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By Mises Updates

From the April 11 Seminar: Inflation: Causes, Consequences, and Cure. A seminar for High School and College Students

(Six Videos)

Click here for the Youtube playlist of the event.

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Ryan McMaken

In her latest hit piece on the Mises Institute, WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin quotes a David Weigel hit piece on the Mises Institute in which Weigel attacks David Gordon and Ralph Raico for daring to criticize Winston Churchill.  The occasion for these remarks is a comment made by Rand Paul about American policy before 1941:

“There are times when sanctions have made it worse,” Paul said. “Leading up to World War II, we cut off trade with Japan. That probably caused Japan to react angrily. We also had a blockade on Germany after World War I that probably encouraged some of their anger.”

It’s not my job to defend Rand Paul, but as Weigel notes, these ideas are likely influenced by this article, and this article.

Rubin’s purpose in mentioning it is to imply that merely mentioning established facts about the pro-war behavior of the American regime prior to world War II somehow constitutes sympathy for the Axis powers. Such an assertion is nonsense, of course, since the Japanese and Nazi states are responsible for the actions of the Japanese and Nazi states. Pointing out that Roosevelt’s regime was doing everything it could to provoke a war with the Japanese, on the other hand, simply highlights the barbarity of the American state in putting its own citizens in danger and seeking a conflict that led to the placing of Japanese Americans in concentration camps, and the enslavement of millions of Americans through conscription. Reducing every conflict to a comic-book-like battle between good guys and bad guys, on the other hand, is just the sort of thing that people like Rubin live for.

For those who actually seek to learn something from history, and for a more complete view of the lead-up to the Second World War, see Robert Higgs’s article based on this video:

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Mises Updates

Gary Galles writes in today’s Mises Daily:

Both the minimum wage and rent control, despite the fact that the first forces prices up and the second forces prices down, reduce the quantity of the good in question exchanged. That makes them counterproductive “solutions” to the problems faced by those who are unable to sell enough of their labor services or unable to purchase enough housing services. But the rhetoric employed disguises the fact that they make the central problem worse rather than better.

For the low-skilled, minimum wage advocates frame the issue as “If you could earn more per hour, you would be better off.” But that sneaks in the false assumption that wanting to work more at higher wages means you will be able to work more, when those wages are imposed by government.

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Ryan McMaken

[A follow-up this Mises Daily article.]

I think we can all agree the Feds, in their usual fashion, have employed unwarranted thuggery in their attempts to shut down the Bundy Ranch. Just as the Feds could have arrested David Koresh when he left his compound (which he often did) they instead chose to employ the usual shock-and-awe tactics that are so beloved by federal agents.

Bundy lost his case in federal court, and he lost the appeal, so as Judge Napolitano points out here, the feds could simply have put a lien on the property, but they instead resorted to violence by stealing cattle and knocking around protestors.

As far as the legal case goes, however, it’s pretty clear that Cliven Bundy has unambiguously lost his case as far as federal law goes. Bundy has already made it clear that, at least at some point, he thought the feds had a right to charge management fees, since he did it for many years before stopping twenty years ago.  He has tied his refusal to pay fees not to the fact that the feds own or manage the land, but that it now manages in a way that does not meet his approval. In other words, a government entity that manages the land properly, would deserve payment, according to Bundy’s own account.

Meanwhile, the issue of government ownership itself is not an issue, it seems, since Bundy has declared that he would pay fees if the land were administered by the state of Nevada.

While I delight in the images of  federal troops being thwarted in their recent attempt to bully Bundy and his allies, I’d be more understanding if Bundy were calling for outright privatization rather than what he appears to be calling for: a mere modification of the status quo in which Nevada rather than the US takes control of the land in question. Remember that Bundy only disputes ownership by the federal government. Government ownership in general is apparently fine. Bundy then attempts to base this assertion on his belief that the US government cannot legally own land, which is a sketchy argument at best.

This is a fool’s game, of course, as understood by anyone who realizes that the US Constitution (apart from the Bill of Rights) is not now and (and possibly never has been) designed to actually limit the power of the federal government. (As Rothbard explains here.)

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Mises Updates

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Ilya Shapiro

Ilya Shapiro

Justice John Paul Stevens has been getting lots of attention lately for his views on the Second Amendment—he still doesn’t like the individual right to keep and bear arms, and would amend the Constitution to get rid of it—but it’s his views on the death penalty that have provoked the more troubling reaction.

Here’s the back-story: Justice Stevens has published a book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution. Three of these amendments are structural: (1) requiring state officials to enforce federal law; (2) eliminating state sovereign immunity; and (3) doing away with political gerrymandering. The other three are from the populist-progressive playbook: (4) the aforementioned Second Amendment tweak (which doesn’t make sense as drafted); (5) allowing Congress and state legislatures to censor political speech limit the money people can spend on election campaigns; and (6) outlawing the death penalty.

The Atlantic’s Andrew Cohen latched onto this last one, lamenting that Stevens is:

a man who consistently upheld capital convictions and the death penalty itself for over 35 years, who helped send hundreds of men and women to their deaths by failing to hold state officials accountable for constitutional violations during capital trials, who more recently endorsed dubious lethal injection standards because he did not want to buck up against court precedent, now wants the Eighth Amendment to read this way, with five new words added: “…nor cruel and unusual punishments such as the death penalty inflicted.”

(The reference to lethal-injection standards relates to the 2008 case of Baze v. Rees, which upheld Kentucky’s particular method of execution. Stevens concurred in that ruling but wrote separately to question “the justification for the death penalty itself.”)

Now, I don’t have any particular ax to grind regarding the death penalty as a policy matter—it’s probably warranted for serious crimes, but there are real problems with the way our justice system administers it—but as a question of law, it’s hard to argue that it’s always unconstitutional. The Fifth Amendment references “capital” crimes and outlaws putting someone’s “life” in jeopardy twice for the same crime, and both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments protect against being deprived of “life” without due process of law.

“Too many commentators conflate that with which they agree with that which the constitution requires.”

To be sure, the Eighth Amendment does prohibit “cruel and unusual punishments,” but that just means that the death penalty can’t …read more

Source: OP-EDS