Month: July 2018

Vietnam Central Bank Confirms It Stands Ready To Maintain Firm Dong

Time and time again, the central banks of the Emerging Markets proclaim their intent to “preserve stability” or promise to “intervene aggressively” to scare speculators away from their plunging currencies and hold back the tide of capital outflows.

However, when the global macro trend changes (Fed tightening accelerating and balance sheet normalization), there seems nothing the local Central Banks can do to save their precious currency (under who’s strength they basked as The Fed puked dollars to the world to save us all for years) as the tsunami of hot capital exoduses faster than it leaked in.

 

Just ask the Argentines…(who blew a billion dollars on Friday… for nothing)

But that never stops them trying and the latest is Vietnam, where the State Bank has stated its willing to sell dollars at lower price than its current price to calm monetary market and maintain macro-economic stability, according to posting on central bank’s website, citing Pham Thanh Ha, head of its monetary policy department.

Ha said the central bank will closely watch dollar supply and demand in the local market and the development of international markets, ready to flexibly set suitable daily reference rates for VND-USD exchange rates.

And one glance at the chart above shows they have lost control. Nevertheless, Ha claims that the central bank will also take into account impacts from possible US Fed rate hike and China-US trade tension to use other monetary tools and measures to keep local market stable.

Once again the same playbook – remember Argentina threatening “other monetary tools and measures” as if that was somehow the bogeyman that would spook capital flows to stop.

So far that hasn’t worked has it?

 

 

 

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Ron Paul Slams ‘Cultural Marxism’ with a Quickly Deleted Bigoted Cartoon

This morning the Facebook page of Ron Paul, former Republican congressman and presidential candidate (and also former Libertarian Party presidential nominee), ran a post attacking “cultural Marxism.” The post made wide national news (see coverage in The Daily Beast, Newsweek, and the New Republic) because it was initially illustrated by a cartoon containing offensive stereotypes of a Jew, a black, an Asian, and a Hispanic punching out Uncle Sam with the hammer-and-sickled fist of cultural Marxism. The same picture appeared in a Ron Paul tweet linking to the Facebook post.

The image was quickly replaced on Facebook with a generic “no political correctness” cartoon, and the tweet was deleted. Paul’s Twitter feed, in a tweet actually signed with Paul’s name, later said that “Earlier today a staff member inadvertently posted an offensive cartoon on my social media. I do not make my own social media posts and when I discovered the mistake it was immediately deleted.”

Paul has a history of underlings writing under his name saying things hostile and prejudicial toward blacks and gays. (See this 2008 Reason account of the earlier “Ron Paul newsletter” controversy for more.) Paul has not yet responded to my request for comment about whether the staffer responsible for attaching that cartoon is being discplined in any way.

Ron Paul the presidential candidate, to his credit, didn’t say much (I never heard anything, but I didn’t hear everything) complaining about “what has become of American culture” or bringing up the bugaboo of “cultural Marxism,” a vague conspiratorial theory that roughly claims that various changes in Western cultural character and traditions over the past 70 years are so are the deliberate result of Marxists’ attempts to bring down liberty and impose communism.

Instead of that sort of right-wing culture-war nonsense, presidential candidate Paul spoke of the human tragedies of military empire, the economic disruptions of federal monetary policy, and the unjust foolishness of restricting free choices that don’t directly harm others, from drug use to raw milk consumption. That Ron Paul celebrated how political liberty can unify us and make us the best we could be, as individuals and as a nation.

When Paul began worrying about “cultural Marxism” in the context of the NFL players taking the knee rather than standing for the national anthem, he went far astray from any opinion rooted in respect for individual liberty. Anyone who took Paul’s own just critique of the crimes of the U.S. government both abroad and at home should have enthusiastically joined the football players in refusing ritualized obeisance to the U.S. flag.

Any public figure can have interests that go beyond political liberty, but Paul in his two GOP presidential runs understood that American needed a national politician running on political liberty, its ethical propriety, its wealth-creating powers, and its power to bring us together.

Paul’s post originally illustrated by the cartoon lays bare how inappropriate and counterproductive worrying about “cultural Marxism” is if liberty is your concern. The Facebook post said that for Marxists:

Their original argument of workers being *exploited* by capitalists, didn’t sell. It’s obviously not the case.

So Marxists just shifted their “exploitation” schtick to culture:
— women exploited by men
— gays exploited by heterosexuals
— The old exploited by the young — and vice-versa
— This list goes on and on.

Anything that is true is to be twisted like a pretzel — to the point where people can’t tell what is true anymore.

How do you think they’re doing?

Had enough yet?

Then don’t be afraid to stand up for truth, and speak it!

Otherwise, history can most definitely repeat itself.

And the history of Socialism is as nasty and brutish as it gets. Nothing compares to it in terms of human suffering.

Paul is correct that socialism in political and economic practice caused enormous human suffering of a sort its current proponents like to ignore. But what leads up to that conclusion in that barely-argued post has nothing to do with socialism. Indeed, raising a stink about these supposed depredations of “cultural Marxism” is in most contexts anti-liberty.

Both legally and culturally, American and western culture absolutely have treated women and homosexuals unfairly and unjustly, both in law and in common cultural practice. Pointing that out and fighting it is in fact fighting for both political and personal liberty, not “Marxism.” (While I can guess what he’s grousing about with the lines about women and gays, I’m not even sure how to interpret the “old exploited by the young” part.)

That some people are unhappy with modern relationship, sexual, gender, and ethnic mores and policies is a fact, but that unhappiness is not rooted in opposition to “Marxism” or defense of liberty. The truth is just the opposite. Western law customarily treated women and gays unjustly. To the extent that that’s changed, it is pro-liberty and irrelevant to Marxism as a political and economic doctrine.

To the extent that law and culture treats women and gays more equally and is less tolerant of abuses of them, even private ones, that’s a better culture, one more in line with the benefits of civilization—benefits that arise, as Paul the presidential candidate understood, from a general spirit of tolerance and living and letting live as long as one’s life or justly held property isn’t encroached upon. As Paul said on an October 2016 episode of his online TV series (ironically, one about “cultural Marxism”): “Liberty means allowing [everybody] to make personal choices, personal social relationship, personal sexual choices, personal economic choices.” That, he said, should not be a “threat”; it should “bring people together.”

The mentality behind not just that cartoon, but the essay it illustrated, is the opposite of the attitude Paul expressed correctly in 2016.

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Senators Demand an Explanation After the F-35 Savings Estimate Is Off By $600 Million

Qian Baihua/SIPA ASIA/SIPA/NewscomThe Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office is facing scrutiny from Congress after reports of its purported savings were found to be more than a little inflated. The Office had claimed that it would be saving over a $1 billion in parts by buying in bulk, as Bloomberg reports:

Program office officials sought and won congressional approval last year to spend $661 million as a down payment on parts for 207 U.S. aircraft to be purchased in 2019 and 2020. The pitch was that this would save $1.2 billion for the U.S. and allies that buy the [F-35] fighter, split evenly.

The savings were supposedly verified by in-house evaluators at the Department of Defense (DOD). However, DOD’s own Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation (CAPE) found the number to be much smaller in a report requested by Sen. John McCain (R–Ariz.), who serves as chair on the Senate Armed Services Committee. In fact, the new savings estimate comes out to about $600 million.

After learning of the discrepancy, the Senate Appropriations Committee gave the F-35 program 30 days to explain the hundreds of millions in lost savings.

“The difference between the levels of projected savings is a function of programmatic changes and differing cost model assumptions,” argued program spokesperson Joe DellaVedova.

The F-35 program has long been criticized for its massive cost overruns. In 2011, The Atlantic once criticized a plan to purchase 2,443 of the fighter jets at $382 billion a pop (a price tag totalling $1 trillion) as being more expensive than the GDP of Australia.

Since that time, costs for the program have only risen higher and deadlines have only been pushed back.

In a report about the use of illegal Chinese parts in the aircraft’s construction, Reason‘s Nick Gillespie gives some perspective on the pricey project:

Oh yeah, and while we wait for the GAO report to hit the newsstands, suck on this: The United States already accounts for fully 40 percent of the planet’s spending on military and defense spending rose by 80 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars between 2001 and 2012. And somewhere in Arizona is a military aircraft graveyard packed with over $35 billion (with a b!) in never-used and nearly-new planes.

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How To Create Your Own Personal Gold Standard And Currency Reserve

Via The Daily Bell,

Did you know that for 99.2% of recorded human history, money was backed by a gold standard?

And only for the last 47 years has the world largely moved away from the gold standard.

It is easy to feel like we are on top of the world in 2018. Technology has never been better or more easily accessible. The standard of living is rapidly rising.

But does that mean we should dispense with 5,000 years of monetary policy which led us to where we are today?

Okay, but how do we get the financial system back on the gold standard?

That seems like a monumental task, which would require a critical mass of activists, a new strain of politician, and wresting control from the Federal Reserve… Good luck.

The cool thing is that the individual is more empowered than ever. So you don’t have to get Big Brother to give you a gold standard. You can create your own personal gold reserve. And no, you don’t have to put anything on the blockchain.

How to Create Your Own Gold Standard

A new guide from Sovereignman.com looks at the history of the gold standard.

Throughout history, paper money was often a stand-in for gold. You could bring the paper to a bank, and get physical gold in return.

Well, right now that is obviously not the case. Dollars are not pegged to anything, and every year over 2% of the value of your savings is robbed through inflation.

So why not just transfer some dollars into gold on your own volition? It is easy to transfer them back into U.S. dollars–or any other currency–if you ever need to. But meanwhile, 2.8% of your wealth will not be siphoned off by the U.S. government. Voila, your own personal gold reserve!

You’ll want to keep some gold in a robust safe on your property. That protects you against sudden market shocks. Even if the dollar hyper-inflates to become worthless–like the Venezuelan Bolivar–gold has a 5,000-year history that says almost anyone on earth will accept it as a medium for trade.

But your safe won’t protect you against the horde of pillagers most likely to take your stuff–the government.

So Sovereign Man tips readers off to another method of owning physical gold, out of the reach of your government, and frivolous litigants.

In short, it’s a good idea to have both coins and bullion.

But for asset protection purposes, for the ability to hedge against what might happen in your country, I like to send a portion of my savings overseas, to a secure storage facility, in the form of bullion bars.

It’s legal, and it keeps a portion of those cash savings safe and secure. The facility I like best is in Singapore — to me, they have the best, most well thought out security system in the world… and they also let you do peer-to-peer lending or borrowing based on gold instead of on paper (fiat) currencies.

We cover this storage facility and their precious metals based peer-to-peer lending platform in more detail on page 21 of our perfect plan B guide.

Sovereign Man’s Perfect Plan B Guide is free, by the way. It takes you through the best ways to hedge against collapsing markets and insane governments. Truly a must for anyone who wants to live as a free individual, insulated from the whims of politicians and their collectivist hordes.

The company they discuss has some interesting ways to make your gold standard work for you.

If you buy gold, and have it stored in their vaults, you have the option of borrowing against that gold at any time. So say you need a loan–you can get a good rate because your physical gold is your security. Then you can pay it back without having to sell your gold.

Or, you could be the one lending the money and earn more interest than you will get in any bank. It is a peer to peer system. And again, any money you lend is backed by the borrower’s gold. That means little risk–if they default, you get their gold. And the company facilitates it all. Nothing is risk-free, but this is pretty close.

Diversify Your Currencies

U.S. fiat dollars are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government… if that means anything to you. This is a great currency if you think nothing bad will ever happen; if you don’t expect inflation to skyrocket from all the money that has been printed; and if you aren’t concerned about the $21 trillion of debt the United States carries, not counting unfunded liabilities.

The value of a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is based on the agreement of people who use it as a medium of exchnge. Plus there are a limited number of Bitcoin tokens available which adds the scarcity aspect. The secure technology means conterfeiting is less of a concern, and transferring funds is much easier and quicker than using a bank. Cryptocurrencies are helping people in Venezuela work online to raise enough money to pay for their ticket out. So cryptocurrencies are certainly useful for keeping some of your wealth insulated from the effects of collapsing economies, and sticky government fingers.

Gold’s value is mostly based on scarcity and agreement that it is worth something as well. This is the classic hedge currency. It is pretty unlikely that gold becomes worthless, and similar things can be said for silver.

It makes sense to own all sorts of different currencies. Have some United States dollars, but don’t keep them all in the bank. Keep enough in cash for a few months in case something goes wrong–for instance mass power outages from a natural disaster like we saw last year.

Physical cash can also help you if there is a bank run like what happened in Cypress. Banks were shut down for an extended holiday, and no one could get more than €100 from the ATM. Depositors with more than €100,000 had everything above that confiscated and converted in bank stock, which obviously plummetted.

This is also an example of why it makes sense to keep some money in a foreign bank account. Then add another layer of protection by keeping some money in a foreign currency. Sovereignman recommends Hong Kong because it is relatively easy for a foreigner to open a bank account in Hong Kong and transfer funds from U.S. Dollars to Hong Kong Dollars.

Since 1983, the Hong Kong dollar (HKD) has been “pegged” to the US dollar at 7.8, +/- a very narrow range.

This means that, for US dollar investors, you could deposit US dollars at a bank in Hong Kong, and then convert those US dollars into Hong Kong dollars (and back) at minimal cost.

Holding Hong Kong dollars makes a lot of sense.

If the US dollar goes through a period of strength, the Hong Kong dollar will mirror that strength.

But if there’s ever a major loss of confidence in the US economy and the US dollar starts to depreciate rapidly, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (country’s central bank) could simply “de-peg” and let the Hong Kong dollar appreciate versus US dollar — thereby preserving the purchasing power of your savings.

So, holding Hong Kong dollars gives you ALL of the benefits of holding US dollars, but with free downside protection in the event of any major US financial catastrophe.

An ultimate diverse holding of currency will include:

  1. Your typical U.S. account from where you will pay bills, and accept deposits.

  2. A badass home safe, where you will keep enough cash for a few months of expenses, along with an equivalent amount of gold and silver.

  3. Physical gold and silver in an offshore account, like the company in Singapore.

  4. A foreign bank account–perhaps in Hong Kong–with both U.S. Dollars and a foreign currency.

  5. An amount of cryptocurrencies that you can afford to lose, focusing on tokens that are most widely accepted and easy to use.

  6. And finally, with any savings left over, you can earn more interest than a U.S. savings account by putting money into very short-term treasury bills that pay 2% interest. Your funds become available every 28 days if you need them. This way you are at least not suffering the full blow of inflation with only a .02% interest rate cushion at a typical bank.

But you can’t eat any of these things.

So if you really want to have a backup plan for if shit hits the fan, check out our list of the top 5 off the grid currencies.

These are usable currencies, so if you can’t trade them, they are still valuable. And they can all be used without electricity.

The good news is they are all relatively cheap to stock up on now but could be worth a lot more if society melts down, even for just a few weeks afer a storm, as we saw last year.

You don’t have to play by the rules of the corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and brainwashed peers.

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Iran Accuses US Of Docking Chemical Weapons-Laden Ship In Persian Gulf

Multiple Russian and Middle East news sources are reporting new accusations by the Iranian military that that a US ship carrying chemical weapons has recently anchored in the Persian Gulf and in engaged in a “dangerous plot”, though not naming the particular “Gulf state” territorial waters at which the ship docked. 

The accusation comes just as a major seven week US military exercise, Operation Nautical Horizon, has concluded in the Persian Gulf which involved the same military transport ship that decommissioned Syria’s declared chemical weapons stockpiles. 

MV Cape Ray in the Persian Gulf during Operation Nautical Horizon, June 24, 2018. Image source: Stars and Stripes 

Iran’s Press TV reported that senior Iranian military spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said the US Navy’s MV Cape Ray vessel had docked at the coast of one of the Persian Gulf Arab countries after recently being escorted into the region by an American warship, and implied further that chemicals carried by the ship could be transferred to US-backed groups in Syria. 

“After suffering consecutive blows by the resistance front, the Americans have now resorted to dangerous ways to continue their presence in Iraq and Syria,” Shekarchi stated, according to Iranian state-run media. 

Press TV further cited the general as saying, “The news proves that chemical attacks in Iraq and Syria have been engineered and led by the Americans,” and that, “The Western countries have used the alleged gas attacks in Syria as a pretext to target military positions inside the Arab country.”

He said: “Checking the records of the US cargo vessel MV Cape Ray revealed that the vessel had been present in the coasts near Iraq and Syria, where the Americans had launched a military aggression under the pretext of the use of chemical weapons by those countries.”

Middle East Monitor, echoing Iranian media reports, explains: “The official stressed that the Iranian army has accurate information on the ship’s characteristics including the number of crew and the chemical substances it carries, adding that Tehran will disclose details and objectives about the ship in the future.”

Thus it appears Iran is preparing to bring formal charges of chemical malfeasance in the region by the US before an international body, similar to an international lawsuit it is reportedly bringing against the US as “founders” of ISIS, based on statements Trump previously made on the campaign trail. 

Though Iranian reports that the Cape Ray vessel could be instrumental in a Syrian “false flag” chemical incident were not accompanied by any level of proof, and must be treated with much skepticism considering there’s a broader propaganda war currently being waged between Iran and the West, the London-based Middle East news site Middle East Monitor noted, “The MarineTraffic website confirmed that the vessel has anchored in the coast of Bahrain and visited the Shuaiba port in Kuwait two days ago.”

Indeed, Stars and Stripes confirmed the presence of the Cape Ray in the Persian Gulf during scheduled military exercises, called Nautical Horizon, which took place for seven weeks and wrapped up in late June. The Cape Ray reportedly participated in a major logistics part of the exercise off Kuwait, and which heavily involved forces from the US base Naval Support Activity Bahrain.

Iranian complaints appear to hinge on the fact that the MV Cape Ray is well-known for its central role in the 2014 destruction of Syria’s declared chemical weapons stockpile, at which time Army engineers outfitted the massive transport ship with Field Deployable Hydrolysis Systems, which broke down a reported 600 metric tons of chemical weapons materials at sea as part of a joint UN-OPCW mission, and as part of a US-Russia deal to decommission Syria’s sarin. 

After the Cape Ray completed its mission of breaking down the chemical precursors to various nerve agents, the remaining raw chemical materials were reportedly incinerated at commercial facilities in the UK and Finland. Thus the ship’s entire purpose in the 2014 mission was first to render the chemical materials unusable, and then to offload the resulting compounds for final destruction as part of a deal that both the US and Russia called a success.

However, the Iranians seem to think the vessel is some kind of permanent chemical weapons transport vehicle, which it is not, though it understandably doesn’t sit well with Tehran that the US conducts regular war games in Iran’s own maritime backyard. 

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Pantera Drummer Vinnie Paul is Dead. Don’t Forget His Role in Ending the Cold War.

It has been over a week since Pantera drummer and American metal heavyweight Vinnie Paul Abbott passed away, and the tributes are still pouring in.

At a Sunday public memorial for Abbott—who died in his sleep at age 54—friends, fans, and a long list of musicians that either influenced or were influenced by Abbott expressed sadness at his passing while sharing personal memories of his life.

My favorite memory of Abbott is the role he and Pantera played in ending the Cold War.

In September 1991, Pantera—alongside fellow rock gods Metallica, AC/DC, and The Black Crowes—held a massive, free “Monsters of Rock” concert at a defunct airfield in Moscow, the heart of a rapidly crumbling Soviet Empire.

“It’s a killer thing we are all here together, and music is the universal language,” belted Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo to roaring approval from a crowd numbering anywhere from 150,000 to 1.6 million. All had turned up that day to hear angry, rebellious music of the kind that was prohibited in the USSR just a few years prior.

Images from the concert are glorious: Pantera guitarist (and Abbott’s brother) “Dimebag” Darrell headbanging along with a shirtless Anselmo; a teeming mass of fans experiencing the fringes of Western culture live and in person for the first time; groups of Soviet policemen impotently struggling to hold back the crowd.

It was a profound cultural moment. It also came at a pivotal time in the USSR’s own history.

Just a month prior, a clique of diehard communist generals had tried to oust liberalizing Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in a failed coup. Two months after the show, Gorbachev announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ushering in not the freedom and democracy many had hoped for, but rather a lost decade of corrupt authoritarianism, political instability, and economic chaos.

A New York Times write-up of the show reports “scattered arrests” from the day as “police officers wearing helmets and wielding truncheons chased after troublemakers and drunken youth who appeared to be well-represented in the crowd.”

“More than 1,000 militiamen were on guard around the stage, and more were hidden in trucks parked farther away,” notes the Times.

Nevertheless, one can also see in Pantera’s 1991 Moscow show the liberating power of culture on full display.

As Reason editors Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie argue in their 2011 book, The Declaration of Independents, the death knell for Soviet communism was not U.S. defense spending or its propping up of friendly third-world dictators. Rather, it was the Eastern Bloc’s irrepressible desire to join the free, prosperous world they saw on the TV show Dallas, or heard about on Velvet Underground records.

Music critic and writer Andrei Orlov made a similar point to the Times, noting that “Monsters of Rock” gave Soviet citizens a chance to openly express a long-repressed love for heavy metal.

“Look at the graffiti in the city,” Orlov said. “AC/DC is written on every wall.”

At a time when serious people wanted to spread freedom at gunpoint, Pantera and Abbott were liberating the youth with heavy riffs.

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A Mexican Town Overthrew Their Local Government And Things Are Going Great

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

The town of Cherán was once plagued by people claiming the right to rule over them and now they live peaceful lives free of violence. After the town of 20,000 people in Mexico decided to take matters into their own hands by kicking out politicians, cops, and criminals, the now completely voluntary society is running great and the people finally have freedom and peace.

Cherán is now run by autonomous groups of armed individuals acting on a voluntary basis, with no one making laws, but no one harming each other either.  Choosing to work together instead of submitting to the authoritarian regime previously claiming ownership over the town and those who reside in it, the people couldn’t be doing better now that they’ve grabbed a firm hold of their freedom.

It sure sounds scary to those unable to imagine a life of true freedom, but the town has been liberated since 2011 and no politician is allowed to come in and begin to control the people.  According to Vice, armed men and women — not police, but members of an autonomous militia — guard every entrance to the town, looking for strangers with contraband. “Contraband” would be considered political propaganda posters of those who claim the right to rule other human beings. Since the town has been free since 2011, there’s no use for politicians or those who want power over others.

For years, the town had been terrorized for years by an organized crime syndicate devoted to illegally logging the surrounding forests. So after mobs drove out the criminals, they disarmed and drove out the corrupt cops who had protected them. Then they banned the politicians. -Vice

Cherán has achieved something unthinkable in Michoacán: a dramatic drop in murder rates, with rates for other serious crimes hovering at nearly zero. For those in Mexico, especially in an election year marred by wanton political murders, Cherán stands as proof that, in the country’s entrenched cycle of violence, the key ingredient to that violence is the state. Remove that ingredient, and it’s possible to start from scratch.  It bears reasoning that when those who claim the right to rule over others are removed from society, and people are left in freedom, they are much better human beings.

When you remove the myth of authority, that some have the right to own others, people freely and cooperatively work together for their best interests. Cherán is evidence that freedom works better than the bold and obvious socialist slavery in Venezuela.  As soon as people begin to realize that their freedom is not at the whims of any other human being, real change and a society based on non-violence and cooperation can thrive. But it’ll take considering the idea of a truly free society rather than putting one’s life into the hands of a master “politician.”

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Will Trump’s Next SCOTUS Pick Be Able To Overturn Roe v. Wade?: Podcast

Last week was a huge week for Supreme Court related news and on today’s Reason Podcast, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, Damon Root (author of 2014’s highly regarded Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court), and I work through the intricacies of Janus v. AFSCME and Carpenter v. United States and assess whether the rulings are wins or losses for liberty (both are wins!). Our regular host, Matt Welch, is on assignment covering the Libertarian Party National Convention in New Orleans.

We discuss whether Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is retiring at the end of the month, was reliably libertarian during his decades on the bench (kind of) and whether his replacement will really be able to overturn Roe v. Wade, which is literally what Donald Trump promised when he was running for president. As a bonus, I put each of the panelists on the spot to say straight up whether they think abortion should be legal and under what circumstances. We also discuss the gruesome murder of five people at Annapolis’s Capital Gazette and ponder if 2018 is starting to look a lot like 1968, the year of Reason’s founding, when there was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air?

When it comes to sharing what we’re reading, listening to, or watching, this week’s recommendations are eclectic as hell and lead into a semi-tense discussion about whether aesthetics and ideology are linked. Suderman gives thumbs up to Kanye West’s latest set of releases; Mangu-Ward admits she’s reading Henry George’s single-tax manifesto Progress and Poverty (it’s for a conference, she says, when asked whether she!); Root, a teenage metalhead, cops to mourning the death of drummer Vinnie Paul by listening to Pantera’s catalog; and I give a rave review to Be More Kind, the new album from libertarian post-punk Brit folkster Frank Turner, whom I properly describe as the Bizarro-world Billy Bragg (the guy has a tattoo of the Sumerian “amagi” and another commemorating the great English Leveller “Freeborn John” Lilburne!).

There’s still time to register for the Reason Media Awards (tickets and more info here), which will be held this year at FreedomFest, the world’s largest annual gathering of libertarians. It takes place in Las Vegas from July 10-14. (Tell them Reason sent you).

Subscribe, rate, and review our podcast at iTunes. Listen at SoundCloud below:

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

Relevant links from the show:

Janus v. AFSCME : Will Ending Mandatory Dues Kill Public-Sector Unions?: Podcast, Nick Gillespie

Justice Anthony Kennedy Is Retiring and All Hell Is About to Break Loose, Damon Root

Could Sen. Mike Lee Replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court?, Eric Boehm

Kennedy’s Departure Probably Will Give Us a Court More Inclined to Defend Gun Rights, Jacob Sullum

Willett, Bolick, Sykes: Three Great Picks to Replace Anthony Kennedy: Podcast, Nick Gillespie and Damon Root

A Post-Roe World Would Pave the Way for a New Black Market in Abortion Pills, Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to “Travel Ban”, Jonathan Adler

How a New SCOTUS Ruling on Abortion Could Permanently Alter Economic Regulation, Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Delaware’s Odd, Beautiful, Contentious, Private Utopia, Jesse Walker

Don’t miss a single Reason Podcast! (Archive here.)

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Nevada Traffic Deaths Plunge 10% Following Marijuana Legalization

It is the one-year anniversary of recreational marijuana in Nevada – how has the state fared?

Newly published data from the Nevada Department of Public Safety reveals an unexpected finding: traffic deaths in the state have plunged by 10 percent in the first year since recreational marijuana was legalized.

According to a report from NBC Reno, about 310 people died in traffic accidents in Nevada between July 2016 and May 2017. From July 2017 to May 2018 — the first 11-months of legal recreational marijuana — just 277 people died in car crashes across the state. KRNV noted that the Nevada Department of Public Safety was unable to provide data for June.

Marijuana became legal in Nevada on January 01, 2017. The law allows anyone 21 and older to possess marijuana and consume it from a licensed dealer.

Some of the narratives of recreational marijuana spun by opponents were that traffic fatalities and DUI arrests would surge if legalized.

The new results from the Nevada Department of Public Safety were published 4-months after a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which suggested that there was “little evidence” that the legalization of marijuana was responsible for increases in traffic deaths in states that have legalized recreational marijuana.

Researchers at the University of Oregon examined traffic accident in Colorado and Washington after legalization and cross-referenced the data with pre-legalization traffic trends.

They stated, “We find that states that legalized marijuana have not experienced significantly different rates of marijuana- or alcohol-related traffic fatalities relative to their synthetic controls.”

Researchers concluded, “In summary, the similar trajectory of traffic fatalities in Washington and Colorado relative to their synthetic control counterparts yield little evidence that the total rate of traffic fatalities has increased significantly as a consequence of recreational marijuana legalization.”

Further, opponents of marijuana said criminal activity would pick up in the state; however, none of that has occurred, as of yet.

“We haven’t seen a massive increase in any sort of marijuana-related incidents. On the criminality end, that is a huge success,” said Will Adler, Sierra Cannabis Coalition.

Separately, the Nevada Department of Taxation said in the first ten months, the state has exceeded marijuana sales projections for the entire fiscal year. So far Nevadans have spent $433.5 million on medical and recreational marijuana, which has spurred a dramatic rise in tax revenue for local governments.

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Larry Kudlow Says Deficits Are ‘Coming Down Rapidly.’ He’s Wrong.

Larry Kudlow, the director of the White House National Economic Council, told Fox Business on Friday that the federal deficit is “coming down rapidly” thanks to the major tax reform bill passed six months ago.

If only. In fact, projections show that the deficit will continue to rise unless Congress acts to make serious spending cuts or raise significantly more revenue.

Kudlow made his false claim during an interview on Morning with Maria, which was centered on the higher-than-anticipated growth achieved by the Trump administration on the six-month anniversary of the tax bill’s passage. Because of the “enormous amounts of the new tax revenues,” Kudlow said, “the deficit is coming down, and it’s coming down rapidly.”

But according to the CBO’s numbers, the federal deficit for the first eight months of fiscal year (FY) 2018 is $530 billion more than the deficit accrued in the first eight months of FY 2017. The CBO’s forecast from April shows that the deficits will rise from $665 billion to $1.5 trillion by 2028.

Increased economic growth is a good thing, of course, and the famous “Laffer Curve” suggests that lower tax rates could produce higher growth and thus generate more revenue for the government.

But the increased growth generated by tax reform will not cancel out the federal government’s current deficit.

“Not only are deficits not falling rapidly—they aren’t falling at all,” says the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in a fact-check of Kudlow’s comments.

This shouldn’t be news to Kudlow. During the debate over the tax bill last year, there was not a single projection that showed the bill would reduce the deficit over the long term. That includes the Treasury Department’s own analysis of the tax cuts—an analysis that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin promised would show that tax reform could “pay for itself.” Even after accounting for economic growth, the Treasury’s assessment largely agreed with other prominent projections saying the tax cuts would add about $1 trillion to the deficit over a decade after economic growth is included.

And continued growth is not a sure bet. Federal Reserve interest rate hikes will likely put a damper on the booming growth that Kudlow’s argument rests on. Kudlow said Friday that he hoped the Fed would move “very slowly” on their interest rate hikes, a tried and tested recipe for recession.

A trade war could also exert a negative effect on the growth numbers that the current administration has been touting. Tariffs and their responses have cut America’s supply of cheap goods and limited the markets for American goods in foreign countries, which bodes poorly for American businesses, who will probably have to end up laying off workers and cutting production.

If genuine deficit reductions are desired by President Trump and his administration, significant spending cuts are the only conceivable way to achieve this goal. Instead, the Republican-controlled Congress spent this year eliminating spending caps to pass a budget that hikes spending on the military and domestic programs. The Trump administration falsely claimed that the budget would also reduce the deficit.

Reductions to the tax rate are always welcome, but it’s dishonest to pretend, as Kudlow did on Friday, that they are a silver bullet to our nation’s serious fiscal quandary.

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