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Today, I will sign a series of historic executive orders. With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense. It’s all about common sense. — President Donald Trump’s inaugural address, January 20, 2025 [Emphasis added]

Presidents other than Trump have invoked the appeal of common sense in their inaugural address, though in the case of George W. Bush it carried the message of perpetual war:

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

That Bush had anything to do with establishing “peace in our world” would be a difficult statement to validate, given the bloody wreckage he created in Afghanistan and Iraq and the consequences for Americans on the home front, highlighted by the Orwellian 52,000-word USA Patriot Act and one of the act’s creatures, the Department of Homeland Security.

The overseas invasions and war on freedom at home were part of Bush’s War on Terror that one Chris Harget in Campbell, CA dared submit to logic and common sense, as it appeared in a letter-to-the editor of the L.A. Times:

How can . . . any reasonable person suppose that there can be a ‘war’ against terror?  There is no strategic objective to win.  There is no specific force to overwhelm.  Terrorism is a technique, not an opponent.

In our society, terrorism is a crime and would be more efficiently and effectively treated as such.

In 2006 Mother Jones published a timeline of the lies leading to the Iraq invasion, which they claim is “sourced to primary documents and initial news accounts.”

So much for Bush’s liberty movement.  But what about Trump?  How closely is he aligned to Bush’s view?  If you read Trump’s words closely you can hear a different message than the one Bush made:

Like in 2017, we will again build the strongest military the world has ever seen. We will measure our success, not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.

My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.

He didn’t just say he wanted to be a peacemaker; he said it would be his proudest legacy, a far stronger statement.

As a hugely successful businessman Trump has no use for war.  But there’s a problem — the Council on Foreign Relations calls the shots on foreign policy, according to Hillary Clinton, and is said to be “the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States.”  It’s been around since 1921 and no doubt was tuned into JFK’s inaugural address of 1961:

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans . . . [who are] unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world. . . . we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

One can almost hear an interventionist chorus of thatta boy, John, thatta boy.

But eventually JFK got religion — common sense — as we find in his commencement address at American University on June 10, 1963:

I have, therefore, chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived–yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.

He realized countries unloading nukes on one another might elevate cockroaches to the highest lifeforms.

Further on he mentioned some of the “wholly baseless and incredible” claims Soviet propagandists made in an “authoritative” text on military strategy:

“American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . .”

It’s interesting Kennedy would view the claims as groundless when he had rejected a proposal from the Defense Department a year earlier called Operation Northwoods that would consist of false flag operations, on American soil and against American people, that could be blamed on Castro and thereby justify a military invasion of Cuba.  It’s as if Soviet spies had gathered intelligence about Northwoods and wrote about it in their military strategy.

JFK’s “Peace Talk” flagrantly violated the anti-communist, warmongering positions of the American defense and intelligence establishment, and combined with Northwoods, Bay of Pigs, Mongoose, his firing of CIA Director Allen Dulles, his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, his ambivalent position on Vietnam, certain people concluded he was not up to the fighting spirit he once projected.  After November, 1963 he no longer projected anything.

But JFK, as DJT wishes for himself, at least has a legacy of peace.

Common sense at the country’s founding

In a May 8, 1825 letter to Richard Henry Lee Thomas Jefferson wrote:

this was the object of the Declaration of Independance. not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject . . . all it’s authority rests then on the harmonising sentiments of the day, whether expressed, in conversns in letters, printed essays or in the elementary books of public right . . .

Jefferson, like others then and now, was defending the Declaration on the basis of what he understood as the common beliefs of the people of his era: We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .

Regarding foreign policy, no one has come close to expressing America’s long-renounced non-interventionist position in such principled and evocative prose as John Quincy Adams in his famous July 4, 1821 “Monsters to Destroy” speech in which America well knows

that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign Independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

Donald Trump so far is bringing a desperately-needed and refreshing amount of common sense to government actions, such as officially recognizing only two genders, eliminating all government diversity programs, freeing (“pardoning”) the J6 prisoners, deregulating drilling, and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Treaty and the WHO.  All these are filed under escaping the madhouse.

What about foreign policy?  Would any of Trump’s advisors show him Adams’ speech?  And would he buy into it?

Powered by Fed money-printing, the American state has frequently enlisted “under other banners than her own,” in which it was involved in conflicts “beyond the power of extrication,” where a wealth-and-life destroying federal government in no way expresses the principles Jefferson penned so eloquently in our founding document.

Surely, Trump can find some way to bring common sense to foreign policy.  Someone, anyone, please show him Adams’ speech.  His legacy as peacemaker depends on it.

The post Common Sense, Then and Now appeared first on LewRockwell.

A year ago I drew a metaphor between the stagnation of Europe and the stagnation of the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev. It must have had some validity, since Niall Ferguson recently drew a parallel between the late Soviet Union and the current state of the ‘West’. Sadly, a year on, the metaphor is still alive: Europe is still stagnating, deindustrialising, while still enjoying enviable living standards and relative political calm. … But the signs of trouble are on the front pages of every major newspaper, and even the EU is feeling the pressure of change….

One of the reasons for the sudden urge for change is the dramatic shift in the US.

Following the re-election of Donald Trump, the US has entered a new era that bears an uncanny resemblance to the Khrushchev era.

The Era  of Khrushchev

After Stalin’s death, Khrushchev became the supreme leader of the Soviet Union. Stalin left a terrible legacy, despite having won the world war, expanded the Soviet Union and created an empire that included a number of satellite states in Eastern and Central Europe. The Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse. The legitimacy of the terror state depended on the fearsome presence of Stalin.  Living standards were very low and shortages made life difficult. Khrushchev, one of Stalin’s henchmen, knew that the empire needed reform to avoid collapse.

Khrushchev knew that reform would not be easy. The Stalinist legacy was guarded by a well-built power machine of party apparatchiks, bureaucrats, secret police cadres and a deep-rooted belief in Stalin’s greatness. Khrushchev’s strategy was to expose some of Stalin’s heinous crimes and their tragic consequences, which cost millions of lives. The great event of Stalin’s defilement was the XXth Congress of the Communist Party in 1956 in a secret speech delivered at the Congress. The secret speech was leaked and soon became known throughout the world. The speech caused quite a shock among communists, while those who hated and feared the communist regime felt that history had vindicated them. But it served Hruscov’s purpose. It fatally weakened the Stalinist faction and allowed a reform programme of the socialist regime to begin.

Khrushchev was not a Rothbardian anarcho-capitalist. He did not want to dismantle the Soviet empire, nor did he want to end state ownership of the means of production and state planning. He was simply looking for a more sustainable and reformed version of socialism, hoping that some limited market-oriented reforms and less terror would allow for more internal dynamism and better living standards at home, along the lines of the New Economic Policy initiated by Lenin after the terrible results of war communism. A second part of his reform was to reduce international tensions in order to cut military spending. But Khrushchev did not want to give up the entire Soviet empire. While seeking an understanding with the West over Austria and making peace with Tito’s Yugoslavia, he crushed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

His reforms were quite successful. The Soviet Union avoided collapse, and the reformed empire lasted another thirty years. Nevertheless, Deng Xiaoping’s much deeper pro-market reforms after Mao’s death in China  revealed that Khrushchev’s timid reforms were just enough to prolong the life of an impossible construction, but not enough to usher in a dynamic rejuvenation. This was realised by Gorbachev, who launched a new round of reforms in the mid-1980s. Gorbachev’s bolder reform plan aimed copying the pro-market reforms of the successful Chinese model …. But it was too late. The rigid Soviet power structure had rotted so badly in the years of Brezhnevian stagnation that the new reform efforts led to the collapse of the Soviet regime.

Trump 2.0: A Khrushchevian reform era

Trump won the 2024 campaign against all odds. The Biden-led deep state tried to stop him with legal warfare, the Harris campaign had more money and the mainstream press was against him. Despite this, he won both the electoral and popular vote, gaining the legitimacy that eluded him in 2016.

Trump came back after four years of constant warfare with the Biden administration and the machinery it had set in motion. He came back full of anger, hatred and a rock-hard impulse to weaken the Democratic Party-dominated Deep State. His well-documented goal is to return the country to an earlier, non-woke infested state. He also promised an economic reform programme to avoid the economic weakness caused by ballooning debt and deindustrialisation. In terms of foreign policy objectives, Trump campaigned as a peace candidate who would end the era of forever wars initiated by the neo-conservative faction that has dominated US foreign policy at least since the Bush presidency.

Make America Great Again is a signal that there was a time in the past when America was the greatest economic and military power, proud of itself. Trump hopes to lead the country back into the future.

A real Khrushchev era of reform. To return the country to an earlier period of greatness in order to meet the challenges of today.

To achieve his goal, he faces a Khrushchevian task. He must destroy the deep state, dominated by the Democratic Party and the neo-conservative faction, and the complex bureaucratic machinery that feeds the wider circle of NGOs and media that serve their interests.

The revelations about USAID spending not only delegitimise the practices of the democratic machinery, but certainly weaken international respect for the US. As in the case of the Khrushchev defamation campaign launched by his leaked secret speech in 1956.

But Trump is not an anarcho-capitalist Rothbardian radical like Khrushchev. Nor is he a Millei with profound economic knowledge on which to base a clear and well-founded reform programme. While his political reforms, aimed at reversing the extreme woke turn are a welcome change, his economic reform programme is a mixed bag. Cutting taxes, reducing regulation and government bureaucracy, cutting politically motivated or corrupt spending are important to reduce the manipulative role of the state. But economic nationalism could have major negative consequences.

What will end up happening: like Khrushchev, like Deng, like Gorbachev – or like FDR reversed?

Trump began his presidency as a Khrushchev-style reformer who wants to destroy the legacy of his predecessors and build a stronger country by returning to the practices of a better past.

Trump’s memory in history will depend on how bold his reforms are to reduce the role of the state and increase the role of market coordination. Small reforms are just a Khrushchev-like correction to the ballooning US deficit and overbearing state. Only market coordination stimulates entrepreneurial dynamism through competition. The competitive market is the best-known institutional arrangement that forces market participants to innovate and serve the interests of their community through new inventions or better production techniques. To return to earlier, more dynamic and less government-induced growth, Trump needs to embrace deep structural reforms, as Deng Xiaoping did in China in the late 1970s, or as Millei is currently doing in Argentina.

But pro-market reforms in one country are not enough to rebalance the world, and Trump’s economic nationalism could have very dangerous consequences for the world. The global economy operates on a pure dollar standard. Aiming to eliminate the negative trade balance of the US could lead to a dollar shortage and consequent economic crisis around the world. If Trump’s overly nationalistic policies lead to a new global crisis, he may be remembered as Gorbachev, who led with good intentions and caused such an upheaval that destroyed the Soviet world.

Unfortunately, Trump is stuck in a cul-de-sac created by past decisions, which is why, despite his best intentions, he may do more harm than good. Only a return to the pre-1914 gold standard could create a balanced trading relationship between the world’s economies. To return to a more balanced international monetary system requires a major conference of the major nations, such as the Bretton Woods conference of 1944. Only such a conference could design a new international monetary system and ensure the full cooperation of all the world’s major players to provide a roadmap. It must be a reverse FDR, whose legacy is the pure dollar system built at Bretton Woods.

But for such cooperation, it is necessary to put an end to the flaring wars, which are also proxy wars between great powers for influence and issues of national security. One of Trump’s election promises was to end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Once the poisonous wars are over, there may be room for cooperation among the world’s major countries and great powers to create a more balanced international monetary system.

El espectro del estancamiento brezhneviano

The post The Era of Khrushchev Is Here. appeared first on LewRockwell.

I confess, as a conservative-minded Catholic, that I read the news of Pope Francis’ most recent missive with a healthy dose of annoyance. Why does this pope, who had little but silence or scorn for American politics over the last 10 years, choose to take formal action now, with this President, over this issue? And why, when he at last does act, does he do so in such an imprecise and ultimately unhelpful way?

The answers to these questions seem obvious to the jaded conservative, even as they’re predictably debated in Catho-Land. Maybe the pope really was well meaning and actually upholds Catholic teaching. Maybe he’s undermining traditional religious ideas and commonsense politics. The pope’s interpretation will continue to be argued for a while longer—as will the properly “Catholic” response to such a complicated practical and moral issue as immigration.

It’s easy to launch into analysis of the pope’s words and intentions. It’s also easy to get frustrated at the timing and ambiguity of it all. But that timing itself has an Ignatian quality to it (in the sense before that word became a pejorative).

The most famous legacy of the Jesuits, the Examen, prays over the events of the day as they happened. Not as they could have happened, or how we wish they happened, but as they actually happened, detecting God’s Providence in the realities of our existence.

As it goes in our own experience, so it goes in the experience of the Church. There’s something to be learned from the pope’s actions, timing, and even (as I suspect this is) missteps—not necessarily because the pope is trying to teach us but because God always is.

So, this letter should prompt us to an examination of conscience—especially, I would add, to us conservatives to whom it seems most directed, because there is rot within our ranks and within our hearts. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat pointed to it as early as 2019—we have been far too blasé about our conditions and moral responsibilities to migrants.

I, for one, am guilty as any other. Immigration is not (as yet) a big problem in my little corner of Appalachia; and my passions burn much brighter for the economic, DEI, and foreign policy issues that erode my community. Other conservatives are the opposite, latching on to Trump precisely because of his strong opposition to the unregulated migrations that are destroying their communities.

But either approach threatens to overlook serious moral issues. Focusing on outcomes of lower numbers of migrants, or on other conservative policies, can risk ignoring important questions about the way we enforce immigration law, or even about the quality of the law as it now stands. Migrants and illegal aliens are still people, after all, and so—regardless of where they fall in the “order of love”—they bind us to Christian charity.

Examining ourselves does not take away from the legitimacy of Trump’s policy goals to curb illegal immigration and strengthen national security. It should actually strengthen their coherence and force, by seriously asking how they can be better implemented in line with God’s desires for our country.

And this examination has to come from within our ranks.

There have been plenty of liberal voices in opposition to Trump since 2016. Many of these voices have disseminated lies and misdirection or peddled false alternatives. Many Trump enthusiasts feel under attack; some have literally been killed. In this environment, criticism can seem unhelpful and self-reflection a tool of the enemy.

Read the Whole Article

The post An Examination of Conscience for a Jaded Francis Reader appeared first on LewRockwell.

Legendary Speech of Robert F. Kennedy Jr at Protest in Berlin

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Speaks at Berlin Rally for Freedom and Peace

“Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. spoke to hundreds of thousands in the streets of Berlin, Germany, August 29, 2020. With Großer Stern Square and the Siegesäule Monument as a backdrop, Mr. Kennedy talked about government control by fear and spoke out against totalitarianism.

He said the government and those with the greatest wealth and control have done a terrible job on public health and will shift us all to 5G and a cashless society. He said that 5G is being pushed on us as a good thing but it will be used for surveillance and data harvesting.

Mr. Kennedy added that the COVID-19 is a crisis of convenience that is destroying the middle class, impoverishing us all, and it is making the powerful elite even more powerful. He closed with the message that we must protect our fellow man, our vulnerable children and our freedoms and democracy!”

The post Legendary Speech of Robert F. Kennedy Jr at Massive Protest in Berlin appeared first on LewRockwell.

Today is Presidents’ Day. Every year a multitude of lazy regime journalists are ordered by their editors to tweak and recycle a banal and deferential piece on the “best” or “worst” presidents for consumption by the naïve and willfully ignorant masses. They ritualistically consult “court historians” in the hope of providing a Ouija board luster and enticing panache to these clichéd parables regarding the deification of the occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

“Court historians” are the intellectual bodyguards of the State. They shape and defend the “official line” or interpretation on the State’s wars, its presidential regimes, or other key historical events and public policies. As a result they enjoy high esteem and recognition in the mainstream media and academia. As defenders of the status quo they frequently attack and label their critics as “conspiracy theorists,” “racists,” “revisionists,” “isolationists,” “appeasers,” “anti-intellectuals,” or other boogie men, rather than engage in civil discourse or discussion

As the internationally acclaimed economist/historian Murray N. Rothbard noted:

“All States are governed by a ruling class that is a minority of the population, and which subsists as a parasitic and exploitative burden upon the rest of society. Since its rule is exploitative and parasitic, the State must purchase the alliance of a group of “Court Intellectuals,” whose task is to bamboozle the public into accepting and celebrating the rule of its particular State. “The Court Intellectuals have their work cut out for them. In exchange for their continuing work of apologetics and bamboozlement, the Court Intellectuals win their place as junior partners in the power, prestige, and loot extracted by the State apparatus from the deluded public. “The noble task of Revisionism is to de-bamboozle: to penetrate the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history of the motivation, the nature, and the consequences of State activity. By working past the fog of State deception to penetrate to the truth, to the reality behind the false appearances, the Revisionist works to delegitimize, to desanctify, the State in the eyes of the previously deceived public.”

Two exceptional online articles which go light-years beyond these monotonous and moronic pieces in their critical analysis and prudential reflection are:

“Our Greatest Presidents?” by historian Ralph Raico, and

“Down With The Presidency” by Lew Rockwell.

The post Presidents Day 2025 appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

The Electronic Intifada

The post Israel’s starvation diet for Gaza appeared first on LewRockwell.

The post Bibi To Rubio: ‘Let’s Attack Iran!’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Vasko Kohlmayer.

The post Not Very Smart appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner writes:

Lew,

I can’t believe these shots are still being distributed! We’ve known for years they have killed and injured many. 

The post Eight States May Pull Covid Shots From Market Over Safety Concerns appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Daily Mail

The post DOGE prepares gold reserve ‘audit’ after top Republican invites Elon Musk to review Fort Knox appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Rick Rozoff:

World controllers is a term from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

When all the major Western news agencies and newspapers use up a year’s worth of last-ditch epithets like far-Right, ultra-Right, alt-Right, neo-N*zi, Christian nationalist, fascist you know a nerve has been pinched.

https://apnews.com/article/germany-munich-vance-free-speech-election-33e720b820e61db9d5e478e63b4a4dc7

 Associated Press: US Vice President JD Vance meets German far-right leader as he criticizes ‘firewalls’ in Europe

***

https://www.reuters.com/world/vance-meets-with-leader-german-far-right-afd-party-2025-02-14/

Reuters: Vance meets with leader of German far-right AfD party

***

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/14/jd-vance-alice-weidel-meeting-germany-far-right

The Guardian: JD Vance breaks taboo by meeting with leader of Germany’s far-right party

The post Atlanticist world controllers freaking out appeared first on LewRockwell.

Il manoscritto fornisce un grimaldello al lettore, una chiave di lettura semplificata, del mondo finanziario e non che sembra essere andato "fuori controllo" negli ultimi quattro anni in particolare. Questa è una storia di cartelli, a livello sovrastatale e sovranazionale, la cui pianificazione centrale ha raggiunto un punto in cui deve essere riformata radicalmente e questa riforma radicale non può avvenire senza una dose di dolore economico che potrebbe mettere a repentaglio la loro autorità. Da qui la risposta al Grande Default attraverso il Grande Reset. Questa è la storia di un coyote, che quando non riesce a sfamarsi all'esterno ricorre all'autofagocitazione. Lo stesso è accaduto ai membri del G7, dove i sei membri restanti hanno iniziato a fagocitare il settimo: gli Stati Uniti.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/leconomia-europea-rallenta-mentre)

I Paesi europei hanno i più grandi stati assistenziali dell'OCSE e tra i più alti al mondo. Allo stesso tempo il dinamismo economico dell'Europa è svanito e i leader europei sono sempre più preoccupati a riguardo. Secondo Christine Lagarde, presidente della BCE, il modello sociale europeo è a rischio a meno che non si risolva il persistente declino della crescita. In una relazione recente Mario Draghi chiede con forza riforme e investimenti per rafforzare la crescita della produttività, mantenendo intatto lo stato assistenziale sovradimensionato del continente. Per gli economisti della Scuola Austriaca, questo suona come avere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca, perché le questioni della crescita economica e della ridistribuzione del reddito sono intrinsecamente collegate.

Il problema dell'Europa con la crescita anemica

La Lagarde riconosce che l'Europa è indietro rispetto agli Stati Uniti in termini di crescita della produttività. Di fronte al rapido progresso dell'innovazione, l'UE è rimasta bloccata nella “trappola della tecnologia intermedia”, mentre gli Stati Uniti e la Cina stanno guidando la rivoluzione digitale. L'Europa sta rimanendo indietro nelle tecnologie emergenti come i microchip, l'intelligenza artificiale e i veicoli elettrici e solo quattro delle prime 50 aziende tecnologiche al mondo sono europee.

La relazione di Draghi su “Il futuro della competitività europea” rivela che la crescita economica è stata inferiore nell'UE rispetto agli Stati Uniti negli ultimi due decenni. Il divario sfavorevole UE-USA in termini di PIL a prezzi costanti è raddoppiato da circa il 15% nel 2002 al 30% nel 2023. Circa il 70% del divario è stato causato da una minore produttività nell'UE (Grafico 1). Inoltre le prospettive di crescita dell'Europa non sono buone. Il continente gode di un'apertura commerciale relativamente elevata, ma ora deve affrontare una forte concorrenza da parte degli esportatori cinesi e potenziali dazi dagli Stati Uniti. In aggiunta le aziende dell'UE sono gravate da elevati costi energetici e i Paesi europei dovranno probabilmente spendere di più per la difesa, aggiungendo questi numeri a una spesa pubblica già elevata.

Grafico 1: Produttività del lavoro UE & USA

Le soluzioni proposte da Draghi per stimolare la crescita della produttività e l'innovazione hanno poco a che fare con l'aumento della libertà economica. Esse mirano principalmente a centralizzare e rafforzare l'intervento statale e a mantenere in piedi il massiccio stato sociale.

Draghi chiede una nuova strategia industriale per l'Europa che dovrebbe essere coordinata a livello UE. Potrebbe aiutare a superare l'attuale divisione tra linee di politica e fonti di finanziamento tra i Paesi, ma non può risolvere il problema dell'allocazione inefficiente delle risorse e dei cattivi incentivi che le politiche industriali comportano. In modo simile la decarbonizzazione e la cosiddetta energia pulita non possono ridurre gli attuali costi energetici elevati senza un costo economico. Gli attuali impianti di produzione basati sui combustibili fossili sono più economici e la loro sostituzione aumenterebbe il costo di fare impresa.

La relazione sostiene inoltre che il rapporto investimenti/PIL dell'UE dovrebbe aumentare di circa €800 miliardi, o 5 punti percentuali del PIL all'anno, il che richiederebbe ingenti sussidi pubblici. Draghi sostiene la creazione di un asset sicuro comune, finanziato dal debito europeo congiunto. Sebbene più economico, il debito mutualizzato si aggiungerebbe comunque a un debito già elevato.

Uno Stato sociale grande e inefficiente

Al culmine della crisi dell'Eurozona nel 2012, la cancelliera tedesca Angela Merkel disse che gli stati sociali europei erano troppo grandi, poiché l'Europa rappresentava il 7% della popolazione mondiale, un quarto del PIL globale e il 50% della spesa sociale globale. Nel frattempo la situazione non è migliorata e la spesa sociale in molti Paesi europei ha superato di cinque-dieci punti percentuali la media OCSE (21% del PIL nel 2022). Secondo l'OCSE la spesa sociale pubblica in Francia, Finlandia, Danimarca, Belgio e Italia è vicina al 30% del PIL, trainata da pensioni, spesa sanitaria e altri trasferimenti sociali come indennità di disoccupazione, indennità di invalidità e assegni per i figli (Grafico 2).

Grafico 2: Spesa sociale pubblica (% del PIL)

Nonostante le sue dimensioni il modello sociale europeo è piuttosto inefficiente. La grande spesa per la protezione sociale nelle economie dell'UE non si traduce necessariamente in una riduzione della povertà. Secondo la Brookings Institution questo è particolarmente il caso delle economie dell'Europa meridionale, come Spagna, Grecia, Italia e Portogallo, dove la spesa sociale è piuttosto elevata, ma la copertura dell'assistenza sociale del 20% più povero della popolazione è relativamente bassa. Al contrario, i piccoli stati assistenziali dell'Europa centrale e orientale spendono circa la metà, ovvero meno del 15% del PIL, per la protezione sociale, ma ottengono una migliore copertura degli strati più poveri della popolazione.

Il Manhattan Institute fa un ulteriore passo avanti e sostiene che gli stati assistenziali in Europa non stanno aiutando i lavoratori poveri. I programmi universali di “assicurazione sociale” che consentono a tutti i membri della società di vivere uno stile di vita da classe media durante i periodi di disoccupazione, malattia o pensione, sono finanziati dalla maggior parte dei Paesi europei attraverso tasse piuttosto elevate sui salari e sui consumi. Negli stati assistenziali più grandi dell'UE i lavoratori a tempo pieno più poveri sono contribuenti netti, i quali sovvenzionano chi non lavora, cosa che non accade negli Stati Uniti. In Paesi come Germania, Danimarca e Paesi Bassi, la metà più povera della popolazione paga una quota molto più alta del proprio reddito in tasse rispetto al decimo più ricco. Ciò distorce gli incentivi al lavoro e rende tutti più poveri.

L'errore assistenzialista di Draghi

È un pio desiderio credere che il problema della crescita dell'UE possa essere risolto senza prima ridimensionare il sistema dispendioso di ridistribuzione del reddito dai lavoratori ai non lavoratori e ridurre l'onere fiscale. La spesa pubblica complessiva in Europa è anche tra le più grandi al mondo, circa il 50% del PIL. Più alto è il livello di spesa pubblica in percentuale del PIL, maggiore è l'onere fiscale complessivo, che sarà in gran parte distribuito dai ricchi alla classe media e a coloro che hanno mezzi modesti.

Nel suo capolavoro “Human Action” Ludwig von Mises confutò la fallacia secondo cui produzione e distribuzione sono due processi economici separati e indipendenti. Secondo gli economisti mainstream quando la produzione di beni e servizi è giunta a saturazione, lo stato può intervenire per garantire una distribuzione più “equa” del reddito nazionale tra i membri della società. A quanto pare ciò non peserebbe sulla produzione economica che è percepita come indipendente dalla successiva ridistribuzione pubblica dei redditi. Ecco perché la Lagarde e Draghi credono che l’Europa possa aumentare le sue performance di crescita indipendentemente dal modello sociale. Ma questo è sbagliato.

In un'economia di mercato, beni e servizi nascono come proprietà di qualcuno e se lo stato vuole ridistribuirli, deve prima confiscarli. Gli stati possono facilmente invadere i diritti di proprietà privata, ma questo non può rappresentare una solida base per una crescita economica sostenibile. Secondo Mises gli investimenti e l'accumulo di capitale si fondano sull'aspettativa che i loro frutti non vengano espropriati. Senza questa garanzia le persone preferirebbero consumare il loro capitale invece di salvaguardarlo per gli espropriatori. Le persone ridurrebbero i risparmi e gli investimenti e gli imprenditori correrebbero meno rischi. I lavoratori lavorerebbero meno ore e godrebbero di più tempo libero se guadagnassero meno su base netta. Ciò deprimerebbe la crescita economica e gli standard di vita sia per i ricchi che per i poveri.

Gwartney, Holcombe e Lawson lo hanno dimostrato empiricamente. Poiché la dimensione della spesa pubblica è quasi raddoppiata in media nei Paesi OCSE dal 1960 al 1996, la loro crescita del PIL reale è scesa di quasi due terzi in media. Inoltre i peggiori performer sono stati alcuni Paesi dell'Europa meridionale che hanno visto aumentare di più la dimensione dello stato (Grafico 3).

Grafico 3: Spesa pubblica e crescita economica nei Paesi OCSE

La lenta crescita economica dell'Europa, la scarsa produttività e la scarsa innovazione sono solo sintomi dell'eccessiva spesa pubblica e dello stato sociale. In un breve commento alla relazione di Draghi, Blanchard e Ubide notano che i Paesi non devono necessariamente essere leader nell'innovazione per prosperare. Possono usare le innovazioni degli altri e continuare a produrre prodotti competitivi. Ma, secondo Mises, questo può accadere solo se gli stati consentono ai mercati di funzionare liberamente e non soffocano l'imprenditorialità individuale. Questo è il problema fondamentale che l'Europa dovrebbe risolvere per primo.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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The recent Super Bowl between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs wasn’t fixed for the Chiefs. This surprised millions of “normies” who had become increasingly vocal about the favorable calls the Chiefs have received all season from the refs. But the Super Bowl did plant a giant exclamation point on our Idiocracy.

The NFL, being the completely criminal enterprise it is, baited gamblers in to betting on the Chiefs. These naive fans assumed that the referees would rig the Super Bowl so that Patrick Mahomes, the least “real” Black high profile figure since Tiger Woods, would become the first quarterback to win three straight Super Bowls. The incurably White Tom Brady never did that. But instead it was an Eagles rout. I wonder which team the fixers bet on? Gamblers never learn, and the myriad of enticing betting options, which can be placed very simply on your “smart” phone, only makes the problem worse. Without all this easy access to gambling, and fantasy football, the NFL would draw the same kind of interest that professional bowling does. The level of play is putrid, hitting has been all but outlawed, and the game is 90 percent Black now. Even old fashioned crooked White referees are being phased out.

So we were all denied the chance to see Taylor Swift celebrating. But what really made this game memorable was the halftime show. The Super Bowl halftime show has become a cultural event in and of itself, as have the very expensive commercials. At Super Bowl parties, wives and girlfriends will invariably ask “is it halftime yet?” In the past, the NFL attempted to book genuine big names, like Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones, or Paul McCartney, as the halftime act. No longer. Eminem, who hardly qualifies as White, was the last pale skinned headliner on Super Bowl Sunday. This year, the NFL dug its heels down as far as they could go into the DEI mud, and hired rapper Kendrick Lamar to perform at halftime. Lamar is primarily known only to the ghetto world, and the young, self-hating cucks who support anything nonwhite. He’s short, chubby, and totally lacking in charisma. And talent. That used to be essential for any musical artist. He just half hopped (hip hopped?) around the stage.

Lamar’s cringeworthy “lyrics” were almost totally indecipherable. Certainly, no one in the overwhelmingly White crowd was singing along. Well, more accurately rapping along. Lamar represented the NFL’s venture into total Blackness. Maximum ghetto. Warp speed stupidity. He was surrounded by “dancers” that also half/hip hopped around, and every one of them was Black, too. There was a shocking lack of diversity on that stage. It was like watching a Tarzan movie, without Tarzan. Or any African big game. Samuel Jackson, Jr., playing the anti-Morgan Freeman role, was dressed up as Uncle Sam. Kind of like two time murderer Don King waving the flag. He joked the performance was “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto,” indicating that this is the way White America viewed it. In other words, the way any civilized person would view it. Civilization is “White.” Being loud and obnoxious is cool. Skill and talent are racist.

Lamar’s hit song, which is unknown to 99 percent of White America, is “Not Like Us.” Ostensibly a “dis” at fellow rapper Drake, who is half Jewish and hardly “real” enough for gangsta rap, it’s also a celebration of segregation. “You not like us,” with its standard adherence to improper grammar, is proclaiming that others (non-Blacks) are not like those in the ghetto, or the multi-millionaires that pose as thugs while living in gated mansions. Well, of course, that stands to reason. I don’t know anyone that goes “wilding,” a unique kind of evil social activity that may end with firing a gun randomly and perhaps killing a toddler. Keeping it real. The people I know don’t wear their pants purposefully hanging low, exposing their underwear to the world. They don’t scoff at reading. They don’t try to provoke others by playing their music aggressively loud, cursing in public, or taking forever to cross a street.

Low class behavior has never been celebrated before, by any society. The British never promoted their Cockney underclass, and lovingly mimicked them. Only America 2.0 has taken the most objectionable “culture” the world has ever seen, and placed it on a pedestal. Given huge recording contracts to “rappers” who essentially “dis” other thugs and boast like unhinged preschoolers. Who give themselves the most uncreative stage names imaginable. What self-respecting adult would call themselves Snoop Dogg, or ‘Lil Romeo, without embarrassment? It is a “culture” that has resulted in generational crime and poverty, fatherless homes, and untold numbers of Blacks killing each other. It is a “culture” that glorifies ignorance. As Chris Rock said in a moment of candor, it’s a love affair with “not knowing shit.” We have at least sixty years of historical data demonstrating what a disastrous failure this “culture” has been.

When was the last time any White public figure said anything remotely resembling what I am saying? Conservatives stay away from the race topic. They might gingerly point out the wildly disproportionate Black crime rate. You have to be a special kind of submissive cuck to stay silent when 12 percent of the population is committing a majority of the violent crime in your country. Has being scared of telling the truth worked here? Has ghetto “culture” become any more civilized? The answer is obvious. Not only has it become more and more uncivil and often deranged, the Whites in charge who are terrified to confront it have decided that “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” is the best option. Except the vast majority of us don’t live in ghettos. We don’t have a desire to appreciate this “culture,” let alone emulate it. I’m not going to pretend to like rap. Or to sing the praises of DEI performers like Beyonce or Rhianna.

But it’s not just the cowering White leaders. It’s the prominent Blacks that contribute even more to the problem. Bill Cosby was the last Black public figure that really castigated ghetto behavior. Then his son died mysteriously in a road accident, and he wound up being accused of drugging and raping many, many women. I’m starting to think maybe he was set up. The response on the part of Black “leaders” to Kendrick Lamar’s cultural implosion was quite illuminating. The only one who condemned it was my favorite podcaster, Jason Whitlock. Deion Sanders, Stephen A. Smith, Sunny Hostin, and others all congratulated Lamar, and declared that “you made us proud.” What? How exactly did he make anyone proud, least of all multi millionaire talking heads? By his incomprehensible gibberish, which meant nothing to almost everyone watching? By his tremendous lack of talent, and unworthiness of the stage he was on?

Now, in this ridiculous song “One of Us,” apparently the esteemed Mr. Lamar calls Drake a pedophile. Fascinating. If only he would rap about how big his thing is. Actually, he probably does. I think that’s an integral part of the hip hop world. To be fair, that kind of childish boasting was also part of the elementary school world back in the day. No adults seemed interested in any of our immature nonsense. At one point in his scintillating performance, tennis star Serena Williams marched out on stage. Now, you might be thinking that she engaged in some kind of tennis exhibition or something. After all, why else would she be there? She doesn’t sing, or dance. Well, actually, she does do this one hilarious hop hip- the “Crip Walk.” It’s not a very impressive move. It looks identical to the hop hipping a lot of us drunk White guys were doing at parties in the 1970s and 1980s. No one recognized our abilities I guess.

Now, this “Crip Walk” would be counterproductive enough on the face of it, given that it’s the signature of the deadly Crips inner city gang. What kind of self respecting athlete worth an estimated $290 million would pay homage to violent criminals? But what makes it outright surrealistic is the fact Serena’s own sister was killed. By these same Crips. Williams, like so many monstrously conceited rappers, came from Compton. You know, straight outa Compton. That’s supposed to mean something to educated people. And educated people, to be sure, act as if it does mean something to them. At any rate, the Williams family fled Compton for obvious reasons when Serena was small. Losing her sister probably had a lot to do with that. But this seemingly non-ghetto millionaire apparently feels she has “roots” there. She had tragic death there. Not sure why any human being would look back fondly on that.

Apparently, Serena did this “Crip Walk” before, over a decade ago, after winning Wimbledon. I’m sure the British upper crust, watching from their overpriced seats, enjoyed her little victory hop hip on the cherished grass court. Looking at the “Crip Walk,” it’s very similar to the hop scotch moves so many toddlers and youngsters have perfected on sidewalks all over the world. No one ever thought hop scotch was cool. Certainly not dangerous, or “gangsta.” “Gangsta,” misspelled to suit the Ebonics illegitimate tongue, is the latest manifestation of 1920s-1930s style Hollywood promoted gangsterism. Al Capone and the boys. Machine guns. Hit men. Mob bosses. So cool. No wonder so many starlets, even the darling Donna Reed, fell victim to their charms. But almost all Americans recognized that gangsters were not suitable role models. The entire society didn’t copy their idiotic “code.”

Jason Whitlock really blasted Serena Williams for her “Crip Walk,” and the poor millionaire victim fought back through her husband, who is White and Jewish, and very, very ungangsta. And adding to the middle school drama, Serena and Drake used to have some kind of relationship. So she was evidently taunting her former boyfriend by shaking her suitably large America 2.0-size “booty” for his arch enemy Lamar. I must be one of the few Whites that just find all this ghetto intrigue to be about as exciting as rush hour traffic. Dull. Mind deadening. Brain cell killing. But then that could describe the entire rap/hip hop genre, which has taken over the entertainment business like an alien invasion. By the way, what exactly is the difference between rap and hip hop? Wait, who would even want to know that? The contributions of ghetto culture are enormous. Maybe we can all learn to twerk together in peace.

The NFL’s commissioner is Roger Goodell, a supreme cuck about my age. He didn’t stop at giving very gay “bro hugs” to each new millionaire number one draft pick (90 percent of whom will be complete busts, to the silence of the sports media); before the Super Bowl, he volunteered for another humiliation ritual. He was filmed engaging in a truly inane conversation with the venerable Snoop Dogg, who is on about 75 percent of all television commercials now. He’s kind of like the George Washington of the hip hop/hop scotch world. Goodell sounded so cringeworthy telling Mr. Dogg that he’s a big fan of his work. He even dropped “shizzle,” or “casniffle,” or some other incredibly stupid nonword from Mr. Dogg, who I think was a murder suspect in the past, and brags about being a Crip, as he ingratiated himself before this perpetually stoned wannabe thug. How do the Roger Goodells of the world live with themselves?

There were also a slew of hip hop/hop scotch themed propagandistic Super Bowl commercials. In the most laughable one, a young Black girl (what else) was seen destroying a bunch of male jocks, almost all of them White (what else) in flag football. The lead male jock was naturally a White bully, and of course he was shown bullying a poor Black kid. Yeah, that happens all the time. What was the point of this scenario, which I think was sponsored by the odious Nike corporation? So the NFL is advertising that little girls- well, as long as they’re Black, of course- are better at football than the multi-millionaires in their corrupt league? The ones we’re watching perform so non-spectacularly in your ultimate event, the Super Bowl? I mean, maybe none of us should get that excited about your magnificent game if a little girl can play it better than grown men. The messaging here is impossible, poisonous fantasy.

We have gone beyond Idiocracy, into a thoroughly ghettoized, Super Idiocracy. Young Whites- we used to call them Wiggers, but I suppose that’s forbidden now- just absolutely worshiping Blacks with lower IQs and questionable morals. Young White girls falling prey to the nonstop programming, urging them to find a Black boyfriend. Turn your nose up into that Resting Bitch Face, and screech “weirdo” at the closest “White Boy.” Say they really “creep” you out. “White Boy,” by the way, is a racial slur that is used not only by virtually all Blacks, but a solid majority of Whites, who revel in making fun of themselves. “It’s true, we’re so lame,” Homer Simpson said about thirty five years ago. Well, if you have a ghetto culture, your heroes, by definition, have to be ghetto. They have to be gangstas. And hos. That’s “whores” to you old sticklers for proper English. “Ho,” like “booty,” now flows easily from the tongues of Whites.

Donald Trump was at the Super Bowl, too, but the cameras oddly ignored him. You’d think that the first president to attend a Super Bowl game might warrant a few moments of camera time. The insane women on The View, while cheering the stark stupidity of Lamar and Williams, laughably claimed that Trump had tried to “remove Black people from the Super Bowl halftime show.” Yeah, I’m sure he did that. If so, boy was he unsuccessful! Maybe he was trying to remove Whites? In that case, another bit of “winning!” Some ridiculous mainstream newspaper headline read “Super Bowl destroys everything Donald Trump represents,” or something like that. I don’t know, he does like to rescue and pardon rappers. Trump here again is the symbolic old White guy. Pitted against him is the 80 percent Black league, and 100 percent Black halftime show. What’s not to love?

Read the Whole Article

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“Sweeping tariffs and a shift away from strong dollar policy can have some of the broadest ramifications of any policies in decades, fundamentally reshaping the global trade and financial systems.”

– Stephen Miran, nominee: CEA Chairman

“We’re going to monetize the asset side of the US balance sheet, for the American people.”

– Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary

“Buckle Up.”

– Matt Smith, entrepreneur and rancher

Henry George observed that tariffs are nations doing to themselves in peacetime what enemies inflict during wars.

Donald Trump disagrees.

Last week, the president issued…then postponed…hefty tariffs on Canada and Mexico. He also intimated he’d apply import duties on the EU, and imposed a 10% levy on products from China.

This week, he announced a 25% impost on foreign aluminum and steel, which appears to impact Canadians the most (or the Chinese, to the extent they reputedly ship steel to Canada and Mexico for laundering to the U.S.).

More tariffs are reflexively threatened based on how countries behave.

Dresden and Detroit

What’s going on here? Is this more “Art of the Deal” 4D Chess?

Or are these tariffs unforced errors, revivals of ideas so imbecilic even most credentialed economists can see the stupidity?

This administration assumes (or wants us to believe) that other governments have been ripping us off. But China, Canada, and Mexico are mere scapegoats. The real enemy is within… mostly in Washington, DC, northern Virginia, and southern Manhattan.

Corporate boardrooms, in conjunction with their purchased politicians, the Fed, and Wall Street are the real source of America’s woes. These are the entities that hollowed Cleveland, St Louis, and Baltimore, and shipped American manufacturing overseas.

If we look at Dresden and Detroit in 1945, then take a glance at each today, we know something went terribly wrong. It started with corporate boondoggles like the Marshall Plan, but continued with Cold War escapades like the Korean “conflict” and a catalogue of coups.

But, as always, to connect the dots we must follow the dollars. And especially what backs them… or doesn’t.

Monetary Resets

During the late 19th century, the U.S. prospered under a genuine gold standard. This lasted till the advent of the Fed in 1913.

A Potemkin version emerged after the First World War. But gold exchange rates in Britain were unsustainable, prompting the Fed to print money to help prop up the pound. This amplified the Roaring ‘20s boom, which collapsed when the hot air inevitably left the balloon.

Under the post-war Bretton Woods system, the US dollar was tied to gold, with other currencies tethered to the dollar. But “Guns and Butter” became scissor blades that cut the ropes.

As deficits mounted during the Great Society and Vietnam War, U.S. gold reserves dwindled. Other countries… notably France… feared their portion wasn’t there. On August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon proved them right.

It wasn’t the first time the U.S. government defaulted. FDR did so on April 5, 1933, when he devalued the dollar by 60%, and confiscated gold from American citizens.

Now Nixon took it from the foreigners. The “gold window” was officially closed, converting the dollar into what Doug Casey calls a “floating abstraction”.

The same day, to coerce cooperation from other countries, Nixon imposed 10% tariffs on all “dutiable articles” entering the US. Almost a decade and a half later, tariffs were again a lever that compelled US trading partners to help weaken the dollar.

On each occasion, the imposition or prospect of tariffs preceded a monetary reset. Is that what Trump’s tariffs portend now? Or perhaps the process is already underway?

Bread Crumbs

Most of what follows is based on digging my friend Matt Smith has done. He didn’t need to delve too deep. The components of the plan are out in the open, proudly proclaimed by the people implementing them.

But Matt brought them to my attention, and I think he’s on to something. He asserts that “the biggest economic shift in fifty years is happening right now”.

His X feed and this podcast reveal in detail why he thinks so. In essence, it’s because Trump’s team is telling us it is.

After several weeks following the bread crumbs, Matt found them to be as much a radar as a reminder. They suggest where we’re going, and that we’ve been there before.

Donald Trump is known for shooting from the hip and flying by the seat of his pants. But because he’s known for that doesn’t mean that’s always what he’s doing. In this case, he appears to be following carefully choreographed footsteps along a well-worn path.

Smithsonian to the Louvre

In a paper published several months ago, Stephen Miran, Trump’s nominee as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, noted that international monetary systems can change unilaterally or multi-laterally. The latter is more desirable, yet more difficult.

Tariffs can be a crowbar to pry compliance. Miran reminds us of Nixon’s in 1971, and the ones Reagan threatened in 1985. In his assessment, each prompted significant revisions in foreign exchange regimes. In both instances, US administrations convinced reluctant countries to help pull the dollar lower.

A few months after Nixon imposed his tariffs, the Smithsonian Agreement amended the dollar pegs under Bretton Woods. This devalued the dollar… but not enough. Markets kept driving it down. Within fifteen months, it was set adrift.

A decade later, after Volcker’s exorbitant interest rates of the early 80s, capital flowed into the US and the dollar regained strength against its rivals.

At the time, Japan was considered the commercial challenger China is perceived to be today. To suppress the yen, Deutsch mark, and other currencies, Congress threatened “protective” tariffs.

Not wanting a trade war, Ronald Reagan sought a deal. In 1985, at the Plaza Hotel in New York, he got one. The U.S. and its major trading partners agreed to push the dollar lower.

They did. For two years the dollar weakened. At the Louvre eighteen months later, the parties met again, and the decline was halted at mutually agreeable levels.

Like his predecessors, Trump wants a weaker dollar. He also wants it to remain the world reserve currency, and has intimated he’d take action against countries choosing other options.

Triffin Dilemma

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing once referred to the dollar’s exalted status as America’s “exorbitant privilege”. It allows the country to avoid balance of payments crises because it can purchase imports with its own currency (which its central bank can “print” at will).

US dollars are the medium of exchange for almost every country’s cross-border purchases. This creates an inherent demand for dollars that lowers borrowing costs for Americans, and allows them to buy from abroad without commensurate production at home. As such, they needn’t manufacture enough exports to pay for their imports.

So they haven’t.

The US economy has been financialized, addicted to debt, and sustained by “services”. Tho’ some goods are assembled in the states, most of what Americans buy is made elsewhere. This forces foreigners to recycle their piles of dollars into US debt, which has been America’s primary export the last five decades.

The “twin deficits” exemplify the “Triffin Dilemma” Miran describes in his paper. According to Belgian economist Robert Triffin, a reserve currency requires a current account deficit, by which it is recycled into Treasury bonds that become base money in foreign central banks.

As domestic manufacturing declines, global confidence in the currency begins to wane. Conversely, inadequate deficits deprive the world of currency, which strengthens the dollar and incentivizes corporations to move manufacturing offshore.

This is the dilemma Trump faces, and that his team will use drastic tactics to try to resolve.

Read the Whole Article

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The Democrats are using the judiciary to cover up their corrupt operations and theft of taxpayers’ money.

If you will notice, the slew of judges countermanding Trump’s executive orders are themselves issuing executive orders, and they are doing so with no reference to law.  Instead, they are ruling that Trump’s executive orders are harming someone, including illegal immigrant-invaders who are not US citizens.  This is outrageous.  Harm is a subjective standard.  Moreover, the judges are overlooking the harm that their rulings do.

What can Trump do?  Like Andrew Jackson, he could ignore the judges.  He could order the federal marshall’s, who report to the president and not to the judiciary, to cease delivering the judges’ edicts and to stop providing any service to the judges other than life protection. 

The rulings by these judges are so egregious that they demonstrate both that some judges are in on the grift and the danger to Democrats from having their corruption revealed is so great that it has to be prevented by having the judiciary dictate to the executive.

We have judges blocking Trump’s order against birthright citizenship which prevents illegals from gaining US citizenship by illegally entering the US in order to give birth.  Such births are known as “anchor babies” as they result in citizenship for the entire family. Hows corrupt does a judge have to be to claim that the Constitution provides nefarious ways for foreigners to acquire US citizenship?

We have judges ordering Trump to reinstate federal funding for private NGOs working to undermine foreign governments and to spread sexual perversion and anti-white woke propaganda. Judges ordering the continuation of these harmful activities are arguing that it is harmful to prevent harm.   Moreover, many and probably most of these NGOs are grift money-laundering operations dumping taxpayers’ money into the hands of Democrats and their children via NGO salaries and grants.  Judges are even ordering  Trump to continue financing private DEI and gender operation websites.

Judges do not have executive powers.  They can interpret existing law and the Constitution, but not on the basis of some subjective factor as their personal notion of harm or their determination to cover up corruption.

I predicted that Trump’s attempt to restore America would be tied down in lawsuits aided and abetted by a corrupt judiciary.  Something must be done about judicial overreach or the renewal of America is a lost cause.

The post Who Will Rule? An Elected President or an Unaccountable Judiciary? appeared first on LewRockwell.

From the Tom Woods Letter:

Yesterday Donald Trump said he’d like to meet with Chinese and Russian leaders and work out an agreement for all of them to cut their military budgets by 50 percent.

I don’t know if that will happen or not. I do know that no president of either party has spoken like that in my lifetime (though of course Ronald Reagan made important moves toward arms control, fearing the truly dreadful possibility of an inadvertent nuclear exchange).

And here’s what I also know: at this point the left is so unreasonable (and so busy making sure nobody’s federal sinecure gets cut) that they probably can’t bring themselves to back even something they themselves have pretended to support for years, now that Trump also supports it.

I can already hear the left’s lament: won’t anyone think of defense-industry profits!

It’s so bad that Congressman Ro Khanna actually had to say:

“I support the effort to find a trilateral agreement with China and Russia to mutually draw down bloated military budgets. We should not oppose efforts to reduce military spending and work towards peace just because it is proposed by Trump.”

Again, if we were dealing with mentally well people, it would not have been necessary to say that.

Another thing happened yesterday: the swearing in of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Let me pause to note that a few weeks ago, when I also wrote about RFK, Jr., in this newsletter, I received a reply from a reader describing him as “a nut” and that under his leadership “healthcare as we know it” would “become extinct.”

I replied:

I sure hope health care as we know it becomes extinct. It is symptom management, it has yielded a declining life expectancy, chronic disease is through the roof, and the money spent is downright criminal. Anyone who doesn’t want health care as we know it to die a well-deserved death is profoundly suspect in my book. There is a reason all the most evil people, and the various vested interests, are after him.

At any rate, I thought you’d be interested in excerpts of RFK’s remarks yesterday:

We see the rise of the military industrial complex, the rise of totalitarianism, these attacks on our Constitution and this breathtaking epidemic that is disabling our people. President Trump has promised to restore the American dream in this country. A healthy person has a thousand dreams. A sick person only has one. Sixty percent of our population has only one dream, that they get better….

President Trump has promised that he’s going to restore America’s strength. But we can’t be a strong nation if we have a citizenry. We need somebody who is willing to come in and has the spine and the guts and the strength to challenge orthodoxies, to stand in the way of vested interests, and to break institutions that have turned against our democracy.

He also addressed the controversy over USAID:

My uncle started USAID in 1961 for humanitarian purposes, to put our country on the side of the poor. It has been captured by the military-industrial complex. It has become a sinister propagator of totalitarianism and war across the globe. And very few people understand how sinister this agency really is. And President Trump saw that, and he stood up to it with a masterstroke. And we want to do the same thing with the institutions that are stealing the health of our children.

I can’t help noting that we now inhabit a world in which the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the presumed directors of both the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, have all been guests on the Tom Woods Show.

If we’re being honest, I don’t think any of us expected that outcome.

In fact, it was Jay Bhattacharya, nominated to head the National Institutes of Health, who wrote the foreword to my book Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania.

Imagine that!

If you still don’t have it, by the way, treat yourself to the audiobook version, because you’ll hear it in my voice — which means it will have just that combination of sarcasm and contempt that the subject matter calls for:

https://www.tomwoods.com/diaryaudiobook

The post Breathing Is Good Even if Trump Does It appeared first on LewRockwell.

Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, Aga Khan IV, hereditary Imam of the world’s 12-15 million Shia Ismaili Muslims, died recently in Lisbon, Portugal.  What a life he led.

The Aga Khan (Great Khan as he was universally known) was born in Geneva, Switzerland and spent much of his flamboyant life jet-setting around Europe and North America.  His charming, much younger sister, Princess Yasmin, attended the International School in Geneva with me.  The young Aga Khan went to the world’s most exclusive boys’ school up Lake Geneva, le Rosey.  I didn’t want to go there because it was boys only – though many of them were princlings from the Arabian Gulf (still not changed yet to the ‘Trump Gulf’).

Karim’s ostensible religious mission was to aid and lead the scattered Ismaili community in Asia, North America, and Africa.  But he spent much of his time racing fast cars, throwing opulent parties, and hobnobbing with movie stars and other gorgeous women.  Not so strictly Islamic.  In some ways, the Aga Khan resembled that other world-famous playboy and bon vivant, Fiat’s Gianni Agnelli. 

I was on a Mediterranean sailing cruise with a bunch of Le Rosey graduates.  Everyone called me ‘the spy’ from the International School, their traditional rival.  I rudely called them a bunch of rich sissies.  We sailed to the newish Sardinian harbor of Porto Cervo, recently built to resemble an ancient-looking fishing village worthy of Disney Studios.  Prince Karim, a Rosey graduate, invited us to his home for lunch.  The Aga Khan returned to his youth, as we all do when reunited with our schoolmates. He turned out to be a very charming man with a quick wit and sharp sense of humor.  Even he called me, ‘the spy.’

Bon vivant though the was, Prince Karim was also a talented businessman and organizer.  His sect would build hospitals, clinics, museums and homes for the elderly in Africa, Pakistan, Canada, Iran and southern Europe.  Toronto was distinguished by an impressive Aga Khan Museum.

According to legend, the hereditary Khan was given his weight in gold each ear by his adoring supporters.  No mention was made of his fondness for champagne, fashion models and Maserati’s.  The Khan managed to effortlessly balance all with grace and charm.  Riches, he would say, are a gift from Allah.

Later, I voyaged high up in Pakistan’s Karakoram Mountain Range to the remote Hunza Valley which had become home of the Ismaili sect.  Hunza was wild and beautiful, lost among snow-capped peaks.  It is said that the American author James Hilton used Hunza as his model for Shangri-la, the land where people never grew old or fell sick.  There seemed to be a spirituality hanging over the valley.

What amazed me was that the Ismailis were an ancient sect dating back to the distant era of the Crusades.  According to legend, the Ismailis were based in the mountain fortress of Alamut from whence their relentless killers, armed with poisoned daggers, terrorized the entire Mideast.  The assassins were heavily drugged with super potent hashish and turned into killers.

For a century, most leaders in the Mideast – Christian or Muslim – paid them protection money and quivered in fear before them.  However, today’s Ismailis are peaceful and enterprising.  Their Aga Khan was one of the Mideast’s best, most productive leaders.  There are high hopes for his successor, son Prince Rahim al-Hussaini

The post Farewell Aga Khan appeared first on LewRockwell.

On February 12th, Stephen Bryen, who has retired from a career at the tops of one of America’s ten largest armaments-makers and near the top of the U.S. Defense Department (he’s been through the revolving door and now has retired from it), headlined “Europe Gasping for Air as Trump Makes His Ukraine Move: No NATO Membership for Ukraine, No US Troops” and reported not only that Trump has basically fired Keith Kellogg who was his failed appointee to negotiate with Russia about the war in Ukraine, but that Trump has dropped the Kellogg-initiated U.S. starting position for entering into those negotiations with Russia (Russia refused to accept that even as a starting position); so, Trump had on February 12th a 90-minute phone conversation with Putin, and it was extremely productive, because Trump now recognizes not only why Russia refuses to accept Ukraine’s EVER being allowed into NATO, but also that Russians would have to be crazy to ever accept such a possibility (just like the United States would have been crazy to have accepted Soviet missiles into Cuba in 1962). It transformed Trump’s view. Here was Trump’s statement:

https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1889720462151917756

Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social

@TrumpDailyPosts

I just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, Energy, Artificial Intelligence, the power of the Dollar, and various other subjects. We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II, remembering, that Russia lost tens of millions of people, and we, likewise, lost so many! We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together. But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine. President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, “COMMON SENSE.” We both believe very strongly in it. We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations. We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately, and we will begin by calling President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now. I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, to lead the negotiations which, I feel strongly, will be successful. Millions of people have died in a War that would not have happened if I were President, but it did happen, so it must end. No more lives should be lost! I want to thank President Putin for his time and effort with respect to this call, and for the release, yesterday, of Marc Fogel, a wonderful man that I personally greeted last night at the White House. I believe this effort will lead to a successful conclusion, hopefully soon!

Donald Trump Truth Social Post 11:53 AM EST 02/12/25

11:57 AM · Feb 12, 2025

4.2M Views

——

And here is what Dr. Bryen wrote about it this morning (go to the original at his “Europe Gasping for Air as Trump Makes His Ukraine Move: No NATO Membership for Ukraine, No US Troops” in order to see the version that includes the several videos):

——

European leaders who have been strongly supporting keeping the Ukraine war going have been dealt a serious blow by President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Most of them must be in shock, gasping for breath.

Let’s start with Hegseth. He made the following declarations:

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Pledge your support

1. Ukraine’s membership in NATO is off the table. Ukraine won’t be invited to join NATO.

2. The US will not send any troops to Ukraine for any reason, including peacekeeping.

3. The US will no longer supply or pay for weapons and support for Ukraine. It will be up to the European NATO members to provide support to Ukraine.

4. While the US supports NATO, American participation has to be fair and equitable, meaning that NATO members will have to significantly increase their contributions.

5. Ukraine will not be able to go back to the borders it had before 2014, meaning that the US expects important territorial concessions from Ukraine.

President Trump, meanwhile, held an hour and a half phone meeting with Russian President Putin. The key takeaway is that Putin said he is willing to start negotiations with the United States on Ukraine and other security issues.

The Trump-Putin conversation covered many topics, for example security issues, energy, artificial intelligence, “the power of the dollar” and “various other subjects.”

Following the call, Trump apparently placed a call “to inform” Ukrainian President Zelensky of his conversation with Putin. He also immediately set up his negotiating team. He designated Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, to lead the negotiations.

Significantly, the list of participants did not include retired Lt. General Keith Kellogg. Kellogg had been openly flogging the idea of significantly increasing sanctions on Russia as a way to get concessions on Ukraine. As he put it, on a scale of 1 to 10, current sanctions on Russia are only a 3. He proposed raising them far higher (assuming this could be done). These comments directly undermined Trump’s approach to Putin and Russia, and appear to have been Kellogg’s idea (among others) to make sure the Ukraine war continued. Whether Kellogg will again appear as a player in Ukraine remains to be seen.

It will take time for Europe’s pro-war leaders, along with the EU, to contemplate the future, now that the rug has pretty well been pulled out from under their feet.

The Europeans have neither the weapons, the troops nor the money to keep the war going in Ukraine. Nor will they get much support for continuing the war if the United States won’t play in the game. In fact, should Europe want to continue on its own, without the United States, they risk the future of the NATO alliance.

Many of the leaders in Europe are in trouble domestically. Germany, France, Poland and even Romania where Presidential elections were cancelled to prevent the leading opposition candidate from being elected, are examples of the growing instability in the European leadership class. Revelations about US and EU interference in the electoral process in Georgia, Serbia and Slovakia, perhaps also Moldova, emphasize the squalid nature of current-day politics in Europe.

The Trump administration is liquidating USAID, which has been acting as a sort of CIA-front in many of the above countries, including Ukraine. With that source of money and support cut off, the EU is being handed a serious problem that goes well beyond finance: the phony argument that the EU (and with it, NATO) is upholding democracy is now exposed. The loss of legitimacy is a real threat to the ruling elites.

Trump has an important geopolitical perspective. It runs something like this: European security is important but is not really threatened by Russia. The US faces a resurgent China that has a (largely Western-supplied) very modern industrial base, a massive workforce, and an increasingly well-equipped and powerful military. From Trump’s point of view, he needs a more friendly Russia that can help balance global power relationships. To get from there to here, he needs to find ways to redefine the US-Russia relationship which is in deep disarray and infused with mutual hostility. In his 90 minute conversation with Putin, Trump was poking at economic and technology capabilities that could, in future, provide a basis for improving relations.

No one can say right now whether a deal can be found for Ukraine, but there is reason to be more optimistic that the two sides can work something out.

We will need to see if the Europeans push back and try to sabotage a deal on Ukraine. The reality is Europe has little it can do if Putin and Trump agree on a deal.

——

My reader-comment to that was:

Stephen, your news-report today is the biggest, most important, news about Trump that I have ever run into, because — if it is true, which I think it probably is (given the contacts you probably have) — you are reporting hugely important decisions by Trump, ALL of which indicate what a great U.S. President would do about the world’s top national-security problem, which is for America finally to END the Cold War on its side as Russia ended it on its side in 1991. This is even bigger news than the Senate’s confirmation today of Tulsi Gabbard as his DNI. WOW!! …

This is the most important breaking news I’ve seen in decades, and (for once, and at last), it is not like the others (all of which were bad news) but is instead TERRIFIC NEWS. If borne out by subsequent events, it is an immensely favorable turning-point in human history.

I have earlier stated and documented (in links) the conclusive evidences that and why the U.S. Government started the war in Ukraine in 2014, and that Russia was forced by the U.S. Government to respond to that ultimately on 24 February 2022 by invading Ukraine so as to block the U.S. regime’s plan from ever being able to be completed.

In the final analysis, America’s Republicans can either blame the Democrats (Obama and Biden) for the war in Ukraine and bring it to an end by repudiating America’s participation in it, or else they will have to push Russia all the way until the U.S. side in that war between the U.S. and Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine becomes totally lost by the U.S. side, and Russia will have been then forced by the U.S. to conquer Ukraine totally and absorb it into the Russian Federation (which Putin did not want ever to do). Because of today’s news, it now appears that Trump will ultimately go with blaming the war entirely on the Democratic Party, though, actually, until now, the Republican Party has likewise backed it. It was a war supported by all U.S. billionaires — not ONLY by the Democratic Party’s billionaires.

This originally appeared on Eric’s Substack.

The post Russia Has Now Won the War in Ukraine. appeared first on LewRockwell.

There was a time when small presses were an important part of the lifeblood of American culture.

The pressures of entrepreneurship were part of what made 1.) farmers great, 2.) small businesses great, 3.) doctors great, 4.) teachers and tutors great, 5.) local newspapers great, and many others great.

These entities meant much in the life of a community, as did anyone else who had to interact with real people daily and had to balance the checkbook weekly. There are considerable pressures in life pushing us away from those realities, pressures we must guard against in each of our lives.

Literary pursuits were a normal aspect of the work of small presses. Poetry might appear in newspapers or magazines that were not considered “literary.” Book serializations might appear in publications that would be considered mainstream by contemporary standards. Drawings and art might be commonplace. Drawings, in the form of political commentary, continue to be commonplace in mainstream publications. Such stark lines have not always been drawn between literary and non-literary the way they are in our era of over-specialization.

That was especially true in the United States, where, try as they may, the establishment figures had the hardest time insulating themselves from the pressures of reality the way the European establishment so successfully seemed to do.

While it is unfair to point to one specific figure since the trajectory of American culture has always had a prominent anti-liberty subset of influencers, the establishment of New Deal era programs around “protecting” the arts and “establishing” the arts under the watch of four-term president Franklin Roosevelt has come to impact American arts and letters for nearly a century.

Under the influence of guaranteed “protective” federal funding, literary magazines went a different way than what would have been typical for a small press dependent on their supporters. They became establishment. They became not just part of some local establishment. They became part of a national establishment. This trend was more wide-ranging than literary magazines. Schools popped up increasingly to teach writing the way the establishment wanted it. The same became of art. Such schools even came to perform a gateway function, helping to sort out who belonged from who did not belong. Schools became institutions that provided secure salaries for establishment voices who could not attract audiences through their brazen pursuit of truth, but who instead attracted sinecures, awards, and honors from those who wanted to hear not from truth-seekers but from the establishment. The publishing industry and all forms of media grew increasingly stultified.

Among the greatest losses in this process was the adjusting of the notion of small scrappy presses and small scrappy literary magazines into the mindset of being a part of something called, “the publishing industry.” The two ideas could not have been more disparate.

What a loss for America that was. But in all likelihood it was more of a loss for publishers of literary magazines and for small presses, for they stopped being relevant. They continued to scrape by, to pay their dues, and some of them ended up with some comfort and some success and a legacy.

But to what ends? What was it a legacy of? What was its purpose?

The purpose was to perpetuate more establishment thought.

That was what became of thousands of burgeoning renegade writers who became a successful literary magazine publisher from the New Deal to the present: they became a vehicle for more establishment thought.

They let their dreams be derailed to become a vehicle for more establishment thought.

I ask you to consider that background as you read the following from Tupelo Press:

====

SUBJECT: Our Take on the New NEA Grant Guidelines

Dear Friend of Tupelo Press,

Many of you have asked about the appalling new NEA guidelines for literature grants (click here to view link). Tupelo Press takes the strongest possible stand against:

• “The applicant will not operate any programs promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) in accordance with Executive Order No. 14173.” — NO!
• “The applicant understands that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology, pursuant to Executive Order No. 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” — NO!
• Applications must be built around or feature some aspect of American triumphalism (“Funding priority will be given for projects that celebrate and honor the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.”) — NO!
• All applicants are required to sign a “Certificate of Compliance,” including Draconian reprisals for failing to comply with “all Executive Orders.” — NO!

Under no circumstances will we suspend our DEI based writing fellowships at Gentle House in Port Angeles, WA;

Under no circumstances will we be dissuaded from building our Spring 2026 list around (a) Jennifer Jean’s dual-language (Arabic/English) anthology of Arab women’s poetry, (b) Naoko Fujimoto’s anthology of Classical Japanese women’s Waka poetry in translation, (c) Ming Holden’s “Fire Alarm,” (d) Avia Tadmor’s “Song in Tammuz,” (e) Preeti Parikh’s “Blue Selvage,” (f) Ángel Garcia’s “Indifferent Cities,” (g) Diana Cao’s “Slipstream,” (h) Stelios Momoris’s “Perishable,” along with six additional, equally important titles.

For 25 years, Tupelo Press has been devoted to widening the audience for contemporary poetry and literary prose by emerging and established writers of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, including, especially, women and writers of color, the LGBTQ, immigrant, and Native American communities. We aim to develop wider audiences for, and deeper understanding of, innovative, multi-cultural writing by essential participants in this conversation.

If our position means no more NEA grants for Tupelo Press, so be it. To act otherwise would be immoral.

Meanwhile, our heart goes out to the dedicated professional staff at the NEA for having to put up with this crap.

====

If you ask me, this is all pretty milquetoast. On one hand, you have Lenin’s useful idiots insisting they are not well-funded and comfortable tools of the system, but are instead free-thinkers. Ludwig von Mises, for the record, much more charitably called them, “useful innocents.” On the other hand, you have a US President who still is not willing to take it as far as he needs to. To be fair he has only been in office 26 days.

This would be a preferable time to totally eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and ELIMINATE ALL FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ARTS, LITERATURE, AND EDUCATION, but Trump may still be too concerned with what the swamp thinks of him for a move like that. His mandate, after all, is to close the porous border, end the wars, and stop the bleeding out of America, not to close little Suzie’s summer ballet camp. But perhaps that mandate too will come. Time will tell.

There’s good news

Thankfully you and I have no need to even take note of such pathetic nonsense. Something really cool happened in the late 1990s, a no one from nowhere noticed that a Washington bureau editor had cancelled a story about the President of the United States and a White House Intern having an affair. Under business as usual, the story would just disappear, as a favor to the politician involved, totally ignored by the rest of the editors of prominent publications. (My appreciation to the late Dr. Gary North and to the Mises Institute for that story from North’s August 2009 speech “Calling and Career.”)

But that day was different. That day, the no one from nowhere shared the story with his email list and the Bill Clinton and Monika Lewinsky story remains known to this day. And that no one from nowhere was Matt Drudge, that man who would come to run the most important news aggregator on the internet.

That day in the late 1990s was the day that the establishment media reached peak relevancy. And they have only lost relevancy continually from that day. It took Washington DC about 3 decades to catch up with the rest of us. A politician is finally re-arranging federal funding to more accurately reflect what the American people want.

Of course, it is too little, too late, and those of us who get what has happened and what is happening are not all that concerned. Those of us who write to move the hearts of warriors, do not care what The New York Times thinks about us. Those of us who write to inspire virtues, do not care what the academy thinks of us. Those of us who write because that is simply what we must do and are grateful to have an audience eager to read us — we care not what the National Endowment for the Arts thinks about us.

We just write. We write and publish in the limitless environment we live in, one in which every single one of us has a virtual printing press that can reach any corner of the planet in ten minutes or less.

My latest book is for the poets and for the authors. Quit holding back. Our era needs truth-tellers like you. Get it here for free Do Not Apologize For The Words You Use: A Call To Poets And Authors Of Our Era. And in case you are curious, if you are reading this website, you are likely one who fits my definition of poet mentioned in that book. “He who goes out to the outskirts of society and brings back to that society the essential truths he has found.” It is a very weak era that has convinced us of a definition of poet that is less than that, a definition that has something to do with rhyme and rhythm.

But I should not get too far from our original theme without handling a matter…Thank you to Trump for finally doing away with some of that nonsense at the NEA. Gratitude is in order. And it is funny to watch sell-insulated liberals get triggered when the fallout of 1997 finally comes to affect them. That is how insulated they have made themselves from reality. They consider themselves entitled to your tax money and balk at the idea that you should be able to place any conditions on that. They do not understand how their press offers little more to the world than the website you are reading this on, a website which does not exist on government largess. Theirs is, in fact, a net negative.

All this can be insightful and make for fun conversations with normies.

There are more important things to focus on though as a writer, such as this question: How are you going to be inspired today to write the most powerful, truthful, mind-blowing thing you’ve ever written? How are you going to get that in front of the reader who needs to read it? Essentially by doing those two things, I am asking, “How are you going to change that person’s life for the better today?” And then, how do you wake up tomorrow and do the same thing again?

I am a writer.

I get it.

If you are a writer, you get it too.

Never has a better time existed to be a writer.

Welcome to this special, special time.

Only now, you are without any excuses.

Today is the day.

Sit, write, share, change a person’s life, perhaps even your own, wake up and do it again tomorrow.

Dear writer. Never has such a special time existed to write. Never.

Let the MSNBC and the Fox News talking heads debate the details of NEA funding. Such things are irrelevant to you and me. The more a person talks about it, the less relevant that person is as a writer. They are meta-writers, talking about writing, not writing. They are teachers, chattering and not doing.

You live in a time as a writer like one that has never existed.

Nothing can stop you from reaching your audience.

That means it’s times to get to work.

The post Uh-Oh, Trump Has Infuriated The Literary Magazines appeared first on LewRockwell.

Let’s say we’ve reached the moment everyone’s been afraid of. Disaster has struck so severely that the government declared martial law.

There might be chaos and pandemonium in the streets. Chances are people just aren’t as prepared as you are, and they might be willing to defy shelter-in-place orders to get what they need.

As much as this might seem like the time to load the shotgun and pull the curtains, there are always going to be crazies out there who think they can outgun Burt Gummer. Not to mention, the risk of someone breaking into your bug-out or bug-in location when you aren’t there!

If you’re worried about how to hide your supplies from would-be looters during martial law, or any other disasters, you might want to try some of the following.

Divide to Not Be Conquered

Regardless of the specific strategy you use to hide your supplies, the wise move is to split up your supplies into multiple batches. That way if a successful looter does get access to your wares, they might find some, but not all of them.

Ideally, you want your various stashes to have redundancy. Rather than putting all the toilet paper in one place, all the antibiotics in another, and the MREs all in one big box. Try putting a little of everything in each stash.

Unfortunately, having a stockpile of antibiotics, let alone two or more, is very hard.

Create a Sacrificial Stash

A good supply-hiding strategy also needs to deploy a little deceptive psychology. Let’s imagine a situation where Burt Gummer’s grandson is threatening to shoot his way in, or you’re simply away when would-be looters get at your shelter.

You can trust that they’ll keep searching until they find something. They’re not going to believe that you’ve been living on saltines and herbal tea.

So let’s say they find a 55-gallon barrel drum or a big tote with a modest handful of supplies. This small sacrificial stash makes it look like you’re already running desperately low. An inventory sheet with most everything checked off, and a bunch of empty cans and pouches in a nearby waste bin sells the perception that you’ve been foolishly overeating.

Don’t Hide Supplies in Light Items

Hiding supplies inside lightweight items, like a potted plant with a false bottom might sound brilliant on paper. In real life when someone is looking for anything of value they will quickly ransack, smash, and knock things over hoping to get lucky.

If they find one potted plant with a false bottom filled with MREs or a heavy flour canister loaded with 22 LR ammo, you can bet they’ll completely toss the place.

They might even start to get rough with your family members trying to get you to talk.

A Discrete Outdoor Storage Bunker

A storage supply bunker hidden outside away from the house or in an outbuilding gives you a great fallback stash. Even if your house does get ransacked and they find the supplies of value, you can still tape into the exterior stash to get you by.

Of course, anything stashed above ground outside has a real risk of spoiling or degrading. So, this is a strategy that’s better suited for things like fuel, and sealed MREs rather than canned goods or ammo.

The trick is to leave these supplies alone, and untouched until you absolutely have to access them. If you have a bunker hidden under the brush pile, or underneath some strawbales in the pole barn, you’ll leave a trail every time you affect the area.

Buried PVC Stashes

Imagine a scenario where looters get into your house, or they try to shoot their way in, and you have to evacuate.

Sealed PVC tubes buried in remote locations on your property give you fallback stashes you can use to either move on or take back your house when the time is right.

You can make all kinds of these loaded with non-perishable food and medical supplies. The ends of the PVC can be sealed watertight. If you bury it 2 feet deep in a shady spot, the tubes will be pretty much insulated from the effects of weather.

Inside an Exterior Liquid Propane Tank

If your rural property already has an outdoor propane tank, a second false tank can be a great exterior storage depot. It doesn’t have to be a massive tank that looks like it’s capable of heating the whole house.

You can usually find disused 100 or 200-gallon options by searching online for “Salvage Propane Tanks.” You could even go with an exterior fuel oil tank.

Attach some simple plumbing that runs a pipe into the ground, and you can position it just about anywhere near the house. Use a cutting torch to open a seam and turn it into a concealed door. A fresh coat of paint, and perhaps some repurposed gas service stickers hide everything in plain sight!

A False Rain Barrel

Assuming you’ve got a rain barrel system set up on your home, garage, or outbuildings, it’s easy to add another one or two. Instead of plumbing them into the system, you use them to store supplies.

Some dummy plumbing fixtures and hardware will make it look convincing enough to a looter. However, the inside of a rain barrel is going to get very hot on a warm summer day. So, it’s not the place to store anything remotely perishable or heat sensitive.

Secret Under-the-Floor Storage

Under-floor storage compartments are a great way to stash a fair amount of supplies out of sight. Especially if you don’t have a formal basement or a basement crawlspace.

After accessing the subfloor stringers, you can easily install a series of milk cartons using heavy-duty fasteners.

Then conceal the underside of the milk cartons in the basement or crawlspace.

Flooring and location are also important factors. Ideally, you want it to be a closet or a lesser-used part of your home. The area will sound different when anyone, like a looter, walks over it.

A closet floor makes it easy to plausibly hide the door seam under old shoes and lightboxes. Under the bed in the guest bedroom is also a good option.

When it comes to flooring type, a hardwood floor can be troublesome as it leaves a noticeable seam where the boards meet unevenly. A tile floor is easier. Especially if you have dark grout lines. With a carpeted floor, try to hide the door seam at the natural edges of the carpet.

Inside Heavy Furniture

The underside of a big couch, or a hide-a-bed that isn’t truly a hide-a-bed is another easy place to hide supplies in plain sight. This is a much better alternative to things like a fake potted plant.

Would-be looters might toss sofa cushions, zip or even cut into them. They might pick a couch to look under it. However, inspecting the frame where you can conceal shallow totes behind a thin sheet of furniture-grade particle board made from cheap lumber won’t look suspicious.

Read the Whole Article

The post Where To Hide Your Supplies During Martial Law appeared first on LewRockwell.