It's funny how people will make excuses for their own actions and inactions, but won't admit the truth.

If you start pushing back on that your circle of friends begins to shrink -- and quite quickly at that.

But it's not because you're wrong -- it's because people are uncomfortable with reality, and you're refusing to put away the "real" card.  You're removing the Facebook patina of perfection, of hedonism, of narcissism and self-delusion.

What am I talking about?  The fact that each and every one of you reading this, along with myself, consent to all of the below list each and every day:

• Every single act of felony assault when a cop in Ferguson points a weapon at a peaceful protester and is not immediately arrested and charged with the crime of assault with a deadly weapon.
• Every single act of altering the timing of yellow lights to generate intentional bogus violations that cannot be evaded due to the laws of physics and, when you are entrapped by happenstance of your presence, you must pay not a legitimate fine for misbehavior but instead literally have funds extorted from you.
• The violations of your Fourth Amendment rights on the road, in the airport and on the sidewalk in NY, Texas, Florida, Tennessee and elsewhere.
• The refusal of our government to recognize your fundamental right to life, that is the right to self defense through the keeping and bearing of the only device known to man that is effective in that regard, everywhere and anywhere without permit, license or other constraint up until you actually commit a criminal act by misusing same.
• The bankster fraud games in Jefferson County Alabama that are still costing people doubled (or more) water and sewer bills and will forever into the future, featuring court-proved acts of bribery.
• The bankster fraud games on Wall Street (including selling securities they self-described internally as "vomit" to people just like you through their pension funds and elsewhere) that caused the housing bubble and subsequent collapse.  Despite literal trillions of intentionally-bogus securities being sold and millions of Americans being dispossessed of their homes and personal wealth not one bankster went to prison for any of it.
• The bankster fraud games on Wall Street that are still going on with derivatives, high-frequency trading and more, all of which has the effect of counterfeiting the currency you carry and spend on a daily basis -- in effect committing what should be prosecuted as felony grand theft against you and counterfeiting against the nation each and every day.
• Hospitals billing people $10,000 for a $100 test without disclosing the price before the test is given, in many cases because the patient is unconscious and thus can't give meaningful consent, then suing to collect a ridiculously bogus charge.
• Hospitals billing a woman $60,000 for two $100 vials of scorpion anti-venom while preventing you from getting that anti-venom from anywhere else through threat of criminal penalty.
• Being forced to buy an "insurance" product (Obamacare) that isn't actually insurance under threat of government force and confiscation of your funds (theft again.)
• Being sold ownership in property that you never actually own as you must rent it forever from the local and state government, and despite this fraud entire industries continue to use the word "sell."
• Having your constitutionally-guaranteed freedom to travel trampled by demands that you be "licensed" to simply move your person and personal property by the ordinary means of the day.
• Having your 4th Amendment right to be left alone trampled by a government agency that lied directly to Congress about what they were doing, falsified the justification for same (that it "caught terrorists" when in fact it actually caught none), got caught in both lies (which is a criminal offense, incidentally) and yet nobody went to prison nor has the program been stopped and the data collected under said false pretense been purged.
• Having 3-4% of your purchasing power stolen each and every year on a compounded basis on average -- sometimes more, some less, but never, not even once since 1980, has it not happened for as little as three consecutive months.
• Ridiculous bloat in the public schools you fund such that half or more of the money spent, and thus a huge chunk of your property taxes (which you pay either in rent or directly if you "own") is literally stolen from you and given to people who perform no necessary service.  In other words, you willingly allow yourself to be robbed each and every year.
• Ridiculous bloat in Universities such that your children get robbed again to the tune of 3, 4, 5 even 10x what it should cost to obtain a "post-secondary" education.
• Injury upon injury is also heaped upon your (adult) children, in concert with the previous point, through the inability to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy, declaring by statute that this "obligation" has literally the same status as child support before the law.
• A Federal Government structure that, in concert with the above and more, literally steals about 2/3rds of the funds that flow into it via taxes and doles them out as patronage.  In other words you have 2/3rds of any taxes you pay being not put to the use claimed but instead are stolen, and all of this is done only because the government implies the threat of using guns against you if you refuse to pay - an act that by any reasonable measure is a felony committed against every one of you.

Need I go on?  I could literally write a book on the outrages, frauds and thefts you suffer on a daily basis.  Hell, I have -- I've written close to 8,500 such examinations and instances since 2007.  Through all of this and more over the last decade you've seen your cost of living go up dramatically while the median family income has not improved at all.  Not only has the technological advancement of the last 10 years, which should have resulted in you obtaining more purchasing power been stolen the theft didn't stop there; it is in fact even greater!

We all know what the counter-argument is: I voted for someone and he or she may have even promised to change some of this, but didn't.  What am I supposed to do about it?

Ah, that's the excuse you see.  And it's probably a good one -- certainly it is in your mind, and it might even be objectively.

But that doesn't change the fact that you consented and continue to consent each and every day!

Here's the thing -- even if the alternative(s) involve either intentionally driving yourself into privation or taking illegal action you still consented.  That the alternative is distasteful enough for you to refuse to act on it, irrespective of the reason, doesn't change the fact that you have given consent to all of the above and will do so again tomorrow.  It does not change the fact that each and every morning you arise from your sleep and once again give that consent.  You did so intentionally this morning, you will do so of your own free will tomorrow, and you will continue to do so in all probability every day next week, month and year.

Do remember that in 1776 the alternatives to that very same consent -- an act of theft via taxation for the purpose of grift that was in fact less than 1/10th of what we consent to today -- were very illegal.  In fact the alternatives to that consent involved committing acts of vandalism, intentional destruction and theft of other people's property, arson and more, up to and including murder and treason.

You stand here in this place called America this morning because a bunch of people heard all the arguments you've raised about how they really should just go along with it because despite protesting via voting, writing letters to the editor, posting bills on trees and other forms of dissent they weren't getting anywhere, and the remaining alternatives that were available to them had potential (indeed, even likely) costs that were too high.  

Privation, prison, even death.

They did it anyway.

Many of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence and those who took actions subsequent to it in fact suffered privation, imprisonment or both and some of them died.

This is not advocacy for violence, by the way.

It is, however, an insistence that you, personally, each and every day, admit that you, personally, are consenting to every one of the above outrages and more because you refuse to stop them.  It is an insistence that you be honest with yourself, your children, your friends and neighbors.  It is an insistence that you not call something rape of one's dignity, civil rights and finances when in fact what happened is consensual sex.  It is an insistence that you hold your head high and take credit for what you have in fact done and allowed to continue, each and every day.

Honesty is the first requirement of a civilized and rational people.

Are you ready to be honest with yourself today, or will you instead choose the worst sort of lie -- lying to yourself and those closest to you?

Let's just list a few reasons, shall we?

• Belief in "suppression" of "technologies" from 100mpg carburetors to "free" energy sources.  I believed in the so-called "vapor" carb and suppression of it once.  I was 13.  I tried to reproduce one (on an old lawnmower engine) and failed.  It was several years later that I took chemistry and physics and then understood why the claims were lies; specifically, the temperature of combustion and exhaust (in Kelvin) defines the maximum theoretical efficiency of any heat engine, the coefficient of drag of a vehicle can be measured, and given those two figures plus the amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline the maximum possible fuel economy can be trivially computed.  Here's the problem -- this sort of thing was "reported" in various non-kooky places, none of which bothered with trivial fact-checking based on physical laws. If you think this is something new or has gone away neither is the case; I just got into it with another of those screamers on Twitter yesterday and ultimately blocked him.  If you are in this group then you are actively harming the search for real and sustainable answers; you are exactly the sort of loon that buys into the crap Obama and others spew when it comes to energy, and since behind every unit of GDP is a unit of energy you are the problem, in large part, when it comes to the challenges facing our nation.
  
  
• Belief that making borrowing easier will make something more affordable.  By definition this is impossible; not only does all borrowing come with interest (so by definition such borrowing makes something more expensive) basic economics tells you that when money chases goods or services prices rise.  Whether the subject is cars, college or houses borrowing will never make affordability better irrespective of the terms offered.
   
• Belief that the government "needs to do more" whether it be by taxing or spending that which it doesn't have.  If you believe that your federal, state or local government should "float another bond" or "tax the rich" you are a damned idiot. I have already presented the math on this -- we could literally give away enough income (from tax revenue) to replace most of our social programs and still cut all federal taxes by 30% and run a $400 billion a year surplus!  In short most of the money that goes into Washington DC is stolen instead of going where the people say it goes -- it's just stolen legally.  The same is true at the state and local levels.
  
  
• Belief that any sort of deficit spending is ever anything other than destruction of your buying power (that is, it's a net loss) or that the issue of said "bonds" are in fact borrowing instead of said intentional and immediate destruction of your purchasing power.  If you don't understand this then you either have intentionally refused to think or you're incapable of it.  Seriously incapable -- like at the level of being unable to balance your own checkbook or make change for a $20 at the store in your head.  If you're incapable of managing your own affairs why should you have the ability to vote and if you're intentionally refusing to think why do you think you deserve anything other than being financially abused?

Let's cut the crap shall we?  What we face in this country is coming as a direct result of our own refusal to face facts and figures head-on, calling those conspiracy nuts that argue against the laws of physics what they are -- lunatics.  At the same time we refuse to call those in Congress and on Main Street that believe there is a "something for nothing" pot of gold to be found in monetary manipulation and bond issues -- that is, spending in deficit no matter how it is couched what they are -- thieves.

For exactly how long should someone continue to bang their head against the wall?  I'm perfectly fine with any sort of debate, provided we're holding that debate in a world where 2 + 2 sums to 4.  As soon as you try to claim it's 6 I walk off in disgust; at that point you're either stupid, ignorant or lying.

If you wish to argue that what I should write about is how to prosper in a world where theft is a standard business model and political system that is, I suppose, a valid position to take.  But there are thousands of people who write from exactly that perspective every single day and offer those opinions.  You can find them all over the Internet and on the TeeVee.  I choose not to engage on those terms because I find the base premise repugnant.

One of the privileges of being a slave to others for a couple of decades and then running a company is that I don't have to blow people in order to get by any more.  I can choose to proceed only on terms that I find agreeable, and if nobody finds my contribution to the debate worth reading then the market of ideas will decide on its own.  I'm ok with this, but it seems many of those who read my column are not and think they can goad me into participating on their terms.

In a word: Nope.

So let me restate the subject line: We deserve what we are getting from our Federal, State and Local Governments and we further deserve what we're getting from the banksters, the "high frequency" rip-off machine and all of the rest of the Ponzi crap that pervades our system of finance.  

We deserve it because we not only tolerate it we demand it in the infantile expectation that if we "go along to get along" we'll get our piece of it and "our piece" will be big enough to not care that the majority of the nation's citizens will get stomped into dust as a consequence.

Well, you're free to do that; we still have freedom of expression in the United States, at least in theory.

I simply refuse to participate on your terms.

From the "speech" I posted (that no High School or College would ever ask me to give) -- but a bit more direct and to-the-point.

This is specifically aimed at all the young people who go along to get along, who do the minimum they can get by with, who suck off those around them (whether it be parents, boyfriends, girlfriends or otherwise) and who refuse to exhibit the basic principle of never give up; get stomped on in the ladder of life but make them mash your fingers to bloody stumps -- never, ever let go or stop trying to eat THEM instead.

Contemplate this folks:

You are here because one sperm won and millions of others lost.  Some of them were lazy and never had a chance.  But even of the ones that did their level damndest best, nearly all of them lost -- and "lost" means they found the door barred and no amount of effort mattered because they were not first.  Nonetheless they did not give up and fought literally until death.

When you were born you screamed and fought to get air.  Had you not you would have died right there, minutes after birth.

When, where, why and how did you ever get the idea that life is any different than what your primordial experience consisted of? Anyone that told you otherwise or silently let you believe otherwise throughout your life is wrong.

If you think life should be "fair" then you may as well blow your own brains out right now, so as to return the sperm that won to the same state as the millions that lost.

THAT WOULD BE "FAIR."

It's also bullshit and you know it.

So cut the crap and deal with the universe as it is.

You're good at something.  In fact, you're almost-certainly best at something.

Figure out what it is and then give it everything you got.

Make those who wish to best you do so only by defeating you when you have given everything you have, and if that happens (and it will) then learn how you were beaten, lick your wounds, add nourishment to your mind and body as required and adjust your aim so as to attack your next endeavor harder, more-precisely and with even more tenacity than the last.

How, where, and for what you fight for is up to you.  But make no mistake -- every single day you consciously decide to get off your ass and put calories down the pie hole and crap out the waste your body produces.  You consciously choose to fight and because you win (and live) other things lose (and die.)

That's reality, it's life, it's how the universe is, it's not fair and it's not supposed to be fair.

Simply put the only way you ever truly lose is when you give up.

A few days ago I penned an essay entitled How Allegedly-Reasonable People Wind Up Labeled BS Artists, in which I went after Paul Craig Roberts on his claim (circling the conspiracy-minded like a hive full of angry hornets) that the Fed had "secretly" bought up $140+ billion in Treasuries in Belgium.

I pointed out that if you're going to make such a claim then you are effectively claiming that The Fed has committed and is committing bank fraud on a continuing basis -- so just come out and say it.

So what did he write as a follow-up?  A couple of days ago he claimed this:

In response to our account of the mysterious large rise in Belgium’s Treasury purchases http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/05/12/fed-great-deceiver-paul-craig-roberts/ , it was suggested that the transaction would show up on the Fed’s balance sheet. However, the Fed is under no obligation to show the transaction.

Gee, who "suggested" that Paul?  Got a problem with attribution over there?

Paul goes on to talk about GAAP standards and the claim that a corporation does not have to itemize and disclose the details of "any event that represents less than 5% of its assets."

Ah, but that's not the whole story, you see.  The reason is that The Fed has statutory requirements in its operation; specifically, the Fed is barred from lending against an obligation of a foreign government.  (10A(2))

There are a number of other restrictions as well.  Swap lines are legal because the obligation is in US Dollars, and must be repaid in dollars.  If the swap had to be repaid in Euros, for example, it would be illegal because the Euro is an obligation of a foreign government.  That would result in The Fed taking currency risk -- an act that is explicitly against the law.

Now there is a fly in the ointment, of course, in that if you lend against a US Obligation that happens to be somewhere other than in the US you might have trouble seizing the collateral if the government involved disappears out from under you.  

But the fact remains that if you're going to argue that The Fed is engaged in some secret set of transactions that are questionable at best, and quite-possibly flatly illegal, then show your work.

Oh, and don't point to the Flow of Funds statement (the Fed Z1) either -- especially when you simply make things up that aren't actually there.  Anyone who's read me for any length of time knows damn well that I go over that thing (although I freely admit to not going over every single line) on a quarterly basis.  It is important to note that the Z1 is an attempt to capture all credit market flows that come into or touch US institutions.  

But wait -- Paul pointed to an alleged change that facially appears to sort of validate his thesis, right?

Wrong.

The line Paul cites ("Credit Market Borrowing") is a rate change, not a level, and is both seasonally adjusted and annualized.  

The level (that is, total amount) of "Rest of World" exposure as of last report among entities The Fed tracks in the US (2013/Q4) was 2,889,455, or $2,889 billion.  That is an advance of $64.9 billion in actual dollars over the last quarter (Fed table Z1/Z1/LA264104005.Q), not $142 billion. 

So no, Paul, what you claimed is not "hidden" in there.  How desperate do you have to be to scour a document that you ought to be familiar with and then take a SAAR (that is, seasonally-adjusted annualized rate of change!) figure and try to claim that it's a one-quarter difference and thus "this is where it might have been hidden"?

In short:

In addition, since Paul insisted on trying to defend a blown thesis with something that looks good but doesn't pass the 15 second smell test (if you know what you're looking at) he managed to get me to spend another 15 seconds reading some of his other material while I was looking for something that I could fact-check.

That was unfortunate (for him), because I ran across this recent missive of his:

Not even Japan and Germany posed a threat to the US. Neither country had any prospect of invading the US and neither country had any such war plans.

Let’s assume Japan had conquered China, Burma, and Indonesia. With such a vast territory to occupy, Japan could not have spared a single division with which to invade the US, and, of course, any invasion fleet would never have made it across the Pacific. Just as was the fate of the Japanese fleet at Midway, an invasion fleet would have been sitting ducks for the US Navy.

Assume Germany had extended its conquests over Europe to Great Britain, Russia and North Africa. Germany would have been unable to successfully occupy such a vast territory and could not have spared a single soldier to send to invade America. Even the US superpower was unable to successfully occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, countries with small land areas and populations in comparison.

So the argument appears to be (again, left unsaid but broadly-hinted at) that we shouldn't have entered WWII at all.  We shouldn't have done anything when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  We had no dog in the fight.  The Japanese invasion of China would have ultimately stopped there of its own weight. We had no right to do anything except protest loudly after Pearl was immolated by Japanese bombs.

Same with Germany and Hitler.  We had no right to interfere.  If the entire European Continent was left speaking German and every single Jew was rounded up and exterminated from Russia's border to the Atlantic, we still had no right to interfere. Leave aside obligation; we're talking about whether it would be correct on a moral and ethical basis to come to someone else's aid in that circumstance.  Of course we all make these decisions without the benefit of hindsight at the time we make them (and did then) but what Paul appears to be arguing is that in the fullness of time when the facts are known if we could go back and do it again we shouldn't.

Really?  You're going to piss on the grave of one of my Uncles who served in WWII, along with the grave of my father who would have gone to fight but was barred from doing so because he had TB and they wouldn't take him?  Never mind all of those who went to fight and never came home.

Paul goes on to reference Ukraine, which I suspect is what prompted his missive in the first place.  I just had an interesting call yesterday afternoon; Press TV wanted a comment from me on the Ukraine situation. I wasn't available for a formal interview but I did give them one over the phone. I suspect they were looking for something simple in a 30 second sound-bite.  What they got was something else entirely; who knows if they ran it.

See, Ukraine is not a simple situation and trying to distill it down into "US Bad, Russia Good" or "US Good, Russia Bad" is intellectually dishonest -- and that's being kind.

So what I attempted to lay out in the short time I had (and I might have failed simply due to the limits of time) is that:

• The US has clearly been interfering in political affairs in Ukraine, and has no right to be there doing so.  That's a "bad."
   
• Russia has clearly been interfering in political affairs in Ukraine, and has no right to be there doing so.  That's also a "bad."
   
• The United States had its head firmly planted in its ass when it failed to take into account the fact that Russia had, in Crimea, its only deep-water 12 month naval port. To believe they would simply walk away from that is both unreasonable and stupid.
  
  
• Russia, and the United States, are both refusing to recognize the right of a people to choose their government including its replacement or dishonor as they direct.  That very right is the foundation of the United States and as such our abuse of same is especially galling, but human rights do not have political borders -- therefore the same charge applies to Russia.
  
  
• Ukraine, on its own volition, entered into a vassal state agreement with Russia where it obtained single-source energy supplies at below market rates, essentially taking welfare from Russia.  It is beyond stupid to believe that this was an actual "gift"; there is always a price associated with same and if you're going to act like you have a right to some other nation's resources by other than a free-market purchase at market prices don't be surprised when that quid-pro-quo shows up at your front door -- in a tank.

There was more, but I think you get the idea.  This isn't a simple situation and neither side is "right."  Arguably the worst part of it is that Ukraine itself has acted in ways contrary to its own best interest when it came to energy flows and has put itself in a box from which there is no easy or quick escape.  Entitlement mentality is lethal not only among individuals but nations as well; there is always a price exacted.

I think the situation over in Ukraine sucks and because there is no simple answer it has a particular quality to its sucking that could quite-easily lead to some really ugly outcomes, including a (for real, with lots of bullets flying) civil war that has the risk of spreading beyond the nation itself.

War sucks -- on that point PCR and I agree.  I also have grave concerns and issues with sending our troops into any sort of combat where the goal and rules of engagement are other than "kill anything that moves until the other side sues for peace."  In my view if you're not doing it that way then you're not justified in going at all, and yes, I understand that this means that a lot of civilians will die.  

Now let's deal with that point -- civilian deaths -- because Paul seems to think that this is an argument against war. Indeed, he leads his piece with:

Did you know that 85 to 90 percent of war’s casualties are non-combatant civilians? That is the conclusion reached by a nine-person research team in the June 2014 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The deaths of soldiers who are fighting the war are a small part of the human and economic cost. Clearly, wars do not protect the lives of civilians. The notion that soldiers are dying for us is false. Non-combatants are the main victims of war.

Nope.  Those people are not victims.  They're legitimate targets.  I reach this conclusion predicated on our Declaration of Independence, a document that lays forth principles that I accept as factual.

To the point, I accept the following as natural laws:

• All persons have unalienable rights as a consequence of being human. Governments do not bestow rights because you cannot bestow that which you do not first possess.  Governments can only protect or disabuse individual rights.
  
  
• Those rights include life, liberty and pursuit (but not guarantee) of happiness.
  
  
• Governments are instituted among populations with and by the consent of the governed for the explicit and sole legitimate purpose of securing those rights.  That is, government only has one legitimate purpose -- to protect and secure individual rights, providing the means and forum for redress of wrongs that one individual commits against another. 

The simple fact remains that if you honor the premise that all governments only exist with the consent of the governed then there are no true innocents in a war except for infants and children and the responsibility for their casualty falls on the shoulders of their parents as the negligent parties because by definition if you live in a land as a citizen you are responsible for allowing the government of that land to exist and act beyond its just powers.  If that government does something evil and unacceptable and you get killed as a consequence when war breaks out that's part and parcel of your dereliction of the duty that comes with citizenship and is the price of your decision to sit in silence while said outrages take place instead of putting a stop to them.

Sleeping while on duty is a good way to get yourself killed whether you're in the military or not.

Perhaps the risk of you getting killed as a direct and proximate consequence of your gross negligence might wake you up to your responsibility to not allow a government to continue to exist that undertakes any actions beyond the just boundary of defending individual rights!

The lesson we ought to learn from this centers on making sure we don't make those sorts of mistakes in other places, both now and in the future.  Dependence is bad.  Single-source dependence is really bad, especially when coupled with implicit or explicit subsidy.  As I have previously noted in my writing on this matter so-called "trade" as a sop to mollify what could otherwise turn into a military excursion does not work when we're talking about single-source, non-market-based "trade."  That is in fact the state of being a vassal and when you finally reject the other party and try to tell him "get out!" (irrespective of how and why) the guns are rather likely to come out simply because the other guy sees this as your violation of what he believes was a bargain; you got the benefit you negotiated for and then screwed him.  Since he can't take recourse to the courts in your nation and in his he can't enforce his judgment that leaves him with only recourse to guns.  (As an aside, isn't it interesting how this is the same situation that arises with various "prohibition" style items within a nation?)

It's easy to find a way to twist and distort so as to make a claim -- whether it has to do with war or whether it is something more mundane, such as trying to claim a seasonally adjusted and annualized figure is in fact a single-quarter change in level.

However, both wind up being, on even cursory examination, no better than trying to claim that 2 + 2 = 6.

There is one certain way to make sure everyone knows you're an idiot -- get out your keyboard.

I absolutely boil over when I see yet another fool blame gun violence on black people. It is almost as bad as blaming it on the guns themselves. The latest story being linked to by the “alternative media” is by Karl Denninger, for his The Market Ticker website entitled “The Real Gun Violence Issue.” After poking fun at a couple anecdotal stories meant to expose the complete disregard for human life by inner city black people

Poking fun?  Murder is FUN?  Since when?

You know who the worst racist assholes are?  The ones who invent racism that doesn't exist in an attempt to label someone.

Of course you have dance around the accusation.  Like Paul did:

Then, after noting that our current President is in fact black (actually only ½), Mr. Denninger meanders into a vague conclusion that if somehow we didn’t allow the criminalization of drugs with “racist” propaganda, somehow all of these problems wouldn’t exist. He also wanders into blaming the ills of gun violence on alcohol and prescription opiates…I think.

Oh, so reading comprehension wasn't your strong suit in school?  Let me help you out.

Black people are overwhelmingly the victims and perpetrators of gun violence. Black people shoot each other at a rate of five to six times that of any other ethnic group.  I didn't make this up, it's a fact. And it is also a fact that most of these homicides are black-on-black.  This isn't some grand revelation, it's a statistical reality.  Paul goes apeshit about my not linking the DOJ's statistics -- is that because he didn't want to look himself?  Oh darn, they really are there.

If there is a point to the article, and you have to look pretty hard to find one, I guess his point would be that if we just give black people easy access to what are now illegal drugs, and make our black President admit that black people are shooting each other in disproportionate numbers, they wouldn’t shoot each other anymore? Could this somehow be the magic bullet to end gun violence?

This is exactly the kind of thinking that brands gun rights activists as racist.

Oh really?  So let me see if I get this right -- we prohibited alcohol and got gun-toting violent gangs across our country as a result.  This taught us exactly...... nothing.

You see, guns are expensive never mind the penalties for misusing them -- like shooting a competing dealer on the street corner.  Therefore, given a choice most people with a dispute would rather sue or ask the government to prosecute.  

However, you can't sue someone for doing an illegal thing.  So when we make a "crime" out of an act that is a voluntary, consensual adult thing, such as drug use, then when there is a dispute exactly what method of resolving that dispute do you think people will use?

It gets worse.  Irrespective of whether you think duels are a suitable way to resolve disputes what's not in dispute is that shitty marksmanship gets innocent people killed. Those who are doing illegal things are not generally interested in openly displaying their acts; therefore said people don't go to the range and practice.  As a result the first time they fire said gun may well be when trying to settle said dispute, and they often miss and hit unintended people instead of their targets.  Sometimes they even shoot their own friends by accident while trying to shoot someone else.

One of the big issues here is that for everyone shot and killed somewhere between 5-10 more people are shot and don't die, which means that the problem is actually much worse than it appears.  And I mean, it's not like 71.4% of those doing the dying aren't Black in places like Chicago, right?  Oh wait.... damn, there's twice that shithead Denninger actually cited a source and statistic.

Mr. Denninger makes a completely undocumented statement about gun violence:

“Indeed, if you take out black-on-black homicide in the major cities from our so-called “blood-red streets” that Bloomberg and others claim as our emblem of “endemic gun violence” you find that something like three quarters of all gun murders disappear.”

Completely undocumented eh?  Uh, nope.

You do have to have a brain.  You also have to take a few seconds to look.  And you can choose your source of data; reports in the media (which often omit the race of the offender; the victim is harder since bleeding people sell newspapers and TV ad time; how do you show the blood without showing the person?) work just fine or, if you prefer, just go to the DOJ.

And then the shibboleths come out:

“The War on Drugs,” the ever expanding militarized police state, and our broken legal system are indeed problems. Most gun crime is generated by recidivist felons who have been let out. But those are symptoms. The problem itself is about opportunity, or a lack thereof, and if you want to boil it down to black people, like Mr. Denninger, since before the Civil Rights movement of the 60s, black people have been cheated out of the American Dream by a margin of 2 to 1. Measuring unemployment data , which is consistently 2 to 1 blacks against whites, food stamp data, also showing 2 to 1. And disproportionately, again, 2 to 1, the percentage of blacks trapped in the inner cities it becomes clear that just pointing a finger at black gun crime just isn’t fair. None of these trends have changed in the last 50 years, regardless of the color of the president.

Really?  We still have plantations, complete with gun-toting patrols and chain-link fences keeping those black people trapped in the inner cities?  Really?

So who's cheated out of what, exactly, and more to the point who's doing it to them?  Every human infant is born trying to learn something, even if it's just how to grab at some food.  It takes real talent and effort to block that, or worse, redirect it into criminal violence.  And how does that happen again in a nation where there are no restrictions on where you choose to live and public libraries dot the landscape?

No, we can't talk about how we enable people to sit on their ass and collect a check, instead of demanding that they get off their ass.  You see, if we enable people to sit on their ass and collect a check we can steal more than half of the check for ourselves and claim we're "helping" people.  (More on that later, complete with the math.)  We also can't talk about how we establish a system of unlawful acts that are illegal just because we say so, not because anyone else (other than the participants) is possibly harmed.  If we make all those acts illegal some people can make billions of dollars by caging others, destroying their economic opportunity with permanent felony records when the "offense" is simply doing something in the privacy of their own home that some "moral majority" believes merits caging them like a wild animal.  Oh, and then for good measure we can have branches of our government involved in providing and making available those very same things, you know, like the CIA has done for the last 50 or so years when it comes to the drug trade and our own DOJ has been doing here and now with drug gangs in Mexico, never mind the money laundering for same our banks have committed?

We didn't do that same sort of thing with gays, right?  We didn't criminalize being gay, did we?  Oh wait, we did. Now there are risks if you happen to be a gay man and like it in the back, but who's risks are they?  Yours.  Why is my business whether you choose to accept said risks in exchange for what you find to be a fulfilling adult choice?

We didn't criminalize black and white people intermarrying, right?  Oh wait, we did that too.  Exactly what harm came of black and white people deciding they loved one another?  Apparently plenty, because the entire purpose of marriage laws in the US originally was to prevent that from happening.

And then we criminalized people drinking alcohol.  Now certainly the overuse of alcohol is bad.  But who gets hurt if it's overused?  The person doing the over-using, right?  But gee, after we did that and removed disputes over alcohol distribution and production from the courts, and it instead went to the streets to be settled with guns, did we learn anything about how dumb that was?

OH HELL NO.

And you read correctly by the way. I said EVERY law abiding American should own and carry a gun. Those who need guns the most are black people in our inner cities, but unfortunately they have the ones that the anti-gunners have fought the hardest to disarm.

Ah, Paul thinks I'm an anti-gunner.  Boy, he doesn't read me much, does he?  Indeed, it's my position that everyone has a right to be armed, all the time.  Yes, even those who did bad things previously, provided they've served their time.  Why?  Because our justice system claims that once one has "paid their debt to society", well, it's paid!  We have a desperate need in this country to stop being hypocrites in damn near everything we do.

If we have a problem with recidivism it's not found in continuing restrictions on a lifetime basis.  It's that we don't lock people up until they're not dangerous any more!  In some cases that means locking them up forever, especially when you lock someone up for a crime, let them go and they do it again.  Like, for instance, the case I wrote about a few years ago where a jackass shot and killed a Marshal that came to serve him some papers in Florida.  He blasted said Marshal with a shotgun.

The problem is that he had done felony time twice before, not just once.  The first time for carjacking, an apparently fine way to earn a living.  We let him out after a few years (!) and he decided that sexual assault was a better idea than carjacking, got arrested and was convicted of that offense.

But we didn't learn a damn thing about dangerous people in that instance, did we?  Obviously not or we wouldn't have let him out again, and he wouldn't have been shooting a Marshal.

At the same time we imprison huge numbers of black people, destroying their civil rights and job prospects with a permanent felony record when their "offense" is nothing more than consensual adult conduct!

This, Paul thinks, is just fine and not really part of the problem.  Riiiiiight.

Most Americans, of all colors and creeds, are law abiding and only want a good life with a good job and opportunity.

Define "good job" please.  And while you're at it, please tell me how you're going to redefine the common law of business balance.  You know, the one that says you have to produce more than you cost, or you have no job in the first place.

Now square that with all the taxes, fees and assessments that our current government programs produce.  Tell me how the so-called "inner city trap" is real, other than by one's own decision to be a sponge off society.  And what does taking that welfare, EBT, Section 8 and other things do?  Why it makes the cost of employing people much higher, especially in those same cities, which means that it depresses employment prospects for the people who live there while raising their cost of living.  Ever price a gallon of milk or a pound of meat in those areas .vs. in the suburbs?  Try it sometime -- if you have the balls to visit the south side of Chicago.

It's simple economics, really.  What do the so-called "progressives" want to do?  Why they're interested in raising the minimum wage, further ratcheting up the price and removing people from the labor market on a competitive basis.

Nobody ever dreams of drug slinging on the streets one bullet away from either the grave or the jailhouse. But for the many of the most ambitious and promising of inner city black people, that is where they end up.

Oh, we agree on something.  Now let's talk about why, as soon as I get done with the list of points on which we do agree.

If you have to nail the inner city violence problem on one thing, it has to be the export of our manufacturing jobs to China. Nearly every industrial city in America has been decimated by a mass exodus of manufacturing from here to overseas, or more accurately, to China. 

Ah, we agree on something else.  Paul doesn't read me often, because if he did (or if he bothered to read Leverage) he'd know that one of the positions I advocate strongly for is wage and environmental parity tariffs (p164, if you're too damned lazy to read the whole book.)

Oh no, Denninger actually believes we ought not to provide incentives to exploit people!

Wait a second...... 

How come this only applies to international trade and not government handouts Paul?

It is the ignorance of writers like Denninger (and the idiots who say they are smart ALEX JONES) that portray 2nd Amendment supports as a bunch of narrow minded racist fools. Yes, black-on-black crime does account for a great deal of gun violence in America. But legalizing drugs to sedate ourselves with isn’t the answer (though legalizing some drugs does have many other benefits in taking the wind out of the overall police state). People with no legitimate opportunity will seek illegitimate opportunity, whether it be selling crack or selling fake Beanie Babies. And because black people find themselves disproportionately in inner cities, unemployed and poorly educated, the import culture of American manufacturing has hit them especially hard, and this is reflected in violent crime rates, including firearm violent crime rates.

So let me see if I get this right.  We provide a system of "free, public education" and spend well beyond $10,000 per kid per year attempting to prosecute that.  By the way, if there are 20 kids in a class (that's low by the way) and a decent teacher costs $50,000 a year in salary can someone explain where the other $150,000 went?  This system fails while at the same time districts spending about half that much manage to succeed.  Paul claims that we didn't "provide opportunity."  I instead allege that what we did was provide $150,000 of graft and the entire true purpose of said system has exactly zero to do with opportunity -- or education.

Paul also appears to think that I may be some sort of person who doesn't support the 2nd Amendment.  He obviously hasn't read much of my writing.  If there's a man or woman who needs a gun, it's that person who is most likely to get shot with one -- so they can attempt to defend themselves.  That would be the black person who lives in a big city, by the way.  But don't tell Bloomberg or Rahm that because both have done everything in their power to prevent said people from exercising their right to lawful self-defense.

But heh, intentionally claiming that someone has a position they don't actually hold is nothing new.  Bloomberg does it all the time.  So does Paul.  Paul could read what I wrote right here and apologize, but he won't.  That would require actually looking at the facts -- and my seven year history of public exposition on these very topics.  When it comes to real solutions to our economic issues, including those that fall disparately on people of color, he could have read Leverage, or just read my column.  

But he didn't do that either.

Instead he piles on the shibboleths and outright lies, such as the claim that public education will "save" us, while ignoring the fact that before there was free public education in this country the literacy rate was higher than it is now.  Educational spending and cost has advanced much faster than inflation and yet we get poorer and poorer results.  Quite clearly and objectively it's not working.

But you know someone has lost their mind when they take your positions and try to claim them as their own, along with claiming that you don't hold them.  For example:

And let law abiding Americans in our inner cities, regardless of how much melanin they have in their skin, have open access to inexpensive firearms. 

That, incidentally, has been a centerpiece of my writing on the 2nd Amendment and the issues facing our cities.

The fact is that big government doesn't work.  It doesn't work because it's laced with corruption, grift and fraud.  We can't educate kids in government schools because education is not what we do any more; as I've written repeatedly where did the shop classes go?  How do you hire someone to weld for $30+/hour who doesn't know how?  I learned how in Junior High School in the 1970s and so did every other kid in shop class!  Am I good at it?  Not really; I can do it well enough to re-attach the suspension to a car that's falling apart but it's not pretty.  However, some kids in that class were both competent and skilled.  How do you know if you're one of them if you never get to try?

How is it that we have a medical system that sucks one dollar in five out of our economy?  Who do you think pays for that?  The poor person who allegedly gets "free" medical care gets nothing of the sort; that "free" medical care costs them a job because the tax rates (or purchasing power dilution) that it forces results in the cost of employing them ratcheting beyond their value to the enterprise.  Nobody gets a job when they cost more than they benefit the enterprise -- period.  We have a four trillion dollar Federal Budget of which almost 60% is comprised of welfare, "pensions" and "free" medical care.  That's more than two trillion dollars a year that is sucked out of the economy and handed to someone.

Now let me point something out.  Let's take the 50 million lowest-earning (on a per-capita basis) Americans of working age.  That's the bottom 20%, approximately (there are about 247 million working-age Americans as of last count.)

Let's stop all of the Welfare, Pension and "free" Medical spending.  

All of it.  Right now, today.

That would be $2.3 trillion dollars this fiscal year we would not spend at the Federal level.

What are we going to do with the $2.3 trillion dollars?

We could simply leave it in the economy, but if we did that some of those 50 million (and their children) would starve.  Not very many of them and not for very long, because economic opportunity would blossom if left alone, but some would undoubtedly starve.  Some of those who did would be little old Grandmothers, and that would look very bad on the evening news.

But -- you say -- those people need these programs.

Ok, how much are they getting?  Put a different way, what if we got rid of the programs but not the money?

Well let's do the math:

$2,300,000,000,000 / 50,000,000 = $46,000.

Each.

Economic "opportunity" eh?  Can you explain to me exactly what we get for our $46,000 per working-age adult in the bottom 20%, an amount that were we to have married couples among that bottom 20% of the adult earning population would have each of those couples (households) gifted $92,000 a year tax free?

How many inner city people have $46,000 to spend -- say much less $92,000 per household?  Zero!

Naw, we can't have that discussion when it comes to whether we should do moar public spending, can we?  Why not?  Maybe because if we did the inexorable conclusion would be that we should do zero public spending of this sort and shut down all of these programs!

Instead Paul and others continue to run the shibboleths about "public education" (which has never worked as a public enterprise as demonstrated by literacy rates before and after it came into effect), medical care being a "right" (while ignoring the monopolies that can only exist because of government force) and so-called "public safety nets" that in fact have available, on a combined basis, forty-six thousand dollars per person in the lowest 20% of earning capacity among adults of working age and yet we have people who are alleged to be "trapped" in inner cities when we are quite-capable on a fiscal basis of simply giving them that same $46,000.

It is the willful and intentional refusal to face facts as demonstrated by Paul and millions of others that has both created and continues to place the boot of government thugs on the necks of minorities.

Exactly who is the racist asshole here, eh and why is it that people like Paul won't pull out the paper and pencil or -- if that's asking too much of his government school education -- a calculator?