--- George Brock Chisholm (1896-1971), head of the World Health Organization, Psychiatry (1946)
VOTE RON PAUL 2012!
Makes you feel kinda small and (in)significant... (props to Andrew)
Dog digs guitars...
I'm only happy when it rains...
Umbrellas in the skies?
The untold Holocaust...
A hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy...
How long would you last during the Old Testament days?
1.21 gigawatts!
What you don't know can't hurt you...
Focusing on the real pollutants....
Gourmet gaming!
Man on a mission...
Why eat pizza...when you can wear it...
Do your own research...don't be a repeater!
A GPS app for avoiding the ghetto...
Spanning the galaxy...
Lumus...
Yahweh I know you are near...
Fishing under ice...
Google easter eggs...
How to stop obesity?
Dog digs being a ham...
Appreciate the little things in life...
Did you know fruit flies levitate?
That's one hell of a proposal!
Getting to know the Georgia Guidestones...
What is the name of the true GOD?
Turtles high five...
Homo erectus...
The asshole cat...
Astronomy pic of the day...
Clay pot refrigeration...
GOOOOOOOOOAL!
Tacos...in...space!
The Orpheus Tone...
Age of Deceit...
Aquarius...the Age of Evil...
HSI eAlert
When you buy an apple or a banana or any other piece of fruit, check out that little sticker.
It has a secret to share with you.
Each sticker has a code that reveals this very useful information...
* Conventionally grown produce has a four-digit number on the sticker.
* Organic produce gets a five-digit number that begins with a 9.
* And produce items that are genetically modified also get five digits, but they begin with an 8.
Those stickers can be annoying when they're almost impossible to remove (yes, we're talking to you, stickers on thin-skinned fruit). But that's a small price to pay to avoid GM foods.
It has a secret to share with you.
Each sticker has a code that reveals this very useful information...
* Conventionally grown produce has a four-digit number on the sticker.
* Organic produce gets a five-digit number that begins with a 9.
* And produce items that are genetically modified also get five digits, but they begin with an 8.
Those stickers can be annoying when they're almost impossible to remove (yes, we're talking to you, stickers on thin-skinned fruit). But that's a small price to pay to avoid GM foods.
Never Do This with Your Teeth - No Matter How "Safe" They Say It Is
Posted By Dr. Mercola | January 17 2012
Story at-a-glance
- The U.S. FDA has long been the world's number one protector of mercury fillings (amalgams), despite the evidence showing the health hazards of mercury
- Prompted by enormous public pressure and the World Health Organization calling for the phasing-out of amalgam in a new mercury report, the FDA promised to make an announcement about the safety of dental amalgam before the end of 2011. However, six minutes before the end of the last work day of 2011, an FDA spokesperson said that no announcement would be made, and a designated press person stated that no target deadline for such an announcement exists
- The agency also failed to act after an FDA panel of experts issued the recommendation, in December 2010, that the FDA promptly make sure all consumers know amalgam is mainly mercury, and to stop using amalgam in children and pregnant women
- Dental amalgam is far from an essential dental product; it’s interchangeable with many other filling materials that do not have the toxic profile amalgam has. Modern materials like resin composites and glass ionomers have rendered amalgam completely unnecessary for any clinical situation, and entire nations have already stopped using amalgam altogether
By Dr. Mercola
After enormous public pressure from scientists, dentists, health professionals, and consumers, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) promised to make an announcement about dental amalgam by the end of 2011.
Dental amalgam, of course, is composed 50% of the dreadful neurotoxin mercury.
Jeffrey Shuren, director of the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH, the branch of the FDA responsible for the approval and safety of all medical devises) said at a public hearing in September, in San Francisco, that FDA will make an “announcement” on a new amalgam policy by the end of 2011.
When questioned by a reporter at a major newspaper, FDA repeated that it would act in 2011.
As 2011 came to a close, the suspense grew as everyone speculated whether FDA would act or whether it would continue its decades of protecting the profits of pro-mercury dentists instead of protecting the health of American children.
With just six minutes left in the work year, at 4:54 pm on Friday, December 30, FDA conceded that no announcement was forthcoming – not in 2011, and maybe not at all.
In that midnight statement, one FDA press person, one Karen Jackler, said that another FDA press person, Morgan Liscinsky, would answer questions about amalgam.
So when the respected trade publication FDA Webview asked, Liscinsky said: No announcement.
And no target date for FDA to do anything on amalgam.
Instead, FDA said what it said ten years ago: it will “continue to study the safety of amalgam.”
FDA has broken yet another promise on amalgam.
Why Won't the FDA Act to Protect You Against Toxic Mercury?
The FDA's history of protecting dental amalgam is a long one.
For the past 32 years, the agency has refused to issue any public warning about its neurotoxic risks, and in 2009, the FDA declared it safe under Class 2 for adults and children over the age of 6 who are not allergic to mercury—despite the overwhelming evidence showing mercury to be highly toxic and easily released in the form of vapor each time you eat, drink, brush your teeth or otherwise stimulate your teeth.
These mercury vapors readily pass through cell membranes, across your blood-brain barrier, and into your central nervous system, where it can cause psychological, neurological, and immunological problems.
Children and fetuses, whose brains are still developing, are clearly most at risk, but anyone can be impacted, and the health risks get greater the longer you have your fillings.
According to Boyd Haley, retired professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky (where he headed the chemistry department), about 80 percent of the mercury vapor released from your fillings collect in your body tissues and can take months or years to eliminate. Needless to say, if your body keeps accumulating more mercury than it can eliminate, after many years of chronic exposure you may end up with quite a bit of accumulated mercury in your body. Studies on cadavers have confirmed that the more amalgam fillings a person has, the more mercury collects in their brain, for example.
World Health Organization Urges Phasing Out of Dental Amalgam
Many hoped that the FDA would reconsider this foolish stance after the World Health Organization called for the phasing-out of amalgam in their 2011 report: Future Use of Materials for Dental Restoration. In May 2011, the Council of Europe also issued a proclamation calling for restrictions and prohibitions of mercury fillings, which are already banned in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Health Canada also stopped endorsing amalgam for use in children, pregnant women, and people with impaired kidney function, all the way back in 1996!
The World Health Organization noted the following three reasons for its new position:
The report also included mention of the known toxic effects of mercury exposure, stating that:
- Amalgam releases a "significant amount of mercury" into the environment, including the atmosphere, surface water, groundwater, and soil. WHO reports:
"When released from dental amalgam use into the environment through these pathways, mercury is transported globally and deposited. Mercury releases may then enter the human food chain especially via fish consumption."- WHO determines that amalgam raises "general health concerns": While the report acknowledges that a few dental trade groups still believe amalgam is safe for all, the WHO report reaches a very different conclusion: "Amalgam has been associated with general health concerns." The report observes:
"According to the Norwegian Dental Biomaterials Adverse Reaction Unit, the majority of cases of side-effects of dental filling materials are linked with dental amalgam."- WHO concludes "materials alternative to dental amalgam are available" and cites studies indicating they are superior to amalgam. For example, WHO says "recent data suggest that RBCs [resin-based composites] perform equally well" as amalgam. And compomers have a higher survival rate, says WHO, citing a study finding that 95% of compomers and 92% of amalgams survive after 4 years.
In particular, WHO explains that "Alternative restorative materials of sufficient quality are available for use in the deciduous [baby] dentition of children" – the population whose developing neurological systems are most susceptible to the neurotoxic effects of dental mercury. Perhaps more important than the survival of the filling, WHO asserts that:
"Adhesive resin materials allow for less tooth destruction and, as a result, a longer survival of the tooth itself."
"Mercury is highly toxic and harmful to health. Approximately 80% of inhaled mercury vapor is absorbed in the blood through the lungs, causing damages to lungs, kidneys and the nervous, digestive, respiratory and immune systems. Health effects from excessive mercury exposure include tremors, impaired vision and hearing, paralysis, insomnia, emotional instability, developmental deficits during fetal development, and attention deficit and developmental delays during childhood."
Why Does the FDA Ignore its Own Experts?
In December 2010, in response to the outrage over their 2009 ruling, the FDA asked an advisory panel to examine the latest science on amalgams. The panel recommended that the FDA promptly:
Still, the agency hesitated… Then, last year Shuren attended a series of town hall meetings around the US, where he heard so much criticism against the agency's amalgam policy that he eventually started saying the agency would act on the petitions to reconsider its position. As recently as November 30, the FDA confirmed to the Chicago Tribune that it did indeed intend to address amalgam in 2011, stating that:
- Make sure that all consumers and all parents know that amalgam is mainly mercury
- Stop amalgam use for children and pregnant women
" … in response to concerns about its [2009] ruling, the FDA convened a panel last December to re-examine the issue and expects to make a new announcement by the end of this year."But, it didn't… According to Charlie Brown, national counsel for Consumers for Dental Choice, and President of the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry:
"At Jeff Shuren's Center for Devices, politics wins. Science loses. Thirteen months ago, FDA's own advisory panel of handpicked scientists told FDA to stop amalgam use for children and pregnant women. But Shuren fails to heed the scientists — even though, since September, he repeatedly announced that he intended to act on amalgam in 2011. Every day that Shuren fails to act, more children are subjected to this mercury product, which — FDA's own rule concedes — can have 'neurotoxic effects' on the 'developing neurological systems' of children and unborn babies."
No One NEEDS Amalgam to Remain Available...
Dental amalgam is far from an essential dental product; it's interchangeable with many other filling materials that do not have the toxic profile amalgam has. Just consider these disturbing facts:
Modern materials like resin composites and glass ionomers have rendered amalgam completely unnecessary for any clinical situation. In fact, the mercury-free alternatives are so advanced that entire nations, such as the Scandinavian countries, have stopped using amalgam altogether.
- Amalgam is the MOST EXPENSIVE dental material when you count environmental costs and clean-up costs.
- Amalgam is the number one cause of mercury exposure for consumers, according to the Canadian government and other sources.
- Mercury from dental offices is the largest source of mercury in wastewater. According to an article by Michael Bender (co-founder of the Mercury Policy Project), at least 40 percent of mercury flowing into municipal water treatment plants begins in dentist offices. And those plants are not set up to remove it, so it ends up in your fish.
- Americans and Europeans have more mercury in their mouths than exists in all products combined—more than 1,000 tons.
- Amalgams of the dead pose a risk to the living. Emissions from the combustion of mercury fillings during cremation are a significant contaminator of air, waterways, soil, wildlife and food. Seven to nine metric tons of mercury per year escapes into the atmosphere during cremations, and it is estimated that, left unchecked, crematoria will be the largest single cause of mercury pollution by 2020.
Already, about half of U.S. dentists are mercury-free and 77 percent of consumers who are told that amalgam contains mercury choose mercury-free alternatives. One of the most popular alternatives to amalgam is resin composite. Resin composites are made of a type of plastic reinforced with powdered glass. It is already common throughout the U.S. and the rest of the developed world, offering notable improvements over amalgam, as it:
A lesser-known alternative is increasingly making mercury-free dentistry possible even in the rural areas of developing countries. Atraumatic restorative treatment (also called alternative restorative treatment or ART) is a mercury-free restorative technique that has been demonstrated a success in a diverse array of countries around the world, including Tanzania, India, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Turkey, South Africa, Thailand, Canada, and a dozen others. ART relies on adhesive materials for the filling (instead of mercury) and uses only hand instruments to place the filling, making it particularly well-suited for rural areas of developing countries.
- Is environmentally safe: Composite, which contains no mercury, does not pollute the environment. This saves taxpayers from paying the costs of cleaning up dental mercury pollution in our water, air, and land – and the costs of health problems associated with mercury pollution.
- Preserves healthy tooth structure, because, unlike amalgam, it does not require the removal of significant amounts of healthy tooth matter. Over the long term, composite preserves healthy tooth structure and actually strengthens teeth, leading to better oral health and less extensive dental work over the long-term.
- Is long-lasting: While some claim that amalgam fillings last longer than composite fillings, the science reveals this claim to be baseless. The latest studies show that composite not only lasts as long as amalgam, but actually has a higher overall survival rate.
How You Can Help Protect Children Everywhere
It's high time for the FDA start acting on the science and get on the bandwagon to protect the health of children and pregnant women across the U.S.
Your voice is needed in order to bring about permanent change in the fight for mercury-free dentistry. The FDA reneged on their stated intent to address dental amalgam by the end of 2011. We now need you to urge the FDA to heed the advice of its own scientists convened in December 2010 and the World Health Organization. To voice your opinion, please contact Dr. Shuren. This time, we think it best if you telephone or fax, and make your message more direct, rather than emailing Dr. Shuren:
Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, DirectorIf you can't get through to Dr. Shuren via phone or fax, please write Anthony Watson, Director of the Division on Devices, anthony.watson@fda.hhs.gov.
Center for Devices, U.S. Food & Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Ave.
WO66-5431, Room 5442
Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002
Phone: 301-796-5900 or 301.796-5000
Fax: 301-847-8149 or 301-847-8109
Phone calls and faxes are especially important because Dr. Shuren cannot ignore them – keep calling and leaving messages until you get answers! Here are some recommended talking points when you call or write:
It is time for the FDA to get out of the way of progress. Please join Charlie and me in keeping the pressure on them — let's not allow them to manipulate their way into placing dental industry profiteering before of your children's health.
- Why is the FDA ignoring its own scientific advisory panel that told the FDA to stop the use of amalgam immediately for children, pregnant women, and hypersensitive adults (as a minimum) over a year ago? There is no excuse for endangering our children with dental mercury.
- Why is the FDA failing to warn every parent that amalgam is mercury, not silver? Every consumer should be told the truth about what's going into their mouths and their children's mouths.
- Why is the FDA so out-of-step with the World Health Organization? In its 2011 report, the World Health Organization calls on health authorities like FDA to take action against amalgam now: "Health authorities can play an active role in advocacy for use of dental materials alternative to amalgam."
It is time for the FDA to act now. An announcement that the FDA's decision will be indefinitely postponed is unacceptable! We have irrefutable scientific evidence about the dangers of mercury amalgams. Your children are being subjected to harm now—they can't wait another year.
I also urge you to tell your family, friends, and neighbors the truth about dental amalgams, and don't let your dentist talk you into one for yourself or for your child. It's not your dentist's mouth—it's YOUR mouth. And YOUR pocket book—which holds a great deal of buying power. If your dentist insists mercury is safe, you may want to seek a mercury-free dentist.
Last but not least, please consider making a contribution to Consumers for Dental Choice. I strongly believe in their mission and their commitment to the Campaign for Mercury-Free Dentistry. They rely on public donations to complete this important mission. (Consumers for Dental Choice is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to advocating mercury-free dentistry. Contributions are tax-deductible in the U.S.)
Donations can be made online or through the mail:
- Online donations here
- Checks can be mailed to:
Consumers for Dental ChoiceAlso, for timely updates and information, please join Consumers for Dental Choice on Facebook.
316 F St., N.E.,
Suite 210
Washington DC 20002
FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Whiskey and Gunpowder by Jeffrey Tucker January 5, 2012 Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A. Elections and the Illusion of Choice The about sums it up. The plus side of elections is that sometimes the debates, discussions, candidates and parties raise fundamental questions about what kind of society we want to live in. That's the best we can hope for. But there is a downside to all this hullabaloo: It gives the impression that the mere existence of the electoral process gives "we the people" a fundamental choice about the kind of state we want. This is not true. The politicians we elect are veneers or facades. They are bandits, but they do not constitute what is called the state. This goes for just about every developed state in the world for the last 200 years. The whole election process leads people to believe that the state is in embedded in leaders. Not so. In France, this system ended with the execution of Louis XVI; in Germany, with the ascent of Bismarck; and in Russia, with the Bolshevik Revolution. The personal state died in the U.S. pretty early on, as even Thomas Jefferson discovered when he became president in 1801; he felt himself powerless to do anything. The modern state lives outside the will of a particular leader or administration. Voting and elections only change the temporary managers, but do not touch the core of the problem. The first book that saw through the facade was by the great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer. It is called, appropriately, The State. It was written in 1908, just as the state had begun to entrench itself deeply into the social order -- more so than at any point in the previous thousand years. He described the state as the one class that dominates all others, obeying a  different law and thriving off violence against person and property. He sums up this violence in a phrase: the "political means." He contrasts this with the "economic means," the essence of which is voluntary human association and trade. (His book came to have an amazing influence through Albert Jay Nock's Our Enemy, the State.)Violence? That sounds like the opposite of elections, doesn't it? Surely, we are exercising our free will in deciding who leads us. The truth is that the people who run for office specialize mostly in what they do best: running and getting elected as an end in itself. The real state is beneath the surface of this public theater. It is the vast army of professional bureaucrats and the mandates they carry out. It is the enforcement apparatus that oversees a gargantuan tax code. It is the Federal Register that is too large to print. It is the central bankers, their staffs, their machinery, their mandate to bail out the state no matter what. It is the hundreds and thousands of agencies that purport to control every aspect of life. No voter ever approved any of this; no election puts any of this at risk. This is because the state itself is not subject to any plebiscite. Imagine if all the elected officials in the entire country and all those who work in their offices decided not to show up to work for an extended period. What would happen? New bills wouldn't pass. The media wouldn't have politics to cover. There would be a periodic scramble over superficial issues like the debt limit. But otherwise, the state would go on just as before. Nothing fundamental would change. Nor is it the case that any of the elected officials have the power to do serious damage to this system. This goes for the president, too. They can often influence the way the state grows, but they can't actually fundamentally threaten the apparatus itself. The longer they are in office, the less personal power they realize that they have. The reason is simple. The system is not structured to permit them to dismantle it, even if they wanted to. They are temporary managers of a ruling class, and the members of this class mostly scoff at these people, treating them like actors on a stage that the class itself owns. The best source to gain a full grasp of the realities of the modern state apparatus is Robert Higgs' amazing work , Against Leviathan. No contemporary author has so fully documented the vast expanse of the modern leviathan in all its permutations. He sees how welfare and warfare are not opposed to each other, but work together to form the main two activities of the modern state. He sees how central banking works to sustain the system. He understands the ways in which the state serves as a cash cow for every form of interest group, and how it works to trick  the population into believing that the state is doing good for people when it is really wrecking their lives.Most of all, Higgs gets that the political system that so enraptures the public mind is not owned by us. It is owned and managed by the state itself and for a precise purpose: to perpetuate the idea that we have all chosen the regime that rules us. That is why there is so little difference between the political parties. As Higgs puts it, the U.S. has "two revolving factions of a one-party state farcically masquerade as authentic alternatives, the one specializing in crushing economic freedom and the other concentrating on crushing every other form of freedom." After the election is all over -- in a grueling 10 months! -- and our new managers take their seats, the talking heads will tell us once more: "The system worked." Yes, it did work in exactly the way they want it to work. Nothing much will change. If you don't like the results, there is something wrong with you. If you don't like the rules, taxes, human suffering, wars, inflation, intrusions, confiscations and all the rest of the apparatus, you had better run for office, give to another candidate or otherwise throw yourself into the politics full time! This is not choice. When we go to the grocery, we face a choice of what to buy. Or we can walk out without buying at all, keeping our money instead. Whatever the result, it is really in our hands. The electoral system is different. The store is the state. The products it offers are produced by the state. There is no real choice, only enough shadings of differences to keep us entertained. And we cannot really walk away. There is "no none of the above" and there is no keeping your own money. Every once in a while, someone comes along who offers a fundamental challenge to the whole racket and somehow manages to attract public attention and even use the system to urge the dismantling of the system. This is what has happened with the candidacy of Ron Paul, and it is precisely why the media strains so hard to keep from reporting on him or letting others speak out for his views. The elites are not so concerned that he can be elected. The system is fixed well enough to prevent that outcome. The real threat -- and Dr. Paul understands this better than anyone -- is the fundamental intellectual challenge that he offers. His book Liberty Defined contains enough radicalism and enough intellectual power to destabilize the entire structure that Oppenheimer and Higgs have so beautifully described. The ideas in these books are far more powerful than any ballot box. They expose the illusion of choice for what it is and unmask the violence embedded in the state-dominated society, a system that no one chose but has been imposed on the population through propaganda, wars, payoffs and every manner of trickery. If there were a way to re-channel all the human energy that people put into politics into reading and thinking, the state would have finally meet its match. Whiskey & Gunpowder by Jeffrey Tucker January 11, 2012 Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A. And what is the evidence of this failure? It is everywhere. Household income continues to fall all over the developed world. Unemployment is persistent, and to the extent that it is being fixed, it is by dramatic reductions in living standards, one paycheck at a time. Debt is egregious. Young people face terrible prospects. Complaints about inequality resonate in this environment not because the financial sector has bred such paper wealth, but because life is such a struggle for everyone else. All of this begs the question: What exactly is this "system"? Our times are constantly being compared with the Great Depression, and plenty of people are hoping for an analogous ideological shift toward ever more state control of economic life. J.M. Keynes urged the destruction of the gold standard and the "end of laissez-faire." Strongmen all over the world complied. But back then, it was easier to bamboozle the public into believing that capitalism was the source of the problem and that the new scientific managers of the state machinery would restore prosperity. The Jazz Age was surely a time of free markets, was it not? Not entirely -- there was the important matter of Prohibition as well as the central bank and its capacity to blow bubbles, such as the one that burst in 1929. That message did not stick, because only a handful of people truly understood, and they didn't have the microphone. So the strongmen had a field day.  But today? The state machinery is the lumbering leviathan that leaves no part of life untouched. It taxes and regulates all things and uses the central bank as its unlimited credit card to pass out welfare to all classes and maintain a worldwide empire rooted in military violence and executive privilege. It takes chutzpah to claim that this has anything to do with a capitalist crisis. This is a crisis of a system of state-based social and economic management This might explain why the socialist left has yet to gain much traction in the post-2008 environment. Does any living soul doubt the role of the government and its friends in generating the housing and financial bubble? It has been demonstrated 10,000 times, and this information is available to one and all in a world of digital information delivery. We are no longer hunkered down by the radio, waiting on a homily from the high priest in Washington. This guy no longer controls what we are allowed to read and think. Writing as part of the series, former Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers points out that a recent survey demonstrated that "among the U.S. population as a whole, 50% had a positive opinion of capitalism while 40% did not." I'm not sure what the take-away from that survey really is, however, because it presumes a shared understanding of what "capitalism" really is. Is it a system of privileged protection for the financial elite at the expense of everyone else or it is a synonym for the free economy? These are two very different things. What is especially striking about Summers' article is his admission that Keynesian-style solutions seem pointless in this environment. He writes that, concerning the crisis, "there is no obvious solution at hand." He further points out that some of the largest existing social anxieties are focused on three sectors in particular: education, health care and old-age provision. All three are run or lorded over by the state. He concludes with an honest admission: "It is not so much the most-capitalist parts of the contemporary economy but the least...that are in most need of reinvention." Another contribution to the series comes from Gideon Rachman. He presents a fascinating typology of the four ideological divides of our time. He says that public and intellectual opinion can be divided as follows: 1) right-wing populist, 2) social democrat, 3) Hayekian libertarian and 4) anti-capitalist socialist. This sounds right to me. The right-wing populist camp (alive in the U.S. and Europe) is the warmongering contingent that opposes immigration, wants war on Islam, favors restrictions on civil liberties, obsesses over demographics, clamors for its own kind of income distribution and longs for a strongman to arrive to impose some kind of order. This penchant has a long history in politics, probably dating to the ancient world. The social-democratic tendency is found in the Obama constituency, and it wants more of the same that got us into this mess: Keynesian fiscal management, union privileges, an ever-larger public sector, piecemeal planning and regulation, central bank-backed stimulus, democracy-spreading imperialism or some random combination of this list. This is the party in power here, there and nearly everywhere. The anti-capitalist/socialist element is obvious enough. It consists of a strange coalition of intellectuals and down-and-out young people leading the Occupy movement, together with media idiots always looking for a splashy and simple story to tell. It is a ridiculously simple-minded view of the world that all would be well if we could just take the income from the tiny group at the top and spread it around the population. To them, the market-based social order is little more than a scam to rob and loot the iPhone-carrying workers and peasants and benefit the financial elites. What's most interesting is the emergence of what Rachman calls the Hayekian-libertarian tendency, represented most conspicuously by Ron Paul but actually encompassing a global intellectual and popular movement that sees through the fog of propaganda. Here we find total coherence: both realistic explanations of our current plight and clear answers for what to do about it. Of the four groups, this is the only group that sees the importance of the issue of monetary reform. Keynes saw back in the 1930s that the most-important step to modifying the market system in favor of state management was the destruction of the gold standard. He hated it and dedicated himself to convincing all governments to give it up in favor of paper money. Without this step, there was no hope for Keynesian policies. In a similar way, the libertarians recognize that the most-important step toward restoring economic vitality and a free market is to repair the quality of money. The gold standard would be wonderful but unlikely, since its reinstitution requires enlightened statesman and bankers who do the right thing. A more-viable path toward the restoration of sound money is through total monetary freedom: Let the market reinvent sound money in our time through the free use of any and all monetary instruments. What's critical is that the libertarians have put the money issue on the map. We are living under a form of monetary prohibitionism today, forbidden to use any means of payment other than that maintained by the state. And it is not unlike the alcohol prohibition of old. It redistributes wealth, steers gains to the unscrupulous, strengthens the state and promotes various forms of criminality. In introducing this series, John Plender writes, "F. Scott Fitzgerald chronicled the moral vacuity of Jazz Age capitalism in The Great Gatsby." Nonsense. Fitzgerald nowhere slams capitalism in his great novel. Jay Gatsby made his fortune as a bootlegger, a profession that would not have existed in absence of state Prohibition. Our own age is filled with Gatsbys, people who have done well for themselves by manipulating a failed system. It is the system that must change, not the right to do well. Peace, love and happiness...until next time...  “There is no amount of darkness that can extinguish the inner light. The important thing is not to spend our lives trying to control the environment around us. The task is to control the environment within us. ” - Joan Chittester |
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