These aren’t as much myths as they are platitudes spoken like hard and fast laws.
Myth: You don’t leave fish to find fish.
Busted: Schooling fish are often all the same size. If all you are catching are “rats,” try another location.
Myth: You need big baits to catch big fish.
Busted: Elephants eat peanuts; big fish often gorge on small bait, so match the hatch for success.
    
|
We’ve finished building three heavy-duty work benches and one of two folding wood sawhorses. Another important part of a workshop is good lumber storage. Up until now we’ve been piling boards on the floor, and it’s been a pain to keep moving them to make room for projects. Our solution is a simple wall-mounted wooden lumber rack. This article shares the instructions for building this rack.
I found the idea on Woodsmith Shop, and with a few modifications, built one that fully meets our needs.
I had one-half of a sheet of plywood left over from building the workbenches. If I didn’t have that handy, this lumber rack would cost about $55, since I would have had to purchase two whole sheets. By eliminating two of the vertical supports and being careful to minimize waste, you can build this rack with only one sheet of plywood, almost cutting the total cost in half.
Materials:
Tools:
Many of the cuts can be made using a circular saw. If you take that route, I suggest using guides to ensure perfectly straight cuts, because circular saws are otherwise difficult to control. We use our table saw and mitre saw, because they make the cuts much easier, since we can use built-in guides.
The entire structure is built out of plywood, and that means this project involves making a lot of rip cuts. A cabinet saw would have been really useful. I don’t have one so I made the best out of what I do have.
Here are the pieces you’ll need to cut with your table saw. I shortened my vertical supports (fourth item below) because I had to work around a garage door. Leave them at 79″ if you have the space. Also, do not rip the entire length of the plywood to make your vertical supports, because you’ll be using the excess at the end of the sheet for further shelf supports. (In other words, before cutting the vertical supports, you should cross-cut the plywood at 79″)
Tip: Using these dimensions, you can have the big box store rip the plywood in half (24″ x 96″) making it easier for subsequent cuts.
The upper cleat needs to have an angled backside, from which you will hang the vertical supports. You want the width on the longest side to measure 5″, and cut it at a 45° angle. This will make the shorter side approximately 4-1/4″.
Tip from Experience: Looking back, both the upper and lower cleats could have been identical (5″ tall with a 45° angle) to better distribute the weight. The design this lumber rack is derived from used removable dowels to “lock” the vertical support in place. For that reason, the bottom cleat is more of a place holder than anything else. I didn’t incorporate the dowels, and would recommend making the bottom cleat angled, which essentially eliminates the need for the dowels in the original design.
This picture shows the top cleat after its been ripped. The top of the cleat has the angle, and the bottom is flat. It is 5″ wide at its widest point.
Next, cut the 6″ wide pieces with your miter saw into 6″ x 15″ rectangles. Do the same with the piece of plywood leftover from cutting your vertical supports.
Your goal is to create 15 identical shelf supports that look like this:
The easiest way to make the diagonal cut is to setup a jig for your table saw. (And no, the drill/driver wasn’t sitting there while I was cutting!)
Here’s several of the shelving supports. Note they are sitting on the table upside-down.
Tip from Experience: Consider cutting a short lip on the top of each shelf support to prevent materials from sliding off. We omitted this in our first build and have not had problems, but we think it would make a slightly better design.
In some of the pictures you’ll see that five of my shelf supports are shorter than 15″, and that’s because I had to make adjustments to work around the garage door. Just like the vertical supports, keep them full length if you have the space.
You need to cut two notches on the vertical supports that will accommodate the upper and lower cleats. I placed my upper cleat 6″ down from the top and the lower cleat 12″ up from the bottom. With these measurements, I can have a shelf at the very bottom for sheet goods and two shelves at the top for 2×4’s and the like. Position your cleats as necessary, but work to keep approximately the same distances from top and bottom. Here’s a diagram showing where I planned the cleats and shelves:
To make things easier, I clamped all the vertical supports together and marked lines. The upper notch should measure 6″ long and the lower notch should measure 4″ long. The extra inch is to allow for clearance below the cleats.
Now it’s time to cut the notches in the vertical supports. Using a square, the lines I just marked and a piece of scrap, I traced an outline.
Use your jig saw to cut along the lines. To make the long cut, start midway and curve onto the line like in the picture. Then cut in the opposite direction to carve out the rest. Alternately, you can drill holes at the corners big enough to fit the t-shank blade.
Remember, the upper notch needs be angled to fit the upper cleat. I used a piece of scrap from ripping the upper cleat to mark the angled line.
The angled cut in the supports fits neatly over the upper cleat.
Each shelf support will be sandwiched between two vertical supports. Glue and screw everything, and remember that the shelf extends away from the notches. Put four screws, staggered on each side.
Here I’ve got two of the uprights finished. You can see the shelf at the top followed closely by the second shelf. The third shelf is place at the bottom for storing sheet goods.
The two cleats are held in place with lag screws. I didn’t have my lovely assistant, so I used some spare boards and a lot of blue tape to get things into position. I wanted the bottom of each vertical support to just barely sit on the block below. If you don’t have similar concerns, you can hang the upper cleat at whatever height is convenient. I’d recommend positioning it to keep the rack up off the floor for easier cleaning.
Remember to orient the cleat such that the angle is going into the wall (so that the vertical supports will hang from it).
Use the stud finder to locate studs and pre-drill the holes, and put a washer on each lag screw before screwing it in. Use four lag screws per cleat.
Here you can see the lower cleat in position.
I’m really pleased with how this lumber rack turned out. It’s strong enough to hold my weight (and a lot more), and it keeps everything off the floor. The shelves can accommodate sheet goods and dimensional lumber of any length since they can slide left and right. Plus, they can easily be removed.
If I did this project again, I would incorporate the tips to angle the lower cleat and cut a lip into the shelf supports. Even so, this lumber rack will serve us well.
By now you're likely well aware that the word ragù—although perhaps most frequently encountered with its accent symbol flipped over, emblazoned across ten thousand jars of tomato products in your local supermarket—has its own non-commercial definition, other than "bad-tasting Italian-themed ketchup."
No one has moderate feelings toward the raw oyster (except perhaps for the terminally indifferent, may they ride the Meh Bus straight to hell): Either you ohmigod love love loooooove them, or you think they are gross little brine-loogies and have bad taste in things.
The map above—from a 1931 issues of Fortune Magazine—tracks the production and transportation of wine, beer, and various hard liquors in the U.S., right at the tail end of Prohibition. It's an old map but it's new to us; make sure to check out the hard-cider swath of Northern New England, the bootleggers' paradise that was Dallas, and the hidden vineyards of Northern Ohio (still a thing!)
The year 2013 was an important one at the U.S. Supreme Court in the life of this nation, coming on the heels of another blockbuster year in 2012. Breitbart News offers a perspective on the Court’s year in review.
Supreme Court Terms start on the first Monday of October and go until the end of June. So the first half of 2013 saw the Court hand down decisions in some big cases, many of which started at the Court in late 2012. Here are the highlights:
On Feb. 29 in Clapper v. Amnesty International, the Court decided whether media and human-rights organizations have standing under Article III of the Constitution to sue over foreign surveillance programs operated by the U.S. government, when none of them can make any showing that any of these groups were ever monitored. The Court held 5–4 that it would violate a key limit the Constitution puts on the federal courts to hold that the plaintiffs have standing, since plaintiffs must demonstrate a concrete injury that was caused by the defendants and that courts could remedy.
On Mar. 26 in Florida v. Jardines, the Court held 5–4 that it violates the Fourth Amendment if police use a drug-sniffing dog on a porch to detect drugs inside a house. This majority was comprised of the most conservative justices with the most liberal, with the more moderate justices dissenting.
On June 3 in Maryland v. King, the Court held 5–4 that it does not violate the Fourth Amendment to use a cotton swab to collect DNA from a person who has been arrested, though the Court had previously held on Jan. 9 in Missouri v. McNeely that a warrant may be required to draw blood by needle to check alcohol levels, although the justices split several ways on why the Fourth Amendment required a warrant in that situation. Justice Thomas held that neither procedure requires a warrant, while some liberal justices argued that both require a warrant.
On June 17 in Arizona v. Ariz. Inter Tribal Council, the Court held 7–2 that states cannot require proof of citizenship when a person uses a federal form to register to vote unless the federal government allows it. Justices Thomas and Alito dissented, arguing the Constitution empowers states to decide the matter.
On June 24, the Court decided Fisher v. Univ. of Tex, challenging that school's racial-preference program for admissions. The Court reaffirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution only permits government to consider race if it satisfies strict scrutiny: the government must prove that the law is precisely tailored to achieve a truly compelling public interest. The Court held 5–4 that the lower court was far too deferential to the university, and sent the case back for the court to apply a scrutiny that is truly strict.
On June 25, the Court held 5–4 in Shelby County v. Holder that the formula Congress uses to require some states—mostly in the South—to obtain approval from the U.S. Justice Department before changing their voting laws is no longer rationally related to any modern evidence of racial discrimination, since the data Congress used was from the 1960s and '70s, and struck down Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act. Justice Thomas argued that the Court should go further, striking down the entire Section 5 preclearance system as outdated, not just the formula Congress uses to impose it.
On June 26 in U.S. v. Windsor, the Court held 5–4 that the federal Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage between a man and woman in federal law, was utterly irrational, and the bipartisan supermajority of Congress that passed it—as well as President Bill Clinton who signed it—were motivated purely by fear, ignorance, and bigotry. The conservative justices dissented on multiple grounds.
On that same day in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Court held 5–4 that when California officials refused to defend the California Constitution in court, no one could step into those officials’ shoes to litigate on behalf of the state. Consequently, the Court could not consider the challenged provision of the California Constitution defining marriage as one man and one woman and thus did not reach the issue of whether the U.S. Constitution includes a never-before noticed right for adults to marry anyone they wish, which would create a right to homosexual marriage and likely polygamy as well.
Since the Court’s 2013 Term began in October, the Court has heard new cases on various other constitutional issues, from public prayer, to whether treaties give Congress power denied to it under the Constitution, to another racial-preference case, to the limits of the EPA’s power.
The Court has not yet decided any of those big cases. There are more newsworthy cases scheduled to be argued in the next few months. On New Year’s Day, Breitbart News will publish a follow-up report on what to expect from the Supreme Court in 2014.
Ken Klukowski is senior legal analyst for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @kenklukowski.
|
|
Mr. Radley Balko has some scary predictions for us. Let’s make sure these things never happen.
Merry Christmas! The crew at the Art of Manliness will be taking the coming week off to spend time with family and reboot before the new year. So we won’t be publishing anything new on the site until January. But for those of you who still need an AoM fix while we’re away, we’ve put together this recap of 2013 on the Art of Manliness.
On the homefront, Kate and I welcomed our second child and first daughter: Olive Scout McKay. Scout has already brought a ton of joy into our lives.
Here on the blog, things have been hopping too. Let’s take a look at the big AoM happenings of the year.
These were our top posts from each month in 2013 based on traffic:
Jan: Testosterone Series
Feb: How to be Assertive
Mar: How to End a Conversation
Apr: Save Money and Shop Smart: Know the Style Pyramid
May: The Sometimes, Always, Never 3-Button Rule Illustrated
Jun: 37 Conversation Rules for Gentlemen from 1875
Jul: How to Accept a Compliment With Class
Aug: Preventing Swamp Crotch: 10 Products “Scientifically” Tested
Sep: What Does It Mean to Be a Man? 80+ Quotes on Manliness & Manhood
Nov: Three Elements of Charisma Series
Dec: How to Pull an All-Nighter: Tips from the Special Forces
Editor’s Picks
Of course traffic isn’t the only measure of the worth of a post. Here are some of our personal favorites from this year:
Solvitur Ambulando: It Is Solved By Walking
Don’t Waste Your Twenties Series
What Is Character? Its 3 True Qualities and How to Develop It
How a Man Handles a Miscarriage
5 Types of Friends Every Man Needs
How and Why to Become a Lifelong Learner
How Delaying Intimacy Can Benefit Your Relationship
You May Be Strong…But Are You Tough?
How to Make a Difficult Decisions: Advice from Sergeant Alvin C. York
Fathering With Intentionality: The Importance of Creating a Family Culture
Measure Twice, Cut Once: Applying the Ethos of the Craftsman in Our Daily Lives
Beyond “Sissy” Resilience: Becoming Antifragile
If the above posts aren’t enough to satiate your AoM appetite, I highly recommend browsing through our archives. We have nearly 2,000 articles in there waiting to be discovered.
(If you’re reading this in the email, click here to watch the video.)
This year we made it a goal to produce more videos. Thanks to the help of Jordan Crowder, we’ve done just that. You can find all our videos on YouTube. While you’re there, make sure to subscribe to our channel so you get updated as soon as we publish a new video.
Here are a few of my favorite videos we put out this year:
How to Shave Like Your Grandpa
The Importance of Roughhousing
The most popular video of the year was on that most essential subject…how to whistle with your fingers!
Another goal I had in 2013 was to bring back the AoM podcast. I publish a podcast about every two weeks. Each episode gets downloaded around 50,000 times within a week of publishing and the Art of Manliness podcast is often in the top 25 podcasts on iTunes.
If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend subscribing to the AoM Podcast. It’s a great way to get your AoM fix while commuting or working out.
Here are a few of my favorite episodes from this past year:
The Warrior Ethos with Steven Pressfield
The Defining Decade With Dr. Meg Jay (about the importance of your 20s)
The Way of Men With Jack Donovan
Experimenting With Your Life With A.J. Jacobs
Since hiring our very first employee, Jeremy Anderberg, as an editor, writer, and community manager back in February, we were able to take on a lot of projects for the site that we had put on the back burner for years. One of those was making videos. Here are a few of the other large projects we launched during the year:
New Art of Manliness Store. This year we partnered with ROBYN Promotions in Oklahoma City to create a new online store for our Art of Manliness gear. You can find AoM tees, stationery, and posters there.
The Art of Manliness Book Club. Jeremy heads up the AoM Book Club and does a heck of a job with it. Every month we alternate between a fiction and non-fiction books. This past year we covered The Great Gatsby, Gates of Fire, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and A Christmas Carol. We’ve got several great books lined up for 2014, so be sure to join today!
The Art of Manliness Sandwich Project. In March we asked readers to submit their favorite sandwich recipes. We received over 500 submissions. During April, Jeremy and I picked 20 of those submissions to highlight on the blog. After the month of sandwiches, we put together an ebook with all 500 recipe submissions. The ebook is free. Just Like us on Facebook or subscribe to our email newsletter to get it.
Art of Manliness en Espanol. Over the years we’ve had several requests from our readers living in Spanish-speaking countries to create a version of AoM in their native tongue. Back in April we launched The Art of Manliness en Español. So far we’ve been translating our articles from the English site. Eventually we’d like to create original content just for the Spanish version of AoM.
We’re coming up on our sixth birthday this January! The Art of Manliness had another great year of growth in 2013. Our continued success wouldn’t be possible without the support of our amazing Art of Manliness readers. Thank you for visiting the site and sharing it with your friends. Thank you to everyone who sent an encouraging letter or comment our way this year. It really means a lot to us.
We’ll be working hard in 2014 to keep bringing you top quality, totally free content that informs, entertains, and inspires. See you then!
Semper Virilis!
What are your favorite Art of Manliness articles from the past year? (Or of all time?)
The sun has fully "flipped upside down", with its north and south poles reversed to reach the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24, Nasa has said.
|
|
By Lee Pfeiffer
In a landmark ruling, an Illinois judge has ruled that Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle prior to 1923 are now considered public domain under U.S. copyright law. The ruling stems from an author's suit that protested what he felt were unnecessary licensing fees paid to the Doyle estate in relation to a new book based on the characters of Holmes and Dr. Watson. The judge ruled that any elements of the stories contained in published works prior to 1923 can now be used without permission of the Doyle estate. These include key elements of the stories and the character of the villain Prof. Moriarty. However, in defending the copyrighted elements of the later stories, the judge cautioned that any elements of the Holmes legend that were introduced in those published works are still considered under copyright. The Doyle estate said it may appeal the ruling but also expressed confidence that the primary aspects of the characters that are routinely used in popular culture and new versions of the stories would be protected by copyright law. They assert that, under the judge's rulings, ten of Doyle's Holmes stories would be subject to copyright protection- but this is debatable and depends upon how many specific personality traits and relationship changes can be said to be defined in those post-1923 stories. Such legendary aspects of the series as Holmes' address at 221 B Baker Street would be in the public domain, as would the essence of the character as the world's greatest detective- as well as his friendship with Dr. Watson. Elements that expand and better define those aspects of the stories in the post-1923 writings would not be available in the public domain. Nevertheless, the judge's ruling opens the gates for anyone to create their own Holmes projects and stories as long as they are based on elements of the early books. The Holmes character is one of the most enduring and popular in literay history. Today a recent film series starring Robert Downey Jr. has proven to be a major success, as have various TV series based on the Holmes stories.For more click here
The attached article has absolutely nothing to do with crony capitalism, but has everything to do with free markets and free prices.
Over time a couple living in a one bedroom apartment in New York amassed one of the greatest art collections of the 20th Century. On a post office worker’s salary they were able to pick and choose emerging artists who would eventually rise to prominence. With what little they had, the Vogels helped truly starving artists with even less, survive.
What is valuable to one person is not valuable to another. This is the essence of markets. The Vogels were able to use their modest income to acquire diamonds in the New York art scene’s rough, and the world is a better place for their efforts.
They never sold their pieces either. For them, the art they’d acquired was more valuable than the millions of dollars they would have gained.
That is a market. Almost art.
But the CPI isn’t moving very much the Fed tells us. Everything is in check. See all that money printing didn’t hurt us. Shoes still cost the same.
Inflationary bubbles rise up in different places each time the Fed keeps things too easy for too long. In the late 90s it was tech stocks. In the mid 2000s it was housing. Now we have bubbles emerging in many asset classes.
Remember the correction after the tech bust? It wasn’t too bad because Greenspan hadn’t gone completely insane yet. The real estate bust was much worse because Greenspan took leave of anything one could call reality. (Which is really scary – you know people used to call Greenspan “The Maestro.” Can you believe that?) Now we will pay for the experiments of Mr. Bernanke, and the adventures of the Bearded One put anything the Maestro did to shame. There will be pain, and lots of it. Just what the world needs.
When? Who knows. But it’s coming and it makes sense to plan accordingly
A century ago the the Creature from Jekyll Island showed itself to the world. It was a sad day for the United States.
The video below is long, it’s a bit academic, but for those who care it is an excellent explanation of how the Federal Reserve came to be. Murray Rothbard was an unparalleled expert on the Fed and thankfully someone had the foresight to capture this speech.
Enjoy.
Four-gallon rigid-plastic square buckets can often be found for free (although sold online for $5 and up). Try local restaurants, as they often buy frozen fruit or other foods in these containers. I’ve found these to be super useful for carrying groceries. For several years, they’ve been my regular totes. Unlike canvas or other sacks, these can’t leak, stain, or tip over easily in the car. They have a handle. You can load them up with heavy bottles or cans and still easily carry two pails. If there’s a spill, they rinse out. Not in use, they stack. In the store, a nested pair fits on the lower level of the shopping cart. I shop fairly often, so I usually don’t need more than fits in two pails, but one can always drop a couple cloth bags into a pail, for additional carry space, using the pails for the heavier items.
On car trips, they make efficient use of space, packed with rainy-weather gear or various other categories of supplies. They are easy to move around when rearranging things or carrying to and from the car.
They often come with square lids, a little fussy to snap on and off, but not necessary for shopping. With a lid on, the container is weatherproof for use outdoors. I’ve camped with a small tent, and stored things in these buckets outside the tent.
My suggestion is to get some for free.
-- Lynn Nadeau
4-Gallon Square Pail
$7
There are a lot of end of year lists circulating this week. This BBC list of 100 interesting facts which appeared in news stories in 2013 may be the most interesting one.
Some are science facts, others arcane bits of cultural knowledge. Nearly all of them are amusing in some way. Here are ten of the 100 which caught my attention:
1. It would have taken 2.5 million seagulls to lift James's giant peach into the air, not the 501 that Roald Dahl suggested.
5. Two per cent of Europeans lack the genes for smelly armpits
Find out more (Scientific American)
22. Plants lace their nectar with caffeine to keep pollinators loyal.
26. There are more deer in the UK now than at any time since the last Ice Age.
39. 6x8 is the multiplication children get wrong most while 9x12 takes longest.
48. The French had no official word for French kissing… until now. It's "galocher".
56. Bookshop customers are six times more likely to buy romance or cookery titles when they can smell chocolate.
70. Cuban rescue workers use sniffer rabbits to find people in collapsed buildings.
79. A man's walking pace slows by 7% for wives and girlfriends but not for other women, and increases if walking with another man.
82. Amazon's original name was to be Relentless - and the URL relentless.com still redirects to the company website.
Find out more (Financial Times)
That's ten of the 100 listed. I verified that last one myself and it works (you may have to remove the 's' from 'https:' to get it working). There are 90 more interesting facts in the list.
|
|
There’s an unwritten rule on ACL where I try and make a point of not doing overtly obnoxious blogger things – though I’m sure some find me overtly obnoxious nonetheless. I attempt to avoid posting pictures of myself on this site and I don’t actively post any sort of press coverage that I am fortunate enough to get. Part of the reason I avoid this stuff is because I don’t want this site to be about me per se, I want the focus to be on the truly interesting and deserving people, places and stories that are out in the world. Though recently I have been struggling internally about going against my self-prescribed code to post a video that involves me in a roundabout way. Ultimately, I decided that the benefits for the subject of the video outweigh the possibilities an appearance of a self-congratulatory blogger parade.
Chris Hughes from Omaha, Nebraska struggled himself, though in a much more real way. He grappled with the recession spending the better part of a year being unemployed or underemployed. During this troubling time of his life he started to focus energy making leather goods, bags and aprons on the side. He hoped to transform his hobby into a business and take a massive leap of faith to leave his job with health insurance to work on his company Artifact Bag Co. full time. In December of 2010 he did just that and has been building Artifact ever since. In a TEDx talk in Omaha he recently gave a speech (see video above) about a tweet and our brief encounter that changed his life.
Watching the video I was flattered by his story and the sincere words. Though I don’t really think my tweets changed his life, I think he changed his life. If he didn’t take the initiative to start making things (good-looking things no less) then he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to capitalize on the press coverage and buzz that he received. So while this is me being humble and saying that the success Chris has had is really just thanks to Chris, the TEDx talk is also just Chris being equally as humble and saying that ACL and my tweet are what did it while he deserves all of the credit.
The lasting impression I get from Chris Hughes and his story is the fact that ACL was able to play a small part in the success of an American company that is making things domestically in an honest way. If I have had any selfish motives for ACL and The American List it would be to hear more stories like the one of the Artifact Bag Co. That’s the stuff that has changed my life.
On December 23 the inventor of the world's most popular firearm--the AK-47--died and was quickly eulogized by the Associated Press (AP) as an inventor of "assault weapons" who "sowed havoc" and "[contributed] to bloodshed."
Mikhail Kalashnikov was 94 years old upon his death. He designed his remarkable rifle after being wounded by Nazis in 1941 and "[brooding] about the superior automatic rifles he'd seen the Nazis deploy."
According to the AP, Kalashnikov designed farm machinery until being wounded by the Nazis; thereafter he designed guns.
The "AK" in AK-47 stands for "Avtomat Kalashnikov," and the "47" stands for the year the rifle began production, 1947. An estimated 100 million are in the world today, and they will fire under conditions that render other guns inoperable.
In 2007, Kalashnikov spoke to the rifle's dependability when he told stories of how "American soldiers would throw away their M-16s to grab AK-47s and bullets from dead Vietnamese soldiers [during the Vietnam War]."
Whereas M-16s had to constantly be cleared to remain functional, the AK-47 simply shot every time a soldier pulled the trigger.
Kalashnikov's story is all the more remarkable when you consider that he was "born into a peasant family in Siberia." Yet he was able to rise above his poverty and create something that the world still treasures today.
Rather than focusing on his amazing accomplishments, the AP summarized Kalashnikov's life this way: "Kalashnikov once aspired to design farm equipment, but his most famous invention--the AK-47 assault rifle--sowed havoc instead of crops."
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.
|
|
Popular former New York mayor Ed Koch used to walk the streets of the city ebulliently asking passers by: How’m I doin?
Although the Fed has never asked this question about itself, the 100th anniversary of the Federal Reserve Act (Dec 23, 2013) would seem an appropriate time to ask it for them.
The Fed was founded to stabilize prices and thereby stabilize the economy. Now that all this time has passed, how has it done?
For most of U.S. history prior to the Fed, prices had fluctuated but eventually returned to about the same place. A loaf of bread bought in 1913 cost about as much in real terms as a loaf bought in 1787, the year our constitution was written.
Since the founding of the Fed, the dollar has lost 97% of its purchasing power. So far, the record does not sound too good.
Why all this inflation? As Thibault de Saint Phalle noted in 1985, “ No one in Congress ever points out… it is the Fed itself that creates inflation.”
So, in effect, we have the paradox of an institution created to control inflation and protect the dollar that has done just the reverse.
And how exactly did the Fed do this? Economist Milton Friedman explained: “An excessive increase in the quantity of money is the one and only important cause of inflation.” Since the Fed has controlled the quantity of money in the economy since 1914, the Fed’s own decisions have caused the inflation.
Paul Volcker, the most successful Fed chairman of our era, indeed the only successful chairman, added in 1994: “If the overriding objective is price stability, we did a better job with the nineteenth century gold standard and passive central banks, …or even with ‘free banking’.”
Loss of dollar purchasing power came at many times during the Fed’s century but especially after the delinking of the dollar from gold by the Nixon administration in 1971 .
One of the framers of the Federal Reserve Act, Senator Elihu Root, had considered making a gold backed dollar part of the legislation but concluded it was unnecessary. He told colleagues the U.S. government would never dare to issue paper currency backed by nothing.
The problem with U.S. dollars backed by nothing is that the government can create as many of them as it wishes, without any restraint. And an unrestrained flood of new dollars will eventually wreck the economy, either by creating too much debt or by setting off hyper-inflation.
At the moment, reported consumer price inflation is low. But that has to be taken with a grain of salt. After the Reagan administration linked social security payments to the consumer price index, the Clinton administration responded by changing the way inflation is calculated.
With reported inflation low, the Fed felt free to create enough new money to blow up the dot com bubble, which made all the economic statistics for Clinton’s term look good but led to the Crash of 2000. This was followed by even more Fed money creation, which led to the much larger Crash of 2008.
Even after these recent calamities, textbooks and media commentators still pretend that the Fed has helped stabilize the economy.
Read the rest of the article at AgainstCronyCapitalism.org
Hunter Lewis is co-founder of Againstcronycapitalism.org, co-founder and former CEO of Cambridge Associates, a global investment firm, and author of two recent books, Free Prices Now!, about the Fed, and Crony Capitalism in America 2008-12.
|
|
When I was a kid I used to pray for the snowy days of winter. When the other kids were dreaming of a day free from the drudgery of school and the fun of sledding and snowmen, I was thinking of making money. Cold, hard cash from crumpled hands would fill my pockets as I worked the neighborhood trying to service as many neighbors or “clients” that I could.
Maybe some of the other former young entrepreneurs out there can relate to this quirk—I actually took the time to individually press my hard-earned fortune using the family iron so that all the bills would lie neatly and crisply in my Velcro wallet. I was a businessman like my dad. I provided a service at an agreed-upon price which was beneficial to all involved, and it was wonderful.
Today’s job market is radically different. Gone are the days of the local fast food restaurants and landscaping companies staffed by pimply-faced teens hoping to save for their first car. Children whose fathers have lost their jobs to outsourcing are now themselves competing against in-sourced labor. Invading armies of illegal immigrants who are dotting the landscape of America have surreptitiously been allowed to cross over into our borders. This has been, and continues to be, the largest cause of wage suppression in the country.
Let’s take a minute so I can clearly state where I stand on this matter before a whole group of political hacks twist and distort what I’m saying. It is my opinion that legal immigration is one of the greatest assets of this country—it is one of our Golden Goose advantages that has blessed our nation from its inception and continues to shower us with dividends too numerous to list.
If I lived in just about 99% of the other countries of the world, I would be doing all I could to move my entire family to our shores; I believe that these United States are the best place to live a life of Liberty. But I would do it legally. The process we have in place for legal immigration is in serious need of significant reform, but as a whole, should not be tossed to the wayside just because millions of people decided to skirt the process and immigrate illegally.
In the ongoing debate over illegal immigration, many of those in favor of the current amnesty plan lack the fundamental understanding of how simple supply and demand works. Their starry eyes are filled with Utopian visions in which the country can digest just about any number of immigrants without its affecting the overall balance of the country’s labor pool. They’re WRONG. The greatest tragedy of their logic is that the very people they claim to be the advocates of (the poor, the uneducated and the downtrodden) are the very members of society who will bear the full brunt of this half-baked proposal.
The illegal immigration problem has grown in proportion to the growth of the welfare state. Years ago, Milton Freedman remarked on how “you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” The fundamental reason is that the wages one pays to an illegal immigrant mask the true cost to the existing labor pool. In essence, illegal immigrants suppress wages for existing workers while burdening the already straining social safety nets.
Ask yourself, "In what direction has the average hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees wages (blue collar labor) been going over the last 40 years?" The existing surplus of low-skilled workers even had democratic-socialist Senator Bernie Sanders say that, “At a time when nearly fourteen percent of Americans do not have a full-time job, and when the middle class is working longer hours for lower wages, I oppose a massive increase in temporary guest worker programs that will allow large corporations to import hundreds of thousands of blue-collar and white-collar workers from overseas.”
Bernie can’t go all the way and call out all of the existing illegals, as it would most likely tarnish his image, but if even those like him on the far left can see the inherent dangers of these policies to the middle and lower classes, you know this has to be a serious problem. You just can’t bring in immigrant (primarily illegal) workers faster than you can create jobs without its destroying the very fabric of our society.
Evidence of this deliberate wage suppression policy is evident, in my opinion, by the continued failure to effectively secure the borders and deal with the millions of illegals currently living here. You cannot hide twelve million people! If illegals were a state of their own, it would be bigger than all but the top six. This failure appears conscious and deliberate to keep the status quo; there are too many advantages for those in power to maintain a permanent underclass. Unfortunately, this class of people can be (and are) used as pawns in the power struggles of politics and business at the expense of the average citizen.
The very notion that in today’s day and age that borders cannot be secured is beyond contempt. Meanwhile, your grandmother is getting cavity-searched by the TSA and yet another anchor baby is born in a U.S. hospital (which accounts for 8% of all births). The average American knows this “look the other way” policy very well, with all of its repercussions, because he has been dealing with suppressed wages for decades. This suppression has not only helped gut lower and middle-class Americans, it has also caused millions of Americans to rely on government subsidies, i.e. welfare checks, section 8 housing, and EBT cards.
Even with illegal immigration’s chilling wage-wake, why are so many in favor of it? Well, for businesses it is easy; more labor available will help them maintain and even lower existing hourly pay. The greater the supply (both legal and illegal) of workers, the greater the profit margins. With unofficial U6 unemployment totaling over 20 million people, allowing even more people into the country will only make it harder for the bottom to find a permanent position in an already over-crowded job market. As for the political 1% crowd’s support of these amnesty plans, the answer is more insidious; it helps control the effects of inflation.
As the U.S. has continued to rack up mind-numbing debt loads in the trillions of dollars, the risk of an inflationary move up in interest rates would most likely plunge the Federal government into a sea of red ink it could never hope to repay. Inflation would expose the decades of manipulation and outright lying that has been fed to the public by elected officials and government bureaucrats who have been selling Keynesian “hopium” to the masses.
These economic solutions were nothing more than monetary manipulations since we dropped the Bretton Woods agreement on August 15, 1971, and adopted a fiat money system. Wages in a free market would have an upward pressure in response to these actions, and because of this, it is to the advantage of large players (big government and business) to counter this force by adding supply to the job market by selectively not enforcing existing immigration laws. It is not a hard equation to understand; more workers equal lower wages, with the number of existing jobs being constant.
The downward force on wages, and the decreasing cost of capital by Fed manipulation, has lead to a widening wealth gap. With wages being flat, those with capital at their disposal will find themselves at the top of the food chain because labor is not their sole source of income. Those without access to capital are fighting a losing war if their weapon of choice is to work harder. For example, a doctor can only do so many surgeries a day, while an asset can grow exponentially. Once we began our fiat experiment, the divergence between productivity (capital) and labor began; this is why there have been so many calls for raising the minimum wage and the fight over right-to-work states. Rather than cut off the supply of in-sourced illegal and now H1B legal labor, the addition of more attempted fixes doesn’t speak to the heart of the problem.
Maybe, hopefully, at some point in the future we will wake up to what has really been going on in the labor market. Manipulation is not a free market. Manipulation distorts the invisible hand of the marketplace and has been the tool of special interests and social engineering utopians throughout history. In the past, the limitations on government restricted the degree of damage it could do to the man on the street, but with the consolidation of corporate and political power over the last half-century, the battles will only become more difficult.
Next time you’re sitting around the dinner table, perhaps over the holidays, be sure and remember to bring up the good ol’ days when entry level jobs were once held by young Americans looking to save, not illegal workers who compete with displaced American adults, all under the eyes of a surveillance-state that is selectively blind.
Source: The Economic Policy Institute
Notice how this divergence coincides with when the U.S. effectively went off the Gold Standard on August 15th, 1971. Fiat money hurts all but the very rich.
|
|
In "stump speech after stump speech," Josh Levin writes in Slate, Ronald Reagan "regaled his supporters with the story of an Illinois woman whose feats of deception were too amazing to be believed."
"In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record," the former California governor declared at a campaign rally in January 1976. "She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans' benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year." As soon as he quoted that dollar amount, the crowd gasped.
Four decades later, Reagan's soliloquies on welfare fraud are often remembered as shameless demagoguery. Many accounts report that Reagan coined the term "welfare queen," and that this woman in Chicago was a fictional character. In 2007, the New York Times' Paul Krugman wrote that "the bogus story of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen [was] a gross exaggeration of a minor case of welfare fraud."
But the woman did exist, Levin writes, and while she certainly wasn't a typical welfare chisler, let alone a typical welfare client, Reagan's descriptions of her scams were mostly accurate accounts of her activities. Yet there was much more to her criminal career than the case that made her infamous in the '70s: kidnappings, con games, maybe murder. Levin's story about her life reads like an epic Gothic saga in which half a dozen villains turn out to be the same shape-shifting monster; every time you think it couldn't possibly get weirder, it does.
Today we continue the countdown of the Most Influential People in BBQ with the 14th most influential person in BBQ. Coming in as the 14th Most Influential Person in BBQ is pitmaster and owner of Franklin Barbecue in Austin, TX, Aaron Franklin.
Aaron Franklin is in a league all by himself when it comes to accolades being showered upon a BBQ restaurant. You name the publication, from Bon Apetit to Texas Monthly to Food & Wine to the New York Times) and Franklin’s Franklin Barbecue has probably been heralded as one of the top BBQ joints in America, if not the top BBQ joint in America. If you want to talk about influence over eating, Franklin has so much influence over the taste buds of his customers that they will wait in line for hours in hopes that they arrived early enough to reach the meat counter before the SOLD OUT sign goes up on the door. Perhaps the most remarkable part of this success story is that Franklin opened his restaurant in 2009 and obtained his status as one of BBQ’s few celebrity chefs in only a few years.
Franklin gained even more notoriety on Destination America’s hit TV show BBQ Pitmasters, where he joined Myron Mixon and Tuffy Stone as a judge. Franklin opted to retire as a full-time judge on BBQ Pitmasters in 2013 to focus more on his restaurant and other projects. We can’t wait to see what Franklin’s next project will be, but we’re certain he will continue to influence the world of BBQ restaurants like no one else to the point where they have been elevated to and compared to fine dinning establishments.
On December 19th we’ll unveil the 13th most influential person in BBQ. We’ll unveil a new member of our Most Influential Person in BBQ List each day through the end of the year and we’ll crown The Most Influential Person in BBQ on Tuesday, December 31st.
To date we’ve previously unveiled the 15th through the 25th Most Influential People in BBQ.
15th – Chris Lilly, Big Bob Gibson BBQ
16th – Sterling Ball, Big Poppa Smokers
17th – Rod Gray, Pellet Envy & Eat Barbecue
19th – Johnny Trigg, Smokin’ Triggers
20th – Danielle Dimovski, BBQ Crawl & Diva Q
21st – Bill Arnold, Blues Hog Barbecue Company
23rd – Melissa Cookston, Memphis Barbecue Co. & Yazoo’s Delta Q
24th – Adam Perry Lang, Daisy May’s BBQ, Barbecoa & Cookbook Author
25th – Ronnie Cates, Smoke on the Water Productions
Will you make the list? Will someone you find deserving fall short of the top 25? Will you disagree with someone listed in the top 25? Check the Pork Barrel BBQ Blog daily now through December 31 and contribute to the discussion by adding comments to each days post!
Who is the most Influential Person in BBQ? Find out on December 31, 2013 when we reveal the Most Influential Person in BBQ.
Steve McQueen would much rather have been a race car driver than an actor.
Indeed, he spent a significant portion of his film earnings on ridiculously fast cars and proceeded to drive them rather recklessly, much to the horror of his producers and their insurance underwriters.
One of the fastest was his Lotus Eleven racer, an extremely beautiful car that suited the King of Cool to a tee.
In the Eleven, writes McQueen’s Machines author Matt Stone, the actor “felt he developed his driving skills from lucky weekend amateur to legitimate racer.”
In this shot, taken during a pit stop at the 1959 Santa Barbara Road Race, he certainly looks like the cat that ate the canary.
Or rather the King that sat in the Lotus…
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Santa Claus here. With just a week to go until the Big Dance, things are hopping here at the North Pole. While the elves make their final preparations, I’m busy preparing myself physically and mentally for my grueling 24-hour work shift delivering toys to boys and girls around the world.
Yes, I do have magic to help me, but magic only gets you so far. You need to be in pretty good physical condition to do my job.
Now, I know what you might be thinking. Santa? In good physical condition?
Yes, it appears I have a belly that shakes like a bowl full of jelly. It’s part of my personal brand. But thanks to elf magic, I’m able to maintain my rotund physique, while simultaneously being a specimen of peak physical health and conditioning. Suck on that, mortals!
Anyways, I thought I’d share with you the HIIT (high intensity interval training) routine I use to get in shape for my Christmas Eve flight. It works for me, maybe it will work for you.
Maybe. Only if you’re good.
Perform each exercise back-to-back with no rest. After you complete a circuit, rest for thirty seconds. Complete the circuit 10 times, 5 times if you’re a mortal man. If you can’t do one set, you’re on the Needs-to-Get-Their-Lazy-Butt-in-Shape List. Expect to receive a lump of broccoli in your stocking this year.
I spend an entire night driving a sleigh of unruly reindeer. To prepare my arms for all that rein snapping, I perform a 30-second round of intense double arm waves with a battle rope. Practice your reindeer roll call while doing it.
To prepare for the loading and unloading of my toy sack from the sleigh, I perform 10 reps of the Toy Sack Lift with my sandbag. You can make your own sandbag for less than $25 following the instructions here.
Make sure to perform the hoists over each shoulder.
While Christmas magic helps me get up chimneys after I’ve broken into homes and put presents under the tree, I need to use a bit of my own physical effort to get things started. When I jump up chimneys, I use a basic squat jump technique. So to prepare for a night of jumping up billions of chimneys, I perform a round of 2o squat jumps.
Be sure to practice putting your finger on the side of your nose. That’s what initiates the magic that carries you up the rest of the way.
To prepare my body for the decreased oxygen during my high-altitude sleigh flights, I typically train with an Elevation Training Mask. It restricts breathing, thus simulating breathing in high-altitudes. I don’t wear that mask around the elves though; they think I’m Bane from Batman and run in terror.
Off the record: I’ve occasionally done blood transfusions to increase red blood cell counts, but don’t tell the Federation of Magical Beings that.
After every workout, I replenish my muscles with a post-workout meal consisting of, what else? Four Tri-O-Plex protein cookies and bottle of Muscle Milk. I don’t do Paleo. I tried it back in ’02 (when it was called the Atkins Diet). Made me cranky and less of a jolly old elf, so Mrs. Claus put me back on the carbs.
Well, there you have it. That’s how, I, Santa Claus, get in shape.
Here’s wishing you and yours a very Merry and Manly Christmas!
Ho! Ho! Ho!
