Jts5665

(Don Boudreaux)

At lunchtime on Tuesday, Jim Grant will speak at the Cato Institute headquarters about his new book, The Forgotten Depression.  If you’re in the DC metro area, do consider attending.  I’ll be there.  Here’s the announcement:

Featuring the author James Grant, Publisher, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer; with comments by Jim Powell, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute; and Lawrence H. White, Professor of Economics, George Mason University, and Senior Fellow, Cato Institute; moderated by George Selgin, Director, Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, Cato Institute.

What happens if you throw a depression and nobody from the government shows up? No Quantitative Easers or fiscal stimulators or financial-firm rescuers? And what would happen if, instead of lowering interest rates and spending more to spur recovery, the government did nothing? The answer, in 1921 at least, is that the economy not only recovers but is “roaring” in less than two years. Was “The Crash that Cured Itself,” as the subtitle of James Grant’s fascinating new book refers to it, a fluke, or does it offer useful lessons for today’s erstwhile depression fighters?Join us to hear James Grant, Jim Powell, and Lawrence H. White discuss this and other important questions raised by Grant’s stimulating new book.

...Rwanda.

 

 

And the biggest collapse in prosperity since 2009 has occurred in Greece - stunningly outpacing war torn, sanctioned Syria to the downside.

 

Source: Prosperity.com

Indian women die, dozens critical after mass sterilization...


(Second column, 26th story, link)

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It appears the terrorist organization known as Islamic State has been watching the fiasco of fiat money and reading Alan Greenspan and Ron Paul. As The Daily Mail reports, ISIS wants to introduce its own currency and plans to bring back solid gold and silver dinar coins in an attempt to solidify its makeshift caliphate. Around 1500 years after the Dinar was first introduced - made from pure gold and silver - ISIS plans to implement the change within a few weeks, changing changing from regular dinars and Lira to golden dinars and silver dirhams.

 

 

As The Daily Mail reports,

ISIS wants to introduce its own currency and plans to bring back solid gold and silver dinar coins, it has emerged.

 

The Middle East terror group apparently wants to introduce its own Islamic currency as part of its attempts to solidify its makeshift caliphate.

 

Militants are said to want to bring back the original dinar, which is an ancient currency from early Islam, and religious figures in Mosul and Iraq’s Nineveh province have apparently announced its return in mosques.

 

The currency known as the dinar, which once consisted purely of gold and silver coins, is today used by a variety of countries, but the coins are created from different materials to the originals.

 

However, the jihadi group is understood to be planning to return to the original gold and silver coins, which were first introduced during the Caliphate of Uthman in 634 CE.

 

...

 

While ISIS has yet to confirm the introduction of its currency, social media is awash with claims that leading religious figures announced the plans during recent prayers in Mosul and Nineveh province.

 

It is believed the terror outfit wants to use the independent currency in areas it controls as part of its war on the West.

 

The currency, which could be introduced within the next few weeks, will involve changing from regular dinars and Lira to golden dinars and silver dirhams.

*  *  *

 

It seems Alan Greenspan may have been on to something after all...

"Remember what we're looking at. Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency. No fiat currency, including the dollar, can match it."

*  *  *

Of course this will mean more physical demand - along with Russia and China - and so more price suppression by the West.

In reality, there is nothing surprising in Matt Taibbi's latest piece since returning to Rolling Stone from the Intercept, as it tells a story everyone is by now is all too familiar with: a former bank employee (in this case Alayne Fleischmann) who was a worker in a bank's (in this case JPM) mortgage operations group, where she observed and engaged in what she describes as "massive criminal securities fraud" and who was fired after trying to bring the attention of those above her to said "criminal" activity.

The story doesn't end there, and as Carmen Segarra already showed, when she revealed that Goldman runs the NY Fed, once Alayne was let go and tried to "whistleblow" on the house of Jimon from the outside, she found the that US Department of Justice headed by Eric Holder is just as, if not more, corrupt, and in his desperate attempt to prevent discovery and bring JPM et al to justice, he would stretch the statue of limitations on frauds committed during the crisis long enough to where nobody had any legal recourse any more, up to and including the US taxpayer.

That is the 1 minute recap of yet another story in which the good guys lose, the bad guys bet everything on red, are bailed out when black hits, lie, never go to jail and instead use the same bailout funds to keep paying "settlement charges" to bribed government officials and avoid prison time. In short, the bad guys win.

And all with the help of every branch of the US government.

For those who want to read more, Taibbi's "The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare" is a must read, even if, as noted, it says nothing that frequent Zero Hedge readers didn't already know. It does, however, have some great cartoons.

Taibbi's punchline:

... In September, at a speech at NYU, Holder defended the lack of prosecutions of top executives on the grounds that, in the corporate context, sometimes bad things just happen without actual people being responsible. "Responsibility remains so diffuse, and top executives so insulated," Holder said, "that any misconduct could again be considered more a symptom of the institution's culture than a result of the willful actions of any single individual."

 

In other words, people don't commit crimes, corporate culture commits crimes! It's probably fortunate that Holder is quitting before he has time to apply the same logic to Mafia or terrorism cases.

 

Fleischmann, for her part, had begun to find the whole situation almost funny.

 

"I thought, 'I swear, Eric Holder is gas-lighting me,' " she says.

 

Ask her where the crime was, and Fleischmann will point out exactly how her bosses at JPMorgan Chase committed criminal fraud: It's right there in the documents; just hand her a highlighter and some Post-it notes – "We lawyers love flags" – and you will not find a more enthusiastic tour guide through a gazillion-page prospectus than Alayne Fleischmann.

 

She believes the proof is easily there for all the elements of the crime as defined by federal law – the bank made material misrepresentations, it made material omissions, and it did so willfully and with specific intent, consciously ignoring warnings from inside the firm and out.

 

She'd like to see something done about it, emphasizing that there still is time. The statute of limitations for wire fraud, for instance, has not run out, and she strongly believes there's a case there, against the bank's executives. She has no financial interest in any of this, no motive other than wanting the truth out. But more than anything, she wants it to be over.

 

In today's America, someone like Fleischmann – an honest person caught for a little while in the wrong place at the wrong time – has to be willing to live through an epic ordeal just to get to the point of being able to open her mouth and tell a truth or two. And when she finally gets there, she still has to risk everything to take that last step. "The assumption they make is that I won't blow up my life to do it," Fleischmann says. "But they're wrong about that."

 

Good for her, and great for her that it's finally out. But the big-picture ending still stings. She hopes otherwise, but the likely final verdict is a Pyrrhic victory.

 

Because after all this activity, all these court actions, all these penalties (both real and abortive), even after a fair amount of noise in the press, the target companies remain more ascendant than ever. The people who stole all those billions are still in place. And the bank is more untouchable than ever – former Debevoise & Plimpton hotshots Mary Jo White and Andrew Ceresny, who represented Chase for some of this case, have since been named to the two top jobs at the SEC. As for the bank itself, its stock price has gone up since the settlement and flirts weekly with five-year highs. They may lose the odd battle, but the markets clearly believe the banks won the war. Truth is one thing, and if the right people fight hard enough, you might get to hear it from time to time. But justice is different, and still far enough away.

And the real punchline: nobody cares aobut justice as long as everyone is getting richer, if only on paper. It is what this nominal paper "wealth" disappears that things get scary for the Jamie Dimon's of the world, which is why the Fed will do everything to avert each and every market crash from now on until it finally loses control, because once people awake from the siren song of the printer, to realize they have nothing to show for years of labor and faith in a broken system, not to mention "Corzined" retirement funds that were invested in a Ponzi scheme, the only justice applicable, will be that of vigilantes.

Thank you so much for being a leader to a better way of life, an example to people like myself, and a genuine life changer. To understand where my gratitude comes from, I have to tell you my story, which began over 10 years ago.

I have Crohn’s Disease, but for the first fifteen years of my life, I had no idea I had it. What I did have was an aching feeling that there was a reason why I had brutal stomachaches nearly every day, why I could eat tons of junk food but never put on weight, and why everything became so much worse when I was stressed. I lived for years without answers, but at fifteen I was finally diagnosed and began a life dependent on medication. My treatment gave me slight relief for a the rest of high school, but every time I experienced stress, my symptoms would rear back up, causing me to leave class and miss important experiences.

The first time Crohn’s sent me to the ER, I was a freshman in college. In rehearsals for my first college play, I began to feel a pain in my abdomen that wouldn’t go away, unlike the cramping that I was used to. After three days in the hospital and receiving heavy doses of antibiotics and steroids, the episode resolved itself. And although I was incredibly weakened by three days of a liquid-only diet, I was still able to perform and return to school, much to my relief.

Little did I know, this episode was only the beginning of my struggle with my health—a struggle that would affect everything in my life. Sure, I had trouble putting on weight and I had the usual array of Crohn’s symptoms, but the real fight was between my disease and my dreams. I constantly wondered, “How am I going to pursue what I’m passionate about? Is Crohn’s really going to dictate how I live and what I can accomplish?”

For the next year or two, I carried on with the same medication (though the dosage sadly increased each year and after each doctor’s visit)…until my last semester of college.

Around New Year’s I began to feel a constant throbbing near my pelvis. My appetite decreased because of it, and I began to lose weight that I couldn’t afford to lose. I was prescribed a new medicine in addition to my original one in order to deal with the apparent inflammation, but it wasn’t enough to take away the crushing pain. For this, I was prescribed hydrocodone, which allowed my exhausted body to slip away into relief for four blissful hours at a time. I also saw a nutritionist, who in classic conventional wisdom, advised me to drink weight-gain “nutritional” supplements like Boost. Only after did I learn (from Mark’s site and books) how much worse this made things. So I dutifully drank them every day. Doped up on hydrocodone, I dealt with the pressures of finishing college, but my hope of graduating magna cum laude was destroyed.

This is me at my college graduation. I was down to pounds and still taking Hydrocodone every four hours to deal with my Crohn’s pain.

In the middle of all of that, my dad was diagnosed with a terminal cancer and given only a couple of months to live. I felt like the world was conspiring against me. I lived in a constant state of pain and depression, and when I should have been there to give comfort to my father, I was only a shadow of myself—frail, broken, and unsure of how to be strong for him.

Two months after my graduation, on the day of my dad’s wake, I went for a check-up with my original gastroenterologist who had just received new blood work results. All that time that I had been quietly suffering—going from an already light 105 pounds to a concerning 73 (I should mention that I’m 5’8”)—it felt like no one understood how sick I was, or how much pain I was feeling all the time. Finally, I had concrete evidence. My inflammation markers, which in a healthy person should have been under 10, were at 97.

My doctor told me there was one last drug he wanted to prescribe, and if it didn’t work the next step would be surgery to remove the damaged part of my gut. He prescribed a powerful immune-suppressor called Humira. The syringes had to be overnighted on ice so I had to plan to be home to receive them every two weeks. I spent six months gaining back some of my strength and weight, and slowly coming to terms with what I wanted to do with my life. My dream of acting professionally had become a faint memory, but I knew I had to go for it while my health was on the upswing. I set a date to move to Los Angeles, just hoping that Humira would keep me ‘healthy’ long enough to give it a decent shot. But as with any drug of that strength, its side effects were equally as potent, including terrible eczema, dermatitis, hair loss, and infections; all awesome things for an actor just starting out. Those side effects waxed and waned every week, but I was still fortunate enough to book a role on an NBC show called Siberia. For any other actor this would have been the day they dreamt about their whole life: filming their first series regular role. For me it was a quick drop from extreme excitement to extreme worry. The show was going to film in Canada, and I had no idea how I was going to get my medicine across the border or what I would do if I ran out since it could not be shipped internationally. It seemed like no matter what I did my disease would always be pulling me down.

In the end, by jumping through a lot of TSA hoops, I was able to bring my Humira to Canada and film my television debut. And around the same time, my college sweetheart (and long distance boyfriend) proposed to me. So, while filming full days in negative 10 degree weather in Winnipeg, I was also planning a wedding in Louisiana set for a mere two days after my role wrapped. Needless to say, it was the perfect storm for stress, and one week after my honeymoon I was back in the ER with an inflamed and blocked intestine.

During our engagement, my husband heard Mark give an interview on a podcast that convinced him to buy The Primal Blueprint. He had changed his whole lifestyle after reading it, and when I was finally discharged from the hospital, I went completely Primal. It wasn’t an easy process. The eczema and psoriasis seemed to intensify at first, but I was vigilant and kept following the Primal guidelines. About six months later, when a paperwork mix-up on the part of my insurance lead to my Humira shipment being delayed, I was sure a flare was right around the corner. But that temporary delay turned into a week without my injection, then a month, and now a year.

This is me now, after filming a scene for an independent film. I’m off all my medicines, feeling amazing and back to 110 pounds!

That’s right. It has been an entire year since I’ve been on medication of any kind! This is not only my letter to Mark and everyone at Mark’s Daily Apple, but also to myself. I am no longer beholden to a pill or a syringe. I am not controlled by my disease, and my body is happy and healthy for the first time in my life (every single Humira side effect has vanished).

I realize now that my career and my dreams don’t have to be put on pause due to my Crohn’s and for the first time my health isn’t fighting against my hope for a fulfilled life. And it feels amazing. No one should have to go through everything that I went through when the solution is possibly so simple. What you put into your body, affects your body. When the math is so clear-cut, how does anyone not treat themselves better? I want so much for my story to give hope to those who feel like they’re living in the dark, with no options left. Because there is a better way to live. Thank you for helping me see it.

Anne-Marie

IRS threatens 'miserable' tax season...


(Second column, 13th story, link)

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Related stories:

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Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,

Don Quixote is easily one of the most entertaining books of the Renaissance, if not all-time. And almost everyone’s heard of it, even if they haven’t read it.

 

You know the basic plot line- Alonso Quixano becomes fixated with the idea of chivalry and sets out to single-handedly resurrect knighthood.

 

His wanderings take him far across the land where he gets involved in comic adventures that are terribly inconvenient for the other characters.

 

He famously assaults a group of windmills, believing that they are cruel giants. He attacks a group of clergy, believing that they are holding an innocent woman captive.

 

All of this is based on Don Quixote’s completely delusional view of the world. And everyone else pays the price for it.

 

Miguel de Cervantes’ novel is brilliantly entertaining. But the modern-day monetary equivalent is not so much.

Central bankers today have an equally delusional view of the world. Just three months ago, Mario Draghi (President of the European Central Bank) embarked on his own Quixotic folly by taking certain interest rates into NEGATIVE territory.

Draghi convinced himself that he was saving Europe from disaster. And like Don Quixote, everyone else has had to pay the price for his delusions.

On November 1st, the first European bank has passed along these negative interest rates to its retail customers.

So if you maintain a balance of more than 500,000 euros at Deutsche Skatbank of Germany, you now have the privilege of paying 0.25% per year… to the bank.

We’ve already seen this at the institutional level: commercial banks in Europe are paying the ECB negative interest on certain balances.

And large investors are paying European governments negative interest on certain bonds.

Now we’re seeing this effect bleed over into retail banking.

It’s starting with higher net worth individuals (the average guy doesn’t have half a million euros laying around in the bank). But the trend here is pretty clear– financial repression is coming soon to a bank near you.

It almost seems like an episode from the Twilight Zone… or some bizarre parallel universe. That’s the investment environment we’re in now.

Bottom line: if you’re responsible with your money and set some aside for the future, you will be penalized. If you blow your savings and go into debt, you will be rewarded.

If we ask the question “cui bono”, the answer is pretty obvious: heavily indebted governments benefit substantially from zero (or negative) rates.

Case in point: the British government just announced that they would pay down some of their debt that they racked up nine decades ago.

In 1927, then Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill issued a series of bonds to consolidate and refinance much of the debt that Britain had racked up from World War I and before.

This debt is still outstanding to this day. And the British government is just starting to pay it down– about $350 million worth.

Think about it– $350 million was a lot of money in 1927. Thanks to decades of inflation, it’s practically a rounding error on government balance sheets today.

This is why they’re all so desperate to create inflation… and why they’ll stop at nothing to make it happen. (It remains to be seen whether they’ll be successful, but they are willing to go down swinging…)

What’s even more extraordinary is how they’re trying to convince everyone why inflation is necessary… and why negative rates are a good thing.

On the ECB’s own website, they say that negative interest rates will “benefit savers in the end because they support growth and thus create a climate in which interest rates can gradually return to higher levels.”

I’m not sure a more intellectually dishonest statement could be made; they’re essentially telling people that the path to prosperity is paved in debt and consumption, as opposed to savings and production.

These people either have no idea how economies grow and prosper, they’re outright liars, or they’re completely delusional.

I’m betting on the latter. Either way, this assault on windmills has only just begun.

As Don Quixote himself said, “Thou hast seen nothing yet.”

*  *  *

Our goal is simple: To help you achieve personal liberty and financial prosperity no matter what happens.

If you liked this post, please click the image below. You can watch a compelling video you'll find very interesting.

I’ve written many times before about the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, the “free market-loving, price-displaying, state-of-the-art, AAAHC accredited, doctor owned, multispecialty surgical facility in central OK.” A few recent news reports have highlighted the Surgery Center’s fastest growing group of patients – Obamacare enrollees.

From an August Watchdog.org story “Oklahoma doctor making a run around Obamacare“:

About a year before the birth of Obamacare, Dr. Keith Smith, director of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, posted all the prices for his center’s surgeries online. Today, he’s in expansion mode, looking to build two more operating rooms. His fastest-growing group of patients? Obamacare enrollees.

Though armed with Obamacare health insurance plans, the patients are saddled with high deductibles. Looking for alternatives, some of them fly from around the country to the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, where the cost of care and travel together amounts to less than their deductibles under their Affordable Care Act plans.

The Surgery Center of Oklahoma is a physician-owned operation that does not take Medicare or Medicaid and only selectively works with private insurance plans. Patients pay in cash or with cashier’s checks.

“Even if someone has an Obamacare insurance card in their pocket, they are soon going to find out that it’s worthless,” Smith said, citing both higher prices and doctor shortages under Obamacare. “Coverage doesn’t mean care.”

From a FOX 25 KOKH-TV (Oklahoma City) report yesterday “Patients with ‘Obamacare’ having a hard time paying with plans, doctor says“:

There is one group of patients growing faster than any other at the Surgery Center of Oklahoma. Medical Director Keith Smith says patients with ‘Obamacare,’ plans under the Affordable Care Act, are flocking to his facility.

“They’re not the largest part of our business but they’re definitely the fastest growing part of our business as patients discover they can actually buy their health care cheaper than they can buy their coverage,” Dr. Smith said. “We started with the idea we could do it better and cheaper than the hospitals and to say it’s been a success would be a wild understatement,” Smith said.

Now, Smith says, more and more Affordable Care Act patients are becoming attracted to this different approach to healthcare. “They can actually buy a hernia procedure here for instance, or a gallbladder procedure here, cheaper paying for it themselves rather than going through the insurance benefit paying,” Smith said.

Smith said that is because many people with these insurance plans have high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs.  The prices he offers are actually smaller than these costs.

MP: I think that we can expect to see a lot more of this type of market-based, price-displaying, innovative disruption in the health care industry. As Dr. Smith says, Obamacare enrollees are quickly finding out that “coverage is not care,” and his center is offering an affordable solution. If the Surgery Center of Oklahoma can offer surgery prices below the high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs for Obamacare patients, this type of health care, and not government-managed health care, could represent the future of medicine.

The post Warning for Obamacare enrollees: ‘Coverage doesn’t mean care’ appeared first on AEI.

Dartmouth economics professor Douglas Irwin has an excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal — “The Ultimate Global Antipoverty Program,” with the subtitle “Extreme poverty fell to 15% in 2011, from 36% in 1990. Credit goes to the spread of capitalism.” Here’s an excerpt:

The World Bank reported on Oct. 9 that the share of the world population living in extreme poverty had fallen to 15% in 2011 from 36% in 1990. Earlier this year, the International Labor Office reported that the number of workers in the world earning less than $1.25 a day has fallen to 375 million 2013 from 811 million in 1991.

Such stunning news seems to have escaped public notice, but it means something extraordinary: The past 25 years have witnessed the greatest reduction in global poverty in the history of the world.

To what should this be attributed? Official organizations noting the trend have tended to waffle, but let’s be blunt: The credit goes to the spread of capitalism. Over the past few decades, developing countries have embraced economic-policy reforms that have cleared the way for private enterprise.

The reduction in world poverty has attracted little attention because it runs against the narrative pushed by those hostile to capitalism. The Michael Moores of the world portray capitalism as a degrading system in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Yet thanks to growth in the developing world, world-wide income inequality—measured across countries and individual people—is falling, not rising, as Branco Milanovic of City University of New York and other researchers have shown.

Capitalism’s bad rap grew out of a false analogy that linked the term with “exploitation.” Marxists thought the old economic system in which landlords exploited peasants (feudalism) was being replaced by a new economic system in which capital owners exploited industrial workers (capitalism). But Adam Smith had earlier provided a more accurate description of the economy: a “commercial society.” The poorest parts of the world are precisely those that are cut off from the world of markets and commerce, often because of government policies.

MP: From a December 2013 CD post, “the chart above could perhaps qualify as the ‘chart of the century’ because it illustrates one of the most remarkable achievements in human history: the 80% reduction in world poverty in only 36 years, from 26.8% of the world’s population living on $1 or less (in 1987 dollars) in 1970 to only 5.4% in 2006. (Source: The 2009 NBER working paper “Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income,” by economists Maxim Pinkovskiy (MIT) and Xavier Sala-i-Martin (Columbia University).

In that post, I also featured the video below, where AEI president Arthur Brooks also makes the case that free markets, free enterprise, and capitalism are responsible for the remarkable reduction in world poverty over the last 40 years:

It turns out that between 1970 and 2010 the worst poverty in the world – people who live on one dollar a day or less – that has decreased by 80 percent (see chart above). You never hear about that. It’s the greatest achievement in human history, and you never hear about it.

So what did that? What accounts for that? United Nations? US foreign aid? The International Monetary Fund? Central planning? No.

It was globalization, free trade, the boom in international entrepreneurship. In short, it was the free enterprise system, American style, which is our gift to the world.

I will state, assert and defend the statement that if you love the poor, if you are a good Samaritan, you must stand for the free enterprise system, and you must defend it, not just for ourselves but for people around the world. It is the best anti-poverty measure ever invented.

The post It’s the greatest achievement in human history, and one you probably never heard about appeared first on AEI.

Possibly good news:

RT @ABC7: #SpaceShipTwo UPDATE: Rescue crew seen carrying person on stretcher to chopper http://t.co/feWCAJn7gJ pic.twitter.com/nYUDt6BF9f

— Jim Meeker (@grumpyastronomr) October 31, 2014

Not so good news:

1 PILOT DEAD & 1 INJURED IN #SpaceShipTwo CRASH: Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crashes in Mojave Desert - @AP pic.twitter.com/raFwn2ky8S

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 31, 2014

The bad news:

#SpaceShipTwo has experienced an in-flight anomaly. Additional info and statement forthcoming.

— Virgin Galactic (@virgingalactic) October 31, 2014

For the second time in a week, a vessel due to go to space has crashed. As SpaceFlightNow reports, Virgin Galactic is reporting its SpaceShipTwo suborbital rocket plane experienced an “in-flight anomaly” on a powered test flight over California’s Mojave Desert on Friday. Two pilots were believed to be aboard SpaceShipTwo, according to the scanner discussion. SpaceShipTwo test flights customarily carry two pilots.

Live Feed:

AP provides some background:

Latest update:

 

Kern County firefighters are responding to an aircraft down. They cannot confirm whether the aircraft is Spaceship Two.

— Jason Kotowski (@jkotowskibako) October 31, 2014

Ss2 blew up. Came down in pieces. At one of debris sites.

— Parabolicarc.com (@spacecom) October 31, 2014

Back in Mojave now. Ss2 had trouble with engine burn, blew up, came down in pieces near Koehn Lake.

— Parabolicarc.com (@spacecom) October 31, 2014

Saw on of crash sites. Body still in seat.

— Parabolicarc.com (@spacecom) October 31, 2014

 

 

Wikipedia describes the vessel's propulsion system as:

The hybrid rocket engine design for SpaceShipTwo has been problematic and caused extensive delays to the flight test program. The original rocket motor design was based on hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) fuel and nitrous oxide oxidizer – sometimes referred to as an N2O/HTPB engine[27][28] – from 2009–early 2014. In May 2014, the engine design was switched from a HTPB to a polyamide fuel formulation.

As KGET10 reports,

SpaceShipTwo, the Virgin Galactic space plane, has crashed east of Mojave, according to the director of the Mojave Air and Space Port Stu Witt.

Witt said a 2 p.m. news conference has been scheduled, and no further details will be available until then.

Via SpaceFlightNow,

Virgin Galactic is reporting its SpaceShipTwo suborbital rocket plane experienced an “in-flight anomaly” on a powered test flight over California’s Mojave Desert on Friday.

 

 

The anomaly apparently occurred after the space plane fired its rocket motor following a high-altitude drop from Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo mothership.

 

Scanner traffic from local first responders indicated wreckage from a crashed aircraft in the area. Reports say parachutes were spotted in the air.

 

Two pilots were believed to be aboard SpaceShipTwo, according to the scanner discussion. SpaceShipTwo test flights customarily carry two pilots.

 

The suborbital spacecraft was making its first powered flight since January and was testing a redesigned rocket motor.

 

Virgin Galactic, part of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, was aiming to complete qualification of the rocket-powered plane in time to begin space tourist flights to the edge of space next year.

 

Slung beneath the WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane, the spacecraft took off at 9:19 a.m. PDT (12:19 p.m. EDT; 1619 GMT) from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The takeoff was delayed more than three hours to wait for bad weather to clear the area.

 

The test flight was the 55th flight of the SpaceShipTwo vehicle, and the craft’s 35th free  flight. It was the fourth time SpaceShipTwo had fired up its rocket motor in flight, and the first powered mission since Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites, the craft’s builder, switched from a rubber-based propellant to a plastic-based fuel mix.

*  *  *

Giving a talk at the Washington Ideas Forum, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder spoke about two different (though, similarly named) journalists that the DOJ has been absolutely egregious in trying to abuse for the sake of questionable leak investigations. Regarding James Risen, the NY Times reporter who the DOJ has been pursuing and demanding he reveal sources concerning a leak (when it's clear the DOJ already knows the source and is just doing this to destroy Risen's credibility with sources), Holder says that the DOJ expects "a resolution" in the near future. That's not too surprising. Holder and the DOJ seem to realize that actually putting Risen in jail (the next step in the process) probably wouldn't go over very well.

But it's the other journalist where things get a bit dicier. That's Fox News reporter James Rosen (note the different letter from Risen). Rosen, you may recall, had his phone, email and security badge records grabbed by the government, after the DOJ told a court that Rosen wasn't a reporter, but "an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator" in the "crime" of leaking classified information about North Korea from the State Department. It later came out that the DOJ actually pretended Rosen was involved in a bombing in its motions to the court.

Holder was asked if there was a decision during his tenure that he regretted, and he brought up the Rosen story:

Holder: I think that -- I think about the subpoena to the Fox reporter, Rosen. I think that I could have been a little more careful in looking at the language that was contained in the filing that we made with the court. He was labeled as a -- as a co-conspirator. I mean, you had to do that as a result of the statute, but there are ways in which I think that could have been done differently, done better. And that's one of the reasons why I thought the criticism that we received because of that -- and the AP matter as well -- was something that we had to act upon and why we put in place this review of our -- the way in which we interact with the media.

Except, as Julian Sanchez points out, that's completely bogus. Holder claiming they had to do that because of the statute is flat out opposites-ville. They had to do that because the statute doesn't allow them to spy on journalists. The law was designed to stop the DOJ from spying on journalists, and so the only way to break that was to lie to the court. The law in question -- 18 USC 793 is designed to only apply to the people actually committing the crime of leaking defense information -- and not to reporters.

Holder claiming that the statute effectively "forced" him into declaring Rosen a co-conspirator is ridiculous. The statute compels him not to seize Rosen's records. Holder is admitting that the DOJ lied to the court here and trying to blame the statute for that lie. That's astounding.

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Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Journalists should be dark, funny, mean people. It’s appropriate for their antagonistic, adversarial role.

 

– Matt Taibbi, in this New York Magazine article

 

Reporters on the ground aren’t necessarily ideological, Attkisson says, but the major network news decisions get made by a handful of New York execs who read the same papers and think the same thoughts.

 

Often they dream up stories beforehand and turn the reporters into “casting agents,” told “we need to find someone who will say . . .” that a given policy is good or bad. “We’re asked to create a reality that fits their New York image of what they believe,” she writes.

 

– From the excellent New York Post article: Ex-CBS reporter’s book reveals how liberal media protects Obama

Earlier this week, I published a piece titled, Former CBS Reporter Accuses Government of Secretly Planting Classified Docs on Her Computer, which I thought was incredible in its own right, yet the information in that post seems almost trite compared to the flood of information Attkisson has revealed to the New York Post’s Kyle Smith.

The following excerpts from the piece will confirm all of your worst suspicions about mainstream media:

Sharyl Attkisson is an unreasonable woman. Important people have told her so.

 

When the longtime CBS reporter asked for details about reinforcements sent to the Benghazi compound during the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack, White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor replied, “I give up, Sharyl . . . I’ll work with more reasonable folks that follow up, I guess.”

 

Another White House flack, Eric Schultz, didn’t like being pressed for answers about the Fast and Furious scandal in which American agents directed guns into the arms of Mexican drug lords. “Goddammit, Sharyl!” he screamed at her. “The Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, The New York Times is reasonable. You’re the only one who’s not reasonable!”

Interesting, because as Matt Taibbi notes in the quote at the top, investigative journalists are not supposed to be reasonable. I digress…

In nearly 20 years at CBS News, she has done many stories attacking Republicans and corporate America, and she points out that TV news, being reluctant to offend its advertisers, has become more and more skittish about, for instance, stories questioning pharmaceutical companies or car manufacturers.

 

Working on a piece that raised questions about the American Red Cross disaster response, she says a boss told her, “We must do nothing to upset our corporate partners . . . until the stock splits.” (Parent company Viacom and CBS split in 2006).

 

Reporters on the ground aren’t necessarily ideological, Attkisson says, but the major network news decisions get made by a handful of New York execs who read the same papers and think the same thoughts.

 

Often they dream up stories beforehand and turn the reporters into “casting agents,” told “we need to find someone who will say . . .” that a given policy is good or bad. “We’re asked to create a reality that fits their New York image of what they believe,” she writes.

 

Reporting on the many green-energy firms such as Solyndra that went belly-up after burning through hundreds of millions in Washington handouts, Attkisson ran into increasing difficulty getting her stories on the air. A colleague told her about the following exchange: “[The stories] are pretty significant,” said a news exec. “Maybe we should be airing some of them on the ‘Evening News?’ ” Replied the program’s chief Pat Shevlin, “What’s the matter, don’t you support green energy?”

 

Says Attkisson: That’s like saying you’re anti-medicine if you point out pharmaceutical company fraud.

 

One of her bosses had a rule that conservative analysts must always be labeled conservatives, but liberal analysts were simply “analysts.” “And if a conservative analyst’s opinion really rubbed the supervisor the wrong way,” says Attkisson, “she might rewrite the script to label him a ‘right-wing’ analyst.”

 

In mid-October 2012, with the presidential election coming up, Attkisson says CBS suddenly lost interest in airing her reporting on the Benghazi attacks. “The light switch turns off,” she writes. “Most of my Benghazi stories from that point on would be reported not on television, but on the Web.”

 

Two expressions that became especially popular with CBS News brass, she says, were “incremental” and “piling on.” These are code for “excuses for stories they really don’t want, even as we observe that developments on stories they like are aired in the tiniest of increments.”

 

Hey, kids, we found two more Americans who say they like their ObamaCare! Let’s do a lengthy segment.

 

When the White House didn’t like her reporting, it would make clear where the real power lay. A flack would send a blistering e-mail to her boss, David Rhodes, CBS News’ president — and Rhodes’s brother Ben, a top national security advisor to President Obama.

I had no idea that the President of CBS News’ brother was a top national security advisor to President Obama, did you?

Attkisson, who received an Emmy and the Edward R. Murrow award for her trailblazing work on the story, says she made top CBS brass “incensed” when she appeared on Laura Ingraham’s radio show and mentioned that Obama administration officials called her up to literally scream at her while she was working the story.

 

One angry CBS exec called to tell Attkisson that Ingraham is “extremely, extremely far right” and that Attkisson shouldn’t appear on her show anymore. Attkisson was puzzled, noting that CBS reporters aren’t barred from appearing on lefty MSNBC shows.

 

No interview with Holder aired but “after that weekend e-mail exchange, nothing is the same at work,” Attkisson writes. “The Evening News” began killing her stories on Fast and Furious, with one producer telling Attkisson, “You’ve reported everything. There’s really nothing left to say.”

 

Sensing the political waters had become too treacherous, Attkisson did what she thought was an easy sell on a school-lunch fraud story that “CBS This Morning” “enthusiastically accepted,” she says, and was racing to get on air, when suddenly “the light switch went off . . . we couldn’t figure out what they saw as a political angle to this story.”

 

The story had nothing to do with Michelle Obama, but Attkisson figures that the first lady’s association with school lunches, and/or her friendship with “CBS This Morning” host Gayle King, might have had something to do with execs now telling her the story “wasn’t interesting to their audience, after all.”

The who charade is completely incestuous.

Meanwhile, she says, though no one confronted her directly, a “whisper campaign” began; “If I offered a story on pretty much any legitimate controversy involving government, instead of being considered a good journalistic watchdog, I was anti-Obama.”

 

Yet it was Attkisson who broke the story that the Bush administration had once run a gun-walking program similar to Fast and Furious, called Wide Receiver. She did dozens of tough-minded stories on Bush’s FDA, the TARP program and contractors such as Halliburton. She once inspired a seven-minute segment on “The Rachel Maddow Show” with her reporting on the suspicious charity of a Republican congressman, Steve Buyer.

All I have to say is thank you CBS, or should I say SeeBS. Thank you for being so horrible at reporting that you have opened an enormous gap for myself and countless others in alternative media to fill. I genuinely couldn’t have done it without your incompetence.

 

This orphaned rhino has made an unexpected friend.

Gertjie (aka Little G) is apparently bosom buddies with a lamb named Lammie. The two play together at the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Center, an organization that rehabilitates orphaned and injured animals.

The rhino seems to mimic the lamb's prancing as the two frolic happily on the grounds of their South African home.



Gertjie did not come from such happy beginnings, however. He was brought to the HESC after being found next to his dead mother, a victim of poachers.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, poaching has increased dramatically in the past few years, and hundreds of African rhinos are killed every year for their horns.

Fortunately, Gertjie has been thriving under the care of his human keepers, who have posted footage online to document his journey. These YouTube videos have helped make Gertjie an Internet star; they've also raised awareness about rhino poaching.

Now, watch Gertjie and Lammie run off into the sunset. Ah, bliss. Adorable, adorable bliss.


H/T Tastefully Offensive

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So, there's a story in the Washington Post that's getting a bit of attention about how Russian hackers apparently breached a White House computer network (an unclassified network, so not as troubling as it could have been). And that story is kind of interesting, but it seems like the bigger deal is this:

U.S. officials were alerted to the breach by an ally, sources said.

Wait a second. After all we've been told about the brilliant minds at the NSA/US Cyber Command and their "cybersecurity" skills -- it seems immensely troubling that (1) the US didn't catch this themselves and (2) that some other country did catch it. So, uh, just why is some "ally" monitoring the White House's network?

As for the rest of the report, as the Washington Post notes, this isn't even that big of a deal. Foreign state hackers are always going to try to breach US government computers, and sometimes they're going to succeed. That's the nature of the beast. But, it does seem profoundly odd that it was discovered by some other country.

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(Don Boudreaux)

I challenge anyone to justify, or even to excuse, such an abuse of power.  (HT a dear and wise and passionate friend.)

Words normally do not escape me, but I can find none that adequately convey the anger and sense of injustice that course through me when I read of seizures such as this one.  Best to let the matter speak for itself, which it surely does to anyone this side of Frank Underwood in decency and civility.  Fortunately, the great Institute for Justice is on the case.

If it weren’t so appalling and dangerous, the conclusion – drawn by many (especially by those who consider themselves to be gentle and liberal) – that the same institution that performs inexcusable aggressions such as this one is fit and trustworthy enough to oversee and ‘correct’ the market would be amusing.

The ACLU FOIA'd up some guidelines for Amtrak staff concerning how they judge whether or not passengers are "suspicious" in terms of being "indicative of criminal activity" and the list seems fairly broad:

• Unusual nervousness of traveler
• Unusual calmness or straight ahead stare
• Looking around while making telephone call(s)
• Position among passengers disembarking (ahead of, or lagging behind passengers)
• Carrying little or no luggage
• Purchase of tickets in cash
• Purchase tickets immediately prior to boarding

Radley Balko takes this list and then compares it to a list put together by James Bovard concerning what the courts have said is conduct that shows "reasonable suspicion" for law enforcement to dig deeper:

• Being the first person off a plane
• Being the last person off a plane
• Someone authorities believe has tried to blend in to the middle of exiting passengers
• Booking a nonstop flight
• Booking a flight with a layover
• Traveling alone
• Traveling with a companion
• People who appear nervous
• People who appear “too calm”
• Merely flying to or from a city known to be a major thoroughfare in the drug pipeline

The message is pretty clear: everyone is a suspect. And anything you might do to look not like a suspect is also suspicious. In fact, you're going to be pretty hard pressed not to look suspicious under these kinds of rules, which is kind of the point.

Part of the problem is the myth out there that there's a legitimate ability to spot "suspicious" people. Sure, there are some extreme cases where people act strange before committing a criminal act, but the idea that you can scan a group of people and spot the people planning out some sort of criminal activity is a concept greatly exaggerated (often by Hollywood), but it inevitably leads to this situation where law enforcement can more or less pick and choose when they suddenly think you're "acting suspicious."

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With the exception of maybe old Andy Taylor, most police officers in the United States carry a firearm as part of their standard equipment. Wouldn't it be nice to know when those sidearms are drawn, and why? A Silicon Valley startup called Yardarm...

(Don Boudreaux)

Here’s another letter to my new correspondent from New Jersey:

Dear Mr. Sloan:

I appreciate your correspondence.  Thank you for it.

You ask if I agree that, because successful entrepreneurs “such as [Jeff] Bezos … benefit disproportionately” from government-supplied infrastructure, these entrepreneurs should be taxed at rates higher than those levied on “regular people.”

I don’t agree.  My reasons are many, not the least of which is that I doubt that successful entrepreneurs benefit disproportionately from government-supplied infrastructure.  Looking at the non-farm U.S. economy over the years 1948-2001, Yale economist William Nordhaus calculates that successful innovators capture only about two percent of the value to society of their innovations.  The other 98 percent of the value of these innovations is, as Nordhaus says, “passed on to consumers rather than captured by producers.”*

If this calculation is even only remotely accurate, then three points about taxes suggest themselves: (1) it’s unwise to raise taxes on - that is, to discourage - activities that generate such huge net benefits for society; (2) successful entrepreneurs already, through market competition, contribute to society nearly all (98 percent) of the value of their successful innovations; and (3) those who enjoy disproportionate benefits from whatever entrepreneurial innovations are made possible by government-supplied infrastructure are, thus, arguably the general public rather than the successful entrepreneurs.

It’s true that Jeff Bezos would be less wealthy today if there were no roads, airports, and other infrastructure to enable Amazon to serve consumers.  But it’s also true that consumers would be less wealthy today not only if there were no roads, airports, and other infrastructure to enable Amazon to serve consumers, but also if Jeff Bezos had instead chosen to become, say, a poet or a civil servant rather than an entrepreneur.  Mr. Bezos had to take positive, risky steps to gain his increased wealth; in contrast, consumers did nothing for their increased wealth other than enjoy it when Mr. Bezos offered it to them.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA  22030

* William D. Nordhaus, “Schumpeterian Profits in the American Economy: Theory and Measurement” (April 2004).

…..

A different, but complementary, point was made to me by e-mail yesterday by a Cafe patron.  I quote him here with his kind permission:

One could effectively argue that the value of the infrastructure only exists because businesses and entrepreneurs make use of it; without them, it might as well be a fallow field.