Here is a fascinating vignette from Reason TV: Whole Foods entrepreneur John Mackey seems to surprise Welch when he tries to explain why he sells products his customers want to buy, even though he doesn’t personally like such products. More important, when asked to list his libertarian influences, he includes Smith, Mill, Hayek, and Mises.

Gillespie interrupts and says, “How did you come across Mises? Because he’s, even today, among a lot of libertarians, he’s fairly obscure. Do you remember how you kind of stumbled across him?

Mackey: “In a lot of ways I think he’s the one that had the biggest impact on me. I loved his work. I just thought he was brilliant when I read him.”

Mackey then says his “awakening” came from reading a lot of libertarian books “voraciously.” He singles out Socialism and Human Action as excellent, and credits Mises for explaining how markets work. He goes on:

“Also, I don’t think von Mises and Hayek and the other Austrian economists have gotten enough credit for…their theory of the business cycle. I really do think we are experiencing…what Austrian business cycle predicts. If you print a lot of money and you send it through the economy you’ll have certain bubbles and those create market distortions and if the bubble’s big enough and it goes on long enough when it pops, it creates great harm in the society. I think that’s what we’re living through right now. That kind of bubble in the stock market and the real estate market.”

Then Gillespie changes the subject. But what’s most telling is he thought Mises was “obscure” among libertarians. If this was once true, and I do not believe it ever was, it’s not anymore. These days, when most people think of libertarianism, I am confident they think of the Mises Institute. Certainly all libertarians have heard of Mises, who is coming to dominate the economic thinking of this generation of libertarians. Good to see that Mackey, unlike some beltway types and neolibertarians, gives proper credit to the great Austrians and their theory of credit expansion.

At some point, the parent made the “mistake” of walking upstairs to look at some of the student-produced artwork. Eventually the teacher arrived and had a “fruitful” discussion with the parent, who left.

Unfortunately, the teacher who had been the parent’s original escort panicked when the visitor couldn’t be found. The administration was notified,  and at around 8:30 a.m. the children were herded into the gym, and lockdown protocols went into effect.

“Police called in the Chesmont Emergency Response Team [ERT], who were training Tuesday in the township, to assist in clearing the building,” reported the Chester County, PA Daily Local. It’s not clear whether the ERT — a paramilitary police unit equipped with Pentagon-issued toys — arrived in their nifty “Peacekeeper” armored vehicle.

The ERT was “assisted by three K-9 officers from North Coventry and Pottstown police departments,” continues the report. “Warwick Child Care locations on East Cedarville Road and Umer Street were both notified about the potential danger and were advised to go into lockdown.” The nearby Owen J. Roberts was also “also alerted to the situation,” but its security team — the slackers! — chose not to impose a lockdown on the student body.

Nor was this the limit of the official over-reaction: “South Hanover Street, between Route 724 and Cedarville Road, was shut down by fire police as officers from area police departments, the state police and the response team surrounded the building. Area residents, while not advised by police that it was necessary to do so, were staying inside their homes and away from the scene as the response team entered the building, guns raised, at about 10:30 a.m.”

Notice that this crack tactical team spent two hours dithering and skulking around the perimeter before entering the school. Had the parent whose innocuous behavior triggered this crackdown been an actual terrorist, he most likely would have finished his killing spree by the time the heroic, battle-ready ERT actually been on the scene.

Remember: Whenever a shooting rampage takes place, all the police are good for is drawing chalk outlines and stringing up the crime scene tape after the victims have been slaughtered.

At 11:14 — more than three hours after this exercise in police state absurdity began — the all-clear was given and the children were permitted to leave the gym.

“Because of our cooperation with the police department here and our safety team that was in place, no children were at risk,” insisted school administrator Dr. James Smock. In fact, the only “risk” the children faced that morning was a result of the school’s over-reaction, which resulted in a potentially dangerous visit by over-anxious, armed tax-feeders in camouflage.

Check out his petition to Bring The Troops Home Now!

As I explain in my book, it’s basic Austrian economics that governments tend to ignore capital expenses in favor of income. Joe, if you want to know where the roof money went, look at the salaries, benefits, pension funds, unions dues, and the huge amount of cash that goes from the taxpayers’ pockets to the teachers to the unions to the liberal Democratic politicians.

It is amazing that a so-called real conservative, a man of the 1994 (fake) Republican Revolution, is now touting the premier socialist institution in American, K-12 government schools.

On the bright side, Regis Philbin just rolled out a drive to raise money for failing Catholic schools.

From the book:

Many government schools are in ancient and decaying buildings which contain numerous environmental time bombs. These include lead, asbestos, mold and indoor air pollution. What you have to understand is that in any government enterprise, capital investment such as new buildings always takes a back seat to spending on income such as wages, benefits and pensions. Thus, the presence of old and unhealthful school buildings is not an accident. It’s the way things are in bureaucracies.

[Thanks to Christopher Kalabus]

The draft legislation instructs the GAO to conduct a thorough audit within a year of the law passing. Mr Paul and his supporters want to examine every line of the Fed’s balance sheet.

If this bill gets through without being hacked to pieces, I’m applying for a Senior Auditor position at the GAO .

There was a Saturday morning t.v. show when I was a kid in the late 70’s called Wonderbug about the adventures of 3 teenagers and an anthropomorphic beat-up, old dune-buggy named SCHLEP that would transform into the Wonderful Wonderbug, a magical supercar that would come to the rescue for the show’s protagonists whenever they got into trouble.  In any given episode, as one of the show’s signature shticks, the female lead, Susan, would come up with an idea to solve whatever dilemma they were facing, and said idea would be summarily rejected by the other two male leads; however, in the very next breath, the “brainy” male lead, Barry, would suggest as his own the very same idea that Susan had just come up with immediate and enthusiastic approval from the other male lead, C.C.—this all to the chagrin of Susan.

Well…

Several months ago, we were having what you might imagine was a typical, “What’s the world coming to?/Woe is me!/We’ve got to take our country back!/What’s become of ‘traditional values’” type of conversation in my conservative Lutheran church’s Sunday-School class regarding Governor Lynch’s having signed into law the legislation legalizing same-sex marriage here in New Hampshire.  After several minutes of this line of discussion, my wife and I piped in with the heretofore unconsidered thought that instead of seeking to overturn this one particular piece of legislation, we ought to instead question at the outset whether the state should have a role at any level in the religious institution of marriage and that perhaps we should instead see governmental licensing of marriage of any kind as an inherently bad idea. (These types of arguments can be compelling to Lutherans especially considering Martin Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms.)

Encouragingly enough, this line of thought seemed to spur on further discussion in several small groups after the class; in particular, I had a conversation with the chairman of the church’s Board of Elders who had been particularly adamant in the early part of the class with the “We ought to kick the bums outta office and get that law overturned” kind of thinking and had certainly never questioned the underlying assumptions of the state’s role in having to give its approval to a couple wishing to be married.  He never fully signed off on my ideas (E.g., he still defended the notion of having to get state permission and pay the state a fee to get married based on one of the state’s alleged grounds of preventing the spread of venereal diseases. “And what a success that’s been!” I pointed out to him. He laughed—as saying that lame notion out loud immediately made it sound as absurd as it is), but I could see his wheels turning.

Then, just this past week, after having been invited to be an elder at our church (if Laurence Vance knew me, he’d be proud of this fact), I attended my first Board of Elders meeting with that very same elder still serving as chairman.  Somehow the same-sex marriage issue came up again at the meeting with several elders groaning about the country’s moral failings, etc., just like in that earlier Sunday School class; well lo and behold, the chairman spoke up saying that he had recently shared an idea that he had come up with on this issue with a co-worker who was also upset about same-sex marriage in New Hampshire.  His idea was that churches, NOT the state, should be in charge of marriage, having to get licensed by/get permission from/pay a fee to the state to get married was absurd on its face, and that governments should have no role in the matter to begin with (adding that at best they could recognize secular civil unions)—he even reported that this notion was compelling to the co-worker he shared this idea with.

If there had been a video camera focused on me to capture my reaction and feeling as if this guy had done an end run on me on my idea, I would have looked with frustration into the camera, shrugged my shoulders, and shook my head, just like Susan on Wonderbug used to do when the others would take credit for her thoughts.  And to make matters worse (for me and my ego that is), the others in the room seemed to really like this guy’s thought—it just seemed to make a lot of sense to the others in the room (and you could see all of their wheels turning too).

But of course, I have to credit many others, including LRC and all of the greats associated with you for my anti-state, anti-war, pro-market ways of thinking; and it’s quite likely that I directly stole the thought from one of your columnists or blog entries to begin with!

And besides, the real victory in the whole situation was the fact that in some small way, the criminal fog known as “the state” has lost its grip on one of our fellow men.  Hooray!

(Thanks to Marc Gallagher)

A Democrat AG wannabe is up in arms because she finally figured out that the text of a 4-year-old approved amendment:

“This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”

can legitimately be read as including marriage itself. She’s absolutely appalled at the possibility that people might decide for themselves who to marry without the state of Texas approving those decisions and forcing that approval on others at gunpoint. Also entertaining is the current Republican AG’s response: “The Texas Constitution . . . is entirely constitutional.”

When I heard this, I was suspicious of whether there really was an outbreak of swine flu on campus, but there was just no data one way or the other. Now there is: the world-renowned Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia routinely tests patients for rhinovirus (the common cold) and H1N1. They found that most of their patients with flu-like symptoms had a cold, not swine flu.

But, there’s more…

Doctors and researchers are now worried that this is a new, more severe strain of rhinovirus (second verse, same as the first). It seems to me that because hospitals and doctors are seeing a rise in the number of patients with respiratory illnesses, and schools are closing due to low attendance, that the experts think this cold is more severe than normal colds.

This, again, is highly suspect reasoning. Schools, doctors, public health bureaucrats, and just about everyone else is recommending that people with a respiratory illness should not go to work or school and, instead, should see a doctor to be treated for the flu. So, while parents may normally send their child to school or choose to save time and money by no taking their little one to the doctor at the first sniffle, they are now petrified of the swine flu and taking all precautions. Thus, the increase in school closings and hospital admissions may simply be an unintended consequence of our leaders’ fearmongering.

Two more points. For anyone who thinks that science is not political, consider this quote:
A fledgling, highly controversial theory suggests that circulating rhinovirus can somehow delay the spread of influenza – one more reason, Mackay [a leading researcher in emerging viruses] said, to increase the testing and study of rhinovirus.

And, consider that many students across the nation have been given Tamiflu for what may very well have been the common cold and, as the article states, “Tamiflu…is useless against rhinovirus.” Good for Roche, bad for everyone else.

(Thanks to Travis Holte)

“More death and destruction came about from the Mengistu regime [in Ethiopia] after he declared total war against the Eritrean secessionists.  ‘The total death estimate of 80,000 civilians and military personnel for 1979-80 includes victims of the massive air raids that were used as reprisals, but does not include those who must have died as a result of the government’s subsequent disruption of the traditional way of life.’”

BIG BROTHER QUIZ FOR NEW SCHOOL PARENTS: OFFICIALS LAUNCH 83-POINT PROBE INTO FAMILIES’ LIVES

Parents of five-year-olds starting school have been sent an 83-point questionnaire that probes personal details of their lives. It asks whether their children tell lies or bully others, and if they steal at home or from shops. Parents are questioned over whether they have friends, if they can speak freely with others in their family and how well they did at school themselves.

The form also delves into family routines, questioning whether they eat takeaways and if the children drink water with their meals. Thousands of families in Lincolnshire were sent the forms as part of trials of a ‘Healthy Child Programme’ being developed in Whitehall. The Department of Health wants all families in England and Wales to fill in similar forms.

[Thanks to Travis Holte]