About Me

In writing the "About Me" portion of this blog I thought about the purpose of the blog - namely, preventing the growth of Socialism & stopping the Death Of Democracy in the American Republic & returning her to the "liberty to abundance" stage of our history. One word descriptions of people's philosophies or purposes are quite often inadequate. I feel that I am "liberal" meaning that I am broad minded, independent, generous, hospitable, & magnanimous. Under these terms "liberal" is a perfectly good word that has been corrupted over the years to mean the person is a left-winger or as Mark Levin more accurately wrote in his book "Liberty & Tyranny" a "statist" - someone looking for government or state control of society. I am certainly not that & have dedicated the blog to fighting this. I believe that I find what I am when I consider whether or not I am a "conservative" & specifically when I ask what is it that I am trying to conserve? It is the libertarian principles that America was founded upon & originally followed. That is the Return To Excellence that this blog is named for & is all about.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Grocery Store Quiz

It is pleasing to have recently discussed some of the quizzes presented from time to time with subscribers who use them as an opportunity to monitor & participate in their children's education - & even to improve their own education.  One mother told me she wants to make sure she knows how to correctly answer the quiz herself before presenting it to her daughter who is in the eighth grade.

My friend Anne Neal, past president of ACTA, told me more than once that people love quizzes.  And this is borne out in that five of the top ten most read posts on RTE worldwide recently have been quizzes.  The Rockefeller Center Christmas Store Quiz tops the list & the old favorite Water Bucket Quiz is in the top ten more often than not.

So let's try one that is very timely - the Grocery Store Quiz.  I will post all correct answers or alternatively will send the correct answer privately to anyone who requests it if no one gets the right answer to the quiz below.

Grocery Store Quiz

Consider the following graph that shows the changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for groceries, dining out, & all items from January, 2020 to & including January 2024.


 

The Fed reports that the Grocery CPI was 261.057 for January, 2020 & 327.327 for January, 2024.  If groceries increased in price by 3.78% from January, 2020 to January, 2021 what was the change in price from January, 2021 to January, 2024 of a basket of groceries that cost $75.00 in January 2020?

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Biden & Trump Bring Different Dangers To America

Special counsel Robert Hur's 388 page report entitled " Report on the Investigation Into Unauthorized Removal, Retention, & Disclosure of Classified Documents Discovered @ Locations Including the Penn Biden Center & the Delaware Private Residence of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.," documented the findings of his investigation of Biden's mishandling of classified documents over decades.  The first sentence of the Executive Summary stated "that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter."  

But instead of feeling joy & relief @ this conclusion Biden was furious @ the reference found twice in the report that he was an "elderly man with a poor memory" who could not remember the starting & ending dates of his vice presidency or even within several years the date his son Beau died.

Around 7 PM Thursday, February 8 the enraged Biden called a press conference for 7:45 PM in which he intended to prove to the world "I know what the hell I'm doing."

Biden looked unusually feeble going to the podium in his usual old-man shuffling gait & after giving an angry speech took questions in which his answers 1) mistakenly referred to the President of Mexico when he meant Egypt regarding human aid in Gaza,  2) absentmindedly referred to his late son Beau - "Let me tell you something.  Some of you have commented.  I wear, since the day he died every single day, the rosary he got from our Lady of …" & then was not able to finish the sentence, 3) emphatically stated that "I said I'm gonna be a president for everybody, whether you live in a red state or a green state," & 4) finally turned to the Democrat safe issue of abortion & promptly misnamed the "Roe v. Wade" case as "Roe v. Ward" as in Montgomery Ward & Co.

Not a performance that portrayed the desired image of a strong energetic man in control but rather one of a confused "elderly man with a poor memory" who exhibited "diminished faculties" & "significant limitations" - exactly how the report he was trying to undo had described him.

Hur's accurate report had struck a nerve & forced Biden out of hiding into center stage of public view - a place his wife & handlers have successfully avoided for him for four years for obvious reasons to us all.  Witness: no formal news conference in 4 months, no news conference in three months (in which he took 4 questions), no pre Super Bowl interview, & no addresses after winning the South Carolina primary or ordering attacks on Houthis & Iranian proxies, or showing any public leadership regarding the southwest border, Ukraine, Israel, or Taiwan.  List compiled by Karl Rove except for reference to Taiwan.

Biden also recently claimed to have talked twice to former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017 & former French President Francois Mitterrand who died in 1996.

On Sunday, three days after the Biden press conference an ABC/Ipsos poll conducted February 9 & 10 found 86% of voters think Biden is "too old" to serve another term.  I think the quickly called press conference proved that Biden is not up to finishing this current term.

But Trump is not off the hook either - the same ABC/Ipsos poll found that 62% of the voters think Trump (3.5 years younger than Biden) is "too old" to serve another term as president & an NBC News poll conducted January 26 -30 found 48% had concerns that Trump does not have the mental & physical health to be president for a second term.  

At a rally in Concord, NH on January 19 Trump confused Pelosi & Nikki when he told the crowd, speaking incorrectly about the Speaker being in charge of security during the riots @ the Capitol on January 6, 2021 that “Because of lots of things … like Nikki Haley is in charge of security — we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down."  I always maintained that if it was thought that 10,000 National Guardsmen were required to ensure security @ the Capitol on January 6 that the entire protest rally should have been called off just because it was thought to be that unsafe.

During a campaign speech in Derry, NH on October 23, 2023 Trump confused the leaders of Hungary & Turkey when he said “- there’s a man, Viktor Orbán, anybody ever hear of him?  He’s probably like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world. He’s the leader of Turkey.”  Of course Orban is the Prime Minister of Hungary.  This Trump snafu is similar to Biden mixing up the presidents of Mexico & Egypt @ the press conference above.  But Trump went on to say that Orban's country shared a border with Russia - which neither Hungary or Turkey do.

Trump & Biden also have in common that they have not participated in any debates.  This only obscures their platforms so that voters really do not know the substance of their positions.  Without the discipline of participating in a debate with Pence, Christie, or Nikki - three people who worked for him & could rebut his answers - Trump has instead roamed the country speaking to adoring audiences @ rallies making all kinds of claims like 1) saying Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if he was president (although he misstated this @ the February 10 rally @ Coastal Carolina University saying the Russian invasion "would've never happened with Putin" when he meant to say "with me"), 2) being able to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours if he becomes president, 3) saying there would not have been an attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7 if he had been president, & 4) saying that Iran proxies would not have killed three of our military personnel in Jordan if he was president hoping that everyone would forget that in June, 2019 Iran shot down a U.S. military asset (RQ-4A Global Hawk drone) flying over the Straits of Hormuz saying @ the time it "may not have been intentional" but a "mistake" by someone "loose & stupid."  And all this from a man who campaigned primarily in 2016 on building a southwest border wall with Mexico paying for it, yet he couldn't get it done.  If there really is a plan for ending the war in 24 hours wouldn't it be best to share it now?

In line with not presenting the plan to end the misery of the Ukraine war in 24 hours Trump also discourages Republicans working on a southwest border security measure, preferring to wait for him to campaign on Biden's impeachable immigration record while the country continues to be overrun by illegal aliens.

Trump's image as a fighter took a hit when he called for giving Bud Light a second chance after they showed their new WOKE colors & never apologized to consumers for abandoning their apolitical sports emphasis in favor of a transgender influencer spokesman that changed the company image @ a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue.  Why would you want to help these types of companies, by giving them the lifeblood of a second chance, when we are finally seeing a little glimmer of ridding ourselves of all the critical theories meant to destroy America?

And last & maybe the worst is Trump saying, regarding NATO members not meeting their financial commitments, that he would "in fact . . . encourage them (Russia) to do whatever the hell they want" to such NATO members because "No, I would not protect  you."  Is a campaign rally 8 months before the election the way to handle NATO finances in a tinderbox world with an inept U.S. president who does not have the mental wherewithal to face a court in a documents case?

It is this coarseness & terribly poor judgement that I am afraid will permeate Trump's second term even more than the first term if he wins - a condition that makes Trump's potential victory more dangerous to America than Biden's.

Consider two leading candidates vying to be Trump's VP - NY Congresswoman Elise Stefanik & Ohio Senator J.D. Vance.   Both have not only supported the stolen election lie but have indicated they would not have done what Pence did on January 6 & presumably as vice president would have found a way for Trump to have won the 2020 presidential election.  Vance outrageously said that "I would have told the states . . . that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, & I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there."  

You don't want these people anywhere near positions of power in our government where they could abuse our glorious Constitution. 

Sunday, February 11, 2024

Argentina's Milei & Heritage's Roberts @ The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting - 2024

The 54th annual, invitation only, meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) was held in Davos, Switzerland from January 15 to 19, 2024.  The theme this year was "Rebuilding Trust."  

Click here to hear WEF Founder Klaus Schwab's opening remarks that address what he calls the "deeply transformative challenges" of "inequalities and uncertainties that threaten the very fabric of our societies" & "the relentless challenges of climate change, a threat to our planet's delicate balance."  The uncertainty, fear, &  pessimism of remedying these challenges, & others, as the WEF sees fit, "erodes the trust we place in our ability to shape a better world" that leads to the "need(ed) paradigm shift" that "rebuilds trust" & the "fundamental need to embody trusteeship, which means to care for the greater good" & "exercising our trusteeship individually and collectively for safeguarding the future of humanity & nature."

In other words, twelve minutes into the annual WEF meeting, we see that the agenda of these global elite busy bodies is to influence & control the lives of people all over a world that "compels us to think beyond borders."

The WEF is a self proclaimed independent international organization that is committed to improving the state of the world & promoting true global leadership through its progressive ideas highlighted @ the Davos meeting & operating the other 51 weeks of the year from its headquarters in Cologny, Switzerland.  Its mission statement says that the WEF "engages business, political, academic & other leaders of society to shape global, regional, & industry agendas."

Attendees totaled over 2,700 people made up of the heads of WEF's 1,000 partner companies, public figures, chiefs of international organizations, society leaders, academics, & highly acclaimed "top thinkers."  The list included Li Qiang, Premier of the People's Republic of China; Emmanuel Macron, President of France; Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission; & Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  Viola Amherd, President of the Swiss Confederation for 2024, also offered welcoming remarks that are included in the link above.

Now the only reason I was not surprised when I learned that Argentina's President Javier Milei was invited to speak @ the meeting was because I had learned from Glenn Beck that Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, had been scheduled to appear a week before I knew Milei was coming.  Both men are authentic principled champions of the Blessings of Liberty from which economic freedom & its resultant prosperity naturally flow from unrestricted human endeavor - so @ least the attendees heard two points of view 180 degrees from the usual progressive dribble they hear at every other WEF annual meeting.

The question is how much of what the attendees heard from Dr. Roberts & President Milei sticks with them & for that matter how much of what you read in this post you are able to do something with.

Kevin Roberts believes that he was invited to the WEF meeting to add credibility to the "Rebuilding Trust" theme - i.e., the WEF thought Roberts would courteously agree with the majority of their platform & maybe offer a few tweaks thereby showing the world that a major American think tank supported & trusted the WEF.  If the same thinking was used to invite Javier Milei it shows how little the WEF knows these men.

Roberts' remarks focused on "taking away the power of the unelected bureaucrats and giving it back to the American people."  He said "The administrative state is the greatest threat to democracy in the United States, and we need to end it. " 

Milei's message is that too many world leaders, including those in attendance, are rejecting the empirical evidence that since 1800 the world has been ridden of 90% of its poverty thanks to free enterprise capitalism - an economic system that has given us the greatest expansion of wealth & prosperity in human history.  The continuing advocacy of socialism will eventually impoverish the world again - poverty being the economic condition of the world for all but the past 225 years.

Click here to hear Kevin Roberts go scorched earth on globalist elites in a compelling candid presentation.  First, Dr. Roberts called it "laughable that anyone would describe Davos as protecting liberal democracy" after his elite moderator stated that the people who come to the WEF in Davos stand up for liberal democracy.  Second, after listing five points covering 1) open borders & illegal immigrants robbing Americans of their way of life, 2) crime & public safety not only endangering Americans' way of life, but their lives, 3) the solutions to the supposed existential crisis called climate change costing more human lives than the problem themselves, 4) the WEF @ Davos not only doesn't call out China as the number 1 adversary to free people on Earth but actually gives the Chinese Communist Party a platform, & 5) the World Health Organization is discussing foisting gender ideology on the global self -- Dr. Roberts stated that "Joe Biden has done a God awful job of articulating what is best for the American citizen."  Then most pointedly he concluded that "every single member of a new administration needs to have a list of everything that has ever been proposed @ the WEF & object to all of them - wholesale." 

But Javier Milei was the headliner of the Davos WEF meeting - first by flying economy class on a scheduled commercial flight (Lufthansa from Buenos Aires to Zurich via Frankfurt) that Milei calculates saved the Argentine government $392,000 in travel costs.  See photo below.




Milei's speech @ Davos was delivered on January 17, 2024 to polite applause that showed the audience heard his refreshing message that emphasized America's founding principles of limited government, personal responsibility, & free enterprise.  

The theme of the speech was that the Western World is in danger of abandoning freedom for socialism, & thereby descending into poverty,  saying "The state is not the solution. The state is the problem itself," & that a return to excellence of libertarianism where "economic freedom, limited government and unlimited respect for private property are essential elements for economic growth" that will cast off "the political caste or the parasites that live off the state."

Below are key excerpts from the English transcript of Milei's speech.  Also, WSJ Editor in Chief, Emma Tucker flew to Argentina to interview Milei on January 27 - click here to watch a video of this interview where Milei dismissed any idea of failure of his plan to restore Argentina to economic health & prosperity by saying "there is no Plan B."

1)  Socialism versus capitalism:  We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause. Do believe me: no one is in a better place than us, Argentines, to testify to these two points.

Thirty five years after we adopted the model of freedom, back in 1860, we became a leading world power. And when we embraced collectivism over the course of the last 100 years, we saw how our citizens started to become systematically impoverished, and we dropped to spot number 140 globally.

It should never be forgotten that socialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon that has failed in all countries where it's been tried out. It's been a failure economically, socially, culturally and it also murdered over 100 million human beings.

2)  Free enterprise capitalism is the cure for poverty:  But before having the discussion, it would first be important for us to take a look at the data that demonstrates why free enterprise capitalism is not just the only possible system to end world poverty, but also that it's the only morally desirable system to achieve this.
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If we look at the history of economic progress, we can see how between the year zero and the year 1800 approximately, world per capita GDP practically remained constant throughout the whole reference period.

If you look at a graph of the evolution of economic growth throughout the history of humanity, you would see a hockey stick graph, an exponential function that remained constant for 90 per cent of the time and which was exponentially triggered starting in the 19th century.

Now, it's not just that capitalism brought about an explosion in wealth from the moment it was adopted as an economic system, but also, if you look at the data, what you will see is that growth continues to accelerate throughout the whole period.

This trend, far from stopping, remains well alive today. If we take the period between the years 2000 and 2023, the growth rate again accelerated to three per cent a year, which means that we could double world per capita GDP in just 23 years.

That said, when you look at per capita GDP since the year 1800 until today, what you will see is that after the Industrial Revolution, global per capita GDP multiplied by over 15 times, which meant a boom in growth that lifted 90 per cent of the global population out of poverty.

We should remember that by the year 1800, about 95 per cent of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. And that figure dropped to five per cent by the year 2020, prior to the pandemic. The conclusion is obvious.

3)  Individualism versus collectivism:  Far from being the cause of our problems, free trade capitalism as an economic system is the only instrument we have to end hunger, poverty and extreme poverty across our planet. The empirical evidence is unquestionable.

Therefore, since there is no doubt that free enterprise capitalism is superior in productive terms, the left-wing doxa (public opinion) has attacked capitalism, alleging matters of morality, saying — that's what the detractors claim — that it's unjust. They say that capitalism is evil because it's individualistic and that collectivism is good because it's altruistic. Of course, with the money of others.

So they therefore advocate for social justice. But this concept, which in the developed world became fashionable in recent times, in my country has been a constant in political discourse for over 80 years. The problem is that social justice is not just, and it doesn't contribute to general well-being.

Quite on the contrary, it's an intrinsically unfair idea because it's violent. It's unjust because the state is financed through tax and taxes are collected coercively. Or can any one of us say that we voluntarily pay taxes? This means that the state is financed through coercion and that the higher the tax burden, the higher the coercion and the lower the freedom.

4)  Universities & media promote poverty:  So how come academia, international organizations, economic theorists and politicians demonize an economic system that has not only lifted 90 per cent of the world's population out of extreme poverty but has continued to do this faster and faster?

Thanks to free trade capitalism, the world is now living its best moment. Never in all of mankind or humanity’s history has there been a time of more prosperity than today. This is true for all. The world of today has more freedom, is rich, more peaceful and prosperous. This is particularly true for countries that have more economic freedom and respect the property rights of individuals.

Countries that have more freedom are 12 times richer than those that are repressed. The lowest percentile in free countries is better off than 90 per cent of the population in repressed countries. Poverty is 25 times lower and extreme poverty is 50 times lower. And citizens in free countries live 25 percent longer than citizens in repressed countries.

5)  Libertarianism:  Now what is it that we mean when we talk about libertarianism? And let me quote the words of the greatest authority on freedom in Argentina, Professor Alberto Benegas Lynch Jr, who says that libertarianism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others based on the principle of non-aggression, in defence of the right to life, liberty and property.

Its fundamental institutions are private property, markets free from state intervention, free competition, and the division of labour and social cooperation, in which success is achieved only by serving others with goods of better quality or at a better price.

In other words, capitalist successful business people are social benefactors who, far from appropriating (seizing or taking) the wealth of others, contribute to the general well-being. Ultimately, a successful entrepreneur is a hero.

And this is the model that we are advocating for the Argentina of the future. A model based on the fundamental principle of libertarianism. The defence of life, of freedom and of property.

6)  Radical feminist agenda:  The first of these new battles was the ridiculous and unnatural fight between man and woman. Libertarianism already provides for equality of the sexes. The cornerstone of our creed is that all humans are created equal and that we all have the same inalienable rights granted by the Creator, including life, freedom and ownership.

All that the radical feminist agenda has led to is greater state intervention to hinder economic progress, giving jobs to bureaucrats who have not contributed anything to society. Examples are ministries of women or international organizations devoted to promoting this agenda.

7)  Humans against nature - climate change:  Another conflict presented by socialists is that of humans against nature, claiming that we human beings damage a planet which should be protected at all costs, even going as far as advocating for population control mechanisms or the abortion agenda.

Unfortunately, these harmful ideas have taken a stronghold in our society. Neo-Marxists have managed to co-opt the common sense of the Western world, and this they have achieved by appropriating the media, culture, universities and also international organizations.

The latter case is the most serious one, probably because these are institutions that have enormous influence on the political and economic decisions of their member states.

Fortunately there's more and more of us who are daring to make our voices heard, because we see that if we don't truly and decisively fight against these ideas, the only possible fate is for us to have increasing levels of state regulation, socialism, poverty and less freedom, and therefore, worse standards of living.

8)  The market value:  The problem with Neoclassicals is that the model they fell in love with does not map reality, so they put down their mistakes to supposed market failures rather than reviewing the premises of the model.

Under the pretext of a supposed market failure, regulations are introduced. These regulations create distortions in the price system, prevent economic calculus, and therefore also prevent saving, investment and growth.

This problem lies mainly in the fact that not even supposed libertarian economists understand what the market is because if they did understand, it would quickly be seen that it's impossible for there to be market failures.

The market is not a mere graph describing a curve of supply and demand. The market is a mechanism for social cooperation, where you voluntarily exchange ownership rights. Therefore based on this definition, talking about a market failure is an oxymoron. There are no market failures.

If transactions are voluntary, the only context in which there can be market failure is if there is coercion and the only one that is able to coerce generally is the state, which holds a monopoly on violence.

Consequently, if someone considers that there is a market failure, I would suggest that they check to see if there is state intervention involved. And if they find that that's not the case, I would suggest that they check again, because obviously there's a mistake. Market failures do not exist.

9)  Conclusion:  . . . long live freedom, damn it! 

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