Friedrich August von Hayek: Fighting the Planners — The Road To Serfdom — A Profile in Liberty — Videos

Posted on April 10, 2013. Filed under: American History, Banking, Blogroll, Business, College, Communications, Economics, Education, Employment, European History, Federal Government, Federal Government Budget, Fiscal Policy, Foreign Policy, government, government spending, history, History of Economic Thought, Inflation, Language, Law, liberty, Life, Links, Literacy, Macroeconomics, media, Microeconomics, Monetary Policy, Money, People, Philosophy, Raves, Tax Policy, Video, Wealth, Wisdom | Tags: capitalism, Economics, Friedrich August von Hayek, Milton Friedman, Socialism, The Road to Serfdom |

Friedrich August von Hayek – Profile / Biography (1/4)

The Intellectual Portrait Series: The Life and Thought of Friedrich A. Hayek (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003)

Friedrich August von Hayek – Profile / Biography (2/4)

Friedrich August von Hayek – Profile / Biography (3/4)

Friedrich August von Hayek – Profile / Biography (4/4)

The Life & Thought of Friedrich Hayek

The Intellectual Portrait Series: The Life and Thought of Friedrich A. Hayek (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003)

The Road to Serfdom

Hayek on The Road to Serfdom

Inside the Hayek Equation: An Interview with Friedrich von Hayek

Hayek: Fighting the Planners part 1 of 4

Hayek: Fighting the Planners part 2 of 4

Hayek: Fighting the Planners part 3 of 4

Hayek: Fighting the Planners part 4 of 4

Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 1 of 2

Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 2 of 2

Hayek and Friedman: Head to Head | Roger W. Garrison

Glenn Beck -6/8/2010- The Road to Serfdom

Hayek, the Market Order and the Fatal Conceit

Barack H. Obama

Barack Obama 2013 Inauguration Speech

Inauguration 2013: Highlights From Obama’s Speech

Krauthammer: Obama Just Declared That The Era Of ‘Big Government Is Back’

Fox News Panel Reacts To Obama’s Inaugural Address: ‘Call To Arms For A Liberal

Fox Panel Discussion: Media Acting as Cheerleaders for Obama in Inaugural Coverage

Ronald Reagan

C-SPAN: President Reagan 1981 Inaugural Address

President Ronald Reagan – First Inaugural Address

Conflict of Visions

Which vision would you follow, Obama’s or Reagan’s?

Presidents of the United States in their Inaugural Addresses to the American people set forth their vision for the country.

In Thomas Sowell’s book, “The Conflict of Visions,” there are two categories of visions, the unconstrained and the constrained. Those with an unconstrained vision believe in human reason and that important decisions should be made by the whole society and government bureaucrats and experts. Those with a constrained vision believe in tradition and accumulated wisdom and decisions should be made by individuals about what immediately concerns them such as their life and property.

President Barack H. Obama’s second Inaugural address illustrates the collectivist’s unconstrained vision while the late President Ronald Reagan first Inaugural address illustrates the individualist’s constrained vision.

President Barack H. Obama’s second Inaugural, Jan. 21, 2013 Credit: http://www.latinopost.com

Obama’s unconstrained vision

Collective action

“But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”

Crisis and a world without boundaries

“This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun. America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it — so long as we seize it together.”

Constantly changing government, tax code, schools, and citizens

“We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher. But while the means will change, our purpose endures: a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American. That is what this moment requires. That is what will give real meaning to our creed.”

Our journey

“It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.”

President Ronald Reagan’s first Inaugural, Jan. 20, 1981 Credit: http://www.inaugural.senate.gov

Reagan’s constrained vision

Government is the problem

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.”

Crisis and limits

“These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people. ”

“You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we’re not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding: We are going to begin to act, beginning today. “

Unemployment, the tax system and deficit spending

“Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery, and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.”

“But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.”

Administration’s objective

“Well, this administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination. Putting America back to work means putting all Americans back to work. Ending inflation means freeing all Americans from the terror of runaway living costs. All must share in the productive work of this ‘new beginning,’ and all must share in the bounty of a revived economy. With the idealism and fair play which are the core of our system and our strength, we can have a strong and prosperous America, at peace with itself and the world.”

Since my political philosophy is libertarianism, I naturally selected Reagan’s constrained vision.

The most famous vision for the future was given by Abraham Lincolns in his second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865 when he said just weeks before his assassination on April 14 and as the Civil War was winding down:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Raymond Thomas Pronk is host of the Pronk Pops Show on KDUX web radio from 3-5 p.m. Fridays and author of the companion blog http://www.pronkpops.wordpress.com/

Background Articles and Videos

G. Edward Griffin – The Collectivist Conspiracy

6 Collectivism & Individualism G Edward Griffin FMNN eTV Full Video

G. Edward Griffin- On Individualism v Collectivism #1

G. Edward Griffin- On Individualism v Collectivism #2

G. Edward Griffin- On Individualism v Collectivism #3

G. Edward Griffin- On Individualism v Collectivism #4

G. Edward Griffin: Individualism & Capitalism vs. Collectivism & Monopolies

TAKE IT TO THE LIMITS: Milton Friedman on Libertarianism

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell and a Conflict of Visions

Thomas Sowell – Obama Going Forward

Thomas Sowell – Our Intellectual-In-Chief

Uncommon Knowledge with Thomas Sowell

Transcript And Audio: Barack Obama’s Second Inaugural Address

The remarks of President Obama, as released by The White House and prepared for delivery:

Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:

Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional — what makes us American — is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a Republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

For more than two hundred years, we have.

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character.

But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. A decade of war is now ending. An economic recovery has begun. America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it — so long as we seize it together.

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.

We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher. But while the means will change, our purpose endures: a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American. That is what this moment requires. That is what will give real meaning to our creed.

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty, and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn. We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other — through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security — these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries — we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure — our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.

We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war. Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage. Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty. The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm. But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war, who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends, and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.

We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law. We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully — not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear. America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe; and we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation. We will support democracy from Asia to Africa; from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom. And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice — not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity; human dignity and justice.

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.

That is our generation’s task — to make these words, these rights, these values — of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time — but it does require us to act in our time.

For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial, and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.

My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction — and we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service. But the words I spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty, or an immigrant realizes her dream. My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride.

They are the words of citizens, and they represent our greatest hope.

You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course.

You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time — not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.

Let each of us now embrace, with solemn duty and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history, and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.

Thank you, God Bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America.

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/21/169903155/transcript-barack-obamas-second-inaugural-address

naugural Address
January 20, 1981

Senator Hatfield, Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. President, Vice President Bush, Vice President Mondale, Senator Baker, Speaker O’Neill, Reverend Moomaw, and my fellow citizens:

To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every 4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle.

Mr. President, I want our fellow citizens to know how much you did to carry on this tradition. By your gracious cooperation in the transition process, you have shown a watching world that we are a united people pledged to maintaining a political system which guarantees individual liberty to a greater degree than any other, and I thank you and your people for all your help in maintaining the continuity which is the bulwark of our Republic.

The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. We suffer from the longest and one of the worst sustained inflations in our national history. It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people.

Idle industries have cast workers into unemployment, human misery, and personal indignity. Those who do work are denied a fair return for their labor by a tax system which penalizes successful achievement and keeps us from maintaining full productivity.

But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children’s future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.

You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we’re not bound by that same limitation? We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding: We are going to begin to act, beginning today.

The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we’ve had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

We hear much of special interest groups. Well, our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we’re sick—professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, “We the people,” this breed called Americans.

Well, this administration’s objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination. Putting America back to work means putting all Americans back to work. Ending inflation means freeing all Americans from the terror of runaway living costs. All must share in the productive work of this “new beginning,” and all must share in the bounty of a revived economy. With the idealism and fair play which are the core of our system and our strength, we can have a strong and prosperous America, at peace with itself and the world.

So, as we begin, let us take inventory. We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.

Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work–work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on Earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on Earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay that price.

It is no coincidence that our present troubles parallel and are proportionate to the intervention and intrusion in our lives that result from unnecessary and excessive growth of government. It is time for us to realize that we’re too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. We’re not, as some would have us believe, doomed to an inevitable decline. I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing. So, with all the creative energy at our command, let us begin an era of national renewal. Let us renew our determination, our courage, and our strength. And let us renew our faith and our hope.

We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are not heroes, they just don’t know where to look. You can see heroes every day going in and out of factory gates. Others, a handful in number, produce enough food to feed all of us and then the world beyond. You meet heroes across a counter, and they’re on both sides of that counter. There are entrepreneurs with faith in themselves and faith in an idea who create new jobs, new wealth and opportunity. They’re individuals and families whose taxes support the government and whose voluntary gifts support church, charity, culture, art, and education. Their patriotism is quiet, but deep. Their values sustain our national life.

Now, I have used the words “they” and “their” in speaking of these heroes. I could say “you” and “your,” because I’m addressing the heroes of whom I speak—you, the citizens of this blessed land. Your dreams, your hopes, your goals are going to be the dreams, the hopes, and the goals of this administration, so help me God.

We shall reflect the compassion that is so much a part of your makeup. How can we love our country and not love our countrymen; and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunity to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?

Can we solve the problems confronting us? Well, the answer is an unequivocal and emphatic “yes.” To paraphrase Winston Churchill, I did not take the oath I’ve just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world’s strongest economy.

In the days ahead I will propose removing the roadblocks that have slowed our economy and reduced productivity. Steps will be taken aimed at restoring the balance between the various levels of government. Progress may be slow, measured in inches and feet, not miles, but we will progress. It is time to reawaken this industrial giant, to get government back within its means, and to lighten our punitive tax burden. And these will be our first priorities, and on these principles there will be no compromise.

On the eve of our struggle for independence a man who might have been one of the greatest among the Founding Fathers, Dr. Joseph Warren, president of the Massachusetts Congress, said to his fellow Americans, “Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of . . . . On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important questions upon which rests the happiness and the liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.”

Well, I believe we, the Americans of today, are ready to act worthy of ourselves, ready to do what must be done to ensure happiness and liberty for ourselves, our children, and our children’s children. And as we renew ourselves here in our own land, we will be seen as having greater strength throughout the world. We will again be the exemplar of freedom and a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom.

To those neighbors and allies who share our freedom, we will strengthen our historic ties and assure them of our support and firm commitment. We will match loyalty with loyalty. We will strive for mutually beneficial relations. We will not use our friendship to impose on their sovereignty, for our own sovereignty is not for sale.

As for the enemies of freedom, those who are potential adversaries, they will be reminded that peace is the highest aspiration of the American people. We will negotiate for it, sacrifice for it; we will not surrender for it, now or ever.

Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act. We will maintain sufficient strength to prevail if need be, knowing that if we do so we have the best chance of never having to use that strength.

Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.

I’m told that tens of thousands of prayer meetings are being held on this day, and for that I’m deeply grateful. We are a nation under God, and I believe God intended for us to be free. It would be fitting and good, I think, if on each Inaugural Day in future years it should be declared a day of prayer.

This is the first time in our history that this ceremony has been held, as you’ve been told, on this West Front of the Capitol. Standing here, one faces a magnificent vista, opening up on this city’s special beauty and history. At the end of this open mall are those shrines to the giants on whose shoulders we stand.

Directly in front of me, the monument to a monumental man, George Washington, father of our country. A man of humility who came to greatness reluctantly. He led America out of revolutionary victory into infant nationhood. Off to one side, the stately memorial to Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence flames with his eloquence. And then, beyond the Reflecting Pool, the dignified columns of the Lincoln Memorial. Whoever would understand in his heart the meaning of America will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Beyond those monuments to heroism is the Potomac River, and on the far shore the sloping hills of Arlington National Cemetery, with its row upon row of simple white markers bearing crosses or Stars of David. They add up to only a tiny fraction of the price that has been paid for our freedom.

Each one of those markers is a monument to the kind of hero I spoke of earlier. Their lives ended in places called Belleau Wood, The Argonne, Omaha Beach, Salerno, and halfway around the world on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pork Chop Hill, the Chosin Reservoir, and in a hundred rice paddies and jungles of a place called Vietnam.

Under one such marker lies a young man, Martin Treptow, who left his job in a small town barbershop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division. There, on the western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy artillery fire.

We’re told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading, “My Pledge,” he had written these words: “America must win this war. Therefore I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.”

The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds, to believe that together with God’s help we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.

And after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.
God bless you, and thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 12 noon from a platform erected at the West Front of the Capitol. Immediately before the address, the oath of office was administered by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger.

In his opening remarks, the President referred to Rev. Donn D. Moomaw, senior pastor, Bel Air Presbyterian Church, Los Angeles, California.

The address was broadcast live on radio and television.

Obama’s Second Inaugural

By Yuval Levin

“…President Obama’s second inaugural address was an exceptionally coherent and deeply revealing speech. Its cogency was impressive: Recent inaugurals, and especially those of reelected presidents, have inclined toward the laundry list far more than this speech did. Obama made an argument, and one that holds together and advances a discernible worldview. It was in that sense a very successful speech, and while it may not be memorable in the sense of containing lines so eloquent or striking that they will always be associated with this moment and this president, it is a speech that will repay future re-reading because it lays out an important strand of American political thought rather clearly.But because it does so, it is also revealing of the shallowness, confusion, and error of that strand of American political thought — that is, of the progressive worldview in our politics.This speech was about as compact yet comprehensive an example of the contemporary progressive vision as we’re likely to get from a politician. It had all the usual elements. Its point of origin was a familiar distorted historical narrative of the founding — half of Jefferson and none of Madison — setting us off on a utopian “journey” in the course of which the founding vision is transformed into its opposite in response to changing circumstances, with life becoming choice, liberty becoming security, and the pursuit of happiness transmuted into a collective effort to guarantee that everyone has choice and security. The ideals of the Declaration of Independence are praised mostly for their flexibility in the face of their own anachronism, as their early embodiment in a political order (that is, the Constitution) proves inadequate to a changing world and must be gradually but thoroughly replaced by an open-ended commitment to meeting social objectives through state action.The only alternative to state action, in this vision of things, is the preposterously insufficient prospect of individual action. “For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias,” the president said.

No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

The individual acting alone or the entire nation acting through its government, those are the only options we have. The space between the individual and the state is understood to be empty at best, and at worst to be filled with dreadful vestiges of intolerance and backwardness that must be cleared out to enable the pursuit of justice.

Our history is more or less a tale of an increasing public awareness of these facts. As we grew to understand that only common public action would suffice in an ever-changing world:

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers.

Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.

Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

That modern economy and that free market are simply constants to be taken for granted — they will keep on humming, the only question is whether they will be placed under any restraints or direction. “Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, are constants in our character,” the president said, so we need not worry about how to sustain them but only about how to contain them.

And as we grew to understand the virtues of such common efforts of containment and direction of the modern economy, we also advanced the struggle against those vestiges of backwardness that have raised obstacles to inclusion, scoring victories for justice in “Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall.” Never mind the 50 million human beings deemed insignificant because they were unwanted and snuffed out over the last four decades in the cause of choice. Indeed, the freedom to remorselessly exterminate these innocents, rather than the struggle to protect the life and dignity of the weak who dared by their existence and their neediness to disrupt the plans of the strong, is somehow given a place of honor in the register of social progress.

Having been delivered along the arc of that progress to this point, we should have a pretty good idea of what we ought to do next: the same thing but more so. After all, the logic of the narrative carries its own direction — toward a series of utopian if sometimes nonetheless remarkably trivial near-term goals (“our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote”) and a longer-term ideal of permanent universal political activism striving for an ever-more-perfect balance of moral individualism and economic collectivism.

As it is both moved by a hunger for justice and embodied in the American story (as its champions understand it), this course is taken to plainly occupy the moral high ground, and opposition to it can really only be explained by bad faith, bad motives, or bad reasoning. Thus, even as the advocates of this way of thinking style themselves pragmatists, they deem their opponents worse than wicked.

The president probably didn’t even quite see that his second inaugural was almost certainly the most partisan inaugural address in American history — more partisan than one delivered on the brink of civil war, or in the midst of it, or after the most poisonous and bitterly contested election in our history. He accused his political opponents of rabid (even stupid) radical individualism, of desiring to throw the elderly and the poor onto the street, of wanting to leave the parents of disabled children with no options, of believing that freedom should be reserved for the lucky and happiness for the few, and of putting dogma and party above country. Because it has exceedingly high expectations of politics, this view treats the failure to achieve its own goals as evidence of misconduct by others and of the inadequacy of the system we have. As White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer put it to the Washington Post this week, “There’s a moment of opportunity now that’s important. What’s frustrating is that we don’t have a political system or an opposition party worthy of the opportunity.”

The first thing to say about this vision is that it is a serious set of ideas and in some important respects an appealing one. It seeks to put American politics on a modern idealistic foundation rather than the modern skeptical foundation on which our constitutional order has put it, and it understands the liberal society as a set of utopian objectives grounded in a set of rational ideals. That’s certainly one way to understand the liberal society, and it is a way with deep roots in American thought. I’ve always thought that describing the progressive worldview as some kind of German implant undersells it and distorts it. It is surely that in part, but it is also the working out of a strain of American liberalism that has been with us from the beginning. The progressives claim to a connection to Jefferson is not unfounded. But it is incomplete and ill-informed.

The progressives used to know this. Herbert Croly understood that his claim to be applying to economic power the logic of the limits and restraints that Jefferson applied to political power was at least a little preposterous. He was not wrong to say that Jeffersonianism is in some tension with the Constitution — Jefferson surely thought so himself. But he was wrong to say that it pointed toward the sort of philosophical collectivism that the modern left is after. He was using a version of American history to make his case for change more palatable. But today’s progressives simply believe their own history and their own self-portrait. They really believe that the case for equality, for greater inclusion and civil rights, and for some protection from risk in the face of our tumultuous economy can only be grounded in the progressive worldview. Indeed, they take that view to be pragmatic common sense in light of a changing world, rather than a utopian ideology, and they therefore don’t grasp the radical inadequacy of the vision they’re espousing.

By espousing that vision more clearly than usual, the president’s speech revealed that inadequacy. It did so first and foremost by showing that (quite ironically, given how it praises itself for keeping up with change) progressivism today is highly anachronistic. As David Brooks astutely noted today:

The Progressive Era, New Deal and Great Society laws were enacted when America was still a young and growing nation. They were enacted in a nation that was vibrant, raw, underinstitutionalized and needed taming.

We are no longer that nation. We are now a mature nation with an aging population. Far from being underinstitutionalized, we are bogged down with a bloated political system, a tangled tax code, a byzantine legal code and a crushing debt.

In fact, in my opinion the lumbering and bogged-down character of our economy is the chief threat to the very economic security (not to mention prosperity) that the progressives say they are after. But Obama’s speech expressed no grasp of our current situation.

It is for that reason that he relied so heavily on straw men and absurd caricatures of his opponents’ positions. At one point, almost despite himself, the president stumbled upon the kind of thinking those opponents now actually offer, though he quickly picked himself up and continued to march in the opposite direction. In the middle of a case about how inequality calls for common action, he said:

We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. We must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher. But while the means will change, our purpose endures: a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American. That is what this moment requires. That is what will give real meaning to our creed.

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.

This is roughly the case for Paul Ryan’s budget. But the president opposes that approach, and in making this argument he pointed to some obvious objections to the rest of his speech without answering them. What programs are so inadequate that he is willing to see them reformed? Where is he willing to change the means to continue achieving the ends? What hard choices does he have in mind to reduce the deficit and the cost of health care? What does it mean to “reject the belief” that we are forced into a choice between the young and the old when we have massive government programs that compel exactly that choice and yet the president refuses to change them?

In fact, it is precisely the vision laid out in the rest of the president’s speech that has brought us to this difficult moment. Our foremost domestic challenges now almost all have to do with mitigating the enormous damage done to our economic dynamism, our social fabric, and our fiscal prospects by the public exertions most directly attributable to the sort of progressivism Obama laid out. This generation and the next one (at least) will spend their political energies trying to pick up the pieces of the Great Society and to construct alternatives to its foremost achievements that are better suited to the kind of country we are and want to be. And today’s progressives are very poorly suited to that task, because they do not see the problem, and they have a rather peculiar notion of the kind of country we are and want to be.

For conservatives to do better, it would be helpful to understand the left’s failings, and this speech is not a bad place to start. Look at the vision it lays out. It denies the relevance of our constitutional system, the value of civil society, the social achievement that is our culture of individual initiative and economic dynamism, the dignity of every life whether wanted by others or not, and the unsustainability of the liberal welfare state.

A coherent alternative would need to answer each of these errors and to put forward a political vision and program that champions the constitutional system and its underlying worldview, lifts up civil society as a key source of our strength, sustains the moral preconditions for democratic capitalism, protects every life, and transforms the institutions of the liberal welfare state into a robust safety net that guards the vulnerable and gives everyone a chance to benefit from and participate in our dynamic economy rather than shielding them from it. It is not hard to imagine such a combination of ideas because that combination, in its various forms, is what American conservatism stands for. It probably wouldn’t hurt to let the voting public know that. …”

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/338366/obama-s-second-inaugural-yuval-levin#

Morning Bell: Obama’s Second Inaugural Address, Translated

Amy Payne

“…Members of Congress—who are about to debate raising the debt ceiling tomorrow—should have paid attention yesterday. The President was very clear that he sees no urgency about reducing the debt and cutting the deficit. In fact, in his second inaugural address, President Barack Obama was honest about his intentions to grow government in order to remake our country along his progressive vision.

To sell his agenda, the President borrowed imagery and terminology from America’s first principles. But he twisted the American founding idea of “We the people” into the liberal “It takes a village.”

His rhetoric on the issues only thinly disguised his true meaning. Let’s translate some of his key points.

Obama on “we the people”: “For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future. Or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores.”

Translation: In case you didn’t hear me the first time, you didn’t build that.

He may have surrounded these words with lip service to the Constitution and America’s promise of freedom, but the President revisited his core message here: It takes a taxpayer-subsidized village to build things. According to his philosophy, entrepreneurs don’t create jobs—the government does.

Obama on the fiscal crisis: “We, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it….We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.”

Translation: I will continue to push for more tax increases instead of reforming Medicare and Social Security.

On this point, the President followed up his promise that he will not negotiate on the debt ceiling by digging in his heels on taxes and entitlement programs. The “hard choices” he refers to on health care and the deficit are more tax increases—because he “reject[s] the belief” that entitlements must be reformed if they are going to stay around for the next generation.

The debt limit showdown continues this week: The House will vote tomorrow on a plan that would extend the debt ceiling for three months while forcing Congress—specifically, the Senate—to pass a budget. If they do not pass a budget by April 15 under this plan, Members of Congress would stop getting paid. If House Republicans so much as blink, the President and his allies will steamroll them.

Obama on green energy: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But American cannot resist this transition.”

Translation: I will continue to increase regulations on the energy sources we use and throw taxpayer money into “green” energy companies.

Despite the ever-growing Green Graveyard of companies like Solyndra that took taxpayer money only to go bankrupt, the President clings to this unworkable and expensive policy. And his linking of climate change to “more powerful storms” points to a renewed push for policies like a carbon tax to punish people for using energy—a policy that would harm the economy and produce no tangible environmental benefits.

Obama on foreign policy: “We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war….We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully. Not because we are naive about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear.”

Translation: The terrorists are on the run, and I still think we can negotiate with nuclear bullies like Iran.

Even as Obama pulls troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the hostage crisis in Algeria shows that al-Qaeda is alive and well. Though Iran continues to rebuff international inspectors and basically do whatever it wants, Obama seems perpetually optimistic that more talks with this hostile regime—and others like it—could make them change their behavior.

The President said yesterday that “fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges.” Though the plans he laid out are not new, they definitely require a response if we are to preserve the founding principles we cherish, including our individual right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Congress has been warned, and by the President no less, that he is in no mood to compromise. If they give in, a liberal agenda like we’ve never known before will be implemented, while needed reforms to our entitlement programs will not take place. Holding the line is more important now than ever. …”

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/01/22/obama-second-inaugural-address-translated/

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The Chicago Way–Obama Attack Ads Of Romney–Winning The Air War–The Chicago Way of Saul Alinsky–Video

Posted on July 17, 2012. Filed under: American History, Blogroll, Communications, Diasters, Economics, Fiscal Policy, Food, Foreign Policy, government, government spending, history, Investments, Law, liberty, Life, Links, media, People, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Public Sector, Rants, Raves, Unions, Video, War, Wealth, Wisdom | Tags: Andrew Breitbart, Attack Ads, Barack Obama, Cloward-Piven, Collectivists Conspiracy, Free Market Capitalism, G. Edward Griffin, Glenn Beck, Individualism, John Birch Society, Milton Friedman, Mitt Romney, Politics, Robert Welch, Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky, The Chicago Way, Videos, Winning The Air War |

KNOW SAUL ALINSKY AND YOU KNOW BARACK OBAMA AND HIS REGIME

Studs Terkel Interviews Saul Alinsky

“Tactics are those conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them. … Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves.” p.126 Always remember the first rule of power tactics (pps.127-134):

1. “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”

2. “Never go outside the expertise of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear and retreat…. [and] the collapse of communication.

3. “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.”

6. “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”

7. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time….”

8. “Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.”

9. “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”

10. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.”

11. “If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside… every positive has its negative.”

12. “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and ‘frozen.’…

“…any target can always say, ‘Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?’ When your ‘freeze the target,’ you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments…. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the ‘others’ come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target…’

“One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.” (pps.127-134)

Saul Alinksky, Rules for Radicals, Vintage Books, New York, 1989.

Rules for Radicals

By Saul Alinsky – 1971

http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/communism/alinsky.htm

From Al Capone to Saul Alinsky to Barack Obama -Methods of Organizing

Saul Alinsky Takes the White House

Mark Levin – Oct 14th – Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (Part 1 of 3)

Mark Levin – Oct 14th – Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (Part 2 of 3)

MILTON FRIEDMAN-what alinsky never told obama…

Obama Ad Calls Romney ‘The Problem’ With Job Losses To China

Obama Criticizes Romney Jobs Record In New Ad

Obama for America TV Ad: “Makes You Wonder”

Why Would Mitt Romney Invest Millions in the Cayman Islands?

Unrelenting Obama Jabs at Romney’s Job Record

The Cloward/Piven Strategy 1

The Cloward/Piven Strategy 2

The Cloward/Piven Strategy 3

The End of America….The Cloward-Piven Strategy

Mitt Romney on US Immigration Policy: Why Won’t He Give a Straight Answer?

Mitt Romney Versus Reality: Global Edition

Our Warrior Andrew Breitbart: “Barack Obama is a Saul Alinsky Radical”

Mind blowing speech by Robert Welch in 1958 predicting Insiders plans to destroy America

Alex Jones interview with G Edward Griffin Collectivists Conspiracy

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Charles and David Koch and Murray N. Rothbard and Ludwig von Mises–Videos

Posted on May 1, 2012. Filed under: American History, Banking, Blogroll, Business, College, Communications, Economics, Education, Employment, Energy, Federal Government, Federal Government Budget, Fiscal Policy, Food, Foreign Policy, government, government spending, history, History of Economic Thought, Inflation, Investments, Language, Law, liberty, Life, Links, Macroeconomics, media, Microeconomics, Monetary Policy, Money, People, Philosophy, Politics, Public Sector, Resources, Tax Policy, Taxes, Technology, Unions, Video, War, Wisdom | Tags: American's for Prosperity, CATO Institute, Charles Koch, Classical Liberal, David Koch, Economics, Friedrich A. Hayek, John Birch Society, Lew Rockwell, libertarian, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, Murray N. Rothbard, Politics, Reason, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Woods |

Lew Rockwell and Tom Woods discuss Rothbard and the Koch Brothers

People & Power – The Koch Brothers

I am a classical liberal or libertarian.

I greatly admire the works of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich A. Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, The Von Mises Institute, Cato Institute, Reason and the Koch brothers.

Competition is what it is all about. This is a mistake the Kock borthers made in not encouraging instead of discouraging the formation of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and trying to marginalize Murray Rothbard. What is needed is many Cato Institutes and Ludwig von Mises Institutes spreading the word on the benefits of free market capitalism and limited government.

The Republican Party establishment, sad to say, is controlled by progressive neoconservatives, which is why many classical liberals or libertarians have left the Republican Party and are now independents.

Nixon, Ford, Bush, Dole, Bush, McCain, and Romney are all big government progressive Republicans. They may talk conservative, but walk as big government spenders. Limited government and fiscal responsibility are the last thing these big government progressive neoconservatives want. The Republican Party has became the party of war and the Democratic Party has become the party of welfare. The result is the warfare and welfare economy and state.

It is only a matter of time before a new political party will emerge that will reflect the views of libertarian conservatives, traditional conservatives, social/religious conservatives and national defense conservatives.

Both the Democratic and Republican party leaderships are so permeated with progressives or liberals that they are both lost causes.

Background Articles and Videos

Koch Family

“…The Koch family ( /ˈkoʊk/ KOHK) of industrialists and businessmen is most notable for their control of Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned company in the United States.^[1] The family business was started by Fred C. Koch, who developed a new cracking method for the refinement of heavy oil into gasoline.^[2]^[3] Fred’s four sons became involved in litigation against each other in the 1980s and 1990s.^[4] According to the Koch Family Foundations and Philanthropy website, “the foundations and the individual giving of Koch family members” have financially supported organizations “fostering entrepreneurship, education, human services, at-risk youth, arts and culture, and medical research.” ^[5]

David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch—the two brothers still with Koch Industries—are affiliated with the Koch family foundations. Annual revenues for Koch Industries have been “estimated to be a hundred billion dollars.” ^[6]

Political activities

Main article: Political activities of the Koch family

David and Charles have funded conservative and libertarian policy and advocacy groups in the United States.^[7] Since the 1980s the Koch foundations have given more than $100 million to such organizations, among these think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, as well as more recently Americans for Prosperity.^[8] Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are Koch-linked organizations that have been linked to the Tea Party movement.^[9]^[10]

Family members

Fred C. Koch (1900–1967), American chemical engineer and entrepreneur who founded the oil refinery firm that later became Koch Industries
Mary Robinson Koch (October 17, 1907 – December 21, 1990),^[11] wife of Fred C. and namesake of the company tanker vessel Mary R. Koch
Four sons of Fred C. and Mary Robinson Koch:^[11]
- Frederick R. Koch (born 1933), collector and philanthropist
- Charles G. Koch (born 1935), Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Koch Industries
- David H. Koch (born 1940), Executive Vice President of Koch Industries
- William Koch (born 1940), businessman, sailor, and collector

References

^ “Forbes America’s Largest Private Companies”. Forbes.com. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/21/private-companies-11_land.html. Retrieved 10/4/11.
^ Koch, Charles C. (2007). The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-470-13988-2.
^ “Koch Industries, Inc.”. Company Profile Report. Hoover’s, Inc.. 2010. http://www.hoovers.com/company/Koch_Industries_Inc/cftjki-1.html. Retrieved 10 May 2010. “[W]hen he tried to market his invention, the major oil companies sued him for patent infringement. Koch eventually won the lawsuits (after 15 years in court), but the controversy made it tough to attract many US customers.”
^ “Epic struggle among Koch brothers ends”. Houston Chronicle: p. 2. 26 May 2001.
^ http://kochfamilyfoundations.org/Foundations.asp
^ Mayer, Jane(August 10, 2010) http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama The New Yorker
^ Zernike, Kate (October 19, 2010). “Secretive Republican Donors Are Planning Ahead”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/us/politics/20koch.htm.
^ Charles Koch, in interview with Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal. 6 May 2006. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114687252956545543.html
^ Vogel, Kenneth P. (August 9, 2010), “Tea party’s growing money problem”, Politico, http://dyn.politico.com/members/forums/thread.cfm?catid=1&subcatid=70&threadid=4355176, retrieved 2011-06-14
^ Fenn, Peter (February 2, 2011), “Tea Party Funding Koch Brothers Emerge From Anonymity”, U.S. News & World Report, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/Peter-Fenn/2011/02/02/tea-party-funding-koch-brothers-emerge-from-anonymity, retrieved 2011-06-13
^ ^a ^b Fred and Mary Koch Foundation …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_family

Koch Industries

“…Koch Industries, Inc. (/ˈkoʊk/), is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Wichita, Kansas, United States, with subsidiaries involved in manufacturing, trading and investments. Koch also owns Invista, Georgia-Pacific, Flint Hills Resources, Koch Pipeline, Koch Fertilizer, Koch Minerals and Matador Cattle Company. Koch companies are involved in core industries such as the manufacturing, refining and distribution^[1] of petroleum, chemicals, energy, fiber, intermediates and polymers, minerals, fertilizers, pulp and paper, chemical technology equipment, ranching,^[3] finance, commodities trading, as well as other ventures and investments. The firm employs 50,000 people in the United States and another 20,000 in 59 other countries.^[4]

In 2011, Forbes called it the second largest privately held company in the United States (after Cargill) with an annual revenue of about $98 billion,^[5]^[6]^[7] down from the largest in 2006. If Koch Industries were a public company in 2007, it would rank about 16 in the Fortune 500.^[8]

Fred C. Koch, for whom Koch Industries, Inc. is named, co-founded the company in 1940 and developed an innovative crude oil refining process.^[9] His sons, Charles G. Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer, and David H. Koch, executive vice president, are principal owners of the company after they bought out their brothers, Frederick and William, for $1.1 billion in 1983.^[10] Charles and David H. Koch each own 42% of Koch Industries, and Charles has stated that the company will publicly offer shares “literally over my dead body”.^[5]

History

Predecessor companies

In 1925, Fred C. Koch joined MIT classmate Lewis E. Winkler at an engineering firm in Wichita, Kansas, which was renamed the Winkler-Koch Engineering Company. In 1927 they developed a more efficient thermal cracking process for turning crude oil into gasoline. This process threatened the competitive advantage of established oil companies, which sued for patent infringement. Temporarily forced out of business in the United States, they turned to other markets, including the Soviet Union, where Winkler-Koch built 15 cracking units between 1929 and 1932. During this time, Koch came to despise communism and Joseph Stalin’s regime.^[11]^[12] In his 1960 book, A Business Man Looks at Communism, Koch wrote that he found the USSR to be “a land of hunger, misery, and terror.”^[13] According to Charles G. Koch, “Virtually every engineer he worked with [there] was purged.”^[12]

In 1940, Koch joined new partners to create a new firm, the Wood River Oil and Refining Company, which is today known as Koch Industries. In 1946 the firm acquired the Rock Island refinery and crude oil gathering system near Duncan, Oklahoma. Wood River was later renamed the Rock Island Oil & Refining Company.^[14] Charles G. Koch joined Rock Island in 1961, having started his career at the management consulting firm Arthur D. Little. He became president in 1966 and chairman at age 32, upon his father’s death the following year.^[9]^[15]

Koch Industries

The company was renamed Koch Industries in honor of Fred Koch, the year after his death. At that time, it was primarily an engineering firm with part interest in a Minnesota refinery, a crude oil-gathering system in Oklahoma,^[12] and some cattle ranches.^[16] In 1968, Charles approached Union Oil of California about buying their interest in Great Northern Oil Company and its Pine Bend Refinery but the discussions quickly stalled after Union asked for a large premium.^[11] In 1969, Union Oil began trying to market their interest in Great Northern by telling potential buyers that Koch’s controlling interest could be thwarted by currying favor with another owner, J. Howard Marshall II. When Marshall discovered this he threw his lot in with Koch, they together acquired a majority interest in the company and ultimately bought Union’s interest.^[14] Ownership of Pine Bend refinery led to several new businesses and capabilities, including chemicals, fibers, polymers, asphalt and other commodities such as petroleum coke and sulfur. These were followed by global commodity trading, gas liquids processing, real estate, pulp and paper, risk management and finance.^[11]

In 1970, Charles was joined at the family firm by his brother David H. Koch. Having started as a technical services manager, David became president of Koch Engineering in 1979.

Subsidiaries

Among Koch Industries’ subsidiaries across various industries^[17] are:

Georgia-Pacific

Georgia-Pacific is a paper and pulp company that produces “Brawny” paper towels, “Angel Soft” toilet paper, “Mardi Gras” napkins and towels, “Quilted Northern” toilet paper and paper towels, “Dixie” paper plates, bowls, napkins and cups, “Sparkle” paper towels, and “Vanity Fair” paper napkins, bowls, plates and tablecloths. The Atlanta-based company has operations in 27 states.^[18]

INVISTA

INVISTA is a polymer and fibers company that makes “Stainmaster” carpet, and “Lycra” fiber, among other products.

Koch Pipeline Company LP

Koch Pipeline Company LP, which owns and operates 4,000 miles (6,400 km) of pipeline used to transport oil, natural gas liquids and chemicals. Its pipelines are located across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Texas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Alberta, Canada. The firm operates offices in Wichita, Kansas, St. Paul, Minnesota and Corpus Christi, Texas.

In 1946 Wood River Oil Co. (a precursor company to Koch Industries) purchased Rock Island Oil and Refining Co. As a part of the transaction, it acquired a crude-oil pipeline in Oklahoma. As a result of construction and investments, Wood River acquired other pipelines in the U.S. and Canada. “In the ensuing years,” according to Koch Pipeline’s website, “the company bought, sold and built pipeline systems transporting crude oil and refined products, as well as natural gas, natural gas liquids and anhydrous ammonia (for fertilizer).”^[19] Koch Pipeline and its affiliates currently maintain a 4,000-mile network of pipelines.

In January 2000, Koch Pipeline agreed to a $35 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department and the State of Texas. This settlement, including a $30 million civil fine, represented compensation for three hundred oil spills in Texas and five other states dating back to 1990.^[20]^[21]^[22]

Pipeline accident

Koch’s Sterling butane pipeline had a leak in Lively, Texas, on August 24, 1996. Two teenagers were killed when the gas exploded and burned. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that severe external pipeline corrosion was the cause of the failure, and recommended to Koch to improve corrosion evaluation procedures.^[23] Although Koch distributed pamphlets about safety around the pipelines, they failed to maintain an up-to-date mailing list. Only 5 out of 45 residences in the area of the accident had received pamphlets. The families of the dead had not.^[24]

In 1999, a Texas jury found that negligence had led to the rupture of the Koch pipeline and awarded the victims’ families $296 million — “the largest compensatory damages judgment in a wrongful death case against a corporation in U.S. history”.^[25]

In a statement released in 2010, Koch Industries offered this comment:

The August, 1996 pipeline accident in Texas was a tragedy. Koch accepted responsibility immediately for the incident, which is the only event of its kind in the company’s history. The thorough review conducted of this pipeline the year before the accident did not uncover any issues that posed a foreseeable threat to public safety. The bacteria-induced corrosion that caused the accident acted more quickly to damage this pipeline than had ever been documented by any industry expert. Koch’s cooperative efforts to identify the source and cause of this problem so that this knowledge could be shared throughout industry were praised by the National Transportation Safety Board, which did a two-year investigation into this incident.^[26]

Flint Hill Resources LP

Flint Hill Resources LP, originally called Koch Petroleum Group, is a major refining and chemicals company based in Wichita, Kansas. It sells products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, ethanol, polymers, intermediate chemicals, base oils and asphalt. It operates oil refineries in six states. Flint Hill has chemical plants in Illinois, Texas and Michigan. The firm is also a major manufacturer of asphalt used for paving and roofing applications. It operates 13 asphalt terminals located in six states including Alaska (2 terminals), Wisconsin (2), Iowa (3), Minnesota (4), Nebraska (1), and North Dakota(1).^[27] The firm manages the purchasing of domestic crude oil from Texas and Colorado offices, has four ethanol plants across Iowa, operates three refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and has a refinery terminal in Alaska. The Minnesota refinery can process 320,000 barrels (51,000 m³) of crude a day, most of which comes from from Alberta, Canada, and handles one quarter of all Canadian oil sands crude entering the U.S.^[28] It also operates fuel terminals in Wisconsin (4 locations), Texas (6), and one each in Iowa and Minnesota.^[29]

In March 1999, Koch Petroleum Group acknowledged that it had negligently dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of aviation fuel into wetlands from its refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota, and that it had illegally dumped a million gallons of high-ammonia wastewater onto the ground and into the Mississippi River. Koch Petroleum paid a $6 million fine and $2 million in remediation costs, and was ordered to serve three years of probation.^[30]

In April 2001, the company reached a $20 million settlement in exchange for admitting to covering up environmental violations at its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas.^[31]^[32]

In June 2003, the US Commerce Department fined Flint Hill Resources a $200,000 civil penalty. The fine settled charges that the company exported crude petroleum from the US to Canada without proper US government authorization. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said from July 1997 to March 1999, Koch Petroleum (later called Flint Hill Resources) committed 40 violations of Export Administration Regulations.^[33]

In 2005, Koch’s Flint Hills Resources refinery was recognized by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Awards program for reducing air emissions by 50 percent while expanding operations.^[34] The EPA has worked with Flint Hills Resources to develop “strategies for curtailing so-called ‘upset’ emissions, in what agency and company sources say could lead to guidance to minimize such emissions from petroleum refineries and other industrial facilities.”^[35] The EPA described the process as a “model for other companies.”^[36]

In 2006, Flint Hill Resources was fined nearly $16,000 by the EPA for 10 separate violations of the Clean Air Act at its Alaska oil refinery facilities, and required to spend another $60,000 on safety equipment needed to help prevent future violations.^[37]

Koch Fertilizer, LLC

Koch Fertilizer, LLC, which is one of the world’s largest makers of nitrogen fertilizers.^[38] Koch Fertilizer owns or has interests in fertilizer plants the United States, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, and Italy, among others.^[39]^[40] Koch Fertilizer was formed in 1988 when the Koch companies purchased the Gulf Central Pipeline and ammonia terminals connected to the pipeline. The next year, the Koch Nitrogen Company was formed in order to market ammonia. The next few years saw purchases of various ammonia facilities in Louisiana, Canada, and elsewhere, and ammonia sales agreements with firms in Australia, the U.K., and other countries. The year 2010 saw the founding of Koch Methanol, LLC, and Koch Agronomic Services, LLC. In October 2010, a plant in Venezuela was nationalized by the government.^[41] In 2011, the firm acquired the British fertilizer firm J&H Bunn Limited.

Koch Agricultural Company

Koch Agricultural Company’s Matador Cattle Company division operates three ranches totaling 425,000 acres (1,720 km²) located in Beaverhead, Montana, Matador, Texas and the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas. There are more than 15,000 head of cattle raised on the ranches.^[42]

The Matador Land and Cattle Company was founded in 1882 by Scottish investors, whose acquisition included 2.5 million acres in four Texas counties. In 1951, the company was sold to Lazard Freres and Company, which in turn sold some of the Texas land to Fred C. Koch. In 1952 Koch formed Matador Cattle Company, and later one of his companies purchased part of Matador Ranch, which was brought together with other Koch ranches in Montana and Kansas. Today, according to the ranch’s website, it “is owned and operated by Matador Cattle Company, a division of Koch Agriculture Company, which is an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries.”^[43]

Koch’s Matador Ranch in Texas earned the Lone Star Land Steward award for outstanding natural resource management in 2010.^[44] The Montana ranch has earned several environmental stewardship awards, including the EPA Regional Administrator’s award.^[45]

Environmental and safety record

From 1999 to 2003, Koch Industries was assessed “more than $400 million in fines, penalties and judgments.”^[25] Another source points out that Koch has had only “eight instances of alleged misconduct … over the span of 63 years” despite being a giant multinational, and that this compares favorably to the fines, penalties and judgments accrued by the similarly large General Electric corporation.^[46]

Pollution and resource fines

In May 2001, Koch Industries paid $25 million to the federal government to settle a federal lawsuit that found the company had improperly taken more oil than it had paid for from federal and Indian land.^[47]

In 2007, Koch Nitrogen’s plant in Enid, Oklahoma, was listed as the third highest company releasing toxic chemicals in Oklahoma, according to the EPA, ranking behind Perma-Fix Environmental Services in Tulsa and Weyerhaeuser Co. in Valliant.^[48] The facility produces about 10% of the US national production of anhydrous ammonia, as well as urea and UAN.^[49]

In 2010, Koch Industries was ranked 10th on the list of top US corporate air polluters, the “Toxic 100 Air Polluters”, by the Political Economic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.^[50]

Awards and certifications

This section relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (May 2011)

According to its website, Koch Industries and its subsidiaries received 289 stewardship awards over the two years ending January 2011.^[51]

Koch Industries’ headquarters in Wichita has been certified for meeting the Energy Star standards for superior energy efficiency and environmental protection. As of 2010^[update] it is the only Wichita office building to be so recognized.^[52]^[53] A Tulsa, Oklahoma site of the Koch-owned John Zink Company site was part of the EPA’s National Environmental Performance Track program from 2003 until 2009 when the program was suspended.^[54]^[55]

In 2011, the Midway-Kansas Chapter of the American Red Cross awarded Koch Industries with a Corporate Excellence Award for its long-standing commitment to the humanitarian mission of Red Cross.^[56]

Legal activity

In 2008, Koch Industries discovered that the French affiliate Koch-Glitsch had violated bribery laws allegedly securing contracts in Algeria, Egypt, India, Morocco, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia after an investigation by Ethics Compliance officer, Egorova-Farines.^[25] After Koch Industries’ investigative team looked into her findings, the four employees involved were terminated. A Bloomberg article states that Egorova-Farines’ reported her findings immediately, and even after Koch’s investigators substantiated the findings, her “superiors removed her from the inquiry in August 2008 and fired her in June 2009, calling her incompetent.”^[25] Koch Industries’ general counsel, Mark Holden, gave a different account of the events to Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post.^[57] Holden stated that Egorova-Farines failed to promptly share the findings, choosing instead to give the information to a manager at Koch-Glitsch who was later fired for bribery. Rubin writes that, according to Holden, “Egorova-Farines was not fired but instead ran into performance problems, left the company to go on leave and never returned.” Egorova-Farines sued Koch-Glitsch for wrongful termination in France. Rubin writes that she lost and “was ordered to pay costs for bringing a frivolous case.”^[57]

In May 2011, a Utah judge dismissed a Koch Industries lawsuit alleging that Youth For Climate Truth, in releasing a fake Koch Industries press release, had infringed on Koch Industries’ trademark.^[58]

Political activity

The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (March 2011)

This section may stray from the topic of the article into the topic of another article, Political activities of the Koch family. Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. (November 2011)

See also: Political activities of the Koch family

Koch Industries has spent more than $50 million to lobby in Washington since 2006, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.^[25]

The company has opposed the regulation of financial derivatives and limits on greenhouse gases.^[25] It sponsors free market foundations and causes.^[59] ^[60] According to the Center for Responsive Politics, many of Koch Industries’ contributions have gone toward achieving legislation on energy issues, defense appropriations and financial regulatory reform.^[61] According to Greenpeace, the company has “had a quiet but dominant role in a high-profile national policy debate on global warming,” and has out-spent ExxonMobil (another corporation active in fighting climate change science and legislation) in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change. “From 2005 to 2008, ExxonMobil spent $8.9 million while the Koch Industries-controlled foundations contributed $24.9 million in funding.”^[62]^[63] Another Greenpeace study states that between 1997 and 2008 Koch Industries donated nearly $48 million to groups which doubt or oppose the theory of anthropogenic global warming.^[64]^[65] Koch Industries replied saying the Greenpeace report “distorts the environmental record of our companies.”^[63]^[context?]

One policy proposal to control global warming that Koch Industries has come out against is Low Carbon Fuel Standards, such as were passed in 2007 in California.^[28] According to Koch Industries, “LCFS would cripple refiners that rely on heavy crude feedstocks to provide the transportation fuels that keep America moving.”^[66]

According to a critic of the Mercatus Center and the Kochs, the political activity by some of the Koch-supported foundations — such as Mercatus Center^[67] — helps the company financially.^{[relevant to this paragraph? – discuss]} According to Thomas McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas who specializes in environmental issues, “Koch has been constantly in trouble with the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Mercatus has constantly hammered” on the EPA.^[63]^{[relevant to this paragraph? – discuss]} The founder of the Mercatus Center, Richard H. Fink, also heads Koch Industries’ lobbying operation in Washington DC.^[63] According to a study by the progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America, Koch Industries (and other Koch brothers-owned companies) “have benefited from nearly a $100 million in government contracts since 2000.”^[63]^[68]

Koch Industries have also been active in supporting and opposing politicians, including presidents. According to Jane Mayer, During the US 2000 election campaign, Koch Industries spent some $900,000 to support the candidacies of George W. Bush and other Republicans.^{[neutrality is disputed]}^[63] It has funded opposition campaigns against programs of the Obama administration — “from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus”^[63]. The Koch Industries website includes an opinion piece from the Wall Street Journal by Charles Koch, one of the company’s owners, “Why Koch Industries is Speaking Out”^[69] The article states:

Because of our activism, we’ve been vilified by various groups. Despite this criticism, we’re determined to keep contributing and standing up for those politicians, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who are taking these challenges [deficit spending by governments] seriously.

References

^ ^a ^b ^c “Koch Industries Welcomes 2009 Leadership Kansas Class” (PDF). http://www.kochind.com/files/070709KIILeadershipKansas.pdf. Retrieved 2011-07-23.
^ “Forbes Magazine Profile for America’s Top 100 Private Companies”. Forbes.com. 3 November 2010. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/21/private-companies-10_Koch-Industries_VMZQ.html. Retrieved 2011-07-23.
^ “Koch Industries, Inc – Industry Areas”. Kochind.com. http://www.kochind.com/IndustryAreas/default.asp. Retrieved 2011-07-23.
^ Continetti, Matthew (April 4, 2011). “The Paranoid Style in Liberal Politics”. The Weekly Standard. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/paranoid-style-liberal-politics_555525.html?nopager=1.
^ ^a ^b Fisher, Daniel (Mar. 13, 2006). “Mr. Big”, pp. 24–26. Forbes. Online summary for calendar year 2005 at [1].
^ “America’s Largest Private Companies”. Forbes. 8 November 2007. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/21/biz_privates07_Americas-Largest-Private-Companies_Rank.html?boxes=custom. Retrieved 2011-07-23.
^ “Forbes rankings for 2009″. Forbes.com. 2009-10-28. http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/28/largest-private-companies-business-private-companies-09_land.html. Retrieved 2011-07-23.
^ “The Principled Entrepreneur”. The American. July–August 2007. http://www.american.com/archive/2007/july-august-magazine-contents/the-principled-entrepreneur. Retrieved 23 February 2010.
^ ^a ^b “Summary of Koch Industries History”. sec.gov. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 14 November 2005. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/41077/000119312505225697/dex993.htm. Retrieved 18 February 2010.
^ The Top 10 Forbes Asia October 19, 2009
^ ^a ^b ^c Koch, Charles C. (2007). The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-470-13988-2.
^ ^a ^b ^c Daniel Fisher (13 March 2006). “Mr. Big”. Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/global/2006/0313/024.html.
^ Koch, Fred C. (1960). A Business Man Looks at Communism. Wichita, Kansas.
^ ^a ^b J. Howard, Marshall II (1994). Done in Oil: An Autobiography. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. p. 254. ISBN 0-89096-533-1.
^ Bruce Upbin; Brandon Copple (14 December 1998). “Creative destruction 101″. Forbes.
^ John, Lincoln (1989). Rich Grass and Sweet Water. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 0-89096-387-8.
^ Koch Industries website, Industry Areas, accessed Aug 25 2010,
^ Georgia Pacific website, accessed March 11, 2011, Georgia-Pacific Company Overview
^ “History”. Koch Pipeline Company, L.P.. http://www.kochpipeline.com/AboutUs/history.asp. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
^ “Koch Pipeline Company L.P. – Newsroom”. Kochpipeline.com. 2000-01-13. http://www.kochpipeline.com/news/printable.asp?id=270. Retrieved 2011-07-23.
^ By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz and Jeff Nesmith (2001-07-23). “Austin news, sports, weather, Longhorns, business”. Statesman.com. http://www.statesman.com/specialreports/content/specialreports/pipelines/23pipegathering.html. Retrieved 2011-07-23.
^ “Koch Agrees to $35 Million Settlement in Two Environmental Cases”. Safety Online. 17 January 2000. http://www.safetyonline.com/article.mvc/Koch-Agrees-to-35-million-Settlement-in-Two-E-0001?VNETCOOKIE=NO.
^ Pipeline Rupture, Liquid Butane Release, and Fire, Lively, Texas, August 24, 1996
^ “Austin news, sports, weather, Longhorns, business”. Statesman.com. http://www.statesman.com/specialreports/content/specialreports/pipelines/23pipelively3.html. Retrieved 2011-07-23.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Loder, Asjylyn; David Evans (3 October 2011). “Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales”. Bloomberg Markets Magazine. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-02/koch-brothers-flout-law-getting-richer-with-secret-iran-sales.html. Retrieved 5 October 2011.
^ “Koch Industries Responds to New Yorker Claims”. Newsmax Media. http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/koch-industries-new-yorker/2010/08/26/id/368519. Retrieved 23 April 2011.
^ Flint Hill Resources website, accessed March 11, 2011, FHR Asphalt
^ ^a ^b Dembicki, Geoff (March 22, 2011). “The Kochs: Oil Sands Billionaires Bankrolling US Right”. The Tyee (Vancouver, B.C.). http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/03/22/KochBrothers/index.html. Retrieved 2011-08-21.
^ Koch Industries website, accessed March 11, 2011, http://www.fhr.com/newsroom/contact.aspx?ID=9
^ “Koch Petroleum Group Sentenced for Minnesota Pollution” (Press release). Environmental Protection Agency. 9 March 2000. http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/d0cf6618525a9efb85257359003fb69d/eae2020401d0bf098525689d00713ea5!OpenDocument. Retrieved 2010-06-14.
^ “Koch Pleads Guilty to Covering up Environmental Violations at Texas Oil Refinery”. justice.gov. U.S. Department of Justice. 9 April 2001. http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2001/April/153enrd.htm. Retrieved 30 May 2010.
^ Don Richards (22 January 2001). “DOJ Reduces Indictments Against Koch Industries”. ICIS. http://www.icis.com/Articles/2001/01/22/130888/doj-reduces-indictments-against-koch-industries.html.
^ US Dept of Commerce, Commerce Dept Fines Kansas Firm, June 3, 2003 press release, http://www.bis.doc.gov/news/2003/kansasfirmfined.htm
^ Jessica Harper (18 November 2009). “Flint Hills is coming out of murky waters”. Dakota County Tribune. http://www.thisweeklive.com/2009/11/18/flint-hills-is-coming-out-of-murky-waters/.
^ “Inside EPA’s Clean Air Report”. InsideEPA. http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:7eiXKq7LLHkJ:www.flinthillsresources.info/upload/InsideEPA9-09Pactwithoil.pdf+Flint+Hills+Resources+epa&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjlfx6q_Ri64N7NdqA3rho-Amf6W1nzG7_PkmPqn7Z9eJiGxEsQN9ph1qqI7EjuAUdIwNaS1l1voou3gXceHm_zhgBmQidSNdEp44PfgvYdxXP_u1PTXKeTbv4SM4bGwfZZ_7S2&sig=AHIEtbQgO5KZzY5H1tGz7XGieXnNJakdqQ. Retrieved 23 April 2011.
^ “Flint Hills Resources, LP Agrees to Transition Its Texas Flexible Permits to Federally Approved Clean Air Act Permits – Transition affects facilities in Corpus Christi, Port Arthur and Longview”. EPA. http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/6F25BD791C4B21CB852577C400552339. Retrieved 27 April 2011.
^ EPA Press Release, EPA Fines Flint Hill Resources Alaska, Dec 13 2006, accessed Aug 25 2010, http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/b0789fb70f8ff03285257029006e3880/6b191200b3ce87e2852572430062f987!OpenDocument
^ Koch Fertilizer website, accessed March 11, 2011, http://www.kochfertilizer.com/
^ Yasha Levine (1 September 2010). “7 Ways the Koch Bros. Benefit from Corporate Welfare”. The New York Observer. http://www.observer.com/2010/daily-transom/how-libertarian-koch-bros-benefit-corporate-welfare.
^ “Fertilizers”. http://www.kochind.com/IndustryAreas/fertilizers.aspx.
^ “Koch Industries says no word on Venezuela takeover”. Reuters. 11 October 2010. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1112262420101011.
^ Koch Industries website, accessed March 11, 2011, Ranching
^ “The History of Matador Ranch”. Matador Ranch. http://www.matadorranch.com/matadorranchhistory.php. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
^ “Lone Star Land Steward Awards Winners Announced” (Press release). Texas Parks & Wildlife. 6 May 2010. http://archive.tpwd.state.tx.us/newsmedia/releases/text.phtml?req=20100506. Retrieved 2010-06-14.
^ “EPA Honors Koch Ranch for Environmental Excellence; Award is Ranch’s Fourth Major Environmental Honor in 1999″ (Press release). Koch Industries. 7 June 1999. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1999_June_7/ai_54811290/. Retrieved 2010-06-14.
^ Bloomberg’s Exposé on Koch Industries Reveals … What Exactly? Daniel Indiviglio| 4 October 2011
^ Russell Ray (20 June 2001). “Tribe Likely to Get Piece of Settlement in Osage County, Okla., Oil Squabble”. Tulsa World.
^ “EPA Reports Toxic Releases to Air, Water and Land in Oklahoma in 2007″. Environmental Protection Agency. 2009-03-19. http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/6427a6b7538955c585257359003f0230/0c43e41531a2f7848525757e00664797!OpenDocument.
^ Voorhis, Dan (2010-12-16). “Fertilizer Helps Koch Grow”. Wichita Eagle. http://www.kansas.com/2010/12/16/1635564/fertilizer-helps-koch-grow.html.
^ “Toxic 100 Air Polluters” (Press release). March 31, 2010. http://www.peri.umass.edu/toxic_press/.
^ “Koch Companies Recognized with 289 Stewardship Awards since 2009″ press release, January 24, 2011.
^ “Koch Industries Inc., Earns Prestigious Energy Star for Efficiencies at Wichita Complex” (Press release). Koch Industries. 17 June 2008. http://www.kochind.com/newsroom/news_releases_details.aspx?id=994. Retrieved 2010-05-31.
^ “ENERGY STAR Labeled Offices in Kansas”. energystar.gov. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=labeled_buildings.showMap&SEARCH_OWNER_ID=&S_CODE=KS&PROFILES=&YEAR=&BUILDING_TYPE_ID=700&SEARCH_SPP_ID=&CITY=&ZIP=&SEARCH_PROP_MANAGER_ID=&FILTER_B_ID=#. Retrieved 30 May 2010.
^ “Process and Pollution Control”. kochenergy.com. Koch Industries. http://kochenergy.com/EHS/processandpollutioncontrol.aspx. Retrieved 30 May 2010.
^ “Performance Track Final Progress Report”. epa.gov. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. May 2009. http://www.epa.gov/performancetrack/downloads/PT_ProgRprt_2009_web.pdf. Retrieved 30 May 2010.
^ Heck, Josh (18 May 2011). “Red Cross Recognizes three fundraisers”. Wichita Business Journal. http://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/news/2011/05/18/red-cross-recognizes-three-fundraisers.html. Retrieved 19 May 2011.
^ ^a ^b Rubin, Jennifer. “Koch responds to Bloomberg”. The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/koch-responds-to-bloomberg/2011/03/29/gIQA3KzNIL_blog.html. Retrieved 5 October 2011.
^ “SUMMARY JUDGMENTS: Our daily legal-news aggregator for May 11, 2011″ Thompson Reuters News and Insight
^ Secretive Republican Donors Are Planning Ahead by Kate Zernike published October 19, 2010, New York Times
^ Pulling the Wraps Off Koch Industries By LESLIE WAYNE; Published: November 20, 1994; New York Times; ” Their donations reflect their belief in libertarian and free market philosophies or their personal interests.”
^ OpenSecrets, Summary of Koch Industries
^ Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine . greenpeace.org . 30 March 2010]
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Covert Operations The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. by Jane Mayer . newyorker.com . August 30, 2010
^ Vidal, John (30 March 2010). “US oil company donated millions to climate skeptic groups, says Greenpeace”. The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/30/us-oil-donated-millions-climate-sceptics.
^ “Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine”. Global Warming. Washington: Greenpeace. 2010-03-29. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/global-warming-and-energy/polluterwatch/koch-industries. Retrieved 2010-04-01.
^ http://www.kochind.com/ViewPoint/lowCarbon.aspx Low Carbon Fuel Standards
^ “Mercatus, the staunchly anti-regulatory center funded largely by Koch Industries Inc.” I Am OMB and I Write the Rules By Al Kamen washingtonpost.com, July 12, 2006]
^ Koch Companies Have Received Almost $100 Million In Government Contracts August 20, 2010 — Media Matters Action Network
^ Why Koch Industries is Speaking Out, Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2011

External links

- Koch Industries
- Lobbying and campaign contributions at OpenSecrets.org
- Koch Industries political contributions from Influence Explorer at the Sunlight Foundation
- Koch Industries Public Sector political contributions from Influence Explorer at the Sunlight Foundation
- KochFacts

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Just One More Thing Congressman Ryan: When Does The Republican’s Path To Prosperity Balance The Budget?–The Twelth of Never!

Posted on April 5, 2011. Filed under: Agriculture, American History, Banking, Blogroll, Business, Communications, Demographics, Economics, Employment, Federal Government, Fiscal Policy, government, government spending, Health Care, history, Homes, Immigration, Investments, Language, Law, liberty, Life, Links, media, Medicine, Monetary Policy, Money, Music, People, Philosophy, Politics, Private Sector, Public Sector, Rants, Raves, Regulations, Strategy, Talk Radio, Taxes, Unions, Video, War, Wealth, Wisdom | Tags: Balanced Budget, deficits, Financial Crisis, inflation, Michele Bachmann, Milton Friedman, national debt, Path to Prosperity, Paul Ryan, Republicans, Ron Paul, Tea Party, unemployment |

Give it a listen!

Pronk Pops Show 24: April 19, 2011

Pronk Pops Show 23: April 12, 2011

Pronk Pops Show 22 (Part 2): April 7, 2011

Pronk Pops Show 22 (Part 1): April 7, 2011

April 08, 2011 11:16 AM PDT

Pronk Pops Show 22, April 7, 2011

Segment 1: 3,500,000 Million Americans Unemployed in March 2011 Still Exceeds Great Depression High of 13,000,000 In March 1933–The Obama Depressions Continues–Bureau of Labor Statistics: 8.8% Official Unemployment Rate (U-3) vs. Gallup Unemployment Rate of 10.0%–Nonfarm Payroll Increased By 216,000–The Government Makes The Depression Worse!–Videos

Segment 2: Obama’s Anti-American, Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Growth, Anti-Jobs, and Anti-Security Energy Policy–Videos

Segment 3: Republican Establishment Will Propose A Ten Year $6,200 Billion Cut In Spending Over Ten Years–The Problem Is It Does Not Balance The Budget For Another Five Years At The Earliest–Tea Party Movement Demands Balanced Budgets Starting In 2012 For The Next Ten Years!–A Jet Plane To Prosperity Not A Path To Prosperity–Videos

Segment 4: Just One More Thing Congressman Ryan: When Does The Republican’s Path To Prosperity Balance The Budget?–The Twelth of Never!–Videos

For additional information and videos on the above segments:

http://pronkpops.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/pronk-pops-show-22-april-5-2011-segment-113500000-million-americans-unemployed-in-march-2011-still-exceeds-great-depression-high-of-13000000-in-march-1933%E2%80%93the-obama-depressions-contin/

Johnny Mathis – The Twelfth Of Never

Ryan Unveils Much Anticipated 2012 Budget Plan

Sean Interviews Paul Ryan

S-1 FY2012 Chairman’s Markup (Nominal Dollars in Billions)
Fiscal Year	Outlays	Revenues	Deficits	Debt Held By Public
2011	3,618	2,230	-1,388	10,351
2012	3,529	2,533	-995	11,418
2013	3,559	2,860	-699	12,217
2014	3,586	3,094	-492	12,801
2015	3,671	3,237	-434	13,326
2016	3,858	3,377	-481	13,886
2017	3,998	3,589	-408	14,363
2018	4,123	3,745	-379	14,800
2019	4,352	3,939	-414	15,254
2020	4,544	4,142	-402	15,681
2021	4,739	4,354	-385	16,071
2012-2021	39,958	34,870	-5,088	n.a.

http://budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/PathToProsperityFY2012.pdf

S-1 FY2012 President’s Budget (Nominal Dollars in Billions)
Fiscal Year	Outlays	Revenues	Deficits	Debt Held By Public
2011	3,819	2,174	-1,645	10,856
2012	3,729	2,627	-1,101	11,881
2013	3,771	3,003	-768	12,784
2014	3,977	3,333	-646	13,562
2015	4,190	3,583	-607	14,301
2016	4,468	3,819	-649	15,064
2017	4,669	4,042	-627	15,795
2018	4,876	4,257	-619	16,513
2019	5,154	4,473	-681	17,284
2020	5,442	4,686	-735	18,103
2021	5,697	4,923	-774	18,967
2012-2021	45,952	38,747	-7,205	n.a.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2012/assets/tables.pdf

The tea party movement’s budget would require the Federal Government to have a balanced or surplus budget in every fiscal year starting in 2012 with a declining national debt starting in Fiscal Year 2017.

S-1 FY2012 Tea Party’s Balanced/Surplus Budget (Nominal Dollars in Billions)
Fiscal Year	Outlays	Revenues	Surpluses	Debt Held By Public
2012	2,500	2,500	0	10,900
2013	2,800	2,800	0	10,900
2014	3,000	3,000	0	10,900
2015	3,200	3,200	0	10,900
2016	3,300	3,300	0	10,900
2017	3,400	3,500	100	10,800
2018	3,500	3,700	200	10,600
2019	3,600	3,900	300	10,300
2020	3,700	4,000	300	10,000
2021	3,800	4,300	500	9,500
2012-2021	32,800	34,200	1,400	n.a.

Summary of Outlays, Revenues (Receipts), Deficits, Surpluses Fiscal Years 1980-2010 (Nominal Dollars in Millions)
Fiscal Year	Outlays	Revenues (Receipts)	Deficits (-), Surpluses
1980	590,941	517,112	-73,830
1981	678,241	599,272	-78,968
1982	745,743	617,766	-127,977
1983	808,364	600,562	-207,802
1984	851,805	666,488	-185,367
1985	946,344	734,037	-212,308
1986	990,382	769,155	-221,277
1987	1,004,017	854,288	-149,730
1988	1,064,417	854,288	-155,178
1989	1,143,744	991,105	-152,639
1990	1,252,994	1,031,958	-221,036
1991	1,324,226	1,054,988	-269,238
1992	1,381,529	1,091,208	-290,321
1993	1,409,386	1,154,335	-255,051
1994	1,461,753	1,258,566	-203,186
1995	1,515,742	1,351,790	-163,392
1996	1,560,484	1,453,053	-107,431
1997	1,601,116	1,579,232	-21,884
1998	1,652,458	1,721,728	69,270
1999	1,701,842	1,827,452	125,610
2000	1,788,950	2,025,191	236,241
2001	1,862,846	1,991,082	128,236
2002	2,010,894	1,853,136	-157,758
2003	2,159,899	1,782,314	-377,585
2004	2,292,841	1,880,114	-412,727
2005	2,471,957	2,153,611	-318,346
2006	2,655,050	2,406,869	-248,181
2007	2,728,686	2,567,985	-160,701
2008	2,982,544	2,523,991	-458,553
2009	3,517,677	2,104,989	-1,412,688
2010	3,456,213	2,162,724	-1,293,489

For a history of the Federal Government’s Receipts (Revenues), Outlays, and Deficits and Surpluses

Table 1.1—Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits (-): 1789–2016

“…Historical Tables provides data on budget receipts, outlays, surpluses or deficits, Federal debt, and Federal employment over an extended time period, generally from 1940 or earlier to 2012 or 2016.

To the extent feasible, the data have been adjusted to provide consistency with the 2012 Budget and to provide comparability over time.

To download the Historical Tables as a single PDF, click here (360 pages, 3.2 MB) …”

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

Neither the Republican nor Democratic Party is capable of living within the means of the American people.

The political class or elites are not serious and do not understand the problem.

If they did they would have a sense of urgency which is lacking in both the Democratic and Republican proposed budgets.

Deficits, Debts and Unfunded Liabilities: The Consequences of Excessive Government Spending

The Republicans are proposing a budget for Fiscal Year 2012 of $3,618 billion compared with the President Obama’s $3,729.

This results in a deficit of $995 billion for the Republican budget and $1,101 billion for President Obama’s budget.

As the above tables clearly show, neither party is capable of balancing the budget in the next ten years.

The above budgets are needed to support a warfare and welfare economy with a collectivist state.

The above budgets are not a pathway to a peace and prosperity economy with a constitutional republic.

The budget needs to be balanced starting in fiscal year 2012 at $2,500 billion or less.

The tea party movement demands that from here on out that all budgets be either balanced or in surplus with no tax increases.

Please do not tell me Congressman Ryan that the budget will me in primary balance by 2015.

Primary balance means you exclude interest on the national debt from expenditures or outlays.

A budget in primary balance is just a rather lame-duck president’s attempt to confuse the American people.

I am not confused or amused by President Obama totally irresponsible Fiscal Year 2012 budget proposal.

Nor am I impressed with the so-called path to a balanced budget and a path to prosperity for the United States economy.

The tea party movement does not want a path to prosperity but a jet plane ride to a balanced budget in Fiscal Year 2012 without any new taxes.

Start permanently shutting down ten Federal Departments before you even begin to think about cutting mandatory spending or entitlements including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The American people want the FairTax not the continuation of an overly complicated Federal Income taxation system even with a lower rate of 25% for individuals and corporations.

The FairTax: It’s Time

President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2012 budget gets a F and it will cost him his re-election.

The American people have no intention of getting in the Democratic Party’s car driven by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama:

The American people have no intention of getting on the Republican Party’s path to prosperity either.

The Republican Fiscal Year 2012 budget gets a D+.

Milton Friedman would give you a D-:

The American people demand fiscal responsibility or living within ones means for the Federal Government starting with the Fiscal Year 2012 Federal Government Budget.

The American people were listening when the Republican establishment’s leadership said they heard the American people.

Republicans roll out “Pledge to America”

Pledge to America Preamble

“Pledge to America” Unveiled by Republicans (Full Text)

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20017335-503544.html

The Republican Pledge to America clearly stated that:

“We have a plan to impose fiscal discipline and cut government down to size.”

The Republican Pathway to Prosperity is that plan and it does not impose fiscal discipline nor does it cut down the size of the Federal Government.

Over the next ten fiscal years, there is not one single year in which the fiscal discipline of a balanced budget is met.

The Republican Pledge to America clearly stated that:

“With common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops, we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone and putting us on a path to balance the budget and pay down the debt. We will also establish strict budget caps to limit federal spending from this point forward.”

For Fiscal Year 2008 the total actual outlays were $2,982 billion and total actual revenues or receipts from taxation were $2,523 billion for the U.S. Federal Government with a deficit of $458 billion.

The Republican Pathway to Prosperity proposes in Fiscal Year 2012 total estimated outlays of $3,529 billion and total estimated revenues of $2,533 billion resulting in a deficit of $997 billion.

The Republican Party establishment and leadership misled and lied to the American people and the tea party movement when it said it would “roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels.”

Both the Democratic and Republican Party proposed U.S. Federal Government budgets are extremely dangerous for they generate increasing uncertainty among business owners and consumers as to where this ultimately leads the economy and nation.

“Extreme Spending”

The Republican establishment’s leadership in Washington D.C. needs to be replaced for they have refused to learn the lessons of the 2006 and 2008 elections and apparently need to learn another lesson in 2012.

If you are a tea party movement patriot challenge all House and Senate seats currently held by Republicans if they vote for this fiscally irresponsible and unbalanced budget for Fiscal Year 2012.

The tea party movement has been betrayed by the Republican Party leadership and establishment in Washington, D.C.

Dan Mitchell gets a A+.

It’s Simple to Balance The Budget Without Higher Taxes

Controlling Leviathan: The Battle for Limited Government

Question and Answer Session: The Fight Against Big Government

I didn’t leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me.

The independents and the tea party movement have given up on both political parties.

The Pathway to Prosperity is the Republican Party’s timid attempt to capture the independents and tea party movement.

No sale.

The tea party movement will not be pleased.

They will be leaving on a jet plane.

I will be voting for Ron Paul for President in 2012 and Michele Bachmann for Vice-President.

SA@TAC – Ron Paul’s Pledge to America

P.S. You really disappointed me Congressman Ryan, your proposal is neither bold nor timid, it is fiscally irresponsible and gutless.

Suggest Paul Ryan talk to some Senators who understand the problem and what needs to be done now.

Rand Paul and Mike Lee on “Glenn Beck” with Judge Napolitano 03/07/11

ELVIS PRESLEY TWELVE OF NEVER

Background Articles and Videos

What We Believe, Part 1: Small Government and Free Enterprise.

What We Believe, Part 2: The Problem with Elitism

What We Believe, Part 3: Wealth Creation

What We Believe, Part 4: Natural Law

What We Believe, Part 5: Gun Rights

What We Believe, Part 6: Immigration

What We Believe, Part 7: American Exceptionalism

Tactics for socialist takeover of nations 1 of 2: Fabianism & Leninism

Tactics for socialist takeover of nations 2 of 2: Fabianism & Leninism

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Gary Becker–Videos

Posted on November 14, 2010. Filed under: Banking, Blogroll, Business, College, Communications, Economics, Education, Employment, Federal Government, Fiscal Policy, government, government spending, Health Care, Immigration, Investments, Language, Law, liberty, Life, Links, media, Medicine, Monetary Policy, Money, People, Philosophy, Politics, Rants, Raves, Regulations, Talk Radio, Taxes, Technology, Video, Wisdom | Tags: Econmics, Gary Becker, Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize |

Gary Becker – The Fed (1 of 5)

Gary Becker – The Fed 2 of 5)

Gary Becker – The Fed (3 of 5)

Gary Becker – Healthcare–A Millstone, Not A Milestone (4 of 5)

Gary Becker – Who Can You Trust? (5 of 5)

Gary Becker: Immigration 1

Gary Becker: Immigration 2

Gary Becker: Immigration 3

Gary Becker: Immigration 4

Gary Becker: Immigration 5

Gary Becker: Immigration 6

Gary Becker: Immigration 7

Gary Becker Intellectual Portrait part 1

Gary Becker Intellectual Portrait part 2

Gary Becker Intellectual Portrait part 3

Gary Becker Intellectual Portrait part 4

Gary Becker Intellectual Portrait part 5

Gary Becker Intellectual Portrait part 6

Gary Becker Intellectual Portrait part 7

Gary Becker Intellectual Portrait part 8

Gary Becker Intellectual Portrait part 9

Entrevista Gary Becker, Nobel Economía 1992 – ICEX

Gary Becker: Fear, Technology, & Education

Uncommon Sense

Milton Friedman & Gary Becker 1/7

Milton Friedman & Gary Becker 2/7

Milton Friedman & Gary Becker 3/7

Milton Friedman & Gary Becker 4/7

Milton Friedman & Gary Becker5/7

Milton Friedman & Gary Becker6/7

Milton Friedman & Gary Becker7/7

Background Articles and Videos

Charlie Rose – An Appreciation of Milton Friedman

The Power of Choice – Milton Friedman

Allan Meltzer – Testimony on FED Power Expansion – Commitee Hearing – HR 1207 Audit the FED 7-9-09

More Perspective – Geithner Calls for Financial Regulation Overhaul – Bloomberg

Inside Look: Managing the Credit Crisis (Part 2)

Inside Look – Inflation Threat Looming? – Bloomberg

Allan H. Meltzer

“…Allan H. Meltzer is an American economist and professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania^[1]. He was born February 6, 1928, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the author of dozens of academic papers and books on monetary policy and the Federal Reserve Bank, and is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on the development and applications of monetary policy^[2]. His book A History of the Federal Reserve is considered the most comprehensive history of the central bank.^[3] Volume II of his History of the Federal Reserve Bank, which covers the years since the Federal Reserve accord in 1951 to 1969, was released in February, 2010.^[4] Meltzer is considered to have originated the aphorism, “Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. It doesn’t work.”^{[5] …”}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Meltzer

Allan H. Meltzer

http://public.tepper.cmu.edu/facultydirectory/FacultyDirectoryProfile.aspx?id=98

Background Articles and Videos

Ronald Reagan TV Ad: “Its morning in America again”

Milton Friedman – The Great Depression Myth

Unpacking the “Pledge to America”

By Daniel Foster

“…The Pledge places job creation front and center, promising to stop all tax hikes scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2011 — not just those singled out by the Obama administration. The plan would also give small businesses the ability to deduct 20 percent of income from tax returns and, in an effort to tame productivity-stifling overregulation, would require congressional approval for any new administration rules that would impact the economy by $100 million or more.

Turning its attention to spending and the size of government, the Pledge proposes to immediately end TARP, cancel unspent stimulus dollars, and “roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels,” a move estimated to save $116 billion in the first year alone. It promises to end the government’s involvement in the revenue-sapping GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while shrinking their portfolios and establishing new capital standards.

To rein in the size of government, the document proposes a hiring freeze on non-security personnel, and calls for any new federal program to come with a “sunset” clause that would place the onus on legislators to routinely reassess its merits and justify new funding.

But the plan does not set specific spending targets, promising only to “significantly” reduce Congress’s next budget and place a “hard cap” on the growth of future discretionary spending.

And it is decidedly vague on entitlement reform, laying out in broad terms a commitment to “regularly review” and “fully account” for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid growth, but stopping well short of embracing specific entitlement reforms like those proposed in Wisconsin GOP congressman Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap.” …”

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/247471/unpacking-pledge-america-daniel-foster

Background Articles and Videos

Rush Limbaugh – Call Congress BarackHatesThis.com 3/19/10

Day of defiance: Nationwide protests as Slaughter House rushes through Demcare

By Michelle Malkin • March 20, 2010

“…Nancy Pelosi’s Slaughter House convenes at 9am. The chaplain opened with a prayer that had this line: “Shield us with your Holy Spirit, Lord…and drive away all that is evil.”

Amen to that.

On the West Lawn of the Capitol, Tea Party protesters and health care takeover opponents meet at high noon to raise their voices against the rotten policy and rotten process that has led us to this foul moment.

Americans will also gather at demonstrations nationwide to show their disgust and disapproval of the corruption, coercion, and Constitution-butchering.

I’ll post as many reader notices, photos, etc. from across the country as I can. Kicking off the rundown: …”

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/03/20/day-of-defiance-nationwide-protests-as-slaughter-house-rushes-through-demcare/

Medical Revolt Over Obamacare?

States Too Broke for Obama-Care?

Ron Paul: Great Health Care Interview With CNN John King

Ronald Reagan speaks out on Socialized Medicine – Audio

Milton Friedman – Socialized Medicine

Milton Friedman – Healthcare, 3rd Party Payer

Thomas Sowell – Obama’s Health Care Reform

Williams with Sowell – Government-Run Health Care

IWV discusses Health Care Poll on Fox News

Americans Oppose Health-Care Reform

Bret Baier Interviews Obama Part 1/2

Bret Baier Interviews Obama Part 2/2

Dr. Tom Coburn (R-OK) Delivers Weekly Republican Address on Health Care

Background Articles and Videos

Milton Friedman

“…Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist, statistician, and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. He is best known among scholars for his theoretical and empirical research, especially consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy.^[1] He was an economic advisor to U.S. President Ronald Reagan. Over time, many governments practiced his restatement of a political philosophy that extolled the virtues of a free market economic system with little intervention by government. As a professor of the Chicago School of Economics, based at the University of Chicago, he had great influence in determining the research agenda of the entire profession. Friedman’s many monographs, books, scholarly articles, papers, magazine columns, television programs, videos and lectures cover a broad range of topics of microeconomics, macroeconomics, economic history, and public policy issues. The Economist magazine praised him as “the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it”.^[2]

Originally a Keynesian supporter of the New Deal and advocate of government intervention in the economy, during the 1950s his reinterpretation of the Keynesian consumption function challenged the basic Keynesian model. At the University of Chicago, Friedman became the main advocate for opposing Keynesianism.^[3] During the 1960s he promoted an alternative macroeconomic policy known as “monetarism”. He theorized there existed a “natural rate of unemployment” and he argued the central government could not micromanage the economy because people would realize what the government was doing and change their behavior to neutralize such policies. He rejected the Phillips Curve and predicted that Keynesian policies then existing would cause “stagflation” (high inflation and minimal growth).^[4] Friedman’s claim that monetary policy could have prevented the Great Depression was an attempt to refute the analysis of Keynes, who argued that monetary policy is ineffective during depression conditions and that fiscal policy — large-scale deficit spending by the government — is needed to decrease mass unemployment. Though opposed to the existence of the Federal Reserve, Friedman argued that, given that it does exist, a steady expansion of the money supply was the only wise policy, and he warned against efforts by a treasury or central bank to do otherwise.

Influenced by his close friend George Stigler, Friedman opposed government regulation of many types. He once stated that his role in eliminating U.S. conscription was his proudest accomplishment, and his support for school choice led him to found The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Friedman’s political philosophy, which he considered classically liberal and libertarian, emphasized the advantages of free market economics and the disadvantages of government intervention and regulation, strongly influencing the opinions of American conservatives and libertarians. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman advocated policies such as a volunteer military, freely floating exchange rates, abolition of licensing of doctors, a negative income tax, and education vouchers.^[5] His books and essays were well read and were even circulated illegally in Communist countries.^[6]^[7]

Friedman’s methodological innovations held wide acceptance among economists, but some considered his policy prescriptions controversial. Most economists during the 1960s rejected them, but since then they have had an increasing international influence (especially in the USA and Britain). Some of his laissez-faire ideas concerning monetary policy, taxation, privatization and deregulation were used by governments,^[8] especially during the 1980s. His monetary theory has had a large influence on economists such as Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve’s response to the financial crisis of 2007-2010.^[9]^[10]

^…”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman

Free To Choose

“…Free to Choose: A Personal Statement maintains that the free market works best for all member of a society, claims to provide examples of how the market works, and maintains that it can solve problems where other approaches have failed. Published in January 1980, the 297 page book contains 10 chapters dealing with issues such as:

The misuse of Federal Reserve powers during the Great Depression,
The decline of personal freedoms, and
Government spending and economic controls.

Milton Friedman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1976. Contrary to normal practice the book was written after the TV series was produced, although the line “Basis for the acclaimed public television triumph” is written on the front cover, using the program transcripts as reference. The book was on the United States best sellers list for 5 weeks.

PBS telecast the series, beginning in January 1980; the general format was that of Dr. Friedman visiting and narrating a number of success and failure stories in history, which Dr. Friedman attributes to capitalism or the lack thereof (e.g. Hong Kong is commended for its free markets, while India is excoriated for relying on centralized planning especially for its protection of its traditional textile industry). Following the primary show, Dr. Friedman would engage in discussion with a number of selected persons, such as Donald Rumsfeld (then of G.D. Searle & Company).

The series was rebroadcast in 1990 with Linda Chavez moderating the episodes. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, Steve Allen and others give personal introductions for each episode in the series. This time, after the documentary part, Friedman sits down with a single opponent to debate the issues raised in the episode.

The Friedmans advocate laissez faire economic policies, often criticizing interventionist government policies and their cost in personal freedoms and economic efficiency in the United States and abroad. Areas of focus include government taxation on gas and tobacco, government regulation of the public school systems, and the Federal Reserve’s role in exacerbating the Great Depression by reducing the money supply in the years leading up to it. On the subject of welfare, the Friedmans argue that current welfare practices are creating “wards of the state”, as opposed to “self-reliant individuals”, and suggest a negative income tax as a less harmful alternative. Other ideas covered are: decriminalization of drugs, tighter control of Fed money supply, and the repeal of laws favoring labor unions …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_to_Choose

Background Articles and Videos

Introduction to Libertarianism by Walter Block Part 1/7

Introduction to Libertarianism by Walter Block Part 2/7

Introduction to Libertarianism by Walter Block Part 3/7

Introduction to Libertarianism by Walter Block Part 4/7

Introduction to Libertarianism by Walter Block Part 5/7

Introduction to Libertarianism by Walter Block Part 6/7

Introduction to Libertarianism by Walter Block Part 7/7

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 1 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 2 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 3 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 4 of 4)

Background Articles and Videos

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 1 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 2 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 3 of 4)

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism (Part 4 of 4)

Murray N. Rothbard: Libertarianism

**Series Id:** LNS14000000 Seasonally Adjusted **Series title:** (Seas) Unemployment Rate **Labor force status:** Unemployment rate **Type of data:** Percent or rate **Age:** 16 years and over
Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1999	4.3	4.4	4.2	4.3	4.2	4.3	4.3	4.2	4.2	4.1	4.1	4.0
2000	4.0	4.1	4.0	3.8	4.0	4.0	4.0	4.1	3.9	3.9	3.9	3.9
2001	4.2	4.2	4.3	4.4	4.3	4.5	4.6	4.9	5.0	5.3	5.5	5.7
2002	5.7	5.7	5.7	5.9	5.8	5.8	5.8	5.7	5.7	5.7	5.9	6.0
2003	5.8	5.9	5.9	6.0	6.1	6.3	6.2	6.1	6.1	6.0	5.8	5.7
2004	5.7	5.6	5.8	5.6	5.6	5.6	5.5	5.4	5.4	5.5	5.4	5.4
2005	5.3	5.4	5.2	5.2	5.1	5.0	5.0	4.9	5.0	5.0	5.0	4.9
2006	4.7	4.8	4.7	4.7	4.6	4.6	4.7	4.7	4.5	4.4	4.5	4.4
2007	4.6	4.5	4.4	4.5	4.4	4.6	4.6	4.6	4.7	4.7	4.7	5.0
2008	5.0	4.8	5.1	5.0	5.4	5.5	5.8	6.1	6.2	6.6	6.9	7.4
2009	7.7	8.2	8.6	8.9	9.4	9.5	9.4	9.7	9.8	10.1	10.0	10.0

**Series Id:** LNS13000000 Seasonally Adjusted **Series title:** (Seas) Unemployment Level **Labor force status:** Unemployed **Type of data:** Number in thousands **Age:** 16 years and over
Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1999	5976	6111	5783	6004	5796	5951	6025	5838	5915	5778	5716	5653
2000	5708	5858	5733	5481	5758	5651	5747	5853	5625	5534	5639	5634
2001	6023	6089	6141	6271	6226	6484	6583	7042	7142	7694	8003	8258
2002	8182	8215	8304	8599	8399	8393	8390	8304	8251	8307	8520	8640
2003	8520	8618	8588	8842	8957	9266	9011	8896	8921	8732	8576	8317
2004	8370	8167	8491	8170	8212	8286	8136	7990	7927	8061	7932	7934
2005	7784	7980	7737	7672	7651	7524	7406	7345	7553	7453	7566	7279
2006	7059	7185	7075	7122	6977	6998	7154	7097	6853	6728	6883	6784
2007	7085	6898	6725	6845	6765	6966	7113	7096	7200	7273	7284	7696
2008	7628	7435	7793	7631	8397	8560	8895	9509	9569	10172	10617	11400
2009	11919	12714	13310	13816	14518	14721	14534	14993	15159	15612	15340	15267

**Series Id:** LNS13327709 Seasonally Adjusted **Series title:** (seas) Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of all civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers **Labor force status:** Aggregated totals unemployed **Type of data:** Percent or rate **Age:** 16 years and over **Percent/rates:** Unemployed and mrg attached and pt for econ reas as percent of labor force plus marg attached
Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1999	7.7	7.7	7.6	7.6	7.4	7.5	7.5	7.3	7.4	7.2	7.1	7.1
2000	7.1	7.2	7.1	6.9	7.1	7.0	7.0	7.1	7.0	6.8	7.1	6.9
2001	7.3	7.4	7.3	7.4	7.5	7.9	7.8	8.1	8.7	9.3	9.4	9.6
2002	9.5	9.5	9.4	9.7	9.5	9.5	9.6	9.6	9.6	9.6	9.7	9.8
2003	10.0	10.2	10.0	10.2	10.1	10.3	10.3	10.1	10.4	10.2	10.0	9.8
2004	9.9	9.7	10.0	9.6	9.6	9.5	9.5	9.4	9.4	9.7	9.4	9.2
2005	9.3	9.3	9.1	8.9	8.9	9.0	8.8	8.9	9.0	8.7	8.7	8.6
2006	8.4	8.4	8.2	8.1	8.2	8.4	8.5	8.4	8.0	8.2	8.1	8.0
2007	8.3	8.1	8.0	8.2	8.2	8.2	8.3	8.5	8.4	8.4	8.5	8.8
2008	9.1	8.9	9.0	9.2	9.7	10.0	10.5	10.9	11.2	11.9	12.8	13.7
2009	14.0	15.0	15.6	15.8	16.4	16.5	16.4	16.8	17.0	17.4	17.2	17.3

Series Id: LNS14000012 Seasonally Adjusted Series title: (Seas) Unemployment Rate - 16-19 yrs. Labor force status: Unemployment rate Type of data: Percent or rate Age: 16 to 19 years
Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1999	15.2	13.9	14.2	14.2	13.3	13.9	13.4	13.3	14.8	13.8	13.9	13.4
2000	12.7	13.8	13.3	12.6	12.8	12.3	13.4	14.0	13.0	12.8	13.0	13.2
2001	13.8	13.7	13.8	13.9	13.4	14.2	14.4	15.6	15.2	16.0	15.9	17.0
2002	16.5	16.0	16.6	16.7	16.6	16.7	16.8	17.0	16.3	15.1	17.1	16.9
2003	17.2	17.2	17.8	17.7	17.9	19.0	18.2	16.6	17.6	17.2	15.7	16.2
2004	17.0	16.5	16.8	16.6	17.1	17.0	17.8	16.7	16.6	17.4	16.4	17.6
2005	16.2	17.5	17.1	17.8	17.8	16.3	16.1	16.1	15.5	16.1	17.0	14.9
2006	15.2	15.3	16.1	14.6	14.0	15.7	15.9	16.1	16.3	15.2	14.9	14.7
2007	14.8	14.9	14.9	15.6	15.9	16.2	15.3	16.0	16.0	15.5	16.2	16.9
2008	17.8	16.5	16.0	15.6	18.9	19.0	20.8	18.9	19.3	20.3	20.3	20.8
2009	20.9	21.8	22.0	21.8	23.2	24.3	24.5	25.7	26.1	27.6	26.8	27.1

**Series Id:** LNS14000006 Seasonally Adjusted **Series title:** (Seas) Unemployment Rate - Black or African American **Labor force status:** Unemployment rate **Type of data:** Percent or rate **Age:** 16 years and over **Race:** Black or African American
Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1999	7.8	8.2	8.0	7.8	7.4	7.7	8.7	7.7	8.5	8.4	8.0	7.8
2000	8.2	8.1	7.4	7.0	7.7	7.8	7.7	7.9	7.3	7.3	7.3	7.4
2001	8.2	7.7	8.3	8.0	7.9	8.3	8.0	9.1	8.9	9.5	9.8	10.1
2002	10.0	9.9	10.5	10.7	10.2	10.5	9.8	9.8	9.7	9.8	10.7	11.3
2003	10.5	10.7	10.3	10.9	10.9	11.5	10.9	10.9	11.1	11.4	10.2	10.1
2004	10.4	9.7	10.3	9.8	10.1	10.2	11.0	10.5	10.3	10.8	10.7	10.7
2005	10.6	10.9	10.5	10.3	10.1	10.2	9.2	9.7	9.4	9.1	10.6	9.2
2006	8.9	9.4	9.5	9.4	8.7	8.8	9.5	8.8	9.0	8.5	8.6	8.3
2007	8.0	8.0	8.3	8.3	8.3	8.4	8.0	7.7	8.1	8.5	8.5	9.0
2008	9.2	8.3	9.1	8.6	9.6	9.4	9.9	10.8	11.4	11.3	11.5	12.1
2009	12.8	13.5	13.5	15.0	15.0	14.8	14.7	15.2	15.5	15.7	15.6	16.2

**Series Id:** LNS14000009 Seasonally Adjusted **Series title:** (Seas) Unemployment Rate - Hispanic or Latino **Labor force status:** Unemployment rate **Type of data:** Percent or rate **Age:** 16 years and over **Ethnic origin:** Hispanic or Latino
Year	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
1999	6.7	6.7	5.8	7.0	6.7	6.6	6.5	6.5	6.7	6.4	6.0	5.8
2000	5.6	5.7	6.1	5.5	5.8	5.6	5.8	5.9	5.8	5.1	6.0	5.7
2001	5.8	6.1	6.2	6.4	6.3	6.6	6.2	6.5	6.7	7.1	7.3	7.7
2002	7.8	7.0	7.5	8.0	7.1	7.4	7.4	7.5	7.4	7.9	7.8	7.9
2003	7.9	7.6	7.8	7.6	8.1	8.4	8.1	7.7	7.3	7.4	7.5	6.6
2004	7.4	7.4	7.5	7.1	7.0	6.6	6.9	6.8	6.9	6.7	6.7	6.5
2005	6.2	6.4	5.8	6.4	5.9	5.7	5.5	5.8	6.5	5.9	6.2	6.1
2006	5.7	5.5	5.2	5.3	4.9	5.2	5.2	5.3	5.5	4.7	5.1	5.0
2007	5.7	5.2	5.1	5.4	5.8	5.6	5.9	5.5	5.8	5.6	5.8	6.3
2008	6.4	6.2	6.9	6.9	6.9	7.7	7.5	8.0	8.0	8.9	8.8	9.4
2009	9.9	11.0	11.6	11.4	12.7	12.3	12.4	13.0	12.7	13.1	12.7	12.9

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Keynesian Economics Is Wrong: Bigger Gov’t Is Not Stimulus

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Economy loses 85K jobs as employers remain wary

Employers cut more jobs than expected in December, unemployment rate holds at 10 percent

By Christopher S. Rugaber, AP Economics Writer , On Friday January 8, 2010, 12:50 pm

“…Lack of confidence in the economic recovery led employers to shed a more-than-expected 85,000 net jobs in December even as the unemployment rate held at 10 percent. The rate would have been higher if more people had been looking for work instead of leaving the labor force because they can’t find jobs.

The sharp drop in the work force — 661,000 fewer people — showed that more of the jobless are giving up. Once people stop looking for jobs, they’re no longer counted among the unemployed.

When discouraged workers and part-time workers who would prefer full-time jobs are included, the so-called “underemployment” rate in December rose to 17.3 percent, from 17.2 percent in November. That’s just below a revised figure of 17.4 percent in October, the highest on records dating from 1994. …”

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Economy-loses-more-jobs-apf-2245188994.html?x=0&.v=8

Employment Situation Summary

Transmission of material in this release is embargoed            USDL-09-1583
until 8:30 a.m. (EST) Friday, January 8, 2010

Technical information:
 Household data:       (202) 691-6378  *  cpsinfo@bls.gov  *  www.bls.gov/cps
 Establishment data:   (202) 691-6555  *  cesinfo@bls.gov  *  www.bls.gov/ces

Media contact:         (202) 691-5902  *  PressOffice@bls.gov

                     THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- DECEMBER 2009

Nonfarm payroll employment edged down (-85,000) in December, and the unem-
ployment rate was unchanged at 10.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statis-
tics reported today. Employment fell in construction, manufacturing, and
wholesale trade, while temporary help services and health care added jobs.

Household Survey Data

In December, both the number of unemployed persons, at 15.3 million, and the
unemployment rate, at 10.0 percent, were unchanged. At the start of the re-
cession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons was 7.7 million,
and the unemployment rate was 5.0 percent. (See table A-1.)

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   |                                                                      |
   |         Revision of Seasonally Adjusted Household Survey Data        |
   |                                                                      |
   |Seasonally adjusted household survey data have been revised using up- |
   |dated seasonal adjustment factors, a procedure done at the end of each|
   |calendar year. Seasonally adjusted estimates back to January 2005 were|
   |subject to revision. The unemployment rates for January 2009 through  |
   |November 2009 (as originally published and as revised) appear in      |
   |table B, along with additional information about the revisions.       |
   |                                                                      |
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Unemployment rates for the major worker groups--adult men (10.2 percent),
adult women (8.2 percent), teenagers (27.1 percent), whites (9.0 percent),
blacks (16.2 percent), and Hispanics (12.9 percent)--showed little change in
December. The unemployment rate for Asians was 8.4 percent, not seasonally
adjusted. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

Among the unemployed, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27
weeks and over) continued to trend up, reaching 6.1 million. In December, 4 in
10 unemployed workers were jobless for 27 weeks or longer. (See table A-9.)

The civilian labor force participation rate fell to 64.6 percent in December.
The employment-population ratio declined to 58.2 percent. (See table A-1.)

The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes re-
ferred to as involuntary part-time workers) was about unchanged at 9.2 million
in December and has been relatively flat since March. These individuals were
working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were
unable to find a full-time job. (See table A-5.)

About 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in
December, an increase of 578,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not sea-
sonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and
were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12
months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for
work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-13.)

Among the marginally attached, there were 929,000 discouraged workers in
December, up from 642,000 a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally ad-
justed.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work be-
cause they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.6 million
persons marginally attached to the labor force had not searched for work in
the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or
family responsibilities.

Establishment Survey Data

Total nonfarm payroll employment edged down in December (-85,000). Job losses
continued in construction, manufacturing, and wholesale trade, while temporary
help services and health care continued to add jobs. During 2009, monthly job
losses moderated substantially. Employment losses in the first quarter of 2009
averaged 691,000 per month, compared with an average loss of 69,000 per month
in the fourth quarter. (See table B-1.)

Construction employment declined by 53,000 in December, with job losses
throughout the industry. Employment in construction has fallen by 1.6 mil-
lion since the recession began.

In December, employment in manufacturing decreased by 27,000. The average
monthly decline for the last 6 months of 2009 (-41,000) was much lower than
the average monthly decline for the first half of the year (-171,000). Since
the recession began, manufacturing employment has fallen by 2.1 million; three-
fourths of this drop occurred in the durable goods component (-1.6 million).

Wholesale trade employment declined by 18,000 in December, with the majority of
the decline occurring among durable goods wholesalers. Employment in retail
trade was little changed over the month, although general merchandise stores
lost 15,000 jobs.

Temporary help services added 47,000 jobs in December. Since reaching a low
point in July, temporary help services employment has risen by 166,000.

Health care employment continued to increase in December (22,000), with notable
gains in offices of physicians (9,000) and home health care services (8,000).
The health care industry has added 631,000 jobs since the recession began.

In December, the average workweek for production and nonsupervisory workers on
private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 33.2 hours. The manufacturing work-
week, at 40.4 hours, and factory overtime, at 3.4 hours, were unchanged over
the month. Since May, the manufacturing workweek has increased by 1.0 hour.
(See table B-2.)

In December, average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory workers
on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 3 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $18.80. Over
the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have risen by 2.2 percent, while
average weekly earnings have risen by 1.9 percent. (See table B-3.)

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for October was revised from
-111,000 to -127,000, and the change for November was revised from -11,000 to
+4,000.
_____________
The Employment Situation for January is scheduled to be released on Friday,
February 5, 2010, at 8:30 a.m. (EST).
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

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John Maynard Keynes

“…John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, CB (pronounced /ˈkeɪnz/) (5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946) was a British economist whose ideas have been a central influence on modern macroeconomics, both in theory and practice. He advocated interventionist government policy, by which governments would use fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of business cycles, economic recessions, and depressions. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots.

In the 1930s, Keynes spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking, overturning the older ideas of neoclassical economics that held that free markets would automatically provide full employment as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands. Following the outbreak of World War II Keynes’s ideas concerning economic policy were adopted by leading Western economies. During the 1950s and 1960s, the success of Keynesian economics was so resounding that almost all capitalist governments adopted its policy recommendations.

Keynes’s influence waned in the 1970s, partly as a result of problems that began to afflict the Anglo-American economies from the start of the decade, and partly due to critiques from Milton Friedman and other economists who were pessimistic about the ability of governments to regulate the business cycle with fiscal policy.^[1] However, the advent of the global financial crisis in 2007 has caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought. Keynesian economics has provided the theoretical underpinning for the plans of President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other global leaders to ease the recession.^[2]

In 1999, Time Magazine named Keynes one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century and reported that, “His radical idea that governments should spend money they don’t have may have saved capitalism”.^[3] Keynes is widely considered the father of modern macroeconomics, and by commentators such as John Sloman, the most influential economist of the 20th century.^[4]^[5]^[6] In addition to being an economist, Keynes was also a civil servant, a patron of the arts, a director of the Bank of England, an advisor to several charitable trusts, a writer, a private investor, an art collector, and a farmer. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes

Murry Rothbard

“…Murray Newton Rothbard (March 2, 1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American intellectual, individualist anarchist,^[1] author, and economist of the Austrian School who helped define modern libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed “anarcho-capitalism”.^[2]^[3] Building on the Austrian School’s concept of spontaneous order in markets, support for a free market in money production and condemnation of central planning,^[4] Rothbard sought to minimize coercive government control of the economy. He considered the monopoly force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term wellbeing of the populace, labeling the State as nothing but a “gang of thieves writ large” – the locus of the most immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.^[5]^[6]^[7]^[8]

Rothbard concluded that virtually all services provided by monopoly governments could be provided more efficiently by the private sector (in particular, money production and coinage).^[9]^[10]^[11] He viewed many regulations and laws ostensibly promulgated for the “public interest” as self-interested power grabs by scheming government bureaucrats engaging in dangerously unfettered self-aggrandizement, as they were not subject to market disciplines which would quickly eliminate such parasitic inefficiencies if they were to occur in the competitive private sector.^[12]^[13]^[14]

He argued that taxation represents coercive theft on a grand scale, and “a compulsory monopoly of force” prohibiting the more efficient voluntary procurement of defense and judicial services from competing suppliers.^[15]^[6] He also considered central banking and fractional reserve banking under a monopoly fiat money system a form of state-sponsored, legalized financial fraud, antithetical to libertarian principles and ethics.^[16]^[17]^[18]

Rothbard opposed military, political, and economic interventionism in the affairs of other nations.^[19]^[20] Rothbard wrote over twenty books before his death in 1995. …”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Rothbard

Keynes, the Man

By Murray Rothbard

“…Keynes was scarcely a “revolutionary” in any real sense. He possessed the tactical wit to dress up ancient statist and inflationist fallacies with modern, pseudoscientific jargon, making them appear to be the latest findings of economic science. Keynes was thereby able to ride the tidal wave of statism and socialism, of managed and planned economies. Keynes eliminated economic theory’s ancient role as spoilsport for inflationist and statist schemes, leading a new generation of economists on to academic power and to political pelf and privilege. …”

Raymond T. Pronk

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