The GOP Battle over Immigration Policy. by Alex Nowrasteh

The GOP convention is gearing up to begin next week in Tampa but a lot of action has already happened behind the scenes. On Tuesday, Republican Party platform drafters agreed to add a plank calling for a guest worker program for temporary migrants. The anti-immigrant establishment (yes, they are opposed to legal immigration too) fought hard against that plank.

A group of committed conservative Texans are responsible for this changing wind. Brad Bailey and Jacob Monty are leading the charge. Earlier this year they began promoting an idea they dubbed the Texas Solution, eventually founding a non-profit to push for the idea. Their idea is simple: Solve the immigration problem by allowing more legal migration.
They had considerable success earlier this year when they got the Texas state GOP to add a plank to their state platform calling for a guest worker visa. But their task hasn't been easy.

Is Rape a Moral Justification for Abortion?

Rape is among the more horrific violations of human dignity. But it is a crime committed by the male, not the female, or the unborn baby.

Andrew Napolitano

The criticisms of the recent absurd comments by Missouri Republican Congressman Todd Akin, who at this writing is his party's nominee to take on incumbent Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November in a contest he had been expected to win, have focused on his clearly erroneous understanding of the human female anatomy. In a now infamous statement, in which he used the bizarre and unheard-of phrase "legitimate rape," the congressman gave the impression that some rapes of women are not mentally or seriously resisted. This is an antediluvian and misogynistic myth for which there is no basis in fact and which has been soundly and justly condemned.

Mexico drug war displaces families in Sinaloa highlands

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

In Mexico, at least 1,500 Sinaloa families in the Sierra Madre highlands have fled fighting between the Zetas gang and the Sinaloa drug cartel in the last month.

Violence between Mexico's Zetas gang and the Sinaloa cartel displaces families in Sinaloa state's highlands.

Members of the Hernandez family fled their home in the highlands of Sinaloa state after 10 relatives were slain in two days (Tracy Wilkinson / Los Angeles Times)

By Tracy Wilkinson

CULIACAN, Mexico — For generations, the extended Hernandez family tended fields of marijuana high in Sinaloa's western Sierra Madre highlands.

They sold their crops to representatives of the Sinaloa cartel for a fraction of what the drug would bring at the U.S. border and eked out a pittance.

Barefoot children never went to school; they just helped their dads with the planting and harvest. Women washed clothes in the river. They burned pine sap for light at night because there was no electricity.

Mexico journalists' killings solved? Critics doubt it

MEXICO UNDER SIEGE

Veracruz state authorities say drug cartel members responsible for killing five news workers have been arrested or slain. An advocacy group doesn't buy it.

By Tracy Wilkinson

MEXICO CITY — With rare speed, authorities in the violence-plagued coastal state of Veracruz say they have solved the killings of five journalists and news media workers, pinning the slayings on two notorious drug cartels.
But press freedom advocates Thursday questioned what they considered a too facile resolution of one of the most alarming strings of journalism attacks in a country where such bloodshed has become all too familiar.
"The government of Veracruz is trying to shelve its worst-ever crisis of violence against the press," the advocacy group Article 19 said in a statement. It criticized Veracruz authorities for blaming all the slayings on a group of detainees who supposedly confessed but have yet to go before a court.

Ron Paul: Print More Money? Spend More Money? This is Crazy!

Is Australia the New Safe Haven for Foreign Investors?

The Problems with Keynesian Solutions to the Current Depression | Robert...

Kimberley Strassel: The Reform Governors Who Led the Way

To understand today's Republican Party, look to the state houses.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

Tampa, Fla.
Republicans meet at the Tampa Bay Times Forum this week to spell out their vision for the country. It needn't be an exercise in imagination.
The party's transformative spirit is already on vivid display, thanks to a crop of reformist Republican governors. With the GOP stymied in Washington, these state leaders—from Chris Christie in New Jersey to Scott Walker in Wisconsin—have become the heart of the conservative movement, many pursuing the sort of thorough overhauls of government once considered impossible. In many cases, the changes are already showing dramatic, positive economic results. Think of the reform governors as the vanguard of the far-reaching policy reforms that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan now want to bring to the national arena.
"If you want a sense of what the party is, what it really stands for, and what it can do, this is the right place to start," says one of the trailblazers, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. He has cut his state's budget, reduced property and inheritance taxes, overhauled education and created free-market health-care options for state employees and the uninsured.

The Tampa Republicans

This is not the George W. Bush-Tom DeLay GOP.

The Republican Party gathering in Tampa this week to nominate Mitt Romney is not your father's GOP, or even George W. Bush's. Four years in the wilderness seem to have had the salutary effect of returning the Party of Lincoln to a focus on government reform and economic revival.
Four years ago, the Republicans were a tired bunch who had lost Congress in 2006 and seemed intellectually tapped out. The 9/11 attacks had turned George W. Bush's focus toward national security and difficult wars abroad, while Tom DeLay presided over a risk-averse Congress focused on incumbent protection. Despite his personal virtues, John McCain had no explanation or answer for the financial panic of 2008, and probably no Republican could have overcome it in any case.

***

The surprise is how quickly the GOP has rebounded from the routs of 2006 and 2008, starting in the states. Even as the national party foundered, Governors like Mitch Daniels in Indiana (transportation, health care) and Jeb Bush in Florida (education) made their mark as reformers.

The History of the Rockefeller World Empire. by Charles H. Featherstone

The folks over at n+1 have a review of Inderjeet Parmar's new book, Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power, an intriguing history of how the Rockefeller World Empire came to use America to rule the world as the foundations came to create and dominate "policy" in the 1930s and 1940s:

The trustees of the large foundations comprised a cozy group of men – well-heeled, white, and Protestant – who were raised in the same milieu, attended the same colleges (over half graduated from Harvard, Princeton, or Yale), and belonged to the same social clubs. Such men could not help but share a worldview, and for most of 20th century there was no one in the room to argue the other side. Internally united and externally unimpeded, they acted with a speed and resolve that was impossible for elected politicians. While government officials mired themselves in political debates, foundation leaders acted: they commissioned research, trained students, launched pilot projects, cultivated allies among foreign governments, and built networks of experts. By the time the government overcame its inertia on an issue, it found a smooth and well-marked trail stretching ahead through the wilderness.

Professor Bernanke’s Blindness on the Great Depression. by Michael S. Rozeff

With all his scholarly study of the Great Depression, Prof. Bernanke is blind to several truly major factors that caused the Great Depression. His is a blindness that he shares with very many other economists of this day and age. Their condition can be described as "a certain state of mind" that they share that prevents them from seeking out, seeing and saying what is before their eyes. And what is this state of mind? It is to defend the status quo and to stay within the comfortable bounds of conventional beliefs that support the system as it is. This spares them from confronting other institutions and their own.

What the FED Should Do Now. by Michael S. Rozeff

The last time I "advised" the FED on what to do was on Feb. 6, 2012. I "told" Ben not to do QE3, and he didn’t. Instead, he did Operation Twist. This was the second one of its type. The first Operation Twist occurred in 1961. The Twist is an attempt by the FED to alter the shape of the bond yield curve. It really doesn’t succeed. Considering the huge size of the debt market and the arbitrage that occurs along the spectrum of bonds of different maturities, it’s hardly to be expected that the FED is even capable of altering the yield curve in any economically significant manner. Most of the FOMC and its staff knew it would be futile (or should have known), because the research on the effect of the 1961 operation concluded that it did very little and accomplished nothing. This didn’t stop them in 2012. Why do something so futile? My guess is they wanted to throw some kind of a bone to those who were urging the FED to do more, including some on the FOMC itself. They had little to lose and something to gain, which was to buy time and give the appearance of acting.

Dancing on the Grave of the Keynesian System

Gary NorthThe collapse of the Soviet Union in December of 1991 was the best news of my lifetime. The monster died. It was not just that the USSR went down. The entire mythology of revolutionary violence as the method of social regeneration, promoted since the French Revolution, went down with it. As I wrote in my 1968 book, Marxism was a religion of revolution, and Marxism died institutionally in the last month of 1991.
Yet we cannot show conclusively that "the West" defeated the Soviet Union. What defeated the Soviet Union was socialist economic planning. The Soviet Union was based on socialism, and socialist economic calculation is irrational. Ludwig von Mises in 1920 described why in his article, "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth." He showed in theory exactly what is wrong with all socialist planning. He made it clear why socialism could never compete with the free market. It has no capital goods markets, and therefore economic planners cannot allocate capital according to capital's most important and most desired needs among by the public.

Ron Paul and the Future. by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

One of the most thrilling memories of the 2012 campaign was the sight of those huge crowds who came out to see Ron. His competitors, meanwhile, couldn’t fill half a Starbucks. When I worked as Ron’s chief of staff in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I could only dream of such a day.

Now what was it that attracted all these people to Ron Paul? He didn’t offer his followers a spot on the federal gravy train. He didn’t pass some phony bill. In fact, he didn’t do any of the things we associate with politicians. What his supporters love about him has nothing to do with politics at all.

Ron is the anti-politician. He tells unfashionable truths, educates rather than flatters the public, and stands up for principle even when the whole world is arrayed against him.

By Robert Samuelson

WASHINGTON -- Republicans and Democrats don't agree on much, but they do agree on this: the middle class. At their conventions, the two parties will compete fiercely for its support. Republicans will accuse Barack Obama of destroying the middle class through policies perpetuating high joblessness and feeble economic growth. Democrats will portray Mitt Romney as a tool of the rich who doesn't understand the middle class. To the victor may go the election, because "saving the middle class" has arguably become the campaign's defining issue.
This is mostly political symbolism. The idea that anyone can "save" the middle class assumes that it's in danger of disappearing, which it isn't, and that presidents possess sufficient powers to resurrect it, which they don't. Still, the symbolism is potent because most Americans equate the middle class with the kind of society we are and ought to be. It is a society where hard work and personal responsibility are rewarded -- where "getting ahead" is expected; where economic security and social stability are enjoyed; and where privilege is minimized.

What If Everyone’s Wrong?

What if what everyone knows about presidential elections is wrong?

Scott Brundage

Everyone knows vice presidential candidates don’t matter. Except that on August 11, the day Paul Ryan was announced, Mitt Romney trailed by almost 5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Two weeks later Romney had pulled to within 1 point—his strongest rally of the general election season.

Everyone knows that when a president is running for reelection, the race is a judgment on the incumbent—and that if the country isn’t in great shape, it’s very much in the challenger’s interest to keep the focus on the incumbent. Make it a referendum on the president. Don’t let the incumbent make it a choice.

Niall Ferguson: College Becoming the New Caste System

Higher education is becoming the new caste system.

School is in the air. It is the time of year when millions of apprehensive young people are crammed into their parents’ cars along with all their worldly gadgets and driven off to college.

The rest of the world looks on with envy. American universities are the best in the world—22 out of the world’s top 30, according to the Graduate School of Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Once it was Oxford or Cambridge that bright young Indians dreamed of attending; now it is Harvard or Stanford. Admission to a top U.S. college is the ultimate fast track to the top.

Little do the foreigners know that all is far from well in the groves of American academe.

Let’s start with the cost. According to the College Board, average tuition and fees for in-state residents at a sample of public colleges have soared by 25 percent since 2008–09. A key driver has been the reduction in funding as states have been forced to adopt austerity measures. In the same time frame, tuition and fees at private universities rose by less (13 percent), but still by a lot more than inflation.

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, total student debt (which includes private loans and federal loans) climbed to more than $1 trillion. It is the only form of consumer debt that has continued to grow even as households pay off mortgages, credit cards, and auto loans. In real terms, students are borrowing twice what they did a decade ago.

It’s not only Facebook stock that Silicon Valley superstar Peter Thiel is selling. He’s shorting higher education, too, arguing that college is the new asset bubble—the natural successor to subprime. Remember when we all believed that a home was an investment that would never lose money? Now, Thiel argues, exactly the same thing is being said about a degree. To back up his point, Thiel is paying 20 of the country’s most promising students $100,000 to walk away from their studies and become entrepreneurs.

"Newsweek editors discuss the magazine's latest college rankings."

Thiel is not alone in his skepticism. “President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob!” Rick Santorum famously declared. “There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day … that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them.”

Artur Davis’s Conversion

Artur Davis’s Conversion
The former Democratic congressman is a threat to his old party.

By John Fund

Former Democratic congressman Artur Davis of Alabama

Only about 3 to 5 percent of voters are truly undecided between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Focus groups run by Republicans have found that some of the most effective ads appealing to those voters feature Democrats and independents speaking candidly about how they voted for Obama in 2008 but are now disappointed.

That’s one of the reasons that Republicans have decided to showcase former Democratic congressman Artur Davis of Alabama as a “headline” speaker at their convention. Davis, a moderate black Democrat who voted against Obamacare in 2010 and was crushed later that year in a Democratic primary for governor, has since left the Democratic party and is backing Mitt Romney. He was an early Obama supporter — the first Democratic congressman outside Illinois to endorse the candidate in 2007. He seconded Obama’s nomination for president at the 2008 Denver convention.
“The Obama I endorsed was the constitutional-law professor who said he supported the rule of law,” Davis explained to me. “Instead, we got someone who always went to the left whenever he reached a fork in the road.” Now Davis spends a great deal of time describing his conversion to Republican audiences. Even Jamelle Bouie, a writer for the left-wing American Prospect who doesn’t find Davis’s conversion story all that compelling, acknowledges its power. “Davis, like Joe Lieberman before him (and Zell Miller before that), can tell a credible story of ideological alienation,” Bouie wrote in the Washington Post. “He thought the Democratic Party was a big tent, but now — under Barack Obama — it is a haven for intolerant leftism.”

by Percy L. Greaves, Jr.

[Understanding the Dollar Crisis (1973)]

In this lecture we address ourselves to the role of value in economics.
Some people, thinking economics merely a matter of opinions, question the "value" of economists. When people are sick or have trouble with their bodies, they consult a doctor. They ask him what to do and what not to do. They take whatever bitter medicine the doctor prescribes, pay him, and thank him. When the same people have economic problems they rarely consult an economist. When they do, and he tells them that a popular expense will have undesirable consequences, they scorn his advice and call him "an enemy of the people." As one prominent economist once implied, it is almost impossible for a man to be both a true patriot and a popular economist at the same time. If an economist is popular with the economically ignorant, it may well be that his advice is not sound.

by Murray N. Rothbard

[This article is excerpted from volume 2, chapter 10 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (1995). An MP3 audio file of this chapter, narrated by Jeff Riggenbach, is available for download.]

Another important reason for Marx's failure to publish was his candid depiction of the communist society in the essay "Private Property and Communism." In addition to its being philosophic and not economic, he portrayed a horrifying but allegedly necessary stage of society immediately after the necessary violent world revolution of the proletariat, and before ultimate communism is to be finally achieved. Marx's postrevolutionary society, that of "unthinking" or "raw" communism, was not such as to spur the revolutionary energies of the Marxian faithful.

by Frederic Bastiat

[Included in The Bastiat Collection (2011), this article appeared in Economic Sophisms (1845).]

We have here, again, the same fallacy. We demand that foreign products should be taxed to neutralize the effect of the taxes that weigh upon our national products. The object, then, still is to equalize the conditions of production. We have only a word to say, and it is this: That the tax is an artificial obstacle that produces exactly the same result as a natural obstacle, its effect is to enhance prices. If this enhancement reach a point that makes it a greater loss to create the product for ourselves than to procure it from abroad by producing a counter value, let well alone. Of two evils, private interest will manage to choose the least. I might then simply refer the reader to the preceding demonstration; but the fallacy we have here to combat recurs so frequently in the lamentations and demands — I might say in the challenges — of the protectionist school as to merit a special discussion.

by Gary North

Recently, the leftist London Guardian posted an article against the 19th-century gold-coin standard. The author, who seems recently to have begun shaving, has provided a highly useful summary of the Keynesian case against the gold-coin standard. His article is a fine mixture of familiar old canards and creative new errors. His name is Duncan Weldon.
Mr. Weldon has not written a book, so it is difficult for me to know exactly what his monetary theory is. He was the unknown Keynesian in the 2011 BBC debate between two teams of economists at the London School of Economics: The Keynes vs. Hayek debate. I assume that Robert Skidelsky, his partner, thought he was an up-and-coming economist. Skidelsky is the author of a multivolume biography of Keynes.
I think it would be a useful exercise to go through Mr. Weldon's case against gold. Clearly, he expects people to take it seriously. While I cannot bring myself to do this, having actually read it, I do think some editor at the Guardian took it seriously, even though he also read it.

by Staff Report

CNN and Time should explain why he's being forgiven and what he's doing to cut down on his workload and multiple payrolls. More than that, reporters should press CNN and Time on why even one commission of what, along with fabrication, is journalism's most basic breach of trust gets a pass. Would I be able to explain to the police that my flat-screen might be stolen, but I swear everything else in my house was bought honestly? The same Times story that initially referred to his busy schedule, noted that Zakaria had been criticized for giving basically the same paid graduation speech at two commencements this spring. I'm not sure how bad an offense that is, but it does raise another question: Where, other than at universities, has he been such a busy paid speaker? Has he been paid to speak to groups − such as those representing major industries or international constituencies (a group that seeks enhanced free-trade agreements, for example) − that have special interests related to issues he reports about or whose leaders have been covered in his writings or on his TV show? − Reuters, Stephen Brill

Doug Casey on the 'Worsening Storm,' QE3 and the Hard Assets Alliance

Anthony Wile

Doug Casey

The Daily Bell is pleased to present this exclusive interview with Doug Casey (left).
Introduction: Doug Casey has appeared on hundreds of radio and TV shows and has been the subject of articles in People, US, Time, Forbes, The Washington Post and numerous other publications. For nearly three decades, Doug Casey and his team have been correctly predicting major budding trends in the overall economy and commodity markets.
Daily Bell: Welcome, Doug. Give us an update on what you call the "Greater Depression."
Doug Casey: A depression is a period of time when most people's standard of living drops significantly. I think we can argue that this one really started in 2008. For the last couple of years, by printing up trillions of currency units, governments have − so far successfully − papered things over. Instead of allowing markets to liquidate, their currency printing has made it possible for people to continue living beyond their means. It's just a question of time before things really come apart but it's impossible to say exactly how much time. My guess is, based on what is happening in Europe and what I think will be happening shortly in China, is that we go back into the storm within a few months. As you know, it's not a good idea to predict both an event and its timing. But I'm an economist − which is to say, someone who tries to describe the way the world works − not a fortuneteller. So I'm willing to take a shot at the timing...
Daily Bell: We asked you last time how long you thought it would take before there is a complete breakdown in confidence of the US dollar.
Doug Casey: Unfortunately, confidence is a critical element here because the dollar − like all the world's currencies − rests mainly on confidence. Confidence is a matter of psychology, and psychology can change very quickly. Confidence can blow away more quickly than a pile of feathers during a hurricane; it's not a sound foundation for a currency.
Let's talk about actual economic reality. At this point, everything the government is doing – and not just the US government but governments everywhere − is not only the wrong thing but exactly the opposite of the right thing. They're passing more laws, raising taxes, creating more currency and incurring more debt. They should be doing the opposite. We're currently still in the eye of the storm. Their actions guarantee that when we go back into the hurricane − the trailing edge of the hurricane − it's going to be much worse and will last much longer than what we saw in 2007 to 2009. I expect this time it's likely to be accompanied by high levels of retail price inflation.
Daily Bell: Where's the best place to sit this out?
Doug Casey: I don't want to be in a country that's in the worst part of the storm. So I don't want to be in Europe, I don't want to be in the US, I don't want to be in China. I'm a fan of developing countries – I always have been – that have high levels of growth with low levels of debt. We have to remember that having savings shows you've been producing more than you've been consuming. Debt is just the opposite; debt means you've been consuming more than you've been producing, that you've been living above your means. So I like a place that's got a stable, growing economy, high levels of savings, not a lot of debt − along with minimal taxes and regulation. It's not an easy call, because there is no country in the world today that's going in the right direction, sad to say. But there are some that are definitely better than others. That said, forget about Europe, the US and China at this point.
Daily Bell: You explained last time that Washington is spending a trillion and a half dollars more than it's taking in. When does that stop?
Doug Casey: It's not going to stop because it's entirely structural at this point in time; it's going to get worse. If you look at where the government spends its money, it's actually very interesting, as well as disturbing.

– by Tibor Machan

Dr. Tibor Machan

Mr. Milos Foreman is a renowned film director but not a good political economist. This is evident in his New York Times op-ed defense of Barack Obama from those who charge the president with being a socialist. (See his essay, "Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close" in the July 10th issue of the paper.)
When someone on the American political landscape is accused of being a socialist, the claim has little directly to do with Stalinism and a lot more with the kind of system they had in Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland and other Soviet colonies, namely the phony promise of cradle-to-grave security and relentless government meddling in people's lives (goulash communism). Call it Norman Thomas style socialism, the kind that so many academic socialists in the West champion.

Romney: Reappoint Bernanke After All ...

– by Staff Report

Ben Bernanke

Consider keeping Bernanke, top Romney adviser says ... Ben Bernanke received an unlikely defense of his work at the U.S. Federal Reserve by a top Mitt Romney adviser, who said on Tuesday that he should be considered for a third term as chairman. Glenn Hubbard, economic adviser to the Republican presidential candidate, said he would advise a possible President Romney that Bernanke should "get every consideration" to stay on beyond January 2014, when the chairman's current term expires. The comments may come as a surprise given Romney has said he would not reappoint Bernanke beyond 2014. Further, many top Republicans have blasted the Fed's aggressive policies since the Great Recession as overreaching and reckless. – Reuters

To Honor Neil Armstrong, Obama Posts Photo of Himself

by Mike Flynn

The thing that most bothers me about Barack Obama is his unearned narcissism. His smugness and arrogance are beyond the ability of science to measure. I don't mind someone being a bit cocky or even arrogant, IF they have the accomplishments and achievements to back up the attitude.

Axelrod-Endorsed IL Congressional Candidate Duckworth Accused of Being Tax Cheat

by Tony Lee

Illinois congressional candidate Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat and a candidate the Obama campaign likes to tout, has been accused of being a tax cheat after a Chicago newspaper suggested she illegally claimed homestead exemptions on two properties from 2017 to 2010. Illinois state law allows for taxpayers to claim only one such exemption, on the property that is their primary residence.

CNN's Roland Martin, Soledad O'Brien Try to Quash Citizens United Film

by Joel B. Pollak

When Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon went on CNN this morning to discuss his new film, The Hope and the Change, Soledad O’Brien and her panel were eager--as usual--to be as nasty as possible. The chyron on the screen called the film “propaganda,” and Roland Martin chimed in to call the former Obama supporters in the film “folks who lie” because they (correctly) claim President Obama has raised taxes.

RNC Protester Arrested Carrying Machete

by Breitbart News

Police arrested a Tallahassee man protesting at the Republican National Convention for carrying a machete into the Event Zone.

According to authorities, Jason T. Wilson had a "full size" machete (pictured above) strapped to his leg at a Sunday protest.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012