however, dashing the hopes of anyone who's prematurely concluded that it provides further evidence of a cooling trend. The evidence is contained in the following partially unlabeled graph. “Despite the recent cooling”, the text reads, “the decadal temperature trend for the lower troposphere remains upward at + .145 C. (see image below)”


Digging into the data on which the graph is constructed, we find the left-most data-point is given for the year 1979. The right end of the graph is for March 2011. If you've been paying attention to the global warming debate much, that first year might ring a bell. You may know that there was a cooling trend from the mid 1950s to the mid 1970s. “Climate scientists,” even some of the same trying to frighten us about warming now, were preaching global cooling and warning of the possibility of a coming ice-age (a fact that really irks the warmers – Google and see).

At the end of the 1970s, it was relatively cool. So of course, if you find the coldest point in recent history – and we aren't continuing unabated into an ice-age – everything from there will be part of a warming trend – at least for a while. Let's put the trend from 1979 to the late 1990s in a different perspective by taking a broader look at temperature change – over the whole century.


Image source: IPCC Attribution to CO2.
These deceptions pale by comparison to the impact of Phil Jones (CRU), a researcher at East Anglia University's Climate Research Unit (CRU). Jones, made globally famous by Climategate. Jones created modified data sets using select data sources and mixed data inputs as tricks to “hide declines” and otherwise support the case for global warming hysteria. The data didn't support global warming “theory,” so he constructed fake data sets to correspond with the “theory.”

More than anyone, Jones demonstrated just how truly despicable warmers are when he went beyond rewriting the Earth's temperature history for the sake of his own scientifically unsupportable arguments. He made a global effort to replace all real temperature data with his own “reconstructed” data. He also requested that temperature data centers around the world mischaracterize his data as their original. According to his own testimony in a UK Parliament hearing, only three countries declined. (The United States was not one of those countries.)

It doesn't matter what sort of statistical analysis is performed on the data. It can't reveal the truth if the data isn't real. (Invalidating even the very limited straw man arguments by Muller and others that are based on analysis of the data.) When investigation of Jones' activities fell off the track into a warmer propaganda party, the last chance for warmers to claim a scientific argument went with it. By not sacrificing Jones and others of Climategate fame and leaking some truth into the debate at that point, party operatives eliminated any possibility of recovering the lost credibility of available data. All they have to offer now on the latter half of the 20th century are demonstrations of garbage-in, garbage-out.

Unfortunately, this means that researchers around the world will not be able to trust the data – no matter how objective and honest they would like to be. For the moment, and for many years to come, “climate science” based on historical temperature records is about as viable as dust on a loafer.

UN document would give 'Mother Earth' same rights as humans

And of course, who do you think Big Daddy is in this arrangement? Bolivia is in fact, under the control of socialist extremists (MAS). The goal is to become Mother Earth's pimp. It's ok to exploit her, as long as the ruling Political Class has control and gets its cut! This is not a new game. Wherever it's happened before, freedom, economy, and Mother Earth have all suffered abuse. Following the eventual revolution, nations have an extremely difficult time extracting themselves from the deepest pits of political corruption and organized crime. Now just imagine it happening on a global scale under the UN umbrella. Corrupt administrations like that in Bolivia will claim legitimacy under international law, justify violent suppression, and ask aid to support tyranny. The UN becomes nothing more than a protection racket.

UNITED NATIONS — Bolivia will this month table a draft United Nations treaty giving "Mother Earth" the same rights as humans — having just passed a domestic law that does the same for bugs, trees and all other natural things in the South American country.

The bid aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to "dominate and exploit" — to the point that the "well-being and existence of many beings" is now threatened.

The wording may yet evolve, but the general structure is meant to mirror Bolivia's Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, which Bolivian President Evo Morales enacted in January.

That document speaks of the country's natural resources as "blessings," and grants the Earth a series of specific rights that include rights to life, water and clean air; the right to repair livelihoods affected by human activities; and the right to be free from pollution.

It also establishes a Ministry of Mother Earth, and provides the planet with an ombudsman whose job is to hear nature's complaints as voiced by activist and other groups, including the state.

Read the rest: UN document would give 'Mother Earth' same rights as humans

Quote of the day!

"The central truth of economics is scarcity. There can never be enough of anything to satisfy everyone. The central truth of politics is patronage: Promising to give everything to everyone. Paper money is the bridge between economics and politics." -Porter Stansberry

The Ten Principles of a Free Society by Ron Paul

This is the Appendix to Ron Paul's new book, Liberty Defined. Rights belong to individuals, not groups; they derive from our nature and can neither be granted nor taken away by government. All peaceful, voluntary economic and social associations are permitted; consent is the basis of the social and economic order. Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments. Government may not redistribute private wealth or grant special privileges to any individual or group. Individuals are responsible for their own actions; government cannot and should not protect us from ourselves. Government may not claim the monopoly over a people's money and governments must never engage in official counterfeiting, even in the name of macroeconomic stability. Aggressive wars, even when called preventative, and even when they pertain only to trade relations, are forbidden. Jury nullification, that is, the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts, is a right of the people and the courtroom norm. All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution. Government must obey the law that it expects other people to obey and thereby must never use force to mold behavior, manipulate social outcomes, manage the economy, or tell other countries how to behave.

Freedom From Freedom

by J. Paul Henderson   There's a basic quality of freedom. And Americans have forgotten it. Simply stated, freedom can only be to. It can't be from. You can be free to eat, but you can't be free from hunger. You can appear to be free from hunger, but in reality, freedom from hunger is a privilege bestowed in exchange for giving up another freedom. The natural state of freedom is always to. Governments can't grant freedom to because freedom to is a natural right of human kind. We have natural rights and freedoms simply because we exist; not because governments dole them out. In recent years, the government in this country has perverted the meaning of the word freedom, and in so doing has confused Americans as to the very nature of freedom. Whenever the government grants "freedoms" to a specific class of citizens, it's really granting special privileges. Privileges that come with costly strings attached. Think for a minute about today's concept of freedom. It's freedom from hunger Freedom from worry. Freedom from discrimination. Freedom from medical bills. Freedom from anything and everything in life that one might consider unpleasant. Freedom from discrimination in housing can only be accomplished by taking away the freedom to manage or dispose of one's property as he or she chooses. The difference between a property owner and a property renter is that the owner may do what he chooses with the property, while the renter has to obey someone else's rules. When the government tells a property owner how to manage his property, or to whom he may rent or sell it, the property owner becomes, in effect, a renter. The government is the new landlord. In the name of freedom from discrimination, the government grants a would-be buyer the privilege of buying property the previous owner may not wish to sell him. For whatever reason. The property owner's freedom to has been usurped by the government in order to grant the would-be buyer a specific freedom from. But here's one of those attached strings. As soon as the would-be buyer takes possession of the property, he becomes a property owner and subsequently loses his freedom to. As more and more segments and classes of society are petitioning the government for special freedoms from, even more people are losing their precious natural rights of freedom to. And sadly, the very same people who've acquired special freedoms from are also losing their real freedoms. Their freedoms to. As more and more privileges (freedoms from) are granted to the myriad of political special interest groups, an increasingly growing number of freedoms to are being forever taken by the government. Eventually, the end result of selling out our freedoms to for specific special privileges will result in the ultimate freedom from: Freedom from freedom itself. April 9, 2011 J. Paul Henderson [send him mail] lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. See his site. Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

The Budget Battle

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.   Watching the public debate on the budget, we are reminded of two boys on the floor playing with toys. One has a bear and the other has a dinosaur. They are forever threatening the other kid with taking the toy away. One warns he will take away the dinosaur (military spending) and the other says he will grab the bear (domestic spending). They pull and tug and eventually settle the dispute so long as each gets to keep his favorite. Oh, and one other thing: both toys belong to other children. That's the public debate, which should strike anyone as preposterous on its face. If the goal in this crisis is to balance the budget without raising taxes, everything has to be cut regardless of political ideology. But of course that's not what political parties do. The goal of a political party is to shovel the largess in the direction of its constituent supporters while punishing the loyalists of the other party, which is attempting to do the same. The tit-for-tat is always resolved the same way: more for both sides, from third parties. In other words, this is all political play, which is obvious from the numbers and the norms. In the first place, no one is talking about actual cuts, not even the supposedly radical Republicans. These are cuts in projected spending, meaning that everyone is dealing with symbolic changes in a future that is just as symbolic. Even on paper, the only way to consider these cuts is to compare them with the GDP and the national debt -- both of which are slated to rise. Forgetting those two metrics, and looking at the actual numbers, there are no cuts at all and only increases. Even the dating of the Republican's balanced budget is ridiculous. So the budget will be fully balanced in 2040? That's three decades from now. Few of the people in office will still be in office, and many will be dead. To see how viable this is, consider how many political plans of the year 1982 still survive today. The Republican plan proposes domestic cuts in these gargantuan programs like Social Security and Medicare with nothing specific beyond the old prattle about establishing bi-partisan commissions and sending block grants to the states. There is nothing specific here beyond a numbers-laden pipe dream. No programs are abolished, no benefits are slashed or even trimmed, and although the propagandists claim to attack the culture of spending in Washington, there is not one word about taking on the money-printing machine that made the $14 trillion national debt possible in the first place. The real legislative battle is over current-year spending, and there the Republicans appear to be taking a slightly less profligate line than one might expect, due to pressure from Tea Party types. The government might "shut down" unless an agreement is reached, and I hope it happens. It doesn't, of course, mean the end of government as we know it, but it can produce a few days of entertainment. The Republicans are at least correct on this point: the government's finances are in a state of total calamity, thanks to them and the Democrats. With each shift in the business cycle, we keep going through the same stages, only it gets worse each time. During the boom, tax revenues soar and the president and Congress initiate vast new spending for their interest groups. Then the recession hits and tax revenue plummets, driving up the deficit. But rather than cut back on spending, economists instruct Congress to do what they want to do anyway, spend even more! And so it goes, as we spiral down into the pit. The only reason this nonsense is sustainable is due to the promise of the Federal Reserve to back all this spending with money creation. The Fed is what makes the whole racket too big too fail. This is why budget battles end up being insignificant to the future of government spending patterns. If the Republicans wanted to seriously take on the fiscal mess, they would begin with reining in the Federal Reserve. Apart from such reforms, budget battles end up being theatre. The time to start paying close attention is when Democrats take on entitlement programs, Republicans propose serious cuts in military spending, and both parties agree on fundamental monetary reform. Until that time, these battles have all the significance of the battle between the two children. Both sides need to return their toys to their proper owners. April 9, 2011 Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail], former editorial assistant to Ludwig von Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor of LewRockwell.com. See his books. Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

John Boehner closes the deal to avoid government shutdown

I hope everyone realizes that Washington and the lamestream media use the term "cuts" much differently than common folk. Democrats propose budget increases more than twice what, as a practical matter, they'd actually be able to spend. Republicans propose increases somewhat smaller, but still over anything that's needed. The "cuts" are merely the amount the final budget comes in lower than the highest proposal.

From Politico: John Boehner closes the deal to avoid government shutdown

His colleagues stood and cheered at his announcement of a deal, knowing Boehner secured more than $38.5 billion in cuts, a far higher figure than many of them expected just days before. Boehner still has to get the votes next week for the long-term budget deal, and he’s got a huge sales job ahead on raising the debt limit, not to mention debating the entire 2012 budget.

“It’s a big deal. It shows a great deal of leadership,” said Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), a Boehner ally. “It’s a big win for the speaker.”

In a larger sense, Boehner has achieved more than just a short-term budget victory — in his first three months as speaker, he’s helped turn the entire Washington dialogue into a debate about the size and scope of government. He started the year by getting rid of earmarks, he’s pushing through some of the deepest spending cuts in American history, and he’ll now try to get most of the GOP Conference on board with Rep. Paul Ryan’s fiscal 2012 budget — one of the most audacious long-term spending plans in recent memory.

Wink, wink! Nudge, nudge!