Zen and the Art of /.*/

I am the licensed charitable gambling manager for the Osseo Fire Department Relief Association.

I write to you today to express my bitter disappointment and profound concern over the state of charitable gambling in Minnesota.

The event that precipitated my correspondence to you today is the fact that myself and two of my fellow paid-on-call / volunteer firefighters spent seven hours this past New Year’s Day holiday performing the newly-required Annual Physical Inventory and Cash Count, instead of enjoying the much-needed holiday with family and friends.

(Salutations and closing omitted)

I just received a 2010 calendar in the mail from you. What in God’s name are you doing sending calendars to constituents?!

Apparently the bitter irony of the US Constitution superimposed on the cover was completely lost on you.

How was this calendar (and the surely countless others that were sent out) paid for? I can think of only three possibilities:

(Salutations and closing omitted)

I would like to take the opportunity during this (relative) lull before the next session to share with you a few of my thoughts and concerns.

As I’m sure you’re aware–and as more and more people are becoming increasingly aware–we, as a state and as a republic, are in dire straits. One could go on endlessly listing all of the seemingly-intractable problems we are facing. The combination and synchronization of these endless problems would appear to be catastrophic.

Nice article (over at HuffPo, of all places) detailing how the Federal Reserve has the entire economics profession eating out of the palm of its hand.

Great article by Jake Towne over at C4L.

The list goes on and on and on. I’m baffled that people continue to think that we somehow need the federal income tax… Wake up.

Great article by Jeff Tucker over at LvMI.

Do you see what is happening here? The minimum wage, subsidized college loans, child work laws, and other interventions are conspiring to prolong adolescence as long as possible — to the point that these young adults are seeing as much as a full decade of life experience pretty well stolen from them.

Once again, well-intentioned people are exacerbating the very problems they are trying to solve because they lack a fundamental understanding of sound economics.

Ten Reasons to be Happy

I think I wrote this article. I agree with it completely and I am anxiously awaiting the day that the statists take that one step past the tipping point, they lose all legitimacy, and we all just go about our lives again–as free people.

Hans Hoppe: The Economics of World Government

Lew Rockwell recently posted a great (mis-titled) talk given by the brilliant Austrian Economist and Anarcho-Capitalist Social Theorist Hans Hoppe. With great clarity and wit, Hoppe explains many crucial aspects of the Rothbardian libertarian society.

The Stateless Society, by Stefan Molyneux (read on YouTube)

Text of the article from LewRockwell.com

Just came across this recently. I’m not terribly familiar with this guy and by accounts online, he appears to be pretty controversial, but this is a pretty good article. Granted, it is little more than a re-presentation of Rothbard’s conception of a libertarian society, but it is an interesting, concise, and compelling presentation. Worth the watch.

Yesterday, I referenced an article over at Strike the Root, that hilariously, though aptly, characterized Keynesian economics as Mathmetical Masturbation.

In a stroke of luck that can only be attributed to divine intervention (perhaps the mysterious workings of the late great Almighty Lord Keynes himself), “Lilburne” today published an article at Mises.org entitled The Second Coming of Keynes [sic].

In classic sycophantic adoration of Keynes’ paraphilia, Krugman recently lamented the fact that Obama’s stimulus projects were under budget, asserting that their only real purpose was to blow the money.