Tom Woods

Zero.

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Bob Murphy has a great post about Berkeley Keynesian Brad DeLong. You can read the DeLong passages themselves at Bob’s blog, but let me give you Bob’s commentary. (The rest of what follows is all Bob.)

Now I know, I know, DeLong, Krugman, Thoma, Baker, et al. wanted more stimulus from the get-go. But it sounds like DeLong is here saying that the 50% increase in federal debt since 2008, as well as the tripling of the Fed’s balance sheet, have achieved virtually nothing. Remember, the way everybody justified those things–even as the economy stayed in the crapper lo these many years–was to say, “Sure, but use counterfactuals: Had we done nothing, this would have been like the Great Depression.”

According to DeLong, this is (almost) like the Great Depression….

We increased the federal debt by 50%, and tripled the Fed’s balance sheet…and yet DeLong is saying we are still screwed for at least most of the next generation. We need to borrow and print even more to at least let our kids see what a good economy looks like, at some point in their lives.

Is this the story people were telling us back in 2008? Does anyone remember DeLong saying something like:

[FAKE DELONG QUOTE FROM 2008]: Don’t listen to those nutjob Austrians who want to let the investment bankers eat their bad loans! The economy would be absolutely awful if you follow their liquidatonist advice. What you need to do, see, is bail out the banks, and spend such-and-such for everything to be fine; trust us, we’ve read Keynes. Oh, by the way, should you for some reason only do 85% of what we tell you, then we will have a repeat of the Great Depression and your kids will think 8% unemployment is normal. So don’t wuss out on us.

I sure don’t. I think that might have influenced the public’s acceptance of the stimulus package and various rounds of QE, had DeLong explained that upfront.

[Read the whole post.]

CNSNews writes:

The run on ammunition has manufacturers scrambling to accommodate demand and reassure customers, as many new and seasoned gun owners stock up over fears of new firearms regulations at both the state and federal levels.

Here’s the article.

State Senator Clark Jolley, chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the Oklahoma Senate, suppressed a recent nullification bill there. (On nullification, see StateNullification.com and NullificationFAQ.com.)

A friend sent me a copy of his letter to a constituent. It reads, in part:

Nullification is simply a fantasy that is the most dangerous type – one semi based in reality. It gives a false hope to those who oppose ObamaCare that we somehow can veto the actions of the federal government because we find them unconstitutional. This is pure legal fiction and has been trounced by everyone from George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson (who is wrongly invoked as supporting the idea), Daniel Webster and many others of our founders.

My oath was to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the State of Oklahoma. This, in my view, was defending the U.S. Constitution and our republic from a cancerous attack that was based from good intentions. I support the opponents of ObamaCare in their continued opposition to implementation and applaud them for attempting to find any legal manner to restore our individual freedoms. But nullification isn’t that answer.

I would strongly encourage you to read the following explanations from noted conservatives as to why nullification is not just a legal fantasy, it is “dangerous anarchic maldoctrine, cancerous and toxic to the health and vigor of a constitutional republic.”

In support of his statement, he went on to cite David Barton, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute.

From the Tenth Amendment Center:

If signed into law, SB102 would nullify a wide range of federal attacks on the right to keep and bear arms in the State of Kansas.  It states, in part:

Any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the government of the United States which violates the second amendment to the constitution of the United States is null, void and unenforceable in the state of Kansas.

In conjunction with Section 6a (quoted above), the bill defines what is meant by “the second amendment to the constitution of the United States,” and it isn’t based on a decision of the supreme court.

The second amendment to the constitution of the United States reserves to the people, individually, the right to keep and bear arms as that right was understood at the time that Kansas was admitted to statehood in 1861, and the guaranty of that right is a matter of contract between the state and people of Kansas and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Kansas in 1859 and the United States in 1861.

State and local agents would be prevented from supporting any acts or actions that are “null, void and unenforceable in the state of Kansas.”  Based on this text, the state of Kansas would not be allowed to participate in any federal gun control measures that restrict the individual right to keep and bear arms as understood in 1861.   

As Judge Andrew Napolitano has said recently, such widespread noncompliance can make a federal law “nearly impossible to enforce” (video here).

Read the whole thing.

Not very good quality, because taken on my wife’s Android, but here are three of our four girls in a 30-second clip of fun and sweetness.

See my calendar of events in the right-hand column of the site? (You may have to scroll down.) This is the problem I’m having: events disappear not the day after they occur but the day they occur. So someone coming to my site for logistical details the day of an event won’t find them. Surely I’m not the only one with this problem; does anyone happen to know offhand how to fix it without ripping apart the plugin?

Over the past several weeks I have mentioned that I’ve been at work on a K-12 homeschool curriculum. That wasn’t the whole story. Today I can tell you the whole story: it is the Ron Paul Homeschool Curriculum.

There is nothing like this curriculum anywhere. Here are just a few of the factors that set it apart.

(1) Grades K-5 will be available for free. You have six years to try out the program without having to spend a dime.

(2) Students will learn the origins and travails of liberty in the Western world and in the United States in particular.

(3) Students will learn the economics of the Austrian School.

(4) Students can learn at their own pace. If they’re advanced and move more quickly, they can quiz out of the first two years of college and enter college as juniors.

(5) The emphasis in this program is not simply on teaching from a different point of view, or teaching material that no other school or curriculum offers, although the Ron Paul Curriculum does both of these things. But it also emphasizes oral and written communication, so that students will be able to spread and defend their ideas effectively. Students will have their own blogs, start YouTube channels, and even learn the basics of video production, website design, and Internet marketing.

(6) It’s cheap. For access to the forums, it’s $250 per year. Each course is just $50. No textbooks — they’re awful, and we use pdfs and primary documents to teach students — so you’ll save hundreds of dollars that way as well.

(7) Parents who wish they’d had the chance for this kind of education can listen to the lectures their children are hearing. We’ve made them of a length that works well with the average commute.

By September 2, we expect to have the material for grades 6-10 available. We’ll continue to add grades until December 2015 — our target date — when we expect to have the entire K-12 curriculum finished.

My own role will be to teach high school courses in Western civilization, the U.S. Constitution, government, and the history of American wars. All the courses on the site are available as part of the overall curriculum or a la carte, for those who would like individual courses.

These courses are centered around a 36-week schedule, five lessons (25 minutes each) per week per course. This means that for each course I will need to record 180 lessons. If you are wondering why I have not found the time to answer your email lately, I hope you will understand now. I have dropped not quite everything, but quite a bit in order to focus on this.

Here’s my three-minute pitch:

The website officially launched today. Right now the site has an excellent course on high school preparation, which covers such topics as how to study, personal goal-setting, time management, public speaking, speed reading, typing, note-taking and retrieval, software for essay writing, how to set up a YouTube channel, how to set up a WordPress blog site, and that most challenging skill, how to read a book. Between now and September 2 you can join the site and access that course for $25.

This, I am convinced, will prove to be Ron Paul’s most significant contribution to the cause of liberty — and that’s saying something. Please check out RonPaulCurriculum.com, and stay tuned for more news as we move forward with this exciting project.

For people wondering what Ron Paul has been up to since retiring from Congress, then, here’s your answer. And he has more announcements coming.

Tonight Dr. Paul will speak to a very large homeschool convention in Ohio. He has a book coming out on education. This is all part of the same package: Ron Paul’s revolution in homeschooling. Be a part of it.

From the Missouri Sound Money conference earlier this year, here’s a talk I gave for the man in the street — an easy-to-understand argument for economic freedom and sound money.