Free Republic

This book is dedicated to an anonymous member of Spain's Secret Police. On January 27, 1960, during a brief encounter on a quiet back street in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, I asked him for advice on how best to avoid any problems in the land of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. The advice he gave me has served me well for forty years. He said there was only one way to avoid troubles with the authorities: "Make yourself invisible." J. J. Luna

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been the subject of such vile attacks from the left that many forget that they once had praise, not vitriol, before she became John McCain’s running mate. After Palin won her election in Alaska in 2006 she was the darling of the Democrats because she bested sitting Governor Frank Murkowski. She not only beat Murkowski, she sent packing many of his pals in the Republican “corrupt bastards club.” Smiles on the faces of Democrats were seen all around. Some of Murkowski’s buddies even made their way to the penitentiary, thanks to Palin. She meant...

http://files.libertyfund.org/files/2200/Mises_1459_EBk_v4.pdf Planning for Freedom http://www.fee.org/pdf/books/Planned_Chaos.pdf Planned Chaos http://mises.org/etexts/anticap.pdf The Anticapitalistic Menality http://mises.org/Books/bureaucracy.pdf Bureaucracy http://mises.org/Books/og.pdf Omnipotent Government (The Rise of the Total State and Total War)

From Slide 1: "The purpose of this material is to educate citizens about various key aspects of the US electricity grid, and the electrical power source choices we have. This is a complicated matter, so I have tried to strike a balance between being too technical and too simplified . . . "

Picture and sound. About 11 minutes. A few events from our FReeper convention in Washington, D.C.

Despite a number of differences I have with Ayn Rand on issues of religion and philosophy, her 1957 magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," definitely steered me away from the leftist upbringing I had, and introduced me to the world of conservative ideas and authors: Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, Isabel Paterson, and many others. Universally panned by literary critics of the day, "Atlas" was, nevertheless, a bestseller in 1957, and continued to sell about 100,000 copies a year for 51 consecutive years. 52 years later -- just after the inauguration of zerobama -- "Atlas" has apparently tripled its sales...

New York – Saturday, July 4, from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. at South Street Seaport and Pier 17

General Motors was once not only the world’s greatest and most prosperous automobile company but the world’s greatest and most prosperous manufacturing company, indeed, the world’s greatest and most prosperous company of any kind. Its success, wealth, and economic power, were symbolic of the success, wealth, and economic power of the United States. General Motors has now perished, brought down by a kind of philosophical and economic tapeworm that consumed the company from within. The economic tapeworm was the United Automobile Workers union, which transformed the company into a carcass upon which it could feed while tying GM’s hands and...

PDF downloads of complete works by Ludwig von Mises, including "Human Action" and "Socialism." A few of the works are in e-book format and can be read online. Interestingly, there is also an MP3 file of Mises speaking at Princeton University in 1958 (the lecture can also be read online at the same site). The audio is not pristine and Mises has a heavy accent, making the file a bit challenging to listen to. The lecture is entitled "Liberty and Property." Download the MP3 at: http://www.mises.org/libprop.asp

The first New York City Tea Party on February 28th was attended by a few hundred people; the second Tea Party on April 15th was attended by a few thousand. At times it resembled a Palin rally, the crowd chanting "USA! USA!", "Take It Back!", and "We Are America!" Naturally, I'm eagerly looking forward to the third event on July 4th. Given that NYC is a lefty stronghold, these rallies don't bode well for the Commander-in-Thief.

INTRODUCING OURSELVES We are disturbed by the current widespread anti- technology sentiment. We are disturbed by the energy crisis that need not have been. We are disturbed by many signs of the times, such as: • Enrollment in engineering and the exact sciences is steadily decreasing at most American universities. Science and technology have become dirty words in some part of the young generation. So has the word business. • The welfare budget for New York State alone is now bigger than the entire budget of NASA. • Vast riches of oil in the US lie unexplored and untapped, while...

The last occupant of the White House often gave the impression of having an inadequate command of the English language and of experiencing great difficulty in speaking in grammatical sentences and using words in accordance with their proper meaning. The present occupant of the White House speaks impeccable English, with crisp, clear pronunciation. Nevertheless, his actual knowledge—of economics, of the meaning of individual rights, and of the nature of government—appears to lag far behind that of his bumbling predecessor. Furthermore, while Bush may be accused of disregarding the rights of foreign terrorists at war with the United States, Obama is...

A few photos of the anti-stimulus tea-party held this afternoon at City Hall Park, lower Manhattan.

Mark Simone just announced on his radio show that legendary broadcaster Paul Harvey has passed away. He was 91 years old. No details yet.

The reason that stimulus packages cause a further loss of capital is that their starting point is the consumption of previously produced wealth. That wealth is part of the capital of the business firms that own it. The stimulus programs offer money in exchange for this wealth and capital. But the money they offer does not come from the production of any comparable wealth by the government or those to whom it gives money—wealth which has had to be produced and sold and thus put into the economic system prior to the withdrawal that now takes place. The starting point...

Our mixed economy rests on the effective discarding of the United States Constitution, which placed severe limits on government power and thus stood as a bulwark in defense of an economic system that was almost one of laissez-faire. The Constitutional protections were discarded by a process of pretending that the Constitution could somehow “grow” or “evolve,” which actually meant nothing other than choosing to ignore it. ...The present symbolism depicting the relationship between the government and the citizen is that the head of the government, the President of the United States, has at his disposal, with no objection from anyone,...

Limbaugh is a major thorn in the side of the Left. They need to remove him, because his criticisms serve to slow their advance and might even help to stop them in their tracks. That’s why I’m for Limbaugh and I too hope Obama fails at every turn in his efforts to expand the powers of government.

This is the first in a series of articles that seeks to provide the intelligent layman with sufficient knowledge of sound economic theory to enable him to understand what must be done to overcome the present financial crisis and return to the path of economic progress and prosperity.

"Let us first ask ourselves the question: Can money be organized under the freedom principle? Can we have a free market in money as well as in other goods and services? What would be the shape of such a market? And what are the effects of various governmental controls? If we favor the free market in other directions, if we wish to eliminate government invasion of person and property, we have no more important task than to explore the ways and means of a free market in money." Murray N. Rothbard

Summers apparently does not see, or if he does see, does not care, that in presenting his proposal for redistribution, what he is urging is armed robbery on a massive scale. That is the essence of any policy of “redistribution,” whether advocated by Summers and Obama or by Lenin, Stalin, or Mao. http://www.georgereisman.com/blog/