Feb 16

WE MUST NEVER FORGET THE 2004 CREEKSTONE FARMS EPISODE IN KANSAS

cows_deesWhat would happen if Americans got rid of government meat inspection? Would American consumers be then poisoned by tainted, rancid, rotten or adulterated meat on supermarket shelves? An episode from 2004 answers this question.

Since the early 1900s, federal law has required that all meatpacking companies that ship meat interstate be inspected by federal inspectors. This bureaucracy costs American taxpayers in excess of a billion dollars annually. Many critics have pointed out that the government’s “inspections” amount to little more than what consumers do on their own when they shop for meat. USDA inspectors simply sniff, poke and look at meat as it is being processed.

In 2003, the government of Japan announced that it would require all beef sold in Japan to be tested for “mad cow disease,” also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE. This of course goes beyond what American beef inspection requires. The official U.S. position on mad cow disease is that concern about the disease is mostly due to hysteria; this position was forged by heavy lobbying by the major U.S. beef processors, along with cattlemens organizations. (Note that I don’t necessarily disagree with this position.)

But if the Japanese wanted their beef to be certified as BSE-free, the rules of capitalism dictate that American beef providers should—in a free market—want to provide such certification. In 2004, a meatpacking plant in Arkansas City, Kansas sought to provide such BSE testing and certification. But the plant—operated by a small firm named Creekstone Farms—was stopped by the USDA. The USDA announced that Creekstone Farms was prohibited from doing any additional testing! The USDA’s actions caused the Kansas meat plant to lay off 150 of its 800 workers in 2005 and to place the rest on part-time status. (About 40 percent of Creekstone’s sales were to Japan.)

Why did the USDA prevent Creekstone Farms from testing its meat for mad cow disease? Probably because of back-room lobbying by the largest American meatpackers (Tyson, Smithfield, Swift, etc.), who viewed Creekstone’s BSE-certification efforts as a source of dangerous competition. The U.S. government denied this, claiming that Creekstone’s BSE-testing system (like Japan’s) wasn’t sufficient to detect mad cow disease with certainty in all animals younger than 30 months. Thus, according to the U.S. government, Creekstone’s additional testing would have given consumers a false sense of security.

Creekstone Farms acknowledged the imperfections of BSE testing. But the issue wasn’t how good the company’s (or any company’s) testing procedures were. The real issue was whether the federal government can deny an American business its right to do the best it can to satisfy its customers.

We must never forget the lesson of the Creekstone Farms episode. Although a decade has passed since this outrage, the episode proves that food safety is not guaranteed by government inspectors. True food safety stems from free-market competition between food providers. And government regulation is often a guise behind which consumers are made to accept goods and services of lower quality.

Feb 15

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE ESTIMATES THAT OBAMACARE WILL REDUCE TOTAL HOURS WORKED BY 1.5 TO 2 PERCENT

mhiker

In February 2014, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an overlooked report on the “Labor Market Effects of the Affordable Care Act.” The Report provided updates of earlier estimates, and by February 2014 the CBO was able to draw on more accurate data than the CBO had cited in its earlier reports.

CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor—given the new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial benefits some will receive.

The reduction in CBO’s projections of hours worked represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024.

Of course, the passage of time often reveals that government programs end up costing much more than politicians originally estimate. We predict that the CBO’s estimate of a 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent decline in total hours worked will turn out to be optimistic.

Feb 15

REGULATION OF EMPLOYMENT HAS KEPT YOUNG AND POOR PEOPLE FROM BEING GAINFULLY EMPLOYED

teen unemploymntThe chartmakers at “Political Calculations” have released a new graph showing “A Decade of Disappearing Teen Jobs” Political Calculations blame minimum wage laws for keeping teens from gainful employment. “As we see in the chart,” write the authors, “the practical effect of all the minimum wage hikes that occurred from 2007 through 2009 was to remove the jobs available for this portion of the U.S. civilian noninstitutionalized labor force.”

That is the result of a structural change in the U.S. economy, where changes in the laws mandating the amount of the minimum wage at the federal, state and local levels have made it too costly for employers with little ability to increase their revenues to continue to hire the members of the least educated, least skilled and least experienced portion of the U.S. workforce: Americans between the ages of 16 and 19. Their ability to generate revenue for the businesses who might employ them is too little to justify the cost of employing them at the governments’ mandated minimum wages.

Feb 14

Edward Snowden Reveals that NSA’s Surveillance Is Now Harming the American Economy by an Amount Larger than the NSA’s Budget

surveilcops Exiled U.S. surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden recently spoke to an audience at Harvard University, via videofeed from Russia. The occasion was the Harvard Institute for Applied Computational Science’s “Data Privacy Symposium” on January 23, 2015. Professor Bruce Schneier joined Snowden for an enlightening discussion.

Snowden pointed to published media reports showing that the NSA is now intercepting American products and services before they are exported to consumers overseas so that the NSA can implant various “Trojans,” and U.S.-government malware into digital products. This implantation of malware allows the NSA or other U.S. government agencies to track, surveil and monitor all users of American tech products. The practice is so widely known by foreign purchasers that they are increasingly avoiding American exported electronics.

According to Snowden, this increasing worldwide avoidance of American tech products and services has already cost American tech suppliers between 35 billion and 185 billion dollars—an amount larger than the NSA’s budgets. And these losses are just what are known and reported on the surface. Actual losses to long-term American tech viability are undoubtedly much greater.

Feb 13

UPDATE: WE HAVE CHANGED OUR DATE FOR PHOTOGRAPHING GLACIER NATIONAL PARK: New Date is September 13

Grinnell GlacierPreviously, we announced a volunteer research project in which we hope to record images of North American glaciers on the precise same dates every year. This research idea is something of a response to official government imagery showing glaciers such as the Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park appearing to melt rapidly in recent years. Those who call for more socialism to save humanity from manmade global warming often point to such imagery to bolster their “settled science” claims.

Official government websites provide suggestive images in which photos of glaciers taken decades ago are compared to photos of the same glaciers taken in recent hot summers. The government appears to be using trickery, in that no specific dates of the year are provided.

As every Montanan knows, glaciers and snowfields cover most of the northern Rockies throughout the winters and these glaciers and snowfields steadily melt throughout the summers. By showing a photo of a dwindling glacier taken on an extremely hot August day and comparing it to photos taken decades ago in the Spring, one can easily manipulate the emotions of the unsophisticated.

We do not deny that the glaciers in Glacier National Park have melted substantially over the past century.

We initially proposed July 24th—traditionally the hottest average date of most summers—as our annual date for photographing the glaciers of Glacier National Park. Upon reflection, however, we believe the project would be better conducted by taking photos of the glaciers ON THE DATE OF AVERAGE FIRST FREEZE in the region. This is because glaciers generally continue to melt throughout the late summers, long after the hottest days of summers.

According to the meteorologists at the Weather Underground, “In West Glacier, Montana, the average date for the first temperature below 32 degrees is Sept. 13.” (Note that it is likely that glaciers generally continue melting even after the first freeze of Autumn, but we have chosen September 13 for the sake of simplicity.) Remember that the point of this project is simply to record imagery on the same day of the year, year-after-year.

Feb 13

People Living in Socialist Hellhole Venezuela Deprived of Basic Medicines As Shelves Empty

sociallismTrusters of government (including trusters of government living in America) point to Venezuela as a socialist paradise. But an expose’ posted on “Oxy” reveals that Venezuelans are now without basic medicines due to Venezuela’s policies of price controls, central planning, single-payer slave-plantation healthcare administration, and government-monopoly licensing.

Feb 12

Isis: The New Enemy!

isis
brought to us by “Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives“:
http://spellingmistakescostlives.com/

The same guys who brought us the “Action Man: Battlefield Casualties” action figures:

http://www.spellingmistakescostlives.com/bethemeat/actionman.htm

Feb 11

Murray Rothbard on Social Security

RothbardThe great economist Murray Rothbard (1926-1995), in his exhaustive treatise “Man, Economy, and State,” briefly discussed Social Security (2nd ed.2001, pages 957-58):

Social security confiscates the income of wage earners, and then, most people presume, it invests the money more wisely than they could themselves, later paying out the money to the former wage earners in their old age. . . . Compelling everyone to transfer his funds to the government forces him to lose utility. Thus, even on its face, it is difficult to understand the great popularity of the social security program. But the true nature of the program differs greatly from the popular image. For the government does NOT invest the funds it takes in taxes; it simply spends them. . . . The cash, of course, can be obtained only by FURTHER taxation. Thus the public must pay TWICE for one payment of social security. The program is essentially one of making more palatable a general taxation of lower-income, wage-earning groups.

Feb 11

John Stossel on Spontaneous Order

stosselThe great libertarian TV journalist and commentator John Stossel is out with a brilliant essay.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2015/02/10/spontaneous-order-n1955526?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=

Stossel discusses the theory of spontaneous order: the notion that humans tend to create order in any chaotic setting, without being commanded to do so. In many respects, the debate over spontaneous order is the debate between freedom and tyranny. Trusters of the state tend to believe humans do not spontaneously order themselves without command; while libertarians tend to believe humans order themselves best without central planning.

Stossel describes how skaters at skating rinks spontaneously create order from chaos. Stossel then describes how increased central planning in modern America has dampened progress and made it much more difficult for people to accomplish monumental projects:

Eighty years ago, it took workers only 15 months to build the Empire State Building. But this century, using vastly superior construction equipment, building the new World Trade Center took 10 times as long. Eighty years ago, some trains ran faster than 100 miles per hour, but now even the “high-speed” Acela train averages only 90 miles per hour because government safety rules demand that American trains be heavier.

Feb 10

NBC’s Brian Williams Has Long History of Lying to Promote Government

surveilcopsBrian Williams, lead news anchor of the government-supported NBC news network, has taken a leave of absence after being caught exaggerating his roles in various state- and military-worshipping news stories. Dale Steinreich of Lewrockwell.com writes today (Feb. 10, 2015) to remind us that Brian Williams previously used news content generated by the Lewrockwell.com site without properly crediting the libertarian site.

NBC, like its sister networks MSNBC and CNBC, are branches of General Electric. The Washington Post revealed in 2009 that GE was actually the largest recipient of government bailout money during the 2008-09 economic crash. This was done in secret, apparently upon the grounds that GE’s financial services arm owned a pair of small Utah banks.
NBC has a long history of smearing and/or ignoring libertarian voices, and championing government expansion and intervention into almost all things from early childhood care and education to military deployment to medical care to climate regulation.