Takes One To Know One

I was thinking a little more about "Tea Party Terrorists". Vice President Biden accused "Tea Party" Congressmen of being terrorists, for voting against the debt ceiling increase.

Scott pointed at that Vice President Biden is a terrorist. In fact, all Congressmen are terrorists. Most Congressmen won't physically assault you themselves to enforce their evil laws. They are perfectly happy authorizing other people to commit crimes on their behalf.

The biggest terrorists are the ones who go around accusing other people of being terrorists.

The biggest racists are the ones who go around accusing other people of being racist.

That's a very interesting observation.

"Best of FSK" - July 2011

In July 2011, my most popular posts by Absolute Unique Pageviews were:

1. Groupon Is A Scam (575)
2. Did the USA Declare Bankruptcy? (560)
3. BMI/ASCAP/SESAC Legal Extortion Scam (315)
4. Ruby on Rails Sucks! (279)
5. Silk Road Was A Partial AgoristBay Implementation (263)
6. Who's the Richest Man in the World? (231)
7. The Compound Interest Paradox (164)
8. Casey Anthony - Who Cares? (159)
9. The Federal Reserve Caused the Great Depression (143)
10. Premium Text Messaging Fraud - 91097 and 654654 (94)
11. The Hunt Brothers' Silver Corner (86)
12. Calculating Vega and other Greeks in Black-Scholes (84)
13. Is It Worth Hoarding Nickels? (84)
14. The Gold Lease Rate is Negative! (79)
15. Two Kinds Of Psychopaths (73)
16. Agorist Philosophy Overview (69)
17. The Gold and Silver Taxation Scam (68)
18. The Bitcoin Conspiracy Theory (66)
19. Who Cares About Obama's Birth Certificate? (65)
20. How Can Every Government Be Bankrupt? (64)
21. The Pat Tillman Conspiracy Theory (62)
22. The "Chained CPI" Scam (61)
23. Real GDP is Decreasing, 1990-2008 (58)
24. The Fluoride Conspiracy Theory (57)
25. Satanic Death Hospitals (52)
26. Your Strawman Corporation (50)
27. Thomas James Ball And The Second Set Of Books (50)
28. Lindsay Lohan On The Federal Reserve (50)
29. Real GDP is Decreasing, 1990-2007 (47)
30. Fight Or Run? (47)
31. Gold Bubble Or Hyperinflation? (44)
32. Modern Marriage Vows (44)

If you only count posts published in July 2011, the most popular were:

1. Casey Anthony - Who Cares? (159)
2. Two Kinds Of Psychopaths (73)
3. How Can Every Government Be Bankrupt? (64)
4. The "Chained CPI" Scam (61)
5. Lindsay Lohan On The Federal Reserve (50)
6. Fight Or Run? (47)
7. Gold Bubble Or Hyperinflation? (44)
8. Modern Marriage Vows (44)
9. DSK And False Rape Accusations (41)
10. Updated Declaration Of Independence (41)
11. Debt Ceiling "Debate" (38)
12. News Corp. Whisleblower Dies Of "Natural Causes" (34)
13. Anders Behring Breivik (32)
14. Scalia's Son Represented Wal-Mart (32)
15. More Corporate Waste (31)
16. Antibiotic Resistant Gonorrhea (28)
17. Insanity Defense (26)
18. Aaron Swartz Indictment (25)
19. The Carried Interest Tax Loophole (24)
20. Time Travel "Impossible" (24)
21. Horrible Bosses - Horrible Propaganda (22)
22. Tax Farming (22)
23. Roger Clemens Mistrial (21)
    

Gold Futures Margins Raised

This story was interesting. The price of gold rose sharply recently, probably due to inflation and expectations of future inflation.

The debt ceiling was raised. The Federal budget deficit grows. The Federal Reserve is continuing its "zero interest rate" police, which is an inflationary stealth bank bailout.

Yesterday, the price of gold declined a bit. Why? The COMEX raised margin requirements!

The "margin requirement" is a fixed dollar amount per contract. It would be more sensible for the margin requirement to be a fixed percentage. However, that would reduce the ability to periodically cause the gold price to decline by raising margin requirements.

There are lots of tricks that insiders can use to manipulate gold and silver prices. One trick is periodically jacking up margin requirements.

Federal Reserve Zero Economic Growth Policy

The Federal Reserve announced they were continuing their "Zero Economic Growth Policy" until at least mid-2013. They are calling it "Zero Interest Rates".

"Zero interest rates" doesn't actually encourage economic growth. Actually, I should have called it a "negative growth policy" instead of "zero growth policy".

The Fed Funds Rate is 0%-0.25%, while true inflation is 20%-30%. This is a huge State subsidy for the banksters. The banksters are borrowing at 0%, and buying tangible assets or lending to other insiders. With 0% interest rates, the banksters are practically guaranteed to profit.

Why would banks lend to individuals and small businesses? They can speculate in Treasury debt and make a guaranteed profit. They can lend to large corporations, with the ever-inflating value of the State monopoly as collateral. Why should banks take risks financing the productive sector of the economy?

The CPI is far less than true inflation. This causes inflation to be misreported as economic growth. By increasing the inflation rate, that will increase the measured "inflation-adjusted" GDP rate, while actual economic activity decreases.

Suppose that inflation is 100% and the stock market goes up 50%. State comedians say "Hooray! The stock market went up 50%!" They ignore the fact that the gains are less than true inflation.

Gold continues to crush the stock market. If you measure stock returns in gold rather than FRNs, then the stock market is obviously a losing proposition.

By keeping interest rates at 0%, the Federal Reserve is not "stimulating the economy". In reality, the Federal Reserve is subsidizing the parasite sector of the economy at the expense of the productive sector.

When Ben Bernanke keeps interest rates at 0%, he isn't spending his own personal money. He's spending the people's money, creating to new money to finance 0% interest rates. Zero interest rates aren't free. Everyone else pays for it via inflation.

Indications Of Progress

Blog posts like this one are interesting. In many ways, that blogger is a pro-State troll. He rabidly defends policemen. However, even he is saying "There's something fundamentally wrong with the political system in the USA."

I'm noting more and more people saying "The political system in the USA is completely broken." However, most of them are still short of the correct answer, which is market anarchism and "All taxation is theft! It makes no difference how taxes are collected or what they're used for. A government monopoly for police/justice/lawmaking is evil and unnecessary."

More people are saying "The system is completely broken." That's an indication of progress. There's an increase in awareness for market anarchism on the Internet, but market anarchism is still not discussed in the mainstream media.

Jailhouse Snitches

This story is hilarious. California passed a law saying "You can't convict a defendant based solely on the uncorroborated testimony of a jailhouse informants." Do you see the joke?

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Do you get the joke? This was such a problem common, that they passed a law forbidding it!

Can you imagine that? Judges and juries are saying "The only evidence against the defendant is a jailhouse informant. That's good enough for me! I'm convicting!" Not only that, it's a common problem?!

Here's how jailhouse snitches work. Suppose you were already convicted (or plea bargained), and sentenced to 5 years in jail. The prosecutor offers you 2 years off your sentence, if you testify against someone else. Under those circumstances, most people will react "What do you want me to say?"

There is a huge temptation for a jailhouse snitch to lie. It is offensive that prosecutors get away with such abuse. It is even more offensive that judges and juries rubberstamp convictions based solely on jailhouse snitches.

If a defendant tries to bribe a witness, that's felony witness tampering. If a prosecutor bribes a witness via a sentence reduction, that's a normal day at the office.

That's the joke. In California, abuse of jailhouse snitches was such a big problem, that they passed a law explicitly forbidding convictions based solely on jailhouse snitches. (I wonder. If two different jailhouse snitches say the same thing, is it now corroborated? That loophole may still exist.)

Alex Rodriguez And Poker

This story is interesting. Alex Rodriguez is a star baseball player for the Yankees. Allegedly, he played in an "illegal high-stakes poker game".

According to natural law, there's no such thing as an "illegal poker game". If a group of people get together and voluntarily play poker, there's nothing wrong with that.

If the person who organizes the game charges players a fee, there's nothing wrong with that either.

Allegedly, some people at the poker game were using cocaine. Again, that's not illegal, according to natural law.

Cocaine really is bad for you. That's a separate issue from "Cocaine should be illegal!"

Allegedly, some of the players got violent. That is another problem with making poker illegal. For a legal poker game, people could resolve disputes through the legal system. For an "illegal" poker game, the players' only recourse is violence, if they feel cheated.

Also, an "illegal" poker game has a strong incentive to be as fair as possible. First, they are dependent on reputation. Second, they don't want players complaining to the State.

According to "natural law", there's no such thing as an "illegal poker game" or "illegal drug". This story is being overhyped, to promote the State ban on unapproved gambling and unapproved drugs. Sometimes, the most State propaganda is put promoting things that aren't real crimes. The State needs continual propaganda, to promote the fact that many "forbidden activities" aren't really crimes.

Why is it anyone else's business, if Alex Rodriguez wanted to play poker?