King's Field (PlayStation)

King’s Field (PlayStation)

Excitebike / Excitebike 64

Excitebike / Excitebike 64

Compute!’s Gazette (June 1989)

Source: Compute!'s Gazette - Issue Number 72 - June 1989

Compute! is a multi-format computer magazine that was published throughout most of the 1980s and early 1990s. Compute! also had several spin-off publications that were specific to one particular computer or another. Most were relatively short-lived but Compute!’s Gazette for Commodore 8-bit computers (mostly the Commodore 64) was an exception. It was published from 1983 until 1990 as a stand-alone magazine and then it continued as an insert until 1993 and finally as a disk only publication until 1995.

The June 1989 issue of Compute!'s Gazette includes:

Features

• Best Arcade Sports Games - An overview of sports games for the Commodore 64. For each sport there was a winner and one or more runners up. For baseball the winner was The Sporting News Baseball and the runner up was HardBall! For football it was 4th & Inches and John Elway's Quarterback. For basketball it was Fast Break with Jordan vs. Bird: One on One and Slam Dunk both being contenders. For Hockey it was Superstar Ice Hockey and Powerplay Hockey: USA vs. USSR. For Golf it was Jack Nicklaus' Greatest 18 Holes of Major Championship Golf (that's a mouthful) with World Tour Golf, World Class Leader Board and Leader Board all being contenders. For boxing it was TKO with both Fight Night and Star Rank Boxing being contenders. The last category was "Olympic-Style Games" and the winner there was The Games: Summer Edition with World Games and Winter Challenge being the other contenders.

• Guide to Commodore User Groups, Part 2 - Part 2 of a guide that includes contact information for user groups in every state.

Reviews

• First Over Germany - This game involves piloting a B-17 but it is more of a mission simulator than a pure flight simulator.

• Jordan vs. Bird: One on One - This was sort of an update to the earlier One On One game with Lary Bird and Dr. J that was also done by Electronic Arts.

• Rocket Ranger - I played this game on the NES and thought it was pretty terrible. I don't know if the Commodore 64 version was any better.

• Predator - A game by Activision based on the movie of the same name. Like most licenses it isn't great but it could be worse...

• Deathlord - A fantasy RPG based on Japanese culture. Characters can be imported from Bard's Tale or Ultima III (or of course you can create new ones).

• Minimodem-C - A 1200 baud modem that plugs directly into the user port of the Commodore 64 or Commodore 128.

Game

• Jericho II: The Revenge - A type-in program that gives you a two-player breakout style game.

• Match Mania - A type-in program that gives you a one or two-player game that presents you with four images. You must pick the one that is different.

Programming

• Grafix Converter - A type-in program that allows you to convert between various graphics formats used by various paint programs on the Commodore 64.

• Ramdisk - A type-in program that gives you a 12K ramdisk on your Commodore 64.

• Hi-Res 80 for the 128 - A type-in program for creating hi-res images in the Commodore 128's 80-column mode.

• SpeedCount - A type-in program that gives you a tool for counting words in SpeedScript.

• BASIC for Beginners: Bugbusters - A tutorial on how to find bugs in your BASIC programs.

• Power BASIC: 128 Monitor Enhancer - An enhancement for the Commodore 128's build-in machine language monitor that adds commands to enable bi-directional scrolling, toggle processors speed and to read and write to any disk sector.

• The Programmer's Page: Self-Modifying BASIC - How to write BASIC programs that modify themselves.

• Machine Language Programming: Laws of Motion - A machine language tutorial involving a program that encapsulates Newton's laws of motion.

• MacroBASIC - A type in program to give macro capabilities to your Commodore 64 or Commodore 128.

Departments

• Editor's Notes - An editorial about rumors...and truth.

• Letters to the Editor - Readers ask about a GEOS publication, educational software, Commodore 128 games, copying disks and more.

• Commodore Clips: News, Notes, and New Products - New products mentioned this month include gameshow software Hollywood Squares, Super Password and Double Dare; educational software for the Commodore 64; some new software for the Commodore 128 and news about a teen who hacked his way into a telephone company with his Commodore 64.

• The GEOS Column: Help Pad - A type-in program to give you help functionality in GEOS, the GUI OS for the Commodore 64/128.

• Feedback - Questions and comments about content from previous issues including Stereo SID chips, 64/PC compatibility and self-modifying BASIC among other topics.

• Horizons: The Commodore 128 - A Dinosaur? - Speculation and rumors about the Commodore 128's demise.

• D'Iversions: Nintendo Revisited - Readers defend the Commodore 64's game playing prowess against the NES.

...and more!

MegaCon 2002: UFO2U

From the program:

"Heidi Hollis will present on the mystery of the UFO and alien phenomena that thousands of people, if not millions, worldwide are reporting. Hear how differences in alien contact are occurring and how that ties in with the raging war many of the alien beings are speaking of that they are currently engaged in."

Watch on Daily Motion.
Watch on Odysee.

Our Quasi-Soviet Fiscal Policy

Our Quasi-Soviet Fiscal Policy

“It’s like deja vu all over again.”

Do Yogi Berra‘s words of wisdom apply to the “new” trillion dollar “public infrastructure” program? The last program, still unpaid, focused on “shovel-ready” projects but somehow missed most potholes. Meanwhile, private companies are prepared to spend $100’s of billions on a new fiber optic internet super highway.

Is the current proposed public spending program more likely to pay off for taxpayers than the last one?

Historical Precedent




When the hammer and sickle flag was lowered for the last time in Moscow on December 25, 1991, the international finance agencies created in Bretton Woods in 1944, led by British economist John Maynard Keynes and the Undersecretary of the U.S. Treasury Harry Dexter White, found a new mission.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is a “bank” according to Keynes, provided the financial infrastructure for international trade. The World Bank (WB), or a “fund” according to Keynes, was promoted by, known communist and accused Russian spy, Undersecretary White to help reconstruct European infrastructure, but primarily Russia’s infrastructure, in the wake of WW II destruction.

The IMF lost its raison d'être in 1971 after President Nixon eliminated dollar convertibility into gold, ending the Bretton Woods function. Russia turned down World Bank membership, so the Bank turned to lending for infrastructure projects in the “underdeveloped” nations, which by 1991 faced overwhelming political obstacles.

Assisting in the conversion of formerly centrally planned economies into capitalist market economies became the finance agencies’ new post-Soviet mission. However, few people had much of an idea of how to accomplish this. It had never been done before, and the IMF and WB were particularly ill-equipped as their charter limited them to lending only to governments. They were essentially statist organizations with little experience with (or sympathy for) competitive private markets (which helps explain why they remain chronically underdeveloped).

Russia’s capital stock was in poor condition, but not for lack of funding. The saving rate was about six times that of western democracies (albeit by force), but the return to state-allocated investments was decidedly negative, as continues to be the case in China (where the resulting credit bubble may soon burst).

Zero Productivity, Raises for Everyone

In early 1992, I found myself on a WB mission. The intention was to help create housing markets in Russia, where the housing stock was poorly located and maintained, that quickly morphed into a government plan to build housing for returning Afghan war veterans (who were armed and potentially dangerous, hence an important political constituency).

The first problem we faced was in obtaining building materials. In particular, there was a serious shortage of sheet rock for interior walls. My interview with the “President” of one of the few production organizations, a recently “self-privatized” state enterprise, went something like this:

Me: So, how is it going?

President: Spectacular, I gave all the employees a 100 percent raise.

Me: But there are no workers.

President: That is because that stupid West German machine still isn’t working.

Me: Why not? They are usually of the highest quality.

President: It needed oil!

Me: So?

President: Who can afford oil when labor costs so much?

When I returned six months later, I got the same story; wages up another 100 percent but still no oil–and no sheet rock.

Failing Infrastructure

Crazy, right, but it can’t happen here? Well, if the purpose of government spending is to “create high paying jobs” then the sheetrock firm was a smashing political success.

State and local governments in the U.S. already do that all too well. “It is routine now for firefighters to be up over $200,000, $300,000,” said Mark Bucher, chief executive officer of the California Policy Center, a public policy think tank. That doesn’t count pension costs, which exceed wage costs for many municipalities in spite of the fact that, several years ago, unfunded pension liabilities were estimated at $3.0 trillion (and I would double that).

The growing public sector wage bill doesn’t produce or maintain public infrastructure. For decades the American Society of Civil Engineers has been warning that deferred maintenance creates ever greater problems. By 2013 the national grade was D+, and is expected to decline with this year’s quadrennial report. The situation isn’t much different at the federal level, where Labor costs are artificially lowered by sub-contracting.

Nobody likes a flunking infrastructure grade. But the problem isn’t insufficient total state and local taxation: total annual tax revenue is about $3.4 trillion. Nor is it a problem of financing, i.e. the inability to issue general obligation or revenue bonds: there is about $3 trillion in outstanding debt, about two-thirds of which is revenue bonds. Fixing the infrastructure shouldn’t be about “creating American jobs:” Soviet state enterprises could do that.

We have a principal-agent problem like that of the Soviet factory manager. State and local employees have undue control of their governments. Taxpayers simply don’t have enough control over their political agents to prevent the diversion of public funds.

Fiscal federalism, a system resembling the Soviet distribution of funds from the center to the oblasts (and on to state-owned enterprises), is intended to further reduce or eliminate public accountability and control.

If at First You Don’t Succeed

Past initiatives for “public improvements,” which go back to the Nation’s founding, have flooded the swamp. Democrats since the Clinton Administration have advocated for a national infrastructure bank, another government-sponsored enterprise, that is more like the WB in its practice of lending and accountability (or lack thereof). Now political advocates demand direct control that favors their labor and Wall Street constituents.

President Trump plans to provide accountability for new infrastructure projects with public-private partnerships and opaque tax subsidies. That is not unlike Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s model of public risk for private profits that subsidized the subprime lending bubble. To ensure that infrastructure investments are “good deals” for the public, the government should avoid bailing out states that are filling the swamp, stick to purely federal infrastructure improvements and calculate the ROI to taxpayers as a business, or better still, finance it themselves.

Kevin Villani

Kevin Villani, chief economist at Freddie Mac from 1982 to 1985, is a principal of University Financial Associates. He has held senior government positions, has been affiliated with nine universities, and served as CFO and director of several companies. He recently published Occupy Pennsylvania Avenue on the political origins of the sub-prime lending bubble and aftermath.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Stop Calling the “Freedom Caucus” the “Rebellious Far Right Wing”

Stop Calling the “Freedom Caucus” the “Rebellious Far Right Wing”

Stop Calling the “Freedom Caucus” the “Rebellious Far Right Wing”

My hope is that this article will settle this nonsense once and for all. It won’t. Fake news outlets will persist as long as they are allowed to get away with it. It’s a smear and an outright lie but it goes on often, especially recently.

The Background

First of all, as you undoubtedly know, there is a faction within the House of Representatives gaining consciousness of the great task of our time: to get government out of the way of the productive forces of freedom, and to do this in every area of life. It is called the “Freedom Caucus,” and their influence just brought down the false alternative to Obamacare that preserved all its essential features.

Given the upheaval in the Republican Party, these people are developing a new understanding of themselves. They stood up to Trump. Clearly, they don't exist on the common left/right spectrum. 

In how they handled the great Obamacare/Ryancare debacle, they should be called “libertarians,” because this is the word that has emerged to describe them in our times.

But more correctly, they should be called “liberals,” because they are the successors to the great cause of human liberation that began in the late Middle Ages, extended through the Enlightenment, drove the revolutions against power in the 18th century, ended slavery and the subjugation of women in the 19th century, and fought socialism and fascism in the 20th century. In the 21st century, they’ve championed digital innovation, privacy, and technological progress.

Here is good tutorial. 

What They Believe

This group, which is undergoing a revival in many forms in our times, is trending toward being a consistent force of freedom. It's not there just yet but the trend line is unmistakable and good. It’s not just about lower taxes, though they do desire that. They also want free trade, free migration as an ideal, free speech, deregulation, penal and prison reform, and an end to wars of all sorts. In short, they see the free society as the answer and government as the problem.

 

They have few connections to what is called the Left, except in areas like prison reform, drug decriminalization, and free speech. But neither do they share the values of the emergent far Right we’re seeing in Europe or the United States. They reject authoritarians of all sorts, which is why they are not reliable friends of the Trump administration. They will back him when he is right but fight him when he is wrong. They are independent in this way, recognizing that both Right and Left are forms of statist ideology, two flavors of the same cause.

They are often called “conservatives” in American political lexicon, and sometimes they too have to embrace this term because it has resonance with the media and the voters. But they don’t like it, and it doesn’t really describe them. They do not want to conserve any old habits of government. They want government out of the way precisely so market forces and society in general can discover new and better ways of doing things.

Now, having described the Freedom Caucus in the House as best I can, consider what the New York Times says. The article “Trump Becomes Ensnared in Fiery G.O.P. Civil War” is by Glenn Thrush (twitter.com/GlennThrush) and Maggie Haberman (twitter.com/maggieNYT). Here is what they write:

In stopping the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the Republican Party’s professed priority for the last seven years, the rebellious far Right wing of his party out-rebelled Mr. Trump, and won a major victory on Friday over the party establishment that he now leads.

You see that? The “rebellious far Right wing.”

The Real Far Right

Any reader would equate that designation with Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, the Golden Dawn in Greece, Jobbik in Hungary, Norbert Hofer in Austria, and so on. Actually, you can read all about the rise of the far Right in Europe in a very authoritative source: the New York Times, in an article published only a few months ago.

 

Their policies are by now predictable. They want protectionism, restricted immigration, some form of industrial economic planning, a strong welfare safety net, and, very often, they favor national health care systems.

In fact, even in the United States, the most highly-trafficked Nazi website (please forgive me for not linking) came out with a front page editorial on the day of the Republican vote that came out explicitly for nationalized health insurance.

These policies are not pro-freedom. They have more in common with an interwar-style fascism. Most people who hang out on Twitter know them well. They are masters of the troll, self-proclaimed edge lords who tweet racist, anti-semitic, and nativist slogans and memes all day and all night. There are whole packages of software designed to block them.

Libertarianism is different, very different, from the alt-right, the far Right, the fascist right, the Nazi right, and so on.

Rebellious, Yes; Far Right, No

With health care, in particular, you see a striking difference. The Freedom Caucus opposed the Trump/Ryan plan because it preserved the statist features of Obamacare. It did not introduce market competition. They knew, as a matter of personal conviction and experience, that the replacement would not work. They acted out of principle but also out of a genuine knowledge of the sector, what has broken it, and how it must be fixed.

 

These reporters really must find a way to clean up their language, or risk sowing a very dangerous confusion. It is ridiculously misleading to persist in these old habits of describing any non-Leftist as associated with the “far Right.” It smacks of propaganda. These reporters have to do better if they want to describe the emergent liberal faction of the Republican party with any accuracy.

On a personal note, I adore the New York Times. I read it thoroughly every day. I don’t agree with it, but I find it an indispensable source of news. I would like to see the ideological reporting of this paper improve.

If you tweet to these reporters, please be nice. No trolling. They are human beings. They are trying to do their best. They just need a bit of help. It is crucial they get this right.

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education. He is also Chief Liberty Officer and founder of Liberty.me, Distinguished Honorary Member of Mises Brazil, research fellow at the Acton Institute, policy adviser of the Heartland Institute, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, member of the editorial board of the Molinari Review, an advisor to the blockchain application builder Factom, and author of five books. He has written 150 introductions to books and many thousands of articles appearing in the scholarly and popular press.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

The truth is still out there! When will The X Files return?

The truth is still out there! When will The X Files return?



Although talks are underway with series stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson and creator Chris Carter to bring The X Files back for another run, unfortunately it doesn’t look like the sci-fi series will go back into production again this year.

“It’s not for lack of trying,” says a show spokesperson. “It’s just very difficult for them to easily find the time to do this. Gillian lives in London, she has young children. Coming to Vancouver for three or four months of filming is not easy for her, particularly when she has other work commitments. David can be available, and then something big can come along for him. So it’s not easy to find time.”

Read more: The truth is still out there! When will The X Files return?

European Welfare States Are Frantic to Breed More Taxpayers

European Welfare States Are Frantic to Breed More Taxpayers

Recently I read a very peculiar news item reporting that the Spanish government has appointed what the media are calling a “Sex Tsar.” It is officially a “commissioner for the demographic challenge,” whose job is to persuade the people of Spain to have more sex, and, by extension, more children.

 

The Spanish are not alone. In 2016, the Italian government ran a “Fertility Day” campaign to get people to have more babies. The Swedish government has initiated a study into the sex lives of its citizens, to find ways to increase the amount of sex Swedes have.

If that was all there was to the story, we could chalk it up to politicians being their usual ridiculous selves and have a good laugh about it. But this nonsense has serious economic causes and potentially far-reaching consequences.

The Ponzi Welfare State




In each of the three cases, the main reason governments wanted more children was to save the welfare state. The welfare state is the biggest Ponzi scheme on Earth, as the great economist Milton Friedman explained.

As long as there are more taxpayers (young, working people) than those who are receiving the benefits of the welfare state, the whole operation runs fine.

The problem starts when people have fewer babies, as in Europe. This will result in a larger number of old people depending on the government, which will have to tax a smaller and smaller working population to finance the benefits. Without new fools to con, the Ponzi scheme will collapse. Even Paul Krugman understands this elementary fact about welfare schemes like Social Security.

Immigrants could compensate for the shrinking population in Europe and increase the tax base for governments. But the governments have closed borders to refugees from Syria and other countries (due to political compulsions), making immigration more difficult precisely when they need more people. If they cannot get more taxpayers through migration, the only alternative is to get their citizens to have more children.

Precedent in History

In 1807, the United States Congress outlawed the import of slaves, economically akin to the immigration controls in modern Europe. Because slave masters could not get more slaves from Africa, they established “breeding farms,” as Ned and Constance Sublette describe in their book, “The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry.”

On these breeding farms, there were far more women and children than men. Slaves were encouraged to have stable family lives. As economic historian and Nobel laureate Robert Fogel explained in his book “Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery,” most slaves were sold with their entire families, or, when a slave wished to separate from his family, separately. In fact, as distinguished economists Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams have pointed out so often, more black children were raised in two-parent families during slavery than are today.

Was this because slave owners had any love for their slaves? Not by any stretch of the imagination. The slave owners simply wanted to maximize profits by encouraging their slaves to have more children. They gave rewards to women for having children, similar to the tax benefits or payments offered by a welfare state. Just as politicians can stay in the welfare business only if citizens have more and more children, the slave owners could stay in business only if slaves had more and more children. They knew that, and acted purely in their selfish interests – just like politicians.

Next, Fogel pointed out that living standards for slaves in the South were comparable to those of free workers in industry. The master ensured the welfare of his slaves, just like the modern welfare state does with its citizens.

There is yet another striking parallel between the welfare state and slavery. People such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson believed that slavery was a terrible thing – Jefferson called it a “great political and moral evil” – yet they continued to hold slaves. They justified it by saying slaves were not capable of taking care of themselves. In the event that they set the slaves free, they argued, the slaves would fall into destitution and suffering.

This argument made by Washington and Jefferson is exactly the same as that made by proponents of a welfare state. History is bound to repeat itself if people don’t pay attention the first time around.

People in countries with a growing population, such as the US, or developing countries like India, should learn the lesson before it is too late, and take steps to roll back the welfare state while there is still time, or else end up slaves to the state.

Jairaj Devadiga

Jairaj Devadiga is an economist who illustrates the importance of property rights and freedom through some interesting real-world cases.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

5 Charts That Will Shift Your Perspective on Poverty

5 Charts That Will Shift Your Perspective on Poverty

5 Charts That Will Shift Your Perspective on Poverty

Angus Deaton, the Nobel-prize winning economist (who also sits on the advisory board of HumanProgress.org), recently reiterated his belief that on the whole the world is getting better–if not, as he accepted, everywhere or for everyone at once. Perhaps that comes as no surprise, but the idea that the world is getting better in regards to poverty is actually a deeply unpopular view.

Ask most people about global poverty, and chances are that they’ll say it is unchanged or getting worse. A survey released late last year found that 92 percent of Americans believe the share of the world population in extreme poverty has either increased or stayed the same over the last two decades.

Americans aren’t alone in that belief. Across all surveyed countries, an only slightly smaller majority–87 percent–believe that extreme poverty has risen or remained an intractable problem.

There are a number of cultural and psychological explanations for the persistence of such pessimism. Bad news makes for good headlines and tends to dominate media coverage. Psychologically, people tend to idealize the past and recall dramatic and unusual events more easily than steady long-term trends. They may also use pessimism as a means of virtue signaling.

Indeed, of those rare people who realize that extreme poverty has declined, almost all underestimate the extent of that decline. In fact, global poverty has halved over the past 20 years­–but only one person in 100 gets it right.

Unsurprisingly, people in areas that have seen the most dramatic reductions in poverty are the most likely to be more aware of what’s really going on. But even in China, where hundreds of millions of people have risen out of destitution over the last four decades, half of the population remains ignorant of the broader collapse in world poverty that has occurred within their lifetimes.



To help bridge the gap between public perceptions and reality, here are five charts, based on data we’ve collected at HumanProgress.org, that illustrate the extraordinary progress humanity has made.

Throughout most of human history, extreme poverty has been the norm. This famous hockey-stick chart, arguably the most important graph in the world, illustrates what happened when the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution caused income to skyrocket­–forever changing the way we live, and perhaps even the way we think.



Humanity, as this chart shows, produced more economic output over the last two centuries than in all of the previous centuries combined. And this explosion of wealth-creation led to a massive decrease in the rate of poverty. In 1820, more than 90 percent of the world population lived on less than $2 a day and more than 80 percent lived on less than $1 a day (adjusted for inflation and differences in purchasing power). By 2015, less than 10 percent of people lived on less than $1.90 a day, the World Bank’s current official definition of extreme poverty.



Not only has the percentage of people living in poverty declined, but the number of people in poverty has fallen as well – despite massive population growth. There are also more people alive who are not in penury than there have ever been. From 1820 to 2015, the number of people in extreme poverty fell from over a billion to 700 million, while the number of people better off than that rose from a mere 60 million to 6.6 billion. (Extreme poverty is again defined here as living on $1.90 a day, adjusted for inflation and differences in purchasing power.)



Globally, poverty is about a quarter of what it was in 1990. And the graph below from Johan Norberg’s excellent book, Progress: 10 Reasons to Look Forward to the Future, illustrates how the decline of extreme poverty has raised living standards and brought about other tangible improvements. As poverty has lessened, so have child mortality, illiteracy, and even pollution in wealthy countries – all are now less than half of what they were in 1990. Hunger has also become much rarer. You can learn more about how increased prosperity has led to progress in other areas by watching this video from a forum inspired by Norberg’s book.



If progress continues on its current trajectory, the Brookings Institution estimated in 2013 that extreme poverty (this time defined as living on $1.25 a day, again adjusted for inflation and differences in purchasing power) will all but vanish by 2030, affecting only 5 percent of the global population. This is what they considered to be the “baseline” or most likely scenario. In the best-case scenario, they predicted that by 2030 poverty will decrease to a truly negligible level, affecting only 1.4 percent of the planet’s population.



The facts are unambiguous: despite public perceptions to the contrary, extreme poverty has declined significantly, to the point where its end may actually be in sight. So next time you hear someone bemoaning a supposed rise in world poverty, encourage them to have a look at the evidence for themselves.

Reprinted from Human Progress.

Chelsea Follett

Chelsea Follet works at the Cato Institute as a Researcher and Managing Editor of HumanProgress.org.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Ryancare Is Worse Than Obamacare

Ryancare Is Worse Than Obamacare

After 7 years, Republicans finally have the chance to fulfill their promise of repealing Obamacare. With Republicans in control of the legislative and executive branches of the federal government, the only thing standing in their way is themselves, apparently a formidable foe.

Titled The American Health Care Act, the Republican establishment unveiled their plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and it was quickly met with controversy among members of their own party.

For his part, Trump has intervened to threaten any lawmaker who opposes the establishment. “He made it very clear he’s all-in on this legislation,” said Representative Kevin Brady after a rough meeting with the president. It was a central pillar of his election and, arguably, swung the election in his favor (he had one job). He is now using his power to do something very different.

Senator Rand Paul has chosen to refer to the AHCA as Obamacare-lite. It’s an apt name, as the bill keeps in place the majority of the Obamacare, namely the supposedly popular provisions. These huge compromises have caused Senator Paul and members of the Freedom Caucus to openly oppose the AHCA and with good reason. By picking and choosing the parts of Obamacare they think are politically expedient instead of the full repeal they promised, the GOP’s proposed bill will exaggerate the ACA’s problems instead of fixing them

How Obamacare Broke Heath Insurance

To understand the problems with the AHCA, one has to understand some of Obamacare’s main provisions, the reasons they exist, and how they all fit together. The original purpose of the ACA was to provide insurance coverage to those who had preexisting conditions. The first step taken to achieve this goal was simply to prevent insurers from rejecting these people. However, if the ACA’s architects had stopped here, insurers would simply have offered plans to cancer patients, for instance, that had million dollar premiums, and their goal would have gone unaccomplished.

This potential “loophole” lead to the provision that gave us the community rating system, which forced insurance companies to charge everyone essentially the same price for similar plans, with a small amount of leeway given factors like age. Community ratings brought about their own problems, however. With insurers forced to accept everyone and unable to charge more for preexisting conditions, people would have no reason to buy insurance until they became ill.

Further spurred by the necessary rise in premiums, healthy people would begin to refrain from buying insurance, forcing premiums to rise more, and so on until the health insurance industry failed entirely. Referring to this sequence of events, free market economists coined the now famous “death spiral” term.

The death spiral is obviously very bad, and it prompted the most infamous of Obamacare’s features, the individual mandate. The individual mandate created a tax penalty for those who didn’t hold an approved plan for the entire year. By forcing everyone into the health insurance pool, the ACA’s framers hoped to avoid the death spiral, with subsidies and other mechanisms added into the bill to further encourage the purchase of insurance.

The Death Spiral Happens Anyway

At this point, the ACA’s architects were pleased with their work. They had thought through the consequences of their legislation more thoroughly than most, after all. However, they failed to consider the same factor which is the ultimate failure of all central planners, their necessary ignorance of market conditions and how best to handle them.

The individual mandate failed to coerce enough healthy people to purchase insurance in order to cover the newly added ill. As insurance pools have worsened, and increased demand for health care without a subsequent rise in doctors and hospitals has driven prices up, premiums have grown massively. The death spiral is occurring, despite Obamacare’s attempts to prevent it.

Insurance companies are hemorrhaging money and going out of business. Some areas now have only one supplier, with 16 counties in my own state of Tennessee having no provider at all. The ACA, like all attempts at central planning, is a failure. At best, the individual mandate’s only effect has been a somewhat slower death spiral.

The AHCA’s Major Blunder

Obamacare is a clear example of Ludwig von Mises’ famous adage that government interventions necessitate more and more interventions to fix the problems they create. The fact that the ACA’s provisions are all intertwined is also clear. To avoid an even bigger disaster, all of them need to be repealed at once. But for reasons that are very likely political, the Republican establishment has chosen a weak and compromised bill which  keeps the requirements for preexisting conditions and community ratings, but does does away with the individual mandate. In other words, the ACHA removes Obamacare’s funding mechanism, but keeps the requirements that made it necessary in the first place.

In the individual mandate’s place is a mandatory 30% surcharge, payable to insurance companies, for those who go without coverage for a prolonged period of time and then choose to purchase another plan. This surcharge is wholly insufficient to fulfill its purpose. Whereas the individual mandate punished people for not purchasing insurance, the surcharge punishes people who’ve decided they do want to buy it. It provides people with very little incentive to continue paying their huge premiums while they’re healthy. Insurance providers simply couldn’t survive in such a distorted environment.

The GOP’s sacrifice of principles for votes will likely result in a loss of both. If the ACHA passes as is, the health insurance market would collapse in an even more rapid death spiral, and this time the Republican party will be on the receiving end of the political blowback.  Indeed, the ACHA’s inevitable failure would create the perfect political environment for a push towards a single payer system. The left will undoubtedly frame the ensuing chaos as to blame deregulation and the free market, when it truly lies in Obamacare and the Republican party’s spinelessness to propose a proper repeal.

Free Markets are the Solution

The Republicans should give the American people what they promised, a repeal of every word of Obamacare. A real repeal is only the first step to repairing health care, however. A repeal must be followed with true free market reforms, particularly those recently proposed by Senator Rand Paul. However, as Warren Gibson wrote for FEE in his 2015 article, the ideal solution is a complete separation of the state and the health care industry. Only free markets can provide the cheapest and highest quality health care to the largest amount of people.

Nathan Keeble

Nathan Keeble helped start the Campaign to End Civil Asset Forfeiture in Tennessee.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Saint Patrick’s Day 2017

Saint Patrick’s Day 2017

This is a little late but better late than never...

Every year Meg O'Malley's, our local Irish Pub puts on a multi-day celebration around St. Patrick's Day. This year was no different with various festivities on St. Patrick's Day itself and a parade and more celebrating on Saturday. Below are some pics from the parade:

What would a Saint Patrick's Day parade be with out Saint Patrick himself? For those that don't know, Saint Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and lived in Ireland in the 5th century. He is regarded as the founder of Christianity in Ireland. March 17th is the supposed day of his death.



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Computer Palace (Atari 400/800)

Source: rom vol 1 issue 2

This is an advertisement for a computer mail order place called Computer Palace that specialized in software for Atari 8-bit computers. It comes from Volume 1, Number 2 of ROM magazine which was a short lived Atari 400/800 specific magazine. This issue would have been published sometime in late 1983.

The highlights to me are the ads for Fort Apocalypse, Miner 2049er and Pharaoh's Curse. These were all games that were originally developed on the Atari 400/800 and probably among the last to be developed on Atari computers first (as opposed to ported from other systems). While Atari's 8-bit computers were supported for another seven or eight years their popularity faded away after this point. The Commodore 64 had been recently released and it was less expensive and somewhat more capable. Most games would be developed on the Commodore 64 first for the next several years and ported to Atari if developed at all for that system.

There wasn't a huge difference in capability between the Commodore 64 and the Atari 8-bit line. I attribute Atari's decline more to their poor marketing and business decisions and mediocre support. Similar problems would haunt their video game systems too.

Synapse, the developer of Pharaoh's Curse and Fort Apocalypse, did not survive past 1984. They developed most or all of their titles for the Atari 8-bit computers and then did ports whenever they released a title for another system. However, by 1984 most of their sales were for the Commodore 64 even though they were titles ported from Atari.

Trump’s Budget Paves the Road to Fiscal Failure

Trump's Budget Paves the Road to Fiscal Failure

President Donald Trump has issued his preliminary federal budget proposal looking to the U.S. government’s next fiscal year. What it shows is that there will likely be no attempt to reduce the size and cost of most of the American interventionist-welfare state.

On Thursday, March 16, 2017, the White House released, “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.” Listening to the comments of some on the political left, you would think that the world was going to come to an end. For many on the political right, the programs placed on the chopping block for reduction or near elimination seem like a dream come true–if the budgetary proposals were to be implemented.

Furthermore, the blueprint offers an insight into the mind of Donald Trump about the role of government in society. When the budget was released, Michael Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said that this was Donald Trump’s fiscal vision for America. "If he said it on the campaign, it's in the budget," Mulvaney declared. "We wrote it using the president's own words."

Same Entitlements, More Defense Spending

Even a cursory look at President Trump’s budgetary proposals reveals that he plans to leave “entitlement programs” untouched while reallocating approximately 30 percent of the federal budget’s “discretionary” expenditures from one set of activities to another. Neither the total amount of government spending nor the likely budget deficit is threatened with meaningful reduction.

In the current 2017 federal fiscal year, Social Security, Medicare, and related spending make up almost 64 percent of Uncle Sam’s expenditures. The net interest on the near $20 trillion national debt makes up another 7 percent of federal spending. Out of the remaining around 30 percent of the budget, defense spending absorbs 15 percent of federal outflows.

The budget proposal makes it clear that President Trump is devoted to expanding military capabilities for continued foreign intervention. A foreign policy focused on “America First” is losing none of its global reach or the military hardware to back it up.

During his March 17 press conference with visiting German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, Donald Trump reiterated that he was not a foreign policy isolationist. Indeed, he emphasized his allegiance to NATO and its role in Europe. At the same time, Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, was at the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea, declaring that nothing was off the table, including a preemptive military attack on North Korea’s nuclear capability.

For conservatives and classical liberals who hope for foreign policy that leaves the United States less vulnerable to regional foreign conflicts, President Trump and his cabinet members are making it clear that America’s political and military allies must pick up more of the financial tab for the joint policing of different parts of the world.

Reflecting this, the president’s blueprint proposes to increase Defense Department spending by $54 billion dollars, which would put military expenditures for 2018 at a total of $603 billion. The Department of Homeland Security would gain an additional $2.8 billion dollars for a total in 2018 of around $70 billion.

The eyes and ears of the surveillance state will, also, remain intact and grow. The only wiretapping that President Trump seems to mind was an alleged eavesdropping on his own conversations before he took office. As for the rest of us, well, Big Brother is watching and listening–for our own good. After all, it’s all part of making America “great” and “safe” again.

Cue Progressive Whining

To pay for increases in the warfare state, President Trump’s budgetary axe has fallen on a variety of “discretionary” welfare and redistributive programs. To cover the $54 billion increase in defense spending, $54 billion is to be cut from half of the of the budgeted 30 percent discretionary spending. It’s worth keeping in mind that all the teeth gnashing by the left is over a less than 1.5 percent decrease to the projected $4 trillion (and then some) that Uncle Sam will spend in 2018.

It must be admitted, conservative and classical liberal hearts can only be warmed by virtually every cut in this part of the budget. For example, Department of Agriculture spending will be reduced by 20.7 percent. However, it is worth observing that subsidies paid to farmers, including subsidies for not growing crops, are not on the chopping block. Trump does not want to antagonize a crucial part of rural Republican America that lives at the trough of government spending.

On the other hand, the State Department and related foreign aid programs would be slashed by almost 29 percent. Not many tears need be shed here, given that State Department programs and personnel are at the heart of America’s misguided global social engineering schemes, and foreign aid is merely a slush fund for foreign political power lusters that undermine real market-oriented economic development in other parts of the world.

This list goes on: Housing and Urban Development, down 12 percent; Health and Human Services, cut 16 percent; Commerce Department, reduced 16 percent; Education Department, decreased by over 13 percent (but with a shift of funds to increase falsely named “school choice” programs). The Interior Department is down almost 12 percent; the Labor Department cut nearly 21 percent.

The Environmental Protection Agency would be cut by over 31 percent. The climate and land-use social engineers are being driven berserk by this one. It is being forecast as the end of planet Earth that swarms of regulatory locusts will be reined in from plaguing the country with their wetland rules, land-use restrictions, market-hampering prohibitions, and abridgments of private property rights. The heavens will darken, the seas will rise, and the land will be barren. How will humanity survive without self-righteous elitists leading mankind to socially-sensitive, greener pastures?

O! The Humanities!

Additionally, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are targeted for a virtual 100 percent cut. Those concerned about the arts and humanities may have to put their private money where their mouths are.

The thought that those who listen to the moralizing, collectivist voices on National Public Radio may have to pay for it (either out of their own pockets or from capitalist commercial interruptions) is just too much for these delicate souls to bear.

Political pocket-pickers are warning that planned “Meals on Wheels” spending cuts threaten the poor and aged with starvation. But, in fact, 65 percent of the program’s funding comes from private donations or local and state governments, with only 35 percent funded by federal dollars. Furthermore, the day after the budget blueprint was released, the media reported that Meals on Wheels around the country received a more than 50 percent increase to their regular private donations rate. Private benevolence–amazingly!–materialized almost instantly to replace coercively collected funding with voluntary support for the charity that, apparently, many consider worthy of support.

Leaving the Entitlement State Intact

Donald Trump’s budgetary blueprint for American greatness needs to be put into the wider context. Where does this leave the size and scope of government in the United States?

Alas, Trump’s budget leaves it seemingly untouched. The entitlement programs are feeding the insatiable growth of America’s domestic system of political paternalism: the governmental spending surrounding Social Security and Medicare redistribution.

Under current legislation, their cost and intrusiveness will only get worse. In its January 2017 long-term federal government budgetary forecast, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that if nothing changes legislatively, the “entitlement” programs will end up consuming nearly 80 percent of all the taxes collected by the United States government.

Since the remaining 20 percent of projected federal tax revenues will not sufficiently cover all projected defense and other “discretionary” spending, plus interest on the national debt between 2018 and 2027, the United States government will continue to run large annual budget deficits between now and then. This will add $10 trillion more to the total national debt over next decade.

Donald Trump made it clear during the primary and general presidential election campaigns in 2016 that he considers Social Security and Medicare sacrosanct, not subject to the budget cutter’s chopping block. In addition, ObamaCare may be repealed, but the reform that Trump and the Republican leadership in Congress have in mind will still leave a heavy fiscal footprint. This, too, will maintain and entrench Uncle Sam’s intrusive presence in the healthcare and medical insurance business, and will, inescapably, cost a lot of government dollars, though the full estimates are still forthcoming.

The Proposed Cuts Are Unlikely

Keep in mind that Trump’s budgetary blueprint is merely his administration’s recommendation to Congress, and especially to the House of Representatives where spending legislation is constitutionally supposed to originate. Already the grumbling has begun to be heard, not only from the Democratic Party minority in Congress but from members of the Republican Party majority, as well.

Abstract spending cuts almost always serve as good campaign rhetoric, especially for Republicans running for elected office, but like their Democratic Party counterparts, Republicans soon find themselves pressured and dependent upon the financial support of special interest groups, each of which feeds off of concrete government spending dollars.

The resulting resistance to fiscal repeal and retrenchment turns out to be no different than with the groups surrounding the Democrats. Plus, the Republican foreign policy hawks have all the big-spending military contractors to serve in the name of warding off foreign threats to American greatness.

At the end of the day, when the actual 2018 federal fiscal budget gets passed by Congress and signed by the president, it will no doubt contain fewer of the discretionary spending cuts than proposed in Trump’s blueprint. Other than adding whatever “repeal and reform” emerges out of the contest between ObamaCare and TrumpCare (or RyanCare), the “entitlement” portion of the federal government’s budget will remain untouched.

Challenging the Entitlement Premises

The fact is America is continuing to move in the long-run direction of fiscal unsustainability. The supposed untouchability of the “entitlement” segment of the federal budget will have to be made touchable. Nearly 90 years ago, in 1930, the famous “Austrian” economist, Ludwig von Mises, said to an audience of Viennese industrialists during an earlier economic crisis:

Whenever there is talk about decreasing public expenditures, the advocates of this fiscal spending policy voice their objection, saying that most of the existing expenditures, as well as the increasing expenditures, are inevitable . . . What exactly does ‘inevitable’ mean in this context?

That the expenditures are based on various laws that have been passed in the past is not an objection if the argument for eliminating these laws is based on their damaging effects on the economy. The metaphorical use of the term ‘inevitable’ is nothing but a haven in which to hide in the face of an inability to comprehend the seriousness of our situation. People do not want to accept that fact that the public budget has to be radically reduced.”

If there is any chance of stopping, reversing and repealing the welfare state, the entitlement language in political discourse has to be challenged. “Entitlement” presumes a right to something by some in the society, which in the modern redistributive mindset equally presumes an obligation to others to provide it.

It is essential to emphasize and explain the dollars and cents of the fiscal unsustainability of the entitlement society. And there are certainly a sufficient number of historical examples to point to for demonstration that the welfare state can go down the road to societal ruin.

In addition, the entitlement mindset must be confronted with an articulate and reasoned defense of individual liberty, based on a philosophy of individual rights to life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. Plus, the ethics of liberty must be shown to be inseparable from the idea of peaceful and voluntary association among people in all facets of life, and that government’s role is to secure and protect such liberty and individual rights, not to abridge and violate them.

If this is not done, and done successfully, the road to fiscal failure and paternalistic serfdom may be impossible from which to exit.

Richard M. Ebeling

Richard M. Ebeling is BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. He was president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) from 2003 to 2008.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Vault 7 Confirms, You’re Right to Be Paranoid

Vault 7 Confirms, You're Right to Be Paranoid

On March 7, the transparency/disclosure activists at Wikileaks began releasing a series of documents titled “Vault 7.” According to the New York Times, Vault 7 consists of “thousands of pages describing sophisticated software tools and techniques used by the [US Central Intelligence Agency] to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions.”

Stranger Than Fiction

If the documents are authentic — and WikiLeaks has a sterling reputation when it comes to document authenticity — every paranoid thriller you’ve ever watched or read was too timid in describing a hypothetical Surveillance State. Even the telescreens and random audio bugs of George Orwell’s 1984 don’t come close to the reality of the CIA’s surveillance operations.

In theory, the CIA doesn’t spy on Americans in America. In fact, digital traffic pays no heed to national borders, and the tools and tactics described have almost certainly been made available to, or independently developed by, other US surveillance agencies, not to mention foreign governments and non-government actors.

Bottom line: You should accept the possibility that for the last several years anything you’ve done on, or in the presence of, a device that can connect to the Internet was observed, monitored, and archived as accessible data.

Paranoid? Yes. But the paranoia is justified.

Even if “they”  — the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, some random group of credit card thieves or voyeurs or whatever — aren’t out to get you in particular, they consider your personal privacy a technical obstacle to overcome, not a value to respect.

All the Skeletons

If you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to fear? Everyone has something to hide. Somewhere, sometime, you’ve said or done something you regret or wouldn’t want the world to know. And you probably said or did it within a few feet of your smartphone, your laptop, or your Internet-connected television. Maybe nobody was listening or watching. Or maybe someone was. The only plausible conclusion from the Vault 7 disclosures is that you should assume the latter.

Vault 7 confirms that as a State entity, the CIA answers to philosopher Anthony de Jasay’s description of the State as such. Just as a firm acts to maximize profits, the State and its arms act to maximize their own discretionary power. Even if it doesn’t do some particular thing, it requires the option, the ability to do that thing. It seeks omnipotence.

The abuses of our privacy implied by the WikiLeaks dump aren’t an aberration. They’re the norm. They’re what government does.

Reprinted from Libertarian Institute.

Thomas Knapp

Thomas L. Knapp, aka KN@PPSTER, is Director and Senior News Analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism and publisher of Rational Review News Digest. He lives and works in north central Florida.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Leftists Understand Economics When it Suits Them

Leftists Understand Economics When it Suits Them

Leftists Understand Economics When it Suits Them

What’s the right way to define good tax policy? There are several possible answers to that question, including the all-important observation that the goal should be to only collect the amount of revenue needed to finance the legitimate functions of government and not one penny above that amount.

But what if we want a more targeted definition? A simple principle to shape our understanding of tax policy?

I’m partial to what I wrote last year.

…the essential insight of supply-side economics…when you tax something, you get less of it.

I’m not claiming this is my idea, by the way. It’s been around for a long time.

Indeed, it’s rumored that Reagan shared a version of this wisdom.

I don’t know if the Gipper actually said those exact words, but his grasp of tax policy was very impressive. And the changes he made led to very good results, even if folks on the left still refuse to believe the IRS data showing that Reagan’s lower tax rates on the rich generated more revenue.

In any event, our friends on the nanny-state left actually understand this principle when it suits their purposes. They propose sugar taxes, soda taxes, carbon taxes, housing taxes, tanning taxes, tobacco taxes, and even “adult entertainment” taxes with the explicit goal of using the tax code to reduce the consumption of things they don’t like.

I don’t like the idea of government trying to dictate what people do with their own money, but these so-called sin taxes generally are successful because supply-siders are right about taxes impacting incentives.

The Belarusian Idleness Tax

But that doesn’t mean it’s always popular when statist governments impose such policies. At least not in Belarus, according to a story from RFERL.

Protests over a new tax aimed at reducing social welfare spread beyond the Belarusian capital, as thousands took to the streets in Homel and other towns. Along with similar protests two days earlier in Minsk, the February 19 demonstrations were some of the largest in the country in years. In Homel, near the border with Russia, at least 1,000 people marched and chanted slogans against the measure, known as the “Law Against Social Parasites.”

But what are “social parasites” and what does the law do?

…the law…requires people who were employed fewer than 183 days in a calendar year to pay a tax of about $200. …The measure is aimed at combating what President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has called “social parasitism.”

For what it’s worth, the Washington Post reports that the government had to back down.

The protesters won. On Thursday, Lukashenko announced that he won’t enforce the measure this year, though he’s not scrapping it. “We will not collect this money for 2016 from those who were meant to pay it,” he told the state news agency Belta. Those who have already paid will get a rebate if they get a job this year. The law, signed into effect in 2015, is reminiscent of Soviet-era crackdowns against the jobless, who undermined the state’s portrayal of a “workers’ paradise.”

That’s good news.

If people can somehow survive without working (assuming they’re not mooching off taxpayers, which is something that should be discouraged), more power to them. It’s not the life I would want, but it’s not the role of government to tax them if they don’t work. Or if they simply choose to work 182 days per year.

Mr. Lukashenko should concentrate instead on taking the heavy foot of government off the neck of his people. According to the most-recent Index of Economic Freedom, Belarus is only ranked #104, with especially weak scores for “rule of law” and “open markets.”

Given the low freedom ranking for Belarus, I suspect the real parasites in that country (just like in the U.S.) are the various interest groups that are feeding from the government trough.

If Mr. Lukashenko turned his country into a Slavic version of Hong Kong with free markets and small government, people will be clamoring to work. But I’m not holding my breath expecting that to happen.

P.S. While government shouldn’t tax people for not working, it’s also a bad idea to subsidize them for not working. Indeed, there’s even a version of the Laffer Curve for poverty and redistribution.

P.P.S. On an amusing note, here’s the satirical British video on killing the poor instead of taxing them.

Republished from International Liberty.

Daniel J. Mitchell

Daniel J. Mitchell is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in fiscal policy, particularly tax reform, international tax competition, and the economic burden of government spending. He also serves on the editorial board of the Cayman Financial Review.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

D.C. Circuit Court Issues Dangerous Decision for Cybersecurity: Ethiopia is Free to Spy on Americans in Their Own Homes

D.C. Circuit Court Issues Dangerous Decision for Cybersecurity: Ethiopia is Free to Spy on Americans in Their Own Homes

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today held that foreign governments are free to spy on, injure, or even kill Americans in their own homes--so long as they do so by remote control. The decision comes in a case called Kidane v. Ethiopia, which we filed in February 2014.

Our client, who goes by the pseudonym Mr. Kidane, is a U.S. citizen who was born in Ethiopia and has lived here for over 30 years. In 2012 through 2013, his family home computer was attacked by malware that captured and then sent his every keystroke and Skype call to a server controlled by the Ethiopian government, likely in response to his political activity in favor of democratic reforms in Ethiopia. In a stunningly dangerous decision today, the D.C. Circuit ruled that Mr. Kidane had no legal remedy against Ethiopia for this attack, despite the fact that he was wiretapped at home in Maryland. The court held that, because the Ethiopian government hatched its plan in Ethiopia and its agents launched the attack that occurred in Maryland from outside the U.S., a law called the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) prevented U.S. courts from even hearing the case.

The decision is extremely dangerous for cybersecurity. Under it, you have no recourse under law if a foreign government that hacks into your car and drives it off the road, targets you for a drone strike, or even sends a virus to your pacemaker, as long as the government planned the attack on foreign soil. It flies in the face of the idea that Americans should always be safe in their homes, and that safety should continue even if they speak out against foreign government activity abroad.  

Factual background

Mr. Kidane discovered traces of state-sponsored malware called FinSpy, a sophisticated spyware product which its maker claims is sold exclusively to governments and law enforcement, on his laptop at his home in suburban Maryland. A forensic examination of his computer showed that the Ethiopian government had been recording Mr. Kidane’s Skype calls, as well as monitoring his (and his family’s) web and email usage. The spyware was launched when Kidane opened an attachment in an email. The spying began at his home in Maryland.

The spyware then reported everything it captured back to a command and control server in Ethiopia, owned and controlled by the Ethiopian government. The infection was active from October 2012 through March 2013, and was stopped just days after researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab released a report exposing Ethiopia's use of FinSpy. The report specifically referenced the very IP address of the Ethiopian government server responsible for the command and control of the spyware on Mr. Kidane’s laptop.

We strenuously disagree with the D.C. Circuit’s opinion in this case. Foreign governments should not be immune from suit for injuring Americans in their own homes and Americans should be as safe from remote controlled, malware, or robot attacks as they are from human agents. The FSIA does not require the courts to close their doors to Americans who are attacked, and the court’s strained reading of the law is just wrong. Worse still, according to the court, so long as the foreign government formed even the smallest bit of its tortious intent abroad, it’s immune from suit. We are evaluating our options for challenging this ruling.

Source: D.C. Circuit Court Issues Dangerous Decision for Cybersecurity: Ethiopia is Free to Spy on Americans in Their Own Homes | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Andrew Jackson Is a Poor Presidential Role Model

Andrew Jackson Is a Poor Presidential Role Model

Donald Trump added a portrait of Andrew Jackson to the White House Oval Office shortly after his inauguration. Why Jackson?

Well, Jackson’s defeat of incumbent John Quincy Adams in the 1828 election was the first great US political upset in which an anti-establishment candidate defeated an insider. This comparison no doubt pleases the man who kept Hillary Clinton from the White House.

Like Trump, Jackson also styled himself as a champion of the “common man,” and that’s a distinction that somehow follows him to this day. But does Jackson deserve to be remembered so fondly as the one who put power in the hands of the people? Let’s break down some of his greatest hits.

• Egalitarian Reforms. The Jacksonian Era was typified by a reforming zeal, including movements for the abolition of slavery and the rights of women. While these movements might have used egalitarian Jacksonian rhetoric, they had little to do with the real Andrew Jackson, who both owned slaves and subscribed to an already outdated cult of masculinity preoccupied with, among other things, defending public female virtue. (The man loved a good duel.)
• American Indian Removal. Jackson was the architect of the compulsory removal of Native Americans from their legal homes. This was a national plan for ethnic cleansing, coupled with the forcible redistribution of property from its rightful owners.
• Checks and Balances. Jackson’s Indian removal policy also ignored the system of checks and balances inherent in the federal system, directly defying the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1831 case Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia. Jackson did, however, stop short of calling Chief Justice John Marshall a “so-called judge.”
• The National Bank. The federal government had overreached its powers in creating the Second National Bank, and Jackson killed that institution. His dedication to defeating the bank, however, was driven by personal animosity more than sound intellectual foundations. (It wasn’t enough for Jackson’s enemies to lose; they had to be destroyed, and he used his power as president to wreak that destruction.) Jackson overstepped his own constitutional authority in his attack, and fighting one wrong with another is hardly great policy.
• State Nullification. Similarly, Jackson’s action against state nullification, when South Carolina sought to invalidate the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 on the grounds that they were unconstitutional, seems to have been less about principle than about his personal split with his former vice president, John C. Calhoun. Jackson’s stance against states’ rights aided the evolution of a powerful national government based on vigorous military suppression, a trademark of the Jacksonian presidency.
• Spoils System. Jackson’s embrace of the spoils system, rewarding his supporters (or cronies) with political positions, further concentrated and entrenched his and later presidents’ executive power.

What is the takeaway here? Rather than decentralizing power or returning it to the people, Jackson magnified his own. As a matter of fact, he claimed that he embodied the people in the same way that Louis XIV believed that he was France, earning Jackson the title “King Andrew I” from his opponents.

In short, for those who support liberty, Trump has chosen a troubling model for his presidency.

This makes Thomas Jefferson’s words to Daniel Webster in 1824 all the more important to remember:

I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place. He has had very little respect for laws and constitutions, and is, in fact, an able military chief.  His passions are terrible. When I was President of the Senate, he was Senator; and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage. His passions are, no doubt, cooler now; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man.

Republished from Learn Liberty.

Amy Sturgis

Amy H. Sturgis earned her Ph.D. in intellectual history from Vanderbilt University, specializes in Science Fiction/Fantasy and Native American Studies, and teaches at Lenoir-Rhyne University.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.