Libera Voce

The Balkanization of America

We must acknowledge and respect our differences, not ridicule them from partisan perspectives.

Why is there increasing noise in social media about the topic of secession? In order to discuss secession itself, we need to understand this question and the answer; that can be difficult given all that “noise”, and the fact that civil discourse is absent from any debate, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored.

Let’s not get hung up on the simplistic notion that this is just another crisis of the Age of Trump; this goes back much further than the current administration. The list of significant such movements in the US is about a dozen and range geographically across the country from Vermont to Hawaii. The impetus for such movements range from cultural, social, political and economic issues, and support secessions of counties within states all the way to groups of states seceding from the Union.

A common theme is the reaction to the imposition of culture, laws and attitudes dictated from above, meaning not representative of a particular local area. The “above” is perceived as Washington DC, i.e. the Federal Government. The imposition resented comes from the politically elite in the urban areas of the Northeast and Pacific Coast.

The resulting social and political dynamic reviving and driving these movements is polarization. With the advent of social media, these movements have grown and the synergy created with technology back feeds into even more support; it’s like a chimeric growth with an indeterminate evolution, but decidedly alienating.

So this in turn leads to the issue of secession itself, an issue that we assumed was settled with the Civil War. However, from a constitutional perspective, that may be only an assumption. The Constitution provides a clear path for a territory to become a state of the Union, but is silent on the issue of secession. That curious fact has been explained variously by many scholars, but not conclusively.

Foremost against secession we have the Supreme Court 1869 ruling in Texas v. White; the case was about US bond sales and redemptions by Texas during the Civil War, and not specifically about Texas’ right to secede from the Union. However the case presented the Supreme Court with an opportunity, so it ruled that the sale was illegal because it occurred at the time of secession, which in turn it deemed illegal stating that the Constitution did not permit states to unilaterally secede from the United States. That is true as the Constitution says nothing about secession, so unilateral or not, permission or prohibition, it is not addressed.

Some scholars have argued that the court should have gone further as it did not address the fact that the Constitution did not speak against secession. Obviously, having just had a bloody civil war about secession and with the South still under Reconstruction governance, the court found itself compelled to take a stand against secession or put the entire outcome in jeopardy. However, by not addressing the issue of the Constitution’s silence on secession, it lost the opportunity to resolve that issue in regards to powers not expressed and therefore reserved to the States.

Regardless of which way you may argue the issue, it remains that the Constitution to this day is silent on secession, does not provide an expressed power, and has not had an amendment to resolve that. On that basis those promoting the right of secession make their case.

Taken all together, we have a Balkanization of America. I chose that phrase based on its definition, i.e. a geopolitical term for the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or uncooperative with one another. The term evolved during the many periods of fragmentation of the Balkans from the time of the Byzantine Empire’s collapse to that of the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

Well by definition we certainly have Balkanization going on in America today, and the current economic collapse will only exacerbate the underlying causes even further. It is difficult to separate the growing polarization from this issue as therein lay both the cause and the possible solution.

Let’s start with the simple premise that when developing policies of governance, especially for a country as large and diverse as America, we can’t take an approach that one size fits all; by definition it can’t work in governance any more than in shoe making since no matter what you’re excluding more people than you are serving.

Government works best to serve the people when it operates at the most localized level to the people involved, i.e. state and county, city and town. This is how the US was originally constructed through the constitution and therein lies the way to understand how polarization starts and grows to the extremes we have today.

With the growth of the Federal government, specifically its assumptions of powers despite restrictions within the Constitution, we have conflict through intervention in areas of governance that belong at the state and local levels, an assumption of powers never intended even by the Federalists and certainly feared by Jeffersonians. It is this growth of the Federal Government and its attendant powers that is the underlying cause of the alienation tearing the Republic apart.

Knowing the problem and its cause informs us for a solution. We need to face and collegially embrace the fact that we are a union of various States, each representing its own unique history, culture, social and political characteristics. We must acknowledge and respect our differences, not ridicule them from partisan perspectives. We must embrace our common values, chiefly our respect for individual freedom as guaranteed by the Constitution, the rule of law and the protection of individual lives, liberties and private properties. There should be no more debate about the Bill of Rights; it was the one thing that enabled the ratification of the Constitution, thanks to the insistence of the New England states, the birth place of the Revolution.

This means an existential shift in the direction of our political institutions away from nationalistic agendas to localized prerogatives; for a truly civil society, when it comes to government, less is truly more.

This should not be dismissed as wishful thinking as this is what our Republic is based on, what the Revolution was fought for, and what the Civil War was intended to preserve. If we do not do these things, polarization will only get worse and we will face the inevitable prospect of Balkanization.

#balkanizationamerica

Looking For America

It was the late 60’s. It was a time of strife, a time of the civil rights and anti-war movements, a time that tore at the fabric of American society, raising conflict between patriotism and moral indignation, racism and rights, older and younger generations; it was a time of turbulence.

In such an environment a bunch of us CCNY college kids embarked on an adventure that in looking back bordered on insanity. One summer we took off in seriously challenged cars, with little resources, on a journey across America. There was no real plan accept a general route to go South, then Northwest, then Southwest, then North again along the Pacific coast, and then East toward home. This caravan of young devil-may-care wanders sometimes split up, often got lost, but always kept the faith that this journey was the right path, the way to better know our country. We were city kids who knew nothing beyond our home, but we had a desire to understand a country that in many ways baffled us.

Some nearly four months and 15,000 miles later we definitely had different perspectives, but perhaps were even more baffled than before. How, we wondered, was this country held together? The diversity, complexity and sometimes contradictions of such a huge place seemed as if we had passed through different countries. However, through it all we also felt a commonality with everyone we met, seldom experiencing hostility of any kind.

Looking at all the polarization, conflict and violence in the country today, I would not now take that journey again. The bridges that would not burn then are now destroyed as the country devolves into one cataclysmic event after another, a dystopia so prevalent that I don’t know if I could find that America of my youth again. The strife for civil rights, a movement so established as non-violent, principled in liberty and equality before the law by people like Martin Luther King Jr., has been replaced with demagogues calling for the violence plaguing many cities and towns across the country, met by various white supremacists just waiting for an excuse to exacerbate the situation in to even more hate and violence.

Maybe it’s the maturation into family and parenthood, but I suspect that even if I was not blessed with any of that, I wouldn’t do it again. It’s not the lack of a sense of adventure as that has thankfully never left me. In recent years past my wife and I would travel to Europe, rent a car and found the best way to get to know another country is to get lost in it.

Rather it’s a sense of loss that the America I knew in my youth is gone, and likely will not be coming back anytime soon. It’s not just that things have changed that disturbs me, but that people seem lost. I hear complaints from my generation that millennials have no sense of purpose, just entitlement. But these are our children who we sent to universities, exploding the higher education population exponentially, but we never bothered to understand that we created institutions that provided the corrosive misconceptions that led to a state of delusion, negativity and hostility. Understanding that helps explain what Mark Twain meant when he said “I was educated once; it took me years to get over it.”

While there are many elements to the devolution of American society, its roots are as old as the nation itself. That the Founders began without living up to the very principles they espoused was evident in the existence of slavery, a delusion that would inevitably cause a bloody Civil War and social conflict to this day. The miseducation that racism is just if in the interest of a greater good it is a means to equality is also a delusion, a denial that evil regardless of intent is still evil.

The belief that economics is a tool and not a natural phenomenon of human society creates the delusion that equality of means can be achieved through coercion, a misconception that capitalism is a cause as opposed to a result. As Milton Friedman once explained “Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

There are other elements in the educational paradigm that have created in much of our society misconceptions of what liberty is, and a rejection of the humanism from which it arises. To believe in liberty is to believe that every individual has the right to pursue their own interests, even if you find those interests to be contrary to your own, or even to someone else’s interests. It is the freedom to even make your own mistakes as long as you accept the consequences.

This is what has changed from the America of my youth. But even more that just these misconceptions perhaps is the attitude that those that disagree with these delusions do not have in fact the right to do so. Gone is the spirit that you can disagree with what someone says, but defend their right to say it. This loss of belief in liberty was recently expressed well in a statement by the American economist Thomas Sowell on a recent tweet:

“Too many people today act as if no one can honestly disagree with them. If you have a difference of opinion with them, you are considered to be not merely in error, but in sin. You are a racists, a homophobe or whatever the villain of the day happens to be.”

Perhaps this is the main cause of our societal ills, the willingness to demonize, dismiss, and cancel someone because you feel threatened by something they represent or say. This polarization of Americans into competing camps of right-think, and the delusion that they have the right to use coercion to establish the dominance of their beliefs, either through violence such as what we see on the streets of our cities, or by political will through what we call democracy in voting politicians to power to legislate for your positons or against those of others, is the essence of anarchy and authoritarianism.

This growth of statism is a symptom of a society in trouble of losing its civility and sense of good will to its citizens, and yet it’s odd that you hear the opposite from those that propose that the state can be the solution. The late Murray Rothbard expressed this best when he said “Irony is a statist calling an anarchist a threat to society.”

What Americans need to do is take a big time out, readily doable in a pandemic, and get to a quiet place of mind and think about a positive approach to life, devoid of fear and its companion hate, to understand that the pursuit of happiness is a right, not a guarantee and never a justification to impose your beliefs on your fellow man. Perhaps then we can find America.

Democracy Is Not Liberty

If you disagree with this assertion, you need to understand that democracy is a political system, as in a form of government, whereas liberty is a state of human existence. Unfortunately any form of government, democratic or otherwise, can impose oppressive restrictions on liberty.

This is an important concept of political and sociological science; in the context of current American politics and society it’s an existential issue. No government actually gives you liberty as it’s something you are born with, and therefore no government, no matter its political system, has the right to take it away. Actually governments have no rights, only the powers its people give it, and therein lays the existential issue.

So apparently the political solution would be to protect against a government oppressing liberty, right? Better yet, define why government is even necessary to begin with; after all, if government is the main threat to liberty, the obvious solution is not to have one, right? Well anarchists have used that argument for millennia, but I believe that would also raise an existential issue, specifically how do you protect against coercive threats, external or internal, to liberty?

So to distill the many arguments for and against government we come down to the issue of coercion, which is inherently evil because by its very nature it seeks to reduce the individual to nothing more than a means to achieve the goals of someone else, like a thief or a group such as a political party.

Now take the last example since we are talking about politics and liberty. What difference does it make if the coercion is a product of a dictatorship or a democratic mandate? This is not an argument against government; it’s an argument against coercion. The true and only justification then for government is to protect all its citizens against coercion, both foreign and domestic. Using force against invasion of your country or invasion of your home is self-defense. A government that Initiates force against another country or its own citizens is therefore by definition oppressive.

In the democratic process it is assumed that the rule of the majority is necessarily a good thing, as it is and expression of freedom; that is a false positive in defense of liberty. If something is wrong, it does not become good because the majority say so. If the majority votes to entitle them to something they have not earned, then it is of necessity at the expense of someone else who has consequently lost that measure of liberty.

In a truly free society, the concept of what is a greater good is not a justification for the use of coercion, whether by dictate or mandate. Currently we are bombarded with the nonsensical proposition of social justice, an excuse for the use of coercion to create equality in all things; it is the most corrosive phenomenon against liberty, yet it is the sacred cow of those that consider themselves “Progressive”, an oxymoronic label considering it is actually regressive. Do Progressives realize that their proposition destroys liberty, the very essence of what it means to be human and an individual?

What does equality in the context of social justice even mean? If it means that we are all equal before the law, great; apparently that is not the case as it proposes that all humans are equal in all things. Such a concept is contrary to humanism; we are all individuals and not some homogenous entity. To reduce humanity to such sameness creates a dystopia antithetical to liberty.

Politically such a phenomenon, if enacted by mandate, proves Floyd Arthur Harper’s warning that “The citizens of a democracy have in their hands the tools by which to enslave themselves.”

Silence of the Damned

With so much protests going on about us, why is there relative silence about the suppression of free speech? Such silence will surely damn America like a cancer causing the destruction of our cultural and social values. As Mark Twain said “The truth hurts but silence kills.”

What is it about Edward Snowden that scares the NSA so much? After all, what he released seven years ago is already in the public domain, and much of it disclosed what should be deemed illegal activities by that organization to begin with. He was a true whistle blower, and the American people should embrace him as a hero, not a traitor. His actions were a protest against our government’s obscene surveillance and invasions of privacy of Americans. I think exposing that scares those that are up to no good.

Amazingly Trump is considering pardoning Snowden. That is likely motivation due to his feud with the intelligence community regarding his dealings with Russia and the Ukraine, but you take whatever good comes along and pardoning Snowden would be a good thing.

Snowden had supporters in Congress, such as Ron Paul, who stated “My understanding is that espionage means giving secret or classified information to the enemy. Since Snowden shared information with the American people, his indictment for espionage could reveal, or confirm, that the US Government views you and me as the enemy.” That’s a chilling insight we need to seriously consider.

Snowden was charged under, among other statutes, the Espionage Act of 1917. That was a shameful law that was meant to silence protest about the US entry into the Great War; the most shameful episode was the acquiescence of the Supreme Court in Schenck v. United States. Schenck was protesting through the distribution of pamphlets, the same publication medium as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense during the American Revolution. The Courts twisted logic in finding against Schenck was a repudiation of free speech if there ever was one. We currently face a tsunami of forces against free speech.

Politically we face the likely revision to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Oddly enough the original purpose of that legislation was to restrict free speech on the internet that was deemed “obscene”, but it also included this section which protected social media as an open public platform against law suits about what someone may publish that anyone found offensive. Now both Democrats and Republicans want to change that as they seek to silence free voices that may criticize them.

Academically there’s the very troubling phenomenon on college campuses where opinions expressed by students and faculty that fellow students and teachers find offensive often results in censorship, suspension, firing and expulsion. How can institutions of higher learning not support free expression, the very essence of intellectual development?

Socially, we are not doing much better. Consider for a moment the Antifa movement, which openly espouses that the very concept of free speech is a tool of “liberal” suppression. The term liberal here does not refer to a political spectrum of modern politics but that of the Enlightenment. That the acronym Antifa stands for Anti-Fascism is another Bizzaro World reversal of our times. Also be aware of the “woke” movement which seeks to suppress any free expression that someone finds “threatening”; well there’s a slippery slope that can’t lead to anything good.

The mass media has not been very helpful here; they are supposed to represent an essential element of democracy as a free press but in fact have deteriorated into political advocacy contrary to objective journalism. This failure aids in polarization and provides an open door for interference from bad actors like Russian and Chinese agents. The effectiveness of those actions increases in the absence of reliable information.

Soon we will see political debates as a lead up to the 2020 elections. It’s troubling that both major parties are actively working to prevent the inclusion of third party candidates, even initiating law suits in that effort. This is not an encouraging development in support of free speech. Americans have a right to hear from all those seeking public office and a true democratic process requires an informed electorate.

Regardless of your political position, keep in mind that free of speech is the foundation of liberty which provides you with the right to even have a political position. A lack of support for free speech is a silence that will damn that right to an empty phrase.

#Silence

This News Is Not New

Recently major media sources have been reporting about the huge rise in bank deposits as if it’s some new phenomenon. More intelligent, informed and principled economic and financial analysts have been telling this story for decades, and increasingly since the Great Recession and the QE it spawned.

It should surprise no one that the majority of the huge stimulus issued by the UST and the Fed has found its way to the major US banks, who in turn cater to their large corporate clients. Couple that with record low interest rates and you have the recipe for fattening the hogs even more while the average American sees little of this largess.

Granted there are the $1,200 stimulus checks to families and the $600 add on for unemployment benefits, the former that does little and the later that disincentives going back to work, but these are for political cover more than real economic benefit. In reality, this spending out of empty pockets is only possible given the existence of fiat (fancy word for fake) currencies that can be manipulated to expand the money supply.

And what are the banks doing with all this cash? Well unless you are one of their big corporate clients they deem capable of ever paying back a loan, you will not be on that bread line, so much of it remains in the vault as reported, at least digitally.

And what do those banks and big corporate clients do with these loans (some under PPP will not even have to be paid back) provided at mandated depressed interest rates? Well given the fact that, at least on paper, they are not supposed to use any for stock buybacks, they can use it to build their balance sheets and use other earnings to do exactly what they have been doing – buybacks. Why spend money to grow a business to supply goods and services in an economy with little demand? So who benefits from such a scheme – the rich corporate heads that get even richer, while most Americans get even poorer. Yes, there is income inequality in America, but not for the smoke and mirror reasons we are told.

Keep in mind that it was governments who created lockdowns. While the correct response in a pandemic is high hygienic protocols, canceling the means for livelihoods is a death sentence to an economy and many of its citizens in ways yet to be seen, and you will see, hear and read about that with increased frequency. Every emergency spawns opportunities for those intoxicated with power.

This is not capitalism, this is cronyism, the elitist club pass-time of the power and money elite in government and business playing the same old game. While their talking heads in media and academia point the finger at capitalism and spout redistribution policies as a cure all, the same elite snicker in their soup, cheer the right think pundits on while they get fatter, literally by the day now.

If this sounds cynical please forgive me. I am losing faith that there are few if any financially and morally responsible people in power any longer. I am neither a Republican nor Democrat so this is not a partisan rant, but a cry of despair that we are so far gone that the burden of debt created by policy is not falling on those responsible, but those least able to shoulder it. In fact, it is our children, grandchildren, and likely even our great grandchildren and yet to be born who will actually bear the cost of such irresponsible and larcenous behavior.

So when you hear and read about the never ending and unresolved debate about how much even more stimulus we need, understand that those shouting the loudest and promising the most are the least to be trusted.

#NotNews

Panicdemic

It’s been a while since I last posted on my blog, but it has been time well spent catching up on so many things I should have done well before the pandemic, as I’m sure is the same for many of you.

I hope you are all doing well, and that includes not panicking over COVID19; the real pandemic that it causes is stress. As my long time doctor has told me, the ultimate cause of poor health long term is stress.

While I don’t believe our administration for a moment regarding this pandemic, I find all those that are indulging in panic, especially the talking heads in politics and the media, to be irresponsible, causing undue stress.

We need to keep our eye on the long run, an aide to which is a look back in history. Consider a century ago when the worst pandemic of modern times, known as the Spanish Flu, hit the world just as the Great War came to an end – timing is everything.

The world population at that time was about 1.8B. Total cases are estimated at about 500M, and deaths at about 50M. This provides some perspective given an infection rate of 27.7% and a mortality rate of 10% of cases, equivalent to 2.7% of the world population; staggering statistics.

Not to minimize COVID19, but comparatively we currently have a world population of 7.8B; as of today total infections are at 14.3M, and deaths at 603K. That’s an infection rate of .18%, and a mortality rate of 4.3% of cases, equivalent to .0077% of the world population. This mortality rate is close to SARS, while MERS was a staggering 34.4%.

While we can contribute the lower rates to better disease protocols, clearly COVID19 is the lesser of the modern era viral epidemics; here are some things to consider that fed in to this panic:

Much of the early market sell-off came from large institutional investors like pensions, hedge funds, and investment banks, which represent the majority of investment and employ algorithmic trading platforms that automatically move with headline news. We saw this before with MERS and SARS, two earlier Coronas, but not to this extent; that the media creates headlines that can cause such panic was clear.
It didn’t help that the FED cut rates drastically as that only added to the panic. Besides, I doubt interest rate cuts cure diseases, has not really helped economically except to keep Zombie companies afloat a little longer, lower debt service for the Federal Government, and feeds Wall Street frenzies, but this definitely hits fixed incomes really hard and does little for the average American worker.
Stimulus programs sound good, but only work short term and ultimately cause capital dislocations away from productivity; the long results will definitely cause panic.
The Fed’s practice of monetizing debt will only extend the recovery period as it did with QE in the 2008 Financial Crisis; professing an “all-in” policy is actually a sign of panic, essentially admitting that all you can do is react to whatever comes about, which is no policy at all.
It only adds to the panic to hear people discount concerns based on false and irrelevant information in the face of simple statistical evidence. When Trump said that he didn’t know that people could die from a virus, it was very disconcerting to find out his own grandfather did! This kind of stuff from the leadership level does not instill confidence.
Medical experts and history tell us that COVID19, which is particularly contagious, will spread out everywhere, which is true, it’s what viruses do, so I have little faith in containment plans; they may help “flatten the curve” in the short term, but ultimately this virus will run its course.
What we need is testing, which not only provides reliable statistical information, but critical analyses and medical protocols for treatments and to help develop a vaccine. Would you believe that with all their hype the media failed to report what MIT published, i.e. that the FDA had initially disallowed local laboratories to conduct testing and required specimens to be sent to the CDC? Finally under intense congressional pressure with the release of MIT’s report the FDA relented on February 29th and changed this policy. What was the FDA thinking getting in the way of medical science? Dumb question right, it’s what they do.
The predictions by experts of millions of Americans dying from COVID19 caused some states to lockdown businesses, depriving many from livelihoods without which they could not live; such panic mongering is even more lethal than the virus itself, but why do we not hear more about the gross miscalculations?
The hyperbole about vaccine development is causing both euphoria and panic; we need a measured analysis for some clarity on this critical issue.

The list goes on, but I will follow what my doctor of 40 years told me – keep clean, keep good health habits, follow hygienic protocols and don’t panic as that creates stress that will definitely make you sick…..and live your life.

And from my financial advisor, don’t look at your retirement plans for about a year, that will definitely stress you out.

#Panic

Tell it like it is!

There are so many buzz words flying around the political debates, often with no context or real meaning, so it’s little wonder that most Americans are a little confused if not misled by what is said. Let’s take the two most used words in the current debates, socialism and capitalism. The first thing to understand about these “..isms” is what they mean.

Let’s take socialism first. Here we should understand that many political science and economic texts and courses in our educational system are full of muddled and contradictory definitions, but in general they agree that socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Now there are further definitions to differentiate types of socialism. For example in the USSR and PRC there was communism, loosely defined as a totalitarian socialism wherein the state is in essence the “community”, ultimately managing every facet of a society. Then there are various European and South American versions that prefer to be called Democratic Socialism defined as having a socialist economy in which the means of production are socially and collectively owned or controlled, alongside a democratic political system of government; the problem with the latter is who actually represents these interests of a democracy; directly or indirectly, it comes down to the government, so such distinctions between these two types often lack a credible difference.

Capitalism as defined by the philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo (both of whom were actually sociologists as the term economist had yet to be defined as a separate discipline) was a natural economic system wherein a free market was allowed to function organically, providing for spontaneous interaction via trade among people, as opposed to the mercantilist regimes of most monarchies. In essence, it was seen as independent of and free from government meddling, what the French economist François Quesnay called Laissez Faire, basically meaning let it be.

Now we know from history that even the most so called free states had some degree of political capitalism, a polite way of saying cronyism, wherein the state and its power associates in business and finance colluded to game the system to their benefit, much as we have seen happen overtime in America. This corruption of the organic and spontaneous nature of a free market has been euphemistically called a “Mixed Economy” to make it a more politically correct concept; however, the damage is done as a little cancer will metastasize overtime to destroy a free market.

One of the differentiating characteristics between socialism and capitalism is that the former requires a political power base in creation and to function whereas the later does not; this is an essential concept to understand given the logic tree for true capitalism:

A free society is based on the natural basic right that all men are free, starting with owning their own lives, which includes the fruit of their labor and how they use that, i.e. property rights.
In order to protect this basic right against all aggression to subvert it, society needs the means to defend it.
The essential role of government is to defend this basic right.
To insure that this basic right can’t be subverted is the essential law that government must create and enforce as all other rights evolve from this basic right, i.e. to be a nation of laws and not of men.
This basic right and the laws to defend it require a separation of the ownership of self as defined above from all other aspects of society.
It also follows then that a basic right means all men are equal before the law; they may not be equal in industry, intelligence, productivity, or just luck, but in respect to this basic right they are immutably equal.
As the basic right includes property rights, essential for a free, civil and productive society, it follows logically that man needs to be productive in order to not just survive, but to thrive.
It is empirically obvious that free men will thrive, meaning they will produce in excess of need.
This excess is called capital; it’s not necessarily money but can also be tools, land, shelter, excess grain or livestock, etc.
This excess creates the need and the ability to trade, the essence of an economy.
Capital and trade create spontaneous interactions throughout society, seeking the most productive use organically, a functional efficiency known as division of labor.
The essential word defining this system is called capitalism, the use of excess production applied for future need rather than immediate consumption, thereby providing growth of the wellbeing of society.

Socialism on the other hand requires a political power base that obviates individual liberty because it can’t afford such a luxury and survive; here’s why:

As it is neither organic nor spontaneous, and does not emanate from any natural basic right, it requires the artificial and arbitrary phenomenon of political power.
This political power can arise democratically via popular mandate, through evolution with gradual subversion of basic rights and subsequent imposition of rule, or through revolution replacing basic rights.
There will be a plan, as there’s always a plan, to replace the natural phenomena resulting from a free economy with the structured agenda of an invented one.
Logically you can’t have competing plans within the same system so coercion is required to enforce whatever plan the current powers to be dictate.
Without protection of man’s basic right, the functionality of a free market will eventually give way to the dictates of politics, which is the rule of men and not the rule of law.
Eventually such systems collapse on themselves as they are inherently unsustainable, creating the ultimate chaos, such as what happened with the USSR, and other socialistic regimes over time. It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.

The essential lesson for Americans is that you can’t have a free market without a free society. When you have the corruption of such basic rights as expressed in our constitution, you have the subversion of a free society, a political process essential for socialism to take hold. This process is chaotic, creating in America what we call a “Mixed Economy”, responsible for the boom and bust cycles we myopically take for granted, but that’s just an insidious means toward the same end.

When you hear a politician offer something for free, understand that in order for someone to get something for nothing, you have to take it from someone else; we usually call that theft, but let’s not be politically incorrect, let’s just call it socialism.

#TellItLikeItIs

Bunker Mentality 4

All actions, including policies decided with COVID19, have consequences; if not intended, they were never considered or were unforeseeable. Early on there were conflicting reports, some saying that there was no real issue and others portending the end of the world.

From the medical perspective, the intent was and is containment of the contagion with careful hygiene and avoiding physical proximity, treatment of the afflicted and hopefully a cure and vaccine. These are medical protocols and should not be conflated as policy. The medical industry does not have political power, they are advisory only.

From the civil perspective, people reacted reasonably well without mandate and practiced the various measures advised, but most did not go into a bunker until forced by edict.

From the political perspective, there were two reactions, chaotic and draconian, with open conflicts among various levels of government as to who had authority, federal, state or local. There were demands from each on the others while at the same time declaring their own powers. There were strident edicts demanding the closure of just about everything. There was panic, hubris, snarky denunciations and mindless directives, but there was little composure. Absent rational debate, there was virtually no consideration of anything but the desire to create a perception of doing something.

From an economic perspective, establishing hygienic protocols was essential, but to place a country in house arrest is not just inhuman and likely illegal, but effectively puts it in a depression. To make matters worse, the government expands an already bloated financial system with even more debt in the name of relief and stimulus, proving that they learned nothing from past failures.

Science is a broad and multi-discipline field. It is the role of management to seek as much information across all disciplines in order to derive a plan addressing what is known and that serves not just the present, but the future. What we got instead was a fractured environment of power grabbing bureaucrats, some elected, some not, laying out their turf.

This is hardly new in the US history of pandemics. Similar behavior can be found with the Spanish Flu. It was not a coincidence with the end of the Great War, but likely because of it. As the Doughboys came home from the sodden infested trenches of Europe, they brought this with them. It did not originate in Spain despite the name of the Flu. Spain was a neutral country during the war with the least censored press, and reported early news of the virulent influenza; it killed around 20-50M worldwide, more than the 17M in the war. The wide range of reported deaths was due to a lack of reliable data, typical then as it is now. The origins are guessed as the UK, France or China, all unproven as is the reason for its devastating potency. What is agreed is that pestilence historically follows war, and the Great War was the worst in history up to that time. While reactions ranged wildly in the US from lockdowns in St. Louis to virtually nothing at all in Philadelphia, the short term results varied accordingly, but the long term effects of the flu were the same everywhere.

Political intentions can be benign or self-serving. With COVID19, most states decided that medical preparedness, an informed public, and avoidance of devastating impacts to citizens’ livelihoods, would in the long run best serve everyone; most US states took this course.

Then there are governors that took the draconian approach with lockdowns. Some of these governors were well intended without self-serving motivations. Then there are those like Governor Whitmer of Michigan stridently shuttering everything in sight; even with the few businesses she allowed to operate she actually dictated what could not be sold from gardening goods to American flags.

So what motivated this later group to act so dictatorially? It was Rahm Emmanuel, COS for Barack Obama, who told him during the MERS pandemic, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Even a better indicator with COVID19 comes from Joe Biden’s savior, House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, telling Democratic Party leaders that COVID19 presented “…a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” On the back of these miseries they see opportunity?

Now as we hear about the plans to end the lockdowns, more and more Americans are beginning to question if not protest these policies, and not just because of money; it’s about something more basic called livelihood, a long term consideration.

I don’t subscribe to the “Plandemic” conspiracy theory, at least not based on what we know at this time. True that the virus appears more and more chimeric with its accelerating mutations, but that does not necessarily mean it was intentionally released like some biological warfare on the world. China is a pretty bad actor, but are they so sociopathic to commit such an act on themselves?

More likely the trail comes back to the NIH who were conducting chimeric experiments on viruses until Congress voted a moratorium on such research; undeterred they outsourced and funded the research to Wuhan China where lax oversight is to blame. It’s disturbing that the NIH is persistently advocating against the moratorium.

Surely there’s room in the news for more about this just as much as the Trump tweets about injecting or ingesting toxic chemicals. Why instead are we bombarded with such meaningless bromides like “We are all in this together” and “We are one”? We are none of those things; we are human beings who should not be locked up and deprived of our lives and livelihoods.

Such an agenda is more befitting a Fascist dictator than a Republic, toxic to its political, economic and medical health. We can only conclude that those that advocate such policies have not let this crisis go to waste, but have taken the opportunity to satisfy their addiction to power, craving ever more control over the American people.

#bunkermentality4

Bunker Mentality 3

Before we proceed to discuss consequences of the COVID19 policies, we will list certain facts that have been reported relative to these consequences:

As the economy is “allowed” to reopen, there will be an increase in the infection and death rates; inevitable given the nature of contagious diseases, and even more so a chimeric virus.
The current infection rate is estimated at 20%, but likely much higher; it is estimated that as many as 143K Americans will die by August, but again could be more.
The rapidly mutating virus is now affecting children and with different symptoms than adults; yet another indication that we are dealing with a chimeric virus.
The unemployment rate, already unprecedented in American history, will likely rise; even if we reopen now there are many jobs that will not come back soon, if ever.
Assuming one of the two main political parties wins in November, we will not have an improvement in leadership, partisanship, polarization or civil discourse.
None of the drastic financial manipulations of the Federal Reserve, or federal government in general, will improve any of the above, and will actually make things worse. Most of the relief money is going to the usual suspects like large corporations and Wall Street Banks. Main Street, as in the Financial Crisis, is Tuesday’s child.

Perspective is needed when considering what governments usually do when confronted with problems; Ronald Regan clearly understood that when he said “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.” Creating “money” out of thin air is not an antidote to disease or economic ills.

We can see now some of the consequences taking shape:

We are in a greater depression than the Great Depression; a recession was coming anyway with the credit bubble (See earlier post, “The Perfect Storm”); COVID19 policies just pushed the metrics into depression territory.
The financial instability will be greater than 2008; the expansion of credit, given the trillions of dollars just created with key strokes, is actually even more debt, placing a burden on Americans that will crush them for even a longer period of economic hardship, likely into future generations.
While these relief and stimulus policies sound huge, the bulk of it goes to the usual government cronies like banks and corporations, little to Main Street to alleviate a moribund economy, and driving equities into even higher unrealistic and unsustainable evaluations.
When the unemployment benefits, including the augmented Federal funding, eventually run out, and that will be soon enough, people will be left with little to no means of support, and no health benefits to rely on, creating a health crisis greater than COVID19.
The food supply chain will be severely impaired, creating malnutrition, adding to the health crisis.
There will be increased crime and civil unrest, endemic in such crises, further impacting health.
Governments have seized powers by decree; they have been doing so over a long span of time since the turn of the last century, but now at a steroid like induced rate, eroding even further our civil liberties. Power mongers love the “opportunities” crises provide.
Politically there will be even further polarization and partisan extremism, adding to an environment ripe for authoritarianism.

The study of economics evolved from sociology. Many people don’t realize that early works like those of Adam Smith and David Ricardo were studies in sociology, principally focused on the interrelationships among people and their livelihoods. These works gave rise to the creation of the discipline known as economics. Essentially, from a sociological perspective, suspend those relationships and you effectively destroy livelihoods. Plagues have been a part of all human history and have had critical impacts to the economic wellbeing of man, but when you suspend the ability to make a living, you are destroying the means to live and recover. Plagues do kill so people will die, but life goes on…..provided it is not suspended.

While we have discussed how long term consequences were not considered, next we should look at what was unintentionally or even intentionally disregarded or dismissed, and what this informs us regarding that.

#bunkermentality3

Bunker Mentality Part 2

Applying what was discussed in the prior post to the current pandemic, a list of what is known:

The EIS (Epidemic Intelligence Service) of the CDC expressed concerns back in 2014 about chimeric laboratory experiments by the NIH with viruses. Amazingly in the course of the next few years Congress became aware of and legislated for a moratorium on such experiments. I say amazingly because Congress is often myopic regarding such issues.
The NIH however was undeterred and outsourced such experiments in the “…cause of science.” It should be noted that the outsourcing was to laboratories in Wuhan, China. There is much conjecture as to what these experiments were or what was produced; some journalists are still investigating but such efforts in China are seldom productive, and lately the same can be said here in the US.
Again the EIS reported that this virus was with us much earlier than initially thought, perhaps as early as late November. Oddly enough the CDC ignored their findings, and the WHO went on to praise China’s efforts in combating the pandemic despite evidence to the contrary.
The administration and its various agencies apparently went along with the CDC and the WHO, allowing air and sea traffic between Asia and Europe well into February and March.
As we became more aware of the spread of this virus, governments went into panic mode, essentially locking down many US States in efforts to contain (flatten the curve) the spread, which we were told was by aspiration.
In the above, please note that the EIS was more concerned about the spread of this virus as they had found sufficient evidence to indicate that it was airborne, making it extremely ubiquitous; essentially, there’s just no stopping it considering that the air is literally everywhere. This raises the likelihood, which is becoming statistically apparent as testing becomes more prevalent, that there are far more people throughout the world who were infected; this includes those infected who are asymptomatic, or recovered even if they were unaware of being infected, or seemingly immune.
We heard early on the concern that we had a shortage of ventilators, which at the time was justified given that the virus attacks the respiratory functions; fortunately with increased supply and falling need we avoided that crisis, at least for the moment.
However, the death rate of those on ventilators was about 88%; the efficacy of that treatment is now in doubt by many doctors.
The virus’ death rate is dominantly with the aged and/or those with underlying chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, asthma, immune disorders, emphysema, cancer, etc.
As of today, the US has reported 1.2M cases. It should be noted that on testing, the positive rate is about 20%, indicating that the virus is indeed everywhere despite the lockdowns, which likely contributed little in flattening the curve.
The deaths due to COVID19 and the seasonal influenza appear about even at 65K; please note that 73K was reported but a significant number reported as CIVID19 were in fact due to other causes, but counted as COVID19 simply because of detected infection.
The death rate for COVID19 continues to fall from about 4.5% early on to about 2% now; that will likely continue to fall as testing increases. Note that the death rate for seasonal influenza is about .1% based on approximately 50M cases. It is noteworthy that the death rate for SARS was 9.6%, but even that pales in comparison to MERS 65%.
There are confirmed cases of medical staff being directed to re-document prior death certificates, i.e. from whatever was initially recorded to revisions for COVID19, or to document the cause of death as COVID19 when it was apparent that there were other causes.
The FDA disallowed the use of testing kits available worldwide, and up to late February, the use of laboratory facilities for test analysis other than CDC and related agencies, presenting unacceptable obstacles to securing the public health and obtaining viable statistics.
The two leading causes of death in the US remain heart and cancer diseases, accounting for 1.25M people annually. The fastest growing disease in the US is diabetes, which now is the cause of more than 83K deaths annually and growing.
Economists divide the American population into quintiles. Of these five groups, the lowest includes those at or near the poverty level. The next two up the ladder are considered low-mid middle class; the next group is considered mid-upper middle class, and the top group upper middle to rich. These are generalizations and various government agencies, private institutions and economists define them and assign attributes variably; however, the lower two quintiles and a majority of the third, approximately 52% of Americans, carry the most consumer debt, making them highly vulnerable to negative economic conditions.

There are many more things we can list that governments should have taken into consideration as it deliberated what actions could be taken to combat COVID19, but let’s just look at what is listed compared to what they did:

Seek and make sure you have the all information from medical and intelligence sources; this was not done or they would have been aware of the EIS reports, informing them more intelligently and completely as to what they were dealing with.
Provide early warnings to the public; while criticism abounds how the administration failed back in January to heed the advice of the CDC, the fact remains that the EIS reports talked about late November. Where was the CDC and the Who at that time?
Avoid panic as this leads to dire consequences, like hoarding essential goods, migrations to outlying areas, violence, etc.; while some Governors like Cuomo preached against panic, it’s not what they practiced. Being fed the end of the world posturing of the CDC and the mass media, they jumped on the band wagon of draconian policies with lock-downs.
Inform the public of just how serious the virus is comparatively, meaning that they should be aware of greater threats to life that we deal with all the time without the need to resort to drastic measures; never discussed, and instead we were told to be prepared for deaths in the millions.
Keep the public truthfully and completely informed of all the facts, not just those that support whatever actions have been taken; never happened as politicians only spoke to whatever they perceived supported their policies.
Define sensible hygienic measures and protocols, and adjust these as more information is available; started out well enough given what was known with social distancing, masks against aspiration, etc. made some sense, but then again little changed, except for the worse with lock-downs. Discovery of rapid mutation, indicating chimeric characteristics, the EIS reports for airborne migration, the uneven distribution of cases around the world, etc. apparently provided no insights for reconsideration.
Help coordinate and expedite the supply chain of medical supplies and equipment; never happened. Consider the pathetic open conflicts between federal, state and local governments on supply chains.
Do not allow beauocracy to stand in the way of medical science, i.e. expedite and do not obstruct; the behavior of the FDA and CDC should be viewed as criminal negligence.
Avoid draconian measures that suppress the life, life years and livelihood of Americans; given the 32M Americans now out of work, worse than the Great Depression, it’s hard to think of more Draconian measures than what was done. The long term destruction of American lives with the loss of their livelihoods affecting diet, health care, etc. will be far greater than whatever this pandemic will ultimately bring.
Take into account the long term consequences of any actions over the perceived short term benefits of measures, especially any that seem to provide more of a political cover for “… having done something.” Consider the total health of Americans, including economic and psychological, both of which affect life expectancy, and do so with consideration of long term consequences; again, this is not what politicians think about as their horizon seldom goes beyond their term of office.

The failure to see the pandemic coming to the US despite the early warnings became the focus for blame, and not for solutions. When they chose to act they did so in a panic without sufficient knowledge of the problem, and in true bunker mentality mode grasped at the apparent ready solution to hunker down, coercively isolating everyone without consideration of the consequences. Those that objected were derisively labeled stupid, insensitive, selfish…and so on. The government became all knowing, the mass media bought into it, and the detractors received the vitriol that contrarians usually do.

It is becoming apparent that the long term consequences of the actions taken may be even direr than originally anticipated, which we will discuss next.

#bunkermentality2