Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.'s Blog, page 2279

Trumponomics

There are a couple of important economic lessons that the American people should learn. I’m going to title one “the seen and unseen” and the other “narrow well-defined large benefits versus widely dispersed small costs.” These lessons are applicable to a wide range of government behavior, but let’s look at just two examples.

Last week, President Donald Trump enacted high tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum. Why in the world would the U.S. steel and aluminum industries press the president...

Modern Newspeak

It’s not breaking news that the internet censors have been hard at work to silence voices that are in opposition to the mainstream media agenda. But after the influence that social media had on the last election, things are going to a whole new level. The internet, that last bastion of truly free speech, isn’t very free anymore.

We’re watching the evolution of Newspeak right before our very eyes as the internet strives to silence any voices that oppose their carefully crafted stories of how g...

A Useful Addition to Your Home Security

Guardline sent me their long-range wireless driveway alarm to review. It consists of a sensor unit and a receiver unit with built-in speakers, along with some mounting gear.

The sensor unit can be mounted at the edge of a driveway, walkway, porch, or other area, and then when something breaks the infrared beam, the receiver emits one of your choice of one of dozens of chimes, sound effects, and melodies, alerting you that something has entered your property.

This receiver unit is their long-r...

Will Coins Become Extinct?

Inflation over time raises the cost of raw metal and we see that such coins vanish from the money supply. Britain is the latest in line to eliminate the 1 & 2 pence coins. They are costing more to produce than they are worth. I have written about the monetary reform Act of 1857 when the penny was drastically reduced in size. Canada eliminated the penny as well.

The United States dropped copper from the penny in 1982. Today, the penny is made of 97.5% zinc. It is copper-plated to give the app...

Americans Are Broke

Retail sales unexpectedly fell again in February. It was the third straight monthly drop and the first time the US economy has seen three straight months of declining retail sales since 2012.

Sales fell 0.1% in February. Analysts had expected an uptick of 0.3%. According to CNBC, households cut back on purchases of motor vehicles and other big-ticket items, pointing to a slowdown in economic growth in the first quarter.

So, why is this happening? Peter Schiff offered a simple reason in his la...

Acceptable Bigotry and Scapegoating

Over the last year and a half, Americans have been bombarded with the Gish Gallop claims of Russiagate. In that time, the most reckless comments have been made against the Russians in service of using that country as a scapegoat for problems in the United States that were coming to a head, which were the real reasons for Donald Trump’s upset victory in 2016.  It has even gotten to the point where irrational hatred against Russia is becoming normalized, with the usual organizations that like t...

Is the GOP Facing a Midterm Disaster?

After the victory of Donald Trump in 2016, the GOP held the Senate and House, two-thirds of the governorships, and 1,000 more state legislators than they had on the day Barack Obama took office.

“The Republican Party has not been this dominant in 90 years,” went the exultant claim.

A year later, Republicans lost the governorship of Virginia and almost lost the legislature.

Came then the loss of a U.S. Senate seat in ruby-red Alabama.

Tuesday, Democrats captured a House seat in a Pennsylvania...

World War 3

“In a nuclear war the “collateral damage” would be the life of all humanity.” — Fidel Castro

The Russians, in their anxiety to show the West how friendly they are, left Washington with a toe hold in Syria, which Washington is using to reopen the war. The Russians’ failure to finish the job has left Washington’s foreign mercenaries, misrepresented in the American presstitute media as “freedom fighters,” in a Syrian enclave. To get the war going again, Washington has to find a way to come to th...

Britain’s Presumption of Guilt Towards Russia

Britain’s abandonment of due process has taken a dangerous and reckless leap, with Theresa May declaring economic sanctions and diplomatic expulsions for Russia’s “failure” to respond to allegations over the Skripal poisoning.

Provocatively, Moscow was given a 24-hour deadline to “answer” charges leveled by the British government that it was responsible for the attempted murder of a Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, who had been living in England since 2010 after a spy-swap deal.

Skripal...

The Grim Lessons of Charles Whitman

The era of mass public shootings began with Charles Whitman in 1966.  He taught us all we need to know to prevent or minimize such events.  We ignored his lessons.

On August first of that year, Whitman rode the elevator to the top of the Clock Tower at the University of Texas at Austin.  He rolled a hand truck along with him that carried a footlocker full of guns and ammunition.  Soon after ensued the first mass murder in a public place in America.

Texas Monthly Magazine published an in-depth...