Don't Newsletter on Me (12/14/20)
Articles from The Mises Institute, Institute for Justice, Rational Ground, FEE, Glenn Greenwald, Reason, FFF, The Emergent Newsletter, Caitlin Johnstone, Salon, Michael Rectenwald,
These are in no particular order.
This will be the last edition of the Don’t Newsletter on Me for 2020. I have a long vacation scheduled from work, and I don’t plan on using it to read a bunch of political articles. I look forward to see you in the new year!
Some Covid themed Christmas jokes.
Did you hear that production was down at Santa’s workshop? Many of his workers have had to elf isolate!
Why didn’t Mary and Joseph make it to Bethlehem? All Virgin flights were cancelled.
Why are Santa’s reindeer allowed to travel on Christmas Eve? They have herd immunity.
Why couldn’t Mary and Joseph join their work conference call? Because there was no Zoom at the inn.
What do the Trumps do for Christmas dinner? They put on a super spread.
Which Christmas film was 30 years ahead of its time? Home Alone.
Post-Thanksgiving mask charts: Still no evidence that masks work
Rational Ground
Slavery: The "Broken Window" of American Economic History
The Mises Institute
New historians of capitalism can identify the ostensible economic prowess of slavery, but they have not seen the costs imposed by slave economies. Contra the claims of these writers, as a pollutant slavery retarded America’s economic development in three ways. Let us explore the channels through which slavery polluted the economy.
U.S. Supreme Court Rules Unanimously You May Sue Government Agents for Damages When They Violate Your Individual Rights
Institute for Justice
Moreover, the Court highlighted that damages are important because they are often the only remedy available. For example, for one of the plaintiffs, Muhammad Tanvir, who lost his job because of his placement on the No Fly List, it is damages or nothing.
AOC’s Latest Viral Post Flunks Econ 101
The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
There’s one glaring problem with Ocasio-Cortez’s impassioned tirade: Economics is not a zero-sum game. Her argument is predicated upon the idea that in the process of achieving great wealth, a billionaire had to take that wealth away from someone else. This simply isn’t how a free-market economy works.
When you voluntarily buy groceries from the local market, you and the store owner are both made better off by the transaction. You get goods that are worth more to you than the money you’re spending on them (or else you wouldn’t make the purchase) and vice versa for the store owner.
After the Deep State Sabotaged His Presidential Bid, Bernie Sanders Mocks Those Who Believe it Exists
Glenn Greenwald
Sanders knows all of this. He knows it as well as anyone, since the very weapons he’s now suggesting are the hallucinations of authoritarians and lunatics — rigged elections, fake news and the Deep State — were deployed against him as much as anyone. But it is now standard Democratic Party agitprop to ridicule anyone who recognizes their undeniable reality and, for whatever reasons, Sanders continues to dutifully recite from that script even now that the transition to Biden/Harris is well underway.
The National Security Establishment Is In Charge
The Future of Freedom Foundation (FFF)
And then look at what happened, almost immediately. Look at what the national-security establishment did to Donald Trump. At the very start of his administration, they defanged him and rendered him impotent. Trump surrounded himself with generals. He even appointed one to be his secretary of defense. Now nearing the the end of his four year term, he failed to end his “forever wars,” as he promised to do. Just as bad, he tried his best to start new ones, like in Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Somalia.
Food Truck Operators Are Still Fighting an Uphill Battle Against Protectionism
Reason
But others are clearly intended to protect brick-and-mortar restaurants in the city at the expense of food trucks. For example, the Bay City ordinance would impose dreaded Chicago-style radius restrictions, mandating that food trucks vend at least 150 feet from brick-and-mortar restaurants. The ordinance would also require businesses that allow food trucks to vend on their private property (e.g., a brewery) "to obtain approval before allowing food trucks onto their property." There's also a provision in the ordinance that prohibits trucks from making "excessive" noise or using flashing or blinking lights and another that requires truck operators to ban anyone from eating within 10 feet of their truck.
Trump may pardon his kids, Biden will kill yours
The Emergent Newsletter
So in conclusion, in the case that Trump does pardon his own kids, and as the media vomits all over itself when they report on that potential story, take some time think about the 18 year olds Biden’s going to be sending overseas to die in another stupid and endless war.
Surprise! America Is Getting Another Psycho For Secretary Of State
Caitlin Johnstone
How true can Biden’s claim be that he regrets his pivotal role in facilitating that unforgivable act of mass military butchery if he’s continued employing the man who advised him about it as an advisor ever since, and is now appointing him to Secretary of State? If someone advises you to do something that you truly regret, do you continue seeking out that person’s advice on the same subject and give them even more power and control over it?
Standing up for free expression means standing up for Julian Assange
Salon
Citizens throughout the world should consider the important role that knowledge plays in democratic life. Knowledge makes us who we are, enables us to understand our fellow citizens and encourages us to grow. Without access to information, our power to express our will at the ballot box is weakened. And our access to information depends on the right to free expression.
The U.S. military and its partners have been at war for nearly two decades. These wars have cost millions of lives and displaced at least 37 million people. We know that our governments, through bias, incompetence or manipulation, have played fast and loose with the truth about these wars. An independent press is the only safeguard we have against government deception.
Time for a divorce? The US is so bitterly divided between red & blue factions that some want it to split into two nations
Michael Rectenwald
Look at the map of how individual counties voted. While Trump won some 2,500 generally sparsely populated ones, and Biden some 500 largely heavily populated ones, there is no easy divide. Even within counties, there are mostly significant minority red or blue factions. The pain of separation would be greater than the discomfort of remaining ‘together’. Thus, these antipathetic twins will remain locked in a loveless, rancorous, and intolerable marriage – for the foreseeable future, at least.
7 Things I'd Do if I Wanted to Keep Poor People Poor
The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
If I wanted to keep poor people poor, there are several government policies I would favor. Let's count them down.
1: An Expanding Welfare State
2: Progressive Taxation Policy
3: Increase the Minimum Wage
4: Support Restrictive “Green Energy” Policies
5: Increase the Business Regulatory Burden
6: Inflate the Money Supply
7: Impose High Tariffs
Gallup Poll: Americans’ Mental Health Hits 20-Year Low Ahead of Renewed Lockdowns
The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)
As Jon Miltimore previously explained for FEE.org, the Centers for Disease Control found that 1 in 4 young Americans considered suicide this past summer amid life under lockdown and unprecedented levels of social isolation. In one anecdote that painfully demonstrates this broader trend, a California hospital doctor told local news in May that during lockdown he witnessed “a year's worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks."
Mike
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