So far I have tried to stay away from political issues but, Herman Cain is a good example of the total confusion that the modern right has on political philosophy.  Herman Cain is considered the darling of the Tea Party.  Talk radio also loves Herman Cain with a number of talk radio hosts actually saying the word “love” when referring to Cain.   Someone even told me this weekend after dinner that they “love” the 999 plan.  I have even read an article in the “intellectual” conservative publication the “American Thinker” that compares Herman Cain’s presence to some kind of religious miracle divinely inspired by God himself.  The fact that so many people are willing to use the word “love” for a politician should be disturbing but, I don’t think that I have any other choice but to accept that a wide swath of the modern conservative movement has some kind of love affair with Herman Cain.  I will attempt to demonstrate in this article that Herman Cain has some very disturbing positions for any lover of liberty.  I will also attempt to demonstrate that the talk radio’s and tea party’s support of Herman Cain is more revealing of the total lack of principles or intellectual honesty of the modern conservative movement.

1.  Herman Cain is a political insider.  He has had long ties with the Koch brothers as seen here, here, here, and here.  The Koch brothers are oil rich billionaires who are part of the Republican establishment, who have used their money to buy influence and enact legislation to benefit them.  Most importantly they support the privately owned Federal Reserve and use their massive amount of political connections to smash any person, think tank, organization, or politician who opposes it.

2.  Herman Cain is a Federal Reserve insider and is a staunch supporter of the central bank.  Though Cain has called for an audit of the central bank in the last six months, early on he has laughed at and chided those who were for auditing the central bank as recently as December 2010.  He has recently said he was  misinterpreted but, the video below should make it obvious that he thought people who wanted to audit the central bank were ignorant and clueless.

3.  Herman Cain is intellectually and morally dishonest.  If Herman Cain said that he was mistaken about auditing the Federal Reserve, he should have said so but, instead he said that he has always been for a Federal Reserve audit and that people need to “just give them a call.”  This not only demonstrates how dishonest Cain is but also demonstrates his lack of understanding of the purpose of a Federal Reserve audit.  The case for auditing the Federal Reserve is obvious, especially considering over 5 trillion dollars went to foreign central banks, but apparently Cain lives in some kind of la-la land where any citizen can just give “them a call” and the secrets to the temple will be revealed.

4.  Herman Cain also has little to no economic understanding.  When asked what Federal Reserve Chairman he thought was most effective in the last thirty years, he said Alan Greenspan.  This is probably one of the most dangerous and economically illiterate statements of all GOP presidential contenders.  Alan Greenspan is the worst Federal Reserve chairman in history.  He is directly responsible for the dot com boom and the housing boom.  It is generally accepted by almost all economists from all different economic perspectives that the housing bubble was Greenspan’s fault. An election of Herman Cain would almost certainly guarantee a currency crisis if he appointed someone like Alan Greenspan.   Cain has further demonstrated his complete lack of economic understanding when he said that the economy was great a week before the collapse of 2008, as seen here.

5.  Herman Cain supported TARP.  In case people forget, this is the biggest reason that compelled the Tea Party to come into being in the first place!  Cain not only supported TARP but chastised “free market purists”  for being against it.  Here is his article in his own words.  This article is not some glummy thesis on how he “might not like TARP but we have no choice” as many economists said but, it is instead almost a celebration of TARP and how much money the American people will make.  I am not sure if he is completely naive or just a Federal Reserve cheerleader.  Once again, he has said that he has been misrepresented, I guess he figured people would not actually go back and read what he said.

6.  Herman Cain does not have a basic understanding of political history.  When asked about the Neoconservative movement he said he was “not familiar with it “as seen at about the 2.40 mark in this clip.

7.  In the same clip at the 2:20 mark, Herman Cain says he looks up to people like Henry Kissinger and KT McFarland for foreign policy ideas.  Henry Kissinger has the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands for his heavy involvement in prolonging and extending the Vietnam War, all the while, admitting privately it was lost.  He has also famously called military men “dumb stupid animals”, basically pawns for his globalist schemes.  For more on Kissinger’s war crimes, here is a video based on Christopher Hitchen’s book.  McFarland is a little more of an amusing choice considering that McFarland believed that Hillary Clinton was sending helicopters to spy on her when she was running against Hillary in 2006. These are the people that Cain looks up to? This would be funny if it was not so scary. For an idea of what conservative foreign policy used to look like here is Tom Woods.

8.  Lastly Cain says all kinds of crazy stuff, I mean crazy stuff all the time!  He says Muslims will “never” be allowed in his cabinet. He also wants to electrify the border fence, saying this “will kill you” to incoming illegal immigrants.  Later he said he was joking but, then said he was serious afterwards saying that he is “not walking away from that, I just don’t want to offend anybody” as seen here.  Cain will make more gaffes like this.  People like this always do.  Just look at Joe Biden.

Herman Cain is loved by the Tea Party and Talk Radio.  Herman Cain has supported food stamps, given money to democrats, and supported Mitt Romney in 2008.  Herman Cain is the “most conservative” candidate out there, or so say the pundits.  I think they are right, Cain is a good example of modern conservatism.  He has no philosophical principles, no moral compunction to tell the truth, no understanding of economics, no understanding of history, and he supports soviet style central planning in the form of the Federal Reserve. Is it any wonder why modern conservationism is a dying ideology?  Talk show hosts gush over his 999 plan, overlooking its obvious flaw that taxes never stay low forever.  Every single tax that was supposed to be temporary or low in American history has become permanent and high.  Every. Single. Time.  Modern conservatives are statists that are more obsessed with personality than substance, how else can you explain their blind devotion to Herman Cain?

I don’t mind protesting Wall Street, like I said before, these guys are bad guys.  To give you an idea of what kind of people are on Wall Street just look at their behavior. Cocaine use is rampant on Wall Street with some studies concluding that 70% of stock brokers are regular cocaine users. It has been reported that many firms openly use cocaine on the trade floor and even use drugs and prostitution as a kind of currency.

So let us consider how we might stop these guys?  Do we put more regulations on Wall Street? No way! Lobbyists end up writing those anyway.  These regulations are used to benefit Wall Street and push out small time competitors.  Should we impose higher minimum wage laws?  Of course not.  Minimum wage always increases unemployment and hurts the poor and unskilled the most.  Should we impose tariffs or end free trade?  Once again this just benefits American corporations by protecting the competition; basically granting them a monopoly. This makes people pay more for their products and increases the profit margins of big corporations.  Personally I like being able to buy shoes for under $20.  I remember when I was a kid you could not buy shoes for under sixty dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that would probably be over a hundred dollars today.  How would making the poor and middle class buy a $100 pair of shoes make them better off?  Tariffs are an absurd argument.  No legitimate economist ever suggests tariffs, it is only politicians and political writers without economic understanding that suggest this.

The best way to end the suffering of the middle class and dramatically decrease the influence of Wall Street would be to end the Federal Reserve and institute sound money. The Federal Reserve could no longer artificially prop up the Wall Street Mega Banks.  The Federal Reserve could no longer inject liquidity into the financial sector at the expense of every other sector.  People would no longer be forced to gamble in the stock market to preserve their wealth because the Federal Reserve could no longer rob people through inflation. Jobs would not be shipped over seas because of the trade imbalances that the global dollar based fiat currency system creates.  Wall Street speculators could no longer gamble trillions of dollars as they do now because savings would have to come from the public rather than government fractional reserve banking.  Massive global corporations would shrink because they would no longer be the first in line for the newly created money.  People would have control of the system because they could always exchange their notes for hard money, putting a break to irrational government and private spending.  People like to talk about the benefits of democracy. To the extent that democracy means that power is in the hands of the people, there is nothing that has a more powerful democratic affect than a hard money banking system.

If people really cared about the poor and the middle class and wanted to shrink Wall Street down to size, we would END THE FED!

People are taking to the streets to occupy Wall Street.  I don’t particularly like Wall Street because these guys are a bunch of cheats and lairs.  There is nothing free market about what happens on Wall Street.  Wall Street is the largest benefactor of government largess which I should not have to go into but, I guess I will because it is very important for people to understand.  Wall Street is not the free market.  They get bailed out by the government at every turn and make the public pay for their risky bets when they go bad.  So what happens when the government does this?  Why, Wall Street speculators make even riskier bets because they can’t loose!  You and I will always and forever bail them out!  What a great system!  What about the SEC and other regulator agencies?   Why, once again, they increase Wall Street profits.  The SEC is dominated by Wall Street insiders and give the profiteers on Wall Street the illusion of legitimacy.  After all, people kept giving Madoff money because the SEC said that there was no fraud going on.  What a great way to defraud people?  Just set up a massive ponzi scheme and have the regulators tell people that it is all legit!  Also, let’s not forget the biggest benefactor of money printing, uhh I mean quantitative easing, is Wall Street.   New money created by the Fed goes to Wall Street banks first which then goes into other speculative areas.  Why do you think that the Stock Market went up so much during QE2?  That run up was a government inflated bubble in stocks.  When the Heroin drip was removed, Wall Street crashed (as your humble author predicted).  As you can see Wall Street hand’s are dirtier than hell. DC and New York are just revolving doors for the biggest creeps in the country.

So Wall Street is guilty but, what about these protesters?  What are they all about?  Like most large movements there is not much unity of message.  For that fact alone, it should lose some credibility.  For a movement to succeed it must have a unifying message.  The same was true for the Tea Party, they did not have a clear message either.  Many said that they wanted smaller government but, wanted Social Security, Medicare, and the continuation of the “Forever Wars” to centrally plan backwater countries around the world.

Just like with the Tea Party, the media tries to spin “Occupy Wall Street” to suit their own agenda, with the most obvious examples being Fox News and MSNBC.  The neocon right tries to portray these people as a bunch of young hipster communists.  The modern left tries to portray these people as a wide swath of the population that wants the “Jobs Bill” to be passed or some such nonsense.  I have not been to a protest myself, but, I don’t think that either portrayal is accurate.  There seems to be a hodge podge of different groups at these protests to include libertarians, tea partiers , Ron Paul types, and Alex Jones fans. They have not only marched on Wall Street but, they have marched on Federal Reserve banks and government buildings around the country.  While many might be socialists, it is not everyone by a long shot. This does not make for a good news story. And so the media portrays all these people as the same type.  Here are some videos of the people I was talking about.  Alex Jones, Ron Paul people, Jesse Ventura, and even well spoken Hip-Hop artists that identify with the Tea Party?  There is much more going on here than meets first glance, which is a good thing.

Will this movement be effective at influencing policy and the direction of the country?  I think that has yet to be seen.  Movements like this are usually co-opted by the political elites.  We can see how the Tea Party became co-opted by the Republican establishment.  Will the same thing happen to Occupy Wall Street?  To be honest, it might not even get that far because there are some obvious Marxist influences (at least as it is being portrayed in the media).  People might like talking about socialism at the local coffee shop but, politicians do not loudly proclaim themselves to be socialists.  Rightly or wrongly, there is too much baggage with the term.  For the socialists out there, it will never happen overtly here.  There will never be a $20 minimum wage as expressed by occupywallstreet.org.  If socialism was ever going to come to America, it would have come in the 1930’s when it had its most intellectual merit. Even the labor party in Britain has dropped nationalization of industry as one of its objectives in the 1990s. If Europe no longer has the will for socialism, how do you expect it to happen here? Whether you like it or not, socialism is a dying ideology.  It has been dying for fifty years, it’s just that the socialists have not realized it.  Socialists call themselves progressive because they think history will inevitably move into their ideological direction.  They are wrong.  Socialism as an idea will become like all the other silly ideas of the past: forgotten. Like polytheism, socialism will be a historical curiosity and nothing more.

People like this don’t take over countries. They might scare the hell out of Glen Beck but, the working class will never follow them.  As Murry Rothbard has said, it is when middle age working people leave their shops and stores and take the streets that true revolution happens.  We are a long way from that.

Prepping for natural or man made disasters should be common practice for most people but, unfortunately it is not.  In fact, the people that need to take simple steps to prepare themselves in case of a natural disaster are usually the least prepared.  For example, in rural areas, most people have a decent amount of extra food stored compared to those who live in urban areas even though people that live in urban areas will be the most threatened in any kind of disaster scenario.  I think that their are a number of reasons for this.  People that live in cities have much shorter time preferences in general compared to people who live in rural areas.   People living in urban areas are used to having stores with fully stocked shelves and think that these will always be there.  This is not always true as we have seen when natural disaster strikes in the form of hurricanes whether in New Orleans or other areas.  Shelves of all grocery stores are cleaned out in a manner of hours with massive amounts of people all rushing to get supplies.  We might not have hurricanes in the Midwest but there is nothing to say that a tornado might not take out the local power plant.

Man made disasters are even more dangerous as we have seen with the breaking of a major water main in Boston that left millions without water.  We have also seen how one guy accidentally shut down the power grid to millions of people in Southern California.  This power outage also led to multiple sewage plants all over southern California going down making much of the water unsafe to drink (authorities told people to boil water before drinking, hopefully they did not have electric stoves!).   Luckily, these events were repaired rather quickly but, what would happen if this went on for a week?   Or a month?  These cities would have completely broken down and would have made the looting and violence in New Orleans look mild in comparison. Having a well stocked pantry that can last you a month or more could mean the difference between living comfortably or being in a very dangerous situation.

A final Note:  Whenever these events have happened, the local and national authorities have done the completely wrong thing.  They immediately institute price controls because they do not want “price gougers” to take advantage of people during a crisis.  This guarantees empty storeroom shelves and shortages of life’s most essential items.  The very people that are willing to pay extra money because they need life saving items are bared, by law, from doing so.  The price system is thrown into chaos and the market is not allowed to provide resources to people that need them most.  This is very well understood by economists from every different spectrum. Price controls always lead to shortages because the market is not allowed to clear as can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.   Unfortunately politicians never listen and institute price controls every single time. Remember, price gouging saves lives contrary to what most people believe.  This is why politicians don’t care what every economist from all corners of the earth say.  Simply put, they don’t have the votes.

Also, when we look at Katrina, the government was totally unable to provide basic necessities while at the same time preventing private firms from bringing in needed supplies.   FEMA turned away Wal-Mart trucks bringing in thousands of gallons of water while the people in the Super Dome had none for days.  Another man was arrested for trying to sell generators after Hurricane Katrina.   FEMA often makes a moderate crisis into a life and death situation. Let us not forget how local police became looters and killers themselves after Katrina, all the while harassing citizens and confiscating legal firearms.

In conclusion you should take moderate steps to prepare yourself for a potential disaster, natural or otherwise.  Remember, you can not depend on the government agencies in a crisis.  The government’s own agencies admit this.