• "Well written, well researched, and the thesis put forth is well argued.... Woods has opened up an area of historical analysis that should invite further study."
    -Journal of American History

  • "During these times that challenge our freedoms there is no one more qualified to make U.S. history relevant to the fight against big government than Thomas Woods."
    -Barry Goldwater Jr.
    Former Member of Congress

  • "I strongly recommend Woods's work."
    -The Honorable Ron Paul,
    U.S. House of Representatives

  • "Written with great clarity and fluency, making the complex philosophical and theological concepts approachable."
    -Journal of American Studies

  • "A must-read."
    -Barron's

  • "An excellent reading source for anyone interested in financial markets, and much more so for anyone interested in learning about capitalism without all the misinterpretations being thrown about in the financial media."
    -Asia Times

  • "Provocative, well-written, and deserves to be read."
    -Catholic Historical Review

  • "An engaging and important contribution to scholarship on the history of American Catholicism."
    -Journal of the Historical Society

  • "Woods and [co-author Kevin] Gutzman appeal to both left and right in this constitutionalist jeremiad…. The authors' exegeses of the Constitution and court decisions, heavy on original intent arguments, are lucid and telling."
    -Publishers Weekly

  • "A marvelous read. Every chapter taught me something new and unexpected."
    -Tom Bethell, senior editor,
    The American Spectator

  • "The hottest book today is Meltdown, by my friend Tom Woods."
    -Judge Andrew Napolitano, senior judicial analyst,
    FOX News Channel

  • "Should be required reading."
    -Economic Affairs (London)

  • "Woods, one of the best classical liberal [libertarian] scholars of his generation, has once more placed us in his debt with this lucid and tightly argued book."
    -David Gordon, The Mises Review

  • "Tom Woods is one of my dearest allies in the struggle against wrong-headed and dangerous economic policy."
    -Peter Schiff

Peter Schiff Show Today!

I’m filling in for Peter again today. My guests will be CNBC’s John Carney and nutrition blogger Steve Cooksey, who’s in trouble in North Carolina for practicing nutrition without a license. Show runs from 10am-12pm ET. Taking your calls at 855-4-SCHIFF. Listen live for free (no subscription required)!

Unlearn the Propaganda!

  • Anonymous

    I was listening to the April 26th
    Peter Schiff Show hosted by Tom Woods. 
    Tom played Senator Tom Carper’s suggestion of storing power from
    windmill farms. He wanted to store the power produced from the windfarms in the
    car batteries of the USPS vehicle fleet. 
    This is laughable and akin to someone storing extra gasoline in zip lock
    baggies in my opinion, but I will calculate out the rough number to humor
    everyone.

    Lets assume the wind stopped blowing
    every morning at 3am.  So the vehicles at
    3am would use their batteries to power the grid in lieu of the wind farms.

    A car battery may have 75AH of capacity at 12 volts.  watts = volts x
    amps. So 75 x12 = 900 watt/hours or .9 Kilo Watt Hours.

    If you had a fleet of 100000 vehicles on the east coast you could store maybe 90,000 kwh of power. At 10cents per KWH this is 9,000 dollars worth of electrical storage capacity. 
    $9,000 per day.  Lets see what it costs to do this.

    The average car battery can withstand maybe 500 charge/discharge cycles at
    best. We will estimate $100 per car battery replacement including labor.  This results in a cost of 20 cents per charge cycle in battery expense.  So we are up to $20,000 dollars in battery costs per day.

    How much labor would it take per
    night to hook and unhook the vehicles?

    Let’s assume it took .5 manhours per
    day to manage the program, hook up, and unhook the average 10 vehicles at each
    USPS office. So .5 x 10,000 = 5000 man hours per day At the low hourly average rate of $24.37 this gives us $121,850 per day in labor costs.

    How much equipment and infrastructure would it take to accomplish this feet?

    We will estimate $20 in infrastructure and maintenance per year for the hardware to hook the vehicles to a dristro box at each USPS office.  And a cost of $1500 per year to setup each of 10,000 east coast offices with the equipment to put power back onto the grid and to track the power flow each way.  (1500*10000+20*100,000)/365

    This calculates to $46,575 per day
    in costs to enable Tom Carper’s idea. For the infrastructure component.

     
    How much energy would be lost in the
    transmission and conversion to and from 12v dc?

    About 10% so our $9,000 revenue just
    became $8100/day.

    In conclusion.

    Tom Carper would unwittingly cause
    the government to spend $188,425 per day, so that we can store and release $8100
    of electrical capacity per day.

    Oh, and one more factor I almost forgot!

    Opportunity cost of entire East coast
    USPS fleet having dead batteries every morning… Priceless…

  • http://youtu.be/4Dr0WgduMRo John Robb

    Great stuff, Tom. I’m glad you link to your Schiff gigs here. I happily listen to Peter’s interviews willie nillie, but I more actively try to catch all of yours. I enjoyed your interview of Cooksey more than all the other news items and editorials, because it provided information I needed to hear [from the sources lips, no less]: that he advertised a situation in which he would receive a fee. That makes him a professional in the eyes of the State and opened him to intervention. I don’t approve of the intervention any more than you do, nor do I approve of behemoth licensing apparatus, but my mind is eased that North Carolina is not aggressing against him in a way that is pioneering new precedence.

    add CISPA

    My mind is no longer eased. CISPA is written in such a way as to allow the Feds to bypass the legal system, including state licensing boards, and shut down websites like his without warning or effective recourse. THAT is scary!

  • Capn mike

    Aaaaah, somebody’s an engineer!!

    I made this sort of an argument to some well meaning Greenie non-engineer once (female).
    Needless to say I didn’t get lucky that night.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jeremy.r.hammond Jeremy R. Hammond

    Listening to this (April 26th show): 
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB7iK3NHVMI. I love that they play “Moma Dance” by Phish during the break (right after Tom talks about how Greenspan created the housing bubble). Very groovy tune.