Myths about the 2016 GOP convention.

The blogosphere and the media are all abuzz about the upcoming 2016 Republican convention. There’s a lot of misconceptions and accusations flying around, and people – even national pundits - obviously have no idea what they’re talking about.

First, a little primer on how the Republican nomination process works.

It starts with a caucus. The caucus is a meeting of people in your voting precinct. This is normally an area with about 2000 households. It’s quite literally the lowest form of grassroots politics there is. The caucus meeting is chaired by the Precinct Committee Officer (PCO), who is a member of the party who is elected by his or her neighbors. You may not recall seeing the PCO on your ballot, which means either that no one ran for the position, or that they ran unopposed. The PCO is a member of your county Republican central committee, and therefore represents you to the party in that capacity. Central committee members may be elected by the county committee to sit on the platform committee or the rules committee, which will draft a platform and convention rules for the party.

Each precinct is allocated a number of seats at the county Republican convention. At the Caucus, attendees elect people from their precinct to represent the precinct at the county convention. The county convention will elect delegates to go to the state convention, and will also vote to pass a county party platform, drafted by the central committee’s rules committee, but subject to amendment on the floor of the county convention.

At the state convention, delegates are divided up by legislative or congressional districts, and they elect delegates from among their number to go to the national convention, where they will cast their votes for the presidential nominee.

Once a state has elected its slate of delegates, they will elect members to sit on the national rules committee, which will draft the rules for the upcoming national election; and the national platform committee, which will draft the platform to be presented to the national convention for adoption.

At the same time, many states also hold a primary, where the general voting populace cast votes for their preferred presidential candidate. Each state’s Republican committee has its own set of rules for how the primary results are to be applied, if they’re to be applied, and in what proportions. Many states have passed laws about the primaries and how they apply to the parties, but these are of questionable legal standing, and have not been challenged in court. The premise is that the Republican party is a private club, and may select its nominee however it chooses. That being said, political parties are legal entities, with bylaws. Bylaws are enforceable by the courts, and may not be violated on a whim.

Here’s what happens at the national convention. Conventions operate under Robert’s Rules of order. This requires a parliamentarian who is well versed in these law to adjudicate when someone questions the actions of the convention under the rules. Failure to follow Robert’s rules of order in a convention can lead to legal action, and the result of the convention being overturned by the courts, which no one wants. For this reason, convention managers scrupulously observe Robert’s rules.

The first order of business at any convention is to elect a chairman. The convention will be called to order by the chairman pro tem, who acts as chairman until a permanent chairman is seated. The chairman is nominated from the floor, and the body of delegates votes for their preferred nominee.  The winner takes charge of the convention.

The convention cannot proceed until the rules are adopted. The rules are drafted before the convention by the rules committee, who are the delegates from each state elected to sit on this committee. The rules are published to the convention delegates prior to the convention, so they are familiar with them. When the motion is made to adopt the rules, motions may be placed before the body to amend the rules, if someone doesn’t like what the committee presented. The amendments are debated, and voted upon. If the amendments pass, they become part of the rules which are then voted on to pass by the body at large. Only when this is complete does the convention get to begin the process of electing the presidential nominee.

Myth: Cruz is stealing delegates.
One does not “steal” delegates. Delegates are selected through a process of caucus and conventions. The bodies that elect these delegates know the delegate’s preferences when they vote on them. The Cruz campaign understands this and has been doing an excellent job of getting their supporters to the caucuses, and promoting their delegates through the system, ahead of the largely uninformed and amateurish efforts of the Trump supporters, many of whom have never been involved in politics and have no idea how the system works.

Myth: The person with the most delegates going into the convention should be the nominee.
The Republican rules require that the nominee be selected by a majority vote, which is defined as 50% +1. If no candidate has met this threshold going into the convention, voting will continue until one candidate has met the threshold.

This plays into Cruz’s hands, because if Trump enters the convention with less than 1237, the first round of balloting will be inconclusive. After the first round, delegates are no longer bound by the results of their state primaries. This is critical. They essentially become free agents, and can vote for whoever they want. Many delegates who are bound by their primaries to vote for Trump in the first round are actually Cruz supporters. There are also the delegates for other candidates who will likely break hard for Cruz over Trump when their candidate is no longer viable. Trump is extremely unlikely to pick up additional delegates once the convention begins.

Myth: The “Establishment” chooses the nominee

This isn’t so much a myth as it is non-applicable. The Republican Establishment has a history of supporting candidates in the nomination process well before the primaries begin. This support is behind the scenes, but organizations, PACs, and soft money flowing to these candidates give them a significant edge. By the time the National convention begins, they normally have the majority of delegates by virtue of the advantages they enjoyed by the party support throughout the process, and their delegate base will ratify whatever the party bosses want.

That’s not going to happen this year. Jeb Bush was the establishment favorite, but crashed and burned, because the Establishment just hasn’t figured out that the country will not tolerate another Bush in the White House. This year’s convention will primarily be Trump and Cruz delegates, and neither group has any love for the establishment. Basically, the Establishment party bosses will try to get their way, and the Trump/Cruz delegates will laugh at them and then continue on with their business.

Keep in mind that many Bound Trump delegates are actually Cruz supporters. They may be bound in their vote for the presidential nominee, but in all other votes, like for chairman, for adoption of the rules, etc, they will vote with the Cruz camp. Butter him up, Trump is toast.

Most people haven’t fathomed how huge this is going to be. Who will sit on the rules committees? Trump and Cruz delegates. Who will elect the convention chairman? Trump and Cruz delegates. Any bets on whether the chairman is a Cruz supporter? The role of the establishment in this convention will be to sit on the sidelines and sell concessions.

Myth: Karl Rove will parachute in a white hat like Paul Ryan to be the nominee.
And when he does, as I stated before, the Trump and Cruz delegations will laugh their asses off and tell Rove to piss up a rope. The convention belongs to the delegates.

Myth: Cruz will be ineligible because of rule 40.

In the 2012 convention the qualification rule (rule 40) was amended from the floor to require that a candidate get a majority of delegates from at least eight states to be qualified to be on the ballot. This was done to prevent Ron Paul from speaking at the convention. It was political hardball, and actually completely unnecessary. 

Now the rule is a majority of delegates. Not a majority of the vote, and not a plurality of delegates (where you might have more but didn’t reach 50%+1). Rule 40 applied to the 2012 convention and to the 2014 convention (off year conventions get very little publicity). This rule has absolutely no authority on the 2016 convention until it’s adopted by the body at the beginning of the convention. It must be (re)drafted in the rules committee (which will have a majority of Cruz sympathizers), and it will be subject to amendment from the floor before adoption (From a body that has a majority of Cruz sympathizers and people who just don’t like Trump). This rule as it stands will not make it to the adoption, and will be amended to allow Cruz to qualify – although in all likelihood Kasitch will be shut out.

So let’s review:

No one is going to rewrite the rules to steal the nomination from Trump, since Trump delegates will be seated at the rules committees and may make amendments from the floor.

No one is going to introduce a dark horse candidate at the last minute and sweep the nomination. Not with a bunch of pissed off Cruz and Trump delegates basically running the convention from the chairman on down.

Cruz is not stealing any delegates. He’s pursuing the nomination under the well-published rules of the nomination process. The fact that neither Trump nor his advisors apparently bothered to read and understand these rules is indicative of his lack of qualifications to be president. Last week Republican party chairman took Trump into a closed door meeting and apparently explained the rules to him, and told him to shut up and quit threatening legal action, because it was all fair, square and above board. Trump, properly chastised, came out of the meeting a changed man, and hasn’t made a peep about threatening legal action since then. If you’re going to play the game it helps to know the rules.

The Establishment doesn’t run the convention, the delegates do. It’s always been this way, but it didn’t seem like it because usually the convention is packed with establishment sympathizers.

So, if Trump doesn’t secure 1237 delegates by the end of the primary season, the first round of balloting, where delegates are bound, will be inconclusive. After that, delegates are released. Also-ran delegates will be able to choose between Cruz and Trump, and you bet they’re going to go hard for Cruz. Many Trump delegates will defect to Cruz, because they were selected by conventions, not by primaries. Cruz will win handily on the second ballot, and will go on to beat Hillary like a drum, embarrassing her in debate after debate, and will go down in history as the greatest president the country ever had, pulling us back to the firm footing of the constitution from the brink of social and economic collapse.

A dust-up in SW Washington.

To set the stage, here in Southwest Washington we have a Republican representative in a fairly evenly split district.  Jaime Herrera Beutler (JHB) was a Republican operative who was politically connected at the state and federal levels and was rewarded by the Party's support when she ran for congress when incumbent Brian Baird vacated his seat.

Congresswoman Beutler makes a great deal out of being a conservative, but votes as a slightly right of center centrist on most issues.  A creature of the establishment Republican Party, she most often votes the party line along with centrist Appeaser of the House John Boehner.

Earlier in January this year, the county Republican Party Precinct Committee officers, entertained a motion to place in the next quarterly PCO meeting an agenda item to discuss Censure against JHB. This motion to discuss this matter was approved largely based on her repeated support of raising spending limits, and her support for john Boehner, who is seen by many as the personification of all that is wrong with the top-down leadership of the Establishment Republican Caucus.

Such a motion was not necessary under the local party bylaws.  Any PCO can make a motion from the floor for any reason, and the motion could have just as easily been to censure JHB straightaway.  Instead, placing it officially as an agenda item for the next quarterly meeting gives everyone a period for discussion, and a chance for JHB to answer the criticisms - something she's been remiss in doing so far during her tenure in congress.

Her first communication after this was a shockingly ill-informed and dismissive letter to the PCO's, with an odd statement that it was paid for from her campaign money.  Here is that letter.

What follows is my response to the Congresswoman:

Failure in Ferguson

While everyone else is spouting off about whether or not the prosecutor in Ferguson Missouri should have forwarded the case of Officer Wilson shooting Michael Brown to the Grand jury, and how idiotic it is to riot and burn your fellow neighbors out because “the man” is putting you down, I’d like to take a second and think for a second about what failed in Ferguson.

I’m not going to second guess the instance of the shooting or say in any way that Officer Wilson committed a crime when he shot the young man. The evidence is pretty conclusive that Michael Brown was charging him, and in that moment, Officer Wilson has a reasonable fear of harm, and took appropriate action.

The question I have is what led up to this crux that left a young man dead in the street and arguably ruined the life of the man who shot him? Could things have been done differently to have avoided this tragedy? From the little bit I’ve put together, my distinct impression is that neither of these two were the sharpest knives in the drawer. What could have happened when these two idiots crossed paths to have prevented this?

By the accounts and Officer Wilson encountered the young thug in the middle of the street, and then received word that suspects matching his description had just robbed a convenience store. This is when the encounter turned violent, when Brown reached into the car, slugged Wilson a couple of times and was shot in the hand. Up to this point, Wilson had done nothing wrong. One does not reasonably expect an eighteen year old – no matter how big – to assault an officer of the law, especially in his car. Brown then took off, and Wilson made his first mistake: he got out of the car.

Look dude, you just got your lights punched out and you had a car door protecting you. What makes you think you have a chance with this guy in the middle of the street? Oh, yeah, you have a gun.

This is a fundamental problem with the culture of many law enforcement agencies. That piece of iron on your hip makes you feel like you’re ten feet tall and covered with hair, and gives you the power to enforce your authority whenever, wherever and however you please. It gives you the confidence to enter into situations that no sane, unarmed person would even consider. And that confidence is misplaced, because guns aren’t as effective as Hollywood would have us believe, and often when a Police officer’s confidence and ego oversteps his common sense, it’s the public he’s sworn to serve that suffers for it.

A word about firearms: handguns are a marginally effective weapon. They’re difficult to aim, and they often don’t immediately stop people from doing what they’re doing. The fact is that many people don’t even realize they’ve been shot at first. Someone who’s intent on closing to assault you may not stop doing so immediately just because they’ve been shot, unless the bullet makes them physically incapable of continuing, which is a pretty low probability shot. Humans can absorb an amazing amount of punishment and continue functioning for short periods of time. The US Army discovered this in the early twentieth century during the Philippine campaigns. One of the reasons the US army adopted the Colt .45 1911 as its standard sidearm is because the .38’s they had been using weren’t stopping the Moro tribesmen. As least the big, heavy, slow-moving .45 slug would throw them back a little, giving more time to aim for a kill shot.

Officer Wilson discovered this the hard way when a barrage of fire failed to stop Brown’s charge, and he ended up having to aim for a kill shot to protect himself. Almost immediately afterward, backup arrived.

Did Wilson have an alternate way of subduing Brown without using a firearm? I doubt it. A taser would have worked well in this situation, but it’s unreliable. If the barbs don’t seat properly, nothing is going to happen. It’s a sad fact that few US law enforcement officers have adequate martial arts training to be effective in unarmed hand to hand combat. Unions have seen to it that Agencies cannot require minimum levels of martial arts training for their officers unless they provide resources and pay them to participate. Few law enforcement agencies have the budgetary resources to support such an effort. Infrequent weekend seminars are inadequate to adequately train officers to any level of proficiency in martial arts. As a black belt in Aikido, I trained four or five times a week for many year before I felt proficient enough to be confident in my skills. Martial arts are something that need to be practiced continuously to be effective. In Japan, many law enforcement agencies make the acquisition of a black belt in Aikido a requirement to be promoted beyond a certain level. This gives the officers the confidence to enter into many situations calmly, something that American law enforcement lacks.

What should Wilson have done? What would the downside have been to just staying in the car, keeping Brown in sight and waiting for backup to arrive? Sometimes the very best thing to do is to back away. It runs against human nature, it’s not what your ego calls for you to do. But that’s why we train police officers: to be effective. Not to be the walking personification of law and order. Wilson’s all to human reaction to having been assaulted while in a position of authority put him in an untenable situation that ended with a dead kid in the middle of the street.

The other question I don’t hear anyone asking is what the hell the state of mind was of Michael Brown? This kid was not a hardened criminal. He wasn’t old enough to have any realistic life experience or to have formed any opinions of his own. Where the hell did he get the idea that assaulting a police officer was an appropriate thing to do?

Well, we don’t have to look any further than Louis Head, Michael Brown’s step-father, who will go down with his famous “Burn this bitch to the ground!” cry. What kind of advice must Michael have heard from this man concerning interactions with the police when he was growing up? What kind of attitude must he have learned concerning race? Certainly Michael’s actions in the last moments of his life were based on information he must have learned from somewhere.

Sadly, this is the price of rampant liberalism, where fathers and families have abdicated their parental responsibilities to the state, and what little parenting they do is to teach their children to despise the very state to which they turn for sustenance. We are nation of laws because our citizens have agreed by majority that certain laws are necessary to preserve prosperity and keep the peace. The respect that Americans generally have for the law is based on the understanding that the law protects their interests. Developing a whole underclass of citizen who have no skin in the game, whose interests are at odds with the people upon whom this nation was founded is a recipe for disaster. Before anyone passes a law to assist a minority group in some way, they need to examine the motivations that will result from such assistance. People are not inherently altruistic, and it’s a fact of life that subsidizing bad behavior just encourages more bad behavior.

Economics for Occupiers 14: Islamic Economics

A largely ignored economic system that deserves discussion because of the number of lives it currently affects is that of Islam.  Islamic economics have never been specifically defined.  The precepts of Islamic economic theory were established in a culture that was evolving from a tribal anarchy to a feudalist society.  The defining characteristics of Islamic economics would have been discarded centuries ago as unworkable, except they have the force of religious law to Muslims, who believe that they were handed down directly from Allah.

The Muslim world has been struggling to reconcile itself with the modern world throughout the twentieth century. They have been trying to overlay a medieval belief system onto modern political and economic methods with limited success.

Read more about this in chapter 10 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Economics for Occupiers 13: Fascism

Fascism, like pornography, is one of those things that seems to have no specific definition, but everyone thinks they know it when they see it. Fascism is inextricably associated in public perception with Hitler and the Nazi Party.  It's a combination of complementary political and economic principles.  The conventional understanding is that it's a right-wing ideology, although it has nothing in common with conservatism, and grew out of leftist socialist movements in both Germany and Italy in the twentieth century.

Our discussion will focus primarily on the economic characteristics of fascism, and through that we will see how the political/ideological characteristics develop.

Fascism is was defined by Benito Mussolini as the "Third Position," an alternative to both Communism and Capitalism.  Under Fascism, the state-controlled economy is a mix of private and public ownership over the means of production. Both the public and private sector are directed by a State-directed economic plan. The prosperity of private enterprise depends on how well it synchronizes itself with the state's economic goals. Private companies are free to make a profit, but must uphold the national interest over profit. The government concerns itself with producing adequate domestic necessities to forestall dissension and popular unrest.

As one can imagine, this sort of setup is a fertile environment for corruption and cronyism, and indeed these were an endemic problem in Nazi Germany.  Nevertheless, when mobilizing the productive resources of a nation towards a specific goal, whether it be to put a man on the Moon, or take over all of Western Europe, there is no more efficient economic model, if the nation is willing to accept the many downsides and implications.

Read more about this in chapter 9 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Economics for Occupiers 12: The Myth of the Regulation-free Market

There's a very vocal segment of free market capitalists that maintain that the free market should be entirely free of regulation.  Their position is that in a pure free market, anyone should be allowed to trade anything, to place any product for sale on the open market.  In their idealistic world, the free market will self-regulate, and substandard products will find no buyers, and every seller in the market will seek excellence, to the benefit of everyone. Anyone who dares to suggest that this may be an overly extreme position is immediately castigated and accused of being a "statist."  This black or white logical fallacy presumes that if you're a "statist," that you automatically endorse government regulation and interference at all levels of the free market.

As we saw in section 10, this view of a pure free market ignores a couple of important points.  You will remember from our basic definition of capitalism that transactions should be free of coercion or misrepresentation. For the capitalist purist market to work as desired, all participants in a transaction must have perfect knowledge of the value of the commodity being exchanged.  This is clearly impossible. What if the seller in a transaction misrepresents the product he's selling?  A seller can make all sorts of claims that may be difficult to verify during the transaction.  The answer given by the market purist is that doing so would stain the seller's reputation, and his product will quickly fall out of favor.  The purist offers no explanation of how this would happen.  I suppose the news of the miscreant's bad product will magically propagate through an almost infinite market by some sort of telepathy.

Read more about this in chapter 14 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Economics for Occupiers Part 11: The 1%

The foundation of the modern protests against capitalism is that it leads to a perceived inequality of wealth. The criticism is that wealth is concentrated in a very few individuals. The conventional wisdom is that this is unfair, and that the wealth of an economy should be distributed more evenly across society. One term used recently in a Rolling Stone editorial is "Horrific inequality." Critics demonize the inequality in such terms, assuming as a matter of course that it's not fair and that the world would be better if people who have more would just share.

Fallacy of the Zero Sum Game

The basis for this conception is the presumption that the total wealth is a zero-sum game, that if someone else has a bigger slice of the pie, then your slice must be correspondingly smaller. People who subscribe to this understanding haven't looked beyond their toes in this age of vast material wealth, this age of iPhones and jet aircraft, and asked themselves where all this wealth was a hundred years ago. Wealth is produced by the capitalist. Since the industrial revolution, durable production has far exceeded nondurable consumption, allowing wealth to accumulate in quantities never before seen in history. The question any critic of capitalist wealth needs to answer is when a capitalist entrepreneur becomes wealthy by means of his efficiency in production, who became poorer? At whose expense did the entrepreneur gain his wealth?

Read more about this in chapter 16 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

The Publishing Industry is Broken

The publishing industry is broken.  The traditional mode of publishing is not serving anyone very well; not the authors, the agents, the publishers, or the readers.  The problem started with the advent of the word processor.  Once upon a time, it took a lot of hard physical work to produce a novel.  Typing was laborious, messy, fraught with mistakes that were difficult to correct, and if you didn't quite like the way something sounded, you had to completely write it over.  This tremendous expenditure of labor worked as a filter to self-limit all but the most dedicated authors from getting a manuscript ready to present to an agent.

Consequently, agents had the time to invest in selecting the authors they wanted to represent.  If an agent saw a promising voice, they had the time to work with that person, mentor them and help them bring their craft up to commercial standards.

Today, word processors give anyone with a keyboard the ability to turn out copious amounts of verbal trash with relatively little effort.  Agents are being buried under mountains of unreadable garbage. Agents find that screening queries and proposals is a full time job, if they spend even five minutes on each query.  The competition to get the attention of an agent is fierce, and it's a very subjective field.  Get your query read when the agent is in a bad mood, before they've had their coffee, or on a Monday when their in box is clogged from the weekend, and your query will join the majority in the round file without the consideration you no doubt feel it deserves.

Then, add in the electronic publishing phenomenon.  With as many as fifty million electronic readers in the market, the paper publishers are feeling the hit.  Publishing a physical book edition is a gamble.  The production run has to reflect the expected sales, yet be big enough to recover the non-recurring expense of typesetting and show a profit.  A publisher's worst nightmare is printing books that sit on the shelves and don't sell.  Predicting the market has become more difficult because e-readers are a game-changer.  While one can easily predict the number of potential readers who will buy a book, it's more difficult to say which ones will buy the physical copy.

This makes publishers very risk-averse, and they're less inclined to take a chance on a book that isn't a guaranteed hit.  They analyze what's selling, and attempt to reproduce the secret sauce ad nauseum.  That's why you're very unlikely to get noticed today unless you're writing teenage vampire stories.  If your story doesn't fit the industry's idea of what's hot, your not going to get published.  Originality and creativity has no place in the risk averse world of the modern publisher.

This puts more pressure on the agents, who're trying to pimp your books to prospective publishers.  Used to be an agent would work with a promising author, develop them and guide them onto the career path.  Now, the author has to practically come to the agent with a print-ready manuscript, as well as a marketing plan, to even be considered.  Authors are looking at this, and asking themselves, "What exactly is it I'm paying you for, anyway?"

The market rules.  And the market for books is there to connect the writers with the readers.  Publishers facilitated this for generations.  Agents facilitated connecting authors with publishers.  But the magic has always been the dynamic between the author and the reader.  The others were piggybacking off this relationship.  But Amazon threw the traditional publishing industry on its ear when it began giving authors the tools they needed to reach out directly from their writing studios and touch the readers.  First it was through e-books.  Now, Amazon has teamed up with CreateSpace to give a print-on-demand option that's within the market rate for the book industry.  An author only need to give CreateSpace a print-ready pdf file that meets CreateSpace's criteria, and when an order is placed the book is printed, bound, and shipped the same day right out of Amazon's warehouses. 

Once self-publishing was considered vanity publishing, and the result was as atrocious as one would expect.  But as more traditional publishers come under more competitive pressure from independent authors, they become more and more a closed avenue to publication, forcing more and more authors to seek self-publishing. The industry has responded with editors, artists and SEO/marketing specialists to aid the author to getting his book in the hands of the people who want to read it.  The trail around the traditional publishing industry has become a four-lane highway, with everyone sweeping the Author's way free of obstacles, because if the Author cannot find readers for his book, nobody profits.

An interesting thing has been happening as the traditional publishing industry loses relevance.  Old paradigms are reasserting themselves.  In the 19th century, before the publishing industry became so ossified, it was quite common for a book to be published as a serial in some sort of journal.  Almost all of Jules Verne's novel were published this way, and people then discussed the latest and next installments of their favorite serial as we would discuss the latest episode of House today.  The publishing industry has been returning to this model again, with short installments of a story appearing regularly for a modest price – often less than a dollar – on Amazon.com.

So if you fancy yourself a writer, and have a story, forget about the traditional publishers.  Get a good editor, get a good cover artist, and use the tools available to reach out and contact your readers yourself!

Look for my first book, The Tears of Jihad, available on Amazon in mid-December 2013.

Economics for Occupiers Part 10: Regulation in a Free Market

The issue of regulations and their place in society and the market is a contentious one.  On one end of the spectrum is a moribund bureaucracy whose sole product is an impenetrable maze of regulations stifles economic activity by making it nearly impossible to do anything without violating some regulation. In this environment regulations are created to shape social policy or promote certain interests or groups for reasons that can often seem capricious or misguided.  While no one will overtly endorse such a regulatory environment, this is the de facto result of the average liberal mindset, which assumes that people need government to protect them from themselves.

At the other end of the spectrum is a completely laissez faire regulatory environment, where no regulations encumber the market, and a wild west, let-the-buyer-beware attitude dominates.  This is the extreme that many free market capitalists endorse.  In this mindset, the government has no role in the market, and any regulation is seen as intrusive and antithetical to the purity of laissez faire free market capitalism. Such purists become outraged to the point of incoherence at any suggestion that some activities should be regulated.

Neither one of these extremes is rational or realistic.  We should remember the basic credo of free market Capitalism: individuals should be free to engage in commerce at mutually agreed upon rates of exchange, without coercion or misrepresentation.  We need to look at the implications of two parts of this definition.  Mutually agreed upon rates and misrepresentation.  The assumption of a perfectly functioning free market is that all parties have perfect knowledge of what is being exchanged, as well as how the rest of the market valuates the items being exchanged.

Read more about this in chapter 13 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Economics for Occupiers Part 9: Taxes and Reaganomics

In this discussion, we're going to examine how tax policy influences the economy, revisit Reaganomics and shed a little sanity on the liberal conventional wisdom about trickle-down economics.

Since America feels that it would be a conflict of interest for the government to compete with the private sector in most areas, the government's source of revenue is taxes. There are also government fees, but those are generally designed to pay for services rendered and don’t typically yield a surplus. Punitive fines are  another source of income, but that is minor and unreliable for budgeting purposes.

Taxation in a free market is the agreed upon demand that society places on the productivity of the individual, to be used for the common good. The ultimate goal of government tax policy is to raise the maximum amount of revenue without overly disrupting commerce and the electorate. A simple economic model postulates a fixed gross production, and tax revenues are merely a percentage of that production. If we boundary check this model, a zero percent tax rate yields no revenue for the government, while a 100% tax rate disrupts all commerce and leaves nothing for the population to consume. The solution in this model is to hold as high a tax rate as possible and still leave some for the plebes to survive on.

You cannot redistribute wealth. History shows that you can only redistribute poverty.

Read more about this in chapter 12 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Economics for Occupiers Part 8 - Keynesian Economics

In Part 2 we looked at the basic concept of money. To examine the convoluted theories posed by John Maynard Keynes, we have to have a better understanding of money and the banking system. There are three forms of money: intrinsic, promissory and accounting. Intrinsic money, as we have seen, is money that has value by its very nature, like coins made of rare metals. Promissory money is basically a coupon which can (theoretically) be redeemed for something of real value by the issuing authority – i.e. a bank. Accounting money is money you have on deposit at a financial institution. It basically doesn't exist except as a mark on a ledger or a blip in a computer, but it represents a demand that you can make on that financial institution at any time – or in some cases, subject to specific rules you agreed to at the time of deposit, like a retirement account or certificate of deposit.

Wealth is anything of intrinsic value: food, property, manufactured goods, livestock, etc. Promissory and accounting money represents wealth. It’s a demand on the wealth of someone else, and can be exchanged for wealth with anyone else who agrees to the value of the promissory note. Even accounting money can be so exchanged – anyone using a credit card is not exchanging tangible money for products, they are ordering an accounting transfer from one account to another.

At issue is how to balance the amount of money in an economy with the wealth that it represents.

Read more about this in chapter 11 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Revelations or Seizures?

Excellent short article by Guest Blogger Alba D'Veritas:

Muhammad was asked what it's like to receive revelation.  His description is very interesting:

Sahih Bukhari

Volume 1, Book 1, Number 2:

Narrated 'Aisha:
(the mother of the faithful believers) Al-Harith bin Hisham asked Allah's Apostle "O Allah's Apostle! How is the Divine Inspiration revealed to you?" Allah's Apostle replied, "Sometimes it is (revealed) like the ringing of a bell, this form of Inspiration is the hardest of all and then this state passes ' off after I have grasped what is inspired. Sometimes the Angel comes in the form of a man and talks to me and I grasp whatever he says." 'Aisha added: Verily I saw the Prophet being inspired Divinely on a very cold day and noticed the Sweat dropping from his forehead (as the Inspiration was over).

Ringing, voices and sweating?  Look at these symptoms from epilepsyfoundation.org about Simple Partial Seizures:

"Simple partial seizures in these areas can produce odd sensations such as a sense of a breeze on the skin; unusual hissing, buzzing or ringing sounds; voices that are not really there;"

"Episodes of sudden sweating, flushing, becoming pale or having the sensation of goosebumps are also possible."

More strange reactions by Muhammad:

Sahih Bukhari
Volume 5, Book 58, Number 170:

Narrated Jabir bin 'Abdullah:
When the Ka'ba was rebuilt, the Prophet and 'Abbas went to carry stones. 'Abbas said to the Prophet "(Take off and) put your waist sheet over your neck so that the stones may not hurt you." (But as soon as he took off his waist sheet) he fell unconscious on the ground with both his eyes towards the sky. When he came to his senses, he said, "My waist sheet! My waist sheet!" Then he tied his waist sheet (round his waist).

Another 'revelation'?

Sahih Muslim
Book 026, Number 5395:

A'isha reported that Sauda (Allah he pleated with her) went out (in the fields) in order to answer the call of nature even after the time when veil had been prescribed for women. She had been a bulky lady, significant in height amongst the women, and she could not conceal herself from him who had known her. 'Umar b. Khattab saw her and said: Sauda, by Allah, you cannot conceal from us. Therefore, be careful when you go out. She ('A'isha) said: She turned back. Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) was at that time in my house having his evening meal and there was a bone in his hand. She (Sauda) cline and said: Allah's Messenger. I went out and 'Umar said to me so and so. She ('A'isha) reported: There came the revelation to him and then it was over; the bone was then in his hand and he had not thrown it and he said:" Permission has been granted to you that you may go out for your needs."

Another description shows that Muhammad had was in distress with these 'divine' experiences:

Volume 1, Book 1, Number 4:

Narrated Said bin Jubair:
Ibn 'Abbas in the explanation of the Statement of Allah. 'Move not your tongue concerning (the Quran) to make haste therewith." (75.16) Said "Allah's Apostle used to bear the revelation with great trouble and used to move his lips (quickly) with the Inspiration." Ibn 'Abbas moved his lips saying, "I am moving my lips in front of you as Allah's Apostle used to move his."...

There are other ahadith and Islamic writings on this subject.  Muhammad's biography tells of him having suicidal thoughts - he was going to throw himself off a mountain.  Clearly he had problems - very well documented problems. Epilepsy may have been one of them.  It's not funny, but it's also not prophetic.

People of the Book

Excellent short article by Guest Blogger Alba D'Veritas:


The People of the Book is an Islamic phrase used for Jews and Christians.  Islam teaches that Moses and Jesus were given books by allah, the Torah (Tawraat) and Gospel (Injeel).

Muslims will try to use the phrase as if it is a good thing, a compliment even.  Well - IT'S NOT!


Quran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." 

The people of the book get to pay jizya to stay alive and keep their faith.  They don't have to convert or die, as the idolaters, polytheists, atheists, agnostics and all other non-Muslims have to do.  Sounds ok, right?  WRONG!  Jews and Christians have to pay "protection money" in order to keep their faith, but who do we pay to?  Muslims.  And who do we need protection from?  Muslims!  Well, that's a pretty good racket, isn't it?  Wouldn't it be better for the "people of the book" if Muslims just left us alone?!  No, they can't do that.  They have to fight until all religion is for allah.  By being subjugated, the people of the book are now less than Muslims and admit that Islam is best.  It's submission - what Islam is truly all about.  People of the book can live as long as they become dhimmis, a lesser class of people in Islam.  Discrimination, hatred and intolerance are built into Islam.

According to Tafsir Ibn Kathir, on Quran 9:29:

Paying Jizyah is a Sign of Kufr and Disgrace

Allah said,
﴿حَتَّى يُعْطُواْ الْجِزْيَةَ﴾
(until they pay the Jizyah), if they do not choose to embrace Islam,
﴿عَن يَدٍ﴾
(with willing submission), in defeat and subservience,
﴿وَهُمْ صَـغِرُونَ﴾
(and feel themselves subdued.), disgraced, humiliated and belittled. Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of Dhimmah or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced and humiliated. Muslim recorded from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet said,
«لَا تَبْدَءُوا الْيَهُودَ وَالنَّصَارَى بِالسَّلَامِ، وَإِذَا لَقِيتُمْ أَحَدَهُمْ فِي طَرِيقٍ فَاضْطَرُّوهُ إِلَى أَضْيَقِه»
(Do not initiate the Salam to the Jews and Christians, and if you meet any of them in a road, force them to its narrowest alley.)

http://www.islam-universe.com/tafsir/

Don't be fooled by Muslims.  The "People of the Book" are not friends with Muslims, not equal to Muslims and will be killed or converted if they don't pay the jizya, protection money.

Qur'an (5:51) - "O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people."