Now that the coronavirus scare has much of the country fearful and sheltered-in-place, there are more than a few special interests that are profiting massively from the "Emergency State" that has emerged. Crony capitalists, corporate criminals, Keynesians, big brother government advocates, previously unknown minor county officials...there is plenty of profit to go around. Don't miss today's Liberty Report... read on...
You can always count on the government to take advantage of a crisis, legitimate or manufactured. This coronavirus pandemic is no exception. read on...
While major military exercises have been cancelled in Europe due to coronavirus fears, the US has decided to continue with war games in the Middle East aimed at making war on Iran. On the home front, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is using the virus to fight a hybrid war on Iran and other US 'enemies.' Will kicking them while they're down really work to our advantage? More sanctions on suffering countries? Watch today's Liberty Report... read on...
There are few things in this life that make me more sick to my stomach than watching Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talking. He truly is one of the evilest men I’ve ever had the displeasure of covering.
Into the insanity of the over-reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak, Pompeo wasted no time ramping up sanctions on firms doing any business with Iran, one of the countries worse-hit by this virus to date.
It’s a seemingly endless refrain, everyday, more sanctions on Chinese, Swiss and South African firms for having the temerity in these deflating times to buy oil from someone Pompeo and his gang of heartless psychopaths disapprove of.
This goes far beyond just the oil industry. Even though I’m well aware that Russia’s crashing the price of oil was itself a hybrid war attack on US capital markets. One that has had, to date, devastating effect. read on...
Jon Utley saved my life. While I hadn’t literally fallen into a well and had him pull me out, in a figurative sense that is exactly what he did. Having just spent most of the 1990s living and working abroad in Hungary, I found myself back in Washington, DC, in a well-known neoconservative think tank. It’s a long story, but much of that strange situation had to do with a combination of disorientation and lack of political contacts after so long overseas.
As anyone in those DC circles would recall from that time, Wednesday mornings were set aside for “coalition” meetings chaired by Grover Norquist, where representatives of the so-called conservative think tanks would each give their updates to the delight of those “coalition members” lucky enough to be in attendance.
These organizations were all solidly neoconservative and were all somehow connected with the massive direct mail rip-off known as “Conservatism, Inc.” Terrify the rubes in flyover country into kicking in a few bucks to fight the enemy of the day who was about to destroy us. More than a couple mansions in the tony DC suburbs were built from the pennies of pensioners frightened by conjured hobgoblins. read on...
With nearly one-third of all Americans on government-enforced lockdown and the National Guard pouring into the streets, it's a good time to take stock of the coronavirus scare and the real nature of the threat. What is our most important investment as the markets crash? Watch today's Liberty Report... read on...
Do we really think “it can’t happen here” in America? Could we quarantine the constitution? Are we doing it already?
Panics from pandemics unleash unchecked governmental power. The very premise of popular films like V for Vendetta reveal this: a group uses a virus to seize power and create a totalitarian society. Anyone could witness this from far-off lands, watching the news about China locking people up in their own homes and then removing them screaming from those homes whenever the state wanted. World War I and the Great Depression birthed virulent forms of governments with leaders like Hitler, Mao, Mussolini and Stalin.
Governments across America already used the pandemic, and the media-stoked panic around the pandemic particularly, to limit, restrict or remove First Amendment freedoms of speech and free association, with officials complaining about the potential restraints the freedom of religion imposed upon them. Others denied or declared the right to deny Second Amendment rights of gun purchase for personal safety (at a time governments are issuing no-arrest and no-detention orders for a wide range of crimes in their community while publicly freeing inmates from jails and prisons). They want to coordinate with tech companies to surveil and spy on your everyday movements and activities, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and potentially waive, unilaterally, your medical right to privacy in multiple contexts. read on...
Last Monday, a bipartisan group of Senators and a coalition including libertarian and progressive activists thwarted a scheme to ram through the Senate legislation renewing three provisions of the USA FREEDOM Act (previously known as the USA PATRIOT Act). read on...
Would you consider the shutting down of an entire national economy for a disease such as the Black Death, which between 1347-1351 killed an estimated 60 percent of the population in the areas where it spread, to be a proportionate response? What about for a virus which carries — at the very most (see below) — a mortality rate of 1.4 percent for those who contract it?
Such decisions should be weighed in the balances. In the left-hand side, there is the number of people who could die from the illness, the burden this will place on the health care system and other vital services, and the consequent misery and devastation this will cause to individuals, to families, to businesses, and to society at large. In the right-hand side, there is the possibility of economic collapse, with the mass job losses, destruction of businesses, and extreme poverty this would bring for many.
For something like the Black Death, it is something of a no-brainer. If you don’t shut down everything very quickly, not only will people start dropping dead like flies, but the economy you are attempting to save will soon have nobody to work in it. If you were foolish enough to try to keep your economy running during such a situation, you’d end up with the worst of both worlds: almost no people and almost no economy. read on...
What happens when governments confuse worst-case scenarios with reality? They transform a health crisis into a social crisis and an economic tsunami, with consequences more severe than the virus could produce in the first place.
As I write, hundreds of thousands of people across Europe and the world have already lost their jobs, in the leisure and entertainment sectors in particular. As sector after sector is impacted by global lockdowns, mass unemployment is not a possibility, it is definite. And the social costs are going to be severe. How severe no one really knows. But past experiences show that when people lose jobs, they can also lose homes, their marriages, their health – and our social fabric is pulled apart.
However, we should be careful not to obsess with trying to second-guess what the huge costs to society will be of the panic. Otherwise there is a danger of one form of apocalyptic scaremongering being replaced by another.
There are two related problems. The first is that the global economy was already in the emergency ward before the impact of Covid-19. Whether the economic actions being taken across the world – from unprecedented interest-rate cuts through to eye-watering trillions of dollar state spending – will stem the flow or not remains to be seen. Perversely, it could help to shake out many non- or under-performing sections of the economy, which could be a good thing in the long-term. read on...
